list,url,date,period,category,rank,artist,title,label,review,listen/buy links,artwork link,artwork file
The 50 Best Albums of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/,2022,year,album,50,Marina Herlop,Pripyat,Pan,"Pan With Pripyat, conservatory-trained pianist Marina Herlop tears up the rule book in its entirety, transforming each musical element into a toy to play with. Phonetic whoops, spiky piano chords, and thousands of Ableton Live presets splinter into knife-edged shards in the Catalan artist’s music. Her experimental compositions burst with enthusiasm, as multi-tracked choral arrangements flicker over jittery time signatures and electronics fit for Pixar’s sound-effects department. Close your eyes and those million tiny pieces rearrange into a single artwork, one radiant enough to illuminate the darkness. –Nina Corcoran",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufenzzCT2h4d3RvsBqi4F1wVe3D7kf9zAR56qRryvXkmiiAzwUk | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/474N76DNT3n1smUARtCDRxekNNF3vu1wV1AjPQDHqP1vtSJ1LCXeQzuZpXEemqE59HpZutecPp2RwSa5M2keJW5WWHAAzVC7dm8sAcRHeEQYYh5NDNBnFEQX3jxoer28dfPg7M31Da5xt1F2vjcYYmjNPcNC | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://marinaherlop.bandcamp.com/album/pripyat | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/0jwNPISM1nMtFfBqJvPnHE | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/226541676,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/628b90cf1e68e9c4338516e7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/marina_herlop_pripyat.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Marina_Herlop-Pripyat.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/,2022,year,album,49,"Black Country, New Road",Ants From Up There,Ninja Tune,"Ninja Tune It’s almost too apt that the making of an album so fixated on departures ended with its focal creator giving notice to the rest of the band, as singer Isaac Wood did just days before Black Country, New Road released this sophomore triumph. Wood makes the most of his grand finale, packing this sprawling canvas with sorrowful, often bitterly funny musings. Over carnivalesque post-rock as dense and cathartic as his prose, he sings each regret as if he’s Hamlet addressing Yorick’s hoisted skull. Now that’s how you make an exit. –Evan Rytlewski",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/3kFAWYpoG8awKEmSGQFARgztiiy6QmBtfV1fvgG585U8cGRxNFRaHjfpy9RKLhTaj1gyKZtVTGWL47uA52hsqkvXvm4w1jkrhTszJ7F7ce5CqeA93a1qLpMbHz7GBYjAoLjrraBp269QeMzDwyUvhmqx7m5NYZXwdWhQXJ1pGSFwp2WNTcA4EFm5Eq2syh5mdid12 | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufemVfFh9cqZStfW4Z89MGH2MRthC6tcB1q7KQM3uKzXaEjAjyz | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/4Q5NDE1dgN4W84pNLsng6VFE1cdfSddbd9XvoFPPLK4asobvNMdQAXBUzYuEpauMz3G1A7Xq7NYJ9i6Dd6qPvj1foZZrknogfWw9EZygGUSQNwSGMmSmcAAgnsFMTLGzutXBKDBguEUVeDMtfvPHdtP2GRDFaXiY2mLCLL47QSL | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://blackcountrynewroad.bandcamp.com/album/ants-from-up-there | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/21xp7NdU1ajmO1CX0w2Egd | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/201105433,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61649694110e7cd222907396/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Black-Country-New-Road.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Black_Country_New_Road-Ants_From_Up_There.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/,2022,year,album,48,Jeff Parker,Forfolks,International Anthem / Nonesuch,"International Anthem / Nonesuch What would an echo of our thoughts sound like? Longtime Tortoise member and prolific jazz improviser Jeff Parker offers one possible answer on Forfolks, his second solo guitar album. Laying down spare, suggestive loops on electronic pedals, he pursues ruminative flights of fancy, fleshing out dusty drones and stuttering repetitions with melodic figures that move with the searching quality of a calmly determined mind. Like the best of his work, it is quiet yet commanding, an invitation to drift as well as dream. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/B7jB7s3t6nATUHhGS3LABK1jRyUqXu5qUiD3X7BcXCzdH57FA1micAPWpwPN4cdeNRYxTRfUWiv2oRy9tahtGnr5HY5PC6WNTotvpMDT7ALjzA3vbeyuvpZgcghvAUQvzZi5STqgqnPpZzj4iBCLRJgXCPKcQGXPawbPvY9e | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufembg28GrRtsVc1WG7DPuzHtFC5MvbtFGEhvRnGVuXBPC8k55z | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/Ehjr9t1bfyFgs5GtcpxVsAdcRJm1vtb9Ubjx5sTFJYB6r2e4TjtG8vb1rkTFisrhHbExGSy1DgZK5HrzBQjdeFLuEEKV6ec9yzDmo6mX1hL81BnYKaXzBdQtRQERwMnJ1bMCu9Dwtzo99dx6VcFsoCxmdyrxY | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/forfolks | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5xu3KOOnK4xqROr66AVztS | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/205764775,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6192b5aa2d3c89da090b8c36/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jeff-Parker-Forfolks.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Jeff_Parker-Forfolks.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/,2022,year,album,47,The Beths,Expert in a Dying Field,Carpark,"Carpark The Beths’ third album is less a relationship autopsy than a painstaking vivisection: a razor-sharp scalpel dissecting a love that’s slowly fading out on the operating table. Songwriter Liz Stokes throws caution to the wind, daring to archive every messy detail and new discovery—emerging doubts, backslide fantasies, leering regrets—with near-scientific honesty and hypermelodic abandon. Trading in their last scraps of punk to hone their newfound instincts for lean, clean power-pop, the band turns the painful clarity of post-breakup anguish into one addictive headrush after another. –Phillipe Roberts",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/4iheeJwWD8ieNhakwNtVbCeWuwR1qfJRV7bDBka8akcakztZ2NpTMJ2tSVULNDBpknPbt39LbtyY7UkoZevjVSbeo87wFsNMMBYdnsw5hzP6DENR3JkCRzuFChS69KuoYQbHnwqEXaWnyrMvR63CWJCBXH74jrawTvQEVkAQXn9eFMYP1PfpLso3Jg | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufiizJGX9UcaEaqU7868oBMfgPg3TMArHACBtLeXacRsir8QvuN | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2h8zKZvUAqv9bScU3SWqLSQ14Mhv9oyTckCaWdKvQAMSEwpzRk9ZyFaLQTRhk6jgnu2rrAr2KwPPBGAYCm5mR38tzShbtmbM6fomvzbsmFCyHcbp932d68nWEKywqiaygywP39sqv6hm8U4buByzb1sSYkJ3qdq46DPhDYCTMXabs7yEJk | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://thebethsnz.bandcamp.com/album/expert-in-a-dying-field | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/6RWLJx7kQLSnwwPyTqPj0U | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/234093524,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63220e886c02b22c1de0acd2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The%2520Beths-%2520Expert%2520in%2520a%2520Dying%2520Field.png,/dataset/artwork/The_Beths-Expert_in_a_Dying_Field.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/,2022,year,album,46,Arca,KicK iii,XL,"XL The centerpiece of a sprawling, five-album cycle, Arca’s KicK iii is a protean climax wedged between more focused experiments in squelching reggaeton and whispery ambient pop. Delving deep into the gnarled industrial textures of her back catalog, the record is governed more by mood than genre, embracing a diabolical temperament that blurs the lines between sadism and masochism. From the rubberized low end of “Señorita” to the nightcored hyperventilation that shakes “Skullqueen,” Arca gives into her most brutal impulses, turning the dancefloor into a brilliant, Boschian hellscape you won’t mind being banished to. –Jude Noel",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8uKhMsZ6pcvtNkWEm4gAjJCyNDuVvWL2Yuk1UC1nbw2xkgnnr1skEY6iepenCRp4T2Vbs65Ja53EAMDtAK5PFacW6hbZ3EY | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufemVxD1D8XE7mq77Goy9H4rfdcaBRoLhGMctQw9rgG8w4ANsGL | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/Ehjr9t1bfyFgs5GtcpxVsAdcRJm1vtb9Ubjx5sTFJYB6r2e4TjtG8vb1rkTFisrhHbExGSy1DgZK5HrzBQjdeFLuEEKV6h1HNBS8wBucikiWA621VFRrFL8pkBYK6z154i1CRBj1ep4a6XPx1CoQBCe9fov32 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1paea7BPqUpZksvNkQ2cqQ | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/204737969,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6189f68636c111e66e6b0e0a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Arca_K3_1200x1200.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Arca-KicK_iii.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/,2022,year,album,45,Soccer Mommy,"Sometimes, Forever",Loma Vista,"Loma Vista From her very first bedroom recordings, Sophie Allison has wrung every ounce of feeling out of her Stratocaster with minimal adornment, the reverb on her vocals emanating outward like a ghost floating through empty space. But where earlier albums found a woman drowning in her own emotions, Sometimes, Forever reveals that Allison has learned how to swim. She writes the hell out of a hook, whether while holding a candle in the dark (“newdemo”) or aiming a double-barrel at a lover (“Shotgun”). And even though she’s traded in her bedroom for a multi-million-dollar studio and an assist from synth sorcerer Oneohtrix Point Never, she's retained her signature acerbic wit. Against richly textured arrangements that have swelled to match her ambition, she's never sounded more sure of herself. –Matthew Ismael Ruiz",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/3WVdWb4brEJ3iT5cRmUo31whQ5bFyaGfVKFTjSbA6Aiwe74mFqwbB5h4cfdMw6wUvQV63DDGyN7e53uaEJSZjSxNYt1Q4knwUDEs625aRp2mjG3czVJXX5N7LgxW3JniuUivvddxbaZ9HLJonxHHwX3umQY1W9UiREs1KwXBxnxttUSz8U85fe | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufengimUsPr56QSTfK1MuwPCn6Rt9kbpU5mUxYvc38z3uChhGa4 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/meh9fHuiYWLjqSgj7XHZWWWEHEHsDNtLyJtA7tHqnKwM7w8ZUnQNeCSNeb3E3hQnYn62ABcNP6jQGetLxhRE5Xxv9HWQ54xybsCK4cyHftxvz1y2wwCx6UyPFcJxNQNQRuaTcfkNMfRbW7RdPTBc3mW4wJHvsf2sxqxfLSMDS | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://sopharela.bandcamp.com/album/sometimes-forever | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3VXLdJpzeaAyX9Tbm0i0zn | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/234049002 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTc1w32Vbeo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/623a998d60d2cf2d46d41a2d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Soccer%2520Mommy%2520-%2520'Sometimes%2C%2520Forever'%2520-%2520Album%2520Art.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Soccer_Mommy-Sometimes_Forever.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/,2022,year,album,44,Amber Mark,Three Dimensions Deep,PMR / Interscope,"PMR / Interscope On her debut album, Amber Mark seeks the answers to life’s biggest questions via soul-baring R&B balladry and funk-tinged pop. The pursuits of love and self-confidence take on a cosmic weight on songs like “Out of This World'' and “Bliss,” intertwining the scientific, spiritual, and physical via her aching, gritty alto. Across 17 sprawling tracks, Mark embarks on a journey that makes the revelation of self-discovery feel like watching a solar eclipse for the first time. –DeAsia Paige",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/qsSkLvaohicCiNF2u5sRy7EaHrr8QBHsmzbUp2chj45Ue8bty9VB33hCfd6kKcz3DYrbDimKL2UtmMM4mqsrwjk12cZELZw13PaEo9rg2NYaen54qkgSnLpqv3NaPzVTdm8aCNpzQ4h3oWdS1CLQ8eehE8GnUdzT7YSNrmpVx5aaUcGJNbtthkJ4 | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufemCe1VH7dLF7Z2UmvPvWDWGrjNnEsvTuQWTFZtrXFChLLduMr | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/63B2uvSQBPtLWCnAKVBh3aKbjMKQQk7xejCd483FePL2oxofuSyumsXdw9eSEjGwyMDBGRkAkNjP2gJLxvJyDdNze3RPFRaiNCPx5VsX7iEopeodKig3ZwMiWojXcqnAL3u6QmEKgMRbF8sgjgxFKVnWcbpUjLFniNoodWRyRZxpCbr | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1S8KMYJE7raT6e6hfPRLUU | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/213356738,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/618d74fb7909bb4eadeda3cb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Amber-Mark.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Amber_Mark-Three_Dimensions_Deep.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/,2022,year,album,43,Mitski,Laurel Hell,Dead Oceans,"Dead Oceans Has exhaustion ever sounded as horribly seductive as it does on Mitski’s sixth album? Laurel Hell was the record that Mitski didn’t want to make: In 2019, she was spent by the success of Be the Cowboy and withdrew from music. But it was the only record she could make, a wearily gorgeous work of dark synth lines, droning guitars, and semi-industrial noise. The album centers around the remarkable one-two punch of “The Only Heartbreaker” and “Love Me More,” two songs so alive with pop zest they seem to have arrived from the hit parade of a parallel universe 1986. –Ben Cardew",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/X7niGYieCH8UQ8PGqdUBtg8M6SAMcPegELm2uaNkiXQqSRwp4HaQGxppbNbXBTTEpWDbmJKpggpTNHpKw3oaWz2rpfAu31PMStK93f8FstJ65jZP37SYfm9tuJQ1Pawc5wuBxfw9J75azNKCZ6Pg2W2ZwES7TztGVcKpt | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufemJagJgd7Ad8YfTijWMAVQkefnfvBH8WYw2yULUXbXTUUM15a | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/MKEh7BpQXwWWp1Y3i6D9RjWuqrJsu9zvnz9d36jPMPvD98gTrNrqcRAvCcYCX4oSM9jZscHurCooXc4F442PjYSAu9nqaf39pRfBboie7sXsFRJR8rQ3aSHzexhMVupy1K24xd87SeuiTdzSK7mxmnmvd9SvRHKFe | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://mitski.bandcamp.com/album/laurel-hell | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/4rcinMUHEWOxpIwJo2sf22 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/200539891,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61898887cbc65810d2fd19c9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mitski-Laurel-Hell.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mitski-Laurel_Hell.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/,2022,year,album,42,700 Bliss,Nothing to Declare,Hyperdub,"Hyperdub As Moor Mother or among collective others, Camae Ayewa's releases are world-building almanacs, the present of Black futurism. DJ Haram roots her sound in brain-bending, body-moving, underground club music, then drags it through a raucous sludge. Together as 700 Bliss, they make dance music like Sun Ra made jazz, Grace Jones made dub, or Prince made pop—which is to say, they rocket in all directions at once. Their finest to date, Nothing to Declare constructs floor-filling labyrinths of calls-out to their crews and fuck-yous to the rest, with trap doors to ragers. –Jesse Dorris",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/8UAFzxJzvSuaw23YMmcgLo6XFpPbbtLCUmg6umLWhEHCQYzpUDSpXHL8eXe7W58cD1MaxfhzYn1KNyfrzXskqCL1UMrWKND7NHVbJZmQXBPKzpCyYu7SQQyGJLFNJGU8vGij5eNQxE3AgQRzVy5m9z8EPmrYA6UcmUpsoqKvYvvYY4mFr2C | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufenh5jxDbb2GAZGa3xyYzGtjP6MidpnSeJtxs6xJx4FZmoJGAC | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/4Q5NDE1dgN4W84pNLsng6VFE1cdfSddbd9XvoFPPLK4asobvNMdQAXBUzYuEpauMz3G1A7Xq7NYJ9i6Dd6qPvj1foZZrkpMqb83PU3ynAnHbBZJ7xFzUxSsz5WwyWx3dsuhWje4wEGeK4g34LohFhAecNBg6U32PwrDHpeYNGgp | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://700bliss.bandcamp.com/album/nothing-to-declare | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/03CDVlgkBtndSWpVIJMybO | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/220495749,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/62338f06edfeddd7a4e5f17e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/700-Bliss.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/700_Bliss-Nothing_to_Declare.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/,2022,year,album,41,Oren Ambarchi,Shebang,Drag City,"Drag City Like a time-lapse video of a flower in bloom, Oren Ambarchi’s Shebang is an awe-inspiring exposition of transformation. From the latticework of iridescent guitars that opens the Australian composer-instrumentalist’s album-length composition to its final apex of rapturous polyrhythm, every element is in constant motion. More than just a transfixing expanse of drift and groove, Shebang unfolds like a Music for 18 Musicians for the 21st century, each shift in tone and timbre an invitation to embrace the uncertainty and persistence of change. –Jonathan Williger",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/meh9fHuiYWLjqSgj7XHZWWWEHEHsDNtLyJtA7tHqnKwM7w8ZUnQNeCSNeb3hxxGjwZN3mdrpSC14wwCrEfmTJhMbuzALwyJdjKzCovEwb4M6x1VzPE7nsG2smerAHEA1uAQtHhqtmV8eHxbF5egVWTLn5H6RJnkVxNxFQapgp | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufihCCMkSWuGUPUxZbFtBymfoE23Xp8tR4Fp2WUyMUDiLtaAam6 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/474N76DNT3n1smUARtCDRxekNNF3vu1wV1AjPQDHqP1vtSJ1LCXeQzuZpXEemqE59HpZutecPp2RwSa5M2keJW5WWHAAzVWsQhXvHa2GB7Q2sB1hQLpU9TK4kUc21eja2mADPdCbMA4Ezn6FnLbodCvDBAyN | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://orenambarchi.bandcamp.com/album/shebang | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1khpMdVH3EXz5RWt4WRAbg | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/234270543/,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63349abb16901d53be466529/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Oren-Ambarchi-Shebang.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Oren_Ambarchi-Shebang.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/,2022,year,album,40,Jenny Hval,Classic Objects,4AD,"4AD The latest album from scholarly Norwegian experimentalist Jenny Hval offers a fresh line of artistic inquiry, challenging set-in-stone clichés about romantic desire and political structures. But even when tackling the biggest topics, Hval distills them into pictorial scenes with deliberately glib language and lounge-like grooves. She describes arthouse touchstone The Passion of Joan of Arc, for instance, as “a clever sci-fi movie”; marriage as “a normcore institution.” Hval presents herself as both artist and critic here, spinning the headiest of thoughts into basic, brilliant comedy. In Hval’s world, intelligence and romance only find resolution through their own ridicule. –Emma Madden",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/PEbHSas7Jt1b5tzL8bQBkN56HvgEKoKidXGJ8n4we1YzzHJziVgBw42E21AUHwSvGW8uNAU7T3g99NwV6H59xRzHuMb7v4GqgJvtreg4Z8gkJkv2HcbFvp1ELTiB1qzu6dW7Dvsft7tcctZ3tML1GzpKhEJUeiBGjHVZ6MvURcz3PHv8 | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufen68kMKdgAuGCBe93DN751C2XjnA1hsRHnnqBaeuhZxvWZrCg | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/3Hvxm9czoAnByw5bJudy155hRgz4HyCyJ9tDMR4K1xHECoF6vhWARjTQ54iHw6M2V82vephGvLgQcNz7yaB625AFTrokYLs2Uf4eftUpHmHuT7WcimyG2mjbSp3RzekaPeSDyF2Cn3wnDECeDTs2RAEeXRZoXWZy6xuPDQ4 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/71T5vyKWwbd4oUPfDpyNwb | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/217105019,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6231fc7a288d216b2733d8eb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/jenny-hval-classic-objects.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jenny_Hval-Classic_Objects.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/,2022,year,album,39,Chat Pile,God’s Country,The Flenser,"The Flenser God’s Country might be unbearable if it weren’t so funny. Oklahoma City sludge-noise band Chat Pile’s debut album deals in extreme bleakness: tales of violence and societal collapse, riffs that sound like they’re on the verge of throwing up. Still, there is something sly—and even a little silly—about these songs that somehow heightens the album’s urgency even more. It’s most obvious in “grimace_smoking_weed.jpg,” where the purple McDonald’s mascot appears as a hallucination during a drug-fueled suicidal episode. But it’s also there in “Why,” the album’s most straightforward political critique. “Why do people have to live outside when there are buildings all around us?” asks singer Raygun Busch, his exaggerated matter-of-factness underscoring one of the album’s major themes: America’s oppression and neglect of its most vulnerable residents isn’t just cruel, it’s absurd. –Andy Cush",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/4Q5NDE1dgN4W84pNLsng6VFE1cdfSddbd9XvoFPPLK4asobvNMdQAXBUzYuGwoxxUXoquE1gtNBZJRUFJKL7D777w6sJF3dWq7poSEUaQce5Q6MgGuau7LABSXzwrhes7MotzN2KfN38rJSbVU7CPCdrA1CUU7ewMEkejpXLwQt | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufenz5pNeHgmh96L9Encwbie5W7cr5uJqyM48G2hxXVzk1DjXsW | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2YfVS2JkEsZbGaVN2xMzcCAf2EcdufCigRyF44GJ5f29ratuBWwUyZKgmpFrhqhmxswYt6NmeGB7aN5jK2UM9Lmk6hBoKRHHj8tdkn5gyBDhJP4WrpyYVMP1zDgMtJ3QL3YTwzJZpjmzcfPkUMBrnohsqXvUk3RZEVE | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://chatpile.bandcamp.com/album/gods-country | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/38hr6lK2Up3QabqUEUEhKx | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/225188684,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/62e16ddcd957e7e2565b5d7f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Chat-Pile-Gods-Country.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Chat_Pile-Gods_Country.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/,2022,year,album,38,Huerco S.,Plonk,Incienso,"Incienso These brittle jitters aren’t what anyone might expect from the maker of 2016’s contemporary ambient classic For Those of You Who Have Never (And Also Those Who Have). Instead, the pointillistic, percussive sound Brian Leeds, aka Huerco S., developed this time establishes a mood of delicate disequilibrium and suppressed unrest. There’s a pained beauty to the irregular, plucked patterns of “Plonk I,” like a player tentatively grappling with a harp that’s been fitted with serrated strings. Elsewhere, there are echoes of the itchy, intricate ’80s electronic funk of Ryuichi Sakamoto, the parched postmodern jazz of Jon Hassell, and the needlepoint snares of ’90s drum’n’bass, underlining the sense that this album purposefully pulls from across history. File under “nervous ambient.” –Simon Reynolds",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/5bwkygcD8TrHGdppHZSrwYPBcY7KL4rNhn7wPE5csqh9eBoYusiekNLU1NCCNvmAqswX988ghBaqm123jVDswgwqnfxifASyqqnq7Hqf7cGxqQUYocKuH64AH2gBu2oanyb6KZm2fcfBFScdaLMxqM2wLhwi2DGk | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufiihNKBrRjMMNNiWXMthRNZogjrR9icYNSUJJpcCrf2BUDYybn | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/AF4hZrJoZxC84SKr5YhNkUxhvHJs9uSA2Ar2Do9q6QaLbRW9zbdL7wZg6oCSkKar6rzWJSC9PyWiC1JNK8YJSAZSwvE29dw8YiEEZzXHDGELeV81AdWtZHdpC7ToksudwNC8UnWPsRi7goQdLUvy18mAg | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://huercosplonk.bandcamp.com/album/plonk | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1NLglnqr3MZju3F0upWXzU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/619510f8c9938cf9ade4be88/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Huerco-S-Plonk.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Huerco_S-Plonk.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/,2022,year,album,37,Weyes Blood,"And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow",Sub Pop,"Sub Pop How do you mourn the loss of what we’re all still living through? Weyes Blood’s Natalie Mering has spent the last few years wrestling with difficult questions about the human species’ slow descent into climate apocalypse, writing tender ballads that situate individual melancholy within a larger politics of collective grief. The second in a series of three albums dedicated to this theme, And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow wades further into the lonesome nostalgia that has long been among the songwriter’s strengths, finding moments of near-religious ecstasy at the depths of her despair. It’s a eulogy for a dying world, born from a hope that the next one will be better. –Rob Arcand",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/5562jUBkjoEKG5nQnQVZTNNDEjjo25wooQswhmFuC7qXVBj65ku9Ezdvzr8wTW6UVzmUVpmKn19H5jYeXawpYHQbs6QZiSe7yyzSYk973QTVJYC9sq8usPZPZCqKSpptxRxauEv1SRwK7CY4ah7gkAvzWhDXgMjo628MsKgaAwgGk6WtpWc4GMHC45jJU88QjurRdPt5v | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufiiak2cBLEfY495cQ1eyf4kNPpoMLfWNtrwwZciPNfsZFefzUQ | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/6WnbuGMnBi631gUEFBH8HyKiiLxb6XTtMH3ozSaYQ5bw7WfDjfwQkFYBwJckSXDcRZuzHZSuPBS3oZKEBEoRKs4xi5ZihgwYBWcFCTAkkHGqUmkXV4U8fLRi2sJ1GgZpuXxfJKEJ18ucprLeDZnkZDU5ir3CzoDtMqFmwYjSsH4VzEtJaCJnG621Y58Drx | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://weyesblood.bandcamp.com/album/and-in-the-darkness-hearts-aglow | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1hngVRZt95TrqPqXoJzQ4A | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/247478983,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/631f595a8f0d7ac40b58d7e4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Weyes-Blood.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Weyes_Blood-And_in_the_Darkness_Hearts_Aglow.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/,2022,year,album,36,Soul Glo,Diaspora Problems,Epitaph / Secret Voice,"Epitaph / Secret Voice Hardcore is the sound of mortal urgency, of one band dodging obstacles only they can see, at a speed no one could possibly maintain. Part of what makes riotous Philadelphia band Soul Glo’s Diaspora Problems so powerful is how raw and real those obstacles are—cyclical poverty, emotional abuse, the ever-present threat of institutional violence—and how completely vocalist Pierce Jordan turns himself inside out in response, howling and screaming and rapping about generational trauma and the harrowing realities of life as a Black American in a militarized police state. Despite the subject matter, Diaspora Problems feels celebratory, not grim: a scream of pain that testifies, above everything else, to an ironclad will to live. –Jayson Greene",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/PEbHSas7Jt1b5tzL8bQBkN56HvgEKoKidXGJ8n4we1YzzHJziVgBw42E21AUHwSvGW8uNAU7T3g99NwV6H59xRzHuMb7v4GqgJvu6rA8CtpUTq1naTXmnsBhP8EgMkqf2X4MVf2xft95KKG5QHc3ZZmv2NozzczyPBS2QZdaSgv1ss9r | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufemtY85vD7M177ws7YT2sGkew6JzzrHvcQN5sWH27UEBA18bjv | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/meh9fHuiYWLjqSgj7XHZWWWEHEHsDNtLyJtA7tHqnKwM7w8ZUnQNeCSNeb3E3hQnYn62ABcNP6jQGetLxhRE5Xxv9HWQ4fNJJVtD9BdY3XDrKSHYZzExkpLFBfFZKFYNvKHjQFPRNtSpJ5mUQeU8GTC96wxFUqA77Z6PJfx3A | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://soulglophl.bandcamp.com/album/diaspora-problems | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2ZYhM0LXHZ38te98EizcQW | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/208133004,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61ddd19b2cf2308e8ce0210a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/87853_SoulGlo_DiasporaProblems.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Soul_Glo-Diaspora_Problems.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/,2022,year,album,35,MJ Lenderman,Boat Songs,Dear Life,"Dear Life On a sonic level, no rock album in 2022 felt quite as cozy as Boat Songs. Everything at Asheville, North Carolina singer-songwriter MJ Lenderman’s disposal—his electric guitar tone, his distorted vocals, those thwacking snare drums—blends into a satisfying whole, like a particularly crunchy bite into a grilled cheese sandwich. But what makes Boat Songs transcend mere indie-rock comfort food is Lenderman’s songwriting, which weaves together poetic hallucinations with unglamorous imagery of daily life. When he sings that the food at a recent dinner with friends was great, “if only for being homemade,” you know he means it. In fact, you can almost taste it. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/FzrGcxRntjxTYBr5CjAbZDfnRiGpg8gXpYfWT8VoaEipXEh8ZG3fF2DGZ1ojNvHyrWykqWS33iVbZu1G7RuLQRx1bnu16zcAfP7z8yQTtCpHY4wbjzHY2j2LaW2hfDtqJimarCpRnGHyhLGjMHvPjCpmnCBAb2pYfNYmyvU2CAvC | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufemu4DbpyGRy7GAgci373ykxLa5vtQ26Vt58K9EMtiLNSAcVNY | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/5bwkygcD8TrHGdppHZSrwYPBcY7KL4rNhn7wPE5csqh9eBoYusiekNLU1NC9W1rwgTSxUn9pKQ4onuMDhZrhwx9sjB9aD8TiXvYVZf2RR5YwMs2Np6Wa7RPJTy96bCgukcXPfztPzvNV9CCaE6Dn6djaGnmH2wdJ | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://mjlenderman.bandcamp.com/album/boat-songs | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1G5OaCbp7Tb0YJlSInBeYu | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/209402786,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6272c286c75302f40c14a3f0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/BoatSongs.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/MJ_Lenderman-Boat_Songs.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/,2022,year,album,34,Mavi,"Laughing So Hard, It Hurts",Mavi 4 Mayor,"Mavi 4 Mayor On his second album, Mavi toes the line between exhausted and emboldened, using openhearted vocal melodies to explore his desires, fears, and insecurities. There’s an easy rhythm to the North Carolina rapper’s voice as it saunters over production that fuses lo-fi loops and casual sample chops, surrounding his nuanced soliloquies with a refreshing brightness. When the 23-year-old calmly spits about seasonal depression on “My Good Ghosts” or muses about finding sobriety on “Chinese Finger Trap,” it feels like a conversation with a close friend who’s been through it, and is better for it. –Matthew Ritchie",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufiioA3JqbAAUTDRFTUkkeGFTa1cJaXRNTcpRd96AfbVfrMX5ex | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/ZxssCo8SeuM6mRcDQfvUeNTNYQAjiyZjfaBb5th84ZcVLxECX7vxkf5SkeET5snFJTZe3XRRTsHKXPjnFy2ozExhNZkG1LDrQwf53q5u6zqJAHKVYjfwAZemaSwsmnCamVgysbDMgMxqoagDTEh9ZthML7BEqQJ8zWhWTLVhv2yTSUyLAV2x | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/0zI5KZ81RN2x6RrQchLLBQ | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/247860454,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6323309510c581ffac68ce4e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mavi.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mavi-Laughing_So_Hard_It_Hurts.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/,2022,year,album,33,The 1975,Being Funny in a Foreign Language,Dirty Hit,"Dirty Hit In 2018, the 1975’s Matty Healy admitted that emotional deflection can be a temporary balm on a song called “Sincerity Is Scary.” But on their fifth album, the British quartet embraces the discomfort that comes with being direct. Atop stripped-back arrangements befitting 11 tracks consumed by matters of the heart, Healy reckons with his tendency to sabotage his own happiness. “I got it/I found it/I’ve just gotta keep it,” he sings of love midway through the record, psyching himself up. Loving—and living—may be a daunting pursuit, but the 1975 sound more than ready to try. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/D7sWyRTyBnUnjVm8WybWbyYXHAEast352rdxovHXCEikaf79NnfTvsLNipAKwwaKrS3RaxAGawST6mTD2nXRQCsHWHWMQFiaMbe49uYkfZv9K3YqB2Q71xR8ZagqJvgLJyAgNaYoLSPhh2gkZVSr9cHp9WQFpAwfKBrgbjvR6dgk2skSUHVgCj5nBU92rH4j1e3q9A | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufihJ2nSxfVcaaPVkcLXemhBYbFzaXgRjjSKUDFbNVe5JhagEcG | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/RLUH3gniSGMDt1DBTaNBBubd7V6MVPTfeVqQQXu3asKBqjuhDLs9ouAfGgknjeNfMSGsr6DLCu3ZNVdTAButNFzUtK9R4c7dWxigixTJ7CwVgNmXYZCbddNqX3GuMGo3dYPyTPk5ikc345bnb9zh94dGTdWeCFKiwewntUT8hNZBE1kaP4RCXZAM6wRc4Sk | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://the1975.bandcamp.com/album/being-funny-in-a-foreign-language | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/6dVCpQ7oGJD1oYs2fv1t5M | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/236048983,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/62c64ec74807e30a5dfd2fde/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/1975%2520-%2520Being%2520Funny%2520In%2520A%2520Foreign%2520Language.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_1975-Being_Funny_in_a_Foreign_Language.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/,2022,year,album,32,Ravyn Lenae,HYPNOS,Atlantic,"Atlantic On her debut album, Ravyn Lenae channels the sublimity of outer space while detailing the intimacies of her life on Earth. The Chicago R&B singer and songwriter begins the record heartbroken and betrayed by someone she loves but, even in moments of pain, the precision of her airy falsetto still stuns. The simmering confidence of her vocals is matched up by HYPNOS’ production—courtesy of innovators like Steve Lacy and Kaytranada—which conjures a cosmic funk that’s both familiar and fresh. Across the album, Lenae transforms pain into transcendence: By the time she arrives at the white-hot “Light Me Up” or the exuberant “Xtasy,” she’s finally opened herself back up to starry love. –Vrinda Jagota",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufenz4RH2a5N4QC8Vw3VJPoQodbVdXUypXm7tMWucSDG9nXScJC | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/ho5L3zdaYSc6AAnBd4uCzvQscAyrNJS2pATNPUhyGs49Uw9ghDqMPdqDaauWeD2PisepKxCC4QS8oaKf52H9x5CDXPvU4vcGRLiC69KX6enXSpcxxrBpGgXoM5i6Tc9rs7GposS9RboNw8Uy4MYx3VRfyr | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5Y4hUd0FPvCed5lu7loMXZ | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/228724864,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/62850e3ac27f1a4486dc20a7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ravyn-Lenae-Hypnos.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ravyn_Lenae-HYPNOS.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/,2022,year,album,31,Hikaru Utada,BADモード,Sony,"Sony For over two decades, J-pop star Hikaru Utada’s intensely emotional songs have looked for answers to life’s big questions. On BADモード, their searching leads them to pay tribute to house music, along with the glittery sounds of disco, city pop, and ’90s R&B. As they grapple with fear and grief throughout the album, instrumentals co-produced with A.G. Cook, Floating Points, and Skrillex swell and swirl with ecstasy. The club is often imagined as a place of abandon, but BADモード is a reminder that dance music is equally well-suited to accompany catharsis—you might not always find answers, but you can still sweat through the pain. –Colin Joyce",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufenBrQdLkjfiBvr8ySLKLtBZk1sRSeCrsmeA2ksphfZowBAQWc | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/HR4R9gBZvZ4oxn7zw1cHBxQb2fAzhn3u565znTKETyW41CWYM5JTJaBL3WfUDKkySVzFCAGrxRnW92Nj5MA84KBRDY5pNqPUWnYJQPSkAAKz5dCb3nTJxVx6nbFSkW7vFyS2NDQ1fCfaoZTbL2U4HwXxeZ6ngNv5iyk8JkfvqVt7KiyQxFUdjF9kqTW | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/7Kxd4i6FPfW0ZuP3Q96uij | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/211993300,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/620a8ee91038e82f029e3a5d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/100000x100000-999.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Hikaru_Utada-BAD.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/,2022,year,album,30,Destroyer,Labyrinthitis,Merge,"Merge Dan Bejar has long been a master of dislocation, and on Labyrinthitis, his 13th album as Destroyer, his songwriting hits some profoundly chaotic new peaks. On “June,” a six-and-a-half-minute disco-rap odyssey, his cast of characters includes an idiotic snow angel and a Cubist judge. “Tintoretto, It’s For You” reimagines the Italian painter as some sort of skulking creature of the night. Then, on “Eat the Wine, Drink the Bread,” he describes a conversation between dogs before unleashing a put-down for the ages: “Everything you just said/Was better left unsaid.” It’s all deliberately obscure, and in that obscurity lies beautiful clarity. –Sophie Kemp",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/FzrGcxRntjxTYBr5CjAbZDfnRiGpg8gXpYfWT8VoaEipXEh8ZG3fF2DGZ1ojNvHyrWykqWS33iVbZu1G7RuLQRx1bnu16zcAfP7yyRE12wAApQcsrmxSLXCEQUHosbNv9RnoRrfLACSn7HouXxtRtKLSmo9Kcxat6fqLWfKEmZ4U | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufemu6oxhiZvcSBHBgxGSYfMTzYyHKX21jFZL84jGvZ12knK4Jt | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/7pktVSmKrEArFkpBqdMfGLHcpT6HuRciy3DF2VQWPYp65rc5KR9UUdfUYoaaPFxyTdqmiWj63Tye2G3skZVhupGVE8NfSKMk55yuWogsZYy3fFeAAWQ6AfF1wnXXw6pP4QzehVrr77ZdEtNTqFGgTDpX3iJk5G9ahkvU | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://destroyer.bandcamp.com/album/labyrinthitis | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/63bs2cLZO9wm6hvhovU1AU | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/209343977,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61dc60f7e5e3cbd18cf32d15/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/MRG789_destroyer_LABYRINTHITIS_900.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Destroyer-Labyrinthitis.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/,2022,year,album,29,Rachika Nayar,Heaven Come Crashing,NNA Tapes,"NNA Tapes A first spin of Heaven Come Crashing feels like plugging a high-voltage power line into the base of your spine: You can’t help but sit up straight and pay attention, absorbing every jolt. Brooklyn-based composer-guitarist Rachika Nayar built her second album from shimmering drones, glitches, synth arpeggios, and occasional beats. The record is beautiful, dramatic, and occasionally frightening as it drifts through that emotionally nourishing space where gentle ambient and harsh noise collide. It’s an energy field as much as a piece of music, the kind of record where you can feel your entire body listening. –Mark Richardson",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/HR4R9gBZvZ4oxn7zw1cHBxQb2fAzhn3u565znTKETyW41CWYM5JTJaBL3WfeUcnmnFLkxGToX2QYKbWLX8QAYXywpaRcUdKEp5YdM9T74M6gGFK6Np3ianNBojteGqawks6CRV6scg57aYsP4577Nw2wTWLYiVBEnZmgSjUKEqAfp7dtTQ5C2q2h29v | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufiih6VZ9i5mzaDwfoq25jnDaAet6T7NXjpwkNbz7Kkn5FFtM6p | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/29CLTwheRZNbn8esbYm7MXCvBW5AqRiuV2rkxzL68ZhZakTS8MPQjntM9eJYYf8EpCq592XdCBpDEyUwpZUBUL7o8wUGv6zc2DPHKkCfGZUxxvUMfau7Nupgif3gjhJPyjkw2kHTnDoFKJwYehawdSijQpD8VtFGhaRgRH9YQtJmcc | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://rachika.bandcamp.com/album/heaven-come-crashing | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/15hyxv55DQ8mUaqQVLlrBP | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/246042729,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/62cf124011f264f564531162/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Album%2520Art%2520(Digital%2520-%2520Full%2520Bleed).jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rachika_Nayar-Heaven_Come_Crashing.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/,2022,year,album,28,billy woods,Aethiopes,Backwoodz Studioz,"Backwoodz Studioz billy woods’ eye for detail is as hilarious as it is morbid. On Aethiopes, the Brooklyn indie-rap mainstay’s first of two fantastic albums this year, he describes shipwrecked European colonizers shooting through the water “like God’s semen,” and then deems himself the “multiverse Benzino” before describing a Medusa head whose snake hair is twisted into Senegalese braids. These bizarre cultural mixes are sold with a dead-eyed confidence that’s matched by producer Preservation’s surreal beats. As woods wrings humor and dread out of a spiraling world, the only option is to laugh to keep from crying. –Dylan Green",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufengmZxzNKuyjExPWwNBRz1YxJR5oBLmaGAUqP4Q5KEz7wUx7A | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8nansyqULpE8awBcBxybcmwRdNwmAjQJqXPnb1kGMKZmGuiDJmazKX5hcGc2dNbb7Zt68hRmB22yN5NYzKmRig8fkNcBFNMhzoTU6HE | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://billywoods.bandcamp.com/album/aethiopes | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/34uTUAM6SE8Eo6Cv4PRqwD | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/220196489,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/622eb47edd123e9e0e460c96/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/AETHIOPES_COVER_1200.jpg,/dataset/artwork/billy_woods-Aethiopes.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/,2022,year,album,27,Florist,Florist,Double Double Whammy,"Double Double Whammy The fourth album from understated indie rockers Florist lands like two decks of hand-crafted playing cards being lovingly shuffled together. One half is a collection of quietly grand folk songs, the other is a stack of ambient fragments sneakily loaded with magnetic, microscopic details that resembles frontwoman Emily A. Sprague’s solo releases. When they dovetail, acoustic reflections sidle up against tiny electrical currents crackling through nature, like fireflies in a humid forest. –Steven Arroyo",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/MKEh7BpQXwWWp1Y3i6D9RjWuqrJsu9zvnz9d36jPMPvD98gTrNrqcRAvCcYRDnHxSjqe2rUvCMiNDD5d4XZqrPK4LaxvsShftaMHHqwVtk6rva3degFnqMh4EvafcqXWN8WpEkhbzGBhuQVmpBpwpYrKwXehvr8gp | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufenhGK3tMJLKFEB7gbkN2z5YGe1K2fupxJUJp8SHic9TEp98wr | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/474N76DNT3n1smUARtCDRxekNNF3vu1wV1AjPQDHqP1vtSJ1LCXeQzuZpXEemqE59HpZutecPp2RwSa5M2keJW5WWHAAzU6dEH3NFYejRkViWCWSiNrkmXoj73d4LFMGMY9LtTdiNUT1hY6uP3JUuJpeKDpc | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://florist.bandcamp.com/album/florist | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/7EvfFPMMvMJ20olfdEkPBR | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/220887125,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/624bc66216f9d676c9c13655/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Florist%2520-%2520Florist%2520_%2520Album%2520Art.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Florist-Florist.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/,2022,year,album,26,Perfume Genius,Ugly Season,Matador,"Matador With Ugly Season, Perfume Genius’ Mike Hadreas descends from the sunlit world of his previous album, 2020’s Set My Heart on Fire Immediately, into a cavernous unknown. “No pattern, no bloom, where I’m taking you,” he sings, entering a realm that’s creaky, vast, and teeming with shadowy creatures. Within these grottoes, there’s a shaft of light in the sweaty “Pop Song,” an empty corridor in the skeletal jazz of “Scherzo,” an errant noise in the rumble of “Hellbent.” As the score to his modern dance experiment, Ugly Season may initially seem like just a side project. But in these recesses you’ll discover Perfume Genius at his most majestic. –Jane Bua",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/PEbHSas7Jt1b5tzL8bQBkN56HvgEKoKidXGJ8n4we1YzzHJziVgBw42E21AUHwSvGW8uNAU7T3g99NwV6H59xRzHuMb7v4GqgJvu25HnCKwCXFw2K8qMPH4AVusSsxPrp5FFghDY8xN7acijnrL4e9Rr31Uy3VPjJ9MBD4Wu89NyfLit | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufenhRaADSTpXNozGCk3XMenUz7PwidF4NBjDnXbELzG8vycq1a | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/MKEh7BpQXwWWp1Y3i6D9RjWuqrJsu9zvnz9d36jPMPvD98gTrNrqcRAvCcYCX4oSM9jZscHurCooXc4F442PjYSAu9nqamVA3binBWom3dTTFgXpjeMRDcYSrMqoHDW3BqzsGdCUqHt9nG65VThuSqhURSZmFpLnc | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://perfumegenius.bandcamp.com/album/ugly-season | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/6rFFWK98d8hhdSYgaOxI5L | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/230955470,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/623c91fa2aacf5efe8e654c9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Perfume-Genius-Ugly-Season.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Perfume_Genius-Ugly_Season.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/,2022,year,album,25,Daphni,Cherry,Jiaolong,"Jiaolong Technically speaking, not much goes on in any given track from Dan Snaith’s third album as Daphni, the Caribou mastermind’s dancefloor outlet. Even the record’s most elaborate arrangements generally come down to a slim handful of elements. In such spartan settings, minor details register with unusual force. A tiny rhythmic irregularity in the title track becomes strangely transfixing as it repeats; gradual modulations make two minutes of unaccompanied synth arpeggio into a bite-sized eternity. The music is minimal but not exactly rigorous, its subtle shifts coming off as instinctive and emotional rather than systematic. The only plan, it seems, is to make your body move. –Andy Cush",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8uKhMsZ6pcvtNkWEm4gAjJCyNDuVvWL2Yuk1UQYoB7xeB1DGgXRGWGotLRGwDGLs94ZcKwxaGZ5fLW9vCwj45GbUb4LVNpp | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufenoFrVZ4xravsgQ3TPMYEw336WbfC6edjoNkKuk2dUNPTVqgc | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/ho5L3zdaYSc6AAnBd4uCzvQscAyrNJS2pATNPUhyGs49Uw9ghDqMPdqDaauWeD2PisepKxCC4QS8oaKf52H9x5CDXPvU4oLYpx6PxXeuGMAK2r51HxtVLs7zHR5igzpGMYcFTxAdx6XVxai6RE79yrEGTa | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://caribouband.bandcamp.com/album/cherry | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/0cmEfkFvLVgKhLIUgGhRG5 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/223010940,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/62bda6a4803e32780b932fc6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Daphni-Cherry.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Daphni-Cherry.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/,2022,year,album,24,FKA twigs,CAPRISONGS,Young,"Young The Capricorns in our lives have an emotional sense of direction, as if life’s compass were affixed to both their brains and their hearts. FKA twigs uses that intuition to shape her astrology-themed mixtape CAPRISONGS around the idea of resilience as a liberating force. Songs like “oh my love” and the Jorja Smith collab “darjeeling” are equally tough and lithe, while others dabble in mischief. This is twigs quietly marveling at her own beauty and strength, like a NASA image revealing the gorgeous interiority of space hiding in plain sight. –Clover Hope",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/B7jB7s3t6nATUHhGS3LABK1jRyUqXu5qUiD3X7BcXCzdH57FA1micAPWpwPN4cdeNRYxTRfUWiv2oRy9tahtGnr5HY5PC6WNTotvmWPWW6KfGUtHbyMNpimFjvzCEtH1caza2GGoNrXDgoypdL2egw2sGzJ1GEZt8e2xWeHE | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufen6t2qL1ny83DsXhCzHgcnB5iuYTEhLdD7NyB8dx9Tr6JyM6Q | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/5bwkygcD8TrHGdppHZSrwYPBcY7KL4rNhn7wPE5csqh9eBoYusiekNLU1NC9W1rwgTSxUn9pKQ4onuMDhZrhwx9sjB9aD8cbXvaqsF1b2j6tDsikkgY1WFC4NhtrywT6amooRasM83pq9QnaMyT2ysjSSx7yDZQc | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3G77BQuJy3jahjdkKQNNNM | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/211886353,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61d740b79a8903a73574e2a5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/FKA-twigs-Caprisongs.jpg,/dataset/artwork/FKA_twigs-CAPRISONGS.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/,2022,year,album,23,Beth Orton,Weather Alive,Partisan,"Partisan Each track on Beth Orton’s eighth album—the first one she self-produced—feels prompted by a forecast: One a warm, rainy night; another a rocky coastline socked in by fog; or a gray countryside bracing for snow. Funded by a personal bank loan Orton took out after she was dropped by her label, Weather Alive’s slow-moving atmospheric systems carry her memory back to times of grief, solitude, and unhealthy self-medication. (Orton summed up her album nicely: “It’s heavy as fuck.”) Amid a palette of muted trumpets, hushed drums, and dampened piano, Orton’s voice crackles and pops out of these songs, like little orange embers. Nothing feels forced out or jammed together; it’s perfectly sturdy, and just a little creaky. –Jeremy D. Larson",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/29CLTwheRZNbn8esbYm7MXCvBW5AqRiuV2rkxzL68ZhZakTS8MPQjntM9eJZG3kDwwZKWV6uW2z9DaCY9hNuzeR7oeZaXTTGDeQdpJfUSpRLHfV9evfwvdhQ9i3psDqhYngdSm1umXhiX5Pmy8ZHEjjd6S3bFAuKtLjfne1NXtmNvt | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufeo6W6fZAMEHXzxgTTDBDLovK5WG5FTTXGiPQoCMKjaktqmJXA | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/7pktVSmKrEArFkpBqdMfGLHcpT6HuRciy3DF2VQWPYp65rc5KR9UUdfUYoaaPFxyTdqmiWj63Tye2G3skZVhupGVE8NfSN171pDbdGV7FD8vg6jyD84ty7VkARZzGr29xS1xWY7FJdn47nFd7WUUz7FqzFUHtwTHwCP2 | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://bethorton.bandcamp.com/album/weather-alive | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/4LukTKZB3A6mp2jaed8x64 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/249039000,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6294c1285e91fc7ba8d4a0ef/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/BETH_ORTON_1000px.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beth_Orton-Weather_Alive.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/,2022,year,album,22,Charlotte Adigéry / Bolis Pupul,Topical Dancer,DEEWEE,"DEEWEE At a recent New York show, when Charlotte Adigéry performed “It Hit Me,” her wryly funny, devastatingly naive recollection of being sexually harassed in public at age 13, I witnessed all the men in the room—and only the men in the room—suddenly freeze. That’s the subversive sociological impact of Topical Dancer, in which Adigéry and her musical partner Bolis Pupul mint teen-mag dating advice, racist microaggressions, and dance-music clichés into absurdist Sprechgesang disco with a wickedly political sense of humor. The Belgian duo’s minimalist grooves will keep you rocking until you’re too uncomfortable to move. –Anna Gaca",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/TdsMtFs7CeQLSCksyQGA7VXqCsKeUzek6phDsvAb6Kt8u7UV9oHgDDzErJgoVeYTHZ1o5LrFi13DsXxDtdnzfVfH2nsYxno8nerAx9dcGHWWf5YxFSPfLpgFyKT8mypwdSPzdbAxXHvKuJoJ2MLmihSc2sPu72NPr4GuPMB5xn31fPrC4BUN9s9fvMuDGpybVCXarjr3LSxo4C | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufemHiwEkTB3dVB8yjMSDC76Tr94TC4YLxNrNGbb3DcSsMsoXYk | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/X7niGYieCH8UQ8PGqdUBtg8M6SAMcPegELm2uaNkiXQqSRwp4HaQGxppbNbCMF44CZcGNECmFt4zQZRh1GRha7dMawYcetZXMrR9ULttSEpz824QuSK2LM8HUV71DjcXe82ComwcYj2HzWYdm89cXPL6JLTuwm7QfGBQ4 | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://charlotteandbolis.bandcamp.com/album/topical-dancer | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/4ivk3u8J7qg7YoWUZlnGNz | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/217147078,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6183e9c86e2d11a8436b3121/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Topical-Dancer.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Charlotte_Adigry__Bolis_Pupul-Topical_Dancer.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/,2022,year,album,21,The Smile,A Light for Attracting Attention,XL,"XL The Smile’s debut resembles a dossier of the sounds and themes favored by Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood throughout their more famous band’s long career, but recording under a different moniker seemingly allowed the pair to escape the paralyzingly high expectations of a new Radiohead album. There’s the familiar doomsaying about contemporary society and those spectral melodies that suspend and fall like snow illuminated beneath a streetlight, but also a conceptual playfulness, like “You Will Never Work in Television Again”’s sneering kiss-off to famous perverts. Coming from a different point of view, Yorke and Greenwood find renewed urgency—and seize upon it like young men who’ve never once been burdened with their own reputation. –Jeremy Gordon",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/D7sWyRTyBnUnjVm8WybWbyYXHAEast352rdxovHXCEikaf79NnfTvsLNipAKwwaKrS3RaxAGawST6mTD2nXRQCsHWHWMQFiaMbe49uYkfiaW78RdbX1FdjYiZNWnLbLdq45eBpqLkptTiqAiXMUd4kKEsn6C9EjhgiucLXxqtaD9Vjm7cizNbBaJKTuRuE7gDQ9p8Q | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufenu7NjFv1ryS1iXxDMPy3W7KRoke1xQPG8gxwEbFCet4cQw4C | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/6WnbuGMnBi631gUEFBH8HyKiiLxb6XTtMH3ozSaYQ5bw7WfDjfwQkFYBwJckSXDcRZuzHZSuPBS3oZKEBEoRKs4xi5ZihgtgbW36k3bq6AYEuggE1d1kxeAXpu2EcJVh6GGrDRGEweyycFsdKd8mrvPmuTpc2F76Z4VQ8tSEgPchf29SDDaz45r9sSMnZv | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://thesmile.bandcamp.com/album/a-light-for-attracting-attention | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/009EjjwUjtdjvH7UP0wHzi | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/225753010,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/62601e65a110f14cd83778cb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-Smile.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Smile-A_Light_for_Attracting_Attention.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/,2022,year,album,20,Cate Le Bon,Pompeii,Mexican Summer,"Mexican Summer Faith gets people into all kinds of trouble across Pompeii, the lockdown-era excavation by Welsh seeker Cate Le Bon. The heavens’ inscrutability sends her out of her mind, no relic can hold her pain, God’s routine is good for nothing, and iconography is a con. (Not that she ever stood a chance in the first place: “I was born guilty as sin to a mother guilty as hell,” she sings on “Cry Me Old Trouble.”) To dodge these disappointments, Le Bon suggests, we must learn to embrace ambiguity and to “trust in love, just as you are,” as she intones in the album’s opening words. Pompeii is spectral and sensuous, playful and ruined, like Roxy Music performing “Avalon” on a flickering black-and-white television set—majestically open-ended art rock that exerts an unyielding grip. –Laura Snapes",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/3Hvxm9czoAnByw5bJudy155hRgz4HyCyJ9tDMR4K1xHECoF6vhWARjTQ54iKND9kozfxcSXU5UAkTNyDtZZNawLjCuMUgfrhfFFV2tXe5nPbnakH8edfNGEtdxLFFWPXdYKzNe1cNXpyij9TUYmDEGGsNyGHZBuZhgiaNvk | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufemVFgegrp3hEfmtPSueLFRC558ECUP78dfZSuajRaUfV5gapQ | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/474N76DNT3n1smUARtCDRxekNNF3vu1wV1AjPQDHqP1vtSJ1LCXeQzuZpXEemqE59HpZutecPp2RwSa5M2keJW5WWHAAzVC3MMeH8PCAr542MenNUJbquLPP9sKFwHpnbPe16CAvZjuQmDGm9bXzMJCnwXCc | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://catelebon.bandcamp.com/album/pompeii | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/0FHU2NxNeg7sw3pjuUHk5w | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/200697267 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6a7WeVYnSs&ab_channel=CateLeBon,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61fab74a8041ff7093f61f5e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/0027499618_16.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Cate_Le_Bon-Pompeii.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/,2022,year,album,19,Charli XCX,Crash,Atlantic,"Atlantic Crash chronicles not just one but three Charli XCX breakups: with her romantic partner, her longtime label, and the jagged brutalism of her earlier experimental music. In spite of its ambition, her fifth album is still laser-focused and impossibly cool. It’s also deeply referential—like the gleefully on-the-nose Robin S. interpolation that powers “Used to Know Me”—but never beholden to its influences. It’s the only album this year that featured new-jack-hyperpop, a thotty New Order tribute, and a gooey ode to infidelity. If early hits like “I Love It” and “Fancy” made Charli a star, and Pop 2 turned her into an avant-garde hero, Crash just may be the reason why, decades from now, dead-eyed girls and demon gays will still be screaming three words loud enough to reach Satan himself: “It’s Charli, baby.” –Shaad D’Souza",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2YfVS2JkEsZbGaVN2xMzcCAf2EcdufCigRyF44GJ5f29ratuBWwUyZKgmpFsfuQuqic5gTBQDo8RactKQAZuxcyUhjSurmeSWeeCWaF3Sh38JTY4rYrfaraZiEaso8eg1amEGPtdxwfh8XHdwgeoxy3oCTfkzjKdArU | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufembfvnHS1bh7ekMjdm4ACSMTi54ivUk3d3KjqCswEkKJji9ig | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/AF4hZrJoZxC84SKr5YhNkUxhvHJs9uSA2Ar2Do9q6QaLbRW9zbdL7wZg6oCSkKar6rzWJSC9PyWiC1JNK8YJSAZSwvE29ZiR3NwLvNbbUaSs1bJADCsntSs6bQxxx4vY1p7WAMSKxsWSjHPMeuj58fuaG | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1QqipMXWzJhr6yfcNKTp8B | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/220646952,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6183f064ebc21d2eb6916d29/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Charli-XCX-Crash.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Charli_XCX-Crash.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/,2022,year,album,18,Makaya McCraven,In These Times,International Anthem,"International Anthem Across several albums, drummer Makaya McCraven has proven to be a master of repetition, convening jam sessions and looping the results through intricate post-production editing. On In These Times, the Chicago mainstay reaches a high-water mark for this technique, crafting an LP that isn’t quite jazz or ambient or R&B. Throughout the record, he splits the difference between genres, creating amorphous sounds with odd time signatures, untethered to arbitrary tags. Though it took him seven years to complete amid other projects, In These Times proves that patience is virtuous, and that ambiguousness can resonate. –Marcus J. Moore",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/3WVdWb4brEJ3iT5cRmUo31whQ5bFyaGfVKFTjSbA6Aiwe74mFqwbB5h4cfdMw6wUvQV63DDGyN7e53uaEJSZjSxNYt1Q4knwUDEs4wrDurTveMxfwQzAu6z8r65R455BA6mAFtBgM8mGrqritHn3CpMMLDo8AuBzahcgqgMkXkfH9XgxAFQ3aY | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufih15F2VcLuJuL67KDD25M3wMqaGLgj9QdotkhGMdSnJP7K6Sk | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/X7niGYieCH8UQ8PGqdUBtg8M6SAMcPegELm2uaNkiXQqSRwp4HaQGxppbNbCMF44CZcGNECmFt4zQZRh1GRha7dMawYceguGzLQQj5e8qT3sA1mEtBd9oacoRej2R5QH8dXT5UrxnRCuhk7cZEwnxVxtFaYuiWvXEbCY8 | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/in-these-times | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1HZw70A6Y71aDRIkPtW7e0 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/246205741,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/62b1d96d0529c199415f5c8b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Makaya-McCraven-In-These-Times-2022.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Makaya_McCraven-In_These_Times.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/,2022,year,album,17,Earl Sweatshirt,Sick!,Tan Cressida / Warner,"Tan Cressida / Warner Each of Earl Sweatshirt’s albums has chronicled a distinct era of the 28-year-old’s life with stark honesty, and this latest chapter has him wading through a global pandemic while reflecting on the strength of fatherhood. Earl retains his mastery of language on Sick!, guiding us through his innermost thoughts with brevity and clarity, but his perspective on the world is no longer as anguished as it once was. Over beats that are alternately slick and grimy, he’s accepting of the past as he looks to the future with hope. Nimbly, wearily, he acknowledges the pressures around him without succumbing to them. –Matthew Ritchie",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/B7jB7s3t6nATUHhGS3LABK1jRyUqXu5qUiD3X7BcXCzdH57FA1micAPWpwPN4cdeNRYxTRfUWiv2oRy9tahtGnr5HY5PC6WNTotvkmLDDAW3qKzDETYcv8sEnCqAaWzw7AfpEWHvdsnHezbyonGoi6QTAjtYStj7t6ez9QZE | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufenCEqTMFiy6Ckn54WDseHNS6nGoA8iTQQ9Gme8dDLwou1JVjW | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/36TDN37JM9t1EvKKNRQCGk3CY6xhpL8WggqiWdjnLMJ4zBzMchvYX7vd3g1nFoMMe8FPVsZtHzDAnYLLnLqKuNeiDtw9sSonGhJShihNTJDtjLZFfjRyrvT7JCqUjCfuyLy5iP3RmUtWpbk5wsR3wgxx | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/51heTwkSfb4Z5dRIgwU2bd | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/209726038,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61b36f85542d8cbcee346351/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Earl-Sweatshirt-Sick.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Earl_Sweatshirt-Sick.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/,2022,year,album,16,Nilüfer Yanya,PAINLESS,ATO,"ATO Time follows feeling on Nilüfer Yanya’s second album: The urgent arpeggios on highlight “stabilise” match the manic all-nighter the British singer-songwriter details in its lyrics, and by the time the drums drop out on the bridge, she’s practically flying. There are whooshing heartbreaks propelled forward by sharp breakbeats, and languid ones that slink alongside alien synths. All the while, Yanya keeps the album’s steady pace with her virtuosic guitar and coolly disciplined vocals. When she finally sinks into the relaxed comfort of closer “anotherlife,” it’s akin to a runner’s afterglow—an elevated heartbeat melting into a deep stretch, as she takes in the marathon she just finished. –Arielle Gordon",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/4Q5NDE1dgN4W84pNLsng6VFE1cdfSddbd9XvoFPPLK4asobvNMdQAXBUzYuGwoxxUXoquE1gtNBZJRUFJKL7D777w6sJF3dWq7poUsgCtfKo5chDXq44iyfY4TXfo2skeUFr9NbR24tDFQ8rZ1ZStHVWWWXoog4pix8Ayfa37Wp | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufemW6En16Sir43WHv1A2n9ecrVcMsR3QKkEAFzsdX5jc9ZuiW4 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/Ehjr9t1bfyFgs5GtcpxVsAdcRJm1vtb9Ubjx5sTFJYB6r2e4TjtG8vb1rkTFisrhHbExGSy1DgZK5HrzBQjdeFLuEEKV6jQCbjhDFdYwMS9F8uRsQZYkqQ3kREDAfjShenegbouoz4Cn9mhAurd8b6GqX5hSp | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://niluferyanya.bandcamp.com/album/painless | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2IVL0vnFIe9uHWW1TAocC7 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/218187366,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/618abe7ee84dd4adabc70e51/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Nilufer-Yanya-Painless.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Nilfer_Yanya-PAINLESS.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/,2022,year,album,15,Jockstrap,I Love You Jennifer B,Rough Trade,"Rough Trade Even though we’re a good 20 years into the internet-accelerated obliteration of genre boundaries, the debut full-length from UK duo Jockstrap proves there’s still something illicitly thrilling—and occasionally disturbing—in jamming seemingly incompatible sounds together. I Love You Jennifer B alternately comes off like an early-’70s psych-folk album being subjected to a hyperpop remix, a ’90s house party breaking out at a conservatory recital, and Third-era Portishead trapped inside a TikTok feed. Teeming with jarring and joyful juxtapositions, the album’s ugly elegance knows no bounds. –Stuart Berman",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/C5BN9bLtpHgEyx7MNKKgBuARJsGD6hr8syYpzKwm7ov8AmmcLX1wqVhpxRVVPoDUEieyEkuBVnCJcsq3fhyqUMZQ7i8koaHmR72Bx7U9khSuoZAzYCPsvpPw1UWZkFjn5SkUn2wfMt3qr8c8ckuCpSedHZMUWuLV3bKdqQVvBekZi3o16BwTAXz | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufigz9VLK9r2bwy3vAr494UcZEzoX4JUiuaNgfooRt5qCVUBV8t | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/63B2uvSQBPtLWCnAKVBh3aKbjMKQQk7xejCd483FePL2oxofuSyumsXdw9eSEjGwyMDBGRkAkNjP2gJLxvJyDdNze3RPFPbHQdNbj1bTEqZLmLGcSe5kxnBeyoCNer8CDJv9VMfZj2MgSaMMqpPn5QNRJLVhYzUEfPJ1tovB4cwzH1J | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://jockstrapmusic.bandcamp.com/album/i-love-you-jennifer-b | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/4YFlC5Abaj48ERwaOPfpu8 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/243723531,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/62a7f8fa478224c02b50ad2c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/CD%2520+%2520DSP%2520Cover%2520Jockstrap%2520album%2520artwork.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Jockstrap-I_Love_You_Jennifer_B.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/,2022,year,album,14,Grace Ives,Janky Star,True Panther / Harvest,"True Panther / Harvest Grace Ives’ aptly titled second album is a junk drawer stuffed with offbeat gems. Though the palette is pop, the color combinations she devises atop that base are endless. “Shelly” passes a power-pop love note across the counter of the Twin Peaks diner. “On the Ground” time-warps the introspective, millennial Ives into the Danceteria ’80s. And it’s in risky, high-concept songwriting gambits, like her deployment of the noxious white-collar euphemism “circle back” on the winsome “Angel of Business,” that Ives spins raw quirk into gold thread, tying up all of the album’s disparate ideas into a single shiny package. –Judy Berman",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/meh9fHuiYWLjqSgj7XHZWWWEHEHsDNtLyJtA7tHqnKwM7w8ZUnQNeCSNeb3hxxGjwZN3mdrpSC14wwCrEfmTJhMbuzALwyJdjKzCNgfPPUqLy9qzAxJHXuqLNWF77EEEukCozmuspkz3mqGPp9RZbL79m1Ftf7k4dda8MEmr8 | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufeno4445U85CZsHQh9NYSe5yHGVweV73pheekqKPWNdysDAeRn | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/5bwkygcD8TrHGdppHZSrwYPBcY7KL4rNhn7wPE5csqh9eBoYusiekNLU1NC9W1rwgTSxUn9pKQ4onuMDhZrhwx9sjB9aD9kL9YxP6RekCSyQ2Fw1Jdwb1UX8cjfTpY7eGsFkMEhgnMjiNSp4pfu7Vtq3ZFcjtQ5W | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/0sZHIgeXLGWrYZasMrNKTl | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/232044885,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/624d02dd2afbc1aa4dab0f56/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Grace%2520Ives%2520Album%2520Cover.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Grace_Ives-Janky_Star.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/,2022,year,album,13,Kendrick Lamar,Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers,pgLang / Top Dawg Entertainment / Aftermath / Interscope,"pgLang / Top Dawg Entertainment / Aftermath / Interscope Pain remains unresolved on Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers. Kendrick Lamar spends his fifth album celebrating and decrying his vices and shortcomings; he seeks no absolution, for there is none. There is only searching. While preoccupied with weighty topics like generational scars and the harm we readily inflict upon loved ones, Mr. Morale is not a drag. The moody production ripples with innovation, as Lamar surveys his kingly lot with a shrug: “I can’t please everybody.” After pushing rap’s vanguard forward for a decade, he also knows ego can go only so far. And that’s OK. –Matthew Strauss",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/9B6f5kDzu8NHvXoaHv3DG2nyvAqsMpecz6tC3fsLqkeurwqcephAjA87bwxYVU8USHQnh988qmHE3s7bcwAnLyCYEfYLxkQeUV54xcSk4Lg55P36xbCUTAWxbi7ACAwu97w5XdyZY8BJERx6XGfLBvrxFqopqj65257cc4eAfjHCXErdyaTF81vDZsEzkzvj4k | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufigtYPeSR4YCpmL1MpuB41JvUBhykTSBVSp9pMfuh6TTyrub8k | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/3WVdWb4brEJ3iT5cRmUo31whQ5bFyaGfVKFTjSbA6Aiwe74mFqwbB5h4cfdLN8X8i84F4W9Gnyaw2m9Mpm4JzPecqCBXwEZHyPNkMDJC2HfSBbDR4ZvuwP2A3hFYY1RmzjWYpGaWvm3i3GQvpzrMMAvzSYsbkNrXqD6VTS21AZoHV9SaQCGw36 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/79ONNoS4M9tfIA1mYLBYVX | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/230909380,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/627c1023d3c744a67a846260/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kendrick-Lamar-Mr-Morale-And-The-Big-Steppers.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kendrick_Lamar-Mr_Morale__The_Big_Steppers.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/,2022,year,album,12,Björk,Fossora,One Little Independent,"One Little Independent For her enveloping 10th album, Björk found inspiration in bass clarinets, maternal connections, and, well, mushrooms. Throughout the record, a thick carpet of swampy woodwinds and off-kilter synths meet jumpy gabber beats, wrapping Björk in an inky cloak as she processes the pain of love, the practice of hope, and the death of her mother. Maintaining the anti-conformist approach that’s brought so much color to each season of her life, Björk delivers poignant insights on the universal condition that are a little mischievous, a little mysterious, and completely staggering. –Allison Hussey",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8uKhMsZ6pcvtNkWEm4gAjJCyNDuVvWL2Yuk1UG9tpWPJ6pex73R6k8vR1rwRq2JvJoabinCvpLyjacvwzryEotrhfrpmxek | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufiihSLP9tmByvhFZXnjJf2L4LCEV7uDcNXU6neLiQt1Uw5dWbJ | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/474N76DNT3n1smUARtCDRxekNNF3vu1wV1AjPQDHqP1vtSJ1LCXeQzuZpXEemqE59HpZutecPp2RwSa5M2keJW5WWHAAzU6hZHU6BxE6YMVu9rurkMxdGc3g2L5oEXfCaPoExpu7JMu3ZLQrvqEGYGXeATpt | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://bjork.bandcamp.com/album/fossora | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5NchVUjB8yqNhqSeBYaFVy | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/247351200 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1p0SSch7pSo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/630f5a82d81b4a1c03943188/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bjork-Fossora.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bjrk-Fossora.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/,2022,year,album,11,The Weeknd,Dawn FM,XO / Republic,"XO / Republic Turns out Abel Tesfaye wasn’t so blinded by the light to see where his megahit was taking him. After obliterating chart records and bringing his bloody and bandaged freak show to the Super Bowl, he returned with the kind of mammoth statement you’d expect from an artist who has scaled pop stardom’s highest peaks. Dawn FM is stuffed silly with icy-hot choruses, Valhalla drum machines, synth patches by the floppy disc, and, why not, some eerie spoken-word cameos from none other than Jim Carrey. Tesfaye occasionally reminds us that he’s still the guy who sang about coke on glass tables and lurid late-night dalliances, but he’s increasingly comfortable finding his hedonistic paradise on the dancefloor, his eyes adjusting to the lights of stadium-filling fame just fine. –Dean Van Nguyen",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/X7niGYieCH8UQ8PGqdUBtg8M6SAMcPegELm2uaNkiXQqSRwp4HaQGxppbNbXBTTEpWDbmJKpggpTNHpKw3oaWz2rpfAu31PMStK9JYQzD95xnFhGNiScN1awW7bTARscagv9veD3tmVzrdaJXvho91dvjRdrDtr7bvUj2 | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufen6gEg9o7uC88bzVW2tSYYHyHoCMsS83BXmw8B1FhZ8nH5iE4 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/474N76DNT3n1smUARtCDRxekNNF3vu1wV1AjPQDHqP1vtSJ1LCXeQzuZpXEemqE59HpZutecPp2RwSa5M2keJW5WWHAAzTsgit3iRqddFv4FYBqdYXEtkw8ruT5Wz5poCnM5XWmP7V8WsPXhJiYDN49WUiAc | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2nLOHgzXzwFEpl62zAgCEC | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/211580112,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61d5fa911b710fb5ce48ed9f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-Weeknd-Dawn-FM.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Weeknd-Dawn_FM.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/,2022,year,album,10,Alex G,God Save the Animals,Domino,"Domino From breakbeat to grunge-pop, God Save the Animals integrates Alex G’s impish genre-muddling into folkish songwriting buffed to a pearlescent sheen. On his most elegantly produced album, Alex Giannascoli welcomes disparate ideas with ease, with images that wiggle like iron filings drawn to a magnetic pole. In mantra-like phrases, he conjures a criminal at confession, the hard-won relief of domesticity, or a seafarer holding onto the fragile hope of love on dry land. As one of indie rock’s great empaths, Giannascoli crafts his songs’ characters with a care that hits poignantly close to home. You feel that the record’s title is no accident, given that humans are animals too. –Owen Myers",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2h8zKZvUAqv9bScU3SWqLSQ14Mhv9oyTckCaWdKvQAMSEwpzRk9ZyFaLQTRioTmKQ7Rbt8QnfTxokwyqUzHwLXfHsc5sbXBSurW8rowHaBbmVbtwkBtH2qVtpB9KGa45MaRyBXktVE1b14txpthdFsaMFerTurgma4QacFmTAkC5k71HdJ | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufenzy4pMzojjJrDAoUpwY4JGp55kErEPYTJQgv7vC33rjVh8yE | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/29CLTwheRZNbn8esbYm7MXCvBW5AqRiuV2rkxzL68ZhZakTS8MPQjntM9eJYYf8EpCq592XdCBpDEyUwpZUBUL7o8wUGv6xNEvJwxaD4nWPeWYBGyUvTscGSP5PTbhMyte1htNuLkLxiCBePViHC15Q2mPVMgiaeyVRyq4QoA8W4Ka | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://sandy.bandcamp.com/album/god-save-the-animals | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/6TzgWk5HZItbFmMT7hH4bU | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/249599146,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/62af3a8f6c8f0240e138567f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/AlexG_GodSaveTheAnimals_3000pxCVR.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Alex_G-God_Save_the_Animals.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/,2022,year,album,9,Yaya Bey,Remember Your North Star,Big Dada,"Big Dada Heavy or light, no memory stays buried on Remember Your North Star. Sometimes they’re  sweet: “meet me in brooklyn” sounds like a particularly great first date at the jerk chicken spot. “keisha,” in contrast, details a draining one-way relationship. Over a collection of mostly self-produced beats that range from bright (“pour up”) to woozy (“big daddy ya”) to stripped-down (“street fighter blues”), Bey goes through the ringer but usually circles back to an optimism.“If I just give it to the sky, I bet it might just be/Alright, alright, alright,” she coos, as if willing her dream into existence. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/4iheeJwWD8ieNhakwNtVbCeWuwR1qfJRV7bDBka8akcakztZ2NpTMJ2tSVULNDBpknPbt39LbtyY7UkoZevjVSbeo87wFsNMMBYdpBiC5rJuryPtv7yXrvf3WqHW7exqfmGsVhz1pdvpRakRE9c8noJHAY5nAyGeSXLiq3MJu6E1r9iZzksLtr4sPE | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufenhRQ4UCG1fpaRHXgpjoWkXdX1S87kspkfXDASYTqiSAY7BjE | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/8UAFzxJzvSuaw23YMmcgLo6XFpPbbtLCUmg6umLWhEHCQYzpUDSpXHL8eXe2qEKQdafD22TNrb3ntHw6iua336RrUYSD1ZDZUyyDqH1URBugVEH2tbfE8JcsRwxTKkWkNQ3F88YPYwBeD2m14annGmzcJsmcBmMiMbMEFoyzuzSBaxr9wS8 | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://yayabey.bandcamp.com/album/remember-your-north-star | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/7BhMDGBQ6xtZl1LwOwueYO | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/221245617,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/62315d88f9a7bf4f83d2d08f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/BD304_PACKSHOT_3000.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Yaya_Bey-Remember_Your_North_Star.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/,2022,year,album,8,Lucrecia Dalt,¡Ay!,Rvng Intl.,"Rvng Intl. Human beings shed about 500 million skin cells every single day. So even when our brains tell us we couldn’t be more stagnant, on a molecular level, we’re still in a constant state of renewal. Colombian shapeshifter Lucrecia Dalt reminds us of our capacity to change on ¡Ay!, an album that warps time and tradition. It combines Dalt’s woozy takes on the music of her childhood—bolero, salsa, merengue, mambo—with an ambient sci-fi concept involving an alien entity whose body is made up of leftover flecks of skin accumulated within the earth’s hydrosphere. The grounding sounds of clarinets, upright bass, and Dalt’s sensuous voice are juxtaposed with lyrics straight out of a jargony Star Trek adventure: “Tearing through my glandular data gates,” she sings in Spanish. “I bring you the view from nowhen.” At 41, Dalt has spent more than a decade on the fringes of electronic and experimental music, and ¡Ay! retains that outré streak even as it flirts with more approachable styles—its twilit mood evokes the prospect of latter-day Kate Bush taking the stage at Twin Peaks’ shadowy Roadhouse bar. As her extraterrestrial character experiences love and temporality for the first time throughout the album, Dalt reopens the listener’s eyes and ears as well, welcoming the limitless possibilities of our next selves. –Ryan Dombal",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2YfVS2JkEsZbGaVN2xMzcCAf2EcdufCigRyF44GJ5f29ratuBWwUyZKgmpFsfuQuqic5gTBQDo8RactKQAZuxcyUhjSurmeSWeeCXZa9yWj1ARGvv96VpvPssqL39LgBNntuizH4NDBLeXEc9Ghi6uPRjrKFepYpu12 | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufigzjjY33xtdfaVCyzr6YkBZJRRGG6nfo5U6TuNwZHtLFaBewi | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/7EaqjGTiGVEZV17h8f56rTA6wXfeUBxFYyCZyWhithNoYDbspYy91PFy2zjsVdfZDudF8n92ctsgNTXa8VzXvAWsFLmZipUnZBF9xz2AXFuuSYpadwEaeeugWLr4seDo4LRqkZiHSsNx4Xekmiuf6 | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://lucreciadalt.bandcamp.com/album/ay | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/6g5Cioj39K7ix89q2xAtsh | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/231170028,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/62b2038d0e4ba2763e0755d9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lucrecia-Dalt-Ay-2022.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lucrecia_Dalt-Ay.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/,2022,year,album,7,Big Thief,Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You,4AD,"4AD Big Thief have always been defined by the interplay between folksy singer-guitarist Adrianne Lenker and her expansive, improvisatory group. In 2019, they released a pair of albums, U.F.O.F. and Two Hands, that seemed to map the range of their sound, from airy and ethereal to ragged and visceral. Three years later, the 20-song double album Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You brings all their breathless styles together, and then some: Consider it contemporary Brooklyn indie rock’s answer to the Beatles’ White Album or Prince’s Sign o’ the Times. Stretching into cracked trip-hop, country hoedowns, and something involving icicles as percussion, Dragon suggested that the limits to what they could do within this framework have yet to be glimpsed. –Marc Hogan",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/gVLYTFHP77FJkNQWkuiD7fwA47LgEMmcpBXHZpNncHciskWk2Nj4f1cYM8w68kivfiHFquLmvyPgCLLj8FGFfTbmHpcBnwC2d5PY3SPxLhxZXtfCiEiZxnvVVMCj8AFapQxKkK4Bm2iCys1BHcBgaW38vGUGGvoP4Wz84MbWgXkHsYZbYw7D213RD9vLPGL2GRWzqFzHqHuCxxJJRn | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufembBB7XvC4aK5h5cbJhJXF9YJErh8krykgvkdydzrV8pR9f5S | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/Jy3CeSzU3u3mba7RyQh4FPJd1ddt7npuZrPrSvLmN5BBZQLmRzm9NmQ1LKsr8REmy5oHPkFZ7KkdX5wivrqfRzkiNCr6vBwq2fQzxBbqP1aBWGWoLsgBVPyxbCtSKg5QPrTqiQjiMcsHb31zNNcPyoSovAGbTqjYVizyD2k4dkSmhewGBi9TGH7y9CDmnFLpTdxT97CNPr | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://bigthief.bandcamp.com/album/dragon-new-warm-mountain-i-believe-in-you | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/7Ln81p86r5cCsesd3KBWIY | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/213383167,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6192b1f87d518c1b374471fc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Big-Thief-Dragon-New-Warm-Mountain-I-Believe-in-You.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Big_Thief-Dragon_New_Warm_Mountain_I_Believe_in_You.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/,2022,year,album,6,Rosalía,Motomami,Columbia,"Columbia “Bro, I’m the first to the studio and the last to leave,” Catalan pop phenom Rosalía recently bragged. It was the post-bout interview, but her latest album MOTOMAMI is the knockout punch. MOTOMAMI is all about contrast, and to craft it, Rosalía painstakingly spliced techniques from bachata, bolero, dembow, and flamenco into one of the year’s most exhilarating records. On opening banger “SAOKO,” she interrupts a buzzing reggaeton synth with free jazz piano. She pierces through gossamer ballad “HENTAI” with rapid-fire drum machine and hypersexual lyrics. And while some artists lean on Auto-Tune to polish subpar vocals, Rosalía, an accomplished cantaora, sneaks it into the more traditional “BULERÍAS” like an alien texture. MOTOMAMI is the sound of Rosalía being intimate in the public eye, restraining soft flesh with rigid leather, and scrawling new verses across ancient texts. –Madison Bloom",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2YfVS2JkEsZbGaVN2xMzcCAf2EcdufCigRyF44GJ5f29ratuBWwUyZKgmpFsfuQuqic5gTBQDo8RactKQAZuxcyUhjSurmeSWeeCYDRvxgSt6ad8qFcXJvuFtB8rcrU1J4h5zKAkbwTe6j5PcDyed5gyFNqST8Lcweo | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufenJBgei6hCdvVfDQWzSKTN1sTfkqS5G69C45piDadoyHmH7Ef | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/Ehjr9t1bfyFgs5GtcpxVsAdcRJm1vtb9Ubjx5sTFJYB6r2e4TjtG8vb1rkTFisrhHbExGSy1DgZK5HrzBQjdeFLuEEKV6hyrtto7FzJKAPyKKiexBh1dnFoiiZY4JMRnaxkkfCsQt9K8njD7WtR9vLAmefbuZ | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/6jbtHi5R0jMXoliU2OS0lo | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/220809479,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61f86f77c5f6f514db2af019/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/MTMM%2520Cover%252010x10.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rosala-Motomami.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/,2022,year,album,5,Bad Bunny,Un Verano Sin Ti,Rimas,"Rimas Bad Bunny’s appeal is as mythical as it is rare: The world’s biggest pop star—a musically inventive, charismatic critic who loves his island—releases the biggest pop album of the year, one that flawlessly effuses the sound and nostalgia of a beach day in the Caribbean. Un Verano Sin Ti marshals reggaeton, dembow, dream-pop, EDM, and mambo, leveraging sex-fueled perreo one moment, only to muse over better futures the next. Whether he’s referencing his “baby gravy” on “Titi Me Preguntó,” or telling the story of a liberated Puerto Rican woman with Buscabulla on “Andrea,” UVST is a sprawling love letter that owns Boricua humor, swagger, and sharp social commentary. The electronic bomba banger “El Apagón” addresses Puerto Rico’s colonial status, gentrification, and ongoing blackouts in an unrelenting yet restorative whirlwind. “Puerto Rico está bien cabrón,” he repeats, almost like a call to action. Un Verano Sin Ti is a resplendent statement on the necessary endurance and conviviality of Caribbean life. –Gio Santiago",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/29CLTwheRZNbn8esbYm7MXCvBW5AqRiuV2rkxzL68ZhZakTS8MPQjntM9eJZG3kDwwZKWV6uW2z9DaCY9hNuzeR7oeZaXTTGDeQdpJbAkaBDUxReVkFQXpdzRGxreJuD2tShSXrcfJfNNW49kmaNWXV38UqxmNZzWjXt3kS4wUWczb | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufeo6TaoxaGz1mwZTHxGNbvH36Jz5AKWMZdB5CJx7p7VTPRnSgF | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/B7jB7s3t6nATUHhGS3LABK1jRyUqXu5qUiD3X7BcXCzdH57FA1micAPWpwPFjkbPZ83VowWmGRrwDA37nhRX9jMpqYqMBT5UKqEXqyMq8a9pgBX2Rb8yhxKRTS4DLNK39J1cFPpFyufq5k1HKgzXWsSxUeV1gMdhJeBwTdaw | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3RQQmkQEvNCY4prGKE6oc5 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/227614732 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TCX_Aqzoo4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/627425dbc85171592b8a6e6a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bad-Bunny-Un-Verano-Sin-Ti.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bad_Bunny-Un_Verano_Sin_Ti.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/,2022,year,album,4,Special Interest,Endure,Rough Trade,"Rough Trade The tradition of punks making unvarnished pop is vast, but no one has done it like Special Interest, tying in technoise textures, pop-house vocals, and rap cadences while putting hooks inside of screams. On its astounding third full-length, the New Orleans band polishes and chisels its once-blistering sound into a force more palatable and anthemic, but also much more confrontational. Endure is a fiercely original experiment, a world where pleasure and fight entangle into a liberationist menage of club fog, Telfar bags, and discomfiting truths demanding that we “burn it down to build it again.” –Jenn Pelly",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/FzrGcxRntjxTYBr5CjAbZDfnRiGpg8gXpYfWT8VoaEipXEh8ZG3fF2DGZ1ojNvHyrWykqWS33iVbZu1G7RuLQRx1bnu16zcAfP7zFMbUsKQTWyj17keGqjkErjCJT1wyy5Nag9ps2Qh5dSHkPrMS93YMfQkV1n9MQYk7hGx6g2oR | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufihghrhJLjKX1kfWNg1dche5uiPe7AFW7618aTaGForvLkgNuD | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/ho5L3zdaYSc6AAnBd4uCzvQscAyrNJS2pATNPUhyGs49Uw9ghDqMPdqDaauWeD2PisepKxCC4QS8oaKf52H9x5CDXPvU4rEyBW5x6wMePEk1hra6MEqdaBc5v9e3mPqpqTPeSNCzmRYRgZuZACUdZoCXuR | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://specialinterestno.bandcamp.com/album/endure | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/7EU4Jf2J97Iamh3lwHCHy9 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/253928686,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/630f5d18303785c05396f2d2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/special-interest-endure.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Special_Interest-Endure.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/,2022,year,album,3,Alvvays,Blue Rev,Polyvinyl / Transgressive,"Polyvinyl / Transgressive Alvvays writes songs about what lasts, what fades, and what young pains resurface in the slipstream of memory. On their third album, the Toronto band returns like one of the old flames in their songs, ready to shatter your every defense. Blue Rev is a crinkled collection of small dramas—a run-in at the pharmacy, a drive-thru break-up over milkshakes—with panoramic feeling. Although Molly Rankin and co. have ascended into the wiser terrain of their 30s, they still summon the dizzying emotions of your rookie years, when the sense of paralysis and betrayal seemed so acute; in their world, college is a bore, pedantic poetry sucks, and solace is that one good song on the radio. This is an album to come home to, with squalling arrangements and melodies so immediate and sublime it’s like you’ve been singing them your whole life. On Blue Rev, Alvvays prove they were the ones all along. –Cat Zhang",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2YfVS2JkEsZbGaVN2xMzcCAf2EcdufCigRyF44GJ5f29ratuBWwUyZKgmpFsfuQuqic5gTBQDo8RactKQAZuxcyUhjSurmeSWeeCWMg8p3oWtqy4DhVmiaxLD76fJ4TVfDpcaubBQ5CeYeAraszkrnbbRan5Rkb78Uf | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufijVG5996p3rQLsvVQCSDhinc1wAYRPLYFXiDULwhKx1WFTRFM | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/Ehjr9t1bfyFgs5GtcpxVsAdcRJm1vtb9Ubjx5sTFJYB6r2e4TjtG8vb1rkTFisrhHbExGSy1DgZK5HrzBQjdeFLuEEKV6cfzr9Nruc2A7gqkW9PhQdkEGvpuJckVKLAyBYXjBuFE4mTqFmERTU776mJvGtT6X | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://alvvays.bandcamp.com/album/blue-rev | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1dShPPoxXfzbjFO1jIHJZz,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/62c4df04d645ed2828d096ce/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/alvvays-blue-rev.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Alvvays-Blue_Rev.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/,2022,year,album,2,Sudan Archives,Natural Brown Prom Queen,Stones Throw,"Stones Throw “I’m not average,” Brittney Parks chants on the title track to Natural Brown Prom Queen, a bright, transformative love letter to herself written in a kaleidoscopic blend of house, R&B, pop, and hip-hop. The L.A. artist has foregrounded her violin before, but Natural Brown Prom Queen’s collagist approach allows Parks’ skillful playing to more elaborately embroider her sharp, often funny lyrics. Themes of self-reliance, family, and heartache emerge in songs that range from no-frills rapping to delicate singsong. With each head-spinning beat change and violin loop, Natural Brown Prom Queen’s musical daredevilry and lyrical honesty guarantee that no one will ever call Parks “average” again. –Eric Torres",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/9B6f5kDzu8NHvXoaHv3DG2nyvAqsMpecz6tC3fsLqkeurwqcephAjA87bwxYVU8USHQnh988qmHE3s7bcwAnLyCYEfYLxkQeUV553GUBeh4WhjU8aDk92BR31Hc1hq1Gdbi4HtyopFEqYyth5cic3AJBoiYesPucZLEXiJE7osmBtUfUYd4SUusXt2PpBKLxiK | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufihHXvUVE4A9UKxThpgY6KaMmCaGNsvct8rXYX7i6kBPQLL3uR | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/8UAFzxJzvSuaw23YMmcgLo6XFpPbbtLCUmg6umLWhEHCQYzpUDSpXHL8eXe2qEKQdafD22TNrb3ntHw6iua336RrUYSD1YANZnDEB2RoPW7QWbuvuJuZ8qpRdkav7ZcwSXA5MmuvH81SPc9jLYye1UuuKGb4jmasZRuNnMoF3qEXgnWxzyu | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://sudanarchives.bandcamp.com/album/natural-brown-prom-queen | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1QSo9HgowUqAc5BI3AdkqN | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/235273373,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/62c4fff81175d2d0f5fee1ff/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sudan-Archives-Natural-Brown-Prom-Queen-STH2449.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sudan_Archives-Natural_Brown_Prom_Queen.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/,2022,year,album,1,Beyoncé,Renaissance,Parkwood Entertainment / Columbia,"Parkwood Entertainment / Columbia Dance music’s liberatory powers are palpable when the lights go low, as the sweat trickles down the small of your back. Renaissance revels in that emancipatory magic, as Beyoncé lends her voice to a Harlem vogue ball, bathes in undulating R&B melismas, and spits over four-on-the-floor rhythms, seamlessly threading it all into her own resplendent cosmology. Watch her golden falsetto levitate on the roller-rink sparkle of “Cuff It.” Feel how a jagged dembow riddim slices through her velvet melodies on “I’m That Girl.” Or let Bey’s demands to release earthly anxieties on “Break My Soul” compel you into movement. Beyoncé owes the grandeur of her latest reinvention to her queer Black forebears, who fought hard for the refuge of this relief. For many of us, the club is more than just a night out; it’s a nexus of community, a financial ecosystem of survival, and most importantly, an obligatory pleasure practice. Bey captures much of that here, citing her ancestors and contemporaries, sometimes leaving us longing for their actual presence. There are tributes to ballroom DJs, producers, and drag queens Kevin Aviance and Kevin Jz Prodigy, as well as appearances from disco glitterati like Grace Jones and bounce music idol Big Freedia. Each interpolation is potent and precise, yielding a DJ mix and history lesson all at once. Over the years, Beyoncé’s music has served every function: It can lift a disheveled spirit, vault femme erotics, or treat the wounds of a devastating relationship. But Renaissance eclipses Bey’s previous statements of hard-won self-love and romantic resilience. It does more than revere the dancefloor; it bottles its joy, conviviality, and verve, all while transcending the condition of homage. Its affirmations electrify the body, coursing through the veins like a life-saving shot of adrenaline: Consider the lines “Don’t even waste your time trying to compete with me/No one else in this world can think like me” on “Alien Superstar,” or, “It should cost a billion to look this good” on “Pure/Honey.” As the world burns, Renaissance invites us to remember what it’s like to feel good. -Isabelia Herrera",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/3Hvxm9czoAnByw5bJudy155hRgz4HyCyJ9tDMR4K1xHECoF6vhWARjTQ54iKND9kozfxcSXU5UAkTNyDtZZNawLjCuMUgfrhfFFV2jHXjtWpZ23B88gYW4cCXPDRZcD6o5531YobhssXmotEgSTdaKJc7rE8QLQVKJKVfn7 | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufihCK2pk6D5ZDT5hj1AdFzqhmde5iHA6dMUimYKJstQnXKkyTM | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/MKEh7BpQXwWWp1Y3i6D9RjWuqrJsu9zvnz9d36jPMPvD98gTrNrqcRAvCcYCX4oSM9jZscHurCooXc4F442PjYSAu9nqajLVGEbpLrpMgm66jrWB4r6VAebmvsAiEmjFiyymz78KJhHbUfPsqy94gki887N1Jc7eo | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/6FJxoadUE4JNVwWHghBwnb | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/240549029,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/62bdd2cb9e0c39ec09d73fd7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Beyonce-Renaissance.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beyonc-Renaissance.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,100,Harry Styles,“As It Was”,Columbia,"Columbia “As It Was” is the kind of twinkly little confection that would easily get the indie kids pogoing at any local DIY dance night at any point in the last two decades. It just happens to have been recorded by one of the biggest pop stars in the world in 2022 instead of, say, the Strokes twenty years earlier. “You know it’s not the same as it was,” Harry Styles sighs, giving a nod to the easy bait of nostalgia. A pointillist synth line tap dances through the song, and all over that nagging pandemic-era malaise we’re all desperately trying to shake. Resistance is futile. –Amy Phillips",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5v3kku4y6Q,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/623b686c6597466fa9d6e32d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Harry-Styles-Harrys-House.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Harry_Styles-As_It_Was.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,99,Black Midi,“Welcome to Hell”,Rough Trade,"Rough Trade Many songs have contended that war is hell; few have ever depicted that hell as crazed as this. Black Midi’s “Welcome to Hell” is four minutes of disorientation, a trillion-BPM assault on the senses that plays like Saving Private Ryan’s Normandy scene as a fast-forwarded Bugs Bunny cartoon. Somewhere amid all the Les Claypool riffage and incalculable time signatures, the band squeezes in a bizzaro homage to Shirley Bassey’s James Bond themes. The ridiculousness of the pastiche doesn’t dull its intensity one bit. –Evan Rytlewski",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Efmq_uXt1Rk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6384f8b665145399a901bccc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Black-Midi.png,/dataset/artwork/Black_Midi-Welcome_to_Hell.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,98,Phoenix,“Tonight” [ft. Ezra Koenig],Loyauté / Glassnote,"Loyauté / Glassnote More than 25 years into their career, Phoenix are still finding new ways to sound brilliantly, effortlessly cool. Case in point: “Tonight,” a smooth collaboration with Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig. Drunk on the promise of a great night out, frontman Thomas Mars charms his way through dinner and the course of an entire relationship in the span of one magical encounter. A sobering, early-morning apology inspires a fleeting moment of self-reflection as the vocalists pause, muse existentially about their endless partying, and ultimately resolve to do it all again, just one verse later. It’s an endearing defense of the pleasure principle from two guys who have seen their share of debauchery—but goddamn if it doesn’t sound fun. –Rob Arcand",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxTCTAnTP6Q,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6318afadafa92f85cc3e46c6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/phoenix-alpha-zulu.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Phoenix-Tonight_ft_Ezra_Koenig.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,97,Tomberlin,“happy accident”,Saddle Creek,"Saddle Creek Tomberlin got to know her new home of New York by walking it. “happy accident,” from her sophomore album I Don’t Know Who Needs to Hear This…, unravels like an aimless meander through the city with unruly thoughts spiraling out along the path. Set to Cass McCombs’ elliptical guitar loop and thumps of percussion that land like leaden footsteps, the singer-songwriter interrogates a relationship that has been ambiguous for too long, her voice seething and weary. A relationship, just like a walk, isn’t always in need of a destination, and “happy accident” lingers brutally in the uncertainty of what might come next. –Carrie Courogen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_57as3Pt1LY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/620c8af61038e82f029e3ba5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Tomberlin%2520-%2520i%2520don't%2520know%2520who%2520needs%2520to%2520hear%2520this...%2520_%2520Album%2520Art.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tomberlin-happy_accident.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,96,Ela Minus / DJ Python,“Pájaros en Verano”,Smugglers Way,"Smugglers Way What’s there to be grateful for in a hopeless world? According to Ela Minus, clouds, crickets, and sleep, to name a few. “Pájaros en Verano” is an ode to the quotidian pleasures we often ignore. Her praise for the small stuff pairs perfectly with DJ Python’s bubbly production, led by a bright, sweet mallet-like synth that meanders through minimal percussion. It’s a subtle anthem that invites you to slow down and linger on life’s simple delights. –Arjun Srivatsa",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfk36vHdTN4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/62eb07dcd957e7e2565b603b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ela-Minus-DJ-Python-%25E2%2599%25A1-EP.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ela_Minus__DJ_Python-Pjaros_en_Verano.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,95,Horse Lords,“May Brigade”,Rvng Intl.,"Rvng Intl. Horse Lords has spent the past 12 years on a quest for utopia, seeking freedom and euphoria within the structures of their experimental rock music. On “May Brigade,” a clashing, raucous pattern born out of microtonal crunch and minimalist repetition morphs into free jazz freneticism, and distant saxophone trills get swallowed by drones and shimmering static. The song’s effortless abandon shows us the bliss that lies beneath Horse Lords’ heady ideas; within its sharp twists and turns there lies a motivating joy—a reminder to always keep on keeping on. –Vanessa Ague",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQpBwbey-dY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6385265e1628784965dd6668/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Horse-Lords-May-Brigade.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Horse_Lords-May_Brigade.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,94,Julia Jacklin,“Lydia Wears a Cross”,Polyvinyl,"Polyvinyl “Lydia Wears a Cross” is like driving rain, slapping you in the face, reminding you that you are both awake and alive. Julia Jacklin sings about religion and what it’s like to be a girl, sitting in the pews, whispering holy words without knowing what any of it means. She prays for Princess Diana; she listens to the Jesus Christ Superstar soundtrack. “I’d be a believer,” she sings, “If it was all just song and dance.” Around her, a fuzzed-out guitar crashes into a kick drum. It’s a look back at childhood, where real sorrow and brutal honesty outweigh nostalgia. –Sophie Kemp",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4D6buHQYhUI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6279edb9c7eb1718d8afd42e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Julia%2520Jacklin%2520Pre%2520Pleasure.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Julia_Jacklin-Lydia_Wears_a_Cross.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,93,4s4ki,“Punish”,Victor Entertainment,"Victor Entertainment “Punish” explores nihilistic self-loathing through a multi-genre electronic fantasia. The Saitama-based hyperpop artist 4s4ki alternates between clear and Auto-Tuned singing across the song’s quickly shifting sonics, which incorporate sounds from digicore and Japanese hip-hop. Her scream of the titular “punish!” flashes like a brief, electric glitch against the serrated drum‘n’bass chorus—a cry for help enmeshed in a suffocating, cybernetic pop landscape. –Zhenzhen Yu",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g86ICw71IiU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/62606c72e624a244cf040e1f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/4s4ki.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/4s4ki-Punish.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,92,Wednesday,“Bull Believer”,Dead Oceans,"Dead Oceans Wednesday’s “Bull Believer” is a two-act grunge odyssey in which lead vocalist Karly Hartzman jumps from chronicling Spanish bullfighting to describing being ignored by the guy she loves at a party. The dizzying song alternates between abrasion and solace, cranking back up just as it reaches a point of melancholic calm; monstrously heavy guitars and lap steel squelch beneath Hartzman’s guttural screams. As her paramour is distracted playing Mortal Kombat, she echoes the video game’s calls to “finish him!,” crying torturously before coming back for one final whisper—a satisfying end to an emotional nine-minute-long journey. –Margeaux Labat",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MawIv5pDFE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/631a50438f0d7ac40b58d734/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/bullbeliever.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Wednesday-Bull_Believer.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,91,Two Shell,“Pods”,Mainframe Audio,"Mainframe Audio Anonymous UK bass and hyperpop pranksters Two Shell insist that they aren’t trolls, which rings true. What kind of troll only spreads joy? The opening tremolo of “Pods” flies like a shuttle over a laser-weaving loom, and its 15-second breakdown feels more like being in a video game than any point of Ready Player One. There’s a Sunset Strip guitar solo with baroque overtones; an opera-cloaked organ tone is stuffed with hyphy vocals and capped with an EDM riser. Too good to be untrue, Two Shell filigree the line between mystery and mischief. They’ll probably turn out to be AI. –Brian Howe",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IEhZKlGzWk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/638534b7189c6a3c6c5a1964/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Two-Shell-Pods.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Two_Shell-Pods.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,90,Joe Rainey,“bezhigo”,37d03d,"37d03d Joe Rainey’s music attests to the importance of community. A member of the Red Lake Nation of Ojibwe people, Rainey knows the value of surrounding yourself with others who inspire you, and this belief underlines every track on his debut Niineta, a deep collaboration with producer Andrew Broder that remembers loved ones who’ve passed and samples decades’ worth of pow wow recordings. Standout “bezhigo” weaves together three separate recordings of Indigenous vocalizing, and as the string arrangements surge, a steady beat arrives in the form of industrial clang, sounding like the repeated strikes of a blacksmith’s hammer. There’s beauty, “bezhigo” suggests, in forging one’s identity, purpose, and dreams alongside those who share your vision. –Joshua Minsoo Kim",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYT9sNeoTTs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/638535296aa3c8c68ad1ff9d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Joe-Rainey.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Joe_Rainey-bezhigo.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,89,Pusha T,“Diet Coke”,G.O.O.D. Music / Def Jam,"G.O.O.D. Music / Def Jam You gotta hand it to Pusha T—it takes dedication to still strive toward drug-rap perfection 20 years after making a song as good as “Grindin.” On “Diet Coke,” he raps over an 88-Keys beat that’s old enough to be called up for jury duty—all vacuum-packed drums and scratched-in vocal samples—but King Push has always made his music outside of linear time, peddling rhymes as eternal as the drug trade itself. “Master recipes under stove lights” he explains on the hook, ostensibly a reference to crack, but he could also be talking about how he manages to pull off this one kind of track again and again. –Dean Van Nguyen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKWP5M8p2fw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/638535880732ebe2fde4fa23/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Pusha-T.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Pusha_T-Diet_Coke.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,88,Panda Bear / Sonic Boom,“Edge of the Edge”,Domino,"Domino Panda Bear and Sonic Boom began their joint album Reset with a simple premise: take the opening moments from great songs of the 1950s and ’60s, loop them, and shape their compositions out from there. “Edge of the Edge” uses Randy & the Rainbows’ “Denise” as its melodic germ, augmenting the 1963 doo-wop hit’s sweet and simple melody with sleigh bells, hand claps, and Panda Bear’s bittersweet croon before beaming in transmissions of dial tones and modem sounds from a less distant past. It’s an infectiously catchy tune that transcends time as it embodies these trusted collaborators’ experimental spirit. –Shy Thompson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgqMW4CHClk&ab_channel=joltinjack,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/62c858df47d620f0d381e3f2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Panda%2520Bear%2520&%2520Sonic%2520Boom_Reset_300dpi.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Panda_Bear__Sonic_Boom-Edge_of_the_Edge.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,87,MUNA,“What I Want”,Saddest Factory / Dead Oceans,"Saddest Factory / Dead Oceans Not since Jonathan Richman’s “I Was Dancing in the Lesbian Bar” has a pop song so perfectly captured the bubbly joy of taking sips, shaking hips, and regarding leather dykes with love. But “What I Want” is about self-love too. MUNA singer Katie Gavin doesn’t want to just date a girl, she wants a girl to want to date her. The song hits hard on a dancefloor and even harder in a graffiti-spattered bathroom; face the mirror, freshen your lipstick, and mouth the hook: “There’s nothing wrong with what I want.” –Peyton Thomas",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63stLm1Rw_U,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/622fecae92f46bea44bd6622/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/MUNA%2520-%2520'MUNA'%2520Album%2520Art.jpg,/dataset/artwork/MUNA-What_I_Want.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,86,Burial,“Strange Neighbourhood”,Hyperdub,"Hyperdub You could say that “Strange Neighbourhood” and the almost-album it comes from, Antidawn, are formulaic—but it’s a formula Burial patented. He owns this sound: the shivery shards of imploring vocals that flare up like embers aloft on the wind, the funeral-parlor organ swells, the moist reverberance and muffled found sounds, the disconcerting pauses and glitchy lapses where it feels like the track is giving up the ghost. Rather than seeming like déjà vu, this 11-minute audio-movie evocation of the hauntedness of urban space feels as fresh and original as the first time you heard Burial. You start to think he could carry on like this forever. –Simon Reynolds",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvWQc6gidYg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61b801cb5064a0d06c6f0013/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/HDBLP050_packshot_4000.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Burial-Strange_Neighbourhood.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,85,Ka,“Ascension”,Iron Works,"Iron Works In the first verse of “Ascension,” Ka describes his style as “measured efficiency.” Indeed, the veteran rapper and producer has cut away all excess from his music, be it programmed drums or nonessential syllables and details. And on this highlight from Languish Arts, one of two albums he dropped in September, the Brownsville, Brooklyn native pries into his childhood—a topic that has grown more central to his writing in recent years—to explain why he believes this cool remove is not only an aesthetic choice but a moral good. Sampled reminiscences about family bookend the song, while Ka bounces, as ever, between the material and metaphysical, the days “long as the solstice” and the uncles’ lives cut short. –Paul A. Thompson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yspLw1dZzhE&feature=emb_title,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6324a210afa92f85cc3e4c7e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ka-Languish-Arts.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ka-Ascension.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,84,Sharon Van Etten,“Anything”,Jagjaguwar,"Jagjaguwar “Anything” is about an undefined anxiety so persistent, it numbs everything else, and keeps you up until dawn. At first, Sharon Van Etten’s admission of ambivalence in the face of war and climate collapse—“I didn’t feel anything”—seems like a self-soothing mantra. But this booming standout from her album We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong pivots at the bridge, when her lover comforts her, providing a moment of connection that nudges her away from the emptiness. As the song builds from spare, haunted strums to a surging crescendo, Van Etten’s tone flips, and by the end she’s belting out her unfeeling thoughts with palpable desperation. –Stephen Thomas Erlewine",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7tYlWq-U74,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/624b561a2afbc1aa4dab0efd/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sharon-Van-Etten-Album-2022.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sharon_Van_Etten-Anything.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,83,Cole Pulice,“City in a City”,Moon Glyph,"Moon Glyph Normally, Oakland saxophonist Cole Pulice uses live-signal processing to stretch their loosely winding jazz into sinuous, squishy shapes. But “City in a City,” the centerpiece of their wonderfully amorphous album Scry, features no such electronic manipulation. The song glides around two tumbling piano chords, as Pulice lets their unadorned saxophone lead the way, dancing up and down its range with autumnal grace. As transporting as Pulice’s more overtly experimental work can be, they’ve never made anything quite so simple and stunning. –Sam Goldner Lisen: Cole Pulice, “City in a City”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3Q0iRZvH8g,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63349a4cc10eb893fc900e9c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Cole-Pulice-Scry.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Cole_Pulice-City_in_a_City.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,82,Bandmanrill,“Real Hips”,Warner,"Warner Bandmanrill never wastes a good sample. On “Real Hips” the kinetic Newark rapper comes through with the zeal of a personal trainer, transforming a Jersey club classic into a HIIT workout aimed at your abductors. DJ Bake and KilSoSouth ensure the beat is both vigorous and elastic—the right balance for Bandmanrill to rifle through talk of parents, success, and paranoia. He always comes back to that instructional, hands-on-hips hook, though, because this is a reminder that, for how frenzied life can be, having a good time should reign supreme. –Joshua Minsoo Kim",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ie6VBxk7Ofg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/62f162517e04458d49bd8a22/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/bandmanrill.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Bandmanrill-Real_Hips.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,81,Animal Collective,“Royal and Desire”,Domino,"Domino Animal Collective have done all the woodsy jamborees and primeval oozing and childlike explorations one could ever ask for, but “Royal and Desire” is above all beautiful—hardly one of the first words used to describe most Animal Collective songs. Deakin takes a commanding lead on the closer of Time Skiffs, their best album in more than a decade, with the rest of the band rising behind him in gaseous harmony. The music is sweet and legato, the sound is psychedelic rock falling from a soft-serve machine. This is AnCo at their most imperial, slowly stepping down the aisle, climbing atop the dais, and solemnly placing a lava lamp on the altar. –Jeremy D. Larson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBa_royWZoY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/616f96035b5cae657e674557/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/AC_timeSkiffs_3000CVR.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Animal_Collective-Royal_and_Desire.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,80,Kelela,“Washed Away”,Warp,"Warp Over the course of three fully realized projects in the mid-2010s, Kelela wove together R&B’s tenderness with the ruggedness of club music, showing us that in allowing pain and pleasure to coexist, we might succeed in forging a path from the former to the latter. And then she disappeared. “Washed Away,” her first new song in five years, explores the aftermath of reconciliation and the eternal question of what happens next. While some might succumb to neurosis and anguish, Kelela chooses peaceful meditation. Devoid of both kick drums and confessional lyrics, the ambient track embraces the vast unknown of the future with a grace akin to ocean mist landing gently on bare skin. –Jessica Kariisa",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A45gzN0cgow,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63853b541628784965dd666a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kelela.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Kelela-Washed_Away.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,79,Gilla Band,“Backwash”,Rough Trade,"Rough Trade Gilla Band wisely recognize that nearly all of the best ideas about how guitar bands can move on from punk come from hip-hop and electronic music. “Backwash” is the Irish band’s culminating proof-of-concept: As abrasive as it is propulsive, as direct as it is diffuse, the song runs post-punk’s basics through production tricks you can learn from modern-rap masterpieces like Playboi Carti’s Whole Lotta Red or Earl Sweatshirt’s Some Rap Songs. The guitars are subjected to blown-out digital processing with no regard for how the sound might be replicated onstage; lyrics about the horror of binge-watching Big Brother cumulate into a deluge of consciousness. Even the title is an inversion of punk-rock cliché: “Backwash” isn’t an image of spitting into someone’s face, but choking on your own disgust. –Ian Cohen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q07rF2E-0Hw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6386272af01b9971e21598f8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Gilla-Band.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Gilla_Band-Backwash.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,78,Yung Kayo,“hear you” [ft. Eartheater],Young Stoner Life,"Young Stoner Life Yung Kayo’s glitchy warble makes for a natural fit within Young Thug’s YSL roster, but the Washington, D.C. native’s music feels closer in spirit to the glittery rave-pop of Drain Gang than to Atlanta trap. On “hear you,” Kayo leaves the material realm, ascending to a dimension of pure light and sound. The presence of Queens-based experimentalist Eartheater might seem leftfield for an album that also features Gunna and Yeat, but her almost-inhuman vocal range makes for a symbiotic duet with Kayo’s unpredictable crooning. –Nadine Smith",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLWAvTHV8Wo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/62016a3a02b16da47292f22e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/ab67616d0000b2731c1c9b62bc125d45c7b6e1d4.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Yung_Kayo-hear_you_ft_Eartheater.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,77,Porridge Radio,“Back to the Radio”,Secretly Canadian,"Secretly Canadian “Back to the Radio,” the momentous opener that sets the table for Porridge Radio’s third album of vein-bulging post-punk, is essentially one big crescendo. Spartan melodies cut through drums that jitter with nervous energy, as the British band approximates the feeling of walls closing in. Meanwhile, frontwoman Dana Margolin fills in the scenes of a hollow relationship: a house on lockdown, mutters in a slow-moving car. Porridge Radio render this quotidian prison so evocatively, it’s hard to not want to stay a while. –Mehan Jayasuriya",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDw9nTQKGd4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/620fbda1c5f838d377abd892/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Porridge-Radio.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Porridge_Radio-Back_to_the_Radio.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,76,Mabe Fratti,“Cada Músculo”,Unheard of Hope,"Unheard of Hope At first, “Cada Músculo” is a thicket of riddles and warnings—a brawny cello rises and lunges, a sibilant violin snarls and lashes, an inquisitive synth taunts and vanishes. This is how the Mexico City-based composer and singer Mabe Fratti renders our vexing world. Her voice glides through the mess, disarming it through self-sovereignty: “Cada músculo tiene una voz,” or “Every muscle has a voice.” Those rough sounds soften when she opens her mouth, sorted into something like breezy chamber pop, the mysteries of this moment temporarily banished. The end’s howling strings are a stark reminder of the iterative effort that existence demands. –Grayson Haver Currin",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EmEeoZt0Kw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/630cf1232e8ec6f348c08c06/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Cada%2520Musculo.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Mabe_Fratti-Cada_Msculo.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,75,Earl Sweatshirt,“Tabula Rasa” [ft. Armand Hammer],Tan Cressida / Warner,"Tan Cressida / Warner After a pair of laconic records whose goal seemed, at times, to obfuscate, Earl Sweatshirt returned this year with SICK!, an album dominated by songs that cut through the noise. Its centerpiece is “Tabula Rasa,” a patient piano number that pairs him with the unvarnished New York duo Armand Hammer. While Elucid and billy woods rap—vividly—about human connections made, broken, and fraying, Earl details the way a similar disintegration forced him to remake himself. “This game of telephone massive,” he raps during his loping verse. “I do what I have to with the fragments.” –Paul A. Thompson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKQIZREDmf4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61b36f85542d8cbcee346351/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Earl-Sweatshirt-Sick.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Earl_Sweatshirt-Tabula_Rasa_ft_Armand_Hammer.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,74,Ibibio Sound Machine,“Protection From Evil”,Merge,"Merge Like a fog machine dosed with sage oil, the opening track of Ibibio Sound Machine’s Electricity brings a heady rush to the disco. Over a cauldron of stomp and shimmer, British-Nigerian frontwoman Eno Williams repeats her incantation: “Spiritual/Invisible/Protection/From evil.” Produced by Hot Chip, the song hovers at the crossroads of Afrobeat and electronic pop, mixing horns, synths, and robotic vocalizations. Each element amplifies Williams’ impassioned chant, a benediction delivered with the haunted force of an exorcism. –Judy Berman",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfMh0zfIO3A,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/623b7856d18c1022aa7c6a88/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ibibio-Sound-Machine-Electricity.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Ibibio_Sound_Machine-Protection_From_Evil.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,73,Babyface Ray,“Sincerely Face”,Wavy Gang / Empire,"Wavy Gang / Empire Plenty of local scenes around the country tried to recapture the magic of Michigan rap this year, but none of them boasted a one-of-a-kind character like Detroit’s own Babyface Ray. “Sincerely Face” lays out what has made Ray such a pillar: Through his icy delivery, basic rap flexes about Rolexes, courtside seats, and steakhouse dinners sound revelatory. Over a chilly beat, he shrugs his way through a mix of life lessons with inimitable cool. It’s the type of song where the fly aura rubs off on you every time you play it. They only make ’em like this in Michigan. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2xXdXP4E88,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61f1748a2db27afdd4bb8397/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Babyface-Ray-Face.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Babyface_Ray-Sincerely_Face.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,72,Eliza Rose / Interplanetary Criminal,“B.O.T.A. (Baddest of Them All)”,Warner,"Warner Taking inspiration from an immaculate poster for the 1973 Pam Grier blaxploitation film Coffy, every flirty bar and bubbly riff of “B.O.T.A.” oozes cool. Sassy organ house has long lit up British dancefloors, but topping the charts was hardly a forgone conclusion for underground UK Garage producer-DJs Eliza Rose and Interplanetary Criminal. After meeting the accelerant of TikTok, though, the tune’s explosion felt inevitable; it began festival season as a limited pressing and ended it as the hottest record in the UK and Ireland. In a year that resurfaced important debates about the ownership and authenticity of dance music, two things about “B.O.T.A.” ring true: It belongs to the people, and it’s real as fuck. –Gabriel Szatan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtGFByAJRQQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63862c1869fd57230f8c9b12/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Eliza-Rose.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Eliza_Rose__Interplanetary_Criminal-BOTA_Baddest_of_Them_All.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,71,Shygirl,“Coochie (a bedtime story)”,Because Music,"Because Music “Coochie (a bedtime story)” is the sweetest X-rated lullaby imaginable. Shygirl starts things off on a direct line with, well, pussy, sounding like she’s cooing into an old Nokia phone: “Hello? Is anyone there? It’s the coochie calling.” What follows is a soft, funny testament to the UK artist’s unapologetic sexuality, its liquid beat gliding, stuttering, and zipping under her airy vocals. That Shygirl can proclaim her own horniness with such cuteness and levity is a coochie-attracting combination in and of itself. –Margeaux Labat",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsJi7OQBJYA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/638631120cc7efeff3eb32fe/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Shygirl.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Shygirl-Coochie_a_bedtime_story.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,70,Oso Oso,“Computer Exploder”,Triple Crown,"Triple Crown Like a drunk staggering across the beach, “Computer Exploder” lurches toward its chorus in fits and starts. The sunny skies of the opening verse are soon clouded with references to heartbreak and addiction, collapsing in a screeching rush. The hook, when it finally arrives, flashes Oso Oso’s signature blend of surf-rock guitars and emo harmonies, the love and drugs complicated by frontman Jade Lilitri’s self-referential songwriting. “When nothing goes quite like you planned it/Write 12 songs, swing like you can’t miss,” he sings in a nod to his latest album’s tracklist. The go-for-broke candor captures Lilitri’s ambition, casting him as a heavy-hitting rocker in an era that’s all but dispensed with them. –Pete Tosiello",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFmprbj8neI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/62348532872828608b0e70dd/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Oso-Oso-Sore-Thumb.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Oso_Oso-Computer_Exploder.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,69,Mavi,“Baking Soda”,Self-released,"Self-released On the sun-kissed “Baking Soda,” producers Monte Booker and Amarah break down the beat so radically that its melodic tendons barely attach to the rhythmic spine—when Mavi murmurs, “I been gave my soul away to the drum, I’mma live forever” on the chorus, the drum itself feels a hair’s breadth away from oblivion. It’s a complementary backdrop for the heady North Carolina rapper’s elusive insights; what does it mean, exactly, when he says, “And your tears is now trees”? The meaning blooms in the line’s lovely, lingering after-image, as the beat crumbles and rebuilds itself like the last dregs of a dream. –Jayson Greene",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JCEASbkLwY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6323309510c581ffac68ce4e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mavi.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mavi-Baking_Soda.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,68,Dehd,“Bad Love”,Fat Possum,"Fat Possum Dehd’s Emily Kempf is howling with her chest, sprinting at top speed towards a new dawn. The beatific “Bad Love” is more than a bold mea culpa for hurting people in the past, it’s a rapturous embrace of the dangerous task of loving again. Kempf stutters syllables in her quest for “re-re-redemption,” her hopscotching vocal rhythms echoed by machine-gun bursts of snare and sparse guitar licks. With the wind in her sails, her roars swell in size, pushing past the timidity of heartbreak to arrive at one of the most invigorating indie rock anthems of the year. –Jesse Locke",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxKvg8pTcc4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/620a8affd8bc62857b465b0c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Dehd-Blue-Skies.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Dehd-Bad_Love.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,67,Koffee,“Pull Up”,Sony UK / RCA,"Sony UK / RCA Koffee boasts about her new luxury lifestyle on “Pull Up,” but it’s never arrogant or sanctimonious. Over an aquatic beat from British-Ghanaian producer Jae5, the Jamaican singer’s orotund voice feels celebratory, a match for a track that bridges the sunny textures of dancehall and Afrobeats. If anyone else leaned out of the window of a drifting car and sang about pulling up to the party in an Audi, it’d probably feel boring and out-of-touch. But when Koffee does just that in the video, her mouth full of braces, you can’t help but grin along with her. –Isabelia Herrera",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvp9E12E4hQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61fc1f6ac968401d75b0b18c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Koffee-Gifted.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Koffee-Pull_Up.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,66,Hagop Tchaparian,“Right to Riot”,Text,"Text The most immediate cut on British-Armenian producer Hagop Tchaparian’s startling debut album Bolts, “Right to Riot” merges worlds. Droning zurna melodies and tumbling dhol drums vie clamorously for our attention, but Tchaparian’s mastery of more traditional tactics—rising bass, cleansing releases, and a sample looped to sound like an alarm—make the track a gem of contemporary techno, whittling down the Four Tet collaborator’s sweeping vision into a sharp point. –Daniel Felsenthal",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pi6GRzhZ8cs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6329ebc3d44e5f88b386060b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Hagop%2520Tchaparian%2520Right%2520To%2520Riot%2520ARTWORK.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Hagop_Tchaparian-Right_to_Riot.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,65,Arctic Monkeys,“Body Paint”,Domino,"Domino Although the meta space-lounge of 2018’s Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino felt like a departure, this year’s The Car reinforced how elusive Arctic Monkeys’ debonair art-rock has always been. “Body Paint,” the album’s cinematic centerpiece, belongs in the revered UK band’s pantheon of slippery slow burners, alongside enigmatic 2000s ballads “505” and “Cornerstone.” Swapping orchestral swoon for glam-rock crunch midway through—right after Alex Turner croons, “And if you’re thinking of me/I’m probably thinking of you”—the song is an emotive puzzle, obsessed with artifice and lingering smudges you can’t wash away. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zgEObNc_-k,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63864d32dac399a2478067ed/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Arctic-Monkeys-Body-Paint.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Arctic_Monkeys-Body_Paint.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,64,Perfume Genius,“Ugly Season”,Matador,"Matador On the LGBTQ+ anthem “Queen,” Mike Hadreas embraced the power in being viewed by homophobes as a “sea witch with penis tentacles.” Eight years later, over the skeletal reggae beat of “Ugly Season,” his exploration of queerness veers further left: He is a heathen outcast finding abject pleasure and autoerotic arousal in filth, rot, and hearty handfuls of Vaseline. Hadreas’ voice is high and pure amid guttural screams and mammalian lurches, offering hymnic bon mots that could have been written by Jean Genet: “Split, black, pit.” This year, as queer artists powerfully embraced monstrousness-as-dissent, “Ugly Season” burrows into outsider living to emerge as a swamp creature with carnal allure and a tender caress. –Owen Myers",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3r4I6tz72Q4&ab_channel=OliverSim,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/623c91fa2aacf5efe8e654c9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Perfume-Genius-Ugly-Season.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Perfume_Genius-Ugly_Season.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,63,Azealia Banks,“New Bottega”,Self-released,"Self-released Azealia Banks considers the difference between fashion (what you wear) and style (what you possess) on “New Bottega,” which is to say, she is aware of how much she lays claim to. Some of the biggest albums this year drew on club sounds like a strategy, but the Harlem-bred Banks has always made a home inside house music. As she lists the names of designers she likes and doesn’t like in a bad Italian accent, “New Bottega” enters into the Banksian capsule collection—a staple in a malcontent designer’s oeuvre. –Mina Tavakoli",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_upAYmlZl8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63864f1fd710f5c5cd9499df/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Azealia-Banks-New-Bottega.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Azealia_Banks-New_Bottega.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,62,Fever Ray,“What They Call Us”,Mute,"Mute This is the sound of crisis approaching from all sides: the escalating cruelties against its subjects (“did you hear what they call us?”) and the indifference of those watching it happen (“can you fix it, can you care?”). In a desperate plea for mercy, Karin Dreijer sings as if they’re grinding their teeth down to the nerve; the track shudders and startles at every turn, desolate synths circling the arrangement like vultures above wasteland. Despite this, “What They Call Us” is not the sound of defeat. It’s a defiant snarl in the face of circumstance: “I will stay if I dare.” –Katherine St. Asaph",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VudTAeQeA9o,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633dc290571ccd970c04fe7f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Fever-Ray.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fever_Ray-What_They_Call_Us.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,61,Amber Mark,“What It Is”,PMR / Interscope,"PMR / Interscope Uncertainty can gnaw at your psyche, boxing out every other thought. But Amber Mark imbues the troubling feeling with celestial wonder on “What It Is,” looking to a higher power to answer her questions following a failed love. The neat and simmering groove moves in lockstep underneath the R&B singer’s vocals, which mix her patient tone with agile vocal runs and gasping harmonies. Adrift in a stream of milky synths, she shows how powerful it is to be lost. –Brandon Callender",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXaPGlkd5do,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/618d74fb7909bb4eadeda3cb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Amber-Mark.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Amber_Mark-What_It_Is.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,60,Plains,“Problem With It”,Anti-,"Anti- The charm of Katie Crutchfield and Jess Williamson’s album is how they seamlessly combine their simpatico strengths—the plainspoken emotiveness, the pretty melodies, the diaristic attention to experiences big and small—into easy-breezy country-pop that wouldn’t sound out of place on Nashville radio. “Problem With It” is the shining jewel from their debut LP as Plains, an airy travelogue of deep feelings about wanderlust and wack lovers that glides by like a fast car on an empty interstate. And the harmonies! There’s true joy in their vocal communion, most striking when the instruments drop out and it’s just the two of them singing, finding their peace and place in the world within each other’s presence. –Jeremy Gordon",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPNFSXjVH_o,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/62e046e4834e1c44b7e2a2c0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Plains-Album-2022.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Plains-Problem_With_It.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,59,Alabaster DePlume,“Don’t Forget You’re Precious”,International Anthem,"International Anthem The Mancunian saxophonist and spoken-word artist Alabaster DePlume meanders through the stuff stuck in his mind: an ex’s email address, a train transfer, assorted strings of identifying digits. Despite these thoughts—or even deeper, more abstracted aches—he delivers a serene reminder of what matters most. “They can’t use us on one another if we don’t forget we’re precious,” he offers. Against airy background vocals and fluttering strings, DePlume’s comforting reassurance feels like a secular blessing, a private rallying point away from life’s greedy clamor. –Allison Hussey",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXE2WceZCsQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61f2ab482cc0b9d61dd34e8a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Alabaster-dePlume-Gold.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Alabaster_DePlume-Dont_Forget_Youre_Precious.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,58,Kehlani,“melt”,Atlantic,"Atlantic Kehlani’s desire for intimacy is insatiable, even as they tangle with their lover in bed. Over Happy Perez and Pop Wansel’s blissful backbeat, Kehlani meticulously and melismatically details a fantasy where they share a physical form with their partner, with only Kehlani’s tattoos differentiating them. In an era flush with sapphic love songs, “melt” stands out for both its grandiose string arrangement and its specificity, finding the most happiness in quiet moments. –Hannah Jocelyn",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcTf_SyVhq4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/623ca60c0162dc8e746ecb4a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kehlani.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kehlani-melt.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,57,Camp Cope,“Running With the Hurricane”,Run for Cover,"Run for Cover Fiona Apple spread like strawberries and climbed like peas and beans; Camp Cope run with the hurricane, setting aside the heavy balloon of depression and obsessive self-loathing to keep pace with the forces that might otherwise knock them flat. There’s some Springsteen-y heroism in their full-pelt charge towards daylight—“Look out boys/I’m on fire and I’m not going out,” Georgia Maq announces—but the Australian trio is mostly guided by their country-punk foremothers: the Chicks, Lucinda Williams, Gillian Welch, Neko Case. The song rattles along in a lovely cacophony of jangling piano, lunging bass, and a baton-swap of choruses, like some junker with sturdy suspension and everything else nailed down just barely enough to make your escape. –Laura Snapes",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8whTAkkBv6U,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61e83140539383a8f2cddb2c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Camp-Cope.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Camp_Cope-Running_With_the_Hurricane.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,56,Beyoncé,“Break My Soul”,Parkwood Entertainment / Columbia,"Parkwood Entertainment / Columbia “Break My Soul” demands its listeners leave all psychic weight at the door. “Release the stress!” a Big Freedia sample commands inside an Earth-shaking house pulse, as Beyoncé presides over the dancefloor like she just rode in on the back of a hologram horse. Bey gives a fully embodied performance that invites the rest of us to luxuriate inside our own bodies—to spit out the toxins and savor the pleasure that floods in once they’re gone. Unleashed at the height of summer, “Break My Soul” ushered in a sorely needed season of abandon and relief, serving as balm and catalyst at the same time. –Sasha Geffen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iz1rIp1-b-Y,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/62b220625aa56a58b6c6410a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Beyonce-Break-My-Soul.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beyonc-Break_My_Soul.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,55,"Black Country, New Road",“Basketball Shoes”,Ninja Tune,"Ninja Tune It’s impossible to know precisely how many songs have been written about Charli XCX wet dreams, but you could reasonably assume only one is a 12-minute chamber-rock requiem whose reference to Concord Air Jordans bore a concept record about the Concorde jet disaster. “Basketball Shoes” erupts with the essentials of Black Country, New Road: frenetic tempo changes, bright arpeggiation, violin, saxophone, glockenspiel, distortion, screaming, doorbell chimes. Concluding more than their album Ants From Up There, the finale bids adieu to singer Isaac Wood, who left the band days before its release. –Hannah Seidlitz",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOnjuIb1TWY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61649694110e7cd222907396/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Black-Country-New-Road.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Black_Country_New_Road-Basketball_Shoes.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,54,DJ Python,“Angel”,Incienso,"Incienso Reggaeton always seems to figure into discussions of DJ Python’s music—the New York-based producer did previously coin the term “deep reggaeton” to describe his sound—but while “Angel,” the lead track from his Club Sentimientos Vol. 2 EP, is built atop a loosely Caribbean shuffle, the sprawling tune is better suited to an afternoon of lounging by the pool than a sweaty night of perreo. Gliding across nearly 11 minutes of plush textures and dreamily plinking tones, the song has a hypnotic, almost womb-like allure, its patient pulse exuding a luxurious (but never ostentatious) sense of cool. –Shawn Reynaldo",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPy585GVSbQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61eae0596c322b7123e6a059/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/artwork---dj-python---club-sentimientos-vol-2-inc017.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/DJ_Python-Angel.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,53,FKA twigs,“honda” [ft. Pa Salieu],Young,"Young Where FKA twigs’ 2019 album MAGDALENE peeled back the skin of a visceral pain, her 2022 mixtape CAPRISONGS rediscovered a sense of somatic joy. twigs leans all the way into that physicality on “honda,” a dubby duet with the English artist Pa Salieu. Over a bone-deep bassline, Salieu and twigs’ voices twist around one another, mirroring the tangled, dancing limbs they sing about. At first listen, “honda” is all sensual chemistry, felt across a dancefloor, or speeding down the highway. But Salieu’s breezy monologue about looking at himself in the mirror frames the song in a different light: It’s also about those moments you feel entirely in your own body, reclaiming your “one-of-a-kind” self. –Aimee Cliff",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxokAmGVzOs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61d740b79a8903a73574e2a5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/FKA-twigs-Caprisongs.jpg,/dataset/artwork/FKA_twigs-honda_ft_Pa_Salieu.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,52,Fontaines D.C.,“Jackie Down the Line”,Partisan,"Partisan The lead single from Fontaines D.C.’s Skinty Fia is seductively dark, with a menacing bassline, gnarly ’90s post-punk guitar skeins, and a lyric that masquerades as a toxic-boyfriend confession. Like much of the album, “Jackie Down the Line” reveals itself with unpacking as a meditation on Irish identity: in this case, an examination of the way that cultural marginalization can breed self-hate and self-fulfilling prophecy. Grian Chatten’s Dublin brogue, flecked with the soulful British surliness of Mark E. Smith and Noel Gallagher, complicated things further. So did the song’s video premiere, brilliantly staged for the Tonight Show in a deserted theater for a roving camera that seemed unable to get a fix on the singer—much like the singer himself. –Will Hermes",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJvwi3N80g0&ab_channel=TheTonightShowStarringJimmyFallon,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63866cfc1146e815654b7210/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Fontaines-DC.png,/dataset/artwork/Fontaines_DC-Jackie_Down_the_Line.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,51,KH,“Looking at Your Pager”,Text / Ministry of Sound,"Text / Ministry of Sound Kieran Hebden’s flair for tunes that intersect credibility and popularity already put him in a lofty position, but “Looking at Your Pager” proved another beast entirely. With fangs added to 3LW’s kiss-off and those signature pearlescent Four Tet chimes dashed against a pair of impudent basslines—like fine snow gracing an enormous, stinking cement mixer in mid-churn—2021’s fervently sought track ID became 2022’s great dancefloor unifier: It runs with the current UK vogue for growling mechanical steppers while offering sanctuary to nomads wandering America’s post-EDM plains in search of a new thrill. Although “Pager” gifted countless DJs a get-out-of-jail card this summer, they should be on red alert. Hebden’s ear for a monster hit is only getting stronger. –Gabriel Szatan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drvS9w-lTMc&ab_channel=3LWVEVO,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63866df90cc7efeff3eb3336/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/KH.jpg,/dataset/artwork/KH-Looking_at_Your_Pager.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,50,Danger Mouse / Black Thought,“Belize” [ft. MF DOOM],BMG,"BMG MF DOOM’s appearance on Cheat Codes represents a bit of unfinished business: Danger Mouse, who originally produced DOOM’s long-vaulted verse, had long wanted the Roots’ Black Thought for the track. What could’ve been an autumnal team-up between two all-time rap technicians became, with DOOM’s passing in 2020, a melancholic meeting across the veil. The Villain’s sardonic epitaph (“They knew he was a negro/So no need to show faces”) draws as much blood as the world’s longest Erik Estrada joke, while Black Thought’s polished yet playful verse is a tribute to the sly anarchy DOOM could elicit, whether or not he was in the room. –Brad Shoup",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZFZh62tw3o,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/627bb38d93f71d60359384f1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Danger-Mouse-Black-Thought-Cheat-Codes-2022.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Danger_Mouse__Black_Thought-Belize_ft_MF_DOOM.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,49,Jessie Ware,“Free Yourself”,PMR / Interscope,"PMR / Interscope The beloved British singer responsible for one of the pandemic’s premiere pop albums teamed up with studio whizz Stuart Price and returned this summer with another ode to love and dancing. “Free Yourself” takes Ware’s blend of ’70s disco and ’80s boogie and shimmies it ecstatically into the ’90s—jacking acid house drum fills, flamboyant male backup singers, gospel piano—without losing an ounce of charm. And when, this fall, she finally sang it live in front of a New York crowd pitched to Judy-at-Carnegie-Hall pandemonium? It became a new classic. –Jesse Dorris",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD7F6M9fsms,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/62d6e335d11b1ae5d53a1e5c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/JessieWare-FreeYourself-3000x3000.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jessie_Ware-Free_Yourself.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,48,Ravyn Lenae,“Light Me Up”,Atlantic,"Atlantic “Light Me Up” is about the soft hope of a blossoming romance. The Steve Lacy-produced song begins with uncertainty, pacing in circles over tranquil bass guitar and kicks that pulse like a slowed heart. Lenae’s tender vocal runs descend like creek water as she describes the exhilaration of trying on someone new: “No coming down, I love the view.” The song’s private intensity makes it fit for a closed-doors affair in a candle-lit room, but Lenae’s weightless voice and quiet vulnerability makes it impossible not to want to listen in. –Jane Bua",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=se6-jWsx_e0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/638777ea89a59aa467a333d3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ravyn-Lenae.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ravyn_Lenae-Light_Me_Up.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,47,Maren Morris,“Circles Around This Town”,Columbia Nashville,"Columbia Nashville Maren Morris does the impossible: She makes driving in Nashville sound fun. A sly bit of memoir set to music, the first single from Humble Quest recalls the singer’s earliest days as a Tennessee transplant, driving her “Montero with the AC busted” through traffic to look for a record deal and maybe find a little inspiration on the radio. It’s been a decade since she arrived in town, but she might as well be singing about what she did last weekend. She arrived in Nashville hungry. Several years and many miles later, she still is. –Stephen Deusner",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EmOYuzBP1I,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63877886ceb7589b00ba78bf/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Maren-Morris.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Maren_Morris-Circles_Around_This_Town.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,46,Drake,“Sticky”,OVO Sound / Republic,"OVO Sound / Republic On an album that often sounds like he’s searching for something (novelty, if you’re being generous; relevance if you’re not), “Sticky” is where Drake issues his demands: for more guests at the Met Gala, for police escorts, for a kiss, requested in curling French-Canadian. Like the best Drake songs, “Sticky” pressure-cooks his brashest impulses until they congeal into something tender. The club closes; the neon lights sputter out, and “it’s you alone with your regrets.” The stickiest situations are always the ones that trap you in your own thoughts. –Dani Blum",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnZcWgXZOKM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/62ac785ab2cec3cf761512c5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Drake-Honestly-Nevermind.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Drake-Sticky.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,45,Lucrecia Dalt,“El Galatzó”,Rvng Intl.,"Rvng Intl. Lucrecia Dalt’s forceful whisper seems to lightly kiss the microphone, capturing the uncomfortable intimacy of another’s breath against your ear. A flute swirls in the stereo mix, and by the third minute of “El Galatzó,” the strings swell into a crescendo and her plaintive speech gives way to a soulful chorus of spirits. This is, of course, the alien Preta, the protagonist of her latest album ¡Ay!, who arrives flush with newly realized erotic power, rejecting the illusion of linear time. It’s a blast of sci-fi folklore, with an anti-colonial POV. The songs and stories of our ancestors aren’t relegated to the past; that kind of temporality, Dalt suggests, is merely a misconception of the unevolved. –Matthew Ismael Ruiz",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ch8JBRZgduQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/62b2038d0e4ba2763e0755d9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lucrecia-Dalt-Ay-2022.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lucrecia_Dalt-El_Galatz.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,44,Taylor Swift,“Anti-Hero”,Republic,"Republic Sometimes the world really does revolve around Taylor Swift: Is there any other artist who could force urgency into the federal investigation of a music industry monopoly just by going on tour? With “Anti-Hero,” Taylor mirrors an entire lifetime of being a coy main character—the bleacher seat-warmer, the “insane” jealous ex, the doomed princess—with one addictive, charming declaration of self-awareness. Her vocal theatrics are spiked with the very millennial instinct to disguise confidence with self-deprecation, using the tools of a generation obsessed with self-reflection to make one of the best pop songs of the year. –Puja Patel",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1kbLwvqugk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63495dffa7846fb4be7fe006/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Taylor-Swift-Midnights.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Taylor_Swift-Anti-Hero.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,43,Carly Rae Jepsen,“Western Wind”,604 / Schoolboy / Interscope,"604 / Schoolboy / Interscope A “jubilation” conjures such a specific kind of party—maybe a little Catholic, maybe a little royal, something grand and elegant with streamers, champagne, castles. When Carly Rae Jepsen sings the word “jubilation” on “Western Wind”—a midtempo Live, Laugh, Love pop song produced by Rostam from Jepsen’s album *The Loneliest Time—*it’s about a memory of her clearing aside all the furniture in her living room to make a space to sing and dance with her family. It’s so simple, so delightful, so inviting. The sneakily well-built song bubbles along softly, like a sleepy little “Freedom! ’90,” a road trip jam that can silence everyone in the car as Jepsen sings this question: “Do you feel home from all directions?” Not sure what it means, but like the best songs, the answer when you’re listening is an unequivocal yes. –Jeremy D. Larson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZiEvY6d8Y4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6275609e458513ff51e945dc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/carly_rae_jepsen_western_wind_single_art.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Carly_Rae_Jepsen-Western_Wind.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,42,MJ Lenderman,“Tastes Just Like It Costs”,Dear Life,"Dear Life When MJ Lenderman’s guitar gently weeps, his songwriting keeps a stiff upper lip. Like everything on the indie rocker’s breakthrough album Boat Songs, “Tastes Just Like It Costs” contrasts the looseness of his playing—a saggy opening riff reminiscent of Queens of the Stone Age, some curdled Dinosaur Jr. soloing—with the extreme economy of his lyrics. In a handful of four- and five-line verses, he sketches a scene appropriate for a Portlandia sketch, or maybe a horror film: an upscale butcher shop, a “dumb hat,” a sourceless scream. “Mm, honey/It tastes just like it costs,” he drawls over glowing charcoal fuzz, savoring the sweetness of the ambiguity. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwbE93A_xqo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6272c286c75302f40c14a3f0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/BoatSongs.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/MJ_Lenderman-Tastes_Just_Like_It_Costs.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,41,Charlotte Adigéry / Bolis Pupul,“It Hit Me”,DEEWEE,"DEEWEE On the Belgian electropop duo Charlotte Adigéry and Bolis Pupul’s debut LP, Topical Dancer, “It Hit Me” pierces through their theatrical scrim. Tackling the fraught subject of sexual spectacle—from the grimy discomfort of being leered at for the first time to the inane seduction techniques found in women’s magazines—“It Hit Me” guides us through the funhouse mirror of navigating one’s sexuality. The chorus underscores the weight of Adigéry and Pupul’s realizations, letting us feel the gut punch with them—and inviting us to dance through it all. –Sue Park",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPMxQBvOii4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/622271a27dc64ca369d62228/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/CharlotteBolis.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Charlotte_Adigry__Bolis_Pupul-It_Hit_Me.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,40,Yaya Bey,“keisha”,Big Dada,"Big Dada “keisha” is a breakup anthem made for a specific type of bad bitch: an independent woman who puts up with annoying “Where my hug at?” dudes, but still just wants to be loved and madly desired. Yaya Bey knows her audience is foul-mouthed, slightly toxic, lovestruck, and aroused by good, flirty conversation, so she adopts a feathery guitar riff that floats through the song. But when she sings the indelible chorus—“Yeah the pussy so, so good/And you still don’t love me”—it’s comedy and tragedy all rolled into one. –Tarisai Ngangura",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1Rf0W4co8c,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63878a1e5b50509fdd99827a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Yaya-Bey-Keisha.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Yaya_Bey-keisha.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,39,Megan Thee Stallion,“Plan B”,1501 Certified Entertainment / 300 Entertainment,"1501 Certified Entertainment / 300 Entertainment The high road is unsatisfying and often boring. Mud-slinging reveals something closer to the truth, and on “Plan B,” the truth sets the Houston Hottie free: “Fuck you, still can’t believe I used to trust you/The only accolade you ever made is that I fucked you.” Bolstered by a Jodeci sample, Meg spits with equal parts force and charisma, confronting not just the anger of a bad relationship but also the pain. Just ’cause you’re a bad bitch doesn’t mean you can’t have your feelings hurt. –Jessica Kariisa",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQuQ8zDxGh0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63878a9be5592afa444297af/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Megan-Thee-Stallion-Plan-B.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Megan_Thee_Stallion-Plan_B.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,38,Angel Olsen,“Big Time”,Jagjaguwar,"Jagjaguwar Even the brightest-burning romances are made up of quiet moments. With “Big Time,” Angel Olsen gives listeners a glimpse into that kind of intimacy: She and her partner Beau Thibodeaux, who co-wrote the song, drink coffee, lay in the tall grass, and walk down to the lake, singing Chris de Burgh’s “The Lady in Red.” Olsen’s brassy, stuck-out-of-time voice and the breezy, country-inspired arrangement imbue those details with the gleam of universal truth. The sweetly delivered line “I’m loving you big time” is a beacon in Olsen’s hands. Its disarming simplicity cracks open her incandescent partnership, letting its light pour out all over everything. –Brad Sanders",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MG7vZRyyj4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/624280679c6e47def3425a1b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/angel-olsen-big-time.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Angel_Olsen-Big_Time.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,37,Sudan Archives,“Home Maker”,Stones Throw,"Stones Throw With the world coming back outside again, “Home Maker” shows that staying in the crib can be just as worthwhile. Sudan Archives sidesteps the opaque nature of some of her previous work for a straight-ahead introvert’s anthem. “I cry when I’m alone,” she coos atop propulsive drums and looping handclaps. “All these people don’t know/That I deal with all of these doubts.” Yet the song doesn’t wallow in sadness; it is empowered, therapeutic, and honest. –Marcus J. Moore",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z5-ejzOouw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/62338e7dedfeddd7a4e5f17c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sudan_Archives_Home_Maker_single_artwork.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Sudan_Archives-Home_Maker.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,36,yeule,“Bites on My Neck”,Bayonet,"Bayonet Part hyperpop cyborg, part suffering bedroom songwriter, yeule deals in emo-tinged laments that conceal deep, impossible desires: to be numb and euphoric at once; to be touched without a body. The Singaporean musician floats between dissociative sing-speak and lullaby coos on “Bites on My Neck,” corralling meteor-shower synths and pugilistic kick drums to offer a fresh perspective on pleasure-centric dance pop. Co-written and produced with Danny L Harle and Mura Masa, the track owes as much to M83’s starbound symphonies and Laurie Anderson’s deadpan alienation as to post-PC Music clubland. Yeule hijacks that garish pop paradigm in service of more vaporous emotions, funneling a post-breakup identity crisis into an immaterial rush. –Jazz Monroe",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsKWJrYdbi8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61fd77bb46491229454c5a64/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/YeuleBOMN.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/yeule-Bites_on_My_Neck.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,35,Special Interest,“Midnight Legend” [ft. Mykki Blanco],Rough Trade,"Rough Trade When the drugs have run dry and you’re about to ditch the club, “Midnight Legend” will call you back. You hear those bouncing ’90s house keys, the synthetic snares that clack like costume jewelry on a cheap bartop. Special Interest vocalist Alli Logout pulls double duty: They are your disco deity, your rave therapist. “They all pine for you/Built you to destroy you,” Logout belts, before partner-in-crime Mykki Blanco slides in with a brassy verse. “Daddy pay the bill but I don’t fuck him,” Blanco snaps over a four-on-the-floor pulse. The divas have arrived—dancefloor salvation. –Madison Bloom",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jss7mRU67e8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632096158f0d7ac40b58d868/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Special-Interest.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Special_Interest-Midnight_Legend_ft_Mykki_Blanco.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,34,Grace Ives,“Shelly”,True Panther / Harvest,"True Panther / Harvest Grace Ives’ Janky Star springs to life like a miniature jukebox of sputtering New York love songs, each delectable hook blaring through with a raggedy kind of charm. Where most of the album channels the raunchy electro-pop of the aughts, “Shelly” calls out the oldies: its power poppy, guitar-chugging strut feels more of a piece with Pulp or Rick Springfield. Ives cheekily lusts after a woman who reminds her of the titular Twin Peaks character, breathily proclaiming, “I wanna 1-2-3-4-5 her.” It’s as winking as it is sweetly sincere, like a parody of all those unrequited-love karaoke classics that’s so positively giddy it ends up becoming the real thing. –Sam Goldner",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYkbTyHXwbs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/624d02dd2afbc1aa4dab0f56/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Grace%2520Ives%2520Album%2520Cover.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Grace_Ives-Shelly.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,33,Big Thief,“Spud Infinity”,4AD,"4AD What exactly is the connection between potatoes and human existence? Who knows. But the absurd central metaphor in Big Thief’s “Spud Infinity” makes it both the band's homeliest song and possibly their most beautiful, escaping like a big, snorty laugh from their murmuring double album, Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You. The mouth harp and see-sawing fiddle are the perfect accompaniment to Adrianne Lenker’s outrageously playful lyrics, rhyming “finish” with “potato knish” in a flourish that would make John Prine crack a mile-wide grin. –Jayson Greene",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYFBNA7uaJQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6192b1f87d518c1b374471fc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Big-Thief-Dragon-New-Warm-Mountain-I-Believe-in-You.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Big_Thief-Spud_Infinity.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,32,Chief Keef,“Bitch Where”,Glo Gang / RBC,"Glo Gang / RBC Chief Keef is at an emotional crossroads. The Chicago native is still as wild and irreverent as ever (“At the gun range, sound checkin’, it sound clear”) but he’s also uncharacteristically grateful to still be alive and creating after a decade in the industry. “Bitch Where” plays these fantastical tonal leaps against a triumphant beat made for a king returning from war, but once the smoke clears, a message from Keef’s grandmother maintains the air of gratitude: “Keep going, baby. Keep going. Granny just love how you move and doing yourself.” –Dylan Green",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdCmaAG-vYg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61b8f491517e91d45ad2f88f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Chief-Keef-4Nem.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Chief_Keef-Bitch_Where.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,31,Charli XCX,“Constant Repeat”,Atlantic,"Atlantic There are glimmers of Charli’s cyborg tendencies on Crash standout “Constant Repeat”—the high-pitched blips, the sliced-and-diced vocal outro—but it moves more lightly ​​than the revved-up pop for which she’s become known. Charli is at ease, luxuriating in Jacuzzi-jet synths while delivering a resolute assertion of her worth to someone who let her go. Ostensibly about a breakup, the song becomes all the more potent considering Crash’s meta-narrative about a fed-up pop star dipping out on her major-label overlords. Charli demands stardom on her own terms; the mainstream machine can take it or leave it. –Olivia Horn",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPQCIRdGAJ0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6183f064ebc21d2eb6916d29/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Charli-XCX-Crash.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Charli_XCX-Constant_Repeat.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,30,Ice Spice,“Munch (Feelin’ U)”,Self-released,"Self-released Merriam-Webster defines “munch” as a verb that means “to eat with a chewing action.” Which is wrong. Or, at least, incomplete. Because according to Ice Spice, the word is a noun that describes a particularly clueless kind of guy—a dummy, a sucker, a simp. “You thought I was feelin’ you?” the Bronx drill rapper eyerolls on one of the year’s most memorable hooks, “That nigga a munch/Nigga a eater he ate it for lunch/Bitch I’m a baddie I get what I want.” Ice Spice grew up idolizing both Cardi B and Erykah Badu, and she balances her brashness with a supremely unbothered delivery, as if she’s been swatting away munches for decades. Centuries, even. Merriam-Webster, it’s time to catch up. –Ryan Dombal",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF-NC3eRsqc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6387900e5b50509fdd99827d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ice-Spice.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Ice_Spice-Munch_Feelin_U.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,29,Jockstrap,“Greatest Hits”,Rough Trade,"Rough Trade A song called “Greatest Hits” might seem like hubris, but subversive audacity is encoded into Jockstrap’s DNA. On this highlight of I Love You Jennifer B, the London duo takes the fundamentals of disco—sashaying glamor, sumptuous strings—and laces them with hyperpop mischief. “Imagine I’m Madonna/Imagine I’m the Madonna,” vogues Georgia Ellery, self-actualizing her stardom. In an alternate reality, “Greatest Hits” is soundtracking a scene of eyebrow-raising decadence in Studio 54 at this very moment. In our timeline it’s playing out on less opulent stages, but even the humblest trappings can’t tarnish its sense of unabashed rapture. –Louis Pattison",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1-x1GWu96o,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63879170869fb5a68d300cf3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jockstrap.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jockstrap-Greatest_Hits.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,28,Soccer Mommy,“Shotgun”,Loma Vista,"Loma Vista Sophie Allison was put on God’s green Earth to write vivid, melancholy songs. On “Shotgun,” the undulating lead single from Sometimes, Forever, she masters the complicated rush of falling into an unsustainable love, painting a twisted picture of twentysomething romances. “You know I’ll take you as you are/As long as you do me,” she sings over muddy layers of grungy guitar chords produced expertly by Oneohtrix Point Never. “Shotgun” is about doing vulnerable and delusional things in love, knowing they’re just quick fixes, and not giving a damn anyway. –Gio Santiago",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1xOoqD8jkI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/623a998d60d2cf2d46d41a2d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Soccer%2520Mommy%2520-%2520'Sometimes%2C%2520Forever'%2520-%2520Album%2520Art.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Soccer_Mommy-Shotgun.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,27,Steve Lacy,“Bad Habit”,RCA,"RCA Steve Lacy is a lovelorn Eeyore on “Bad Habit,” his Gemini Rights anthem for the undecided. He dutifully trods around in his own head, assuaging the guilt of not pursuing a love interest. Still, he allows himself to daydream. In a year that’s felt directionless for many, it’s clear why a song about living in ambiguity would become a No. 1 hit and every TikTok introvert’s soundtrack. More than the wispy pangs of regret or plaintive falsetto, what propels the song is a steady pulse of uncertainty, relatable to anyone who’s ever talked themselves out of following their heart. –Clover Hope",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VF-FGf_ZZiI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/638e088e12b41513f51f15ac/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Steve-Lacy-Bad-Habit.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Steve_Lacy-Bad_Habit.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,26,Cate Le Bon,“Moderation”,Mexican Summer,"Mexican Summer “Moderation,” a highlight of Cate Le Bon’s Pompeii, is a beguiling elegy to uncertainty. Atop a strutting new wave bassline and lonesome horns, the Welsh musician faces the habits she can’t quite knock, reckoning with guilt and her own good intentions. “Moderation/I can’t have it/I don’t want it/I want to touch it,” she sings, lingering on each word as if to briefly possess its essence. In this strange space between emotions, Le Bon stands transfixed by the unknown. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6a7WeVYnSs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/638792ede5592afa444297b1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Cate-Le-Bon-Moderation.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Cate_Le_Bon-Moderation.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,25,Burna Boy,“Last Last”,Atlantic,"Atlantic Has heartbreak ever sounded so liberating? “Last Last” is Burna Boy’s paean to pain and things that, well, don’t last—his layered vocals soaring freely over lolloping kicks. But played against the charismatic defiance of his drink- and smoke-soaked performance is that shivering riff of Toni Braxton’s “He Wasn’t Man Enough”; it rings like eternal doubt—maybe it was me, not you, after all?—and delivers the tension that triggered the song’s explosion across street parties and beach stages all summer. –Will Pritchard",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=421w1j87fEM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63879349aab341d1b0e32eb7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Burna-Boy-Last-Last.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Burna_Boy-Last_Last.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,24,Daphni,“Cherry”,Jiaolong,"Jiaolong Daphni’s third album, Cherry, feels like it was bashed out in a few hours, in the best possible way. It’s rave music as garage rock, with a giddy sense of freedom that makes it feels like a breakthrough for the dance-music project of Caribou’s Dan Snaith. Standing astride the record is the title track, composed of a few eccentric but judiciously arranged elements—a frog-chorus of pitch-shifted hi-hats, a simple melody played on a pneumatic chord preset—threaded along a synth loop that sounds like a chain of exploding Pop Rocks. Simply yet counterintuitively constructed, “Cherry” is proof a rave anthem can be patched together out of anything. –Daniel Bromfield",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqI5-2G-x4w,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/62bda6a4803e32780b932fc6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Daphni-Cherry.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Daphni-Cherry.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,23,Weyes Blood,"“It’s Not Just Me, It’s Everybody”",Sub Pop,"Sub Pop Natalie Mering transforms a biting moment of interiority—feeling unseen at a party—into a plea for empathy and interconnectivity. She notices the increasing loneliness in herself, then the loneliness in everyone, everywhere: a testament to the fact that we’re all “a part of one big thing.” The song beams with ’70s sonic nostalgia, Mering’s languid voice soaring over soft piano and taut drums. But the sentiments in “It’s Not Just Me, It’s Everybody” are hardly backwards-looking. Mering searches for a way forward, embracing mercy as a path to ourselves and each other. –Brady Brickner-Wood",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3g7BSnavHH8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/631f595a8f0d7ac40b58d7e4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Weyes-Blood.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Weyes_Blood-Its_Not_Just_Me_Its_Everybody.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,22,Two Shell,“home”,Mainframe Audio,"Mainframe Audio Two Shell could really piss you off if their music wasn’t so fantastic. Forget the duo’s inane first interview that self-destructed before you could read it, or their Boiler Room set where they twiddled knobs to a pre-recorded set in goat hats and sunglasses. Forget the passcode-protected hacker website that makes you feel like you have to steal the Declaration of Independence to get in. It all evaporates in the face of a big, phosphorescent floor-filler like “home,” in which pitched-up vocals from a 2016 alt-R&B song emit an irresistible rainbow sheen, texturized by whirring jungle beats and slobbery bubble-popping noises. It’s dippy, synthetic, and blindingly fun, a sure sign that even at closing time your night is on the up. –Cat Zhang",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqV40g90-Ow,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/629a5c8d151052c422d1c877/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Two-Shell.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Two_Shell-home.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,21,Monaleo,“We Not Humping (Remix)” [ft. Flo Milli],Stomp Down,"Stomp Down When pop-culture feminism goes full-throttle on misandry, the Miami bass-inflected “We Not Humping (Remix)” will be the movement’s rallying song. Equally bratty and lacerating, Monaleo and Flo Milli take turns using the alpha-male ego like a punching bag. Sparing no feelings, these Southern women giggle at erectile dysfunction, berating those who can only last for the duration of a TikTok video, and shaming the ones who failed Eater 101 in a playground-taunt delivery. Don’t worry, they just might let you hang—just come with your jaw loose and most importantly keep your pants zipped. –Heven Haile",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjBJCrhPyXw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63879537ceb7589b00ba78c2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Monaleo.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Monaleo-We_Not_Humping_Remix_ft_Flo_Milli.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,20,Caroline Polachek,“Billions”,Perpetual Novice,"Perpetual Novice Caroline Polachek dives headfirst into the twists and turns of a mutually obliterative infatuation. She breathily gasps about “sexting sonnets” and “working the angles,” before plunging down an octave to seethe “headless angel / body upgraded / but it's dead on arrival.” And then a sharp turn: She hands off the final chorus to a British children's choir, whose voices sound so weightless they could be simulated. “I never felt so close to you,” they sing, modeling what all the best pop music does: taking a specific situation between a particular I and a particular you and inviting everyone else in the world to fill it with their own dreams and nightmares. –Sasha Geffen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zEQJrggKgk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/62052c23c5f838d377abd4ee/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Billions.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Caroline_Polachek-Billions.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,19,Beth Orton,“Friday Night”,Partisan,"Partisan Beth Orton’s astonishing “Friday Night” captures the moment when a disarrayed consciousness finally arranges itself into a shape that makes sense. The haunted background vocals and vaporous synths suggest the time-travel of memory as much as the lyric about Proust’s madeleine, but Orton has no desire to live in the past. Though she’s a little unsteady, hobbling along to the tumbling beat of the drum, she’d rather move forward. As “Friday Night” unfolds, Orton sounds both weary and sneakily energized, ready to discover what’s next. –Mark Richardson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYUXWwMWbGE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/638796bb4be10a96d983fc0e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Beth-Orton.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Beth_Orton-Friday_Night.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,18,Björk,“Ancestress”,One Little Independent,"One Little Independent Björk wrote “Ancestress,” a long and stirring highlight from Fossora, in the wake of her mother’s death. She penned pages of words before whittling them down and enlisting her son, Sindri Eldon, to harmonize. In the moments they sing together, Björk and Eldon sketch out a lifecycle, each honoring their own matriarch. Björk pays tribute to her mother’s dyslexia—an “idiosyncratic sense of rhythm” and the “ultimate free form.” But she doesn’t just sing about it: She echos it with musical structure, shoving aside delicate chimes and dispatching atonal bells and jagged percussion. “Ancestress” is not only a song about Björk’s mother; it is her mother transposed into song. –Madison Bloom",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QRIgD1bAjI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/630f5a82d81b4a1c03943188/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bjork-Fossora.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bjrk-Ancestress.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,17,Nilüfer Yanya,“Midnight Sun”,ATO,"ATO Play a round of Heardle with “Midnight Sun” and you might easily guess an In Rainbows song. Nilüfer Yanya translates Radiohead’s signature elements—minor-key trickery, layered guitar loops, cryptic lyrics punctuated with anxiety—into a heavily redacted diary entry. From the sharp intake of a drum roll that opens the song to the scuzzy, major-key blowout that offers a long-awaited catharsis, “Midnight Sun” uses rock’s ominous side to ward off an unidentified threat. Consider it a talisman for a new decade of misinformation, paranoia, and emotional spiraling. –Nina Corcoran",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ax_tCstL-H4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61e978bd6c322b7123e6a047/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/MidnightSun.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Nilfer_Yanya-Midnight_Sun.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,16,Kendrick Lamar,“The Heart Part 5”,pgLang / Top Dawg Entertainment / Aftermath / Interscope,"pgLang / Top Dawg Entertainment / Aftermath / Interscope One of the worst strains of discourse in the field of Kendrickology is the idea that Kendrick Lamar never asked to be considered a spokesperson for the affairs of Black America, that he’s merely a savant that stumbled into a spotlight he’s not suited for, and never wanted. What an insult. “The Heart Part 5” is a three-hundred-and-thirty-two-second-long declaration of Kendrick’s unabashed desire for the pulpit, contending with whether the world no longer has use for his earnestness, and whether he should be ashamed to indulge his ambitions to moral superheroics. That’s actually exactly what the world wants, and it’s what Kendrick wants, too. –Adlan Jackson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAPUkgeiFVY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/627c19975b2088a310d05898/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kendrick-Lamar-The-Heart-Part-5.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kendrick_Lamar-The_Heart_Part_5.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,15,Rachika Nayar,“Heaven Come Crashing” [ft. Maria BC],NNA Tapes,"NNA Tapes Though Rachika Nayar’s previous works of gossamer ambient play along a rich spectrum of feeling, they often expressed their intensity softly. The first half of the Brooklyn guitarist-composer’s “Heaven Come Crashing” glides along in a familiar quietude, with clusters of vocals from fellow guitarist Maria BC. When it abruptly drops into a motorway-paced drum’n’bass section, the catharsis is surprising but earned, like a natural discharge of energy. Amid all the noise and rhythm, the familiar sound of a processed guitar becomes something new and majestic. –Zhenzhen Yu",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9mZCVzub9A,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/62cf124011f264f564531162/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Album%2520Art%2520(Digital%2520-%2520Full%2520Bleed).jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rachika_Nayar-Heaven_Come_Crashing_ft_Maria_BC.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,14,Pharrell,"“Cash In Cash Out” [ft. 21 Savage and Tyler, the Creator]",Columbia,"Columbia “Cash In Cash Out” sounds like Pharrell heard a Gen-Zer refer to him as “the Minions song guy” and took it personally. Returning to a grittier sound after his work on Pusha-T’s It’s Almost Dry, he sought out two “ravenous wolves”—Tyler the Creator and 21 Savage—to attack extraterrestrial 808s and militant snares. Both rappers trade braggadocious bars, neither relegated to feature status—21 surfing the high-tempo beat while Tyler double-dutches with an increasingly frenetic flow culminating in his conclusive “Woof!” –Heven Haile",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKEwnhc8ItY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63879aa966010010de681634/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Cash-In-Cash-Out.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Pharrell-Cash_In_Cash_Out_ft_21_Savage_and_Tyler_the_Creator.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,13,The 1975,“Part of the Band”,Dirty Hit,"Dirty Hit “Part of the Band” is both the thesis and the outlier of the 1975’s Being Funny in a Foreign Language. Its patient orchestral folk and tongue-twisting one-liners about “vaccinista tote bag chic baristas” stand apart from the bittersweet synth-pop found elsewhere on the album. The song’s vulnerability feels distinct in its precision, too. As frontman Matty Healy sings of exactly how long it’s been since he last used heroin, down to the minute, toward the end of the track, the production swells to a crescendo, pushing him further ahead. –Matthew Strauss",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87nG3LuabUs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/62c72d1d77fa4b7e459a2408/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-1975.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_1975-Part_of_the_Band.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,12,Aldous Harding,“Fever”,4AD,"4AD Nobody darts around the edges of narrative and inscrutability quite like the folk-pop enigma Aldous Harding. On “Fever,” the New Zealand singer deals out impressionistic morsels of an 11-day love affair in a faraway city, shouting the first word of each measure like a schoolteacher calling roll. “Fever” may seem like a straightforward tale by Harding’s cryptic standards, but from the lopsided piano groove that anchors the tune to the dada wisdom that “one will fry if the other’s connected,” everything remains pleasantly askew. –Zach Schonfeld",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMA1kJ7Uc9s,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61de4f9c73b31e38e0eb110a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/ALDOUS%2520HARDING%2520-%2520WARM%2520CHRIS%2520PAKSHOT%255B1%255D.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Aldous_Harding-Fever.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,11,Ethel Cain,“American Teenager”,Daughters of Cain,"Daughters of Cain Ethel Cain approaches her music as a sound designer as much as a songwriter, eschewing conventional structure for marginal vibrations and layered sensations, which makes an arena-ready pop anthem like “American Teenager” something of a revelation. On a lost highway turnoff somewhere between Bruce Springsteen and Brandon Flowers, Ethel rides a sepia-tinged carousel of all-American imagery: tears under the bleachers, wasted nights gone wrong, and forlorn prayers to Jesus. While her songs are frequently extended epics, somewhere between slowcore and chopped & screwed choral music, “American Teenager” is immediate and succinct, but not any less careful in its construction. –Nadine Smith",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ed_WWmFy9I,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63879c2daab341d1b0e32eb9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ethel-Cain.png,/dataset/artwork/Ethel_Cain-American_Teenager.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,10,Hikaru Utada,“Somewhere Near Marseilles”,Sony,"Sony Hikaru Utada reinvented themselves on their eighth album, BADモード, dialing from J-pop toward sleek, mellow dance music. Featuring co-production from Floating Points’ Sam Shepherd, the LP’s jet-setting, showstopping finale frames a Mediterranean tryst in finger snaps and rubbery synths. It’s a glamorous setup for breathless intimacy: “Maybe I’m afraid of love/Say I’m not the only one,” they murmur as the song builds toward a blissed-out dance breakdown. Spiked with unfettered yearning, “Somewhere Near Marseilles” makes falling hard and fast sound like its own euphoric form of escape. –Eric Torres",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FL7ahAmdp8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/620a8ee91038e82f029e3a5d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/100000x100000-999.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Hikaru_Utada-Somewhere_Near_Marseilles.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,9,Bad Bunny,“Tití Me Preguntó”,Rimas,"Rimas Bad Bunny regards seductive mischief as inextricable from his sensitive disposition: This is how he lets us know he’s complex. The arrangement reflects Bunny’s amiable disregard for monogamy. Producer MAG treats Bunny’s first solo stab at dembow like a coming-out party, lavishing him with keyboard swirls, sampled camera effects, a beat switch-up in the outro, and, terrifyingly, his aunt to shake her finger at her nephew. But Tití doesn’t have to ask for details—Benito will tell her. He giggles at his own admissions, and of course, like cads before him, admits that what he really wants is… love. –Alfred Soto",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cr8K88UcO0s,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/627425dbc85171592b8a6e6a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bad-Bunny-Un-Verano-Sin-Ti.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bad_Bunny-Tit_Me_Pregunt.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,8,Alan Braxe / DJ Falcon,“Step by Step” [ft. Panda Bear],Smugglers Way,"Smugglers Way French house kingpins Alan Braxe and DJ Falcon made their long-awaited return on “Step by Step,” rolling out gentle waves of modular synths that sound like they come from an old AM radio. Panda Bear gives the duo’s subtle glow a narrative framework, singing about the aftermath of an idyllic past. But “Step by Step” is really about moving forward: The synths suddenly come alive, acoustic drums breathe momentum into the song’s sails, and Panda Bear—multi-tracked into an elated choir, and delivering the crown jewel of his already laudable 2022 discography—becomes a chorus of trusted advisors whose collective force, and copious repetitions, transform an old self-help chestnut into a life-changing belief system. –Evan Minsker",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqKjFj6YoWM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6284f63ba4d67444abb385ba/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Alan-Braxe-DJ-Falcon-Step-by-Step.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Alan_Braxe__DJ_Falcon-Step_by_Step_ft_Panda_Bear.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,7,Rosalía,“SAOKO”,Columbia,"Columbia Pressing play on “SAOKO” feels like opening a matchbox to find a blaze already lit inside. It’s the crackling, compact powerhouse that realizes Rosalía’s stated desire to hear something she’s never heard before. In just over two minutes, she darts through a Wisin and Daddy Yankee interpolation, digital distortion, and organic, jazzy interludes while laying bars harder than the diamonds she affixed to her teeth this year. “Yo me transformo”—“I transform myself”—is her refrain throughout, and a mission statement for how she synthesizes cross-cultural influences into a totalizing, transcendent vision of pop. –Olivia Horn",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nD3tMTrKMy8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61f86f77c5f6f514db2af019/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/MTMM%2520Cover%252010x10.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rosala-SAOKO.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,6,Yeah Yeah Yeahs,“Spitting Off the Edge of the World” [ft. Perfume Genius],Secretly Canadian,"Secretly Canadian Time may have tamed their more volatile inclinations, but Yeah Yeah Yeahs is still for the kids: whether in the context of literal parenthood, the younger artists for whom their influence abounds, or the emerging generation at the heart of this quietly epic song. On the cinematic lead single from their first album in eight years, Yeah Yeah Yeahs obliquely trace the contours of our consequential historical moment, of what the young will inherit: “Cowards, here’s the sun/So bow your heads.” Its atmosphere conjures a world slowly turning, putting rage into a cool, cutting stare. –Jenn Pelly",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckM_TklU_AQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6296de7bde4f971b8c93a42a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/YYYs%2520Cool%2520It%2520Down%2520Artwork.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Yeah_Yeah_Yeahs-Spitting_Off_the_Edge_of_the_World_ft_Perfume_Genius.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,5,Beyoncé,“Alien Superstar”,Parkwood Entertainment / Columbia,"Parkwood Entertainment / Columbia At least now we’ll be prepared if a UFO ever touches down in the club. “Alien Superstar” is a new-gen ballroom staple with a synth-drenched hook beamed down from a higher plane. Beyoncé has never lacked for confidence, but over Prince-ly funk paired with interstellar electronic flourishes, her assertions about being a “masterpiece, genius” with a “drip intravenous” feel particularly justified. Add to the audaciousness a grouping of samples that, were it not for the House of Yoncé’s copious resources, would surely never have been assembled under one roof: Dancefloor staples Foremost Poets and Peter Rauhofer meet a Right Said Fred interpolation that culminates in an outro by Barbara Ann Teer, founder of the National Black Theater. The result is 20-plus credits on a track that both soars and swaggers, a new bar set by a star always game to raise it. –Emma Carmichael",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rb4-oOKIZQ8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/62bdd2cb9e0c39ec09d73fd7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Beyonce-Renaissance.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beyonc-Alien_Superstar.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,4,Alex G,“Runner”,Domino,"Domino Alex G writes songs because, he says, he doesn’t have the “technical skill” for fiction. Probably you would not get a book deal on this premise: “Runner” might be a song about a dog, but it’s also a song about dog spelled backward. “I have done a couple bad things,” he howls, the tortured Judas cry of that most Easter bunnies-and-puppies of Alex G albums, God Save the Animals. “Judge me for what I do,” he reminds us, and as is true of many spiritual texts, the detail is kind of inscrutable while the story comes alive in sound: creeping-ivy melodies, spooky beatboxing, that primal scream. The scream leaves the human realm, meets the animal, approaches the perfect love to which we now aspire in the form of perfect two-and-a-half-minute pop songs. Alex G, like the dog who catches the car, keeps running. –Anna Gaca",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFaMCIVHz2I,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/62af3a8f6c8f0240e138567f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/AlexG_GodSaveTheAnimals_3000pxCVR.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Alex_G-Runner.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,3,Glorilla / Hitkidd,“F.N.F. (Let’s Go)”,BLAC NOIZE! / Campsouth Records,"BLAC NOIZE! / Campsouth Records Landing like a crunkafied version of Trina’s “Single Again” but with a rowdy Lil Phat on the chorus, Glorilla’s “F.N.F.” is a flashy relationship-status update that makes a breakup feel like a riot. Instead of solitary nights spent crying over a tub of ice cream, Glo goes looking for debauchery with her home girls, leading the charge into the streets with an invigorating “Let’s goooo!!!!” Flanked by her bad bitch army, she stomps over a thunderous HitKidd beat and has the last laugh over an ex who wasted her time: “Life's great, pussy still good/Still eating cake, wishing that a bitch would.” Don’t even try texting: Glorilla’s too busy twerking at intersections, hanging out car windows, and making the world know she’s free. –Heven Haile",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkOJnpai1MI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6387a057e1dcb979baf84c0b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Glorilla.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Glorilla__Hitkidd-FNF_Lets_Go.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,2,Destroyer,“June”,Merge,"Merge “Speaking of lifelike, this is what life’s like,” Dan Bejar declares midway through “June,” a gloriously surreal destination following three decades of journeying into the heart of his subconscious. The Canadian songwriter’s spoken-word vocals are processed to sound like a montage of various Dan Bejars complimenting and contradicting one another, musing on art and existence or cracking an “I barely know her!” joke while pondering the meaning of love. The onslaught of non sequiturs is chopped and layered against wafting disco, like the soundtrack to a mirrorball head-trip sequence in the Hollywood adaptation of his life. If we’re to take him at his word, this really is what life is like—alternately gliding in ecstasy and waging war on each passing thought, all while still making time for the everyday absurdity that falls in between. A crown jewel of one of indie rock’s most ambitious songbooks, “June” found its home in a world that seems as absurd, doomed, and oddly romantic as Bejar has always seen it. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3hFZkFgs-g,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61dc60f7e5e3cbd18cf32d15/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/MRG789_destroyer_LABYRINTHITIS_900.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Destroyer-June.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2022 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/,2022,year,song,1,Alvvays,“Belinda Says”,Polyvinyl / Transgressive,"Polyvinyl / Transgressive Alvvays frontwoman Molly Rankin recently cited the Canadian short story master Alice Munro as an influence, noting the way the writer’s work can “knock the wind out of you.” Rankin and her band offer their own bracing wallop with “Belinda Says,” a heartbreaking sketch of an unexpected pregnancy that’s also a modern power-pop classic. She only needs one line to render vivid scenes: a warm vodka cooler chugged behind a hockey rink, a tense phone call with a would-be father, a forlorn move to the countryside soundtracked by Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven Is a Place on Earth.” Like a heroine in one of Munro’s timeless stories, the narrator’s life is altered forever by a single choice of impossible magnitude. The song’s bittersweet, sighing melody, one that could easily be repurposed within an antique music box, is magnified by production that weaponizes shoegaze signifiers in service of the narrative. Guitars smother like wet wool and shrieking seagulls fly over the coast; there's an overwhelming heightening of stakes, like your heart is being squeezed by a trash compactor. As Rankin soars into a final high note, it might feel like you’re leaving with a whiff of hope—but the solo that takes you home is messy, discordant, a little confused. It’s an appropriate finale for a song about the moments in people’s lives that defy clear articulation, when your only choice is surrender to a swirling maelstrom of emotion. –Jamieson Cox",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVJ0ZKYu-GI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/62c4df04d645ed2828d096ce/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/alvvays-blue-rev.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Alvvays-Belinda_Says.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2021/,2021,year,album,50,Yasmin Williams,Urban Driftwood,Spinster,"Spinster Yasmin Williams coaxes mesmerizing compositions from her guitar by using her entire body. She deftly plucks the strings positioned across her lap like a keyboard, and adds percussion by playing the kalimba mounted at her guitar’s bottom and knocking her wrist against the instrument’s surface. Her technique is virtuosic and timeless, but also crucially grounded in the desire to communicate something meaningful about the present. Williams’ second album, Urban Driftwood, is a testament to her talent—a contemplative balm with an expressive emotional core. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/74gALtHroeCQLJ2xUvHLxb5f56onKCpBiChrTbuHesKqdv9HopBy24Ce7VY8v22WJCPrYJmxTsPzeT4rrk4Le4anBS6r5Aqha1NpzibMMFrdXgXBPB78hQTkAAqSevfV2ZHzTg?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/RTBwSQLkhETA6UFFPTH546tj4MhS8mXL1r9PZ2BaJwAiGQLaVRYbHCdSKwwyUDLoScnzmdbYLYXroCv7adS4krsMAW7oEKXG67XFZYutHBeALdeWWsYBi14X?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://yasminwilliams.bandcamp.com/album/urban-driftwood | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/233gqBTj1syIvhppH8NV7w | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/168202331,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a92fcde2c7c1ae7d723fe8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Yasmin-Williams.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Yasmin_Williams-Urban_Driftwood.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2021/,2021,year,album,49,Magdalena Bay,Mercurial World,Luminelle,"Luminelle The internet-obsessed rollout for Magdalena Bay’s debut album featured Y2K-style websites, meta music videos, and hallucinatory TikToks—playful gateways into one of the most distinctive pop records of the year. The L.A.-based duo of Mica Tenenbaum and Matthew Lewin make music splashed with markers of the past: vaporwave, G-funk, and Max Martin-sized pop are all touchstones for Mercurial World. There are wobbly sugar rushes and glitched-out ballads, but the album reaches its apex on “Chaeri,” a melancholic ode to a crumbling friendship where Magdalena Bay deliver pathos and electro-pop perfection all at once. –Eric Torres",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/RTBwSQLkhETA6UFFPTH546tj4MhS8mXL1r9PZ2BaJwAiGQLaVRZ8r6mBo5VGRwKEoA7T2azq35dzj9qzD2eQxfDiXXFmeLxjUnenTvetQMKB1KyibmUUVXKh?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/K3zshu2iQiXVvEDxNccYK5ceC1BYFnHKBq2Gk1gTQviPUEsHkLc5PTSiHHrEALcexwxW7MVx1xFzDrv3fhKmH7fxY7tPeUMGmTvCQnXr5jQQYKcQm9E1fc5EczRTguBnQY6?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/RTBwSQLkhETA6UFFPTH546tj4MhS8mXL1r9PZ2BaJwAiGQLaVRYbHCdSKwwyUDLoScnzmdbYLYXroCv7adS4kca52z31BbgqYXioyQkKFF7rQ1G3oWyq2w6G?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://magdalenabay.bandcamp.com/album/mercurial-world | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1ERrUvG31thFCxdwWUoJrY | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/186371811,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a93149c506646422ab9c8f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Magdalena-Bay.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Magdalena_Bay-Mercurial_World.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2021/,2021,year,album,48,Ka,A Martyr’s Reward,Iron Works,"Iron Works The past sticks like plaque onto Ka’s music. The rapper’s penitent songs zoom in on the residues of bygone eras of New York—the blood, dregs, and traumas beneath the city’s pressure-washed surfaces. On his sixth solo album, he remains a dazzling lyricist, packing his verses with breathtaking wordplay. But while his previous records borrowed their conceptual frames from movies, religion, and mythology, allowing him to rap from a slight remove, A Martyr’s Reward draws primarily from Ka’s own life experience, finally allowing him to play his own main character. As he evokes New York’s many histories, his own story resonates right alongside them. –Stephen Kearse",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2rvbHH82BraNT99FtW6yvth1JdpMTwHWrvjv2YLDg2A5s8z1QpTLSJWKpndXeF7UPz4z1yzXTKGBCnwbS3RodXrDYWaD8fFouHaMzo2524tVQwuweL7nwbNP8W?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5MOODX5ZNXcbIyMLSluNbw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a9323834f90bf312300073/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ka.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Ka-A_Martyrs_Reward.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2021/,2021,year,album,47,dltzk,Frailty,deadAir,"deadAir A heavyweight from SoundCloud’s gloriously chaotic digicore scene, the 18-year-old New Jersey producer dltzk (pronounced “delete zeke”) had an electrifying run this year. Their debut record, February’s Teen Week, offered an explosive ride through adolescence, featuring EDM and jungle drums, bitcrushed vocals and glitchcore stutters, even a sample of Avril Lavigne. Their madcap “dariacore” compilations—think Vanessa Carlton’s “A Thousand Miles” on speed, with lightning-fast breakbeats and screamo—kicked off a mashup micro-genre over the summer. But the culmination of dltzk’s boundless creativity thus far is Frailty. More melodically-minded and refined than their previous work, the nearly-hour-long opus trafficks in emo, shoegaze, and Passion Pit-style indietronica, just to name a few whiplashing styles. All the while, it retains the same thrilling experimentalism that has quickly become this limitless artist’s signature. –Cat Zhang",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/8WDqjKE222JbQFibNW2fFqSyNQumrwtw8r6LkwBJPoaJ4LwEAmkZmqs1PyansUp6QBNpRH521xN3d9Fk6xPE5bCimtEbjvFAnnrx1oxaEBNw?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/a7yg5mSTVWkeqdxahu8KrUqdoWXw1TJDwdgaCv8TmeZxHkzM88WYtvNqYVHe4xP3jhagDWKUnowrpZZL3mmRgqbs3sZvda1VXVDrPmrcZ3Wp9?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://dltzk.bandcamp.com/album/frailty-2 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/6rO7DlLYSHabzSsD7Gpe14?si=24-q98pQSrC0HArJC2Ybqw | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/202237410,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a932edc506646422ab9c91/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/dltzk.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/dltzk-Frailty.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2021/,2021,year,album,46,Helado Negro,Far In,4AD,"4AD For years, Roberto Carlos Lange’s music-making process was a solitary one, his songs and albums assembled alone in his apartment, like jigsaw puzzles. The artist borrowed words from writers like Isaac Asimov and Jamaica Kincaid, solicited strings and horn tracks from friends, and recorded ambient sounds in liminal states—filtering it all and examining how the results reflected his own sense of being. But the success of his sixth album, 2019’s This Is How You Smile, left Lange burnt out and looking for deeper connections: with his partner, his friends, and his surroundings. Far In, largely conceived in the West Texas desert, is Lange’s most accessible record yet. Stressing a sleek, clean-toned palette, Lange collaborated with dozens of artists who contributed strings, winds, drums, and electronics. Far from shutting others out with an inward gaze, the album is an invitation into his orbit, a beacon of light beamed out into the universe, drawing you in towards its warmth. –Matthew Ismael Ruiz",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2hc5hQAHzn9yH9KVBJuV9oKaAPBbdh5WwLjSmqyi6cvmCBQccHwH31CL8b6njVXnsuRVSnNkk4yZmgMhnpPJXnB52yJGYruXwCMQfzn4dx1?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/r6wFKS8mkAiDPmTEz93sK39nULusjTYqJbxaWfNtL7tmAwYxmDMghtxh7qKwKh5YGzRrR3gDPcHQThcf4cVJPd5B8z3vBY5SoXET51YD253LQYpuc?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/8WDqjKE222JbQFibNW2fFqSyNQumrwtw8r6LkwBJPoaJ4LwEAmkQ5y3gYbxRiE11cxQweizCjYw7krWysveFf2TemkrrjyhXKsJvP4jPUypR?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://heladonegro.bandcamp.com/album/far-in | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/6VuufjwylS8CGaUcq3Vs4e | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/199464538,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a933c7e300dbbaf1abae32/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Helado-Negro.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Helado_Negro-Far_In.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2021/,2021,year,album,45,aya,im hole,Hyperdub,"Hyperdub Throughout aya’s debut album, voices rush the ear and then denature. Half-sung, half-shouted words slip in pitch, puddling into an artificially low register. “Come over/We can fuck the void out of each other,” she chants, multi-tracked high and low, both channels scoured raw and loaded with grit. The UK musician’s melting electronics and sour club progressions slink around an emptiness that threatens to obliterate the self as it dares you to consider that we’re all just bricolage plastered together from haphazard experience, trash in orbit around the gaping hole. –Sasha Geffen",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/3JZfEfaDYYkPAPXYmy6jiJsmiMqjRLSrhKA85cGtuejRi1VAKc13rXNY7mvLQV8gwx3KALJWZVEnoPwLjdTPGWYDPRhobt1A?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2hc5hQAHzn9yH9KVBJuV9oKaAPBbdh5WwLjSmqyi6cvmCBQccHwH31CL823DfAviYzBP59AzVMfzJVBa9D78Hio6uruWK29ckosjkkSwFMG?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/PLjJJwDTggeDim4faxqyNNRjTKiNuaebWr3DRh34YFSsZiboWfa3RebJ3GNrWzoL3usj9mkN2CcPofSJuZA4BZidXBR2NX1L3X22cGYZt?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://aya-yco.bandcamp.com/album/im-hole | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3o6dE7ccS1LCt5CBkwLV7T,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a9345345c013baf49b7eb1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/aya.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/aya-im_hole.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2021/,2021,year,album,44,Sofia Kourtesis,Fresia Magdalena EP,Technicolour,"Technicolour What was a house producer to do during a time when many clubs still lay dormant? For Berlin-based Peruvian musician Sofia Kourtesis, the answer was obvious: Make an EP so astoundingly bittersweet that it would tug at the heartstrings even when experienced on the crappiest of laptop speakers. Fresia Magdalena—the title is a reference to her mother, while standout track “La Perla” is dedicated to her late father—is above all else personal, a marriage of electronic inspiration and human commotion across five beautifully cathartic songs. –Ben Cardew",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/dFXfBmxfeQ7icoqJVNTXj2LrAZ52SNm1deZP9MKGaLqu9V5751ucezwfmK5GX47Jixotupna9w2uxK51xpYKJXGb78JS5VizP3fYTR7JwDsWiZSrCm9Amub9HYfi?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/TmDrEmPQpsBKzABdtEB96MRZ36dV1M9GGrfKJR3nW989fwZbBdHQFf8NoexRw1XeJuHsfBTJaEEvk81UsiymfjgJiZuqg1cxbYDGMhSp44SBZsdg5Sn2F2vuhBVUPdCp1NyQbxz?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/3m18KYZSha52eh3iCCDi6cUvc1AYmM13FnkmvjrfdkAaqASu7niwfoxrxf93sWLCFG1i9FbFE1rwynxvrSVX24aqjGc4oWY5brtEtjStRqPT51bK8aM8Vf26Kn3xwT?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://sofiakourtesis.bandcamp.com/album/fresia-magdalena | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/4GyOH7hvecm5MHQhPgMArn | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/172177374,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a938e4c506646422ab9c93/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sofia-Kourtesis.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Sofia_Kourtesis-Fresia_Magdalena_EP.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2021/,2021,year,album,43,Hand Habits,Fun House,Saddle Creek,"Saddle Creek Meg Duffy’s contributions to the indie rock world are manifold, having loaned their ranging guitar textures to Perfume Genius, Kevin Morby, Weyes Blood, and plenty more. On Fun House, Duffy’s third album as Hand Habits, they show off some limber songwriting of their own. Duffy’s reflections are gentle and nuanced: “Aquamarine” is a deceptively wistful number wrapped in a charging rhythm, while “Graves” stands out as an elegant acoustic foray. As Duffy works through ideas of memory, self-determination, grief, and shifting identity, these songs imbue the search with a sense of comfort. –Allison Hussey",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/a7yg5mSTVWkeqdxahu8KrUqdoWXw1TJDwdgaCv8TmeZxHkzM88XHevfiwWqRbhvvhapXVMFhj5UmZCheGpy1ur9V9wstVvNpWJaGqKQMwMaTW?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/RTBwSQLkhETA6UFFPTH546tj4MhS8mXL1r9PZ2BaJwAiGQLaVRZ8r6mBesyj71DnJeDw325TyLotJBKmUEMQe9cC47Qaoe5HSM9mGPB8Xz7xkPC4fwGRgiJS?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/C8EegXATuNghRByhKqVk7ohxcebBb67JjxVuTCsGi31rRugsF6WpCNMLmF7wE3VginigJhwM19aUZrC2bsgySuThFxhtyTRZSJB4GgZWhWBKdwZT?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://handhabits.bandcamp.com/album/fun-house | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1LBaX90YupG7JKOHCWi4y0 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/192538792,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a9399814c6f0e2df9a3291/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Hand-Habits.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Hand_Habits-Fun_House.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2021/,2021,year,album,42,Vijay Iyer / Linda May Han Oh / Tyshawn Sorey,Uneasy,ECM,"ECM Jazz maestro Vijay Iyer articulates the urgency of protest without shirking the sentimental on this album recorded with longtime collaborators Linda May Han Oh and Tyshawn Sorey. Iyer’s pin-heeled piano work hot-steps around in search of a sacred chord to alight upon, leaving shallow punctures across your heart as Oh and Sorey’s storm-flung rhythm section executes stomach-lurching shifts. Volatility abounds: The raucous paean “Combat Breathing” honors Eric Garner and Black Lives Matter with music that’s by turns fluid and transfixed, the sound of righteous fury opening channels for electricity to course between the many. –Jazz Monroe",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/Lkx5Gxxh29wDTjehJPyRQqJ28dxLCcGGJ7PSaMLsk4iX9cgDoN97zVCfeZJdLbJRdbqBnAk3banAH2aAqxgcB6M3JkyUUYFd6dG2CrDxwKwbitnP6135yguhWEFMRbYW3wiawWVf4hRF6hNPNx?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/74gALtHroeCQLJ2xUvHLxb5f56onKCpBiChrTbuHesKqdv9HopBy24Ce7VY8v22WJCPrYJmxTmg2fRSgTu5i4WKqpLC5EVKSgjxhcmtbBVSvdpsxytKA7asDvEDM3HCbGYihkS?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/8WDqjKE222JbQFibNW2fFqSyNQumrwtw8r6LkwBJPoaJ4LwEAmkQ5y3gYbxRiE11cxQweizCjYw7krWysveFfAfRwHKjzXzZmPwFS4d2Jic9?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://vijayiyer.bandcamp.com/album/uneasy | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1MasELWlBKjqok0ysgHduk | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/179651744,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a93c8278731ac7095ec4d9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Vijay-Iyer.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Vijay_Iyer__Linda_May_Han_Oh__Tyshawn_Sorey-Uneasy.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2021/,2021,year,album,41,Lingua Ignota,Sinner Get Ready,Sargent House,"Sargent House Kristin Hayter’s voice, stacked tall atop itself, holds you from a terrifying height. On her latest album as Lingua Ignota, she reckons with devotion and loneliness in rural Pennsylvania, using its spare landscape and its musical and religious history as the fertile backdrop for her work. Between Appalachian instruments and prepared piano, she sings like she’s on the cusp of physical collapse, running her voice ragged only for it to surge into a roar. The point where exhaustion snaps into adrenaline is her starting ground. From there, she traces the contours of human faith, gumming the jagged edges where it breaks. –Sasha Geffen",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2rvbHH82BraNT99FtW6yvth1JdpMTwHWrvjv2YLDg2A5s8z1QpTNqdiS2eNom74jVtjDTt14F2BUHo43DVu1DUn617RRNnYW2VyC2o9rhVTLjDknsVib8TTcVe?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/ggEqDMbEw3ssKaRvkRVf88vKZNcdB3AfBURbeCcq4V4C2N67byHQsNMLmz2va2qvZY5vRRdyq1R3KroGJF2FDqft6MQhwjbJ1fhAdvo8g5ASnXg45wMne6p54EkLc2LffuBHSiic1hx?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2rvbHH82BraNT99FtW6yvth1JdpMTwHWrvjv2YLDg2A5s8z1QpTLSJWKpndXeF7UPz4z1yzXTKGBCnwbS3RodaKA18y92E8QK8uFzELxAiYrGHjGe3FyJSkHY9?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://linguaignota.bandcamp.com/album/sinner-get-ready | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/06wtf2TCkmyTgS1yZGiSr5 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/184963255/,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a93cfb45c013baf49b7ee5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lingua-Ignota.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Lingua_Ignota-Sinner_Get_Ready.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2021/,2021,year,album,40,Erika de Casier,Sensational,4AD,"4AD Erika de Casier sings in the light, airy way you might absentmindedly hum along to a tune on the radio. Styles like Y2K R&B, breakbeat, and UK garage echo throughout Sensational like sonar, coalescing in spacious tracks that are allergic to lily-gilding. From two-step bangers to a ballad about a hypebeast’s obsession with wavey garms, de Casier assembles her genre patchwork with sotto voce assurance. –Owen Myers",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2FoCAs6c7W3gHEG9hQ3rhUSkK5vdHEXrx3CqKSnoXYjbc6dkRcDxtAvRfP8V2H328JS2jV5CQruUnamprRkQAptSuXYqeozvybf2VQnffsjNJ19dtesNx3?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/dFXfBmxfeQ7icoqJVNTXj2LrAZ52SNm1deZP9MKGaLqu9V5751ucezwfZA7MaQQ85yo2FTvwMcoveQozNUajmA1pH9GUw11mW88KiyLht7DSbQPfhYa5fL6pzUCn?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/4jjCSCMwJVXruhVCpjCXf4cVmhgtNvQBWChJJuvPbZPRTxsn589TUTEBpdd38yNhgtQqquFLxxW6bm56TSLAJ3Jwk5JSDLLu6q4EaurtWh3cQNX8w2D?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://erikadecasier.bandcamp.com/album/sensational | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/4nsap9FkZQJLSbQP8I9one | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/182354301,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a9417a45c013baf49b7ee7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Erika-de-Casier.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Erika_de_Casier-Sensational.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2021/,2021,year,album,39,Loraine James,Reflection,Hyperdub,"Hyperdub Reflection is always surprising, from the errant percussive barrage of the title track to the sibilant rap and aquatic dub of “Insecure Behaviour and Fuckery” to the vertiginous IDM of “Self-Doubt (Leaving the Club Early).” But the fluidity of London electronic experimentalist Loraine James’ third album peaks on the penultimate “Running Like That.” Starting off with the angelic voice of Eden Samara, the song might initially be mistaken for one of Cocteau Twins’ weightless confections, were it not for the persistence of the grinding drums. James’ wild sleight of hand here—masking the beat’s hectic energy with Samara’s cool, calming voice—crystallizes her daunting, and thrilling, unpredictability. –Hubert Adjei-Kontoh",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/r6wFKS8mkAiDPmTEz93sK39nULusjTYqJbxaWfNtL7tmAwYxmDMghtxhQJDnfgaJxErbiHLnVjDkLBfJuSawfPVLB4YftG87AYocFGfVqbd1mWnyb?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/dFXfBmxfeQ7icoqJVNTXj2LrAZ52SNm1deZP9MKGaLqu9V5751ucezwfZA7MaQQ85yo2FTvvhk6uFGkTaMCqbWtbNi7EidrZdXutAXrDDL5fS5afXyCoNFpAAj9Y?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/r6wFKS8mkAiDPmTEz93sK39nULusjTYqJbxaWfNtL7tmAwYxmDLbKBEnEHKcLa1cKSnxV9gsHerkfz7g4vjSA58AJLKJ5CmEWYVtAaeyf3LJVtSaU?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://lorainejames.bandcamp.com/album/reflection | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2z5JAOOwIIWog5UDQydquq | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/175033641,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61aa270778731ac7095ec50d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Loraine-James.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Loraine_James-Reflection.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2021/,2021,year,album,38,Navy Blue,Song of Sage: Post Panic! / Navy’s Reprise,Freedom Sounds,"Freedom Sounds As Navy Blue, Sage Elsesser makes rap music that’s spiritually weary, as if he’s processing the anguish of past lives in real time. On the strength of two stunning projects released within months of each other, the Brooklynite solidified his status as an intuitive link between generations of independent hip-hop. Song of Sage: Post Panic!, which came out on one of winter’s darkest days, had him ruminating on what it means to survive as a young Black man in the era of George Floyd; Navy’s Reprise, presented amid spring’s bloom, is more restorative—not exactly hopeful, but it seems to at least acknowledge that hope can exist. On both, Elsesser flows over a series of inviting loops that follow in the lineage of Madlib, DOOM, and Dilla, his thoughts drifting between everything from depression to gentrification to what he ate that day. This is stream-of-consciousness rap with a purpose, as personal as it is profound. –Ryan Dombal Song of Sage: Post Panic!: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | TidalNavy’s Reprise: Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61aa27a234f90bf3123000aa/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Navy-Blue.gif,/dataset/artwork/Navy_Blue-Song_of_Sage_Post_Panic__Navys_Reprise.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2021/,2021,year,album,37,RP Boo,Established!,Planet Mu,"Planet Mu In a year when pioneering Black producers passed away at a heartbreaking clip—RIP Lee “Scratch” Perry, Paul Johnson, and K-Hand—the return of Chicago footwork legend RP Boo felt like a life preserver. His fourth album, aptly called Established!, eschewed the minimalism of his previous work, instead offering a set of dancefloor fillers tracing the roots of footwork through careful, uproarious samples: the swing of gospel and swagger of early-’70s funk, rap’s macho peacockery, the fierce ecstasy of house. After two decades behind the boards, Boo is still making tracks that make the ears (and ass, and feet) work. Long may he reign. –Jesse Dorris",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/PLjJJwDTggeDim4faxqyNNRjTKiNuaebWr3DRh34YFSsZiboWfaYGT8WMsFSVDQzJKEhHAuxXMX5gjJQ5MbsTsqiuuFXcCWZmdJBeyU9y?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/HVbFUD9QgCwDHbhVBfFtJzwfzJb3mkhKMtcsQ4aejXwxz1d7wCYh992WSmN4c3QYg2NmE25UXfbmLrMRv1NZ8Y24q7hEJAHyGii5tBRnYQ5zm8MwCTYi?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/4jjCSCMwJVXruhVCpjCXf4cVmhgtNvQBWChJJuvPbZPRTxsn589TUTEBpdd38yNhgtQqquFLxxW6bm56TSLAHyXRPFLZTZsoFCtdLgepyfVyfCv1EpF?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://rpboo.bandcamp.com/album/established | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1tdtDx55BTwtdSjqmAVrsl | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/186391010,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61aa2b6945c013baf49b7eed/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/RP-Boo.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/RP_Boo-Established.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2021/,2021,year,album,36,Lost Girls,Menneskekollektivet,Smalltown Supersound,"Smalltown Supersound Menneskekollektivet is Norwegian for “human collective,” and Norwegian experimentalists Jenny Hval and Håvard Volden duly summon a sound larger than themselves on their first album as Lost Girls. Over churning house beats, keys and guitars tangle and detune; hypnotic arrangements sprawl to 15 minutes long. Hval’s spoken-word vocals are like eavesdropping on someone’s inner monologue. She muses on the strangeness of lockdown, meditates on the nature of fiction. In one song, she quotes a 1984 poem written by a computer program, which seems fitting: Collaboration, Lost Girls suggest, is itself a kind of artificial intelligence—greater than the sum of its parts, spitting out an endless and uncontrollable stream of ideas, sounds, and desires. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2rvbHH82BraNT99FtW6yvth1JdpMTwHWrvjv2YLDg2A5s8z1QpTNqdiS2eNom74jVtjDTt14F2BUHo43DVuH4nWPGSWRQUotJpUgNvCcBhRwtSupBSaDtSaP6b?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/5uAfuPMz6QukbPem79MSH5AYiuRyCEn73dS6kZ1DWhnfnL3NLeDQHf6PDcbmmpML1njxNCcpTNQWusvAj6ztdjH4H91vXKfo7VAYY4iDWkyxxbAsRfLySaa4TJeLtVRbKjxs5QKy3NX6dVQGhLU1mEBmq3dNL9DG?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/3m18KYZSha52eh3iCCDi6cUvc1AYmM13FnkmvjrfdkAaqASu7niwfoxrxf93sWLCFG1i9FbFE1rwynxvrSVX25ybybS4KRByTrwAMnFVP4nx4oguBWidcc1BScz8zQ?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://lostgirls1000.bandcamp.com/album/menneskekollektivet | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2s78eWRhSxsb7KaEbi4p4Q | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/173517690,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61aa2bf04301dc152b2ab800/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lost-Girls.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Lost_Girls-Menneskekollektivet.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2021/,2021,year,album,35,Illuminati Hotties,Let Me Do One More,Hopeless / Snack Shack Tracks,"Hopeless / Snack Shack Tracks Sarah Tudzin does her sharpest songwriting when she’s got an axe to grind. On Let Me Do One More, her second album as Illuminati Hotties, she dishes up snarky takedowns of industry big-shots, capitalist sheeple, and West Coast health goths, but it’s the self-owns that best showcase her lyrical wit: leaning away during kisses, burning Pop-Tarts, sporting matching sneakers like a dork. Alternating between folk-punk ballads and power-pop rippers, Tudzin cracks open an oversized champagne bottle of fun and feelings, a celebration of maybe almost figuring herself out. –Nina Corcoran",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/K3zshu2iQiXVvEDxNccYK5ceC1BYFnHKBq2Gk1gTQviPUEsHkLc5PTSiPLuDNWbwdL1UZRMFv5QmR4uS1gDUPFRhmKzpVqC5w5VSYhDACuYpjJEaTCDuTpuZ1wvtPV9aANx?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/HVbFUD9QgCwDHbhVBfFtJzwfzJb3mkhKMtcsQ4aejXwxz1d7wCYh992WSmN4c3QYg2NmE25WbLAULAEg5jD85xpLhBiE92yFNYPPTjxJcoHLmCNnvk6A?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/dFXfBmxfeQ7icoqJVNTXj2LrAZ52SNm1deZP9MKGaLqu9V5751torcK7iihXUVN8JuGfaDHpMayQk3FU4Wa5n3331Ab3CHo5GoRLvVsrUV2UrLkhsMfUYBv1cUNK?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://illuminatihotties.bandcamp.com/album/let-me-do-one-more | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5MH2ICGjLf6Lm9G72Rfx2f | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/184477650,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61aa2c6334f90bf3123000ae/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/illuminati-hotties.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Illuminati_Hotties-Let_Me_Do_One_More.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2021/,2021,year,album,34,The War on Drugs,I Don’t Live Here Anymore,Atlantic,"Atlantic The War on Drugs’ synth-heavy fifth album is bright and sparkly—it fizzes and pops and then glows until fading into darkness—as bandleader Adam Granduciel yet again channels and transforms the once-maligned sound of big-ticket mainstream rock circa 1987. The songs he writes are about heavy things—love, death, loneliness—but, whatever the subject, they always circle back to memory, our deeply flawed process for storing and retrieving the past. Granduciel’s characters are haunted by where they’ve been and what they’ve seen, and he surrounds them with discarded fragments of music history that become special because of how he remembers them. –Mark Richardson",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/9zNiHPnpZduJkBHyarW9dxiXwTeXQ7qQbzsS4u2KbKbFjT5LAjfA2txp8KGSYnnq1q3WKkvHo7Q2YzBez9zJstwvyBVCk5j4Bn8Y9E9uxGPwnGDCmqMcjNu8Yu7ezF8PzupyKYJDLG?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/dFXfBmxfeQ7icoqJVNTXj2LrAZ52SNm1deZP9MKGaLqu9V5751ucezwfZA7MaQQ85yo2FTvpgcYjwwXfsPwBt2hoCKzicAz6qTQieH2rJFiC3vo2m8DoRHYszeCN?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2NgESoWeZmgHcdwNBQQBsCoNK9ZoWxEs1GnxcUr19ac5gBECxvHW3W3qUiVp3Jq84y7Zcw3acQXJ9L2dvtcSq2PBYFC7UCiHDs1HFY8TWmXNFFAxc2Q5DvvKSaPEsY6gJT6Ki?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/69jQsPvJzMvcb2fGqI2qaB | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/200919312,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61aa2d5414c6f0e2df9a32c8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-War-on-Drugs.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_War_on_Drugs-I_Dont_Live_Here_Anymore.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2021/,2021,year,album,33,Xenia Rubinos,Una Rosa,ANTI-,"ANTI- Raw spirit courses through Una Rosa, Xenia Rubinos’ third and best album. Thematically split into halves—one fiery, the other cool—it offers a commanding blend of Latin rhythms, icy synths, and live-wire vocal takes. Rubinos contends with spectres of life and identity—the liminality of being a Caribbean woman in the United States, the inevitability of death and grief—as she slices through their omens with a cleaver. At times, Una Rosa feels like an ideal version of a modern-day telenovela: dramatic and juicy while never losing sight of its necessary commentary. –Gio Santiago",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/3XBo9W39MvrKg1g8KmX5LDPsfSHMXP15288ufZbVwA4pT2yA7pUCgWPsv7cgjaBf228Gma8PtkimZf8ePbCpwBamPKrpFGurAMBAnhULmtJE4it?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2rvbHH82BraNT99FtW6yvth1JdpMTwHWrvjv2YLDg2A5s8z1QpTNqdiS22C1NqVyQxsJ5VumD9jyTZhv4ZbhAewPQVkpPrvWk1b6SrSTomRgjj8xVHBCjwNw58?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/3XBo9W39MvrKg1g8KmX5LDPsfSHMXP15288ufZbVwA4pT2yA7pU9RnAbPFyrScTSK5U7e6CQZfCD8tvhh5Eb61ad1sxqnAuW2NmeU2MFBJRHQXC?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://xeniarubinos.bandcamp.com/album/una-rosa | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/68AEf03cJgTNpj5mQRQez4 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/197971180,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61aa2e1114c6f0e2df9a32ca/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Xenia-Rubinos.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Xenia_Rubinos-Una_Rosa.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2021/,2021,year,album,32,Adele,30,Columbia,"Columbia On 30, Adele fetched the bolt cutters. Prying herself free from her marriage, as well as the expectations that come with being the mother of a young child—nevermind those of being one of the biggest pop stars on the planet—she conjured up her most musically adventurous album yet. Over the course of an hour, we hear Adele as a torch singer, a quiet storm seductress, and an inconsolable mess, sobbing on the phone in a voicemail snippet so private it hurts to hear. Songs like the wrenching “My Little Love” and the gale-force “To Be Loved” examine the high cost of putting yourself first, while the galvanic “Hold On” stumbles haltingly towards the light. For a generation that has grown up with Adele, 30 charts a way for exploring new dimensions of adulthood. –Amy Phillips",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2Z6F81fjE4MRLa7xz3rjZbmJyHaFAumcQDR6SUb36FWLq4BsczwQCRZF8rw4GnmWSDpVq6G6vh1RTEppgSwrHXRm9koy?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/29WcPCBE7Hwdg2NeaPhGZTmzZs9TiVfgNtsPnVPnqnN6Ya9UTyax781WjUEyUaixca2zpLo4wLHswR7UJAjLT3iAfG3wgQTr1RY2qSn?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/29WcPCBE7Hwdg2NeaPhGZTmzZs9TiVfgNtsPnVPnqnN6Ya9UTyavdFneUm76x9VzkGHir9wQYmEaFKSkV6tYsKjc7mrzXCk4NJ7mWGQ?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/21jF5jlMtzo94wbxmJ18aa | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/205573153,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61aa2e9645c013baf49b7eef/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Adele.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Adele-30.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2021/,2021,year,album,31,Wiki,Half God,Wikset Enterprise,"Wikset Enterprise New York rapper Wiki’s music has always felt locally sourced, but never more so than on Half God. The lyrics read like an index of classic Big Apple signifiers—Mets caps, yellow cabs, spicy chicken sandwiches—though Wiki’s main preoccupation is with the ways his city is losing its character to gentrification. On several tracks, he takes the interlopers in his Lower East Side neighborhood to task: “What I can’t understand or get through to me is, after all the schooling you did, don’t know what community is?” From Half God’s rooftop vantage, Wiki towers over them all. –Will Gottsegen",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/ms25gbZV6mN1nPEbxtrtkrQvdiAz6CBRQyyUJHvFDCUySFdceodYbfJVkqh1PDUrkoYGfaQohtuiMkg7mzHL5tfrF7wtZBf1qu?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/a7yg5mSTVWkeqdxahu8KrUqdoWXw1TJDwdgaCv8TmeZxHkzM88XHevfikQk9TokrqJoJJ9vke7zQ5t68BL9vkXXvWsYSeancDaUhGwaEXHpNJ?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/3XBo9W39MvrKg1g8KmX5LDPsfSHMXP15288ufZbVwA4pT2yA7pU9RnAbPFyrScTSK5U7e6CQZfCD8tvhh5Eb5yC3nc2Cf8aXZkNXDEg9QZT2JB6?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://wiksetnyc.bandcamp.com/album/half-god | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1sVKmvl9cQPV2pW1XWTCyR | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/199019224,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61aa2efe4301dc152b2ab802/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Wiki.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Wiki-Half_God.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2021/,2021,year,album,30,Claire Rousay,a softer focus,American Dreams,"American Dreams Scattered throughout Claire Rousay’s a softer focus are snippets of her daily life: the sounds of a typewriter, a blaring swirl of cicadas, barely audible conversations. Swathed in swells of drone, half-remembered melodies, and strings saturated with melancholy, these prosaic sounds become monumental, activating a powerful sense of nostalgia for moments of quiet reflection and human connection. The abstract pieces on a softer focus are made potent by their suggestive familiarity, each sound a potential trigger for our own memories—happy, sad, or, more likely, somewhere in between. –Jonathan Williger",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/6YJtJY7jyhCpNdXsPJjcMe8eApjh8ejDTvjEGQqAMq51jusCfcUDernorQg2gdmuyDwUeWuXNKGdeC4rD92YRxZmrFnhciZ3RQ3tdb88uHF9MM5d2FyF8N6?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/DBDZJrJCS4xnHMkxpQX6PmcFbVj9CjHAxGxDJCADXBXJKahK2xpQ22sG2NrGBSNZsTX9iAio1oyb1tVMEggbEXtNPxUbRJsbUexoE5b8MqpjSL8ufdyzEPVq3zMnETG?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/6YJtJY7jyhCpNdXsPJjcMe8eApjh8ejDTvjEGQqAMq51jusCfcU6W3doX81g5MU9FsFVwyKhdbnWQcKqAS29YzyHX5YzyEjzCjhDkbof7DfcDq32Rajo1Z6?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://clairerousay.bandcamp.com/album/a-softer-focus | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/0UnY8jxUamnb3hYkUVN8pK | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/178267758,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61aa2f674301dc152b2ab804/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Claire-Rousay.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Claire_Rousay-a_softer_focus.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2021/,2021,year,album,29,Little Simz,Sometimes I Might Be Introvert,Age 101,"Age 101 Sometimes I Might Be Introvert plays out like a hero’s journey where Little Simz’s ultimate opponent is herself. Over cinematic production, from warm soul to groovy Afrobeat, the virtuoso rapper outlines the tensions that wrestle within: her introversion versus a calling to make political, public-facing art; living as a “London-born estate girl” in the glitzy entertainment industry; warring sentiments of anger and empathy toward her once-absent father. She then dutifully concedes to these polar forces, acknowledging that she wouldn’t be who she is without them. –Michelle Kim",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/9zNiHPnpZduJkBHyarW9dxiXwTeXQ7qQbzsS4u2KbKbFjT5LAjfA2txp8KGSYnnq1q3WKkvHo7Q2YzBez2FPojFUQxcrZr7Vtug5eyJLexhBh4mxzL9G5twy3YRXTYqZjQtAEuPY3M?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/EKxjmNPJg55KqsT2LTHDdmQoGtRsZJ4X2CQaLDNnEsZMDYomBHs8rtfVpt34YYre39CNjTBKogdvnEUd9PLboo44fiMjMVaBDbY5nDdTwMzpEnU4thbTb1fNbt45nugif5cPiadgaxkazS?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/428C3oXt8VZhX6zZ2Ef7VGVxLutQEfJZdXE3ZuCH98Nq5f25a9MMYGFumqW6DJG7Lo5yvwTSqhB8fVnfU9FX9W2Yc5gDbgyfqPDnuhR8tySpnV3HSRoUWgaKR4GJmxsBN7wVQFDkvLwLb?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/0DBoWQ52XUHtrZQdfAqOVj | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/179752112,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61aa3040c506646422ab9d64/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Little-Simz.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Little_Simz-Sometimes_I_Might_Be_Introvert.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2021/,2021,year,album,28,Spirit of the Beehive,"ENTERTAINMENT, DEATH",Saddle Creek,"Saddle Creek ENTERTAINMENT, DEATH plays like it was recorded on a recycled VHS, with ghostly echoes of whatever late-night ephemera was originally on the tape bleeding through. For their fourth album, Philadelphia’s Spirit of the Beehive made their already expansive sound feel even more hallucinatory, blending psychedelia, shoegaze, and scuzz with newly prominent electronic trappings. At their core, these are delicate pop songs, but they’ve been dissected and plastinated, like corpses in a human body exhibit. The spectacle is unnerving, to be sure, but it’s strangely engrossing too. –Evan Rytlewski",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/EKxjmNPJg55KqsT2LTHDdmQoGtRsZJ4X2CQaLDNnEsZMDYomBHs8rtfVuMCrBFijzqGfyZkYZvhYZxcAwkVgi4ptpXgP58eAN8FkEDxAABEHQFaUMZ19PSmmmWUHHVEqtdoiQynfXRNB7V?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/WHvUKwsVKgUMQTuq6CsxZQPPvequLtTr9UfACQP91UcsrzPK7ebt3eZ5Y9JJQ3485PxfzgKaut1owUgFCaM3qkAB7qdKUzDYfJfUXgfNkvrZNrHMdqqmpeRiVqxvZb15xijDhcVMVNu1WBwStJNJdk?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/3m18KYZSha52eh3iCCDi6cUvc1AYmM13FnkmvjrfdkAaqASu7niwfoxrxf93sWLCFG1i9FbFE1rwynxvrSVX24P3J9Bg8uk65mpMukCevEb21c3pHsA2AKXJB1QCRY?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://spiritofthebeehive.bandcamp.com/album/entertainment-death | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/6sQH9WNLJamVgyRudQV7eA | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/167152896,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61aa309614c6f0e2df9a32cc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Spirit-of-the-Beehive.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Spirit_of_the_Beehive-ENTERTAINMENT_DEATH.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2021/,2021,year,album,27,Moor Mother,Black Encyclopedia of the Air,ANTI-,"ANTI- On her first release for eclectic indie mainstay ANTI-, experimental noise poet Moor Mother transmits radical messages softly. Black Encyclopedia of the Air is far more hushed than her harsh dispatches of the past. The album nods to ’90s R&B, ambient, and cosmic jazz, and is packed with features from her expanding artistic community including Alabama’s Pink Siifu, and members of her own Philadelphia-based collective, Black Quantum Futurism. Moor Mother mines the same wreckage that she has always confronted—particularly the prolonged effects of intergenerational trauma—but here, she conquers it in a state of relative tranquility. –Madison Bloom",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/338BiKkuvAGUaoHXwo79kid9NQFr2cXuUQzC7ms9HqcrZGspqsu9PdhHZvXgmp5VYuaCB98zjAc89cADENodyVZyWXy9a2vUuKBBZ65J2woFLYQEuJeFrk61bUQtvL8zmaSCzNsuj?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/5UdVcLUa5nygyopWXDufA2RhauKt2GhAMeF9Wm2nUt93ke5orUSrcgU7Twr1duRTuAAY3ca4y7ANr4goYVZW2s9nd8BXjvsKTwB9pTaAVbVJD9EaLCe6QkFgEnpZytuyyDWxeJeZhv2X3nrH4?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/ggEqDMbEw3ssKaRvkRVf88vKZNcdB3AfBURbeCcq4V4C2N67byGXeSahyJU1XC8Kz7ZqUHsG7PEX25ufmv8jhAn4nHYRnw5Z4gFGSVLvEzUBbJQKWh7D9aSqtci5qqXkqYYu9DSnU2N?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://moormother.bandcamp.com/album/black-encyclopedia-of-the-air | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5MbfULVKirwaOOlA58Ja9J | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/183667353,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61aa318a34f90bf3123000b0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Moor-Mother.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Moor_Mother-Black_Encyclopedia_of_the_Air.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2021/,2021,year,album,26,Armand Hammer and the Alchemist,Haram,Backwoodz Studioz,"Backwoodz Studioz As Armand Hammer, billy woods and ELUCID combine their powers to wax about racism, personal turmoil, and slap boxing, live from rap’s bleeding edge. Their latest album Haram cuts the tension and dark humor of the duo’s music with beats courtesy of California maestro the Alchemist, who meets them halfway with music as psychedelic as it is foreboding. woods and ELUCID have been speaking abstract truth to power for nearly two decades, but Haram broadcasts their poetic ambitions in widescreen. –Dylan Green",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/K3zshu2iQiXVvEDxNccYK5ceC1BYFnHKBq2Gk1gTQviPUEsHkLc5PTSiPLuDNWbwdL1UZRMFv5QmR4uS1QiAKvU58EXocWewuDPsDb7RsvtyVKZ4A22SL8uKShLABUS6FKi?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/21ph1kqPT1Sz6AhfrtrzamH23F7zn9YJXWHM47od8gE9nEPPPzRSHhD2vELG6eFc6UTBCvNYNHkW5jcA2UHpEEjmLQg3ynxE9ffRbrXnDAvAhofofQ8ohz4LyiiLfwehxANavWohvk24wYZL?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2hc5hQAHzn9yH9KVBJuV9oKaAPBbdh5WwLjSmqyi6cvmCBQccHwEqhnvNCzsTZQ7V5rNu3iWPnJFDexH4P85gS3h3pL8k1BBF76Y9attuxb?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://armandhammer.bandcamp.com/album/haram | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/0RPanQrJXRyTJoiq2trm7k | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/174564324,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61aa321d45c013baf49b7ef1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Armand-Hammer.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Armand_Hammer_and_the_Alchemist-Haram.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2021/,2021,year,album,25,Indigo De Souza,Any Shape You Take,Saddle Creek,"Saddle Creek Tapping into a deep well of human emotion, Indigo De Souza makes familiar experiences feel new. The North Carolina musician’s writing and delivery are so unguarded that you can’t help but relate, whether she’s screaming in anguish or reassuring a loved one that things will be OK. Her second album, Any Shape You Take, often feels like a series of battles as she fights off ghosts, both real and imagined, in an attempt to gain understanding. “I wanna be a light,” she sings, and when she shines, the brightness can be overwhelming. In fact, it’s all you can see. –Kelly Liu",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/DBDZJrJCS4xnHMkxpQX6PmcFbVj9CjHAxGxDJCADXBXJKahK2xpQ22sG6Te4u3TVdsKQo8aMZnj6YYyE1FLahT9JAFoP7k2QtjqvYnhdD4WzSA6sXS3Z1bvzpaiv5Tz?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/vk6RbnauTeVCsCd3NEopoVtbRFo1CmcNvyQhGtFgGDSjT1ivbfNCbZEqK5SS14zC5i45ShtdhCcFE8R1HkmBnPpKFiyhZpVAhvnzfXSmnqkEHPE5qWKkqDUDc4M2gGYe?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/dFXfBmxfeQ7icoqJVNTXj2LrAZ52SNm1deZP9MKGaLqu9V5751torcK7iihXUVN8JuGfaDHpMayQk3FU4Wa5mYAYZ4t8gRm4DTfW3pYXBVKhoKqvsav7DW5TNipc?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://indigodesouza.bandcamp.com/album/any-shape-you-take | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/7G7lPTcJta35qGZ8LMIJ4y | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/185938000,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61aa32b914c6f0e2df9a32ce/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Indigo-De-Souza.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Indigo_De_Souza-Any_Shape_You_Take.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2021/,2021,year,album,24,Nala Sinephro,Space 1.8,Warp,"Warp Space 1.8 earns its astronomical title through frontier-breaking ambition. Its influences are distinctly throwback—Eric Dolphy’s investigations of the clarinet, both Coltranes’ search for an infinite cry—but the album isn’t content to replicate what worked in the past. London’s Nala Sinephro, utilizing both the harp and synthesizer, guides her band through a muted rumble that pricks the ears with both small deviations and seismic overtures alike. It’s heavy music delivered with a light touch. –Hubert Adjei-Kontoh",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/C8EegXATuNghRByhKqVk7ohxcebBb67JjxVuTCsGi31rRugsF6X4ZNjyjSCWNuU2oVy6bjDe3RyMh9Jk2VyJNcxAkr9KbUhwHMqJpKvtwpjD7PLb?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/9DMYJr9zEupHgNwSiKTQGs9aLqW1KtbtoNCR3oHpwE76UJEcp8TRPf3sRWFafP4szmazNrbsqYD7cveVLF93zJAfWToc3F8WRLCrLUKT1zYxcWp5hRApXqUZmL2?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/C8EegXATuNghRByhKqVk7ohxcebBb67JjxVuTCsGi31rRugsF6WpCNMLmF7wE3VginigJhwM19aUZrC2bsgyT5x2jU6v9jLN9NzEtbH7FG4mAYY7?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://nalasinephro.bandcamp.com/album/space-18 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5Svfamp6qQ2IfLVNVICpVm | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/195672004,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61aa33dd78731ac7095ec511/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Nala-Sinephro.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Nala_Sinephro-Space_18.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2021/,2021,year,album,23,black midi,Cavalcade,Rough Trade,"Rough Trade When their berserk live sets started going viral on YouTube a few years ago, black midi were hailed as the second coming of math-punk cranks like the Jesus Lizard. But with each passing year, that initial assessment seems increasingly off the mark. Countering their proudly inscrutable musicality with a newfound melodic elegance, Cavalcade makes it feel like we’re still discovering this band anew. These days, it’s more apt to think of black midi as the free-jazz Talk Talk, or the post-punk Scott Walker, or the symphonic Slint, or the art-school Primus—with each and every song, Cavalcade captures black midi in a perpetual state of spontaneous combustion and radical reanimation. –Stuart Berman",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/8WDqjKE222JbQFibNW2fFqSyNQumrwtw8r6LkwBJPoaJ4LwEAmkZmqs1SVWYrYvuVgP6YoH256YfeCiP39KWpWJTUQMamE2caX4tf9DfBzui?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/6YJtJY7jyhCpNdXsPJjcMe8eApjh8ejDTvjEGQqAMq51jusCfcUDernopYwYHmTTaT76u7b5u3e88hbJ9WQnG94NKFeSHgJrF8MTTnbpXs8SLRLmuMhjbuG?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/C8EegXATuNghRByhKqVk7ohxcebBb67JjxVuTCsGi31rRugsF6WpCNMLmF7wE3VginigJhwM19aUZrC2bsgySrySXFRyR6S8qDr8TkuAwS9sixWY?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://bmblackmidi.bandcamp.com/album/cavalcade | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/7AsC27VDa3yOksZrfBSD6D | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/183187812,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61aa3f0a482c9acdf0ddc36d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/black-midi.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/black_midi-Cavalcade.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2021/,2021,year,album,22,Dawn Richard,Second Line: An Electro Revival,Merge,"Merge Dawn Richard has lived several musical lives over the last decade and a half, from Danity Kane to Diddy - Dirty Money to her experimentation as a solo artist, but Second Line: An Electro Revival marks her most exhilarating chapter yet. Richard’s power lies in her ability to intuitively skip across genres while dropping filthy bars over attention-seeking 808s or threading heartache alongside sparse instrumentation, and her sixth album is startlingly eclectic—bombastic house beats, strands of European classical melodies, and swoon-worthy R&B all take their place at the party. There’s a song for the line, the club, and the soul, and they all lead back to her native NOLA. After years of taking form, this is her genesis. –Tarisai Ngangura",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/r6wFKS8mkAiDPmTEz93sK39nULusjTYqJbxaWfNtL7tmAwYxmDMghtxhQJDnfgaJxErbiHLnVjDkLBfJthznm8AUDBPkKvLV4wb9rLBrPVbpWKrTW?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/338BiKkuvAGUaoHXwo79kid9NQFr2cXuUQzC7ms9HqcrZGspqsu9PdhHZEvXf3PLFg1oUbX9a7bHZ3eeJoYv4pWv59GoSBTJ9mwbVU9Lc7uEUrGTi8yENUzgTx5Q9pJtXy6WUB7pJ?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/4jjCSCMwJVXruhVCpjCXf4cVmhgtNvQBWChJJuvPbZPRTxsn589TUTEBpdd38yNhgtQqquFLxxW6bm56TSLAJ3JwbB3t2KdajJbWAH6928i3ESgd2Pc?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://dawnrichard.bandcamp.com/album/second-line | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/4ZZPaImVERqe30KPt1EOHv | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/170772258,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61aa3fc8c506646422ab9d68/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Dawn-Richard.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Dawn_Richard-Second_Line_An_Electro_Revival.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2021/,2021,year,album,21,Olivia Rodrigo,SOUR,Geffen,"Geffen In 2021, nobody did heartbreak better than Olivia Rodrigo. The 18-year-old pop phenom’s debut album already seems like a greatest hits collection, but it’s not just that the songs on SOUR’s A-side were inescapable throughout the year. It’s that everyone from teenage TikTokers to middle-aged music critics fell for its charms: the weapons-grade power ballads “drivers license” and “traitor”; the candy-coated kiss-offs “deja vu” and “good 4 u”; the teen angst manifesto “brutal.” When it comes down to it, sad girl shit is a universal language. –Amy Phillips",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/PLjJJwDTggeDim4faxqyNNRjTKiNuaebWr3DRh34YFSsZiboWfaYGT8WMsFSVDQzJKEhHAuxXMX5gjJQ5EMESXjStxQ2HsRFAuj71eA1f?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/56DCwaYCeYcTVNaJ5SjwfzEWiv4J3twu9oDyam7DnJ9vaMpC3ZzLaBXJ4EnbFMJbRunCacTWDLnqvjRZtBU2Esg1MJysRcuJAMPqujX4Lgv3amsHmUMZ1AB2ZhgoLyuZmx?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/PLjJJwDTggeDim4faxqyNNRjTKiNuaebWr3DRh34YFSsZiboWfa3RebJ3GNrWzoL3usj9mkN2CcPofMQRVnvM2nMiKh36bY556Y3tPEFM?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/6s84u2TUpR3wdUv4NgKA2j | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/184786791,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61aa401014c6f0e2df9a32d2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Olivia-Rodrigo.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Olivia_Rodrigo-SOUR.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2021/,2021,year,album,20,Mach-Hommy,Pray for Haiti,Griselda,"Griselda At different points on Pray for Haiti, Mach-Hommy is a messiah in Vetements linen, a benefactor for relatives in need of money, a blockchain, and a lothario, all while he burrows into his Haitian heritage and love of rap history. His commanding voice, a subtly malleable croak, guides these cascading diversions: hardening for his deadpan punchlines, deepening when he speaks Creole, and lightening for his warm melodies. Ever since he started surfacing from rap’s underground about five years ago, Mach’s slipperiness has extended beyond his delivery and lyrics as he’s slapped exorbitant price tags on his records and mostly avoided press. It’s tempting to say he’s embracing accessibility with Pray for Haiti given his reunion with indie rap standard bearers Griselda Records, the album’s widespread availability, and a handful of new interviews, but obfuscation remains his calling card. From the woozy production that slinks in and out of focus to his oblique, free-associative writing, he’s still an artful trickster. But he doesn’t withdraw into his coded world; he inhabits it, rendering it and himself in exquisite detail. Camouflage, he reminds us, isn’t just for hiding. –Stephen Kearse",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2NgESoWeZmgHcdwNBQQBsCoNK9ZoWxEs1GnxcUr19ac5gBECxvHXpN7iVCuNH6DaNZwZyV3UrD7j63fEJv8aeLnRvyate8yRmfNogtkp253TExqiDKjLzUxcr69wHjK6DJJ4N?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/6YJtJY7jyhCpNdXsPJjcMe8eApjh8ejDTvjEGQqAMq51jusCfcU6W3doX81g5MU9FsFVwyKhdbnWQcKqAS29Z77e2xQhGJrsxAn47dnzDV54VJcVigS1CLh?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/7doW9YWOtpmqHBqAUuBaKO | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/184617189,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61aa40931e7d848580e76ac4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mach-Hommy.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Mach-Hommy-Pray_for_Haiti.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2021/,2021,year,album,19,Dean Blunt,Black Metal 2,Rough Trade,"Rough Trade The latest cryptic transmission from British singer-songwriter Dean Blunt is unsparing yet beautiful in its quest for hope in an increasingly despondent world. Blunt refuses allegiance to any single ideology, preferring instead to sprinkle provocative questions about Black rage before vanishing into the shadows. He perfects this approach in the taunting yet empathetic final lines of “MUGU”: “Let it out, nigga, let it out,” he sighs, “show them crackers what you’re all about.” Black Metal 2 doesn’t concede any of Dean Blunt’s mystique, but it’s the closest to a straight answer he’s given yet. –Brandon Callender",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/r6wFKS8mkAiDPmTEz93sK39nULusjTYqJbxaWfNtL7tmAwYxmDMghtxhQJDnfgaJxErbiHLnVjDkLBfJti5UiSr8bcZmXCbB3AAEm2WAWtg5tDVLd?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/74gALtHroeCQLJ2xUvHLxb5f56onKCpBiChrTbuHesKqdv9HopBy24Ce7VY8v22WJCPrYJmvNaQSTzoGhM8EGki6LCRZXAfrUsY1yeMEtsHfXHyCJfqwqrw2k6WRUUTQqzfDUa?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2FoCAs6c7W3gHEG9hQ3rhUSkK5vdHEXrx3CqKSnoXYjbc6dkRcDwGC266vFCaAAmvDHsxxMYrypU45qDj1ggYio5Gs2sK88zoxDQR226bHzUeN5ujgFe64?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://roughtraderecords.bandcamp.com/album/black-metal-2 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/33xbAWdpX79o2YtXBiBWQv | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/184833882,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61aa413f45c013baf49b7f57/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Dean-Blunt.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Dean_Blunt-Black_Metal_2.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2021/,2021,year,album,18,Grouper,Shade,Kranky,"Kranky Grouper’s Liz Harris pulls you in close on Shade. Her new songs are characteristically intimate, offering quiet truths and rapturous noise that require close focus. The individual components feel familiar—the hushed vocals, tape hiss, and sound of fingertips sliding up guitar strings—but Harris’ fingerpicked melodies and gutting poetry manage to explore new depths of her bottomless sound. Lean in enough and you’ll hear her ponder the light and the clouds, contending with the gravitational pull of darkness: “Bury those thoughts real deep/Bury those bodies deep/Put us back to sleep.” It’s a crushing flash of insight delivered like a whispered secret. –Evan Minsker",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/ms25gbZV6mN1nPEbxtrtkrQvdiAz6CBRQyyUJHvFDCUySFdceodYbfJVkqh1PDUrkoYGfaQohtuiMkg7kfA5t9jsBfKc4CN9tY?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/a7yg5mSTVWkeqdxahu8KrUqdoWXw1TJDwdgaCv8TmeZxHkzM88XHevfikQk9TokrqJoJJ9vsDf5iJfCJ7ePvgnKU4uyfb5Cd8ELSqEjA3Fo8r?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2hc5hQAHzn9yH9KVBJuV9oKaAPBbdh5WwLjSmqyi6cvmCBQccHwEqhnvNCzsTZQ7V5rNu3iWPnJFDexH4P85gTQfiFNro3aPq7XfhAhxgEL?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://grouper.bandcamp.com/album/shade | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1w3EOCPDwqWIiu2c1pHylJ | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/191874510,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61aa41fa4301dc152b2ab839/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Grouper.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Grouper-Shade.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2021/,2021,year,album,17,Cassandra Jenkins,An Overview on Phenomenal Nature,Ba Da Bing,"Ba Da Bing Throughout An Overview on Phenomenal Nature, Cassandra Jenkins gracefully accepts life’s mysteries, singing of friendship, happenstance, and death in a hush while inviting a dreamy atmosphere to seep into her words. The music, in turn, is serene and meditative, sustained by the centripetal force of her perspective as a songwriter. Tragedy surrounds the album, as Jenkins recorded it just a few months after the death of her would-be tourmate, David Berman. But she does not push away the sadness. Instead, she welcomes it and renders it beautiful. –Matthew Strauss",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/7dutxVkA8rize326TZ9NeheFFsiSTFqDwwJFmj12pEWRfWmUffRfkeWUMA3nBkBv7gP5PgFgxcaiWccX8GbfZbtjfcMvo6S9AbaDZLeLfp7bKCY7gqtJ2Q8nmuTfpsijzh1mX144f6N15ioxPKWtt?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/3EHh1cdBr1TDj4ZnBFyRvE2DrBp2r2n9VvR5RbLCiM6uMVeHUxLxxJgkb2TdMng4nEQLj7aZSLARFnPgyqMj9VBtydLAPnaBcH5ZbU5Aq9HCKCb6Z5n2WzmuAP9Jzjg7TKD26CMe1tKfEUwWjuyDVC7g?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/21ph1kqPT1Sz6AhfrtrzamH23F7zn9YJXWHM47od8gE9nEPPPzRQykg6S8trQYESBWDWsoxEUbtMdcVCfK9sKKD1PZ3zqk4k1L2ToPDQvbL4ZAQdkkMGgeggF68q3JatyhQ9VmSoDdYsSHRV?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://cassandrajenkins.bandcamp.com/album/an-overview-on-phenomenal-nature | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1NzOdSkSNmBhhg72KlNcsE | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/161526701/,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61aa4225e300dbbaf1abae9e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Cassandra-Jenkins.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Cassandra_Jenkins-An_Overview_on_Phenomenal_Nature.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2021/,2021,year,album,16,MIKE,Disco!,10k,"10k The arc of NYC indie-rap hero MIKE’s journey over the last couple of years has seen him steadily trudging toward salvation, working with local peers including KeiyaA and Navy Blue. Together, they helped him piece together fuzzy snapshots of loss, gently burying the past beneath shattered loops. On Disco!, which MIKE produced on his own under his dj blackpower alias, he finally finds the slivers of light he’s been searching for in the reflection of luminous samples that bathe his self-affirming bars with a heavenly shimmer. He may have taken the long road to recovery, but here he gives himself permission to crack a smile again. –Phillipe Roberts",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2FoCAs6c7W3gHEG9hQ3rhUSkK5vdHEXrx3CqKSnoXYjbc6dkRcDxtAvRexioxufcvoF54CTkj9LEKY612yyz9DWH23iqEATT1vhboJgfzniM7XcezzTjrn?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2hc5hQAHzn9yH9KVBJuV9oKaAPBbdh5WwLjSmqyi6cvmCBQccHwEqhnvNCzsTZQ7V5rNu3iWPnJFDexH4P85gRZGS4B2gxrp5CtbHHunwBF?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://mikelikesrap.bandcamp.com/album/disco | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2h8RTxYBE8eNvSrB7quw9N | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/187584241,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61aa42d814c6f0e2df9a32d5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/MIKE.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/MIKE-Disco.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2021/,2021,year,album,15,Snail Mail,Valentine,Matador,"Matador Considering its bounty of pleaded pet names—“baby,” “honey,” “sugar,” “darling”—Valentine seems to pick up the pieces of Lindsey Jordan’s bleeding heart right where she left them on Snail Mail’s 2018 debut, Lush. But while that album promised forever, the songs on Jordan’s sophomore record are wrapped in day-glo caution tape: “Nothing stays as good as how it starts,” she sings with a wariness that makes her hopeless obsessions all the more devastating. Her world has expanded in the last three years—“parasitic cameras,” relapsing, and rehab are all mentioned—and her lyrics are sharper and more intentional, if only to make room for it all. She is now accompanied by synths, string sections, and even a disco sample, but Valentine’s pop sheen never overshadows Jordan’s unflinching honesty. Her deep growl of a voice flickers and flares above taut arrangements—a reminder that even the neatest songs can’t hide the messiness of heartbreak. –Arielle Gordon",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/8WDqjKE222JbQFibNW2fFqSyNQumrwtw8r6LkwBJPoaJ4LwEAmkZmqs1SVWYrYvuVgP6YoH256YfeCiP3P4c72ivPQqPg6Wf7Bn4EeEuT1he?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/K3zshu2iQiXVvEDxNccYK5ceC1BYFnHKBq2Gk1gTQviPUEsHkLc5PTSiHHrEALcexwxW7MVzwNvndMrdMc9px1m9sz9uhauL4eZWgBTwyckmwCUrMQ1BrTNWNdhqcmbeuCz?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/C8EegXATuNghRByhKqVk7ohxcebBb67JjxVuTCsGi31rRugsF6WpCNMLmF7wE3VginigJhwM19aUZrC2bsgyT8KtdcifMKYtZijgh75pQsybAUXP?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://snailmail.bandcamp.com/album/valentine | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/0zNWhYDalgisc4uweLIGZJ | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/201215490,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61aa4348e2c7c1ae7d724084/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Snail-Mail.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Snail_Mail-Valentine.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2021/,2021,year,album,14,Japanese Breakfast,Jubilee,Dead Oceans,"Dead Oceans After two albums and a best-selling memoir that grappled with her mother’s death, grief had been a top note in Michelle Zauner’s work for too long. On Jubilee, her splashy third album as Japanese Breakfast, Zauner sucks up life through a crazy straw. She boosts her sound for a growing audience without smoothing over her idiosyncrasies, taking inspiration from the daily battle to tame one’s anxieties, from capitalist buffoonery, and even from the concept of inspiration itself. “How’s it feel to stand at the height of your powers?” she sings. The answer is hers to divulge. –Olivia Horn",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/HVbFUD9QgCwDHbhVBfFtJzwfzJb3mkhKMtcsQ4aejXwxz1d7wCYh992WYJ6twqVMETy8MrtXL1ZaSKmNd7pCZmtLXetky5SDZUJyzvWceA6h4EQtbbqW?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/DBDZJrJCS4xnHMkxpQX6PmcFbVj9CjHAxGxDJCADXBXJKahK2xpQ22sG2NrGBSNZsTX9iAie2b5ArUeq3DJadQrv4iUd1EZigUNkwGs1SxrcbQBNpK3BXKrvFtB6bmg?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/a7yg5mSTVWkeqdxahu8KrUqdoWXw1TJDwdgaCv8TmeZxHkzM88WYtvNqYVHe4xP3jhagDWKUnowrpZZL3mmRh1FcfirJ9Jja2WCPfob5cZ2kX?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://michellezauner.bandcamp.com/album/jubilee | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1uD1kdwTWH1DZQZqGKz6rY | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/175149281,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61aa440534f90bf3123000e5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Japanese-Breakfast.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Japanese_Breakfast-Jubilee.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2021/,2021,year,album,13,Tirzah,Colourgrade,Domino,"Domino The voltaic second album from London electronic artist Tirzah revolves around a close-knit, labyrinthine, and slightly crooked emotionality. Working alongside collaborators Mica Levi and Coby Sey, she reduces her formula to elemental parts in order to bring out a more tactile intimacy guided by improvisatory songwriting, looped samples, and ad-libbed vocals. The sparse impressions on tracks like the out-of-step “Beating” and the unsettled “Crepuscular Rays” are the result of years of friendship and community melted down into what sounds like a close, honest embrace. –Eric Torres",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/PLjJJwDTggeDim4faxqyNNRjTKiNuaebWr3DRh34YFSsZiboWfaYGT8WMsFSVDQzJKEhHAuxXMX5gjJQ5SMG3NbkeeXPLsTswaJp9Cu8g?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/HVbFUD9QgCwDHbhVBfFtJzwfzJb3mkhKMtcsQ4aejXwxz1d7wCYh992WSmN4c3QYg2NmE25TvwENDkUAMp8ttfjmmkrgBsTCtacL4JT9DCE1B2LGCyoU?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/4jjCSCMwJVXruhVCpjCXf4cVmhgtNvQBWChJJuvPbZPRTxsn589TUTEBpdd38yNhgtQqquFLxxW6bm56TSLAHxygxJr4SWkyf73JKaokiKqCeRxXXr5?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://tirzah.bandcamp.com/album/colourgrade | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/0Uu5MAL65d04IDQ3h1waXy | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/198384135,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61aa446b482c9acdf0ddc370/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Tirzah.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Tirzah-Colourgrade.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2021/,2021,year,album,12,Arooj Aftab,Vulture Prince,New Amsterdam,"New Amsterdam ​​When the Pakistani singer Arooj Aftab started recording Vulture Prince, she had no plans for an elegy. But then her brother died, as did a close friend. In tracing the shape of these new absences in her life, her mind went to the Urdu ghazals of her childhood, music and poetry filled with boundless, near-erotic longing for God. Aftab reimagined these ghazals, scored for only soft, stringed instruments—harp, stand-up bass, acoustic guitar, some violin. These sounds call clearly to each other across moonlit space, and Aftab’s voice cuts a path through the darkness in front of it, one line, one footfall, at a time. Jarred out of time, her grief (and ours) softens and grows overwhelmingly beautiful. –Jayson Greene",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/DBDZJrJCS4xnHMkxpQX6PmcFbVj9CjHAxGxDJCADXBXJKahK2xpQ22sG2NrGBSNZsTX9iAigfEJWVTRTQPZRWMmZxLqs3X9fSj7ZknBjY4hRBUJKEuKenupuHREwygz?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/6YJtJY7jyhCpNdXsPJjcMe8eApjh8ejDTvjEGQqAMq51jusCfcU6W3doX81g5MU9FsFVwyKhdbnWQcKqAS29Z9Xwk3ebmAZc22KRKAp5BbJMJBWtfYNx6UY?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://aroojaftab.bandcamp.com/album/vulture-prince | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/21OZptKAhVTvzKdxxtk4DT | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/180012418,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61aa44de34f90bf3123000e7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Arooj-Aftab.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Arooj_Aftab-Vulture_Prince.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2021/,2021,year,album,11,Faye Webster,I Know I’m Funny haha,Secretly Canadian,"Secretly Canadian Faye Webster strikes an unusual balance to keep her fourth album in motion: self-effacing and lovesick, but also knowing and a little cocky. Nothing much happens in these songs because nothing much needs to; Webster’s internal monologue is winsome and cutting enough to keep people occupied, and she knows it. “I like your songs even though they’re not about me,” she tells a love interest. When they’re together, she apologizes for being the first one to nod off, and when she’s by herself, she sleeps with the lights on to feel less alone. If she has to be sad, she’s going to be in on the joke. –Anna Gaca",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/DBDZJrJCS4xnHMkxpQX6PmcFbVj9CjHAxGxDJCADXBXJKahK2xpQ22sG6Te4u3TVdsKQo8aMZnj6YYyE1BLbnzWRFgwYqPT9wkkorvZF8LgpLcACHY4j8JcEfwkDFTv?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/vk6RbnauTeVCsCd3NEopoVtbRFo1CmcNvyQhGtFgGDSjT1ivbfNCbZEqK5SS14zC5i45ShtoNdKCcVXznVMsZhGnbLyWaJeUD1MjNada46RoPg6bkr8YttRKktQF7neA?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/DBDZJrJCS4xnHMkxpQX6PmcFbVj9CjHAxGxDJCADXBXJKahK2xp8JJHZWfLXfvTidwG8bRQ9nSoTffsrhDWsVjERseyboAoLzuze2VdTHREVrPHYYiM2simRFEnFw5P?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://fayewebster.bandcamp.com/album/i-know-im-funny-haha | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/424bxvpYyNDM2DFFibeKs0 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/179261503,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61aa4568e2c7c1ae7d724086/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Faye-Webster.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Faye_Webster-I_Know_Im_Funny_haha.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2021/,2021,year,album,10,Dry Cleaning,New Long Leg,4AD,"4AD One way to hear New Long Leg is as a cringe-tinged dramedy—like Fleabag or Girls—with Florence Shaw as the performer who knows exactly how to deliver her own script. This album is not the type to be nominated for a Grammy, but it really ought to get Emmys for writing and acting. The lyrics infest your brain with quotables that reverberate for days, but more than the words it’s Shaw’s intonation that’s so funny and so heartbreaking: the grudging cadences, the way she can inject an unreadable alloy of earnestness and irony into an inanity like “I can rebuild.” The self-portrait painted here is of a burned-out shell drifting numbly through a life that senselessly accumulates irritations, humiliations, discomforts, chores, and interpersonal skirmishes, offset by the tiny comforts of Twix bars and artisanal treats. There’s a personal dimension to the inner emptiness (a sapping break-up), but because New Long Leg’s release coincided with the depressive pall that swept over the world thanks to lockdown, Shaw’s interiority synced up perfectly with exterior conditions. It’s no coincidence that the most exciting rock record in years is about the inability to feel excitement. Within Shaw is a voice of a generation distilling how it feels to be alive right now: “Do everything and feel nothing.” –Simon Reynolds",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/4jjCSCMwJVXruhVCpjCXf4cVmhgtNvQBWChJJuvPbZPRTxsn589YJFWLqKq1SZjg2Ep9vDD8KooMGFg45yFVzZPgc5iSpe5sAk12mQZ3xtTJfsio4TQ?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/3m18KYZSha52eh3iCCDi6cUvc1AYmM13FnkmvjrfdkAaqASu7nj1ENikHAwD3pSH4Gyg8WqrpWHDzTWc3pxSFeKXUwGqMGtKKVsLUTeGoujyf7JWVRCPeG1kTWhPcS?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/HVbFUD9QgCwDHbhVBfFtJzwfzJb3mkhKMtcsQ4aejXwxz1d7wCYKrAmCmEe4SBpnb3vEaqcK7yyRiRX55goa27CocA4BU3WuBFFnTNzV5eYWS95V9Gzt?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://drycleaning.bandcamp.com/album/new-long-leg | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/4oNy189uvEgnJKNLsWx9Zz | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/176698678,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61aa463834f90bf3123000e9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Dry-Cleaning.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Dry_Cleaning-New_Long_Leg.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2021/,2021,year,album,9,Playboi Carti,Whole Lotta Red,AWGE / Interscope,"AWGE / Interscope Whole Lotta Red is an all-time heat check. Playboi Carti could have easily put out Die Lit 2, and everyone would have probably been fine with it. But that’s not how this Atlanta alien works. At just 25 years old, he has already reinvented his sound multiple times, from wavy plugg music to his baby voice era; whenever some SoundCloud copycats start to catch up, he jets toward new territory. On Whole Lotta Red, over blown-out beats that blend hypnotic melodies with drums that twitch and boom like a tweaked-out Godzilla, Carti yelps, shrieks, and croons as if he’s trying to exorcise a demon. Its meticulously layered-yet-effortless style will once again have all the wannabes scratching their heads for years. What a flex. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/9zNiHPnpZduJkBHyarW9dxiXwTeXQ7qQbzsS4u2KbKbFjT5LAjfA2txp5JTGJuXZymCY8oN5UqDo7ao5J8ZJQkqi1NHGa82X4kShYMRMYw8urBRxuyEW5qaHhzTsSxpXUumkbYyKzE?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/RTBwSQLkhETA6UFFPTH546tj4MhS8mXL1r9PZ2BaJwAiGQLaVRYbHCdSKwwyUDLoScnzmdbYLYXroCv7adS4kvMN2GKeqwaQbN3aA8PbrRdsPT68oMcAu7Sa?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2QRedhP5RmKJiJ1i8VgDGR | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/167372109 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/YXa-M2sYOOI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61aa46ae52913e02bbab357c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Playboi-Carti.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Playboi_Carti-Whole_Lotta_Red.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2021/,2021,year,album,8,Mdou Moctar,Afrique Victime,Matador,"Matador Mdou Moctar first riveted listeners as a wedding performer in his home country of Niger; his live recordings circulated over shared SIM cards. Since then, he’s continued to find electrified approaches to the vernacular music of his Tuareg background with uninhibited guitar. On Afrique Victime, his first release for Matador, Moctar chases lively arrangements even further while excoriating the traumatic legacy of brutal French colonialism in Africa. His solos rip like lightning bolts across a storm of melody and rhythm, with Mikey Coltun’s bass roiling in ecstatic complement. The band charges through energetic and lightly psychedelic numbers (“Chismiten,” “Ya Habibti”), and find more knots to untangle in their quieter asides (“Asdikte Akal,” “Tala Tannam”). Its title track is a pure thrill, detonating as Moctar’s cohort locks into a churning groove from his sung invocation and only growing wilder from there. Reports of the death of rock have been greatly exaggerated: Afrique Victime is a uniquely vibrant and kinetic recording, one that proves that the future of rock music exists far beyond what any genre or geographic borders can define. –Allison Hussey",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2FoCAs6c7W3gHEG9hQ3rhUSkK5vdHEXrx3CqKSnoXYjbc6dkRcDxtAvRfP8V2H328JS2jV5CQruUnamprSpgdeRpnN2pR4XaNFu1uKTyUvwpFHkgsmAqJc?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/vk6RbnauTeVCsCd3NEopoVtbRFo1CmcNvyQhGtFgGDSjT1ivbfNCbZEqK5SS14zC5i45ShtdfSWfvBCs7JkJuAYCs7Gg5XT7nYn9s9RwrmkPdhqCNZBSULWkmA8MNCx6?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/RTBwSQLkhETA6UFFPTH546tj4MhS8mXL1r9PZ2BaJwAiGQLaVRYbHCdSKwwyUDLoScnzmdbYLYXroCv7adS4kFGN5jQLVGo6EJuxExeosacvszqFcJwKa4v3?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://mdoumoctar.bandcamp.com/album/afrique-victime | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3ZZMK1Hd8E9Uzj1Tycdlf2 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/182354281,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61aa4758c506646422ab9d6a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mdou-Moctar.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Mdou_Moctar-Afrique_Victime.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2021/,2021,year,album,7,The Weather Station,Ignorance,Fat Possum,"Fat Possum A Canadian singer-songwriter with an aura of purposeful solitude, a gift for drawing insight and revelation from minute observations of relationships and environments, and an ear for melodies that dip, wind, and double back like trains of thought. After a few great albums, most of them sparse and muted, she assembles a band that can channel the exuberance of her era’s pop rhythms and twist them toward her own idiosyncratic ends. Far from dampening the music’s acuity and expressiveness, making them softly palatable, these new grooves accompany some of the sharpest songs of her career. Weather Station bandleader Tamara Lindeman might be tired of hearing Joni Mitchell comparisons at this point, but the resemblance is uncanny: Ignorance is something like her Court and Spark. Not that it sounds much like Mitchell’s 1974 masterpiece. Where that album is warm and jazzy, Ignorance is single-mindedly propulsive, befitting songs concerned with the shrinking possibility of love on a planet hurtling toward collapse. Multiple percussionists provide an unflagging beat; strings, woodwinds, and electronic keyboards float above these girders like an iridescent sunset after a wildfire. Lindeman’s inimitable voice wanders the spaces between, taking in trees choked by buildings, birds alighting on rooftops, a world that hangs over her with the indifference of a secondhand jacket. Perhaps the comparison has more to do with the space Court and Spark opened in Joni’s canon, making room for the run of wonderful and profoundly strange albums that came next. After this, it seems, Tamara Lindeman can do anything. –Andy Cush",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/RTBwSQLkhETA6UFFPTH546tj4MhS8mXL1r9PZ2BaJwAiGQLaVRZ8r6mBo5VGRwKEoA7T2azq35dzj9qzDM9bNZvfPxKCxGQznvkpP1KiYWLRCZ57LhD2CwTa?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/3m18KYZSha52eh3iCCDi6cUvc1AYmM13FnkmvjrfdkAaqASu7nj1ENikHAwD3pSH4Gyg8Wqra7pYsSZ1SRro1xnwB1DdfocqE3f7XjFpDqnMAzejqJxTVLjXHi98Sz?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/C8EegXATuNghRByhKqVk7ohxcebBb67JjxVuTCsGi31rRugsF6WpCNMLmF7wE3VginigJhwM19aUZrC2bsgySwqjL6jjcvadmrAzLFZdpuP26Zxk?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://theweatherstation.bandcamp.com/album/ignorance | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3KeR5BDM2giFr8zoSXBrgE | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/149027111,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61aa481445c013baf49b7f59/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-Weather-Station.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Weather_Station-Ignorance.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2021/,2021,year,album,6,Turnstile,Glow On,Roadrunner,"Roadrunner After the world spent 18 months at home, the Baltimore band Turnstile unleashed Glow On unto a rapidly-growing audience that could not have possibly been better primed to receive its 34 minutes of nonstop feeling. Is this post-hardcore? Pop hardcore? Streetwear Fugazi? Do you “have to see it live to get it”? No matter how you square their multitudes, Turnstile know that hardcore is fundamentally interactive music—you don’t just listen; you participate; together—and Glow On facilitates it. This might mean screaming along to the tidal hooks of “Mystery” and “Holiday” to lock in with a kinetic crowd. It might mean having a moment of connected introspection with lyrics like “I just need to know I’m working for the big prize” or “Can’t be the only one” or “Thank you for letting me see myself” (just like those Turnstilemaniacs nodding along in the sublime Turnstile Love Connection film). Or maybe it means allowing Glow On’s hypercharged riffs and blast beats—its synth arpeggios, sing-rapping, Caribbean rhythms, and Dev Hynes harmonies—to fluidly eclipse your misfit soul, clarifying that it belongs here. –Jenn Pelly",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/64ZhAxL8rmn8sF4YrPAjgHBb64LLv9XiodwRZnKbLKE7UMJQE4krE1wGG9fcgUHJy2sECpZPYoLWA14wctzGwpeWS1WsRUx6x68X145T?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/3XBo9W39MvrKg1g8KmX5LDPsfSHMXP15288ufZbVwA4pT2yA7pUCgWPsuGboSMKNaxDZMLiQCmXq6uNvno5ndd4uV3rcVFdZdpMhMFzKoPoXNZk?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/a7yg5mSTVWkeqdxahu8KrUqdoWXw1TJDwdgaCv8TmeZxHkzM88WYtvNqYVHe4xP3jhagDWKUnowrpZZL3mmRgsx9n7SKBT26QYWYjkMVonkdP?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2NrYPcMmQBlbBxopc2XlzS | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/193913258 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdJZlmhQXug,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61aa48bac506646422ab9d6c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Turnstile.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Turnstile-Glow_On.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2021/,2021,year,album,5,Low,HEY WHAT,Sub Pop,"Sub Pop Nearly 30 years into their career, Low have moved beyond simply writing great songs: They are now focused on the way those songs travel from the speakers to our ears: a strange, circuitous journey that makes HEY WHAT feel like genuinely new territory. It is easy to imagine any of these 10 warped, noisy pieces of music in stripped-down arrangements. In fact, most of the songs tease that kind of delivery: Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker’s voices arrive in unison like folk singers, stripped of effects and clear in the mix, every word audible and sung in simple, hummable melodies. But with producer BJ Burton, Sparhawk and Parker interrupt and distort themselves, filtering their stark, psalm-like compositions through the kind of processing that makes a guitar solo squeal into feedback, or the sound from your speakers clip into static. It is a beautiful, adventurous album from a band who is letting their music fall into disorder and who, in doing so, have never sounded more in control. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/BAX9mKFcNF8UpSRqFUcKXKu6MYz6EQq8Lw9GFLhA7PYG419J97VDbb44LuGQefAwKXwDACCHUPds9nEr7MuHwYxLKetQsP4NP?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/8WDqjKE222JbQFibNW2fFqSyNQumrwtw8r6LkwBJPoaJ4LwEAmkZmqs1PyansUp6QBNpRH52GFhxLQ46uRuG9KyFyYbgeZjKiQ2T2qxoHosc?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/3XBo9W39MvrKg1g8KmX5LDPsfSHMXP15288ufZbVwA4pT2yA7pU9RnAbPFyrScTSK5U7e6CQZfCD8tvhh5Eb5yCDXgdfUmfp3SuQkL6DFkvZGnv?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://lowtheband.bandcamp.com/album/hey-what | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/6S6jg2LuEwGdo9iYMSwCBS | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/189302658,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61aa492cc506646422ab9d6e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Low.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Low-HEY_WHAT.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2021/,2021,year,album,4,Floating Points / Pharoah Sanders / The London Symphony Orchestra,Promises,Luaka Bop,"Luaka Bop It begins atomically, with a building block made of seven notes twisting around like a helix. Around this motif Promises blinks to life, a self-regenerating ecosystem in nine movements. This hybrid electronic/jazz/orchestral piece doesn’t feel composed so much as monitored by Sam Shepherd, the boundless electronic composer who performs as Floating Points. Whether arranging the London Symphony Orchestra’s oceanic swells or tapping out notes on a harpsichord that seems to be falling slightly out of tune, Shepherd lays down a framework for the eminent free jazz saxophonist Pharaoh Sanders to follow and then thrillingly disregard. Sanders is the central voice and shining star of Promises, his first major recording in a couple of decades, and one of 2021’s greatest musical gifts. He trots to one idea, floats to another, then sprints to a third, exploring the universe Shepherd has cast for him and spinning out new meanings for its restless, incessant seven-note central motif. This is the endless joy of Promises: listening to Sanders feel his way through this alien world as if newly born into it. It leaves such a unique impression that although you are listening to music, you are also witnessing its evolution. –Jeremy D. Larson",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/3ft572pKvWTwA1njMREViFVBhZkRyU5FvuRnxJJVeVTFUBea2xG4U68wvUHYz1bcueKvwNymEJxPwDuKUVnrSDEdiC2gcBTrUjwAJu4LySePdUGdruKe1QvsQGv3SoxS4KhxVpdavtUEmDfnHg2ZM18EH2ujqWPpDm1bHGw62dJEgscSr4u338?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/Lkx5Gxxh29wDTjehJPyRQqJ28dxLCcGGJ7PSaMLsk4iX9cgDoN97zVCfXw5KotNyjDT62Y13W6P2jrqTig4qx6dyhNyJCFVeTeCJnxKZjcMReYD9twEsR5iMVbZxdjaqhjK2qjYQusGk5XLqNN?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/AqefbiEisJzjAejgQH64yvUPi6ib9QrGWemGXYXkhVj45TRZkPGuGPZwLtftEo5yqjnecccVdtM3qvVef9EMWgPaemPdxU8Bqn4k6fPZUxdQqBKBEGqHJENTUXJLo5H6Jc3c9tjNxMvVQ8nhgZb1XqJqK?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://floatingpoints.bandcamp.com/album/promises | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3ShtO5VCYa3ctlR5uzLWBa | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/171257173,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61aa4a2d14c6f0e2df9a3309/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Floating-Points.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Floating_Points__Pharoah_Sanders__The_London_Symphony_Orchestra-Promises.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2021/,2021,year,album,3,"Tyler, the Creator",Call Me If You Get Lost,Columbia,"Columbia Even by the maximalist standards of Tyler, the Creator’s previous albums, there’s kind of a lot happening on this one. Call Me If You Get Lost is a formal homage to aughts-era rap mixtapes. And it’s a concept record about luxury living narrated by the artist’s fur-capped alter ego, Sir Tyler Baudelaire. And it’s a reckoning with the shock-jock narrators of his early material. And it’s a rambling apology to the other two (possibly famous) members of a broken love triangle. But Tyler manages the conceptual overload using all the tools in his box, shuffling moods with beats that touch down in jazz, reggae, and bossa nova, and rapping like he hasn’t in years, free-associating over wild verses that sometimes pull on five or six story threads at once. You know the old advice about giving the task you need done right to a busy person? Maybe there's something to it. –Lane Brown",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/DBDZJrJCS4xnHMkxpQX6PmcFbVj9CjHAxGxDJCADXBXJKahK2xpQ22sG2NrGBSNZsTX9iAicSxeYWbhjidJPFK6qjPdyDqR9MbFgbUFHevSBBAmZdXJ2E6daBW5Hfup?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/K3zshu2iQiXVvEDxNccYK5ceC1BYFnHKBq2Gk1gTQviPUEsHkLbg5mbYex1gwno1SrX3hnu2E2t1XbMbsD7Jg9kgYnL3hGyJAQZaywyLDefmBftbQinLkev2xAwQo76Xv12?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/45ba6QAtNrdv6Ke4MFOKk9 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/188802758,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61aa4a694301dc152b2ab83c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Tyler-the-Creator.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Tyler_the_Creator-Call_Me_If_You_Get_Lost.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2021/,2021,year,album,2,L’Rain,Fatigue,Mexican Summer,"Mexican Summer In the hands of Brooklyn artist Taja Cheek, music can be nonlinear and unpredictable without sacrificing grooves and hooks. As L’Rain, her blend of hi- and lo-fi techniques spawns songs that call for a half-dozen genre descriptors—avant-garde, psych-soul, with a side of musique concrète?—and refuse to resolve in an expected way. Her second album, Fatigue, is a symphony of fleeting, hyper-specific sound, from the opulent keyboard arpeggios that open “Two Face” and the swampy bass driving “Suck Teeth” to the heartfelt guitar interplay on “Blame Me” and the ingenuous rhythmic repetition of the phrase “make a way out of no way”—a line borrowed from Cheek’s late mother, Lorraine—on “Find It.” L’Rain songs can be one small idea or 10 overlapping ones, 17 seconds or six minutes, built around a single loop or encompassing upwards of 20 players. The works on Fatigue mimic the nature of grief and change, the haze and backsliding and dark thoughts. Through these vivid fragments, Cheek’s worldview comes across clearly: The best way to achieve growth is through unhindered exploration. –Jillian Mapes",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/4R1mmfmYP2SokTK93KhuDSZ6bj2j4yvLzkrUFVKg1iqgU6TacMrpJTz4DvVuah45xcLR29GU59W7fYbmeqSHRLu2rYYRe46ijdNL?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/a7yg5mSTVWkeqdxahu8KrUqdoWXw1TJDwdgaCv8TmeZxHkzM88XHevfikQk9TokrqJoJJ9vjSvgQPsA2xLWHG7i9b2WMFqgLLAnPEC3jjsytJ?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/a7yg5mSTVWkeqdxahu8KrUqdoWXw1TJDwdgaCv8TmeZxHkzM88WYtvNqYVHe4xP3jhagDWKUnowrpZZL3mmRgqSdzYjicq3SoQhm1aehw6vbg?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://lrain.bandcamp.com/album/fatigue | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/0958H6mglwYhFhwbpzHB8e | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/187931673,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61aa4ae014c6f0e2df9a330b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/L_Rain.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/LRain-Fatigue.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2021/,2021,year,album,1,Jazmine Sullivan,Heaux Tales,RCA,"RCA On her previous album, 2015’s Reality Show, Jazmine Sullivan made it clear who her music was speaking to and intended for: women who hover outside the frame in a thick, stifling haze of stereotypes. Heaux Tales is a similar, vastly more ambitious corrective whose characters surrender to varying shades of anger, shame, sex, and abandonment. Vulnerability, as she sees it, is a cyclical, always uncomfortable, sisterly burden. But the simple act of owning and sharing each other’s flaws can beget something that resembles growth. Catharsis is possible because Sullivan chooses to amplify the ugly narratives women hold and reframe them as purges, and then package them as confessional R&B. In this intimate space, she can embrace the power and duality of toxic love. “Girl Like Me” is both a meditation on the virtues of so-called ho living and a supervillain origin story where a cheater sparks her metamorphosis from good girl to maneater. She’s dismissive but maybe also desires protection. “You leave me with no choice,” Sullivan relinquishes. The album’s emotions live in steady disharmony that way. Next to the sublime detachment of “Lost One” is the orgasmic poetry of “On It” and the cold-shoulder eviction notice “Pick Up Your Feelings.” These songs conjure memories of disappearing soulmates and raging fuckboys who did or didn’t help you see yourself. But it’s the visceral interludes from women in Sullivan’s orbit that give the project the feel of a Terry McMillan novel, or a community of complicated Zolas made dimensional through song. As liberating as it is to be naked, there’s no erasing the fear part, nor the circle of trust it takes to say the quiet parts out loud. Heaux Tales wins because Sullivan holds the therapies of sisterhood sacred, confident no one can take them away. –Clover Hope",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/428C3oXt8VZhX6zZ2Ef7VGVxLutQEfJZdXE3ZuCH98Nq5f25a9MRSMKEnHYjVSo8wQcCinojdUZ1JFJ3DA1xdjYhi7acD2tddHJqrgDpCGWDoEY19P9h1nNc1pbQ4DWxkj43SAW9tzt6d?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/4jjCSCMwJVXruhVCpjCXf4cVmhgtNvQBWChJJuvPbZPRTxsn589TUTEBpdd38yNhgtQqquFLxxW6bm56TSLAHzKnGaxHcVsZbgzzWr5RNMrKjxg1yTZ?cid=61a92debe300dbbaf1abae2c | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5g9YhHW8tE7Tcslgxsk5u9 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/168084923,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61aa4b94c506646422ab9d71/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jazmine-Sullivan.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Jazmine_Sullivan-Heaux_Tales.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,100,Halsey,"“I am not a woman, I’m a god”",Capitol,"Capitol More than any other track on Halsey’s career-best LP If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power, “I am not a woman, I’m a god” embodies the bitter resignation of the album’s title: detachment as a mask for self-loathing. Taking the come-closer-go-away themes of previous songs like “Alone” and turning them post-apocalyptic, Halsey likens themself to a distant sort of god, an alt-pop Doctor Manhattan surveying their emotional wasteland of botched connections and might-have-been selves and finding nothing savable. Producers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross deliver their late-career coldest: an implacable sequence line, a metronomic beat, and a synth riff that prickles like a crown of thorns. Halsey vocalizes like they’re trying to outrun the thing they’re singing about, until the final chorus: a desperate belt with an abrupt end, the sounds their last few remaining feelings make before they’re soldered over. –Katherine St. Asaph",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3jkwj90c6U,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a66f2e00162df77321fc98/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Halsey.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Halsey-I_am_not_a_woman_Im_a_god.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,99,Smerz,“Believer”,XL,"XL Smerz, the electronic project of Norwegian songwriters Henriette Motzfeldt and Catharina Stoltenberg, released its debut full-length, Believer, early this year. The album’s cold, creeping title track is among the duo’s finest work: The song teeters on jagged synths and rattling polyrhythms, while strings surge from behind at gale force. Stoltenberg’s voice is small and slightly processed, a mechanical purr that somehow feels both vulnerable and detached. Her clipped dispatches on love are pragmatic and icy, but beguiling enough to lure you through each disorienting curve. –Madison Bloom",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHp3dnAQAFc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a66fab643fcf85b332525b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Smerz.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Smerz-Believer.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,98,"Mandy, Indiana",“Bottle Episode”,Fire Talk,"Fire Talk “Bottle Episode” is repetition weaponized. The single by the Manchester-based Mandy, Indiana marches brusquely from pocket to pocket, its pacing urgent, its drums military. But it’s Valentine Caulfield’s lyrics that form the most compelling loops—the ones that upend the song’s tone. Each short verse ends with a single repeating line; some, when read straight, would be too grim to maintain the song’s relentless groove (“Sous le feu et sous les balles/Les hommes dansent quasiment,” roughly translated: “As the bullets hit them/The men dance, almost”). Yet Caulfield infuses them with a perverse playfulness, allowing you to imagine, against your better judgment, how that choreography might look. –Paul A. Thompson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sUSDQxUV7A,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a67019c07f2ab13bbedc95/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mandy-Indiana.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Mandy_Indiana-Bottle_Episode.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,97,beabadoobee,“Last Day on Earth”,Dirty Hit,"Dirty Hit Bea Kristi wrote “Last Day on Earth” soon after COVID-19 lockdowns began by imagining how she would’ve spent her last “normal” day. It sounds like a rom-com writing prompt, with music to match: irresistible guitar-pop jangle, a giddy wordless hook, soft backing vocals from the 1975’s Matty Healy. But the song’s sweet self-referentiality takes it someplace unexpected. Instead of looking for love or throwing a rager, Bea wanders around her house naked and alone, obsessing over a song that’s “so fucking sick” even as she’s too drunk to finish the lyrics. That’s where the hook comes in: When you have a golden riff and a perfect melody, there's nothing wrong with singing shoop-do-badoo and calling it a day. –Jamieson Cox",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwpVNq1FeEk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a670c163b4e7f270e56f13/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/beabadoobee.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/beabadoobee-Last_Day_on_Earth.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,96,Kay Flock,“Being Honest”,UMG,"UMG Bronx teenager Kay Flock has the voice of a much older man, suitable for projecting menace and hinting at relentless pain. It’s reminiscent of G Herbo, when the Chicago rapper was pioneering drill nearly a decade ago. Herbo solidified this connection by showing up on a remix of “Being Honest,” but it’s the original, solo version of the track that gives Kay Flock the most space to express his tormented worldview. The song’s verses are stark, filled with loneliness and missed calls and death, all atop a sample of the late XXXTentacion’s “changes” made to sound as if it were an unearthed pop relic from the ’60s. In a year when New York’s mutation of drill seemed to be stagnating, Kay Flock injected it with new life. –Paul A. Thompson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMV4-xekoaY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a6718700162df77321fc9a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kay-Flock.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Kay_Flock-Being_Honest.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,95,Doss,“Look”,LuckyMe,"LuckyMe A girl walks home alone at night: There are horror films written about the sheer anxiety that scenario evokes. But on her effervescent single “Look,” Doss subverts the threat. Defiant in her confident solitude, she dares us to, well, look. “You see me, on my own,” she sings in a robotic register, before a rubbery, slightly sinister synth counters. “Look” is grimy and grotesque, with wobbly basslines and EDM-style drops. Like a rave in a funhouse mirror, its rhythms are as disorienting as they are danceable. Her lyrics share that shifting perspective, transferring power between the observer and the observed. “I can do it on my own,” she insists, over and over again. By the end, it’s impossible to tell if the dip in her voice is out of fear or excitement, but either way, we’re transfixed. –Arielle Gordon",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rlkQXdji7M,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a671ff6fb56ac14551bd39/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Doss.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Doss-Look.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,94,Doja Cat,“Get Into It (Yuh)”,Kemosabe / RCA,"Kemosabe / RCA The best Doja Cat singles work their way into your brain, and then, when you least expect it, involuntarily funnel back out through your vocal cords. On “Get Into It (Yuh),” it’s the way she bends her voice on the hook, going from a croaky whisper to a sweet-sounding chant. Then there’s the light, dreamy melody that’s perfect to whistle along to. The only problem is, when you sing it back to yourself, it won’t sound nearly as good. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zln8SZO6yYY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a672a4b309fed97ceae4c1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Doja-Cat-2.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Doja_Cat-Get_Into_It_Yuh.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,93,Mavi,“Time Travel”,New York Lab,"New York Lab Mavi’s 2019 record Let the Sun Talk was a spiritual journey of self-discovery and Black liberation that established the North Carolina artist as a leader of rap’s underground vanguard. Two years later, he sounds hungrier than ever, suffering no fools. On “Time Travel,” he narrates the battle between his ego and insecurities. “Often I be embarrassed over how brazen I be,” he raps over shimmering keys, “but it beats bein’ embarrassed over how lazy they be.” For nearly four minutes, he breathlessly runs through references both Biblical and mythological in between nods to Nickelodeon cartoons and his beloved hometown Charlotte Hornets, painting a self portrait that feels both superhuman and achingly relatable. –Brandon Callender",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og0Y73hAoVE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a67328643fcf85b332525d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mavi.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Mavi-Time_Travel.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,92,SPELLLING,“Little Deer” ,Sacred Bones,"Sacred Bones Bay Area art-pop sorcerer Tia Cabral of SPELLLING reintroduced herself with “Little Deer,” the surging baroque opener of her fantastical third album The Turning Wheel. Evoking the audacious spirits of forebears like Minnie Riperton and Kate Bush, it is a fable-like tale of death and rebirth, of the never-quite-finished process of being a person. Joined by over a dozen musicians—brass, strings, woodwinds, conga, a choir—Cabral brings pop formalism and the questing spirit of ’70s soul orchestration into SPELLLING’s world, making a majestic entry into her sharpest album yet. –Jenn Pelly",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yACWrKIKeMs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a673d600162df77321fc9c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Spellling.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/SPELLLING-Little_Deer.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,91,Snoh Aalegra,“We Don’t Have to Talk About It”,Artium,"Artium Here’s an R&B ballad for the ghosted, by the ghosted. Snoh Aalegra, whose elegant vocals and tight ponytail have inspired enough comparisons to Sade to cause a minor Twitter controversy, is trying to navigate the frustrations of a one-sided relationship. She wants to respect her partner’s silence even as she’s haunted by what’s been left unsaid. Atop roomy production that mirrors the empty space she’s wading through, Aalegra sounds both poised and vulnerable—straight-faced with a single tear running down. She can’t force him to talk about what’s wrong. But he can’t stop her from singing about it, either. –Ryan Dombal",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wO7ZdCgHOYs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a67525c07f2ab13bbedc97/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Snoh-Aalegra.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Snoh_Aalegra-We_Dont_Have_to_Talk_About_It.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,90,The Armed,“All Futures”,Sargent House,"Sargent House “All Futures” introduced ULTRAPOP as the Armed’s fourth album, and also as a one-band genre: a deliberate attempt to fashion post-hardcore’s most extremist tendencies into something thrillingly accessible. In a live-performance video that has become the song’s definitive version, the band flexed the results of the absurd nutrition and exercise regimen they’d followed for the previous year, a sort of conceptual stunt aimed at visually matching the maxed-out heroism of the music. Absolutely ripped, dwarfing their instruments, they pummel out massive hooks amid organized chaos. These facets are inseparable for the Armed, a band that has dedicated its confounding existence to highbrow myth-making on one hand, and on the other, shit that immediately sounds and looks fucking awesome. –Ian Cohen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fbo21aWFbhQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a6758c39ed78ff9e45e0ba/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-Armed.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Armed-All_Futures.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,89,Danny L Harle,“Boing Beat”,Mad Decent,"Mad Decent MC Boing, the pitched-up voice on Danny L Harle’s post-trance rave-up “Boing Beat,” is a blobby blue cartoon character that looks like a cross between Crazy Frog and a character from a Red Bull commercial. Such absurd imagery suits the song’s delirious swirl of internet-addled Eurodance refractions and pitched-up sugar-rush rapping, which is credited to the animated avatar. The euphoric, otherworldly track arrived in January, while clubs across the world were still shuttered and the long nights out that “never, never, never end” were still a distant dream. Though dancefloors have filled back up, the music’s yearning is still palpable—few songs better capture the feeling of desperately straining for an ecstatic experience that’s just out of reach. –Colin Joyce",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EpnYQW8XWY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a67dc700162df77321fc9e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Danny-L-Harle.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Danny_L_Harle-Boing_Beat.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,88,Dijon,“Many Times”,R&R / Warner,"R&R / Warner If “Many Times” is a song about needing space, Dijon manages to use every available inch. It unfolds in the moments after a breakup, leaving the R&B-inflected singer-songwriter grasping at straws, his multi-tracked vocals growing progressively more agitated across two verses. A series of structural pivots—claustrophobic percussion giving way to a roomier chorus—mirror the narrative’s emotional trajectory, with a lively piano outro lending a glimmer of hope. –Pete Tosiello",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8NeBYucGcw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a67eb96fb56ac14551bd6d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Dijon.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Dijon-Many_Times.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,87,Joy Orbison,“better” [ft. Léa Sen],XL,"XL Presented as a mixtape, Joy Orbison’s long-awaited debut full-length, Still Slipping Vol. 1, is meant to be consumed as a complete, luscious whole, but album highlight “better” beautifully encapsulates the UK producer’s timeless brand of post-dubstep street soul. Dreamily drifting along the edge of the dancefloor, the track rests atop a bed of plush deep house that recalls the pillow-soft sounds of Larry Heard; its silky, dimly lit groove centers the R&B-infused vocals of fellow Londoner Léa Sen, who delivers a heart-twisting tale of late-night longing. –Shawn Reynaldo",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6kEQrog0RQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a6837834f90bf312300025/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Joy-Orbison.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Joy_Orbison-better_ft_La_Sen.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,86,Mariah the Scientist,“2 You”,RCA,"RCA The heartbreak Mariah the Scientist sings about in “2 You” is the kind that doesn’t fade for years. Against a dreamy mosaic of a cappella fragments, she reminisces about a lover who drifted away, about how the only thing she regrets more than letting this one go was not leaving sooner. “But look at what we made/Sure was beautiful,” she sings, voice soaring up from a well of emotions heavy as gravity, a heaping stack of harmonies to tell you how her heart went threadbare. After all this time, she still can’t quite explain it: “Whenever they play our song/Don’t know why I feel ashamed.” –Anna Gaca",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwNOfTaUwrw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a6848314c6f0e2df9a3234/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mariah-the-Scientist.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Mariah_the_Scientist-2_You.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,85,City Girls,“Twerkulator”,Quality Control / UMG,"Quality Control / UMG “Twerkulator” fuses regions, eras, and sounds, weaving samples from Afrika Bambaataa & Soulsonic Force’s foundational 1982 electro-rap record “Planet Rock” and Cajmere’s 1992 house touchstone “The Percolator” into a beat that throws back to the blunt minimalism of Miami bass music. Incorporating all that history made it tougher to put out—after a leaked version went viral on TikTok in 2020, sample clearance issues delayed its proper release for a year—but it also practically guaranteed its power. “Pop that pussy on some Luke shit,” Yung Miami instructs on the song, offering another nod to raunchy rap pioneer Uncle Luke. Even with this amalgam of references, the City Girls’ stamp still rings loud and clear. –Ivie Ani",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62-iVogg5jA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a684c714c6f0e2df9a3236/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/City-Girls.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/City_Girls-Twerkulator.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,84,Ethel Cain,“Michelle Pfeiffer” [ft. lil aaron],Daughters of Cain,"Daughters of Cain Hayden Anhedönia’s music as Ethel Cain depicts a woman scorned by love and by society, to startlingly vulnerable, often disturbing effect. On “Michelle Pfeiffer,” the first single from her breakout EP Inbred, Anhedonia recasts Cain as Florence + The Ketamine: blurry, bleary-eyed, but colossal, the L.A.-inspired breakup anthem plays like an on-stage meltdown at the Hollywood Bowl. Anhedönia told Pitchfork earlier this year that she wants to “write about what really happens,” and the melodramatic “Pfeiffer” co-exists on Inbred with tracks about intergenerational trauma and abuse. Those songs thrive on pent-up aggression and tension; “Pfeiffer” is all release, pure unhinged gothic beauty. –Hannah Jocelyn",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Riw9fBbt5I,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a685534301dc152b2ab6d3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ethel-Cain.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Ethel_Cain-Michelle_Pfeiffer_ft_lil_aaron.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,83,Leo Bhanji,“Damaged”,Dirty Hit,"Dirty Hit Leo Bhanji doesn’t write songs so much as assemble musical Frankenstein’s monsters—malformed skeletal prototypes whose guts and wiring he does not attempt to polish or hide. “Damaged” is willfully oblique in its collage of lo-fi pop, R&B, hip-hop, church music, and UK dance, with sounds that mutate in response to Bhanji’s stream-of-consciousness vocals. As the London artist's voice shifts between King Krule mumble and Auto-Tuned croon, the beat shifts with him—capturing both the anxiety and the acceptance of an intimate late-night epiphany. –Bhanuj Kappal",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aklK9cjLwJM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a6859ac506646422ab9b6e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Leo-Bhanji.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Leo_Bhanji-Damaged.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,82,Shannon Lay,“Rare to Wake”,Sub Pop,"Sub Pop “I’m longing to grow,” sings L.A. folkie Shannon Lay on “Rare to Wake,” a ballad that traces the hinge between fear of personal transformation and excitement for it. Lay’s multi-tracked harmonies fall at soft angles over finger-picked acoustic guitar and meandering electric piano, until a dynamic swell announces a transition that never comes. The arrangement, like the song itself, seems to fidget with anticipation, finding beauty at an uncertain precipice. –Lane Brown",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQ18ZZznLZE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a6860e34f90bf312300027/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Shannon-Lay.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Shannon_Lay-Rare_to_Wake.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,81,Yeat,“Gët Busy”,TwizzyRich,"TwizzyRich “This song already was turnt but here’s a bell,” Yeat raps about halfway through this track, before firing off a massive gonging sound that’s become the Portland artist’s trademark. Zoom out from that moment, though, and there’s a lot more to enjoy here: mini vocal freakouts full of garbled drug concoctions; Dr. Seuss references; twizzies, tizzies, and Lizzies. Cutting his teeth in the influential online rap collective Slayworld over the last few years, Yeat was always a little stranger than his peers, and consequently cast as a minor figure. But in 2021, his surrealist bent became his superpower. –Mano Sundaresan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bd5l5NtzoWc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a6867114c6f0e2df9a3238/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Yeat.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Yeat-Gt_Busy.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,80,Rostam,“4Runner”,Matsor Projects,"Matsor Projects Rostam’s twelve-string tribute to the open road would make anyone swoon, but this love song may hold special significance for queer people. “Don’t wanna be pretty like a girl,” he sings. “I think I’m pretty much your boy.” For anyone who’s ever felt like a foreigner in their own skin, being seen in the right way by the right person—handsome rather than beautiful, say—can feel like a homecoming. In “4Runner,” Rostam and his love make a new home for themselves on the highway, leaving the familiar behind and driving forward into a future that once seemed impossible. –Peyton Thomas",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kSAfpJtULA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a686f2e300dbbaf1abacf9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Rostam.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Rostam-4Runner.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,79,Water From Your Eyes,““Quotations””,Wharf Cat,"Wharf Cat Water From Your Eyes’ ““Quotations”” manages to seem offhanded and rigorous at once, moving restlessly but with almost neurotic precision. As the Brooklyn art-pop duo stitches disconnected observations—legs stretching on grass, something in the air flying by—the music comes together as an alien collage, with errant elements meticulously arranged: bubbly synths, fractured percussive clicks, a disorienting vocal loop, a sprawling breakbeat. When the track ascends to its abrupt ending, it is as though a portal has opened up, and we’re suddenly sucked back to reality. –Kelly Liu",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6C3cRd0-zk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a79e764301dc152b2ab70b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Water-From-Your-Eyes.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Water_From_Your_Eyes-Quotations.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,78,Dean Blunt,“the rot”,Rough Trade,"Rough Trade Dean Blunt’s music can often be sparse. He renders club rap bangers into acoustic ballads, compressing each recording to its emotional core. Black Metal 2 offers some of the most accessible music of his career, and with “the rot” the artist approaches Britpop. Blunt’s intimate, monotone croon is familiar, but the sweeping strings and lightly twanging guitars are disarmingly luxurious. As the song closes, he cedes ground to Joanne Robertson, whose airy and overdubbed vocals melt into a gentle, orchestral whirlpool. Call it Dean Blunt’s “Bitter Sweet Symphony.” –Nadine Smith",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Le1myp8Bpo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a79ee514c6f0e2df9a323f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Dean-Blunt.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Dean_Blunt-the_rot.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,77,Iceage,“Shelter Song”,Mexican Summer,"Mexican Summer Iceage’s album-opening “Shelter Song” is a wearily triumphant reintroduction to the band: no longer the fresh-faced punks of records past, they slouch onto Seek Shelter like hardened rockers, armed with Screamadelica bombast and Exile on Main St. scuzz. The song builds over a jagged riff; soon, the Lisboa Gospel Collective bolsters vocalist Elias Bender Rønnenfelt’s gravelly tones. As he sings of getting kicked and knocked down, the band swells in commiseration, offering shelter where they once might have added to the melee. –Daniel Felsenthal",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_n6gT24h_k,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a79fe514c6f0e2df9a3241/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Iceage.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Iceage-Shelter_Song.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,76,Foodman,“Parking Area”,Hyperdub,"Hyperdub True to his name, Foodman loves to eat. Some of his favorite places to grab a snack are the michi no eki (service stations) which dot Japan’s highways—often sprawling campuses with spas, cafés, and farmers markets. Foodman pays tribute to these roadside oases on his 2021 album Yasuragi Land, and on “Parking Area,” he sketches a scenic view that might entice a weary traveler to pull over. His palette is more spacious than usual; a breezy, digitally altered guitar drives the melody, leaving more room for his nimble beats to ping-pong around than his often jam-packed tunes typically do. “Parking Area” invites you to take a moment to enjoy life’s simplest pleasures. Treat yourself. You deserve it. –Shy Thompson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwCiC3n2xjg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7a0db482c9acdf0ddc2ae/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Foodman.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Foodman-Parking_Area.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,75,Bad Boy Chiller Crew,“Don’t You Worry About Me”,Relentless / House Anxiety,"Relentless / House Anxiety Besides standing in a wind tunnel and letting the air peel your lips back, there were few more effective ways of stretching your face into a huge, shit-eating grin this year than drinking in UK dance/rap trio Bad Boy Chiller Crew’s speedy fusion of organ house and balls-to-the-wall bass. The boys from Bradford have worked out what they do well (beers, bangers, bikes) and they’re sticking with it. “Don’t You Worry About Me” refines the formula: A whale-sized hook backed up with boisterous bars and a shot of humour to chase it down. Git up. –Will Pritchard",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPckvzufS90,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7a17845c013baf49b7e55/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bad-Boy-Chiller-Crew.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Bad_Boy_Chiller_Crew-Dont_You_Worry_About_Me.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,74,Helado Negro,“Gemini and Leo”,4AD,"4AD Where Helado Negro’s 2019 breakthrough This Is How You Smile was an intimate self-portrait, on followup Far In, Roberto Carlos Lange adjusts his aperture to capture something bigger: the cosmos. The twinkling funk of lead single “Gemini and Leo,” which was appropriately released on the summer solstice, radiates pure warmth. With each sweep of the chorus Lange’s voice tilts skyward, yet the elegant bassline and assured beat remain earthbound, accompanying the song’s titular star-crossed dancers as they stay locked in a groove and glide through an hour undefined. –Gabriel Szatan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRTsDQAWPtk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7a1ed482c9acdf0ddc2b0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Helado-Negro.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Helado_Negro-Gemini_and_Leo.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,73,Indigo De Souza,“Hold U”,Saddle Creek,"Saddle Creek As comfortable as Indigo De Souza is with solitude, she knows the company you keep can help further your journey to acceptance. Over the sleek, funk-lite groove of “Hold U,” the Asheville musician proclaims her adoration for the community she’s built into her own personal safety net: “I want the best things for you,” she coos, like a wedding vow exchange you can’t help but shed a tear to. “Hold U” is a cathartic reminder that the people you surround yourself with are often the clearest reflection of your own psyche, and if you find the type of friends that she describes, loving yourself feels less like a task. –Abby Jones",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZstVTHCCcGs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7a2dbe2c7c1ae7d723f2e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Indigo-De-Souza.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Indigo_De_Souza-Hold_U.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,72,Bruiser Wolf,“Dope Game $tupid”,Bruiser Brigade,"Bruiser Brigade Bruiser Wolf can sound like a stand-up comedian, an Adult Swim character, and the silkiest mack alive all at the same time. On “Dope Game $tupid,” over a beat as shaky as a Jenga tower, he races through daft sex brags before getting stuck on a single point: Dealing is dumb, but it’s damn hard to quit. “The dope game stupid, but the boy still do it,” he repeats on the hook. In Wolf’s hands, the struggle sounds almost hallucinogenic, with images of coke cooking in potholes and a potential snitch keeping as silent as an imaginary friend. He’s weird and darkly funny—but stupid? Like a fox. –Dean Van Nguyen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IV_6_DHtTbI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7a3f545c013baf49b7e57/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bruiser-Wolf.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Bruiser_Wolf-Dope_Game_tupid.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,71,Lucy Dacus,“VBS”,Matador,"Matador Lucy Dacus strolls glumly in the chasm between preteen faith and life’s holy shitshow on “VBS” (short for Vacation Bible School). She offers a few of the expected observations—blubbering worshipers, the cool pastor—but soon homes in on one other student: a poem-scrawling, nutmeg-abusing metalhead from a troubled family. “You were gonna win me over from the start,” she smiles, but her younger self is trying to win him. Pinning effortless internal rhyme to the solemn strum of campfire praise, Dacus sketches her one-time boyfriend—and her attempts at saving his soul—with incisive resignation. “All it did, in the end,” she sighs, “was make the dark feel darker than before” –Brad Shoup",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8JqjG8A90g,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7a4bae2c7c1ae7d723f30/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lucy-Dacus.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Lucy_Dacus-VBS.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,70,Jayda G,“All I Need”,!K7,"!K7 Canadian house phenom Jayda G’s “All I Need” is dance music that feels like an out-of-body experience, untethering you from your most mundane worries. The lyrics are just empty enough to serve as an incantation (“Putting up, putting up our walls/I’ve given you all my worlds”) or a vessel, a container for whatever you’re exorcising on the dance floor. The retro melody evokes simpler times and simpler pleasures: sweat and oblivion, body and blood. –Linnie Greene",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MW3cIxnxJnI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7a5ad78731ac7095ec428/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jayda-G.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Jayda_G-All_I_Need.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,69,Normani,“Wild Side” [ft. Cardi B],Keep Cool / RCA,"Keep Cool / RCA Normani expresses her sensuality on “Wild Side” as if it’s simmering just beneath the surface, the promise of an explosion that never arrives. The song’s allure is in its restraint, the way her voice, breathy yet commanding, matches the push-and-pull of the skittering beat. When Cardi B arrives, claiming she can “suck a watermelon through a straw,” it’s a moment of raunch that brings balance to a curiously subtle R&B hit. –Michelle Kim",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFMEBquxeO8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7a6744301dc152b2ab70d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Normani.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Normani-Wild_Side_ft_Cardi_B.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,68,Turnstile,“Mystery”,Roadrunner,"Roadrunner When the return of live music started to feel a little less theoretical, two schools of thought emerged: Do we ease ourselves back in or wild the fuck out on sight? Turnstile considered all possibilities with “Mystery,” which obliges the hesitant with an introductory 20 seconds of welcoming synth bubbles and then reacquaints Turnstile’s audience with everything that’s made them synonymous with “You really gotta see it live to get it” hardcore: a rap-rock riff that moves to the exact rhythms of a sustainable headbang, a low-end punch capable of making people literally lose their shit in the pit, and instantaneous quotables like “And it’s been so long!” delivered in Brendan Yates’ ocean-sized roar. –Ian Cohen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ny1fjdLKew,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7a7954301dc152b2ab70f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Turnstile.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Turnstile-Mystery.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,67,Yu Su,“Xiu”,Beijing Cultural Communication Co.,"Beijing Cultural Communication Co. 秀 (xìu) is used as an English loanword, pronounced nearly like “show”—it can mean “excellent,” “elegant,” or “to show off, give a show.” Balanced on pentatonic synths that beam like carnival lights, Yu Su’s “Xiu” feels very much like that titular exhibition. The Chinese-born, Vancouver-based musician’s gentle ambient vocalizations layer like interlocking puzzle pieces over pulsating waves of drum’n’bass. As an opener, the song contrasts with the rest of the placidly flowing Yellow River Blue, but it stands proudly on its own as a lush, energetic jump start. –Zhenzhen Yu",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvcBqAAu9o0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7a84945c013baf49b7e59/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Yu-Su.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Yu_Su-Xiu.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,66,Dawn Richard,“Bussifame”,Merge,"Merge The lead single from Dawn Richard’s fantastic electro fest Second Line opens with a brief definition of the titular New Orleans dance style. In short, it’s all about the get-down. For the next four-and-a-half minutes, Richard lets the hi-hats and house rhythms swirl as she drops slick, stream-of-consciousness callouts like she just grabbed the mic at a club to amp partygoers leaving blood on the dancefloor. The record unravels into an elastic ball that invites you to move your feet and bust it, with one simple rule: close your eyes and be free. –Clover Hope",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxfjLdQAA4I,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7a8e978731ac7095ec45c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Dawn-Richard.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Dawn_Richard-Bussifame.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,65,Armand Hammer and the Alchemist,“Stonefruit”,Backwoodz Studioz,"Backwoodz Studioz NYC rappers Elucid and billy woods have been making uncompromising music together as Armand Hammer since 2013, but this year’s collab with veteran producer the Alchemist, Haram, finds them at a rarified new level. The simple production on album closer “Stonefruit” centers a siren synth that sits just behind the beat of a triumphant drumroll and two repeating arpeggios. ELUCID matches the production with a gruff verse about love and its pitfalls, and billy woods follows from the opposite angle, gliding through thorny rhyme schemes (regalia, bougainvillea, marginalia) before zeroing in on the image of a woman who conquers and cannibalizes his body. If Armand Hammer’s brutal realism usually beats the listener into submission, “Stonefruit” is a fantastical balm for our wounds. –Raphael Helfand",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4S3gEfqPQlM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7aa23e300dbbaf1abad34/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Armand-Hammer.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Armand_Hammer_and_the_Alchemist-Stonefruit.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,64,serpentwithfeet,“Fellowship”,Secretly Canadian,"Secretly Canadian On this jubilant ode to friendship, serpentwithfeet’s ethereal falsetto glistens like sunlight on a lake as he details the jokes and customs he shares with those closest to him: their “crafty looks when there’s nothing to wear” and “fascination with Prosecco.” He sings with generosity over warm percussion, making it feel like you’re immersed in an amber-hued movie montage. “Fellowship” is a high note on DEACON, which celebrates supportive relationships while embracing emotional growth. It suggests we worry less, and actively embrace love in every shape it takes. –Vrinda Jagota",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rld75JvoN48,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7aabde063f3b44683bcd1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/serpentwithfeet.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/serpentwithfeet-Fellowship.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,63,Backxwash,“I Lie Here Buried With My Rings and My Dresses” [ft. Ada Rook],Ugly Hag,"Ugly Hag Rapper-producer Backxwash finds clarity in rage. The title track from her latest album channels rap, metal, and industrial into a tornado of pent-up anger, world history, and potent soul-searching. “The artistry that I’m giving, ghosted up in the matrix,” the Zambian-Canadian artist bellows. “Almost like our ancients weren’t posted up in the slave ships.” Confronting sinister specters of the past, she offers an exorcism that’s both aggressive and beautiful. –Dylan Green",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-I9RpfCeo5E,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7ab52e300dbbaf1abad36/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Backxwash.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Backxwash-I_Lie_Here_Buried_With_My_Rings_and_My_Dresses_ft_Ada_Rook.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,62,Lil Nas X,“MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name)”,Columbia,"Columbia Who among us could resist Lil Nas X riding a stripper pole into hell to give a lap dance to the devil? “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)” was his most explicitly queer track to date, and the video is undeniable proof that he is one of the most creative, unpredictable artists working today. The song itself is more familiar but still thoroughly joyful: an upbeat, desperately escalating desire-spiral towards a bad-news hookup, elevated to high drama by banjo, flamenco guitar, and lusty humming. –NM Mashurov",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6swmTBVI83k,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7abfc4301dc152b2ab711/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lil-Nas-X.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Lil_Nas_X-MONTERO_Call_Me_By_Your_Name.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,61,Cleo Sol,“23”,Forever Living Originals,"Forever Living Originals Musically, “23” sounds like the best part of the summer, with a harp, chirping birds, and sunny vocal harmonies. But lyrically, it’s a somber reflection on UK singer-songwriter Cleo Sol’s relationship with her mother, occasioned by the birth of her own daughter. It all adds up to one cathartic exhale, as Sol attempts to release her mother from the burden of failing to meet her goals while promising to do better herself. “The little stars and the locked up dreams,” she sings, “the missing pieces, they’re in me.” –Veracia Ankrah",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IdLgRpa3W0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7acb4c506646422ab9c0a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Cleo-Sol.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Cleo_Sol-23.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,60,LSDXOXO,“Sick Bitch”,XL,"XL LSDXOXO cuts straight to the point on “Sick Bitch,” an immaculately filthy statement of intent: “I’m a sick bitch/And I like freak sex/If you want to test the limits of my gag reflex,” the Berlin-based producer growls coolly. It’s techno for the sluts who’ll emerge from all-night dick appointments with their eyeliner still looking immaculate. Over a bed of dial-tone synths, thumping kicks, and laser zaps, LSDXOXO goads someone to “go berserk” and deliver on rough sex; the pièce de résistance is cut-up moans that simulate being edged, culminating in blissed-out aaaaahhhs. It’s not for the faint of heart, but “Sick Bitch” contains so much pleasure. –Cat Zhang",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leDOXsXSOzo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7ad50e063f3b44683bcd3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/LSDXOXO.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/LSDXOXO-Sick_Bitch.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,59,Circuit des Yeux,“Dogma”,Matador,"Matador A dear friend’s death, a lonely artist residency, an intractable bout of writer’s block: Circuit des Yeux mastermind Haley Fohr was having a hell of a hard go of things. “Dogma,” the militantly lithe rock track on -io, an album of otherwise pillowy orchestral dimensions, serves as Fohr’s stubborn note-to-self: Keep moving and keep busy, and you might just keep it together. “Tell me how to feel right/Tell me how to see the light,” she commands over drums so mighty they stanch the synthesizer din creeping beneath her. Through this forward motion, she cultivates the strength to survive, at least until answers about what’s next come easier. –Grayson Haver Currin",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1PGGcw3xeI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7ae1a482c9acdf0ddc2e4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Circuit-des-Yeux.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Circuit_des_Yeux-Dogma.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,58,Erika de Casier,“Drama”,4AD,"4AD “Drama” isn’t fights and fireworks. Against a skittering beat and guitar loop right out of one of Kandi and She’kspere’s late-’90s productions, Erika de Casier insinuates vocal lines as nimble as Craig David and coy as Aaliyah. Her voice starts off processed and digitized, as if it’s coming from a clock radio, and she’s mic’d close to capture every purr. A fog of strings and chillout piano conjure up the pure moods, while de Casier murmurs decidedly impure propositions. Like much contemporary Y2K&B, “Drama” sounds dreamier and more delicate than the actual music of the past—fitting for this track about woozy late-night texts and the relationship rubble left behind. –Katherine St. Asaph",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmzccjPrH0s,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7af0a14c6f0e2df9a3243/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Erika-de-Casier.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Erika_de_Casier-Drama.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,57,Amaarae,“Sad Girlz Luv Money Remix” [ft. Kali Uchis and Moliy],Golden Child Entertainment,"Golden Child Entertainment Nothing is sexier than a woman getting paid. “SAD GIRLZ LUV MONEY,” a sleek standout from Amaraae’s 2020 debut The Angel You Don’t Know, indulges in the pleasure of nabbing that “mula-la-la-la” and going dancing; the world-conquering remix featuring Colombian-American pop star Kali Uchis—which became a TikTok sensation and then hit the Billboard charts—only heightens the opulent sensuality. Uchis’ soft, lustrous vocals align seamlessly with Amaarae’s wispy falsetto and fellow Ghanaian-American singer Moliy’s airy purrs as they trade verses over the cool, rocking beat. “I really want to get naughty/I think you’re such a hottie,” Amaarae sings, ever so blunt and coquettish. It’s “fuck bitches, get money,” this time for the ladies. –Cat Zhang",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2oEeNlQeoQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7afae78731ac7095ec45e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Amaarae.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Amaarae-Sad_Girlz_Luv_Money_Remix_ft_Kali_Uchis_and_Moliy.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,56,Monaleo,“Beating Down Yo Block”,Self-released,"Self-released On her viral single “Beating Down Yo Block,” Houston rapper Monaleo is dauntless and defiant, a brat and a boss, a benevolent leader and, potentially, the last thing you see before you meet your maker: “I’m pretty but I’ll take a n***a life and that’s the tea, bitch,” she raps in her take-no-shit Texas drawl. Born out of horrific struggle—the 20-year-old recorded the track as a way to gas herself up after leaving an abusive ex—“Beating Down Yo Block” is a beatific clapback. Another famed Houstonite once insisted that the best revenge is your paper, but Monaleo has another idea that could be even more effective: make a song he’ll never be able to escape, no matter how hard he tries. –Shaad D’Souza",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDZJPJV__bQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7b03178731ac7095ec460/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Monaleo.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Monaleo-Beating_Down_Yo_Block.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,55,Bartees Strange,“Weights”,Memory Music,"Memory Music On its surface, “Weights” is one of countless songs about clinging to a crush. In the hands of Bartees Strange, however, that familiar theme gets a redesign worthy of the pantheon. Armed with an explosive rhythm section and guitars aimed at the cheap seats, Bartees captures the most pivotal moment of post-relationship life—the decision to move on—through Bloc Party-style crescendos and throat-clearing howls. Think karaoke for the heartbroken desperately seeking confidence. Taken from the deluxe edition of his breakthrough 2020 album Live Forever, “Weights” is a personal victory lap that basks in an adrenaline spike so strong that listeners can feel it, too. –Nina Corcoran",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2xplsdve0M,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7b10b45c013baf49b7e5b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bartees-Strange.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Bartees_Strange-Weights.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,54,Saweetie,“Best Friend” [ft. Doja Cat],ICY / Warner,"ICY / Warner Just a few years ago, mainstream collabs between women in rap were as rare as a genuine Notes app apology. Now, there’s an embarrassment of riches, and “Best Friend” is one of those coups: two of rap’s most dominant merging to hype each other up, as good confidants do. (Who hasn’t spotted their Day One on the street and screamed, “Beep beep, is that my bestie in a Tessie”?) Over a beat that bounces like a pogo stick, Saweetie lobs bad-bitchisms at Doja Cat, whose masterful shapeshifting manifests as a bubbly, three-flow verse. As public displays of affection go, this is the kind that’s perfectly admissible. –Clover Hope",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xJUCsyMQes,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7b23845c013baf49b7e5f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Saweetie.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Saweetie-Best_Friend_ft_Doja_Cat.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,53,Tirzah,“Send Me”,Domino,"Domino Stripped to synthesizer, voice, and the occasional sullen drumbeat, Tirzah’s album Colourgrade demonstrates a self-protective restraint. “Send Me” is among the record’s most spartan songs: A single guitar figure is looped over a rickety hi-hat pattern, practically without variation, for four minutes. Over this skeletal frame, Tirzah asks for healing. “Send me sun at dawn/Gonna let it heal some more,” she sings softly, as though cooing a lullaby to her newborn; the lyrics are both tender and cryptic. Then, in the final 30 seconds, she steps on a stomp box, and all that palliative energy suddenly goes up in flames. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuC1eP7FhNA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7b3503f8e2207712e7209/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Tirzah.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Tirzah-Send_Me.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,52,Billie Eilish,“Happier Than Ever”,Darkroom / Interscope,"Darkroom / Interscope For much of her sophomore album, Billie Eilish is subdued, rarely rising past a melodic whisper even when she’s spitting venom at stalkers, trolls, and abusers. At first, the record’s sprawling title track feels like more of the same: “Happier Than Ever” begins with wafty ukulele, twinkly keys, and Eilish’s cozy vibrato, her opening salvo so wistfully delivered that you almost miss its underlying spite. But midway through, Billie’s inner Alanis activates. She submits to rage and cranks the volume, summoning a torrent of fried guitar and muffled screams as she reams out an ex. “I don’t talk shit about you on the internet,” she wails, before proceeding to talk a whole lot of shit. It can be tempting to air your grievances online, but Eilish knows that her burns make better lyrics than tweets. –Olivia Horn",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/OORBa32WFcM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7b3e734f90bf312300029/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Billie-Eilish.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Billie_Eilish-Happier_Than_Ever.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,51,Little Simz,“Introvert”,Age 101,"Age 101 “Introvert” is the opening in a chilling, fantastical score where Little Simz is the messiah tasked with preventing evil from ending the world. Rather than sheer gospel, the song plays like theme music for a champion boxer jogging into the ring before Michael Buffer announces, “Let’s get ready to rumble!”—except the match is taking place at a cathedral over the sounds of church horns and bells. Simz vigilantly defends her title–over 10 years in the game–with steady, precise jabs: “I see sinners in a church, I see sinners in a church.” Here, she embraces being a loner and continues throwing bows, even if it means bad manners in the house of the Lord. –Veracia Ankrah",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxfGQ2AJHGk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7b55b45c013baf49b7e61/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Little-Simz.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Little_Simz-Introvert.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,50,The War on Drugs,“I Don’t Live Here Anymore”,Atlantic,"Atlantic Adam Granduciel is looking back at the past and man, it looks so good. “I Don’t Live Here Anymore,” the sublime title track from the War on Drugs’ fifth record, is an anthem made for being covered in tanning oil on a roof while wearing aviators, or pumping your fist in the air from the back of a pickup truck. It’s iridescent, with varicolored synths and guitars as big as skyscrapers. He namedrops Dylan, and he sings about memory and how we all need to walk through “this darkness” on our own. There’s still a sense of sweet, sweet mystery in this life, he seems to say. It might sound corny, but he’s right. –Sophie Kemp",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVh6XTwWhMY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7b5f3e300dbbaf1abad38/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-War-on-Drugs.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_War_on_Drugs-I_Dont_Live_Here_Anymore.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,49,Grouper,“Kelso (Blue sky)”,Kranky,"Kranky On “Kelso (Blue sky),” Liz Harris chauffeurs us along the desolate road of her internal struggle. While driving home on a rural highway beside the Columbia River, Harris is consumed by fog. Between pensive hums, she expresses her discontent as the light disappears around her. The sky turns dark and so do her emotions as she sings, “Can't beliеve that I don't get to see you one morе time.” She wants to tell us she’s happy, but at night she can only tell the truth. –Arjun Srivatsa",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5SU9NpMzi4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7be30c506646422ab9c0c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Grouper.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Grouper-Kelso_Blue_sky.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,48,Doss,“Strawberry”,LuckyMe,"LuckyMe Doss’ “Strawberry” begins with breath. It’s less like an inhalation that precedes singing and more like a sudden gasp for air, a sound befitting a track about realizing one’s self-worth. “Maybe this song believes you,” the New York musician whispers, as if revealing a secret. As her voice entwines with a sturdy beat, fairy-light synths, and the faintest hint of guitar fuzz, her anthropomorphizing feels like more than mere metaphor. Sound becomes a conduit for self-discovery—and for the revelation, “Maybe I could sing too.” “Strawberry” sits in a lineage of danceable shoegaze classics like “Soon” and “Pearl,” but it feels content with being simple, ephemeral: a refreshing morsel that’s unexpectedly life-giving. –Joshua Minsoo Kim",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gU7tX5YJghc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7beeb482c9acdf0ddc2e6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Doss-Strawberry.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Doss-Strawberry.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,47,L-Gante,"“Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 38”",DALE PLAY,"DALE PLAY Argentine rapper L-Gante’s “Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 38” is the sticky smash driving a new urbano style called Cumbia 420 that operates at the intersection of cumbia, reggaeton, and weed. Earlier this year, the fiendish track topped Argentina’s pop chart, and it’s easy to hear why: L-Gante’s immaculately sinister croak cuts through a beat that incorporates EDM bombast and an addictive brrrrrp sound effect that could be sourced from a Hans Zimmer movie score. He whizzes through local slang, rapping about the partying and women that make him feel powerful. You don’t have to be a stoner to appreciate the song, but L-Gante’s call to light a porro with him and let go is undeniable all the same. –Gio Santiago",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-mUsAXh6wI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7bfbce2c7c1ae7d723f32/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/L-Gante.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/L-Gante-Bzrp_Music_Sessions_Vol_38.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,46,Oneohtrix Point Never / Elizabeth Fraser,“Tales From the Trash Stratum”,Warp,"Warp The original “Trash Stratum,” on 2020’s Magic Oneohtrix Point Never, entwined distortion and euphony in familiar Dan Lopatin fashion. This year’s reinvention lovingly collages ’80s production motifs: pizzicato string flutters as fragrant as Enya, blobs of reverb-smudged piano that evoke Harold Budd, high-toned pings of bass that could be the Blue Nile or Seventeen Seconds. Like a bowerbird building a glittering nest, he succeeds in reeling in onetime Cocteau Twin Elizabeth Fraser. Fraser’s contributions—ASMR-triggering wisps of sibilant breath, chirruping syllables from a disintegrated lullaby—are closer to a diva’s warm-up exercises than an actual aria, and sometimes you long for her to take full-throated flight into song. But it’s lovely to hear the goth goddess brought into the glitchy 21st century. –Simon Reynolds",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fDPh5QKKss,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7c04914c6f0e2df9a3245/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Oneohtrix-Point-Never.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Oneohtrix_Point_Never__Elizabeth_Fraser-Tales_From_the_Trash_Stratum.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,45,Charli XCX,“Good Ones”,Atlantic,"Atlantic “RIP hyperpop?” Charli XCX tweeted this summer, while teasing the release of this track. Charli’s forte has always been her deep understanding of pop music’s fickle undercurrents, and just as her sound was starting to become synonymous with vocoders and late ’90s/early ’00s nostalgia, she jumped ship to deliver the kind of dancefloor banger that forcibly lifts your soul straight out of your body and into the refracted light of a disco ball. Charli has spent the last decade shape-shifting from mainstream hitmaker to avant-garde darling; “Good Ones” sees her embarking on yet another chapter, winking at us with a rhinestone eyelash in the process. –Cameron Cook",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjAuUXdSFaM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7c0c034f90bf31230002b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Charli-XCX.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Charli_XCX-Good_Ones.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,44,Rxk Nephew,“American tterroristt”,NewBreedTrapperRecords,"NewBreedTrapperRecords On this nearly 10-minute barrage, the rambling and unpredictable RXKNephew reels off enough nonsensical conspiracy theories to make Joe Rogan think: This guy is really onto something! The wildest ones—about the COVID vaccine causing mutations and dinosaurs discovering electricity before Benjamin Franklin—might stand out at first, but keep listening. I mean, points are made here: The Bible does have a lot of plot holes! Algebra is some bullshit! And let’s face it, they knew Kelly Clarkson would win American Idol all along! You might not want to elect Nephew to any school boards, but hear him out. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB2J0DpFOUg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7c154482c9acdf0ddc2e8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/RxkNephew.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Rxk_Nephew-American_tterroristt.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,43,Justin Bieber,“Peaches” [ft. Daniel Caesar and Giveon],RBMG / Def Jam,"RBMG / Def Jam Justin Bieber’s sixth album Justice was a big leap from last year’s Changes because it broke out of the latter’s gnawingly inoffensive R&B to embrace Bieber’s multi-genre versatility. And yet, “Peaches,” Justice’s peak, is a pure R&B jam. At this point, Bieber has tossed so many bromides gesturing at a deep connection to faith and marital love, it’s become a defining quirk. But where words and MLK quotes fail on the album, “Peaches” hits because he leans on the sheer feeling of those aspirations. The swing of his delivery adds a shimmer to the production’s major-key bliss. –Brian Josephs",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQ0yjYUFKAE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7c20f34f90bf31230002d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Justin-Bieber.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Justin_Bieber-Peaches_ft_Daniel_Caesar_and_Giveon.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,42,Magdalena Bay,“Chaeri”,Luminelle,"Luminelle Over a grumbling synth loop, singer Mica Tenenbaum asks, “Was I a bad friend?” and “I’m sorry/Did you feel lonely?” But “Chaeri” isn’t quite an apology, and Tenenbaum isn’t above some finger-pointing of her own—she urges her dour ally to be just a little happier. This is the hard conversation you had last year and then replayed in your head until you got it right—except the song ends before that all happens. Magdalena Bay relishes in the ache of just remembering. –Ashley Bardhan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ben9qDbrLYU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7c2e0482c9acdf0ddc2ea/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Magdalena-Bay.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Magdalena_Bay-Chaeri.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,41,Kacey Musgraves,“Breadwinner”,Interscope / UMG Nashville,"Interscope / UMG Nashville Kacey Musgraves’ Star-Crossed is both a divorce album and a story of tragic romance, and “Breadwinner” is its central cautionary tale—the faint siren that divides the tracklist into two acts. With her gift for wordplay, Musgraves flips the traditional role of the “breadwinner” to invent a new character, a kind of male gold digger who’s flattered and then intimidated by a woman’s success. As his shine dulls, she sees his motives clearly. Musgraves’ roots ground her: A slight twang lingers amid her glittering synth and soft rock, more country-pop symbiosis than crossover. She’s shedding a love that weighed her down, gazing through the rearview mirror and driving forward. –Julia Gray",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uknykpj1QSo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7c36ce2c7c1ae7d723f34/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kacey-Musgraves.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Kacey_Musgraves-Breadwinner.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,40,Illuminati Hotties,“MMMOOOAAAAAYAYA”,Hopeless / Snack Shack Tracks,"Hopeless / Snack Shack Tracks On the lead single from her impressive second LP, Illuminati Hotties head Sarah Tudzin doesn’t just sing about the disorienting whiplash of modern existence—she simulates it. Shifting voices and tones like she’s driving stick in the Alps, Tudzin tosses everything together at full speed: nonsequiturs about late-stage capitalism, nihilistic onomatopoeia, possibly earnest requests to be choked, trolling of customer-service representatives. She toggles between punk chords in the verses and surf-rock hooks in the chorus, the music as brazen and impudent as her dispatches from the brink. –Jillian Mapes",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvQCWX8w_Yw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7c45478731ac7095ec462/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/illuminati-hotties.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Illuminati_Hotties-MMMOOOAAAAAYAYA.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,39,Adele,“To Be Loved”,Columbia,"Columbia On “To Be Loved” Adele zeros in on a relationship’s scars and scratches until there is blood. She has never controlled her vocals as precisely as on this minimal piano ballad about the end of her marriage. And, letting loose after a majestic and accusatory bridge, she pushes her voice way past the elegant restraint that is her signature, as it curdles into squalls and ragged screams. “To Be Loved” feels beyond what we know an Adele song to be, because the desperation is beyond what she has ever known. –Owen Myers",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dlExeOyFh4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7c5f44301dc152b2ab713/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Adele.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Adele-To_Be_Loved.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,38,Playboi Carti,“Slay3r”,AWGE / Interscope,"AWGE / Interscope Of all the rock bands Playboi Carti could have bragged that he “could’ve joined,” it makes sense that he chose Slayer. Many of the rapper’s obsessions are reflected in the larger-than-life thrash metal group: leather-clad showmanship, a wicked mix of catchiness and confrontation, satanism at arena-scale. Ironically, “Slay3r” sounds downright bubbly next to the post-Yeezus darkwave found elsewhere on Whole Lotta Red. But Carti’s vocals, which alternate between a stage whisper and a squeaky rasp, lend the ascending synths and distant chirps a slippery, even sinister, edge. If attitude is what matters, Carti is ready for his audition. –Mehan Jayasuriya",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0DJDF0uSek,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7c6f214c6f0e2df9a3247/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Playboi-Carti.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Playboi_Carti-Slay3r.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,37,Madlib,“Road of the Lonely Ones”,Madlib Invazion,"Madlib Invazion “Road of the Lonely Ones” is the plaintive heart of Madlib’s Sound Ancestors, spare enough to stand out from the heady rush of the rest of the album. It resurrects a mournful hook from the obscure late-1960s Philly soul group the Ethics, brightening their lost-love lament with a skittering drum break. If the task of the crate-digging producer is to convey to listeners the thrill of discovery, Madlib goes further, imbuing his dusty sample with layers of grief unanticipated by the original singer, or perhaps even the producer himself. The track’s hazy melancholy plays eerily like a tribute to MF DOOM, though Madlib created it before he learned of his friend and collaborator's untimely death. –Zach Schonfeld",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y52M28WQu2s,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7c7c434f90bf31230002f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Madlib.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Madlib-Road_of_the_Lonely_Ones.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,36,Burial,“Dark Gethsemane”,Keysound,"Keysound The beloved and enigmatic Burial resurfaced this year with Shock Power of Love, his split EP with London producer Blackdown. Of its four songs, the undeniable highlight is “Dark Gethsemane,” a cinematically sprawling track clocking in at 10 minutes. Burial opens with a subtle, searching garage beat, beneath which snakes a stream of sirens, chimes, and police radio chatter. The constant vinyl crackle has a lulling quality; not so the fiery gospel cry that follows: “We must shock this nation with the power of love!” Those words loop over an incandescent choir until Burial pitches the phrase down to a darker register. Armed with bellowing horns and driving bass, the incessant sermon becomes something fiercer: a battle cry. –Madison Bloom",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nORcDjx-Dvg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7c86871c70ac9122f1d28/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Burial.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Burial-Dark_Gethsemane.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,35,Doja Cat,“Kiss Me More” [ft. SZA],Kemosabe / RCA,"Kemosabe / RCA “Kiss Me More” is an ode to one of romance’s greatest and simplest pleasures: kissing. This might seem a little PG-13 compared to the summer of “WAP,” but it’s far from chaste. There’s just something about a really heady kiss (or hundreds of them). And though it’s their first collaboration, Doja Cat and SZA have effortless chemistry. Their bestie energy alongside a playful melody reminiscent of Janet Jackson’s “The Pleasure Principle” and Olivia Newton-John’s “Physical,” capped with a deliciously bratty hook, made “Kiss Me More” one of this summer’s funnest pop songs. –NM Mashurov",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EVVKs6DQLo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7c924482c9acdf0ddc2ec/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Doja-Cat.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Doja_Cat-Kiss_Me_More_ft_SZA.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,34,MIKE,“Crystal Ball”,10K,"10K The sampled horn that opens “Crystal Ball” brings to mind the euphoria of a Sunday morning free of all responsibility. Though MIKE’s music has often been marked by heaviness—his 2020 album Weight of the World found him grappling with his mother’s death—this single from the NYC rapper’s luminous Disco! radiates with hope. “Suppressive of a big smile, why I had to shave clean,” he proudly raps. Even though paranoia follows closely in the song’s refrain, MIKE’s cheerful words freely drift between a smoky vocal chop and slow-churning drums. Nothing can stop his glow now. –Brandon Callender",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kM52gFmY0hQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7c9f034f90bf312300031/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/MIKE.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/MIKE-Crystal_Ball.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,33,Mdou Moctar,“Afrique Victime”,Matador,"Matador Those of us who speak neither French nor Tamasheq can only experience “Afrique Victime” at a remove, yet it’s a conversation we recognize all too well. Mdou Moctar, who has carried a nomadic Tuareg tradition of electric blues called assouf  thousands of miles beyond the Sahara, inflames colonial and ancestral tongues with his spark-spitting guitar, lighting an African lament he sings so lovingly that a love song is all it could be. Above all, the iconoclast from Niger makes an aged form feel young again—not just assouf, but also rock music itself, which sounds newly radical in his hands. –Brian Howe",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnERiRvlw58,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7cb354301dc152b2ab716/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mdou-Moctar.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Mdou_Moctar-Afrique_Victime.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,32,duendita,“Open Eyes”,Mexican Summer,"Mexican Summer On “Open Eyes,” duendita sings about overcoming personal tumult, her voice trilling high and swaying low, deftly maneuvering through a jazz ensemble and the swirl of synthesizers. The New York artist’s final lines are imbued with a sense of purpose and serenity—“I’m wishing peace and stillness unto you”—but there’s a twist ending; at the coda, the already-loose structure unfurls completely, and a phrase from earlier in the song (“blind is our faith”) gets caught in a loop. duendita seems to be reminding us that the path to enlightenment is never linear, never easy, and never over. –Chris O’Connell",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-z_dp3LLrI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7cd54c506646422ab9c10/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/duendita.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/duendita-Open_Eyes.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,31,Jessie Ware,“Please”,PMR / Friends Keep Secrets / Interscope,"PMR / Friends Keep Secrets / Interscope A sequencer, a vocal melody with hints of KC and the Sunshine Band, and the thumpiest of thumps—it shouldn’t be this easy to make a banger. This postscript to last year’s What’s Your Pleasure? continues the transformation of Jessie Ware from an artist who sighed elegantly at the end of relationships into a queen of the dancefloor. A line like “Don’t upset the rhythm tonight” might have appeared as a plea on one of Devotion’s devastating ballads; in “Please,” it’s a giddy come-on after a couple vodka sodas. Her voice wraps around the chorus like a feather boa. –Alfred Soto",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-31FETutIr4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7ceaf4301dc152b2ab718/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jessie-Ware.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Jessie_Ware-Please.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,30,Noname,“Rainforest”,Self-released,"Self-released “Rainforest” is equal parts Twitter timeline cleanse and reality check. Rapper and radical thought leader Noname condemns the worship of billionaires, the emptiness of consumer culture, and rampant environmental decay, but the song isn’t a biting anthem as much as a solemn lament. Over featherlight syncopations and acoustic guitar plucks, she sounds disappointed but resolute as she lays out how racism and capitalism poison the way we feel and love. “I just wanna dance tonight,” she raps in the hook, knowing it can never be so simple. –Ivie Ani",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKYrGdvmeqc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7cf6f10001079799089f7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Noname.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Noname-Rainforest.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,29,Dry Cleaning,“Scratchcard Lanyard”,4AD,"4AD Like a high school reunion in the midst of a personal crisis, “Scratchcard Lanyard” was both oddly welcoming and creepingly surreal. The song—a tonal burst of post-punk guitars, basslines you could hang your coat on, and lyrics about ceramic shoes and bouncy balls that resonated almost despite themselves—felt like an anthem for a world knocked slightly askew. Florence Shaw’s affably dry, permanently bemused tone is at delicious odds with any kind of musical convention, a key factor in Dry Cleaning’s continuing journey through the indie rock looking glass. –Ben Cardew",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PuqlOTyJt0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7d344482c9acdf0ddc2ee/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Dry-Cleaning.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Dry_Cleaning-Scratchcard_Lanyard.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,28,Azealia Banks,“Fuck Him All Night”,Chaos & Glory Recordings,"Chaos & Glory Recordings Like the bimbo, the bitch is a classic archetype. Half self-styled genius, half-warrior, the bitch feeds cannilly on the tender meat of respectability politics, refuses to accept an L, and embraces hostility on a level so fundamental it might be cellular. Banks is a bitch with stamina. “Fuck Him All Night” is her and producer Galcher Lustwerk’s spare take on booty house: a horny, repetitive, Chicago-indebted genre of dance music that pickles her spirit like it’s in a vat of vinegar. It’s neither her best track nor her worst, but the vim is—as promised—carnivorous, dramatic, stabby. The single’s cover has her nails splayed across her crotch in denim, spelling out the name of a fading rival (K-A-N-Y-E, right hand; ★-W-E-S-T, left) against lacquer the color of a perfect bruise. –Mina Tavakoli",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUZS41hcAcI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7d443e300dbbaf1abad3a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Azealia-Banks.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Azealia_Banks-Fuck_Him_All_Night.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,27,Mach-Hommy,“Kriminel”,Griselda,"Griselda Over the summer, Mach-Hommy talked about his inner conflict as a member of the Haitian diaspora amid the country’s ongoing turmoil. “A lot of our psychological energy and makeup is kind of, like, split between two places because we have to be where we are,” the elusive New Jersey rapper told NPR. “But, we also—we can’t leave where we come from.” On “Kriminel,” the heart of his 2021 album Pray for Haiti, he raps a haunting verse about the toll of everything sent home—and what home sends back. The beat loops a spectral vocal as a parade of family members visit him in his sleep. While he’s awake, another cousin reminds him to “send that fucking MoneyGram before he crack.” Toggling between Creole and English, Mach sounds ragged with worry as he details a life in constant commune with the tragedies of the past and an uncertain present. –Ross Scarano",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52mES-h-rD0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7d54678731ac7095ec466/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mach-Hommy.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Mach-Hommy-Kriminel.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,26,L’Rain,“Find It”,Mexican Summer,"Mexican Summer Discussion of L’Rain’s breakthrough album Fatigue often focused on the Brooklyn artist’s stated desire to be illegible and confusing. “Find It” underscores that her music can be easy to enjoy, as long as you appreciate a voyage of discovery. For much of its six-minute runtime, the song is warped, genre-mashing pop-soul not unlike early Ibeyi, as a scuffed pulse, murky low-end, and swirling vocals support an epigrammatic refrain: “Make a way out of no way.” The way may seem truly lost in the dizzying middle section, where cosmic jazz meets nature sounds. But all is soon found again in a field-recorded snippet of gospel song “I Won’t Complain,” which taps into a holy fervor reminiscent of Paradise Garage staple “Stand on the Word” or watching Summer of Soul for the first time. When the drums cascade in the end, everything makes perfect sense. It’s a sublime epiphany. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHRAPIwsS5I,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7d68514c6f0e2df9a3249/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/L'Rain.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/LRain-Find_It.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,25,Yves Tumor,“Jackie”,Warp,"Warp On “Jackie,” the shapeshifting art-rock performer Yves Tumor ruminates on torturous love and monomaniacal obsession, singing of sleepless nights and a spoiled appetite with sincerity that turns to detachment. This hot-blooded subject matter arrives via their most familiar track to date, with brightly metallic guitars and a vocal delivery that borders on pop-punk. There’s a thrilling tension between the brooding intensity of Tumor’s lyrical concerns and the propulsive accessibility of their sonic palette. It’s hard for listeners not to become obsessed with “Jackie” too. –Emma Madden",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQpaWvPFx8A,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7d76314c6f0e2df9a324b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Yves-Tumor.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Yves_Tumor-Jackie.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,24,PinkPantheress,“Just for Me”,Parlophone,"Parlophone The aughts revival got serious this year. With confessional lyrics alongside crushed-out 2-step and garage beats, 20-year-old PinkPantheress soundtracked the confessional side of TikTok in 480p resolution, calling back to the halcyon days of LiveJournal. “Just for me” lingers in the cutely obsessive, a diary entry that indulges the kind of vulnerability afforded by the more introverted corners of the internet. –Stefanie Fernández",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xo_lPnBlfto,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7d8d678731ac7095ec468/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/PinkPantheress.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/PinkPantheress-Just_for_Me.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,23,Jlin,“Embryo”,Planet Mu,"Planet Mu More than a decade after emerging from the Midwest’s footwork scene, Jlin still sounds like she’s only just getting started. Across three albums between 2015 and 2018, she proved herself capable of head-spinning abstracted beats, globe-shrinking traditional instrumentation, and even a modern-dance soundtrack of ambient minimalism. On the title track from her first proper solo record in three years, Jlin once again shows the unpredictability that has been her enduring strength. It’s difficult to imagine this song, originally written for a contemporary classical group, being played by human hands; it’s an exercise in controlled chaos that reveals Jlin at her most maximalist—and audacious—yet. Beneath a buzzing synth, the hyper-rhythms of “Embryo” bounce like Aphex Twin in a corn popper and shift shapes like a life cycle with only one stage: constant metamorphosis. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVfGJLbwNl8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7d99cc506646422ab9c12/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jlin.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Jlin-Embryo.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,22,Baby Keem,“family ties” [ft. Kendrick Lamar],pgLang / Columbia,"pgLang / Columbia “Family Ties” is IMAX rap—a multi-suite affair that opens with a horn fanfare and proceeds to cast a hungry upstart against his rejuvenated mentor, both eager to steal scenes. Its event status is heightened even further because this is the first major song to feature Kendrick Lamar in years. But first up is his cousin Baby Keem, just 20 years old at the time of the single’s release and so excitable at the start of his verse he can hardly finish his words. Keem’s elation quickly morphs into confidence as he lets off a series of playful taunts: “The girl of your dreams to me is a fan/I netted 10 million and did a lil’ dance.” Then there’s Kendrick, who tidily addresses social unrest and a pandemic in just a few lines, reminding Keem, the Pulitzer committee, and the rest of the world that he still sits patiently at the pinnacle—a taste of fury to come. –Matthew Strauss",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6HBZC9pZHQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7da5045c013baf49b7e98/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Baby-Keem.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Baby_Keem-family_ties_ft_Kendrick_Lamar.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,21,black midi,“John L”,Rough Trade,"Rough Trade black midi’s debut sprawled across the barrens of outré rock, sporadically burping up gold from its rabbit-hole hooks. The London outfit’s follow-up, Cavalcade, explores leafier, spongier territories, but only after “John L” blows open a portal from one record to the next. Propelled by a chaotically catchy riff, the album opener arms vocalist Geordie Greep with his most audacious lyrics to date: Adopting the eerie neutrality of a disaster reporter, he populates the brass-spangled maelstrom with teeming crowds and a jingoistic leader whose “gargling non-song whips throng into frenzy.” His hallucinatory imagery bursts dizzyingly to life: dark surrealism scoped on the horror of our times. –Jazz Monroe",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GT0nSp8lUws,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7db5fe300dbbaf1abad6e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/black-midi.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/black_midi-John_L.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,20,SZA,“Good Days”,Top Dawg / RCA,"Top Dawg / RCA SZA unspools her anxieties over a failed relationship on “Good Days,” an achingly intimate song that spills out like a stream of consciousness. Over lush, glimmering guitar, she pleads for rest, to think of anything but her former lover, for her brain to empty out. In moments of strength, she can be cutting—“I don’t miss no ex/I don’t miss no text/I choose not to respond,” she croons—and the hope in her voice transforms introspection into something stunning. She wants to believe in recovery and redemption; and in SZA’s world, the want is enough. –Dani Blum",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oh64haEP9g8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7dc4645c013baf49b7e9a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/SZA.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/SZA-Good_Days.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,19,Faye Webster,“I Know I’m Funny haha”,Secretly Canadian,"Secretly Canadian The stakes are low on the title track to Faye Webster’s fourth album, and that’s kind of the point. There’s no chorus, just three quick mumbled verses, about drinking saké on her front porch, the bass guitar she bought for her boyfriend’s birthday (“the same one the guy from Linkin Park plays”), an awkward encounter with his sister. Flickers of pedal steel and drums shuffle below Faye’s lyrics, as if she’s taking a drunk walk home from the bar. It’s funny, yes, but also quietly devastating in its portrayal of a young woman’s insecurities. –Sophie Kemp",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmuNjoR8jUI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7dd76e2c7c1ae7d723f3b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Faye-Webster.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Faye_Webster-I_Know_Im_Funny_haha.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,18,Megan Thee Stallion,“Thot Shit”,300,"300 The moment Megan starts rapping on “Thot Shit,” the track begins to throb. “Booked, but I squeeze a lil’ head in my calendar/Looking at the mirror like, ‘Damn, I don’t brag enough,’” she raps. With a fantastic music video designed to push back against the moral panic over last year’s “WAP,” Megan goes from relishing her sexuality to weaponizing it; when she twerks on a garbage can steamrolling a senator or spreads her legs out on his desk, it’s clear that this is combat. “Thot Shit” is a state of mind, a no-holds-barred way of approaching the world. She snatches back a flippant word used by and for women, and turns it into a battle cry. –Dani Blum",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KynkMn5Hv3Q,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7ded714c6f0e2df9a324f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Megan-Thee-Stallion.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Megan_Thee_Stallion-Thot_Shit.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,17,Peggy Gou,“I Go”,Gudu Records,"Gudu Records “I Go” was engineered to motivate. The Korean lyrics were pulled from a note Peggy Gou wrote to herself on her phone—some words of encouragement after seeing just how exhausted she looked in an airport bathroom mirror. Her vocals are gentle, but her promise of persistence (“I go I go, I go I go”) feels powerful. Throbbing drum machines further bolster her energizing message, turning a personal pep talk into a lull-crushing banger. A six-minute ’90s dance megamix that feels 10 minutes too short, it definitely goes. –Evan Minsker",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKJgVg7Eux0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7e09be2c7c1ae7d723f3d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Peggy-Gou.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Peggy_Gou-I_Go.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,16,Tinashe,“Bouncin”,Self-released,"Self-released There’s something so pleasant and blithe about the line “I been sendin’ dirty pics/Hope they make it to the cloud,” that when Tinashe sings it, you can’t help but want the same. The 333 highlight delivers on the star’s unique ability to maneuver through sensual R&B with grace; her silky vocals and slick lyrics snake through the song’s beat like a gentle touch from a deft hand. She brims with confidence, assuming the role of an alluring pop icon, and projecting the kind of joy that is impossible not to join in on. –Gio Santiago",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gueFdP9WI4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7e147e2c7c1ae7d723f3f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Tinashe.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Tinashe-Bouncin.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,15,Big Thief,“Little Things”,,"Where Adrianne Lenker once might have illuminated a detail like a lawn chair or a spine tattoo, “Little Things” instead recounts the things she loves about someone in terms so sweeping as to be ambiguous. In turn, Big Thief blur their edges; buzzing guitar and lyrics sung in cursive smudge together like watercolors seeping across paper. Lenker’s lyrical longing comes into sharp focus with the line “Maybe I’m a little obsessed/Maybe you do use me.” It can feel hopeless knowing someone revels in your attention without planning on giving you the same, almost like those feelings have gone to waste. But “Little Things” encourages us to embrace our yearning, to let imaginations run wild. –Vrinda Jagota",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qF0dXT-v-vY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7e1ece300dbbaf1abad70/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Big-Thief.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Big_Thief-Little_Things.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,14,WizKid,“Essence” [ft. Tems],Starboy / Sony Music International / RCA,"Starboy / Sony Music International / RCA When it first appeared on Made in Lagos in October 2020, WizKid’s “Essence” barely made a ripple, but by the following summer, the song’s melody broke through like the sun spilling from a bleak winter’s grasp. The song thrives off of the musician’s talent for slickly blending various shades of Black music, mixing Afrobeats with the sweaty R&B radio duets of the aughts. It radiates sensuality, from its beatific production to the way the track’s leading pair lustfully stretch their syllables over the instrumentals. But really, this is Tems’ showcase. When she sings her hot-blooded, “You don’t need no other body,” she wraps us all in her yearning, lovers and strangers alike. –Brian Josephs",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jipQpjUA_o8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7e24214c6f0e2df9a3251/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Wizkid.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/WizKid-Essence_ft_Tems.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,13,Sofia Kourtesis,“La Perla”,Technicolour,"Technicolour Berlin-based producer Sofia Kourtesis built “La Perla” from field recordings she collected in Lima, Peru, as she cared for her dying father. Inspired by their shared love of the ocean, the song feels like a brief escape to a more forgiving world, surrounding a thumping, club-friendly beat with electronic layers that burble and sigh like soft waves. Kourtesis’ tender voice develops a bittersweet edge as she sings about trying to change and forget. Like the bivalve gem, “La Perla” has a soft glow, and as the opening number to Kourtesis’ gorgeous Fresia Magdalena EP, it sets the luminous tone for the songs that follow. –Allison Hussey",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WY1bZjXKKWA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7e29c78731ac7095ec46a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sofia-Kourtesis.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Sofia_Kourtesis-La_Perla.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,12,Sharon Van Etten / Angel Olsen,“Like I Used To”,Jagjaguwar,"Jagjaguwar “Like I Used To” embodies Angel Olsen’s and Sharon Van Etten’s ascensions to their thrones as two of the most important indie stars of the last dozen years—a couple of icons remembering how it’s done and taking what’s theirs. Released in May, during the brief glimmer between the vaccine’s arrival and the Delta variant’s emergence, it reflects this year’s sense of getting back to life and oneself, but also a more timeless pursuit of romantic newness. Short of Van Etten’s “Seventeen,” “Like I Used To” is the most overtly anthemic song either artist has been involved with, full of Springsteenish hooks, silvery glockenspiel runs, and a mood that is both desperately hopeful and undeniably swaggering. –Jillian Mapes",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ibj87fwRaM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7e2f74301dc152b2ab71b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sharon-Van-Etten-Angel-Olsen.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Sharon_Van_Etten__Angel_Olsen-Like_I_Used_To.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,11,Japanese Breakfast,“Be Sweet”,Dead Oceans,"Dead Oceans Japanese Breakfast’s most undeniable pop song to date was originally written to be pitched to big name stars. But Michelle Zauner and collaborator Jack Tatum (of Wild Nothing) realized that they had made something too good to give up. “Be sweet to me, baby,” a beatific clustered harmony urges, pointing to that boiling point when a messy argument badly needs to simmer. It’s a song desperate for a warm blanket of trust and affection, and there’s an inescapable feeling of bliss permeating all of Zauner and Tatum’s melodic decisions. That sick slinking bassline, those atmospheric ’80s R&B guitar stabs, and Zauner’s wholehearted commitment to the kind of vocal performance and hook you’d expect from Cyndi Lauper or Stacey Q all culminate in a blast-in-your-car singalong jam. Making up takes work, but through the lens of “Be Sweet,” the payoff sounds euphoric. –Evan Minsker",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZfcZEIo6Bw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7e34214c6f0e2df9a3253/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Japanese-Breakfast.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Japanese_Breakfast-Be_Sweet.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,10,Olivia Rodrigo,“deja vu”,Geffen,"Geffen Olivia Rodrigo first broke through with the chart-conquering phenom “drivers license,” but it was on its follow-up that she truly arrived. The endlessly screamable “deja vu” is all about the brutal details we think we glean from afar, likely through screens, about people who were once the main characters of our lives. It’s a psychological pop spiral, watching an ex move on, recycling the energy and excitement they sucked from you—strawberry ice cream, “Glee,” and Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girl” have possibly never instigated such impassioned indignation. “She thinks it’s special, but it’s all reused,” Olivia sings, rightfully bitter. From the outside, their lives might look like movies. Maybe the ex-boyfriend would get a credit. But in the drama of “deja vu,” Olivia is directing. –Jenn Pelly",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cii6ruuycQA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7e41245c013baf49b7e9c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Olivia-Rodrigo.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Olivia_Rodrigo-deja_vu.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,9,Arooj Aftab,“Mohabbat”,New Amsterdam,"New Amsterdam In “Mohabbat,” the centerpiece of Arooj Aftab’s breakthrough album Vulture Prince, the Brooklyn-based, Pakistan-born composer is accompanied by harp, flugelhorn, synth, guitar, and percussion—but you could be mistaken for imagining she’s the only person in the room. The arrangement coheres into a gentle cycle of the notes of a major chord, somewhere between an ambient arpeggio and the fingerpicked intro to a folk song, the kind with endless verses. As Aftab sings about grief and sadness in her calm, dusky voice, she doesn’t just tell you the way those feelings can isolate and suspend you in time. She and her collaborators make you feel it with every note, with every breath. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRZ98HX1MO8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7e48c482c9acdf0ddc2f0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Arooj-Aftab.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Arooj_Aftab-Mohabbat.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,8,Snail Mail,“Valentine”,Matador,"Matador Lindsey Jordan loves hard. On “Valentine,” the young indie rocker is spiraling in the aftermath of a breakup. It’s not as if the relationship was picture-perfect: Atop a ghostly synth she describes unequal power dynamics, conflicting desires. But that insight doesn’t make the notion of her ex moving on any less devastating: In fact, the intricacies of her narrative make it all the more thrilling when Jordan erupts on the song’s chorus over thunderous guitars, imbuing every word with an aching urgency. Heartbreak is as old as time itself, but on “Valentine,” Jordan transforms the feeling into rocket fuel, blowing a kiss as she blasts off. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxarOZ0JBcc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7e507c506646422ab9c15/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Snail-Mail.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Snail_Mail-Valentine.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,7,Mitski,“Working for the Knife”,Dead Oceans,"Dead Oceans The saying goes that if you do what you love, you’ll never have to work a day in your life. Mitski would like to have a word on that. After a long and grueling world tour supporting her breakthrough album Be the Cowboy, the singer took time off in 2019, saying she needed a break from the “constant churn” of performance. “Working for the Knife"" is her brooding, melancholic first major single back from this respite, and acts as an incisive warning about how much of our identity we give to our life’s greatest undertakings, and who we’re giving it up for. The song unfolds as a balancing act of vulnerability and expectation, of altruistic self-expression and the vanity of wanting to be seen, or even adored. There’s some humor to it all; forlorn, she recognizes that the world never stops turning, and that it’s fine to lie to ourselves if it helps pass the time. It’s a one-act play of existential malaise and a sardonic anthem for those who can't help but seek out the spotlight. –Puja Patel",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYbXt4_r9Pw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7e6bd4301dc152b2ab71d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mitski.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Mitski-Working_for_the_Knife.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,6,"Tyler, the Creator",“Lumberjack”,Columbia,"Columbia We’ve always known that Tyler was one of the best rappers working. And yet, for the last decade, he’s seemed to delight in withholding this ability while pursuing other opportunities: orchestral pop, cherry-colored funk, songs about the Grinch. With “Lumberjack,” he returns to hard-nosed rap, though it hardly feels like a capitulation—if anything, it sounds like he’s still thumbing his nose at naysayers. The beat pulls its trembling keys from a Gravediggaz song (probably a nod to critics that tried to pigeonhole Odd Future as “horrorcore”) and the song’s chorus (“Rolls Royce pull up/Black boy hop out”) is delivered like a middle finger. “That’s my nuance, used to be a weirdo,” he deadpans at one point, reminding us that hip-hop’s ultimate insider used to be an outsider. –Mehan Jayasuriya",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4Y7JIQlv20,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7e582c506646422ab9c19/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Tyler-the-Creator.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Tyler_the_Creator-Lumberjack.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,5,Lana Del Rey,“White Dress”,Polydor / Interscope,"Polydor / Interscope The pop music Lana Del Rey is making right now feels unattainable, like you simply have to cock your head and admire it through glass. Who is this person casting Sun Ra and Kings of Leon in a similar light? Who is using an Orlando business conference as a catalyst for Proustian reverie? Who is whispering these chipped-paint choruses so high in her register that they are impossible to sing along to? Who are you? is a question that has dogged Lana’s entire career, a question her songs answer mythically, cryptically, truthfully—sometimes all at once. This is what happens on “White Dress,” co-written by Jack Antonoff, a delirious highlight from her album Chemtrails Over the Country Club. Lana—a goth who wears all white in an attempt to be the most goth—is our melodramatic tour guide through her past, our “waitress/white dress” near-homophone queen. Sure, it’s a trip down memory lane to a simpler life before all the tabloid brouhaha, but when she sings about how waiting tables “made me feel like a god,” it’s as if she’s staring into a swirling cauldron, casting a spell to deify herself once more. –Jeremy D. Larson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJuV8PDwvC8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7e77745c013baf49b7e9e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lana-Del-Rey.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Lana_Del_Rey-White_Dress.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,4,Jazmine Sullivan,“Pick Up Your Feelings”,RCA,"RCA Breakup songs tend to fall into one of two categories. The first include ones that luxuriate in the aftermath of a relationship, reminiscing on what was lost and finding something like solace on the other side. Then there are those from the perspective of the jilted partner who wants to let it burn, pour a drink, and dance on the ashes. Jazmine Sullivan’s smoldering “Pick Up Your Feelings” belongs firmly with the latter. Here, whoever messed things up picked the right one on the wrong day. “You’re off the lease/Run me my keys,” Sullivan demands in the opening verse, voice pirouetting through octaves. The song rightfully claims a spot in the pantheon of definitive R&B dismissals like “Tyrone” and “Irreplaceable,” where specificity (“Need a ride?/Call that bitch/Gas way too expensive”) creates a vividly relatable portrait. If you need a sign to dump the two-timing partner in your life, Sullivan is graciously here to deliver. –Eric Torres",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkMRkQbVLVU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7e81fc506646422ab9c1b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jazmine-Sullivan.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Jazmine_Sullivan-Pick_Up_Your_Feelings.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,3,Low,“Days Like These”,Sub Pop,"Sub Pop “Days Like These” is a song in the form of an eclipse: the first half made of blinding light, the second an uncanny, disembodied stillness. Singing into a static blur that sounds like wind noise on video, or like someone’s sawing through the tape, Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker describe a vast and subtle longing, a desire for a kind of transcendence not found on Earth. “Know that I would do anything,” they cry, their fried-out vocals taking on the call-and-response pattern of a hymn. But in this strange, desaturated grief, there’s no action to take. Even the song doesn’t end, really; it just stretches out, twinkling in the distance, a lone satellite pressing on toward the edge of space. –Anna Gaca",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8QiSZRX8dA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7e88c482c9acdf0ddc2f2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Low.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Low-Days_Like_These.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,2,Cassandra Jenkins,“Hard Drive”,Ba Da Bing,"Ba Da Bing “Hard Drive” is part self-help podcast, part hero’s quest, part breathing exercise. Some of the song is spoken plain like a story, some of it sung. People pass through, including a security guard and a driving instructor, all with grounding lessons to impart. Its instrumentation is dotted with wandering saxophone and guitar tones as dewy as a fall morning. The combined effect is curiously invigorating, like a perfume with an underlying note of dill pickle. As the centerpiece of New York City songwriter Cassandra Jenkins’ album An Overview on Phenomenal Nature, “Hard Drive” is also a kind of mission statement. Her search for guidance to quell neuroses both philosophical and practical eventually leads her to a psychic, who advises her to close her eyes, breathe in deeply, and count to three. As Jenkins repeats the numbers like a mantra, the song’s drum beat stiffens its spine and the sax starts to really blow. By the end, we’re floating, if only for a moment. –Ryan Dombal",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW8XoovSlsM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7e94b45c013baf49b7ea0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Cassandra-Jenkins.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Cassandra_Jenkins-Hard_Drive.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2021 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2021/,2021,year,song,1,Caroline Polachek,“Bunny Is a Rider”,Perpetual Novice,"Perpetual Novice Who is Bunny? In Caroline Polachek’s vision, she is a figure of undeniable intrigue. Sexy and beguiling, untraceable even by satellite, she goes where she wants and is beholden to no one. You wish you were Bunny; we all do. Casting off the gossamer avant-pop of 2019’s Pang, Polachek and producer Danny L Harle opt for a sound that is both commercial and weird: a deep, juicy bassline befitting of the Top 40, a “yoo hoo” whistle, a sample taken from Harle’s giggling baby, even marimba plinks that conjure an island vacation with Kygo. It’s a characteristic display of PC Music alum Harle’s impulse to simultaneously send-up and pay homage to popular forms, with results too deliciously crisp to read as a joke. Meanwhile, as if recreating the slipperiness of Bunny, Polachek darts through various images (blazing fireworks, a wet palette, a cut check), never resting long enough for you to grasp what’s next. She enters a new dimension in the chorus, switching from narrator to first-person, trading a Drake-like rhythmic delivery for her usual lithe, crystalline singing. She may be channeling the want to be immaterial, the ability to evaporate like a wisp of smoke, but when she sings “I’m so nonphysical,” it comes with embodied longing, as if she’s aching for touch. The thrill of the song is wrapped up in how it skirts any pressure to lay out its intentions, how it moves at its own whims. Bunny keeps you guessing. –Cat Zhang",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_V2ccs_Urk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/61a7e9c7e300dbbaf1abad72/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Caroline-Polachek.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Caroline_Polachek-Bunny_Is_a_Rider.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2020/,2020,year,album,50,Mary Lattimore,Silver Ladders,Ghostly,"Ghostly Listening to Mary Lattimore’s Silver Ladders feels like blinking awake on New Year’s Day: There’s some melancholy over what has passed mixed with buzzing wonder at what lies ahead. The harpist’s ambient compositions are somber but whimsical, submerging her careful plucks in murky pools of reverb and synth. She recorded the album with Slowdive’s Neil Halstead at his studio in the coastal English county of Cornwall, and cites the quiet minutiae of seaside life—cream tea, a pub quiz, the Sunday roast—as inspiration for the music. In turn, each twinkling note relays the bittersweet tranquility of memories gone by. –Vrinda Jagota",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/bestof2020/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/mary-lattimore/silver-ladders/lp | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/39vjtnz | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://marylattimoreharpist.bandcamp.com/album/silver-ladders | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5ROFj16TsmnCUd5YtiVDU3 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/150072161,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc940ede7768c955699095b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mary-Lattimore.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mary_Lattimore-Silver_Ladders.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2020/,2020,year,album,49,Yaeji,What We Drew,XL,"XL While the Korean-American producer Yaeji has anchored her previous work in strobe-lit beats and floor-shaking bass, her first full-length mixtape captures the anxious, aching throb of the morning after a night out. What We Drew burbles between frenetic drum patterns and hip-hop cadences, glossy electro beats and sinister synths. Within these entrancing soundscapes, stray ruminations float to the surface. “Why doesn’t it feel the same when I’m in the air?” she murmurs on “In the Mirror.” “My life is in a weird place,” she raps in Korean on “Free Interlude.” But she finds clarity, and joy, in examining it nonetheless. –Dani Blum",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/bestof2020/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/yaeji/what-we-drew | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/34kpuAr | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://kraejiyaeji.bandcamp.com/album/what-we-drew | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/150xIoPgnDoEfRvd0paiIc | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/135536196,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc941896bb9744db02a9efd/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Yaeji.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Yaeji-What_We_Drew.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2020/,2020,year,album,48,Charli XCX,how i’m feeling now,Atlantic,"Atlantic Cut off from her usual muses—her crew and the club—Charli XCX needed a different kind of community space to inspire her this year. So she built one via her fourth album, how i’m feeling now. Recording it over a few short weeks at the onset of the pandemic, Charli escaped isolation’s creative doldrums by opening up a feedback loop with her fans, sharing real-time updates and allowing them a hand in her process. The resulting songs pierce her party girl persona with something more sentimental—and sometimes quotidian—but, true to form, she buoyed the vibe with sugar-rush hooks and blowout beats. Never before has eating cereal sounded like such a riot. –Olivia Horn",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/bestof2020/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/charli-xcx/how-i-m-feeling-now | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/2Ua727R | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3a9qH2VEsSiOZvMrjaS0Nu | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/141361297 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6oq5HCzG4c,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc9423c6bb9744db02a9eff/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Charli-XCX.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Charli_XCX-how_im_feeling_now.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2020/,2020,year,album,47,Lil Baby,My Turn (Deluxe),Quality Control / Wolfpack Global / Motown / Capitol,"Quality Control / Wolfpack Global / Motown / Capitol It’s taken time for Lil Baby’s My Turn to grow into the beautiful, sprawling mess that it is. In February, it was a memorable yet conventional 20-track Atlanta rap album. But with the addition of six songs on the deluxe edition in May, the record kicked dirt on the arbitrary and outdated rules of rap albums. Instantly, it felt more like an unfocused, loose, and chaotic mid-aughts Lil Wayne mixtape with memorable tracks like “All In,” where the flexes are brilliantly batshit (Lil Baby threatens to wreck his Lambo truck just to prove, to no one in particular, that it’s not rented). The final addendum came in June: the protest anthem “The Bigger Picture” is a jarring inclusion on an album that isn’t overtly political—and that also makes it perfect. Baby can jump from whining about middle-school crushes to name-dropping denim brands to attempting to encapsulate one of the most tense and unjust moments of our lifetimes. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/bestof2020/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/lil-baby/my-turn | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/33tdk7J | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1ynyQdPQiXdYJNQEDL1S3d | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/132049635,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7fb590f9ba652bdb99140/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lil-Baby.png,/dataset/artwork/Lil_Baby-My_Turn_Deluxe.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2020/,2020,year,album,46,Burna Boy,Twice as Tall,Atlantic,"Atlantic Twentieth-century listeners imagined the music of the next millennium as a harsh, mechanistic grind or a frenzy of twitchy glitches. Afrobeats is a prime example of the future-pop that actually transpired, a hyper-digital sound far easier and oozier on the ear. As befits an artist obsessed with being a superhero, Burna Boy’s music is thoroughly posthuman: much of its succulence comes from how the singer’s lilting cadences mesh with Auto-Tune. Rhythmically, Burna’s Afro-fusion sound connects homebase Lagos to Kingston, Atlanta, and London. The historical sweep of the music is equally broad, not simply focused on this-minute sounds but spanning decades of influences and collaborators—the latter ranging here from ancestral icon Youssou N’Dour to nineties legends like Timbaland and Diddy, to recent stars like Stormzy. Lyrically, Burna muses on fame, destiny, and, on “Monsters You Made,” the legacy of colonialism in Nigeria. But these Fela-like or Marley-esque moments tend to melt into the glide-and-glisten of the sound. “I no be politician/Me no like no politics,” Burna insists—and that rings true. Twice as Tall triumphs not so much for its substance but as a shimmering surface, a landslide victory for the politics of pleasure. –Simon Reynolds",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/32sQ7lC | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/218CJKDCszsQQj7Amk7vIu | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/151857670,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7f208c61c34a7841b1ead/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Burna-Boy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Burna_Boy-Twice_as_Tall.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2020/,2020,year,album,45,Lyra Pramuk,Fountain,Bedroom Community,"Bedroom Community The opening notes of Lyra Pramuk’s debut album, Fountain, are like a slow tracking shot through the gates of a musical Atlantis. Using only her transmuted and multi-layered vocals, the Berlin-based composer creates a dense architecture where choral music and meditative techno meet. While some vocal lines emulate pulsing bass and celestial synth, the prevailing current is a surging chorus of near-language, struck through with the unmistakable trembles and notches of a human voice. Rather than muddling her meaning, this single instrument’s ambiguity—of feeling, timbre, gender, even species—suggests a state of perpetual transformation. Look, Pramuk seems to declare, at how much we contain. –Jazz Monroe",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/31yMiLa | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://lyrapramuk.bandcamp.com/album/fountain | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1wL3qXTeiRKUhEJM1tOf5q | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/129803629,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc9439f1ef00c5e1192c7a4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lyra-Pramuk.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lyra_Pramuk-Fountain.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2020/,2020,year,album,44,Freddie Gibbs / The Alchemist,Alfredo,ESGN / ALC / Empire,"ESGN / ALC / Empire “My execution might be televised.” That line and others from Freddie Gibbs’ “Scottie Beam” appeared in black marker on handmade signs this summer, held aloft in cities across the country during what may have been the largest wave of civil-rights protests in American history. Eventually, they were shared on Instagram by Gibbs himself, completing an utterly contemporary loop of art and life. Alfredo, the dexterous 38-year-old MC’s collaboration with beloved producer the Alchemist, is by turns heavy and light—his “Beam” verse ends with a rude kiss off to an ex in the form of Jordan-Pippen wordplay: “without me the bitch wouldn’t have got a ring.” More than a time capsule, Alfredo is an unruly feast of language. The napkins might be white linen but nobody’s using them. –Ross Scarano",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/bestof2020/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/freddie-gibbs/alfredo | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/34nqbsV | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3znl1qe13kyjQv7KcR685N | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/142032059,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7cfb20aaaf18ca0286f3b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Freddie-Gibbs-Alchemist.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Freddie_Gibbs__The_Alchemist-Alfredo.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2020/,2020,year,album,43,Megan Thee Stallion,Good News,1501 Certified /300,"1501 Certified /300 Megan Thee Stallion’s official debut album is a triumphant joyride that more than fulfills the promise of its title. After steamrolling detractors over classic Biggie on withering opener “Shots Fired,” the reigning Hot Girl shifts her focus to more pressing concerns, namely flexing and sexing. The album soars when Megan nods to the greats of rap and R&B, from a jolly rework of Juvenile to the Jazmine Sullivan-indebted bad bitch anthem “Circles.” More than anything, these songs remind us that even when the worst comes to pass, good times might be right around the corner. –Jessica Kariisa",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/3fV47Ka | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/0KjckH1EE6HRRurMIXSc0r | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/162814354,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc9451bd4d3a13a6758a502/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Megan-Thee-Stallion.png,/dataset/artwork/Megan_Thee_Stallion-Good_News.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2020/,2020,year,album,42,Kate NV,Room for the Moon,RVNG Intl.,"RVNG Intl. Room for the Moon feels like a safe place to hide from mounting anxiety. Moscow artist Kate Shilonosova’s third full-length is an engrossing collection of kaleidoscopic avant-pop in which each song unspools into a fantastic world inspired by everything from Sailor Moon to surrealist René Magritte to the Russian Mary Poppins. The album is always enchanting and full of small surprises: the particularly cartoonish warble of a synth on “Sayonara,” the intimate binaural hums on the meandering “Marafon 15,” the burst of laughter answering the lure of a saxophone on the cosmos-traversing “Plans.” New details peek out on every listen, like elements of wonder waiting to be discovered. –NM Mashurov",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/bestof2020/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/kate-nv/room-for-the-moon | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/3jvi4yZ | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://katenv.bandcamp.com/album/room-for-the-moon | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1GmdNCH9lvYzn0ZgtG8Mpa | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/131892938,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc945b7ee65027d9ed931dc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kate-NV.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kate_NV-Room_for_the_Moon.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2020/,2020,year,album,41,Rina Sawayama,SAWAYAMA,Dirty Hit,"Dirty Hit Rina Sawayama’s debut album is unafraid to present all of her paradoxes. The British-Japanese singer’s triumphant songs, which meld the fabulosity of Y2K-era Britney Spears with Korn-inspired nu-metal and campy stadium rock, invite sing-alongs and stylish TikTok choreography. But they’re also jam-packed with sharp, critical observations about growing up with dual identities, the Orientalist gaze, and the trappings of femininity. So as she thrashes between anti-capitalist bops and introspective anthems, Sawayama assumes the role of both pop diva and pop rebel, subverting expectations of what the genre could and should stand for. –Michelle Kim",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/bestof2020/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/rina-sawayama/sawayama | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/33P96rl | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3stadz88XVpHcXnVYMHc4J | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/127109955,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7fe6fd4d3a13a6758a454/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Rina-Sawayama.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rina_Sawayama-SAWAYAMA.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2020/,2020,year,album,40,Arca,KiCk i,XL,"XL In February, electronic experimentalist Arca dropped @@@@@, a 62-minute song framed as a pirate-radio broadcast from a post-singularity future that begins with whispers of a “diva constructed.” KiCk i, released four months later, is the Barcelona-based musician’s more straightforward take on diva-hood. Bullet casings fall to the floor on opener “Nonbinary,” but Arca isn’t under attack: “I do what I wanna do when I wanna do it,” she deadpans, and then proceeds to prove it by remaking herself with each track. KiCk i is her first record to prominently feature several guest singers, with Björk, Rosalía, SOPHIE, and Shygirl all present to witness her various metamorphoses. She turns liquid on the synth-sheathed “Time,” raps on the chaotic “Riquiquí,” and glitches with her voice pitched high on “Rip the Slit.” Presented as the first of four eventual albums, KiCk i shares all the promise of becoming, in both its pain and its joy. –Colin Lodewick",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/bestof2020/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/arca/kick-i | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/38s6ylO | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2KICtQ7dqaaot7B1yN9wPq | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/146631590,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7eb6cdcf8ebd9e69c42c7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Arca.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Arca-KiCk_i.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2020/,2020,year,album,39,Dehd,Flower of Devotion,Fire Talk,"Fire Talk In 2019, Chicago indie rock trio Dehd released the sparse and scrappy album Water, with songs informed by the romantic breakup of bassist Emily Kempf and guitarist Jason Balla, accompanied by Eric McGrady’s one-tom, one-snare minimalism. For their exquisite follow-up Flower of Devotion, Dehd upgraded to a proper studio, refining their gritty alchemy without scrubbing it too clean. Kempf and Balla trade yearning, hiccupy vocals across riffs that reverberate like heat waves off asphalt, as McGrady thuds away through the humid air. “If this is all that we get, so be it,” Kempf insists, a bit of wistful resignation that doubles as a mission statement for their proudly stripped-down approach. –Marc Hogan",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/bestof2020/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/dehd/flower-of-devotion | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/3e1Aiqp | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://dehdforever.bandcamp.com/album/flower-of-devotion | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/0kn1V8vpoxtEw69CcMDlik | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/132701415,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc807aa1ef00c5e1192c727/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Dehd.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dehd-Flower_of_Devotion.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2020/,2020,year,album,38,Duval Timothy,Help,Carrying Colour,"Carrying Colour Duval Timothy is constantly dismantling to rebuild on Help, a gorgeous, crestfallen record about possession and healing. The pianist and multidisciplinary London artist’s work skirts conventional disciplines, tinkering with the very concepts of “jazz” and “club” music as it synthesizes a substitute. His songs can be layered and minimal, lingual and graphic, natural and mechanical—all coming together in a work that both registers the omnipotence of imperial history and documents an ongoing restoration process. –Sheldon Pearce",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/3lrsHEo | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://duvaltimothy.bandcamp.com/album/help | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/6XgC2zL6j2hrqrAbYsaGmN | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/144562933,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc948f11ef00c5e1192c7a6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Duval-Timothy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Duval_Timothy-Help.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2020/,2020,year,album,37,Lomelda,Hannah,Double Double Whammy,"Double Double Whammy Hannah Read can make a melody out of anything. Throughout Hannah, her fifth album as Lomelda, her expressive warble blooms and shrinks into strange and beautiful phrasings, heightening their meaning. On the slow-burning “It’s Lomelda,” she croons off a list of her musical heroes and their work, from Yo La Tengo to Frank Ocean to Sufjan Stevens’ devastatingly spare “The Only Thing.” She turns a conversational bit of advice into a soaring mantra on “Wonder,” repeating the phrase “When you get it, give it all you got, you said” across vocal peaks and valleys. She sings like no one else in indie rock, as though she is guided by a golden energy from within. –Jillian Mapes",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/bestof2020/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/lomelda/hannah | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/31AYpaq | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://lomelda.bandcamp.com/album/hannah | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/0xyYtBmta0jBeqXOJsocSJ | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/145405142 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adKEqin5SoI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7b59a526a629411e3e86e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lomelda.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lomelda-Hannah.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2020/,2020,year,album,36,Special Interest,The Passion Of,Thrilling Living / Night School,"Thrilling Living / Night School New Orleans electro-punks Special Interest see catharsis in demolition. Frontperson Alli Logout’s jagged vocals dissect poverty, love, and commodified dissent, making The Passion Of the rare contemporary punk album that is actually as revolutionary as it sets out to be. For all of the record’s industrial squall and techno blast beats, it doesn’t just inspire destruction—it asks what you’ll rebuild from the rubble. –Madison Bloom",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/37JTckP | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://specialinterestno.bandcamp.com/album/the-passion-of | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1A8tZPpBIiYfF1lNFj4QbR | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/142839835,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc94cc9dcf8ebd9e69c4443/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Special-Interest.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Special_Interest-The_Passion_Of.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2020/,2020,year,album,35,Ka,Descendants of Cain,Iron Works,"Iron Works Ka has spent his 40s laboring over how to animate the ghosts of his home. The title of the Brownsville rapper’s engrossing album frames his traumas as the product of his father’s sins cursing east Brooklyn’s soil. Putting that lens to the side, his stories about the ease of embracing hate (“Solitude of Enoch”) and post-prison families (“Unto the Dust”) are just as gripping and vivid. Descendants of Cain’s frosty tone evaporates in its final minutes: “I Love (Mimi, Moms, Kev)” is Ka’s dedication to the people who saved him. The song’s title sentiment is simply uttered on the hook—he’s wounded, yet hopeful that the sentiment’s warmth can be felt. –Brian Josephs",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/3kpEfaR | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/0yhyMBfxKhjy1f7TsXXssl | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/140156121,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7edbb0f9ba652bdb99136/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ka.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ka-Descendants_of_Cain.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2020/,2020,year,album,34,Dogleg,Melee,Triple Crown,"Triple Crown A band’s impact shouldn’t be hypothetical, but here’s Dogleg, the debutants of Michigan emo, whose breakout year mostly took place in the imagination. Singer-songwriter Alex Stoitsiadis was supposed to be hollering his hooks over melodic post-hardcore guitars in roiling 250-cap clubs, and the scenes of heartbreak he described were supposed to be playing out for listeners in real life. The fact that Melee conjures a year so different from the one we got is part of why it leaves such a mark: The histrionics of emo aren’t just dramatic, they’re now science fiction. We’re left to sit alone and imagine what these songs should be doing. You air-drum the little hitch in “Fox” again and again across your steering wheel; you throw your chest forward in your home-office at all the perfectly executed half-time breakdowns; you do isometric lunges while Stoitsiadis sings about disintegrating. The old world that Dogleg wrote about sucks in its own way, but it’s the world they deserve. –Jeremy D. Larson",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/bestof2020/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/dogleg/melee | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/3n3dJow | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://dogleg.bandcamp.com/album/melee-2 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/6tCvAxUcCTFBEQeCKEAvT0 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/131309194,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc94dd7ee65027d9ed931de/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Dogleg.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dogleg-Melee.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2020/,2020,year,album,33,Beatrice Dillon,Workaround,PAN,"PAN The internet has plenty of playlists full of pillowy background noise, built for tuning out while you dig into the task at hand. Workaround inverts that dynamic: By requiring sustained close attention to the thumps and shimmers in your headphones, it offers something truly meditative. To the casual listener, Beatrice Dillon’s avant electronic tracks might seem austere. They are mostly untitled, proceed according to a single tempo across the whole album, and feature a drastically limited instrumental palette. Rarely does a particular sound last longer than a single beat. There is almost no reverb. But if you listen closely, a universe might open in the split-second space between two hi-hats. Synth stabs that at first seem uniform take on entirely new shapes with every repetition. Each element, shorn of everything extraneous, glows with significance. –Andy Cush",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/35kn2JG | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://beatricedillon.bandcamp.com/album/workaround | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1kGLxIjski3cSPhXBJRnw9 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/125059371,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc94e6e0f9ba652bdb99221/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Beatrice-Dillon.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beatrice_Dillon-Workaround.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2020/,2020,year,album,32,Drakeo the Ruler / JoogSzn,Thank You for Using GTL,Stinc Team,"Stinc Team Produced while Drakeo the Ruler was awaiting retrial in Los Angeles on a bogus gang charge, Thank You for Using GTL is punctuated with robotic warnings from the extortive inmate phone service over which it was recorded. GTL is a technical marvel as well as a creative one: producer JoogSzn’s beats retain their funk and low end while making space for Drakeo’s vocals, which come through impressively crisp. Across the record, the rapper uses singular rhythms and invented syntax to imagine his jewelry eliciting gasps from the juror box, chide police for snooping through his DMs, and laugh along with the inmates nodding their heads to his phone calls. By now, Drakeo has been released from jail, making GTL a testament to resourcefulness that will hopefully remain an anomaly in his catalog. –Paul A. Thompson",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/34jSzvP | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/6lF4KtV8umj69N06QxdlUc?si=9h2-TMiOTeezFTmTuC9mnA | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/142966590,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f100b962097041dd8c63ff/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Drakeo-the-Ruler-GTL.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Drakeo_the_Ruler__JoogSzn-Thank_You_for_Using_GTL.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2020/,2020,year,album,31,The Soft Pink Truth,Shall We Go on Sinning So That Grace May Increase?,Thrill Jockey,"Thrill Jockey For years, Matmos’ Drew Daniel used his solo project the Soft Pink Truth to join his disparate interests, reimagining punk classics and black metal as squirrelly glitch techno. His 2020 album of original compositions is a radically different proposition: a 43-minute ambient suite meant to counter fascism’s global spread with joy rather than despair. Close friends and peers contributed voice, reeds, percussion, and piano; the album’s nine tracks shift from airy drones to richly rendered deep house, from lyrical etudes to propulsive classical minimalism. For all its gentleness, it is an album of deep resolve, unshakable in its commitment to the idea that a better world is possible. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/bestof2020/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/the-soft-pink-truth/shall-we-go-on-sinning-so-that-grace-may-increase | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/3e8fXjl | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://thesoftpinktruth.bandcamp.com/album/shall-we-go-on-sinning-so-that-grace-may-increase | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1e3s36bc0Ell9KOKEsf16V,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc94f780f9ba652bdb99223/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-Soft-Pink-Truth.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Soft_Pink_Truth-Shall_We_Go_on_Sinning_So_That_Grace_May_Increase.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2020/,2020,year,album,30,Bartees Strange,Live Forever,Memory Music,"Memory Music “Genres keep us in our boxes,” Bartees Strange sing-raps on “Mossblerd,” a song that sounds like it’s falling apart even as he’s putting it together. No artist wants to be pigeonholed, but for Strange this resistance is crucial to the art he makes as a Black man working in a field most associated with white dudes. On his first album, Live Forever, there’s a righteous defiance to the way the D.C.-via-Oklahoma artist scrambles 2000s indie rock (the intimacy of Bon Iver, the bombast of the Arcade Fire) with hip-hop cadences, emo intensity, and punk catharsis, as though he’s working it all out in real time. His deep familiarity with each of those touchstones—he prefaced Live Forever with an EP of National covers—allows him to explode them from within and rethink not just how but if they speak for him. It makes for a complex and personal statement about the nature and worth of Black creativity and labor. –Stephen M. Deusner",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/bestof2020/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/bartees-strange/live-forever | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/2JTks6r | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://barteesstrange.bandcamp.com/album/live-forever | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/4Lu520UvMf7lJccCnKw3hJ | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/147569458,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc9509de7768c955699095d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bartees-Strange.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bartees_Strange-Live_Forever.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2020/,2020,year,album,29,Taylor Swift,folklore,Republic,"Republic Recorded in secret in quarantine and unleashed upon the world with less than a day’s warning, folklore was the first Taylor Swift album untethered from the traditional expectations of a blockbuster release. With no stadiums to fill, Swift could take risks that would have previously seemed unimaginable in a discography calibrated to reach the cheap seats: work with the National’s Aaron Dessner as her principal collaborator, duet with Bon Iver, make tracks that sound like Low and the Sundays, drop an s-bomb within the first 20 seconds of the first song. The result is some of the finest songwriting of Swift’s career, vivid storytelling both personal and fictional (and somewhere in between), stuffed with more Easter eggs than a Marvel movie. Infinite worlds are contained within the threads of that teal yogurt shop shirt and that infamous cardigan, carving a path for the Taylor Swift Cinematic Universe to expand ever onward. –Amy Phillips",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/2HpLRvP | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2fenSS68JI1h4Fo296JfGr | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/149678928 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUnDkI7l9LQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7ceddc61c34a7841b1e70/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Taylor-Swift.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Taylor_Swift-folklore.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2020/,2020,year,album,28,Chloe x Halle,Ungodly Hour,Parkwood / Columbia,"Parkwood / Columbia Historically, there are two trajectories from sweetie childhood star to flawed adult: the bumpy one full of high-profile foibles or the one where they wind up as robots. Neither hot mess nor robot, sisters Chloe x Halle have chosen a different route, from YouTube sensations to Beyoncé protégées to grown women. On their pop- and R&B-bending second album Ungodly Hour, they’re figuratively slapping an ID card on a bar and saying, “Bartender, I need a drink.” The Bailey sisters have quietly lost some of the wide-eyedness of the past and instead turned towards the flotsam and jetsam of twentysomething life. Ungodly Hour is a collection of low-key tracks that demonstrated true mastery of their intricate harmonies over slinky, charismatic production. It makes sense that the album gave them their biggest hit, the highly boppable “Do It.” While it feels like the duo shot up overnight and out of sight, their rise parallels the way the world has been living this year: inward and on an insomniac’s circadian rhythm. Hopefully, like Chloe x Halle, we reemerge into the real world, elegantly transformed by what happened in the wee hours of the morning. –Allison P. Davis",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/3eISF43 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2HIaUwS0PTUeqFFYHBBGAN | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/144455775,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc952970f9ba652bdb99225/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Chloe-x-Halle.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Chloe_x_Halle-Ungodly_Hour.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2020/,2020,year,album,27,Kelly Lee Owens,Inner Song,Smalltown Supersound,"Smalltown Supersound The followup to Kelly Lee Owens’ breakthrough self-titled LP is rooted in pain and loss—the shedding of a toxic relationship, the death of her grandmother, and the decay of the environment. Inner Song’s palette of pulsing basslines, swirling synths, and visceral found sounds draws influence from the practices of the sound-healing community: sound baths, shamanic drumming, and voice work. Owens wrote the lyrics in a depressive state following a trauma-release therapy session, transforming that cathartic expulsion of her pain into a record with healing properties of its own. Inner Song is club music at its most spiritual. It lies at the intersection of beats and ambience, where sounds are just vibrations entering and leaving the body, cleansing it of toxins. –Matthew Ismael Ruiz",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/bestof2020/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/kelly-lee-owens/inner-song/lp-plus-x2 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/3lpjPhN | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://kellyleeowens.bandcamp.com/album/inner-song | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3DzlkHEQtb0ABoxze4Zxi7 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/130833526,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc9539cd4d3a13a6758a506/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/KLO.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kelly_Lee_Owens-Inner_Song.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2020/,2020,year,album,26,Soccer Mommy,color theory,Loma Vista,"Loma Vista Sophie Allison paints with the shades of a bruise on color theory. Her mother’s terminal illness and her own struggles with depression appear in a wintry synesthesia of yellow, blue, and gray. Much like Sufjan Stevens in the songs of Carrie & Lowell, Allison ventures into the tundra of her despair and emerges with an unsparing and unsentimental account of survival. She buoys her bleak lyrics with the bright melodies and buzzing guitars that soundtracked Beavis and Butt-Head’s bickering on MTV in the ’90s. These instrumentals lend a “sense of comic relief,” Allison says, “like when you joke with your friend about your unhealthy habits.” In a year when hundreds of thousands of Americans perished, we needed friends desperately—someone to make us laugh, and someone to sit with us at shiva. With this intimate hospice of a record, Allison gave us both. –Peyton Thomas",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/bestof2020rock/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/soccer-mommy/color-theory/lp-plus | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/36KngdN | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://sopharela.bandcamp.com/album/color-theory | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2CISL0rSGzbO0MbQMlqBez | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/132017971,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc9048396ab91ca523e2c38/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Soccer-Mommy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Soccer_Mommy-color_theory.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2020/,2020,year,album,25,Nubya Garcia,Source,Concord Jazz,"Concord Jazz London-based tenor saxophonist Nubya Garcia made her debut album Source with the goal of exploring her roots: both her heritage as a child of Guyanese and Trinidadian immigrants, and the things that ground her as a person. The record effortlessly weaves between reggae, cumbia, Ethio-jazz, and more, containing wild energy and profound chill. Garcia has worked with many other musicians in and around her city’s vibrant jazz scene over the last few years, and her collaborators on Source are crucial to its eclectic range of styles. Still, without question, it’s Garcia’s performances and curatorial instincts that make this such a powerful statement of self. –Evan Minsker",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/bestof2020/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/nubya-garcia/source | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/2IQ8mdC | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://nubyagarcia.bandcamp.com/album/source | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iooBeTrG8wPKMgo7OAOX6 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/151981854,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc9551c0f9ba652bdb99227/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Nubya-Garcia.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nubya_Garcia-Source.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2020/,2020,year,album,24,Grimes,Miss Anthropocene,4AD,"4AD Grimes embodies the unhuman on Miss Anthropocene. Her fifth album’s title is a personification of the anthropocene, a theorized geological epoch in which civilization provokes its own destruction via climate crises. But rather than finding comfort in the anthropomorphic gesture, Grimes renders a bleak, if beautiful, portrait of nihilism. “Imminent annihilation sounds so dope,” she sings on “My Name Is Dark,” a prescient picture of doomsday raving. But in her instrumentation, she reaches for organic matter, sometimes painstakingly: Grimes meticulously tweaked acoustic guitar loops on “Delete Forever,” layering actual violins and banjo until they recall a post-apocalyptic campfire song. Grimes once treated lyrics as meaningless sound, but here, she’s shockingly honest about the pain of posh isolation: “I’ll tie my feet to rocks and drown/You’ll miss me when I’m not around.” –Arielle Gordon",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/bestof2020/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/grimes/miss-anthropocene | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/3muCSbX | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/35qyYk6OV6H8GxhS80NkzF | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/130819287,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fca71710aaaf18ca02870f5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Grimes.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Grimes-Miss_Anthropocene.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2020/,2020,year,album,23,Porridge Radio,Every Bad,Secretly Canadian,"Secretly Canadian On Every Bad, Brighton indie rock four-piece Porridge Radio make a strong case for curative self-scrutiny. Lead vocalist and songwriter Dana Margolin is incisive in her observations, and she often points them inward. Over airy guitars on the somber “Pop Song,” she exposes her least flattering attributes: a rotten core, a bitter disposition. But instead of corroding Margolin further, this music uplifts her, more like an exorcism of destructive thoughts than a platform for them. Her howled words and the music’s occasionally sharp edges are both caustic and restorative forces. –Madison Bloom",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/bestof2020/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/porridge-radio/every-bad | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/31x4ULn | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://porridgeradio.bandcamp.com/album/every-bad | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/4DN3XbB33kHTJA7HhI0RFI | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/125926326,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7f2db75014cd2f75cc54d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Porridge-Radio.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Porridge_Radio-Every_Bad.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2020/,2020,year,album,22,KeiyaA,"Forever, Ya Girl",Forever,"Forever KeiyaA is simply over it all on her debut album, Forever, Ya Girl. “I can’t wait to be alone, to be one with my blackest fire,” she exhales on “Nu World Burdens,” over a twinkling melody and drums warm enough to make your heart flutter. But even though she’s sick of the bullshit surrounding her, she doesn’t let it consume her being. Whether she’s fighting the urge to retreat back to bed or striving to permanently block a negative relationship, the 28-year-old singer and producer powers through with an impressively unbothered focus on growth amid the chaos. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/34npWOx | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://keiyaa.bandcamp.com/album/forever-ya-girl | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/6bMdCDoTp3dLXiG1oXRGYV | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/135486237,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fca735064866991b824b1c2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/KeiyaA.jpg,/dataset/artwork/KeiyaA-Forever_Ya_Girl.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2020/,2020,year,album,21,Dua Lipa,Future Nostalgia,Warner,"Warner Dua Lipa’s second studio album is anchored by popular sounds of the past, but it’s less attached to a memory than the promise of a feeling. Equal parts retro and fresh, Future Nostalgia is redolent of elements from the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s, nodding to the work of artists like Blondie, Chic, Kylie Minogue, Nile Rodgers, Prince, Madonna, and Daft Punk. As she glissades through disco synths on “Love Again,” talkbox funk on “Levitating,” and electronic dance rhythms on “Hallucinate,” the British singer effortlessly fuses styles without resorting to forced formulas. Alive with the kind of freedom that 2020 mostly failed to deliver, Lipa’s vision of future-pop pairs classic themes of love with enough hope to carry us to a new year. –Ivie Ani",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/bestof2020/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/dua-lipa/future-nostalgia | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/3pcgDJw | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5lKlFlReHOLShQKyRv6AL9 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/159971052,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fca74b02e107fe5db3a1cfd/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Dua-Lipa.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dua_Lipa-Future_Nostalgia.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2020/,2020,year,album,20,Fleet Foxes,Shore,ANTI-,"ANTI- The warm, gracious folk on Shore seems to materialize from an alternate universe where there are no storm clouds or push notifications. According to bandleader Robin Pecknold, Fleet Foxes’ fourth album carries the mission to live “fully and vibrantly” in celebration of lost heroes like Arthur Russell and John Prine, an especially poetic resolution in the grey hours of the present. This music invites friends to wade in its relief, conjuring an aura of lush abundance amid solitude: Shore’s opening moments are ceded to 21-year-old newcomer Uwade Akhere, who murmurs about summer passing into fall, and loving with a violent passion; later on, over 400 recorded voices, solicited by Pecknold over Instagram, swell in the chorus of “Can I Believe You.” As Pecknold reaches his mid-30s, he leaves behind the fidgeting anxiety of youth. As he smiles on “Young Man’s Game,” “I’ll be lying in my ocean of time.” –Cat Zhang",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/bestof2020/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/fleet-foxes/shore | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/3oplerJ | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://fleetfoxes.bandcamp.com/album/shore | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/0lmjCPEcec2k6L7ysNIcd3 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/154899546,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7c7ec4d02be8489d3c897/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Fleet-Foxes.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fleet_Foxes-Shore.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2020/,2020,year,album,19,Amaarae,The Angel You Don’t Know,Platoon,"Platoon Ghanaian-American singer-songwriter-producer Amaarae assembles music that makes very little sense on paper. Her glittering debut, The Angel You Don’t Know, features waist-winding afropop rhythms; bouncy, avant-pop melodies; experimental modulated vocals; and playful lyrics as Instagram-ready as any artist this side of Drake. (“Percy Miller, ‘bout it ‘bout it, ‘bout the dough/Macarena to the money after shows,” she sings on single “Fancy.”) And yet, maybe improbably, she synthesizes wide-ranging references into a genreless style that could very well be predictive of a post-Spotify moment. Consider The Angel You Don’t Know proof-of-concept of an alt-afropop offshoot, destined for a global audience without sacrificing its cultural roots. –Rawiya Kameir",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/3p7auOZ | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1cceIhCQ8R79pwy8jbZFqE | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/157541233,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fca76451ef00c5e1192c91a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Amaarae.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Amaarae-The_Angel_You_Dont_Know.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2020/,2020,year,album,18,Destroyer,Have We Met,Merge / Dead Oceans,"Merge / Dead Oceans For 25 years, Dan Bejar has come across as the smartest absinthe-sipping aesthete in the room. And in the past decade, the rooms have become markedly more luxurious, with sophisti-pop saxophone, synths, and strings giving new plushness to his formerly sparse songs. On Have We Met, the Vancouver-based Destroyer maestro slips into another velvet interior, only to find it's a sort of Black Lodge. Slap bass intrudes, his gnomic utterances fold in on themselves, and his clenched voice disappears completely amid ambient guitar and unholy noise. Have We Met leaves you to wonder: Is Bejar the cagey proprietor of this dream world or the disoriented guest? –Marc Hogan",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/bestof2020/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/destroyer/have-we-met | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/35cooqY | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://destroyer.bandcamp.com/album/have-we-met | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3quNG7I59IYGauZ9Tn7Iyk | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/119181744,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7f39696ab91ca523e2bc2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Destroyer.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Destroyer-Have_We_Met.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2020/,2020,year,album,17,Róisín Murphy,Róisín Machine,Skint / BMG,"Skint / BMG Dua Lipa, Jessie Ware, and Kylie Minogue all sashayed back to the disco podium in 2020, but none captured the paradox of the genre—its hedonism and heartbreak, its pain dunked in prosecco—quite like Róisín Murphy. Twirling in the fog of producer DJ Parrot’s near-industrial spin on 12” disco, Murphy lets us into her wildest dreams and wrongest desires (“Ten lovers in my bed / But I want something more,” she sings on “Something More”). From the velvet-heavy chug of “Simulation” to the microdosed funk of “Shellfish Mademoiselle,” Róisín Machine knows what it means to disappear in the dry ice and come out feeling new. –Chal Ravens",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/bestof2020/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/roisin-murphy/roisin-machine/lp-x2 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/3ojQDeL | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5WpDQt6EbpzXbqo9g9P0L6 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/150345285,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fca77b696ab91ca523e2d1b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Roisin-Murphy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Risn_Murphy-Risn_Machine.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2020/,2020,year,album,16,Run the Jewels,RTJ4,Jewel Runners / BMG,"Jewel Runners / BMG There was the ambient danger that El-P and Killer Mike would eventually begin to bore us with their roughneck brilliance—another bruising Run the Jewels album to add to the pile, is it? Well, yes. It is. Righteous anger pointed at society’s rulers flows throughout RTJ4, which was released at the start of June amid nationwide protests in response to the police killing of George Floyd. Killer Mike’s verse on “walking in the snow” offers a particularly stop-you-in-your-tracks moment, as he raps, “And you so numb, you watch the cops choke out a man like me/Until my voice goes from a shriek to whisper, ‘I can’t breathe.’” Alongside production that subtly expands the Run the Jewels sound, the duo offer more insight into the modern American psyche than any cable news pundit could hope to muster. –Dean Van Nguyen",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/bestof2020/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/run-the-jewels/rtj4 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/3opl5ob | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/6cx4GVNs03Pu4ZczRnWiLd | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/140490815,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7ec5d96ab91ca523e2bc0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/RTJ.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Run_the_Jewels-RTJ4.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2020/,2020,year,album,15,U.S. Girls,Heavy Light,4AD / Royal Mountain,"4AD / Royal Mountain From the opening disco swagger of “4 American Dollars,” U.S. Girls’ Heavy Light crackles with kinetic energy. Songwriter and bandleader Meg Remy reckons with alienation and injustice, drawing on a palette of pop, rock, and experimental sounds to convey the anxiety of the era. Poignant collages of interviews split the album into sections; the speakers’ recollections of hurtful memories and childhood bedrooms suffuse the music with empathy. Heavy Light is filled with existential dread, but it aspires to a gentler world, one where the burden of being isn’t so leaden. –Allison Hussey",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/bestof2020/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/u-s-girls/heavy-light | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/2IXul2r | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/66LP9b290P2kVNJB19Mi1C | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/132701113,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc90414e7768c955699091f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/US-Girls.jpg,/dataset/artwork/US_Girls-Heavy_Light.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2020/,2020,year,album,14,Jay Electronica,Act II: The Patents of Nobility (The Turn),Equity,"Equity It was an album that was rumored to be rap’s next opus before it even materialized. When a slightly unfinished version of Jay Electronica’s Act II appeared this October, it had been a little over a decade after its initial slated release, and most fans had given up hope on it ever actually coming out. Somehow the record doesn’t suffer from the delay, if anything the often drumless production—heavy on somber piano melodies and lush samples—is timeless. Jay’s lines are clever and self-reflective, and his references are evergreen: “Fuck Bill O’Reilly and Rudy Giuliani,” he passionately raps on “New Illuminati.” It’s rewarding to be swept up in his aura, and to feel the magnitude of every strategically placed interlude, every space where the beat rides endlessly, and every roughly mixed verse. Jay’s strange sense of humor appears regularly, like when he builds a perfect woman who “had an ass like Rosa Acosta” and “smelled like strawberries” on “Rough Love,” or when he’s absorbed by the flaws of Western civilization on “Run and Hide.” The rumors have been justified. –Alphonse Pierre",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fca7975e7768c95569909d2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jay-Electronica.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jay_Electronica-Act_II_The_Patents_of_Nobility_The_Turn.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2020/,2020,year,album,13,The Microphones,Microphones in 2020,P.W. Elverum & Sun,"P.W. Elverum & Sun On Microphones in 2020, Phil Elverum revived his earliest moniker to ponder his formative years across a single, wistful, 45-minute song. In the companion short film, he accompanies his thoughts by flipping through hundreds of old photos, adding bittersweet visual cues to the rambling narrative. He isn’t pining for the good old days; he is reacclimating himself in the present, poking holes in the very idea of nostalgia and showing how memories live on. “I will never stop singing this song,” he acknowledges, 40 minutes in. As his acoustic guitar pulses forward and the details pile up, Elverum gestures toward a deeper, universal history: Look long enough, and you might see yourself in the photos. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://pwelverumandsun.bandcamp.com/album/microphones-in-2020 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/145258393 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7BkabF31ak,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fca79c40f9ba652bdb99302/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Microphones.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Microphones-Microphones_in_2020.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2020/,2020,year,album,12,Lil Uzi Vert,Eternal Atake,Generation Now / Atlantic,"Generation Now / Atlantic On Eternal Atake, Lil Uzi Vert employs an extraterrestrial concept that should be kitschy—in the album’s trailer, he’s jetted into the cosmos in a saucer the size of a city block by a humanoid cult—but instead lends the LP an intergalactic sheen. Across the hour-long odyssey, Uzi hops between kaleidoscopic new worlds: one where it sounds like he’s skipping across a Sega Genesis circuit board, another where he’s hosting an ethereal party alongside a turnt choir. He sounds possessed here, supercharged by something supernatural—even when he’s just shouting a luxury brand’s name into the ether 15 times in a row. –Mankaprr Conteh",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/3dQMzOv | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/7IyoGB8J31fvQDwGtHAq9m | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/133516096,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc806bde7768c9556990913/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lil-Uzi-Vert.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lil_Uzi_Vert-Eternal_Atake.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2020/,2020,year,album,11,Adrianne Lenker,songs / instrumentals,4AD,"4AD When Big Thief scrapped their international tour this year, Adrianne Lenker found a world of her own in a cabin near the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts. A pair of albums that work as a brilliant whole, songs and instrumentals capture the ambiance of the woods, the anguish of a breakup, and an autumn’s harvest of keen-eyed musings, at once lofty and visceral. She wants to hear a lover blinking; she sees a horse’s eyes rotting. “Oh, emptiness/Tell me about your nature,” she sings on “zombie girl.” While songs mostly consists of Lenker’s silvery vocals and brambled acoustic guitar, and instrumentals turns toward fingerpicked meditations and wind-chime drones, both sound like nothing so much as the rustic abode that Lenker has likened to “the inside of an acoustic guitar.” These records put you right inside that hollow. –Marc Hogan",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/bestof2020/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/adrianne-lenker/songs-and-instrumentals/lp-x2 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/38pTai2 | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://adriannelenker.bandcamp.com/ | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2Qt8Z1LB3Fsrf6nhBNsvUJ | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/151064599,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc9017cd3d904fb4b7bc6c6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Adrianne-Lenker.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Adrianne_Lenker-songs__instrumentals.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2020/,2020,year,album,10,Bad Bunny,YHLQMDLG,Rimas,"Rimas On YHLQMDLG, aka Yo Hago Lo Que Me Da La Gana or I Do Whatever I Want, Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny honors his home island’s past of sweaty marquesina throwdowns with a score of perreo bangers for the new age. His nostalgia for reggaetón’s mixtape-era reaches its peak on “Safaera,” a crowning jewel of a record featuring elder statesmen Jowell & Randy and Ñengo Flow, with Bad Bunny’s subterranean voice bridging the past and present. He does a lot more of whatever he wants throughout the rest of the record—from sad boi trap to acoustic rap balladry to emocore—but not without first celebrating those who made it all possible. –Jenzia Burgos",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/bestof2020/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/bad-bunny/yhlqmdlg | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/3eGb15q | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://badbunnypr.bandcamp.com/album/yhlqmdlg | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5lJqux7orBlA1QzyiBGti1 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/132672298,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7f16b0f9ba652bdb9913a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bad-Bunny.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bad_Bunny-YHLQMDLG.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2020/,2020,year,album,9,Jessie Ware,What’s Your Pleasure?,PMR / Friends Keep Secrets / Interscope,"PMR / Friends Keep Secrets / Interscope On her fourth studio album, UK singer-songwriter Jessie Ware conjures the erotic frisson of the cruisy dancefloors we aren’t permitted to congregrate on while the global pandemic rages on. What’s Your Pleasure’s adrenalizing disco, electro-funk, and deep house are indebted to the pulsing eclecticism of defunct queer nightclubs like the Paradise Garage and the Saint: The title track recalls New Order’s early ’80s cyborg funk, while “Read My Lips” pays homage to R&B group Full Force’s muscular rhythm tracks of the same decade, and the sparkling arpeggios of “Save a Kiss” evoke Robyn’s yearning 21st-century electro-pop. A married mom in her mid-30s, Ware is still able to capture one of nightlife’s great gifts—the exhilarating thrill of being single, looking out onto a packed dancefloor, and seeing the possibility of magnetic attraction. –Jason King",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/bestof2020/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/jessie-ware/what-s-your-pleasure | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/37ON1vA | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1CTm3ARqDETSm7GfvNYNJp | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/145944660,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fca7d6796ab91ca523e2d1d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jessie-Ware.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jessie_Ware-Whats_Your_Pleasure.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2020/,2020,year,album,8,Haim,Women in Music Pt. III,Columbia,"Columbia Three songs into Haim’s sharpest album yet, Danielle is behind the wheel in her beloved Los Angeles with a Joni Mitchell classic on the stereo, “screaming every word to ‘Both Sides Now.’” How lost must one feel to shout “I really don’t know life at all” alone in the car first thing in the morning? That’s the precise kind of biting honesty that Alana, Este, and Danielle brilliantly amplify on Women in Music Pt. III. Writing with more personality and candor than ever about a range of difficult themes—depression, loss, misogyny, the complications of loving on one’s own terms—they’ve also loosened their taut pop rock just enough to breathe more life into it, incorporating the ‘90s Lilith rock of Sheryl Crow, the blue-skied strums of Wilco, and a groovy Lou Reed interpolation. Through it all, clearer-than-ever proof emerges not just of a great band in stride, but a cultural fact: women continue making the most vital rock music now. The most revelatory sound Haim make room for on Women in Music Pt. III is themselves. –Jenn Pelly",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/bestof2020/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/haim/women-in-music-pt-iii | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/37wEvBq | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/4qNGDMsRNqDQZPkTWyyeRF | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/146068806,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7f5fb75014cd2f75cc550/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Haim.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Haim-Women_in_Music_Pt_III.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2020/,2020,year,album,7,Yves Tumor,Heaven to a Tortured Mind,Warp,"Warp If 2018’s soul-affirming Safe in the Hands of Love established Yves Tumor as a preeminent experimentalist, then the pleasure-seeking and approachable Heaven to a Tortured Mind is the sound of them strutting into the role of a rock god. On their fourth album, Tumor is smoldering and romantic, expressing their appetite through squalling guitar solos, slinky basslines, and an ensemble of guest singers who match their lusty fervor beat for beat. Heaven flirts with familiar rock motifs as often as it subverts them, morphing into something unrecognizable. Traditional structures melt into long vamps, as on the tormented psychedelic ballad “Kerosene!,” which distills the album’s beguiling agony. Led by a keening riff lifted from Uriah Heep’s “Weep in Silence,” Tumor and singer-songwriter Diana Gordon supplicate to a lover over walls of electric guitar and pummeling drums. Gordon’s howls are hell-bent and infatuated, with Tumor’s raspy pleas pushing them both closer to the edge of oblivion. Heaven to a Tortured Mind balances listeners on that knife point, declaring Tumor’s rock-star bona fides with roguish style. –Eric Torres",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/bestof2020/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/yves-tumor/heaven-to-a-tortured-mind | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/3dMLG9H | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://yves-tumor.bandcamp.com/album/heaven-to-a-tortured-mind | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5wnCTZtzIZxasRSHzI1JeW | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/135867142 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LsZmnMhqfU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fca7ec80f9ba652bdb99304/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Yves-Tumor.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Yves_Tumor-Heaven_to_a_Tortured_Mind.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2020/,2020,year,album,6,Bob Dylan,Rough and Rowdy Ways,Columbia,"Columbia If nothing else, Bob Dylan’s 39th studio album should forever put to rest the idea that the storied songwriter is losing his voice. On his first collection of original material in eight years, he sounds unusually attuned to the suggestive power of his craggy instrument, using small changes of inflection to convey wry self-mockery, roaring prowess, and a certain uneasy nostalgia. Rough and Rowdy Ways can be approximately divided into two types of song: the ballads, which nearly evaporate as you listen, and the more conventionally rocking blues-based numbers. It is a testament to Dylan’s spectral presence as a singer, and the sympathy of his accompanists, that the uptempo tunes often seem as misty and elusive as the slow ones. As ever with late-period Dylan albums, death lurks in every corner: as a prompt for bloody, Frankenstein-ish experiments in “My Own Version of You,” a red river to be traversed in “Crossing the Rubicon,” a body who shares his bed in “I Contain Multitudes,” a nameless rival in “Black Rider.” The gravity of Dylan’s voice and the clarity of his vision allow him to address these wraiths as an equal, one with intimate knowledge of the darkness they inhabit. One minute, he is at peace, nearly succumbing to whatever comes next; the next, he is spoiling for a fight, ready to wrestle death to the mat one last time. “You girls mean business,” he bellows to two “fleet-footed guides from the underworld” on the swaggering “False Prophet.” “And I do too.” –Andy Cush",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/bestof2020/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/bob-dylan/rough-and-rowdy-ways | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/35cWqv7 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1Qht64MPvWTWa0aMsqxegB | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/145057447,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fca7f63c61c34a7841b1f64/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bob-Dylan.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bob_Dylan-Rough_and_Rowdy_Ways.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2020/,2020,year,album,5,Perfume Genius,Set My Heart on Fire Immediately,Matador,"Matador In a year of isolation and unattainable intimacies, Perfume Genius’ Mike Hadreas is our poet laureate of constant longing. Set My Heart on Fire Immediately, his fifth album, celebrates the endless possibility and vulnerability of the body without losing sight of the fundamental absurdity of the human ordeal. Hadreas sings about misery and disconnection, about feeling unrecognizable to himself, about shepherding an inexperienced lover through his first gay encounter and picking his pockets afterwards. As on 2017’s No Shape, producer Blake Mills reveals the music with startling clarity and subtlety, bringing out lifelike strings and trembling synths through sound design as much as conventional production. In the warm thrum of “Describe,” the oceanic splash of “Without You,” and the barnstorming buildup of “Some Dream,” Set My Heart on Fire Immediately throws open doors to the dusty rooms where we’ve all been lurking inside ourselves. –Anna Gaca",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/bestof2020/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/perfume-genius/set-my-heart-on-fire-immediately | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/37xVoeL | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://perfumegenius.bandcamp.com/album/set-my-heart-on-fire-immediately | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/6daEdTBi1hyFQgmsnR7oRr | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/140644928,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fca80211ef00c5e1192c91c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Perfume-Genius.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Perfume_Genius-Set_My_Heart_on_Fire_Immediately.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2020/,2020,year,album,4,Phoebe Bridgers,Punisher,Dead Oceans,"Dead Oceans Phoebe Bridgers will tweet about eating ass with one hand and crush your heart with the other. The droll, phantom-like singer writes music for faithless burnouts who still want to believe: lost souls clinging to astrology and fucked-up intimacy, striving to get by in a brutal universe with no pre-ordained meaning. Death and apocalypse lurk in every corner of Punisher—lightning flashes, sirens wail, a Giants fan gets killed at Dodger Stadium—and Bridgers shuffles through this ominous fog, still alive, still growing taller. The wintry decay that initially clouds the album disintegrates on “Garden Song,” where the arrangement blooms and burbles, thumping steadily, like a walk home in crisp evening air. For each tart complaint (“I hate your mom”) or fatalist disclosure (“I’ve been playing dead my whole life”) is a glimmering prophecy that one day things might be just fine, even if that day comes at the very end of civilization. –Cat Zhang",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/bestof2020/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/phoebe-bridgers/punisher | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/3mh1uod | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://phoebebridgers.bandcamp.com/album/punisher | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2xECuqnvvmVktV7UO8Dd3s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/135629244,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7fde0d4d3a13a6758a452/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Phoebe-Bridgers.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Phoebe_Bridgers-Punisher.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2020/,2020,year,album,3,Moses Sumney,græ,Jagjaguwar,"Jagjaguwar The first half of græ, Moses Sumney’s tour de force sophomore album, came out just before lockdown; the second was released a few months later, after its audience had been humbled by the soft brutality of isolation, the brutal clarity of wandering our own inner landscapes day after day. If only we could make like Sumney and turn self-interrogation into a singular kind of art. Where on his debut album Sumney lingered on lack and absence, on græ he delivers effulgence and multiplicity with a shapeshifting swagger. Dream-sequence strings float atop dissonant shudders; Sumney’s voice transfigures mid-run like a stage trick, his falsetto a sudden flapping dove; he sings about being between polarities of desire and identity as if to lay claim to both at the same time. Twenty tracks is long enough for græ to form a private cosmology of ambivalence and assertion—a map of Planet Sumney as it lay in 2020, with its blush tones and icy eruptions and violent rocky swirls. –Jia Tolentino",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/bestof2020/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/moses-sumney/grae | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/2ISE9KZ | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://mosessumney.bandcamp.com/album/gr-2 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/35CHoLB0GEwYlOomriifC6 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/130664831,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fca82007fe6799d0d822bb8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Moses-Sumney.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Moses_Sumney-gr.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2020/,2020,year,album,2,Waxahatchee,Saint Cloud,Merge,"Merge From her early punk recordings alongside sister Allison to her quietly devastating solo albums, Katie Crutchfield is always steadfast in her truth. With Saint Cloud, Crutchfield’s fifth album as Waxahatchee, she climbs to solid ground, emerging from the storm self-assured. The album reflects her newfound ease, all big skies, wide open spaces, and Americana twang. It’s both the country album she was destined to make and an acknowledgment that self-acceptance is hard-won; Saint Cloud reckons with addiction, sobriety, imperfect romance, trauma, and trying to navigate it all. Now, Crutchfield gazes into the mirror and doesn’t shy away from the reflection. “I have a gift, I’ve been told, for seeing what’s there,” she sings on “The Eye,” and her perspective has never sounded so clear. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/bestof2020/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/waxahatchee/saint-cloud | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/2IVWUxf | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://waxahatchee.bandcamp.com/album/saint-cloud-2 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/04HMMwLmjkftjWy7xc6Bho | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/125907299,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc80202d4d3a13a6758a456/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Waxahatchee.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Waxahatchee-Saint_Cloud.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2020/,2020,year,album,1,Fiona Apple,Fetch the Bolt Cutters,Epic,"Epic Fifteen years ago, on the title track to Extraordinary Machine, Fiona Apple declared, “I still only travel by foot, and by foot, it’s a slow climb.” She worked her way up to the clear heights of Fetch the Bolt Cutters over the course of the last half-decade or so, largely at her L.A. home alongside trusted bandmates and friends and a small shelter’s worth of barking dogs. The result was her truest, wildest record to date—the kind of album that borders on literature in its ability to convey nuances of the human condition. Equal parts meticulous and haphazard, the self-directed songs pick up on the percussive thread of 2012’s The Idler Wheel… with elemental rhythms formed, in part, by handclaps, floorstomps, and furniture-banging. But the raw energy of Apple’s voice is the album’s life force, and there’s no mistaking the subjects of her missives—be it the men who refuse to recognize their abusive behavior; the women who, like Apple, were conditioned to compete with other women; the mean girls and those who called their bullshit; the users and the silencers; the people she fears will leave her. “I grew up in the shoes they told me I could fill, shoes that were not made for running up that hill/And I need to run up that hill, I need to run up that hill/I will, I will, I will, I will, I will,” she insists on another title track doubling as a renewed mission statement. Fetch the Bolt Cutters is the sound of someone freeing themself from a mental prison built by others but unknowingly reinforced by the self. Consider the load sufficiently lightened; on she climbs. –Jillian Mapes",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: https://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/bestof2020/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/fiona-apple/fetch-the-bolt-cutters | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/31xp5ZO | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/0fO1KemWL2uCCQmM22iKlj | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/137338101 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GXMAR9I1rA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc902c696ab91ca523e2c33/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Fiona-Apple.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fiona_Apple-Fetch_the_Bolt_Cutters.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,100,Ela Minus,“dominique”,Domino,"Domino After years of playing in emo bands and releasing candy-coated electropop, Ela Minus splits the difference on “dominique.” The standout from her debut LP, acts of rebellion, is a depressive ode to sleeping all day and never leaving the house set to bright, buoyant melodies. Even as she teeters on the edge of the abyss, wasting away with coffee and liquor as her only companions, she finds humor in the downward spiral: “I should probably eat something that’s not liquid,” she deadpans. Recorded more than a year before much of humanity was sheltering in place, its themes of isolation and delirium feel prescient, offering a view from indoors that, for many, will look like a reflection. –Matthew Ismael Ruiz",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EyDeCvQ8vA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7acb396ab91ca523e2bba/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ela-Minus.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ela_Minus-dominique.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,99,Pale Blue,“I Walk Alone With Acid”,2MR,"2MR The jarring dissonance between a four-on-the-floor acid-house beat and the burden of having a body makes electronic duo Pale Blue’s “I Walk Alone With Acid” more incisive than your average dance banger. “Is my body mine?/Is my fear real?” Elizabeth Wight asks breathily over Mike Simonetti’s propulsive beats, checking her glass before she sips, remembering that her keys can be a weapon in the dark. It’s a song for girls, gays, and theys leaving the club with a can of pepper spray and a prayer: an ominous reminder of the dangers of the walk home, a sonic shot of cortisol. –Linnie Greene",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nhf7_oXnIZU&feature=youtu.be,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7b15ee7768c9556990800/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Pale-Blue.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Pale_Blue-I_Walk_Alone_With_Acid.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,98,1010 Benja SL,“Dobby”,Young Turks,"Young Turks There’s power in the intimacy of this song, in the scrape of the acoustic guitar’s strings and the finger snaps that guide its rhythm. Listening to “Dobby,” it feels like you’re right there in the room where singer-songwriter Benjamin Lyman is expressing his gratitude for the woman he loves in pure, unflinching language. The song is primarily a showcase for Lyman’s voice, and he fills its empty space with thrilling, wordless runs and tremulous melodies. He circles around the adoring chorus, using it as both a placeholder and a mantra: “She really loved me and she really gave it to me…” The air around him crackles with the joy of creation. When the song ends and the spell breaks, you can’t help but see your own loved ones with his wide-eyed wonder. –Jamieson Cox",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQ8EW3QbNxQ&feature=youtu.be,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7b1ede7768c9556990802/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/1010-Benja-SL.jpg,/dataset/artwork/1010_Benja_SL-Dobby.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,97,Caitlin Pasko,“Horrible Person”,Whatever’s Clever,"Whatever’s Clever Sometimes, trying to find a path forward after someone’s depleted you can feel like building a house of cards with a wet deck. On “Horrible Person,” the standout track from Brooklyn experimental musician Caitlin Pasko’s Greenhouse, you can hear the tension of someone painstakingly putting their life back together. “You… know… you… are… a... horrible... person,” she sings, as though she’s deliberately placing another soggy card down. Synths briefly wail alongside her, suggesting an undercurrent of rage. “Please stop texting me on... my... birthday,” she calmly requests, offering a glimpse into this person’s specific but universal kind of horrible. The song ends with a crunching loop of distortion, sonic rubble from which to once again become whole. –Emma Madden",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzlWca_KMRY&feature=youtu.be,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7b2b5cecf8b306252c346/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Caitlin-Pasko.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Caitlin_Pasko-Horrible_Person.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,96,Jockstrap,“Acid”,Warp,"Warp Jockstrap spent their conservatory studies molding pop and its pleasantries like haunted Silly Putty. With “Acid,” their debut single for Warp, the London duo angle their funhouse mirror at the sort of contemporary chanson-pop that soundtracks indie rom-coms and Francophile café culture. Beneath the lackadaisical surface, however, is a distinct lack of joie de vivre. Queasy electronics and sighs of “gas and blood and blood and blood” creep in on the subconscious level, disturbing the peace like dead pixels in lush cinematography. Whether portraying a complicated love or something more sinister, it’s an arresting vision of trouble in paradise. –Jazz Monroe",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOXho8yVaKk&feature=youtu.be,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7b3960aaaf18ca0286f2f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jockstrap.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jockstrap-Acid.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,95,Bullion,“Hula”,DEEK,"DEEK The slow-motion electronic pop of Bullion’s “Hula” soundtracks a series of vacations, recounted as pleasantly fogged memories. The music is seductive, almost narcotic, with synth pads exhaling in long, overlapping layers. But something feels off. The instrumental break following an unexpected chord change lurches like a luxury liner in choppy water; melodic lines become queasily detuned. The London-based producer-songwriter is taciturn as a lyricist and a singer, but such off-center musical moments help to fill in the blanks, suggesting that holidays and hula dancing offered only partial reprieve from some looming anxiety. “Are people in pain where you are?” he wonders repeatedly, then thinks better of it: “I’ll ask you tomorrow.” –Andy Cush",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGd9wKo1ZFs&feature=youtu.be,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7b4290aaaf18ca0286f32/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bullion.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bullion-Hula.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,94,The Killers,“Caution”,Island,"Island Like most of the Killers’ best songs, no one knows what “Caution” really means, but it gets the people going. Trying to make literal sense of why Brandon Flowers spends every verse sketching out a hard-luck heartbreaker with “Hollywood eyes” only to belt out on the chorus that he’s throwing caution to the wind is as futile as locating “South Detroit” on a map. Despite the blatant A Deeper Understanding fanfic, the Killers aren’t trying to copy the War on Drugs on “Caution” so much as paying the same kind of homage to them as Journey once did to Bruce Springsteen. Because there’s a time to lend quiet dignity to all the “black top white trash” and “featherweight queens,” and a time when they just want to burn brighter than the Las Vegas skyline. –Ian Cohen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlwlV4hcBac,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7b4750aaaf18ca0286f34/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-Killers.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Killers-Caution.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,93,DaBaby,“Rockstar” [ft. Roddy Ricch],South Coast / Interscope,"South Coast / Interscope In 2019, Charlotte rapper DaBaby bull-charged rap with 100 frenetic variations on a single song, like a jabbering, grinning, dumb-punchline-dispensing perpetual motion machine. His yearlong blitzkrieg campaign garnered him a No. 1 album, a billion streams on Spotify, and a persistent reputation as a one-note artist. There are entire memes devoted to this idea; DaBaby spoofed it himself in the video for his Lil Yachty and Drake collaboration “Oprah’s Bank Account.” In 2020, DaBaby showed that he wasn’t just unstoppable; he was flexible. Yes, when he opens his mouth it still feels like being trampled by clowns. But on his hit “Rockstar,” he also showed that his brand of bottled energy could pop off with pretty much any soundtrack, including the kind of winsome faux-flamenco guitar over which Young Thug might explore his soulful side. –Jayson Greene",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwrFl4xbVZs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7b527d4d3a13a6758a440/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/DaBaby.jpg,/dataset/artwork/DaBaby-Rockstar_ft_Roddy_Ricch.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,92,Lomelda,“Hannah Sun”,Double Double Whammy,"Double Double Whammy Lomelda’s Hannah Read reckons with physical and emotional distance on “Hannah Sun.” She begins with a transatlantic separation, then zooms in progressively, first to a hometown phone call, then a close embrace. The music builds excitedly behind her, with flashes of synth joining the jittery acoustic guitar pulse. “Glad you held me, too/Though I didn’t know how to be closer to you,” Read admits at the climax, holding the last word for 20 aching seconds, an entire lungful of “you.” In an era of isolation, the song is a reminder of the simple warmth of being near. –Will Miller",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIjU0do0PqU&feature=youtu.be,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7b59a526a629411e3e86e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lomelda.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lomelda-Hannah_Sun.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,91,Yaeji,“WAKING UP DOWN”,XL,"XL In the flattened cycle of life in pandemic times, even the most mundane things can feel like arduous tasks. Yaeji released her glassy-eyed marvel “WAKING UP DOWN” just before the new normal set in, and it epitomizes the art of surviving an anxious existence by simply conquering the everyday. Over a tick-tock electro beat, the bleary synth production grows in intensity as hard-panned stereo effects become more disorienting. In English, she intones a little mantra about how well she’s coping—waking up, hydrating, cooking, and listening are among her accomplishments—as if warding off insecurity. Then, in Korean, she coos an important caveat: having it together is a war of attrition. –Sheldon Pearce",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNNf4I1dc_U&feature=youtu.be,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7b60cc61c34a7841b1e38/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Yaeji.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Yaeji-WAKING_UP_DOWN.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,90,Beatriz Ferreyra,“Echos”,Room40,"Room40 Argentine composer Beatriz Ferreyra is renowned for the disorienting spatiality and shape-shifting abstraction of her electronic and tape-based work, but it’s the human scale and raw intimacy of “Echos” that startle. Recorded in 1978 but released for the first time this year, the piece is woven entirely from the voice of Ferreyra’s niece Mercedes Cornu, who died in a car accident prior to its composition. In places, the young woman’s voice flickers and trembles with playful delight, sounding impossibly alive. At other points, the melted murmurs and shimmered syllables feel soothing and psalm-like, as though the girl’s ghost is mourning herself. Listening to “Echos” is as poignant as stumbling upon a roadside shrine of flowers, candles, and photos, but Ferreyra goes beyond creating a memorial to Mercedes: She defies death itself and resurrects her niece as an aural apparition. Heard at any time in the four decades since its making, “Echos” would be touching. But in a year like this one, it breaks your heart. –Simon Reynolds",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/E0b-u69xdws,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7b8aadcf8ebd9e69c42c3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Beatriz-Ferreyra.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beatriz_Ferreyra-Echos.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,89,beabadoobee,“Care”,Dirty Hit,"Dirty Hit Beatrice Laus, aka beabadoobee, initially gained attention as a bedroom indie artist who dreams of Pavement and scored her first major success earlier this year playing the Dido to Canadian rapper Powfu’s Eminem on his sad-sack TikTok smash “death bed (coffee for your head).” But with “Care,” the lead single from her debut album Fake It Flowers, Laus makes a bid for stardom on her own terms. Striking the sweet spot between the folky yearning of Lisa Loeb and the bubble-grunge of Veruca Salt, “Care” is a readymade ’90s alt-rock anthem that sounds right at home in 2020—because, let’s face it: reality still bites. –Stuart Berman",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPrw_Nyq88U,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7ba32d4d3a13a6758a442/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/beabadoobee.jpg,/dataset/artwork/beabadoobee-Care.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,88,Kehlani,“Hate the Club” [ft. Masego],Atlantic,"Atlantic Kehlani turns temperamental nerves about her love life into measured cool on “Hate the Club.” The singer coos capriciously throughout: She stubbornly sits in the VIP alone to avoid her paramour before conjuring the courage to make amends. “Maybe if I drank enough/I’ll make my way over to ya,” she thinks out loud. The tension is eased by a slinky sax from future-soul artist Masego and then heightened by a polyphony of backup vocals that engulf the chorus with internal turmoil. The song climaxes with a confrontation, as the DJ shouts her out, blowing up her spot—“I still need you,” Kehlani pleads—though by the end it’s still unclear whether her dreaded trip out was worth the trouble. –Claire Lobenfeld",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dw5FWNmCi4&feature=youtu.be,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7bca5d46127696f328f99/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kehlani.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kehlani-Hate_the_Club_ft_Masego.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,87,DJ Python,“ADMSDP” [ft. LA Warman],Incienso,"Incienso Halfway through the gentle ebb of his album Mas Amable, DJ Python turns down a slipstream of inner consciousness. Poet LA Warman’s wary monologue sways over a faint backbeat suffused with the kind of dread usually found in haunted dubplates. Coming from Python, an ostensibly jolly club producer, “ADMSDP” might leave you grasping for your bearings. But then, what is a chill-out room if not a sensory deprivation tank with beanbags? The soft power of this 11-minute guided dissociation holds true of any therapeutic method: The more you give in to it, the more necessary it becomes. –Gabriel Szatan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7bd2dc61c34a7841b1e3a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/DJ-Python.jpg,/dataset/artwork/DJ_Python-ADMSDP_ft_LA_Warman.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,86,Tame Impala,“Breathe Deeper”,Interscope / Fiction,"Interscope / Fiction What makes Tame Impala mastermind Kevin Parker so compelling is how he melds the sounds of his favorite pop idols with a production style that updates arena rock for the age of microdosing. On “Breathe Deeper,” you can hear Mariah Carey in the syrupy verse, the Neptunes in every raw drum hit, early Daft Punk in the finale’s acid house groove, and yet there’s no mistaking this for anything but a Tame Impala song. Parker said it was inspired by his first experience with MDMA, which accounts for the rave outro and the blissful piano hooks that make it the danciest cut on this year’s The Slow Rush. But he also sneaks in the briefest of guitar interludes, once again relying on incidental audio spliced in from our real world—the flip of a tape deck switch, the click and hiss of a needle on a vinyl record—to better bring us into his own. –Noah Yoo",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTfYYRGTB3g,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7bfc527ed03c80126df69/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Tame-Impala.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tame_Impala-Breathe_Deeper.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,85,Cakes Da Killa / Proper Villains,“Don Dada”,Classic,"Classic The best part of the video for “Don Dada”—a cocky, bouncy, sexy slice of hip-house courtesy of New York rapper Cakes Da Killa and producer Proper Villains—is when Cakes, in an ice-white tennis skirt, steals the focus from a leonine model by shaking his ass in triple-time. He’s always been less concerned with genre confines than with rapping over anything that ensures that he’s the main character, and this Paris Is Burning credits-worthy, vogue-ready burner feels like a final, ascendant role by several orders of magnitude. Hearing a track this haute and juicy in 2020 is borderline rude for how much it makes us miss the rush of nightlife, but Cakes has never really been polite about his spotlight. –Mina Tavakoli",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MxT6PePWZQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7c17827ed03c80126df6b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Cakes-Da-Killa.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Cakes_Da_Killa__Proper_Villains-Don_Dada.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,84,Rico Nasty,“IPHONE”,Atlantic/Sugar Trap,"Atlantic/Sugar Trap The first single off of Rico Nasty’s raucous album Nightmare Vacation considers the peaks and valleys of romantic love as analogous to our unhealthy relationships with our phones. Peppered with references to early aughts technological obsessions (“He on my hip like a Tamagotchi/Leave a heart on my wall so I can know you like me”), the track offers nostalgia wrapped up in the saccharine chimes and futurist hyperpop of 100 gecs mastermind Dylan Brady’s production. In the track’s most tender moments, the maxed-out vocal effects are toned down to center Rico’s melodic pleas for affection, capturing the unique angst of chasing love behind a screen. –Jessica Kariisa",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/RuhvdaDabpU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7c1f90f9ba652bdb9912e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Rico-Nasty.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rico_Nasty-IPHONE.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,83,Ana Roxanne,“Suite pour l’invisible”,Kranky,"Kranky Ana Roxanne makes even silence sound vivid. A former student of Mills College’s acclaimed experimental-music program and current member of the Kranky Records roster, which includes the likes of Grouper and Tim Hecker, Roxanne draws inspiration from classical Hindustani singing and sacred choral music in her ambient soundscapes. “Suite pour l’invisible,” from Roxanne’s second album, Because of a Flower, maps self-knowledge onto a soothing drone and keys that twinkle like bokeh. “I hold your joy/I hold your pain,” she sings over heavenly synth tones. It’s the sound of the self turned into an atmosphere. –Emma Madden",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7c2b35d29c1cf1205b49c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ana-Roxanne.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ana_Roxanne-Suite_pour_linvisible.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,82,Moor Mother / billy woods,“Furies”,Adult Swim,"Adult Swim Restless experimentalist Moor Mother couples her searing spoken-word delivery with New York rapper billy woods’ oblique rhymes to mesmerizing effect on this one-off collaborative single. The duo’s rapport is even-footed and intimate over flutes and knocking hand drums. Where Moor Mother speaks to battling inner and outer demons, her intoning voice echoing and relentless, woods is an ideal foil, adding drifting verses that lead to a needling concern: “What did I want?” The artful “Furies” leads listeners along its own orbit, with no easy answers to its cryptic questions. –Eric Torres",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7c323ee65027d9ed930fc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Moor-Mother-billy-woods.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Moor_Mother__billy_woods-Furies.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,81,Beverly Glenn-Copeland,“River Dreams”,Transgressive,"Transgressive On the deeply spiritual “River Dreams,” a new song included on Beverly Glenn-Copeland’s career-spanning 2020 compilation Transmissions, the pioneering experimental musician sings rich and soft invocations that encourage reflection, accompanied by circular piano melodies and synthetic orchestral chords. The meditative track speaks to finding fulfillment out of what little you have around you, learning to tune into the universe when it speaks, and grounding yourself in small moments of serenity—necessary reminders amid a year of unprecedented turmoil. –Jemima Skala",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/L-JaWgRu8sY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7c42a5d29c1cf1205b49e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Beverly-Glenn-Copeland.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beverly_Glenn-Copeland-River_Dreams.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,80,SZA,“Hit Different” [ft. Ty Dolla $ign],Top Dawg / RCA,"Top Dawg / RCA SZA has an unparalleled ability to draw out the most intoxicating parts of an unhealthy relationship and turn them into an intoxicating song. “Hit Different” is misted with heady sluggishness, dragging drums, and Ty Dolla $ign’s honeyed voice, soft with the truth of a late-night realization. But SZA is buoyant as she sings about her inconsistent love. He’ll never prioritize her, but she presents her conflicting shame and pleasure openly. Getting carried away by languid harmonies and the open wound of SZA’s honesty, you start to wonder if there’s anything you’re hiding from yourself. –Ashley Bardhan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/qJlMkMtK7-8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7c57f0f9ba652bdb99130/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/SZA.jpg,/dataset/artwork/SZA-Hit_Different_ft_Ty_Dolla_ign.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,79,Kate NV,“Sayonara”,RVNG INTL.,"RVNG INTL. Outwardly, Kate NV’s “Sayonara” is an ebullient hybrid of Japanese city pop and early-’80s avant disco; each element is daubed on in bold splotches of color, and its empty space suggests voluminous proportions. But there’s also something lonely and maybe even a little spooky about the song, which the Moscow musician says was written during a difficult time. In a high, breathy voice wreathed in delay, she sings short, repeated phrases mostly in Russian: “Yes, yes, yes/No, no, no/Sayonara, goodbye.” Affirmation, negation, disappearance. Entering the world of this song is like walking into an opulent room where a party has just concluded, as the host’s farewell fades down the hallway. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/E8cDfzTTDhs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7c6cb0aaaf18ca0286f37/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kate-NV.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kate_NV-Sayonara.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,78,Drakeo the Ruler / JoogSzn,“Backflip or Sumn”,Stinc Team,"Stinc Team Drakeo the Ruler has long been unfazeable, but on his latest LP, Thank You for Using GTL, recorded on a payphone from the Men’s Central Jail in Los Angeles County, ice water flows through his veins. Staring down trumped-up conspiracy charges in which his music was on trial as much as his actions, Drakeo oozes with swagger over a moody JoogSzn beat on “Backflip or Sumn.” He casually drops threats and flexes on the case he eventually did manage to beat, all the while stressing how unimpressed he is by it all. That he would cut a record full of the same kind of lyrics being used against him in a sham court proceeding is more than just chutzpah. It’s evidence that he remains unfazed—by the county sheriff, by the prosecutor, and by that giant bag of money at the strip club. –Matthew Ismael Ruiz",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/toAkIGcNKZk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f100b962097041dd8c63ff/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Drakeo-the-Ruler-GTL.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Drakeo_the_Ruler__JoogSzn-Backflip_or_Sumn.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,77,Fleet Foxes,“Sunblind”,ANTI-,"ANTI- On “Sunblind,” Fleet Foxes frontman Robin Pecknold proudly partakes in the age-old tradition of memorializing one’s heroes in song. He invokes late greats like Richard Swift, Judee Sill, and Elliott Smith, wrapping their works around him like a security blanket. “I’m gonna swim for a week in warm American Water with dear friends,” he proclaims, playfully nodding to Silver Jews’ David Berman, who passed away last year after decades of tortured brilliance. Even though “Sunblind” is an ode to the departed, it never succumbs to melancholy. Instead, it serves as a celebration of music as a source of solace and rejuvenation, and an exhilarating reminder of its profound potential. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/LQ3nAhJyE44,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7c7ec4d02be8489d3c897/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Fleet-Foxes.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fleet_Foxes-Sunblind.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,76,Saweetie,“Tap In”,ICY / Artistry / Warner,"ICY / Artistry / Warner Saweetie builds contemporary hits out of ’00s hip-hop anthems, consistently inverting their masculine attitudes to make them her own. “Tap In” twists West Coast legend Too $hort’s “Blow the Whistle” into a mnemonic device for bagging a man with big money, and her tone is matter-of-fact, like she’s the smartest student of the game in your study group. After the California rapper caught flack for her overt materialism this year, she clarified that she demands riches of men more symbolically than literally. So even if you’ll never meet a dude earning eight figures, “Tap In” is an energizing lesson in assessing your worth and asserting your standards. –Mankaprr Conteh",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/jUIrolORx6M,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7c8e30f9ba652bdb99134/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Saweetie.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Saweetie-Tap_In.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,75,Oneohtrix Point Never,“Long Road Home”,Warp,"Warp Experiencing Oneohtrix Point Never’s “Long Road Home,” with its soft-rock swirl enveloping Caroline Polachek’s mystical vocals, is like immersing yourself in a supernatural coming-of-age road-trip movie. It feels like looking up at the stars on the way back home when you’re 16 and missing your friends; Peter Gabriel is on the radio and the new issue of Heavy Metal awaits you in your bedroom. (Judging from the sound of the production, it’s 1983 via 2083.) A torch song from Mars, “Long Road Home” is OPN with his romance meter at full gauge: romance of the very far away, romance of a car at night with a long way to go, romance of reuniting after isolation. –Leah Mandel",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/w5azY0dH67U,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7c9655d29c1cf1205b4a0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Oneohtrix-Point-Never.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Oneohtrix_Point_Never-Long_Road_Home.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,74,Helado Negro,“I Fell in Love” [ft. Xenia Rubinos],Adult Swim,"Adult Swim While Helado Negro’s Roberto Carlos Lange has been exploring experimental sounds and textures for more than a decade, his more recent work adopts more pleasant frequencies in service of space-age lullabies and healing spells. “I Fell in Love,” a one-off single featuring the eclectic Brooklyn singer-songwriter Xenia Rubinos, is likely the most direct song either artist has ever made. Yet there’s power in this simplicity—it eliminates any obstacles that might stand in the way of the song’s sentiment, becoming an aural manifestation of love itself. Lange’s soothing voice turns hypnotic when drenched in reverb, and Rubinos returns the energy in kind, beaming lights into the dark. –Matthew Ismael Ruiz",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/KpQA0w03j00,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7cc8be7768c95569908a1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Helado-Negro.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Helado_Negro-I_Fell_in_Love_ft_Xenia_Rubinos.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,73,Standing on the Corner,“Angel”,XL,"XL Standing on the Corner have a way of capturing the wooziness of love. In its tenderest moments, the experimental jazz-indebted ensemble slows things down in order to disorient and emotionally disarm—the sonic equivalent of watching the world melt as your darling walks away upside-down and backward on the ceiling. “Angel” is another lovesick moment, resembling the group’s doleful rendition of the jazz standard “Body and Soul.” The melody is sumptuous, somewhere between carnal and spiritual, with bursts of distortion or horns punctuating the wobbling beat. “Angel” is sad but happy, alluring yet absurd, expressing the simple things we struggle to define. –Matthew Strauss",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/PEwQV6RRrzQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7cd391ef00c5e1192c71b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/SOTC.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Standing_on_the_Corner-Angel.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,72,Koffee,“Lockdown”,Columbia,"Columbia Koffee’s summertime anthem opens with a question that most people have probably asked themselves at some point in 2020: Where will we go after this whole “quarantine ting” is over? On “Lockdown,” reggae’s youngest Grammy winner sings of spirited plans to drive around and travel, but she also reveals there’s something else—someone, actually—to this dream of an island adventure. “Me ah go put you pon lockdown,” Koffee insists, the clever wordplay spelling out a shamelessly jubilant love story in the age of ’rona. –Jenzia Burgos",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/oSzv3K3Keyg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7ce1c8b8e5df19f4ba8be/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Koffee.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Koffee-Lockdown.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,71,Taylor Swift,“mirrorball”,Republic,"Republic On a different Taylor Swift album, “mirrorball” might have been the shining pop centerpiece. The songwriting is airborne and graceful, using lyrics about hushed conversations, burning discos, and “shimmering beautiful” visions as melodic cues. But instead of aiming for the sugar rush of Swift’s early work or the arena grandeur of 1989, it stands as one of folklore’s subtlest moments. The atmosphere is intimate and understated, as if we’re hearing her thoughts before she has time to process them. “I’ve never been a natural,” she sings over dreamy electric guitars and a lapping drumbeat that sounds buried under several layers of comforters. She seems lost in the moment, like she has no one to please but herself. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/KaM1bCuG4xo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7ceddc61c34a7841b1e70/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Taylor-Swift.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Taylor_Swift-mirrorball.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,70,Freddie Gibbs / The Alchemist,“Scottie Beam” [ft. Rick Ross],ESGN / ALC / EMPIRE,"ESGN / ALC / EMPIRE Alchemist’s flickering piano keys are ideal for spilling loose ruminations. Freddie Gibbs floods the screen with drama—a police traffic stop that risks turning violent; warning cops about his personal arsenal—but when he repeats, “The revolution is the genocide/Look, your execution will be televised,” it feels like the perfect flip of Gil Scott-Heron’s message for an era when footage of Black death floods the news. Then Rick Ross rides in to drop his best guest spot since “Devil in a New Dress” and the message of “Scottie Beam” from the two veteran rappers couldn’t be clearer: they’re still getting better. –Dean Van Nguyen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/GT9IWNxHupc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7cfb20aaaf18ca0286f3b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Freddie-Gibbs-Alchemist.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Freddie_Gibbs__The_Alchemist-Scottie_Beam_ft_Rick_Ross.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,69,Roddy Ricch,“The Box”,Atlantic,"Atlantic There’s something infinitely charming about the first 15 seconds of Roddy Rich’s chart-topper “The Box,” before the song’s hi-hats, reverse 808s, and run of inescapable melodies even get going. At the beginning, it’s just Roddy, screeching “eeech urh” into the mic, like a toddler exploring vowel sounds for the first time. It’s ludicrous. But it works, locking listeners into one of the most curiously infectious hits of the year. –Jonah Bromwich",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/UNZqm3dxd2w,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7dbced4d3a13a6758a444/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Roddy-Ricch.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Roddy_Ricch-The_Box.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,68,Lianne La Havas,“Bittersweet”,Nonesuch,"Nonesuch British singer-songwriter Lianne La Havas would be forgiven for simply coasting on her rich voice and its impossibly slow vibrato. Instead, she’s spent three albums piecing together her own painfully intimate take on neo-soul. “Bittersweet,” the opener of her eponymous third LP, envelopes La Havas’ heart-wrenching ache with production that’s as warm and inviting as a crackling bonfire. The pathos of its most powerful lyric—“No more hangin’ around”—is fitting for the way our most intense feelings are sometimes shrouded in casual language; the things that sound trivial when we say them are made concrete by La Havas’ startling performance. –Natalie Weiner",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/AI4wVtrmMAc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7dc6596ab91ca523e2bbe/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lianne-La-Havas.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lianne_La_Havas-Bittersweet.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,67,Arca,“Mequetrefe”,XL,"XL Arca’s music has always challenged listeners to free themselves from the constructs of pop, embrace bedlam, and find melodies in the noise. While her earlier releases were sometimes marked by nearly impenetrable abstractions, KiCK i feels just accessible enough to draw listeners into its maelstrom of chaos. Few tracks exemplify this duality as well as “Mequetrefe,” an ode to self-expression sans shame. Losing none of the aggression and confrontation that make her records so arresting, “Mequetrefe” is buoyed by a sweet and tender string melody that’s at odds with its twitchy surroundings but at peace with itself. –Matthew Ismael Ruiz",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/AZKPd3k6O6A,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7eb6cdcf8ebd9e69c42c7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Arca.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Arca-Mequetrefe.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,66,Angel Olsen,“Whole New Mess”,Jagjaguwar,"Jagjaguwar The title track to Angel Olsen’s stripped-back 2020 album is one of her most haunting songs in a catalog full of them. Thick with reverb, Olsen’s flinty vibrato sounds worn-down and raw, as the fraught strums behind her recall the spartan folk music of her early records. Her spare sound palette is in service of an insatiate self-analysis on fame, addiction, and feeling unrooted in life. Olsen’s elegiac melody gives weight to her words, offering a troubled tribute to maintaining your sanity when everything else seems to be falling apart. –Eric Torres",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/Z3_9FSfpADA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7ebfcd4d3a13a6758a44a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Angel-Olsen.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Angel_Olsen-Whole_New_Mess.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,65,Run the Jewels,“JU$T” [ft. Pharrell Williams and Zach De La Rocha],Jewel Runners / BMG,"Jewel Runners / BMG Like any superhero team-up or buddy comedy, the formula for an RTJ song is carved in stone by now: Killer Mike the swaggering priest and El-P sardonic philosopher, threatening R-rated violence and revolutionary action over sounds rescued from hip-hop’s golden era and retrofitted for pre-pandemic festival stages. As with all must-see serialized dramas, the guest stars are just as impressive as the main cast. Enter Pharrell, reciting a mantra about the circular clutches of modern capitalism in the laconic tone he once used to brag about his Gandalf hat; enter Zack de la Rocha, erstwhile Rage Against the Machine frontman, incendiary and conspiratorial about wanting to rip those systems apart. El-P’s production reins in his usual glitchy energy of a in favor of near-military restraint as he memorializes Eric Garner, and Killer Mike casually advocates for the murder of our corporate overlords. Take direction at your own risk, but nobody can doubt their commitment. –Jeremy Gordon",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksxbIY-EAzU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7ec5d96ab91ca523e2bc0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/RTJ.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Run_the_Jewels-JUT_ft_Pharrell_Williams_and_Zach_De_La_Rocha.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,64,Jessy Lanza,“Lick in Heaven”,Hyperdub,"Hyperdub Rage can be a powerful force for good when focused, but taming it is often difficult. This tricky dance between intensity and chaos plays out on Jessy Lanza’s “Lick in Heaven”: The bounce of the bass synth and Lanza’s angelic voice are red herrings for the song’s angry underpinnings. On one level, the song is about letting loose with the feelings you keep pent up inside. On another, it’s about catching yourself in the throes of your worst moments, taking a step back, and reclaiming control of your life. –Noah Yoo",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/V3D7EEpdlY4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7ed0dc61c34a7841b1eab/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jessy-Lanza.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jessy_Lanza-Lick_in_Heaven.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,63,Ka,"“I Love (Mimi, Moms, Kev)”",Iron Works,"Iron Works Ka’s Descendants of Cain paints a bleak picture of the Brownsville rapper’s hood, where street justice and biblical judgement go hand in hand. The album’s first 10 songs are a litany of bullets, scars, and endless striving, but the mood shifts with the closing “I Love (Mimi, Moms, Kev),” a tribute to his wife, mother, and late friend. In contrast to the album’s eerily stark beats, “I Love” blossoms unexpectedly. “Now death is minor, ’cause you got me livin’ life major,” he tells his wife, the key change mirroring his outlook. He marvels that his mother “showed me love when all I seen was hate.” His typically labyrinthine verses straighten out, as though the page itself had become unburdened. Capping an album that lingers hauntingly on his past, “I Love” is a tribute to the very streets that shaped him: “Everybody called it the slums, but we know it as home.” –Philip Sherburne",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/A5d8RF7dndM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7edbb0f9ba652bdb99136/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ka.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ka-I_Love_Mimi_Moms_Kev.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,62,Bill Callahan,“The Mackenzies”,Drag City,"Drag City “The Mackenzies” begins inauspiciously, with a broken-down car and some unsolicited advice from a neighbor. From there, the turns it takes are so quietly strange, and strangely moving, that any further discussion of its lyrics might require a spoiler alert. Against a spare acoustic guitar backdrop, in his own increasingly fatherly baritone, Bill Callahan tells a faintly supernatural story of parents and children, life and death, and the profound closeness and distance that can coexist between people. The song’s final scene—forgive the spoiler—is indelible: A man drifts off to sleep while two elder strangers stand in the doorway. “It’s okay, son,” they tell him. “We’re okay.” –Andy Cush",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/hMMEUgts6i0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7ee56433575c992bd6cc3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bill-Callahan.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bill_Callahan-The_Mackenzies.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,61,Jay Electronica,“The Neverending Story”,Roc Nation,"Roc Nation A decade ago, the New Orleans native Jay Electronica enchanted with a series of cryptic dispatches, then vanished in a cloud of smoke and British tabloids. This year saw the release of not only his long-lost debut—precipitated by a targeted leak—but also a replacement record, a restart of sorts, which paired him with Jay-Z. The latter, A Written Testimony, often grapples with the pressure that drove Electronica from the spotlight. But on “The Neverending Story,” he raps over Alchemist’s pensive Litto Nebbia loop about the wonder he still sees in the world—a motorcycle ride to the desert, the gold teeth that make his smile shine like a Frankie Beverly song. –Paul A. Thompson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/OcWXY6LsUbo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7ef7b0f9ba652bdb99138/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jay-Electronica.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jay_Electronica-The_Neverending_Story.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,60,The Chicks,“Gaslighter”,Columbia,"Columbia The Chicks dropped “Gaslighter”—the title track of their first album in 14 years—on March 4, shortly before 2020 went all the way up in flames. Its belt-along chorus and Natalie Maines’ post-divorce barbs make the song immediately satisfying, a dose of the band’s familiar blistering humor served with an assurance that they were ready for the current moment after so much time away. Maines’ admissions of vulnerability only further root her battle cries in her humanity, speaking to a righteous channel of rage, sorrow, and bewilderment at the hurt of a relationship gone to hell. The salve of “Gaslighter” is easy to apply to almost any wound, whether or not it involves a now-ex-husband misbehaving on a boat. –Allison Hussey",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/sbVPcPL30xc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7f0191ef00c5e1192c721/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Chicks.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Chicks-Gaslighter.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,59,Charli XCX,“forever”,Atlantic,"Atlantic Written and recorded in self-isolation at home in Los Angeles—under the pressure of a self-imposed May deadline—Charli XCX’s how i’m feeling now already feels like a relic of another time. The album’s lead single, the soaring, heartfelt “forever,” captured the early-quarantine mood perfectly: vulnerable and sincere, the song finds Charli bearing her emotions with stunning clarity and candor. “I’ll love you forever,” she swears, over a rush of radiant synths, “even when we’re not together.” It’s a moving testament to a romance that right now means everything—even if it ultimately fades away. –Calum Marsh",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/TbJE-KVZvTA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7f0cddcf8ebd9e69c42ca/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Charli-XCX.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Charli_XCX-forever.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,58,Bad Bunny,“Yo Perreo Sola”,Rimas,"Rimas Perreo, as a genre, dance, and movement, has always been about power. And with “Yo Perreo Sola,” Bad Bunny offers a consent-driven treatise centering a woman’s independence on the dancefloor. The video even features the superstar donning the chains, latex, and thigh-high boots of the song’s narrator, as he exhibits a genuine desire to play with gender expression in a genre often catered to the male gaze. But “Yo Perreo Sola” also repeated reggaetón’s long-standing pattern of relegating female vocalists to anonymity; Puerto Rican rapper Nesi, who delivers its chorus with a passionate drawl, was uncredited upon the song’s release. The oversight was later rectified with a remix featuring her (this time with a credit) alongside pioneer Ivy Queen—whose legendary “Quiero Bailar” set the terms for this track—providing vindication for the caballotas who just want to dance in peace. –Stefanie Fernández",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/GtSRKwDCaZM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7f16b0f9ba652bdb9913a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bad-Bunny.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bad_Bunny-Yo_Perreo_Sola.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,57,Burna Boy,“Onyeka (Baby)”,Atlantic,"Atlantic No man is a whole movement. But Burna Boy—who put out an album ambitiously titled African Giant last year, then doubled down on his promise with 2020’s Twice as Tall—has made his career by convincingly begging to differ. “Onyeka (Baby)” is an indestructibly sweet, sunny moment amid a colossal album of dancehall, Afrobeats, and pop, another of Burna’s Sisyphean efforts to compress the breadth of pan-Africanism into his person. Not since Fela Kuti has one artist blended the contradictions, agonies, and triumphs of the continent with so much muscle. –Mina Tavakoli",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/-BrqVZeLr0Q,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7f208c61c34a7841b1ead/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Burna-Boy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Burna_Boy-Onyeka_Baby.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,56,City Girls,“Pussy Talk” [ft. Doja Cat],Quality Control,"Quality Control Yung Miami and JT of City Girls are grade-A, gold-standard shit talkers. It’s what makes their music so fun to listen to, and on “Pussy Talk” they’re at their best, enlisting Doja Cat in a rundown of all the things their pussies want, can or can’t do, will or won’t tolerate. When considered as part of a pussy-exalting trilogy, with Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s “WAP” and Meg’s “Don’t Stop” as the grand finale, “Pussy Talk” gets even better. In 2016, the 45th president all but ruined the word, but now with the end of his reign, pussy can spend the rest of the 2020s reclaiming its identity. According to City Girls, it is multitalented, multilingual (“English, Spanish, and French”), rich, demanding, and in complete control. –Allison P. Davis",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/_UzXwZkmzgE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7f27575014cd2f75cc54b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/City-Girls.jpg,/dataset/artwork/City_Girls-Pussy_Talk_ft_Doja_Cat.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,55,Porridge Radio,“Sweet”,Secretly Canadian,"Secretly Canadian “Sweet” is a character study of a woman on the edge of mania. Porridge Radio frontwoman Dana Margolin sings as if her insides are aflame, delivering lines with nearly feral bravado. As her narrator bites her fingernails and fends off a mother’s backhanded expressions of concern, the song oscillates between nervous, flayed post-punk and outbursts of metallic distortion. The music illustrates the Sisyphean task of feeling better: Each time it reaches some measure of calm, the noise comes roaring back. –Sophie Kemp",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/27BvZLSzaz8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7f2db75014cd2f75cc54d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Porridge-Radio.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Porridge_Radio-Sweet.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,54,Destroyer,“Cue Synthesizer”,Merge / Dead Oceans,"Merge / Dead Oceans Like so many Destroyer songs before it, “Cue Synthesizer” is a grim view of a dilapidated world, led by a tour guide who can hardly stomach the sight. “Been to America, been to Europe,” Dan Bejar sings distractedly. “It’s all the same shit.” To accompany the voyage, he commands a small band in his head—“Bring in the drums/Cue fake drums,” he sighs—but the actual accompaniment refuses to follow his orders. It’s all ghostly ambience, groovy slap bass, and serpentine, canned electric guitar solos. The result feels slightly apocalyptic, weirdly funny, and right on time. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/06ZLNLz2yGI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7f39696ab91ca523e2bc2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Destroyer.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Destroyer-Cue_Synthesizer.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,53,Bfb Da Packman,“Free Joe Exotic” [ft. Sada Baby],The Lunch Crew Company,"The Lunch Crew Company There are few acceptable places to play “Free Joe Exotic” outside of your own headphones. On the jaw-dropping track, Flint, Michigan-raised Bfb Da Packman raps about how he would rather hurl himself from a bridge than wear a condom, twists the Sour Patch Kids slogan into a pun about oral sex, and accuses a girl of telling a tall tale about the size of his junk: “She said she can feel it in her stomach, stop capping/Ol’ lyin’ ass bitch, my dick ain’t that big.” And all that’s in just the first verse. Not even in Michigan, the current rap capital of darkly funny shit talking, will you find anyone thinking more unholy thoughts than Packman. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/zzY64Qu8HHc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7f4121ef00c5e1192c723/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/BFB-Da-Packman.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bfb_Da_Packman-Free_Joe_Exotic_ft_Sada_Baby.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,52,Nick Hakim,“QADIR”,ATO,"ATO Nick Hakim’s tribute to a deceased childhood friend shines in the details. Steady yet anxious congas, a gentle flute, and bright keys meld into an affectingly soulful plea for a kinder world. Like passing through a space inhabited by the spirits of lost loved ones, “QADIR” is both comforting and unsettling. As the track swells to symphonic levels, Hakim’s dusty timbre staggers to a halt and gives way to a haunting 10-person chorus, surrendering to a feeling that can no longer be expressed by words. Much like a life, “QADIR” reverberates long after it ends. –Jessica Kariisa",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/PqzFi6PwTGA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7f5880f9ba652bdb9913c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Nick-Hakim.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nick_Hakim-QADIR.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,51,Haim,“I Know Alone”,Columbia,"Columbia “I Know Alone” may have been written before the pandemic, but its reflections on solitude hit especially hard in a year when pretty much everyone was forced to live life as a glorified hermit. The song is a groggy anthem for those days when counting the spots on your ceiling can feel like too much work. “Nights turn into days, that turn to gray, keep turning over,” Danielle Haim sings with quiet desperation. The moody bassline delivers a melody to curl up in and brood, while the uptempo beat towards the end is a reminder that even loneliness ends. –Dayna Evans",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/vfZSgr_si4I,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7f5fb75014cd2f75cc550/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Haim.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Haim-I_Know_Alone.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,50,Kelly Lee Owens,“Melt!”,Smalltown Supersound,"Smalltown Supersound “Melt!” might tap into the space-age magic of early techno classics like Cybotron’s “Clear,” but instead of using ascending synth notes to reach toward the heavens, London producer Kelly Lee Owens focuses on anchoring you to Earth with sternum-cracking bass. The unrelenting drums are a perfect match for the field recordings of glacial melt that Owens sprinkles in for ambience and texture, her shuffling hi-hats pinging across the tundra. This is club music sequenced with computers and hardware, but “Melt!” is resolutely human at its core—a frenzied celebration of our planet that also warns of its impending demise. –Noah Yoo",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfQoERnyCeg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7f658e7768c955699090d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kelly-Lee-Owens.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kelly_Lee_Owens-Melt.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,49,Dua Lipa,“Physical”,Warner,"Warner Dua Lipa’s “Physical” is pure adrenaline: a stand-up-the-second-you-hear-it masterpiece of power pop that can transform a dancefloor into something feral, or at least help you eke out one last push-up. Sweaty and cathartic, it’s the high-water mark of Lipa’s knockout second album, Future Nostalgia. “Physical” is just that, from the threatening, Eurythmics-adjacent synth line that anchors the beat, to Lipa’s soaring chorus, which pleads for human touch as much as it demands it. It’s the sound of a precocious pop star throwing off the restraints, cracking her knuckles, and stepping into the fray. –Jackson Howard",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HDEHj2yzew,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7f7100aaaf18ca0286f73/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Dua-Lipa.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dua_Lipa-Physical.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,48,Thundercat,“Dragonball Durag”,Brainfeeder,"Brainfeeder Thundercat has Dragon Ball Z tattoos all over his body. He also wrote “Dragonball Durag,” a strange and glorious ball of fuzz that, like his best songs, threatens to flutter away at any moment. On the track, the L.A. virtuoso best known for his imaginative bass lines and staggering fretwork embarks on a quixotic quest to woo a love interest with his speckled headwear. The goal is out of sight, the means absurd. But the groove is so serious that it’s all gospel. –Mano Sundaresan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ormQQG2UhtQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7f8c5e7768c955699090f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Thundercat.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Thundercat-Dragonball_Durag.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,47,Sufjan Stevens,“The Ascension”,Asthmatic Kitty,"Asthmatic Kitty After eulogizing his late mother on 2015’s startlingly bare Carrie & Lowell, Sufjan Stevens is now grappling with the death of his own ego. The songwriter sounds like he’s taking himself to task on the title track from his eighth studio album, suggesting the hushed hopelessness and conflicted faith that propel so much of his work add up to little more than a performative mess. But he doesn’t do away with those trademarks on “The Ascension”; he uses them as a mirror for even deeper self-investigation. As a muted instrumental flutters in the background, recalling a hollowed-out version of his anthem “Chicago,” a choir of Sufjans repeatedly asks, “What now?” Against the odds, a swell of synths finally hints at something like salvation. –Ryan Dombal",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgFlMY2glD4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7f9680f9ba652bdb9913e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sufjan-Stevens.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sufjan_Stevens-The_Ascension.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,46,070 Shake,“Guilty Conscience”,G.O.O.D. Music / Def Jam,"G.O.O.D. Music / Def Jam 070 Shake’s hypnotic voice makes hard things go down easier. In 2018, it was her verse on Kanye West’s “Ghost Town” that saved ye from complete, disaffected gloom. Now, on her debut LP, the GOOD Music/Def Jam recruit pours a spacey sheen over her own battles with substance abuse, heartbreak, and suicidal ideation to self-soothe, rather than self-destruct. And she does it best on “Guilty Conscience,” a big, ambient pop record that tells of a lover’s remorse after catching their partner cheating, only to reveal that they cheated first. With the sound of her vocals soaring over gauzy ’80s synths, even guilt gets its moment of grace. –Jenzia Burgos",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAsHVwl-MU4&feature=youtu.be&t=152,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7f9e55d29c1cf1205b4a5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/070-Shake.jpg,/dataset/artwork/070_Shake-Guilty_Conscience.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,45,Half Waif,“Ordinary Talk”,ANTI-,"ANTI- Half Waif’s Nandi Rose loves the process of working through her problems, but she’s never captured the bittersweet realities of what that means like she does on “Ordinary Talk.” Atop solemn synths and pulsing bass drum, she establishes guidelines for facing personal struggles: cry openly, laugh at TV, fold laundry, and, above all else, be prepared to do it alone. It’s a cold truth made warm in Rose’s hands, thanks to revitalizing choral harmonies that mirror the magic of self-affirmation with each swell. –Nina Corcoran",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHyobMujalc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7fa5dc61c34a7841b1eaf/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Half-Waif.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Half_Waif-Ordinary_Talk.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,44,Lil Baby / 42 Dugg,“We Paid”,Quality Control / UMG,"Quality Control / UMG With the touring industry stalled in 2020, it seemed like every rapper on Earth tried to make up for the loss with their very own digital deluxe reissue, padding out recent albums with extra tracks. For the most part, though, quality lacked. Only one artist made his album better with its deluxe edition: Lil Baby, who added a number of great songs to My Turn. None were greater than “We Paid,” his triumphant collaboration with protégé 42 Dugg. Baby plays the elder statesman on the quietly menacing track, rapping more ferociously than usual while letting Dugg take the lead. “We Paid” is smooth and confident: If you can’t hustle like you used to, Baby suggests, find new ways to flourish. –Matthew Strauss",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GErG9femMQk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7fb590f9ba652bdb99140/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lil-Baby.png,/dataset/artwork/Lil_Baby__42_Dugg-We_Paid.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,43,Róisín Murphy,“Murphy’s Law”,Skint / BMG,"Skint / BMG Róisín Murphy’s glossy totem to the dancefloor is based on an adage that feels extremely appropriate given this year’s circumstances: anything that can go wrong will go wrong. But consequences be damned, there’s no hesitation when Murphy’s smoky voice sings about getting back on her feet. She’s said that this song is the story of her life, and while she’s right that things go wrong no matter what, the lyrics also pose a reasonable question for the rest of us: what have you got to lose? Take chances, live life, and dance as much as possible. –Evan Minsker",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Khh8NB-qBo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7fc0b1ef00c5e1192c725/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Roisin-Murphy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Risn_Murphy-Murphys_Law.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,42,Earl Sweatshirt,“WHOLE WORLD” [ft. Maxo],Tan Cressida / Warner,"Tan Cressida / Warner Earl Sweatshirt and Maxo have both made their homes in the rain-blurred realm where raps feel like unspoken thoughts, where beats resemble humming machinery a block away—a world of smudged loops, two or three notes long, punctured by diaristic jottings that flash like lightning. “Devil hittin’ my peripherals,” Maxo mutters on “WHOLE WORLD,” over a three-minute heart-murmuring loop from Alchemist. Earl’s own flow is hesitant, probing for meaning in the cracks between sound and sense: “Anxious, moving at a pallbearer’s pace/My family flank me in the rain.” The two of them are standing completely still, speaking in code, letting the wind take their thoughts to whoever might hear them. –Jayson Greene",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wWCb_w3Ks8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7fc9ed4d3a13a6758a44e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Earl-Sweatshirt.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Earl_Sweatshirt-WHOLE_WORLD_ft_Maxo.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,41,Dogleg,“Kawasaki Backflip”,Triple Crown,"Triple Crown Dogleg honed the wild catharsis of “Kawasaki Backflip” across dozens of shows in bars and small rooms before it opened Melee, the Michigan emo wrecking crew’s debut album. In another year, its layered guitar work and massive drums would have prompted massive pits and reckless stage dives at outdoor music festivals. Instead, self-isolation became an oddly fitting context for frontman Alex Stoitsiadis’ screams about solitude, destruction, and an uncertain future. Hopefully, for Dogleg, that future involves kids doing literal backflips into much bigger crowds. –Evan Minsker",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjjygwmqG9M,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7fd1ee7768c9556990911/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Dogleg.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dogleg-Kawasaki_Backflip.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,40,Flo Milli,“Like That Bitch”,’94 Sounds / RCA,"’94 Sounds / RCA Flo Milli’s “Like That Bitch” is like a shot of bad bitch juice, a potent steroid for dealing with enemies, envy, and haters in general. Over three and a half breathless minutes, she shoots off rounds of snappy taunts and neck-breaking flexes; you can practically feel Flo Milli curling her lips and flipping her hair as she compares you to “a toilet with some lips.” The Alabama rapper serves up plates of deliciously petty barbs and flaunts four different flows, offering us a taste of her lifestyle of money-making and man-taking. All you can do is bask in the power of Flo Milli shit. –Isabelia Herrera",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76e_EbDbFhE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7fd94d4d3a13a6758a450/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Flo-Milli.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Flo_Milli-Like_That_Bitch.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,39,Phoebe Bridgers,“I Know the End”,Dead Oceans,"Dead Oceans “I Know the End” packs an album’s worth of ideas into five minutes and 45 seconds. One moment the Punisher closer is a hushed acoustic ballad, the next it’s a swelling mid-tempo strummer, and then it explodes into an orchestral fanfare, and each section has its own emotional arc. It’s something like Phoebe Bridgers’ version of Neil Young’s “After the Gold Rush,” in which fear and bombed-out desolation are buoyed by an undercurrent of defiance. She has a rare ability to connect the fragmented images passing by the window to what she feels inside: She shows us funnel clouds dropping from the sky, a slaughterhouse, and a shopping mall, and turns each into a signpost for her own confusion. As the song builds, despair is tempered by a burst of energy that hints at survival. When it finally detonates and a seeming cast of thousands join in to shout “The end is here!” we come to understand her apocalypse as one frightening and cathartic in equal measure. –Mark Richardson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJ9-xN6dCW4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7fde0d4d3a13a6758a452/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Phoebe-Bridgers.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Phoebe_Bridgers-I_Know_the_End.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,38,Rina Sawayama,“Bad Friend”,Dirty Hit,"Dirty Hit Pop music loves to memorialize doomed romances and terrible exes; the genre offers considerably less for failed friendships. But on “Bad Friend,” Rina Sawayama gives friend breakups their own ballad. She confronts her guilt for fading out of a friend’s life, chronicling the memories of intimacy—sweaty karaoke singalongs, summer nights in the city—and the quiet corrosion of falling out of touch. A sense of shame courses through the track, undercutting her excuses (“Don’t ask me where I’ve been/Been avoiding everything,” she admits) until a choir of voices swells up to join her in communal confession: “Put your hands up if you’re not good at this stuff.” The relief doesn’t come easy, but once it does, the song softens and shines. Sawayama’s catharsis demands interrogation and forgiveness. –Dani Blum",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLXtc2OSrLQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7fe6fd4d3a13a6758a454/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Rina-Sawayama.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rina_Sawayama-Bad_Friend.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,37,Blake Mills,“Vanishing Twin”,Verve,"Verve One of the year’s greatest, and most unusual, guitar solos arrives near the end of “Vanishing Twin,” when Blake Mills conjures a haunted rumble that echoes like a ghost that’s not quite ready to cross over. It serves as the grand finale to an especially intimate folk song, hinting at the virtuosic talent he often keeps behind the scenes. The California artist had a breakthrough year lending his touch to albums by Bob Dylan, Phoebe Bridgers, and Perfume Genius, but on his own record, Mutable Set, he explored an elegant quiet that’s entirely his own. He sings “Vanishing Twin” in a double-tracked whisper over a deceptively complex arrangement of fretless bass, plucked strings, and distant percussion. “Skin on skin,” he murmurs. “Soon you will know where I’ve been.” And then he reaches for the guitar and shows you where he’s going. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_32FuDN2rmg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7fee1fe2c3d3a0ac0fc73/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Blake-Mills.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Blake_Mills-Vanishing_Twin.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,36,Bartees Strange,“Mustang”,Memory Music,"Memory Music With “Mustang,” Bartees Strange took everything he knew about indie rock and put it into one massive song. Set to walls of guitar and synth hooks, his lyrics contain a nod to the music that inspired him as a Black teenager interested in punk and indie, and to the unfulfilling jobs he worked for years to pay the bills before quitting to focus on performing and producing. Throughout “Mustang,” Strange offers intimate confessions like, “It's nice to think that folks are near/Waking up was hard this year,” but the song is unapologetically loud enough to get anyone out of bed. –Hannah Jocelyn",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlywGIexOnA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7ffa1ee65027d9ed93132/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bartees-Strange.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bartees_Strange-Mustang.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,35,Haim,“The Steps”,Columbia,"Columbia For those of us raised on the red meat of American classic rock, “The Steps” is the kind of song you know as soon as you hear it. Does the Haim sisters’ embrace of simple pleasures—the bubblegum guitar riff, the easy harmonies, the big chorus—signal a lack of imagination? Not any more than someone who manages to make jeans and a T-shirt look beautiful. “I can’t understand why you don’t understand me, baby,” Danielle complains. Maybe it’s because she’s more complicated than the song lets on. Just because it’s comfort food doesn’t mean it’s easy to cook. –Mike Powell",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2O_xa8cems,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7f5fb75014cd2f75cc550/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Haim.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Haim-The_Steps.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,34,Noname,“Song 33”,Self-released,"Self-released At the apex of this summer’s racial-justice uprising, Noname released the J. Cole diss track “Song 33.” He had launched the first volley with “Snow on tha Bluff,” a grating whinge about being out-woked by a woman widely presumed to be Noname. She swats him away handily, the diss track equivalent of receiving a long text and dismissing it with a “K.” Its opening line, delivered in her characteristic hush, reflects decades of Black radical feminist critique: “I see a demon on my shoulder, it’s looking like patriarchy.” After coolly ethering Cole—over a cascading Madlib beat, no less—Noname busies herself with more important things: eulogizing murdered activist Toyin Salau, highlighting the crisis of violence against trans women, name-checking George Floyd, and calling for a break up of Amazon. And it only takes her a minute. –Rawiya Kameir",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFp1eW2bihg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc800b354e0c8e53596fc5c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Noname.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Noname-Song_33.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,33,Shamir,“On My Own”,Self-released,"Self-released One thing nine months more or less alone reveals is whom to miss and whom to let go. Always ahead of his time, Shamir wrote an anthem for figuring this out before lockdown; lucky for us, he released it just as the loneliness really set in. “On My Own” is bittersweet like prime Breeders, its sugary hooks enrobing drums as light and crunchy as puffed rice. His voice, dexterous as Prince’s, does the most in a full range of light and shade. But the simple precision of the song’s sentiment—“And I feel it in my bones/Inside myself is where I belong”—is what stands out the most. In a year defined by dancing on your own, Shamir made it sound like self-actualization. –Jesse Dorris",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFJMAJT_BNc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc8011354e0c8e53596fc5e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Shamir.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Shamir-On_My_Own.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,32,Taylor Swift,“the last great american dynasty”,Republic,"Republic Taylor Swift’s Rhode Island estate was already notorious—for those spectacular Fourth of July parties, for the Tom Hiddleston photos, for costing so much money ($17.75 million, in cash) that it inspired the governor to propose a new tax on second homes. But even Taylor Swift-sized drama doesn’t seem so juicy compared to “the last great american dynasty,” a highlight from her summer quarantine album folklore that traces the glamorous, troubled life of 20th-century heiress Rebekah Harkness, who married into Standard Oil money and—here comes the big reveal—lived in that very same enormous hilltop mansion. With the intrigue of a story song and the intimacy of a biography, Swift delves into socialite anthropology and returns with an epitaph for a woman she’ll never meet. The real magic is the winking humility of the image in the mirror: a woman criticized endlessly for being too rich and too gauche who knows that living well is still the best revenge. –Anna Gaca",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2s5xdY6MCeI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7ceddc61c34a7841b1e70/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Taylor-Swift.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Taylor_Swift-the_last_great_american_dynasty.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,31,Waxahatchee,“Lilacs”,Merge,"Merge Katie Crutchfield christened her solo project Waxahatchee in honor of a creek in her hometown of Birmingham, Alabama; she now lives in Kansas City, a metropolis bifurcated by the country’s longest river. But the water she sings of on “Lilacs,” a stunning highlight from this spring’s Saint Cloud, comes in a bottle: Her flowers drink Topo Chico, a sparkling mineral water sourced from an inactive Mexican volcano with purported healing qualities. There’s a built-in reverb grounding Crutchfield’s falsetto, and it sounds like an unexpectedly early thaw, like the comforting promise that when flowers wilt and eventually die, it’s because they will soon bloom anew. So too will she. “I’ll fill myself back up like I used to do,” she trills, buoyant over a wide-open, folky guitar. Like a gentle river, time passing slowly is better than it not passing at all. –Rawiya Kameir",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaA7I7B1pOk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc80202d4d3a13a6758a456/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Waxahatchee.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Waxahatchee-Lilacs.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,30,Amaarae,“FANCY”,Platoon,"Platoon Amaarae’s delicate vocals melt into a beat like butter on a warm slice of bread. On “Fancy,” glistening drums and spare guitar strums set the stage, but the Ghanaian-American singer’s babyish delivery is the real draw. She uses her candy-sweet vocal melodies to boldly and justly praise her own glamour: “Every day I do my dance in the mirror ’cause I feel so damn fancy.” Then she goes on to repeat the word “fancy” a few more times, reiterating her bravado with the ease of a feather floating down from the sky and landing on your nose. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9nCy25Mwko,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc80249b64c50c5711bbcc0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Amaarae.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Amaarae-FANCY.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,29,Lil Uzi Vert,“POP”,Generation Now / Atlantic,"Generation Now / Atlantic Lil Uzi Vert just beamed down in a pair of Balenciaga jeans that cost more than your biweekly paycheck (before taxes), and he is ready to rap. “Straight bars,” he announces at the top of “POP,” before making good on that promise with the kind of stream-of-consciousness spree we haven’t heard since Lil Wayne’s mixtape heyday. Listening to this song is like living in a Sonic the Hedgehog speedrun—it’s zany, breakneck, and features a surprising number of ’90s references (congratulations My Cousin Vinny and Cindy Crawford, you are now Uzi-approved). Over an intergalactic beat that churns and gurgles like Jabba the Hutt with an upset stomach, Uzi rifles through flex after flex about everything from his gleaming fists to his minty-fresh dick to his (why not) “multi, multi, multi, multi, multi-grain” granola bars. It’s a direct line into one of music’s nimblest minds. –Ryan Dombal",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kOAdhUlkt0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc806bde7768c9556990913/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lil-Uzi-Vert.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lil_Uzi_Vert-POP.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,28,The 1975,“If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know)”,Dirty Hit / Interscope,"Dirty Hit / Interscope “If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know)” is the 1975 incarnate. A minefield of modern neuroses laid over top of a euphoric blast of ’80s schmaltz (complete with a bombastic saxophone solo), it’s a snapshot of what the band does best: grandiose uncertainty. This time, Matty Healy is hung up on the “girl of your dreams,” who he can only connect with via FaceTime. “I need to get back, I’ve gotta see the girl on the screen,” he announces. But time and time again, his efforts to rendezvous with his digital paramour are interrupted by real-life obstacles, from locked hotel rooms to the awkwardness of online intimacy. “If You’re Too Shy” doesn’t find any resolution to these problems, but rarely does disconnect sound so good. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYYQpTbBSBM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc80728ee65027d9ed93134/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-1975.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_1975-If_Youre_Too_Shy_Let_Me_Know.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,27,Dehd,“Loner”,Fire Talk,"Fire Talk Though the solitude that Chicago indie rockers Dehd invoke in “Loner” is self-imposed, this anti-breakup-song became a fitting soundtrack to a time of little human connection. Over beachy guitar riffs and bouncy hand claps, singer-bassist Emily Kempf expresses a desire to detach herself from the limitations of relationships, painting separation as a bittersweet opportunity for growth. The difference between independence and loneliness, Dehd suggest, is your relationship with yourself. –Abby Jones",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNwdj0BmYnk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc807aa1ef00c5e1192c727/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Dehd.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dehd-Loner.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,26,Drake,“Laugh Now Cry Later” [ft. Lil Durk],OVO Sound / Republic,OVO Sound / Republic,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFm7YDVlqnI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc80844d4d3a13a6758a458/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Drake.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Drake-Laugh_Now_Cry_Later_ft_Lil_Durk.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,25,100 gecs,"“hand crushed by a mallet (remix)” [ft. Fall Out Boy, Craig Owens, and Nicole Dollanganger]",Big Beat / Atlantic,"Big Beat / Atlantic You might consider this as kind of like one of those pop-punk covers of turn-of-the-millennium hits gone spectacularly right. And given that the artists responsible are gecs, one of the slipperiest, most brilliant-dumb acts going, it’s both more and less complicated than that. Sure, the remix unites two iconic wailers of the 2000s Alternative Press set—Fall Out Boy’s Patrick Stump and Chiodos’ Craig Owens—for arresting vocal turns that transport you back about 15 years. But as the barbed guitar riffs and methodical bass plucks give way to a chorus made for a hot-pink dressing room montage scene played at 1.5x speed, and a happy hardcore breakdown devolves into a spiky loop of unclean vocals, it becomes clear that the remix is somehow even more amazingly chaotic (and infinitely catchier) than the cyber hellscape that is the original. –Jillian Mapes",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvFfp_f8koo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc808a10a2ec9475ba87e15/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/100-gecs.jpg,/dataset/artwork/100_gecs-hand_crushed_by_a_mallet_remix_ft_Fall_Out_Boy_Craig_Owens_and_Nicole_Dollanganger.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,24,The Weather Station,“Robber”,Fat Possum,"Fat Possum “Robber” unfurls like a cerebral crime drama, the kind that lures you in with a moody pilot and leaves you glued to your couch until you figure out whodunnit. Tamara Lindeman sketches out a villain—the titular thief, silent and cool—before lifting the veil on larger forces at work: laws, banks, a rotten system that forces people to act in their own self-interest. The song’s rhythm is insistent and unsteady; saxophone and electric guitar spray like seafoam, wild and untamed at the edges. By the time ""Robber"" reaches its urgent climax, Lindeman has transformed a personal reckoning with societal failures into a reflective prompt for the listener. Can you blame yourself for ruthlessness if you were never given a choice? –Jamieson Cox",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJ9SYLVaIUI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc808fc96ab91ca523e2bc4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-Weather-Station.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Weather_Station-Robber.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,23,The Weeknd,“Blinding Lights”,XO / Republic,"XO / Republic The Weeknd’s misanthropic, bacchanalian persona was ahead of its time when he broke through in 2012, but with druggy nihilism essentially one of the unifying moods of 2020, Abel Tesfaye’s album After Hours felt freshly urgent in ways both enjoyable and horrifying. “Blinding Lights” was its rallying cry, a cold New Wave song about a protagonist so detached and listless that clamoring to turn his obsessive carnal fantasies into reality is all that appeases him. Max Martin’s polish helped make it a number one single for four weeks, the hurried drumbeat, surging choruses, and neon ‘80s synth allowing Tesfaye’s falsetto the euphoric if grinding edge of an amphetamine high. But it’s also easy to hear the broader spiritual resonance in this ode to a lonely man with little joy left except for intoxicants and the object of his desire. –Alex Frank",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NRXx6U8ABQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc809e3b64c50c5711bbcc4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-Weeknd.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Weeknd-Blinding_Lights.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,22,Jessie Ware,“What’s Your Pleasure?”,PMR / Friends Keep Secrets / Interscope,"PMR / Friends Keep Secrets / Interscope Jessie Ware and producer James Ford know their disco, but on “What’s Your Pleasure?” they not only pay tribute to classics like Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” but also to the era’s overall feeling of smoky sleaze. Atop a steely sequencer, Ware’s vocals swoop like the bell sleeve of a chiffon disco gown sweeping you toward the floor. While she luxuriates in the heady, horny stuff of the verses—of perfect symmetry and blown candles—the beat throbs with lockstep control, less feeling love than meaning business. For every spangly synth, there’s a bit of brass that growls in a beastlier key, or guitars that practically salivate. And if you listen closely, she finishes each chorus with a gleeful whoop, completing the homage: There’s no pleasure without fun. –Katherine St. Asaph",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWazsCKdlhg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc80af11ef00c5e1192c729/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jessie-Ware.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jessie_Ware-Whats_Your_Pleasure.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,21,India Jordan,“For You”,Local Action,"Local Action With euphoria in short supply and dancefloors shuttered around the globe, 2020 hasn’t been particularly kind to dance music. Outside the context of booming sound systems and late-night revelry, even the most expertly crafted club tracks have lost some of their luster, which makes the glittering elation of “For You” all the more precious. Bounding along atop a turbo-charged filter-house template, the song gleefully reanimates the ghosts of French touch and harkens back to the days when house producers regularly (and rightfully) landed in the Top 40. As the title track of Jordan’s For You EP—an effort reflecting the London artist’s struggle to move past the homophobia and small-mindedness that pervaded their formative years in the North of England—the song is a joyous ode to self-love and self-acceptance that underscores the healing power of a good rave. –Shawn Reynaldo",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5YJKW3BAiQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc80cbd96ab91ca523e2bfa/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/India-Jordan.jpg,/dataset/artwork/India_Jordan-For_You.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,20,Jazmine Sullivan,“Lost One”,RCA,"RCA Jazmine Sullivan has a gift for eulogizing relationships that are beyond saving, and even beyond possibility. On “Lost One,” a crackly ballad that concedes to the slipperiness of time, she confesses into an abyss about the sting of falling short in a partnership. Anguish turns to grief as Sullivan’s hoarse, fragile vocals retreat into a guitar that sounds as hollow as her defenses, landing somewhere between gospel and otherworldly. The song is profoundly sad because it isn’t a two-way dialogue between souls—it’s a soliloquy. The beauty of the song lies in the author’s awareness of the imbalance at hand. From the very beginning, she knows she’s singing to an apparition. –Clover Hope",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NMz1jsoNoU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc80d46c61c34a7841b1eb1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jazmine-Sullivan.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jazmine_Sullivan-Lost_One.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,19,Adrianne Lenker,“anything”,4AD,"4AD Adrianne Lenker’s music feels like a whisper even when her band screams behind her, and on her solo music, that whisper is pinpoint-accurate; listening to her sing feels like a tap on the shoulder. “Anything” is another one of her simple, warm folk songs, just another drop in the larger reservoir of work that seems to live within her. The vocal melody encompasses a range you could find under one hand on the piano, just a few notes, while her fingerpicking works its familiar, comforting magic. The lyrics are a series of simple affirmations and intimate scenes that express Lenker’s ongoing plea, audible in every breath, for a connection that transcends the bounds of talking. “Wanna listen to the sound of you blinking,” she sings. “I don’t wanna talk about anything.” The song makes space for the kind of silence she craves, the kind held by two people. –Jayson Greene",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bs4MffKz9rk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc9017cd3d904fb4b7bc6c6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Adrianne-Lenker.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Adrianne_Lenker-anything.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,18,Jayda G,“Both of Us”,Ninja Tune,"Ninja Tune There were so very few reasons to break out in ecstatic dance this year, but Jayda G offered a sublime exception. The London-based producer dropped her bubbly single “Both of Us” mid-summer, and it felt like being rescued by a party barge while lost at sea. Bright, bouncing keys are the driving force of her spirited house banger, but what happens on the song’s perimeter is just as entrancing. Dry, papery beats, synchronized claps, and muffled chit-chat lend the atmosphere of a packed, pulsing nightclub—and the molasses-slow breakdown offers one of the best beat-drop payoffs of the year. After months of inertia, Jayda G brought the dancefloor to us. –Madison Bloom",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kIsJjnc8PQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc901f2d3d904fb4b7bc6c9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jayda-G.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jayda_G-Both_of_Us.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,17,Grimes,“Delete Forever”,4AD,"4AD Grimes’ vision of our technologically mediated future is either marvelously prescient or totally wrong, but inside the elaborate cryogenic chambers of her albums, everything goes her way. Until “Delete Forever.” Here, in the misfit of Miss Anthropocene, a loose, extremely un-Grimes acoustic guitar strum becomes the setting for an affecting tribute to friends and fellow artists who’ve died in the opioid crisis. It’s not a testimonial; it’s a fragile meditation on lost innocence, surrender, and the contradictions of trauma. “Funny how they think us naive when we’re on the brink,” she sings in a high, crystalline coo. Some might find it crass to describe death in the same words as a wiped hard drive, but, well, this is still Grimes. “Delete Forever” extends the kind of empathy no AI can. –Anna Gaca",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvzC8MmC850,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc9026ae7768c955699091d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Grimes.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Grimes-Delete_Forever.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,16,Fiona Apple,“Fetch the Bolt Cutters”,Epic,"Epic The title of Fiona Apple’s spectacular fifth album is a call to “fetch your tool of liberation [and] set yourself free,” and its title track captures the cautious jubilation of accomplishing that feat. It opens with percussion that sounds like a rapping at the door, a wake-up call. Apple shakes off the burden of expectations and demarcates her own growth, building toward a Kate Bush-worthy insistence that she’ll make it up her hill. After a raft of heavy breaths, barking dogs, and a pounding-heart bassline that convey the frazzled yet determined energy of finding your footing, the song ends with a twinkling flourish of keys—a playful ta-da underscoring the realization that a broken lock is just the beginning. –Allison Hussey",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emXYPRlVBas,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc902c696ab91ca523e2c33/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Fiona-Apple.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fiona_Apple-Fetch_the_Bolt_Cutters.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,15,Chloe x Halle,“Do It”,Parkwood / Columbia,"Parkwood / Columbia Chloe x Halle polished their slinky R&B formula this year on sophomore album Ungodly Hour, and “Do It” was the duo’s glittering crown jewel. Their rich, fluttering harmonies pirouette over trap snares, finger snaps, and wobbling bass, all the while painting a portrait of a perfectly unbothered night out with friends. Light on its feet and effervescent, “Do It” is the sound of Chloe x Halle gracefully gliding across a vocal tightrope, with each sweetened back-and-forth accented by fabulous self-confidence. –Eric Torres",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9HIaGcBocc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc9033596ab91ca523e2c35/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Chloe-Halle.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Chloe_x_Halle-Do_It.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,14,U.S. Girls,“4 American Dollars”,4AD,"4AD Meghan Remy wears the perfectionist swagger of American pop like a disguise. Her stylistic shifts might seem willfully evasive, but as she puts it on ""4 American Dollars,"" ""It's not personal, it's business."" The song is a standout from Heavy Light, her sauntering, sensuous seventh album as the frontwoman of U.S. Girls, which revels in the sounds of hard-fought freedom—gospel, blues, Springsteen—utilizing their easy familiarity as a Trojan horse for materialist critique. With sky-high synths and a girl-group chorus, “4 American Dollars” drapes her daggers in velvetine funk. “No matter how much you get to have/You will still die, and that's the only fact,” she coos, sugar-coating capitalism’s alienation. Inverting a quote from Martin Luther King Jr., “4 American Dollars” accessorizes the trappings of a rags-to-riches mindset: “You gotta have boots if you wanna lift those bootstraps.” –Arielle Gordon",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGQ1UAX0aYo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc90414e7768c955699091f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/US-Girls.jpg,/dataset/artwork/US_Girls-4_American_Dollars.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,13,Soccer Mommy,“circle the drain”,Loma Vista,"Loma Vista If asked to pinpoint the primary emotional experience of quarantine, you might go with listlessness, or fatigue. But neither quite nails it. With a bit more prodding to open up, maybe you’d land on: I’ve been falling apart these days. Sophia Allison of Soccer Mommy nailed our constant recursion, atrophy, isolation, gall, and grief back in the early spring. It’s more than just the chorus lyric of “circle the drain,” the lead single from Allison’s synesthetic indie rock album Color Theory; it’s how she sings it. The line’s path is dizzying, catching an updraft on falling apart, that feeling of rust as our sweatpants become thinner with wear. Then it floats back down and alights on these days, the great borderless period of time in which we find ourselves. The song’s warm familiarity, which Allison modeled in part after bright pop-rock hits of her youth, like Sheryl Crow’s “Soak up the Sun” or Natalie Imbruglia’s “Torn,” gives it the quality of a quilt filled with stones. It’s comforting but heavy, the weight of the world on your chest—even, as Allison reminds us, when everything is fine. –Jeremy D. Larson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTc1w32Vbeo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc9048396ab91ca523e2c38/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Soccer-Mommy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Soccer_Mommy-circle_the_drain.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,12,Moses Sumney,“Cut Me”,Jagjaguwar,"Jagjaguwar On his sophomore album græ’s first true song, Moses Sumney wields his falsetto like a lancer: He thrusts in unexpected directions and blocks when necessary. “Masochistic kisses are how I thrive,” he croons, staking a position as someone who revels in pain because they’re otherwise not long for this world. But Sumney, Oneohtrix Point Never, and Adult Jazz’s arrangement doesn’t let listeners get comfortable. The five-note synth bass serves as the foundation to a track of spiraling complexity keyed to the Ghanaian-American singer’s descents and swoops: a piano here, a horn there, as precise as punctuation. “Guess I’m a true immigrant son/No vacancies, no vacations,” he sings, resigned but resilient. –Alfred Soto",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GeAoj-nxLk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc90541d4d3a13a6758a490/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Moses-Sumney.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Moses_Sumney-Cut_Me.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,11,Lady Gaga / Ariana Grande,“Rain on Me”,Interscope,"Interscope Following detours into Tony Bennett-style crooning, lightly country-fried rock, and Oscar-winning melodrama, Lady Gaga made her ferocious return to the club with the all-bangers-no-ballads Chromatica. On an album centered in dance music’s ability to heal, “Rain on Me” is the apex, a group therapy session disguised as a turn-of-the-millennium Euro-house floor-filler. Gaga’s lusty bravado and Ari’s airy coos complement each other perfectly as they sing about the restorative power of uncontrollable sobbing. No tears left to cry? That’s so 2018. In 2020, it’s all tears, all the time. –Amy Phillips",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffxKSjUwKdU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc905ff96ab91ca523e2c3a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lady-Gaga.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lady_Gaga__Ariana_Grande-Rain_on_Me.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,10,Waxahatchee,“Fire”,Merge,"Merge It begins like a faithful car being jump-started to make the last leg of a long trip; a spark of life followed by relief. Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield is driving with her partner through a Memphis sunset when a realization strikes, and on its face, “Fire” is a piercing love song that chases after the brief brilliance of the day right as it settles into sleep. But it also wears a graceful disguise. Warm, lo-fi keys and a loosely strummed guitar cushion the restlessness of self-work and sobriety, as she plainly states that she’ll “put on a good show for you.” Her voice crackles as she wrestles with the precarity of declaring acceptance—what it means to give it to yourself, to others—and the nerves of speaking a truth in shared company. By the end she recognizes there’s hope in the dark, too. –Puja Patel",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEyYlyRr2_U,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc80202d4d3a13a6758a456/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Waxahatchee.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Waxahatchee-Fire.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,9,Phoebe Bridgers,“Garden Song”,Dead Oceans,"Dead Oceans On her debut album Stranger in the Alps, Phoebe Bridgers stopped analyzing her dreams. “I don’t believe in that stuff anymore,” she admitted in “Funeral,” a song about being consumed by the tragedy of a classmate’s death. Bridgers has said that her first album documented her trauma, while her second, this year’s Punisher, is about understanding how she processes it. So on its lead single, “Garden Song,” Bridgers is dissecting her dreams again, delving into her subconscious to understand what she wants and what it feels like to actually get it. Buoyed by plucky guitar and Bridgers’ bare, delicate vocals, the song gently folds time—and the evolution of desire—on itself like a baker kneading dough. One minute, Bridgers is a self-assured 17-year-old; then, in a recurring dream, a college student yearning for sex; then an adult tending to the garden she’s always wanted. There’s no real beginning or resolution, just flickers of past memories, longing, and anxiety patched together like her mind’s own hedge maze. And while moments of glimmering contentment emerge from the fog, eventually reality seeps in: the garden she’s cultivated will forever be haunted. –Vrinda Jagota",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1u8rIx65QgA&has_verified=1,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc906e10ba465fcf55a9730/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Garden-Song.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Phoebe_Bridgers-Garden_Song.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,8,Perfume Genius,“Describe”,Matador,"Matador When you are swallowed into the pitch black of your misery, who do you reach for? On “Describe,” Mike Hadreas stumbles through a depressive sludge, choked by thrashing, polluted guitars. There is goodness on the other side, but he can’t make out its shape. “Can you just wait here with me?” he pleads with his partner. It’s a moving portrait of love amid torment; the tenderness Hadreas receives is “like ribbons,” slivers of loveliness to press up against his cheek. Eventually, he emerges from the wreckage into a clearing, holding still in the soft glow of the final minutes. The most pristine love, he suggests, is found as a whisper back in the dead of the night. –Cat Zhang",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAoWMJTClqo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc907581ef00c5e1192c762/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Perfume-Genius.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Perfume_Genius-Describe.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,7,Yves Tumor,“Gospel for a New Century”,Warp,"Warp On “Gospel for a New Century,” Yves Tumor preaches the freedom to exist as they are. That means fully inhabiting their newfound rock star persona and doing away with the thin line between art and artifice. In one moment, Yves is dragging serrated horn samples across cavernous guitars; in the next, they’re casually settling into a groove worthy of Prince. This is a love song at its core but, facing down the barrel of this year, its sense of longing resonates further than that. “How much longer till December?” Yves asks at the end of the chorus. However far away, it can’t come soon enough. –Noah Yoo",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-9QCsH3OQM&has_verified=1,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc907f0e7768c9556990921/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Yves-Tumor.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Yves_Tumor-Gospel_for_a_New_Century.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,6,Bob Dylan,“Murder Most Foul”,Columbia,"Columbia Bob Dylan set the stage for “Murder Most Foul” three-and-a-half years ago with a winding speech in acceptance of his Nobel Prize in Literature: For nearly a half hour, he blithely mused about the songs, musicians, and books that have influenced him over muted lounge piano. At 17 minutes, “Murder Most Foul” is similarly extended and retrospective—the 79-year-old slowly spins a story that orbits around the 1963 killing of President John F. Kennedy while rattling off many of America’s finest musicians along the way. As usual, there’s an ungraspable wisdom to Dylan’s meditations here, like he’s seeing something we cannot. Sung over the simplest of orchestral accompaniments, his words spill out and burn like a fever dream, as if they were bestowed unto him—or maybe he’s just associating as he goes. The historical gravity of his words are balanced with a pat rhyme scheme and self-reflexive lines like, “I’m just a patsy like Patsy Cline.” The poetry and loaded allusions come with levity. With “Murder Most Foul,” Dylan turns to a defining event of the 20th century to reveal that history is always happening right in front of our eyes, bringing with it everything that’s come before and everything that will soon be. His American tale is one of distraction, humor, and endless curiosity. The meaning of it all is right there in plain sight. Take what you’d like. –Matthew Strauss",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NbQkyvbw18,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc909a0d4d3a13a6758a493/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bob-Dylan.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bob_Dylan-Murder_Most_Foul.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,5,Bad Bunny / Jowell & Randy / Ñengo Flow,“Safaera”,Rimas,"Rimas There isn’t a single wasted moment on “Safaera,” Bad Bunny’s epic homage to old-school perreo culture. The five-minute song is an all-consuming aesthetic maelstrom that is continually transforming; each beat change connects another link in a chain of references, establishing a masterful reggaetón timeline. With the energy of an intuitive DJ mix, producers Tainy and DJ Orma pieced together a whirlwind of a track as evocative for longtime fans of the genre as it is educational for newcomers. Standing confidently at the center of the saga is Bad Bunny himself. Amid the near-constant chaos of the song’s sonic shifts, he is resolute, moored firmly by his commitment to the music that he loves and the history held within it. –Sheldon Pearce",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCQ_6XbATPc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc7f16b0f9ba652bdb9913a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bad-Bunny.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bad_Bunny__Jowell__Randy__engo_Flow-Safaera.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,4,Megan Thee Stallion,“Savage Remix” [ft. Beyoncé],1501 Certified Entertainment / 300 Entertainment,"1501 Certified Entertainment / 300 Entertainment The “Savage Remix” leak hit in April like an intravenous drip of caffeine and glitter, lifting the masses out of their doldrums, if only for four minutes. Megan Thee Stallion had only grown as a beacon of that-bitch-ism since 2019, but joined by one of the 21st century’s greatest entertainers, she became bolder. In their verses on the remix, Meg and Bey owned their sex appeal, their smarts, and their success, inviting you to own yours, too. In the months that followed, Megan would go from joyously dancing to the track in her kitchen, to performing it on an elaborate dystopian stage in the desert, to making a heart-wrenching political statement with it at 30 Rock. After Megan had been shot, mocked, and gaslit, the “Savage Remix” evolved from a confident anthem to an assertion of her complex, endangered humanity. –Mankaprr Conteh",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcwxVHKeqs0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650e2b7ea0109c461ee86589/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Megan-Thee-Stallion-Beyonce-Savage-Remix.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Megan_Thee_Stallion-Savage_Remix_ft_Beyonc.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,3,Fiona Apple,“I Want You to Love Me”,Epic,"Epic On Fetch the Bolt Cutters, Fiona Apple skewers romantic orthodoxy with such flair that you might wonder why anyone ever bothers with it to begin with. The answer comes in the album’s overture, a beguiling love song of blossoming arpeggios and Philip Glass pinwheels. In the chorus, anxiety stirs and a half bar sinkholes like a lost summer; in the lyrics, Apple is radically direct, like the master painter whose final act is to draw a simple straight line. She has forged through lust, betrayal, and heartbreak to reach this beginning—to ask, in the plainest terms, to be loved. Since the song’s debut in 2013, the identity of its “you” has flitted between real lovers and “somebody I hadn’t met yet,” Apple has said. It makes for a funny muse, this “you,” trembling through a chorus possessed equally of fierce desire and trepidation. As her coo whips into a snarl, Apple looks to metaphysics for solace, yet finds little: Spiritual wisdom, she learns, is no remedy for her primal desire to desire, to “want somebody to want.” For decades, Apple has penned damning chronicles of toxic romances. “I Want You to Love Me” suggests a limit to their power: They cannot make her love any less. –Jazz Monroe",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N541HLPeG6Y,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc902c696ab91ca523e2c33/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Fiona-Apple.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fiona_Apple-I_Want_You_to_Love_Me.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,2,Christine and the Queens,"“People, I’ve been sad”",Because Music,"Because Music Plenty of languages have a word for the nostalgic longing that comes with grief: in Portuguese, “saudade” articulates it while romanticizing the pain of absence. Shades of meaning separate the similarly despaired Romanian “dor,” the Russian “toska,” the more heartened Japanese “natsukashii.” Ethiopian “tizita” is a musical genre born from this melancholic feeling, as are the American “blues.” But in the overwhelming chaos of 2020, and coincidentally from the land that gave us “ennui,” Christine and the Queens’ Héloïse Letissier captured the many heartaches of a world in pain via a word so universal you can’t help but laugh: “People, I’ve been sad.” In the song, she conjures the emotion with gravitas and synth-pop charm. Backed by sauntering keys and quivering strings, Letissier sings in her native French about teenage loneliness and angst. On the chorus, she pleads for presence and permanence. The lines are delivered with a confessional vulnerability, as ghostly vocals echo her own in support. You can practically feel a distance being bridged between her voice and the microphone, and between despondent fans across the globe. –Puja Patel",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYHAnuBKV-o,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc90c42e7768c9556990924/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Christine.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Christine_and_the_Queens-People_Ive_been_sad.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2020 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2020/,2020,year,song,1,Cardi B,“WAP” [ft. Megan Thee Stallion],Atlantic,"Atlantic Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion rapped such a rich tapestry of filth on “WAP” that it earned a face-breaking 93 million streams in its first week and immediately went No. 1. This wasn’t a mere lyrical double-team, but two women in their career prime overpowering pop with a raw anthem attuned to the very specific frequency of certain pandemic urges; the rare instant hit that exists as a trend and future monument. Of the many words that could describe their duet—dirty, vulgar, nasty, explicit—none come anywhere close to capturing the attitude of the acronym itself. Over the tremors of a Baltimore club classic, “Whores in This House,” Cardi and Megan forgo euphemisms entirely (“I wanna gag,” etc.) to present an airtight case in favor of women expressing full-bodied lust. Megan presumably stands before an appellate court to do so, admitting, “Your Honor, I’m a freak bitch,” while a Cardi verse somehow tributes the unsung uvula amid an imposing tour de force of lecherous metaphors. “WAP” is so decisively absent of shame that it’s now positioned alongside similar anthems by the likes of Khia, Lil’ Kim, and Trina. It’s as resonant as it is unreachable: consider that, in a year of fairly learnable TikTok challenges, the dance for “WAP” asks that you transition from a floor-hump to a windmill split. It’s a feat that the song exists at all, encapsulating a year in which women have been leading both the statistics and conscience of rap, and even forced conservative talking heads to contend with the extraordinary power of the word “pussy.” –Clover Hope",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVyV0-DTQLU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5fc90ceb531378467199f86c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/WAP.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Cardi_B-WAP_ft_Megan_Thee_Stallion.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2019/,2019,year,album,50,Floating Points,Crush,Ninja Tune,"Ninja Tune British electronic producer Sam Shepherd has always exerted remarkable control over his meticulous musical output as Floating Points: With his favored instrument, the Buchla modular synthesizer, he can contour sound waves and alter circuitry to suit his needs. But Shepherd, like the rest of us, has comparatively little control over his input, and the chaos of the past three years—Brexit, Trump—shook something loose inside him. Out came Crush, a record that vibrates with sadness and anger, buoyed by squelching melodies that flutter and pop. It’s the sound of a super-rational person realizing the limits of reason and letting loose with 44 minutes of pure feeling. –Jonah Bromwich",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/best-of-2019/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/floating-points/crush | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/367OcCo | Platform: Tidal - Link: http://tidd.ly/184c7d3d,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6851b9669180008bb63ef/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Floating-Points.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Floating_Points-Crush.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2019/,2019,year,album,49,Faye Webster,Atlanta Millionaires Club,Secretly Canadian,"Secretly Canadian On Atlanta Millionaires Club, 22-year-old singer-songwriter Faye Webster taps into a wide variety of her Southern hometown’s natural reserves, powering her homebody daydreams with drowsy folk-country, bold R&B, and filigreed soul. These solitary songs about unrequited love are full of intimate moments and gestures: hanging on the dead air between her and the silent recipient of a love letter; sleeping in an ex’s shirt to keep the memories fresh; begging an old flame to come back into town and renew their spark. Her eagle-eyed observations about her hapless relationships can be as funny as they are heartbreaking, like on the swooning “Jonny,” where she laments how her dog is her best friend even though, she sings, “He doesn't even know what my name is.” –Sheldon Pearce",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/best-of-2019/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/faye-webster/atlanta-millionaires-club | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/367OaKM | Platform: Tidal - Link: http://tidd.ly/1903b41a,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6851b238c6f0008bc0d12/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Faye-Webster.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Faye_Webster-Atlanta_Millionaires_Club.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2019/,2019,year,album,48,Danny Brown,uknowhatimsayin¿,Warp,"Warp Danny Brown’s fifth full-length offers heartening proof that the 38-year-old has settled snugly into a demographic of middle-class rappers who can sustain livelihoods without the pressure of storming charts or selling out stadiums. The album is a wonderful scenario for an artist a decade into their career: a rewarding balance of consistency and growth, with subtle experimentation instead of the common midcareer misstep of transparently grabbing for radio play. Brown knows what works and honors it here. Notably, uknowhatimsayin¿ is executive produced by Q-Tip, whose penchant for air and texture encourages Brown into a mellower, more sober headspace. Fuzzy guitar, looped strings, and expansive guest spots from fellow vets Blood Orange and Run the Jewels underscore a new phase of Brown’s work without blotting out the high-pitched urgency that made him a compelling figure in the first place. That he’s still rapping his ass off makes uknowhatimsayin¿ as satisfying to hear as you can imagine it was for Brown to make. –Rawiya Kameir",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/best-of-2019/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/danny-brown/uknowhatimsayin | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/2DPWHFX | Platform: Tidal - Link: http://tidd.ly/92734f59,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6851a9eef880008cd114e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Danny-Brown.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Danny_Brown-uknowhatimsayin.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2019/,2019,year,album,47,Barker,Utility,Ostgut Ton,"Ostgut Ton Sam Barker is wary of taking the easy route in getting people to move their bodies. A resident DJ at Berlin’s hallowed techno haven Berghain, he has voiced his skepticism of kick drums and drops—the utilitarian elements that so often trigger lizard-brain reactions on a dancefloor. For his debut album, Utility, Barker dug into his archives to see which of his old sketches sounded good when he stripped them back to the studs. The result is mysterious, weightless. These tracks still throb: “Hedonic Treadmill” and “Utility” are trance-like bangers made propulsive entirely via cycling synth melodies, and even the more ambient songs swell and build like club music. As a whole, Utility is an expression of what techno can be when the most obvious percussive elements go away. –Evan Minsker",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/best-of-2019/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/barker/utility | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/34VDcYt | Platform: Tidal - Link: http://tidd.ly/810803c9,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6851ab9e6f50008a304dc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Barker.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Barker-Utility.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2019/,2019,year,album,46,Chai,PUNK,Burger,"Burger PUNK, the second album from Nagoya, Japan’s Chai, is as anthemic and glossy as it is insurgent. Throughout the record, the quartet subtly distort their sugar-pie group vocals, whisking them into frenzied disco-grrl guitars, hectic brass bleats, and fluorescent electro blips. They pierce the conformist pressures of contemporary Asian femininity without clichès or sloganeering: “Too much makeup/Just lips and eyebrows all set,” chirps frontwoman Mana in Japanese. “Glossy yellow skin/Have nothing more than this.” Looking like what society demands of you isn’t weakness, they seem to say—it just means you can start your fire within its walls. –Stacey Anderson",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/best-of-2019/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/chai/punk | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/2s0PFvi | Platform: Tidal - Link: http://tidd.ly/9645e054,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de68476b517ce000899ee53/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/CHAI.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Chai-PUNK.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2019/,2019,year,album,45,DaBaby,Baby on Baby,Interscope,"Interscope On his major label debut, North Carolina rapper DaBaby is tireless behind the mic, weaving words with a boxer’s nimble intensity. Utterly smashed 808s and snappy drums undergird his flows as he injects fierce energy into hits like “Suge” and “Baby Sitter.” He has range beyond the singles, too: “Carpet Burn” finds him twirling around hedonistic reflections on his success, while “Deal Wit It” and “Backend” flash his melodic finesse. At the start of this year, DaBaby made his ambitions clear, saying, “I want to get where Drake and them are at.” With Baby on Baby, as well as its follow-up, KIRK, which hit No. 1 in October, he put in the work to make his big talk a reality. –Noah Yoo",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/383iuI6 | Platform: Tidal - Link: http://tidd.ly/d0d2a2db,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7da90238c6f0008bc0e15/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/DaBaby-Suge.jpg,/dataset/artwork/DaBaby-Baby_on_Baby.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2019/,2019,year,album,44,Holly Herndon,PROTO,4AD,"4AD PROTO plays like a document of the creation of Spawn, the neural network that experimentalist Holly Herndon trained to sing using her voice alongside the voices of some 300 collaborators. But Spawn isn’t a computer simulation made to appear human, like other recent CGI novelties. According to Herndon, who recently earned her PhD in artificial intelligence in music, Spawn learns on “her” own, and Herndon uses the technology to create an album that thrills even beyond its futuristic context. The thundering “Frontier” builds a battle anthem for the climate emergency against anxious AI wails, while “Godmother” interpolates the fragmented rhythms of Herndon’s friend Jlin, chopping and scattering Spawn’s voice as if it were being fed through fan blades. At times, listening to PROTO can feel like being immersed in a language you’re only just beginning to understand, where obvious phrases seem to stick out of inappropriate contexts and the familiar is not quite so. –Anna Gaca",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/best-of-2019/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/holly-herndon/proto | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/2qoBxM1 | Platform: Tidal - Link: http://tidd.ly/8d36ed91,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7e586b517ce000899efba/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Holly-Herndon.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Holly_Herndon-PROTO.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2019/,2019,year,album,43,Rico Nasty / Kenny Beats,Anger Management,Atlantic,"Atlantic Following their mosh-worthy 2018 collaboration “Smack a Bitch,” Maryland rapper Rico Nasty and producer Kenny Beats doubled down on their reckless chemistry with Anger Management. Offering nine tracks in 18 minutes, the project burns quick and bright: Mostly, Rico jumps in, commands a raucous beat, and dips before the three-minute mark. But midway through, her signature voice-cracking threats shift in tone. She’s still calling out irritating shit, but with a cool-headed poise. The bright “Sell Out” contemplates her growth as an artist, the things she’s lost to get there, and the strength she found in turning her “emotions to something y’all could sing to.” Anger Management bursts open with the fury of a hardcore record, but it also shows there’s much more to Rico than her temper. –Braudie Blais-Billie",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/2PfMdVM | Platform: Tidal - Link: http://tidd.ly/c200836d | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-D4happ4TQU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7e5b9b517ce000899efbc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Rico-Nasty.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rico_Nasty__Kenny_Beats-Anger_Management.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2019/,2019,year,album,42,100 gecs,1000 gecs,Dog Show,"Dog Show The thrill of 1000 gecs isn’t just the post-internet omnivorousness with which it connects its various reference points, but how profoundly dumb it is. These are the kinds of songs you might make up in the shower, or to your pet—half-phrased absurdities too embarrassing to let out of your own head, let alone broadcast to an audience. For as fragmented as this carousel of mall punk, trap-pop, video-game soundtracks, and melodramatic Euro-trance can feel, the lingering mood is one of intimacy, of inner children mashing the pleasure button without boundaries or shame. That Dylan Brady and Laura Les recorded most of it through remote collaboration makes sense: 1000 gecs taps into a kind of communication predicated on separateness, mining the difference between what you can say aloud in your imperfect human body and what you can express in a boundless cyberspace. –Mike Powell",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/2r6AC3n | Platform: Tidal - Link: http://tidd.ly/8a87cd8a,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6ca7c4072b60008774464/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/100-gecs-money-machine.jpg,/dataset/artwork/100_gecs-1000_gecs.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2019/,2019,year,album,41,Blood Incantation,Hidden History of the Human Race,Dark Descent/Century Media,"Dark Descent/Century Media In one sense, Blood Incantation are traditionalists. The warped, intricate death metal of the Colorado quartet’s sophomore album takes influence from legendary bands like Death and Morbid Angel, while its all-analog recording and illustrated sci-fi cover art feel further rooted in the past. Even the side-long closing track, “Awakening From the Dream of Existence to the Multidimensional Nature of Our Reality (Mirror of the Soul),” seems like a nod to the ’70s prog acts whose dark visions helped inspire countless subgenres of heavy music. Yet the real brilliance of this music lies in how free it sounds from what’s come before. On these four songs—ranging from gnarled chaos in “The Giza Power Plant” to the psychedelic slow burn of “Inner Paths (to Outer Space)”—Blood Incantation find their own corner in a storied cosmos, where even the most familiar textures can feel thrilling and extreme. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/best-of-2019/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/blood-incantation/hidden-history-of-the-human-race | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/2DLNsXs | Platform: Tidal - Link: http://tidd.ly/4f529eff,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7e6fa9669180008bb651f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Blood-Incantation.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Blood_Incantation-Hidden_History_of_the_Human_Race.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2019/,2019,year,album,40,Thom Yorke,ANIMA,XL,"XL Was 2019 the year Thom Yorke finally got funky? Sure, Radiohead’s “Idioteque” kind of banged, and the singer has been known to flail around to syncopated rhythms from time to time. But until ANIMA, there was something a little stiff about Yorke’s beats, both solo and with his band, a studiousness that suggested a lifetime of nervously eyeing the dancefloor. ANIMA saw him jump right in: Songs like “Impossible Knots,” “Traffic,” and “Not the News” genuinely swing. The album also boasts some of his dreamiest tracks, from the storm-tossed swoon of “Twist” to the angelic venom on “I Am a Very Rude Person.” And Yorke finally got around to nailing the legendarily elusive “Dawn Chorus,” which shows up here as a sunset synthesizer buzz. With ANIMA, the 51-year-old embraced meaty production while maintaining his taste for digital glitches and melodic sprawl, coming away with his finest solo album yet. –Ben Cardew",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/best-of-2019/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/thom-yorke/anima | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/366bl83 | Platform: Tidal - Link: http://tidd.ly/15322032 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfOa1a8hYP8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7dfcbb517ce000899efb1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Thom-Yorke-Dawn-Chorus.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Thom_Yorke-ANIMA.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2019/,2019,year,album,39,Aldous Harding,Designer,4AD,"4AD Aldous Harding is frequently inscrutable. The music world didn’t know how to respond to the New Zealand singer-songwriter’s unpredictable 2017 album Party; its follow-up, Designer, is even more opaque. At a time when many of our biggest stars visit Genius HQ to offer blow-by-blow accounts of their lyrics, Harding gives us cryptic lines like “show the ferret to the egg” and dares us not to overthink them. Designer is a fitting headphone companion for wandering the city in a melancholy fog, but it never fades into the background. Odd lines and textures linger: an incongruous maraca, a chorus that falls away to leave Harding eerily silhouetted against sparse piano, a world map with a pin in Dubai. Then there’s Harding’s voice itself, an androgynous instrument that glides from deep-chested husk to nasal yowl, often within the same song. On the title track, she declares, “Shapes live forever,” and they do here: Harding’s songs create jagged, impressionistic outlines that allow listeners to climb inside, yet they are unmistakably her own. –Aimee Cliff",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/best-of-2019/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/aldous-harding/designer | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/2LGs62b | Platform: Tidal - Link: http://tidd.ly/90171ac3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7e754b9e6f50008a30668/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Aldous-Harding.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Aldous_Harding-Designer.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2019/,2019,year,album,38,RAP,EXPORT,Jolly Discs,"Jolly Discs Do you think Lifetones are far and away better than This Heat? Do you feel like Gang Gang Dance were never the same after Tim DeWitt left the band? Do you stand in solidarity with DJ Sprinkles in her anti-streaming stance? If you have a burning hot desire to answer these questions, then you’re probably already obsessed with the RAP album. If, instead, parsing any of the proper nouns above makes you want to throw the whole of experimental music into the ocean, bear with me, and please give a listen to EXPORT. Yes, the album fits comfortably within the avant-garde’s long tail, but the British duo’s sound is primed for a much larger audience. Blending skittering percussion with stoned-out synths and charmingly monotone vocals, EXPORT is warm and playful, a genreless exploration of rhythm. It’s the type of record that seems destined to be rediscovered long after its release and heralded as ahead of its time. But it doesn’t have to be. –Matthew Schnipper",Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://jollydiscs.bandcamp.com/album/export,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7e783b517ce000899efbe/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/RAP.jpg,/dataset/artwork/RAP-EXPORT.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2019/,2019,year,album,37,Nilüfer Yanya,Miss Universe,ATO,"ATO Nilüfer Yanya plays her guitar the way some people pick at their nails—as if she wouldn't know what to do with her hands if she stopped. Along with her rich voice, Yanya’s fidgety guitar is one of the few binding threads tying together her virtuosic, post-genre smear of a debut. With the poise of Sade’s Love Deluxe and the zapped attention span of Pavement’s Wowee Zowee, Miss Universe triple-axels between silky soul, smoldering jazz, and ripping alt-rock—and then adds hybrids like “Tears,” a song that seems to imagine what Timbaland might have sounded like if he made ’80s new wave records. It’s an album that never stops openly wondering how cool it might be if it tried to be something completely different. –Evan Rytlewski",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/best-of-2019/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/nilufer-yanya/miss-universe | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/2DRdf0e | Platform: Tidal - Link: http://tidd.ly/dab0ad25,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7e7ab238c6f0008bc0e1d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Nilu%25CC%2588fer-Yanya.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nilfer_Yanya-Miss_Universe.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2019/,2019,year,album,36,Denzel Curry,ZUU,Loma Vista,"Loma Vista Nearly a decade after releasing his first tape, Carol City, Florida’s most promising native son, Denzel Curry, delivered his opus this year. ZUU is an homage to the rapper’s hometown, alight with the anarchic spirit of an art-school thesis. Curry freestyled nearly every song on the album—an extraordinary feat for any rapper, made all the more dazzling by the vividness of his storytelling and the complexity of his internal rhymes. It is a privilege to spend a half hour in the singular slice of South Florida that Curry paints in his forthright verses. He’s frank about the violence plaguing his beloved home; frank about the murder of his brother, Treon Johnson, who was Tasered to death by police in 2014. But he also wants his listeners to know about all the goodness that South Florida has to offer, all the day-one friends he’s made on its sun-soaked streets. With ZUU, Curry kicks at the darkness surrounding him until it bleeds daylight. –Peyton Thomas",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/best-of-2019/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/denzel-curry/zuu | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/2DOhXMf | Platform: Tidal - Link: http://tidd.ly/5e181bf,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7e7e5b9e6f50008a3066a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Denzel-Curry.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Denzel_Curry-ZUU.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2019/,2019,year,album,35,Mannequin Pussy,Patience,Epitaph,"Epitaph For their first album with legendary pop-punk label Epitaph Records, the Philadelphia quartet Mannequin Pussy swap fuzz-heavy thrashers for melodic, grand anthems of heartache and regret. On “Drunk II,” a raging post-breakup lament, frontwoman Marisa Dabice drowns her hurt in alcohol and wry jokes, but there’s no mistaking the depth of her emptiness. The pop-forward “Who You Are” finds Dabice tackling self-loathing, settling on a kind of acceptance that sounds simple but is anything but. And she sings of a fledgling romance on the closing “In Love Again,” which wraps around her like a pair of arms while guitar riffs shoot off fireworks—a surprise happy ending to an album that turns anguish into high drama. –Madison Bloom",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/best-of-2019/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/mannequin-pussy/patience | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/2DPW3bv | Platform: Tidal - Link: http://tidd.ly/a0651607,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7dc3f4072b600087744e7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mannequin-Pussy-Drunk-II.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mannequin_Pussy-Patience.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2019/,2019,year,album,34,slowthai,Nothing Great About Britain,True Panther/Method,"True Panther/Method Brexit broke Britain, fast-rewinding the country to the ’70s, when it first joined Europe and last seemed this close to collapse. Perhaps that’s why slowthai, a grime MC from the nowheresville dead-center of England, often feels so punk. His publicity stunts—like brandishing Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s decapitated head at an awards ceremony—can’t help but recall the Sex Pistols (and Sid Vicious got a namecheck in one of his songs). On the Bajan-British MC’s debut album, Nothing Great About Britain, he even tosses in a sample from an ancient doc about glue-sniffing—that proud, crusty pastime. Elsewhere, the evocations are early-millennial: The loping, strings-propelled beat on “Drug Dealer” nods to the Streets, and he shouts out Dizzee Rascal. These echoes might all add up to déjà vu if it weren’t for slowthai’s outsize personality and sharp eye for detail, from “Northampton’s Child,” the touching, Tupac-like tribute to his single mom, to the teen miscreant memoir “North Nights.” Still, it’s the waywardness of his delivery that really sets him apart: Sounding like a cross between a grimacing gargoyle and an impish urchin, he lurches side-to-side over his grooves like a drunk and agitated man approaching you on the pavement; you flinch, but you also lean in to hear what he’s ranting about. Even more than calling Her Majesty the C-word, slowthai’s mangling of the Queen’s English is his true feat of treason. –Simon Reynolds",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/best-of-2019/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/slowthai/nothing-great-about-britain | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/2Ro3OgY | Platform: Tidal - Link: http://tidd.ly/617841e9 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZsNnuaUSNs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7e8e9b9e6f50008a3066c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Slowthai.jpg,/dataset/artwork/slowthai-Nothing_Great_About_Britain.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2019/,2019,year,album,33,Polo G,Die a Legend,Columbia,"Columbia When Chicago drill first hit mainstream rap like a sonic icepick seven years ago, it was due to the distinctive, abrasive sounds of Chief Keef, Young Chop, and King Louie. But drill has always had a melodic side, and that undergirding pop sensibility has allowed the subgenre to survive in an industry always on the lookout for the next regional trend. Chicago’s latest star is Polo G, whose debut album Die a Legend contains some of the best hip-hop ballads in recent memory. Polo approaches his verses with the dedication of a singer-songwriter, and his bleeding-heart sadness is more akin to country than emo-rap. Even when he’s snatching chains and staging robberies, like on the chorus of his breakout hit “Pop Out,” Polo G is apologetic and regretful, unable to ignore the ghosts. –Nadine Smith",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/2RnDEL7 | Platform: Tidal - Link: http://tidd.ly/bbc4a89,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7e91bb517ce000899efc0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Polo-G.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Polo_G-Die_a_Legend.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2019/,2019,year,album,32,Sharon Van Etten,Remind Me Tomorrow,Jagjaguwar,"Jagjaguwar After the lonesome folk of her 2009 debut, Sharon Van Etten’s subsequent albums mostly offered modest tweaks to a familiar strain of heartland-flavored indie. But Remind Me Tomorrow cracks her style open like a geode: The roadhouse soul of “You Shadow” is halfway between Motown and Massive Attack; “Seventeen” arrives decades too late for the John Hughes closing credits it deserves; “Jupiter 4,” titled after a vintage Roland synthesizer, sounds like a gothic take on slowcore. It all makes for a fitting soundtrack for starting over. Among all the record’s big themes—the brush with death recounted on the album’s opener, the closing letter to her child—it’s the little details that stick out, like a line of dialogue that gives “Comeback Kid” the feel of a finely turned short story. Like a freshly polished lens, the album’s eclectic production only pulls Van Etten’s songwriting into sharper focus. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/best-of-2019/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/sharon-van-etten/remind-me-tomorrow | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/2rhG7fy | Platform: Tidal - Link: http://tidd.ly/d0b33da7,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7dffe238c6f0008bc0e19/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sharon-Van-Etten-Seventeen.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sharon_Van_Etten-Remind_Me_Tomorrow.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2019/,2019,year,album,31,MIKE,Tears of Joy,10K,"10K Most rap songs are composed of two main elements: the rapping and the beat. Sometimes those two things complement each other nicely; sometimes they don’t. But rarely do they melt into each other in the way they do on MIKE’s Tears of Joy. The young New York City artist’s delivery is somewhere between talking and rapping, and the album’s production, composed of short loops of various dirgelike sounds, matches that intermediary state. The whole thing is recorded grittily—a garage band’s lo-fi aesthetic applied to hip-hop. You can duck in and out of deep listening: Binge Tears of Joy’s 20 short songs as one complete thought or rewind when a particular detail pricks your ears, like the stuttered beat of “Planet” or the vividly abstract bildungsroman of “Memorial.” The album closes with another type of lo-fi recording: a voicemail MIKE’s mother left him before she died. “My son, I love you so much,” she says. “You are such a golden child. My blessed boy. You shall be blessed forever. Ever.” –Matthew Schnipper",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/38arIm1 | Platform: Tidal - Link: http://tidd.ly/3596051c,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7ec974072b600087744ed/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/MIKE.jpg,/dataset/artwork/MIKE-Tears_of_Joy.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2019/,2019,year,album,30,Oso Oso,Basking in the Glow,Triple Crown,"Triple Crown “I got two souls fighting for the same spotlight,” Long Island emo hero Jade Lilitri sings on the opening track of his third album as Oso Oso, Basking in the Glow. One soul seems devoted to self-pity and the other to splendor, and throughout the album, this internal battle plays out via guitar rock that’s marked by a dappled radiance. “Priority Change” swaggers with shy pride in its chord changes, while Lilitri complains of “being trapped in binary code.” “Dig” gets the balance just about right, with a gloriously smeared chorus in which he’s “still reeling from the mess I made.” Gems like “Impossible Game” find drama in the effort to invest meaning in well-worn metaphors of open roads and unknowable partners. It’s self-conscious stuff, to be sure, with highlight “Wake Up Next to God” reveling in the G-force of self-torment. But Lilitri shows why that spotlight—that glow to bask in—is worth fighting for. –Jesse Dorris",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/best-of-2019/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/oso-oso/basking-in-the-glow | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/2sMSTmB | Platform: Tidal - Link: http://tidd.ly/7c9353e8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6c0ba9eef880008cd118b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Oso-Oso-One-Sick-Plan.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Oso_Oso-Basking_in_the_Glow.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2019/,2019,year,album,29,Ariana Grande,"thank u, next",Republic,"Republic Ariana Grande released thank u, next in the aftermath of her ex-boyfriend Mac Miller’s death and her broken engagement to Pete Davidson, but she refuses to bend to the tropes of traumatized women throughout the album. She flaunts her vulnerability. She molds her desires into flexes. She is silly and silky and occasionally swaggering, not in spite of her tumultuous recent past but because of it. Her swooping voice stitches the disparate moods together, gliding from gorgeous high notes into husky psuedo-raps, demanding to be followed as she pulls you from the dancefloor to the bedroom, from praying to partying. There are powerhouse, splashy pop numbers here—“NASA,” “bad idea,” “7 rings”—but the quieter tracks, especially the title song, showcase a stunning maturity. –Dani Blum",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/best-of-2019/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/ariana-grande/thank-u-next | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/2qpwISN | Platform: Tidal - Link: http://tidd.ly/c837c2c9,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6daef238c6f0008bc0d97/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ariana-Grande-NASA.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ariana_Grande-thank_u_next.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2019/,2019,year,album,28,Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds,Ghosteen,Ghosteen LTD,"Ghosteen LTD You become a parent with the wish that your kids outlive you. But what happens when that hope is suddenly dashed? Nick Cave confronts this reality on Ghosteen, the first album he wrote and recorded in full after the tragic accidental death of his teen son, Arthur. It’s a record unlike anything else he’s made with the Bad Seeds across the last 35 years. On ""Hollywood,"" the double LP's 14-minute closing track, Cave viscerally summarizes his broken heart. ""The kid drops his bucket and spade/And climbs into the sun,"" he murmurs before the track’s steady bassline suddenly glitches, as if the needle of a turntable has hit a bad groove, and Cave begins to keen in falsetto. Ghosteen abounds with stark moments like this that reveal the raw heart of grief. To sit with it can be almost unbearable, and yet Cave—with the same talent he’s loaned to many other dark topics—takes the harshness of life and uses it to cleave his way to the truth of being human. Singing his sorrow so nakedly, with so little reserve, Cave asks the world to bear witness to the love he’s shared and his cavernous, neverending loss. –Sasha Geffen",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/best-of-2019/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/nick-cave-and-the-bad-seeds/ghosteen | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/3682aUU | Platform: Tidal - Link: http://tidd.ly/632987f0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7ed1db517ce000899eff6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Nick-Cave-and-the-Bad-Seeds.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nick_Cave__the_Bad_Seeds-Ghosteen.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2019/,2019,year,album,27,Florist,Emily Alone,Double Double Whammy,"Double Double Whammy Emily Alone is the kind of delicate album that doesn’t compete for your attention so much as it waits patiently for you to return to it. Credited to singer-songwriter Emily Sprague’s band but very much a solitary project, the record comes on the heels of a few years in which she underwent three of the biggest changes a person can undergo: the dissolution of a relationship, the death of a parent, and a major shift in location, from upstate New York to California. Not that the trauma surfaces in the music. If anything, Emily Alone embodies the hard-earned truth that behind every moment, however dramatic, lies another, quieter moment, transpiring without expectation or pressure. Like the water Sprague often sings about, and by which she is so evidently moved, the music here is rippling and continuous, bedroom folk rendered with the meditative heart of new age. (That she also makes beautiful, droning synthesizer music isn’t surprising.) The album’s underlying note is a kind of supreme confidence, the sound of an artist seeking truth with open eyes, a gentle heart, and a practiced commitment to the possibility that under the politics and advertising lies a beautiful experience of the world. And so she puts her faith in trees, the ocean, her friends, and, finally, herself. Emily Alone dares you to tell her she’s wrong. –Mike Powell",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/best-of-2019/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/florist/emily-alone | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/2DNLt4R | Platform: Tidal - Link: http://tidd.ly/e533f29,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7ed6cb517ce000899eff8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Florist.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Florist-Emily_Alone.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2019/,2019,year,album,26,Burna Boy,African Giant,Atlantic,"Atlantic Nigeria’s Burna Boy titled his fourth album African Giant to reflect his own outsized stature in his home country and, more broadly, the continent’s eons-long cultural footprint. On it, he perfects styles from the worldwide African diaspora and situates them in universal conversation, while his sharp ear for collaborators—including Future and YG, Lagos rapper Zlatan, Kingston crooner Serani, and Beninise icon Angélique Kidjo—underpins his thesis and shows off his range. The record is a sublime peak for the interchange between pared-down Afrobeats and sax-infused dancehall, and Burna Boy’s supple, occasionally craggy vocals—in English, Igbo, Pidgin, Yoruba—deliver intimacy, romance, and politically biting messages about colonialism. African Giant places him in the lineage of his Nigerian countryman Fela Kuti, a national treasure whose supreme musicality was inextricable from the rebellious surroundings in which it was made. More than his ability to smoothly navigate and naturally fuse genres through his voice, Burna Boy’s opus reflects a rare magnanimity of vision that is also simply irrefutable on a dancefloor. –Julianne Escobedo Shepherd",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/2Lt0k93 | Platform: Tidal - Link: http://tidd.ly/9bc1692f,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7ed974072b600087744ef/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Burna-Boy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Burna_Boy-African_Giant.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2019/,2019,year,album,25,Vampire Weekend,Father of the Bride,Columbia,"Columbia Vampire Weekend ambled away from the spotlight for a half-decade or so, but even as the delays mounted for the follow-up to their 2013 masterpiece Modern Vampires of the City—and even as Rostam Batmanglij, long thought to be their behind-the-scenes mastermind, left to pursue other projects—they returned on Father of the Bride as if they’d just stepped out of the country club for a breath of sea air. Nothing, it seems—neither time, nor age, nor a shifting cultural landscape—can chip away at their self-delighted gleam, their garish sophistication, their heartbroken contentment. Seasoned experts at locating the expanding borders of “cool” and then working just outside them, here Vampire Weekend decide that they are a jam band, with all of the fretless bass and weightless Jerry Garcia guitar solos this implies. Of course, they sound goofy at first. And of course, when the surface dressings fall away, Ezra Koenig is writing as searchingly as ever about lasting happiness, low-grade fear, and the certainty that if bad times are here, worse times are on the way. No matter how long they go away, Vampire Weekend will always return perfectly out of time. –Jayson Greene",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/best-of-2019/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/vampire-weekend/father-of-the-bride | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/34VC9aZ | Platform: Tidal - Link: http://tidd.ly/3d52b172,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6e3c29eef880008cd11d6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Vampire-Weekend-Sympathy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Vampire_Weekend-Father_of_the_Bride.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2019/,2019,year,album,24,Kim Gordon,No Home Record,Matador,"Matador After rewriting rock’s rulebook with Sonic Youth, establishing herself as a star in the art world, and writing a memoir, Kim Gordon finally got around to making her first solo album. For No Home Record, she worked with producer Justin Raisen, whose credits include the Kim-indebted brooder Sky Ferreira and experimental shapeshifter Yves Tumor, and the pair conjure a dissonant, avalanche-sized sound. “Murdered Out” is three-and-a-half minutes of a patient bass loop being continuously, relentlessly sandblasted by one thing after another: distorted guitar, encroaching noise, and Gordon’s roar, the strongest blast of all. “Get Yr Life Back” sits uneasily atop tensely arranged found-sound; “Sketch Artist” seems to be tearing itself apart; “Paprika Pony” rides a minimal toy-piano rap beat that sounds like it was created by the world’s most sinister toddler. No Home Record shows that the 66-year-old Kim is still hellbent on chasing new musical ideas, wherever they may lead. –Katherine St. Asaph",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/best-of-2019/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/kim-gordon/no-home-record | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/369d24y | Platform: Tidal - Link: http://tidd.ly/b1479dab,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5dee77c5fca3b800088ab0f2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kim-Gordon.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kim_Gordon-No_Home_Record.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2019/,2019,year,album,23,"Tyler, the Creator",IGOR,Columbia,"Columbia Tyler, the Creator’s IGOR is an album about heartbreak, but the bright chords and harmonies suggest hope, not self-pity. His 2017 album Flower Boy was a disarming journey into self-discovery, but Igor is even more revealing, as Tyler wrestles with the fact that maybe he doesn’t have everything figured out. Each track feels like a selection on a mixtape, chosen for a specific emotion: “RUNNING OUT OF TIME” is a slow-groove journey into his subconscious, reminding you how singular Tyler’s vision can be behind the boards; “EARFQUAKE” is one of Tyler’s most ambitious songs, a catchy symphony that features Playboi Carti in the squeakiest and strangest version of his baby voice. Years ago, the idea of Tyler making music this intimate and reflective seemed like a stretch, but on IGOR, he gives in to the grown-up uncertainty that eventually comes for us all. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/best-of-2019/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/tyler-the-creator/igor | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/2r9vVpw | Platform: Tidal - Link: http://tidd.ly/82a0332b,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5dee7818c573b80009766dbe/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Tyler-the-Creator.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tyler_the_Creator-IGOR.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2019/,2019,year,album,22,Cate Le Bon,Reward,Mexican Summer,"Mexican Summer While writing the songs that would become her fifth album, Welsh singer-songwriter Cate Le Bon spent a year studying furniture-building at an English architecture school, living alone in a cabin in England’s rural Lake District. On Reward, Le Bon proves herself to be a canny architect of another kind: one gifted at making dense sonic arrangements feel somehow weightless. These songs are intimate and personal, with Le Bon carefully leveraging a broader, deeper palette of instrumentation than on past work. Elastic, off-kilter guitar lines carry the prickly “Mother’s Mother’s Magazines,” while “Sad Nudes” floats along slack percussion and metallic adornments. Her layers of guitars, synths, saxes, and more make Reward feel lavish but never overstuffed. With everything in its just-right place, Le Bon's precise touches on Reward are prizes in their own right. –Allison Hussey",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/best-of-2019/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/cate-le-bon/reward | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/2YmFTQc | Platform: Tidal - Link: http://tidd.ly/a0a20048,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5dee78ba29131e0008fba757/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Cate-Le-Bon.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Cate_Le_Bon-Reward.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2019/,2019,year,album,21,Billie Eilish,"When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?",Darkroom/Interscope,"Darkroom/Interscope Every generation gets the teen-angst avatar it deserves. For kids raised under the threat of mass extinction, of course a dead-eyed 17-year-old whispering about night terrors, benzos, suicide, and the climate crisis over a post-genre stew of trap beats, dubstep drops, and twee-ish bedroom pop would be hailed as a savior. (Throw in ASMR sonics, samples from The Office, a dental drill, and the sound of the singer ripping out her own Invisalign, and you’ve got Gen Z musique concrète.) But you don’t have to be below the drinking age to appreciate Billie Eilish’s peculiar magic: Her music serves as a thrilling reminder of the vertiginous highs and lows of adolescence, from the giddy insouciance of “bad guy” to the boiling rage of “you should see me in a crown” to the black-hole devastation of “when the party’s over.” It’s going to be fascinating to watch how Eilish’s career unfolds: In 10 years, she will still be well under 30. Let’s hope the planet survives that long. –Amy Phillips",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/best-of-2019/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/billie-eilish/when-we-all-fall-asleep-where-do-we-go | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/33UFAxe | Platform: Tidal - Link: http://tidd.ly/7de365fa,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7dec89669180008bb651d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Billie-Eilish-Bad-Guy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Billie_Eilish-When_We_All_Fall_Asleep_Where_Do_We_Go.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2019/,2019,year,album,20,Jenny Hval,The Practice of Love,Sacred Bones,"Sacred Bones As the planet becomes more crowded, studies suggest the most surefire way to limit your impact on a world buckling beneath our self-made weight is to have fewer children, or even none at all. Norwegian art-pop philosopher Jenny Hval floats between these logical dots throughout The Practice of Love, an album of festering generational unease set to the twilit synths and entrancing pulses of ’90s raves. The music is a wryly nostalgic nod to the moment in history just before we as a species fully understood how quickly life on Earth as we know it might collapse. Surveying a wounded forest, Hval finds spirits stronger than God: herself, her friends, the continuums of art and ecology. She reckons with being child-free in a society that constantly reminds her how she’s running out of biological time. And, finally, she finds liberation in feeling equivalent to an annual plant, blooming once briefly and then fading into the forest. The Practice of Love asks more questions than it answers: Are we more responsible to ourselves or to our species? What value is conforming in a world where norms have ruined us? And what does one’s legacy look like when the future isn’t guaranteed? These are what Hval calls her “loops of the mind,” scattered here among voices that search for communion in an atmosphere of crisis. –Grayson Haver Currin",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/best-of-2019/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/jenny-hval/the-practice-of-love | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/367wYVy | Platform: Tidal - Link: http://tidd.ly/4a0b0402,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5dee7aaf795ff5000938f8de/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jenny-Hval.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jenny_Hval-The_Practice_of_Love.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2019/,2019,year,album,19,Jessica Pratt,Quiet Signs,Mexican Summer,"Mexican Summer Jessica Pratt’s folk songs usually press right up against the speaker, making you feel inches away from her delicately voiced guitar, lonesome words, and peculiar execution of vowels—a language unto itself. Her third album, Quiet Signs, sounds a little further away—perhaps through an open stained-glass window as Pratt, alone in a church, hums as if she’s just going through soundcheck. Only a few lyrics pop out from her baroque melodies, like, “This time around, has it gone so grey that my faith can't hold out?” Her nylon-string guitar recalls sunny ’70s Brazilian pop, but her voice is all fog and rain. Are you hearing these songs, or spying on them? –Jeremy D. Larson",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/best-of-2019/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/jessica-pratt/quiet-signs | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/2LGqWnl | Platform: Tidal - Link: http://tidd.ly/fbc0671f,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5dee7af429131e0008fba759/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jessica-Pratt.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jessica_Pratt-Quiet_Signs.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2019/,2019,year,album,18,Clairo,Immunity,Fader,"Fader The solitary piano chords that launch Clairo’s debut album sum up the emotional tone of everything to come. Opener “Alewife” finds 21-year-old singer-songwriter Claire Cottrill revisiting suicidal thoughts that she had in eighth grade, and over the next 10 tracks, we are with her through so many growing pains and regrets. Even on the twinkling “Impossible,” where she evokes how weird and cool it is to be a young person with a messy, meaningful life ahead, she never hides. Cottrill, who went viral in 2017 with the charmingly homemade track “Pretty Girl,” has said that Immunity is partly about the process of coming out as bisexual, and songs like “Bags” and “White Flag” feel undeniably about the beginnings of things. Meanwhile, the closing “I Wouldn’t Ask You,” about Cottrill’s struggle with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, is born directly from fresh pain: A choir of children lifts the song up, and you’re reminded how, in early adulthood, you wonder if you’re ever going to figure life out. With compassion and understanding, Immunity helps you access your unfinished self, the one you paved over just to make it through. –Alex Frank",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/best-of-2019/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/clairo/immunity | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/2DLH42r | Platform: Tidal - Link: http://tidd.ly/ad955726,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7e278b517ce000899efb4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Clairo-Bags.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Clairo-Immunity.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2019/,2019,year,album,17,(Sandy) Alex G,House of Sugar,Domino,"Domino Since first emerging as a prodigious one-man songwriting machine earlier this decade, Alex Giannascoli has remained tapped into an ever-flowing stream of idiosyncratic excellence. House of Sugar is his most ambitious and immersive album yet. Moving beyond the haunted Americana of 2017’s Rocket, these 13 songs offer meticulous portraits of addiction, greed, and obsession. Inescapable spirals of desire—whether for control, companionship, or instant gratification—are manifested as voids desperate to be filled. Giannascoli’s tendency to enshroud his vulnerabilities in warped guitars and pitch-shifted vocals makes the straightforward candor of album standout “Hope” all the more devastating. As he laments the overdose and subsequent death of a good friend, he reaches a humble conclusion: “Why write about it now?/Gotta honor him somehow.” This quiet tribute to the darkest of realities crystalizes what makes Giannascoli’s songwriting so poignant: a resounding humanity. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/best-of-2019/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/sandy-alex-g/house-of-sugar | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/2PfiEnm | Platform: Tidal - Link: http://tidd.ly/7a7e55b5,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7da069669180008bb651b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sandy-Alex-G-Gretel.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sandy_Alex_G-House_of_Sugar.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2019/,2019,year,album,16,Bon Iver,"i,i",Jagjaguwar,"Jagjaguwar In form and function, Bon Iver’s fourth album is an act of protest. You can see its vision of egalitarianism across the LP’s inner gatefold, which shows obscured portraits of the 52 people who helped create the record. You can hear its selflessness in the myriad tones, instruments, voices, and happy accidents that come and go, subverting ego while sidestepping excess. Even the title i,i nods to the Rastafarian idea of “I and I,” of oneness. Of course, Justin Vernon’s elastic howl will always be the catalyst that transforms Bon Iver from just another experimental indie rock project to a quasi-religious cult of emotion, but on i,i, he sounds like he’s simply flowing through a slipstream, his load lightened. The songs follow an elusive—and affecting—dream logic. With its queasy synths, snatches of stray trumpet, and gas mask imagery, “Jelmore” conjures a landscape from a not-too-distant future that’s been left desolate by climate change. “Sh’diah”—which Vernon began writing the morning after the 2016 election, with a title that stands for “shittiest day in American history”—fights the ugliness of modern politics with an understated call for rationality. “U (Man Like)” is a piano ballad that urges men to do better. “Power has come to me,” Vernon said earlier this year, “but it’s not fun to wield by yourself.” i,i is the solution, a collective effort as endless as it is empathetic. –Ryan Dombal",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/best-of-2019/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/bon-iver/i-i | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/2rXPgd9 | Platform: Tidal - Link: http://tidd.ly/f8a5785b,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5dee7e62cade48000818ed7d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bon-Iver.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bon_Iver-ii.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2019/,2019,year,album,15,Bill Callahan,Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest,Drag City,"Drag City Plenty of people come to Bill Callahan’s music just to hear him string sentences together as he explores an absurd, beautiful world one song at a time. While Callahan’s double album Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest contains plenty of his signature wisdom—songs about love and death, paternal advice and domestic romance, smirking one-liners and piercing, plainspoken verse—its magic is in the way his words wear his music like a beloved pair of old jeans. His simple arrangements for guitar, strings, and percussion are filled with purpose: Every new note and lyric is in service of communicating a pure thought. Take “Writing,” which rises slow and heavy like the sun in late summer. “It feels good to be writing again,” Callahan sighs, stepping through a field of thickly plucked notes; in the six years since his last album, he married and fathered a son, milestones that, for a while, dulled the need to be creative. He sings about clear water flowing from his pen, and a second riff emerges, lighter and more delicate, a cool stream burbling just out of sight. Eventually he leaves words behind entirely, sinking into cascading acoustic guitars and the soft tinkle of chimes. It’s a moment representative of this warm, humble, and remarkably graceful album: a celebration of the act of creation that reaches its peak when there’s nothing left to say. –Jamieson Cox",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/best-of-2019/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/bill-callahan/shepherd-in-a-sheepskin-vest | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/2Lp12UE | Platform: Tidal - Link: http://tidd.ly/f2114997,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6e0269669180008bb6469/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bill-Callahan-747.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bill_Callahan-Shepherd_in_a_Sheepskin_Vest.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2019/,2019,year,album,14,Beyoncé,Homecoming: The Live Album,Parkwood/Columbia,"Parkwood/Columbia No one does maximalism like Beyoncé. Homecoming: The Live Album—the musical companion to her retina-popping Coachella live film—boasts a whopping 40 tracks that fuse soul, hip-hop, gospel, and go-go with live skits and confessional interludes, as brassy marching bands and black drumlines give dap to the cultural traditions of HBCUs. In Beyoncé’s musical Cuisinart, James Weldon Johnson’s uplifting 1905 Negro National Anthem “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” sidles up next to her bootyshaking 2016 club jam “Formation.” The dizzying result of all Beyoncé’s kitchen-sink pop mastery: one of the most confident concert albums ever made, an audacious raising of the bar for stadium R&B in the footsteps of Prince, Michael Jackson, and Janet. In a cultural moment when black women’s labor and contributions are still underrecognized and diminished, Homecoming is the distillation of 21st century black female fabulosity. –Jason King",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/2r9vaga | Platform: Tidal - Link: http://tidd.ly/5eb380cf,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5dee7ed3fca3b800088ab0f6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Beyonce%25CC%2581.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beyonc-Homecoming_The_Live_Album.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2019/,2019,year,album,13,Big Thief,Two Hands,4AD,"4AD By the time Big Thief released U.F.O.F. this past May, you might’ve thought they deserved some time off: It was their third album in four years. But not five months later came Two Hands, which is as much an exorcism as its predecessor. Violence ripples through these songs like a vein of quartz—“Rock and Sing” might be a children’s lullaby about lost souls, “The Toy” an intimation of great evil. Warmed by humming amps and the presence of four bodies pressed in close, the album unspools as effortlessly as a campfire session—stray counterpoints, offhand vocal harmonies, tiny details dancing like shadows on the treeline. At a time when it feels like no patch of ground is immune from either flood or fire, Two Hands draws a circle and creates a refuge there. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/best-of-2019/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/big-thief/two-hands | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/2PjhXJw | Platform: Tidal - Link: http://tidd.ly/6ebf3d11,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7df284072b600087744e9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Big-Thief-Not.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Big_Thief-Two_Hands.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2019/,2019,year,album,12,Brittany Howard,Jaime,ATO,"ATO Brittany Howard named her debut solo album after her older sister, who died when Brittany was eight years old. While there’s no song explicitly about her on Jaime, there is urgent advice about how to live with the time we’re given: by refusing hatred and spreading love in fractious times; by dismissing inattentive partners and acting on desire. That immediacy pervades the sound of Howard’s solo debut, which is less wedded to genre than her work with Alabama Shakes and Thunderbitch. When the spirit calls for sparkling old soul, it’s there, as on the perennially festive “Stay High”; when Howard addresses a racist attack on her mixed-race parents, she doesn’t smooth over the stumbling piano refrain, nor her stunned delivery. The magnetic scrappiness doubles as a bracing alert. –Laura Snapes",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/best-of-2019/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/brittany-howard/jaime | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/365eXXT | Platform: Tidal - Link: http://tidd.ly/5247473b,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de68e6bb517ce000899ee8a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Brittany-Howard-13th-Century-Metal.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Brittany_Howard-Jaime.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2019/,2019,year,album,11,Jamila Woods,LEGACY! LEGACY!,Jagjaguwar/Closed Sessions,"Jagjaguwar/Closed Sessions Jamila Woods, the Chicago-based teacher, activist, and R&B poet, takes an audacious leap forward on LEGACY! LEGACY!, her sophomore album. Each song is named after a creative titan of color (Betty Davis, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, Frida Kahlo, etc.), drawing on the subject’s specific history as a spiritual guide for locating her own truth. LEGACY! LEGACY! is a more unified work than Woods’ 2016 debut, HEAVN, which marked her as a graceful champion of self-love, black feminism, and her Windy City hometown. On this album, even Woods’ more straightforward declarations—she’s “not your typical girl,” she’s “all out of fucks”—are set within richly imaginative and deeply allusive contexts, rooted in her artistic forebears. The music exists on an expanded scale, too, with producer Slot-A helping guide the proceedings from cosmic soul to garage-rock grit and on through to Chicago house. “So many women in me,” Woods sings, and she is every one. –Marc Hogan",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/best-of-2019/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/jamila-woods/legacy-legacy | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/2RntY3p | Platform: Tidal - Link: http://tidd.ly/dd24b495,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5dee83befca3b800088ab0f8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jamila-Woods.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jamila_Woods-LEGACY_LEGACY.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2019/,2019,year,album,10,Purple Mountains,Purple Mountains,Drag City,"Drag City We’re used to confronting a work of crushing sadness after the artist who made it has reached a better place. Stories of depression and despair are easier to take with full knowledge of the happy ending. Purple Mountains, the final album of new music from David Berman, released 26 days before he took his own life at age 52, offers no such luxury. A number of lines and song titles—“The dead know what they are doing when they leave this world behind,” from “Nights That Won’t Happen,” or “No way to last out here like this for long” from “All My Happiness Is Gone”—seem to point at what was to come, and to hear them in a certain mood is to be emotionally overwhelmed. But it’s important to remember what Berman’s friends at Drag City said following his death: His music didn’t predict his death; it was written despite his depression. The best way to hear these songs now is to listen to them in that spirit—to assume Berman was fighting fire with fire. He searched for the perfectly turned phrase to articulate pain because it helped him feel less of it; he added jokes because the absurdity of life is funny. His parting gift turned out to be one of his very best records. –Mark Richardson",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/best-of-2019/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/purple-mountains/purple-mountains | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/2RnBScV | Platform: Tidal - Link: http://tidd.ly/24bcd197,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7dbe84072b600087744e5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Purple-Mountains-Snow-Is-Falling.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Purple_Mountains-Purple_Mountains.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2019/,2019,year,album,9,Weyes Blood,Titanic Rising,Sub Pop,"Sub Pop Titanic Rising is vintage-sounding music for people who don’t want to live in the past. On her fourth album as Weyes Blood, L.A. singer-songwriter Natalie Mering coos laughably old-fashioned lines like “treat me right, I’m still a good man’s daughter” while referencing the cosmic loneliness of modern dating. You can parse out the weight, hope, and humor of Mering’s poetry, or you can sit back and let her dulcet tone and excellent taste in George Harrison-esque slide guitar wash over you. But even going the comfortable route, she is constantly disrupting her own ’70s soft rock pastiche with sounds that represent the future—space-age synths, satellites trying to connect. This simultaneous backwards-forwards vantage point leaves Mering well-positioned to consider our current moment—even if she sounds almost nothing like it. –Jillian Mapes",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/best-of-2019/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/weyes-blood/titanic-rising | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/2RnFrQp | Platform: Tidal - Link: http://tidd.ly/8ce664d8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5dee843d29131e0008fba7c6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Weyes-Blood.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Weyes_Blood-Titanic_Rising.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2019/,2019,year,album,8,Fennesz,Agora,Touch,"Touch The magic of Christian Fennesz’s work comes in the way he turns the minimal into the maximal, expanding tiny moments into huge sonic environments. When making Agora, his first solo album in five years, the experimental ambient producer was forced to work minimally—after losing his studio space, he was relegated to using headphones in a bedroom—and he translated these restrictions into one of his most oversized works yet. The album’s four tracks are all over 10 minutes in length and unabashedly sweeping, as processed guitar tones and dense computer manipulations generate droning, nearly-orchestral waves. But each mountainous track is also filled with small details, be it a high-pitched squall, a grainy click, or a distant rumble. Like all of Fennesz’s best work, Agora evokes memories and the way they linger and change. But the album never feels faded or nostalgic; all of its enveloping sound is immensely present, pulsing with life. –Marc Masters",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/best-of-2019/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/fennesz/agora | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/2qoz18x | Platform: Tidal - Link: http://tidd.ly/4a63dad4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5dee84a8fca3b800088ab0fa/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Fennesz.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fennesz-Agora.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2019/,2019,year,album,7,Helado Negro,This Is How You Smile,RVNG Intl.,"RVNG Intl. The most striking aspect of Helado Negro’s This Is How You Smile isn’t the dreamy production, with its lush acoustic guitars wound around intimately rendered drums. It’s not the field recordings that populate interludes like “November 7.” Nor is it the album’s introspective closer, “My Name Is for My Friends,” which splices ambient sounds with brief, cryptic dialogue. Amid all this wonder, what stays with you most is Roberto Carlos Lange’s comforting voice: It’s resonant and entrancing in both Spanish and English as he narrates meditations on resilience and the Latinx experience. Fresh hells rear their ugly heads every day, and Helado Negro reminds us that we can care for our communities as we seek to improve a world determined to beat us down. This Is How You Smile effortlessly illustrates the kind of quiet rage that has come to feel increasingly common in our current reality; for that reason, it might be the finest political record of the year. –Noah Yoo",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/best-of-2019/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/helado-negro/this-is-how-you-smile | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/2RpvKRI | Platform: Tidal - Link: http://tidd.ly/2f67b8b6,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7d90b238c6f0008bc0e13/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Helado-Negro-Running.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Helado_Negro-This_Is_How_You_Smile.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2019/,2019,year,album,6,Bad Bunny,X 100PRE,Rimas,"Rimas By the time Bad Bunny dropped his debut LP on Christmas Eve 2018, the Puerto Rican star had already demonstrated fluency in the trap, R&B, and reggaetón sounds that dominate urbano music through a deluge of hit singles and features. But X 100PRE was the first time all of those musical sides—and more—were presented in a singular statement. Expertly sequenced and absent of fluff, the album deploys only a choice few guest appearances designed for maximum impact: a rare Spanish verse from Drake, dirty bass programming by Diplo, and a romantic harmony courtesy of Ricky Martin. The focus instead is on flaunting Bad Bunny’s wide stylistic range; he channels salsa king Héctor Lavoe and flamboyant Mexican pop star Juan Gabriel as fluently as he might modern reggaetoneros like J Balvin and Ozuna. His versatility is most evident on the standout track “La Romana,” in which bachata guitar weaves cleverly into a trap beat before swerving into a full-on dembow banger. For the past few years, Bad Bunny has remained a true original in an urbano scene littered with talented copycats, and X 100PRE is his hard-to-catch victory lap. –Matthew Ismael Ruiz",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/best-of-2019/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/bad-bunny/x-100pre | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/386SKL0 | Platform: Tidal - Link: http://tidd.ly/e606d541 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=af9gVqE9-E8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7e1f94072b600087744eb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bad-Bunny-Caro.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bad_Bunny-X_100PRE.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2019/,2019,year,album,5,Solange,When I Get Home,Columbia,"Columbia In Solange’s vision of Houston, the streetlights are hazy, the liquor is dark, and the air is humming with dreams. The singer’s fourth album, When I Get Home, is a collection of reveries on family, history, and blackness—a love letter to her hometown. She finds solace in the frequent repetition of phrases and calls on powerful forebears for guidance, be they Alice Coltrane, Steve Reich, or DJ Screw. With its loose, almost jazz-like form, When I Get Home elevates Solange’s artistry to another plane: The grace and wisdom that flowed through 2016’s A Seat at the Table is chopped and screwed, complicated not just spiritually but musically as well. The album’s more abstracted tendencies also come to the forefront in its surreal visual companion piece, set in various real and imagined locations around the city. But in Solange’s generous hands, heady ideas don’t feel out of reach. We’re all given a place to rest in her Houston of the soul. –Eric Torres",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/best-of-2019/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/solange/when-i-get-home | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/34XMvHq | Platform: Tidal - Link: http://tidd.ly/7cb7082f,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7de65b517ce000899efad/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Solange-Binz.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Solange-When_I_Get_Home.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2019/,2019,year,album,4,Angel Olsen,All Mirrors,Jagjaguwar,"Jagjaguwar With each record, Angel Olsen’s music grows grander and darker, and on All Mirrors, she spreads her leathery wings and nearly blots out the sky. Her most dramatic release yet, All Mirrors telegraphs to us in Andrew Lloyd Webber-sized gestures: When Olsen's voice ascends an octave on “Lark,” the accompanying drum resounds like a cannon aimed at a fortress, and the dive-bombing glissandos from the orchestra mimic debris streaming around her. Over the album’s inky expanse, Olsen tries out an entirely new, gothic corner of her record collection: The Cure’s Disintegration, Cocteau Twins’ Heaven or Las Vegas, Siouxsie and the Banshees. Even at its gauziest, however, Olsen’s music still thrums with anxiety; her version of dream-pop is unsettled by existential terror, which prickles to the surface of “Too Easy” and “What It Is” like fever sweat. –Jayson Greene",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/best-of-2019/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/angel-olsen/all-mirrors | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/2PeUaKM | Platform: Tidal - Link: http://tidd.ly/eaeacd6c,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7d8a64072b600087744e1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Angel-Olsen-All-Mirrors.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Angel_Olsen-All_Mirrors.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2019/,2019,year,album,3,Big Thief,U.F.O.F.,4AD,"4AD Like white light refracted through a prism to reveal an array of colors, ordinary words and phrases—wrinkled hands, silver hair, clear water—take on new meanings when sung by Big Thief’s Adrianne Lenker. U.F.O.F, the first of two stellar albums the band released this year, sounds at once exploratory and wise, as if they are both seeing the world with fresh wonder while explaining the way things have always been. On bulked-up folky rock songs like “Jenni” and “Betsy,” Lenker’s winding voice twists through a dense weave of vine-like guitars and brittle drums, acting as a sonic anchor while the rhythm swirls around her. The lyrics are elliptical yet striking, so successful at filling you with what feels like an ancient longing that it sometimes feels like you’re discovering a new language entirely. –Vrinda Jagota",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/best-of-2019/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/big-thief/u-f-o-f | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/2LqFreu | Platform: Tidal - Link: http://tidd.ly/c26ce03a,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6e37e9669180008bb646d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Big-Thief-Cattails.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Big_Thief-UFOF.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2019/,2019,year,album,2,FKA twigs,MAGDALENE,Young Turks,"Young Turks FKA twigs’ second album plays like an unsparing breakup manual for a distant species, some glamorous alien race presumably as brilliant at everything as she is: singing, producing, writing, dancing, seducing, exorcising, empathizing. MAGDALENE is an overwhelming collection of intimacies, a generous feat of communication that turns her specific pain (not all of us have to get over a breakup with a celluloid vampire) into communion. For all the clever syntheses in MAGDALENE’s production—polyphonic vocals wisping over bass shudders; operatic trills distorted into grisly yelps—twigs is desperately clear in her words. Over the alluring trap beat of “holy terrain,” she asks coyly for fidelity, nervous and brave in her open-heartedness. Part the waves of distortion on “home with you,” and she is wailing, gorgeously, at the injustice of emotional abandonment. And on the exquisite centerpiece “cellophane,” she is as exposed, fallen, and overwhelmed as the album’s namesake. But unlike Mary Magdalene, twigs can reclaim her narrative, in this act of graceful assertion that makes the agony of her love heroic. –Stacey Anderson",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/best-of-2019/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/fka-twigs-bd78f3bf-3044-4ff5-b2c2-834f02b88f23/magdalene | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/34U0e1R | Platform: Tidal - Link: http://tidd.ly/797f157,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6c6d19eef880008cd118f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/FKA-twigs-sad-day.jpg,/dataset/artwork/FKA_twigs-MAGDALENE.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2019/,2019,year,album,1,Lana Del Rey,Norman Fucking Rockwell!,Polydor/Interscope,"Polydor/Interscope After eight years, five albums, and complete political and cultural upheaval, Lana Del Rey has risen to her greatest musical heights. When she first crash-landed into the public consciousness in 2011, breathily cooing about video games and blue jeans, the artist formerly known as Lizzy Grant was engulfed in heated debates over her authenticity, whether or not she was in control of her creative output, and whether she deserved her success at all. (As if the Bowies and Madonnas of the world didn’t spend decades proving that an artist’s greatest triumphs can come from reinvention.) But she ignored the haters and plowed forward, steadily carving out her own dark corner of the pop landscape. Norman Fucking Rockwell! takes that journey one step further: It cements Del Rey as a newly emergent Great American Songwriter. The elements of the Lana Del Rey Cinematic Universe, as established in the Born to Die era, have remained consistent throughout her discography: Lynchian dreamscapes of haunted prom queens and suburban ennui, meditations on the death of the American Dream, Old Hollywood glamour, the agony and ecstasy of bad men, references to classic rock and Comp Lit 101. On Norman Fucking Rockwell!, her songwriting at last goes toe-to-toe with the grandeur of her ideas. Her lyrics are dense poems destined for academic scrutiny, anchored by the kind of dry wit that could come as easily from the pen of Dorothy Parker as from a really good Instagram caption. Del Rey’s attitude towards destructive relationships take a refreshing turn, giving her more agency than ever before: “You’re fun and you’re wild/But you don’t know the half of the shit that you put me through/Your poetry’s bad and you blame the news,” she sings wearily on the title track. “’Cause you’re just a man/It’s just what you do.” (Because the reality of loving a fast-living, leather jacket-clad Romeo on a motorcycle is that you also have to deal with his bullshit.) Later, on “Venice Bitch,” she’s “fresh out of fucks forever,” like so many of us aspire to be. On “The Greatest,” she takes a widescreen look at our planet, sighing into the void as climate change brings about a hellish endless summer. Del Rey’s melodies also find their ideal setting in producer Jack Antonoff’s airy Laurel Canyon psych-folk, where she follows in the lineage of Joni Mitchell and Carole King. Untethered from the electronic pop and hip-hop trappings of many of her previous songs, her vocals breathe deep and her melodies luxuriate. Nothing here aims anywhere near the top 40; to paraphrase Del Rey’s buddy Kacey Musgraves, she’s classic in the right way. Norman Fucking Rockwell! is an album that arrived feeling like a greatest hits collection. Future generations will marvel that one album contained “Venice Bitch” and “Mariners Apartment Complex” and “hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have - but i have it.” And they will scoff in disbelief that Lana Del Rey was once treated as anything but the poet laureate of a world on fire. –Amy Phillips",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/best-of-2019/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/lana-del-rey/nfr | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://apple.co/38c8cWk | Platform: Tidal - Link: http://tidd.ly/5f66c63 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cE6wxDqdOV0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7e2b8b517ce000899efb6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lana-Del-Rey-The-Greatest.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lana_Del_Rey-Norman_Fucking_Rockwell.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,100,Shawn Mendes,“If I Can’t Have You”,Island,"Island Shawn Mendes seems beamed in from a pop era before face tattoos and pink hair and cursing: Last year, when the Canadian heartthrob revealed he liked to—gasp!—smoke weed, his squealing army of fans was appalled, with one of them advising him to “think about going to rehab because we cant lose u like this. u are going to overdose and die.” But amid his chart peers’ rampant insolence, the 21-year-old’s tangy white funk slices through like a double rainbow. Take “If I Can’t Have You,” a sparkling single propelled by gargantuan Elton John piano chords and a glorious descending vocal line that should squeeze stress sweat out of Justin Timberlake. On paper, Mendes is pining after the girl who got away with the obsessiveness of an Instagram stalker—and yet his effervescent delivery, and shameless cheesing in the video, make it clear that this winning rom-com of a song has a happy ending. –Ryan Dombal",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTJ-oqwxdZY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de68dabc43b7100080dda6d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Shawn-Mendes-If-I-Cant-Have-You.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Shawn_Mendes-If_I_Cant_Have_You.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,99,DJ Nate,“Fuck Dat”,Planet Mu,"Planet Mu A deceptively sparse cut from Chicago stalwart DJ Nate’s first footwork record in nearly a decade, “Fuck Dat” is a fitting return to the genre: The steady clap of a snare drum recalls the style’s roots in ghetto house, while a meandering synth line hovers in the air, teasing the onslaught to come. But DJ Nate’s power is restraint: With a stream of warm TR-808 hits and a few errant hi-hats, he allows the footworkers who compete in dizzying dance battles to fill in the energy. The titular vocal sample, chopped into oblivion, is a suitable mantra: Nate returned to footwork while recovering from an injury that left him temporarily paralyzed from the waist down, a particularly cruel irony in a scene defined by movement. But just because he’s not killing a circle doesn’t mean he can’t give it new life. –Arielle Gordon",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/PJxX979zxWE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de68df5238c6f0008bc0d15/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/DJ-Nate-Fuck-Dat.jpg,/dataset/artwork/DJ_Nate-Fuck_Dat.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,98,Brittany Howard,“13th Century Metal”,ATO,"ATO On “13th Century Metal”—the centerpiece of Brittany Howard’s debut solo album, Jaime—the leader of Alabama Shakes lays out a personal mission statement, her rock mantras on self-care and empathy building into the courage to denounce those “who are determined to keep us in the dark ages of fear.” The song reflects her search for optimism, with chants that grow in intensity as her inward resolutions become outward pleas for kindness. A potent juxtaposition of crashing noise music and pure ideals, “13th Century Metal” feels unconquerable, a maelstrom settling into place. –Sheldon Pearce",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUuuFGFpBlU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de68e6bb517ce000899ee8a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Brittany-Howard-13th-Century-Metal.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Brittany_Howard-13th_Century_Metal.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,97,Klein,“Claim It”,ijn inc.,"ijn inc. Perhaps the biggest shock on Klein’s latest album, Lifetime, is the appearance of a halfway conventional beat. Nestled among an album of brilliant—if sometimes exhausting—intensity, “Claim It” is a pause for thought as the South London producer peels back the sticky layers of her songs to reveal the textural skill beneath. What emerges is a strangled, melodic hook offset by unsettling vocal effects and chords that spiral upwards in a nervous twist of energy. Like a single malt whiskey with a drop of spring water, “Claim It” both dilutes and liberates Klein’s distinctive musical flavor, a reminder from this most maximalist of producers that less can occasionally be more. –Ben Cardew",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_B8dMObh3w,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de68ee9b517ce000899ee8c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Klein-Claim-It.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Klein-Claim_It.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,96,Ciara,“Thinkin Bout You”,Beauty Marks,"Beauty Marks If “Thinkin Bout You” is any indication, even after three years of marriage to her football-star husband, Ciara is still in the honeymoon stage. As she puts it: He’s a habit she can’t break; he’s her destiny. The exhilarating track from her seventh studio album, Beauty Marks, follows the singer in the throes of infatuation, with a throwback disco beat that mimics her joy. The song’s straightforward production matches the force of her emotions; little more than a simple beat, bassline, and backing vocals elevate her voice. It’s a rare, all-out work of pop from Ciara, and her voice glides over every line as she gives in to the force of her heart. –Colin Lodewick",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVczk4uIPPg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de68fa1c43b7100080dda6f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ciara-Thinkin-Bout-You.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ciara-Thinkin_Bout_You.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,95,Boy Scouts,“Get Well Soon”,Anti-,"Anti- The heartbreaker and the heartbroken—aka the villain and the victim—are often the stock characters in songs about failing relationships. On “Get Well Soon,” Taylor Vick, the Oakland-based folk-pop singer who has performed as Boy Scouts for nearly a decade, chooses instead to look at how breaking someone’s heart can break yours, too. Singing over her lilting guitar, she makes it known that her decision is a compassionate act. There are no balloons, no condolence cards here; Vick knows that as bad as it feels, she can’t stay around to comfort someone who hasn’t treated her well. –Colin Lodewick",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCeKYDkTTRM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de69213238c6f0008bc0d4b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Boy-Scouts-Get-Well-Soon.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Boy_Scouts-Get_Well_Soon.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,94,Lil Keed,“It’s Up Freestyle”,Young Stoner Life/300,"Young Stoner Life/300 Lil Keed is from the same Cleveland Avenue apartments in Atlanta as Young Thug. He has an eccentric and versatile ear for melody similar to Thug, and has even remixed his songs. But Keed is more than just another Young Thug clone. On “It’s Up Freestyle,” Keed perfects his high-pitched delivery, screeching and harmonizing over a beat from JetsonMade that sounds ready for a dystopian sci-fi movie. Whether he’s rapping at an inhuman pace or piecing together his ad-libs, whatever leaves Keed’s mouth is recitable: “Walked in, walked in, this Bentley truck you can crawl in,” he wails on a hook that’s since gone viral on TikTok. It’s that sugary delivery and his control that elevates the track into a standout in a city that has no shortage of hits. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDS5WJJP5Z8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6932d4072b60008774456/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lil-Keed-Its-Up-Freestyle.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lil_Keed-Its_Up_Freestyle.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,93,Sky Ferreira,“Downhill Lullaby”,UMG/Capitol,"UMG/Capitol Despite many rumors to the contrary, Sky Ferreira didn’t sample the strings of “Bitter Sweet Symphony” on “Downhill Lullaby,” but hers did share that mood: a fatal swoon, something like the score of a David Lynch film. Their sound is shamelessly opulent and sumptuous with rot, like fruit losing its color but deepening in scent. If Ferreira’s previous album Night Time, My Time channeled ’90s alt-pop, “Downhill Lullaby” nods to the decade’s trip-hop with languid drums and bass, dank atmosphere, and a vague seediness. Ferreira’s vocals alternate from husky and over-heavy to lullaby-plaintive, then slide into the vulnerability that's marked her best songs. She sings about a relationship that’s not healthy yet no longer up for reconsideration; around her, the strings swoop and keen as if they're racing to the ground, too. –Katherine St. Asaph",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8x55qS3chA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de69393238c6f0008bc0d4d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sky-Ferreira-Downhill-Lullaby.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sky_Ferreira-Downhill_Lullaby.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,92,Róisín Murphy,“Incapable”,Skint,"Skint Róisín Murphy begins “Incapable” as cheerfully as its disco-ready bassline suggests she will. The Irish dance-pop vet is ready to move, happy to feel wanted and free, even boasting that she’s never had a broken heart. But soon, the song’s steady groove and bright handclaps underpin a growing skepticism, as her perfectly intact heart begins to strike her as its own worrisome condition. “Am I incapable of love?” she asks herself. Though the song may be tongue-in-cheek, it highlights one of dance music’s core truths: Even a great beat can’t shield you from self-doubt. –Colin Lodewick",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H02BPY7vEms,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de69464b517ce000899eec2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Roisin-Murphy-Incapable.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Risn_Murphy-Incapable.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,91,Jay Som,“Superbike”,Polyvinyl,"Polyvinyl Nothing symbolizes freedom quite like the pairing of a motorcycle and open road. It’s a staple of American mythos; it’s the central conceit of Jay Som’s “Superbike.” Melina Duterte, who helms the project, is sparing with her imagery, piecing together the story as if from glimpses out a moving vehicle: hurt followed by hope, a two-wheeled escape, a painful memory. What she can’t fit into words plays out in the song’s swirl of major-key jangle, shoegaze fuzz, and tambourine, all churning like air currents. Betrayal may be the song’s fuel, but the overarching feeling is one of ease, unburdening, and independence regained. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1Z7UDNyCWQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de694edc43b7100080dda71/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jay-Som-Superbike.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jay_Som-Superbike.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,90,Hand Habits,“placeholder”,Saddle Creek,"Saddle Creek Love and loss are twin pillars of songwriting, but there’s far less attention paid to the space in between: the relationships that last for three dates, the regrettable one-night stands, the rebound flings that never really had a chance. On the title track of their stellar second album, L.A.-via-Albany indie guitar hero Meg Duffy—a.k.a. Hand Habits—gives voice to the lovers left behind by non-committal types on the hunt for something better, as the song’s slow, Neil Young gait sets the pace for their fellow walking wounded. “I was just a placeholder, a lesson never learned,” they sing and sigh, like someone who’s grown all too accustomed to getting that “I think we should just be friends” text. For a remedy, they delve deeper into Youngian psychology, unleashing a series of pained fretboard squeals that sound like the guitar-solo equivalent of screaming into your pillow. –Stuart Berman",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYXwR9FFMVs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de69550238c6f0008bc0d4f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Hand-Habits-Placeholder.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Hand_Habits-placeholder.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,89,Control Top,“Office Rage”,Get Better,"Get Better In the 1997 film Clockwatchers, an office temp pontificates on what work life has in store for her: “When I look ahead, I imagine infinite possible futures repeated like countless photocopies, a thousand blank pages.” In “Office Rage,” Philadelphia’s Control Top storm the cubicles and find that although the blank pages have been replaced by screens, the lethal ennui remains. “Staring at a screen/Makes me itch and scream,” Ali Carter yells. “Click click click click click/Makes me fucking sick.” A highlight of their Covert Contracts album on Get Better Records—company slogan: “for the queers, by the queers”—“Office Rage” employs a network of guitar lines more tangled than a messy router and drums like someone kicking a vending machine to liberate a trapped bag of chips. But in this economy, it’s worker liberation Control Top is after. “Service with a smile? EAT SHIT!” Carter screams. It’s a sentiment all of us can believe in. –Jesse Dorris",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnoSdi3Slsc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de69699b9e6f50008a30512/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Control-Top-Office-Rage.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Control_Top-Office_Rage.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,88,Saweetie,“My Type”,Icy/Artistry/Warner,"Icy/Artistry/Warner Invoking 2000s nostalgia in a bid to create her own rap hit, Saweetie samples from a crunk classic: Petey Pablo’s Lil Jon-produced “Freek-a-Leek.” But instead of adopting Petey’s suave, come-hither vibe, Saweetie delivers “My Type” with bite: “That’s my type!” she yells, as if she’s just spotted a man at the other end of the club and she’s ready to take a swipe at any woman who dares approach him. Saweetie’s raucous energy falls in line with another generation of women in rap: Three 6 Mafia’s Gangsta Boo and Crime Mob’s Diamond and Princess, who were exhilarating to listen to because they weren’t meek, pleasant, or well-mannered. Against the throwback beat’s rumbling synthesizers that could get anyone on the dancefloor, Saweetie turns “My Type” into an anthem for women who want to be unabashedly loud. –Michelle Kim",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M48nlk-1kH8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de697309669180008bb642a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Saweetie-My-Type.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Saweetie-My_Type.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,87,Taylor Swift,“Lover”,Republic,"Republic There’s room in Taylor Swift’s galaxy for celebrity warfare, veiled political commentary, and enthusiastic allyship, but her work is finest when it’s laser-focused on flawed, hopeful people making a connection. “Lover,” the title track from her most recent blockbuster LP, is a reminder of how effortlessly she can translate specific gestures and moments into universal expressions of romance. With its rustic arrangement and domestic imagery, it sounds like a spiritual sequel to “New Year’s Day,” the acoustic cleansing that closes 2017’s divisive Reputation. Both songs are tributes to the dirty work that goes into keeping a relationship healthy, and they’re spiked with the fear and doubt people feel even when that work is paying off. How can you make sure a good thing lasts forever? “Lover” features a classically swooning, Swiftian bridge—one designed to soundtrack wedding vows in renovated barns until the end of time—but its most penetrating lines depict the unglamorous stuff: telling dirty jokes, saving seats, deciding whether or not to drag out the air mattress for your college friends. This is the stuff of real intimacy, of partnership, of creating a language and a life together. It turns out the woman who built a career on fairy tales and scorched-earth breakup songs is just as deft with the simple and soulful. –Jamieson Cox",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BjZmE2gtdo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de697e7b9e6f50008a30514/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Taylor-Swift-Lover.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Taylor_Swift-Lover.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,86,Bedouine,“Bird”,Spacebomb,"Spacebomb As clichés go, “If you love someone, set them free” is textbook fare; making a memorable song out of it requires a certain magic touch. “Bird,” the emotional centerpiece of folk singer Azniv Korkejian’s second album as Bedouine, transforms that familiar conceit into a cinematic marvel. Backed by an orchestra that sounds plucked from Hollywood’s Golden Age, she sings with compassion and grace to a lover she likens to a bird she’s releasing from its cage. The contrast between the rhapsodic instrumentals and Korkejian’s stoic, heavy-lidded alto draws out the disparity between what is felt and what is said when lovers part ways. Bedouine’s heroine stares wistfully at the night into which her bird has flown off, the echoes of their final words implied by avian flute trills. You may have seen this ending before, but you’ll cry all the same. –Olivia Horn",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWBL_8MpMVo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de69871238c6f0008bc0d51/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bedouine-Bird.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Bedouine-Bird.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,85,Duwap Kaine,“Flyin’”,Self-released,"Self-released Teenage Atlanta rapper Duwap Kaine has been releasing lo-fi bedroom recordings on SoundCloud for about three years with little fanfare, and his music feels almost yawned out, dotted with Chief Keef-inspired Auto-Tune melodies, mumbled punchlines, and featherlight beats. A cartoon fever dream about getting high like a pilot, liking girls’ pics on IG, and the designer brands he wears while he glides through the streets of Georgia, “Flyin’” is the quintessential Duwap single. It’s hypnotic, effortless. On the song, he sounds like he’s wandering around in a daze, and his music is a perfect soundtrack for doing the same. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmYxlCKPqaw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de698c3238c6f0008bc0d53/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Duwap-Kaine-Flyin.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Duwap_Kaine-Flyin.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,84,Ari Lennox,“New Apartment”,Dreamville/Interscope,"Dreamville/Interscope Ari Lennox had to fight to put “New Apartment” on Shea Butter Baby because, she said, Dreamville label head J. Cole didn’t quite “understand” it. But Lennox thought it was the most important song on the album, because for a young woman like her, having her own apartment signifies safety and independence. On “New Apartment,” Lennox conveys this particular sense of freedom with a delightful string of images. Over a sample of Hubert Law’s soulful 1979 jazz composition “Land of Passion,” she sings about popping her “woo-hah in the sky,” drinking out of dollar-store wine glasses, and leaving her hair to clog the shower, all with the kind of sensual croon usually reserved for a romantic slow jam. –Michelle Kim",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJfEIWLXeoA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de69978b517ce000899eef8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ari-Lennox-New-Apartment.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ari_Lennox-New_Apartment.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,83,Kasper Marott,“Drømmen om Ø (Forever Mix ’19)”,Kulør,"Kulør Yoshinori Mizutani’s cover photograph of vivid lime-green parakeets outside a drab urban building is ingeniously suited for Kasper Marott’s Forever Mix EP. The record’s A-side, “Drømmen om Ø (Forever Mix ’19),” is a sumptuous, 14-minute mini-suite that lofts picturesque bird calls atop sleek drum pulse, rubbery acid synths, clattering Latin percussion, and other meticulously rendered subtleties. “Drømmen om Ø (Forever Mix ’19)” (the first part of the title translates to “The Dream of the Island”) is also a strange bird within Marott’s own Copenhagen techno scene. Forever Mix is the second release from Kulør, the label run by fellow Danish artist Courtesy, following a compilation that introduced the city’s “fast techno” style. But the music here is slower-paced, introspective. “Drømmen om Ø (Forever Mix ’19)” may hit like a shock of tropical color against a gray city exterior, but it takes the length of an early-morning dream to achieve its blissful effects. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aH1nu1zd68,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de699ff9eef880008cd1151/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kasper-Marott-Dr%25C3%25B8mmen-om-%25C3%2598.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kasper_Marott-Drmmen_om__Forever_Mix_19.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,82,Black Belt Eagle Scout,“At the Party”,Saddle Creek,"Saddle Creek Pop stars slumped into nihilistic torpor this year, too paranoid and depressed to migrate from their beds to the dancefloor. Party? In this economy? they seemed to ask. But not all revelry equates with excess, even when the world is crumbling. In “At the Party,” Black Belt Eagle Scout’s Katherine Paul, a radical indigenous queer feminist, affirms the necessity of communal gathering for those who have suffered. The opening track of her second album, At the Party With My Brown Friends, it is Pacific Northwest indie rock at its finest—all quiet humming and watery guitar, mist and cold air—but it retains the redemptive quality of gospel. The central refrain lulls like gentle ocean waves: “We will always sing,” Paul murmurs. “We will always sing.” Her words drive home the power of music as refuge and even as self-defense. Sometimes what looks like a party is really salvation. –Cat Zhang",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gk3FLRe4tAM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de69aba238c6f0008bc0d55/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Black-Belt-Eagle-Scout-At-the-Party.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Black_Belt_Eagle_Scout-At_the_Party.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,81,Young Thug,“What’s the Move” [ft. Lil Uzi Vert],300/Atlantic,"300/Atlantic One of the most consistent sources of joy on Instagram in the past year has been Lil Uzi Vert’s feed, which serves as a running catalog of the rapper’s outfits. There’s something heartwarming about seeing the young talent—his sartorial tastes unbridled and his budget now virtually unlimited—take on looks that range from Resident Evil hero to hypebeast Halloween ghoul. All of Uzi’s various flexes coalesce during his appearance on “What’s the Move,” a highlight from Young Thug’s album So Much Fun. Atop a bed of 808s and bird calls, Thugger’s yearning melodies set his Philadelphia counterpart up for a captivating (if all-too-brief) guest verse. “Flexin’ on these haters,” Uzi jeers, after rattling off all the designer labels on his person. “Richer than your first, richer than your last.” Success is the best revenge. –Noah Yoo",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L32ZHlOqqGY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de69b249eef880008cd1153/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Young-Thug-Whats-the-Move.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Young_Thug-Whats_the_Move_ft_Lil_Uzi_Vert.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,80,black midi,“bmbmbm”,Rough Trade,"Rough Trade Black midi traffic in beautiful convulsions, spazzing between rhythms, textures, and keys with a dexterity that’s so precise it’s dazzling, so fluid it’s showy. It’s tempting to take the quartet’s audacity as a challenge—to pop sensibilities, to listener patience—but it’s more rewarding to embrace their constant sense of wonder. On “bmbmbm” (pronounced “boom boom boom”), they are puckish and aloof, stacking oblique lyrics and a warped sample of a wailing woman over a calm bass riff and steady drumming. The resulting mood is placid but tense, like a flame meandering down a fuse. Energetic bolts of noise and percussion materialize from the sky and vanish just as quickly, disrupting the groove but not toppling it. As the song continues, these disruptions become more frequent, building to a tempest of discord that’s cathartic, indulgent, and kind of silly. But that’s the thrill of black midi: They’re as unsure of where the muse will lead them as the listener is. –Stephen Kearse",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de69c9e238c6f0008bc0d57/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/black-midi-bmbmbm.jpg,/dataset/artwork/black_midi-bmbmbm.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,79,Vagabon,“Flood”,Nonesuch,"Nonesuch Lætitia Tamko, who makes music as Vagabon, has said that “Flood” was initially written for another act to record. She described the process of creating for someone other than herself as “relief” from writer’s block, saying that there was freedom in that transference. The word “relief” implies a temporary state, a short break from a more permanent condition, but Tamko’s statement can also be seen as an acknowledgement of what creativity in 2019 looks like: at its best when untethered from the exhaustive rituals of self-promotion. “Flood,” which served as the introduction to Vagabon’s self-titled second album, diverges from previous Tamko recordings, which were rooted in the singer-songwriter’s melancholy croon and guitar playing. On the chorus of “Flood,” in the shadow of a drum machine and synthesizers that rise tall like futuristic oaks, Tamko’s voice embodies that modern-day creative isolation, taking on an almost robotic sheen. –Anupa Mistry",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=De_e_TgsXjE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6b71d9669180008bb6461/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Vagabon-Flood.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Vagabon-Flood.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,78,2 Chainz,“NCAA”,Def Jam,"Def Jam 2 Chainz’ Rap or Go to the League unpacks a long-held belief: The only two ways for some kids to make it out of the hood are to rap or play ball. The marching, Honorable C.N.O.T.E.-produced “NCAA” is the album’s centerpiece, detailing the rapper’s rise from amateur baller to pro rapper while taking on corruption in the sporting world. The song marks college players as victims of institutional suppression of opportunity, implicating the system as exploitative of the primarily black stars who earn billions in revenue for others. Until recently, the governing body that oversees college sports wouldn’t let student athletes profit in any way off their talents or likenesses, and 2 Chainz, a former player himself, weaponizes that hypocrisy into a rallying cry. Here, his flows are leisurely as usual but he sounds slightly perturbed, too, as if he can’t believe the unmitigated gall of it all. “NCAA” reinforces a fundamental 2 Chainz philosophy: Balling hard should be rewarded. –Sheldon Pearce",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmvBsxd3WxE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6b948238c6f0008bc0d8d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/2-Chainz-NCAA.jpg,/dataset/artwork/2_Chainz-NCAA.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,77,Powder,“New Tribe”,Beats in Space,"Beats in Space At first, Powder’s “New Tribe” looms ominously. The left-field techno anthem’s beat is reminiscent of Laurie Anderson’s “O Superman,” except here those slow, staccato exhalations sound more like the huffing of some titanic beast; the lumbering bassline might be its swishing tail. But a funny thing happens as the song continues its endless build: It pulls you in. What started out forbidding and impenetrable becomes a bubble you live inside. But that’s exactly the kind of thing Powder would do. The Tokyo electronic musician is famous for lengthy, off-kilter DJ sets that disorient and envelop in equal measure. Here, she effortlessly flips the specter of colossal menace into a warm embrace. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vkfpi2H8tOE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6be949669180008bb6463/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Powder-New-Tribe.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Powder-New_Tribe.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,76,Empath,“Roses That Cry”,Get Better,"Get Better When you listen to a great punk song, you should be holding your breath a little, fearing for its survival. Empath’s “Roses That Cry” is so joyous and unsteady, so beautiful and compromised, that you feel compelled to pray for its existence immediately. The Philadelphia quartet’s anthem rises out of the center of their album Active Listening: Night on Earth like a thought bubble over the head of a cartoon character, hazy and unreal. “Remember when/That tree fell on your car?/Glass spilled/All over the yard,” warbles singer-songwriter and guitarist Catherine Elicson as the band collapses around her in streams of detuned synthesizers and guitars that sound like wind tunnels. She sounds positively serene. –Jayson Greene",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUdz-So6Myo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6bfd99eef880008cd1189/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Empath-Roses-That-Cry.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Empath-Roses_That_Cry.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,75,Oso Oso,“One Sick Plan”,Triple Crown,"Triple Crown Long Island native Jade Lilitri makes emo that could only exist in 2019. He draws from the rollercoaster hooks and blown-out emotion of his early-’00s Nassau County forebears, but strives to write, in his words, more “conscious” lyrics. That intention shines and crackles through “One Sick Plan,” the centerpiece of his third and best record, Basking in the Glow. Amid the rest of the album’s radiant gloss, “One Sick Plan” sounds like a hissy cassette demo, as if the sentiment—one of coming to see what really matters, like an epiphany—is so urgent and crucial that Lilitri had to release it straight away. His choppy acoustic strums seem to cut through a breeze, as he sings out to the person he cherishes: “Don’t sweep it under the rug.” Through all the self-doubt and pained longing Lilitri describes in this simple acoustic song, he has one sick plan to defy time: enduring love. –Jenn Pelly",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWB8ttm9ZRo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6c0ba9eef880008cd118b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Oso-Oso-One-Sick-Plan.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Oso_Oso-One_Sick_Plan.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,74,Faye Webster,“Room Temperature”,Secretly Canadian,"Secretly Canadian The hook of Faye Webster’s “Room Temperature” serves as a mantra for depressed millennials everywhere: “I should get out more.” Webster got started as the odd-one-out at Atlanta’s Awful Records, a singer-songwriter with a soft rock sound on a label mostly known for releasing rap, and she doesn’t exactly fit into a tidy genre either; her slightly soulful country-western style sounds more like ’70s FM radio than contemporary indie rock. “Room Temperature” exemplifies Webster’s lyrical specialty, that all-too-familiar summertime sadness, those late capitalism blues. Her voice expresses a gentle yet pervasive melancholy, but the swaying cymbals, woozy guitars, and lazy pedal steel keep you from sinking too deep into self-pity. –Nadine Smith",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMybE4Ge6hM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de9431f238c6f0008bc0f02/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Faye-Webster-Room-Temp.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Faye_Webster-Room_Temperature.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,73,Maxo Kream,“Meet Again”,Big Persona/88 Classic/RCA,"Big Persona/88 Classic/RCA Maxo Kream doesn’t glamorize. He doesn’t preach. He tells stories. With a reporter’s sense for detail and a matter-of-fact delivery, the rapper tells of lives marked by crime and poverty with gut-punching pathos and bleak humor. Those abilities were on striking display on his breakout album, 2018’s Punken; “Meet Again,” the lead-off single from this year’s Brandon Banks, take them to another level. Borrowing the epistolary conceit of Nas’ “One Love,” Maxo narrates a letter to an incarcerated friend. The song hits an emotional peak when the beat drops and Maxo starts talking about his own family, ripped apart by prison sentences and drug addiction. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxce_qvhi5I,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6c1414072b60008774458/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Maxo-Kream-Meet-Again.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Maxo_Kream-Meet_Again.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,72,Rema,“Dumebi”,Mavin/Jonzing World,"Mavin/Jonzing World At the beginning of 2019, Rema was a teenager from Benin City, Nigeria, with a modestly viral front-seat car freestyle. In the spring, he was at the top of the Nigerian charts. Released on the label of the powerful and enigmatic producer Don Jazzy, who also helped establish Afropop powerhouses like Tiwa Savage, Rema’s self-titled EP was composed of four tracks, each with a different sound—Juice WRLD-style trap, Young Thug-influenced melodies, and Afropop love ballads. But standing tall among them was “Dumebi.” “Dumebi” feels both traditional and new. The Ozedikus-produced rhythm is bouncy and fresh, while Rema injects the track with youthful energy and eccentric melodies. The times are changing in Nigeria, both politically and culturally, and the next generation of Afropop sounds like Rema. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thIH-e2pWQM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6c1929eef880008cd118d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Rema-Dumebi.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rema-Dumebi.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,71,Lil Tecca,“Ransom”,Galactic/Republic,"Galactic/Republic In his instantly famous Genius “Verified” video for “Ransom,” teenage rapper Lil Tecca detailed what he made up while writing his not-so-humblebrag of a breakout hit: He has never gone to Europe, he doesn’t wear designer clothes, and he can’t mentally handle being a player. The Long Island MC may have verified these fabrications, but his playfulness was obvious enough from the sound of things. Buoyed by an infectious hook, a sugar-cereal beat, and Tecca’s Auto-Tuned verses, “Ransom” is two glorious minutes of playing pretend. –Matthew Strauss",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/c_fXqA5UAbY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6c382238c6f0008bc0d8f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lil-Tecca-Ransom.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lil_Tecca-Ransom.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,70,Sleater-Kinney,“Hurry on Home”,Mom & Pop,"Mom & Pop Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein has likened the romantic disjointment in “Hurry on Home” to the breakdown of trust between government and citizens in our Trumpian epoch. It is, quite certainly, the horniest song of said epoch. The lead single from The Center Won’t Hold is a raw-throated howl of queer desire, shot through with angry, annihilative hunger. It is the sort of music about fucking that you make when your very right to fuck is under attack: Brownstein and bandmate Corin Tucker sing about sex as a desperate leap into disembodiment. The fevered pulse of St. Vincent’s production blurs the jagged edges of Brownstein and Tucker’s twin guitars, making for an urgent undercurrent capable of driving listeners into each other’s arms. So long as Sleater-Kinney survives, no force on earth will stand between a woman, another woman, and their primal urge to U-Haul. –Peyton Thomas",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5uAH0vNn2s,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6c4f94072b6000877445a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sleater-Kinney-Hurry-on-Home.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sleater-Kinney-Hurry_on_Home.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,69,Caribou,“Home”,Merge,"Merge Home is an ambiguous concept for Dan Snaith: In his nearly two decades of music-making, the producer has dramatically reinvented himself on an album-by-album basis, veering from glitchy electronica to blown-out shoegaze to kaleidoscopic pop to subaquatic house without ever retracing his steps. So there’s a delightful sense of frisson when, on his first Caribou single in five years, we hear the sampled voice of ’70s soul singer Gloria Barnes declare, “Baby, I’m home.” It’s a statement that suggests a return to one’s roots, but “Home” doesn’t so much sound like Snaith’s earliest music as it does an alternate 2001 where he embraced the crowd-pleasing collagist aesthetic of the Avalanches and DJ Shadow instead of the cerebral beats of Four Tet and Boards of Canada. By conjuring a past he never experienced, “Home” once again takes Snaith somewhere he’s never been before. –Stuart Berman",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LX30jRKcmbw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6c54f4072b6000877445c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Caribou-Home.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Caribou-Home.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,68,Georgia,“About Work the Dancefloor”,Domino,"Domino Don’t get caught up on the seemingly faulty grammar of Georgia Barnes’ “About Work the Dancefloor,” a quirky electro-pop banger inspired by a weekend of club-hopping in Berlin. The unassuming lilt in the British percussionist/producer’s voice is enough to make the opaque title feel natural, as if she were interrupting her own train of thought. The single edit trims the song a bit; the best version appears on Georgia’s forthcoming album Seeking Thrills, out in January, and gives room for her staggering intro to poke through the gleaming synths and stereo laser sprays. “I don’t have much in terms of money now,” Georgia admits as a thick, clubby bass drops, but on “About Work the Dancefloor,” she just wants to set us free. –Anna Gaca",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4Y9V07wry4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6c5fa4072b6000877445e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Georgia-About-Work-the-Dancefloor.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Georgia-About_Work_the_Dancefloor.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,67,FKA twigs,“sad day”,Young Turks,"Young Turks On the slow-burning “sad day,” FKA twigs alternates between a pining falsetto and a clenched, scratchy voice, full of regret. “Would you make a wish of my love?” she asks in the high voice, before dropping down and remembering the pain she caused in the past. The track, a jagged instrumental courtesy of twigs alongside producers Skrillex, Nicolas Jaar, Benny Blanco, and Noah Goldstein, fills in the space between these two modes of address—sweet entreaty, throaty self-recrimination. The refrain samples the British classic “It’s a Fine Day,” made famous in its 1992 rave rendition by Opus III, providing a moment of release from all the romantic tension and misguided hope. –Thea Ballard",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnmDMAVdaPc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6c6d19eef880008cd118f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/FKA-twigs-sad-day.jpg,/dataset/artwork/FKA_twigs-sad_day.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,66,Koffee,“Throne”,Promised Land,"Promised Land Over the past two years, the young Jamaican artist Koffee has steadily risen through the ranks of the reggae-dancehall world thanks to the success of her pop-leaning single “Toast,” a track so massive it was recently performed by a Chinese military band to welcome the Prime Minister of Jamaica to Beijing. But “Throne” is Koffee’s true coronation song. Atop laidback horns, the 19-year-old delivers a performance steeped in the lineage of imaginative reggae-dancehall, particularly that of her mentor, Chronixx. She is a clever, urgent lyricist, constantly finding new pockets to play in. “A born storm, fire cyah calm,” she declares over a soundsystem-perfected bassline that will suit American festivals just fine. –Anupa Mistry",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5V4ZDNV4si0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6c7394072b60008774460/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Koffee-Throne.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Koffee-Throne.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,65,Octo Octa,“I Need You”,Technicolour,"Technicolour The first half of this 10-minute track from DJ/producer Maya Bouldry-Morrison, aka Octo Octa, is rooted in gritted, lo-fi breaks, with vocals that drift on a reverbed vapor trail. They give ""I Need You"" the feeling of being suspended between two planes, its knees planted on the ground as its spirit drifts to the sky like a prayer. Then, six minutes in, the song finds its emotional anchor, as Bouldry-Morrison reads a buoyant note to her friends, her family, her listeners: “I love you! Thank you for being there. You mean so much to me.” It’s a deeply joyous moment. –Ian Cohen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-01X6v5QjPg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6c7794072b60008774462/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Octo-Octa-I-Need-You.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Octo_Octa-I_Need_You.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,64,Charly Bliss,“Capacity”,Barsuk,"Barsuk Brooklyn synth-pop band Charly Bliss introduced their second album, Young Enough, with a glimmering, radioactive song that delights in blowing everything up. On “Capacity,” singer Eva Hendricks questions her tendency to put other people’s needs before her own while remaining empathetic towards her anxious, overachieving younger self. Rather than using boyfriends, endless work, or other people’s desires as a distraction, Hendricks decides to finally celebrate herself. The sound of this emotional resurrection is enormous: an explosion of buzzing synth, commanding drums, and gnashing guitar buoy Hendricks’ effervescent vocals. The ultimate irony of this song about a commitment to do less? The band’s ambition clearly shines through. –Vrinda Jagota",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3yayHHmUxs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6c7ef93c34b0008130ac1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Charly-Bliss-Capacity.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Charly_Bliss-Capacity.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,63,Polo G,“Pop Out” [ft. Lil Tjay],Columbia,"Columbia Chicago rapper Polo G came up listening to local greats like Lil Durk and G Herbo, whose storytelling balanced titillation and tragedy. His own music is a logical evolution of their writing, even more vulnerable and irrepressibly sad. “Pop Out” was his breakout, the track that introduced his sorrow-stricken voice to the masses. Although it’s set against a backdrop of action—the robbery in the chorus is detailed with the kinetic precision of a Brian De Palma film—its real drama is internal, as Polo G processes the toll that playing the villain takes on your psyche. He may be the shooter, but in Polo G’s world, everybody’s a casualty. Telling his story, Polo G makes every word matter. It takes a special talent to rhyme “poverty” with “animosity,” and an even more special one to do it so casually that you don’t even really notice. That’s Polo’s great gift: His prose is intricate and purposeful, but it’s the emotion that lingers. –Evan Rytlewski",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-uW3I_AtDE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6c856238c6f0008bc0d91/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Polo-G-Pop-Out.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Polo_G-Pop_Out_ft_Lil_Tjay.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,62,Jessica Pratt,“Aeroplane”,Mexican Summer,"Mexican Summer An airplane is a breeding ground for epiphanies—you’re floating above Earth and awed by the expanse, but you also feel distant and isolated and ultimately alone. It’s a place for remembering, for both running down regrets and allowing yourself to feel a bit of gratitude. That’s where Jessica Pratt finds herself here. “Aeroplane” is another entry in a long line of great songs set in the sky (think Joni Mitchell’s “This Flight Tonight” or Bill Callahan’s “Small Plane”), this one spurred by a reflection in the cabin window and an image of someone from her past, whose head she imagines wreathed in city lights. “I don’t wanna touch down,” she sings, musing over “treasures luminous and divine.” For three-and-a-half minutes, we’re up there with her. –Mark Richardson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AD0dRjq4m20,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6cf73b517ce000899ef31/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jessica-Pratt-Aeroplane.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jessica_Pratt-Aeroplane.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,61,100 gecs,“money machine”,Dog Show,"Dog Show Hearing “money machine”—the raucous, euphoric peak of trash-pop duo 100 gecs’ debut album—is like getting blasted in the face with a million Swarovski crystals and leaky glowsticks. It hurts and it's fabulous, this humiliation fantasy that begins with vocalist Laura Les calling you a “piss baby,” spitting and scream-singing through sheets of voice processing. Together with her fellow riot-starter Dylan Brady, Les crunches steel-wool bass and styrofoam guitars into something wonderful. 100 gecs seem to ask, What if you took everything you hated about yourself—all your insecurities about not being good enough or whole enough—and melted them down, jammed your boots in the sticky pit, and headbanged about it? Wouldn’t that feel like cash printed on demand? “money machine” is a purification ritual for the rotted-out brain, a seething, monstrous prayer to burn the slime away. –Sasha Geffen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z97qLNXeAMQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6ca7c4072b60008774464/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/100-gecs-money-machine.jpg,/dataset/artwork/100_gecs-money_machine.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,60,Mount Eerie,“Love Without Possession”,P.W. Elverum & Sun,"P.W. Elverum & Sun Over the course of his last several albums, each a document of loss, Phil Elverum has become one of the most bracingly frank songwriters of our generation. On the first single from his sequel to the 2008 Mount Eerie album Lost Wisdom, he and collaborator Julie Doiron zoom out from the everyday minutiae of grief, excavating a broader-reaching poetics from blunt observation. “What glows beneath all the pain and anguish?” Elverum and Doiron ask in an asymmetrical call-and-response. The answer is love, of course. In this pair’s hands, love is an infinitely unruly concept, however concise their words and simple their musical arrangement, which doesn’t thicken much beyond the yawn of an organ and some distorted guitar. In his 2004 song “We Squirm,” Elverum characterized feelings as “captors” from which we’ll never be free. Here, love is rendered as a horizon, a void; it’s beautiful and it’s terrifying, and it goes on forever. And yet there’s comfort in hearing these two old friends return to one another to call this blazing thing forth. –Thea Ballard",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhKoeYiGTWs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6cc0db9e6f50008a3054c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mount-Eerie-Love-Without-Possession.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mount_Eerie-Love_Without_Possession.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,59,Chai,“Fashionista”,Burger,"Burger From Kraftwerk’s “The Model” to David Bowie’s “Fashion” to Right Said Fred’s “I’m Too Sexy,” pop music has always looked to the runway with an arched eyebrow. These are songs that playfully skewer the fashion world for its vanity and vacuity while secretly desiring to be part of it. (Surely it’s no coincidence that all of the above also function as tailor-made catwalk soundtracks.) Chai’s “Fashionista” belongs in this tradition, though the Japanese pop maximalists are less focused on supermodels than on the cosmetics consumers buy in attempts to look more like them. The song’s punky disco bounce is less an invitation to pose for the paparazzi than the soundtrack to a daily drill of skincare routines and make-up applications. But lead singer Mana isn’t about to accept her fate as a prisoner to the beauty industry: “Someone’s trend, it’s a shame!/Someone’s rules, it’s a shame!” she shouts in Japanese, transforming “Fashionista” from a lip-glossed pop jam into a revolutionary cry to stomp on your compacts in 4/4 time. –Stuart Berman",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amwdDzK218A,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6cdff4072b60008774466/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Chai-Fashionista.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Chai-Fashionista.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,58,Burna Boy,“Anybody”,Atlantic,"Atlantic A crown jewel among many on Burna Boy’s African Giant, “Anybody” offers up an unrelentingly smooth exercise in realizing your own potential. The track’s fleshed-out sound, filled with bright horns, rapid clave rhythms, and a melodic interpolation of Angélique Kidjo’s “We We,” suits the Nigerian star’s specific strain of prosperity gospel: If you have wealth, share it with your friends, he seems to say; and if you see others flaunting theirs, know that their comeuppance is around the corner. Like the smooth-talking “Ye” before it, “Anybody” finds Burna Boy operating at peak power, with his deep rasp and haughty delivery locking into an indisputable swagger. “Respect is reciprocal,” he declares, encouraging and upbraiding us at once. –Eric Torres",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rz_kQiBxaQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6ce8f4072b60008774468/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Burna-Boy-Anybody.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Burna_Boy-Anybody.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,57,Haim,“Summer Girl”,Columbia,"Columbia Haim released “Summer Girl,” their first single since 2017’s Something to Tell You, on July 31, just in time to bottle the incandescent idea of late summer, when the season feels sweeter because its days are numbered. That sense of savoring small, perfect snatches of sun breezes through the song’s sax-flecked groove. It’s a minimal pop song with maximum levity, and if it feels like a balm, that’s because Danielle Haim wrote it for her partner (and Haim producer) Ariel Rechtshaid, who was battling testicular cancer at the time. Interpolating the “doo doo doo”s of Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side,” “Summer Girl” never builds to one solid chorus or drop, instead swaying into a sketch of a season’s magic hour, rolling on and on into the sunset. –Jenn Pelly",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjuA_o6Jzyo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6cf4f238c6f0008bc0d93/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Haim-Summer-Girl.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Haim-Summer_Girl.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,56,Joy Overmono,“Bromley”,XL,"XL When it comes to peak-hour dance tracks, there are crowd-pleasers that give the audience a perfect loop or breakbeat to sink their teeth into, and pivot tunes that give the DJ space to steer the night in new directions. “Bromley,” the first joint single by UK rave powerhouses Joy Orbison and Overmono, somehow manages to be both: a raw techno tool built atop relentless drum loops and a collage of intriguing sounds. Its mysterious, sampled vocal feels like a prism for a dancefloor’s energy, while moody ambience and electronic noise creeps through the cracks between drum hits. “Bromley” is a perfect fusion of Joy Orbison’s atmosphere and the thudding, percussive style of Overmono, and the results are delirious. –Noah Yoo",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThaTKXGXHKE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6d0234072b6000877446a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Joy-Overmono-Bromley.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Joy_Overmono-Bromley.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,55,Toro y Moi,“Freelance”,Carpark,"Carpark “Freelance,” the spiritual centerpiece of Chaz Bear’s sixth album as Toro y Moi, is the sort of catchy song that follows you—onto the subway, into the bathroom, into your dreams. Elsewhere on the well-named Outer Peace, Bear says he’s “bad with the words,” but the lyrics here are worth chewing over. There’s the darkly ironic (“Freelance now, yeah I guess you earned it”), the adorably resigned (“No more shoes and socks, I only rock sandals/I can’t tell if I’m hip or getting old”), and the strangely evocative (“You don’t know that you’re rust”). On the surface, “Freelance” may seem nonchalant, maybe even absurd, but there’s plenty going on here—and, given how much it burrows into your brain, it’s ultimately impossible not to notice. –Jonah Bromwich",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jm6hDWBZXc4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6d0d4bce2c50008b5f2f1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Toro-y-Moi-Freelance.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Toro_y_Moi-Freelance.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,54,Stormzy,“Vossi Bop”,#Merky/Atlantic,"#Merky/Atlantic Two years after Stormzy’s debut record lifted him from emergent grime talent to the all-around pride of London, the first single from his forthcoming second album took it back to the basics he built his name on. Best when he’s blustery, he took the raring energy of his early singles and channeled it into an extended brag concurrent with the vibe of the dance that inspired him. In it, he celebrates his success as a musician and activist while hearkening to the long tradition of dance-instructive tracks in the UK funky club scene that he’s drawn from. Stormzy's delivery is as stealth and cool as a Lamborghini in a foggy alley at night, further codifying his versatility as an MC and expressing the sweatless confidence of a newly crowned king. –Julianne Escobedo Shepherd",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ClYy0MxsU0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6d1469eef880008cd11c5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Stormzy-Vossi-Bop.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Stormzy-Vossi_Bop.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,53,Lizzo,“Juice”,Nice Life/Atlantic,"Nice Life/Atlantic Lizzo began 2019 as a cult favorite and ended it as a full-on industry darling. “Juice” wasn’t the hit that landed her at No. 1 for much of the fall, but the song’s irresistible throwback funk brought the singer-rapper into pop radio territory early on in the year, setting some groundwork for the big break to come. It’s an unapologetic introduction to Lizzo’s empowering strain of pop: If you don’t like the fabulosity before you, the song seems to say, then that’s your problem. Pulling double duty as both a body-positive banger and a party bop, “Juice” obliterates inhibitions to the point that listeners’ insecurities become as insignificant as the not-so-single men sliding into Lizzo’s DMs. –Abby Jones",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaCrQL_8eMY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6d2069eef880008cd11c7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lizzo-Juice.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lizzo-Juice.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,52,Jenny Lewis,“Wasted Youth”,Warner Bros.,"Warner Bros. In the deceptively chipper “Wasted Youth,” Jenny Lewis lets us in on two sisters’ blacked-out, rock-bottom conversation about the recent death of their estranged mother, who was a drug addict during their childhoods. But if you ask Lewis about it, there’s a more innocent dependency at its core: “I feel like that song is more about Candy Crush than heroin,” she explained, “if that’s even fucking possible.” And indeed, during the breezy pinwheel of a hook, Lewis sings the name of the time-sucking iPhone game, letting those two words sum up the helplessness that haunts the song. As the folksy pop melody swirls, her words descend like so many colorful blocks on a screen. It’s a distraction—something to keep us entertained while everything falls apart—but that doesn’t mean it’s not real. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY8bdQRpmGU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6d279238c6f0008bc0d95/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jenny-Lewis-Wasted-Youth.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jenny_Lewis-Wasted_Youth.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,51,Peggy Gou,“Starry Night”,Gudu Records,"Gudu Records Whatever accounts for it—club culture’s ongoing fragmentation, some creeping suspicion that levity is bankrupt—dance music has been short on anthems in recent years. The South Korean producer Peggy Gou’s “Starry Night” summons revellers around a familiar gathering point: bright, bold piano chords, the tentpoles of summertime house classics ever since the music migrated from Chicago basements to Balearic terraces. To drive her point home, she offers up a chant that’s practically subliminal—one-word invocations of the ocean, starlight, pleasure, freedom, us. It’s a song about communion, an invocation of the very act of coming together, and an irresistible reminder of why we do. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_wwmmo6UGY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6d3109eef880008cd11c9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Peggy-Gou-Starry-Night.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Peggy_Gou-Starry_Night.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,50,Neon Indian,“Toyota Man”,Mom & Pop,"Mom & Pop Alan Palomo floated onto the indie scene a decade ago as the avatar of a sun-baked, synth-based movement that everyone soon begrudgingly agreed to call “chillwave.” Over the next several years, his Neon Indian project grew from warped-cassette daydream to wide-screen dance party. “Toyota Man,” Palomo’s first new song in three years, casts his music in fresh light by drawing out elements that were integral to his sound all along. Politics, humor, and Palomo’s Mexican-American identity were already latent in Neon Indian’s discography, but this warped Spanish-language protest anthem finally brought them all brilliantly to the front. The results feel more joyful than anyone in a time of border walls and internment camps could have expected. “Toyota Man” mixes endearing details (learning English from The Larry Sanders Show) with broad truths (“Todos somos Americanos,” or, as translated, “We are all American”) concoct a perfect celebration of his own immigrant experience—and, by extension, the American experience writ large. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jvkHxmeNXc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6d3759669180008bb6465/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Neon-Indian-Toyota-Man.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Neon_Indian-Toyota_Man.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,49,Teejayx6,“Dark Web”,Self-released,"Self-released If you’ve ever woken up to see that Saks Fifth Avenue has charged thousands of dollars to your credit card, you probably won’t love Teejayx6’s brand of Detroit scam rap. On “Dark Web,” after the government bans Teejayx6 from using those sites, he responds by downloading a Tor Browser so he can get back in, obtains a VPN so he’s untraceable, and purchases a BIN so he can once again go about his scams freely. The hyper-specific details—he makes it sound so easy that credit scams probably quintupled in the wake of this song—are what makes his music both seedy and improbably exciting. It’s the story of an underdog who just wants to scam a couple of unaware citizens and department stores so he can acquire some drip he can flex on IG: “I paid five thousand for my fit/ I’m not fitting in,” as he puts it. If you’re going to scam, at least make a catchy song about it. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubs9b-ssuuM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6d43b9669180008bb6467/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Teejayx6-Dark-Web.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Teejayx6-Dark_Web.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,48,Jamila Woods,“ZORA”,Jagjaguwar/Closed Sessions,"Jagjaguwar/Closed Sessions “I do not weep at the world, I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife,” Zora Neale Hurston wrote in 1928. Her words, spiked with equal parts apathy, opulence, and menace, echoed in Jamila Woods’ mind as she worked on her second album, LEGACY! LEGACY!, a monument to black excellence. Like Hurston, the namesake of the album’s first single, Woods is something of a polymath: a singer-songwriter, poet, teacher, and activist. But on “ZORA,” she asserts that her selfhood is far more expansive than these labels, or any others thrust upon her, would suggest. “Little boxes you can’t stick unto me,” she sings, her vocals melting over a commanding backbeat. As if with a finger wag, she adds, “You will never know everything.” But there’s sweetness even in Woods’ venom, as when she taunts her foes by threatening to “tenderly fill [them] with white light.” It’s another nod to her multitudes: White light contains every color of the rainbow. –Olivia Horn",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NO0_3XwBb5s,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6d697b517ce000899ef33/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jamila-Woods-ZORA.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jamila_Woods-ZORA.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,47,Caroline Polachek,“Door”,Columbia,"Columbia Sometimes the difference between a good pop song and a great one lies in the sticky details: a borrowed bassline, a baby coo, the loop of a tumbi melody. Chairlift singer-songwriter Caroline Polachek, one of the first ’00s indie rock musicians to move into mainstream pop songwriting, surely knows this. On “Door,” her first single released under her own name, Polachek turns her malleable voice into a sing-song hook—“Back in the city/I’m just another/Girl in a sweater”—that scales up and down infectiously. Inspired by the slow-burning funk of Chic’s “At Last I Am Free” cover, Polachek takes her time unfolding the details surrounding that small realization. Atop sparse beats and a hazy guitar, she sings poetically about the wave of self-actualization that hits after the end of a long-term relationship, noting that “the door slams hard behind you when you leave the house of judgement.” –Jillian Mapes",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZKXkD6EgBk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6d7469eef880008cd11cb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Caroline-Polachek-Door.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Caroline_Polachek-Door.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,46,Perfume Genius,“Eye in the Wall”,Matador,"Matador To hear him tell it, Mike Hadreas has a terrible relationship with his body. He has Crohn’s disease, and he’s repeatedly expressed the desire to transcend his own fleshy form. Yet over four fearless albums, his physicality has occupied an ever-greater part of his work. In The Sun Still Burns Here, a dance piece from Hadreas and Seattle-based dancer Kate Wallich, it becomes the totality: One preview described part of the performance as “essentially a fully clothed orgy,” for which Hadreas both composed the score and performs as a dancer. On “Eye in the Wall,” the first song released from the project, he commands fragmented images of a body to become whole, “wild and free,” leaving him “full of feeling…full of nothing but love.” He issues these instructions in a louche warble, his twang and metallic shimmer gathering into a nine-minute reverie of Afro-Latin percussion and searing, silvery brightness that captures the incandescent feeling of physical abandon. –Laura Snapes",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oply9BPy6nU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6daa49eef880008cd11cd/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Perfume-Genius-Eye-in-the-Wall.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Perfume_Genius-Eye_in_the_Wall.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,45,Ariana Grande,“NASA”,Republic,"Republic NASA, probably the only popular U.S. government agency left, was everywhere this year: T-shirts and patches bearing its charmingly retro insignia became a bona fide trend, and Ariana Grande pulled its name for a sneaky sleeper hit from thank u, next. On an album largely about the joys of being unattached, “NASA” offers a nuance: the freedom to be attached, just not right now. “I can’t really miss you if I’m with you,” Grande offers, gently reminding a lover that intimacy doesn’t mean constant proximity. While Grande’s refrain of “I’m a star, I’ma need space” verges on cutesy, the delicate harmonies and airy production of “NASA” make its blown-out bass and trap drums feel weightless. –Anna Gaca",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_aGvdfLTKY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6daef238c6f0008bc0d97/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ariana-Grande-NASA.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ariana_Grande-NASA.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,44,Denzel Curry,“RICKY”,Loma Vista,"Loma Vista Denzel Curry blazed a trail for SoundCloud rap—that gritty, bass-boosted sound that reverberated around South Florida and elevated its young practitioners into rock stars. But despite his fame, he’s grown up with his head screwed straight. The rapper pays tribute to his father on “RICKY,” handing down paternal pillars of advice—trust no one but your family, stick up for your day-ones, respect women like you would your mother—to his followers, some of whom started out doubting him. The directives are austere, but a slowed-down sample of the British electronic producer Lukid’s “Twisted Blood” infuses the song with life. “RICKY” clanks and bounces, as if an airplane climbing toward higher altitudes has just hit turbulence. –Cat Zhang",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WHm6tfvKlk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6dbea4072b6000877446e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Denzel-Curry-Ricky.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Denzel_Curry-RICKY.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,43,Young Nudy / Playboi Carti,“Pissy Pamper”,,"Even without an official release, “Pissy Pamper” was irrepressible. Left off Young Nudy’s Sli’merre due to sample-clearing issues, the song has lived a full life in corners of the internet—uploaded, taken down, then uploaded again, sometimes as only one verse or an instrumental, sometimes under the name “Kid Cudi.” (The real Cudi approved.) The sparkling, Pi’erre Bourne-produced oddity has spawned countless freestyles and remixes, becoming a little phenomenon on its own. Nudy proves a capable leading man, and few rappers sound more untroubled while detailing how they evade cops, but it’s his song in name only: Playboi Carti dominates with his spectacular, baby-voice verse. Only Carti is better at navigating Bourne’s circus beats than Nudy—they’ve both had more practice than anyone—but here, they prove they work best as a team. Nudy is a perfect sidekick, Carti is a born star, and Bourne is the most daring rap producer working now. Even as a leak, this is the new benchmark for the SoundCloud rap elite. –Sheldon Pearce",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6dc4c9eef880008cd11cf/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Pissy-Pamper.png,/dataset/artwork/Young_Nudy__Playboi_Carti-Pissy_Pamper.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,42,Brittany Howard,“Stay High”,ATO,"ATO Brittany Howard doesn’t specify whether the buzz she seeks on “Stay High” is internal or external, whether she wants her effervescence from emotional intimacy or a fat joint. It doesn’t matter—the song is light and loose enough to capture both. Howard creates a space for luxuriating in the company of another person, sharing a private escape from the downcast grind of everyday life. Her smoky croon does the heavy lifting: the way she draws out and sinks into the phrase “I’m doing wonderful, just fine, thank you” feels like the deep, full-body stretch that comes after a satisfying afternoon nap. “I already feel like doing it again,” Howard sings on the track's opening line, and her easygoing warmth makes ""Stay High"" worth repeating. –Allison Hussey",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfizQsGWOxI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6dc89b517ce000899ef36/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Brittany-Howard-Stay-High.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Brittany_Howard-Stay_High.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,41,Pop Smoke,“Welcome to the Party”,Republic,"Republic There’s no greater honor in New York City than having the song of the summer. Past anthems like Bobby Shmurda’s “Hot Nigga” and Cardi B’s “Bodak Yellow” are immortal, and now Pop Smoke’s “Welcome to the Party” can be added to that list. Like Bobby and Cardi, it happened fast for Pop Smoke: At the start of 2019, he was an unknown with only a single remix to his name. Four months later, “Welcome to the Party” dominated the city’s airwaves and guided Brooklyn drill music beyond New York’s state lines. His voice was almost preposterously deep for his age, like some kind of mysterious cartoon villain, and mixed with the haphazard, bass-heavy production, the song transformed Brooklyn into a dystopian playground. His was a swagger that couldn’t be imitated, though people tried from every rooftop, apartment window, and car door. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXJLcBeUcmg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6dd37238c6f0008bc0d99/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Pop-Smoke-Welcome-to-the-Party.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Pop_Smoke-Welcome_to_the_Party.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,40,Nilüfer Yanya,“In Your Head”,ATO,"ATO Part of London singer-songwriter Nilüfer Yanya’s early appeal was her deadpan, detached cool. Airy melodies seemed to drift out of her like breath. But her debut album, Miss Universe, challenges the idea that anyone should be so poised, and on the guitar-thrashing “In Your Head,” she dazzlingly loses her shit. While the verses move slow, with half-spoken lyrics shrugged into wide-open space, the choruses build like a panic attack, anguished and ferocious. The track is a perfect expression of a distinctly modern anxiety: being stranded in a place with no cell signal, dying to know what’s going on in someone else’s head. From the creeping intensity of the glimmering background synth to the perfectly imperfect way her voice skids when she hits the high notes, Yanya encapsulates the explosive tantrum feeling of not being able to reach or read someone, when in theory we should have their thoughts at our fingertips. It's a song perfect for 2019, but with a rock backbone that would go just as hard in any year. –Aimee Cliff",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsxf541UI-8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6de8bb517ce000899ef39/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Nilu%25CC%2588fer-Yanya-In-Your-Head.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nilfer_Yanya-In_Your_Head.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,39,Bill Callahan,“747”,Drag City,"Drag City When Bill Callahan returned with his first record in six years, he did so as a father. This new role of family man shaped his album Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest significantly. On the standout ballad “747,” Callahan contemplates the unspoiled gaze of a newborn baby, likening it to the view from an airplane. While much of Callahan’s earlier catalog is tied to specific, isolated characters, “747” casts a wider glance, marveling at the splendor of birth and parental love. As he sits by the titular airplane’s window, “flying through some stock footage of heaven,” he compares the celestial sight to an infant’s purity. “This must be the light you saw/That just left you screaming,” he sings over sweetly plucked guitar. “And this must be the light you saw/Before our eyes could disguise true meaning.” He is certain that we lose this vision in time, each year getting further from that light. But, Callahan argues, we are doing the best we can. “747” is not a criticism of our transformation from wide-eyed infants to weary elders, but a tranquil acknowledgement of its inevitability. –Madison Bloom",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6e0269669180008bb6469/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bill-Callahan-747.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bill_Callahan-747.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,38,Bruce Springsteen,“Hello Sunshine”,Columbia,"Columbia On Western Stars, a Springsteen album full of character studies, the protagonist of “Hello Sunshine” may be the one who most resembles the man himself. It’s a cinematic country ballad about being left alone with your loneliness, still roaming the empty streets but now searching for hope there. Springsteen has been open about his lifelong battle with depression, and “Hello Sunshine”—with its warm pedal steel, serene strings, and nostalgic piano chords—sounds like him trying to hang on to a happy moment. –Matthew Strauss",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icJjlg5e6l8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6e0d0238c6f0008bc0d9b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bruce-Springsteen-Hello-Sunshine.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bruce_Springsteen-Hello_Sunshine.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,37,Four Tet,“Only Human”,Text/Ministry of Sound,"Text/Ministry of Sound Four Tet’s “Only Human” started life as a dancefloor edit of Nelly Furtado’s “Afraid,” the opening track from her now-iconic 2006 album Loose. As Four Tet describes it, he happened to hear the original song and began working on it almost as a lark, layering Furtado’s vocals and locking them into sizzling hi-hats and knocking percussion. His rework quickly made its way from DJ to DJ (as these unofficial edits tend to do), appearing in sets by Peggy Gou, Ben UFO, and others, before finally being officially released this March. The track itself is minimalist brilliance, but the song’s origin story and its dancefloor potency are what makes it such a compelling listen. Thank goodness that sample cleared. –Noah Yoo",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peHvj5TedFI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6e175b9e6f50008a30550/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Four-Tet-Only-Human.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Four_Tet-Only_Human.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,36,Deerhunter,“What Happens to People?”,4AD,"4AD In the debate over whether it’s better to burn out or fade away, Deerhunter leader Bradford Cox doesn’t take sides. In the frail centerpiece of the band’s Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared?, he simply prods at the multiple ways humans give up, decay, and vanish. As a narrator, Cox expresses a kind of numb acceptance, and the scenery he offers—the rotting houses and rusted engines—are as bleak and beautiful as the song’s sweeping pianos and gentle guitar licks. Though “What Happens to People?” was recorded before the death of former Deerhunter bassist Josh Fauver late last year, the loss can’t help but hang like a specter over this song about the inevitability of life’s end. –Evan Minsker",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6e1db238c6f0008bc0d9d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Deerhunter-What-Happens-to-People.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Deerhunter-What_Happens_to_People.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,35,The 1975,“People”,Dirty Hit/Interscope,"Dirty Hit/Interscope For their latest warning about the end of the human race, relentlessly self-aware genre agnostics the 1975 turn to a style that many—including the band itself—have deemed extinct: rock’n’roll. “People” is powered by a screeching lead guitar line that pierces like a nuclear alarm, drums loud enough to rev up a bloodthirsty gladiator arena, and frontman Matty Healy’s panicked screams, seemingly delivered from the center of a rapidly melting ice cap. Healy wrote the lyrics while touring the American South earlier this year, around the time Alabama signed a draconian anti-abortion bill into law, and he shows the most desperate kind of gallows humor: “The economy’s a goner, republic’s a banana, ignore it if you wanna.” The song is both a wake-up call and an admission of defeat—a balls-out strut to be played for the indifferent masses as the world burns. –Ryan Dombal",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKdPxXWm7Jg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6e2929eef880008cd11d4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-1975-People.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_1975-People.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,34,Mark Ronson,“True Blue” [ft. Angel Olsen],Sony UK,"Sony UK You know it’s been a rough year when the man behind “Uptown Funk” makes an album of breakup songs. Mark Ronson’s most recent LP, Late Night Feelings, is full of sad dance tracks that mix glitter with broken glass, and none cut as deep as the Angel Olsen feature “True Blue.” Olsen sings like the final patron at a bar, crooning just loud enough to tell her sob story over the blaring jukebox. It’s unclear if anyone’s listening, but that makes it all the more tragic. The funky bass riff and disco drums mock her distress, setting the scene for a dance where our heroine has no partner: “I ran to you and you know why,” she shouts at the empty barstool next to her. “True Blue” is the sound of taking your heartache out for a night on the town—you might be able to sedate it with booze and loud music, but you will wake up in its arms the next morning. –Madison Bloom",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuJ2yitJI_U,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6e2ee4072b60008774471/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mark-Ronson-True-Blue.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mark_Ronson-True_Blue_ft_Angel_Olsen.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,33,Aldous Harding,“The Barrel”,4AD,"4AD On “The Barrel,” Aldous Harding says a lot but gives away almost nothing. Riding a steady current of crisply picked acoustic guitar and rippling piano, the song is crammed with references to ferrets and eggs, doves and nuts, peaches freshly harvested and hands reaching out of barrels. The imagery is familiar, yet the New Zealand-born/Wales-based artist deploys it in a way that makes these everyday objects sound off-kilter and foreign, like signs held askew to point in a direction few have traveled. She arranges the song—a standout on her third album, the folk-pop gem Designer—so it builds gradually, adding new elements that subtly reshape its flow. As always, Harding fashions her own unique mythology but remains evasive about its precise meaning; perhaps she doesn’t write to confess, but to pose uneasy questions. –Stephen Deusner",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyZeJr5ppm8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6e3429669180008bb646b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Aldous-Harding-The-Barrel.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Aldous_Harding-The_Barrel.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,32,Big Thief,“Cattails”,4AD,"4AD Big Thief’s most resonant music keys into a sweeping modern dread—namely, that tech expansion and the ecological crisis have orphaned us from nature, maybe from part of our soul. “Cattails” proposes that music can bridge that gulf: between our modern and past lives, between the conscious and unconscious realms, and between our daily routines and the unarticulated terror burbling underneath. With a keening croak and hearty 12-string, Adrianne Lenker traverses this liminal space in great strides, implicating beauty, fear, plant life, and human death in a vast spiritual conspiracy. Lenker sings of her late great-grandmother over cyclical strums, insisting that the river of time, like a bottomless melody, can only lead us home. –Jazz Monroe",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUR-Ad8QcmA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6e37e9669180008bb646d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Big-Thief-Cattails.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Big_Thief-Cattails.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,31,Vampire Weekend,“Sympathy”,Columbia,"Columbia What happened to Vampire Weekend? After the departure of core member and baroque multi-instrumentalist Rostam Batmanglij, the usually chipper and concise indie rock band recorded Father of the Bride, a very long, exploratory album. “Sympathy” is the surprise highlight. Sometimes the song is sublimely funky; sometimes it feels designed to make your stomach gurgle. Until three minutes in, it’s a wiggly little thing, its cha-cha beat working double-time as frontman Ezra Koenig coos like a sexy villain. But when the drums kick in for the final 45 seconds, they introduce an explosive wall of sound that’s as urgent as an air raid siren. After years of buttoned-up tastefulness, the band seems to be creeping into enemy territory here. –Matthew Schnipper",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2L0d4uUp24,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6e3c29eef880008cd11d6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Vampire-Weekend-Sympathy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Vampire_Weekend-Sympathy.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,30,Rico Nasty,“Time Flies”,Sugar Trap,"Sugar Trap It was easy to submit to rage this year; there was good cause all around. Mercifully, Rico Nasty returned with her dynamic brand of catharsis, smashing through walls like a pint-sized Kool-Aid Man. Anger Management, her collaborative project with the producer Kenny Beats, was released just as spring arrived, but by summer, Rico seemed to have gotten fight music out of her system. In July, she dropped “Time Flies,” a Dee B-produced loosie that appears on the Madden NFL 20 soundtrack. Ironically, the song sounds more like the brief, intoxicating respite that comes after scream therapy than the dyspeptic fury you’d expect of anything associated with the NFL. Sparkly, melodic, and ultimately optimistic, “Time Flies” recalls the treacly, animated energy of Rico’s early days. As the beat bubbles and then strikes, she catalogs her pain; there is loss, fear, undeserved hate. But even as the reasons for Rico’s anger persist, her own attitude helps spur transformation: “Got tired of complaining/I got up and changed my situation,” she sings. As summer turned into fall, that sentiment proved just as useful as her anger has been. –Rawiya Kameir",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIYgNhz2ty8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6e63fb517ce000899ef3f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Rico-Nasty-Time-Flies.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rico_Nasty-Time_Flies.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,29,Cate Le Bon,“Daylight Matters”,Mexican Summer,"Mexican Summer Cate Le Bon finds the beauty in isolation. On “Daylight Matters,” from her delightfully eccentric fifth album Reward, she spins repetitive, circuitous speech patterns into delicate bridges and euphoric choruses. “Love you, I love you, I love you, I love you,” she sings, her wistful voice foreshadowing the twist: “But you’re not here.” The lilting vocal gives off the impression of talking to yourself, the sort of compulsive self-soothing that springs up in seclusion. The melancholy is a reflection of Le Bon’s environment: She composed Reward in the near-solitude of England’s mountainous Lake District. Cloaked in dreamy synths and rounded saxophone, “Daylight Matters” hints at glam rock’s bravado while retaining Le Bon’s characteristic playfulness. It’s as if we’ve been let into her colorful interior world, witness to the elaborate orchestra she’s constructed to fill in the empty space. –Arielle Gordon",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjduOTMn9dw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7ce209669180008bb6517/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Cate-Le-Bon-Daylight-Matters.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Cate_Le_Bon-Daylight_Matters.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,28,Weyes Blood,“Andromeda”,Sub Pop,"Sub Pop In the early weeks of 2019, Natalie Mering shared a subtly disorienting video for “Andromeda,” the first single from Titanic Rising, her masterful fourth album as Weyes Blood. The song itself is all sweeping Laurel Canyon haze: a hook that’s almost entirely pedal steel guitar and a sad, swooning vocal delivery that seems coated in FM static. While her music has felt increasingly connected to classic rock radio, this song—with its analog hum and open road grandeur—signaled a deeper inquiry into what’s so classic about those old standbys. The video, however, looked more like a Y2K-era screensaver on a desktop computer: a steady, slightly pixelated flow of distant stars in an endless black sky. This melding of our recent and distant pasts is crucial to Mering’s songwriting; she moves forward by studying where we’ve been, rendering it both familiar and somewhat uncanny. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StSEXZcwOB4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7d7379eef880008cd12e1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Weyes-Blood-Andromeda.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Weyes_Blood-Andromeda.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,27,Bon Iver,"“Hey, Ma”",Jagjaguwar,"Jagjaguwar Two-and-a-half minutes into “Hey, Ma,” the music fades to silence, the song grows calm, and Justin Vernon’s voice emerges almost naked, mostly free of the effects that have colored his vocals since 2007’s For Emma, Forever Ago. It’s a powerful moment: one of the most influential musicians of the 21st century stripping everything away so he can sing directly to you. The words might sound unsettled and unspecific—something about waiting outside, going into a room, learning the truth—but he’s always made a virtue out of impressionistic lyrics. This is a song less about communication than connection: Who keeps you grounded? Who pulls you out of the coal mine and into the real world? Over time, Vernon expanded Bon Iver to include a small town’s worth of musicians and even a dance troupe, and together they’ve created a rousing arena anthem suitable for the ambitious tour they launched earlier this year. “Hey, Ma” wants you to get those lighters up—or your phone or your hands or whatever—and join in. –Stephen Deusner",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDAKS18Gv1U,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7d78eb9e6f50008a30626/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bon-Iver-Hey-Ma.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bon_Iver-Hey_Ma.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,26,Danny Brown,“Dirty Laundry”,Warp,"Warp On any given night in America, there is an open mic event where a green comedian jokes about paying strippers with change and inevitably uses the phrase “making it hail.” No one laughs. On “Dirty Laundry,” being a broke, horny schmuck is the setup instead of the punchline, and Danny Brown kills. He recounts awkward drug sales, a hookup in a Burger King bathroom, and two encounters with a stripper: as a client and as a fellow patron at a laundromat. Skeevy and giddy, he makes the gutter sound like a theme park. Brown has been telling offbeat stories his entire career, and Q-Tip’s bouncy production—a funky drip of beeps, gurgly synths, and stretched vocal samples—accents his poise. The rapper sounds at ease over this colorful backdrop, his laundry-themed wordplay as loose and entertaining as it is technical. These gonzo escapades lack the teeth-chattering urgency of Brown’s previous music, but ultimately, his dirty-uncle act comes across as relief. He’s a full showman here, his bits polished, his delivery smooth. Most acts don’t mature this well. –Stephen Kearse",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1okqvhq7ZaI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7d7dd9669180008bb6519/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Danny-Brown-Dirty-Laundry.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Danny_Brown-Dirty_Laundry.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,25,Jenny Hval,“Ashes to Ashes”,Sacred Bones,"Sacred Bones Jenny Hval’s work is always moving closer to the essentials: pleasure, creativity, nurture; reproduction, death, survival. Again and again, she ventures into dank places and emerges with observations that are striking for their lucid originality and humor. On “Ashes to Ashes,” she tills the sediments of sex, art, and mortality, dragging ash from a cigarette into a grave and equating penetrating fingers to the double-digit swipe of a phone screen to a frantic drowning kick. The song takes place in a dream and preserves dream logic, psychologically cogent yet somehow logically inexplicable. Hval threads it together with a trance pulse that buffets these ideas across the wake-sleep divide like marbles in a Newton’s cradle. Yet it’s featherlight: Hval’s euphoria and divine hooks transform scholarly thought into pure pop. –Laura Snapes",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Bq5s2oRp24,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7d83e9eef880008cd12e3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jenny-Hval-Ashes-to-Ashes.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jenny_Hval-Ashes_to_Ashes.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,24,Angel Olsen,“All Mirrors”,Jagjaguwar,"Jagjaguwar Angel Olsen has always been difficult to pin down, a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an otherworldly warble and gut-punching lyrics. She has spent her career shapeshifting between genres and personas, from solo folkie to barnstorming indie bandleader to Mark Ronson- collaborating pop singer. On “All Mirrors,” the title track of her latest album, Olsen introduced her latest (and perhaps greatest) incarnation: mighty goth sorceress. The song unfurls like the train of a black satin wedding gown, undulating on a bed of sinister, classic-Hollywood strings and subtle synth pulses. Olsen intones ominously about lost beauty, being buried alive, and repeating the past, building to the kind of cathartic climax that demands to be shouted from a windswept cliff in a fierce rainstorm (preferably while wearing the elaborate bejeweled headpiece from the song’s striking music video). With that, we are thoroughly under her spell. –Amy Phillips",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jjt698Zv5jQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7d8a64072b600087744e1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Angel-Olsen-All-Mirrors.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Angel_Olsen-All_Mirrors.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,23,Helado Negro,“Running”,RVNG Intl.,"RVNG Intl. “Running” opens like a dream: Ambient noise buzzes into focus, as singer-songwriter Roberto Carlos Lange’s soft, layered croon fades in and holds us close. The fragmented story that unfolds against crisp, quiet hi-hats and warm piano chords has a nostalgic quality, though it’s hard to know if Lange is acknowledging someone from his past, present, or future. “I feel you/In my mind/All the time,” he sings with care, revealing the kind of love he feels: implicit, unconditional. When he delivers the chorus—which features the word “running” repeated eight times—it feels like a meditation of gratitude. Then the song fades away, leaving you a little lighter than before. –Braudie Blais-Billie",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4mof-W6ggI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7d90b238c6f0008bc0e13/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Helado-Negro-Running.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Helado_Negro-Running.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,22,Lana Del Rey,“hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have - but i have it”,Polydor/Interscope,"Polydor/Interscope In 2019, Lana Del Rey doesn’t have to explain why she considers hope to be a dangerous thing, but what does she mean by “a woman like me?” How does one of the decade’s greatest pop music enigmas define herself? In the piano-ballad closer of Norman Fucking Rockwell!, she offers a few clues: She finds inspiration from Sylvia Plath and photographer Slim Aarons. She’s not quite happy but she’s definitely not sad. Because the arrangement never picks up—it’s just Jack Antonoff’s muted piano, his pauses as loud as the chords themselves—Del Rey pushes the dynamics with her vocal delivery, building to a whispered falsetto as affecting as any of her most elaborate crescendos. Once upon a time, listening to her music meant scouring all the references and layers to find the reasons for the apocalyptic dread in her voice, the slow-burning romance in her melodies, the nostalgic haze of her videos. On “hope is a dangerous thing,” she lays the mystery bare, looking directly into our eyes and telling us what she sees. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY2LUmLw_DQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7d9b34072b600087744e3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lana-Del-Rey-hope-is-a-dangerous-thing.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lana_Del_Rey-hope_is_a_dangerous_thing_for_a_woman_like_me_to_have_-_but_i_have_it.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,21,(Sandy) Alex G,“Gretel”,Domino,"Domino In the Brothers Grimm fairytale “Hansel and Gretel,” a young brother and sister are lured into a house made of sweets by a child-eating witch. Eventually, Gretel pushes the evil creature into an oven, frees her caged sibling, and the pair escape. Philadelphia bedroom-pop hero (Sandy) Alex G’s abstract update of the story, a highlight from his album House of Sugar, is decidedly darker: Gretel leaves her brother behind and ends up consumed not by the misdeed, but by her own twisted desire to return to the candy-coated lair. The song's mix of sped-up and untreated vocals suggests its namesake's split psyche, while its ominous main guitar riff is constantly brushing up against more whimsical musical flourishes. With all of its juxtapositions, “Gretel” is a small study in reworking age-old concepts to fit into our troubling present. –Abby Jones",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcO-NPtj5BI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7da069669180008bb651b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sandy-Alex-G-Gretel.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sandy_Alex_G-Gretel.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,20,DaBaby,“Suge (Yea Yea)”,Interscope,"Interscope The core of DaBaby’s gauntlet-throwing year, “Suge” is one of 2019’s most fun and infectious hip-hop songs, putting on display the rapper’s signature bounce and his almost goofy, browbeating nature. His talky flows scan as bar-heavy despite most of his raps being filler, simply because their ferocity can raze beats to cinders. Invoking the name of the strongman turned Death Row Records boss Suge Knight, Da Baby’s breakout single is all about graduating from thug to kingpin but still being ready to put hands on fools—or, you know, dangle them off of a balcony (allegedly) if need be. He runs rampant, bullying, threatening, and coercing his enemies, his claims brought to life by his bum-rushing delivery. The song made clear that DaBaby was wound up and raring to go before he exploded this year, and no one has stopped him yet. –Sheldon Pearce",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvuQNNVrbtM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7da90238c6f0008bc0e15/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/DaBaby-Suge.jpg,/dataset/artwork/DaBaby-Suge_Yea_Yea.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,19,Jai Paul,“He”,XL,"XL In 2011 and 2012, the British singer-songwriter and producer Jai Paul released two singles that caught the attention of everyone from the then-active music blogosphere to Drake. After a mixtape’s worth of unfinished music was leaked in 2013, Paul basically disappeared for the next six years, establishing himself as a reclusive mad genius. But in June of this year, Paul re-emerged, releasing an official version of the leak and two new songs: “He” and “Do You Love Her Now.” “He” begins with fast strokes like “Bootylicious” before Paul’s signature funky guitar and pillowy whole notes emerge. The track carries the Prince allusions often ascribed to Paul—clanging synths only enhance the ’80s flavor—but there’s a new earnestness to the song that becomes apparent toward the bridge. Paul’s voice breaks away from all affect, and it sounds as though we’re hearing him sing into the booth through the talkback button in a studio’s control room, unadorned and unmic’d. It sounds like he’s finally free. –Anupa Mistry",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5DSbyl7WYs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7dad1b9e6f50008a30628/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jai-Paul-He.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jai_Paul-He.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,18,Lil Nas X,“Old Town Road”,Columbia,"Columbia “Old Town Road,” inarguably the most popular song of 2019, might not have reached such a level of cultural saturation were it not for the commotion around its expulsion from Billboard’s country charts, a dubious move that sparked warranted accusations of racism. But whether the song is country or rap is irrelevant; “Old Town Road” doesn’t just transcend genre, it transcends music altogether. It came out of nowhere, two minutes of pure joy made by a guy whose previous claim to fame was rumoredly running a Nicki Minaj-stanning Twitter account. The song’s beat samples Nine Inch Nails, which you’d never know, and the lyrics, loosely about riding horses, are crooned with effortless confidence. The finished product is a weird-as-hell blast of serotonin. Admittedly, you can’t take hits of sunshine all day, every day, so it’s possible that your need to incessantly hear “Old Town Road” has waned. Mine hasn’t. Years from now, when time has laid waste to my body, I will still whisper my personal Rosebud: “Wrangler on my booty.” –Matthew Schnipper",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2Ov5jzm3j8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5dee8b6bcade48000818ed81/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Nas-X.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lil_Nas_X-Old_Town_Road.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,17,Purple Mountains,“Snow Is Falling in Manhattan”,Drag City,"Drag City David Berman was a peerless songwriter and poet with a gift for squeezing expressive scenes out of seemingly ordinary language. In “Snow Is Falling in Manhattan,” he turns a brownstone into a snow globe, his ragged voice rumbling over gentle guitar and drums. His portrait of a bitter New York winter couldn’t be any warmer: The frigid world outside is undercut by hospitable gestures, from a caretaker salting an icy stoop to one friend shielding another with an afghan. The images are breathtaking in their simplicity and beauty. The caretaker is a metaphor for Berman’s role as a singer, and he treats that responsibility with reverence. The lyric about being “a host who left a ghost” behind feels even more poignant after Berman’s death this year, as every utterance remains familiar and inviting, ushering you in from the cold. –Sheldon Pearce",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50227UHWULg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7dbe84072b600087744e5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Purple-Mountains-Snow-Is-Falling.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Purple_Mountains-Snow_Is_Falling_in_Manhattan.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,16,Mannequin Pussy,“Drunk II”,Epitaph,"Epitaph To listen to Mannequin Pussy’s Marisa Dabice sneer, cry, wince, and roar her way through “Drunk II” is to step into her shattered psyche. She sings with a ferocity rarely heard in the easy-listening playlist bait of modern indie; her presence practically makes the entire band vibrate. “Do you remember the nights I called you up?” Dabice asks her former lover. “I still love you, you stupid fuck.” There is joy here, too—in every muscular snare fill, every noisy pick drag, every note of the guitar solo at the song’s apex. At that point, Dabice splits in two—her internal dialogue goes to the left channel as her newly courageous external self moves to the right. “I push you down, I drink, you drown, I am alone,” she sighs, as her other side boasts, “Everyone, gather ’round, I have the answer now.” “Drunk II” expresses the push and pull of love and hate, and how we’re all surrounded by other people just trying to figure it out. –Noah Yoo",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6ozH0Ljv1U,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7dc3f4072b600087744e7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mannequin-Pussy-Drunk-II.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mannequin_Pussy-Drunk_II.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,15,Lil Uzi Vert,“Free Uzi”,Self-released,"Self-released It’s been two long years since Lil Uzi Vert’s Luv Is Rage 2, and all we’ve had to hold us over is leaks, label drama, and the occasional Instagram fit pic. But for one moment, Uzi slipped free of the grip of Generation Now label heads Don Cannon and DJ Drama with “Free Uzi.” Over a classic DJ L drill beat, Uzi explodes for three minutes of bars that feel like a blurry 2000s Philly freestyle—probably featuring Meek Mill with fuzzy cornrows—that you would find in the deepest corners of YouTube. It’s a peek at the direction in which Uzi’s rap is headed, raising his pitch and unveiling his take on the baby voice popularized by Playboi Carti. And truly, Uzi is the only rapper that could confess on record to being a loyal viewer of The Big Bang Theory and still have it slap. Free Uzi forreal. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvFXf30cWWk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7dd0d238c6f0008bc0e17/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lil-Uzi-Vert-Free-Uzi.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Lil_Uzi_Vert-Free_Uzi.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,14,Normani,“Motivation”,RCA/Keep Cool,"RCA/Keep Cool It may not have been intentional that Normani’s first solo single after the dissolution of Fifth Harmony shares the effervescence of Beyoncé’s 2005 bop “Check on It,” but it was definitely subliminal: Like her Houston sister, here was a former girl-grouper stepping out on her own, eager to show the world her talent after a half-decade of performing as a cog in that system. Normani breezed through the track, co-written by Ariana Grande, with the confidence of an artist who knows her worth, and further stamped her star power with the stunningly gymnastic choreography in its video. Both song and video contain the brassy essence of pop R&B’s early-2000s glory days, an innocent coquettishness and pure joy in hitting the dance floor—and in paying homage to that era, Normani hit a hard reset on her career trajectory, proving that she was always more formidable than she’d gotten credit for. –Julianne Escobedo Shepherd",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKXSh14svlQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7dda5b9e6f50008a3062c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Normani-Motivation.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Normani-Motivation.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,13,Angel Olsen,“Lark”,Jagjaguwar,"Jagjaguwar On “Lark,” the opening track from All Mirrors, Angel Olsen once again surveys how men and women in love struggle to see each other clearly. She expands an idea from 2016’s “Heart Shaped Face”—that baggage dragged from relationship to relationship is too heavy to bear—into a high-stakes epic, the first of her songs that could legitimately shock you. She begins tenderly, but about a minute in, she starts hollering as if from the top of a mountain. Even once Olsen turns gentle again, the string arrangement simmers with dread—there is some kind of explosion coming, the song warns us, before it arrives, spectacularly. “Told me that I was the woman/He’d always be losing, always be dreaming,” Olsen says just before everything erupts. “What about my dreams?” she screeches, sounding like so many ambitious, fed-up women before her. –Jillian Mapes",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E01oblLGs1Y&lc=Ugjlb1RSTbqs43gCoAEC,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7d8a64072b600087744e1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Angel-Olsen-All-Mirrors.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Angel_Olsen-Lark.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,12,Megan Thee Stallion,“Cash Shit” [ft. DaBaby],300/1501 Certified,"300/1501 Certified As a joint thesis statement from two of rap’s biggest breakout stars, “Cash Shit” is almost suspiciously on-the-nose. Megan Thee Stallion and DaBaby—both witty Southerners with distinct if borderline-conventional rap styles—seize the Lil Ju beat as a stage. The production booms and yet is barely there, and actually elevates their vocals. The pair delivers some of the year’s most-recited lyrics: Megan’s capitalist-feminism (“Yeah I’m in my bag but I’m in his too”) was inescapable, both as a club staple and as a trending social media philosophy. DaBaby, as 2019’s reigning steal-your-girl lothario, made for plenty of Instagram captions, too. But even in its ubiquity, “Cash Shit” didn’t get old—arguably, in part, because Megan and DaBaby both rap about sex like they have plenty of it, a transcendent feat among their peers who’ve been clouded in a low-libido haze. Two much-hyped music videos were subsequently abandoned, making it quite clear: The song itself is plenty. –Rawiya Kameir",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Xe7OAFljOA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7de28b9e6f50008a3062e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Megan-Thee-Stallion-Cash-Shit.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Megan_Thee_Stallion-Cash_Shit_ft_DaBaby.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,11,Solange,“Binz”,Columbia,"Columbia “Binz” is a one-minute-and-51-second playful fragment of music bleeding out of and into the songs before and after it on Solange’s album When I Get Home. Because that album aspires to abstraction through repetitive loops and vocals, when you listen to the tracks sequentially, “Binz” feels like a respite. Its bassline is a lure, the hi-hat a metronome for your sacrum to ride. Multi-part harmonies and singsong back-and-forth between Solange and The-Dream feel like peering into a closed session. “Binz” is a banger, a sunny break from the self-serious mood of When I Get Home. To call it an “interstitial” is to acknowledge its place in how we listen to music in this day and age. False starts while scanning a playlist, tinny snares from passing headphones, auto-play in all of your feeds: In 2019, sound is primarily experienced as fleeting. –Anupa Mistry",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83LeK-t-kTw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7de65b517ce000899efad/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Solange-Binz.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Solange-Binz.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,10,Billie Eilish,“bad guy”,Darkroom/Interscope,"Darkroom/Interscope “bad guy” jumps out by not jumping out. Its volume drops abruptly, pulling the listener in close, making them strain to catch the breath braided so exquisitely by Billie Eilish and her co-producer/brother, Finneas O’Connell. A pop miniaturist who shuns grand vocal acrobatics, she skirts the edge of inaudible to invent a new kind of subdued sass. Her virtuosity is in tone and texture: the delicious derision of “duh,” the way she smudges consonants and crumbles vowels in her mouth. Apart from the occasional deliberately unsubtle effect, like the juddering digital croak on the chorus, it’s an artfully crafted illusion of intimacy. “bad guy” is a crawlspace of a track that feels like it’s made of the same whispery fabric as Eilish’s voice: clicks, whirrs, fingersnaps, and ear-tickling sounds that prompt ASMR tingles. Furtive and nimble, the beat moves just like her lines about “creeping around like no one knows,” yet the bass, when it hits, has the dancefloor heft of trap. As for Eilish’s jaded goth-pop schtick? Those who can only remember being teenage may smile at lines like “My soul? So cynical.” But for the actual teens who’ve followed her rise to the top of the charts, Eilish captures the tender mess of being young and alive. –Simon Reynolds",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyDfgMOUjCI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7dec89669180008bb651d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Billie-Eilish-Bad-Guy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Billie_Eilish-bad_guy.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,9,Big Thief,“Not”,4AD,"4AD With the release of the cosmic U.F.O.F. in May, Big Thief seemed content to spend 2019 suspended above Earth. They came crashing down with “Not.” The standout lead single from Two Hands, the quartet’s second incredible record of the year, is driven by carnal desperation. As a lyricist, Adrianne Lenker captures even the most abstract observations with profound precision. On “Not,” she uses that vivid specificity to outline an absence, her voice snarling and burning as she prowls around the indescribable. But like everything Big Thief does, the song’s stunning impact comes not from one bandmate, but from the collective whole; its force is the result of four intertwined spirits carving into themselves in hopes of digging up some sort of raw, corporeal clarity. When “Not” finally crescendos into a scorched-earth guitar solo, it feels more like an exorcism than an exhale. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIcVwH47uxQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7df284072b600087744e9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Big-Thief-Not.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Big_Thief-Not.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,8,Rosalía / J Balvin,“Con Altura”,Sony,"Sony “Con Altura” roughly translates to “do it hard,” according to Rosalía, who borrowed the phrase from a Dominican TV personality. The song is aptly named, with the Catalan singer and Colombian star J Balvin exchanging swaggering verses that name-drop the Porsche Panamera and the flamenco icon Camarón de la Isla over a watertight reggaeton beat. El Guincho, who co-produced this and much of Rosalía’s breakthrough album El Mal Querer, also adds a brief vocal, his contribution a reminder of his days as a solo star in the Iberian underground. “Con Altura” invites the listener to admire the wonderful flex of Latin pop in the late 2010s: the way Rosalía’s flamenco inflection leans into the Caribbean pulse, how J Balvin takes on a larger-than-life, hip-hop bluster. It’s a perfect pop song of thrilling energy and dexterity. The song’s chorus alone is so rhythmically irresistible, it makes you wonder why Spanish wasn’t always pop’s lingua franca. –Ben Cardew",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7bfOZek9t4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7df7eb517ce000899efaf/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Rosali%25CC%2581a-Con-Altura.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rosala__J_Balvin-Con_Altura.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,7,Thom Yorke,“Dawn Chorus”,XL,"XL After the death of Rachel Owen—his former partner and the mother of his children—Thom Yorke, like many before, sought relief in Thom Yorke songs. He speaks of his return to creativity, and the way music airlifts the grief-stricken from despondency, in near-mystical terms. “If it’s needed,” he told the New York Times, “it will find you.” Perhaps it’s telling that, on the solo album ANIMA, Yorke appears to confront his loss on a song called “Dawn Chorus.” It’s a title (if not the same composition) that fluttered around Radiohead lore for years. Famous to fans for its incompletion, it may, to Yorke, have symbolized refuge and endurance. On its glassy surface, the mournful lyrics are typically inscrutable. But the tone is one of illumination—a sense, rare in Yorke’s music, that the light at the end of the tunnel was daybreak, after all, and not just another false dawn. Its title, which refers to the birdsong that accompanies sunrise, could represent resolution, or perhaps the bittersweet end of a glorious night. Maybe it’s just a “bloody racket,” as Yorke mutters, riffing on how one man’s symphony is another’s dirge. The prettiest songs, he reminds us, will always be both at once. –Jazz Monroe",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7dfcbb517ce000899efb1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Thom-Yorke-Dawn-Chorus.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Thom_Yorke-Dawn_Chorus.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,6,Sharon Van Etten,“Seventeen”,Jagjaguwar,"Jagjaguwar After decades of owning the age of 17, Stevie Nicks finally passed the torch. Let Sharon Van Etten be the new author of your 17th year: She knows its allure and innocence, how it feels to be on the cusp of adulthood. She knows the paradox of being a teen is that it’s all over soon, but it will stay with you forever. “Seventeen,” her anthem from Remind Me Tomorrow, is the climax of her journey from quiet café folk singer to venerable rock star. It rolls like a boulder down a mile-long hill, pushed by a synth-rock snare and a seething, roaming performance from Van Etten as she feels every single word. When she performs the song live, she strafes around the stage, microphone in hand, like she’s searching the crowd for someone, until she finally finds her younger self among them and delivers the coup de grâce: “Afraid that you’ll be just like me.” How she invokes time, self, youth, guilt, and forgiveness with just one line reveals the masterful craft of Van Etten on one of her greatest songs yet. –Jeremy D. Larson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dn8-4tjPxD8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7dffe238c6f0008bc0e19/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sharon-Van-Etten-Seventeen.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sharon_Van_Etten-Seventeen.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,5,Bad Bunny,“Caro”,Rimas,"Rimas When the concept of self-love has been commodified by hucksters selling $500 infrared sauna blankets, it can be tempting to toss all of your belongings into a dumpster and welcome a life of self-loathing instead. Luckily, with “Caro,” urbano shapeshifter Bad Bunny offers a more practical solution to embracing your worth. The song rescues ideas of empowerment from sponsored hashtag hell, with the Puerto Rican star flicking off critics of his androgynous style and class-collapsing brashness over a trap beat that’s as quietly menacing as an alien hovercraft. “Don’t you see that I’m expensive?” he spits in Spanish, voicing the indignance of anyone who’s been made to feel undeserving because of what they wear or who they love. Then, midway, the sinister instrumental evaporates, and Bad Bunny is joined by none other than Ricky Martin—who was once lambasted by Puerto Rican clergy members after he came out as gay—for a cloud-parting bridge that exposes the song’s pristine core: “Why can’t I just be?” they plead. “What harm is it to you? I’m just happy.” It’s a startlingly vulnerable moment, one that makes this anthem of acceptance that much more invincible. –Ryan Dombal",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bg64AFnRnkc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7e1f94072b600087744eb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bad-Bunny-Caro.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bad_Bunny-Caro.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,4,Charli XCX / Christine and the Queens,“Gone”,Atlantic,"Atlantic A high-octane bridge between the rave-ups of Charli XCX’s past and the sleek robo-pop of her present, “Gone” is the best Charli of both worlds. The song’s central tension is nothing new—being surrounded by people yet feeling so alone—but how she chooses to alleviate that pain is something special: with a bombastic, bulletproof synth-pop chorus that revels in the roiling chaos of social anxiety. Christine and the Queens’ Héloïse Letissier is Charli’s perfect foil, adding her own cryptic ruminations on self-isolation over spiky synth stabs and glittering, glitched-out effects. The titillating video for “Gone,” with Charli and Chris chained to and then dancing atop a white sports car in the rain, only solidified the song’s place as one of the most cathartic moments in pop this year. –Eric Torres",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chSZCtLrgz8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7e242b9e6f50008a30631/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Charli-XCX-Gone.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Charli_XCX__Christine_and_the_Queens-Gone.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,3,Clairo,“Bags”,Fader,"Fader The relationships in Clairo’s songs always teeter on the edge of chaos. On “Bags,” the lead single from her debut album, Immunity, the Gen Z pop songwriter sings with the kind of bittersweetness that could either herald the beginning of a new romance or signal its smoldering end. The image she paints repeatedly in the chorus—“walking out the door with your bags”—hangs frozen like a still from a movie, melancholic and unabating. Behind her, though, a synthesizer chirps like a second, excitable singer. It’s as if Clairo is envisioning a breakup at the very moment of the first kiss, the sparks and the sadness translucent and overlaid on top of each other. How do you savor intimacy when you can foresee its failure in vivid detail? “Bags” outlines the fight to stay present in the good stuff, even when your brain is fast-forwarding to the collapse. –Sasha Geffen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9HYJbe9Y18,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7e278b517ce000899efb4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Clairo-Bags.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Clairo-Bags.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,2,Lana Del Rey,“The Greatest”,Polydor/Interscope,"Polydor/Interscope On “The Greatest,” the big one—the ultimate disaster—looms large. Civilization teeters toward oblivion, the temperature climbs upward, and Lana Del Rey is our soothsayer. She narrates these end times with a wry resignation that’s nostalgic and tactile, dreamy yet prickly. Pining for Long Beach and a lost lover, missing the music and nightlife of New York, her response to the future is to cling to her past. She’s had a ball, but as she flips through the photo album, she concedes that the culture is a little too lit, that the heat is making her breath feel heavy. The gut punch of the song is that despite her exhaustion, she sounds fulfilled. There's contentment in her voice as it floats over Jack Antonoff's sour guitar chords and soft keys, as if she’s savoring her just desserts. This isn’t just a character study, though: As one woman's world goes up in smoke, Del Rey zooms out to observe other anguishes: Kanye West is a shadow of himself; Hawaii is panicked by fictional missile strikes; David Bowie’s vision of life on Mars is now being pursued by Elon Musk. As her voice drops to a whisper, she takes in this surreal and depressing panorama—what a truly ludicrous ending, right?—then suddenly she perks up. Why? Because there’s a livestream to watch. The greatest loss of all, it turns out, is our attention spans. –Stephen Kearse",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ndo8r_Hg_lg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7e2b8b517ce000899efb6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lana-Del-Rey-The-Greatest.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lana_Del_Rey-The_Greatest.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2019 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2019/,2019,year,song,1,FKA twigs,“cellophane”,Young Turks,"Young Turks It’s nearly impossible to separate the physicality of FKA twigs’ work from her voice—she moves with the trained precision of an athlete, changes costumes as if she’s shedding skin, and carries herself with the dramatic flair of a Shakespearean thespian. Projecting strength in moments of extreme fragility feels like it’s become part of her routine more recently; a very public breakup with her Hollywood ex was followed by the discovery of a medical condition anchored in her uterus. This year’s MAGDALENE was twigs’ exorcism of those woes—the ones that suddenly appear on your doorstep, the ones brewing internally—with “cellophane” as its final absolution. Heartbreak is a trial so delicate that the slightest degree of pressure can shift whether it ends in acceptance or despair. On “cellophane,” twigs recognizes that fissure and puts on an acrobatic display of deciding whether she’ll dip a toe into the darkness of its void. It’s a song best listened to alone, where the beauty of its restraint can be made clear. A whisper of a beat propels an inquisition into self-doubt, longing, and regret—her voice aches, soaring with resolve before a gravitational pull brings it back down. A dreamy piano melody serves as a sidekick alongside synths that swell to a climax and then drop out altogether. It masterfully makes the ugly, complicated mess of interrogating lost love feel like an act of pride. Because when you’ve aimed a spotlight at yourself, perhaps all that matters is knowing you’re worthy of its glow. –Puja Patel",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkLjqFpBh84,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de7e2f9b517ce000899efb8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/FKA-twigs-Cellophane.jpg,/dataset/artwork/FKA_twigs-cellophane.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/,2018,year,album,50,SOB X RBE,Gangin,SOB X RBE ENT,"SOB X RBE ENT The quiet miracle of friendship is that it is almost always accidental. Adjacent seats, matching hats, shared cul-de-sacs—any random moment of connection can be the beginning of a lifelong bond. SOB X RBE formed in Vallejo, California, around shared commitments to Call of Duty, basketball, and rap—and on their debut album, Gangin, you can feel both the looseness of those links and their intensity. Lul G, Yhung T.O., DaBoii, and Slimmy B make ruffian rap that bruises and bounces in equal measure; their record is a marvel of perpetual motion and brotherhood. Gangin plays like a cartoon fight cloud set to music: At any given moment, you can snap your fingers or a neck. The record often feels limitless and unbound; the members appear on songs in unpredictable order, sometimes alone, other times as a trio or duo. In lieu of ad-libs or layered vocals, there’s constant fluidity. Flows are passed along and riffed. Verses are packed toe-to-toe, the ideas firing too quickly to pause. The beats are smooth but fleet, complementing and contrasting the group's harried delivery. Now the future of the group is uncertain, but perhaps that, too, is par for the course. Entropy is enabling until it isn’t. –Stephen Kearse",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-oRjaDRGgY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5a834ab0aed392225cc0d9fb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/SOBxRBE_Gangin.jpg,/dataset/artwork/SOB_X_RBE-Gangin.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/,2018,year,album,49,Georgia Anne Muldrow,Overload,Brainfeeder,"Brainfeeder For years, Georgia Anne Muldrow was underground R&B’s greatest utility player. She provided yin to Dudley Perkins’ yang, dropped Roberta Flack rose petals on Mos Def, crafted loopy old soul with Madlib, and teamed with fellow priestess Erykah Badu to bring the notion to “stay woke” to the world at large. But the restlessly creative and bountiful artist has also had a remarkable solo career—and Overload, her 17th album in 12 years, is her best one yet. All of Muldrow’s powers as singer, songwriter, and producer are on display here. A hundred years of the African-American pop vernacular are, too: Astral jazz wafts through pop confections, boom-bap turns into soul-quaking confessionals, and Muldrow daydreams Stevie Wonder doing a second-line strut. She makes Afrofuturism resound right here, in the present moment. –Andy Beta",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqGOU6d5pLA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5be09cd2855e410f812a907a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/overload.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Georgia_Anne_Muldrow-Overload.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/,2018,year,album,48,Kamasi Washington,Heaven and Earth,Young Turks,"Young Turks Pity the jazz artist whose work garners major acclaim across genre lines—usually, whether they asked for it or not, a responsibility for the entire art form will be hefted onto his or her shoulders. Luckily, the most recently anointed, California tenor saxophonist and bandleader Kamasi Washington, has an omnivorous creative ambition that continues to expand. This double album is a conceptual trip through outer and inner space, stacked with an ace ensemble cast of players. They go big, as on the frenzied, endlessly ascending jam “One of One,” and deep, with an elongated meditation on the Brill Building gem “Will You Love Me Tomorrow.” The dizzying trip navigates hybrid terrain that includes shimmering exotica and slinky G-funk grooves, moving from the bodily pleasures of soul jazz and funk to the spiritual and cerebral ecstasies of gospel and psychedelia. –Alison Fensterstock",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5b04265ed8a22521f9d48121/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kamasi%2520Washington:%2520Heaven%2520and%2520Earth.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kamasi_Washington-Heaven_and_Earth.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/,2018,year,album,47,Skee Mask,Compro,Ilan Tape,"Ilan Tape Techno doesn’t get more sensual, tactile, or inviting than Compro. The music—a ripe and septic mix of dub and breakbeats, bangers and ambient interludes—feels so alive and unpredictable that it barely fits that genre tag for more than a minute at a time. As Skee Mask, Munich producer Bryan Müller uses his mix of analog and digital equipment to conjure a boggy landscape out of which all kinds of sumptuous notes emerge. The sharp, steely drum pads—which cut through “Soundboy Ext.” and “Dial 274” like wires passing through clay—are rough enough to keep you dancing in some cement basement all night, but Compro could also soundtrack an evening spent on an abandoned train platform, staring up at the sky. It’s some of the most astonishing and alive electronic music of the year; it thrashes, it seethes, it wails, it breathes. –Jayson Greene",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xx3nkr8u15k,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72aea79ce93e00083820d5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Skee-Mask-Compro.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Skee_Mask-Compro.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/,2018,year,album,46,Blood Orange,Negro Swan,Domino,"Domino Blood Orange’s Negro Swan opens the door to a more appealing universe—somewhere without requirement to shrink yourself in order “to quote-unquote belong,” as the transgender writer/activist Janet Mock puts it in an interlude here. Dev Hynes’ inquiry into black depression exhumes his trauma and insecurities, school bullying encounters, and early thoughts of death, delivering diary entries in a yearning tone sometimes reminiscent of Elliott Smith—too tired to shout, too exhausted to keep quiet. Negro Swan is indulgent in the best way, like a loner showing you around their obsessively decorated bedroom: It has glimmers of angsty Prince, petty Marvin Gaye, desolate psychedelia, bluesy mysticism. Poised between escapism and self-examination, the album welcomes the dispossessed and extends tender, melancholy encouragement to take up space in the world. –Jazz Monroe",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztLnHpvfrnQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5b5a0f4e4242b82d1866a549/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/negro%2520swan%2520cover%2520art.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Blood_Orange-Negro_Swan.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/,2018,year,album,45,Cat Power,Wanderer,Domino,"Domino Chan Marshall pulled off one of the year’s great conjuring tricks on Wanderer, her first album in six years. Rarely has music this well constructed sounded so utterly effortless, as if blown along by the wind rather than stitched together in the studio. Wanderer is so low-key that it could easily pass you by, but this delicacy is also its charm. The understated textures on songs like “Nothing Really Matters” and the Rihanna cover “Stay” feel like a whisper in the ear or a nap under a tree, deliciously simple pleasures that linger. Wanderer’s warm-hearted sound is all soft vocal strokes, muted guitar, and hushed piano. It is a triumph of quiet introspection and musical restraint, a spellbinding record that works its magic by sleight of hand. –Ben Cardew",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-Tsk-cPXxI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5b746c3361613f18abb1b4a5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Cat%2520Power%2520_%2520Wanderer%2520Cover.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Cat_Power-Wanderer.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/,2018,year,album,44,Camp Cope,How to Socialise & Make Friends,Run for Cover,"Run for Cover Camp Cope singer-guitarist Georgia Maq’s voice is a beacon of resilience. On the razor-sharp songs that make up her Australian trio’s second record—a mix of folk-rock intimacy, punk incision, and loud emo catharsis—she shares her path forward. How to Socialise & Make Friends spins a bracing narrative of feminist solidarity and self-sufficiency in the face of toxic men, and it offers empathy in response to the havoc they wreak. On “The Opener,” the album’s first track and its rallying thesis, Maq sarcastically stitches together a selection of the belittling comments that music industry men have made to Camp Cope since they formed in 2015—undervaluing their abilities, equating their success with their gender. Maq’s biting delivery here carries throughout all of How to Socialise: She turns single syllables into triumphs. The title track finds Maq breezing along on her bike with no hands on the handlebar, thriving, humming a mantra: “I can see myself living without you.” It’s one lifesaving sentiment on an album full of them. –Jenn Pelly",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40nc_8ij3MI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5a902b2bb8c3f77d9ba046f7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Camp%2520Cope:%2520How%2520to%2520Socialise%2520&%2520Make%2520Friends.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Camp_Cope-How_to_Socialise__Make_Friends.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/,2018,year,album,43,Sleep,The Sciences,Third Man,"Third Man As Juuling has taken over high schools around the country, it’s only appropriate that some lifelong stoners in their 40s would come back to remind us that the only acceptable way to inhale vapor is through a bong. Sleep started when its members were teenagers; back then, their now-legendary guitarist Matt Pike had white dreads that flopped around as his guitar solos ascended to heaven. Aside from a new drummer (and Pike’s hair), not much has changed for the band. Sleep are still dedicated freaks and effortless doom metal masters who use their skill to write praise songs to the sweet leaf. Their extended odes boast very sick solos and repetitious bass that burrows deep into your skull. The Sciences, the band’s first album in more than a decade, dropped by surprise on the international marijuana holiday, April 20, and while that’s cute and all, it’s a good listen all year round. Throw your vape in the trash, call your dealer, and crank it. –Matthew Schnipper",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCDcm-BNiFs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5ada126b2c39e92029a3ae90/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/sleep-the-sciences-1524167366-compressed1-1524186011-compressed.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sleep-The_Sciences.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/,2018,year,album,42,Adrianne Lenker,abysskiss,Saddle Creek,"Saddle Creek Adrianne Lenker’s abysskiss is a hushed but intense affair for acoustic guitar and voice. The Big Thief frontwoman asks painful questions—“What Can You Say” addresses waning love in the most melancholy terms imaginable—but also reassuring answers like those found in “10 Miles,” a rural picture of domestic contentment as seen from a life’s latter half. The album is bookended by death: Its specter ripples through both the opening and closing songs, though the softness of Lenker’s voice belies the starkness and even severity of her imagery—an earthy menagerie shot through with wild animals, forests, and other kaleidoscopic fragments of the sublime. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyNQIArpPIQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511d4d52608271ae68b0a66/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Adrianne-Lenker-Abysskiss.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Adrianne_Lenker-abysskiss.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/,2018,year,album,41,Ty Dolla $ign / Jeremih,MihTy,Def Jam,"Def Jam As two of R&B’s most generous collaborators, Ty Dolla $ign and Jeremih are so consistently the best part of any song they’re featured on that a shared project from the two was bound to be an exercise in decadence. And sure enough, the peanut butter/chocolate pairing of Ty Dolla’s nonchalant croon and Jeremih’s frictionless falsetto is a triumph of creature comforts. MihTy frees the two unshowy showmen to indulge in the tropes of ’90s R&B, a style there isn’t much room for on the charts these days. But the duo’s forward-looking producers ensure this isn’t just an exercise in nostalgia. They continually introduce sly, contemporary twists on these classic sounds, especially lead architect Hitmaka, whose plush, pillowy inversions of trap provide the singers a backdrop every bit as sumptuous as their voices. –Evan Rytlewski",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkIASi2uaq8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5bd0a75ae5dd5125e7f6bd47/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/mihty.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ty_Dolla_ign__Jeremih-MihTy.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/,2018,year,album,40,Iceage,Beyondless,Matador,"Matador Iceage make bold moves, and Beyondless is their boldest yet. This time around, the Danish punks’ arsenal is particularly robust, as brass and violins and hammered dulcimers throw momentum and sophistication behind the slurring poet up front, Elias Bender Rønnenfelt. Their aesthetic palette has widened well beyond the confines of their punk origins: Just look at “Showtime,” which features the band diving into a trombone-heavy burlesque pastiche. It’s a fun bit of vaudeville—until you realize the central character is a singer who shoots himself in the head in front of a packed audience. Rønnenfelt has talked about how he wrote the album after touring a changing planet—one with more barbed-wire barriers, more refugee camps, and a more palpable sense of fear. This discouraging state of affairs pervades the record. There are sarcastic celebrations about the horrors of war (“Hurrah”) and stomping meditations on how death is around the corner (“The Day the Music Dies”). Even the album’s banger, “Pain Killer,” bolstered by a Sky Ferreira guest turn, is about toxic codependency. That’s the pull of Beyondless—an album that pairs bleak narratives with frenzied, over-the-top rock’n’roll. –Evan Minsker",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qP8GJj8lAI8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5aa8112b0a1d724145f45aec/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Iceage_Beyondless.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Iceage-Beyondless.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/,2018,year,album,39,The Internet,Hive Mind,Columbia,"Columbia The Internet’s fourth album, and their first in three years, represents a reunion of sorts. The members took their time between projects to follow their own curiosities, in both solo work and collaboration. The clearest beneficiaries of this branching-out are in Syd’s renewed vocal confidence, dancing around tracks in melodies that are pleading, catchy, and coy all at once, crooning her way through all manner of romantic conquests. Steve Lacy’s guitar work unfolds into a more romantic and playful bounce, painting the backgrounds. The Internet’s main bag has long been trying to keep a foot in so many genres that the genres themselves become useless. Here they still dip into smooth R&B, as in “Stay the Night,” and funky dance tracks like “Roll (Burbank Funk)” and bossa nova like “La Di Da,” but it all serves their greater, unified sound. Hive Mind is the full realization of what the Internet has been reaching for since their inception: They have finally become a genre unto themselves. –Hanif Abdurraqib",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIqvRzEIqIo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5b0ec423fdfb234f26101366/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-Internet-Hive-Mind.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Internet-Hive_Mind.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/,2018,year,album,38,Kali Uchis,Isolation,Virgin EMI,"Virgin EMI In the abundant femme art-pop brilliance of this year, Kali Uchis’ bilingual debut album, Isolation, announces her as a genre-defying visionary. Like Janelle Monáe, St. Vincent, or latter day-Beyoncé, Colombian-American Uchis pays tribute to pop’s past while making it sound new through glowing homage to black and Latinx jukebox favorites and a global roster of collaborations housed in classic soul/R&B aesthetics. She’s a stylist for sure, but her retro dream world sounds more OutKast downtempo psych funk and less Bruno Mars roller rink pander. That said, her solid songcraft should win her fans across all generations, while her lyrics, full of POC feminist empowerment aphorisms and frank millennial sex-positivity, speak to how to grow up and love right. And if that doesn’t work, her breakup anthem “Dead to Me” will hex the ex, and the gooey G-funk groove “After the Storm” will salve the wounded soul. –Daphne Carr",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmRdryt4Or0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/642aff786b6881a134712104/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kali-Uchis-Isolation.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kali_Uchis-Isolation.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/,2018,year,album,37,JPEGMAFIA,Veteran,Deathbomb Arc,"Deathbomb Arc First, you notice the beats. JPEGMAFIA—raised in Brooklyn and across the South but established as an artist in Baltimore—is a preternaturally gifted producer, the textures of his beats all jagged and interlocking just so. It’s ordered anarchy, informed by noise music and screeching dial-up modems; on Veteran’s “Real Nega,” he uses a vocal gag from the late Ol’ Dirty Bastard as sonic scaffolding. But what makes “Peggy”—as his cultish and rapidly expanding fanbase refers to him—such a magnetic artist is his ability to gobble up all the broken syntaxes, unhinged YouTube comments, and Senatorial screeds that define this era and regurgitate them back in a focused burst. He has that unique ability as a writer to make verses that are dripping in irony seem, in aggregate, to convey a sincere and unmistakable message. Veteran is the sort of album that will spawn hundreds, if not thousands, of imitators in basements and bedrooms across the country—and not a single one will replicate it. –Paul A. Thompson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIW-L39oqpQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72ad6f6eee70000829f2c0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/JPEGMAFIA-Veteran.jpg,/dataset/artwork/JPEGMAFIA-Veteran.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/,2018,year,album,36,Rico Nasty,Nasty,Sugar Trap,"Sugar Trap Nasty marks the capstone in a breakout year for DMV upstart Rico Nasty. The album blends her sugar-rush raps with a mosher’s fury for maximum thrash, all while she perfectly balances the aesthetics of her awesomely named alter-egos (primarily Tacobella and Trap Lavigne). It can be dizzying to keep pace with her many styles throughout the record, from sing-song teases to punchy romps with blistering flows. Soundtracked in large part by one of the year’s most impactful producers, Kenny Beats, doing some of his most dynamic work, Nasty pushes Rico to the front of a class of rap shapeshifters. And in running the full gamut of her talents, she reveals more of herself than ever before. –Sheldon Pearce",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdP75cxwQIU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5b27c372eded5567e42607da/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/100000x100000-999.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rico_Nasty-Nasty.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/,2018,year,album,35,A.A.L (Against All Logic),2012 - 2017,Other People,"Other People Throughout this decade, Nicolas Jaar has cultivated a brand of shadowy electronic music that aims to subvert, challenge, and disrupt everything we know about electronic music. These brainy exercises are great at poking at our preconceptions, but by consciously avoiding repetition, sticky melodies, and cresting dynamics, they can also come across as impenetrable, distant. In this context, 2012 - 2017, a compilation of tracks under Jaar’s A.A.L (Against All Logic) moniker, plays like a dancefloor-filling complement to all those head games—a record for the body. It’s one of the most accessible things he’s ever released, a contemporary house album stuffed with bass that thumps where you expect it to and glorious soul samples that wail to the heavens. And yet, no one would confuse this album with something by, say, Disclosure. Jaar still manages to work in some of his offbeat moves, like the pointillistic drums on “I Never Dream,” or the subterranean clatter that shades the ebullient piano chords of “Cityfade.” Jaar is a genius when it comes to upending dance music traditions, but here, he’s just as masterful at honoring them. –Ryan Dombal",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luq8QBwVR5I,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5a95787fd63bda1b0a702f15/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/2012%2520-%25202017.jpg,/dataset/artwork/AAL_Against_All_Logic-2012_-_2017.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/,2018,year,album,34,Neneh Cherry,Broken Politics,Smalltown Supersound,"Smalltown Supersound What a welcome surprise that this decade may wind up containing Neneh Cherry’s most sustained, rewarding creative peak. No disrespect to her 1989 breakthrough, Raw Like Sushi; it’s just math, as she’s released two strong solo albums, one vibrant jazz project, and a sizzling remix collection since 2010. Broken Politics reunites her with producer Four Tet, whom she paired with on 2014’s Blank Project, but they don’t repeat their steps; while that first collaboration favored starkly thumping electronic compositions, Broken Politics pursues a supple variety. That is the case even when it stomps—as on the uptempo highlight “Natural Skin Deep,” which offers a battery of whirling samples, metallic percussion elements, sirens, and even a saxophone break. A similar timbral sensitivity carries over to the more reflective pieces. On “Synchronised Devotion,” Cherry sings beautifully of “living in the slow jam” as a political stance—one that emphasizes the connection that remains possible inside a song while the broader culture is crumbling. –Seth Colter Walls",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dF2oUGGuWU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5bbcdb78b5a62d2d54af6561/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/neneh%2520cherry_broken%2520politics.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Neneh_Cherry-Broken_Politics.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/,2018,year,album,33,Sheck Wes,MUDBOY,Cactus Jack / G. O. O. D. Music / Interscope,"Cactus Jack / G. O. O. D. Music / Interscope When some people hear the words “New York” and “rap” in the same sentence, the first things that come to mind are “lyrical” and “boom bap”: terms that speak to both revered and reviled styles of rap, with roots in the late-’80s to mid-’90s Golden Age of Hip-Hop. But the sound of New York rap in 2018 isn’t monolithic, nor is it trapped in a time capsule. Sheck Wes, the son of Senegalese immigrants and a Harlemite, is an example of this diversity. His debut, MUDBOY, contradicts any notion of what New York is supposed to sound like. Propelled by “Mo Bamba,” Wes’ smash with the producers 16yrold and Take a Daytrip, the sound of MUDBOY is a melting pot of the 20-year-old Wes’ influences. Largely produced by homegrown teen beat-makers Lunchbox and Redda, the record features robotic post-EDM synthesized highs (“Gmail”) and thunderous low ends (“Live Sheck Wes,” “Wanted”) in the vein of the 808 sound that old-school New York producers introduced and Southern producers perfected. As for Wes the rapper, his nasal baritone is used to great effect to exclaim “Bitch!” and tell stories of mobbin’ through the city, causing mayhem and being banished to Senegal (“Jiggy on the Shits”). Looking for New York rap? This is what it sounds like. –Timmhotep Aku",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isZTZz3EjJE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5bb7afe526c20b7bcebf0f89/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/mudboy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sheck_Wes-MUDBOY.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/,2018,year,album,32,Let’s Eat Grandma,I’m All Ears,Transgressive,"Transgressive Not long ago, Jenny Hollingworth and Rosa Walton were twin Alices in Wonderland: two teens from Norwich, England who wore matching outfits and wrote fanciful songs about mushrooms and treehouses. But with I’m All Ears, their second album as Let’s Eat Grandma, the pair bridge the gap between eccentricity and innovation. Their playful curiosity persists, but it is put to use exploring disparate corners of the pop and pop-adjacent world, from stirring piano balladry on “Ava” to disco pomp on “Donnie Darko.” “Hot Pink” stands out for its grating industrial noise and weaponized emblem of girlishness; it flashes a colorful middle finger to the duo’s detractors. However, it is blue—the ubiquitous, pallid blue of glowing screens—that more noticeably tints the record. Hollingworth and Walton apply an effortlessly contemporary lens to tried-and-true themes of togetherness, aloneness, and the transitional state between the two, adroitly capturing both IRL emotions and those refracted through phone keyboards. At 19 and 20, the pair are certainly young, but don’t call them the future of pop: They’re the present. –Olivia Horn",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0M3iIf2wdg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5ae0a4228bec5b23c213a2f5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Let%25E2%2580%2599s%2520Eat%2520Grandma:%2520I'm%2520All%2520Ears.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lets_Eat_Grandma-Im_All_Ears.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/,2018,year,album,31,Arctic Monkeys,Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino,Domino,"Domino The Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino isn’t the most appealing vacation spot. The views are incredible, but the VR masks are grimy and unreliable. The on-site taqueria’s not bad, but there’s better food down near Clavius if you’re willing to leave the resort. The performers all seem to experience existential crises as soon as they take the stage. It all sounds a little sleazy. What’s more remarkable is that it all feels real. Arctic Monkeys’ bold gambit—a hairpin turn from good, ol’ fashioned rock’n’roll into bachelor-pad psych-pop—only pays off because of their commitment to world-building. It’s what gives Alex Turner’s one-liners and commentaries on screen-addled modernity their emotional ballast. All of the album’s narrators are looking for an escape, whether from our planet’s charring husk or a lover who’s haunted them for years. It’s an album for a near-future where technology is better but everyone’s still miserable, and you leave it with immense empathy for the sad-sack lounge lizards just looking for a new friend or two. –Jamieson Cox",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_2rM8A_1-w,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6349cba2a7846fb4be7fe018/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Arctic-Monkeys.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Arctic_Monkeys-Tranquility_Base_Hotel__Casino.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/,2018,year,album,30,Christine and the Queens,Chris,Because Music,"Because Music In a year in which our rights to be whoever we want to be and love whoever we want to love were increasingly threatened, art that blows up the gender binary and shatters traditional ideas of sexuality feels more necessary than ever. On her second album, Christine and the Queens’ Hélöise Letissier invents a new persona—the tough, in-your-face androgyne Chris—to challenge and question the things male rock stars get away with. Over sinuous new wave funk, Chris sings about paying for sex (“5 dollars”) aggressively pursuing pleasure (“Damn [what must a woman do]”), and shrugging off commitment (“girlfriend”)—the kinds of things that would be seen as “masculine” if you believed in that concept. “Some of us just had to fight/For even being looked at right,” Chris sings on “5 dollars,” summing up the way it feels when the world expects you to behave a certain way, but you just can’t play by their rules. And in 2018, that was a whole lot of us. –Amy Phillips",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8eulIH7tU0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650b442b075611b11337fc63/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Christine-and-the-Queens-Chris.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Christine_and_the_Queens-Chris.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/,2018,year,album,29,boygenius,boygenius EP,Matador,"Matador Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus are three beloved indie rock singer-songwriters with their own distinct styles and standalone careers, and their self-titled debut EP as boygenius is a testament to the magic of collaboration. Each song is arranged around each woman’s artistic quirks, and they elevate their individual strengths while finding dynamic harmony. On “Me & My Dog,” Bridgers’ gauzy folk-rock is brought into focus by the immediacy of Baker’s disruptive vocals and Dacus’ keen, steady guitar. Dacus’ introspection is made full and sweet on “Bite the Hand” with the help of Baker and Bridgers’ cascading vocals, while Baker’s cutting delivery on the confrontational “Stay Down” is softly centered by piano and hushed harmonies. The trust and appreciation between band members is palpable throughout. –Braudie Blais-Billie",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63f917c696cce0f3266685cd/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Boygenius.jpg,/dataset/artwork/boygenius-boygenius_EP.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/,2018,year,album,28,Deafheaven,Ordinary Corrupt Human Love,Anti,"Anti In 2018, the Smashing Pumpkins (sort of) got back together, and an excellent Smashing Pumpkins album was released. But these two things have absolutely nothing to do with one another, because that excellent Smashing Pumpkins album was actually made by Deafheaven. For the past half-decade, the San Francisco-bred band have been experimenting with the soluble qualities of black metal, heating it up and melting it down until it evaporates into dream pop. But more than ever before, on Ordinary Corrupt Human Love, their atomic fusion of melancholy and infinite madness assumes the lighter-waving splendor and communal ecstasy of arena rock. The elegant piano-led build of “You Without End” (aka Deafheaven’s “Tonight, Tonight”) and serene, stargazing sway of “Near” are disarming enough, but it’s the 11-minute “Honeycomb” that best illustrates Deafheaven’s shifting priorities: What begins as a blast-beat blur gradually dissolves into a Siamese Dream of an outro that’ll have you scouring the liner notes for a James Iha cameo. Of course, George Clarke’s tonsil-ripping growl remains several degrees more fearsome and ferocious than even Billy Corgan’s most anguished wails, but then, what do you think a raging rat in a cage is supposed to sound like? –Stuart Berman",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITgslYJhfx0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5ad75e758bec5b23c2139e25/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/deafheaven%2520cover.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Deafheaven-Ordinary_Corrupt_Human_Love.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/,2018,year,album,27,Soccer Mommy,Clean,Fat Possum,"Fat Possum Nashville songwriter Sophie Allison’s debut studio album as Soccer Mommy is one of 2018’s most affecting portraits of romance. Allison’s longings are humble: She self-identifies as more of a dying flower than a sunbeam on “Last Girl,” idolizes an ice cold heartbreaker on “Cool,” and just wants to be “the one you’re kissing when you’re stoned” on “Skin.” On Clean’s hushed centerpiece, “Blossom (Wasting All My Time),” dreams are consistently darkened by reality. But despite this vulnerable (and often self-loathing) sense of self, Allison looks forward with confidence. She knows that untangling the mysteries of life and love can’t be rushed; after all, spirits are governed by our blood and the stars (as she suggests on “Scorpio Rising”). By the time Allison concludes “I want to be who I wasn’t” on the closer “Wildflowers,” Clean faces a horizon full of hope. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Phsup-LrII,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651724315569c29d27877422/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Soccer%2520Mommy-%2520Clean.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Soccer_Mommy-Clean.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/,2018,year,album,26,Vince Staples,FM!,Def Jam,"Def Jam Dropped in angst-ridden, pre-midterms early November, Vince Staples’ FM! is the exact length of a television sitcom—22 minutes—and as snappily edited as one. “We gon’ party til the sun or the guns come out,” Staples sings on the opener, “Feels Like Summer,” tire-slashing the idyllic illusion of California, his home. Throughout FM!, he applies that sardonic, pitch-perfect wit to a wild, compressed experiment of twitchy songs made with California collaborators Ty Dolla $ign, Earl Sweatshirt, Kamaiyah, and more, in a format that mimics the iconic rap radio show “Big Boy’s Neighborhood.” With the album’s cover art, Staples deliberately borrows the gleeful, cartoonish vibe of Green Day’s Dookie, playing up the contrast between those anthems of teenage angst and his own. He may sing “We just wanna have fun,” but references to “dead homies” resurface in song after song; what purports to be party jams become hymns to the fallen. Reality inevitably intrudes: “My black is beautiful, but I’ll still shoot at you,” he says, unflinching. Experimental and abrupt, the album ends all too soon, yet it feels convincing and complete, and Staples’ sobering revelations linger. –Rebecca Bengal",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xc6hdQEm_h4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6517250c6ca93883ed139827/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Vince%2520Staples-%2520FM!.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Vince_Staples-FM.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/,2018,year,album,25,Playboi Carti,Die Lit,Interscope / AWGE,"Interscope / AWGE Playboi Carti’s debut studio album is a little darker and much stranger than the Atlanta rapper’s previous work. Instead of the jovial trap of his 2017 debut mixtape, the mosh pit invades Die Lit’s personal space. Producer Pi’erre Bourne brings a more luxurious version of the manic energy that he bottled on last year’s “Magnolia,” with features from Nicki Minaj, Travis Scott, and Young Thug, who all dig deep into their pools of personality for more exaggerated takes on their signature sounds. The result makes for a take on rap that’s more rambunctious than lyrical—and all the stronger for it. On Die Lit, Carti sounds more alive than ever before. –Trey Alston",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oakC_u5vbdU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5af9eeb1e36af94c779017da/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/playboi%2520carti%2520_%2520die%2520lit%2520_%2520cover.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Playboi_Carti-Die_Lit.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/,2018,year,album,24,Julia Holter,Aviary,Domino,"Domino Dense, sprawling, and hugely varied across its 90-minute length, Julia Holter’s Aviary is an art-pop album that unapologetically puts the emphasis on art. Like Robert Wyatt, Laurie Anderson, or Scott Walker, Holter’s music is so idiosyncratic and instantly identifiable that it could come from no one else, and her admirable commitment to the form and structure of a double-album-sized idea leads to a work that is challenging and rewarding in equal measure. Aviary takes strengths from Holter’s earlier records—an ear for delicate melody and an expert fusion of pop form and modern composition—and boils them down to their essence, then twists them into gnarled and sometimes frightening new designs. –Mark Richardson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2o-AmKLh_E,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d77b83a9ce93e000838237d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Julia-Holter-Aviary.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Julia_Holter-Aviary.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/,2018,year,album,23,Travis Scott,Astroworld,Cactus Jack / Epic,"Cactus Jack / Epic Young rap fans and radio programmers have loved Travis Scott for awhile, but Astroworld propelled awareness of his sound-design flair to a new level. Critics had previously tended to view Scott as a skillful convenor of other talents, rather than a talent in his own right. While that networking and curatorial skill was still evident on Astroworld—which recruits everyone from Stevie Wonder to the ghost of the Notorious B.I.G.—what’s striking about the album is how it all sounds like Travis Scott. The host rarely gets overshadowed by the guests; the broth is never spoiled by the ridiculous number of cooks. “Sicko Mode” splits its song publishing between 30 names and involves five producers, yet still triumphs as the album’s banger. “5% Tint” is another killer, with its stereo-panning growls and vocals like anesthetic gas seeping under the door in a ’60s spy movie. Doubts persist about Scott ever becoming the Kanye-level major artist he aspires to be; his lyrics, rarely memorable, mostly traffic in hollow hedonism. But you don’t turn to Scott for insights into our contemporary decadence, you come for the exquisitely intricate ear candy: queasy stereo-sculpted effects, dilated smears of texture, startling vocal treatments. More about mood than meaning, Scott’s music is a glistening vapor that fills headphones and car interiors with cocooning unreality. File under “ambient.” –Simon Reynolds",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ONRf7h3Mdk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5b60c32dc50e6c2e339b99fe/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Travis%2520Scott_Astroworld.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Travis_Scott-Astroworld.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/,2018,year,album,22,U.S. Girls,In a Poem Unlimited,4AD,"4AD U.S. Girls is the work of solo artist Meghan Remy, who—now a decade into her career—has grown cynical and sinister, but hasn’t lost her gift as a reliable and sharply focused narrator. In a Poem Unlimited plays as a book might read, with the speaker’s gaze always directly honed and a storyline unfolding eagerly but not so loosely that it can’t be followed. Remy’s targets are largely men, from St. Peter to Barack Obama to the vast specter of maleness haunting each corner of a country’s violence. From the haunting opener “Velvet 4 Sale” to the danceable anti-war “M.A.H.,” the songs work because Remy sings earnestly and patiently about revenge and reckoning—something she knows is coming. The album also plays host to over 20 guests, and the collaborations echo the album’s tone: There is a fight and the fight cannot be approached alone. In a Poem Unlimited manages to be a record for the times, without bowing to the vastness of all miseries. It knows its targets. –Hanif Abdurraqib",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YkIvuGYGqA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76b63e6eee70000829f38e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/US-Girls-In-a-Poem-Unlimited.jpg,/dataset/artwork/US_Girls-In_a_Poem_Unlimited.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/,2018,year,album,21,The 1975,A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships,Dirty Hit / Interscope,"Dirty Hit / Interscope The 1975 are, in a word, unsubtle. On A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships, they grapple with obvious questions—Is true love deeply felt and simply expressed? Is the internet bad? Is Trump bad?—and answer in the affirmative every time. It’s also clear that “Love It If We Made It,” the big set piece of their third album, is a 2018 redux of “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” with its topical shouts-outs of everything from fossil fuels to kneeling on football fields—and for a band that has historically drawn from the crystalline guitars of the ’80s, pulling from Billy Joel isn’t really out of step. Cultural references pour out of frontman Matty Healy’s mouth in a barrage, a litany of blunt phrases ranging from the death Lil Peep to the figurative death of Kanye West. A Brief Inquiry is a Saturn Return of an album, the sound of turning over new leaves, kicking heroin (or Twitter), and not letting the waves of modernity knock you down. The band is at their most luxurious and diverse here; their pop gently beckons. The way the album goes from acoustic confessions to a choir-backed neo-soul jam to pleading ballads spangled with vocoder and digital gloss has a way of disarming each and every layer of cynicism. It is a weapon of mass sincerity, deployed in these worst of times. It may be the only thing that works. –Jeremy D. Larson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Wl1B7DPegc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65172788d3932f6eb7938b42/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The%25201975-%2520A%2520Brief%2520Inquiry%2520Into%2520Online%2520Relationships.png,/dataset/artwork/The_1975-A_Brief_Inquiry_Into_Online_Relationships.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/,2018,year,album,20,Beach House,7,Sub Pop,"Sub Pop Beach House have characterized the vibe of 7, the band’s seventh record, as “pre-apocalyptic,” which also feels like a fitting way to describe the various devastations and dark omens of 2018. How does a person keep on, knowing that the present path could very well end in ruin? 7 suggests lunging toward the unknown in the most glamorous way possible; it’s the fuck-it spirit of Prince’s 1999, filtered through a throbbing synthesizer and played only at twilight, just as the temperature starts to dip and stars begin speckling the horizon. Aggressively layered synthesizers and guitars build a wall of sound that’s both forceful and enveloping. Victoria Legrand’s wispy-but-menacing vocals express some vague melancholy, but they’re filled with hope, too—nobody knows, after all, what might happen next, and in those dusky moments, anything is still possible. –Amanda Petrusich",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0vMIQLXxqQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/641dc5859100843f4510a9d3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Beach-House-7.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beach_House-7.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/,2018,year,album,19,Cardi B,Invasion of Privacy,Atlantic,"Atlantic After breaking out last year with “Bodak Yellow,” Cardi B had a lot to live up to. But with her debut album, Invasion of Privacy, she didn’t just meet expectations: She soared over them. The project cements her evolution from self-described “stripper hoe” to bonafide rap star, without losing any of the infectious personality that made her a cultural beacon in the first place. The full complexity of her Cardi-ness is on display here. She teams up with fellow boss-bitch SZA on “I Do,” where she deploys brash one-liners about not needing a man for anything. She’s just as charismatic while flashing her vulnerable side on “Be Careful,” when she warns a cheating partner that he’s on his last strike, and spills out words of gratitude on the wholesome “Best Life” with Chance the Rapper. That sense of range also transfers to her exploration of genre, as she expertly flips between boogaloo-inspired Latin trap, Southern hip-hop twerk anthems, tender R&B jams, and neck-snapping freestyles. It’s not so much a question anymore whether you like Cardi or not: it’s which Cardi you like most. –Michelle Kim",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zSRkr1nQNw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d794ea24bc6510008699745/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Cardi-B-Invasion-of-Privacy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Cardi_B-Invasion_of_Privacy.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/,2018,year,album,18,SOPHIE,OIL OF EVERY PEARL’s UN-INSIDES,Future Classic / Transgressive,"Future Classic / Transgressive Graduating from the glossy, cyborg music crafted with her PC Music collaborators to a dynamic world of lurching machinery, heavily distorted pop, and uncanny beauty, SOPHIE came into her own on her auspicious debut album. OIL OF EVERY PEARL’s UN-INSIDES is a vivid artistic statement made by a musician finally prepared to step into the spotlight, a fact made manifest on opener “It’s Okay to Cry.” It finds SOPHIE singing her own lyrics for the first time, delicate yet unerringly passionate. Elsewhere, the record renders SOPHIE’s world in bold pops of color and mercurial transitions, from the serrated, post-club squeals of the dom-sub fantasy “Ponyboy” and the beauty complex-defying “Faceshopping” to the stirring, stripped-back atmospherics of “Is It Cold in the Water?” SOPHIE’s willful deconstruction of self and form, tearing away at expectations and norms with cacophony and ambience alike, makes OIL a startling, moving experience. –Eric Torres",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_S0qCeA-pc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/648747aaaed875e699bc73ed/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sophie.jpg,/dataset/artwork/SOPHIE-OIL_OF_EVERY_PEARLs_UN-INSIDES.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/,2018,year,album,17,Pusha T,Daytona,G. O. O. D. Music / Def Jam,"G. O. O. D. Music / Def Jam Pusha-T’s long-awaited third solo album also happens to be the most accomplished release of Kanye West’s high-concept 2018 albums series produced in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Across Daytona’s lean 21 minutes, Pusha’s elocution-deliberate, quasi-malevolent midtempo flow jumps out of the speakers, offering up snarling lyrics about street life and clapbacks to Lil Wayne, Birdman, Harvey Weinstein, Donald Trump, and his nemesis, Drake. As producer, West serves up a seven-track array of finely diced ’n’ sliced, gritty soul samples, showcasing head-bopping, hooky production on opener “If You Know You Know” and chilling forlornness on “Santeria,” a track about Pusha’s murdered road manager. Confident and flexing, Daytona is Pusha-T’s most compelling solo album; who says hip-hop MCs can’t do their best work after age 40? –Jason King",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7-0ugujS2U,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d728cf29ce93e00083820d1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Pusha-T-Daytona.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Pusha_T-Daytona.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/,2018,year,album,16,Jon Hopkins,Singularity,Domino,"Domino Jon Hopkins is a master sound manipulator: a bass technician, a texture craftsman, and a pastoral abstractionist. Five years after the release of his breakthrough album, Immunity, the British producer returned with Singularity, which further expands the scope of his heady electronic compositions. Tracks like “Emerald Rush” and “Everything Connected” are designed to translate in peak hours at the club and in meditative headphone sessions alike; songs like “Echo Dissolve” and “Recovery” display Hopkins’ penchant for raw piano, blending his performances with field recordings and digital noise. Within each song—and the album as a whole—Hopkins paints enormous sonic cliffs and valleys worthy of the psychedelic California desert adventures that inspired the record. It’s this understanding, combined with his earnest quest for spiritual catharsis, that informs every sternum-rattling drop and wistful synthesizer expanse on Singularity. Like all great producers, he knows that a song’s impact is only as great as its dynamic arc. –Noah Yoo",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sk0uDbM5lc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5a9ffd01340a1c29ad6d710e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/jon%2520hopkins%2520singularity.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jon_Hopkins-Singularity.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/,2018,year,album,15,Noname,Room 25,Self-released,"Self-released Room 25 is the soundtrack to Fatimah Warner coming into her own—not just as an artist, but as an adult and self-actualized black woman. Within the 35 minutes of her second record as Noname, she gives us the full range of who she has become: a confident rapper, a passionate lover, a survivor of heartbreak, and a reluctant public figure. On “Blaxploitation,” she expresses a consciousness of her blackness and its meaning in the world without veering into performative wokeness; her personhood isn’t couched in bravado as much as it is steeped in self-awareness. On “Don’t Forget About Me,” she exposes her own hurt and insecurity while finding strength in vulnerability. The evolution of Noname’s skills matches the evolution of her music itself. Words tumble, somersault, and stick landings in a style that owes its swagger to rap and its cadence to spoken-word poetry. The production straddles genre lines as well, with producer and multi-instrumentalist Phoelix providing sonic backdrops replete with live instrumentation that are part jazz, part neo-soul, and all grounded in hip-hop. If her 2016 mixtape Telefone was the introduction to Noname’s talent, Room 25 is the proof that she’s arrived. –Timmhotep Aku",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syi60tUIP48,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72c6f5fd34990009cf89e5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Noname-Room-25.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Noname-Room_25.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/,2018,year,album,14,Amen Dunes,Freedom,Sacred Bones,"Sacred Bones Freedom is the first Amen Dunes album to feature Damon McMahon’s face on the cover, his familiar frizzy curls shorn into a tidy buzz cut. It proves to be an unsubtle advertisement for the music contained within, as the Brooklyn singer-songwriter emerges from the psych-folk sprawl of 2014’s Love with a newfound clarity and concision; where he once let his voice drone and decay into the haze, McMahon delivers Freedom’s meditations on survival and faith with a confession-booth candor. But even as his songs adopt the ebullient rhythms of ’80s Paul Simon and liberally quote Phil Collins hits, McMahon is still chasing transcendence through hypnotic, shape-shifting arrangements and wandering melodies that gradually become unglued from their established structures. “We play religious music/Don’t think you’d understand, man,” he sings atop the ethereal funk of “Blue Rose,” but it proves to be less a word of warning than an invitation to get lost. Freedom presents no less profound a spiritual journey than McMahon’s previous work; he’s just guiding us down a better lit, more smoothly paved path into the unknown. –Stuart Berman",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A64wcAgpbrM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76ac1e9ce93e000838225b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Amen-Dunes-Freedom.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Amen_Dunes-Freedom.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/,2018,year,album,13,Tirzah,Devotion,Domino,"Domino Tirzah’s debut EP, 2013’s I’m Not Dancing, turns out to have been prophetically titled. Collaborating with her longtime friend Mica Levi—the visionary, Oscar-nominated film score composer and Micachu and the Shapes mastermind—the London singer-songwriter offered a rough-hewn take on dance-pop that the pair would sharpen on 2014’s No Romance EP. On Devotion, Tirzah’s debut full-length and latest team-up with Levi, she again pursues a sparse, sketch-like approach that is beautifully made, though not for the dancefloor. Turning away from club-ready UK grime and garage sounds, Devotion redirects Tirzah’s grainy vocals and Levi’s destabilizing production into an extraordinary set of pared-down and scuffed-up R&B reflections on adult love. With its unvarnished loops and disarmingly blunt lyrics, Devotion dreams up a unique space somewhere between the lo-fi cello epiphanies of Arthur Russell and the digital pop futurism of Kelela. The album varies impressively within its distinct niche, finding room for crunching distortion, sad-robot vocal textures, and gritty drum shards. Devotion truly is like a prayer, a hushed offering from Tirzah’s private world. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2EIDPpzXUE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d78009f0db1d10008f1fcb5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Tirzah-Devotion.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tirzah-Devotion.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/,2018,year,album,12,CupcakKe,Ephorize,Self-released,"Self-released As CupcakKe, Chicago rapper Elizabeth Eden Harris alchemizes high raunch and vigorous navel-gazing. On her third album, Ephorize, her prickles have sharpened and her introspection has gotten more vivid: It’s like watching a flowering cactus grow tall and bloom. Her songwriting is also at its most generous, attending to her own insecurities on “Self Interview” and giving a messy group-hug to queerdom on “Crayons.” But it’s not all wholesome, thank God: There is sex aplenty on Ephorize, and CupcakKe has not receded from her role as a character annihilator. She relishes in piercing hypocrisies, often to establish her standards. At her most low-voiced and vulnerable on “Total,” CupcakKe starts examining mediocre relationships via their opportunity cost. “Post Pic” praises the timesaving joys of a sexting-only arrangement, with fun, gear-shifting swerves. The album’s standout, the magnificent “Duck Duck Goose,” is a playground of sloppy, bodily thrills. Ephorize is busy and porny, but the deep current of the album asks us to be good to one another. We have time to treat each other well, Ephorize tells us, and still make it to all our dick appointments. –Maggie Lange",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ps-38KVmS8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5a4bfe210c1ab40a8ff883ce/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Cupcakke.jpg,/dataset/artwork/CupcakKe-Ephorize.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/,2018,year,album,11,Ariana Grande,Sweetener,Republic,"Republic In some ways, big-budget pop was stuck in purgatory in 2018. Rap dominated the charts, and young guns like Troye Sivan, Billie Eilish, and Normani didn’t cross the “household name” threshold; many of the heavyweights, the Katys and Rihannas and Biebers, didn’t do much. And yet Ariana Grande fully ascended to Mount Olympus with Sweetener, an album filled with barnburners but also tremendous personality and even pathos. There are so many moments of catchy ecstasy on Sweetener, like the one-two punch of “everytime” followed by “breathin.” But beneath the soft edges and the streaming-friendly pop sheen, there’s also a deep sense of grace, growth, and self-expression. What is it about the soaring quality of Grande’s voice that sounds so much like eyes-closed, fists-clenched freedom? Between a terrorist bombing and breakups, here is a woman who has had a trying and, at times, terrifying few years; she puts it all in her music. “no tears left to cry” is a classic, convincing diva ode to resilience, and a song like “pete davidson” chronicles her personal life so closely, it’s basically a chapter in her memoir. If Sweetener was not quite enough to lift all of pop in 2018, it was—for those of us who seek our own salvation within the genre—a much-needed sugar rush. –Alex Frank",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BYr1br2Ee4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64b1973a37e30e506f0416db/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ariana-Grande-Sweetener.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ariana_Grande-Sweetener.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/,2018,year,album,10,Yves Tumor,Safe in the Hands of Love,Warp,"Warp Listening to Safe in the Hands of Love is like entering freefall. There are reference points, landmarks—a snare drum, a funk bassline, a pop vocal—but they whir past the ear. The drums tower over the mix; the bass fizzles; the vocal melodies tease but never coalesce into hooks. Samples begin midway through a note, as though someone has pressed play on a tape recorder a half-second too late. Where there should be the calming harmonies of a backup singer, anguished screams surface instead. Thorns choke the whole album. In Sean Bowie’s third album as Yves Tumor, the experimental musician obscures the usual entryways to a pop song, demanding that the listener clear a new route. It’s immediate and arresting work; plenty of music soothes pain, but little engages so directly with the mechanism of how the body responds to trauma, by assuming a new shape for survival. Safe in the Hands of Love approaches this process with a stark, unflinching gaze, holding the promise of resilience in its chaotic, beautiful brutality. In a year when any given day could be a new opportunity to wake up and hurt, Safe in the Hands of Love offered a disorienting form of reassurance. –Sasha Geffen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9teCJVTr_s,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76b0acfd34990009cf8b43/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Yves-Tumor-Safe-in-the-Hands-of-Love.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Yves_Tumor-Safe_in_the_Hands_of_Love.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/,2018,year,album,9,Tierra Whack,Whack World,Self-released,"Self-released Fifteen songs, 15 minutes: Tierra Whack did that. Whack World is a surreal audio-visual album that reveals the vivid imagination of the Philadelphia-raised artist, jumping from ideas with the snap of a finger. In her debut record’s short runtime, Whack explores the power of less as more, using every chance to land a new style, flow, or sound. She taps into her moody, sing-rap side on songs like “Flea Market,” then she gets on her Philly street-tale spitter tip with “4 Wings,” then widens her sound entirely, floating into the realm of current pop-rap radio stars on “Fruit Salad.” The 15 minutes thing isn’t a gimmick; it’s Tierra cutting all the fat, getting straight to the point, and giving everyone the rare album that demands instant replay. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuX8yOdrCVc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7be9588699b30008f1b039/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Tierra-Whack-Whack-World.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tierra_Whack-Whack_World.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/,2018,year,album,8,Low,Double Negative,Sub Pop,"Sub Pop Twenty-five years ago, when blaring angst was in, Low emerged as part of the slowcore movement—a group of bands who discovered untapped expressive possibilities in slowing down and dreaming away. The Duluth, Minnesota, outfit has continued to evolve unpredictably, delivering a long string of thoughtful, progressively rewarding albums. With Double Negative, their best work yet, Low once again rise above the cacophony by subverting it. In a year when all art could be mined for political subtext, Double Negative captured its pervasive dread like nothing else. Digitally deconstructed with producer BJ Burton, the record’s electronic noise attempts to strangle the human voice. Static prevails and flickering tones are almost untraceable to the instruments that made them. As austere as Double Negative gets, the mournful harmonies of Mimi Parker and Alan Sparhawk keep it from ever seeming impenetrable. “It’s not the end, just the end of hope,” Sparhawk murmurs into the maelstrom. Call them slowcore if you must, but this is also pretty hardcore. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gz5ACAg_iik,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650220357571b6377545f3bb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Low-Double-Negative.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Low-Double_Negative.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/,2018,year,album,7,Earl Sweatshirt,Some Rap Songs,Columbia / Tan Cressida,"Columbia / Tan Cressida Earl Sweatshirt has a lot weighing on his mind, and Some Rap Songs finds him wading through his thoughts. In this self-exploration, the 24-year-old hip-hop veteran created the most introspective record of his career to date, surveying the widening chasm between his spitfire youth and the family legacy he aspires to honor. This is roots music that repurposes sounds of the past (dusty vintage rap, African jazz, black American soul) in compact loops, influenced by a community of musicians that includes MIKE and Standing on the Corner, and inspired by his parents—especially his late father, the celebrated poet and political activist Keorapetse Kgositsile. Though primarily written and recorded before his father’s death in January, Some Rap Songs is a profound and often pointed rumination on connection, and in turn a searing personal statement. Few rappers possess Earl’s natural lyrical acumen, but even fewer possess the penetrating, perceptive gaze he has developed over time. Most rare are those who would use such insightfulness to work through their own issues. On “Peanut”—half eulogy, half psyche autopsy—he unscrambles the complex emotional brew that comes with mourning a distant parent whom you barely knew. On “Nowhere2Go,” he burrows through depression and seeks fulfillment. As Earl considers his poetic birthright amid a tangled personal history, things start to come into focus, and he begins a healing process. –Sheldon Pearce",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4caTCHR4xo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650510a6b07566d3ac5f7ccc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Earl-Sweatshirt-Some-Rap-Songs.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Earl_Sweatshirt-Some_Rap_Songs.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/,2018,year,album,6,Rosalía,El Mal Querer,Sony,"Sony The moment that Rosalía’s “Malamente (Cap.1: Augurio)” hit YouTube in May, it was clear that the young Spanish singer had struck upon something startlingly new. Where her largely acoustic 2017 album Los Ángeles had rendered flamenco tradition with skeletal brushstrokes, “Malamente” blew it up into widescreen HD and juiced it with THX-caliber bass. Co-produced by Pablo Diaz-Reixa, aka El Guincho, El Mal Querer makes thrillingly good on that single’s promise and the subsequent one, “Pienso en Tu Mirá (Cap.3: Celos),” flipping lightning-fast guitar runs and flickering castanets into hypnotic electronic fusions with unfamiliar scales that only add to their otherworldly qualities. To say the record plays up the tension between tradition and rupture would be an understatement: In “De Aquí No Sales (Cap.4: Disputa),” revving motorcycle engines are deployed as percussive accents over haunting a cappella fragments based on centuries-old folkloric melodies. At the center of it all is Rosalía’s showstopper of a voice. Whether breathy or belting, she’s as commanding a presence as Spanish-language pop has encountered in ages—less an ambassador for flamenco than the inventor of her own fascinating hybrid. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rht7rBHuXW8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64b194c24d755736fe4b0d2a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Rosalia-El-Mal-Querer.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rosala-El_Mal_Querer.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/,2018,year,album,5,Snail Mail,Lush,Matador,"Matador There were few moments in music as clear-eyed, emotionally courageous, and resonant this year as Snail Mail’s Lindsey Jordan calmly asking the love of her life, “Don’t you like me for me?/Is there any better feeling than coming clean?” As the guitars swirled around Jordan like comet trails, her gaze felt like it was fixed directly on you. The song’s name was the song’s feeling: “Pristine.” Listening to it felt like staring into the bottom of a riverbed and being able to count every pebble. Incredibly, the album enfolding “Pristine” contains at least four or five other moments as sharp, poignant, and honest. Anyone with a lifelong codependent relationship to indie rock will sense the echoes stirred by Jordan’s sour-apple guitars, the muted arrangements, and rich, conversational vocals: Pavement, the Spinanes, Liz Phair, Sebadoh, Hope Sandoval. But those references are just murmurs beneath the surface: It’s Jordan who demands your attention. Time and again, she approaches the chorus of her slow-burn rock songs like the kicker to the heartrending speech you never quite managed to give to your unrequited adolescent love: “And did things work out for you/Or are you still not sure what that means?” she asks on “Stick.” “I hope whoever it is holds their breath around you/Because I know I did,” she declares on “Heat Wave.” Over and over on Lush, Jordan’s heart pumps out like a reservoir, carrying us all aloft with it. –Jayson Greene",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tnTucP1UM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/647df852fc45260b788763db/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Snail-Mail-Lush.png,/dataset/artwork/Snail_Mail-Lush.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/,2018,year,album,4,Robyn,Honey,Konichiwa,"Konichiwa Robyn’s first album in eight long years reveals how she spent at least part of that time: drifting away from and then back to her longtime beau. Honoring the arc of that heartbreak, the songs on Honey are presented in the order in which they were written. The record’s first half—its strongest run of songs—is heaviest in theme, yet Robyn’s musical touch is deft. A deceptive slice of disco cheesecake, “Because It’s in the Music” cuts to the core of why heartbroken people need music to survive, and how those same sounds betray us with every nostalgic rewind. You can almost envision Robyn playing the same song on repeat all night before waking up to write “Baby Forgive Me,” a light-touch house ode subtly built up by syncopated drums, reverent organ, and the faint cheers of a crowd. Honey then abruptly shifts in tone. In the record’s big diva-house vocal moment, “Send to Robin Immediately,” she turns what might sound like an ultimatum into a rallying cry for staying true to oneself: “If you’ve got something to say, say it right away.” With these words, Robyn sets Honey free from her own sorrow and regret. She reaps the benefits immediately on the glorious title track, in which nearly every musical line sounds like it is panting. The possibilities rise alongside the BPMs, percussion galloping like the racing hearts of lovers entwined in rediscovery. By the closing credits of “Ever Again,” with a funk-lite band in tow, Robyn declares a ban on loneliness. Her happy ending is the faith that love can endure, and the knowledge that she will survive no matter what. –Jillian Mapes",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HA9ovGhP_Yo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7950016eee70000829f66d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Robyn-Honey.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Robyn-Honey.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/,2018,year,album,3,DJ Koze,Knock Knock,Pampa,"Pampa Many voices float through Knock Knock, like spirits. One of them is the sampled croak of what sounds like a thousand-year-old man. He talks about his kinship with music—how he sells it, listens to it, and plays it during most of his waking hours. In a metaphysical flourish, the old-timer boasts, “Look at my teeth: You see music on it.” The line is a joke, but he means it—and it’s easy to think of this mysterious guru as an avatar for DJ Koze himself. The German DJ, producer, and label owner has spent the last few decades cultivating a parallel musical universe, one based on a collector’s knowledge and a sense of play, where the histories of dance music and hip-hop and psychedelia are all pulled together by the same gravitational force. In this utopia, Knock Knock, a life’s work, plays on a continuous loop, and no one tires of it. Koze created much of the album in a remote Spanish village, a locale that he has described as “totally different from the desperate big city, where you try to make cool music.” The isolation plays out in Knock Knock’s bespoke frequencies: Each synth wobble is crafted with a watchmaker’s care, every snare hit manicured for maximum swing. And Koze has no truck with of-the-moment trends. The record’s featured vocalists—including Swedish folkie José González, Speech from the ’90s rap group Arrested Development, and modern dancefloor diva Róisín Murphy—are surprising and varied, the product of admiration rather than any type of algorithmic cross-referencing. So we get what could be a lost Van Morrison classic alongside an impossibly soulful Old Kanye-type beat alongside techno built for flying cars, everything holding everything else up. There are no barriers between genres, eras, origins—only freedom. –Ryan Dombal",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MczfNRvzl04,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a68484bc6510008699895/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/DJ-Koze-Knock-Knock.jpg,/dataset/artwork/DJ_Koze-Knock_Knock.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/,2018,year,album,2,Kacey Musgraves,Golden Hour,MCA Nashville,"MCA Nashville “Are we here just once or a billion times?” Kacey Musgraves asks on “Oh, What a World.” She wishes she knew but knows it also doesn’t matter: Who needs wholesale reincarnation when new love offers daily rebirths? Especially the kind that give renewed inquiry to questions that were once the preserve of stoners. Musgraves’ first two major albums concentrated on small-town existence, a lens that yielded slightly smaller returns by 2015’s Pageant Material. Golden Hour’s focus is existential: The newlywed singer-songwriter is learning to savor time, and to let it pass. Her inviting outlook is wrought through the record: softly strummed acoustic guitars that blur into sepia haze; boundless pedal steel as conduit for eternity, communing so effortlessly with touches of space-age funk that you wonder why nobody ever did it before. The latter provides one of Golden Hour’s most touching moments: On “Oh, What a World,” a robotic voice marvels at its surroundings and worries about how little time it has left—immortal, unfeeling machinery having a Pinocchio moment. Golden Hour is filled with these awed revelations, undercut with enough anxiety—and, more than once, snappy in-the-pocket disco—to keep Musgraves from floating off into a fever dream. Her wit isn’t diminished, but she’s less interested in scathing portraits or barbed payoffs than she once was. “And I think we’ve seen enough, seen enough/To know that you ain’t ever gonna come down,” she muses on one such dancefloor burner, “High Horse.” As ever, Musgraves sings about drinking, smoking, and acid, but her most prized high on this gorgeous album is rising above it all to see life in a different light. –Laura Snapes",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hwRe7scRiY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/641deb27aef545723eec5e31/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kacey-Musgraves-Golden-Hour.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kacey_Musgraves-Golden_Hour.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2018/,2018,year,album,1,Mitski,Be the Cowboy,Dead Oceans,"Dead Oceans At high noon, in the Wild West of our collective imagination, America began to romanticize the wrong kind of power. The cowboy strolled in—spraying bullets down Main Street, burning saloons to cinders—and his reckless bravado became something to be admired, not scorned. But in a year likewise full of ugly, macho confrontations shot from the hip, Mitski Miyawaki reclaimed the gunslinger’s confidence for herself. Channeling brash new characters on her fifth album, she embraced the opposite of her experiences, and the gambit paid off: This is Mitski’s most triumphant record to date, a refining of her many strengths, splashed across the largest canvas her arms can carry. Mitski’s familiar charms—scrappy guitars, cutting observations, nervy synths—return as conduits for deeper intimacies and grand declarations. Be the Cowboy finds her ready for the arena, with nimble, airtight songs full of broad pop choruses and big, irrepressible emotions presented as candidly as dry-cleaning receipts. Even in her 10-gallon hat, she fixes her gaze on universal torments: loneliness, devotion, wistfulness, defiance. With “Nobody,” her disco-piano romp of a single, Mitski turns the song’s title into the biggest sing-along of her career, those three syllables locking in all the lint of isolation: the despair, the self-loathing, the cruel and ever-dwindling hope for pardon. In “A Pearl,” she wails and pounds the crumbling walls of a toxic relationship, papering over the pain with power-ballad feedback, her lithe vocals carrying a wisp of forsaken echo. Mitski sets her credo on “Geyser,” Cowboy’s stunning opener. She weaponizes passionate, tenacious intensity—something women can be shamed for, particularly in non-Western cultures—and celebrates herself for it. In a Broadway belt, she cries of her desire, “Feel it bubbling from below/Hear it call, hear it call,” as wind-whipped guitars crest below. In the past, Mitski has never shown an interest in playing a role, whether that of the submissive Asian-American stereotype or the rebuker of such fetishism. Adopting hotshot narrators on Cowboy becomes even more significant in this context; in doing so, she’s said, she found the inverse of her apologetic experiences as a Japanese-American woman, and the empowerment ripples outward. Her character work is also a rebellion against the “confessional” pejorative foisted onto so many female singer-songwriters, the idea that women must be helplessly spilling these disclosures instead of savvily employing them. All of this makes her defiance even more liberating to hear. It’s good to have Mitski firing back for all of us; it’s even better to hear this true original growing into her limitless future. –Stacey Anderson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zdFZJf-B90,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/645d40634f4e20edab39a90b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mitski-Be-the-Cowboy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mitski-Be_the_Cowboy.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,100,Post Malone,“Rich and Sad”,Republic,"Republic On April 11, 1964, the burgeoning Beatles both topped the Billboard charts with “Can’t Buy Me Love” and set a record for the most songs in the Top 20 by a single artist, with six. That record held for 54 years, until this May, when Post Malone placed nine tracks in the Top 20, including “Rich & Sad” at No. 14. Some may consider this changing of the guard a pop travesty of apocalyptic proportions—or, at least, a shameless byproduct of newfangled streaming metrics—but there is actually some kismet at work here. “Rich & Sad” is buoyed by a psychedelic wheeze that recalls nothing less than “Strawberry Fields Forever,” and the song’s regretful message is a 21st-century twist on Paul McCartney’s 1964 revelation that more money does not necessarily lead to love. “I would throw it all away/I just keep on wishin’ that the money made you stay,” Post laments, sobbing into a pile of hundred dollar bills. The track brings the latent woe in the singer’s voice to the fore—how he often seems to be sinking in quicksand while yowling of the spoils of success, like a forehead-tatted canary in late capitalism’s doomed coal mine. Because as long as there are rich pop stars who need real love, there will be songs about how they can’t afford to find it. –Ryan Dombal",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZX8-ETX0pI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/629a1ab12d02603d4e7ae82d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Post-Malone-Beerbongs-and-Bentleys.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Post_Malone-Rich_and_Sad.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,99,Miya Folick,“Stock Image”,Terrible / Interscope,"Terrible / Interscope For Miya Folick, the traditional stress relief of a therapeutic soak isn’t working. At the start of “Stock Image,” she climbs in the warm water but only remembers to leave when it’s become so cold that she’s physically blue, too. In this vulnerable moment, she forgives herself for her faults and embraces her eccentricities: “You hide in the bones of a stock image,” she sings at the close of her chorus, her voice taking on a sudden operatic tremor. Pulsing drums and radiant synths propel and lift her, goading her into sharing intimate details—the hair swept under her bed, the long stares in her mirror, the fact that she struggles with it all. Avoiding escapism and platitudes, Folick pushes past hardship by first accepting it. “Stock Image” is a rare multivalent motivational song, as much a poke in the ribs as it is a reassuring pat on the back. –Grayson Currin",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_I46mszI4dE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5b2bc54c9e77c15c59ad7de9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/miya%2520folick%2520_%2520stock%2520image%2520_%2520single%2520art.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Miya_Folick-Stock_Image.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,98,Mac Miller,“Self Care”,Warner Bros.,"Warner Bros. Mac Miller let us know he wasn’t all right. In interviews, the rapper was always open about addiction, and on his final album, Swimming, he was even more candid and unflinching. No song painted a grimmer portrait of his final months than “Self Care,” a stark account of the external and internal forces that drove him to self-medicate; the track's only relief comes in the form of a woozy coda that plays like an implicit relapse. Following his death, the song is even more difficult to listen to, especially a wishful line about having all the time in the world. Miller may have recognized that he was waging a losing battle, but there’s still something beautiful about his resolve to keep fighting. –Evan Rytlewski",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsKT0s5J8ko,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5b48f7ac90d89b323d713aa9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/mac%2520miller%2520_%2520swimming.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mac_Miller-Self_Care.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,97,Young Fathers,“In My View”,Ninja Tune,"Ninja Tune There are biblical overtones to “In My View,” from Young Fathers’ third album, Cocoa Sugar. In this Scottish trio’s half-rapped, half-sung verses, references to kings, saints, sinners, and Delilah abound, and wisps of background vocals evoke a holy choir. If this is a hymn, though, it’s a harsh one, with a chorus insisting that progress comes with a price, possibly suggesting an eye-for-an-eye worldview. But nothing in “In My View” is perfectly clear, even if it is one of Young Fathers’ most accessible tracks to date. The group is still adept at crafting music and messages that don’t lend themselves to easy interpretation, no matter how clearly the words are delivered. So “In My View” becomes a sinewy soul song that swings and sways while riding an undercurrent of tension and uncertainty. Sweating out a marching band beat while simultaneously meditating on desire and betrayal, Young Fathers make anxiety sound smooth, and then the opposite, too. –Marc Masters",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQFPikYSalg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5a5fcb793bca4e30ca1e0810/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/young%2520fathers%2520_%2520cocoa%2520sugar_%2520album%2520cover.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Young_Fathers-In_My_View.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,96,Sharon Van Etten,“Comeback Kid”,Jagjaguwar,"Jagjaguwar Maybe now people can stop calling Sharon Van Etten “confessional” and stop assuming her songs are purely autobiographical. In “Comeback Kid,” the first single from her forthcoming LP Remind Me Tomorrow, she comes across as something between a film noir heroine, an Outsiders-esque rebel, and an aging boxer. She’s put away the strings and pedal steels in favor of synth and organ, at times bringing to mind Siouxsie Sioux. And in the song’s video, she’s all dark-pop ’80s glam in blood red lipstick, with an unwavering stare. “I’m the runaway, I’m the stay-out-late,” she declares, tough and incandescent. –Rebecca Bengal",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US4xCFUuHuQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5c1ba81a275359558e038a77/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/remind%2520me%2520tomorrow_sharon%2520van%2520etten.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sharon_Van_Etten-Comeback_Kid.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,95,Frank Ocean,“Moon River”,Blonded,"Blonded Joaquin Oliver, an avowed Frank Ocean fan who loved Blonde so much he’d dyed his own hair to match, was only 17 when he was gunned down in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting this past February. The same day, Ocean released a cover of the melancholy “Moon River,” from Breakfast at Tiffany’s. It was a coincidence; Ocean has made a habit of dropping songs untethered to any external schedule, preserving his shrouded, shamanic presence. On its own, his version already had a haunting quality, his quivering voice splitting harmonies over plaintive keys. But according to reports, some friends of Oliver’s saw the confluence as “divine timing,” the lyrics about a “moon river, wider than a mile” and “crossing it in style someday” ringing like a blessed premonition of their friend peacefully floating away. There have been so many random shocks of tragedy this year that mourning can feel a daily experience. But here, in Ocean’s chance release of “Moon River,” was proof of our world’s unplanned joys, too. It was the ether providing a balm at the same time it produced tragedy: an old-fashioned song sung in 1961 by Audrey Hepburn, pitch-shifted by a modern healer into something to soothe us. Joaquin Oliver might never have gotten to hear the song, but Frank Ocean’s “Moon River” will now always be his, a tiny consolation for a tragedy too big. –Alex Frank",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXiFHDfvn4A,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5a85f190000dc822199a6c9d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Moon%2520River%2520FO.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Frank_Ocean-Moon_River.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,94,Amber Mark,“Love Me Right”,PMR / Interscope,"PMR / Interscope “Love Me Right” is a wounded plea to a romantic partner who’s gone cold, a sumptuous R&B anthem that dips into house, samba, even smooth jazz. It’s also a neat snapshot of what New York singer, songwriter, and producer Amber Mark does so well. Her lyrics are conversational, relating to feelings anyone could experience, and her delivery rarely feels flashy. But her husky voice and globe-trotting sensibility bring all this to a place of understated opulence. In songs, as in relationships, intimacy sometimes means not having to spell everything out for the other person—and in the case of “Love Me Right,” the other person just doesn’t get it, and it’s not clear if they ever will. So when Mark asks, “Why won’t you realize you gotta love me right baby?” it already sounds like she’s moving on. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWvXfmwuiHU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5a9d67226cd8a464fb281b7e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/amber%2520mark%2520song.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Amber_Mark-Love_Me_Right.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,93,Aphex Twin,“T69 Collapse”,Warp,"Warp It’s hard to think of another electronic artist who’s enjoyed a late-career rejuvenation like Richard D. James. Instead of glum, self-plagiarizing stagnation, his artistic middle age has been a sustained eruption of surprise and delight. Continuing his current run, the Collapse EP bursts its skin with ripening creativity: a feeling of plenitude caught in its vocal snippet that promises to lead the listener to “the land of abundance.” Opener “T69 Collapse” is an apt herald of the richness within. It starts with the whispery crispness of intricately edited beats, skidding and slipping like a tap-dancer on an oily floor: a flashback to the serene frenzy of late-’90s drill‘n’bass, when James and his IDM comrades strove to beat jungle at its own breakbeat game. But things get really interesting mid-song, when the collapse referenced in the title occurs: a juddering tumble of drums that feels like an astrophysical rupture, time itself swirling down the cosmic plughole. The tune then pulls itself together like reversed film of an explosion, gliding out with feverishly dainty beatwork offset by a typically Aphex pensive melody, daubed in milky synth so tonally smeared it feels like your ears are being pulled out of focus. Twenty-seven years into his recording career and approaching his life’s half-century mark, James exhibits a limber vitality and an evergreen joy in creation that’s as remarkable as it is enviable. –Simon Reynolds",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqayDnQ2wmw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5b9141f2d244ec2c9bc112d9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/aphex%2520twin_collapse%2520EP.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Aphex_Twin-T69_Collapse.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,92,Charli XCX,“Track 10”,Asylum,"Asylum Released at the very end of last year, Charli XCX’s Pop 2 mixtape saw the electro-pop star perfecting her ongoing collaboration with maximalist bubblegum collective PC Music. Closer “Track 10” serves as a fitting end to a record in which angelic, sugary electronics easily turn dark, even grotesque. An odyssey of trust issues, the song is able to achieve that rare balance between extreme artifice and total honesty: Amid an effervescent rush of beats and vocal loops, Charli XCX hits the bridge and suddenly we’re home free, fear turned to fearlessness under the force of her belt. Her voice frays through the Auto-Tune at one point, like a speck of mud flung onto something very shiny, before giving way to harps and trap. As this crumbling volcano of a song goes down, it leaves the listener with one last “It’s Charli, baby” whispered in their ear. As if it could be anyone else. –Jillian Mapes",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpPt8NpYtJg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bcfcd0db1d10008f200ca/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Charli-XCX-Pop-2.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Charli_XCX-Track_10.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,91,700 Bliss,“Ring the Alarm”,Halcyon Veil,"Halcyon Veil Fellow Philadelphians Moor Mother and DJ Haram each make dense, noisy music on their own, but Spa 700, their debut EP under the name 700 Bliss, is as subtle as it is bracing. On the release’s sparse highlight “Ring the Alarm,” Haram constructs a rhythm that’s both insistent and halting, creating an experience that feels like listening to your own heartbeat. Into this web, Moor Mother injects blunt statements rapped with authoritative urgency, punctuating her repeated phrases with quick breaths. One of her bullet-like couplets—“You heard what I said/That anti-black’s programmed in your head”—sticks particularly hard, shot as it is through the barrel of Haram’s increasingly intense samples. The duo’s imperatives for action are certainly clear and timely, but “Ring the Alarm” shows that political music can be nuanced and brutally effective at once. –Marc Masters",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3b677kvS0g,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5a96bd7d6cd8a464fb28178a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/700%2520Bliss_Ring%2520the%2520Alarm.png,/dataset/artwork/700_Bliss-Ring_the_Alarm.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,90,Future,“Hate the Real Me”,Epic Records,"Epic Records Future’s music traces the occasional soaring victory and plenty other wins that are small, petty, spiteful. He’s interested in making you jealous of his furs and his girls; private flights to tropical villas are worth it if an ex sees them on Instagram and feels a pang of envy. But none of these things—pettiness, spite, Turks, Caicos—are the animating force behind Future’s music. That would be pain—the raw, uncut sort that lingers in the belly for years without end. “Hate the Real Me,” the last track on his and Zaytoven’s BEASTMODE 2, recognizes that pain as unresolvable. On the chorus, Future drones, “I’m tryna get high as I can”; the first verse has an extended passage about a woman describing her attempts to sleep with him, and then he lists each person who’s heard the rumor while sounding increasingly, irretrievably empty. There’s a reference to when he was shot as a teenager and a startling aside: “A sober mind wasn’t good for me.” Even his voice trembles. –Paul A. Thompson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WY_gbRGrmo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5b452dd0ab6b2c4f14a1084a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/beastmode2.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Future-Hate_the_Real_Me.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,89,Carly Rae Jepsen,“Party for One”,604 / School Boy / Interscope,"604 / School Boy / Interscope A lot of people still want a sequel to “Call Me Maybe,” perhaps none more than Carly Rae Jepsen herself. But even though everything she’s released since has followed a similarly winsome template, “Party for One” is Jepsen’s first explicit sequel to that hit. The intros are strikingly similar, the synths in the background play the same melody as the strings of “Call Me Maybe,” and there’s a direct lyrical callback. Again, Jepsen pairs sweeter-than-average music and blunter-than-average lyrics. For decades, it hasn’t been remarkable for a pop star to refer to masturbation—but it is remarkable to do so while setting the disarming, 1 a.m. “you don’t care about me” text to the sugariest of hooks. “Party for One” sounds like ending credits music for a teen movie that adults love too, the kind where angst is resolved and new love blooms in one glorious party of dancing and cheering and synchronized bursts of spangles. And like all good Carly Rae Jepsen songs, it makes that sound like the very first time. –Katherine St. Asaph",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFq4E9XTueY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651ada1e74b4443784c5f128/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Carly%2520Rae%2520Jepsen-%2520%2522Party%2520for%2520One%2522.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Carly_Rae_Jepsen-Party_for_One.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,88,Azealia Banks,“Anna Wintour”,Entertainment One,"Entertainment One Maybe it’s a Vogue/voguing pun, but Anna Wintour is an odd talisman for what Azealia Banks has described as a song “about finding myself.” The legendary, bobbed magazine editor is an icon of consistency. Azealia Banks is… not an icon of consistency. Mercifully, on “Anna Wintour,” the rapper’s messy public persona yields the floor to a bracing showcase of her dexterity. She pulls triple duty as house diva, raging wraith, and cold-blooded killer, nailing each part and metabolizing Junior Sanchez’s fiercely generic Ibiza track into a raw energy source. “Anna Wintour” joins “thank u, next” and “Honey” among the few songs about self-love released this year that betray greater depth than vapid Instagram inspo, and it offers a reminder of what makes the often-frustrating Banks so great: Like this song’s namesake, she knows how to keep us looking. –Laura Snapes",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=au8QGTiPhEw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651adbd3b361cdeda26ef59f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Anna%2520Wintour.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Azealia_Banks-Anna_Wintour.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,87,Migos,“Stir Fry”,Quality Control / UMG,"Quality Control / UMG Compared with Migos’ 2017 single, “MotorSport”—which had a wafting ethereality that pointed to a new post-trap direction—follow-up “Stir Fry” has the trio playing by old-school rules, and winning. Originally made for T.I. but never used, Pharrell’s beat is from 2008 and harks back even further still, recalling the raw funk of Neptunes productions like Mystikal’s “Shake Ya Ass.” Running through the whole of “Stir Fry” is a nagging ear-worm that’s positively primordial: a whistling motif based on an organ lick from Mohawks’ 1968 R&B tune “The Champ,” already sampled hundreds of times in hip-hop. Takeoff, Offset, and Quavo ride the loping, breakbeat-like groove, reeling off references to cheap fast-food chains that contrast with their more standard name-checks of expensive foreign watches and cars. It fits the contradictory aspiration expressed in Quavo’s Auto-crooned hook: the wish and the vow to “still be real and famous.” This was the year Migos became a meme: parodied in a “SNL” sketch, piling into James Corden’s “Carpool Karaoke.” They now exist somewhere between street and simulacrum, turning snapshots of vice and viciousness into blithe and buoyant entertainment. The tongue-twisting, lip-smacking assonance of this irresistible single’s chorus—“In the kitchen, wrist-twistin’ like it’s stir fry”—makes crack preparation seem as harmless and wholesome as a cooking show. –Simon Reynolds",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HI-mXMr8glQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5a3ac72954d6610a8752f9e5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/migos-stir-fry.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Migos-Stir_Fry.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,86,Mount Erie,“Distortion”,P. W Elverum & Sun,"P. W Elverum & Sun Over 11 riveting minutes, “Distortion” finds Mount Eerie’s Phil Elverum taking a series of plainspoken vignettes from his life and fastening them into a winding meditation on birth, life, death, responsibility, and resilience. We hear about the first two times Elverum saw a dead body—his great-grandfather, as a kid, and then his wife and the mother of his young child—and two portraits of wild young men who stare down the prospect of becoming fathers before they are ready. One of these is Elverum himself, who at age 23 hears that he may have impregnated someone with whom he’d had a random sexual encounter. And the other is the writer Jack Kerouac, the subject of a documentary Elverum watches during a long flight. There’s a lot to take in, and these stories at first seem arbitrary and unconnected. But as the song builds, they fold in on each other, collapsing the lines between past and the present, between reality and imagination, between what we can’t quite remember and what we will never forget. –Mark Richardson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul-gSdnQnlg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5a81ad81d218d80cf45aeeae/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mount%2520Eerie:%2520Now%2520Only.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mount_Erie-Distortion.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,85,Beyoncé / JAY-Z,“APESHIT”,Roc Nation / Parkwood,"Roc Nation / Parkwood No one was prepared for “APESHIT.” The lead single from Beyoncé and JAY-Z’s surprise joint album brims with cocky gratitude for the high life, flaunting Bey’s head-spinning flow and JAY’s louche, laid-back delivery over an expensive, pop-trap background courtesy of Pharrell. While clearly indebted to Migos, whose demo of the song leaked just a few days after the Carters’ came out, “APESHIT” is further proof that the zeitgeist belongs to this power couple, who can claim a cultural moment whenever they please. Bey lists off fashion houses and sports cars like they’re items on her grocery list, but it’s her sneering “Get off my dick” that really sets the tone. Of course, the song is only half the story—the lavish video for “APESHIT,” one of the year’s best, finds the Carters lounging and dancing around an empty Louvre in designer fineries, a seamless mashup of icons old and new. –Eric Torres",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbMqWXnpXcA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5b27cb06c87cd85577eaf7a4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Beyonce%25CC%2581%2C%2520JAY-Z%2520-%2520Everything%2520Is%2520Love.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beyonc__JAY-Z-APESHIT.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,84,Valee,“Vlone”,G. O. O. D. Music / Def Jam,"G. O. O. D. Music / Def Jam Valee is a serene individual. He keeps an indoor koi pond. And when an ABC sitcom hired him to make a cameo as himself, he was asked to portray a thoughtful, patient listener. As usual, the rapper is a calm presence on “Vlone.” He only has a handful of lines in the song, and none of them bestow any real wisdom—he just talks about the clothes he’s wearing. “These are vintage jeans,” he half-mumbles before offering a clipped affirmative: “Mhm.” The song is a subdued flex coupled with a borderline sleepy delivery. He’s got nice things, but he’s not going on and on about it. Over minimal instrumentation, he’s literally telling you to leave him alone. Especially if you’re broke. –Evan Minsker",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xk_YVcimlfA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5a999223340a1c29ad6d6daa/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/GOOD%2520Job%2C%2520You%2520Found%2520Me.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Valee-Vlone.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,83,Amen Dunes,“Believe”,Sacred Bones,"Sacred Bones Freedom, Damon McMahon’s fifth record as Amen Dunes, is sprawling and shimmering, lingering somewhere between a memory and a daydream. Nowhere is this more true than on “Believe,” which examines the false promise of nostalgia while fully enveloped in its rosy glow. The song is built upon a series of impressions: snatches of spiritual imagery, glimpses into a childhood scored by the radio, brief pronouncements of devotion rounding out otherwise unintelligible verses. These details simmer over insistent plucks of guitar and swells of harmonica, building to a cathartic climax as McMahon gives thanks for his past and confronts his future head-on. –Madison Bloom",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0xxKdcwqi0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5a81b09c73301b2d13c13ade/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Amen%2520Dunes:%2520Freedom%2520.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Amen_Dunes-Believe.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,82,JPEGMAFIA,“Macaulay Culkin’’,Deathbomb / Arc,"Deathbomb / Arc In what’s been a breakout year for Baltimore rapper JPEGMAFIA, “Macaulay Culkin” offered a brief glimpse into the man behind the music, sans all the piss and vinegar that made up his excellent Veteran LP. On this rare moment of reflection, he name-checks a few recognizable figures to assess how he truly feels behind the scenes. “I got my hands on my face like Macaulay Culkin,” he spits at the top of the two-minute track. “Black man, white fam, I feel like Jason Jordan,” he claims, referencing the WWE star. He’s Rick and Morty in the science lab, Mulder and Scully solving mysteries. All of which is to say: There’s no telling who you’ll get from one JPEGMAFIA track to the next. –Marcus J. Moore",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2sCay_KPj8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72ad6f6eee70000829f2c0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/JPEGMAFIA-Veteran.jpg,/dataset/artwork/JPEGMAFIA-Macaulay_Culkin.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,81,Lil Peep,“Life is Beautiful’’,Columbia,"Columbia It hurts to hear Lil Peep acknowledge that life can be worthwhile. He does it a lot, perhaps with some irony, in “Life Is Beautiful,” a song originally written and released in 2015 and then gorgeously reworked for the emo rap star’s posthumous album, Come Over When You’re Sober Pt. 2. On the track, Peep presents myriad of examples of how devastation is part of everyday life, whether it takes the form of a soul-crushing office job, being targeted by the police, or pining for the approval of your crush. But after each one, he seemingly shakes his head while asking the question: “Isn’t life beautiful?” The track’s producers, Smokeasac and IIVI, envelope his melancholy vocals with pooling synths and creaking cello lines, giving it a pulsating, breathing quality. In all its wounded grace, the song gets a chance at new life. –Michelle Kim",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ORsrbQa94M,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5be4b8b2f2477e2038d0d9ef/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/cowys2.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lil_Peep-Life_is_Beautiful.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,80,Nilüfer Yanya,“Thanks 4 Nothing’’,Blue Flowers Music / ATO,"Blue Flowers Music / ATO Nilüfer Yanya is no Ariana Grande. Where the megastar won platitudes for her magnanimity in “thank u, next,” the young London singer’s “Thanks 4 Nothing” is the bitterest sort of kiss-off. Yanya’s protagonist doesn’t just see the world through a glass-half-empty lens; she takes a sip and smashes her tumbler on the ground. “Will you and I waste this?/I won’t even try in case it don’t work/I hate you and I hate this,” she sings, her voice as unsteady as a small, wounded bird. Romantic fatalism has rarely been so straight-up nihilistic. Fortunately, Yanya knows how to make the most bilious heartbreak not just palatable, but even refreshing. Her pitter-pat drum machine and clean-toned guitar evoke the most wistful strains of vintage UK soul and indie, like Sade and Everything But the Girl, and her voice is nothing short of revelatory, capable of drawing a one-syllable word into a four-note melisma in the least showy way possible. And the vulnerability of her tone, octaves jumping like a catch in the throat, is the balm to counterbalance all that scorched-earth attitude, injecting every breath with a potent mixture of defiance and regret. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zsx1cOjydBA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5a7a164da1a351331dd2c2c3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/thanks%2520for%2520nothing%2520cover.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nilfer_Yanya-Thanks_4_Nothing.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,79,Rayvn Lenae,“Sticky’’,Atlantic,"Atlantic Nineteen-year-old R&B singer Ravyn Lenae may have been classically trained at the Chicago High School for the Arts, but she’s got a jones for experimental, jagged, synthy beats and left-of-center soul. Taken from her third EP, Crush, which was produced by the Internet’s Steve Lacy, “Sticky” is a full-tilt, psychedelic slow burn. By turns freaky and hypnotic, the song is like Lenae’s version of Prince’s Sign o' the Times deep cut “Strange Relationship”—the lyrics find her flummoxed in love, under the spell of topsy-turvy emotions. The intro, a flood of standalone organ chord changes, already sounds legendary; by the time the blunted groove drops and the hiccup melodies in the verses follow, you’ll be hooked. But it’s Lenae herself that makes “Sticky” glisten: Her gossamer mezzo sounds like a wicked mix of Kate Bush, Minnie Riperton, and Aaliyah. –Jason King",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y378ys4NZ0k,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651ae360fb86dccd1399abc5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Rayvn%2520Lenae-%2520Crush.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Rayvn_Lenae-Sticky.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,78,Lolina,“The River’’,Self-released,"Self-released Lolina, the experimentalist formerly known as Inga Copeland, has always played her cards close to her chest. In Hype Williams, her duo with Dean Blunt, she toyed with further aliases, offered only the most cryptic interview responses and performed masked or from deep inside a dry-ice fog. Her 2018 album The Smoke, which switchbacks through dissonant piano counterpoints and spindly Casiotone fugues, is not much more forthcoming. “The River” is the album’s most immediate track—it could almost be a vintage Tricky outtake, but trip-hop is rarely as unsettling as this. Synths chatter like roosting birds and beats drop out when you least expect, throwing her words into relief against sudden silence. Lolina switches between singing and speaking modes like someone who can’t decide whether to jog or to walk, sounding sullen and playful all at once. The conflict at the center of the song—“You tell me, ‘Open your eyes’/That means I won’t”—sounds like as true a thing as she’s ever sung. Wherever this river may lead, both its origin and its destination are known only to her. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtDddf94nPc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5aac17878195c0189f134f9b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The%2520smoke%2520Lolina%2520.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lolina-The_River.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,77,"Tyler, the Creator",“Okra’’,Columbia,"Columbia Tyler hasn’t talked his shit like this in years. Maybe he’s been too busy—launching a successful fashion line and music festival, making TV shows, and taking on the role of rap’s easy-listening radical with 2017’s Flower Boy. His deliberate empire-building across this decade almost makes you forget that he established his brand on total chaos, that he crunched down on a cockroach and staged his own hanging in the “Yonkers” video almost eight years ago. A spiritual successor to that breakout hit, “OKRA” is an unapologetically hard banger celebrating Tyler’s many wins. A blown-out bass ushers in Tyler’s crooked, Valee-nodding flow, as he rolls through an abundance of imperial lines including, “Tell Tim Chalamet to come get at me.” Consider this song a sneering reminder that the goblin is still somewhere inside him. –Matthew Strauss",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSbZidsgMfw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651ae8fdd92add4198b93af2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Tyler%2C%2520the%2520Creator-%2520Okra.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Tyler_the_Creator-Okra.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,76,Tirzah,“Devotion’’ [ft. Coby Sey],Domino,"Domino Tirzah sings “I just want your attention,” and time stops. When the British artist allows a line to leave her mouth, it lingers, intimate and close. On “Devotion,” desperation is felt in producer Mica Levi’s looped instrumental, elevating Tirzah’s quiet urgency with every slow-moving piano key and woozy beat of the drums. She wants it all, without exception: all the comfort, all the understanding, all the love. This is her plea, vulnerable to the point of transcendence—her aching desire to be with one other person only. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCmtAR4qQ9Y,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d78009f0db1d10008f1fcb5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Tirzah-Devotion.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tirzah-Devotion_ft_Coby_Sey.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,75,Helena Hauff,“Hyper-Intelligent Genetically Enriched Cyborg’’,Ninja Tune,"Ninja Tune In its dark, hypnotic call-and-response of acid squibs and synths jumping over distorted snares, “Hyper-Intelligent Genetically Enriched Cyborg” feels like a peek into the best rooms of techno’s past: the clubs of 1994 Berlin, or the industrial spaces of Cleveland in 1988. But this standout track from Helena Hauff’s excellent second album, Qualm, is rooted firmly in the present, too, down to its title subject matter: This year, pop culture has percolated with paranoia about technology, and, quietly, we’ve already seen futurism realized in gene-modified births. The techno future is here, and if we haven’t spent a lot of time questioning its fancy new tools—who has them, how they should be used—then we ought to. Hauff’s radical politics make it easy to hear this track as a sonification of the mind of such a gene-“cleansed” genius cyborg, as unmoored from humanitarian ethics as the corporations who built it. So listen warily to this siren’s warning. –Daphne Carr",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5b59eb84bdb17d3baf88e95b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/qualm.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Helena_Hauff-Hyper-Intelligent_Genetically_Enriched_Cyborg.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,74,Yves Tumor,“Noid’’,Warp,"Warp “Noid” seems to present an artist reborn: an antic experimentalist pivoting to pop in riotous fashion. But close inspection reveals Yves Tumor to be as intense as ever, with the song lurching into urgent extremes. It’s perhaps the year’s most visceral response to brutality against black bodies, refocusing the singer and producer’s dissident energy into music that involves, enraptures, and implicates. As Tumor repeats a few biting phrases (“9-1-1, can’t trust ’em...”), time seems to stall in a heightened moment, as if violence might be imminent. The beat propelling the cinematic strings, so harried and urgent, would sooner flee than fight, and indeed seems already on its way. From there, “Noid” presents a spectacular balancing act in which paranoia threatens to snap into terror. Rarely is radical art so neatly set at the precipice of delirium. –Jazz Monroe",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Edthfw5Pbxk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76b0acfd34990009cf8b43/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Yves-Tumor-Safe-in-the-Hands-of-Love.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Yves_Tumor-Noid.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,73,Gunna,“Sold Out Dates’’ [ft. Lil Baby],Quality Control/ Young Stoner Life,"Quality Control/ Young Stoner Life Both Gunna and Lil Baby grew from Young Thug’s rib, but the pair’s breakout collaboration, “Sold Out Dates,” owes just as much to Lil Uzi Vert’s “XO Tour Llif3.” It’s a mission statement for overmedicated troubadours with chemical dependencies, low-level paranoia, and $20,000 in one-dollar bills. “Dates” is produced by Turbo and Ghetto Guitar and sounds like the kind of thing a grizzled country star might pull out at an after-hours club, much to the dismay of his three publicists. Gunna and Lil Baby are likely destined for different kinds of stardom—slow-and-steady and stratospheric, respectively—but “Sold Out Dates” finds them perfectly in concert. –Paul A. Thompson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wp6oQlb--Ks,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7030ba7cf67c000854d4af/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Gunna-Sold-Out-Dates.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Gunna-Sold_Out_Dates_ft_Lil_Baby.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,72,Slowthai,“Ladies’’,Method,"Method Slowthai raps like every song is his last gasp. “Ladies,” a paean to the women who shaped the UK grime MC, is no less fevered, but it’s also his most open and wholehearted song yet. Delivered over a stuttering, 8-bit beat, Slowthai’s lyrics jump from the gaps in his teeth to the promise of a yellow brick road, rattled off with a characteristically impish grin. But there’s newfound tenderness and an unexpected kind of feminism here as he raps, “I appreciate queens ’cause they made us.” It’s a quality made even more evident in the accompanying music video, where he lays naked and prostrate next to a clothed woman and later faces the camera wrapped in her arms. He’s searching for redemption and, whether he finds it or not, the excursion is exhilarating. –Eric Torres",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRX2ME9scmg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651b01406b13cb7107712ca2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Slowthai-%2520Ladies.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Slowthai-Ladies.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,71,Pistol Annies,“Best Years of My Life’’,RCA Records Nashville,"RCA Records Nashville Heartbreak, of course, is country music’s meat and potatoes—and Pistol Annies’ Miranda Lambert, Ashley Monroe, and Angaleena Presley can do heartbreak. “Best Years of My Life” is a deceptively simple, devastatingly intimate domestic drama about love that left with a whimper, not a bang, and the mundane narcotics (prescription opioids and brainless TV) that help numb the ache. It’s a song that feels like listening to someone’s heart slowly snuff out from lack of emotional oxygen, with a sweet, sad, spare guitar line that slowly grows louder and fuzzier. The lyrics detail a compounded sadness; we mourn for the dead relationship, yes, but more so for all the possibilities its lingering dead weight is taking the place of. There are interior epics hidden and thrumming underneath the most ordinary events in human lives, and Pistol Annies excel at revealing them. –Alison Fensterstock",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KB3PPdvz_M,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5bdc72062403ae3dc512807e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/interstate%2520gospel.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Pistol_Annies-Best_Years_of_My_Life.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,70,Kamasi Washington,“Fists of Fury’’,Young Turks,"Young Turks Los Angeles saxophonist and composer Kamasi Washington’s second album commences with a rallying cry. “Fists of Fury” is a cover version of sorts, a bold refresh of Joseph Koo & Ku Chia Hui’s blaring theme tune for the 1972 Bruce Lee film Fist of Fury. In the hands of Washington and his band, though, it becomes explicitly political: a noble call for justice and retribution that feels like a call-to-arms for the Black Lives Matter era. There is a righteous anger here, but the track itself is utterly beguiling. The arrangements invoke the rhythmic motifs of Blaxploitation funk and Latin music, massed strings adopt a honeyed swoon, and Washington and pianist Cameron Graves turn out magnificent solos that give the song’s 10 minutes a sense of perpetual lift. A feat of graceful pugilism, “Fists of Fury” floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee. –Louis Pattison",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CHct5L-YjM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5b04265ed8a22521f9d48121/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kamasi%2520Washington:%2520Heaven%2520and%2520Earth.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kamasi_Washington-Fists_of_Fury.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,69,Marie Davidson,“Work It’’,Nina Tune,"Nina Tune On the surface, “Work It” is a walloping dancefloor motivational for the secure-the-bag generation. Quebecoise singer and producer Marie Davidson weaves an elegant lattice of analog percussion—thudding kicks, dotty drums, clanging digital cowbell—before swooping in with a stern, business-bitch monologue listing the virtues of hard toil. “I don’t wanna see any fake-ass workers,” she demands. “I need real builders.” Job done? Not quite. Considered in the context of its parent album, Working Class Woman, “Work It” emerges as part of a nuanced reflection on the psychological cost of being a touring musician—the physical and mental toll of hedonism, the stress of being your own boss. With this in mind, the song’s spoken text emerges as something more precarious: an admission of workaholism set to a runaway pulse that just can’t—or won’t—stop. It’s an important reminder of a truth that’s seldom spoken: You can still work yourself to death doing something you love. –Louis Pattison",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23Df3jHYTrs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651b033662209760f5a7a8b8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Marie%2520Davidson-%2520Work%2520It.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Marie_Davidson-Work_It.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,68,Empress Of,“When I’m With Him’’,Terrible,"Terrible “When I’m With Him” is a Trojan horse of a song, an exuberant dance-pop banger that conceals the internal loneliness of secretly falling out of love. Like Robyn, Empress Of’s Lorely Rodriguez refracts her sorrow through assertive drums and blossoming, golden synthesizers. The track’s skipping beat and sunny production transform heartache into tantalizing melodrama. Rodriguez does this with remarkable self-awareness, acknowledging that she is repressing emotions while still attempting to articulate those tangled feelings. She sings in both Spanish and English here, and each language provides a unique cadence; the Spanish phrases in the pre-chorus tend to be more staccato, while the following English phrases flow like cursive. Like sugar added to a savory stew, the contrast enhances both sensations. –Vrinda Jagota",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4dtT-Pvrkk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5b7d8b1ca78458227bd77ff2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Empress%2520Of%2520_%2520Us%2520_%2520Album%2520Cover.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Empress_Of-When_Im_With_Him.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,67,Lizzo,“Boys’’,Nice Life / Atlantic,"Nice Life / Atlantic In a year buoyed by auspicious hip-hop women, from Cardi B to Tierra Whack, Lizzo continues to brand herself as the no-fucks poster girl for the utopian promise of letting your freak flag fly. The classically trained Minneapolis musician’s single “Boys” is an infectious dance tribute to all things XY chromosome, topped by a saucy black-and-white video filmed in front of urinals. The song is freewheeling retro fun: The exuberant rhythm track recalls Timberlake and Timbaland’s “SexyBack,” and when was the last time you heard an old-school electric guitar solo during the bridge? Sassy to the hilt, Lizzo laundry-lists the boys who quench her thirst (“itty bitty boys, Mississippi boys”), and her declaration “Baby I don’t need you/I just want to freak you” pays homage to Missy Elliott’s combination of raunchy good-humor and sexual autonomy. Lizzo also racks up points for her inclusive approach to man crushes when she confesses: “I don’t discriminate, come and get a taste/From the playboys to the gay boys.” “Boys” ain’t rocket science, but it’s downright subversive to hear a plus-size black woman owning her sexual lust and essentially grabbing her own pussy in the face of persistent toxic masculinity. –Jason King",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQliEKPg1Qk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5b3288a28b7610470d0dd530/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/lizzo%2520_%2520boys%2520_%2520single%2520art.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lizzo-Boys.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,66,serpentwithfeet,“bless ur heart’’,Secretly Canadian / Triangle,"Secretly Canadian / Triangle On the chorus of “bless ur heart,” the word “heart” swells to fill a whole line. It grows eight extra syllables and as many sonic embellishments; a wall of sound that sensually mirrors the way love buoys every molecule in one’s body. The lead single from serpentwithfeet’s debut album soil, “bless ur heart” is a perfect introduction to his fantastical and fleshy style of songwriting. Vocally, there are nods to his church choir background and to his Brandy fandom—the two singers utilize a tremble to texturally convey tenderness—but it’s lyrically that serpentwithfeet really flies. In a song about a lover who taught him gentleness and inspired his writing, he imagines creatures to carry his notes deep underground, stories that grow feet, and bodies that rid themselves of rivers. That love and language can both be transformative is not a new tale, but it takes a gifted storyteller to show how snugly they dovetail. –Ruth Saxelby",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7VtBSanueQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5afee8ce2e977f2e8a1d6a41/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/serpentwithfeet:%2520soil.jpg,/dataset/artwork/serpentwithfeet-bless_ur_heart.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,65,Ariana Grande,“Sweetener’’,Republic,"Republic “Sweetener” is not subtle. “Hit it, hit it, hit it, hit it/Flip it, flip it, flip it,” Ariana Grande instructs on the chorus to her fourth album’s title track, resembling an X-rated game of Bop It. Amid the track’s svelte production—trickling percussion, cushy bass hits, a lusty and cascading synth line—Pharrell punctuates Grande’s commands with a high-pitched “sheesh!” like a steam whistle cutting through the air. It all adds up to a gleeful evocation of sensuality on an album consumed with the heady pleasures of new love. “Sweetener” carries a tender streak, too, embracing the notion of finding the good in so much bad, and toasting to the people in one’s life who encourage such perseverance. At a Manchester tribute concert following the deadly bombing at her show there last year, Grande said, “The fact that all of those people were able to turn something that represented the most heinous of humanity into something beautiful and unifying and loving is just wild.” And “Sweetener” embodies that same look-on-the-bright-side universality—a reminder that even the worst feelings can be turned into something radiant and nourishing. –Larry Fitzmaurice",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vay5SgNPpk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64b1973a37e30e506f0416db/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ariana-Grande-Sweetener.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ariana_Grande-Sweetener.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,64,Kurt Vile,“Loading Zone’’,Matador,"Matador In the space of a few seconds, Kurt Vile blends several feel-good guitar textures on “Loading Zones.” When the opening wah-wah flourish gives way to more intricate acoustic fingerpicking, the singer-songwriter shows an ability to channel artists as different as Peter Frampton and Fleet Foxes. In the first verse, his droll voice unspools in lines of uneven length—telling a fractured, dreamlike story about an improbable small-town power broker—suggesting a sincere love for vintage talking blues. Happily, none of this weaving of popular traditions sounds forced; the song’s distractible journey is the work of a mellow, lightly perplexed narrator. By now, though, Vile’s more committed listeners likely understand the narrative haze as the work of a deceptively purposeful songwriter, one who knows exactly where he wants to lead them. –Seth Colter Walls",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mbh43HgT4U,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5b75a9f2f45936445f7caa83/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kurt%2520Vile%2520_%2520Loading%2520Zones%2520_%2520Single%2520Art.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kurt_Vile-Loading_Zone.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,63,Snail Mail,“Heat Wave’’,Matador,"Matador Snail Mail’s “Heat Wave” is built atop contradictions. The song begins as a delicate ballad before unleashing triumphant, devil-may-care bursts of fuzzy indie rock. All the while, Lindsey Jordan displays both a tonal brattiness appropriate of her 19 years and a worldly wisdom, as she addresses a green-eyed ex who’s decided to move on: “I hope whoever it is holds their breath around you, ’cause I know I did.” Toward the end of the song, the rhythm section quiets and Jordan introduces a bold refrain—“I’m not into sometimes”—that turns into an anthemic distillation of unrequited young love. “Heat Wave” is neither acerbic farewell nor mopey retrospective, but a clear admission of the pain of rejection, and the hope that we’ll all eventually find whatever it is we’re searching for. –Noah Yoo",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-d91Qn8QUks,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/647e2b2dabc4a03ca6b3607f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Snail-Mail-Heat-Wave.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Snail_Mail-Heat_Wave.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,62,Octavian,“Hands’’,Drilla,"Drilla How do you follow up a sleeper rap hit? That was the question faced by London MC Octavian after “Party Here” catapulted him into the mainstream (thanks to one Aubrey Drake Graham). The answer: An idiosyncratic slice of dreamy electro-R&B. “Hands” does away with anything resembling traditional song structure. Instead, twinkling synths, pitch-shifted lyric snippets, and a driving bassline are brought together in experimental, James Blake-esque interplay. In all its genre-bending oddity, “Hands” serves as a clear sign that this young artist has ambitions that go way beyond a Drake co-sign. –Will Pritchard",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uIc1GQL2XE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5abcf1fcf131ec63502c4be6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/octavian%2520hands.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Octavian-Hands.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,61,Jeff Tweedy,“Having Been Is No Way to Be’’,DBPM,"DBPM Jeff Tweedy has been around long enough to know that any song he releases is a song that he'll have to live with for the rest of his life. So “Having Been Is No Way to Be,” off his memoiristic solo album WARM, sounds like he’s keeping his future self in check, crafting a surefire live staple that will force him to confront his urges and addictions night after night. The music is low-key, humble even: a loping acoustic strum; a low and sympathetic bass, like a steadying hand on his shoulder; a room-spinning guitar solo. But the lyrics are some of the most probing he’s ever written—in particular when he’s confronting the fact that some fans prefer the music he made while addicted to painkillers to the songs he wrote after he got clean: “But they’re not my friends/And if I was dead/What difference would it ever make to them?” With startling honesty, “Having Been Is No Way to Be” celebrates the fact that Tweedy gets to keep on living. –Stephen Deusner",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAAti2RlSgs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651b08f8b361cdeda26ef5bb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jeff%2520Tweedy-%2520WARM.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Jeff_Tweedy-Having_Been_Is_No_Way_to_Be.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,60,The 1975,“It’s Not Living (If It’s Not With You)’’,Interscope / Dirty Hit,"Interscope / Dirty Hit Of the many, many insults Matty Healy served himself on the 1975’s last LP, none dug deeper than “I’ve been romanticizing heroin.” Whatever countercultural cachet opioids once held has been negated by the undignified deaths of Tom Petty and Prince, along with the suffering of guys like Danny, the physically broken gas station employee that Healy uses as a stand-in for himself on “It’s Not Living (If It’s Not With You).” Though it’s a dark meditation on drug use, the song could anchor a crushed-out mix if you ignore its lyrics—a decent likelihood, since it’s one of those ruthlessly efficient pop machines that merges hair metal and ’80s stadium synth-pop. But “It’s Not Living” devastates because it presents Healy—a guy who’s scrutinized every aspect of our modern existence—as someone who knows he can never satisfactorily answer the one question that tortures anyone close to an addict: Why? –Ian Cohen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzfKn-hlZwo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651b0ac96b13cb7107712ca4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The%25201975-%2520%25E2%2580%259CIt%25E2%2580%2599s%2520Not%2520Living%2520(If%2520It%25E2%2580%2599s%2520Not%2520With%2520You)%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_1975-Its_Not_Living_If_Its_Not_With_You.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,59,Arctic Monkeys,“Four Out of Five’’,Domino,"Domino After a dozen years, six albums, and more success than anyone expected, Alex Turner is bragging about Yelp reviews on the damn moon. With Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino—and this track, its centerpiece, in particular—Arctic Monkeys present a ’70s rock lounge-lizard homage to future problems: What happens when we also ruin outer space with aggressive capitalism, gentrification, and information overload? It’s a scary, funny thought, and Turner, ever the deft vocalist, plays up both qualities in equal measure. His pitch-black Bowie croon shows a flash of conviction when he boasts of a four-star user review for his lunar taqueria—“And that’s unheard of!” At first, the song starts and stops in fits, like a latter-day Jack White track that can’t quite figure out if it has a rock rhythm or a rap one, before taking on a dreamy psychedelic quality. Maybe the moon’s marketing creeps are lulling listeners into a fake sense of security, which makes you wonder: Who’s vetting all these glowing reviews, anyway? –Jillian Mapes",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71Es-8FfATo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651b0c1f1cedb7acc222011d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Arctic%2520Monkeys-%2520Four%2520Out%2520of%2520Five.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Arctic_Monkeys-Four_Out_of_Five.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,58,MorMor,“Heaven’s Only Wishful’’,Don't Guess,"Don't Guess The debut single from Toronto’s Seth Nyquist bears all the hallmarks of a homespun indie-pop project: the sullen jangly guitars, the vacuum-sealed production, the skeletal “Billie Jean” beat that sounds like an outline for some pro drummer to embellish later on. And this is to say nothing of the open-ended yet intensely introspective lyrical confessions of a “poor boy” who’s “waiting for answers” and “hoping to find meaning” so that he can “break this feeling.” But despite its greyscale mood, “Heaven’s Only Wishful” nonetheless bottles up the thrill of a DIY producer realizing his potential in real time. While the song’s tempo never changes, the temperature certainly does: As Nyquist piles on Morse code squeals and grinding guitar solos, his understated cool gives way to unrestrained anger. “Some say/You’re the reason I feel this way,” he screams at an unspecified target in the song’s dying moments—an emotional breakthrough as dramatic and revelatory as his musical one. –Stuart Berman",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PvIIn6cc1M,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5a74ab2524df5e3693c62967/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/mormor%2520cover.jpg,/dataset/artwork/MorMor-Heavens_Only_Wishful.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,57,BlocBoy JB,“Look Alive’’ [ft. Drake],OVO Sound / Warner Bros.,"OVO Sound / Warner Bros. There’s a running joke that getting a feature from Drake is like handing him the keys to a vehicle that won’t be returned: When he hops on a young artist’s track, he can’t help but steal their shine. But BlocBoy JB’s breakout single “Look Alive” bucks this trend—not only does JB manage to hold his own throughout the song, he actually draws attention away from Drizzy. Over ominous production that mixes the lowest of piano notes with bulky bass, JB breathlessly jumps in as Drake’s verse ends, radiating confidence with rapid rushes of goofy punchlines that are as witty as they are amusing (“I’ma spray ’em, just like Febreze”). After this track, JB’s career is on a fast climb, and it’s not hard to see why. –Trey Alston",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV-3s2wwC8c,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5a7e0aaf000dc822199a67c5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/look%2520alive%2520cover.jpg,/dataset/artwork/BlocBoy_JB-Look_Alive_ft_Drake.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,56,Amen Dunes,“Miki Dora’’,Sacred Bones,"Sacred Bones Amen Dunes’ “Miki Dora” is a wave that never breaks, a cosmic surf beat that pulses for five minutes as singer-songwriter Damon McMahon’s reassuring voice and oceanic lyrics hover above the swell. All of the song’s basic information—melody, groove, texture—arrives in the first 30 seconds, a compact and transcendental good feeling. Then the small shifts keep coming: ever-widening guitar parts around the central thump, miniature drama with a vocal modulation about halfway through, a pile of stacked self-harmonies near the end alongside guitar lines that sound like they’ve been run through a warbling cassette tape. It’s a long way from the discombobulated constructions of McMahon’s earliest work nearly 10 years ago, with the haze now transmuted into a gentle glow, the sun sinking into the digital surf. –Jesse Jarnow",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RONXqXaF8oI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76ac1e9ce93e000838225b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Amen-Dunes-Freedom.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Amen_Dunes-Miki_Dora.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,55,Yaeji,“One More’’,Self-released,"Self-released Polyglot club phenom Yaeji spent 2017 offering up track after track of deep house filtered through the minimalist insouciance of modern R&B. She was strong enough to blow through electronic music’s biases and remix nightlife in her own image, all the while launching lyrical doozies like “I don’t fuck with family planning.” But the rolling bullshit of this year left her personally betrayed, frustrated with the industry, and rationally furious. So Yaeji returned this fall with “One More,” a self-made and self-released middle finger to men who expect women to do all the work. It is a mood, tossing and turning from gauzy quiet storm to Björk-y drum breaks and heartbreak, where even a quick turn towards euphoria ends up twitchy. It not only moves the body, it surely moves on. –Jesse Dorris",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIDDfl5nUiM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5baa8737ba92702ce4891da9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Yaeji-One-More.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Yaeji-One_More.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,54,Cardi B,“I Do’’ [ft. SZA],Atlantic,"Atlantic Flipping a phrase commonly associated with matrimony, “I Do” drastically shifts the narrative with just three little words: “I do what I like.” The closing track from Cardi B’s Invasion of Privacy, it finds the rapper taking back power in the face of hearsay—all while reaping the benefits of her self-made empire. With nods to Gucci and YSL, “I Do” can seem at times like a shopping list for Barneys, but it endures above all as a celebration of financial autonomy and sexual empowerment. Cardi and SZA stalk the foreboding beat, flexing atop skittering hi-hats and something like detuned church bells. They count out their cash and accomplishments without a scrap of shame; Cardi feels so sexually superior, she claims to shout her own name in the sack. They don’t shy away from naming their desires, but as usual, they’re not asking others to provide for them—they’ve got that part handled. –Madison Bloom",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Psn0fiNaHOw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d794ea24bc6510008699745/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Cardi-B-Invasion-of-Privacy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Cardi_B-I_Do_ft_SZA.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,53,Sheck Wes,“Wanted’’,Cactus Jack / G. O. O. D. Music/ Interscope,"Cactus Jack / G. O. O. D. Music/ Interscope For many teenagers in New York—whose days are spent wandering through the city being ignored by adults and stalked by cops—nowhere ever really feels like home. On “Wanted,” Harlem’s Sheck Wes embodies that nomadic lifestyle as he tries to maneuver through a place where everyone just wishes he would go away, convinced he’s only up to no good. Realizing that he won’t be accepted no matter what, he opts to wreak havoc: boosting items from downtown to sell uptown and wilding on the subway, carving out some control wherever he can. It’s why Sheck Wes has become the voice of the unheard youth in NYC, and beyond. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBD9tYIeZb4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5bb7afe526c20b7bcebf0f89/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/mudboy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sheck_Wes-Wanted.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,52,Sons of Kemet,“My Queen Is Harriet Tubman’’,Impulse!,"Impulse! Sons of Kemet’s “My Queen Is Harriet Tubman” is a standout from a strong year for London’s burgeoning jazz scene. The song was written as an interpretation of the famed abolitionist’s initial escape from slavery via the Underground Railroad. Tubman’s bid for freedom is brought to life in an urgent, relentless, and tightly wound melee of sax, drums, and tuba; players weave in and out like those moving along a loosely defined network of routes. The song is reflective of more contemporary times as well. Over five-and-a-half minutes, the track plumbs the UK capital’s rich, diasporic mesh of cultures: Afrobeat rhythms and freeform sax playing with an energy that resembles the golden era of pirate radio grime sets, typified by huddles of MCs passing a microphone around. Exclamatory stabs from the sax sound like reactive ad libs, and there’s a sense of unbridled joy running throughout. “My Queen Is Harriet Tubman” ends as abruptly as it began, leaving pure adrenaline coursing from ear to aorta. –Will Pritchard",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twjaSC5Ym9s,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d6ff0519cec850008642dec/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sons-of-Kemet-My-Queen-Is-Harriet-Tubman.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sons_of_Kemet-My_Queen_Is_Harriet_Tubman.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,51,Sandro Perri,“In Another Life’’,Constellation,"Constellation Over a bubbling synth beat and lyrical guitar fills, Canadian singer-songwriter Sandro Perri vividly imagines a better place, one where “the seed of greed dissolved in thirst.” But by walking us step-by-step through his impossible dream, steadily unfolding one verse after another for 24 patient minutes, Perri offers an additional experience that enlivens his description of this weary utopia. This parallel existence isn’t just in our imaginations: By taking the song in and following its gentle curves, we start to become one with its rhythms, syncing with its gurgling, ceaseless flow. “In Another Life” isn’t a perfect prescription—many lines don’t make sense—but rather a space to inhabit, one that can be transformational in the right headspace. As we so often find ourselves struggling to cram in every last piece of crucial data, here is a song that has all the time in the world. –Mark Richardson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iREC2GrXA6w,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5b9693141265072719e8007b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sandro%2520Perri%2520_%2520In%2520Another%2520life%2520cover.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sandro_Perri-In_Another_Life.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,50,Lucy Dacus,“Night Shift’’,Matador,"Matador It’s called the graveyard shift for a reason. Night can bring terrors, but moments of lucidity can also lurk within its quiet shadows. Lucy Dacus knows this duality all too well in “Night Shift,” a strung-out swamp of feelings about a breakup and the ensuing attempts to trying to hack away at the emotional cartilage that binds you to an ex-lover. The nearly-seven-minute track portrays a person flung off her axis and haunted by specters. Its racked, exquisite agony—and teeth-gritting determination to face the future without that loser ex—marks it as one of Dacus’ greatest songs to date. After a hushed opening, the song ignites as a chugging guitar riff cedes to Dacus screaming, in a bludgeoning wail, that she’s settled for second-rate treatment for the last time. They say that you learn something, good or bad, from every relationship. Dacus’ emotional purging feels like a much-needed vomit after a night of excess. The taste lingers, but wipe your mouth and keep on walking. –Owen Myers",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WDZdT04ls4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64077ad16e31d2053dffc0c5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lucy-Dacus-Historian.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lucy_Dacus-Night_Shift.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,49,Low,“Always Trying to Work It Out’’,Sub Pop,"Sub Pop As the two vocalists of Low, the experimental rock project they’ve helmed since the early 1990s, Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker play to their differences. Sparhawk’s voice has a rough, earthy grain that makes him the perfect foil to Parker’s crystal vibrato; the contrast in texture between the two lends depth to their slow, simple arrangements. On “Always Trying to Work It Out,” from the desolate landscape of Double Negative, Parker and Sparhawk add a new element to their vocal dynamics, texturing their voices with prismatic studio effects. Each singer’s voice fractures into pitch-shifted strands; they’re harmonizing with each other, as they usually do, but they’re also singing against alternate visions of themselves over the steady chug of a bass drum. Their voices fray and unravel, sounding as if they’re just missing each other. “Always Trying to Work It Out” stands as one of the loneliest and most poignant cuts off an album consumed with the feeling of isolation. Singing to someone and not knowing if they’ll hear you can be harder than singing to no one at all. –Sasha Geffen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbnS-1ZQPD0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650220357571b6377545f3bb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Low-Double-Negative.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Low-Always_Trying_to_Work_It_Out.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,48,Soccer Mommy,“Your Dog’’,Fat Possum,"Fat Possum Soccer Mommy’s Sophie Allison wastes no time stating her thesis here: “I don’t wanna be your fucking dog.” The ultimate kiss-off to unhealthy power dynamics, “Your Dog” seethes with resentment, as Allison recounts a partner’s offenses: emotional neglect, using her like a “prop,” choking her with a metaphorical collar and leash. Though her voice falters into tender, multi-tracked murmurs when she describes the forehead kisses that keep her coming back for more—mimicking the confusing cycle of forgiveness in a toxic relationship—Allison’s delivery throughout the song is determined and self-possessed. “I want a love that lets me breathe,” she exclaims as the track deteriorates into a squall of noisy guitar feedback. This isn’t a bruised confession about an emotionally manipulative ex: It’s a declaration of sovereignty. –Braudie Blais-Billie",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ouem6cFXJvA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651724315569c29d27877422/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Soccer%2520Mommy-%2520Clean.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Soccer_Mommy-Your_Dog.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,47,Empath,“The Eye’’,Get Better,"Get Better West Philly noise-pop quartet Empath’s best song yet is named for a phrase plucked from feminist poet Adrienne Rich: “the tear that washes out the eye.” Despite its literary origins, the reference is far from overwrought—Catherine Elicson, who sings, plays guitar, and writes for the group, tends to let intuition guide her lyrics, deciphering their meaning after the fact. Instead of overthinking things, Elicson doubles down on the pop form here, concocting an infectious hook while throwing in a few “baby”s for sexy punctuation and treating the poet’s words like decorative wallpaper. This subversion—de-escalating high art and lifting up the low—is a delicious twist that tops off the anarchic fun of “The Eye,” a hurtling three-minute endeavor in which drones collide with wind chimes and birdsong and indecipherable crew vocals tease juicy secrets. –Olivia Horn",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoDuEheqF-A,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5abbe94792243050dbec06a5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Empath_Liberating_Guilt_and_Fear_IG.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Empath-The_Eye.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,46,Kacey Musgraves,“High Horse’’,MCA Nashville,"MCA Nashville Of all the stinging one-liners on “High Horse,” the most revealing is when Kacey Musgraves declares, “You’re classic in the wrong way.” Musgraves, by contrast, has built a career out of being classic in the right way. The singer made her name on vintage, pedal-steel country with a fiercely contemporary perspective, and this song turns toward the dancefloor by reaching back for a sultry Bee Gees strut. And yet, “High Horse” is no nostalgia play. The sleek production sounds every bit as timely as the 2018 indie disco-pop of Mitski’s “Nobody” or U.S. Girls’ “Rosebud,” while the lyrical horseplay—this self-impressed loudmouth clearly won’t come off it, so he better just “giddy-up, giddy-up”—is a perfect chef’s kiss of a kiss-off. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbNDJRwXKGc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/641deb27aef545723eec5e31/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kacey-Musgraves-Golden-Hour.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kacey_Musgraves-High_Horse.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,45,Tierra Whack,“Hungry Hippo’’,Self-released,"Self-released “Hungry Hippo” is a manifesto from a hip-hop chameleon. Tierra Whack tells us we’ll never get a long look at her, someone whose interior life moves so fast, we’re lucky just to hear a flash of it. The song begins with a plinking melody, like a sophisticated ice cream truck coming down the block, before Whack’s voice arrives, dripping with glamour. “He likes my diamonds and my pearls,” she sings, preening, “I said, Thank you, I designed it.” In this way, “Hungry Hippo” gets closest to Whack showing herself as the artist behind her concealing designs. It’s one of the most flirtatious reveals on Whack World, an album of one-minute songs that Whack rolls out to us like gems before quickly snatching them back. –Maggie Lange",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVdSAhRsVQU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5b18380bd25b7272360c56d9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Tierra%2520Whack_Whack%2520World%2520EP.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tierra_Whack-Hungry_Hippo.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,44,Jessica Pratt,“This Time Around’’,Mexican Summer / City Slang,"Mexican Summer / City Slang Like all of Jessica Pratt’s best songs, “This Time Around” puts equal emphasis on the familiar and the fadeout. It’s like a gorgeous, muffled refrain from the radio of a passing car, just brief enough to get stuck in your head but too fleeting to make out the words. Pratt’s psychedelic folk music is strikingly solitary, with little more than her vocals and guitar; it doesn’t suck the listener in so much as wave them forward, to be immersed at their own pace. It’s easy to take for granted when an artist is able to conjure such strange atmospheres with such simple sounds. While the world has gotten much louder in the three years since her last album, “This Time Around” promises her sanctuary of song remains intact—as cozy and addictively alien as ever. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDi6C8AeTVI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5de6c995b9e6f50008a3054a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jessica-Pratt-Aeroplane.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jessica_Pratt-This_Time_Around.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,43,Rico Nasty,“Rage’’,Sugar Trap,"Sugar Trap “Rage” evokes an immersive world in which women’s anger is as thrilling as it is cathartic. Channeling her inner berserker, Rico Nasty’s prickly rasp does wonders here, puncturing producer Kenny Beats’ thick walls of crunch and bass. Like a chain mace, Rico’s flow can be nimble or dense, swinging with the beat or smashing against it. On “Rage,” every punch lands; every shriek pierces. Rico’s rage here is deft but not directionless. As she mows down biters, doubters, challengers—basically anyone in her way—she raps with cutting precision. And as Rico channels her own fury, she also shouts out the bad bitches who rage just as hard. Any schmuck can get upset; rage, Rico shows, is a commitment. –Stephen Kearse",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91QQqfr1qzE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651b1db3dde683d5bc973b6d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Rico%2520Nasty-%2520Rage.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Rico_Nasty-Rage.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,42,Mitski,“Geyser’’,Dead Oceans,"Dead Oceans “Geyser” may depict intense, undeniable devotion, but it rejects the elation typical of love songs. On the track, Mitski doesn’t recount the specific joys of being with another person. Rather, she turns inward, singing about her desire more broadly, as a force that brews like a geyser about to erupt. Mitski has explained that “Geyser” is about her relationship to music rather than romance, about how there is a certain desperation in the music made by people who know they couldn’t possibly do anything else. This sense of passion, swirling with the gravitational pull of a whirlpool, is bigger than any one person or situation. –Vrinda Jagota",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zdFZJf-B90,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651b1eb0dde683d5bc973b6f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mitski-Geyser.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Mitski-Geyser.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,41,Lady Gaga / Bradley Cooper,“Shallow’’,Interscope / Warner Bros.,"Interscope / Warner Bros. In A Star Is Born, Lady Gaga’s character Ally sits in a grocery store parking lot with Bradley Cooper’s Jackson Maine, who inspires her to spontaneously write and sing a verse from what would become “Shallow.” Within a week, the pair are singing a full-band version of the song to a crazed live crowd (apparently, Maine telepathically learned the rest of it). The film proselytizes that kind of organic, meant-to-be songwriting over processed pop, though in real life, composing “Shallow” involved four different writers, including Mark Ronson and the guy from Miike Snow. If it takes that much work to make something sound so natural, it’s worth it: When Gaga hits her deep-throated yelp in the song’s back third, it’s a true punch-the-air moment of triumph. It sounds like something out of the movies. And then you realize it is. –Matthew Schnipper",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bo_efYhYU2A,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c9339dc33d2bb960c151e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lady-Gaga-A-Star-Is-Born-Soundtrack.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lady_Gaga__Bradley_Cooper-Shallow.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,40,Rae Sremmurd,“Powerglide’’ [ft. Juicy J],Eardrum / Interscope,"Eardrum / Interscope On “Powerglide,” Rae Sremmurd and Juicy J assert their status as some of the most successful stars in rap by invoking all the familiar tropes: fast cars, fine jewelry, fashionable women. But while Swae Lee and Slim Jxmmi are bigger than ever, some things in the Rae Sremmurd universe remain unchanged, going all the way back to their “No Flex Zone” days: Mike-WiLL made it (again), and the Mississippi duo still couldn’t care less about any of their various luxuries, warbling about the byproducts of their prosperity with blithe indifference. “I don’t care if she take all of mine, like it ain’t shit but a dollar sign,” Swae Lee proclaims at the end of the chorus. Weird flex, but OK. –Noah Yoo",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95Rzsn-zjr0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5a9889ba50d3cd0aec82efb4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/powerglide%2520cover.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rae_Sremmurd-Powerglide_ft_Juicy_J.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,39,Earl Sweatshirt,“December 24’’,Tan Cressida / Columbia,"Tan Cressida / Columbia The beat of “December 24” is woozy and warm. It has no edges. It sounds like what would happen if you tickled a Mobb Deep instrumental until it broke out giggling. It never comes into focus, no matter how you squint—if it were an eye test, you would fail it. Earl Sweatshirt keeps things blurry on purpose throughout his album Some Rap Songs, and the decision suggests a lot of things about his worldview: False clarity is inimical to truth; metrical perfection crowds out life. He doesn’t worry about his voice syncing perfectly with the beat on this song—he just dances above it. Muffled explosions detonate in his lyrics, which reverberate with death, sickness, grief. His grandmother, eulogized on his previous albums, appears as a memory here, “on a drip drink” of morphine at the hospital. Hearts and limbs break, and Earl wonders who will help him when his own bones turn brittle. He’s 24. At that age, your bones are young, springy, quick to heal. But he sounds deeply unconvinced, as if he has intuited somewhere just how little it takes to shatter. –Jayson Greene",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvtpGspVHgs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650510a6b07566d3ac5f7ccc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Earl-Sweatshirt-Some-Rap-Songs.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Earl_Sweatshirt-December_24.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,38,Vince Staples,“FUN!’’,Def Jam,"Def Jam What stands out on “FUN!” is Vince Staples’ deliberate patience as an MC as he searches for a connective rhyme with each syllable. Even when it doesn’t work out, the attempt creates sonic pleasure. Vince is one of the best reporters working today, which is why his songs often feel like spectacular, inviting world-building. This song, which lifts its sound from the Bay Area’s hyphy scene and features E-40, is like the night after the last day of school, with nothing but warmth and endless possibilities ahead. Amid spacey and bounceable production, Vince charts the geography of a neighborhood, both at ease in it and not. There’s something special about the way he is able to unfold these spaces in a song that runs under three minutes. Nothing is wasted; everything flourishes. –Hanif Abdurraqib",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vz9-pXuvFEU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6517250c6ca93883ed139827/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Vince%2520Staples-%2520FM!.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Vince_Staples-FUN.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,37,Lana Del Rey,“Venice Bitch’’,Interscope,"Interscope Over the course of the last seven years, Lana Del Rey has transformed herself from a viral phenomenon to the center of her own sad-girl artistic universe. She’s not above mainstream friendly moves, but she’s also long shown a willingness to follow her Americana muse wherever it might lead. On “Venice Bitch,” she head-fakes toward the middle of the road but ends up someplace gloriously bonkers. Lana worked on the song with Jack Antonoff, whose hits with Taylor Swift and Lorde could’ve forecast it to be streamlined Top 40 fare. Instead, “Venice Bitch” is almost 10 minutes of folk-rock introspection, as Lana mashes up decades of cultural signposts—Hallmark, a Father John Misty album name, a favorite Robert Frost line—into her own nü-Laurel Canyon epic. This is Lana doubling down on her Lana-ness: Lana squared, Lana rebooting Being John Malkovich. Perhaps she’s commenting on the supposed stability of small-town, pre-rock’n’roll living—the album “Venice Bitch” precedes is titled Norman Fucking Rockwell—amid the gentle plucks and bleary solos of rock’s post-hippie comedown. Or maybe she’s just cracking herself up. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qg3DxELVPj4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650a4595c60b99f119caa51b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lana-Del-Rey-Venice-Bitch.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lana_Del_Rey-Venice_Bitch.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,36,Yves Tumor,“Lifetime’’,Warp,"Warp The drums on “Lifetime” feel like being pulled under the ocean. Recalling the explosive fills of the Smashing Pumpkins’ Jimmy Chamberlin or the fluid, ecstatic musicality of Liturgy’s Greg Fox, they seem to be battering you from every angle, possibly moving in several directions at once. The little hi-hats feel like sharp gasps for air. Above and around this clattering mass of sound, Yves Tumor demonstrates how unusual a rock anthem can be. The song’s chorus soars upward with all the chest-beating angst of Bono circa “New Year’s Day,” but the words make no sense, or they make such a hyper-specific kind of sense that we are left entirely out of the equation. The only thing that is clear is we are being given a startling keyhole into a howling emotional storm. –Jayson Greene",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TY0qllYc8as,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5b8ff3122139ed4e0509aca4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Yves%2520Tumor%2520_%2520Lifetime%2520_%2520Single%2520art.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Yves_Tumor-Lifetime.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,35,U.S. Girls,“Rosebud’’,4AD,"4AD Whether calling out Obama for drone killings over punchy brass or depicting the reaches of the patriarchy all the way to heaven over hiccuping record scratches, U.S. Girls’ In a Poem Unlimited is an examination of the personal, political, and purely unconventional. “Rosebud” is the album’s gorgeous centerpiece, a catchy, disco-infused jaunt cut with Meg Remy’s piercing vocals. Yet the song’s shimmering background—anchored by a smooth bassline, programmed drums, and strings—is something of a ruse. Here, Remy’s lyrics are imploring and complex, making a reference to the mystery at the heart of Citizen Kane and flipping it to ask a meditative question: Who holds the key to who you are? Remy doesn’t offer up any simple answers, but she makes it clear that we sometimes need to dig deep to identify which factors—our upbringing, our partners, our friends—have molded us into who we are today. –Eric Torres",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cFnewlPpzI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76b63e6eee70000829f38e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/US-Girls-In-a-Poem-Unlimited.jpg,/dataset/artwork/US_Girls-Rosebud.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,34,Blood Orange,“Charcoal Baby’’,Domino,"Domino The word “charcoal” conjures images of residue, used both as an exfoliate in beauty masks and as makeup for blackface. But “Charcoal Baby,” the highlight of Blood Orange’s Negro Swan, is a celebration of black skin amid its many negative connotations. The song finds both beauty and exclusion in having to permanently wear blackness, in all its otherness. “No one wants to be the odd one out at times/No one wants to be the negro swan,” Dev Hynes sighs. “Can you break sometimes?” There is no freedom from the ugliness of the world, but Hynes suggests there is some deliverance in the embrace of the unchanging. His feathery tone, met at various points by a talented and barely noticeable supporting cast, wisps between an unfastening guitar riff, washed-out synths, and shimmering keys. His delicate touch brings warmth to a place of near isolation; his cooing falsetto communicates comfort. The song—in its gorgeous, understated display of beauty—is an embrace. –Sheldon Pearce",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIlauccaH88,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5b7735baf60a9e325d3f01d5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/blood%2520orange_negro%2520swan.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Blood_Orange-Charcoal_Baby.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,33,Julia Holter,“I Shall Love 2’’,Domino,"Domino At the start of “I Shall Love 2,” Julia Holter is suspended in a permanent daze. “I am in love/What can I do?” she asks over rudimentary keyboards and drum machines, so distracted by this odd feeling that all she seemingly can do is sit beside a window and stare at the world outside. But suddenly, strings, horns, bass, and drums cozy up to her. “I shall love,” sings a choir, emerging from the ether. She takes up their credo, singing it without interruption or hesitation for the next two minutes, as the band morphs into a symphony. The mantra becomes her flashlight through an unknown dark, a way of navigating the unseen terror of the future. Holter doesn’t try to simplify love or the complexity it entails; she embraces its significance, letting the power lift her to a new plane of strength and clarity. It’s a hard lesson to remember on our best days—and a far more necessary one during our worst. –Grayson Haver Currin",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5uwPaCvbhA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5bbd1391b5a62d2d54af6599/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/julia%2520holter_aviary.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Julia_Holter-I_Shall_Love_2.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,32,Westerman,“Confirmation’’,Blue Flowers Music,"Blue Flowers Music In “Confirmation,” a balmy and left-field pop gem, Westerman puts his overactive mind on pause. With reverb-shrouded vocals that drift by like puffs of cumulus, the London songwriter radiates a near-spiritual faith in the power of art, offering mindful encouragement to move forward even when it feels impossible. That pathway is mirrored by sirens symbolizing inner tumult, which fade to make way for a bright patina of ’80s synths. Westerman’s optimistic vision is far from naïve, though. He clocks that life in a noisy world can lead to creative impasse but refuses to make that a scapegoat for inaction. (“Blame it on the establishment,” he offers as an option, before reconsidering that excuse as “so boring.”) Tethering grounded awareness with a welcome sense of escape, “Confirmation” marks the arrival of a songwriter who soothes. –Owen Myers",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIiEh05reck,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5a8450fb1bcb940ab644bad4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/confirmation%2520cvoer.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Westerman-Confirmation.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,31,Pusha-T,“The Story of Adidon’’,Self-released,"Self-released “You are hiding a child.” The line is so deflating, so uncouth, so petty that it’s beautiful. Pusha-T’s feud with Drake began as an outgrowth of his long-running tiffs with Lil Wayne and Baby, and there was no need for it to ever evolve further. But on “The Story of Adidon,” Pusha doesn’t just diss Drake; he diagnoses him, reading his charts slowly and sinisterly. The Drake he conjures is not just a lesser MC: he’s a sad, deadbeat hypocrite embroiled in generational dysfunction that plays out in his music, in his relationships, and on his scalp. Though Pusha’s rapping is more rushed than usual, his writing less artful, it’s clear his energy was concentrated on staging. The song’s artwork, an image of Drake in blackface, is unforgettable. No I.D.’s beautiful production, hijacked from JAY-Z’s “The Story of O.J.,” is made caustic. Each time Nina Simone coos “My skin is black,” there’s a readymade image of Drake missing the power of that statement by a mile. Whereas JAY-Z used O.J. Simpson as a foil, Pusha holds Drake at a comic distance, turning his foe’s story into a slapstick riot that’s as cruel as it is insulting. This dissonance is the brutal brilliance of “The Story of Adidon,” and perhaps all rap beef. As Pusha chuckles in the outro—his satisfaction unabashed, the surgery complete—it’s hard not to notice all the blood on the operation table. –Stephen Kearse",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwWy-4EF-Mw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5b0edf32fdfb234f2610139e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/story%2520of%2520adidon%2520_%2520cover%2520art.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Pusha-T-The_Story_of_Adidon.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,30,Janelle Monáe,“Make Me Feel’’,Atlantic / Wondaland / Bad Boy,"Atlantic / Wondaland / Bad Boy As ever, Janelle Monáe’s image and creative vision are meticulously controlled on “Make Me Feel,” but the single ditches restraint in favor of one of the greatest subjects in music: uncontainable feelings that become uncontained over the course of a song. The crisp minimalist backdrop—which may or may not directly involve a synth by Prince—gives way to vocal and guitar outbursts, as Monáe teases “don’t make me spell it out for you” before doing exactly that with National Spelling Bee shouts. By the end, she’s ripping holes in the song, belting “I can’t help it!” and sounding utterly free. “Make Me Feel” was co-written by prolific pop hitmakers Julia Michaels and Justin Tranter, who have been making this same sort of zipped-up funk song for about two years now (think Selena Gomez’s “Hands to Myself”). But Monáe is self-possessed enough of a performer to elevate it from its workaday beginnings to someplace joyous and potentially boundless. And in this glum, gray year for pop, it’s a relief to hear love sound so good, so fucking real. –Katherine St. Asaph",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMlcn-_jpWY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651ae4fb69619748a6a72bcf/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/02-Janelle-Mona%25CC%2581e-Make-Me-Feel.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Janelle_Mone-Make_Me_Feel.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,29,Let’s Eat Grandma,“Falling Into Me’’,Transgressive,"Transgressive On paper, Let’s Eat Grandma’s “Falling Into Me” shouldn’t work. But the duo of Jenny Hollingworth and Rosa Walton are masters of streamlining a host of strange elements to create immersive universes for their glossy pop songs. For this nearly six-minute track, they manage to blend together pounding ’80s drum fills, fingerpicked classical guitar, a sea of sawtooth synths, syncopated cowbell, and an epic saxophone solo… and somehow make it not sound like the corniest thing in the world. Instead, it emerges as a sleek track with the danceability of a Lorde song. The lyrics here describe the thrilling uncertainty of getting to know a new lover, coded in cryptic imagery, from misted backstreets and night-blooming violets to dented phone screens and handprints against windows. But in the chorus, they cast off any obliqueness and distill the feeling in just three words: “You/Me/This.” –Michelle Kim",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGVv7SQ_jus,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5ae0a4228bec5b23c213a2f5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Let%25E2%2580%2599s%2520Eat%2520Grandma:%2520I'm%2520All%2520Ears.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lets_Eat_Grandma-Falling_Into_Me.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,28,Peggy Gou,“It Makes You Forget (Itgehane)’’,Ninja Tune,"Ninja Tune Just two years ago, Peggy Gou dropped out of fashion school to focus full-time on music production. The Berlin-based producer’s early singles flashed a gift for balancing house, techno, and electro, and she soon became the first female Korean DJ to make a BBC Essential Mix. But with “It Makes You Forget (Itgehane),” Gou makes a quantum leap. Daydreaming about the chaotic state of the world in her native Korean, she taps into dance music’s underlying emotions. Amid acid squelches and a spot-on ’90s house beat, topped off with a dulcet vibraphone line and Gou’s own murmurs, “It Makes You Forget (Itgehane)” channels those feelings of wistfulness, of finding comfort among strangers. She captures that singular dancefloor sensation of shaking off the world’s troubles and giving in to the total euphoria of the moment. –Andy Beta",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlbVgjFvE3I,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5a747d0118ad145a7d71a315/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Once%2520Peggy%2520Gou.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Peggy_Gou-It_Makes_You_Forget_Itgehane.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,27,Drake,“In My Feelings’’,Young Money / Cash Money / Republic,"Young Money / Cash Money / Republic In May, it looked like Drake had lost the most important rap beef since Nas vs. Jay-Z. But soon after, he quieted all that noise with one of the catchiest tracks of his career. “In My Feelings” is a New Orleans bounce-indebted No. 1 hit with production from that scene’s legendary producer, BlaqNmilD, sliced-up vocals courtesy of the city’s own Lil Wayne, and a hook so effective that it scarred every person named Kiki worldwide. The contagious track also inspired the most genuinely spontaneous viral dance challenge the music industry has ever seen—one that saw grandmas making heart hands alongside moving cars. Drake went from roadkill under Pusha-T’s tire to making a song that was so good, it made people risk becoming roadkill themselves. That’s power. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyUZCXm_0Vo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/649dbfb832ef0bc7a4f1ac4f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Drake-Scorpion.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Drake-In_My_Feelings.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,26,Beach House,“Lemon Glow’’,Sub Pop,"Sub Pop Somehow, Beach House were not one of the bands invited to play the Roadhouse in last year’s “Twin Peaks: The Return.” But “Lemon Glow,” with its menacing sexiness and the accompanying video’s Black Lodge wiggle, shows that the duo remains a force when it comes to building surreal mystery. The song’s coiling riff and tittering hi-hats make it sound as if Beach House have learned something from the hip-hop producers who keep sampling them. And when singer Victoria Legrand lays into the chorus—“When you turn the lights down low/Lemon-color honey glow”—it feels as if she’s goading us into deeper levels of innuendo and bemusement. “I come alive/You stay all night,” she sings, confirming what we suspected all along: “Lemon Glow” is a sex jam, albeit one more concerned with the shadows than the bodies casting them. –Andrew Gaerig",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smqhSl0u_sI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5a85ac465114010ab1e69314/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/beach%2520house%2520lemon%2520glow%2520cover.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beach_House-Lemon_Glow.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,25,Camp Cope,“The Opener’’,Run For Cover / Poison City,"Run For Cover / Poison City “The Opener” is a manifesto of survival. It’s built around the gendered criticism that has been leveled at Camp Cope during their years in Melbourne, Australia’s indie scene: that their success is just dumb luck and not the outcome of hard work, that women can’t sell out venues, that bookers often see them as a box to tick off. Mimicking a clueless promoter, songwriter and guitarist Georgia Maq seethes, “‘Yeah, just get a female opener/That’ll fill the quota.’” Despite her fury, “The Opener” never explodes into a chorus of rage. Instead, Camp Cope maintain a measured, hookless guitar-drum-bass chug throughout, their consistency emphasizing their formidable chops. The song’s only real dynamics come from Maq, whose jagged voice lands with force while still revealing a profound hurt. When she bellows, “Well, see how far we’ve come not listening to you” at the end of the song, it’s a triumphant reminder that their persistence has paid off. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40nc_8ij3MI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a93cb0db1d10008f2000d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Camp-Cope-The-Opener.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Camp_Cope-The_Opener.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,24,Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks,“Middle America’’,Matador,"Matador One of the most flat-out beautiful songs of Stephen Malkmus’ long career, “Middle America” derives its power from a low-key simplicity: the lovely country-rock arrangement, the pendulum rhythm of Joanna Bolme’s bassline, Malkmus’ disarmingly tender falsetto, that perfect rhyme of “You know you should be blushin’” with “to a hue of Robitussin.” For a guy who’s too often held up as the aging avatar of ’90s indie-rock irony, Malkmus doesn’t sound detached or desperate, but rather warm and wise on this wistful meditation about responsibility. –Stephen Deusner",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5a7ca103aed392225cc0d6f7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Middle%2520America.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Stephen_Malkmus_and_the_Jicks-Middle_America.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,23,Cardi B,“I Like It” [ft. Bad Bunny and J Balvin],Atlantic,"Atlantic Cardi B’s debut album, Invasion of Privacy, would not have been complete without a nod to her Latin roots. At the urging of her label head, Atlantic’s Craig Kallman, she began what would become a seven-month writing process for “I Like It” last fall. They started with two samples from Kallman’s vinyl collection—Latin boogaloo bandleader Pete Rodriguez’s “I Like It Like That” and “Oh That’s Nice”—and created the rapper’s second No. 1 single. It’s pretty hard to hate a song this animated, but the appeal of “I Like It” goes beyond the power of positivity. From the opening drift of horns to the bodying waves of bass, this Latin trap cut is a carefully calibrated burst of energy. Its charismatic MCs—Cardi alongside the reggaeton stars Bad Bunny and J Balvin—achieve the perfect balance: She flows and flexes effortlessly, Bunny goes hard, and Balvin exudes suaveness. Of the singles released from Invasion of Privacy, “I Like It” is the most expansive in sound and color—no small feat from one of hip-hop’s boldest talents this year. –Trey Alston",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTlNMmZKwpA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d794ea24bc6510008699745/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Cardi-B-Invasion-of-Privacy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Cardi_B-I_Like_It_ft_Bad_Bunny_and_J_Balvin.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,22,SOPHIE,“Is It Cold In the Water?”,Transgressive / Future Classic,"Transgressive / Future Classic “Is It Cold in the Water?” is appropriately titled: There’s an aqueous chill in the song’s shifting electronic undertows. As the grandiose centerpiece of SOPHIE’s debut album OIL OF EVERY PEARL’s UN-INSIDES, the song vacillates between rave-gnarled electronics and shimmering pop emotion. The devastating impact of this combination is magnified by the track’s sense of mystery: The lyrics paint an impressionistic picture of anguished resistance, while guest vocalist Cecile Believe’s articulated strength absorbs the listener’s own fears. In a year of blowhard and bluster, “Is It Cold in the Water?” showed strength in ambiguity, its glacial charm an icy dagger to the heart of pop music. –Ben Cardew",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laWPXcUx35E,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/648747aaaed875e699bc73ed/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sophie.jpg,/dataset/artwork/SOPHIE-Is_It_Cold_In_the_Water.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,21,Christine and the Queens,“5 dollars”,Because Music,"Because Music The handful of great singles about sex work have made their characters sound pitiful. “5 dollars” does something different. Through transactional physicality, the solicitor and solicited in Héloïse Letissier’s story get to revel in their instincts, freed from harsh gazes and self-loathing—to steal a line from Lou Reed, they experience how it would feel to be James Dean for a day. Letissier galvanizes such heroic outcasts in an air-punching chorus that makes these archetypes gleam anew: She is Springsteen on the sidelines cheering on her cracked antiheroes, the all-American imagery of five-dollar spoils and implied blue collars lending a classic pop-art touch. How long her characters’ sense of transcendence lasts is uncertain: You won’t get far on five dollars. But that small sum contains infinite potential. –Laura Snapes",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oG6fayQBm9w,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650b442b075611b11337fc63/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Christine-and-the-Queens-Chris.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Christine_and_the_Queens-5_dollars.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,20,Moses Sumney,“Rank & File”,Jagjaguwar,"Jagjaguwar Moses Sumney’s falsetto is so otherworldly, it usually lends him an air of repose—like a narrator working from a sky-high vantage point. But on “Rank & File,” he burrows himself in the mud and despair of our moment, brooding in a deeper register that only exacerbates his dripping venom. The closing track from his Black in Deep Red, 2014 EP, “Rank & File” inverts a ubiquitous chant of the armed forces—“I don’t know but I’ve been told”—into an excoriation of police brutality. A finger-snapped, martial beat mimics the implacable passage of time, while listless, numerical chanting adds to an overwhelming aura of surveillance and groupthink. Sumney pushes back against the complacency, hissing at the bloody forces threatening the black community. When he finally unsheathes his angelic upper register, it’s in wails of anguish, and it cuts to the marrow. –Stacey Anderson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysb4TjuC5GM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5b62080e4242b82d1866a6c1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Moses%2520Sumney%2520_%2520Rank%2520&%2520File%2520_%2520Cover%2520art.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Moses_Sumney-Rank__File.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,19,Travis Scott,“Sicko Mode” [ ft. Drake],Epic,"Epic In a year spent getting mad online, it was nice to see people experience some joy, too. “Let’s fucking focus!” bellowed hip-hop podcaster DJ Akademiks on a livestream upon first hearing Drake on “Sicko Mode,” literally jumping out of his chair for a guest appearance from the most ubiquitous artist in popular music right now. His drunken overreaction was beautiful in its pure outlandishness—characteristics that can be applied to Travis Scott and to “Sicko Mode” as a whole. Scott’s music has always possessed a Frankenstein-like, stitched-together build, but the multi-part “Sicko Mode” goes to hilariously operatic new heights. The proggiest hip-hop song to hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts this year, it’s essentially Rush’s “Tom Sawyer” for future ComplexCon attendees, lurching through rubbery bass lines and haunted-house organs courtesy of a small army of trending rap producers. Scott namechecks Bonnaroo and Uncle Luke in the same breath, Drake delivers his best verse of the year while talking about sleeping on a plane, and both join forces to repeat the phrase “like a light” enough times to potentially short-circuit a metropolitan power grid. “Sicko Mode” is a sonic embarrassment of riches that’s well worth embarrassing yourself online for. –Larry Fitzmaurice",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHaRqym0IuQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5b649fcc0b743703a498201f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Travis%2520Scott%2520_%2520Astroworld_Cover%2520Art.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Travis_Scott-Sicko_Mode__ft_Drake.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,18,Ella Mai,“Boo’d Up”,10 Summers / Interscope,"10 Summers / Interscope Originally released in the winter of 2017, Ella Mai’s “Boo’d Up” finally graduated to radio hit status in the summer of 2018, as if it needed a heat index that matched its own weather to truly unfurl. The song is a long shimmer of R&B, its synths woven into a cloud of moisture trembling in the air. DJ Mustard’s production, transmitted from somewhere far beyond the aerobic snap of his previous hits, is so relaxed it sounds gradually exhaled. Mai’s voice is remarkably steady and focused, but the words she sings constantly sink into vulnerability. It is this vision of desire as a truly bottomless feeling that makes “Boo’d Up” feel special, like a modern day version of Anita Baker’s “Caught Up in the Rapture.” The song’s chorus—“Ba-dum, boo’d up”—simulates the quickened thrum of Mai’s heartbeat, as if it were trying to speak to her, echoing distantly from the depth to which she’s fallen in love. –Brad Nelson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrfcbNCqH40,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5bc0e7bbb0b61c5e88bc36f4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/ellamai.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ella_Mai-Bood_Up.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,17,Troye Sivan,“My My My!”,Capitol,"Capitol “My My My!” possesses no more and no less than what all great pop moments need: push-and-pull lyrics about love and sex, the rush of a massive chorus that feels instantly familiar, and, most of all, the aura of a performer with undeniable charm. The fact that Troye Sivan is gay—a frustrating novelty in a genre that relies on gay dollars but does not always reward gay talent—both matters and doesn’t. Yes, it is refreshing to imagine the song as a story of infatuation between two men. But the entire point of “My My My!” seems to be about pop’s thrilling, almost old-fashioned power to appeal to anyone and everyone. –Alex Frank",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5TqNsr6YuQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5a57c8e6eda92301e86cf5be/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/troye%2520siva%2520my%2520my%2520my.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Troye_Sivan-My_My_My.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,16,Lonnie Holley,“I Woke Up in a Fucked-Up America”,Jagjaguwar,"Jagjaguwar Every era has its prophets, and Lonnie Holley—a 68-year-old sculptor from Birmingham, Alabama, who began releasing experimental music in 2012—speaks to the anguish and tumult of modern life with extraordinary fury and perception. A version of “I Woke Up in a Fucked-Up America” has been a part of Holley’s mind-bending live set for awhile; when he performs it, the song expands and contracts in mesmerizing ways. Is it noise? Is it pop? All that’s ever truly clear is that the song is a dissonant, wounded lament for a nation under duress. It ends with an imploration: “Please, please, please/Go/Let me out of this dream.” Holley’s throaty vocals—evoking Louis Armstrong, Stevie Wonder, and Tom Waits—and his bandmates’ spaced-out clanking combine to make a gorgeous racket, while the song’s lyrics address feelings of confusion and deep disappointment. This is what it sounds like when you know the ground below your feet has been compromised. –Amanda Petrusich",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ss3cz9FgGnA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5ba50b424912092d04e13e04/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/lonnie%2520holley_mith.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lonnie_Holley-I_Woke_Up_in_a_Fucked-Up_America.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,15,Robyn,“Missing You”,Konichiwa,"Konichiwa Missing someone is a universal human experience. Everyone from newborns to centenarians knows what it feels like to stare into the abyss of “this empty space you left behind,” as Robyn sings here. But only Robyn could take that abyss and make it this kind of dance party. Arpeggiated notes glisten like sunlight on teardrops, while the pulsing undercurrent propels forward motion, out of grief and into healing. As in the most classic of pop songs, the “you” she’s addressing is whoever you want it to be; this is a song that could be played at a wake, a high school graduation party, or on a boombox outside of a lost love’s window. –Amy Phillips",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8o5BHH9U2Mg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5b621fc4c734c705ed658e09/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Missing%2520U%2520_%2520Robyn%2520_%2520Single%2520Cover%2520.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Robyn-Missing_You.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,14,Valee,“Womp Womp” [ft. Jeremih],G. O. O. D. Music,"G. O. O. D. Music Valee raps like nothing is at stake. The world is his oyster, and if there’s no pearl inside, he’d probably like it served to him Rockefeller. He’s leisure-obsessive, a connoisseur of the finer things and the pleasures they bring him. His raps are about how he already has everything, and he puts that same premium on the freedoms afforded to those with nothing but downtime. “Womp Womp,” his off-kilter collaboration with Jeremih, embodies this attitude—so much so that Valee freestyled his verse. The song, which turns a long-running Peanuts joke into flex fodder, communicates supreme comfort without resplendence. It suggests that this pair is so used to people telling them what they want to hear that they aren’t even listening anymore—and they’ve faced no consequences for it. It’s rap showboating that’s masterful in its subtlety. This isn’t recreation; it’s lazing. –Sheldon Pearce",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ss2hULhXf04,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5aeb4cfc9c63b62eb5a1cddf/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Screen%2520Shot%25202018-05-03%2520at%25201.50.45%2520PM.png,/dataset/artwork/Valee-Womp_Womp_ft_Jeremih.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,13,Noname,“Self”,Self-released,"Self-released As the introduction to Noname’s magnificent second album, Room 25, “Self” establishes the lyrical sophistication and vocal flexibility the rapper practiced in Chicago’s spoken word community. She sets her smooth flow over a soulful bed of humming vocals, letting her inflections sting with light, tangy acidity. She unfurls stylish social critique that carries a smacking aftertaste between some perfect lines (the most perfect: “My pussy wrote a thesis on colonialism”). She is a tough judge, both of herself and the people who underestimate her. But there’s nothing knee-jerk in these critiques, and “Self” is awash with a pastel glow and beaming confidence. It’s the fantasy fulfillment of going back in time and flawlessly responding to someone who brushed you off. And sometimes that just means telling them what your pussy wrote. –Maggie Lange",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMMtgDcPvLI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72c6f5fd34990009cf89e5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Noname-Room-25.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Noname-Self.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,12,boygenius,“Me & My Dog”,Matador,"Matador “Me & My Dog” presents the complete arc of a doomed romance: dreamy beginnings, hazy disintegration, urgent end. The song begins with Phoebe Bridgers recalling a wonderfully imperfect date over a gently crescendoing guitar. But as the strumming grows louder, her blithe infatuation begins to cool, and insecurities arise. In a crushing moment of self-doubt, Bridgers is bolstered by the voices of her bandmates Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus, and “Me & My Dog” suddenly transforms into a massive affirmation of autonomy. By the final refrain, Bridgers’ agitation reaches a breaking point and she unleashes a desire to “be emaciated”—a violent declaration that is less about becoming smaller than it is a desperate need to sever a toxic tie. She immediately counters it with a comforting fantasy: “I wish I was on a spaceship/Just me and my dog and an impossible view.” As boygenius harmonize around this escapist dream, they cling to the notion that, together, they can conquer all. –Quinn Moreland",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63f917c696cce0f3266685cd/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Boygenius.jpg,/dataset/artwork/boygenius-Me__My_Dog.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,11,Kacey Musgraves,“Slow Burn”,MCA Nashville,"MCA Nashville The sonic departures on country star Kacey Musgraves’ Golden Hour are the gentle sort: playful explorations of disco and sunny, string-spangled pop, a fresh and guileless intimacy twining her words together. An acid trip served as the album’s conceptual genesis, and “Slow Burn,” its opening track, unfurls appropriately, with the eye-widening feeling of something new coming on. A plain, solo strummed guitar is joined by sparkly banjo notes low in the mix; effects slowly layer, with more instruments joining in. Atop this, Musgraves’ lyrics grow more expansive, turning from inward rumination to mind-expanded macro-philosophy about how to move through the world. “Whatever feels good,” she sings, and suddenly there are violins and reverb. It sounds like she’s tuned into a psychedelic zen frequency, a blissful calm. –Alison Fensterstock",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC7cmWkBoz4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/641deb27aef545723eec5e31/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kacey-Musgraves-Golden-Hour.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kacey_Musgraves-Slow_Burn.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,10,CupcakKe,“Duck Duck Goose”,Self-released,"Self-released Chicago rapper CupcakKe does not hold back. At all. “I thought I came but I peed on the dick,” goes the opening line of “Duck Duck Goose,” setting the sexed-up, spit-take tone. But as producer Def Starz’s horny, neon beat throbs forward, something magical happens: The language turns surreal and downright violent—clothing is torn, members are severed—and, abruptly, CupcakKe’s energy becomes less stand-up comic and more triathlon winner. As she raps faster and with more musicality, the song turns into a virtuosic display of momentum, focus, and precision. In the final seconds, just for kicks, she drops an entirely new hook: “Vending machine/Vending machine/Can’t eat it till there’s money between.” It’s the type of mantra a lesser writer might center an entire song on. For CupcakKe, though, it’s just one brush stroke in her masterpiece of Pornhub pointillism. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ps-38KVmS8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5a4bfe210c1ab40a8ff883ce/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Cupcakke.jpg,/dataset/artwork/CupcakKe-Duck_Duck_Goose.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,9,Mitski,“Nobody”,Dead Oceans,"Dead Oceans Mitski is a connoisseur of surfaces. She knows exactly how to polish them until they are bright, placing the fine bone china on the side tables, making sure all the dinner forks are in order. She also knows how perfectly smooth surfaces betray us, how we can summon an earthquake of emotion to send all the pieces crashing to the floor. This clash—preternatural composure shattered by elemental feeling—is at the heart of her astonishing album Be the Cowboy, and “Nobody” is its jagged peak, a convulsion of despair executed with the neatness of a triple axel. The song comes out sashaying, with genteel piano voicings and bachelor-pad disco flourishes. But once the words resolve into the foreground, “Nobody” becomes a gasp of loneliness so pure it hurts your lungs to breathe it in; no song broke through the year with the immediacy and desperation of “I’ve been big and small and big and small and big and small again/And still nobody wants me.” It is the sort of bald confession that clears a room, that makes people fear your misfortune to be some kind of contagion. But “Nobody” offers it with jazz hands, and in one final flourish, signs off with the two most dazzling musical modulations of the year. Coming across the song this year was like chancing upon someone’s emotional meltdown on Facebook, marked off by posts about dogs and ads for backpacks—it felt like all the worst and most exhilarating parts of 2018 compressed into a diamond. –Jayson Greene",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qooWnw5rEcI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651b3840d92add4198b93afe/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mitski-%2520Nobody.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Mitski-Nobody.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,8,Ariana Grande,"“thank u, next”",Republic,"Republic It’s been an up-and-down year for Ariana Grande, to put it mildly. She cemented her status as a member of pop’s elite with the release of Sweetener, an album that bucked prevailing pop trends and addressed anxiety and trauma with transparency and grace; within two months, she’d lose an ex-boyfriend to a tragic overdose and call off a whirlwind engagement, all in the harsh light of the public eye. No one would have blamed her for weathering the storm in solitude or decamping to the nearest private island. Instead, she channeled her life’s spectacle into “thank u, next,” a radical display of empathy that has become her biggest hit to date. With its soft, dreamy keys and buttery vocals, the song further refines Grande’s brand of ’90s-leaning pop-R&B. It’s a surprisingly comforting smash, one that lands in your system like a melatonin tablet and a mug of tea. And yet the song’s cultural omnipresence has more to do with the woman at its center than any particular sound. Instead of blaming the men in her life for the pain she’s endured, she thanks them for helping her become the woman she is today. In doing so, she takes the self-love that made Sweetener so special and extends it beyond herself, demonstrating optimism and compassion on the largest possible stage. –Jamieson Cox",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gl1aHhXnN1k,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651b39d46b13cb7107712cdb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ariana%2520Grande%2520-Thank%2520U%2C%2520Next.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Ariana_Grande-thank_u_next.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,7,Lil Uzi Vert,“New Patek”,Atlantic,"Atlantic On June 16, Lil Uzi Vert posted a brief video of himself shimmying, gyrating, posing, and pantomiming to a new song on Instagram—whetting fans’ appetite for a track that would not drop for another three months. When it did, “New Patek” immediately shot to the top of streaming charts. Never have we witnessed a snippet be so effective. Uzi, noted for his stylistic innovation as an emo and pop punk-inflected rapper, had now innovated in the realm of music marketing, too. Though the teaser was bite-size, the song itself is anything but brief. Clocking in at nearly six minutes, its length is justified by Uzi’s breathless vocal performance. We get every bit of what makes Uzi a superstar: the Philly-bred rapid-fire flow, his trademark sass and arrogance, a metaphor about being a jewelry-wearing octopus, “Naruto” references, and some half-sung vocals for good measure. The Dolan Beats-produced instrumental turns a sample from an anime soundtrack into a shimmering backdrop for Uzi to get absurd. Who could have predicted that the drawn-out final version of the song would be as rewindable as the preview? –Timmhotep Aku",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PczuoZJ-PtM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5ecd642aee33b6018584dd51/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/New-Patek.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lil_Uzi_Vert-New_Patek.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,6,Snail Mail,“Pristine”,Matador,"Matador “Pristine” begins as a humble indie-rock song before it blooms, brimming with the rawest feelings of youth. In just under five minutes, Snail Mail’s Lindsey Jordan chronicles the moment when innocence begins to turn into something else—the late-teens shift from feeling endlessly confident to seeing just how overwhelming emotions can really be. “Is there any better feeling than coming clean?” the 19-year-old sings, and it sounds like a great epiphany. Miraculously, Jordan embodies the clarity and ambition she sings of: “Pristine” has a scrappy spirit as well as polish, with a move towards virtuosity—she really sings—that is rare in indie rock. “Pristine” carries hope; it feels genuinely new. –Jenn Pelly",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tnTucP1UM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/647e2a8ee7a8aa8db8026972/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Snail-Mail-Pristine.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Snail_Mail-Pristine.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,5,DJ Koze,“Pick Up”,Pampa,"Pampa Two chords and the perfect bassline can propel any party into the stratosphere. But DJ Koze doesn’t give it up from the jump. Instead, he begins with the ghostly outline of a rhythm. Then, a crystalline Gladys Knight sample peals above the noise, clear and cold. “It’s sad to think/I guess neither one of us,” she sings, “Wants to be the first to say goodbye.” The fuzz dissipates, and sweeping strings come into stark relief. Liftoff. “Pick Up” is a love letter to house music. For years, the track was a live staple for Koze, a genre agnostic who’s dedicated his career to cultivating vast knowledge of music and serving it up to audiences around the globe. What began life as a simple disco edit, built for live performance, revealed itself to be a testament to the power of the perfect loop, a dancefloor catalyst that Daft Punk or Chic could recognize and admire. Its pair of elemental, diametrically opposed samples—Knight’s melancholic voice alongside an uptempo break from onetime R&B hitmaker Melba Moore—blend together atop perfectly sequenced drums. “Pick Up” is a capsule of Koze’s musical mission: subtle reconfiguration of history in the quest of summoning bliss. –Noah Yoo",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JE63vMzb3UE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a68484bc6510008699895/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/DJ-Koze-Knock-Knock.jpg,/dataset/artwork/DJ_Koze-Pick_Up.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,4,Drake,“Nice for What”,Cash Money,"Cash Money Ten years ago, Drake became a star with “Best I Ever Had,” in which he told a certain someone that she didn’t need to squeeze into a tight outfit and layer her face with makeup to look good. Amid a pop landscape swimming in misogyny, it sounded kind of sweet. But then, in the song’s Kanye West-directed video, Drake played coach to a basketball team of women with cartoonish curves and short-shorts, imploring them to “take that D!” and revealing his progressivism to be little more than a scam. But that was then. Drake’s latest ode to the opposite sex, “Nice for What,” is more believable. The song heavily samples Lauryn Hill’s “Ex-Factor,” a wrenching lament about manipulators who take their loyal partners for granted, as Drake rolls out verses that essentially tell women that they don’t need a guy like Drake at all. “That’s a real one in your reflection/Without a follow, without a mention,” he raps over a beat powered by New Orleans’ signature bounce style, offering a pep talk to independent women worldwide. In the video, helmed by young filmmaker Karena Evans, Drake is barely seen. Instead, famous and powerful women like Issa Rae and Yara Shahidi lead board meetings, study for college, and levitate. Is it all just pandering to the #empowerment era? Maybe. But the fact that one of the most self-possessed pop stars of our time is flipping the mirror away from himself feels like a victory in itself. –Ryan Dombal",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ldzm7KGECI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7136647cf67c000854d534/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Drake-Nice-for-What.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Drake-Nice_for_What.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,3,Rosalía,“Malamente (Cap.1: Augurio)”,Sony,"Sony El Mal Querer, the second album from the Catalan singer Rosalía, is based loosely on an anonymous 13th Century Occitan poem about the psychic perils of jealousy, and what happens when love curdles into something uglier: panic about losing love. The single “Malamente” (the title roughly translates to “Badly”) mixes traditional flamenco rhythms with elements of pop, reggaeton, hip-hop, and R&B to create a sparse, pulsing hybrid. With this song, Rosalía somehow turns flamenco—which usually feels warm, flushed—into something chilling. The most transfixing thing about “Malamente” is her rich, fretful vocal; the song’s lyrics, sung in Spanish, are spooky, foreboding, dark. This is the sound, Rosalía seems to suggest, of love going wrong, and fast. She narrates a cascading series of bad portents: a broken crystal, a voice on the stairs, a gypsy, a dream about a bridge. Eventually, she comes to understand what’s at stake, and how important it is to get free: “I won’t waste even a minute on thinking about you again,” she promises. –Amanda Petrusich",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rht7rBHuXW8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d823e42bd2bba0009fdf0e4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Rosali%25CC%2581a-Malamente.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rosala-Malamente_Cap1_Augurio.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,2,Robyn,“Honey”,Konichiwa,"Konichiwa Robyn’s “Honey” was a myth before it ever truly existed. When an early version of the song aired during an episode of “Girls” last year, the Swedish pop star’s fans were left to imagine what the finished track would sound like; many expressed this via the playful online plea #ReleaseHoneyDammit. Later, Robyn said she’d worked on “Honey” longer than any other song she’d written. All this anticipation threatened to create unrealistic expectations for the track before it was even released. Instead, it turned out anticipation was the point all along. The title track from Robyn’s first solo album in eight years builds up so serenely, it snaps almost imperceptibly into focus. Drizzled in synth, pulsing like a heartbeat, “Honey” is where pop’s lovelorn dancefloor queen delivers ecstasy merely by promising it. The song overwhelms with glittery intimacy but keeps its own secrets. There’s a profound pleasure in hearing Robyn beckon, “You’re not gonna get what you need/Baby, I have what you want/Come get your honey.” With “Honey,” Robyn showed that pop, like real love, could be all about shared trust. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IxdQUpQjqc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6344bb5fb7e2764bb92791ea/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Robyn-Honey.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Robyn-Honey.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2018 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2018/,2018,year,song,1,The 1975,“Love It If We Made It”,Interscope / Dirty Hit,"Interscope / Dirty Hit The 1975 were polarizing from the start. Revisit one of their sleazily winking early videos or just read the long-winded title of their last album out loud, and it’s not hard to understand why. In the clip for their 2016 single “The Sound,” the Manchester pop quartet satirized their detractors, performing in a glass box while spectators grew bored outside of it, their critiques flashing onto the screen in big letters: “PRETENTIOUS. UNIMAGINATIVE. ANNOYING.” A sign of how the world has caught up with their relentless energy, “Love It If We Made It” turns the tables: Now we’re all in the glass box, and they’re defining us. Setting a whole feed’s worth of headlines, catastrophes, and memes to an industrial new wave rave-up, “Love It If We Made It” is the type of sing-along retrospective usually best left to award show montages and “SNL” season finales. It addresses police brutality, the prison industrial complex, the opioid crisis, and much more, as frontman and lyricist Matty Healy offers epitaphs both sweeping (“Modernity has failed us”) and specific (“Rest in peace Lil Peep”). With an anxious arrangement inspired by Scottish cult band the Blue Nile, the song connects culture and counterculture, internet and real life, past and present in a way that feels miraculously, temporarily united. Even when the words read like a list of jumbled trending topics—“Fossil fueling, masturbation, immigration, liberal kitsch, kneeling on a pitch”—the band’s urgency binds it together. Unpacking every reference becomes less entertaining than just standing back and watching the fireworks, as one headline explodes into the next. The beauty of “Love It If We Made It” is its fluidity, its weightlessness. It’s the sound of a band alternately thrashing against the world and rising above it. In the vocal performance of his young career, Healy sighs, growls, and screams, sounding just as helpless as any of us, raising questions only to watch them get buried by a thousand more. Few bands could have attempted something so audacious and made it sound so moving—a prolonged moment of desperate eye contact, shaped into a generational anthem. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkubQCI4Fxo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651b0ac96b13cb7107712ca4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The%25201975-%2520%25E2%2580%259CIt%25E2%2580%2599s%2520Not%2520Living%2520(If%2520It%25E2%2580%2599s%2520Not%2520With%2520You)%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_1975-Love_It_If_We_Made_It.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2017/,2017,year,album,50,Yaeji,EP/EP2,Godmode,"Godmode Yaeji contains multitudes. On her first two EPs, the New York City-based producer flirts with hip-hop cadences and pounding club house beats. She recites hypnotizing lyrics about the most mundane observations, switching effortlessly between English and Korean to take advantage of the melodic structures of each language. And she raps in a combination of whisper and spoken word, positioning her voice as both intimate and distant. With each new song, Yaeji sounds more comfortable embracing the binaries that exist within her identity and her music. On EP2, she reveals the full spectrum of her interiority, seamlessly moving between uneasiness and confidence. At 24, she seems to understand how opposites aren’t necessarily contrary, and that they’re often interconnected. –Michelle Kim",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3T8KznhThQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5929c225eb335119a49ed676/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/d661b15c.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Yaeji-EPEP2.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2017/,2017,year,album,49,Open Mike Eagle,Brick Body Kids Still Daydream,Mello Music Group,"Mello Music Group Open Mike Eagle has spent this decade distinguishing himself as one of the greatest underground rappers in Los Angeles. On his fifth solo record, the tightly wound Brick Body Kids Still Daydream, Eagle reverts back to a childhood in Chicago spent partly in the notorious Robert Taylor Homes, at one time the largest block of public housing projects in the country. Over 12 songs, Eagle explores our relationship to physical spaces and traces the slow, accretive drip of American racism as it flows through city councils and federal housing policy. He’s an inimitable writer: On “Brick Body Complex,” one building is personified as a battered man. There are tantalizing moments of fresh air, but the album largely captures the claustrophobic sound of a society as it crumbles. –Paul A. Thompson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQxXubLTIBw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/597f8fa5452fd16aaaeaa71a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/open%2520mike%2520eagle%2520cover.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Open_Mike_Eagle-Brick_Body_Kids_Still_Daydream.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2017/,2017,year,album,48,(Sandy) Alex G,Rocket,Domino,"Domino On Rocket, the singer-songwriter formerly known as Alex G employs lovingly recorded violin and piano on tender, country-leaning jaunts. He also cranks up the distortion and bass for the Death Grips-adjacent screamathon “Brick” and cloaks his voice in a misty Auto-Tune effect on the wistful “Sportstar.” Those two tracks, which rank among the strangest and best he has recorded, arrive side-by-side smack in the middle of the album, breaking up its gentler moments with a blast of surrealism. Alex G’s songs have always had more swimming beneath the surface than they show on first play, but Rocket sees him broadening his formal range to new, bizarre, beautiful peaks. –Sasha Geffen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMQXwTXld1I,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5929c3c4eb335119a49ed7bc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/cf2c3c90.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sandy_Alex_G-Rocket.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2017/,2017,year,album,47,Kehlani,SweetSexySavage,TSNMI / Atlantic,"TSNMI / Atlantic Brimming with bangers, ballads, and boss-bitch aphorisms, Kehlani’s sublime studio debut uses pop-kissed R&B to sing the story of a relationship. But the Oakland native isn’t given to desperate, tear-soggy pleas. Instead, the 22-year-old offers odes filled with wisdom, self-confidence, hard-won vulnerability, and lyrics that dissect the psychology of her romantic affairs. The all-class effort simply sounds amazing, too: From jazzy two-stepper “Keep On” to the glossy “Distraction” and delightfully giddy “Get Like,” the album’s sleek brightness is heightened by the contrast of Kehlani’s husky vocals. With all due respect to the album’s title, the singer sums herself up best on the catchy “CRZY”: “If I gotta be a bitch, I’ma be a bad one.” Clearly. –Rebecca Haithcoat",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2d7U4CX0PHk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5929c0b5ea9e61561daa7c79/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/e5a744de.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kehlani-SweetSexySavage.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2017/,2017,year,album,46,Laurel Halo,Dust,Hyperdub,"Hyperdub Dust is Laurel Halo’s loosest offering yet, orbiting out from its oddball-pop epicenters to the point of near-chaos. The producer’s music has always been exploratory, knitting together synth-pop, Detroit techno, and jazz with a singular, continuous voice, and that process feels particularly gleeful here. Her vocals and lyrics are, just like the instrumentals into which they’re woven, another site of play: The voicings of Halo and her collaborators—notably Klein and Lafawndah on the standout single “Jelly”—recall as much the experiments of Meredith Monk as they do a more tightly laced pop single. Meanwhile, her stylized lyrics lean into nouveau-Beatnik territory as she asks questions like, “Did this ever happen/Do you ever happen?” over stretched-out dub. But even if Halo dips unapologetically into weirder and more challenging zones than she has before, Dust is also, on some level, a genuinely fun album—one that bears the stamp of its creator’s limitless curiosity. –Thea Ballard",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAkO7WFkiC8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651c3a0230b9a568d0e2c102/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Laurel%2520Halo%2520Dust.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Laurel_Halo-Dust.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2017/,2017,year,album,45,Girlpool,Powerplant,Anti-,"Anti- With a few simple changes—cranking the volume, singing a little louder, adding drums—Girlpool made the leap from a promising indie rock band to an essential one with their second album, Powerplant. Cleo Tucker and Harmony Tividad retain all the appeal of their signature saw-toothed vocal harmonies and surrealist nursery rhymes here, but they deploy these strengths for more ambitious endeavors. The writing is haunting, funny, and intimate—see: “I faked global warming just to get close to you”—and each song on Powerplant builds up its own fully fleshed out world of subtle gestures, heartbreaks, and emotional thrills. When tasked with confronting how big and scary the world gets the second you grow up, Girlpool did more than just meet the dangers head-on. They conquered them. –Kevin Lozano",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PRIyi8OIgI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592f54dce972aa38417255ad/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/file,/dataset/artwork/Girlpool-Powerplant.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2017/,2017,year,album,44,Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith,The Kid,Western Vinyl,"Western Vinyl Whereas many of her contemporaries use analog synth technology to pursue bleep-bloop abstraction, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith takes her weapon of choice—a relatively rare, ergonomically beautiful 1970s system named the Buchla Music Easel—and weaves it into a rich, colorful tapestry of sound. The Kid, her fourth full-length album, is a concept piece of sorts, its four sides tracing the passage of a human from childhood to old age. “In the World” and “I Am Curious, I Care” are whorling fractals of sound that find Smith pondering themes of innocence, experience, and life’s interconnectedness, her voice multi-tracked into an otherworldly chorus. At its best, The Kid feels like a profound embrace of life, even when, by the end, it’s staring death square in the face. –Louis Pattison",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s-cZwROezI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651c3a66d7a6fde3614c14c0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kaitlyn%2520Aurelia%2520Smith%2520The%2520Kid.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kaitlyn_Aurelia_Smith-The_Kid.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2017/,2017,year,album,43,Lil B,Black Ken,Basedworld,"Basedworld Lil B has built a career on quantity, and his albums are usually defined by cherry-picked highlights. Black Ken breaks this cycle. It is still abundant, stuffed with an hour and 39 minutes of the Based God rapping and singing over self-produced electro-funk beats, but the album is also a defining statement throughout. It feels difficult to nail down a specific hit, partially because he expertly cycles through so many modes. Lil B is sometimes the undeniable party starter, distilling club bangers into easily shouted catchphrases about going dumb and turning up. He’s also quietly introspective, reflecting on his unique position in the culture as an internet icon who is famous but not rich. Elsewhere he’s aggressive, offering the ultimate kiss-off anthem with “Bad Mf” and airing out his beef with Soulja Boy on “The Real Is Back.” This thing is the total package—even the skits are funny as hell. –Evan Minsker",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epBsPlQSgqE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5996017707b7060c23525ddb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/lil%2520b%2520black%2520ken%2520cover.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lil_B-Black_Ken.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2017/,2017,year,album,42,Vagabon,Infinite Worlds,Father/Daughter,"Father/Daughter On Infinite Worlds, Vagabon’s Lætitia Tamko creates her own brand of indie rock out of journeys both literal and figurative. Many of the New York-based artist’s tracks mix French—which she spoke in her home country of Cameroon—with English. This amalgamation of language is familiar to those who are torn between two worlds, struggling to remember old practices in a new culture. From “Fear & Force,” which finds her hiding in small spaces, to the interlude “Mal à L’aise,” which gets its title from the French word for “discomfort,” Vagabon faces dark emotions head-on. The central questions of the album are about home, how we attempt—and sometimes fail—to find it in new places and in the people we love. Vagabon doesn’t find a definitive answer to these questions, but her process of searching is a joy to observe. –Vrinda Jagota",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akGBRTV3SZE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5929c18dc0084474cd0c336a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/8c0e76c5.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Vagabon-Infinite_Worlds.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2017/,2017,year,album,41,Zola Jesus,Okovi,Sacred Bones,"Sacred Bones Zola Jesus’ Nika Danilova personifies a certain kind of anxious dread in her music, one steeped in a goth-pop lineage that resonates through catharsis. Okovi, her fifth full-length, is a return to the singer’s more avant roots after the pop feint of 2014’s Taiga. Its operatic balance of dark ambient iciness, wavy post-industrial bass, and blood-drawing string sections is immediately gripping, barreling over any attempts at casual half-listening. But when those production touches underpin boldly straightforward reckonings with mortality, depression, and powerlessness, there’s no concealing the intent. Through her defiant voice, Danilova is searching for a place in the world before the afterlife claims her. –Nate Patrin",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4s-kGT5bFo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651c3ad7d7a6fde3614c14c2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Zola%2520Jesus%2520Okovi.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Zola_Jesus-Okovi.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2017/,2017,year,album,40,The xx,I See You,Young Turks,"Young Turks The xx named their third album after a line from the Velvet Underground’s “I’ll Be Your Mirror”: “Please put down your hands/’Cause I see you.” Throughout the record, the London trio take that edict seriously, recasting their precocious bedroom indie pop into something newly ascendant, rhythmic, and exhilarating. I See You addresses the band’s personal demons: alcoholism, the deaths of loved ones, disconnection from one another. It sounds like a lot to tackle for a group known for their great command of subtlety, but these topics led to a creative revitalization—not only in their forthright lyrics, but also in a more upbeat sonic palette that includes bold uses of familiar samples and dynamic brass. By filtering their typical introspection through real-life tragedies, the xx lean into a more refined version of themselves, maturing in real time. –Eric Torres",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGBn9_aEtB8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651c7244b87d59c47a3234b3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The%2520xx%2520I%2520See%2520You.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_xx-I_See_You.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2017/,2017,year,album,39,Fleet Foxes,Crack-Up,Nonesuch,"Nonesuch Fleet Foxes’ first album in six years is about existing within limitations and weathering deep self-doubt. It contains leader Robin Pecknold’s best lyrical work yet, rife with imagery of roaring oceans and rising fires as well as existential conundrums. Over folk instrumentals that expand and crash in multi-part suites, Pecknold’s ego fights with insecurity; on “I Should See Memphis,” he concocts visions of grandeur while lamenting better things just out of sight. At the song’s end, Pecknold offers a beatific and disjointed howl that seems to contain the many ideas he has still to share while offering a peek up over the walls he’s built around himself. –Matthew Strauss",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szTSgVTncWY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/593efe6acbfb4235e8b872c4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/crack-up.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fleet_Foxes-Crack-Up.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2017/,2017,year,album,38,Drake,More Life,Young Money Entertainment / Cash Money,"Young Money Entertainment / Cash Money Following the paranoid, sonically muddy VIEWS, Drake’s latest album—correction, “playlist”—More Life feels like a cool breeze. There’s less gloomy lyrical introspection, more musical range, and the added emphasis on dancehall, grime, and Afrobeats marks a dramatic, Black Atlantic sea change. Though much has been made of More Life’s reliance on a heavyweight features list over the development of Drake’s lyrical persona, the balance between the rapper’s ambivalent tone and the blissful, eclectic music selection works uncannily well. So when Drake shrugs, “Passionate from miles away/Passive with the things you say,” over the haunting whale song synths of “Passionfruit,” the result is a note-perfect crescendo of danceable distance. –Edwin “STATS” Houghton",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIFajIQRRak,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5929c24b13d197565213bce1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/ae52c98d.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Drake-More_Life.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2017/,2017,year,album,37,Julie Byrne,Not Even Happiness,Ba Da Bing! / Basin Rock,"Ba Da Bing! / Basin Rock Julie Byrne speaks with an unusual kind of precision, the kind that comes with a high degree of self-knowledge. Both qualities are hallmarks of the singer-songwriter’s music—heard in her intricately fingerpicked guitar and her quietly observant lyrics, which zoom in on the tension between aloneness and love, between ego and selflessness, with a compassionate heart and a poet’s eye for detail. It’s in that friction that she finds the spark that sets her songs alive, on cold nights under lonely prairie skies, thinking of a presence many miles away. As she sings in “Morning Dove,” “I went out walking in the wood/And the light cast long from the moon/And life is short as a breath half-taken/I could not wait to tell you truth.” In song after song, her hushed, almost heartbreakingly beautiful third album, Not Even Happiness, captures precisely that sense of emotional questing and wide-eyed revelation. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSRdGF12dDk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5929c063abf31b7dc7156454/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/f0a6f4e4.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Julie_Byrne-Not_Even_Happiness.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2017/,2017,year,album,36,Syd,Fin,Columbia,"Columbia The title of Syd’s solo debut evokes silent, slippery creatures moving just beneath dark water, and the Odd Future vet glides through her icy body music in the same way. Her confident singing and rapping connects languid jams like “Smile More” and twinkling, post-Aaliyah come-ons like “Body”—it’s amazing how she can make you sweat with a single, softly spoken invitation. Songs like “Know” and “All About Me” suggest Syd as a C-suite executive or a high-powered attorney—someone in total command, who takes the edge off with good weed and better sex. (When she’s fascinated by a woman who’s just as independent on “Got Her Own,” the results are magnetic.) She’d seem totally detached if not for “Insecurities,” a track about finding the confidence to leave a relationship that’s dragged her down for too long. It’s a surprisingly vulnerable closer for an album defined by seductive, effortless cool. Even sharks can suffer broken hearts. –Jamieson Cox",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCFt9sMYuuA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651c78c1ba9d1afe4e9a89ed/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Syd%2520Fin.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Syd-Fin.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2017/,2017,year,album,35,Playboi Carti,Playboi Carti,Interscope / AWGE,"Interscope / AWGE No rapper ad-libs quite like Playboi Carti. The fidgety Atlanta upstart rarely sustains a thought for more than a few bars, but whenever rhymes elude him, he just kicks around random words and consonants. Sometimes he fills entire verses with the word “what.” On a more traditional album, such tics might scan as filler or transparent stall tactics, but Carti commits to them so fully on his debut project that they become an attraction unto themselves. There’s no precedent for a rapper hitting such heights while rapping so little. Carti’s haphazard rhyming may be an acquired taste, but his ear for production is undeniable. His beatmakers, including breakout star Pi’erre Bourne, drape him with instrumentals that are daffy yet chic, airy puffs of neon and pastel that contort in hypnotizing ways, like marshmallows in a microwave. They’d flatter just about anybody, and when A$AP Rocky shows up to spit one of the album’s few writerly verses on “New Choppa,” he sounds like a bona fide heavyweight. But really, Carti proves again and again that such effort isn’t necessary. Music this posh speaks for itself. –Evan Rytlewski",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JZqoGz0b6o,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d766c7a0db1d10008f1fb22/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Playboi-Carti.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Playboi_Carti-Playboi_Carti.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2017/,2017,year,album,34,Mount Kimbie,Love What Survives,Warp,"Warp Mount Kimbie has always been a difficult act to pin down. Though they once inspired the awkward “post-dubstep” tag, on Love What Survives, they’ve abandoned electronic music almost entirely. And yet, in doing so, they’ve arrived at some of the most vital music of their career. The King Krule collaboration “Blue Train Lines” is as propulsive a post-punk song as anyone’s written this decade, crafted from buzzing synth drones, sculpted feedback, and twitchy drums. “Marilyn,” which features Micachu, builds a pop melody from the overlap between kalimba notes that ricochet through the mix. Longtime collaborator James Blake returns for two showstopping tracks, both of which manage to push the trio’s shared aesthetic into new territory: “We Go Home Together” aims for blemishes-and-all blue-eyed soul, more willfully rough-hewn than anything either artist has previously released. In its deep grooves, loose energy, and rich textures, Love What Survives suggests that if nothing else, Mount Kimbie might be defined by the messy friction of collaboration itself. –Mehan Jayasuriya",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1kzMFnFSh0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651c79398d07c4e0b46f71a8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mount%2520Kimbie%2520Love%2520What%2520Survives.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mount_Kimbie-Love_What_Survives.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2017/,2017,year,album,33,Kelly Lee Owens,Kelly Lee Owens,Smalltown Supersound,"Smalltown Supersound It would not be fair, exactly, to say that “Arthur” is an instrumental song. The highlight from Kelly Lee Owens’ debut album may not contain words, but it’s filled with expressive coos: There’s mourning in them, celebration, pensiveness. The track is a tribute to Arthur Russell, that New York guru of diverse and idiosyncratic electronic music, and Owens proves herself a worthy follower, having come out of the rock world as a bassist before adopting a digital approach. When the Welsh musician occasionally adopts lyrics, they are clipped, and through repetition, they take on a mantric quality (“the colors, the beauty, the motion,” she says flatly through “CBM”). Trading on its sad/beautiful dynamic, Kelly Lee Owens reveals itself as a record that can appeal to both listeners already obsessive about their electronic music and ones newer to the digital world who seek a meaningful toehold. –Matthew Schnipper",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOtcEgmcth4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5929c235c0084474cd0c341f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/4722dfb8.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kelly_Lee_Owens-Kelly_Lee_Owens.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2017/,2017,year,album,32,Lana Del Rey,Lust for Life,Polydor / Interscope,"Polydor / Interscope Lana Del Rey’s music has always been an exploration of her own fandom: intimate thoughts on life and love commingling with instantly identifiable language from her record collection. This aspect of her persona explodes on her sweeping fourth album, Lust for Life, which is peppered with classic rock quotes and musings from the crowd at Coachella. Musically, she dabbles in everything from trip-hop chill to future psych-rock lushness to robotic doo-wop balladry. For the first time on any of her albums, she even lends verses to other artists, from A$AP Rocky to Stevie Nicks; you can practically see her swaying to the beat, listening in reverence as her friends and heroes step to the mic. Still, Lust for Life revolves around one person. In “Heroin,” the most traditional-sounding Lana Del Rey song here, she delights in subverting the sad-girl mythos that she has, by now, completely outgrown. “Writing in blood on my walls and shit,” she sings with a sigh over a characteristically dramatic crescendo, “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t sick of it.” Over the course of Lust for Life, she adjusts to a swiftly changing world, where one can sense, at any given moment, hope or despair or ennui. Whatever comes next, you can bet she’s got the perfect song cued up. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Mr7w-MfBi4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63ed45f2589919a844be73f0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lana-Del-Rey-Lust-for-Life.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lana_Del_Rey-Lust_for_Life.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2017/,2017,year,album,31,Kamasi Washington,Harmony of Difference EP,Young Turks,"Young Turks On Harmony of Difference, Kamasi Washington further solidifies his place as his generation’s foremost purveyor of spiritual jazz. The subdued 30-minute EP is a far cry from the massive three-hour journey that was 2015’s The Epic, filled with subtle nuances, like the way the sax echoes and fades on “Desire,” or the ’70s-inspired Brazilian soul of “Integrity.” And it all comes together on the 13-minute “Truth,” the EP’s volcanic concluding track, which fuses melodic and harmonic elements from the record’s previous songs into one massive composition. The release may not be as ambitious as his previous work, but it still resounds with Washington’s commitment to spreading peace, love, and unity through his music. –Marcus J. Moore",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtW1S5EbHgU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651c79e367d8e58d2fbdfd2e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kamasi%2520Washington%2520Harrmony%2520of%2520Difference.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kamasi_Washington-Harmony_of_Difference_EP.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2017/,2017,year,album,30,Slowdive,Slowdive,Dead Oceans,"Dead Oceans How to make a successful comeback album: 1) have a relatively small original catalog so fans still hunger for new material; 2) make sure key members are involved; 3) pay close attention to what you used to do best; 4) write great songs. Slowdive’s first album in more than two decades checks all these boxes, capturing the precise sound of the band at its shoegazing peak, but it also adds an extra half-turn of beauty. These are among the most captivating melodies frontman Neil Halstead has written, and the album’s lush guitar tone is gorgeous as ever, while infused with a new delicacy. Where their 1993 classic Souvlaki could be dense and heavy, still speaking the language of rock, Slowdive is pure weightless dream-pop bliss—every track shimmers and sparkles and floats like a soap bubble in the sunlight. –Mark Richardson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxwAPBxc0lU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651c7a903776bf8149410db6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Slowdive%2520Slowdive.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Slowdive-Slowdive.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2017/,2017,year,album,29,Run the Jewels,Run the Jewels 3,Self-released,"Self-released Less than 10 minutes into Run the Jewels 3, a massive, synthesized crowd is heard chanting the group’s initials: “R-T-J! R-T-J!” It feels worlds apart from their 2013 debut, on which Killer Mike and El-P reveled in the low stakes they’d allowed themselves. Where the first Run the Jewels album was a controlled exercise, and the second applied their new style to heavier and more overtly political themes, Run the Jewels 3 is clean and competent, a professional turn that’s still irreverent where it matters. El says a prayer for Vietnam vets then promises to style on you endlessly; Mike rattles the cages of complacent American capitalists. The beats are stuffed with tangents and competing textures, as Mike continues to assert himself as one of rap’s most powerful vocalists. RTJ3 is informed by (and, at points, seems tailored to) the festival circuit that’s treated the duo so well, down to a show-stopping set piece of a verse from Danny Brown. It’s frantic music for frantic times, but El and Mike have it down to a science. –Paul A. Thompson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6k7kk1lUnis,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5929c06d5e6ef95969323550/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/f50f99fa.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Run_the_Jewels-Run_the_Jewels_3.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2017/,2017,year,album,28,Ibeyi,Ash,XL,"XL When the Yoruba people—who originated in present-day Nigeria and Benin—arrived in Cuba via the middle passage, they were enslaved, cut off from their ancestors, and denied the freedom of religion. But their culture survived, with songs and spiritual practices passed down through generations. Those traditions eventually made it to Naomi and Lisa-Kaindé Diaz, the French-Cuban twin sisters who perform as Ibeyi. To hear Ibeyi’s second LP, Ash—minimalistic arrangements of modern jazz, soul, and hip-hop elegantly woven with West African rhythms—is to receive energy carrying the weight of history. Naomi’s gorgeous rasp complements Lisa-Kaindé’s tender sweetness, and the pair’s sonic palette strikes a balance between their Yoruba heritage and the new music they discover every day. With Auto-Tuned spirituals, Spanish raps, and jazzy sax solos, Ash defies most attempts at categorization. Its very existence is proof of a culture that refused to be suppressed, and its beauty a testament to the pain that made it possible. –Matthew Ismael Ruiz",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Hc8cWtedN8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/59a8696fc6078536656ece52/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/ibeyi%2520ash%2520ash%2520cover.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ibeyi-Ash.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2017/,2017,year,album,27,Future,HNDRXX,Epic,"Epic For all his eccentricities, Future has spent the last few years releasing the same mixtape over and over. Following a spectacular run of slurry, despondent rap in 2015, his productivity began to feel tiring instead of exciting. This year, he released two full-length, bona fide albums a week apart: The first one, FUTURE, was indeed more of the same. But then came HNDRXX, which was not. The album recasts Future as a romantic pop icon—instead of icy and detached, it is warm and romantic. He sings about watching his lover make breakfast with the ocean behind her and sharing a hot yoga class, about texting back-and-forth and picking her son up from his father. Through all of this, of course, he’s still overmedicated, a self-proclaimed “bad guy” sounding surprised to feel so tender. But as he luxuriates in the album’s buoyant beats, Future finally sounds like he’s escaping depression by losing himself in love again. –Jay Balfour",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkZMvmyKxU0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5929c1e6c0084474cd0c33dc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/d2f1a76e.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Future-HNDRXX.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2017/,2017,year,album,26,Jay Som,Everybody Works,Double Deenim / Polyvinyl,"Double Deenim / Polyvinyl Everybody Works, from 23-year-old Melina Duterte, can restore your faith in the future of indie rock. Part of that comes from its restless sound, an interplay between the chilly whispers of shoegaze and warm R&B-funk, packaged with lyrics that consider the benefits of patience in moments of pessimism. The album also feels like a thoroughly modern invention in its design: budget bedroom pop, with every part played and produced by Duterte, though you wouldn’t necessarily know it based on the record’s robust sound. Like a homemade outfit mistaken for a designer look, the LP is a testament to the vast ingenuity that can be tapped into when resources are tight. Everybody does work, but some people just work harder. –Jillian Mapes",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRES6Af_Wyg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72b91f0db1d10008f1faa6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jay-Som-Everybody-Works.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jay_Som-Everybody_Works.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2017/,2017,year,album,25,Priests,Nothing Feels Natural,Sister Polygon,"Sister Polygon The long-awaited debut from the D.C. punk quartet Priests recognizes that the outrages in our headlines and Twitter feeds are perennial rather than isolated occurrences—that injustice and violence are literally tenets of our national anthem. Written well before the 2016 election, Nothing Feels Natural concerns itself with the individual’s perseverance in the face of endless turmoil. The album is resoundingly urgent because it survives and thrives. Whether referencing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, condemning music industry leeches, or marveling at an asshole ex, Priests burst with infectious and topical energy. It is so easy to be swallowed by the sheer horror of existence, but Nothing Feels Natural provides a beacon of hope. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PISymRFlY8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5929c059abf31b7dc715644a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/cebb0744.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Priests-Nothing_Feels_Natural.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2017/,2017,year,album,24,Thundercat,Drunk,Brainfeeeder,"Brainfeeeder Thundercat’s third solo album is an inward-looking suite of songs informed largely by the virtuosic bassist’s own eccentric sensibilities. The result includes goofy-ass lyrics, depressing balladry, and guest spots by artists as disparate as Kendrick Lamar and Kenny Loggins. Undulating basslines and ultra-crisp drum loops serve as fitting foundations for his anxious ponderings on ideas both big and small. In “Friend Zone,” Thundercat muses over a funk groove about whether a woman spurned him because of his adoration of video games; “Walk on By” grapples with death; and the penultimate track, the Pharrell collaboration “The Turn Down,” takes on the impending doom of man-made climate change. Spread out across 23 tracks, Drunk kicks off in high gear, frenetic and playful, before eventually coming to resemble the bleariness of its creator’s late-night state. –Noah Yoo",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wV8HYokDWeE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651c7bc5fce6fefcd1690238/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Thundercat%2520Drunk.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Thundercat-Drunk.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2017/,2017,year,album,23,Big Thief,Capacity,Saddle Creek,"Saddle Creek There is a song on Big Thief’s Capacity that sounds like it was recorded on frontwoman Adrianne Lenker’s phone, late at night and under a blanket, whispered over her acoustic guitar. Like most everything on the album, “Coma” is an oblique mixture of rapture and dread, a locked box to which only Lenker has the key. But halfway through, it’s as though the covers are thrown off: The full band’s vivid, pulsing folk-rock spills across the stereo field, bright as the full moon. This kind of metamorphosis goes to the heart of Big Thief’s gorgeous, moving, at times painful second album, in which images of trauma and redemption dance in the darkness under the watchful eye of owls and magpies. Lenker’s gift for empathy is astonishing: In her stories, she slips seamlessly across the lines dividing man and woman, mother and daughter, even victim and attacker. But despite a pervasive sorrow and an occasionally suffocating sense of menace, her band’s capacity for catharsis proves nearly limitless. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4F19lnK7UXA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651c7c093776bf8149410db8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Big%2520Thief%2520Capacity.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Big_Thief-Capacity.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2017/,2017,year,album,22,St. Vincent,Masseduction,Loma Vista,"Loma Vista Early discussions around Annie Clark’s fifth album as St. Vincent were driven by questions regarding its potential mass-culture appeal. The singer-songwriter was now a subject of tabloid interest. She was working with Jack Antonoff, a producer famous for his hits with Lorde and Taylor Swift. Was Clark due for a zeitgeist moment? In reality, the project wasn’t so dramatic a pivot. It was—shocker—another sequence of richly compelling songs, given greater heft thanks to Clark’s feverish performances. There’s the guitar squall at the end of the title track, which reasserts her noise-rock bona fides even as the song’s beat tugs her toward the dancefloor; countrified shades of regret color “Happy Birthday, Johnny;” and on “Los Ageless,” a layer of distortion on the vocal track can’t mask the exposed nerve underneath—including an “Oh my Lord” that sounds as though it had traveled from the blues shouts of Howlin’ Wolf and PJ Harvey before landing in Clark’s throat. On Masseduction, Clark doesn’t capitulate to pop as much as she makes pop adapt to her own core idiosyncrasies. –Seth Colter Walls",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVhCo7PoVpA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/59d3d5948e7d4e2f3d4da52a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/masseduction_st%2520vincent.jpg,/dataset/artwork/St_Vincent-Masseduction.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2017/,2017,year,album,21,Arca,Arca,XL,"XL Alejandro Ghersi’s voice had trickled into his work as Arca before, though he’d never really positioned himself as a singer. But on the producer’s third, self-titled LP, the howl beneath the veil comes into full bloom, rubbing its raw, bloodied edges against his labyrinthian MIDI arrangements and piercing beat work. The singing feeds the frenzy of his compositions: On “Desafío,” for a moment, the lacerations across his soundscape contort into falsetto-streaked, sugar-dusted pop. That he sounds lost among his own architecture only reiterates the album’s lyrical themes of alienation, displacement, love-as-violence and violence-as-love, sex drives and death drives, and the weird, helpless longing that lurks in the shadows of our minds. Arca is Ghersi’s first full-length work since he began collaborating with master producer and vocalist Björk, and her influence floods its veins. Here, he applies the technical dexterity he’s honed to sternum-rattling siren songs, threading his voice in and out of the haunted machines he calls home. –Sasha Geffen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WKWZ9y-dvU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5929f36beb335119a49ef99d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/658a3645.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Arca-Arca.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2017/,2017,year,album,20,Björk,Utopia,One Little Indian,"One Little Indian You stare at the screen and wonder if anything you felt that day was real: He told you he cared for you, but how can you invest in something tossed off an iPhone keyboard? Björk, ever a seer of what is new and modern, is here to tell you that the emotions you experience through the glass of your hardware are as true as anything. She has characterized Utopia as her “Tinder album” because it’s an exploration of something we all do more and more of: get to know one another online. Here, the medium is the message. With co-producer Arca, she creates an electronic pastoral of flutes and bird noises that feels as lush as an actual meadow. On the bucolic climax “Future Forever,” she imagines a digitized paradise of love—a productive exercise even if it’s just a hopeful fantasy. The album’s wisdom is clear: If you’re lucky enough to get a text message that makes you blush, be sure to count that blessing and, like Björk has, sing its praises. –Alex Frank",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnFd2eeTMLs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5a0c61a753d2ec32119336b3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/bjork%2520utopia.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bjrk-Utopia.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2017/,2017,year,album,19,Migos,Culture,Quality Control / 300 Entertainment,"Quality Control / 300 Entertainment When Donald Glover proclaimed Migos’ No. 1 smash “Bad and Boujee” to be “the best song ever” at this year’s Golden Globes, the statement seemed sensible—which in itself is kind of crazy. It was a testament to what the North Atlanta trio have perfected across the last six years: a woozy trap style that they stretch in strange and unique ways on their second album, Culture. Even though 18 different producers contributed to the record, it still manages to achieve a level of cohesion. This is largely thanks to Migos’ confidence in their own sound—triplet flows, symphonic hi-hat work—which has become infinitely influential. And the album’s light-handed use of features proves that Quavo, Offset, and Takeoff aren’t merely relying on their peers to get the job done. While many may try to duplicate their style, no one knows the formula quite like these three. –Kristin Corry",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VUa99-tJqs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651c7ce4fce6fefcd169023c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Migos%2520Culture.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Migos-Culture.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2017/,2017,year,album,18,Julien Baker,Turn Out the Lights,Matador,"Matador At one point in the video for “Appointments,” a highlight off Julien Baker’s sophomore album, the Memphis singer-songwriter finally leaves her empty house—and is suddenly followed by a barrage of undulating dancers. It’s an apt metaphor for Turn Out the Lights, which operates under the belief that there is beauty—even transcendence—in showing people the darkest, most conflicted parts of yourself in the stark light of the day. Alongside elegant strings and woodwinds, Baker’s clean guitar loops and plodding piano lines form a nest for lyrics about depression and substance abuse struggles. She often maintains the optimism of someone successful in her recovery efforts, though never without the memory of how it got so bad. But there is something else at play here, something that defines Baker’s choice to live, and that is her faith. Turn Out the Lights is not a Christian record, but it does have Baker asking a higher power why she feels broken as she wrestles to find the answers internally. She doesn’t come up empty-handed. –Jillian Mapes",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdBu21i9aEE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/59df8df69fc4f92030bb5c58/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/turn%2520out%2520the%2520lights_julien%2520baker.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Julien_Baker-Turn_Out_the_Lights.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2017/,2017,year,album,17,Charlotte Gainsbourg,Rest,Because,"Because Grief is the only truly universal experience, yet entire albums about death are still rare enough to shock. Charlotte Gainsbourg’s fifth and most personal record, Rest, reckons with the lost family members that have defined her life. In 2013, the singer’s sister died. The tragedy prompted Gainsbourg to start writing her own songs, something she had previously avoided due to her late father Serge’s giant legacy. Her lyrics are deft and minimalist, whether she’s singing about lying with her father’s dead body and the sound of nails entering his coffin, or about her sister’s struggles with alcohol. She finds an elegant match in production by SebastiAn and Daft Punk’s Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, whose hypnotic atmospheres and horror movie synths scintillate like snowfall at dusk. As Gainsbourg longs to commune with her lost spirits, Rest suggests that grief’s best possible outcome can be a kind of beautiful purgatory. –Laura Snapes",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkyIVKbCfG8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651c7d460fec390851441fdc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Charlotte%2520Gainsbourg%2520Rest.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Charlotte_Gainsbourg-Rest.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2017/,2017,year,album,16,Perfume Genius,No Shape,Matador,"Matador Mike Hadreas once wore bondage gear and lipstick on “Letterman” to sing about scandalizing families, and it’s always seemed as though the courage to execute that transgression came from having outlived so many harrowing ordeals: addiction, homophobic bullying, depression, Crohn’s disease. That past haunted his first three albums as Perfume Genius. On the fourth, No Shape, he celebrates the love and sobriety he now enjoys without denying any residual melancholy. Opener “Otherside” begins with the kind of delicate balladry that defined Hadreas’ early work. Then, suddenly, the song explodes into a cloud of chimes and sighs—a glitter cannon at a piano recital. Emotionally, it’s Dorothy stepping into a Technicolor world that’s more cheerful than her black-and-white home, but also scarier. This tangle of pretty contradictions defines the new Perfume Genius: quiet and loud, introspective and flamboyant, sad and happy. More spangly bursts of sound punctuate “Slip Away,” which could soundtrack lovers fleeing an angry mob; “Wreath” is similarly propulsive, although this time it’s death pursuing Hadreas. Love, worry, hard-won wisdom, and plaintive strings spill over from the big production numbers into the lullabies. Hadreas leaves us in neither Oz nor sepia-toned Kansas, but his own bright heart. –Judy Berman",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPiiY4a1vf4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7950a24bc6510008699749/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Perfume-Genius-No-Shape.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Perfume_Genius-No_Shape.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2017/,2017,year,album,15,Sampha,Process,Young Turks,"Young Turks It now seems curious that London electro-soul singer Sampha made his name as a collaborator with other mononyms—Kanye, Drake, Solange—when he had such a singular, achingly personal drive at his core: the long cancer battle and eventual death of his mother, and his struggle to come to terms with it. Grief runs through his long-awaited debut, Process, like a solitary, sustained note, his luscious voice like a cry padded with cotton and shredding at the corners. The album is as effortful in discovery as the title suggests, but it edges away from neat resolutions and Hallmark platitudes. It is a record about staring into the space where someone you love once was. And it is more beautiful than the situation deserves. –Stacey Anderson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oM1DFL43Lk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76b6799ce93e0008382265/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sampha-Process.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sampha-Process.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2017/,2017,year,album,14,Mount Eerie,A Crow Looked at Me,P.W. Eelverum & Sun,"P.W. Eelverum & Sun As a subject for song lyrics and poetry, death is a perennial that stretches back to the dawn of human language. We use words to try to understand the nature of a soul, the meaning of the universe, what might happen next. Phil Elverum of Mount Eerie lost his wife to cancer when she was just 35 and their daughter was not yet two, and A Crow Looked at Me, an album written in the immediate aftermath, is heavy with death in every strummed note of its spare arrangements. But Elverum doesn’t focus so much on the Big Questions, singing instead about the mundane details, like when it’s finally time to throw away the departed’s used toothbrush. Someone’s there and then they’re gone; the world seems like it should stop, but it doesn’t. Hearing Elverum catalog his grief and confusion with tenderness and bracing honesty does a couple of things at once: It makes us feel less alone, and it reminds us to go easy on ourselves. No one actually knows how to get through the worst of it, and sometimes survival is all you can hope for. –Mark Richardson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGESP0iePmQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bc57053e80c0008f43b26/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mount-Eerie-A-Crow-Looked-at-Me.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mount_Eerie-A_Crow_Looked_at_Me.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2017/,2017,year,album,13,JAY-Z,4:44,UMG / Roc Nation,"UMG / Roc Nation When recording, JAY-Z seemingly always wants to hear the beat as loud as possible. Some variation of “Turn the music up, turn me down” has become a common refrain across his career, to the point of parody. With these requests for volume, it feels like he’s using the booming frequencies between his ears as jet fuel to power his extravagant id. But on most of 4:44, you get the impression he wants the music low, so he can finally hear the quiet anxieties whispering inside of his head. He’s not projecting grandness; he’s allowing himself to be small. Instead of his typical dialed-up intros, one track even begins with a quaint confession of weakness: “Got a lil’ cold, so bear with me.” Urged on by producer No I.D.’s thematically harmonious sampling of classics by the likes of Nina and Stevie, 4:44 finds the rapper introspective and apologetic—for his infidelities, for his reckless youth, and for providing a faulty blueprint for a generation brought up on his signature flash. It’s not a full-on pity party, though. The man born Shawn Carter also offers a new set of life rules marked by black ownership, legacies across generations, and personal responsibility, all while deftly avoiding the pitfalls of respectability politics—given his rampant regret, holier-than-thou isn’t really an option. Startlingly self-lacerating and honest, 4:44 is a winning admission of defeat from the only rapper who could ever knock JAY-Z off his gilded perch. –Ryan Dombal",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFGrmHIohi8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651c7e189accbbeca9f91a1d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/JAY-Z%25204%252044.jpg,/dataset/artwork/JAY-Z-444.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2017/,2017,year,album,12,LCD Soundsystem,American Dream,DFA / Columbia,"DFA / Columbia “You warned me about the cocaine, then dove straight in” is the LCD Soundsystem experience in a nutshell. Coming halfway through the nine-minute “How Do You Sleep?”—somehow only the second-longest song on American Dream—the lyric has it all: neuroses, memories, white lines. James Murphy is supposedly singing about his former friend and business partner Tim Goldsworthy, and their split is audible on this heavy epic. But while the song may be thematically on target, it sounds darker than before. “How Do You Sleep?” is one of a few uncharacteristically foreboding tracks from the band’s comeback record, their first since Murphy retired to write music for high-profile marketing projects and open a wine bar. American Dream also includes plenty of classic LCD: No one does rock’n’roll disco better, and on songs like “Tonite,” “Call the Police,” and “Other Voices,” we get the barnburners LCD are best known for and still capable of. But it’s the album’s more ominous moments that make it so worth the wait, and such a relief to hear. –Matthew Schnipper",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBLagwi_m2c,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/639b2b714a2538c4055b0e80/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/LCD-Soundsystem-American-Dream.jpg,/dataset/artwork/LCD_Soundsystem-American_Dream.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2017/,2017,year,album,11,The War on Drugs,A Deeper Understanding,Atlantic,"Atlantic Until now, the War on Drugs leader Adam Granduciel’s greatest act of studio wizardry has been to give his music the appearance of real rock instead of what it really is: ruthlessly engineered pop fantasy. A Deeper Understanding blows his cover—with legendary industry guru Jimmy Iovine’s blessing, and new label Atlantic’s budget, Granduciel ditched his makeshift home studio to record his first blockbuster in Los Angeles and New York alongside an army of vintage synths. The record is his most expansive and escapist yet, as its pristine perpetual motion machines quarantine the listener from 2017’s politics, narratives, and trends, allowing us all to sort through our shit in peace. It’s a monolithic sound, egoless as it distills the pure artistic essence of pop music at its most inclusive. –Ian Cohen ",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9LgHNf2Qy0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651c7e73bfd513aedb130ad2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/War%2520on%2520Drugs%2520A%2520Deeper%2520Understanding.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_War_on_Drugs-A_Deeper_Understanding.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2017/,2017,year,album,10,Jlin,Black Origami,Planet Mu,"Planet Mu If Jlin’s debut album, Dark Energy, saw the Gary, Indiana, producer edge away from the basic tenets of footwork, Black Origami has her striding into her own musical world. With a clear spirit of adventure, she unleashes a globe-trotting journey through percussion, where American marching bands meet techno hi hats, tabla drums caress stuttering percussive hooks, and djembe drum rolls float over electronic bass drum thumps. They all form rhythmical tangles that unfurl like the paper-folding art of the album title. Balanced against this percussive uproar are two hugely elegant choral numbers in “Holy Child” and “Calcination,” where Jlin lets astral melody seep into her steely sonic mix. With Black Origami, Jlin not only takes a huge leap forward—she drags electronic music along in her wake too. –Ben Cardew",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lekNe82iIA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a67038699b30008f1aeae/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jlin-Black-Origami.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jlin-Black_Origami.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2017/,2017,year,album,9,Fever Ray,Plunge,Rabid / Mute,"Rabid / Mute Plunge, Karin Dreijer’s second album as Fever Ray, returns to a similar landscape of eerie synths and alien vocals that defined her self-titled 2009 debut. But now, the avowedly queer singer turns up the political forthrightness as she aims her focus toward fucking, loving, and finding freedom. Instead of foggy mystery, her videos are made up of S&M tea parties; instead of ominous abstraction, her lyrics are declarative and up-front. “Destroy boring,” she proclaims, traversing across blitzkrieg electronics, singalong melodies, and a tender violin dirge on her journey of discovery. Frenetic and freewheeling, Plunge revolts against dystopia by reveling despite it. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lQI81TJe7I,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651c7f028d07c4e0b46f71aa/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Fever%2520Ray%2520Plunge.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fever_Ray-Plunge.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2017/,2017,year,album,8,"Tyler, the Creator",Flower Boy,Columbia,"Columbia In years past, Tyler, the Creator didn’t give a fuck—about you or anyone else—as he snarled, stomped around, and bit into roaches. There were a few hints of emotional vulnerability, but anarchic rapper mostly masked his true self behind layers of aggression and all-caps tweets. On Flower Boy, though, he drops the bravado. Over a musical backdrop that Stevie Wonder might admire, he finally gives us a sense of the man behind the facade. He’s riddled with loneliness, wallowing in angst and self-doubt. And on “I Ain’t Got Time!,” he seemingly all but comes out when he raps, “I’ve been kissing white boys since 2004.” It’s a surprising revelation for the 26-year-old, whose homophobic slurs have peppered his music since Odd Future’s earliest songs, and the candor is refreshing. Perhaps Tyler really gives a fuck after all. –Marcus J. Moore",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxFP_TI2gTM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76b30053e80c0008f43815/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Tyler-the-Creator-Flower-Boy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tyler_the_Creator-Flower_Boy.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2017/,2017,year,album,7,Vince Staples,Big Fish Theory,Artium / Blacksmith / Def Jam,"Artium / Blacksmith / Def Jam While Vince Staples’ affable, everyman charm and witty online presence has endeared him to hip-hop circles, the rapper has bigger goals in mind. On Big Fish Theory, his concise and clear-eyed second album, he continues to shift away from expectations, this time condensing sharp social commentary and personal insights into tightly knit club tracks. Staples is a committed civic observer here, unabashedly thumbing his nose at the government on “BagBak,” one of hip-hop’s first responses to the Trump presidency. Most often, though, his favorite subject is the one in the mirror. “Big Fish” is a striking character profile, rich with detail about his pre-fame life in Long Beach, California, as well as poignant admissions about his anxieties as a marquee name. The album’s rhythms draw from from big-beat and house, but rather than signaling a departure from hip-hop, Big Fish Theory reinforces Staples’ niche within black music overall; it establishes his connection to the young black men and women who fostered the rise of electronic music decades before him, on dancefloors in New York, Chicago, Detroit, and beyond. The result well worth savoring, before he evolves to his next exciting form. –Vanessa Okoth-Obbo",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KF6x7g5ZfwM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/594c1ddad3993f4ad30b94c4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/vince%2520staples%2520big%2520fish%2520theory.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Vince_Staples-Big_Fish_Theory.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2017/,2017,year,album,6,Moses Sumney,Aromanticism,Jagjaguwar,"Jagjaguwar Throughout the glassy, gossamer soul of Moses Sumney’s debut album, the 26-year-old finds new ways to talk about loneliness, romance at a distance, the ability to “behold and not be held.” Sumney is not fixated on an inability to love so much as an inability to belong to a love made in this broken, repressive world—the “Lonely World” that heaves and swells at the center of Aromanticism. Sumney has the voice of a saxophone with an old reed, his tone unfailingly pure in the falsetto where he spends most of the album. Not since D’Angelo, Frank Ocean, or Jeff Buckley has a songwriter debuted with such a singular gift for tip-toeing through heartbreak, though Sumney might be more vulnerable than them all. It’s R&B for castaways, a euphorically miserable ode to solitude. –Jeremy D. Larson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpvBlhdrqz8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d77b9946eee70000829f3fe/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Moses-Sumney-Aromanticism.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Moses_Sumney-Aromanticism.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2017/,2017,year,album,5,Lorde,Melodrama,Lava / Republic,"Lava / Republic Of all the cinematic wonders on Melodrama—Lorde dancing alone through an exposed window; pink gums smarting around a tequila-drenched lime—none is as obsessively rendered as the car crash in “Homemade Dynamite,” her breathless surrender to hedonism. “We’ll end up painted on the road/Red and chrome/All the broken glass sparkling,” she marvels. This isn’t a PSA about driving under the influence. It’s a fantasy: Wouldn’t it be simpler if this car flipped right here and we all died, and everything was absolute, all our doubts crushed between fender and asphalt? That finality is almost preferable to what Lorde reckons with amid Melodrama’s bruised euphoria. How do you live with your regrets? How many times do you let yourself get hurt when you know every relationship eventually goes tits up? And how do you stop bitterness from tarnishing the golden parts? Most twentysomethings have to shake off a measure of youthful idealism to thrive in the real world, but Lorde is different: On Melodrama, the former teenage nihilist wrestles with how much to care. She doesn’t find the answers (because there aren’t any), but the album’s many majestic pop moments let her dabble with the sensation of sweet surrender. –Laura Snapes",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQsJ_FCCIMQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d8904320480b10008ffa260/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lorde-Melodrama.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Lorde-Melodrama.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2017/,2017,year,album,4,Kelela,Take Me Apart,Warp,"Warp So much forward-thinking pop and R&B succumbs to innovation fatigue, offering intricate futurescapes that nonetheless start to sound interchangeable. But Kelela remains ambitious and distinctive on her first proper album, offering unshowy yet modern production alongside emotionally complex lyrics that spare neither her partner nor herself from her high standards. Take Me Apart is dense with carefully chosen details. “LMK” sounds like a hit from a parallel, less dysfunctional radio universe, as hooky as it is subtly wistful. She’s rarely obvious: On the Arca-produced “Turn to Dust,” the singer’s multitracked vocals are unexpected against pizzicato strings and the most overtly felt cello swoon of the past few years. The last minute of “Blue Light” begins almost a cappella, with Kelela admitting to a potential partner that “darling, my guard is down.” On a lesser song, that would be the end of it: a quiet outro for quiet feelings. But Kelela’s voice splits into a dozen parts, hooks pinging between registers. The symbolism is potent: Vulnerability is often expressed through smallness, but for Kelela, it’s a magnifying force. –Katherine St. Asaph",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wjq7x2d_s1w,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/59d6839ba161ef1828a4b3b9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/kelela_take.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kelela-Take_Me_Apart.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2017/,2017,year,album,3,King Krule,The OOZ,True Panther / XL,"True Panther / XL So much music seems happy to be merely complementary now: in the background, on a playlist, soundtracking that new TV show. But those in search of something more immersive can find a gangly, ginger, hollering hero in King Krule’s Archy Marshall. The 23-year-old Londoner doesn’t need Netflix to fill out his engrossing blue-and-black tracks, and the only playlist that could suitably house the songs from his second album is his second album, The OOZ. The record, more than any other this year, creates an entire universe unto itself. Fittingly for 2017, that universe is a dark place, practically post-apocalyptic. Throughout, Marshall sounds like the loneliest astronaut, looking out at the ultimate emptiness, wondering what on earth went wrong. There are fits of scuffed-up punk anger, bouts of contemplation hung upon exploratory jazz chords, ambient soliloquies of the mind. “Nothing’s working with me!” he yowls at one point. But within Marshall’s world of decay, everything works to color in the crumble. Only a master of his own musical universe could make such a collapse feel so whole. –Ryan Dombal",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cijxVWAVWRg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/59d6ab987855fa6c9a16f2f1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/the%2520ooz_king%2520krule.jpg,/dataset/artwork/King_Krule-The_OOZ.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2017/,2017,year,album,2,SZA,Ctrl,TDE,"TDE In the fall of 2016, it seemed like SZA’s debut studio album would never see the light of day. The rising R&B talent born Solána Rowe proclaimed that she was quitting music, a decision attributed to her battles with anxiety, a frustratingly perfectionist attitude, and, perhaps, some cloak-and-dagger label politics, too. But soon enough, SZA was writing through her personal reckoning, laying bare the kind of vulnerability most often whispered in private. She penned sincere songs about love, heartbreak, self-esteem, and the idea of control—what it means to have it and let it go. Throughout Ctrl, SZA is startlingly open about her loneliness and need for attention, but she is no one-note, downtrodden protagonist: She jumps from exploring the sting of being passed over to empowering women to be themselves and enjoy their lives. Elsewhere, she’s fancy-free, further showing the beautiful contradictions of women, even at their most unsure. Her soulful vocals, dotted occasionally with twee inflections, are compelling and instantly recognizable as hers, paired with lush production that uses both subtle R&B samples and original, stirring instrumentation. Her work here let thousands of listeners feel seen, understood, and less alone. That’s a special type of kindness to put out into the world; it’s only fitting that some of it should come back around. –Vanessa Okoth-Obbo",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWktRW128UA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/593ed23cf6f585756595affa/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/b24dfb11.jpg,/dataset/artwork/SZA-Ctrl.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-50-best-albums-of-2017/,2017,year,album,1,Kendrick Lamar,DAMN.,Top Dawg Entertainment / Interscope,"Top Dawg Entertainment / Interscope Kendrick Lamar is taking his pulpit to arenas now. In 2017, his deeply cerebral rap dominated pop culture as he scored his biggest hits without compromising his epic vision, while headlining festivals and out-streaming the biggest pop stars. And he did it all while posing a radical question: How does one enjoy the spoils of rap majesty and still earn entry into the kingdom of heaven? DAMN. is as zealous and purposeful as it is broadly appealing. The record is rangy and radio-friendly, sacred and secular, full of evocative scene-setting and risk-taking. Kendrick’s more complex ideas get pared down without losing impact, flexed in his most digestible storytelling yet. Scripture becomes song on DAMN., where Deuteronomy and the curses of disobedience inform paranoid musings and philosophical debates. The fame monster has been eating away at his spirituality again, but this time he returns to the source: God. These are the tension-filled tales of a self-professed sinner, reborn but not yet redeemed, chasing divine favor and freedom. On “HUMBLE.,” he tries to induce meekness; “LUST.” considers the monotony of materialism; and “LOVE.” longs to find beauty in a depraved world, and in others. The pressures of being a missionary and emancipator crash onto the rapper’s very human shoulders on “FEEL.”: “I feel like the whole world want me to pray for ’em/But who the fuck prayin’ for me?” When he takes the wider view to his community, his rhymes burst with urgency. “See, in a perfect world, I’ll choose faith over riches/I’ll choose work over bitches, I’ll make schools out of prison,” he raps on “PRIDE.,” where paradise can be found in self-actualization. “I’ll take all the religions and put ’em all in one service/Just to tell ’em we ain’t shit, but He’s been perfect.” Throughout, Kendrick’s inner war rages on, as he dares to expose grim realities while questioning his place in them, and in the next world. He wonders aloud how to be a good Samaritan, a rap king, and a savior; how to savor both the pleasures of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit. But Kendrick’s kingdom is here on Earth, as he takes his rightful place before the altar and on the rap throne, humbling many of his peers in the process. The hymns and prayers are for Him, but the preternatural raps are for us. –Sheldon Pearce",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glaG64Ao7sM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a63a8256a0a0009483358/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kendrick-Lamar-DAMN.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kendrick_Lamar-DAMN.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,100,Maggie Rogers,“On + Off”,Capitol,"Capitol As a humble music student from Maryland, Maggie Rogers rose to fame after catching Pharrell's ear with her enigmatic pop song “Alaska.” The upbeat electro track showcased Rogers’ keen intuition as a songwriter and arranger. Now “On + Off” finds her a brilliant alchemist, joining styles from across the sonic spectrum under a swooping arc. Brittle synth pop, heartland folk, quiet storm R&B, deep house, velvety dream pop, even a trace of gospel choir: They’re all here, in the brilliant stained glass mirror through which she sees the world. –Zoe Camp",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdIBxhONpC0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651daa8c0fec390851441fec/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/maggie%2520rogers_on%2520and%2520off.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Maggie_Rogers-On__Off.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,99,Kamaiyah,“Build You Up”,Interscope,"Interscope Between signing with Interscope and landing a spot on XXL’s Freshmen class of ’17, Kamaiyah Johnson made plenty of power moves over the past 12 months. Her greatest may be “Build You Up,” a punchy neon pep talk that repurposes Tony! Toni! Toné!’s 1990 chart-topper “Feels Good” into a burst of R&B optimism. Kamaiyah has said she wrote “Build You Up” to empower young women within a cultural landscape where such anthems are scarce. True enough, in her catchy track, the Bay Area MC lifts up her peers as she stresses their right to love and respect. “If he don’t show you love, then he’s less than/Never stress it, tell that brother get to steppin’,” she instructs. Words to live by. –Zoe Camp",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uRNpEynpcw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/595f91c54e80eb1ae5d7aae1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/build%2520you%2520up%2520.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kamaiyah-Build_You_Up.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,98,Charly Bliss,“Percolator”,Barsuk,"Barsuk The 2001 film version of Josie and the Pussycats was a commercial failure, but many of us grew to love its power-pop soundtrack anyway, and some even formed bands. Charly Bliss stand out among them by favoring pop over force: “Percolator” offers a few moments of grimy guitar before attacking the listener with hooks instead. Eva Hendricks’ voice has the capricious shape of an inner monologue, squeaking out each wry line: “Swimming in your pool, I am pregnant with meaning/Could I be more appealing, writing slurs on the ceiling?” It’s sardonic, self-deprecating, and utterly serious all at once. Satirizing the music industry as a psy-ops conspiracy, Josie and the Pussycats also suggested how much fear and disdain youthful ardor can provoke. Call it power—something “Percolator” has. –Chris Randle",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKl8Gw68awY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651daf655380aea59b9e8466/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/percolator_charly%2520bliss.png,/dataset/artwork/Charly_Bliss-Percolator.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,97,DJ Khaled,“Wild Thoughts” [ft. Rihanna and Bryson Tiller],Epic,"Epic “Wild Thoughts” is proof that DJ Khaled’s sheer determination to engineer Top 40 hits can actually pay off. Strategic in his appeals to nostalgia, Khaled essentially recreated Santana and the Product G&B’s 1999 hit “Maria Maria,” retaining its shuffling Latin percussion and seductive guitar lines. Perhaps Khaled knew a Latin-tinged pop song could rule the U.S. charts for the summer—but only if an English-speaking superstar jumped on it, as evidenced by Justin Bieber’s remix of Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s “Despacito.” After eight years of trying to get Rihanna on a track, Khaled finally landed an elusive feature, and her ability to exude carefree sex appeal proved a perfect match for the slinky beat. Confident and restrained, Rihanna dips to the lowest parts of her range to make playful phrases about temptation sound as sensuous as possible. Bryson Tiller contributes a just-fine verse that expectedly mentions D’usse and not-so-expectedly references The Waterboy. Add in the occasional over-exuberant ad-lib from DJ Khaled, and you have the recipe for a great summer bop. –Michelle Kim",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyaI4-5849w,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5943e98daa1127341c3bc7ac/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/DJKhaled_WildThoughts.jpg,/dataset/artwork/DJ_Khaled-Wild_Thoughts_ft_Rihanna_and_Bryson_Tiller.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,96,Yo Gotti,“Rake It Up” [ft. Nicki Minaj],Gotti Made-It / Empire,"Gotti Made-It / Empire For decades, strip clubs in the South have served as a testing ground for hip-hop songs, and Yo Gotti handcrafted “Rake It Up” as a pole-friendly anthem. But instead of the usual “make it rain” tropes centered around the power of the patron, the Memphis rapper shifts the energy to the dancers raking up wads of cash after a successful night on the job. Producer Mike WiLL Made-It finesses hi-hats and big bass into a spacious beat that’s filled out by Gotti and Nicki Minaj, who makes rhyming the word “China” five times in a row sound ingenious on one of her most showstopping features in recent memory. Here, the women are moneymakers, and Nicki is center stage. –Kristin Corry",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrSadmwmmAs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651db11f3cb20b5da52dde85/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/rake%2520it%2520up_yo%2520gotti.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Yo_Gotti-Rake_It_Up_ft_Nicki_Minaj.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,95,Downtown Boys,“A Wall”,Sub Pop,"Sub Pop Earlier this year, as the White House bungled the implementation of its “Muslim ban,” sparking airport protests and civil rights lawsuits, Downtown Boys were holed up in Steve Albini’s Chicago studio cutting their Sub Pop debut, Cost of Living. Vocalist Victoria Ruiz and guitarist Joey DeFrancesco earned their activist stripes organizing for labor and civil rights in their home base of Providence, Rhode Island; they’re not used to watching from the sidelines. But the record they cut will endure long after the current administration has left office, and “A Wall,” its opening salvo, perfectly captures their righteous rage. In between the driving bassline and soaring sax melody, Ruiz and DeFrancesco shout down jingoistic imperialism. It’s an extension of the band’s live shows, which are equal parts dance party and discourse. Ruiz confronts and challenges her audience, encouraging us to decolonize our minds while examining our own complicity in oppressive structures rooted in white supremacy. On a record full of defiant statements, “A Wall” is among the most forceful. –Matthew Ismael Ruiz",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9yim3ZGuUc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5980ede831cc0f604d98b959/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/cost%2520of%2520living_downtown%2520boys.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Downtown_Boys-A_Wall.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,94,Vagabon,“The Embers”,Father / Daughter,"Father / Daughter Lætitia Tamko never says anything about fire on “The Embers,” the opening track of Vagabon’s debut album, Infinite Worlds. In a rougher version, at the end of Vagabon’s 2014 EP Persian Garden, the same song was titled “Sharks.” You could argue the original title made more sense, because Tamko sings here—laconically, unforgettably—about being “a small fish” in a sea of voracious predators. But “The Embers” fans her artistic statement of self-belief into a glowing, quiet-loud opus that evokes both classic Modest Mouse and recent Hop Along. It’s proof that there are other seas for small fish, particularly the New York D.I.Y. community that nurtured Vagabon. And yet, in showing how someone made to feel marginal can transform that sense of vulnerability into strength, the song also reveals determined souls can set any situation brilliantly ablaze. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTo_Dsa8ijM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5929f5380c2bba1b7de03768/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/de93e21b.png,/dataset/artwork/Vagabon-The_Embers.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,93,Big Shaq,“Man’s Not Hot”,Island,"Island It was a banner year for grime-related humor, first seeing Roll Safe achieve meme-level fame, and then Big Shaq’s “Man’s Not Hot” proving itself the most quotable British product since Lethal Bizzle’s “Rari Workout.” Casual observers might wonder if grime parodies are better than grime tracks, but “Man’s Not Hot” renders that distinction moot by being an excellent example of each. Indeed, it joins in a tradition of songs (e.g., the Darkness’ “I Believe in a Thing Called Love”) that so expertly lampoon their chosen genre they become part of its firmament. “Man’s Not Hot,” which originated as a freestyle on BBC Radio 1Xtra, is the brainchild of British comedian Michael Dapaah, who builds the track around one wry observation—why are young toughs always mugging in parkas?—and withholds the punch line long enough to practice his gun noises and turn “donut” into an insult. He also brags about his deodorant and ups the stakes (“Man can never be hot/Perspiration ting”), wrapping the track so tightly in patois and bravado that it hardly matters whether you’re doubled over laughing or marring your search history with “uckers.” –Andrew Gaerig",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoAI7gTQSko,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651db52dfce6fefcd1690250/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/man's%2520not%2520hot_big%2520shaq.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Big_Shaq-Mans_Not_Hot.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,92,Jessie Ware,“Midnight”,Island,"Island “Midnight” is the sound of walls tumbling down, the kinds used to shield a heart from love. Upon its release, Jessie Ware described the song as one she’s “always wanted to be able to sing” and it exudes a newfound confidence, shining with every note. Ware sounds powerful and poised as she embodies the full force of falling for someone. “Can I miss you in the daylight?” she sings, underscoring the question’s idyllic naivety. But for all the vulnerability contained within these lyrics, Ware’s vocals are the grandest revelation here, capturing the beautiful discomfort of such a feeling. She employs her higher register to stunning effect, and this iteration of old soul-tinged pop is Ware at her most impressive. –Briana Younger",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJz8mtImzdc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/597b4961c1992a3194e4b839/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/jessie-ware-midnight.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jessie_Ware-Midnight.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,91,CCFX,“The One to Wait”,DFA,"DFA “The One to Wait” begins quietly, with a wash of guitar and a gentle breakbeat. And then Mary Jane Dunphe, a singer who always sounds like she’s announcing herself to the world, announces herself to the world, and CCFX sounds for a moment like the type of brilliant post-punk act that arrives like a summer storm to reorganize your thoughts about rock music. The end result isn’t quite so dramatic, thankfully. CCFX is Dunphe’s collaboration with Trans FX’s Chris McDonnell, and the dream pop they conjure is the most luxurious environ she's inhabited yet. On “The One to Wait,” her voice swoops and eddies through a tale of longing and indecision, her phrasing and tone almost sculpture-like in its exaggerated poses. The lyrics and puddled guitars suggest sadness, but the song’s melody seems to slope ever upward, never quite cresting. It creates a fidgety, nervous energy that carries the track as you wonder if Dunphe is going to let loose. She doesn’t, because some storms just drizzle all day long. –Andrew Gaerig",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFBQA-jU9Bg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/59e634d3b3222c6c648bf9da/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/ccfx_ccfx.jpg,/dataset/artwork/CCFX-The_One_to_Wait.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,90,J Balvin / Willy William,“Mi Gente” [ft. Beyoncé] (Remix),Epic Records,"Epic Records It is a strange sign of the times that after a hurricane struck Houston in late summer, there was a faction of the internet mad at Beyoncé for not responding quickly enough to help her hometown, as though she were a public servant or president (oh were it so!) and not a Pepsi-sponsored pop star. Of course, Beyoncé always answers her detractors with statements so powerful, no further comment is needed—and so, not only did she personally go to Houston herself to hand out food to those in need, she later dropped a remix of Colombian singer J Balvin’s massive Latin hit “Mi Gente” to benefit hurricane relief all around the hemisphere in Puerto Rico, the Caribbean, and Mexico. Balvin is about as big as B in Latin America, and his track was already massive globally without her help. But the Beyoncé charity co-sign put reggaeton on the speakers of kids in America who might never have heard it before, and made her as effective—if not more—at helping to fix the world’s ills than some actual heads of state who shall remain nameless. –Alex Frank",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUdhYvzZ_tE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5b452dd0ab6b2c4f14a1084a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/beastmode2.jpg,/dataset/artwork/J_Balvin__Willy_William-Mi_Gente_ft_Beyonc_Remix.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,89,Dirty Projectors,“Little Bubble”,Domino,"Domino Camouflaged as a breakup album, Dirty Projectors’ self-titled, eighth full-length was a reinvention for songwriter Dave Longstreth, and nowhere more so than on the empty-bed lament “Little Bubble.” Featuring Longstreth, a string quartet, and a heroically minimalist drum part by Michael Johnson, “Little Bubble” bypasses the deeply specific references that dot many of the album’s songs and aims for something more universal, straightforward, and ambitious. The self-harmonized verses take about half the song’s length to achieve its central, sad thought. En route, Longstreth finds a new mode for his nearly decade-and-a-half old project via a gently glitching keyboard, barely perceptible bubble-shaped bleeps, and the barest of rhythm tracks. The moody dynamic, casting the music with the song’s “cold October light,” frames his R&B vocal tendencies in a way both legitimately poppy and true to his weirdness. Downsized but still intricate, Longstreth’s return to mostly-solo recording manifests as self-resolution on “Little Bubble,” pointing to a future with new paths to discover, but no less filled with loss. –Jesse Jarnow",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IG5f50olZA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651db9b6b9177fb1db43aebb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/dirty%2520projectors.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dirty_Projectors-Little_Bubble.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,88,Hurray for the Riff Raff,“Pa’lante”,ATO,"ATO The phrase “pa’lante,” meaning “forward,” was a rallying cry for the Young Lords, a Puerto Rican civil rights group that took to the streets of Spanish Harlem in the late 1960s. On Hurray for the Riff Raff’s album The Navigator, leader Alynda Segarra makes “Pa’lante” into a powerful ode to perseverance. Starkly swaying piano chords meet Segarra’s raw-throated musings about work, romance, gender identity, and, yes, post-colonial assimilation. There’s a brightly affirmative midsection (“Any day now, I will come along,” Segarra promises) and a searing poetry reading before the itinerant Nuyorican folk-rock bandleader widens her gaze further “to the ghost of Emmett Till” and beyond. In a year of Hurricane Maria, of tragic headlines for so many who were historically marginalized, Segarra’s repetition of “pa’lante” sounds like an intersectional “amen”: a universal prayer to be something, feel something, move forward. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOL2OkV-TkU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5929c1c45e6ef9596932375f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/ec794de3.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Hurray_for_the_Riff_Raff-Palante.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,87,Harry Styles,“Sign of the Times”,Columbia,"Columbia The saddest shift of youth arrives the day your favorite tousle-haired boy-bander leaves your daydreams and abruptly needs to get off your lawn. More depressing still are the stabs at trendiness that eclipsed teen heartthrobs often take: mealy-mouthed EDM sex ballads, hammy Broadway residencies, Xeroxed pop-soul trifles. Harry Styles was one of the rare ones who hopscotched neatly over all these awkward phases once One Direction went on hiatus. Instead, on his debut solo single, “Sign of the Times,” Styles embraced the musical forms that his peers might deem uncool, from Elton John ivories-melting pomp to Glen Campbell–style lurid balladry. Grim lyrics that could seem fatalist (or given his age, just a bit emo) are delivered with earthy insight, Styles showing his true crooner abilities as he warns of bleak times to come. Well, maybe for everyone else—this golden child seems to have blue skies ahead. –Stacey Anderson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qN4ooNx77u0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651dbdd8bfd513aedb130b48/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/harry%2520styles-%2520sign%2520of%2520the%2520times.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Harry_Styles-Sign_of_the_Times.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,86,Baths,“Dream Daddy”,Game Grumps,"Game Grumps “Dream Daddy” was not presented to the world as Baths’ new masterwork. There was no PR blast announcing its arrival, and it can’t be purchased on vinyl like his impressive new album, Romaplasm. It lives primarily as the opening title music for its video game namesake, and although the 96-second song’s primary function is to transition us into a world of scrumptious virtual DILFs, it’s so much more than a throwaway sonic blurb. Will Wiesenfeld weaves an earworm for the ages, a melody so beatific that the term “dream daddy” transcends its meme status and becomes a universal idyll. With only a handful of words and some celestial vocal effects, he paints an impressionistic portrait of fresh crush elation. The beat makes it danceable and heightens the euphoria—a mood that’s easy to consume again and again, making it perfect for pre-game repetition. Maybe one day, it’ll get a good, long 12'' dance mix—but until then, that title screen will just have to stay on repeat, postponing gameplay indefinitely. –Evan Minsker",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jlQbAKsLJc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651dbe8dfce6fefcd1690252/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/dream%2520daddy_baths.png,/dataset/artwork/Baths-Dream_Daddy.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,85,Missy Elliott,“I’m Better” [ft. Lamb],Goldmine / Atlantic,"Goldmine / Atlantic It’s been a staggering 12 years since Missy Elliott, still the grande dame of hip-hop, released her last studio album. As such, any morsel of music she releases is a blessing, and for the past few years, she has been slowly but surely teasing a full-blown comeback. So far, the syrupy-slow “I’m Better” is the apex of these new tracks, and one that is quintessentially Missy: a lean, funky beat coupled with mind-bending wordplay in her iconic half-bar drawl. The song shows a subdued maturity that separates it from the classic Missy tracks we know and love, without holding back on her sense of innovation. Before, Missy was eager to show us the impressive range of tricks in her arsenal, from groundbreaking production work with Timbaland to her legendary music videos. Here, she’s more thoughtful and controlled, but just as impactful, and her lyrics just as witty (somehow managing to rhyme “I’m from VA” with “the car that I drive be Ferrari”). The core tenets of Missy’s persona—body positivity, black female empowerment, Afrofuturism—have only become more prescient with time, and while awaiting her true second coming, she is still demanding we get our freak on—but on her terms, and in her own time. –Cameron Cook",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwyPsUd9LAk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5929f4c8c0084474cd0c589d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/7fc5e56a.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Missy_Elliott-Im_Better_ft_Lamb.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,84,Broken Social Scene,“Hug of Thunder”,Arts & Crafts,"Arts & Crafts Looking back at a scribbly teenage journal, decades later, can be bittersweet: Here is, word for word, who you were and will never be again, all rendered in the glorious freedom of youth. For her first star turn on a Broken Social Scene song in 11 years, Leslie Feist revisits her own adolescent musings—the Syd Barrett surrealism, the broken teeth, the days when “the bus stop was the size of the entire world”—with a sense of awe. This isn’t nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake; there are layers of remembrance, half-memories, creases made up of meaning. Lilting through her past over a gently surging backbeat, she fills “Hug of Thunder” with the wisdom of a sentimentalist. Each line, old and new, is memorable enough to feel real, with blank pages to spare. –Ryan Dombal",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9ujF9s48Z8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651dc6c1247a704be92e5cc4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/broken%2520social%2520scene-%2520hug%2520of%2520thunder.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Broken_Social_Scene-Hug_of_Thunder.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,83,Playboi Carti,“Location”,Interscope / AWGE,"Interscope / AWGE Playboi Carti’s self-titled breakthrough album is best known for charismatic singles like “Magnolia” and “wokeuplikethis*”—songs that sharpen the Atlanta rapper’s hypnotic languor into trunk-rattling bangers. But in many ways, album opener “Location” is more true to form, a mood piece that’s equal parts triumphant and narcotic. The song is built around a sample of Allan Holdsworth’s jazz fusion classic “Endomorph,” which producer Harry Fraud treats like Silly Putty, pitching it up and slowing it down until the soaring synths become smears of sound. Carti matches Fraud’s impressionistic beat with a heavy-lidded, laconic flow, rapping like he’s being taxed per word. His bars are snapshots that slowly dissolve through repetition, just another texture in the neon haze. Like all of Playboi Carti’s best songs, “Location” is an exercise in economy, a vivid picture painted using a limited palette of colors. –Mehan Jayasuriya",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ad6PgYPISko,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5929c43cea9e61561daa80db/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/a240bddc.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Playboi_Carti-Location.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,82,Zola Jesus,“Siphon”,Sacred Bones,"Sacred Bones The songs on Zola Jesus’s Okovi contain a lot of straight talk, and “Siphon” is one of its bluntest. Writing about a real-life friend’s second attempt at suicide, Nika Danilova avoids couching the event in metaphor or stand-in characters. Instead, she talks directly to her friend, insisting that everyone wants him to stay alive and will do everything they can to make sure that happens. Such earnest lyrics, filled with references to dark nights and warm blood, could venture into sentimental cliches. But the boldness of Danilova’s vocal delivery, the gathering storm of her synths, and the hard industrial pound of her beat give “Siphon” the urgent sonic edge its words deserve. Danilova sounds sure that matters of life and death deserve direct action, and that conviction makes “Siphon” sound like a siren blaring toward an emergency. –Marc Masters",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVtwUxQ1TeA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651c3ad7d7a6fde3614c14c2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Zola%2520Jesus%2520Okovi.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Zola_Jesus-Siphon.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,81,The National,“The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness”,4AD,"4AD The National don’t do guitar solos. Across the band’s first six albums, they favored an inward emotional gaze, a reflective austerity that limits such sudden, shrieking outbursts. But halfway into “The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness,” guitarist Aaron Dessner rushes in to relieve Matt Berninger, who’s so vexed by the world around him that he can only shout out his confusion on repeat, his steadfast baritone splintering at its oaken edges. Dessner dives headlong into the bridge, bending the song’s snarling lead riff with the rhythmic acrobatics of Robbie Robertson and the irascible tone of Neil Young. Berninger inveighs against something he can’t quite define here, a world of inadequate faiths, power vacuums, and “lonely secrets.” Dessner’s star turn, though, puts a knife point on this frustration, weaponizing the song. Guitar solos work like curses; overuse them and they lose their rhetorical power. The National smartly saved this—a bona fide rock’n’roll rip through time—for an anthem that admits even trying to articulate the mess we’re in can be goddamn tiring. –Grayson Haver Currin",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2O6duDDkhis,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/641dc8b29100843f4510aa05/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-National.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_National-The_System_Only_Dreams_in_Total_Darkness.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,80,Moses Sumney,“Quarrel”,Jagjaguwar,"Jagjaguwar Moses Sumney has said that his songs tend to hover somewhere in the interstice between sleeping and waking. The cinematic harp rolls and floating vocal embellishments that outfit “Quarrel,” from his debut album, Aromanticism, certainly seem like snippets of dream language written into reality. Sumney could be speaking from within the kind of early-morning fog that lets dreams linger, clouding out everything but personal truth from the subconscious mind—which would explain his brutal honesty in addressing the emotional distance between him and his lover. After singing most of “Quarrel” in an icy falsetto, Sumney slips into a lower, more conversational register to deliver its stinging final couplet: “We cannot be lovers/Long as I’m the other.” He’s referring to the implicit power dynamics that wreak havoc on relationships—from class disparities to less obvious differences, like preference of attachment type—and make it impossible for lovers to negotiate as equals, dooming their prospects from the start. His cynicism could rattle the most die-hard romantic. –Olivia Horn",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iTHaZAq38E,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/598c80b256bc3206a7dc5156/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/mosessumney-quarrel.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Moses_Sumney-Quarrel.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,79,The Black Madonna,“He Is the Voice I Hear”,We Still Believe,"We Still Believe In the handwritten liner notes to this single by Marea Stamper, aka the Black Madonna, the “He” in the title is legendary Paradise Garage DJ Larry Levan, answering a prayer by the “I” that was the equally iconic Frankie Knuckles. Stamper adds more names to shout out—Arthur Russell, Patrick Cowley, Sylvester, Loleatta Holloway—and underscores the tribute in the structure of the song, which starts with the ghost-jazz piano of Christoforo Labarbera and builds from its mournful intro into a string-sweetened old-school Moroder pulse that blurs history into a cyclical continuum of euphoric remembrance. Gripes about “pastiche” miss the point. You can hear snatches of ’74 soul or ’79 Italo or ’85 house or ’88 acid in certain rhythms and chord progressions, but it’s all refracted into a greater whole, where the most important history is emotional. It’s ultimately about all the connections that people make through decades of music, of finding a path to old feelings and remembering how your heart connects to your feet. –Nate Patrin",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaTLziOMJnI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651ddcaa67d8e58d2fbdfdd7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/We%2520Still%2520Believe.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Black_Madonna-He_Is_the_Voice_I_Hear.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,78,The xx,“On Hold”,Young Turks,"Young Turks The typical xx song plays like a conversation between best friends—lovers, if you use your imagination—confiding their innermost secrets to each other. That intimacy among singers Romy Madley Croft and Oliver Sim casts a powerful spell, but it can also leave producer Jamie xx in a tough spot, like a guy trying to lure his friends onto the dancefloor while they stubbornly insist on standing in the corner. On the group’s previous albums, Jamie’s overtures usually amounted to a gentle tug on the sleeve, but “On Hold”—the first taste of I See You— marks the moment he finally just grabs his bandmates by the arms and pushes them under the bright lights. Powered by a strobe-lit bass and a showy Hall & Oates sample, the song forces Madley Croft and Sim to relinquish the comfort of their insular safe spaces and hash out their issues as if yelling over a neighbor’s car stereo. It’s a therapeutic exercise that draws their pent-up feelings to the surface, an emotional cleansing by way of the beat. –Evan Rytlewski",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blJKoXWlqJk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651ecd8f6946ac49c2c92dc6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/xx-on%2520hold.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_xx-On_Hold.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,77,Stormzy,“Big for Your Boots”,#Merky,"#Merky Hands down the best childhood sound is that winded, rubbery “OOEEHH” gasp that comes in the wake of a cheap plastic soccer ball being thwacked across a field. By some feat of vocal magic, grime ambassador Stormzy captures that exact noise every time he repeats the word “boots” on this song about kicking down pretenders. It is incredibly satisfying. “Big for Your Boots” is regal, gothic, brutally cheeky, dexterous, and utterly assured: Stormzy can pull off schooling wannabe bad boys and nicking meat out of his mum’s stew pot in a single breath. The song tethers the pitched-up vocal samples of grime’s past to a pop present where its creators no longer have to compromise to break the mainstream in their native UK. Because, finally, they are the mainstream. –Laura Snapes",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFOErVWlsxg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d6fdb022409b8000823ce40/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Stormzy-Big-for-Your-Boots.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Stormzy-Big_for_Your_Boots.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,76,Kelly Lee Owens,“Anxi.” [ft. Jenny Hval],Smalltown Supersound,"Smalltown Supersound There was a strong current of techno-feminism flowing throughout 2017, from UMFANG’s playful, scrappy Symbolic Use of Light to Kelly Lee Owens’ meditative self-titled debut. Owens’ album reminds us that techno doesn’t always have to be stark or severe, and she makes the best use of her gentle touch on “Anxi.” The track coaxes you into its orbit with delicate, reverberating percussion before guest artist Jenny Hval and her lullaby-like vocals meet sunny synths—it is both a restorative balm and minimalist mover. But a deeper listen proves to be less light: “Always failed at the romantic/I did baroque badly,” Hval sings, with her characteristically calm caution, as the brightness subsides and coldness sets in. It is a somber reminder that things aren’t always what they seem or what we want them to be; that tranquil places can still be disrupted by our own muddy minds. –Claire Lobenfeld",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdDf2Ib4B64,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5a1f18d120efdc5bf244dcb8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/kelly%2520lee%2520owens%2520album.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kelly_Lee_Owens-Anxi_ft_Jenny_Hval.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,75,21 Savage,“Bank Account”,Slaughter Gang / Epic,"Slaughter Gang / Epic Until this year, 21 Savage had succeeded mostly as a specialist, someone whose thin, sneering deadpan was best suited to short bursts over Metro Boomin’s sparsest, most ambient production. Issa Album revealed the Atlantan as something more, someone capable of mining rote consumption or clawing survival to find its psychological crevices. That album’s breakout hit, “Bank Account,” which 21 produced, gives trips to the mall and to Wells Fargo a crushing weight, like 21 is going to buckle under all those millions. He’s become a deceptively slippery vocalist, sliding in and out of cadences that have dominated Atlanta rap for last half-decade, leveraging a limited vocal range for maximum effect. There’s also a delightful absurdity to how specific the references get: at times, 21 references a character from the movie Shottas and warns that “the Draco make you do the chickenhead like Chingy.” It’s grim and impossibly fun. –Paul A. Thompson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1KBHFXm2Bg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651ed41b2f3d842f11c3ecc0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/bank%2520account_21%2520savage.jpg,/dataset/artwork/21_Savage-Bank_Account.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,74,SahBabii,“Pull Up Wit Ah Stick” [ft. Loso Loaded],Warner Bros.,"Warner Bros. It’s fun now to think about how the simplest of melodies changed SahBabii’s life, but the Atlanta rookie once considered the catchy riff on “Pull Up Wit Ah Stick” too basic to be released. Recorded in his brother’s bedroom using a broken microphone, his breakout track narrowly made the cut for his S.A.N.D.A.S. mixtape last year; after snippets of the song went viral online, Young Thug hopped on the remix this summer. Throughout “Pull Up Wit Ah Stick,” SahBabii and Loso Loaded make multiple references to firearms—“Draco with a drum” and, of course, “a stick”—without once using the most colloquial terms. The song’s controversial and incredibly popular video features an unholy amount of weaponry, and is thus more direct in its messaging—but even without it, the track scores as both a street anthem and an irrepressible shot of confidence. With this song blaring, anyone can pull up to the function and feel like the most important person there. –Vanessa Okoth-Obbo",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9VIH89musE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651ed6e20fec390851442081/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/pull%2520up%2520wit%2520ah%2520stick_sahbabii.jpg,/dataset/artwork/SahBabii-Pull_Up_Wit_Ah_Stick_ft_Loso_Loaded.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,73,(Sandy) Alex G,“Bobby”,Domino,"Domino “Bobby” is not the first song that (Sandy) Alex G has quite longingly named for a boy, but it’s so lovely and lovesick that it’s the one you’re likely to return to when your next relationship rips apart and you’re left all alone. Alex had been better known for a sound that pulled from emo and indie, but on his 2017 album, Rocket, he was seemingly inspired by one of his heroes, Lucinda Williams, to make work that sounds almost Appalachian at times. With violin and lazy guitar, “Bobby” is a worn-out country duet between him and frequent collaborator Emily Yacina, her voice soaring when his collapses. Alex’s talent has always been an almost adolescent capacity for wonder and intimacy, and this song is either a tender tale about a bisexual love triangle or a metaphoric marvel in which he personifies his own crippling self-doubt as a kid named Bobby. The subject maybe doesn’t matter: His voice crackles with feeling, as though he had picked his bruised self off the floor and struggled through the words with tearstained cheeks and clenched fists. You could say you hear his heart breaking right there in the music, but “Bobby” is so powerful, it might just be your own. –Alex Frank",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPuxLpVus-k,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651ee0430fec390851442085/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/rocket%2520alex%2520g.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Sandy_Alex_G-Bobby.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,72,Haim,“Want You Back”,Columbia,"Columbia Listening to a Haim song is kind of like getting a disjointed lesson in contemporary music history. In their distinct strain of left-of-center pop, sisters Danielle, Alana, and Este simultaneously revere disparate genres through their ages, from soft-focus ’70s rock to doo-wop group vocals to thoroughly of-the-moment pop tropes. Delivered a week after a fakeout of a lead single, “Want You Back” was the first proper taste of the trio’s second album, Something to Tell You. True to form, it compiles a playful assortment of sounds: power ballad–worthy piano chords, pitch-shifted vocal riffs, and what sounds like a horse neigh. Within the space of two lines in the chorus (“I’ll take the fall and the fault in us/I’ll give you all the love I never gave before I left you”), Danielle achieves a rhythmic flow that simultaneously flexes her strengths as a lyricist, vocalist, and percussionist. That dexterity, paired with a healthy dose of idiosyncrasy, had us singing the chorus right back at Haim. –Olivia Horn",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPQfcG-eimk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651ee1150fec390851442087/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/haim%2520want%2520you%2520back.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Haim-Want_You_Back.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,71,Perfume Genius,“Die 4 You”,Matador,"Matador The precision of Mike Hadreas’ singing is a perfect fit for balladry. But the invention of his songwriting often makes for surprises that are even more affecting. Here, during the mournful, rubato feel of the opening verse, you may wonder about his description of this tune as a “love song” (even if the breathy singing style delivers lyrics that reference erotic asphyxiation). Yet the underlying aim is unmissable by the song’s hinge point. As one conflicted couplet—“Each and every breath I spend/You are collecting”—is cut off, unfinished, the composition moves to a new melodic line, driven with mid-tempo swagger. When Hadreas sings “Oh my love, take your time,” the song’s new air of pleasure has all the license it needs to stick around for the remainder of the track. –Seth Colter Walls",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-XQkDyEwQo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651f034db10b55876bfb8875/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/die%25204%2520you_perfume%2520genius.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Perfume_Genius-Die_4_You.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,70,J Hus,“Did You See”,Black Butter,"Black Butter East London rapper J Hus’ Common Sense is an album that sidesteps another false start of an American grime crossover, preferring to survey everything from Afrobeats to turn-of-the-century Roc-A-Fella instead. Its lead single, “Did You See,” starts off like so many radio pop songs from the last handful of years: delicately, with a sound palette imported from West Africa. Throughout the track, Hus stays in a comfortable pocket, showing off his skills as an evocative and often hilarious writer: At one point, after comparing his changing cars to a magic trick, he remarks that the girls in the club have never seen such a skinny guy in such a big puffer jacket. –Paul A. Thompson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rk6_Ax0mQo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651ee8ef9accbbeca9f91ad1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/did%2520you%2520see_j%2520hus.jpg,/dataset/artwork/J_Hus-Did_You_See.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,69,Brian Eno / Kevin Shields,“Only Once Away My Son”,Adult Swim,"Adult Swim Since commissioning avant-garde guitarist Sonny Sharrock to write the theme song for “Space Ghost Coast to Coast” in 1993, Cartoon Network has occasionally served as an unlikely patron of experimental music. And this track from the Adult Swim Singles Series plays like a cartoon superhero reboot with the unexpected, fully welcome, and deliriously successful pairing of professional ex-glam sound genius Brian Eno and his new sidekick, My Bloody Valentine noise sculptor Kevin Shields. Begging to be listened to on noise-canceling headphones or very, very loud speakers, the duo blast off with a drum track that is instantly, almost comically subsumed into a nine-minute sound-cleanse of bells, drones, and a soaring rocket flare that may be a guitar. Ambient but hardly static, its tones and textures return throughout, as if tracing long and inaudibly developing melodies. Not immediately identifiable as either Eno or Shields’ work, “Only Once Away My Son” is a rich, enveloping piece of music—and the cartoon superhero franchise we never knew we needed. –Jesse Jarnow",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2TB6GRdC6k,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/59f0d6a152f4e263cfef85b0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Singles_Track26_Square%255B1%255D.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Brian_Eno__Kevin_Shields-Only_Once_Away_My_Son.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,68,Oneohtrix Point Never,“The Pure and the Damned” [ft. Iggy Pop],Warp,"Warp At the end of the tightly wound modern noir Good Time, the film’s metallic score melts away as sumptuous piano chords begin to rumble, a moment of clarity finally washing over the film. Then Iggy Pop utters the word “love,” and the elegiac “The Pure and the Damned” blooms in full. “Every day I think about untwisting and untangling these strings I’m in/And to lead a pure life,” he confesses in a croon that brings to mind Ian Curtis’ wistful delivery on Joy Division’s “Atmosphere.” He’s singing of that foolhardy quest to turn the turbid reality of our world into something exquisite, giving voice to that all-too-human notion where, in the face of imminent doom, we still somehow hope for the ideal. –Andy Beta",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzZ6-OqjoIg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651efd460b639b432ace9e7d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/%2520Oneohtrix%2520Point%2520Never%2520%2522good%2520time%2522.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Oneohtrix_Point_Never-The_Pure_and_the_Damned_ft_Iggy_Pop.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,67,BROCKHAMPTON,“GUMMY”,Empire,"Empire The opening track of BROCKHAMPTON’s Saturation II sounds like a combination of the young rap collective’s favorite turn-of-the-millennium artists, calling to mind the Neptunes’ off-kilter production, Timbaland’s affinity for Eastern melodies, and M.I.A.’s brash attitude. Despite the mélange of influences, each member that appears on “GUMMY” offers a distinct verse that stands out from the others—and saves BROCKHAMPTON from being dismissed as mere copycats. De facto leader Kevin Abstract sounds incredulous, gasping for air; Merlyn rages in a short and effective post-hook section; Ameer Vann contributes his laid-back Houston flow. With each new track, BROCKHAMPTON seem to be getting more daring, more willing to experiment with vocal deliveries, and just smarter. As individual personalities emerge, BROCKHAMPTON continue to build their own identity. It’s thrilling to watch. –Michelle Kim",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWhPimx07H0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5982377f291a2e6aa938623d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/gummy%2520cover.jpg,/dataset/artwork/BROCKHAMPTON-GUMMY.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,66,Vince Staples,“BagBak”,Def Jam / Blacksmith,"Def Jam / Blacksmith Vince Staples recently—and possibly, facetiously—maintained that his second studio album, Big Fish Theory, should be awarded the Grammy for electronic album of the year. It’s not an entirely silly thought. Trading in the swampy sonics of his debut for brighter hues and faster tempos, Big Fish Theory finds the Long Beach rapper taking a hard left into club music. It still bears his fingerprints, though, especially in its lead single, “BagBak.” Here, atop synth arpeggios and an aqueous bassline, Staples offers sharp stream-of-consciousness insights on sex, justice, race, and power—all converging in the moment he insists, “We need Tamikas and Shaniquas in that Oval Office.” When his frustration finally boils over, Staples’ directive for his president, the government, and the one percent to all “suck a dick” feels less like a sophomoric taunt and more like a protest chant: heartfelt, direct, cathartic. –Mehan Jayasuriya",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KF6x7g5ZfwM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651effde0fec390851442090/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/bagbak-vince.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Vince_Staples-BagBak.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,65,Sheer Mag,“Need to Feel Your Love”,Wilsons RC,"Wilsons RC When we first encounter Tina Halladay on Sheer Mag’s debut full-length, Need to Feel Your Love, she’s taking to the streets on Inauguration Day with “bottles and bricks.” Then, a few tracks later, she’s upgraded her anarchist tool of choice to bayonets. But en route, the singer tiptoes out of the protest and dips into a basement disco to recharge her batteries and remember who and what she’s fighting for. With its gleaming, glitter-balled jangle, ghetto-blaster groove, and VHS-tape patina, Need to Feel Your Love’s title track doesn’t just introduce a dramatic change of scene for the Philly raunch-rock rebels; it’s a disarming expression of desire and vulnerability from a band that normally exudes swagger and fury. It’s also a necessary reminder that romantic surrender and organized resistance are two sides of the same burning heart. –Stuart Berman",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Orlj7ve4ZP0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/593ed46ef5a38a73d63aa2ad/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/429a1a85.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sheer_Mag-Need_to_Feel_Your_Love.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,64,Nilüfer Yanya,“Golden Cage’’,Blue Flowers Music,"Blue Flowers Music It only happens a few times during the year in music, and sometimes it doesn’t happen at all. We wait for a song from some total newcomer that just wrecks you, grabs you by the lapel, and beckons you to listen over and over again. “Golden Cage,” by Nilüfer Yanya, is one of those songs. At 22, Yanya has the nonchalant vocal prowess of Amy Winehouse singing over a King Krule-style jazz-pop beat. And “Golden Cage” is an attractive blend of jagged guitar riffs and blasts of saxophone bliss played by Yanya’s friend, the amazingly named Jazzi Bobbi. It all comes together on a track that’s effortlessly cool, infinitely playable, and too special to sleep on. –Kevin Lozano",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbwZIRcsdDo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651f060fb10b55876bfb8877/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Nilu%25CC%2588fer%2520Yanya%2520%2522golden%2520cage%2522.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nilfer_Yanya-Golden_Cage.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,63,Julien Baker,“Turn Out the Lights”,Matador,"Matador Loneliness isn’t just an emotion—it’s a physical sensation, often a debilitating one, and nobody captures it quite like Julien Baker. The title track from the songwriter’s aching second album finds her once again feeling numbed and powerless, almost paralyzed by the bum hand the world has dealt her. There she is, staring at a hole in the drywall she’ll probably never fix, trying to convince herself she prefers it that way. But “Turn Out the Lights” ends with a twinge of hope, building to a rare eruption of sound. At that moment, it’s as if a stray twinkle of her guitar connects with an open gas line, setting off a combustion that engulfs the song and shakes her from her funk. Nothing’s solved, of course—she’s still terrified of being alone—but she sounds determined to do something about it. She’s still got some fight left. –Evan Rytlewski",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xV1dMqeb4_U,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651f072f1fe20d67109f7cd9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/turn%2520out%2520the%2520lights_julien%2520baker.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Julien_Baker-Turn_Out_the_Lights.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,62,French Montana,“Unforgettable” [ft. Swae Lee],Bad Boy / Epic,"Bad Boy / Epic After two albums and a walloping 22 mixtapes, it seems like French Montana is finally coming into his own. He’s always had the makings of a pop-rap icon, from his litany of exotically-set music videos and his heavily documented lavish lifestyle. Too often, though, his musical output has paled next to his Versace-bathrobe-and-Gucci-flip-flops persona, but that trend ostensibly ends with “Unforgettable,” an ultra-catchy, radio-friendly track that features an arresting turn from Rae Sremmurd’s Swae Lee. Amid rolling waves of steel drums, Lee’s vocals sound murkily echoed, as if he’s delivering his lines from right under the surface of his and Montana’s aqua green swimming pool. In contrast, French sounds fresh and crisp, riding a reggaeton beat around atmospheric keyboard swells. Reportedly, the rapper was so confident that “Unforgettable” would be a hit that he paid $300,000 out-of-pocket to clear the rights to the song, which started off as a demo by Jeremih. Evidently, his intuition paid off, and “Unforgettable” may very well mark the moment he became an altogether different kind of artist. –Cameron Cook",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTFtOOh47oo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651f08b0bfd513aedb130c14/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/unforgettable-french-montana.jpg,/dataset/artwork/French_Montana-Unforgettable_ft_Swae_Lee.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,61,Girlpool,“123’’,Anti-,"Anti- Girlpool rose to acclaim making anthems that weren’t particularly anthemic—no swollen guitars, no reverbed drum rolls, no broad lyrics. And this track seemingly continues that trend as it starts off with Cleo Tucker and Harmony Tividad whispering over viscous guitar. But then big guitars, bigger drums, and full-throated vocals crash the quiet. Their (and our) world’s gotten a lot louder in the two years since their debut, and this song goes big to meet the surrounding noise. The emotions are still ambiguous, but they’re now rendered all-consuming, like a giant, bolded question mark. –Ian Cohen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uAhIt1UFCY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651f0a891fe20d67109f7cdb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Girlpool-%2520%2522123%2522.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Girlpool-123.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,60,Mount Kimbie,“Marilyn” [ft. Micachu],Warp,"Warp Squalls of punk noise, industrial haze, and churning rhythms jut up throughout Mount Kimbie’s third album, Love What Survives, but “Marilyn,” the record’s most hushed song, resonates the loudest. Recalling the gentler moments of post-punk icons like This Heat and the Raincoats, the UK duo bring a filigree of thumb piano and buzzing melodica to flutter around the track. Alongside them, Micachu and the Shapes’ Mica Levi provides the song’s murmuring heart with disorienting lines that ultimately reveal a quiet, secret space shared by two people. –Andy Beta",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjSKEyR2vDo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651f0c5ebfd513aedb130c16/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/mount%2520kimbie%2520marilyn.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mount_Kimbie-Marilyn_ft_Micachu.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,59,Julie Byrne,“Natural Blue”,Ba Da Bing / Basin Rock,"Ba Da Bing / Basin Rock “Been a long time since I’ve been moved,” Julie Byrne sings in “Natural Blue,” the slow, captivating centerpiece of her breakthrough album, Not Even Happiness. It’s a disquieting realization in a song about touring life—an existence shifting between thoughts, moods, and state lines. But “Natural Blue” doesn’t wallow; it arrives in a clear-eyed moment of understanding. The title could be read as a commentary on accepting one’s emotions, though Byrne doesn’t focus too long on her own state of mind. Her thoughts wander to the world around her until she’s left speechless, expressing wordless gratitude for the intangible things that hang above us, wherever we go. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gdO3qebP5E,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5929f56dd7a71d1ea569b0a6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/f90b3add.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Julie_Byrne-Natural_Blue.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,58,Kendrick Lamar,“LOYALTY.” [ft. Rihanna],Top Dawg / Interscope / Aftermath,"Top Dawg / Interscope / Aftermath The moment Kendrick Lamar heard the sample that became the backbone of “LOYALTY.”—a warped, reversed sliver of Bruno Mars’ “24K Magic”—he made a declaration: He needed Rihanna in the studio. Perhaps it was the sample’s high-pitched whinny, strangely suggestive of Rihanna’s most languid hooks, that inspired his decision. Or maybe it was the stuttering drums, so suited to her seemingly effortless melismas. But on their first collaboration, the duo’s voices become lock-and-key, tongue-and-groove, perfect complements for a casual chorus with an ironclad grip. Rihanna and Kendrick don’t tell us what kind of loyalty to have, making no judgments on whether romantic, communal, or material faithfulness is best; having risen through hip-hop’s ranks, they simply celebrate the virtue itself, of maintaining relationships and prerogatives that existed before superstardom. Indeed, “LOYALTY.” feels like an unearthed gem from the heyday of Timbaland or Jermaine Dupri, with a high-end music video of fast cars and special effects to boot. It puts two of the world’s biggest stars in conversation; their fun sounds natural, their chemistry real, their loyalty earned. –Grayson Haver Currin",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dlh-dzB2U4Y,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a63a8256a0a0009483358/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kendrick-Lamar-DAMN.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kendrick_Lamar-LOYALTY_ft_Rihanna.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,57,Father John Misty,“Total Entertainment Forever”,Sub Pop,"Sub Pop Technology promises us so much: efficiency, independence, enlightenment. But in the end, it’s most reliable function has been to facilitate the cheap and plentiful distribution of pornography. According to Father John Misty, it won’t be long before we’re all strapping on headsets to enjoy a little virtual hoo-hah with our favorite pop stars after supper, just as we once congregated around the TV on Thursdays to watch “Friends.” But “Total Entertainment Forever” is more than just a cheeky commentary on the disassociating effects of our wired world: It’s a postmortem on the entire history of human civilization and a despairing indictment of a society in which the pinnacle of progress is a guy sitting in an easy chair, wearing robot goggles, and jerking off. We’ve spent an inordinate amount of time this past year worrying about whether the president’s next tweet will trigger World War III, but “Total Entertainment Forever” reassures us that we’re already well on our way to the apocalypse, and it won’t be the bombs that do us in. –Stuart Berman",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHpV08wI-bw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651f1647fce6fefcd169028f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/total%2520entertainment%2520forever_father%2520john%2520misty.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Father_John_Misty-Total_Entertainment_Forever.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,56,King Krule,“Czech One” ,True Panther / XL,"True Panther / XL “Czech One” operates within its own dream logic. Filled with eerie, screwed-down voices, subterranean beats, and distant keyboard lines, the song was inspired by Archy Marshall’s Eastern European ancestry as well as a trippy dream sequence from “The Sopranos,” from which he also pulls an errant line of dialogue. Amid this woolgathering, Marshall packs his production with plenty of negative space in order to explore his thoughts. His King Krule project has always seemed to have a striking self-awareness to it, but on “Czech One,” Marshall gives that same insight a new, gripping dose of strangeness. –Eric Torres",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8rto8GTP2Y,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651f183b3cb20b5da52ddec2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/czech%2520one%2520_king%2520krule.jpg,/dataset/artwork/King_Krule-Czech_One.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,55,Four Tet,“Planet’’,Text,"Text Four Tet’s ninth album, New Energy, is shot through with a gossamer optimism, making it a dance-music outlier in a year understandably lacking in high spirits. But Kieran Hebden’s hopefulness is carefully measured, and in keeping with this tone, standout “Planet” concludes the album on an even keel, but also with arresting intricacy. Atop a familiar 4/4 beat, samples are layered one-by-one: a four-note bell melody, a breathy female coo, and then the bright, classical finger-picking that ultimately defines the melody. He surfs smoothly between analog and digital, and while it seems like he’s barely doing anything to meld these elements, they cohere in a lovely textural harmony. Noted for his slippery moves between electronic styles genres, Hebden asserts a streamlined language that’s distinctly his own. “Planet” is a gentle escape, but to a place that’s not altogether implausible. –Thea Ballard",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K37tJp-U19E&ab_channel=FourTet,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5981e44531cc0f604d98b96b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/four%2520tet%2520cover%2520planets.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Four_Tet-Planet.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,54,Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith,“An Intention”,Western Vinyl,"Western Vinyl The music of Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith has always felt interlocked with nature, evolving like plants that sprout up and curl back into the ground. The Kid is her most elemental album to date, filled with physically affecting music that verges on catchy synth-pop, and on “An Intention,” that physicality manifests as a heartbeat rhythm. The song is about early stages of life, and grappling with being born into a name; her looping synths and expansive lyrics circle around as she contemplates discarding the ego and merging with the universe. That’s a lot for one four-minute song to contain, but in Smith’s hands, vast expanses get boiled down to just a few powerful words and notes. –Marc Masters",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xhZnIskhT4&ab_channel=KaitlynAureliaSmith-Topic,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/59945663b15fd27bc343ddfe/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/An%2520Intention%2520Single%2520Art.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kaitlyn_Aurelia_Smith-An_Intention.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,53,Kehlani,“Undercover”,Atlantic,"Atlantic An undeniable highlight from Kehlani’s major label debut, “Undercover” is a tropical jet stream of a track. The burgeoning 22-year-old star sings with a brash confidence, her vocals effortlessly gliding across the effervescent beat, as if Aaliyah were covering a monumental trap song from the future. But “Undercover” sets itself apart with its clever mishmash of stylistic influences; for example, when a crystal-clear guitar riff opens the song, it reads much more “No Scrubs” than “No Flex Zone.” “Undercover” is proof that a steadfast vision and stylistic precision are more than enough to create a forward-thinking hit. –Cameron Cook",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBrmg0BBHI4&ab_channel=Kehlani,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5929f4b4c0084474cd0c5884/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/875e3133.png,/dataset/artwork/Kehlani-Undercover.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,52,Future,“Incredible”,Epic,"Epic The stories around Future’s soulful rap have always been dramatic and borderline melancholy. Nuclear breakups, clinical depression, copious amounts of codeine—these are the themes that often serve as a window into his consciousness. So what makes “Incredible” so remarkable is its ecstatic happiness. On the song, Future finds himself steeped in a budding relationship so pure that his past demons drift away like purple haze. Extolling the virtues of both hot yoga and recreational Vicodin, he raps in a warbled Auto-Tune over a rubber-band bassline and a keyboard riff that is part present-day Rihanna, part Afropop-era Peter Gabriel. As he repeats the track’s title like a mantra, Future sounds like a man reborn. –Cameron Cook",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ql_hDyyeO-Q&ab_channel=NewMusicFriday,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d6fe628b34908000801000c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Future-Incredible.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Future-Incredible.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,51,Paramore,“Hard Times” ,Fueled by Ramen,"Fueled by Ramen Perky and despairing, “Hard Times” maps the chasm between a generation’s sunny online personae and the gaping existential holes within. It introduced a vibrant new sound for the former emo band, though the song is not as nuclear as it could be: Zac Farro’s percussion sounds like it’s played on old milk bottles, Taylor York’s guitar is a last nerve cajoled into funky discipline, and singer Hayley Williams exposes the effort of sustaining her rictus grin. That’s what makes “Hard Times” so satisfying—it’s not hollow empowerment pop, but a bittersweet dispatch from a year that felt like a punch line to some cosmic prank. “I still don’t know how I even survive,” Williams despairs. But this is how: Paramore always remake, remodel. –Laura Snapes",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEB6ibtdPZc&ab_channel=Paramore,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651f1ce0bfd513aedb130c18/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Paramore%2520%2522Hard%2520Times%2522.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Paramore-Hard_Times.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,50,Thundercat,“Show You the Way” [ft. Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins],Brainfeeder,"Brainfeeder Yacht-rock icon Michael McDonald has shown up on newer artists’ songs here and there in the past few years, but he’s never met a younger foil as well-suited to his legacy as Thundercat. Over plush production here, McDonald’s monolithic baritone is the perfect counterbalance to Thundercat’s upper register—no surprise when you recall McDonald’s wealth of iconic duets alongside Kenny Loggins. And therein lies the other ingredient that makes “Show You the Way” full-on magic: Loggins shows up too, and the contrast between those two voices together still sounds fresh and vital decades later. The three behemoths of smooth invite us on a journey into the unknown, and while they warn about darkness, “Show You the Way” is inherently joyful. Thundercat affects a smarmy lounge persona to introduce his cohorts, while Loggins and McDonald slip into their soulful, familiar tones to reassure us that things are easier than they might seem. With music this effortless, it’s easy to believe them. –Evan Minsker",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-zdIGxOJ4M,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651c7bc5fce6fefcd1690238/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Thundercat%2520Drunk.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Thundercat-Show_You_the_Way_ft_Michael_McDonald_and_Kenny_Loggins.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,49,Big Thief,“Mythological Beauty”,Saddle Creek,"Saddle Creek On this finger-picked origin story, Big Thief frontwoman Adrianne Lenker addresses her mom—and her own nativity—in the most unromantic terms possible: “Seventeen, you took his cum/And you gave birth to your first life.” Such matter-of-factness runs throughout “Mythological Beauty,” as Lenker details the traumatic events that shaped her upbringing, including an older brother given up for adoption and a devastating head injury suffered from a railroad spike falling from her makeshift treehouse. The singer’s autobiography tempts histrionics, but Big Thief opt for mesmerizing understatement instead, allowing the nuances of her vocals to show which parts of the story are still raw. While it’s nearly impossible to relate to “Mythological Beauty” on a literal level, Lenker carries it through with a quiet determination that anyone can aspire to. –Ian Cohen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejzzO51e4xI&ab_channel=SaddleCreek,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651f2121d2c0965d7be0a21b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/%2522mythological%2520beauty%2522%2520by%2520big%2520thief.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Big_Thief-Mythological_Beauty.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,48,Selena Gomez,“Bad Liar”,Interscope,"Interscope The Selena Gomez song that was everywhere this summer was her collaboration with Kygo, “It Ain’t Me,” yet another exercise in EDM guys reducing female vocalists to anonymities. The Selena Gomez song that should have been everywhere is “Bad Liar,” the best recreation of a hopeless crush since “Call Me Maybe.” It has songwriter Julia Michaels, who is well-experienced at turning songs into monologues. It got the OK from Talking Heads to strut to “Psycho Killer”’s bassline, the most poised sample major-label cash can buy. And as it has Selena singing syllables that trip over one another, would-be flirtations about your king-size bed turning into awkward tangents about rental amenities and the Battle of Troy that trail off, abashed, to nothing. The bridge is the last-ditch confession: an impassioned yelp, an over-earnest confession, a hasty retreat. Maybe it was never meant to be. –Katherine St. Asaph",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZKXkD6EgBk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5929f2aeeb335119a49ef89f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/3e420f17.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Selena_Gomez-Bad_Liar.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,47,GoldLink,“Crew” [ft. Brent Faiyaz and Shy Glizzy],RCA,"RCA On his debut studio album, At What Cost, GoldLink proudly held up a mirror to his hometown of Washington, D.C. So when the single “Crew” snowballed into a smash, it felt like an inclusively feel-good celebration. On the song, GoldLink manages to distill his city’s amorphous hip-hop scene into a single sound, throwing it all on the same canvas without any overspill. He tucks into the beat so fluidly that his warm, slurring mumble clutters the music by burrowing into its nooks. Fellow D.C. rapper Shy Glizzy darts around with a shouted giddiness, stealing the show with his fist-pumping momentum. Their game is bookended by Brent Faiyaz’s monotonous, elegant chorus, the type that could appear on the song two more times and not be enough. But like the best summer hits, “Crew” instead begs to be repeated in full. –Jay Balfour",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhNqbe6QENY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d702f8c13ff690008c6eef1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/GoldLink-Crew.jpg,/dataset/artwork/GoldLink-Crew_ft_Brent_Faiyaz_and_Shy_Glizzy.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,46,Slowdive,“Star Roving”,Dead Oceans,"Dead Oceans The big risk of taking 22 years to release new music in the genre you helped codify: sounding like a copy of a copy of a buzz band. The somewhat smaller, even likelier risk: getting the schtick done just good enough to have some cursory content for the inevitable reunion tour. Undoubtedly, this was on Slowdive’s mind upon their return this year, but any worries were misplaced. There are innovations in “Star Roving,” chief among them a notably beefier guitar line. But what’s here is largely what you know and missed: Neil Halstead and Rachel Goswell’s vocals trailing sculpted paths like air currents, lyrics like snapshots of fleeting moments of love. It doesn’t seem implausible, given a little reshuffling of history, that 500 bands might have lived and breathed off this. –Katherine St. Asaph",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogCih4OavoY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5929f50e5e6ef95969325c8d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/69347afc.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Slowdive-Star_Roving.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,45,Perfume Genius,“Slip Away”,Matador,"Matador The title promises something demure, even shy, but the music generously reneges. “Slip Away” is a rapture of excess, layering drums atop each other as if daring the tower to crumble. Mike Hadreas allows himself to get swept up in it; compression gives his singing a disembodied intimacy, his voice seeming to hover between various frequencies. The transcendence “Slip Away” describes is fleeting and overwhelming, concluding nothing, a reverie in the midst of survival: “It’s singing through your body/And I’m carried by the sound.” –Chris Randle",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPiiY4a1vf4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651f29072f3d842f11c3eccb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/slip%2520away%2520perfume%2520genius.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Perfume_Genius-Slip_Away.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,44,Fever Ray,“To the Moon and Back”,Rabid / Mute,"Rabid / Mute On its own, “To the Moon and Back” passes for mindless hedonism. “I want to run my fingers up your pussy,” Karin Dreijer sings, sounding merry, almost, her litany of come-ons recited in sing-songy groans over a cartoonish hook. The song trades her 2009 debut’s surrealism for something more sensual, the naked thrill of fuzzy lips and creamy kisses, and it sounds euphoric. But considered as part of her second album, Plunge, this song assumes a new, insurrectionary subtext. “This country makes it hard to fuck,” Dreijer cries on “This Country,” another of the record’s queer anthems declaring that liberation begins in the bedroom. “Every time we fuck we win.” “To the Moon and Back” is the sound of that victory. –Jazz Monroe",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJjGZkPl9Tw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651f2b5ba471d83684a96518/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/to%2520the%2520moon%2520and%2520back_fever%2520ray.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fever_Ray-To_the_Moon_and_Back.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,43,Jay Som,“The Bus Song” ,Double Denim / Polyvinyl,"Double Denim / Polyvinyl Is there anything romantic about a city bus? It’s cramped and loud and lurching and, as a companion of Jay Som’s Melina Duterte protests here, often smells. But it’s also a public place where you can be alone with your thoughts, even if you’ve got someone’s elbow in your face, as you stare out the window and slowly roll toward your destination. “The Bus Song” moves at that same unhurried pace. Its route is circuitous, meandering lazily through Duterte’s restless mind. A one-woman band in her bedroom studio, she strums and drums with a light but steady hand while unfurling her sleepy croon over plainspoken expressions of frustration. She is observant enough to know her relationship is a car about to break down, and she’s doing the mature thing—giving the other person space—even as she stews in desire and suspicion. There is nothing romantic about a city bus, which makes it the perfect vehicle for letting go of your sentimental attachments so you can keep creeping forward. –Judy Berman",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2SluHV2i40&ab_channel=PolyvinylRecords,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72b91f0db1d10008f1faa6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jay-Som-Everybody-Works.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jay_Som-The_Bus_Song.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,42,Lorde,“The Louvre”,Republic / Lava,"Republic / Lava The emotional precision of “The Louvre” is overwhelming. It bottles the ecstasy of a beginning, when you still float with the conviction that your nascent love is, or could be, an artwork of “Mona Lisa” proportions. It’s as if Lorde devised each line of “The Louvre” so that we might have a more perfect language for this state of mind—lines to tweet and put in captions and type, all-caps, into a sacred group text (i.e., “I AM YOUR SWEETHEART PSYCHOPATHIC CRUSH”). Nothing could better capture the unruly, self-possessed feeling of chasing your heart when you know it’s wrong than “blow all my friendships to sit in hell with you.” No line more readily or immaculately transfers the anxiety of text-based infatuation, the fundamental imperfection of a DM, than “I overthink your punctuation use.” Formally, “The Louvre” contains a sly inversion: winding all of its tension and bombast into its verses and then letting them slowly unravel in the anti-chorus. “Megaphone to my chest,” it goes, “Broadcast the boom, boom, boom, boom/And make ’em all dance to it.” It’s an elegant description of putting your own vulnerability on blast, one that could just as easily apply to tweeting your feelings as to releasing the best breakup album of the year. –Jenn Pelly",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQkdwymDanE&ab_channel=Lorde,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d8904320480b10008ffa260/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lorde-Melodrama.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Lorde-The_Louvre.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,41,Priests,“Nothing Feels Natural”,Sister Polygon,"Sister Polygon Katie Alice Greer is not the kind of lyricist who hides behind abstractions. On early releases, the Priests singer called out Barack Obama and cited the number of slaveholders who signed the Constitution. But the Washington, D.C. rock quartet’s first proper album, Nothing Feels Natural, is partially an object lesson in the impossibility of communicating clearly—as an artist and as a human—while you’re buried under personal and political crises, and its title track is a mess of pronouns and negatives that feels purposefully disorienting. When Greer finally makes a concise statement here, it’s one of disillusionment: “To people in sanctuaries/All I can say is/‘You will not be saved.’” The clarity comes from the texture of the music itself, like a dream that captures a feeling the conscious mind can’t articulate. Equal parts surf rock and the Cure, Taylor Mulitz’s bassline slithers through a dense forest of rumbling drums and clanging guitar. Greer’s wail sounds uncharacteristically remote, as though she’s in breathy pursuit of a melody forceful enough to tame her unruly thoughts. The words “nothing feels natural” never come up in the song, but that sense of altered perception is present in every sound. –Judy Berman",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/MIIZg93XHlE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/59359fa931bcdd124292bc17/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/file,/dataset/artwork/Priests-Nothing_Feels_Natural.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,40,"Tyler, the Creator",“911/Mr. Lonely” [ft. Frank Ocean and Steve Lacy],Columbia,"Columbia In some songs, loneliness is a nagging undercurrent or the trigger for a moment of deep regret. For Tyler, the Creator, it’s an emergency. Wiping out in the supercars that he buys to fill an emotional void that’s grown massive since his early outsider skater days, the Tyler of “911/Mr. Lonely” is blunt to the point of honesty about his isolation—even when that isolation’s in front of a sold-out crowd of thousands. It all pivots on the song’s narrative shift, from sweating his thirst levels in the first half to admitting that so much of what he does is an attempt to break a feeling of detached alienation. Sure, he’s got other people to rely on—Steve Lacy from the Internet and singer Anna of the North weave in and out of Tyler’s voice on the hook, and Frank Ocean evokes early-morning and late-shift restlessness in the same short bridge. But Tyler opens up so much about his own deep ennui that the song still feels like you’re being situated between one man’s set of headphones, sinking into the meditative space. –Nate Patrin",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khMb3k-Wwvg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/595654117ea4c3234eae0ff8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/911-mrlonely-tyler.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Tyler_the_Creator-911Mr_Lonely_ft_Frank_Ocean_and_Steve_Lacy.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,39,Kendrick Lamar,“LOVE.” [ft. Zacari],Top Dawg / Interscope,"Top Dawg / Interscope Kendrick Lamar has made his name on an intense type of endlessness. His ability to stuff so many words and meanings into a song, verse, or even a single line constantly astounds, burnishing his reputation as a genius who is mesmerizing in his density. In this light, “LOVE.”—the most straight-ahead pop song of Lamar’s career thus far—sounds utterly radical. Amid Kendrick’s furious lightning storms, this blissful rap ballad is a blue-diamond sky punctuated by the puffiest of clouds. “LOVE.” glides like an update on every great R&B slow jam of the ’90s, nodding to simpler times. In between spaced-out beats and utopian synths, Kendrick’s flow matches the simplicity of the song’s message: He’s not cracking skulls with triple entendres, but he’s not phoning in a sappy Valentine’s card, either. Currently engaged to his high school sweetheart, the 30-year-old is familiar with commitment and the ease that can come along with it. “I’d rather you trust me than to love me,” he attests on the hook, offering wisdom beyond infatuation. His word is his bond. –Ryan Dombal",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzeaCzs0x4Q,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a63a8256a0a0009483358/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kendrick-Lamar-DAMN.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kendrick_Lamar-LOVE_ft_Zacari.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,38,Charlotte Gainsbourg,“Deadly Valentine”,Because,"Because It seems fitting that this song comes from one of modern cinema’s most compelling actors. Charlotte Gainsbourg’s “Deadly Valentine” drips with dramatic tension and celluloid fantasy, wrapped up in a perfectly attuned blend of mournful melody and disco production. The latter is courtesy of producer SebastiAn, who marries the well-loved traits of French house—foot-stomping disco beats, filter sweeps, pulsating synth harmonies—to electrifying string rushes. To this, Gainsbourg adds the kind of infuriatingly simple vocal melody that destroys the heart and gets stuck in the head, her understated delivery adding mystery to the song’s dramatic sweep, like an actor subtly raising an eyebrow. Her twists, turns, and contrasts make “Deadly Valentine” both instantly satisfying and enduringly rewarding, a tour de force of musical storytelling that you can still bug out to on the dancefloor. –Ben Cardew",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkyIVKbCfG8&ab_channel=CharlotteGainsbourg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65240fa34ed2a09d6dc506a4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/deadly%2520valentine_charlotte%2520gainsbourg.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Charlotte_Gainsbourg-Deadly_Valentine.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,37,Ibeyi,“Deathless” [ft. Kamasi Washington] ,XL,"XL French-Cuban twins Naomi and Lisa-Kaindé Díaz are no strangers to death. Their 2015 debut as Ibeyi is haunted by the ghosts of departed kin, including their father, the famed percussionist Miguel “Angá” Díaz. But “Deathless” turns their elegiac songwriting inside out, trading mourning in for triumph. Singing lead, Lisa-Kaindé recalls an incident from her teenage years when a Parisian police officer harassed her in the subway, and though her normally dulcet voice is streaked with the jagged scars left by that episode, she turns the story into a statement of solidarity with “everybody that feels that they are nothing.” The Díaz twins push back against the epidemic of police brutality via assists from Kamasi Washington, whose turbulent saxophone licks feed off the urgent tone set by Naomi’s drumming, and the raucous cries of a gospel choir. Ibeyi may not be able to fix one of the most prevalent issues facing people of color around the world, but they sure as hell won’t stay silent about it. –Olivia Horn",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yN8TUgkPnbU&ab_channel=Ibeyi,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/59c1498b62f8b05385d543e5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/ibeyi_ash.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ibeyi-Deathless_ft_Kamasi_Washington.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,36,Moses Sumney,“Doomed’’ ,Warp,"Warp Moses Sumney’s ghostly falsetto has the ability to raise hairs and tingle spines, and “Doomed” features one of his finest vocal performances yet. Minimally accompanied by sighing synths, his expressive flutter swoops and soars, always precisely calibrated in service of emotion, with a creaking timbre that reminds us this amazing instrument is part of an actual human body. That Sumney is using it to convey an existential void, born from lack of love, only renders the overall impact more devastating. The prospect of impending doom has rarely sounded so purely beautiful. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMyRfIpNvPs&ab_channel=MosesSumney,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5b8ff3122139ed4e0509aca4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Yves%2520Tumor%2520_%2520Lifetime%2520_%2520Single%2520art.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Moses_Sumney-Doomed.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,35,Jorja Smith,“On My Mind’’ ,Famm,"Famm Jorja Smith’s feature on Drake’s More Life track “Get It Together” made her a name to watch on both sides of the Atlantic. In the past, this might have seen the 20-year-old UK artist funneled into a music industry strategy where her Englishness was watered down in the name of broad transatlantic appeal. On the contrary, though, “On My Mind” feels utterly, quintessentially British. A kiss-off to a former lover that’s done her wrong, it’s a collaboration with Preditah, whose productions trace lines between grime and its immediate predecessor, UK garage. The skippy beat is a perfect canvas for Smith, whose voice carries bruised wisdom and a budding defiance. “Nothing sweet about my misery,” she sings. But this track—a rapturous hymn to love, heartbreak, and getting over it—begs to differ. –Louis Pattison",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PA5uuBCtZ5k&ab_channel=JorjaSmithVEVO,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/59a6d2f0e1b94a0f1a3e97a3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/jorja%2520smith%2520cover.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jorja_Smith-On_My_Mind.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,34,LCD Soundsystem,“How Do You Sleep?” ,Columbia / DFA,"Columbia / DFA As a keen student of rock music, James Murphy must be aware of John Lennon’s 1971 track “How Do You Sleep?,” a scathing attack on Paul McCartney. Murphy also likely knows “Dead Souls,” a Joy Division B-side from which LCD Soundsystem’s “How Do You Sleep?” cribs its rolling drum rhythm. But Murphy has always been adept at remodeling rock history to his own means and he proves it again on this savage character assassination. Lyrically, the song is a pin-sharp takedown of Murphy’s former DFA Records partner Tim Goldsworthy, poetic and even funny without dropping its predatory intent. Musically, it marries funereal drum patterns to a synth line so monolithic, it might crack your speakers. But what makes the track really pulsate is Murphy’s vocal, a wild howl into the void that sounds as if he’s trying to reach Goldsworthy’s UK headquarters all the way from Brooklyn without the distraction of a microphone. It’s furious, intense, and borderline unpleasant—and it opens up new emotional territory for LCD Soundsystem, right when they need it most. –Ben Cardew",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E55hWJFzaC8&ab_channel=LCDSoundsystem-Topic,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/639b2b714a2538c4055b0e80/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/LCD-Soundsystem-American-Dream.jpg,/dataset/artwork/LCD_Soundsystem-How_Do_You_Sleep.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,33,Frank Ocean,"“Biking” [ft. JAY-Z and Tyler, the Creator]",Blonded,"Blonded Everyone has a secret obsession. Not necessarily a passion, just a fascination that you can’t shake—the static thoughts that lull you to sleep after a long day. For Frank Ocean, this preoccupation appears to be riding his bicycle, and “Biking” is about a feeling of freedom and solitude, the moment of mindless solace between life’s challenges. JAY-Z and Tyler, the Creator frame the track, respectively playing the out-of-touch uncle who fails to relate and the gearhead who can’t grasp the substance beyond the wheels. But the key perspective comes from Frank, whose musings on the weather and heavy thoughts about love and commitment flit by with equal levity; it’s all the same when he’s on his bike. –Matthew Strauss",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYGPcfUqzL0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5929f3620c2bba1b7de03500/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/471328df.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Frank_Ocean-Biking_ft_JAY-Z_and_Tyler_the_Creator.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,32,Jlin,“Nyakinyua Rise”,Planet Mu,"Planet Mu At first, Indiana producer Jlin’s “Nyakinyua Rise” feels like a prelude: It sounds as if a half-dozen component parts are restlessly arranging themselves, waiting for a climax that never comes. In the meantime, they riff and fight and are enjambed on one another until a rhythm emerges. Djembe patterns are punctuated by chanted vocals, auxiliary percussion is panned frantically left and right. In the song’s latter half, the pace picks up and the sound bed grows thicker—skewing closer to traditional footwork—and those vocals, which first were allowed to breathe, start to get triggered and shortened like the sample clips they are. And then it’s over. –Paul A. Thompson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKVeGO2k-9c&ab_channel=Jlin-Topic,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6524171634022af1ab4d1523/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jlin-%2520%25E2%2580%259CNyakinyua%2520Rise%25E2%2580%259D.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jlin-Nyakinyua_Rise.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,31,Vince Staples,“Big Fish’’ ,Artium / Blacksmith / Def Jam,"Artium / Blacksmith / Def Jam Vince Staples likes to leave his work up for interpretation, and his refusal to dictate the meaning of his music has a marked effect on the way you receive a song like “Big Fish,” the quasi-title track on his bracing LP, Big Fish Theory. At a bare minimum it’s a club-rap slapper, one that feels like it never stops ascending thanks to its thick, tinny production. Staples slots in two economic verses, while Juicy J’s hook lets the good times roll. It’ll do wonders for you on a workout playlist. But, if you dig a little deeper, you’ll notice “Big Fish” is pockmarked with the same anxiety and guilt that colors so much of Staples’ work: The margins between cruising around town in a foreign supercar and ending up broke or dead are slim. The rapper pays his debts by working hard and keeping kids on the straight and narrow, but he can’t shake the darkness in his rearview mirror. It’s in this context that Juicy’s introductory promise—“You can get anything you want, know what I’m saying?”—starts to sound less like a celebration than the start of some devilish bargain. The world might be your oyster, but you can never really leave your past behind. –Jamieson Cox",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0l9kzS_B7gg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5929f2ac0c2bba1b7de033fd/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/23146024.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Vince_Staples-Big_Fish.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,30,Carly Rae Jepsen,“Cut to the Feeling”,School Boy / Interscope,"School Boy / Interscope You know the feeling: sinking, stomach-twisting, life-consuming longing—the kind that seems to grow from the earth and take hold of your whole self, cell by cell. It sits at the very edges of total euphoria, and “Cut to the Feeling” is crucially about that pull toward the ecstatic. Carly Rae Jepsen wants to cut to the feeling; she’s not there yet. How is it possible that this perfect pop song didn’t spend 2017 hovering at the top of every chart in existence? Who let her keep it off E•MO•TION? Jepsen’s best single since “Call Me Maybe” was allegedly axed from her 2015 album for being “too cinematic,” but the song will now soundtrack millions of lives that feel like movies for the rest of time. It is the dark and glittering sound of running full speed on a boardwalk at night, of sitting on a roof under the stars, these perfect places with proximity to the infinite. –Jenn Pelly",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qlsu7RhOnsQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65241a8234022af1ab4d1527/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Carly%2520Rae%2520Jepsen-%2520%25E2%2580%259CCut%2520to%2520the%2520Feeling%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Carly_Rae_Jepsen-Cut_to_the_Feeling.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,29,Kamasi Washington,“Truth”,Young Turks,"Young Turks Kamasi Washington, a composer of largely vocal-free songs, nonetheless stands among the most politically articulate artists around. On his I EP, the saxophonist uses broad titles—“Integrity,” “Knowledge”—to root his warm, communal jazz in concepts that are at once timeless and urgent. “Truth” is a nearly 14-minute suite comprising six movements, each entangled with the knotty conflicts of the last, surging toward a collective redemption. When his sax finally arrives, it sounds soft and assuring; in successive phrases, his solo grows sprawling arms and beckons the rhythm section into them. He’s soon greeted by a gospel-choral motif that sounds like a sigh contorted with hope. Like many feelings aroused by Washington’s work, the harmonic mesh has the feeling of something lost so long ago, you begin to wonder if you dreamt it. –Jazz Monroe",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOl2BEvFtOA&ab_channel=KamasiWashington-Topic,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65241cbb34022af1ab4d1529/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/truth_kamasi%2520washington.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kamasi_Washington-Truth.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,28,Lana Del Rey,“Love” ,Polydor,"Polydor Lana Del Rey seemed less like an old soul when she emerged from the shadows of internet novelty six years ago. In fact, she seemed like something entirely new. But over the course of four albums, she has evolved into the poster child for all things vintage—an aesthetic evolution that’s paired nicely with her increasingly world-weary wisdom. “Love” is not simply a song about being in love; it reflects on the thrilling possibilities of the heart and asks the kids not to squander the moment. This deliberate, mid-tempo ballad is not something a 19-year-old starlet could get away with singing. The signature LDR blend of the future and the past is present, as muted gunshots and swirling sirens fly over warm mellotron, Phil Spector-style drums rendered in slo-mo, and a touch of tenderness borrowed from the Beach Boys. “Don’t worry, baby,” she deadpans, never quite promising that everything will turn out all right. –Jillian Mapes",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-NTv0CdFCk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65241dc3aeb62be7989dbc7f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lana%2520Del%2520Rey-%2520%2522Love%2522.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lana_Del_Rey-Love.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,27,Sampha,“(No One Knows Me) Like the Piano”,Young Turks,"Young Turks Sampha’s gripping debut album, Process, is a record full of anxiety and mourning around his mother’s death, and on “(No One Knows Me) Like the Piano,” he spins that pain into a stunning piano ballad. It is ostensibly an ode to the instrument he has played since he was 3, but the detail that rings loudest is its location: in his mother’s home. The song serves as a way of addressing Sampha’s profound loss, and the resilience needed to survive it, by praising the instrument that helped him cope. The warbles of the London artist’s vibrato glide like melting butter over sparse keys as he unearths feelings that he kept close while serving as his mother’s primary caretaker. Before Sampha’s voice begins, and after he fades out, we are left with just notes and chords, a reminder that sometimes words pale in comparison to the quiet comfort of a piano. –Vrinda Jagota",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NSuIYwBxu4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76b6799ce93e0008382265/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sampha-Process.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sampha-No_One_Knows_Me_Like_the_Piano.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,26,Kelela,“LMK’’ ,Warp,"Warp The immediate pleasure of “LMK” lies in its hook’s uncomplicated message: Just let me know how you feel already, because otherwise, what the hell are we doing here? It’s transparency delivered to a new flame in order to receive the same in return, simple and easy yet crying out. Kelela’s divine debut album Take Me Apart examines plenty of these kinds of back-and-forths, especially ones between strangers on dark dancefloors, but “LMK” winnows such interactions down to their essence. The singer conveys her death blow to indecision through exacting yet playful kiss-offs and an elastic mix of deep bass, booming handclaps, and low synth lines. But ultimately, it’s her uncontrived candor, no-nonsense and vulnerable at once, that makes “LMK” such an effective floor-filler. –Eric Torres",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePi5BLJogyA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5981f2cf452fd16aaaeaa91c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/kelela%2520lmk.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Kelela-LMK.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,25,Camp Cope,“The Opener’’ ,Run For Cover / Poison City,"Run For Cover / Poison City “The Opener” is a manifesto of survival. It’s built around the gendered criticism that has been leveled at Camp Cope during their years in Melbourne, Australia’s indie scene: that their success is just dumb luck and not the outcome of hard work, that women can’t sell out venues, that bookers often see them as a box to tick off. Mimicking a clueless promoter, songwriter and guitarist Georgia Maq seethes, “‘Yeah, just get a female opener/That’ll fill the quota.’” Despite her fury, “The Opener” never explodes into a chorus of rage. Instead, Camp Cope maintain a measured, hookless guitar-drum-bass chug throughout, their consistency emphasizing their formidable chops. The song’s only real dynamics come from Maq, whose jagged voice lands with force while still revealing a profound hurt. When she bellows, “Well, see how far we’ve come not listening to you” at the end of the song, it’s a triumphant reminder that their persistence has paid off. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40nc_8ij3MI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a93cb0db1d10008f2000d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Camp-Cope-The-Opener.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Camp_Cope-The_Opener.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,24,St. Vincent,“New York’’ ,Loma Vista,"Loma Vista The literary genre of “Why I’m Leaving New York” essays had a moment a few years back before becoming a full-blown cliché. It remains difficult not to roll your eyes at coast-swapping writers wistfully denouncing downtown filth (and not just because they’re friends you hope don’t become Hiking People). But somehow, Annie Clark escapes our skepticism. She positions her move west around a conundrum also faced by those who’ve never stepped foot in Manhattan: What do you do when everywhere you go reminds you of the one you loved and lost, when city and significant other blur into one aching mass? The question at the heart of “New York” is more direct than those typically addressed in Clark’s songs, underscored by a pared-back but still palpable piano melody and a heart-swelling combo of strings and synths. “It is easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends,” Joan Didion famously began when she said goodbye to all that. But “New York” offers a counterpoint as it perfectly articulates a moment when the city suddenly seems a lot less interesting. –Jillian Mapes",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TPqUvy1vYU&ab_channel=St.Vincent,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d700ed0b6cdc3000861181c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/St-Vincent-New-York.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/St_Vincent-New_York.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,23,Yaeji,“Drink I’m Sippin On”,Godmode,"Godmode Yaeji flits between genres and languages with quiet self-assurance. Throughout “Drink I’m Sippin On,” she raps and sings in both Korean and English, always sounding calmly centered over an 808-anchored trap beat with a nebulous house vibe. It’s a song of and about repetition, ostensibly a swaggy night-out anthem as outlined in the title, but actually agnostic to booze or drugs. On the chorus, she softly sings a phrase in Korean—translation: “That’s not it, no, that’s not it”—over and over, refusing to be pinned down and sounding almost spiritual in the process. It’s often tempting to describe a house singer’s voice as “soaring” because of the way the genre creates space on top of the beat instead of inside it. But on “drink i’m sippin on,” Yaeji’s actually floating in the middle of the mix, levitating on her own gorgeously meditative mantra. –Jay Balfour",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoxCItHxLiM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/59f35d01e68f6520a90c0aff/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/yaeji_ep2.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Yaeji-Drink_Im_Sippin_On.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,22,SZA,“The Weekend” ,RCA / Top Dawg Entertainment,"RCA / Top Dawg Entertainment “The Weekend” details a mind-blowing, part-time affair, but it largely comes from a Sunday perspective, that feeling of leaving and lacking. SZA’s man has an arrangement that’s all business, weekday 9-to-5 stuff: one girl clocking in, one girl clocking out, dirty deeds scheduled to the exact hour and minute. She uses a sample of a Justin Timberlake track about setting the mood, transplanted into the moment when that mood’s slipped away, seen off by a wistful sigh of guitars and keys. SZA slips between the perspectives of girlfriend and girlfriend-in-waiting, neither of whom are exactly satisfied, neither of whom quite commit to bragging or complaining or wanting much more. The situation is just a rigged game, one you can only win for a couple days at a time. –Katherine St. Asaph",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMD63TwzB1o&ab_channel=SZAVEVO,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/593ed23cf6f585756595affa/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/b24dfb11.jpg,/dataset/artwork/SZA-The_Weekend.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,21,Migos,“T-Shirt” ,300 Entertainment / Quality Control,"300 Entertainment / Quality Control Given their utter triumph over the mainstream this year, it’s become easy to forget that Migos have been doubted every step of the way: by traditionalists, competitors, even followers. And more than any other song on their crossover opus, Culture, “T-Shirt” feels like a riposte to those naysayers who said the trio would never make it this far. Did you write off Migos as a triplet-spitting one-trick pony? Behold as they effortlessly wield a variety of flows over a disorienting, codeine-slow beat. Thought the other members would never emerge from Quavo’s shadow? Watch Takeoff steal the show with his staccato delivery, and Offset flash a vocal range and command of melody previously unseen. Accused them of not paying due respect to their elders? Well, here’s an entire hook built around a lyric by the late Southern rap ambassador Shawty Lo, just to remind you how deeply rooted in Atlanta the group remains. But the best thing about “T-Shirt” might be the fact that you don’t need to know a single thing about Migos’ long journey to the top to enjoy it. It’s a lean rap song that places the emphasis where it belongs: on a group of certified hitmakers who are only now hitting their stride. –Mehan Jayasuriya",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VUa99-tJqs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65242b703e06944a57607866/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/migos%2520t-shirt.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Migos-T-Shirt.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,20,Calvin Harris,“Slide” [ft. Frank Ocean and Migos] ,Sony,"Sony There is, at once, everything and nothing calculated about the magic of “Slide.” The song is built around not just the idiosyncratic sound effects of Migos’ Offset but also Frank Ocean, a vocalist so talented and yet so seemingly bored with singing normally that his go-to aesthetic tic is now a balloon-sucking yelp. And yet, set against Calvin Harris’ graceful disco piano lines, relaxed-fit funk grooves, and soft-focus ’80s drum machines, Frank’s pitched-up nonsense rhymes give “Slide” an edge of newness. The summertime hit cements Frank’s guest spots as the main course of whatever friend’s dinner party he deigns to attend. –Jillian Mapes",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ee4QjCEHHc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65242eae9dcc4a1d20d8ed02/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Calvin%2520Harris%2520ft.%2520frank%2520ocean%2520and%2520migos-slide.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Calvin_Harris-Slide_ft_Frank_Ocean_and_Migos.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,19,Fever Ray,“IDK About You”,Rabid / Mute,"Rabid / Mute The synths Karin Dreijer uses sound like blades being sharpened. They are present on “IDK About You,” the thrilling center of her second album as Fever Ray, Plunge, and the vein-busting beat, made by the young Portuguese producer Nídia, make them seem covered in blood. Listening to Dreijer interrogate some mortal plebe over whether they are worthy of her is exhilarating—and intimidating: “Anybody’s coming with me/Gotta love my tracks/And swing an ax.” Got half of that covered; just let me check on Amazon’s ax-shipping policy. –Jeremy D. Larson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BEnuoh9nKM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651c7f028d07c4e0b46f71aa/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Fever%2520Ray%2520Plunge.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fever_Ray-IDK_About_You.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,18,Nilüfer Yanya,“Baby Luv”,Blue Flowers Music / ATO,"Blue Flowers Music / ATO Last month, at her first American show, the London-based singer-songwriter Nilüfer Yanya closed with this song. She stood alone onstage, gently pulling chords out of her electric guitar. “Baby Luv”’s subtle dynamic shifts, little revs within the verse, tease out its wistful nature before the confrontational chorus hits: “Do you like pain?” But the real marvel is in Yanya’s indie-pop precision, her preternatural ear for something both dramatic and effortless, as if the act of kicking puddles were turned into a song. She dives and alights on her words like Young Marble Giants by way of Joni Mitchell, and her voice can light candles and snuff them out in the same breath. Surely one day there will be a band behind her, and a full album with bells and whistles, but an indelible pop song like this needs no ornaments to improve it. –Jeremy D. Larson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmmQuNl_8xc&ab_channel=NiluferYanyaVEVO,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d6fe0e7b349080008010005/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Nilu%25CC%2588fer-Yanya-Baby-Luv.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nilfer_Yanya-Baby_Luv.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,17,The War on Drugs,“Thinking of a Place”,Atlantic,"Atlantic In the War on Drugs’ music, you’re never quite sure where the road leads, but you have faith it’s safe to travel. Bandleader Adam Granduciel’s romantic, mysterious vision of America is at its most expansive on the 11-minute “Thinking of a Place.” It’s a slow, loping epic that takes familiar elements from Granduciel’s discography—gauzy synths, wheedling harmonica, a guitar solo that stumbles around the beat—and stretches them into unfamiliar positions. And like much of his work, it doesn’t tell a love story in any traditional sense. Instead, it approaches the idea of transcendence from multiple angles: Love is a ghost just beyond our grasp; lovers melt into each other entirely; and thinking of a place is enough to make it real. Meanwhile, melodies blur and stack like thin clouds on the horizon, and the knockout hook lands after you’ve long since passed into a meditative state. Granduciel once titled an album Lost in the Dream, and “Thinking of a Place” feels like the culmination of that idea: You can lose yourself in this song forever, moving through a twilight that never fades. –Jamieson Cox",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeaDE1magRk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5929f32cd7a71d1ea569adbd/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/2b7a4bbc.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_War_on_Drugs-Thinking_of_a_Place.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,16,Playboi Carti,“Magnolia”,Interscope / AWGE,"Interscope / AWGE “Mumble rap” has become somewhat of a loaded term, criticized by both appreciators and detractors of the style. But when it works, it works. Twenty-one-year-old Atlanta rapper Playboi Carti’s “Magnolia” raised the standard for infectious, mainstream hip-hop this year, using a blend of perfect production and slurry rhymes. Tumbling across  the fattest, shakiest, dirtiest bass to ever be blasted from a Maserati, Carti’s droning cadence hypnotizes as he cycles through the same images: crack dealers, police altercations, careening through New York decked out in Rick Owens. It’s a lilting loop of a song, repetitive to the point of delirium. –Cameron Cook",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCveByMXd_0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5929c43cea9e61561daa80db/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/a240bddc.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Playboi_Carti-Magnolia.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,15,Björk,“The Gate”,One Little Indian,"One Little Indian For all the playfulness she can conjure with her videos and stage shows, Björk approaches creative renewal seriously. It’s one of the traits her hardcore fans treasure, but this unpredictability can go both ways; when you want bangers, she may give you chamber-music abstractions. On “The Gate,” she splits the difference. The first minutes are devoted to whispery trails of sound, before an arpeggiated motif teases a new momentum. When the low-end eventually hits, a sense of release is tied to a pair of refrains: “care for me” and “care for you.” As she alternates between those chants, the song’s arrangement turns its most galvanizing percussive figures loose, and reciprocity becomes a reality. –Seth Colter Walls",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIGgn1s3AvI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6524348f7792e31cf9313bd8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/the%2520gate_bjork.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bjrk-The_Gate.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,14,Mount Eerie,“Real Death”,P.W. Elverum & Sun,"P.W. Elverum & Sun Taking place a week after the death of Phil Elverum’s wife, Geneviève, “Real Death” describes his failing, grief-stricken mind and body. It culminates in an unforgettably harrowing scene where Elverum collapses in tears on the front step of the house they once shared. The song is at once a negation—art about death that addresses the futility of making art about death—and an affirmation. Like the gift from his wife that arrives at his doorstep in that pivotal scene, “Real Death” is a sign of love, one that can bring you to your knees even if you know exactly what’s coming. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1UyUsz0A-A&ab_channel=MountEerie-Topic,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5929f4dad7a71d1ea569affa/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/761acb65.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mount_Eerie-Real_Death.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,13,JAY-Z,“The Story of O.J.”,Roc Nation / UMG,"Roc Nation / UMG On “The Story of O.J.,” JAY-Z repeats the ugliest epithet in American history with relentless purpose. The track’s sample source is Nina Simone’s haunting 1966 classic “Four Women,” which dramatized how the legacy of slavery encircled black women, and the mogul’s point here is similar: America will always see him, first and foremost, as black. With self-deprecating intimacy that’s rare for Hov—and exaggeration-prone cleverness that’s not—he argues for his empire-building as a step forward for racial progress. Provocative? Of course. But it’s also a brilliant anthem for the era of Black Lives Matter, as complex and irreducible as an individual. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RM7lw0Ovzq0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651c7e189accbbeca9f91a1d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/JAY-Z%25204%252044.jpg,/dataset/artwork/JAY-Z-The_Story_of_OJ.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,12,Drake,“Passionfruit” ,Young Money Entertainment / Cash Money,"Young Money Entertainment / Cash Money Throughout Drake’s segue from sad-boy rap architect to world music ambassador over the last few years, few songs have nailed the universal sound he’s coveted as much as this one. Throughout the track, Drake’s tone, as genteel as it is unfussy, is hypnotizing as it wafts over dancehall-lite rhythms. It’s the most assured he’s seemed in this direction since “One Dance,” playing up a struggle for control with a long-distance lover. There’s still some angst—this is a Drake song—as he sounds put off by the prospect of not being the center of someone else’s universe. But amid this song’s smoothness, such troubles feel easy to sweep aside. –Sheldon Pearce",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5929c24b13d197565213bce1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/ae52c98d.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Drake-Passionfruit.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,11,Kendrick Lamar,“HUMBLE.”,Aftermath / Interscope / Top Dawg,"Aftermath / Interscope / Top Dawg Kendrick Lamar has long exhibited the masterful ability to dip his toes in the mainstream while keeping one foot firmly planted on the street. “HUMBLE.,” his first-ever solo Billboard No. 1, cements that legacy. Mike WiLL Made-It’s production deserves equal praise; the sinister piano melody that dominates the song strikes with as much percussive force as the drum beat itself, instantly recognizable as it thundered from car windows and storefronts all summer. But Kendrick’s bars still take center stage. He remains comfortably in the pocket, right through the moment he summarily executes the ubiquitous “ayy” flow, as a bevy of lesser rappers fight over who started it. Despite its name, “HUMBLE.” is a righteous exercise in braggadocio. –Matthew Ismael Ruiz",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvTRZJ-4EyI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5929f38a0c2bba1b7de0353c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/676eea48.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kendrick_Lamar-HUMBLE.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,10,Charli XCX,“Boys”,Atlantic,"Atlantic Charli XCX’s most effective bursts of bubblegum pop take place in a sphere all their own: not in the club, not in the street, not in the hotel room, but dreaming while at all three. “Boys,” her sparkling ode to male objectification, is a party song that’s about missing the party altogether: Her friends are blowing up her phone, and she’s ignoring them, lost in a daydream that doesn’t fixate on any romantic interest in particular so much as “boys” the plural noun, the natural resource, the element. The chiptune squiggle that punctuates the word in the song’s chorus makes it sound like Charli’s racking up boys like coins in Super Mario Odyssey—a shower of boys in each city, boys raining from the heavens, boys streaming through the gutters, boys like tokens redeemable for oversized stuffed animals. Note that Charli isn’t idly contemplating her chosen currency: She’s “busy thinking ’bout boys.” This is work, and she reaps the rewards every time she names her prize. –Sasha Geffen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPRy1B4t5YA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65243e22eb91a0dad816de92/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/boys_charli%2520xcx.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Charli_XCX-Boys.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,9,Kelela,“Frontline”,Warp,"Warp Throughout her debut album, Take Me Apart, Kelela built on all the strengths of her previous mixtapes and EPs: meticulousness, emotional clarity, and those stunning, bold vocals. “Frontline” is the acme of this careful practice; as Kelela recounts her decision to leave a relationship, a sense of resolve washes over the listener in a luminous wave. The song is an invitation to view the entire R&B landscape from Kelela’s vantage point—to understand how she looks to both the past and future with limitless possibility. This isn’t easy to do. With each passing year, as R&B gets gradually subsumed by other genres, Kelela insists that the influence of the cherished artists that came before her still deserves its spotlight. “Frontline” proves that she is the right person to make sense of R&B today and lead the charge. –Vanessa Okoth-Obbo",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/59aec2257c502311a6c2f045/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/kelela%2520frontline.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Kelela-Frontline.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,8,Future,“Mask Off”,Epic / A1 / Freebandz,"Epic / A1 / Freebandz When Future released two albums within a week of each other early in the year, he was banking on a song called “Draco” to push him over the top. But “Mask Off” had other ideas. The song’s buttery-soft flute lick—lifted lovingly by producer Metro Boomin from Selma, a late-’70s musical about the life of Martin Luther King, Jr.—quickly mesmerized #FutureHive, spreading alarmingly from there. Fan tribute versions flooded the banks of social media; the loop was recreated with flutes, violins, alto saxophones, trumpets, and hilariously off-key caterwauling. Grover got in on the action, as did SpongeBob. It spawned its own dance. It was maybe the most deathless doodled bit of music of the year, the sound of the entire internet whistling to itself. –Jayson Greene",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqotq0CV2b0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d71207ff1e8ce0008b717f5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Future-Mask-Off.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Future-Mask_Off.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,7,King Krule,“Dum Surfer”,True Panther / XL,"True Panther / XL How ugly can you make a song without sacrificing its groove, its swagger, its sex appeal? That question lies at the heart of King Krule’s “Dum Surfer,” a track so sullen, so contorted with disgust, so miserly with its compassion, that it can’t even bother to spell its own title right. As a deeply British snapshot of a drunken night out, the song is as unsparing and brutal as photographer Dougie Wallace’s portrayal of the nation’s pub crawls and stag parties. A post-punk bassline sounds like it’s ricocheting down a back alley, and that implied distance only reinforces the sense that there’s no warmth here, no belonging—just wasted bodies dodging disaster on unforgiving streets. You can practically smell the desperation: The lyrics reek of puke and warm piss, “skunk and onion gravy,” potato mash. Musically, though, the song makes something nearly beautiful out of all that damage, as jazz guitar and baritone sax drip like red velvet curtains. Archy Marshall’s feral snarl sounds like self-laceration with a dull knife, but it’s also strangely seductive. When he warbles, “Now my brain’s diluting with blame and guilt and hash,” it’s almost enough to make you sidle up to the bar and order a shot of whatever he’s having. Almost. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5-f1Bnltu8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7010919cec850008642e24/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/King-Krule-Dum-Surfer.jpg,/dataset/artwork/King_Krule-Dum_Surfer.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,6,Frank Ocean,“Chanel”,Self-released,"Self-released Given the drought that preceded Blonde, the handful of singles Frank Ocean released this year felt nothing short of a blessing. The first and most potent of these songs, “Chanel,” quietly reveals a new era. Though the track is built on a melancholy piano phrase, it ultimately trades the wistful air that marked Blonde for an attitude that’s present and self-possessed—speaking not as the Frank of relationships past, but as the Frank of now. Its musical flourishes—a winding flute, muted percussion, the occasional cash-register click—represent another understated step forward for Frank’s future-leaning pop, which drips with easygoing cool. His wordplay is dense, though, as it meanders through locales and references, from Tokyo to that recurring swimming pool, from provocative director Gaspar Noé to 21 Savage. These are, of course, all secondary to the French fashion house and its double-C logo: “I see on both sides,” he sings. Locating oneself on both sides of a dichotomy is, for Frank, a source of strength and even opulence: His guy is pretty like a girl and he’s got fight stories to tell. “Chanel” flexes a muscular sense of self, redefining what it sounds like to assert power. –Thea Ballard",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnbsIl2BnWw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5929f3df5e6ef95969325b1f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/d2ad578c.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Frank_Ocean-Chanel.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,5,NA,NA,Atlantic,"Atlantic The unlikely story of this song began when Lil Uzi Vert took a stage dive into a Geneva, Switzerland crowd in February, losing two phones filled with unreleased material amid the throng. Instead of fretting, he simply leaked everything he recorded for his debut album, including “XO TOUR Llif3.” With no marketing and no artwork, the song gained traction on SoundCloud before becoming one of the most ubiquitous hits of the year, garnering more than 1.3 billion streams worldwide. This unlikeliness extends to the song’s sound, which blends trap production with Uzi’s emo lyricism about his now-ex-girlfriend and substance abuse issues. Channeling the goth-tinged emotion of some of his favorite rockers, including Marilyn Manson, the Philadelphia rapper turns a morbid hook—“Push me to the edge/All my friends are dead”—into a delirious sing-along. –Kristin Corry",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrsFXgQk5UI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5ecd68f8ee33b6018584dd57/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/xo-tour.jpg,/dataset/artwork/1cccf91e-f6e5-4b91-9d9c-b8390cfbab48
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,4,SZA,“Love Galore” [ft. Travis Scott],RCA / Top Dawg Entertainment,"RCA / Top Dawg Entertainment “Love Galore” is the perfect introduction to the compelling character that SZA inhabited on her debut album, Ctrl: the petty, sexy, confused, high, confident, complicated, dismissive, cool twentysomething unafraid to air out her business (and yours). There is something cinematic about the way SZA paints her scenes in this tale of toxic romance, the way she is able to write language as it is actually spoken, the way she draws you into her world, like all of the best protagonists. By the time Travis Scott shows up for a verse that’s basically a booty call, everyone who is listening knows that she deserves better; let’s hope, by now, she does too. –Alex Frank",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHXfCOjb3fk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5929cc6d5e6ef9596932448a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/4fbc0271.jpg,/dataset/artwork/SZA-Love_Galore_ft_Travis_Scott.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,3,Lorde,“Green Light”,Lava / republic,"Lava / republic From the ashes of burnt romance rises “Green Light,” 2017’s most defiant expression of pop euphoria. Lorde has said that the song channels the spirit of a drunk girl dancing herself clean, calling bullshit on her ex, and waiting for—no, demanding—a new reality. Like its spiritual and sonic predecessor, Robyn’s “Dancing on My Own,” “Green Light” demonstrates that emotional self-discovery does not follow a straight path but yo-yos between extremes. While opening herself up to new sounds, the New Zealand singer jumps from whispered intimacies to ecstatic, explosive choruses that encourage denting the roof of your SUV while wearing a gown and Adidas Superstars. It is an anthem of fluorescent catharsis that gave a dark year some much-needed brightness. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMK_npDG12Q,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d8904320480b10008ffa260/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lorde-Melodrama.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Lorde-Green_Light.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,2,Kendrick Lamar,“DNA”,Aftermath / Interscope / Top Dawg,"Aftermath / Interscope / Top Dawg On “DNA.,” Kendrick Lamar dances breathlessly on the head of a pin, unwinding a single idea about origins, nature, nurture, and destiny. “I got power, poison, pain, and joy inside my DNA,"" he declares in the first verse. This animating thought—that we carry the seeds of our greatness and our undoing inside us at all times, that we are forever just one breath from our most exalted and debased behavior—runs like a vein of gold beneath Lamar’s catalog, and he’s never before drilled into it with the fierceness and precision of “DNA.” Over its escalating and spiritually replenishing three minutes, he doubles down and subdivides this notion so many times, from so many angles, that there is almost no interpretive work left for his listeners. He’s lived the life, done the work—“Born inside the beast/My expertise checked out in second grade”—and we simply receive his story. In this way, Kendrick is maybe our closest modern analog to Chuck D—like Chuck, Kendrick doesn’t beg you to see the world through his eyes, or ask that you enter into his mind. He proclaims. But where Chuck’s messages and voice were crisp and clear, Kendrick’s isn’t here to offer you slogans. He’s hoping that his all-devouring intelligence, his actorly control of inflection, and his sheer technician’s ability to dart around, inhabit, or smother the beat will help him devour the world, in all of its impossible contradictions. You can almost feel his imagination thrashing itself apart: “I know murder, conviction, burners, boosters, burglars, ballers, dead, redemption/Scholars fathers dead with kids/And I wish I was fed forgiveness.” What is there to do with this tidal wave of information except to simply stand in front of it, letting it envelop you? –Jayson Greene",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLZRYQMLDW4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a63a8256a0a0009483358/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kendrick-Lamar-DAMN.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kendrick_Lamar-DNA.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2017 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/,2017,year,song,1,Cardi B,“Bodak Yellow”,Atlantic,"Atlantic Cardi B is not just a rapper; she’s everything we needed, just when we needed it. And “Bodak Yellow” is not just the banger of the year; it’s an unignorable antithesis to a political landscape built around xenophobia, racism, and sexism. The first solo female rap track to hit No. 1 in nearly 20 years, it emboldened many of the people—especially women of color—who were marginalized for the very things that anchor the Afro-Latina star’s impenetrable pride. It let them lift their middle fingers a little higher and shout a little louder over the voices that wished them silent. All year long, Cardi B was a mesmerizing display of what it looks like to win without having to code-switch or shrink, and “Bodak Yellow” was her blaring anthem of purpose. By now, the story of Cardi B’s rise is legend: A fed-up grocery store cashier quits her job to become a stripper, then parlays Vine and Instagram notoriety into reality TV stardom before achieving ubiquitous fame with her first single for a major label. Could there be a more modern depiction of the American Dream? That “Bodak Yellow” was the flash point makes the victory even sweeter: It’s full of charismatic bravado, endless flex, and abundant joy. Cardi’s cadence, inspired by Kodak Black’s “No Flockin,” is injected with her unfuckwithable energy, as authentic as it is contagious, igniting a blend of enraptured aggression and bona fide club hysteria. Her voice is fiery and insistent, her Spanish-hued Bronx accent clipping and languishing as she offers clever wordplay about getting head and getting paid; even without knowing her hard-hustling rise, the celebration in her voice has an inclusive edge. Her braggy lines also belie a thoughtful core. Cardi may be on top, shuffling through praise, diamonds, and dudes at her whim, but in her glee she’s opening the door to her listeners, her sisters: This lifestyle, or any triumph they so choose, feels like it may just be in their reach, too. On and off wax—in a wholly demoralizing year that still became, indisputably, hers—Cardi B owned who she was. Her confidence, which disallows shame and silence, spilled into “Bodak Yellow” and created a perfect storm: a song that feels good from someone who rose to dominance at a time when women and their stories were simultaneously under attack and given more cultural space. At its heart, Cardi’s breakout demands that its listeners reclaim their power, jumping over all barriers of race, class, and gender. She did it. And while there’s still a long way to go for many like her, her existence and this song served as beacons across 2017, liberating us from our own realities, four minutes at a time. –Briana Younger",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6H0myzj4Bc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d823a59d5d1da00099a8e0a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Cardi-B-Bodak-Yellow.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Cardi_B-Bodak_Yellow.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,200,Ratking,So It Goes (2014),XL,"XL As suggested by the painstakingly detailed map of New York City that covers So It Goes, Ratking’s 2014 debut is a deep dive into their hometown. Storming from the stoops of Harlem to the bustling storefronts of Canal Street are the gaptooth spitfire Wiki and the languid daydreamer Hak, whose relentless banter never loses steam. Producer Sporting Life’s abstract, sample-heavy soundscapes conjure the chaos of the modern concrete jungle—a sound that evokes the dissonance of ’70s no wave and the experimentation of ’90s hip-hop. Together, Ratking paint a compelling city portrait: “Remove Ya” addresses its rampant stop-and-frisk abuses, while the jazzy “Snow Beach” chastises gentrification for poisoning the Big Apple. So It Goes shows NYC as it really is: pretty, gritty, and gross, forever restless and forever alive. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/ratking/so-it-goes | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/so-it-goes/884998023?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F58080937%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d727a140db1d10008f1fa90/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ratking-So-It-Goes.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ratking-So_It_Goes_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,199,Wu Lyf,Go Tell Fire to the Mountain (2011),L Y F,"L Y F In the late 2000s and early 2010s, plenty of indie bands sprang up with crystalline guitars, cryptic lyrics, and an aversion to sharing basic biographical details. But those other acts didn’t have a singer like Wu Lyf’s Ellery Roberts. Go Tell Fire to the Mountain supported Roberts’ shredded growl with patient post-rock builds, and the result was pure catharsis. These songs were so cuttingly earnest—“I love you forever,” Roberts rasped on the opener, “L Y F”—that it almost came as no surprise when the group broke up afterward. Who could sustain such intensity; who would want to? It wasn’t always easy to tell what Roberts was hollering about, but Wu Lyf’s best songs, like the sweeping “We Bros,” could have you chanting along, caught up in a frenzy of oddball solidarity. –Marc Hogan",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/go-tell-fire-to-the-mountain/442815754?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F19334785%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d727a650db1d10008f1fa92/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/WU-LYF.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Wu_Lyf-Go_Tell_Fire_to_the_Mountain_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,198,Jean Grae / Quelle Chris,Everything’s Fine (2018),Mello Music Group,"Mello Music Group On Everything’s Fine, Jean Grae and Quelle Chris tackle a range of modern topics—from the mistreatment of black people by the police to the ever-growing influence of Instagram models—through dense skits, outrageous parodies, and sharp rapping. The conversations they begin don’t always reach a conclusion, but they’re thoughtful, and the duo never sacrifices style for substance. Grae is the steady force and more of a traditionalist: She’s technically precise, while Chris is the wild card. But despite their differences, they complement each other perfectly, whether rapping or producing. That balance carries over to their wide array of guests who all rise to meet their energy. Yet, in the end, the album is about Jean Grae and Quelle Chris, who make it clear that they’re not content to be “fine.” –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/jean-grae-and-quelle-chris/everything-s-fine | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/everythings-fine/1338940283?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F83725277%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d727ab153e80c0008f436d8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jean-Grae-Quelle-Chris-Everythings-Fine.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jean_Grae__Quelle_Chris-Everythings_Fine_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,197,Fatima Al Qadiri,Genre-Specific Xperience (2011),UNO,"UNO Few documents of global music this decade were as interesting as the producer Fatima Al Qadiri’s Genre-Specific Xperience, an icy, minimal exercise in translating and flattening microgenres—juke, dubstep, digital tropicália—into a cohesive statement that tied to her international upbringing and youth as a gamer. Just five songs long, the record was high-minded—its videos, helmed by highly regarded artists like Ryan Trecartin and Sophia al-Maria, debuted in New York’s New Museum—but it also provided a template for what a cerebral dancefloor could look like. –Julianne Escobedo Shepherd",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/genre-specific-xperience-ep/954908009?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F39356367%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d727c772073fe00084eb0fa/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Fatima-Al-Qadiri-Genre-Specific-Xperience.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fatima_Al_Qadiri-Genre-Specific_Xperience_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,196,Portal,Vexovoid (2013),Profound Lore,"Profound Lore Some 21st-century death metal acts embraced digital technology and the clarity it brought; imagine listening to a jackhammer busting through concrete in hi-def. That modern crispness is nowhere to be found in the eruptive music of Portal, who instead update old-school death metal by making their music sound not like just one tsunami but dozens of them. The Australian group successfully shaded the lines of all instruments into one cumulative blast, with everything melting together: the slow, guttural growling of lead vocalist The Curator, drummer Ignis Fatuus’ rumbling percussive churn. (All the band members are anonymous and perform masked.) There are glints of familiar metal tropes—epic guitar solos, sci-fi-homage lyrics—but by boiling these elements into a tarry, punishing brew, Portal bring metal back where it started, as the sound of something terrifying, exciting, and new. –Matthew Schnipper",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/portal/vexovoid | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/vexovoid/595552450?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F23938486%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d727d499ce93e000838209a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Portal-Vexovoid.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Portal-Vexovoid_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,195,Downtown Boys,Full Communism (2015),Don Giovanni,"Don Giovanni “Why is it that we never have enough with just what's inside of us?” screams Victoria Ruiz at the start of “Monstro,” the highlight of Downtown Boys’ cyclonic debut album, Full Communism. It’s a fair question to throw at a capitalist country that's hell-bent on extracting every modicum of value from its people, especially its young and marginalized. With true punk fury—and the occasional stellar use of saxophones— Downtown Boys clear themselves a space to rage: Joey L DeFrancesco cracks bedrock with his guitar chords, while drummer Norlan Olivo agitates the whole band into breakneck urgency. With Full Communism, Downtown Boys established themselves as the harbingers of righteous frustration at a system that keeps people pinned down in a cycle of exploitation. –Sasha Geffen",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/full-communism/975310963?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F43842142%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d727da50db1d10008f1fa94/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Downtown-Boys-Full-Communism.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Downtown_Boys-Full_Communism_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,194,Titus Andronicus,The Monitor (2010),XL,"XL Throw together the Civil War, Bruce Springsteen’s New Jersey, and Titus Andronicus singer Patrick Stickles’ self-imposed exile from mainstream American culture—plus some bagpipes—and you get The Monitor, the blueprint for a decade of emo rock bands. In Stickles’ fevered imagination, everything is a metaphor for everything else: high school is a battlefield, his anxiety and malaise is Abraham Lincoln’s, and tramps aren’t born to run as Bruce said, but instead were born to die. As the rhythm section storms along, Stickles screams himself hoarse about accepting your given lot in life and the folly of using spite for fuel. On one song’s chorus, he screams “You will always be a loser” over and over, which at least gives the losers an anthem, too. –Jeremy D. Larson",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/the-monitor/355708784?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F58085055%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7289062073fe00084eb0ff/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Titus-Andronicus-The-Monitor.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Titus_Andronicus-The_Monitor_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,193,Lil Peep,Hellboy (2016),Self-released,"Self-released Hellboy was released while Lil Peep was a teen, just a few years before he died. The mixtape is focused on pain and how he hoped his might dissipate, and how he figured it probably wouldn’t. That he wasn’t wrong makes listening to the album feel like hearing a very loud alarm with a signal you cannot heed. The isolation at the core of his music wasn’t particular to him; he was just particularly good at distilling it. About the insistence of his depression, despite newfound success, he raps, “I used to wanna kill myself/Came up, still wanna kill myself.” It’s particularly bittersweet that he made it sound so tantalizing, the sound of his voice rich over the borrowed riffs of emo bands and electronic music producers. If you’ve ever felt that way, his music assures you that you’re not alone—and if you haven’t, he gives you a glimpse of what that suffering feels like. –Matthew Schnipper",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d728a08fd34990009cf8999/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lil-Peep-Hellboy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lil_Peep-Hellboy_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,192,Kelela,Cut 4 Me (2013),Fade to Mind,"Fade to Mind When Kelela debuted with Cut 4 Me, she solidified an experimental bass movement into something that felt human, as if a team of extraterrestrial scientists finally made contact. The mixtape was welded by a group of producers from UK imprint Night Slugs and their L.A. sister label Fade to Mind who bent elements of drum’n’bass, dubstep, techno, grime, and footwork into sparse soundtracks for the club underground. Kelela was the skeleton key to the crew’s disparate styles, a siren who could unlock a matrix of synths, shattering glass, and sputtering bass to reveal the soul hiding in the pauses between. It’s rare when something is both so clearly reflective of its time and predictive of the future, and Cut 4 Me was just that. –Puja Patel",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/kelela/cut-4-me-deluxe-edition | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/cut-4-me/993161423?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F43763039%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d728a500db1d10008f1fa98/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kelela-Cut-4-Me.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kelela-Cut_4_Me_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,191,Kate Bush,50 Words for Snow (2011),Anti-/Fish People,"Anti-/Fish People On Kate Bush’s only studio album of the decade, she sings about catching a snowflake out of the sky, warning a hunted yeti, and sleeping with a dissolving snowman. And she does so wide-eyed and full-heartedly, even painstakingly. 50 Words for Snow, named for the myth that the Inuit have such a vocabulary, boasts all of her trademark magical realism, fantastical lovers, and far-flung settings, but the songs are more quietly ambitious than past works—almost like chamber pieces. The material is more wistful: Where Bush’s best singles have often been about having something beautiful that you’re about to lose, much of 50 Words for Snow addresses things that are already lost. The wistfulness is often self-referential, as on “Snowed In at Wheeler Street,” a tale of star-crossed lovers with lyrics threaded with references to her old songs. It's music that rewards close attention in an age where that is increasingly rare. –Katherine St. Asaph",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/kate-bush/50-words-for-snow-0a958c24-8c82-4234-ad66-9d432ec3e427 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/50-words-for-snow/468587752?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F68575454%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d728af26eee70000829f286/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kate-Bush-50-Words-for-Snow.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kate_Bush-50_Words_for_Snow_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,190,Huerco S.,For Those of You Who Have Never (and Also Those Who Have) (2016),Proibito,"Proibito Huerco S. got his start crafting techno that erased most of the things that typically make dance music tick: beats, basslines, forward drive. Within a few short years, those subtractive processes yielded For Those of You Who Have Never (and Also Those Who Have), an album of barely-there ambient music. Twirling grainy wisps of synthesizer around a hollow core, it’s hardly more substantial than wind chimes caught on corroded magnetic tape—and all the more captivating for it. Churning loops bubble up into a fizz of tape hiss, sounding like a lo-fi cassette dub of Berlin ambient-techno pioneers Basic Channel; bell tones and tinny synth riffs stumble down a delay-pedal hall of mirrors. It’s almost impossible to fix any of these ethereal pieces in your memory, but as long as the disc is spinning, it is an uncommonly enveloping listen. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/for-those-of-you-who-have-never-and-also-those-who-have/1111704765?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F60260365%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d728b662073fe00084eb101/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Huerco-S-For-Those-of-You.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Huerco_S-For_Those_of_You_Who_Have_Never_and_Also_Those_Who_Have_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,189,Miranda Lambert,The Weight of These Wings (2016),RCA Nashville,"RCA Nashville For the first half of the decade, Miranda Lambert was a country superstar with a string of radio hits, a recurring spot on The Voice, and a picture-perfect marriage to fellow singer Blake Shelton. But when they divorced in 2015, the breakup encouraged her to go down a darker, more existential path. Her ambitious double album The Weight of These Wings carries on in a grand tradition of messy relationship statements: It has the grit of Tom Petty’s Wildflowers and the uncertainty of Bruce Springsteen’s Tunnel of Love, wrapped up in Lambert’s fiery, down-home charm. Its songs are torch ballads and highway anthems with a live band that feels borne of late night jam sessions, raw and unglamorous. For Lambert, redemption comes from buying a cheap pair of plastic sunglasses, by spending late nights alone at the bar, in knowing that she alone controls her destiny. Legend has it, she hung up on the first interviewer she spoke to about the record—the question was about Shelton’s new partner, Gwen Stefani—and decided that she would do no press surrounding the album, letting the music speak for itself. “All you had to do was listen,” she said. And the music says it all. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/the-weight-of-these-wings/1166241178?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F67223701%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d728c582073fe00084eb103/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Miranda-Lambert-Weight-of-These-Wings.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Miranda_Lambert-The_Weight_of_These_Wings_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,188,Pusha-T,Daytona (2018),G.O.O.D. Music/Def Jam,"G.O.O.D. Music/Def Jam After the breakup of the Clipse, his duo with his brother, Pusha-T spent this decade trying to find his footing as a solo rapper. He’s had plenty of highs—his verse on “Mercy,” all of “Numbers on the Board”—but he’s also had releases that didn’t live up to the high standard he once set. Daytona is the full realization of Pusha as a star. The drug dealing raps that fans first fell in love with on Clipse’s Hell Hath No Fury are just as rich here as he settles into a new corporate villain persona. Executive produced by Kanye West, Daytona closes with “Infrared,” an end-to-end thriller, famous for the petty shots at Drake that lit a new flame to one of this century’s defining rap beefs. And yet, for all the storylines and drama that surrounded Daytona, the music rises above. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/pusha-t/daytona | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/daytona/1388853738?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F89313048%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d728cf29ce93e00083820d1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Pusha-T-Daytona.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Pusha-T-Daytona_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,187,Iceage,Beyondless (2018),Matador,"Matador With limbs flailing and sweat matting his hair, Iceage frontman Elias Bender Rønnenfelt grew up before our eyes. He was only 18 at the top of the decade, when he and his childhood friends were dubbed the Next Great Punk Band, and across four albums and countless shows, they put in the work needed to uphold the claim. Beyondless, the quartet’s most recent LP, saw them once again expanding their sound in service of their ever-growing ambition, this time incorporating manic violins, honky-tonk pianos, and, for the first time, a guest vocalist in Sky Ferreira. The permanently anguished Rønnenfelt offers up a clear example of his dark philosophy in the cabaret stunner “Showtime,” narrating the onstage suicide of a handsome young singer. Over drunken drums that lead the rest of the band along by a rope, he snarls into the mic, grappling with the very public line of work that’s made him a minor heartthrob among the indie set. This is the latest, greatest Iceage: a bit more romantic but as fiercely droll as ever. –Noah Yoo",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/iceage/beyondless | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/beyondless/1349318425?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F87882165%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d728d9d6eee70000829f2b8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Iceage-Beyondless.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Iceage-Beyondless_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,186,Various Artists,Mono No Aware (2017),PAN,"PAN Assembled by PAN label head Bill Kouligas, the compilation Mono No Aware offered a referendum on what “ambient music” means in the streaming era and a who’s-who primer on the genre’s emerging voices. An immediate standout was Yves Tumor with the gossamer synths and vérité chatter of “Limerance.” But at 16 tracks and nearly 80 minutes, the comp feels like a fun house with trapdoors at every turn: Open one and tumble into the breathy murmurs and glacial drifts of Malibu’s “Held.” Open another and hear Kouligas’ “VXOMEG” morph from harsh squall to blurry drones. Enigmatic and patiently unfolding, Mono No Aware stands as an argument for appreciating everyday subtleties in an era prone to bombast. –Marc Hogan",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/various-artists/mono-no-aware | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/mono-no-aware/1208099933?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F70750180%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d728de10db1d10008f1fa9a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/VA-Mono-No-Aware.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Various_Artists-Mono_No_Aware_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,185,Hailu Mergia,Lala Belu (2018),Awesome Tapes From Africa,"Awesome Tapes From Africa Reissues of obscure albums ran rampant this decade, thanks in part to labels following the YouTube algorithms that guided listeners to styles they may have otherwise never found. But the MP3 blog-turned-label Awesome Tapes From Africa bucked that trend, diligently digging through physical artifacts to discover true gems. Take keyboardist/composer Hailu Mergia, a star in his native Ethiopia in the ’70s who moved to Washington, D.C. and became a taxi driver. Discovery of an old tape in Bahir Dar, a tourist hotspot in northern Ethiopia, in 2013 ignited Mergia’s dormant career in the West, capped by Lala Belu, his first new album in decades. On it, Mergia still sounds spry and roving on piano, accordion, and synthesizer, his melodic sense as acute and mesmerizing as ever. With Mergia at the helm of a jazz trio moving as a crackling, telepathic entity, Lalu Belu astonishes not by being a nostalgia trip but by sounding triumphantly in the present. –Andy Beta",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/hailu-mergia/lala-belu | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/lala-belu/1313329534?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F83794252%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d728ea02073fe00084eb105/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Hailu-Mergia.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Hailu_Mergia-Lala_Belu_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,184,Soccer Mommy,Clean (2018),Fat Possum,"Fat Possum Clean is a breath of fresh air that will also knock the wind out of you. Nashville singer-songwriter Sophie Allison was far from the only former home-recorder making bittersweet indie pop in 2018, but she did it her own way, and with impressive craft. Released when Allison was 20, these endlessly replayable songs have the prickly slouch of ’90s indie rock, but with wide-eyed vulnerability and bright melodies in place of ironic distance; the sharp eyes and conversational delivery of vintage Taylor Swift, but with more of real life’s mess. It’s tempting to dwell on just the first three tracks: the relationship dysfunction of dreamy ballad “Still Clean,” the vicarious imperturbability of swirling anthem “Cool,” and, especially, the damn-she-just-did-that Stooges reversal “Your Dog.” But the rest is also revelatory; the subdued finale “Wildflowers,” where Allison intones that she “found God on Sunday morning, layin’ next to you,” is a sigh of relief that leaves you gasping for more. –Marc Hogan",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/soccer-mommy/clean | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/clean/1324319630?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F82330905%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d728efcfd34990009cf899b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Soccer-Mommy-Clean.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Soccer_Mommy-Clean_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,183,Elysia Crampton,American Drift (2015),Blueberry,"Blueberry Elysia Crampton’s experimental electronic music unearths deep personal truths in surprising places. Her earlier work as E+E turned heads by finding something sublime and alien in edits of pop hits by the likes of Justin Bieber. Crampton’s first album under her own name, American Drift, is a four-song, 30-minute set bringing together crunk, trap, cumbia, spoken word, crickets, and blaring radio station identifications. American Drift runs deeper when you learn about the ideas that inform it: The Bolivian-American producer described the album as an investigation of her adopted home state Virginia’s history, of brownness, of colonialism. As the bubble for mass-market electronic dance music was about to burst, this individualistic approach distinguished Crampton as a renegade on the rise. –Marc Hogan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d728f53fd34990009cf899d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Elysia-Crampton-American-Drift.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Elysia_Crampton-American_Drift_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,182,G.L.O.S.S.,Trans Day of Revenge (2016),Sabotage,"Sabotage “T.D.O.R.” usually stands for Trans Day of Remembrance, a time to pay tribute to victims of violence in the community. G.L.O.S.S., the Olympia, Washington-based hardcore punk band, flipped the R to “revenge” on the only EP they released before breaking up in 2016. (Their acronymic name was equally bold: ""Girls Living Outside Society's Shit."") With Trans Day of Revenge, G.L.O.S.S. railed against the cultural tropes that so often diminish a trans woman's life into a narrative of muted tragedy. Inflamed and incandescent, lead singer Sadie Switchblade's yowl scorches anyone who would tell her to shut up, stay docile, wait her turn. “When peace is just another word for death/It’s our turn to give violence a chance,” she screams in the opening bars against the roar of distorted electric guitar, just before a typhoon of drums crashes in. Continuing in the riot grrrl tradition of flashing sharpened teeth at embedded patriarchal violence, G.L.O.S.S. burned bright in their brief time together, leaving behind a relic of pure and righteous anger. –Sasha Geffen",Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://girlslivingoutsidesocietysshit.bandcamp.com/album/trans-day-of-revenge,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72900f0db1d10008f1fa9c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/GLOSS.jpg,/dataset/artwork/GLOSS-Trans_Day_of_Revenge_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,181,Jamila Woods,LEGACY! LEGACY! (2019),Jagjaguwar,"Jagjaguwar On her second album, R&B singer Jamila Woods grapples with the present by looking to the past. Each track is an ode to one of her inspirations, most of them women of color. Sometimes she writes directly from their perspective, but more often she draws from her subjects’ lives and adapts their words to her own life. She channels Eartha Kitt’s self-assuredness, then Frida Kahlo’s sense of balance in romantic relationships; Zora Neale Hurston reminds her that she is allowed to contain multitudes. Pulling from so many texts and thinkers, LEGACY! LEGACY! is theoretically dense, but it flows like honey. Woods’ voice is rich and velvety, and the album’s grounding in emotional truths makes it accessible and immediate. –Vrinda Jagota",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/jamila-woods/legacy-legacy | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/legacy-legacy/1450438412?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F106535374%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7290be6eee70000829f2ba/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jamila-Woods-LEGACY-LEGACY.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jamila_Woods-LEGACY_LEGACY_2019.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,180,Chvrches,The Bones of What You Believe (2013),Glassnote,"Glassnote On paper, it shouldn’t work: Two grizzled veterans of dour, navel-gazing Glasgow post-rock bands team up with a young singer raised on third-wave emo. They make bright, shiny synth-pop that is entirely self-written and self-produced, but is so immaculately constructed, it feels like it was built by a team of scientists. And yet, in 2013, The Bones of What You Believe served as the ideal wake-up call for those stumbling blearily out of the chillwave daze. On soaring songs like “The Mother We Share,” “We Sink,” and “Recover,” Lauren Mayberry’s crystalline voice deconstructs fractured relationships with beguiling poetics and brutal honesty, while the music swells with a mastery of dancefloor dynamics that nods to New Order and Depeche Mode. On their debut album, Chvrches ushered in a new era of dance pop with an indie soul. A thousand Spotify-core bands bloomed in their wake, but none could ever capture the same magic. –Amy Phillips",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/the-bones-of-what-you-believe/1450852683?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F35143655%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650b333fbbcef9298df0b98c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Chvrches-The-Bones-of-What-You-Believe.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Chvrches-The_Bones_of_What_You_Believe_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,179,Shabazz Palaces,Black Up (2011),Sub Pop,"Sub Pop There isn’t as much room for mystery in music now as there was in 2009, when Shabazz Palaces crept onto the scene. Two EPs, sparse cover art, conceptual experimental music—at first, this is all we knew. By the time Black Up dropped, we knew the group was led by Ishmael Butler (formerly of Digable Planets) and multi-instrumentalist Tendai Maraire, but their biographies didn’t matter; they had effectively let their music do the talking. Black Up is drowned in murky instrumentals and bombastic, introspective rhymes. The sounds flirt with jazz, but also root themselves in a firm understanding of silence, or the sparse magic of simplicity. The songs teem with unexpected climaxes, like when “Free Press and Curl” veers straight into gospel, or the way ""Recollections of the Wraith"" seems to wrestle with itself before settling on a rush of soaring vocals in the chorus. From great mystery exploded an album of impossible vision. –Hanif Abdurraqib",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/shabazz-palaces/black-up | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/black-up/669854622?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F6986980%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7291e6fd34990009cf89d3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Shabazz-Palaces-Black-Up.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Shabazz_Palaces-Black_Up_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,178,Savages,Silence Yourself (2013),Matador/Pop Noire,"Matador/Pop Noire The post-punk hero of the decade wore pink stilettos onstage and made monogamy sound as appealing as anthrax. Jehnny Beth, frontwoman of Savages, sang with a sinister and a heavy-lidded hauteur, adding omnidirectional disdain for all things patriarchal and vanilla. Below her, terse, voluble bass and severe toms also nodded back to another era, one more restrictive to women as bold as the ones in this London band. Savages’ debut came almost secondary to their quick mythology—their live show was explosive from the jump, a salve for those who missed the dark, sweaty scenes that predated them. But Silence Yourself carries every bit of that adrenaline; in its coiled, sparking guitars and rabid screams, it warns of the dangers of technology while weaponizing its potential. Too loudly to be ignored, it disputes complacent norms: Maybe marriage isn’t idyllic, but asphyxiating. Maybe an endless stream of information isn’t edifying, but toxic. And maybe a clarinet solo does belong in the year’s most casually brutal rock album. Suddenly, the alternatives sounded ancient. –Stacey Anderson",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/savages/silence-yourself | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/silence-yourself/614945667?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F19927123%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72a6dcfd34990009cf89d5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Savages-Silence-Yourself.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Savages-Silence_Yourself_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,177,Margo Price,All American Made (2017),Third Man,"Third Man Margo Price toiled for years to become an overnight sensation: Her acclaimed debut Midwest Farmer's Daughter, released in 2016 on Jack White's Third Man Records, came out after she had spent more than a decade in the Nashville trenches. But that album was a Trojan horse for the thornier sentiments she would smuggle onto the airwaves and stages with her follow-up, All American Made. Price mingles the political and the personal until they're indistinguishable on songs like “Heart of America” and the barnstormer “Cocaine Cowboys,” leading a band that draws on old-school honky tonk rhythms without coming across the least bit revivalist. “Pay Gap” couches its income disparity blues in flourishes of accordion and Lone Star guitar, while the Dylanesque title track wanders a desolate America as Price wonders if her pain—all our pain, actually—might be specific to this place. –Stephen Deusner",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/margo-price/all-american-made | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/all-american-made/1464825180?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F109786846%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72a75153e80c0008f43715/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Margo-Price-All-American-Made.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Margo_Price-All_American_Made_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,176,Gil Scott-Heron,I’m New Here (2010),XL,"XL When Gil Scott-Heron sampled Kanye West, five years after having his own “Home Is Where the Hatred Is” hook used by West on Late Registration, it felt like a kindly nod from a mentor. Scott-Heron, whose spoken-word vocals so wisely distilled America’s racial and social turmoil in the ’70s and early ’80s, had already served as an invaluable forefather to hip-hop. He had nothing to prove. But even at 62, Scott-Heron still had his ear to the ground. On I’m New Here, his 13th and final studio album before he died in 2011, he doesn’t just swerve into icy, minimalist electronics for the first time—he, along with producer Richard Russell, uses them to bring new friction to his aching, burnished voice. Over 15 tracks of wry philosophizing and solemn reflection, Scott-Heron honors everything in his rearview, from the strong women who shaped his character to the many mistakes that cost him dearly. He seems deeply lonely at times—a secluded insomniac who’s seen it all and knows change is stubborn to come—but at times, he also sounds reinvigorated. It’s a beautiful note he bows out on. –Stacey Anderson",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/gil-scott-heron-2037aa15-077a-4bc0-a291-b43580bbf07a/i-m-new-here-9ac31b34-38ce-4d50-8f89-99f964139a1e | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/im-new-here-bonus-track-version/351170362?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F58222878%5D%5D | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgAomHGqKUM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72a80a53e80c0008f43717/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Gil-Scott-Heron-Im-New-Here.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Gil_Scott-Heron-Im_New_Here_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,175,Jessie Ware,Devotion (2012),Universal Island/PMR/Cherrytree,"Universal Island/PMR/Cherrytree Arriving at the same time as industrial-strength belters like Adele and Florence Welch, fellow UK singer-songwriter Jessie Ware was an anomaly. After collaborating with post-dubstep acts SBTRKT and Joker, Ware synthesized her love of American hip-hop and R&B with dance music. The result was a preternaturally poised debut filled with a headrush of affection, all delivered in Ware’s elegantly airy voice. Devotion flits between sumptuous pop-R&B and sweeping power ballads, but it’s never missing Ware’s gentle, discerning touch: a surprisingly earworm-y Big Pun sample speeds behind “110%” (later replaced by a soundalike following a clearance dispute with Pun’s estate), while the anthemic “Wildest Moments” gave both Adele and Welch a run for their Top 40 money. Much of Devotion went on to soundtrack TV dramas and romance movies, which feels like a badge of honor: Ware provided a masterclass in mining the ups and downs of romance with an artful, featherlight touch. –Eric Torres",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/devotion/1443130097?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F35469036%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72a97b53e80c0008f43719/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jessie-Ware-Devotion.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jessie_Ware-Devotion_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,174,Sharon Van Etten,Are We There (2014),Jagjaguwar,"Jagjaguwar Are We There was a great deepening—of Sharon Van Etten’s emotional range, of the power of her songwriting, and of the potency of her voice, which became an alarmingly physical instrument. The Brooklyn singer-songwriter’s vocals shake her body like a mighty engine, and on primal moments like “Your Love Is Killing Me,” it feels like we were hearing Van Etten literally come apart as she sings. She claws the walls off every word. Her fourth album, Are We There, was the first to rise from classic soul more than indie rock; the faint organ licks and slow, patient drums are designed to center a torrential voice, the kind that stands pleading at the footlights. That is Van Etten, and her performance is transfixing, exhausting, cleansing. –Jayson Greene",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/sharon-van-etten/are-we-there | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/are-we-there/820969262?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Fartist%252F3768703%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72ab116eee70000829f2be/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sharon-Van-Etten-Are-We-There.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sharon_Van_Etten-Are_We_There_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,173,Hurray for the Riff Raff,Small Town Heroes (2014),ATO,"ATO Alynda Lee Segarra had been releasing albums under the name Hurray for the Riff Raff for years before her ATO Records debut, Small Town Heroes, introduced the Bronx-born, Louisiana-based singer-songwriter to the world at large. A former freight train jumper and street busker, Segarra collects sounds and melodies like postcards from across America, mixing rhythmically lurching New Orleans R&B, rural blues, and Appalachian stomps into a new form of roots music. Small Town Heroes consists mostly of traveling songs—reflections on life as a touring musician—but also the thoughts of a woman who has spent most of her adult existence in transit. She's seen jubilation, tribulation, and cold-blooded murder, but Segarra keeps wandering, as though she can't wait to see what's over the next hill or around the next corner. “We might not be here when next year comes,” she sings on “Small Town Heroes.” “You better live it like you’re on the run.” –Stephen Deusner",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/small-town-heroes/864156360?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F60260365%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72ab44fd34990009cf89de/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Hurray-for-the-Riff-Raff.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Hurray_for_the_Riff_Raff-Small_Town_Heroes_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,172,Popcaan,Where We Come From (2014),Mixpak,"Mixpak On Where We Come From, Jamaican singer Popcaan’s soothing melodies shine over slick production from Dre Skull, Dubbel Dutch, and other in-demand beatmakers. Together, they jump from silky love ballads to grind-ready bangers. “Love Yuh Bad” is the album’s centerpiece, as Popcaan’s lovestruck lyrics anchor a hip-shaking dancefloor groove. Just as great are the moments when Popcaan fuses the rich sounds of his home with traditional pop bounce, like the scintillating title track. But through all the genre bending and lane-switching, Popcaan is clearly, deeply proud of his dancehall roots. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/where-we-come-from/882040225?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F60382136%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72acd50db1d10008f1faa2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Popcaan-Where-We-Come-From.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Popcaan-Where_We_Come_From_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,171,JPEGMAFIA,Veteran (2018),Deathbomb Arc,"Deathbomb Arc Baltimore rapper JPEGMAFIA’s darkly humorous—and occasionally troll-ish—personality is on full display throughout his gleefully unfiltered breakthrough album, Veteran. The Air Force vet’s chaotic stream-of-consciousness flow includes odd references—like to Macaulay Culkin, and to the wrestling theme song that doubles as his producer tag—as well as things he detests, like Morrissey (on a song called “I Cannot Fucking Wait Til Morrissey Dies”). Sometimes he spits with aggression over an airy instrumental ready to be embraced by the SoundCloud community, other times he scream-raps about Tinder and political figureheads over noise music. No matter the specific sound or subject matter, this scatter-brained album can’t help but leave you energized and ready to fight. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/jpegmafia/veteran | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/veteran/1429075456?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F93699887%5D%5D | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6rhLTg6M7A,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72ad6f6eee70000829f2c0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/JPEGMAFIA-Veteran.jpg,/dataset/artwork/JPEGMAFIA-Veteran_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,170,Skee Mask,Compro (2018),Ilian Tape,"Ilian Tape On the surface, Brian Müller’s breakthrough album as Skee Mask is an attempt to meld furious drum patterns with gorgeous ambient passages, à la Aphex Twin. But keep listening, and Compro becomes more complicated. The German producer uses the last 20 years of electronic music as a massive sandbox from which to create textured tracks that are familiar enough to be enjoyable, yet mutate enough to constantly surprise. Album opener “Cerroverb” is built on empty space: Cosmic blips burble and then fade away abruptly, like the track is decomposing as you listen. Later, “50 Euro to Break Boost” offers up a gritty breakbeat smeared with foggy synths that hover like a beautiful, toxic rain cloud. With Compro, Müller doesn’t build a world as much as he soundtracks its weirdly beautiful end. –Sam Hockley-Smith",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/skee-mask/compro | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/compro/1386727307?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F89075566%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72aea79ce93e00083820d5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Skee-Mask-Compro.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Skee_Mask-Compro_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,169,Paramore,After Laughter (2017),Fueled by Ramen,"Fueled by Ramen It turns out, the incredibly personal connection that a teenage Hayley Williams of Paramore created with her fans back in the Warped Tour days—which many adult critics didn’t acknowledge at the time, as though her band’s pop-punk contained frequencies only teenagers could hear—was strong enough to last the decade and dynamic enough to grow and deepen with age and maturity. Call After Laughter “emo for adults”: Williams wrote an album that feels like a perfect window into the inner turmoil that defines millennials’ state of extended adolescence. Maybe modern Paramore feels as urgent as old Paramore did once because the confusions of young life have lingered longer than expected; maybe no one really ever grows up at all. Or maybe the feeling of release—of clenching your fists and singing along with “Forgiveness” in your bedroom—is just an essential and eternal pleasure, one conjured better by no one than Williams. –Alex Frank",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/paramore/after-laughter | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/after-laughter/1227049864?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F73856849%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72aed0fd34990009cf89e0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Paramore-After-Laughter.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Paramore-After_Laughter_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,168,Julianna Barwick,The Magic Place (2011),Asthmatic Kitty,"Asthmatic Kitty Singer and ambient composer Julianna Barwick has mentioned the importance of seeing Empire of the Sun, Steven Spielberg’s epic war film, at a formative age. Most crucially, she remembers its score by John Williams, which featured a boys choir singing the Welsh lullaby “Suo Gan.” Her breakthrough album, The Magic Place, summons similar moments of peace amid chaos. Her primary mode of expression is her voice and a loop pedal, layered to feel completely enveloping: the reverb-coated sound of singing and breathing, echoed until you forget where it’s coming from. Arriving early in a decade that would find other young artists drawing inspiration from the once-maligned New Age genre, the album represented a shift in how the underground could embrace the celestial. As the world was getting louder, Barwick was building her own sanctuary, full of light and space and strange enough to feel like home. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/the-magic-place/1410812654?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F91898766%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72af6c53e80c0008f4371b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Julianna-Barwick-The-Magic-Place.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Julianna_Barwick-The_Magic_Place_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,167,(Sandy) Alex G,DSU (2014),Orchid Tapes,"Orchid Tapes Alex Giannascoli could never be called a frugal songwriter. Undeniably prolific by 2014, he’d amassed a cult fanbase but most of the world didn’t yet know him. DSU, his fifth proper album as Alex G, changed this. Self-recorded in his Philadelphia home, the characters in its 13 songs are often bleak—lovesick fatalists, regretful junkies, and self-proclaimed emotional voids—but in his hands, they transform into slightly haunted, subtly profound stories. His songs are built around catchy, intimate melodies evocative of Elliott Smith at his poppiest, with disorienting flourishes of freakiness, like a pitch-shifted baby voice or sharp blasts of dissonance. Insular without being inaccessible, addictive while still being idiosyncratic, DSU affirmed that the decade’s most singular voices were probably holed up in their bedrooms, waiting to be heard. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/alex-g/dsu | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/dsu/1079064127?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F56714255%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72afba2073fe00084eb10f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sandy-Alex-G-DSU.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sandy_Alex_G-DSU_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,166,Nicki Minaj,The Pinkprint (2014),Cash Money/Young Money/Republic,"Cash Money/Young Money/Republic On her third studio album, The Pinkprint, Nicki Minaj came closest to putting it all together: rapping and singing, EDM and hip-hop, seriousness and ridiculousness. She pared back her straight pop overtures like “Starships” and put her audacious versatility on full display. The Pinkprint’s all-you-can-eat buffet includes the raw autobiography of “All Things Go,” the campy raunch of “Anaconda,” and the Ariana Grande-featuring “Get On Your Knees,” as well as riotous flow showcases like “Want Some More.” Eccentric production is her co-star: There’s the Enya-inspired minimalist synth pop of “I Lied,” the fiery pan-Caribbean groove of “Trini Dem Girls,” and the feel-good dubstep-pop of “The Night Is Still Young.” No one will mistake The Pinkprint for a tightly-constructed masterpiece like its namesake, Jay-Z’s 2001 album The Blueprint, but the album helped add depth and dimension to Minaj’s image and blaze a stylistic trail for future rappers like Cardi B. It would also prove to be the creative high point in Minaj’s decade. –Jason King",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/the-pinkprint-bonus-tracks/1440851747?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F38625529%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72b7006eee70000829f2c2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Nicki-Minaj-The-Pinkprint.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nicki_Minaj-The_Pinkprint_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,165,Jay Som,Everybody Works (2017),Polyvinyl,"Polyvinyl Everybody Works, the Bay Area singer-songwriter Melina Duterte’s first proper album as Jay Som, vaulted her to the main stages and into a new indie-rock vanguard. The songs represent a dizzying crash course in everything that makes the genre great. First single “The Bus Song” veers from coffeehouse strums to gleaming trumpets, from the unspoken dynamics of two friends’ particular relationship, to universally understood concerns like the odor of public transportation. Duterte’s vocals, hushed and conversational, hold everything together: Even when the arrangements plant a sly toe in near-funk territory, it sounds small enough to fit in your pocket and large enough to change your world. –Marc Hogan",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/everybody-works/1191796223?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F70990692%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72b91f0db1d10008f1faa6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jay-Som-Everybody-Works.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jay_Som-Everybody_Works_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,164,Hop Along,Painted Shut (2015),Saddle Creek,"Saddle Creek Listening to Frances Quinlan fray her vocals is like watching someone rip a gnarly run in their black tights: Instantly, the whole outfit is rendered punk. On Painted Shut, the breakthrough album from her band Hop Along, Quinlan is on glorious display; her voice scrapes viscerally against the word “picture” in “I Saw My Twin,” the phrase “to post a motivational video” is briefly lent the velocity of an asteroid barreling toward earth in “Happy to See Me.” Being able to wring emotion out of any word is a gift, but then Quinlan has to rub it in by being one of the most compelling storytellers of her generation, too. In “Powerful Man,” she feels guilty for catching a father beating his child and not pressing the issue with an overwhelmed teacher. Elsewhere, she sings from the perspective of the ’60s folk musician Jackson C. Frank, alluding to tragic moments from his biography and invoking the general unfairness of life with a metaphor about horseshoe crabs. All the while, the rest of the band meets Quinlan’s sharp turns with their own clear-eyed intensity: Her brother Mark Quinlan takes cues from the simple but forceful percussion of grunge drummers like Dave Grohl, while the enthusiastic yet angsty guitars channel classic indie and pop-punk alike. In a decade where the lo-fi solo project often dominated indie music, Hop Along made a strong case for honest-to-goodness rock bands, one pummeling performance at a time. –Jillian Mapes",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/hop-along/painted-shut-3a1c16bc-b859-412f-8d88-3dfe0ae23dad | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/painted-shut/974793635?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F75045344%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72baac0db1d10008f1faa8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Hop-Along-Painted-Shut.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Hop_Along-Painted_Shut_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,163,Meek Mill,Dreamchasers 2 (2012),Warner Bros.,"Warner Bros. In May 2012, Meek Mill effectively broke the rap internet: Dreamchasers 2 caused the mixtape site DatPiff to crash en route to becoming the most downloaded release in its history. The project marked a turning point in the Maybach Music Group signee’s career, when he moved out of Rick Ross’ shadow and deepened his sound. Most notably, on “Amen,” with Drake and Jeremih, the Philly rapper slowed down his flurry of a flow; he had the wealth of time on his side. But even on a project this victorious, legal woes haunted Mill. His contemplative rework of Drake’s “The Ride” devotes many lines to Philadelphia assistant district attorney Noel DeSantis, who would face off against him in the courtroom seven months after DC2’s release, when Judge Genece Brinkley prohibited Meek from traveling outside of his hometown to perform. (Brinkely’s decisions on Mill’s legal problems would only grow more troublesome.) To the hip-hop world, DC2 made Meek untouchable, as powerful a star as he’d ever been. But inside the criminal justice system, he was at the mercy of others, forced to fight like he’d been doing since he was a teenager. –Ross Scarano",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/dreamchasers-2/1435442616?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F94660255%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72c5b09ce93e000838210b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Meek-Mill-Dreamchasers-2.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Meek_Mill-Dreamchasers_2_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,162,Sturgill Simpson,Metamodern Sounds in Country Music (2014),High Top Mountain,"High Top Mountain Sturgill Simpson’s music is rooted in modern country, but he’s also part of the proud heritage of “cosmic country,” a spacey descendant of Rhodes scholar Kris Kristofferson and Kahlil Gibran-quoting Willie Nelson. On his breakout album, Metamodern Sounds in Country Music, Simpson braided together no less than Jesus, Buddha, and “reptile aliens made of light” in the very first song. From there, the Kentucky native managed to dig deeper into his earthy roots of while also wandering even further into galaxy-brain thought. Simpson still refuses to be penned in and Metamodern Sounds in Country Music is when he started to elevate. –Andy Beta",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/sturgill-simpson/metamodern-sounds-in-country-music | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/metamodern-sounds-in-country-music/865795112?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F36812490%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72c6066eee70000829f2c4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sturgill-Simpson-Metamodern-Sounds.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sturgill_Simpson-Metamodern_Sounds_in_Country_Music_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,161,The 1975,I like it when you sleep… (2016),Dirty Hit,"Dirty Hit The 1975 have come a long way over the last decade. Matty Healy and co. have morphed from a spunky buzz band with a few bratty, glossy singles into the act that best captures the anxious modern condition—or, at least, has the ambition to try. The band’s second album, I like it when you sleep…, is the moment when their skills caught up with that ambition. Instead of sticking with sleek Phoenix-esque pop-rock, the band opens themselves to a wide range of influences: the sleek pop of the ’80s, neo-soul, shoegaze, and heartfelt acoustic balladry. Not every single lyric landed, but they met each clunker with a line that captured exactly what it’s like to live in this moment. Take this one at the center of “A Change of Heart”: “You said I’m full of diseases, your eyes were full of regret/And then you took a picture of your salad and put it on the internet.” That perfect balance between anguish and absurdity is what makes the 1975 feel so relevant, and so resonant. –Jamieson Cox",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/the-1975/i-like-it-when-you-sleep-for-you-are-so-beautiful-yet-so-unaware-of-it-5b689b1d-81bc-4bb6-817d-ef76d4ac84fe | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/i-like-it-when-you-sleep-for-you-are-so-beautiful-yet/1440832181?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F57494415%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72c6932073fe00084eb113/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/1975-I-like-it-when-you-sleep.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_1975-I_like_it_when_you_sleep_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,160,Noname,Room 25 (2018),Self-released,"Self-released Noname once quipped that her style is “lullaby rap,” in reference to her soft timbre and relaxed cadence. It was a great tweet, but lullabies didn’t deserve the co-sign: Room 25 isn’t putting anyone to sleep. She breathlessly details her inner life and the world with singular introspection and grace. Choice words for the prison system, wasteman boyfriends, pandering politicians, and Noname herself give the record a patina of seriousness, but she is as amused as she is agitated. From the frank sex raps to the constant boasts to the in-your-face cleverness, a giddy energy animates Room 25 and sells its free spirit. The album is the sound of a rapper realizing her powers and testing them for herself and no one else. When she says, “You really thought a bitch couldn’t rap?” it feels like both a wisecrack and a statement of purpose. –Stephen Kearse",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/room-25/1436063073?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F95013275%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d94b58ea540790008f9dbb0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Noname-Room25.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Noname-Room_25_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,159,Pallbearer,Foundations of Burden (2014),Profound Lore,"Profound Lore Arkansas doom metal band Pallbearer rose above the pack through sheer ambition. The emotional intensity and velocity of their songs suggest open spaces instead of dimly lit basements, singing along over solitary headbanging. For all the misery and pain conjured by their music, played at slow speeds with infinite layers of guitars, their records can feel oddly uplifting. Some of that is due to the soaring vocals of Brett Campbell, but the real magic lies in the band’s songwriting. Their epic song lengths become templates for dazzling melodies, classic rock choruses, and solos as memorable as the hooks. On their sophomore album, Foundations of Burden, Pallbearer cleaned up their sound, stripping away the murk of earlier releases. Near the end of the record is “Ashes,” the atmospheric interlude that’s a prerequisite for any serious doom metal album. Far from filler, it’s a masterfully composed, pop-leaning ballad. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/pallbearer/foundations-of-burden | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/foundations-of-burden/892503890?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F32808802%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72cb132073fe00084eb116/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Pallbearer-Foundations-of-Burden.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Pallbearer-Foundations_of_Burden_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,158,Sleigh Bells,Treats (2010),N.E.E.T./Mom and Pop,"N.E.E.T./Mom and Pop The intro to Treats is exhilarating: two quick cherry-bomb pummels, guitars and brass blown up huge enough to make engineers quiver and listeners thrill. The sound is physical, designed to rattle rooms. It wasn’t much like the previous music made by Derek Miller, who was in a metalcore band, or Alexis Krauss, who in her teens was part of a Cheetah Girls-ish girl group. In fact, it wasn’t like much else at all. The newness of Treats lends itself to metaphors: It’s like you took an old issue of YM magazine, shot it, sampled the gunshots, then wrote lyrics out of the tattered snippets about braces, illicit drugs, “dumb whores, best friends,” and beach bashes. It was pure pop as concentrate. Come 2019, Treats still sounds like nothing else around, but for a different reason—unlike most pop music today, it has negative chill. (It also doesn't sound like Sleigh Bells these days, who have inevitably done a sonic pivot.) But echoes of it can be found: PC Music took the art-pop roots and a few of the sounds—the sonar-like pings of “Run the Heart,” the Jock Jams synths—and made them more candy-colored. Artists like Lorde and Billie Eilish revel in Sleigh Bells’ distortion, and in their upending and mocking the bubblegum tropes that, in another era, they may have become. –Katherine St. Asaph",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/treats/371959684?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F82575463%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72cb8853e80c0008f4371f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sleigh-Bells-Treats.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sleigh_Bells-Treats_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,157,The 1975,A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships (2018),Dirty Hit/Interscope,"Dirty Hit/Interscope The 1975’s Matt Healy described his internal monologue—actually out loud—to the New York Times thusly: “I’m Jim Morrison. Am I Jim Morrison? I’m sorry that I’m Jim Morrison. I’m [expletive] Jim Morrison!” On A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships, Healy’s relentless self-belief paid off, his flailing coalesced into dramatic gestures, and he finally nailed the part he auditioned himself for. He is magnetic and empathetic and tender and unbearably silly, all at once and all of the time, and so is the music, which smears together Auto-Tune, orchestras, glam-rock guitars, and entire showrooms full of 1980s synths. Across the album’s 15 songs, Healy wants to verbalize every racing thought in your fevered brain: your boredom, your callow judgments, your sudden bouts of existential terror and your equally sudden bursts of inexplicable lust, your opinions on how whiskey tastes and the sound of your Twitter feed imprinting itself on your neural cortex. On an album stuffed with wry quotables, the funniest might be “I’ve just got one more thing to say.” –Jayson Greene",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/the-1975/a-brief-inquiry-into-online-relationships | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/a-brief-inquiry-into-online-relationships/1435546528?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F99350677%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72d2b76eee70000829f2c6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-1975-A-Brief-Inquiry.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_1975-A_Brief_Inquiry_Into_Online_Relationships_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,156,Jenny Lewis,The Voyager (2014),Warner Bros.,"Warner Bros. Jenny Lewis’ third solo album is a nostalgic swan dive into past lives, as sprawling as Lewis’s own impressive turn from child actor to rock poet. Scattered memories appear like flipped tarot cards—plane tickets to Paris as a teenager, the Twin Towers falling, a punch in the drywall during an argument—melting into a colorful but weary montage over sunny ’80s new wave and ’70s rock. Some song hit close to home, like the dryly funny “Just One of the Guys,” a meditation on sexism and ageism in music. Others are far more distant, like Lewis gushing about a future wedding and the faded romance that follows it on the deceptively bubbly “Love U Forever.” Armed with a perfect rainbow Nudie suit, Lewis asserted herself as a mature, somewhat wistful rock veteran, and took her rightful place as a bona fide solo star. –Hazel Cills",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/the-voyager/883276305?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F104156343%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72d30a2073fe00084eb118/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jenny-Lewis-The-Voyager.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jenny_Lewis-The_Voyager_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,155,21 Savage / Metro Boomin,Savage Mode (2016),Slaughter Gang/Epic,"Slaughter Gang/Epic In the middle of the decade, Metro Boomin was the most bankable producer in hip-hop. He helped auteurs like Future flesh out their sounds and kept Drake on top of the world with beats that were pulsing, punishing, and ahead of the curve. So it’s strange that the greatest thing he’s done sounds nothing like his catalog of louder hits, and sounds like virtually none of the other mainstream rap produced this century. Savage Mode plays like a dream sequence, where 21 Savage’s half-whisper sinks into what sounds like fraying, muddy silk. It’s not dissimilar to ambient music, but things that exist as atmosphere are seldom this unsettling. Together, Metro and 21 make having sex in lavish hotels with jewelry swinging against your chest sound like a completely foreign experience—not just the price of the room or the chains, but the sensation of having things touch your neck, the unnatural feel of the bedsheets. It’s a terrible, tranquil body high that ends too soon. –Paul A. Thompson",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/savage-mode/1133782044?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F62980263%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72d38cfd34990009cf8a1d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/21-Savage-Metro-Boomin-Savage-Mode.jpg,/dataset/artwork/21_Savage__Metro_Boomin-Savage_Mode_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,154,Mica Levi,Under the Skin OST (2014),Milan,"Milan With her soundtrack to Jonathan Glazer’s 2013 body horror film Under the Skin, the electronic musician and composer Mica Levi drew on the dissonance of avant-garde icons like John Cage and Gyorgy Ligeti, adding her own, distinct chill. Throughout the score, violas, cellos, and drum machines are slowed down to grim effect, perfectly mirroring Scarlett Johansson’s performance as a seductive, murderous alien. Beyond amplifying the visuals, Levi explored the pure physicality of noise: the thrum of blood rushing to the head, the prickling of small hairs, a soft touch, or the sensation of an otherworldly lifeform drinking you down to your last drop. –Andy Beta",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/under-the-skin-original-motion-picture-soundtrack/836460975?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F35282450%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72d3d69ce93e000838210f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Under-the-Skin.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mica_Levi-Under_the_Skin_OST_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,153,Purple Mountains,Purple Mountains (2019),Drag City,"Drag City David Berman’s final album followed a long period of silence, and his isolation echoed through the music. His comeback after abandoning Silver Jews in 2009 found him contemplating the struggles of maintaining relationships, faith, confidence, and hope as you get older. “Things have not been going well,” he announces wearily in its opening track, and the songs that follow prove this to be something of an understatement. Although bleak, the music never wallows, thanks to the cozily upbeat arrangements from his new backing band (featuring members of Woods) and his peerless lyrics. His writing remained as complex, funny, and smart as any of his classic work, from the songwriting-as-therapy spiral of “Storyline Fever” to the color-coded purgatory in “Margaritas at the Mall.” In the wake of Berman’s death—just a month after the album’s release and days before a scheduled tour—fans lit up the internet telling stories, sharing photos, and citing his best lyrics, many of which came from these songs. His voice never felt louder or more vital. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/purple-mountains/purple-mountains | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/purple-mountains/1456510195?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F109235260%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72d4f853e80c0008f43721/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Purple-Mountains.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Purple_Mountains-Purple_Mountains_2019.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,152,Arctic Monkeys,AM (2013),Domino,"Domino The influence of hip-hop acts—especially Mike Skinner’s the Streets—could be heard in the lyrics of Arctic Monkeys right from the start. But it wasn’t until their fifth studio album, AM, that the Sheffield band fully reflected that influence in their music. On AM, they bent these sounds to their will so casually it was breathtaking. Who could have foreseen that the Monkeys’ spartan guitar riffs would sit so well over a muscular, Dr. Dre-style beat on “Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High?” Or that Alex Turner’s wily vocal hooks on songs like “Do I Wanna Know?” could have so much in common with the lyrical strut of the best MCs? AM was a giant, cocksure beast that seemed entirely happy with its place in the world, making it one of the few indie rock hits of the 2010s that sounded like it genuinely belonged in the decade’s pop mainstream. –Ben Cardew",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/arctic-monkeys/am-6744e5e7-a0b1-4a8a-bf7f-31c83b4db1e6 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/am/663097964?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F22248417%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d766b809ce93e00083821b9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Arctic-Monkeys-AM.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Arctic_Monkeys-AM_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,151,Lady Gaga,The Fame Monster (2009),Interscope/Cherrytree,"Interscope/Cherrytree At first, Lady Gaga seemed like a slightly smarter-than-usual dance-pop hopeful and nothing more. But then came “Bad Romance.” A gothic psychodrama draped around a titanic club banger, accompanied by an instantly iconic music video in which she stoically burns a man to death, the song announced Gaga as a true force to be reckoned with. “Bad Romance” kicked off The Fame Monster, a collection of eight songs released as a deluxe edition of Gaga’s 2008 debut album, The Fame. (Yes, we know: The Fame Monster was technically released in late November 2009. But for something that cast such a long shadow over this decade, we’re making an exception.) Other than the supremely fun, Beyoncé-featuring “Telephone” (originally written for Britney Spears!), none of these songs sounded like anything else released at the time. They’re bizarre and jarring, full of references to death, dangerous sex, Hitchcock movies, and eating brains. (There’s also “Speechless,” an unabashedly retro power ballad that Meat Loaf would have killed for.) The Fame Monster’s release kicked off an arms race of pop kookiness: Suddenly, it seemed like everyone from Katy Perry to Nicki Minaj to Kesha was falling all over themselves to out-weird each other. But nobody’s freak flag ever flew higher than Gaga’s. –Amy Phillips",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/the-fame-monster-deluxe-edition/1476727669?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F77707060%5D%5D | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrO4YZeyl0I,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d766c372073fe00084eb1c0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lady-Gaga-Fame-Monster.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lady_Gaga-The_Fame_Monster_2009.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,150,Playboi Carti,Playboi Carti (2017),AWGE,"AWGE Before he emerged from the shadows with his eponymous debut mixtape, Playboi Carti was an enigma: The Atlanta native's SoundCloud page was a secret hiding in plain sight, spoken about with gatekeeping whispers, and his leaked tracks were passed around the internet like contraband. Playboi Carti brought substance to the growing mythology surrounding him, as he established himself as a rapper willing to bend genres and switch styles on a whim. On the tape, Carti emphasized his narcotized delivery and ad-libs while adding polish to his dreamy sound with help from producer Pi’erre Bourne. Songs like the hypnotizing “Magnolia” brought Carti’s ability to create an entire aura around snippets of songs to the mainstream, making rap that was just as enjoyable in a 30-second Instagram clip as it was blaring in full from a car speaker. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/playboi-carti/playboi-carti | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/playboi-carti/1440887343?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F72500653%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d766c7a0db1d10008f1fb22/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Playboi-Carti.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Playboi_Carti-Playboi_Carti_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,149,Mac DeMarco,2 (2012),Captured Tracks,"Captured Tracks Love him or hate him, Mac DeMarco’s influence on an entire generation of bedroom-pop acts and would-be scum-rock wunderkinds is tough to overstate. His breakout album, 2, established his penchant for cigarettes, zany antics, and quietly compelling songwriting. Throughout, the then-22-year-old Canadian waxes drolly on addiction and suburban sedation, intertwining his laid-back voice with flanged guitar work. His devil-may-care attitude can be seen in live videos from the period, where he would walk out with a beat-to-hell guitar that was falling out of tune, its un-clipped strings dangling from the headstock, and proceed to make not giving a shit look like the most alluring—and even admirable—way of life. This was when he was at his most free, before he was saddled with the expectations of being indie rock’s class clown, before his music took him to high places no one could have ever foreseen. –Noah Yoo",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/mac-demarco/2-23ab3685-9e1a-4965-9c8f-eefc58013eee | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/2/561048714?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F19327514%5D%5D | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxWEpjaKRmM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d766cc72073fe00084eb1c2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mac-DeMarco-2.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mac_DeMarco-2_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,148,Nicolas Jaar,Space Is Only Noise (2011),Circus Company,"Circus Company At the beginning of the 2010s, the echoes of peak chillwave lingered in the air, and a sample of rushing water typically indicated the onset of a feel-good, uncomplicated song. Nicolas Jaar's debut album begins with splashing sounds, but it quickly sidesteps the path toward easy bliss. There's menace lurking beneath the producer's work, a ghostly energy that opens up in his understated beats and sinewy basslines. Percussive guitars and close-miked vocals bleed into waves of reverb. During the early-’10s glut of bro EDM and bubbling chillwave, Jaar found magic in restraint, leaving enough space in his music to give the impression of a nefarious presence always lurking around the corner, of a young artist eager to play the notes that aren't there. –Sasha Geffen",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/nicolas-jaar/space-is-only-noise | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/space-is-only-noise/488873549?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F13765905%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d766df2fd34990009cf8aa1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Nicolas-Jaar-Space-Is-Only-Noise.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nicolas_Jaar-Space_Is_Only_Noise_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,147,The National,High Violet (2010),4AD,"4AD High Violet has the swimmy quality that comes with making sense of a new reality. It was the first National album to really incorporate guitarists Aaron and Bryce Dessner’s experimental tendencies, making what was solid and plainly beautiful on Boxer fractious and unreliable—not a fake empire, but a treacherous one. Frontman Matt Berninger feels separated from lovers, from home, from the person he was and the one he is becoming. To survive, he makes depression, debt, and self-destruction into sublime cosmic jokes at his own mopey, myopic expense. It was the last time Berninger’s lyrics were perfectly congruent with the times, an existentialist eclipse before he became more character than chronicler. Once adulthood fits, it’s hard to remember how it once didn’t. –Laura Snapes",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/the-national/high-violet-e4578068-e85a-4807-8071-9f35fc96fa96 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/high-violet-bonus-track-version/368054407?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F4797745%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d766e5553e80c0008f43802/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-National-High-Violet.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_National-High_Violet_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,146,Sheer Mag,Compilation (2017),Wilsuns RC,"Wilsuns RC There are two kinds of punk bands: nihilists and life lovers. Philly group Sheer Mag have spent their five-year existence attesting to the power of the latter. With shimmying, riffy protest rock and the coolest of neo-heavy-metal-style band logos, Sheer Mag became underground heroes this decade for their sticky songwriting and their principled independence. Like hardcore icons Black Flag and Minor Threat before them, Sheer Mag laid the foundation with a string of EPs, then rounded them up with the no-filler Compilation, still their high-water mark. It’s full of songs about gentrification, crooked cops, slumlords, yuppies, old-fashioned heartbreak, and other trials and tribulations that eat away at Generation Y’s more critically minded members. The music can be aching, swaggering, and celebratory—but it all feels designed to help us live. –Jenn Pelly",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/sheer-mag/compilation-9c994ac7-33ef-46a1-a209-44b894704608 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/compilation-i-ii-iii/1199255735?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d766ecd6eee70000829f349/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sheer-Mag-Compilation.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sheer_Mag-Compilation_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,145,Chief Keef,Finally Rich (2012),Interscope,"Interscope When Chief Keef’s major-label debut came out in 2012, it was scrutinized to a degree rap hadn't seen since the moral panic days of the ’90s. Here was a hardened teen from the most neglected corners of Chicago making music that reflected—and, yes, romanticized—the violence he came up around. Keef was more clever and more in control of his vision than his detractors gave him credit for, though, and his minimalist wordplay served to emphasize his monumental hooks. Finally Rich was drill’s great crossover event, polishing the rapper's nihilistic imagining of trap just enough for the radio without compromising its fundamental menace. Even after Interscope and the A-listers who'd been so eager to jump on his remixes cast him aside following this album, Keef continued to make inventive, influential music throughout the decade. But Finally Rich remains his pinnacle, and a best-case scenario for what can happen when a street-tested sound meets a big-time budget. –Evan Rytlewski",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/finally-rich-deluxe-version/1440818106?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F35189928%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d766f7353e80c0008f43804/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Chief-Keef-Finally-Rich.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Chief_Keef-Finally_Rich_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,144,PJ Harvey,Let England Shake (2011),Vagrant/Island Def Jam,"Vagrant/Island Def Jam On her eighth studio album, released two decades into her remarkable career, Polly Jean Harvey explores England’s military history, from World War I to the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan, with sharp, journalistic observance and poetic grace. Moving from English folk to Jamaican reggae, and from dark comedy to just darkness, she examines the nature of conflict itself and the raw human tragedy that lies at its center. A thread of weary nostalgia weaves its way through these 12 brief but devastating songs, shot through with despair at human inability to learn from our mistakes. It’s an album that hits right in the gut, timeless yet horribly timely, locally specific yet globally relevant. –Ben Cardew",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/let-england-shake/1213996598?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F71309649%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76701e0db1d10008f1fb58/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/PJ-Harvey-Let-England-Shake.jpg,/dataset/artwork/PJ_Harvey-Let_England_Shake_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,143,Weyes Blood,Titanic Rising (2019),Sub Pop,"Sub Pop On Titanic Rising, Natalie Mering’s fourth album as Weyes Blood, she combats dread through empathetic songs that are propelled by a masterful understanding of lush, ’70s pop harmonics. Mering’s willowy voice gives her warnings about the most hellish aspects of life a graceful air, as best exemplified on Titanic Rising’s penultimate track, “Picture Me Better,” a letter to a friend who died by suicide during the recording of the album. “Waiting for the call from beyond,” Mering lilts, as old-world Hollywood strings swell underneath her. “Waiting for something with meaning to come through soon.” –Noah Yoo",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/weyes-blood/titanic-rising | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/titanic-rising/1450550344?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F106478328%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d767107fd34990009cf8aa4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Weyes-Blood-Titanic-Rising.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Weyes_Blood-Titanic_Rising_2019.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,142,Fennesz,Agora (2019),TOUCH,"TOUCH Using computers to turn sounds into alien shapes now feels like a given, but at the turn of the century, guitarist and producer Christian Fennesz’s audacious noise- and pop-smearing work suggested strange, glitchy new worlds. Two decades on, the Austrian ambient artist suddenly found himself without a studio space, so he resorted to doing what so many teens do, jamming away in his bedroom on headphones. But even in such homely environs, he operates like an old master, patiently layering guitars and electronics one downstroke at a time until it all accrues into a vast canvas of distorted bliss. Agora boasts both the most expansive and most finely detailed soundscapes of his career. Contemplative and visceral, blurred and acute, the album upholds Fennesz as the 21st century’s finest romantic futurist. –Andy Beta",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/fennesz/agora | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/agora/1450001113?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F102730774%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7671720db1d10008f1fb5a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Fennesz-Agora.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fennesz-Agora_2019.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,141,Rick Ross,Rich Forever (2012),Def Jam,"Def Jam Rick Ross’ best work happens when he’s completely, utterly divorced from reality. Case in point: His 2012 mixtape Rich Forever, in which the former prison guard fully embraces his villainous kingpin persona, casting himself as the hardboiled antihero of his own blockbuster action franchise. Forgoing the decadent, red-velvet soul of his studio albums, Rich Forever emphasizes tight, IMAX-sized instrumentals. From the searing synthesizers of “High Definition” to the brutalist, grinding trap of “Yella Diamonds,” nearly every beat is as mammoth and monumental as Ross’ brontosaurus grunt. And at a time when rappers like Drake and Kendrick were prioritizing grounded, personal statements, Ross doubled down on fantasy. There isn't a single claim on Rich Forever that a fact checker could verify, and the mixtape is better for it. –Evan Rytlewski",Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F16391340%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7672182073fe00084eb1c4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Rick-Ross-Rich-Forever.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rick_Ross-Rich_Forever_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,140,Parquet Courts,Sunbathing Animal (2014),What’s Your Rupture?/Mom and Pop,"What’s Your Rupture?/Mom and Pop In an era when indie rock got cozier than ever with the pop mainstream, Parquet Courts preferred to be left alone. After breaking through with 2012’s delightful and funny Light Up Gold, their follow-up album, Sunbathing Animal, made the band an unlikely pillar of modern American rock. The record cultivates an air of hyper-rational individuals thwarted by modern mania; its surrealist screeds transform, upon inspection, into pleas for sanity. Andrew Savage and Austin Brown emit a flurry of barely formed questions: How do you navigate the enduring challenges of love and passion amid labor exploitation, political cruelty, and the specter and spectacle of American violence? The music runs then crawls, plays dumb then flaunts frills. To hide genius hooks in songs so slack is audacious, the mark of a band either certain you’re paying attention or the complete opposite. –Jazz Monroe",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/parquet-courts/sunbathing-animal-322eb9dc-c9eb-47aa-8b0e-bd6c08998ec4 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/sunbathing-animal/1068020261?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F55307797%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76730153e80c0008f43808/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Parquet-Courts-Sunbathing-Animal.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Parquet_Courts-Sunbathing_Animal_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,139,Emeralds,Does It Look Like I’m Here? (2010),Editions Mego,"Editions Mego With Does It Look Like I’m Here?, the experimental Ohio trio Emeralds ascended toward more melodic, starry atmospheres without losing any of the density and power of their previous sound. In shorter songs full of rising arpeggios and drifting guitar lines, they layered loops and doused the stereo spectrum in glittering accents. Channeling the synth explorations of the ’70s and the dreamy ambience of the ’80s, they presaged the New Age pop revival that would flourish throughout the decade. Though they would only make one more album together, the subsequent solo work of Mark McGuire, Steve Hauschildt, and John Elliot continued to uphold the idea that soothing, space-bound music can be just as edgy and complex as harsh noise. –Marc Masters",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/does-it-look-like-im-here/368521609?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F4261245%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76a4ca6eee70000829f34f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Emeralds-Does-It-Look-Like-Im-Here.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Emeralds-Does_It_Look_Like_Im_Here_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,138,Alabama Shakes,Sound & Color (2015),ATO,"ATO Alabama Shakes’ second album begins with a song about an astronaut who has been shot into space on a mission to find a new planet where the human race can settle and start over. And thus, Sound & Color subverted almost everything we’d come to expect about a band that had been positioned as saviors of back-to-basics rock’n’roll: what frontwoman Brittany Howard was singing about, how the music sounded, even which planets they visit. There’s something alien about songs like “Future People” (about meeting the you of 10 or 20 years on), but Howard’s concerns can be earthly as well: losing a lover with a Mickey Mouse tattoo on “Miss You,” paying the water and power bills on “Don’t Wanna Fight.” The Shakes groove and vamp like the Swampers from Mars, with Howard shouting and crooning and squealing like Bowie by way of Etta James. Sound & Color is grounded in Southern soul, but the band’s gaze is fixed on the heavens. –Stephen Deusner",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/alabama-shakes/sound-color | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/sound-color/1053742064?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F44546094%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76a5876eee70000829f351/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Alabama-Shakes-Sound-and-Color.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Alabama_Shakes-Sound__Color_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,137,A$AP Rocky,LIVE.LOVE.A$AP (2011),Self-released,"Self-released LIVE.LOVE.A$AP feels like one of the first hip-hop projects that could not have existed without the internet. Marked by A$AP Rocky’s straightforward delivery and “I’m the shit” attitude, the 2011 mixtape is rooted in the rapper’s Harlem upbringing, but the sound of the project is pulled from scenes across the country that Rocky and his crew fell in love with online: The chopped vocals are true to Houston’s lean-infused drip, the dark themes are directly influenced by SpaceGhostPurrp’s Miami-based Raider Klan, and the cloudy production is built on a style that was thriving in California through artists like Main Attrakionz and Lil B. Along with producer Clams Casino, Rocky brought a new flavor to these styles—not rehashing existing ideas, but entwining them with his own to create something unbound by regional lines. –Alphonse Pierre",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76a6106eee70000829f353/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/ASAP-Rocky-LiveLongASAP.png,/dataset/artwork/AAP_Rocky-LIVELOVEAAP_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,136,Tim Hecker,"Ravedeath, 1972 (2011)",Kranky,"Kranky When Tim Hecker released Ravedeath, 1972 in 2011, critics interpreted the Canadian producer’s clash of organic pipe organ and synthetic corrosion as a comment on music’s chances of survival in a digital world. In 2019, that matter seems superficial compared to Ravedeath’s unavoidable contemporary resonance. Its grimy, eddying tundras are nothing less than an omen of our promised apocalypse, where decay has defeated living matter and noise has drowned out signal. The music, however, remains gorgeous and rooted in the metaphysical. While the forlorn cirrus wisps that writhe and glimmer through the static don’t offer anything so trite as optimism, they cast the ruins in the sobering relief that elevates Ravedeath, 1972 from ambient reverie to enduringly urgent confrontation. –Laura Snapes",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/tim-hecker/ravedeath-1972 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/ravedeath-1972/411842895?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F18058603%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76aa670db1d10008f1fb61/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Tim-Hecker-Ravedeath-1972.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tim_Hecker-Ravedeath_1972_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,135,Fleet Foxes,Helplessness Blues (2011),Sub Pop,"Sub Pop The making of Fleet Foxes’ second album was fraught, due in no small part to the success of their first. Robin Pecknold and co. wondered how to trust their instincts without leaning on formula, and fretted about the reception that awaited their new music. These worries form a backdrop for Helplessness Blues, the unmistakable work of uneasy hearts. Starting with the scene-setting intonation that opens the record (“So now I am older”), Pecknold’s melancholy tenor heralded a decade of discourse about millennial anxiety. He paints an indelible portrait of fading young-adulthood—diverging from the path set by parents, searching for place and purpose, falling out of relationships that have dried up. Above all, Pecknold questions his ability—and will—to be anything other than, as he describes it on the title track, “a functioning cog in some great machinery.” These complicated fears offer a foil to the swollen sound that envelopes them. Fleet Foxes’ maximalist folk, with harmonies stacked high as mountains and reverb that could fill caverns, makes feeling small seem epic. –Olivia Horn",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/fleet-foxes/helplessness-blues | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/helplessness-blues/425059566?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F68640008%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76aac02073fe00084eb232/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Fleet-Foxes-Helplessness-Blues.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fleet_Foxes-Helplessness_Blues_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,134,M83,"Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming (2011)",Mute,"Mute Around the time Anthony Gonzalez wound down the tour for 2008’s Saturdays = Youth, the M83 frontman left France and moved to Los Angeles. The city inspired his biggest, best, and most cinematic album, Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming. These songs are steeped in a kind of magical realism stemming from the intensity of adolescent emotions, full of heart-on-sleeve choruses, slap-bass funk, vintage synth swells, and a desire for home or love or something just out of reach. The album contains a loose narrative that has something to do with brothers and sisters, but you don’t need to know any of the story to get swept up in the neon-lit groove of “Midnight City” or swept away by the tidal wave that is “Steve McQueen.” Gonzalez’s nostalgia is very specific, very personal, and very idiosyncratic, which makes Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming sound so universal and inviting, not to mention sturdy enough to withstand the wave of imitators that sprang up in its wake. –Stephen Deusner",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/hurry-up-were-dreaming/828259375?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F35001627%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76ab379ce93e0008382259/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/M83-Hurry-Up-Were-Dreaming.jpg,/dataset/artwork/M83-Hurry_Up_Were_Dreaming_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,133,Frankie Cosmos,Zentropy (2014),Double Double Whammy,"Double Double Whammy Greta Kline once quipped that the title of Zentropy, her full-band studio debut as Frankie Cosmos, meant a descent into “zen-ness”: an embrace of one’s surroundings. It’s a clever way of approaching the album, which collapses notions of big and small, sophisticated and rudimentary, serious and funny, until there’s little choice but to accept them all as the same. Zentropy doesn’t feel longer than its 10-song, 17-minute run time, but it feels like more. Tempos careen and stutter unpredictably, lyrical motifs bleed between tracks. Gigantic feelings go supernova out of notebook-worthy musings on being “the kind of girl buses splash with rain,” yearning to go dancing, and mourning the death of a dog. Beneath this, Klein filters a ’60s girl-group pop sensibility through the New York deadpan of ’00s anti-folk and the pajama-party whimsy of ’90s K Records. Later Frankie Cosmos albums would go longer, and run no less deep, but with Zentropy, Kline made us one with everything. –Marc Hogan",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/zentropy/1071967333?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F55838344%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76abca0db1d10008f1fb63/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Frankie-Cosmos-Zentropy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Frankie_Cosmos-Zentropy_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,132,Amen Dunes,Freedom (2018),Sacred Bones,"Sacred Bones The fifth album from Damon McMahon’s hallucinatory rock project Amen Dunes pumps the vapors of bygone rock jams into half-seen visions of the past. McMahon has an eye for the antihero and his vulnerabilities, the fading conscience of modernity. “Pride destroyed me, man/Til it took ahold of me,” he sings over cresting bass on the luscious “Miki Dora,” a sympathetic homage to the surfer icon of hedonism and chaos. A master of the lyrical arched eyebrow, McMahon is capable of conveying total honesty in one line and ironic remove in the next. His band builds a warmly reverbed atmosphere, steadying psychedelic swells and loops against murky rhythm until the air feels rotten with insinuation. Freedom doesn’t feel like an album from this decade; it feels like an album suspended in time. –Anna Gaca",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/amen-dunes/freedom | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/freedom/1328551614?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F85273955%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76ac1e9ce93e000838225b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Amen-Dunes-Freedom.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Amen_Dunes-Freedom_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,131,Run the Jewels,Run the Jewels 2 (2014),Mass Appeal,"Mass Appeal Run the Jewels were rap’s most thrillingly unlikely success story this decade: El-P, an indie-rap lifer and Killer Mike, an Atlanta rap vet finding new inspiration in each other. When they joined forces, they rapped as if their lives (and ours) depended on it. Run the Jewels 2 was where their uncanny chemistry reached Anarchist Cookbook proportions. It’s an album of virtuosic vulgarity, a pair of underdogs seizing their moment and reaching new heights, both in their cadence-shifting bars and El’s arena-quaking productions. But beneath the bluster, what sets RTJ2 apart is its humanity and prescience: on police brutality, on #MeToo, and on the burgeoning friendship between two world-hardened idealists. No wonder Marvel gave them their own comic books. –Marc Hogan",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/run-the-jewels-2/1438904728?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F93772424%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76ac9c53e80c0008f4380f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Run-the-Jewels-2.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Run_the_Jewels-Run_the_Jewels_2_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,130,Tame Impala,Lonerism (2012),Modular,"Modular At its core, Lonerism is a tightly wound, deeply internal album about what it means to always feel like an outsider. That it gained such a huge following and catapulted Tame Impala into the mainstream is ironic, but not surprising. Throughout the record, classic rock tropes are updated with reverence, memorable riffs are tossed off like they’re in endless supply, and moments of bliss allow for at least an illusion of catharsis: The tongue-in-cheek single “Elephant” is so sure of itself that it practically swaggers, while “Feels Like We Only Go Backwards” is built around blown-out cymbals and a communal hook that happens to be all about frontman Kevin Parker’s own indecision and dashed hopes. If there’s one idea to take away from Tame Impala’s second album, though, it’s that everything repeats itself and nothing is ever really in our control. Frustration never sounded so good. –Sam Hockley-Smith",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/tame-impala/lonerism-314a7d7a-7e88-4e2f-9b08-45ccf2762a3a | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/lonerism/1440765963?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F28098315%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76ada02073fe00084eb236/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Tame-Impala-Lonerism.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tame_Impala-Lonerism_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,129,Various Artists,Bangs and Works Vol. 1: A Chicago Footwork Compilation (2010),Planet Mu,"Planet Mu In dance music circles, it’s hard to think of a more important recent document than Bangs and Works. While Chicago footwork had been percolating for over 20 years at the time of the compilation’s release, for many people outside the local scene, it proved to be their first experience of the genre’s marriage of breakneck beats with haunting soul samples. Alongside searing examples of the form by pioneers like RP Boo and DJ Rashad, who would go on to take footwork around the world, there’s a DJ Nate track that verges on the spiritual, and a succinct meditation on loving support by Tha Pope. A decade on, Bangs and Works still sounds as fresh and invigorating as the first listen. –Ruth Saxelby",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/bangs-works-vol-1-a-chicago-footwork-compilation/687501131?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F22979365%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76ae399ce93e000838225d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/VA-Bangs-and-Works-Vol-1.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Various_Artists-Bangs_and_Works_Vol_1_A_Chicago_Footwork_Compilation_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,128,Radiohead,A Moon Shaped Pool (2016),XL,"XL When A Moon Shaped Pool entered the world in May 2016, many of the horrors Radiohead had spent more than two decades warning us about were coming to fruition. Campaigns for Brexit and Trump were spreading odious strains of nationalism. The Earth’s temperature was reaching precipitous new highs. Nefarious companies were harvesting data from tens of millions of Facebook users in order to undermine American democracy. The record also arrived amid acute personal tragedy for Thom Yorke, who had announced a separation from his partner, Rachel Owen, the year prior. (Seven months after its release, Owen died following a long battle with cancer.) It’s no wonder that, according to one scientific analysis, A Moon Shaped Pool was found to be the infamously bleak band’s most depressing album. And yet the record does not wallow. The stubbornly forward-facing quintet allows itself to look back—most notably with “True Love Waits,” a live fan favorite since the mid ’90s, finally put to tape in the studio—while avoiding self-parody or indulgence. On the luminous ballad “Daydreaming,” Yorke sounds like he’s levitating when he sings, “We are just happy to serve... you.” It’s a nod to the symbiotic bond Radiohead keeps with their listeners through the worst of times, a bond that this album elegantly upholds. –Ryan Dombal",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/radiohead/a-moon-shaped-pool | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/a-moon-shaped-pool/1111577743?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F60215409%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76ae9d6eee70000829f356/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Radiohead-A-Moon-Shaped-Pool.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Radiohead-A_Moon_Shaped_Pool_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,127,Car Seat Headrest,Teens of Denial (2016),Matador,"Matador Like his indie rock forefathers in the Replacements, Car Seat Headrest mastermind Will Toledo sounds sincerely undecided about embarking on any kind of grand search for purpose. He feels like a walking piece of shit, which is basically the default state for modern young people. On Teens of Denial, following a prolific run of Bandcamp releases, Toledo comes off like a passive avatar for the feelings he’s channeling. Even when he shakes off the doldrums long enough to rouse his audience into a singalong, it’s with a self-conscious—but nonetheless empowering—line like “I’ve got a right to be depressed!” The beautiful thing about this record is how it doesn’t demand our loyalty, only that we admit we feel the same way. –Jeremy Gordon",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/car-seat-headrest/teens-of-denial | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/teens-of-denial/1117093779?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F61144838%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76af692073fe00084eb238/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Car-Seat-Headrest-Teens-of-Denial.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Car_Seat_Headrest-Teens_of_Denial_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,126,Panda Bear,Tomboy (2011),Paw Tracks,"Paw Tracks As a follow-up to 2007’s acclaimed Person Pitch (with Animal Collective’s even-more-acclaimed Merriweather Post Pavilion in between), Noah Lennox’s fourth solo album as Panda Bear often seems a vehicle to adjust classic sounds into a new, weird future. Covered in the singer’s rich self-harmonies, the Beach Boys references are almost too easy to make, with the wave-touched “Surfer’s Hymn” perhaps even acting as overt bait. But churning behind those echoing cries are any number of marginally identifiable sounds—fast-cycling bells? backwards pianos?—that flicker like reflections in dark water. Brimming with dubby modern psychedelia, Tomboy may be more like a VR beach than a surf-and-sand one, but it offers just as many pretty sunsets. –Jesse Jarnow",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/tomboy/1101965696?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F59215412%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76afd353e80c0008f43811/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Panda-Bear-Tomboy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Panda_Bear-Tomboy_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,125,Yves Tumor,Safe in the Hands of Love (2018),Warp,"Warp With their third album, Safe in the Hands of Love, Sean Bowie took a hacksaw to the very idea of experimental music. They ripped into entrenched notions about its sound and audience, then stood back to admire the glorious mess. Still, the producer-singer’s opposing musical textures cohere astonishingly well: R&B grooves meld into sinister spoken-word interludes, sensuous cellos and militaristic chopper sounds share space. Bowie tugs at the ear with teases of pop before abruptly morphing into something far more severe. They often invert foreground and background, retreating to near-tuneless vocal melodies that act more as scaffolding than centerpiece within their heady brew of electronics. Amid the tumult, Safe in the Hands of Love examines the tension between being held, being confined, and the rare instances where the two conditions meet. The album itself occupies a similarly strange intersection: It is both remarkably beautiful and remarkably unnerving. –Olivia Horn",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/yves-tumor/safe-in-the-hands-of-love | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/safe-in-the-hands-of-love/1429971639?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F94625862%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76b0acfd34990009cf8b43/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Yves-Tumor-Safe-in-the-Hands-of-Love.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Yves_Tumor-Safe_in_the_Hands_of_Love_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,124,Real Estate,Days (2011),Domino,"Domino There are albums on this list excavated from the darkest pits of despair, ones that irrevocably reshaped the sound of pop, and ones that will be commemorated by future generations as crucial documents of the decade’s political turmoil. And then there’s Real Estate’s second album, Days, which people turned to when they wanted something that just sounded good. If that seems like damning praise, consider how hard it can be to face the challenge of substantiating serenity, of finding validation for the ambient sadness and fleeting joys that make up most of life, of appreciating the past without being trapped in it. With this album, Real Estate casually perfected a novel form of crisp, interlocking jangle that could’ve been sourced from any point in the last 35 years. Days’ most enduring image is a pair of names carved into a tree—fitting for an album that will always be right where you left it, exactly how you remember it. –Ian Cohen",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/days/470027419?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F37002536%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76b10f9ce93e000838225f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Real-Estate-Days.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Real_Estate-Days_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,123,Deafheaven,Sunbather (2013),Deathwish,"Deathwish Singer George Clarke and guitarist Kerry McCoy recorded their first demos as Deafheaven while living with 12 other people in an old nunnery in San Francisco’s Mission District, their call-center jobs barely lucrative enough to cover a combined $500 in rent. Listening to the opening notes of their sophomore album, you can’t help but get the sense that they are trying to escape: Clarke screams like a man in fear for his own life as the song’s frenzied guitar tremolos and ragged blast-beats sound like they are trying to outrun each other. To the chagrin of black metal and hardcore purists, Deafheaven also seemed determined to evade any distinctions between one brand of wall-of-sound catharsis and another, teetering endlessly between ecstatic chaos and the melodic romance of ’90s shoegaze and post-rock. But focusing on Sunbather’s surface prettiness ignores the sheer scale of its compositional ambition, its brocaded sonic sub-plots and gut-punching crescendos channeling the go-for-broke ambition of people with nothing to lose. –Emilie Friedlander",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/sunbather/652038965?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F20749616%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76b1746eee70000829f38c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Deafheaven-Sunbather.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Deafheaven-Sunbather_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,122,Snail Mail,Lush (2018),Matador,"Matador How does Lush manage to sound so radiant? After a series of defining teenage experiences—lust burning so bright you can’t sleep at night, crushing heartbreak, getting so drunk you can’t see straight—Lindsey Jordan immediately put those feelings to tape, capturing them at their greatest intensity. There’s more to Snail Mail’s debut album than her gripping guitar playing, whether she’s unfurling gentle melodies or slicing out unforgettable riffs. There’s more still beyond her clean, expressive voice, which conveys a sense of wonder and boundless curiosity. The root of Jordan’s precocious, multifaceted talent is her writing, and the way she can cut to the core of a complicated feeling with just a few words. Look at the chant that closes “Heat Wave”: “I’m feeling low/I’m not into ‘sometimes.’” What more needs to be said about someone who makes you happy occasionally but will never make you whole? –Jamieson Cox",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/snail-mail/lush | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/lush/1355422978?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Fartist%252F7506198%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76b1c00db1d10008f1fb65/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Snail-Mail-Lush.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Snail_Mail-Lush_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,121,The Hotelier,"Home, Like Noplace Is There (2014)",Tiny Engines,"Tiny Engines Even for an emo record, Home, Like Noplace Is There is unflinching in its depiction of constant crisis. From beginning to end, it details one calamity after another—some merely deflating, others catastrophic, including incidents of addiction, abuse, and suicide. It’s a lot, and sometimes Home is almost too effective at conjuring the panic of barely holding it together when the people we care for need us the most. But the album balances its strife with jumpy pop-punk hooks, and never grows numb to suffering or loses its drive to uplift. Instead, what emerges is a portrait of contagious empathy. –Evan Rytlewski",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/home-like-noplace-is-there/1114555149?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F60192958%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76b2a553e80c0008f43813/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Hotelier-Home-Like-NoPlace.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Hotelier-Home_Like_Noplace_Is_There_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,120,"Tyler, the Creator",Flower Boy (2017),Columbia,"Columbia Throughout Flower Boy, Tyler, the Creator appears to recount the tale of a bygone romance with a male lover, describing their magical connection on “Glitter” and mourning their end on the wistful “See You Again.” He also uses their story as a device to reveal more about himself than he ever has before. Over sweeping, orchestral funk arrangements, he earnestly addresses his anxieties about fame, his paranoia about being canceled were he to come out, and the terrifying reality of police brutality. He takes stock of his emotional development, too, as he raps on “Where This Flower Blooms” with pride: “I rock, I roll, I bloom, I grow.” It marks Tyler’s departure from the artist he was—a trouble-making scoundrel who used homophobic slurs and graphic imagery throughout his incendiary songs—to a more compassionate rapper, ready to embrace the softer parts of his personality. The album blossoms with hope, making it Tyler’s most expansive project yet. –Michelle Kim",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/tyler-the-creator/flower-boy | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/flower-boy/1254572564?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F76331728%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76b30053e80c0008f43815/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Tyler-the-Creator-Flower-Boy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tyler_the_Creator-Flower_Boy_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,119,Girlpool,Before the World Was Big (2015),Wichita,"Wichita Girlpool’s first full-length record is a study in tiny worlds and overflowing hearts. Avery Tucker and Harmony Tividad were still teenagers when they wrote these humble songs with bass and guitar, and there is something so profoundly young adult about Before the World Was Big. The album encapsulates what it’s like to walk through your hometown and realize you don’t live there anymore, or to suffer a serious heartbreak for the first time; on ""Chinatown,"" Tucker and Tividad pose question after question about their own existences and whether they are capable of being loved. The duo went on to make more ambitious records, but Before the World Was Big will always be their spare, indelible reminder to notice what it feels like to be alive while you still think you’re invincible. –Sophie Kemp",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/before-the-world-was-big/971178450?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F111478100%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76b3bb2073fe00084eb26e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Girlpool-Before-the-World-Was-Big.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Girlpool-Before_the_World_Was_Big_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,118,Leonard Cohen,You Want It Darker (2016),Columbia/Sony,"Columbia/Sony Leonard Cohen was too grand a figure to let death sneak up on him. Instead, he graciously accepted its approach and courted the void with one final masterpiece. You Want It Darker arrived just weeks before Cohen died at 82, still a goliath of his form. It is a profound work that addresses a man’s end, and what he must let go of once he gets there. Cohen’s legendary baritone is leagues deeper than before, perhaps sunk by the weight of his subject matter. On the title track, he sounds as though he’s been living off a steady diet of cigars and scotch; his grumbles are foreboding, even sinister, against the synagogue choir that echoes him. Cohen’s repetition of the word “hineni,” Hebrew for “here I am,” is one of the record’s most chilling moments—his humble surrender to a greater power. You Want It Darker is full of these concessions: he sings of relinquishing life, love, and libido throughout its sparse yet rich compositions. His ability to examine mortality with such restraint is a testament to his elevated craft—when he sings of letting go and traveling light, it’s with relief. –Madison Bloom",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/leonard-cohen/you-want-it-darker | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/you-want-it-darker/1154144036?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F66024823%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76b4122073fe00084eb270/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Leonard-Cohen-You-Want-It-Darker.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Leonard_Cohen-You_Want_It_Darker_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,117,Death Grips,The Money Store (2012),Epic,"Epic That ringing sensation in your head from the crossed streams of cable news and political discourse? That’s The Money Store. Every time you’re digitally assaulted by millions of loud voices creating nothing but noise? Pure, unadulterated The Money Store. Recorded (improbably) at the Chateau Marmont, and released (even more improbably) by the same label that puts out Mariah Carey and Meghan Trainor, Death Grips’ proper debut album captured the barking, unstoppable information overload of the 2010s in a burst of experimental rap and rock. It's a pure thrill to hear: throat-searing vocalist MC Ride, keyboardist Andy Morin, and drummer/producer Zach Hill assault the senses with blasted beats, brutally nonsensical sloganeering, and sour melodies that sound like squeezing a lemon onto a skinned knee. –Larry Fitzmaurice",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/death-grips/the-money-store | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/the-money-store/515449028?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Fartist%252F4557268%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76b5289ce93e0008382261/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Death-Grips-Money-Store.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Death_Grips-The_Money_Store_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,116,Janelle Monáe,The ArchAndroid (2010),Bad Boy/Wondaland,"Bad Boy/Wondaland The ArchAndroid, the debut studio album by Atlanta Renaissance woman Janelle Monáe, foretold her cultural impact on the decade. Its storyline about a messianic android is tied together by apocalyptic rock, jiggling funk, and psychedelic soul, all delivered with cinematic flair. Monáe’s star would continue to rise from here, from her guest vocal on fun.’s ubiquitous “We Are Young,” to her acting roles in Moonlight and Hidden Figures, to an Album of the Year Grammy nomination for 2018’s Dirty Computer. The ArchAndroid is the genesis of it all. –Ben Cardew",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/the-archandroid-deluxe/370300698?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F4107987%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76b57f9ce93e0008382263/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Janelle-Mona%25CC%2581e-ArchAndroid.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Janelle_Mone-The_ArchAndroid_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,115,U.S. Girls,In a Poem Unlimited (2018),4AD,"4AD As U.S. Girls mastermind Meghan Remy has evolved from one-person noisemaker to charismatic leader of a cracking rock band, her aesthetic priorities—simple melodies, rich textures, subversive lyrics—have remained steadfast. They’re all perfectly present on In a Poem Unlimited, an unabashed pop album that swings on the surface but gets thorny underneath. Complex verses about sexual dynamics and interpersonal conflict cut through music that reveres nostalgic styles like disco and glam without aping them. Along the way, Remy captures the tension of the times with a rapturous swagger, building a catchy, cathartic response to the world. –Marc Masters",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/u-s-girls/in-a-poem-unlimited | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/in-a-poem-unlimited/1311639242?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F84151753%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76b63e6eee70000829f38e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/US-Girls-In-a-Poem-Unlimited.jpg,/dataset/artwork/US_Girls-In_a_Poem_Unlimited_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,114,Sampha,Process (2017),Young Turks,"Young Turks When we need to give definition to tough feelings that have no clear shape and no end in sight, no word satisfies like “process.” Grief, sobriety, adulthood, etc. don’t feel so daunting and boundless when they’re “processes”; they take on a structure that they lack as experiences. As Sampha adopts the term to capture the tumult of his mother dying from cancer in 2015, he embraces both its clarity and its dizziness. His delicate, tender voice never disguises the despair at the heart of these songs, yet there’s a striking sense of wonder to his writing, a wide-eyed willingness to find a way to carry on despite the pain. As hooded figures give chase on “Blood on Me,” a car takes flight on “Under,” and a lone gunman cries for his mother on “Kora Sings,” death takes on a dreamlike quality. The production froths with energy and verve despite the glum backdrop, constantly swirling around Sampha’s fragile falsetto or geysering into open air. Sampha grieves by expressing his sorrow as well as molding it into new forms. “It’s never gonna feel real,’” he once said of his mother’s death, skeptical of the allure of closure. Process takes that dread as a challenge. –Stephen Kearse",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/sampha/process | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/process/1138217713?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F69761927%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76b6799ce93e0008382265/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sampha-Process.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sampha-Process_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,113,Japandroids,Celebration Rock (2012),Polyvinyl,"Polyvinyl Of course, an album called Celebration Rock begins with the sound of fireworks—a spectacle that is at once exhilarating and ephemeral, the ecstatic climax to an event that also signals it’s time for everyone to go home. Japandroids spend the next 35 minutes doing whatever they can to delay the moment when the highest of highs must give way to the cruelest of comedowns. The Vancouver duo’s second album condenses all the promise, excess, and regret of an epic all-nighter into an eight-song dusk-to-dawn cycle, like a Dazed and Confused that swaps out bored teens in the ’70s for directionless twenty-somethings in the 21st century. Nostalgia hits like a panic attack, the line between motivational anthem and break-up song gets blurry, and even the most starry-eyed declarations of devotion come embedded with escape clauses for when the thrill is gone. Back in 2009, Japandroids introduced themselves to the world by declaring “Young Hearts Spark Fire.” On Celebration Rock, their relentless effort to keep the flame alive only made them more conscious of the shortening wick. So, of course, an album so fervent yet fleeting also ends with the sound of fireworks. –Stuart Berman",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/celebration-rock/527058833?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F22622410%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76b83053e80c0008f43817/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Japandroids-Celebration-Rock.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Japandroids-Celebration_Rock_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,112,Daft Punk,Random Access Memories (2013),Columbia,"Columbia Thomas Bangalter and Guy de-Homem Christo spent more than a million dollars to make their triumphant comeback record, Random Access Memories. It showed. In rejection of the frictionless EDM sounds then at their commercial peak, Daft Punk went straight to the source in their quest to revive some of their favorite analog styles. They booked time in a handful of the world’s most renowned studios to record the disco pioneer Nile Rodgers, several hall-of-fame session musicians, and vocalists including Pharrell and Panda Bear, then painstakingly pieced together their work into songs that span poppy funk, prog, new wave, soft-rock balladry, and even spoken word (courtesy of electro godhead Giorgio Moroder). As a whole, the album plays like an eclectic radio transmission beamed in from an imagined past. The highlight remains “Touch,” a psychedelic showstopper sung by ’70s songwriter Paul Williams, best known for his work with Barbara Streisand and the Carpenters. At one point in the intricately arranged song, a space-age choir gives way to Williams’ voice—delicate yet firm—backed by nothing but a grand piano. “Sweet touch, you’ve almost convinced me I’m real,” he muses, a mouthpiece for the mysterious duo who remind us just how tangible music can be. –Noah Yoo",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/daft-punk/random-access-memories | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/random-access-memories/617154241?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F20115556%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76b8810db1d10008f1fb9b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Daft-Punk-Random-Access-Memories.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Daft_Punk-Random_Access_Memories_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,111,EMA,Past Life Martyred Saints (2011),Soutterain Transmissions,"Soutterain Transmissions Confessional songwriting in the 2010s had a tendency toward extremes—you had your empowerment narratives, where struggles were introduced and then brushed aside to allow time to wallow in the fabulous now, and you had your nihilistic tales of pill-popping self-hatred. Past Life Martyred Saints, the debut album by Erika Anderson’s project EMA, lives in the complicated middle, a place where the pain is very real but so is the occasional flicker of hope. Over blues-scuffed alt-rock, Anderson’s characters pull up their sleeves to reveal open wounds and fading scars and speak of an emptiness that makes them want to vomit, but deep down they also believe that someone out there might love them. Later in the decade, Anderson would turn her eye to the political and cultural forces that drive people toward darkness, but Past Life is far too claustrophobic for that kind of perspective. When something heavy is on top of you and pressing down, the only thing you can think about is how to get out from under it. –Mark Richardson",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/past-life-martyred-saints/433404940?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F6663917%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d77ae489ce93e0008382347/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/EMA-Past-Life-Martyred-Saints.jpg,/dataset/artwork/EMA-Past_Life_Martyred_Saints_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,110,Waka Flocka Flame,Flockaveli (2010),Warner Bros.,"Warner Bros. In its gunshot ad-libs and aggressively escalating synths, Waka Flocka Flame’s debut still feels explosive. But with the benefit of hindsight, it’s easier to embrace how an album that once led to think-piecing and hand-wringing about authenticity and struggle is just pure fun, too. As much as you can draw a line from Waka and producer Lex Luger's steamrolling sound to Chief Keef and Young Chop’s gruesome Back From the Dead mixtape, you can also connect Flockaveli to the live-show antics of Travis Scott, rallying the teens to mosh. Though Waka eventually took the EDM route, playing shows at frats and shotgunning beers with undergrads, his debut struck the right balance between harsh realism and recklessness. –Ross Scarano",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkkC9cK8Hz0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d77b6dd0db1d10008f1fc73/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Waka-Flocka-Flame-Flockaveli.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Waka_Flocka_Flame-Flockaveli_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,109,Julia Holter,Aviary (2018),Domino,"Domino Ninety minutes long, with its billowing proportions blown out in strings, horns, choirs, harp, percussion, synthesizers, reeds, bagpipes, and more, Julia Holter’s Aviary revels in ecstatic excess. Meandering, shape-shifting, and often dissonant, its melodies diffuse into clouds of pure atmosphere, offering the opposite of the glib simplicity that so much pop aspires to in the streaming era. Playlist fodder, this is not. Aviary’s references are among the most erudite and obscure of any of Holter’s albums, encompassing Dante, Pushkin, Occitan folk songs, and an academic tome about mnemonics and the Middle Ages; Vangelis’ Blade Runner score is in there somewhere, too. Nevertheless, Holter’s search for meaning in “destitute times” translates to an unmistakably contemporary record, her stream-of-consciousness lyrics gesturing bleakly at the nightly news (“Frequent missile talk/Slurping on the words I heard from the wretched zone/Fortune throwing candy slow in a death crawl”). And while its surfeit of feeling can mimic the shell-shocked sense of information overload that accompanies a long day scrolling social media, its moments of catharsis cut deliciously deep. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/julia-holter/aviary | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/aviary/1424641183?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F97398667%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d77b83a9ce93e000838237d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Julia-Holter-Aviary.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Julia_Holter-Aviary_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,108,Kaytranada,99.9% (2016),XL,"XL The debut album from Montreal producer Kaytranada is a shining example of dance music as more than the sum of its parts. Blending soul, hip-hop, house, jazz, and disco, and featuring vocal turns from the likes of Vic Mensa, Syd, Craig David, Anderson .Paak, and more, the album is also a reaction against the relative whiteness of EDM circa 2016. For all the acrobatic weaving of glitchy beats with slinky, complex instrumentation, it never feels anything but warm; the athleticism isn’t necessarily beside the point, but it’s not meant to make a spectacle of itself, either. Moreover, the album is a benchmark for how pop music has commonly come to be thought of in this decade: If you blend enough genres together, they cancel each other out, and what’s left is just its own thing that doesn’t have any particular use for a tidy classification. –Steve Kandell",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/kaytranada/99-9 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/99-9/1092026376?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F59881207%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d77b89bfd34990009cf8be3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kaytranada-99.9.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kaytranada-999_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,107,Dirty Projectors,Swing Lo Magellan (2012),Domino,"Domino Dirty Projectors used to be an inscrutable band. You’d read about how frontman David Longstreth conducted 18-hour practices in an airless Brooklyn studio, or reworked the chords of a Black Flag song to synchronize with the Fibonacci sequence or something, and think: This is music for people who make you feel like a moron for humming along to the radio. But on Swing Lo Magellan, their formal experimentation slowly gave way to an emotional generosity no amount of musical theory could obfuscate. The album shines with the warmth and familiarity of a group of loved ones trading stories around a campfire. It’s unguarded, with “Impregnable Question” offering itself as a premier wedding song for former hipsters experimenting with sincerity. It’s funny, like when singers Amber Coffman and Haley Dekle clown Longstreth’s knotty lyrics on “Unto Caesar” (“Uh, that doesn't make any sense…”). Swing Lo Magellan ended up being the last album with this lineup of Dirty Projectors, making it a bittersweet listen. But we know it was real while it lasted. –Jeremy Gordon",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/swing-lo-magellan/529617790?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F37001823%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d77b9160db1d10008f1fc75/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/DIrty-Projectors-Swing-Lo-Magellan.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dirty_Projectors-Swing_Lo_Magellan_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,106,Moses Sumney,Aromanticism (2017),Jagjaguwar,"Jagjaguwar Only once a decade, maybe, do you get a voice like Moses Sumney’s. It is cotton-soft and canyon-wide, as crisp and ornate as frost forming on the window. A similar coldness—the absence of love—informs his spare, beautiful debut album, Aromanticism. It is not a lament for lost love but a guess that love may never arrive. His brand of blues is heavy with emotion, even as he wonders if he might not want to feel any of it. Maybe he’ll call you back; instead of sex, how about just a little making out in the car? On most songs, his falsetto hangs over spare electric guitar—except for the knockout “Lonely World,” around which the entire album spins. And though solitude haunts these songs, it also seems like a kind of relief: “To behold and not be held,” he sings, those words a blessing and a curse. –Jeremy D. Larson","Platform: Vinyl Me, Please - Link: https://vinyl-me-please.evyy.net/AXEVj | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/aromanticism/1248865596?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F77731667%5D%5D",https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d77b9946eee70000829f3fe/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Moses-Sumney-Aromanticism.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Moses_Sumney-Aromanticism_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,105,Disclosure,Settle (2013),PMR/Cherrytree,"PMR/Cherrytree Howard and Guy Lawrence’s debut album as Disclosure overhauled house, two-step garage, and other strains of dance music for the day-glo EDM brigade. The brothers, who started DJing as teenagers in southeast England, may have relied on familiar formulas with Settle, but they still managed to fashion them into one of the most irresistibly inviting dance records of the decade. The duo supported their carefully curated patchwork of genres with a wide net of guest artists, many of whom turned into quick success stories themselves: the duo single-handedly launched Sam Smith’s career with the bombastic “Latch,” and the Nottingham pop group London Grammar began climbing after their slow-burning turn on “Help Me Lose My Mind.” Disclosure wouldn’t scale the same heights again, but Settle remains a vivid, ecstatic time capsule of early-2010s club music at its pinnacle. –Eric Torres",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/settle-deluxe-version/1440862011?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Fartist%252F3900791%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d5ab5fac7e6ee0009d81a2a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Disclosure-Settle.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Disclosure-Settle_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,104,Waxahatchee,Cerulean Salt (2013),Don Giovanni,"Don Giovanni Allison and Katie Crutchfield’s scrappy teenage band P.S. Eliot was beloved far beyond the Alabama DIY scene they rose in. After the twin sisters broke up the group in 2011, Allison stepped out from behind the drums to lead the noisy guitar-pop band Swearin’; Katie holed up at their parents’ home with an acoustic guitar and recorded her debut as Waxahatchee, the stark, searing American Weekend. Its follow-up, Cerulean Salt, focused all that accelerated musical experience and added new color. Katie still recorded at home, but now “home” was a Philadelphia house she shared with Allison and her Swearin’ bandmates, who pitched in across the album. Backed by thudding drums and blown-out guitars, Katie’s heartrendingly vivid sketches of alienation and self-doubt sound almost triumphant, especially on the surf-flecked “Coast to Coast,” where she insists, in her faint drawl, “I’ll try to embrace the lows.” After this, Waxahatchee jumped labels to indie titans Merge, releasing two more remarkable albums and continuing to inspire a generation of acolytes to sing their own messy truths. –Marc Hogan",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/waxahatchee/cerulean-salt-clear-vinyl | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/cerulean-salt/785719208?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F25060605%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d77bad853e80c0008f43887/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Waxahatchee-Cerulean-Salt.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Waxahatchee-Cerulean_Salt_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,103,Helado Negro,This Is How You Smile (2019),RVNG Intl.,"RVNG Intl. Roberto Carlos Lange had been building toward This Is How You Smile for over a decade. Whether tinkering with vocoders or recruiting new collaborators, Lange has experimented under the banner of Helado Negro in a manner that is patient and community-oriented; people have always mattered most to him. He reached a creative apex on This Is How You Smile by washing his sound in tape hiss and soft-lit synths, casting a twilight glow over bilingual meditations on community, displacement, and loving the skin in which you were born. Lange’s fount of hope within This Is How You Smile is a balm for everyone, but for the black and brown people whom he singles out in heartfelt lyrics (“History shows/That brown won’t go/Brown just glows”), it feels like benediction. –Eric Torres",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/helado-negro/this-is-how-you-smile | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/this-is-how-you-smile/1441162701?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F102601575%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d77bb550db1d10008f1fc77/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Helado-Negro-This-Is-How-You-Smile.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Helado_Negro-This_Is_How_You_Smile_2019.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,102,Jeremih,Late Nights: The Album (2015),Def Jam,"Def Jam Despite an attitude that ranged from nonchalance to outright self-sabotage, Jeremih quietly sustained mainstream success throughout the decade. Take Late Nights, an album that represents a triumph within the major-label system for its mere existence. Singles “Planez” and “Oui” became rap and R&B radio mainstays purely off the strength of the songwriting; Jeremih otherwise declined to engage in any sort of promotional tactics, from shooting music videos to performing on television. In touring the album, he immediately clashed with headliner PARTYNEXTDOOR—top-billed despite having far fewer hits—before being accused of sending out a body double at a show in Houston. While a dominant musical theme of the 2010s was the seamless fusion of rap and R&B, as employed by artists like Drake and Post Malone, Jeremih got to the same place from the other side; his R&B flows and flexes like rap music, but with a distinct melodic bounce that could only come from a singer. The music on Late Nights rates as some of the finest R&B of the decade, even if that genre tag fits loosely: Highlights “Pass Dat” and “Drank” are experimental celebrations of substances that travel along pathways carved by Lil Wayne and Young Thug, and ballads like “Actin’ Up” and “Remember Me” have a stoned spaciness that recalls the decade’s best hip-hop. The album’s most instructive song is “Paradise,” a gentle acoustic outro that begins with Jeremih still high from the night before, a girl next to him in bed, and ends with him alone in a jacuzzi toasting his great life. You get the sense he enjoys the solitude. –Jordan Sargent",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/late-nights/1440859822?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F54275547%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d77bbef0db1d10008f1fc79/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jeremih-Late-Nights.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jeremih-Late_Nights_The_Album_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,101,Chromatics,Kill for Love (2012),Italians Do It Better,"Italians Do It Better When shadowy studio rat Johnny Jewel cofounded the Italians Do It Better label in 2006, his music as part of reformed noise-rockers Chromatics cast him as an artist wonderfully out of time with his surroundings. But when Chromatics’ fourth album Kill for Love was released in 2012, the timing couldn’t have been more perfect: Jewel's nocturnal aesthetic had just served as the primary sonic influence for Nicolas Winding Refn's stylish hit film Drive. Kill for Love is a pitch-perfect and impeccably post-genre blend of Italo disco’s slow-motion thump, the self-mythologizing of classic rock, and smeared-lens ambient synth workouts. Music that sounds this eerily timeless also takes time to get right. –Larry Fitzmaurice",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/chromatics/kill-for-love-08a0318a-2cd7-4a25-b793-0e700df127b8 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/kill-for-love/630306478?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F80992776%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d77bc32fd34990009cf8be5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Chromatics-Kill-for-Love.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Chromatics-Kill_for_Love_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,100,Ariana Grande,Sweetener (2018),Republic,"Republic For a moment, it seemed like Ariana Grande’s career could be consumed by darkness. In 2017, 22 people were killed in a suicide bombing at her concert in Manchester. For most people after that, just getting out of bed would be an accomplishment. But Grande, with immeasurable strength, managed not only to throw off the covers but to return to center stage with Sweetener. The path from trauma to sunny pop affirmations isn’t a straight one, but she walked it with grace and poise. Pharrell, who co-wrote and produced much of the album, evokes his early-’00s heyday with bouncing, hectic beats, while Grande uses her big voice to both mourn and celebrate. The devastating “no tears left to cry” could have been too sentimental in someone else’s hands; in Grande’s, it’s an anthem. Everything on this album is. –Matthew Schnipper",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/ariana-grande/sweetener | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/sweetener/1399202539?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F93636397%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d77bee8fd34990009cf8bf1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ariana-Grande-Sweetener.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ariana_Grande-Sweetener_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,99,Bad Bunny,X 100PRE (2018),Rimas,"Rimas It’s rare for a musician to sell out arenas based on the strength of singles, but Bad Bunny was doing exactly that, around the world, even before his outsized, wacky persona was noticed by most English speakers in America. The Puerto Rican singer and rapper was exactly the right person—young, outré, extraordinarily talented, experimental—at the exact right time, spreading Soundcloud singles through word-of-mouth until he was eventually the purveyor of his own nuevo religión. X 100PRE—internet wordplay for “por siempre,” a self-estimation of his musical longevity—was a thrilling exploration of his range, hitting on the Latin trap wave he helped captain, but also diving into dembow, yearning ballads, clubby reggaetón, and delightfully feisty emo. Bad Bunny’s unwillingness to conform to the rigid masculine scripts that often inform música urbana—his nail polish and acrylic extensions just the tip of it—informs the freedom of his music, and X 100PRE was a brilliant musical rebuttal to that rigidity. Throughout, his deep, demonstrative care for his community is tempered by an equal capacity for personal bluster and self-regard. (Or, as he raps on the banger “Caro,” “Yo sé cuánto valgo”: “I know how much I'm worth.”) Though lite reggaetón and its offshoots continue to break through to English-speaking audiences and climb charts in the States, Bad Bunny’s debut is most important as a rejoinder to his masses of young Spanish-speaking fans: This is their world now, and his, and they’ve earned it. –Julianne Escobedo Shepherd",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/bad-bunny/x-100pre | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/x-100pre/1447554595?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F101423934%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d77fb576eee70000829f4aa/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bad-Bunny-X-100PRE.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bad_Bunny-X_100PRE_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,98,Todd Terje,It’s Album Time (2014),Olsen,"Olsen The title of Norwegian nü-disco master Todd Terje’s only full-length record to date is a joking acknowledgement that all hyped DJ/producers inevitably make the leap from 12-inches and edits to “serious” album statements. Terje approaches this common rite of passage as a truly special once-in-a-lifetime event—one that demands dressing up in your finest evening attire and cracking open that bottle of bubbly in the back of your fridge. You don’t so much listen to It’s Album Time as step into its cosmic cocktail-lounge fantasia. Like a proper host, Terje sets the perfect pace for the evening’s indulgences, laying out the tantalizing hors d’oeuvres (the frothy space-funk trifles that comprise the record’s opening suite) before serving the main course (the hedonistic electro-house pleasures of “Strandbar” and “Delorean Dynamite”). In his effort to reshape the DJ/artist album template in his own eccentric image, Terje can’t help but indulge in one cliche of the form: the rock-star cameo. But in this case, it’s hardly a calculated crossover attempt: by enlisting Bryan Ferry for a moody, minimalist reading of Robert Palmer’s 1980 new wave nugget “Johnny and Mary,” Terje provides both a well-timed respite from the album’s relentless revelry and a sympathetic portrait of the lost souls most in need of it. –Stuart Berman",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/todd-terje/it-s-album-time | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/its-album-time/806267243?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F25990423%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d77fc496eee70000829f4ac/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Todd-Terje-Its-Album-Time.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Todd_Terje-Its_Album_Time_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,97,The War on Drugs,Lost in the Dream (2014),Secretly Canadian,"Secretly Canadian On Lost in the Dream, the War on Drugs’ third album and first masterpiece, highlights like “An Ocean Between the Waves” and “Red Eyes” pivot on simple pleasures: a slow build, a well-timed “woo!” But bandleader Adam Granduciel’s production is meticulously layered, occasionally fading into pure ambience and letting his dark textures tell the bigger story. Legend has it, Granduciel was tortured by its creation, endlessly scrapping and rebuilding each track by himself to the point of madness and near-physical collapse. “I didn’t feel like I was contributing to the canon in the way that I wanted to,” he said at the time. It’s a high standard, but it suits him: This is music that lingers forever in the hazy intersection between real life and our wildest dreams. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/the-war-on-drugs/lost-in-the-dream | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/lost-in-the-dream/765568650?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F26632816%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d77fcc12073fe00084eb386/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/War-on-Drugs-Lost-in-the-Dream.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_War_on_Drugs-Lost_in_the_Dream_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,96,Low,Double Negative (2018),Sub Pop,"Sub Pop During this time of unrelenting political insanity, Low could’ve easily played it safe and stayed out of the fray. But 25 years into a career full of risk-taking, the Minnesota trio felt compelled to confront the confusion—or, at least, turn confusion into music. On Double Negative, the patient slowcore sound that Low coined long ago disintegrates into broken melodies, distorted ambience, and distant echoes. On “Always Up” and “Always Trying to Work It Out,” the group reflects the sleep-deprived fatigue that anyone with a smartphone experiences on a day-to-day basis. But Double Negative isn’t just a standard Low album broken into bits. It’s a self-contained work with baked-in influences—dub, techno, drone, noise—that guide its core while producing something paradoxical: a coherent expression of disarray. –Marc Masters",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/low/double-negative | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/double-negative/1391898131?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F94340774%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d77fe6d53e80c0008f4390a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Low-Double-Negative.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Low-Double_Negative_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,95,Jai Paul,Leak 04-13 (Bait Ones) (2019),XL,"XL In 2013, when a collection of demos and rough takes credited to Jai Paul went up for sale on Bandcamp without his involvement or approval, it pushed the already reclusive pop-soul artist even more into the fringes. For almost seven years, he was mostly silent, aside from contributing one guest feature and working behind-the-scenes with his artistic think tank the Paul Institute. But then he re-materialized in 2019 with new music, a formal release of the leaked material, and a note to fans describing the “complete shock” and subsequent emotional fallout of the experience. Spanning a nine-year creative period, Leak 04-13 (Bait Ones) remains an appealingly unpolished, timeless capsule of shaggy beat experiments, space-age funk workouts, and the limber, Bollywood-sampling “Str8 Outta Mumbai,” a gleaming pop highlight that tamped out the one-hit-wonder debate that had hovered around Paul after his breakthrough hit “BTSTU.” What already felt beamed in from a thrilling, genre-agnostic future at the onset of the 2010s was given a deserved revisit and reality check by the end of the decade. –Eric Torres",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/leak-04-13-bait-ones/1465710066?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F110423770%5D%5D | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bPrYzINTG0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d77ff426eee70000829f4b0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jai-Paul-Leak-04-13.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jai_Paul-Leak_04-13_Bait_Ones_2019.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,94,Vampire Weekend,Contra (2010),XL,"XL Vampire Weekend’s 2008 debut offended the punk-minded with its Wes Anderson-like vignettes of upper class life. Upping the ante, Contra took its title from Nicaragua’s CIA-backed right-wing paramilitaries—a witty inversion of The Clash’s Sandinista!, named in tribute to that country’s socialist government. Contra amplifies and exacerbates all the aspects of Vampire Weekend that trad indie rock fans associated with la contrarrevolución: the dainty details, the blithe bounciness, the preppy smartness, the clever-clever references. Polishing the debut’s demo-like sound, Contra set its sights on the charts. Drum machines merge with hand-played rhythms, digital reverb lends a slightly canned quality to proceedings, and, on the mad sprint of “California English,” Ezra Koenig’s already buttery voice is buffed to a slick Auto-Tune sheen. What Contra does share with Sandinista! is the later Clash’s outward-facing perspective and yen for border-crossing hybridity. The instrumental arsenal includes rebolo, zabumba, and shereke, and no, I don’t know what those are either. But these exotic borrowings read less like rhythms-of-resistance solidarity and more like liberal-elite tourism. What does it all add up to? Whose side are Vampire Weekend on anyway? It’s hard to care when the sound is this captivating and the words dance with the melodies so attractively. –Simon Reynolds",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/vampire-weekend/contra | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/contra-bonus-track-version/340465551?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F4393151%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d780009fd34990009cf8bfd/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Vampire-Weekend-Contra.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Vampire_Weekend-Contra_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,93,Tirzah,Devotion (2018),Domino,"Domino It’s not just her tone (a warm and gentle rasp) or her lyrics (a scrapbook collection of reflections on the nature of relationships) that make Tirzah’s debut album such a standout. It’s also the casual intimacy of her delivery: the way the London artist extends each word of the chorus of “Fine Again” into a line long enough to wrap around a shoulder. The non-verbal vocal wriggles on “Affection.” The chin jut and soft warning of “Go Now.” Many of the songs use improvised first-take vocals, which is a testament to Tirzah’s friendship with the composer and musician Mica Levi, who crafted the album’s spacious beats and introspective piano refrains. In taking care to value in-the-moment feeling over post-production polish, Devotion achieves the feat of being a truly idiosyncratic pop record that it’s easy to feel at home with, too. –Ruth Saxelby",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/tirzah/devotion | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/devotion/1372735578?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F92654764%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d78009f0db1d10008f1fcb5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Tirzah-Devotion.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tirzah-Devotion_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,92,JAY-Z / Kanye West,Watch the Throne (2011),Roc Nation/Def Jam,"Roc Nation/Def Jam Upon its release in 2011, JAY-Z and Kanye West's self-celebrating team-up Watch the Throne drew blowback for its Maybach-destroying extravagance in the wake of the global financial crisis. Neither rapper has ever been one to apologize for pushing the boundaries of good taste, though, and the gilded album had the substance to back up its vanity. Both stars saved some of their deepest, most sorrowful ruminations on race for these songs about making it to the unimaginable upper echelons of society and still feeling like an outcast. In between infamous lines about planking on stacks of cash and marrying the Olsen twins are thoughts on gang violence in West’s native Chicago and hymns that invoke Martin and Malcolm. Is this album wholly relatable? Not really. But it’s enlightening nonetheless, and often unexpectedly moving. –Evan Rytlewski",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/watch-the-throne-deluxe/1440845249?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F7597277%5D%5D | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoEKWtgJQAU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7802ccfd34990009cf8c01/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kanye-West-Jay-Z-Watch-the-Throne.jpg,/dataset/artwork/JAY-Z__Kanye_West-Watch_the_Throne_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,91,Bon Iver,"22, A Million (2016)",Jagjaguwar,"Jagjaguwar In retrospect, maybe the stylistic shifts on 22, A Million shouldn’t have been so unexpected. After all, Justin Vernon’s time in the studio with Kanye West gave him plenty of exposure to Auto-Tune and other digital technologies, and that hypermodern signature positions 22, A Million about a billion miles from the modest, earthy tones of the band’s first two albums. But what ultimately makes the Wisconsin group’s 2016 album so striking has less to do with production choices than sheer chutzpah. There’s an unabashedly gonzo energy to the album, from its yin and yang symbols and yodeling-adjacent vocal leaps to its typographically deranged track titles that look cribbed from a witch house mixtape. It’s not always easy to tell how much is an elaborate gag: Is Vernon, once the face of anti-branding, really singing the praises of the upscale hipster hangout the Ace Hotel? But by the time you hit the tangled saxophones and processed choirs of “___45___,” there’s no doubting the album’s fundamental sincerity. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/bon-iver/22-a-million | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/22-a-million/1141107722?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F64975223%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7801fcfd34990009cf8bff/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bon-Iver-22-A-Million.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bon_Iver-22_A_Million_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,90,Joyce Manor,Never Hungover Again (2014),Epitaph,"Epitaph With their third album, the California pop-punk band Joyce Manor distilled their frayed fuzz into an elemental blast of power and melody. This is a collection of chiseled, two-minute songs that makes you want to howl to the rafters, and the polished production serves their poignant insights on the indignities of aging. As frontman Barry Johnson sings, “Your body’s saying, Isn’t that enough?/Your brain is going, I don’t give a fuck.” There are moments here that could scan as vitriolic, but they feel empathetic coming from Johnson, a narrator who recognizes self-destructive behavior because he’s no stranger to it. It’s a last gasp at freedom and feeling good without consequence, knowing full well that the crash is waiting for you. –Matthew Strauss",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/never-hungover-again/879169637?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Fartist%252F3852332%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7802706eee70000829f4b2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Joyce-Manor-Never-Hungover-Again.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Joyce_Manor-Never_Hungover_Again_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,89,Caribou,Our Love (2014),Merge,"Merge Dan Snaith didn’t appear to overthink the success of his 2010 album Swim. He didn’t fret, at least not publicly, about trying to imitate its success, nor did he dive back into the comfort of the esoteric. Instead, he figured the reception of that album meant that people liked what he was doing. For its follow-up, the former mathematician moved even further away from the cerebral, opening his heart and giving us a batch of body-moving love songs. The lyrics don’t look like much, but they operate as mantras. “Can’t Do Without You” is a tenderizing phrase; by the time the song’s done, Snaith’s pledge that “you’re the only one thing I think about” comes across as heartbreakingly sincere. The effect is similar on “Our Love” as bass fills in the silence, suggesting the beating of multiple hearts. It isn’t always so easy, as the minor-key melody and lyrics of “Back Home” suggest. But if it were easy, it’d remain unspoken, and Our Love is an album about how worthwhile it is to say what you feel. –Jonah Bromwich",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/caribou/our-love-11d601c9-b062-4b7a-90a7-629b139ae150 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/our-love/883739153?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F37270823%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d780af16eee70000829f4b8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Caribou-Our-Love.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Caribou-Our_Love_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,88,Jenny Hval,"Apocalypse, girl (2015)",Sacred Bones,"Sacred Bones Right around the time “self-care” entered the American lexicon, Jenny Hval wondered aloud on her fifth record, “What is it to take care of yourself?” As calm electronic beats turned ominous, the Norwegian musician grappled with a wide range of options, ranging from beauty rituals set by the capitalist patriarchy to her own desire to touch herself with dirty hands. It is this juxtaposition between the edifying and the primal that makes Hval’s albums so thrilling, and Apocalypse, girl is her crowning achievement to date—a generous record that explores big feminist questions and childhood fever dreams alike while flitting among eerie ambient sounds, lounge-lizard folk, and one-woman Gregorian chants. With its bongo-laden smirking about women’s strides meaning Hval can “consume what I want now,” “That Battle Is Over” is an immediate standout, but the looser tracks detailing Christian dedication and early psychosexual thoughts show off Hval’s entrancing voice and reveal their brilliance more gradually. Pegging Apocalypse, girl is as difficult as answering Hval’s initial question, and just as ever-changing. –Jillian Mapes",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/jenny-hval/apocalypse-girl | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/apocalypse-girl/968903924?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F45213973%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d780b6553e80c0008f4390e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jenny-Hval-Apocalypse-girl.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jenny_Hval-Apocalypse_girl_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,87,Rae Sremmurd,SremmLife (2015),Interscope,"Interscope Rae Sremmurd’s debut arrived when rap was still mired in the moody angst of Drake and Future, making their irrepressible giddiness all the more striking. Brothers Swae Lee and Slim Jxmmi regarded rap stardom not as a dreary obligation but as a comically awesome fantasy come true, head-banging and high-fiving their way through turn-up music equally suited for house parties, strip clubs, and skate parks. Producer Mike WiLL Made-It created an intergalactic funhouse for his protégés (the name “Rae Sremmurd” is his “Ear Drummers” tag backward), but it was the duo’s free-spending, safe-sex-having zeal that sold it. –Evan Rytlewski",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/sremmlife/1440815323?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F38929524%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d780c2f8699b30008f1acf5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Rae-Sremmurd-SremmLife.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rae_Sremmurd-SremmLife_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,86,Haim,Days Are Gone (2013),Columbia,"Columbia You can pretty reliably guess someone's generation by which artist Haim reminds them of. Fleetwood Mac? Wilson Phillips? Paula Cole? That's what happens when you study decades of AAA radio like it’s the sacred canon, then recapitulate it all in one album. Days Are Gone excels in this soft-rock mode: It’s full of singalong commitment phobia, gently lit love affairs, and heartbreak that's well-behaved but still moving. Crucially, there’s also levity—like “My Song 5,” which draws its power from muffled rage and the default title of a Garage Band demo. The lyrics are to-the-point and the arrangements are given a nostalgic haze, both of which highlight the Haim sisters’ unshowy chops. They’d soon also moonlight extensively as session musicians for artists like Vampire Weekend, remaking a large swath of the decade’s rock in their image. –Katherine St. Asaph",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/haim/days-are-gone | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/days-are-gone/681237313?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F34840049%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d780db9fd34990009cf8c05/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Haim-Days-Are-Gone.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Haim-Days_Are_Gone_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,85,Jessica Pratt,On Your Own Love Again (2015),Drag City,"Drag City On Your Own Love Again feels beamed in from some implacable, dreamy elsewhere. With little more than guitars and her voice, Jessica Pratt offers floating melodies that sometimes sound spare and wintry, sometimes warm and sleepless, and always with an ache entirely their own. Her songs provide a universal shelter for sadness, as much in the intimate late-night tradition of Leonard Cohen as in the pastoral spaces of her Drag City labelmate Joanna Newsom. Whether it’s the sudden tape-warp of “Jacquelyn in the Background,” the self-harmonies of “Back, Baby,” or Pratt’s sometimes-affected voice, On Your Own Love Again creates a space for itself that seems to change with the quality of the light. –Jesse Jarnow",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/jessica-pratt/on-your-own-love-again | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/on-your-own-love-again/936872257?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F86403862%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d78105c53e80c0008f43910/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jessica-Pratt-On-Your-Own.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jessica_Pratt-On_Your_Own_Love_Again_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,84,Chance the Rapper,Acid Rap (2013),Self-released,"Self-released The already-vanishing difference between a mixtape and an album—from a rap listener’s perspective, at least—evaporated completely in the 2010s, and no one took advantage more enthusiastically than Chance the Rapper. The Chicago MC was barely 20 years old when he started giving away what was technically his second mixtape, Acid Rap, for free online, but it instantly felt like a classic album. He had already shown promise on his first tape, 2012’s intricate 10 Day, but Acid Rap raised the stakes to giddy new heights. Chance’s cartoonish squawk veers unpredictably between cigarette-burnt sing-song and “tobacco-packin’ acrobat” rapping. He manages to project off-kilter exuberance even as he’s haunted by the same gun violence as his Chicago drill-rap contemporaries. And he’s assisted by an improbable yet satisfying guest list that includes hometown speed-rapper Twista, like-minded genre-bender Childish Gambino, and a rising Noname. With Acid Rap, he earned his stardom. –Marc Hogan",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/acid-rap/1470464025?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F112262593%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d78122553e80c0008f43912/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Chance-the-Rapper-Acid-Rap.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Chance_the_Rapper-Acid_Rap_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,83,Burial,Rival Dealer EP (2013),Hyperdub,"Hyperdub William Bevan (a.k.a. Burial) once described Rival Dealer as a collection of “anti-bullying tunes that could maybe help someone to believe in themselves.” Considering his music’s dank, glowering atmosphere, the idea might seem counterintuitive, but whatever you decide the music is about, its three tracks represent a real departure for the London producer. Rival Dealer serves as the climax to a three-EP streak of genius, beginning with Kindred and Truant/Rough Sleeper. The title track opens with a melody resembling a scream, cooling into gentler vocals and softer beats before opening up into a gorgeous major-key pool of light. “Hiders” steers into near-schmaltzy euphoria, while the closing track, “Come Down to Us,” samples an inspirational speech by Lana Wachowski about “other worlds previously unimaginable.” Burial’s music has been caricatured for his moodiness, but Rival Dealer proved that his music serves a higher purpose. –Jo Livingstone",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/rival-dealer-ep/893730102?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F31939786%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7812be8699b30008f1acf8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Burial-Rival-Dealer.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Burial-Rival_Dealer_EP_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,82,Girls,"Father, Son, Holy Ghost (2011)",True Panther,"True Panther After releasing their promising indie-pop debut two years earlier, Girls thoroughly redefined themselves on their second and final album, Father, Son, Holy Ghost. Now, Christopher Owens and JR White’s homespun project was a vehicle for opulent, laser show-worthy ’70s classic rock. But their record also further illuminated the wounded emotional core embedded within frontman Owens’ lovable fuck-up persona. The album’s devastating centerpiece, “Forgiveness,” takes the form of an eight-minute confession-booth visitation in which he begs for mutual absolution from all he’s wronged and all who’ve wronged him—and when this hushed acoustic hymn erupts into a squealing guitar solo, it’s less a gratuitous display of fretboard fireworks than a physical manifestation of the immense effort and pain it takes to overcome past traumas. Just a year after releasing this record, Girls were no more, and the news of their sudden demise came as a shock to many fans. But in hindsight, we shouldn’t have been so surprised: Father, Son, Holy Ghost is a pristine portrait of a band that did everything they wanted to do and said everything that needed to be said. –Stuart Berman",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/father-son-holy-ghost-bonus-track-version/453540055?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F58086307%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7814e42073fe00084eb3c0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Girls-Father-Son-Holy-Ghost.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Girls-Father_Son_Holy_Ghost_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,81,Solange,When I Get Home (2019),Columbia,"Columbia On the When I Get Home interlude “Can I Hold the Mic,” Solange makes a case for honoring all the different parts of yourself. “I can’t be a singular expression of myself, there’s too many parts, too many spaces…” she says, trailing off in thought, like this list could go on for eons. The idea of the infinite existing within the singular is a running theme throughout the album—especially when she sings about her hometown of Houston, a city that contains multitudes. Solange represents its expanse with her loosely arranged soul music that’s steeped in the drowsy feeling of the city’s chopped ’n’ screwed hip-hop, expanded with glittering new age synths. On “Almeda,” she uses the word “brown” like a mantra, her repetition ultimately rendering signifiers of black culture—molasses, waves, dark liquor, and more—as sacred. –Michelle Kim",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/solange/when-i-get-home | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/when-i-get-home/1454595364?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Fartist%252F5017%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d78154f0db1d10008f1fcf2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Solange-When-I-Get-Home.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Solange-When_I_Get_Home_2019.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,80,Aphex Twin,Syro (2014),Warp,"Warp Syro is the kind of album you return to in order to remind yourself why you fell in love with electronic music in the first place. To enjoy it is to luxuriate in perfectly executed fundamentals of composition: the resolution of a chord progression, the precise arrangement of percussion that transforms a straight beat into a syncopated one, the discernible shape of a melody that drifts and changes without losing its essential character. And while the music comes from many sources—techno, house, ambient, and various branches of electropop are always present, in ever-shifting proportions—you get the sense that this particular arrangement of sounds, with its rhythmic quirks and signature tuneful flourishes, could only come from one person. After the shock of hearing new music from Richard D. James subsided—released with little warning, Syro was the first new Aphex Twin album in 13 years—we had time to appreciate that this was one of his very best records, which is to say that it’s one of the best instrumental electronic records ever made. –Mark Richardson",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/aphex-twin/syro | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/syro/911319255?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F34298496%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d781628fd34990009cf8c07/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Aphex-Twin-Syro.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Aphex_Twin-Syro_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,79,Tame Impala,Currents (2015),Interscope,"Interscope With Currents, Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker abandoned the more resolutely lo-fi aesthetics of his first two albums, like a film director transitioning from Super 8 to IMAX. Opting to record and mix everything himself with fresh gear, he added a technicolor precision to the group’s sound while staying true to the catchy bassline melodies, echoing coos, and flanged guitars of Tame Impala’s past. Parker clearly believes that there are certain sounds that feel undeniably good, regardless of context, and he puts them to work on the slinky future-disco of “The Less I Know the Better” and the squelching synthesizer balladry of “New Person, Same Old Mistakes” (a noted Rihanna favorite). His perfectionism pays off as his drums jump through the speakers and his synths burn with clarity, offering a new gold standard for rock production. –Noah Yoo",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/tame-impala/currents-5ba07445-97e3-4a8e-b309-19aff8926b29 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/currents/1440838039?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F47696788%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d794c1c53e80c0008f439c4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Tame-Impala-Currents.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tame_Impala-Currents_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,78,Kurt Vile,Smoke Ring for My Halo (2011),Matador,"Matador On Smoke Ring for My Halo, Kurt Vile’s breakthrough album, the Philadelphia songwriter plays an acoustic guitar and sings about how he’ll probably never leave his couch again—“cause when I’m out, I’m only out of my mind”—and literally shrinking to hide from the world by hiding inside his baby’s hands. Where his past albums had been scuzzy, lo-fi efforts, Smoke Ring formed the groundwork of his next decade of output, spotlighting a poet who untangles circuitous trains of thought over hypnotic guitar patterns. Vile doesn’t wrestle with social anxiety or depression so much as he acknowledges the symptoms, second-guesses his own logic, loses his focus, and circles back around. Sure, he plugs in and brings some heft on songs like “Puppet to the Man,” but more often, he keeps things quiet. How’s he supposed to figure himself out with all that noise? –Evan Minsker",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/kurt-vile/smoke-ring-for-my-halo | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/smoke-ring-for-my-halo-bonus-track-version/418948456?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F5687550%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d794c9a0db1d10008f1ff15/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kurt-Vile-Smoke-Ring-for-My-Halo.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kurt_Vile-Smoke_Ring_for_My_Halo_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,77,Four Tet,There Is Love in You (2010),Domino,"Domino For the first time in his career, Kieran Hebden decided to test out new songs—the material that would become There Is Love in You—by blasting them in clubs. When “Love Cry” reached the partying masses, they screamed with approval, and each time he played it, he tightened it more and more based on the crowd’s reaction. Fresh from collaborations with the iconic percussionist Steve Reid and in an arguable creative peak in his career, Hebden harnessed the thrill of these surroundings to create a tribute to music’s transportive power, its ability to make you feel so chemically blissed-out that the stresses of life fall away. He even plants the seeds of his own autobiographical joy, amplifying the literal heartbeat of his godson and recording a friend’s kid playing a toy piano. It’s an album that focuses on the love within all of us, and to get us there, Hebden meditates on his own happy place. –Evan Minsker",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/there-is-love-in-you-expanded-edition/1286314406?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F79271195%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d794d11256a0a0009483315/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Four-Tet-There-Is-Love-in-You.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Four_Tet-There_Is_Love_in_You_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,76,Arcade Fire,The Suburbs (2010),Merge,"Merge The Suburbs is like an audio analogue to Richard Linklater’s 2014 film Boyhood: both messy but privileged coming-of-age stories set in Texas, ambitiously executed and critically adored. Yet after grappling with death and religion on their first two records, when Arcade Fire turned their collective eye toward leaving home on The Suburbs, the concept seemed almost small-scale by comparison. The music, of course, was anything but, with multiple two-part songs, recurring musical motifs, and new beginnings peppered throughout the album’s 16 tracks. Loosely inspired by the Houston-area childhood of band leader Win Butler and his brother Will, the album innately understood how urban sprawl could engender claustrophobia in the hearts of the young and strange, and that this experience may look different in the rearview mirror. It portrays the dread of suburbia as manifesting in power-tripping cops and “dead shopping malls rising like mountains beyond mountains,” but it also fondly remembers the way the world could feel patient and unpretentious. Best of all, the sound was vast and electric and opulent in ways that the backdrop could never be, capturing the narrators’ dreams and frustrations and pointing Arcade Fire toward their dance-rock future with the stunning “Sprawl II.” –Jillian Mapes",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/arcade-fire/the-suburbs-36ea27df-e99e-42fa-9893-837d2db9f64d | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/the-suburbs/1252757950?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F75572501%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d794d686eee70000829f66b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Arcade-Fire-The-Suburbs.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Arcade_Fire-The_Suburbs_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,75,The Weeknd,House of Balloons (2011),Self-released,"Self-released With his debut mixtape, Abel Tesfaye introduced the world to his hedonistic universe. Back then, we knew nothing about him, save for a Drake cosign, and with so much mystery we had to focus on the tangible: the now-iconic sans-serif type and artsy, Tumblr-core nude on the cover artwork, and the music itself. PBR&B jokes aside, the Weeknd’s first mixtape was a harbinger of trends to come, full of seductive songwriting enmeshed with genre-agnostic production. Cocteau Twins, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Beach House samples? Check. Cocaine-fueled carnality? Plenty of that. Songs like “The Morning” and “Wicked Games” predate the Weeknd’s outright pop aspirations and highlight his raw talent for hooks, while the creeping bells and loping drums of “What You Need” designed the blueprint for an entire generation of twilight crooners. House of Balloons and his subsequent mixtapes may have landed Tesfaye his major label deal, but to this day, eerie album opener “High for This” might remain the Weeknd’s most effective mission statement. Gritty synths bloom as his beguiling voice glides through the air, inviting you to relax, breathe deep, and shed some clothes. –Noah Yoo",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/house-of-balloons/1440837364?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d794dc28699b30008f1ae3d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-Weeknd-House-of-Balloons.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Weeknd-House_of_Balloons_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,74,SOPHIE,OIL OF EVERY PEARL’s UN-INSIDES (2018),Transgressive/Future Classic,"Transgressive/Future Classic Much of the science fiction we read in middle school fears a future in which people lose touch with what makes us human: our emotions, our favorite books, our memories. But what if the future, full of computerized voices and digitized avatars, allows us freedom from restrictive contemporary notions of gender and sexuality? On her debut album, the Scottish producer SOPHIE’s plastic, glinting experimental pop dares to imagine a time when we’ll have agency over our bodies and identities. On “Faceshopping,” she finds realness in the seductions of Photoshop, and on “Immaterial,” vocalist Cecile Believe gleefully chants, “I can be anything I want.” While the album is lyrically abstract, it is also SOPHIE’s most vulnerable project; before she released the music video for “It’s Okay to Cry,” few listeners had ever seen the elusive producer’s face. SOPHIE build a whole new world, one where our most authentic selves are the ones we construct, reinvent, and debut to the world every day. –Vrinda Jagota",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/sophie/oil-of-every-pearl-s-un-insides | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/oil-of-every-pearls-un-insides/1396580720?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F90144193%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d794e2e256a0a0009483317/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/SOPHIE-Oil-of-Every-Pearl.jpg,/dataset/artwork/SOPHIE-OIL_OF_EVERY_PEARLs_UN-INSIDES_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,73,Cardi B,Invasion of Privacy (2018),Atlantic,"Atlantic From the moment Cardi B started rapping for money, she wanted to be the shrewdest in the game, even if she wasn’t the technical best. It was after the summer of “Bodak Yellow,” her playfully taunting mainstream introduction—and the first of four unprecedented No. 1 hits—that she became unstoppable, moving at roadrunner speeds. The audacity, humor, and business savvy that made her famous on both Instagram and reality TV carried over to her debut album, Invasion of Privacy. Her music was sensitive and hardcore, carefully crafted, and, most of all, likable. The bass on “I Like It"" seemed made to blow out speakers on any continent, and “Be Careful” was Cardi's rap version of a quiet storm anthem. Her once unrefined flow—a subject of ridicule—was more sculpted, even next to agile guests like Migos, Chance the Rapper, and SZA. It was a seamless debut, made better by the fact that it wasn’t supposed to be this good. –Clover Hope",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/cardi-b/invasion-of-privacy | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/invasion-of-privacy/1368156323?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F86900549%5D%5D | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoboMneWC7o,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d794ea24bc6510008699745/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Cardi-B-Invasion-of-Privacy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Cardi_B-Invasion_of_Privacy_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,72,Father John Misty,"I Love You, Honeybear (2015)",Sub Pop,"Sub Pop Before he became notorious for trolling journalists and engaging in performance art about What It All Means, Josh Tillman captured the feeling of love as a defiant, selfish, and contradictory state of emotions on I Love You, Honeybear. Across the album, he cooes sickly sweet comes-ons to his wife, Emma, knowing the private rituals of companionship seem delusional from the outside; he spits vitriol at a dull woman he meets at a party before deciding to go home with her anyway; he languishes in his personal crises like a pig rolling around in the mud. The music is sensual, the vibe languid. Through everything—the muck and desolation of existing on this stupid planet—Tillman tilts towards love, because real life gave him no other choice. –Jeremy Gordon",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/father-john-misty/i-love-you-honeybear | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/i-love-you-honeybear/931563362?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F40453264%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d794f374bc6510008699747/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Father-John-Misty-Honeybear.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Father_John_Misty-I_Love_You_Honeybear_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,71,Robyn,Honey (2018),Konichiwa/Interscope,"Konichiwa/Interscope Following up 2010’s beloved Body Talk was always going to be a daunting task. So for her first album in eight years, Robyn skipped floor-filling pop anthems in favor of the tender electro-pop therapy we didn’t know we needed, meeting real-life heartbreak and loss first with mourning, then with acceptance and celebration. Taking her time meant Robyn came to the table with deep reflection, scripting effortless-seeming phrases—“turned all my sorrow into glass,” “we’re making diamonds”—that froze transient emotion in amber. She’s both the subject and the sympathetic ear, playfully poking holes between her personal and artistic identities on “Send to Robin Immediately,” and issuing a collective invitation to party, party, par-ty on “Beach 2K20.” More than any one standout song, Honey is a mood and a balm, an equilibrium as light and steady as its beachy house beats. But perhaps the best moment is the transcendent closer “Ever Again,” a plea for peace—“How ’bout we stop arguing and do something else?”—sealed with the promise that no matter how long you wait, real honey never spoils. –Anna Gaca",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/robyn/honey | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/honey/1436781118?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F96970803%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7950016eee70000829f66d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Robyn-Honey.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Robyn-Honey_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,70,Perfume Genius,No Shape (2017),Matador,"Matador No Shape, the fourth album from Mike Hadreas’ avant-pop outfit Perfume Genius, is a rapturous ode to true love that spares no bell, whistle, or baroque string section. Following 2014’s grittier, more hemmed-in Too Bright, No Shape is split wide open and sparkling. Hadreas exalts love in its many forms: sensual, mundane, and defiant, allowing his skyward voice and lavish compositions to elevate the familiar into the realm of myth. During the chorus of “Just Like Love,” the titular three words sound sung by a field of wildflowers swaying in the wind. Hadreas knows that comparing things to love is a timeworn exercise in melodrama, and yet when you’re in its grasp, there is nothing too grand to describe it. Still, he is just as quick to be vulnerable: On “Die 4 You,” his voice retreats to the trembling timbre of Sade. On the closing ballad “Alan,” written for his boyfriend and longtime collaborator Alan Wyffels, Hadreas is equally delicate, though his proclamations are less lofty. “Did you notice,” he sings, in recognition of a small and simple kind of love, “we sleep through the night?” –Madison Bloom",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/perfume-genius/no-shape | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/no-shape/1210458504?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F73299504%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7950a24bc6510008699749/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Perfume-Genius-No-Shape.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Perfume_Genius-No_Shape_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,69,Drake,"If You’re Reading This, It’s Too Late (2015)",Cash Money,"Cash Money If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late captures rap’s biggest star in self-congratulation, celebrating his ascent to sovereignty and already on the defensive as a result. It’s Drake at his loosest musically and tensest spiritually. Rarely has he been pettier. IYRTITL was a “retail mixtape,” as Drake’s camp stressed, and that was a calculated distinction to relieve the pressure he felt to deliver a classic album after announcing Views From the 6; he release IYRTITL as a sort of preface to that record, and it freed him up considerably. Drake is showing off, enjoying a victory lap, burning bridges and taking risks, his flows unbound but the pressure of delivering a classic album. With ominous, mesmerizing beats from his in-house team at OVO (40, Boi-1da, PartyNextDoor) and a few talented Canadian mainstays (WondaGurl, Frank Dukes), these songs establish Drake as a relentless conqueror: “The game is all mine and I’m mighty possessive/Lil Wayne could not have found him a better successor,” he boasts in the tape’s closing moments. IYRTITL finds a master schemer taking stock of his positioning—as rap’s ambassador to Toronto, as influencer and tabloid fodder, as wary and dangerous mogul—and realizing the full extent of his power. He marvels at his own superiority throughout and presents himself as untouchable, because he pretty much was. –Sheldon Pearce",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/drake/if-you-re-reading-this-it-s-too-late | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/if-youre-reading-this-its-too-late/1440839718?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F41295825%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a566f256a0a000948334f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Drake-IYRTITL.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Drake-If_Youre_Reading_This_Its_Too_Late_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,68,Flying Lotus,Cosmogramma (2010),Warp,"Warp Steven Ellison got his start scoring for Adult Swim in the late ’00s, and with his breakout LP Cosmogramma, he channeled that anarchic energy into a new medium. Fusing jazz, video-game sounds, post-Dilla hip-hop, IDM drum breaks, laser shrieks, and much more, he forged a fluid and propulsive music that doesn’t have a name. He made Cosmogramma while his mother was dying, so he sampled the sound of her hospital-room machinery on “Galaxy in Janaki,” the album’s hypnotic final track. Elsewhere, he processes the weight of his musical heritage: the recurring joyful soul melodies recall “Love Hangover,” written by Ellison’s grandmother Marilyn McLeod, and mournful jazz-harp interludes reference Ellison’s great-aunt, Alice Coltrane. Live instrumentation and guest vocals from Ravi Coltrane and Thom Yorke send ambient melodies drifting over steady grooves and skittish beats. Ten years later, new artists are still treading in FlyLo’s cosmic footprints. –Jo Livingstone","Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/flying-lotus/cosmogramma | Platform: Vinyl Me, Please - Link: https://vinyl-me-please.evyy.net/1QeNd | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/cosmogramma/367788829?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F16025624%5D%5D",https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a57980db1d10008f1ffbb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Flying-Lotus-Cosmogramma.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Flying_Lotus-Cosmogramma_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,67,Courtney Barnett,"Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit (2015)",Mom and Pop,"Mom and Pop Aussie singer-songwriter Courtney Barnett established herself as a wordy, clever storyteller with her debut full-length, and she earned a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist in the process. Her songs unfurl at a stream-of-consciousness pace, narrating the mundanities of daily life over garage-rock guitar. She sings about about the benefits of owning a percolator, the burnout of office workers, and even, at one point, restlessly declares mid-song that she might be hungry. But the poetic attention Barnett pays to everyday experiences belie her greater anxieties beneath the free-wheeling music: a tour of a sad house on “Depreston” tells a story of death and regrowth; a walk on the beach in “Kim’s Caravan” leads to a meditation on destroyed coral reefs. With Sometimes I Sit and Think, Barnett became a poster woman for a young generation seized by self-doubt and introversion, and her music never failed to process those feelings with a dark sense of humor. –Hazel Cills",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/courtney-barnett/sometimes-i-sit-and-think-and-sometimes-i-just-sit | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/sometimes-i-sit-and-think-and-sometimes-i-just-sit/960342539?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F82575082%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a588e0db1d10008f1ffbd/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Courtney-Barnett-Sometimes-I-Sit-and-Think.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Courtney_Barnett-Sometimes_I_Sit_and_Think_and_Sometimes_I_Just_Sit_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,66,Fever Ray,Plunge (2017),Rabid/Mute,"Rabid/Mute Karin Dreijer's 2009 self-titled debut as Fever Ray was about motherhood, but motherhood portrayed via a near-unbroken stretch of anhedonic sludge: postpartum depression as an album. So it was a surprise to many when, upon revisiting their solo project nearly a decade later, Dreijer inverted it entirely to release a playful, gleeful album primarily about queer desire and kink. In this, it shares a lot with the Knife's opus Shaking the Habitual, but where that album was bundled with a manifesto, Plunge came with a personal ad seeking “hours and hours of sharing.” Every emotion is huge and earnest; the songs about lust have a near-apocalyptic urgency. The love songs have a frantic glee and the kink is as much about sentiment as sex. The political songs are personal (and delivered the iconic lyric “this country makes it hard to fuck!”). The most Fever Ray-esque track, “Mustn't Hurry,” is about wanting to leave that album’s gloom behind to get to the good part: “Saw the blood,” Dreijer sings, “but it's not scary.” –Katherine St. Asaph",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/fever-ray/plunge | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/plunge/1299148287?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F80236343%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a5aed0db1d10008f1ffc9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Fever-Ray-Plunge.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fever_Ray-Plunge_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,65,Future,Dirty Sprite 2 (2015),Epic/Freebandz,"Epic/Freebandz Future’s consistency works to his disadvantage; his relentless stream of albums and mixtapes this decade can feel like a level plane. Dirty Sprite 2 is manifestly some kind of peak, though, in quality and mainstream impact. The album works as a microcosm of Future’s career: fixated in themes and mood, a steady accumulation of dirge upon dirge sustaining his bleak vision of joyless hedonism. It could be ambient music, almost, if the beats—mostly by Metro Boomin—didn’t hit with such pummeling physicality. Memorable images flash up now and then: the codeine urine of “Thought It Was a Drought,” the literal money-laundering of “Blood on the Money.” But Future is not a lyrical MC in the tradition upheld today by Kendrick Lamar. He’s a voice more than a writer, who shines as texture rather than text, and his most crucial accomplice was the late engineer Seth Firkins, the Auto-Tune wizard who coated Future’s bleary croon in a hundred subtle shades of digital grit. A plateau of pleasure-pain, DS2 finally breaks loose with the closer “F*ck Up Some Commas”: an anthem of ecstatic indifference, Future squandering money and life-force over Southside & DJ Spinz’s slow-mo stampede. The third verse, where Future chops his vocal against the beat like a deejay slashing the cross-fader, is one of the decade’s most thrilling and purely musical moments. –Simon Reynolds",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/ds2-deluxe/1017125737?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F49193318%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a5baa4bc65100086997f3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Future-DS2.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Future-Dirty_Sprite_2_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,64,Mitski,Be the Cowboy (2018),Dead Oceans,"Dead Oceans Few songwriters articulate wanting quite like Mitski. Across her catalog of impassioned rock anthems, sometimes she aches for a love that falls like “a body from the balcony.” Other times, she wishes simply to see the world and still pay rent. A classically trained composer who began her career recording piano ballads, Mitski insists that her music is technical rather than emotional, the characters in her stories fictional rather than autobiographical. Be the Cowboy, her fifth album, is a stunning piece of theater on the subject of wanting. Whether she’s spinning pain into something danceable on “Nobody” or pushing away a devoted lover’s touch on the searing “A Pearl,” the stories Mitski tells may be imaginary but the emotions are real. As she expands her sound, swapping her signature guitar shredding for synthesizers and disco, assuming the voices of weary wives and swaggering conquerors, Mitski’s songs are the most complex they’ve ever been. –Hazel Cills","Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/mitski/be-the-cowboy | Platform: Vinyl Me, Please - Link: https://vinyl-me-please.evyy.net/kGo3z | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/be-the-cowboy/1373892692?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F91826107%5D%5D",https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a5e3d0db1d10008f1ffff/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mitski-Be-the-Cowboy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mitski-Be_the_Cowboy_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,63,Danny Brown,XXX (2011),Fool’s Gold,"Fool’s Gold When he broke through in 2011, Danny Brown seemed to be running backwards at us, howling from about five years into the future. He was a Ghostface-level narrator with an asymmetrical haircut, tight jeans, gap teeth, and an imagination so vivid it seemed to frighten even him. Brown rapped in an astonished yelp and treated verses like advanced Pac-Man levels, gobbling up as much of his surroundings as he could before the timer buzzed. The title track from XXX (a triple entendre for his third album, his 30th year, and his preferred adult entertainment rating) compacts his vision, his determination, his torture. “I never leave the house, ain’t slept in three days/Poppin’ pills, writing, drinking, and smoking haze,” he rapped, his voice fraying at the edges. ""Weaving kicks and snares, trying to dodge these hooks/Keeping it original, something that’s overlooked.” He would say all of this, in a million inventive ways, after XXX, but the thing about a first impression is that it only happens once. –Jayson Greene",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/danny-brown/xxx-7eea7279-55cf-4e6b-ad96-176bf1c3b3e0 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/xxx-deluxe-version/508262167?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F82627447%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a5e6f0db1d10008f20001/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Danny-Brown-XXX.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Danny_Brown-XXX_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,62,Grouper,Ruins (2014),Kranky,"Kranky Liz Harris’ music as Grouper has always been intensely private, sometimes intimidatingly so: the sound of solitude so profound, so all-encompassing, that it blots out everything beyond it. Harris spent the first few years of the decade pushing deeper and deeper into emptiness, covering her tracks with impenetrable echoes, but Ruins felt like tearing away a veil. Recorded during a stint on the coast of Portugal, it’s just Harris alone at the piano, her voice unadorned, singing with unnerving candor about heartbreak and confusion. The only reverb is that of the piano’s sustain pedal; her only accompaniment is the occasional sound of crickets, frogs, a passing thunderstorm. Toward the end of “Labyrinth,” a microwave beeps when the power flashes back on after a blackout—a strange and startling reminder that there is a world outside this terrifying, irresistibly beautiful loneliness. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/grouper/ruins-c21fc8e8-0657-4476-8a0c-cd0b39454a0f | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/ruins/909173677?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Fartist%252F3664190%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a5efa256a0a0009483351/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Grouper-Ruins.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Grouper-Ruins_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,61,Arca,Arca (2017),XL,"XL Arca, the Venezuelan producer also known as Alejandra Ghersi, laced her singing voice into her early Soundcloud mixtapes and her debut album, 2014’s Xen. But it always came through corroded, as if chewed up by the intricate electronic shapes she’d twist with her synthesizers. Known for working behind the scenes with Kanye West and Björk, Arca established her impressive technical skills on her first few records, but it wasn’t until 2017’s self-titled breakthrough that her artistic spirit came to the forefront. She built Arca around her singing voice, its ragged edges tracing stories of death, and yearning, and change. If Xen and its 2015 follow-up, Mutant, flourished in cerebral space, then Arca aims straight for the beautiful tumult of the body. It's a delicate and stormy album about shedding skin and growing it anew, about the pain of nursing a wound and the celebration of watching the body stitch itself back together whole. –Sasha Geffen",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/arca/arca | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/arca/1203295856?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F72034227%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a5f87256a0a0009483353/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Arca-Arca.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Arca-Arca_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,60,King Krule,The OOZ (2017),True Panther/XL,"True Panther/XL When he released his debut album, 2013’s 6 Feet Beneath the Moon, Archy Marshall was 19 years old and self-certain, a swaggering rogue prowling London backstreets amid urban decay. His second album as King Krule, The OOZ, sees little of note on those streets, but constructs an elaborate microcosm in Marshall’s bedroom, where decay is a kind of comfort. After releasing a series of experimental songs under various monikers, he conceived The OOZ as a return to “guitar music.” But Marshall sets a new benchmark for the form, conjuring an odyssey of overdosed psych, anxious hip-hop, zombified punk, spoken word, loping jazz, and sound art. Vignettes flit by, conjuring heartbreak and depression; the expensive, isolating city backdrops his existential funk. Yet the immersive production and poetry reach out to you, like panicked arms from a murky deep end. Even as The OOZ churns through Krule’s torment, it glows with a melancholy too exquisite to fear. –Jazz Monroe",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/king-krule/the-ooz | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/the-ooz/1277397848?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F79524582%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a608553e80c0008f43a31/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/King-Krule-The-OOZ.jpg,/dataset/artwork/King_Krule-The_OOZ_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,59,Taylor Swift,Red (2012),Big Machine,"Big Machine Red is a portrait of a young woman eager to feel everything on her way to the top. Its songs are self-aware enough to be funny and guileless enough to be honest, capturing the temptation of risk-taking, the rush of memory and disappointment, and the transformative power of grown-up romantic love felt for the first time. The album gave Taylor Swift her first No. 1 hit (the irresistible “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together”) and inaugurated many of her famously over-the-top marketing tactics: commemorative Keds sneakers, Papa John’s pizza boxes, weaponized tabloid gossip. Aside from her pop leanings, the chipper breakup-to-makeup story “Stay Stay Stay” and melancholic renewal ballad “Begin Again” would be some of her final acoustic-forward recordings of the decade. Soon after Red, nobody in America could ever again plausibly ask, “Who’s Taylor Swift, anyway?” –Anna Gaca",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/taylor-swift/red | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/red/1440935340?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F35358097%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a613d53e80c0008f43a33/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Taylor-Swift-Red.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Taylor_Swift-Red_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,58,Kamasi Washington,The Epic (2015),Brainfeeder,"Brainfeeder For at least 60 years, Los Angeles jazz culture has been shaped by several of its circumstances: a slower pace of life, rehearsal spaces in great supply, proximity to the TV and film business, and a vague condescension emanating towards it from New York. When the saxophonist Kamasi Washington released his first album for a label in 2015 after a few self-released starts, he was 34 and unusually ready for the spotlight. He’d had the time, space, and resources to develop an uncanny fluidity among his band members, who’d known one another since high school; they benefited from years of church and R&B gigs, and the encouragement of a network of local elders and heroes. They weren’t academic formalists or bebop sticklers; they knew the canon, but grew up geographically close both to the grooves of Compton hip-hop and the commercial, proggy, and spiritual branches of jazz embodied by Patrice Rushen, George Duke, and Alice Coltrane. This mixture of things—and its beneficial distance from New York—gives The Epic its casual hugeness. Washington's playing, informed by Kenny Garrett and Pharoah Sanders, comes out in agile, darting climbs toward free-jazz wail, then slow elegies, and then clipped, mellow funk. The band includes two drummers, two bassists, a choir, and strings; it is thundering and chill, monolithic and uncontrived. It began one of the strongest groundswells in the last quarter-century of the jazz tradition, if you want to call it that. And if you do, consider that jazz has accommodated popular and sacred and advanced musicianship—the academic and the vernacular—since it began. –Ben Ratliff",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/kamasi-washington/the-epic | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/the-epic/975772107?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F75215973%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a61cc256a0a0009483356/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kamasi-Washington-The-Epic.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kamasi_Washington-The_Epic_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,57,Kendrick Lamar,DAMN. (2017),Top Dawg/Aftermath/Interscope,"Top Dawg/Aftermath/Interscope Kendrick Lamar uses inner conflict as the main fuel source for DAMN., an autobiographical work of epic proportions that won him a Pulitzer Prize. He plays tug-of-war between good and evil, illustrating how futile morality is when you grow up in a place like Compton, where racialized oppression and violence is commonplace. Lamar touched on these themes in his earlier works, but as he breezes through his rapid-fire verses, flashing his lyrical dexterity and the vocal flexibility that he honed with To Pimp a Butterfly’s funk experimentation, he brings an unprecedented technicolor detail. DAMN. concludes with Kendrick revealing his astonishing origin story in “DUCKWORTH.,” involving a coincidental meeting years ago between his father and his label head, Anthony Tiffith. It could have left one dead and the other in prison. But since both ended up safe, Kendrick frames the story as proof of his “chosen one” status, a fateful sign that he’d go on to become the greatest rapper in the world. Whether or not you believe in divine intervention, it’s hard to argue that he didn’t fulfill that prophecy. –Michelle Kim",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/kendrick-lamar/damn | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/damn/1440881047?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F72694579%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a63a8256a0a0009483358/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kendrick-Lamar-DAMN.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kendrick_Lamar-DAMN_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,56,Björk,Vulnicura (2015),One Little Indian,"One Little Indian On her eighth studio LP, Björk returns divorce to the arena of biblical sin. A monstrous take on the breakup album, Vulnicura bypasses heartbreak records’ usual sensitivities, demanding “emotional respect” like an angry god berating a malign species. Zero-gravity beats (co-produced by Arca) splice with close-miked vocals and string section heraldry, situating Björk’s despair in an ancient tradition—one that knows agony is a form of majesty. On “Black Lake,” she sings to her ex, “You fear my limitless emotions.” Emotional maximalism is not a chance fact of this superstar’s existence, the album reminds us, but her core philosophy. By lamenting one man’s failure, she demands reckoning from all her listeners, illuminating the sacred bond between art and principle. –Jazz Monroe",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/bjork/vulnicura | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/vulnicura/960042103?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F40243049%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a64af6eee70000829f71e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bjo%25CC%2588rk-Vulnicura.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bjrk-Vulnicura_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,55,St. Vincent,Strange Mercy (2011),4AD,"4AD The shadowy narratives that make up Strange Mercy, Annie Clark’s third album as St. Vincent, flash by in sharply lurid images: horsehair whips, dirty policemen, suitcases of cash. Clark’s father went to prison for stock fraud in 2010, which gave rise to Strange Mercy’s elliptical lyrics that often allude to depression, crime, and anger. But she used the incident as lighter fluid for apoplectic guitar shredding and dark tales of complicated power dynamics, whether between a dominant and submissive, a police officer and a civilian, or a parent and a child. Strange Mercy fuses the cinematic thrust of Clark’s 2009 album Actor with stirring experimental accents, from the corrosive solo that caps “Northern Lights” to the wiry motif that runs through the exquisite pop workout “Cruel.” She would go on to throw bolder shapes, but with its quicksilver moods and mercurial instrumentation, Strange Mercy is the most urgent and resonant St. Vincent album to date. –Eric Torres",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/st-vincent/strange-mercy | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/strange-mercy/453456287?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F7748181%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a65b84bc6510008699829/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/St-Vincent-Strange-Mercy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/St_Vincent-Strange_Mercy_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,54,Young Thug,Barter 6 (2015),300/Atlantic,"300/Atlantic Young Thug went from the face of rap’s inter-generational wars to one of its elder statesmen with unsettling speed. Just a few years ago, when he first emerged as a leader of Atlanta’s melodic new school, his contortionist flows and frenzied yelps were a novelty; today, his stylistic progeny dominate the charts. Still, Barter 6, Thug’s de facto debut album, remains his most cohesive project to date. Alternately paranoid, introspective, and tongue-in-cheek, he glides over production by Wheezy and London on Da Track. Although the release was attended by some high-profile drama (the name was an obvious, if inscrutable, subliminal aimed at his former idol Lil Wayne), Thug sounds inordinately focused, easily out-rapping guests like T.I., Boosie BadAzz, and Young Dolph, all of whom deliver memorable turns on songs like the creeping “Can’t Tell” and the stormy “Never Had It.” He’s remained prolific since then but, following plenty of leaks, label drama, and personal setbacks, Thug has yet to recapture the purity of that moment. –Rawiya Kameir",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/barter-6/986011611?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F44632346%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a66336eee70000829f720/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Young-Thug-Barter-6.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Young_Thug-Barter_6_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,53,Jlin,Black Origami (2017),Planet Mu,"Planet Mu Indiana footwork innovator Jerrilynn Patton, aka Jlin, once said that “the literature for experimental music is blank pages.” Her steely second album is a testament to this out-of-box thinking. Charged with a constant feeling of discovery, it offers no real hierarchy of sound, as the well-oiled polyrhythmic parts clatter, woosh, and glitch together with balletic ease. Black Origami sounds like real life, like industrialization collapsing and recalibrating, generative and alive. “I call it Black Origami,” Jlin has said, because “all those folds and bends that you go through in your life, that is what folds you into that piece of origami. You start off as this blank sheet of paper, this innocent thing. And then life starts bending and folding, bending and folding.” In her own folding, she establishes herself as one of the most forward-thinking contemporary composers in any genre, and one of the most human. –Jenn Pelly",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/jlin/black-origami-ac035ee2-cf48-49f7-8c82-f698c1a6f137 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/black-origami/1213453132?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F71465632%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a67038699b30008f1aeae/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jlin-Black-Origami.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jlin-Black_Origami_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,52,LCD Soundsystem,This Is Happening (2010),Virgin/Parlophone/DFA,"Virgin/Parlophone/DFA Before he entered the hibernation that was supposed to be his grand exit, LCD Soundsystem lifted up every last commandment James Murphy believed in: Get newly baptized under the disco ball, change who you are if it helps someone fall in love with you, never make a hit, take one last shot at your critics, then leave the stage forever. This final album from the band—the story went—was full of stakes and climaxes and last-goodbyes. “It was a music of desperation,” Murphy once said of “All I Want,” the beating heart of the record, a song so stuffed with feeling it ends with Murphy crying, “Take me home."" He sings again of home at the very end of the record, as if heaven or a wine-bar proprietorship calls him hither. Of course, in the real world, where LCD Soundsystem reunited and made another good album seven years later, the “take me home” motif now scans a little more like a drunk guy in the back of an Uber after a long night. The saga of This Is Happening and the band’s final concert at Madison Square Garden fizzes in the mind like a dream, too cathartic and momentous to ever be real. –Jeremy D. Larson",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/lcd-soundsystem/this-is-happening | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/this-is-happening/693387639?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F3821703%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a67ed4bc651000869982b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/LCD-Soundsystem-This-Is-Happening.jpg,/dataset/artwork/LCD_Soundsystem-This_Is_Happening_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,51,DJ Koze,Knock Knock (2018),Pampa,"Pampa DJ Koze doesn’t sing on his records, but his personality nevertheless shines through with every wonky beat—and electronic music’s premier troublemaker with a heart of gold was never more lovable than on Knock Knock. His productions have always been somewhat at odds with the sorts of Ibiza mega-clubs he’s often booked to play—intimate instead of bombastic, squirrelly instead of grandstanding—and Knock Knock makes the most of his idiosyncrasies: A Bon Iver sample puts a campfire-folk spin on glitchy deep house; Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner gurgles sweetly through Auto-Tune. Much of the album’s jewel-toned sampledelia is decidedly laid-back, with chopped-up soul over easygoing drum breaks, but there’s no missing the mainstage triumph of the Gladys Knight-sampling disco-house anthem “Pick Up,” a bittersweet breakup anthem that, heard amid a throng of 10,000 souls dancing in unison, is simply life-affirming. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/knock-knock/1333548730?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F87007741%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a68484bc6510008699895/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/DJ-Koze-Knock-Knock.jpg,/dataset/artwork/DJ_Koze-Knock_Knock_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,50,Grimes,Visions (2012),4AD,"4AD Claire Boucher’s first two albums as Grimes submerged her pop instincts deep within experimental manipulations. Visions, her third record, glints with the excitement of a newly unlocked talent and the thrill of wielding it. Its songs are twisted flashes of pop melodies laid over frothy techno pulses, where something vaguely sinister underlines the sweetness of the vocals. The album operates by its own unconventional timekeeping—many tracks are over four minutes, many others under two—and in its own unfamiliar yet accessible space. Its beats sound close but cavernous, feeling out a dance groove in the dark of “Circumambient” and erasing and rewriting itself half a dozen times on “Oblivion.” There are ballads, too, if that’s what you call a song like “Skin,” festooned with gothic filigrees. Almost eight years later, Boucher’s human-generated cyborg pop still feels enigmatic. –Anna Gaca",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/grimes/visions | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/visions/499874506?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F58084213%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a742253e80c0008f43a39/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Grimes-Visions.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Grimes-Visions_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,49,Oneohtrix Point Never,Replica (2011),Mexican Summer/Software,"Mexican Summer/Software Listeners encountering Replica upon its release didn’t have to know its backstory to tell that something had changed in Oneohtrix Point Never’s work: In place of the retro-futurist synth fantasia of the New York musician’s previous albums were curious, half-melodic abstractions with origins difficult to tease out. Many of the sounds, it turned out, were sampled from TV commercials from the ’80s, but Daniel Lopatin’s curious way of chopping and looping freed them from kitschy overtones—really, from any context whatsoever. Instead, these disembodied voices and half-recognizable sounds suggested only a kind of vague, inchoate melancholy—the sadness of dead media, a gesture of mourning for a past whose outline was already fading from memory. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/replica/1444030145?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F56226741%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bb61f8699b30008f1b031/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Oneohtrix-Point-Never-Replica.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Oneohtrix_Point_Never-Replica_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,48,ANOHNI,Hopelessness (2016),Rough Trade/Secretly Canadian,"Rough Trade/Secretly Canadian Hopelessness is a tremendous, terrifying reflection on the perils of drone warfare, our digital panopticon, the continued degradation of the planet Earth, and patriarchal violence. In these horrifying, beautiful songs, ANOHNI presses crisis to flesh—and as this decade wore on, they became more and more relevant. Beyond ANOHNI’s supernal voice, which easily communicates both intimacy and dread—her tone elegant and refined with empathy while being robust enough to condemn evil—there is a material perspective that makes all of these crimes feel more visceral. She sings about “exploded crystal guts,” feeling the temperature of a near-boiling planet on the skin, idle lenses observing unknowing figures, the marrow being sucked out of bones. Throughout Hopelessness, these become powerful symbols of American carnage. Produced alongside Oneohtrix Point Never and Hudson Mohawke, ANOHNI embraces electronic dance music as a compelling vehicle for truth-telling without losing its serrated edge. Hopelessness crystalised the environmentalist pop ANOHNI had made for years with Antony and the Johnsons into piercingly sharp, graceful protest songs for our present and future dystopias. –Sheldon Pearce","Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/anohni/hopelessness | Platform: Vinyl Me, Please - Link: https://vinyl-me-please.evyy.net/BdqyW | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/hopelessness/1084753880?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F59107398%5D%5D",https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bc2a20db1d10008f200c5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/ANOHNI-Hopelessness.jpg,/dataset/artwork/ANOHNI-Hopelessness_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,47,Carly Rae Jepsen,E•MO•TION (2015),Interscope,"Interscope E•MO•TION marked the end of Carly Rae Jepsen, wholesome chart-topper, and the beginning of CRJ, patron saint of just going for it. After the mind-numbing ubiquity of “Call Me Maybe,” Jepsen went in search of her own sound and, after cowriting hundreds of songs, landed on bright, bold synth-pop with a distinct ’80s sleekness. Though E•MO•TION was initially considered something of a commercial flop, it became, along with a few other LPs, emblematic of a certain 2010s trend: the rise of the mainstream pop star swerving to collect her indie cred. Working with collaborators like Dev Hynes and Rostam, Jepsen honed her reference points and packed the album with tactile sonic details: the synth sheen cascading off “All That,” a ballad seemingly made for the prom scene in a John Hughes movie, or the way the house-tinged sleeper “Warm Blood” pulses on at least four different levels at once. And who could forget the most epic saxophone part to open a pop song since “Careless Whisper”? But it was Jepsen’s unabashed yearning and acute sense of rejection that turned E•MO•TION into a certified cult hit—relatable in the way that a really good rom-com is, and just as rare. –Jillian Mapes",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/e-mo-tion-deluxe/1440845175?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F49817531%5D%5D | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeccAtqd5K8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d9ca0ec39d76100088ec37d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Carly-Rae-Jepsen.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Carly_Rae_Jepsen-EMOTION_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,46,The Knife,Shaking the Habitual (2013),Rabid/Brille/Mute,"Rabid/Brille/Mute The Knife’s fifth and final album demanded nothing less than the obliteration of Western society’s sturdiest pillars: capitalism, patriarchy, gender conformity. And like true performance artists, siblings Karin and Olaf Dreijer knew that the legitimacy of their message hinged on their willingness to obliterate themselves. Even coming from a group that had, over the previous decade, forsaken neon-bright indie-pop for black-light techno-goth and impenetrable operatic dronescapes, Shaking the Habitual marked yet another radical act of self-negation. The shadowy electro provocateurs were reborn as an animalistic, post-apocalyptic industrial act making an ungodly clang from (presumably) short-circuiting synths and burnt-out oil drums bashed by human bones. Whether it’s subjecting you to pulverizing electro-punk, nauseating 19-minute ambient movements, or diseased tropical funk, Shaking the Habitual relentlessly agitates as a means to inspire resistance. In retrospect, the album functioned as a punishing boot-camp drill to prepare us for the difficult conversations, legislative battles, and bad-faith disinformation wars that rage today. –Stuart Berman",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/shaking-the-habitual/828145438?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F35109284%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bc48b53e80c0008f43b24/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Knife-Shaking-the-Habitual.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Knife-Shaking_the_Habitual_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,45,Mount Eerie,A Crow Looked at Me (2017),P.W. Elverum and Sun,"P.W. Elverum and Sun Pause for a moment to remember December 2009, and think of the people you knew who were alive then, now gone. The older you are, the more names will come to mind. And the next 10 years will bring more names still—possibly many more. There’s no escaping it. Death is real. With that line, Phil Elverum begins A Crow Looked at Me, his hushed and plainspoken album about the loss of his wife, Geneviève Castrée, to cancer the year before. Crow is one of the most specific albums ever made—the details, and there are many, are drawn directly from the songwriter’s life, from what’s arriving in the mail to how long he holds on to his wife’s old toothbrush. But inside the minutiae are truths that exist independently of Elverum. It’s impossible to listen and not think about the people around you. His story starts to feel like yours. Crow is like a letter from an old friend that you savor alone and then put back in the drawer when you’re finished, a work designed to cycle in and out of people’s lives. “We are all always so close to not existing at all,” Elverum sings in “Swims.” When that thought is close at hand, so is this record. –Mark Richardson",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/mount-eerie/a-crow-looked-at-me | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/a-crow-looked-at-me/1193426815?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F69145056%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bc57053e80c0008f43b26/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mount-Eerie-A-Crow-Looked-at-Me.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mount_Eerie-A_Crow_Looked_at_Me_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,44,A Tribe Called Quest,We got it from Here... Thank You 4 Your service (2016),Epic,"Epic Within the span of one month in 2016, A Tribe Called Quest fans went from never expecting music from the group again to mourning Phife Dawg to preparing themselves for a new album. This whirlwind of emotions can be felt in the frantic and urgent music itself, which explores exit strategies and considerations for a newer and better world in the first two songs alone, “The Space Program” and “We the People….” The record was released at the tail end of the week that Donald Trump was elected president, but its pitch-perfect intersection of fury and sadness had been brewing for years, which meant it arrived as a perfect response to people who assumed America had only recently become violent and frightening. Beyond all of this, the album momentarily returned Phife Dawg to us, his voice showing no rust despite the years. This is the album’s truest gift; his instantly classic verse on “Black Spasmodic” feels like the MC kicking in the door to a dark room where everyone is sleeping and turning all of the lights on. –Hanif Abdurraqib",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/a-tribe-called-quest/we-got-it-from-here-thank-you-4-your-service | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/we-got-it-from-here-thank-you-4-your-service/1173106678?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F66961064%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bc6760db1d10008f200c7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/A-Tribe-Called-Quest-we-got-it-from-here.jpg,/dataset/artwork/A_Tribe_Called_Quest-We_got_it_from_Here_Thank_You_4_Your_service_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,43,Sky Ferreira,"Night Time, My Time (2013)",Capitol,"Capitol Despite the desires of her label, Sky Ferreira refused to be molded into the next coy pop princess. As a result, her debut album was locked in purgatory for years, until she put her own modeling money toward financing it. When it finally emerged in 2013, Night Time, My Time testified to Ferreira’s authentic edginess, from the cover—a humid shot of a topless, glaring Ferreira in a green-tiled shower—to her vulnerable, often self-loathing lyrics. Throughout it, she owns her emotional complexities, moving coolly from optimism to frustration to a Lynchian brooding that the director himself later put to good use. She’s a starry-eyed romantic on “Boys” and a scorned lover on “You’re Not the One;” she takes accountability for her reputation on “I Blame Myself” and questions her relevance on the title track. Working alongside producers including Ariel Rechtshaid and Justin Raisen, she fashions these raw sentiments into sparkly synth-pop and grungy, kohl-lined gems. “Nobody asked me if I was okay…Nobody asked me what I wanted,” she murmurs throatily at one point. Night Time, My Time is testament to the power of singing for oneself. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/sky-ferreira/night-time-my-time-green | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/night-time-my-time/1443133185?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F35218343%5D%5D | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0vmK4WXCRI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bccb66eee70000829f85c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sky-Ferreira-Night-Time-My-Time.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sky_Ferreira-Night_Time_My_Time_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,42,Erykah Badu,New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh (2010),Motown,"Motown Then, now, and forever, love makes people go a little crazy. Even Erykah Badu, goddess of unbothered R&B, is not immune. Throughout Return of the Ankh, her only proper album of this decade, she offers up conflicting desires with the unfiltered realness of a drunk dial. She pines for a long-distance love with lusty teenage angst. She laughs about fucking around on a besotten boyfriend. She cautions would-be suitors on a song called “Fall in Love (Your Funeral),” which works in lines from Biggie Smalls’ cold-blooded classic “Warning.” At one point, her frustrations make her contemplate gunplay. But for every moment of blind passion here, there is an equal and opposite moment of contemplation: On the psychedelic 10-minute suite “Out My Mind, Just in Time,” she evolves from a doting, codependent lover to a solo superhero in tune with her own worth. The arrangements, largely based on the comforting grooves of ’70s soul, add an element of analog time travel to her cosmic funk. Though a record all about the vagaries of the heart may not be a new idea, in Erykah Badu’s hands, it never gets old. –Ryan Dombal",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/new-amerykah-pt-2-return-of-the-ankh/1440764608?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F3545865%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bcd3d53e80c0008f43b28/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Erykah-Badu-New-Amerykah-Part-2.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Erykah_Badu-New_Amerykah_Part_Two_Return_of_the_Ankh_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,41,Beyoncé,Lemonade (2016),Columbia/Parkwood,"Columbia/Parkwood The first thing Lemonade delivers is wrath: Infidelity has ruptured not just marriage but a whole life. Beyoncé, the world’s most powerful woman, is gleeful to set streets on fire, throw off her wedding ring, shit-talk with her girls to abandon. If Lemonade’s first 10 minutes has a headline, it would be that Jay-Z, dummy that he is, really did cheat. But then everything builds to something more profound, more complete: a prayer about how love can fracture the self. Suddenly we’re in Texas, in stadiums, on plantations; a Led Zeppelin beat is next to a reggae sample. “SpottieOttieDopaliscious” appears next to a James Blake feature. Lemonade feels like an exercise in dissonance, the act of holding two warring ideas in your head and in your heart: You can love someone but also hate them, adore your father and also resent him, want to cry and twerk at the same time. One woman can feel all of this—and more—at once, Lemonade suggests, because that’s how confusing life and grief and history is. It exalts the mundane as profoundly spiritual: being black, being a woman, feeling confused, feeling grief, trying to forgive, feeling sexual. In all those, together, is the healing. –Hunter Harris","Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/beyonce/lemonade | Platform: Vinyl Me, Please - Link: https://vinyl-me-please.evyy.net/MdaR3 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/lemonade/1460430561?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F108043414%5D%5D",https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bceb78699b30008f1b037/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Beyonce%25CC%2581-Lemonade.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beyonc-Lemonade_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,40,Charli XCX,Pop 2 (2017),Asylum/Atlantic,"Asylum/Atlantic After cowriting and appearing on Iggy Azalea’s hit “Fancy,” Charli XCX could have easily shipped out to Los Angeles to record Max Martin cast-offs forever. But instead, Charli began to construct her own little weird pop utopia from the ground up, turning to the squelchy, hyper-synthetic sounds of producers like A.G. Cook and SOPHIE. The Pop 2 mixtape, Charli’s best full-length to date, is the brilliant culmination of all that effort: a nonstop avant-garde party built for fembots and fog machines. Over the sound of her hissed “XCX” and “It’s Charli, baby” signatures, she pulls in multiple collaborators on each track, like the filth-loving rapper CupcakKe and the rising dance princess Kim Petras. Throughout, she solidifies her mastery of the strange, wonderful new pop world she continues to build. –Hazel Cills",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/charli-xcx/number-1-angel-pop-2 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/pop-2/1320853683?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F82088443%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bcfcd0db1d10008f200ca/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Charli-XCX-Pop-2.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Charli_XCX-Pop_2_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,39,Bill Callahan,Apocalypse (2011),Sonic Ranch,"Sonic Ranch About halfway through Apocalypse, Bill Callahan describes a scene in which a man, sitting alone in a boat, fires a flare gun into the sky. As the flare rises, the man can see everything. When it comes back down, it sets his boat on fire. The boat goes down—the man, too, in all his contradictions. If he seems worried, Callahan doesn’t tell us. If anything, the mood is one of lightness, of calm, of finally being released from the illusory responsibilities of being all the things the man thought he was. Callahan’s writing is like this: Matter-of-fact but philosophical, deeply felt, a little uncanny—parables on our condition. Coming after more than a dozen albums, Apocalypse feels like an ascendance: His voice is lower, his music more rustic but more psychedelic, too. The stone-faced man who seems to know all, and in denim, no less. And if he seems a little serious, that’s because he is. Then again, so is life. –Mike Powell",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/bill-callahan/apocalypse-02a17036-10e4-4559-b16e-c962b82ad5b6 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/apocalypse/429316869?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F86402713%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7be8b953e80c0008f43b2a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bill-Callahan-Apocalypse.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bill_Callahan-Apocalypse_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,38,Tierra Whack,Whack World (2018),Self-released,"Self-released Welcome to Whack World, the surreal universe of the Philly dynamo Tierra Whack. Here, as established in her 15-minute audiovisual album that plays like an absurdist children’s sketch show, BET stands for “bitches eat tacos” and self-care advice is administered with childlike glee. Whack’s playfulness also extends to her vocal prowess: on one song she spits with the fervor of André 3000, on another she jokes around with a goofy Southern twang. Her creativeness is both fun and impressive, like when she uses whimsical imagery to work through tough subjects: Fried chicken condiments serve as a segue to address the violence in her hometown, and when she mourns her dead “dog,” it’s coded language for a late friend. Though packed tight, each song on Whack World lands just at or under one minute long, and Whack’s imagination runs unbound throughout. –Michelle Kim",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/whack-world/1388073103?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F89240693%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7be9588699b30008f1b039/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Tierra-Whack-Whack-World.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tierra_Whack-Whack_World_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,37,David Bowie,Blackstar (2016),Columbia/RCA/ISO,"Columbia/RCA/ISO David Bowie was sometimes accused of being calculating, and that trait served him triumphantly when it came to stage-managing his exit as an artist. From its daring music to its perfect title, from its stunning artwork to its startling videos, Blackstar was a magnificent farewell to his audience. Even the timing was immaculate, the album coming out two days before Bowie’s death. As pop’s greatest self-dramatist, he doubtless felt he owed his audience a consummate denouement, but you also get the sense from Blackstar that Bowie felt free of obligations, able to explore and experiment to his art’s content. Unlike his preceding album The Next Day, Blackstar betrays zero concern for radio play or other worldly metrics of success. The cutting edges dominate, with a palette steeped in lifelong loves like jazz and brief passions like drum ‘n’ bass. But although the urgent desire to break new ground rather than revisit familiar pathways is palpable, flickers from Bowie’s vast past appear: the harmonica texture from Low’s “A New Career in a New Town,” for instance, rematerializes on the closing “I Can’t Give Everything Away.” That title is Bowie affirming the value of mystique. It’s notable that he never wrote a memoir—a rare act of superstar tact. Yet while Blackstar’s words are oblique, vocally and emotionally, Bowie has rarely seemed more achingly exposed. The title track is one of the strangest and strongest things Bowie ever made. The glassy-grey waver of his voice sounds like he’s already a ghost. The refrain “I’m a blackstar” serves as a chilling image for the extinction of personality, but also hints at the way icons fascinate long after they’ve faded from the scene, just like black holes emit radiation. –Simon Reynolds",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/david-bowie/blackstar | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/blackstar/1059043043?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F55825380%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bebcf8699b30008f1b03b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/David-Bowie-Blackstar.jpg,/dataset/artwork/David_Bowie-Blackstar_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,36,Rosalía,El Mal Querer (2018),Sony,"Sony Melding classic flamenco techniques with trap and the stylistic instincts of the Instagram generation was postmodern, to say the least. And El Mal Querer, the Spanish virtuoso Rosalía’s debut album, also highlighted a very 2010s tension between cultural appreciation and appropriation, given the Catalan singer’s pop take on the storied gitano genre and, more complexly, her adoption of an Andalusian accent—two hallmarks of the Roma people in Spain. A lesser musician might not have weathered the criticisms—she still seems to be figuring it out—but El Mal Querer was one of the most exquisite albums of the decade. Rosalía’s conservatory-trained voice is elevated by her epic album concept based on a 13th-century novel. Her interpolation of the text’s eternally human themes into today’s hyper-tech landscape, with glitchy and romantic production courtesy of El Guincho, meant that it translated widely. Her emotion was emphatic and fluent, even if many of her listeners’ Spanish-speaking ability wasn’t—a giant step for a burgeoning global pop star. –Julianne Escobedo Shepherd",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/el-mal-querer/1436309944?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F95094922%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7becb0bf029700081d7c3f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Rosali%25CC%2581a-El-Mal-Querer.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rosala-El_Mal_Querer_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,35,Blood Orange,Cupid Deluxe (2013),Domino,"Domino By late 2013, Dev Hynes had established himself as the go-to vibey songwriter of the moment. His tracks with Solange and Sky Ferreira established a new sound in pop, merging slinky guitar with full-on lamentation and heartbreak. These bummer jams, spiked with extra catchy catharsis, succeeded because they felt real, but Hynes had yet to fully capitalize on his talents as a solo artist. That changed with Cupid Deluxe. Leadoff track “Chamakay” serves as a mission statement of sorts, with Hynes using all his tricks at once: women harmonizing, echoed percussion, romantic pleading, gurgling bass. The album follows a similar kitchen-sink-funk feel, as Hynes pilfers the best bits from disco, soul, and R&B, creating a hybrid sound that's inimitable and vastly appealing. At times, a breathy saxophone wafts in from nowhere, as if things weren’t sexy enough. After Cupid Deluxe, Hynes further opened his sound: His subsequent albums are deeper, more complex, and more adventurous. But they never sounded as undeniably funky. –Matthew Schnipper",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/blood-orange/cupid-deluxe | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/cupid-deluxe/716767448?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F23673561%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bed928699b30008f1b03d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Blood-Orange-Cupid-Deluxe.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Blood_Orange-Cupid_Deluxe_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,34,Vince Staples,Summertime ’06 (2015),Def Jam,"Def Jam Vince Staples’ debut for Def Jam doesn’t fit neatly into any Los Angeles rap tradition—it’s not radical, just cold and alien, as if the north side of Long Beach were a quasi-industrial hell. The album occasionally grapples with the white gaze—see “Lift Me Up,” where he looks out at a sea of pale fans cheering after asking them “Where my niggas at?”—but it is most effective when the rapper disappears into his own gut, his own memory. For all the obsession with what’s happening metatextually in his music, Summertime ’06 is striking because of moments like on “Like It Is,” when Staples, who has two brothers, confesses to feeling like his mother’s only son. Across two short discs, the rapper works like a pitcher changing speeds: there are the laconic taunts of “Street Punks,” the staccato come kill me bluff at the beginning of “Señorita,” the wistful pleading of “Summertime.” And of course there’s that dizzying third verse of “Norf Norf.” That’s the song that was immortalized in the video of a frantic white mother, crying as she reads the cop-bashing lyrics into her webcam, horrified that something so offensive to her sensibilities had become inescapable. But the song, like Staples himself, is not interesting primarily as an exercise in social chaos. “Norf Norf” is essential because it’s breathless and virtuosic, full of tics and unfabricatable details that are impossible to wash away. –Paul A. Thompson",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/vince-staples/summertime-06-segment-1 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/summertime-06/1444178693?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F46953053%5D%5D | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPSeDkSWqeY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bf0c28699b30008f1b03f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Vince-Staples-Summertime-06.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Vince_Staples-Summertime_06_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,33,Big Thief,U.F.O.F. (2019),4AD,"4AD There are few modern descriptors more benign than “folk-rock.” But with U.F.O.F., Big Thief capped four extraordinarily productive years and a five-album run (including Adrianne Lenker and Buck Meek’s solo debuts) by giving folk-rock teeth again. They didn’t need to be loud or aggressive, though the screaming through tears on the opening song could unnerve even a hardened listener. Instead, U.F.O.F. strips away the bucolic qualities usually associated with acoustic guitars and hushed vocals to reassert a fundamental strangeness, a powerful awe at the world’s mysteries. Moving away from the often harrowing autobiographical material of 2017’s Capacity, Lenker sings of metaphysical states and UFO friends, motley menageries of dogs, fruit bats, silkworms, and moths. There are fewer certainties in her lyrics than ever before—is “Open Desert” about swimming or dying?—except for the truest certainties of all: the knowledge that all things are connected, death is life’s lone constant, and a glimpse of the infinite can be found in a trick of light on water or a whispered vocal harmonized just so. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/big-thief/u-f-o-f | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/u-f-o-f/1452026004?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F108003200%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bf1478699b30008f1b041/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Big-Thief-UFOF.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Big_Thief-UFOF_2019.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,32,Bon Iver,Bon Iver (2011),Jagjaguwar/4AD,"Jagjaguwar/4AD With Bon Iver’s second, self-titled album, Justin Vernon leapt from his cabin in the woods into a world entirely of his own imagination. The sweeping compositions were a huge shift from his debut For Emma, Forever Ago’s spare folk, with arrangements that sounded like they bloomed directly from Vernon’s subconscious. Precise in imagery but hazy in structure, the songs evoke places and moments the way Vernon remembers them: unreliably and romantically. People get mixed up with the landscapes: He whisper-sings about bones and nature in the same breath, painting images of a human frame breaking the curvatures of the sea. And on “Wash.,” he refers to his hometown of Eau Claire just as “Claire,” emphasizing how loving a place is not so different from loving a person, and the memory of one is often entangled in the memory of another. –Michelle Kim",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/bon-iver/bon-iver | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/bon-iver/438685974?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F41636908%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bf1a50db1d10008f200d2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bon-Iver-Bon-Iver.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bon_Iver-Bon_Iver_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,31,Beyoncé,4 (2011),Columbia/Parkwood,"Columbia/Parkwood Before her albums were world-stopping cultural events, before a surprise release meant “pulling a Beyoncé,” there was 4. The superstar’s aptly named fourth album marked a return to hardcore R&B after 2008’s dispiritingly middle-of-the-road I Am...Sasha Fierce; it’s telling that nothing here cracked the Top 10 pop chart but several songs ran up the R&B/Hip-Hop chart. Beyoncé was done catering to visions of how her music should sound. The star power she enlisted was massive—Kanye and André 3000 cameoed, The-Dream and Tricky Stewart lent their songwriting chops (most notably on the perfect torch song “1+1”). And then there was a young Frank Ocean, who co-wrote the silken “I Miss You,” a song so powerful the demo allegedly made Beyoncé cry. But ultimately the marquee star of 4 was Beyoncé’s indefatigable work ethic. She turned in 72 songs for this project; 12 made the cut of the standard release. (On that note: Stick with 4’s original sequencing—the reconfigured tracklist on Spotify snuffs its slow burn and displaces “Countdown” from the climax position.) She gave us more key changes than we ever thought we needed. (“Love on Top” has four!) And she blew with a late-anthropocene gusto, quivering and shaking around words, interpreting by the syllable. –Rich Juzwiak",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/beyonce/4-58633a65-dae3-41b7-873b-6b815e2723f2 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/4-the-remix-ep/519218831?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F33834047%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d5ab5ee1ce1350009a5d4eb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Beyonce-4.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beyonc-4_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,30,Mitski,Puberty 2 (2016),Dead Oceans,"Dead Oceans After the majestic ballads and clear-eyed heartache of her third album, Bury Me at Makeout Creek, Mitski returned with a louder and gnarlier indie-rock record rife with distortion and thrashing guitar riffs. Hurt still radiates from its pores, but so does the sound of struggle. Here, Mitski is experiencing a second coming-of-age, a metamorphosis from young woman into adult. She is grappling with how the world sees her and who she wants to be in it. On “My Body’s Made of Crushed Little Stars,” she articulates the many mundane and not-so-mundane thoughts tumbling around her brain at any moment, pivoting from her fear of death to anxiety over an upcoming interview. On “Thursday Girl,” she sounds lost in existential angst as she searches for someone to “please tell me no.” And on the album centerpiece “Your Best American Girl,” she struggles with a lingering sense of shame about her upbringing and what it means to feel fully American and fully worthy of love. As always, Mitski is tremendously talented at working through her feelings, but on Puberty 2, the exhilaration comes not from catharsis, but from marinating in emotional conflict. –Vrinda Jagota",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/mitski/puberty-2 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/puberty-2/1087128495?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F60757035%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bf3984bc65100086999c6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mitski-Puberty-2.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mitski-Puberty_2_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,29,Deerhunter,Halcyon Digest (2010),4AD,"4AD On their fifth album, Deerhunter linger in the dark recesses of the mind. Understated and insular, especially compared to the band’s previous avant-garde leanings, these songs shine a light on private pains: melancholy, rejection, repression. And yet many of Halcyon Digest’s bleakest moments are also its brightest, which is in itself a statement on how difficult memories can shift into something more manageable. Full of lush textures and impressionistic details like “a dirty couch in the gray fog” and “the smell of loose-leaf joints on jeans,” Halcyon Digest watches memories get blown away by the sands of time yet never quite makes peace with mortality. Pushing forward this sense of impermanence, the closing track “He Would Have Laughed,” a seven-and-half minute tribute to the late rocker Jay Reatard, cuts out suddenly in the middle of a dreamy melody, a candle extinguished as quickly as life itself. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/deerhunter/halcyon-digest | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/halcyon-digest/387922299?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F4489494%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bf44a8699b30008f1b043/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Deerhunter-Halcyon-Digest.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Deerhunter-Halcyon_Digest_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,28,FKA twigs,LP1 (2014),Young Turks,"Young Turks FKA twigs is already so fully developed as an artist that her voice—wispy, breathy, disarmingly operatic—can sometimes be overshadowed by her astonishing performances. They function as demonstrations of her dancer’s command of her body, living art installations, and full-spectrum auditory experience—together, something like live 4DX. LP1, her first full-length, alluded to the expansive visionary she'd soon become, twisting her nimble voice over a textured palette of glitchy beats and sweeping synths. LP1 often sounds mournful, upended by her propensity for minor keys, and a notion of sexuality that was widely ascribed to its songs that may not have been explicitly about sex. This interpretation may have been partly because of how twigs carries herself—a generously candid musician and sinewy dancer—but is also attributable to the complex ways she delves into such topics as autonomy, aloneness, and sensuality in a holistic sense. Lead single ""Two Weeks"" may have been a break-up song lyrically, but the way she dives into it—vocal cadences interplaying with triple-time bass—elevates it into something like a triumphant prose poem to herself. Released in a crowded year for British experimental electronics, twigs' sense of drama pushed the landscape of heady dancefloor tracks into a blissfully corporeal space. –Julianne Escobedo Shepherd",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/lp1/911606990?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F58912478%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a863e0db1d10008f20007/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/FKA-twigs-Two-Weeks.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/FKA_twigs-LP1_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,27,Earl Sweatshirt,Some Rap Songs (2018),Columbia,"Columbia At the start of the decade, when he emerged as Odd Future’s most gifted rapper, Earl Sweatshirt laced his intricate verses with outrageous lines about masturbation and hating Steve Harvey. But after branching off from the collective, he grew into the role of jazz poet, with an expanded circle of friends influencing him. On Some Rap Songs, a lyrical and beat-making breakthrough, Earl details his coming-of-age in a deadpan delivery over murky, mesmerizing loops that sound like they’ve been left out in the sun for weeks. On “Azucar,” Earl wields his grimiest flow and delivers one of the album’s definitive one-liners: “There’s not a black woman I can’t thank.” Only two tracks surpass the two-minute mark, and the brevity makes them even more impactful and replayable. Earl still shocks, but now it’s by way of his stunning candor about the most personal aspects of his life, including dealing with depression and the aftermath of his father’s death. Here, Earl digs deep, heals, and completely comes into his own. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/earl-sweatshirt/some-rap-songs | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/some-rap-songs/1442399872?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F99564770%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bf55a0db1d10008f200d4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Earl-Sweatshirt-Some-Rap-Songs.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Earl_Sweatshirt-Some_Rap_Songs_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,26,Angel Olsen,Burn Your Fire for No Witness (2014),Jagjaguwar,"Jagjaguwar It’s hard to imagine the decade without Angel Olsen’s magnetic howl. Her sophomore album, Burn Your Fire For No Witness, was the kind of breakthrough that shifted the scene around it. Now the folkier corners of indie rock are filled with auteur singer-songwriters who are trying to be both timeless and out of time, intimate-seeming yet often fleshed out by a smoky full band, angsty like punk and sad like old country. That’s largely her influence. Olsen’s turning point came as a result of her imagining a new way forward, both in terms of the album’s richer instrumentation and within its narrative arc. Spurred by a breakup but ultimately about much more, Burn Your Fire for No Witness is self-help by way of total emotional whiplash. At her most optimistic, Olsen’s words serve as tiny mantras for fledgling twenty-somethings, the sort of poetic phrases a millennial might tattoo on their body. Employing the album’s signature light-dark imagery, she writes her way straight out of a creative rut on “Lights Out”: “Just when you thought you would turn all your lights out, it shines,” she croons, a cool edge to her voice. A lesser singer would have delivered the line with more earnest hope, but Olsen knows that lurking behind every step forward is a dark night of the soul waiting to strike. –Jillian Mapes",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/angel-olsen/burn-your-fire-for-no-witness-c4a7021b-d9d4-4b4d-8bc4-df687197c1c3 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/burn-your-fire-for-no-witness-deluxe-edition/919520252?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F35535784%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bf65d53e80c0008f43b2d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Angel-Olsen-Burn-Your-Fire-for-No-Witness.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Angel_Olsen-Burn_Your_Fire_for_No_Witness_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,25,Jamie xx,In Colour (2015),Young Turks,"Young Turks Hearing In Colour feels like listening to the dissection of a heartbeat—skittering anxieties mirrored in the snares, the warm glow of love reflected in steel drums, camaraderie sampled via musical voices of the past. By the time the record came out in 2015, Jamie Smith had already made two LPs with the xx, remixed an album by the legendary musician and poet Gil Scott-Heron (later loaning a sample from the project to Drake for a Top 10 hit), and released a solo track called “All Under One Roof Raving” about the communal ethos of the UK underground. He was a dance music enthusiast who didn’t really enjoy drugs, a loner who frequented London’s famous Plastic People nightclub by himself, a kid who watched UK garage documentaries on tour when he was homesick. In Colour was the result of his self-directed club education, a collection of influences—’90s jungle, swaggy doo-wop, the exaltation of trance, and the tension of two-step—that were reverent of the past but wary of nostalgia. It’s the sound of longing and loneliness mixed with the joyful relief of discovering that you’ve been among friends all along. –Puja Patel",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/jamie-xx/in-colour | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/in-colour/978362006?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F58080500%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bf74a6eee70000829f8c6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jamie-xx-In-Colour.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jamie_xx-In_Colour_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,24,SZA,CTRL (2017),Top Dawg/RCA,"Top Dawg/RCA On CTRL, SZA offers a rare thing: a millennial black woman’s coming-of-age story. It could’ve been a movie but instead, it’s a collection of songs that have the hyper-specificity of a group chat. Her experiences—and her listeners’—are all here: bad jobs, stoned Netflix binges, time-sharing men, late-night tacos, and being horny, sad, elated, messy, self-destructive, self-sufficient. She sings with pathos in every creak of her voice, catharsis in every sigh. She’s emotionally generous and wise, an Erykah Badu for people who spend entirely too much time on dating apps. SZA packages up all of these feelings into an album that’s deceptively musically and technically masterful. She takes R&B to unexpected places, with composition so eccentric it becomes inimitable (as anyone who has tried to belt along her vocal runs knows). It took her a long time to release CTRL—derailed by label politics, three totally different versions existed before this one emerged. Because of that, maybe, the album is such an accurate soundscape of the false starts, rough drafts, and dashed expectations of growing out of your twenties. –Allison P. Davis",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/sza/ctrl | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/ctrl/1239976329?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F74778333%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bad504bc65100086999b7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/SZA-The-Weekend.jpg,/dataset/artwork/SZA-CTRL_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,23,Kacey Musgraves,Golden Hour (2018),MCA Nashvillle,"MCA Nashvillle With Golden Hour, Kacey Musgraves burst the country music bubble, welcoming a rainbow of humanity to join her rousing chorus of “when I say yee, you saw haw.” Her third record draws on pop and country sensibilities to document falling in love—and staying there—with remarkable clarity and a lingering sense of wonder. A noted fan of story songs, Musgraves knows that sometimes, the story is as simple as how flowers look on the walk to the bar. On an album accessorized with disco beats and vocoder trills, even vibe-harshing characters like the know-it-all boor of “High Horse” get the glitterbomb treatment. There are pangs of anxiety, too—fear that the glow will fade, or that faraway family will slip out of reach—but they only make Musgraves’ bliss more believable, and the satisfaction sweeter. –Olivia Horn",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/kacey-musgraves/golden-hour | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/golden-hour/1440918116?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F86330313%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a8c718699b30008f1aee5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kacey-Musgraves-Slow-Burn.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kacey_Musgraves-Golden_Hour_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,22,Destroyer,Kaputt (2011),Merge/Dead Oceans,"Merge/Dead Oceans Dan Bejar made a masterpiece out of a comedown, a glassy-eyed look at a world starting to collapse. The dyspeptic indie rock of Destroyer’s past is smoothed with soft-rock saxophones and New Age synths, topped by Bejar’s louche vocals (recorded as he laid supine on a couch). The atmosphere was so lazy that Bejar could hardly be bothered to bring his tongue to his teeth to voice a “th” sound; as a result, he exquisitely “summed sroo the books on your shelf.” Underneath the listless arrangements, Bejar settles into his bon vivant character. He’s music’s Oscar Wilde, staring up at the stars from the gutter while rattling off his favorite UK music mags and “chasing cocaine through the back rooms of the world all night.” The mood all drains into the final track, “Bay of Pigs (Detail),” a 11-minute monologue delivered from a dock to the ocean. Tossed-off epiphanies (“the world’s just bones”) swirl into big thoughts and little memories. Underneath Bejar’s prose lurks the tides of death, love, and some great or terrible occasion just on the horizon. “As apocalypses go that’s pretty good, sh-la-la, wouldn’t you say?” he sings, careless and preoccupied. Nero fiddled; Bejar chilled. –Jeremy D. Larson",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/destroyer/kaputt | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/kaputt/412955678?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Fartist%252F3566018%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d790b2cfd34990009cf8d12/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Destroyer-Chinatown.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Destroyer-Kaputt_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,21,Beach House,Teen Dream (2010),Sub Pop,"Sub Pop Beach House are nothing if not devoted to a mood. On their first two records, that atmosphere was one of lo-fi wistfulness, but on Teen Dream, the Baltimore duo amplified their dream pop to the logical next step: grandiose, sweeping songs that are more My Bloody Valentine than Mazzy Star. It’s the sound of a band pulling back the veil of composure and unleashing the emotional intensity that has long been bubbling beneath the surface. Teen Dream is less an ode to adolescent nostalgia as it is a tribute to a lost feeling of passion: With Alex Scally’s guitar swelling to imperial heights and Victoria Legrand’s voice reaching new depths, euphoria bursts from every note. As Legrand chants “it is happening again” on “Silver Soul,” the urgency of her voice commands you to hold on tight to this rapture for as long as you can, because losing it would be devastating. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/beach-house/teen-dream-9ea23969-cffe-4ec1-9b00-efe7a0045259 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/teen-dream/349535407?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F35091034%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bf99453e80c0008f43b2f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Beach-House-Teen-Dream.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beach_House-Teen_Dream_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,20,DJ Rashad,Double Cup (2013),Hyperdub,"Hyperdub DJ Rashad was a singular genius and one of footwork’s architects, who shared credit for this unselfishly with other members of his inimitable Teklife crew. He was someone who was there at the beginning but unafraid of the future, and Double Cup is a genre-defining masterpiece because he wasn’t afraid to tweak the genre’s DNA. It’s warm but alien, brutal but weightless; it has all the requisite, trance-like repetition fit for dancing without the stench of pretense or academia. It melts the long history of Chicago house into the glossiest bits of pop-rap, the athletic feats of juke into the warmth and soul of the city’s R&B. It has all the jaggedness of something stitched together by hand but none of the attendant imperfections. It moans and whimpers and bludgeons and exhales, all in perfect time. You can practically hear Double Cup sweat. –Paul A. Thompson",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/dj-rashad-6e83686e-4ac1-4765-8e84-3f6a69f45133/double-cup-04f6143a-5131-49f5-bab8-b9ee423a820c | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/double-cup/897998509?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F32389180%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6537c9dfd6794e741ed8e3d0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/DJ-Rashad-Double-Cup.jpg,/dataset/artwork/DJ_Rashad-Double_Cup_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,19,Lana Del Rey,Norman Fucking Rockwell! (2019),Polydor/Interscope,"Polydor/Interscope Norman Fucking Rockwell!, Lana Del Rey’s fifth and finest album, begins with a breakup and ends with self-affirmation and hope. In between, she takes on wide-lens topics—climate change, gun violence, depression, death—with effortless cool. (She even manages to seamlessly fit in a Sublime cover.) Her indelible pop melodies are strung together with the grace of a tragic ballet. Lana worked on the record with Jack Antonoff, a producer known for encouraging pop artists to indulge their most theatrical, bombastic sides. Del Rey, however, encourages a more somber atmosphere, defined by muted piano, acoustic guitars, and layered harmonies that pair with her angsty, existential stories—’70s in spirit and ’90s in frame of mind, to paraphrase a lyric. If Lana’s music once sounded like a collage of her heroes’ greatest hits, then here is where she lapsed into her own language entirely. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/lana-del-rey/nfr | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/norman-f-g-rockwell/1474669063?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F116099819%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7945c94bc651000869973f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lana-Del-Rey-The-Greatest.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lana_Del_Rey-Norman_Fucking_Rockwell_2019.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,18,Kendrick Lamar,"good kid, m.A.A.d. city (2012)",Aftermath/Interscope/Top Dawg,"Aftermath/Interscope/Top Dawg On his major-label debut, Kendrick Lamar rapped like he’d been holding a breath his whole life, and when he exhaled, everything came out: his troubled and reverent relationship to West Coast gangsta rap; the horrors and comforts of his adolescence; his mother and father, and Uncle Tony, whom he watched get shot at a burger stand; walking back from Bible study and gang-banging; the nameless souls who died asking only that Kendrick sing about them. Somehow, despite all of these harrowing details, you can play good kid, m.A.A.d. city at parties, drinking to its songs about the perils of drinking. It is a morality play that resists easy lessons, a sermon that embraces pleasure. Every autobiographical rap album that came after it walks in part in its footsteps. –Jayson Greene",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/kendrick-lamar/good-kid-m-a-a-d-city-25825fd0-ef49-46ba-b9a8-22ed1df92f7e | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/good-kid-m-a-a-d-city-deluxe-version/1440818890?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F35470507%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d8901df1f868e00096102c2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kendrick-Lamar-good-kid-maad-city.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kendrick_Lamar-good_kid_mAAd_city_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,17,Sufjan Stevens,Carrie & Lowell (2015),Asthmatic Kitty,"Asthmatic Kitty Named after Sufjan Stevens’ late mother and stepfather, Carrie & Lowell exists beyond the realm of typical singer-songwriter fare, with intimate silences and details that feel like a true tour through one man’s memories. Compared to the decade’s other creative-nonfiction-folk landmarks—Sun Kil Moon’s Benji and Mount Eerie’s A Crow Looked at Me—the songs on Carrie & Lowell rarely take place in the present tense. Instead, Stevens blends his childhood and future, his fantasies and traumas, his loved ones and tormentors, into a record where unromantic confessions (“You checked your texts while I masturbated”) blend into the universal (“We’re all gonna die”). It makes his personal history feel almost allegorical, and even more powerful for it. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/sufjan-stevens/carrie-lowell | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/carrie-lowell/955572616?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F43560103%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d8902230480b10008ffa25c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sufjan-Stevens-Carrie-and-Lowell.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sufjan_Stevens-Carrie__Lowell_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,16,Joanna Newsom,Have One on Me (2010),Drag City,"Drag City Joanna Newsom has called Have One on Me her “early ’70s California singer-songwriter album”—and indeed, there are implicit references to Joni Mitchell and the smooth, layered arrangements of Laurel Canyon in centerpieces like “In California” and “Good Intentions Paving Co.” Her songwriting, newly direct here, often concerns falling in and out of love, drinking and dancing, leaving home and coming back. Among the most beautiful ballads in her catalog, “Baby Birch” pairs her harp with electric guitar to stark, almost confessional effect; it’s the rare Newsom composition that could be drawn from the traditional American songbook. As the follow-up to 2006’s wildly ambitious Ys, even just the barroom title of Have One on Me seems to signal a more earthbound turn from a harpist who often composes with a full orchestra in mind. But through these songs, Newsom’s greatest asset remains the cosmic grandeur she brings to even the most familiar scenes. “You give love a little shove and it becomes terror,” she sings on “Soft as Chalk,” a quiet warning from a songwriter known to dissect the simplest truths until they turn mystical and strange. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/have-one-on-me/354800970?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F86403168%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d823b4c43566d0008bed8c3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Joanna-Newsom-Good-Intentions.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Joanna_Newsom-Have_One_on_Me_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,15,Kanye West,Yeezus (2013),Def Jam,"Def Jam It’s hard to listen to Yeezus and not think of its caustic opening squelch as the definitive moment when New Kanye was born. As that gurgly, disorienting sound pulses and convulses for 15 seconds, it feels like a laser is cutting a hole through spacetime. Kanye emerges from this portal as confident as ever, but he sounds angrier, uglier. His rapping is crude and labored; the rhymes are vulgar and the images are incendiary. Soul—the fulcrum of his past music, in design and affect—is supplanted by bitter, horny electricity. It feels as if Skynet sent a Terminator back in time exclusively to hip-thrust and shout obscenities in the town square. In 2013, the theater of Kanye scorching his public image was already a familiar show, but Yeezus felt like a plot twist because of its intensity. From the writing to the producing to the mixing, Kanye and his corps of writers and producers insist on provocation. The lyrics repurpose loaded terms like “god,” “slave,” and “apartheid” for relationship drama and petty screeds. Stripped down by executive producer Rick Rubin, the sound bed is just as bristling: the low-end hits like a tsunami, verses spazz into glitchy screams, wormholes to the chipmunk soul of Old Kanye materialize then blip out, digital effects swirl and explode like fireworks. The combination of these constant spasms and Kanye’s aggrandizement make the record feel like a toxic rager, but look closely and there’s a grace to its motion, an elegance to its seizures. The house, industrial, and drill influences he draws from are brandished as weapons but put to use as tools, sanding all this rage into music that is as slick as it is prickly. New Kanye, same old grandiose vision. –Stephen Kearse",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/yeezus/1440873068?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F20753857%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d702a3413ff690008c6eeed/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kanye-West-Blood-on-the-Leaves.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kanye_West-Yeezus_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,14,Lorde,Melodrama (2017),Universal,"Universal What do you do when your debut album, a goth-pop account of life as a teenage outsider in suburban New Zealand, turns you into a global superstar and generational icon at the age of 16, paving the way for a new wave of awkward, self-conscious pop disruptors to follow in your footsteps? You move to New York, hunker down in the studio with Jack Antonoff, and record, to date, this century’s greatest album-length exploration of the messy transition from teendom to adulthood. You capture heartbreak, hedonism, and the perils of fame with pointillistic detail. You eviscerate your ex and celebrate new love with enough gut-punching lines to launch a thousand Tumblr posts. You perform in a wedding dress on Saturday Night Live. You review onion rings on a secret Instagram account. You wait for the rest of the world to catch up. –Amy Phillips",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/lorde/melodrama | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/melodrama/1429662346?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F74892041%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d8904320480b10008ffa260/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lorde-Melodrama.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Lorde-Melodrama_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,13,Drake,Take Care (2011),Cash Money/Young Money/Republic,"Cash Money/Young Money/Republic Take Care’s album cover shows Drake, alone in the VIP, with little more than the cup that makes the Nazi’s head implode at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade for company. It is a perfect vacuum, where no subtlety can find breathable air; he may as well have named the album RICH GUY ENNUI, but damn if he didn’t earn his ludicrousness. So Far Gone was the breakthrough mixtape; Thank Me Later was the hype-fulfilling proper debut. Take Care went weirder, longer, deeper. The lushness and the sincerity flow forth from the first seconds of “Over My Dead Body”—the piano frills! the self-regarding unburdening!—and never stop. Even the hits are plaintive; a song as big as “HYFR” should have no right to be that earnest. On “Marvins Room,” quite possibly still the definitive Drake song, we get pitch-perfect generational oversharing: “Having a hard time adjusting to fame,” he actually says out loud. It’s strange to put on old Drake at a public function. One of the many Rules of Drake is “There Is Always New Drake.” That’s not to say his machine-like industriousness makes his old stuff obsolete. The new bangers are for everyone, so the classics become more intimate. Close the doors, pop on your headphones. This is him talking to you now. –Amos Barshad",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/drake/take-care-8a567e26-6a08-42e6-8e25-ffbc39ff8f99 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/take-care-deluxe-version/1440642493?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F14234315%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d8903d021339a000839699a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Drake-Take-Care.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Drake-Take_Care_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,12,Rihanna,ANTI (2016),Roc Nation/Westbury Road,"Roc Nation/Westbury Road With ANTI, Rihanna hopped off of the factory line, destroyed the mind-control machine, added some salt to the cafeteria’s chicken. She took risks and freed herself from mainstream pop expectations, cementing herself as a risk-taking, boundary-breaking godhead. Her eighth album moves from jarring, atonal rock to lackadaisical dancehall before switching up into sultry, sex-positive R&B. She bounces into a stoned torch song in which she’s all but crooning on top of a piano before, whiplash: a weird but brilliantly faithful cover of Tame Impala’s “New Person, Same Old Mistakes,” just because she can. Every left turn is delivered with her inimitable attitude and empowerment; every shrugged decision leads to a fascinating new journey. Upon ANTI’s release, the New York Times called it the “record you make when you don’t need to sell records” but, really, it’s the album Rihanna made when she no longer had to sell Rihanna. When it was released, she was enjoying the most freedom yet in her career: She’d been through her Saturn return, she’d swerved Drake, she’d jumped from Def Jam to Roc Nation and started her own imprint there. She’d acquired the masters of all the songs she’d recorded at Def Jam and was fully independent. She was ennobled to take a big, ambitious swing that could have broken at the seams, yet ANTI proved her modern rewriting of that old adage: Freedom’s just another word for no fucks left to give. –Allison P. Davis",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/rihanna/anti-146d4e95-dfc3-4346-87fb-56f89f0eda0b | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/anti-deluxe/1440933869?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F56681092%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d8905f35d366d000838ce6c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Rihanna-ANTI.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rihanna-ANTI_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,11,Grimes,Art Angels (2015),4AD,"4AD Grimes is a producer, a provocateur, a punk—and, yes, a pop star. By her own estimation, pop is “music that seeks to hit the pleasure center,” and Art Angels, replete with surging dance beats and saccharine girl-gang vocals, undeniably fits the bill. But on Claire Boucher’s fourth album, her pleasure comes cut with danger. Shrieks and snarls burn holes through the aptly named “SCREAM;” in one distinctive visual, she knifes herself and smears blood across her face; on “California,” a lyric about “commodifying all the pain” points to the sinister capitalist underpinnings of the entire pop enterprise. Along with mussing up pop’s slick surface with a generous coating of gore, on Art Angels, Boucher conspicuously styles herself as an auteur, challenging the notion that pop’s frontwomen are seen but not really heard without a cadre of industry men behind them. If such women are the product of a “pop star mold,” Grimes has left that mold noticeably warped. –Olivia Horn",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/grimes/art-angels | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/art-angels/1051022913?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F53699960%5D%5D | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tv9YoYCKNoE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d8904bc21339a000839699c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Grimes-Art-Angels.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Grimes-Art_Angels_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,10,Frank Ocean,Channel Orange (2012),Def Jam,"Def Jam Christopher Breaux began the decade as a recent transplant to Los Angeles who’d written a few minor songs for Justin Bieber and Brandy. He will end it as Frank Ocean, not just one of the most acclaimed musicians of his time but a trailblazer for artists’ autonomy and their freedom to express their sexuality. His legacy on the former was secured when he delivered one album to Def Jam and sold another immediately to Apple. The latter came years earlier when he published an open letter on Tumblr in which he came out as queer, one of the first men in R&B and rap to do so. But the album that accompanied that letter, Channel Orange, was not crafted to echo what ended up becoming a major cultural moment. Instead, Ocean’s studio debut is an unassuming, languid record; its drums shuffle along softly, cushioning Ocean's weightless vocals. It’s queer, too, in its own pure, nascent way: Across the span of an hour, Ocean slips into different narrative roles, including father, trust-funder, drug addict, Egyptian king, rock star. The act of inhabiting someone you are not is inherent to the queer experience; after all, pretending to be straight is nothing if not the assumption of a persona. Perhaps this informs Ocean’s richly observed characters, especially the subversive closer: On “Forrest Gump,” Ocean imagines himself within that movie’s universe, cheering on the well-meaning galoot playing running back. He sings of his fingertips and lips burning as he chain-smokes through his nerves, ending with a lilting outro—“Forrest green, Forrest blues/I’m remembering you/If this is love, I know it’s true/I won’t forget you”—that captures the peculiar, melancholic longing of the closet. His tenderness is unforgettable; even the second half of “Pyramids,” told from a pimp’s perspective, foregrounds the humanity of the woman who works for him. Channel Orange, above all, suggests the work of a profound empath, and in the seven years since its release, Ocean has shown himself to be nothing if not that. –Jordan Sargent",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/frank-ocean/channel-orange | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/channel-orange/1440760117?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F35181031%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d89085ed118d20008aff3df/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Frank-Ocean-Channel-Orange.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Frank_Ocean-Channel_Orange_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,9,D’Angelo & the Vanguard,Black Messiah (2014),RCA,"RCA After he released 2000’s steamy soul classic Voodoo, D’Angelo went into freefall, reeling from addiction, a near-fatal car crash, and the deleterious psychological consequences of starring in the thirst-trap video for “Untitled (How Does It Feel).” Black Messiah served as evidence that his decade-and-a-half sabbatical also brought about creative maturation. Played by the Vanguard band, the album’s painstakingly crafted R&B fusion veers from the twitchy groove of “Ain’t That Easy” to the Pointer Sisters-ish jazz-bop of “Sugah Daddy” to the delicate guitar balladry of “Really Love.” D’Angelo’s muffled falsetto obscures the lyrics of songs like “1000 Deaths” and “The Charade,” but on those tracks, he wades deep into issues like police brutality, putting the album in conversation with Kendrick Lamar’s activist classic To Pimp a Butterfly and the era’s #BlackLivesMatter concerns. Like one of those rare, exotic plants that only blooms every decade, D’Angelo only seems to gift us with a new album once a generation or two. But he always feels right on time. –Jason King",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/d-angelo-d9fb77d0-26c1-4144-8880-a4ea66056e8c/black-messiah | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/black-messiah/950764300?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F38967096%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d8902e20480b10008ffa25e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/DAngelo-Black-Messiah.jpg,/dataset/artwork/DAngelo__the_Vanguard-Black_Messiah_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,8,Robyn,Body Talk (2010),Interscope/Konichiwa/Cherrytree,"Interscope/Konichiwa/Cherrytree In 2010, Robyn rebooted. Five years after founding her own label and securing the artistic freedom she never had as a bubblegum-pop teen icon, the Swedish singer announced an ambitious plan to release three mini-albums in one year, recording and touring simultaneously to fund her efforts. The gamble paid off: Body Talk, the compilation of those releases, distills love, loneliness, and dancefloor euphoria into electro-pop perfection. Its legacy transcends just being a stellar record: Body Talk is the mark of a singular artist claiming her future. Body Talk reintroduces Robyn as an innovator and a powerhouse, as well as a woman with complexities to celebrate. She’s a hyper-optimized fembot rebelling against societal expectations; she’s a globetrotting badass you should know not to fuck with; she’s indestructible. These 15 songs surge forward with pulsating four-to-the-floor breakdowns, disco sparkles, and glitchy techno earworms (most produced by Klas Åhlund). But beneath Body Talk’s metallic armor is vulnerability: Robyn is an outsider seeking salvation on the dancefloor, who uses this space to spark the fire inside her. “Don’t you know when nothing ever seem to make sense/You put your dancing shoes on and do it again,” she proclaims on “In My Eyes.” A current of self-assuredness runs beneath Body Talk, even in its loneliest moments. The record’s two life-affirming hits, “Dancing on My Own” and “Call Your Girlfriend,” are vivid portrayals of heartache told from two sides of the same coin. In the former, she is brokenhearted but resilient, dancing her pain away at a nightclub among “stilettos and broken bottles.” In the latter, she is the one crushing hearts as she instructs her lover on how to ditch his girlfriend, imploring him to treat her with the respect and kindness she deserves. Robyn’s strength and empathy inspired a new generation of pop artists, from Carly Rae Jepsen to Perfume Genius, and the escapism her music offers is just as generous: Every song on Body Talk is an invitation to transform your own pain into triumph. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/robyn/body-talk | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/body-talk/1440714879?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F35613356%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d8906f75d366d000838ce70/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Robyn-Body-Talk.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Robyn-Body_Talk_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,7,Vampire Weekend,Modern Vampires of the City (2013),XL,"XL Modern Vampires of the City was the moment when Vampire Weekend stopped knowing everything. Ezra Koenig turned his gaze from mansard roofs and diplomats’ children to wonder aloud about God and the nature of existence. Rostam Batmanglij, now working with producer Ariel Rechtshaid, crafted his most sentimental, stirring music yet. “If I can’t trust you then dammit, Hannah/There’s no future, there’s no answer,” Koenig sings softly on “Hannah Hunt,” interrogating a relationship in novelistic detail, winking toward hopelessness while suggesting that all the universe’s truths can be contained in a single love affair. Later, on “Ya Hey,” Koenig confronts God, asking how He could remain silent in a rotten world. Again, he seems to know the answer: There’s never an answer. –Matthew Strauss",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/vampire-weekend/modern-vampires | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/modern-vampires-of-the-city/613184430?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F20420782%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d88eb1d1f868e00096102b6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Vampire-Weekend-Hannah-Hunt.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Vampire_Weekend-Modern_Vampires_of_the_City_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,6,Solange,A Seat at the Table (2016),Columbia,"Columbia Every artist hopes to capture the zeitgeist, to make the right record at the right time. Yet only a handful can claim to have given voice to a movement, as Solange did with A Seat at the Table. At once deeply personal and unapologetically political, the album offers an honest reflection on race and identity in America in the twilight of the Obama era. The album’s rousing message of black empowerment is set forth in no uncertain terms on “F.U.B.U.”—For us, this shit is for us—and feels more urgent than ever as we approach the end of this tumultuous decade. More than just rage against the system, though, there’s a life-affirming joy in A Seat at the Table. On tracks like “Weary” and “Don’t Touch My Hair,” Solange rises above the insidious slights that come with moving through the world as a black woman, soaring toward a higher creative and emotional plane. That spiritual levity is buoyed by a series of conversational interludes, soul-bearing monologues from the singer’s friends and family. As Solange’s mother, Tina Knowles, opines, “It’s such beauty in black people.” –Chioma Nnadi",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/solange/a-seat-at-the-table-5b35d36f-7aae-42fe-a9bc-a33a293c618d | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/a-seat-at-the-table/1159507212?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F65425616%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d88f7d70480b10008ffa253/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Solange-Cranes-in-the-Sky.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Solange-A_Seat_at_the_Table_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,5,Fiona Apple,The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do (2012),Epic,"Epic With seven years between 2005’s Extraordinary Machine and The Idler Wheel, patience became a core tenet of Fiona Apple fandom. Even still, it’s hard to say anyone was prepared for the tempest that is this album. Apple’s fourth record and only release of this decade contains her most incisive, clear-eyed, and ambitiously sparse songs to date. Her smoky, operatic alto is a beacon for roving inner monologues on self-acceptance in the face of sadness and pain, whether offering wholehearted generosity in the face of a breakup on “Werewolf” or attempting to decelerate the rapid-fire pace of an overactive mind on “Every Single Night.” Here, she relies on her piano as a powerful duet partner, with winding melodies rambling amid many clattering instruments. Much of Idler Wheel is consumed by a sense of isolation, but as always, in Apple’s hands, it transforms into a salve for those of us who just want to feel everything we possibly can. –Eric Torres",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/idler-wheel-is-wiser-than-driver-screw-whipping-cords/1462213924?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F35290143%5D%5D | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIlLq4BqGdg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d89031bf452640008e4ee9b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Fiona-Apple-The-Idler-Wheel.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fiona_Apple-The_Idler_Wheel_Is_Wiser_Than_the_Driver_of_the_Screw_and_Whipping_Cords_Will_Serve_You_More_Than_Ropes_Will_Ever_Do_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,4,Kendrick Lamar,To Pimp a Butterfly (2015),Aftermath/Interscope/Top Dawg,"Aftermath/Interscope/Top Dawg When Kendrick Lamar released his third studio album, To Pimp a Butterfly, he spoke about the title’s contrast between a butterfly—delicate, bright, free—and “pimp”: a word that hearkens aggression, deviance, and exploitation. The album itself is a dance between this dichotomy, one black Americans know all too well: between pain and beauty and what happens when one is informed by the other. Lamar invites us to Compton to watch him sermonize from his front porch while jazz, funk, and soul bands rove through, providing the melodies to his experimental beats. With assists from Kamasi Washington, Thundercat, the Isley Brothers, and George Clinton, he shows the range and harmony of black creativity; with his sharp and empathetic lyrics, he gives us the playfulness and joy of “King Kunta,” the frustration and didacticism of “The Blacker the Berry,” and the plain hope of “Alright.” There’s music made by black people and then there’s black music: songs that hit you in the chest and make their way into your bloodstream, that become part of you. TPAB was released in the spring of 2015, three years after Trayvon Martin was gunned down, and over a year after Michael Brown and Eric Garner were murdered; Lamar knew that pain and knew, too, that more was to come. But with this album, he steeled us against the future and gave us not just anthems but prayers. He gave us the album he knew we’d need to keep going, as we always have. –Kara Brown",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/kendrick-lamar/to-pimp-a-butterfly | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/to-pimp-a-butterfly/1440828886?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F43732748%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d88fd1d09b36e0009899f3e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kendrick-Lamar-Alright.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kendrick_Lamar-To_Pimp_a_Butterfly_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,3,Beyoncé,Beyoncé (2013),Columbia,"Columbia “We be all night,” Beyoncé proclaimed on “Drunk in Love,” the most meme-ready track on her self-titled album. She was singing about riding her husband’s big body like a surfboardt, but she may as well have been referring to the way listeners gulped down Beyoncé, which dropped at midnight on a Thursday and seemed to envelop all of social media into the dawn hours while also revolutionizing how albums are conceived and released. The first major pop album to adapt to the way we listen to, and watch, music in the YouTube age, her first “visual album” couldn’t have worked if it weren’t Beyoncé at her absolute best. Over 14 tracks, she peels through her exhaustive musical vocabulary: married-woman trap bangers, ’80s-influenced roller-rink jams, grown-ass R&B, burlesque backseat scores, contemporary blues ballads. And then there was “Flawless,” which sampled Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s 2012 TEDX talk and helped establish Beyoncé as a fierce interpreter and purveyor of black feminist thought for the pop masses. It’s difficult to understate how enduringly Beyoncé shifted culture (“I woke up like this!”), reasserting the artist as a full-spectrum visionary who was also dreaming up the future, invigorating the industry, maturing in her marriage, and blossoming into first-time motherhood. There is no doubt we’ll still be discussing it for decades to come. –Julianne Escobedo Shepherd",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/beyonce/beyonce-45443330-666e-44be-b456-13ad69f81403 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/beyonc%C3%A9/939783754?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F37936030%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d89069e5d366d000838ce6e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Beyonce%25CC%2581-Beyonce%25CC%2581.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beyonc-Beyonc_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,2,Kanye West,My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010),Def Jam/Roc-A-Fella,"Def Jam/Roc-A-Fella The sheer audacity of Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is matched only by its overwhelming appetite. Born in a period of strife amid self-imposed exile, during a near-mythic island summit of rap superfriends in Hawaii, MBDTF is an exercise in God-level debauchery. It is at turns baroque and symphonic, with song-length Auto-Tuned codas, posse-cut performances that redefined the form, and an immense phantasmagoria of light and sound that threatens to overshadow its A-list cameos. It was a creation that accurately reflected West’s massive ego, in a period of rare bruising: By 2010, he’d drunkenly antagonized Taylor Swift, symbol of All-American sweetness, and been called a jackass by a sitting president. But instead of apologizing, Kanye conjured a warped, all-encompassing vision of excess, a toast to the assholes, a battle cry for fellow monsters. It was a huge risk that proved not just redemptive but deifying. MBDTF’s songs are meticulously designed set-pieces that ably house all their drama. West goes bar-for-bar with Raekwon on “Gorgeous,” leveling some of his sharpest critiques of race, class, and rap iconography, only moments after pairing beatmaking legends RZA and No I.D. together on an epic deserving of an opera house. The endearing douchebag anthem “Runaway” stripped Kanye of any remaining pretense, his singing bald and honest, and reintroduced Pusha T as his attack dog. With the industry in flux and rap sales lagging, the new landscape began to take shape in My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy’s wake. It spearheaded the first wave of great albums produced this decade; the two biggest rappers of the next generation, Drake and Kendrick Lamar, followed Kanye’s lead overtly on their breakthrough records. Bon Iver’s profile was exponentially boosted by this album. Pusha and Nicki Minaj aren’t really Pusha and Nicki Minaj without it. And for Kanye, MBDTF remains the most pristine jewel in a collection of rare artifacts—a perfectionist’s brush with perfection. –Sheldon Pearce",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/kanye-west/my-beautiful-dark-twisted-fantasy-b915ce78-8cc9-47a5-b4ff-915ea54f25a1 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/my-beautiful-dark-twisted-fantasy/1440742903?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F4875681%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d890641d118d20008aff3dd/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kanye-West-MBDTF.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kanye_West-My_Beautiful_Dark_Twisted_Fantasy_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,1,Frank Ocean,Blonde (2016),Self-released,"Self-released In 2016, the hinge year of a grotesque age, Frank Ocean’s cars were his confessional booths. They included a white Ferrari and a BMW X6; the Bugatti “left some stretch marks on the freeway,” as he remembers listlessly. To Ocean, the car is an Americana icon of certain ideals: freedom that turns solipsistic and reckless; materialism we worship as artistry; barrel-chested masculinity, queered on backroads. Above all, transience. Frank Ocean is the hinge artist of our time, the true voice of a generation because he takes long silences. With Blonde and its attendant works, his Boys Don’t Cry zine and Endless, he took his time building his staircase to somewhere. Elusive and independent, he weaves from genre to genre, sometimes shifting gears to obliterate category altogether, as he cruises past the conventions the culture still fears to let go. On Blonde, the languid guitar of surf rock coexists with soft doo-wop melodies; Frank the rapper—who is heady and occasionally, knowingly vulgar—coincides with Frank the singer, who is plaintive and longing. Sometimes, he just talks rhythmically, like in “Nights.” “Futura Free,” the triptych anchor of Blonde, moves from midtempo to atmospheric synth to a clanging guitar solo. The impressionistic lyrics mirror the feeling of wanting to disappear, for a spell: “Breathe till I evaporated/My whole body see through.” Songs evaporate on Blonde, too: they’re hazed, minimalist, capricious. The sweet, airy strum of “Pink + White” is hardened by its last few seconds, as we hear birds swarm. So, too, in “Ivy,” which starts off a masterpiece of cinematic lovesickness and then warps at its tail-end, ceding to a clang of instruments. The slight touches of distortion on Blonde call attention to impermanence, the trap of artifice, and, distantly, death. But Ocean is never sanctimonious; the whole point of existence is that a dark musing on morality can—and should—be interrupted by soft flesh, a sticky plant, a designer shirt. Live a little. Live too much. Because he is a writer first, he kinks his voice to suit his characters and his stories: On his cover of Stevie Wonder’s “Close to You,” a song about the fear of solitude, he multiplies and increases. On “Seigfried,” as he considers settling down for “two kids and a swimming pool,” his warble is warm, fragile, and resigned; then he almost shrieks, “I’m not brave!” It is an ache, a primal tearing of a social contract each generation learns is a lie. The year 2016 crystallized the political disaster right under the surface. People theorized that we needed anthems to get us through the dark night. Big choruses, hooks as wide as highway signs, regular percussion that could gird us from chaos. But our mood was languorous; jingoism was the problem in the first place. We wanted the blurred, the softened, the existential. “Inhale, in hell, there’s heaven,” Ocean sings on “Solo,” capturing the whiplash experience of being young in this country in one line. Blonde is one synonym for American. –Doreen St. Félix",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/blonde/1146195596?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F65484188%5D%5D | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHGqsnsuA3c,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d8907371f868e00096102c5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Frank-Ocean-Blonde.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Frank_Ocean-Blonde_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,200,Avicii,“Levels” (2011),Universal,"Universal As sampled in Avicii’s “Levels,” Etta James’ relatively modest claim that “Oh, sometimes I get a good feeling” felt impossibly aspirational for a generation of entry-level millennials dumped into an indifferent economy. In 2011, good feelings were rare and expensive, but it was possible to get one for free via a sparkling EDM hook. “Levels,” with its monumental synths and jetstream whooshes, took that potential and conquered the world with it. In hindsight, its sheer scale still feels staggering, but there’s a sinister undertone to it. Tim Bergling, who took his own life in 2018, at age 28, got his stage name from Avici, the hell-like realm in Buddhism where dead sinners are reborn. There is something punishing about “Levels,” which, like the office drone pushing a boulder up a mountain in its music video, seems to climb and climb without actually going anywhere, an illusion of transcendence that’s actually just plain old limbo. Electronic pop music of the early 2010s, from “Harlem Shake” to “Turn Down for What,” was punctuated by images of people in their boring jobs and dumpy apartments exploding into uncontrollable, spasmodic dancing—half joyful release, half exorcism. “Levels” is the sound of a generation hell-bent on having a good feeling, reality be damned. –Emily Yoshida",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ovdm2yX4MA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d6fdbf4b349080008010001/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Avicii-Levels.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Avicii-Levels_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,199,Stormzy,“Big for Your Boots” (2017),#Merky,"#Merky Before he was a world-famous MC, Stormzy got his start uploading DIY freestyle videos in which he spit nonstop bars over hard-edged grime beats in streets and parks near his South London home. So it makes sense that the knockout track from his eclectic debut album, Gang Signs & Prayer, simply showcases his high-octane rapping and palpable charisma over a jagged instrumental, proving that he deserves to take a seat next to grime greats like Dizzee Rascal and Wiley. On “Big for Your Boots,” Stormzy fires off a barrage of disses directed at his enemies and rap rivals. “You’re getting way too big for your boots/You’re never too big for my boot,” he raps in the chorus, emphasizing the last syllable with maniacal glee. Considering the fact that he’s 6-foot-5 and wears a size 12 shoe, any detractors would be wise to heed his warning. –Michelle Kim",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqQGUJK7Na4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d6fdb022409b8000823ce40/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Stormzy-Big-for-Your-Boots.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Stormzy-Big_for_Your_Boots_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,198,dvsn,“The Line” (2016),Self-released,"Self-released It's not explicitly about God, but the debut single from singer Daniel Daley and producer Nineteen85—better known as dvsn—is some kind of gospel, particularly if you consider falling in love to be a religious experience. Arriving the year before mainstream hip-hop reclaimed gospel via Chance the Rapper's Coloring Book and Kanye West’s “Ultralight Beam,” “The Line” has Daley showing off a preacher’s sense of mesmerizing repetition as he fills the song’s skeletal framework with melisma capable of stretching moments into eternities. By the time the choir hits about halfway into this epic slow jam, dvsn’s romantic redemption is secured. –Rich Juzwiak",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFbK3bJW54Y,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d6fdc66b6cdc300086117de/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/dvsn-The-Line.jpg,/dataset/artwork/dvsn-The_Line_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,197,Icona Pop,“I Love It” [ft. Charli XCX] (2012),Record Company Ten/Big Beat Records,"Record Company Ten/Big Beat Records Manic and apathetic at once, “I Love It” is a perfect display of post-breakup hedonism, written over a drop that keeps on dropping. Penned by then-upstart Charli XCX, it was delivered to Swedish twosome Icona Pop by the producer Patrik Berger, whose credits include Robyn’s similarly anthemic “Dancing on My Own”—though the duo differentiate their electropop catharsis by adding an edge of vengeance. Turn the bass up enough, Icona Pop suggest, and it can drown out the throbbing of your broken heart. –Olivia Horn",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxxajLWwzqY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d6fd8b06136e40008cfb25d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Icona-Pop-I-Love-It.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Icona_Pop-I_Love_It_ft_Charli_XCX_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,196,John Maus,“Believer” (2011),Ribbon Music/Upset the Rhythm,"Ribbon Music/Upset the Rhythm Like many of his lo-fi pop contemporaries in the early ’10s, reclusive Midwesterner John Maus pushed underground music forward by looking backward—rejecting digital studio techniques in favor of old drum machines and wonky synths, excavating the dramatic excesses of ’80s stadium pop and sentimental radio jingles as though they held clues to some hard-to-pinpoint generational subconscious. But his actual relationship to such sources could be hard to read: Was Maus poking fun at music’s power to manufacture an emotional response, like when we find ourselves crying in the middle of a commercial, or celebrating its potential to offer us a fleeting moment of ecstasy, a glimpse of a world that is better than our own? Arriving at the end of 2011’s We Must Be the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves with the cathartic finality of perfectly curated exit music, this song—with its glittering harpsichord arpeggios, briskly pulsing bass, and grandiose allusions to borderless love—is the closest Maus has ever come to being a true believer. –Emilie Friedlander",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMku-GbafEg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d6fdd8bb349080008010003/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/John-Maus-Believer.jpg,/dataset/artwork/John_Maus-Believer_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,195,Cloud Nothings,“I’m Not Part of Me” (2014),Carpark,"Carpark Out of the glut of lo-fi pop-punkers who emerged at the turn of the decade, Cloud Nothings frontman Dylan Baldi was the only one who got nastier with age. At the dead center of the band’s catalog lies “I’m Not Part of Me,” a song where Baldi lets all of his seemingly unworkable contradictions fight themselves into an exhausted standstill while tossing out an album’s worth of hooks in less than five minutes. It’s an insular type of empowering breakup song: “I’m not, I’m not you/You’re a part of me,” Baldi howls, a compact mantra for giving up the character defects and trauma that people hold onto because they confuse it with their identity. Don’t look back in anger, says “I’m Not Part of Me”—let it guide you forward. –Ian Cohen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74TP8QhupLU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d6fdeb99cec850008642de2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Cloud-Nothings-Im-Not-Part-of-Me.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Cloud_Nothings-Im_Not_Part_of_Me_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,194,Lil B,“Wonton Soup” (2010),BasedWorld,"BasedWorld Two true things: Lil B is a beatific vessel for galaxy-brain-level peace, love, and understanding. He also once tweeted “buttcheeks party grandma.” But spirituality need not bend to reason, and over this decade the Based God remained committed to his vision of untrammeled optimism and unbridled creative confidence, evolving from Bay Area blog savant into legitimate folk hero for the new school. “Wonton Soup” is the peak from this early period, when he first exploded into semi-mainstream consciousness. All his stylistic trademarks are on display: endless “woop” ad libs, hazy production, a monotone delivery that makes his absurd lyrics—he brags about being able to achieve orgasm “like 36 ways,” then compares himself to J.K. Rowling—sound like blissed-out Zen koans. It’s the best possible argument for BasedGodism, even better than a sermon. –Jeremy Gordon",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGYHEBpX2xQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d6fdfa72409b8000823ce42/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lil-B-Wonton-Soup.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lil_B-Wonton_Soup_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,193,Nilüfer Yanya,“Baby Luv” (2017),Blue Flowers/ATO,"Blue Flowers/ATO London upstart Nilüfer Yanya does a lot with a little on “Baby Luv.” The song spotlights her insistent guitar strums, her urgent vocals, and little else. Yanya makes the best of repetition, wielding certain words and phrases like blunt instruments. When she asks, “Do you like pain?” she follows the question with a single word—“again”—saying it over and over again until the word turns numb. It’s a great example of her restraint as a songwriter: Instead of spelling things out in bright red block letters, she selects a couple of choice words and blows them up for maximum impact. When she sings “call me sometime” in the song’s bridge, the familiar phrase assumes a new and menacing shape. –Madison Bloom",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmmQuNl_8xc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d6fe0e7b349080008010005/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Nilu%25CC%2588fer-Yanya-Baby-Luv.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nilfer_Yanya-Baby_Luv_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,192,Tame Impala,“Feels Like We Only Go Backwards” (2012),Modular,"Modular Tame Impala’s music is often pegged as brain-melting sonic exploration, but mastermind Kevin Parker also has a pop star’s understanding of emotion. Stripped down to melody and lyrics, “Feels Like We Only Go Backwards,” from 2012’s Lonerism, is a crushing meditation on dashed hopes and rejection. But with its galloping bass and kaleidoscopic, ever-shifting textures, it seems wistfully nostalgic, if not downright celebratory. You can hear why Kendrick Lamar, fresh off the contradictory impulses of his hit “Swimming Pools (Drank),” was drawn to rap over the song. And you can hear how Parker, in the span of a decade, went from headphones auteur to Coachella headliner. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6y3WqQnOm4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d6fe1b4b349080008010007/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Tame-Impala-Feels-Like-We-Only-Go-Backwards.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Tame_Impala-Feels_Like_We_Only_Go_Backwards_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,191,Rico Nasty,“Smack a Bitch” (2018),Sugar Trap,"Sugar Trap Go to a Rico Nasty show and you’ll see a swirling mob of teenage girls thrashing and jumping along to her every word. In the spirit of Bikini Kill’s “girls to the front” rallying cry, the rapper always calls for a female-only mosh pit when she’s about to play her most unruly material, purposefully making space for other young women to share their rage, too. This sense of uncontainable fury is what makes her breakout single, “Smack a Bitch,” so transfixing. Over a lurching, guitar-fueled instrumental produced by Kenny Beats, Rico yells, “Thank God, I ain’t have to smack a bitch today,” as if delivering blows is part of her normal routine. Pushing her delivery into near-psychotic territory, she declares, “Your ass is done,” before cackling maniacally. Rico takes absolutely no shit, and it’s refreshing to see. –Michelle Kim",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-D4happ4TQU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d6fe2e92409b8000823ce45/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Rico-Nasty-Smack-a-Bitch.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rico_Nasty-Smack_a_Bitch_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,190,Ty Dolla $ign,“Paranoid” [ft. B.o.B] (2013),Atlantic,"Atlantic Ty Dolla $ign’s biggest, best single was one of many hits in the early half of the decade to flaunt producer DJ Mustard’s minimalist touch, realigning R&B with house music. Still, “Paranoid” stands out, its spacious snap-and-pop production setting the stage for our narrator to hit the club only to encounter two girls he’s seeing, both of whom are wearing matching heels and “the same damn fragrance.” Ty wonders if it’s some sort of set-up or if it’s all just in his head. This internal debate is punctuated by his own quivering backing vocals, a Greek chorus commenting on a twisted spin through modern romance. –Jordan Sargent",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cC2ZgCEaLWs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d6fe37cb6cdc300086117e0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ty-Dolla-Sign-Paranoid.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Ty_Dolla_ign-Paranoid_ft_BoB_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,189,J Balvin / Willy William,“Mi Gente (Remix)” [ft. Beyoncé] (2017),Scorpio Music,"Scorpio Music Much of what makes Colombian singer J Balvin’s “Mi Gente” sizzle—that audacious drumbeat, that insistent five-note vocal melody—is lifted from Mauritian-French singer Willy William’s 2017 track “Voodoo Song,” which itself reinterprets a sample from the Indian composer Akassh. No wonder “Mi Gente” was such a global, cross-culture sensation. Balvin worked with William to reinvent the source material, adding Spanish lyrics, chants, and ferocious Latin percussion. His lines like “el mundo nos quiere” (“the world wants us”) transform the song into a universal call to the dancefloor, an embrace of solidarity and unification at a time of enormous worldwide polarization. Aided on the remix by Beyoncé, who audaciously tackles Spanish and ups the diva ante, “Mi Gente” became the first all-Spanish song to reach the top of Spotify’s Global Top 50 chart. It remains a testament to pop music’s ability to push back against growing neo-nationalist fervor—there was no border, no wall, that could keep people from coming together and loving this song. –Jason King",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APHgDFRpCi0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d6fe4429cec850008642de4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/J-Balvin-Willy-William-Mi-Gente.jpg,/dataset/artwork/J_Balvin__Willy_William-Mi_Gente_Remix_ft_Beyonc_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,188,Future,“Incredible” (2017),Epic/Freebandz,"Epic/Freebandz On “Incredible,” Future’s giddy ode to rebound romance, he and his new woman do hot yoga together and send each other “XO” texts. But he isn’t just intoxicated with this fresh love—his zeal for money and jewelry (and Vicodin) loom just as large in his lyrics. Meanwhile, the song’s hook is so simple and so instant—basically, an Auto-Tune hiccup of the title phrase—that it’s a wonder it hadn’t been done before. Producer Dre Moon frames the rapper’s warble in moonlit synths and limber bass for an effect as frothy as an island cocktail. There’s an extra glimmer of hope in hearing such unabashed exuberance from Future in light of his long history of zonked-out moroseness. “I’ma do whatever it’s gon’ take to keep my baby spoiled,” he vows happily, sounding like he truly means it. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ql_hDyyeO-Q,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d6fe628b34908000801000c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Future-Incredible.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Future-Incredible_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,187,Thom Yorke,“Dawn Chorus” (2019),XL,"XL The death of Thom Yorke’s longtime partner, Rachel Owen, in late 2016 casts a shadow over “Dawn Chorus,” the emotional center of his solo album Anima. Though the pair had split about 18 months before her passing, it’s impossible to not feel like he’s reflecting, however obliquely, on his own loss. “I think I missed something, but I’m not sure what,” he says in a murmur that makes it seem like he’s dragging his voice across the floor reluctantly. “In the middle of the vortex the wind picked up/Shook up the soot from the chimney pot into spiral patterns of you my love.” The term “dawn chorus” describes the sound birds make at sunrise during mating season. Nature lovers can’t get enough of it, but here, Yorke calls it a “bloody racket.” That seems off for him, to criticize the organic world. In a state of mourning, though, something that should be sweet can often turn sour. With this song, at least, Yorke makes it sound beautiful. –Matthew Schnipper",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d6fe7399cec850008642de6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Thom-Yorke-Dawn-Chorus.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Thom_Yorke-Dawn_Chorus_2019.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,186,Skepta,“Shutdown” (2015),Boy Better Know Entertainment,"Boy Better Know Entertainment Skepta’s 2015 hit “Shutdown” serves as the decade’s ultimate London anthem: catchy enough to elevate slang to lexicon, hard enough to burst from the world’s weediest soundsystem, and worldly enough to shut down both the Arc de Triomphe and Central Park, as the rapper teases in the song. In a satirical mid-song skit, an unfeasibly posh woman laments the “intimidating” presence of men in hoodies on her TV, alluding to Kanye West’s grime takeover of the 2015 BRIT Awards, which featured Skepta alongside many of the genre’s stars. With this flourish, Skepta’s single rejects battle-rap showboating and zeroes in on the real bête-noire: the snoots who clutch pearls when black MCs breach the nation’s living rooms. The promise of a new, emancipatory grime wave has since resonated loud and clear, on the UK’s biggest stages and beyond. –Jazz Monroe",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQOG5BkY2Bc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d6feb12b34908000801000e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Skepta-Shutdown.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Skepta-Shutdown_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,185,Sharon Van Etten,“Seventeen” (2019),Jagjaguwar,"Jagjaguwar Sharon Van Etten’s best songs are often marked by their restraint: There’s a feeling that her husky and wide-ranging voice, along with her roiling guitars, could run off the rails, but they’re held in place by her steadfast sense of control. “Seventeen,” from this year’s Remind Me Tomorrow, stretches this idea to the limit—and then careens right past it. The song is immaculately arranged, a lockstep keyboard-rock anthem that’s artfully mussed with synth wobbles and Van Etten’s quavering vocals. But then, as her ambivalent reflections on a youthful doppelgänger wind down, she unleashes a full-throated scream: “Afraid that you’ll be just like me,” she bellows, losing her cool but gaining something even fiercer. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7sTHoeH0eA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d6fec5eb6cdc300086117e4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sharon-Van-Etten-Seventeen.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sharon_Van_Etten-Seventeen_2019.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,184,Frank Ocean,“Chanel” (2017),Blonded,"Blonded After releasing Blonde in 2016, Frank Ocean spent the next year trickling out a series of singles that built upon that album’s fluid confidence. “Chanel” is the first and best of them, capturing an artist in total command of his faculties as a singer, writer, and rapper. There isn’t much to it in terms of melody or structure. The piano chords are simple and translucent; the beat ambles casually. It’s all about Frank and the places his words can take you: a heated swimming pool in the hills, a Tokyo back alley, the first-class lounge at the Delta terminal. Listen closely, and “Chanel” also reveals itself to be a meditation on masculinity, one that alternately embraces it, subverts it, and points out its absurdity. Beneath it all, there’s a romantic ripple, too, as a relationship that seemed casual and disposable is revealed, almost shyly, to mean something more. This is Frank’s gift, the ability to build worlds of meaning and emotion into a song that has the casual grace of a freestyle. –Jamieson Cox",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnbsIl2BnWw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d6fece39cec850008642de8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Frank-Ocean-Chanel.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Frank_Ocean-Chanel_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,183,Young M.A,“OOOUUU” (2016),M.A Music/3D,"M.A Music/3D Young M.A’s breakthrough single oozes the kind of confidence you can’t fake. Against a loose, snare-heavy beat, she raps breezily about sex with other women—a rarity in hip-hop that she plays off nonchalantly amid lines about getting drunk and cracking jokes with friends. An out stud in an industry that’s still deciding how to digest queer musicians, M.A used “OOOUUU” to carve out a judgment-free zone where she can be herself and feel herself, where she isn’t an outsider but the queen of her own domain. The coyote howl of the title is both a tease and a triumph, the sound of finally feeling at home in your own skin and inviting others to play along with you. –Sasha Geffen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVf_4Ns3qLU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d6fedcb9cec850008642dea/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Young-MA-OOOUUU.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Young_MA-OOOUUU_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,182,Beyoncé,“XO” (2013),Columbia,"Columbia “XO” is about more than the saccharine simplicity of dreamy hugs and kisses. It begins with a clip of the crew of the Challenger realizing the malfunction on their spaceship, giving the love story that follows an undercurrent of mortality. On the surface, the slow-building track is an airy breather after the erotic, liberatory journey of the rest of Beyoncé’s self-titled 2013 album; the synth drops, and so does the snare drum, creating a soundscape that draws from rock, reggae, and EDM. Meanwhile, Beyoncé’s voice is raw, almost growling, a sound we have never heard from her before. (Turns out she had a sinus infection during the recording.) In the video, Beyoncé is at a carnival, flashing us one gorgeous smile after another. But carnivals themselves are a form of trickery: youthful joy on the surface, covering a shadowy underbelly. Like the spell of love and the threat it could end, “XO” deftly balances joy and sorrow; it’s a cautionary tale of beautiful things that sometimes head to untimely endings. –Samhita Mukhopadhyay",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xUfCUFPL-8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d6feeda2409b8000823ce47/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Beyonce%25CC%2581-XO.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beyonc-XO_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,181,Migos,“Bad and Boujee” [ft. Lil Uzi Vert] (2016),Quality Control,"Quality Control The runaway success of “Bad and Boujee” created its own pop culture ecosystem. The Migos became mainstream stars. “Rain drops, drop tops” became a catchphrase. Takeoff’s absence from the track became a memeable conspiracy theory. The song itself is a perfect distillation of everything that makes the Migos irresistible: a Gucci Mane-derived gift for quotables, a sizzling Metro Boomin beat, ad-libs for days, and an ear for perfectly placed guest stars—in this case, a before-he-was-huge Lil Uzi Vert, rapping about falling asleep in a jacuzzi. Soon enough, the Migos were matching chart feats once set by the Beatles, cementing their status as generational titans. –Jonah Bromwich",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mq2ukdhyhQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d6fef1c2409b8000823ce49/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Migos-Bad-and-Boujee.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Migos-Bad_and_Boujee_ft_Lil_Uzi_Vert_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,180,Sons of Kemet,“My Queen Is Harriet Tubman” (2018),Impulse!,"Impulse! The U.S. Treasury Secretary continues to balk at the rollout of a new $20 bill featuring abolitionist Harriet Tubman. Meanwhile, do-it-yourself Tubman rubber stamps are perpetually out of stock, suggesting that many Americans might concur with Sons of Kemet and the British-born, Barbados-raised saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings’ bold declaration that “My Queen Is Harriet Tubman.” The unrelenting highlight of the band’s Impulse! debut, Your Queen Is a Reptile, “Harriet Tubman” unites African-American jazz and Afro-Caribbean soca. But UK sounds also bubble up on the track, from the punk sneer inherent in that title to the dubstep wobble in tuba player Theon Cross’ huffed frequencies. And then there’s Hutchings’ own breathless solo, his staccato shrieks matching the rapidfire flow of grime. Drawing on many musical heritages, “Harriet Tubman” also moves forward, its sound igniting the spirit of all future freedom fighters. –Andy Beta",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twjaSC5Ym9s,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d6ff0519cec850008642dec/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sons-of-Kemet-My-Queen-Is-Harriet-Tubman.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sons_of_Kemet-My_Queen_Is_Harriet_Tubman_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,179,Rich Kidz,“My Life” [ft. Waka Flocka Flame] (2012),Self-released,"Self-released “My Life” feels like it came from a different century. The uncut bombast of Atlanta rap group Rich Kidz’ towering tune was laced by producer London on da Track, but its pure sonic overload was lovingly ripped from the gigantic sound popularized by Lex Luger, before a variety of issues drove him off the map for the rest of the decade. Waka Flocka Flame’s contributions to the song resemble a pack of sound effects played all at once, evoking the smoking-barrel chaos of his own 2010 masterpiece, Flockaveli, though the rapper’s career is currently mired in reality-TV purgatory. Even Rich Kidz’ Skooly and RK Kaelub are no longer making music together anymore. But no matter what’s happened since, “My Life” is still a Kool-Aid-colored diamond that hasn’t lost any of its blinding sparkle. –Larry Fitzmaurice",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsHBIZWmA-o,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7007b1b6cdc3000861181a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Rich-Kidz-My-Life.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rich_Kidz-My_Life_ft_Waka_Flocka_Flame_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,178,The 1975,“The Sound” (2016),Dirty Hit,"Dirty Hit “The Sound” has all the hallmarks of a great 1975 song: a sticky chorus, bouncing neon synths, Matty Healy name-dropping Greek philosophers and promptly calling himself a cliché. It’s fun and clever and anthemic while taking the piss out of big anthems at the same time. Above all the roaring maximalism, Healy is tuned to the sound of his many, many desires: for attention, sex, intellectual validation, intimacy, and, quite possibly, immortality. With this, he embodies a very millennial mindset: as eager to promote himself as he is to air all of his insecurities. –Matthew Strauss",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSnAllHtG70,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7008309cec850008642dee/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-1975-The-Sound.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_1975-The_Sound_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,177,A Tribe Called Quest,“The Space Program” (2016),Epic,"Epic A Tribe Called Quest have never been conscious or woke in the way that so many of the best-intentioned rappers are. Instead, they adopt the playful, nihilistic tone of high cultural gatekeepers, turning it back onto those same gatekeepers over kick snare and hi-hat. So it was deeply satisfying to hear the group strike as strongly as ever after 18 years of downtime on “The Space Program,” where they chuckle at the idea that NASA is anything more than a segregated train car, meant to take the rich to space and leave everyone else right where we’re at. Over soft-touch keyboards and guitars that pick up where 1996’s Beats Rhymes and Life left off, the song opens up We got it from Here... Thank You 4 Your service, Tribe’s final album of tongue-in-cheek musings on the current state of the world and the weekend. “Let's make something happen,” is the mantra, one anybody with a pulse can feel. We got it from Here... is fossilized by the passing of Phife Dawg shortly after its release, and this track captures a group, a sound, and a spirit that fought to the last second to exist in a world that remained alien to it. –Matthew Trammell",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTrqmNieVKI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7008bb2409b8000823ce4f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/A-Tribe-Called-Quest-The-Space-Program.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/A_Tribe_Called_Quest-The_Space_Program_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,176,Sampha,“(No One Knows Me) Like the Piano” (2017),Young Turks,"Young Turks When it came time for Sampha to write and record his debut album, the UK singer was in mourning. His mother, whom he’d lived with and cared for in London, had died of cancer. The resulting LP, Process, is a deeply personal look at the painful and, at times, transformative power of grief, and nowhere is that more apparent than on “(No One Knows Me) Like the Piano.” The ballad finds Sampha anthropomorphizing the piano in his mother’s home, which was purchased by his father, who passed away when Sampha was young. The instrument is likened to a childhood friend who helped him channel his despair into song. As Sampha narrates his coming of age, the hiss of room tone and the cooing of birds can be heard deep in the mix. The effect is one of intimacy, of being welcomed into a private moment of respite. –Gabriela Tully Claymore",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NSuIYwBxu4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d70098f2409b8000823ce51/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sampha-No-One-Knows-Me-Like-the-Piano.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sampha-No_One_Knows_Me_Like_the_Piano_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,175,Nicki Minaj,“Come on a Cone” (2012),Cash Money/Young Money/Republic,"Cash Money/Young Money/Republic Nicki Minaj may have become a star off of sugar-rush pop-rap anthems, but her status as one of the fiercest MCs of the decade was established by tracks like “Come on a Cone”: punchy, barb-laced polemics displaying crushing levels of pettiness and animus. Easily one of the most dynamic rap performances of the past 10 years, “Come on a Cone” is unswerving, deservedly smug, and incredibly funny. Nicki wields her flashy fashion show front-row status as a weapon that reinforces her power: “When I’m sittin’ with Anna/I’m really sittin’ with Anna/Ain’t a metaphor, punchline—I’m really sittin’ with Anna,” she barks. “Just admit that I’m winnin’,” she declares, and if you don’t, well... there’s a certain appendage Nicki would like to stick in your face. –Sheldon Pearce",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pl35X82lF3Q,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d700a0ab349080008010010/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Nicki-Minaj-Come-on-a-Cone.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nicki_Minaj-Come_on_a_Cone_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,174,Florence and the Machine,“Shake It Out” (2011),Universal Republic/Island,"Universal Republic/Island Take a look at the YouTube comments for Florence and the Machine’s “Shake It Out”: Eight years after its release, the song is still helping people get through breakups, depression, illness, and even a prison sentence. Such are the healing powers of Florence Welch’s gale-force vocals delivering a message of hope and perseverance over florid gospel-pop that sounds like the sun breaking through after a storm. Florence’s multi-platinum 2009 debut album Lungs introduced the London singer to the world stage, but it was “Shake It Out” and its accompanying album, 2011’s Ceremonials, that cemented her place as an arena and festival headliner—a position she maintains to this day. Few moments in pop this decade have delivered this level of ecstatic catharsis; only big rooms and big crowds can do it justice. –Amy Phillips",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbN0nX61rIs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d700b746136e40008cfb298/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Florence-and-the-Machine-Shake-It-Out.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Florence_and_the_Machine-Shake_It_Out_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,173,DJ Khaled,"“I’m on One” [ft. Drake, Rick Ross, and Lil Wayne] (2011)",Epic,"Epic You’d be forgiven for wondering why the guy who does the ad-libs has top billing on this star-studded 2011 posse cut. But here, DJ Khaled shows his gift for executive production, assembling a showcase for three of hip-hop’s biggest artists. Everyone sounds laid-back and in their zone: Rick Ross leans into the fabulist drug kingpin fantasy he established on Teflon Don, and Lil Wayne is at his most casually confident (“You niggas on the bench like the bus coming”). But Drake steals the show, drowning in his double cup while taking shots at the throne, perfectly paired to a beat from fellow Canadians T-Minus, Nikhil S., and Noah “40” Shebib that’s laced with synthesizers that sing like sirens. Considering the hook is also lifted from Drake’s “Trust Issues,” this song is as much his as Khaled’s, a summer anthem that helped reinforce the hit-making status of all involved. –Matthew Ismael Ruiz",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z09lYqdxqzo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d700c842409b8000823ce53/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/DJ-Khaled-Im-on-One.jpg,/dataset/artwork/DJ_Khaled-Im_on_One_ft_Drake_Rick_Ross_and_Lil_Wayne_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,172,Sleep,“Marijuanaut’s Theme” (2018),Third Man,"Third Man Doom metal trio Sleep became legends by doing a few simple things very well. They played slow. They played loud. They made smoking pot sound like an epic journey on par with Lord of the Rings. So when the band returned with their first new album in 15 years in 2018, the fact that their gnarly riffs sounded just as inspired as they did in the ’90s was worth celebrating. Metal played at torpid speed often seems to invoke the apocalypse, and a colossal solo from guitarist Matt Pike in “Marijuanaut’s Theme” certainly suggests some kind of destruction. But Sleep’s new music was remarkable for sounding equally combustive and comfortable in its freefall through space. Close your eyes, they seem to say, There is a band playing in your head, and they are getting high. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMUaWc46_0U,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d700d096136e40008cfb29a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sleep-Marijuanauts-Theme.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sleep-Marijuanauts_Theme_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,171,Adele,“Rolling in the Deep” (2011),Columbia/XL,"Columbia/XL In the first line of “Rolling in the Deep,” Adele warns us of a coming fire, then she burns everything to the ground. The lead single from the mega-selling breakup album 21 transformed her into a global star, and she has hardly made anything like it since. The lyrics quickly abandon hell-hath-no-fury cliché: By the pre-chorus, the boiling anger has cooled into sadness, revealing protruding scars. The music follows suit—Adele once described the song as “dark bluesy gospel disco,” which feels like the made-up sub-genre she was born to sing. Her vocal control, the way she allows melisma to curl around the edges of her voice, is like a superpower that needed this song to reveal it. –Rich Juzwiak",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?hl=it&v=rYEDA3JcQqw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d700dbd6136e40008cfb29c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Adele-Rolling-in-the-Deep.png,/dataset/artwork/Adele-Rolling_in_the_Deep_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,170,Lil Peep,“Kiss” (2016),Self-released,"Self-released Lil Peep’s “Kiss” sounds like two or three songs staggering home together. The sampled guitars might be from a Modern Baseball song, or maybe another Lil Peep song entirely, and the first voices on the track are a half-buried sample of the California pop-punk band Better Luck Next Time; the echoes run together the same way that incoming headlights smear into one beam when you squint. Produced by Smokeasac, Peep’s closest and most intimate creative partner, the song begins pickled in that signature Peep weariness, but then a second song seems to yawn and wake up inside the first one. This is a cautiously exultant one, a rare Peep anthem of bashful hope instead of despair: “One more chance, baby give me a kiss/Ya got one more chance for a night like this,” he sings. It has the lifespan of a soap bubble, this fleeting burst of euphoria. You feel the urge to protect it. –Jayson Greene",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPQa_4gzjdA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d700e4f2409b8000823ce55/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lil-Peep-Kiss.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lil_Peep-Kiss_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,169,St. Vincent,“New York” (2017),Loma Vista,"Loma Vista Surrounded by hypersexual synth workouts and fuzzed-to-all-hell basslines, this bare piano ballad is the heartrending centerpiece of MASSEDUCTION, Annie Clark’s fifth album as St. Vincent. The song’s intimate verses, cribbed from Clark’s own text messages to old friends, honor people and places who may have drifted away but will never be completely out-of-mind. “You’re the only motherfucker in the city who can stand me,” she sings. The chorus, meanwhile, zooms out into the cosmos, as she pays homage to fallen musical heroes like David Bowie and Prince. It’s a song about living, loving, and losing in the big city—and not regretting any of it. –Noah Yoo",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TPqUvy1vYU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d700ed0b6cdc3000861181c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/St-Vincent-New-York.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/St_Vincent-New_York_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,168,King Krule,“Dum Surfer” (2017),XL,"XL On “Dum Surfer,” King Krule’s Archy Marshall showed that, aside from his beatmaking prowess and lounge-lizard loucheness, he could also pen a terse rocker. Singing with the affect of a boxer with a plugged nose, he veers between emotional extremes, calling out a band as “fucking trash” while sounding miserably convinced of his own fallibility. A snaking baritone sax and smoky dub effects blur the song’s edges until even the name-calling title subtly shifts to a gentle adage: “Don’t suffer.” Had it come a few generations before, it might have made Krule into alternative rock royalty alongside the Pixies or Sonic Youth. Instead, it made fans of everyone from weirdo-jazz ensemble Standing on the Corner to Beyoncé. –Andy Beta",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/k2HRzIyyXvU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7010919cec850008642e24/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/King-Krule-Dum-Surfer.jpg,/dataset/artwork/King_Krule-Dum_Surfer_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,167,Tinashe,“2 On” [ft. Schoolboy Q] (2014),RCA,"RCA Produced by L.A. hitmaker DJ Mustard, “2 On” is widescreen and intricately sculpted: Its curling, high-toned bassline seems to whir and chime, and its descending roll of pizzicato synth-drums are so ear-catching that they compete with the gorgeous vocal melody. “2 On” is Tinashe’s term for being too high—intoxication chased to the edge of oblivion. Her lyrics ripple with references to liquor and smoke, and the song’s forthright celebration of “getting faded till we trip” may well have contributed to it only reaching No. 24 on the Hot 100. (“Live fast, die young, that’s my choice” does sound nihilistic, admittedly.) But Tinashe’s sensuous, slurred lingering over the chorus “I luuuuu to get 2 on” is joyous and life-affirming, a million miles from the deadened hedonism of so much trap. Dissolution has never sounded so delicious. –Simon Reynolds",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s7TCuCpB5c,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7010dfb349080008010012/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Tinashe-2-On.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Tinashe-2_On_ft_Schoolboy_Q_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,166,Bad Bunny,“Caro” (2018),Rimas,"Rimas Bad Bunny was already one of the biggest acts in música urbana when his knockout debut LP X 100PRE dropped in 2018, and the album’s fourth single, “Caro,” offered the clearest picture of his brilliance. It’s the perfect vessel for his suave sadboi aesthetic: laid-back yet full of bounce, draped in woozy synths and atmospheric coos that ground his nimble flow. It’s romantic yet political in its expression of the universal human desire to live one’s truth freely: “¿En qué te hago daño a ti?/Y solamente soy feliz,” he croons (“How have I hurt you?/I’m just happy”). “Caro” became a defining moment for Bad Bunny: In the wake of a homophobic backlash to his whimsical sartorial choices and predilection for freshly manicured nails, its video doubled down with a rejection of traditional gender roles and toxic masculinity. The stunning clip includes a female Bad Bunny stand-in and a drag queen working the runway, and, during the song’s incandescent bridge featuring none other than Ricky Martin, Bad Bunny himself is seen receiving kisses from both a man and a woman. With “Caro,” the Puerto Rican star flipped a few scripts that badly needed it. –Matthew Ismael Ruiz",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bg64AFnRnkc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d701216b349080008010014/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bad-Bunny-Caro.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bad_Bunny-Caro_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,165,Jessica Pratt,"“Back, Baby” (2014)",Drag City,"Drag City Like waiting out a snowstorm indoors, Jessica Pratt’s sophomore album On Your Own Love Again has an isolating power. Amid its hazier material, “Back, Baby” is its clearest transmission, with a melody as familiar as an oldies radio standard. And yet Pratt’s delivery—strange, sad, slightly off-kilter—gives the sense of someone more interested in drowning out the world than inviting it in. Alongside strums of a nylon string guitar, she cycles through the song’s bobbing refrains and wordless choruses, her voice sewn through with an intensity that belies its understated presentation. “Sometimes I pray for the rain,” she sings as the sun peeks through the blinds. But even at her most upbeat, there’s a tinge of sadness, knowing all storms must pass. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3YxJ1OYrVo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7012946136e40008cfb29e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jessica-Pratt-Back-Baby.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Jessica_Pratt-Back_Baby_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,164,Andrés,“New for U” (2012),La Vida,"La Vida Saying there’s not much to Andrés’ “New for U” might not be wrong, but it misses the point. Simple tools are almost always the most effective, as the Detroit DJ proves here. Using a lovely little string melody as its main flourish, “New for U” straddles the line between symphonic disco and house music. With its occasionally washed out vibe, it has the feel of being prewritten to play the way a great DJ would deploy it, teasing out its peaks. Once the DJ for the Motor City rap group Slum Village, Andrés released a considerable amount of music this decade, but nothing competed with this track’s restrained power. –Matthew Schnipper",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqmlXTN3GPQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d70133802a1db000895d81b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Andre%25CC%2581s-New-for-U.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Andrs-New_for_U_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,163,Davido,“Fall” (2017),Sony,"Sony Prior to 2017, Nigerian Afropop singer Davido had already established himself as one of Africa’s premier artists, but “Fall” turned him into a star the world over. Who can blame everyone for falling in love with the song’s soft melody and Davido’s tricky charisma? Every line is uttered with both mesmerizing cockiness and vulnerability. “I don’t wanna be a player no more,” he pleads, raising his pitch. In the back half of the 2010s, Afropop exploded in popularity, with countless artists attempting to hop on the trend. “Fall” was instrumental in continuing to widen the influence of Nigeria’s music on Western culture, becoming an international anthem along the way. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Iyuym-Gci0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7013a99cec850008642e26/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Davido-Fall.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Davido-Fall_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,162,Chance the Rapper,“No Problem” [ft. 2 Chainz and Lil Wayne] (2016),Self-released,"Self-released The most maximalist single from Chance the Rapper’s Coloring Book, “No Problem” drapes layered gospel samples from every corner, like streamers bedecking a birthday party. The song bursts with childlike joy, from Chance’s raspy laughs in the hook to the dizzying turns by its superstar guests. 2 Chainz comes in with swift, blunt punches, while Weezy takes his time, delivering the best flex of the entire track: “Fuck the watch, I buy a new arm.” But all those bells and whistles can’t conceal the sharp knives these MCs have tucked behind their backs. “If one more label try to stop me,” Chance barks, “It’s gon’ be some dread head niggas in ya lobby.” It’s a threat uttered through a smile, making this jubilant ode to independence sound that much more determined. –Madison Bloom",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVkkYlQNmbc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d70141402a1db000895d81d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Chance-the-Rapper-No-Problem.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Chance_the_Rapper-No_Problem_ft_2_Chainz_and_Lil_Wayne_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,161,Vybz Kartel,“Clarks” [ft. Popcaan and Gaza Slim] (2010),Cr203,"Cr203 Months after squashing a bitter rivalry with fellow dancehall icon Mavado that involved a dizzying stretch of singles, a peace concert, and a summit shepherded by Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding, Vybz Kartel dialed things back to deliver a fashion anthem that paid homage to that most classic of song topics: simply keeping the ’fit straight and the kicks clean. Kartel is both light-hearted and funny over the “Mad Collab” riddim, giving his pops fashion daps (“Mi pattern mi daddy from mi was a youngster”), explaining proper Wallabees hygiene (“Toothbrush get out the dust fast”), and styling a whole look (“Real badman no model inna shorts”). He also allowed his protégé, a young upstart named Popcaan, to bless the track with a verse that includes the line “the queen fi England haffi love off Yardie,” honoring a Jamaican predilection for the British footwear brand Uptown Yardie that reflects Jamaican migration to England. But more than anything, “Clarks” offers Kartel a chance to rep his own shoe rack. As he told The Guardian in 2010, “I personally have more than 50 pair of Clarks. I have more than there are states in America.” –Julianne Escobedo Shepherd",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFYtre2q6uo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7014e2b6cdc3000861181e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Vybz-Kartel-Clarks.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Vybz_Kartel-Clarks_ft_Popcaan_and_Gaza_Slim_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,160,Odd Future,“Oldie” (2012),Odd Future,"Odd Future “Oldie” is a Russian nesting doll where the prize at the center is the first Earl Sweatshirt appearance following his fabled exile in Samoa. Though the last song on The OF Tape Vol. 2 features the whole crew—even Frank—taking turns rapping, the whole point is that one verse. It’s a knotty, 40-bar exercise that confirmed what those who’d waded through Tumblr to find his early work already knew: bar for bar, Earl is a generational talent, impervious to hype. A few years later, on his album I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside, Earl plainly stated what had been true all along: “If I’m on the track, these niggas skip to me.” –Paul A. Thompson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzi24Nssiow,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d70162402a1db000895d81f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Odd-Future-Oldie.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Odd_Future-Oldie_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,159,Katy B,“Katy on a Mission” (2010),Columbia/Rinse,"Columbia/Rinse “Katy on a Mission” began as “Man on a Mission,” a dubstep cut by producer Benga. But then Katy B’s remake went Top 5 in the UK, decisively punting out the titular “Man,” and making the young London singer not just the face of underground dance music, but a mirror for dance-pop at large too. Katy is neither a belter nor a cooing soubrette but an everygirl, imbuing her vocals with relatable frankness and yearning. On “Katy on a Mission,” she’s both a poised singer—her vocal tenses and slacks alongside Benga’s track effortlessly—and an audience surrogate. She moves back and forth between cool confidence and total surrender at the speed of a strobe light flicker, taking listeners along like a hand pulling them onto the dancefloor. –Katherine St. Asaph",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKrlttpw-Y8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d701a5e47318e000977d795/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Katy-B-Katy-on-a-Mission.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Katy_B-Katy_on_a_Mission_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,158,Waka Flocka Flame,“Hard in da Paint” (2010),Warner,"Warner Waka Flocka Flame worked hard to conjure an image of out-and-out raucousness, but his debut record, 2010’s Flockaveli, is sneakily varied: He slides slickly into pockets, at turns vicious or playful; he revels in whatever material goods are right in front of him while still lamenting the way life might have gone better. His booming, Lex Luger-produced warning shot, “Hard in da Paint,” contains all of these well-trodden modes while feeling totally singular. At first he brags about having not only a main bitch, but a girlfriend and a mistress; by the end he’s admitting, “When my little brother died, I said ‘fuck school.’” This is not a “dichotomy of man” thing, where the point is to feel the tension between warring impulses. The point is that this is all happening, all at once. –Paul A. Thompson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkkC9cK8Hz0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7026b313ff690008c6eee9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Waka-Flocka-Flame-Hard-in-Da-Paint.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Waka_Flocka_Flame-Hard_in_da_Paint_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,157,Beyoncé,“1+1” (2011),Sony,"Sony When Beyoncé performs “1+1” live, she often kneels. It’s a fitting posture for a ballad about the divine nature of love. On the recording, her voice is sparingly framed with a handful of elements—a Prince-esque guitar line, gospel organ, and the shimmer of chimes—so when Bey conjures up a primal growl before launching back into a tender falsetto, there’s little to distract from the sheer force of her vocals. The song’s structure is simple: Beyoncé admits that she doesn’t know about something—be it math, guns, or war—and then quickly pivots back to her devotion to her partner, finding reassurance in his strength and permanence. The resulting message is one that’s beautiful in its near-spiritual wisdom: trust in love, and it will anchor and guide you through all of life’s uncertainties. –Michelle Kim",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaasJ44O5lI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d70270a13ff690008c6eeeb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Beyonce%25CC%2581-1+1.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beyonc-11_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,156,Girl Unit,“Wut” (2010),Night Slugs,"Night Slugs What makes “Wut” such a propulsive blast of energy is both its dexterous manipulation of tension and release, and its seemingly hyperdimensional use of texture. Drawing on the dynamics of 808-fueled rap instrumentals, and replete with a mischievous vocal sample, wobbly synths, and well-timed use of an airhorn, “Wut” is one of the cheekiest peak-time tracks to emerge from the transatlantic club scene this decade. It’s one of those impossible-not-to-move-to tunes, a crystallization of the club’s love affair with hip-hop. –Ruth Saxelby",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbc-319VYlw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d702754c64ac00009a14ff4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Girl-Unit-Wut.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Girl_Unit-Wut_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,155,Kanye West,“Blood on the Leaves” (2013),Def Jam,"Def Jam “Blood on the Leaves” is a microcosm of what made Kanye both great and awful this decade; it was because of everything he did so beautifully that we endured everything else he did poorly. The beat: a 2 Fast 2 Furious-style collision of Nina Simone’s “Strange Fruit” and TNGHT’s “R U Ready” that’s about as tasteful as a 10-car pileup. The vocal: a mangled Auto-Tune yelp about paternity paranoia, cheating, and child support that includes a comparison between serial infidelity and apartheid. The song is about as ugly a piece of music as was made this decade, and yet it was leeringly ugly, purposefully so. The music Kanye was cooking up to feed his overheated imagination was so lurid and tactile that, for this blazing moment and others, it held everything together. –Jayson Greene",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEA0btSNkpw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d702a3413ff690008c6eeed/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kanye-West-Blood-on-the-Leaves.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kanye_West-Blood_on_the_Leaves_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,154,Japanese Breakfast,“Everybody Wants to Love You” (2016),Yellow K,"Yellow K In “Everybody Wants to Love You,” Japanese Breakfast’s Michelle Zauner offers a vision of romance that is gloriously unrestrained. She lets her imagination run wild as she outlines the course of a hypothetical relationship, jumping from the quiet intimacy of a shared toothbrush to impromptu marriage. “Can I get your number?/Can I get you into bed?” she coyly asks over a celestial synthesizer. “When we wake up in the morning/Will you give me lots of head?” Featuring a jangly guitar solo and propulsive backing vocals, the song is deliriously catchy—but with repeated listens, its upbeat surface begins to crack. Is Zauner singing about a new relationship, or is she desperately trying to breathe life into one that has grown stale? Is the repeated title phrase a genuine celebration of attraction, or a mockery of romantic idolization? Like love itself, “Everybody Wants to Love You” is more complex than it first appears. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNT7wuqaykc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d702b82c64ac00009a1502a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Japanese-Breakfast-Everybody-Wants-to-Love-You.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Japanese_Breakfast-Everybody_Wants_to_Love_You_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,153,Danny Brown,“30” (2011),Fool’s Gold,"Fool’s Gold More rap careers end at age 30 than begin at age 30. In 2011, Danny Brown was acutely aware of this fact, as he said goodbye to his 20s and made his final push towards rap stardom after spending years trapped in the industry spin cycle. The frantic “30” is imbued with the desperation of a man with his eye on the hourglass, realizing his last best hope is slipping away. What begins as absurdist punchline rap quickly devolves into a catalog of personal chaos. Producer Skywlkr’s horns sound like an accordion, wheezing and deflating cartoonishly, as Brown is terrorized by an alternate future where his lifelong calling goes unrealized. He has visions of OD’ing without knowing his daughter, of dying unloved and unfulfilled. “The last 10 years I been so fucking stressed/Tears in my eyes let me get this off my chest/The thought of no success got a nigga chasing death,” he cries out. Even listening to the song now, in the wake of eight years of triumphs for the Detroit MC, it still devastates. –Sheldon Pearce",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J--rO7FP16U,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d702c13bfe56b000945b715/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Danny-Brown-30.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Danny_Brown-30_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,152,Miley Cyrus,“Wrecking Ball” (2013),RCA,"RCA August 25, 2013: During her performance at the VMAs, Miley Cyrus mimes anilingus on another woman, pleasures herself with a foam finger, and twerks all over Robin Thicke. She instantly destroys any remnants of her purity-ring-wearing Hannah Montana image, transforming from America’s Sweetheart into America’s Nightmare in a matter of minutes. That same day, she releases “Wrecking Ball,” the song that ensures she’ll still have a career when the dust settles. A perfect vehicle for Miley’s burnt-cigarette voice, “Wrecking Ball” spectacularly captures the agony of losing a love after coming on too strong. It’s one of the great torch songs of the 21st century, destined to be wailed by the drunk and heartsick at karaoke bars until the end of time. The video, in which a tearful Miley fellates a sledgehammer and gyrates naked on top of a wrecking ball, will likely be used in highlight reels to evoke “the 2010s” for decades to come, too. Unfortunately, the legacy of both the song and video are tainted by associations with two of the #MeToo era’s biggest villains, producer Dr. Luke and photographer/director Terry Richardson (not to mention Miley’s own myriad controversies). But when that chorus hits like a you-know-what, it’s impossible not to sing along at the top of your lungs. –Amy Phillips",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFLv9Ns1EuQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d702cb9f1e8ce0008b71720/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Miley-Cyrus-Wrecking-Ball.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Miley_Cyrus-Wrecking_Ball_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,151,Gang Gang Dance,“Glass Jar” (2011),4AD,"4AD Grown from the same New York art-noise ooze that produced Animal Collective and Yeah Yeahs Yeahs, Gang Gang Dance blurred lines, participating in the Whitney Biennial en route to a global stage. Opening 2011’s Eye Contact, the band’s nearly 11-and-a-half minute “Glass Jar” is prelude, overture, and banger all at once. The song is one of their many continuing tributes to late bandmate Nathan Maddox, who was struck by lightning on a Chinatown rooftop in 2002, and a door to the next phase of their career. First comes a slow shift from spoken-word drift to full-on groove; then, synths that rain down with a classical sense of drama. The drums don’t coalesce into a steady rhythm until slightly more than halfway through. Samples, references, and arty details abound on “Glass Jar,” but the destination is a Brooklyn-style drop, recognized on dancefloors the world over. –Jesse Jarnow",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_bkNR-zOn8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d702e0abfe56b000945b717/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Gang-Gang-Dance-Glass-Jar.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Gang_Gang_Dance-Glass_Jar_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,150,Nicki Minaj,“Beez in the Trap” [ft. 2 Chainz] (2012),Cash Money/Young Money/Republic,"Cash Money/Young Money/Republic In 2012, Nicki Minaj was at the center of a burning debate about rap, pop, and credibility. Onstage at New York rap station Hot 97’s Summer Jam concert that June, blowhard DJ Peter Rosenberg blasted her frothy hit “Starships” as the antithesis of “real hip-hop,” adding that it was for “chicks.” It was a small-minded, chauvinist argument—Nicki’s very strength was always about how her wily versatility took rap to unprecedented places—but the concurrent success of “Beez in the Trap” was also a perfect retort. You want “real hip-hop”? Here was Nicki flipping bars over an alien beat as thrilling as the rapper herself, filled with synths and drums that buzz and bang and bubble. That “Starships” and “Beez in the Trap” were from the same album, and hits at the same time, showed precisely who Minaj was: a woman in possession of a strange and singular talent who could appeal to seemingly everyone, from tweens to twinks to rap obsessives. –Alex Frank",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmZvOhHF85I,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d702e6bbfe56b000945b719/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Nicki-Minaj-Beez-in-the-Trap.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nicki_Minaj-Beez_in_the_Trap_ft_2_Chainz_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,149,Björk,“Stonemilker” (2015),One Little Indian,"One Little Indian Björk spent the decade increasingly entangled in complex experiments involving VR and bitcoin, with each new album presented as part of a wider technological narrative. It felt quietly ironic, then, that her best song of the era would plug into an emotional well older than time: heartbreak. “Stonemilker,” the first track to be taken from Björk’s eighth studio album, Vulnicura, was inspired by her separation from artist Matthew Barney, her raw feelings splattered all across the lyrics. “Show me emotional respect,” she demands on the hook, while volcanic beats pound and strings dive around her. In the future, the song’s VR video will seem as charmingly antiquated as a silent film reel, but its message of fierceness in the face of heartache will remain state-of-the-art. –Ben Cardew",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQEyezu7G20,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d702f1e13ff690008c6eeef/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bjo%25CC%2588rk-Stonemilker.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bjrk-Stonemilker_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,148,GoldLink,“Crew” [ft. Brent Faiyaz and Shy Glizzy] (2017),RCA,"RCA Long after the summer breezes by, its anthems live on. Hear a song like “Crew,” and everything about the summer of 2017—relationships, moments, the weather on that one Friday you cut out early—comes rushing back in vivid detail. At its core, “Crew” was destined to be a song that put on for GoldLink’s native DMV, but it became so much more. Link’s rapid delivery, Shy Glizzy’s conversational bars, and Brent Faiyaz’s silky throwback melody each feed into each other seamlessly. Together, the trio turned out a track as catchy as it is charming, one that should go down as a memorable addition into the backyard barbecue canon. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhNqbe6QENY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d702f8c13ff690008c6eef1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/GoldLink-Crew.jpg,/dataset/artwork/GoldLink-Crew_ft_Brent_Faiyaz_and_Shy_Glizzy_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,147,Ella Mai,“Boo’d Up” (2018),10 Summers/Interscope,"10 Summers/Interscope Ella Mai’s breakout single “Boo’d Up” is a luxurious track unconcerned with the passing of time, with a glistening instrumental by DJ Mustard and a vocal that moves through the melody like falling into someone’s arms. It’s also an exceedingly unlikely Top 10 hit. So many factors worked against “Boo’d Up”: the fact that Ella Mai was largely an unknown; that women in R&B, once the genre’s heart, had become the genre’s outsiders throughout the 2010s; that the song’s languid pace, unassuming sound, and besotten emotional clarity weren’t particularly marketable. And then people heard it, and all those factors floated away, irrelevant. –Katherine St. Asaph",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YNZlXfW6Ho,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d70307947318e000977d7cb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ella-Mai-Bood-Up.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ella_Mai-Bood_Up_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,146,Gunna,“Sold Out Dates” [ft. Lil Baby] (2018),Young Stoner Life/300 Entertainment,"Young Stoner Life/300 Entertainment So many collaborations lean on clichéd narratives about two artists rising to some grand occasion of shared interest. Atlanta rappers Gunna and Lil Baby, it seems, just want to make a run of impossibly fun songs and enjoy each other’s company. Out of their many team-ups, “Sold Out Dates” is the most infectious—the one where their voices blend to seamless heights, until it’s unclear where one ends and the other takes over. The constantly unfurling chorus leaps across the song’s electric guitar riff, finding one soft landing spot after another. If there is a sports analogy to be made, it is less Stockton and Malone, and more Stockton and Stockton: Gunna and Baby find each other in perfect position, then pass out of it, to an even more perfect position. Their dynamic has the same feel as Watch the Throne-era Kanye and Jay, not trying to make a mark by outdoing each other, just ruminating on the ever-evolving idea of hedonism, and emerging with no answers. –Hanif Abdurraqib",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpUY5iNqVzU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7030ba7cf67c000854d4af/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Gunna-Sold-Out-Dates.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Gunna-Sold_Out_Dates_ft_Lil_Baby_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,145,Charli XCX,“Gone” [ft. Christine and the Queens] (2019),Atlantic,"Atlantic After nearly a decade of branding herself as a rave-happy club kid who parties until five in the morning, Charli XCX’s facade cracked. On “Gone,” she feels adrift at an event and spirals into despair. “I feel so unstable/Fucking hate these people,” Charli sings over an ’80s funk-pop beat. These lines about unbelonging also double as a metaphor for the constrictions she faces as a major-label artist who is expected to churn out chart hits but prefers to tweak and deconstruct them instead. Joining the rampage is fellow pop rule-breaker Héloïse Letissier of Christine and the Queens, who descends into paranoia, posing some truly mystifying questions about whether she’s “the smoke” or “the sun.” The madness escalates into a breakdown of glitching vocal chops, metallic clanking, and dramatic power-synth fills. It’s the soundtrack to a mental breakdown, the kind that ensues right before you come back even stronger. –Michelle Kim",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chSZCtLrgz8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d703134bfe56b000945b71d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Charli-XCX-Gone.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Charli_XCX-Gone_ft_Christine_and_the_Queens_2019.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,144,Spoon,“Inside Out” (2014),Matador,"Matador A Spoon song is typically defined by what you can’t hear as much as what you can: They are stripped and reduced to their elements, allowing the band to build music with visible architecture and plenty of open space. All this matters because “Inside Out” is quite possibly the most lush Spoon song ever written. Built on a rigid rhythm that acts as a backbone for a harp solo—not exactly their signature sound—and frontman Britt Daniel’s raspy lyrics about how life can be pretty simple if you know what you want and avoid getting dragged down by everything else, it’s not quite Spoon gone new age, but it also doesn’t sound a whole lot like any other Spoon song. The greatness of “Inside Out” lies not just in its unexpected softness, but in Daniel’s ability to be wise and brash at the same time. Earned wisdom is a part of getting older; rarely does it sound this accomplished. –Sam Hockley-Smith",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpT5SBg1Mmk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d70317647318e000977d7cd/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Spoon-Inside-Out.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Spoon-Inside_Out_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,143,Rick Ross,“B.M.F. (Blowin’ Money Fast)” [ft. Styles P] (2010),Def Jam,"Def Jam You know those old monster movies, the ones where an almighty beast lumbers through a terrified city, toppling buildings and swatting planes out of the sky as bullets bounce off his torso? At some point, Rick Ross must have leaned forward in his leather chair and thought to himself, What would it sound like if that monster were rapping right now? Ross channeled that energy on “B.M.F.,” his quaking collaboration with producer Lex Luger. For four minutes, the rapper takes the form of an all-powerful, coke-fueled leviathan laughing with maniacal disdain as he demolishes any obstacle standing between him and his bottom line. You can’t stop him. You can’t negotiate with him. All you can do is build a statue in his honor and marvel at the merciless efficiency of his wrath. –Evan Rytlewski",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2MVzP4MaJ0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d71195f13ff690008c6ef2e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Rick-Ross-BMF.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rick_Ross-BMF_Blowin_Money_Fast_ft_Styles_P_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,142,Rihanna,“Needed Me” (2016),Def Jam,"Def Jam “Needed Me” offered a clear crystallization of Rihanna as a well-traveled, yeehaw-pioneering outlaw: People needed her, and she needed no one. It should feel normal, but it was thrilling to witness a woman governed only by her own rules, acting like a man. On the other hand, “Needed Me” is tender and sadly wise, a song about someone who is capable of being strong in a relationship and has learned they can’t expect to rely on anyone. And why bother? Put to music with radio heavy-hitters DJ Mustard, Frank Dukes, and Starrah, the song is sexy and savage, a way for Rihanna to flex her unique ability to inhabit the tastes and feelings of both Gen Z and Gen X. It resonated massively but quietly, becoming her longest-charting hit without ever hitting the Top 5. –Naomi Zeichner",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfN4PVaOU5Q,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7119dcf1e8ce0008b717f3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Rihanna-Needed-Me.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rihanna-Needed_Me_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,141,Gil Scott-Heron,“New York Is Killing Me” (2010),XL,"XL Gil Scott-Heron had a love-hate relationship with the city he called home for most of his life. In the mid ’70s, not long after President Ford told the city to drop dead, Scott-Heron wrote a love letter simply called “New York City” extolling the place as beautiful and benignly energetic. Thirty-five years later, when JAY-Z and Alicia Keys were still riding high on their local anthem “Empire State of Mind,” Scott-Heron presented a different, much darker depiction of the city. “New York Is Killing Me” portrays a place sapped of all promise and opportunity, defined by an alienation and isolation that Scott-Heron suggests is fatal. The production, courtesy of XL Recordings owner Richard Russell, is constricting, as if it’s been breathing exhaust fumes all day. The music is busy yet austere, prodding and cajoling Scott-Heron with jump-rope rhythms, disruptive clatter, and a bassline that pulsates like the jarring rumble of a subway car. “Eight million people, and I didn’t have a single friend,” he sang, his voice heavy with worry and regret. The past tense hurt when the song was released in 2010, and it only stung more when he died a year later. –Stephen Deusner",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aeMfm6O7iQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d711a227cf67c000854d4e7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Gil-Scott-Heron-New-York-Is-Killing-Me.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Gil_Scott-Heron-New_York_Is_Killing_Me_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,140,Rae Sremmurd,“No Type” (2014),Ear Drummer,"Ear Drummer In 2014, Rae Sremmurd stepped into the spotlight with the infectious “No Flex Zone,” backed by Mike WiLL Made-It at the height of his superproducer powers. The two baby-faced brothers had a club anthem on their hands, though many were skeptical about their ability as rappers and wrote them off. But within months they topped their first hit with “No Type,” which elevated Swae Lee and Slim Jxmmi from predicted one-hit wonders into bona fide stars. At the song’s irresistible core is Swae’s gliding chorus, but “No Type” is more than just a catchy hook: It established the duo’s yin-yang balance of sparkling melody and raucous energy. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzMrK-aGCug,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d711b80c64ac00009a150cc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Rae-Sremmurd-No-Type.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rae_Sremmurd-No_Type_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,139,Iceage,“The Lord’s Favorite” (2014),Matador,"Matador Iceage mellowed the hardcore chaos and angst of their first two records in favor of tightly-strung cowpunk with “The Lord’s Favorite.” The song finds frontman Elias Bender Rønnenfelt playing the part of a lovesick megalomaniac intoxicated by the allure of expensive wine, cheap makeup, and five-inch heels. In the darkness of a seedy club, these gaudy vices spur Rønnenfelt’s sloshed barfly to proselytize about his divine privilege. “After all I think it’s evident that I am God’s favorite one/And now is the time I should have whatever I desire,” he moans, letting that last word ooze from his lips. As the Danish band kicked up a rockabilly storm, they showed that they have more to offer than clenched-fist angst. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roB4hRdLlas,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d711c1047318e000977d838/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Iceage-The-Lords-Favorite.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Iceage-The_Lords_Favorite_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,138,Drake,“Hotline Bling” (2015),Cash Money,"Cash Money A pastiche artist of the social media age, Drake seamlessly exchanges music and cultural references like a Tumblr teen mashing up Spongebob GIFs—and this is the song that solidified his status as hip-hop’s supreme memelord. Drake first conceived of it as a remix to DRAM’s “Cha Cha,” with producer Nineteen85 flipping Timmy Thomas’ 1972 soul classic “Why Can't We Live Together” onto an impossibly catchy syncopated drum sequence. DRAM and Drake bickered over credit as “Hotline Bling” blew up, largely thanks to a music video that cribbed visual artist James Turrell’s 2013 installation “Breathing Light” and its Instagram-ready rooms bathed in neon pastel tones. Within months, the high priestess of neo-soul, Erykah Badu, made an entire mixtape riffing on the “hotline” concept, expanding it into a treatise on the role of phones in modern society (featuring bars from a Drake soundalike named Aubrey, no less). A veritable human centipede of modern art, the most lasting legacy of “Hotline Bling” may just be the inextricable ties to the work it inspired and was inspired by. –Matthew Ismael Ruiz",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzMhcP7ab3k,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d711cb613ff690008c6ef33/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Drake-Hotline-Bling.png,/dataset/artwork/Drake-Hotline_Bling_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,137,Yaeji,“Drink I’m Sippin On” (2017),Godmode,"Godmode One of Brooklyn’s most exciting young electronic artists began with deliberate secrecy: Yaeji initially sang in Korean because she didn’t want others to understand her, then came to love those arch, elegant syllables with new ears. Her breakthrough single is clear in that affection; she roves over narcotic synths and trap drums with icy vocal tones, her gently libertine words delivered in an unhurried rap cadence. A bit of English peeps into the bridge—more as an aside than an accommodation—after she’s just murmured the line “That’s not it” in Korean several times, a lovely and winking moment of benign miscommunication. That elastic bass drop, though, can’t be mistaken. –Stacey Anderson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoxCItHxLiM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d711d03bfe56b000945b796/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Yaeji-drink-im-sippin-on.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Yaeji-Drink_Im_Sippin_On_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,136,CupcakKe,“Duck Duck Goose” (2018),Self-released,"Self-released Sending nudes of such high quality that the recipient uses up all their data. Comparing a dick to the Statue of Liberty. The lines, “Coochie guaranteed to put you to sleep so damn soon/Ridin’ on that dick, I’m readin’ Goodnight Moon.” These are some of CupcakKe’s tamer moments on “Duck Duck Goose.” The Chicago rapper’s salacious humor is on full display here, in an endless barrage of X-rated jokes. The track also shows that she can spit better than anyone in the room, and is able to lace her verses with the wit, puns, and vivid imagery of an elite songwriter. CupcakKe delivers it all over an instrumental ready for an overstuffed, sweaty club—the perfect place to experience her brilliance. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awGEv-ctCtg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d711dc8c64ac00009a150ce/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Cupcakke-Duck-Duck-Goose.jpg,/dataset/artwork/CupcakKe-Duck_Duck_Goose_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,135,Robyn,“Honey” (2018),Interscope/Konichiwa,"Interscope/Konichiwa “Honey” is one of Robyn’s filthier tunes—a 3 a.m. booty call set to a pulsing house beat. The song flows slowly, picking up rattling hi-hats and strobing synthesizer as it oozes along the dancefloor. Meanwhile, the Swedish star allows plenty of space for her visuals to bloom—the “strands of saliva” laced with glitter, the emeralds glinting on pavement. Each syllable is drawn out like taffy, and her voice hovers just above a whisper, as if she wants you to lean in a little closer. But her message is so clear there’s no need to shout it: A decade after she danced alone, Robyn made a triumphant return to the discotheque. But this time, she won’t be leaving solo. –Madison Bloom",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcNo07Xp8aQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d711f5613ff690008c6ef35/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Robyn-Honey.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Robyn-Honey_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,134,Kamasi Washington,“Truth” (2017),Young Turks,"Young Turks Kamasi Washington is an artist who needs room to meditate, sculpt, engineer. His songs, each their own island of brewing affect, are where his ideas find pulse, where they’re outfitted with all the sensory trademarks that accent his catalog. “Truth” is the finest, and perhaps most-psalm-like, of the saxophonist’s musical regions—the wet bass, the godly orchestral wails, the intoxication and pure-cut adrenaline reminiscent of master architect Phraroah Sanders. It’s Washington’s very own Odyssey—only funkier, Afro’d, and regaled in a Senegalese dashiki. You know, king shit. Originally composed for an exhibit at the 2017 Whitney Biennial and later packaged as the closer on Washington’s Harmony of Difference EP, “Truth” is about journeys: spiritual, musical, human. It’s a track so complexly layered in its artistic command that it places him alongside historians who’ve mined the folkways of Black Los Angeles in their work, from poet Wanda Coleman and director John Singleton to visual artist Betye Saar and producer DJ Quik. Listen closely and you’ll hear the tension and swoop of life, the emotional velocity of love, the drama of drawn breath. –Jason Parham",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d71202913ff690008c6ef37/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kamasi-Washington-Truth.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Kamasi_Washington-Truth_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,133,Future,“Mask Off” (2017),Epic,"Epic Future’s music constantly dramatizes the tragedy of excess and indulgence by celebrating those very things. The strategy should be nearly impossible to pull off, and yet the Atlanta star is one of the most gifted stylists in contemporary rap. “Mask Off,” his highest-charting single, should be an over-the-top breaking point—he repeats the words “molly” and “Percocet” in the chorus more than he does the title. But still he rises to the occasion by plumbing the depths of drug abuse. Future offers his chilling description of lean in two words—“my guillotine”—while a flute sample of “Prison Song,” from the 1978 musical Selma, a tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement, snakes around his vocals. “Cold chills, prison cells,” the screwed vocals from “Prison Song” intone at the outro. “Mask Off” is one of Future's most cartoonish songs, but perhaps that’s the best way to encapsulate a reality that’s careening dangerously into the unreal. –Ross Scarano",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvZqHgFz51I,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d71207ff1e8ce0008b717f5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Future-Mask-Off.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Future-Mask_Off_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,132,Kurt Vile,“Baby’s Arms” (2011),Matador,"Matador “Baby’s Arms” is the sound of Kurt Vile’s slacker-Zen persona snapping suddenly into focus. The opening track of 2011’s Smoke Ring for My Halo felt like a reintroduction for the Philadelphia songwriter, who had previously hidden behind a curtain of reverb. Working with his band the Violators, producer John Agnello, and an expanded cast, Vile replaced the bleary atmosphere of his earliest releases with crystalline finger-picking, and the mumbled aphorisms with odes to his loved one. “Baby’s Arms” is cool and sweet, intimate and resonant. It sounds full while barely rising above a whisper. –Jesse Jarnow",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enTY6AITe1Q,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7120e6c64ac00009a150d0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kurt-Vile-Babys-Arms.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kurt_Vile-Babys_Arms_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,131,Chromatics,“Kill for Love” (2012),Italians Do It Better,"Italians Do It Better Johnny Jewel takes a lot of flack for perfectionism, but listen to a song like “Kill for Love” and the infamously exacting Chromatics ringleader looks a lot more rational. The title track from the group’s 2012 album is their mission in miniature: the sound of ennui in search of bliss. Ruth Radelet’s deceptively blasé vocal performance articulates the craving for novelty lurking within habit: “I drank the water and I felt all right/I took a pill almost every night/In my mind, I was waiting for change.” The fractured synth stabs are sharp enough to split geodes; the guitars dizzy and sentimental, melty and echoing; the cymbal rattles nonstop. Under the anxiety and damage are the same elemental urges, where every momentary escape holds the promise of nothing, now and forever. –Anna Gaca",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0mxXrHowHQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7121baf1e8ce0008b717f7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Chromatics-Kill-for-Love.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Chromatics-Kill_for_Love_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,130,A$AP Rocky,“Peso” (2011),RCA,"RCA Did any rap song this decade open with five words more immediately iconic than “I be that pretty motherfucker”? From the moment “Peso” broke, it was clear that it was going to vault A$AP Rocky to a stardom built atop sounds from Memphis and Houston, but presented as the New Yorker’s alchemic birthright. In the video, he mugged with diamond teeth and coiled-up charisma—shirtless, venomous. The money started rolling in, followed soon after by the jokes: Can you believe he’s named after Rakim but he raps like this? And true, nothing about Rocky’s music is as intricate, groundbreaking, or downright mean as the great stars of New York’s past. But you can’t tell him he isn’t pretty. –Paul A. Thompson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ob3ktDxAjWI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7121fcc64ac00009a150d2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/ASAP-Rocky-Peso.jpg,/dataset/artwork/AAP_Rocky-Peso_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,129,Lorde,“Royals” (2013),Lava/Republic,"Lava/Republic At the start of the decade, pop music taught teenagers what their desires were, not the other way around. According to the radio, teen dreams were filled with earth-shattering parties and unconscionable excess tracked to wall-of-sound synth production best suited for football stadiums. And then New Zealand’s 16-year-old Lorde strolled into the charts like a supremely over-it exchange student, singing her chilly, nearly a capella manifesto about just how tired she was of songs about tigers and jet planes and Cadillacs. While “Royals”’ pillory of rap-video tropes attracted accusations of racism, the song propelled Lorde to stardom and transformed pop in the process. In the years since, the genre has grown bleaker, replacing maximalist odes to excess with bummed-out songs stressing isolation and anxiety. And a new generation of artists who speak to the same sense of teen ennui—Halsey and Clairo and Billie Eilish—have proliferated, working to override the industry’s male gaze instead of playing into it. As it introduced a new kind of pop star, “Royals” challenged the world’s biggest artists to be not just enviable, but relatable. –Hazel Cills",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlcIKh6sBtc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d71239fbfe56b000945b798/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lorde-Royals.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lorde-Royals_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,128,Young Thug,“Danny Glover” (2013),TSBV2,"TSBV2 In 2013, Young Thug descended from an unknown planet equipped with a language that everyone was dying to learn and a melody that reshaped what we thought we knew about rappers who sing. For many outside of Atlanta, “Danny Glover” was their introduction to this otherworldly persona. Thug raps fast and coos punchlines that stick: “I don’t like using profanity, but the Young Thugger will gut you.” He has quirks on top of quirks, but they’re all coddled inside go-to producer Southside’s signature trunk-rattling hi-hats and 808s. When “Danny Glover” arrived, Thug sounded like no one else; now it’s hard to imagine what rap would sound like without him. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPbzMMorE_E,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7123f213ff690008c6ef39/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Young-Thug-Danny-Glover.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Young_Thug-Danny_Glover_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,127,James Blake,“CMYK” (2010),R&S,"R&S James Blake charted the next step in bass music’s evolution with “CMYK.” Sampling both Kelis and Aaliyah, the song looked backward to late-’90s R&B, whose ribbon-like vocals and plush harmonies would become hallmarks of the young British producer’s music. More important was what he did with those vocals: chopping, re-pitching, and layering them with his own processed voice, creating a strange, hybrid call-and-response that floated, web-like, over synths as spongy as marshland. It was the sound of a new world coming into focus, and it would guide his music for years to come. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oI5HvfxgpU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7125017cf67c000854d4e9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/James-Blake-CMYK.jpg,/dataset/artwork/James_Blake-CMYK_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,126,Ciara,“Ride” [ft. Ludacris] (2010),LaFace,"LaFace In her video for “Ride,” Ciara shows off her remarkable dance skills and sheer athleticism. She also straddles a mechanical bull while wearing a drenched undershirt. BET reportedly banned the sultry clip from its airwaves—a decision Ciara called “very unfortunate” and refused to back down from, never making a toned-down version for them. She didn’t need their cosign. On “Ride,” the Atlanta singer flaunts her artistic command, meeting the track’s distorted beat with an almost-clipped vocal performance that underscores her confidence. Not even an audaciously horny Ludacris feature can derail Ciara’s show: She makes no concessions. –Matthew Strauss",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/Lp6W4aK1sbs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d71257bc64ac00009a150d4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ciara-Ride.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ciara-Ride_ft_Ludacris_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,125,Lykke Li,“I Follow Rivers” (2011),LL,"LL Lykke Li once compared the overwhelming desire that ignited “I Follow Rivers” to a “nature force,” one in which you’re at the mercy of another person so completely that “you almost have no voice.” She expresses that cataclysmic metaphor in a storm of stomping girl-group drums, dissonant organ, and stuttering vocals. The song signaled an about-face from the more delicate, hushed tracks she first broke out with, affording her a deeper layer of darkness that she’d then yet to unearth. She may have been simply trying to satisfy some serious thirst on “I Follow Rivers,” but her pained, lusty delivery gives her yearning a cosmic pull. –Eric Torres",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZYbEL06lEU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d712688c64ac00009a150d8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lykke-Li-I-Follow-Rivers.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lykke_Li-I_Follow_Rivers_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,124,Nicki Minaj,“Super Bass” (2010),Cash Money/Young Money/Republic,"Cash Money/Young Money/Republic One of the reasons “Super Bass” is such a banger is its emotional depth: Just take a close listen to the mournful chords that run beneath the verses, providing contrast and context for the track’s hot-blooded desire, as well as its siren call to party. Having shared a male-gaze-flipping list of what she finds attractive in a man, Nicki Minaj’s quickfire bars race the beat to the chorus, which “boom badoom boom” bursts like a rainbow after a downpour. A trance-y bridge with digital strings seals the deal on this masterclass in contemporary pop. –Ruth Saxelby",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JipHEz53sU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7126dd7cf67c000854d4eb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Nicki-Minaj-Super-Bass.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nicki_Minaj-Super_Bass_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,123,Clairo,“Bags” (2019),Fader,"Fader Clairo’s Claire Cottrill had uploaded plenty of relatable and catchy bedroom pop songs before “Bags”—including her viral hit “Pretty Girl,” which lamented the unfair sacrifices women often make in their romantic relationships—though they ultimately felt slight, like she was holding something back. The lead single of her debut album, Immunity, reintroduced her with new vigor and undeniable shine. Co-produced with Rostam, “Bags” leaves her lo-fi origins firmly in the past. The song is a flurry of action as drums shimmy, synths whirr like insect wings, and keys clamor drunkenly, yet Cottrill’s voice is composed and calm as she recalls her love walking out on her. It vividly captures the tremendous effort that goes into maintaining a cool façade after the door slams shut. –Vrinda Jagota",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9HYJbe9Y18,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7127c37cf67c000854d4f4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Clairo-Bags.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Clairo-Bags_2019.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,122,Playboi Carti,“Magnolia” (2017),Interscope/AWGE,"Interscope/AWGE There are album artists and singles artists, and then there’s Playboi Carti, a rapper whose work is most ravenously devoured via compressed-to-hell snippets ripped from Instagram. Hailing from the most anarchic corners of the social internet (but also Atlanta), Carti is someone whose promise will always outpace his official output, and that is by design. “Magnolia” is the rare moment when all his significant skills are put to use in the same direction: It’s a sinister song with an instantly quotable hook that otherwise functions mostly as an extended ad-lib. The hit also served as producer Pi’erre Bourne’s national introduction, launching him from relative obscurity to rap production’s A-list. “Magnolia” is the single best distillation of Carti and Pi’erre’s chemistry, which, amid rap’s rapidly moving generational drift, has already spawned its own legion of pounding, skeletal imitations. –Paul A. Thompson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCveByMXd_0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d71281347318e000977d83a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Playboi-Carti-Magnolia.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Playboi_Carti-Magnolia_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,121,DJ Rashad,“Feelin” [ft. DJ Spinn and Taso] (2013),Hyperdub,"Hyperdub Footwork’s relationship to time has a lot to do with a kind of musical sleight-of-hand. Some of the genre’s sonic elements run at triple-time while others dawdle, yet a sense of urgency remains consistent. And no one has ever wielded that energy as fluidly as DJ Rashad. “Feelin,” from 2013’s Double Cup, the only album he released before his death the following year, pivots off a languid sax riff from Roy Ayers’ “Brand New Feeling” and distills soul singer Merry Clayton’s formidable vocal into animated squiggles that ride atop Rashad’s frenzied beat. (It’s worth noting that members of Rashad’s Teklife crew, DJs Spinn and Taso, joined the producer in fleshing out “Feelin” from an earlier version he released in 2012.) Ayers’ original is about the transformative power of the first flush of love. Rashad’s take is more a rumination on the everyday search to feel something—anything—amid the frantic pace of life. –Ruth Saxelby",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzEK5Z9ALU8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6537c9dfd6794e741ed8e3d0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/DJ-Rashad-Double-Cup.jpg,/dataset/artwork/DJ_Rashad-Feelin_ft_DJ_Spinn_and_Taso_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,120,Justin Bieber,“Sorry” (2015),Def Jam,"Def Jam “Sorry” is a strange creature. By grafting a fashionably clipped pop melody over a retro, Shabba Ranks-inspired Caribbean fusion beat, producers Skrillex and BloodPop created one of the best tropical house hits of the decade. The ethereal hook, crafted from Justin Bieber’s pitched and manipulated vocal, squares off against a synth horn line and a surging drop. But what truly elevates “Sorry” are its witty lyrics: “I know you know that I made those mistakes maybe once or twice/By once or twice, I mean maybe a couple of hundred times,” Bieber coos, managing to sound pensive, subdued, and even a little sexy at the same time. That this fallen teen idol, the decade’s emblem of white male petulance and bad-boy behavior, was crooning for redemption and second chances in an age of #BlackLivesMatter protests—especially in the context of his enduring appropriation of urban culture—shouldn’t be lost on anyone. –Jason King",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRh_vgS2dFE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d71295547318e000977d83c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Justin-Bieber-Sorry.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Justin_Bieber-Sorry_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,119,Fleet Foxes,“Helplessness Blues” (2011),Sub Pop,"Sub Pop Here is an anthem for anyone who has felt adrift, abandoned, unsure of their purpose in the world. The title track to Fleet Foxes’ impressionistic second album revealed a more intriguing side of frontman Robin Pecknold; something dark and complex had lurked beneath the songwriter’s soaring harmonies from the beginning, and “Helplessness Blues” represented all of his neuroses writ large. In the verses, he contemplates what it means to be useful, to others and to yourself, before the song’s passionate strumming rips open to reveal miles of wide-open drum fills and dreams of a simpler life in (where else?) the country. “Someday I’ll be like the man on the screen,” Pecknold claims in the song’s closing seconds. It’s a line that’s just ambiguous enough to drive home how frequently his generation has caught a glimpse at a different life and, for a brief moment, pondered the worth of the tools we’ve been given. –Larry Fitzmaurice",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HHgedNNQco,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d712a2a7cf67c000854d52a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Fleet-Foxes-Helplessness-Blues.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fleet_Foxes-Helplessness_Blues_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,118,Travis Scott,“Sicko Mode” [ft. Drake] (2018),Epic,"Epic By any conventional wisdom, a five-minute, three-part suite of a song should have never become a phenomenon in a climate where dwindling attention spans are leading to shorter and shorter hits. But “Sicko Mode” is fueled by the power of Travis Scott and Drake, two of the era’s defining rappers, operating at an energized high. The song’s first part is a short Drake verse that cuts off abruptly—a tease that only makes you want more. Once the funky second beat hits, you forget about Drake as Travis takes center stage with some of the best rapping of his career. The gradual build meets a grand finale, where Travis and the Toronto icon fuse for one of the decade’s signature back-and-forths. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ONRf7h3Mdk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d712b3ac64ac00009a1510e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Travis-Scott-Sicko-Mode.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Travis_Scott-Sicko_Mode_ft_Drake_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,117,Usher,“Climax” (2012),RCA,"RCA Usher once ruled R&B so decisively that the music industry spent over a decade churning out clones of him. But by 2010, he was reduced to guesting on anonymous Max Martin and will.i.am tracks, just another pop singer. Then came “Climax,” which single-handedly rescued his critical reputation from lyrics like, “Honey got some boobies like wow, oh wow.” Co-produced by an uncharacteristically restrained Diplo, the 2012 hit was quickly compared to alt-R&B newcomers like James Blake and the Weeknd. But instead of conveying intense feelings with a chilly shrug, Usher is clearly pained as he eulogizes a failing relationship in a lonely falsetto. The verses try to build, don’t, try again, don’t again. At one point, Usher abruptly turns the whole thing into what seems like a final roaring emotional plea, a would-be climax, but it isn’t enough, and the track recedes again. As a match of song to message, it’s brilliant. As a microcosm of Usher’s career, it’s sadly prophetic: He would spend the rest of the decade trying to recapture “Climax”’s highs. –Katherine St. Asaph",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNTyfVh3nmU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d712c1ef1e8ce0008b7182f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Usher-Climax.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Usher-Climax_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,116,Burial,“Kindred” (2012),Hyperdub,"Hyperdub Agonizingly, Burial never gave us a proper follow-up to his classic 2007 album Untrue this decade, instead resorting to intermittent singles and EPs. But this strategy still resulted in tracks that lived up to the mysterious producer’s lofty legacy, none more so than “Kindred.” While still rooted in his lifelong obsession with the feral jungle choons of his youth, the song sunk even deeper into the turbidity of our modern world, embracing decay and loss much like William Basinski’s The Disintegration Loops did a decade prior. “Kindred” feels haunted, its errant noises both disrupting the flow and somehow cohering everything into a jaw-dropping, 12-minute opus. It’s a corrupted symphony of a dozen open YouTube tabs, the sound of the flames burning all around us. –Andy Beta",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wC16FJTI6XM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d712ca77cf67c000854d52c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Burial-Kindred.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Burial-Kindred_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,115,The Weeknd,“The Morning” (2011),Republic,"Republic Here is the pop American Psycho, a work that sums up all that’s decadent and a little disgusting about our era. It’s also the greatest song the Weeknd, that dark knight of R&B, ever made. Ostensibly a druggy party track, it’s called “The Morning” as if to dare us to look at the bacchanal in the glare of day, when the abandoned Solo cups are spilled onto the carpet. It was Abel Tesfaye’s first big statement to the world, so resonant it would make him famous: There are strippers and codeine and money atop a hungover tempo that feels like a symbol of generational malaise. “The Morning” might even qualify as horror, as Tesfaye refers to himself and his friends as “zombies of the night”—a pretty terrifying way to characterize a bar crawl. The song made the Weeknd an unlikely yet unflinching chronicler of fucked-up times, the man we’ll put on the stereo when we want to remember exactly how good and terrible it all felt. –Alex Frank",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TAko3RH0bk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d712d12c7531e0008f96f68/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-Weeknd-The-Morning.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Weeknd-The_Morning_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,114,Daft Punk,“Get Lucky” [ft. Pharrell] (2013),Daft Life Limited/Columbia,"Daft Life Limited/Columbia “Get Lucky” debuted as a four-bar loop in a commercial, which Daft Punk’s obsessive fans promptly re-looped and re-looped until it lasted 10 hours. When the full song finally arrived, the instrumentation was pretty much just those four bars over and over, and it was still engrossing. That’s the thing about this song: It’s so simple someone made a chintzy MIDI version of it, but so sinuous that it’s also inspired debates by music-theory journals about what key it’s in. It’s clearly a ’70s pastiche, but it also sounds immediate, even before the robo beeps and boops come in. Daft Punk take the right parts of this song either incredibly seriously or not seriously at all. The disco groove is an immaculate, unironic homage to Nile Rodgers’ Chic, produced alongside the man himself, who plays guitar on the song. The irony is saved for the lyrics, where Pharrell does not even remotely try to keep a straight face while singing his lines about “the legend of the phoenix.” After four lines, he gives up the philosophizing and focuses on the task at hand: getting lucky. But unlike the other huge disco-funk hit of 2013, “Blurred Lines,” this song doesn’t come off too sleazy—there just isn’t enough there. Within those four bars, it’s hard to hear anything but precisely executed joy. –Katherine St. Asaph",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5EofwRzit0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d71309713ff690008c6ef47/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Daft-Punk-Get-Lucky.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Daft_Punk-Get_Lucky_ft_Pharrell_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,113,Jenny Hval,“Conceptual Romance” (2016),Sacred Bones,"Sacred Bones In theory, the Norwegian artist Jenny Hval set out to create an experimental pop album about period blood and vampires with 2016’s Blood Bitch. Really, the record was a deeply accomplished inquiry into the possibility of a feminine sound that gravitated towards the grotesque. At its emotional core is “Conceptual Romance,” a song that floats like a cloud, its hazy procession tempered by the rigor of Hval’s lyrics. A self-described love letter to Chris Kraus’ 1997 novel I Love Dick, which helped shape a generation of feminist artists and intellectuals, “Conceptual Romance” is about the mind-altering power of infatuation. “My heartbreak is too sentimental for you,” Hval croons, slyly chipping back at emotionless masculinity. Between each dreamlike note, “Conceptual Romance” acknowledges thinking and feeling as equally consequential pillars of our lives. –Jenn Pelly",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY7eLAVrfK4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7130f67cf67c000854d52e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jenny-Hval-Conceptual-Romance.png,/dataset/artwork/Jenny_Hval-Conceptual_Romance_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,112,Paramore,“Ain’t It Fun” (2013),Fueled by Ramen,"Fueled by Ramen After three albums of careening mall-punk thrills, Paramore reinvented themselves with “Ain’t It Fun.” Still their highest-charting single, the song brought groove and soul to their sugar-rushing sound—not to mention a gospel choir and real-world resilience. “It’s easy to ignore trouble/When you’re living in a bubble,” Hayley Williams sings, but this is the sound of the bubble of youth freshly burst, of beginning to smash your rose-tinted glasses, of not looking back. Williams has never sounded more monumental or self-possessed. “Ain’t It Fun” proved Paramore to be a legitimate pop force, authors of a new, genre-blurring paradigm of what Top 40 guitar-rock could sound like in the 2010s. They may have made their name on rollercoaster hooks fit for Warped Tour—influencing the likes of Snail Mail, Princess Nokia, and Lil Uzi Vert in the process—but here they grew into themselves, anticipating the influence of blown-up Hot Topic emo in the unlikeliest of places. –Jenn Pelly",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFEmTsfFL5A,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7135027cf67c000854d530/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Paramore-Aint-It-Fun.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Paramore-Aint_It_Fun_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,111,A$AP Ferg,“Shabba” [ft. A$AP Rocky] (2013),Polo Grounds/RCA,"Polo Grounds/RCA “We were always weirdos,” Ferg once said of his A$AP cohort, and the proof is this song, which remains a New York party staple six years later. There’s nothing formulaic about pairing a menacing sample from a twisted ’60s horror flick about a family scalping business with lavish praise for Jamaican dancehall king Shabba Ranks—which makes it perfectly appropriate for Ferg and his crew. Along the way, there are bizarre, ear-twisting moments like Ferg’s full-bodied “Master Bruce!” yell and the unsettling, falling-down-a-mineshaft ad-lib that comes immediately after. The real Shabba Ranks makes a cameo in the video, and the gold jewelry enumerated in the chorus is true to his powerful life, but the strange details—the guts of the song—are Ferg’s alone. –Ross Scarano",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHorckcX60A,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d71355abfe56b000945b79c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/ASAp-Ferg-Shabba.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/AAP_Ferg-Shabba_ft_AAP_Rocky_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,110,Chairlift,“I Belong in Your Arms” (2012),Young Turks/Columbia,"Young Turks/Columbia Brooklyn synth-pop aesthetes Chairlift were a sneakily influential act right up until their split in 2016. Along with fellow blog-era Columbia signees Passion Pit and MGMT, their off-kilter approach to pop songwriting resonated throughout the music industry; dig through the roster of any major label at the start of this decade and you’d find a few acts who were trying to replicate Caroline Polachek and Patrick Wimberly’s approach, albeit without the duo’s left-of-center weirdness. “I Belong in Your Arms” is the crown jewel of their strongest album, 2012’s Something. Polachek delivers lyrics as if she’s gasping for air, spitting stream-of-consciousness non-sequiturs (“Banana split/Honestly/You’re my remote controller”) amid drum machines and synths so perpetually ascendant that they touch the sun. What comes through is the giddy sensation of falling so deeply in love that nothing quite makes sense except a warm embrace. Giving so much of yourself to someone else is always a risky proposition, but for three and a half minutes, Chairlift make the act of devotion sound worth it. –Larry Fitzmaurice",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e8Ql9qFA2o,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7135f37cf67c000854d532/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Chairlift-I-Belong-in-Your-Arms.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Chairlift-I_Belong_in_Your_Arms_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,109,Drake,“Nice for What” (2018),Cash Money,"Cash Money Aubrey Graham took a confident leap of faith in himself by rapping on a sample of Lauryn Hill’s bad-boyfriend soul classic “Ex-Factor” in “Nice for What,” a track that stepped out brazenly on a bounce beat with extra vocals from NOLA icon Big Freedia. But Drake’s message landed like a grown man’s mea culpa for the dog gospel he’s spread for much of the decade—a twerking devotional to all the Insta queens who’ve been wronged by rudely emotional, blame-denying men like Drake. As often as he’s been dismissed as making “music for girls,” the rapper really did so in good faith with “Nice for What,” a celebration of self-sustaining women who keep it moving—“had a man last year, life goes on”—and prefer glowing up alongside their crew to mollifying sweet-talking dudes. The song’s video had director Karena Evans female-gazing upon a cast of accomplished women—Misty Copeland, Tracee Ellis Ross, Olivia Wilde, Tiffany Haddish—making Drake’s magnanimity seem that much more legit. Fatherhood matured him, maybe; perhaps he’s even graduated from the Supreme rug and basketball hoop in his bedroom. –Julianne Escobedo Shepherd",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9BwWKXjVaI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7136647cf67c000854d534/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Drake-Nice-for-What.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Drake-Nice_for_What_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,108,Girlpool,“Before the World Was Big” (2015),Wichita,"Wichita The title track from Philadelphia duo Girlpool’s debut album, Before the World Was Big, distilled the anxieties Harmony Tividad and Cleo Tucker faced as their little band took off, painting an honest portrait of what it means to come of age in the 21st century. The song starts with the amateurish tinkling of a xylophone, the type you might find on the floor of a child’s bedroom. Its delicate notes are pierced by a prickly guitar before Tividad and Tucker launch in, singing in tandem. Together, they reminisce about how easy life felt when they were childhood friends, when reality confined itself to the surrounding neighborhood and the complexities of life had not yet made themselves known. Together, they stand on the precipice of adulthood and eulogize a time when the future was just another question waiting to be answered. –Gabriela Tully Claymore",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDprSv9DjxY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d71384b13ff690008c6ef4a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Girlpool-Before-the-World-Was-Big.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Girlpool-Before_the_World_Was_Big_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,107,Fetty Wap,“Trap Queen” (2014),300 Entertainment,"300 Entertainment On its face, Fetty Wap’s “Trap Queen” is as straightforward as its opening line: “I’m like, ‘Hey, what’s up, hello?’” Made up of only a handful of rhyme schemes, it’s a pop-rap song designed to burrow into your head and never escape, complete with glittering trap production and a drug-pushing, Bonnie-and-Clyde-type love story. What prevents it from being overly repetitive, though, is the New Jersey rapper’s irregular voice; his electronically enhanced vibrato is so deep and tremulous, it welcomed comparisons to yodeling. But like Roger Troutman of Zapp and other funk pioneers of the past, Fetty used effects not to sanitize or correct his voice, but to inject even more emotion into it. So every time he sings, “Baby, yeahhhh,” each slightly mechanical crack and quiver rings with extra devotion. –Michelle Kim",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_kF4zLNKio,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7138f0c7531e0008f96f6a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Fetty-Wap-Trap-Queen.png,/dataset/artwork/Fetty_Wap-Trap_Queen_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,106,Christine and the Queens,“Tilted” (2015),Atlantic,"Atlantic When chart-dominating acts like Ed Sheeran have fashioned superstardom from a corny outsider narrative, where does that leave the real weirdos—the ones who don’t even fit the basic binary of high glamour and humdrum convention? Christine and the Queens’ “Tilted” elegantly articulates that liminal territory, and, more elegantly still, avoids commodifying it with a hashtagable definition. (That satisfying slipperiness may be a quirk of the French singer’s impressionistic approach to writing in English.) “Tilted” makes room for all manner of imbalance as it advocates for neutrality rather than ticker-tape positivity: When she sings “actually” in the line “I am actually good,” the word shrugs off the idea that self-loathing should be a natural state. And when the synths in the verses lurch like warm blood rushes of adrenaline, or arousal, Chris conveys a real-time sense of being overcome by acceptance for the first time. –Laura Snapes",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RBzsjga73s,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7139a5416c320008d9d75c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Christine-and-the-Queens-Tilted.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Christine_and_the_Queens-Tilted_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,105,Kendrick Lamar,“DNA.” (2017),Aftermath/Interscope/Top Dawg,"Aftermath/Interscope/Top Dawg It’s a rapper’s true test to not only string together rhyming lyrics but to frame them, couching in themes and smoothing big ideas into mantras. It’s why word-soup rap enjoys a cult following but falls on deaf ears to everyday audiences; “keep it simple” is a motto many lyricists can’t hold to. In this way, Kendrick Lamar is an anomaly: As dense as his lyrics can be, he zooms out onto big ideas that are resonant and impactful to the masses. He does this on “DNA.,” a blistering personal statement from 2017’s DAMN. that digs back generations and stamps a moment of collective tensing among Black Americans. In the face of a growing, grinning wave of genocidal hate-speech delivered with the presidential seal of approval, Lamar shouts forth the steely confidence of a people ready to bark and bite back, standing on roots that run centuries deep. The song’s riotous second half lets the final battle wage in all its chaos, as Lamar lets off a breathless stanza that even brought the Pulitzer committee to a hush. –Matthew Trammell",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLZRYQMLDW4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7166e37cf67c000854d537/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kendrick-Lamar-DNA.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kendrick_Lamar-DNA_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,104,Amen Dunes,“Miki Dora” (2018),Sacred Bones,"Sacred Bones In the primordial ’60s of yore, Californian surfer Miki Dora was a counterculture icon, a lawless criminal, and the distillation of American masculinity—the stuff of Tom Wolfe books and Dennis Hopper flicks. In 2018, he lived on as one of the subjects of Amen Dunes’ fifth album, Freedom. Here, Dora’s life is a mirror to indie rock songwriter Damon McMahon’s own. “Miki Dora” is about the surfer, but it’s also about the end of McMahon’s youth, and what it means for him to grapple with maleness. Those big West Coast waves that Dora surfed half a century ago are rendered endless in the mesmerizing rhythm of the song. Eventually the guitar gets a bit roomier, and McMahon’s perma-stoned vocals rise ever so slightly, but there are no riptides in “Miki Dora,” only surf, sun, and pearl-white flotsam. –Sophie Kemp",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RONXqXaF8oI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d71679fc7531e0008f96fd5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Amen-Dunes-Miki-Dora.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Amen_Dunes-Miki_Dora_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,103,Erykah Badu,“Hello” [ft. André 3000] (2015),Motown,"Motown Erykah Badu’s 2015 mixtape But You Caint Use My Phone reimagined other artists’ telephone-based songs to delve into the nature of long-distance communication; landlines connected people, she mused, while smartphones more often create distance. The tape’s origin may have been a “Hotline Bling” thought experiment, but its logical endpoint is “Hello,” a dreamy Isley Brothers interpolation (by way of Todd Rundgren) that musically reunites Badu with André 3000, the father of her eldest child. She coos sweet salutations into the receiver, he untangles verses about the terrors of opening up—be it the digital fear of unlocking your phone for a snoopy lover or the analog fear of sitting by, waiting, and having to bear your soul when the phone is finally answered. It feels like two people figuring things out. Roughly half of American households don’t have landlines anymore. But here, the joys and anxieties of twirling a cord around your finger while sinking into a lengthy call aren’t yet antiquated. –Sheldon Pearce",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVg9J5ELEwI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7168dc416c320008d9d7fc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Erykah-Badu-Hello.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Erykah_Badu-Hello_ft_Andr_3000_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,102,Katy Perry,“Teenage Dream” (2010),Capitol,"Capitol In the context of Katy Perry’s cartoonish early hits, the “Teenage Dream” music video is downright stark. No pyrotechnic breasts, psychedelic candy landscapes, or glow-in-the-dark alien abductions: just Katy, her ripped beau, and some similarly photogenic pals on a sepia-toned drive along the beach. The track is similarly svelte and irresistible: a sunny, major-key melody that shares a lineage with Don Henley’s “Boys of Summer,” New Radicals’ “You Get What You Give,” and other pop hits that arrived pre-loaded with nostalgia and widescreen emotions. At the time Perry recorded it, she was attempting to become more than a pop novelty. As if realizing her ambitions mid-sentence, she once explained in an interview, “I want people to… think of me as that pin-up poster in their room—or hopefully I can invade their dreams and be their teenage dream.” And just like that, her music turned bold and sweeping, owing more to the ’80s pop stars with whom she’d soon share chart milestones. Meanwhile, she was midway through her 20s, about to get married, and entering a decade where her propensity for unsubtle gestures of positivity would fall in and out of fashion. But as she gazed toward the camera from the passenger seat in this song’s video, she seemed to have it all figured out. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGJuMBdaqIw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d717d2113ff690008c6ef91/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Katy-Perry-Teenage-Dream.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Katy_Perry-Teenage_Dream_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,101,TNGHT,“Higher Ground” (2012),Warp/Luckyme,"Warp/Luckyme Listening to “Higher Ground” is like getting hit by a freight truck while chugging a liter of cold brew. The track had TNGHT producers Hudson Mohawke and Lunice bridging the gap between Lex Luger’s dirty South production and modern dance music, preluding (and arguably helping birth) the EDM-trap craze. Its guttural brass line, ferocious breakdown, and vocal sample lifted from Julie McKnight’s 2002 club anthem “Home” combine to erect an imposing electronic music monument. The popularity of the track led its makers to recoil from the spotlight and quietly switch off the TNGHT signal, which is fair enough. In its sheer sonic magnitude, “Higher Ground” is essentially insurmountable. –Noah Yoo",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HzyUHxmkg0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d717d9413ff690008c6ef93/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/TNGHT-Higher-Ground.jpg,/dataset/artwork/TNGHT-Higher_Ground_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,100,Jamie xx,“I Know There’s Gonna Be (Good Times)” [ft. Young Thug and Popcaan] (2015),XL,"XL Who knew the shy producer from whispery indie rock trio the xx could also throw a great party? Dancehall star Popcaan, trap royal Young Thug, and the sampled voices of ’70s a cappella group the Persuasions meet in “I Know There’s Gonna Be (Good Times),” a snare-rolling standout from Jamie xx’s 2015 solo debut, In Colour. Popcaan’s deft sing-song amplifies the Caribbean roots of Jamie xx’s steel drums, while Thug giddily squeals through the song’s empty space: When he declares, “I’ma ride in that pussy like a stroller,” his glee is contagious. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjLBB-TMa84,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d717e8b7cf67c000854d570/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jamie-xx-Gosh.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jamie_xx-I_Know_Theres_Gonna_Be_Good_Times_ft_Young_Thug_and_Popcaan_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,99,Mac DeMarco,“Ode to Viceroy” (2012),Captured Tracks,"Captured Tracks A heartfelt tribute to a notoriously terrible brand of cigarettes became a career-making moment for Mac DeMarco. With his inaugural solo mini-album Rock and Roll Night Club, the Canadian singer established himself as a weirdo skeez with a shit-eating grin—a guy whose songs showed tons of promise if you pierced through the thick coats of deep-voiced, slow-motion gimmickry. On “Ode to Viceroy,” he sings tenderly about his unforgiving tobacco addiction and frequent trips to the bodega to buy another pack. “Don’t let me see you cryin’,” he croons. Again, he’s singing to a pack of cigarettes, but any inherent absurdity barely registers. The unlikely love song ends with the sound of him lighting up, inhaling, and collapsing into a fit of echoing coughs. –Evan Minsker",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bfTTeZOrs4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d718018416c320008d9d804/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mac-DeMarco-Ode-to-Viceroy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mac_DeMarco-Ode_to_Viceroy_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,98,D’Angelo & the Vanguard,“Really Love” (2014),RCA,"RCA D’Angelo is such a naturalist that you can almost overlook his eccentricity. “Really Love” evokes the rapture of deep love, the blissful sensation of falling into orbit around the object of your affection. D’Angelo’s honeyed coo, “I’m in really love with you,” is disarming in its sincerity and in its faint aberration—“really” is used oddly, as an adjective rather than an adverb. It sounds off at first, but as the strings quiver and the unquantized drums tick along, every instance of the word becomes a knowing wink, a flash of intimacy. The song includes a spoken word intro in Spanish, along with violin, viola, contrabass, sitar, multiple guitars, horns, synths—even a Curtis Mayfield sample. (It shouldn’t be surprising that D’Angelo plays many of these parts.) When “Really Love” was released as the single to Black Messiah in 2014, its richness felt like a statement: D’Angelo had been largely out of sight for 14 years, but he’d never been idle. –Stephen Kearse",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVsQwJfWzoI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7180c17cf67c000854d572/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/DAngelo-Really-Love.jpg,/dataset/artwork/DAngelo__the_Vanguard-Really_Love_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,97,Snail Mail,“Pristine” (2018),Matador,"Matador Uplifted by chugging guitars and crashing drums, Snail Mail’s Lindsey Jordan mourns a relationship that’s crashing to the ground on “Pristine.” The young indie rock musician leans into the grandiosity of her pain, layering anguished thought over anguished thought. Any one line from the song—“I know myself and I’ll never love anyone else,” “Don’t you like me for me?” “I’ll still see you in everything, tomorrow and all the time”—distills the exquisite, all-consuming pain of teenage heartache. With these words, Jordan builds a scarecrow outline of her relationship just to torch it all to the ground. “Pristine” burns and burns, fueled by an urge to create one last beautiful spectacle out of failed romance. –Vrinda Jagota",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tnTucP1UM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d71828347318e000977d848/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Snail-Mail-Pristine.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Snail_Mail-Pristine_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,96,Thundercat,“Them Changes” (2015),Brainfeeder,"Brainfeeder For a virtuoso whose music explores the outer reaches of funk, yacht rock, and astral jazz, Thundercat has always shown a sensitive undercurrent. In his first two solo albums, he slowed down a George Duke love anthem, sang adoringly about his cat, and composed a heart-wrenching tribute to a late friend. “Them Changes,” from his 2015 EP The Beyond/Where the Giants Roam, pairs this vulnerability with one of his best grooves. It’s a burbling stomp about being emotionally and literally destroyed, about how his heart has been ripped from his chest and his floor is covered in blood. (It’s worth noting that this man has a well-documented love of samurai films.) Thundercat seems dazed and panicked here, unable to process what’s happened as he begs for help. Then, in an interlude, his trusty bass falls away and he sings some ethereal oooohs, pinpointing a sweet spot between boldness and fragility. –Evan Minsker",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNCd_ERZvZM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7804f20db1d10008f1fcb8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Thundercat-Them-Changes.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Thundercat-Them_Changes_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,95,Rihanna,“Bitch Better Have My Money” (2015),Roc Nation,"Roc Nation This was the music video that launched a thousand pearl-clutching critiques, along with about as many think pieces about its radical significance. In it, Rihanna nonchalantly threatens her accountant with a phrase often wielded by men. In the process, she kidnaps and tortures his wife, before taking a chainsaw to his neck. There are umteen ways to read into the politics of this video: What kind of violence are we sensitized to, and what makes us squirm? What does it look like for a woman to be powerful and angry while also being feminine? How are white women complicit in and benefitting from the bad behavior of white men? But ultimately, determining whether this video is Good and Feminist or Bad and Cancelled is futile; what freedom looks like for any woman cannot be simplified into one set of rules. This is for certain though: “Bitch Better Have My Money” is a song and video about Rihanna putting herself—her money, her friends, her revenge—first. –Vrinda Jagota",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/B3eAMGXFw1o,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7805626eee70000829f4b4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Rihanna-BBHMM.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rihanna-Bitch_Better_Have_My_Money_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,94,Hurray for the Riff Raff,“Pa’lante” (2017),ATO,"ATO In his 1973 poem “Puerto Rican Obituary,” the Nuyorican poet Pedro Pietri urged his people onward toward self-knowledge and self-love. More than 40 years later, Alynda Segarra, the singer-songwriter behind Hurray for the Riff Raff, used the poem as fuel for “Pa’lante,” the penultimate track from her band’s 2017 album, The Navigator. The record found Segarra staking a new claim to her Puerto Rican identity, after a lifetime of “finding most of my heroes in white men.” But this song didn’t find its ultimate purpose until later that year, when Hurricane Maria arrived. Since the storm hit, Segarra continuously tried to find her way back to her ravaged ancestral homeland in a way that would allow her to give without taking. She finally made it in December 2018. While there, playing “Pa’lante” for her people, she fully understood its time-warped origin. As she told Billboard: “It felt like I didn’t write the song—we wrote the song.” –Jonah Bromwich",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LilVDjLaZSE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d78066dfd34990009cf8c03/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Hurray-for-the-Riff-Raff-Palante.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Hurray_for_the_Riff_Raff-Palante_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,93,Radiohead,“True Love Waits” (2016),XL,"XL Until it resurfaced as the last track on A Moon Shaped Pool, “True Love Waits” was best known among Radiohead fans as the earnest acoustic ballad that got away. Written more than 30 years earlier and unsuccessfully retooled for each of the band’s peak-era masterpieces, the song was squandered at the bottom of the 2001 live album I Might Be Wrong. But Yorke never abandoned the studio version, eventually forgoing the experimental synthesizers and Rhodes piano he kept trying to make work in favor of soft piano chords. In its final form, “True Love Waits” remains obliquely romantic, but instead of begging and pleading with his partner, Yorke sounds resigned to a more solitary fate. In the context of the band’s—and the song’s—long-term trajectory, this shift in tone shift feels major: Yorke and co. know that the older you get, the more you realize how little is in your control. –Jillian Mapes",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7808012073fe00084eb3bc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Radiohead-True-Love-Waits.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Radiohead-True_Love_Waits_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,92,Meek Mill,“Dreams and Nightmares (Intro)” (2012),Maybach,"Maybach When posterity whittles an artist’s music career down to a few ripe seconds (and it will), they are lucky to be left with a single drum crack or a yelped ad lib to testify that they once existed. Meek Mill had a turbulent decade, but with “Dreams and Nightmares,” he notched 200 glorious, uninterrupted seconds onto hip-hop’s wall. You cannot abridge the intro to his album of the same name; “Dreams and Nightmares” has to be taken in full or not at all. May the gods protect the DJ who cut away from the weepy grand pianos before the beat change—that switch-up is the point, the gas pedal. This song’s so goddamn potent, it spawned a subgenre: From Tee Grizzley’s “First Day Out” to Cardi B’s “Get Up 10,” the ensuing years were littered with tracks directly mimicking its lush intro/pummeling coda structure. None of them came close to matching Meek Mill’s blood-curdling intensity. –Jayson Greene",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWh4O6ujK4o,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7808866eee70000829f4b6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Meek-Mill-Dreams-and-Nightmares.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Meek_Mill-Dreams_and_Nightmares_Intro_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,91,Haim,“The Wire” (2013),Columbia,"Columbia “The Wire” is the most locked-in groove from Haim’s debut album Days Are Gone—a record not exactly lacking in locked-in grooves. The song has the group’s three sisters, who up to that point had spent a literal lifetime honing session chops while mastering a soft rock-meets-’90s R&B sound infused with Laurel Canyon vibes, reaching maximum vocal synchronicity as they glide over hand-clap melodies and airy lyrics about giving a bruised lover the brush-off. They are technically the ones apologizing—“You know I’m bad at communication, it’s the hardest thing for me to do”—but anyone who sounds this unbothered while saying sorry clearly has the upper hand, and always will. –Jeremy Gordon",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Vh0iP5BziQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7808d88699b30008f1acf3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Haim-The-Wire.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Haim-The_Wire_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,90,Blawan,“Why They Hide Their Bodies Under My Garage?” (2012),Hinge Finger,"Hinge Finger Blawan’s “Why They Hide Their Bodies Under My Garage?” just might be the most cheerfully mean-spirited song of the decade—an evil, glowering spirit that barrels ahead like a bull on a rampage. Over a punishing drum groove of hammered anvils and sharpening knives, the UK producer flips a Fugees sample into what sounds like a serial killer’s accidental confession. Then, for extra horror-core effect, he adds a blood-curdling scream every few bars. It’s a song so ludicrous in its malevolence that even Skrillex started playing it in his sets, bringing the techno underground together with EDM’s fuzzy-boots set by way of a good, old-fashioned murder fantasy. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KL_Bbyi3ub8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7809730db1d10008f1fcba/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Blawan-Why-They-Hide-Their-Bodies.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Blawan-Why_They_Hide_Their_Bodies_Under_My_Garage_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,89,Frank Ocean,“Pyramids” (2012),Def Jam,"Def Jam In the middle of 2012, Frank Ocean was still the shadowy Odd Future affiliate who put out a charming mixtape of skewed R&B, or the guy who guested on JAY-Z and Kanye’s Watch the Throne and wrote a song with Beyoncé. He was not yet an icon, and the world hadn’t really seen all that he could do. Then came “Pyramids,” and the ground beneath us shifted. The three-part, 10-minute hyperspace cruise through time, styles, and cool-eyed character observations offered monumental proof that he was capable of miracles. Egyptian pharaohs, Las Vegas sex workers, uncredited John Mayer guitar solos—somehow, he made all of it sound like it belonged. Most impressively, the result was light and catchy enough not to collapse under the weight of Ocean’s vast ambition. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJt7gNi3Nr4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d79087e2073fe00084eb42f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Frank-Ocean-Pyramids.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Frank_Ocean-Pyramids_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,88,Japandroids,“Younger Us” (2010),Polyvinyl,"Polyvinyl “Younger Us” is a self-fulfilling rock’n’roll prophecy. When Japandroids frontman Brian King graduated college, he watched his friends from small town British Columbia, Canada quickly settle into normalcy—weddings, mortgages, babies—and thought, Well, fuck that. So he started a band with drummer Dave Prowse and dreamed up a song about teenage abandon, blooming lust, and jumping out of bed to grab a beer with your best friend. “Younger Us” was written during the sessions for Japandroids’ breakthrough album, 2009’s Post-Nothing, when the duo were essentially making music for themselves. So its manic nostalgia, driven by King’s gushing distortion and Prowse’s incessant cymbal crashes, looks backward and forward at the same time: The song doesn’t lament lost youth so much as it’s hellbent on recapturing it. By the time “Younger Us” was released in 2010, Japandroids were drinking through sunrises en route to the next sold-out gig, far from home. –Ryan Dombal",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4m6Ptx4CV6k,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d79092e0db1d10008f1fe36/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Japandroids-Younger-Us.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Japandroids-Younger_Us_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,87,Rich Gang,“Lifestyle” (2014),Cash Money,"Cash Money In 2014, Cash Money Records co-founder Birdman, one of the keenest A&R men in rap history, brought together two buzzing Atlanta artists—infectious eccentric Young Thug and malleable crooner Rich Homie Quan—for a feel-good jam of perfect synergy. On “Lifestyle,” their Auto-Tuned warbles sounded as lush as the manners of living they envisioned in song: Thug bursting at the seams, puffing on clouds from the top of a mountain, Quan reclining with commas in every bank. It marked Thug and Quan’s biggest hit to date, and the trio would birth an exceptional mixtape together, Rich Gang: Tha Tour Pt. 1. But the alliance that had seemed to foreshadow many more seasons of Cash Money primacy instead dissolved rather quickly, and all three artists have feuded with each other on and off ever since. “Lifestyle” remains a snapshot of what could have been, a look inside a dynasty before it was irreparably broken. –Sheldon Pearce",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGt_JGHYEO4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d790a022073fe00084eb431/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Rich-Gang-Lifestyle.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rich_Gang-Lifestyle_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,86,Destroyer,“Chinatown” (2011),Merge,"Merge The opening track on Destroyer’s Kaputt unfurls like a waking dream. Everything in it feels simultaneously vivid and unreal; the blurry saxophone seems to beckon from beyond the song itself, while Dan Bejar’s vocals sound plucked from a metaphysical overheard conversation: “You can’t believe/The way the wind’s talking to the sea,” he marvels. You might not know what he means, exactly, but those windswept waves are indelible once he’s pointed them out to you. “I can’t walk away,” he repeats, sounding more obsessed than trapped. Whatever “Chinatown” means to Bejar’s narrator, it’s somewhere deliciously inescapable—a state of mind forever disappearing over the horizon. –Madison Bloom",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmeu3aiVeb8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d790b2cfd34990009cf8d12/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Destroyer-Chinatown.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Destroyer-Chinatown_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,85,Charli XCX,“Track 10” (2017),Asylum/Atlantic,"Asylum/Atlantic Charli XCX is sonic science fiction. Delightfully robotic and whimsically spacy, she got the best grasp of where she was going, and could go, on 2017’s Pop 2 mixtape. Tucked at the end is “Track 10,” which, after a production swap and a Lizzo feature, became her blaring 2019 single “Blame It On Your Love.” But in its relatively spare original form, the song relies not on bass drops but rather a heavily accumulating chorus that loops and loops, burrowing its way deeper into the mind and limbs with each rotation. At her best, which she is here, Charli XCX cracks a key pop music code: doing as much with as little language as possible. The chorus of “Track 10” consumes and consumes, until it ends, and the listener can’t remember living in a world before they heard it. –Hanif Abdurraqib",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rj6dwEBmBJA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d790c4afd34990009cf8d14/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Charli-XCX-Track-10.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Charli_XCX-Track_10_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,84,Kelela,“Bank Head” (2013),Fade to Mind,"Fade to Mind Released six years ago, Kelela’s “Bank Head” is a proof-of-concept that’s still recouping. Today, an R&B vocalist pairing with electronic producers is a familiar idea; during the more wide-eyed summer of 2013, though, Kelela and Kingdom’s mp3 demos sounded like a future the club kids and R&B purists had both intuited, where the black queer underground got its just due as cultural alchemists. Kelela was an easy sell as an underground icon: Her vocals flexed with all the acrobatic skill her generation had learned from Janet, Brandy, and Mariah, while her style whet the palates of the ultramodern Opening Ceremony devotees who run the fashion world. The beats did the rest: The handclaps that drive the track forward are a call-to-action for hips and tongues across genres, from Miami bass to baile-funk to house, drenched in a synth-bed that sounds like a sunrise let-out from a Bed-Stuy afterhours club. “Time goes by really slow,” Kelela sings here, but it feels like it was just yesterday when she was sketching out the sounds of tomorrow. –Matthew Trammell",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0q9LcifnTV4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d790dfbfd34990009cf8d16/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kelela-Bank-Head.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kelela-Bank_Head_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,83,Deerhunter,“Desire Lines” (2010),4AD,"4AD Unlike most of Deerhunter’s catalog, “Desire Lines” has little to do with frontman Bradford Cox. Sung instead by guitarist Lockett Pundt, the highlight of their fifth album, Halcyon Digest, found Deerhunter at their nocturnal best: Two screeching guitar riffs hurtle around each other for a few frenzied minutes and collapse, while the band hammers at the tune over and over again, just to check that it’s dead. You’d be forgiven for thinking you were listening to Arcade Fire at first—“Desire Lines” opens with the same anguished chug as 2004’s “Rebellion (Lies)”—though Deerhunter wield a sharper edge, paring down the tune’s raw materials into a darker and more elegant shape. –Jo Livingstone",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mBSOtdOjoc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d793eec4bc6510008699739/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Deerhunter-Desire-Lines.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Deerhunter-Desire_Lines_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,82,Dej Loaf,“Try Me” (2014),Columbia,"Columbia 2019 rap enjoys subverting gender norms at both ends. At one are pipsqueak-pitched brats racing to see who can sound the most infantile and coy while spouting hyper-masculine, R-rated lyrics; it’s easy to picture that Looney Tunes cigar-smoking baby when listening to the latest verses from Playboi Carti or Lil Uzi Vert. On the other end are pencil-sharp female rappers dragging the genre to new edges from behind cat-eye makeup. They aren't concerned with celebrating femininity, or anything else for that matter—they simply grab for your throat, no matter how you identify. One could argue that a touchstone for both styles was Dej Loaf’s “Try Me,” the shimmering street anthem that took 2014 by storm from a Detroit front porch. With her unisex wardrobe, buttersoft voice, and vows to turn her enemies into pasta, she carved out space for female rappers to be sour and sweet while giving dudes some lessons in melody: A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie, for one, must know he owes his radio-ready flow to Dej Loaf’s pioneering style. –Matthew Trammell",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Hn9hLOljJI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d793f4d256a0a0009483311/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Dej-Loaf-Try-Me.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Dej_Loaf-Try_Me_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,81,Cass McCombs,“County Line” (2011),Domino,"Domino By the time Cass McCombs released this pillow-soft meditation on the ache of loneliness, he’d already established himself as a slippery figure in American folk-rock, with a penchant for cryptic, out-of-time songs. Casting his feathery falsetto front and center, “County Line” is the rare McCombs track that sees him fully resisting the urge to obfuscate his best melodic instincts in bizarre chord changes and jarring industrial sounds, opting for a comforting backdrop of ambrosial organ, wispy drums, and twangy guitar licks. Its power resides in the way it offsets all that beauty with the wretched, delicious pain of its subject matter, elevating a highway marker into a metaphor for the invisible boundaries we cross and recoil from as we move in and out of each other’s lives. And yet, with McCombs, even a lyric as naked as “You never even tried to love me” is never straightforward—to understand why, just look at the “County Line” music video, which features footage of a line of cars awaiting passage at the U.S.-Mexico border. –Emilie Friedlander",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOcnITphyjk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d79407f4bc651000869973b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Cass-McCombs-County-Line.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Cass_McCombs-County_Line_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,80,Blood Orange,“You’re Not Good Enough” (2013),Domino,"Domino It’s a cliche for an artist to say that their music is their therapy, but Dev Hynes really does share things in his music that most of us would only say inside patient-doctor confidentiality. “You’re Not Good Enough,” from his breakthrough as Blood Orange, Cupid Deluxe, is not a pleasant thing to say, to sing, or to even think while breaking up with someone—but why, if its so cruel, does it sound so good? Perhaps it’s Hynes’ Prince-lite funk orchestration and the delicate vocal interplay between him and his then-girlfriend, Samantha Urbani; perhaps it’s how we’ve all thought something similar at some point about someone who disappoints us. But even more so, it’s probably the sheer wonder of enjoying an artist who’s so open that even his darkest ideas become ours. That’s who Hynes has been to a generation: the sensitive, vulnerable, sometimes-sour poet of emotional contradictions, the singer of our thoughts, both clean and otherwise. –Alex Frank",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gtdpnKbT10,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d79410e4bc651000869973d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Blood-Orange-Youre-Not-Good-Enough.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Blood_Orange-Youre_Not_Good_Enough_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,79,Lana Del Rey,“The greatest” (2019),Polydor/Interscope,"Polydor/Interscope On “The greatest,” Lana Del Rey’s world is aflame. Carefree nights have been poisoned by the constant threat of nuclear warfare; her beloved Malibu is ravaged by monstrous wildfires; nothing feels like it used to, and holding onto hope no longer seems plausible. “The culture is lit, and if this is it, I had a ball/I guess that I’m burned-out after all,” she concludes over a noir swell of strings and keys. Despite its tongue-in-cheek fatalism, “The greatest” doesn’t submit to nihilism; it feels like the logical apex of Del Rey’s ever-present nostalgia. Surfing on a languid ’70s guitar wave, her blasé murmur wraps each turbulent image in a gauze of comforting warmth. The end of the world has never felt so assured. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIt2QsIYH88,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7945c94bc651000869973f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lana-Del-Rey-The-Greatest.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lana_Del_Rey-The_greatest_2019.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,78,Jeremih,“Oui” (2015),Def Jam,"Def Jam Is there a contemporary R&B singer more selfless than Jeremih? Between his sporadic solo projects, the Chicago serenader has doubled as one of the industry’s most overqualified session musicians, lending his silken falsetto to tracks from dozens of rap and R&B’s biggest names—and plenty of smaller ones, too, often without so much as a feature credit in return. When you've been gifted with a voice like this, it’d be cruel not to spread it around. After his 2009 breakout “Birthday Sex,” most of Jeremih's singles saddled him with rap features that rarely added much, but “Oui” was a reminder of how transcendent he could sound when given the chance to carry a track on his own. For four heavenly minutes, the song suspends gravity, accompanying Jeremih with production as weightless as his voice: plinking pianos, gentle swooshes, and helium-infused trap drums that float toward blue sky like a bouquet of heart-shaped balloons. Jeremih isn’t just singing about bliss. He’s creating it. –Evan Rytlewski",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtcP0PFifpE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d794661256a0a0009483313/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jeremih-Oui.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Jeremih-Oui_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,77,Kanye West,“Ultralight Beam” (2016),G.O.O.D./Def Jam,"G.O.O.D./Def Jam Given the kaleidoscope of egomania and petty grievances that make up Kanye West’s world, the most immediately surprising thing about “Ultralight Beam” is that he barely appears on it. Yes, he’s there, hobbled by Auto-Tune, a pilgrim in rags ascending the mountain. But the Life of Pablo opener is a group effort: an imperiled Kelly Price, an ecstatic Chance the Rapper, a reverential Kirk Franklin, a gale-force choir. See? West seems to say. I know when to shut up. As uplifting as the song’s message is, the music here is pretty leaden: The trudging drums, the vast silences, the choir struggling against the inertia of it all. But that’s the song’s power: Instead of capturing triumph or even reprieve, it fixates morbidly on burden. And yet Kanye is there, his friends are there, he fucks up and asks forgiveness, the seasons turn. If West continues to seem sympathetic, it’s in part because no matter how much he achieves, he still manages to make himself look like he’s climbing—steadily, painfully, an avatar for the possibility that one can be both weak enough to buckle and strong enough to go on. As for whether or not he deserves the redemption he’s asking for, well, if you really believe in God, you know that even assholes deserve to stand in His light. –Mike Powell",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oHdAA3AqnE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7946b353e80c0008f439c2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kanye-West-Ultralight-Beam.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kanye_West-Ultralight_Beam_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,76,The National,“Bloodbuzz Ohio” (2010),4AD,"4AD The National are very good at making buttoned-up music about weariness and despair, and the time they’ve spent perfecting such downcast moodiness makes their explosive moments hit that much harder. “Bloodbuzz Ohio,” from their 2010 album High Violet, is one of their finest anthems, a slow-building roar that gathers momentum with every measure. Bryan Devendorf’s drums, halfway between a backbeat and a fill, give the song its relentless forward motion, and his rhythm seems to shove each additional instrument into place and send it on its way by sheer force of will. Singer Matt Berninger offers typically cryptic lines about “owing money to the money” and being carried to Ohio by a swarm of bees, but the true meaning of his words comes from the way he sings them—resigned, a little bewildered, somehow still hopeful in spite of it all. –Mark Richardson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfySK7CLEEg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7946fe0db1d10008f1ff0d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-National-Bloodbuzz-Ohio.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_National-Bloodbuzz_Ohio_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,75,DJ Koze,“Pick Up” (2018),Pampa,"Pampa Impervious to trends, DJ Koze’s specialty is creating warmly funky tracks coated with light psychedelic mist, tracks that braid together yearning, hope, and sadness into a fundamentally human ache. “Pick Up,” a towering highlight from his 2018 album Knock Knock, condenses his fundamental Koze-ness into six and a half minutes of shimmering disco bliss. That the song is built around a vocal sample from a Gladys Knight & the Pips ballad is perfect, reminding us that Koze is as much a listener as he is a creator. We hear what he heard in Knight’s voice, and then we follow him as he takes that feeling someplace all his own. –Mark Richardson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JE63vMzb3UE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7947a26eee70000829f669/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/DJ-Koze-Pick-Up.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/DJ_Koze-Pick_Up_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,74,Jack Ü,“Where Are Ü Now” [ft. Justin Bieber] (2015),Mad Decent/OWSLA,"Mad Decent/OWSLA What a difference a perfect pop song can make. In the couple of years before Justin Bieber’s “Where Are Ü Now,” produced by Skrillex and Diplo under their Jack Ü moniker, the baby-faced star was in the middle of an awkward transition from tween-pop hairball to tattoo-covered fuckboi, his countless transgressions splashed across TMZ on what seemed to be an hourly basis. When he wasn’t pissing in a mop bucket in the kitchen of a restaurant, he was throwing eggs at his neighbor’s house, or visiting the Anne Frank House only to write how he hoped the tragic Holocaust victim “would have been a belieber” in the guestbook. For a moment, he was the most hated man-child on Earth. Then came this song, and everything changed. It started off as an affectingly whiny Bieber demo before the vocals were sent to Diplo and Skrillex, who tweaked and distorted and pitch-shifted them to match their future-pop dreams. “Where Are Ü Now” was released in 2015, when EDM’s trademark drops had all but lost their adrenaline-spiking effectiveness. Sensing this shift, the one time drop-mongers inverted their own style here: Instead of concocting a hands-in-the-air buildup to a blaring hook, Diplo and Skrillex sucked out all of the track’s air at its peak, like an astronaut suddenly floating in space. The result was discombobulating to the point of deliriousness—a reimagining of what Justin Bieber could be, and what a Top 10 hit could sound like. –Ryan Dombal",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nntGTK2Fhb0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7947f64bc6510008699741/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jack-U%25CC%2588-Where-Are-U%25CC%2588-Now.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jack_-Where_Are__Now_ft_Justin_Bieber_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,73,Perfume Genius,“Queen” (2014),Matador,"Matador Over his first two albums, Mike Hadreas’ hollowed-out music as Perfume Genius relied on waterlogged recordings and funereal vocals befitting pitch-black subject matter: desperation, addiction, abuse. But with “Queen,” he cleared away the reverb to deliver his most assertive beam of clarity yet. He used the showy elements of glam rock to swan triumphantly against gay panic: “No family is safe when I sashay,” he cried over a crash of cymbals and guttural vocals, ushering in a brash sound for Perfume Genius that went hand in hand with a newly unambiguous lyrical approach. A full year before the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage across the U.S., Hadreas was locking horns with those who clutched their pearls at the faintest whiff of homosexuality—the same kind of bigoted personalities that now populate some of America’s highest offices. Let “Queen” be the rallying cry against them, ad infinitum. –Eric Torres",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7OSSUwPVM4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d79483c0db1d10008f1ff0f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Perfume-Genius-Queen.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Perfume_Genius-Queen_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,72,"Tyler, the Creator",“Yonkers” (2011),XL,"XL “Yonkers” is like an indoctrination—before you know it, Tyler, the Creator has swept you up in his breakneck realm. And as Tyler’s first release on a proper label, the song served as the catalyst for the Odd Future movement, bringing the L.A. kids off the internet and onto Jimmy Fallon’s back. It begins abruptly with its sickly, skittish beat that sticks like a broken delete key. Just as swiftly, the rapper starts dropping names of then-mysterious figures—Anwar, Jasper, Syd—as he inverts rap cliches into menacing quips. There’s nowhere to sit, nowhere to hide. You just want to follow this guy wherever he goes, even when he eats a cockroach in the video. –Matthew Strauss",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSbZidsgMfw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7948a00db1d10008f1ff11/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Tyler-the-Creator-Yonkers.png,/dataset/artwork/Tyler_the_Creator-Yonkers_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,71,Adele,“Someone Like You” (2011),Columbia/XL,"Columbia/XL Be sure to stretch before putting on 21: It’s still a marathon of human misery. Adele didn’t just languish in the agony of sudden heartbreak on her second album, she found the glory in surviving it—of turning her scratchy soul belt into a conduit for bewilderment and betrayal. After fixating, fantasizing, and hypothesizing her way through the record, Adele showed just how far she had come with its closing track, “Someone Like You.” The ballad is an atom bomb of yearning, but it’s not permitted to freewheel into self-pity. Singing with hoarse gravity, Adele holds every note like a steely challenge to move forward even as she looks back, rarely flickering into melisma as the piano arpeggios churn below. Listen to “Someone Like You” in the depths of despair, and it’s a lifeline; listen to it from the other side, and it’s a medal for a battle well fought. –Stacey Anderson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLQl3WQQoQ0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d79492d4bc6510008699743/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Adele-Someone-Like-You.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Adele-Someone_Like_You_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,70,Beach House,“Zebra” (2010),Sub Pop/Bella Union,"Sub Pop/Bella Union Beach House singer Victoria Legrand listened to her bandmate Alex Scally’s instrumental demo, with its pendulum riffs and dramatic crash cymbals, and thought of zebras. “It was what I was seeing,” she told KEXP recently, “patterns crossing.” So she wrote a song about that striped animal running among horses, simultaneously distinguished and camouflaged by its markings. It became the lead-off track to Beach House’s third album, Teen Dream, and a pivotal moment for the duo. On its surface, “Zebra” sounds like a song about deception—perhaps a prelude to the breakup album that follows. But it also gets at something much deeper: “Patterns crossing” may be the most apt description of the Beach House sound, which thrives on the contrast between textures and feelings, between Scally’s stoic guitar and Legrand’s soulful vocals. “Zebra” expresses something about how they create together, how they use their stripes to capture ineffable feelings, and how they’ve managed to remain so mysterious for so long. –Stephen Deusner",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-wfb25WmV4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d79496d0db1d10008f1ff13/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Beach-House-Zebra.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beach_House-Zebra_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,69,Caribou,“Can’t Do Without You” (2014),Merge/City Slang,"Merge/City Slang “Can’t Do Without You” initially scans as a relatively straightforward love song. In it, Caribou’s Dan Snaith and a sampled Marvin Gaye sing the titular phrase over a simmering nü-disco beat that swells into a euphoric banger. But any sweetness inherent to those few words eventually gets smothered by the claustrophobic nature of how they’re delivered: It’s about love, for sure, but it also starts to sting as a reflection on obsession and codependency. So by the end of the track, it’s hard to shake the feeling that you’re basking in the rapturous glow of a relationship that’s become dysfunctionally intertwined. –Evan Minsker",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI2Et19vDCM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d780adc0db1d10008f1fcbc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Caribou-Cant-Do-Without-You.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Caribou-Cant_Do_Without_You_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,68,FKA twigs,“Two Weeks” (2014),Young Turks,"Young Turks A lot has been made of the sexually explicit lyrical content of “Two Weeks” (such as: “My thighs are apart for when you’re ready to breathe in”), but less has been said about how much of an orgasm the song is musically. There are all these elongated sounds—slowly arching snares, spilt treacle synths, vocals that stretch into the horizon—that act as lines of tension, gently bracing themselves for the inevitable. There’s even what appears to be a cracked whip just after the one-minute mark. When the drop finally comes (again and again), it carries twigs’ voice off into the abyss. While there’s plenty to savor in the artist’s clit-sure lyricism, what makes her tale of desire and release a keeper is how its sound embodies the rise and fall of our protagonist’s thirst for her would-be lover; a death and a rebirth, swallowing one another whole. –Ruth Saxelby",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yDP9MKVhZc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a863e0db1d10008f20007/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/FKA-twigs-Two-Weeks.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/FKA_twigs-Two_Weeks_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,67,Kacey Musgraves,“Slow Burn” (2018),MCA Nashville,"MCA Nashville By picking up on narrative threads of past country rebels, from Loretta Lynn’s sexual frankness to Willie Nelson’s penchant for mind-expanding flora, Kacey Musgraves’ lyrics have been defiant and open-minded, even when her music has sounded more traditional. But on Golden Hour, her third album, it’s the arrangements that catch your attention. Its opening track, “Slow Burn,” begins by evoking sunny Laurel Canyon soft rock as much as it does country, with a serene melody and gently strummed acoustic guitar. But midway, after the introduction of a drumbeat and bassline, it takes on shades of trip-hop, as though filtering Patsy Cline through a Portishead prism. “Slow Burn” is not so much a genre crossover as an open-ended journey, like the acid trip in the desert that inspired Musgraves to write the song. Rather than leaving country behind, the songwriter has chosen to explore the limits of its territory, and to expand them. –Shuja Haider",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC7cmWkBoz4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a8c718699b30008f1aee5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kacey-Musgraves-Slow-Burn.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kacey_Musgraves-Slow_Burn_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,66,King Krule,“Out Getting Ribs” (2010),House Anxiety,"House Anxiety It’s still a bit shocking to hear that voice coming from that body in the DIY video for “Out Getting Ribs,” Archy Marshall’s breakout song. He was just 15 years old when he posted the clip, but his weathered warble suggested someone several decades older—as do the lyrics, which had Marshall pulling from his adolescence while also transcending the simple angst typical of such an age. He touched up “Out Getting Ribs” for his 2013 debut album as King Krule, 6 Feet Beneath the Moon, taking out some reverb and cleaning up the guitar and bass. But the original version, rough and raw and bracing, stands up best. –Matthew Strauss",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9wLrAtcd6Y,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a8ce253e80c0008f43a3c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/King-Krule-Out-Getting-Ribs.jpg,/dataset/artwork/King_Krule-Out_Getting_Ribs_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,65,Drake,“Worst Behavior” (2013),Cash Money/Young Money/Republic,"Cash Money/Young Money/Republic In 2013, we were introduced to Tough Drake. Nothing Was the Same was his coming-out party, and “Worst Behavior” was his anthem. If young Drake strained awkwardly to make his points, Tough Drake romanticized his misbehavior with ease, burning time just yelling “Remember?! Motherfucker?!” Years before he became the world’s most-streamed act, “Worst Behavior” was Drake’s chest-beating play for pop’s center, even with its gloriously rattled, oblong beat (which producer DJ Dahi once called “literally, like, a mistake”). Drake was 26 then, and Tough Drake felt like a costume he’d eventually take off. But it wasn’t a phase. Six years later, Drake still isn’t in a forgiving mood. He still hasn’t settled down, and maybe he never will. (He’s not the only one who thinks permanently coupling up might actually make you lonelier.) When you have everything, do you stay on your worst behavior forever? –Naomi Zeichner",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CccnAvfLPvE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a8d2b8699b30008f1aee8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Drake-Worst-Behavior.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Drake-Worst_Behavior_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,64,Phoebe Bridgers,“Motion Sickness” (2017),Dead Oceans,"Dead Oceans The lyrics to “Motion Sickness,” a highlight from Phoebe Bridgers’ slow-burning debut Stranger in the Alps, eulogize a toxic relationship. “I hate you for what you did/And I miss you like a little kid,” she sings softly over layers of echoing guitars and an insistent rhythm. In the climax, she offers a particularly damning line—“You were in a band when I was born”—and holds out the last syllable like a primal howl. It’s a lyric that now feels inextricable from a New York Times article from earlier this year in which Bridgers and other musicians alleged abuse at the hands of Ryan Adams. But for all its first-person directness and lingering questions, “Motion Sickness” is the beginning of a story, not an ending: Its steady rise of adrenaline sounds like a vow to keep moving. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sfYpolGCu8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a8d75f2a07f0008f41ca4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Phoebe-Bridgers-Motion-Sickness.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Phoebe_Bridgers-Motion_Sickness_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,63,Bobby Shmurda,“Hot Nigga” (2014),Epic,"Epic New York needed something fresh. It was 2014 and the city was less than a year removed from famed Compton, California native Kendrick Lamar claiming he was the “King of New York” on record. Then, in March, Bobby Shmurda released the music video for “Hot Nigga” on YouTube. It began as a New York street-rap hit; the city fell in love with Bobby’s Brooklyn cockiness and the song’s booming Jahlil Beats production. The hook could be heard playing out of cars across all five boroughs, while the rapper’s “Shmoney Dance” found its way into schools and, eventually, Vine. Looking back, it’s unreal that “Hot Nigga” was ever more than a local phenomenon, especially since the NYPD cut Bobby’s career short before he got a chance to benefit from his success. But for a moment, his energy and personality brought New York hip-hop back into the spotlight. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3JNEM1TIEs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a8dc4256a0a0009483360/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bobby-Shmurda-Hot-Nigga.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bobby_Shmurda-Hot_Nigga_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,62,Rihanna,“We Found Love” [ft. Calvin Harris] (2011),Island Def Jam,"Island Def Jam Hopelessness is not a common thing to find in a pop song. Sadness? Sure. Heartbreak? Of course. But the word “hopeless” implies a sense of disrepair that’s hard to face directly, let alone dance to. Yet somehow, it took less than a minute for Rihanna and Calvin Harris to lodge the idea into the radio’s vocabulary with their glittering collaboration “We Found Love.” While her words gesture toward the world’s darkest corners, the warmly insistent, lite-house thump suggests starry skies, packed dancefloors, human touch. Like a lot of things concerning Rihanna, “We Found Love” inserted itself into popular culture with idiomatic ease, and the generational gravity of its message only adds to its appeal. Lately, Rihanna has used her platform to speak out for a number of prominent causes: for reproductive rights, for Colin Kaepernick, against the president. She’s at that point in her career where every move she makes suggests a feeling of invincibility: Just because she found what she’s looking for doesn’t mean she’s done searching. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg00YEETFzg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a8e1f256a0a0009483362/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Rihanna-We-Found-Love.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rihanna-We_Found_Love_ft_Calvin_Harris_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,61,EMA,“California” (2011),Soutterain Transmissions,"Soutterain Transmissions “California,” the droning centerpiece of Erika M. Anderson’s first album as EMA, is a gospel song at heart—an invitation to surrender in the face of impossible odds, to lay down one’s burden at the feet of a force more powerful than the self. Beatless, ceaseless, the track sounds more like weather than music, a storm from which Anderson can’t quite find refuge. The catharsis of “California” isn’t so much that the storm passes but that she surrenders to it, and in doing so, gives herself a shot at starting over. As the song reaches its peak, Anderson quotes “Camptown Races,” an old minstrel tune about playing the horses: “I bet my money on the bob-tailed nag/Somebody bet on the bay.” Historically, it was presented as comedy, the story of an enterprising young guy getting ready to try his luck. Then there’s Anderson, 150 years later, detoxing from manifest destiny at the edge of America with nothing to show for it but the knowledge of what it means to have failed. –Mike Powell",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tuu5YtkPIo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a8ea1256a0a0009483364/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/EMA-California.jpg,/dataset/artwork/EMA-California_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,60,Future,“March Madness” (2015),Freebandz,"Freebandz The bulk of “March Madness” found Future detailing his lavish lifestyle. Especially at the time, this rang very true. The Atlanta rapper had an enormous year in 2015, with the release of his Drake collaboration What a Time to Be Alive along with one of his best albums, Dirty Sprite 2. He’d reached hip-hop’s A-list, and “March Madness” offered a view from the top. Yes, it’s a song about getting fucked up and driving too fast in an expensive car, but it’s also a song where Future reveals that he’s not insulated from the outside world. “All these cops shootin’ niggas, tragic,” he sang, months after the deaths of Michael Brown and Laquan McDonald. Over ethereal synth arpeggios, digital bells, and 808s, Future’s vocal acrobatics amplify the tension that plays out in his lyrics—the highs of luxury butting against the violence that’s brought upon the unarmed and unprotected. –Evan Minsker",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80eG40_eK7A,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a8ee90db1d10008f20009/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Future-March-Madness.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Future-March_Madness_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,59,David Bowie,“Blackstar” (2015),Columbia,"Columbia “I’m not a pop star,” Bowie insists in this mercurial, nearly 10-minute amble of woodwind jazz bleats, group moans, and tinny vocal shearing. Having reinvented himself so many times, his last musical effort was to bid farewell with that same grace and eternal curiosity. The title track of Blackstar, his 25th album, set this tone immediately; its surreal lines about nonchalant executions and bright, heavenly bodies—beautiful in their doomed infernos—are sung with comforting humanity, an empathy that overpowers the song’s proggy grandeur. Its skittish, multi-act structure and glacial sax tones resist easy resolution; the most catharsis we are offered comes in the poetically macabre music video, in which the lonely corpse of Major Tom is exhumed and, with him, all Bowie’s spectacular former guises are laid to rest. Then all that remains is the man, staring straight into the unfathomable and having the wisdom to offer no answers. –Stacey Anderson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kszLwBaC4Sw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a8fae256a0a0009483366/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/David-Bowie-Blackstar.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/David_Bowie-Blackstar_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,58,Miguel,“Adorn” (2012),RCA,"RCA In 2012, R&B was in the midst of an identity crisis. Even the genre’s brightest talents found themselves shut out of Top 40 radio, and the few that managed to infiltrate its playlists did so by surrendering to the overblown EDM of the moment. But on his inventive run of early ’10s singles, Miguel posited another way forward. “Adorn” was one of the year’s few crossover R&B hits that still felt like R&B. It was also a wild studio experiment: an ’80s Marvin Gaye/Lionel Richie homage that sounded like it was recorded in a racquetball court. All throbbing synths and bubbling bass, “Adorn” freed Miguel to roam the song’s alien terrain, exploring how his desirous falsetto bounces off its oblique angles. He cartwheeled through the track, singing in swooning howls, and in the process coining an inimitable sound that bottled the sensation of ecstatic liberation: whawp! –Evan Rytlewski",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dM5QYdTo08,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a8ff24bc65100086998ce/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Miguel-Adorn.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Miguel-Adorn_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,57,Taylor Swift,“All Too Well” (2012),Big Machine,"Big Machine “All Too Well,” the hidden gem of Taylor Swift’s Red, captures everything that makes her a world-class songwriter: her emotional intelligence, her candor, her economy of words, her ability to find beauty in vulnerability. Swift tells a big story by freezing time and honing in on small details, the kind that could seem like background noise to others: the scarf that her ex (reportedly, Jake Gyllenhaal) kept as a memento, the refrigerator light that illuminated midnight dance parties. All these hyper-specifics, rigorously chronicled, protect Swift’s pain so she can tend to it; when she sings, “It was rare/I was there,” she asserts her own experience against those who would trivialize it. As the song builds, its initially mild-mannered guitar gains energy, cymbals begin to crash, and Swift’s voice steadily rises. But she doesn’t really need volume to convey the magnitude of the damage. It’s the quietest moments that serve this story best—they make you lean in close enough to see every tiny fissure in her broken heart. –Olivia Horn",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5YOaJ_ASMs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a90930db1d10008f2000b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Taylor-Swift-All-Too-Well.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Taylor_Swift-All_Too_Well_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,56,Vince Staples,“Norf Norf” (2015),Def Jam,"Def Jam If you were to compile a map of the United States as told by rappers, no locale would be rendered as crisply as Vince Staples’ Long Beach. On the norf side, Yankee hats are in style, snitches are hunted to extinction, and the shotgun that offed Boyz n the Hood’s Ricky Baker remains at large. As Staples slides from parties to shootouts, danger is courted and eluded. Death is defied and embraced. Gangster rap is disparaged; gangsters endure. Though every detail is in 4K, the screen flickers. Obama’s promises of hope and change remain unfulfilled; Vince’s family sticks around, yet so do his gun-toting rivals. Embodying that relentless tension, Clams Casino’s production is a twitchy fusillade. The bass quakes and smolders; the synths blare and pulse; the claps tingle. Proud of his home, Staples is at ease within this discord, but he doesn’t shy away from its costs. Because he sees his city so clearly, he has no illusions: No one can run forever. –Stephen Kearse",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mb6Jc4juSF8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a91c3256a0a0009483368/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Vince-Staples-Norf-Norf.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Vince_Staples-Norf_Norf_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,55,Bat for Lashes,“Laura” (2012),Parlophone/EMI,"Parlophone/EMI The title character of “Laura” is a dreamer in crisis, a partied-out socialite left behind by the crowds. Only Natasha Khan remains by her side, and in her sweetest and deadliest ballad, she dedicates every ounce of her formidable self herself to propping up her lost friend. We all yearn for someone like Khan to swoop in and declaim our innate superheroism to the world, and “Laura” isn’t just a tribute; it’s a devotional, a monument. “You’ll be famous for longer than them/Your name is tattooed on every boy’s skin,” Khan wails. Laura may have been overlooked but, within the aura of Khan’s belief, we know her glory. –Jazz Monroe",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UznHTBZIa8E,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a92a98699b30008f1aeeb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bat-for-Lashes-Laura.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bat_for_Lashes-Laura_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,54,Disclosure,“Latch” [ft. Sam Smith] (2012),PMR,"PMR With “Latch,” Disclosure managed to land a rare one-two punch: Not only did the UK duo become dance music heavies in their own right, they practically minted an entirely new pop star to boot. As the song slowly made its way toward ubiquity, eventually peaking at No. 7 in America two years after its initial release, it wooed an EDM audience that was tiring of 12-ton drops and dudes screaming at crowds to put their hands in the air. As a refreshing alternative, Guy and Howard Lawrence created a track bound to an indestructible house beat and filled with the types of chord extensions more commonly found in jazz (or Steely Dan albums) than standard chart fare, allowing for Sam Smith to unleash their jaw-dropping vocals. Today, the song remains a testament to a brave new world of democratized production, one where two brothers, a laptop, and an unknown superstar can move the world. –Noah Yoo",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93ASUImTedo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a932c53e80c0008f43a40/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Disclosure-Latch.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Disclosure-Latch_ft_Sam_Smith_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,53,Solange,“Losing You” (2012),Terrible,"Terrible “Losing You” was the conclusion of a love story, but it was also the beginning of a new Solange. The song was released between two pivotal projects: four years after her album Sol-Angel and the Hadley Street Dreams, an almost quaint love letter to Motown, and four years before her culture-shifting political purge, A Seat at the Table. Produced and co-written with Blood Orange’s Dev Hynes, both “Losing You” and its parent EP, True, turned Solange into an indie R&B darling with a clear vision that was destined to be refined. As breakup ballads go, this one’s deceptively cheerful. Disoriented by the end of something irreconcilable, she sees her relationship devolve from all-night makeout sessions to total static. The melody lags, at odds with the backdrop’s retro claps and squeals, but perhaps it’s a sign that the loss is actually a gain. –Clover Hope",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy9W_mrY_Vk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a9386256a0a000948336a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Solange-Losing-You.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Solange-Losing_You_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,52,Camp Cope,“The Opener” (2017),Run for Cover,"Run for Cover Since the dawn of time, women have been fed up with the patronizing antics of men in music. And with “The Opener,” Melbourne-based punk trio Camp Cope use the misogynistic injustices they have faced over the years as creative jet fuel as they crush industry bros who use feminism for their own self image, bookers convinced that the band can’t sell out a room, and bored stoner dudes who treat women like meat sacks. Over Georgia Maq’s nervy alto, a driving bassline, and grunge-of-center percussion, the band presents a withering critique that does not hold back even a little. Near the end of the song, when Maq yelps, “Now look how far we’ve come not listening to you!” she cements Camp Cope’s place as a no-bullshit punk band that will be emblazoned on denim jacket patches in perpetuity. –Sophie Kemp",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40nc_8ij3MI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a93cb0db1d10008f2000d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Camp-Cope-The-Opener.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Camp_Cope-The_Opener_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,51,Kendrick Lamar,"“Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe” (2012)",Aftermath/Interscope/Top Dawg,"Aftermath/Interscope/Top Dawg In 2012, newfound fame was weighing on Kendrick Lamar. He was surrounded by people he didn’t know, while adapting to life as the new voice of Compton. On “Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe,” he took a break from the reflective coming-of-age story he narrated throughout good kid, m.A.A.d city to address keeping his musical virtues intact amid so much change. “I’m tryin’ to keep it alive/And not compromise the feeling we love,” he rapped. But he also acknowledged, in the song’s lingering opening line, “I am a sinner who’s probably gonna sin again.” Despite the heavy content, the Sounwave-produced track sounds like a jazzy backseat ride through Cali, with Kendrick’s vocals cycling through nasal-voiced singing, smooth-talk flows, and rapid-fire sprints. He delivered the message that Compton—and everyone else—could put their faith in him. He hasn’t let us down yet. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF8aaTu2kg0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a940a0db1d10008f2000f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kendrick-Lamar-Bitch-Dont-Kill-My-Vibe.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kendrick_Lamar-Bitch_Dont_Kill_My_Vibe_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,50,Arcade Fire,“Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)” (2010),Merge,"Merge “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)” served as the climax of 2010’s The Suburbs—as well as of everything Arcade Fire had done up to that point. It’s about a very particular archetype: the artsy misfit, the daydreamer trapped in a place that stifles creativity and smothers dreams. The character fits into the band’s past, with its dark anthems about kid-level conspiracies—brothers bitten by vampires, secret cities where no cars go—but this song adds a new urgency. Régine Chassagne sings her exurban angst with big-hearted wonder, adding nobility to the tired concept of escaping the concrete jungle for more bucolic landscapes, as the rest of the group’s pearly dance-pop avoids any note of bitterness or pessimism. Listening to “Sprawl II,” it feels clear that the song’s heroine got out of whatever grey hell she was in, and found her kind. –Stephen Deusner",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awHWColYQ90,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a94884bc65100086998d0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Arcade-Fire-Sprawl-II.png,/dataset/artwork/Arcade_Fire-Sprawl_II_Mountains_Beyond_Mountains_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,49,Gyptian,“Hold Yuh” (2010),VP,"VP Everyone wants a song of the summer, but few people realize the song that defines a summer doesn’t necessarily arrive as the season is fully blossoming. There are tracks like “Hold Yuh” that poke their heads Stateside in the spring, before getting played in clubs or on the radio until the melody affixes itself to a moment, then an entire season—and maybe even a whole half-decade worth of seasons. Gyptian had been flourishing on the Jamaican dancehall charts for over five years with songs like “Serious Times” before “Hold Yuh” became a crossover success. It is almost unfair how irresistibly danceable this song is, how it articulates a desire for closeness while laid over the kind of sparse but infectious beat that practically demands bodies shifting together. –Hanif Abdurraqib",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNidyB0KWtU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7ba68e0db1d10008f20088/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Gyptian-Hold-Yuh.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Gyptian-Hold_Yuh_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,48,Ariana Grande,"“thank u, next” (2018)",Republic,"Republic Navigating romance publicly comes with being a public figure—which can be good when it is good, and agonizing when it is agonizing. Ariana Grande has had to do this through several iterations of her career, in ways that have sometimes felt unfair. All this came to a head in the fall of 2018, when she was mourning both the death of her ex-boyfriend Mac Miller and a broken-off engagement to Pete Davidson. “thank u, next” was her response, the polished product of bouncing back from many heartbreaks. The song itself works against the somewhat dismissive sentiment of the title: The twinkling chorus is steeped in a kind of corny but joyful gratitude, for the past but also for the present self. Crooning angelically, Grande reminds the masses that we choose to love people for a reason, even if that love is brief. “thank u, next” might even be considered a little bit of a troll because of how it challenges the voyeurism of her situation: It would have been salacious to air an ex out for the world to see, but it is more fascinating to draw an eager audience close before offering what is merely a small token of gratitude. –Hanif Abdurraqib",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gl1aHhXnN1k,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7ba7674bc65100086999b3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ariana-Grande-thank-u-next.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ariana_Grande-thank_u_next_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,47,Tame Impala,“Let It Happen” (2015),Modular,"Modular If you can’t understand a damn thing Kevin Parker sings during the bridge of “Let It Happen,” you’re not alone. The vocals are complete gibberish, placeholder words given emotional heft by his performance and vocoders time-tested by ’80s icons and French robots alike. It doesn’t matter that he’s singing raw syllables, though, because you can feel the wistful acceptance in every note. It’s the most affecting part of this nearly eight-minute-long song, which opened 2015’s Currents and introduced a new era of Tame Impala. No more trivial accusations of retrofetishism or John Lennon idol worship; with this heavy slab of space disco, Parker decidedly broke free of any preconceived notions about his abilities. The riff—a simple, octave-leaping groove—stands alone, but the punchy drums and elaborate synth arrangements throughout cleared the stage for Tame Impala to claim their place as true psych-rock originals. –Noah Yoo",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ed6UeDp1ek,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7ba7c50db1d10008f2008a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Tame-Impala-Let-It-Happen.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tame_Impala-Let_It_Happen_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,46,The Knife,“Full of Fire” (2013),Rabid/Brille/Mute,"Rabid/Brille/Mute There’s an alternate reality in which the Knife never stopped sounding like the sunny electro-pop band who inspired that one José González song at the turn of the century, thereby ending up in the third-biggest font size on the Electric Daisy Carnival poster and probably collaborating with Marshmello once or twice. But in our actual reality, Karin and Olof Dreijer got dark with their 2006 classic Silent Shout before making their grand return seven years later by inhaling radical theory and fully metamorphosing into their namesake—something steely, cutting, dangerous when necessary. “Full of Fire,” the first single from 2013’s Shaking the Habitual, is a nasty patchwork of sawtooth synths, hissed vocals, and guttural drum patterns, perennially teetering on the brink of manic collapse. It primes you to leave it all on the dancefloor before waking up ready to throw a brick through the patriarchy. –Jeremy Gordon",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxJhYpTIrl8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7ba84a53e80c0008f43a81/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-Knife-Full-of-Fire.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Knife-Full_of_Fire_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,45,Robyn,“Call Your Girlfriend” (2010),Interscope/Konichiwa,"Interscope/Konichiwa Only Robyn, the Swedish teen-pop phenom turned self-directed superstar, could shimmy through a scenario as thorny as the one in “Call Your Girlfriend.” In it, she plays a woman who’s been covertly seeing someone who’s already paired off with someone else. But her character shows no bitterness for the girlfriend in question. Instead, she gently coaches her lover through breaking up with the other woman, urging him to spare her feelings. The klaxon call of the chorus makes “Call Your Girlfriend” a dance-pop triumph, one of many Robyn songs to arc toward euphoric release. But the glittery production only deepens the sinister lyrical narrative: “Now it’s gonna be me and you,” Robyn concludes, having successfully manipulated her man into her arms. Maybe she’s scheming, but it’s impossible not to celebrate along with her. –Sasha Geffen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nv644ipg2Ss,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bab5a53e80c0008f43a83/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Robyn-Call-Your-Girlfriend.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Robyn-Call_Your_Girlfriend_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,44,Big Thief,“Mary” (2017),Saddle Creek,"Saddle Creek “Mary,” the emotional center of Big Thief’s breakthrough album Capacity, takes the form of a late-night reverie. Band leader Adrianne Lenker’s voice is hushed and hesitant, as though she’s trying not to wake anyone as she sifts through a box full of private memories, their outlines turned silvery and strange with time. Over a reassuring backdrop of organ and piano, her voice gathers strength as she is swept away in a flood of images, words so vivid you can feel them beating in your hand like small, frightened birds. It is a nostalgic song, shot through with a sense of loss, but it is ecstatic in its synesthetic rush, its sublime sense of everything coming on at once. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5OV1JPqlNQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bac414bc65100086999b5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Big-Thief-Mary.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Big_Thief-Mary_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,43,Lorde,“The Louvre” (2017),Republic,"Republic Lorde is a sneering romantic: She’ll dissect love like it’s a frog in biology class while still falling under its spell. That’s the mode in which she operates on “The Louvre,” narrating a whirlwind summer romance that’s lighting her from within even as she’s rolling her eyes at the whole thing. As the song begins, she could be working out a sketch in her childhood bedroom, her voice just above a whisper and hung over rumbling, muted chords. An intensely physical connection settles into something deeper, and you can hear her fighting off love until her facade starts to crack. When she drops her guard to embrace love in all of its supernatural glory, it feels as bracing as a dip in a frozen lake. “The Louvre” isn’t the most readily melodic or explosive song on her 2017 opus Melodrama, but it’s the one that best conveys Lorde’s preternatural skills. She can take a feeling everyone knows and transform it into something fresh, as if you’re experiencing it for the first time. –Jamieson Cox",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQkdwymDanE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bacb8256a0a0009483419/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lorde-The-Louvre.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lorde-The_Louvre_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,42,SZA,“The Weekend” (2017),Top Dawg/RCA,"Top Dawg/RCA SZA baited a new lovestruck generation by presenting herself as a work-in-progress, shamelessly hooked on rash decisions. “The Weekend,” from her debut album CTRL, is an imagined agreement between partners, sung from the perspective of the Other Woman who isn’t fully in charge. While the girlfriend spends the mundane hours of the week with the man, SZA’s character gets to absorb his stress, be in command, and “make him lose his mind” on the weekends. SZA’s singing conveys all the euphoria and uncertainty of this arrangement: She presents desire as a transaction between multiple people, singing with the confidence of a person who loves to indulge but who realizes the idea of possession in relationships is slippery. The shades of acceptance, sadness, and hope in her voice, slung over a moody, slow-drip tempo, give “The Weekend” its sober dimension—there’s a sense that performing the feel-good service of satisfaction is a thankless act, and that she knows she wants more. –Clover Hope",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMD63TwzB1o,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bad504bc65100086999b7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/SZA-The-Weekend.jpg,/dataset/artwork/SZA-The_Weekend_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,41,Courtney Barnett,“Avant Gardener” (2013),Marathon Artists,"Marathon Artists The song that made Courtney Barnett an indie rock star involves a startlingly detailed narrative about the tension of literally being unable to breathe. In it, she sets out to garden, and after some small talk about vegetables with a neighbor, she pulls her first weed and quickly has an asthmatic episode. “Avant Gardener” is a languid song, and Barnett’s delivery is deadpan, but her anxiety in every observation gives the whole thing a nail-biting intensity. Someone calls an ambulance, and her first thought is about how much this shit is going to cost. She gets a shot of adrenaline and instantly conjures Uma Thurman’s near-death scene in Pulp Fiction. As she watches her day go off the rails, she always grounds the song in a seven-word chorus that is as simple as it is profound: “I’m not that good at breathing in.” –Evan Minsker",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcnIhzaDTd0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bae516eee70000829f7e6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Courtney-Barnett-Avant-Gardener.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Courtney_Barnett-Avant_Gardener_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,40,Frank Ocean,“Nights” (2016),Self-released,"Self-released On “Nights,” the space-bending centerpiece of Blonde, Frank Ocean distorts and collapses all sense of time. It begins with him singing over sunny guitars about an ex-lover, taking bitter swipes at their character. Then, after about three minutes, the track starts to descend into a frenzy of distorted guitars, frantically circling through arpeggios like it’s bracing for a crash landing. As the track switches into a woozy trap beat, Frank plunges back into the past. He tells how he first met his ex by flashing a series of small images that transports you back to the scene: his family’s old Acura, going to the Southern restaurant chain Shoney’s, transferring colleges from New Orleans to Texas after Hurricane Katrina. Throughout “Nights,” Frank establishes an ultra-thin line between past and present, day and night, and nostalgia and regret, effortlessly dancing between each binary. –Michelle Kim",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4l9bFqgMaQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7baea653e80c0008f43ab9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Frank-Ocean-Nights.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Frank_Ocean-Nights_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,39,SOPHIE,“Bipp” (2013),Numbers,"Numbers Before there was SOPHIE the transgressive pop icon, there was SOPHIE the divisive electronic music producer, and “Bipp” was her calling card. Like all the best future-thinking pop music, “Bipp” caused equal parts delight and bemusement when it was released in 2013, thanks to its combination of pitch-shifted vocals, elastic synths, and nonchalant percussive hits that seemed to roll around like a raver on an endlessly pitching deck, nauseous but giddily excited. “Bipp” skirted musical genres, from rave to R&B, UK garage to EDM, in a way that frustrated purists and confused the hell out of commentators, straining at the leash of electronic music’s tightly patrolled genre borders. And yet the track proved to be SOPHIE’s breakthrough, its envelope-mangling, sugar-rush energy paving the way for collaborations with everyone from Madonna to Vince Staples—a day-glo warning shot that indicated just how wonderfully weird pop was going to get in the years that followed. –Ben Cardew",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVc3Z-bG6Eo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7baf178699b30008f1b02f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/SOPHIE-Bipp.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/SOPHIE-Bipp_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,38,Kanye West,"“Monster” [ft. Justin Vernon, Rick Ross, JAY-Z, and Nicki Minaj] (2010)",G.O.O.D./Island Def Jam,"G.O.O.D./Island Def Jam “Monster” packs enough objectively insane moments to fill an entire episode of Scooby-Doo: Kanye hiking up his high-waters to quote Napoleon Dynamite, JAY-Z moaning “looooooove” like a mummified Heathcliff on the moors, Rick Ross using a chunk of his 10-second prologue of a verse to refer to himself as a “fat motherfucker.” Yet the decade’s most opulent posse cut ends up far greater than the sum of its ridiculous parts. Over yawning synths and brusque, almost-industrial bass, these hip-hop hellions offer a quick peek into the vulnerabilities of the super rich and famous while allowing us to ride the wave of their incomprehensibly lofty egos. Of course, “Monster” is remembered most for the burgeoning star it made inarguable: Nicki Minaj, still a month away from releasing her debut album, slaughtering everyone in her path with 32 bars of demented Barbie BDE. Consider our brains eaten. –Stacey Anderson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pS6HRKZQLFA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7baf6e4bc65100086999b9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kanye-West-Monster.png,/dataset/artwork/Kanye_West-Monster_ft_Justin_Vernon_Rick_Ross_JAY-Z_and_Nicki_Minaj_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,37,Jai Paul,“BTSTU (edit)” (2011),XL,"XL Though Jai Paul’s first single wears its influences on its sleeve—the wonky rhythms of J Dilla, the menacing sweetness of Prince—and though it would go on to influence the borderless sound of pop in years to come, “BTSTU (edit)” still sounds like nothing else. At first, the falsetto murmur of “don’t fuck with me” that runs through the track is disorienting. By the time it’s been buried under woozy synth combustion, it’s clear that the disorientation is the point. “BTSTU” works because it sounds like the biggest piece of bedroom pop ever, because it is club music designed to be heard by one person at a time. –Sam Hockley-Smith",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUBAFPIHETA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bb2ac6eee70000829f81c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jai-Paul-BTSTU.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jai_Paul-BTSTU_edit_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,36,Carly Rae Jepsen,“Run Away With Me” (2015),Interscope,"Interscope The proposal is simple and familiar: escape, hand-in-hand, from reality. Still, Carly Rae Jepsen sells it with invigorating conviction on “Run Away With Me.” She’s high on romantic possibility, and her infatuation feels so unstoppable that the only logical solution is to let it carry her away completely. Fueled by a yearning saxophone riff and colossal drums, Jepsen gleefully repeats her heartfelt invitation until the rest of the world melts away. “Over the weekend, we could turn the world to gold,” she murmurs with a quiet devotion, letting the image of two gilded lovers linger in the air. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeccAtqd5K8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bb3110db1d10008f200c0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Carly-Rae-Jepsen-Run-Away-With-Me.png,/dataset/artwork/Carly_Rae_Jepsen-Run_Away_With_Me_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,35,Rae Sremmurd,“Black Beatles” [ft. Gucci Mane] (2016),Ear Drummer,"Ear Drummer Calling yourself a rock star became a rap norm this decade—it simultaneously affirmed hip-hop’s centrality in the culture, laid claim to an inheritance of artistic grandiosity, and turned decadence into an aspirational ideal. Despite strong bids from Kanye and Future, despite Post Malone chanting it into numbing cliché, Rae Sremmurd own the idea for all time thanks to “Black Beatles.” Propelled to No. 1 off the back of the “mannequin challenge” meme, it truly deserved the top spot for its unusual sound and magical, mystical mood. Producer Mike WiLL Made-It’s loping beat and haunting synth conjure a feeling of floaty suspension that pairs perfectly with the song’s lyrics about stepping through the looking glass into a dreamworld of super-fame. There’s something strangely pure-hearted about the fey, sighing way Swae Lee murmurs lines like “quick release the cash, watch it fall slowly”—as though Rae Sremmurd have somehow gone through the excess of lust and ego and now levitate serenely above it all. In a song crammed with great lines, Slim Jxmmi sees off Lee and guest Gucci Mane with his kicker: “me and Paul McCartney related!” The impudence is adorable, the hubris hilarious—and yet, at its core, “Black Beatles” really is a psychedelic pearl as radiant as “Rain.” –Simon Reynolds",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cK5G8fPmWeA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bb36f6eee70000829f81e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Rae-Sremmurd-Black-Beatles.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rae_Sremmurd-Black_Beatles_ft_Gucci_Mane_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,34,Future Islands,“Seasons (Waiting on You)” (2014),4AD,"4AD Years before their network television debut, Future Islands earned a reputation for playing raucous shows at small clubs. So when the Baltimore band brought that same energy to play “Seasons (Waiting on You)” on The Late Show With David Letterman, frontman Samuel T. Herring’s unabashedly earnest performance went viral. Channeling the bravado of a Broadway actor, Herring sang to the studio audience as if it were his last chance. His gamble endeared the band to a new legion of fans and made “Seasons” a hit. Even without the visual, the song is still a triumph. It’s arena-ready synth pop that mourns the end of a relationship, a dissolution as predictable as summer turning into winter. The muscular new wave beat softens under Herring’s croon, his delivery shifting from rugged to wounded from one verse to the next. He sings of losing love as if it were an apocalyptic reckoning, and “Seasons” is the resilient epic written in the aftermath. –Gabriela Tully Claymore",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYO1lSUspXA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bb3e9256a0a000948341d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Future-Islands-Seasons.png,/dataset/artwork/Future_Islands-Seasons_Waiting_on_You_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,33,LCD Soundsystem,“Dance Yrself Clean” (2010),Virgin/Parlophone/DFA,"Virgin/Parlophone/DFA James Murphy has always seemed unusually aware of time’s passing. From LCD Soundsystem’s very first single, the kids were coming up from behind. By “Dance Yrself Clean,” the opener to 2010’s This Is Happening, Murphy was staring at the clock like someone awaiting final judgment: “Everybody’s getting younger,” he moaned. “It’s the end of an era, it’s true.” But this song doesn’t offer a way of beating back the advancing years, or of marking them; it’s a cleansing fire, momentarily releasing us from time’s grip. Simmering in nervous funk before boiling over into thudding synth-pop, “Dance Yrself Clean” is a nine-minute jam about Marxism, divorce, and generalized misanthropy that could serve as the collective freak-out moment at a wedding reception. It’s a stomping, screaming last call of sorts, an invitation to get it all out before the opportunity disappears. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoA0cTC228M,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bb43e6eee70000829f821/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/LCD-Soundsystem-Dance-Yrself-Clean.jpg,/dataset/artwork/LCD_Soundsystem-Dance_Yrself_Clean_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,32,Fiona Apple,“Every Single Night” (2012),Epic,"Epic After seven years away, Fiona Apple returned to a world that better understood her, and she did it with music that seemed to better understand itself, too. On her fourth album, The Idler Wheel..., Fiona charged not just her lyrics but each raw, blistering note with her spirit of defiance, resilience, and fury. “Every Single Night,” the opener, is a surreal lullaby about constantly fighting with your mind. Fiona’s metaphysical lyrics trace the psychosomatic impact of mental struggle, charting the “butterflies in my brain” as they “percolate the mind,” “trickle down the spine,” “swarm the belly,” “swell into a blaze.” She has always been an artist aware of her body, but “Every Single Night” feels like a step further. You can hear clenched teeth, whitened knuckles, and a throat about to be shred. It’s so breathtakingly, quintessentially Fiona: romancing omnipresent internal frictions for three-and-a-half minutes as a method of survival. “I just want to feel everything,” she trills, illuminating the truest theme of all her work: hard-earned aliveness. –Jenn Pelly",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIlLq4BqGdg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bb4e40db1d10008f200c2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Fiona-Apple-Every-Single-Night.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fiona_Apple-Every_Single_Night_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,31,Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti,“Round and Round” (2010),4AD,"4AD If you squint, Ariel Pink’s “Round and Round” starts to resemble Beck’s “Loser.” Both were generational anthems that made no literal sense, made by inveterate L.A. weirdos who rode the line between sincerity and irony until it seemed to crumble. Both reinvented what was considered “cool,” too. Pink’s reference points were like no one else’s—AM radio, commercial jingles, Steely Dan. Countless chillwave, vaporwave, and whatever-else-wave artists followed his lead, but few of them proved capable of the magnificent pop architecture of “Round and Round.” It may be inseparable from its moment, an odd interlude between the peak-indie 2000s and a decade where indie and pop became unashamedly inseparable. But if there’s any coherent message behind “Round and Round,” it’s that pop songs, trends, and life itself are a constant cycle of death and renewal. –Ian Cohen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiLqAu4s-_s,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d8239f3a7cd00000919191c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ariel-Pink-Round-and-Round.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ariel_Pinks_Haunted_Graffiti-Round_and_Round_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,30,Cardi B,“Bodak Yellow” (2017),Atlantic,"Atlantic In early 2017, a few of Cardi B’s songs had landed well enough to lock in BET Awards nominations and a magazine cover, but she needed more music by summer to take full advantage of those looks. So she went to work and came back with a hit that made thoughtful use of its key elements: action-movie intensity, a proven flow courtesy of Florida rapper Kodak Black, and a bottomless array of bars that were easy to parrot and pre-baked for captions. Like Meek Mill’s famously instigating “Dreams and Nightmares (Intro),” it got people going; DJs loved it, and influencers did too. It was released in June with little initial promotion, while Cardi showed up for culture’s early adopters, at queer parties and Southern clubs. By July, it was in radio rotation. By August, all kinds of fans knew the words. And in September, it was a verified smash, unseating Taylor Swift at No. 1 on the Hot 100, making Cardi B the first woman solo rapper to hit that peak in 19 years. Her victory was genuinely ground-up and people-driven. That it was possible—or inevitable, and a precursor for more success to come—still feels triumphant. –Naomi Zeichner",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEGccV-NOm8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d823a59d5d1da00099a8e0a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Cardi-B-Bodak-Yellow.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Cardi_B-Bodak_Yellow_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,29,Joanna Newsom,“Good Intentions Paving Co.” (2010),Drag City,"Drag City “Good Intentions Paving Co.” is the story of two journeys, one literal and one figurative. There’s a road trip to a concert through an unfamiliar countryside, under stars that shyly emerge in a pastel sky. Then the drive exposes a second, inner tale, of a relationship paved with good intentions but now fraught with misgivings and anxieties. With her lover behind the wheel, Newsom addresses some regrets that haunt the romance, namely her own confusion. “How I said to you, ‘Honey just open your heart’/When I’ve got trouble even opening a honey jar,” she chirps apologetically. Nodding to Joni Mitchell, Newsom’s piano arrangement follows the idiosyncratic rhymes of her inner monologue, twisting and turning to the tenor of her puzzled soul. Though she is at her most musically ambitious on this seven-minute opus, the heart of “Good Intentions Paving Co.” is painfully simple: She just wants to be led away from her own indecision. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCCl3nzL5PI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d823b4c43566d0008bed8c3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Joanna-Newsom-Good-Intentions.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Joanna_Newsom-Good_Intentions_Paving_Co_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,28,Beyoncé,“Countdown” (2011),Columbia,"Columbia If being in love has a sound, it’s the euphoric vocal run that opens Beyoncé’s “Countdown.” The song quickly gives way to steady snare-drum taps and staccato horn bleats that match the singer’s heartbeat, as she and songwriter The-Dream carefully mix the best sounds across genres—funk, reggae, dancehall, and R&B (that’s a Boys II Men sample)—into one stutter-stepping, ecstatic, instant classic. The premise of “Countdown” has Beyoncé running down all the ways she loves her man, using a lot of clever wordplay that culminates in a tip-your-head-back, shout-it-in-the-club chorus. At the time, she had been with her husband, JAY-Z, for almost a decade; ever the old soul, she isn’t singing about new love, or one-night-stand love, or ephemeral love. This is an effusive ode to her broken-in, ride-or-die, monogamous romance and a swaggy reminder of exactly what will happen to him if he ever messes around. “Countdown” walked so Lemonade could enter couples therapy and run. –Allison P. Davis",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XY3AvVgDns,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d823b8f4cd79f00091bbacb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Beyonce%25CC%2581-Countdown.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beyonc-Countdown_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,27,M.I.A.,“Bad Girls” (2010),Self-released,"Self-released In the decade since M.I.A. originally released “Bad Girls” on her Vicki Leekz mixtape, the cultural concept of “badass” women has evolved into a meaningless capitalist construct. Now children are reading books about “rebel girls,” aka complex women from history smoothed down by cutesy illustrations and aspirational rhetoric. “Bad Girls” maintains the case for defiance through spikiness: Maya Arulpragasam’s rapping is a blunt and effectively indolent instrument; that clipped, Middle Eastern-inspired synth commands attention like a siren igniting a neighborhood; the S.O.S. signal buried in producer Danja’s beat needles incessantly about the global imperative for women to defy repressive norms (and/or fuck in cars until the windows steam up and the dashboard caves in). Crucially, “Bad Girls” is no manifesto. M.I.A. reclaims rebelling without a cause from the white, male cult hero, her track’s stubborn swagger an incitement to fecklessness. Proof of concept: The single version of “Bad Girls” came out five days before she flipped the bird at the Super Bowl, a powerfully petulant display that showed up America’s prudish hypocrisy and earned her years of legal strife. “My life, but I broke it,” indeed. –Laura Snapes",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_7UFOBjr1M,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d823be52ca7f300099223c6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/MIA-Bad-Girls.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/MIA-Bad_Girls_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,26,Bon Iver,“Holocene” (2011),Jagjaguwar,"Jagjaguwar “Holocene” is the magical realism centerpiece of 2011’s Bon Iver, transforming ordinary life into a beautiful kingdom soaked in cosmic meaning. Justin Vernon’s inscrutable falsetto is your shepherd through the wilderness, soft and reaching for the sky. His sonic landscapes on “Holocene” are composed of rolling drums, keyboards, and humming horns, grounded by one looping, acoustic guitar lick. It’s vast yet simple, and can feel almost too sentimental to be sincere. How can this guy be this seriously existential—reflecting on magnificence and the hallways of his life—when he hardly seems to be saying anything at all? “Holocene” is about letting go, imagining the place where you gain clarity, and basking in the feeling. –Matthew Strauss",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWcyIpul8OE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d823c90d047720009aaa5c7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bon-Iver-Holocene.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Bon_Iver-Holocene_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,25,FKA twigs,“Cellophane” (2019),Young Turks,"Young Turks In 2018, after three years without a major release, FKA twigs shared a note on her absence: six fibroid tumors had grown in her uterus, causing massive swelling and excruciating pain. For a performer whose force lies in mastery of the self, the medical crisis posed an existential threat: Where to go when the body becomes a site of conflict? “Cellophane” and its surreal video begin inside the question and end somewhere beyond it, plunging the singer into a new phase of self-invention—even as the lyrics fret over romantic inadequacy. Where earlier productions contrasted fragility with strength, “Cellophane” is all transcendent vulnerability. Beneath her vocal acrobatics, the lullaby piano warps and degrades without ever changing key, and its three-and-a-half minutes occupy and stretch out the brief tremor we experience when something cherished threatens to break. –Jazz Monroe",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkLjqFpBh84,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d823d5bd5d1da00099a8e40/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/FKA-twigs-Cellophane.jpg,/dataset/artwork/FKA_twigs-Cellophane_2019.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,24,Todd Terje,“Inspector Norse” (2012),Olsen,"Olsen On “Inspector Norse,” Todd Terje nails his signature trick: a dancefloor classic that’s somehow both coy and preposterous. From the mothership-landing intro to the laser-gun synth pings, you know straight off he has something up his sleeve—yet when he beckons towards the trapdoor, you can’t help but follow. I have what you want, the elastic bassline promises. But you need to come a little closer. To seal the false sense of security, the Norwegian producer layers up familiar ingredients—a kitschy snare, some fog-machine sighs, a little synth calligraphy, all sounds one might hear in moderation at the IKEA café. He preserves the air of cocktail-bar elegance until the last moment, when a distant siren whooshes into the periphery. By then it’s too late. A coil of otherworldly tension, a sensational swing into ecstasy, and we’re plunged into Todd’s magic box. Some bliss-out tunes adapt easily to your surroundings, scaling down to soundtrack housework or a morning commute. But listening to “Inspector Norse” on a minor occasion feels scandalous, like hanging a Rembrandt in the bathroom. Then again, that’d be another classic Terje prank. Smuggling mystery into the mundane on neon-lit dancefloors, he shows us that nothing’s as plain as daylight would have us believe. –Jazz Monroe",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHiqPG0526U,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d823da4d5d1da00099a8e42/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Todd-Terje-Inspector-Norse.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Todd_Terje-Inspector_Norse_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,23,Rosalía,“Malamente (Cap.1: Augurio)” (2018),Sony,"Sony “Malamente” marked the arrival of one of the decade’s most remarkable—and unexpected—talents. Even Rosalía’s early fans could hardly have seen it coming: Before “Malamente,” the young Catalan singer was known only for the stripped-down flamenco of her debut album, Los Ángeles, a spine-tingling affair of acoustic guitar and voice. “Malamente” seemed to come from a different universe entirely. The song’s age-old flamenco roots were audible in its fluttering handclaps and in Rosalía’s vocal trills, but every other element—the lurching beat, luminous keys, hiccupping ad-libs, and samples of breaking glass—was unmistakably contemporary. The song’s video filled out that hybrid vision by twisting Spanish iconography old and new (Catholic penitents, bullfighters, tattooed truckers) into a dizzying set of images. “Malamente” jacked into a heretofore undiscovered matrix of possibilities, and a whole new world flashed into being. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rht7rBHuXW8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d823e42bd2bba0009fdf0e4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Rosali%25CC%2581a-Malamente.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rosala-Malamente_Cap1_Augurio_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,22,ANOHNI,“Drone Bomb Me” (2016),Rough Trade,"Rough Trade The horror of drone warfare is that it has no constraints. Operated remotely, designed for stealth, and unburdened by national borders or human rights, drones can deliver war at any time, to any place. On “Drone Bomb Me,” ANOHNI channels all that dread and horrible potential by invoking drones as objects of affection. “Blow me from the mountain/And into the sea,” she sings with sweet resignation. It’s a desperate, masochistic request; drones are gods, essentially, and her narrator has chosen to embrace their limitless power. What makes “Drone Bomb Me” so potent is that this fatalism is not weakness. ANOHNI’s voice is full and resonant even as she solicits a grisly death. Hudson Mohawke and Oneohtrix Point Never’s production is defiantly colorful despite the grim backdrop: The synths swell and twinkle, the drum programming chitters and slaps. It’s jarring for such warmth and personality to be invoked in the context of the cold, mechanical nature of drone warfare, and that’s the point. Lost within those body counts, mission logs, and intelligence reports are real people. For ANOHNI, they may be beyond saving, but they can always be recognized. –Stephen Kearse",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeKBqXszwoQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d823e7ba7cd000009191952/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/ANOHNI-Drone-Bomb-Me.jpg,/dataset/artwork/ANOHNI-Drone_Bomb_Me_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,21,Drake,"“Hold On, We’re Going Home” [ft. Majid Jordan] (2013)",Cash Money/Young Money/Republic,"Cash Money/Young Money/Republic In later years, tinkering with global sounds and codes, Drake would cement himself as one of the decade’s preeminent pop maximalists. Before that, though, there was Aubrey Graham at the horizon, hungry and eager to prove his prowess. In the fall of 2013, Drake released Nothing Was the Same, which found him at the summit of his powers. The album’s biggest single, “Hold On, We’re Going Home,” may very well be the Toronto rapper’s most timeless artifact. It’s raw seduction, a disco-reminiscent ballad that borrows from Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing.” In an interview from that year, Drake said “Hold On” was not the typical fare fans had come to expect, explaining that he wanted the song to be played at weddings and bar mitzvahs in the decades ahead. That sense of legacy is what you hear, cushioned by R&B duo Majid Jordan’s dim coos, and satin-soft production from Noah “40” Shebib and Nineteen85. “Hold On” is not consumed with the moment, as Drake songs routinely are, but with forever. –Jason Parham",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxgqpCdOKak,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d823ecd4cd79f00091bbacd/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Drake-Hold-On-Were-Going-Home.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Drake-Hold_On_Were_Going_Home_ft_Majid_Jordan_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,20,M83,“Midnight City” (2011),Mute,"Mute With “Midnight City,” a whole new generation of teenagers were handed a testament to the life-affirming power of synthesizers. The track catapulted Anthony Gonzalez’s band M83 from beloved indie act to global festival stalwarts through a sublime mix of dream pop, new wave, and neon-lit nostalgia. (There’s also an argument to be made that the pealing outro single-handedly brought saxophones back from the brink.) By now, it’s clear that the song has transcended all of the ’80s tropes that serve as its backbone—if anything, its filtered keyboards and massive, pitched-up hook served as something of a blueprint for countless EDM drops to come. –Noah Yoo",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dX3k_QDnzHE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d824774d047720009aaa5ca/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/M83-Midnight-City.jpg,/dataset/artwork/M83-Midnight_City_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,19,Vampire Weekend,“Hannah Hunt” (2013),XL,"XL In 1968, Simon & Garfunkel released “America,” a road-trip song about love, ennui, and the search for a country’s soul. “Hannah Hunt,” a patient, folky standout from Vampire Weekend's third album, is built from the same musical and narrative bones, and feels like a worthy update of that boomer touchstone. But where Simon & Garfunkel ultimately grasped for unity amid the tumult of the ’60s—“They’ve all come to look for America,” goes their full-throated finale —Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig, a weary millennial, focuses his faith. At the climax of “Hannah Hunt,” snares crack like fireworks, a stately piano enters, and his voice leaps from a croon to a cry as he pledges allegiance to just one person. “If I can’t trust you then damn it, Hannah/There’s no future, there’s no answer,” he yelps. It's the most desperately human Koenig has ever sounded, as he clings to the only thing he can still believe in. –Ryan Dombal",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eo2ZsAOlvEM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d88eb1d1f868e00096102b6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Vampire-Weekend-Hannah-Hunt.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Vampire_Weekend-Hannah_Hunt_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,18,Kanye West,“Runaway” [ft. Pusha T] (2010),G.O.O.D./Island Def Jam,"G.O.O.D./Island Def Jam In 2010, Kanye West was just starting to lean into his heel turn. A year after rushing the VMAs stage to defend Beyoncé’s honor—a stunt that still ripples across pop culture, or at least Taylor Swift’s psyche—West released his great redemption, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Its second single was a self-aware, if not quite repentant, exploration of what it means to be a chronic dickhead. Anchored by a cavernous beat and a 16-note piano line ready to soundtrack a movie about a haunted 18th-century doll, “Runaway” is an exquisite piece of music. But the song’s enduring legacy is in its hook: Once West started toasting the douchebags and the assholes, he couldn’t stop. His unbridled, unapologetic id became the governing force of not only his increasingly dodgy career decisions but of the nation, too, so steadily we barely even noticed. –Steve Kandell",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bm5iA4Zupek,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d88ebb9d09cd000084cdeaf/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kanye-West-Runaway.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kanye_West-Runaway_ft_Pusha_T_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,17,Jamie xx,“Gosh” (2015),XL,"XL “Gosh” opens Jamie xx’s In Colour on a brutal, post-human note: a stripped-down flurry of clattering percussion, a bassline like the emergency alert system on a spaceship about to self-destruct. At the time, the producer said that his album’s copious samples—pulled from old pirate radio snippets, documentaries on early UK garage, and, in the case of “Gosh,” a never-aired pilot for the BBC Radio 1 show One in the Jungle—were all from sources that reminded him of London when he got homesick touring for months at a time. Jamie, like many of his listeners, was barely walking in that era, much less raving. But this isn’t merely borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered ’90s; it’s active and interpretive and alive. “Gosh” feels like the transmission of a memory, the transformation of an old bootleg or VHS recording from inert data into something that flourishes in a whole new era. There’s something cosmically optimistic about the track, and when its melody finally emerges, swooping down from the ceiling and careening around in loop-de-loops, it fully transcends space and time. –Emily Yoshida",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTGJfRPLe08,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d717e8b7cf67c000854d570/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jamie-xx-Gosh.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jamie_xx-Gosh_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,16,The 1975,“Love It If We Made It” (2018),Dirty Hit,"Dirty Hit If any song summarizes this decade—literally—it’s “Love It If We Made It.” According to 1975 singer Matty Healy, for all its promises of progress, “modernity has failed us,” and he’s got the receipts. Over gigantic drums and gleaming synthesizers, he unleashes a torrent of horrors pulled straight from the headlines, including but not limited to: police brutality against black people, fake news, the Syrian refugee crisis, the prison industrial complex, and the opioid epidemic. Had he delivered these realities as a long, sober list, the track would have been too grim, too exhausting. But the 1975 pair this “We Didn’t Start the Fire”-style litany with a technicolor chorus that offers hope in the face of darkness. “And I’d love it if we made it,” Healy bellows over and over with increasing fervor, both a plea and an avowal to make a difference. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Wl1B7DPegc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d88f137d09cd000084cdeb1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-1975-Love-It-If-We-Made-It.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_1975-Love_It_If_We_Made_It_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,15,Rihanna,“Work” [ft. Drake] (2016),Roc Nation,"Roc Nation On “Work,” Boi-1da’s gleaming dancehall beat provides an unlikely home for Rihanna’s vulnerable portrayal of the whiplash of a complex love, of being between heartbreak, longing, and self-assurance. The rolling patois of songwriter PARTYNEXTDOOR’s reference track is left intact on the final version, though in Rihanna’s hands, “Work” loses its tempestuousness and gains perpetual-song-of-summer status. Released in the midst of pop radio’s renewed interest in “tropical” sounds, this No. 1 hit was not the Bajan singer’s first foray into the music of her culture but, perhaps until the arrival of her long-rumored reggae album, it is her most complete. –Rawiya Kameir",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uUIrXv7GTY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d88f1ac09b36e0009899f34/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Rihanna-Work.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rihanna-Work_ft_Drake_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,14,Angel Olsen,“Shut Up Kiss Me” (2016),Jagjaguwar,"Jagjaguwar An aching rave-up and a frenzy of desire, “Shut Up Kiss Me” anchored My Woman, Angel Olsen’s vibrant, wide-screen third album. The song enters a long line of kissability anthems—part girl-group yearning à la the Shangri-Las’ “Give Him a Great Big Kiss,” part Lucinda Williams sass à la “Passionate Kisses.” Olsen steps up with deceptively cool-headed intentions: “We could still be having some sweet memories,” she wagers, but as each word becomes a staccatoed punch, she lets herself fly. When she hollers “I’m still young!” it is a full-body grasp at life itself. “Shut Up Kiss Me” is a glitter-bomb testament to the mania of longing, a fight song for the human heart in all its exhausting complexity. –Jenn Pelly",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nleRCBhLr3k,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d88f25521339a000839692b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Angel-Olsen-Shut-Up-Kiss-Me.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Angel_Olsen-Shut_Up_Kiss_Me_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,13,Chief Keef,“I Don’t Like” [ft. Lil Reese] (2012),Interscope,"Interscope In the early 2010s, Chief Keef was a True Religion jeans-wearing teenager whose main concern was escaping house arrest. He released “I Don’t Like” in an effort to solidify his local Chicago fame, but he ended up stumbling into virality and worldwide renown. With its harsh, gut-wrenching street talk over a Young Chop production that incorporated thudding drums, tinny chimes, and horror-film melodies, the song established drill music as a legitimate hip-hop subgenre. Kanye West would even tap Keef for a remix of the track, which landed on G.O.O.D. Music’s Cruel Summer compilation. At the time, hip-hop didn’t know how to respond to this rugged teen; the industry couldn’t account for the level of internet and street popularity Keef had achieved. Years later, it’s still trying to catch up. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6g5ZF6DUrHI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d88f2e009b36e0009899f36/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Chief-Keef-I-Dont-Like.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Chief_Keef-I_Dont_Like_ft_Lil_Reese_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,12,Sky Ferreira,“Everything Is Embarrassing” (2012),Capitol,"Capitol There is no more perfect way to describe life than as embarrassing. Painful? Sure. Fun? Sometimes. Weird? If you’re lucky. But embarrassing? Always. This song, written by Blood Orange’s Dev Hynes, is nominally a breakup song. But when Sky Ferreira sings, “You know I’m trying, I was always trying,” she may as well be outlining a thesis on how best to live in the face of daily humiliation. What could be more mortifying than living earnestly in a world determined to make a joke out of everything? Ferreira, an L.A. singer with a husky voice and a difficult past, has a flair for making the dramatic seem commonplace (and vice versa), especially in contrast with Hynes signature funk-lite guitar strutting. It all turns “Everything Is Embarrassing” into a quirky, ’80s-tinged anthem for anyone flinching through their days. –Matthew Schnipper",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEamE0MYPkg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d88f3210480b10008ffa251/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sky-Ferreira-Everything-Is-Embarrassing.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Sky_Ferreira-Everything_Is_Embarrassing_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,11,Bill Callahan,“Riding for the Feeling” (2011),Drag City,"Drag City Bill Callahan has become a master of portraying isolation throughout his three-decade career, but few of his songs do so more acutely than “Riding for the Feeling.” It’s sung by a man perpetually exiting crowded rooms—a freeze-frame on desolation that offers no solutions, just invisible companionship. The song’s arrangement is sparse but stirring—brushed snare and twangs of electric guitar neither overpower nor dissolve under Callahan’s weighty baritone. At one point, he describes the final exchange between a longing crowd and a reticent performer. “I asked the room if I’d said enough/No one really answered,” Callahan deadpans. “They just said, ‘Don't go, don't go…’” A picture of outstretched arms comes into focus, but it’s clear that their reach provides no comfort. Later, he finds himself on a hotel bed, tuned in to a muted television. That scrap of information sets an entire scene; you get the sense that the hotel isn’t a very nice one, and the TV, though silent, emits just enough light to make it feel a little less lonely. –Madison Bloom",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYg6eIH7qR8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d88f61e5d366d000838ce2f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bill-Callahan-Riding-for-the-Feeling.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bill_Callahan-Riding_for_the_Feeling_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,10,Lil Uzi Vert,“XO TOUR Llif3” (2017),Generation Now/Atlantic,"Generation Now/Atlantic Lil Uzi Vert’s “XO TOUR Lif3” was never supposed to be a hit. The single was included as part of a throwaway four-track EP that was meant to fill time leading up to the Philadelphia rapper’s major label debut, Luv Is Rage 2. But as soon as the track was uploaded to SoundCloud, gloomy lyrics like “Push me to the edge, all my friends are dead” and “Xanny help the pain” went viral; so did Uzi’s delivery, which made him sound like a pop-punk prince. Even the instrumental, which producer TM88 recorded using an old computer and a Beats Pill, is irresistible. For a while, few took Uzi seriously as a hitmaker. But as “XO TOUR Llif3” wormed its way toward ubiquity, becoming the SoundCloud generation’s most influential song, it established Uzi as one of hip-hop’s most distinctive voices. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrsFXgQk5UI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d88f6a15d366d000838ce31/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lil-Uzi-Vert-XO-Tour-Life.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lil_Uzi_Vert-XO_TOUR_Llif3_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,9,Lana Del Rey,“Video Games” (2011),Interscope/Polydor,"Interscope/Polydor When Lana Del Rey first arrived, she was bored and glamorous, looking by turns like a queen of Old Hollywood and like she was too young to be smoking. Her makeshift visual for “Video Games” confronted the incongruity without shame: The retro-gazing torch singer uploading webcam footage to YouTube, the beautiful pop star acquiescing to feeling ignored. The most familiar version of “Video Games” is actually the rough mix, a working draft built over live vocals and piano. It’s not quite polished, and like the grain on a photograph, that’s part of its charm. Tolling church bells, harp arpeggios, and chilly gasps of electric air swirl around submerged 808 hits, as Lana, low and smooth, sounds self-assured or desperate or even sarcastic. “They say that the world was built for two/Only worth living if somebody is loving you,” she sang, pining after a man-shaped vacancy, as if self-sacrifice could make her any less alone. It was outright depressing, and she made it look good. –Anna Gaca",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cE6wxDqdOV0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d88f72d1f868e00096102bc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lana-Del-Rey-Video-Games.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lana_Del_Rey-Video_Games_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,8,Solange,“Cranes in the Sky” (2016),Columbia,"Columbia Solange dropped A Seat at the Table less than six weeks before America elected Donald Trump as its 45th president. For people who had been listening to the album on repeat during that time, putting on “Cranes in the Sky,” its most moving track, was like popping an Emergen-C for a flu we didn’t even know we were in danger of contracting. “Cranes” is a soft-power anthem for frightening times, noncoercive yet still inspiring. It’s the product of Solange working through the trauma, sadness, and disappointment of being a black woman in this society. It’s the song you hear when you break through to the other side—when you are stepping firmly into joy and identity—and it’s musically structured to mimic the journey: airy and peaceful and ponderous, sometimes a little bit fragile, but bold in its choices. There’s so much space around Solange’s calm, and the song’s jazzy, soulful rhythms are carefully selected to evoke a whole history of black musicians, black culture, and black spirituality. It’s notable that Solange never belts, and the climax of “Cranes” isn’t a noisy ascension but a quiet one, right at the end: her voice, delicately scaling the mountain to reach Minnie Ripperton heights. At a time when power is something loud and dangerous and brash, “Cranes in the Sky” is an atypical song of revolution. It will be played endlessly, hopefully in less toxic times—not during rallies, or when a candidate walks onstage, but in quiet moments when we need to reflect, recharge, and rediscover our own beauty. –Allison P. Davis",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0qrinhNnOM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d88f7d70480b10008ffa253/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Solange-Cranes-in-the-Sky.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Solange-Cranes_in_the_Sky_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,7,Mitski,“Your Best American Girl” (2016),Dead Oceans,"Dead Oceans Sometimes, love isn’t enough. On “Your Best American Girl,” despite how Mitski strives and stretches to fit into the world of her “all-American boy,” it doesn’t quite work. The Japanese-American indie rocker feels the pull of her heritage and the traditions her parents raised her with, and must accept they are incompatible with his. Puberty 2, Mitski’s fourth album, runs deep with such moments of questioning, as she navigates themes of loneliness, depression, and lust. Love isn’t the deus ex machina to solve any of them; that’s the stuff of blonder romantic heroines onscreen. Instead, she offers rougher truths, and none wiser than in this song: Over grandly ringing arena guitars and the kind of distortion that can drown out saner thoughts, Mitski elegantly releases her love, in a sad yet prideful push, valuing herself above tempting conformity. How did her Captain America take this? Did he object? We’ll never know, because his voice and thoughts are not heard. This song is not about his experience. It’s about hers. –Stacey Anderson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_hDHm9MD0I,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d88f97321339a0008396961/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mitski-Your-Best-American-Girl.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mitski-Your_Best_American_Girl_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,6,Azealia Banks,“212” (2011),Self-released,"Self-released “212” launched the force that is Azealia Banks by way of the sweet-voiced theater nerd’s sneer of, “I’ma ruin you, cunt.” It’s a ratatat MC in the Harlem tradition, twisting her claymation cadences around a frothy house beat. It’s a New Yorker’s goodbye to New York, an overdue star’s coming-out party, and a warning to herself. (It was also a YouTube smash before the industry knew what to do with those.) Flipping a previously obscure Belgian dance track, Azealia Banks was one of the decade’s first to recognize that the sound of vogue culture would reverberate far beyond the city. Celebrated French-Canadian producers Lunice and Jacques Greene make cameos in the unforgettable black-and-white video, but only cameos: “212” felt like pure Banks, the unfiltered arrival of a fiery new voice. And although her personal controversies have largely overshadowed her music by now, this singular track can still raze anything that dares get in its way. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3Jv9fNPjgk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d88fa0b5d366d000838ce35/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Azealia-Banks-212.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Azealia_Banks-212_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,5,Frank Ocean,“Thinkin Bout You” (2012),Self-released,"Self-released On December 27th, 2011, in the thin air of a commercial airliner flying back to Los Angeles, Frank Ocean typed a few hundred words that slowly darkened the glow of a laptop screen. They told the story of his first love—a man—and that nameless summer longing that whistles through us all. He kept his thoughts private for awhile, and instead posted a cryptic message on his Tumblr: “fuck. that was hard to write.” When he did publish his writing, an open letter, it was on July 4th the following year, still three years before the U.S. Supreme Court would strike down the ban on same-sex marriage, but just days before he surprise-released his official debut, Channel Orange. “I feel like a free man,” Ocean concluded in the letter. “If I listen closely.. I can hear the sky falling, too.” What an unprecedented act of bravery in the history of black music, of queer music, of all music; he opened the door so that we could at once pour ourselves into his light. It was the lens through which we listened to Channel Orange, and no song echoes the love, the glow, the tectonic impact of Frank Ocean more than “Thinkin Bout You.” Call it R&B, or nü-doo-wop, or the music from the guy in Odd Future who sings, whatever you want, “Thinkin Bout You” belongs in a delirious world of its own. The song’s direct address is shaded with nostalgia and fabulism, its vision so wide it takes cues from ’70s songwriter Albert Hammond, Prince’s Sign “O” the Times, and country legend George Strait. Every single moment, from the tornado to Southern California to the beach house in Idaho, feels like Ocean is flying at the ceiling unlimited: when the snare eighth-notes lock-in with Ocean’s vocals, when he leaps out of nowhere to the falsetto in the chorus, when he sings, “Yes, of course I remember/How could I forget how you feel?” For Ocean, it’s a foregone conclusion—yes, of course—that those endless days and nights feeling that “new feel” will last forever. We all have that one summer, that one love that altered the course of our lives. This was Frank Ocean’s, and he graciously let it be ours, too. –Jeremy D. Larson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gmq4WIjQxp0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d88fa8021339a0008396963/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Frank-Ocean-Thinkin-Bout-You.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Frank_Ocean-Thinkin_Bout_You_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,4,Beyoncé,“Formation” (2016),Parkwood/Columbia,"Parkwood/Columbia The day after Trayvon Martin’s birthday, Beyoncé unceremoniously uploaded “Formation” onto her website. The tension of the song was immediate from the siren of Mike WiLL’s hypnotic two-note opening: It felt viscerally reactive to the moment, a response to the murder of black people at the hands of the police, a reminder—via the opening voice of Messy Mya from beyond the grave—that the cyclical nature of violence is heightened among communities forgotten by the government. It reminded me of the story behind Nina Simone’s “Mississippi Goddamn,” a furious song Simone wrote in 1964 as an antidote to internal anger, delivered with the pep of a show tune, that reflected on the murder of civil rights activist Medgar Evers and a white-supremacist attack on an Alabama church that killed four young girls. Simone once said, “We will shape and mold this country or it will not be molded and shaped at all anymore.” When Beyoncé performed “Formation” at the 2016 Super Bowl halftime show, the day after its release, wearing the bandoliers of the Black Panthers, it felt like she was ready to take the reins and be seen doing so. In the unforgettable video, Beyoncé crouches on a cop car submerged alongside houses in New Orleans devastated by natural disaster, the scene interspersed with images of people dancing in the dark—it’s the no-fucks vibrancy of a culture that persists when the systems surrounding them have been sucked into the muck and left to languish. Beyoncé celebrates the Southern black vernacular and Southern black culture: marching bands, cowboys, step squads, Mardi Gras, and bounce queens appear in the video, and in the song, she flaunts her “baby hair and afros” and her “negro nose with Jackson Five nostrils.” Though the song was thoroughly and specifically for and about black women and their unseen labor, the whole world was quick to rally behind another Bey hit. Hillary Clinton, hot on the campaign trail, would mention she had hot sauce in her bag on an interview with long-running hip-hop radio show, “The Breakfast Club,” Etsy would commodify her language and iconography, so that women of every race could get in formation. The next year, “Formation” would lose two Grammys to Adele’s “Hello,” but the phrase “OK ladies, now let’s get in formation” would appear across signs at the Women’s March and in allyship alongside the #MeToo movement, reinvigorated from a decade’s existence by the Weinstein allegations. The song’s initial appeal was an awakening for a country in crisis. But it will live on as a reminder of the slow, persistent, daily work of organizing and the power of resilience and protest—the importance of holding grief, anger, hope, and pride side by side. –Puja Patel",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDZJPJV__bQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d88fb0b1f868e00096102c0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Beyonce%25CC%2581-Formation.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beyonc-Formation_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,3,Robyn,“Dancing on My Own” (2010),Interscope/Konichiwa,"Interscope/Konichiwa New York City’s subway system is typically associated with maddening delays, twitchy vermin, and, occasionally, traces of the bubonic plague. It is a place where you strap on headphones like armor and try to block out humanity. But everything changed for a few minutes on the night of March 8, 2019. That’s when a hundred-strong gaggle of Robyn fans, clinging to the thrill of just having seen their hero onstage at Madison Square Garden, began singing, jumping, and goofily smiling along with a song about stomping through heartbreak, turning a filthy subway platform in the middle of Manhattan into an ecstatic summit. Such is the power of “Dancing on My Own.” A month after that impromptu party, the bubbling anthem, which first hit the internet in the spring of 2010, was finally certified platinum in America—cosmic justice for a song that never touched the Billboard Hot 100 but still served as a lodestar for so much of this decade’s pop. With “Dancing on My Own,” from her defining album Body Talk, Robyn took the euphoric ache of classic house and disco, spiked it with her own obsessive brand of vulnerability, and set a blueprint for everyone from Lorde to St. Vincent to Taylor Swift to worshipfully follow. At its core, the song is an exploration of contradictions: between the mechanized backbeat and Robyn’s all-too-human vocals; between a dancefloor’s collective catharsis and the isolation of being trapped inside your own skin; between the despair of the heart and the resilience of the body. “I’m right over here, why can’t you see me?” Robyn pleads to an oblivious ex making out with someone new across the club. For all of its invisible voyeurism, though, “Dancing on My Own” has a regenerative ability to make anyone who hears it feel hopelessly, resolutely seen. –Ryan Dombal",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xguIYNjYU1A,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d88fb960480b10008ffa259/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Robyn-Dancing-on-My-Own.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Robyn-Dancing_on_My_Own_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,2,Grimes,“Oblivion” (2012),4AD,"4AD In the seven years since Grimes released her breakout hit, increasingly outlandish cycles of outrage have engulfed the Canadian singer, songwriter, and producer born Claire Boucher. Most recently, it was her loyalty to a future A.I. dictatorship that got people wondering whether she was some kind of techno-fascist. But what Grimes’ critics fail to realize is that she has always looked to what’s next in order to soothe her present. You can hear it on “Oblivion,” with its gargled bass line that still sounds tailor-made for the exact moment when aliens lower their drawbridge onto Earth. Boucher wrote the Visions single after experiencing an assault she described as “one of the most shattering experiences of my life,” the kind that leaves you on the back foot in perpetuity. “And now I’m left behind, all the time,” she sang, a devastating sentiment rendered in succubus sing-song, and a setback transcended by the track’s forward-thinking production. Ultimately, “Oblivion” galvanized Boucher’s pain into a complex anthem of vulnerability and nihilism that defiantly eludes a clear reading—a reminder to never stop searching for nuance as you look ahead. –Laura Snapes",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtH68PJIQLE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d88fc93d7bb780008932aba/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Grimes-Oblivion.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Grimes-Oblivion_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,1,Kendrick Lamar,“Alright” (2015),Aftermath/Interscope/Top Dawg,"Aftermath/Interscope/Top Dawg It’s not every day, or even every decade, that a song will become platinum certified, Grammy recognized, street ratified, activist endorsed, and a new nominee for Black National Anthem; that it’ll be just as effective performed before a massive festival audience or chanted on the front lines at protests; that it’ll serve as a war cry against police brutality, against Trump, for the survival of the disenfranchised. Inspired by a trip to South Africa, Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright” bears a message of unbreakable optimism in the face of hardship: “We gon’ be alright!” repeats Pharrell, who helped write and produce the song. Endurance, it assures, will ensure a more positive tomorrow. “Alls my life I’ve had to fight, nigga!” Kendrick howls, echoing writer and activist Alice Walker on the black American experience. Fighting is the only way we know forward. The centerpiece of Kendrick’s most ambitious opus, To Pimp a Butterfly, “Alright” permeated the collective consciousness in the spring and summer of 2015. It was around the time people became tragically familiar with names like Freddie Gray and Sandra Bland, and when nine black people were shot and killed inside of a historic church in Charleston, South Carolina. As a cornerstone of the #BlackLivesMatter canon, the song seemed like a beacon of light ushering us away from terror. You could argue that things are worse now than they were then, that its hope was misplaced. But “Alright” isn’t promising a better world, just that we’ll find a way to survive the one we have. It is a defense mechanism, pining for an aspirational future—maybe even a nonexistent one—as it helps us cope with our chaotic present. For the entire 2010s, from Section.80’s survivalist stories of the post-Reagan hood to good kid, m.A.A.d. city’s autobiographical cinema on the futile fight to escape the quicksand of street life, Kendrick’s work has often dealt with persisting under perilous circumstances. To Pimp a Butterfly considers oppression’s sprawling impact, from colorism to survivor’s guilt, longing for a way we could all make it out together. To that end, “Alright” serves as a thesis statement of sorts: that the path through life’s trials begins with striving for more, for better. You can imagine the characters who cycle in and out of his songs whispering “We gon’ be alright” to themselves, or reassuring loved ones between sighs, trying to make it through the next day. Here, as horns wail and drums snap, there is a sense that the “we” is actually unfathomable, a force that can overcome anything when banded as one. –Sheldon Pearce",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-48u_uWMHY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d88fd1d09b36e0009899f3e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kendrick-Lamar-Alright.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kendrick_Lamar-Alright_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,200,Ratking,So It Goes (2014),XL,"XL As suggested by the painstakingly detailed map of New York City that covers So It Goes, Ratking’s 2014 debut is a deep dive into their hometown. Storming from the stoops of Harlem to the bustling storefronts of Canal Street are the gaptooth spitfire Wiki and the languid daydreamer Hak, whose relentless banter never loses steam. Producer Sporting Life’s abstract, sample-heavy soundscapes conjure the chaos of the modern concrete jungle—a sound that evokes the dissonance of ’70s no wave and the experimentation of ’90s hip-hop. Together, Ratking paint a compelling city portrait: “Remove Ya” addresses its rampant stop-and-frisk abuses, while the jazzy “Snow Beach” chastises gentrification for poisoning the Big Apple. So It Goes shows NYC as it really is: pretty, gritty, and gross, forever restless and forever alive. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/ratking/so-it-goes | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/so-it-goes/884998023?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F58080937%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d727a140db1d10008f1fa90/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ratking-So-It-Goes.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ratking-So_It_Goes_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,199,Wu Lyf,Go Tell Fire to the Mountain (2011),L Y F,"L Y F In the late 2000s and early 2010s, plenty of indie bands sprang up with crystalline guitars, cryptic lyrics, and an aversion to sharing basic biographical details. But those other acts didn’t have a singer like Wu Lyf’s Ellery Roberts. Go Tell Fire to the Mountain supported Roberts’ shredded growl with patient post-rock builds, and the result was pure catharsis. These songs were so cuttingly earnest—“I love you forever,” Roberts rasped on the opener, “L Y F”—that it almost came as no surprise when the group broke up afterward. Who could sustain such intensity; who would want to? It wasn’t always easy to tell what Roberts was hollering about, but Wu Lyf’s best songs, like the sweeping “We Bros,” could have you chanting along, caught up in a frenzy of oddball solidarity. –Marc Hogan",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/go-tell-fire-to-the-mountain/442815754?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F19334785%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d727a650db1d10008f1fa92/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/WU-LYF.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Wu_Lyf-Go_Tell_Fire_to_the_Mountain_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,198,Jean Grae / Quelle Chris,Everything’s Fine (2018),Mello Music Group,"Mello Music Group On Everything’s Fine, Jean Grae and Quelle Chris tackle a range of modern topics—from the mistreatment of black people by the police to the ever-growing influence of Instagram models—through dense skits, outrageous parodies, and sharp rapping. The conversations they begin don’t always reach a conclusion, but they’re thoughtful, and the duo never sacrifices style for substance. Grae is the steady force and more of a traditionalist: She’s technically precise, while Chris is the wild card. But despite their differences, they complement each other perfectly, whether rapping or producing. That balance carries over to their wide array of guests who all rise to meet their energy. Yet, in the end, the album is about Jean Grae and Quelle Chris, who make it clear that they’re not content to be “fine.” –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/jean-grae-and-quelle-chris/everything-s-fine | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/everythings-fine/1338940283?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F83725277%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d727ab153e80c0008f436d8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jean-Grae-Quelle-Chris-Everythings-Fine.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jean_Grae__Quelle_Chris-Everythings_Fine_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,197,Fatima Al Qadiri,Genre-Specific Xperience (2011),UNO,"UNO Few documents of global music this decade were as interesting as the producer Fatima Al Qadiri’s Genre-Specific Xperience, an icy, minimal exercise in translating and flattening microgenres—juke, dubstep, digital tropicália—into a cohesive statement that tied to her international upbringing and youth as a gamer. Just five songs long, the record was high-minded—its videos, helmed by highly regarded artists like Ryan Trecartin and Sophia al-Maria, debuted in New York’s New Museum—but it also provided a template for what a cerebral dancefloor could look like. –Julianne Escobedo Shepherd",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/genre-specific-xperience-ep/954908009?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F39356367%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d727c772073fe00084eb0fa/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Fatima-Al-Qadiri-Genre-Specific-Xperience.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fatima_Al_Qadiri-Genre-Specific_Xperience_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,196,Portal,Vexovoid (2013),Profound Lore,"Profound Lore Some 21st-century death metal acts embraced digital technology and the clarity it brought; imagine listening to a jackhammer busting through concrete in hi-def. That modern crispness is nowhere to be found in the eruptive music of Portal, who instead update old-school death metal by making their music sound not like just one tsunami but dozens of them. The Australian group successfully shaded the lines of all instruments into one cumulative blast, with everything melting together: the slow, guttural growling of lead vocalist The Curator, drummer Ignis Fatuus’ rumbling percussive churn. (All the band members are anonymous and perform masked.) There are glints of familiar metal tropes—epic guitar solos, sci-fi-homage lyrics—but by boiling these elements into a tarry, punishing brew, Portal bring metal back where it started, as the sound of something terrifying, exciting, and new. –Matthew Schnipper",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/portal/vexovoid | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/vexovoid/595552450?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F23938486%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d727d499ce93e000838209a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Portal-Vexovoid.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Portal-Vexovoid_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,195,Downtown Boys,Full Communism (2015),Don Giovanni,"Don Giovanni “Why is it that we never have enough with just what's inside of us?” screams Victoria Ruiz at the start of “Monstro,” the highlight of Downtown Boys’ cyclonic debut album, Full Communism. It’s a fair question to throw at a capitalist country that's hell-bent on extracting every modicum of value from its people, especially its young and marginalized. With true punk fury—and the occasional stellar use of saxophones— Downtown Boys clear themselves a space to rage: Joey L DeFrancesco cracks bedrock with his guitar chords, while drummer Norlan Olivo agitates the whole band into breakneck urgency. With Full Communism, Downtown Boys established themselves as the harbingers of righteous frustration at a system that keeps people pinned down in a cycle of exploitation. –Sasha Geffen",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/full-communism/975310963?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F43842142%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d727da50db1d10008f1fa94/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Downtown-Boys-Full-Communism.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Downtown_Boys-Full_Communism_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,194,Titus Andronicus,The Monitor (2010),XL,"XL Throw together the Civil War, Bruce Springsteen’s New Jersey, and Titus Andronicus singer Patrick Stickles’ self-imposed exile from mainstream American culture—plus some bagpipes—and you get The Monitor, the blueprint for a decade of emo rock bands. In Stickles’ fevered imagination, everything is a metaphor for everything else: high school is a battlefield, his anxiety and malaise is Abraham Lincoln’s, and tramps aren’t born to run as Bruce said, but instead were born to die. As the rhythm section storms along, Stickles screams himself hoarse about accepting your given lot in life and the folly of using spite for fuel. On one song’s chorus, he screams “You will always be a loser” over and over, which at least gives the losers an anthem, too. –Jeremy D. Larson",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/the-monitor/355708784?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F58085055%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7289062073fe00084eb0ff/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Titus-Andronicus-The-Monitor.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Titus_Andronicus-The_Monitor_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,193,Lil Peep,Hellboy (2016),Self-released,"Self-released Hellboy was released while Lil Peep was a teen, just a few years before he died. The mixtape is focused on pain and how he hoped his might dissipate, and how he figured it probably wouldn’t. That he wasn’t wrong makes listening to the album feel like hearing a very loud alarm with a signal you cannot heed. The isolation at the core of his music wasn’t particular to him; he was just particularly good at distilling it. About the insistence of his depression, despite newfound success, he raps, “I used to wanna kill myself/Came up, still wanna kill myself.” It’s particularly bittersweet that he made it sound so tantalizing, the sound of his voice rich over the borrowed riffs of emo bands and electronic music producers. If you’ve ever felt that way, his music assures you that you’re not alone—and if you haven’t, he gives you a glimpse of what that suffering feels like. –Matthew Schnipper",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d728a08fd34990009cf8999/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lil-Peep-Hellboy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lil_Peep-Hellboy_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,192,Kelela,Cut 4 Me (2013),Fade to Mind,"Fade to Mind When Kelela debuted with Cut 4 Me, she solidified an experimental bass movement into something that felt human, as if a team of extraterrestrial scientists finally made contact. The mixtape was welded by a group of producers from UK imprint Night Slugs and their L.A. sister label Fade to Mind who bent elements of drum’n’bass, dubstep, techno, grime, and footwork into sparse soundtracks for the club underground. Kelela was the skeleton key to the crew’s disparate styles, a siren who could unlock a matrix of synths, shattering glass, and sputtering bass to reveal the soul hiding in the pauses between. It’s rare when something is both so clearly reflective of its time and predictive of the future, and Cut 4 Me was just that. –Puja Patel",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/kelela/cut-4-me-deluxe-edition | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/cut-4-me/993161423?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F43763039%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d728a500db1d10008f1fa98/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kelela-Cut-4-Me.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kelela-Cut_4_Me_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,191,Kate Bush,50 Words for Snow (2011),Anti-/Fish People,"Anti-/Fish People On Kate Bush’s only studio album of the decade, she sings about catching a snowflake out of the sky, warning a hunted yeti, and sleeping with a dissolving snowman. And she does so wide-eyed and full-heartedly, even painstakingly. 50 Words for Snow, named for the myth that the Inuit have such a vocabulary, boasts all of her trademark magical realism, fantastical lovers, and far-flung settings, but the songs are more quietly ambitious than past works—almost like chamber pieces. The material is more wistful: Where Bush’s best singles have often been about having something beautiful that you’re about to lose, much of 50 Words for Snow addresses things that are already lost. The wistfulness is often self-referential, as on “Snowed In at Wheeler Street,” a tale of star-crossed lovers with lyrics threaded with references to her old songs. It's music that rewards close attention in an age where that is increasingly rare. –Katherine St. Asaph",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/kate-bush/50-words-for-snow-0a958c24-8c82-4234-ad66-9d432ec3e427 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/50-words-for-snow/468587752?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F68575454%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d728af26eee70000829f286/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kate-Bush-50-Words-for-Snow.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kate_Bush-50_Words_for_Snow_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,190,Huerco S.,For Those of You Who Have Never (and Also Those Who Have) (2016),Proibito,"Proibito Huerco S. got his start crafting techno that erased most of the things that typically make dance music tick: beats, basslines, forward drive. Within a few short years, those subtractive processes yielded For Those of You Who Have Never (and Also Those Who Have), an album of barely-there ambient music. Twirling grainy wisps of synthesizer around a hollow core, it’s hardly more substantial than wind chimes caught on corroded magnetic tape—and all the more captivating for it. Churning loops bubble up into a fizz of tape hiss, sounding like a lo-fi cassette dub of Berlin ambient-techno pioneers Basic Channel; bell tones and tinny synth riffs stumble down a delay-pedal hall of mirrors. It’s almost impossible to fix any of these ethereal pieces in your memory, but as long as the disc is spinning, it is an uncommonly enveloping listen. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/for-those-of-you-who-have-never-and-also-those-who-have/1111704765?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F60260365%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d728b662073fe00084eb101/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Huerco-S-For-Those-of-You.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Huerco_S-For_Those_of_You_Who_Have_Never_and_Also_Those_Who_Have_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,189,Miranda Lambert,The Weight of These Wings (2016),RCA Nashville,"RCA Nashville For the first half of the decade, Miranda Lambert was a country superstar with a string of radio hits, a recurring spot on The Voice, and a picture-perfect marriage to fellow singer Blake Shelton. But when they divorced in 2015, the breakup encouraged her to go down a darker, more existential path. Her ambitious double album The Weight of These Wings carries on in a grand tradition of messy relationship statements: It has the grit of Tom Petty’s Wildflowers and the uncertainty of Bruce Springsteen’s Tunnel of Love, wrapped up in Lambert’s fiery, down-home charm. Its songs are torch ballads and highway anthems with a live band that feels borne of late night jam sessions, raw and unglamorous. For Lambert, redemption comes from buying a cheap pair of plastic sunglasses, by spending late nights alone at the bar, in knowing that she alone controls her destiny. Legend has it, she hung up on the first interviewer she spoke to about the record—the question was about Shelton’s new partner, Gwen Stefani—and decided that she would do no press surrounding the album, letting the music speak for itself. “All you had to do was listen,” she said. And the music says it all. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/the-weight-of-these-wings/1166241178?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F67223701%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d728c582073fe00084eb103/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Miranda-Lambert-Weight-of-These-Wings.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Miranda_Lambert-The_Weight_of_These_Wings_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,188,Pusha-T,Daytona (2018),G.O.O.D. Music/Def Jam,"G.O.O.D. Music/Def Jam After the breakup of the Clipse, his duo with his brother, Pusha-T spent this decade trying to find his footing as a solo rapper. He’s had plenty of highs—his verse on “Mercy,” all of “Numbers on the Board”—but he’s also had releases that didn’t live up to the high standard he once set. Daytona is the full realization of Pusha as a star. The drug dealing raps that fans first fell in love with on Clipse’s Hell Hath No Fury are just as rich here as he settles into a new corporate villain persona. Executive produced by Kanye West, Daytona closes with “Infrared,” an end-to-end thriller, famous for the petty shots at Drake that lit a new flame to one of this century’s defining rap beefs. And yet, for all the storylines and drama that surrounded Daytona, the music rises above. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/pusha-t/daytona | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/daytona/1388853738?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F89313048%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d728cf29ce93e00083820d1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Pusha-T-Daytona.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Pusha-T-Daytona_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,187,Iceage,Beyondless (2018),Matador,"Matador With limbs flailing and sweat matting his hair, Iceage frontman Elias Bender Rønnenfelt grew up before our eyes. He was only 18 at the top of the decade, when he and his childhood friends were dubbed the Next Great Punk Band, and across four albums and countless shows, they put in the work needed to uphold the claim. Beyondless, the quartet’s most recent LP, saw them once again expanding their sound in service of their ever-growing ambition, this time incorporating manic violins, honky-tonk pianos, and, for the first time, a guest vocalist in Sky Ferreira. The permanently anguished Rønnenfelt offers up a clear example of his dark philosophy in the cabaret stunner “Showtime,” narrating the onstage suicide of a handsome young singer. Over drunken drums that lead the rest of the band along by a rope, he snarls into the mic, grappling with the very public line of work that’s made him a minor heartthrob among the indie set. This is the latest, greatest Iceage: a bit more romantic but as fiercely droll as ever. –Noah Yoo",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/iceage/beyondless | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/beyondless/1349318425?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F87882165%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d728d9d6eee70000829f2b8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Iceage-Beyondless.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Iceage-Beyondless_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,186,Various Artists,Mono No Aware (2017),PAN,"PAN Assembled by PAN label head Bill Kouligas, the compilation Mono No Aware offered a referendum on what “ambient music” means in the streaming era and a who’s-who primer on the genre’s emerging voices. An immediate standout was Yves Tumor with the gossamer synths and vérité chatter of “Limerance.” But at 16 tracks and nearly 80 minutes, the comp feels like a fun house with trapdoors at every turn: Open one and tumble into the breathy murmurs and glacial drifts of Malibu’s “Held.” Open another and hear Kouligas’ “VXOMEG” morph from harsh squall to blurry drones. Enigmatic and patiently unfolding, Mono No Aware stands as an argument for appreciating everyday subtleties in an era prone to bombast. –Marc Hogan",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/various-artists/mono-no-aware | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/mono-no-aware/1208099933?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F70750180%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d728de10db1d10008f1fa9a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/VA-Mono-No-Aware.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Various_Artists-Mono_No_Aware_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,185,Hailu Mergia,Lala Belu (2018),Awesome Tapes From Africa,"Awesome Tapes From Africa Reissues of obscure albums ran rampant this decade, thanks in part to labels following the YouTube algorithms that guided listeners to styles they may have otherwise never found. But the MP3 blog-turned-label Awesome Tapes From Africa bucked that trend, diligently digging through physical artifacts to discover true gems. Take keyboardist/composer Hailu Mergia, a star in his native Ethiopia in the ’70s who moved to Washington, D.C. and became a taxi driver. Discovery of an old tape in Bahir Dar, a tourist hotspot in northern Ethiopia, in 2013 ignited Mergia’s dormant career in the West, capped by Lala Belu, his first new album in decades. On it, Mergia still sounds spry and roving on piano, accordion, and synthesizer, his melodic sense as acute and mesmerizing as ever. With Mergia at the helm of a jazz trio moving as a crackling, telepathic entity, Lalu Belu astonishes not by being a nostalgia trip but by sounding triumphantly in the present. –Andy Beta",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/hailu-mergia/lala-belu | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/lala-belu/1313329534?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F83794252%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d728ea02073fe00084eb105/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Hailu-Mergia.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Hailu_Mergia-Lala_Belu_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,184,Soccer Mommy,Clean (2018),Fat Possum,"Fat Possum Clean is a breath of fresh air that will also knock the wind out of you. Nashville singer-songwriter Sophie Allison was far from the only former home-recorder making bittersweet indie pop in 2018, but she did it her own way, and with impressive craft. Released when Allison was 20, these endlessly replayable songs have the prickly slouch of ’90s indie rock, but with wide-eyed vulnerability and bright melodies in place of ironic distance; the sharp eyes and conversational delivery of vintage Taylor Swift, but with more of real life’s mess. It’s tempting to dwell on just the first three tracks: the relationship dysfunction of dreamy ballad “Still Clean,” the vicarious imperturbability of swirling anthem “Cool,” and, especially, the damn-she-just-did-that Stooges reversal “Your Dog.” But the rest is also revelatory; the subdued finale “Wildflowers,” where Allison intones that she “found God on Sunday morning, layin’ next to you,” is a sigh of relief that leaves you gasping for more. –Marc Hogan",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/soccer-mommy/clean | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/clean/1324319630?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F82330905%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d728efcfd34990009cf899b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Soccer-Mommy-Clean.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Soccer_Mommy-Clean_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,183,Elysia Crampton,American Drift (2015),Blueberry,"Blueberry Elysia Crampton’s experimental electronic music unearths deep personal truths in surprising places. Her earlier work as E+E turned heads by finding something sublime and alien in edits of pop hits by the likes of Justin Bieber. Crampton’s first album under her own name, American Drift, is a four-song, 30-minute set bringing together crunk, trap, cumbia, spoken word, crickets, and blaring radio station identifications. American Drift runs deeper when you learn about the ideas that inform it: The Bolivian-American producer described the album as an investigation of her adopted home state Virginia’s history, of brownness, of colonialism. As the bubble for mass-market electronic dance music was about to burst, this individualistic approach distinguished Crampton as a renegade on the rise. –Marc Hogan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d728f53fd34990009cf899d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Elysia-Crampton-American-Drift.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Elysia_Crampton-American_Drift_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,182,G.L.O.S.S.,Trans Day of Revenge (2016),Sabotage,"Sabotage “T.D.O.R.” usually stands for Trans Day of Remembrance, a time to pay tribute to victims of violence in the community. G.L.O.S.S., the Olympia, Washington-based hardcore punk band, flipped the R to “revenge” on the only EP they released before breaking up in 2016. (Their acronymic name was equally bold: ""Girls Living Outside Society's Shit."") With Trans Day of Revenge, G.L.O.S.S. railed against the cultural tropes that so often diminish a trans woman's life into a narrative of muted tragedy. Inflamed and incandescent, lead singer Sadie Switchblade's yowl scorches anyone who would tell her to shut up, stay docile, wait her turn. “When peace is just another word for death/It’s our turn to give violence a chance,” she screams in the opening bars against the roar of distorted electric guitar, just before a typhoon of drums crashes in. Continuing in the riot grrrl tradition of flashing sharpened teeth at embedded patriarchal violence, G.L.O.S.S. burned bright in their brief time together, leaving behind a relic of pure and righteous anger. –Sasha Geffen",Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://girlslivingoutsidesocietysshit.bandcamp.com/album/trans-day-of-revenge,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72900f0db1d10008f1fa9c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/GLOSS.jpg,/dataset/artwork/GLOSS-Trans_Day_of_Revenge_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,181,Jamila Woods,LEGACY! LEGACY! (2019),Jagjaguwar,"Jagjaguwar On her second album, R&B singer Jamila Woods grapples with the present by looking to the past. Each track is an ode to one of her inspirations, most of them women of color. Sometimes she writes directly from their perspective, but more often she draws from her subjects’ lives and adapts their words to her own life. She channels Eartha Kitt’s self-assuredness, then Frida Kahlo’s sense of balance in romantic relationships; Zora Neale Hurston reminds her that she is allowed to contain multitudes. Pulling from so many texts and thinkers, LEGACY! LEGACY! is theoretically dense, but it flows like honey. Woods’ voice is rich and velvety, and the album’s grounding in emotional truths makes it accessible and immediate. –Vrinda Jagota",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/jamila-woods/legacy-legacy | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/legacy-legacy/1450438412?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F106535374%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7290be6eee70000829f2ba/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jamila-Woods-LEGACY-LEGACY.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jamila_Woods-LEGACY_LEGACY_2019.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,180,Chvrches,The Bones of What You Believe (2013),Glassnote,"Glassnote On paper, it shouldn’t work: Two grizzled veterans of dour, navel-gazing Glasgow post-rock bands team up with a young singer raised on third-wave emo. They make bright, shiny synth-pop that is entirely self-written and self-produced, but is so immaculately constructed, it feels like it was built by a team of scientists. And yet, in 2013, The Bones of What You Believe served as the ideal wake-up call for those stumbling blearily out of the chillwave daze. On soaring songs like “The Mother We Share,” “We Sink,” and “Recover,” Lauren Mayberry’s crystalline voice deconstructs fractured relationships with beguiling poetics and brutal honesty, while the music swells with a mastery of dancefloor dynamics that nods to New Order and Depeche Mode. On their debut album, Chvrches ushered in a new era of dance pop with an indie soul. A thousand Spotify-core bands bloomed in their wake, but none could ever capture the same magic. –Amy Phillips",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/the-bones-of-what-you-believe/1450852683?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F35143655%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650b333fbbcef9298df0b98c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Chvrches-The-Bones-of-What-You-Believe.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Chvrches-The_Bones_of_What_You_Believe_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,179,Shabazz Palaces,Black Up (2011),Sub Pop,"Sub Pop There isn’t as much room for mystery in music now as there was in 2009, when Shabazz Palaces crept onto the scene. Two EPs, sparse cover art, conceptual experimental music—at first, this is all we knew. By the time Black Up dropped, we knew the group was led by Ishmael Butler (formerly of Digable Planets) and multi-instrumentalist Tendai Maraire, but their biographies didn’t matter; they had effectively let their music do the talking. Black Up is drowned in murky instrumentals and bombastic, introspective rhymes. The sounds flirt with jazz, but also root themselves in a firm understanding of silence, or the sparse magic of simplicity. The songs teem with unexpected climaxes, like when “Free Press and Curl” veers straight into gospel, or the way ""Recollections of the Wraith"" seems to wrestle with itself before settling on a rush of soaring vocals in the chorus. From great mystery exploded an album of impossible vision. –Hanif Abdurraqib",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/shabazz-palaces/black-up | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/black-up/669854622?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F6986980%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7291e6fd34990009cf89d3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Shabazz-Palaces-Black-Up.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Shabazz_Palaces-Black_Up_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,178,Savages,Silence Yourself (2013),Matador/Pop Noire,"Matador/Pop Noire The post-punk hero of the decade wore pink stilettos onstage and made monogamy sound as appealing as anthrax. Jehnny Beth, frontwoman of Savages, sang with a sinister and a heavy-lidded hauteur, adding omnidirectional disdain for all things patriarchal and vanilla. Below her, terse, voluble bass and severe toms also nodded back to another era, one more restrictive to women as bold as the ones in this London band. Savages’ debut came almost secondary to their quick mythology—their live show was explosive from the jump, a salve for those who missed the dark, sweaty scenes that predated them. But Silence Yourself carries every bit of that adrenaline; in its coiled, sparking guitars and rabid screams, it warns of the dangers of technology while weaponizing its potential. Too loudly to be ignored, it disputes complacent norms: Maybe marriage isn’t idyllic, but asphyxiating. Maybe an endless stream of information isn’t edifying, but toxic. And maybe a clarinet solo does belong in the year’s most casually brutal rock album. Suddenly, the alternatives sounded ancient. –Stacey Anderson",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/savages/silence-yourself | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/silence-yourself/614945667?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F19927123%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72a6dcfd34990009cf89d5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Savages-Silence-Yourself.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Savages-Silence_Yourself_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,177,Margo Price,All American Made (2017),Third Man,"Third Man Margo Price toiled for years to become an overnight sensation: Her acclaimed debut Midwest Farmer's Daughter, released in 2016 on Jack White's Third Man Records, came out after she had spent more than a decade in the Nashville trenches. But that album was a Trojan horse for the thornier sentiments she would smuggle onto the airwaves and stages with her follow-up, All American Made. Price mingles the political and the personal until they're indistinguishable on songs like “Heart of America” and the barnstormer “Cocaine Cowboys,” leading a band that draws on old-school honky tonk rhythms without coming across the least bit revivalist. “Pay Gap” couches its income disparity blues in flourishes of accordion and Lone Star guitar, while the Dylanesque title track wanders a desolate America as Price wonders if her pain—all our pain, actually—might be specific to this place. –Stephen Deusner",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/margo-price/all-american-made | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/all-american-made/1464825180?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F109786846%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72a75153e80c0008f43715/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Margo-Price-All-American-Made.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Margo_Price-All_American_Made_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,176,Gil Scott-Heron,I’m New Here (2010),XL,"XL When Gil Scott-Heron sampled Kanye West, five years after having his own “Home Is Where the Hatred Is” hook used by West on Late Registration, it felt like a kindly nod from a mentor. Scott-Heron, whose spoken-word vocals so wisely distilled America’s racial and social turmoil in the ’70s and early ’80s, had already served as an invaluable forefather to hip-hop. He had nothing to prove. But even at 62, Scott-Heron still had his ear to the ground. On I’m New Here, his 13th and final studio album before he died in 2011, he doesn’t just swerve into icy, minimalist electronics for the first time—he, along with producer Richard Russell, uses them to bring new friction to his aching, burnished voice. Over 15 tracks of wry philosophizing and solemn reflection, Scott-Heron honors everything in his rearview, from the strong women who shaped his character to the many mistakes that cost him dearly. He seems deeply lonely at times—a secluded insomniac who’s seen it all and knows change is stubborn to come—but at times, he also sounds reinvigorated. It’s a beautiful note he bows out on. –Stacey Anderson",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/gil-scott-heron-2037aa15-077a-4bc0-a291-b43580bbf07a/i-m-new-here-9ac31b34-38ce-4d50-8f89-99f964139a1e | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/im-new-here-bonus-track-version/351170362?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F58222878%5D%5D | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgAomHGqKUM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72a80a53e80c0008f43717/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Gil-Scott-Heron-Im-New-Here.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Gil_Scott-Heron-Im_New_Here_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,175,Jessie Ware,Devotion (2012),Universal Island/PMR/Cherrytree,"Universal Island/PMR/Cherrytree Arriving at the same time as industrial-strength belters like Adele and Florence Welch, fellow UK singer-songwriter Jessie Ware was an anomaly. After collaborating with post-dubstep acts SBTRKT and Joker, Ware synthesized her love of American hip-hop and R&B with dance music. The result was a preternaturally poised debut filled with a headrush of affection, all delivered in Ware’s elegantly airy voice. Devotion flits between sumptuous pop-R&B and sweeping power ballads, but it’s never missing Ware’s gentle, discerning touch: a surprisingly earworm-y Big Pun sample speeds behind “110%” (later replaced by a soundalike following a clearance dispute with Pun’s estate), while the anthemic “Wildest Moments” gave both Adele and Welch a run for their Top 40 money. Much of Devotion went on to soundtrack TV dramas and romance movies, which feels like a badge of honor: Ware provided a masterclass in mining the ups and downs of romance with an artful, featherlight touch. –Eric Torres",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/devotion/1443130097?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F35469036%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72a97b53e80c0008f43719/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jessie-Ware-Devotion.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jessie_Ware-Devotion_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,174,Sharon Van Etten,Are We There (2014),Jagjaguwar,"Jagjaguwar Are We There was a great deepening—of Sharon Van Etten’s emotional range, of the power of her songwriting, and of the potency of her voice, which became an alarmingly physical instrument. The Brooklyn singer-songwriter’s vocals shake her body like a mighty engine, and on primal moments like “Your Love Is Killing Me,” it feels like we were hearing Van Etten literally come apart as she sings. She claws the walls off every word. Her fourth album, Are We There, was the first to rise from classic soul more than indie rock; the faint organ licks and slow, patient drums are designed to center a torrential voice, the kind that stands pleading at the footlights. That is Van Etten, and her performance is transfixing, exhausting, cleansing. –Jayson Greene",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/sharon-van-etten/are-we-there | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/are-we-there/820969262?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Fartist%252F3768703%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72ab116eee70000829f2be/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sharon-Van-Etten-Are-We-There.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sharon_Van_Etten-Are_We_There_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,173,Hurray for the Riff Raff,Small Town Heroes (2014),ATO,"ATO Alynda Lee Segarra had been releasing albums under the name Hurray for the Riff Raff for years before her ATO Records debut, Small Town Heroes, introduced the Bronx-born, Louisiana-based singer-songwriter to the world at large. A former freight train jumper and street busker, Segarra collects sounds and melodies like postcards from across America, mixing rhythmically lurching New Orleans R&B, rural blues, and Appalachian stomps into a new form of roots music. Small Town Heroes consists mostly of traveling songs—reflections on life as a touring musician—but also the thoughts of a woman who has spent most of her adult existence in transit. She's seen jubilation, tribulation, and cold-blooded murder, but Segarra keeps wandering, as though she can't wait to see what's over the next hill or around the next corner. “We might not be here when next year comes,” she sings on “Small Town Heroes.” “You better live it like you’re on the run.” –Stephen Deusner",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/small-town-heroes/864156360?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F60260365%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72ab44fd34990009cf89de/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Hurray-for-the-Riff-Raff.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Hurray_for_the_Riff_Raff-Small_Town_Heroes_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,172,Popcaan,Where We Come From (2014),Mixpak,"Mixpak On Where We Come From, Jamaican singer Popcaan’s soothing melodies shine over slick production from Dre Skull, Dubbel Dutch, and other in-demand beatmakers. Together, they jump from silky love ballads to grind-ready bangers. “Love Yuh Bad” is the album’s centerpiece, as Popcaan’s lovestruck lyrics anchor a hip-shaking dancefloor groove. Just as great are the moments when Popcaan fuses the rich sounds of his home with traditional pop bounce, like the scintillating title track. But through all the genre bending and lane-switching, Popcaan is clearly, deeply proud of his dancehall roots. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/where-we-come-from/882040225?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F60382136%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72acd50db1d10008f1faa2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Popcaan-Where-We-Come-From.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Popcaan-Where_We_Come_From_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,171,JPEGMAFIA,Veteran (2018),Deathbomb Arc,"Deathbomb Arc Baltimore rapper JPEGMAFIA’s darkly humorous—and occasionally troll-ish—personality is on full display throughout his gleefully unfiltered breakthrough album, Veteran. The Air Force vet’s chaotic stream-of-consciousness flow includes odd references—like to Macaulay Culkin, and to the wrestling theme song that doubles as his producer tag—as well as things he detests, like Morrissey (on a song called “I Cannot Fucking Wait Til Morrissey Dies”). Sometimes he spits with aggression over an airy instrumental ready to be embraced by the SoundCloud community, other times he scream-raps about Tinder and political figureheads over noise music. No matter the specific sound or subject matter, this scatter-brained album can’t help but leave you energized and ready to fight. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/jpegmafia/veteran | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/veteran/1429075456?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F93699887%5D%5D | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6rhLTg6M7A,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72ad6f6eee70000829f2c0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/JPEGMAFIA-Veteran.jpg,/dataset/artwork/JPEGMAFIA-Veteran_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,170,Skee Mask,Compro (2018),Ilian Tape,"Ilian Tape On the surface, Brian Müller’s breakthrough album as Skee Mask is an attempt to meld furious drum patterns with gorgeous ambient passages, à la Aphex Twin. But keep listening, and Compro becomes more complicated. The German producer uses the last 20 years of electronic music as a massive sandbox from which to create textured tracks that are familiar enough to be enjoyable, yet mutate enough to constantly surprise. Album opener “Cerroverb” is built on empty space: Cosmic blips burble and then fade away abruptly, like the track is decomposing as you listen. Later, “50 Euro to Break Boost” offers up a gritty breakbeat smeared with foggy synths that hover like a beautiful, toxic rain cloud. With Compro, Müller doesn’t build a world as much as he soundtracks its weirdly beautiful end. –Sam Hockley-Smith",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/skee-mask/compro | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/compro/1386727307?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F89075566%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72aea79ce93e00083820d5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Skee-Mask-Compro.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Skee_Mask-Compro_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,169,Paramore,After Laughter (2017),Fueled by Ramen,"Fueled by Ramen It turns out, the incredibly personal connection that a teenage Hayley Williams of Paramore created with her fans back in the Warped Tour days—which many adult critics didn’t acknowledge at the time, as though her band’s pop-punk contained frequencies only teenagers could hear—was strong enough to last the decade and dynamic enough to grow and deepen with age and maturity. Call After Laughter “emo for adults”: Williams wrote an album that feels like a perfect window into the inner turmoil that defines millennials’ state of extended adolescence. Maybe modern Paramore feels as urgent as old Paramore did once because the confusions of young life have lingered longer than expected; maybe no one really ever grows up at all. Or maybe the feeling of release—of clenching your fists and singing along with “Forgiveness” in your bedroom—is just an essential and eternal pleasure, one conjured better by no one than Williams. –Alex Frank",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/paramore/after-laughter | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/after-laughter/1227049864?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F73856849%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72aed0fd34990009cf89e0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Paramore-After-Laughter.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Paramore-After_Laughter_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,168,Julianna Barwick,The Magic Place (2011),Asthmatic Kitty,"Asthmatic Kitty Singer and ambient composer Julianna Barwick has mentioned the importance of seeing Empire of the Sun, Steven Spielberg’s epic war film, at a formative age. Most crucially, she remembers its score by John Williams, which featured a boys choir singing the Welsh lullaby “Suo Gan.” Her breakthrough album, The Magic Place, summons similar moments of peace amid chaos. Her primary mode of expression is her voice and a loop pedal, layered to feel completely enveloping: the reverb-coated sound of singing and breathing, echoed until you forget where it’s coming from. Arriving early in a decade that would find other young artists drawing inspiration from the once-maligned New Age genre, the album represented a shift in how the underground could embrace the celestial. As the world was getting louder, Barwick was building her own sanctuary, full of light and space and strange enough to feel like home. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/the-magic-place/1410812654?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F91898766%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72af6c53e80c0008f4371b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Julianna-Barwick-The-Magic-Place.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Julianna_Barwick-The_Magic_Place_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,167,(Sandy) Alex G,DSU (2014),Orchid Tapes,"Orchid Tapes Alex Giannascoli could never be called a frugal songwriter. Undeniably prolific by 2014, he’d amassed a cult fanbase but most of the world didn’t yet know him. DSU, his fifth proper album as Alex G, changed this. Self-recorded in his Philadelphia home, the characters in its 13 songs are often bleak—lovesick fatalists, regretful junkies, and self-proclaimed emotional voids—but in his hands, they transform into slightly haunted, subtly profound stories. His songs are built around catchy, intimate melodies evocative of Elliott Smith at his poppiest, with disorienting flourishes of freakiness, like a pitch-shifted baby voice or sharp blasts of dissonance. Insular without being inaccessible, addictive while still being idiosyncratic, DSU affirmed that the decade’s most singular voices were probably holed up in their bedrooms, waiting to be heard. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/alex-g/dsu | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/dsu/1079064127?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F56714255%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72afba2073fe00084eb10f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sandy-Alex-G-DSU.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sandy_Alex_G-DSU_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,166,Nicki Minaj,The Pinkprint (2014),Cash Money/Young Money/Republic,"Cash Money/Young Money/Republic On her third studio album, The Pinkprint, Nicki Minaj came closest to putting it all together: rapping and singing, EDM and hip-hop, seriousness and ridiculousness. She pared back her straight pop overtures like “Starships” and put her audacious versatility on full display. The Pinkprint’s all-you-can-eat buffet includes the raw autobiography of “All Things Go,” the campy raunch of “Anaconda,” and the Ariana Grande-featuring “Get On Your Knees,” as well as riotous flow showcases like “Want Some More.” Eccentric production is her co-star: There’s the Enya-inspired minimalist synth pop of “I Lied,” the fiery pan-Caribbean groove of “Trini Dem Girls,” and the feel-good dubstep-pop of “The Night Is Still Young.” No one will mistake The Pinkprint for a tightly-constructed masterpiece like its namesake, Jay-Z’s 2001 album The Blueprint, but the album helped add depth and dimension to Minaj’s image and blaze a stylistic trail for future rappers like Cardi B. It would also prove to be the creative high point in Minaj’s decade. –Jason King",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/the-pinkprint-bonus-tracks/1440851747?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F38625529%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72b7006eee70000829f2c2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Nicki-Minaj-The-Pinkprint.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nicki_Minaj-The_Pinkprint_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,165,Jay Som,Everybody Works (2017),Polyvinyl,"Polyvinyl Everybody Works, the Bay Area singer-songwriter Melina Duterte’s first proper album as Jay Som, vaulted her to the main stages and into a new indie-rock vanguard. The songs represent a dizzying crash course in everything that makes the genre great. First single “The Bus Song” veers from coffeehouse strums to gleaming trumpets, from the unspoken dynamics of two friends’ particular relationship, to universally understood concerns like the odor of public transportation. Duterte’s vocals, hushed and conversational, hold everything together: Even when the arrangements plant a sly toe in near-funk territory, it sounds small enough to fit in your pocket and large enough to change your world. –Marc Hogan",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/everybody-works/1191796223?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F70990692%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72b91f0db1d10008f1faa6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jay-Som-Everybody-Works.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jay_Som-Everybody_Works_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,164,Hop Along,Painted Shut (2015),Saddle Creek,"Saddle Creek Listening to Frances Quinlan fray her vocals is like watching someone rip a gnarly run in their black tights: Instantly, the whole outfit is rendered punk. On Painted Shut, the breakthrough album from her band Hop Along, Quinlan is on glorious display; her voice scrapes viscerally against the word “picture” in “I Saw My Twin,” the phrase “to post a motivational video” is briefly lent the velocity of an asteroid barreling toward earth in “Happy to See Me.” Being able to wring emotion out of any word is a gift, but then Quinlan has to rub it in by being one of the most compelling storytellers of her generation, too. In “Powerful Man,” she feels guilty for catching a father beating his child and not pressing the issue with an overwhelmed teacher. Elsewhere, she sings from the perspective of the ’60s folk musician Jackson C. Frank, alluding to tragic moments from his biography and invoking the general unfairness of life with a metaphor about horseshoe crabs. All the while, the rest of the band meets Quinlan’s sharp turns with their own clear-eyed intensity: Her brother Mark Quinlan takes cues from the simple but forceful percussion of grunge drummers like Dave Grohl, while the enthusiastic yet angsty guitars channel classic indie and pop-punk alike. In a decade where the lo-fi solo project often dominated indie music, Hop Along made a strong case for honest-to-goodness rock bands, one pummeling performance at a time. –Jillian Mapes",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/hop-along/painted-shut-3a1c16bc-b859-412f-8d88-3dfe0ae23dad | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/painted-shut/974793635?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F75045344%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72baac0db1d10008f1faa8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Hop-Along-Painted-Shut.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Hop_Along-Painted_Shut_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,163,Meek Mill,Dreamchasers 2 (2012),Warner Bros.,"Warner Bros. In May 2012, Meek Mill effectively broke the rap internet: Dreamchasers 2 caused the mixtape site DatPiff to crash en route to becoming the most downloaded release in its history. The project marked a turning point in the Maybach Music Group signee’s career, when he moved out of Rick Ross’ shadow and deepened his sound. Most notably, on “Amen,” with Drake and Jeremih, the Philly rapper slowed down his flurry of a flow; he had the wealth of time on his side. But even on a project this victorious, legal woes haunted Mill. His contemplative rework of Drake’s “The Ride” devotes many lines to Philadelphia assistant district attorney Noel DeSantis, who would face off against him in the courtroom seven months after DC2’s release, when Judge Genece Brinkley prohibited Meek from traveling outside of his hometown to perform. (Brinkely’s decisions on Mill’s legal problems would only grow more troublesome.) To the hip-hop world, DC2 made Meek untouchable, as powerful a star as he’d ever been. But inside the criminal justice system, he was at the mercy of others, forced to fight like he’d been doing since he was a teenager. –Ross Scarano",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/dreamchasers-2/1435442616?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F94660255%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72c5b09ce93e000838210b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Meek-Mill-Dreamchasers-2.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Meek_Mill-Dreamchasers_2_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,162,Sturgill Simpson,Metamodern Sounds in Country Music (2014),High Top Mountain,"High Top Mountain Sturgill Simpson’s music is rooted in modern country, but he’s also part of the proud heritage of “cosmic country,” a spacey descendant of Rhodes scholar Kris Kristofferson and Kahlil Gibran-quoting Willie Nelson. On his breakout album, Metamodern Sounds in Country Music, Simpson braided together no less than Jesus, Buddha, and “reptile aliens made of light” in the very first song. From there, the Kentucky native managed to dig deeper into his earthy roots of while also wandering even further into galaxy-brain thought. Simpson still refuses to be penned in and Metamodern Sounds in Country Music is when he started to elevate. –Andy Beta",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/sturgill-simpson/metamodern-sounds-in-country-music | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/metamodern-sounds-in-country-music/865795112?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F36812490%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72c6066eee70000829f2c4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sturgill-Simpson-Metamodern-Sounds.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sturgill_Simpson-Metamodern_Sounds_in_Country_Music_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,161,The 1975,I like it when you sleep… (2016),Dirty Hit,"Dirty Hit The 1975 have come a long way over the last decade. Matty Healy and co. have morphed from a spunky buzz band with a few bratty, glossy singles into the act that best captures the anxious modern condition—or, at least, has the ambition to try. The band’s second album, I like it when you sleep…, is the moment when their skills caught up with that ambition. Instead of sticking with sleek Phoenix-esque pop-rock, the band opens themselves to a wide range of influences: the sleek pop of the ’80s, neo-soul, shoegaze, and heartfelt acoustic balladry. Not every single lyric landed, but they met each clunker with a line that captured exactly what it’s like to live in this moment. Take this one at the center of “A Change of Heart”: “You said I’m full of diseases, your eyes were full of regret/And then you took a picture of your salad and put it on the internet.” That perfect balance between anguish and absurdity is what makes the 1975 feel so relevant, and so resonant. –Jamieson Cox",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/the-1975/i-like-it-when-you-sleep-for-you-are-so-beautiful-yet-so-unaware-of-it-5b689b1d-81bc-4bb6-817d-ef76d4ac84fe | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/i-like-it-when-you-sleep-for-you-are-so-beautiful-yet/1440832181?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F57494415%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72c6932073fe00084eb113/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/1975-I-like-it-when-you-sleep.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_1975-I_like_it_when_you_sleep_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,160,Noname,Room 25 (2018),Self-released,"Self-released Noname once quipped that her style is “lullaby rap,” in reference to her soft timbre and relaxed cadence. It was a great tweet, but lullabies didn’t deserve the co-sign: Room 25 isn’t putting anyone to sleep. She breathlessly details her inner life and the world with singular introspection and grace. Choice words for the prison system, wasteman boyfriends, pandering politicians, and Noname herself give the record a patina of seriousness, but she is as amused as she is agitated. From the frank sex raps to the constant boasts to the in-your-face cleverness, a giddy energy animates Room 25 and sells its free spirit. The album is the sound of a rapper realizing her powers and testing them for herself and no one else. When she says, “You really thought a bitch couldn’t rap?” it feels like both a wisecrack and a statement of purpose. –Stephen Kearse",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/room-25/1436063073?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F95013275%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d94b58ea540790008f9dbb0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Noname-Room25.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Noname-Room_25_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,159,Pallbearer,Foundations of Burden (2014),Profound Lore,"Profound Lore Arkansas doom metal band Pallbearer rose above the pack through sheer ambition. The emotional intensity and velocity of their songs suggest open spaces instead of dimly lit basements, singing along over solitary headbanging. For all the misery and pain conjured by their music, played at slow speeds with infinite layers of guitars, their records can feel oddly uplifting. Some of that is due to the soaring vocals of Brett Campbell, but the real magic lies in the band’s songwriting. Their epic song lengths become templates for dazzling melodies, classic rock choruses, and solos as memorable as the hooks. On their sophomore album, Foundations of Burden, Pallbearer cleaned up their sound, stripping away the murk of earlier releases. Near the end of the record is “Ashes,” the atmospheric interlude that’s a prerequisite for any serious doom metal album. Far from filler, it’s a masterfully composed, pop-leaning ballad. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/pallbearer/foundations-of-burden | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/foundations-of-burden/892503890?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F32808802%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72cb132073fe00084eb116/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Pallbearer-Foundations-of-Burden.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Pallbearer-Foundations_of_Burden_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,158,Sleigh Bells,Treats (2010),N.E.E.T./Mom and Pop,"N.E.E.T./Mom and Pop The intro to Treats is exhilarating: two quick cherry-bomb pummels, guitars and brass blown up huge enough to make engineers quiver and listeners thrill. The sound is physical, designed to rattle rooms. It wasn’t much like the previous music made by Derek Miller, who was in a metalcore band, or Alexis Krauss, who in her teens was part of a Cheetah Girls-ish girl group. In fact, it wasn’t like much else at all. The newness of Treats lends itself to metaphors: It’s like you took an old issue of YM magazine, shot it, sampled the gunshots, then wrote lyrics out of the tattered snippets about braces, illicit drugs, “dumb whores, best friends,” and beach bashes. It was pure pop as concentrate. Come 2019, Treats still sounds like nothing else around, but for a different reason—unlike most pop music today, it has negative chill. (It also doesn't sound like Sleigh Bells these days, who have inevitably done a sonic pivot.) But echoes of it can be found: PC Music took the art-pop roots and a few of the sounds—the sonar-like pings of “Run the Heart,” the Jock Jams synths—and made them more candy-colored. Artists like Lorde and Billie Eilish revel in Sleigh Bells’ distortion, and in their upending and mocking the bubblegum tropes that, in another era, they may have become. –Katherine St. Asaph",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/treats/371959684?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F82575463%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72cb8853e80c0008f4371f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sleigh-Bells-Treats.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sleigh_Bells-Treats_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,157,The 1975,A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships (2018),Dirty Hit/Interscope,"Dirty Hit/Interscope The 1975’s Matt Healy described his internal monologue—actually out loud—to the New York Times thusly: “I’m Jim Morrison. Am I Jim Morrison? I’m sorry that I’m Jim Morrison. I’m [expletive] Jim Morrison!” On A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships, Healy’s relentless self-belief paid off, his flailing coalesced into dramatic gestures, and he finally nailed the part he auditioned himself for. He is magnetic and empathetic and tender and unbearably silly, all at once and all of the time, and so is the music, which smears together Auto-Tune, orchestras, glam-rock guitars, and entire showrooms full of 1980s synths. Across the album’s 15 songs, Healy wants to verbalize every racing thought in your fevered brain: your boredom, your callow judgments, your sudden bouts of existential terror and your equally sudden bursts of inexplicable lust, your opinions on how whiskey tastes and the sound of your Twitter feed imprinting itself on your neural cortex. On an album stuffed with wry quotables, the funniest might be “I’ve just got one more thing to say.” –Jayson Greene",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/the-1975/a-brief-inquiry-into-online-relationships | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/a-brief-inquiry-into-online-relationships/1435546528?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F99350677%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72d2b76eee70000829f2c6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-1975-A-Brief-Inquiry.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_1975-A_Brief_Inquiry_Into_Online_Relationships_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,156,Jenny Lewis,The Voyager (2014),Warner Bros.,"Warner Bros. Jenny Lewis’ third solo album is a nostalgic swan dive into past lives, as sprawling as Lewis’s own impressive turn from child actor to rock poet. Scattered memories appear like flipped tarot cards—plane tickets to Paris as a teenager, the Twin Towers falling, a punch in the drywall during an argument—melting into a colorful but weary montage over sunny ’80s new wave and ’70s rock. Some song hit close to home, like the dryly funny “Just One of the Guys,” a meditation on sexism and ageism in music. Others are far more distant, like Lewis gushing about a future wedding and the faded romance that follows it on the deceptively bubbly “Love U Forever.” Armed with a perfect rainbow Nudie suit, Lewis asserted herself as a mature, somewhat wistful rock veteran, and took her rightful place as a bona fide solo star. –Hazel Cills",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/the-voyager/883276305?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F104156343%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72d30a2073fe00084eb118/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jenny-Lewis-The-Voyager.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jenny_Lewis-The_Voyager_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,155,21 Savage / Metro Boomin,Savage Mode (2016),Slaughter Gang/Epic,"Slaughter Gang/Epic In the middle of the decade, Metro Boomin was the most bankable producer in hip-hop. He helped auteurs like Future flesh out their sounds and kept Drake on top of the world with beats that were pulsing, punishing, and ahead of the curve. So it’s strange that the greatest thing he’s done sounds nothing like his catalog of louder hits, and sounds like virtually none of the other mainstream rap produced this century. Savage Mode plays like a dream sequence, where 21 Savage’s half-whisper sinks into what sounds like fraying, muddy silk. It’s not dissimilar to ambient music, but things that exist as atmosphere are seldom this unsettling. Together, Metro and 21 make having sex in lavish hotels with jewelry swinging against your chest sound like a completely foreign experience—not just the price of the room or the chains, but the sensation of having things touch your neck, the unnatural feel of the bedsheets. It’s a terrible, tranquil body high that ends too soon. –Paul A. Thompson",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/savage-mode/1133782044?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F62980263%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72d38cfd34990009cf8a1d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/21-Savage-Metro-Boomin-Savage-Mode.jpg,/dataset/artwork/21_Savage__Metro_Boomin-Savage_Mode_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,154,Mica Levi,Under the Skin OST (2014),Milan,"Milan With her soundtrack to Jonathan Glazer’s 2013 body horror film Under the Skin, the electronic musician and composer Mica Levi drew on the dissonance of avant-garde icons like John Cage and Gyorgy Ligeti, adding her own, distinct chill. Throughout the score, violas, cellos, and drum machines are slowed down to grim effect, perfectly mirroring Scarlett Johansson’s performance as a seductive, murderous alien. Beyond amplifying the visuals, Levi explored the pure physicality of noise: the thrum of blood rushing to the head, the prickling of small hairs, a soft touch, or the sensation of an otherworldly lifeform drinking you down to your last drop. –Andy Beta",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/under-the-skin-original-motion-picture-soundtrack/836460975?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F35282450%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72d3d69ce93e000838210f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Under-the-Skin.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mica_Levi-Under_the_Skin_OST_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,153,Purple Mountains,Purple Mountains (2019),Drag City,"Drag City David Berman’s final album followed a long period of silence, and his isolation echoed through the music. His comeback after abandoning Silver Jews in 2009 found him contemplating the struggles of maintaining relationships, faith, confidence, and hope as you get older. “Things have not been going well,” he announces wearily in its opening track, and the songs that follow prove this to be something of an understatement. Although bleak, the music never wallows, thanks to the cozily upbeat arrangements from his new backing band (featuring members of Woods) and his peerless lyrics. His writing remained as complex, funny, and smart as any of his classic work, from the songwriting-as-therapy spiral of “Storyline Fever” to the color-coded purgatory in “Margaritas at the Mall.” In the wake of Berman’s death—just a month after the album’s release and days before a scheduled tour—fans lit up the internet telling stories, sharing photos, and citing his best lyrics, many of which came from these songs. His voice never felt louder or more vital. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/purple-mountains/purple-mountains | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/purple-mountains/1456510195?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F109235260%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d72d4f853e80c0008f43721/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Purple-Mountains.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Purple_Mountains-Purple_Mountains_2019.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,152,Arctic Monkeys,AM (2013),Domino,"Domino The influence of hip-hop acts—especially Mike Skinner’s the Streets—could be heard in the lyrics of Arctic Monkeys right from the start. But it wasn’t until their fifth studio album, AM, that the Sheffield band fully reflected that influence in their music. On AM, they bent these sounds to their will so casually it was breathtaking. Who could have foreseen that the Monkeys’ spartan guitar riffs would sit so well over a muscular, Dr. Dre-style beat on “Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High?” Or that Alex Turner’s wily vocal hooks on songs like “Do I Wanna Know?” could have so much in common with the lyrical strut of the best MCs? AM was a giant, cocksure beast that seemed entirely happy with its place in the world, making it one of the few indie rock hits of the 2010s that sounded like it genuinely belonged in the decade’s pop mainstream. –Ben Cardew",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/arctic-monkeys/am-6744e5e7-a0b1-4a8a-bf7f-31c83b4db1e6 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/am/663097964?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F22248417%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d766b809ce93e00083821b9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Arctic-Monkeys-AM.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Arctic_Monkeys-AM_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,151,Lady Gaga,The Fame Monster (2009),Interscope/Cherrytree,"Interscope/Cherrytree At first, Lady Gaga seemed like a slightly smarter-than-usual dance-pop hopeful and nothing more. But then came “Bad Romance.” A gothic psychodrama draped around a titanic club banger, accompanied by an instantly iconic music video in which she stoically burns a man to death, the song announced Gaga as a true force to be reckoned with. “Bad Romance” kicked off The Fame Monster, a collection of eight songs released as a deluxe edition of Gaga’s 2008 debut album, The Fame. (Yes, we know: The Fame Monster was technically released in late November 2009. But for something that cast such a long shadow over this decade, we’re making an exception.) Other than the supremely fun, Beyoncé-featuring “Telephone” (originally written for Britney Spears!), none of these songs sounded like anything else released at the time. They’re bizarre and jarring, full of references to death, dangerous sex, Hitchcock movies, and eating brains. (There’s also “Speechless,” an unabashedly retro power ballad that Meat Loaf would have killed for.) The Fame Monster’s release kicked off an arms race of pop kookiness: Suddenly, it seemed like everyone from Katy Perry to Nicki Minaj to Kesha was falling all over themselves to out-weird each other. But nobody’s freak flag ever flew higher than Gaga’s. –Amy Phillips",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/the-fame-monster-deluxe-edition/1476727669?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F77707060%5D%5D | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrO4YZeyl0I,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d766c372073fe00084eb1c0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lady-Gaga-Fame-Monster.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lady_Gaga-The_Fame_Monster_2009.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,150,Playboi Carti,Playboi Carti (2017),AWGE,"AWGE Before he emerged from the shadows with his eponymous debut mixtape, Playboi Carti was an enigma: The Atlanta native's SoundCloud page was a secret hiding in plain sight, spoken about with gatekeeping whispers, and his leaked tracks were passed around the internet like contraband. Playboi Carti brought substance to the growing mythology surrounding him, as he established himself as a rapper willing to bend genres and switch styles on a whim. On the tape, Carti emphasized his narcotized delivery and ad-libs while adding polish to his dreamy sound with help from producer Pi’erre Bourne. Songs like the hypnotizing “Magnolia” brought Carti’s ability to create an entire aura around snippets of songs to the mainstream, making rap that was just as enjoyable in a 30-second Instagram clip as it was blaring in full from a car speaker. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/playboi-carti/playboi-carti | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/playboi-carti/1440887343?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F72500653%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d766c7a0db1d10008f1fb22/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Playboi-Carti.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Playboi_Carti-Playboi_Carti_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,149,Mac DeMarco,2 (2012),Captured Tracks,"Captured Tracks Love him or hate him, Mac DeMarco’s influence on an entire generation of bedroom-pop acts and would-be scum-rock wunderkinds is tough to overstate. His breakout album, 2, established his penchant for cigarettes, zany antics, and quietly compelling songwriting. Throughout, the then-22-year-old Canadian waxes drolly on addiction and suburban sedation, intertwining his laid-back voice with flanged guitar work. His devil-may-care attitude can be seen in live videos from the period, where he would walk out with a beat-to-hell guitar that was falling out of tune, its un-clipped strings dangling from the headstock, and proceed to make not giving a shit look like the most alluring—and even admirable—way of life. This was when he was at his most free, before he was saddled with the expectations of being indie rock’s class clown, before his music took him to high places no one could have ever foreseen. –Noah Yoo",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/mac-demarco/2-23ab3685-9e1a-4965-9c8f-eefc58013eee | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/2/561048714?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F19327514%5D%5D | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxWEpjaKRmM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d766cc72073fe00084eb1c2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mac-DeMarco-2.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mac_DeMarco-2_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,148,Nicolas Jaar,Space Is Only Noise (2011),Circus Company,"Circus Company At the beginning of the 2010s, the echoes of peak chillwave lingered in the air, and a sample of rushing water typically indicated the onset of a feel-good, uncomplicated song. Nicolas Jaar's debut album begins with splashing sounds, but it quickly sidesteps the path toward easy bliss. There's menace lurking beneath the producer's work, a ghostly energy that opens up in his understated beats and sinewy basslines. Percussive guitars and close-miked vocals bleed into waves of reverb. During the early-’10s glut of bro EDM and bubbling chillwave, Jaar found magic in restraint, leaving enough space in his music to give the impression of a nefarious presence always lurking around the corner, of a young artist eager to play the notes that aren't there. –Sasha Geffen",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/nicolas-jaar/space-is-only-noise | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/space-is-only-noise/488873549?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F13765905%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d766df2fd34990009cf8aa1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Nicolas-Jaar-Space-Is-Only-Noise.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nicolas_Jaar-Space_Is_Only_Noise_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,147,The National,High Violet (2010),4AD,"4AD High Violet has the swimmy quality that comes with making sense of a new reality. It was the first National album to really incorporate guitarists Aaron and Bryce Dessner’s experimental tendencies, making what was solid and plainly beautiful on Boxer fractious and unreliable—not a fake empire, but a treacherous one. Frontman Matt Berninger feels separated from lovers, from home, from the person he was and the one he is becoming. To survive, he makes depression, debt, and self-destruction into sublime cosmic jokes at his own mopey, myopic expense. It was the last time Berninger’s lyrics were perfectly congruent with the times, an existentialist eclipse before he became more character than chronicler. Once adulthood fits, it’s hard to remember how it once didn’t. –Laura Snapes",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/the-national/high-violet-e4578068-e85a-4807-8071-9f35fc96fa96 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/high-violet-bonus-track-version/368054407?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F4797745%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d766e5553e80c0008f43802/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-National-High-Violet.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_National-High_Violet_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,146,Sheer Mag,Compilation (2017),Wilsuns RC,"Wilsuns RC There are two kinds of punk bands: nihilists and life lovers. Philly group Sheer Mag have spent their five-year existence attesting to the power of the latter. With shimmying, riffy protest rock and the coolest of neo-heavy-metal-style band logos, Sheer Mag became underground heroes this decade for their sticky songwriting and their principled independence. Like hardcore icons Black Flag and Minor Threat before them, Sheer Mag laid the foundation with a string of EPs, then rounded them up with the no-filler Compilation, still their high-water mark. It’s full of songs about gentrification, crooked cops, slumlords, yuppies, old-fashioned heartbreak, and other trials and tribulations that eat away at Generation Y’s more critically minded members. The music can be aching, swaggering, and celebratory—but it all feels designed to help us live. –Jenn Pelly",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/sheer-mag/compilation-9c994ac7-33ef-46a1-a209-44b894704608 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/compilation-i-ii-iii/1199255735?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d766ecd6eee70000829f349/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sheer-Mag-Compilation.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sheer_Mag-Compilation_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,145,Chief Keef,Finally Rich (2012),Interscope,"Interscope When Chief Keef’s major-label debut came out in 2012, it was scrutinized to a degree rap hadn't seen since the moral panic days of the ’90s. Here was a hardened teen from the most neglected corners of Chicago making music that reflected—and, yes, romanticized—the violence he came up around. Keef was more clever and more in control of his vision than his detractors gave him credit for, though, and his minimalist wordplay served to emphasize his monumental hooks. Finally Rich was drill’s great crossover event, polishing the rapper's nihilistic imagining of trap just enough for the radio without compromising its fundamental menace. Even after Interscope and the A-listers who'd been so eager to jump on his remixes cast him aside following this album, Keef continued to make inventive, influential music throughout the decade. But Finally Rich remains his pinnacle, and a best-case scenario for what can happen when a street-tested sound meets a big-time budget. –Evan Rytlewski",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/finally-rich-deluxe-version/1440818106?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F35189928%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d766f7353e80c0008f43804/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Chief-Keef-Finally-Rich.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Chief_Keef-Finally_Rich_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,144,PJ Harvey,Let England Shake (2011),Vagrant/Island Def Jam,"Vagrant/Island Def Jam On her eighth studio album, released two decades into her remarkable career, Polly Jean Harvey explores England’s military history, from World War I to the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan, with sharp, journalistic observance and poetic grace. Moving from English folk to Jamaican reggae, and from dark comedy to just darkness, she examines the nature of conflict itself and the raw human tragedy that lies at its center. A thread of weary nostalgia weaves its way through these 12 brief but devastating songs, shot through with despair at human inability to learn from our mistakes. It’s an album that hits right in the gut, timeless yet horribly timely, locally specific yet globally relevant. –Ben Cardew",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/let-england-shake/1213996598?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F71309649%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76701e0db1d10008f1fb58/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/PJ-Harvey-Let-England-Shake.jpg,/dataset/artwork/PJ_Harvey-Let_England_Shake_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,143,Weyes Blood,Titanic Rising (2019),Sub Pop,"Sub Pop On Titanic Rising, Natalie Mering’s fourth album as Weyes Blood, she combats dread through empathetic songs that are propelled by a masterful understanding of lush, ’70s pop harmonics. Mering’s willowy voice gives her warnings about the most hellish aspects of life a graceful air, as best exemplified on Titanic Rising’s penultimate track, “Picture Me Better,” a letter to a friend who died by suicide during the recording of the album. “Waiting for the call from beyond,” Mering lilts, as old-world Hollywood strings swell underneath her. “Waiting for something with meaning to come through soon.” –Noah Yoo",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/weyes-blood/titanic-rising | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/titanic-rising/1450550344?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F106478328%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d767107fd34990009cf8aa4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Weyes-Blood-Titanic-Rising.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Weyes_Blood-Titanic_Rising_2019.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,142,Fennesz,Agora (2019),TOUCH,"TOUCH Using computers to turn sounds into alien shapes now feels like a given, but at the turn of the century, guitarist and producer Christian Fennesz’s audacious noise- and pop-smearing work suggested strange, glitchy new worlds. Two decades on, the Austrian ambient artist suddenly found himself without a studio space, so he resorted to doing what so many teens do, jamming away in his bedroom on headphones. But even in such homely environs, he operates like an old master, patiently layering guitars and electronics one downstroke at a time until it all accrues into a vast canvas of distorted bliss. Agora boasts both the most expansive and most finely detailed soundscapes of his career. Contemplative and visceral, blurred and acute, the album upholds Fennesz as the 21st century’s finest romantic futurist. –Andy Beta",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/fennesz/agora | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/agora/1450001113?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F102730774%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7671720db1d10008f1fb5a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Fennesz-Agora.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fennesz-Agora_2019.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,141,Rick Ross,Rich Forever (2012),Def Jam,"Def Jam Rick Ross’ best work happens when he’s completely, utterly divorced from reality. Case in point: His 2012 mixtape Rich Forever, in which the former prison guard fully embraces his villainous kingpin persona, casting himself as the hardboiled antihero of his own blockbuster action franchise. Forgoing the decadent, red-velvet soul of his studio albums, Rich Forever emphasizes tight, IMAX-sized instrumentals. From the searing synthesizers of “High Definition” to the brutalist, grinding trap of “Yella Diamonds,” nearly every beat is as mammoth and monumental as Ross’ brontosaurus grunt. And at a time when rappers like Drake and Kendrick were prioritizing grounded, personal statements, Ross doubled down on fantasy. There isn't a single claim on Rich Forever that a fact checker could verify, and the mixtape is better for it. –Evan Rytlewski",Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F16391340%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7672182073fe00084eb1c4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Rick-Ross-Rich-Forever.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rick_Ross-Rich_Forever_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,140,Parquet Courts,Sunbathing Animal (2014),What’s Your Rupture?/Mom and Pop,"What’s Your Rupture?/Mom and Pop In an era when indie rock got cozier than ever with the pop mainstream, Parquet Courts preferred to be left alone. After breaking through with 2012’s delightful and funny Light Up Gold, their follow-up album, Sunbathing Animal, made the band an unlikely pillar of modern American rock. The record cultivates an air of hyper-rational individuals thwarted by modern mania; its surrealist screeds transform, upon inspection, into pleas for sanity. Andrew Savage and Austin Brown emit a flurry of barely formed questions: How do you navigate the enduring challenges of love and passion amid labor exploitation, political cruelty, and the specter and spectacle of American violence? The music runs then crawls, plays dumb then flaunts frills. To hide genius hooks in songs so slack is audacious, the mark of a band either certain you’re paying attention or the complete opposite. –Jazz Monroe",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/parquet-courts/sunbathing-animal-322eb9dc-c9eb-47aa-8b0e-bd6c08998ec4 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/sunbathing-animal/1068020261?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F55307797%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76730153e80c0008f43808/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Parquet-Courts-Sunbathing-Animal.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Parquet_Courts-Sunbathing_Animal_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,139,Emeralds,Does It Look Like I’m Here? (2010),Editions Mego,"Editions Mego With Does It Look Like I’m Here?, the experimental Ohio trio Emeralds ascended toward more melodic, starry atmospheres without losing any of the density and power of their previous sound. In shorter songs full of rising arpeggios and drifting guitar lines, they layered loops and doused the stereo spectrum in glittering accents. Channeling the synth explorations of the ’70s and the dreamy ambience of the ’80s, they presaged the New Age pop revival that would flourish throughout the decade. Though they would only make one more album together, the subsequent solo work of Mark McGuire, Steve Hauschildt, and John Elliot continued to uphold the idea that soothing, space-bound music can be just as edgy and complex as harsh noise. –Marc Masters",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/does-it-look-like-im-here/368521609?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F4261245%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76a4ca6eee70000829f34f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Emeralds-Does-It-Look-Like-Im-Here.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Emeralds-Does_It_Look_Like_Im_Here_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,138,Alabama Shakes,Sound & Color (2015),ATO,"ATO Alabama Shakes’ second album begins with a song about an astronaut who has been shot into space on a mission to find a new planet where the human race can settle and start over. And thus, Sound & Color subverted almost everything we’d come to expect about a band that had been positioned as saviors of back-to-basics rock’n’roll: what frontwoman Brittany Howard was singing about, how the music sounded, even which planets they visit. There’s something alien about songs like “Future People” (about meeting the you of 10 or 20 years on), but Howard’s concerns can be earthly as well: losing a lover with a Mickey Mouse tattoo on “Miss You,” paying the water and power bills on “Don’t Wanna Fight.” The Shakes groove and vamp like the Swampers from Mars, with Howard shouting and crooning and squealing like Bowie by way of Etta James. Sound & Color is grounded in Southern soul, but the band’s gaze is fixed on the heavens. –Stephen Deusner",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/alabama-shakes/sound-color | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/sound-color/1053742064?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F44546094%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76a5876eee70000829f351/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Alabama-Shakes-Sound-and-Color.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Alabama_Shakes-Sound__Color_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,137,A$AP Rocky,LIVE.LOVE.A$AP (2011),Self-released,"Self-released LIVE.LOVE.A$AP feels like one of the first hip-hop projects that could not have existed without the internet. Marked by A$AP Rocky’s straightforward delivery and “I’m the shit” attitude, the 2011 mixtape is rooted in the rapper’s Harlem upbringing, but the sound of the project is pulled from scenes across the country that Rocky and his crew fell in love with online: The chopped vocals are true to Houston’s lean-infused drip, the dark themes are directly influenced by SpaceGhostPurrp’s Miami-based Raider Klan, and the cloudy production is built on a style that was thriving in California through artists like Main Attrakionz and Lil B. Along with producer Clams Casino, Rocky brought a new flavor to these styles—not rehashing existing ideas, but entwining them with his own to create something unbound by regional lines. –Alphonse Pierre",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76a6106eee70000829f353/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/ASAP-Rocky-LiveLongASAP.png,/dataset/artwork/AAP_Rocky-LIVELOVEAAP_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,136,Tim Hecker,"Ravedeath, 1972 (2011)",Kranky,"Kranky When Tim Hecker released Ravedeath, 1972 in 2011, critics interpreted the Canadian producer’s clash of organic pipe organ and synthetic corrosion as a comment on music’s chances of survival in a digital world. In 2019, that matter seems superficial compared to Ravedeath’s unavoidable contemporary resonance. Its grimy, eddying tundras are nothing less than an omen of our promised apocalypse, where decay has defeated living matter and noise has drowned out signal. The music, however, remains gorgeous and rooted in the metaphysical. While the forlorn cirrus wisps that writhe and glimmer through the static don’t offer anything so trite as optimism, they cast the ruins in the sobering relief that elevates Ravedeath, 1972 from ambient reverie to enduringly urgent confrontation. –Laura Snapes",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/tim-hecker/ravedeath-1972 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/ravedeath-1972/411842895?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F18058603%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76aa670db1d10008f1fb61/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Tim-Hecker-Ravedeath-1972.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tim_Hecker-Ravedeath_1972_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,135,Fleet Foxes,Helplessness Blues (2011),Sub Pop,"Sub Pop The making of Fleet Foxes’ second album was fraught, due in no small part to the success of their first. Robin Pecknold and co. wondered how to trust their instincts without leaning on formula, and fretted about the reception that awaited their new music. These worries form a backdrop for Helplessness Blues, the unmistakable work of uneasy hearts. Starting with the scene-setting intonation that opens the record (“So now I am older”), Pecknold’s melancholy tenor heralded a decade of discourse about millennial anxiety. He paints an indelible portrait of fading young-adulthood—diverging from the path set by parents, searching for place and purpose, falling out of relationships that have dried up. Above all, Pecknold questions his ability—and will—to be anything other than, as he describes it on the title track, “a functioning cog in some great machinery.” These complicated fears offer a foil to the swollen sound that envelopes them. Fleet Foxes’ maximalist folk, with harmonies stacked high as mountains and reverb that could fill caverns, makes feeling small seem epic. –Olivia Horn",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/fleet-foxes/helplessness-blues | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/helplessness-blues/425059566?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F68640008%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76aac02073fe00084eb232/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Fleet-Foxes-Helplessness-Blues.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fleet_Foxes-Helplessness_Blues_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,134,M83,"Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming (2011)",Mute,"Mute Around the time Anthony Gonzalez wound down the tour for 2008’s Saturdays = Youth, the M83 frontman left France and moved to Los Angeles. The city inspired his biggest, best, and most cinematic album, Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming. These songs are steeped in a kind of magical realism stemming from the intensity of adolescent emotions, full of heart-on-sleeve choruses, slap-bass funk, vintage synth swells, and a desire for home or love or something just out of reach. The album contains a loose narrative that has something to do with brothers and sisters, but you don’t need to know any of the story to get swept up in the neon-lit groove of “Midnight City” or swept away by the tidal wave that is “Steve McQueen.” Gonzalez’s nostalgia is very specific, very personal, and very idiosyncratic, which makes Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming sound so universal and inviting, not to mention sturdy enough to withstand the wave of imitators that sprang up in its wake. –Stephen Deusner",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/hurry-up-were-dreaming/828259375?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F35001627%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76ab379ce93e0008382259/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/M83-Hurry-Up-Were-Dreaming.jpg,/dataset/artwork/M83-Hurry_Up_Were_Dreaming_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,133,Frankie Cosmos,Zentropy (2014),Double Double Whammy,"Double Double Whammy Greta Kline once quipped that the title of Zentropy, her full-band studio debut as Frankie Cosmos, meant a descent into “zen-ness”: an embrace of one’s surroundings. It’s a clever way of approaching the album, which collapses notions of big and small, sophisticated and rudimentary, serious and funny, until there’s little choice but to accept them all as the same. Zentropy doesn’t feel longer than its 10-song, 17-minute run time, but it feels like more. Tempos careen and stutter unpredictably, lyrical motifs bleed between tracks. Gigantic feelings go supernova out of notebook-worthy musings on being “the kind of girl buses splash with rain,” yearning to go dancing, and mourning the death of a dog. Beneath this, Klein filters a ’60s girl-group pop sensibility through the New York deadpan of ’00s anti-folk and the pajama-party whimsy of ’90s K Records. Later Frankie Cosmos albums would go longer, and run no less deep, but with Zentropy, Kline made us one with everything. –Marc Hogan",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/zentropy/1071967333?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F55838344%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76abca0db1d10008f1fb63/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Frankie-Cosmos-Zentropy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Frankie_Cosmos-Zentropy_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,132,Amen Dunes,Freedom (2018),Sacred Bones,"Sacred Bones The fifth album from Damon McMahon’s hallucinatory rock project Amen Dunes pumps the vapors of bygone rock jams into half-seen visions of the past. McMahon has an eye for the antihero and his vulnerabilities, the fading conscience of modernity. “Pride destroyed me, man/Til it took ahold of me,” he sings over cresting bass on the luscious “Miki Dora,” a sympathetic homage to the surfer icon of hedonism and chaos. A master of the lyrical arched eyebrow, McMahon is capable of conveying total honesty in one line and ironic remove in the next. His band builds a warmly reverbed atmosphere, steadying psychedelic swells and loops against murky rhythm until the air feels rotten with insinuation. Freedom doesn’t feel like an album from this decade; it feels like an album suspended in time. –Anna Gaca",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/amen-dunes/freedom | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/freedom/1328551614?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F85273955%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76ac1e9ce93e000838225b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Amen-Dunes-Freedom.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Amen_Dunes-Freedom_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,131,Run the Jewels,Run the Jewels 2 (2014),Mass Appeal,"Mass Appeal Run the Jewels were rap’s most thrillingly unlikely success story this decade: El-P, an indie-rap lifer and Killer Mike, an Atlanta rap vet finding new inspiration in each other. When they joined forces, they rapped as if their lives (and ours) depended on it. Run the Jewels 2 was where their uncanny chemistry reached Anarchist Cookbook proportions. It’s an album of virtuosic vulgarity, a pair of underdogs seizing their moment and reaching new heights, both in their cadence-shifting bars and El’s arena-quaking productions. But beneath the bluster, what sets RTJ2 apart is its humanity and prescience: on police brutality, on #MeToo, and on the burgeoning friendship between two world-hardened idealists. No wonder Marvel gave them their own comic books. –Marc Hogan",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/run-the-jewels-2/1438904728?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F93772424%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76ac9c53e80c0008f4380f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Run-the-Jewels-2.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Run_the_Jewels-Run_the_Jewels_2_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,130,Tame Impala,Lonerism (2012),Modular,"Modular At its core, Lonerism is a tightly wound, deeply internal album about what it means to always feel like an outsider. That it gained such a huge following and catapulted Tame Impala into the mainstream is ironic, but not surprising. Throughout the record, classic rock tropes are updated with reverence, memorable riffs are tossed off like they’re in endless supply, and moments of bliss allow for at least an illusion of catharsis: The tongue-in-cheek single “Elephant” is so sure of itself that it practically swaggers, while “Feels Like We Only Go Backwards” is built around blown-out cymbals and a communal hook that happens to be all about frontman Kevin Parker’s own indecision and dashed hopes. If there’s one idea to take away from Tame Impala’s second album, though, it’s that everything repeats itself and nothing is ever really in our control. Frustration never sounded so good. –Sam Hockley-Smith",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/tame-impala/lonerism-314a7d7a-7e88-4e2f-9b08-45ccf2762a3a | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/lonerism/1440765963?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F28098315%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76ada02073fe00084eb236/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Tame-Impala-Lonerism.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tame_Impala-Lonerism_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,129,Various Artists,Bangs and Works Vol. 1: A Chicago Footwork Compilation (2010),Planet Mu,"Planet Mu In dance music circles, it’s hard to think of a more important recent document than Bangs and Works. While Chicago footwork had been percolating for over 20 years at the time of the compilation’s release, for many people outside the local scene, it proved to be their first experience of the genre’s marriage of breakneck beats with haunting soul samples. Alongside searing examples of the form by pioneers like RP Boo and DJ Rashad, who would go on to take footwork around the world, there’s a DJ Nate track that verges on the spiritual, and a succinct meditation on loving support by Tha Pope. A decade on, Bangs and Works still sounds as fresh and invigorating as the first listen. –Ruth Saxelby",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/bangs-works-vol-1-a-chicago-footwork-compilation/687501131?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F22979365%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76ae399ce93e000838225d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/VA-Bangs-and-Works-Vol-1.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Various_Artists-Bangs_and_Works_Vol_1_A_Chicago_Footwork_Compilation_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,128,Radiohead,A Moon Shaped Pool (2016),XL,"XL When A Moon Shaped Pool entered the world in May 2016, many of the horrors Radiohead had spent more than two decades warning us about were coming to fruition. Campaigns for Brexit and Trump were spreading odious strains of nationalism. The Earth’s temperature was reaching precipitous new highs. Nefarious companies were harvesting data from tens of millions of Facebook users in order to undermine American democracy. The record also arrived amid acute personal tragedy for Thom Yorke, who had announced a separation from his partner, Rachel Owen, the year prior. (Seven months after its release, Owen died following a long battle with cancer.) It’s no wonder that, according to one scientific analysis, A Moon Shaped Pool was found to be the infamously bleak band’s most depressing album. And yet the record does not wallow. The stubbornly forward-facing quintet allows itself to look back—most notably with “True Love Waits,” a live fan favorite since the mid ’90s, finally put to tape in the studio—while avoiding self-parody or indulgence. On the luminous ballad “Daydreaming,” Yorke sounds like he’s levitating when he sings, “We are just happy to serve... you.” It’s a nod to the symbiotic bond Radiohead keeps with their listeners through the worst of times, a bond that this album elegantly upholds. –Ryan Dombal",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/radiohead/a-moon-shaped-pool | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/a-moon-shaped-pool/1111577743?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F60215409%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76ae9d6eee70000829f356/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Radiohead-A-Moon-Shaped-Pool.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Radiohead-A_Moon_Shaped_Pool_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,127,Car Seat Headrest,Teens of Denial (2016),Matador,"Matador Like his indie rock forefathers in the Replacements, Car Seat Headrest mastermind Will Toledo sounds sincerely undecided about embarking on any kind of grand search for purpose. He feels like a walking piece of shit, which is basically the default state for modern young people. On Teens of Denial, following a prolific run of Bandcamp releases, Toledo comes off like a passive avatar for the feelings he’s channeling. Even when he shakes off the doldrums long enough to rouse his audience into a singalong, it’s with a self-conscious—but nonetheless empowering—line like “I’ve got a right to be depressed!” The beautiful thing about this record is how it doesn’t demand our loyalty, only that we admit we feel the same way. –Jeremy Gordon",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/car-seat-headrest/teens-of-denial | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/teens-of-denial/1117093779?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F61144838%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76af692073fe00084eb238/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Car-Seat-Headrest-Teens-of-Denial.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Car_Seat_Headrest-Teens_of_Denial_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,126,Panda Bear,Tomboy (2011),Paw Tracks,"Paw Tracks As a follow-up to 2007’s acclaimed Person Pitch (with Animal Collective’s even-more-acclaimed Merriweather Post Pavilion in between), Noah Lennox’s fourth solo album as Panda Bear often seems a vehicle to adjust classic sounds into a new, weird future. Covered in the singer’s rich self-harmonies, the Beach Boys references are almost too easy to make, with the wave-touched “Surfer’s Hymn” perhaps even acting as overt bait. But churning behind those echoing cries are any number of marginally identifiable sounds—fast-cycling bells? backwards pianos?—that flicker like reflections in dark water. Brimming with dubby modern psychedelia, Tomboy may be more like a VR beach than a surf-and-sand one, but it offers just as many pretty sunsets. –Jesse Jarnow",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/tomboy/1101965696?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F59215412%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76afd353e80c0008f43811/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Panda-Bear-Tomboy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Panda_Bear-Tomboy_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,125,Yves Tumor,Safe in the Hands of Love (2018),Warp,"Warp With their third album, Safe in the Hands of Love, Sean Bowie took a hacksaw to the very idea of experimental music. They ripped into entrenched notions about its sound and audience, then stood back to admire the glorious mess. Still, the producer-singer’s opposing musical textures cohere astonishingly well: R&B grooves meld into sinister spoken-word interludes, sensuous cellos and militaristic chopper sounds share space. Bowie tugs at the ear with teases of pop before abruptly morphing into something far more severe. They often invert foreground and background, retreating to near-tuneless vocal melodies that act more as scaffolding than centerpiece within their heady brew of electronics. Amid the tumult, Safe in the Hands of Love examines the tension between being held, being confined, and the rare instances where the two conditions meet. The album itself occupies a similarly strange intersection: It is both remarkably beautiful and remarkably unnerving. –Olivia Horn",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/yves-tumor/safe-in-the-hands-of-love | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/safe-in-the-hands-of-love/1429971639?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F94625862%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76b0acfd34990009cf8b43/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Yves-Tumor-Safe-in-the-Hands-of-Love.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Yves_Tumor-Safe_in_the_Hands_of_Love_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,124,Real Estate,Days (2011),Domino,"Domino There are albums on this list excavated from the darkest pits of despair, ones that irrevocably reshaped the sound of pop, and ones that will be commemorated by future generations as crucial documents of the decade’s political turmoil. And then there’s Real Estate’s second album, Days, which people turned to when they wanted something that just sounded good. If that seems like damning praise, consider how hard it can be to face the challenge of substantiating serenity, of finding validation for the ambient sadness and fleeting joys that make up most of life, of appreciating the past without being trapped in it. With this album, Real Estate casually perfected a novel form of crisp, interlocking jangle that could’ve been sourced from any point in the last 35 years. Days’ most enduring image is a pair of names carved into a tree—fitting for an album that will always be right where you left it, exactly how you remember it. –Ian Cohen",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/days/470027419?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F37002536%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76b10f9ce93e000838225f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Real-Estate-Days.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Real_Estate-Days_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,123,Deafheaven,Sunbather (2013),Deathwish,"Deathwish Singer George Clarke and guitarist Kerry McCoy recorded their first demos as Deafheaven while living with 12 other people in an old nunnery in San Francisco’s Mission District, their call-center jobs barely lucrative enough to cover a combined $500 in rent. Listening to the opening notes of their sophomore album, you can’t help but get the sense that they are trying to escape: Clarke screams like a man in fear for his own life as the song’s frenzied guitar tremolos and ragged blast-beats sound like they are trying to outrun each other. To the chagrin of black metal and hardcore purists, Deafheaven also seemed determined to evade any distinctions between one brand of wall-of-sound catharsis and another, teetering endlessly between ecstatic chaos and the melodic romance of ’90s shoegaze and post-rock. But focusing on Sunbather’s surface prettiness ignores the sheer scale of its compositional ambition, its brocaded sonic sub-plots and gut-punching crescendos channeling the go-for-broke ambition of people with nothing to lose. –Emilie Friedlander",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/sunbather/652038965?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F20749616%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76b1746eee70000829f38c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Deafheaven-Sunbather.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Deafheaven-Sunbather_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,122,Snail Mail,Lush (2018),Matador,"Matador How does Lush manage to sound so radiant? After a series of defining teenage experiences—lust burning so bright you can’t sleep at night, crushing heartbreak, getting so drunk you can’t see straight—Lindsey Jordan immediately put those feelings to tape, capturing them at their greatest intensity. There’s more to Snail Mail’s debut album than her gripping guitar playing, whether she’s unfurling gentle melodies or slicing out unforgettable riffs. There’s more still beyond her clean, expressive voice, which conveys a sense of wonder and boundless curiosity. The root of Jordan’s precocious, multifaceted talent is her writing, and the way she can cut to the core of a complicated feeling with just a few words. Look at the chant that closes “Heat Wave”: “I’m feeling low/I’m not into ‘sometimes.’” What more needs to be said about someone who makes you happy occasionally but will never make you whole? –Jamieson Cox",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/snail-mail/lush | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/lush/1355422978?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Fartist%252F7506198%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76b1c00db1d10008f1fb65/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Snail-Mail-Lush.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Snail_Mail-Lush_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,121,The Hotelier,"Home, Like Noplace Is There (2014)",Tiny Engines,"Tiny Engines Even for an emo record, Home, Like Noplace Is There is unflinching in its depiction of constant crisis. From beginning to end, it details one calamity after another—some merely deflating, others catastrophic, including incidents of addiction, abuse, and suicide. It’s a lot, and sometimes Home is almost too effective at conjuring the panic of barely holding it together when the people we care for need us the most. But the album balances its strife with jumpy pop-punk hooks, and never grows numb to suffering or loses its drive to uplift. Instead, what emerges is a portrait of contagious empathy. –Evan Rytlewski",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/home-like-noplace-is-there/1114555149?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F60192958%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76b2a553e80c0008f43813/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Hotelier-Home-Like-NoPlace.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Hotelier-Home_Like_Noplace_Is_There_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,120,"Tyler, the Creator",Flower Boy (2017),Columbia,"Columbia Throughout Flower Boy, Tyler, the Creator appears to recount the tale of a bygone romance with a male lover, describing their magical connection on “Glitter” and mourning their end on the wistful “See You Again.” He also uses their story as a device to reveal more about himself than he ever has before. Over sweeping, orchestral funk arrangements, he earnestly addresses his anxieties about fame, his paranoia about being canceled were he to come out, and the terrifying reality of police brutality. He takes stock of his emotional development, too, as he raps on “Where This Flower Blooms” with pride: “I rock, I roll, I bloom, I grow.” It marks Tyler’s departure from the artist he was—a trouble-making scoundrel who used homophobic slurs and graphic imagery throughout his incendiary songs—to a more compassionate rapper, ready to embrace the softer parts of his personality. The album blossoms with hope, making it Tyler’s most expansive project yet. –Michelle Kim",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/tyler-the-creator/flower-boy | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/flower-boy/1254572564?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F76331728%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76b30053e80c0008f43815/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Tyler-the-Creator-Flower-Boy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tyler_the_Creator-Flower_Boy_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,119,Girlpool,Before the World Was Big (2015),Wichita,"Wichita Girlpool’s first full-length record is a study in tiny worlds and overflowing hearts. Avery Tucker and Harmony Tividad were still teenagers when they wrote these humble songs with bass and guitar, and there is something so profoundly young adult about Before the World Was Big. The album encapsulates what it’s like to walk through your hometown and realize you don’t live there anymore, or to suffer a serious heartbreak for the first time; on ""Chinatown,"" Tucker and Tividad pose question after question about their own existences and whether they are capable of being loved. The duo went on to make more ambitious records, but Before the World Was Big will always be their spare, indelible reminder to notice what it feels like to be alive while you still think you’re invincible. –Sophie Kemp",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/before-the-world-was-big/971178450?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F111478100%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76b3bb2073fe00084eb26e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Girlpool-Before-the-World-Was-Big.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Girlpool-Before_the_World_Was_Big_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,118,Leonard Cohen,You Want It Darker (2016),Columbia/Sony,"Columbia/Sony Leonard Cohen was too grand a figure to let death sneak up on him. Instead, he graciously accepted its approach and courted the void with one final masterpiece. You Want It Darker arrived just weeks before Cohen died at 82, still a goliath of his form. It is a profound work that addresses a man’s end, and what he must let go of once he gets there. Cohen’s legendary baritone is leagues deeper than before, perhaps sunk by the weight of his subject matter. On the title track, he sounds as though he’s been living off a steady diet of cigars and scotch; his grumbles are foreboding, even sinister, against the synagogue choir that echoes him. Cohen’s repetition of the word “hineni,” Hebrew for “here I am,” is one of the record’s most chilling moments—his humble surrender to a greater power. You Want It Darker is full of these concessions: he sings of relinquishing life, love, and libido throughout its sparse yet rich compositions. His ability to examine mortality with such restraint is a testament to his elevated craft—when he sings of letting go and traveling light, it’s with relief. –Madison Bloom",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/leonard-cohen/you-want-it-darker | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/you-want-it-darker/1154144036?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F66024823%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76b4122073fe00084eb270/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Leonard-Cohen-You-Want-It-Darker.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Leonard_Cohen-You_Want_It_Darker_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,117,Death Grips,The Money Store (2012),Epic,"Epic That ringing sensation in your head from the crossed streams of cable news and political discourse? That’s The Money Store. Every time you’re digitally assaulted by millions of loud voices creating nothing but noise? Pure, unadulterated The Money Store. Recorded (improbably) at the Chateau Marmont, and released (even more improbably) by the same label that puts out Mariah Carey and Meghan Trainor, Death Grips’ proper debut album captured the barking, unstoppable information overload of the 2010s in a burst of experimental rap and rock. It's a pure thrill to hear: throat-searing vocalist MC Ride, keyboardist Andy Morin, and drummer/producer Zach Hill assault the senses with blasted beats, brutally nonsensical sloganeering, and sour melodies that sound like squeezing a lemon onto a skinned knee. –Larry Fitzmaurice",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/death-grips/the-money-store | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/the-money-store/515449028?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Fartist%252F4557268%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76b5289ce93e0008382261/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Death-Grips-Money-Store.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Death_Grips-The_Money_Store_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,116,Janelle Monáe,The ArchAndroid (2010),Bad Boy/Wondaland,"Bad Boy/Wondaland The ArchAndroid, the debut studio album by Atlanta Renaissance woman Janelle Monáe, foretold her cultural impact on the decade. Its storyline about a messianic android is tied together by apocalyptic rock, jiggling funk, and psychedelic soul, all delivered with cinematic flair. Monáe’s star would continue to rise from here, from her guest vocal on fun.’s ubiquitous “We Are Young,” to her acting roles in Moonlight and Hidden Figures, to an Album of the Year Grammy nomination for 2018’s Dirty Computer. The ArchAndroid is the genesis of it all. –Ben Cardew",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/the-archandroid-deluxe/370300698?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F4107987%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76b57f9ce93e0008382263/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Janelle-Mona%25CC%2581e-ArchAndroid.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Janelle_Mone-The_ArchAndroid_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,115,U.S. Girls,In a Poem Unlimited (2018),4AD,"4AD As U.S. Girls mastermind Meghan Remy has evolved from one-person noisemaker to charismatic leader of a cracking rock band, her aesthetic priorities—simple melodies, rich textures, subversive lyrics—have remained steadfast. They’re all perfectly present on In a Poem Unlimited, an unabashed pop album that swings on the surface but gets thorny underneath. Complex verses about sexual dynamics and interpersonal conflict cut through music that reveres nostalgic styles like disco and glam without aping them. Along the way, Remy captures the tension of the times with a rapturous swagger, building a catchy, cathartic response to the world. –Marc Masters",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/u-s-girls/in-a-poem-unlimited | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/in-a-poem-unlimited/1311639242?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F84151753%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76b63e6eee70000829f38e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/US-Girls-In-a-Poem-Unlimited.jpg,/dataset/artwork/US_Girls-In_a_Poem_Unlimited_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,114,Sampha,Process (2017),Young Turks,"Young Turks When we need to give definition to tough feelings that have no clear shape and no end in sight, no word satisfies like “process.” Grief, sobriety, adulthood, etc. don’t feel so daunting and boundless when they’re “processes”; they take on a structure that they lack as experiences. As Sampha adopts the term to capture the tumult of his mother dying from cancer in 2015, he embraces both its clarity and its dizziness. His delicate, tender voice never disguises the despair at the heart of these songs, yet there’s a striking sense of wonder to his writing, a wide-eyed willingness to find a way to carry on despite the pain. As hooded figures give chase on “Blood on Me,” a car takes flight on “Under,” and a lone gunman cries for his mother on “Kora Sings,” death takes on a dreamlike quality. The production froths with energy and verve despite the glum backdrop, constantly swirling around Sampha’s fragile falsetto or geysering into open air. Sampha grieves by expressing his sorrow as well as molding it into new forms. “It’s never gonna feel real,’” he once said of his mother’s death, skeptical of the allure of closure. Process takes that dread as a challenge. –Stephen Kearse",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/sampha/process | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/process/1138217713?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F69761927%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76b6799ce93e0008382265/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sampha-Process.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sampha-Process_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,113,Japandroids,Celebration Rock (2012),Polyvinyl,"Polyvinyl Of course, an album called Celebration Rock begins with the sound of fireworks—a spectacle that is at once exhilarating and ephemeral, the ecstatic climax to an event that also signals it’s time for everyone to go home. Japandroids spend the next 35 minutes doing whatever they can to delay the moment when the highest of highs must give way to the cruelest of comedowns. The Vancouver duo’s second album condenses all the promise, excess, and regret of an epic all-nighter into an eight-song dusk-to-dawn cycle, like a Dazed and Confused that swaps out bored teens in the ’70s for directionless twenty-somethings in the 21st century. Nostalgia hits like a panic attack, the line between motivational anthem and break-up song gets blurry, and even the most starry-eyed declarations of devotion come embedded with escape clauses for when the thrill is gone. Back in 2009, Japandroids introduced themselves to the world by declaring “Young Hearts Spark Fire.” On Celebration Rock, their relentless effort to keep the flame alive only made them more conscious of the shortening wick. So, of course, an album so fervent yet fleeting also ends with the sound of fireworks. –Stuart Berman",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/celebration-rock/527058833?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F22622410%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76b83053e80c0008f43817/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Japandroids-Celebration-Rock.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Japandroids-Celebration_Rock_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,112,Daft Punk,Random Access Memories (2013),Columbia,"Columbia Thomas Bangalter and Guy de-Homem Christo spent more than a million dollars to make their triumphant comeback record, Random Access Memories. It showed. In rejection of the frictionless EDM sounds then at their commercial peak, Daft Punk went straight to the source in their quest to revive some of their favorite analog styles. They booked time in a handful of the world’s most renowned studios to record the disco pioneer Nile Rodgers, several hall-of-fame session musicians, and vocalists including Pharrell and Panda Bear, then painstakingly pieced together their work into songs that span poppy funk, prog, new wave, soft-rock balladry, and even spoken word (courtesy of electro godhead Giorgio Moroder). As a whole, the album plays like an eclectic radio transmission beamed in from an imagined past. The highlight remains “Touch,” a psychedelic showstopper sung by ’70s songwriter Paul Williams, best known for his work with Barbara Streisand and the Carpenters. At one point in the intricately arranged song, a space-age choir gives way to Williams’ voice—delicate yet firm—backed by nothing but a grand piano. “Sweet touch, you’ve almost convinced me I’m real,” he muses, a mouthpiece for the mysterious duo who remind us just how tangible music can be. –Noah Yoo",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/daft-punk/random-access-memories | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/random-access-memories/617154241?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F20115556%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d76b8810db1d10008f1fb9b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Daft-Punk-Random-Access-Memories.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Daft_Punk-Random_Access_Memories_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,111,EMA,Past Life Martyred Saints (2011),Soutterain Transmissions,"Soutterain Transmissions Confessional songwriting in the 2010s had a tendency toward extremes—you had your empowerment narratives, where struggles were introduced and then brushed aside to allow time to wallow in the fabulous now, and you had your nihilistic tales of pill-popping self-hatred. Past Life Martyred Saints, the debut album by Erika Anderson’s project EMA, lives in the complicated middle, a place where the pain is very real but so is the occasional flicker of hope. Over blues-scuffed alt-rock, Anderson’s characters pull up their sleeves to reveal open wounds and fading scars and speak of an emptiness that makes them want to vomit, but deep down they also believe that someone out there might love them. Later in the decade, Anderson would turn her eye to the political and cultural forces that drive people toward darkness, but Past Life is far too claustrophobic for that kind of perspective. When something heavy is on top of you and pressing down, the only thing you can think about is how to get out from under it. –Mark Richardson",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/past-life-martyred-saints/433404940?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F6663917%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d77ae489ce93e0008382347/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/EMA-Past-Life-Martyred-Saints.jpg,/dataset/artwork/EMA-Past_Life_Martyred_Saints_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,110,Waka Flocka Flame,Flockaveli (2010),Warner Bros.,"Warner Bros. In its gunshot ad-libs and aggressively escalating synths, Waka Flocka Flame’s debut still feels explosive. But with the benefit of hindsight, it’s easier to embrace how an album that once led to think-piecing and hand-wringing about authenticity and struggle is just pure fun, too. As much as you can draw a line from Waka and producer Lex Luger's steamrolling sound to Chief Keef and Young Chop’s gruesome Back From the Dead mixtape, you can also connect Flockaveli to the live-show antics of Travis Scott, rallying the teens to mosh. Though Waka eventually took the EDM route, playing shows at frats and shotgunning beers with undergrads, his debut struck the right balance between harsh realism and recklessness. –Ross Scarano",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkkC9cK8Hz0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d77b6dd0db1d10008f1fc73/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Waka-Flocka-Flame-Flockaveli.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Waka_Flocka_Flame-Flockaveli_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,109,Julia Holter,Aviary (2018),Domino,"Domino Ninety minutes long, with its billowing proportions blown out in strings, horns, choirs, harp, percussion, synthesizers, reeds, bagpipes, and more, Julia Holter’s Aviary revels in ecstatic excess. Meandering, shape-shifting, and often dissonant, its melodies diffuse into clouds of pure atmosphere, offering the opposite of the glib simplicity that so much pop aspires to in the streaming era. Playlist fodder, this is not. Aviary’s references are among the most erudite and obscure of any of Holter’s albums, encompassing Dante, Pushkin, Occitan folk songs, and an academic tome about mnemonics and the Middle Ages; Vangelis’ Blade Runner score is in there somewhere, too. Nevertheless, Holter’s search for meaning in “destitute times” translates to an unmistakably contemporary record, her stream-of-consciousness lyrics gesturing bleakly at the nightly news (“Frequent missile talk/Slurping on the words I heard from the wretched zone/Fortune throwing candy slow in a death crawl”). And while its surfeit of feeling can mimic the shell-shocked sense of information overload that accompanies a long day scrolling social media, its moments of catharsis cut deliciously deep. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/julia-holter/aviary | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/aviary/1424641183?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F97398667%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d77b83a9ce93e000838237d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Julia-Holter-Aviary.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Julia_Holter-Aviary_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,108,Kaytranada,99.9% (2016),XL,"XL The debut album from Montreal producer Kaytranada is a shining example of dance music as more than the sum of its parts. Blending soul, hip-hop, house, jazz, and disco, and featuring vocal turns from the likes of Vic Mensa, Syd, Craig David, Anderson .Paak, and more, the album is also a reaction against the relative whiteness of EDM circa 2016. For all the acrobatic weaving of glitchy beats with slinky, complex instrumentation, it never feels anything but warm; the athleticism isn’t necessarily beside the point, but it’s not meant to make a spectacle of itself, either. Moreover, the album is a benchmark for how pop music has commonly come to be thought of in this decade: If you blend enough genres together, they cancel each other out, and what’s left is just its own thing that doesn’t have any particular use for a tidy classification. –Steve Kandell",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/kaytranada/99-9 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/99-9/1092026376?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F59881207%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d77b89bfd34990009cf8be3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kaytranada-99.9.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kaytranada-999_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,107,Dirty Projectors,Swing Lo Magellan (2012),Domino,"Domino Dirty Projectors used to be an inscrutable band. You’d read about how frontman David Longstreth conducted 18-hour practices in an airless Brooklyn studio, or reworked the chords of a Black Flag song to synchronize with the Fibonacci sequence or something, and think: This is music for people who make you feel like a moron for humming along to the radio. But on Swing Lo Magellan, their formal experimentation slowly gave way to an emotional generosity no amount of musical theory could obfuscate. The album shines with the warmth and familiarity of a group of loved ones trading stories around a campfire. It’s unguarded, with “Impregnable Question” offering itself as a premier wedding song for former hipsters experimenting with sincerity. It’s funny, like when singers Amber Coffman and Haley Dekle clown Longstreth’s knotty lyrics on “Unto Caesar” (“Uh, that doesn't make any sense…”). Swing Lo Magellan ended up being the last album with this lineup of Dirty Projectors, making it a bittersweet listen. But we know it was real while it lasted. –Jeremy Gordon",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/swing-lo-magellan/529617790?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F37001823%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d77b9160db1d10008f1fc75/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/DIrty-Projectors-Swing-Lo-Magellan.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dirty_Projectors-Swing_Lo_Magellan_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,106,Moses Sumney,Aromanticism (2017),Jagjaguwar,"Jagjaguwar Only once a decade, maybe, do you get a voice like Moses Sumney’s. It is cotton-soft and canyon-wide, as crisp and ornate as frost forming on the window. A similar coldness—the absence of love—informs his spare, beautiful debut album, Aromanticism. It is not a lament for lost love but a guess that love may never arrive. His brand of blues is heavy with emotion, even as he wonders if he might not want to feel any of it. Maybe he’ll call you back; instead of sex, how about just a little making out in the car? On most songs, his falsetto hangs over spare electric guitar—except for the knockout “Lonely World,” around which the entire album spins. And though solitude haunts these songs, it also seems like a kind of relief: “To behold and not be held,” he sings, those words a blessing and a curse. –Jeremy D. Larson","Platform: Vinyl Me, Please - Link: https://vinyl-me-please.evyy.net/AXEVj | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/aromanticism/1248865596?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F77731667%5D%5D",https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d77b9946eee70000829f3fe/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Moses-Sumney-Aromanticism.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Moses_Sumney-Aromanticism_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,105,Disclosure,Settle (2013),PMR/Cherrytree,"PMR/Cherrytree Howard and Guy Lawrence’s debut album as Disclosure overhauled house, two-step garage, and other strains of dance music for the day-glo EDM brigade. The brothers, who started DJing as teenagers in southeast England, may have relied on familiar formulas with Settle, but they still managed to fashion them into one of the most irresistibly inviting dance records of the decade. The duo supported their carefully curated patchwork of genres with a wide net of guest artists, many of whom turned into quick success stories themselves: the duo single-handedly launched Sam Smith’s career with the bombastic “Latch,” and the Nottingham pop group London Grammar began climbing after their slow-burning turn on “Help Me Lose My Mind.” Disclosure wouldn’t scale the same heights again, but Settle remains a vivid, ecstatic time capsule of early-2010s club music at its pinnacle. –Eric Torres",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/settle-deluxe-version/1440862011?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Fartist%252F3900791%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d5ab5fac7e6ee0009d81a2a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Disclosure-Settle.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Disclosure-Settle_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,104,Waxahatchee,Cerulean Salt (2013),Don Giovanni,"Don Giovanni Allison and Katie Crutchfield’s scrappy teenage band P.S. Eliot was beloved far beyond the Alabama DIY scene they rose in. After the twin sisters broke up the group in 2011, Allison stepped out from behind the drums to lead the noisy guitar-pop band Swearin’; Katie holed up at their parents’ home with an acoustic guitar and recorded her debut as Waxahatchee, the stark, searing American Weekend. Its follow-up, Cerulean Salt, focused all that accelerated musical experience and added new color. Katie still recorded at home, but now “home” was a Philadelphia house she shared with Allison and her Swearin’ bandmates, who pitched in across the album. Backed by thudding drums and blown-out guitars, Katie’s heartrendingly vivid sketches of alienation and self-doubt sound almost triumphant, especially on the surf-flecked “Coast to Coast,” where she insists, in her faint drawl, “I’ll try to embrace the lows.” After this, Waxahatchee jumped labels to indie titans Merge, releasing two more remarkable albums and continuing to inspire a generation of acolytes to sing their own messy truths. –Marc Hogan",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/waxahatchee/cerulean-salt-clear-vinyl | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/cerulean-salt/785719208?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F25060605%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d77bad853e80c0008f43887/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Waxahatchee-Cerulean-Salt.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Waxahatchee-Cerulean_Salt_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,103,Helado Negro,This Is How You Smile (2019),RVNG Intl.,"RVNG Intl. Roberto Carlos Lange had been building toward This Is How You Smile for over a decade. Whether tinkering with vocoders or recruiting new collaborators, Lange has experimented under the banner of Helado Negro in a manner that is patient and community-oriented; people have always mattered most to him. He reached a creative apex on This Is How You Smile by washing his sound in tape hiss and soft-lit synths, casting a twilight glow over bilingual meditations on community, displacement, and loving the skin in which you were born. Lange’s fount of hope within This Is How You Smile is a balm for everyone, but for the black and brown people whom he singles out in heartfelt lyrics (“History shows/That brown won’t go/Brown just glows”), it feels like benediction. –Eric Torres",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/helado-negro/this-is-how-you-smile | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/this-is-how-you-smile/1441162701?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F102601575%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d77bb550db1d10008f1fc77/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Helado-Negro-This-Is-How-You-Smile.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Helado_Negro-This_Is_How_You_Smile_2019.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,102,Jeremih,Late Nights: The Album (2015),Def Jam,"Def Jam Despite an attitude that ranged from nonchalance to outright self-sabotage, Jeremih quietly sustained mainstream success throughout the decade. Take Late Nights, an album that represents a triumph within the major-label system for its mere existence. Singles “Planez” and “Oui” became rap and R&B radio mainstays purely off the strength of the songwriting; Jeremih otherwise declined to engage in any sort of promotional tactics, from shooting music videos to performing on television. In touring the album, he immediately clashed with headliner PARTYNEXTDOOR—top-billed despite having far fewer hits—before being accused of sending out a body double at a show in Houston. While a dominant musical theme of the 2010s was the seamless fusion of rap and R&B, as employed by artists like Drake and Post Malone, Jeremih got to the same place from the other side; his R&B flows and flexes like rap music, but with a distinct melodic bounce that could only come from a singer. The music on Late Nights rates as some of the finest R&B of the decade, even if that genre tag fits loosely: Highlights “Pass Dat” and “Drank” are experimental celebrations of substances that travel along pathways carved by Lil Wayne and Young Thug, and ballads like “Actin’ Up” and “Remember Me” have a stoned spaciness that recalls the decade’s best hip-hop. The album’s most instructive song is “Paradise,” a gentle acoustic outro that begins with Jeremih still high from the night before, a girl next to him in bed, and ends with him alone in a jacuzzi toasting his great life. You get the sense he enjoys the solitude. –Jordan Sargent",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/late-nights/1440859822?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F54275547%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d77bbef0db1d10008f1fc79/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jeremih-Late-Nights.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jeremih-Late_Nights_The_Album_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,101,Chromatics,Kill for Love (2012),Italians Do It Better,"Italians Do It Better When shadowy studio rat Johnny Jewel cofounded the Italians Do It Better label in 2006, his music as part of reformed noise-rockers Chromatics cast him as an artist wonderfully out of time with his surroundings. But when Chromatics’ fourth album Kill for Love was released in 2012, the timing couldn’t have been more perfect: Jewel's nocturnal aesthetic had just served as the primary sonic influence for Nicolas Winding Refn's stylish hit film Drive. Kill for Love is a pitch-perfect and impeccably post-genre blend of Italo disco’s slow-motion thump, the self-mythologizing of classic rock, and smeared-lens ambient synth workouts. Music that sounds this eerily timeless also takes time to get right. –Larry Fitzmaurice",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/chromatics/kill-for-love-08a0318a-2cd7-4a25-b793-0e700df127b8 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/kill-for-love/630306478?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F80992776%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d77bc32fd34990009cf8be5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Chromatics-Kill-for-Love.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Chromatics-Kill_for_Love_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,100,Ariana Grande,Sweetener (2018),Republic,"Republic For a moment, it seemed like Ariana Grande’s career could be consumed by darkness. In 2017, 22 people were killed in a suicide bombing at her concert in Manchester. For most people after that, just getting out of bed would be an accomplishment. But Grande, with immeasurable strength, managed not only to throw off the covers but to return to center stage with Sweetener. The path from trauma to sunny pop affirmations isn’t a straight one, but she walked it with grace and poise. Pharrell, who co-wrote and produced much of the album, evokes his early-’00s heyday with bouncing, hectic beats, while Grande uses her big voice to both mourn and celebrate. The devastating “no tears left to cry” could have been too sentimental in someone else’s hands; in Grande’s, it’s an anthem. Everything on this album is. –Matthew Schnipper",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/ariana-grande/sweetener | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/sweetener/1399202539?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F93636397%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d77bee8fd34990009cf8bf1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ariana-Grande-Sweetener.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ariana_Grande-Sweetener_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,99,Bad Bunny,X 100PRE (2018),Rimas,"Rimas It’s rare for a musician to sell out arenas based on the strength of singles, but Bad Bunny was doing exactly that, around the world, even before his outsized, wacky persona was noticed by most English speakers in America. The Puerto Rican singer and rapper was exactly the right person—young, outré, extraordinarily talented, experimental—at the exact right time, spreading Soundcloud singles through word-of-mouth until he was eventually the purveyor of his own nuevo religión. X 100PRE—internet wordplay for “por siempre,” a self-estimation of his musical longevity—was a thrilling exploration of his range, hitting on the Latin trap wave he helped captain, but also diving into dembow, yearning ballads, clubby reggaetón, and delightfully feisty emo. Bad Bunny’s unwillingness to conform to the rigid masculine scripts that often inform música urbana—his nail polish and acrylic extensions just the tip of it—informs the freedom of his music, and X 100PRE was a brilliant musical rebuttal to that rigidity. Throughout, his deep, demonstrative care for his community is tempered by an equal capacity for personal bluster and self-regard. (Or, as he raps on the banger “Caro,” “Yo sé cuánto valgo”: “I know how much I'm worth.”) Though lite reggaetón and its offshoots continue to break through to English-speaking audiences and climb charts in the States, Bad Bunny’s debut is most important as a rejoinder to his masses of young Spanish-speaking fans: This is their world now, and his, and they’ve earned it. –Julianne Escobedo Shepherd",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/bad-bunny/x-100pre | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/x-100pre/1447554595?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F101423934%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d77fb576eee70000829f4aa/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bad-Bunny-X-100PRE.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bad_Bunny-X_100PRE_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,98,Todd Terje,It’s Album Time (2014),Olsen,"Olsen The title of Norwegian nü-disco master Todd Terje’s only full-length record to date is a joking acknowledgement that all hyped DJ/producers inevitably make the leap from 12-inches and edits to “serious” album statements. Terje approaches this common rite of passage as a truly special once-in-a-lifetime event—one that demands dressing up in your finest evening attire and cracking open that bottle of bubbly in the back of your fridge. You don’t so much listen to It’s Album Time as step into its cosmic cocktail-lounge fantasia. Like a proper host, Terje sets the perfect pace for the evening’s indulgences, laying out the tantalizing hors d’oeuvres (the frothy space-funk trifles that comprise the record’s opening suite) before serving the main course (the hedonistic electro-house pleasures of “Strandbar” and “Delorean Dynamite”). In his effort to reshape the DJ/artist album template in his own eccentric image, Terje can’t help but indulge in one cliche of the form: the rock-star cameo. But in this case, it’s hardly a calculated crossover attempt: by enlisting Bryan Ferry for a moody, minimalist reading of Robert Palmer’s 1980 new wave nugget “Johnny and Mary,” Terje provides both a well-timed respite from the album’s relentless revelry and a sympathetic portrait of the lost souls most in need of it. –Stuart Berman",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/todd-terje/it-s-album-time | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/its-album-time/806267243?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F25990423%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d77fc496eee70000829f4ac/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Todd-Terje-Its-Album-Time.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Todd_Terje-Its_Album_Time_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,97,The War on Drugs,Lost in the Dream (2014),Secretly Canadian,"Secretly Canadian On Lost in the Dream, the War on Drugs’ third album and first masterpiece, highlights like “An Ocean Between the Waves” and “Red Eyes” pivot on simple pleasures: a slow build, a well-timed “woo!” But bandleader Adam Granduciel’s production is meticulously layered, occasionally fading into pure ambience and letting his dark textures tell the bigger story. Legend has it, Granduciel was tortured by its creation, endlessly scrapping and rebuilding each track by himself to the point of madness and near-physical collapse. “I didn’t feel like I was contributing to the canon in the way that I wanted to,” he said at the time. It’s a high standard, but it suits him: This is music that lingers forever in the hazy intersection between real life and our wildest dreams. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/the-war-on-drugs/lost-in-the-dream | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/lost-in-the-dream/765568650?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F26632816%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d77fcc12073fe00084eb386/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/War-on-Drugs-Lost-in-the-Dream.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_War_on_Drugs-Lost_in_the_Dream_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,96,Low,Double Negative (2018),Sub Pop,"Sub Pop During this time of unrelenting political insanity, Low could’ve easily played it safe and stayed out of the fray. But 25 years into a career full of risk-taking, the Minnesota trio felt compelled to confront the confusion—or, at least, turn confusion into music. On Double Negative, the patient slowcore sound that Low coined long ago disintegrates into broken melodies, distorted ambience, and distant echoes. On “Always Up” and “Always Trying to Work It Out,” the group reflects the sleep-deprived fatigue that anyone with a smartphone experiences on a day-to-day basis. But Double Negative isn’t just a standard Low album broken into bits. It’s a self-contained work with baked-in influences—dub, techno, drone, noise—that guide its core while producing something paradoxical: a coherent expression of disarray. –Marc Masters",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/low/double-negative | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/double-negative/1391898131?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F94340774%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d77fe6d53e80c0008f4390a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Low-Double-Negative.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Low-Double_Negative_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,95,Jai Paul,Leak 04-13 (Bait Ones) (2019),XL,"XL In 2013, when a collection of demos and rough takes credited to Jai Paul went up for sale on Bandcamp without his involvement or approval, it pushed the already reclusive pop-soul artist even more into the fringes. For almost seven years, he was mostly silent, aside from contributing one guest feature and working behind-the-scenes with his artistic think tank the Paul Institute. But then he re-materialized in 2019 with new music, a formal release of the leaked material, and a note to fans describing the “complete shock” and subsequent emotional fallout of the experience. Spanning a nine-year creative period, Leak 04-13 (Bait Ones) remains an appealingly unpolished, timeless capsule of shaggy beat experiments, space-age funk workouts, and the limber, Bollywood-sampling “Str8 Outta Mumbai,” a gleaming pop highlight that tamped out the one-hit-wonder debate that had hovered around Paul after his breakthrough hit “BTSTU.” What already felt beamed in from a thrilling, genre-agnostic future at the onset of the 2010s was given a deserved revisit and reality check by the end of the decade. –Eric Torres",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/leak-04-13-bait-ones/1465710066?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F110423770%5D%5D | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bPrYzINTG0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d77ff426eee70000829f4b0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jai-Paul-Leak-04-13.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jai_Paul-Leak_04-13_Bait_Ones_2019.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,94,Vampire Weekend,Contra (2010),XL,"XL Vampire Weekend’s 2008 debut offended the punk-minded with its Wes Anderson-like vignettes of upper class life. Upping the ante, Contra took its title from Nicaragua’s CIA-backed right-wing paramilitaries—a witty inversion of The Clash’s Sandinista!, named in tribute to that country’s socialist government. Contra amplifies and exacerbates all the aspects of Vampire Weekend that trad indie rock fans associated with la contrarrevolución: the dainty details, the blithe bounciness, the preppy smartness, the clever-clever references. Polishing the debut’s demo-like sound, Contra set its sights on the charts. Drum machines merge with hand-played rhythms, digital reverb lends a slightly canned quality to proceedings, and, on the mad sprint of “California English,” Ezra Koenig’s already buttery voice is buffed to a slick Auto-Tune sheen. What Contra does share with Sandinista! is the later Clash’s outward-facing perspective and yen for border-crossing hybridity. The instrumental arsenal includes rebolo, zabumba, and shereke, and no, I don’t know what those are either. But these exotic borrowings read less like rhythms-of-resistance solidarity and more like liberal-elite tourism. What does it all add up to? Whose side are Vampire Weekend on anyway? It’s hard to care when the sound is this captivating and the words dance with the melodies so attractively. –Simon Reynolds",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/vampire-weekend/contra | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/contra-bonus-track-version/340465551?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F4393151%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d780009fd34990009cf8bfd/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Vampire-Weekend-Contra.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Vampire_Weekend-Contra_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,93,Tirzah,Devotion (2018),Domino,"Domino It’s not just her tone (a warm and gentle rasp) or her lyrics (a scrapbook collection of reflections on the nature of relationships) that make Tirzah’s debut album such a standout. It’s also the casual intimacy of her delivery: the way the London artist extends each word of the chorus of “Fine Again” into a line long enough to wrap around a shoulder. The non-verbal vocal wriggles on “Affection.” The chin jut and soft warning of “Go Now.” Many of the songs use improvised first-take vocals, which is a testament to Tirzah’s friendship with the composer and musician Mica Levi, who crafted the album’s spacious beats and introspective piano refrains. In taking care to value in-the-moment feeling over post-production polish, Devotion achieves the feat of being a truly idiosyncratic pop record that it’s easy to feel at home with, too. –Ruth Saxelby",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/tirzah/devotion | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/devotion/1372735578?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F92654764%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d78009f0db1d10008f1fcb5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Tirzah-Devotion.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tirzah-Devotion_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,92,JAY-Z / Kanye West,Watch the Throne (2011),Roc Nation/Def Jam,"Roc Nation/Def Jam Upon its release in 2011, JAY-Z and Kanye West's self-celebrating team-up Watch the Throne drew blowback for its Maybach-destroying extravagance in the wake of the global financial crisis. Neither rapper has ever been one to apologize for pushing the boundaries of good taste, though, and the gilded album had the substance to back up its vanity. Both stars saved some of their deepest, most sorrowful ruminations on race for these songs about making it to the unimaginable upper echelons of society and still feeling like an outcast. In between infamous lines about planking on stacks of cash and marrying the Olsen twins are thoughts on gang violence in West’s native Chicago and hymns that invoke Martin and Malcolm. Is this album wholly relatable? Not really. But it’s enlightening nonetheless, and often unexpectedly moving. –Evan Rytlewski",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/watch-the-throne-deluxe/1440845249?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F7597277%5D%5D | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoEKWtgJQAU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7802ccfd34990009cf8c01/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kanye-West-Jay-Z-Watch-the-Throne.jpg,/dataset/artwork/JAY-Z__Kanye_West-Watch_the_Throne_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,91,Bon Iver,"22, A Million (2016)",Jagjaguwar,"Jagjaguwar In retrospect, maybe the stylistic shifts on 22, A Million shouldn’t have been so unexpected. After all, Justin Vernon’s time in the studio with Kanye West gave him plenty of exposure to Auto-Tune and other digital technologies, and that hypermodern signature positions 22, A Million about a billion miles from the modest, earthy tones of the band’s first two albums. But what ultimately makes the Wisconsin group’s 2016 album so striking has less to do with production choices than sheer chutzpah. There’s an unabashedly gonzo energy to the album, from its yin and yang symbols and yodeling-adjacent vocal leaps to its typographically deranged track titles that look cribbed from a witch house mixtape. It’s not always easy to tell how much is an elaborate gag: Is Vernon, once the face of anti-branding, really singing the praises of the upscale hipster hangout the Ace Hotel? But by the time you hit the tangled saxophones and processed choirs of “___45___,” there’s no doubting the album’s fundamental sincerity. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/bon-iver/22-a-million | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/22-a-million/1141107722?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F64975223%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7801fcfd34990009cf8bff/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bon-Iver-22-A-Million.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bon_Iver-22_A_Million_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,90,Joyce Manor,Never Hungover Again (2014),Epitaph,"Epitaph With their third album, the California pop-punk band Joyce Manor distilled their frayed fuzz into an elemental blast of power and melody. This is a collection of chiseled, two-minute songs that makes you want to howl to the rafters, and the polished production serves their poignant insights on the indignities of aging. As frontman Barry Johnson sings, “Your body’s saying, Isn’t that enough?/Your brain is going, I don’t give a fuck.” There are moments here that could scan as vitriolic, but they feel empathetic coming from Johnson, a narrator who recognizes self-destructive behavior because he’s no stranger to it. It’s a last gasp at freedom and feeling good without consequence, knowing full well that the crash is waiting for you. –Matthew Strauss",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/never-hungover-again/879169637?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Fartist%252F3852332%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7802706eee70000829f4b2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Joyce-Manor-Never-Hungover-Again.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Joyce_Manor-Never_Hungover_Again_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,89,Caribou,Our Love (2014),Merge,"Merge Dan Snaith didn’t appear to overthink the success of his 2010 album Swim. He didn’t fret, at least not publicly, about trying to imitate its success, nor did he dive back into the comfort of the esoteric. Instead, he figured the reception of that album meant that people liked what he was doing. For its follow-up, the former mathematician moved even further away from the cerebral, opening his heart and giving us a batch of body-moving love songs. The lyrics don’t look like much, but they operate as mantras. “Can’t Do Without You” is a tenderizing phrase; by the time the song’s done, Snaith’s pledge that “you’re the only one thing I think about” comes across as heartbreakingly sincere. The effect is similar on “Our Love” as bass fills in the silence, suggesting the beating of multiple hearts. It isn’t always so easy, as the minor-key melody and lyrics of “Back Home” suggest. But if it were easy, it’d remain unspoken, and Our Love is an album about how worthwhile it is to say what you feel. –Jonah Bromwich",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/caribou/our-love-11d601c9-b062-4b7a-90a7-629b139ae150 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/our-love/883739153?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F37270823%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d780af16eee70000829f4b8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Caribou-Our-Love.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Caribou-Our_Love_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,88,Jenny Hval,"Apocalypse, girl (2015)",Sacred Bones,"Sacred Bones Right around the time “self-care” entered the American lexicon, Jenny Hval wondered aloud on her fifth record, “What is it to take care of yourself?” As calm electronic beats turned ominous, the Norwegian musician grappled with a wide range of options, ranging from beauty rituals set by the capitalist patriarchy to her own desire to touch herself with dirty hands. It is this juxtaposition between the edifying and the primal that makes Hval’s albums so thrilling, and Apocalypse, girl is her crowning achievement to date—a generous record that explores big feminist questions and childhood fever dreams alike while flitting among eerie ambient sounds, lounge-lizard folk, and one-woman Gregorian chants. With its bongo-laden smirking about women’s strides meaning Hval can “consume what I want now,” “That Battle Is Over” is an immediate standout, but the looser tracks detailing Christian dedication and early psychosexual thoughts show off Hval’s entrancing voice and reveal their brilliance more gradually. Pegging Apocalypse, girl is as difficult as answering Hval’s initial question, and just as ever-changing. –Jillian Mapes",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/jenny-hval/apocalypse-girl | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/apocalypse-girl/968903924?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F45213973%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d780b6553e80c0008f4390e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jenny-Hval-Apocalypse-girl.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jenny_Hval-Apocalypse_girl_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,87,Rae Sremmurd,SremmLife (2015),Interscope,"Interscope Rae Sremmurd’s debut arrived when rap was still mired in the moody angst of Drake and Future, making their irrepressible giddiness all the more striking. Brothers Swae Lee and Slim Jxmmi regarded rap stardom not as a dreary obligation but as a comically awesome fantasy come true, head-banging and high-fiving their way through turn-up music equally suited for house parties, strip clubs, and skate parks. Producer Mike WiLL Made-It created an intergalactic funhouse for his protégés (the name “Rae Sremmurd” is his “Ear Drummers” tag backward), but it was the duo’s free-spending, safe-sex-having zeal that sold it. –Evan Rytlewski",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/sremmlife/1440815323?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F38929524%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d780c2f8699b30008f1acf5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Rae-Sremmurd-SremmLife.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rae_Sremmurd-SremmLife_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,86,Haim,Days Are Gone (2013),Columbia,"Columbia You can pretty reliably guess someone's generation by which artist Haim reminds them of. Fleetwood Mac? Wilson Phillips? Paula Cole? That's what happens when you study decades of AAA radio like it’s the sacred canon, then recapitulate it all in one album. Days Are Gone excels in this soft-rock mode: It’s full of singalong commitment phobia, gently lit love affairs, and heartbreak that's well-behaved but still moving. Crucially, there’s also levity—like “My Song 5,” which draws its power from muffled rage and the default title of a Garage Band demo. The lyrics are to-the-point and the arrangements are given a nostalgic haze, both of which highlight the Haim sisters’ unshowy chops. They’d soon also moonlight extensively as session musicians for artists like Vampire Weekend, remaking a large swath of the decade’s rock in their image. –Katherine St. Asaph",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/haim/days-are-gone | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/days-are-gone/681237313?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F34840049%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d780db9fd34990009cf8c05/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Haim-Days-Are-Gone.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Haim-Days_Are_Gone_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,85,Jessica Pratt,On Your Own Love Again (2015),Drag City,"Drag City On Your Own Love Again feels beamed in from some implacable, dreamy elsewhere. With little more than guitars and her voice, Jessica Pratt offers floating melodies that sometimes sound spare and wintry, sometimes warm and sleepless, and always with an ache entirely their own. Her songs provide a universal shelter for sadness, as much in the intimate late-night tradition of Leonard Cohen as in the pastoral spaces of her Drag City labelmate Joanna Newsom. Whether it’s the sudden tape-warp of “Jacquelyn in the Background,” the self-harmonies of “Back, Baby,” or Pratt’s sometimes-affected voice, On Your Own Love Again creates a space for itself that seems to change with the quality of the light. –Jesse Jarnow",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/jessica-pratt/on-your-own-love-again | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/on-your-own-love-again/936872257?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F86403862%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d78105c53e80c0008f43910/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jessica-Pratt-On-Your-Own.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jessica_Pratt-On_Your_Own_Love_Again_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,84,Chance the Rapper,Acid Rap (2013),Self-released,"Self-released The already-vanishing difference between a mixtape and an album—from a rap listener’s perspective, at least—evaporated completely in the 2010s, and no one took advantage more enthusiastically than Chance the Rapper. The Chicago MC was barely 20 years old when he started giving away what was technically his second mixtape, Acid Rap, for free online, but it instantly felt like a classic album. He had already shown promise on his first tape, 2012’s intricate 10 Day, but Acid Rap raised the stakes to giddy new heights. Chance’s cartoonish squawk veers unpredictably between cigarette-burnt sing-song and “tobacco-packin’ acrobat” rapping. He manages to project off-kilter exuberance even as he’s haunted by the same gun violence as his Chicago drill-rap contemporaries. And he’s assisted by an improbable yet satisfying guest list that includes hometown speed-rapper Twista, like-minded genre-bender Childish Gambino, and a rising Noname. With Acid Rap, he earned his stardom. –Marc Hogan",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/acid-rap/1470464025?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F112262593%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d78122553e80c0008f43912/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Chance-the-Rapper-Acid-Rap.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Chance_the_Rapper-Acid_Rap_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,83,Burial,Rival Dealer EP (2013),Hyperdub,"Hyperdub William Bevan (a.k.a. Burial) once described Rival Dealer as a collection of “anti-bullying tunes that could maybe help someone to believe in themselves.” Considering his music’s dank, glowering atmosphere, the idea might seem counterintuitive, but whatever you decide the music is about, its three tracks represent a real departure for the London producer. Rival Dealer serves as the climax to a three-EP streak of genius, beginning with Kindred and Truant/Rough Sleeper. The title track opens with a melody resembling a scream, cooling into gentler vocals and softer beats before opening up into a gorgeous major-key pool of light. “Hiders” steers into near-schmaltzy euphoria, while the closing track, “Come Down to Us,” samples an inspirational speech by Lana Wachowski about “other worlds previously unimaginable.” Burial’s music has been caricatured for his moodiness, but Rival Dealer proved that his music serves a higher purpose. –Jo Livingstone",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/rival-dealer-ep/893730102?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F31939786%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7812be8699b30008f1acf8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Burial-Rival-Dealer.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Burial-Rival_Dealer_EP_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,82,Girls,"Father, Son, Holy Ghost (2011)",True Panther,"True Panther After releasing their promising indie-pop debut two years earlier, Girls thoroughly redefined themselves on their second and final album, Father, Son, Holy Ghost. Now, Christopher Owens and JR White’s homespun project was a vehicle for opulent, laser show-worthy ’70s classic rock. But their record also further illuminated the wounded emotional core embedded within frontman Owens’ lovable fuck-up persona. The album’s devastating centerpiece, “Forgiveness,” takes the form of an eight-minute confession-booth visitation in which he begs for mutual absolution from all he’s wronged and all who’ve wronged him—and when this hushed acoustic hymn erupts into a squealing guitar solo, it’s less a gratuitous display of fretboard fireworks than a physical manifestation of the immense effort and pain it takes to overcome past traumas. Just a year after releasing this record, Girls were no more, and the news of their sudden demise came as a shock to many fans. But in hindsight, we shouldn’t have been so surprised: Father, Son, Holy Ghost is a pristine portrait of a band that did everything they wanted to do and said everything that needed to be said. –Stuart Berman",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/father-son-holy-ghost-bonus-track-version/453540055?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F58086307%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7814e42073fe00084eb3c0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Girls-Father-Son-Holy-Ghost.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Girls-Father_Son_Holy_Ghost_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,81,Solange,When I Get Home (2019),Columbia,"Columbia On the When I Get Home interlude “Can I Hold the Mic,” Solange makes a case for honoring all the different parts of yourself. “I can’t be a singular expression of myself, there’s too many parts, too many spaces…” she says, trailing off in thought, like this list could go on for eons. The idea of the infinite existing within the singular is a running theme throughout the album—especially when she sings about her hometown of Houston, a city that contains multitudes. Solange represents its expanse with her loosely arranged soul music that’s steeped in the drowsy feeling of the city’s chopped ’n’ screwed hip-hop, expanded with glittering new age synths. On “Almeda,” she uses the word “brown” like a mantra, her repetition ultimately rendering signifiers of black culture—molasses, waves, dark liquor, and more—as sacred. –Michelle Kim",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/solange/when-i-get-home | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/when-i-get-home/1454595364?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Fartist%252F5017%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d78154f0db1d10008f1fcf2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Solange-When-I-Get-Home.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Solange-When_I_Get_Home_2019.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,80,Aphex Twin,Syro (2014),Warp,"Warp Syro is the kind of album you return to in order to remind yourself why you fell in love with electronic music in the first place. To enjoy it is to luxuriate in perfectly executed fundamentals of composition: the resolution of a chord progression, the precise arrangement of percussion that transforms a straight beat into a syncopated one, the discernible shape of a melody that drifts and changes without losing its essential character. And while the music comes from many sources—techno, house, ambient, and various branches of electropop are always present, in ever-shifting proportions—you get the sense that this particular arrangement of sounds, with its rhythmic quirks and signature tuneful flourishes, could only come from one person. After the shock of hearing new music from Richard D. James subsided—released with little warning, Syro was the first new Aphex Twin album in 13 years—we had time to appreciate that this was one of his very best records, which is to say that it’s one of the best instrumental electronic records ever made. –Mark Richardson",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/aphex-twin/syro | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/syro/911319255?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F34298496%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d781628fd34990009cf8c07/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Aphex-Twin-Syro.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Aphex_Twin-Syro_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,79,Tame Impala,Currents (2015),Interscope,"Interscope With Currents, Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker abandoned the more resolutely lo-fi aesthetics of his first two albums, like a film director transitioning from Super 8 to IMAX. Opting to record and mix everything himself with fresh gear, he added a technicolor precision to the group’s sound while staying true to the catchy bassline melodies, echoing coos, and flanged guitars of Tame Impala’s past. Parker clearly believes that there are certain sounds that feel undeniably good, regardless of context, and he puts them to work on the slinky future-disco of “The Less I Know the Better” and the squelching synthesizer balladry of “New Person, Same Old Mistakes” (a noted Rihanna favorite). His perfectionism pays off as his drums jump through the speakers and his synths burn with clarity, offering a new gold standard for rock production. –Noah Yoo",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/tame-impala/currents-5ba07445-97e3-4a8e-b309-19aff8926b29 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/currents/1440838039?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F47696788%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d794c1c53e80c0008f439c4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Tame-Impala-Currents.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tame_Impala-Currents_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,78,Kurt Vile,Smoke Ring for My Halo (2011),Matador,"Matador On Smoke Ring for My Halo, Kurt Vile’s breakthrough album, the Philadelphia songwriter plays an acoustic guitar and sings about how he’ll probably never leave his couch again—“cause when I’m out, I’m only out of my mind”—and literally shrinking to hide from the world by hiding inside his baby’s hands. Where his past albums had been scuzzy, lo-fi efforts, Smoke Ring formed the groundwork of his next decade of output, spotlighting a poet who untangles circuitous trains of thought over hypnotic guitar patterns. Vile doesn’t wrestle with social anxiety or depression so much as he acknowledges the symptoms, second-guesses his own logic, loses his focus, and circles back around. Sure, he plugs in and brings some heft on songs like “Puppet to the Man,” but more often, he keeps things quiet. How’s he supposed to figure himself out with all that noise? –Evan Minsker",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/kurt-vile/smoke-ring-for-my-halo | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/smoke-ring-for-my-halo-bonus-track-version/418948456?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F5687550%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d794c9a0db1d10008f1ff15/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kurt-Vile-Smoke-Ring-for-My-Halo.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kurt_Vile-Smoke_Ring_for_My_Halo_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,77,Four Tet,There Is Love in You (2010),Domino,"Domino For the first time in his career, Kieran Hebden decided to test out new songs—the material that would become There Is Love in You—by blasting them in clubs. When “Love Cry” reached the partying masses, they screamed with approval, and each time he played it, he tightened it more and more based on the crowd’s reaction. Fresh from collaborations with the iconic percussionist Steve Reid and in an arguable creative peak in his career, Hebden harnessed the thrill of these surroundings to create a tribute to music’s transportive power, its ability to make you feel so chemically blissed-out that the stresses of life fall away. He even plants the seeds of his own autobiographical joy, amplifying the literal heartbeat of his godson and recording a friend’s kid playing a toy piano. It’s an album that focuses on the love within all of us, and to get us there, Hebden meditates on his own happy place. –Evan Minsker",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/there-is-love-in-you-expanded-edition/1286314406?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F79271195%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d794d11256a0a0009483315/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Four-Tet-There-Is-Love-in-You.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Four_Tet-There_Is_Love_in_You_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,76,Arcade Fire,The Suburbs (2010),Merge,"Merge The Suburbs is like an audio analogue to Richard Linklater’s 2014 film Boyhood: both messy but privileged coming-of-age stories set in Texas, ambitiously executed and critically adored. Yet after grappling with death and religion on their first two records, when Arcade Fire turned their collective eye toward leaving home on The Suburbs, the concept seemed almost small-scale by comparison. The music, of course, was anything but, with multiple two-part songs, recurring musical motifs, and new beginnings peppered throughout the album’s 16 tracks. Loosely inspired by the Houston-area childhood of band leader Win Butler and his brother Will, the album innately understood how urban sprawl could engender claustrophobia in the hearts of the young and strange, and that this experience may look different in the rearview mirror. It portrays the dread of suburbia as manifesting in power-tripping cops and “dead shopping malls rising like mountains beyond mountains,” but it also fondly remembers the way the world could feel patient and unpretentious. Best of all, the sound was vast and electric and opulent in ways that the backdrop could never be, capturing the narrators’ dreams and frustrations and pointing Arcade Fire toward their dance-rock future with the stunning “Sprawl II.” –Jillian Mapes",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/arcade-fire/the-suburbs-36ea27df-e99e-42fa-9893-837d2db9f64d | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/the-suburbs/1252757950?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F75572501%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d794d686eee70000829f66b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Arcade-Fire-The-Suburbs.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Arcade_Fire-The_Suburbs_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,75,The Weeknd,House of Balloons (2011),Self-released,"Self-released With his debut mixtape, Abel Tesfaye introduced the world to his hedonistic universe. Back then, we knew nothing about him, save for a Drake cosign, and with so much mystery we had to focus on the tangible: the now-iconic sans-serif type and artsy, Tumblr-core nude on the cover artwork, and the music itself. PBR&B jokes aside, the Weeknd’s first mixtape was a harbinger of trends to come, full of seductive songwriting enmeshed with genre-agnostic production. Cocteau Twins, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Beach House samples? Check. Cocaine-fueled carnality? Plenty of that. Songs like “The Morning” and “Wicked Games” predate the Weeknd’s outright pop aspirations and highlight his raw talent for hooks, while the creeping bells and loping drums of “What You Need” designed the blueprint for an entire generation of twilight crooners. House of Balloons and his subsequent mixtapes may have landed Tesfaye his major label deal, but to this day, eerie album opener “High for This” might remain the Weeknd’s most effective mission statement. Gritty synths bloom as his beguiling voice glides through the air, inviting you to relax, breathe deep, and shed some clothes. –Noah Yoo",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/house-of-balloons/1440837364?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d794dc28699b30008f1ae3d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-Weeknd-House-of-Balloons.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Weeknd-House_of_Balloons_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,74,SOPHIE,OIL OF EVERY PEARL’s UN-INSIDES (2018),Transgressive/Future Classic,"Transgressive/Future Classic Much of the science fiction we read in middle school fears a future in which people lose touch with what makes us human: our emotions, our favorite books, our memories. But what if the future, full of computerized voices and digitized avatars, allows us freedom from restrictive contemporary notions of gender and sexuality? On her debut album, the Scottish producer SOPHIE’s plastic, glinting experimental pop dares to imagine a time when we’ll have agency over our bodies and identities. On “Faceshopping,” she finds realness in the seductions of Photoshop, and on “Immaterial,” vocalist Cecile Believe gleefully chants, “I can be anything I want.” While the album is lyrically abstract, it is also SOPHIE’s most vulnerable project; before she released the music video for “It’s Okay to Cry,” few listeners had ever seen the elusive producer’s face. SOPHIE build a whole new world, one where our most authentic selves are the ones we construct, reinvent, and debut to the world every day. –Vrinda Jagota",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/sophie/oil-of-every-pearl-s-un-insides | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/oil-of-every-pearls-un-insides/1396580720?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F90144193%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d794e2e256a0a0009483317/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/SOPHIE-Oil-of-Every-Pearl.jpg,/dataset/artwork/SOPHIE-OIL_OF_EVERY_PEARLs_UN-INSIDES_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,73,Cardi B,Invasion of Privacy (2018),Atlantic,"Atlantic From the moment Cardi B started rapping for money, she wanted to be the shrewdest in the game, even if she wasn’t the technical best. It was after the summer of “Bodak Yellow,” her playfully taunting mainstream introduction—and the first of four unprecedented No. 1 hits—that she became unstoppable, moving at roadrunner speeds. The audacity, humor, and business savvy that made her famous on both Instagram and reality TV carried over to her debut album, Invasion of Privacy. Her music was sensitive and hardcore, carefully crafted, and, most of all, likable. The bass on “I Like It"" seemed made to blow out speakers on any continent, and “Be Careful” was Cardi's rap version of a quiet storm anthem. Her once unrefined flow—a subject of ridicule—was more sculpted, even next to agile guests like Migos, Chance the Rapper, and SZA. It was a seamless debut, made better by the fact that it wasn’t supposed to be this good. –Clover Hope",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/cardi-b/invasion-of-privacy | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/invasion-of-privacy/1368156323?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F86900549%5D%5D | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoboMneWC7o,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d794ea24bc6510008699745/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Cardi-B-Invasion-of-Privacy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Cardi_B-Invasion_of_Privacy_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,72,Father John Misty,"I Love You, Honeybear (2015)",Sub Pop,"Sub Pop Before he became notorious for trolling journalists and engaging in performance art about What It All Means, Josh Tillman captured the feeling of love as a defiant, selfish, and contradictory state of emotions on I Love You, Honeybear. Across the album, he cooes sickly sweet comes-ons to his wife, Emma, knowing the private rituals of companionship seem delusional from the outside; he spits vitriol at a dull woman he meets at a party before deciding to go home with her anyway; he languishes in his personal crises like a pig rolling around in the mud. The music is sensual, the vibe languid. Through everything—the muck and desolation of existing on this stupid planet—Tillman tilts towards love, because real life gave him no other choice. –Jeremy Gordon",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/father-john-misty/i-love-you-honeybear | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/i-love-you-honeybear/931563362?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F40453264%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d794f374bc6510008699747/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Father-John-Misty-Honeybear.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Father_John_Misty-I_Love_You_Honeybear_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,71,Robyn,Honey (2018),Konichiwa/Interscope,"Konichiwa/Interscope Following up 2010’s beloved Body Talk was always going to be a daunting task. So for her first album in eight years, Robyn skipped floor-filling pop anthems in favor of the tender electro-pop therapy we didn’t know we needed, meeting real-life heartbreak and loss first with mourning, then with acceptance and celebration. Taking her time meant Robyn came to the table with deep reflection, scripting effortless-seeming phrases—“turned all my sorrow into glass,” “we’re making diamonds”—that froze transient emotion in amber. She’s both the subject and the sympathetic ear, playfully poking holes between her personal and artistic identities on “Send to Robin Immediately,” and issuing a collective invitation to party, party, par-ty on “Beach 2K20.” More than any one standout song, Honey is a mood and a balm, an equilibrium as light and steady as its beachy house beats. But perhaps the best moment is the transcendent closer “Ever Again,” a plea for peace—“How ’bout we stop arguing and do something else?”—sealed with the promise that no matter how long you wait, real honey never spoils. –Anna Gaca",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/robyn/honey | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/honey/1436781118?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F96970803%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7950016eee70000829f66d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Robyn-Honey.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Robyn-Honey_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,70,Perfume Genius,No Shape (2017),Matador,"Matador No Shape, the fourth album from Mike Hadreas’ avant-pop outfit Perfume Genius, is a rapturous ode to true love that spares no bell, whistle, or baroque string section. Following 2014’s grittier, more hemmed-in Too Bright, No Shape is split wide open and sparkling. Hadreas exalts love in its many forms: sensual, mundane, and defiant, allowing his skyward voice and lavish compositions to elevate the familiar into the realm of myth. During the chorus of “Just Like Love,” the titular three words sound sung by a field of wildflowers swaying in the wind. Hadreas knows that comparing things to love is a timeworn exercise in melodrama, and yet when you’re in its grasp, there is nothing too grand to describe it. Still, he is just as quick to be vulnerable: On “Die 4 You,” his voice retreats to the trembling timbre of Sade. On the closing ballad “Alan,” written for his boyfriend and longtime collaborator Alan Wyffels, Hadreas is equally delicate, though his proclamations are less lofty. “Did you notice,” he sings, in recognition of a small and simple kind of love, “we sleep through the night?” –Madison Bloom",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/perfume-genius/no-shape | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/no-shape/1210458504?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F73299504%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7950a24bc6510008699749/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Perfume-Genius-No-Shape.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Perfume_Genius-No_Shape_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,69,Drake,"If You’re Reading This, It’s Too Late (2015)",Cash Money,"Cash Money If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late captures rap’s biggest star in self-congratulation, celebrating his ascent to sovereignty and already on the defensive as a result. It’s Drake at his loosest musically and tensest spiritually. Rarely has he been pettier. IYRTITL was a “retail mixtape,” as Drake’s camp stressed, and that was a calculated distinction to relieve the pressure he felt to deliver a classic album after announcing Views From the 6; he release IYRTITL as a sort of preface to that record, and it freed him up considerably. Drake is showing off, enjoying a victory lap, burning bridges and taking risks, his flows unbound but the pressure of delivering a classic album. With ominous, mesmerizing beats from his in-house team at OVO (40, Boi-1da, PartyNextDoor) and a few talented Canadian mainstays (WondaGurl, Frank Dukes), these songs establish Drake as a relentless conqueror: “The game is all mine and I’m mighty possessive/Lil Wayne could not have found him a better successor,” he boasts in the tape’s closing moments. IYRTITL finds a master schemer taking stock of his positioning—as rap’s ambassador to Toronto, as influencer and tabloid fodder, as wary and dangerous mogul—and realizing the full extent of his power. He marvels at his own superiority throughout and presents himself as untouchable, because he pretty much was. –Sheldon Pearce",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/drake/if-you-re-reading-this-it-s-too-late | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/if-youre-reading-this-its-too-late/1440839718?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F41295825%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a566f256a0a000948334f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Drake-IYRTITL.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Drake-If_Youre_Reading_This_Its_Too_Late_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,68,Flying Lotus,Cosmogramma (2010),Warp,"Warp Steven Ellison got his start scoring for Adult Swim in the late ’00s, and with his breakout LP Cosmogramma, he channeled that anarchic energy into a new medium. Fusing jazz, video-game sounds, post-Dilla hip-hop, IDM drum breaks, laser shrieks, and much more, he forged a fluid and propulsive music that doesn’t have a name. He made Cosmogramma while his mother was dying, so he sampled the sound of her hospital-room machinery on “Galaxy in Janaki,” the album’s hypnotic final track. Elsewhere, he processes the weight of his musical heritage: the recurring joyful soul melodies recall “Love Hangover,” written by Ellison’s grandmother Marilyn McLeod, and mournful jazz-harp interludes reference Ellison’s great-aunt, Alice Coltrane. Live instrumentation and guest vocals from Ravi Coltrane and Thom Yorke send ambient melodies drifting over steady grooves and skittish beats. Ten years later, new artists are still treading in FlyLo’s cosmic footprints. –Jo Livingstone","Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/flying-lotus/cosmogramma | Platform: Vinyl Me, Please - Link: https://vinyl-me-please.evyy.net/1QeNd | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/cosmogramma/367788829?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F16025624%5D%5D",https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a57980db1d10008f1ffbb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Flying-Lotus-Cosmogramma.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Flying_Lotus-Cosmogramma_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,67,Courtney Barnett,"Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit (2015)",Mom and Pop,"Mom and Pop Aussie singer-songwriter Courtney Barnett established herself as a wordy, clever storyteller with her debut full-length, and she earned a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist in the process. Her songs unfurl at a stream-of-consciousness pace, narrating the mundanities of daily life over garage-rock guitar. She sings about about the benefits of owning a percolator, the burnout of office workers, and even, at one point, restlessly declares mid-song that she might be hungry. But the poetic attention Barnett pays to everyday experiences belie her greater anxieties beneath the free-wheeling music: a tour of a sad house on “Depreston” tells a story of death and regrowth; a walk on the beach in “Kim’s Caravan” leads to a meditation on destroyed coral reefs. With Sometimes I Sit and Think, Barnett became a poster woman for a young generation seized by self-doubt and introversion, and her music never failed to process those feelings with a dark sense of humor. –Hazel Cills",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/courtney-barnett/sometimes-i-sit-and-think-and-sometimes-i-just-sit | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/sometimes-i-sit-and-think-and-sometimes-i-just-sit/960342539?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F82575082%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a588e0db1d10008f1ffbd/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Courtney-Barnett-Sometimes-I-Sit-and-Think.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Courtney_Barnett-Sometimes_I_Sit_and_Think_and_Sometimes_I_Just_Sit_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,66,Fever Ray,Plunge (2017),Rabid/Mute,"Rabid/Mute Karin Dreijer's 2009 self-titled debut as Fever Ray was about motherhood, but motherhood portrayed via a near-unbroken stretch of anhedonic sludge: postpartum depression as an album. So it was a surprise to many when, upon revisiting their solo project nearly a decade later, Dreijer inverted it entirely to release a playful, gleeful album primarily about queer desire and kink. In this, it shares a lot with the Knife's opus Shaking the Habitual, but where that album was bundled with a manifesto, Plunge came with a personal ad seeking “hours and hours of sharing.” Every emotion is huge and earnest; the songs about lust have a near-apocalyptic urgency. The love songs have a frantic glee and the kink is as much about sentiment as sex. The political songs are personal (and delivered the iconic lyric “this country makes it hard to fuck!”). The most Fever Ray-esque track, “Mustn't Hurry,” is about wanting to leave that album’s gloom behind to get to the good part: “Saw the blood,” Dreijer sings, “but it's not scary.” –Katherine St. Asaph",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/fever-ray/plunge | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/plunge/1299148287?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F80236343%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a5aed0db1d10008f1ffc9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Fever-Ray-Plunge.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fever_Ray-Plunge_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,65,Future,Dirty Sprite 2 (2015),Epic/Freebandz,"Epic/Freebandz Future’s consistency works to his disadvantage; his relentless stream of albums and mixtapes this decade can feel like a level plane. Dirty Sprite 2 is manifestly some kind of peak, though, in quality and mainstream impact. The album works as a microcosm of Future’s career: fixated in themes and mood, a steady accumulation of dirge upon dirge sustaining his bleak vision of joyless hedonism. It could be ambient music, almost, if the beats—mostly by Metro Boomin—didn’t hit with such pummeling physicality. Memorable images flash up now and then: the codeine urine of “Thought It Was a Drought,” the literal money-laundering of “Blood on the Money.” But Future is not a lyrical MC in the tradition upheld today by Kendrick Lamar. He’s a voice more than a writer, who shines as texture rather than text, and his most crucial accomplice was the late engineer Seth Firkins, the Auto-Tune wizard who coated Future’s bleary croon in a hundred subtle shades of digital grit. A plateau of pleasure-pain, DS2 finally breaks loose with the closer “F*ck Up Some Commas”: an anthem of ecstatic indifference, Future squandering money and life-force over Southside & DJ Spinz’s slow-mo stampede. The third verse, where Future chops his vocal against the beat like a deejay slashing the cross-fader, is one of the decade’s most thrilling and purely musical moments. –Simon Reynolds",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/ds2-deluxe/1017125737?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F49193318%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a5baa4bc65100086997f3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Future-DS2.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Future-Dirty_Sprite_2_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,64,Mitski,Be the Cowboy (2018),Dead Oceans,"Dead Oceans Few songwriters articulate wanting quite like Mitski. Across her catalog of impassioned rock anthems, sometimes she aches for a love that falls like “a body from the balcony.” Other times, she wishes simply to see the world and still pay rent. A classically trained composer who began her career recording piano ballads, Mitski insists that her music is technical rather than emotional, the characters in her stories fictional rather than autobiographical. Be the Cowboy, her fifth album, is a stunning piece of theater on the subject of wanting. Whether she’s spinning pain into something danceable on “Nobody” or pushing away a devoted lover’s touch on the searing “A Pearl,” the stories Mitski tells may be imaginary but the emotions are real. As she expands her sound, swapping her signature guitar shredding for synthesizers and disco, assuming the voices of weary wives and swaggering conquerors, Mitski’s songs are the most complex they’ve ever been. –Hazel Cills","Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/mitski/be-the-cowboy | Platform: Vinyl Me, Please - Link: https://vinyl-me-please.evyy.net/kGo3z | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/be-the-cowboy/1373892692?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F91826107%5D%5D",https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a5e3d0db1d10008f1ffff/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mitski-Be-the-Cowboy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mitski-Be_the_Cowboy_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,63,Danny Brown,XXX (2011),Fool’s Gold,"Fool’s Gold When he broke through in 2011, Danny Brown seemed to be running backwards at us, howling from about five years into the future. He was a Ghostface-level narrator with an asymmetrical haircut, tight jeans, gap teeth, and an imagination so vivid it seemed to frighten even him. Brown rapped in an astonished yelp and treated verses like advanced Pac-Man levels, gobbling up as much of his surroundings as he could before the timer buzzed. The title track from XXX (a triple entendre for his third album, his 30th year, and his preferred adult entertainment rating) compacts his vision, his determination, his torture. “I never leave the house, ain’t slept in three days/Poppin’ pills, writing, drinking, and smoking haze,” he rapped, his voice fraying at the edges. ""Weaving kicks and snares, trying to dodge these hooks/Keeping it original, something that’s overlooked.” He would say all of this, in a million inventive ways, after XXX, but the thing about a first impression is that it only happens once. –Jayson Greene",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/danny-brown/xxx-7eea7279-55cf-4e6b-ad96-176bf1c3b3e0 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/xxx-deluxe-version/508262167?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F82627447%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a5e6f0db1d10008f20001/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Danny-Brown-XXX.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Danny_Brown-XXX_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,62,Grouper,Ruins (2014),Kranky,"Kranky Liz Harris’ music as Grouper has always been intensely private, sometimes intimidatingly so: the sound of solitude so profound, so all-encompassing, that it blots out everything beyond it. Harris spent the first few years of the decade pushing deeper and deeper into emptiness, covering her tracks with impenetrable echoes, but Ruins felt like tearing away a veil. Recorded during a stint on the coast of Portugal, it’s just Harris alone at the piano, her voice unadorned, singing with unnerving candor about heartbreak and confusion. The only reverb is that of the piano’s sustain pedal; her only accompaniment is the occasional sound of crickets, frogs, a passing thunderstorm. Toward the end of “Labyrinth,” a microwave beeps when the power flashes back on after a blackout—a strange and startling reminder that there is a world outside this terrifying, irresistibly beautiful loneliness. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/grouper/ruins-c21fc8e8-0657-4476-8a0c-cd0b39454a0f | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/ruins/909173677?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Fartist%252F3664190%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a5efa256a0a0009483351/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Grouper-Ruins.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Grouper-Ruins_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,61,Arca,Arca (2017),XL,"XL Arca, the Venezuelan producer also known as Alejandra Ghersi, laced her singing voice into her early Soundcloud mixtapes and her debut album, 2014’s Xen. But it always came through corroded, as if chewed up by the intricate electronic shapes she’d twist with her synthesizers. Known for working behind the scenes with Kanye West and Björk, Arca established her impressive technical skills on her first few records, but it wasn’t until 2017’s self-titled breakthrough that her artistic spirit came to the forefront. She built Arca around her singing voice, its ragged edges tracing stories of death, and yearning, and change. If Xen and its 2015 follow-up, Mutant, flourished in cerebral space, then Arca aims straight for the beautiful tumult of the body. It's a delicate and stormy album about shedding skin and growing it anew, about the pain of nursing a wound and the celebration of watching the body stitch itself back together whole. –Sasha Geffen",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/arca/arca | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/arca/1203295856?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F72034227%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a5f87256a0a0009483353/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Arca-Arca.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Arca-Arca_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,60,King Krule,The OOZ (2017),True Panther/XL,"True Panther/XL When he released his debut album, 2013’s 6 Feet Beneath the Moon, Archy Marshall was 19 years old and self-certain, a swaggering rogue prowling London backstreets amid urban decay. His second album as King Krule, The OOZ, sees little of note on those streets, but constructs an elaborate microcosm in Marshall’s bedroom, where decay is a kind of comfort. After releasing a series of experimental songs under various monikers, he conceived The OOZ as a return to “guitar music.” But Marshall sets a new benchmark for the form, conjuring an odyssey of overdosed psych, anxious hip-hop, zombified punk, spoken word, loping jazz, and sound art. Vignettes flit by, conjuring heartbreak and depression; the expensive, isolating city backdrops his existential funk. Yet the immersive production and poetry reach out to you, like panicked arms from a murky deep end. Even as The OOZ churns through Krule’s torment, it glows with a melancholy too exquisite to fear. –Jazz Monroe",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/king-krule/the-ooz | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/the-ooz/1277397848?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F79524582%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a608553e80c0008f43a31/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/King-Krule-The-OOZ.jpg,/dataset/artwork/King_Krule-The_OOZ_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,59,Taylor Swift,Red (2012),Big Machine,"Big Machine Red is a portrait of a young woman eager to feel everything on her way to the top. Its songs are self-aware enough to be funny and guileless enough to be honest, capturing the temptation of risk-taking, the rush of memory and disappointment, and the transformative power of grown-up romantic love felt for the first time. The album gave Taylor Swift her first No. 1 hit (the irresistible “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together”) and inaugurated many of her famously over-the-top marketing tactics: commemorative Keds sneakers, Papa John’s pizza boxes, weaponized tabloid gossip. Aside from her pop leanings, the chipper breakup-to-makeup story “Stay Stay Stay” and melancholic renewal ballad “Begin Again” would be some of her final acoustic-forward recordings of the decade. Soon after Red, nobody in America could ever again plausibly ask, “Who’s Taylor Swift, anyway?” –Anna Gaca",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/taylor-swift/red | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/red/1440935340?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F35358097%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a613d53e80c0008f43a33/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Taylor-Swift-Red.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Taylor_Swift-Red_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,58,Kamasi Washington,The Epic (2015),Brainfeeder,"Brainfeeder For at least 60 years, Los Angeles jazz culture has been shaped by several of its circumstances: a slower pace of life, rehearsal spaces in great supply, proximity to the TV and film business, and a vague condescension emanating towards it from New York. When the saxophonist Kamasi Washington released his first album for a label in 2015 after a few self-released starts, he was 34 and unusually ready for the spotlight. He’d had the time, space, and resources to develop an uncanny fluidity among his band members, who’d known one another since high school; they benefited from years of church and R&B gigs, and the encouragement of a network of local elders and heroes. They weren’t academic formalists or bebop sticklers; they knew the canon, but grew up geographically close both to the grooves of Compton hip-hop and the commercial, proggy, and spiritual branches of jazz embodied by Patrice Rushen, George Duke, and Alice Coltrane. This mixture of things—and its beneficial distance from New York—gives The Epic its casual hugeness. Washington's playing, informed by Kenny Garrett and Pharoah Sanders, comes out in agile, darting climbs toward free-jazz wail, then slow elegies, and then clipped, mellow funk. The band includes two drummers, two bassists, a choir, and strings; it is thundering and chill, monolithic and uncontrived. It began one of the strongest groundswells in the last quarter-century of the jazz tradition, if you want to call it that. And if you do, consider that jazz has accommodated popular and sacred and advanced musicianship—the academic and the vernacular—since it began. –Ben Ratliff",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/kamasi-washington/the-epic | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/the-epic/975772107?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F75215973%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a61cc256a0a0009483356/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kamasi-Washington-The-Epic.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kamasi_Washington-The_Epic_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,57,Kendrick Lamar,DAMN. (2017),Top Dawg/Aftermath/Interscope,"Top Dawg/Aftermath/Interscope Kendrick Lamar uses inner conflict as the main fuel source for DAMN., an autobiographical work of epic proportions that won him a Pulitzer Prize. He plays tug-of-war between good and evil, illustrating how futile morality is when you grow up in a place like Compton, where racialized oppression and violence is commonplace. Lamar touched on these themes in his earlier works, but as he breezes through his rapid-fire verses, flashing his lyrical dexterity and the vocal flexibility that he honed with To Pimp a Butterfly’s funk experimentation, he brings an unprecedented technicolor detail. DAMN. concludes with Kendrick revealing his astonishing origin story in “DUCKWORTH.,” involving a coincidental meeting years ago between his father and his label head, Anthony Tiffith. It could have left one dead and the other in prison. But since both ended up safe, Kendrick frames the story as proof of his “chosen one” status, a fateful sign that he’d go on to become the greatest rapper in the world. Whether or not you believe in divine intervention, it’s hard to argue that he didn’t fulfill that prophecy. –Michelle Kim",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/kendrick-lamar/damn | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/damn/1440881047?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F72694579%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a63a8256a0a0009483358/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kendrick-Lamar-DAMN.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kendrick_Lamar-DAMN_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,56,Björk,Vulnicura (2015),One Little Indian,"One Little Indian On her eighth studio LP, Björk returns divorce to the arena of biblical sin. A monstrous take on the breakup album, Vulnicura bypasses heartbreak records’ usual sensitivities, demanding “emotional respect” like an angry god berating a malign species. Zero-gravity beats (co-produced by Arca) splice with close-miked vocals and string section heraldry, situating Björk’s despair in an ancient tradition—one that knows agony is a form of majesty. On “Black Lake,” she sings to her ex, “You fear my limitless emotions.” Emotional maximalism is not a chance fact of this superstar’s existence, the album reminds us, but her core philosophy. By lamenting one man’s failure, she demands reckoning from all her listeners, illuminating the sacred bond between art and principle. –Jazz Monroe",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/bjork/vulnicura | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/vulnicura/960042103?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F40243049%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a64af6eee70000829f71e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bjo%25CC%2588rk-Vulnicura.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bjrk-Vulnicura_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,55,St. Vincent,Strange Mercy (2011),4AD,"4AD The shadowy narratives that make up Strange Mercy, Annie Clark’s third album as St. Vincent, flash by in sharply lurid images: horsehair whips, dirty policemen, suitcases of cash. Clark’s father went to prison for stock fraud in 2010, which gave rise to Strange Mercy’s elliptical lyrics that often allude to depression, crime, and anger. But she used the incident as lighter fluid for apoplectic guitar shredding and dark tales of complicated power dynamics, whether between a dominant and submissive, a police officer and a civilian, or a parent and a child. Strange Mercy fuses the cinematic thrust of Clark’s 2009 album Actor with stirring experimental accents, from the corrosive solo that caps “Northern Lights” to the wiry motif that runs through the exquisite pop workout “Cruel.” She would go on to throw bolder shapes, but with its quicksilver moods and mercurial instrumentation, Strange Mercy is the most urgent and resonant St. Vincent album to date. –Eric Torres",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/st-vincent/strange-mercy | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/strange-mercy/453456287?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F7748181%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a65b84bc6510008699829/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/St-Vincent-Strange-Mercy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/St_Vincent-Strange_Mercy_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,54,Young Thug,Barter 6 (2015),300/Atlantic,"300/Atlantic Young Thug went from the face of rap’s inter-generational wars to one of its elder statesmen with unsettling speed. Just a few years ago, when he first emerged as a leader of Atlanta’s melodic new school, his contortionist flows and frenzied yelps were a novelty; today, his stylistic progeny dominate the charts. Still, Barter 6, Thug’s de facto debut album, remains his most cohesive project to date. Alternately paranoid, introspective, and tongue-in-cheek, he glides over production by Wheezy and London on Da Track. Although the release was attended by some high-profile drama (the name was an obvious, if inscrutable, subliminal aimed at his former idol Lil Wayne), Thug sounds inordinately focused, easily out-rapping guests like T.I., Boosie BadAzz, and Young Dolph, all of whom deliver memorable turns on songs like the creeping “Can’t Tell” and the stormy “Never Had It.” He’s remained prolific since then but, following plenty of leaks, label drama, and personal setbacks, Thug has yet to recapture the purity of that moment. –Rawiya Kameir",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/barter-6/986011611?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F44632346%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a66336eee70000829f720/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Young-Thug-Barter-6.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Young_Thug-Barter_6_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,53,Jlin,Black Origami (2017),Planet Mu,"Planet Mu Indiana footwork innovator Jerrilynn Patton, aka Jlin, once said that “the literature for experimental music is blank pages.” Her steely second album is a testament to this out-of-box thinking. Charged with a constant feeling of discovery, it offers no real hierarchy of sound, as the well-oiled polyrhythmic parts clatter, woosh, and glitch together with balletic ease. Black Origami sounds like real life, like industrialization collapsing and recalibrating, generative and alive. “I call it Black Origami,” Jlin has said, because “all those folds and bends that you go through in your life, that is what folds you into that piece of origami. You start off as this blank sheet of paper, this innocent thing. And then life starts bending and folding, bending and folding.” In her own folding, she establishes herself as one of the most forward-thinking contemporary composers in any genre, and one of the most human. –Jenn Pelly",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/jlin/black-origami-ac035ee2-cf48-49f7-8c82-f698c1a6f137 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/black-origami/1213453132?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F71465632%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a67038699b30008f1aeae/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jlin-Black-Origami.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jlin-Black_Origami_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,52,LCD Soundsystem,This Is Happening (2010),Virgin/Parlophone/DFA,"Virgin/Parlophone/DFA Before he entered the hibernation that was supposed to be his grand exit, LCD Soundsystem lifted up every last commandment James Murphy believed in: Get newly baptized under the disco ball, change who you are if it helps someone fall in love with you, never make a hit, take one last shot at your critics, then leave the stage forever. This final album from the band—the story went—was full of stakes and climaxes and last-goodbyes. “It was a music of desperation,” Murphy once said of “All I Want,” the beating heart of the record, a song so stuffed with feeling it ends with Murphy crying, “Take me home."" He sings again of home at the very end of the record, as if heaven or a wine-bar proprietorship calls him hither. Of course, in the real world, where LCD Soundsystem reunited and made another good album seven years later, the “take me home” motif now scans a little more like a drunk guy in the back of an Uber after a long night. The saga of This Is Happening and the band’s final concert at Madison Square Garden fizzes in the mind like a dream, too cathartic and momentous to ever be real. –Jeremy D. Larson",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/lcd-soundsystem/this-is-happening | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/this-is-happening/693387639?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F3821703%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a67ed4bc651000869982b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/LCD-Soundsystem-This-Is-Happening.jpg,/dataset/artwork/LCD_Soundsystem-This_Is_Happening_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,51,DJ Koze,Knock Knock (2018),Pampa,"Pampa DJ Koze doesn’t sing on his records, but his personality nevertheless shines through with every wonky beat—and electronic music’s premier troublemaker with a heart of gold was never more lovable than on Knock Knock. His productions have always been somewhat at odds with the sorts of Ibiza mega-clubs he’s often booked to play—intimate instead of bombastic, squirrelly instead of grandstanding—and Knock Knock makes the most of his idiosyncrasies: A Bon Iver sample puts a campfire-folk spin on glitchy deep house; Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner gurgles sweetly through Auto-Tune. Much of the album’s jewel-toned sampledelia is decidedly laid-back, with chopped-up soul over easygoing drum breaks, but there’s no missing the mainstage triumph of the Gladys Knight-sampling disco-house anthem “Pick Up,” a bittersweet breakup anthem that, heard amid a throng of 10,000 souls dancing in unison, is simply life-affirming. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/knock-knock/1333548730?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F87007741%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a68484bc6510008699895/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/DJ-Koze-Knock-Knock.jpg,/dataset/artwork/DJ_Koze-Knock_Knock_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,50,Grimes,Visions (2012),4AD,"4AD Claire Boucher’s first two albums as Grimes submerged her pop instincts deep within experimental manipulations. Visions, her third record, glints with the excitement of a newly unlocked talent and the thrill of wielding it. Its songs are twisted flashes of pop melodies laid over frothy techno pulses, where something vaguely sinister underlines the sweetness of the vocals. The album operates by its own unconventional timekeeping—many tracks are over four minutes, many others under two—and in its own unfamiliar yet accessible space. Its beats sound close but cavernous, feeling out a dance groove in the dark of “Circumambient” and erasing and rewriting itself half a dozen times on “Oblivion.” There are ballads, too, if that’s what you call a song like “Skin,” festooned with gothic filigrees. Almost eight years later, Boucher’s human-generated cyborg pop still feels enigmatic. –Anna Gaca",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/grimes/visions | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/visions/499874506?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F58084213%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a742253e80c0008f43a39/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Grimes-Visions.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Grimes-Visions_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,49,Oneohtrix Point Never,Replica (2011),Mexican Summer/Software,"Mexican Summer/Software Listeners encountering Replica upon its release didn’t have to know its backstory to tell that something had changed in Oneohtrix Point Never’s work: In place of the retro-futurist synth fantasia of the New York musician’s previous albums were curious, half-melodic abstractions with origins difficult to tease out. Many of the sounds, it turned out, were sampled from TV commercials from the ’80s, but Daniel Lopatin’s curious way of chopping and looping freed them from kitschy overtones—really, from any context whatsoever. Instead, these disembodied voices and half-recognizable sounds suggested only a kind of vague, inchoate melancholy—the sadness of dead media, a gesture of mourning for a past whose outline was already fading from memory. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/replica/1444030145?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F56226741%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bb61f8699b30008f1b031/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Oneohtrix-Point-Never-Replica.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Oneohtrix_Point_Never-Replica_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,48,ANOHNI,Hopelessness (2016),Rough Trade/Secretly Canadian,"Rough Trade/Secretly Canadian Hopelessness is a tremendous, terrifying reflection on the perils of drone warfare, our digital panopticon, the continued degradation of the planet Earth, and patriarchal violence. In these horrifying, beautiful songs, ANOHNI presses crisis to flesh—and as this decade wore on, they became more and more relevant. Beyond ANOHNI’s supernal voice, which easily communicates both intimacy and dread—her tone elegant and refined with empathy while being robust enough to condemn evil—there is a material perspective that makes all of these crimes feel more visceral. She sings about “exploded crystal guts,” feeling the temperature of a near-boiling planet on the skin, idle lenses observing unknowing figures, the marrow being sucked out of bones. Throughout Hopelessness, these become powerful symbols of American carnage. Produced alongside Oneohtrix Point Never and Hudson Mohawke, ANOHNI embraces electronic dance music as a compelling vehicle for truth-telling without losing its serrated edge. Hopelessness crystalised the environmentalist pop ANOHNI had made for years with Antony and the Johnsons into piercingly sharp, graceful protest songs for our present and future dystopias. –Sheldon Pearce","Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/anohni/hopelessness | Platform: Vinyl Me, Please - Link: https://vinyl-me-please.evyy.net/BdqyW | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/hopelessness/1084753880?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F59107398%5D%5D",https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bc2a20db1d10008f200c5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/ANOHNI-Hopelessness.jpg,/dataset/artwork/ANOHNI-Hopelessness_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,47,Carly Rae Jepsen,E•MO•TION (2015),Interscope,"Interscope E•MO•TION marked the end of Carly Rae Jepsen, wholesome chart-topper, and the beginning of CRJ, patron saint of just going for it. After the mind-numbing ubiquity of “Call Me Maybe,” Jepsen went in search of her own sound and, after cowriting hundreds of songs, landed on bright, bold synth-pop with a distinct ’80s sleekness. Though E•MO•TION was initially considered something of a commercial flop, it became, along with a few other LPs, emblematic of a certain 2010s trend: the rise of the mainstream pop star swerving to collect her indie cred. Working with collaborators like Dev Hynes and Rostam, Jepsen honed her reference points and packed the album with tactile sonic details: the synth sheen cascading off “All That,” a ballad seemingly made for the prom scene in a John Hughes movie, or the way the house-tinged sleeper “Warm Blood” pulses on at least four different levels at once. And who could forget the most epic saxophone part to open a pop song since “Careless Whisper”? But it was Jepsen’s unabashed yearning and acute sense of rejection that turned E•MO•TION into a certified cult hit—relatable in the way that a really good rom-com is, and just as rare. –Jillian Mapes",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/e-mo-tion-deluxe/1440845175?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F49817531%5D%5D | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeccAtqd5K8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d9ca0ec39d76100088ec37d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Carly-Rae-Jepsen.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Carly_Rae_Jepsen-EMOTION_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,46,The Knife,Shaking the Habitual (2013),Rabid/Brille/Mute,"Rabid/Brille/Mute The Knife’s fifth and final album demanded nothing less than the obliteration of Western society’s sturdiest pillars: capitalism, patriarchy, gender conformity. And like true performance artists, siblings Karin and Olaf Dreijer knew that the legitimacy of their message hinged on their willingness to obliterate themselves. Even coming from a group that had, over the previous decade, forsaken neon-bright indie-pop for black-light techno-goth and impenetrable operatic dronescapes, Shaking the Habitual marked yet another radical act of self-negation. The shadowy electro provocateurs were reborn as an animalistic, post-apocalyptic industrial act making an ungodly clang from (presumably) short-circuiting synths and burnt-out oil drums bashed by human bones. Whether it’s subjecting you to pulverizing electro-punk, nauseating 19-minute ambient movements, or diseased tropical funk, Shaking the Habitual relentlessly agitates as a means to inspire resistance. In retrospect, the album functioned as a punishing boot-camp drill to prepare us for the difficult conversations, legislative battles, and bad-faith disinformation wars that rage today. –Stuart Berman",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/shaking-the-habitual/828145438?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F35109284%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bc48b53e80c0008f43b24/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Knife-Shaking-the-Habitual.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Knife-Shaking_the_Habitual_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,45,Mount Eerie,A Crow Looked at Me (2017),P.W. Elverum and Sun,"P.W. Elverum and Sun Pause for a moment to remember December 2009, and think of the people you knew who were alive then, now gone. The older you are, the more names will come to mind. And the next 10 years will bring more names still—possibly many more. There’s no escaping it. Death is real. With that line, Phil Elverum begins A Crow Looked at Me, his hushed and plainspoken album about the loss of his wife, Geneviève Castrée, to cancer the year before. Crow is one of the most specific albums ever made—the details, and there are many, are drawn directly from the songwriter’s life, from what’s arriving in the mail to how long he holds on to his wife’s old toothbrush. But inside the minutiae are truths that exist independently of Elverum. It’s impossible to listen and not think about the people around you. His story starts to feel like yours. Crow is like a letter from an old friend that you savor alone and then put back in the drawer when you’re finished, a work designed to cycle in and out of people’s lives. “We are all always so close to not existing at all,” Elverum sings in “Swims.” When that thought is close at hand, so is this record. –Mark Richardson",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/mount-eerie/a-crow-looked-at-me | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/a-crow-looked-at-me/1193426815?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F69145056%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bc57053e80c0008f43b26/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mount-Eerie-A-Crow-Looked-at-Me.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mount_Eerie-A_Crow_Looked_at_Me_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,44,A Tribe Called Quest,We got it from Here... Thank You 4 Your service (2016),Epic,"Epic Within the span of one month in 2016, A Tribe Called Quest fans went from never expecting music from the group again to mourning Phife Dawg to preparing themselves for a new album. This whirlwind of emotions can be felt in the frantic and urgent music itself, which explores exit strategies and considerations for a newer and better world in the first two songs alone, “The Space Program” and “We the People….” The record was released at the tail end of the week that Donald Trump was elected president, but its pitch-perfect intersection of fury and sadness had been brewing for years, which meant it arrived as a perfect response to people who assumed America had only recently become violent and frightening. Beyond all of this, the album momentarily returned Phife Dawg to us, his voice showing no rust despite the years. This is the album’s truest gift; his instantly classic verse on “Black Spasmodic” feels like the MC kicking in the door to a dark room where everyone is sleeping and turning all of the lights on. –Hanif Abdurraqib",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/a-tribe-called-quest/we-got-it-from-here-thank-you-4-your-service | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/we-got-it-from-here-thank-you-4-your-service/1173106678?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F66961064%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bc6760db1d10008f200c7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/A-Tribe-Called-Quest-we-got-it-from-here.jpg,/dataset/artwork/A_Tribe_Called_Quest-We_got_it_from_Here_Thank_You_4_Your_service_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,43,Sky Ferreira,"Night Time, My Time (2013)",Capitol,"Capitol Despite the desires of her label, Sky Ferreira refused to be molded into the next coy pop princess. As a result, her debut album was locked in purgatory for years, until she put her own modeling money toward financing it. When it finally emerged in 2013, Night Time, My Time testified to Ferreira’s authentic edginess, from the cover—a humid shot of a topless, glaring Ferreira in a green-tiled shower—to her vulnerable, often self-loathing lyrics. Throughout it, she owns her emotional complexities, moving coolly from optimism to frustration to a Lynchian brooding that the director himself later put to good use. She’s a starry-eyed romantic on “Boys” and a scorned lover on “You’re Not the One;” she takes accountability for her reputation on “I Blame Myself” and questions her relevance on the title track. Working alongside producers including Ariel Rechtshaid and Justin Raisen, she fashions these raw sentiments into sparkly synth-pop and grungy, kohl-lined gems. “Nobody asked me if I was okay…Nobody asked me what I wanted,” she murmurs throatily at one point. Night Time, My Time is testament to the power of singing for oneself. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/sky-ferreira/night-time-my-time-green | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/night-time-my-time/1443133185?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F35218343%5D%5D | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0vmK4WXCRI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bccb66eee70000829f85c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sky-Ferreira-Night-Time-My-Time.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sky_Ferreira-Night_Time_My_Time_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,42,Erykah Badu,New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh (2010),Motown,"Motown Then, now, and forever, love makes people go a little crazy. Even Erykah Badu, goddess of unbothered R&B, is not immune. Throughout Return of the Ankh, her only proper album of this decade, she offers up conflicting desires with the unfiltered realness of a drunk dial. She pines for a long-distance love with lusty teenage angst. She laughs about fucking around on a besotten boyfriend. She cautions would-be suitors on a song called “Fall in Love (Your Funeral),” which works in lines from Biggie Smalls’ cold-blooded classic “Warning.” At one point, her frustrations make her contemplate gunplay. But for every moment of blind passion here, there is an equal and opposite moment of contemplation: On the psychedelic 10-minute suite “Out My Mind, Just in Time,” she evolves from a doting, codependent lover to a solo superhero in tune with her own worth. The arrangements, largely based on the comforting grooves of ’70s soul, add an element of analog time travel to her cosmic funk. Though a record all about the vagaries of the heart may not be a new idea, in Erykah Badu’s hands, it never gets old. –Ryan Dombal",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/new-amerykah-pt-2-return-of-the-ankh/1440764608?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F3545865%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bcd3d53e80c0008f43b28/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Erykah-Badu-New-Amerykah-Part-2.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Erykah_Badu-New_Amerykah_Part_Two_Return_of_the_Ankh_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,41,Beyoncé,Lemonade (2016),Columbia/Parkwood,"Columbia/Parkwood The first thing Lemonade delivers is wrath: Infidelity has ruptured not just marriage but a whole life. Beyoncé, the world’s most powerful woman, is gleeful to set streets on fire, throw off her wedding ring, shit-talk with her girls to abandon. If Lemonade’s first 10 minutes has a headline, it would be that Jay-Z, dummy that he is, really did cheat. But then everything builds to something more profound, more complete: a prayer about how love can fracture the self. Suddenly we’re in Texas, in stadiums, on plantations; a Led Zeppelin beat is next to a reggae sample. “SpottieOttieDopaliscious” appears next to a James Blake feature. Lemonade feels like an exercise in dissonance, the act of holding two warring ideas in your head and in your heart: You can love someone but also hate them, adore your father and also resent him, want to cry and twerk at the same time. One woman can feel all of this—and more—at once, Lemonade suggests, because that’s how confusing life and grief and history is. It exalts the mundane as profoundly spiritual: being black, being a woman, feeling confused, feeling grief, trying to forgive, feeling sexual. In all those, together, is the healing. –Hunter Harris","Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/beyonce/lemonade | Platform: Vinyl Me, Please - Link: https://vinyl-me-please.evyy.net/MdaR3 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/lemonade/1460430561?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F108043414%5D%5D",https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bceb78699b30008f1b037/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Beyonce%25CC%2581-Lemonade.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beyonc-Lemonade_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,40,Charli XCX,Pop 2 (2017),Asylum/Atlantic,"Asylum/Atlantic After cowriting and appearing on Iggy Azalea’s hit “Fancy,” Charli XCX could have easily shipped out to Los Angeles to record Max Martin cast-offs forever. But instead, Charli began to construct her own little weird pop utopia from the ground up, turning to the squelchy, hyper-synthetic sounds of producers like A.G. Cook and SOPHIE. The Pop 2 mixtape, Charli’s best full-length to date, is the brilliant culmination of all that effort: a nonstop avant-garde party built for fembots and fog machines. Over the sound of her hissed “XCX” and “It’s Charli, baby” signatures, she pulls in multiple collaborators on each track, like the filth-loving rapper CupcakKe and the rising dance princess Kim Petras. Throughout, she solidifies her mastery of the strange, wonderful new pop world she continues to build. –Hazel Cills",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/charli-xcx/number-1-angel-pop-2 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/pop-2/1320853683?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F82088443%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bcfcd0db1d10008f200ca/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Charli-XCX-Pop-2.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Charli_XCX-Pop_2_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,39,Bill Callahan,Apocalypse (2011),Sonic Ranch,"Sonic Ranch About halfway through Apocalypse, Bill Callahan describes a scene in which a man, sitting alone in a boat, fires a flare gun into the sky. As the flare rises, the man can see everything. When it comes back down, it sets his boat on fire. The boat goes down—the man, too, in all his contradictions. If he seems worried, Callahan doesn’t tell us. If anything, the mood is one of lightness, of calm, of finally being released from the illusory responsibilities of being all the things the man thought he was. Callahan’s writing is like this: Matter-of-fact but philosophical, deeply felt, a little uncanny—parables on our condition. Coming after more than a dozen albums, Apocalypse feels like an ascendance: His voice is lower, his music more rustic but more psychedelic, too. The stone-faced man who seems to know all, and in denim, no less. And if he seems a little serious, that’s because he is. Then again, so is life. –Mike Powell",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/bill-callahan/apocalypse-02a17036-10e4-4559-b16e-c962b82ad5b6 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/apocalypse/429316869?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F86402713%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7be8b953e80c0008f43b2a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bill-Callahan-Apocalypse.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bill_Callahan-Apocalypse_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,38,Tierra Whack,Whack World (2018),Self-released,"Self-released Welcome to Whack World, the surreal universe of the Philly dynamo Tierra Whack. Here, as established in her 15-minute audiovisual album that plays like an absurdist children’s sketch show, BET stands for “bitches eat tacos” and self-care advice is administered with childlike glee. Whack’s playfulness also extends to her vocal prowess: on one song she spits with the fervor of André 3000, on another she jokes around with a goofy Southern twang. Her creativeness is both fun and impressive, like when she uses whimsical imagery to work through tough subjects: Fried chicken condiments serve as a segue to address the violence in her hometown, and when she mourns her dead “dog,” it’s coded language for a late friend. Though packed tight, each song on Whack World lands just at or under one minute long, and Whack’s imagination runs unbound throughout. –Michelle Kim",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/whack-world/1388073103?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F89240693%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7be9588699b30008f1b039/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Tierra-Whack-Whack-World.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tierra_Whack-Whack_World_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,37,David Bowie,Blackstar (2016),Columbia/RCA/ISO,"Columbia/RCA/ISO David Bowie was sometimes accused of being calculating, and that trait served him triumphantly when it came to stage-managing his exit as an artist. From its daring music to its perfect title, from its stunning artwork to its startling videos, Blackstar was a magnificent farewell to his audience. Even the timing was immaculate, the album coming out two days before Bowie’s death. As pop’s greatest self-dramatist, he doubtless felt he owed his audience a consummate denouement, but you also get the sense from Blackstar that Bowie felt free of obligations, able to explore and experiment to his art’s content. Unlike his preceding album The Next Day, Blackstar betrays zero concern for radio play or other worldly metrics of success. The cutting edges dominate, with a palette steeped in lifelong loves like jazz and brief passions like drum ‘n’ bass. But although the urgent desire to break new ground rather than revisit familiar pathways is palpable, flickers from Bowie’s vast past appear: the harmonica texture from Low’s “A New Career in a New Town,” for instance, rematerializes on the closing “I Can’t Give Everything Away.” That title is Bowie affirming the value of mystique. It’s notable that he never wrote a memoir—a rare act of superstar tact. Yet while Blackstar’s words are oblique, vocally and emotionally, Bowie has rarely seemed more achingly exposed. The title track is one of the strangest and strongest things Bowie ever made. The glassy-grey waver of his voice sounds like he’s already a ghost. The refrain “I’m a blackstar” serves as a chilling image for the extinction of personality, but also hints at the way icons fascinate long after they’ve faded from the scene, just like black holes emit radiation. –Simon Reynolds",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/david-bowie/blackstar | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/blackstar/1059043043?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F55825380%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bebcf8699b30008f1b03b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/David-Bowie-Blackstar.jpg,/dataset/artwork/David_Bowie-Blackstar_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,36,Rosalía,El Mal Querer (2018),Sony,"Sony Melding classic flamenco techniques with trap and the stylistic instincts of the Instagram generation was postmodern, to say the least. And El Mal Querer, the Spanish virtuoso Rosalía’s debut album, also highlighted a very 2010s tension between cultural appreciation and appropriation, given the Catalan singer’s pop take on the storied gitano genre and, more complexly, her adoption of an Andalusian accent—two hallmarks of the Roma people in Spain. A lesser musician might not have weathered the criticisms—she still seems to be figuring it out—but El Mal Querer was one of the most exquisite albums of the decade. Rosalía’s conservatory-trained voice is elevated by her epic album concept based on a 13th-century novel. Her interpolation of the text’s eternally human themes into today’s hyper-tech landscape, with glitchy and romantic production courtesy of El Guincho, meant that it translated widely. Her emotion was emphatic and fluent, even if many of her listeners’ Spanish-speaking ability wasn’t—a giant step for a burgeoning global pop star. –Julianne Escobedo Shepherd",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/el-mal-querer/1436309944?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F95094922%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7becb0bf029700081d7c3f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Rosali%25CC%2581a-El-Mal-Querer.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rosala-El_Mal_Querer_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,35,Blood Orange,Cupid Deluxe (2013),Domino,"Domino By late 2013, Dev Hynes had established himself as the go-to vibey songwriter of the moment. His tracks with Solange and Sky Ferreira established a new sound in pop, merging slinky guitar with full-on lamentation and heartbreak. These bummer jams, spiked with extra catchy catharsis, succeeded because they felt real, but Hynes had yet to fully capitalize on his talents as a solo artist. That changed with Cupid Deluxe. Leadoff track “Chamakay” serves as a mission statement of sorts, with Hynes using all his tricks at once: women harmonizing, echoed percussion, romantic pleading, gurgling bass. The album follows a similar kitchen-sink-funk feel, as Hynes pilfers the best bits from disco, soul, and R&B, creating a hybrid sound that's inimitable and vastly appealing. At times, a breathy saxophone wafts in from nowhere, as if things weren’t sexy enough. After Cupid Deluxe, Hynes further opened his sound: His subsequent albums are deeper, more complex, and more adventurous. But they never sounded as undeniably funky. –Matthew Schnipper",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/blood-orange/cupid-deluxe | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/cupid-deluxe/716767448?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F23673561%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bed928699b30008f1b03d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Blood-Orange-Cupid-Deluxe.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Blood_Orange-Cupid_Deluxe_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,34,Vince Staples,Summertime ’06 (2015),Def Jam,"Def Jam Vince Staples’ debut for Def Jam doesn’t fit neatly into any Los Angeles rap tradition—it’s not radical, just cold and alien, as if the north side of Long Beach were a quasi-industrial hell. The album occasionally grapples with the white gaze—see “Lift Me Up,” where he looks out at a sea of pale fans cheering after asking them “Where my niggas at?”—but it is most effective when the rapper disappears into his own gut, his own memory. For all the obsession with what’s happening metatextually in his music, Summertime ’06 is striking because of moments like on “Like It Is,” when Staples, who has two brothers, confesses to feeling like his mother’s only son. Across two short discs, the rapper works like a pitcher changing speeds: there are the laconic taunts of “Street Punks,” the staccato come kill me bluff at the beginning of “Señorita,” the wistful pleading of “Summertime.” And of course there’s that dizzying third verse of “Norf Norf.” That’s the song that was immortalized in the video of a frantic white mother, crying as she reads the cop-bashing lyrics into her webcam, horrified that something so offensive to her sensibilities had become inescapable. But the song, like Staples himself, is not interesting primarily as an exercise in social chaos. “Norf Norf” is essential because it’s breathless and virtuosic, full of tics and unfabricatable details that are impossible to wash away. –Paul A. Thompson",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/vince-staples/summertime-06-segment-1 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/summertime-06/1444178693?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F46953053%5D%5D | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPSeDkSWqeY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bf0c28699b30008f1b03f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Vince-Staples-Summertime-06.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Vince_Staples-Summertime_06_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,33,Big Thief,U.F.O.F. (2019),4AD,"4AD There are few modern descriptors more benign than “folk-rock.” But with U.F.O.F., Big Thief capped four extraordinarily productive years and a five-album run (including Adrianne Lenker and Buck Meek’s solo debuts) by giving folk-rock teeth again. They didn’t need to be loud or aggressive, though the screaming through tears on the opening song could unnerve even a hardened listener. Instead, U.F.O.F. strips away the bucolic qualities usually associated with acoustic guitars and hushed vocals to reassert a fundamental strangeness, a powerful awe at the world’s mysteries. Moving away from the often harrowing autobiographical material of 2017’s Capacity, Lenker sings of metaphysical states and UFO friends, motley menageries of dogs, fruit bats, silkworms, and moths. There are fewer certainties in her lyrics than ever before—is “Open Desert” about swimming or dying?—except for the truest certainties of all: the knowledge that all things are connected, death is life’s lone constant, and a glimpse of the infinite can be found in a trick of light on water or a whispered vocal harmonized just so. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/big-thief/u-f-o-f | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/u-f-o-f/1452026004?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F108003200%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bf1478699b30008f1b041/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Big-Thief-UFOF.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Big_Thief-UFOF_2019.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,32,Bon Iver,Bon Iver (2011),Jagjaguwar/4AD,"Jagjaguwar/4AD With Bon Iver’s second, self-titled album, Justin Vernon leapt from his cabin in the woods into a world entirely of his own imagination. The sweeping compositions were a huge shift from his debut For Emma, Forever Ago’s spare folk, with arrangements that sounded like they bloomed directly from Vernon’s subconscious. Precise in imagery but hazy in structure, the songs evoke places and moments the way Vernon remembers them: unreliably and romantically. People get mixed up with the landscapes: He whisper-sings about bones and nature in the same breath, painting images of a human frame breaking the curvatures of the sea. And on “Wash.,” he refers to his hometown of Eau Claire just as “Claire,” emphasizing how loving a place is not so different from loving a person, and the memory of one is often entangled in the memory of another. –Michelle Kim",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/bon-iver/bon-iver | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/bon-iver/438685974?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F41636908%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bf1a50db1d10008f200d2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bon-Iver-Bon-Iver.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bon_Iver-Bon_Iver_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,31,Beyoncé,4 (2011),Columbia/Parkwood,"Columbia/Parkwood Before her albums were world-stopping cultural events, before a surprise release meant “pulling a Beyoncé,” there was 4. The superstar’s aptly named fourth album marked a return to hardcore R&B after 2008’s dispiritingly middle-of-the-road I Am...Sasha Fierce; it’s telling that nothing here cracked the Top 10 pop chart but several songs ran up the R&B/Hip-Hop chart. Beyoncé was done catering to visions of how her music should sound. The star power she enlisted was massive—Kanye and André 3000 cameoed, The-Dream and Tricky Stewart lent their songwriting chops (most notably on the perfect torch song “1+1”). And then there was a young Frank Ocean, who co-wrote the silken “I Miss You,” a song so powerful the demo allegedly made Beyoncé cry. But ultimately the marquee star of 4 was Beyoncé’s indefatigable work ethic. She turned in 72 songs for this project; 12 made the cut of the standard release. (On that note: Stick with 4’s original sequencing—the reconfigured tracklist on Spotify snuffs its slow burn and displaces “Countdown” from the climax position.) She gave us more key changes than we ever thought we needed. (“Love on Top” has four!) And she blew with a late-anthropocene gusto, quivering and shaking around words, interpreting by the syllable. –Rich Juzwiak",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/beyonce/4-58633a65-dae3-41b7-873b-6b815e2723f2 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/4-the-remix-ep/519218831?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F33834047%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d5ab5ee1ce1350009a5d4eb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Beyonce-4.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beyonc-4_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,30,Mitski,Puberty 2 (2016),Dead Oceans,"Dead Oceans After the majestic ballads and clear-eyed heartache of her third album, Bury Me at Makeout Creek, Mitski returned with a louder and gnarlier indie-rock record rife with distortion and thrashing guitar riffs. Hurt still radiates from its pores, but so does the sound of struggle. Here, Mitski is experiencing a second coming-of-age, a metamorphosis from young woman into adult. She is grappling with how the world sees her and who she wants to be in it. On “My Body’s Made of Crushed Little Stars,” she articulates the many mundane and not-so-mundane thoughts tumbling around her brain at any moment, pivoting from her fear of death to anxiety over an upcoming interview. On “Thursday Girl,” she sounds lost in existential angst as she searches for someone to “please tell me no.” And on the album centerpiece “Your Best American Girl,” she struggles with a lingering sense of shame about her upbringing and what it means to feel fully American and fully worthy of love. As always, Mitski is tremendously talented at working through her feelings, but on Puberty 2, the exhilaration comes not from catharsis, but from marinating in emotional conflict. –Vrinda Jagota",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/mitski/puberty-2 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/puberty-2/1087128495?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F60757035%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bf3984bc65100086999c6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mitski-Puberty-2.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mitski-Puberty_2_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,29,Deerhunter,Halcyon Digest (2010),4AD,"4AD On their fifth album, Deerhunter linger in the dark recesses of the mind. Understated and insular, especially compared to the band’s previous avant-garde leanings, these songs shine a light on private pains: melancholy, rejection, repression. And yet many of Halcyon Digest’s bleakest moments are also its brightest, which is in itself a statement on how difficult memories can shift into something more manageable. Full of lush textures and impressionistic details like “a dirty couch in the gray fog” and “the smell of loose-leaf joints on jeans,” Halcyon Digest watches memories get blown away by the sands of time yet never quite makes peace with mortality. Pushing forward this sense of impermanence, the closing track “He Would Have Laughed,” a seven-and-half minute tribute to the late rocker Jay Reatard, cuts out suddenly in the middle of a dreamy melody, a candle extinguished as quickly as life itself. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/deerhunter/halcyon-digest | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/halcyon-digest/387922299?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F4489494%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bf44a8699b30008f1b043/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Deerhunter-Halcyon-Digest.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Deerhunter-Halcyon_Digest_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,28,FKA twigs,LP1 (2014),Young Turks,"Young Turks FKA twigs is already so fully developed as an artist that her voice—wispy, breathy, disarmingly operatic—can sometimes be overshadowed by her astonishing performances. They function as demonstrations of her dancer’s command of her body, living art installations, and full-spectrum auditory experience—together, something like live 4DX. LP1, her first full-length, alluded to the expansive visionary she'd soon become, twisting her nimble voice over a textured palette of glitchy beats and sweeping synths. LP1 often sounds mournful, upended by her propensity for minor keys, and a notion of sexuality that was widely ascribed to its songs that may not have been explicitly about sex. This interpretation may have been partly because of how twigs carries herself—a generously candid musician and sinewy dancer—but is also attributable to the complex ways she delves into such topics as autonomy, aloneness, and sensuality in a holistic sense. Lead single ""Two Weeks"" may have been a break-up song lyrically, but the way she dives into it—vocal cadences interplaying with triple-time bass—elevates it into something like a triumphant prose poem to herself. Released in a crowded year for British experimental electronics, twigs' sense of drama pushed the landscape of heady dancefloor tracks into a blissfully corporeal space. –Julianne Escobedo Shepherd",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/lp1/911606990?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F58912478%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a863e0db1d10008f20007/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/FKA-twigs-Two-Weeks.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/FKA_twigs-LP1_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,27,Earl Sweatshirt,Some Rap Songs (2018),Columbia,"Columbia At the start of the decade, when he emerged as Odd Future’s most gifted rapper, Earl Sweatshirt laced his intricate verses with outrageous lines about masturbation and hating Steve Harvey. But after branching off from the collective, he grew into the role of jazz poet, with an expanded circle of friends influencing him. On Some Rap Songs, a lyrical and beat-making breakthrough, Earl details his coming-of-age in a deadpan delivery over murky, mesmerizing loops that sound like they’ve been left out in the sun for weeks. On “Azucar,” Earl wields his grimiest flow and delivers one of the album’s definitive one-liners: “There’s not a black woman I can’t thank.” Only two tracks surpass the two-minute mark, and the brevity makes them even more impactful and replayable. Earl still shocks, but now it’s by way of his stunning candor about the most personal aspects of his life, including dealing with depression and the aftermath of his father’s death. Here, Earl digs deep, heals, and completely comes into his own. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/earl-sweatshirt/some-rap-songs | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/some-rap-songs/1442399872?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F99564770%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bf55a0db1d10008f200d4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Earl-Sweatshirt-Some-Rap-Songs.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Earl_Sweatshirt-Some_Rap_Songs_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,26,Angel Olsen,Burn Your Fire for No Witness (2014),Jagjaguwar,"Jagjaguwar It’s hard to imagine the decade without Angel Olsen’s magnetic howl. Her sophomore album, Burn Your Fire For No Witness, was the kind of breakthrough that shifted the scene around it. Now the folkier corners of indie rock are filled with auteur singer-songwriters who are trying to be both timeless and out of time, intimate-seeming yet often fleshed out by a smoky full band, angsty like punk and sad like old country. That’s largely her influence. Olsen’s turning point came as a result of her imagining a new way forward, both in terms of the album’s richer instrumentation and within its narrative arc. Spurred by a breakup but ultimately about much more, Burn Your Fire for No Witness is self-help by way of total emotional whiplash. At her most optimistic, Olsen’s words serve as tiny mantras for fledgling twenty-somethings, the sort of poetic phrases a millennial might tattoo on their body. Employing the album’s signature light-dark imagery, she writes her way straight out of a creative rut on “Lights Out”: “Just when you thought you would turn all your lights out, it shines,” she croons, a cool edge to her voice. A lesser singer would have delivered the line with more earnest hope, but Olsen knows that lurking behind every step forward is a dark night of the soul waiting to strike. –Jillian Mapes",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/angel-olsen/burn-your-fire-for-no-witness-c4a7021b-d9d4-4b4d-8bc4-df687197c1c3 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/burn-your-fire-for-no-witness-deluxe-edition/919520252?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F35535784%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bf65d53e80c0008f43b2d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Angel-Olsen-Burn-Your-Fire-for-No-Witness.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Angel_Olsen-Burn_Your_Fire_for_No_Witness_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,25,Jamie xx,In Colour (2015),Young Turks,"Young Turks Hearing In Colour feels like listening to the dissection of a heartbeat—skittering anxieties mirrored in the snares, the warm glow of love reflected in steel drums, camaraderie sampled via musical voices of the past. By the time the record came out in 2015, Jamie Smith had already made two LPs with the xx, remixed an album by the legendary musician and poet Gil Scott-Heron (later loaning a sample from the project to Drake for a Top 10 hit), and released a solo track called “All Under One Roof Raving” about the communal ethos of the UK underground. He was a dance music enthusiast who didn’t really enjoy drugs, a loner who frequented London’s famous Plastic People nightclub by himself, a kid who watched UK garage documentaries on tour when he was homesick. In Colour was the result of his self-directed club education, a collection of influences—’90s jungle, swaggy doo-wop, the exaltation of trance, and the tension of two-step—that were reverent of the past but wary of nostalgia. It’s the sound of longing and loneliness mixed with the joyful relief of discovering that you’ve been among friends all along. –Puja Patel",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/jamie-xx/in-colour | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/in-colour/978362006?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F58080500%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bf74a6eee70000829f8c6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jamie-xx-In-Colour.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jamie_xx-In_Colour_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,24,SZA,CTRL (2017),Top Dawg/RCA,"Top Dawg/RCA On CTRL, SZA offers a rare thing: a millennial black woman’s coming-of-age story. It could’ve been a movie but instead, it’s a collection of songs that have the hyper-specificity of a group chat. Her experiences—and her listeners’—are all here: bad jobs, stoned Netflix binges, time-sharing men, late-night tacos, and being horny, sad, elated, messy, self-destructive, self-sufficient. She sings with pathos in every creak of her voice, catharsis in every sigh. She’s emotionally generous and wise, an Erykah Badu for people who spend entirely too much time on dating apps. SZA packages up all of these feelings into an album that’s deceptively musically and technically masterful. She takes R&B to unexpected places, with composition so eccentric it becomes inimitable (as anyone who has tried to belt along her vocal runs knows). It took her a long time to release CTRL—derailed by label politics, three totally different versions existed before this one emerged. Because of that, maybe, the album is such an accurate soundscape of the false starts, rough drafts, and dashed expectations of growing out of your twenties. –Allison P. Davis",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/sza/ctrl | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/ctrl/1239976329?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F74778333%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bad504bc65100086999b7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/SZA-The-Weekend.jpg,/dataset/artwork/SZA-CTRL_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,23,Kacey Musgraves,Golden Hour (2018),MCA Nashvillle,"MCA Nashvillle With Golden Hour, Kacey Musgraves burst the country music bubble, welcoming a rainbow of humanity to join her rousing chorus of “when I say yee, you saw haw.” Her third record draws on pop and country sensibilities to document falling in love—and staying there—with remarkable clarity and a lingering sense of wonder. A noted fan of story songs, Musgraves knows that sometimes, the story is as simple as how flowers look on the walk to the bar. On an album accessorized with disco beats and vocoder trills, even vibe-harshing characters like the know-it-all boor of “High Horse” get the glitterbomb treatment. There are pangs of anxiety, too—fear that the glow will fade, or that faraway family will slip out of reach—but they only make Musgraves’ bliss more believable, and the satisfaction sweeter. –Olivia Horn",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/kacey-musgraves/golden-hour | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/golden-hour/1440918116?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F86330313%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a8c718699b30008f1aee5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kacey-Musgraves-Slow-Burn.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kacey_Musgraves-Golden_Hour_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,22,Destroyer,Kaputt (2011),Merge/Dead Oceans,"Merge/Dead Oceans Dan Bejar made a masterpiece out of a comedown, a glassy-eyed look at a world starting to collapse. The dyspeptic indie rock of Destroyer’s past is smoothed with soft-rock saxophones and New Age synths, topped by Bejar’s louche vocals (recorded as he laid supine on a couch). The atmosphere was so lazy that Bejar could hardly be bothered to bring his tongue to his teeth to voice a “th” sound; as a result, he exquisitely “summed sroo the books on your shelf.” Underneath the listless arrangements, Bejar settles into his bon vivant character. He’s music’s Oscar Wilde, staring up at the stars from the gutter while rattling off his favorite UK music mags and “chasing cocaine through the back rooms of the world all night.” The mood all drains into the final track, “Bay of Pigs (Detail),” a 11-minute monologue delivered from a dock to the ocean. Tossed-off epiphanies (“the world’s just bones”) swirl into big thoughts and little memories. Underneath Bejar’s prose lurks the tides of death, love, and some great or terrible occasion just on the horizon. “As apocalypses go that’s pretty good, sh-la-la, wouldn’t you say?” he sings, careless and preoccupied. Nero fiddled; Bejar chilled. –Jeremy D. Larson",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/destroyer/kaputt | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/kaputt/412955678?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Fartist%252F3566018%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d790b2cfd34990009cf8d12/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Destroyer-Chinatown.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Destroyer-Kaputt_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,21,Beach House,Teen Dream (2010),Sub Pop,"Sub Pop Beach House are nothing if not devoted to a mood. On their first two records, that atmosphere was one of lo-fi wistfulness, but on Teen Dream, the Baltimore duo amplified their dream pop to the logical next step: grandiose, sweeping songs that are more My Bloody Valentine than Mazzy Star. It’s the sound of a band pulling back the veil of composure and unleashing the emotional intensity that has long been bubbling beneath the surface. Teen Dream is less an ode to adolescent nostalgia as it is a tribute to a lost feeling of passion: With Alex Scally’s guitar swelling to imperial heights and Victoria Legrand’s voice reaching new depths, euphoria bursts from every note. As Legrand chants “it is happening again” on “Silver Soul,” the urgency of her voice commands you to hold on tight to this rapture for as long as you can, because losing it would be devastating. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/beach-house/teen-dream-9ea23969-cffe-4ec1-9b00-efe7a0045259 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/teen-dream/349535407?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F35091034%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bf99453e80c0008f43b2f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Beach-House-Teen-Dream.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beach_House-Teen_Dream_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,20,DJ Rashad,Double Cup (2013),Hyperdub,"Hyperdub DJ Rashad was a singular genius and one of footwork’s architects, who shared credit for this unselfishly with other members of his inimitable Teklife crew. He was someone who was there at the beginning but unafraid of the future, and Double Cup is a genre-defining masterpiece because he wasn’t afraid to tweak the genre’s DNA. It’s warm but alien, brutal but weightless; it has all the requisite, trance-like repetition fit for dancing without the stench of pretense or academia. It melts the long history of Chicago house into the glossiest bits of pop-rap, the athletic feats of juke into the warmth and soul of the city’s R&B. It has all the jaggedness of something stitched together by hand but none of the attendant imperfections. It moans and whimpers and bludgeons and exhales, all in perfect time. You can practically hear Double Cup sweat. –Paul A. Thompson",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/dj-rashad-6e83686e-4ac1-4765-8e84-3f6a69f45133/double-cup-04f6143a-5131-49f5-bab8-b9ee423a820c | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/double-cup/897998509?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F32389180%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6537c9dfd6794e741ed8e3d0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/DJ-Rashad-Double-Cup.jpg,/dataset/artwork/DJ_Rashad-Double_Cup_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,19,Lana Del Rey,Norman Fucking Rockwell! (2019),Polydor/Interscope,"Polydor/Interscope Norman Fucking Rockwell!, Lana Del Rey’s fifth and finest album, begins with a breakup and ends with self-affirmation and hope. In between, she takes on wide-lens topics—climate change, gun violence, depression, death—with effortless cool. (She even manages to seamlessly fit in a Sublime cover.) Her indelible pop melodies are strung together with the grace of a tragic ballet. Lana worked on the record with Jack Antonoff, a producer known for encouraging pop artists to indulge their most theatrical, bombastic sides. Del Rey, however, encourages a more somber atmosphere, defined by muted piano, acoustic guitars, and layered harmonies that pair with her angsty, existential stories—’70s in spirit and ’90s in frame of mind, to paraphrase a lyric. If Lana’s music once sounded like a collage of her heroes’ greatest hits, then here is where she lapsed into her own language entirely. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/lana-del-rey/nfr | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/norman-f-g-rockwell/1474669063?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F116099819%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7945c94bc651000869973f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lana-Del-Rey-The-Greatest.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lana_Del_Rey-Norman_Fucking_Rockwell_2019.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,18,Kendrick Lamar,"good kid, m.A.A.d. city (2012)",Aftermath/Interscope/Top Dawg,"Aftermath/Interscope/Top Dawg On his major-label debut, Kendrick Lamar rapped like he’d been holding a breath his whole life, and when he exhaled, everything came out: his troubled and reverent relationship to West Coast gangsta rap; the horrors and comforts of his adolescence; his mother and father, and Uncle Tony, whom he watched get shot at a burger stand; walking back from Bible study and gang-banging; the nameless souls who died asking only that Kendrick sing about them. Somehow, despite all of these harrowing details, you can play good kid, m.A.A.d. city at parties, drinking to its songs about the perils of drinking. It is a morality play that resists easy lessons, a sermon that embraces pleasure. Every autobiographical rap album that came after it walks in part in its footsteps. –Jayson Greene",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/kendrick-lamar/good-kid-m-a-a-d-city-25825fd0-ef49-46ba-b9a8-22ed1df92f7e | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/good-kid-m-a-a-d-city-deluxe-version/1440818890?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F35470507%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d8901df1f868e00096102c2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kendrick-Lamar-good-kid-maad-city.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kendrick_Lamar-good_kid_mAAd_city_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,17,Sufjan Stevens,Carrie & Lowell (2015),Asthmatic Kitty,"Asthmatic Kitty Named after Sufjan Stevens’ late mother and stepfather, Carrie & Lowell exists beyond the realm of typical singer-songwriter fare, with intimate silences and details that feel like a true tour through one man’s memories. Compared to the decade’s other creative-nonfiction-folk landmarks—Sun Kil Moon’s Benji and Mount Eerie’s A Crow Looked at Me—the songs on Carrie & Lowell rarely take place in the present tense. Instead, Stevens blends his childhood and future, his fantasies and traumas, his loved ones and tormentors, into a record where unromantic confessions (“You checked your texts while I masturbated”) blend into the universal (“We’re all gonna die”). It makes his personal history feel almost allegorical, and even more powerful for it. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/sufjan-stevens/carrie-lowell | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/carrie-lowell/955572616?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F43560103%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d8902230480b10008ffa25c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sufjan-Stevens-Carrie-and-Lowell.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sufjan_Stevens-Carrie__Lowell_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,16,Joanna Newsom,Have One on Me (2010),Drag City,"Drag City Joanna Newsom has called Have One on Me her “early ’70s California singer-songwriter album”—and indeed, there are implicit references to Joni Mitchell and the smooth, layered arrangements of Laurel Canyon in centerpieces like “In California” and “Good Intentions Paving Co.” Her songwriting, newly direct here, often concerns falling in and out of love, drinking and dancing, leaving home and coming back. Among the most beautiful ballads in her catalog, “Baby Birch” pairs her harp with electric guitar to stark, almost confessional effect; it’s the rare Newsom composition that could be drawn from the traditional American songbook. As the follow-up to 2006’s wildly ambitious Ys, even just the barroom title of Have One on Me seems to signal a more earthbound turn from a harpist who often composes with a full orchestra in mind. But through these songs, Newsom’s greatest asset remains the cosmic grandeur she brings to even the most familiar scenes. “You give love a little shove and it becomes terror,” she sings on “Soft as Chalk,” a quiet warning from a songwriter known to dissect the simplest truths until they turn mystical and strange. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/have-one-on-me/354800970?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F86403168%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d823b4c43566d0008bed8c3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Joanna-Newsom-Good-Intentions.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Joanna_Newsom-Have_One_on_Me_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,15,Kanye West,Yeezus (2013),Def Jam,"Def Jam It’s hard to listen to Yeezus and not think of its caustic opening squelch as the definitive moment when New Kanye was born. As that gurgly, disorienting sound pulses and convulses for 15 seconds, it feels like a laser is cutting a hole through spacetime. Kanye emerges from this portal as confident as ever, but he sounds angrier, uglier. His rapping is crude and labored; the rhymes are vulgar and the images are incendiary. Soul—the fulcrum of his past music, in design and affect—is supplanted by bitter, horny electricity. It feels as if Skynet sent a Terminator back in time exclusively to hip-thrust and shout obscenities in the town square. In 2013, the theater of Kanye scorching his public image was already a familiar show, but Yeezus felt like a plot twist because of its intensity. From the writing to the producing to the mixing, Kanye and his corps of writers and producers insist on provocation. The lyrics repurpose loaded terms like “god,” “slave,” and “apartheid” for relationship drama and petty screeds. Stripped down by executive producer Rick Rubin, the sound bed is just as bristling: the low-end hits like a tsunami, verses spazz into glitchy screams, wormholes to the chipmunk soul of Old Kanye materialize then blip out, digital effects swirl and explode like fireworks. The combination of these constant spasms and Kanye’s aggrandizement make the record feel like a toxic rager, but look closely and there’s a grace to its motion, an elegance to its seizures. The house, industrial, and drill influences he draws from are brandished as weapons but put to use as tools, sanding all this rage into music that is as slick as it is prickly. New Kanye, same old grandiose vision. –Stephen Kearse",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/yeezus/1440873068?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F20753857%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d702a3413ff690008c6eeed/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kanye-West-Blood-on-the-Leaves.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kanye_West-Yeezus_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,14,Lorde,Melodrama (2017),Universal,"Universal What do you do when your debut album, a goth-pop account of life as a teenage outsider in suburban New Zealand, turns you into a global superstar and generational icon at the age of 16, paving the way for a new wave of awkward, self-conscious pop disruptors to follow in your footsteps? You move to New York, hunker down in the studio with Jack Antonoff, and record, to date, this century’s greatest album-length exploration of the messy transition from teendom to adulthood. You capture heartbreak, hedonism, and the perils of fame with pointillistic detail. You eviscerate your ex and celebrate new love with enough gut-punching lines to launch a thousand Tumblr posts. You perform in a wedding dress on Saturday Night Live. You review onion rings on a secret Instagram account. You wait for the rest of the world to catch up. –Amy Phillips",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/lorde/melodrama | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/melodrama/1429662346?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F74892041%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d8904320480b10008ffa260/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lorde-Melodrama.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Lorde-Melodrama_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,13,Drake,Take Care (2011),Cash Money/Young Money/Republic,"Cash Money/Young Money/Republic Take Care’s album cover shows Drake, alone in the VIP, with little more than the cup that makes the Nazi’s head implode at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade for company. It is a perfect vacuum, where no subtlety can find breathable air; he may as well have named the album RICH GUY ENNUI, but damn if he didn’t earn his ludicrousness. So Far Gone was the breakthrough mixtape; Thank Me Later was the hype-fulfilling proper debut. Take Care went weirder, longer, deeper. The lushness and the sincerity flow forth from the first seconds of “Over My Dead Body”—the piano frills! the self-regarding unburdening!—and never stop. Even the hits are plaintive; a song as big as “HYFR” should have no right to be that earnest. On “Marvins Room,” quite possibly still the definitive Drake song, we get pitch-perfect generational oversharing: “Having a hard time adjusting to fame,” he actually says out loud. It’s strange to put on old Drake at a public function. One of the many Rules of Drake is “There Is Always New Drake.” That’s not to say his machine-like industriousness makes his old stuff obsolete. The new bangers are for everyone, so the classics become more intimate. Close the doors, pop on your headphones. This is him talking to you now. –Amos Barshad",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/drake/take-care-8a567e26-6a08-42e6-8e25-ffbc39ff8f99 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/take-care-deluxe-version/1440642493?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F14234315%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d8903d021339a000839699a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Drake-Take-Care.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Drake-Take_Care_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,12,Rihanna,ANTI (2016),Roc Nation/Westbury Road,"Roc Nation/Westbury Road With ANTI, Rihanna hopped off of the factory line, destroyed the mind-control machine, added some salt to the cafeteria’s chicken. She took risks and freed herself from mainstream pop expectations, cementing herself as a risk-taking, boundary-breaking godhead. Her eighth album moves from jarring, atonal rock to lackadaisical dancehall before switching up into sultry, sex-positive R&B. She bounces into a stoned torch song in which she’s all but crooning on top of a piano before, whiplash: a weird but brilliantly faithful cover of Tame Impala’s “New Person, Same Old Mistakes,” just because she can. Every left turn is delivered with her inimitable attitude and empowerment; every shrugged decision leads to a fascinating new journey. Upon ANTI’s release, the New York Times called it the “record you make when you don’t need to sell records” but, really, it’s the album Rihanna made when she no longer had to sell Rihanna. When it was released, she was enjoying the most freedom yet in her career: She’d been through her Saturn return, she’d swerved Drake, she’d jumped from Def Jam to Roc Nation and started her own imprint there. She’d acquired the masters of all the songs she’d recorded at Def Jam and was fully independent. She was ennobled to take a big, ambitious swing that could have broken at the seams, yet ANTI proved her modern rewriting of that old adage: Freedom’s just another word for no fucks left to give. –Allison P. Davis",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/rihanna/anti-146d4e95-dfc3-4346-87fb-56f89f0eda0b | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/anti-deluxe/1440933869?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F56681092%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d8905f35d366d000838ce6c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Rihanna-ANTI.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rihanna-ANTI_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,11,Grimes,Art Angels (2015),4AD,"4AD Grimes is a producer, a provocateur, a punk—and, yes, a pop star. By her own estimation, pop is “music that seeks to hit the pleasure center,” and Art Angels, replete with surging dance beats and saccharine girl-gang vocals, undeniably fits the bill. But on Claire Boucher’s fourth album, her pleasure comes cut with danger. Shrieks and snarls burn holes through the aptly named “SCREAM;” in one distinctive visual, she knifes herself and smears blood across her face; on “California,” a lyric about “commodifying all the pain” points to the sinister capitalist underpinnings of the entire pop enterprise. Along with mussing up pop’s slick surface with a generous coating of gore, on Art Angels, Boucher conspicuously styles herself as an auteur, challenging the notion that pop’s frontwomen are seen but not really heard without a cadre of industry men behind them. If such women are the product of a “pop star mold,” Grimes has left that mold noticeably warped. –Olivia Horn",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/grimes/art-angels | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/art-angels/1051022913?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F53699960%5D%5D | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tv9YoYCKNoE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d8904bc21339a000839699c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Grimes-Art-Angels.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Grimes-Art_Angels_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,10,Frank Ocean,Channel Orange (2012),Def Jam,"Def Jam Christopher Breaux began the decade as a recent transplant to Los Angeles who’d written a few minor songs for Justin Bieber and Brandy. He will end it as Frank Ocean, not just one of the most acclaimed musicians of his time but a trailblazer for artists’ autonomy and their freedom to express their sexuality. His legacy on the former was secured when he delivered one album to Def Jam and sold another immediately to Apple. The latter came years earlier when he published an open letter on Tumblr in which he came out as queer, one of the first men in R&B and rap to do so. But the album that accompanied that letter, Channel Orange, was not crafted to echo what ended up becoming a major cultural moment. Instead, Ocean’s studio debut is an unassuming, languid record; its drums shuffle along softly, cushioning Ocean's weightless vocals. It’s queer, too, in its own pure, nascent way: Across the span of an hour, Ocean slips into different narrative roles, including father, trust-funder, drug addict, Egyptian king, rock star. The act of inhabiting someone you are not is inherent to the queer experience; after all, pretending to be straight is nothing if not the assumption of a persona. Perhaps this informs Ocean’s richly observed characters, especially the subversive closer: On “Forrest Gump,” Ocean imagines himself within that movie’s universe, cheering on the well-meaning galoot playing running back. He sings of his fingertips and lips burning as he chain-smokes through his nerves, ending with a lilting outro—“Forrest green, Forrest blues/I’m remembering you/If this is love, I know it’s true/I won’t forget you”—that captures the peculiar, melancholic longing of the closet. His tenderness is unforgettable; even the second half of “Pyramids,” told from a pimp’s perspective, foregrounds the humanity of the woman who works for him. Channel Orange, above all, suggests the work of a profound empath, and in the seven years since its release, Ocean has shown himself to be nothing if not that. –Jordan Sargent",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/frank-ocean/channel-orange | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/channel-orange/1440760117?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F35181031%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d89085ed118d20008aff3df/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Frank-Ocean-Channel-Orange.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Frank_Ocean-Channel_Orange_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,9,D’Angelo & the Vanguard,Black Messiah (2014),RCA,"RCA After he released 2000’s steamy soul classic Voodoo, D’Angelo went into freefall, reeling from addiction, a near-fatal car crash, and the deleterious psychological consequences of starring in the thirst-trap video for “Untitled (How Does It Feel).” Black Messiah served as evidence that his decade-and-a-half sabbatical also brought about creative maturation. Played by the Vanguard band, the album’s painstakingly crafted R&B fusion veers from the twitchy groove of “Ain’t That Easy” to the Pointer Sisters-ish jazz-bop of “Sugah Daddy” to the delicate guitar balladry of “Really Love.” D’Angelo’s muffled falsetto obscures the lyrics of songs like “1000 Deaths” and “The Charade,” but on those tracks, he wades deep into issues like police brutality, putting the album in conversation with Kendrick Lamar’s activist classic To Pimp a Butterfly and the era’s #BlackLivesMatter concerns. Like one of those rare, exotic plants that only blooms every decade, D’Angelo only seems to gift us with a new album once a generation or two. But he always feels right on time. –Jason King",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/d-angelo-d9fb77d0-26c1-4144-8880-a4ea66056e8c/black-messiah | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/black-messiah/950764300?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F38967096%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d8902e20480b10008ffa25e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/DAngelo-Black-Messiah.jpg,/dataset/artwork/DAngelo__the_Vanguard-Black_Messiah_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,8,Robyn,Body Talk (2010),Interscope/Konichiwa/Cherrytree,"Interscope/Konichiwa/Cherrytree In 2010, Robyn rebooted. Five years after founding her own label and securing the artistic freedom she never had as a bubblegum-pop teen icon, the Swedish singer announced an ambitious plan to release three mini-albums in one year, recording and touring simultaneously to fund her efforts. The gamble paid off: Body Talk, the compilation of those releases, distills love, loneliness, and dancefloor euphoria into electro-pop perfection. Its legacy transcends just being a stellar record: Body Talk is the mark of a singular artist claiming her future. Body Talk reintroduces Robyn as an innovator and a powerhouse, as well as a woman with complexities to celebrate. She’s a hyper-optimized fembot rebelling against societal expectations; she’s a globetrotting badass you should know not to fuck with; she’s indestructible. These 15 songs surge forward with pulsating four-to-the-floor breakdowns, disco sparkles, and glitchy techno earworms (most produced by Klas Åhlund). But beneath Body Talk’s metallic armor is vulnerability: Robyn is an outsider seeking salvation on the dancefloor, who uses this space to spark the fire inside her. “Don’t you know when nothing ever seem to make sense/You put your dancing shoes on and do it again,” she proclaims on “In My Eyes.” A current of self-assuredness runs beneath Body Talk, even in its loneliest moments. The record’s two life-affirming hits, “Dancing on My Own” and “Call Your Girlfriend,” are vivid portrayals of heartache told from two sides of the same coin. In the former, she is brokenhearted but resilient, dancing her pain away at a nightclub among “stilettos and broken bottles.” In the latter, she is the one crushing hearts as she instructs her lover on how to ditch his girlfriend, imploring him to treat her with the respect and kindness she deserves. Robyn’s strength and empathy inspired a new generation of pop artists, from Carly Rae Jepsen to Perfume Genius, and the escapism her music offers is just as generous: Every song on Body Talk is an invitation to transform your own pain into triumph. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/robyn/body-talk | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/body-talk/1440714879?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Ftidal.com%252Fbrowse%252Falbum%252F35613356%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d8906f75d366d000838ce70/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Robyn-Body-Talk.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Robyn-Body_Talk_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,7,Vampire Weekend,Modern Vampires of the City (2013),XL,"XL Modern Vampires of the City was the moment when Vampire Weekend stopped knowing everything. Ezra Koenig turned his gaze from mansard roofs and diplomats’ children to wonder aloud about God and the nature of existence. Rostam Batmanglij, now working with producer Ariel Rechtshaid, crafted his most sentimental, stirring music yet. “If I can’t trust you then dammit, Hannah/There’s no future, there’s no answer,” Koenig sings softly on “Hannah Hunt,” interrogating a relationship in novelistic detail, winking toward hopelessness while suggesting that all the universe’s truths can be contained in a single love affair. Later, on “Ya Hey,” Koenig confronts God, asking how He could remain silent in a rotten world. Again, he seems to know the answer: There’s never an answer. –Matthew Strauss",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/vampire-weekend/modern-vampires | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/modern-vampires-of-the-city/613184430?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F20420782%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d88eb1d1f868e00096102b6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Vampire-Weekend-Hannah-Hunt.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Vampire_Weekend-Modern_Vampires_of_the_City_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,6,Solange,A Seat at the Table (2016),Columbia,"Columbia Every artist hopes to capture the zeitgeist, to make the right record at the right time. Yet only a handful can claim to have given voice to a movement, as Solange did with A Seat at the Table. At once deeply personal and unapologetically political, the album offers an honest reflection on race and identity in America in the twilight of the Obama era. The album’s rousing message of black empowerment is set forth in no uncertain terms on “F.U.B.U.”—For us, this shit is for us—and feels more urgent than ever as we approach the end of this tumultuous decade. More than just rage against the system, though, there’s a life-affirming joy in A Seat at the Table. On tracks like “Weary” and “Don’t Touch My Hair,” Solange rises above the insidious slights that come with moving through the world as a black woman, soaring toward a higher creative and emotional plane. That spiritual levity is buoyed by a series of conversational interludes, soul-bearing monologues from the singer’s friends and family. As Solange’s mother, Tina Knowles, opines, “It’s such beauty in black people.” –Chioma Nnadi",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/solange/a-seat-at-the-table-5b35d36f-7aae-42fe-a9bc-a33a293c618d | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/a-seat-at-the-table/1159507212?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F65425616%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d88f7d70480b10008ffa253/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Solange-Cranes-in-the-Sky.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Solange-A_Seat_at_the_Table_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,5,Fiona Apple,The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do (2012),Epic,"Epic With seven years between 2005’s Extraordinary Machine and The Idler Wheel, patience became a core tenet of Fiona Apple fandom. Even still, it’s hard to say anyone was prepared for the tempest that is this album. Apple’s fourth record and only release of this decade contains her most incisive, clear-eyed, and ambitiously sparse songs to date. Her smoky, operatic alto is a beacon for roving inner monologues on self-acceptance in the face of sadness and pain, whether offering wholehearted generosity in the face of a breakup on “Werewolf” or attempting to decelerate the rapid-fire pace of an overactive mind on “Every Single Night.” Here, she relies on her piano as a powerful duet partner, with winding melodies rambling amid many clattering instruments. Much of Idler Wheel is consumed by a sense of isolation, but as always, in Apple’s hands, it transforms into a salve for those of us who just want to feel everything we possibly can. –Eric Torres",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/idler-wheel-is-wiser-than-driver-screw-whipping-cords/1462213924?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F35290143%5D%5D | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIlLq4BqGdg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d89031bf452640008e4ee9b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Fiona-Apple-The-Idler-Wheel.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fiona_Apple-The_Idler_Wheel_Is_Wiser_Than_the_Driver_of_the_Screw_and_Whipping_Cords_Will_Serve_You_More_Than_Ropes_Will_Ever_Do_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,4,Kendrick Lamar,To Pimp a Butterfly (2015),Aftermath/Interscope/Top Dawg,"Aftermath/Interscope/Top Dawg When Kendrick Lamar released his third studio album, To Pimp a Butterfly, he spoke about the title’s contrast between a butterfly—delicate, bright, free—and “pimp”: a word that hearkens aggression, deviance, and exploitation. The album itself is a dance between this dichotomy, one black Americans know all too well: between pain and beauty and what happens when one is informed by the other. Lamar invites us to Compton to watch him sermonize from his front porch while jazz, funk, and soul bands rove through, providing the melodies to his experimental beats. With assists from Kamasi Washington, Thundercat, the Isley Brothers, and George Clinton, he shows the range and harmony of black creativity; with his sharp and empathetic lyrics, he gives us the playfulness and joy of “King Kunta,” the frustration and didacticism of “The Blacker the Berry,” and the plain hope of “Alright.” There’s music made by black people and then there’s black music: songs that hit you in the chest and make their way into your bloodstream, that become part of you. TPAB was released in the spring of 2015, three years after Trayvon Martin was gunned down, and over a year after Michael Brown and Eric Garner were murdered; Lamar knew that pain and knew, too, that more was to come. But with this album, he steeled us against the future and gave us not just anthems but prayers. He gave us the album he knew we’d need to keep going, as we always have. –Kara Brown",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/kendrick-lamar/to-pimp-a-butterfly | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/to-pimp-a-butterfly/1440828886?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F43732748%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d88fd1d09b36e0009899f3e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kendrick-Lamar-Alright.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kendrick_Lamar-To_Pimp_a_Butterfly_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,3,Beyoncé,Beyoncé (2013),Columbia,"Columbia “We be all night,” Beyoncé proclaimed on “Drunk in Love,” the most meme-ready track on her self-titled album. She was singing about riding her husband’s big body like a surfboardt, but she may as well have been referring to the way listeners gulped down Beyoncé, which dropped at midnight on a Thursday and seemed to envelop all of social media into the dawn hours while also revolutionizing how albums are conceived and released. The first major pop album to adapt to the way we listen to, and watch, music in the YouTube age, her first “visual album” couldn’t have worked if it weren’t Beyoncé at her absolute best. Over 14 tracks, she peels through her exhaustive musical vocabulary: married-woman trap bangers, ’80s-influenced roller-rink jams, grown-ass R&B, burlesque backseat scores, contemporary blues ballads. And then there was “Flawless,” which sampled Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s 2012 TEDX talk and helped establish Beyoncé as a fierce interpreter and purveyor of black feminist thought for the pop masses. It’s difficult to understate how enduringly Beyoncé shifted culture (“I woke up like this!”), reasserting the artist as a full-spectrum visionary who was also dreaming up the future, invigorating the industry, maturing in her marriage, and blossoming into first-time motherhood. There is no doubt we’ll still be discussing it for decades to come. –Julianne Escobedo Shepherd",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/beyonce/beyonce-45443330-666e-44be-b456-13ad69f81403 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/beyonc%C3%A9/939783754?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F37936030%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d89069e5d366d000838ce6e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Beyonce%25CC%2581-Beyonce%25CC%2581.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beyonc-Beyonc_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,2,Kanye West,My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010),Def Jam/Roc-A-Fella,"Def Jam/Roc-A-Fella The sheer audacity of Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is matched only by its overwhelming appetite. Born in a period of strife amid self-imposed exile, during a near-mythic island summit of rap superfriends in Hawaii, MBDTF is an exercise in God-level debauchery. It is at turns baroque and symphonic, with song-length Auto-Tuned codas, posse-cut performances that redefined the form, and an immense phantasmagoria of light and sound that threatens to overshadow its A-list cameos. It was a creation that accurately reflected West’s massive ego, in a period of rare bruising: By 2010, he’d drunkenly antagonized Taylor Swift, symbol of All-American sweetness, and been called a jackass by a sitting president. But instead of apologizing, Kanye conjured a warped, all-encompassing vision of excess, a toast to the assholes, a battle cry for fellow monsters. It was a huge risk that proved not just redemptive but deifying. MBDTF’s songs are meticulously designed set-pieces that ably house all their drama. West goes bar-for-bar with Raekwon on “Gorgeous,” leveling some of his sharpest critiques of race, class, and rap iconography, only moments after pairing beatmaking legends RZA and No I.D. together on an epic deserving of an opera house. The endearing douchebag anthem “Runaway” stripped Kanye of any remaining pretense, his singing bald and honest, and reintroduced Pusha T as his attack dog. With the industry in flux and rap sales lagging, the new landscape began to take shape in My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy’s wake. It spearheaded the first wave of great albums produced this decade; the two biggest rappers of the next generation, Drake and Kendrick Lamar, followed Kanye’s lead overtly on their breakthrough records. Bon Iver’s profile was exponentially boosted by this album. Pusha and Nicki Minaj aren’t really Pusha and Nicki Minaj without it. And for Kanye, MBDTF remains the most pristine jewel in a collection of rare artifacts—a perfectionist’s brush with perfection. –Sheldon Pearce",Platform: Rough Trade - Link: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8984099/type/dlg/sid/decadesalbums2010s/https://www.roughtrade.com/us/kanye-west/my-beautiful-dark-twisted-fantasy-b915ce78-8cc9-47a5-b4ff-915ea54f25a1 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/my-beautiful-dark-twisted-fantasy/1440742903?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F4875681%5D%5D,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d890641d118d20008aff3dd/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kanye-West-MBDTF.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kanye_West-My_Beautiful_Dark_Twisted_Fantasy_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,album,1,Frank Ocean,Blonde (2016),Self-released,"Self-released In 2016, the hinge year of a grotesque age, Frank Ocean’s cars were his confessional booths. They included a white Ferrari and a BMW X6; the Bugatti “left some stretch marks on the freeway,” as he remembers listlessly. To Ocean, the car is an Americana icon of certain ideals: freedom that turns solipsistic and reckless; materialism we worship as artistry; barrel-chested masculinity, queered on backroads. Above all, transience. Frank Ocean is the hinge artist of our time, the true voice of a generation because he takes long silences. With Blonde and its attendant works, his Boys Don’t Cry zine and Endless, he took his time building his staircase to somewhere. Elusive and independent, he weaves from genre to genre, sometimes shifting gears to obliterate category altogether, as he cruises past the conventions the culture still fears to let go. On Blonde, the languid guitar of surf rock coexists with soft doo-wop melodies; Frank the rapper—who is heady and occasionally, knowingly vulgar—coincides with Frank the singer, who is plaintive and longing. Sometimes, he just talks rhythmically, like in “Nights.” “Futura Free,” the triptych anchor of Blonde, moves from midtempo to atmospheric synth to a clanging guitar solo. The impressionistic lyrics mirror the feeling of wanting to disappear, for a spell: “Breathe till I evaporated/My whole body see through.” Songs evaporate on Blonde, too: they’re hazed, minimalist, capricious. The sweet, airy strum of “Pink + White” is hardened by its last few seconds, as we hear birds swarm. So, too, in “Ivy,” which starts off a masterpiece of cinematic lovesickness and then warps at its tail-end, ceding to a clang of instruments. The slight touches of distortion on Blonde call attention to impermanence, the trap of artifice, and, distantly, death. But Ocean is never sanctimonious; the whole point of existence is that a dark musing on morality can—and should—be interrupted by soft flesh, a sticky plant, a designer shirt. Live a little. Live too much. Because he is a writer first, he kinks his voice to suit his characters and his stories: On his cover of Stevie Wonder’s “Close to You,” a song about the fear of solitude, he multiplies and increases. On “Seigfried,” as he considers settling down for “two kids and a swimming pool,” his warble is warm, fragile, and resigned; then he almost shrieks, “I’m not brave!” It is an ache, a primal tearing of a social contract each generation learns is a lie. The year 2016 crystallized the political disaster right under the surface. People theorized that we needed anthems to get us through the dark night. Big choruses, hooks as wide as highway signs, regular percussion that could gird us from chaos. But our mood was languorous; jingoism was the problem in the first place. We wanted the blurred, the softened, the existential. “Inhale, in hell, there’s heaven,” Ocean sings on “Solo,” capturing the whiplash experience of being young in this country in one line. Blonde is one synonym for American. –Doreen St. Félix",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://geo.music.apple.com/us/album/blonde/1146195596?mt=1&app=music&at=1000l32vk&ct=decadesalbums2010s | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=17117&awinaffid=632498&clickref=decadesalbums2010s&p=%5B%5Bhttps%253A%252F%252Flisten.tidal.com%252Falbum%252F65484188%5D%5D | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHGqsnsuA3c,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d8907371f868e00096102c5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Frank-Ocean-Blonde.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Frank_Ocean-Blonde_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,200,Avicii,“Levels” (2011),Universal,"Universal As sampled in Avicii’s “Levels,” Etta James’ relatively modest claim that “Oh, sometimes I get a good feeling” felt impossibly aspirational for a generation of entry-level millennials dumped into an indifferent economy. In 2011, good feelings were rare and expensive, but it was possible to get one for free via a sparkling EDM hook. “Levels,” with its monumental synths and jetstream whooshes, took that potential and conquered the world with it. In hindsight, its sheer scale still feels staggering, but there’s a sinister undertone to it. Tim Bergling, who took his own life in 2018, at age 28, got his stage name from Avici, the hell-like realm in Buddhism where dead sinners are reborn. There is something punishing about “Levels,” which, like the office drone pushing a boulder up a mountain in its music video, seems to climb and climb without actually going anywhere, an illusion of transcendence that’s actually just plain old limbo. Electronic pop music of the early 2010s, from “Harlem Shake” to “Turn Down for What,” was punctuated by images of people in their boring jobs and dumpy apartments exploding into uncontrollable, spasmodic dancing—half joyful release, half exorcism. “Levels” is the sound of a generation hell-bent on having a good feeling, reality be damned. –Emily Yoshida",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ovdm2yX4MA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d6fdbf4b349080008010001/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Avicii-Levels.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Avicii-Levels_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,199,Stormzy,“Big for Your Boots” (2017),#Merky,"#Merky Before he was a world-famous MC, Stormzy got his start uploading DIY freestyle videos in which he spit nonstop bars over hard-edged grime beats in streets and parks near his South London home. So it makes sense that the knockout track from his eclectic debut album, Gang Signs & Prayer, simply showcases his high-octane rapping and palpable charisma over a jagged instrumental, proving that he deserves to take a seat next to grime greats like Dizzee Rascal and Wiley. On “Big for Your Boots,” Stormzy fires off a barrage of disses directed at his enemies and rap rivals. “You’re getting way too big for your boots/You’re never too big for my boot,” he raps in the chorus, emphasizing the last syllable with maniacal glee. Considering the fact that he’s 6-foot-5 and wears a size 12 shoe, any detractors would be wise to heed his warning. –Michelle Kim",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqQGUJK7Na4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d6fdb022409b8000823ce40/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Stormzy-Big-for-Your-Boots.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Stormzy-Big_for_Your_Boots_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,198,dvsn,“The Line” (2016),Self-released,"Self-released It's not explicitly about God, but the debut single from singer Daniel Daley and producer Nineteen85—better known as dvsn—is some kind of gospel, particularly if you consider falling in love to be a religious experience. Arriving the year before mainstream hip-hop reclaimed gospel via Chance the Rapper's Coloring Book and Kanye West’s “Ultralight Beam,” “The Line” has Daley showing off a preacher’s sense of mesmerizing repetition as he fills the song’s skeletal framework with melisma capable of stretching moments into eternities. By the time the choir hits about halfway into this epic slow jam, dvsn’s romantic redemption is secured. –Rich Juzwiak",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFbK3bJW54Y,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d6fdc66b6cdc300086117de/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/dvsn-The-Line.jpg,/dataset/artwork/dvsn-The_Line_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,197,Icona Pop,“I Love It” [ft. Charli XCX] (2012),Record Company Ten/Big Beat Records,"Record Company Ten/Big Beat Records Manic and apathetic at once, “I Love It” is a perfect display of post-breakup hedonism, written over a drop that keeps on dropping. Penned by then-upstart Charli XCX, it was delivered to Swedish twosome Icona Pop by the producer Patrik Berger, whose credits include Robyn’s similarly anthemic “Dancing on My Own”—though the duo differentiate their electropop catharsis by adding an edge of vengeance. Turn the bass up enough, Icona Pop suggest, and it can drown out the throbbing of your broken heart. –Olivia Horn",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxxajLWwzqY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d6fd8b06136e40008cfb25d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Icona-Pop-I-Love-It.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Icona_Pop-I_Love_It_ft_Charli_XCX_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,196,John Maus,“Believer” (2011),Ribbon Music/Upset the Rhythm,"Ribbon Music/Upset the Rhythm Like many of his lo-fi pop contemporaries in the early ’10s, reclusive Midwesterner John Maus pushed underground music forward by looking backward—rejecting digital studio techniques in favor of old drum machines and wonky synths, excavating the dramatic excesses of ’80s stadium pop and sentimental radio jingles as though they held clues to some hard-to-pinpoint generational subconscious. But his actual relationship to such sources could be hard to read: Was Maus poking fun at music’s power to manufacture an emotional response, like when we find ourselves crying in the middle of a commercial, or celebrating its potential to offer us a fleeting moment of ecstasy, a glimpse of a world that is better than our own? Arriving at the end of 2011’s We Must Be the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves with the cathartic finality of perfectly curated exit music, this song—with its glittering harpsichord arpeggios, briskly pulsing bass, and grandiose allusions to borderless love—is the closest Maus has ever come to being a true believer. –Emilie Friedlander",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMku-GbafEg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d6fdd8bb349080008010003/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/John-Maus-Believer.jpg,/dataset/artwork/John_Maus-Believer_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,195,Cloud Nothings,“I’m Not Part of Me” (2014),Carpark,"Carpark Out of the glut of lo-fi pop-punkers who emerged at the turn of the decade, Cloud Nothings frontman Dylan Baldi was the only one who got nastier with age. At the dead center of the band’s catalog lies “I’m Not Part of Me,” a song where Baldi lets all of his seemingly unworkable contradictions fight themselves into an exhausted standstill while tossing out an album’s worth of hooks in less than five minutes. It’s an insular type of empowering breakup song: “I’m not, I’m not you/You’re a part of me,” Baldi howls, a compact mantra for giving up the character defects and trauma that people hold onto because they confuse it with their identity. Don’t look back in anger, says “I’m Not Part of Me”—let it guide you forward. –Ian Cohen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74TP8QhupLU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d6fdeb99cec850008642de2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Cloud-Nothings-Im-Not-Part-of-Me.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Cloud_Nothings-Im_Not_Part_of_Me_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,194,Lil B,“Wonton Soup” (2010),BasedWorld,"BasedWorld Two true things: Lil B is a beatific vessel for galaxy-brain-level peace, love, and understanding. He also once tweeted “buttcheeks party grandma.” But spirituality need not bend to reason, and over this decade the Based God remained committed to his vision of untrammeled optimism and unbridled creative confidence, evolving from Bay Area blog savant into legitimate folk hero for the new school. “Wonton Soup” is the peak from this early period, when he first exploded into semi-mainstream consciousness. All his stylistic trademarks are on display: endless “woop” ad libs, hazy production, a monotone delivery that makes his absurd lyrics—he brags about being able to achieve orgasm “like 36 ways,” then compares himself to J.K. Rowling—sound like blissed-out Zen koans. It’s the best possible argument for BasedGodism, even better than a sermon. –Jeremy Gordon",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGYHEBpX2xQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d6fdfa72409b8000823ce42/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lil-B-Wonton-Soup.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lil_B-Wonton_Soup_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,193,Nilüfer Yanya,“Baby Luv” (2017),Blue Flowers/ATO,"Blue Flowers/ATO London upstart Nilüfer Yanya does a lot with a little on “Baby Luv.” The song spotlights her insistent guitar strums, her urgent vocals, and little else. Yanya makes the best of repetition, wielding certain words and phrases like blunt instruments. When she asks, “Do you like pain?” she follows the question with a single word—“again”—saying it over and over again until the word turns numb. It’s a great example of her restraint as a songwriter: Instead of spelling things out in bright red block letters, she selects a couple of choice words and blows them up for maximum impact. When she sings “call me sometime” in the song’s bridge, the familiar phrase assumes a new and menacing shape. –Madison Bloom",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmmQuNl_8xc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d6fe0e7b349080008010005/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Nilu%25CC%2588fer-Yanya-Baby-Luv.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nilfer_Yanya-Baby_Luv_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,192,Tame Impala,“Feels Like We Only Go Backwards” (2012),Modular,"Modular Tame Impala’s music is often pegged as brain-melting sonic exploration, but mastermind Kevin Parker also has a pop star’s understanding of emotion. Stripped down to melody and lyrics, “Feels Like We Only Go Backwards,” from 2012’s Lonerism, is a crushing meditation on dashed hopes and rejection. But with its galloping bass and kaleidoscopic, ever-shifting textures, it seems wistfully nostalgic, if not downright celebratory. You can hear why Kendrick Lamar, fresh off the contradictory impulses of his hit “Swimming Pools (Drank),” was drawn to rap over the song. And you can hear how Parker, in the span of a decade, went from headphones auteur to Coachella headliner. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6y3WqQnOm4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d6fe1b4b349080008010007/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Tame-Impala-Feels-Like-We-Only-Go-Backwards.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Tame_Impala-Feels_Like_We_Only_Go_Backwards_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,191,Rico Nasty,“Smack a Bitch” (2018),Sugar Trap,"Sugar Trap Go to a Rico Nasty show and you’ll see a swirling mob of teenage girls thrashing and jumping along to her every word. In the spirit of Bikini Kill’s “girls to the front” rallying cry, the rapper always calls for a female-only mosh pit when she’s about to play her most unruly material, purposefully making space for other young women to share their rage, too. This sense of uncontainable fury is what makes her breakout single, “Smack a Bitch,” so transfixing. Over a lurching, guitar-fueled instrumental produced by Kenny Beats, Rico yells, “Thank God, I ain’t have to smack a bitch today,” as if delivering blows is part of her normal routine. Pushing her delivery into near-psychotic territory, she declares, “Your ass is done,” before cackling maniacally. Rico takes absolutely no shit, and it’s refreshing to see. –Michelle Kim",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-D4happ4TQU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d6fe2e92409b8000823ce45/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Rico-Nasty-Smack-a-Bitch.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rico_Nasty-Smack_a_Bitch_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,190,Ty Dolla $ign,“Paranoid” [ft. B.o.B] (2013),Atlantic,"Atlantic Ty Dolla $ign’s biggest, best single was one of many hits in the early half of the decade to flaunt producer DJ Mustard’s minimalist touch, realigning R&B with house music. Still, “Paranoid” stands out, its spacious snap-and-pop production setting the stage for our narrator to hit the club only to encounter two girls he’s seeing, both of whom are wearing matching heels and “the same damn fragrance.” Ty wonders if it’s some sort of set-up or if it’s all just in his head. This internal debate is punctuated by his own quivering backing vocals, a Greek chorus commenting on a twisted spin through modern romance. –Jordan Sargent",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cC2ZgCEaLWs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d6fe37cb6cdc300086117e0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ty-Dolla-Sign-Paranoid.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Ty_Dolla_ign-Paranoid_ft_BoB_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,189,J Balvin / Willy William,“Mi Gente (Remix)” [ft. Beyoncé] (2017),Scorpio Music,"Scorpio Music Much of what makes Colombian singer J Balvin’s “Mi Gente” sizzle—that audacious drumbeat, that insistent five-note vocal melody—is lifted from Mauritian-French singer Willy William’s 2017 track “Voodoo Song,” which itself reinterprets a sample from the Indian composer Akassh. No wonder “Mi Gente” was such a global, cross-culture sensation. Balvin worked with William to reinvent the source material, adding Spanish lyrics, chants, and ferocious Latin percussion. His lines like “el mundo nos quiere” (“the world wants us”) transform the song into a universal call to the dancefloor, an embrace of solidarity and unification at a time of enormous worldwide polarization. Aided on the remix by Beyoncé, who audaciously tackles Spanish and ups the diva ante, “Mi Gente” became the first all-Spanish song to reach the top of Spotify’s Global Top 50 chart. It remains a testament to pop music’s ability to push back against growing neo-nationalist fervor—there was no border, no wall, that could keep people from coming together and loving this song. –Jason King",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APHgDFRpCi0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d6fe4429cec850008642de4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/J-Balvin-Willy-William-Mi-Gente.jpg,/dataset/artwork/J_Balvin__Willy_William-Mi_Gente_Remix_ft_Beyonc_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,188,Future,“Incredible” (2017),Epic/Freebandz,"Epic/Freebandz On “Incredible,” Future’s giddy ode to rebound romance, he and his new woman do hot yoga together and send each other “XO” texts. But he isn’t just intoxicated with this fresh love—his zeal for money and jewelry (and Vicodin) loom just as large in his lyrics. Meanwhile, the song’s hook is so simple and so instant—basically, an Auto-Tune hiccup of the title phrase—that it’s a wonder it hadn’t been done before. Producer Dre Moon frames the rapper’s warble in moonlit synths and limber bass for an effect as frothy as an island cocktail. There’s an extra glimmer of hope in hearing such unabashed exuberance from Future in light of his long history of zonked-out moroseness. “I’ma do whatever it’s gon’ take to keep my baby spoiled,” he vows happily, sounding like he truly means it. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ql_hDyyeO-Q,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d6fe628b34908000801000c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Future-Incredible.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Future-Incredible_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,187,Thom Yorke,“Dawn Chorus” (2019),XL,"XL The death of Thom Yorke’s longtime partner, Rachel Owen, in late 2016 casts a shadow over “Dawn Chorus,” the emotional center of his solo album Anima. Though the pair had split about 18 months before her passing, it’s impossible to not feel like he’s reflecting, however obliquely, on his own loss. “I think I missed something, but I’m not sure what,” he says in a murmur that makes it seem like he’s dragging his voice across the floor reluctantly. “In the middle of the vortex the wind picked up/Shook up the soot from the chimney pot into spiral patterns of you my love.” The term “dawn chorus” describes the sound birds make at sunrise during mating season. Nature lovers can’t get enough of it, but here, Yorke calls it a “bloody racket.” That seems off for him, to criticize the organic world. In a state of mourning, though, something that should be sweet can often turn sour. With this song, at least, Yorke makes it sound beautiful. –Matthew Schnipper",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d6fe7399cec850008642de6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Thom-Yorke-Dawn-Chorus.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Thom_Yorke-Dawn_Chorus_2019.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,186,Skepta,“Shutdown” (2015),Boy Better Know Entertainment,"Boy Better Know Entertainment Skepta’s 2015 hit “Shutdown” serves as the decade’s ultimate London anthem: catchy enough to elevate slang to lexicon, hard enough to burst from the world’s weediest soundsystem, and worldly enough to shut down both the Arc de Triomphe and Central Park, as the rapper teases in the song. In a satirical mid-song skit, an unfeasibly posh woman laments the “intimidating” presence of men in hoodies on her TV, alluding to Kanye West’s grime takeover of the 2015 BRIT Awards, which featured Skepta alongside many of the genre’s stars. With this flourish, Skepta’s single rejects battle-rap showboating and zeroes in on the real bête-noire: the snoots who clutch pearls when black MCs breach the nation’s living rooms. The promise of a new, emancipatory grime wave has since resonated loud and clear, on the UK’s biggest stages and beyond. –Jazz Monroe",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQOG5BkY2Bc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d6feb12b34908000801000e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Skepta-Shutdown.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Skepta-Shutdown_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,185,Sharon Van Etten,“Seventeen” (2019),Jagjaguwar,"Jagjaguwar Sharon Van Etten’s best songs are often marked by their restraint: There’s a feeling that her husky and wide-ranging voice, along with her roiling guitars, could run off the rails, but they’re held in place by her steadfast sense of control. “Seventeen,” from this year’s Remind Me Tomorrow, stretches this idea to the limit—and then careens right past it. The song is immaculately arranged, a lockstep keyboard-rock anthem that’s artfully mussed with synth wobbles and Van Etten’s quavering vocals. But then, as her ambivalent reflections on a youthful doppelgänger wind down, she unleashes a full-throated scream: “Afraid that you’ll be just like me,” she bellows, losing her cool but gaining something even fiercer. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7sTHoeH0eA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d6fec5eb6cdc300086117e4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sharon-Van-Etten-Seventeen.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sharon_Van_Etten-Seventeen_2019.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,184,Frank Ocean,“Chanel” (2017),Blonded,"Blonded After releasing Blonde in 2016, Frank Ocean spent the next year trickling out a series of singles that built upon that album’s fluid confidence. “Chanel” is the first and best of them, capturing an artist in total command of his faculties as a singer, writer, and rapper. There isn’t much to it in terms of melody or structure. The piano chords are simple and translucent; the beat ambles casually. It’s all about Frank and the places his words can take you: a heated swimming pool in the hills, a Tokyo back alley, the first-class lounge at the Delta terminal. Listen closely, and “Chanel” also reveals itself to be a meditation on masculinity, one that alternately embraces it, subverts it, and points out its absurdity. Beneath it all, there’s a romantic ripple, too, as a relationship that seemed casual and disposable is revealed, almost shyly, to mean something more. This is Frank’s gift, the ability to build worlds of meaning and emotion into a song that has the casual grace of a freestyle. –Jamieson Cox",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnbsIl2BnWw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d6fece39cec850008642de8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Frank-Ocean-Chanel.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Frank_Ocean-Chanel_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,183,Young M.A,“OOOUUU” (2016),M.A Music/3D,"M.A Music/3D Young M.A’s breakthrough single oozes the kind of confidence you can’t fake. Against a loose, snare-heavy beat, she raps breezily about sex with other women—a rarity in hip-hop that she plays off nonchalantly amid lines about getting drunk and cracking jokes with friends. An out stud in an industry that’s still deciding how to digest queer musicians, M.A used “OOOUUU” to carve out a judgment-free zone where she can be herself and feel herself, where she isn’t an outsider but the queen of her own domain. The coyote howl of the title is both a tease and a triumph, the sound of finally feeling at home in your own skin and inviting others to play along with you. –Sasha Geffen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVf_4Ns3qLU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d6fedcb9cec850008642dea/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Young-MA-OOOUUU.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Young_MA-OOOUUU_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,182,Beyoncé,“XO” (2013),Columbia,"Columbia “XO” is about more than the saccharine simplicity of dreamy hugs and kisses. It begins with a clip of the crew of the Challenger realizing the malfunction on their spaceship, giving the love story that follows an undercurrent of mortality. On the surface, the slow-building track is an airy breather after the erotic, liberatory journey of the rest of Beyoncé’s self-titled 2013 album; the synth drops, and so does the snare drum, creating a soundscape that draws from rock, reggae, and EDM. Meanwhile, Beyoncé’s voice is raw, almost growling, a sound we have never heard from her before. (Turns out she had a sinus infection during the recording.) In the video, Beyoncé is at a carnival, flashing us one gorgeous smile after another. But carnivals themselves are a form of trickery: youthful joy on the surface, covering a shadowy underbelly. Like the spell of love and the threat it could end, “XO” deftly balances joy and sorrow; it’s a cautionary tale of beautiful things that sometimes head to untimely endings. –Samhita Mukhopadhyay",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xUfCUFPL-8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d6feeda2409b8000823ce47/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Beyonce%25CC%2581-XO.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beyonc-XO_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,181,Migos,“Bad and Boujee” [ft. Lil Uzi Vert] (2016),Quality Control,"Quality Control The runaway success of “Bad and Boujee” created its own pop culture ecosystem. The Migos became mainstream stars. “Rain drops, drop tops” became a catchphrase. Takeoff’s absence from the track became a memeable conspiracy theory. The song itself is a perfect distillation of everything that makes the Migos irresistible: a Gucci Mane-derived gift for quotables, a sizzling Metro Boomin beat, ad-libs for days, and an ear for perfectly placed guest stars—in this case, a before-he-was-huge Lil Uzi Vert, rapping about falling asleep in a jacuzzi. Soon enough, the Migos were matching chart feats once set by the Beatles, cementing their status as generational titans. –Jonah Bromwich",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mq2ukdhyhQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d6fef1c2409b8000823ce49/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Migos-Bad-and-Boujee.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Migos-Bad_and_Boujee_ft_Lil_Uzi_Vert_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,180,Sons of Kemet,“My Queen Is Harriet Tubman” (2018),Impulse!,"Impulse! The U.S. Treasury Secretary continues to balk at the rollout of a new $20 bill featuring abolitionist Harriet Tubman. Meanwhile, do-it-yourself Tubman rubber stamps are perpetually out of stock, suggesting that many Americans might concur with Sons of Kemet and the British-born, Barbados-raised saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings’ bold declaration that “My Queen Is Harriet Tubman.” The unrelenting highlight of the band’s Impulse! debut, Your Queen Is a Reptile, “Harriet Tubman” unites African-American jazz and Afro-Caribbean soca. But UK sounds also bubble up on the track, from the punk sneer inherent in that title to the dubstep wobble in tuba player Theon Cross’ huffed frequencies. And then there’s Hutchings’ own breathless solo, his staccato shrieks matching the rapidfire flow of grime. Drawing on many musical heritages, “Harriet Tubman” also moves forward, its sound igniting the spirit of all future freedom fighters. –Andy Beta",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twjaSC5Ym9s,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d6ff0519cec850008642dec/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sons-of-Kemet-My-Queen-Is-Harriet-Tubman.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sons_of_Kemet-My_Queen_Is_Harriet_Tubman_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,179,Rich Kidz,“My Life” [ft. Waka Flocka Flame] (2012),Self-released,"Self-released “My Life” feels like it came from a different century. The uncut bombast of Atlanta rap group Rich Kidz’ towering tune was laced by producer London on da Track, but its pure sonic overload was lovingly ripped from the gigantic sound popularized by Lex Luger, before a variety of issues drove him off the map for the rest of the decade. Waka Flocka Flame’s contributions to the song resemble a pack of sound effects played all at once, evoking the smoking-barrel chaos of his own 2010 masterpiece, Flockaveli, though the rapper’s career is currently mired in reality-TV purgatory. Even Rich Kidz’ Skooly and RK Kaelub are no longer making music together anymore. But no matter what’s happened since, “My Life” is still a Kool-Aid-colored diamond that hasn’t lost any of its blinding sparkle. –Larry Fitzmaurice",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsHBIZWmA-o,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7007b1b6cdc3000861181a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Rich-Kidz-My-Life.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rich_Kidz-My_Life_ft_Waka_Flocka_Flame_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,178,The 1975,“The Sound” (2016),Dirty Hit,"Dirty Hit “The Sound” has all the hallmarks of a great 1975 song: a sticky chorus, bouncing neon synths, Matty Healy name-dropping Greek philosophers and promptly calling himself a cliché. It’s fun and clever and anthemic while taking the piss out of big anthems at the same time. Above all the roaring maximalism, Healy is tuned to the sound of his many, many desires: for attention, sex, intellectual validation, intimacy, and, quite possibly, immortality. With this, he embodies a very millennial mindset: as eager to promote himself as he is to air all of his insecurities. –Matthew Strauss",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSnAllHtG70,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7008309cec850008642dee/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-1975-The-Sound.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_1975-The_Sound_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,177,A Tribe Called Quest,“The Space Program” (2016),Epic,"Epic A Tribe Called Quest have never been conscious or woke in the way that so many of the best-intentioned rappers are. Instead, they adopt the playful, nihilistic tone of high cultural gatekeepers, turning it back onto those same gatekeepers over kick snare and hi-hat. So it was deeply satisfying to hear the group strike as strongly as ever after 18 years of downtime on “The Space Program,” where they chuckle at the idea that NASA is anything more than a segregated train car, meant to take the rich to space and leave everyone else right where we’re at. Over soft-touch keyboards and guitars that pick up where 1996’s Beats Rhymes and Life left off, the song opens up We got it from Here... Thank You 4 Your service, Tribe’s final album of tongue-in-cheek musings on the current state of the world and the weekend. “Let's make something happen,” is the mantra, one anybody with a pulse can feel. We got it from Here... is fossilized by the passing of Phife Dawg shortly after its release, and this track captures a group, a sound, and a spirit that fought to the last second to exist in a world that remained alien to it. –Matthew Trammell",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTrqmNieVKI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7008bb2409b8000823ce4f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/A-Tribe-Called-Quest-The-Space-Program.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/A_Tribe_Called_Quest-The_Space_Program_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,176,Sampha,“(No One Knows Me) Like the Piano” (2017),Young Turks,"Young Turks When it came time for Sampha to write and record his debut album, the UK singer was in mourning. His mother, whom he’d lived with and cared for in London, had died of cancer. The resulting LP, Process, is a deeply personal look at the painful and, at times, transformative power of grief, and nowhere is that more apparent than on “(No One Knows Me) Like the Piano.” The ballad finds Sampha anthropomorphizing the piano in his mother’s home, which was purchased by his father, who passed away when Sampha was young. The instrument is likened to a childhood friend who helped him channel his despair into song. As Sampha narrates his coming of age, the hiss of room tone and the cooing of birds can be heard deep in the mix. The effect is one of intimacy, of being welcomed into a private moment of respite. –Gabriela Tully Claymore",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NSuIYwBxu4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d70098f2409b8000823ce51/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sampha-No-One-Knows-Me-Like-the-Piano.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sampha-No_One_Knows_Me_Like_the_Piano_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,175,Nicki Minaj,“Come on a Cone” (2012),Cash Money/Young Money/Republic,"Cash Money/Young Money/Republic Nicki Minaj may have become a star off of sugar-rush pop-rap anthems, but her status as one of the fiercest MCs of the decade was established by tracks like “Come on a Cone”: punchy, barb-laced polemics displaying crushing levels of pettiness and animus. Easily one of the most dynamic rap performances of the past 10 years, “Come on a Cone” is unswerving, deservedly smug, and incredibly funny. Nicki wields her flashy fashion show front-row status as a weapon that reinforces her power: “When I’m sittin’ with Anna/I’m really sittin’ with Anna/Ain’t a metaphor, punchline—I’m really sittin’ with Anna,” she barks. “Just admit that I’m winnin’,” she declares, and if you don’t, well... there’s a certain appendage Nicki would like to stick in your face. –Sheldon Pearce",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pl35X82lF3Q,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d700a0ab349080008010010/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Nicki-Minaj-Come-on-a-Cone.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nicki_Minaj-Come_on_a_Cone_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,174,Florence and the Machine,“Shake It Out” (2011),Universal Republic/Island,"Universal Republic/Island Take a look at the YouTube comments for Florence and the Machine’s “Shake It Out”: Eight years after its release, the song is still helping people get through breakups, depression, illness, and even a prison sentence. Such are the healing powers of Florence Welch’s gale-force vocals delivering a message of hope and perseverance over florid gospel-pop that sounds like the sun breaking through after a storm. Florence’s multi-platinum 2009 debut album Lungs introduced the London singer to the world stage, but it was “Shake It Out” and its accompanying album, 2011’s Ceremonials, that cemented her place as an arena and festival headliner—a position she maintains to this day. Few moments in pop this decade have delivered this level of ecstatic catharsis; only big rooms and big crowds can do it justice. –Amy Phillips",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbN0nX61rIs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d700b746136e40008cfb298/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Florence-and-the-Machine-Shake-It-Out.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Florence_and_the_Machine-Shake_It_Out_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,173,DJ Khaled,"“I’m on One” [ft. Drake, Rick Ross, and Lil Wayne] (2011)",Epic,"Epic You’d be forgiven for wondering why the guy who does the ad-libs has top billing on this star-studded 2011 posse cut. But here, DJ Khaled shows his gift for executive production, assembling a showcase for three of hip-hop’s biggest artists. Everyone sounds laid-back and in their zone: Rick Ross leans into the fabulist drug kingpin fantasy he established on Teflon Don, and Lil Wayne is at his most casually confident (“You niggas on the bench like the bus coming”). But Drake steals the show, drowning in his double cup while taking shots at the throne, perfectly paired to a beat from fellow Canadians T-Minus, Nikhil S., and Noah “40” Shebib that’s laced with synthesizers that sing like sirens. Considering the hook is also lifted from Drake’s “Trust Issues,” this song is as much his as Khaled’s, a summer anthem that helped reinforce the hit-making status of all involved. –Matthew Ismael Ruiz",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z09lYqdxqzo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d700c842409b8000823ce53/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/DJ-Khaled-Im-on-One.jpg,/dataset/artwork/DJ_Khaled-Im_on_One_ft_Drake_Rick_Ross_and_Lil_Wayne_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,172,Sleep,“Marijuanaut’s Theme” (2018),Third Man,"Third Man Doom metal trio Sleep became legends by doing a few simple things very well. They played slow. They played loud. They made smoking pot sound like an epic journey on par with Lord of the Rings. So when the band returned with their first new album in 15 years in 2018, the fact that their gnarly riffs sounded just as inspired as they did in the ’90s was worth celebrating. Metal played at torpid speed often seems to invoke the apocalypse, and a colossal solo from guitarist Matt Pike in “Marijuanaut’s Theme” certainly suggests some kind of destruction. But Sleep’s new music was remarkable for sounding equally combustive and comfortable in its freefall through space. Close your eyes, they seem to say, There is a band playing in your head, and they are getting high. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMUaWc46_0U,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d700d096136e40008cfb29a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sleep-Marijuanauts-Theme.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sleep-Marijuanauts_Theme_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,171,Adele,“Rolling in the Deep” (2011),Columbia/XL,"Columbia/XL In the first line of “Rolling in the Deep,” Adele warns us of a coming fire, then she burns everything to the ground. The lead single from the mega-selling breakup album 21 transformed her into a global star, and she has hardly made anything like it since. The lyrics quickly abandon hell-hath-no-fury cliché: By the pre-chorus, the boiling anger has cooled into sadness, revealing protruding scars. The music follows suit—Adele once described the song as “dark bluesy gospel disco,” which feels like the made-up sub-genre she was born to sing. Her vocal control, the way she allows melisma to curl around the edges of her voice, is like a superpower that needed this song to reveal it. –Rich Juzwiak",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?hl=it&v=rYEDA3JcQqw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d700dbd6136e40008cfb29c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Adele-Rolling-in-the-Deep.png,/dataset/artwork/Adele-Rolling_in_the_Deep_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,170,Lil Peep,“Kiss” (2016),Self-released,"Self-released Lil Peep’s “Kiss” sounds like two or three songs staggering home together. The sampled guitars might be from a Modern Baseball song, or maybe another Lil Peep song entirely, and the first voices on the track are a half-buried sample of the California pop-punk band Better Luck Next Time; the echoes run together the same way that incoming headlights smear into one beam when you squint. Produced by Smokeasac, Peep’s closest and most intimate creative partner, the song begins pickled in that signature Peep weariness, but then a second song seems to yawn and wake up inside the first one. This is a cautiously exultant one, a rare Peep anthem of bashful hope instead of despair: “One more chance, baby give me a kiss/Ya got one more chance for a night like this,” he sings. It has the lifespan of a soap bubble, this fleeting burst of euphoria. You feel the urge to protect it. –Jayson Greene",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPQa_4gzjdA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d700e4f2409b8000823ce55/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lil-Peep-Kiss.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lil_Peep-Kiss_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,169,St. Vincent,“New York” (2017),Loma Vista,"Loma Vista Surrounded by hypersexual synth workouts and fuzzed-to-all-hell basslines, this bare piano ballad is the heartrending centerpiece of MASSEDUCTION, Annie Clark’s fifth album as St. Vincent. The song’s intimate verses, cribbed from Clark’s own text messages to old friends, honor people and places who may have drifted away but will never be completely out-of-mind. “You’re the only motherfucker in the city who can stand me,” she sings. The chorus, meanwhile, zooms out into the cosmos, as she pays homage to fallen musical heroes like David Bowie and Prince. It’s a song about living, loving, and losing in the big city—and not regretting any of it. –Noah Yoo",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TPqUvy1vYU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d700ed0b6cdc3000861181c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/St-Vincent-New-York.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/St_Vincent-New_York_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,168,King Krule,“Dum Surfer” (2017),XL,"XL On “Dum Surfer,” King Krule’s Archy Marshall showed that, aside from his beatmaking prowess and lounge-lizard loucheness, he could also pen a terse rocker. Singing with the affect of a boxer with a plugged nose, he veers between emotional extremes, calling out a band as “fucking trash” while sounding miserably convinced of his own fallibility. A snaking baritone sax and smoky dub effects blur the song’s edges until even the name-calling title subtly shifts to a gentle adage: “Don’t suffer.” Had it come a few generations before, it might have made Krule into alternative rock royalty alongside the Pixies or Sonic Youth. Instead, it made fans of everyone from weirdo-jazz ensemble Standing on the Corner to Beyoncé. –Andy Beta",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/k2HRzIyyXvU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7010919cec850008642e24/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/King-Krule-Dum-Surfer.jpg,/dataset/artwork/King_Krule-Dum_Surfer_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,167,Tinashe,“2 On” [ft. Schoolboy Q] (2014),RCA,"RCA Produced by L.A. hitmaker DJ Mustard, “2 On” is widescreen and intricately sculpted: Its curling, high-toned bassline seems to whir and chime, and its descending roll of pizzicato synth-drums are so ear-catching that they compete with the gorgeous vocal melody. “2 On” is Tinashe’s term for being too high—intoxication chased to the edge of oblivion. Her lyrics ripple with references to liquor and smoke, and the song’s forthright celebration of “getting faded till we trip” may well have contributed to it only reaching No. 24 on the Hot 100. (“Live fast, die young, that’s my choice” does sound nihilistic, admittedly.) But Tinashe’s sensuous, slurred lingering over the chorus “I luuuuu to get 2 on” is joyous and life-affirming, a million miles from the deadened hedonism of so much trap. Dissolution has never sounded so delicious. –Simon Reynolds",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s7TCuCpB5c,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7010dfb349080008010012/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Tinashe-2-On.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Tinashe-2_On_ft_Schoolboy_Q_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,166,Bad Bunny,“Caro” (2018),Rimas,"Rimas Bad Bunny was already one of the biggest acts in música urbana when his knockout debut LP X 100PRE dropped in 2018, and the album’s fourth single, “Caro,” offered the clearest picture of his brilliance. It’s the perfect vessel for his suave sadboi aesthetic: laid-back yet full of bounce, draped in woozy synths and atmospheric coos that ground his nimble flow. It’s romantic yet political in its expression of the universal human desire to live one’s truth freely: “¿En qué te hago daño a ti?/Y solamente soy feliz,” he croons (“How have I hurt you?/I’m just happy”). “Caro” became a defining moment for Bad Bunny: In the wake of a homophobic backlash to his whimsical sartorial choices and predilection for freshly manicured nails, its video doubled down with a rejection of traditional gender roles and toxic masculinity. The stunning clip includes a female Bad Bunny stand-in and a drag queen working the runway, and, during the song’s incandescent bridge featuring none other than Ricky Martin, Bad Bunny himself is seen receiving kisses from both a man and a woman. With “Caro,” the Puerto Rican star flipped a few scripts that badly needed it. –Matthew Ismael Ruiz",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bg64AFnRnkc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d701216b349080008010014/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bad-Bunny-Caro.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bad_Bunny-Caro_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,165,Jessica Pratt,"“Back, Baby” (2014)",Drag City,"Drag City Like waiting out a snowstorm indoors, Jessica Pratt’s sophomore album On Your Own Love Again has an isolating power. Amid its hazier material, “Back, Baby” is its clearest transmission, with a melody as familiar as an oldies radio standard. And yet Pratt’s delivery—strange, sad, slightly off-kilter—gives the sense of someone more interested in drowning out the world than inviting it in. Alongside strums of a nylon string guitar, she cycles through the song’s bobbing refrains and wordless choruses, her voice sewn through with an intensity that belies its understated presentation. “Sometimes I pray for the rain,” she sings as the sun peeks through the blinds. But even at her most upbeat, there’s a tinge of sadness, knowing all storms must pass. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3YxJ1OYrVo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7012946136e40008cfb29e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jessica-Pratt-Back-Baby.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Jessica_Pratt-Back_Baby_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,164,Andrés,“New for U” (2012),La Vida,"La Vida Saying there’s not much to Andrés’ “New for U” might not be wrong, but it misses the point. Simple tools are almost always the most effective, as the Detroit DJ proves here. Using a lovely little string melody as its main flourish, “New for U” straddles the line between symphonic disco and house music. With its occasionally washed out vibe, it has the feel of being prewritten to play the way a great DJ would deploy it, teasing out its peaks. Once the DJ for the Motor City rap group Slum Village, Andrés released a considerable amount of music this decade, but nothing competed with this track’s restrained power. –Matthew Schnipper",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqmlXTN3GPQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d70133802a1db000895d81b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Andre%25CC%2581s-New-for-U.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Andrs-New_for_U_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,163,Davido,“Fall” (2017),Sony,"Sony Prior to 2017, Nigerian Afropop singer Davido had already established himself as one of Africa’s premier artists, but “Fall” turned him into a star the world over. Who can blame everyone for falling in love with the song’s soft melody and Davido’s tricky charisma? Every line is uttered with both mesmerizing cockiness and vulnerability. “I don’t wanna be a player no more,” he pleads, raising his pitch. In the back half of the 2010s, Afropop exploded in popularity, with countless artists attempting to hop on the trend. “Fall” was instrumental in continuing to widen the influence of Nigeria’s music on Western culture, becoming an international anthem along the way. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Iyuym-Gci0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7013a99cec850008642e26/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Davido-Fall.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Davido-Fall_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,162,Chance the Rapper,“No Problem” [ft. 2 Chainz and Lil Wayne] (2016),Self-released,"Self-released The most maximalist single from Chance the Rapper’s Coloring Book, “No Problem” drapes layered gospel samples from every corner, like streamers bedecking a birthday party. The song bursts with childlike joy, from Chance’s raspy laughs in the hook to the dizzying turns by its superstar guests. 2 Chainz comes in with swift, blunt punches, while Weezy takes his time, delivering the best flex of the entire track: “Fuck the watch, I buy a new arm.” But all those bells and whistles can’t conceal the sharp knives these MCs have tucked behind their backs. “If one more label try to stop me,” Chance barks, “It’s gon’ be some dread head niggas in ya lobby.” It’s a threat uttered through a smile, making this jubilant ode to independence sound that much more determined. –Madison Bloom",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVkkYlQNmbc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d70141402a1db000895d81d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Chance-the-Rapper-No-Problem.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Chance_the_Rapper-No_Problem_ft_2_Chainz_and_Lil_Wayne_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,161,Vybz Kartel,“Clarks” [ft. Popcaan and Gaza Slim] (2010),Cr203,"Cr203 Months after squashing a bitter rivalry with fellow dancehall icon Mavado that involved a dizzying stretch of singles, a peace concert, and a summit shepherded by Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding, Vybz Kartel dialed things back to deliver a fashion anthem that paid homage to that most classic of song topics: simply keeping the ’fit straight and the kicks clean. Kartel is both light-hearted and funny over the “Mad Collab” riddim, giving his pops fashion daps (“Mi pattern mi daddy from mi was a youngster”), explaining proper Wallabees hygiene (“Toothbrush get out the dust fast”), and styling a whole look (“Real badman no model inna shorts”). He also allowed his protégé, a young upstart named Popcaan, to bless the track with a verse that includes the line “the queen fi England haffi love off Yardie,” honoring a Jamaican predilection for the British footwear brand Uptown Yardie that reflects Jamaican migration to England. But more than anything, “Clarks” offers Kartel a chance to rep his own shoe rack. As he told The Guardian in 2010, “I personally have more than 50 pair of Clarks. I have more than there are states in America.” –Julianne Escobedo Shepherd",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFYtre2q6uo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7014e2b6cdc3000861181e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Vybz-Kartel-Clarks.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Vybz_Kartel-Clarks_ft_Popcaan_and_Gaza_Slim_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,160,Odd Future,“Oldie” (2012),Odd Future,"Odd Future “Oldie” is a Russian nesting doll where the prize at the center is the first Earl Sweatshirt appearance following his fabled exile in Samoa. Though the last song on The OF Tape Vol. 2 features the whole crew—even Frank—taking turns rapping, the whole point is that one verse. It’s a knotty, 40-bar exercise that confirmed what those who’d waded through Tumblr to find his early work already knew: bar for bar, Earl is a generational talent, impervious to hype. A few years later, on his album I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside, Earl plainly stated what had been true all along: “If I’m on the track, these niggas skip to me.” –Paul A. Thompson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzi24Nssiow,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d70162402a1db000895d81f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Odd-Future-Oldie.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Odd_Future-Oldie_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,159,Katy B,“Katy on a Mission” (2010),Columbia/Rinse,"Columbia/Rinse “Katy on a Mission” began as “Man on a Mission,” a dubstep cut by producer Benga. But then Katy B’s remake went Top 5 in the UK, decisively punting out the titular “Man,” and making the young London singer not just the face of underground dance music, but a mirror for dance-pop at large too. Katy is neither a belter nor a cooing soubrette but an everygirl, imbuing her vocals with relatable frankness and yearning. On “Katy on a Mission,” she’s both a poised singer—her vocal tenses and slacks alongside Benga’s track effortlessly—and an audience surrogate. She moves back and forth between cool confidence and total surrender at the speed of a strobe light flicker, taking listeners along like a hand pulling them onto the dancefloor. –Katherine St. Asaph",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKrlttpw-Y8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d701a5e47318e000977d795/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Katy-B-Katy-on-a-Mission.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Katy_B-Katy_on_a_Mission_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,158,Waka Flocka Flame,“Hard in da Paint” (2010),Warner,"Warner Waka Flocka Flame worked hard to conjure an image of out-and-out raucousness, but his debut record, 2010’s Flockaveli, is sneakily varied: He slides slickly into pockets, at turns vicious or playful; he revels in whatever material goods are right in front of him while still lamenting the way life might have gone better. His booming, Lex Luger-produced warning shot, “Hard in da Paint,” contains all of these well-trodden modes while feeling totally singular. At first he brags about having not only a main bitch, but a girlfriend and a mistress; by the end he’s admitting, “When my little brother died, I said ‘fuck school.’” This is not a “dichotomy of man” thing, where the point is to feel the tension between warring impulses. The point is that this is all happening, all at once. –Paul A. Thompson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkkC9cK8Hz0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7026b313ff690008c6eee9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Waka-Flocka-Flame-Hard-in-Da-Paint.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Waka_Flocka_Flame-Hard_in_da_Paint_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,157,Beyoncé,“1+1” (2011),Sony,"Sony When Beyoncé performs “1+1” live, she often kneels. It’s a fitting posture for a ballad about the divine nature of love. On the recording, her voice is sparingly framed with a handful of elements—a Prince-esque guitar line, gospel organ, and the shimmer of chimes—so when Bey conjures up a primal growl before launching back into a tender falsetto, there’s little to distract from the sheer force of her vocals. The song’s structure is simple: Beyoncé admits that she doesn’t know about something—be it math, guns, or war—and then quickly pivots back to her devotion to her partner, finding reassurance in his strength and permanence. The resulting message is one that’s beautiful in its near-spiritual wisdom: trust in love, and it will anchor and guide you through all of life’s uncertainties. –Michelle Kim",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaasJ44O5lI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d70270a13ff690008c6eeeb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Beyonce%25CC%2581-1+1.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beyonc-11_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,156,Girl Unit,“Wut” (2010),Night Slugs,"Night Slugs What makes “Wut” such a propulsive blast of energy is both its dexterous manipulation of tension and release, and its seemingly hyperdimensional use of texture. Drawing on the dynamics of 808-fueled rap instrumentals, and replete with a mischievous vocal sample, wobbly synths, and well-timed use of an airhorn, “Wut” is one of the cheekiest peak-time tracks to emerge from the transatlantic club scene this decade. It’s one of those impossible-not-to-move-to tunes, a crystallization of the club’s love affair with hip-hop. –Ruth Saxelby",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbc-319VYlw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d702754c64ac00009a14ff4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Girl-Unit-Wut.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Girl_Unit-Wut_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,155,Kanye West,“Blood on the Leaves” (2013),Def Jam,"Def Jam “Blood on the Leaves” is a microcosm of what made Kanye both great and awful this decade; it was because of everything he did so beautifully that we endured everything else he did poorly. The beat: a 2 Fast 2 Furious-style collision of Nina Simone’s “Strange Fruit” and TNGHT’s “R U Ready” that’s about as tasteful as a 10-car pileup. The vocal: a mangled Auto-Tune yelp about paternity paranoia, cheating, and child support that includes a comparison between serial infidelity and apartheid. The song is about as ugly a piece of music as was made this decade, and yet it was leeringly ugly, purposefully so. The music Kanye was cooking up to feed his overheated imagination was so lurid and tactile that, for this blazing moment and others, it held everything together. –Jayson Greene",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEA0btSNkpw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d702a3413ff690008c6eeed/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kanye-West-Blood-on-the-Leaves.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kanye_West-Blood_on_the_Leaves_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,154,Japanese Breakfast,“Everybody Wants to Love You” (2016),Yellow K,"Yellow K In “Everybody Wants to Love You,” Japanese Breakfast’s Michelle Zauner offers a vision of romance that is gloriously unrestrained. She lets her imagination run wild as she outlines the course of a hypothetical relationship, jumping from the quiet intimacy of a shared toothbrush to impromptu marriage. “Can I get your number?/Can I get you into bed?” she coyly asks over a celestial synthesizer. “When we wake up in the morning/Will you give me lots of head?” Featuring a jangly guitar solo and propulsive backing vocals, the song is deliriously catchy—but with repeated listens, its upbeat surface begins to crack. Is Zauner singing about a new relationship, or is she desperately trying to breathe life into one that has grown stale? Is the repeated title phrase a genuine celebration of attraction, or a mockery of romantic idolization? Like love itself, “Everybody Wants to Love You” is more complex than it first appears. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNT7wuqaykc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d702b82c64ac00009a1502a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Japanese-Breakfast-Everybody-Wants-to-Love-You.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Japanese_Breakfast-Everybody_Wants_to_Love_You_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,153,Danny Brown,“30” (2011),Fool’s Gold,"Fool’s Gold More rap careers end at age 30 than begin at age 30. In 2011, Danny Brown was acutely aware of this fact, as he said goodbye to his 20s and made his final push towards rap stardom after spending years trapped in the industry spin cycle. The frantic “30” is imbued with the desperation of a man with his eye on the hourglass, realizing his last best hope is slipping away. What begins as absurdist punchline rap quickly devolves into a catalog of personal chaos. Producer Skywlkr’s horns sound like an accordion, wheezing and deflating cartoonishly, as Brown is terrorized by an alternate future where his lifelong calling goes unrealized. He has visions of OD’ing without knowing his daughter, of dying unloved and unfulfilled. “The last 10 years I been so fucking stressed/Tears in my eyes let me get this off my chest/The thought of no success got a nigga chasing death,” he cries out. Even listening to the song now, in the wake of eight years of triumphs for the Detroit MC, it still devastates. –Sheldon Pearce",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J--rO7FP16U,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d702c13bfe56b000945b715/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Danny-Brown-30.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Danny_Brown-30_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,152,Miley Cyrus,“Wrecking Ball” (2013),RCA,"RCA August 25, 2013: During her performance at the VMAs, Miley Cyrus mimes anilingus on another woman, pleasures herself with a foam finger, and twerks all over Robin Thicke. She instantly destroys any remnants of her purity-ring-wearing Hannah Montana image, transforming from America’s Sweetheart into America’s Nightmare in a matter of minutes. That same day, she releases “Wrecking Ball,” the song that ensures she’ll still have a career when the dust settles. A perfect vehicle for Miley’s burnt-cigarette voice, “Wrecking Ball” spectacularly captures the agony of losing a love after coming on too strong. It’s one of the great torch songs of the 21st century, destined to be wailed by the drunk and heartsick at karaoke bars until the end of time. The video, in which a tearful Miley fellates a sledgehammer and gyrates naked on top of a wrecking ball, will likely be used in highlight reels to evoke “the 2010s” for decades to come, too. Unfortunately, the legacy of both the song and video are tainted by associations with two of the #MeToo era’s biggest villains, producer Dr. Luke and photographer/director Terry Richardson (not to mention Miley’s own myriad controversies). But when that chorus hits like a you-know-what, it’s impossible not to sing along at the top of your lungs. –Amy Phillips",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFLv9Ns1EuQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d702cb9f1e8ce0008b71720/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Miley-Cyrus-Wrecking-Ball.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Miley_Cyrus-Wrecking_Ball_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,151,Gang Gang Dance,“Glass Jar” (2011),4AD,"4AD Grown from the same New York art-noise ooze that produced Animal Collective and Yeah Yeahs Yeahs, Gang Gang Dance blurred lines, participating in the Whitney Biennial en route to a global stage. Opening 2011’s Eye Contact, the band’s nearly 11-and-a-half minute “Glass Jar” is prelude, overture, and banger all at once. The song is one of their many continuing tributes to late bandmate Nathan Maddox, who was struck by lightning on a Chinatown rooftop in 2002, and a door to the next phase of their career. First comes a slow shift from spoken-word drift to full-on groove; then, synths that rain down with a classical sense of drama. The drums don’t coalesce into a steady rhythm until slightly more than halfway through. Samples, references, and arty details abound on “Glass Jar,” but the destination is a Brooklyn-style drop, recognized on dancefloors the world over. –Jesse Jarnow",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_bkNR-zOn8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d702e0abfe56b000945b717/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Gang-Gang-Dance-Glass-Jar.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Gang_Gang_Dance-Glass_Jar_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,150,Nicki Minaj,“Beez in the Trap” [ft. 2 Chainz] (2012),Cash Money/Young Money/Republic,"Cash Money/Young Money/Republic In 2012, Nicki Minaj was at the center of a burning debate about rap, pop, and credibility. Onstage at New York rap station Hot 97’s Summer Jam concert that June, blowhard DJ Peter Rosenberg blasted her frothy hit “Starships” as the antithesis of “real hip-hop,” adding that it was for “chicks.” It was a small-minded, chauvinist argument—Nicki’s very strength was always about how her wily versatility took rap to unprecedented places—but the concurrent success of “Beez in the Trap” was also a perfect retort. You want “real hip-hop”? Here was Nicki flipping bars over an alien beat as thrilling as the rapper herself, filled with synths and drums that buzz and bang and bubble. That “Starships” and “Beez in the Trap” were from the same album, and hits at the same time, showed precisely who Minaj was: a woman in possession of a strange and singular talent who could appeal to seemingly everyone, from tweens to twinks to rap obsessives. –Alex Frank",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmZvOhHF85I,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d702e6bbfe56b000945b719/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Nicki-Minaj-Beez-in-the-Trap.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nicki_Minaj-Beez_in_the_Trap_ft_2_Chainz_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,149,Björk,“Stonemilker” (2015),One Little Indian,"One Little Indian Björk spent the decade increasingly entangled in complex experiments involving VR and bitcoin, with each new album presented as part of a wider technological narrative. It felt quietly ironic, then, that her best song of the era would plug into an emotional well older than time: heartbreak. “Stonemilker,” the first track to be taken from Björk’s eighth studio album, Vulnicura, was inspired by her separation from artist Matthew Barney, her raw feelings splattered all across the lyrics. “Show me emotional respect,” she demands on the hook, while volcanic beats pound and strings dive around her. In the future, the song’s VR video will seem as charmingly antiquated as a silent film reel, but its message of fierceness in the face of heartache will remain state-of-the-art. –Ben Cardew",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQEyezu7G20,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d702f1e13ff690008c6eeef/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bjo%25CC%2588rk-Stonemilker.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bjrk-Stonemilker_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,148,GoldLink,“Crew” [ft. Brent Faiyaz and Shy Glizzy] (2017),RCA,"RCA Long after the summer breezes by, its anthems live on. Hear a song like “Crew,” and everything about the summer of 2017—relationships, moments, the weather on that one Friday you cut out early—comes rushing back in vivid detail. At its core, “Crew” was destined to be a song that put on for GoldLink’s native DMV, but it became so much more. Link’s rapid delivery, Shy Glizzy’s conversational bars, and Brent Faiyaz’s silky throwback melody each feed into each other seamlessly. Together, the trio turned out a track as catchy as it is charming, one that should go down as a memorable addition into the backyard barbecue canon. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhNqbe6QENY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d702f8c13ff690008c6eef1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/GoldLink-Crew.jpg,/dataset/artwork/GoldLink-Crew_ft_Brent_Faiyaz_and_Shy_Glizzy_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,147,Ella Mai,“Boo’d Up” (2018),10 Summers/Interscope,"10 Summers/Interscope Ella Mai’s breakout single “Boo’d Up” is a luxurious track unconcerned with the passing of time, with a glistening instrumental by DJ Mustard and a vocal that moves through the melody like falling into someone’s arms. It’s also an exceedingly unlikely Top 10 hit. So many factors worked against “Boo’d Up”: the fact that Ella Mai was largely an unknown; that women in R&B, once the genre’s heart, had become the genre’s outsiders throughout the 2010s; that the song’s languid pace, unassuming sound, and besotten emotional clarity weren’t particularly marketable. And then people heard it, and all those factors floated away, irrelevant. –Katherine St. Asaph",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YNZlXfW6Ho,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d70307947318e000977d7cb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ella-Mai-Bood-Up.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ella_Mai-Bood_Up_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,146,Gunna,“Sold Out Dates” [ft. Lil Baby] (2018),Young Stoner Life/300 Entertainment,"Young Stoner Life/300 Entertainment So many collaborations lean on clichéd narratives about two artists rising to some grand occasion of shared interest. Atlanta rappers Gunna and Lil Baby, it seems, just want to make a run of impossibly fun songs and enjoy each other’s company. Out of their many team-ups, “Sold Out Dates” is the most infectious—the one where their voices blend to seamless heights, until it’s unclear where one ends and the other takes over. The constantly unfurling chorus leaps across the song’s electric guitar riff, finding one soft landing spot after another. If there is a sports analogy to be made, it is less Stockton and Malone, and more Stockton and Stockton: Gunna and Baby find each other in perfect position, then pass out of it, to an even more perfect position. Their dynamic has the same feel as Watch the Throne-era Kanye and Jay, not trying to make a mark by outdoing each other, just ruminating on the ever-evolving idea of hedonism, and emerging with no answers. –Hanif Abdurraqib",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpUY5iNqVzU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7030ba7cf67c000854d4af/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Gunna-Sold-Out-Dates.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Gunna-Sold_Out_Dates_ft_Lil_Baby_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,145,Charli XCX,“Gone” [ft. Christine and the Queens] (2019),Atlantic,"Atlantic After nearly a decade of branding herself as a rave-happy club kid who parties until five in the morning, Charli XCX’s facade cracked. On “Gone,” she feels adrift at an event and spirals into despair. “I feel so unstable/Fucking hate these people,” Charli sings over an ’80s funk-pop beat. These lines about unbelonging also double as a metaphor for the constrictions she faces as a major-label artist who is expected to churn out chart hits but prefers to tweak and deconstruct them instead. Joining the rampage is fellow pop rule-breaker Héloïse Letissier of Christine and the Queens, who descends into paranoia, posing some truly mystifying questions about whether she’s “the smoke” or “the sun.” The madness escalates into a breakdown of glitching vocal chops, metallic clanking, and dramatic power-synth fills. It’s the soundtrack to a mental breakdown, the kind that ensues right before you come back even stronger. –Michelle Kim",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chSZCtLrgz8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d703134bfe56b000945b71d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Charli-XCX-Gone.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Charli_XCX-Gone_ft_Christine_and_the_Queens_2019.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,144,Spoon,“Inside Out” (2014),Matador,"Matador A Spoon song is typically defined by what you can’t hear as much as what you can: They are stripped and reduced to their elements, allowing the band to build music with visible architecture and plenty of open space. All this matters because “Inside Out” is quite possibly the most lush Spoon song ever written. Built on a rigid rhythm that acts as a backbone for a harp solo—not exactly their signature sound—and frontman Britt Daniel’s raspy lyrics about how life can be pretty simple if you know what you want and avoid getting dragged down by everything else, it’s not quite Spoon gone new age, but it also doesn’t sound a whole lot like any other Spoon song. The greatness of “Inside Out” lies not just in its unexpected softness, but in Daniel’s ability to be wise and brash at the same time. Earned wisdom is a part of getting older; rarely does it sound this accomplished. –Sam Hockley-Smith",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpT5SBg1Mmk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d70317647318e000977d7cd/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Spoon-Inside-Out.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Spoon-Inside_Out_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,143,Rick Ross,“B.M.F. (Blowin’ Money Fast)” [ft. Styles P] (2010),Def Jam,"Def Jam You know those old monster movies, the ones where an almighty beast lumbers through a terrified city, toppling buildings and swatting planes out of the sky as bullets bounce off his torso? At some point, Rick Ross must have leaned forward in his leather chair and thought to himself, What would it sound like if that monster were rapping right now? Ross channeled that energy on “B.M.F.,” his quaking collaboration with producer Lex Luger. For four minutes, the rapper takes the form of an all-powerful, coke-fueled leviathan laughing with maniacal disdain as he demolishes any obstacle standing between him and his bottom line. You can’t stop him. You can’t negotiate with him. All you can do is build a statue in his honor and marvel at the merciless efficiency of his wrath. –Evan Rytlewski",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2MVzP4MaJ0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d71195f13ff690008c6ef2e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Rick-Ross-BMF.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rick_Ross-BMF_Blowin_Money_Fast_ft_Styles_P_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,142,Rihanna,“Needed Me” (2016),Def Jam,"Def Jam “Needed Me” offered a clear crystallization of Rihanna as a well-traveled, yeehaw-pioneering outlaw: People needed her, and she needed no one. It should feel normal, but it was thrilling to witness a woman governed only by her own rules, acting like a man. On the other hand, “Needed Me” is tender and sadly wise, a song about someone who is capable of being strong in a relationship and has learned they can’t expect to rely on anyone. And why bother? Put to music with radio heavy-hitters DJ Mustard, Frank Dukes, and Starrah, the song is sexy and savage, a way for Rihanna to flex her unique ability to inhabit the tastes and feelings of both Gen Z and Gen X. It resonated massively but quietly, becoming her longest-charting hit without ever hitting the Top 5. –Naomi Zeichner",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfN4PVaOU5Q,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7119dcf1e8ce0008b717f3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Rihanna-Needed-Me.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rihanna-Needed_Me_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,141,Gil Scott-Heron,“New York Is Killing Me” (2010),XL,"XL Gil Scott-Heron had a love-hate relationship with the city he called home for most of his life. In the mid ’70s, not long after President Ford told the city to drop dead, Scott-Heron wrote a love letter simply called “New York City” extolling the place as beautiful and benignly energetic. Thirty-five years later, when JAY-Z and Alicia Keys were still riding high on their local anthem “Empire State of Mind,” Scott-Heron presented a different, much darker depiction of the city. “New York Is Killing Me” portrays a place sapped of all promise and opportunity, defined by an alienation and isolation that Scott-Heron suggests is fatal. The production, courtesy of XL Recordings owner Richard Russell, is constricting, as if it’s been breathing exhaust fumes all day. The music is busy yet austere, prodding and cajoling Scott-Heron with jump-rope rhythms, disruptive clatter, and a bassline that pulsates like the jarring rumble of a subway car. “Eight million people, and I didn’t have a single friend,” he sang, his voice heavy with worry and regret. The past tense hurt when the song was released in 2010, and it only stung more when he died a year later. –Stephen Deusner",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aeMfm6O7iQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d711a227cf67c000854d4e7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Gil-Scott-Heron-New-York-Is-Killing-Me.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Gil_Scott-Heron-New_York_Is_Killing_Me_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,140,Rae Sremmurd,“No Type” (2014),Ear Drummer,"Ear Drummer In 2014, Rae Sremmurd stepped into the spotlight with the infectious “No Flex Zone,” backed by Mike WiLL Made-It at the height of his superproducer powers. The two baby-faced brothers had a club anthem on their hands, though many were skeptical about their ability as rappers and wrote them off. But within months they topped their first hit with “No Type,” which elevated Swae Lee and Slim Jxmmi from predicted one-hit wonders into bona fide stars. At the song’s irresistible core is Swae’s gliding chorus, but “No Type” is more than just a catchy hook: It established the duo’s yin-yang balance of sparkling melody and raucous energy. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzMrK-aGCug,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d711b80c64ac00009a150cc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Rae-Sremmurd-No-Type.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rae_Sremmurd-No_Type_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,139,Iceage,“The Lord’s Favorite” (2014),Matador,"Matador Iceage mellowed the hardcore chaos and angst of their first two records in favor of tightly-strung cowpunk with “The Lord’s Favorite.” The song finds frontman Elias Bender Rønnenfelt playing the part of a lovesick megalomaniac intoxicated by the allure of expensive wine, cheap makeup, and five-inch heels. In the darkness of a seedy club, these gaudy vices spur Rønnenfelt’s sloshed barfly to proselytize about his divine privilege. “After all I think it’s evident that I am God’s favorite one/And now is the time I should have whatever I desire,” he moans, letting that last word ooze from his lips. As the Danish band kicked up a rockabilly storm, they showed that they have more to offer than clenched-fist angst. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roB4hRdLlas,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d711c1047318e000977d838/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Iceage-The-Lords-Favorite.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Iceage-The_Lords_Favorite_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,138,Drake,“Hotline Bling” (2015),Cash Money,"Cash Money A pastiche artist of the social media age, Drake seamlessly exchanges music and cultural references like a Tumblr teen mashing up Spongebob GIFs—and this is the song that solidified his status as hip-hop’s supreme memelord. Drake first conceived of it as a remix to DRAM’s “Cha Cha,” with producer Nineteen85 flipping Timmy Thomas’ 1972 soul classic “Why Can't We Live Together” onto an impossibly catchy syncopated drum sequence. DRAM and Drake bickered over credit as “Hotline Bling” blew up, largely thanks to a music video that cribbed visual artist James Turrell’s 2013 installation “Breathing Light” and its Instagram-ready rooms bathed in neon pastel tones. Within months, the high priestess of neo-soul, Erykah Badu, made an entire mixtape riffing on the “hotline” concept, expanding it into a treatise on the role of phones in modern society (featuring bars from a Drake soundalike named Aubrey, no less). A veritable human centipede of modern art, the most lasting legacy of “Hotline Bling” may just be the inextricable ties to the work it inspired and was inspired by. –Matthew Ismael Ruiz",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzMhcP7ab3k,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d711cb613ff690008c6ef33/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Drake-Hotline-Bling.png,/dataset/artwork/Drake-Hotline_Bling_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,137,Yaeji,“Drink I’m Sippin On” (2017),Godmode,"Godmode One of Brooklyn’s most exciting young electronic artists began with deliberate secrecy: Yaeji initially sang in Korean because she didn’t want others to understand her, then came to love those arch, elegant syllables with new ears. Her breakthrough single is clear in that affection; she roves over narcotic synths and trap drums with icy vocal tones, her gently libertine words delivered in an unhurried rap cadence. A bit of English peeps into the bridge—more as an aside than an accommodation—after she’s just murmured the line “That’s not it” in Korean several times, a lovely and winking moment of benign miscommunication. That elastic bass drop, though, can’t be mistaken. –Stacey Anderson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoxCItHxLiM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d711d03bfe56b000945b796/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Yaeji-drink-im-sippin-on.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Yaeji-Drink_Im_Sippin_On_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,136,CupcakKe,“Duck Duck Goose” (2018),Self-released,"Self-released Sending nudes of such high quality that the recipient uses up all their data. Comparing a dick to the Statue of Liberty. The lines, “Coochie guaranteed to put you to sleep so damn soon/Ridin’ on that dick, I’m readin’ Goodnight Moon.” These are some of CupcakKe’s tamer moments on “Duck Duck Goose.” The Chicago rapper’s salacious humor is on full display here, in an endless barrage of X-rated jokes. The track also shows that she can spit better than anyone in the room, and is able to lace her verses with the wit, puns, and vivid imagery of an elite songwriter. CupcakKe delivers it all over an instrumental ready for an overstuffed, sweaty club—the perfect place to experience her brilliance. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awGEv-ctCtg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d711dc8c64ac00009a150ce/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Cupcakke-Duck-Duck-Goose.jpg,/dataset/artwork/CupcakKe-Duck_Duck_Goose_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,135,Robyn,“Honey” (2018),Interscope/Konichiwa,"Interscope/Konichiwa “Honey” is one of Robyn’s filthier tunes—a 3 a.m. booty call set to a pulsing house beat. The song flows slowly, picking up rattling hi-hats and strobing synthesizer as it oozes along the dancefloor. Meanwhile, the Swedish star allows plenty of space for her visuals to bloom—the “strands of saliva” laced with glitter, the emeralds glinting on pavement. Each syllable is drawn out like taffy, and her voice hovers just above a whisper, as if she wants you to lean in a little closer. But her message is so clear there’s no need to shout it: A decade after she danced alone, Robyn made a triumphant return to the discotheque. But this time, she won’t be leaving solo. –Madison Bloom",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcNo07Xp8aQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d711f5613ff690008c6ef35/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Robyn-Honey.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Robyn-Honey_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,134,Kamasi Washington,“Truth” (2017),Young Turks,"Young Turks Kamasi Washington is an artist who needs room to meditate, sculpt, engineer. His songs, each their own island of brewing affect, are where his ideas find pulse, where they’re outfitted with all the sensory trademarks that accent his catalog. “Truth” is the finest, and perhaps most-psalm-like, of the saxophonist’s musical regions—the wet bass, the godly orchestral wails, the intoxication and pure-cut adrenaline reminiscent of master architect Phraroah Sanders. It’s Washington’s very own Odyssey—only funkier, Afro’d, and regaled in a Senegalese dashiki. You know, king shit. Originally composed for an exhibit at the 2017 Whitney Biennial and later packaged as the closer on Washington’s Harmony of Difference EP, “Truth” is about journeys: spiritual, musical, human. It’s a track so complexly layered in its artistic command that it places him alongside historians who’ve mined the folkways of Black Los Angeles in their work, from poet Wanda Coleman and director John Singleton to visual artist Betye Saar and producer DJ Quik. Listen closely and you’ll hear the tension and swoop of life, the emotional velocity of love, the drama of drawn breath. –Jason Parham",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d71202913ff690008c6ef37/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kamasi-Washington-Truth.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Kamasi_Washington-Truth_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,133,Future,“Mask Off” (2017),Epic,"Epic Future’s music constantly dramatizes the tragedy of excess and indulgence by celebrating those very things. The strategy should be nearly impossible to pull off, and yet the Atlanta star is one of the most gifted stylists in contemporary rap. “Mask Off,” his highest-charting single, should be an over-the-top breaking point—he repeats the words “molly” and “Percocet” in the chorus more than he does the title. But still he rises to the occasion by plumbing the depths of drug abuse. Future offers his chilling description of lean in two words—“my guillotine”—while a flute sample of “Prison Song,” from the 1978 musical Selma, a tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement, snakes around his vocals. “Cold chills, prison cells,” the screwed vocals from “Prison Song” intone at the outro. “Mask Off” is one of Future's most cartoonish songs, but perhaps that’s the best way to encapsulate a reality that’s careening dangerously into the unreal. –Ross Scarano",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvZqHgFz51I,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d71207ff1e8ce0008b717f5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Future-Mask-Off.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Future-Mask_Off_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,132,Kurt Vile,“Baby’s Arms” (2011),Matador,"Matador “Baby’s Arms” is the sound of Kurt Vile’s slacker-Zen persona snapping suddenly into focus. The opening track of 2011’s Smoke Ring for My Halo felt like a reintroduction for the Philadelphia songwriter, who had previously hidden behind a curtain of reverb. Working with his band the Violators, producer John Agnello, and an expanded cast, Vile replaced the bleary atmosphere of his earliest releases with crystalline finger-picking, and the mumbled aphorisms with odes to his loved one. “Baby’s Arms” is cool and sweet, intimate and resonant. It sounds full while barely rising above a whisper. –Jesse Jarnow",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enTY6AITe1Q,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7120e6c64ac00009a150d0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kurt-Vile-Babys-Arms.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kurt_Vile-Babys_Arms_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,131,Chromatics,“Kill for Love” (2012),Italians Do It Better,"Italians Do It Better Johnny Jewel takes a lot of flack for perfectionism, but listen to a song like “Kill for Love” and the infamously exacting Chromatics ringleader looks a lot more rational. The title track from the group’s 2012 album is their mission in miniature: the sound of ennui in search of bliss. Ruth Radelet’s deceptively blasé vocal performance articulates the craving for novelty lurking within habit: “I drank the water and I felt all right/I took a pill almost every night/In my mind, I was waiting for change.” The fractured synth stabs are sharp enough to split geodes; the guitars dizzy and sentimental, melty and echoing; the cymbal rattles nonstop. Under the anxiety and damage are the same elemental urges, where every momentary escape holds the promise of nothing, now and forever. –Anna Gaca",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0mxXrHowHQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7121baf1e8ce0008b717f7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Chromatics-Kill-for-Love.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Chromatics-Kill_for_Love_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,130,A$AP Rocky,“Peso” (2011),RCA,"RCA Did any rap song this decade open with five words more immediately iconic than “I be that pretty motherfucker”? From the moment “Peso” broke, it was clear that it was going to vault A$AP Rocky to a stardom built atop sounds from Memphis and Houston, but presented as the New Yorker’s alchemic birthright. In the video, he mugged with diamond teeth and coiled-up charisma—shirtless, venomous. The money started rolling in, followed soon after by the jokes: Can you believe he’s named after Rakim but he raps like this? And true, nothing about Rocky’s music is as intricate, groundbreaking, or downright mean as the great stars of New York’s past. But you can’t tell him he isn’t pretty. –Paul A. Thompson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ob3ktDxAjWI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7121fcc64ac00009a150d2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/ASAP-Rocky-Peso.jpg,/dataset/artwork/AAP_Rocky-Peso_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,129,Lorde,“Royals” (2013),Lava/Republic,"Lava/Republic At the start of the decade, pop music taught teenagers what their desires were, not the other way around. According to the radio, teen dreams were filled with earth-shattering parties and unconscionable excess tracked to wall-of-sound synth production best suited for football stadiums. And then New Zealand’s 16-year-old Lorde strolled into the charts like a supremely over-it exchange student, singing her chilly, nearly a capella manifesto about just how tired she was of songs about tigers and jet planes and Cadillacs. While “Royals”’ pillory of rap-video tropes attracted accusations of racism, the song propelled Lorde to stardom and transformed pop in the process. In the years since, the genre has grown bleaker, replacing maximalist odes to excess with bummed-out songs stressing isolation and anxiety. And a new generation of artists who speak to the same sense of teen ennui—Halsey and Clairo and Billie Eilish—have proliferated, working to override the industry’s male gaze instead of playing into it. As it introduced a new kind of pop star, “Royals” challenged the world’s biggest artists to be not just enviable, but relatable. –Hazel Cills",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlcIKh6sBtc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d71239fbfe56b000945b798/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lorde-Royals.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lorde-Royals_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,128,Young Thug,“Danny Glover” (2013),TSBV2,"TSBV2 In 2013, Young Thug descended from an unknown planet equipped with a language that everyone was dying to learn and a melody that reshaped what we thought we knew about rappers who sing. For many outside of Atlanta, “Danny Glover” was their introduction to this otherworldly persona. Thug raps fast and coos punchlines that stick: “I don’t like using profanity, but the Young Thugger will gut you.” He has quirks on top of quirks, but they’re all coddled inside go-to producer Southside’s signature trunk-rattling hi-hats and 808s. When “Danny Glover” arrived, Thug sounded like no one else; now it’s hard to imagine what rap would sound like without him. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPbzMMorE_E,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7123f213ff690008c6ef39/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Young-Thug-Danny-Glover.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Young_Thug-Danny_Glover_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,127,James Blake,“CMYK” (2010),R&S,"R&S James Blake charted the next step in bass music’s evolution with “CMYK.” Sampling both Kelis and Aaliyah, the song looked backward to late-’90s R&B, whose ribbon-like vocals and plush harmonies would become hallmarks of the young British producer’s music. More important was what he did with those vocals: chopping, re-pitching, and layering them with his own processed voice, creating a strange, hybrid call-and-response that floated, web-like, over synths as spongy as marshland. It was the sound of a new world coming into focus, and it would guide his music for years to come. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oI5HvfxgpU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7125017cf67c000854d4e9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/James-Blake-CMYK.jpg,/dataset/artwork/James_Blake-CMYK_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,126,Ciara,“Ride” [ft. Ludacris] (2010),LaFace,"LaFace In her video for “Ride,” Ciara shows off her remarkable dance skills and sheer athleticism. She also straddles a mechanical bull while wearing a drenched undershirt. BET reportedly banned the sultry clip from its airwaves—a decision Ciara called “very unfortunate” and refused to back down from, never making a toned-down version for them. She didn’t need their cosign. On “Ride,” the Atlanta singer flaunts her artistic command, meeting the track’s distorted beat with an almost-clipped vocal performance that underscores her confidence. Not even an audaciously horny Ludacris feature can derail Ciara’s show: She makes no concessions. –Matthew Strauss",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/Lp6W4aK1sbs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d71257bc64ac00009a150d4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ciara-Ride.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ciara-Ride_ft_Ludacris_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,125,Lykke Li,“I Follow Rivers” (2011),LL,"LL Lykke Li once compared the overwhelming desire that ignited “I Follow Rivers” to a “nature force,” one in which you’re at the mercy of another person so completely that “you almost have no voice.” She expresses that cataclysmic metaphor in a storm of stomping girl-group drums, dissonant organ, and stuttering vocals. The song signaled an about-face from the more delicate, hushed tracks she first broke out with, affording her a deeper layer of darkness that she’d then yet to unearth. She may have been simply trying to satisfy some serious thirst on “I Follow Rivers,” but her pained, lusty delivery gives her yearning a cosmic pull. –Eric Torres",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZYbEL06lEU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d712688c64ac00009a150d8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lykke-Li-I-Follow-Rivers.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lykke_Li-I_Follow_Rivers_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,124,Nicki Minaj,“Super Bass” (2010),Cash Money/Young Money/Republic,"Cash Money/Young Money/Republic One of the reasons “Super Bass” is such a banger is its emotional depth: Just take a close listen to the mournful chords that run beneath the verses, providing contrast and context for the track’s hot-blooded desire, as well as its siren call to party. Having shared a male-gaze-flipping list of what she finds attractive in a man, Nicki Minaj’s quickfire bars race the beat to the chorus, which “boom badoom boom” bursts like a rainbow after a downpour. A trance-y bridge with digital strings seals the deal on this masterclass in contemporary pop. –Ruth Saxelby",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JipHEz53sU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7126dd7cf67c000854d4eb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Nicki-Minaj-Super-Bass.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nicki_Minaj-Super_Bass_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,123,Clairo,“Bags” (2019),Fader,"Fader Clairo’s Claire Cottrill had uploaded plenty of relatable and catchy bedroom pop songs before “Bags”—including her viral hit “Pretty Girl,” which lamented the unfair sacrifices women often make in their romantic relationships—though they ultimately felt slight, like she was holding something back. The lead single of her debut album, Immunity, reintroduced her with new vigor and undeniable shine. Co-produced with Rostam, “Bags” leaves her lo-fi origins firmly in the past. The song is a flurry of action as drums shimmy, synths whirr like insect wings, and keys clamor drunkenly, yet Cottrill’s voice is composed and calm as she recalls her love walking out on her. It vividly captures the tremendous effort that goes into maintaining a cool façade after the door slams shut. –Vrinda Jagota",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9HYJbe9Y18,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7127c37cf67c000854d4f4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Clairo-Bags.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Clairo-Bags_2019.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,122,Playboi Carti,“Magnolia” (2017),Interscope/AWGE,"Interscope/AWGE There are album artists and singles artists, and then there’s Playboi Carti, a rapper whose work is most ravenously devoured via compressed-to-hell snippets ripped from Instagram. Hailing from the most anarchic corners of the social internet (but also Atlanta), Carti is someone whose promise will always outpace his official output, and that is by design. “Magnolia” is the rare moment when all his significant skills are put to use in the same direction: It’s a sinister song with an instantly quotable hook that otherwise functions mostly as an extended ad-lib. The hit also served as producer Pi’erre Bourne’s national introduction, launching him from relative obscurity to rap production’s A-list. “Magnolia” is the single best distillation of Carti and Pi’erre’s chemistry, which, amid rap’s rapidly moving generational drift, has already spawned its own legion of pounding, skeletal imitations. –Paul A. Thompson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCveByMXd_0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d71281347318e000977d83a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Playboi-Carti-Magnolia.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Playboi_Carti-Magnolia_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,121,DJ Rashad,“Feelin” [ft. DJ Spinn and Taso] (2013),Hyperdub,"Hyperdub Footwork’s relationship to time has a lot to do with a kind of musical sleight-of-hand. Some of the genre’s sonic elements run at triple-time while others dawdle, yet a sense of urgency remains consistent. And no one has ever wielded that energy as fluidly as DJ Rashad. “Feelin,” from 2013’s Double Cup, the only album he released before his death the following year, pivots off a languid sax riff from Roy Ayers’ “Brand New Feeling” and distills soul singer Merry Clayton’s formidable vocal into animated squiggles that ride atop Rashad’s frenzied beat. (It’s worth noting that members of Rashad’s Teklife crew, DJs Spinn and Taso, joined the producer in fleshing out “Feelin” from an earlier version he released in 2012.) Ayers’ original is about the transformative power of the first flush of love. Rashad’s take is more a rumination on the everyday search to feel something—anything—amid the frantic pace of life. –Ruth Saxelby",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzEK5Z9ALU8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6537c9dfd6794e741ed8e3d0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/DJ-Rashad-Double-Cup.jpg,/dataset/artwork/DJ_Rashad-Feelin_ft_DJ_Spinn_and_Taso_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,120,Justin Bieber,“Sorry” (2015),Def Jam,"Def Jam “Sorry” is a strange creature. By grafting a fashionably clipped pop melody over a retro, Shabba Ranks-inspired Caribbean fusion beat, producers Skrillex and BloodPop created one of the best tropical house hits of the decade. The ethereal hook, crafted from Justin Bieber’s pitched and manipulated vocal, squares off against a synth horn line and a surging drop. But what truly elevates “Sorry” are its witty lyrics: “I know you know that I made those mistakes maybe once or twice/By once or twice, I mean maybe a couple of hundred times,” Bieber coos, managing to sound pensive, subdued, and even a little sexy at the same time. That this fallen teen idol, the decade’s emblem of white male petulance and bad-boy behavior, was crooning for redemption and second chances in an age of #BlackLivesMatter protests—especially in the context of his enduring appropriation of urban culture—shouldn’t be lost on anyone. –Jason King",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRh_vgS2dFE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d71295547318e000977d83c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Justin-Bieber-Sorry.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Justin_Bieber-Sorry_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,119,Fleet Foxes,“Helplessness Blues” (2011),Sub Pop,"Sub Pop Here is an anthem for anyone who has felt adrift, abandoned, unsure of their purpose in the world. The title track to Fleet Foxes’ impressionistic second album revealed a more intriguing side of frontman Robin Pecknold; something dark and complex had lurked beneath the songwriter’s soaring harmonies from the beginning, and “Helplessness Blues” represented all of his neuroses writ large. In the verses, he contemplates what it means to be useful, to others and to yourself, before the song’s passionate strumming rips open to reveal miles of wide-open drum fills and dreams of a simpler life in (where else?) the country. “Someday I’ll be like the man on the screen,” Pecknold claims in the song’s closing seconds. It’s a line that’s just ambiguous enough to drive home how frequently his generation has caught a glimpse at a different life and, for a brief moment, pondered the worth of the tools we’ve been given. –Larry Fitzmaurice",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HHgedNNQco,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d712a2a7cf67c000854d52a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Fleet-Foxes-Helplessness-Blues.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fleet_Foxes-Helplessness_Blues_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,118,Travis Scott,“Sicko Mode” [ft. Drake] (2018),Epic,"Epic By any conventional wisdom, a five-minute, three-part suite of a song should have never become a phenomenon in a climate where dwindling attention spans are leading to shorter and shorter hits. But “Sicko Mode” is fueled by the power of Travis Scott and Drake, two of the era’s defining rappers, operating at an energized high. The song’s first part is a short Drake verse that cuts off abruptly—a tease that only makes you want more. Once the funky second beat hits, you forget about Drake as Travis takes center stage with some of the best rapping of his career. The gradual build meets a grand finale, where Travis and the Toronto icon fuse for one of the decade’s signature back-and-forths. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ONRf7h3Mdk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d712b3ac64ac00009a1510e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Travis-Scott-Sicko-Mode.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Travis_Scott-Sicko_Mode_ft_Drake_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,117,Usher,“Climax” (2012),RCA,"RCA Usher once ruled R&B so decisively that the music industry spent over a decade churning out clones of him. But by 2010, he was reduced to guesting on anonymous Max Martin and will.i.am tracks, just another pop singer. Then came “Climax,” which single-handedly rescued his critical reputation from lyrics like, “Honey got some boobies like wow, oh wow.” Co-produced by an uncharacteristically restrained Diplo, the 2012 hit was quickly compared to alt-R&B newcomers like James Blake and the Weeknd. But instead of conveying intense feelings with a chilly shrug, Usher is clearly pained as he eulogizes a failing relationship in a lonely falsetto. The verses try to build, don’t, try again, don’t again. At one point, Usher abruptly turns the whole thing into what seems like a final roaring emotional plea, a would-be climax, but it isn’t enough, and the track recedes again. As a match of song to message, it’s brilliant. As a microcosm of Usher’s career, it’s sadly prophetic: He would spend the rest of the decade trying to recapture “Climax”’s highs. –Katherine St. Asaph",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNTyfVh3nmU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d712c1ef1e8ce0008b7182f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Usher-Climax.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Usher-Climax_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,116,Burial,“Kindred” (2012),Hyperdub,"Hyperdub Agonizingly, Burial never gave us a proper follow-up to his classic 2007 album Untrue this decade, instead resorting to intermittent singles and EPs. But this strategy still resulted in tracks that lived up to the mysterious producer’s lofty legacy, none more so than “Kindred.” While still rooted in his lifelong obsession with the feral jungle choons of his youth, the song sunk even deeper into the turbidity of our modern world, embracing decay and loss much like William Basinski’s The Disintegration Loops did a decade prior. “Kindred” feels haunted, its errant noises both disrupting the flow and somehow cohering everything into a jaw-dropping, 12-minute opus. It’s a corrupted symphony of a dozen open YouTube tabs, the sound of the flames burning all around us. –Andy Beta",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wC16FJTI6XM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d712ca77cf67c000854d52c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Burial-Kindred.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Burial-Kindred_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,115,The Weeknd,“The Morning” (2011),Republic,"Republic Here is the pop American Psycho, a work that sums up all that’s decadent and a little disgusting about our era. It’s also the greatest song the Weeknd, that dark knight of R&B, ever made. Ostensibly a druggy party track, it’s called “The Morning” as if to dare us to look at the bacchanal in the glare of day, when the abandoned Solo cups are spilled onto the carpet. It was Abel Tesfaye’s first big statement to the world, so resonant it would make him famous: There are strippers and codeine and money atop a hungover tempo that feels like a symbol of generational malaise. “The Morning” might even qualify as horror, as Tesfaye refers to himself and his friends as “zombies of the night”—a pretty terrifying way to characterize a bar crawl. The song made the Weeknd an unlikely yet unflinching chronicler of fucked-up times, the man we’ll put on the stereo when we want to remember exactly how good and terrible it all felt. –Alex Frank",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TAko3RH0bk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d712d12c7531e0008f96f68/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-Weeknd-The-Morning.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Weeknd-The_Morning_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,114,Daft Punk,“Get Lucky” [ft. Pharrell] (2013),Daft Life Limited/Columbia,"Daft Life Limited/Columbia “Get Lucky” debuted as a four-bar loop in a commercial, which Daft Punk’s obsessive fans promptly re-looped and re-looped until it lasted 10 hours. When the full song finally arrived, the instrumentation was pretty much just those four bars over and over, and it was still engrossing. That’s the thing about this song: It’s so simple someone made a chintzy MIDI version of it, but so sinuous that it’s also inspired debates by music-theory journals about what key it’s in. It’s clearly a ’70s pastiche, but it also sounds immediate, even before the robo beeps and boops come in. Daft Punk take the right parts of this song either incredibly seriously or not seriously at all. The disco groove is an immaculate, unironic homage to Nile Rodgers’ Chic, produced alongside the man himself, who plays guitar on the song. The irony is saved for the lyrics, where Pharrell does not even remotely try to keep a straight face while singing his lines about “the legend of the phoenix.” After four lines, he gives up the philosophizing and focuses on the task at hand: getting lucky. But unlike the other huge disco-funk hit of 2013, “Blurred Lines,” this song doesn’t come off too sleazy—there just isn’t enough there. Within those four bars, it’s hard to hear anything but precisely executed joy. –Katherine St. Asaph",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5EofwRzit0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d71309713ff690008c6ef47/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Daft-Punk-Get-Lucky.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Daft_Punk-Get_Lucky_ft_Pharrell_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,113,Jenny Hval,“Conceptual Romance” (2016),Sacred Bones,"Sacred Bones In theory, the Norwegian artist Jenny Hval set out to create an experimental pop album about period blood and vampires with 2016’s Blood Bitch. Really, the record was a deeply accomplished inquiry into the possibility of a feminine sound that gravitated towards the grotesque. At its emotional core is “Conceptual Romance,” a song that floats like a cloud, its hazy procession tempered by the rigor of Hval’s lyrics. A self-described love letter to Chris Kraus’ 1997 novel I Love Dick, which helped shape a generation of feminist artists and intellectuals, “Conceptual Romance” is about the mind-altering power of infatuation. “My heartbreak is too sentimental for you,” Hval croons, slyly chipping back at emotionless masculinity. Between each dreamlike note, “Conceptual Romance” acknowledges thinking and feeling as equally consequential pillars of our lives. –Jenn Pelly",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY7eLAVrfK4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7130f67cf67c000854d52e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jenny-Hval-Conceptual-Romance.png,/dataset/artwork/Jenny_Hval-Conceptual_Romance_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,112,Paramore,“Ain’t It Fun” (2013),Fueled by Ramen,"Fueled by Ramen After three albums of careening mall-punk thrills, Paramore reinvented themselves with “Ain’t It Fun.” Still their highest-charting single, the song brought groove and soul to their sugar-rushing sound—not to mention a gospel choir and real-world resilience. “It’s easy to ignore trouble/When you’re living in a bubble,” Hayley Williams sings, but this is the sound of the bubble of youth freshly burst, of beginning to smash your rose-tinted glasses, of not looking back. Williams has never sounded more monumental or self-possessed. “Ain’t It Fun” proved Paramore to be a legitimate pop force, authors of a new, genre-blurring paradigm of what Top 40 guitar-rock could sound like in the 2010s. They may have made their name on rollercoaster hooks fit for Warped Tour—influencing the likes of Snail Mail, Princess Nokia, and Lil Uzi Vert in the process—but here they grew into themselves, anticipating the influence of blown-up Hot Topic emo in the unlikeliest of places. –Jenn Pelly",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFEmTsfFL5A,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7135027cf67c000854d530/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Paramore-Aint-It-Fun.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Paramore-Aint_It_Fun_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,111,A$AP Ferg,“Shabba” [ft. A$AP Rocky] (2013),Polo Grounds/RCA,"Polo Grounds/RCA “We were always weirdos,” Ferg once said of his A$AP cohort, and the proof is this song, which remains a New York party staple six years later. There’s nothing formulaic about pairing a menacing sample from a twisted ’60s horror flick about a family scalping business with lavish praise for Jamaican dancehall king Shabba Ranks—which makes it perfectly appropriate for Ferg and his crew. Along the way, there are bizarre, ear-twisting moments like Ferg’s full-bodied “Master Bruce!” yell and the unsettling, falling-down-a-mineshaft ad-lib that comes immediately after. The real Shabba Ranks makes a cameo in the video, and the gold jewelry enumerated in the chorus is true to his powerful life, but the strange details—the guts of the song—are Ferg’s alone. –Ross Scarano",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHorckcX60A,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d71355abfe56b000945b79c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/ASAp-Ferg-Shabba.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/AAP_Ferg-Shabba_ft_AAP_Rocky_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,110,Chairlift,“I Belong in Your Arms” (2012),Young Turks/Columbia,"Young Turks/Columbia Brooklyn synth-pop aesthetes Chairlift were a sneakily influential act right up until their split in 2016. Along with fellow blog-era Columbia signees Passion Pit and MGMT, their off-kilter approach to pop songwriting resonated throughout the music industry; dig through the roster of any major label at the start of this decade and you’d find a few acts who were trying to replicate Caroline Polachek and Patrick Wimberly’s approach, albeit without the duo’s left-of-center weirdness. “I Belong in Your Arms” is the crown jewel of their strongest album, 2012’s Something. Polachek delivers lyrics as if she’s gasping for air, spitting stream-of-consciousness non-sequiturs (“Banana split/Honestly/You’re my remote controller”) amid drum machines and synths so perpetually ascendant that they touch the sun. What comes through is the giddy sensation of falling so deeply in love that nothing quite makes sense except a warm embrace. Giving so much of yourself to someone else is always a risky proposition, but for three and a half minutes, Chairlift make the act of devotion sound worth it. –Larry Fitzmaurice",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e8Ql9qFA2o,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7135f37cf67c000854d532/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Chairlift-I-Belong-in-Your-Arms.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Chairlift-I_Belong_in_Your_Arms_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,109,Drake,“Nice for What” (2018),Cash Money,"Cash Money Aubrey Graham took a confident leap of faith in himself by rapping on a sample of Lauryn Hill’s bad-boyfriend soul classic “Ex-Factor” in “Nice for What,” a track that stepped out brazenly on a bounce beat with extra vocals from NOLA icon Big Freedia. But Drake’s message landed like a grown man’s mea culpa for the dog gospel he’s spread for much of the decade—a twerking devotional to all the Insta queens who’ve been wronged by rudely emotional, blame-denying men like Drake. As often as he’s been dismissed as making “music for girls,” the rapper really did so in good faith with “Nice for What,” a celebration of self-sustaining women who keep it moving—“had a man last year, life goes on”—and prefer glowing up alongside their crew to mollifying sweet-talking dudes. The song’s video had director Karena Evans female-gazing upon a cast of accomplished women—Misty Copeland, Tracee Ellis Ross, Olivia Wilde, Tiffany Haddish—making Drake’s magnanimity seem that much more legit. Fatherhood matured him, maybe; perhaps he’s even graduated from the Supreme rug and basketball hoop in his bedroom. –Julianne Escobedo Shepherd",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9BwWKXjVaI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7136647cf67c000854d534/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Drake-Nice-for-What.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Drake-Nice_for_What_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,108,Girlpool,“Before the World Was Big” (2015),Wichita,"Wichita The title track from Philadelphia duo Girlpool’s debut album, Before the World Was Big, distilled the anxieties Harmony Tividad and Cleo Tucker faced as their little band took off, painting an honest portrait of what it means to come of age in the 21st century. The song starts with the amateurish tinkling of a xylophone, the type you might find on the floor of a child’s bedroom. Its delicate notes are pierced by a prickly guitar before Tividad and Tucker launch in, singing in tandem. Together, they reminisce about how easy life felt when they were childhood friends, when reality confined itself to the surrounding neighborhood and the complexities of life had not yet made themselves known. Together, they stand on the precipice of adulthood and eulogize a time when the future was just another question waiting to be answered. –Gabriela Tully Claymore",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDprSv9DjxY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d71384b13ff690008c6ef4a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Girlpool-Before-the-World-Was-Big.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Girlpool-Before_the_World_Was_Big_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,107,Fetty Wap,“Trap Queen” (2014),300 Entertainment,"300 Entertainment On its face, Fetty Wap’s “Trap Queen” is as straightforward as its opening line: “I’m like, ‘Hey, what’s up, hello?’” Made up of only a handful of rhyme schemes, it’s a pop-rap song designed to burrow into your head and never escape, complete with glittering trap production and a drug-pushing, Bonnie-and-Clyde-type love story. What prevents it from being overly repetitive, though, is the New Jersey rapper’s irregular voice; his electronically enhanced vibrato is so deep and tremulous, it welcomed comparisons to yodeling. But like Roger Troutman of Zapp and other funk pioneers of the past, Fetty used effects not to sanitize or correct his voice, but to inject even more emotion into it. So every time he sings, “Baby, yeahhhh,” each slightly mechanical crack and quiver rings with extra devotion. –Michelle Kim",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_kF4zLNKio,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7138f0c7531e0008f96f6a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Fetty-Wap-Trap-Queen.png,/dataset/artwork/Fetty_Wap-Trap_Queen_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,106,Christine and the Queens,“Tilted” (2015),Atlantic,"Atlantic When chart-dominating acts like Ed Sheeran have fashioned superstardom from a corny outsider narrative, where does that leave the real weirdos—the ones who don’t even fit the basic binary of high glamour and humdrum convention? Christine and the Queens’ “Tilted” elegantly articulates that liminal territory, and, more elegantly still, avoids commodifying it with a hashtagable definition. (That satisfying slipperiness may be a quirk of the French singer’s impressionistic approach to writing in English.) “Tilted” makes room for all manner of imbalance as it advocates for neutrality rather than ticker-tape positivity: When she sings “actually” in the line “I am actually good,” the word shrugs off the idea that self-loathing should be a natural state. And when the synths in the verses lurch like warm blood rushes of adrenaline, or arousal, Chris conveys a real-time sense of being overcome by acceptance for the first time. –Laura Snapes",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RBzsjga73s,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7139a5416c320008d9d75c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Christine-and-the-Queens-Tilted.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Christine_and_the_Queens-Tilted_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,105,Kendrick Lamar,“DNA.” (2017),Aftermath/Interscope/Top Dawg,"Aftermath/Interscope/Top Dawg It’s a rapper’s true test to not only string together rhyming lyrics but to frame them, couching in themes and smoothing big ideas into mantras. It’s why word-soup rap enjoys a cult following but falls on deaf ears to everyday audiences; “keep it simple” is a motto many lyricists can’t hold to. In this way, Kendrick Lamar is an anomaly: As dense as his lyrics can be, he zooms out onto big ideas that are resonant and impactful to the masses. He does this on “DNA.,” a blistering personal statement from 2017’s DAMN. that digs back generations and stamps a moment of collective tensing among Black Americans. In the face of a growing, grinning wave of genocidal hate-speech delivered with the presidential seal of approval, Lamar shouts forth the steely confidence of a people ready to bark and bite back, standing on roots that run centuries deep. The song’s riotous second half lets the final battle wage in all its chaos, as Lamar lets off a breathless stanza that even brought the Pulitzer committee to a hush. –Matthew Trammell",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLZRYQMLDW4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7166e37cf67c000854d537/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kendrick-Lamar-DNA.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kendrick_Lamar-DNA_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,104,Amen Dunes,“Miki Dora” (2018),Sacred Bones,"Sacred Bones In the primordial ’60s of yore, Californian surfer Miki Dora was a counterculture icon, a lawless criminal, and the distillation of American masculinity—the stuff of Tom Wolfe books and Dennis Hopper flicks. In 2018, he lived on as one of the subjects of Amen Dunes’ fifth album, Freedom. Here, Dora’s life is a mirror to indie rock songwriter Damon McMahon’s own. “Miki Dora” is about the surfer, but it’s also about the end of McMahon’s youth, and what it means for him to grapple with maleness. Those big West Coast waves that Dora surfed half a century ago are rendered endless in the mesmerizing rhythm of the song. Eventually the guitar gets a bit roomier, and McMahon’s perma-stoned vocals rise ever so slightly, but there are no riptides in “Miki Dora,” only surf, sun, and pearl-white flotsam. –Sophie Kemp",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RONXqXaF8oI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d71679fc7531e0008f96fd5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Amen-Dunes-Miki-Dora.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Amen_Dunes-Miki_Dora_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,103,Erykah Badu,“Hello” [ft. André 3000] (2015),Motown,"Motown Erykah Badu’s 2015 mixtape But You Caint Use My Phone reimagined other artists’ telephone-based songs to delve into the nature of long-distance communication; landlines connected people, she mused, while smartphones more often create distance. The tape’s origin may have been a “Hotline Bling” thought experiment, but its logical endpoint is “Hello,” a dreamy Isley Brothers interpolation (by way of Todd Rundgren) that musically reunites Badu with André 3000, the father of her eldest child. She coos sweet salutations into the receiver, he untangles verses about the terrors of opening up—be it the digital fear of unlocking your phone for a snoopy lover or the analog fear of sitting by, waiting, and having to bear your soul when the phone is finally answered. It feels like two people figuring things out. Roughly half of American households don’t have landlines anymore. But here, the joys and anxieties of twirling a cord around your finger while sinking into a lengthy call aren’t yet antiquated. –Sheldon Pearce",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVg9J5ELEwI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7168dc416c320008d9d7fc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Erykah-Badu-Hello.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Erykah_Badu-Hello_ft_Andr_3000_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,102,Katy Perry,“Teenage Dream” (2010),Capitol,"Capitol In the context of Katy Perry’s cartoonish early hits, the “Teenage Dream” music video is downright stark. No pyrotechnic breasts, psychedelic candy landscapes, or glow-in-the-dark alien abductions: just Katy, her ripped beau, and some similarly photogenic pals on a sepia-toned drive along the beach. The track is similarly svelte and irresistible: a sunny, major-key melody that shares a lineage with Don Henley’s “Boys of Summer,” New Radicals’ “You Get What You Give,” and other pop hits that arrived pre-loaded with nostalgia and widescreen emotions. At the time Perry recorded it, she was attempting to become more than a pop novelty. As if realizing her ambitions mid-sentence, she once explained in an interview, “I want people to… think of me as that pin-up poster in their room—or hopefully I can invade their dreams and be their teenage dream.” And just like that, her music turned bold and sweeping, owing more to the ’80s pop stars with whom she’d soon share chart milestones. Meanwhile, she was midway through her 20s, about to get married, and entering a decade where her propensity for unsubtle gestures of positivity would fall in and out of fashion. But as she gazed toward the camera from the passenger seat in this song’s video, she seemed to have it all figured out. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGJuMBdaqIw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d717d2113ff690008c6ef91/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Katy-Perry-Teenage-Dream.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Katy_Perry-Teenage_Dream_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,101,TNGHT,“Higher Ground” (2012),Warp/Luckyme,"Warp/Luckyme Listening to “Higher Ground” is like getting hit by a freight truck while chugging a liter of cold brew. The track had TNGHT producers Hudson Mohawke and Lunice bridging the gap between Lex Luger’s dirty South production and modern dance music, preluding (and arguably helping birth) the EDM-trap craze. Its guttural brass line, ferocious breakdown, and vocal sample lifted from Julie McKnight’s 2002 club anthem “Home” combine to erect an imposing electronic music monument. The popularity of the track led its makers to recoil from the spotlight and quietly switch off the TNGHT signal, which is fair enough. In its sheer sonic magnitude, “Higher Ground” is essentially insurmountable. –Noah Yoo",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HzyUHxmkg0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d717d9413ff690008c6ef93/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/TNGHT-Higher-Ground.jpg,/dataset/artwork/TNGHT-Higher_Ground_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,100,Jamie xx,“I Know There’s Gonna Be (Good Times)” [ft. Young Thug and Popcaan] (2015),XL,"XL Who knew the shy producer from whispery indie rock trio the xx could also throw a great party? Dancehall star Popcaan, trap royal Young Thug, and the sampled voices of ’70s a cappella group the Persuasions meet in “I Know There’s Gonna Be (Good Times),” a snare-rolling standout from Jamie xx’s 2015 solo debut, In Colour. Popcaan’s deft sing-song amplifies the Caribbean roots of Jamie xx’s steel drums, while Thug giddily squeals through the song’s empty space: When he declares, “I’ma ride in that pussy like a stroller,” his glee is contagious. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjLBB-TMa84,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d717e8b7cf67c000854d570/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jamie-xx-Gosh.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jamie_xx-I_Know_Theres_Gonna_Be_Good_Times_ft_Young_Thug_and_Popcaan_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,99,Mac DeMarco,“Ode to Viceroy” (2012),Captured Tracks,"Captured Tracks A heartfelt tribute to a notoriously terrible brand of cigarettes became a career-making moment for Mac DeMarco. With his inaugural solo mini-album Rock and Roll Night Club, the Canadian singer established himself as a weirdo skeez with a shit-eating grin—a guy whose songs showed tons of promise if you pierced through the thick coats of deep-voiced, slow-motion gimmickry. On “Ode to Viceroy,” he sings tenderly about his unforgiving tobacco addiction and frequent trips to the bodega to buy another pack. “Don’t let me see you cryin’,” he croons. Again, he’s singing to a pack of cigarettes, but any inherent absurdity barely registers. The unlikely love song ends with the sound of him lighting up, inhaling, and collapsing into a fit of echoing coughs. –Evan Minsker",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bfTTeZOrs4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d718018416c320008d9d804/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mac-DeMarco-Ode-to-Viceroy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mac_DeMarco-Ode_to_Viceroy_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,98,D’Angelo & the Vanguard,“Really Love” (2014),RCA,"RCA D’Angelo is such a naturalist that you can almost overlook his eccentricity. “Really Love” evokes the rapture of deep love, the blissful sensation of falling into orbit around the object of your affection. D’Angelo’s honeyed coo, “I’m in really love with you,” is disarming in its sincerity and in its faint aberration—“really” is used oddly, as an adjective rather than an adverb. It sounds off at first, but as the strings quiver and the unquantized drums tick along, every instance of the word becomes a knowing wink, a flash of intimacy. The song includes a spoken word intro in Spanish, along with violin, viola, contrabass, sitar, multiple guitars, horns, synths—even a Curtis Mayfield sample. (It shouldn’t be surprising that D’Angelo plays many of these parts.) When “Really Love” was released as the single to Black Messiah in 2014, its richness felt like a statement: D’Angelo had been largely out of sight for 14 years, but he’d never been idle. –Stephen Kearse",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVsQwJfWzoI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7180c17cf67c000854d572/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/DAngelo-Really-Love.jpg,/dataset/artwork/DAngelo__the_Vanguard-Really_Love_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,97,Snail Mail,“Pristine” (2018),Matador,"Matador Uplifted by chugging guitars and crashing drums, Snail Mail’s Lindsey Jordan mourns a relationship that’s crashing to the ground on “Pristine.” The young indie rock musician leans into the grandiosity of her pain, layering anguished thought over anguished thought. Any one line from the song—“I know myself and I’ll never love anyone else,” “Don’t you like me for me?” “I’ll still see you in everything, tomorrow and all the time”—distills the exquisite, all-consuming pain of teenage heartache. With these words, Jordan builds a scarecrow outline of her relationship just to torch it all to the ground. “Pristine” burns and burns, fueled by an urge to create one last beautiful spectacle out of failed romance. –Vrinda Jagota",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tnTucP1UM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d71828347318e000977d848/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Snail-Mail-Pristine.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Snail_Mail-Pristine_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,96,Thundercat,“Them Changes” (2015),Brainfeeder,"Brainfeeder For a virtuoso whose music explores the outer reaches of funk, yacht rock, and astral jazz, Thundercat has always shown a sensitive undercurrent. In his first two solo albums, he slowed down a George Duke love anthem, sang adoringly about his cat, and composed a heart-wrenching tribute to a late friend. “Them Changes,” from his 2015 EP The Beyond/Where the Giants Roam, pairs this vulnerability with one of his best grooves. It’s a burbling stomp about being emotionally and literally destroyed, about how his heart has been ripped from his chest and his floor is covered in blood. (It’s worth noting that this man has a well-documented love of samurai films.) Thundercat seems dazed and panicked here, unable to process what’s happened as he begs for help. Then, in an interlude, his trusty bass falls away and he sings some ethereal oooohs, pinpointing a sweet spot between boldness and fragility. –Evan Minsker",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNCd_ERZvZM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7804f20db1d10008f1fcb8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Thundercat-Them-Changes.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Thundercat-Them_Changes_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,95,Rihanna,“Bitch Better Have My Money” (2015),Roc Nation,"Roc Nation This was the music video that launched a thousand pearl-clutching critiques, along with about as many think pieces about its radical significance. In it, Rihanna nonchalantly threatens her accountant with a phrase often wielded by men. In the process, she kidnaps and tortures his wife, before taking a chainsaw to his neck. There are umteen ways to read into the politics of this video: What kind of violence are we sensitized to, and what makes us squirm? What does it look like for a woman to be powerful and angry while also being feminine? How are white women complicit in and benefitting from the bad behavior of white men? But ultimately, determining whether this video is Good and Feminist or Bad and Cancelled is futile; what freedom looks like for any woman cannot be simplified into one set of rules. This is for certain though: “Bitch Better Have My Money” is a song and video about Rihanna putting herself—her money, her friends, her revenge—first. –Vrinda Jagota",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/B3eAMGXFw1o,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7805626eee70000829f4b4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Rihanna-BBHMM.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rihanna-Bitch_Better_Have_My_Money_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,94,Hurray for the Riff Raff,“Pa’lante” (2017),ATO,"ATO In his 1973 poem “Puerto Rican Obituary,” the Nuyorican poet Pedro Pietri urged his people onward toward self-knowledge and self-love. More than 40 years later, Alynda Segarra, the singer-songwriter behind Hurray for the Riff Raff, used the poem as fuel for “Pa’lante,” the penultimate track from her band’s 2017 album, The Navigator. The record found Segarra staking a new claim to her Puerto Rican identity, after a lifetime of “finding most of my heroes in white men.” But this song didn’t find its ultimate purpose until later that year, when Hurricane Maria arrived. Since the storm hit, Segarra continuously tried to find her way back to her ravaged ancestral homeland in a way that would allow her to give without taking. She finally made it in December 2018. While there, playing “Pa’lante” for her people, she fully understood its time-warped origin. As she told Billboard: “It felt like I didn’t write the song—we wrote the song.” –Jonah Bromwich",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LilVDjLaZSE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d78066dfd34990009cf8c03/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Hurray-for-the-Riff-Raff-Palante.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Hurray_for_the_Riff_Raff-Palante_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,93,Radiohead,“True Love Waits” (2016),XL,"XL Until it resurfaced as the last track on A Moon Shaped Pool, “True Love Waits” was best known among Radiohead fans as the earnest acoustic ballad that got away. Written more than 30 years earlier and unsuccessfully retooled for each of the band’s peak-era masterpieces, the song was squandered at the bottom of the 2001 live album I Might Be Wrong. But Yorke never abandoned the studio version, eventually forgoing the experimental synthesizers and Rhodes piano he kept trying to make work in favor of soft piano chords. In its final form, “True Love Waits” remains obliquely romantic, but instead of begging and pleading with his partner, Yorke sounds resigned to a more solitary fate. In the context of the band’s—and the song’s—long-term trajectory, this shift in tone shift feels major: Yorke and co. know that the older you get, the more you realize how little is in your control. –Jillian Mapes",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7808012073fe00084eb3bc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Radiohead-True-Love-Waits.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Radiohead-True_Love_Waits_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,92,Meek Mill,“Dreams and Nightmares (Intro)” (2012),Maybach,"Maybach When posterity whittles an artist’s music career down to a few ripe seconds (and it will), they are lucky to be left with a single drum crack or a yelped ad lib to testify that they once existed. Meek Mill had a turbulent decade, but with “Dreams and Nightmares,” he notched 200 glorious, uninterrupted seconds onto hip-hop’s wall. You cannot abridge the intro to his album of the same name; “Dreams and Nightmares” has to be taken in full or not at all. May the gods protect the DJ who cut away from the weepy grand pianos before the beat change—that switch-up is the point, the gas pedal. This song’s so goddamn potent, it spawned a subgenre: From Tee Grizzley’s “First Day Out” to Cardi B’s “Get Up 10,” the ensuing years were littered with tracks directly mimicking its lush intro/pummeling coda structure. None of them came close to matching Meek Mill’s blood-curdling intensity. –Jayson Greene",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWh4O6ujK4o,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7808866eee70000829f4b6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Meek-Mill-Dreams-and-Nightmares.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Meek_Mill-Dreams_and_Nightmares_Intro_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,91,Haim,“The Wire” (2013),Columbia,"Columbia “The Wire” is the most locked-in groove from Haim’s debut album Days Are Gone—a record not exactly lacking in locked-in grooves. The song has the group’s three sisters, who up to that point had spent a literal lifetime honing session chops while mastering a soft rock-meets-’90s R&B sound infused with Laurel Canyon vibes, reaching maximum vocal synchronicity as they glide over hand-clap melodies and airy lyrics about giving a bruised lover the brush-off. They are technically the ones apologizing—“You know I’m bad at communication, it’s the hardest thing for me to do”—but anyone who sounds this unbothered while saying sorry clearly has the upper hand, and always will. –Jeremy Gordon",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Vh0iP5BziQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7808d88699b30008f1acf3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Haim-The-Wire.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Haim-The_Wire_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,90,Blawan,“Why They Hide Their Bodies Under My Garage?” (2012),Hinge Finger,"Hinge Finger Blawan’s “Why They Hide Their Bodies Under My Garage?” just might be the most cheerfully mean-spirited song of the decade—an evil, glowering spirit that barrels ahead like a bull on a rampage. Over a punishing drum groove of hammered anvils and sharpening knives, the UK producer flips a Fugees sample into what sounds like a serial killer’s accidental confession. Then, for extra horror-core effect, he adds a blood-curdling scream every few bars. It’s a song so ludicrous in its malevolence that even Skrillex started playing it in his sets, bringing the techno underground together with EDM’s fuzzy-boots set by way of a good, old-fashioned murder fantasy. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KL_Bbyi3ub8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7809730db1d10008f1fcba/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Blawan-Why-They-Hide-Their-Bodies.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Blawan-Why_They_Hide_Their_Bodies_Under_My_Garage_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,89,Frank Ocean,“Pyramids” (2012),Def Jam,"Def Jam In the middle of 2012, Frank Ocean was still the shadowy Odd Future affiliate who put out a charming mixtape of skewed R&B, or the guy who guested on JAY-Z and Kanye’s Watch the Throne and wrote a song with Beyoncé. He was not yet an icon, and the world hadn’t really seen all that he could do. Then came “Pyramids,” and the ground beneath us shifted. The three-part, 10-minute hyperspace cruise through time, styles, and cool-eyed character observations offered monumental proof that he was capable of miracles. Egyptian pharaohs, Las Vegas sex workers, uncredited John Mayer guitar solos—somehow, he made all of it sound like it belonged. Most impressively, the result was light and catchy enough not to collapse under the weight of Ocean’s vast ambition. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJt7gNi3Nr4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d79087e2073fe00084eb42f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Frank-Ocean-Pyramids.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Frank_Ocean-Pyramids_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,88,Japandroids,“Younger Us” (2010),Polyvinyl,"Polyvinyl “Younger Us” is a self-fulfilling rock’n’roll prophecy. When Japandroids frontman Brian King graduated college, he watched his friends from small town British Columbia, Canada quickly settle into normalcy—weddings, mortgages, babies—and thought, Well, fuck that. So he started a band with drummer Dave Prowse and dreamed up a song about teenage abandon, blooming lust, and jumping out of bed to grab a beer with your best friend. “Younger Us” was written during the sessions for Japandroids’ breakthrough album, 2009’s Post-Nothing, when the duo were essentially making music for themselves. So its manic nostalgia, driven by King’s gushing distortion and Prowse’s incessant cymbal crashes, looks backward and forward at the same time: The song doesn’t lament lost youth so much as it’s hellbent on recapturing it. By the time “Younger Us” was released in 2010, Japandroids were drinking through sunrises en route to the next sold-out gig, far from home. –Ryan Dombal",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4m6Ptx4CV6k,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d79092e0db1d10008f1fe36/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Japandroids-Younger-Us.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Japandroids-Younger_Us_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,87,Rich Gang,“Lifestyle” (2014),Cash Money,"Cash Money In 2014, Cash Money Records co-founder Birdman, one of the keenest A&R men in rap history, brought together two buzzing Atlanta artists—infectious eccentric Young Thug and malleable crooner Rich Homie Quan—for a feel-good jam of perfect synergy. On “Lifestyle,” their Auto-Tuned warbles sounded as lush as the manners of living they envisioned in song: Thug bursting at the seams, puffing on clouds from the top of a mountain, Quan reclining with commas in every bank. It marked Thug and Quan’s biggest hit to date, and the trio would birth an exceptional mixtape together, Rich Gang: Tha Tour Pt. 1. But the alliance that had seemed to foreshadow many more seasons of Cash Money primacy instead dissolved rather quickly, and all three artists have feuded with each other on and off ever since. “Lifestyle” remains a snapshot of what could have been, a look inside a dynasty before it was irreparably broken. –Sheldon Pearce",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGt_JGHYEO4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d790a022073fe00084eb431/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Rich-Gang-Lifestyle.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rich_Gang-Lifestyle_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,86,Destroyer,“Chinatown” (2011),Merge,"Merge The opening track on Destroyer’s Kaputt unfurls like a waking dream. Everything in it feels simultaneously vivid and unreal; the blurry saxophone seems to beckon from beyond the song itself, while Dan Bejar’s vocals sound plucked from a metaphysical overheard conversation: “You can’t believe/The way the wind’s talking to the sea,” he marvels. You might not know what he means, exactly, but those windswept waves are indelible once he’s pointed them out to you. “I can’t walk away,” he repeats, sounding more obsessed than trapped. Whatever “Chinatown” means to Bejar’s narrator, it’s somewhere deliciously inescapable—a state of mind forever disappearing over the horizon. –Madison Bloom",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmeu3aiVeb8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d790b2cfd34990009cf8d12/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Destroyer-Chinatown.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Destroyer-Chinatown_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,85,Charli XCX,“Track 10” (2017),Asylum/Atlantic,"Asylum/Atlantic Charli XCX is sonic science fiction. Delightfully robotic and whimsically spacy, she got the best grasp of where she was going, and could go, on 2017’s Pop 2 mixtape. Tucked at the end is “Track 10,” which, after a production swap and a Lizzo feature, became her blaring 2019 single “Blame It On Your Love.” But in its relatively spare original form, the song relies not on bass drops but rather a heavily accumulating chorus that loops and loops, burrowing its way deeper into the mind and limbs with each rotation. At her best, which she is here, Charli XCX cracks a key pop music code: doing as much with as little language as possible. The chorus of “Track 10” consumes and consumes, until it ends, and the listener can’t remember living in a world before they heard it. –Hanif Abdurraqib",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rj6dwEBmBJA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d790c4afd34990009cf8d14/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Charli-XCX-Track-10.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Charli_XCX-Track_10_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,84,Kelela,“Bank Head” (2013),Fade to Mind,"Fade to Mind Released six years ago, Kelela’s “Bank Head” is a proof-of-concept that’s still recouping. Today, an R&B vocalist pairing with electronic producers is a familiar idea; during the more wide-eyed summer of 2013, though, Kelela and Kingdom’s mp3 demos sounded like a future the club kids and R&B purists had both intuited, where the black queer underground got its just due as cultural alchemists. Kelela was an easy sell as an underground icon: Her vocals flexed with all the acrobatic skill her generation had learned from Janet, Brandy, and Mariah, while her style whet the palates of the ultramodern Opening Ceremony devotees who run the fashion world. The beats did the rest: The handclaps that drive the track forward are a call-to-action for hips and tongues across genres, from Miami bass to baile-funk to house, drenched in a synth-bed that sounds like a sunrise let-out from a Bed-Stuy afterhours club. “Time goes by really slow,” Kelela sings here, but it feels like it was just yesterday when she was sketching out the sounds of tomorrow. –Matthew Trammell",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0q9LcifnTV4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d790dfbfd34990009cf8d16/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kelela-Bank-Head.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kelela-Bank_Head_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,83,Deerhunter,“Desire Lines” (2010),4AD,"4AD Unlike most of Deerhunter’s catalog, “Desire Lines” has little to do with frontman Bradford Cox. Sung instead by guitarist Lockett Pundt, the highlight of their fifth album, Halcyon Digest, found Deerhunter at their nocturnal best: Two screeching guitar riffs hurtle around each other for a few frenzied minutes and collapse, while the band hammers at the tune over and over again, just to check that it’s dead. You’d be forgiven for thinking you were listening to Arcade Fire at first—“Desire Lines” opens with the same anguished chug as 2004’s “Rebellion (Lies)”—though Deerhunter wield a sharper edge, paring down the tune’s raw materials into a darker and more elegant shape. –Jo Livingstone",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mBSOtdOjoc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d793eec4bc6510008699739/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Deerhunter-Desire-Lines.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Deerhunter-Desire_Lines_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,82,Dej Loaf,“Try Me” (2014),Columbia,"Columbia 2019 rap enjoys subverting gender norms at both ends. At one are pipsqueak-pitched brats racing to see who can sound the most infantile and coy while spouting hyper-masculine, R-rated lyrics; it’s easy to picture that Looney Tunes cigar-smoking baby when listening to the latest verses from Playboi Carti or Lil Uzi Vert. On the other end are pencil-sharp female rappers dragging the genre to new edges from behind cat-eye makeup. They aren't concerned with celebrating femininity, or anything else for that matter—they simply grab for your throat, no matter how you identify. One could argue that a touchstone for both styles was Dej Loaf’s “Try Me,” the shimmering street anthem that took 2014 by storm from a Detroit front porch. With her unisex wardrobe, buttersoft voice, and vows to turn her enemies into pasta, she carved out space for female rappers to be sour and sweet while giving dudes some lessons in melody: A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie, for one, must know he owes his radio-ready flow to Dej Loaf’s pioneering style. –Matthew Trammell",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Hn9hLOljJI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d793f4d256a0a0009483311/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Dej-Loaf-Try-Me.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Dej_Loaf-Try_Me_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,81,Cass McCombs,“County Line” (2011),Domino,"Domino By the time Cass McCombs released this pillow-soft meditation on the ache of loneliness, he’d already established himself as a slippery figure in American folk-rock, with a penchant for cryptic, out-of-time songs. Casting his feathery falsetto front and center, “County Line” is the rare McCombs track that sees him fully resisting the urge to obfuscate his best melodic instincts in bizarre chord changes and jarring industrial sounds, opting for a comforting backdrop of ambrosial organ, wispy drums, and twangy guitar licks. Its power resides in the way it offsets all that beauty with the wretched, delicious pain of its subject matter, elevating a highway marker into a metaphor for the invisible boundaries we cross and recoil from as we move in and out of each other’s lives. And yet, with McCombs, even a lyric as naked as “You never even tried to love me” is never straightforward—to understand why, just look at the “County Line” music video, which features footage of a line of cars awaiting passage at the U.S.-Mexico border. –Emilie Friedlander",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOcnITphyjk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d79407f4bc651000869973b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Cass-McCombs-County-Line.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Cass_McCombs-County_Line_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,80,Blood Orange,“You’re Not Good Enough” (2013),Domino,"Domino It’s a cliche for an artist to say that their music is their therapy, but Dev Hynes really does share things in his music that most of us would only say inside patient-doctor confidentiality. “You’re Not Good Enough,” from his breakthrough as Blood Orange, Cupid Deluxe, is not a pleasant thing to say, to sing, or to even think while breaking up with someone—but why, if its so cruel, does it sound so good? Perhaps it’s Hynes’ Prince-lite funk orchestration and the delicate vocal interplay between him and his then-girlfriend, Samantha Urbani; perhaps it’s how we’ve all thought something similar at some point about someone who disappoints us. But even more so, it’s probably the sheer wonder of enjoying an artist who’s so open that even his darkest ideas become ours. That’s who Hynes has been to a generation: the sensitive, vulnerable, sometimes-sour poet of emotional contradictions, the singer of our thoughts, both clean and otherwise. –Alex Frank",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gtdpnKbT10,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d79410e4bc651000869973d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Blood-Orange-Youre-Not-Good-Enough.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Blood_Orange-Youre_Not_Good_Enough_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,79,Lana Del Rey,“The greatest” (2019),Polydor/Interscope,"Polydor/Interscope On “The greatest,” Lana Del Rey’s world is aflame. Carefree nights have been poisoned by the constant threat of nuclear warfare; her beloved Malibu is ravaged by monstrous wildfires; nothing feels like it used to, and holding onto hope no longer seems plausible. “The culture is lit, and if this is it, I had a ball/I guess that I’m burned-out after all,” she concludes over a noir swell of strings and keys. Despite its tongue-in-cheek fatalism, “The greatest” doesn’t submit to nihilism; it feels like the logical apex of Del Rey’s ever-present nostalgia. Surfing on a languid ’70s guitar wave, her blasé murmur wraps each turbulent image in a gauze of comforting warmth. The end of the world has never felt so assured. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIt2QsIYH88,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7945c94bc651000869973f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lana-Del-Rey-The-Greatest.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lana_Del_Rey-The_greatest_2019.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,78,Jeremih,“Oui” (2015),Def Jam,"Def Jam Is there a contemporary R&B singer more selfless than Jeremih? Between his sporadic solo projects, the Chicago serenader has doubled as one of the industry’s most overqualified session musicians, lending his silken falsetto to tracks from dozens of rap and R&B’s biggest names—and plenty of smaller ones, too, often without so much as a feature credit in return. When you've been gifted with a voice like this, it’d be cruel not to spread it around. After his 2009 breakout “Birthday Sex,” most of Jeremih's singles saddled him with rap features that rarely added much, but “Oui” was a reminder of how transcendent he could sound when given the chance to carry a track on his own. For four heavenly minutes, the song suspends gravity, accompanying Jeremih with production as weightless as his voice: plinking pianos, gentle swooshes, and helium-infused trap drums that float toward blue sky like a bouquet of heart-shaped balloons. Jeremih isn’t just singing about bliss. He’s creating it. –Evan Rytlewski",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtcP0PFifpE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d794661256a0a0009483313/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jeremih-Oui.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Jeremih-Oui_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,77,Kanye West,“Ultralight Beam” (2016),G.O.O.D./Def Jam,"G.O.O.D./Def Jam Given the kaleidoscope of egomania and petty grievances that make up Kanye West’s world, the most immediately surprising thing about “Ultralight Beam” is that he barely appears on it. Yes, he’s there, hobbled by Auto-Tune, a pilgrim in rags ascending the mountain. But the Life of Pablo opener is a group effort: an imperiled Kelly Price, an ecstatic Chance the Rapper, a reverential Kirk Franklin, a gale-force choir. See? West seems to say. I know when to shut up. As uplifting as the song’s message is, the music here is pretty leaden: The trudging drums, the vast silences, the choir struggling against the inertia of it all. But that’s the song’s power: Instead of capturing triumph or even reprieve, it fixates morbidly on burden. And yet Kanye is there, his friends are there, he fucks up and asks forgiveness, the seasons turn. If West continues to seem sympathetic, it’s in part because no matter how much he achieves, he still manages to make himself look like he’s climbing—steadily, painfully, an avatar for the possibility that one can be both weak enough to buckle and strong enough to go on. As for whether or not he deserves the redemption he’s asking for, well, if you really believe in God, you know that even assholes deserve to stand in His light. –Mike Powell",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oHdAA3AqnE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7946b353e80c0008f439c2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kanye-West-Ultralight-Beam.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kanye_West-Ultralight_Beam_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,76,The National,“Bloodbuzz Ohio” (2010),4AD,"4AD The National are very good at making buttoned-up music about weariness and despair, and the time they’ve spent perfecting such downcast moodiness makes their explosive moments hit that much harder. “Bloodbuzz Ohio,” from their 2010 album High Violet, is one of their finest anthems, a slow-building roar that gathers momentum with every measure. Bryan Devendorf’s drums, halfway between a backbeat and a fill, give the song its relentless forward motion, and his rhythm seems to shove each additional instrument into place and send it on its way by sheer force of will. Singer Matt Berninger offers typically cryptic lines about “owing money to the money” and being carried to Ohio by a swarm of bees, but the true meaning of his words comes from the way he sings them—resigned, a little bewildered, somehow still hopeful in spite of it all. –Mark Richardson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfySK7CLEEg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7946fe0db1d10008f1ff0d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-National-Bloodbuzz-Ohio.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_National-Bloodbuzz_Ohio_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,75,DJ Koze,“Pick Up” (2018),Pampa,"Pampa Impervious to trends, DJ Koze’s specialty is creating warmly funky tracks coated with light psychedelic mist, tracks that braid together yearning, hope, and sadness into a fundamentally human ache. “Pick Up,” a towering highlight from his 2018 album Knock Knock, condenses his fundamental Koze-ness into six and a half minutes of shimmering disco bliss. That the song is built around a vocal sample from a Gladys Knight & the Pips ballad is perfect, reminding us that Koze is as much a listener as he is a creator. We hear what he heard in Knight’s voice, and then we follow him as he takes that feeling someplace all his own. –Mark Richardson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JE63vMzb3UE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7947a26eee70000829f669/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/DJ-Koze-Pick-Up.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/DJ_Koze-Pick_Up_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,74,Jack Ü,“Where Are Ü Now” [ft. Justin Bieber] (2015),Mad Decent/OWSLA,"Mad Decent/OWSLA What a difference a perfect pop song can make. In the couple of years before Justin Bieber’s “Where Are Ü Now,” produced by Skrillex and Diplo under their Jack Ü moniker, the baby-faced star was in the middle of an awkward transition from tween-pop hairball to tattoo-covered fuckboi, his countless transgressions splashed across TMZ on what seemed to be an hourly basis. When he wasn’t pissing in a mop bucket in the kitchen of a restaurant, he was throwing eggs at his neighbor’s house, or visiting the Anne Frank House only to write how he hoped the tragic Holocaust victim “would have been a belieber” in the guestbook. For a moment, he was the most hated man-child on Earth. Then came this song, and everything changed. It started off as an affectingly whiny Bieber demo before the vocals were sent to Diplo and Skrillex, who tweaked and distorted and pitch-shifted them to match their future-pop dreams. “Where Are Ü Now” was released in 2015, when EDM’s trademark drops had all but lost their adrenaline-spiking effectiveness. Sensing this shift, the one time drop-mongers inverted their own style here: Instead of concocting a hands-in-the-air buildup to a blaring hook, Diplo and Skrillex sucked out all of the track’s air at its peak, like an astronaut suddenly floating in space. The result was discombobulating to the point of deliriousness—a reimagining of what Justin Bieber could be, and what a Top 10 hit could sound like. –Ryan Dombal",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nntGTK2Fhb0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7947f64bc6510008699741/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jack-U%25CC%2588-Where-Are-U%25CC%2588-Now.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jack_-Where_Are__Now_ft_Justin_Bieber_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,73,Perfume Genius,“Queen” (2014),Matador,"Matador Over his first two albums, Mike Hadreas’ hollowed-out music as Perfume Genius relied on waterlogged recordings and funereal vocals befitting pitch-black subject matter: desperation, addiction, abuse. But with “Queen,” he cleared away the reverb to deliver his most assertive beam of clarity yet. He used the showy elements of glam rock to swan triumphantly against gay panic: “No family is safe when I sashay,” he cried over a crash of cymbals and guttural vocals, ushering in a brash sound for Perfume Genius that went hand in hand with a newly unambiguous lyrical approach. A full year before the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage across the U.S., Hadreas was locking horns with those who clutched their pearls at the faintest whiff of homosexuality—the same kind of bigoted personalities that now populate some of America’s highest offices. Let “Queen” be the rallying cry against them, ad infinitum. –Eric Torres",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7OSSUwPVM4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d79483c0db1d10008f1ff0f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Perfume-Genius-Queen.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Perfume_Genius-Queen_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,72,"Tyler, the Creator",“Yonkers” (2011),XL,"XL “Yonkers” is like an indoctrination—before you know it, Tyler, the Creator has swept you up in his breakneck realm. And as Tyler’s first release on a proper label, the song served as the catalyst for the Odd Future movement, bringing the L.A. kids off the internet and onto Jimmy Fallon’s back. It begins abruptly with its sickly, skittish beat that sticks like a broken delete key. Just as swiftly, the rapper starts dropping names of then-mysterious figures—Anwar, Jasper, Syd—as he inverts rap cliches into menacing quips. There’s nowhere to sit, nowhere to hide. You just want to follow this guy wherever he goes, even when he eats a cockroach in the video. –Matthew Strauss",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSbZidsgMfw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7948a00db1d10008f1ff11/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Tyler-the-Creator-Yonkers.png,/dataset/artwork/Tyler_the_Creator-Yonkers_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,71,Adele,“Someone Like You” (2011),Columbia/XL,"Columbia/XL Be sure to stretch before putting on 21: It’s still a marathon of human misery. Adele didn’t just languish in the agony of sudden heartbreak on her second album, she found the glory in surviving it—of turning her scratchy soul belt into a conduit for bewilderment and betrayal. After fixating, fantasizing, and hypothesizing her way through the record, Adele showed just how far she had come with its closing track, “Someone Like You.” The ballad is an atom bomb of yearning, but it’s not permitted to freewheel into self-pity. Singing with hoarse gravity, Adele holds every note like a steely challenge to move forward even as she looks back, rarely flickering into melisma as the piano arpeggios churn below. Listen to “Someone Like You” in the depths of despair, and it’s a lifeline; listen to it from the other side, and it’s a medal for a battle well fought. –Stacey Anderson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLQl3WQQoQ0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d79492d4bc6510008699743/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Adele-Someone-Like-You.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Adele-Someone_Like_You_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,70,Beach House,“Zebra” (2010),Sub Pop/Bella Union,"Sub Pop/Bella Union Beach House singer Victoria Legrand listened to her bandmate Alex Scally’s instrumental demo, with its pendulum riffs and dramatic crash cymbals, and thought of zebras. “It was what I was seeing,” she told KEXP recently, “patterns crossing.” So she wrote a song about that striped animal running among horses, simultaneously distinguished and camouflaged by its markings. It became the lead-off track to Beach House’s third album, Teen Dream, and a pivotal moment for the duo. On its surface, “Zebra” sounds like a song about deception—perhaps a prelude to the breakup album that follows. But it also gets at something much deeper: “Patterns crossing” may be the most apt description of the Beach House sound, which thrives on the contrast between textures and feelings, between Scally’s stoic guitar and Legrand’s soulful vocals. “Zebra” expresses something about how they create together, how they use their stripes to capture ineffable feelings, and how they’ve managed to remain so mysterious for so long. –Stephen Deusner",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-wfb25WmV4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d79496d0db1d10008f1ff13/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Beach-House-Zebra.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beach_House-Zebra_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,69,Caribou,“Can’t Do Without You” (2014),Merge/City Slang,"Merge/City Slang “Can’t Do Without You” initially scans as a relatively straightforward love song. In it, Caribou’s Dan Snaith and a sampled Marvin Gaye sing the titular phrase over a simmering nü-disco beat that swells into a euphoric banger. But any sweetness inherent to those few words eventually gets smothered by the claustrophobic nature of how they’re delivered: It’s about love, for sure, but it also starts to sting as a reflection on obsession and codependency. So by the end of the track, it’s hard to shake the feeling that you’re basking in the rapturous glow of a relationship that’s become dysfunctionally intertwined. –Evan Minsker",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI2Et19vDCM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d780adc0db1d10008f1fcbc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Caribou-Cant-Do-Without-You.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Caribou-Cant_Do_Without_You_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,68,FKA twigs,“Two Weeks” (2014),Young Turks,"Young Turks A lot has been made of the sexually explicit lyrical content of “Two Weeks” (such as: “My thighs are apart for when you’re ready to breathe in”), but less has been said about how much of an orgasm the song is musically. There are all these elongated sounds—slowly arching snares, spilt treacle synths, vocals that stretch into the horizon—that act as lines of tension, gently bracing themselves for the inevitable. There’s even what appears to be a cracked whip just after the one-minute mark. When the drop finally comes (again and again), it carries twigs’ voice off into the abyss. While there’s plenty to savor in the artist’s clit-sure lyricism, what makes her tale of desire and release a keeper is how its sound embodies the rise and fall of our protagonist’s thirst for her would-be lover; a death and a rebirth, swallowing one another whole. –Ruth Saxelby",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yDP9MKVhZc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a863e0db1d10008f20007/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/FKA-twigs-Two-Weeks.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/FKA_twigs-Two_Weeks_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,67,Kacey Musgraves,“Slow Burn” (2018),MCA Nashville,"MCA Nashville By picking up on narrative threads of past country rebels, from Loretta Lynn’s sexual frankness to Willie Nelson’s penchant for mind-expanding flora, Kacey Musgraves’ lyrics have been defiant and open-minded, even when her music has sounded more traditional. But on Golden Hour, her third album, it’s the arrangements that catch your attention. Its opening track, “Slow Burn,” begins by evoking sunny Laurel Canyon soft rock as much as it does country, with a serene melody and gently strummed acoustic guitar. But midway, after the introduction of a drumbeat and bassline, it takes on shades of trip-hop, as though filtering Patsy Cline through a Portishead prism. “Slow Burn” is not so much a genre crossover as an open-ended journey, like the acid trip in the desert that inspired Musgraves to write the song. Rather than leaving country behind, the songwriter has chosen to explore the limits of its territory, and to expand them. –Shuja Haider",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC7cmWkBoz4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a8c718699b30008f1aee5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kacey-Musgraves-Slow-Burn.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kacey_Musgraves-Slow_Burn_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,66,King Krule,“Out Getting Ribs” (2010),House Anxiety,"House Anxiety It’s still a bit shocking to hear that voice coming from that body in the DIY video for “Out Getting Ribs,” Archy Marshall’s breakout song. He was just 15 years old when he posted the clip, but his weathered warble suggested someone several decades older—as do the lyrics, which had Marshall pulling from his adolescence while also transcending the simple angst typical of such an age. He touched up “Out Getting Ribs” for his 2013 debut album as King Krule, 6 Feet Beneath the Moon, taking out some reverb and cleaning up the guitar and bass. But the original version, rough and raw and bracing, stands up best. –Matthew Strauss",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9wLrAtcd6Y,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a8ce253e80c0008f43a3c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/King-Krule-Out-Getting-Ribs.jpg,/dataset/artwork/King_Krule-Out_Getting_Ribs_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,65,Drake,“Worst Behavior” (2013),Cash Money/Young Money/Republic,"Cash Money/Young Money/Republic In 2013, we were introduced to Tough Drake. Nothing Was the Same was his coming-out party, and “Worst Behavior” was his anthem. If young Drake strained awkwardly to make his points, Tough Drake romanticized his misbehavior with ease, burning time just yelling “Remember?! Motherfucker?!” Years before he became the world’s most-streamed act, “Worst Behavior” was Drake’s chest-beating play for pop’s center, even with its gloriously rattled, oblong beat (which producer DJ Dahi once called “literally, like, a mistake”). Drake was 26 then, and Tough Drake felt like a costume he’d eventually take off. But it wasn’t a phase. Six years later, Drake still isn’t in a forgiving mood. He still hasn’t settled down, and maybe he never will. (He’s not the only one who thinks permanently coupling up might actually make you lonelier.) When you have everything, do you stay on your worst behavior forever? –Naomi Zeichner",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CccnAvfLPvE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a8d2b8699b30008f1aee8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Drake-Worst-Behavior.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Drake-Worst_Behavior_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,64,Phoebe Bridgers,“Motion Sickness” (2017),Dead Oceans,"Dead Oceans The lyrics to “Motion Sickness,” a highlight from Phoebe Bridgers’ slow-burning debut Stranger in the Alps, eulogize a toxic relationship. “I hate you for what you did/And I miss you like a little kid,” she sings softly over layers of echoing guitars and an insistent rhythm. In the climax, she offers a particularly damning line—“You were in a band when I was born”—and holds out the last syllable like a primal howl. It’s a lyric that now feels inextricable from a New York Times article from earlier this year in which Bridgers and other musicians alleged abuse at the hands of Ryan Adams. But for all its first-person directness and lingering questions, “Motion Sickness” is the beginning of a story, not an ending: Its steady rise of adrenaline sounds like a vow to keep moving. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sfYpolGCu8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a8d75f2a07f0008f41ca4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Phoebe-Bridgers-Motion-Sickness.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Phoebe_Bridgers-Motion_Sickness_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,63,Bobby Shmurda,“Hot Nigga” (2014),Epic,"Epic New York needed something fresh. It was 2014 and the city was less than a year removed from famed Compton, California native Kendrick Lamar claiming he was the “King of New York” on record. Then, in March, Bobby Shmurda released the music video for “Hot Nigga” on YouTube. It began as a New York street-rap hit; the city fell in love with Bobby’s Brooklyn cockiness and the song’s booming Jahlil Beats production. The hook could be heard playing out of cars across all five boroughs, while the rapper’s “Shmoney Dance” found its way into schools and, eventually, Vine. Looking back, it’s unreal that “Hot Nigga” was ever more than a local phenomenon, especially since the NYPD cut Bobby’s career short before he got a chance to benefit from his success. But for a moment, his energy and personality brought New York hip-hop back into the spotlight. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3JNEM1TIEs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a8dc4256a0a0009483360/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bobby-Shmurda-Hot-Nigga.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bobby_Shmurda-Hot_Nigga_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,62,Rihanna,“We Found Love” [ft. Calvin Harris] (2011),Island Def Jam,"Island Def Jam Hopelessness is not a common thing to find in a pop song. Sadness? Sure. Heartbreak? Of course. But the word “hopeless” implies a sense of disrepair that’s hard to face directly, let alone dance to. Yet somehow, it took less than a minute for Rihanna and Calvin Harris to lodge the idea into the radio’s vocabulary with their glittering collaboration “We Found Love.” While her words gesture toward the world’s darkest corners, the warmly insistent, lite-house thump suggests starry skies, packed dancefloors, human touch. Like a lot of things concerning Rihanna, “We Found Love” inserted itself into popular culture with idiomatic ease, and the generational gravity of its message only adds to its appeal. Lately, Rihanna has used her platform to speak out for a number of prominent causes: for reproductive rights, for Colin Kaepernick, against the president. She’s at that point in her career where every move she makes suggests a feeling of invincibility: Just because she found what she’s looking for doesn’t mean she’s done searching. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg00YEETFzg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a8e1f256a0a0009483362/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Rihanna-We-Found-Love.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rihanna-We_Found_Love_ft_Calvin_Harris_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,61,EMA,“California” (2011),Soutterain Transmissions,"Soutterain Transmissions “California,” the droning centerpiece of Erika M. Anderson’s first album as EMA, is a gospel song at heart—an invitation to surrender in the face of impossible odds, to lay down one’s burden at the feet of a force more powerful than the self. Beatless, ceaseless, the track sounds more like weather than music, a storm from which Anderson can’t quite find refuge. The catharsis of “California” isn’t so much that the storm passes but that she surrenders to it, and in doing so, gives herself a shot at starting over. As the song reaches its peak, Anderson quotes “Camptown Races,” an old minstrel tune about playing the horses: “I bet my money on the bob-tailed nag/Somebody bet on the bay.” Historically, it was presented as comedy, the story of an enterprising young guy getting ready to try his luck. Then there’s Anderson, 150 years later, detoxing from manifest destiny at the edge of America with nothing to show for it but the knowledge of what it means to have failed. –Mike Powell",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tuu5YtkPIo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a8ea1256a0a0009483364/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/EMA-California.jpg,/dataset/artwork/EMA-California_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,60,Future,“March Madness” (2015),Freebandz,"Freebandz The bulk of “March Madness” found Future detailing his lavish lifestyle. Especially at the time, this rang very true. The Atlanta rapper had an enormous year in 2015, with the release of his Drake collaboration What a Time to Be Alive along with one of his best albums, Dirty Sprite 2. He’d reached hip-hop’s A-list, and “March Madness” offered a view from the top. Yes, it’s a song about getting fucked up and driving too fast in an expensive car, but it’s also a song where Future reveals that he’s not insulated from the outside world. “All these cops shootin’ niggas, tragic,” he sang, months after the deaths of Michael Brown and Laquan McDonald. Over ethereal synth arpeggios, digital bells, and 808s, Future’s vocal acrobatics amplify the tension that plays out in his lyrics—the highs of luxury butting against the violence that’s brought upon the unarmed and unprotected. –Evan Minsker",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80eG40_eK7A,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a8ee90db1d10008f20009/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Future-March-Madness.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Future-March_Madness_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,59,David Bowie,“Blackstar” (2015),Columbia,"Columbia “I’m not a pop star,” Bowie insists in this mercurial, nearly 10-minute amble of woodwind jazz bleats, group moans, and tinny vocal shearing. Having reinvented himself so many times, his last musical effort was to bid farewell with that same grace and eternal curiosity. The title track of Blackstar, his 25th album, set this tone immediately; its surreal lines about nonchalant executions and bright, heavenly bodies—beautiful in their doomed infernos—are sung with comforting humanity, an empathy that overpowers the song’s proggy grandeur. Its skittish, multi-act structure and glacial sax tones resist easy resolution; the most catharsis we are offered comes in the poetically macabre music video, in which the lonely corpse of Major Tom is exhumed and, with him, all Bowie’s spectacular former guises are laid to rest. Then all that remains is the man, staring straight into the unfathomable and having the wisdom to offer no answers. –Stacey Anderson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kszLwBaC4Sw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a8fae256a0a0009483366/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/David-Bowie-Blackstar.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/David_Bowie-Blackstar_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,58,Miguel,“Adorn” (2012),RCA,"RCA In 2012, R&B was in the midst of an identity crisis. Even the genre’s brightest talents found themselves shut out of Top 40 radio, and the few that managed to infiltrate its playlists did so by surrendering to the overblown EDM of the moment. But on his inventive run of early ’10s singles, Miguel posited another way forward. “Adorn” was one of the year’s few crossover R&B hits that still felt like R&B. It was also a wild studio experiment: an ’80s Marvin Gaye/Lionel Richie homage that sounded like it was recorded in a racquetball court. All throbbing synths and bubbling bass, “Adorn” freed Miguel to roam the song’s alien terrain, exploring how his desirous falsetto bounces off its oblique angles. He cartwheeled through the track, singing in swooning howls, and in the process coining an inimitable sound that bottled the sensation of ecstatic liberation: whawp! –Evan Rytlewski",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dM5QYdTo08,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a8ff24bc65100086998ce/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Miguel-Adorn.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Miguel-Adorn_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,57,Taylor Swift,“All Too Well” (2012),Big Machine,"Big Machine “All Too Well,” the hidden gem of Taylor Swift’s Red, captures everything that makes her a world-class songwriter: her emotional intelligence, her candor, her economy of words, her ability to find beauty in vulnerability. Swift tells a big story by freezing time and honing in on small details, the kind that could seem like background noise to others: the scarf that her ex (reportedly, Jake Gyllenhaal) kept as a memento, the refrigerator light that illuminated midnight dance parties. All these hyper-specifics, rigorously chronicled, protect Swift’s pain so she can tend to it; when she sings, “It was rare/I was there,” she asserts her own experience against those who would trivialize it. As the song builds, its initially mild-mannered guitar gains energy, cymbals begin to crash, and Swift’s voice steadily rises. But she doesn’t really need volume to convey the magnitude of the damage. It’s the quietest moments that serve this story best—they make you lean in close enough to see every tiny fissure in her broken heart. –Olivia Horn",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5YOaJ_ASMs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a90930db1d10008f2000b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Taylor-Swift-All-Too-Well.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Taylor_Swift-All_Too_Well_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,56,Vince Staples,“Norf Norf” (2015),Def Jam,"Def Jam If you were to compile a map of the United States as told by rappers, no locale would be rendered as crisply as Vince Staples’ Long Beach. On the norf side, Yankee hats are in style, snitches are hunted to extinction, and the shotgun that offed Boyz n the Hood’s Ricky Baker remains at large. As Staples slides from parties to shootouts, danger is courted and eluded. Death is defied and embraced. Gangster rap is disparaged; gangsters endure. Though every detail is in 4K, the screen flickers. Obama’s promises of hope and change remain unfulfilled; Vince’s family sticks around, yet so do his gun-toting rivals. Embodying that relentless tension, Clams Casino’s production is a twitchy fusillade. The bass quakes and smolders; the synths blare and pulse; the claps tingle. Proud of his home, Staples is at ease within this discord, but he doesn’t shy away from its costs. Because he sees his city so clearly, he has no illusions: No one can run forever. –Stephen Kearse",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mb6Jc4juSF8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a91c3256a0a0009483368/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Vince-Staples-Norf-Norf.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Vince_Staples-Norf_Norf_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,55,Bat for Lashes,“Laura” (2012),Parlophone/EMI,"Parlophone/EMI The title character of “Laura” is a dreamer in crisis, a partied-out socialite left behind by the crowds. Only Natasha Khan remains by her side, and in her sweetest and deadliest ballad, she dedicates every ounce of her formidable self herself to propping up her lost friend. We all yearn for someone like Khan to swoop in and declaim our innate superheroism to the world, and “Laura” isn’t just a tribute; it’s a devotional, a monument. “You’ll be famous for longer than them/Your name is tattooed on every boy’s skin,” Khan wails. Laura may have been overlooked but, within the aura of Khan’s belief, we know her glory. –Jazz Monroe",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UznHTBZIa8E,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a92a98699b30008f1aeeb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bat-for-Lashes-Laura.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bat_for_Lashes-Laura_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,54,Disclosure,“Latch” [ft. Sam Smith] (2012),PMR,"PMR With “Latch,” Disclosure managed to land a rare one-two punch: Not only did the UK duo become dance music heavies in their own right, they practically minted an entirely new pop star to boot. As the song slowly made its way toward ubiquity, eventually peaking at No. 7 in America two years after its initial release, it wooed an EDM audience that was tiring of 12-ton drops and dudes screaming at crowds to put their hands in the air. As a refreshing alternative, Guy and Howard Lawrence created a track bound to an indestructible house beat and filled with the types of chord extensions more commonly found in jazz (or Steely Dan albums) than standard chart fare, allowing for Sam Smith to unleash their jaw-dropping vocals. Today, the song remains a testament to a brave new world of democratized production, one where two brothers, a laptop, and an unknown superstar can move the world. –Noah Yoo",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93ASUImTedo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a932c53e80c0008f43a40/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Disclosure-Latch.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Disclosure-Latch_ft_Sam_Smith_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,53,Solange,“Losing You” (2012),Terrible,"Terrible “Losing You” was the conclusion of a love story, but it was also the beginning of a new Solange. The song was released between two pivotal projects: four years after her album Sol-Angel and the Hadley Street Dreams, an almost quaint love letter to Motown, and four years before her culture-shifting political purge, A Seat at the Table. Produced and co-written with Blood Orange’s Dev Hynes, both “Losing You” and its parent EP, True, turned Solange into an indie R&B darling with a clear vision that was destined to be refined. As breakup ballads go, this one’s deceptively cheerful. Disoriented by the end of something irreconcilable, she sees her relationship devolve from all-night makeout sessions to total static. The melody lags, at odds with the backdrop’s retro claps and squeals, but perhaps it’s a sign that the loss is actually a gain. –Clover Hope",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy9W_mrY_Vk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a9386256a0a000948336a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Solange-Losing-You.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Solange-Losing_You_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,52,Camp Cope,“The Opener” (2017),Run for Cover,"Run for Cover Since the dawn of time, women have been fed up with the patronizing antics of men in music. And with “The Opener,” Melbourne-based punk trio Camp Cope use the misogynistic injustices they have faced over the years as creative jet fuel as they crush industry bros who use feminism for their own self image, bookers convinced that the band can’t sell out a room, and bored stoner dudes who treat women like meat sacks. Over Georgia Maq’s nervy alto, a driving bassline, and grunge-of-center percussion, the band presents a withering critique that does not hold back even a little. Near the end of the song, when Maq yelps, “Now look how far we’ve come not listening to you!” she cements Camp Cope’s place as a no-bullshit punk band that will be emblazoned on denim jacket patches in perpetuity. –Sophie Kemp",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40nc_8ij3MI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a93cb0db1d10008f2000d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Camp-Cope-The-Opener.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Camp_Cope-The_Opener_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,51,Kendrick Lamar,"“Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe” (2012)",Aftermath/Interscope/Top Dawg,"Aftermath/Interscope/Top Dawg In 2012, newfound fame was weighing on Kendrick Lamar. He was surrounded by people he didn’t know, while adapting to life as the new voice of Compton. On “Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe,” he took a break from the reflective coming-of-age story he narrated throughout good kid, m.A.A.d city to address keeping his musical virtues intact amid so much change. “I’m tryin’ to keep it alive/And not compromise the feeling we love,” he rapped. But he also acknowledged, in the song’s lingering opening line, “I am a sinner who’s probably gonna sin again.” Despite the heavy content, the Sounwave-produced track sounds like a jazzy backseat ride through Cali, with Kendrick’s vocals cycling through nasal-voiced singing, smooth-talk flows, and rapid-fire sprints. He delivered the message that Compton—and everyone else—could put their faith in him. He hasn’t let us down yet. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF8aaTu2kg0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a940a0db1d10008f2000f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kendrick-Lamar-Bitch-Dont-Kill-My-Vibe.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kendrick_Lamar-Bitch_Dont_Kill_My_Vibe_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,50,Arcade Fire,“Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)” (2010),Merge,"Merge “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)” served as the climax of 2010’s The Suburbs—as well as of everything Arcade Fire had done up to that point. It’s about a very particular archetype: the artsy misfit, the daydreamer trapped in a place that stifles creativity and smothers dreams. The character fits into the band’s past, with its dark anthems about kid-level conspiracies—brothers bitten by vampires, secret cities where no cars go—but this song adds a new urgency. Régine Chassagne sings her exurban angst with big-hearted wonder, adding nobility to the tired concept of escaping the concrete jungle for more bucolic landscapes, as the rest of the group’s pearly dance-pop avoids any note of bitterness or pessimism. Listening to “Sprawl II,” it feels clear that the song’s heroine got out of whatever grey hell she was in, and found her kind. –Stephen Deusner",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awHWColYQ90,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7a94884bc65100086998d0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Arcade-Fire-Sprawl-II.png,/dataset/artwork/Arcade_Fire-Sprawl_II_Mountains_Beyond_Mountains_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,49,Gyptian,“Hold Yuh” (2010),VP,"VP Everyone wants a song of the summer, but few people realize the song that defines a summer doesn’t necessarily arrive as the season is fully blossoming. There are tracks like “Hold Yuh” that poke their heads Stateside in the spring, before getting played in clubs or on the radio until the melody affixes itself to a moment, then an entire season—and maybe even a whole half-decade worth of seasons. Gyptian had been flourishing on the Jamaican dancehall charts for over five years with songs like “Serious Times” before “Hold Yuh” became a crossover success. It is almost unfair how irresistibly danceable this song is, how it articulates a desire for closeness while laid over the kind of sparse but infectious beat that practically demands bodies shifting together. –Hanif Abdurraqib",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNidyB0KWtU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7ba68e0db1d10008f20088/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Gyptian-Hold-Yuh.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Gyptian-Hold_Yuh_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,48,Ariana Grande,"“thank u, next” (2018)",Republic,"Republic Navigating romance publicly comes with being a public figure—which can be good when it is good, and agonizing when it is agonizing. Ariana Grande has had to do this through several iterations of her career, in ways that have sometimes felt unfair. All this came to a head in the fall of 2018, when she was mourning both the death of her ex-boyfriend Mac Miller and a broken-off engagement to Pete Davidson. “thank u, next” was her response, the polished product of bouncing back from many heartbreaks. The song itself works against the somewhat dismissive sentiment of the title: The twinkling chorus is steeped in a kind of corny but joyful gratitude, for the past but also for the present self. Crooning angelically, Grande reminds the masses that we choose to love people for a reason, even if that love is brief. “thank u, next” might even be considered a little bit of a troll because of how it challenges the voyeurism of her situation: It would have been salacious to air an ex out for the world to see, but it is more fascinating to draw an eager audience close before offering what is merely a small token of gratitude. –Hanif Abdurraqib",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gl1aHhXnN1k,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7ba7674bc65100086999b3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ariana-Grande-thank-u-next.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ariana_Grande-thank_u_next_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,47,Tame Impala,“Let It Happen” (2015),Modular,"Modular If you can’t understand a damn thing Kevin Parker sings during the bridge of “Let It Happen,” you’re not alone. The vocals are complete gibberish, placeholder words given emotional heft by his performance and vocoders time-tested by ’80s icons and French robots alike. It doesn’t matter that he’s singing raw syllables, though, because you can feel the wistful acceptance in every note. It’s the most affecting part of this nearly eight-minute-long song, which opened 2015’s Currents and introduced a new era of Tame Impala. No more trivial accusations of retrofetishism or John Lennon idol worship; with this heavy slab of space disco, Parker decidedly broke free of any preconceived notions about his abilities. The riff—a simple, octave-leaping groove—stands alone, but the punchy drums and elaborate synth arrangements throughout cleared the stage for Tame Impala to claim their place as true psych-rock originals. –Noah Yoo",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ed6UeDp1ek,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7ba7c50db1d10008f2008a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Tame-Impala-Let-It-Happen.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tame_Impala-Let_It_Happen_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,46,The Knife,“Full of Fire” (2013),Rabid/Brille/Mute,"Rabid/Brille/Mute There’s an alternate reality in which the Knife never stopped sounding like the sunny electro-pop band who inspired that one José González song at the turn of the century, thereby ending up in the third-biggest font size on the Electric Daisy Carnival poster and probably collaborating with Marshmello once or twice. But in our actual reality, Karin and Olof Dreijer got dark with their 2006 classic Silent Shout before making their grand return seven years later by inhaling radical theory and fully metamorphosing into their namesake—something steely, cutting, dangerous when necessary. “Full of Fire,” the first single from 2013’s Shaking the Habitual, is a nasty patchwork of sawtooth synths, hissed vocals, and guttural drum patterns, perennially teetering on the brink of manic collapse. It primes you to leave it all on the dancefloor before waking up ready to throw a brick through the patriarchy. –Jeremy Gordon",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxJhYpTIrl8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7ba84a53e80c0008f43a81/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-Knife-Full-of-Fire.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Knife-Full_of_Fire_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,45,Robyn,“Call Your Girlfriend” (2010),Interscope/Konichiwa,"Interscope/Konichiwa Only Robyn, the Swedish teen-pop phenom turned self-directed superstar, could shimmy through a scenario as thorny as the one in “Call Your Girlfriend.” In it, she plays a woman who’s been covertly seeing someone who’s already paired off with someone else. But her character shows no bitterness for the girlfriend in question. Instead, she gently coaches her lover through breaking up with the other woman, urging him to spare her feelings. The klaxon call of the chorus makes “Call Your Girlfriend” a dance-pop triumph, one of many Robyn songs to arc toward euphoric release. But the glittery production only deepens the sinister lyrical narrative: “Now it’s gonna be me and you,” Robyn concludes, having successfully manipulated her man into her arms. Maybe she’s scheming, but it’s impossible not to celebrate along with her. –Sasha Geffen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nv644ipg2Ss,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bab5a53e80c0008f43a83/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Robyn-Call-Your-Girlfriend.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Robyn-Call_Your_Girlfriend_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,44,Big Thief,“Mary” (2017),Saddle Creek,"Saddle Creek “Mary,” the emotional center of Big Thief’s breakthrough album Capacity, takes the form of a late-night reverie. Band leader Adrianne Lenker’s voice is hushed and hesitant, as though she’s trying not to wake anyone as she sifts through a box full of private memories, their outlines turned silvery and strange with time. Over a reassuring backdrop of organ and piano, her voice gathers strength as she is swept away in a flood of images, words so vivid you can feel them beating in your hand like small, frightened birds. It is a nostalgic song, shot through with a sense of loss, but it is ecstatic in its synesthetic rush, its sublime sense of everything coming on at once. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5OV1JPqlNQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bac414bc65100086999b5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Big-Thief-Mary.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Big_Thief-Mary_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,43,Lorde,“The Louvre” (2017),Republic,"Republic Lorde is a sneering romantic: She’ll dissect love like it’s a frog in biology class while still falling under its spell. That’s the mode in which she operates on “The Louvre,” narrating a whirlwind summer romance that’s lighting her from within even as she’s rolling her eyes at the whole thing. As the song begins, she could be working out a sketch in her childhood bedroom, her voice just above a whisper and hung over rumbling, muted chords. An intensely physical connection settles into something deeper, and you can hear her fighting off love until her facade starts to crack. When she drops her guard to embrace love in all of its supernatural glory, it feels as bracing as a dip in a frozen lake. “The Louvre” isn’t the most readily melodic or explosive song on her 2017 opus Melodrama, but it’s the one that best conveys Lorde’s preternatural skills. She can take a feeling everyone knows and transform it into something fresh, as if you’re experiencing it for the first time. –Jamieson Cox",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQkdwymDanE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bacb8256a0a0009483419/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lorde-The-Louvre.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lorde-The_Louvre_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,42,SZA,“The Weekend” (2017),Top Dawg/RCA,"Top Dawg/RCA SZA baited a new lovestruck generation by presenting herself as a work-in-progress, shamelessly hooked on rash decisions. “The Weekend,” from her debut album CTRL, is an imagined agreement between partners, sung from the perspective of the Other Woman who isn’t fully in charge. While the girlfriend spends the mundane hours of the week with the man, SZA’s character gets to absorb his stress, be in command, and “make him lose his mind” on the weekends. SZA’s singing conveys all the euphoria and uncertainty of this arrangement: She presents desire as a transaction between multiple people, singing with the confidence of a person who loves to indulge but who realizes the idea of possession in relationships is slippery. The shades of acceptance, sadness, and hope in her voice, slung over a moody, slow-drip tempo, give “The Weekend” its sober dimension—there’s a sense that performing the feel-good service of satisfaction is a thankless act, and that she knows she wants more. –Clover Hope",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMD63TwzB1o,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bad504bc65100086999b7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/SZA-The-Weekend.jpg,/dataset/artwork/SZA-The_Weekend_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,41,Courtney Barnett,“Avant Gardener” (2013),Marathon Artists,"Marathon Artists The song that made Courtney Barnett an indie rock star involves a startlingly detailed narrative about the tension of literally being unable to breathe. In it, she sets out to garden, and after some small talk about vegetables with a neighbor, she pulls her first weed and quickly has an asthmatic episode. “Avant Gardener” is a languid song, and Barnett’s delivery is deadpan, but her anxiety in every observation gives the whole thing a nail-biting intensity. Someone calls an ambulance, and her first thought is about how much this shit is going to cost. She gets a shot of adrenaline and instantly conjures Uma Thurman’s near-death scene in Pulp Fiction. As she watches her day go off the rails, she always grounds the song in a seven-word chorus that is as simple as it is profound: “I’m not that good at breathing in.” –Evan Minsker",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcnIhzaDTd0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bae516eee70000829f7e6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Courtney-Barnett-Avant-Gardener.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Courtney_Barnett-Avant_Gardener_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,40,Frank Ocean,“Nights” (2016),Self-released,"Self-released On “Nights,” the space-bending centerpiece of Blonde, Frank Ocean distorts and collapses all sense of time. It begins with him singing over sunny guitars about an ex-lover, taking bitter swipes at their character. Then, after about three minutes, the track starts to descend into a frenzy of distorted guitars, frantically circling through arpeggios like it’s bracing for a crash landing. As the track switches into a woozy trap beat, Frank plunges back into the past. He tells how he first met his ex by flashing a series of small images that transports you back to the scene: his family’s old Acura, going to the Southern restaurant chain Shoney’s, transferring colleges from New Orleans to Texas after Hurricane Katrina. Throughout “Nights,” Frank establishes an ultra-thin line between past and present, day and night, and nostalgia and regret, effortlessly dancing between each binary. –Michelle Kim",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4l9bFqgMaQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7baea653e80c0008f43ab9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Frank-Ocean-Nights.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Frank_Ocean-Nights_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,39,SOPHIE,“Bipp” (2013),Numbers,"Numbers Before there was SOPHIE the transgressive pop icon, there was SOPHIE the divisive electronic music producer, and “Bipp” was her calling card. Like all the best future-thinking pop music, “Bipp” caused equal parts delight and bemusement when it was released in 2013, thanks to its combination of pitch-shifted vocals, elastic synths, and nonchalant percussive hits that seemed to roll around like a raver on an endlessly pitching deck, nauseous but giddily excited. “Bipp” skirted musical genres, from rave to R&B, UK garage to EDM, in a way that frustrated purists and confused the hell out of commentators, straining at the leash of electronic music’s tightly patrolled genre borders. And yet the track proved to be SOPHIE’s breakthrough, its envelope-mangling, sugar-rush energy paving the way for collaborations with everyone from Madonna to Vince Staples—a day-glo warning shot that indicated just how wonderfully weird pop was going to get in the years that followed. –Ben Cardew",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVc3Z-bG6Eo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7baf178699b30008f1b02f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/SOPHIE-Bipp.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/SOPHIE-Bipp_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,38,Kanye West,"“Monster” [ft. Justin Vernon, Rick Ross, JAY-Z, and Nicki Minaj] (2010)",G.O.O.D./Island Def Jam,"G.O.O.D./Island Def Jam “Monster” packs enough objectively insane moments to fill an entire episode of Scooby-Doo: Kanye hiking up his high-waters to quote Napoleon Dynamite, JAY-Z moaning “looooooove” like a mummified Heathcliff on the moors, Rick Ross using a chunk of his 10-second prologue of a verse to refer to himself as a “fat motherfucker.” Yet the decade’s most opulent posse cut ends up far greater than the sum of its ridiculous parts. Over yawning synths and brusque, almost-industrial bass, these hip-hop hellions offer a quick peek into the vulnerabilities of the super rich and famous while allowing us to ride the wave of their incomprehensibly lofty egos. Of course, “Monster” is remembered most for the burgeoning star it made inarguable: Nicki Minaj, still a month away from releasing her debut album, slaughtering everyone in her path with 32 bars of demented Barbie BDE. Consider our brains eaten. –Stacey Anderson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pS6HRKZQLFA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7baf6e4bc65100086999b9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kanye-West-Monster.png,/dataset/artwork/Kanye_West-Monster_ft_Justin_Vernon_Rick_Ross_JAY-Z_and_Nicki_Minaj_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,37,Jai Paul,“BTSTU (edit)” (2011),XL,"XL Though Jai Paul’s first single wears its influences on its sleeve—the wonky rhythms of J Dilla, the menacing sweetness of Prince—and though it would go on to influence the borderless sound of pop in years to come, “BTSTU (edit)” still sounds like nothing else. At first, the falsetto murmur of “don’t fuck with me” that runs through the track is disorienting. By the time it’s been buried under woozy synth combustion, it’s clear that the disorientation is the point. “BTSTU” works because it sounds like the biggest piece of bedroom pop ever, because it is club music designed to be heard by one person at a time. –Sam Hockley-Smith",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUBAFPIHETA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bb2ac6eee70000829f81c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jai-Paul-BTSTU.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jai_Paul-BTSTU_edit_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,36,Carly Rae Jepsen,“Run Away With Me” (2015),Interscope,"Interscope The proposal is simple and familiar: escape, hand-in-hand, from reality. Still, Carly Rae Jepsen sells it with invigorating conviction on “Run Away With Me.” She’s high on romantic possibility, and her infatuation feels so unstoppable that the only logical solution is to let it carry her away completely. Fueled by a yearning saxophone riff and colossal drums, Jepsen gleefully repeats her heartfelt invitation until the rest of the world melts away. “Over the weekend, we could turn the world to gold,” she murmurs with a quiet devotion, letting the image of two gilded lovers linger in the air. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeccAtqd5K8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bb3110db1d10008f200c0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Carly-Rae-Jepsen-Run-Away-With-Me.png,/dataset/artwork/Carly_Rae_Jepsen-Run_Away_With_Me_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,35,Rae Sremmurd,“Black Beatles” [ft. Gucci Mane] (2016),Ear Drummer,"Ear Drummer Calling yourself a rock star became a rap norm this decade—it simultaneously affirmed hip-hop’s centrality in the culture, laid claim to an inheritance of artistic grandiosity, and turned decadence into an aspirational ideal. Despite strong bids from Kanye and Future, despite Post Malone chanting it into numbing cliché, Rae Sremmurd own the idea for all time thanks to “Black Beatles.” Propelled to No. 1 off the back of the “mannequin challenge” meme, it truly deserved the top spot for its unusual sound and magical, mystical mood. Producer Mike WiLL Made-It’s loping beat and haunting synth conjure a feeling of floaty suspension that pairs perfectly with the song’s lyrics about stepping through the looking glass into a dreamworld of super-fame. There’s something strangely pure-hearted about the fey, sighing way Swae Lee murmurs lines like “quick release the cash, watch it fall slowly”—as though Rae Sremmurd have somehow gone through the excess of lust and ego and now levitate serenely above it all. In a song crammed with great lines, Slim Jxmmi sees off Lee and guest Gucci Mane with his kicker: “me and Paul McCartney related!” The impudence is adorable, the hubris hilarious—and yet, at its core, “Black Beatles” really is a psychedelic pearl as radiant as “Rain.” –Simon Reynolds",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cK5G8fPmWeA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bb36f6eee70000829f81e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Rae-Sremmurd-Black-Beatles.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rae_Sremmurd-Black_Beatles_ft_Gucci_Mane_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,34,Future Islands,“Seasons (Waiting on You)” (2014),4AD,"4AD Years before their network television debut, Future Islands earned a reputation for playing raucous shows at small clubs. So when the Baltimore band brought that same energy to play “Seasons (Waiting on You)” on The Late Show With David Letterman, frontman Samuel T. Herring’s unabashedly earnest performance went viral. Channeling the bravado of a Broadway actor, Herring sang to the studio audience as if it were his last chance. His gamble endeared the band to a new legion of fans and made “Seasons” a hit. Even without the visual, the song is still a triumph. It’s arena-ready synth pop that mourns the end of a relationship, a dissolution as predictable as summer turning into winter. The muscular new wave beat softens under Herring’s croon, his delivery shifting from rugged to wounded from one verse to the next. He sings of losing love as if it were an apocalyptic reckoning, and “Seasons” is the resilient epic written in the aftermath. –Gabriela Tully Claymore",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYO1lSUspXA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bb3e9256a0a000948341d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Future-Islands-Seasons.png,/dataset/artwork/Future_Islands-Seasons_Waiting_on_You_2014.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,33,LCD Soundsystem,“Dance Yrself Clean” (2010),Virgin/Parlophone/DFA,"Virgin/Parlophone/DFA James Murphy has always seemed unusually aware of time’s passing. From LCD Soundsystem’s very first single, the kids were coming up from behind. By “Dance Yrself Clean,” the opener to 2010’s This Is Happening, Murphy was staring at the clock like someone awaiting final judgment: “Everybody’s getting younger,” he moaned. “It’s the end of an era, it’s true.” But this song doesn’t offer a way of beating back the advancing years, or of marking them; it’s a cleansing fire, momentarily releasing us from time’s grip. Simmering in nervous funk before boiling over into thudding synth-pop, “Dance Yrself Clean” is a nine-minute jam about Marxism, divorce, and generalized misanthropy that could serve as the collective freak-out moment at a wedding reception. It’s a stomping, screaming last call of sorts, an invitation to get it all out before the opportunity disappears. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoA0cTC228M,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bb43e6eee70000829f821/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/LCD-Soundsystem-Dance-Yrself-Clean.jpg,/dataset/artwork/LCD_Soundsystem-Dance_Yrself_Clean_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,32,Fiona Apple,“Every Single Night” (2012),Epic,"Epic After seven years away, Fiona Apple returned to a world that better understood her, and she did it with music that seemed to better understand itself, too. On her fourth album, The Idler Wheel..., Fiona charged not just her lyrics but each raw, blistering note with her spirit of defiance, resilience, and fury. “Every Single Night,” the opener, is a surreal lullaby about constantly fighting with your mind. Fiona’s metaphysical lyrics trace the psychosomatic impact of mental struggle, charting the “butterflies in my brain” as they “percolate the mind,” “trickle down the spine,” “swarm the belly,” “swell into a blaze.” She has always been an artist aware of her body, but “Every Single Night” feels like a step further. You can hear clenched teeth, whitened knuckles, and a throat about to be shred. It’s so breathtakingly, quintessentially Fiona: romancing omnipresent internal frictions for three-and-a-half minutes as a method of survival. “I just want to feel everything,” she trills, illuminating the truest theme of all her work: hard-earned aliveness. –Jenn Pelly",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIlLq4BqGdg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d7bb4e40db1d10008f200c2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Fiona-Apple-Every-Single-Night.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fiona_Apple-Every_Single_Night_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,31,Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti,“Round and Round” (2010),4AD,"4AD If you squint, Ariel Pink’s “Round and Round” starts to resemble Beck’s “Loser.” Both were generational anthems that made no literal sense, made by inveterate L.A. weirdos who rode the line between sincerity and irony until it seemed to crumble. Both reinvented what was considered “cool,” too. Pink’s reference points were like no one else’s—AM radio, commercial jingles, Steely Dan. Countless chillwave, vaporwave, and whatever-else-wave artists followed his lead, but few of them proved capable of the magnificent pop architecture of “Round and Round.” It may be inseparable from its moment, an odd interlude between the peak-indie 2000s and a decade where indie and pop became unashamedly inseparable. But if there’s any coherent message behind “Round and Round,” it’s that pop songs, trends, and life itself are a constant cycle of death and renewal. –Ian Cohen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiLqAu4s-_s,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d8239f3a7cd00000919191c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ariel-Pink-Round-and-Round.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ariel_Pinks_Haunted_Graffiti-Round_and_Round_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,30,Cardi B,“Bodak Yellow” (2017),Atlantic,"Atlantic In early 2017, a few of Cardi B’s songs had landed well enough to lock in BET Awards nominations and a magazine cover, but she needed more music by summer to take full advantage of those looks. So she went to work and came back with a hit that made thoughtful use of its key elements: action-movie intensity, a proven flow courtesy of Florida rapper Kodak Black, and a bottomless array of bars that were easy to parrot and pre-baked for captions. Like Meek Mill’s famously instigating “Dreams and Nightmares (Intro),” it got people going; DJs loved it, and influencers did too. It was released in June with little initial promotion, while Cardi showed up for culture’s early adopters, at queer parties and Southern clubs. By July, it was in radio rotation. By August, all kinds of fans knew the words. And in September, it was a verified smash, unseating Taylor Swift at No. 1 on the Hot 100, making Cardi B the first woman solo rapper to hit that peak in 19 years. Her victory was genuinely ground-up and people-driven. That it was possible—or inevitable, and a precursor for more success to come—still feels triumphant. –Naomi Zeichner",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEGccV-NOm8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d823a59d5d1da00099a8e0a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Cardi-B-Bodak-Yellow.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Cardi_B-Bodak_Yellow_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,29,Joanna Newsom,“Good Intentions Paving Co.” (2010),Drag City,"Drag City “Good Intentions Paving Co.” is the story of two journeys, one literal and one figurative. There’s a road trip to a concert through an unfamiliar countryside, under stars that shyly emerge in a pastel sky. Then the drive exposes a second, inner tale, of a relationship paved with good intentions but now fraught with misgivings and anxieties. With her lover behind the wheel, Newsom addresses some regrets that haunt the romance, namely her own confusion. “How I said to you, ‘Honey just open your heart’/When I’ve got trouble even opening a honey jar,” she chirps apologetically. Nodding to Joni Mitchell, Newsom’s piano arrangement follows the idiosyncratic rhymes of her inner monologue, twisting and turning to the tenor of her puzzled soul. Though she is at her most musically ambitious on this seven-minute opus, the heart of “Good Intentions Paving Co.” is painfully simple: She just wants to be led away from her own indecision. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCCl3nzL5PI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d823b4c43566d0008bed8c3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Joanna-Newsom-Good-Intentions.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Joanna_Newsom-Good_Intentions_Paving_Co_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,28,Beyoncé,“Countdown” (2011),Columbia,"Columbia If being in love has a sound, it’s the euphoric vocal run that opens Beyoncé’s “Countdown.” The song quickly gives way to steady snare-drum taps and staccato horn bleats that match the singer’s heartbeat, as she and songwriter The-Dream carefully mix the best sounds across genres—funk, reggae, dancehall, and R&B (that’s a Boys II Men sample)—into one stutter-stepping, ecstatic, instant classic. The premise of “Countdown” has Beyoncé running down all the ways she loves her man, using a lot of clever wordplay that culminates in a tip-your-head-back, shout-it-in-the-club chorus. At the time, she had been with her husband, JAY-Z, for almost a decade; ever the old soul, she isn’t singing about new love, or one-night-stand love, or ephemeral love. This is an effusive ode to her broken-in, ride-or-die, monogamous romance and a swaggy reminder of exactly what will happen to him if he ever messes around. “Countdown” walked so Lemonade could enter couples therapy and run. –Allison P. Davis",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XY3AvVgDns,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d823b8f4cd79f00091bbacb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Beyonce%25CC%2581-Countdown.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beyonc-Countdown_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,27,M.I.A.,“Bad Girls” (2010),Self-released,"Self-released In the decade since M.I.A. originally released “Bad Girls” on her Vicki Leekz mixtape, the cultural concept of “badass” women has evolved into a meaningless capitalist construct. Now children are reading books about “rebel girls,” aka complex women from history smoothed down by cutesy illustrations and aspirational rhetoric. “Bad Girls” maintains the case for defiance through spikiness: Maya Arulpragasam’s rapping is a blunt and effectively indolent instrument; that clipped, Middle Eastern-inspired synth commands attention like a siren igniting a neighborhood; the S.O.S. signal buried in producer Danja’s beat needles incessantly about the global imperative for women to defy repressive norms (and/or fuck in cars until the windows steam up and the dashboard caves in). Crucially, “Bad Girls” is no manifesto. M.I.A. reclaims rebelling without a cause from the white, male cult hero, her track’s stubborn swagger an incitement to fecklessness. Proof of concept: The single version of “Bad Girls” came out five days before she flipped the bird at the Super Bowl, a powerfully petulant display that showed up America’s prudish hypocrisy and earned her years of legal strife. “My life, but I broke it,” indeed. –Laura Snapes",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_7UFOBjr1M,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d823be52ca7f300099223c6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/MIA-Bad-Girls.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/MIA-Bad_Girls_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,26,Bon Iver,“Holocene” (2011),Jagjaguwar,"Jagjaguwar “Holocene” is the magical realism centerpiece of 2011’s Bon Iver, transforming ordinary life into a beautiful kingdom soaked in cosmic meaning. Justin Vernon’s inscrutable falsetto is your shepherd through the wilderness, soft and reaching for the sky. His sonic landscapes on “Holocene” are composed of rolling drums, keyboards, and humming horns, grounded by one looping, acoustic guitar lick. It’s vast yet simple, and can feel almost too sentimental to be sincere. How can this guy be this seriously existential—reflecting on magnificence and the hallways of his life—when he hardly seems to be saying anything at all? “Holocene” is about letting go, imagining the place where you gain clarity, and basking in the feeling. –Matthew Strauss",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWcyIpul8OE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d823c90d047720009aaa5c7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bon-Iver-Holocene.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Bon_Iver-Holocene_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,25,FKA twigs,“Cellophane” (2019),Young Turks,"Young Turks In 2018, after three years without a major release, FKA twigs shared a note on her absence: six fibroid tumors had grown in her uterus, causing massive swelling and excruciating pain. For a performer whose force lies in mastery of the self, the medical crisis posed an existential threat: Where to go when the body becomes a site of conflict? “Cellophane” and its surreal video begin inside the question and end somewhere beyond it, plunging the singer into a new phase of self-invention—even as the lyrics fret over romantic inadequacy. Where earlier productions contrasted fragility with strength, “Cellophane” is all transcendent vulnerability. Beneath her vocal acrobatics, the lullaby piano warps and degrades without ever changing key, and its three-and-a-half minutes occupy and stretch out the brief tremor we experience when something cherished threatens to break. –Jazz Monroe",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkLjqFpBh84,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d823d5bd5d1da00099a8e40/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/FKA-twigs-Cellophane.jpg,/dataset/artwork/FKA_twigs-Cellophane_2019.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,24,Todd Terje,“Inspector Norse” (2012),Olsen,"Olsen On “Inspector Norse,” Todd Terje nails his signature trick: a dancefloor classic that’s somehow both coy and preposterous. From the mothership-landing intro to the laser-gun synth pings, you know straight off he has something up his sleeve—yet when he beckons towards the trapdoor, you can’t help but follow. I have what you want, the elastic bassline promises. But you need to come a little closer. To seal the false sense of security, the Norwegian producer layers up familiar ingredients—a kitschy snare, some fog-machine sighs, a little synth calligraphy, all sounds one might hear in moderation at the IKEA café. He preserves the air of cocktail-bar elegance until the last moment, when a distant siren whooshes into the periphery. By then it’s too late. A coil of otherworldly tension, a sensational swing into ecstasy, and we’re plunged into Todd’s magic box. Some bliss-out tunes adapt easily to your surroundings, scaling down to soundtrack housework or a morning commute. But listening to “Inspector Norse” on a minor occasion feels scandalous, like hanging a Rembrandt in the bathroom. Then again, that’d be another classic Terje prank. Smuggling mystery into the mundane on neon-lit dancefloors, he shows us that nothing’s as plain as daylight would have us believe. –Jazz Monroe",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHiqPG0526U,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d823da4d5d1da00099a8e42/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Todd-Terje-Inspector-Norse.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Todd_Terje-Inspector_Norse_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,23,Rosalía,“Malamente (Cap.1: Augurio)” (2018),Sony,"Sony “Malamente” marked the arrival of one of the decade’s most remarkable—and unexpected—talents. Even Rosalía’s early fans could hardly have seen it coming: Before “Malamente,” the young Catalan singer was known only for the stripped-down flamenco of her debut album, Los Ángeles, a spine-tingling affair of acoustic guitar and voice. “Malamente” seemed to come from a different universe entirely. The song’s age-old flamenco roots were audible in its fluttering handclaps and in Rosalía’s vocal trills, but every other element—the lurching beat, luminous keys, hiccupping ad-libs, and samples of breaking glass—was unmistakably contemporary. The song’s video filled out that hybrid vision by twisting Spanish iconography old and new (Catholic penitents, bullfighters, tattooed truckers) into a dizzying set of images. “Malamente” jacked into a heretofore undiscovered matrix of possibilities, and a whole new world flashed into being. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rht7rBHuXW8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d823e42bd2bba0009fdf0e4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Rosali%25CC%2581a-Malamente.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rosala-Malamente_Cap1_Augurio_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,22,ANOHNI,“Drone Bomb Me” (2016),Rough Trade,"Rough Trade The horror of drone warfare is that it has no constraints. Operated remotely, designed for stealth, and unburdened by national borders or human rights, drones can deliver war at any time, to any place. On “Drone Bomb Me,” ANOHNI channels all that dread and horrible potential by invoking drones as objects of affection. “Blow me from the mountain/And into the sea,” she sings with sweet resignation. It’s a desperate, masochistic request; drones are gods, essentially, and her narrator has chosen to embrace their limitless power. What makes “Drone Bomb Me” so potent is that this fatalism is not weakness. ANOHNI’s voice is full and resonant even as she solicits a grisly death. Hudson Mohawke and Oneohtrix Point Never’s production is defiantly colorful despite the grim backdrop: The synths swell and twinkle, the drum programming chitters and slaps. It’s jarring for such warmth and personality to be invoked in the context of the cold, mechanical nature of drone warfare, and that’s the point. Lost within those body counts, mission logs, and intelligence reports are real people. For ANOHNI, they may be beyond saving, but they can always be recognized. –Stephen Kearse",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeKBqXszwoQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d823e7ba7cd000009191952/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/ANOHNI-Drone-Bomb-Me.jpg,/dataset/artwork/ANOHNI-Drone_Bomb_Me_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,21,Drake,"“Hold On, We’re Going Home” [ft. Majid Jordan] (2013)",Cash Money/Young Money/Republic,"Cash Money/Young Money/Republic In later years, tinkering with global sounds and codes, Drake would cement himself as one of the decade’s preeminent pop maximalists. Before that, though, there was Aubrey Graham at the horizon, hungry and eager to prove his prowess. In the fall of 2013, Drake released Nothing Was the Same, which found him at the summit of his powers. The album’s biggest single, “Hold On, We’re Going Home,” may very well be the Toronto rapper’s most timeless artifact. It’s raw seduction, a disco-reminiscent ballad that borrows from Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing.” In an interview from that year, Drake said “Hold On” was not the typical fare fans had come to expect, explaining that he wanted the song to be played at weddings and bar mitzvahs in the decades ahead. That sense of legacy is what you hear, cushioned by R&B duo Majid Jordan’s dim coos, and satin-soft production from Noah “40” Shebib and Nineteen85. “Hold On” is not consumed with the moment, as Drake songs routinely are, but with forever. –Jason Parham",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxgqpCdOKak,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d823ecd4cd79f00091bbacd/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Drake-Hold-On-Were-Going-Home.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Drake-Hold_On_Were_Going_Home_ft_Majid_Jordan_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,20,M83,“Midnight City” (2011),Mute,"Mute With “Midnight City,” a whole new generation of teenagers were handed a testament to the life-affirming power of synthesizers. The track catapulted Anthony Gonzalez’s band M83 from beloved indie act to global festival stalwarts through a sublime mix of dream pop, new wave, and neon-lit nostalgia. (There’s also an argument to be made that the pealing outro single-handedly brought saxophones back from the brink.) By now, it’s clear that the song has transcended all of the ’80s tropes that serve as its backbone—if anything, its filtered keyboards and massive, pitched-up hook served as something of a blueprint for countless EDM drops to come. –Noah Yoo",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dX3k_QDnzHE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d824774d047720009aaa5ca/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/M83-Midnight-City.jpg,/dataset/artwork/M83-Midnight_City_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,19,Vampire Weekend,“Hannah Hunt” (2013),XL,"XL In 1968, Simon & Garfunkel released “America,” a road-trip song about love, ennui, and the search for a country’s soul. “Hannah Hunt,” a patient, folky standout from Vampire Weekend's third album, is built from the same musical and narrative bones, and feels like a worthy update of that boomer touchstone. But where Simon & Garfunkel ultimately grasped for unity amid the tumult of the ’60s—“They’ve all come to look for America,” goes their full-throated finale —Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig, a weary millennial, focuses his faith. At the climax of “Hannah Hunt,” snares crack like fireworks, a stately piano enters, and his voice leaps from a croon to a cry as he pledges allegiance to just one person. “If I can’t trust you then damn it, Hannah/There’s no future, there’s no answer,” he yelps. It's the most desperately human Koenig has ever sounded, as he clings to the only thing he can still believe in. –Ryan Dombal",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eo2ZsAOlvEM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d88eb1d1f868e00096102b6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Vampire-Weekend-Hannah-Hunt.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Vampire_Weekend-Hannah_Hunt_2013.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,18,Kanye West,“Runaway” [ft. Pusha T] (2010),G.O.O.D./Island Def Jam,"G.O.O.D./Island Def Jam In 2010, Kanye West was just starting to lean into his heel turn. A year after rushing the VMAs stage to defend Beyoncé’s honor—a stunt that still ripples across pop culture, or at least Taylor Swift’s psyche—West released his great redemption, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Its second single was a self-aware, if not quite repentant, exploration of what it means to be a chronic dickhead. Anchored by a cavernous beat and a 16-note piano line ready to soundtrack a movie about a haunted 18th-century doll, “Runaway” is an exquisite piece of music. But the song’s enduring legacy is in its hook: Once West started toasting the douchebags and the assholes, he couldn’t stop. His unbridled, unapologetic id became the governing force of not only his increasingly dodgy career decisions but of the nation, too, so steadily we barely even noticed. –Steve Kandell",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bm5iA4Zupek,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d88ebb9d09cd000084cdeaf/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kanye-West-Runaway.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kanye_West-Runaway_ft_Pusha_T_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,17,Jamie xx,“Gosh” (2015),XL,"XL “Gosh” opens Jamie xx’s In Colour on a brutal, post-human note: a stripped-down flurry of clattering percussion, a bassline like the emergency alert system on a spaceship about to self-destruct. At the time, the producer said that his album’s copious samples—pulled from old pirate radio snippets, documentaries on early UK garage, and, in the case of “Gosh,” a never-aired pilot for the BBC Radio 1 show One in the Jungle—were all from sources that reminded him of London when he got homesick touring for months at a time. Jamie, like many of his listeners, was barely walking in that era, much less raving. But this isn’t merely borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered ’90s; it’s active and interpretive and alive. “Gosh” feels like the transmission of a memory, the transformation of an old bootleg or VHS recording from inert data into something that flourishes in a whole new era. There’s something cosmically optimistic about the track, and when its melody finally emerges, swooping down from the ceiling and careening around in loop-de-loops, it fully transcends space and time. –Emily Yoshida",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTGJfRPLe08,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d717e8b7cf67c000854d570/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jamie-xx-Gosh.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jamie_xx-Gosh_2015.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,16,The 1975,“Love It If We Made It” (2018),Dirty Hit,"Dirty Hit If any song summarizes this decade—literally—it’s “Love It If We Made It.” According to 1975 singer Matty Healy, for all its promises of progress, “modernity has failed us,” and he’s got the receipts. Over gigantic drums and gleaming synthesizers, he unleashes a torrent of horrors pulled straight from the headlines, including but not limited to: police brutality against black people, fake news, the Syrian refugee crisis, the prison industrial complex, and the opioid epidemic. Had he delivered these realities as a long, sober list, the track would have been too grim, too exhausting. But the 1975 pair this “We Didn’t Start the Fire”-style litany with a technicolor chorus that offers hope in the face of darkness. “And I’d love it if we made it,” Healy bellows over and over with increasing fervor, both a plea and an avowal to make a difference. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Wl1B7DPegc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d88f137d09cd000084cdeb1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-1975-Love-It-If-We-Made-It.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_1975-Love_It_If_We_Made_It_2018.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,15,Rihanna,“Work” [ft. Drake] (2016),Roc Nation,"Roc Nation On “Work,” Boi-1da’s gleaming dancehall beat provides an unlikely home for Rihanna’s vulnerable portrayal of the whiplash of a complex love, of being between heartbreak, longing, and self-assurance. The rolling patois of songwriter PARTYNEXTDOOR’s reference track is left intact on the final version, though in Rihanna’s hands, “Work” loses its tempestuousness and gains perpetual-song-of-summer status. Released in the midst of pop radio’s renewed interest in “tropical” sounds, this No. 1 hit was not the Bajan singer’s first foray into the music of her culture but, perhaps until the arrival of her long-rumored reggae album, it is her most complete. –Rawiya Kameir",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uUIrXv7GTY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d88f1ac09b36e0009899f34/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Rihanna-Work.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rihanna-Work_ft_Drake_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,14,Angel Olsen,“Shut Up Kiss Me” (2016),Jagjaguwar,"Jagjaguwar An aching rave-up and a frenzy of desire, “Shut Up Kiss Me” anchored My Woman, Angel Olsen’s vibrant, wide-screen third album. The song enters a long line of kissability anthems—part girl-group yearning à la the Shangri-Las’ “Give Him a Great Big Kiss,” part Lucinda Williams sass à la “Passionate Kisses.” Olsen steps up with deceptively cool-headed intentions: “We could still be having some sweet memories,” she wagers, but as each word becomes a staccatoed punch, she lets herself fly. When she hollers “I’m still young!” it is a full-body grasp at life itself. “Shut Up Kiss Me” is a glitter-bomb testament to the mania of longing, a fight song for the human heart in all its exhausting complexity. –Jenn Pelly",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nleRCBhLr3k,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d88f25521339a000839692b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Angel-Olsen-Shut-Up-Kiss-Me.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Angel_Olsen-Shut_Up_Kiss_Me_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,13,Chief Keef,“I Don’t Like” [ft. Lil Reese] (2012),Interscope,"Interscope In the early 2010s, Chief Keef was a True Religion jeans-wearing teenager whose main concern was escaping house arrest. He released “I Don’t Like” in an effort to solidify his local Chicago fame, but he ended up stumbling into virality and worldwide renown. With its harsh, gut-wrenching street talk over a Young Chop production that incorporated thudding drums, tinny chimes, and horror-film melodies, the song established drill music as a legitimate hip-hop subgenre. Kanye West would even tap Keef for a remix of the track, which landed on G.O.O.D. Music’s Cruel Summer compilation. At the time, hip-hop didn’t know how to respond to this rugged teen; the industry couldn’t account for the level of internet and street popularity Keef had achieved. Years later, it’s still trying to catch up. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6g5ZF6DUrHI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d88f2e009b36e0009899f36/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Chief-Keef-I-Dont-Like.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Chief_Keef-I_Dont_Like_ft_Lil_Reese_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,12,Sky Ferreira,“Everything Is Embarrassing” (2012),Capitol,"Capitol There is no more perfect way to describe life than as embarrassing. Painful? Sure. Fun? Sometimes. Weird? If you’re lucky. But embarrassing? Always. This song, written by Blood Orange’s Dev Hynes, is nominally a breakup song. But when Sky Ferreira sings, “You know I’m trying, I was always trying,” she may as well be outlining a thesis on how best to live in the face of daily humiliation. What could be more mortifying than living earnestly in a world determined to make a joke out of everything? Ferreira, an L.A. singer with a husky voice and a difficult past, has a flair for making the dramatic seem commonplace (and vice versa), especially in contrast with Hynes signature funk-lite guitar strutting. It all turns “Everything Is Embarrassing” into a quirky, ’80s-tinged anthem for anyone flinching through their days. –Matthew Schnipper",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEamE0MYPkg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d88f3210480b10008ffa251/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sky-Ferreira-Everything-Is-Embarrassing.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Sky_Ferreira-Everything_Is_Embarrassing_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,11,Bill Callahan,“Riding for the Feeling” (2011),Drag City,"Drag City Bill Callahan has become a master of portraying isolation throughout his three-decade career, but few of his songs do so more acutely than “Riding for the Feeling.” It’s sung by a man perpetually exiting crowded rooms—a freeze-frame on desolation that offers no solutions, just invisible companionship. The song’s arrangement is sparse but stirring—brushed snare and twangs of electric guitar neither overpower nor dissolve under Callahan’s weighty baritone. At one point, he describes the final exchange between a longing crowd and a reticent performer. “I asked the room if I’d said enough/No one really answered,” Callahan deadpans. “They just said, ‘Don't go, don't go…’” A picture of outstretched arms comes into focus, but it’s clear that their reach provides no comfort. Later, he finds himself on a hotel bed, tuned in to a muted television. That scrap of information sets an entire scene; you get the sense that the hotel isn’t a very nice one, and the TV, though silent, emits just enough light to make it feel a little less lonely. –Madison Bloom",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYg6eIH7qR8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d88f61e5d366d000838ce2f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bill-Callahan-Riding-for-the-Feeling.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bill_Callahan-Riding_for_the_Feeling_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,10,Lil Uzi Vert,“XO TOUR Llif3” (2017),Generation Now/Atlantic,"Generation Now/Atlantic Lil Uzi Vert’s “XO TOUR Lif3” was never supposed to be a hit. The single was included as part of a throwaway four-track EP that was meant to fill time leading up to the Philadelphia rapper’s major label debut, Luv Is Rage 2. But as soon as the track was uploaded to SoundCloud, gloomy lyrics like “Push me to the edge, all my friends are dead” and “Xanny help the pain” went viral; so did Uzi’s delivery, which made him sound like a pop-punk prince. Even the instrumental, which producer TM88 recorded using an old computer and a Beats Pill, is irresistible. For a while, few took Uzi seriously as a hitmaker. But as “XO TOUR Llif3” wormed its way toward ubiquity, becoming the SoundCloud generation’s most influential song, it established Uzi as one of hip-hop’s most distinctive voices. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrsFXgQk5UI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d88f6a15d366d000838ce31/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lil-Uzi-Vert-XO-Tour-Life.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lil_Uzi_Vert-XO_TOUR_Llif3_2017.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,9,Lana Del Rey,“Video Games” (2011),Interscope/Polydor,"Interscope/Polydor When Lana Del Rey first arrived, she was bored and glamorous, looking by turns like a queen of Old Hollywood and like she was too young to be smoking. Her makeshift visual for “Video Games” confronted the incongruity without shame: The retro-gazing torch singer uploading webcam footage to YouTube, the beautiful pop star acquiescing to feeling ignored. The most familiar version of “Video Games” is actually the rough mix, a working draft built over live vocals and piano. It’s not quite polished, and like the grain on a photograph, that’s part of its charm. Tolling church bells, harp arpeggios, and chilly gasps of electric air swirl around submerged 808 hits, as Lana, low and smooth, sounds self-assured or desperate or even sarcastic. “They say that the world was built for two/Only worth living if somebody is loving you,” she sang, pining after a man-shaped vacancy, as if self-sacrifice could make her any less alone. It was outright depressing, and she made it look good. –Anna Gaca",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cE6wxDqdOV0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d88f72d1f868e00096102bc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lana-Del-Rey-Video-Games.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lana_Del_Rey-Video_Games_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,8,Solange,“Cranes in the Sky” (2016),Columbia,"Columbia Solange dropped A Seat at the Table less than six weeks before America elected Donald Trump as its 45th president. For people who had been listening to the album on repeat during that time, putting on “Cranes in the Sky,” its most moving track, was like popping an Emergen-C for a flu we didn’t even know we were in danger of contracting. “Cranes” is a soft-power anthem for frightening times, noncoercive yet still inspiring. It’s the product of Solange working through the trauma, sadness, and disappointment of being a black woman in this society. It’s the song you hear when you break through to the other side—when you are stepping firmly into joy and identity—and it’s musically structured to mimic the journey: airy and peaceful and ponderous, sometimes a little bit fragile, but bold in its choices. There’s so much space around Solange’s calm, and the song’s jazzy, soulful rhythms are carefully selected to evoke a whole history of black musicians, black culture, and black spirituality. It’s notable that Solange never belts, and the climax of “Cranes” isn’t a noisy ascension but a quiet one, right at the end: her voice, delicately scaling the mountain to reach Minnie Ripperton heights. At a time when power is something loud and dangerous and brash, “Cranes in the Sky” is an atypical song of revolution. It will be played endlessly, hopefully in less toxic times—not during rallies, or when a candidate walks onstage, but in quiet moments when we need to reflect, recharge, and rediscover our own beauty. –Allison P. Davis",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0qrinhNnOM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d88f7d70480b10008ffa253/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Solange-Cranes-in-the-Sky.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Solange-Cranes_in_the_Sky_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,7,Mitski,“Your Best American Girl” (2016),Dead Oceans,"Dead Oceans Sometimes, love isn’t enough. On “Your Best American Girl,” despite how Mitski strives and stretches to fit into the world of her “all-American boy,” it doesn’t quite work. The Japanese-American indie rocker feels the pull of her heritage and the traditions her parents raised her with, and must accept they are incompatible with his. Puberty 2, Mitski’s fourth album, runs deep with such moments of questioning, as she navigates themes of loneliness, depression, and lust. Love isn’t the deus ex machina to solve any of them; that’s the stuff of blonder romantic heroines onscreen. Instead, she offers rougher truths, and none wiser than in this song: Over grandly ringing arena guitars and the kind of distortion that can drown out saner thoughts, Mitski elegantly releases her love, in a sad yet prideful push, valuing herself above tempting conformity. How did her Captain America take this? Did he object? We’ll never know, because his voice and thoughts are not heard. This song is not about his experience. It’s about hers. –Stacey Anderson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_hDHm9MD0I,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d88f97321339a0008396961/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mitski-Your-Best-American-Girl.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mitski-Your_Best_American_Girl_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,6,Azealia Banks,“212” (2011),Self-released,"Self-released “212” launched the force that is Azealia Banks by way of the sweet-voiced theater nerd’s sneer of, “I’ma ruin you, cunt.” It’s a ratatat MC in the Harlem tradition, twisting her claymation cadences around a frothy house beat. It’s a New Yorker’s goodbye to New York, an overdue star’s coming-out party, and a warning to herself. (It was also a YouTube smash before the industry knew what to do with those.) Flipping a previously obscure Belgian dance track, Azealia Banks was one of the decade’s first to recognize that the sound of vogue culture would reverberate far beyond the city. Celebrated French-Canadian producers Lunice and Jacques Greene make cameos in the unforgettable black-and-white video, but only cameos: “212” felt like pure Banks, the unfiltered arrival of a fiery new voice. And although her personal controversies have largely overshadowed her music by now, this singular track can still raze anything that dares get in its way. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3Jv9fNPjgk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d88fa0b5d366d000838ce35/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Azealia-Banks-212.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Azealia_Banks-212_2011.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,5,Frank Ocean,“Thinkin Bout You” (2012),Self-released,"Self-released On December 27th, 2011, in the thin air of a commercial airliner flying back to Los Angeles, Frank Ocean typed a few hundred words that slowly darkened the glow of a laptop screen. They told the story of his first love—a man—and that nameless summer longing that whistles through us all. He kept his thoughts private for awhile, and instead posted a cryptic message on his Tumblr: “fuck. that was hard to write.” When he did publish his writing, an open letter, it was on July 4th the following year, still three years before the U.S. Supreme Court would strike down the ban on same-sex marriage, but just days before he surprise-released his official debut, Channel Orange. “I feel like a free man,” Ocean concluded in the letter. “If I listen closely.. I can hear the sky falling, too.” What an unprecedented act of bravery in the history of black music, of queer music, of all music; he opened the door so that we could at once pour ourselves into his light. It was the lens through which we listened to Channel Orange, and no song echoes the love, the glow, the tectonic impact of Frank Ocean more than “Thinkin Bout You.” Call it R&B, or nü-doo-wop, or the music from the guy in Odd Future who sings, whatever you want, “Thinkin Bout You” belongs in a delirious world of its own. The song’s direct address is shaded with nostalgia and fabulism, its vision so wide it takes cues from ’70s songwriter Albert Hammond, Prince’s Sign “O” the Times, and country legend George Strait. Every single moment, from the tornado to Southern California to the beach house in Idaho, feels like Ocean is flying at the ceiling unlimited: when the snare eighth-notes lock-in with Ocean’s vocals, when he leaps out of nowhere to the falsetto in the chorus, when he sings, “Yes, of course I remember/How could I forget how you feel?” For Ocean, it’s a foregone conclusion—yes, of course—that those endless days and nights feeling that “new feel” will last forever. We all have that one summer, that one love that altered the course of our lives. This was Frank Ocean’s, and he graciously let it be ours, too. –Jeremy D. Larson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gmq4WIjQxp0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d88fa8021339a0008396963/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Frank-Ocean-Thinkin-Bout-You.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Frank_Ocean-Thinkin_Bout_You_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,4,Beyoncé,“Formation” (2016),Parkwood/Columbia,"Parkwood/Columbia The day after Trayvon Martin’s birthday, Beyoncé unceremoniously uploaded “Formation” onto her website. The tension of the song was immediate from the siren of Mike WiLL’s hypnotic two-note opening: It felt viscerally reactive to the moment, a response to the murder of black people at the hands of the police, a reminder—via the opening voice of Messy Mya from beyond the grave—that the cyclical nature of violence is heightened among communities forgotten by the government. It reminded me of the story behind Nina Simone’s “Mississippi Goddamn,” a furious song Simone wrote in 1964 as an antidote to internal anger, delivered with the pep of a show tune, that reflected on the murder of civil rights activist Medgar Evers and a white-supremacist attack on an Alabama church that killed four young girls. Simone once said, “We will shape and mold this country or it will not be molded and shaped at all anymore.” When Beyoncé performed “Formation” at the 2016 Super Bowl halftime show, the day after its release, wearing the bandoliers of the Black Panthers, it felt like she was ready to take the reins and be seen doing so. In the unforgettable video, Beyoncé crouches on a cop car submerged alongside houses in New Orleans devastated by natural disaster, the scene interspersed with images of people dancing in the dark—it’s the no-fucks vibrancy of a culture that persists when the systems surrounding them have been sucked into the muck and left to languish. Beyoncé celebrates the Southern black vernacular and Southern black culture: marching bands, cowboys, step squads, Mardi Gras, and bounce queens appear in the video, and in the song, she flaunts her “baby hair and afros” and her “negro nose with Jackson Five nostrils.” Though the song was thoroughly and specifically for and about black women and their unseen labor, the whole world was quick to rally behind another Bey hit. Hillary Clinton, hot on the campaign trail, would mention she had hot sauce in her bag on an interview with long-running hip-hop radio show, “The Breakfast Club,” Etsy would commodify her language and iconography, so that women of every race could get in formation. The next year, “Formation” would lose two Grammys to Adele’s “Hello,” but the phrase “OK ladies, now let’s get in formation” would appear across signs at the Women’s March and in allyship alongside the #MeToo movement, reinvigorated from a decade’s existence by the Weinstein allegations. The song’s initial appeal was an awakening for a country in crisis. But it will live on as a reminder of the slow, persistent, daily work of organizing and the power of resilience and protest—the importance of holding grief, anger, hope, and pride side by side. –Puja Patel",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDZJPJV__bQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d88fb0b1f868e00096102c0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Beyonce%25CC%2581-Formation.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beyonc-Formation_2016.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,3,Robyn,“Dancing on My Own” (2010),Interscope/Konichiwa,"Interscope/Konichiwa New York City’s subway system is typically associated with maddening delays, twitchy vermin, and, occasionally, traces of the bubonic plague. It is a place where you strap on headphones like armor and try to block out humanity. But everything changed for a few minutes on the night of March 8, 2019. That’s when a hundred-strong gaggle of Robyn fans, clinging to the thrill of just having seen their hero onstage at Madison Square Garden, began singing, jumping, and goofily smiling along with a song about stomping through heartbreak, turning a filthy subway platform in the middle of Manhattan into an ecstatic summit. Such is the power of “Dancing on My Own.” A month after that impromptu party, the bubbling anthem, which first hit the internet in the spring of 2010, was finally certified platinum in America—cosmic justice for a song that never touched the Billboard Hot 100 but still served as a lodestar for so much of this decade’s pop. With “Dancing on My Own,” from her defining album Body Talk, Robyn took the euphoric ache of classic house and disco, spiked it with her own obsessive brand of vulnerability, and set a blueprint for everyone from Lorde to St. Vincent to Taylor Swift to worshipfully follow. At its core, the song is an exploration of contradictions: between the mechanized backbeat and Robyn’s all-too-human vocals; between a dancefloor’s collective catharsis and the isolation of being trapped inside your own skin; between the despair of the heart and the resilience of the body. “I’m right over here, why can’t you see me?” Robyn pleads to an oblivious ex making out with someone new across the club. For all of its invisible voyeurism, though, “Dancing on My Own” has a regenerative ability to make anyone who hears it feel hopelessly, resolutely seen. –Ryan Dombal",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xguIYNjYU1A,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d88fb960480b10008ffa259/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Robyn-Dancing-on-My-Own.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Robyn-Dancing_on_My_Own_2010.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,2,Grimes,“Oblivion” (2012),4AD,"4AD In the seven years since Grimes released her breakout hit, increasingly outlandish cycles of outrage have engulfed the Canadian singer, songwriter, and producer born Claire Boucher. Most recently, it was her loyalty to a future A.I. dictatorship that got people wondering whether she was some kind of techno-fascist. But what Grimes’ critics fail to realize is that she has always looked to what’s next in order to soothe her present. You can hear it on “Oblivion,” with its gargled bass line that still sounds tailor-made for the exact moment when aliens lower their drawbridge onto Earth. Boucher wrote the Visions single after experiencing an assault she described as “one of the most shattering experiences of my life,” the kind that leaves you on the back foot in perpetuity. “And now I’m left behind, all the time,” she sang, a devastating sentiment rendered in succubus sing-song, and a setback transcended by the track’s forward-thinking production. Ultimately, “Oblivion” galvanized Boucher’s pain into a complex anthem of vulnerability and nihilism that defiantly eludes a clear reading—a reminder to never stop searching for nuance as you look ahead. –Laura Snapes",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtH68PJIQLE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d88fc93d7bb780008932aba/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Grimes-Oblivion.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Grimes-Oblivion_2012.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/,2010s,decade,song,1,Kendrick Lamar,“Alright” (2015),Aftermath/Interscope/Top Dawg,"Aftermath/Interscope/Top Dawg It’s not every day, or even every decade, that a song will become platinum certified, Grammy recognized, street ratified, activist endorsed, and a new nominee for Black National Anthem; that it’ll be just as effective performed before a massive festival audience or chanted on the front lines at protests; that it’ll serve as a war cry against police brutality, against Trump, for the survival of the disenfranchised. Inspired by a trip to South Africa, Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright” bears a message of unbreakable optimism in the face of hardship: “We gon’ be alright!” repeats Pharrell, who helped write and produce the song. Endurance, it assures, will ensure a more positive tomorrow. “Alls my life I’ve had to fight, nigga!” Kendrick howls, echoing writer and activist Alice Walker on the black American experience. Fighting is the only way we know forward. The centerpiece of Kendrick’s most ambitious opus, To Pimp a Butterfly, “Alright” permeated the collective consciousness in the spring and summer of 2015. It was around the time people became tragically familiar with names like Freddie Gray and Sandra Bland, and when nine black people were shot and killed inside of a historic church in Charleston, South Carolina. As a cornerstone of the #BlackLivesMatter canon, the song seemed like a beacon of light ushering us away from terror. You could argue that things are worse now than they were then, that its hope was misplaced. But “Alright” isn’t promising a better world, just that we’ll find a way to survive the one we have. It is a defense mechanism, pining for an aspirational future—maybe even a nonexistent one—as it helps us cope with our chaotic present. For the entire 2010s, from Section.80’s survivalist stories of the post-Reagan hood to good kid, m.A.A.d. city’s autobiographical cinema on the futile fight to escape the quicksand of street life, Kendrick’s work has often dealt with persisting under perilous circumstances. To Pimp a Butterfly considers oppression’s sprawling impact, from colorism to survivor’s guilt, longing for a way we could all make it out together. To that end, “Alright” serves as a thesis statement of sorts: that the path through life’s trials begins with striving for more, for better. You can imagine the characters who cycle in and out of his songs whispering “We gon’ be alright” to themselves, or reassuring loved ones between sighs, trying to make it through the next day. Here, as horns wail and drums snap, there is a sense that the “we” is actually unfathomable, a force that can overcome anything when banded as one. –Sheldon Pearce",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-48u_uWMHY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5d88fd1d09b36e0009899f3e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kendrick-Lamar-Alright.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kendrick_Lamar-Alright_2015.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,150,Salt-N-Pepa,Very Necessary (1993),Next Plateau / London,"Next Plateau / London Salt-N-Pepa were a rebuke to the music industry’s storied disdain for women rappers, having gone platinum on their first two records; by their fourth album Very Necessary, which quickly went multi-platinum, the trio could not be denied. They didn’t change up their raison d’etre: Salt, Pepa, and Spinderella were still committed to women determining their own futures and calling out creepers and weirdos. But in the wake of the so-called “Year of the Woman,” their career-long pop sensibilities congealed in the hits “Shoop” and the En Vogue-featuring “Whatta Man,” positive anthems that remain stalwart in the wedding and auntie playlists. More than that, though, hip-hop was beginning to thaw to the idea of incorporating R&B and pop: Puff had convened Bad Boy Records in 1993, and genre-shifting cuts like Method Man and Mary J. Blige’s “I'll Be There for You/You're All I Need to Get By” weren’t far away. Salt-N-Pepa just happened to get there early. –Julianne Escobedo Shepherd",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufdt6xr77PK24K6P5zhFasz7BrKYdXHmDmvkh4nZUR4Urjnqimm | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/X7niGYieCH8UQ8PGqdUBtg8M6SAMcPegELm2uaNkiXQqSRwp4HaQGxppbNbCMF44CZcGNECmFt4zQZRh1GRha7dMawYceve2Q1xLXApakHqRxhEXdeeL4ywxbUEtAuRR5uP4dmhiWrdtC6DWRKokfiB3yBUgqFLJjqzy5 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2W2EmEpud13QHlhCFS9P8g?si=3UkamjuPScOqULOlsN7Itw | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/93177719,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63321c7a10c581ffac68d1fe/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Salt-N-Pepa%2520-%2520Very%2520Necessary.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Salt-N-Pepa-Very_Necessary_1993.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,149,Bratmobile,Pottymouth (1993),Kill Rock Stars,"Kill Rock Stars Largely recorded in a single day for the price of a slice of pizza and a bottle of hair dye, Olympia/D.C. riot grrrl trio Bratmobile’s 1993 debut Pottymouth is a scrappy vessel for nuanced feminist commentary and punk demystification. Beginning with an incendiary opener—“Admit it! Innocent little girls turn you on, don’t they”—Bratmobile burn all the walls down. “Cool Schmool” uses sing-songy sugar to taunt pretentious scene politics, while the blistering “P.R.D.C.T.” depicts the correlation between male-ego idolization and sexual violence: “You’re my punk rock dream come true/I would die to stay with you.” Over the course of 16 tracks in just 28 minutes, Bratmobile established themselves as a revolutionary force. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1oxyyAYY1Dy2ksFscFBRvtfimwFDhqFVpmaamzSGZrA2FQs | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8nansyqULpE8awBcBxybcmwRdNwmAjQJqXPnb2JGAosJivz4pjWPmV5umPqz8WHe4J2UksTMz8SDnWkBPZwpyAo53ZET42uJab4h93u | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://bratmobile.bandcamp.com/album/pottymouth | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/7pF01v90RPyI6baoIH76Ia?si=9-v3AJ0QSImn60cDNM-1tw | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/19145887,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63321d6a10c581ffac68d200/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bratmobile%2520-%2520Pottymouth.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bratmobile-Pottymouth_1993.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,148,Soundgarden,Superunknown (1994),A&M,"A&M On Superunknown, Soundgarden mixed some pop vulnerability into their Zep-influenced hard rock and broke into the mainstream. The album often gets grouped in with grunge—overdriven guitars abound, and yes, Soundgarden are from Seattle—but its pummeling riffs and Chris Cornell’s one-of-a-kind wail transcended the genre’s power chords and raspy sneering. The anthemic melodies are juxtaposed with bleak themes of death, despondence, and apocalypse that feel even more devastating following Cornell’s 2017 suicide. The album remains an alt-rock anomaly, thundering and openhearted in equal measure. –Max Freedman",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufaohpKvWigSXNq7sgkkY6A4Dea39skhjDjUkUKYcwFsJDBJsd1 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/4iheeJwWD8ieNhakwNtVbCeWuwR1qfJRV7bDBka8akcakztZ2NpTMJ2tSVUJ3Lf4GkGgvH9aXEKTzZ2kWz8WEthRX2c5Pf7uJM1hDcokM63xRPyLhz6t7fzRW2UAn5g2hgeRNo25UWHEgi2grt3i4Eno8oJarGo2v4cdj6JsLTJM1E5TZRknrNPiL7 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/4K8bxkPDa5HENw0TK7WxJh?si=TP9pfGJLSRaoDzq0pLoWBA | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/2571098,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63321fdfb775c5f7a6fea75e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Soundgarden%2520-%2520Superunknown.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Soundgarden-Superunknown_1994.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,147,Whitney Houston,The Bodyguard (1992) ,Arista / BMG,"Arista / BMG The interracial romance-thriller The Bodyguard, starring Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner, was the 13th biggest movie of 1992—a feat that had more than a little to do with the film’s soundtrack, which featured Houston delivering six superbly written and produced tracks at the pristine peak of her vocal superpowers. First, there’s the covers, including her ebullient remake of Chaka Khan’s “I’m Every Woman,” and her bold reconstruction of Dolly Parton’s sentimental country-weeper “I Will Always Love You,” which spent a record 14 weeks atop the Hot 100 en route to becoming one of the most beloved and hated songs ever, depending on your taste for pop schmaltz. Not to be overlooked are the album’s original torch songs, “I Have Nothing” and “Run to You,” performed by Houston with maximalist feeling and immaculate precision. The Bodyguard became the highest-earning soundtrack of all time, surpassing Saturday Night Fever, and influencing generations of big-voiced divas like Christina Aguilera and Ariana Grande. It’s easy to forget that the album also contains six other worthwhile cuts by artists like Kenny G and Lisa Stansfield—we might consider them more if Whitney didn’t slay so hard. –Jason King",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufamQ82Pjdemu1uUNCbwnF6S517nPN9f4GAahbCkZarZeWGuSZ5 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/D7sWyRTyBnUnjVm8WybWbyYXHAEast352rdxovHXCEikaf79NnfTvsLNipACNTWGMKmKC37vqyDVZCgFMQQG4th1ytmVBc91fCpHR2Rrjpm6pA1NVSjwAXAtfzup1drZV9S6x3cwmkdHHgeX4PiCpdtrPBtcC9zrKC1LLpqPUhHF3GqW3FLSwhho9BgsMN6NLd4Zdy | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/7JVJlkNNobS0GSoy4tCS96?si=695QxcBYQZij7zonjOB7RA | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/5120354,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6332f6229a8953bde11f94d4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Whitney%2520Houston%2520-%2520The%2520Bodyguard.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Whitney_Houston-The_Bodyguard_1992.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,146,Boredoms,Super æ (1998),Warner Music Japan / Birdman,"Warner Music Japan / Birdman Boredoms started in 1986 as something like a noise band, and ended three decades later as something like a mountain. The Osaka collective’s fifth full-length comes the closest to encapsulating the entirety of their journey, with long passages of the ecstatic trance-rock that would characterize their later years, punctuated frequently with the cartoonish riffs and chaotic smash cuts that had been their specialty early on. At times, they sound like a hardcore band that never got the memo about brevity; at others, like a religious cult for whom the sound of a skipping CD is the embodiment of the divine. Two chords might repeat for 10 minutes, until that relatively small sliver of time feels like eternity. A crescendo might gain thrilling momentum only to slam abruptly into silence. Later Boredoms recordings and performances could resemble live-band DJ sets, with shards of noise and melody whirling around a single central pulse. On Super æ, they delighted in shaking listeners out of their flow states just as thoroughly as they did in drawing them in. These prankish interruptions and asides don’t take away from the music’s joyousness and near-mystical uplift; they enhance it. Meditation is one path to bliss. A good joke is another. –Andy Cush",Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/0rMegQXvLDuu3OWQH5tg7C | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/32910272,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633323941dccce609e416378/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Boredoms%2520-%2520Super%2520%25C3%25A6.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Boredoms-Super__1998.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,145,Fugazi,Repeater (1990),Dischord,"Dischord To save hardcore, Fugazi had to destroy it and build something new from what scraps could still be salvaged. By 1986, Minor Threat frontman Ian MacKaye was bored and frustrated with the violent, pig-headed masculinity prevalent in hardcore scenes across the country. He found kinship in the arty introspection of Rites of Spring, whose singer-guitarist Guy Picciotto and drummer Brendan Canty joined the fold of MacKaye’s next band. With these new members and bassist Joe Lally as collaborators, MacKaye paired slower and more rhythmically supple arrangements with an unrelenting commitment to his DIY, straight-edge values and the revolutionary spirit at the heart of the genre. After two tremendous EPs (later compiled on 13 Songs), 1990’s Repeater was the definitive moment when “post-hardcore” finally crystalized. Over lacerating chords and a deft use of space, the band took the many indignities of the Reagan-Bush era into their own hands—a sound, and a political worldview, that would reshape scenes overnight. –Rob Arcand",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1mBeksHGwU9Cbb2TMg6ENqi4VFffbUvV151HVYwf9WXRUCo | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/X7niGYieCH8UQ8PGqdUBtg8M6SAMcPegELm2uaNkiXQqSRwp4HaQGxppbNbCMF44CZcGNECmFt4zQZRh1GRha7dMawYcerQDzS9Zfc8uKRzaa73nsemAWjB4hxdb97Xeub1fRVQJLEBeMAJdp82UdqULjxrw8cyqZV6WK | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://fugazi.bandcamp.com/album/repeater-3-songs | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3ZnF1cPxlqB48RyLiecDnv | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/76389809,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6332f8b5f2e57bfbb7050055/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Fugazi%2520-%2520Repeater.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Fugazi-Repeater_1990.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,144,Iris DeMent,Infamous Angel (1992),Philo,"Philo Iris DeMent opened her first album with a meditation on what happens to a person in the afterlife; after wandering through some of the more popular theories, she reached a practical conclusion: “I think I’ll just let the mystery be.” “Let the Mystery Be” set the tone for 1992’s Infamous Angel, a staggering debut across which the Arkansas-born singer-songwriter reflected on mortality, faded hopes, and bygone affections. Her voice authenticated every bit of heartache she sifted through the rubble and found the bittersweet beauty therein: “Our Town” endures as an album standout for how succinctly DeMent captured the tragedy of American dreams drying up, but the raw pathos of “Mama’s Opry” and the sublime escapism of her take on “Fifty Miles of Elbow Room” are no less potent. –Allison Hussey",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufaoWHUvaKYYCcG6LZZM1S223bhNsxG3R4Z845UWCNeZ2vVzJSb | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/X7niGYieCH8UQ8PGqdUBtg8M6SAMcPegELm2uaNkiXQqSRwp4HaQGxppbNbCMF44CZcGNECmFt4zQZRh1GRha7dMawYceguL5tksKR2N7WBBZJZrLpQABXQKCKkASJqFDrQz8RzrVH1FjhRXLuyS23tLDTneZK1kVtsaX | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://irisdement.bandcamp.com/album/infamous-angel | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/4LluPNK62d1cUvD1ZL46bf | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/111593243 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiSX9PNRyyc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6332fc73800c1a0f8721bb18/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Iris%2520Dement%2520-%2520Infamous%2520Angel.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Iris_DeMent-Infamous_Angel_1992.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,143,Aimee Mann,Whatever (1993),Imago,"Imago The start of the ’90s found Aimee Mann world-weary and jaded, put through the wringer of MTV stardom and what would become many years of label troubles. It’s no coincidence that Mann’s solo debut Whatever—recorded independently with producer Jon Brion after a three-year stand-off with Epic—encapsulated all the shades of meaning derived from the word it was named after. Marrying wry and melancholic narratives that grappled with disappointment and disillusionment—be it at the hand of labels or lovers—Whatever ran the gamut from caustic kiss-offs and stubborn determination to resigned sighs of defeat and shrugging indifference. It set the tone for the rest of Mann’s career, particularly as the decade would wear on, as an uncompromising songwriter with unparalleled gift for depicting the many different sighs of life. –Carrie Courogen",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1rQMrG47KjnEcBJ8r2niZd72QDRcKGmFAph8qkXfdpaazjR | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/Ehjr9t1bfyFgs5GtcpxVsAdcRJm1vtb9Ubjx5sTFJYB6r2e4TjtG8vb1rkTFisrhHbExGSy1DgZK5HrzBQjdeFLuEEKV6nnfbxMVx2k9HG87v6nD9UJUxFDtWgv9cABrockNeFxiFfS9dhPtJEMMLBSvCK2rT | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/6c1xyQiasQXWYtKy70Vm8q | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/14341993,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6332fd9a81f657b67c94e722/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Aimee%2520Mann%2520-%2520Whatever%2520.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Aimee_Mann-Whatever_1993.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,142,Boyz II Men,II (1994),Motown,"Motown The first single from Philadelphia vocal harmony group Boyz II Men’s follow-up to their massively successful debut Cooleyhighharmony was titled “I’ll Make Love to You,” a wholesome anachronism at a time when every other R&B artist wanted to creep, freak, knock boots, rub it down, or sex you up. (Listening to the song now, with its gentle lyrics about respectful consent, it actually sounds strangely progressive.) An article about II in Entertainment Weekly was headlined “Revenge of the Nerds” and noted that they still lived with their parents. But these nerds met at performing arts school, and their studious attention to their craft shines across the album, particularly on their a cappella cover of the Beatles’ “Yesterday.” Uncool and out of step, II was a collection of lush crowd-pleasers that spoke to the silent majority of the record-buying public. Its influence endures across generations, passed down via family gatherings, proms, and weddings; these days, Boyz II Men count Tyler, the Creator, BTS, and Justin Bieber as their biggest fans and collaborators. –Jessica Suarez",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1rYQvpeoDVWhqeFEHirSwnWThLXRGDXmtyHA1hdKBuF1uEP | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/7EaqjGTiGVEZV17h8f56rTA6wXfeUBxFYyCZyWhithNoYDbspYy91PFy2zjsVdfZDudF8n92ctsgNTXa8VzXvAWsFLmZirDkXKTqwGn8VFPkQLa3KtxhfkUbG2gkBixjz54tukH5L1jYFETxGBajq | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1IWhZEOwEoXbOB4a40XaR3 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/35882919,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6332fe74f2e57bfbb7050059/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Boyz%2520II%2520Men%2520-%2520II.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Boyz_II_Men-II_1994.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,141,Sparklehorse,Good Morning Spider (1998),Capitol,"Capitol When Mark Linkous died for the first time, in a London hotel room in 1996, he was brought back to life by paramedics. Despite a challenging recovery, the Sparklehorse leader returned to music with a heightened awareness of the world around him. Fittingly, Good Morning Spider sounds like the album an alien might produce after getting a glimpse of life on Earth. These proudly eclectic songs are full of reverence for things we mostly take for granted: tiny creatures, overlooked moments, forces outside of our grasp. Musically, the album tends toward a natural state of entropy, veering from cowpunk to rural blues to dusty AM rock. (And when Linkous managed to pull off a radio-friendly pop song like “Happy Man,” he was sure to bury it under static.) Where his previous work seemed to quietly conjure the ghosts of his rural Virginia home, Good Morning Spider plays like a chaotic celebration of everything that’s outside and alive. –Mehan Jayasuriya",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1neMc8gVJAEWqux5w7Bv1b1g9aW8Ts1oje75jm8gymdpDks | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/4Q5NDE1dgN4W84pNLsng6VFE1cdfSddbd9XvoFPPLK4asobvNMdQAXBUzYuEpauMz3G1A7Xq7NYJ9i6Dd6qPvj1foZZrkoXJq4Jd5RumUfMcTAvixXdWnN9SPSYPZcHUcB4cbifVysZfSwChFebTevM8qWqu7MgPcFWECqrNjHR | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/4FWzJKnZMl51qBHzmKClqP | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/621135,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6332fefc6abc1e7431932afa/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sparklehorse%2520-%2520Good%2520Morning%2520Spider.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Sparklehorse-Good_Morning_Spider_1998.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,140,Three 6 Mafia,Mystic Stylez (1995),Prophet,"Prophet Recorded while holed up in North Memphis, Mystic Stylez is Three 6 Mafia’s horrorcore sound at its most skin-crawling. The songs feel like they’re never going to end—they’re unhurried and drawn-out, like the scene in a good slasher flick where the killer may or may not be about to strike. Moments as small as the pitched-down vocals on the opening of “Sweet Robbery” or the punishing drop on “Break Da Law ’95” hit you like a jump scare; Juicy J and DJ Paul’s beats are one-of-a-kind and truly cinematic, with brooding piano lines, tripped-out samples, and hi-hats that tick like a climbing heart rate. Collectively, their writing feels as if they’re all competing to rap the most shocking bar, and the nightmarish tone is emphasized by colorful and hyper-specific references to satan, coffins, and soul snatching. It’s not just a great album, but a dark text on how to push the limits in rap. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1rcEmMr5EBRUCzDZw2WLxgzA7gQVy2kgMpcuik1qBMHbvR5 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2YfVS2JkEsZbGaVN2xMzcCAf2EcdufCigRyF44GJ5f29ratuBWwUyZKgmpFrhqhmxswYt6NmeGB7aN5jK2UM9Lmk6hBoKRcLbEDLhUxHGAVCBT1ALttGmBvtLCgZeAvJ8cTeqQ1q4dEkCZaHMwVhrkoZDa66vtcGXbd | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/03dao4rkv9ZZ95IJrnugVM | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/40198145,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6332ff789d26f5817514abac/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Three%25206%2520Mafia%2520-%2520Mystic%2520Stylez.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Three_6_Mafia-Mystic_Stylez_1995.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,139,Toni Braxton,Toni Braxton (1993),LaFace / Arista,"LaFace / Arista In the time of b-girls and baggy overalls, Toni Braxton emerged on the cover of her self-titled debut with a sultry but low-key sexiness—high-waisted jeans, a white tank, a leather jacket slung off her shoulders, an of-the-moment pixie cut and a red lip. Coming off the success of the Boomerang soundtrack, Braxton’s first album is a crooning, bluesy deep dive into the agony of heartbreak. Produced by the era-defining Babyface and L.A. Reid, along with famed producer and hit maker Daryl Simmons, Braxton’s alto is punctuated by the post-new jack sound yet still sounds like a throwback. The album put her on the map—she won three Grammys for it and spent weeks at the top of the charts—and has remained a staple, especially for the grown, sexy, self-aware of us who aspired to its posture. –Samhita Mukhopadhyay",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam6puHmUUNAmU7Sgb2rFBPdcoyEFbTAc1DMw4oY5XsbMwX5W7 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/MKEh7BpQXwWWp1Y3i6D9RjWuqrJsu9zvnz9d36jPMPvD98gTrNrqcRAvCcYCX4oSM9jZscHurCooXc4F442PjYSAu9nqako1DeYY9DoqzCvp9bYeL5DaquEuohTE5oEYnRB6YG6jwqMinHZiHkQgXbz9mX9vq3JFy | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/73ojqvZakvdkBxSg9pyPqz | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/680072,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6332fff5800c1a0f8721bb1a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Toni%2520Braxton%2520-%2520Toni%2520Braxton.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Toni_Braxton-Toni_Braxton_1993.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,138,American Football,American Football (1999),Polyvinyl,"Polyvinyl By the fall of 1999, the members of American Football were done with college, with emo, and with American Football itself. The trio had decided to break up even before the release of their first full-length; thus, the album turned out to be a farewell from a band that had scarcely introduced itself. American Football was also a rebuke of the Midwestern scene that had been shaped by the incalculable long-tail influence of Mike Kinsella’s previous one-album supernova Cap’n Jazz, rerouting emo’s bloodline from hardcore toward minimalist jazz and meditiative math-rock. It’s likely that no album on this list had less impact on the actual 1990s than American Football, but few loom larger right this moment; after the bursting of the Myspace bubble, hundreds of bands took Kinsella’s elliptical expressions of hope and heartbreak as unfinished business, rebuilding the genre on a foundation of open-tuned Telecasters, capos, and red and black flannels. Yet, while the sound of American Football is remarkably easy to replicate, its spirit of wistful carpe diem remains forever elusive. “You can’t miss what you forget,” Kinsella warns on “Never Meant,” if not the greatest emo song ever then the most potent expression of preemptive nostalgia in a genre that does it better than any other. –Ian Cohen",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1sjv49Drf2F1PLv2uGdX956KDk7VjV11c6rJZWtoo6wVKrw | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/3Hvxm9czoAnByw5bJudy155hRgz4HyCyJ9tDMR4K1xHECoF6vhWARjTQ54iHw6M2V82vephGvLgQcNz7yaB625AFTrokYLhh6uBfunkfk6u3GHCiwwKP24ryAKMrNvb1nvt4pw6gzizyrbg8u754KqiEv2nsLNWHgdt7Y7Z | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://americanfootball.bandcamp.com/album/american-football | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3wRBlpk5PRoixwOnLujTal | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/4086444,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333009fcb86801423062e4b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/American%2520Football%2520-%2520Amerian%2520Football.jpg,/dataset/artwork/American_Football-American_Football_1999.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,137,Bone Thugs-N-Harmony,E. 1999 Eternal (1995),Ruthless / Relativity,"Ruthless / Relativity Bone Thugs-N-Harmony made absence and the afterlife a focal point of their music: Their second album, E. 1999 Eternal, was less about the hurdles they scaled to achieve success, and more about those who would not be around to toast with them. Each track hit like a message to the grim reaper: The album worked through the stages of grief for those whose lives move too fast to properly acknowledge pain, yet still need something like closure. It is darkly comedic, treating death like both an intruder and unavoidable foe. The 808s are somber and steady as a marching band, giving center stage to lines that act as both introduction and eulogy. A year after the album’s release, Tupac Shakur would be dead, and the Notorious B.I.G., shortly after—unquantifiable casualties that made it difficult for peers and fans to both grieve and remember. Coming from the only group to work with both of those artists, E. 1999 Eternal was a grim blueprint for moving forward while never losing sight of those not in the room. –Tarisai Ngangura",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufbFSVcvrBipFfkLggEj85LV1exS5tD5EoueZgAkVSFst2kek6s | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/X7niGYieCH8UQ8PGqdUBtg8M6SAMcPegELm2uaNkiXQqSRwp4HaQGxppbNbCMF44CZcGNECmFt4zQZRh1GRha7dMawYcecPsxeEmqR1z96uWgVp85qY6HuAVMdra3QRPHAA8UaUeU9LmEVi3yMkwVLYn57VVxCwSBAvmd | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3r25XjxAmLMOhOWoV6X8N9 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/66306659,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633304041dccce609e41636e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bone%2520Thugs%2520n-Harmony%2520-%2520E.%25201999%2520Eternal.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Bone_Thugs-N-Harmony-E_1999_Eternal_1995.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,136,Depeche Mode,Violator (1990),Mute,"Mute We are lucky to live in the musical world that Depeche Mode helped create with Violator, their celebrated album of synthy, sexy gloom. At this point, it’s mostly taken for granted that artists can crunch together pop, rock, dance, and electronic music into something capable of pleasing fans of each genre, or that deep, sensual darkness can writhe its way onto the radio—but it wasn’t always like this; there’s a line that runs straight from Martin Gore and Dave Gahan all the way on through to Finneas and Billie Eilish. “Personal Jesus” is so crisply produced that you’d think it was made yesterday, but it’s “Enjoy the Silence” that is the album’s best and most subtle moment, with a melancholy guitar line that still mystifies three decades years later. Violator sounded like the future when it arrived in 1990. Now, it sounds like everything. –Alex Frank",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam6oZjERfpEhMRoJ6rdoT3D1szbnZ5pREtQZuLdYrz1p5eXzo | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/qsSkLvaohicCiNF2u5sRy7EaHrr8QBHsmzbUp2chj45Ue8bty9VB33hCfd6DmL3Z7ddgiGYA7eGBKavp844TFtJLVTXSykoDUFjTK1K4ahu9MkxTPrgXdQRuFGd94CQfwcuBGDLvkx6MwBek2RbdydwvigsHMvHzCq8MP834GESm12YifPmv7rh5 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5g3Yi15plTSMaq6tYiuw8p | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/66932434,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333047a6e8a9ef73daa4376/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Depeche%2520Mode%2520-%2520Violator.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Depeche_Mode-Violator_1990.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,135,Jeff Buckley,Grace (1994),Columbia,"Columbia If all he ever gave us was “Hallelujah,” Jeff Buckley would still be hailed as a tremendously influential artist whose drowning death at 30 remains an unfathomable tragedy. Fortunately for everyone who skips that track at this point (guilty), there’s so much more to Grace than his cover of John Cale’s cover of Leonard Cohen’s most famous song. The son of a folk singer who also died way too young, Buckley drew from New York bohemia as well as from European chanson, from Patti Smith as well as from Edith Piaf, and that unusual set of influences—not to mention that voice—distinguished him then as now. Buckley savored the drama of unabashed beauty colliding with unrestrained noise: “So Real” erupts in orgasms of guitar distortion, quieted only by Buckley whispering, “I love you… but I’m afraid to love you.” It’s almost over-the-top, almost ridiculous, which makes its transcendence that much more impressive and daring. –Stephen Deusner",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufbD9QdGpUZZqmU8LP8USC6CcAsswipYJfqSp1gD8oFkPwzmHN7 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/AF4hZrJoZxC84SKr5YhNkUxhvHJs9uSA2Ar2Do9q6QaLbRW9zbdL7wZg6oCSkKar6rzWJSC9PyWiC1JNK8YJSAZSwvE29b1r68QVWYP7G9fsDTqAgnu47Xj8XFM3V2sioxrPtREkjLo2jwHD9SZ9mhFfd | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/7yQtjAjhtNi76KRu05XWFS | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/52159021,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63330563cb86801423062e4f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jeff%2520Buckley%2520-%2520Grace.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Jeff_Buckley-Grace_1994.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,134,Gillian Welch,Revival (1996) ,Almo Sounds,"Almo Sounds Gillian Welch was in her late 20s when she issued her debut album, Revival, but she already sounded like a woman who’d lived through a few other lifetimes. Several years before she predicted the digitally induced collapse of the music industry, the singer-songwriter was writing tunes about lonesome left-behinds, heartaches that wouldn’t quit, and sweet little Appalachian flowers. With producer T Bone Burnett, Welch built songs that were spacious in their sentiments, spare in their melodies, and quietly puckish in their view of the world, as guitarist David Rawlings, a steadfast musical companion to Welch over subsequent years, backed her cool and easy voice with prickling steel-string licks. Revival was the first plank in the career of a generational voice, one whose work feels both timely and eternal in any decade. –Allison Hussey",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1mCqonmCwk9vLx8DH2yDUgFxNMYqYHt3yDVYcYzbBs6DBDh | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/AF4hZrJoZxC84SKr5YhNkUxhvHJs9uSA2Ar2Do9q6QaLbRW9zbdL7wZg6oCSkKar6rzWJSC9PyWiC1JNK8YJSAZSwvE29eaLHEcRXoyubHcPJRRXSXGcFfNmfWLbLRzd41m9JdC7HWQrdPTBJBGU3XVps | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://gillianwelch.bandcamp.com/album/revival | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/733rVkP3oBulDHJbiuRANa | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/87279654 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sy6VMDXB2SQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333061df2e57bfbb705005b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Gillian%2520Welch%2520-%2520Revival.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Gillian_Welch-Revival_1996.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,133,Jonathan Richman,"I, Jonathan (1992)",Rounder,"Rounder Modern Lovers founder Jonathan Richman was 41 when he released this sunny solo record, but he looks half that, nearly teenaged, on the album’s cover. He sounds it, too. Richman’s lyrical concerns involve the magic of new love, the despair of a disagreement with a roommate, and the joy of losing oneself on the dancefloor in a lesbian bar. I, Jonathan marries the airtight pop construction of Brian Wilson to the crustpunk ethos of K Records as it narrates all the triumphs and tribulations of 20s adolescence. Timeless is the word. –Peyton Thomas",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufamW7QdUmcJut5JV6M5taosBpMPCv6XtB46pmWzTE6H83LZZj5 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/474N76DNT3n1smUARtCDRxekNNF3vu1wV1AjPQDHqP1vtSJ1LCXeQzuZpXEemqE59HpZutecPp2RwSa5M2keJW5WWHAAzUQ4wSVoVD2VNdTzV2yX4vtgw7tt5Ute1nie9HyhBZZntaTn3J6X8XGnTBgATJUw | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://rounderrecords.bandcamp.com/album/i-jonathan | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2RtcqYl0VAhDw9DPMEqWF5 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/36062658,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633306b9cb86801423062e51/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jonathan%2520Richman%2520-%2520I%2C%2520Jonathan.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jonathan_Richman-I_Jonathan_1992.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,132,Oval,94 Diskont (1995),Mille Plateaux / Thrill Jockey,"Mille Plateaux / Thrill Jockey Oval has always been a highly conceptual project, as central figure Markus Popp could spiel for hours about the standardization enforced by digital audio software. Attempting to subvert such strictures, the German trio turned digital dysfunction into raw material: Physically damaging actual compact discs, they took the gnarly weirdness that sputtered out of the CD player and tiled these sonic splinters into glittering mosaics. But it’s easy to divorce the polemical framing from the listening experience, and simply immerse yourself in Oval’s stream of strange beauty—particularly on 94 Diskont’s 24-minute standout, “Do While,” which resembles a My Bloody Valentine song shoved through a paper shredder and collaged into a shimmering abstract sound painting. 94 Diskont almost single-handedly inspired a wave of glitchy late-’90s electronica woven out of skips and clicks, ranging from Herbert’s twitchy but danceable grooves to punky noise-blasts like Lesser’s influence-exorcizing jibe, “Markus Popp Can Kiss My Redneck Ass.” Oval’s later releases grew conceptually top-heavy, but with 94 Diskont they created an ambient dreamscape as pretty and placid as it was disorienting and uncanny. –Simon Reynolds",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufbEx42y5yCNnr8VbgjVf7jdMeSWQp3VuMt6ZyFw3JUJSnk6bPV | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/474N76DNT3n1smUARtCDRxekNNF3vu1wV1AjPQDHqP1vtSJ1LCXeQzuZpXEemqE59HpZutecPp2RwSa5M2keJW5WWHAAzPACGWbkpNvCfT7VEfxxdKW2PEnFsUn2HHBvnTEuEjd7ouoh49BZ2Jrfwqen6ifZ | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://oval.bandcamp.com/album/94diskont-remastered-2013-reissue | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/33xUwaoTPJ9aNbCJZEpRol,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63330783e02a17d9175e55de/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Oval%2520-%252094%2520Diskont.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Oval-94_Diskont_1995.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,131,Prefab Sprout,Jordan: The Comeback (1990),Kitchenware / CBS,"Kitchenware / CBS Paddy McAloon, the eccentrically ambitious frontman of Prefab Sprout, has a habit of self-mythologizing. Read enough interviews with him and you’ll start wondering if half the abandoned projects he mentions—say, a Christmas album called Total Snow or a movie musical written with Spike Lee—actually exist somewhere in the vaults or were just momentary bursts of inspiration tested out against some befuddled music journalist. The English band’s 1990 masterpiece, Jordan: The Comeback, however, makes you believe it’s all true. Somewhere in its 19-song sprawl—which spans bossa nova party-starters, tear-jerking R&B ballads, and arena rock anthems—there’s a narrative throughline about reincarnation, Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, and the imminent turn of the century, all delivered with enough gravitas for several Bible characters to make credible appearances. (“Hi, this is God, here,” goes a particularly memorable opening line.) It might all feel like a puzzle—something to be studied and worked over rather than celebrated—if it weren’t also filled with impeccable hooks and performances. Three decades later, the world finally seems to be catching up to its vision for cerebral, heartfelt pop. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam6pwyrN8N8zWi1sT6DKSnPXw6hWuTkzzNTEsFpQobKbcnd6F | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/4Q5NDE1dgN4W84pNLsng6VFE1cdfSddbd9XvoFPPLK4asobvNMdQAXBUzYuEpauMz3G1A7Xq7NYJ9i6Dd6qPvj1foZZrkot7AFBXdadFLk8H1USjYUMpc6B7y9HFszShFWEUmnYhrGZDVfyWys5m3czUXjMt2kKiEtKdybt38GP | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3HYcTvojN9GFKGvn7zA2Pq | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/3180784,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63330c4605942a58667ee21d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Prefab%2520Sprout%2520-%2520Jordan%2520-%2520The%2520Comeback.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Prefab_Sprout-Jordan_The_Comeback_1990.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,130,Maxwell,Maxwell’s Urban Hang Suite (1996) ,Columbia,"Columbia A song cycle that moves from a passionate fling to a breakup to a reunion and marriage proposal, Maxwell’s sumptuous debut album dilates one turbulent romance into a celebration of monogamous love and ’70s soul. To bring this retro vision to life, Maxwell enlisted accomplished collaborators like Sade saxophonist Stuart Matthewman and guitarist Wah Wah Watson, known for his work with Marvin Gaye and Herbie Hancock. But it’s ultimately Maxwell’s distinct voice as a singer, songwriter, and producer that powers these songs of courtship. His tender croon radiates vulnerability, his higher notes tinged with an anxious yearning. Marriage plots like this one are by definition conservative, but the rich details of Urban Hang Suite leave the door ajar for anyone who’s horny and lovestruck. –Stephen Kearse",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam7KsmkRzkyYswM3x6ib6mo3D1977DqN8KACjnGywkierW84P | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/8UAFzxJzvSuaw23YMmcgLo6XFpPbbtLCUmg6umLWhEHCQYzpUDSpXHL8eXe2qEKQdafD22TNrb3ntHw6iua336RrUYSD1Xu8pUBA7b8SGhVLiXftzga1hRwCNe3HZFcDCc6n1HsQpUcYq2Jdo4znemeV8apsxUHUvQTYC4R3ADzw9Nkip79 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2k5YAxjmAD3DmYtmlrY64p | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/5129129,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63330d5ae5c4af791617a928/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Maxwell%2520-%2520Urban%2520Hang%2520Suite.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Maxwell-Maxwells_Urban_Hang_Suite_1996.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,129,Tom Petty,Wildflowers (1994),Warner Bros.,"Warner Bros. Already a household name long before the release of Wildflowers, Tom Petty didn’t need to go above and beyond his signature rich, driving rock’n’roll to ensure the album’s success. But Wildflowers stood out precisely because it pulled back some of that anthemic rock sound. With its stripped-down production, and spartan, honed lyrics, his second solo record was a turning point for the then-44-year-old rocker into a wiser era, strolling through folk, blues, and rock—including the self-pitier’s theme song “You Don’t Know How It Feels”—depending on how the spirit of the moment moved him. –Evie Nagy",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufamCxCoHUcCtj2R4Acf8bMMJh1wopF9Tphxppva9axtK8uZmnw | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/5bwkygcD8TrHGdppHZSrwYPBcY7KL4rNhn7wPE5csqh9eBoYusiekNLU1NC9W1rwgTSxUn9pKQ4onuMDhZrhwx9sjB9aDBrhkcL1H6WPQ5NAXU9w3hsLC6Qusizfu7vWgGnMorjPSVWJsKraR22M7emLUbnC5dHR | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3ZGUBwDiY5HPOcWv4SBPQg | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/3401020,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63330dae9d26f5817514abae/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Tom%2520Petty%2520-%2520Wildflowers.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Tom_Petty-Wildflowers_1994.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,128,Drexciya,Neptune’s Lair (1999),Tresor,"Tresor Detroit techno had always relished myths about the utopian promise of the information age, but no one took the epic, worldbuilding spirit of the genre further than Drexciya. From their first Deep Sea Dweller EP, James Stinson and Gerald Donald used the project as a vehicle for exploring the lingering traumas of the Black diaspora in the United States and beyond, creating an elaborate narrative of undersea people and nations rooted in the real history of the Middle Passage and Paul Gilroy’s concept of the Black Atlantic. The duo’s first album-oriented release, Neptune’s Lair draws the legend of Drexciya into a larger-than-life story, using wonky synths, electro drum patterns, and pitched-down vocal samples to describe Drexciya’s aquatic population and their quest to return to their homeland. Yet for all of the album’s sci-fi imagery, Stinson and Donald always resist the allure of true escapism, consistently asking how speculative fictions can challenge the presumed immutability of everyday life and contribute to a social world as rich and all-consuming as the collective fantasies they document. –Rob Arcand",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufeo61Fcb7kRj74fTibpRfRo7ZskXhP4Ga7DqPzMUjBAnYCM3uy | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/7pktVSmKrEArFkpBqdMfGLHcpT6HuRciy3DF2VQWPYp65rc5KR9UUdfUYoaaPFxyTdqmiWj63Tye2G3skZVhupGVE8NfSKqoqAYxE4dHn9mWbJMngqufMshKzgHbGeiNY1XmYcChCaJfoYdci4GYELT59EWek8GuM9YK | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://tresorberlin.bandcamp.com/album/neptunes-lair | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/7bBx5uPv2YgRIAFyXBWhEV | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/227031639,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63330e3605942a58667ee21f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Drexciya%2520-%2520Neptune_s%2520Lair.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Drexciya-Neptunes_Lair_1999.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,127,Sinéad O’Connor,I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got (1990),Ensign / Chrysalis,"Ensign / Chrysalis I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got begins with a recitation of the Serenity Prayer and ends with the title track, an a cappella hymn of self-acceptance. In between, you’ll find the enormous range of the Irish singer-songwriter: a prophetic protest ballad (“Black Boys on Mopeds”), a 17th-century poem set to the “Funky Drummer” beat (“I Am Stretched on Your Grave”), a jaunty alt-pop us-against-them anthem (“The Emperor’s New Clothes”). And, of course, the massive hit “Nothing Compares 2 U,” originally written by Prince, but owned forever by Sinéad O’Connor. It’s a breakup song so devastating it would tower over everything else around it on a lesser album. Instead, it stands as just another skyscraper in a skyline of heartbreak. –Amy Phillips",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufeo61Fcb7kRj74fTibpRfRo7ZskXhP4Ga7DqPzMUjBAnYCM3uy | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2FTC5bHweKNXpHC9thPgiTMZ7CKV7gyqnq3T43d9US4PEFsoPMbz36ZSb45vo7Po67YwfeFw1VePqcR4tiByG9dEytLCG7ftxiFgzhPYPxKNxGUxoGtcwUn964HwVKoyxg89hU26bm2a6yNgB2SYrEjqgRvnU19i3VikkpgzoYrhgiDhapXe1aVo67CKR | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/0fV9DAddjwNZcmCP1Q8b01 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/233192924,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63330edfe5c4af791617a92a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sinead%2520O_Connor%2520-%2520I%2520Do%2520Not%2520Want%2520What%2520I%2520Haven%25E2%2580%2599t%2520Got.png,/dataset/artwork/Sinad_OConnor-I_Do_Not_Want_What_I_Havent_Got_1990.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,126,Ol’ Dirty Bastard,Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version (1995),Elektra,"Elektra Where Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) described a self-contained world—Staten Island as Shaolin, martial arts movies and local Five Percenters as the only moral guideposts—Ol’ Dirty Bastard embodied the bleed between that realm and our own. After all, the lead single from his solo debut is named after a whole other borough. A lesser version of ODB would scan as a raucous live act who couldn’t quite translate his shtick to record; the ODB we got was instead so radically unpredictable that any vocal take capturing his exuberance and idiosyncrasies became a perfect little time capsule, irreducible and irreproducible. Near Return to the 36 Chambers’ middle, a song is interrupted by ODB’s wife excoriating him over his litany of affairs. He responds by singing four lines of “Over the Rainbow” and then snapping upright into more conventional verse—where he describes his style as “evil, like a Wicked Witch.” –Paul A. Thompson",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufamDHtQ6WGe8hxPWRtApifz4ESX2UPKvkvBQCU6k9h6nvnCpdD | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/8UAFzxJzvSuaw23YMmcgLo6XFpPbbtLCUmg6umLWhEHCQYzpUDSpXHL8eXe2qEKQdafD22TNrb3ntHw6iua336RrUYSD1ZDZaWNUEUhXr3zyN2BeTBo7DEUzndHQqsgJ566CsD2UhujdrJSRZyqvhiacb5AxyryCyZT3suRCode3VBVeC9M | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/4tI4WJdTN5MzDMRMl2i7VR | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/3120818 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRblYfKwa88,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63330fe32118fbded71a64a1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ol_%2520Dirty%2520Bastard%2520-%2520Return%2520to%2520the%252036%2520Chambers-%2520The%2520Dirty%2520Version.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Ol_Dirty_Bastard-Return_to_the_36_Chambers_The_Dirty_Version_1995.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,125,Modest Mouse,The Lonesome Crowded West (1997),Up,"Up On Modest Mouse’s second album, Isaac Brock stares down the open expanse of the American West and finds the placeless drudgery of urban sprawl where something like freedom used to be. The Lonesome Crowded West embodies the claustrophobia of late-’90s American cities—Brock’s guitars creak and squeal with a creeping unease, carving sharp edges into the melodies of “Heart Cooks Brain” and setting his caterwauling screams ablaze on “Shit Luck.” But that unsustainable mania gives way, more often than not, to quiet profundity: The clap-stomp folk-punk of “Cowboy Dan” melts into a meditation on being in nature and “thinking nothing,” before just as quickly returning to its defensive crouch. Brock has a knack for spinning the bleakness of late-stage capitalism into postmodern poetry, finding romance in trailer parks and truck stop bathrooms. The Lonesome Crowded West is a death rattle for the American dream, the kind of album that will feel just as vital when all that’s left are cockroaches, snow-drenched plastic forks, and half-decomposed cups laced with the thick syrup of Orange Julius. –Arielle Gordon",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufejJ6J1ZVty3iXvQ9NMba4cKpHo7bGav61cAaj4J82yegLLDfd | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/ZxssCo8SeuM6mRcDQfvUeNTNYQAjiyZjfaBb5th84ZcVLxECX7vxkf5SkeET5snFJTZe3XRRTsHKXPjnFy2ozExhNZkG1VXjRYFAaVgiZXo9MaxfGU4tRsSiPPQQcbxxwci1u5FsXPtLKKjL4wsqJxwBMeYKuWb7UMexNFetaoCDbEA713S7 | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://modestmouse.bandcamp.com/album/the-lonesome-crowded-west | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5mvHTVy1iUIkAflIufoOpj | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/183082698,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633311a4e5c4af791617a92d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Modest%2520Mouse%2520-%2520The%2520Lonesome%2520Crowded%2520West.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Modest_Mouse-The_Lonesome_Crowded_West_1997.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,124,Tori Amos,Little Earthquakes (1992),Atlantic,"Atlantic As Tori Amos was writing her solo debut, the singer-songwriter had little faith on her side. Little Earthquakes followed her time in the short-lived synth-pop band Y Kant Tori Read; when she turned in a new album of stark piano and voice to Atlantic in 1990, the label rejected it and insisted on more guitars. But Amos—a minister’s daughter who had been playing piano in bars since 15 and knew this music was her lifeblood—was nothing if not resolute. She fought to release Little Earthquakes as she intended, an album of revelations hammered through piano that stunningly recounts crises of faith and relationships. Songs like “Crucify” use religion as a springboard to forgive and stand up for oneself; on “Silent All These Years” and “Me and a Gun,” Amos gives voice to survivors of sexual assault in powerfully unembellished words. Those songs led her to partner with the anti-sexual violence organization RAINN in 1994, still the largest of its kind in the United States. “I wrote my way out of my own private hell,” Amos said in 2020. “Writing songs was the only way I was going to heal.” With the soul-affirming music of Little Earthquakes, she made way for countless others to do the same. –Eric Torres",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufapoQWJPmp7ar3pEdPGfd9nScx29gUzev9KnQ2muBitaD8Xqcj | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/qsSkLvaohicCiNF2u5sRy7EaHrr8QBHsmzbUp2chj45Ue8bty9VB33hCfd6DmL3Z7ddgiGYA7eGBKavp844TFtJLVTXSyTc77AKNmpbAj22GtosDW6hDR1orr7yHT15WQw3J1RVL5gWsd5QVkoKU5CSv6e2AR8B3KdW1fWLaMHeJwqTYMrDewjX5 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1pFUGy3ABpLRRE3oNMPbDb | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/639815,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333120e52d4bd45efccbe48/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Tori%2520Amos%2520-%2520Little%2520Earthquakes.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Tori_Amos-Little_Earthquakes_1992.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,123,Guided by Voices,Bee Thousand (1994),Scat,"Scat In 1994, Guided by Voices frontman Robert Pollard quit his job after 14 years as a schoolteacher and bet it all on rock’n’roll with Bee Thousand. Throughout this DIY touchstone, Pollard cranks out distorted gems full of do-or-die spirit and misheard lyrics, as if he’s recreating the greatest British Invasion songs that never existed directly into a four-track. Flanked by his Dayton, Ohio buddies, Pollard sounds insatiable and totally uninhibited. While his words rarely get more coherent than “goldheart mountaintop queen directory,” there’s something alchemical about the way he uncorks each phrase of poetic gibberish with everything he’s got, conjuring indie rock myth out of thin air. –Steven Arroyo",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam6xjBTREie7qpRMmgW9SkbSdT7Tb41ka8TMaTbx68V5gsup3 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/MKEh7BpQXwWWp1Y3i6D9RjWuqrJsu9zvnz9d36jPMPvD98gTrNrqcRAvCcYCX4oSM9jZscHurCooXc4F442PjYSAu9nqaXuJYo7k9zAqe1FJX4ESK4QQUauBhn7gn13YGuoAWhwJX8XGRrfq6BSyS24DTJzVN9a8o | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://guidedbyvoices.bandcamp.com/album/bee-thousand | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2VQKZAvtL5epxdEOuLVP6t | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/11070433 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0WnfJOeCKg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633312bdafa92f85cc3e4f9b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Guided%2520by%2520Voices%2520-%2520Bee%2520Thousand.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Guided_by_Voices-Bee_Thousand_1994.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,122,Roni Size / Reprazent,New Forms (1997),Talkin' Loud / Mercury / Universal,"Talkin' Loud / Mercury / Universal While some of his contemporaries were trying to legitimize drum ‘n’ bass by adapting it to the concert hall, Bristol, England’s Roni Size orchestrated a double-disc exercise in musical excess that often feels as if it could’ve been the work of a very amped-up jazz ensemble. This is nimble, proper music, crisp as a freshly vacuumed carpet with not a single fiber out of place. The individual performances Size captures are brilliant—Si John plays standup bass in a strangely inverted way, as if he’s watching himself in a mirror—but even as he’s leaning on the ensemble or expertly tacking vocalist Onallee’s sibilant runs to the ticks of the hi-hat, he never loses sight of the bigger picture. Take “Brown Paper Bag,” where he holds the listener up in a hotel lobby for the first two-and-a-half minutes, then gleefully sprints out of the front door to dance. –Marty Sartini Garner",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1qDTjKb6EKnuSFZaeKcQL6G5tNzZ7zyVfaGsLrTPNZ29tVd | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8nansyqULpE8awBcBxybcmwRdNwmAjQJqXPnb2DvZ98WYtJzk1dXF8AjxYiBh34dCgzqS5M3NBbp1ViFtcA3Gumbn9y6wHXe7qKx5z7 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/0RFE2IiZa7OCGrEZngGlGJ | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/633464,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333134a10c581ffac68d208/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Roni%2520Size_Reprazent%2520-%2520New%2520Forms.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Roni_Size__Reprazent-New_Forms_1997.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,121,Garbage,Garbage (1995),Almo Sounds,"Almo Sounds When it began, Garbage was a project helmed by Nevermind producer Butch Vig, who, by 1993, was kind of a big deal. But when they released their self-titled debut with a Scottish female singer in 1995, it was definitely Shirley Manson’s band—her fierce stage presence, outspoken attitude, and dark sense of humor would be the defining figure of the band. More pop than grunge but with plenty of grit and electronic edge, Garbage had layers of sharp production, but still felt raw thanks to Manson’s sneer and biting lyrics. It was anything but humorless, though—the hit single “Only Happy When It Rains” was actually a dig at the band’s own alternative scene and its preoccupation with misery, while “Stupid Girl” mocked privileged people who don’t use their power or potential for good. –Evie Nagy",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufbCxJqUbhKTNp4gG254vTagHApqM7oQcpLK4V5f3HnrHCdYw67 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/21YXcjY98V7uQu6paaTiZwEAeXpX3ekB1fp46DMhFdt89E7WnnWKDAPmS9LJoCwkgVrEw21nqgwapMW2xnHGiGNaHmt6FriHnoeLKsNvEpiU5RtWarE41nabwspjnC3qJQnogqhJiwVCQuHGRM9Qc66LXgeTP3X57euj1LgXfZncKMmPWVqjHygBgJrE5vsUZm3V3SbkhCgyDmjDqPupdu9 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1Vze7jtjAVQOdIIQ8oO2X7 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/77824701,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633313e5d4e0114d9287d2a8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Garbage%2520-%2520Garbage.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Garbage-Garbage_1995.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,120,Rage Against the Machine,Rage Against the Machine (1992),Epic,"Epic Every generation gets the rap-metal it deserves (see: the loutish gum-swallowers who ruled the late ’90s), but in 1992, Rage Against the Machine gave us the rap-metal we needed. Hearing their revolutionary ruckus on the same rock radio assembly line as the Black Crowes and Guns N’ Roses felt like discovering a Molotov cocktail in a crate of milk bottles. Their self-titled debut spiked millions of suburban CD changers with desperate funk and radical leftist politics; Tom Morello’s riffs conjured record scratches and sirens, while Zack de la Rocha punctuated the riot with exhortations and gut-shot grunts. Grunge bands of the day were nosing into darker corners, but only Rage seemed hellbent on flooding them with light—whether via truth or explosion. Even if you missed Rage’s point then, you could tell they had one, and that made all the difference. –Brian Howe",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam6puHyP9XnYekNpZ7UiXfHWNkVcw77cNkxV1V3iUjbP3W319 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2h8zKZvUAqv9bScU3SWqLSQ14Mhv9oyTckCaWdKvQAMSEwpzRk9ZyFaLQTRhk6jgnu2rrAr2KwPPBGAYCm5mR38tzShbtnMv9gs6ZmZM9fHe2ZZg7XRwvqYiRsKhtSsjxj6gj2v9U1tX3AWQzQfAwjssWffgf1j1z2vEQfMhPT7TEYvzLF | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/4LaRYkT4oy47wEuQgkLBul | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/23653053,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333148ee02a17d9175e55e0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Rage%2520Against%2520The%2520Machine%2520-%2520Rage%2520Against%2520the%2520Machine.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Rage_Against_the_Machine-Rage_Against_the_Machine_1992.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,119,Sarah McLachlan,Fumbling Towards Ecstasy (1993),Nettwerk / Arista,"Nettwerk / Arista For those who hear the words “Sarah McLachlan” and reflexively summon an image constellation of tremendous adult-contemporary mauveness—shelter cats, hemp skirts, Lilith Fair corsetry—Fumbling Towards Ecstasy is here to serve as a reminder of the singer-songwriter’s formidable powers. Written alone in the mountains as the dark winter softened into spring, McLachlan’s third album is a rough-hewn cathedral: abstract monsters lurk behind the formalist arrangements, under the flowing stream of her voice. Directly inspired by Talk Talk’s experimental rock seance Spirit of Eden, McLachlan and producer Pierre Marchand undergird Ecstasy with a similarly shocking synesthetic precision—guitars strike at chest level like a conviction; chords shimmer out of a void, epiphanic; beauty blooms from stone. “Possession,” a love song told from the point of view of McLachlan’s real-life stalker, is the lodestar: alive, haunting, searching for some terrible grace. –Jia Tolentino",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam6pthT8r8viWTrVLKkW9HMNwLWW6prQMDWCQ7MdrruZTNyJP | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2h8zKZvUAqv9bScU3SWqLSQ14Mhv9oyTckCaWdKvQAMSEwpzRk9ZyFaLQTRhk6jgnu2rrAr2KwPPBGAYCm5mR38tzShbtmekyjThNqyKzXePDQcaAabkp41uzMWbM4afhjTxJSfY2YGCdpuGmb5JZXX851WtgLM8PacZDGDvbEzoZU3qVZ | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2PVFgeTAbZomjRzis55b8L | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/1862485,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633315131dccce609e416371/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sarah%2520McLachlan%2520-%2520Fumbling%2520Towards%2520Ecstasy.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Sarah_McLachlan-Fumbling_Towards_Ecstasy_1993.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,118,U2,Achtung Baby (1991),Island,"Island After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the world woke up changed. U2, huffing off the historical moment, followed suit with their own rebirth. Their seventh album, which began its gestation in the reunified German capital at the top of the decade, remains one of rock’s most rewarding left turns, a beacon for mid-career bands looking to loosen up and freak out. Across the record, the Edge trades in his holy guitar chimes for riffs that howl like tornados being sucked down a storm drain. The rhythms are suddenly, surprisingly danceable. Bono floats above the distorted din, moaning and whispering his deepest desires. Doused in black hair dye and shiny leather, the frontman transformed into a sentient oil slick, sending up hoary rock’n’roll clichés while gleefully reveling in them. At this point, the album’s surreal, after-hours milieu brings to mind another ’90s touchstone, Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, with Bono playing the part of a famous family man trapped between love and lust, faith and folly. Achtung Baby still stands as the sleekest, grooviest, and just plain coolest thing U2 have ever done—a dark night of the soul seen through buggy wraparound shades. –Ryan Dombal",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufamWrfJE9dgMaHDgYJTxS7kTNYWswczoqfm3AB3aP9FEEX7BH1 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2YfVS2JkEsZbGaVN2xMzcCAf2EcdufCigRyF44GJ5f29ratuBWwUyZKgmpFrhqhmxswYt6NmeGB7aN5jK2UM9Lmk6hBoKQxDVE37rCMkHohqdB62aBekBAwM5oQsbGH7KjrXtHoyjZsQkxsYjVR9Ejyunf4DjSLzTwV | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5n52kyQKeUZs5ObZJejLQd | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/8938999,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633315bef2e57bfbb7050061/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/U2%2520-%2520Achtung%2520Baby.jpg,/dataset/artwork/U2-Achtung_Baby_1991.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,117,The Notorious B.I.G.,Life After Death (1995),Bad Boy / Arista,"Bad Boy / Arista Released 16 days after his murder, Life After Death demonstrates the Notorious B.I.G.’s mastery of seemingly every type of rap music that existed in 1997. If his debut Ready to Die was a gritty, austere New York album, Life After Death is the glossy, maximalist statement, with evermore intricate and subversive flows. He gets luxurious on “Hypnotize” only to step on his enemies’ necks on “Kick in the Door,” all of it unfolding on top of Bad Boy’s shiny, R&B-inflected production. When it comes to this nearly two-hour double album, the overwhelming sprawl is the point. –Jayson Buford",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufaouM2yVESCpSsnPphZ6gpHqjEvo3cMX1sMgUTqvzDArwoNF3d | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/4iheeJwWD8ieNhakwNtVbCeWuwR1qfJRV7bDBka8akcakztZ2NpTMJ2tSVUJ3Lf4GkGgvH9aXEKTzZ2kWz8WEthRX2c5PeCRrUaFDMN2qha8zVrtoJQAjsYs7VS3KGdgh8XBY4ihRHKSmdfStE5WobbAp7eB445184zPkbujXMMW7Tzf5PVaRR7hJF | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/7dRdaGSxgcBdJnrOviQRuB | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/33227058,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63331621e02a17d9175e55e2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The%2520Notorious%2520B.I.G.%2520-%2520Life%2520After%2520Death.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Notorious_BIG-Life_After_Death_1995.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,116,Mazzy Star,So Tonight That I Might See (1993) ,Capitol,"Capitol “Fade Into You,” the dreamiest single of the ’90s, broke Mazzy Star through to the charts with its aching beauty. But anybody expecting their full-length to sustain that sense of fragile romance must have been shocked by the disquieting dread that hangs thick over So That Tonight I Might See, a dream-pop album with a gothic core. It plays out in a hallucinogenic swirl: Glimmers of warmth peek through the album’s lurching psychedelia, but they’re ephemeral, interrupted by stern, almost contemptuous blues riffs that glare into the distance. The harder you try to make eye contact with these songs, the more pointedly they avert your gaze. –Evan Rytlewski",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1naUpZyxK5e1WotmGWq9RLJUSoPqUVcg4L4oNRi1FRfyZcj | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/C5BN9bLtpHgEyx7MNKKgBuARJsGD6hr8syYpzKwm7ov8AmmcLX1wqVhpxRVNUGC12W9K4TdWhvkmUmqtuoTcQJy39iMVYRApCscgVryoYqDqhXEEgQV1qcZQXFxnJyfUgxaSGB8ds6zfYz7wiW2VKsyV29YS4KtfKAv56dP1f85uBkmFtHnL6P1 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5K18gTgac0q6Jma5HkV1vA | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/147475,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333181be5c4af791617a934/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mazzy%2520Star%2520-%2520So%2520Tonight%2520That%2520I%2520Might%2520See.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mazzy_Star-So_Tonight_That_I_Might_See_1993.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,115,Arthur Russell,Another Thought (1994),Point,"Point Arthur Russell was boundless, iridescent, and unplaceable. The Downtown New York composer and cellist from Iowa worked across styles—disco, folk, experimental, pop, contemporary classical—but every note was charged by the illumination that flowed from his voice and heart, gathered at the fount of his Buddhist practice. His name, largely unknown in his lifetime, is now synonymous with possibility, restlessness, and love. Another Thought was the first compilation of his iconoclastic work following his 1992 death from AIDS. The delicate dissonance and depth of his amplified cello, paired with his sublimely sensitive singing, comes alive on “This Is How We Walk on the Moon,” proof he saw the future; “Lucky Cloud,” embodying his vision’s borderlessness; and “Losing My Taste for the Night Life,” an introvert’s hymn. It is for good reason that Russell is now an avatar of misunderstood genius. The only comfort is to keep listening as voraciously as Russell did, each song moving, he sings, towards “another thought now.” –Jenn Pelly",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufeM9wF2xg4NAFcu5mvpd4LqcPapVK9ZZdph6Tn8QeNhChd9XpT | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/3Hvxm9czoAnByw5bJudy155hRgz4HyCyJ9tDMR4K1xHECoF6vhWARjTQ54iHw6M2V82vephGvLgQcNz7yaB625AFTrokYLhiCkb5ZFbbSaHXD4wMC2yDb2FhNbPdS99zfjSBUgpkBUSJGxDar6gFmDzyig1S1NEcrYtvRnF | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3pYFqjWzClbyDKvACv5bVQ | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/172343639,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331d9ff8085714fe37b0d9d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Arthur-Russell-This-Is-How-We-Walk-on-the-Moon.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Arthur_Russell-Another_Thought_1994.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,114,The Pharcyde,Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde (1992) ,Delicious Vinyl / EastWest,"Delicious Vinyl / EastWest With G-funk crumbling pavements in the Wild West, Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde offered a breezier boom-bap alternative. The Pharcyde were four knuckleheaded school friends from South Central L.A. who rapped about not getting girls and told “your mama” jokes in verses that could sound drunk and/or helium-high. Add in producer J Swift and his no-such-thing-as-sample-overkill attitude, and you have a madcap concoction that could never have come from any kind of tested recipe. –Dean Van Nguyen",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufaozdijNAvKczxZ7GuUbXbRAtGmitJJDkLDbQZMUDt52kvpur7 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/qsSkLvaohicCiNF2u5sRy7EaHrr8QBHsmzbUp2chj45Ue8bty9VB33hCfd6DmL3Z7ddgiGYA7eGBKavp844TFtJLVTXSyAQzpeRu1EivsJ43i6gdaFhFTe8TVRdeAswNmMZQxVL5AGeBYV1v22BzbWagTD3QeoQZkXxzAN3g7GrpbcKUKynPNYAB | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/48kU5gP41TqZEw32Cwhsna | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/33733635,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333196952d4bd45efccbe4b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The%2520Pharcyde%2520-%2520Bizarre%2520Ride%2520II%2520%2520The%2520Pharcyde.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Pharcyde-Bizarre_Ride_II_the_Pharcyde_1992.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,113,The Cranberries,"Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We? (1993) ",Island,"Island Before Dolores O’Riordan joined The Cranberries, she listened mainly to traditional Irish music and songs from her Catholic church, where she played the organ. She had never heard of Melody Maker or NME—“All I knew was that I was writing songs and saying what I felt,” she later remarked. But it was precisely that unvarnished earnestness—not a naïveté, as the press suggested, but a heartfelt lack of cynicism—that made The Cranberries’ 1993 debut, Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?, so singularly moving, so unblinkingly sincere, breaking open even the irony-scarred hearts of American college radio snobs. The Cranberries met O’Riordan’s chiming brogue with windswept string arrangements, delicate cymbal hits, and reverb-washed guitars. Listening to their music felt like reading the diary of a wood nymph—ethereal, enchanting, and slightly heartbreaking. But as much as O’Riordan’s lyrics define The Cranberries, it’s her wordless incantations, like that liberated, warbling cry before the last bridge of “Dreams,” that encapsulate their greatest feat: finding freedom, and even joy, in the great unknown. –Arielle Gordon",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufdt7bUzqNzAZsskCYDWr2V8wy4DBkceSdrqohEZp2UBbiCmvPR | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/Jy3CeSzU3u3mba7RyQh4FPJd1ddt7npuZrPrSvLmN5BBZQLmRzm9NmQ1LKsr8REmy5oHPkFZ7KkdX5wivrqfRzkiNCr6vCb4WeoiRKN5gMSVvjVVF8XKV9JTXDtAjNmc8N5B3b3KC3whufGNDASfJtBbfkm3hFqEGQiicYHkzBGAnXjrzi1H3bZmPgAyyCSUWF3m6Dj61M | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/0AP5O47kJWlaKVnnybKvQI | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/2570167,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63331a0888f1f0bb8bcfdbcc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The%2520Cranberries%2520-%2520Everybody%2520Else%2520Is%2520Doing%2520It%2520So%2520Why%2520Can_t%2520We_.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Cranberries-Everybody_Else_Is_Doing_It_So_Why_Cant_We_1993.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,112,Selena,Amor Prohibido (1994),EMI Latin,"EMI Latin Latinos who grew up in the U.S. have a saying—ni de aquí, ni de allá; neither from here, nor there. Selena, a Latina from Texas, was making music that sounded like and appealed to both sides of the borderlands. And as complicated as her estate has become, or the dark shadow cast by her tragic death, nothing can take away from the impact Amor Prohibido—her final studio release before her 1995 death—had on American culture at large. Amor Prohibido was playful and pleasurable, revelatory and confident as Selena’s booming voice detailed male toxicity in greater detail and power than ever before. Through the ’90s balladry of “Si Una Vez” and “No Me Queda Más,” and bangers like “El Chico Del Apartamento 512” and “Techno Cumbia,” Selena brought cumbia rhythms to mainstream attention. Amor Prohibido remains the best-selling Tejano album of all time, blasting the subgenre to national attention. Most importantly, it’s the moment where Selena transcended regional stardom and became American pop royalty. –Gio Santiago",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufapi3qzwehJxyZfFBK8jkZjTwMfLnAjWVZQFSnMtR1WiMU3dT5 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/X7niGYieCH8UQ8PGqdUBtg8M6SAMcPegELm2uaNkiXQqSRwp4HaQGxppbNbCMF44CZcGNECmFt4zQZRh1GRha7dMawYceYRW4wZ5aawxnYGHamg7dY8tkSu5G4CBB1UWkYZy8348o4emTCk1EubGSE34brHaYUU1mVNyu | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/6iv9WTw1nhNxSsgKaxMp4E | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/43893705,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63331ab4800c1a0f8721bb21/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Selena%2520-%2520Amor%2520Prohibido.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Selena-Amor_Prohibido_1994.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,111,Green Day,Dookie (1994),Reprise,"Reprise Every decade gets the punk rock it deserves. The brutal imperialism of the ’70s inspired the biting satire of the Dead Kennedys; the ’80s gave us Tipper Gore and, in response, Danzig. But by the ’90s, a decade into the far quieter brutality of Reaganomics and the Moral Majority, punk’s targets had become evasive. Absent any obvious villains, what could a teenager in the Oakland suburbs rebel against other than himself? Dookie, the Bay Area band’s major label debut, packaged up their neurotic, goofy, inward-facing jitters as neat, whip-fast pop perfection. Combining Brill Building vocal harmonies and palm-muted power chords, frontman Billie Joe Armstrong made apathy sound apoplectic. From “Burnout”’s disarmingly cheerful descent into total numbness to the bleakly sardonic portrait of urban decay on “Welcome to Paradise,” Dookie reached for humor to communicate helplessness. It was a clever sleight-of-hand that allowed Green Day to mask despair with dick jokes. For the downtrodden and the downwardly mobile, masturbating until you lose your mind can feel like rebellion, too. –Arielle Gordon",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam6nTGc3zEVbHR1J3JWJLFFR94LZN6Anug28sj6BufinnS4b1 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/ho5L3zdaYSc6AAnBd4uCzvQscAyrNJS2pATNPUhyGs49Uw9ghDqMPdqDaauWeD2PisepKxCC4QS8oaKf52H9x5CDXPvU4pp5CzbVGkqx6ygdbF1yLWMuFY6Za3PQiHBXyWHyynphnq4jtKAcqN8fxq5krK | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/4uG8q3GPuWHQlRbswMIRS6 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/225469 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KTsXHXMkJA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63331b4f8f0d7ac40b58df19/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Green%2520Day%2520%2520-%2520Dookie.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Green_Day-Dookie_1994.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,110,Gang Starr,Moment of Truth (1998),Virgin,"Virgin DJ Premier’s trademarked plinky piano loop kicks in seconds into “Work” and you go “uhh”—like, this is an insane oatmeal raisin cookie “uhh”—only for Guru to instantly echo your satisfaction with an “uhh” of his own. “I put in work,” he preens, “and watch my status escalate.” A quarter century later and 12 years since Guru left the planet, Moment of Truth’s status remains undisputed. The 1998 album—Gang Starr’s fifth total, and second after Guru’s landmark Jazzmatazz teamed him with Dr. Lonnie and Roy Ayers, among others—collects 20 tracks of spare Premier hip-hop beatcraft plus radically refined enunciation from Guru (calling himself “king of monotone,” a rare moment of self-deprecation, on the title cut). In the decades since, I’ve mostly listened to instrumentals of these tracks, luxuriating in Premier’s jazz snatches and other exotica-tinged samples, and meditating on the void left by Guru’s premature death. –Marc Weidenbaum",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/X7niGYieCH8UQ8PGqdUBtg8M6SAMcPegELm2uaNkiXQqSRwp4HaQGxppbNbCMF44CZcGNECmFt4zQZRh1GRha7dMawYcem9NgYABmUChcZhWfMfDyLjZn8415MCSny61SRH46XG9rqryU9Acfc5qKGXCfKvbdBN52sTJP | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5f6Nz2v1DESbpu1NerEql2 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/163843,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63331be6800c1a0f8721bb23/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Gang%2520Starr%2520-%2520Moment%2520of%2520Truth.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Gang_Starr-Moment_of_Truth_1998.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,109,Elastica,Elastica (1995),Deceptive / DGC,"Deceptive / DGC During Britpop’s heyday, Elastica were unjustly denied the same respect as peers like Blur and Suede in the powerful British music press. The best bits of “Connection” and “Waking Up”? Just rip-offs of Wire and the Stranglers. The band’s initial hype? It was little more than prurient interest in frontwoman Justine Frischmann's love triangle with Blur's Damon Albarn and Suede's Brett Anderson. But Elastica’s only real sin was making it all look so easy. Frischmann wrote wry lyrics about car sex, alcohol-fueled erectile dysfunction, and the tedium of making tea, and wrapped them around taut, bouncy hooks that got to the point and moved on. Elastica packs 15 tracks into a spring-loaded 38 minutes; Frischmann told anyone who wanted more to just rewind it. Good advice, then and now. –Jessica Suarez",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1qHvJtp7yYaMCX6xyunG6WyfYqgHLLUJXDXYzLLkpw13aQF | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/Ehjr9t1bfyFgs5GtcpxVsAdcRJm1vtb9Ubjx5sTFJYB6r2e4TjtG8vb1rkTFisrhHbExGSy1DgZK5HrzBQjdeFLuEEKV6e7s1Wxwg74bTYYGyR1rrnJajqv8U4tu6hSLLDhMdHFfRYdyNxZuse1spaShAUrDM | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/00MAXeszCotk3g9q8KYJlZ | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/35978050,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63331c979d26f5817514abb2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Elastica%2520-%2520Elastica.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Elastica-Elastica_1995.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,108,Mary J. Blige,What’s the 411? (1992),Uptown,"Uptown From the first refrain of her early single “Reminisce,” a mournful, sensual ex-sex jam, it was clear Mary J. Blige was not fronting. Her voice was raw with the travails of heartbreak and sounded perfectly imperfect, sidestepping the vocal flawlessness celebrated in R&B by letting emotion lead first—a revolutionary notion in the era of Jodeci’s choral masterpieces and Mariah’s operatic gymnastics. Her sound, too, signaled an evolution from new jack swing towards a more explicitly intertwined hip-hop and R&B, imbuing it with Blige’s emotional resonance and a Bronx-Yonkers vernacular. “Real Love” was a juggernaut that earned her the moniker the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul (initially a Puffy-inspired marketing gambit for radio stations confused by her porous genre lines), but every song on Blige’s debut knocked, even the slow jams. She was just 21, cool, and mad New York, embodying tough-girl sexy in oversized jerseys and doorknockers, and her entrance into the pop landscape was a revelation. –Julianne Escobedo Shepherd",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1rQh2WJddPpNftFmU4DxFM8rJCqFz8EBzTb57zJiFRKN3aB | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/7pktVSmKrEArFkpBqdMfGLHcpT6HuRciy3DF2VQWPYp65rc5KR9UUdfUYoaaPFxyTdqmiWj63Tye2G3skZVhupGVE8NfSN1GUep5ozppaJ5sPNZBaXKSA7kfZBCQqLeJwbQUAzLCus8XMgLMaZuAFsTaLUChwMLfSZVu | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5Q3xLiKnY4ShDuQda7qfg2 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/4533367,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63331d3752d4bd45efccbe4e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mary%2520J.%2520Blige%2520-%2520What_s%2520the%2520411_.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mary_J_Blige-Whats_the_411_1992.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,107,Smog,Knock Knock (1999),Drag City,"Drag City Bill Callahan has said that he intended Knock Knock, the seventh album under his Smog alias, to be a “teenage” album: big riffs, boundless attitude, wildcat and lightning bolt on the cover. Yet the songs, many of which were conceived behind the wheel of his Dodge van as he abandoned South Carolina following a breakup, examined entirely adult feelings and themes like empathy, self-knowledge, and regret. From the romantic promise of the opening “Let’s Move to the Country” to the kiss-off of “I Could Drive Forever” and the bruised farewell of the closing “Left Only With Love,” Knock Knock is charged with the pleasures and terrors of domestic comforts: budding families, abusive fathers, lonely suburban streets. In fact, the only song explicitly about adolescence, “Teenage Spaceship,” is a look back at a moment of serenity that Callahan seems to know he’ll never experience again. But the record’s keen-eyed depiction of promise and disappointment—paired with Jim O’Rourke’s inventive and exacting production—makes it one of the best in Callahan’s catalog. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1rQf5GnXdaN3trmzB9d7hjWYQZxG3RmyvmTcpe6Kuihde27 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/7EaqjGTiGVEZV17h8f56rTA6wXfeUBxFYyCZyWhithNoYDbspYy91PFy2zjsVdfZDudF8n92ctsgNTXa8VzXvAWsFLmZitdw4ppov35AqmdYVQvgAYc6FXjg4aKMEeJAd7ckm2mFVhXivaau2wby1 | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://smog.bandcamp.com/album/knock-knock | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3XzbVl7oibSdnmpCGzCK6A | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/111775115,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63331da2800c1a0f8721bb26/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Smog%2520-%2520Knock%2520Knock%2520.png,/dataset/artwork/Smog-Knock_Knock_1999.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,106,Tortoise,TNT (1998),City Slang,"City Slang Forget you’ve ever heard the term “post-rock,” and all its associations—windy album titles, yawning orchestral dirges, the word “cinematic.” Instead, try thinking of Tortoise’s third album, TNT, as the sound of several galaxies on a slow collision course. In the early ’90s, within the wake of Seattle’s grunge boom, at least five Billboard cover stories aimed to position Chicago as a grunge capital to rival the Pacific Northwest’s. Bands balked, alliances formed: Men from acts like Slint, Eleventh Dream Day, and Bastro blended with free jazz saxophonists and theatrical no-wavers for a strangely harmonious cosmic phalanx of punk, avant-garde, and jazz, intent on moving as far as possible from alt-rock’s earthbound mud. What came next was a strange, inconsistent universe: a constellation of spaghetti Western, Reichian patter, fusion noodling, krautrock locomotion. Skyward and too-much, Tortoise was an evolution—proof of entropy, a will to explore the colder perimeters of space, marginal by definition and design. –Mina Tavakoli",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2uxxCQ7Rfr7UdzaA2Zhf91GSEj296CGdcDtJKv6414tXY6CYHD4gRanNgp6FmttpZ95piYqozLaYFhHjuZWpk3K8JeNskNf4Pt8KW5v8bwk6ueCgXG5BTQX8Ve13DGpvv9WFEfifM | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8nansyqULpE8awBcBxybcmwRdNwmAjQJqXPnb27cgL4Vzo84YBtKZT5WKpYNqgSQMLb6dW9SDm1VfssSvfENk6ATpsCPAfbPhY5MV7h | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://tortoise.bandcamp.com/album/tnt | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/4JwjxPyISbFEUeh267bYbg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63331e2d52d4bd45efccbe50/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Tortoise%2520-%2520TNT.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tortoise-TNT_1998.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,105,Digable Planets,Blowout Comb (1994),EMI,"EMI Blowout Comb is among the lushest and most sublime of hip-hop albums: Unhurried tempos invite dreamy contemplation, while samples from old jazz records carry fragrant clouds of vibraphone and Fender Rhodes. Floating above the grooves, the deeply musical voices of Ishmael “Butterfly"" Butler, Mary Ann “Ladybug Mecca” Vieira, and Craig “Doodlebug” Irving are three points of a perfect triangle, so confident in their message of Black liberation they need never shout. The sonic beauty and effortless style are woven into a complex emotional tapestry—amid joyous odes to the group’s Brooklyn home are lines about racist policing, incarcerated heroes, and neglected communities—leading to an album that meets you wherever you are and sounds different every time you put it on. –Mark Richardson",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1mNfKbu3ECzJ78WeuG82pu6N3RT5XdFJ6pZU5AQKLQDL58w | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/MKEh7BpQXwWWp1Y3i6D9RjWuqrJsu9zvnz9d36jPMPvD98gTrNrqcRAvCcYCX4oSM9jZscHurCooXc4F442PjYSAu9nqaXvSfKP4Ymr2rubbMJ91FYSbkowV6Vj7K3a9LFFaEt3DS8gpwdJRW57nYLodRViULiYKD | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://pendulumrecords.bandcamp.com/album/blowout-comb | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5gvlpKnnINq8Z1YICdtiBt | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/1408942,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63331eb38f0d7ac40b58df1b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Digable%2520Planets%2520-%2520Blowout%2520Comb.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Digable_Planets-Blowout_Comb_1994.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,104,Pet Shop Boys,Behaviour (1990),Parlophone,"Parlophone Drugs and success’s pressures rocked much of England’s great gay ’80s wave before AIDS did: The Pet Shop Boys nevertheless ascended while others overdosed. But by 1990, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe knew their self-described “imperial phase” of staggering worldwide success was over. So on this, their fourth album, they emphasize elegy over energy, and often symphonic melodies rather than club-centric rhythms. Their drollery is still intact: a former editor of UK pop bible Smash Hits, Tennant takes down smug stars like only he can on “How Can You Expect to Be Taken Seriously?” But what gives the entire project life are the ghosts of countless AIDS fatalities summoned by meticulous analogue synth work overseen by Giorgio Moroder’s former collaborator Harold Faltermeyer, particularly on the haunted masterpiece, “Being Boring.” For those who survived, “All the people I was kissing/Some are here, and some are missing” remains one of pop’s saddest rhymes. –Barry Walters",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufdsoxnXcsSnVNc65bgPh6PFmMqF3gaFQEwMttEyimRghfHuPD5 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2h8zKZvUAqv9bScU3SWqLSQ14Mhv9oyTckCaWdKvQAMSEwpzRk9ZyFaLQTRhk6jgnu2rrAr2KwPPBGAYCm5mR38tzShbtmQjWDDUWh8qL8MmHAjELZXfxuyuxJicAM1FrbsMvtuyreL2GjbaXtnz1wsbyKiihZusnu5fPVtj8UbeQjcp9H | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/23uqrSQB0iXBCRx2Zc8STp,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63331f4ce02a17d9175e55e4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Pet%2520Shop%2520Boys%2520-%2520Behaviour.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Pet_Shop_Boys-Behaviour_1990.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,103,Air,Moon Safari (1998),Virgin,"Virgin As French house music started burning up dancefloors in the late ’90s, Moon Safari arrived for everybody who was trying to chill at home near the stereo. Air’s Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel made slinky electronics-bolstered lounge music—hookup jams that were at once of their era and an undeniable product of ’70s popular culture. Dainty robot voices sing “Kelly watch the stars” on a wistful track in homage to Jaclyn Smith’s Charlie’s Angels character; the instrumental “Ce Matin-lá” carries sweeping Bacharach and Love Unlimited Orchestra vibes, while Beth Hirsch’s vocals made the songs sound “like a space-age Carpenters,” as Godin once put it. It’s a bold series of vintage looks, but the duo’s earnestness makes Moon Safari camp without caricature. –Evan Minsker",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1mN3vMFPxBpmUesQiQeRL5iE1RfSTFWpH9dGHZ4oioSNdwH | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/5bwkygcD8TrHGdppHZSrwYPBcY7KL4rNhn7wPE5csqh9eBoYusiekNLU1NC9W1rwgTSxUn9pKQ4onuMDhZrhwx9sjB9aDAF1vkercvNxeaH9Miyg16NtKHdKvdGk8pTPmZL4E5pSksYdhVauTgLtaV3QKVUptpSf | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/206GTDefY2qRMQxYXmfb0a | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/43710473,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63331ff7f2e57bfbb7050064/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Air%2520-%2520Moon%2520Safari.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Air-Moon_Safari_1998.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,102,Wilco,Summerteeth (1999) ,Reprise,"Reprise Wilco’s 2002 album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is widely seen as the fault line dividing their formative roots-rock phase and their more boldly experimental second act, but its 1999 predecessor, Summerteeth, had already demonstrated an equally urgent desire to break free from their past. It’s just that, where Yankee infamously deconstructed their sound into dissonance and drones, Summerteeth aspired to be nothing less than the alt-country Pet Sounds. But the album’s hair-raising orchestral ascents and Mellotron-swirled luxuriousness can’t mask the deep distress in Jeff Tweedy’s lyrics—written during a rough patch in his marriage, songs like “She’s a Jar” and “Via Chicago” teeter perilously on the edge of where domestic disturbances turn into crime scenes. Today, Summerteeth also stands as a pristine portrait of the troubled relationship between Tweedy and late Wilco co-founder Jay Bennett, before well-documented discord triggered their aesthetic divorce. –Stuart Berman",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam6ofQ5LRjd2cotaNnRGM74ycFDmh9NXkhCGK5WaS7X37g5VM | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/5bwkygcD8TrHGdppHZSrwYPBcY7KL4rNhn7wPE5csqh9eBoYusiekNLU1NC9W1rwgTSxUn9pKQ4onuMDhZrhwx9sjB9aDBDaeRHH5E2a6b7XgY7Gaz3FrQxh8YwtoRCit965dneCGRSygEkxiCr7BWHg2AriNPDm | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1JpaFJzzcsiulO6MdIcQdK | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/369108,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333208c1dccce609e416373/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Wilco%2520-%2520Summerteeth.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Wilco-Summerteeth_1999.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,101,Built to Spill,Keep It Like a Secret (1999),Up / Warner Bros.,"Up / Warner Bros. Built to Spill’s most reassuring album, and the last of their trio of consecutive great ones, Keep It Like a Secret comforts like a hug from a friend who doesn’t usually do hugs. Band leader Doug Martsch cut through the cynicism of ’90s alt-rock with unabashed earnestness, singing about psyches and bodies buckling under the weight of societal pressures while insisting we’re more than the weight of our adolescent traumas. “Count your blemishes/You can’t, they’re all gone,” he sings on “Carry The Zero,” as guitars cry along. You can be forgiven for joining them. –Evan Rytlewski",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufamCgZYcZgFKbji3SaQmvddCidKRc1sdcoqFDYb6qHNGAsVWpT | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/29CLTwheRZNbn8esbYm7MXCvBW5AqRiuV2rkxzL68ZhZakTS8MPQjntM9eJYYf8EpCq592XdCBpDEyUwpZUBUL7o8wUGv77bDYmuMU5Qh7fMCA3T7pmTAKRBf4GJDVSpN4bEJjQmL4NF2xS6h7kqaJqY5a5JkJ5ykaFyt19Uqkb4Y3 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2PKZhfPrgMmK5zug2pqdHA | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/34433618,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63332129800c1a0f8721bb28/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Built%2520to%2520Spill%2520-%2520Keep%2520It%2520Like%2520a%2520Secret.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Built_to_Spill-Keep_It_Like_a_Secret_1999.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,100,Jim O’Rourke,Eureka (1999),Drag City,"Drag City At the end of the ’90s, underground music’s foremost hyphenate tossed a surprising title onto the dashboard: singer-songwriter. Before Eureka, Jim O’Rourke had played hurdy-gurdy on more tracks than he’d sung lead. Nowadays, there’s a sizable audience that associates him not with noise collaborations or guitar experiments but a clutch of exquisitely wrought pop-rock releases from the turn of the century. Warm yet prickly in the rumpled tradition of Harry Nilsson, the album includes allusions to the perilous performance art of Chris Burden, a poignantly faithful Bacharach cover, and finely crafted chamber-pop arrangements played by the cream of Chicago’s jazz and indie rock scenes. Guiding it all are the steady hands of O’Rourke, who can set a cello and steel pan to dance, or make a shaker sound meditative. –Brad Shoup",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufiiarcdB4At2E9Bk5qJEtWBNAHNtExfTLL582f2aE4KWhSHHCf | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/ho5L3zdaYSc6AAnBd4uCzvQscAyrNJS2pATNPUhyGs49Uw9ghDqMPdqDaauWeD2PisepKxCC4QS8oaKf52H9x5CDXPvU4rHGDPGP1SMhikJJwuWbfbYhvD6V8NdjHnLMmUaYstpUiZLUKgDAJjecywjKa3 | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://jimorourke.bandcamp.com/album/eureka | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/244161234,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333220f8f0d7ac40b58df1d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jim%2520O_Rourke%2520-%2520Eureka.png,/dataset/artwork/Jim_ORourke-Eureka_1999.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,99,The Flaming Lips,The Soft Bulletin (1999),Warner Bros.,"Warner Bros. Few records have fundamentally shifted the trajectory of a band’s career as The Soft Bulletin did for the Flaming Lips. Nine albums and 16 years into their existence, The Soft Bulletin redirected these presumed one-hit wonders from the cut-out bin to the top line on the festival poster, transforming an irreverent fuzz-rock band into deeply philosophical emissaries of circus-sized orchestral spectacle, nun puppet and all. But while it’s impossible to hear the opening drum strike of “Race for the Prize” without picturing exploding confetti cannons and human-sized plastic bubbles, The Soft Bulletin’s breathtaking symphonic-rock rapture is ultimately a function of escapist fantasia crashing into cold, hard truths. Spinning real-life stories of drug addiction and the loss of parents into sweetly sung, wondrous fables, the album remains an indispensable support system for dealing with the problems and stresses that await us outside the venue once all that confetti gets swept up. –Stuart Berman",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufdqv1HhWEsXUCjHUABQJsSM1Jw7AhJvnFgcjfJXmHeNqDwNJrF | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/meh9fHuiYWLjqSgj7XHZWWWEHEHsDNtLyJtA7tHqnKwM7w8ZUnQNeCSNeb3E3hQnYn62ABcNP6jQGetLxhRE5Xxv9HWQ56VaMgK5fd37DUMrxSWoLqMcW9yt7jxfXG1oyZehLicxBb2KwAejmxGsD8u2vjcxkAutXThmvo4yR | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1mJFgPeuLhU1PzLNBURdJC | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/75023234 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvfxKbpoxRE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633324d3cb86801423062e66/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The%2520Flaming%2520Lips%2520-%2520The%2520Soft%2520Bulletin.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Flaming_Lips-The_Soft_Bulletin_1999.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,98,Smashing Pumpkins,Siamese Dream (1993),Virgin,"Virgin In the video for “Today,” Smashing Pumpkins’ breakthrough single, Billy Corgan stars as a dorky ice cream man who reads comic books and imagines sexy couples making out all around him. He is by far the least cool-looking person in the clip, and that’s the point. With their second album, the Chicago quartet dive-bombed into a rock era defined by rawness and DIY humility armed with guitar-god solos, drum theatrics, and production that made every second of the 62-minute opus sound as pristine as the Hope Diamond. Siamese Dream was an alternative to punk piety, and it soon became an alt-rock blueprint for generations to come. Throughout the record, Corgan coos and sneers as he works through troubling childhood memories and suicidal depression, his trauma turning triumphant when matched with so many squealing riffs. “Life’s a drag!” he sings, smearing the last word across five ecstatic syllables, and making human existence sound like a bummer that’s very much worth living. –Ryan Dombal",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufambngiF5drHq7RsPvmSFut4onZrqS64u3xYYoWX5iJ5Zm1yEb | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2YfVS2JkEsZbGaVN2xMzcCAf2EcdufCigRyF44GJ5f29ratuBWwUyZKgmpFrhqhmxswYt6NmeGB7aN5jK2UM9Lmk6hBoKRw4nJj979e92mc836SxWaoFyDQ9eSjZLKLXNmrjYz91ZjobQDubefNE1bkiMTWJPXQiorB | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/0bQglEvsHphrS19FGODEGo | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/10643304,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633325e412e43930baa6dcc4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Smashing%2520Pumpkins%2520-%2520Siamese%2520Dream.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Smashing_Pumpkins-Siamese_Dream_1993.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,97,A Tribe Called Quest,Midnight Marauders (1993),Jive,"Jive Faced with the task of following up 1991’s classic The Low End Theory, A Tribe Called Quest responded by adding just the right touches of conceptual breadth and subtle innovation. From its multiple album cover designs celebrating a community of (literal) hip-hop heads to its playful, proto-Siri interludes, Midnight Marauders positioned Tribe as unifiers and humanizers amid modern life’s estrangements. The record was at turns thoughtful (the N-word defense language discourse “Sucka Nigga”) and self-deprecating (“8 Million Stories,” a comical chronicle of mundane struggles), but it most dominantly emoted joy. Across a dazzling boom-bap production-scape that merged Blue Note, original school breaks, and Quiet Storm classics, Q-Tip and Phife sounded ebullient, their vocal chemistry offering a comprehensive study in abstract/wisecrack interplay. From statements of purpose like “Award Tour” to the ecstatic rhyme exercise “Lyrics to Go” to the bawdy pick-up lines of “Electric Relaxation,” the pair exuded comradery and affection. It was Tribe’s true love movement. –Jeff Mao",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam6rCRnW3c9x5GTWYnWfQ1ZVW6uWup8RZuBACf5hrXQhMhCiX | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/meh9fHuiYWLjqSgj7XHZWWWEHEHsDNtLyJtA7tHqnKwM7w8ZUnQNeCSNeb3E3hQnYn62ABcNP6jQGetLxhRE5Xxv9HWQ4uWDe4QeNsaCDybNsXv2syWn8EBmbVrq7ebBk5nAoQCxxqyfJ7cpELXuZmqVvJbu8Jc12gmXGtawm | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/4v5x3Oo3UjQ9YmF3hRAip5 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/1104286,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633326801dccce609e4163ae/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/A%2520Tribe%2520Called%2520Quest%2520-%2520Midnight%2520Marauders.jpg,/dataset/artwork/A_Tribe_Called_Quest-Midnight_Marauders_1993.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,96,Primal Scream,Screamadelica (1991),Shock,"Shock Primal Scream made it all sound far too easy on Screamadelica, whose combination of classic songwriting and electronic production left an early high-water mark for forward-thinking rock music in the 1990s. Listening to the Scottish group’s third LP, it seemed only natural that house, blues, soul, dub, ambient, rave, and psychedelic rock should come together in 65 minutes of joyful music; it seemed somehow right that a gang of MC5-obsessed rockers on their critical uppers should create a work of ecstasy-blasted euphoria that provided the Day-Glo yin to Nirvana’s turbulent yang. The results were the epitome of unfettered musical instinct, as Primal Scream and their motley crew (including producer/DJ Andrew Weatherall, ambient-house pioneers the Orb, singer Denise Johnson, former PiL bass player Jah Wobble, and Rolling Stones producer Jimmy Miller) powered through the history of modern music and into the future, operating on inspiration and too many early mornings. Its ragtag bag of influences meant Screamadelica sounded a lot like many people, but no one sounded quite like Screamadelica, an album both perfectly of its time and light years ahead of the rock/dance curve. –Ben Cardew",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam7WPMRWYh2CiwLRZzWzi2Zrwefgg1ffaC3gSkQCRHhLoxLmy | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2YfVS2JkEsZbGaVN2xMzcCAf2EcdufCigRyF44GJ5f29ratuBWwUyZKgmpFrhqhmxswYt6NmeGB7aN5jK2UM9Lmk6hBoKRvzYMw8rR27onu6HDBWpJQGLciybVy4BRtu3oKHtGzLYwta7CUN6ktf6sqzdJ4Nq9182GK | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/4TECsw2dFHZ1ULrT7OA3OL | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/35247980,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633326d9800c1a0f8721bb2c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Primal%2520Scream%2520-%2520Screamadelica.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Primal_Scream-Screamadelica_1991.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,95,Ice Cube,Death Certificate (1991),Priority,"Priority No Jheri curl, no mercy. Over molten funk and soul loops, Ice Cube spends Death Certificate accosting every American person, demographic, and structure that he sees as an impediment to Black power. The concept album—divided into a death side mirroring the times and a life side imagining an improved future—is fiendishly specific and textured, gangster rap as sworn deposition and apocalyptic fever dream. When Los Angeles exploded in protest the following year over the acquittals of three LAPD officers who brutalized Rodney King, Death Certificate’s caustic verses evoking fiery Black insurrection proved prophetic. But the album’s urgent mood relies on tension as well as outright flamethrowing. Cube plays both storyteller and polemicist, couching the threats to burn it all down in slow-building narratives set in hospital waiting rooms, jail cells, and Korean-owned package stores. As he brings these locales to life with humor, wit, and irritation alongside rage, the album reveals itself to be more testament than manifesto—one rapper’s constant proximity to death informing an unapologetic vision of life. –Stephen Kearse",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufemb78zXNxrK5nCesQqN1DhGZp1Zhbdm5J2zUV2Lm5xFd2PC8K | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/meh9fHuiYWLjqSgj7XHZWWWEHEHsDNtLyJtA7tHqnKwM7w8ZUnQNeCSNeb3E3hQnYn62ABcNP6jQGetLxhRE5Xxv9HWQ4fLsjyw4zP1DTwQVUr9kQGd7P36GRWuMpDD4je3DkQkzUnDfdxs6m42b9RexRyLzJVWG9yTDJ8scP | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/062N80S3hs96dOhFzmvfLj | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/202134871,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63332788f2e57bfbb7050068/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ice%2520Cube%2520-%2520Death%2520Certificate.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ice_Cube-Death_Certificate_1991.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,94,No Doubt,Tragic Kingdom (1995),Trauma / Interscope,"Trauma / Interscope Gwen Stefani’s heartbreak became No Doubt’s glory, fueling the SoCal ska-pop group’s powerhouse third album, Tragic Kingdom. The soon-to-be-iconic frontwoman wrote her way through a breakup with the band’s bassist, Tony Kanal, resulting in a series of hits that juxtaposed her pain with frolicking rhythms and liberal explorations of ska, disco, and new wave. But it was “Just a Girl,” the album’s snarky wink of a lead single—with muscular, looping guitar from Tom Dumont backing Stefani’s affected warble—that captured the feminist attitude of the time and helped them conquer the mainstream. With Tragic Kingdom, No Doubt seemed to ask: What if, instead of crying over all that hurt, you could kick the door down, throw one helluva party, and skank your way better? –Amanda Wicks",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1rZc87emZjYTP1sLQcwj9o29yZdCiJkUAu1eeazSCZU4aEw | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/X7niGYieCH8UQ8PGqdUBtg8M6SAMcPegELm2uaNkiXQqSRwp4HaQGxppbNbCMF44CZcGNECmFt4zQZRh1GRha7dMawYcetaEJyGkYHhTcWnjgpRquYqGovd6oe5N8RLjXsGTdAzRcxTtbrCDcTS4RGd2wNoc9ijaZVvWo | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3VekjWskUut57hx6W9wqL8 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/35971908,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633328039dd3784d119dceb3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/No%2520Doubt%2520-%2520Tragic%2520Kingdom.jpg,/dataset/artwork/No_Doubt-Tragic_Kingdom_1995.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,93,Beck,Odelay (1996),DGC,"DGC Listening to Odelay is like watching a Vegas revue made from the trash we left behind. He’s karaoke country, he’s toy-commercial rap, he’s rhinestone-studded soul. You get the sense Beck is having fun with it, but also that he’s lost in translation: After all, “I’ve got a devil’s haircut in my mind” doesn’t make sense no matter how passionately you scream it. As much as the album captured the eclecticism of mid-’90s bohemia, it also glimpsed the attention-deficient moment to come. This is music that came out before most people had cell phones, when the internet came from a plug in the wall. Where early hip-hop had used sampling and collage to bring disparate sounds together, Odelay created a feeling of almost perpetual dislocation, but also of wonder: The lights that keep flashing and the pings that keep pinging whether you know where they’re coming from or not. –Mike Powell",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufeJFLareLMtxLLmxNcv6DUB5KhV3ZkBc757uN4fbAJ5VVNeNp3 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/ho5L3zdaYSc6AAnBd4uCzvQscAyrNJS2pATNPUhyGs49Uw9ghDqMPdqDaauWeD2PisepKxCC4QS8oaKf52H9x5CDXPvU56Y551VAWG2G5fdWXoeiaM2uFypHvZjSS1hwoewxHXoSRGDigZx1n538PZJwGF | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1Pus5h1qGedCn4CtOuPVtp | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/79169803,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333288b9dd3784d119dceb5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Beck%2520-%2520Odelay.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beck-Odelay_1996.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,92,Autechre,Amber (1994) ,Wax Trax!,"Wax Trax! Autechre’s second album soothes with one hand and abrades with the other. The comforting touch makes the irritant all the more effective; there’s so much warm bathwater flowing over your skin that you don’t realize it’s being sanded away. The Manchester electronic duo released Amber on Warp as the label entered its most emblematic era, when albums from Aphex Twin, Nightmares on Wax, and Boards of Canada would pinch UK dance music into a tight, heady corner. The record taught successive generations of hyperfocused sound sculptors that you didn’t need more than a handful of off-the-shelf tools to render lurid, immersive environments; that nausea could feed pleasure rather than upend it; that with enough patience, fertilizer, and poison, impossible landscapes can grow. –Sasha Geffen",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam7EUwZtaceN1BLN5iabZJzhNUNFfEcp9LxA1rvg4mKfrMYVH | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/36TDN37JM9t1EvKKNRQCGk3CY6xhpL8WggqiWdjnLMJ4zBzMchvYX7vd3g1nFoMMe8FPVsZtHzDAnYLLnLqKuNeiDtw9sRUwe8EiJNQQeJP2L8gkthMbZNtBApNuKZxN83yWTze8QU2CGhRhV83Vwm4f | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://autechre.bandcamp.com/album/amber | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/7EfhvG3RwdhzXrFlkDVxg4 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/16024625,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333291de02a17d9175e55e7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Autechre%2520-%2520Amber.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Autechre-Amber_1994.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,91,Weezer,Weezer (Blue Album) (1994) ,DGC,"DGC Mainstream pop culture was not always so obsessed with superheroes and nerds named Sheldon; for many years, rock stars were insatiable creatures, not insecure dorks. Weezer leader Rivers Cuomo wasn’t single-handedly responsible for this shift, but his bespectacled presence from 1994 onward was like a flare to the sky for rock geeks everywhere. The wholesomeness of the first and greatest of Weezer’s color-coded eponymous albums—from the Beach Boys harmonies and X-Men lyrics to the Happy Days-inspired “Buddy Holly” video coming preloaded on Windows 95—is matched by a sour note, upon closer listening. You can hear it in the ultra-crisp hard-rock riffs, the loud-soft dynamic cribbed from the Pixies, and most of all, the record’s animating tension, between crushing vulnerability and uncomfortable jokes about the opposite sex (if released today, someone would surely call it an incel classic). This is the dream-shame space of kids who fear the rules but long to break them, of boys and girls who feel rejected before they even try, and it is one of the most powerful forces that can propel a modern guitar record. No wonder Blue and its even more curdled follow-up, 1996’s Pinkerton, became classics of third-wave emo and sensitive indie rock alike. –Jill Mapes",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1rQwqWSQH5M1CnRcvfexUeZaumvyo1VNZkKqVN8DhQTRgcB | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/ho5L3zdaYSc6AAnBd4uCzvQscAyrNJS2pATNPUhyGs49Uw9ghDqMPdqDaauWeD2PisepKxCC4QS8oaKf52H9x5CDXPvU5J2H3oyM3toXkK7DqYNiynFvGWMBRWCNTrNadesRc2BuL4JWC5FvgFJUApL54o | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1xpGyKyV26uPstk1Elgp9Q | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/3345768,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633329cc10c581ffac68d20e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Weezer%2520-%2520Weezer%2520%255BBlue%2520Album%255D.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Weezer-Weezer_Blue_Album_1994.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,90,Ghostface Killah,Ironman (1996),Epic Street,"Epic Street Ghostface Killah recorded Ironman in a burst of uneasy adrenaline, fresh off the incarceration of his best friend and a frightening diabetes diagnosis. The fact that he’s never been happy with the result—“deadlines will fuck you up,” he told Okayplayer in 2021, on occasion of the album’s 25th anniversary—only testifies to the impossibility of confining the splatter of his unruly mind to one canvas. Without the Al Green flips on “Iron Maiden” and “260” or the sunlit Jackson 5 sample on “All That I Got Is You,” there would be no soul loops as rap fans understand them today—a young Kanye West cited Ghostface as the originator of his style, and made the beats for The Blueprint with him in mind. Without Ghostface’s furry Kangols and two-toned Wallabees, Cam’ron would have never worn pink or driven a Laffy Taffy-colored Range Rover; without the comic-book style lettering on the front, a young Daniel Dumile would have never donned the mask to become MF DOOM. Ghost’s influence spread so wide in part because he felt so human and touchable. In a group of rough shouters, he raised his voice in anxiety as often as in anger, and he remains the only Wu member capable of making you weep for him, as he did on the Mary J. Blige-assisted “All That I Got Is You.” He would refine his bugged-out panoramas on 2000’s Supreme Clientele, but Ironman injected the first operatic note into gangsta rap, and it’s trembled with strange, ungovernable emotions ever since. –Jayson Greene",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam6puHuCsaD9yiAzfRrCa2XhBi3G1kwZa6MnhajoedPDeAkVR | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/ho5L3zdaYSc6AAnBd4uCzvQscAyrNJS2pATNPUhyGs49Uw9ghDqMPdqDaauWeD2PisepKxCC4QS8oaKf52H9x5CDXPvU4x1DyqKW11BMGnd9K1EFYhXLrbHqFGtyQ6tjswVKuqsD9xrKgRJVZhCF2voeJ7 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2jCjUgaDh9lVGju6u3cGvK | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/1270792,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63332a7dd997a1f3e8a0cef7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ghostface%2520Killah%2520-%2520Ironman.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Ghostface_Killah-Ironman_1996.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,89,Sonny Sharrock,Ask the Ages (1991) ,Axiom,"Axiom Even in jazz, singularity can be a burden. With asthma precluding him from the sax, Sonny Sharrock bent and hammered his guitar strings to sound like the tenor players he worshiped. The style he developed in the ’60s—which sometimes suggested the sound of someone forging a sword out of lava—made him an odd fit in a scene that had tilted from free jazz toward fusion. He bowed out in the mid ’70s but emerged a decade later, his gifts fully appreciated and intact. His last release before his death at 53, Ask the Ages was the culmination of this comeback: a taut, modern set showcasing his tonal and compositional abilities. He recruited two key figures from John Coltrane’s spiritual-jazz era, drummer Elvin Jones and saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, and set them loose on prickly modal slouches, skronky workouts, and some of his stickiest melodies: “Who Does She Hope to Be?” is a candidate for the most plaintive ballad—in any genre—of the decade. –Brad Shoup",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam7SScqYmBGMsTXRVjfU1CDEdSX3LxFCr7g77FFKTzRE3otqy | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2YfVS2JkEsZbGaVN2xMzcCAf2EcdufCigRyF44GJ5f29ratuBWwUyZKgmpFrhqhmxswYt6NmeGB7aN5jK2UM9Lmk6hBoKQxQvqytvHbaDYMw2SWsWqXpqdeHt3JfhGA1MbC6PEnMJjL6JMikiGczvCTaxdLx5QvV5AB | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/0Fx1VWICKcxrZqHJp2l8Jw | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/35708647,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63333d85e02a17d9175e55e9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sonny%2520Sharrock%2520-%2520Ask%2520the%2520Ages.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sonny_Sharrock-Ask_the_Ages_1991.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,88,Sonic Youth,Goo (1990),DGC,"DGC When Sonic Youth signed with major label DGC for their 1990 album Goo, some feared they had abandoned the underground. As if. Goo takes the destructive bliss defined by its predecessor Daydream Nation and sharpens it—but only a smidge. The resulting songs are some of their finest, from the warped “Dirty Boots” to Kim Gordon’s devastating tribute to Karen Carpenter, “Tunic (Song for Karen).” As usual, Sonic Youth were ahead of the curve: One year later, punk would break and every major label would invest in alternative bands that they hoped could crash the charts. (For their part, DGC crossed their fingers that an album called Nevermind would match the sales of Goo.) But few bands ever “sold out” and remained as untouchably cool as Sonic Youth. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1rQgxtkRhKmBf1ecHtf6LWcn6dn64eWnhjvThgukEomMZBH | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/UWxN5ZEu9McrNbWY8o36qGTBDgMaP1LsE744YS6juBDEQncwJt6nLhF4KorDsNqBDyGyPLES9Rxgmi5wE6xwTezpnJFhRgLMxokijSvDnBU3vsWb4EwFs4jSxFgRQGErzdzMY8xGPSW9or4aVDEDGP | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iYYQwB0oH9FVyVlaOXZdr | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/3525076,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331c199f2e57bfbb7050005/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sonic-Youth-Kool-Thing.png,/dataset/artwork/Sonic_Youth-Goo_1990.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,87,DJ Screw,3 ’N The Mornin’ Part Two (1996),BIGTIME,"BIGTIME DJ Screw was an effortless curator of vibes, an intuitive conductor of rhythm and a notorious workaholic known for his nocturnal habits and nonstop hustle. The basics of chopped and screwed are simple: two copies of the same record are slowed down side-by-side, with one track a beat behind the other to create the stuttering “chopped” rhythm. But Screw was a turntablist wizard before he ever slowed music down, and there’s an electric unpredictability to his mixing that never resorts to formula. 3 ’N the Mornin’ Part Two is one of Screw’s signature works not just because it was one of the few retail projects he released during his lifetime, but because it’s such a vivid time capsule of Texas rap—essentially, an extended studio session with local legends like Lil’ Keke, Big Moe, and Point Blank. In the years since, his music has spread from the trunk speakers of Houston to the earbuds of the world, passed along like folklore through burned CDs and zip files, revived by Drake samples and Megan Thee Stallion freestyles and the Moonlight soundtrack, summoned by every kid making vaporwave remixes in their bedroom. But there’s no mistaking homage for the original—it’s only screwed if Robert Earl Davis made it. –Nadine Smith",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufanoKdZmJzS2Ztnx3ppyFWRmEeChHaqCiy8icQfwJHXiAJSWhy | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/4Q5NDE1dgN4W84pNLsng6VFE1cdfSddbd9XvoFPPLK4asobvNMdQAXBUzYuEpauMz3G1A7Xq7NYJ9i6Dd6qPvj1foZZrkhH1jqa3vStqGyspaGagYpjxj5ggekb9FD4fKXfjuSxrwvudrECmMzcqZLBAFqbgS4Bw7iSKpx1ZCj5 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2F7xZ22zn1KZRlM4v6M9de | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/38386485,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63333fdc800c1a0f8721bb2f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/DJ%2520Screw%2520-%25203%2520_n%2520the%2520Mornin_%2520(Part%2520Two).jpeg,/dataset/artwork/DJ_Screw-3_N_The_Mornin_Part_Two_1996.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,86,Spiritualized,Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space (1997),Dedicated,"Dedicated In Jason Pierce’s musical quest to hit as many pleasure receptors as real heroin, the high has never been more pure and terrible than on Spiritualized’s 1997 masterpiece. Painstakingly constructed from performances by the band, a string quartet, a gospel choir, and Dr. John, Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space blurs shoegaze sleep paralysis into full-throated gospel deliverance into lullaby harmonica blues. The noise burns like a sunspot, the light at the end of a tunnel stretching from the first church bell chime of the title track to the decaying ebb of “Cop Shoot Cop…,” the ultimate comedown. Never duplicated, Ladies and Gentlemen is an album of bared teeth and tender romantic underbelly, a secret password to the hearts of the surliest old heads in indie rock. –Anna Gaca",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufeHryhmVryoPgTpbMiebWbCs88q3c6rtEwt6gpCE9e3QSqCGcK | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/32ZjHBEcANQ5znEtfywfuDew5mP7JSZTbEhWXqjfKUWLhs1aKFqJc4xKe8d3Qhu6VbXALAYfKoDKUSvH7bu9DYDavkzaJDJnPB6X1yJq615CLB66Jdgn49BrmEgvoMyPwbGEuo1rrhht9NSEWqKjgmLehhZhNKdQobfMHoycLNX6pdbCFY9wAJsTTDD6FX4sao61BZgMsuvzPYy9 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/56YzQ0dhmRMDryZsrjdHun | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/134049292,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633340b052d4bd45efccbe58/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Spiritualized.png,/dataset/artwork/Spiritualized-Ladies_and_Gentlemen_We_Are_Floating_in_Space_1997.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,85,Godspeed You! Black Emperor,F♯ A♯ ∞ (1997),Constellation / Kranky,"Constellation / Kranky Upon first listen, you might mistake Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s first album of chilling and expansive post-rock for an apocalyptic prophecy intercepted from an extraterrestrial frequency. “We’re trapped in the belly of this horrible machine/And the machine is bleeding to death,” the narrator of “Dead Flag Blues” states in a deadpan growl. But for each foreboding drone, there’s a glimmer of hope: jubilant glockenspiel, wistful bagpipes, the crashing drums halfway through “Providence.” GY!BE were not only interested in illustrating our broken world, but also in radicalizing listeners to do something about it. Like the penny flattened by passing trains that comes with each vinyl copy—a symbol of the force needed to bend and break capitalism—F♯ A♯ ∞ is both a warning and an inspiration. –Nina Corcoran",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufaouESx2WLsqcqN1gGGfBrqdtsmJ2R63jVcSqugSNYdY5qiYd9 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2QvS63bbj2Qv8FXWwJEcmHMBrxtMGgBhuZDbCu3Ru3MM4Sxw7F3JDmvEbtbdpGZJGcV9e79ciDCwEUJoUXasxYcKBVwxSnt7mpn1ca8Ny3Xt9yPzHFgo9XJ6M9gnVFJG5AoENifadQTixxEjNCwd | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://godspeedyoublackemperor.bandcamp.com/album/f-a | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/7sh2Z8jj1iySpHRAnGd9w5 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/18056906,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333417d4e7c28d8b1f4c505/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Godspeed%2520You!%2520Black%2520Emperor%2520-%2520F#a#_.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Godspeed_You_Black_Emperor-F_A__1997.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,84,OutKast,ATLiens (1996),LaFace,"LaFace ATLiens is simultaneously an excavation into the city of OutKast’s childhood and a farewell to it. It is a solemn ruin of cross streets, landmarks, aggrieved ballads, and defensive young men talking past one another. Its muted funk licks and fathomless basslines are transmissions from a subterranean bunker, or, if you prefer, deep space. The slow contemplation yields intricate characters—dour pimps, half-aware caricatures, backwoods philosophers. Yet the miracle of ATLiens lies in its digression. “Babylon,” for instance, is at once a graphic account of Andre 3000’s sexual history and a heartfelt tribute to Big Boi’s late aunt. This yin and yang would prove OutKast’s undoing, but on ATLiens it makes for a fascinatingly humane dialogue, creative partners maintaining brilliant correspondence while failing to meet one another’s eyes. –Pete Tosiello",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam6waw3xP9CFZbhUWyCzv8AXxKtnMuySuTo8cPsbDRoroS6CT | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/ho5L3zdaYSc6AAnBd4uCzvQscAyrNJS2pATNPUhyGs49Uw9ghDqMPdqDaauWeD2PisepKxCC4QS8oaKf52H9x5CDXPvU4kXzMeipU6oQEijnMKY3wbTNcJ3hRNcuRA7TYBCks4FQ3gih4Rm4GVJ5f8m46P | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1IaBCF26OjgYwUCEPaIyC0 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/43956,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333422153f23a34218e58ec/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/OutKast%2520-%2520ATLiens.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/OutKast-ATLiens_1996.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,83,Slint,Spiderland (1991),Touch and Go,"Touch and Go Spiderland is the loudest quiet record of the ’90s, a harrowing experience of psychic despair and physical desolation whose impact was as significant as its record sales were fallow. (To tweak the old saying, less than 10,000 people bought a copy but every one of them started a post-rock band.) The members of Slint were four regular guys from Louisville, Kentucky, prone to goofs and pranks—that they made such a profoundly bleak record characterized by negative space and brooding contemplation speaks to the mundanity of depression and its unbreakable hold on the spirit. As the story goes, singer Brian McMahan checked himself into a psychiatric hospital the morning after recording was finished. His vocals toggle between plaintive spoken word and pained howls, as David Pajo’s guitar lines stretch and wobble like power lines swaying in the wind. The songs are beyond summary, because to say that “Good Morning, Captain” is about missing someone is to say that Moby Dick is about going fishing. Thirty years after it reshaped rock music with the potential to create an unknowable atmosphere, Spiderland is still a portal to a haunted America where ghosts lurk in every forgotten crevice. –Jeremy Gordon",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufdr7eZp2H1ecZdeHkpnJG7vZbVbJe4GHZpQqTePfzLswAKUpPd | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8nansyqULpE8awBcBxybcmwRdNwmAjQJqXPnb2Qeq93UEk6y7UHHnveKx7GrahbdDyHbE4ajSnbRBekeTiXFtRFhut4cYTC8d5pVARq | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://slint.bandcamp.com/album/spiderland | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2NnkLRaeX33d1Mn8ZLgTo8 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/61685321,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633342b7925ae3b60287abfd/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Slint%2520-%2520Spiderland.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Slint-Spiderland_1991.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,82,The Chicks,Fly (1999),Monument,"Monument The Chicks begin Fly, their fifth album, by running from love, and they end it ready to say goodbye to a relationship that can’t be fixed. Heralded by Natalie Maines’ twangy yelps and pace-quickening arrangements of banjo, violin, and guitar, the trio fight against domestic standards, instead painting relationships with men as dangerous, limiting, and boring. “Goodbye Earl,” which tells the story of two best friends who murder an abusive ex and then start a farm together, is Fly’s emotional centerpiece: a snarling, intensely funny quest for justice and a celebration of the safety found in bonds with other women. Their desire to find wild and unruly love shines through, but often as a means for self actualization rather than yearning for any particular person. Fly laid the groundwork for the group’s more explicitly political era, too: These were women who honored their truest desires and paid no attention to what others wanted from them. –Vrinda Jagota",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufamJopeULwRbVX5W7Se1SRknvX9qVjd6BWhNwYwkSFzjEAqCoD | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/7EaqjGTiGVEZV17h8f56rTA6wXfeUBxFYyCZyWhithNoYDbspYy91PFy2zjsVdfZDudF8n92ctsgNTXa8VzXvAWsFLmZiqZkit4hh1SdHNv2RLhY9kHKRyafdC84kRwxqt4v1K5v8dCynpV1aghJK | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3y6G5El2I6QrJA9BdfAbqA | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/211826912,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633343344632279182b1c6b9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The%2520Chicks%2520-%2520Fly.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Chicks-Fly_1999.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,81,Radiohead,The Bends (1995),Parlophone,"Parlophone Between the grunge pastiche of Pablo Honey and the outsize art-rock of OK Computer, The Bends arrived as an unlikely milestone for Britpop and for Radiohead itself. The band worked with mainstay producer Nigel Godrich for the first time, and Thom Yorke blew his previous songwriting out of the water, signaling a visionary future. Some of the quintet’s most reliable traits emerged: stadium-singalong balladry; cryptic lyrics about capitalist dread, artificiality, and paranoia; deceptively complex guitar lines that could split the ground open or gorgeously float through space and time; Yorke’s unmistakable falsetto. Radiohead managed to expand upon this framework en route to most acclaimed rock catalog of the past 30 years because the template was so undeniable. –Max Freedman",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufbEYyTVWvWUtWRRxZjjVTJt2u4WoS22eUVcqvqeYu1Lani5WTm | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8nansyqULpE8awBcBxybcmwRdNwmAjQJqXPnb2SiNDAVUdCGvMFas9D4XDWAf8W5ySvVpFc6SF1UQrvk4bQuv1UgjaW3jqvA7BzwMPh | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://radiohead.bandcamp.com/album/the-bends | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/35UJLpClj5EDrhpNIi4DFg | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/58990497,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633343c3afa92f85cc3e4fd8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Radiohead%2520-%2520The%2520Bends.png,/dataset/artwork/Radiohead-The_Bends_1995.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,80,Bikini Kill,The C.D. Version of the First Two Records (1994),Kill Rock Stars,"Kill Rock Stars Using hardcore’s aggression for unapologetic feminist expression, riot grrrl pioneers Bikini Kill kicked down the door of the patriarchy and male-dominated punk scenes. Their song “Rebel Girl,” in which frontwoman Kathleen Hanna declares her devotion to “the queen of the neighborhood” who embodies the revolution, became the undisputed riot grrrl anthem after the release of the band’s studio debut Pussy Whipped in October 1993. But the band brought their older music to the front on this 1994 LP, unequivocally affirming for a new global audience that their revolution was far more than a one-off battle cry. Songs like “Suck My Left One,” about defiance in the face of incest, and “White Boy,” a white-hot rage against sexual assault (“I can not scream from pain down here on my knees/I’m so sorry that I think!”), went in hard and intensified Bikini Kill’s unrelenting message. –Evie Nagy",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufdtCfBgoJQCF7rDUHpt5QycDVZFPdsh3RhjSvpSsigERhpAERR | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/29CLTwheRZNbn8esbYm7MXCvBW5AqRiuV2rkxzL68ZhZakTS8MPQjntM9eJYYf8EpCq592XdCBpDEyUwpZUBUL7o8wUGv7UaMtruhn9yWuxBAq2Uu4U9G5EhYQZt3t63yeBne1Nfdhzp3WNTUzNxjjuuDkWXeRqz8zuXsHVRF4yxfm | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://bikinikill.bandcamp.com/album/the-first-two-records | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/6U4EMkDA3CZarmG5t3Bqze | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/94566649,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333452f5fedcce4b8a2daa2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bikini-Kill.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Bikini_Kill-The_CD_Version_of_the_First_Two_Records_1994.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,79,DMX,It’s Dark and Hell Is Hot (1998),Def Jam,"Def Jam Amid the frenzied mourning that erupted in New York City following DMX’s tragic passing last year, it was easy to forget that Earl Simmons had once seemed like a lost cause, passed over by Bad Boy for the more bankable LOX after early single “The Born Loser” flopped at Columbia. But this trial by failure proved to be his salvation. By the time Def Jam gave him a shot, DMX was a 27-year-old vet who wasn’t about to take his second chance for granted. It’s Dark and Hell Is Hot is a chilling, introspective debut album that laid waste to the shiny suit era by cashing in on X’s hard-won vantage point. “Ruff Ryders Anthem”’s bruising clarion call sets the stage for an odyssey through a man’s fractured soul, one that can cook up Faustian bargains (“Damien”) while playing God’s ventriloquist as self-therapy (“The Convo”), preach a gospel of retribution (“Get at Me Dog”), and bask in everlasting forgiveness (“Prayer”). It’s a toast to a new king as he sits atop a throne of blood. –Phillipe Roberts",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufdtCcVkLgiuAzyQ9uRH36zjwjQN3pHk7ZF3jvLmfSV9cBdL2g3 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/8UAFzxJzvSuaw23YMmcgLo6XFpPbbtLCUmg6umLWhEHCQYzpUDSpXHL8eXe2qEKQdafD22TNrb3ntHw6iua336RrUYSD1WsK933tSSpGHyrvk4H6DXUqYCPNtJahXQLnyp69Ggv68VVEi3EVsFDKndXLfNZ17KEBVVNViDzeLXf82rkqENF | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2xIhksIizs6gWdRBYdiTLc | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/105504510,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633345c212e43930baa6dcfc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/DMX%2520-%2520It_s%2520Dark%2520and%2520Hell%2520Is%2520Hot.jpg,/dataset/artwork/DMX-Its_Dark_and_Hell_Is_Hot_1998.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,78,The Magnetic Fields,69 Love Songs (1999),Merge,"Merge After Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, but before Sufjan Stevens promised to write an album after every state, the most ambitious music project known to indie heads was 69 Love Songs. The album delivers exactly what the title says, styled as cowboy ballads, folk songs, synth pieces, and countless other genres, all tied together with Stephin Merritt’s devastatingly clever lyrics. Merritt has maintained that it’s not an album about love, but about love songs—devotional, yes, but only to the tropes of the genre. He’s a scholar of pop music, and Love Songs is his thesis. But all of that is easy to forget once immersed in the world of the album itself, which is endlessly generous with its vignettes and listeners alike. They wouldn’t be love songs if they didn’t charm us off our feet, waltz us through familiar scenes which suddenly feel eye-openingly new, and leave us swooning—even when we think we should know better. –NM Mashurov",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufduQonPECgnnt1mwX8fHkDYbc1CstsUwUH1Bj1wajnSnG7J8A7 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/MKEh7BpQXwWWp1Y3i6D9RjWuqrJsu9zvnz9d36jPMPvD98gTrNrqcRAvCcYCX4oSM9jZscHurCooXc4F442PjYSAu9nqZzLQGx9o1Yfc76N9f6QoFfjzCWwrnJnNSmMX3HAU8fav67waQFLYbGyVncgJ5EVn1aGZH | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://themagneticfields.bandcamp.com/album/69-love-songs | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2GuROKcqyHdpIDcgxml1C7 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/37267701,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633346594e7c28d8b1f4c507/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The%2520Magnetic%2520Fields%2520-%252069%2520Love%2520Songs.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Magnetic_Fields-69_Love_Songs_1999.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,77,The Roots,Things Fall Apart (1999),MCA,"MCA If Things Fall Apart was Questlove’s idea of going pop, then the Roots drummer and bandleader’s vision of commercial appeal was so rich and multi-faceted that just about anything could qualify. The Philadelphia hip-hop group’s fourth album boasts one of the most breathtaking ballads of the neo-soul era they helped guide, “You Got Me,” a Jill Scott co-write that overflows with bittersweet strings, a serene Erykah Badu chorus, and the brash introduction of Philly rapper Eve. But as you might expect from a record named after the seminal Chinua Achebe novel, it’s also some rigorously heady stuff, bookended by dialogue from Spike Lee’s Mo’ Better Blues and a graphic spoken-word poem. And with dual MCs Black Thought and Malik B. trading verses with their usual improvisatory verve, joined by such formidable verbal sparring opponents as Mos Def and Common, it’s closer to an old-school rap battle than the personality-driven myth-making that was then crossing over from the hip-hop charts. Still: take one listen to the loopy flows of the J Dilla-produced “Dynamite!,” and Things Fall Apart sounds like—if not pop exactly—then the impressionistic shape of art-pop to come. –Marc Hogan",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufamD7ZVUPCQdTRahFWBgMVD7eWZEHdf34VweJYyybg6Pn1EmSs | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/meh9fHuiYWLjqSgj7XHZWWWEHEHsDNtLyJtA7tHqnKwM7w8ZUnQNeCSNeb3E3hQnYn62ABcNP6jQGetLxhRE5Xxv9HWQ56Vaha2kkFqr5CHojCn85g2KZ4skJZVhdwwYMg7QtsD5mbaBCPMVLMj1CCjLjfiL1F3WKFwfCByX9 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/0qbl8aNaCUOvX8HGsZYLfh | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/35712362 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuELGO_-lEU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633346fece47f3e4782d79a3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The%2520Roots%2520-%2520Things%2520Fall%2520Apart.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Roots-Things_Fall_Apart_1999.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,76,The KLF,Chill Out (1990) ,KLF Communications,"KLF Communications As a creation story for the ’90s, Chill Out has it all. Emerging in the first months of the decade from a British rave scene approaching its apogee, this sublime suite of anti-music was all about appropriation—a quintessential ’90s methodology. From its origins in a contested DJ collaboration to its majestic tapestry woven from samples of Tuvan throat singers, BBC jingles, and bursts of Fleetwood Mac and Van Halen, the record exalted the gathering obsession with musical borrowing (aka theft) in late 20th century pop. But aside from its situationist hijinks, the KLF’s most listenable album also sounded—quite literally—like a dream. The cornerstone of an entire genre, Chill Out’s hypnagogic fantasy of a twilight trawl across the Deep South established the gold standard for early-hours comedown music—one only rarely matched in the decades since. –Alex Niven",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWebqCRw7o4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333476e800c1a0f8721bb31/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The%2520KLF%2520-%2520Chill%2520Out.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_KLF-Chill_Out_1990.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,75,Nirvana,In Utero (1993) ,DGC,"DGC By 1993, Kurt Cobain was ailing from chronic stomach pain, exacerbated by a poor diet and his scoliosis, which he treated unsuccessfully with heroin. In February of that year, In Utero wasn’t so much made as it was purged from Nirvana’s digestive tract, tasting of copper and smelling of offal. Recorded live in a Minnesota studio by Steve Albini in a two-week sprint, the album was in exercise in rejection: of the glossy sound of Nevermind, of Nirvana’s sudden fame, of bodily organs, of life in general. Cobain sang about kissing open sores, eating cancer, anemia, milk, shit, umbilical nooses—an undigested litany that hints that his pain was much more of his body than in his mind. The singer’s vocal cords sound either lightly sandpapered or heavily scalpelled, recorded without any overdubs. He is alternately angry, sarcastic, spiritual, caustic, wearing his heart on his sleeve only because he’s turned his body inside out for all to see. –Jeremy D. Larson",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufaoCP3HNgmfncVbn4fKNN3vco2yVs1HwtSdYoMGfkbePFJEH5u | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/RLUH3gniSGMDt1DBTaNBBubd7V6MVPTfeVqQQXu3asKBqjuhDLs9ouAfGgknjeNfMSGsr6DLCu3ZNVdTAButNFzUtK9R4i8uTooLHJ9J5z6CxSaotAuNksTicWLwnCQxVymLCyv7YnSzECzXb2Koeegt21NGTANWMQEX4rscBwGrjdxU4gAbarqKsBzu3GP | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/7wOOA7l306K8HfBKfPoafr | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/2570599,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333483f12e43930baa6dcfe/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Nirvana%2520-%2520In%2520Utero.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nirvana-In_Utero_1993.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,74,Missy Elliott,Supa Dupa Fly (1997),,"It didn’t take much for Missy Elliott and Timbaland to rewrite the visual and aural rules of hip-hop with 1997’s Supa Dupa Fly. An inflated garbage bag jumpsuit, a universe of celestial, serrated beats, and a love of the eccentric. Timbaland’s mosaic production style—often spacious, with room for a chorus of crickets, some beatboxing, or masterfully placed soul samples—were the ideal foundation for Missy’s ruminations on fuckboys, booty calls, and heartache. With staccato raps and catchy flows, Elliott struck a perfect balance between romantic vulnerability and self-assured flexing, an approach that felt like uncharted territory within a world that hypersexualized women. The album also assembled late ’90s R&B and rap luminaries like Lil’ Kim, Busta Rhymes, and Aaliyah, showcasing an industry in transition. At the moment of hip-hop’s commercial surge, this pair of Afrofuturists was envisioning how the genre could stretch its imagined boundaries in the new millennium. The fact that it only took two weeks in the studio to bring Supa Dupa Fly to life is just further proof of the depth of the duo’s prescient vision. –Isabelia Herrera",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam7WMqX8GU7DX7rdoy6WLqsCn6yNeybuyJnNm4QaDw9o6yjoH | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2YfVS2JkEsZbGaVN2xMzcCAf2EcdufCigRyF44GJ5f29ratuBWwUyZKgmpFrhqhmxswYt6NmeGB7aN5jK2UM9Lmk6hBoKRwDQ7RTkGQFL6zZstotYKbmJ7wiWVWuzNgnJkMDafXyJ7Ly3FFYmkXf244ALmmCmKr7g5H | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/6UkdyvPElK6JDkyeRClbI2 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/2303999 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHcyJPTTn9w,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633349204632279182b1c6bb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Missy%2520_Misdemeanor_%2520Elliott%2520-%2520Supa%2520Dupa%2520Fly.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Missy_Elliott-Supa_Dupa_Fly_1997.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,73,Yo La Tengo,I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One (1997),Matador,"Matador This was not Yo La Tengo’s first great album, nor their second, but it marked the first time that they were so great in so many different ways at once. While the New Jersey indie trio had by this point perfected the connection between close-mic intimacy and freakout solos, I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One shows them brimming with ideas, including sample-punctured meditations (“Moby Octopad”), tightened-up pop (“Stockholm Syndrome”), and dialogues between ambient crickets and a slide guitar (“Green Arrow”). The album is as quiet and gentle as a winter snowfall, as loud and electric as a spring thunderstorm, as free and fun as a summer bike ride, and as durable and dependable as, yes, the world’s best autumn sweater. –Steven Arroyo",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufbFMUYsFyHuYAAt1Y1gGr8TEewtRmDUaYr6BLhNdxVU59s6Euq | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/9B6f5kDzu8NHvXoaHv3DG2nyvAqsMpecz6tC3fsLqkeurwqcephAjA87bwxTP2gCSiVzaXuAtKU9FVXHC8Cxc7dbrJnyhFXyMJGmwW13jmYg6bmaXTQcmsVChVfvVmnH3baRN7cRPCmzPWYpdM4hdkG7siFZ6p1sZGRHu1uUvr19JqKrwjzRZMuuHHEMUSqQef | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://yolatengo.bandcamp.com/album/i-can-hear-the-heart-beating-as-one-25th-anniversary-deluxe-edition | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3V18DIKvRuwdxc2LE4wuac | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/49793689 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38iyHpJtylg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63334992d997a1f3e8a0cef9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Yo%2520La%2520Tengo%2520-%2520I%2520Can%2520Hear%2520the%2520Heart%2520Beating%2520as%2520One.png,/dataset/artwork/Yo_La_Tengo-I_Can_Hear_the_Heart_Beating_as_One_1997.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,72,De La Soul,De La Soul Is Dead (1991),Tommy Boy / Warner Bros.,"Tommy Boy / Warner Bros. A fraught follow-up to their irresistibly confectionary debut, 1991’s De La Soul Is Dead is a sui-generis act of ingenious world building and uneasy vibes. Its closest antecedent in music history could be Sly and the Family Stone’s 1971 landmark There’s a Riot Goin’ On, which likewise evinced newly formed skepticism regarding utopian ideals while exhibiting a thrillingly novel sonic palette. The two groups’ migration from optimistic self-determination to anguished acknowledgement of an insurmountable power structure roughly traces the tortured start-and-stop trajectory of every consequential American liberation movement, and the blood is all over these tracks. From the self-negating album title to the skittering don’t-fuck-with-us-’cause-you-think-we’re-hippies warnings of “Please Porridge” to the infectious but spiritually wobbly “Keepin’ the Faith,” De La Soul Is Dead is the sound of a group taking inventory of their early success with pronounced wariness and a vaulting sense of musical adventure. –Elizabeth Nelson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4dLwK1foFQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63334aa71dccce609e4163b2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/De%2520La%2520Soul%2520-%2520De%2520La%2520Soul%2520Is%2520Dead.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/De_La_Soul-De_La_Soul_Is_Dead_1991.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,71,Pulp,Different Class (1995),Island,"Island At age 16, Jarvis Cocker drew up an ambitious manifesto for his new band, then called Arabicus Pulp: “The group shall work its way into the public eye by producing fairly conventional, yet slightly offbeat, pop songs [...] then begin to subvert and restructure both the music business and music itself.” Nearly two decades later, the frontman and his group did manage to capture the attention of the masses via Different Class, a full-length that alchemized bubblegum, glam, and luxe new wave into artful pop preoccupied with social divisions and furtive couplings. Anchoring it all is “Common People,” the stinging insta-anthem about a sculpture student slumming it with a normie, that got Pulp to No. 2 on the UK charts. The album may not have upended the record industry at large, but it did illuminate a path forward for the band’s fellow mis-shapes, mistakes, and misfits. –Robert Ham",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam7SUh6fhnARviqwcR3W7VFFk9fbCsvF2jchYk3LrptgtFoWj | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/3Hvxm9czoAnByw5bJudy155hRgz4HyCyJ9tDMR4K1xHECoF6vhWARjTQ54iHw6M2V82vephGvLgQcNz7yaB625AFTrokYLweYaY5RwPBpD2VoDqFfuMatynaGbWXLLLYsTfDgNkR42qaxaKXMEZupcWBz3m9jgDCKLEqKsh | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3ly9T2L4pqTZijFgQssd3x | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/637093,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63334be1363ea4ab8f34fdc9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Pulp%2520-%2520Different%2520Class.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Pulp-Different_Class_1995.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,70,Pavement,Slanted and Enchanted (1992),Matador,"Matador Pavement weren’t the only early-’90s band that turned noise into something like pop—Nirvana and Sonic Youth did the same—but the low-key charm of Slanted and Enchanted felt different. Whatever angst they might’ve felt was sublimated by a bookishness and sense of grandeur that made even their feedback seem sweet. In an unearthed 1982 high school newspaper profile on singer Stephen Malkmus, he’s pictured in lacrosse gear, looking dreamily toward the horizon under the headline “Athletics, punk band occupy Malkmus’ time.” The jocks, the nerds, the freaks—maybe it wasn’t as simple as The Breakfast Club made it seem. The title comes from the poet Emily Dickinson: “Tell all the truth/but tell it slant.” They sound like boys but their mystery runs deep. To gentle hearts inspired by punk’s freedom but wigged out by its intensity, they served as proof that not every revolution demands a fight. –Mike Powell",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufbFSMh4gupAHgB5NUQnAz3d3NARzHXcKpjqzbxCRgi9GGxof1V | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/meh9fHuiYWLjqSgj7XHZWWWEHEHsDNtLyJtA7tHqnKwM7w8ZUnQNeCSNeb3E3hQnYn62ABcNP6jQGetLxhRE5Xxv9HWQ54wtiWnuZCTPvUiGuxtGwEYV5sUJ5y9CkgRwmAknR4nULsShp4npQioUHDjRtunAtgWF8aPiARLRh | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://pavement.bandcamp.com/album/slanted-enchanted | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/7o14zVcXSRk7clV6QCEdOD | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/2275868,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63334c83d997a1f3e8a0cefb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Pavement%2520-%2520Slanted%2520and%2520Enchanted.png,/dataset/artwork/Pavement-Slanted_and_Enchanted_1992.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,69,GZA,Liquid Swords (1995),Geffen,"Geffen Staten Island is lonely. Time moves slower; the winter feels a little more frigid than in Brooklyn or Jersey; the limited ways to get off the island sometimes make you feel like you’re trapped. More so than any other Wu-Tang Clan album, group or solo, Liquid Swords is Staten Island’s. GZA’s still, quiet, and grim nature captures the mood of a borough that feels like exile. The bedrock is made of dark and brooding beats—with the R&B samples stripped of all color, it’s arguably the greatest production work of RZA’s hot streak. All the Wu members are here, but their larger than life personalities are reserved without being muted, handing over the centerstage to GZA’s pensive, dense, and descriptive rhymes. Bullets hit first floor window panes and bust up dice games on “Cold World”; the world-building on “Hell’s Wind Staff/Killah Hills 10304” is full of imagination as the song gradually builds from drug-dealing in real-life New York City locations to a Narcos plot. The album is lined with clips from the bleak 1980 samurai flick Shogun Assassin, where blood sprays and battles are treated like an inevitability. At a time when the Wu solo records were from the roughhousing, quotable, and larger-than-life personalities like Method Man, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, and Raekwon, the gravity of Liquid Swords pulled rap into a new orbit. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1qHveScA74jAHvjtY24SgRaEXdfVn3DPW9vUotf42mR1419 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/7pktVSmKrEArFkpBqdMfGLHcpT6HuRciy3DF2VQWPYp65rc5KR9UUdfUYoaaPFxyTdqmiWj63Tye2G3skZVhupGVE8NfSKNBVMxcAJpTkQAQNWoMCZpKd6LUgKvvkVd16SzcUQ7LtkosF4B1gGAk7imAU6b3kgcm3WJP | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3k8xoyOXkGgZxUKgpmxz4P | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/637866,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63334d7112e43930baa6dd00/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/GZA%2520-%2520Liquid%2520Swords.jpg,/dataset/artwork/GZA-Liquid_Swords_1995.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,68,Bob Dylan,Time Out of Mind (1997),Columbia,"Columbia Motorcycle crashes and crashed marriages, spiritual awakenings and amphetamine escapades: Despite rounds of severe real-life turmoil, Bob Dylan had never gone four years without releasing new music, at least until the late ’90s. Nearing 60, was he done? Time Out of Mind suggests he wondered that very thing. An album of bedrock existential doubt and loneliness so pervasive that death itself seems the only cure, this is a Dylan record without precedent or parallel, blues draped across his back like a translucent mourning shroud, as if he were sitting shiva for himself. In a humid Miami studio, producer Daniel Lanois conducted a sterling band of multiple drummers and keyboardists, shaping the eerie haze through which this Dylan-in-doubt could drift. “There’s not even room enough to be anywhere,” he grumbles during a song about making one’s own deathbed. He was wrong: No other ’90s album by Dylan’s aging peers invented a new space for its maker like these 11 haunted beauties. –Grayson Haver Currin",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam6puHSUQMcDF3S6cXXVSTCaPnegxB4hqgRSxReDDceKrhNJP | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/3Hvxm9czoAnByw5bJudy155hRgz4HyCyJ9tDMR4K1xHECoF6vhWARjTQ54iHw6M2V82vephGvLgQcNz7yaB625AFTrokYNEUBabq8mexxMYp1hjk3JWT6CM9Z8UFKxZBcXv4ZrkZqPdVGZkx2es3YwWV7p3vPQiXZTxTmQF | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/185DHT5SvszXRrezx3lOjt | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/1268043,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63334e1c4632279182b1c6bd/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bob%2520Dylan%2520-%2520Time%2520Out%2520of%2520Mind.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bob_Dylan-Time_Out_of_Mind_1997.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,67,Beastie Boys,Check Your Head (1992),Capitol,"Capitol After their skull-snapping 1989 sample-go-‘round Paul’s Boutique flopped, the Beastie Boys wiped the slate clean. Michael Diamond, Adam Horovitz, and Adam Yauch set up shop in their Los Angeles headquarters (complete with skateboard ramp and basketball court) and started jamming on the instruments they had put down when they left hardcore punk behind. Inspired by the funk classics they had been mining for samples, they set out to create some grooves of their own. “A lot of the theory was, let’s make a record that’s like the dope break parts,” said Diamond. The blend of punk, funk, and hip-hop on Check Your Head—from the fuzzed-out, stuttery hit “So What’Cha Want” to a Biz Markie guest spot to a blistering cover of Sly Stone’s “Time for Livin’”—established the archetypally ’90s skate-rap-rock aesthetic. And on soul-searching songs like “Gratitude” and “Stand Together,” the Beastie Boys’ startling transformation from superbrats to enlightened activists had begun. –Alan Light",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam7bUtiQjkJ975SXqFkE1ZDny8EctbDQMjXf8MVUU2emeypnP | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/5562jUBkjoEKG5nQnQVZTNNDEjjo25wooQswhmFuC7qXVBj65ku9Ezdvzr8tutFuL3uB4LmXqZLrWUQGquXWYwmo5MMe8yFfjiusJbqEqn9YoiViuUwT6uE1RQHnHLRU5LamENDBbgmcWnAjct2Ni7LarvFEXniBWzeG1mZKKkJ6pkG6TnqPftTUAKngXd44gWZoVYkdh | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/7CSP7J60QKIBCqOV64qILq | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/2407839,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63334e9f4632279182b1c6bf/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Beastie%2520Boys%2520-%2520Check%2520Your%2520Head.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beastie_Boys-Check_Your_Head_1992.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,66,Cat Power,Moon Pix (1998),Matador,"Matador Chan Marshall wrote all of her fourth record as Cat Power in one evening while living in a barn with fellow songwriter Bill Callahan, and it plays like a summer thunderstorm in the middle of nowhere. At the time, Marshall was under pressure and about to give up on music, and you can hear that urgency, that weariness. Moon Pix is primarily a tempestuous, feel-bad listen: It’s 4 a.m., stumbling drunk, drop-your-keys-on-the-front-porch shit. Her bleariness on a song like “Metal Heart” is palpable; the shuffling drum machine loop on “American Flag” can’t help but make your soul grow tired. On Moon Pix, Marshall sings like she has to, like it’s the only way she can make you understand how she’s feeling. And she does. –Sophie Kemp",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufbFSMbgsbCJ9ETC7nvdV1TwtV8P2yXKPHXnHZhXnsf2BeQcmgf | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/Ehjr9t1bfyFgs5GtcpxVsAdcRJm1vtb9Ubjx5sTFJYB6r2e4TjtG8vb1rkTFisrhHbExGSy1DgZK5HrzBQjdeFLuEEKV6hyrmiDLoYRzTLgyvZUP7qxw4Y14yZHzkC31gAuUB5upNtqSWDCMzthHTWq3W4Tj1 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/6AoSTHrd6oEaeUYBEGdLTb | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/49793710,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c85cfd997a1f3e8a0cbcb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Cat-Power-Cross-Bones-Style.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Cat_Power-Moon_Pix_1998.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,65,MF DOOM,Operation: Doomsday (1999),Fondle 'Em,"Fondle 'Em In 1994, after his brother’s sudden death and the cancellation of his group’s album due to its controversial cover, a dejected Daniel Dumile disappeared into the streets of New York City. He resurfaced years later at Nuyorican Poets Cafe, wearing a stocking over his face and performing a new song called “Doomsday,” in which he announced his new, villainous mission “to destroy rap.” Soon, Dumile would ditch the stocking for a metal mask and fully assume his new form: MF DOOM. On his debut album, DOOM drew himself as a self-effacing, mentally disturbed outcast who was hell-bent on seeking revenge on the industry that forced him to hide his face. His absurdism was evident in his punchlines and his production, filled with Scooby-Doo grunts, offbeat drums, and beat drops that acted like comedic rimshots, but DOOM also conveyed tenderness through R&B flips and diaristic lyrics about his late brother. Operation: Doomsday didn’t destroy the rap industry; instead, it paved the way for fellow villainous weirdos to flourish. –Arjun Srivatsa",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufamR1EyqLAtJzi4TpxkQJo9dW56UpFKX53iBbFAeKJTrbM3VPy | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/C5BN9bLtpHgEyx7MNKKgBuARJsGD6hr8syYpzKwm7ov8AmmcLX1wqVhpxRVNUGC12W9K4TdWhvkmUmqtuoTcQJy39iMVYPcZLxyFybdnNsVqzyjgq8ryX1zsTEkgjYHryNzxvvMCRy1AbnRwpW4Wz8s8Epd6L8oosengxzwoBE96PJdqFb1SxNF | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/4UG3kz6qoHtNI1glQ2wdon | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/6333457 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwjGlsdj5ks,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dc6b7e02a17d9175e5506/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/MF-DOOM-Rhymes-Like-Dimes.jpg,/dataset/artwork/MF_DOOM-Operation_Doomsday_1999.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,64,Tricky,Maxinquaye (1995),Island,"Island Tricky’s debut album, Maxinquaye, hit No. 3 in the UK album chart and helped spawn a genre—trip-hop—that became synonymous with bourgeois lifestyle music. Yet listening back today, it still sounds more jarring than that legacy would suggest. An unholy fusion of soul, hip-hop, and the soundsystem heritage of Tricky’s native Bristol, the album’s largely languid pacing conceals an undercurrent of dark, chaotic energy. There is torrid sex (“Suffocated Love”), occult rap (“Hell Is Round the Corner”), even a sample of Smashing Pumpkins’ “Suffer” spun into curdled bliss (“Pumpkin”). A cover of Public Enemy’s “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos” is sung insouciantly by Tricky’s muse and romantic partner Martina Topley-Bird atop a bed of full-tilt heavy metal. Tricky himself is largely a phantom presence, directing affairs from the shadows. But where their voices intertwine—hers a sultry blues cry, his a husky, smoked-out whisper—it feels almost indecent. –Louis Pattison",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam7TaE9pTwNQSngfSu2FyWVoHQCaRXdNn8e8gvV9HCadAqbAK | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/5bwkygcD8TrHGdppHZSrwYPBcY7KL4rNhn7wPE5csqh9eBoYusiekNLU1NC9W1rwgTSxUn9pKQ4onuMDhZrhwx9sjB9aDAEWDV3WBxWnhEr8og3en5YNY4JwWTJBHTwd93AXctiMpPFXu8SmE5c4fy3yeYtG7Ztf | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/7qlZpMib7D0riFPQ5JHDT8 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/637039,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333509d12e43930baa6dd02/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Tricky%2520-%2520Maxinquaye.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tricky-Maxinquaye_1995.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,63,R.E.M.,Automatic for the People (1992),Warner Bros.,"Warner Bros. No band did more to establish the idea of “college rock” and the indie rock ethos than R.E.M. As a young group of Georgia sweeties, the band steadily built a devoted following while rejecting any commercial maneuvers that could sacrifice their artistic drive. When their sound and distribution leverage finally intersected with the mainstream, 1991’s Out of Time made them superstars. But a year later, it was Automatic for the People that set R.E.M. up for immortality. It’s ironic, then, that many at the time suspected that frontman Michael Stipe was nearing his end. His gaunt appearance and indeterminate sexuality fueled false rumors that he was dying of AIDS, bolstered by the new album’s sublime grappling with nostalgia, depression, and death. Heart-gripping ballads including “Drive,” “Nightswimming,” and “Everybody Hurts” were made richer in both tragedy and hope by stirring string arrangements from former Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones. Anything but a last gasp, Automatic for the People breathed powerful life into R.E.M.’s ascent for decades to come. –Evie Nagy",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufbEYkHkVFupQPagAW2TkVTiTYnP1PWzBGd3iU8q1B4AbgDEpBm | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/8UAFzxJzvSuaw23YMmcgLo6XFpPbbtLCUmg6umLWhEHCQYzpUDSpXHL8eXe2qEKQdafD22TNrb3ntHw6iua336RrUYSD1UmUCh3zky1hgPTBH4QRTwvCFBajbyU2uWfX9iMSqkWMVTbcKWBfTHoQwovnaCZCd1ABBuTWNegpXawz1dJeqMM | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/0BiNb8HYR4JvuxUa31Z58Q | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/58758339,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63335108d997a1f3e8a0cefd/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/R.E.M.%2520-%2520Automatic%2520for%2520the%2520People.jpg,/dataset/artwork/REM-Automatic_for_the_People_1992.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,62,Juvenile,400 Degreez (1998),Universal / Cash Money,"Universal / Cash Money 400 Degreez stands as the ultimate Mannie Fresh production—a sweaty, irresistible ride through the sights and sounds of New Orleans’ Third Ward. The beatmaker always excelled at squeezing the soul and funk out of programmed drums and keyboards, but his partnership with Juvenile—a mealy-mouthed, melodic rapper from the Magnolia Projects—resulted in a mélange of bounce and rap that was darker and more viscous than anything he’d done before. Juvenile would come to Mannie with fully written verses, and Mannie would make beats on the spot that molded to his cadences. The effect is music and voice in total symbiosis: See the album’s masterpiece, “Ha,” where Juvenile’s talky flow dips in and out of Mannie’s groove, a rhythm inside a rhythm. –Mano Sundaresan",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1rQgVVT196J3NdaGvUF3bY4VKDeXxrXQrKQPfQ3YJKrpvZR | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/MKEh7BpQXwWWp1Y3i6D9RjWuqrJsu9zvnz9d36jPMPvD98gTrNrqcRAvCcYCX4oSM9jZscHurCooXc4F442PjYSAu9nqZxt3p88nWYTFYXXiWkWD5wDocPGA5N67kgMd9hgfNixPGQReRNUzrxR4AndfYMGFSKXhD | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/6wpqS71CJr3I0dLguYiZdJ | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/35695716,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63335197cb86801423062ea0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Juvenile%2520-%2520400%2520Degreez.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Juvenile-400_Degreez_1998.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,61,Massive Attack,Blue Lines (1991),Wild Bunch / Virgin,"Wild Bunch / Virgin In the decade leading up to Blue Lines, Bristol was home to reggae soundsystems, post-punk bohemians, and some of the UK’s earliest converts to hip-hop. Massive Attack emerged from this ferment of overlapping undergrounds. The group’s core of 3D, Daddy G, Mushroom, and Tricky were crate-digging DJs and MCs who’d grown up on 2-Tone and post-punk, and chose to rap using the faltering phrasing of English speech patterns rather than pretend to be American. They were inventing a new archetype of the meditative MC, a British homegrown mode that would blossom with Tricky’s solo album Maxinquaye, the street-level reveries of Mike Skinner, and Dizzee Rascal’s more introspective moments. But while the mumbled flows, samples, and scratching identify Blue Lines as hip-hop, the album’s scope is expansive, embracing soul and reggae with achingly melodic contributions from Shara Nelson and Horace Andy, and nodding to the grandeur of film scores and jazz fusion. Rolling at a languid 90 BPM—or slower—Blue Lines reflects the spliff-tempo metabolism of Bristol’s stoners. Massive were hardly slackers, though; ambitiously conceived and immaculately achieved, the landmark Blue Lines mapped out directions that would define the British ’90s and reverberate to this day. –Simon Reynolds",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufanhrWvbDCFCNxAaqs7kC29tUusp53WojaY8rHbNsr6xNKjFhV | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/ZxssCo8SeuM6mRcDQfvUeNTNYQAjiyZjfaBb5th84ZcVLxECX7vxkf5SkeET5snFJTZe3XRRTsHKXPjnFy2ozExhNZkG18gAti4foBXnU9EqdfpZWL8HWxSAF57qnW9pV3fkKhFXed5P5aNU5RDJNUXwoRq56j3az88EThSwJvEJUY9VZ58F | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5mAPk4qeNqVLtNydaWbWlf | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/17691643,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633351ff7688464689951d1c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Massive%2520Attack%2520-%2520Blue%2520Lines.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Massive_Attack-Blue_Lines_1991.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,60,Mariah Carey,Butterfly (1997),Columbia,"Columbia Fueled by the tantric edging of an extramarital liaison and the pleasure of “finally getting a shot of good Vitamin D,” as she cheekily put it in her memoir, Butterfly is Mariah Carey at 28, reawakened by “breathless and fervid” love affairs, as well as a post-divorce freedom to fully embrace Black genres in her music and write from the heart. She is a babydoll with a tear-soaked pillow; a sexy-ass vixen; a technician and a tone poet. Few but Carey can sing “My All” on a technical level, but Butterfly rarely feels like vocal showboating; her voice weaves textural tapestries over in the cut R&B, and she takes audible pleasure in her instrument’s elasticity. Particularly heavenly is the five-song hang suite at Butterfly’s center, a showcase for the strength she finds in vulnerable sensuality, as well as sympatico with peers like Mobb Deep and Bone Thugs-N-Harmony—collaborators she lavishes in layers of harmony like tweezed gold leaf. –Owen Myers",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam6pthT3TjD3iJXMDpfuCCeWbRh2MyA4AE3ZC2iFLqwXtNipK | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/Ehjr9t1bfyFgs5GtcpxVsAdcRJm1vtb9Ubjx5sTFJYB6r2e4TjtG8vb1rkTFisrhHbExGSy1DgZK5HrzBQjdeFLuEEKV6cgyqEv1UGWkHuMZ864vEieCU5yayRXcC6C8rxmPorHAonxBNMucNJsvgsDxbwjFq | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/7aDBFWp72Pz4NZEtVBANi9 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/30015542,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633352744180c08bebb59bf9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mariah%2520Carey%2520-%2520Butterfly.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mariah_Carey-Butterfly_1997.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,59,JAY-Z,Reasonable Doubt (1996),Priority / Roc-A-Fella,"Priority / Roc-A-Fella A quarter century later, it’s hard to see JAY-Z as anything but the lordly figure he has become, but his first album is a reminder that nothing about him or his success was inevitable. Inspired by Nas’ Illmatic, the Brooklyn-by-way-of-Trenton, New Jersey high school dropout and drug dealer crafted some of the most crushing tales of poverty, hustling, and street politics in hip-hop history on Reasonable Doubt. The street details are intricate and vivid. The hustler aspires to the big time, but he’s not quite dreaming of a mogul’s life. He takes his wages to Vegas—to bet against Mike Tyson—so he can get a break on his taxes. He buys the whole car and never leases. This is the good life as imagined by someone balanced on the edge between making it and oblivion. –Jayson Buford",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufduhpy1gC22MooVMBxRsysH3yckjY3BWs1LdRxEoePi5EhwHe3 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/B7jB7s3t6nATUHhGS3LABK1jRyUqXu5qUiD3X7BcXCzdH57FA1micAPWpwPFjkbPZ83VowWmGRrwDA37nhRX9jMpqYqMBRzqnehZ7mmsoTvDZk44YqmXFw2wbcwNhP8oP3r2gE4G83z2xgxtCzvXVVTNoJKrTH2Df3NEDw6j | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3YPK0bNOuayhmSrs0sIIBR | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/115084360,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633355a512e43930baa6dd04/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jay-Z%2520-%2520Reasonable%2520Doubt.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/JAY-Z-Reasonable_Doubt_1996.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,58,Slowdive,Souvlaki (1993),Creation,"Creation By the time frontman Neil Halstead turned up to record Slowdive’s second album, with his iconic shaggy hair shorn off after a “bad acid experience,” it was already clear that the group, once heralded as a boundary-pushing act in the nascent shoegaze scene, was in crisis. Halstead’s relationship with bandmate Rachel Goswell was unraveling, the British music press were beginning to use the group as a punching bag, and Alan McGee, head of their label Creation Records, openly disliked their new songs. Emotions were raw, but that’s always where Slowdive thrive. Souvlaki has since become a touchstone for virtually every reverb-clouded, feelings-forward act that has come in its wake. Part of the power of these songs has to do with their uncomfortable closeness: The Halstead-sung acoustic closer “Dagger” is so intimate that Goswell had a hard time listening to it for years. But even amid all that heaviness, the music still manages to float above—an attractive notion, then and now. –Colin Joyce",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufdr7byqRitBgdHa8k9ABPUL93QnukP6RM6jemKg9SZNWD691e3 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/474N76DNT3n1smUARtCDRxekNNF3vu1wV1AjPQDHqP1vtSJ1LCXeQzuZpXEemqE59HpZutecPp2RwSa5M2keJW5WWHAAzVX3YaDT7SJ2JSemGWNaPjFnQJt7uzJkWCrWd33ks68GQMS2M5UZHgjJXgjxNwyu | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/53eHm1f3sFiSzWMaKOl98Z | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/4869383,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333562e8f0d7ac40b58df56/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Slowdive%2520-%2520Souvlaki.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Slowdive-Souvlaki_1993.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,57,Mobb Deep,The Infamous (1995),RCA / Loud,"RCA / Loud It’s strange to think now that Prodigy and Havoc had already been dropped by their label before making The Infamous, as a commercially dead debut record and the explosion of their Queensbridge peer Nas had sent Mobb Deep skidding to the gutter. But it was precisely from this gloom that their perfectly formed second LP would emerge. There’s storytelling here that Davids Chase and Simon would admire, along with one-liners and street aphorisms that have punctured and filtered through pop culture ever since. (Just try to find a lyric catchier or more visceral than “Rock you in your face, stab your brain with your nose bone.”) Perhaps the only thing to top the pair’s relentless lyricism is the sampling—so delicate and precise, yet rough edged, crackling, and endlessly intriguing. There’s a minute-long YouTube video breaking down the piano sample on “Shook Ones Pt. II” that’s been watched millions of times since it was posted in 2011. It took years for anyone to figure out how Havoc did it in the first place; even now, knowing how he pulled it off can’t explain its genius. –Will Pritchard",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufeJ3u5gutY4yxzwZRZKjM5AsP8cooMTYcCp6Gy1BzcDKBs5Ao5 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/MKEh7BpQXwWWp1Y3i6D9RjWuqrJsu9zvnz9d36jPMPvD98gTrNrqcRAvCcYCX4oSM9jZscHurCooXc4F442PjYSAu9nqakms9NXqhnC7hkAf7nrEDqDLaeHxFTZPGrKzFinBL9bGXZwNAiV8haaqhYUFonWRY6gZ1 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1cCAb1vN8uUsdfEylVmTLs | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/1845906 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-QS4CTtltg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633356a41dccce609e4163b5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mobb%2520Deep%2520-%2520The%2520Infamous.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Mobb_Deep-The_Infamous_1995.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,56,Scott Walker,Tilt (1995),Fontana / Drag City,"Fontana / Drag City Scott Walker turned the act of bucking expectations into its own class of performance art—a lifelong piece urging his career as a renegade pop star into increasingly thorny terrain. 1995’s Tilt was especially jagged; 11 years after releasing the orchestral Climate of Hunter, Walker burst from the abyss with a disturbed industrial opera. Walker’s voice is booming and grand, towering even amid blasting pipe organ and chopper-blade percussion. His lyrics are stark, cryptic, and terrifying, though he later lamented that critics missed the comedy in his work (the subtly raunchy “Rosary” affirms his humor). The purchasing public were also prone to confusion; in the early 2000s, Walker reflected on one fan’s assessment: “I had a guy sit down next to me in the tube,” he recalled. “He said, ‘I have to tell you, I’m a big fan of yours. I bought your last two records… and I’m never going to buy one again!’” The man exited the train, leaving Walker delighted. It was all part of the performance. –Madison Bloom",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam7e5WLCCDdzRa8n2e5rmse5DA87k3KFYhALJ2i6dGJSWdLju | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/36TDN37JM9t1EvKKNRQCGk3CY6xhpL8WggqiWdjnLMJ4zBzMchvYX7vd3g1nFoMMe8FPVsZtHzDAnYLLnHTVVAU8BatVswbZ3Da8gLcxiwZpWdmrRSFzvReYggqDn5TMqs1GND2sUnASfC7oqXYB3cZy | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/0vd2UrnAUlxVHlVFwmgiNC?si=L3iNL98AS3eelT20257l8Q | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/639123,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333590162b037a9a1513b64/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Scott%2520Walker%2520-%2520Tilt.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Scott_Walker-Tilt_1995.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,55,Madonna,Ray of Light (1998),Maverick / Warner Bros.,"Maverick / Warner Bros. Inspired by the deaths of her mother and her friend Gianni Versace, as well as the birth of her daughter Lourdes, Ray of Light is Madonna’s most heartbroken and most ecstatically joyful album. Fusing icy electronica and new-age music with elements of trip-hop, Britpop, and grunge, Ray of Light found Madonna trying, with all her might, to evoke the blackest depths and most euphoric joys of the human heart. The album’s title track sounds like it was forged inside a meteor; the surreal, pitch-black poem “Mer Girl” is as still as death itself. The grief of the latter is an insurmountable tide, while motherhood, evoked in the former, acts as a ballast against it. No other Madonna album, before or after, has captured a feeling so vast. –Shaad D’Souza",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam6oZT96toZFdd3nF8HEYMJun4T4UFzQH2LqmoqQBVWbvE8Fu | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/Ehjr9t1bfyFgs5GtcpxVsAdcRJm1vtb9Ubjx5sTFJYB6r2e4TjtG8vb1rkTFisrhHbExGSy1DgZK5HrzBQjdeFLuEEKV6kN86L6KmM3srGxNyHq38pALpHTcj5cscCFaCA4b62sWJXNQ8Qnkn3YkKJHe4s9GF | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/6cuNyrSmRjBeekioLdLkvI | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/1669846,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63335a0ff2e57bfbb70500a0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Madonna%2520-%2520Ray%2520of%2520Light.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Madonna-Ray_of_Light_1998.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,54,Scarface,The Diary (1994),Rap-A-Lot / Noo Trybe,"Rap-A-Lot / Noo Trybe In 1991, Brad Jordan was already Houston’s definitive orator of desperation, struggle, and occasional triumph. Three years removed from his introduction to America on the Geto Boys’ “Mind Playing Tricks on Me,” the rapper aptly named Scarface settled into a wizened, often bleak groove on his third solo album, The Diary. Steeped in the Southern blues, with syrupy yet morose production from Mike Dean, N.O. Joe, Uncle Eddie, and Scarface himself, The Diary is a tour through the mind of a paranoid and fatalistic man who happened to end up speaking for thousands of listeners who also stopped giving a fuck a long time ago. Face crafts a picture of failed redemption on “I Seen a Man Die,” takes aim at media hypocrisy and the demonization of gangsta rap on “Hand of the Dead Body” alongside Ice Cube, and ultimately damns America and society at large for making him, his peers, and his fans what they are. A bleaker picture never sounded so rich. –Brandon Caldwell",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufaoCQSwxyQtth2EwwLkLrvq2tH8MahUfre9z12MoZymt4Ux6Gs | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/Ehjr9t1bfyFgs5GtcpxVsAdcRJm1vtb9Ubjx5sTFJYB6r2e4TjtG8vb1rkTFisrhHbExGSy1DgZK5HrzBQjdeFLuEEKV6mLo3JZRqct66ndGpfU1eax68t6qni71FxZZ8f4TTbapo6qLZzvpHF45rbj28e5Ky | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2Z1lDWB2EfTUKV5ILxjdvu | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/22330975,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63335acccb86801423062ea2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Scarface%2520-%2520The%2520Diary.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Scarface-The_Diary_1994.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,53,Aphex Twin,Selected Ambient Works Volume II (1994),Warp,"Warp Richard D. James once told David Toop that Selected Ambient Works Volume II was meant to feel like “standing in a power station on acid,” swimming in electrical hum. The 1994 album marked an austere new extreme for a style that, in the early 1990s, was mostly associated with chillout rooms and post-rave comedowns. Crashing partiers would have found little comfort here: SAW II’s more than two dozen tracks are as ethereal as the vapor rising from dry ice, and as stark as one of Dan Flavin’s fluorescent tubes. It was a far cry from the lush pads and splintered breakbeats of Aphex’s much more reassuring Selected Ambient Works 85-92, released just two years before, and the polar opposite of the hyperactive drill’n’bass he’d take up with 1995’s …I Care Because You Do. But the album’s singularity is part of what makes it so special—as though James had snuck into one of his beloved substations, swallowed a tab, and switched on his recorder, in the process picking up a frequency that was never to be repeated. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufdqv2c2Zyexe4y4y7Sn5FykSShW13QafgFkYeGiYVf9xVikkRq | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2FTC5bHweKNXpHC9thPgiTMZ7CKV7gyqnq3T43d9US4PEFsoPMbz36ZSb45vo7Po67YwfeFw1VePqcR4tiByG9dEytLCG87wb4JyjQh6y5Tzg1bcBbWKsdntaEdXzeMfd1TNJzq6v6fSzHtBfXP24FzSJsYFCiuDdsm2G8vEzTgLbCSTEw9iqtZXQKyyd | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/17vHPMmoxN5B8cdhCDeMTe | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/16024086,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63335bb362b037a9a1513b66/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Aphex%2520Twin%2520-%2520Selected%2520Ambient%2520Works%2520Volume%2520II%2520.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Aphex_Twin-Selected_Ambient_Works_Volume_II_1994.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,52,Sade,Love Deluxe (1992),Epic,"Epic Sade would remain largely quiet for the remainder of the ’90s, but the icier electronic textures of Love Deluxe functioned as a bridge between the art pop scene of the previous decade and the trip-hop of the next, as their jazz-inflected sophisti-pop evolved from the warmth of the live club to the cold steel of the studio. The stiff breakbeat of “No Ordinary Love” is a sharp opening turn, and as the song progresses and lightly metal guitar riffs intertwine with Sade Adu’s yearning voice, it becomes apparent why Deftones would later cover the song. On their earlier records, the band’s playing is parallel to Adu’s instrument, loosely flowing with an improvisatory ache, but on Love Deluxe, their function is more perpendicular—an almost robotically precise machine that creates a chilling sense of counterpoint to the singer’s natural warmth. Once unfairly derided for sounding too smooth, Sade’s Love Deluxe prefigured the chilled-out turn the British music scene would take in the years to come. –Nadine Smith",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam6pthuty6zTTnLM63P5vAo1N6vZVMDZi43FkYgEQUSNE3oyD | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/5bwkygcD8TrHGdppHZSrwYPBcY7KL4rNhn7wPE5csqh9eBoYusiekNLU1NC9W1rwgTSxUn9pKQ4onuMDhZrhwx9sjB9aDA5dKjoCKDEM3CqHKQEeExeV9ZYMZSA4m7MdBpjHjcT2rPgsBHSYUUCssNBXXBdC2D3y | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2PfGKHtqEX58bHtkQxJnWG | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/149574907,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63335c3d2ca381f0210fb7e3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sade%2520-%2520Love%2520Deluxe.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sade-Love_Deluxe_1992.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,51,Alanis Morissette,Jagged Little Pill (1995),Maverick,"Maverick At a time when female singer-songwriters were getting just popular enough to have their talents regularly diminished by the rock establishment, Alanis was the most popular and most misunderstood of all. Her famous misuse of irony in “Ironic” (or was it intentional meta-irony?) left her even more open to mockery and the danger of being a flash in the pan. But Pill embodied a sharp, unashamed, sometimes hilarious range of emotions from rage to deep affection that listeners could relate to on a molecular level. “You Oughta Know” was the primal scream of a betrayed lover that dispenses with melancholy to embrace mess; “Head Over Feet” marveled at the long-resisted realization that healthy relationships can exist after all. We laughed at Alanis, but we also cried, yelled, and laughed with her. –Evie Nagy",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam7Th4a6RQRZmg91JTEukv6VUNwbMh81FHunTfYLHb4zwLUpB | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/4iheeJwWD8ieNhakwNtVbCeWuwR1qfJRV7bDBka8akcakztZ2NpTMJ2tSVUJ3Lf4GkGgvH9aXEKTzZ2kWz8WEthRX2c5Pdw1tmMutKzuEAnQjMvPqudT8V7WQC44Fxh7F9VJ2brtAV9U8vgrCEGrCXHGdQp9Quk4NXeYLpY6zt8Y4fMShMxD85Cs6s | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5Ap3F8CxjjsQKZGASDcHNA | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/308569,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63335d544e7c28d8b1f4c50b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Alanis%2520Morissette%2520-%2520Jagged%2520Little%2520Pill.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Alanis_Morissette-Jagged_Little_Pill_1995.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,50,Elliott Smith,Elliott Smith (1995),Kill Rock Stars,"Kill Rock Stars Getting people to agree on the one skill that made Elliott Smith an icon is nearly impossible, because there’s too many to choose from. On his sophomore album, he established his wealth of talent and set its everlasting influence into motion. Recorded in friends’ basements with a stripped-down setup, Elliott Smith showcases everything that would define Smith as a singular artist: haunting lyrics (“Needle in the Hay”), odd guitar tunings and chords that sound easier to play than they are (“Southern Belle”), double-tracked vocals that add a depth and warmth to his voice (“St. Ides Heaven”), a songwriting style driven by delicacy and intuition (“Alphabet Town”). From the album’s epochal opening strums onwards, Smith appears like an apparition surrounded by fog, equal parts dream and omen as he invites you to let the haze envelop you, too. –Nina Corcoran",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufeJ4d6UuQCu5oi7AhAuDDAuVBzu2pjkhcNnz8eQxfPv6WBSE9h | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2YfVS2JkEsZbGaVN2xMzcCAf2EcdufCigRyF44GJ5f29ratuBWwUyZKgmpFrhqhmxswYt6NmeGB7aN5jK2UM9Lmk6hBoKRAwiMXbyi2wgtmV4jsTPG3dueL48DjB8KXuSgYP85bFeb2CfmGGo3JHRrvtmM2S7VKNcsD | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/60C4r1YwIxsliktUL6eXfw | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/19117048,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63335ec31dccce609e4163b7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Elliott%2520Smith%2520-%2520Elliot%2520Smith.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Elliott_Smith-Elliott_Smith_1995.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,49,DJ Shadow,Endtroducing... (1996),Mo' Wax,"Mo' Wax The expressive possibilities of sample-based music were still unfolding in the ’90s as 1) hungry copyright lawyers began litigating the artform into oblivion, and 2) America’s rap mainstream began a hard-pivot into dirty-realist minimalism. All of which made the Sistine Chapel-scaled achievement of Endtroducing… that much more impressive. Mostly instrumental and entirely sample-based, it fused an astonishing variety of fragments—of Metallica, Björk, Giorgio Moroder, Meredith Monk, Funkadelic, and even private press high school band recordings, many scavenged from the record shop on the album’s iconic cover—using the fairly primitive tools that Sacramento, California record nerd and DJ Josh Davis had at his disposal: an Akai MPC60 sampler, a Technics SL-1200 turntable, and an Alesis ADAT digital recorder. The result is a crate-digger fantasia that collapses time and space, creating polyglot virtual supergroups of the living and the dead, the known and the unknown. It expanded—and exploded—the idea of what a hip-hop album could be, dazzlingly positing an art form that was capacious and voracious enough to contain multitudes. –Will Hermes",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufdthgk5JeNMJ3jopoTxp9q18aycHB94CHekvs2wvKcbdKPhokX | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2YfVS2JkEsZbGaVN2xMzcCAf2EcdufCigRyF44GJ5f29ratuBWwUyZKgmpFrhqhmxswYt6NmeGB7aN5jK2UM9Lmk6hBoKRAy7xrUKNopJWESAWYwZVgyMTJW5u8bzqWJuM6cSXERbhmCFY6ctUbdWSdRWbbzKoVwPrK | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/4wvqGLk1HThPA0b5lzRK2l | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/102048718,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63335f4d10c581ffac68d213/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/DJ%2520Shadow%2520-%2520Endtroducing.jpg,/dataset/artwork/DJ_Shadow-Endtroducing_1996.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,48,Fugees,The Score (1996),Columbia,"Columbia The Score—featuring U.S.-born Lauryn Hill and Pras Michel and Haitian immigrant Wyclef Jean—is suffused with a refugee’s sense of being forever unstuck from place and time, voracious about using every bit of cultural material it can find, like someone collaging together the elements of an identity. What is subtext in so much of music is text here—it’s an album about lives built in opposition, never wholly assimilable in a hostile land, which is to say it’s an immigrant’s album (and also an album about New Jersey). Even Hill, the star of the show, comes off here like a stranger in her own country. There’s a dizzying moment when Jean sings a version of Bob Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry” (the cover would later be remixed as a duet with Bob’s son Stephen). The song folds into itself not just the original but the cover by Boney M. and the mordant sample of the cover by East Orange, New Jersey’s Naughty by Nature, evoking at once the Haiti that Jean left, the Brooklyn he arrived in, the Jamaica that Bob Marley knew, and the Jersey of the Fugees’ present. There's something so moving about it—as if the song were trying to wrap its arms around the diaspora. –Tommy Craggs",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam7AXvVBfqWHbcLWSzRpKbtA9pTv9CRLmDwzqu2LMKoi6QTeb | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/Ehjr9t1bfyFgs5GtcpxVsAdcRJm1vtb9Ubjx5sTFJYB6r2e4TjtG8vb1rkTFisrhHbExGSy1DgZK5HrzBQjdeFLuEEKV6mLo3JaXpwrhPXBceJArzXQLEbfPbVKruWe5GRnMv9omVdx3MAbaoxaL5dh9crkFd | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/4z6F5s3RVaOsekuaegbLfD | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/107394129,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63335fdc8f0d7ac40b58df58/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Fugees%2520-%2520The%2520Score.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Fugees-The_Score_1996.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,47,Sleater-Kinney,Dig Me Out (1997),Kill Rock Stars,"Kill Rock Stars Dig Me Out is one of the rare rock albums that makes a case for rock as a revivifying force and does not whiff. Music is the air that Sleater-Kinney breathes; their voices are your favorite song, and you must know that committing to loving these women makes you liable to live in lyrical infamy. If you didn’t get the message, it’s there in their refined interplay and surging drama. In this corpus of sound, bolstered by robust rock, blues, and a fresh sense of playfulness, Corin Tucker, Carrie Brownstein, and Janet Weiss got their satisfaction and stoked appetites that other forces were intent on diminishing. It was their biggest success to date, shaking off the vestiges of the post-riot grrrl era and euphorically laying siege to the cloistered rock establishment. “Can’t take this away from me,” Brownstein sings on “Words and Guitar,” with matter-of-fact tartness. –Laura Snapes",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufaoukZMpW9KxvwiAzjvhPSYjV6N86uqmJnCWpGybKtipEa9G2o | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/29CLTwheRZNbn8esbYm7MXCvBW5AqRiuV2rkxzL68ZhZakTS8MPQjntM9eJYYf8EpCq592XdCBpDEyUwpZUBUL7o8wUGv6qKtpTJGH55fYSseGNpkRuxkLaeHSNBxfrbhYZxLGzDRUZAHrapMB6PmNm7VfNeHNn6CZagwBb8k3sWCK | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://sleaterkinney.bandcamp.com/album/dig-me-out-remastered | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3tshnNFNhHrO6NUQ0BHw42 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/76727835,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633360498f0d7ac40b58df5a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sleater-Kinney%2520-%2520Dig%2520Me%2520Out.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Sleater-Kinney-Dig_Me_Out_1997.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,46,UGK,Ridin’ Dirty (1996),Jive,"Jive It was their third album, and their last chance. The Port Arthur, Texas duo Bun B and Pimp C had watched Jive Records bowdlerize their music for years—stripping samples, switching backing tracks, launching clueless and half-hearted promotions—and this time, their only request was to be left alone to make the album they heard in their heads. Ridin’ Dirty was the result. Like Dr. Dre in the West, Pimp C dreamed of rap albums as layered and luxuriant as soul classics by Curtis Mayfield or Isaac Hayes. On Ridin’ Dirty, every breath sounds drawn in real time, every key feels pressed down by a finger right next to your ear. N.O. Joe, a mentor to Pimp C, played many of the drum tracks live, giving them the feel of a late-night band. Even Bun B’s mesmerizing verse on “Murder”—a blizzard of interlocking lines, enjambment, and darting emphases meant to show the world that the South contained a rapper every bit as technically fearsome as JAY-Z or Nas—was recorded in a single take, with no punch-ins. It sold respectably. Promotions and media coverage remained sparse. Pimp C, who passed in 2007, wouldn’t live to see Ridin’ Dirty become what it is today: The Chronic of the South, a single-album stand-in for “Texas rap,” and one of the most pained and enduring documents of street struggles ever recorded. –Jayson Greene",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam6puHqvhGJYWHpbiebU5p1YdSdXYgQanQPmMtSW3W8k3PPib | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/5bwkygcD8TrHGdppHZSrwYPBcY7KL4rNhn7wPE5csqh9eBoYusiekNLU1NC9W1rwgTSxUn9pKQ4onuMDhZrhwx9sjB9aDB3kNuKtXTViXmvQwFpbqXRZMqeSK9eFktTWxKZrz9Ktq6ZqFrx2rr99whLD528Yt55u | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/4jTPQq9PSlKMOm1yLx2ATN | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/4955778,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633360d64e7c28d8b1f4c50d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/UGK%2520-%2520Ridin%2520Dirty.jpg,/dataset/artwork/UGK-Ridin_Dirty_1996.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,45,Destiny’s Child,The Writing’s on the Wall (1999),Columbia,"Columbia Legendary girl groups aren’t created overnight. Watch clips of a baby-faced Destiny’s Child rehearsing or revisit the countless interviews where former members detailed the “Olympic-style” training regimen that would catapult them to fame. Their work ethic and talent caught the industry’s eyes by the time the group's members—initially Beyoncé Knowles, Kelly Rowland, LaTavia Roberson, and LeToya Luckett—were still in high school, and their second album, The Writing’s on the Wall, kept the world’s attention. Produced by an all-star roster of seasoned industry professionals like Missy Elliott, Kandi Burruss, Kevin “She’kspere” Briggs and Rodney Jerkins, the album combined sophisticated R&B production with the exuberant theatrics of young women. There were controversial and empowering anthems, homages to The Godfather and Set it Off, playful threats to have AOL shut down their email because a man wouldn’t stop messaging them, a slew of the decade’s most reliable party-starting bangers. It was also the launching pad for contemporary pop’s most enduring and evolutionary star, one that Beyoncé consistently pays homage to through periodic reunions and nostalgic home movie clips. –Heven Haile",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam6pthuyPCJaqzDckEkhUAgELA1KV6zgEJY7VHu21EPv8Py6s | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2h8zKZvUAqv9bScU3SWqLSQ14Mhv9oyTckCaWdKvQAMSEwpzRk9ZyFaLQTRhk6jgnu2rrAr2KwPPBGAYCm5mR38tzShbtnUv6FFXnUpxYSeCrnuNYZqaVA9pYFK2h4CX7cRZV1uCtDTTefAb1QKgqKrzdkasACphsjYfbFoUhSkuHhPqmD | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/283NWqNsCA9GwVHrJk59CG | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/1321114 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lf9_3-XSxSE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333616c1dccce609e4163b9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Destiny_s%2520Child%2520-%2520The%2520Writing_s%2520on%2520the%2520Wall.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Destinys_Child-The_Writings_on_the_Wall_1999.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,44,Stereolab,Emperor Tomato Ketchup (1996),Duophonic / Elektra,"Duophonic / Elektra “Olv 26,” the sixth song on Stereolab’s 1996 album Emperor Tomato Ketchup, opens with the pulsing of a drum machine, the hissy and primitive sort that were attached to electronic organs in the 1960s and ’70s. These “rhythm boxes,” as they were known back then, came with preloaded patterns for particular styles: waltz, cha cha, bossa nova, rock’n’roll. But to contemporary ears, their mechanized beats suggest rudimentary early stabs at genres that didn’t yet exist: synth-pop, house, hip-hop, techno. Stereolab’s fourth album lives in this historical interzone, coming off simultaneously like the past’s vision of a glorious future that never quite came to pass, and an attempt at recreating an idyllic past they never experienced for themselves. Lætitia Sadier, Tim Gane, and their cohort were students of the sorts of music the rhythm boxes were trying to emulate, but also of krautrock, punk, disco, classical minimalism—anything that found its groove through stripped-down repetition. On Emperor Tomato Ketchup, they synthesized all of it. The sense of lost futures was not only an aesthetic proposition, but a political one as well: Joyous in tone but often scathing in subject matter, the album imagined a borderless utopia of sound while denouncing the powers that be for preventing such a paradise from manifesting in the world outside your headphones. –Andy Cush",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufdubduSxsGbnGGCRN2ZvxyUs6vfQFmqvWzPWHqrxdA6o7k7cyy | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/PEbHSas7Jt1b5tzL8bQBkN56HvgEKoKidXGJ8n4we1YzzHJziVgBw42E21AEPbbPdiCkK6DY2Sv4EQTZ7pJK8ja5QVgdCTnCUUyqG8dmYFXJ17yBKiNPiYbrCoqrGnYcWV29ZFS22GzYZFoy6q4xeMmcGXNdVUAyMi6EYbb6SQsmCfbq | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://stereolab.bandcamp.com/album/emperor-tomato-ketchup-expanded-edition | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/6SI4L8ARoPuOCGcnBrnIkn | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/94896896,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333624112e43930baa6dd06/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Stereolab%2520-%2520Emperor%2520Tomato%2520Ketchup.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Stereolab-Emperor_Tomato_Ketchup_1996.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,43,Le Tigre,Le Tigre (1999),Mr. Lady,"Mr. Lady Evolving from Kathleen Hanna’s post-Bikini Kill solo project the Julie Ruin, Le Tigre were a leftist School House Rock girl group rolling their eyes at electronic music elitism. Their debut album opened with the question “Who took the bomp?”, inverting the doo-wop standard to declare that nothing is fresh, only repurposed. But Hanna and collaborators Johanna Fateman and Sadie Benning didn’t just offer criticism; there was also gray space, and solutions. “What’s Yr Take on Cassavetes?” is meditative proto-cancel culture wrestling with a problematic fave over a mechanical heartbeat, while “Hot Topic” suggests a host of artistic palliatives, from David Wojnarowicz to No Limit soldier Mia X. Above all, Le Tigre is pure, exuberant fun—not to mention the album that called Rudy Giuliani a “fucking jerk” before the rest of the country knew it to be true. –Claire Lobenfeld",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufaohN2qqkXdCH7ZEtgZjisF4Ro32WUUgqJiFzuPDhoEw2G973R | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/Ehjr9t1bfyFgs5GtcpxVsAdcRJm1vtb9Ubjx5sTFJYB6r2e4TjtG8vb1rkTFisrhHbExGSy1DgZK5HrzBQjdeFLuEEKV6hUnFCovt3twTx2iqjXMc35rp33fbnJCuzx2PBKxKydQCVYG76MA5oo1g7bv5gDaK | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/0dSSZGzoukzrFBnG07J45i | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/92268617 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXmsLe8t_gg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633362d08f0d7ac40b58df5c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Le%2520Tigre%2520-%2520Le%2520Tigre.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Le_Tigre-Le_Tigre_1999.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,42,TLC,CrazySexyCool (1994),LaFace / Arista,"LaFace / Arista With their impressive debut, 1992’s light-hearted Ooooooohhh… on the TLC Tip, the Atlanta trio of T-Boz, Left Eye, and Chilli introduced themselves as the girls next door of new jack swing. On their follow-up, TLC remade the template for R&B and hip-hop hybrids altogether. CrazySexyCool is best remembered for its massive coming-of-age hits: horn-stabbed infidelity narrative “Creep,” socially conscious Stax-horns singalong “Waterfalls,” consummately horny slow jam “Red Light Special.” But its brash spirit is embodied in the cameo-filled interludes, like when Chilli prank calls Puff Daddy and feigns arousal only to reveal, as her moans give way to a flush, that she’s on the toilet. On guitar-blazing finale “Sumthin’ Wicked This Way Comes,” Left Eye even trades introspective verses with a pre-ATLiens André 3000. Collectively, TLC always prevailed. Their cover of Prince’s winking come-on “If I Was Your Girlfriend” may have lost the implied gender reversal of the original, but it cheekily demonstrated what the world would learn on TLC’s next album, 1999’s FanMail: These women would suffer no scrubs. –Marc Hogan",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam6wayUc1kjvg6bFCcvLdwikphMFJVq4d35GDxYYMAcnyrdab | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2YfVS2JkEsZbGaVN2xMzcCAf2EcdufCigRyF44GJ5f29ratuBWwUyZKgmpFrhqhmxswYt6NmeGB7aN5jK2UM9Lmk6hBoKR4i5YwH4ZPhPtCyDw3814s4Us6djhLEnV3euFRqH1cSaE5CRS42TNg8NLkYW1KJ9F74Ehy | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5eg56dCpFn32neJak2vk0f | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/667700,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633363b62ca381f0210fb7e5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/TLC%2520-%2520CrazySexyCool.jpg,/dataset/artwork/TLC-CrazySexyCool_1994.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,41,Raekwon,Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… (1995),Loud / RCA,"Loud / RCA Inspired by John Woo’s The Killer and Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… stars Raekwon as Lex Diamonds, a Henry Hill-like character who uses a cryptic mix of street slang and Five Percenter mathematics to narrate the life and crimes of his gang, the Wu-Gambinos. As Tony Starks, Diamonds’ right-hand man, Ghostface Killah raps with the hot-headed swagger of Joe Pesci in a Scorsese film—in rhymes and skits they plot their hits, throw jabs at competitors, and dream about getting out of the game for good. RZA’s production acts like a gritty score for their braggadocious bars; his sample choice is at its murkiest, with dark piano chords, unintelligible moans, and crying violins creating an aura of uncertainty that emphasizes Raekwon’s stories of the struggle. Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… was a cinematic masterpiece, expanding the lore of the Wu-Tang Clan and ushering in a new era of mafioso rap. –Arjun Srivatsa",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam6pthT67SbGsBFjywdszgVfnEsEnpXe2MbuTVHEmsiYfQLNo | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/PEbHSas7Jt1b5tzL8bQBkN56HvgEKoKidXGJ8n4we1YzzHJziVgBw42E21AEPbbPdiCkK6DY2Sv4EQTZ7pJK8ja5QVgdCbc2sZBkrDoPi8TCmoJ2xAGUk6WWka4FvADyVN6qfTnHVu8rVkzRku7DKZo726JbpqpX2gYzytbmjL8MKnHH | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/7btiyhWzUfzxN3ijSiBpC8 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/1805232 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpmtMyr6orE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633364341dccce609e4163bb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Raekwon%2520-%2520Only%2520Built%25204%2520Cuban%2520Linx....jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Raekwon-Only_Built_4_Cuban_Linx_1995.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,40,Nine Inch Nails,The Downward Spiral (1994),Nothing / Interscope,"Nothing / Interscope The Downward Spiral is the full blossoming of Trent Reznor’s compositional genius and insatiable id. His wants are extreme (to break it up; to smash it up; to fuck you like an animal; to fuck everyone in the world), his alienation is profound. Paradoxically, his yelps of pain were never more uncompromising and never more commercially impactful. A loose concept album chronicling a slow-motion descent into addiction and suicide, The Downward Spiral fit snugly with the angst and self-hatred of the grunge revolution that ended with Kurt Cobain’s death in a Seattle greenhouse, weeks after this album was released. But musically, NIN’s greatest work bypasses grunge in favor of subtle textures and mangled nods to the art-rock of Reznor’s youth. Its stature as a masterpiece was assured well before Johnny Cash took a liking to its most haunting song, further cementing the album’s eternal anguish. –Zach Schonfeld",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1qJovvguLLEnC57tv3ZEWPBEgHXUG4P5hngqZTxZKq2HmXh | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/FzrGcxRntjxTYBr5CjAbZDfnRiGpg8gXpYfWT8VoaEipXEh8ZG3fF2DGZ1oa12e7ckyDhDq5M858hSN2iLkcC8RxGWk2cTBjLuYGQLxuZDiP1yFCPaBGLnqHDnK3ipkv4ceABa3pXvFMqD8FaofCgJqTpa6QGMCNtr1waYHYkkrf | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3nJnyDV8fwFpffo0EyHQto | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/637208 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AHCfZTRGiI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633364a9afa92f85cc3e4fda/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Nine%2520Inch%2520Nails%2520-%2520The%2520Downward%2520Spiral.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nine_Inch_Nails-The_Downward_Spiral_1994.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,39,2Pac,All Eyez on Me (1996),Death Row / Interscope,"Death Row / Interscope Luxurious in gangsta allegory, this 27-track opus from hip-hop’s Shakspeare in Karl Kani is all Alizé, no absolution. It’s an ungovernable object of flawed glory and gore crammed with tales of guns and gold, peppered with emotional conflict, and propelled by 2Pac’s outlaw brand of storytelling. The first two tracks he put on wax for the record—the snub-nosed “Ambitionz Az a Ridah” and the elegiac “I Ain’t Mad at Cha,” both recorded in the hours after his release from an eight-month stint in jail due to a sexual abuse conviction—typify the intoxicating polarities of All Eyez on Me, of what makes it such an entrancing work, in spite of its rank misogyny. The album is profuse with classics, including the era-defining “California Love,” but where it finds illumination—something Pac chased his entire career, trying as he could to evade the growing darkness around him—is in its funk-rich sound and range. Every Pac is given face: people’s champ, pariah, renegade. By September 1996, only seven months after the record’s release, Pac would be dead, killed in a storm of gunfire on the Las Vegas strip. We haven’t stopped looking for him since. –Jason Parham",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufemJLMRuKVhGLc8rcxeDigZFWEmvpm9emUCHczBwFvPvB65im9 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/X7niGYieCH8UQ8PGqdUBtg8M6SAMcPegELm2uaNkiXQqSRwp4HaQGxppbNbCMF44CZcGNECmFt4zQZRh1GRha7dMawYceYRFy9QnMRYzPHqrgGu5NP3FsedsbYii6BEw5rAeeL6T44d5cge4czuJkheJmjivwq4ix8qej | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/78iX7tMceN0FsnmabAtlOC | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/43746383,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333659210c581ffac68d215/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/2Pac%2520-%2520All%2520Eyez%2520on%2520Me.jpg,/dataset/artwork/2Pac-All_Eyez_on_Me_1996.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,38,Janet Jackson,janet. (1993),Virgin,"Virgin Released a few months before Janet Jackson made her film debut in the John Singleton picture Poetic Justice, janet. oozed maturity from a distinctive and ravenous narrator tapping into the intimacy of blues and the expansive improvisation of jazz. Urged on by trusted collaborators Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, Jackson co-wrote and co-produced every song on the record, and her gift for arrangements culminated in a project that was revelatory without pretense and assertive with its candor. A deeply personal undertaking, janet. irrevocably shifted the public and private inclinations of a society raised to visualize and consume: Tracks like “That’s the Way Love Goes,” “If” and “Any Time, Any Place” illustrated the depths and context of her desire and longing for liberation. The record had a seismic influence on artists working inside pop and R&B, as well as a generation that would make pleasure and sexual autonomy a cornerstone of their brands and lyrical signatures in hip-hop. –Tarisai Ngangura",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1mBeYfihx33GtDfBDm8UQfY4NkZY3gEiwtfSRrFPLLucZnj | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/AF4hZrJoZxC84SKr5YhNkUxhvHJs9uSA2Ar2Do9q6QaLbRW9zbdL7wZg6oCSkKar6rzWJSC9PyWiC1JNK8YJSAZSwvE29byAxdkjLXCW8HFi2Frj3sRqNa9bMFYqogtZ3JzRdjiMieL8nz3iVHgxnJ8WF | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/7qIuZgsMkRuh7rzi4qVcpg | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/2501081,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63336646aa79394c9a3e7fdc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Janet%2520Jackson%2520-%2520janet..jpg,/dataset/artwork/Janet_Jackson-janet_1993.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,37,Fiona Apple,Tidal (1996),Sony,"Sony In the summer of 1996, Fiona Apple’s piano-thudding debut revealed a fully formed voice that quickly cut through the fuzzed-out alt-rock of the era. Music executives who heard Tidal before it came out thought they were being tricked; it seemed impossible that songs like the knowing “Shadowboxer” and eviscerating “Sleep to Dream” could have come from a self-taught 18-year-old. Made with producer Andrew Slater, Apple’s music on Tidal is informed equally by the stylings of hip-hop, and jazz titans like Ella Fitzgerald, with lyrics that glide with the rhythmic grace of a poet. It is the sound of an artist emerging with a sense of clarifying self-sufficiency, opening up pivotal space for listeners who experience the world with the same vivid intensity. Apple’s incisive songwriting, smoky alto, and endlessly perceptive lyrics on Tidal remain as potent as ever. The delicate “Sullen Girl” and “Never Is a Promise” soothe the soul by opening up and nursing traumatic wounds; the instantly infamous “Criminal,” written in 45 minutes to satisfy Sony’s demand for a radio single, moves with seductive, snarling energy for a coolly insouciant bloodletting. The emotional flotsam that Apple sifts through—falling violently in and out of love, coping with depressive fallout, and finding a sense of self and purpose through it all—resonated with an entire generation and beyond, setting off tremors that reached everyone from Kanye to Olivia Rodrigo. It also led to her 1997 VMAs acceptance speech, a stunningly honest wake-up call to audiences entranced by the world of MTV that would come to define Apple’s ethos as an artist who moves at her own pace and refuses to take any of the industry’s bullshit. Hard-won resilience animates each of Apple’s albums, but it first took root within Tidal’s searingly truthful music. –Eric Torres",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufamCbQgdByqDku7cqaveCD7ii3U5nV784Sph4nRcJ4LQB2eHCX | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/36TDN37JM9t1EvKKNRQCGk3CY6xhpL8WggqiWdjnLMJ4zBzMchvYX7vd3g1nFoMMe8FPVsZtHzDAnYLLnLqKuNeiDtw9sSt45dAbRr2ssLF1CTK7Xo5vtveFESKpZEeExupyBqLdTnr7pdRCbQf2oB5d | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5gVBXH8MT6zfdRkjp7qT18 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/33771515 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vioJwze-KQ&feature=emb_title,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633366ba8f0d7ac40b58df5e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Fiona%2520Apple%2520-%2520Tidal.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Fiona_Apple-Tidal_1996.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,36,Lil’ Kim,Hard Core (1996),Undeas / Big Beat / Atlantic,"Undeas / Big Beat / Atlantic Brooklyn rapper Lil’ Kim’s debut album delivered a pussy power permission slip packaged in a mink coat. Brimming with unblushing sexuality, Hard Core’s humor, tight narratives, and bracing toughness have been an undercurrent in rap for nearly 25 years. There’s no Nicki, no CupcakKe, no “WAP” without these open-mouthed, open-legged bars. Kim’s gifts as a presence and a performer have resonated everywhere from various Real Housewives franchises to the upper echelons of high fashion. She offers a cheat sheet for surviving and thriving when the world wasn’t built for you to dominate. –Claire Lobenfeld",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufamD3dPN1W7p4iNGVBiWuoE8QpnszGhyERwzoATjjL4GqnSBpo | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/Ehjr9t1bfyFgs5GtcpxVsAdcRJm1vtb9Ubjx5sTFJYB6r2e4TjtG8vb1rkTFisrhHbExGSy1DgZK5HrzBQjdeFLuEEKV6fYYQcR3uAX5iktNvCLy3nEjR57gyyGVSEhdDkB7AcTfFkR8zukaQQTYK9MwD9Vsq | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/39xHAZmTUSQJyXt6ebpjKT | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/3029384,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632def5652d4bd45efccbdbb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lil-Kim-Big-Momma-Thang.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Lil_Kim-Hard_Core_1996.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,35,The Breeders,Last Splash (1993),4AD / Elektra,"4AD / Elektra Last Splash thrust the Breeders out of the fetid bedroom environs of their claustrophobic 1990 debut, Pod, and into the surf-grunge sunshine. “Cannonball” took the album platinum, elevating a band previously known as Pixies bassist Kim Deal’s side project to alt-rock superstar status. But so monolithic is the single that it overshadows a record whose greatest asset is its sonic and thematic unity. Like a beach blowout where everyone stays in the sun too long and somebody gets stung by a jellyfish, Last Splash counterbalances its exuberant pop moments with the snarling pith of “Saints” and the light disorientation of “No Aloha.” Squalling instrumentals that riff on surf classics fuse the tracks into a swell of waves that crest in pristine choruses, then disappear into a foam of feedback. Sure, you can extract one perfect song from the flotsam, but it makes an even bigger splash in its natural setting. –Judy Berman",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufdr7eWGp2bM8ScfYTMXbiSSRrFyr2hVZ2ksTbXerA3z4wPGCgT | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/MKEh7BpQXwWWp1Y3i6D9RjWuqrJsu9zvnz9d36jPMPvD98gTrNrqcRAvCcYCX4oSM9jZscHurCooXc4F442PjYSAu9nqaf39kBibhpVSDmiWxhtvFnynwW7Kx3p41SQx3gZhx91QemYGaqXUk1auHKXdFBDYbUifV | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/57F44c0MTziVzHPEuJtH9A | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/157762275,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633368581dccce609e4163bd/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The%2520Breeders%2520-%2520Last%2520Splash.png,/dataset/artwork/The_Breeders-Last_Splash_1993.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,34,Aphex Twin,Richard D. James Album (1996),Warp,"Warp You could spend an entire essay trying to elucidate the alien power of a single measure of Aphex Twin’s Richard D. James Album: the minute choreography of kicks and snares, dancing like electrons around a nucleus; the wistful turn of a particular melodic line; the way an ostensibly mundane sample—say, the snippet of James’ father calling his name that punctuates “4”—becomes almost painfully loaded with feeling when it lands at just the right moment. To hear James tell it, that’s the way he composed the music, tinkering over every stretch of rhythm as if it were a Lilliputian sculpture, spending hours arranging elements that pass by in the span of seconds for the listener. He wasn’t the only musician working in this fashion at the time, and was open about the influence of contemporaries like Squarepusher and Luke Vibert. But, perhaps more than any producer before or since, he found beauty and holism in this microscopic view of music, and never more so than on Richard D. James. The tiny rhythmic vibrations are not mere filigree for the larger arc of a given composition; they are the very heart of it. It’s as if each measure contains the entire album in miniature: galaxies spinning inside every atom. –Andy Cush",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufamJzUHHmRxHLu3BTtXc113Dyx2X5Cxq87oMhEgLi5xUjQKA1q | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/29CLTwheRZNbn8esbYm7MXCvBW5AqRiuV2rkxzL68ZhZakTS8MPQjntM9eJYYf8EpCq592XdCBpDEyUwpZUBUL7o8wUGv7Pvm3Wgnx9UR1HYJL4nrfnXK9ft6gWsa85k7nycrFqF6EpT1ot7kcSuGBVHUzRpC1GqJQzCzVRm1rg3DD | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/43s2fKRQsOSB6rSrxtAXKK | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/16024653,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63336941fccd3fda16c5bf5f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Aphex%2520Twin%2520-%2520Richard%2520D.%2520James%2520Album.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Aphex_Twin-Richard_D_James_Album_1996.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,33,Talk Talk,Laughing Stock (1991),Verve / Polydor,"Verve / Polydor The last two Talk Talk records occupy a particularly rarified space in the history of cult-classic albums. The mythology is irresistible: One-time synth-pop hitmakers get a longer leash to experiment in the studio, dissolve their sound into an imagistic sweep with little precedent in rock, take new pleasure in improvised performance and sprawling moments of silence, and retire on as high a note as one can imagine. But even that lofty narrative doesn’t do justice to the music. On Laughing Stock, the band’s final record, they whiplash between extremes. Sometimes the sound is serene and gorgeous, like the gentle, brush-stroked “New Grass”; and sometimes it’s harsher, as in “Ascension Day,” a thrashing epic that presages the decade’s most explosive post-rock bands. The image that always comes to mind while listening is a sanctuary, but Talk Talk were just as quick to knock down the walls. In the last second of “Ascension Day,” the tape cuts mid-performance, ending the song abruptly and inorganically, suggesting the whole thing is an illusion. The magic was always ours to create. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1rQxEfjrxFmJ3yE9BZQedBAFK2Dw8DAXPXjqEzU2Snd4kt3 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/X7niGYieCH8UQ8PGqdUBtg8M6SAMcPegELm2uaNkiXQqSRwp4HaQGxppbNbCMF44CZcGNECmFt4zQZRh1GRha7dMawYcek2a8k4s2aNMCS76mkV5MdXjoCmBBBQhv98kuMnvgAA2vb4vvRgwHytmw2LAQ1ahjvQdqyGxb | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3NEa40lY9rNpSIALSIKn79 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/34774394,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63336a125c7dee5dc1f59122/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Talk%2520Talk%2520-%2520Laughing%2520Stock.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Talk_Talk-Laughing_Stock_1991.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,32,Lucinda Williams,Car Wheels on a Gravel Road (1998),Mercury,"Mercury Lucinda Williams was two decades into her career at the cross-section of country and rock when she finally released her full-length opus, the album that earned her commercial success, wide acclaim, and status as one of the most influential living songwriters. She had traversed and absorbed the American South on a sensory level. She was 45 years old. With four previous albums under her belt, Williams had endured 20 years of being told “no”: by labels, by producers, by awful men. Heartbreak, romantic and creative, has its way of producing clarity, which she brought to her narratives of drunken angels and metal firecrackers and Greenville, Rosedale, and Jackson. On Car Wheels, everything cohered into a blue-skied open-road travelogue that still feels like freedom. –Jenn Pelly",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1rQfgoPCZo78ke8xHoTy3w6tzpPazRTexpnEUM5zpawmffZ | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/C5BN9bLtpHgEyx7MNKKgBuARJsGD6hr8syYpzKwm7ov8AmmcLX1wqVhpxRVNUGC12W9K4TdWhvkmUmqtuoTcQJy39iMVYJv9XkpJM3Q8e8Tdzq2onC9TPmDw3efL9AvLfKEkWjqGNHgbpXEFMeyv2hGRUwtW7Xb9mojvJPVWwiZjrGP5ZNbCMZm | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3iC6dJobZulVXp0F4Bojig | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/630124,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63336aa5d997a1f3e8a0ceff/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lucinda%2520Williams%2520-%2520Car%2520Wheels%2520On%2520A%2520Gravel%2520Road.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lucinda_Williams-Car_Wheels_on_a_Gravel_Road_1998.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,31,Neutral Milk Hotel,In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (1998),Merge,"Merge In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is a celebration of the unconscious as a source of creative inspiration. Neutral Milk Hotel’s Jeff Mangum, who was driven to make field recordings, loved folk music of all kinds, and had his life changed by the idiosyncratic punk of Minutemen; he worked as hard as any successful musician, painstakingly writing and revising songs until he got them right. But he also trusted that the unexplainable images that bubbled up in his mind were worth setting to music. Aeroplane, the masterpiece of NMH’s brief discography, unfolds like a water-damaged 8mm film of these fragments, with semen-stained mountaintops and scenes featuring Anne Frank, reincarnated as a little boy, pounding out a melody on a burning piano. For those who hear something special in it, the album feels like the product of a rare kind of telepathy, as if versions of your own obsessions have somehow made their way into songs by someone you’ve never met. –Mark Richardson",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1opNinGCVfYPyLKUvk1QLLiHkX8NSsgzB4GVFbxBts75rFd | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/3WVdWb4brEJ3iT5cRmUo31whQ5bFyaGfVKFTjSbA6Aiwe74mFqwbB5h4cfdLN8X8i84F4W9Gnyaw2m9Mpm4JzPecqCBXwECju4PVN9qsBk3gL27zYXY4E5AK99fuuAk5fmkJB8SejMZZBs5uQwhmpNJHX3dhRtrrgNmEw4DZheh1SnwbhMfnd9 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/0vVekV45lOaVKs6RZQQNob | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/37265686,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63336b0c1dccce609e4163bf/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Neutral%2520Milk%2520Hotel%2520-%2520In%2520the%2520Aeroplane%2520Over%2520the%2520Sea.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Neutral_Milk_Hotel-In_the_Aeroplane_Over_the_Sea_1998.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,30,Mos Def,Black on Both Sides (1999),Rawkus / Priority,"Rawkus / Priority Mos Def’s discography is a testament to the idea that Blackness isn’t a monolith. Black on Both Sides, his 1999 solo debut, was the Brooklyn rapper’s attempt to blend his thoughts on racism, dwindling resources, and all kinds of love to create a fluid and biting portrait of Black America on the edge of a new millenium, a marriage of the smooth and the confrontational. Def—who now goes by Yasiin Bey—wasn’t afraid to use his skills as an MC to examine the world’s problems from his soapbox (“New World Water,” “Mr. Nigga”), but Both Sides never feels sanctimonious. He draws connections between the history of Black music and the Five Elements of hip-hop while contextualizing rap’s birthplace as a wellspring of creativity that extends beyond the genre’s origins (“Habitat”). Black On Both Sides is conscious in the literal sense—self-aware, honest, unpretentious, a cornucopia of Black sound to weather listeners through the towering inferno. –Dylan Green",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1rQfgoQd41GKXjVkXoA2JW2fxSyf3ztD7WodXtUexfBTsGP | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/FzrGcxRntjxTYBr5CjAbZDfnRiGpg8gXpYfWT8VoaEipXEh8ZG3fF2DGZ1oa12e7ckyDhDq5M858hSN2iLkcC8RxGWk2cHhQVWiFiGcRCj9GBuEbvynoVrRisvhhPyR85BJRg7enYHPNnt9PRLkaRmCe2EdgaMBcVH23qnRofez7 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5gK2l2LgWY0BA4p9uy27z6 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/569752,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63336b8652d95d0f90c87f6c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mos%2520Def%2520-%2520Black%2520on%2520Both%2520Sides.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mos_Def-Black_on_Both_Sides_1999.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,29,Pavement,"Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (1994)",Matador,"Matador Pavement’s decision to graft a shadow history of ’60s and ’70s California folk-rock and psychedelia onto the abrasive, Fall-inspired noise of their previous sound made total sense once the end product was rendered. But in some ways this obscures what a truly strange and wondrous inspiration it was in the first place. Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain’s 12 tracks are alternately sparkling and insinuating, mournful and ominous and finally cathartic, variously evoking the desert swoon of the Flying Burrito Brothers, the swaggering two-guitar overdrive of Buffalo Springfield, and the eerie chill of jazz pioneer Dave Brubeck. When Stephen Malkmus sings, “Good night to the rock’n’roll era” over the closing tribute to famed concert promoter Bill Graham, “Fillmore Jive,” it’s part funeral and part exorcism: a final postscript for the sandcastle paradise of ’60s utopianism. Freedom’s just another word when everything is lost. –Elizabeth Nelson",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufbFSMh4kdXG5VSDauhufsw3ZJsMU3xa6LeSUieAQnpPag229w1 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/ZxssCo8SeuM6mRcDQfvUeNTNYQAjiyZjfaBb5th84ZcVLxECX7vxkf5SkeET5snFJTZe3XRRTsHKXPjnFy2ozExhNZkG19rzswQZknfushsoevWgRF4We1fRUn6EeR9XpHU8tPQriQgeXR2xk5kN4R6UfAkd8EQKhBrPmXbDJWDQUqez7zzf | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://pavement.bandcamp.com/album/crooked-rain-crooked-rain | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1XFNz6KIvLyIsLFOiLRKqP | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/58085898,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63336c421dccce609e4163c1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Pavement%2520-%2520Crooked%2520Rain%2C%2520Crooked%2520Rain.png,/dataset/artwork/Pavement-Crooked_Rain_Crooked_Rain_1994.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,28,Björk,Post (1995),One Little Independent,"One Little Independent It’s a tale as old as time: a girl from the wilderness hits it big, moves to the city during her Saturn Return, starts clubbing, finds herself amid the chaos and solitude, and makes an art-pop masterpiece. Alternating between feral and tender songs, 1995’s Post is a portal into the pulsing sensuality of British trip-hop and electronica as seen through Björk’s eyes. Like 1993’s Debut, the sound is highly eclectic—from the surprisingly faithful cover of Betty Hutton’s “It’s Oh So Quiet” to the twinges of baroque music—but Post marks the first time Björk really stepped into the tastemaker role she occupies to this day, assembling collaborators from across the underground (Tricky, Nellee Hooper, Graham Massey, Howie B) to work in service of her vision. The music follows the emotion: Every exclamation mark of the soul is met with a freaky horn blast or tribal drum break, every dark glance an industrial beat or a mysterious twinge of harpsichord. And with her supernaturally nimble voice and to-the-point poetry, Björk is able to articulate emotional scenarios with the clarity of discovering there is a foreign word for a feeling that remains ineffable in your mother tongue. On Post, this includes sex without touching, music as life force, death dreams that make you wake up grateful, and the way falling in love can feel like the world’s shortest fireworks display. It’s an album of apathy and desire, restlessness and freedom, capriciousness and control—in other words, Björk’s becoming. –Jill Mapes",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam7TfagsyMS1MFSPJXpBH5tZT1z1knuKA4oPXZEWmvkSZ4kNF | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/UWxN5ZEu9McrNbWY8o36qGTBDgMaP1LsE744YS6juBDEQncwJt6nLhF4KorDsNqBDyGyPLES9Rxgmi5wE6xwTezpnJFhRq3f3ZPE9papgPb9cvDXSins5zfEVWU25fPag4fwDdVBJyXhBAHFE9TBf1 | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://bjork.bandcamp.com/album/post | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2Ul7B1LEHxXzYubtkTMENs | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/33348477 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ojarj6nTM4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63336cd0800c1a0f8721bb34/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bjo%25CC%2588rk%2520-%2520Post.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bjrk-Post_1995.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,27,Public Enemy,Fear of a Black Planet (1990),Def Jam / Columbia,"Def Jam / Columbia In 1990, Public Enemy had a way of making wildly engrossing political art while also reinforcing the very things they sought to destroy. The group was drawing on a strain of Black nationalist political practice that was self-defeatingly conspiratorial, that saw the fiendish workings of long-tentacled cabals behind everything—the media, Hollywood, 911, the music industry, AIDS, and so on. One could read revolutionary anticapitalist or antiracist intent into these ideas when taken in isolation—and that was always easy to do, given Chuck D's immense talent for quotably pungent insights—but the vision uniting them was ultimately a conservative one, given to reactionary essentialisms: a people, a nation (mainly the men), beset from without and sometimes within by a parasitic Other. At Public Enemy’s best, the whole of their music had the potential to create solidarity beyond the narrower ideas being pushed in some of their verses. The “organized noise” cultivated by Hank Shocklee and the Bomb Squad on Fear of a Black Planet was densely allusive, reshuffling and reworking artists and cultural totems and ideas both past and present—James Brown, Sly Stone, Funkadelic, Bobby Byrd, Afrika Bambaataa, sirens, hisses, polyrhythms, Malcolm X’s “Message to the Grass Roots.” The production was a thumping bricolage, the effect of which was to submit Public Enemy into a sort of communal dialogue with the latter half of the Black 20th century. To listen to Fear of a Black Planet was not to become a passive receptacle for Chuck D’s politics, but to open yourself up to what the sociologist Paul Gilroy calls the “restless, recombinant qualities” of the Black Atlantic cultures. Any political meanings you’re tempted to assign to “Welcome to the Terrordome” or “Fight the Power” have to contend with something bigger than words: the feelings of power, love, and liberation that come over a roomful of people who have decided to move their asses, together. –Tommy Craggs",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufamR2NdX1Ly8mZF33t5PZTrzgkPk1rWVv8BqnhwQHJVLPmUdCo | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/PEbHSas7Jt1b5tzL8bQBkN56HvgEKoKidXGJ8n4we1YzzHJziVgBw42E21AEPbbPdiCkK6DY2Sv4EQTZ7pJK8ja5QVgdCUY8smxMWmd6eksGMk3ZJuFrfFjW6WYJTfXAzuc4v4oA78LLDtMNZ2ia3mB5BaHc86v2MMsguxTPVBG6kR9V | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/0aFNb4RDk2hmKKLa0bzXNz | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/2570257,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63336d50e02a17d9175e5621/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Public%2520Enemy%2520-%2520Fear%2520of%2520a%2520Black%2520Planet.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Public_Enemy-Fear_of_a_Black_Planet_1990.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,26,Boards of Canada,Music Has the Right to Children (1998),Warp / Skam,"Warp / Skam In 1998, an album wrapped in a grainy family photo, faces lost to time—or scrubbed from it—appeared on better record store racks. It boasted the imprimatur of not one but two of the decade’s finest labels, Sheffield’s heavy-hitting Warp and Manchester’s mysterious Skam, as likely to put out a Frisbee as it was the latest Autechre side project. But Music Has the Right to Children, the first release from Scottish brothers Michael Sandison and Marcus Eoin that most people were lucky enough to hear, was a revelation. Boards of Canada coaxed breaks into motion as if excavating ancient rock formations while high on their own supply of hairy psych-rock samples (even Hair itself). It’s nostalgic but not dissociative: The album’s most idiosyncratic aspect are the wobbling voices that gurgle, “I love you…,” or, “There are a lot of different me’s…,” mostly summoned from 1970s North American public television, that ancient medium of collective meaning-making. Decades on, Music remains mystical and deeply human, an uncanny valley rung with melodies drifting off all grids. It is folk music for people who use DATs instead of dobros. The faces might be mirrors. –Jesse Dorris",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam7EUwZshX8NkksoEKCh49DiMiBMWUarwEinbvKdmzS1ecZ1m | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/HR4R9gBZvZ4oxn7zw1cHBxQb2fAzhn3u565znTKETyW41CWYM5JTJaBL3WfUDKkySVzFCAGrxRnW92Nj5MA84KBRDY5pNwnWgRUS3FCHwk6XkhH2vVCHsDr77YWSJWb9D8ea2UQA6SqbCsADig2ZGfRPbuJxGmGvRdHgp16hXnZQGZDsJW7gkmYGZWT | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://boardsofcanada.bandcamp.com/album/music-has-the-right-to-children | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1vWnB0hYmluskQuzxwo25a | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/16024556,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63336de012e43930baa6dd08/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Boards%2520of%2520Canada%2520-%2520Music%2520Has%2520the%2520Right%2520to%2520Children.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Boards_of_Canada-Music_Has_the_Right_to_Children_1998.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,25,Belle and Sebastian,If You’re Feeling Sinister (1996),Jeepster,"Jeepster In 1996, Belle and Sebastian approached perfection, twice. First came Tigermilk, a quietly profound debut recorded as a school project. If You’re Feeling Sinister arrived a few months later, an album that presses its nose against a windowpane and peers out at the world beyond, yearning to indulge in beauty and ugliness alike. Writing in the shadow of his yearslong struggle with chronic fatigue syndrome, frontman Stuart Murdoch emerged as a Glaswegian Salinger, a storyteller with an eye for misfits: a track and field star as accomplished in sex as she is in athletics; a curmudgeonly veteran with nostalgia for Roxy Music; a suicidal girl who enjoys S&M and Bible studies. Set atop gorgeous arrangements inspired by swooning ’60s pop and the Velvet Underground at their most melodic, these songs set the standard for pretty much all indie pop that was to come. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufbFMVh7j21MeJxwkLkGiibceWyGFu38Sm1nQJHwvrCfnZsojMu | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/ZxssCo8SeuM6mRcDQfvUeNTNYQAjiyZjfaBb5th84ZcVLxECX7vxkf5SkeET5snFJTZe3XRRTsHKXPjnFy2ozExhNZkG1GmKacm4TYjKxJ611sD8seZkKZY56YsLRgp5g5eytbmAaPVCAsoHUR87ciMNcEax8dKgDxXe854T86y5Bmu62k6F | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/0cR6FGQSOUDEwwapI7yfQZ | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/2274951 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4de-RHHLCBA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63336e98d997a1f3e8a0cf03/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Belle%2520and%2520Sebastian%2520-%2520If%2520You_re%2520Feeling%2520Sinister.png,/dataset/artwork/Belle_and_Sebastian-If_Youre_Feeling_Sinister_1996.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,24,Dr. Dre,The Chronic (1992),Death Row / Interscope,"Death Row / Interscope From the outset, The Chronic announces itself as a revenge record. Dr. Dre had spent the previous five or so years as the underpaid sonic architect of West Coast gangsta rap, and his first solo outing served as retribution to all the haters and exploiters. “Niggas with attitudes? Nah,” his charge Snoop Dogg announced on the intro, “Niggas on a muthafuckin’ mission.” Dr. Dre achieved the sweetest vengeance of all by crafting G-funk, a whole new sound that would become the era’s most influential. Digging into the Parliament/Funkadelic crates, the producer shifted hip-hop’s sonic landscape toward a sumptuous mix of sampling and live instrumentation. In addition to the hypnotic classics “Let Me Ride” and “Nuthin’ but a G Thang,” The Chronic also offered a response to the 1992 L.A. uprising with “The Day the Niggaz Took Over” and “Lil’ Ghetto Boy”—not as explicit political comment but rather by showing the perspective of those living amid the day-to-day realities of street life and police violence. The album’s misogyny is at times overwhelming, but as an unflinching documentary and musical landmark, it has few peers. –Mychal Denzel Smith",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/Ehjr9t1bfyFgs5GtcpxVsAdcRJm1vtb9Ubjx5sTFJYB6r2e4TjtG8vb1rkTFisrhHbExGSy1DgZK5HrzBQjdeFLuEEKV6mLo3JZMYukEERYqQnLFnbxtNc7fD9QHP7L8QdEsygbpMv8s2WtGeJaKgPqw1qSeF | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/6vdFSyhPjL4dZFkgRtToXH | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/drdre,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63336f5952d4bd45efccbe5e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Dr.%2520Dre%2520-%2520The%2520Chronic.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dr_Dre-The_Chronic_1992.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,23,Elliott Smith,Either/Or (1997),Kill Rock Stars,"Kill Rock Stars Either/Or is the hinge point in Elliott Smith’s story, the last moment where his mastery—of home recording techniques, of his intricate guitar parts, and most crucially, of his acrid, empathetic songwriting—bloomed under protective cover of his relative anonymity. He was surrounded by a close-knit circle of admiring friends, and he recorded many of his most beloved classics—“Between the Bars,” “Angeles,” “Pictures of Me,” “Say Yes”—in their living rooms and bedrooms, or at Jackpot!, the ramshackle studio he helped build with Larry Crane. Within a year, Smith would find himself backstage at the Oscars in a rumpled white suit, listening to the comforting words of Celine Dion as he braced to perform “Miss Misery”—a song he’d recorded in an idle moment at Jackpot!—on national television. He would field phone calls from People magazine; he would become label mates with Randy Newman. Some of his definitive work still lay ahead, but from here on out, he would forever be “Elliott Smith.” If you want Elliott, Either/Or is where you can still find him—cigarettes on his breath, long-necked bottle hooked between his fingers about to tell a silly joke to the friend down the bar. This is where he was closest to us, and thus when his talent seemed most miraculous. –Jayson Greene",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1oxQFQhfLy9EAvuVynDQdpi46cKZhxCFAHLKZEFEyMq6JTd | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/Ehjr9t1bfyFgs5GtcpxVsAdcRJm1vtb9Ubjx5sTFJYB6r2e4TjtG8vb1rkTFisrhHbExGSy1DgZK5HrzBQjdeFLuEEKV6e7YUaEHwUE4gTntWhLZbqcgmwyvAGW3xcKdxj1oELXzP6LLs74rPbPg173UyrFtf | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/6KMdn9HDIqcBPaaok0K34K | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/14830659,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63337045afa92f85cc3e4fdc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Elliott%2520Smith%2520-%2520Either_Or.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Elliott_Smith-EitherOr_1997.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,22,Nas,Illmatic (1994),Columbia,"Columbia Illmatic was to some extent an act of recalibration. When the 17-year-old Nas stunned listeners with his guest turn on Main Source’s 1991 track “Live at the Barbecue,” he was still dabbling in the shock rap that cast him as an adolescent “snuffing Jesus.” Traces of that sensibility sneak onto his debut, but as he neared 20 he became fixated on the passage of time. Visions of his friends locked up (“The World Is Yours”) or “years in the hundreds” (“Life’s a Bitch”) make him write long, sympathetic letters to his incarcerated friends (“One Love”); he’s wistful when he raps about listening to Rap Attack on the radio (“Halftime”) and even about New York drug lords Supreme McGriff and Alpo Martinez—on a song called “Memory Lane (Sittin’ in da Park).” Nas communicates all this through rhymes that are staggeringly dense, their scenes and sentences breaking unpredictably across the ends of bars, their details precise, their virtuosity somehow beside the point. –Paul A. Thompson",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufao1DUXs2ighjR4ab9LtFhjarSD1UreiJCGzNcEkxKZ2S3XDpo | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/474N76DNT3n1smUARtCDRxekNNF3vu1wV1AjPQDHqP1vtSJ1LCXeQzuZpXEemqE59HpZutecPp2RwSa5M2keJW5WWHAAzURdMuMufKdQFygnX2QJwiDGv3yAGRMoAMupeUDtgsUUZm6azbnUdPbvHejjdsBh | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3kEtdS2pH6hKcMU9Wioob1 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/28104732,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633370cde02a17d9175e5623/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Nas%2520-%2520Illmatic.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Nas-Illmatic_1994.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,21,Silver Jews,American Water (1998),Drag City,"Drag City American Water was the sea change in the Silver Jews catalog, a moment when David Berman gave in to melody and made a warm and inviting record. The album has lines that will change the way you see the world and others that rattle around your head like high school lovers in recurring dreams. Its calling cards, “Random Rules” and “The Wild Kindness,” are beautiful songs that make life feel briefly hopeful; when Berman sings, “I’m gonna shine out in the wild kindness and hold the world to its word,” it’s as if nothing bad could ever happen. In between the bookends are handfuls of lyrics that are beguiling and stirring, unable to be shaken; it’s often as if Berman is contorting the landscape to his lyrical whims, turning ordinary observations profound or sinister, depending on the song. The apex of the Silver Jews discography, American Water breathes through the contrast of Berman’s bare profundity and his unruly poetics, brightened by Stephen Malkmus’ playful and virtuosic guitar playing. Life exists in the crevices we can’t explain. –Matthew Strauss",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1rQgkrrGed3ASKT3D95CBUQ98jh1vNaPmQekVXWpyK65XwH | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2YfVS2JkEsZbGaVN2xMzcCAf2EcdufCigRyF44GJ5f29ratuBWwUyZKgmpFrhqhmxswYt6NmeGB7aN5jK2UM9Lmk6hBoKQxLdE2SXaYhoCR77633Yq3T41xDtFQNawLU4VBXUWaL2wdgZGh94uxDfrsrnve2q4u6pKV | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2GbNeQEg5fLtuxjr5nlIpc | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/111769338,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333718b8f0d7ac40b58df60/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Silver%2520Jews%2520-%2520American%2520Water.png,/dataset/artwork/Silver_Jews-American_Water_1998.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,20,D’Angelo,Brown Sugar (1995),EMI,"EMI Looking like a sexy ruffneck, sounding like a mix of Al Green and Prince, and able to write compelling songs on-demand, 21-year-old musical wunderkind D’Angelo was positioned as R&B’s great hope back in 1995. He crafted an idiosyncratic sound for his debut album Brown Sugar, blending jazz and soul with the low-end beatmaking of hip-hop acts like A Tribe Called Quest. Enlisting collaborators like Raphael Saadiq and Tribe’s Ali Shaheed Muhammad,, D’Angelo struck a chord with the after-hours nightclub simmer of title track, the burnished mackin’ music of “Lady,” the paranoid humor of “Shit, Damn, Motherfucker,” and the questing gospel of album closer “Higher.” The singer, songwriter, and producer would delve even deeper into his one-of-a-kind sound five years later with the talismanic Voodoo, but Brown Sugar is where the magic began. –Jason King",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufbFT9TvUtgTJR4HwfDx9z629QkztdPiwUgy4p9gVCnKkPxnwxo | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/MKEh7BpQXwWWp1Y3i6D9RjWuqrJsu9zvnz9d36jPMPvD98gTrNrqcRAvCcYCX4oSM9jZscHurCooXc4F442PjYSAu9nqaXwR1HcPWdeGxuZMW8rhtJ4MTXyqcrhFxNHnzoumoptJ5hydJXmATz7fRPRc4xfTUmrxB | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/4HTVABUq8amDUxBv3zJbX4 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/68372519,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333720452d4bd45efccbe60/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/D_Angelo%2520-%2520Brown%2520Sugar.jpg,/dataset/artwork/DAngelo-Brown_Sugar_1995.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,19,Fiona Apple,When the Pawn… (1999),Epic,"Epic At the time of the release of Fiona Apple’s second album, few knew what to make of the music—one critic compared it to Korn (!)—but everyone thought they knew what to make of Apple herself, their takes plagued by cartoonish misogyny. Apple knew all this; she was always several steps ahead. When the Pawn… is about knowing your patterns, knowing the rubble they’ve made of your life—and knowing you’ll do it again. Producer Jon Brion set a baroque stage of arrangements that careen like off-rails Cirque du Soleil. But he just sketched the blueprints. Apple constructed, then wrecked, the house. She played the piano like assassins use knives. Her vocal roles are larger-than-life: precise and unsingably fast, fit for a technical rapper, or open-throated and dramatic, like a stage diva commandeering an encore. On the thunderous choruses of “Limp” and “Get Gone,” she summons hundreds of women against countless detractors. Her force spares no one, much less herself. –Katherine St. Asaph",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam6puHmTb5krVCkNYMpWw9o2qJVvZUKKAKdaUhbVcDiN1JTeb | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2Vo2MLmraDYcw8gQ4YAhz2X1PpFcB9bTRkBji3JyXyg5vtuAWh9aqVrEH32k2QUs432UPPPrryJV1TjRPkjQk22XTYt65XNDGMJj5ghqix8U3HQMgDncWKacVAwVcotwrcdyiUjAdojXufAGmFAGvhs85MydpmgoPGZVQdFTu3n2pd1NBVs8RB8NroYERyfXdDxzzxP6Ft6gCQoyk8KxBvEGMr3 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3o5EnVZNJXtfPV8tCoagjI | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/1781115,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333729752d4bd45efccbe62/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Fiona%2520Apple%2520-%2520When%2520the%2520Pawn%2520Hits%2520the%2520Conflicts%2520He%2520Thinks%2520Like%2520a%2520King....jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fiona_Apple-When_the_Pawn_1999.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,18,Cocteau Twins,Heaven or Las Vegas (1990),4AD,"4AD By 1990, when Cocteau Twins released Heaven or Las Vegas—their final album for 4AD, the independent UK label that had shepherded their journey from post-punk mystics to ambient-pop dream-weavers—the Scottish trio was under immense pressure. Singer Elizabeth Fraser and guitarist Robin Guthrie had given birth to their first child, yet Guthrie’s drug addiction was dragging down the couple and the group. The world around them was changing, too. The protective cocoon of the 1980s underground had decisively split open; former peers were playing stadiums, and the murky, hermetic sound the Cocteaus had pioneered was being supplanted by louder, sunnier strains of alternative rock. None of that is audible in Heaven or Las Vegas, the most effortless album in their catalog, bursting with light and hope. There are nods to the new decade in programmed beats that hint at dance and hip-hop rhythms, but otherwise they simply sound like themselves distilled into their most potent form. Simon Raymonde’s prominent basslines give the band an unexpected melodic push; Guthrie’s guitars fan out like streams of light, a miracle of transubstantiation; Fraser maintains all her ethereal mystique while sharpening her voice until it cuts like a laser through velvet. At times, an intelligible phrase even burns through the pastel haze, as on “Iceblink Luck”: “Burn this whole madhouse down.” Rarely is a fire so cleansing. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1mNdySSM8JjoZoKFFszKqp4dvpjPzAEz2mBJUnWfjdNSz9h | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/4iheeJwWD8ieNhakwNtVbCeWuwR1qfJRV7bDBka8akcakztZ2NpTMJ2tSVUJ3Lf4GkGgvH9aXEKTzZ2kWz8WEthRX2c5PdfxWtWVQ39LwXvV52Y1sdFsZnfsYvgGwKeG1F8wUYnwMpxcp8oaFtAMtDqWdf4pUzZgEpSEXxgA2PQGxd3jUxCpHnU3jZ | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5lEphbceIgaK1XxWeSrC9E | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/track/2404960,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333732f6984e83cd288d2f5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Cocteau%2520Twins%2520-%2520Heaven%2520or%2520Las%2520Vegas.png,/dataset/artwork/Cocteau_Twins-Heaven_or_Las_Vegas_1990.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,17,Erykah Badu,Baduizm (1997),Kedar / Universal,"Kedar / Universal Baduizm presented like an ideology, but felt more like a spell: the mesmerizing introduction to Ms. “On and On” Badu, a jazz-inclined soul singer with a rapper's cadence who sounded like she invented the meaning of being “in the pocket.” In a decade that practically required shine and flash, the incisive Fort Greene-via-Dallas 26-year-old peeled soul music to its raw heart, purring roaming odes to sex and snare drums, self-assurance and spirituality, and her weariness of social ills and unserious dudes. She did so over Rhodes pianos, boom-bap beats, upright bass and a little band from Philly called The Roots. Kicking off a career-long genius for deploying onomatopoeia in service to the vibe (""boom-klat, boom-klat,"" she intoned on ""Rim Shot (Intro)""), Baduizm was a surprise hit that redirected R&B so fiercely it ultimately became a genre unto itself, a back-to-roots evolution that would eventually be dubbed “neo-soul,” with the silken-voiced Badu as its endlessly cool beacon. –Julianne Escobedo Shepherd",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam7SSuKuee8tFJjmvVenEiHfNJ1516JUxJ9nhQEMfDwPJX5jZ | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/474N76DNT3n1smUARtCDRxekNNF3vu1wV1AjPQDHqP1vtSJ1LCXeQzuZpXEemqE59HpZutecPp2RwSa5M2keJW5WWHAAzTf1rJmbX1cwNb5s5bX5y85UacuD5rZP8Fm9vBdudzbzWEqYfFERChnc9F9cEGno | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3qr4pTBWEU1SVf01j6RAx3 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/633711,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633373b5e02a17d9175e5626/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Erykah%2520Badu%2520-%2520Baduizm.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Erykah_Badu-Baduizm_1997.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,16,PJ Harvey,Rid of Me (1993),Island,"Island Polly Jean Harvey comes on like an unstoppable pestilence on her second album, a wretched presence attacking from every angle who will never let you rest. “I might as well be dead,” she ruminates at the end of “Legs,” which oozes like a toxic spillage. Then she revels in the feint: “But I could kill you instead.” If her debut, Dry, had the texture of scorched earth, then the Steve Albini-produced Rid of Me, with its reckless application of the loud-quiet-loud dynamic, often sounds like the ground being torn up with crude glee. Harvey turns this volatility into her weapon against the obliterating emotional violence and suffocating gender dynamics she exorcizes on this album, framed through a cast of destitute characters. They’re brought to life by an artist whose facility for horror suggested an unsettling affinity with it: Harvey’s catalog isn’t short on frights, but Rid of Me is the one that’ll keep you up at night. –Laura Snapes",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1rQgtrRKX2WXEL9tDasKhyT5TQLkTtes8xsqB4Z49xRGdo1 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8nansyqULpE8awBcBxybcmwRdNwmAjQJqXPnb2NU3fvDJfuJcS46v2B4Aid7oaE7gfDMYsSSCzxedwj27AoaPi5KFdPK38NHur2rKFh | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2fDJpBJhtloxzUENHlU9JB | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/2571171,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333743eafa92f85cc3e4fde/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/PJ%2520Harvey%2520-%2520Rid%2520Of%2520Me.jpg,/dataset/artwork/PJ_Harvey-Rid_of_Me_1993.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,15,Aaliyah,One in a Million (1996),Blackground / Atlantic,"Blackground / Atlantic Aaliyah’s first union with Missy Elliott and Timbaland was a jolt, completely upending R&B through a collective vision of futurism, cyber goth, and sci-fi samples that remain virtually unmatched in scope and impact, as evidenced by the number of contemporary musicians still mining her catalog for inspiration. One in a Million arrived when R&B needed an overhaul, and Aaliyah was the perfect vessel: her breathy but assured alto gave her an aura of mystique, and she possessed a kind of reticence and remove even while singing about her own desire. (Furthering this mystique was the unfounded rumor that her signature side-part and sunglasses were hiding an amblyopic eye.) Her own reasons for this remain cause for speculation—she’d been illegally child-married to R. Kelly for less than a year when One in a Million came out—but the record was unmistakably the sound of her gaining her agency as a young woman and changing the course of music history, all before she even graduated from high school. –Julianne Escobedo Shepherd",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufekhkJYSYWbzKFdqtoU3ZpkdzZg8HqW3RcBAbt22k9FGUdRjS3 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/B7jB7s3t6nATUHhGS3LABK1jRyUqXu5qUiD3X7BcXCzdH57FA1micAPWpwPFjkbPZ83VowWmGRrwDA37nhRX9jMpqYqMBQweYPyfBZuPTRDVwatEDqjsJiNu3j2ywvmtn4jHmHhwiEmvADdGSXaviFsJm8pvEYU33NQ4i85R | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/79EIRdmpPSIWfRlxaZdJbG | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/193698339,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333750352d4bd45efccbe64/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Aaliyah%2520-%2520One%2520in%2520a%2520Million.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Aaliyah-One_in_a_Million_1996.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,14,The Notorious B.I.G.,Ready to Die (1994),Bad Boy / Arista,"Bad Boy / Arista It’s a coming-of-age tale set in a long gone Brooklyn, the cornerstone of a historic moment in hip-hop, the album that made the East Coast feel like the center of the rap universe again. There’s hardly a wasted breath: Biggie’s rapping on his 1994 debut is purposeful, his storytelling is sprawling and intricate yet concise, his voice plows through the funk and soul of Diddy’s handpicked producers like a heavy-duty snow blower. Even the interlude of Biggie just getting busy has a point. It’s all part of a persona mythical enough to feel as cinematic as the Blaxploitation and mafioso flicks he was inspired by, and real enough that his corner boy tales and cold-blooded violence resonated everywhere. He could be vulnerable in more ways than one, whether it was grappling with how his lifestyle had turned a parent’s love into fear on “Things Done Changed,” or imagining taking his own life on “Suicidal Thoughts.” Through all the darkness and fatalism, it’s got a celebratory feel with the smooth maximalism that oozes out of the crossover hits like “Big Poppa” and “Juicy.” There have been rappers who have tried to recapture Biggie’s presence, voice, and ability to be both grounded and larger than life at the same time, but Ready to Die itself is completely inimitable. Murals don’t do it justice. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufapWHxPDU7qHLsnhm39KDQEpsnCabkCW1TatuiQpJdvXsPaMjR | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/8UAFzxJzvSuaw23YMmcgLo6XFpPbbtLCUmg6umLWhEHCQYzpUDSpXHL8eXe2qEKQdafD22TNrb3ntHw6iua336RrUYSD1ZDZKbQgg2yXMW1omxraY4Re3saJFV9G7eWKm2A6MzzKHii4iDsc81nvaoEwab6CKEaWY1ppMmZC7Ek2PjMGq3h | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2HTbQ0RHwukKVXAlTmCZP2 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/362384,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63337582afa92f85cc3e4fe0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The%2520Notorious%2520B.I.G.%2520-%2520Ready%2520to%2520Die.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Notorious_BIG-Ready_to_Die_1994.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,13,Daft Punk,Homework (1997),Virgin,"Virgin The singles are among the most potent dance music gateway drugs we’ve got: One moment you’re digging “Around the World”’s hooky persistence and “Da Funk”’s lowrider squelch, then suddenly you’ve taken up permanent residence in Daft Punk’s world, way out there among lo-pass filters, roller-rink basslines, and stacks of brilliant, rough ‘n’ tumble thumpers from Chicago and Detroit’s rich histories. That two upper-middle-class kids working from a bedroom overlooking Montmartre’s cobbled streets could make these naked influences scalable without losing any of the original stuff’s bite, garnering all-important approval from electronic music’s Black and Latin forebears in the process, was an improbability bordering on absurdity. And while some rave hits can lose their buzz in weeks, Homework simply never cooled off, carrying Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo through the underground, up the pop charts, and into the next century. After a quarter century of DJ culture’s oft-ludicrous mutations, you need only witness the reaction on any half-decent dancefloor when the zipper-on-leather mania of “Rock’n Roll” or “Rollin’ & Scratchin’” drops to understand Homework’s shatterproof place in clubland’s trophy cabinet. That roar is immortality calling. –Gabriel Szatan",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1mK7i4BPtjWoBDWW18dxrBkihMPVuhMsmFdJBsyCzU2gwbZ | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/474N76DNT3n1smUARtCDRxekNNF3vu1wV1AjPQDHqP1vtSJ1LCXeQzuZpXEemqE59HpZutecPp2RwSa5M2keJW5WWHAAzUKNHioPHdW86atDnXVnLDtdPoCx4Em29R52MoUotMATxF5rodJMvkK9pwfv6xH1 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5uRdvUR7xCnHmUW8n64n9y | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/161010,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333761d1dccce609e4163c3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Daft%2520Punk%2520-%2520Homework.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Daft_Punk-Homework_1997.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,12,OutKast,Aquemini (1998),LaFace,"LaFace The dueling personalities at the heart of OutKast have always been the source of their greatness: Big Boi beats the block with his boots, while André dreams of outer space. Their first two records reveled in their own otherness—first as the premier playas in their own community, and then as extra-terrestrials, alienated from the world at large. But on Aquemini, Big Boi and André 3000 embrace the complementary nature of their differences and create something that surpasses the sum of its parts. Weaving funk, soul, gospel, and psych influences through freewheeling recording sessions with live musicians—a departure from the Dungeon Family’s basement production on those early LPs—the duo obliterated the boundaries and expectations for a Southern rap group without ever sounding like anyone other than themselves. André’s relationship with Erykah Badu drew them into the sonic orbit of the burgeoning neo-soul movement, but despite the parallels with the Soulquarians’ Afrocentric Nag Champa vibe on tracks like the sprawling opus “Liberation,” Aquemini is staunchly a record by and of the Dirty South. Its biggest hit manages to flip one of the most iconic moments of the Civil Rights Movement into a giddy harmonica hoedown, and the seven-minute dub session “SpottieOttieDopaliscious” remains singular, a transportive nostalgia trip drenched in sensory input and a timeless horn melody. Stankonia would be their true breakout moment, and by the time they released the companion solo LPs Speakerboxx and The Love Below, their individual star power threatened to swallow the group whole. Aquemini remains their most ambitious attempt to explore the quirks that make them fit together like clockwork. –Matthew Ismael Ruiz",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam6pyk1TGgNUC3oa65dSVVPoRkWZXyyFAbbZ9x21pQLUFn3yu | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/474N76DNT3n1smUARtCDRxekNNF3vu1wV1AjPQDHqP1vtSJ1LCXeQzuZpXEemqE59HpZutecPp2RwSa5M2keJW5WWHAAzTZ5XNf6PJmY4msDXJ2BJc5NgHXNTFe6cGTa2CVkmtn82Bc7M4YCMq7i558GG7b1 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5ceB3rxgXqIRpsOvVzTG28 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/43868,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633376ea10c581ffac68d219/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Outkast%2520-%2520Aquemini.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/OutKast-Aquemini_1998.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,11,Portishead,Dummy (1994),Go! Beat,"Go! Beat Despite its reputation as one of the cornerstones of trip-hop, Bristol trio Portishead’s 1994 debut is much darker—and stranger—than the conventional wisdom might lead you to believe. For one thing, the genre hadn’t yet solidified, and 22-year-old crate-digger Geoff Barrow wasn’t much interested in ambient music anyway. Sampling vintage soul and channeling the spirit of old spy movies, he and 37-year-old guitarist Adrian Utley sketched out a skeletal strain of boom-bap where dial-tone buzz and homemade breakbeats swam in an ocean of silence. It was 29-year-old singer Beth Gibbons who was tasked with filling in that emptiness, but despite the warmth of her Billie Holiday-indebted croon her singing is uniformly forlorn, her presence as unsettling as it is intimate. In the 28 years since, few soundtracks to dorm-room hookups have inspired a greater sense of dread. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1rQMSVKf9rk5vduGhTdsxxwJrVpy1dAghAjWGy2iw4T3ppb | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/AF4hZrJoZxC84SKr5YhNkUxhvHJs9uSA2Ar2Do9q6QaLbRW9zbdL7wZg6oCSkKar6rzWJSC9PyWiC1JNK8YJSAZSwvE29a3VpbFnhdfcmmw6e9RV4BbHSNpq5LKHLhUCYD53E4QgzUeAd6HNZGvytSxjV | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3539EbNgIdEDGBKkUf4wno | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/1765476,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63337754800c1a0f8721bb36/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Portishead%2520-%2520Dummy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Portishead-Dummy_1994.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,10,Nirvana,Nevermind (1991),DGC,"DGC While alternative rock was certainly no secret throughout the ’80s, Nirvana’s uncomfortable rocket ride to the top on 1991’s Nevermind marked the genre’s supernova moment. Launched by “Smells Like Teen Spirit”s bare, twitchy guitar intro and explosive drums, the album’s ennui, angst, and incredible songwriting made it suddenly seem like talented outcasts could rule the world. Many would try to bottle Nirvana’s soured essence in the years following, but few other bands were working with the same quality of raw components: Krist Novoselic’s hypnotic basslines, Dave Grohl’s furious pace, and Kurt Cobain’s ability to create anthemic choruses out of the blunt-edge scrape of a single word. Veering through tempos with an alchemic mix of poignancy and catchiness, Nevermind explored the duality of acceptance and rejection, but never made it feel like a lesson. Fuzzed-out “In Bloom” and chill “Come As You Are” managed to be opposite sides of the same coin, with Cobain sizing up the people who liked all their pretty songs but didn’t fully grasp them, before opening his arms to misfits everywhere. Call it a generational changing of the guard if you must, but these 12 songs connected with young listeners around the world—some who just thought they rocked, and many more who recognized Cobain’s wary POV for what it was: the truth. –Jessica Letkemann",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufamWZnV7ESx6fRrgaLT9cu6ieyR3hwNCYyKBFZAoe7VWJXeENP | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8nansyqULpE8awBcBxybcmwRdNwmAjQJqXPnb2DvZ4BZR6dCDgodef53HQH8Sysgr9PoL9LEoAXF3GGuiuBdV9KbtoJK8KJDkd1Mrz7 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2guirTSEqLizK7j9i1MTTZ | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/77610756,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633377d4e02a17d9175e5629/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Nirvana%2520-%2520Nevermind.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nirvana-Nevermind_1991.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,9,A Tribe Called Quest,The Low End Theory (1991),Jive,"Jive Q-Tip once told Dr. Dre that he made A Tribe Called Quest’s 1993 album Midnight Marauders after listening to The Chronic; Dre told Tip that he knew he had to make The Chronic after listening to A Tribe Called Quest’s 1991 album The Low End Theory. The anecdote is notable as one of the most pointed examples of steel sharpening steel, but also because it puts into proper context how meaningful The Low End Theory is to music history: Remove this record from the timeline, and generations of greatness could have disappeared with it. That includes Tribe’s direct descendants like the Roots, Common, Yasiin Bey, Kanye West, J Dilla, and Pharrell, along with everything that spun-off The Chronic’s branch of influence, from Snoop Dogg to 50 Cent to Eminem. With their second album, Tribe executed a flawless new fusion of ’90s boom-bap and jazz, spearheaded by Q-Tip’s legendary perfectionism, while Phife Dawg’s witty and bombastic performances proved he was no mere hanger-on. There was Busta Rhymes’ incendiary star-making verse on “Scenario” and “Excursions,” which built on a sample of the legendary jazz drummer Art Blakey and additional vocals from Civil Rights era revolutionaries the Last Poets. And perhaps the quintessential Tribe song in “Check the Rhime,” a masterclass in back-and-forth rhyming only Run-DMC could touch. –Mychal Denzel Smith",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam7Aemv5GZVsm4E3jLT4EcT3GkaFuSX4SZbmQBDsSXkTYGqYf | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/meh9fHuiYWLjqSgj7XHZWWWEHEHsDNtLyJtA7tHqnKwM7w8ZUnQNeCSNeb3E3hQnYn62ABcNP6jQGetLxhRE5Xxv9HWQ56VaMgHQDRvWtpFx3hTfusHZ3425RcFA39DBN3admrZsmWJKemVYtXeLv5ygFDMcqYJqKyFgCLHBh | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1p12OAWwudgMqfMzjMvl2a | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/2775344,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63337872370a564bd4b91d5d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/A%2520Tribe%2520Called%2520Quest%2520-%2520The%2520Low%2520End%2520Theory.jpg,/dataset/artwork/A_Tribe_Called_Quest-The_Low_End_Theory_1991.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,8,Hole,Live Through This (1994),DGC,"DGC In 1994, Courtney Love had a hell of a lot to be angry about: unrelenting abuse at the hands of the media and misogynist grunge fans; Child Protective Services’ brief seizure of her infant daughter; husband Kurt Cobain’s personal downward spiral, which ended with his suicide just days before the release of Live Through This, Hole’s second album. She channeled all this into a masterpiece of wrathful beauty—12 tracks bubbling over with poison-candy-apple hooks and some of the most deliciously melodic screams ever recorded. Raging against abusive lovers (“Violet”), victim-blaming (“Asking for It”), impossible beauty standards (“Miss World”), motherhood (“Plump”), and more, Love became an icon for the misfits, the survivors, and the fed-up. Live Through This broke the dam, flooding rock’n’roll with a strain of fury that flowed from riot grrrl to Alanis Morrissette to Paramore to Olivia Rodrigo and beyond. “Just you try to hold me down/Come on try to shut me up,” Love snarled on “Gutless.” Three decades later, nobody has been able to do either. –Amy Phillips",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1rYQvpd1wMdbBBqmxjQHMkvb4Ad35UaAxmgFmdyR1mGYYeo | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/meh9fHuiYWLjqSgj7XHZWWWEHEHsDNtLyJtA7tHqnKwM7w8ZUnQNeCSNeb3E3hQnYn62ABcNP6jQGetLxhRE5Xxv9HWQ4sw9BtDo1SQE1496V2mfiy5fbh5ooeGeY766qHxU8K2uyecqWuwCoYUMfb3V1syzbEoprKtXu1ZqM | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2Rwf2nPYZQ9aIe4QXACTC7 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/18256340,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633378c2800c1a0f8721bb38/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Hole%2520Live%2520-%2520Through%2520This.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Hole-Live_Through_This_1994.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,7,Janet Jackson,The Velvet Rope (1997),Virgin,"Virgin Having sexually blossomed in public on 1993’s janet., Janet Jackson then turned inward to water her spiritual garden, laying out her open invitation during the title track: “Come with me inside/Inside my velvet rope.” A meta-meditation on her consciousness, 1997’s The Velvet Rope plumbs the depths of Jackson’s mind, from love in retrospect (“Got ’Til It’s Gone”) to love in the metaphysical future (“Together Again”). Here, rope represents not just a relinquished barrier to intimacy, but also a facilitator for bondage play, and the inner world built by Jackson and her trusty collaborators (Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis, and then-husband René Elizondo Jr.) is fully realized. Lyrical and musical themes double back and riff off each other throughout; the proto-footwork snare clatter of “Empty,” for example, reverberates to much different effect in the album’s quiet-storm stunner “Anything.” The resulting cohesion is stronger than on any other Jackson album, particularly during Rope’s back half, a suite of slow jams that mine facets of a full-blown aesthetic of chill. That Jackson would drop such a mellow and musically daring record after signing what was then the biggest recording contract of all time (an $80 million re-up with Virgin) is a quintessentially Janet move: introverted in its extroversion, the quietest of roars. –Rich Juzwiak",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1naUxMtAFVUiJKDo64N12F8CVt89trUEWDtYdm18sdRdwgf | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/X7niGYieCH8UQ8PGqdUBtg8M6SAMcPegELm2uaNkiXQqSRwp4HaQGxppbNbCMF44CZcGNECmFt4zQZRh1GRha7dMawYcetXqJ284G4YYz5Mp5qnEJ8jvqbFqQWoN9paHCG69GmU69ZrSGaVHxaCsdEwf5sVgTgeH6GsyM | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/6ZANEjETQ9L9pjBuvOAhCQ | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/2906717,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333794810c581ffac68d21b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Janet%2520Jackson%2520-%2520The%2520Velvet%2520Rope.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Janet_Jackson-The_Velvet_Rope_1997.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,6,Björk,Homogenic (1997),One Little Independent,"One Little Independent Björk immersed herself in London’s club scene for her first two solo albums, but by the runup to 1997’s Homogenic a string of personal circumstances had given her no shortage of reasons to return to her native Iceland. With volatile electronic elements that Björk has likened to the island nation’s active volcanoes, and desolate strings that could conceivably soundtrack an epic Viking film, the album certainly represented a homecoming of sorts. Its title also spoke to Björk’s growing control over the creative process, which she used, with collaborators such as Markus Dravs and Mark Bell, to achieve her most unified sonic palette yet. That stately yet unstable setting—Arvo Pärt meets Aphex Twin—adorns some of the often-cryptic lyricist’s most arresting statements. She’s a fountain of blood in the shape of a girl; a state of emergency is where she wants to be; she knows you can’t handle love. When she unloads these epiphanies in her usual gravity-defying manner, as much trapeze artist as vocalist, the sense of adventure is palpable. In the end, much of the album was recorded in Spain—you really can never go home again—and Björk’s return to a quieter life turned out to be an even greater journey of discovery. By the time the album wraps with the limpid ecstasy of “All Is Full of Love,” it’s clear that by going back to where she was from, Björk had found a new way of moving forward. –Marc Hogan",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam6oa3g3zEdz8Q1xWZ11dcjJzcnMSNWhPPtsuCjRMpYFHeq3y | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/474N76DNT3n1smUARtCDRxekNNF3vu1wV1AjPQDHqP1vtSJ1LCXeQzuZpXEemqE59HpZutecPp2RwSa5M2keJW5WWHAAzUKNHjXqpKJJHGgLNg21jLY1xyQLwbWF2qtj3yYQtEBFj2CAczfppvzw5Vz1CGbD | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://bjork.bandcamp.com/album/homogenic | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/0HMsmYvoT1h2x1C4di5faf | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/3126068,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633379b0f2e57bfbb70500a2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bjo%25CC%2588rk%2520-%2520Homogenic.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bjrk-Homogenic_1997.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,5,Wu-Tang Clan,Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) (1993),Loud,"Loud With their debut album, Wu-Tang Clan didn’t just crash through as a group but as a genre unto itself. Built around its own vernacular, in-house producer RZA’s proudly unrefined sonic templates, and every MC’s uniquely towering standard of lyrical excellence, the Wu’s insular world made little concession to convention. And why should it? As a crew of nine outsiders and industry cast-offs repping NYC’s forgotten borough of Staten Island (aka “Shaolin”), self-sufficiency was essential to survival. This urgency informs every battle-tested couplet, from the throttling salvos of their landmark first single “Protect Ya Neck,” which features nearly all of the group’s original members, to Ghostface and Raekwon’s nostalgic laments on “Can It Be All So Simple,” to Method Man and Inspectah Deck’s existential introspection on “C.R.E.A.M.” “Wu-Tang Clan Ain’t Nuthing Ta F’ Wit,” meanwhile, is poetically self-referential on a whole other level: a defiant declaration from consummate rap underdogs rhyming over the sampled theme song to the ’60s cartoon Underdog. Upon its release, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) already sounded legendary. Now, heard as the soundtrack to an origin story of which we know the outcome, its historical legacy equals its undiluted brilliance. –Jeff Mao",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufamQkjzEVWgKJuAq6VPNHtDVvb5EgzX4AvtHXbckgxfZcByF9m | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/qsSkLvaohicCiNF2u5sRy7EaHrr8QBHsmzbUp2chj45Ue8bty9VB33hCfd6DmL3Z7ddgiGYA7eGBKavp844TFtJLVTXSyFc56F3TEtEe7qSwbS515PMwMN8nBWS6bwMZrnsx4fmRqbXnGSGJ51EAVi8myJHLJCYw2hjcqutYqHddHZmxJgZAFmEK | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3tQd5mwBtVyxCoEo4htGAV | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/33913336,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63337a541390abe483e95472/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Wu-Tang%2520Clan%2520-%2520Enter%2520The%2520Wu-Tang%2520(36%2520Chambers).jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Wu-Tang_Clan-Enter_The_Wu-Tang_36_Chambers_1993.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,4,Liz Phair,Exile in Guyville (1993),Matador,"Matador In college, Liz Phair counted the number of women in an art history textbook and was dismayed by her slim findings. Later, from the fringes of a boys’ club indie scene in Chicago, she wrote Exile in Guyville. The void of female perspectives in popular culture was both her 1993 debut’s motivation—Phair positioned it as a counterpoint to an album she deemed canonically male, the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main St.—and the reason for its success. In Phair, listeners found an avatar for a sort of female complexity not abundantly visible in the mainstream: vulnerable, bawdy, vengeful, declaring her desire for a boyfriend “and all that stupid old shit” one minute and brushing off emotional intimacy the next. Phair delivers it all in an unimpressed monotone, and she picks at her guitar like a scab—gestures that point to a constant undercurrent of anger, though her arrangements never surpass a low simmer. Rather, it’s her words, with their offhanded grace and devastating bluntness, that truly burn. –Olivia Horn",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufdscNBSc5X6BXwAwB5s5bo5MyFQpsztfVGJXjaeu3HVJXpGxvo | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/meh9fHuiYWLjqSgj7XHZWWWEHEHsDNtLyJtA7tHqnKwM7w8ZUnQNeCSNeb3E3hQnYn62ABcNP6jQGetLxhRE5Xxv9HWQ4h2kSxrCnW58zr7EnM4sj2pySn8cxZXh6FycDLZ6zmXepo4C4QEStkh3UBT16cRDK6UncDHMjYmPH | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/7sCpW2cLGcRk1zf9zi0Yqd?si=sRasQquOTu-7e2zQodrGvg | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/85848652,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63320eefe02a17d9175e55ce/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Liz-Phair-Fuck-and-Run.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Liz_Phair-Exile_in_Guyville_1993.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,3,Radiohead,OK Computer (1997),Parlophone,"Parlophone OK Computer was the last gasp of the rock monoculture: an incontestable, unrepeatable, and critically consecrated masterpiece of a genre that was too big to fail, yet too limp to preside over a new century. Picking up grunge’s challenge to macho rock orthodoxy, the bookish Oxford five-piece parlayed corporate resistance and righteous angst into an infernal assessment of mainstream conformism, petit bourgeois inertia, and cartoonish celebrity culture. But where grunge despaired at the gravity of it all, and Britpop buried its head in hedonism, Radiohead made a crucial distinction: Seeing the inferno of modern life in all its grotesque glory was not a curse to endure or escape, but a superpower to wield. The band enshrined Thom Yorke’s feverish proclamations in music so valorizingly grand and emotionally involving it left little room for reflection. The electric guitar had all but lost its anti-authority luster, yet here was Jonny Greenwood, combining Pixies-style fretwork and pedal-board wizardry to remake the instrument as the sound of system collapse. Lurching rhythms and electronics flung us into a kingdom on the fritz, where old-world beauty fractured among broken beats and trip-hop tremors. Yorke belted spittle-flecked barbs about fame, sleaze, and corporate lies like a vanquished revolutionary, adopting a paranoid tenor to name conspiracies that everyone knows to be true: consumerism corrupts, capitalism alienates, technology isolates, et cetera. This dire, depressingly real worldview might have stoked a fire in our bellies. Instead, many of Yorke’s disciples were comforted, relieved to feel seen in our infernal little bedrooms and hatchbacks. Rock no longer inspired faith in its revolutionary power, but OK Computer did the next best thing—it made us believe in the spectacle. –Jazz Monroe",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufbEYyTVepdwBZNNLNLGKdVFYcpkMacaEPeCFhWeXQYQXhqs9Z5 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/MKEh7BpQXwWWp1Y3i6D9RjWuqrJsu9zvnz9d36jPMPvD98gTrNrqcRAvCcYCX4oSM9jZscHurCooXc4F442PjYSAu9nqahD59q6WBUpAVszEwderkELMnJoHZS6m7AYgwHWcLwJvvJCMafDkdUo17xihWat8rdmfR | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/6dVIqQ8qmQ5GBnJ9shOYGE | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/58990510,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dcfdcef6685f1f1f35aa0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Radiohead-Let-Down.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Radiohead-OK_Computer_1997.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,2,Lauryn Hill,The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (1998),Ruffhouse / Columbia,"Ruffhouse / Columbia The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill is the story of a 23-year-old woman experiencing heartbreak and disappointment in a dizzying phase of her life, and choosing to rap about it. Without the backing of her group, the Fugees, a then-pregnant Lauryn Hill allowed herself space to breathe and explore the entirety of her emotions without divorcing those emotions from skill. On her first and only solo studio album, she’s wise and unknowing, as sensitive as she is vigorous in explaining her growing pains. The 1990s weren’t exactly an era for harmonized vulnerability in rap, but Hill was so wildly proficient at singing and emceeing—about everything from Moses to star signs—that she created a new love language for a world of Drakes. With Miseducation, her search for desire and spirituality resonated because it was built on a foundation of honesty: songs about obligations to art, men, and motherhood, packaged into a concept album with interludes that treat love as a necessary, amorphous thing. It’s the way she cloaks the hurt in daggers on the diss record “Lost Ones,” then sings with painful clarity about a relationship’s demise on “Ex-Factor,” a beautifully clear-headed postmortem. For the length of the album, Hill does the dirty work of facing her feelings, and in the process helps her listeners pick up their own. –Clover Hope",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufdrJnuH38BRgGzKcszjg4dqrKytRMGD5Pk8X8e9NcLLsFUHkUT | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2FTC5bHweKNXpHC9thPgiTMZ7CKV7gyqnq3T43d9US4PEFsoPMbz36ZSb45vo7Po67YwfeFw1VePqcR4tiByG9dEytLCG8AX8Zh9Lpgxzh7a8NzvfaHw5MBPXEtcHMFm9UUssGduUM9PAAVMZANbm3qx5gwpieCfsEpT6eXUZ9poui6MDVHJ6M6qCz2Kd | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1BZoqf8Zje5nGdwZhOjAtD | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/78067535,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63337bee25ed8dd61c96535f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lauryn%2520Hill%2520-%2520The%2520Miseducation%2520Of%2520Lauryn%2520Hill.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Lauryn_Hill-The_Miseducation_of_Lauryn_Hill_1998.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,1,My Bloody Valentine,Loveless (1991),Creation / Sire,"Creation / Sire You could say, shrewdly, that Loveless combines two main modalities of the ’90s by being the greatest rock album that is made almost entirely of samples—drum loops, guitar feedback, vocals, all sent through an Akai S1000, which could then be triggered from a keyboard—creating a singular melding of dream-pop and acid-house and hip-hop that defined a new genre called shoegaze. You could say its underlying philosophy remains as relevant as ever: that sleepiness is a largely underrated state of being, that our unconscious impulses are far more truthful than our conscious behavior, that the best music should feel like it could go on forever. You could say that its chief architect, Kevin Shields, is influenced by no one more than fellow Irishman Edmund Burke, the 18th-century philosopher who coined the Romantic ideals of beauty and sublime, and who wrote that the richest emotional response from art comes from the “terrible uncertainty” it can elicit. At its heart, Loveless is terribly uncertain. It is the primo example of an auteurist studio album—glacially pieced together almost entirely by Shields in and out of British studios across over two years—yet the frontman and producer buries his and Bilinda Butcher’s lipless vocals in the middle of the mix to recreate the sound of watching My Bloody Valentine in a loud club. Every pitch on Loveless is imperfect—they are glided into and out of tune using Shields’ whammy bar, or they are at war with themselves, 10 to 15 vocal or guitar tracks buried underneath the lead line creating imperceptible microtonal anomalies. And even though Loveless has become something of an audiophile’s totem, Shields himself has said it sounded all right listening to it through his phone speaker. Every time you put on Loveless, the music changes, the emotion shifts, the ceremony is never the same. That’s where its power comes from: its reptilian ability to survive and evolve, to stand for the belief that the best albums are not just something you listen to but something you become a part of. –Jeremy D. Larson",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam7EZ8jVpYZQzNcfrfESpATpQZt2PtD3G3xdgc25Z1kk4aZMu | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/474N76DNT3n1smUARtCDRxekNNF3vu1wV1AjPQDHqP1vtSJ1LCXeQzuZpXEemqE59HpZutecPp2RwSa5M2keJW5WWHAAzUkhsTYA8wpsW5Y7vfPfppipDp58jkawmsEQHZCsKL1NzLa5GrTFZa7fnB3e2XB1 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3GH4IiI6jQAIvnHVdb5FB6 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/35095273,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63337cac1390abe483e95476/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/My%2520Bloody%2520Valentine-Loveless.jpg,/dataset/artwork/My_Bloody_Valentine-Loveless_1991.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,250,Len,“Steal My Sunshine” (1999),Work / Columbia,"Work / Columbia Of all the great one-hit wonders of the ’90s, Len’s “Steal My Sunshine” might be the most enduring and the most inexplicable. Somehow, a pair of Canadian siblings managed to capture the essence of Southern California in a single that turned into a summertime perennial. The song comes into view slowly, like a mirage shimmering on the edge of a sun-bleached horizon. Its foundational sample of Andrea True Connection’s disco classic “More, More, More” reveals itself as a grounding mantra, then the bliss goes widescreen once Len crash into the verse. Marc and Sharon Costanzo share a lackadaisical vocal affect—it sounds like they hit the studio directly after getting burned on the beach—but where so many slackers couldn’t be bothered to shape their slothfulness into hooks, Len cares deeply about leisure: They’re committed to wasting away the hours that make up a dull day. Because nothing sounds better than doing absolutely nothing. –Stephen Thomas Erlewine",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1fzJ_AYajA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632b7a2de02a17d9175e54b2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Len-Steal-My-Sunshine.png,/dataset/artwork/Len-Steal_My_Sunshine_1999.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,249,Wu-Tang Clan,“Triumph” (1997),Loud / RCA,"Loud / RCA No need to address Inspectah Deck’s opening lines, which everyone who cares about the Wu-Tang Clan already knows by heart, and has probably tried rapping themselves at some point. They’re great, but they stick in your head above the others partly by virtue of coming first. What about Raekwon’s white-gold tarantula, rhymed—unbelievably but perhaps inevitably—with “substantial-a”? Even U-God gets an all-timer in there, singing a song from Sing-Sing, sipping on ginseng. The monumental first single from their sprawling and uneven second album, “Triumph” is the Wu’s last great stand as a nine-man team and one of hip-hop’s greatest posse cuts. Over suitably dusty RZA production, with nothing remotely resembling a chorus, they go in for six minutes about Marvel comics and Mortal Kombat; Tennessee Williams and Laurel & Hardy; champagne bottles and squabbles with rival crews; and, of course, the will of the Wu to rule it all. They were never particularly aligned with commercial trends, but in 1997, at the dawn of the shiny suit era, this sort of wordy mythologizing was especially unfashionable. And yet, with no concessions to the mainstream save its blockbuster music video, it went platinum. The first line of the final verse provides the most apposite reaction: “Ayo, that’s amazing.” –Andy Cush",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPRKsKwEdUQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63320fc710c581ffac68d1fc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Wu-Tang-Clan-Triumph.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Wu-Tang_Clan-Triumph_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,248,Ani DiFranco,“Both Hands” (1990),Righteous Babe,"Righteous Babe Ani DiFranco kicked off her studio discography with a mature song about the end of an affair that she recorded when she was just 18. The opening track off her self-titled debut, which was also the first release from her DIY label Righteous Babe, “Both Hands” hangs sensual recollections on a skeleton of trembling acoustic guitar. Flickering between a slam-poetry cadence and the frantic trill of a Gen X Joni Mitchell, the bisexual-icon-to-be narrated the dissolution of a formative relationship with a person of unspecified gender, whose physical contours read as female. It would take a few years for DiFranco to become the default soundtrack of coffeehouses and women’s centers, but with “Both Hands”—still her most popular track—she arrived as both a throwback to folk’s idealistic hippie heyday and a prophet of sexual revolutions to come. –Judy Berman",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Th-GDhsveM4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c701af2e57bfbb704fe94/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ani-Difranco-Both-Hands.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Ani_DiFranco-Both_Hands_1990.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,247,Fugazi,“Smallpox Champion” (1993),Dischord,"Dischord While colonizing the Americas in the 1700s, officers from Britain enacted biological warfare by intentionally gifting blankets infected with smallpox to Indigenous Americans. Though historians debate if the method even worked, it’s a revolting act immortalized in the diaries of those who pulled it off—and the history lesson at the heart of In on the Kill Taker’s most energizing track. Led by Guy Picciotto’s fuming vocals, “Smallpox Champion” is a scathing condemnation of U.S. genocide filtered through Fugazi’s rousing brand of post-hardcore. Between Brendan Canty’s aggressive tom hits and Ian Mackaye’s wiry guitar noise lies a protest song without any of the typical cliches or moral preaching. Instead, Picciotto delights in the promise of retribution: “History rears up to spit in your face.” By the time its whammy-bar riffs ring out and its “cha-cha-cha” chants start, Fugazi sound almost joyful. “You’ll get yours,” cheers Picciotto. “Woohoo-hoo!” –Nina Corcoran",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C75Aw9-BsTc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632b7eecafa92f85cc3e4e14/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Fugazi-Smallpox-Champion.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Fugazi-Smallpox_Champion_1993.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,246,Wilson Phillips,“Hold On” (1990),SBK,"SBK “Hold On” stitches together the camp and corniness left over from the ’80s, chintzy piano, and what should sound like affirmations stitched on throw pillows—open your heart and mind, tomorrow will be easier, you’re responsible for your own happiness—into a panoramic anthem. The track begins with a tingle of percussion and just the suggestion of strings before those schmaltzy chords chime in. Beneath the sweet sheath of harmonies and lilting melody, Wilson Phillips issue a command: just keep going. It’s a plea packaged as a pep talk: “Hold On” was Wilson Phillips’ first single, and they needed the hit to slide out of their parents’ shadows (consisting of descendants of both Brian Wilson and the Mamas & the Papas, the band was soft-rock royalty). With “Hold On,” they asked to be taken seriously, on their own terms—with the hope that you, too, could recognize your potential, even if only for one more day. –Dani Blum",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIbXvaE39wM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632b80b01dccce609e4161dc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Wilson-Phillips-Hold-On.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Wilson_Phillips-Hold_On_1990.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,245,Refused,“New Noise” (1998),Burning Heart,"Burning Heart Refused get blamed for everything that came after their genre-exploding masterwork “New Noise”: nu-metal, Hot Topic-core, rudimentary techno beats dropped casually into the breakdowns of hardcore songs. But what elevates this song above mere pastiche is its finely tuned balance. Here, the Swedish hardcore band is painfully self-serious, but also looser and more playful than most of their peers and imitators. Every part of the song does its job: The circuitous intro signals the arrival of something momentous, the verses build tension, and the choruses hit with meteoric force. With unwavering confidence, Refused promised a new sound and then actually delivered an opus that pointed a way forward for heavy music in the new millennium. –Mehan Jayasuriya",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkAe30aEG5c,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632b81bd8f0d7ac40b58dc31/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Refused-New-Noise.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Refused-New_Noise_1998.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,244,Deborah Cox,“Nobody’s Supposed to Be Here” (1998),Arista,"Arista Deborah Cox spent the first six months of her music career touring as a backup singer for Celine Dion, a crash course in how to make every note a spectacle. On her breakout hit, “Nobody’s Supposed to be Here,” the smallest shifts are mesmerizing—the jagged edge in her throat when she admits love has knocked her down, the way the vowel caves in when she sings the word “sad,” the shock of shriek that builds up as she belts the chorus. Gentle percussion and chimes swirl in the background, and the song winds around and around Cox’s circular thinking, as she spirals through dejection, hope, and refusal, all leading up to a cathartic key change. “I’m not supposed to care anymore,” she moans as the track trickles out, a final sigh before she gives in. –Dani Blum",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H947PtHmh0Y,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c7041c092b177647856b6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Deborah-Cox-Nobodys-Supposed-to-Be-Here.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Deborah_Cox-Nobodys_Supposed_to_Be_Here_1998.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,243,Dismemberment Plan,“You Are Invited” (1999),DeSoto,"DeSoto By the time the Dismemberment Plan released Emergency & I, in 1999, the band didn’t fit into any existing niche. Born from Washington, D.C.’s punk scene, they twitched around rhythms more like nervous jazzbos. Embraced by indie rock fans, their third album was bankrolled, and then ditched, by an easily distracted major label. Emo? Fine—but “You Are Invited,” the record’s affecting centerpiece, also did icy electronic drum throbs a year before Radiohead’s “Idioteque,” and witty post-punk speak-singing a cultural eon before LCD Soundsystem’s “Losing My Edge.” Its message, delivered by Travis Morrison with genial yearning, was simple: What if you got a sheet of paper guaranteeing you could never be left out of the party again? The uncanny similarity between the “since you’ve been gone” refrain on another great Emergency & I song, “The City,” and Kelly Clarkson’s subsequent smash hinted at D-Plan’s potential to transcend boundaries of genre and scene; on a wide-eyed journey toward fist-pumping catharsis, “You Are Invited” embodies that welcoming generosity of spirit. It’s an all-access pass to self-acceptance—and like the main character in the song, you’ll immediately want to pay it forward to the next person who needs it. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAYldCX27G0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c712162bcbfd19793fb6c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Dismemberment-Plan-You-Are-Invited.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Dismemberment_Plan-You_Are_Invited_1999.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,242,Naughty by Nature,“Feel Me Flow” (1995),Tommy Boy,"Tommy Boy Even the most ambitious spiritual lyrical miracle MC would be hard-pressed to match the pace of Treach’s nimble tongue on “Feel Me Flow.” Yet Naughty by Nature’s missive feels less like a flex than a dare: Can you party as hard as they do? Atop a twinkling sample of the Meters’ “Find Yourself,” this 1995 song-of-the-summer candidate finds Treach stuffing bars with rhymes and mocking the nerds who can’t keep up. The East Orange, New Jersey rap group balanced their grit with a bit of goofiness (not unlike their Newark neighbor Redman), best evidenced by the accompanying music video, in which the whole hood is transported from summer on the block in Jersey to winter on the slopes in Vermont. –Matthew Ismael Ruiz",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLSbWDVI_pw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c71da3cb072de755b47ae/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Naughty-by-Nature-Feel-Me-Flow.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Naughty_by_Nature-Feel_Me_Flow_1995.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,241,Robyn,“Show Me Love” (1995),Ricochet / Ariola / BMG,"Ricochet / Ariola / BMG Robyn Is Here was the name of the Swedish pop wunderkind’s debut album, but could anyone have understood what a poignant and prophetic statement it would be? In the years to come, Robyn would recalibrate pop with her specific brand of shattered euphoria, songs that doused you in glitter even while seeping into your every ache. But as a teen hitmaker, she crash-landed on the U.S. charts with a handful of glinting, gooey singles. “Show Me Love” is a blast of Max Martin confection, with syrupy synths and the sugar rush of Robyn’s belt in the chorus, trapping the burgeoning star in amber. –Dani Blum",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhWEI6-_w9E,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c72398f0d7ac40b58dccf/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Robyn-Show-Me-Love.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Robyn-Show_Me_Love_1995.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,240,Pearl Jam,“Corduroy” (1994),Epic,"Epic The success of grunge presented a quandary for many of its practitioners; accustomed to marinating in the untested righteousness of their anticonsumerism, they now had to grapple with the fact that millions of consumers, among them fist-pumping jocks and radio-loving dilettantes, were now wholly into their stuff. No one suffered more openly on the horns of his stardom than Eddie Vedder, who took every available opportunity to minimize the uncritical worship his band inspired. He also made maybe the best entry in the canon of pop music by famous people about the wages of fame. Pearl Jam’s “Corduroy,” off the band’s third album, Vitalogy, transcends the meager limits of the category by being irresistible about wanting to be resisted. Every move works here, from the tolling guitar arpeggios of the first few bars to Jeff Ament’s prowling bass solo that I swear is an homage to Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain.” “I don’t want to take what you can give/I would rather starve than eat your bread,” Vedder howls at his fans, but the hook undermines his attempt to distance himself from their affections. Fame’s a bummer, the rock star laments, while the world can’t help but hum along. –Tommy Craggs",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S73ypK3As8I,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c72ac10c581ffac68d0c7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Pearl-Jam-Corduroy.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Pearl_Jam-Corduroy_1994.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,239,JAY-Z,“Dead Presidents II” (1996),Roc-A-Fella,"Roc-A-Fella JAY-Z’s classic debut LP Reasonable Doubt sounds like little else in his catalog, with one foot planted firmly in the street and the other set to step into the boardroom. It’s peppered with prominent entries into the rap canon, but few embody his capitalist gangster ethos better than “Dead Presidents II.” The original version—released as a single ahead of the album—features the same gorgeous loop of the piano melody from Lonnie Liston Smith’s “A Garden of Peace,” but its juvenile braggadocio falls flat. The new verses on the album version exude a quieter confidence, with a tone more reflective of an underground kingpin assured of his future success. Of course, Jay’s later claim that “You made it a hot line, I made it a hot song” about the Nas sample that serves as the chorus always seemed disingenuous, because “The World Is Yours” remains one of the defining works of the boom-bap era. But “Dead Presidents II” does evince one of the reasons JAY-Z has managed to maintain relevance as various trends explode and fade into the ether: A preternatural ability to borrow from others to make something truly his own. –Matthew Ismael Ruiz",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3grvCbdONk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c7305d997a1f3e8a0cbc1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jay-Z-Dead-Presidents-II.jpg,/dataset/artwork/JAY-Z-Dead_Presidents_II_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,238,Blur,“Song 2” (1997),Food,"Food After charging through the football stadium in aimless elation, soundtracked to the sound of Damon Albarn’s “WOO-HOO,” Moe Szyslak turns to Homer Simpson and says, impatiently: “We’ve been running around cheering for an hour! Where the hell’s the game?” The 1999 Simpsons bit perfectly taps into the spirit of Blur’s atypically free-spirited “Song 2,” a flippant yet propulsive FRAP of a track that can make grown men earnestly lose their shit before they realize they’ve been had. A parody of post-grunge American rock that was originally presented to their label as a joke, “Song 2” swept up the very market it was meant to be mocking. With its 12-beers-deep nonsense lyrics and car alarm power chords, the track—irresistible as it is—was ubiquitous during sporting events in the ’90s, signaling each touchdown and post-match celebration. May its capacity to cause male onset zoomies never wane. –Emma Madden",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bynKHspJZRA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c7372f2e57bfbb704fe96/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Blur-Song-2.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Blur-Song_2_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,237,Gin Blossoms,“Hey Jealousy” (1992),San Jacinto,"San Jacinto With singer Robin Wilson as his amplifier, Gin Blossoms’ core songwriter Doug Hopkins could wring honey out of his heart’s most festering wounds. The Arizona rock band’s signature hit lights up a last-ditch effort to claw back a lost love from the ruins of one’s own mistakes. “If you don’t expect too much from me/You might not be let down,” Wilson sings, the words rippling out uncannily smooth, their inherent desperation buffed to a shine. The levity in the song’s arrangement—the jangling guitar arpeggios, the shivers of tambourine—belie the weight of the addiction and mental illness Hopkins found himself tangled in while writing, which dragged him to his death a few months after “Hey Jealousy” got a foothold on the pop charts. But the lyrics hide nothing, their abyssal despair and fevered hope laid bare in the curl of a perfect hook. –Sasha Geffen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ah5gAkna3jI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c757f5d15e3865f508d91/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Gin-Blossoms-Hey-Jealousy.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Gin_Blossoms-Hey_Jealousy_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,236,Broadcast,“Echo’s Answer” (1999),Warp,"Warp Every moment of “Echo’s Answer” feels like it is falling in and out of focus. It is a tone and mood befitting Broadcast, a band that was born from ’60s club nights in their native Birmingham, England and grew within a UK scene anchored by similarly psychedelic pop groups like Stereolab and Pram. Broadcast distinguished themselves through dub-like production techniques and jazzy drumming that made their work as slippery and mysterious as the undulating wax in a lava lamp. On this track, though, even the most solid component of the band’s work, the enchanting vocals of the late Trish Keenan, vanishes in the haze with lyrics that elude easy interpretation and a post-production effect that swallows her last line into a wormhole. The only appropriate course of action is to follow her down. –Robert Ham",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZV9OqdFFyk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c75c11dccce609e4161e0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Broadcast-Echos-Answer.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Broadcast-Echos_Answer_1999.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,235,Tracy Chapman,“Give Me One Reason” (1995),Elektra,"Elektra In 1988, Tracy Chapman’s influential self-titled album and breakthrough “Fast Car” presaged the folk revival to come. Yet throughout the ’90s, critics called her music “dour,” never truly grasping the complexity with which Chapman integrated stories of disenfranchisement and poverty alongside her gently melodic love songs. On 1995’s New Beginning, Chapman found her second wind through an album that brightened the corners of her folk music with an eye toward renewal and environmentalism (the CD even came bundled with a coupon for a packet of seeds to be redeemed at her shows). “Give Me One Reason” is the record’s bluesy highlight and her biggest hit to date, strutting along a plucked, head-nodding guitar melody and Chapman’s grainy alto. Centering on an imbalanced relationship, each verse grows more frustrated from a lack of reciprocity; then the band kicks in and the pleading in her voice becomes cathartic, begging for a reason to stay while knowing it won’t come. The bittersweet ultimatum seemed to bloom out of years of romantic frustration, but in Chapman’s voice and arrangement it becomes a balm, guiding listeners through the push and pull of loving someone who can’t give you what you need. –Eric Torres",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6hQ9HSKlIE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c760462bcbfd19793fb6f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Tracy-Chapman-Give-Me-One-Reason.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Tracy_Chapman-Give_Me_One_Reason_1995.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,234,Korn,“Freak on a Leash” (1999),Immortal / Epic,"Immortal / Epic Jonathan Davis knew he was trapped. The Bakersfield misfits of Korn were becoming the outlandish stars of ascendant nu-metal, so to make their third album, they tapped endless industry spoils: a recording budget nearing a million, a ceaseless stream of booze and blow, a vocal coach literally punching Davis in the back. But he also bristled at sudden commodity status, knowing free stuff wasn’t actually freedom. “Freak on a Leash” is the sound of pariahs pounding against asylum walls, of demanding to be let out despite being permanent hostages, “a cheap fuck for me to lay.” Those pinprick guitars are tin snips taken to barbed wire, that lashing rhythm section a sledgehammer against an armored door. The dangerous assault, though, comes after two minutes, with the era’s most unhinged vocal paroxysm—Davis’ beat-boxed glossolalia, 27 terrifying, cathartic, and sort of hilarious seconds where frustration overruns the capacity of language. When Davis commands “Go!” imagine yourself rushing the gates, too, outrunning bullets at your back. –Grayson Haver Currin",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRGrNDV2mKc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c76461dccce609e4161e2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Korn-Freak-on-a-Leash.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Korn-Freak_on_a_Leash_1999.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,233,Cypress Hill,“How I Could Just Kill a Man” (1991),Ruffhouse / Columbia,"Ruffhouse / Columbia The B-side to Cypress Hill’s debut single “The Phuncky Feel One,” this West Coast anthem was much of the world’s introduction to the bong-toking cholos that would help define the gangsta rap sounds coming out of Southern California in the early ’90s. With boom-bap drums punctuated by the squeal of sampled horns, “How I Could Just Kill A Man” is the battle cry of disaffected youth driven to meet violence with violence. In some ways it sits on other side of the same coin as Ice Cube’s “It Was a Good Day”; where Cube’s good fortune guides him away from the gaze of corrupt cops and carjackers, B-Real faces it head-on, dismissing detractors who could never understand the daily dangers he faces. “So how do you know where I'm at, when you haven't been where I've been?” he asks, already knowing the answer: It’s easy to declare violence is not the solution when you never have to face it. –Matthew Ismael Ruiz",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yg-RIOATCbU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c76f31dccce609e4161e4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Cypress-Hill-How-I-Could-Just-Kill-a-Man.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Cypress_Hill-How_I_Could_Just_Kill_a_Man_1991.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,232,Brian Eno / John Cale,“Lay My Love” (1990),Opal / Warner Bros.,"Opal / Warner Bros. Like the best art from devotional poets John Milton or John Donne, one of Brian Eno’s masterworks is a hymnal from a funny angle—not upward, from man to his unknowable God, but southward, from its point of view back down. “I am the wheel,” Eno drones sunnily, in a pop song that sounds aerially suspended. “I am the turning.” Maybe this beatific rush was a product of Eno’s somewhat fighty relationship with collaborator John Cale; maybe it was shaped out of the runoff from the semi-liquid ambient classic Thursday Afternoon, released five years before it; or maybe just from a random pang of bliss in the long wake of his emancipation from Roxy Music. Who’s to say. A single card from Eno’s Oblique Strategies deck of creative prompts might be most explanatory of “Lay Your Love”’s magic, monkish kiss to and from the divine. It bears one word against a white void: “Courage!” –Mina Tavakoli",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCz2KxM9AwY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c774762bcbfd19793fb71/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Brian-Eno-Lay-My-Love.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Brian_Eno__John_Cale-Lay_My_Love_1990.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,231,Celine Dion,“It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” (1996),Virgin,"Virgin Jim Steinman, the mad genius who wrote “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now,” said he was inspired by the novel Wuthering Heights, and compared it to “Heathcliff digging up Cathy’s corpse and dancing with it in the cold moonlight.” This is important to remember, because there is no scene in Wuthering Heights where Heathcliff digs up Cathy’s corpse and dances with it in the cold moonlight. But this haunted and windswept romantic fantasia is what’s conjured by Celine Dion’s spirit-galvanizing rendition of Steinman’s song. Dion, the most successful balladeer of the ’90s, summons all the power in her soul and lungs to commune with the dead, the theatrically proggy arrangement crescendoing behind her. She sings about making love so intense it’s banned by the law; she’s joined by a reassuring chorus who agree, yes, that feeling she remembers is coming back to her now, Dion isn’t just making this up. Her passion hits an apex as she sings “baby, baby, baby” like she’s squeezing her hand through a tight space to reach the afterlife. It’s the stuff of romance novels, even if it never literally happened in one. –Jeremy Gordon",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8fHNdrZTSI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c77ad1dccce609e4161e6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Celine-Dion-Its-All-Coming-Back-to-Me-Now.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Celine_Dion-Its_All_Coming_Back_to_Me_Now_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,230,Cornershop,“Brimful of Asha” (1997),Wiiija,"Wiiija In 2011, Asha Bhosle recalled the time that “Brimful of Asha” helped her through the immigration desk at London’s Heathrow Airport. When the officer on the desk quizzed her on her profession as singer, she offered the silky, languorous indie-pop Cornershop song as a reference—not because it was one of the thousands she’d appeared on over her years as a Bollywood playback singer, but rather because it was one written in her honor. By then—thanks mostly to a pitched-up earworm of a big-beat-era Fatboy Slim remix—the song was a core component of rose-tinted nostalgia for the late ’90s. For a song about recognition—fighting for it, or being denied it—by a political, punkish, Punjabi-led band who’d named themselves after the racial stereotype of British Asians owning convenience stores, Bhosle’s immigration play was perhaps a fitting encounter. After all, in Hindi, the name Asha also means “hope.” –Will Pritchard",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lM7H0ooV_o8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c7807afa92f85cc3e4e80/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Cornershop-Brimful-of-Asha.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Cornershop-Brimful_of_Asha_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,229,Boyz II Men,“Motownphilly” (1991),Motown,"Motown Was life really ever as earnest and pure as Boyz II Men’s “Motownphilly” music video made it out to be? In 1991, when the fledgling Philly group released its first single, it was all youthful exuberance spilling out in oversized pink blazers, matching bow ties, and snazzy horn riffs. (Also: If Tik Tok teens haven’t studied this choreography yet, they are missing out.) Michael Bivins of New Edition and Bell Biv DeVoe appeared on the track, which features classic soul harmonies over a new jack swing beat, as well as a totally gratuitous doo-wop showcase at the end. Not too hard and not too soft, the song ushered in the decade of copycat (and largely whitewashed) boy bands that would follow. –Emma Carmichael",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rciee-oQLoI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c78a2800c1a0f8721b907/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Boyz-II-Men-MotownPhilly.png,/dataset/artwork/Boyz_II_Men-Motownphilly_1991.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,228,Soundgarden,“Black Hole Sun” (1994),A&M,"A&M NASA recently shared what a black hole really sounds like, and it turns out that Soundgarden wasn’t so far off. Summer anthems are rarely as dark as night, but for a band drenched in Seattle’s stormy ethos, it’s fitting that their biggest hit was this masterfully trippy power-dirge. Sporting a famous video full of apocalyptic suburbanites with over-sized eyes, “Black Hole Sun” begins with dreamlike guitars and Chris Cornell in full croon. Eeriness immediately invades, before the crunch of Cornell and Kim Thayil’s drop D guitars drive everything further down the rabbit hole. “Heaven send hell away,” Cornell pleads, “No one sings like you anymore.” The sentiment resonated all the more as it blasted from radios at the crest of the Seattle rock wave, just months after Kurt Cobain died. –Jessica Letkemann",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mbBbFH9fAg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c791f10c581ffac68d0c9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Soundgarden-Black-Hole-Sun.png,/dataset/artwork/Soundgarden-Black_Hole_Sun_1994.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,227,Goodie Mob,“Cell Therapy” (1995),LaFace,"LaFace Just because Goodie Mob were paranoid didn’t mean people weren’t following them. While this ad-hoc crew of OutKast affiliates had never recorded a song together before the sessions that would become 1995’s Soul Food, their debut album’s bone-chilling hit laid out a lasting template for how Southern hip-hop could be at once conscious and crunk. “Cell Therapy” was both menacing and menaced, fucked up by conspiracy theories but also the conspiratorial realities of systemic racism. Its gutturally drawled, often-surreal vision of life near the trap would be familiar to Atlanta viewers, let alone EarthGang or Denzel Curry listeners, and its eerie, dub-cavernous production also set a course so irresistible that it was echoed by Gorillaz and sampled by Travis Scott. But the song’s most resonant association is the moment it soundtracks in Barry Jenkins’ classic 2016 film Moonlight: Our now full-grown hero wakes from a nightmare, looking tough as nails, scarred within by trauma that’s deeper than the red Georgia clay. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1V_xRb0x9aw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c7a108f03c19ff0ab1eee/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Goodie-Mob-Cell-Therapy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Goodie_Mob-Cell_Therapy_1995.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,226,Alice in Chains,“Would?” (1992),Columbia,"Columbia The darkness underneath “Would?” has belied its tenure as a rock radio staple since its release in 1992. Layne Staley wrote the song about Andrew Wood, the lead singer of fellow grunge band Mother Love Bone, who died of an overdose in 1990. All that pain and grief funnels into the song’s final minute, which also happens to be the final minute of Dirt, Alice in Chains’ hour-long march through a fetid Seattle carnival of depression, suicide, and heroin. Staley does a kind of whammy bar dive-bomb effect on his voice on “mista-a-a-a-ke” before unveiling its upper register; drummer Sean Kinney gets a nice fill showcase; the band ends on a unison five-note rubato car honk: “If I would, could you?” The question “Would?” asks becomes hellaciously macabre in light of Staley’s overdose death in 2002, but the song stands as a long-lasting totem of the Seattle scene’s heavy sound and heavier struggles. –Jeremy D. Larson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nco_kh8xJDs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c7a6bf2e57bfbb704fe98/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Alice-in-Chains-Would.png,/dataset/artwork/Alice_in_Chains-Would_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,225,Jawbox,“Savory” (1994),Atlantic,"Atlantic Jawbox’s “Savory” was one of the unlikeliest alt-rock crossover bids of 1994. Instead of gambling on the tidy production style that decided many a punk band’s fate at the time, the Dischord expats drilled deeper into their fiery essence for the first single off their major label debut. Propelled by an evil swing with dangerous riptides underneath, the song keeps things tense even in the tuneful chorus. Though “Savory” aired on MTV’s 120 Minutes and Beavis and Butt-Head, its blunted serration skidded off the mainstream, and the band’s deadpan mien and newfound penchant for formal dress didn’t make their cryptic music any more accessible. But those same intractable qualities set the song apart as one of the heaviest, grooviest, most soulful post-hardcore anthems ever. –Brian Howe",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFvz1JQAPgQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c7abf10c581ffac68d0cb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jawbox-Savory.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Jawbox-Savory_1994.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,224,Luniz,“I Got 5 on It” (1995),Noo Trybe,"Noo Trybe Did Luniz always intend “I Got 5 on It” to sound so sinister? The Bay Area rap duo wrote the song, their lone hit, about going 50-50 on a dime bag, and on paper it’s a celebration of the rituals and etiquette of social smoking. But the musky, nocturnal beat, built from a corroded sample of R&B group Club Nouveau’s late ‘80s hit “Why You Treat Me So Bad,” turned the track into an exercise in paranoia. It wasn’t a stretch, then, when Jordan Peele absorbed the track into the score for his 2019 horror movie Us. The raps invite you to chip in; the beat cautions you to beware. –Evan Rytlewski",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSC9cgvtkRs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c7b7662bcbfd19793fb73/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Luniz-I-Got-5-on-It.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Luniz-I_Got_5_on_It_1995.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,223,The La’s,“There She Goes” (1990),Go! Discs,"Go! Discs Sometimes credited as the opening salvo of Britpop—Noel Gallagher once declared it his favorite song of the ’90s—this delicious single certainly owes poetic debt to the Velvet Underground’s “There She Goes Again.” On first listen it sounds like a lost ’60s classic stripped to the beams, just an indelibly repeated chorus with sly variations over Byrdsian guitar chime. The melody, parsed out over a seven-word juggling of the title, is irresistible; the jangling riffs appeal to a cultural sweet tooth that the Smiths’ Johnny Marr and R.E.M.’s Peter Buck reawakened in the ’80s. The lyrics play with the classic love-is-the-drug metaphor so expertly that the song joined the ranks of alleged pop paeans to heroin while simultaneously inviting an excellent cover by Christian alt-rock charmers Sixpence None the Richer. It’s a perfect earworm that leaves its parting strum unresolved just enough to make you want—need—to hear it again. –Will Hermes",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMfXeuv4kZE&ab_channel=SergioFoobar,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632de91052d4bd45efccbdb7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-Las-There-She-Goes.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Las-There_She_Goes_1990.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,222,RuPaul,“Supermodel (You Better Work)” (1992),Tommy Boy,"Tommy Boy An entire drag ecosystem earning a small country’s GDP would simply not exist without RuPaul’s 1992 single, which ushered in a catchphrase that, 30 years later, lives on in the Drag Race multiverse: “Sashay, shantay.” A club queen who’d frequented New York’s most storied downtown establishments (and the Shaque D’Amour) and established herself as a beloved weirdo in a scene full of them, Ru’s runway-empowerment house track got heavy rotation on MTV when such things still mattered, becoming a mainstream hit in an underdog-friendly year. (Kurt Cobain loved this song, resulting in the iconic photo of Ru and her skyscraper beehive holding a crying Francis Bean at the ’93 VMAs.) Ru was a 6’4 drag queen cheekily instructing listeners to “make love to the camera,” but it didn’t read as a novelty. It was a perfect pop song for the supermodel era, and one that launched a thousand drag careers, with mother Ru and her bigass wig at the forefront, catwalking the filthy streets of ’90s NYC. –Julianne Escobedo Shepherd",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SOryJvTAGs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c7c21d997a1f3e8a0cbc5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/RuPaul-Supermodel.png,/dataset/artwork/RuPaul-Supermodel_You_Better_Work_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,221,Veruca Salt,“Seether” (1994),Minty Fresh,"Minty Fresh The version of you who scrawls venomous graffiti on bathroom walls, who claps back at bullies, who keeps a running hit list and lies awake plotting revenge? She is the Seether, the alter-ego antihero in the song that took Chicago four-piece Veruca Salt from alt-rock obscurity to the main stage of Glastonbury in just a year. “Seether” is bubblegrunge at its finest, all guitar fuzz and pop stickiness and crackling angst animating a personification of anger that just can’t be leashed. “I try to cram her back in my mouth,” co-frontwoman Nina Gordon sings in the verse, but she didn’t really try that hard. The Seether is everywhere, most recently on the lips of Olivia Rodrigo and fans who discovered the song through her live cover—a new generation blessed with a soundtrack for their righteous rage. –Olivia Horn",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPsQcB52V18,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c7c94d997a1f3e8a0cbc7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Veruca-Salt-Seether.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Veruca_Salt-Seether_1994.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,220,Blur,“Girls & Boys” (1994),Food,"Food The nu-disco lead single from Blur’s Parklife, “Girls & Boys” might have been a sonic outlier in their ambitious catalog, but it was quintessentially Blur in its pithy observations of middle-class English culture. “It’s the travels of the mystical lager-eater,” Damon Albarn said of his inspiration: an Essex bloke en vacance, sunburned and stumbling through Majorca nightclubs. “Girls & Boys” remains one of the finest examples of a rock band crossing over into dance music, thanks largely to Alex James’ buoyant bassline and Graham Coxon’s assertively sour guitar work, which provided the tart top note in an otherwise candy-coated banger. His dissonance mimicked Albarn’s paradise, plagued by bad omens like paranoid love and looming unemployment. Is this a holiday—or sun-drenched hell? –Madison Bloom",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDswiT87oo8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c7ceb1dccce609e4161e8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Blur-Girls-and-Boys.png,/dataset/artwork/Blur-Girls__Boys_1994.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,219,Elvis Crespo,“Suavemente” (1999),Sony Music Latin,"Sony Music Latin In 1998, merengue was on its last legs in the Latin music market—until Puerto Rican vocalist Elvis Crespo came along and dropped the surprise smash hit “Suavemente.” Since then, there’s absolutely no way you’ll attend any Latino cookout, wedding, or party without watching everyone run out of their seats to the dancefloor once the opening a cappella—“Suavemente, Bésame/Yo quiero sentir tus labios” or “Kiss me softly, I want to feel your lips”—hits, before exploding into horns, güira, and percussion that feels like unending swooning euphoria. “Suavemente” gave merengue its glorious breakthrough for mainstream audiences; while it may not be the biggest Latin hit of the ’90s, there are few that remain as beloved and feel-good romantic to your tias. –Gio Santiago",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPiEbYSF9kE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c7d4ecb9d29a648704d42/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Elvis-Crespo-Suavemente.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Elvis_Crespo-Suavemente_1999.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,218,Third Eye Blind,“Semi-Charmed Life” (1997),Elektra,"Elektra There’s a sneering swagger to the way Third Eye Blind sang about disaffection and apathy on their debut single, “Semi-Charmed Life.” They were losers like Beck but combative about it, as if to say: Gaze upon us, ye professional managerial class, and despair. Nestled within the sunshine guitar riff and the “doot doot doot” harmonies borrowed from Lou Reed was a cautionary tale about crystal meth addiction, and falling into a lifestyle that sucks up the years before you realize they’re gone. Seemed bad, but on the other hand: doot doot doot, doot doot-doot doot. It was the rollicking Clinton years, the end of history, and “Semi-Charmed Life” was big-tent solipsism for a generation of dirtbags and college graduates wondering “is this it?” as they navigated adulthood during a period of halcyon global stability. Well, we know what came next. –Jeremy Gordon",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beINamVRGy4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c7da2f2e57bfbb704fe9a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Third-Eye-Blind-Semi-Charmed-Life.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Third_Eye_Blind-Semi-Charmed_Life_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,217,Shanice,“I Love Your Smile” (1991),Motown,"Motown That doo-doo-doo-doo refrain: a starburst melody that simultaneously feels like it must have always existed and was surely beamed to Shanice from the heavens in a moment of celestial magic. “I Love Your Smile” is all about young romance and the joy that uncontrollably bursts from your chest cavity. Funky drums and a prominent bassline adds a streetwise undercurrent to the singer’s effervescence. Though the radio edit foolishly omits Shanice’s rap verse, her rudimentary rhymes attest to feelings of doubt, with the sound of thunder bringing a sudden seriousness to her voice. But then she releases the tension with a laugh, making way for a sax solo by none other than Branford Marsalis, the sun bursting through the clouds once more. –Dean Van Nguyen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGXxcSdsXJ4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c7e08e02a17d9175e54b4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Shanice-I-Love-Your-Smile.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Shanice-I_Love_Your_Smile_1991.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,216,Blink-182,“Dammit” (1997),MCA / Cargo,"MCA / Cargo Blink-182 wrote dozens of songs about being teenagers, so it’s ironic that the most enduring is also the most mature. The San Diego trio was riding the tide of local fame when this quintessential ode to growing up came out; within a couple of years, it had vaulted them into the Billboard Hot 100 and late-night TV. Its iconic guitar riff begins by simply moving up the major scale—about as rudimentary as it gets, but thematically perfect for a song about the travails of growing past childhood—with a tempo just fast enough to provide an actual challenge for all the kids it inspired to pick up the instrument. With “Dammit,” Blink-182 evolved from their juvenile skate-punk origins to a (slightly) more grown-up sound, worthy of the radio domination that would soon come. –Nina Corcoran",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_cs8hidCtw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c7e84f7137d56795e57d3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Blink-182-Dammit.png,/dataset/artwork/Blink-182-Dammit_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,215,Blackstreet,“No Diggity” [ft. Dr. Dre and Queen Pen] (1996),Interscope,"Interscope After almost single-handedly reshaping the course of pop music as the pioneer of New Jack Swing in the late ’80s, singer-songwriter-producer Teddy Riley led his group Blackstreet to a career peak with this 1996 party anthem. One of the stickiest hip-hop/R&B hybrids of all time, “No Diggity” is so stacked with pleading, arm-waving pleasures that a stingier producer probably could have partitioned it out into three or four distinct hits. Along with that melodic abundance, the track heaves one larger-than-life voice on top of the next: Dr. Dre’s linebacker huff, Chauncey “Black” Hannibal’s chesty croon (“SHEEEE’S got class AND STYLE”), and an acrobatic verse from rapper Queen Pen. A nodding Bill Withers sample hangs over it all, like the voice of God himself looking down approvingly on this ridiculously good time. –Evan Rytlewski",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KL9mRus19o,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c805dafa92f85cc3e4e82/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Blackstreet-No-Diggity.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Blackstreet-No_Diggity_ft_Dr_Dre_and_Queen_Pen_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,214,Garbage,“Stupid Girl” (1995),Almo,"Almo When he wasn’t stewarding Nirvana’s Nevermind, enigmatic producer Butch Vig spent the first half of the ’90s stripping pop for parts, reworking songs by Nine Inch Nails, EMF, and Depeche Mode and leaving just their core vocals intact. Perhaps it’s unsurprising that when Vig endeavored to condense his pop philosophies into a new venture, he had everything he needed for a hit with “Stupid Girl”—a drum sample ripped from the Clash, guitars pumped through a grab bag of effects, a bassline that flirted with the blues—except a vocalist. Shirley Manson didn’t just fill the void; on “Stupid Girl,” the Scottish singer stared into it and sneered. Manson’s low register added a seductive and soulful element to the surgical studio glean of Garbage’s production, but she also, crucially, added a deadpan simplicity as a lyricist. Was “Stupid Girl” a diss track? Was it empowering? Was it even about a girl? Manson coyly avoided obvious answers, but the tremble in her voice on the final bridge hints that it could just as well be about the woman singing it. –Arielle Gordon",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rn7n6er1_Ik,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c80b3daa29e0a2a030a61/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Garbage-Stupid-Girl.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Garbage-Stupid_Girl_1995.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,213,Lil’ Kim,“Big Momma Thang” (1996),Undeas / Big Beat / Atlantic,"Undeas / Big Beat / Atlantic Lil’ Kim arrived in 1995 as the most colorful member of Biggie’s Junior M.A.F.I.A., multitasking as the mistress, sexual deviant, and superstar in the crew. Her debut album Hard Core is a complicated declaration of freedom, and “Big Momma Thang“ is Kim activating all of her multitudes: filthy, tough, conceited. The minute she spit the first line—“I used to be scared of the dick/Now I throw lips to the shit”—it opened up a wormhole to an explicit world for women both inside and outside hip-hop. The rest of the song, two verses spliced with a few meddlesome Jay-Z bars, is a PSA about her hopes and dreams, including 24 orgasms and carats, and ultimately her worth. –Clover Hope",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpRfpk311NU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632def5652d4bd45efccbdbb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lil-Kim-Big-Momma-Thang.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Lil_Kim-Big_Momma_Thang_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,212,4 Non Blondes,“What’s Up?” (1992),Interscope / Atlantic,"Interscope / Atlantic Built around a vocal performance so huge that it nearly swallows the song’s jangly guitar riff, “What’s Up?” is the sound of wild mood swings happening in real time. Frontwoman Linda Perry sang about being 25, exhausted by the pain of everyday living, and frustrated by the slow pace of personal and political progress, with the sincerity of someone young enough to keep striving for something better. Impossible to slot neatly into a genre, the track threw Perry into conflict with veteran producer David Tickle—who tried to rewrite her lyrics, among other unnecessary interventions—and forced her to fight for the eclectic, eccentric voice that would make her a sought-after pop songwriter in the aughts. The song is essential not just to Perry’s origin story, but also to creating an overwhelming—perhaps chemically altered—rush of emotion that has fueled three decades of crying jags and karaoke jams. –Judy Berman",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NXnxTNIWkc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c816c800c1a0f8721b909/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/4-Non-Blondes-Whats-Up.jpg,/dataset/artwork/4_Non_Blondes-Whats_Up_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,211,Whitney Houston,“I’m Every Woman” (1992),Arista,"Arista By the time Whitney Houston’s rendition of the Chaka Khan anthem “I’m Every Woman” dropped, she was already an international star racking up countless awards, sold-out venues on world tours, and solidifying her spot as one of the greatest vocalists of all time. As a musician, she was on top of the world, which made her first foray into film all the more precarious. The Bodyguard wasn’t exactly a cinematic breakthrough, but it produced the most successful soundtrack of any movie ever, and the ease with which Houston carried its classic banger immediately revived its anthemic status. Pulling out the disco that underlined the Chaka Khan original, Houston’s version brings us to church, soft and welcoming, as her voice carries us for the first full minute before the beat drops. Walk into any nightclub, drag show, or karaoke bar (should you dare), and euphoria will take over the room should this song come on, lifting us up. At that moment, we are every woman. –Samhita Mukhopadhyay",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7_sqdkaAfo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c821462bcbfd19793fb77/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Whitney-Houston-Im-Every-Woman.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Whitney_Houston-Im_Every_Woman_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,210,Temple of the Dog,“Hunger Strike” (1991),A&M,"A&M Pearl Jam didn’t even exist when Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell beckoned Eddie Vedder to duet on this plaintive power ballad, but what began as Cornell’s unfinished elegy for fallen Mother Love Bone singer Andrew Wood came to crown the accidental Seattle supergroup led by members of two of the scene’s biggest bands. Beyond its quintessential Seattle sound—especially those gentle-to-crunchy guitars, courtesy of nascent Pearl Jammers Mike McCready and Stone Gossard—the call-and-response of Cornell’s multi-octave roar and Vedder’s distinctive bari-tenor echoing the same lines over and over elevated the track into a classic. Incredibly, Vedder first stepped up to Cornell’s mic to belt this one out during his week-long Pearl Jam audition in the rehearsal space the then-forming band shared with Temple of the Dog. Spoiler: Vedder got the job. –Jessica Letkemann",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUb450Alpps,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c826952d4bd45efccbcf7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Temple-of-the-Dog-Hunger-Strike.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Temple_of_the_Dog-Hunger_Strike_1991.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,209,The KLF,“3 a.m. Eternal (Live at the S.S.L.)” (1991),KLF Communications,"KLF Communications Residing cozily among Nelson and New Kids on the Block singles, house tracks manufactured by hook-savvy British and European producers made early 1990s pop radio a less traumatic experience. British stadium-house pranksters Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond conceived “3 a.m. Eternal” as a rap-conversant and club-designed worldwide smush; the title parenthetical, another of their knee-slappers, refers to the desk at which Cauty and Drummond mixed this not-live-in-the-slightest track. Yet “3 a.m. Eternal” generates the endorphin rush of a good concert experience and a better dose of MDMA. Besides its walloping rhythm, double-reed oboe solo, and creamy pre-chorus, it hurls spitballs like “bass ballistics” and “sample city through Trancentral,” not to mention the useful maxim “time is eternal.” What many who made “3 a.m. Eternal” a Top 5 hit remember, though, are the chant—“KLF is gonna ROCK YA!”—and a four-note bleep-hook tapped out on one of those period brick cell phones. Not many Euro-house tracks sported one of those. –Alfred Soto",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGvCYB-P_wI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c82be62bcbfd19793fb79/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-KLF.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_KLF-3_am_Eternal_Live_at_the_SSL_1991.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,208,Belly,“Feed the Tree” (1993),Sire / Reprise,"Sire / Reprise By the early 1990s, a decade as a second-string guitarist-songwriter for Throwing Muses and three parallel years in the Breeders still hadn’t brought out the full range of Tanya Donelly’s talent for tweaking Gothic cliches about madwomen in attics. Using demos she had initially prepared for a second Breeders album, she formed Belly, a group that could pivot from twinkling, sugar-spun ballads to impressively muscular power pop. “Feed the Tree,” released in early 1993 after months of buzz, takes advantage of Donelly’s talent for punching holes in the wall with a killer chorus. Tom Gorman’s serpentine riff coils around the verses while bassist Fred Abong and drummer Chris Gorman keep their rhythms flippy-floppy. The result: an unexpected hit, gold-certified album, and Grammy nomination in a year when major-label moguls polished their glasses and studied those weird-ass little “modern rock” bands. Take your hats off, boys! –Alfred Soto",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQJjUbMrt8w,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c83b752d4bd45efccbcf9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Belly-Feed-the-Tree.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Belly-Feed_the_Tree_1993.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,207,Teenage Fanclub,“The Concept” (1991),Creation,"Creation Some of the best power-pop songs are about the feeling of being turned on by music itself as much as any romantic interest: Big Star’s “Thirteen” looked back on “Paint It, Black,” and the Replacements’ “Alex Chilton” paid homage to the titular Big Star frontman. “The Concept,” the misty and melancholic opening song from Teenage Fanclub’s breakthrough record Bandwagonesque, starts out describing a denim-clad girl who buys records by Status Quo, an obscure ’60s group. By the fist-pumping coda—a marvel of searing guitars, bombastic drums, and wistful three-part harmonies—it’s clear that frontman Norman Blake isn’t in love with the girl so much as he relishes the idea of being in the band onstage, basking in the glow of raised lighters. It’s a fantasy that Teenage Fanclub in some sense made real—Bandwagonesque famously beat out Nirvana’s Nevermind on SPIN’s best albums of the year list—and it exists anew every time someone plugs into power-pop’s nostalgic charge. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Er_JOsnwzcI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c841710c581ffac68d0cd/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Teenage-Fanclub-The-Concept.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Teenage_Fanclub-The_Concept_1991.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,206,Mark Morrison,“Return of the Mack” (1996),WEA / Atlantic,"WEA / Atlantic In hindsight, there’s a slight irony to the massive success of “Return of the Mack,” given that Mark Morrison was never quite able to capitalize on his deliciously petty signature song: It’s a return in search of a departure, a comeback without a debut. In the years that followed his smash hit, a slick and triumphant British Invasion of the American R&B charts with a heavy ragga-tinged beat, Morrison’s career would implode due to constant legal troubles—most infamously the time he hired a lookalike to do his court-mandated community service while he went on tour. The resentment and bitterness exemplified by his lone hit might have been Morrison’s undoing when it came to career longevity, but “Return of the Mack” spins negativity into cathartic gold, a walking-on-air anthem designed to be played on repeat during those times when you need to manifest sweet comeuppance into reality. –Nadine Smith",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB1D9wWxd2w,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c846f8f0d7ac40b58dd3a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mark-Morrison-Return-of-the-Mack.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mark_Morrison-Return_of_the_Mack_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,205,New Radicals,“You Get What You Give” (1998),MCA,"MCA No other ’90s artifact about selling out has endured like “You Get What You Give.” New Radicals leader Gregg Alexander yelped about sticking it to the man, trashing cars, and disrespecting his retail premises, all to the kind of peak CD-era pop-rock that fattened the man’s wallet and made U2 jealous. It’s survived because there’s not a drop of cynicism in it. Alexander considers the communal joy of forging an alternative, sung with irrepressible certainty that you are the antidote. The euphoric hit was too pure for this world and only grows more poignant in time: A disillusioned Alexander split up the band one single later, war broke out, and it turned out there was, allegedly, more than enough reason to want to kick Marilyn Manson’s ass in. But for the four-and-a-half minutes of this song—which, by the way, once inspired a defeated Joni Mitchell to keep making music—the dreamer’s disease still rages beautifully. –Laura Snapes",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DL7-CKirWZE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c84f5f2e57bfbb704fe9d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/New-Radicals-You-Get-What-You-Give.jpg,/dataset/artwork/New_Radicals-You_Get_What_You_Give_1998.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,204,Da Brat,“Funkdafied” (1994),So So Def,"So So Def Da Brat’s swift ’90s rise is the stuff of hip-hop fairy tales. After winning a rap competition hosted by MTV, the young Chicago MC met producer Jermaine Dupri, inked a record deal, and began work on her debut album. She dropped the title track in May of ’94; by summer’s end, it had peaked at No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100. Bumping to a sample of the Isley Brothers’ baby-maker “Between the Sheets,” “Funkdafied” wrapped Da Brat’s jabbing, sassy flow in synthesized strings and a slinking bassline. The single baptized Da “Brat-tat-tat-tat” as a trailblazer—a bar-spitting tomboy who resisted the industry’s appetite for more sexualized packaging. As “Funkdafied” cruised the airwaves, she became the first solo female rapper to go platinum. “I’m on a roll in control like Janet,” she snaps in the third verse—her nod to royalty as she snatched her own crown. –Madison Bloom",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pf_si60K9nM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c85845973f1325c6e0d33/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Da-Brat-Funkdafied.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Da_Brat-Funkdafied_1994.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,203,Cat Power,“Cross Bones Style” (1998),Matador,"Matador You could spend a lifetime trying to detangle the spell cast by “Cross Bones Style,” with its twilit guitars and peppy percussion that never quite falls in step with Chan Marshall’s voice. Searching for some kind of impossible salvation in the eyes of a child who has seen too much, her vocals are doubled—weary yet hopeful, meditative and pleading—like a rope that braids and frays. Cat Power’s songs have protested the cruelties we inflict on each other; yet the abstracted poetry of “Cross Bones Style,” inspired by two orphans whose parents were killed in South Africa’s blood diamond mines, is both frighteningly specific and lingers like a myth. –Owen Myers",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eHkclXUNU0&ab_channel=CatPower-Topic,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c85cfd997a1f3e8a0cbcb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Cat-Power-Cross-Bones-Style.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Cat_Power-Cross_Bones_Style_1998.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,202,Mos Def,“Ms. Fat Booty” (1999),Rawkus,"Rawkus The genius of producer Ayatollah’s flip of Aretha Franklin’s “One Step Ahead” is twofold: The sampled song’s lyrics speak directly to the conundrum Mos Def (now known as Yasiin Bey) writes about on “Ms. Fat Booty,” and it’s also conceivably the record playing on the jukebox when the object of Mos’ affection blows him off during their first meeting. This is the rare love song that ends not in bliss or heartbreak but with the speaker’s deflating realization that he simply can’t keep up. The spark of recognition and last-call conspiracy gives way to an infatuation that consumes him but ebbs for her, made all the worse by the fact that you can see it from the front. –Paul A. Thompson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01yUzXQctcM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c8622e02a17d9175e54b6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mos-Def-Ms-Fat-Booty.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Mos_Def-Ms_Fat_Booty_1999.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,201,Hole,“Doll Parts” (1994),DGC,"DGC On “Doll Parts,” singer, guitarist, and songwriter Courtney Love dissects herself into slivers. Fake eyes, legs, and arms all fall at odd angles, their connective elastic snapped. When some men want women, they divide them in this way: reduce them to anatomical segments, seize upon a part, and throw away the rest. Fame can do this to a person, too, a fact that Love knew well by the time Hole released their second album, Live Through This. In the years since the raw smolder of the band’s 1991 debut, Pretty on the Inside, she had become half of a globally surveilled couple alongside Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain, been the subject of multiple media scandals, and felt the scathing, desirous gaze the world casts on a woman who won’t fit any of its molds. With “Doll Parts,” Love crawls inside that mangling hunger and inverts it. She turns herself into plaster and then ignites the replica with her want. In pieces, charred and deformed, she begs to swallow the world, to make it feel the same pain that’s accumulated for decades in her gut. –Sasha Geffen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RD9xK9smth4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c86838f0d7ac40b58dd3c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Hole-Doll-Parts.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Hole-Doll_Parts_1994.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,200,Maxwell,“Ascension (Don’t Ever Wonder)” (1996),Columbia,"Columbia Is Maxwell talking about love on “Ascension (Don’t Ever Wonder),” the second single from Maxwell’s Urban Hang Suite? A woman? God? Drugs? Maybe all of the above, which is why the chorus penetrates your soul: You know the feeling when something takes you to a place you’ve never been before. The album sequencing suggested it was about the throbbing crescendo of intimate and sexual love, which didn’t stop the song from being beloved by church choirs—it is, after all, a Biblical reference. The track evokes an ethereal lightness, an angelic warmth that hugs you and elevates you higher, above yourself, to a new tier of consciousness. –Samhita Mukhopadhyay",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7rm9t5S4uE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c86f252d4bd45efccbcfb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Maxwell-Ascension.png,/dataset/artwork/Maxwell-Ascension_Dont_Ever_Wonder_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,199,Helium,“Pat’s Trick” (1995),Matador,"Matador On the surface, “Pat’s Trick” is an index of mid-’90s slacker-rock tropes: that chunky, rickety groove; that low-slung and loose-stringed sound; those tinny harmonies; and the countenance of bored contempt that singer-guitarist Mary Timony wears in the video. But the wonderful strangeness of her music can’t help but glow through. The lead single from Helium’s Matador debut The Dirt of Luck, “Pat’s Trick” is as mysterious a creature as the one silhouetted in its lyrics. The riffs and words are both squirmy and stunted, surging with the power of change. Too cool to raise her voice, Timony spread it over blistered crags of guitar and slashes of thick bass chords. It’s the most accessible portal into Helium’s thorned, enchanted world. –Brian Howe",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VY3HuDsHyK8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632ca3bcafa92f85cc3e4ec1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Helium-Pats-Trick.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Helium-Pats_Trick_1995.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,198,Acen,“Trip II the Moon (Pt. 1 and 2)” (1992),Production House,"Production House These indelible slices of 1992 hardcore—in the breakbeat sense—build on a delirious premise delivered in chipmunk falsetto. The repeated vocal snippet expresses the foundational rave desire to be taken higher, perhaps by then-nascent smart drugs, perhaps to the title’s heavenly body. (“Pt. 1”’s whirligig ending suggests UFO involvement.) One thing’s for sure: The voice itself couldn’t rise an iota further before slipping beyond human hearing. It pushes at intelligibility much as the track pushes past any semblance of early-’90s pop normalcy. This is a raucous blender montage of samples and effects, the beat a comforting throughline amid candy-colored chaos. Cinematic samples decorate riotous percussion, taking occasional breaks for proto-drop near-silences. “Pt. 2” is downtempo only by comparison: drums deeper, pace considered, vocals sodden from exertion. A trip to the moon means going up, but at some point you gotta land. Acen eases us down. –Marc Weidenbaum",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8v7dRXuzEw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c8877e02a17d9175e54b8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Acen-Trip-II-the-Moon.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Acen-Trip_II_the_Moon_Pt_1_and_2_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,197,L7,“Pretend We’re Dead” (1992),Slash,"Slash In 1991, outraged by Reagan and Bush Sr.’s years of attacks on reproductive freedom and galvanized by Anita Hill’s testimony against Clarence Thomas, the L.A. punk band L7 co-founded Rock for Choice, a benefit concert series raising money for abortion rights groups. (Over the course of the following 13 years, Rock for Choice would feature almost every major alt-rock band, from Nirvana to Rage Against the Machine to No Doubt, and raise hundreds of thousands of dollars.) The following year, L7 released “Pretend We’re Dead,” a protest anthem that bottled their activist spirit into four minutes of grunge perfection. Singer-guitarist Donita Sparks warned against the danger of political apathy over riffs as heavy as bricks; the only way forward was to “turn the tables with our unity,” she beckoned. Thirty years later, the consequences of that unheeded warning are catastrophic beyond anything L7 could have imagined. –Amy Phillips",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAdlZ2F-fs8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c88b01dccce609e4161ed/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/L7-Pretend-Were-Dead.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/L7-Pretend_Were_Dead_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,196,Fiona Apple,“Sleep to Dream” (1996),Work / Columbia,"Work / Columbia Released when she was 18 years old, the first song on Fiona Apple’s debut album is a mature and clear-eyed statement of self-determination—whether you read it as a breakup song or a preemptive, prescient rejoinder to the small minds who would willfully misunderstand her in the early years of her career. Unlike the rest of Tidal’s piano-forward tracks, “Sleep to Dream” builds from the beat up, a rumble anchoring Apple as she spits bars, her words so sharp and precise they could have been written with a scalpel. “I’ve got my own hell to raise,” is her proclamation in the chorus. Through formal innovations and radical forthrightness, she has spent the decades since fulfilling that prophecy. –Olivia Horn",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVHQJlogH0k,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c8912afa92f85cc3e4e86/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Fiona-Apple-Sleep-to-Dream.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Fiona_Apple-Sleep_to_Dream_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,195,Björk,“Venus as a Boy” (1993),One Little Independent,"One Little Independent Not to get all What Women Want about it, but it’s hardly surprising that the idealized male figure Björk rhapsodizes about in “Venus as a Boy” is described in terms of how he makes the narrator feel, and not what he looks like. This is beauty, according to Björk: attentiveness, the capability of making one’s partner feel beautiful, and an apparent willingness to go down on her. She’s not excited by his biceps or the bulge in his pants, but his sense of humor. Sonically, this Nelle Hooper-assisted single from Debut is something like a chanson in the Earth section of Epcot on Mars. Strings recorded at film studios in India do a ton of heavy lifting; every figure sounds like a different variation on swooning. At once intelligible and singular, “Venus” encapsulated Björk’s particular pop genius so preciously. –Rich Juzwiak",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEQ7GDQC-T4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c89bbd997a1f3e8a0cbcf/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bjork-Venus-as-a-Boy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bjrk-Venus_as_a_Boy_1993.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,194,The Sundays,“Here’s Where the Story Ends” (1990),DGC / Rough Trade,"DGC / Rough Trade Released right at the start of the 1990s, the Sundays’ second single had more than one leg stuck in the 1980s, its gentle jangle pop and bookish miserabilism inevitably recalling fellow Rough Trade signees the Smiths. At the same time, “Here’s Where the Story Ends” has such a titanically strong pop melody—conveying a bittersweet tale of nostalgic longing that has withstood covers by artists as diverse as sugary house merchants Tin Tin Out and American Idol runner-up Crystal Bowersox—that it feels untethered to anything as prosaic as the calendar year. “Here’s Where the Story Ends” is an irresistible ode to moping around in your bedroom, borne aloft and into the stars on David Gavurin’s silk-slipper acoustic-guitar textures and Harriet Wheeler’s crystalline delivery. It influenced the gentler side of Britpop and it will resonate for as long as young people feel sorry for themselves—which is to say, probably forever. –Ben Cardew",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHsip5xOenQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c89fcf2e57bfbb704fe9f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-Sundays-Heres-Where-the-Story-Ends.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Sundays-Heres_Where_the_Story_Ends_1990.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,193,Aimee Mann,“Save Me” (1999),SuperEgo,"SuperEgo Aimee Mann spent the ’90s sparring with a music industry that had desperately tried to control her. After leaving the ’80s synth rock group ’Til Tuesday, Mann went through a tumultuous run of contractual battles and label restructurings that left her both adrift and hardened. With “Save Me,” she found a way out. The melancholy song was written for Mann’s third solo LP—and first on her own label, SuperEgo—which shares DNA with the director Paul Thomas Anderson’s Oscar-nominated 1999 film Magnolia. Anderson wrote his screenplay using Mann’s cutting lyrics as dialogue, working together with the singer-songwriter to give flesh and blood to intricate stories about “the ranks of the freaks who suspect they could never love anyone,” as she puts it in the song. Subtly informed by a long period of disappointment, “Save Me” is wry but surefooted, with its loping guitar melodies, shuddering accordion, and gentle percussion. The featherlight production and songwriting belie its inevitable punch: Here, Mann underscores the raw tenderness that comes with searching for help. –Eric Torres",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72fDsC2kX7g,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c8a96ff16f54a7f09ca85/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Aimee-Mann-Save-Me.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Aimee_Mann-Save_Me_1999.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,192,Tony! Toni! Toné!,“Feels Good” (1990),Wing,"Wing “Play this record as frequently as possible. Then, as it becomes easier for you, play the record once a day or as needed.” The old-timey voiceover that introduced the Oakland trio’s first big song set a high bar that this tune would be the cure for what ailed listeners, but that first drum hits like a full syringe of serotonin. With all the sweet harmonies and big beats that defined new jack swing, “Feels Good” stands out as a titan of the genre, a full-bodied five-minute mission to live up to its name, and a catalyst for the prolific career of artist-producer Raphael Saadiq. One of the thousands of songs to sample Lyn Collins’ 1972 James Brown-produced “Think (About It),” “Feels Good” drew heavily from older funk, soul, gospel, and jazz, while also embracing the hard-hitting sound of the era. It was part love song to a girl, part love song to music in general, and all party. –Evie Nagy",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jfoxsfhi-kk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c8bcee02a17d9175e54ba/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Tony-Toni-Tone-Feels-Good.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tony_Toni_Ton-Feels_Good_1990.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,191,My Bloody Valentine,“When You Sleep” (1991),Creation / Sire,"Creation / Sire “When You Sleep” is a firework of emotion gone awry, a love song that leaves you so helplessly and hazily entranced. On their shoegaze-pioneering album Loveless, My Bloody Valentine were intent on making their instruments sound just as destructive as these emotions, and “When You Sleep” is filled with indelible blown-out noise, shattered guitar feedback, and muddled confessions narrowly escaping the surface: “When I look at you/Oh, I don’t know what’s real,” Shields sang, barely perceptible. Was this reality, or was it a dream? Either way, there was no exit. –Gio Santiago",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-Ig71fhUc8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c919710c581ffac68d0d1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/My-Bloody-Valentine-Only-Shallow.jpg,/dataset/artwork/My_Bloody_Valentine-When_You_Sleep_1991.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,190,Gang Starr,“Mass Appeal” (1993),Chrysalis / EMI,"Chrysalis / EMI “It was recorded as a joke,” Gang Starr’s DJ Premier once said of “Mass Appeal.” “We just wanted to make fun of the radio on what it sounded like to get airplay.” The infamous song is smooth like some chinchilla coat worn by a gangster’s daughter—but nowhere near as soft. Guru’s voice, scholarly and crystalline, is compact over Preemo’s precise beat. Even though Gang Starr were non-violent, they weren’t only for the backpackers, either. And while Guru wasn’t a hustler rapper, he was still hardcore, his flow too confident for any posturing or ornamentation. They spoke to so many of rap’s constituencies at once. Preemo might have created this song as a gag, but it stands firm as both criticism and corrective. –Jayson Buford",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9lNbNGbo24,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c907c52d4bd45efccbcfe/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Gang-Starr-Mass-Appeal.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Gang_Starr-Mass_Appeal_1993.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,189,Groove Theory,“Tell Me” (1995),Epic,"Epic Groove Theory only had one album and one hit, but they made it count. “Tell Me” was a simple, sensual admission of affection by singer-songwriter Amel Larrieux that captured all of the genuine nerves and excitement accompanying bubbling romance, set over a heartsick and woozy groove. “If you thought I’d sleep on this/Boy, you're wrong ’cause all I dream about is our first kiss,” she sings, her voice both a sultry come-on and a raw confessional. All of this, combined with the unforgettable melody and producer Bryce Wilson’s bulletproof bassline, made “Tell Me” a near-perfect representative of the best that R&B could be. –Evie Nagy",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THtqUDitQ4I,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c90e0afa92f85cc3e4ebf/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Groove-Theory-Tell-Me.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Groove_Theory-Tell_Me_1995.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,188,Cocteau Twins,“Cherry-Coloured Funk” (1990),Capitol,"Capitol Cocteau Twins entered the ’90s with birth (Elizabeth Fraser and Robin Guthrie’s daughter), death (Simon Raymonde’s father), agony (Guthrie’s substance abuse), and success (their highest charting U.S. single, “Carolyn’s Fingers”). This complex concoction seems fit for a band that melded hope with heartbreak, embodying indescribable emotions through ethereal instrumentals and cryptic lyrics. “Cherry-Coloured Funk,” the opening track to their 1990 tour de force Heaven or Las Vegas, drips with thick, sticky desire. Over lush guitar and churning bass, Fraser begins in an almost sinister low register, painting an abstract bucolic scene, then climbs to an anguished falsetto cry. As a feeling, “Cherry-Coloured Funk” is familiar yet ineffable, and thankfully expressed by a band who understood the inexpressible. –Arjun Srivatsa",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbbUeLkZt74,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c91df62bcbfd19793fb7f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Cocteau-Twins-Cherry-Coloured-Funk.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Cocteau_Twins-Cherry-Coloured_Funk_1990.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,187,Double 99,“Ripgroove” (1997),Satellite / Logic,"Satellite / Logic Movie directors aiming to create suspense or tension have been known to deploy what’s called the Shepard tone, an arrangement that gives the illusion of a continuously rising siren sound. In 1997, UK garage producers were using a similar effect to signal the arrival of something much more thrilling: A big, bulbous bassline to put the wind up your Moschino shirt. In the hands of Double 99, that suspense comes from a wailing, rotating Tina Moore vocal chop that rides atop a trundle of plump kicks before eventually—it’s a long build even by speed-garage standards—a delayed, distorted “brock wild!” summons a walloping bassline that’s become instantly recognizable to ravers of all stripes over the subsequent decades. Just like that Shepard tone, it’s still going. –Will Pritchard",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR3Vw8J8vUo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c92408f0d7ac40b58dd72/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Double-99-Ripgroove.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Double_99-Ripgroove_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,186,Ghostface Killah,"“Daytona 500” [ft. Raekwon, Cappadonna, and Force M.D.s] (1996)",Razor Sharp / Epic / Sony,"Razor Sharp / Epic / Sony Beholding the power of Wu-Tang at their peak was like stumbling onto the world’s most esoteric track meet—cryptic smartasses bombing hammers and javelins all over the field, with points awarded according to the precepts of Supreme Mathematics. “Daytona 500” fulfills the title’s promise of speed: Over a rubbery strut sampled from Bob James’ jazz workhorse “Nautilus,” Raekwon’s leadoff leg effortlessly piles up internal rhymes and mordant asides. Ghost follows with his particular blend of artisanal flexes (“In the Philippines, pick herbal beans”) and invincibility (“I slapbox with Jesus, lick shots at Joseph”). They build a big enough lead for Cappa to break the tape, beer sloshing out of his cup. –Brad Shoup",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1G03xA3SMKo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c929ace259b802f516693/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ghostface-Killah-Daytona-500.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ghostface_Killah-Daytona_500_ft_Raekwon_Cappadonna_and_Force_MDs_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,185,SWV,“Right Here (Human Nature Remix)” (1992),RCA,"RCA In the comments section for a four-minute YouTube clip from 1993’s Free Willy, hundreds have communed to honor a cinematic moment from childhood that gave them “chills.” As Willy’s fins cut through the water, the sound of Michael Jackson’s reinterpolated “Human Nature” shimmers like the sun-jeweled waves, and the sound of SWV’s voices gently rain down like drops of holy water. Chills. Sitting somewhere snug between the ecstatic and absolute serene, SWV’s “Right Here (Human Nature Remix)” belongs as much in the church as it does the Free Willy soundtrack. With its gospel-infused harmonies, Teddy Riley’s remix combines the classic romanticism and cool insouciance of the original with updated, widescreen hip-hop production (including a cameo from his protégé, Pharrell). –Emma Madden",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6l90av9nj58,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c9bb11dccce609e416223/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/SWV-Right-Here.jpg,/dataset/artwork/SWV-Right_Here_Human_Nature_Remix_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,184,Wilco,“Via Chicago” (1999),Reprise,"Reprise In 1999, Wilco were set on blowing up their alt-country identity and stepping further into their truth as aesthetes. On Summerteeth, the band embraced the psychedelia of Beach Boys baroque pop, weaving in ever more textural experimentation. “Via Chicago” is the most stunning signal of what was to come on their 2001 opus, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot: the song deconstructs, as if slowly collapsing on the road back to their city and their people. “I’m coming home/Via Chicago,” Jeff Tweedy sings, gently and wearied, broken yet whole, proof that place is only the first stop en route to the complicated comforts of home. –Jenn Pelly",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7lgner6IO0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c9cbd1dccce609e416225/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Wilco-Via-Chicago.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Wilco-Via_Chicago_1999.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,183,Yo-Yo,“You Can't Play With My Yo-Yo” [ft. Ice Cube] (1991),East West,"East West Yo-Yo made her recording debut in 1990, matching Ice Cube bar for bar on “It’s a Man’s World”—but her second solo single, in 1991, was stratospheric, an infectious declaration laying out Yo-Yo’s plan for woman-domination in the entrenched male landscape of West Coast gangsta rap. Over Cube’s lowrider-slow sample of Earth, Wind & Fire’s “Devotion” and a refrain that cast a mournful pallor over its demands (“don’t try to play me out”), the Compton-born Yo-Yo flowed majestically about her skills, intellect, style, values, and street bona fides, all while laying out a credo for herself and her crew, the Intelligent Black Woman’s Coalition (IBWC). The blessing of Cube lent Yo-Yo some legitimacy in those sexist circles and helped her land a record deal by the time she was 18, but her flow spoke for itself, a protegee turned spiritual predecessor to current rappers as wide-ranging as Saweetie to City Girls to Omeretta the Great. –Julianne Escobedo Shepherd",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHk4sPCkU5s,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c9d508f0d7ac40b58dd74/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Yo-Yo-You-Cant-Play-With-My-Yo-Yo.png,/dataset/artwork/Yo-Yo-You_Cant_Play_With_My_Yo-Yo_ft_Ice_Cube_1991.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,182,Spice Girls,“Wannabe” (1996),Virgin,"Virgin Women. Ever heard of them? For much of the nineties the British cultural landscape had been suffused with the banality of blokiness, to the point where femininity felt like radical counter-programming. The Spice Girls were cartoonish splinters of British girlhood, each of them campishly endowed with femdom archetypes: Scary, Baby, Posh, Sporty, and… Ginger. “Wannabe,” their debut single, was a boisterous, friendship-forward anthem centering the most hoydenish parts of their personalities. The five women delivered sass and brattiness with the giddy mania of a toy commercial—Friendship! Fun! Zig-ah-zig-ah! The track itself is indulgently weird, frantically jittering from one idea to the next without any thought or collecting breath. It sounds like pop music held at gunpoint, but this energy reinscribed a much-needed sense of humor and unseriousness into the genre. –Emma Madden",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJLIiF15wjQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c9dc4ca81299b65ebad5f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Spice-Girls-Wannabe.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Spice_Girls-Wannabe_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,181,Dr. Octagon,“Blue Flowers” (1996),Bulk / Mo' Wax,"Bulk / Mo' Wax Kool Keith has had plenty of receptive collaborators both before and after his initial turn as the time-traveling alien OB/GYN Dr. Octagon, but none understood or complemented him as well as Dan the Automator. On 1996’s Dr. Octagonecologyst, the producer keeps Keith from flying too far into the atmosphere with rocksteady boom-bap, while tickling the rapper’s one-of-a-kind brain with wiggly synth drones, and samples from porn flicks and the cult ’90s comedy Cabin Boy. One clear highlight is “Blue Flowers,” which features a horror-soundtrack-level flip of Bartók’s Violin Concerto No. 2 alongside a jazzy backbeat. It’s unsettling on its own, but Keith cranks up the disquiet with verses that are blood-soaked, heatsick, and wickedly funny. –Robert Ham",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9VYzNUXGDA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c9e55d997a1f3e8a0cc08/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Dr-Octagon-Blue-Flowers.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dr_Octagon-Blue_Flowers_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,180,Usher,“You Make Me Wanna…” (1997),LaFace / Arista,"LaFace / Arista My Way was a path-changing album in Usher’s discography, and on a record where every song had the potential to break out, “You Make Me Wanna…” had to be particularly spectacular to slightly edge out the others. A sublime mix of hip-hop cool and R&B seduction in the vein of Usher’s idol, Bobby Brown, the song is sexy without being lascivious, playful without any childish inclinations, and just a little unbelievable. It’s common to mourn the “death” of smooth, danceable and carefully produced R&B—an apparent bygone of a lost era—yet Usher’s artistry has revealed itself to be committed to his roots, with a deep awareness of the foundational pillars lent to the genre by gospel and soul. As the years have passed, he’s shifted and experimented, all the while pledging allegiance to the melodies that raised and introduced him. –Tarisai Ngangura",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQRzrnH6_HY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c9f2ff2e57bfbb704fea1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Usher-You-Make-Me-Wanna.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Usher-You_Make_Me_Wanna_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,179,Metallica,“Enter Sandman” (1991),Elektra,"Elektra In which prototypical ’80s speed metal headbangers trade in thrash velocity and prog drama for a more straightforward and compact grunge-adjacent churn, in service of a spooky-ooky bedtime story named for a 19th Century continental European shuteye myth you can trace through ’50s girl-group dreamers the Chordettes, dirging ’70s soft-rockers America, a ’30s DC Comic-turned-’80s Neil Gaiman graphic novel, and maybe, just maybe, months after the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein. Add references to the turn-of-18th-Century Protestant children’s prayer “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep,” the Southern folk lullaby “Hush Little Baby,” and Peter Pan’s (if not Michael Jackson’s) Neverland, warn of “the beast under your bed, in your closet, in your head” (for the tween boy in the video, impending puberty maybe?), and you’ve got a sellout that goes bump in the night. Exit light, enter nye-yite, welcome to Metallica’s nightmare. –Chuck Eddy",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNUgsbKisp8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c9ff9d997a1f3e8a0cc0a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Metallica-Enter-Sandman.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Metallica-Enter_Sandman_1991.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,178,Raekwon,"“Ice Cream” [ft. Method Man, Ghostface Killah, and Cappadonna] (1995)",Loud,"Loud “Ice Cream” sounds just as roughneck as the grimiest Wu bangers, so it’s a little funny that Raekwon hated the song at first because he thought it was “too soft.” RZA turns jazz guitarist Earl Klugh’s plucky riff into a blood-curdling loop that cradles the Chef, Ghostface, and Cappadonna’s confidence-oozing player raps. The three of them sound like guys fighting to get the attention of a beautiful woman who just passed by their block, verbally shoving each other out the way to shout the wildest compliments imaginable. Not all of their hollering has aged well—especially parts of Raekwon’s verse—but it’s still a quintessential New York rap love story: a little too upfront, yet romantic in its own crude way. –Brandon Callender",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgh10of6DKA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632ca32f692dbdf6033321cd/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Raekwon-Ice-Cream.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Raekwon-Ice_Cream_ft_Method_Man_Ghostface_Killah_and_Cappadonna_1995.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,177,Garth Brooks,“Friends in Low Places” (1990),Capitol Nashville,"Capitol Nashville One of the best-selling artist of the ’90s, Garth Brooks was primarily influenced by Texas country acts like George Strait, and he wore a Stetson to prove it. “Friends in Low Places,” the ultimate hat act single, starts off as a nearly a cappella story-song about storming an ex’s high-falutin’ shindig, and Brooks attacks that chorus in a way that justifies every Elvis comparison. The song inevitably climaxes as a barroom sing-along that’s musical and spiritual kin to Lone Star anthems like Tanya Tucker’s “Texas (When I Die).” It’s also Garth’s pledge as a country singer—especially one hailed as the genre’s conquering hero—to bring some low-class kicks to the high-class sales charts and record books. –Stephen Deusner",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7cAycpkivg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632ca39131f8f46af3b69b8f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Garth-Brooks-Friends-in-Low-Places.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Garth_Brooks-Friends_in_Low_Places_1990.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,176,The Prodigy,“Firestarter” (1997),XL / Maverick / Mute,"XL / Maverick / Mute Rave as metal—or oi!, maybe—with indie rock wah-wah borrowed from the Breeders, deep house bam-bam from Ten City, proto-techno “hey hey!” from Art of Noise, and a pyromania-horror concept from Stephen King. Keith Flint, him of the Bozo the Clown hair-tufts, slings Cockney rhyming slang about what a bloomin’ rebel he is— or, per his chants, what a trouble starter, punkin’ instigator, mind detonator, twisted animator he is. That last one was particularly apt since these blokes were nothing if not cartoons—but cartoons with the big beat, sillier and catchier and buzzier than just about anything else on the radio at the time. All told, a master class in how to sell electronic dance music as what looks and feels like a “rock band.” –Chuck Eddy",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmin5WkOuPw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632ca41cf2e57bfbb704fea4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Prodigy-Firestarter.png,/dataset/artwork/The_Prodigy-Firestarter_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,175,Galaxie 500,“Fourth of July” (1990),Rough Trade,"Rough Trade Do you know just how low it feels to think the whole world is enjoying a party and you’re the only one not invited? Or to believe that most every possible comfort—the playfulness of a pet, the ecstasy of a holiday, the warmth of a smile, the silence of your space—is unavailable, denied for some reason you can’t comprehend? That is the listless sadness at the core of “Fourth of July,” a song about wanting to be loved by a crowd too busy to bother. Dean Wareham shuffles around New York, unimpressed by its Empire State Building’s stature and uninterested in its Independence Day clamor. Naomi Yang and Damon Krukowski perfectly illustrate his anxious pacing, their circular rhythm moving like someone who wants to go anywhere but has nowhere willing to take him. What to do when the world shuts you out? Shut yourself in and take a glorious guitar solo that forever wanders, just like you. –Grayson Haver Currin",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L67x9VGfF-g,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632ca4a0800c1a0f8721b90f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Galaxie-500-Fourth-of-July.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Galaxie_500-Fourth_of_July_1990.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,174,Noreaga,“Superthug” (1998),Tommy Boy,"Tommy Boy “Superthug,” the breakout hit from goofily intense rapper Noreaga (aka N.O.R.E.), not only launched a new era of Queens rap, pushing aside the cool and collected storm clouds of Nas and Mobb Deep with one fell swoop of its indelible “what-what-what-what-what-what-what” hook. It also heralded the arrival of producers Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo, aka the Neptunes, onto the international stage. Their signature stuttering drums and sci-fi synths sounded unlike anything playing on Hot 97 at the time, foretelling the innovative path Williams and Hugo would chart for decades to come. –Claire Lobenfeld",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gs9ngd-uq6I,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632ca635afa92f85cc3e4ec3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Noreaga-Superthug.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Noreaga-Superthug_1998.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,173,Elliott Smith,“Waltz #2 (XO)” (1998),DreamWorks,"DreamWorks In the long history of songs about other songs, “Waltz #2 (XO)” ranks as one of the best. Inside a smoky karaoke bar, a man and a woman—two people who may very well be stand-ins for Elliott Smith’s mother, Bunny, and his stepfather, Charlie—select songs that thinly veil their marital strife. She blankly performs the humiliating “Cathy’s Clown,” he sings the pointed “You’re No Good.” Smith uses karaoke night, or as he calls it, “the substitute scene,” to give us this meta novella about pop music and heartbreak. He becomes an audience member inside his own composition, distant and helpless to do anything but silently show his love for his distraught mom, signed with a kiss and a hug. –Jeremy D. Larson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyeryRobP2g&ab_channel=TheEverlyBrothers-Topic,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632deae852d4bd45efccbdb9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Elliott-Smith-Waltz-2.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Elliott_Smith-Waltz_2_XO_1998.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,172,En Vogue,“My Lovin’ (You’re Never Gonna Get It)” (1992),EastWest,"EastWest Lord help the man at the business end of an “Oooooooooooo BOP.” With its searing James Brown sample, stunning vocals, and biting parenthetical title, “My Lovin’” was En Vogue’s 1992 entry into the proud tradition of soul anthems by pissed-off women who were absolutely done being used and disrespected. But the four-member girl group from Oakland added the all-important squad element, and this dirtbag trying to sweet talk his lady back after treating her like crap never stood a chance. What makes you think you can just walk back into her life, indeed. –Evie Nagy",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIuYQ_4TcXg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632ca7c1553704c2255f854a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/En-Vogue-My-Lovin.jpg,/dataset/artwork/En_Vogue-My_Lovin_Youre_Never_Gonna_Get_It_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,171,Slowdive,“Alison” (1993),Creation,"Creation Shoegaze is about capturing the shimmering melancholia at the edge of existence, that too-stoned sense of being unmoored in the world. “Alison,” from one of the best shoegaze acts to ever do it, taps into that sinking feeling of lying in bed, wishing you could stay there forever but knowing you eventually have to face the universe. The song has a shaggy, nostalgic comfort, its warmth shining through like a lazy sunbeam on your face. But it’s also tinged with unbearable loss, as the protagonist addresses a flawed person whose existence animates their being. “I’ll be here in the morning,” Neil Halstead sings, even as he’s the one who needs reassuring. –Cat Zhang",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkM3M3zGcGE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632ca8251dccce609e416227/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Slowdive-Alison.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Slowdive-Alison_1993.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,170,Puff Daddy,"“All About the Benjamins” [ft. the Notorious B.I.G., Lil’ Kim, Jadakiss, and The Lox] (1997)",Bad Boy / Arista,"Bad Boy / Arista You can practically feel the breeze of a whirring cash machine in your face. Produced by Deric “D-Dot” Angelettie of Bad Boy Records’ Hitmen production squad, this instrumental floats like a swarm of wasps, held aloft by a slowed and reversed sample of the opening guitar lick from R&B trio Love Unlimited’s 1977 single “I Did It for Love.” There’s enough room in the pocket of this beat to fit a giraffe riding a 747—or a rap crew at the peak of their powers. Nearly every line is now a certified classic, etched into NYC brownstone, from Puffy’s immortal, Jadakiss-penned opening spray—“Now what y’all wanna do?!/Wanna be ballers, shot callers, brawlers?”—to Sheek Louch’s quest for “colossal-sized Picassos” to Lil’ Kim throwing hexes and Angela Landsbury references at rivals real and imagined. (Legend has it the Lox’s third member, Styles P, was cut from the track by a pre-fame Missy Elliott, who helped with the arrangement.) The production switches to a Jackson 5 flip for Biggie’s anchor verse, suggesting a separate plane of existence: Upon its release months after the rapper’s 1997 murder, this definitive version of “It’s All About the Benjamins” doubled as a statement of defiance and a raucous respite from tragedy. –Ryan Dombal",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0c58ppLPJcQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632ca8a7f2e57bfbb704fea6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Puff-Daddy-All-About-the-Benjamins.png,/dataset/artwork/Puff_Daddy-All_About_the_Benjamins_ft_the_Notorious_BIG_Lil_Kim_Jadakiss_and_The_Lox_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,169,Ace of Base,“The Sign” (1993),Arista,"Arista “The Sign” is the kind of uncomplicated, unserious pop song that’s easy to love: there are those diet-reggae guitar licks, that pulsing drum-machine beat, and vague, chirpy lyrics that you can memorize almost instantly, even though you don’t actually know what the song is about. (Technically, it chronicles a couple discovering a renewed sense of purpose in their relationship, but that’s beside the point). When it was released in 1993 on the Swedish quartet’s debut album, it exploded internationally; even member Ulf Ekberg’s past in a skinhead gang didn’t stop the band’s ascent, though it definitely demanded some damage control. “The Sign” was a product of the Swedish pop machine, a system that produced a certain kind of flawlessly constructed, ultra-polished pop commodity. Exemplified by groups like ABBA in the ’70s, “The Sign” heralded its return two decades later, restoring a formula that would dominate the pop charts in the years to come. –Isabelia Herrera",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqu132vTl5Y,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632cbbe08f0d7ac40b58dd77/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ace-of-Base-The-Sign.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Ace_of_Base-The_Sign_1993.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,168,Beenie Man,“Who Am I” (1998),VP / Slammin' Vinyl,"VP / Slammin' Vinyl Beenie Man understands the power of an eternal groove. The Playground riddim produced by veteran producer Jeremy Harding caught the Jamaican dancehall DJ’s ear, and he reportedly showed up at Harding’s studio with the song that would become “Who Am I” already in mind. “Who Am I” pulses like any good dancehall song, but at its heart is a man shook up about being left by his favorite lover, now forced to confront his own conniving ways with the help of love, shame, and some Luther Vandross interpolations. The track is foundational for modern dancehall and has been interpolated, sampled, and referenced countless times, but few follow-ups have captured the original’s intoxicating mix of love and lust. –Dylan Green",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WI-xQ7IksUc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632caa5a52d4bd45efccbd02/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Beenie-Man-Who-Am-I.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beenie_Man-Who_Am_I_1998.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,167,Oasis,“Don’t Look Back in Anger” (1995),Creation,"Creation Britpop had plenty to answer for (see, especially, Menswe@r). But at its best it worked as a collective celebration of the humane things about the late 20th century: classic pop, social democracy, the fleeting empowerment of working-class culture. Released at the height of Oasis’ Augustan phase, “Don’t Look Back in Anger” epitomized Britpop’s historic sense in both form and context. Musically, away from the nonsense lyrics, it evoked the communitarian early ’70s, with an “Imagine” steal, Harrison-esque guitar licks, and ‘“All the Young Dudes” allusions. More broadly, as it attained Great Singalong status in the late ’90s, the eulogistic anthem came to embody a brief moment when exalting the better side of the past and looking forward to a brighter future seemed to work in harmony. In a decade when surface was depth, no song managed to mean so little and yet so much at the same time. –Alex Niven",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8OipmKFDeM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632caace1dccce609e416229/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Oasis-Dont-Look-Back-in-Anger.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Oasis-Dont_Look_Back_in_Anger_1995.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,166,De La Soul,“Stakes Is High” (1996),Tommy Boy / Warner Bros.,"Tommy Boy / Warner Bros. Three quarters of the way into “Swahililand,” a 10-minute jazz odyssey by the great pianist Ahmad Jamal, you can hear J Dilla’s ears perk up in his record-filled Detroit basement. He recognized a perfect sample, an urgent and dramatic chord progression that became the looping heart of De La Soul’s “Stakes Is High.” The trio’s message on the song was bold—they’d grown sick of the fake shit, the gaudy capitalist-fantasy videos, and the rappers play-acting as drug lords without saying anything substantial about the crack epidemic. “Stakes Is High” was a line in the sand backed by one of Dilla’s most iconic beats—a template for a different way ahead from the stuff getting airtime on MTV. –Evan Minsker",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzOOCnkUlnA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632cabb11dccce609e41622b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/De-La-Soul-Stakes-Is-High.jpg,/dataset/artwork/De_La_Soul-Stakes_Is_High_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,165,Galaxy 2 Galaxy,“Jupiter Jazz” (1993),Underground Resistance,"Underground Resistance “Jupiter Jazz” sounds like one of those airbrushed sci-fi book covers of the late ’70s and early ’80s looks: galaxian synth melodies and whirring, bubbling space noises floating over beats that echo the rhythmic complexity of jazz as played by drum machines. Underground Resistance’s “Mad” Mike Banks may be better known for uncompromising techno and militant aesthetics, but this record is fun and hopeful, as playful rave stabs and dreamy Motor City pads give way to an elegant mission statement about techno as “hi-tech jazz.” Back in 1992, UR’s live band didn’t physically exist yet, but you can see the idea taking shape over EPs like Nation 2 Nation, World 2 World (the EP that contains this track), and 1993’s Galaxy 2 Galaxy. Like all good space explorations, Banks’ endeavor has taken time and patience, but the Galaxy 2 Galaxy live ensemble fulfills the promise of “Jupiter Jazz,” bringing together several generations of Detroit Afrofuturists—from sax players to synth wizards—to play timeless, tireless grooves. –Vivian Host",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xw55wqO5yzU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632cac38afa92f85cc3e4ec5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Galaxy-2-Galaxy.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Galaxy_2_Galaxy-Jupiter_Jazz_1993.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,164,Smashing Pumpkins,“Mayonaise” (1993),Virgin,"Virgin During the recording of Smashing Pumpkins’ Siamese Dream, frontman Billy Corgan demanded absolute perfection from those around him. In liner notes for the album’s reissue, he referenced recording “thousands” of drum takes to tape that had been spliced so much it was disintegrating. It was this relentless drive, in part, that made him stand out from his peers, who were wading through swampy distortion with snarling disaffection. For Corgan, caring was cool—and “Mayonaise,” a lonely meditation on the beauty of owning your shortcomings, was something of a mission statement. Amid a record of songs about abuse, suicide, and bearing the weight of the world, it’s a lushly arranged moment of peace, reframing Corgan’s relentless perfectionism as a kind of perseverance. –Colin Joyce",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vbu_K41efvY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632cad7cf2e57bfbb704feaa/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Smashing-Pumpkins-Mayonaise.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Smashing_Pumpkins-Mayonaise_1993.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,163,Big Pun,“Still Not a Player” (1998),Loud / RCA,"Loud / RCA Big Pun’s trademark ode to the players and pimps continues to ring out in the streets of the South Bronx. Pun was the precursor to the Bad Bunnys and Cardi Bs of the current scene, a hip-hop trailblazer for Latinos all over the map. He created a sound and dialect that was unmatched at the time, rapping in Spanish one moment and then in English the next, dense sheets of compound rhymes pouring out of him, the wordplay at once rapidfire and unhurried. “Still Not a Player” remains a staple of Puerto Rican Day parades; it’s what every papi hears before heading over to the block to hang. Especially in Pun’s native borough, it still sounds like home. –Jayson Buford",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Xue-dOOLiY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632cadffd997a1f3e8a0cc0c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Big-Pun-Still-Not-a-Player.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Big_Pun-Still_Not_a_Player_1998.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,162,R.E.M.,“Losing My Religion” (1991),Warner Bros.,"Warner Bros. “Losing My Religion” is the ultimate back-door hit—so unorthodox in its composition yet so representative of its creators’ strengths. Grown entirely from a single riff on the mandolin, an instrument that was completely new to guitarist Peter Buck at the time, the song captures R.E.M. at their most synergistic, resolute, and vulnerable. Michael Stipe sings like he’s afraid of his own shadow, and he’s stalked and swarmed by Buck, bassist Mike Mills, and drummer Bill Berry as he winces his way through a string of wounded confessions that are both specific-seeming and interpretable, whether through a lens of religion (it wasn’t intended that way), unrequited love (Stipe has cited “Every Breath You Take” as a major inspiration), or the view from the corner or the spotlight. –Steven Arroyo",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/9dKB41x1Db4?t=486,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632caed63ac0cd2d1146dea1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/REM-Losing-My-Religion.jpg,/dataset/artwork/REM-Losing_My_Religion_1991.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,161,Kelis,“Caught Out There” (1999),Virgin,"Virgin Kelis has said that “Caught Out There,” her debut single, recorded when she was just 20 years old, “set the tone for my entire life.” It was an early and formative Neptunes production, with bouncy keyboards and a pew-pew sound effect that can only be compared to laser guns, but their collaboration eventually soured. It was ahead of its time, which meant the timing was off, which makes it a “cult favorite”—a euphemism for “not as popular as it should have been” and a way of signaling taste and discernment that would, rather unfairly, dog Kelis for much of her career. But it was also an anthem for women’s aggrievement, the song that made her, with its ferocious, shouting hook, “the first girl to scream on a track,” as she would later remind us. For all she’s been through over the years, it makes sense that Kelis came out kicking. –Emma Carmichael",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSgp-IIgr4I,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632caf4ae02a17d9175e54f0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kelis-Caught-Out-There.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kelis-Caught_Out_There_1999.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,160,Yo La Tengo,“Autumn Sweater” (1997),Matador,"Matador Nothing the local coffee shop cues on chilly days can compare to “Autumn Sweater,” a downy song about our sentimental attachment to mementos, but more acutely, about wanting to disappear with the person you love. Is the charm in lead singer Ira Kaplan’s shy, sweet delivery, murmuring his proposal as if his hands are tucked nervously into his pockets, or in the unassuming but lively instrumentation—the rattle of the shakers, the bright tones of the organ, the syncopated groove of the congos? Few songs stake the same claim on a season, the nervousness and possibility stirred up when the air picks up a draft. –Cat Zhang",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIkMeaAfIRw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632cafc23ac0cd2d1146dea3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Yo-La-Tengo-Autumn-Sweater.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Yo_La_Tengo-Autumn_Sweater_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,159,Public Enemy,“Welcome to the Terrordome” (1990),Def Jam / Columbia,"Def Jam / Columbia Public Enemy’s 1990 single “Welcome to the Terrordome” has complicated roots. On the one hand, it’s a musical Molotov lobbed at the powers of white supremacy much like “Fight the Power,” which soundtracked Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing the year before. But it’s also a response to the controversy stirred up by Professor Griff, Public Enemy’s onetime Minister of Information, whose inflammatory anti-Semitic comments brought down a shitstorm of opprobrium on the group, eventually resulting in Griff’s dismissal. Chuck D references the flap in a few lines, and not, admittedly, to his benefit (“Crucifixion ain’t no fiction/So-called chosen frozen”; “Told a Rab to get off the rag”). But the force of his defiance, as he details the indignities visited upon Black Americans, paired with the claustrophobic apocalyptic feel of Hank Shocklee’s production, is nonetheless thrilling, in a real pit-in-your-stomach way. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BBgOlfSLQI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632cb0486e09cfc74d352dba/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Public-Enemy-Welcome-to-the-Terrordome.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Public_Enemy-Welcome_to_the_Terrordome_1990.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,158,No Doubt,“Just a Girl” (1995),Interscope,"Interscope Ska-pop band No Doubt’s 1995 hit “Just a Girl” was a sassy indictment of institutional sexism subtle enough to skank its way onto the charts. Atop a squiggly riff, Gwen Stefani outlines an experience of girlhood inhibited by the patriarchy: “I’m just a girl, all pretty and petite/So don’t let me have any rights,” she sneers. “Just a Girl”’s feminism is cleverly transgressive: beyond her sarcastic delivery, Stefani’s vocals jump from babydoll soft to full-chested belting, playing with the stereotypes of the fragile waif and the angry woman. These identities combine in the song’s final moments. “Oh, I’ve had it up to here,” Stefani belts, her frustration unignorable. But then she lets the final word wilt like a flower. Is she surrendering or wantonly using the infantilization she just spent a whole song decrying as a mechanism of power? Girlhood has always been more complex than it seems. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHzOOQfhPFg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632cb11810c581ffac68d0d4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/No-Doubt-Just-a-Girl.jpg,/dataset/artwork/No_Doubt-Just_a_Girl_1995.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,157,The Cure,“Friday I’m in Love” (1992),Fiction / Elektra,"Fiction / Elektra “Friday I’m in Love” is a happy song. Right? The ebullient jangle of the guitars; that melody, so easy and intuitive and right that Robert Smith was convinced for a while that he’d stolen it from somewhere else; and the titular line, yelped with the enthusiasm of a puppy waiting for a treat. Who could be sad on Friday? Not even Smith. But it only comes once a week, and you already know what the other days are like. Monday: Black. Tuesday, Wednesday: Heart attack. And on it goes until Friday lights us up again, however briefly. The Cure’s final hit is an ode to the ecstasy that finds us only occasionally, taking its unsteady foothold before drudgery washes it away again. Still, those guitars and that melody make clear that it really is a happy song. Smith and the band recognize that joy’s rarity makes it all the more precious, and that finding it for even one day per week is a cause for celebration. Here’s to feeling good roughly 14 percent of the time. –Andy Cush",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucX9hVCQT_U,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632cb17dd997a1f3e8a0cc0e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-Cure-Friday-Im-in-Love.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Cure-Friday_Im_in_Love_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,156,De La Soul,“A Rollerskating Jam Named ‘Saturdays’” (1991),Tommy Boy / Warner Bros.,"Tommy Boy / Warner Bros. De La Soul Is Dead found the group reckoning with their Day-Glo debut, 3 Feet High and Rising, spiking their rap hippie rep with darker humor and edgier storytelling. But they didn’t spend the entire album clearing the air. “A Roller Skating Jam Named ‘Saturdays’” radiates relief, with De La roping in fellow Native Tongues members Q-Tip and Vinia Mojica for a breezy ode to the best day of the week. The verses, the chorus, and even the record scratches glide over Prince Paul’s silky beat, which blends disco, funk, and the Grease theme into a springy delight. Like a Saturday, it is contained but boundless, a Cinderella slipper for the whole squad. –Stephen Kearse",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8MawQnR2gw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dec06f2e57bfbb704fec5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/De-La-Soul-A-Rollerskating-Jam-Named-Saturdays.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/De_La_Soul-A_Rollerskating_Jam_Named_Saturdays_1991.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,155,The Verve,“Bitter Sweet Symphony” (1997),Hut / Virgin,"Hut / Virgin Until the matter was settled in 2019, the Verve’s “Bitter Sweet Symphony” was less a pop song than a rollicking, anthemic full-employment act for intellectual property lawyers. The fight centered around the hook’s sample of four bars of Andrew Loog Oldham’s orchestral version of the Rolling Stones’ “The Last Time,” which was itself borrowing from an old gospel song. The Verve was cut out of a fortune’s worth of royalties, the Stones got fractionally richer, and the whole mess overshadowed what was maybe the best song of the Britpop moment. Just luxuriate in the Spectory thickness of the production—“a prairie-music kind of sound,” in the evocative phrase of the Verve’s Richard Ashcroft, who cited the Temptations and Ennio Morricone as models. It is an epic, the best sort of grandiose, the music soaring where the words want to mope. Maybe all the legal shitfighting wound up saying the thing the lyrics couldn't quite articulate. What better summation of the present era, after all, than the meta-story of “Bitter Sweet Symphony”—some asset-holding boomers got wealthier without leaving the couch and everyone else was stuck holding the bag. –Tommy Craggs",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lyu1KKwC74,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632cb32bd997a1f3e8a0cc10/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-Verve-Bittersweet-Symphony.png,/dataset/artwork/The_Verve-Bitter_Sweet_Symphony_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,154,UGK,“One Day” (1996),Jive,"Jive “Why you let these killas live and take my homeboy son away?” Pimp C asks on UGK’s most significant album, 1996’s Ridin’ Dirty. The moment is a call to God for answers, none of which the man born Chad Butler would ever get. UGK found the darkest piece of the blues over a flip of The Isley Brothers’ “Ain’t I Been Good to You” while charting through nihilism, the loss of friendship, and the finality of death. “One Day” is a solemn funeral procession, where Bun B, Pimp C, and featured rapper Mr. 3-2 understand that being Black can mean your final days come over a “funky-ass dice game,” on the uneven scales of the criminal justice system, or even worse—by an unimaginable act of God. –Brandon Caldwell",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uu5P4pOUuYk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632cb39d42fe027c67463004/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/UGK-One-Day.jpg,/dataset/artwork/UGK-One_Day_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,153,En Vogue,“Free Your Mind” (1992),East West,"East West Appearing on a genre-fluid album laced with doo-wop-like jams like “My Lovin’ (You’re Never Gonna Get It)” and sensual classics like “Giving Him Something He Can Feel,” En Vogue’s “Free Your Mind” took us to rock as thrashing metal guitar riffs layered with keyboards, the group’s signature harmony, and a message of gender and racial unity. “It doesn’t mean that I’m a prostitute, no, no,” these curvaceous Black femmes in thigh-high boots wanted us to know—a radical message at a time when feminism was all but declared dead and a war on women was underway. Slut-shaming and moral judgment were the norm, not the exception, and “Free Your Mind” was an anthem to STFU and leave people be. –Samhita Mukhopadhyay",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7iQbBbMAFE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632cb40342fe027c67463006/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/En-Vogue-Free-Your-Mind.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/En_Vogue-Free_Your_Mind_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,152,Superchunk,“Slack Motherfucker” (1990),Merge,"Merge The only thing worse than a miserable low-paying job is having to compensate for the absolute dud working the same shift, and Superchunk bottled both dimensions of that rage perfectly in their joyously explosive breakout single. The layabout muse of “Slack Motherfucker” was a guy Mac McCaughan worked with at Kinko’s, but the specific dude matters not. He is an archetype that exists in every bad job—the person taking too many smoke breaks, who leans when he could clean, whose lack of work makes it so you have to stay late. When the band shouts the chorus and the final repeated strains of “you motherfucker,” that’s a universal release that anybody can scream along to. –Evan Minsker",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-c_GX2CYkcQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632cb477e02a17d9175e54f4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Superchunk-Slack-Motherfucker.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Superchunk-Slack_Motherfucker_1990.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,151,Origin Unknown,“Valley of the Shadows” (1993),RAM,"RAM If you were at a drum’n’bass rave at any point in the ’90s, chances are you know the feeling of being in “a long, dark tunnel,” a sensation forever trademarked by the sample in Andy C and Ant Miles’ iconic 1993 anthem “Valley of the Shadows.” The track contains little more than arpeggiated bells, a shuffling “Think” break, eerie pads, and a “31 seconds” soundbite from the Apollo 11 moon landing—mostly sounds from a free sample CD that came with a 1993 issue of Future Music magazine—yet it sums up the darkcore aesthetic of early jungle with chilling simplicity (and some seriously deadly sine-wave bass). Nearly 30 years on, Andy C is drum’n’bass’ top DJ, and RAM has over 440 releases to its name. In a genre that’s come to be associated with daredevil drops and over-the-top production trickery, you can still get a mighty rewind off this stone-cold classic. –Vivian Host",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5meT63flnM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632cb61e52d4bd45efccbd04/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Origin-Unknown-Valley-of-the-Shadows.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Origin_Unknown-Valley_of_the_Shadows_1993.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,150,Three 6 Mafia,“Tear Da Club Up” (1997),RED / Relativity / Hypnotize Minds,"RED / Relativity / Hypnotize Minds Three 6 Mafia’s first major-label contract required them to put “Tear Da Club Up” on their next record. In theory, not a huge ask—Chapter 2: World Domination ended up exhuming several hits from the Memphis crew’s previous albums, where Juicy J and DJ Paul continually scraped layers of lo-fi graveyard grime off their horrorcore production style. But they were tired of that particular song. So the ’97 version converts the original’s ambient dread into imminent dread, from the soap-opera piano ostinato to the four-note rising synth figure that chases each verse like Hell’s breaking-news theme. Recent addition Gangsta Boo pops up halfway through to bigfoot the track; it’s no wonder hers is the verse featured in the canny, nu-rock TV ad. Whether or not the song truly was “banned in 17 states,” as that commercial claims, crunk grew from its wreckage. –Brad Shoup",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1ggXeLTeaA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632cb6b569ee15120820abdf/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Three-6-Mafia-Tear-Da-Club-Up.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Three_6_Mafia-Tear_Da_Club_Up_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,149,Elastica,“Connection” (1994),Deceptive / Geffen,"Deceptive / Geffen Swiping the electronic bop that fuels post-punk icons Wire’s “Three Girl Rhumba”—an homage that eventually resulted in a lawsuit that was settled out of court—Elastica crafted one of the marvels of the Britpop era: art-rock reconfigured as a carnal rallying cry. All leftward hooks and innuendo, “Connection” never hits its target squarely—frontwoman Justine Frischmann alludes to its oblique construction by ending her chorus by admitting that “somehow the vital connection is made”—but the single sounds simple, even primal, as Elastica bashes their dive-bomb riff with enthusiasm. As soon as the song takes shape, when the suggestions start seeming like overt flirtations, Elastica pulls the plug: The “Connection” is fleeting, no matter how indelible it may be. –Stephen Thomas Erlewine",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilKcXIFi-Rc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632cb75552d4bd45efccbd06/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Elastica-Connection.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Elastica-Connection_1994.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,148,Eminem,“My Name Is...” (1999),Aftermath / Interscope,"Aftermath / Interscope As with Beck’s “Loser,” you would have been forgiven at the time for taking Marshall Mathers' chicka-chicka-chart debut for a novelty-joke one-shot—nothing indicated a major career on the way. Right off, Slim Shady's gleefully introduced as a class clown and horrible role model (“Hi kids, do you like violence?”— “Primus” in the edited version—“Wanna see me stick Nine Inch Nails through each one of my eyelids?”). But he constantly sets up escape hatches, serving as peanut gallery (“Stop the tape! This kid needs to be locked away!”), and switching out of apparent autobiography only to catalog every satirical way he’ll wreak havoc on English teachers, autograph hounds, his own body (two fake suicides!), and his own Mom. “God sent me to piss the world off”—everybody has a purpose, right? –Chuck Eddy",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNPnbI1arSE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632cbd66cba35ad4ab5bc432/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Eminem-My-Name-Is.png,/dataset/artwork/Eminem-My_Name_Is_1999.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,147,Neil Young,“Harvest Moon” (1992),Reprise,"Reprise “I’m still in love with you,” Neil Young sings during the chorus of his 1992 standard “Harvest Moon.” You could spend a lifetime in that “still.” The Canadian songwriter was in his mid-40s when he wrote it, and he seemed to use every minute of his time here to fuel its sense of romance and devotion. Backed by an autumnal lineup featuring Linda Ronstadt on vocal harmonies, Ben Keith on pedal steel, and Tim Drummond sweeping a broom for percussion, Young lets his guitar summon a vast distance—detuning the lowest string and letting it reverberate through the central riff, fingerpicking the harmonics high up the fretboard during the verses. The sound itself seems to conjure eternity, and the words do, too. Three decades into his career, Young had written plenty of songs about searching for a companion, about the heart-skipping joy of finding love and the ditched-out misery of losing it. Here was his simple, soulful prayer to making it last. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2MtEsrcTTs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632cbdf7d997a1f3e8a0cc12/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Neil-Young-Harvest-Moon.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Neil_Young-Harvest_Moon_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,146,Janet Jackson,“That’s the Way Love Goes” (1993),Virgin,"Virgin Ephemeral, transcendent, sensual, groovy—“That’s the Way Love Goes” is less a song than it is a vibe. From the first bouncy downbeat, your back relaxes, your head nods, and you let out a sigh: That is the way love goes. How can one feel so horny yet so chill at the same time? With Jackson’s whispering vocals over Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis’ delicate, soulful beat, it is one of the greatest songs ever released about the overwhelming yet meditative pangs of lust, hypnotic, like desire itself. “That’s the Way Love Goes” was a mega-hit—the longest-running No. 1 single of any Jackson family artist—and the song, like the janet. album it appeared on, exposed us to a new Jackson: still soft-spoken but confident in her sexuality, her body, and her desire. –Samhita Mukhopadhyay",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b_KfAGiglc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632db681e02a17d9175e54fe/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Janet-Jackson-Thats-the-Way-Love-Goes.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Janet_Jackson-Thats_the_Way_Love_Goes_1993.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,145,The Notorious B.I.G.,“Hypnotize” (1997),Bad Boy / Arista,"Bad Boy / Arista The sirening opening sample clears the streets and the bass shakes the pavement: Even if it weren’t the last single to be released in Biggie’s lifetime, “Hypnotize” would still be an eternal Brooklyn anthem. He’s just that smooth, strutting effortlessly across a Puff Daddy beat that flips a chunky, convivial Herb Alpert bassline into a low-riding crawl. His writing plays off the subtlest nuances of his voice, flashing details as causally as checking his watch: colorful Coogi sweaters, freaky sex in the Lexus, a not-at-all-unconvincing threat to shoot you that turns into a preposterous one to kidnap the DA’s daughter while he’s at it. Yeah, all that—and one of the most iconic vocal hooks in hip-hop. –Anna Gaca",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glEiPXAYE-U,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632db724cd9063ead69606ed/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Notorious-BIG-Hypnotize.png,/dataset/artwork/The_Notorious_BIG-Hypnotize_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,144,Sheryl Crow,“If It Makes You Happy” (1996),A&M,"A&M Women in ’90s rock were marketed by a male-dominated industry as angry, damaged, confessional, or exceedingly quirky. Sheryl Crow fit into the alternative mega-tent of mid-’90s pop, but not really any of these little boxes. The carefree cover of her jazz- and roots-inflected debut, 1993’s Tuesday Night Music Club, could double as a Levi’s ad, and its biggest hit, “All I Wanna Do,” exalts the power of a good beer buzz in the morning. When Crow returned with her self-titled sophomore album in 1996, she was mired in expectations and ideas about her success and sound; she appears on the sepia-toned cover throwing stink eye from behind strands of hair, an attitude matched by the album’s electrified pop-rock. Spiked with chugging guitars, lead single “If It Makes You Happy” works on several levels: as a rejoinder to cross-armed skeptics, an ironic portrait of a Gen-X boheme lifestyle (I like to imagine she’s addressing Troy from Reality Bites), and a question Crow is asking about her own strange life. She references having a miserable time at Woodstock ’94, getting stoned, and making French toast from moldy bread, and her voice on the chorus soars and scrapes in equal measure. For a moment in time, Sheryl Crow was not the kind of girl you take home—and it was glorious. –Jill Mapes",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyihQtBes1I,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632ded641dccce609e4162d5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sheryl-Crow-If-It-Makes-You-Happy.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Sheryl_Crow-If_It_Makes_You_Happy_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,143,Elliott Smith,“Say Yes” (1997),Kill Rock Stars,"Kill Rock Stars “Say Yes” arrives last on Either/Or—standing in the doorway, hesitating, with its shoes on. Elliott Smith actually clears his throat at the outset: Can he come in? Will you hear him out? At this point in Smith’s career, before Good Will Hunting and the Oscars, before the transition to a larger label, listeners came to him for songs of abjection, making the sunny optimism of “Say Yes” seem like a hard sell. It’s a straight-ahead love song, one that dares to hope. Listen closely and you’ll hear just how fragile that hope is: Smith whispers most of the song. He wavers. His fingers pluck out a simple question on the acoustic. He’ll accept no; he’ll leave if he’s not wanted. But if there’s a chance, even the slightest, of yes, he’d like to stay long enough to hear it. –Peyton Thomas",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bxmk09lCzk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632db920e02a17d9175e5500/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Elliott-Smith-Say-Yes.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Elliott_Smith-Say_Yes_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,142,Beltram,“Energy Flash” (1990),R & S,"R & S New York producer Joey Beltram’s 1990 single “Energy Flash” was so brilliantly dumb, there were only two ways it could go: change the world or fall flat on its snarling face. There’s almost nothing to it—pummeling kick drum, impudent sub-bass, vocal sample, and the occasional electronic flourish—but even that seems superfluous when held up against the viscerally compelling, technologically evil riff that runs through the song, a relentless and yet kind of funky half-note sledgehammer that resembles Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid” recreated by murderous robots. “Energy Flash” is well named: The effect is like a high-voltage shot to the neurons that lit up dance floors all over the world; its irresistibly dark momentum shaped the sounds of hardcore, jungle, and techno as the utopian spirit of rave dissolved into a world of bad drugs and police busts. –Ben Cardew",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALsHox5sYCk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dbcf38f0d7ac40b58dde7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Beltram-Energy-Flash.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Beltram-Energy_Flash_1990.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,141,Ice Cube,“It Was a Good Day” (1992),Lench Mob / Priority,"Lench Mob / Priority Ever since Chuck D analogized rap music as television news for Black America, critics, scholars, and fans have referenced how it reflects the everyday injustice and inequality in these communities in a way that’s often missing from mainstream media. But the Black experience is about more than just oppression—something Ice Cube eloquently captured with this joyful single from his 1992 album The Predator. Written at the peak of his solo career, Cube’s good day centers not on the trappings of wealth but on everyday events in his neighborhood; breakfast with his momma, the pickup game in the park, shooting dice with the homies. He experiences the kind of fortuitous luck afforded only to the most blessed: he cleans up at craps, his favorite basketball team beats a rival, and he connects with a girl he’s long pined for. But beneath the happiness of a day when everything seems to go right is a latent anxiety over how easily things could go another way. He may have evaded the carjackers, the cops and the specter of death, but he knows they always lurk just around the corner. –Matthew Ismael Ruiz",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4UqMyldS7Q,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dbe0310c581ffac68d0df/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ice-Cube-It-Was-a-Good-Day.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ice_Cube-It_Was_a_Good_Day_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,140,Nirvana,“All Apologies” (1993),DGC,"DGC The melody to “All Apologies” is so simple it seems as though someone, somewhere, must always have been singing it. Appropriately, it followed Kurt Cobain around for years in different forms: His undated acoustic home demo, thought to have originated around 1990, was pleading and sincere, while the version the band tracked in 1991 but left off Nevermind was sardonic and sloppy. As the song lurched towards its final self, sharpening early lyrics and gaining a cello, it began to radiate a vast, frightening exhaustion. Feelings this big trail us for years before revealing their awesome face, and by the time Cobain was onstage performing it for MTV Unplugged: Live in New York, it had the clarity and finality of epiphany. It’s always been interpreted as a suicide note, but really it’s just a master statement. The song held everything: tenderness and bitterness, anger and acceptance, love and hatred, resignation and revelation. What else could he say? –Jayson Greene",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDilu87kQCk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dbf9a52d4bd45efccbd78/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Nirvana-All-Apologies.png,/dataset/artwork/Nirvana-All_Apologies_1993.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,139,Souls of Mischief,“93 'Til Infinity” (1993),Jive,"Jive The in-the-booth, stream-of-consciousness rap song intro is a trope as old as hip-hop itself; mostly, these are space fillers that add little. But such is the magnetism of “93 ’Til Infinity” that when Tajai Massey says, “Right now, we just maxing in the studio,” all of a sudden you’re right there with him, blunt smoke tickling your nostrils. For a hair under five minutes of breezy, rolling boom-bap, a single sax note glides in and out, pads drift and cut, and the drums—bop your head—don’t ever stop. Tajai and crew toss bars and ad libs back and forth, all in sync, swigging from the same 40 in a freewheeling, effortless jam. By the time the final, closing roll call of who’s chilling sails in, you half expect to hear your own name called out. –Will Pritchard",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXJc2NYwHjw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dc0711dccce609e416297/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Souls-of-Mischief-93-Til-Infinity.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Souls_of_Mischief-93_Til_Infinity_1993.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,138,Soho,“Hot Music” (1990),U.N.I.T.Y,"U.N.I.T.Y New York in 1990 was a vibrant place. Hip-hop and house music were changing by the month, and ruling the clubs in the process. It was also a scary one—the city’s murder rate reached its peak that year with 2,245 killings, a huge increase over 1989. Joseph Longo was perfectly situated to capture that vibe in a bottle. A clerk at the 12-inch storehouse Vinylmania in Manhattan, he became a producer in the late ’80s and by 1990 was producing classics in both rap—Boogie Down Productions’ “Love’s Gonna Get’cha (Material Love)”—and house, under aliases like Earth People and Pal Joey. As Soho, his “Hot Music” reconfigured airy Wynton Marsalis snippets over an all-business kick-drum pattern just off kilter enough to carry more than a hint of menace. “Playing ‘Hot Music’ usually caused chaos,” Longo recalled in 2013. Decades on, it still does. –Michaelangelo Matos",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p30DUmx9v3Q,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dc0e38f0d7ac40b58dde9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Soho-Hot-Music.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Soho-Hot_Music_1990.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,137,OutKast,“Elevators (Me & You)” (1996),LaFace,"LaFace “Elevators (Me & You),” the lead single from ATLiens, was the moment when OutKast became bona fide stars. The beat is unmistakably cool, built around smooth bass, hi-hat drums, and an echoing wood block; there’s just enough there to make the instrumental distinct, but also keep it uniquely mimnal. André 3000 and Big Boi match the understated poise in their verses, every word rolling off their tongues impeccably while telling the world how they patiently planned their ascent, all skill, no luck and no haste. It’s the ultimate come-up song, a track that recounts André and Big Boi’s rise from “Player’s Ball” to ballers. –Matthew Strauss",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqB_UVlhlPA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dc1a138b91b8b13af1b52/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/OutKast-Elevators.png,/dataset/artwork/OutKast-Elevators_Me__You_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,136,Pavement,“Summer Babe” (1992),Drag City / Matador,"Drag City / Matador Was Pavement for real, really? The debate over how much frontman Stephen Malkmus gave a damn dangled perpetually over the Stockton, California band for its entire existence. Beavis and Butt-Head implored them to “try harder”; Robert Christgau saw through their hunched postures and declared them “well-schooled”; Pavement’s original drummer, local hippie Gary Young, split the difference when he remarked, “This Malkmus idiot is a complete songwriting genius.” “Summer Babe (Winter Version)” sketches Malkmus’ balancing act between the court jester and the savant. It takes a foolish confidence to start your debut single with “Ice baby” only two years removed from Vanilla Ice’s billboard-topping single, but the chainsaw revving of distorted guitars tips their hand—they were indeed “schooled” among the no-wave heavyweights of the late ’80s, and they had the hard-fought melodies to show for it. “Summer Babe” careens between self-seriousness and complete nonsense; when Malkmus sings, with an exasperated laugh, “Drop off,” in the final stanza that could be called a verse, it’s as if he’s laughing at himself, sheepishly questioning whether to commit fully to the rock star act. But the beautiful thing about Pavement was that in the end, they always committed. –Arielle Gordon",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHqcBL_a7q8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dc243e02a17d9175e5502/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Pavement-Summer-Babe.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Pavement-Summer_Babe_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,135,Craig Mack,"“Flava in Ya Ear (Remix)” [ft. The Notorious B.I.G., LL Cool J, Rampage, and Busta Rhymes] (1994)",Bad Boy,"Bad Boy The first single released by Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs’ influential Bad Boy Records, Craig Mack’s “Flava in Ya Ear” signaled a paradigm shift for New York rap via Mack’s off-kilter flow and producer Easy Mo Bee’s elasticky head-knock production. With the remix, featuring vets LL Cool J and Busta Rhymes, plus Bad Boy up-and-comer the Notorious B.I.G., Puffy cemented himself as a true forward-thinker. Mack and Biggie—pre-“Juicy”—are all laid-back bravado, a perfect foil for an unhinged Busta. But even amidst this posse cut’s stacked lineup, Biggie’s star power shone through. Nearly thirty years later, “Don’t be mad, UPS is hiring” still stings. –Claire Lobenfeld",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMbELEUfmIA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dc324f2e57bfbb704feb7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Craig-Mack-Flava-in-Ya-Ear.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Craig_Mack-Flava_in_Ya_Ear_Remix_ft_The_Notorious_BIG_LL_Cool_J_Rampage_and_Busta_Rhymes_1994.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,134,k.d. lang,“Constant Craving” (1992),Sire / Warner Bros.,"Sire / Warner Bros. “Constant Craving” signified the Canadian crooner k.d. lang’s official shift away from her alt-country roots toward a blend of klezmer and adult contemporary, a move which afforded its own set of risks and rewards. “I knew it was a hit, and I was mad at it for that,” lang succinctly said of the song in 2018. It’s easy enough to understand—lang’s knotty songwriting, yearning mezzo-soprano, and that slyly sexy chorus are instantly undeniable, which led to new audiences and celebrity once it came out alongside an eerily beautiful video riffing on Waiting for Godot. But the song struck a separate nerve in 1992. What was usually made subtext in pop songs—that specifically queer longing that settles in the forefront of your attention for someone you aren’t supposed to want, an emotion that may not be reciprocated but achingly lives on—was suddenly brought to the surface, sung by a woman who wore all the unmistakable markers of butch iconography, from the spiky gelled bouffant to the sharply tailored suits. lang came out as a lesbian in an issue of The Advocate the same year “Constant Craving” was released, leaving behind a large chunk of her country fan base in the process. But it was a choice that reaffirmed her status as an icon, once the song infiltrated the Hot 100 and assumed a life of its own in the cultural zeitgeist, tilting expectations for lang and all the queer singer-songwriters who have come since. –Eric Torres",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTx7XHqKYgk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dc3951dccce609e416299/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/kd-Lang-Constant-Craving.jpg,/dataset/artwork/kd_lang-Constant_Craving_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,133,The Roots,“You Got Me” [ft. Erykah Badu and Eve] (1999),MCA,"MCA “You Got Me” is a short story and a love song, a duet for three voices and a collective arrival, a ballad that enters with classical guitar arpeggios and exits with a drum‘n’bass break. It’s also the lead single from Things Fall Apart, the Roots’ fourth studio album, recorded with the hopes of helping them finally break big. The devil’s bargain? Switching out Jill Scott, who co-wrote the song, for Erykah Badu, the neo-soul queen of the moment. (The band made up with Scott later by taking her on tour.) Meanwhile, the song—a lovers’ back-and-forth, with Black Thought as the male lead and the female character split between an Eve verse and Badu’s gentle, reassuring vocals—stuck, and helped propel the Roots to the mainstream. Despite the melancholic tone, the song is comforting, committing to the kind of care that keeps a relationship going strong despite the turbulence—as true for the track’s collaborators as for its fictional protagonists. –NM Mashurov",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJCHeEQV454,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dc42dec753dca652306ad/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-Roots-You-Got-Me.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Roots-You_Got_Me_ft_Erykah_Badu_and_Eve_1999.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,132,Sonic Youth,“Tunic (Song for Karen)” (1990),DGC,"DGC The ’90s arrived right on time for Sonic Youth, whose transition from heroes of New York art-punk to bona fide rock stars came six months into the dawning decade with the release of Goo, their major label debut. In style and subject matter, “Tunic (Song for Karen)” embodies their dual citizenship in the mainstream and the underground. For most of the song’s six-minute runtime, it sounds like Sonic Youth as their cult of fans had come to know them thus far: The guitars are dense and dissonant, the groove is propulsive and unrelenting, the vocals follow a dreamy spoken cadence that has more in common with experimental theater than rock’n’roll. But when they downshift into the chorus, a half-time riff that swaggers in tandem with Kim Gordon’s menacing refrain—“You aren’t never going anywhere”—you can practically see the Lollapalooza crowd forming in front of them. The lyrics memorialize and pay homage to soft-rock megastar Karen Carpenter, who died of complications from anorexia—perhaps an unlikely subject for a group whose professed tastes ran toward the avant-garde. But Gordon shows real empathy for Carpenter, inhabiting her wounded psyche and celebrating her resilience in the face of public scrutiny. It’s a fitting encapsulation of early-’90s Sonic Youth: unabashed about chasing fame, but clear-eyed about its dark side. –Andy Cush",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reSOp1domrU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331c199f2e57bfbb7050005/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sonic-Youth-Kool-Thing.png,/dataset/artwork/Sonic_Youth-Tunic_Song_for_Karen_1990.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,131,Fugees,“Ready or Not” (1996),Ruffhouse,"Ruffhouse When Lauryn Hill first sang the hook on “Ready or Not,” she had already decided to leave the Fugees. With tears in her eyes, she laid down a demo for the group to use; a few months later, when she’d rejoined them, she spent five hours trying to re-do the vocals, but no version came close to the rawness of that first recording, the one that gives the song its potent sense of foreboding and focus. Hill sings every word of the Delfonics interpolation with precision and anguish as she, Wyclef Jean, and Pras take turns flexing in the face of their rivals. The song is a kiss-off to other rappers, but her verse and performance also serves as a love letter to her bandmates. It’s a poignant moment of cohesion from a group whose time together was steeped in turmoil. –Vrinda Jagota",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIXyKmElvv8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dc5618f0d7ac40b58ddeb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Fugees-Ready-or-Not.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fugees-Ready_or_Not_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,130,Jeff Mills,“The Bells” (1997),Purpose Maker,"Purpose Maker A figure of Jeff Mills’ stature doesn’t necessarily need a signature tune. But “The Bells” is exactly that: a fulcrum of his DJ sets to this day, and a cornerstone of Detroit techno in general. Unusually, for a tune with such an instant level of recognition, there’s no obvious audience appeasement going on here—no crowd-pleasing sample, no big chorus. Instead, the effectiveness of “The Bells” seems to spring straight from its sleek simplicity. Just a springy 4/4 kick and snare, a pinging riff that dances around the offbeat, and a four-note chime set in a teasing refrain, all arranged to give the sense of a tumble down an infinite wormhole. Mills was playing “The Bells” out as early as 1994, so by the time it finally appeared on his Kat Moda EP in 1997, it already felt like a classic. –Louis Pattison",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KevUFO2moZI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dc5e338b91b8b13af1b54/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jeff-Mills-The-Bells.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Jeff_Mills-The_Bells_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,129,Green Day,“Basket Case” (1994),Reprise,"Reprise The members of Green Day grew up on the first wave of punk, and rethreaded the genre’s pop fringes through the slacker vibe that would come to define the ’90s. “Basket Case” was a fizzy and petulant self-doubt anthem featuring sex and immortal existential questions like “Am I just paranoid, or am I just stoned?” (The answer was both.) Below its flippant veneer, the track is a sly reflection of ailing mental health: It was written when a 22-year-old Armstrong was struggling with severe anxiety, later diagnosed as a panic disorder. Lines like “Sometimes my mind plays tricks on me” and “I think I’m cracking up” sound blasé and unidentifiably snotty, but they reveal a young man desperately trying to make sense of his own thoughts. “Basket Case” does much more than whine, demonstrating an internalized self-fear finally breaking through to the surface, transferring punk energy to millions of young people coming of age and feeling just like Armstrong did. –Jane Bua",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUTGr5t3MoY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dc652e02a17d9175e5504/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Green-Day-Basket-Case.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Green_Day-Basket_Case_1994.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,128,MF DOOM,“Rhymes Like Dimes” (1999),Fondle 'Em,"Fondle 'Em MF DOOM claims he “came to destroy rap” at the beginning of his 1999 debut Operation: Doomsday, but “Rhymes Like Dimes” proved his love of craft was equal to his love for chaos. He spends over four minutes juggling his disdain for the industry with his innate ability to spit truth, not just rocking a mic but giving people “something to remember like the Alamo.” DOOM’s malevolent and wry words clash with the self-produced beat, a loop of Quincy Jones’ “One Hundred Ways” that plinks and bounces with warm colorful synths. “Rhymes Like Dimes” is both a love letter to and a formal complaint about rap music that also introduced one of the largest personalities in the genre’s history. Who else but a supervillain could manage all that? –Dylan Green",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPCwL__3Lss,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dc6b7e02a17d9175e5506/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/MF-DOOM-Rhymes-Like-Dimes.jpg,/dataset/artwork/MF_DOOM-Rhymes_Like_Dimes_1999.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,127,Shania Twain,“Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” (1997),Mercury Nashville,"Mercury Nashville Shania Twain’s opening credo—“Let’s go, girls!”—isn’t so much a call to arms as a champagne pop, an effervescent invitation to celebrate. Arriving at a time when riot grrrl’s space-claiming had shifted into the capitalistic sheen of girl power, Twain’s twangy pop equated feminism with being unapologetically herself, short skirts and all. Frenetic fiddles over the chorus marked the fading traces of her country music origins, as she deliberately pursued a more global pop audience without any of the hand-wringing that so often precedes that kind of leap. Twain’s ambition, and the swaggering confidence fueling it, found millions of giddy listeners who just wanted to have a little fun right alongside her. –Amanda Wicks",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJL4UGSbeFg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dc77c52d4bd45efccbd7c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Shania-Twain-Man-I-Feel-Like-a-Woman.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Shania_Twain-Man_I_Feel_Like_a_Woman_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,126,2Pac,“Keep Ya Head Up” (1993),Interscope / Jive,"Interscope / Jive One of the greatest tricks 2Pac ever pulled was cultivating a tough-guy persona based on sensitivity. For all his party tracks and songs steeped in misogyny, he wasn’t too cool to show emotion or delve into current events with a comforting sense of empathy. Even by those standards, “Keep Ya Head Up” is an ode to Black women and abortion rights that stands out as a gem in his discography. Producer DJ Daryl’s funky sample of Zapp’s “Be Alright” is the perfect cushion for reassurances of Black empowerment (“Some say the Blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice/I say the darker the skin, then the deeper the roots”) and a full-throated defense of women from rapists and deadbeat fathers in a music world that rarely focused on them. All this clashes with the fact that barely a year after its release in October 1993, 2Pac was convicted of sexual assault. These contradictions have left 2Pac with a complicated yet enduring legacy, but the proud message of “Keep Ya Head Up” remains one of his most powerful. –Dylan Green",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XW--IGAfeas,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dc7f7f2e57bfbb704feb9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/2Pac-Keep-Ya-Head-Up.png,/dataset/artwork/2Pac-Keep_Ya_Head_Up_1993.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,125,Goldie,“Inner City Life” (1994),FFRR,"FFRR “Inner City Life” wasn’t the first jungle tune—the sound was in early creative flush in 1994, when the song was released—but it provided the breakthrough moment for this most British of musical genres and remains jungle’s vertiginous peak. On “Inner City Life,” Goldie, alongside producer Rob Playford, proved that the style’s experimental energy—cut-up drums, bombshell bass, neo-hardcore synths, and dazzling production trickery—could not just co-exist but sit snugly with a vocal from singer Diane Charlemagne that balanced optimism and despair, romance and torment, creating an anthem for youth that was desperate but never hopeless. In the UK, “Inner City Life” grazed the charts and made a star out of Goldie, while jungle would go from strength to strength, dynamiting its reputation as a mere playground for twisted ravers. Twenty-eight years on, the song’s amalgam of innovation and soul remains astonishing. –Ben Cardew",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8u7MNG-ug8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dc864f2e57bfbb704febb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Goldie-Inner-City-Life.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Goldie-Inner_City_Life_1994.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,124,Silver Jews,“Wild Kindness” (1998),Drag City,"Drag City The atmosphere of “Wild Kindness” is heavy, laden with nitrogen gas and cigarette smoke. It’s the last song on Silver Jews’ American Water, the most important album of band leader David Berman’s career. As songwriter and a poet, he’s at the height of his powers here, at his most fluid, macabre, and surreal. The images jump directly into your mindspace, one after another: grass growing in an ancient icebox, drug store hair dye dripping into a cracked motel sink. At the song’s center, Berman tries to wrap his head around what it means to be kind, to watch time slip out of your control. It’s a hallucination that begins with terror and ends with transcendence. –Sophie Kemp",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIKVJRMv1T4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dc97cd997a1f3e8a0cd55/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Silver-Jews-Wild-Kindness.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Silver_Jews-Wild_Kindness_1998.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,123,Bell Biv DeVoe,“Poison” (1990),MCA,"MCA Before “Poison” rocketed them to superstardom, Ricky Bell, Michael Bivins, and Ronnie DeVoe were pretty much only known as “the other guys in New Edition.” That gave them the freedom to try out a risky new sound, a groundbreaking blend of R&B and hip-hop that framed the group’s vocal harmonies in gritty production. At the time, the casual misogyny of the song’s raps were the clearest sign that these guys were done wooing “Candy Girl”s; thirty years later, it’s hard to find anything smooth about lines like “the low pro ho she’ll be cut like an afro.” But that opening dirty snare roll, now as iconic as “Be My Baby,” still finds a way to fill any wedding or bar mitzvah dance floor, regardless. –Jessica Suarez",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAFg2TQk9v0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dc9f9afa92f85cc3e4ed4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bell-Biv-DeVoe-Poison.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bell_Biv_DeVoe-Poison_1990.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,122,Method Man,“I’ll Be There for You/You’re All I Need to Get By” [ft. Mary J. Blige] (1995),Def Jam / PolyGram,"Def Jam / PolyGram At his peak, Method Man wasn’t just the Wu-Tang Clan’s brightest commercial prospect—he was also the member with the most sex appeal, as his charisma and smooth voice made him a natural for the kind of sultry rap-R&B hybrids that dominated the ’90s. Remixing “All I Need”—a love-centric track from his 1994 solo debut Tical—with Mary J. Blige was an easy call, and “I’ll Be There for You/You’re All I Need to Get By” turned Meth’s sweet nothings into an undeniable anthem. As Blige’s vocals coast smoothly over samples of Marvin Gaye and Biggie, Meth’s bars are affectionate without losing the hard edge that got him there: “You didn’t have to funk with me/But you did, now I’m going all out, kid/And I got mad love to give, you my nigga.” –Dylan Green",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XW1HNWqdVbk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dcad6afa92f85cc3e4ed6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Method-Man-All-I-Need.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Method_Man-Ill_Be_There_for_YouYoure_All_I_Need_to_Get_By_ft_Mary_J_Blige_1995.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,121,Radiohead,“Let Down” (1997),Parlophone / Capitol,"Parlophone / Capitol “Let Down” missed out on being OK Computer’s lead single only because the band was unhappy with the music video. You can see it, though, right? It’s a perfect introduction to the album’s themes of automation and alienation: “Transport/motorways and tramlines/Starting and then stopping /Taking off and landing /The emptiest of feelings,” Thom Yorke sings, conjuring the lack of control in getting stuck in traffic or sitting in a tin can at 33,000 feet, and the horror of being stuck within one’s own body. Modern transportation has gotten bigger, faster, and stronger, and it threatens to overwhelm us humans, crushing us like bugs. So why, for God’s sake, does this song feel so hopeful? Its lullaby melody soars freely in ways the song’s protagonist never can, as Yorke’s overdubbed counterpoint overflows and overpowers his words. He sings about being “hysterical and useless” while at the same time showing you what it feels like to be free and unbounded. –Jessica Suarez",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVgHPSyEIqk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dcfdcef6685f1f1f35aa0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Radiohead-Let-Down.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Radiohead-Let_Down_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,120,DJ Shadow,“Midnight in a Perfect World” (1996),Mo' Wax / FFRR,"Mo' Wax / FFRR “Midnight in a Perfect World” nearly caused DJ Shadow’s landmark sample tapestry Endtroducing… to be mothballed entirely. Though a rising star for UK label Mo’ Wax, Shadow was beset by self-doubt, and the burden of finding room for (among others) Meredith Monk, David Axelrod, Rotary Connection, and Organized Konfusion to all perch harmoniously on the same five-minute waveform left him vibrating with stress. In the end, those long hours spent recasting ancient glyphs into a language of his own paid dividends: He mastered the art of lo-fi beats to study to two decades before the trope even had a name. And “Midnight” endures as a peerless companion of choice for introverts, stoners, and late-night ponderers because, in that moment of creation, Shadow was all three. –Gabriel Szatan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InFbBlpDTfQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dd06c52d4bd45efccbd80/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/DJ-Shadow-Midnight-in-a-Perfect-World.jpg,/dataset/artwork/DJ_Shadow-Midnight_in_a_Perfect_World_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,119,Salt-N-Pepa,“Shoop” (1993),Next Plateau,"Next Plateau Like the universe, women’s sexuality is expansive, ever-evolving, and predominantly unexplored by man. The distance traveled between Salt lowering her sunglasses and ogling a guy in a three-piece suit on Coney Island beach in 1993’s “Shoop” video and Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B scissoring onstage to “WAP” at the 2021 Grammys, for example, is galactic. Though it might seem quaint in comparison now, “Shoop” was pioneering when it came out, a sex-positive anthem delivered over a reworked Ikettes hook that encouraged women to go after whomever they wanted, however it was hanging, and whenever they wanted it. Salt and Pepa glide over the track with libidinous gusto, sharing punchlines and inventing new ways to flip hetero conquests and objectify the male form. –Emma Carmichael",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vaN01VLYSQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dd11fafa92f85cc3e4eda/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Salt-N-Pepa-Shoop.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Salt-N-Pepa-Shoop_1993.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,118,Rage Against the Machine,“Killing in the Name” (1992),Epic,"Epic Rarely has a band nailed its sound and agenda from day one like Rage Against the Machine did on its ceaselessly thrilling debut single—not just the blueprint for everything that the Los Angeles quartet would do but the apogee, too. Every component of Rage’s musical battlewagon is firmly in place: the rhythm section’s wrecking-ball funk, Zack de la Rocha’s shattering fury, Tom Morello’s Swiss-Army-knife guitar playing. It’s enough to fool you into thinking that fusing hip-hop, punk, and metal was easy, although the ’90s would provide numerous counterexamples. De la Rocha’s verses targeted the LAPD in the immediate wake of the Rodney King uprising, but he made the song eternal by boiling down decades of protest songwriting into a single personalised roar of denial—“Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me”—that made resistance sound like the most natural, and exhilarating, impulse on earth. –Dorian Lynskey",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWXazVhlyxQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dd1bb8f0d7ac40b58dded/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Rage-Against-the-Machine-Killing-in-the-Name.png,/dataset/artwork/Rage_Against_the_Machine-Killing_in_the_Name_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,117,Dawn Penn,"“You Don’t Love Me (No, No, No)” (1994)",Big Beat,"Big Beat A rejection the whole world embraced, this rocksteady anthem by Kingston’s Dawn Penn has deep roots that still flower today. In 1967, the teenaged Penn sang her song to ska and reggae kingpin Coxsone Dodd, who turned it into a modest hit on the iconic Studio One label. A few more singles followed, but in 1970 she left a music industry she says never paid what she was due. Almost 30 years later, she showed up at producer Clevie Browne and Steely Johnson’s studio with a tape; instead, they re-recorded her first recording in a single vocal take. Penn, radiant among golden-hour horns, sounds wise and defiant over the track’s crisp swing. By 1994, the cult hit became a new standard, and soon everyone from thickets of jungle producers to the legends of 21st century pop music—Rihanna, Mary J. Blige, even Beyoncé—would say yes to Penn’s irresistible hit. As if anyone could possibly say no. –Jesse Dorris",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JEo-GetMRY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dd29ccce3570496344364/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Dawn-Penn-You-Dont-Love-Me.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dawn_Penn-You_Dont_Love_Me_No_No_No_1994.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,116,The Pharcyde,“Passin’ Me By” (1992),Delicious Vinyl,"Delicious Vinyl Thirty years ago, the Pharcyde figured out that silliness can be an avenue into darkness. The L.A. group’s defining song, “Passin’ Me By,” unfolds as a series of vignettes, the four rappers each telling of a love interest that didn’t give them a shot. Producer J-Swift, who was trained as a classical pianist, approaches sampling as a bandleader might, and the track’s locomotive bassline lends it a playful, bluesy rumble. It’s a fitting backdrop for verses that are undercut by a streak of sadness, like Fatlip getting a “return to sender” notice on his love letter, or Slimkid3 growing older with a girl and watching the feelings fizzle out. Sandwiched between these tales is that cloudy saxophone, a slow sigh that draws you into the song’s wistful loneliness. –Mano Sundaresan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-mAK3uB2_0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dd3788f0d7ac40b58ddef/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-Pharcyde-Passin-Me-By.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Pharcyde-Passin_Me_By_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,115,Madonna,“Vogue” (1990),Sire / Warner Bros.,"Sire / Warner Bros. Discovering the art at Susanne Bartsch’s Love Ball in 1989, Madonna was a latecomer to ballroom but a quick study. She made the scene into a pop monument, enshrining the artistry of ballroom in the hetero-mainstream imagination. Over a joyful house beat, co-produced by Madonna and Shep Pettibone, she is as imperious and instructive as Old Way, a capital-M Mother coaching a recruit for the performance of their life, whispering “vogue, vogue, vogue…” over icy synths and Salsoul horns like an invitation to some promised land. “Vogue,” a love letter to the balls as a space for self-actualization, was both the first house record to hit number one, and one of the very few Top 40 hits to unapologetically celebrate queer life at the height of the AIDS epidemic. Although Madonna had sung of the material world’s luster before, the track conjures a vision of luxe living that feels easier to attain: Beauty is where you find it, and you can be as enchanting as those queens of Golden Age Hollywood, no matter how fat your wallet. You’re a superstar and what’s more, you know it. –Owen Myers",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuJQSAiODqI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dd41610c581ffac68d115/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Madonna-Vogue.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Madonna-Vogue_1990.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,114,Bonnie “Prince” Billy,“I See a Darkness” (1998),Palace / Domino,"Palace / Domino Redolent of the beer-fed, Appalachian sort of primitivism that boomed like a rusty gong across Drag City’s roster throughout the ’90s, Will Oldham’s ballad to feeling bad feels, in an uncomplicated way, totally bathetic. His night vision isn’t so much an abstraction as it is a straightforward ability to see the discrepancies between a life internal and a life before those we love. Johnny Cash would cover this song in 2000, in a move so natural that it seems to have been written for him in mind. And why not: Both Oldham and Cash are fluent in the border-crossing between hurt and endurance. Both are aware that pain is no shortcut to profundity. Both know that there is a very small foothold between living with agony, and dying of it. –Mina Tavakoli",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iV4NwSbscg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dd59fe02a17d9175e550b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bonnie-Prince-Billy-I-See-a-Darkness.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bonnie_Prince_Billy-I_See_a_Darkness_1998.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,113,R.E.M.,“Nightswimming” (1992),Warner Bros.,"Warner Bros. Legend has it that Michael Stipe only needed to hear the piano part from “Nightswimming” one time before the entirety of the lyrics appeared to him: the photograph on the dashboard, the shirt left by the water, the indelible image of two moons, side-by-side, in the late-August sky. As he sings the Automatic for the People ballad, accompanied by Mike Mills’ music-box piano and a string arrangement by Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones, it’s easy to imagine it occurring as a stream-of-consciousness recitation from somewhere deep in his psyche. After spending the 1980s in more cryptic, agitated moods, Stipe sounded newly romantic and comfortable, the arrangement pared down to a lullaby, the scenic view stretched out before him. “These things they go away,” he sings, “replaced by everyday.” So he captures it all in the moment, just as it appears. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahJ6Kh8klM4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dd631d997a1f3e8a0cd8b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/REM-Nightswimming.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/REM-Nightswimming_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,112,Ol’ Dirty Bastard,“Got Your Money” [ft. Kelis] (1999),Elektra,"Elektra Ol’ Dirty Bastard once stole the stage from Shawn Colvin at the Grammys, brought an MTV crew to film him fraudulently claiming a welfare check, and upstaged the Notorious B.I.G. at his own birthday party—all of which made him seem like a professional wrestler who never breaks character. He was a brilliant rapper apart from the antics, possessing a generational oddball charisma that labels and mentors can’t teach. Decades of pop music couldn’t sum up the vagaries of unrequited love better than the blunt early lines of his 1999 classic “Got Your Money”—“I don’t have no trouble with you fucking me/But I got a little problem with you not fucking me”—as he whimpers, roars, and slurs his way through a litany of sleazy come-ons. As the millennium approached, ODB was looking to the past; “Got Your Money” is a lifeline to the 1970s, built around a deceptively simple Neptunes production and comely Kelis hook, and boasting a music video stitched together from old Dolemite clips. The nostalgia was respectful, even if the lyrics were not, but the professionally unprofessional juxtaposition made for an indelible pop-rap song and the biggest single of ODB’s solo career. –Jeremy Gordon",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXTzm5GtqVo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dd6a6aeacff0b6b601b8b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ol-Dirty-Bastard-Got-Your-Money.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Ol_Dirty_Bastard-Got_Your_Money_ft_Kelis_1999.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,111,Isolée,“Beau Mot Plage” (1998),Playhouse,"Playhouse Like a handful of the most innovative electronic producers in the 1990s, Frankfurt’s Rajko Müller—better known as Isolée—made an anthem that defined a movement. His single, “Beau Mot Plage” brought microhouse, a cool take on four-to-the-floor that favored sound design over soul, to the mainstream—or at least the big rooms of better clubs. The song’s expert engineering had a bit in common with the stiffly funky clicks and hissing of the endless 12""s that came in its wake. But unlike most of its imitators, Isolée’s track is simply massive. It’s precisely hedonist and balances opposing forces expertly: a thick undertow of bass against melodies that spatter like waves cresting with foam; whirlpools of dub and the forward momentum of an irresistible, if slightly submerged, kick drum. And the astonishing rounds of guitar-like pinging—whether sampled or ersatz, who knows—ground “Beau Mot Plage” like a sandbar between past classics like “Sueño Latino” and “Little Fluffy Clouds” and the work of future pleasure seekers like Four Tet and Octo Octa. Prog in structure, pop in sensibility, on this beach microhouse never felt more macro. –Jesse Dorris",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQy2V_3LRMQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dd743d997a1f3e8a0cd8d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Isolee-Beau-Mot-Plage.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Isole-Beau_Mot_Plage_1998.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,110,Janet Jackson,“Together Again” (1997),Virgin,"Virgin On the surface, “Together Again” borders on Hallmark-card triteness: It features a childlike, major-key melody, a peppy disco-house beat, and a hook that goes, “Everywhere I go, every smile I see/I know you are there smilin’ back at me.” But Jackson wrote the lyric about personal friends she’d lost to AIDS, and the song’s co-mingling of plucky cheerfulness and crestfallen grief makes it both winsome and wistful, echoing the spirit of the Supremes’ classic “Someday We’ll Be Together.” In 1997, the world was in the second decade of the AIDS crisis, yet few mainstream pop stars had creatively responded to the epidemic, despite the deaths of musicians like Freddie Mercury and Eazy E, and the disproportionate effect of HIV and AIDS on LGBTQ+ communities of color. By paying tribute to the departed, this No. 1 hit became an intervention, a cause—an upbeat rallying cry when we needed it the most. –Jason King",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69fx7n-D_nU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dd85bf2e57bfbb704febe/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Janet-Jackson-Together-Again.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Janet_Jackson-Together_Again_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,109,Belle and Sebastian,“The State I Am In” (1996),Electric Honey,"Electric Honey If “The State I Am In” didn’t already exist, Belle and Sebastian would have to go back and invent it. A former long-distance runner, who struggles with chronic fatigue syndrome, records an album on a shoestring budget with a newly assembled group for a school project, and then sits back and watches as the opening track is rapturously championed by the BBC’s Radio 1? The story of the song itself is the type of shaggy-dog tale that the Glasgow band has been delivering with increasing directness for more than a quarter-century since it was originally released on 1996’s Tigermilk. With its nonchalantly ambitious ’60s-style chamber-pop ruminations on spirituality, sexuality, and the meaning of it all (or possible lack thereof), “The State I Am In” is also perhaps the archetypal Belle and Sebastian song. For the many who would discover it as the band’s music trickled across online forums in the late 1990s, it signified a gentle, sophisticated rebuke to the false post-grunge link between aggressiveness and transgressiveness. It also marked a breakthrough for the self-consciously tender sensibilities of likeminded indie labels such as Scotland’s Postcard, England’s Sarah, and Olympia, Washington’s K. Today, after several decades of twee aesthetics rotating in and out of fashion, it simply sounds like a classic record. No one writes them like they used to, so it may as well have been Belle and Sebastian. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHVbiHuqMow,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dd995800c1a0f8721b9b4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Belle-and-Sebastian-The-State-I-Am-In.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Belle_and_Sebastian-The_State_I_Am_In_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,108,Crystal Waters,“Gypsy Woman (She’s Homeless)” (1991),Mercury,"Mercury As in New York, Newark, and Atlanta, the underground club scene in Baltimore was intimate. With Crystal Waters’ “Gypsy Woman (She’s Homeless),” respected local DJs and producers the Basement Boys were able to transpose the sybaritic vibe of local hot spots like the Black Box to similar musical sanctuaries for Black and gay youth outside Maryland. Their instantly memorable, organ-driven rhythm track combined with Waters’ distinctive, jazz-influenced vocals to create a perfect peak-hour club record. Dancing to serious subject matter is a form of exorcism in house music—and the opening bars of “Gypsy Woman” sent the denizens of New York City’s most influential nightclubs running for the dancefloor. –Carol Cooper",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KztNIg4cvE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dda2a800c1a0f8721b9b6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Crystal-Waters-Gypsy-Woman.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Crystal_Waters-Gypsy_Woman_Shes_Homeless_1991.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,107,Fugees,“Killing Me Softly” (1996),Ruffhouse / Columbia,"Ruffhouse / Columbia The Score functions as the rare hip-hop classic that appeals to a cross-generational pop audience without losing its edge: Its iciest posse cuts satisfy the heads, while Lauryn Hill’s buttery crooning makes your parents happy. It spawned the smash “Killing Me Softly,” a cover of singer-songwriter Lori Lieberman’s 1972 song that was made famous by Roberta Flack a year later. The Fugees version is a wonderfully effective crowd-pleaser while remaining strange and subversive, a study of texture and the ways our bodies respond to space. Its most jarring section is the first verse, after that twangy sample, when Hill sings over a sparse, extended breakbeat, her voice cutting through the mix like a hatchet. It’s a subtly complex record that maps onto the mysterious arc of the Fugees; just a year after The Score launched all their careers, they’d start to dissolve. –Mano Sundaresan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKOtzIo-uYw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632ddaa71dccce609e4162d3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Fugees-Killing-Me-Softly.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fugees-Killing_Me_Softly_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,106,Depeche Mode,“Enjoy the Silence” (1990),Mute,"Mute The crucial thing to understand about Depeche Mode’s main songwriter Martin Gore is that he’s a moralist with a wide self-critical streak, which means that even in the biggest hit from synthpop’s best-selling group, one covered by everyone from Tori Amos and Nada Surf to Breaking Benjamin and Susan Boyle, he insists on being a little creepy. Hence, he undercuts his virtue by calling his beloved “my little girl.” Yet he also honors her with the blazingly romantic line “All I ever needed is here in my arms” and by submitting his little harmonium ballad to a majestic dancefloor treatment featuring a sliding, slinky guitar riff for which many rock bands would indeed sacrifice virgins. You can’t say this Zen valentine hasn’t aged well: While our communication tools manipulate free speech’s equality so effectively that we’re destroying democracy worldwide with constant deafening chatter, savoring silence has become more quixotic than ever. –Barry Walters",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGSKrC7dGcY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632ddb0be8d93ffe5dcad768/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Depeche-Mode-Enjoy-the-Silence.png,/dataset/artwork/Depeche_Mode-Enjoy_the_Silence_1990.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,105,The Aztec Mystic,“Knights of the Jaguar” (1999),Underground Resistance,"Underground Resistance There’s something almost sacred about DJ Rolando’s “Jaguar,” often known as “Knights of the Jaguar.” It’s not just the cascading synth rivulets, the way the driving Detroit claps somehow gel with the off-time ride, or even the full-body rush that comes when the strings tease in at two and a half minutes—there’s something in the way all these elements come together that is truly mystical. Arriving just in time to be an anthem of the 1999 Berlin Love Parade and the first Detroit Electronic Music Festival (today known as Movement) in 2000, “Jaguar” is a melancholy belter that gallops and spirals before ending in a sort of symphonic chaos; you might even say that it’s trance in its purest and least cheesy form. Sleek and swift, it’s a melancholy epic that you never want to be over—a perfect piece of knight music. –Vivian Host",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6xVKcvze74,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632ddba6d997a1f3e8a0cdc3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-Aztec-Mystic-Knights-of-the-Jaguar.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Aztec_Mystic-Knights_of_the_Jaguar_1999.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,104,Adina Howard,“Freak Like Me” (1995),East West / Lola Waxx,"East West / Lola Waxx R&B singer Adina Howard’s biggest hit serves as a member’s pledge for Club Freak: a place where a woman can proudly self-describe as a “dog” and live shame-free in her liberated sexuality. Subverting peacocking rap masculinity over a breezy invocation of G-Funk, Adina leans all the way back in the driver’s seat, refusing to pull out her wallet for any man. The song samples Sly Stone and Bootsy Collins, but its finest flip occurs when Howard transforms the squeaked-out Mary Jane Girls sample from LL Cool J’s girlfriend-wishlist “Around the Way Girl” into an expression of her own needs: “I got you shook up on your knees.” Over the years, “Freak Like Me” has been famously covered by Sugababes and interpolated by Megan Thee Stallion and SZA, continuing to stomp all over whatever’s left of the idea of ladylike decorum. –Claire Lobenfeld",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGSajAGg9h4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632ddc22aeacff0b6b601b8d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Adina-Howard-Freak-Like-Me.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Adina_Howard-Freak_Like_Me_1995.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,103,Weezer,“Say It Ain’t So” (1994),DGC,"DGC In retrospect, the terms of Rivers Cuomo’s Faustian pact were harsh. Can you imagine? After splurging a career’s worth of chops and goodwill in one burst, you’re condemned to walk an earth where your possessive, juvenile songwriting drifts further from acceptability while new generations relentlessly clown your Toto covers as virgin music. But we’ll always have Weezer’s glory years, especially “Say It Ain’t So,” not so much an anthem as an arena wrecking ball swaddled in cringe-resistant cladding and studded with spikes. It’s the most relatable Cuomo has ever been; the focus locks on personal minutiae, framed by a letter offering clemency to the absent father who left his psyche mangled in the first place, yet the feelings evoked are universal. As the track creeps to a volcanic climax, each strained syllable and bent note hits with increasing frenzy, daggers plunged deep into an inescapable past. –Gabriel Szatan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENXvZ9YRjbo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632ddcaaaeacff0b6b601b8f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Weezer-Say-It-Aint-So.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Weezer-Say_It_Aint_So_1994.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,102,Master P,"“Make ’Em Say Uhh!” [ft. Fiend, Silkk the Shocker, Mia X, and Mystikal] (1998)",Priority / No Limit,"Priority / No Limit No Limit Records’ symbol was a tank. And if the label’s colonel, Master P, understood anything, it was how to orchestrate an onslaught—of artists, releases, videos, and hooks—in order to overwhelm listeners via brute force and charm. “Make ’Em Say Uhh!” distilled this approach down to a frenzied posse cut featuring four of his strongest soldiers, including the ever charismatic Mia X and the volcanic Mystikal, touting the tank’s might over producer KLC’s collision of rollicking horn blasts and ominous piano. Yet for all its Louisiana bravura, the song also owed a piece of its sonic soul to Harlem, New York, thanks to P’s clever repurposing of the Masterdon Committee’s early-’80s electro hit “Funkbox Party” for the hook. Ever the strategist, Master P well recognized that the time-tested tactic of synthesizing influences and making them new again may be the most potent weapon of all. –Jeff Mao",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_OxZKktwQc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632ddd6c800c1a0f8721b9b8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Master-P-Make-Em-Say-Uhh.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Master_P-Make_Em_Say_Uhh_ft_Fiend_Silkk_the_Shocker_Mia_X_and_Mystikal_1998.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,101,Smashing Pumpkins,“1979” (1995),Virgin,"Virgin After proving he could fill arenas and headline festivals with the alt-rock epics of Siamese Dream, Billy Corgan wanted more: more noise, more drama, more sprawl, more chaos. His pursuit of more beauty yielded “1979,” an attempt to bottle up the bliss and abandon of youth in four minutes of sentimental pop. Corgan wrote the song in his late 20s, and its classic video captures a day in the life of a disaffected suburban mallrat fondly remembered a decade later. After touring your hometown from a cramped backseat, pinballing through a house party, and stopping for snacks in a fluorescent convenience store, “1979” sounds like the final drive home, quietly hurtling through an inky night lit by halogen street lamps. It’s nostalgic without an ounce of bitterness, and it only grows more poignant as those teenage memories fade in the rear-view mirror. –Jamieson Cox",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aeETEoNfOg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632ddde58f0d7ac40b58ddf1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Smashing-Pumpkins-1979.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Smashing_Pumpkins-1979_1995.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,100,The Orb,“Little Fluffy Clouds” (1990),Big Life,"Big Life As the UK’s first chill-out DJ, former Killing Joke roadie Alex Paterson soothed clubbers with an ecumenical blend of musical oddities. That philosophy informed his defining single as the Orb—ambient house’s ground zero. Rickie Lee Jones dreamily recalls 1960s Arizona skies while BBC presenter John Waite rhapsodizes about the English summer. Ennio Morricone’s harmonica confers with a decelerated Harry Nilsson beat and the scintillating multi-tracked guitars of Steve Reich via Pat Metheny. While fellow sample-hounds Bomb the Bass and S’Express crafted hectic smash cuts of dancefloor commandments, Paterson and co-producer Youth (Killing Joke’s former bassist) liquefied their source material into a benign reverie, propelled by a cheerful acid-house burble. This aesthetic—English whimsy meets big-sky American romance—is also at play in the KLF’s ambient road trip Chill Out, but “Little Fluffy Clouds” condensed it into pop, finally cracking the UK Top 10 upon its re-release in 1993. –Dorian Lynskey",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ecdn5SGT1E,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632ddf3bf2e57bfbb704fec0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-Orb-Little-Fluffy-Clouds.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Orb-Little_Fluffy_Clouds_1990.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,99,Selena,“Bidi Bidi Bom Bom” (1994),EMI Latin,"EMI Latin You know the drill: Your heart swells, your hands sweat, and a stutter seems to appear out of nowhere. It’s that feeling of a simmering crush that Selena bottles on “Bidi Bidi Bom Bom.” The husky, melismatic “yeah” that opens the song is a reminder that Selena’s voice was just as suited for singing about forbidden love and breakups as it was for the thrill of crushing hard. Every element here is designed to produce effervescence, evoking the fast heartbeat of infatuation: the wobbly reggae guitar, the steady cowbell, the pulsing cumbia rhythm. That isn’t accidental; as the story goes, Selena made up a rhyme about a fish swimming in the sea during a soundcheck one day, and eventually “Itty Bitty Bubble” turned into a full song. While the Tejano star’s tragic mythos and cultural martyrdom often threaten to consume her legacy, “Bidi Bidi Bom Bom” is a small slice of the whimsy and joy she left behind. –Isabelia Herrera",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKGbjJarMeA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632e2310afa92f85cc3e4ede/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Selena-Bidi-Bidi-Bom-Bom.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Selena-Bidi_Bidi_Bom_Bom_1994.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,98,The Notorious B.I.G.,“Mo Money Mo Problems” [ft. Puff Daddy and Mase] (1997),Bad Boy / Arista,"Bad Boy / Arista When “Mo Money Mo Problems” arrived in the summer of 1997, Diana Ross’ hiccupping sample and Kelly Price’s sashaying lamentation as ubiquitous as a heat wave, Biggie Smalls had been dead for four months. Mase and Puff Daddy—then nearing the release of their respective debuts—took the lead, playfully plodding through opening verses and goofing on Tiger Woods and Bryant Gumbel in a paradoxically ostentatious video. In that life-after-death context, it was impossible not to hear the song’s tragic irony, like a warning by and for B.I.G. about the fate that may await such a contentious and ostentatious superstar. But the anthem’s enduring power stems from its moral simplicity, epitomized by Biggie’s monstrous minute-long verse, buried in the second half: Stay true to your roots and crew, even as you aspire for the cover of Fortune. This was never a song about dying or problems, really; it was a song about living through a moment’s madness, of making it out intact and sane. –Grayson Haver Currin",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUhRKVIjJtw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632e24258f0d7ac40b58ddf7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Notorious-BIG-Mo-Money-Mo-Problems.png,/dataset/artwork/The_Notorious_BIG-Mo_Money_Mo_Problems_ft_Puff_Daddy_and_Mase_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,97,Beck,“Loser” (1994),,"Proudly celebrating one’s mediocrity was the defining pose of the 1990s, and Beck’s breakout hit was a national anthem for the prevailing mood. “Loser” checked every box for a singalong radio smash, embodying the particular combination of apathy and dry cleverness that made the losers in your life seem inordinately charming—a depressed singer might have asked “Why don’t you kill me?” but in the rapper-rocker-singer’s mouth, it came off like a bored dare. Beck claimed that the verses of cryptic wordplay were freestyle nonsense in an attempt to rap like Public Enemy’s Chuck D, but all of his intents and purposes snapped together on that battlecry chorus. Or maybe he just stumbled into that, too—he wouldn’t be the first of Gen X’s stereotypically and stoned layabouts to fuck around and find transcendence. –Evie Nagy",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgSPaXgAdzE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632e24c31dccce609e4162d9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Beck-Loser.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beck-Loser_1994.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,96,Toni Braxton,“You’re Makin’ Me High” (1996),LaFace / Arista,"LaFace / Arista The lead single from Toni Braxton’s sophomore set Secrets is perhaps best remembered for its playful video: When Braxton isn’t gyrating in a skin-tight white catsuit, she and sitcom gal pals Vivica A. Fox and Erika Alexander size up handsome dudes as they ride up an elevator shaft. The R&B tune—a collaborative effort between Braxton, Babyface, and Bryce Wilson of Groove Theory—skillfully captures the feeling of unbridled lust. Its bass-heavy beat oozes along at a blunted tempo, evoking both ’70s Barry White and ’80s Steve Arrington, as Braxton sings a lyric racier than anything we’d heard from her before: “I can imagine you touching my private parts.” The real centerpiece is her sultry, thick-as-molasses alto—no vocalist of the ’90s better embodied the allure of body heat. –Jason King",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIgOL21S98o,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632e259cafa92f85cc3e4ee0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Toni-Braxton-Youre-Makin-Me-High.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Toni_Braxton-Youre_Makin_Me_High_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,95,Queen Latifah,“U.N.I.T.Y.” (1993),Motown,"Motown In just over four minutes, Queen Latifah takes on street harassment, misogyny, domestic violence, and gangster posturing—and manages to make it all sound more like a block party than a term paper. From the start of her career, she made music that centered Black women’s perspectives and experiences, putting them in direct dialogue with her male counterparts. With “U.N.I.T.Y.,” she directly addresses her Flavor Unit crewmate Apache, whose controversial “Gangsta Bitch” had come out earlier in the year; her opening challenge, repeated throughout (“Who you callin’ a bitch?”) invites yet another response. The song sits comfortably in its unabashed politics, and in her flow: melodic, authoritative, undeterred. –Emma Carmichael",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84DR3VfFO-k,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632e266352d4bd45efccbdf2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Queen-Latifah-UNITY.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Queen_Latifah-UNITY_1993.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,94,Guided by Voices,“Game of Pricks” (1995),Matador,"Matador If you take the phrase “greatest hits” very literally, the everlasting version of Guided by Voices’ “Game of Pricks” is the punchy, professional recording from 1995’s Tigerbomb EP, eventually included on the band’s best-of compilation—a song built for pumping a fist with a beer in the other hand. But underneath GBV’s bullish exterior as the best Midwestern bar band to ever live was an insular and vulnerable core, fomented as songwriter Robert Pollard struggled to find artistic success while working as a schoolteacher in his native Dayton, Ohio. That side of GBV bled through the scratchy version of “Game of Pricks” from Alien Lanes, the hoped-for breakout record that allowed them to quit their day jobs before the presale numbers came in. With the bass turned all the way down and the treble turned all the way up, Pollard’s song sounds like a private letter to a younger self, a crunchy bedroom-pop nugget built around a self-affirming message worth stenciling into your high school notebook: “You can never be strong/You can only be free.” Guided by Voices never made it big, it turned out, but success doesn’t matter when you know yourself this well. –Jeremy Gordon",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlZlst4NBVw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632e271f800c1a0f8721b9bb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Guided-by-Voices-Game-of-Pricks.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Guided_by_Voices-Game_of_Pricks_1995.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,93,Björk,“Human Behaviour” (1993),One Little Independent,"One Little Independent Björk is not an alien, despite the extraterrestrial terms in which she is often described. But as a human woman who, at the time of her 1993 solo debut, baffled journalists simply by being from Iceland, to say nothing of her avant-garde sensibilities, she was well-positioned to offer an outsider’s perspective on “Human Behaviour.” On the surface, her thesis—that we definitely (definitely, definitely) lack logic—is a warning to other interlopers preparing for contact. Really, it names our vagaries, our capacity for misunderstanding and being misunderstood, as essential to the human condition, reframing these isolating experiences as shared ones. Furthering the song’s sense of universality, Björk reached across time and geography to borrow its rattling percussion and commanding timpani riff from the Brazilian composer Antônio Carlos Jobim. The result, the throat-clearing opening of Björk’s foray into experimental dance-pop, is strange and welcoming; it invites you to sit with the unfamiliar. –Olivia Horn",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJiAEdWg1ZM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632e28521dccce609e4162db/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bjork-Human-Behaviour.png,/dataset/artwork/Bjrk-Human_Behaviour_1993.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,92,Chaka Demus / Pliers,“Murder She Wrote” (1992) ,Mango / Taxi,"Mango / Taxi “Murder She Wrote” is a testament to taking your time on your craft. Dancehall duo Chaka Demus and Pliers spent five years working on the song, a natural occurrence in Kingston, Jamaica, where producers would record dozens of versions before landing on the one with enough of the genre’s brash and ineffable blend of memorable lyrics and high-speed rhythms. “Murder She Wrote” was exactly that, a speaker-cracking track that became one of the biggest hits from the ’90s dancehall scene. Built around a riddim inspired by Indian bhangra music and Toots and the Maytals’ 1966 track “Bam Bam,” the song was among the first of its kind to break through in the United States by finding a strong foothold on radio, where that instantly recognizable opening bassline began to wind its way through the country. “Murder She Wrote” has been endlessly interpolated since, but the original is eternal, a staple of sweaty summer block parties everywhere that further pushed the genre forward to international attention. –Eric Torres",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvPihZ4MoxI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632e290ad997a1f3e8a0cdc7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Chaka-Demus-Pliers-Murder-She-Wrote.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Chaka_Demus__Pliers-Murder_She_Wrote_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,91,Busta Rhymes,“Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See” (1997),Flipmode / Elektra,"Flipmode / Elektra There are a million ways a rapper might approach the beat to “Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See.” Sourced from a dusty album cut by 1970s soft-rock hitmakers Seals & Crofts, it consists primarily of negative space: a stuttering bit of bassline here, a snare hit or two over there, but otherwise a blank canvas, its minimalism an encouragement for a vocalist to try out any flow they’d like. A less inventive rapper might have chosen to fill the dead air with words, to keep the rhythm rolling along when the production threatens to sputter out. Busta Rhymes took the opposite tack, cutting off his stream of syllables to emphasize the emptiness that opens up on the fourth beat of every bar. With its periodically muted bursts of virtuosic precision, “Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See” moves like a malfunctioning robot, or a clip of a breakdancer that someone keeps pausing and playing again. It’s the sound of a rapper who was usually the loudest voice on any given track discovering the power of silence. –Andy Cush",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSoQDaXh144,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632e2a451dccce609e4162dd/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Busta-Rhymes-Put-Your-Hands-Where-My-Eyes-Could-See.png,/dataset/artwork/Busta_Rhymes-Put_Your_Hands_Where_My_Eyes_Could_See_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,90,Sonic Youth,“Kool Thing” (1990),DGC,"DGC What’s the point of being cool? Mostly nothing, Kim Gordon’s deadpan monologue suggests. Ostensibly a shot at LL Cool J, whom Gordon had interviewed for Spin and failed to connect with, “Kool Thing” flies at the edge of control, part go-go rave-up, part ideological exorcism. It’s a song coated in sarcasm so thick, it’s almost impossible to crack it—just listen to the way the guitars tag every line in the verse with an acidic shoulder shrug. But the fed-up ecstasy that crowns Gordon’s spoken bridge makes it sound as if Sonic Youth, already well-aware of their fate to be the eternal avatars for a certain kind of white alt-cool by the time they’d recorded this song, had crashed into irony’s outer wall. The song itself is their attempt to navigate the rubble. –Marty Sartini Garner",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDTSUwIZdMk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331c199f2e57bfbb7050005/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sonic-Youth-Kool-Thing.png,/dataset/artwork/Sonic_Youth-Kool_Thing_1990.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,89,Camp Lo,“Luchini AKA This Is It” (1997),Arista,"Arista Among the most evocative acts of New York’s mid-’90s major-label hip-hop boom, the Bronx duo Camp Lo blended Harlem Renaissance verve with Blaxploitation-era sizzle. The sole single from their debut album Uptown Saturday Night, “Luchini AKA This Is It” distills Sonny Cheeba and Geechi Suede’s dynamic energy and vivid—at times impenetrable—vernacular. The song’s heavily referential verses unfold like the ecstatic denouement of a heist film, replete with silk shirts, Italian liqueurs, and sumptuous island getaways. Built around a two-bar horn sample from Dynasty’s luxurious 1980 R&B track “Adventures in the Land of Music,” Ski Beatz’s production captures the rush of 125th Street across its various heydays. Only a group as bold as Camp Lo would dare kick off their career with a victory lap. –Pete Tosiello",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVYxoPUjOHU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632e2c32f6cd3c79af7a7679/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Camp-Lo-Luchini.png,/dataset/artwork/Camp_Lo-Luchini_AKA_This_Is_It_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,88,Massive Attack,“Unfinished Sympathy” (1991),Wild Bunch / Virgin,"Wild Bunch / Virgin The reincarnation of Bristol’s Wild Bunch collective, Massive Attack brought their hometown’s full range to bear on their 1991 debut album, Blue Lines: hip-hop breaks, dub basslines, a rolling hint of house music, and a healthy dose of soul, thanks to their singer, Shara Nelson. But for “Unfinished Sympathy,” they looked beyond the traditional trappings of soundsystem culture. Tracking Nelson’s verses first against a single drum machine, then adding breaks, samples, and scratching, the group ended up getting the synth parts re-recorded by a full orchestra at Abbey Road Studios, dialing up the song’s already cinematic properties and yielding a breakbeat soul classic of epic proportions. The strings may have marked an early instance of rough-and-ready rave culture going upmarket, paving the way for a host of dubious techno-goes-to-the-symphony projects in the decades to come, but “Unfinished Sympathy” remains shot through with a murky urgency that refuses to clean up nicely. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWmrfgj0MZI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632e2d6bf2e57bfbb704fefd/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Massive-Attack-Unfinished-Sympathy.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Massive_Attack-Unfinished_Sympathy_1991.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,87,CeCe Peniston,“Finally” (1991) ,A&M,"A&M From Pride parades to Fire Island, from The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert to the Palladium, it’s not a party without “Finally.” The early ’90s airwaves pulsed with glossy Eurodance, but “Finally” was different—a house track firmly in the Chicago house tradition, with Peniston not as a disposable rent-a-diva but as the fully realized personality at the center. The singer was working retail and doing support vocals on the side when A&M tapped her for a single. She took the lyrics from a poem she wrote in college and turned them into “Finally,” her first and best-known hit, a self-fulfilling prophecy enabling her to live out her dreams. Between the sunny tea dance-ready beat and chorus, and the way Peniston belts, growls, and scats her way through it, “Finally” has become a true anthem for finding community, romance, embodiment, desire, self-confidence, or whatever else might have felt unattainable for way too long. –NM Mashurov",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xk8mm1Qmt-Y,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331b1e9d997a1f3e8a0ce37/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/CeCe-Peniston-Finally.jpg,/dataset/artwork/CeCe_Peniston-Finally_1991.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,86,Sleater-Kinney,“One More Hour” (1997),Kill Rock Stars,"Kill Rock Stars The second song from the third album by the Pacific Northwest trio Sleater-Kinney was the moment when the explosive alchemy of their post-riot grrrl power trio truly coalesced. Before, guitarists and songwriters Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein had primarily sung separately. But here—in a song about their own painful romantic separation, we would eventually learn—they came together, braiding their voices more devastatingly and ecstatically than ever. The tension of Tucker’s aching vibrato holding on alongside Brownstein’s clipped delivery is the image of realism in parting. “One More Hour” described one relationship’s end, but it became a beginning, a breakthrough break-up song that bound Brownstein and Tucker together in beautiful friction. –Jenn Pelly",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VoWc3yypHs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331b2bad1c5ef3d2b69369c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sleater-Kinney-One-More-Hour.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sleater-Kinney-One_More_Hour_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,85,OutKast,“Rosa Parks” (1998),LaFace,"LaFace “Rosa Parks” isn’t the best song on Aquemini (that’s “SpottieOttieDopaliscious”), nor was it OutKast’s biggest to date (that was “Elevators (Me and You)”). But at a moment when labels like No Limit and Cash Money were trying to preserve Southern rap’s regionality while building a national audience, the track’s hollering and harmonica felt like provocations toward listeners who wouldn’t be caught dead in something so country. And while the extraterrestrial imagery connected them to Afrofuturists like Parliament and Jimi Hendrix, it doubled as a joke about how most Americans imagine the rural South as another planet anyway. –Mike Powell",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drsQLEU0N1Y,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331b3f68f0d7ac40b58de9b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/OutKast-Rosa-Parks.png,/dataset/artwork/OutKast-Rosa_Parks_1998.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,84,Erykah Badu,“Tyrone (Live)” (1997),Kedar / Universal,"Kedar / Universal Mere months after lifting neo-soul to new heights with her 1997 debut Baduizm, Erykah Badu had the sheer confidence to release a full live concert album that included many of those same songs. It was a runaway hit, thanks in large part to the non-album radio single “Tyrone.” The titular proto-scrub was the buddy of Badu’s man, who never paid for anything and always brought his dirtbag pal along with buddies Jim, James, and Paul to everything they did together. Badu was always covering their asses, which is why she suggested her guy better call Tyrone to help get his shit out of her house, her voice oozing with raw, mesmerizing, sexy-as-hell contempt. The kicker—“But you can’t use my phone”—was a lyric that made exhausted girlfriends the world over scream with delight, and pledge devotion to the church of Baduizm for life. –Evie Nagy",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YY2-mrsXgMM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331b84250e3f640553c93ac/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Erykah-Badu-Tyrone.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Erykah_Badu-Tyrone_Live_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,83,Innerzone Orchestra,“Bug in the Bass Bin” (1996),Mo' Wax,"Mo' Wax When it debuted, Carl Craig’s “Bug in the Bass Bin”—the first outing under his Innerzone Orchestra alias—sounded like nothing else in Detroit techno, or anywhere else, for that matter. Skilled in the dark arts of razor and tape, Craig sliced into a 1960s easy-listening percussion album to come up with the song’s distinctive beat: a rolling, sliding brushed-snare pattern whose sluggish feel he accentuated with queasy synth glissandi. There’s no discernable downbeat; woozy and ghostlike, it half-slinks and half-floats across the dancefloor. The principal riff is just a call-and-response between a plucked bass note and a few splashes of synths; the whole thing is humid, hazy, hard to get a fix on. Yet UK DJs like Fabio, attuned to the track’s unconventional breakbeat energy, ended up pitching it up to 45, where it meshed with the double-time sounds of jungle and drum’n’bass. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mInY6_o6PCE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331b8e28f0d7ac40b58de9d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Innerzone-Orchestra-Bug-in-the-Bassbin.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Innerzone_Orchestra-Bug_in_the_Bass_Bin_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,82,Radiohead,“Karma Police” (1997),Parlophone / Capitol,"Parlophone / Capitol In its own detached way, “Karma Police” is structured as a stealth microcosm of the first decade of Radiohead’s recording career. Its first two minutes are classic ’90s Radiohead: tuneful and sardonic pop-rock, a bit too dour to fit in with the Britpop craze, yet melodically bright enough to be covered by college kids at open mics for perpetuity. Its haunting final refrain imperceptibly sums up an album’s worth of alienation in seven words: “For a minute there I lost myself.” And its remarkable outro, created by Thom Yorke and Nigel Godrich after the singer told his producer he disliked the latter half of the song, deconstructs it all in a collapsing fizz of samples and noise. “It was the first time we did anything like that,” Godrich later recalled—a foreshadowing of Radiohead’s restlessness and their growing interest in outré electronics. –Zach Schonfeld",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uYWYWPc9HU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331bd3fafa92f85cc3e4f1c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Radiohead-Karma-Police.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Radiohead-Karma_Police_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,81,The Chicks,“Wide Open Spaces” (1998),Monument,"Monument Six years before The Chicks made “Wide Open Spaces” the title track of their major-label debut, it was just an idea in a notebook belonging to a college student named Susan Gibson. Gibson had written the song in frustration: Everyone in her life seemed intent on making decisions for her, so she wrote what would become one of country’s defining feminist anthems in just 20 minutes—a song that saw boundless potential for self-determination in the genre’s history of open road romanticism. Years later, The Chicks turned it into a verdant daydream of a bluegrass song, all sighing pedal steel and resolute sisterly harmonies, and it became the emotional blueprint for a career filled with songs about the treacherous, rewarding work of striking out on your own. “Wide Open Spaces” remains a monument to everything The Chicks wanted to see in the world; the career that followed made good on that promise, and then some. –Shaad D’Souza",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dom7VlltBUc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331be53afa92f85cc3e4f1e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Chicks-Wide-Open-Spaces.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Chicks-Wide_Open_Spaces_1998.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,80,Pépé Bradock,“Deep Burnt” (1999),Kif Recordings,"Kif Recordings In an era of over-the-top French filter house (and over-cranked music in general), Pépé Bradock came through with a second-wave deep-house classic whose dusky palette and earworm grooves made it a staple of DJ crates from Detroit to Berlin. Bradock sails into the sunset on a small but mighty romantic string loop lifted from Freddie Hubbard’s 1979 mellow jazz number “Little Sunflower,” further propelled by hip-shaking tambourines (sampled from Max Roach’s “Driva’ Man”) and a strong, heartbeat-like 125-bpm kick drum. For just over nine minutes, he teases different melodic themes but never loses the utterly hypnotic groove—it’s simple and deep at the same time, a song that instantly becomes the perfect soundtrack to any experience. –Vivian Host",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opvopULDhVI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331bf64c9ea29ce4745a610/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Pepe-Bradock-Deep-Burnt.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Pp_Bradock-Deep_Burnt_1999.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,79,Dr. Dre,“Still D.R.E.” [ft. Snoop Dogg] (1999),Afterrmath / Interscope,"Afterrmath / Interscope After leaving the Death Row empire in 1996 and releasing a couple of projects that landed with a thud, Dr. Dre’s ongoing relevance was far from secured as the 20th century drew to a close. His redemption came in the form of a hit that connected eras. With its pristine strings and a blinging piano loop, “Still D.R.E.” felt like the future. This ultra-high-end form of beatmaking established the template for the Dre-produced hits by 50 Cent, Eminem, and Eve that crushed early 2000s MTV; they’re the kind of productions from which you could launch a luxe brand of headphones. But with Snoop Dogg in the passenger’s seat, Dre also drew a line directly back to his G-funk past. It’s the type of song that’s monumental enough to cement a musical legacy, then, now, and forever. –Dean Van Nguyen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CL6n0FJZpk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331c439d1c5ef3d2b6936d7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Dr-Dre-Still-Dre.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dr_Dre-Still_DRE_ft_Snoop_Dogg_1999.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,78,My Bloody Valentine,“Only Shallow” (1991),Creation / Sire,"Creation / Sire Commentary on My Bloody Valentine tends to focus on the guitar sound—its swarming amorphousness, the way it’s simultaneously soft as snow and hard as nails. Nicknamed “glide guitar” by its inventor Kevin Shields, it’s generated by a technique of fast strumming through sustained tremolo and a studio effect known as reverse reverb. But MBV’s swoon-power, their unmatched ability to make you sway and flutter your closed eyelids, comes as much from the breathy vocals of Shields and Bilinda Jayne Butcher. The Irish-English group liked to talk about their “not-really-there sound”; on “Only Shallow,” Butcher really does sound barely there, a palimpsest of a person wiped out by sensations beyond verbalizing. There are lyrics, but you can hardly make out a word as Butcher’s vocal texture blurs into the surrounding wooze. The opening salvo on the shoegaze classic Loveless, “Only Shallow” showcased another of the band’s under-discussed strengths: melody. Scores of underground rock groups were doing excruciatingly extreme things with guitars in the early ’90s, but nobody melded tuneful and torrential as exquisitely as My Bloody Valentine. –Simon Reynolds",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyYMzEplnfU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331c5d2d1c5ef3d2b6936d9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/My-Bloody-Valentine-Only-Shallow.jpg,/dataset/artwork/My_Bloody_Valentine-Only_Shallow_1991.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,77,A Tribe Called Quest,“Check the Rhime” (1991),Jive,"Jive The cypher is one of hip-hop’s most sacred traditions and one that defined the relationship between A Tribe Called Quest’s Q-Tip and Phife Dawg. Their chemistry was defined by the way their voices, sense of humor, and nuggets of wisdom informed and clashed with one another, and “Check the Rhime,” a highlight from their second album The Low End Theory, is when the two were most in sync. Forget the litany of all-time great quotables, and the minimal bass thump that works its way through your body like a virus. The pleasures of “Check the Rhime” can all be traced back to a timeless chant, the call-and-response between two friends heard ’round the world: “You on point, Phife?/All the time, Tip.” –Dylan Green",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QWEPdgS3As,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331c8f11dccce609e416317/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/A-Tribe-Called-Quest-Check-the-Rhime.jpg,/dataset/artwork/A_Tribe_Called_Quest-Check_the_Rhime_1991.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,76,PJ Harvey,“Rid of Me” (1993),Island,"Island The genius of “Rid of Me” is its performance of feminized sexuality. Here’s Harvey, a girl who lives on a sheep farm in rural England, shrieking about being inescapable and wanting someone to lick her legs. She’s at the peak of her career with a hit album, being as much of a disaffected freak as possible. She sexualizes herself because she can, and the song is deliberately interested in messing with the male gaze, of asking for sex so directly that she almost seems like the Exorcist girl, mid-exorcism. “Don’t you wish you never, never met her,” she repeats, unflinching, throughout the song over sparse electric guitars and the occasional crash of drums. Also: “I’m going to twist your head off, see.” She’s not joking. –Sophie Kemp",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PlaNe3mXl8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331c9ccd1c5ef3d2b6936dc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/PJ-Harvey-Rid-of-Me.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/PJ_Harvey-Rid_of_Me_1993.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,75,Annie Lennox,“Walking on Broken Glass” (1992),BMG / Arista,"BMG / Arista The piano intro of “Walking on Broken Glass” sparkles like a chandelier exploded across a ballroom floor, its crystalline notes falling in sugary shards. Annie Lennox sounds confident as she marches across them on the second track to her solo debut Diva. Carried by Annie Lennox’s silky voice, the song rides intoxicating highs and tragic lows; a string section offers an air of formality around a steady synthetic pop rhythm and a punchy guitar part tucked in the mix. Lennox opens up from her level-headed start into a belted chorus, finding brief deliverance before admitting to the excruciating discomfort of trying to hold it together. Even as she stands among the splintered pieces, the emotional undercurrent of “Walking on Broken Glass” captures the exasperation, ache, and yearning of not giving up just yet. –Allison Hussey",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y25stK5ymlA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331cb0510c581ffac68d1f4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Annie-Lennox-Walking-on-Broken-Glass.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Annie_Lennox-Walking_on_Broken_Glass_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,74,Ghost Town DJ’s,“My Boo (Hitman’s Club Mix)” (1996),So So Def,"So So Def The original version of the Ghost Town DJ’s Miami bass classic “My Boo” was a dancefloor banger beloved by breakdancers and club kids but not exactly a breakout hit. The track didn’t take off until Chicago house legend DJ Mike “Hitman” Wilson put out his remix, with an extended three minutes of atmospheric groove over Virgo Williams’ haunting vocals. The DNA of “My Boo” runs across generations, from the Diplomats to a wobbly remix from witch house wunderkind Balam Acab. But the song is for dancing—it got a deserved second life when two kids from New Jersey started the viral Running Man challenge in 2016. 20 years after the original release, “My Boo” went from an IYKYK classic to a household tune. –Samhita Mukhopadhyay",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLKkk-GnE5s,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331cccce02a17d9175e557b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ghost-Town-DJs-My-Boo.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ghost_Town_DJs-My_Boo_Hitmans_Club_Mix_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,73,Bone Thugs-N-Harmony,“Tha Crossroads” (1996),Ruthless,"Ruthless The original “Crossroad,” recorded during the sessions for Bone Thugs’ sophomore album E. 1999 Eternal, was a somber take on the group’s menacing Midwestern funk and a tribute to their late friend Wally Laird. The second version, a plainspoken hymn written in the wake of Eazy-E’s 1995 death, became the quartet’s first and only No. 1 hit. The synthesis of gospel chords and a subtle Isley Brothers sample lends the effect of a Greek chorus: The rappers hand off brief sing-song verses like sprinters passing a relay baton. Krayzie Bone—a fourth-generation Jehovah’s Witness—is the vocal and emotional anchor. In contrast, Bizzy Bone’s erratic, unenunciated bars carry the mystique of a camp revival. The song’s visceral anguish (“Can somebody, anybody tell me why/I don’t wanna die?”) and audacious faith offers a universal comfort and companionship in the face of the unknown. –Pete Tosiello",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=234aK1Mpc0I,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331cdb685ab3acb6908fa65/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bone-Thugs-N-Harmony-Tha-Crossroads.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bone_Thugs-N-Harmony-Tha_Crossroads_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,72,Natalie Imbruglia,“Torn” (1997),RCA / BMG,"RCA / BMG “Torn” is the happiest sad song in the ’90s MTV canon, the “Soak Up the Sun” of “Paper Bag”s. Natalie Imbruglia, with her silvery little-girl-blowing-bubbles voice, radiates a totalizing innocence even as she sings about an affair that ended in abject shame and devastation. The contradiction turned “Torn,” which was originally recorded by the Danish singer Lis Sørensen in 1993, into an abiding classic: Those opening chords dawn like a sunny day in a cartoon, and then, before you know it, our girl is (allegedly) naked, speechless, bound and broken on the floor. The indelible post-chorus guitar wail was the last-call round at the end of Imbruglia’s bender—a source of uncountable interpretive dance interludes past, present, and future, for as long as karaoke and the absurdity of heartbreak coexist. –Jia Tolentino",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIYiGA_rIls,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331d03c1dccce609e416319/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Natalie-Imbruglia-Torn.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Natalie_Imbruglia-Torn_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,71,Pete Rock / C.L. Smooth,“They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.)” (1992),Untouchables / Elektra,"Untouchables / Elektra In 1990, Mount Vernon, New York native Troy “Trouble T Roy” Dixon died in a freak accident while on tour with Heavy D & the Boyz. When his Westchester neighbors Pete Rock and C.L. Smooth went about eulogizing him with “They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.),” they accomplished something even grander and more profound. Barely into their 20s, Pete and C.L. were already casting back: Pete into his parents’ vinyl collection, C.L. into a rough-and-tumble childhood. The warmth of Pete’s early work is turned up like an electric blanket here, as he threads a hooky sample of jazz saxophonist Tom Scott through rattling snares. C.L.’s clear-eyed verses match the track’s wistful nostalgia, as if he’s flipping through a yellowed family photo album. In the end, Trouble T Roy is an incidental character; “T.R.O.Y.” considers the rush of life, the embrace of death, and the unifying force of love from the vantage of evaporating youth. –Pete Tosiello",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6mdRv0ZdR8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331d0f6800c1a0f8721bafa/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Pete-Rock-CL-Smooth-They-Reminisce-Over-You.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Pete_Rock__CL_Smooth-They_Reminisce_Over_You_TROY_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,70,Everything But the Girl,“Missing (Todd Terry Remix)” (1995),Blanco y Negro / Atlantic,"Blanco y Negro / Atlantic UK duo Everything But the Girl were reeling from a career-tanking flop of an album when Todd Terry’s remix launched all three of them into unstoppable global airplay. That Terry’s take on “Missing” had so much octane in the mid-’90s market speaks to the fluidity and hunger for variety from that era’s radio programming. Deep dance tracks cultivated by far-flung collaborators could be mammoth hits, as likely to ring out in a club as a CVS; former sophisti-pop darlings from Northern England could meld minds with a house virtuoso from Brooklyn and throw sparks across the globe. Tracey Thorn’s voice, let loose from its typical acoustic furnishings, aerosolizes into a fine mist against Terry’s galloping loops. In his mix, her words scale up from quiet reflection to existential yearning: a missing so deep it’d take an ocean to fill. –Sasha Geffen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAkY5m00rpY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331d1a6f2e57bfbb705003e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Everything-But-the-Girl-Missing-Todd-Terry.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Everything_But_the_Girl-Missing_Todd_Terry_Remix_1995.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,69,Foo Fighters,“Everlong” (1997),Roswell / Capitol,"Roswell / Capitol After decades of his dutiful service as Real Rock’s most enthusiastic diplomat, it can be hard to remember a time when Dave Grohl was still trying to figure out what he wanted Foo Fighters to be. So how about this: a guy rooted in mid-’80s D.C. hardcore borrowing half of Sunny Day Real Estate to make a googly-eyed power ballad about his girlfriend, directly and immensely influencing bands like The Get Up Kids and Jimmy Eat World and their subsequent masterpieces. Foo Fighters, the Band Who Broke Emo? Call it a stretch, but the exalted status of “Everlong” is entirely due to Grohl submitting to impulse, drunk in love and swerving far from the middle of the road he’s occupied ever since. As a worthy crush should feel, “Everlong” is paralyzing and exhilarating at the same time, its relentless propulsion and professional polish working in tandem to create an illusory effect, like watching an Olympic speed skater furiously pump their legs while appearing to effortlessly glide. That Foo Fighters haven’t revisited this sound only underscores its resonance as a song that desperately tries to capture a moment when things feel like they can’t possibly be this good again—because they never will be. –Ian Cohen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBG7P-K-r1Y,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331d2b5d997a1f3e8a0cea4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Foo-Fighters-Everlong.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Foo_Fighters-Everlong_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,68,Hole,“Violet” (1994),DGC,"DGC Courtney Love has described “Violet” as a “hex” on a man—purportedly Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins—who wronged her. The feverish lyrics are about assault, exploitation, and the asshole who walks away once he’s taken everything he wants from a woman. It is the most frenzied statement on Live Through This, with a force that connects like a fist hitting a brick wall thanks to its hopped-up guitars and a chorus that’s screamed more than sung. “Violet” is one of the finest expressions of what Love was capable of in this unbelievably productive period, a woman spinning all her vulnerability, destitution, disgrace, power, speed, sex, rage, and violence into a ferocious incantation. –Alex Frank",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G597VdnVBgM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331d3851dccce609e41631d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Hole-Violet.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Hole-Violet_1994.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,67,Robin S.,“Show Me Love” (1993),Champion / Big Beat / ZYX,"Champion / Big Beat / ZYX Good jams never die—they await rediscovery in our bedrooms and train rides, one conversion at a time. Beyoncé understood this adage when she recorded this year’s “Break My Soul,” dependent on 1993’s pop-house hit “Show Me Love.” In its original 1990 version, the track sported electric piano, vocoder, and synthesized string parts closer to the post-disco in which Lisa Stansfield specialized. It awaited an essential remix by Swedish DJ-producer StoneBridge, who added the Korg M1 bassline that both time-stamps and immortalizes it. As for the singer, Robin S. sounds like a regular person, like you and me giving the performance of our lives. Dance music often requires anonymity, the better to project our needs. But Robin’s hoarse, crinkly delivery (thanks to the flu, she has said) expressed the agony of listeners who tried dancing their way out of their constrictions. “Baby, if you want meeee,” she growls before the chorus. Ah, such a fleeting thing, desire. –Alfred Soto",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps2Jc28tQrw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331d437d1c5ef3d2b693712/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Robin-S-Show-Me-Love.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Robin_S-Show_Me_Love_1993.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,66,DMX,“Ruff Ryders’ Anthem” (1998),Ruff Ryders / Def Jam,"Ruff Ryders / Def Jam If you’ve ever fought in front of a crowd (and don’t go starting if you haven’t), you know how much benefit there can be in having your own cheering section. That’s the energy DMX brought to “Ruff Ryders’ Anthem,” as a chorus of voices punctuated every confrontational line with an emphatic “WHAT!?” By 1998, New York rap had spent a few years enthralled with mafiosos, lavish lifestyles, and shiny suits, then came DMX—gritty, growling, on a rampage. His biggest-ever hit is grounded in trauma (“All I know is pain, all I feel is rain/How can I maintain with mad shit on my brain?”) but never lacking in pure bravado (“Light it up like a candle just ’cause I can’t stand you”). The rapper’s breathless verses fill in the space around producer Swizz Beatz’s spare, Casio-keyboard sound, which was novel in its simplicity. As for the hook, well, childhood fire safety drills were never the same again. –Mychal Denzel Smith",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThlhSnRk21E,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331d59ed997a1f3e8a0cea6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/DMX-Ruff-Ryders-Anthem.jpg,/dataset/artwork/DMX-Ruff_Ryders_Anthem_1998.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,65,Elliott Smith,“Between the Bars” (1997),Kill Rock Stars,"Kill Rock Stars Before Sufjan Stevens inspired an army of whisper-voiced acoustic strummers, before Phoebe Bridgers presided over the fetishization of capital-S Sadness, there was Elliott Smith. One of his most enduring tunes, owing both to its prominent slot on the Good Will Hunting soundtrack and covers by artists as varied as Madonna and Beabadoobee, “Between the Bars” conceals its desperate melancholy within a lilting melody that never stops moving forward. Like all of the late songwriter’s best songs, this one contains layers; what seems at first like a comforting lullaby to a troubled lover reveals itself, on repeated listens, to describe the seductive promise of alcoholism. “Drink up, one more time/And I’ll make you mine,” Smith croons, like the world’s most brutally honest beer pitchman. –Zach Schonfeld",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5g-91mwiNs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632db920e02a17d9175e5500/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Elliott-Smith-Say-Yes.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Elliott_Smith-Between_the_Bars_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,64,The Cardigans,“Lovefool” (1996),Stockholm / Mercury,"Stockholm / Mercury “Lovefool” makes desperation sexy. In the hands of Swedes Nina Persson and Peter Svensson, the crippling embarrassment of trying to save a failing relationship is considered with the carefree elan of a model on vacation. The biggest single by the Cardigans does pop desire differently: it’s about how exhilarating and purely fun it can be to debase yourself in the name of love. (Its popularity in the U.S. is owed, in part, to its placement in both Cruel Intentions and Romeo + Juliet, two films that explore, in backwards ways, the ecstatic nihilism of pursuing a crush.) Persson’s vocals, all coquettish sighs and blissful coos, suggest that there’s more joy to be found in the pursuit than the goal as she delivers her plea with a cartoonish, IMAX-sized wink. Animating the whole thing is a gorgeous, candy-colored daytime disco stomp—a beat so undeniable that it could turn any relationship death march into a parade. –Shaad D’Souza",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NI6aOFI7hms,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331d8feefc35c38a593d8dd/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-Cardigans-Lovefool.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Cardigans-Lovefool_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,63,Arthur Russell,“This Is How We Walk on the Moon” (1994),Point Music,"Point Music When the cellist, composer, and producer Arthur Russell died in 1992, he left behind a pile of music so big that archivists are still sifting through it. There was a little bit of a lot of different things: disco, country, post-minimal “classical” pieces, the spacey beginnings of what we think of as bedroom pop. His genius lived in how many seemingly unrelated points he managed to connect—a vision of creativity more familiar in our curatorial era than it was when Russell was alive. So when you listen to “This Is How We Walk on the Moon,” from 1994’s Another Thought, first ask yourself what it is. Deconstructed folk? With dissonant electronic vocal processing in the middle? And a salsa-ish trombone part toward the end? Then realize that, as a lifelong Buddhist, he seemed more interested in explorations than conclusions. “This is How We Walk on the Moon” is the sound of sound changing. –Mike Powell",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eq5gjfN5lns,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331d9ff8085714fe37b0d9d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Arthur-Russell-This-Is-How-We-Walk-on-the-Moon.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Arthur_Russell-This_Is_How_We_Walk_on_the_Moon_1994.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,62,Warren G / Nate Dogg,“Regulate” (1994),Death Row / Interscope,"Death Row / Interscope If Dr. Dre’s G-funk was marked by its hydraulic lurch, his little step brother Warren G’s version was more like a sophisticated slide. His biggest hit’s understated swagger, and the ease with which the bad-night-goes-good tale unfurls, renders the narrative violence beside the point—it’s all seen through the dewy lens of whatever swell things went down later on at the Eastside Motel. Besides, the beat is so slick, it would be impossible for any sense of menace to stick to it in the first place. Gritty? Of course. But the Michael McDonald sample makes it clear: This is Long Beach yacht rap. –Marty Sartini Garner",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1plPyJdXKIY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331db68f2e57bfbb7050042/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Warren-G-Nate-Dogg-Regulate.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Warren_G__Nate_Dogg-Regulate_1994.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,61,Built to Spill,“Carry the Zero” (1999),Warner Bros.,"Warner Bros. By 1999, all of Doug Martsch’s mildest dreams had come true. Built to Spill, his scrappy Idaho band, had steered its way into the waiting arms of a major label, which had handed him the money and freedom necessary to make a classic—1997’s Perfect From Now On—and the experience nearly broke him. “Carry the Zero,” from two years later, is the sound of a band that has just turned the corner on making a masterpiece. The interplay is still telepathic, the juices of exhilaration are running high, and out pour creations that would never otherwise slip out with such ease. “Carry the Zero” is an exhalation: warm, open-hearted, emotionally generous. Martsch’s voice, a keening wail that reaches so high it seems to be vying for airspace with his soaring leads, unleashes a series of cutting observations that somehow land like pure tenderness (“You’ve become/What you thought was dumb/A fraction of the sum”). Instead of the careful patchwork of Perfect, “Carry the Zero” swirls like some kind of dizzying carousel ride: Brett Nelson’s bassline leaps up and down the scale like a calliope, Scott Plouf’s drums explode like county fair fireworks, and Martsch, the humblest of all of indie rock’s many charisma-averse guitar hobbits, soars and glitters above us, a million brilliant shades of emerald and vermillion. –Jayson Greene",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-f7zsW7EV4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331dc4c800c1a0f8721bb03/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Built-to-Spill-Carry-the-Zero.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Built_to_Spill-Carry_the_Zero_1999.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,60,Moodymann,“Shades of Jae” (1999),KDJ,"KDJ Paradoxically, you can tell Kenny Dixon Jr., aka Moodymann, is a musician by the way he utilizes samples—not just looping or pasting them in, but interpreting them. “Shades of Jae” is the ultimate example: A lolling Bob James keyboard line and a bit of Marvin Gaye’s live version of “Come Get to This” float like wisps of smoke, interacting fleetingly in places and closely in others, but rarely in the same way twice. That teasing quality is shared by the beat itself: The kick drum, house music’s traditional cue that it’s time to dance, comes in only when Moody feels like it. But he teases us so deliciously, and the groove is so resoundingly right-there without it, that if you can resist moving fully to the whole thing you might be in a body cast. –Michaelangelo Matos",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YCgkz_yK1w,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331dda1e02a17d9175e55b1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Moodymann-Shades-of-Jae.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Moodymann-Shades_of_Jae_1999.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,59,Whitney Houston,“I Will Always Love You” (1992),Arista,"Arista By the end of 1992, Whitney Houston had become pop’s golden child, set to star in her first feature film, The Bodyguard. All she needed was a signature soundtrack ballad, and she found it in Dolly Parton’s rustic country ballad from two decades earlier. Originally written about Parton’s creative split from mentor Porter Wagoner, “I Will Always Love You” was recast under Houston’s spell as a heartfelt send-off to a love that’s tender but incomplete. Though she had made a career out of vocal exhibitions, this is the Jersey church girl at her most controlled. The song opens softly, then builds with creeping intensity, her voice carving canyons and shifting timbres along the way. The gut punch is that four-second pause and the chilling high note from beyond that blows you to the back of the room. Staying at No. 1 on the pop chart for 14 weeks, “I Will Always Love You” is the best-case scenario of a powerhouse in command. –Clover Hope",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JWTaaS7LdU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331de78d1c5ef3d2b693717/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Whitney-Houston-I-Will-Always-Love-You.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Whitney_Houston-I_Will_Always_Love_You_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,58,A Tribe Called Quest,“Scenario” (1991),Jive,"Jive For most of its run, A Tribe Called Quest’s 1991 masterpiece The Low End Theory is refined and restrained, all tasteful jazz thump and sophisticated introspection. But for its closing barrage, Q-Tip and Phife cut loose with the New York crew Leaders of the New School on an absolute lung-buster that anticipated the shouty, mic-grabbing styles of Das EFX and Wu-Tang Clan. The energy was undeniable, as was the star-making turn from Busta Rhymes, whose verse doubled as a mission statement for the track, if not his entire being: “Causing rambunction throughout the sphere/Raise the levels of the boom inside your ear.” –Evan Rytlewski",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6TLWqn82J4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331df588f0d7ac40b58df0c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/A-Tribe-Called-Quest-Scenario.jpg,/dataset/artwork/A_Tribe_Called_Quest-Scenario_1991.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,57,Daniel Johnston,“Some Things Last a Long Time” (1990),Shimmy Disc,"Shimmy Disc Daniel Johnston recorded the spare piano ballad “Some Things Last a Long Time” during a 1988 visit to New York City. After he stopped taking his medication, the trip spiraled into a manic episode. In the span of a few days, Johnston was arrested for vandalizing the Statue of Liberty, assaulted at a homeless shelter, admitted into a psychiatric ward, and then released due to clerical error in time to play a gig at CBGB. That “Some Things Last a Long Time” exists at all is a testament to the small army that loved Daniel, that lifted him up when his sanity left him. But Johnston alone renders the song a body blow. He delivers lyrics as simple as nursery rhymes with the somber regret of a deathbed confession. Covers abound, by artists including Lana Del Rey, Beck, and Beach House, but none will last as long, or hurt so much, as Johnston conveying his grief into eternity. –Peyton Thomas",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TV6LPx1ezYs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331e0cb4cd8167e3722209c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Daniel-Johnston-Some-Things-Last-a-Long-Time.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Daniel_Johnston-Some_Things_Last_a_Long_Time_1990.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,56,Erykah Badu,“On & On” (1997),Kedar / Universal,"Kedar / Universal Baduizm’s first single is quintessential literature in the Badu canon, and the neo-soul movement at large. Rarely was she the easiest narrator to interpret, but for as alluringly coded as “On & On” is, there’s a clear political undercurrent girding the track. “My money’s gone/I’m all alone” her sultry alto voice crooned over a slick four-note bassline, the first of many existential declarations—an opening address for a new generation of earth mothers, Afrofuturists, and doobie burners to follow like scripture. Despite—or because of—its elusiveness, the song has become one of the great chilled-out anthems for Black folks building new worlds in a country working hard on their demise. –Gio Santiago",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TW28iWV7nxE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331e146f2e57bfbb7050044/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Erykah-Badu-On-and-On.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Erykah_Badu-On__On_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,55,Madonna,“Ray of Light” (1998),Maverick / Warner Bros.,"Maverick / Warner Bros. A culture-shaping fusion of UK acid house and American dance pop that still betrays its origins as a bluesy travelers’ lament (doesn’t the Zephyr sound like a train?), “Ray of Light” is, simply, a song about flying. The title track of Madonna’s first mystic reinvention started out as a heavy-hearted folk tune recorded by British duo Curtiss Maldoon in 1971; the version she created with electronic producer William Orbit is raving psychedelic pop disco, full of laser arpeggios and sirens that move with the silvery magnetism of ocean fish. A Kabbalah-coded ode to divine femininity with a racing pulse, “Ray of Light” is body music for the embodied consciousness. –Anna Gaca",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQ5OtnBdcWw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331e1d2f2e57bfbb7050046/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Madonna-Ray-of-Light.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Madonna-Ray_of_Light_1998.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,54,TLC,“Creep” (1994),LaFace / Arista,"LaFace / Arista Anchoring their classic 1994 album CrazySexyCool, “Creep” is TLC’s mischievous justification for revenge cheating on a partner who’s abandoned any sense of trust. Smooth, decisive, and almost numb in her delivery, T-Boz sells the feeling of emotional detachment with her signature deep rasp, relaying a message that sometimes the most cathartic response to a messy relationship is to get even messier. Today’s R&B is so rich with women doing dirt that it’s almost quaint to remember an era when a song about a woman cheating as emotional retribution was an aberration. It’s a feat that she waited until the 22nd of loneliness to do so. –Clover Hope",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlZydtG3xqI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331e24f4cd8167e3722209e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/TLC-Creep.jpg,/dataset/artwork/TLC-Creep_1994.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,53,Frankie Knuckles,“The Whistle Song” (1991),Virgin,"Virgin While Frankie Knuckles’ pioneering early tracks were soaked in acid and eroticism, his sound became warmer and more soulful as the genre of “house” solidified. The title of his 1991 album Beyond the Mix captured the essence of deep house: Beyond the music and the musician is the potential for collective experience that dance unlocks, the ego death and emergent sense of togetherness that can come from existing as one unit within the unified organism of a crowd. While elsewhere Knuckles works with vocalists to deliver fervent club Jeremiads over an electronic chorus, “The Whistle Song” is pure sound. There’s no direct address or thematic telegraph, and in its simplicity, Knuckles’ instrumental opus demonstrates the possibility of dance music as pure feeling, unbound from time and language. The titular whistle is our guiding compass in a misty soundscape that dissolves the barrier between musical rhythm and natural ambience. –Nadine Smith",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIdimVDuSEU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331e2c8e02a17d9175e55b3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Frankie-Knuckles-The-Whistle-Song.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Frankie_Knuckles-The_Whistle_Song_1991.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,52,Juvenile,“Back That Azz Up” [ft. Mannie Fresh and Lil Wayne] (1999),Cash Money / Universal,"Cash Money / Universal Not only is “Back That Azz Up” the defining hit of Cash Money, its opening strings are still an alarm call to clear out of the dancefloor if you’re not ready to sweat. There’s Mannie Fresh’s propulsive, funky beat; Juvenile’s direct command to throw ass; the hypnotic flow in his verses have the effect of bounce music; the jolt of adrenaline every time the hook comes back around. It’s all sort of romantic, too, how Juvenile treats a little ass shaking like the blessing that it is. In the future, Cash Money would reach higher commercial peaks, but not much lives on like a twerk anthem. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpQrAbkM3dI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331e37452d4bd45efccbe30/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Juvenile-Back-That-Azz-Up.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Juvenile-Back_That_Azz_Up_ft_Mannie_Fresh_and_Lil_Wayne_1999.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,51,Le Tigre,“Deceptacon” (1999),Mr. Lady,"Mr. Lady When “Deceptacon” came out in 1999, the idea of an indie band being both pop-positive and confrontationally political wasn’t as familiar as it is now. Like the early rock’n’roll it quoted, the song was, in essence, dance music—a quality foregrounded by James Murphy and Tim Goldsworthy’s remix a few years later. And not just dance music, but the kind of immediate, floor-filling shout-along that glossy regional magazines were recommending as bridal-party entrance music. That riot grrrl pioneer Kathleen Hanna, who’d quit Bikini Kill a few years earlier, wrote the song out of frustration with watching feminism’s dilution through stuff like the Spice Girls and Xena: Warrior Princess made sense: This is cute, fun music in part about the cultural complexity of young women having cute fun. –Mike Powell",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kpVqbCpXck,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331e3d352d4bd45efccbe32/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Le-Tigre-Deceptacon.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Le_Tigre-Deceptacon_1999.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,50,Janet Jackson,“If” (1993),Virgin,"Virgin Janet Jackson is staring down an oblivious dude from across the room while thinking some very naughty thoughts. “If you like I’ll go down, da-down, down, down, da-down, down,” she mumbles in a hypnotic monotone, before opening up her voice to underline the innuendo, “Your smooth and shiny feels so good against my lips, sugar.” “If,” the fiercest track from her chart-obliterating janet. album, clears a path for her freakiest fantasies. The production, by Janet and her longtime collaborators Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, is a genre-defying riot—feral guitars that bring to mind prog rocker Robert Fripp smashed together with an artfully flipped Supremes sample and steel-hard hip-hop drums inspired by Public Enemy. Urged on by the turbocharged beat—and a dance-heavy video where Janet memorably pushes a guy’s head toward her crotch—this horny hypothetical of a song is fully realized. –Ryan Dombal",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTSd4vqnMwo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331e4b4784a14640cd40b96/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Janet-Jackson-If.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Janet_Jackson-If_1993.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,49,Mariah Carey,“Always Be My Baby” (1995),Columbia,"Columbia From the moment “Always Be My Baby” begins, it’s immersed in nostalgia. What sounds initially like an acoustic guitar has the artificial shimmer of a romanticized memory, while Carey’s wordless chorus feels Motown-esque, buoyant in the face of what should be heartache. But “Always Be My Baby” is not a breakup song. It’s a song about eternity. Just because something is over doesn’t mean it’s over; every touch is in some way permanent, and anyone who passes through your heart leaves their shape behind. This infinite wave pool of romantic longing was a point of transformation for Carey—her first collaboration with Jermaine Dupri, who helped push her sound further into the gleam of hip-hop. “Always Be My Baby” is, by contrast, in no hurry to get anywhere, certain that even as things change they also recur, making for a cozy, classical R&B song that’s also a portal between worlds, flowing into and out of them forever. –Brad Nelson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfRNRymrv9k,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331e50f10be3c511c19685d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mariah-Carey-Always-Be-My-Baby.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mariah_Carey-Always_Be_My_Baby_1995.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,48,Digable Planets,“Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)” (1992),Pendulum / Elektra,"Pendulum / Elektra “Rebirth of Slick” captures Digable Planets’ preternatural chemistry and indelible cool. From the slowed sample of Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers’ “Stretching” to the buttery rhymes and neat drums, the song exudes a carefree spirit that’s indebted to the Native Tongues but spacier and more inquisitive. The smoothness of jazz rap sometimes veers into corny respectability, but the mood here is loose and playful, the Planets referencing childhood hairstyles, movies, and outfits. Even as the verses showcase everyone’s individual styles, the constant mentions of “we”and “us,” along with the mic-passing riffs that close the song, channel the group’s history of sharing meals together and recording in a closet studio, their cool generated not just by the obscure jazz they all adored, but by their connections to each other. –Stephen Kearse",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cM4kqL13jGM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331e57252d4bd45efccbe34/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Digable-Planets-Rebirth-of-Slick.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Digable_Planets-Rebirth_of_Slick_Cool_Like_Dat_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,47,Deee-Lite,“Groove Is in the Heart” (1990),Elektra,"Elektra You can’t craft a song like “Groove Is In the Heart” without a good ear for timing, a strong sense of camp, and the stamina for digging deep into the crates—all qualities that Deee-Lite’s DJ Dimitry and Lady Miss Kier honed on the late ’80s NYC club scene. Parliament-Funkadelic’s Bootsy Collins, legendary sax player Maceo Parker, and a young Q-Tip guest on “Groove Is In the Heart,” while many more are represented through snippets of sound: the slide whistle and crowd noise from soul singer Vernon Burch’s “Get Up,” Eva Gabor saying “I” on loop from the Green Acres theme in the chorus, a drum loop nicked from Billy Preston to cradle Tip’s rap, and that Herbie Hancock bassline. Without the snap, crackle, and pop of such tactile details, the genre-defying dance hit might not sound so much like a party you never want to leave, where they give out tabs of acid along with a toy noisemaker. In a decade filled with ’70s revivalism, house-inspired pop, hip-hop’s creeping influence, and countless weird one-hit-wonders, Deee-Lite were one of the few good acts at the center of the Venn diagram. –Jill Mapes",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yLHOAkj9ss,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331e5c3e02a17d9175e55b5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Deee-Lite-Groove-Is-in-the-Heart.png,/dataset/artwork/Deee-Lite-Groove_Is_in_the_Heart_1990.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,46,Orbital,“Halcyon + On + On” (1993),FFRR,"FFRR Named after a tranquilizer that Orbital members Paul and Phil Hartnoll witnessed their mother taking during their childhood, the original “Halcyon” unfolds like a drug trip itself, a universe of motion blurs (some of which are reversed echoes of Kirsty Hawkshaw’s vocal from Opus III’s “It’s a Fine Day”) with percussion moving restlessly beneath it like insect legs. The track is far more recognizable in its remixed form, however, due to its placement on the soundtracks for ’90s blockbusters like Hackers and Mortal Kombat. With the subsequent rise of sampling, the remixed “Halcyon”—titled “Halcyon + On + On”—is in many ways emblematic of a decade where music increasingly sounded like a written-over palimpsest. The beat is straightened out, a piano shimmers in the distance like a desert mirage, and Hawkshaw’s voice sweeps like winds over a landscape of pulsing ambient techno. –Brad Nelson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Np_NsRgb4Eg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331e6321dccce609e416320/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Orbital-Halcyon.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Orbital-Halcyon__On__On_1993.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,45,2Pac,“California Love” [ft. Dr. Dre and Roger Troutman] (1996),Death Row / Interscope,"Death Row / Interscope When cable news came of age in the ’90s, L.A.’s public image swiftly became collateral damage. A regional ode for the ages was never more badly needed than in 1995, when the city was firmly under the microscope of a national media eager for more footage of riots or the next Bronco chase. So two of Death Row Records’ greatest creative minds willed one into existence. On “California Love,” Dr. Dre goes into full hitmaker mode by refurbishing familiar pieces of musical history, including a Joe Cocker riff and a Ronnie Hudson refrain, into pure party-anthem bliss. With the special sauce of vintage talkbox vocals from Zapp’s Roger Troutman, Dre and a freshly inspired 2Pac repossessed and momentarily redirected the nation’s attention toward a sunnier view of California. –Steven Arroyo",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/ffklJc_vfuk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331e684800c1a0f8721bb05/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/2Pac-California-Love.png,/dataset/artwork/2Pac-California_Love_ft_Dr_Dre_and_Roger_Troutman_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,44,D’Angelo,“Brown Sugar” (1995),Cooltempo,"Cooltempo “Brown Sugar” is effortlessly cool: In the music video, D’Angelo struts into a dimly lit lounge, sits at the piano, and instantly busts out the sweetest serenade, with smoke from a joint still coming out of his mouth. If you told me that’s how he actually recorded the song, I would absolutely believe it. In an era when much of the popular R&B singles had been inspired by Teddy Riley’s new jack swing slickness, D’Angelo’s debut hit was a slow-burner that felt beamed in from another universe. Inspired by icons like Marvin Gaye, Al Green, and Stevie Wonder, the Virginia-raised singer pulled from those retro roots while addings elements of hip-hop, helping to lay the foundation for neo-soul. The rap influence is in D’Angelo’s look—cornrows and baggy clothes—but also in the tinny drums programmed by A Tribe Called Quest’s Ali Shaheed Muhammad, which give the song an almost slow-mo bounce. Filtered through the singer’s honey-smooth falsetto and mystic allure, the past and present become seamlessly intertwined. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_WzjiTzZBA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331e712afa92f85cc3e4f56/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/DAngelo-Brown-Sugar.jpg,/dataset/artwork/DAngelo-Brown_Sugar_1995.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,43,The Cranberries,“Dreams” (1992),Island,"Island The Cranberries’ “Dreams” is the sensation of butterflies in your stomach incarnate: “Oh, my life is changing everyday/In every possible way,” Dolores O’Riordan sings, capturing the terrifying thrill of entrusting your heart to someone who could shred it to pieces, or make your wildest fantasies come true. With an arrangement that seems to say “go after your heart’s desire, but be careful!,” “Dreams” gallops forward atop sweeping guitar chords and quietly rumbling drums, only to consistently rein itself in. O’Riordan begins each verse from a place of softness, as if she’s floated back to Earth and needs to touch some grass to reassure herself that this is real. But ultimately, the euphoria is too big for words: O’Riordan emits a fierce yodel, opening her throat to the sky and letting those fluttering feelings pour out. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yam5uK6e-bQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331e756e02a17d9175e55b7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-Cranberries-Dreams.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Cranberries-Dreams_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,42,Sade,“No Ordinary Love” (1992),Epic,"Epic If there’s one song that harnesses Sade’s capacity for aquatic melancholy, it’s “No Ordinary Love.” This isn’t only because of the music video’s marine setting, which depicts lead singer Sade Adu as a brooding mermaid who aspires to be a human bride. There are the chugging guitars in the chorus, which crest like the peak of ocean waves; the fluid fog of synths that floats over sparse percussion; and of course, the unrelenting devotion central to the lyrics, which become liquid velvet between Adu’s lips. The oceanic aura that surrounds “No Ordinary Love” might be mellow, but it’s also one of the UK band’s most piercing and desolate moments. After all, that’s what love feels like when it’s elusive, especially after you’ve emptied yourself in service of another: as isolating and bottomless as the sea itself. –Isabelia Herrera",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WcWHZc8s2I,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331e7aad1c5ef3d2b69371b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sade-No-Ordinary-Love.png,/dataset/artwork/Sade-No_Ordinary_Love_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,41,Geto Boys,“Mind Playing Tricks on Me” (1991),Rap-A-Lot / Priority,"Rap-A-Lot / Priority Among the most haunting street-life narratives ever recorded, this masterpiece by Houston’s Geto Boys rewired hip-hop’s supposed binaries—between East Coast and West, conscious poets and amoral journalists—unpacking drug game paranoia over a plaintive loop of Isaac Hayes’ “Hung Up on My Baby.” The ghostly, pitched-down guitar figure sets up some ironic distance from the grim narration while also telegraphing cartoon violence by way of the Blaxploitation classic Three Tough Guys, which starred Hayes and featured his song on its soundtrack. Reprising the candles-in-a-dark-room scenario from the band’s horrorcore salvo “Mind of a Lunatic,” Scarface goes deep, evoking Jim Crow nightmares and a present-day vision of himself “sleeping with my finger on the trigger,” as well as contemplating suicide as an escape, rejecting it on his son’s account, and lamenting the love he lost through his callousness. The song became an emo-rap touchstone, referenced by artists from Biggie to OutKast to Kid Cudi, who credited it with inspiring his breakout “Day ’n’ Nite” and called it “his favorite song in the world.” –Will Hermes",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOccCuTTrAg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331e7f0d997a1f3e8a0ceaa/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Geto-Boys-Mind-Playing-Tricks-on-Me.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Geto_Boys-Mind_Playing_Tricks_on_Me_1991.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,40,Pavement,“Gold Soundz” (1994),Matador,"Matador Pavement started as a scuzzy noise-rock project, but elegance turned out to be their secret weapon. Yes, Stephen Malkmus used the word to mock Stone Temple Pilots in “Range Life” but it was the pot calling the kettle black—from his baseline game to his perfect haircut to his endlessly inventive guitar fills, Malkmus radiates the stuff, and Courtney Love was dead on when she called him the Grace Kelly of rock. “Gold Soundz” was merely one brilliant single among the many the band released across the decade, but it was the first one to show the world just how refined they could be. Every element—achingly nostalgic lyrics, jangly chord progression, succinct guitar solo with a perfectly graceful tone—is arranged just so, not a note or a word out of place. –Mark Richardson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPvhKV3Yg2k,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331e84052d4bd45efccbe36/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Pavement-Gold-Soundz.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Pavement-Gold_Soundz_1994.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,39,Mary J. Blige,“Real Love” (1992),Uptown / MCA,"Uptown / MCA Between its main radio edit and its various 12"" remixes, Mary J. Blige’s “Real Love” came with several different introductions: If the tune’s “Top Billin’” drumbeats didn’t grab you, maybe starting with the guitar riff from “Clean Up Woman” or Mary’s jazzy a cappella ad-libs would. Her raw gift for impromptu gospel and jazz singing paralleled the improvisational impulses of rising MCs and hip-hop DJs; so when Biggie Smalls added a few bars to the remix, you heard his rhymes juxtaposed against isolated melodic phrases that revealed structural similarities in Blige’s delivery. In an era when danceable rap records were increasingly crossing from Black radio to “pop” stations, “Real Love” wed roller-disco tempos to B-girl vulnerability. The combination of kinetic rhythms and passionate, confessional vocalizing became the signature sound for the emergent Queen of Hip-Hop Soul. –Carol Cooper",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvK0zgvX1uE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331e889e02a17d9175e55b9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mary-J-Blige-Real-Love.png,/dataset/artwork/Mary_J_Blige-Real_Love_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,38,Fiona Apple,“Paper Bag” (1999),Epic,"Epic Fiona Apple was in the middle of recording her 1996 debut album Tidal, and she was miserable. Spotting a white dove in the sky, she took it as a sign that everything was going to be okay. Looking closer, she saw that it wasn’t actually a bird at all—it was an airborne plastic bag. She was crushed. Apple turned this sense of disappointment into “Paper Bag” on her magnificent 1999 album When the Pawn… She expresses frustration with a romantic partner she dismisses as a “little boy,” while recognizing that she’s a lot to sign up for (“I know I’m a mess he don’t wanna clean up”). The hint of swagger in the beat and the gorgeous Beatles-y horns in the coda reflect this nuanced mix of melancholy and defiance. “I’m a fucking contradicting little kid most of the time,” Apple said in a 2000 interview, “except in my songs. That’s the only time I can actually focus and go, ‘This is the truth about this. This is the way it is.’” –Alan Light",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BK30r_SIZ-g,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331e8e4d1c5ef3d2b69371d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Fiona-Apple-Paper-Bag.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Fiona_Apple-Paper_Bag_1999.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,37,Stardust,“Music Sounds Better With You” (1998),Roulé / Virgin / Because,"Roulé / Virgin / Because The promise anchoring French house is that one perfect loop can change your life. When producer Alan Braxe, singer Benjamin Diamond, and Daft Punk’s Thomas Bangalter came together as Stardust and clipped a few seconds from Chaka Khan’s “Fate,” they rocketed into the annals of dance music history. “Music Sounds Better With You,” the trio’s lone single, is meant to be shared with other people, emphasizing communal ecstasy in the way Diamond sings “with you!” like it’s lifting him an inch off the ground. The song’s generous bliss laid the groundwork for Daft Punk’s shift from the DJ tools of Homework to Discovery’s accessible craftsmanship, and decades later its basic principle—a tight, filtered nibble of joy—is part of pop music’s lingua franca. –Jamieson Cox",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQlAEiCb8m0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331e9343850e156c9fff591/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Stardust-Music-Sounds-Better-With-You.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Stardust-Music_Sounds_Better_With_You_1998.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,36,Aaliyah,“One in a Million” (1996),Blackground / Atlantic,"Blackground / Atlantic Skittering percussion and squirming sub-bass have dominated rap and pop production for so long now it’s easy to forget that when Aaliyah’s “One in a Million’’ debuted in 1996, Timbaland’s style had yet to gain a foothold on radio or MTV. Just four seconds into the song you hear it, though: the rapid flicker of hi-hats, the element that always made his early work sound as if it were a stuttering transmission from the future. Every time it happens in “One in a Million” it’s like time mutates, lurching forward and then snapping back on itself like a rubbery cartoon character. In this case it mirrors the song’s subject: falling in love with someone so hard that you feel the continual pull of their gravity. And no voice navigated these thickets of drum patterns more capably than Aaliyah’s; she rides the currents of the undulating groove as if she were piloting a hang glider through them. –Brad Nelson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKSz4NE6PwY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331e9801dccce609e416322/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Aaliyah-One-in-a-Million.png,/dataset/artwork/Aaliyah-One_in_a_Million_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,35,Lauryn Hill,“Ex-Factor” (1998),Ruffhouse / Columbia,"Ruffhouse / Columbia Like any great breakup song, “Ex-Factor” has its own mythology: It was reportedly written about Lauryn Hill’s affair with Wyclef Jean, her former Fugees bandmate. But does that even matter? It’s a plea that will serve as a balm for anyone and everyone as long as hearts are getting broken. Featuring one of Hill’s all-time great vocal performances, the song’s genesis alone spans generations and genres: The unsettlingly plaintive opening line is adapted from a Wu-Tang Clan sample of a Gladys Knight & the Pips’ cover of Barbra Streisand’s “The Way We Were”; Hill’s track, in turn, has been sampled countless times since. And with its encouraging ad-libs, it almost sounds like a private duet with and to herself, a reminder in the margins that she—just 23 when she wrote it, yet possessing razor-sharp emotional clarity—deserves better. –Emma Carmichael",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7m148vZDwJA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331e9d83850e156c9fff593/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lauryn-Hill-Ex-Factor.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Lauryn_Hill-Ex-Factor_1998.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,34,OutKast,“SpottieOttieDopaliscious” (1998),LaFace / Arista,"LaFace / Arista If “SpottieOttieDopaliscious” sounds like a fantasy of a night out at the club, that’s because it is. Andre 3000 wrote his verse about a night he almost went to Charles’ Disco as a teenager, but found himself too drunk to walk in the door—“So all the stuff I said after that,” he told an interviewer later, “was made up.” The production has the wooziness of a dream or a memory half recollected from inebriation: humid wah-wah guitar, a reggae-ish rhythm section that ambles along with no particular place to be. And then there’s the horn line, one of the greatest instrumental hooks in pop history, stretching out across eight full bars, both languid and triumphant. Andre and Big Boi deliver their verses like they’re talking to you from across the pool table, more spoken word than rap. In the former’s, revelry erupts suddenly into violence, possibly fatal; in the latter’s, the decision to grind up against a stranger leads eventually to unexpected fatherhood. The club becomes a kind of crucible, not just a venue for drinking and dancing, but a place where the twin possibilities of death and new life lurk in the background of every scene. —Andy Cush",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXmqauitBkM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331ea6dafa92f85cc3e4f5a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/OutKast-SpottieOttieDopaliscious.jpg,/dataset/artwork/OutKast-SpottieOttieDopaliscious_1998.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,33,Alanis Morissette,“You Oughta Know” (1995),Maverick / Reprise,"Maverick / Reprise In 1995, a 21-year-old Alanis Morissette shunned the bubbly sound that had made her a pop star in Canada and released the incendiary kiss-off “You Oughta Know.” Long before Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo angrily called out their exes in song, Morissette explored the rage she felt when her partner unceremoniously tossed her aside. If she didn’t get to escape her feelings, neither would he. Moving from a fugue-like calm to detailed accusations over a roving bass line and refracted guitar, Morissette built catharsis out of her pricklier emotions and helped usher in an era of women songwriters who fervently hungered to be themselves. The song dropped like a lit match on parched earth, becoming the first of three hit singles from her breakout album, Jagged Little Pill. Morissette’s fury became a wildfire, and listeners heard themselves in the burn. –Amanda Wicks",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPcyTyilmYY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331eab4e02a17d9175e55bb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Alanis-Morissette-You-Oughta-Know.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Alanis_Morissette-You_Oughta_Know_1995.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,32,TLC,“No Scrubs” (1999),LaFace / Arista,"LaFace / Arista “No Scrubs” is a cold-hearted diss, but it’s also a song about putting your foot down and finally valuing your self-worth. It would be mean if it wasn’t so funny, especially when they nail the specifics on the bridge: Guys that don’t have a car should keep it stepping, and if your mom is your roommate don’t even try to waste their time. Most of all, it sounds beautiful: Chili’s strong and sweet lead vocals, the angelic background harmonies, the futuristic flourishes of the instrumental, Left Eye’s robotic raps preserved in arguably the definitive Hype Williams music video. It remains the holy grail of deadbeat boyfriend ethers, a sentiment frequently captured but not with the balance of theatrics and truth that TLC had down pat. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrLequ6dUdM&ab_channel=TLCVEVO,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331eb73800c1a0f8721bb07/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/TLC-No-Scrubs.jpg,/dataset/artwork/TLC-No_Scrubs_1999.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,31,Nine Inch Nails,“Closer” (1994),Nothing / TVT / Interscope / Atlantic,"Nothing / TVT / Interscope / Atlantic Hissing “I want to fuck you like an animal” was shocking enough to become a sexily confrontational mantra or a sign of societal decay, depending on who was doing the listening. The second single from The Downward Spiral launched Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails into a new tier of notoriety, a couple of years after Pretty Hate Machine had established him as the aggro prince of industrial rock. Singing from the raw and dangerous perspective of a self-hating obsessive, set to bone-rattling beats that sounded like they were recorded in some grimy sex dungeon, Reznor sounded like he was both tortured and doing the torturing. It was accentuated by a hardcore music video stocked with unsettling imagery like Reznor done up in S&M gear and a very anxious monkey tied to a cross. Still Nine Inch Nails’ most popular song, an enduring strip club anthem for three decades, and a weird one to do at karaoke, “Closer” is the sound of self-loathing as a twisted kind of love letter. –Evie Nagy",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccY25Cb3im0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331ebb8afa92f85cc3e4f5c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Nine-Inch-Nails-Closer.png,/dataset/artwork/Nine_Inch_Nails-Closer_1994.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,30,Brandy / Monica,“The Boy Is Mine” (1998),Atlantic,"Atlantic Brandy laid down her feathery sweet vocals in California, while Monica recorded her tough and soulful melodies in Atlanta. Some have said it’s because their voices weren’t meshing; others have said it’s because they couldn’t stand each other. That they’ve only sung the soap opera-ready R&B classic once together live—on that same night Monica punched Brandy in the face—is reason enough to go with the latter. “The Boy Is Mine” has a simple driving idea: Brandy and Monica have found out that they are dating the same man. It’s fiction, but as they trade stingy jabs, that line between reality and story is blurred, and the way Brandy airily coos “He said without me, he couldn’t make it” probably hurts more than any punch could. Rodney Jerkins’ beat is the perfect backdrop, a harp buildup that could heighten any melodrama and a shimmering and shaking feel that gives the song more edge than it already has. Neither Brandy or Monica outshine each other, as their voices line up like two puzzle pieces. It’s one of the great duets of our time, even if they couldn’t stand each other. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSIOp_K5GMw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331ec1d3850e156c9fff595/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Brandy-Monica-The-Boy-Is-Mine.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Brandy__Monica-The_Boy_Is_Mine_1998.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,29,Massive Attack,“Teardrop” (1998),Circa / Virgin,"Circa / Virgin “Teardrop,” the centerpiece of Massive Attack’s Mezzanine, is themed around water and feels made of it—to this day, downtempo artists are still searching for its depths. The instrumental is narcotic but simple: two bars of harpsichord that vary by one note, sustained piano chords, percussion ticking like a hypnotist’s pendulum. Guest vocalist Elizabeth Fraser’s voice moves like liquid, too, high notes evaporating and melisma cascading like a waterfall. She realized only after recording that she’d written the lyrics for former partner Jeff Buckley, who died when she was recording the song. Those lyrics are a series of oblique what-ifs, meditations on the ideal love she never achieved. She sings her regrets into the waiting abyss. –Katherine St. Asaph",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7K72X4eo_s,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331eccc39e4feaad8560c7c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Massive-Attack-Teardrop.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Massive_Attack-Teardrop_1998.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,28,Britney Spears,“...Baby One More Time” (1998),Jive,"Jive Britney Spears is so thoroughly woven into our cultural fabric—her rise, fall, revival, restriction, and liberation—that you forget she once needed to introduce herself. Her origin story is the stuff of legend: A driven Louisiana teenager met an enigmatic Swede who had written hits for the Backstreet Boys and Robyn. She flew to Stockholm and purposefully stayed up too late the night before recording her vocals, making her voice, as she once put it, “rusty.” Then Spears and Max Martin entered the studio and reshaped the next quarter-century of pop music, like a dam redirecting a river’s flow. “...Baby One More Time” is the dam, a structure crackling with energy. Like so many great pop songs, it taunts the listener by conflating the romantic and the religious: confession, belief, begging for a sign. The spiritual desperation, alongside Martin’s precise melodic techniques, is what makes a high school crush feel like life or death. Would-be stars and ambitious producers have been chasing that transgressive thrill for decades, but it’s tough to top the original sin. –Jamieson Cox",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-u5WLJ9Yk4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331ed2ef2e57bfbb7050048/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Britney-Spears-Baby-One-More-Time.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Britney_Spears-Baby_One_More_Time_1998.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,27,Dr. Dre,“Nuthin’ But a ‘G’ Thang” [ft. Snoop Dogg] (1992),Death Row / Interscope,"Death Row / Interscope Rappers don’t ask for permission when they’re about to fundamentally change the course of pop culture. N.W.A. certainly didn’t with Straight Outta Compton, and yet Snoop Doggy Dogg and Dr. Dre began “Nuthin’ But a ‘G’ Thang” ready to make an entrance and politely requesting that you give them a little space before they freed hip-hop from two decades of tyrannical East Coast rule. Over the most luxurious production ever heard on a rap record to that point, the duo trade lines like they’re just hanging by the grill at a neighborhood cookout; no human being has ever sounded cooler simply spelling his own name. But by the first chorus, Snoop and Dre assume you’re down enough to understand what this and that are like, and if not… just chill to the next episode, because there will be plenty more. Snoop and Dre no longer have to ask us to let us in our homes; it’s been thirty years since “Nuthin But a ‘G’ Thang” and they’ve never left. –Ian Cohen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0F0CAEoF4XM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331ed89e02a17d9175e55be/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Dr-Dre-Nuthin-But-a-G-Thang.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Dr_Dre-Nuthin_But_a_G_Thang_ft_Snoop_Dogg_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,26,Ginuwine,“Pony” (1996),550 / Epic,"550 / Epic “Pony” has got all the makings of a classic, sure: It’s one of Timbaland’s first major hits, its croaking vocoded “yea, yea, hell yea” beat is immediately recognizable at the club, and there are even ready-made dance cues. But there’s so much more. It can be a reach to project yourself into the panty-dropper protagonist of a sexy club anthem, but Ginuwine’s unbridled commitment to the bit (saddles! jockeys! ponytails!) has an earnestness to it, empowering even the least likely cowboy to jump on it. “Pony” is both the soundtrack to Channing Tatum’s Magic Mike dancing at his absolute peak, and a down and out Magic Mike cracking a smile and dancing alone in his wood workshop. After all, beyond the bit, “Pony” earns its enduring reign by being a genuinely fun and hot track to grind to—whether in the club or by yourself. –NM Mashurov",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbnoG2dsUk0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331ee47e02a17d9175e55c0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ginuwine-Pony.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Ginuwine-Pony_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,25,A Tribe Called Quest,“Can I Kick It?” (1990),Jive,"Jive By the time he was 16, Q-Tip had produced much of what would become People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm, the debut album that would earn him and his partners in A Tribe Called Quest the first 5-mic rating from ’90s rap bible The Source. The process was painstaking—he spent hours isolating samples on pause tapes, drawing from his father’s extensive record collection—but the beats it yielded were loose, uncluttered, inevitable. “Can I Kick It?” turns the bassline from Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side” into a looping shrug, which in turn allows him and Phife Dawg to dial the early Native Tongues ethos down from sunny but quasi-militant to bemused. The call-and-response hook reveals the group as adolescent observers of hip-hop’s first decade, but would itself be riffed on by innumerable rappers to come. –Paul A. Thompson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3pyCGnZzYA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331ee9ce02a17d9175e55c2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/A-Tribe-Called-Quest-Can-I-Kick-It.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/A_Tribe_Called_Quest-Can_I_Kick_It_1990.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,24,Radiohead,“Paranoid Android” (1997),Parlophone / Capitol,"Parlophone / Capitol “Paranoid Android” belongs to the class of epic rock songs that overexert themselves again and again, fully aware of their own absurdity: Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” The Beatles’ “A Day in the Life,” David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.” Recorded in the mansion of a former James Bond girl and pared down from a 14-minute original version, Radiohead’s through-composed theatrical extravaganza changes keys repeatedly, whips out multiple guitar solos, and brings in a choral arrangement while waxing about governmental control. It’s beyond indulgent, a perfect entry into the category of songs that inspire you to sing along like you’re Wayne and Garth. –Nina Corcoran",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thyJOnasHVE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633200d2e02a17d9175e55c6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Radiohead-Paranoid-Android.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Radiohead-Paranoid_Android_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,23,Cher,“Believe” (1998),Warner Bros.,"Warner Bros. “Believe” marked a new era, for Cher and for popular music. For the first time on Top 40 radio, Auto-Tune—producers’ open-secret weapon for perfecting vocal takes—was laid bare for all to hear, on purpose, a reversal of its typical clandestine use. As she sings about trying to regain her footing after heartbreak, Cher’s voice warbles with synthetic oscillation. Warner executives initially scoffed at the effect, but “Believe” became one of Cher’s biggest career hits, reaching No. 1 in the United States and more than a dozen other countries. Just as the song’s production revealed the guts of its operation, Cher’s wide-open vocals exposed her own emotional vulnerability. She isn’t too good to admit she’s not hurting, and she powers through toward salvation, declaring “I don’t need you anymore” as the song hits its peak. And coming from Cher—a confident, charismatic, and massively talented woman who’d been subjected to frequent public ridicule over her personal life—”Believe” took on an extra survivalist edge. Nearly 25 years later, it still dazzles in its defiance. –Allison Hussey",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZXRV4MezEw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63320336800c1a0f8721bb0c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Cher-Believe.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Cher-Believe_1998.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,22,The Breeders,“Cannonball” (1993),4AD / Elektra,"4AD / Elektra When this song cracked the Top 50 in 1993, it made obvious what was always true: Kim Deal, heretofore regarded as a slacker from Dayton, Ohio who played the bass for the Pixies, can write explosive pop songs. On “Cannonball,” the bass is front and center; loud, noisy, mean. Over top of that squall, she cackles into the mic with the bravado and control of a punk rock Mozart. She sings about bongs and goes sadomasochist mode by implying that she’s a little bit of a libertine. It’s sexy, it rocks, and it makes you want to light a car on fire (with your lover). –Sophie Kemp",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxvkI9MTQw4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633203bcd997a1f3e8a0cee4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-Breeders-Cannonball.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Breeders-Cannonball_1993.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,21,Beastie Boys,“Sabotage” (1994),Grand Royal,"Grand Royal As Beastie Boys tracked Ill Communication, MCA, Mike D, and Ad-Rock became a scourge to their engineer and co-producer. The tormented Mario Caldato Jr. begged the band to finish the album—to finish a song, for fuck’s sake—and occasionally succumbed to tantrums that involved chucking equipment out of the studio window. “Sabotage,” Beasties’ pummeling, era-defining return to heaviness, was aimed at Caldato (mostly in jest). The trio is at its most indignant on “Sabotage,” with Ad-Rock in particular shrieking like a punk rock Joe Pesci. It may have been a harbinger of much-maligned late ’90s rap-rock—Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, and Papa Roach all released debut LPs in the ensuing years—but “Sabotage” was also an undeniable triumph in the band’s own legacy. The song’s wheezy, robotic scratching foreshadowed the hyper-digital funk of “Intergalactic,” while its modest structure and blaring guitar signaled a return to form. After years of crafting sample-jammed hip-hop, Beastie Boys could still kick the door in, blow out your speakers, and piss off your parents. –Madison Bloom",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qORYO0atB6g,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633205033850e156c9fff599/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Beastie-Boys-Sabotage.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Beastie_Boys-Sabotage_1994.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,20,Underworld,“Born Slippy (Nuxx)” (1996),Junior’s Own Boy / Wax Trax! / TVT,"Junior’s Own Boy / Wax Trax! / TVT The lyrics are an alcoholic cry for help, and much of the song plays out to the isolated thud of a kick drum. Yet “Born Slippy (Nuxx),” a non-album single from improv-heavy UK electronic outfit Underworld, became a sacred text for ravers in the ’90s, not to mention a musical lynchpin to Trainspotting, one of the decade’s most revered movies. These kinds of contradictions are ingrained in the wide-screen techno masterpiece, which combines the most perfectly uplifting three-note keyboard riff with descent-into-hell drums, and stream-of-consciousness verses with a two-word refrain that became shout-along iconic. “Born Slippy (Nuxx)” was one of the most extreme hit songs of what was a pretty weird decade for music, a tone poem of confusion and distress that soundtracked some of the ’90s’ happiest memories, and a reminder that sometimes even the most outlandish electronic producers can stumble across pop gold. –Ben Cardew",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiMrrleH_hI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633205853850e156c9fff59b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Underworld-Born-Slippy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Underworld-Born_Slippy_Nuxx_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,19,Sinéad O’Connor,“Nothing Compares 2 U” (1990),Chrysalis,"Chrysalis As written by Prince, “Nothing Compares 2 U” was already a heartbreak anthem for the ages. The lyrics incorporate enough specifics to conjure the obsessive banalities of a breakup (“It’s been seven hours and 15 days…”) and enough sweeping generalities to express its primal significance. The sparse arrangement is full of space and catharsis, and the chorus melody manages incredible catchiness while also mimicking the fragmented speech of a sobbing breakdown. But nobody could sing it like Sinéad O’Connor, who, in her early 20s, seemed to understand a more existential question at the song’s core. Consider the way she lingers in the unresolved final note of the chorus, twisting and holding the word “you” as if beckoning it from somewhere dark and far away. Or what about the way she changes one line to address a male object of affection but specifically leaves in a very Princian utterance of “mama” during the final verse? It’s around this moment in the music video—a close-up of her face that would define O’Connor’s mainstream image and help sweep the song to No. 1—that her eyes begin welling with tears, and you start wondering if she really is just singing about a breakup, or something else. In retrospect, O’Connor has explained the tears were unplanned, brought on by thoughts of her mother, an abusive figure who tormented the Irish singer throughout her childhood and died in a car accident just before her career took off. Their relationship was complicated, and the song—whose last verse ends with an unanswered plea to “give it another try”—closes without much of a glimmer of hope. There could be no better introduction to O’Connor’s raw talent: a poet of conflicted emotions, using her voice to express feelings that exist between and beyond words. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-EF60neguk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633206181dccce609e416329/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sinead-OConnor-Nothing-Compares-2-U.png,/dataset/artwork/Sinad_OConnor-Nothing_Compares_2_U_1990.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,18,Pulp,“Common People” (1995),Island,"Island Formed in 1978 by a couple of Sheffield teens, Pulp slogged through lineup and label shifts without commercial success—until the Britpop explosion of the mid-’90s provided a new world stage for their fifth album Different Class and its career-defining lead single. A much sexier, stirring, and more appropriately cynical UK counterpart to “Uptown Girl,” “Common People” was the story of ceaselessly magnetic frontman Jarvis Cocker’s art school dabbling with a rich girl who was excited by the idea of slumming it with poor folks like himself. He humored her—and was happy to sleep with her—but the song was a harsh criticism of class tourism by people who would never know poverty, a populist anthem built for hours of sweaty dancing regardless of socio-economic status. –Evie Nagy",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuTMWgOduFM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6332083a0e6417b8aac61707/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Pulp-Common-People.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Pulp-Common_People_1995.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,17,Portishead,“Sour Times” (1994),Go! Discs / London,"Go! Discs / London Portishead are masters of digital psychedelia, of artificially eroded samples and breaks that encase fiery yearning in soothing layers of ice. Situated in the unbridgeable gap between fantasy and fate, the Bristol trio endures as a monument to our own sublimated desires. “Sour Times” spins this existential despair into a fatalistic noir dreamscape. Vocalist Beth Gibbons tosses and turns over a sinuous bassline and guitarist Adrian Utley’s best Morricone riffing, bathing in the cursed knowledge of a lost love’s inescapable power. The song draws its hypnotic majesty from the thrill of Gibbons’ graceful rage, poised between succumbing to an eternity of longing and spitting venom in destiny’s eye. It’s a haunted waltz for star-crossed androids, damned to soundtrack disconnected hearts far beyond the singularity. –Phillipe Roberts",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=un8EW82GwKc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633208b2e02a17d9175e55ca/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Portishead-Sour-Times.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Portishead-Sour_Times_1994.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,16,George Michael,“Freedom! ’90” (1990),Columbia,"Columbia George Michael’s subdued and pensive sophomore solo album Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1 showed a different side of the frequently bubblegummy superstar, and “Freedom! ’90” laid bare its mission statement: Sometimes the clothes do not make the man. Perhaps to the chagrin of every hungry schoolgirl, the star’s image never graced Prejudice, neither on its cover nor its videos. The music was to speak for itself, and on “Freedom!” it did so using a “Funky Drummer” break and Madchester-y piano riff. The song’s strut mounts until an ebullient choir detonates, repeatedly harmonizing the song’s title. That freedom was to be achieved, in Michael’s estimation, via image revision: “There’s something deep inside of me/There’s someone else I’ve got to be.” Attempting to conjure authenticity in show business is about as easy as declaring yourself vegan while only eating at steakhouses, but “Freedom!” is about concept, not practice, suggesting the journey to happiness rather than the destination. For the classic video, Michael enlisted a slate of high-profile lip-syncers—Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington, Linda Evangelista—who helped provide beautiful scenery on his quest. –Rich Juzwiak",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diYAc7gB-0A,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63320902800c1a0f8721bb0f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/George-Michael-Freedom-90.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/George_Michael-Freedom_90_1990.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,15,Mobb Deep,"“Shook Ones, Pt. II” (1995)",Loud / RCA,"Loud / RCA “Shook Ones, Pt. II” is so rich a text that isolated elements of it communicate more style and biographical depth than nearly any other introduction in hip-hop’s history. There’s the Herbie Hancock piano that Havoc morphed, in his mother’s apartment, into one of rap’s most unmistakable basslines; there’s Prodigy’s opening ad-lib—“To all the killers and the hundred-dollar billers/For real niggas who ain’t got no feelings”—and what it suggests is being elided in his verses; there are those hi-hats, which people believed for years to be the sound of stoves in the Queensbridge Houses sputtering to life. Even the mesmerizing siren loop tells a story: It’s lifted from a song by Quincy Jones, whom Prodigy’s grandfather taught to read music. And still, all of this becomes secondary when P raps—about the burn of bullets in flesh, about hoping to die in a place like Queensbridge, and about how, if you don’t watch yourself, “the next rhyme I write might be about you.” –Paul A. Thompson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nBikBBDeBM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63320986e02a17d9175e55cc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mobb-Deep-Shook-Ones-Pt-II.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Mobb_Deep-Shook_Ones_Pt_II_1995.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,14,Fiona Apple,“Criminal” (1996),Epic,"Epic “I’ve been a bad, bad girl,” Fiona Apple purrs like a vixen in an old man’s sex dream, knowing that at 18, a woman is young enough to get preyed on and old enough to get pilloried. “Criminal” is her most popular song, potent like a spiked drink, selling a leering public a sexual fantasy while pointing out the fucked-up dynamics underneath. A piano trembles as if announcing the sudden onset of an earthquake, and Apple confesses to the sin of being “careless with a delicate man,” her voice dripping with irony. Men are so tough until it’s time to take responsibility, then they’re helpless and angry like children. But Fiona howls out for punishment, sounding irresistible while fessing up to her crime. As a new generation of girls likes to say: I support women’s rights, but more importantly, I support women’s wrongs. –Cat Zhang",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFOzayDpWoI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63320a34d1c5ef3d2b693722/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Fiona-Apple-Criminal.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fiona_Apple-Criminal_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,13,Mazzy Star,“Fade Into You” (1993),Capitol,"Capitol A slow waltz beat, a few Dylan chords, a pedal steel like a lamp from an attic window, and Hope Sandoval’s downy voice, full of melting vowels and pregnant pauses: “Fade Into You” taps into the sweet exhaustion at the end of it all. Marketed as a make-out anthem off Mazzy Star’s major-label debut, it was the mainstream peak for this dream-pop duo that evolved out of psych group Opal, and the platonic ideal of a melancholic slow-dance song. Even as its dusky, enveloping aura echos through Beach House’s deliberate dream pop, Taylor Swift’s glittering indie folktales, and Faye Webster’s weary steel-guitar slides, the ache of the original goes unanswered: The space between us is small yet enormous, the only way forward straight into oblivion. –Anna Gaca",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B327Xt2M3uo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63320a91d997a1f3e8a0cee7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mazzy-Star-Fade-Into-You.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Mazzy_Star-Fade_Into_You_1993.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,12,Lauryn Hill,“Doo Wop (That Thing)” (1998),Ruffhouse / Columbia,"Ruffhouse / Columbia Lauryn Hill is tender and fierce on her first solo single, offering empathy and stern counsel to women and men in troubled relationships. On Fugees songs she’d often harden her flows (or “add a ‘motherfucker’ so you ignant niggas hear me,” as she puts it on “Zealots”), but here and throughout The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, her rapping is conversational, assured. Motown soul, gospel, and hip-hop converge as she glides over bright horns, crisp drums, and a jingly key riff. She sounds bent on channeling every sound and inspiration she’s ever had, harmonizing, scatting, rapping, and humming. The music video features a split-screen motif that pictures her as both modern and retro, but the real takeaway from this song is that she is simply herself. –Stephen Kearse",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6QKqFPRZSA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63320af58f0d7ac40b58df10/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lauryn-Hill-Doo-Wop.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Lauryn_Hill-Doo_Wop_That_Thing_1998.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,11,Daft Punk,“Around the World” (1997),Virgin,"Virgin The music doesn’t begin so much as surface, as if “Around the World” arises from some great depth, that lowpass filter cutting out the high-end without obscuring the “fundamental” signal. And then the song fully emerges, the bass suddenly going like something stolen out from under Bernard Edwards’ fingertips, the hi-hat doing that bright, open chhh business on the offbeat. The up-from-underground stuff turns out to have been sort of poignantly appropriate. “Around the World” was an exhumation, disco as reworked in post-industrial Chicago and Detroit, then adapted anew by two blessed weirdos from Montmartre, Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo. Crucially, Daft Punk retained from Chicago house and Detroit techno the artists’ sense that they were bound up in the larger social dynamics of urban de-industrialization. DJs saw themselves as conduits for the music, not its authors. Daft Punk obscured their identities, just as Juan Atkins and Derrick May did before them. They dressed like anonymous robots because, as Homem-Christo has said, “The energy people send to the stage bounces back and everybody has a good time together rather than focusing on us.” Disco had returned with a radical proposition, hauled up from the underground without, you might say, affecting the fundamental: that the music belongs to the people dancing to it. –Tommy Craggs",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0HSD_i2DvA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63320bb58f0d7ac40b58df12/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Daft-Punk-Around-the-World.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Daft_Punk-Around_the_World_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,10,Bikini Kill,“Rebel Girl” (1992),Kill Rock Stars,"Kill Rock Stars “Rebel Girl” is a call to arms. Fuck the patriarchy! Ride a motorcycle in a minidress! Fall in love with your best friend—not metaphorically, literally kiss her on the lips! Set alight by snarls of guitars and bass, the song tells us that love is a revelation, an invitation to worship your friends, to see them as beautiful, to shout from the streets that girls matter. That we’re angry. That we’re all geniuses. By now, “Rebel Girl” has soundtracked personal revolutions across several generations, from Gen Xer chicks on college campuses to Zoomer girls reading Rookie in their high school computer labs. It’s so impactful because Kathleen Hanna sang so bluntly about loving so fiercely. And loving someone is one of the punkest things a person can do. –Sophie Kemp",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOCWma5vOiQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63320bfd3850e156c9fff59d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bikini-Kill-Rebel-Girl.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Bikini_Kill-Rebel_Girl_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,9,The Notorious B.I.G.,“Juicy” (1994),Bad Boy / Arista,"Bad Boy / Arista Christopher Wallace’s outsized talent as a GOAT-level lyricist is often discussed in terms of his deft wordplay and sophisticated rhyme schemes. From his first hit ""Juicy,"" however, it was also evident how gifted he was as a storyteller. Coalescing all of his prodigious skills over sampled swaths of Mtume’s early-’80s R&B smash “Juicy Fruit,” the song is ostensibly an autobiographical rags-to-riches tale. But B.I.G.’s attention to detail enables the childhood reminiscences (“Way back, when I had the red and black lumberjack/With the hat to match”) and aspirational goals (“Livin’ life without fear/Puttin’ five carats in my baby girl’s ear”) to transcend individual experience. The song endures largely by being eminently human and relatable—whether, like Wallace, you are or ever were young, doubted, and Black, or if you simply embrace the belief that one’s hope for the future, no matter how unlikely, is never merely a dream. –Jeff Mao",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JZom_gVfuw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63320c70d997a1f3e8a0cee9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Notorious-BIG-Juicy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Notorious_BIG-Juicy_1994.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,8,Destiny’s Child,“Say My Name” (1999),Columbia,"Columbia Nearly two decades before Beyoncé delivered Lemonade, her heart-wrenching opus on self-transformation and forgiveness in the wake of a partner’s infidelity, she led Destiny’s Child’s glossy, unflinching interrogation of an untrustworthy lover with “Say My Name.” Beyoncé’s staccato, kinetic delivery—which influenced R&B vocal cadences for years to come—is effortless and unrelenting, underscoring her assertion that she is not one to be played. The song is all bravado, and circles a request so elemental that it shouldn’t even have to be asked: to be remembered, and treated with care and respect by someone who loves you. That tension between the audacity of Destiny Child’s performance and the vulnerability of their titular ask imbues the song with an incomparable poignancy. –Vrinda Jagota",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQgd6MccwZc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63320d0f52d4bd45efccbe39/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Destinys-Child-Say-My-Name.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Destinys_Child-Say_My_Name_1999.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,7,Aphex Twin,“Windowlicker” (1997),Warp / Sire,"Warp / Sire With each new development in electronic music, Aphex Twin’s “Windowlicker” seems that much more prescient. A decade ago, one heard in it the seeds of later developments in dubstep and the rubbery digital manipulations of the Brainfeeder axis, and 10 years on, it sounds like a foundational text for the broader hyperpop universe. This is what happens when quantum-level auditory science meets plain old musical inspiration. At the time of its release in 1999, “Windowlicker” was understood as a surprising nod toward pop. Though Richard James’ work was often accessible and he had remixed artists including Jesus Jones and Saint Etienne, nothing he’d done sounded as straightforward and approachable as the opening moments of “Windowlicker.” The track’s early section, with its eerie warped vocals and hypnotic descending progression, is so indelible you could even imagine hearing it in the wild on the radio. (And so it was in the UK, where the single hit the top 20, powered by the strange and disturbing video by Chris Cunningham.) But embedded within the slippery groove and sighing voices is a feeling that something’s a little off, a notion reinforced when it abruptly shifts tempos and descends into blistering noise. James specializes in music that’s both beautiful and unsettling, and “Windowlicker” reads like a crackly dispatch from the floor of the uncanny valley, where familiar pleasures are there to be enjoyed but—also never quite what they seem. –Mark Richardson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JDiGU2Z5Wc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63320d670e6417b8aac61709/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Aphex-Twin-Windowlicker.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Aphex_Twin-Windowlicker_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,6,Nirvana,“Smells Like Teen Spirit” (1991),DGC,"DGC As much as anything, it was a breakup song. “Who will be the king and queen of the outcasted teens?” Kurt Cobain asked in a discarded lyric from an early draft of “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” One of his biographers is pretty sure he was talking about Tobi Vail, the “over-bored” and “self-assured” riot grrrl vanguardist. The two of them had had a brief romance, which she ended, and Cobain responded in the manner of so many thwarted, sensitive young men, turning rejection into a synecdoche for the oppressions of life writ large. He filled up his journal with violent fantasies and weird drawings. His friends started to worry. And somewhere in this burst of energy, Cobain wrote the perfect pop song. A denial, a denial, a denial. It hangs over “Teen Spirit” like bad weather. Call it the teenage boy’s blues—a young dude’s awakening to the fact that he is caught in the crosswinds of, like, the whole system, man, that panders to him, that fires his imagination, and then constrains him, tells him to chill. Very often it’s sex being denied. Sometimes it’s a car, which is just sex at one remove. Maybe it’s money or a fix. Whatever their subject, the teenage boy’s blues have been the very stuff of pop music since around the time Chuck Berry went motorvatin’ after that Coupe DeVille. The result has been a great deal of regrettable pop songs, but on occasion there have been transcendent exceptions, like the lead single off of Nirvana’s Nevermind. Above all it rips, even still, from that first Gap Band flam to the last, exhausted denial. It’s got a screamy part and a soft part, and right at the point where you expect the song to fuzz out and go totally to shit, there’s a crisp guitar solo that restates the vocal melody from the verse, almost as if Cobain were satirizing himself and having a damn good time of it. Well, he probably was, right? Self-doubt is everything in “Teen Spirit.” The song famously stands outside itself, mocking its own postures, hating its own apathy and irresolution, anthemic in its insistence on being unanthemic: “Oh well, whatever, never mind.” I remember the girls in middle school who had Cobain’s photo taped up in their lockers and thinking how funny it was that they were treating this king of the outcasts like something they'd clipped out of Tiger Beat. But of course they were the ones who were actually seeing Cobain clearly—that underneath all the marketing and self-mythology and fraying cardigans there was a true pop idol, beautiful, androgynous, too wounded to be threatening, a troubadour of their uncertainty. He sang as if he were owed something. That’s the teenage boy’s blues. In the next breath he wondered if he was worthy of any of it. That’s a blues for everyone else. –Tommy Craggs",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTWKbfoikeg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63320dc990c94c777c070eab/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Nirvana-Smells-Like-Teen-Spirit.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nirvana-Smells_Like_Teen_Spirit_1991.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,5,Missy Elliott,“The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)” (1997),Goldmind / Elektra,"Goldmind / Elektra “The Rain” starts with an exhale and a yawn, fitting for a song so playfully trippy it sounds as if it came to Missy and Timbaland in a dream, or maybe after a huge bong hit. Some of the most enduring moments from Supa Dupa Fly—an album that was completed in just two weeks—still sound like studio freestyles, two buddies shooting the shit and making each other giggle in the long spaces between songwriting. The song arrived in the wake of Biggie and Tupac’s murders, when hip-hop needed a lift, and it both positioned Missy and Timbaland as industry lodestars and solidified their sound: so tight, as she raps in the song, that you get their styles tangled. Saying “vroom” and “fricky fricky” over that cricket-propelled, Ann Peebles-sampling beat never sounded too silly; it simply sounded correct. –Emma Carmichael",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHcyJPTTn9w,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63320e9f52d4bd45efccbe3b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Missy-Elliott-The-Rain.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Missy_Elliott-The_Rain_Supa_Dupa_Fly_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,4,Liz Phair,“Fuck and Run” (1993),Matador,"Matador “Fuck and Run” begins like an alarm clock, eviscerating Saturday night. A woman wakes up several beds deep in a spree of Sisyphean sex and almost immediately starts to spiral. She sings about fucking and actually calls it “fucking,” too. It is impossible to understate how big of a deal this was. Liz Phair engineered the single to elevate what she called her “awkward morning-after insecurities” to rock airplay, then rock canon. Her guitar work, sometimes criticized as unstudied, is beefed-up, radio-sleek. Her vocal, though flat and casual, is deliberate; she yanks the melody up to show frustration, mumbles out the vulnerable parts. It takes work to sound this unrehearsed. Any potential mopiness is undercut by Phair’s goofy humor, like how she backs her forever-alone plaints with jingle bells. And any attempt to make “Fuck and Run” into a big statement on hookup culture is undercut by the whole song being a projection in the woman’s head: The guy is just a syllable in her self-fulfilling prophecy; the one running is her. –Katherine St. Asaph",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znF6o0ME0-o,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63320eefe02a17d9175e55ce/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Liz-Phair-Fuck-and-Run.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Liz_Phair-Fuck_and_Run_1993.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,3,Aaliyah,“Are You That Somebody?” (1998),Blackground / Atlantic,"Blackground / Atlantic “Are You That Somebody?” was the song that consolidated Aaliyah’s image as a refined and unapologetic streetwise princess, supplanting the more traditional R&B sound of her work with R. Kelly in favor of something that nudged toward hip-hop soul. The material Timbaland and Missy Elliott created for the singer didn’t require her to scream or over-embellish, but rather forced you to listen harder: Aaliyah’s vocals grew more compelling the softer and more subtle they became. She could grab attention simply by being unusually calm, the gleaming center of a rhythm track that telegraphed emotional chaos in its fits and starts. Learning from catastrophic sample lawsuits against De La Soul in 1989 and Biz Markie in 1991, Timbaland became one of the first producers to create signature hip-hop loops out of obscure sound-effect records and found noises. The baby gurgles that punctuate the song’s stuttering tango are first ridden by Tim’s gravelly vocal affirmations, then by Aaliyah’s hushed, reedy croon. The hybridized sound—intentionally odd, jittery tempos, backed by syncopated commentary—was groundbreaking and reflective of something more: the building of a persona around Aaliyah with an even greater mystique than that Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis had created for Janet Jackson in the years prior. –Carol Cooper",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTMuqL0qx08,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63320f86e02a17d9175e55d0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Aaliyah-Are-You-That-Somebody.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Aaliyah-Are_You_That_Somebody_1998.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,2,Björk,“Hyperballad” (1995),One Little Independent,"One Little Independent The woman at the center of Björk’s “Hyperballad” has a ritual that keeps her alive. She begins each day by sneaking away from her sleeping partner to the edge of the mountaintop she calls home, where she then tosses random detritus down, down, down until they break into pieces. Sometimes, she imagines what her “body would sound like/Slamming against those rocks,” curious if she would face her demise with eyes open or shut. Earth itself seems to awaken as this haunting fable unwinds, from brushed drums that evoke the sound of wind rustling a field to orchestration as slight and sharp as distant crickets. An acid house superbloom of a chorus bursts from this landscape, and the cliffside ritual is revealed as an act of preservation. “I go through all this/Before you wake up/So I can feel happier/To be safe up here with you,” Björk sings. It’s a track built on polarities: self-obliteration that inspires collective harmony; guttural, thrillingly human vocals set against synthetic sounds; melancholy and exaltation in coexistence. Paving the way for pop cathartics like Robyn, “Hyperballad” imagines a dancefloor as a place of refuge. When the time of transcendence ultimately arrives, Björk’s eyes are definitely open. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=te7PgEGj0z0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633210bd038c497e368dfa9a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bjork-Hyperballad.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Bjrk-Hyperballad_1995.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,1,Mariah Carey,“Fantasy (Remix)” [ft. Ol’ Dirty Bastard] (1995),Columbia,"Columbia Leave it to Mariah Carey, the girl next door, to make pure lust sound so naive, so syrupy sweet, that it could be read as something pious to a passerby. Leave it to a diva at the height of her fame to describe being horny as feeling “kinda hectic inside,” and to articulate it by singing more dizzying runs than an amusement park’s worth of rides. It feels right that she wrote, produced, and recorded “Fantasy” in only two days, roughly the amount of time a person can live solely on the giddiness of a flirtation and the anticipation of an eventual release. Here’s what love at 26, the age at which she put out the song, could feel like. It’s what you want love to feel like for the rest of your life, too. Mariah’s ninth No. 1 came between hits from fellow icons Janet Jackson and Whitney Houston, outperforming both as a historical chart-topping record. “Fantasy” debuted at the top of the Hot 100, making Mariah the first woman to ever do so, and only the second artist to debut at No. 1 after Michael Jackson. Its foundation was a melding of genres—by reworking several elements from “Genius of Love,” the 1981 Tom Tom Club track that was already becoming a staple in rap sample libraries, she and co-producer Dave Hall suggested that pop music could be just as sly, reverent, experimental, and flip as hip-hop. And the remix, produced by Diddy and his Bad Boy collective, served as their proof of concept. By several accounts, it’s a miracle that the remix exists at all. At the time, Mariah’s infamously controlling label honcho husband, Tommy Mottola, 20 years her senior, had hoped to make a family-friendly balladeer out of the singer. He didn’t want her sullying her pristine image, never mind at the hands of a rapper who performed under the name Ol’ Dirty Bastard. (Later in life, the singer would open up about how she, a light-skinned Black woman, was marketed by her label in ways that felt out of her control.) But Mariah, a superfan of Wu-Tang’s 36 Chambers who was known to blast ODB on a pink boombox while riding around in her limo, insisted that the rapper be given free rein. It became a spectacle, involving exorbitant amounts of money at the time—$15,000 for a verse—and several very drunk studio sessions. And so ODB became the song’s ringmaster, opening with what would become one of the most recognizable callouts in block party history, ambling in and out of the song with a swaggering charm, inevitably swerving so hard that his drawl becomes a little bit country, a little bit rock’n’roll. It was chaos, it was genius, it made for a remix so successful that it ended up being responsible for half of the song’s insane sales. But the song also became something much more powerful for Mariah and those who would follow her: It was a declaration of independence, a reclamation of agency and identity, a blueprint for a new kind of pop song that would be replicated for decades to come. –Puja Patel",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tCTm5M3Cp8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633211a0d997a1f3e8a0ceeb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mariah-Carey-Fantasy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mariah_Carey-Fantasy_Remix_ft_Ol_Dirty_Bastard_1995.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,150,Salt-N-Pepa,Very Necessary (1993),Next Plateau / London,"Next Plateau / London Salt-N-Pepa were a rebuke to the music industry’s storied disdain for women rappers, having gone platinum on their first two records; by their fourth album Very Necessary, which quickly went multi-platinum, the trio could not be denied. They didn’t change up their raison d’etre: Salt, Pepa, and Spinderella were still committed to women determining their own futures and calling out creepers and weirdos. But in the wake of the so-called “Year of the Woman,” their career-long pop sensibilities congealed in the hits “Shoop” and the En Vogue-featuring “Whatta Man,” positive anthems that remain stalwart in the wedding and auntie playlists. More than that, though, hip-hop was beginning to thaw to the idea of incorporating R&B and pop: Puff had convened Bad Boy Records in 1993, and genre-shifting cuts like Method Man and Mary J. Blige’s “I'll Be There for You/You're All I Need to Get By” weren’t far away. Salt-N-Pepa just happened to get there early. –Julianne Escobedo Shepherd",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufdt6xr77PK24K6P5zhFasz7BrKYdXHmDmvkh4nZUR4Urjnqimm | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/X7niGYieCH8UQ8PGqdUBtg8M6SAMcPegELm2uaNkiXQqSRwp4HaQGxppbNbCMF44CZcGNECmFt4zQZRh1GRha7dMawYceve2Q1xLXApakHqRxhEXdeeL4ywxbUEtAuRR5uP4dmhiWrdtC6DWRKokfiB3yBUgqFLJjqzy5 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2W2EmEpud13QHlhCFS9P8g?si=3UkamjuPScOqULOlsN7Itw | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/93177719,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63321c7a10c581ffac68d1fe/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Salt-N-Pepa%2520-%2520Very%2520Necessary.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Salt-N-Pepa-Very_Necessary_1993.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,149,Bratmobile,Pottymouth (1993),Kill Rock Stars,"Kill Rock Stars Largely recorded in a single day for the price of a slice of pizza and a bottle of hair dye, Olympia/D.C. riot grrrl trio Bratmobile’s 1993 debut Pottymouth is a scrappy vessel for nuanced feminist commentary and punk demystification. Beginning with an incendiary opener—“Admit it! Innocent little girls turn you on, don’t they”—Bratmobile burn all the walls down. “Cool Schmool” uses sing-songy sugar to taunt pretentious scene politics, while the blistering “P.R.D.C.T.” depicts the correlation between male-ego idolization and sexual violence: “You’re my punk rock dream come true/I would die to stay with you.” Over the course of 16 tracks in just 28 minutes, Bratmobile established themselves as a revolutionary force. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1oxyyAYY1Dy2ksFscFBRvtfimwFDhqFVpmaamzSGZrA2FQs | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8nansyqULpE8awBcBxybcmwRdNwmAjQJqXPnb2JGAosJivz4pjWPmV5umPqz8WHe4J2UksTMz8SDnWkBPZwpyAo53ZET42uJab4h93u | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://bratmobile.bandcamp.com/album/pottymouth | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/7pF01v90RPyI6baoIH76Ia?si=9-v3AJ0QSImn60cDNM-1tw | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/19145887,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63321d6a10c581ffac68d200/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bratmobile%2520-%2520Pottymouth.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bratmobile-Pottymouth_1993.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,148,Soundgarden,Superunknown (1994),A&M,"A&M On Superunknown, Soundgarden mixed some pop vulnerability into their Zep-influenced hard rock and broke into the mainstream. The album often gets grouped in with grunge—overdriven guitars abound, and yes, Soundgarden are from Seattle—but its pummeling riffs and Chris Cornell’s one-of-a-kind wail transcended the genre’s power chords and raspy sneering. The anthemic melodies are juxtaposed with bleak themes of death, despondence, and apocalypse that feel even more devastating following Cornell’s 2017 suicide. The album remains an alt-rock anomaly, thundering and openhearted in equal measure. –Max Freedman",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufaohpKvWigSXNq7sgkkY6A4Dea39skhjDjUkUKYcwFsJDBJsd1 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/4iheeJwWD8ieNhakwNtVbCeWuwR1qfJRV7bDBka8akcakztZ2NpTMJ2tSVUJ3Lf4GkGgvH9aXEKTzZ2kWz8WEthRX2c5Pf7uJM1hDcokM63xRPyLhz6t7fzRW2UAn5g2hgeRNo25UWHEgi2grt3i4Eno8oJarGo2v4cdj6JsLTJM1E5TZRknrNPiL7 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/4K8bxkPDa5HENw0TK7WxJh?si=TP9pfGJLSRaoDzq0pLoWBA | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/2571098,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63321fdfb775c5f7a6fea75e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Soundgarden%2520-%2520Superunknown.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Soundgarden-Superunknown_1994.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,147,Whitney Houston,The Bodyguard (1992) ,Arista / BMG,"Arista / BMG The interracial romance-thriller The Bodyguard, starring Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner, was the 13th biggest movie of 1992—a feat that had more than a little to do with the film’s soundtrack, which featured Houston delivering six superbly written and produced tracks at the pristine peak of her vocal superpowers. First, there’s the covers, including her ebullient remake of Chaka Khan’s “I’m Every Woman,” and her bold reconstruction of Dolly Parton’s sentimental country-weeper “I Will Always Love You,” which spent a record 14 weeks atop the Hot 100 en route to becoming one of the most beloved and hated songs ever, depending on your taste for pop schmaltz. Not to be overlooked are the album’s original torch songs, “I Have Nothing” and “Run to You,” performed by Houston with maximalist feeling and immaculate precision. The Bodyguard became the highest-earning soundtrack of all time, surpassing Saturday Night Fever, and influencing generations of big-voiced divas like Christina Aguilera and Ariana Grande. It’s easy to forget that the album also contains six other worthwhile cuts by artists like Kenny G and Lisa Stansfield—we might consider them more if Whitney didn’t slay so hard. –Jason King",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufamQ82Pjdemu1uUNCbwnF6S517nPN9f4GAahbCkZarZeWGuSZ5 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/D7sWyRTyBnUnjVm8WybWbyYXHAEast352rdxovHXCEikaf79NnfTvsLNipACNTWGMKmKC37vqyDVZCgFMQQG4th1ytmVBc91fCpHR2Rrjpm6pA1NVSjwAXAtfzup1drZV9S6x3cwmkdHHgeX4PiCpdtrPBtcC9zrKC1LLpqPUhHF3GqW3FLSwhho9BgsMN6NLd4Zdy | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/7JVJlkNNobS0GSoy4tCS96?si=695QxcBYQZij7zonjOB7RA | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/5120354,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6332f6229a8953bde11f94d4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Whitney%2520Houston%2520-%2520The%2520Bodyguard.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Whitney_Houston-The_Bodyguard_1992.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,146,Boredoms,Super æ (1998),Warner Music Japan / Birdman,"Warner Music Japan / Birdman Boredoms started in 1986 as something like a noise band, and ended three decades later as something like a mountain. The Osaka collective’s fifth full-length comes the closest to encapsulating the entirety of their journey, with long passages of the ecstatic trance-rock that would characterize their later years, punctuated frequently with the cartoonish riffs and chaotic smash cuts that had been their specialty early on. At times, they sound like a hardcore band that never got the memo about brevity; at others, like a religious cult for whom the sound of a skipping CD is the embodiment of the divine. Two chords might repeat for 10 minutes, until that relatively small sliver of time feels like eternity. A crescendo might gain thrilling momentum only to slam abruptly into silence. Later Boredoms recordings and performances could resemble live-band DJ sets, with shards of noise and melody whirling around a single central pulse. On Super æ, they delighted in shaking listeners out of their flow states just as thoroughly as they did in drawing them in. These prankish interruptions and asides don’t take away from the music’s joyousness and near-mystical uplift; they enhance it. Meditation is one path to bliss. A good joke is another. –Andy Cush",Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/0rMegQXvLDuu3OWQH5tg7C | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/32910272,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633323941dccce609e416378/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Boredoms%2520-%2520Super%2520%25C3%25A6.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Boredoms-Super__1998.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,145,Fugazi,Repeater (1990),Dischord,"Dischord To save hardcore, Fugazi had to destroy it and build something new from what scraps could still be salvaged. By 1986, Minor Threat frontman Ian MacKaye was bored and frustrated with the violent, pig-headed masculinity prevalent in hardcore scenes across the country. He found kinship in the arty introspection of Rites of Spring, whose singer-guitarist Guy Picciotto and drummer Brendan Canty joined the fold of MacKaye’s next band. With these new members and bassist Joe Lally as collaborators, MacKaye paired slower and more rhythmically supple arrangements with an unrelenting commitment to his DIY, straight-edge values and the revolutionary spirit at the heart of the genre. After two tremendous EPs (later compiled on 13 Songs), 1990’s Repeater was the definitive moment when “post-hardcore” finally crystalized. Over lacerating chords and a deft use of space, the band took the many indignities of the Reagan-Bush era into their own hands—a sound, and a political worldview, that would reshape scenes overnight. –Rob Arcand",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1mBeksHGwU9Cbb2TMg6ENqi4VFffbUvV151HVYwf9WXRUCo | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/X7niGYieCH8UQ8PGqdUBtg8M6SAMcPegELm2uaNkiXQqSRwp4HaQGxppbNbCMF44CZcGNECmFt4zQZRh1GRha7dMawYcerQDzS9Zfc8uKRzaa73nsemAWjB4hxdb97Xeub1fRVQJLEBeMAJdp82UdqULjxrw8cyqZV6WK | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://fugazi.bandcamp.com/album/repeater-3-songs | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3ZnF1cPxlqB48RyLiecDnv | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/76389809,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6332f8b5f2e57bfbb7050055/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Fugazi%2520-%2520Repeater.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Fugazi-Repeater_1990.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,144,Iris DeMent,Infamous Angel (1992),Philo,"Philo Iris DeMent opened her first album with a meditation on what happens to a person in the afterlife; after wandering through some of the more popular theories, she reached a practical conclusion: “I think I’ll just let the mystery be.” “Let the Mystery Be” set the tone for 1992’s Infamous Angel, a staggering debut across which the Arkansas-born singer-songwriter reflected on mortality, faded hopes, and bygone affections. Her voice authenticated every bit of heartache she sifted through the rubble and found the bittersweet beauty therein: “Our Town” endures as an album standout for how succinctly DeMent captured the tragedy of American dreams drying up, but the raw pathos of “Mama’s Opry” and the sublime escapism of her take on “Fifty Miles of Elbow Room” are no less potent. –Allison Hussey",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufaoWHUvaKYYCcG6LZZM1S223bhNsxG3R4Z845UWCNeZ2vVzJSb | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/X7niGYieCH8UQ8PGqdUBtg8M6SAMcPegELm2uaNkiXQqSRwp4HaQGxppbNbCMF44CZcGNECmFt4zQZRh1GRha7dMawYceguL5tksKR2N7WBBZJZrLpQABXQKCKkASJqFDrQz8RzrVH1FjhRXLuyS23tLDTneZK1kVtsaX | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://irisdement.bandcamp.com/album/infamous-angel | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/4LluPNK62d1cUvD1ZL46bf | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/111593243 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiSX9PNRyyc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6332fc73800c1a0f8721bb18/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Iris%2520Dement%2520-%2520Infamous%2520Angel.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Iris_DeMent-Infamous_Angel_1992.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,143,Aimee Mann,Whatever (1993),Imago,"Imago The start of the ’90s found Aimee Mann world-weary and jaded, put through the wringer of MTV stardom and what would become many years of label troubles. It’s no coincidence that Mann’s solo debut Whatever—recorded independently with producer Jon Brion after a three-year stand-off with Epic—encapsulated all the shades of meaning derived from the word it was named after. Marrying wry and melancholic narratives that grappled with disappointment and disillusionment—be it at the hand of labels or lovers—Whatever ran the gamut from caustic kiss-offs and stubborn determination to resigned sighs of defeat and shrugging indifference. It set the tone for the rest of Mann’s career, particularly as the decade would wear on, as an uncompromising songwriter with unparalleled gift for depicting the many different sighs of life. –Carrie Courogen",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1rQMrG47KjnEcBJ8r2niZd72QDRcKGmFAph8qkXfdpaazjR | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/Ehjr9t1bfyFgs5GtcpxVsAdcRJm1vtb9Ubjx5sTFJYB6r2e4TjtG8vb1rkTFisrhHbExGSy1DgZK5HrzBQjdeFLuEEKV6nnfbxMVx2k9HG87v6nD9UJUxFDtWgv9cABrockNeFxiFfS9dhPtJEMMLBSvCK2rT | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/6c1xyQiasQXWYtKy70Vm8q | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/14341993,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6332fd9a81f657b67c94e722/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Aimee%2520Mann%2520-%2520Whatever%2520.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Aimee_Mann-Whatever_1993.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,142,Boyz II Men,II (1994),Motown,"Motown The first single from Philadelphia vocal harmony group Boyz II Men’s follow-up to their massively successful debut Cooleyhighharmony was titled “I’ll Make Love to You,” a wholesome anachronism at a time when every other R&B artist wanted to creep, freak, knock boots, rub it down, or sex you up. (Listening to the song now, with its gentle lyrics about respectful consent, it actually sounds strangely progressive.) An article about II in Entertainment Weekly was headlined “Revenge of the Nerds” and noted that they still lived with their parents. But these nerds met at performing arts school, and their studious attention to their craft shines across the album, particularly on their a cappella cover of the Beatles’ “Yesterday.” Uncool and out of step, II was a collection of lush crowd-pleasers that spoke to the silent majority of the record-buying public. Its influence endures across generations, passed down via family gatherings, proms, and weddings; these days, Boyz II Men count Tyler, the Creator, BTS, and Justin Bieber as their biggest fans and collaborators. –Jessica Suarez",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1rYQvpeoDVWhqeFEHirSwnWThLXRGDXmtyHA1hdKBuF1uEP | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/7EaqjGTiGVEZV17h8f56rTA6wXfeUBxFYyCZyWhithNoYDbspYy91PFy2zjsVdfZDudF8n92ctsgNTXa8VzXvAWsFLmZirDkXKTqwGn8VFPkQLa3KtxhfkUbG2gkBixjz54tukH5L1jYFETxGBajq | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1IWhZEOwEoXbOB4a40XaR3 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/35882919,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6332fe74f2e57bfbb7050059/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Boyz%2520II%2520Men%2520-%2520II.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Boyz_II_Men-II_1994.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,141,Sparklehorse,Good Morning Spider (1998),Capitol,"Capitol When Mark Linkous died for the first time, in a London hotel room in 1996, he was brought back to life by paramedics. Despite a challenging recovery, the Sparklehorse leader returned to music with a heightened awareness of the world around him. Fittingly, Good Morning Spider sounds like the album an alien might produce after getting a glimpse of life on Earth. These proudly eclectic songs are full of reverence for things we mostly take for granted: tiny creatures, overlooked moments, forces outside of our grasp. Musically, the album tends toward a natural state of entropy, veering from cowpunk to rural blues to dusty AM rock. (And when Linkous managed to pull off a radio-friendly pop song like “Happy Man,” he was sure to bury it under static.) Where his previous work seemed to quietly conjure the ghosts of his rural Virginia home, Good Morning Spider plays like a chaotic celebration of everything that’s outside and alive. –Mehan Jayasuriya",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1neMc8gVJAEWqux5w7Bv1b1g9aW8Ts1oje75jm8gymdpDks | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/4Q5NDE1dgN4W84pNLsng6VFE1cdfSddbd9XvoFPPLK4asobvNMdQAXBUzYuEpauMz3G1A7Xq7NYJ9i6Dd6qPvj1foZZrkoXJq4Jd5RumUfMcTAvixXdWnN9SPSYPZcHUcB4cbifVysZfSwChFebTevM8qWqu7MgPcFWECqrNjHR | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/4FWzJKnZMl51qBHzmKClqP | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/621135,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6332fefc6abc1e7431932afa/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sparklehorse%2520-%2520Good%2520Morning%2520Spider.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Sparklehorse-Good_Morning_Spider_1998.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,140,Three 6 Mafia,Mystic Stylez (1995),Prophet,"Prophet Recorded while holed up in North Memphis, Mystic Stylez is Three 6 Mafia’s horrorcore sound at its most skin-crawling. The songs feel like they’re never going to end—they’re unhurried and drawn-out, like the scene in a good slasher flick where the killer may or may not be about to strike. Moments as small as the pitched-down vocals on the opening of “Sweet Robbery” or the punishing drop on “Break Da Law ’95” hit you like a jump scare; Juicy J and DJ Paul’s beats are one-of-a-kind and truly cinematic, with brooding piano lines, tripped-out samples, and hi-hats that tick like a climbing heart rate. Collectively, their writing feels as if they’re all competing to rap the most shocking bar, and the nightmarish tone is emphasized by colorful and hyper-specific references to satan, coffins, and soul snatching. It’s not just a great album, but a dark text on how to push the limits in rap. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1rcEmMr5EBRUCzDZw2WLxgzA7gQVy2kgMpcuik1qBMHbvR5 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2YfVS2JkEsZbGaVN2xMzcCAf2EcdufCigRyF44GJ5f29ratuBWwUyZKgmpFrhqhmxswYt6NmeGB7aN5jK2UM9Lmk6hBoKRcLbEDLhUxHGAVCBT1ALttGmBvtLCgZeAvJ8cTeqQ1q4dEkCZaHMwVhrkoZDa66vtcGXbd | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/03dao4rkv9ZZ95IJrnugVM | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/40198145,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6332ff789d26f5817514abac/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Three%25206%2520Mafia%2520-%2520Mystic%2520Stylez.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Three_6_Mafia-Mystic_Stylez_1995.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,139,Toni Braxton,Toni Braxton (1993),LaFace / Arista,"LaFace / Arista In the time of b-girls and baggy overalls, Toni Braxton emerged on the cover of her self-titled debut with a sultry but low-key sexiness—high-waisted jeans, a white tank, a leather jacket slung off her shoulders, an of-the-moment pixie cut and a red lip. Coming off the success of the Boomerang soundtrack, Braxton’s first album is a crooning, bluesy deep dive into the agony of heartbreak. Produced by the era-defining Babyface and L.A. Reid, along with famed producer and hit maker Daryl Simmons, Braxton’s alto is punctuated by the post-new jack sound yet still sounds like a throwback. The album put her on the map—she won three Grammys for it and spent weeks at the top of the charts—and has remained a staple, especially for the grown, sexy, self-aware of us who aspired to its posture. –Samhita Mukhopadhyay",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam6puHmUUNAmU7Sgb2rFBPdcoyEFbTAc1DMw4oY5XsbMwX5W7 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/MKEh7BpQXwWWp1Y3i6D9RjWuqrJsu9zvnz9d36jPMPvD98gTrNrqcRAvCcYCX4oSM9jZscHurCooXc4F442PjYSAu9nqako1DeYY9DoqzCvp9bYeL5DaquEuohTE5oEYnRB6YG6jwqMinHZiHkQgXbz9mX9vq3JFy | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/73ojqvZakvdkBxSg9pyPqz | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/680072,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6332fff5800c1a0f8721bb1a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Toni%2520Braxton%2520-%2520Toni%2520Braxton.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Toni_Braxton-Toni_Braxton_1993.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,138,American Football,American Football (1999),Polyvinyl,"Polyvinyl By the fall of 1999, the members of American Football were done with college, with emo, and with American Football itself. The trio had decided to break up even before the release of their first full-length; thus, the album turned out to be a farewell from a band that had scarcely introduced itself. American Football was also a rebuke of the Midwestern scene that had been shaped by the incalculable long-tail influence of Mike Kinsella’s previous one-album supernova Cap’n Jazz, rerouting emo’s bloodline from hardcore toward minimalist jazz and meditiative math-rock. It’s likely that no album on this list had less impact on the actual 1990s than American Football, but few loom larger right this moment; after the bursting of the Myspace bubble, hundreds of bands took Kinsella’s elliptical expressions of hope and heartbreak as unfinished business, rebuilding the genre on a foundation of open-tuned Telecasters, capos, and red and black flannels. Yet, while the sound of American Football is remarkably easy to replicate, its spirit of wistful carpe diem remains forever elusive. “You can’t miss what you forget,” Kinsella warns on “Never Meant,” if not the greatest emo song ever then the most potent expression of preemptive nostalgia in a genre that does it better than any other. –Ian Cohen",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1sjv49Drf2F1PLv2uGdX956KDk7VjV11c6rJZWtoo6wVKrw | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/3Hvxm9czoAnByw5bJudy155hRgz4HyCyJ9tDMR4K1xHECoF6vhWARjTQ54iHw6M2V82vephGvLgQcNz7yaB625AFTrokYLhh6uBfunkfk6u3GHCiwwKP24ryAKMrNvb1nvt4pw6gzizyrbg8u754KqiEv2nsLNWHgdt7Y7Z | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://americanfootball.bandcamp.com/album/american-football | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3wRBlpk5PRoixwOnLujTal | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/4086444,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333009fcb86801423062e4b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/American%2520Football%2520-%2520Amerian%2520Football.jpg,/dataset/artwork/American_Football-American_Football_1999.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,137,Bone Thugs-N-Harmony,E. 1999 Eternal (1995),Ruthless / Relativity,"Ruthless / Relativity Bone Thugs-N-Harmony made absence and the afterlife a focal point of their music: Their second album, E. 1999 Eternal, was less about the hurdles they scaled to achieve success, and more about those who would not be around to toast with them. Each track hit like a message to the grim reaper: The album worked through the stages of grief for those whose lives move too fast to properly acknowledge pain, yet still need something like closure. It is darkly comedic, treating death like both an intruder and unavoidable foe. The 808s are somber and steady as a marching band, giving center stage to lines that act as both introduction and eulogy. A year after the album’s release, Tupac Shakur would be dead, and the Notorious B.I.G., shortly after—unquantifiable casualties that made it difficult for peers and fans to both grieve and remember. Coming from the only group to work with both of those artists, E. 1999 Eternal was a grim blueprint for moving forward while never losing sight of those not in the room. –Tarisai Ngangura",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufbFSVcvrBipFfkLggEj85LV1exS5tD5EoueZgAkVSFst2kek6s | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/X7niGYieCH8UQ8PGqdUBtg8M6SAMcPegELm2uaNkiXQqSRwp4HaQGxppbNbCMF44CZcGNECmFt4zQZRh1GRha7dMawYcecPsxeEmqR1z96uWgVp85qY6HuAVMdra3QRPHAA8UaUeU9LmEVi3yMkwVLYn57VVxCwSBAvmd | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3r25XjxAmLMOhOWoV6X8N9 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/66306659,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633304041dccce609e41636e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bone%2520Thugs%2520n-Harmony%2520-%2520E.%25201999%2520Eternal.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Bone_Thugs-N-Harmony-E_1999_Eternal_1995.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,136,Depeche Mode,Violator (1990),Mute,"Mute We are lucky to live in the musical world that Depeche Mode helped create with Violator, their celebrated album of synthy, sexy gloom. At this point, it’s mostly taken for granted that artists can crunch together pop, rock, dance, and electronic music into something capable of pleasing fans of each genre, or that deep, sensual darkness can writhe its way onto the radio—but it wasn’t always like this; there’s a line that runs straight from Martin Gore and Dave Gahan all the way on through to Finneas and Billie Eilish. “Personal Jesus” is so crisply produced that you’d think it was made yesterday, but it’s “Enjoy the Silence” that is the album’s best and most subtle moment, with a melancholy guitar line that still mystifies three decades years later. Violator sounded like the future when it arrived in 1990. Now, it sounds like everything. –Alex Frank",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam6oZjERfpEhMRoJ6rdoT3D1szbnZ5pREtQZuLdYrz1p5eXzo | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/qsSkLvaohicCiNF2u5sRy7EaHrr8QBHsmzbUp2chj45Ue8bty9VB33hCfd6DmL3Z7ddgiGYA7eGBKavp844TFtJLVTXSykoDUFjTK1K4ahu9MkxTPrgXdQRuFGd94CQfwcuBGDLvkx6MwBek2RbdydwvigsHMvHzCq8MP834GESm12YifPmv7rh5 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5g3Yi15plTSMaq6tYiuw8p | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/66932434,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333047a6e8a9ef73daa4376/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Depeche%2520Mode%2520-%2520Violator.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Depeche_Mode-Violator_1990.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,135,Jeff Buckley,Grace (1994),Columbia,"Columbia If all he ever gave us was “Hallelujah,” Jeff Buckley would still be hailed as a tremendously influential artist whose drowning death at 30 remains an unfathomable tragedy. Fortunately for everyone who skips that track at this point (guilty), there’s so much more to Grace than his cover of John Cale’s cover of Leonard Cohen’s most famous song. The son of a folk singer who also died way too young, Buckley drew from New York bohemia as well as from European chanson, from Patti Smith as well as from Edith Piaf, and that unusual set of influences—not to mention that voice—distinguished him then as now. Buckley savored the drama of unabashed beauty colliding with unrestrained noise: “So Real” erupts in orgasms of guitar distortion, quieted only by Buckley whispering, “I love you… but I’m afraid to love you.” It’s almost over-the-top, almost ridiculous, which makes its transcendence that much more impressive and daring. –Stephen Deusner",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufbD9QdGpUZZqmU8LP8USC6CcAsswipYJfqSp1gD8oFkPwzmHN7 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/AF4hZrJoZxC84SKr5YhNkUxhvHJs9uSA2Ar2Do9q6QaLbRW9zbdL7wZg6oCSkKar6rzWJSC9PyWiC1JNK8YJSAZSwvE29b1r68QVWYP7G9fsDTqAgnu47Xj8XFM3V2sioxrPtREkjLo2jwHD9SZ9mhFfd | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/7yQtjAjhtNi76KRu05XWFS | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/52159021,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63330563cb86801423062e4f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jeff%2520Buckley%2520-%2520Grace.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Jeff_Buckley-Grace_1994.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,134,Gillian Welch,Revival (1996) ,Almo Sounds,"Almo Sounds Gillian Welch was in her late 20s when she issued her debut album, Revival, but she already sounded like a woman who’d lived through a few other lifetimes. Several years before she predicted the digitally induced collapse of the music industry, the singer-songwriter was writing tunes about lonesome left-behinds, heartaches that wouldn’t quit, and sweet little Appalachian flowers. With producer T Bone Burnett, Welch built songs that were spacious in their sentiments, spare in their melodies, and quietly puckish in their view of the world, as guitarist David Rawlings, a steadfast musical companion to Welch over subsequent years, backed her cool and easy voice with prickling steel-string licks. Revival was the first plank in the career of a generational voice, one whose work feels both timely and eternal in any decade. –Allison Hussey",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1mCqonmCwk9vLx8DH2yDUgFxNMYqYHt3yDVYcYzbBs6DBDh | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/AF4hZrJoZxC84SKr5YhNkUxhvHJs9uSA2Ar2Do9q6QaLbRW9zbdL7wZg6oCSkKar6rzWJSC9PyWiC1JNK8YJSAZSwvE29eaLHEcRXoyubHcPJRRXSXGcFfNmfWLbLRzd41m9JdC7HWQrdPTBJBGU3XVps | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://gillianwelch.bandcamp.com/album/revival | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/733rVkP3oBulDHJbiuRANa | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/87279654 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sy6VMDXB2SQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333061df2e57bfbb705005b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Gillian%2520Welch%2520-%2520Revival.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Gillian_Welch-Revival_1996.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,133,Jonathan Richman,"I, Jonathan (1992)",Rounder,"Rounder Modern Lovers founder Jonathan Richman was 41 when he released this sunny solo record, but he looks half that, nearly teenaged, on the album’s cover. He sounds it, too. Richman’s lyrical concerns involve the magic of new love, the despair of a disagreement with a roommate, and the joy of losing oneself on the dancefloor in a lesbian bar. I, Jonathan marries the airtight pop construction of Brian Wilson to the crustpunk ethos of K Records as it narrates all the triumphs and tribulations of 20s adolescence. Timeless is the word. –Peyton Thomas",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufamW7QdUmcJut5JV6M5taosBpMPCv6XtB46pmWzTE6H83LZZj5 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/474N76DNT3n1smUARtCDRxekNNF3vu1wV1AjPQDHqP1vtSJ1LCXeQzuZpXEemqE59HpZutecPp2RwSa5M2keJW5WWHAAzUQ4wSVoVD2VNdTzV2yX4vtgw7tt5Ute1nie9HyhBZZntaTn3J6X8XGnTBgATJUw | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://rounderrecords.bandcamp.com/album/i-jonathan | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2RtcqYl0VAhDw9DPMEqWF5 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/36062658,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633306b9cb86801423062e51/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jonathan%2520Richman%2520-%2520I%2C%2520Jonathan.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jonathan_Richman-I_Jonathan_1992.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,132,Oval,94 Diskont (1995),Mille Plateaux / Thrill Jockey,"Mille Plateaux / Thrill Jockey Oval has always been a highly conceptual project, as central figure Markus Popp could spiel for hours about the standardization enforced by digital audio software. Attempting to subvert such strictures, the German trio turned digital dysfunction into raw material: Physically damaging actual compact discs, they took the gnarly weirdness that sputtered out of the CD player and tiled these sonic splinters into glittering mosaics. But it’s easy to divorce the polemical framing from the listening experience, and simply immerse yourself in Oval’s stream of strange beauty—particularly on 94 Diskont’s 24-minute standout, “Do While,” which resembles a My Bloody Valentine song shoved through a paper shredder and collaged into a shimmering abstract sound painting. 94 Diskont almost single-handedly inspired a wave of glitchy late-’90s electronica woven out of skips and clicks, ranging from Herbert’s twitchy but danceable grooves to punky noise-blasts like Lesser’s influence-exorcizing jibe, “Markus Popp Can Kiss My Redneck Ass.” Oval’s later releases grew conceptually top-heavy, but with 94 Diskont they created an ambient dreamscape as pretty and placid as it was disorienting and uncanny. –Simon Reynolds",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufbEx42y5yCNnr8VbgjVf7jdMeSWQp3VuMt6ZyFw3JUJSnk6bPV | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/474N76DNT3n1smUARtCDRxekNNF3vu1wV1AjPQDHqP1vtSJ1LCXeQzuZpXEemqE59HpZutecPp2RwSa5M2keJW5WWHAAzPACGWbkpNvCfT7VEfxxdKW2PEnFsUn2HHBvnTEuEjd7ouoh49BZ2Jrfwqen6ifZ | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://oval.bandcamp.com/album/94diskont-remastered-2013-reissue | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/33xUwaoTPJ9aNbCJZEpRol,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63330783e02a17d9175e55de/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Oval%2520-%252094%2520Diskont.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Oval-94_Diskont_1995.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,131,Prefab Sprout,Jordan: The Comeback (1990),Kitchenware / CBS,"Kitchenware / CBS Paddy McAloon, the eccentrically ambitious frontman of Prefab Sprout, has a habit of self-mythologizing. Read enough interviews with him and you’ll start wondering if half the abandoned projects he mentions—say, a Christmas album called Total Snow or a movie musical written with Spike Lee—actually exist somewhere in the vaults or were just momentary bursts of inspiration tested out against some befuddled music journalist. The English band’s 1990 masterpiece, Jordan: The Comeback, however, makes you believe it’s all true. Somewhere in its 19-song sprawl—which spans bossa nova party-starters, tear-jerking R&B ballads, and arena rock anthems—there’s a narrative throughline about reincarnation, Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, and the imminent turn of the century, all delivered with enough gravitas for several Bible characters to make credible appearances. (“Hi, this is God, here,” goes a particularly memorable opening line.) It might all feel like a puzzle—something to be studied and worked over rather than celebrated—if it weren’t also filled with impeccable hooks and performances. Three decades later, the world finally seems to be catching up to its vision for cerebral, heartfelt pop. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam6pwyrN8N8zWi1sT6DKSnPXw6hWuTkzzNTEsFpQobKbcnd6F | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/4Q5NDE1dgN4W84pNLsng6VFE1cdfSddbd9XvoFPPLK4asobvNMdQAXBUzYuEpauMz3G1A7Xq7NYJ9i6Dd6qPvj1foZZrkot7AFBXdadFLk8H1USjYUMpc6B7y9HFszShFWEUmnYhrGZDVfyWys5m3czUXjMt2kKiEtKdybt38GP | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3HYcTvojN9GFKGvn7zA2Pq | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/3180784,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63330c4605942a58667ee21d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Prefab%2520Sprout%2520-%2520Jordan%2520-%2520The%2520Comeback.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Prefab_Sprout-Jordan_The_Comeback_1990.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,130,Maxwell,Maxwell’s Urban Hang Suite (1996) ,Columbia,"Columbia A song cycle that moves from a passionate fling to a breakup to a reunion and marriage proposal, Maxwell’s sumptuous debut album dilates one turbulent romance into a celebration of monogamous love and ’70s soul. To bring this retro vision to life, Maxwell enlisted accomplished collaborators like Sade saxophonist Stuart Matthewman and guitarist Wah Wah Watson, known for his work with Marvin Gaye and Herbie Hancock. But it’s ultimately Maxwell’s distinct voice as a singer, songwriter, and producer that powers these songs of courtship. His tender croon radiates vulnerability, his higher notes tinged with an anxious yearning. Marriage plots like this one are by definition conservative, but the rich details of Urban Hang Suite leave the door ajar for anyone who’s horny and lovestruck. –Stephen Kearse",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam7KsmkRzkyYswM3x6ib6mo3D1977DqN8KACjnGywkierW84P | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/8UAFzxJzvSuaw23YMmcgLo6XFpPbbtLCUmg6umLWhEHCQYzpUDSpXHL8eXe2qEKQdafD22TNrb3ntHw6iua336RrUYSD1Xu8pUBA7b8SGhVLiXftzga1hRwCNe3HZFcDCc6n1HsQpUcYq2Jdo4znemeV8apsxUHUvQTYC4R3ADzw9Nkip79 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2k5YAxjmAD3DmYtmlrY64p | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/5129129,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63330d5ae5c4af791617a928/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Maxwell%2520-%2520Urban%2520Hang%2520Suite.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Maxwell-Maxwells_Urban_Hang_Suite_1996.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,129,Tom Petty,Wildflowers (1994),Warner Bros.,"Warner Bros. Already a household name long before the release of Wildflowers, Tom Petty didn’t need to go above and beyond his signature rich, driving rock’n’roll to ensure the album’s success. But Wildflowers stood out precisely because it pulled back some of that anthemic rock sound. With its stripped-down production, and spartan, honed lyrics, his second solo record was a turning point for the then-44-year-old rocker into a wiser era, strolling through folk, blues, and rock—including the self-pitier’s theme song “You Don’t Know How It Feels”—depending on how the spirit of the moment moved him. –Evie Nagy",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufamCxCoHUcCtj2R4Acf8bMMJh1wopF9Tphxppva9axtK8uZmnw | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/5bwkygcD8TrHGdppHZSrwYPBcY7KL4rNhn7wPE5csqh9eBoYusiekNLU1NC9W1rwgTSxUn9pKQ4onuMDhZrhwx9sjB9aDBrhkcL1H6WPQ5NAXU9w3hsLC6Qusizfu7vWgGnMorjPSVWJsKraR22M7emLUbnC5dHR | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3ZGUBwDiY5HPOcWv4SBPQg | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/3401020,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63330dae9d26f5817514abae/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Tom%2520Petty%2520-%2520Wildflowers.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Tom_Petty-Wildflowers_1994.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,128,Drexciya,Neptune’s Lair (1999),Tresor,"Tresor Detroit techno had always relished myths about the utopian promise of the information age, but no one took the epic, worldbuilding spirit of the genre further than Drexciya. From their first Deep Sea Dweller EP, James Stinson and Gerald Donald used the project as a vehicle for exploring the lingering traumas of the Black diaspora in the United States and beyond, creating an elaborate narrative of undersea people and nations rooted in the real history of the Middle Passage and Paul Gilroy’s concept of the Black Atlantic. The duo’s first album-oriented release, Neptune’s Lair draws the legend of Drexciya into a larger-than-life story, using wonky synths, electro drum patterns, and pitched-down vocal samples to describe Drexciya’s aquatic population and their quest to return to their homeland. Yet for all of the album’s sci-fi imagery, Stinson and Donald always resist the allure of true escapism, consistently asking how speculative fictions can challenge the presumed immutability of everyday life and contribute to a social world as rich and all-consuming as the collective fantasies they document. –Rob Arcand",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufeo61Fcb7kRj74fTibpRfRo7ZskXhP4Ga7DqPzMUjBAnYCM3uy | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/7pktVSmKrEArFkpBqdMfGLHcpT6HuRciy3DF2VQWPYp65rc5KR9UUdfUYoaaPFxyTdqmiWj63Tye2G3skZVhupGVE8NfSKqoqAYxE4dHn9mWbJMngqufMshKzgHbGeiNY1XmYcChCaJfoYdci4GYELT59EWek8GuM9YK | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://tresorberlin.bandcamp.com/album/neptunes-lair | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/7bBx5uPv2YgRIAFyXBWhEV | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/227031639,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63330e3605942a58667ee21f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Drexciya%2520-%2520Neptune_s%2520Lair.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Drexciya-Neptunes_Lair_1999.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,127,Sinéad O’Connor,I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got (1990),Ensign / Chrysalis,"Ensign / Chrysalis I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got begins with a recitation of the Serenity Prayer and ends with the title track, an a cappella hymn of self-acceptance. In between, you’ll find the enormous range of the Irish singer-songwriter: a prophetic protest ballad (“Black Boys on Mopeds”), a 17th-century poem set to the “Funky Drummer” beat (“I Am Stretched on Your Grave”), a jaunty alt-pop us-against-them anthem (“The Emperor’s New Clothes”). And, of course, the massive hit “Nothing Compares 2 U,” originally written by Prince, but owned forever by Sinéad O’Connor. It’s a breakup song so devastating it would tower over everything else around it on a lesser album. Instead, it stands as just another skyscraper in a skyline of heartbreak. –Amy Phillips",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufeo61Fcb7kRj74fTibpRfRo7ZskXhP4Ga7DqPzMUjBAnYCM3uy | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2FTC5bHweKNXpHC9thPgiTMZ7CKV7gyqnq3T43d9US4PEFsoPMbz36ZSb45vo7Po67YwfeFw1VePqcR4tiByG9dEytLCG7ftxiFgzhPYPxKNxGUxoGtcwUn964HwVKoyxg89hU26bm2a6yNgB2SYrEjqgRvnU19i3VikkpgzoYrhgiDhapXe1aVo67CKR | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/0fV9DAddjwNZcmCP1Q8b01 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/233192924,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63330edfe5c4af791617a92a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sinead%2520O_Connor%2520-%2520I%2520Do%2520Not%2520Want%2520What%2520I%2520Haven%25E2%2580%2599t%2520Got.png,/dataset/artwork/Sinad_OConnor-I_Do_Not_Want_What_I_Havent_Got_1990.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,126,Ol’ Dirty Bastard,Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version (1995),Elektra,"Elektra Where Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) described a self-contained world—Staten Island as Shaolin, martial arts movies and local Five Percenters as the only moral guideposts—Ol’ Dirty Bastard embodied the bleed between that realm and our own. After all, the lead single from his solo debut is named after a whole other borough. A lesser version of ODB would scan as a raucous live act who couldn’t quite translate his shtick to record; the ODB we got was instead so radically unpredictable that any vocal take capturing his exuberance and idiosyncrasies became a perfect little time capsule, irreducible and irreproducible. Near Return to the 36 Chambers’ middle, a song is interrupted by ODB’s wife excoriating him over his litany of affairs. He responds by singing four lines of “Over the Rainbow” and then snapping upright into more conventional verse—where he describes his style as “evil, like a Wicked Witch.” –Paul A. Thompson",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufamDHtQ6WGe8hxPWRtApifz4ESX2UPKvkvBQCU6k9h6nvnCpdD | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/8UAFzxJzvSuaw23YMmcgLo6XFpPbbtLCUmg6umLWhEHCQYzpUDSpXHL8eXe2qEKQdafD22TNrb3ntHw6iua336RrUYSD1ZDZaWNUEUhXr3zyN2BeTBo7DEUzndHQqsgJ566CsD2UhujdrJSRZyqvhiacb5AxyryCyZT3suRCode3VBVeC9M | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/4tI4WJdTN5MzDMRMl2i7VR | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/3120818 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRblYfKwa88,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63330fe32118fbded71a64a1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ol_%2520Dirty%2520Bastard%2520-%2520Return%2520to%2520the%252036%2520Chambers-%2520The%2520Dirty%2520Version.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Ol_Dirty_Bastard-Return_to_the_36_Chambers_The_Dirty_Version_1995.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,125,Modest Mouse,The Lonesome Crowded West (1997),Up,"Up On Modest Mouse’s second album, Isaac Brock stares down the open expanse of the American West and finds the placeless drudgery of urban sprawl where something like freedom used to be. The Lonesome Crowded West embodies the claustrophobia of late-’90s American cities—Brock’s guitars creak and squeal with a creeping unease, carving sharp edges into the melodies of “Heart Cooks Brain” and setting his caterwauling screams ablaze on “Shit Luck.” But that unsustainable mania gives way, more often than not, to quiet profundity: The clap-stomp folk-punk of “Cowboy Dan” melts into a meditation on being in nature and “thinking nothing,” before just as quickly returning to its defensive crouch. Brock has a knack for spinning the bleakness of late-stage capitalism into postmodern poetry, finding romance in trailer parks and truck stop bathrooms. The Lonesome Crowded West is a death rattle for the American dream, the kind of album that will feel just as vital when all that’s left are cockroaches, snow-drenched plastic forks, and half-decomposed cups laced with the thick syrup of Orange Julius. –Arielle Gordon",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufejJ6J1ZVty3iXvQ9NMba4cKpHo7bGav61cAaj4J82yegLLDfd | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/ZxssCo8SeuM6mRcDQfvUeNTNYQAjiyZjfaBb5th84ZcVLxECX7vxkf5SkeET5snFJTZe3XRRTsHKXPjnFy2ozExhNZkG1VXjRYFAaVgiZXo9MaxfGU4tRsSiPPQQcbxxwci1u5FsXPtLKKjL4wsqJxwBMeYKuWb7UMexNFetaoCDbEA713S7 | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://modestmouse.bandcamp.com/album/the-lonesome-crowded-west | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5mvHTVy1iUIkAflIufoOpj | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/183082698,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633311a4e5c4af791617a92d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Modest%2520Mouse%2520-%2520The%2520Lonesome%2520Crowded%2520West.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Modest_Mouse-The_Lonesome_Crowded_West_1997.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,124,Tori Amos,Little Earthquakes (1992),Atlantic,"Atlantic As Tori Amos was writing her solo debut, the singer-songwriter had little faith on her side. Little Earthquakes followed her time in the short-lived synth-pop band Y Kant Tori Read; when she turned in a new album of stark piano and voice to Atlantic in 1990, the label rejected it and insisted on more guitars. But Amos—a minister’s daughter who had been playing piano in bars since 15 and knew this music was her lifeblood—was nothing if not resolute. She fought to release Little Earthquakes as she intended, an album of revelations hammered through piano that stunningly recounts crises of faith and relationships. Songs like “Crucify” use religion as a springboard to forgive and stand up for oneself; on “Silent All These Years” and “Me and a Gun,” Amos gives voice to survivors of sexual assault in powerfully unembellished words. Those songs led her to partner with the anti-sexual violence organization RAINN in 1994, still the largest of its kind in the United States. “I wrote my way out of my own private hell,” Amos said in 2020. “Writing songs was the only way I was going to heal.” With the soul-affirming music of Little Earthquakes, she made way for countless others to do the same. –Eric Torres",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufapoQWJPmp7ar3pEdPGfd9nScx29gUzev9KnQ2muBitaD8Xqcj | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/qsSkLvaohicCiNF2u5sRy7EaHrr8QBHsmzbUp2chj45Ue8bty9VB33hCfd6DmL3Z7ddgiGYA7eGBKavp844TFtJLVTXSyTc77AKNmpbAj22GtosDW6hDR1orr7yHT15WQw3J1RVL5gWsd5QVkoKU5CSv6e2AR8B3KdW1fWLaMHeJwqTYMrDewjX5 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1pFUGy3ABpLRRE3oNMPbDb | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/639815,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333120e52d4bd45efccbe48/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Tori%2520Amos%2520-%2520Little%2520Earthquakes.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Tori_Amos-Little_Earthquakes_1992.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,123,Guided by Voices,Bee Thousand (1994),Scat,"Scat In 1994, Guided by Voices frontman Robert Pollard quit his job after 14 years as a schoolteacher and bet it all on rock’n’roll with Bee Thousand. Throughout this DIY touchstone, Pollard cranks out distorted gems full of do-or-die spirit and misheard lyrics, as if he’s recreating the greatest British Invasion songs that never existed directly into a four-track. Flanked by his Dayton, Ohio buddies, Pollard sounds insatiable and totally uninhibited. While his words rarely get more coherent than “goldheart mountaintop queen directory,” there’s something alchemical about the way he uncorks each phrase of poetic gibberish with everything he’s got, conjuring indie rock myth out of thin air. –Steven Arroyo",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam6xjBTREie7qpRMmgW9SkbSdT7Tb41ka8TMaTbx68V5gsup3 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/MKEh7BpQXwWWp1Y3i6D9RjWuqrJsu9zvnz9d36jPMPvD98gTrNrqcRAvCcYCX4oSM9jZscHurCooXc4F442PjYSAu9nqaXuJYo7k9zAqe1FJX4ESK4QQUauBhn7gn13YGuoAWhwJX8XGRrfq6BSyS24DTJzVN9a8o | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://guidedbyvoices.bandcamp.com/album/bee-thousand | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2VQKZAvtL5epxdEOuLVP6t | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/11070433 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0WnfJOeCKg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633312bdafa92f85cc3e4f9b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Guided%2520by%2520Voices%2520-%2520Bee%2520Thousand.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Guided_by_Voices-Bee_Thousand_1994.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,122,Roni Size / Reprazent,New Forms (1997),Talkin' Loud / Mercury / Universal,"Talkin' Loud / Mercury / Universal While some of his contemporaries were trying to legitimize drum ‘n’ bass by adapting it to the concert hall, Bristol, England’s Roni Size orchestrated a double-disc exercise in musical excess that often feels as if it could’ve been the work of a very amped-up jazz ensemble. This is nimble, proper music, crisp as a freshly vacuumed carpet with not a single fiber out of place. The individual performances Size captures are brilliant—Si John plays standup bass in a strangely inverted way, as if he’s watching himself in a mirror—but even as he’s leaning on the ensemble or expertly tacking vocalist Onallee’s sibilant runs to the ticks of the hi-hat, he never loses sight of the bigger picture. Take “Brown Paper Bag,” where he holds the listener up in a hotel lobby for the first two-and-a-half minutes, then gleefully sprints out of the front door to dance. –Marty Sartini Garner",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1qDTjKb6EKnuSFZaeKcQL6G5tNzZ7zyVfaGsLrTPNZ29tVd | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8nansyqULpE8awBcBxybcmwRdNwmAjQJqXPnb2DvZ98WYtJzk1dXF8AjxYiBh34dCgzqS5M3NBbp1ViFtcA3Gumbn9y6wHXe7qKx5z7 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/0RFE2IiZa7OCGrEZngGlGJ | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/633464,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333134a10c581ffac68d208/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Roni%2520Size_Reprazent%2520-%2520New%2520Forms.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Roni_Size__Reprazent-New_Forms_1997.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,121,Garbage,Garbage (1995),Almo Sounds,"Almo Sounds When it began, Garbage was a project helmed by Nevermind producer Butch Vig, who, by 1993, was kind of a big deal. But when they released their self-titled debut with a Scottish female singer in 1995, it was definitely Shirley Manson’s band—her fierce stage presence, outspoken attitude, and dark sense of humor would be the defining figure of the band. More pop than grunge but with plenty of grit and electronic edge, Garbage had layers of sharp production, but still felt raw thanks to Manson’s sneer and biting lyrics. It was anything but humorless, though—the hit single “Only Happy When It Rains” was actually a dig at the band’s own alternative scene and its preoccupation with misery, while “Stupid Girl” mocked privileged people who don’t use their power or potential for good. –Evie Nagy",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufbCxJqUbhKTNp4gG254vTagHApqM7oQcpLK4V5f3HnrHCdYw67 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/21YXcjY98V7uQu6paaTiZwEAeXpX3ekB1fp46DMhFdt89E7WnnWKDAPmS9LJoCwkgVrEw21nqgwapMW2xnHGiGNaHmt6FriHnoeLKsNvEpiU5RtWarE41nabwspjnC3qJQnogqhJiwVCQuHGRM9Qc66LXgeTP3X57euj1LgXfZncKMmPWVqjHygBgJrE5vsUZm3V3SbkhCgyDmjDqPupdu9 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1Vze7jtjAVQOdIIQ8oO2X7 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/77824701,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633313e5d4e0114d9287d2a8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Garbage%2520-%2520Garbage.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Garbage-Garbage_1995.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,120,Rage Against the Machine,Rage Against the Machine (1992),Epic,"Epic Every generation gets the rap-metal it deserves (see: the loutish gum-swallowers who ruled the late ’90s), but in 1992, Rage Against the Machine gave us the rap-metal we needed. Hearing their revolutionary ruckus on the same rock radio assembly line as the Black Crowes and Guns N’ Roses felt like discovering a Molotov cocktail in a crate of milk bottles. Their self-titled debut spiked millions of suburban CD changers with desperate funk and radical leftist politics; Tom Morello’s riffs conjured record scratches and sirens, while Zack de la Rocha punctuated the riot with exhortations and gut-shot grunts. Grunge bands of the day were nosing into darker corners, but only Rage seemed hellbent on flooding them with light—whether via truth or explosion. Even if you missed Rage’s point then, you could tell they had one, and that made all the difference. –Brian Howe",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam6puHyP9XnYekNpZ7UiXfHWNkVcw77cNkxV1V3iUjbP3W319 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2h8zKZvUAqv9bScU3SWqLSQ14Mhv9oyTckCaWdKvQAMSEwpzRk9ZyFaLQTRhk6jgnu2rrAr2KwPPBGAYCm5mR38tzShbtnMv9gs6ZmZM9fHe2ZZg7XRwvqYiRsKhtSsjxj6gj2v9U1tX3AWQzQfAwjssWffgf1j1z2vEQfMhPT7TEYvzLF | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/4LaRYkT4oy47wEuQgkLBul | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/23653053,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333148ee02a17d9175e55e0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Rage%2520Against%2520The%2520Machine%2520-%2520Rage%2520Against%2520the%2520Machine.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Rage_Against_the_Machine-Rage_Against_the_Machine_1992.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,119,Sarah McLachlan,Fumbling Towards Ecstasy (1993),Nettwerk / Arista,"Nettwerk / Arista For those who hear the words “Sarah McLachlan” and reflexively summon an image constellation of tremendous adult-contemporary mauveness—shelter cats, hemp skirts, Lilith Fair corsetry—Fumbling Towards Ecstasy is here to serve as a reminder of the singer-songwriter’s formidable powers. Written alone in the mountains as the dark winter softened into spring, McLachlan’s third album is a rough-hewn cathedral: abstract monsters lurk behind the formalist arrangements, under the flowing stream of her voice. Directly inspired by Talk Talk’s experimental rock seance Spirit of Eden, McLachlan and producer Pierre Marchand undergird Ecstasy with a similarly shocking synesthetic precision—guitars strike at chest level like a conviction; chords shimmer out of a void, epiphanic; beauty blooms from stone. “Possession,” a love song told from the point of view of McLachlan’s real-life stalker, is the lodestar: alive, haunting, searching for some terrible grace. –Jia Tolentino",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam6pthT8r8viWTrVLKkW9HMNwLWW6prQMDWCQ7MdrruZTNyJP | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2h8zKZvUAqv9bScU3SWqLSQ14Mhv9oyTckCaWdKvQAMSEwpzRk9ZyFaLQTRhk6jgnu2rrAr2KwPPBGAYCm5mR38tzShbtmekyjThNqyKzXePDQcaAabkp41uzMWbM4afhjTxJSfY2YGCdpuGmb5JZXX851WtgLM8PacZDGDvbEzoZU3qVZ | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2PVFgeTAbZomjRzis55b8L | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/1862485,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633315131dccce609e416371/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sarah%2520McLachlan%2520-%2520Fumbling%2520Towards%2520Ecstasy.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Sarah_McLachlan-Fumbling_Towards_Ecstasy_1993.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,118,U2,Achtung Baby (1991),Island,"Island After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the world woke up changed. U2, huffing off the historical moment, followed suit with their own rebirth. Their seventh album, which began its gestation in the reunified German capital at the top of the decade, remains one of rock’s most rewarding left turns, a beacon for mid-career bands looking to loosen up and freak out. Across the record, the Edge trades in his holy guitar chimes for riffs that howl like tornados being sucked down a storm drain. The rhythms are suddenly, surprisingly danceable. Bono floats above the distorted din, moaning and whispering his deepest desires. Doused in black hair dye and shiny leather, the frontman transformed into a sentient oil slick, sending up hoary rock’n’roll clichés while gleefully reveling in them. At this point, the album’s surreal, after-hours milieu brings to mind another ’90s touchstone, Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, with Bono playing the part of a famous family man trapped between love and lust, faith and folly. Achtung Baby still stands as the sleekest, grooviest, and just plain coolest thing U2 have ever done—a dark night of the soul seen through buggy wraparound shades. –Ryan Dombal",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufamWrfJE9dgMaHDgYJTxS7kTNYWswczoqfm3AB3aP9FEEX7BH1 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2YfVS2JkEsZbGaVN2xMzcCAf2EcdufCigRyF44GJ5f29ratuBWwUyZKgmpFrhqhmxswYt6NmeGB7aN5jK2UM9Lmk6hBoKQxDVE37rCMkHohqdB62aBekBAwM5oQsbGH7KjrXtHoyjZsQkxsYjVR9Ejyunf4DjSLzTwV | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5n52kyQKeUZs5ObZJejLQd | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/8938999,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633315bef2e57bfbb7050061/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/U2%2520-%2520Achtung%2520Baby.jpg,/dataset/artwork/U2-Achtung_Baby_1991.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,117,The Notorious B.I.G.,Life After Death (1995),Bad Boy / Arista,"Bad Boy / Arista Released 16 days after his murder, Life After Death demonstrates the Notorious B.I.G.’s mastery of seemingly every type of rap music that existed in 1997. If his debut Ready to Die was a gritty, austere New York album, Life After Death is the glossy, maximalist statement, with evermore intricate and subversive flows. He gets luxurious on “Hypnotize” only to step on his enemies’ necks on “Kick in the Door,” all of it unfolding on top of Bad Boy’s shiny, R&B-inflected production. When it comes to this nearly two-hour double album, the overwhelming sprawl is the point. –Jayson Buford",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufaouM2yVESCpSsnPphZ6gpHqjEvo3cMX1sMgUTqvzDArwoNF3d | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/4iheeJwWD8ieNhakwNtVbCeWuwR1qfJRV7bDBka8akcakztZ2NpTMJ2tSVUJ3Lf4GkGgvH9aXEKTzZ2kWz8WEthRX2c5PeCRrUaFDMN2qha8zVrtoJQAjsYs7VS3KGdgh8XBY4ihRHKSmdfStE5WobbAp7eB445184zPkbujXMMW7Tzf5PVaRR7hJF | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/7dRdaGSxgcBdJnrOviQRuB | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/33227058,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63331621e02a17d9175e55e2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The%2520Notorious%2520B.I.G.%2520-%2520Life%2520After%2520Death.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Notorious_BIG-Life_After_Death_1995.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,116,Mazzy Star,So Tonight That I Might See (1993) ,Capitol,"Capitol “Fade Into You,” the dreamiest single of the ’90s, broke Mazzy Star through to the charts with its aching beauty. But anybody expecting their full-length to sustain that sense of fragile romance must have been shocked by the disquieting dread that hangs thick over So That Tonight I Might See, a dream-pop album with a gothic core. It plays out in a hallucinogenic swirl: Glimmers of warmth peek through the album’s lurching psychedelia, but they’re ephemeral, interrupted by stern, almost contemptuous blues riffs that glare into the distance. The harder you try to make eye contact with these songs, the more pointedly they avert your gaze. –Evan Rytlewski",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1naUpZyxK5e1WotmGWq9RLJUSoPqUVcg4L4oNRi1FRfyZcj | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/C5BN9bLtpHgEyx7MNKKgBuARJsGD6hr8syYpzKwm7ov8AmmcLX1wqVhpxRVNUGC12W9K4TdWhvkmUmqtuoTcQJy39iMVYRApCscgVryoYqDqhXEEgQV1qcZQXFxnJyfUgxaSGB8ds6zfYz7wiW2VKsyV29YS4KtfKAv56dP1f85uBkmFtHnL6P1 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5K18gTgac0q6Jma5HkV1vA | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/147475,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333181be5c4af791617a934/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mazzy%2520Star%2520-%2520So%2520Tonight%2520That%2520I%2520Might%2520See.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mazzy_Star-So_Tonight_That_I_Might_See_1993.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,115,Arthur Russell,Another Thought (1994),Point,"Point Arthur Russell was boundless, iridescent, and unplaceable. The Downtown New York composer and cellist from Iowa worked across styles—disco, folk, experimental, pop, contemporary classical—but every note was charged by the illumination that flowed from his voice and heart, gathered at the fount of his Buddhist practice. His name, largely unknown in his lifetime, is now synonymous with possibility, restlessness, and love. Another Thought was the first compilation of his iconoclastic work following his 1992 death from AIDS. The delicate dissonance and depth of his amplified cello, paired with his sublimely sensitive singing, comes alive on “This Is How We Walk on the Moon,” proof he saw the future; “Lucky Cloud,” embodying his vision’s borderlessness; and “Losing My Taste for the Night Life,” an introvert’s hymn. It is for good reason that Russell is now an avatar of misunderstood genius. The only comfort is to keep listening as voraciously as Russell did, each song moving, he sings, towards “another thought now.” –Jenn Pelly",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufeM9wF2xg4NAFcu5mvpd4LqcPapVK9ZZdph6Tn8QeNhChd9XpT | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/3Hvxm9czoAnByw5bJudy155hRgz4HyCyJ9tDMR4K1xHECoF6vhWARjTQ54iHw6M2V82vephGvLgQcNz7yaB625AFTrokYLhiCkb5ZFbbSaHXD4wMC2yDb2FhNbPdS99zfjSBUgpkBUSJGxDar6gFmDzyig1S1NEcrYtvRnF | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3pYFqjWzClbyDKvACv5bVQ | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/172343639,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331d9ff8085714fe37b0d9d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Arthur-Russell-This-Is-How-We-Walk-on-the-Moon.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Arthur_Russell-Another_Thought_1994.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,114,The Pharcyde,Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde (1992) ,Delicious Vinyl / EastWest,"Delicious Vinyl / EastWest With G-funk crumbling pavements in the Wild West, Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde offered a breezier boom-bap alternative. The Pharcyde were four knuckleheaded school friends from South Central L.A. who rapped about not getting girls and told “your mama” jokes in verses that could sound drunk and/or helium-high. Add in producer J Swift and his no-such-thing-as-sample-overkill attitude, and you have a madcap concoction that could never have come from any kind of tested recipe. –Dean Van Nguyen",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufaozdijNAvKczxZ7GuUbXbRAtGmitJJDkLDbQZMUDt52kvpur7 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/qsSkLvaohicCiNF2u5sRy7EaHrr8QBHsmzbUp2chj45Ue8bty9VB33hCfd6DmL3Z7ddgiGYA7eGBKavp844TFtJLVTXSyAQzpeRu1EivsJ43i6gdaFhFTe8TVRdeAswNmMZQxVL5AGeBYV1v22BzbWagTD3QeoQZkXxzAN3g7GrpbcKUKynPNYAB | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/48kU5gP41TqZEw32Cwhsna | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/33733635,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333196952d4bd45efccbe4b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The%2520Pharcyde%2520-%2520Bizarre%2520Ride%2520II%2520%2520The%2520Pharcyde.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Pharcyde-Bizarre_Ride_II_the_Pharcyde_1992.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,113,The Cranberries,"Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We? (1993) ",Island,"Island Before Dolores O’Riordan joined The Cranberries, she listened mainly to traditional Irish music and songs from her Catholic church, where she played the organ. She had never heard of Melody Maker or NME—“All I knew was that I was writing songs and saying what I felt,” she later remarked. But it was precisely that unvarnished earnestness—not a naïveté, as the press suggested, but a heartfelt lack of cynicism—that made The Cranberries’ 1993 debut, Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?, so singularly moving, so unblinkingly sincere, breaking open even the irony-scarred hearts of American college radio snobs. The Cranberries met O’Riordan’s chiming brogue with windswept string arrangements, delicate cymbal hits, and reverb-washed guitars. Listening to their music felt like reading the diary of a wood nymph—ethereal, enchanting, and slightly heartbreaking. But as much as O’Riordan’s lyrics define The Cranberries, it’s her wordless incantations, like that liberated, warbling cry before the last bridge of “Dreams,” that encapsulate their greatest feat: finding freedom, and even joy, in the great unknown. –Arielle Gordon",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufdt7bUzqNzAZsskCYDWr2V8wy4DBkceSdrqohEZp2UBbiCmvPR | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/Jy3CeSzU3u3mba7RyQh4FPJd1ddt7npuZrPrSvLmN5BBZQLmRzm9NmQ1LKsr8REmy5oHPkFZ7KkdX5wivrqfRzkiNCr6vCb4WeoiRKN5gMSVvjVVF8XKV9JTXDtAjNmc8N5B3b3KC3whufGNDASfJtBbfkm3hFqEGQiicYHkzBGAnXjrzi1H3bZmPgAyyCSUWF3m6Dj61M | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/0AP5O47kJWlaKVnnybKvQI | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/2570167,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63331a0888f1f0bb8bcfdbcc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The%2520Cranberries%2520-%2520Everybody%2520Else%2520Is%2520Doing%2520It%2520So%2520Why%2520Can_t%2520We_.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Cranberries-Everybody_Else_Is_Doing_It_So_Why_Cant_We_1993.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,112,Selena,Amor Prohibido (1994),EMI Latin,"EMI Latin Latinos who grew up in the U.S. have a saying—ni de aquí, ni de allá; neither from here, nor there. Selena, a Latina from Texas, was making music that sounded like and appealed to both sides of the borderlands. And as complicated as her estate has become, or the dark shadow cast by her tragic death, nothing can take away from the impact Amor Prohibido—her final studio release before her 1995 death—had on American culture at large. Amor Prohibido was playful and pleasurable, revelatory and confident as Selena’s booming voice detailed male toxicity in greater detail and power than ever before. Through the ’90s balladry of “Si Una Vez” and “No Me Queda Más,” and bangers like “El Chico Del Apartamento 512” and “Techno Cumbia,” Selena brought cumbia rhythms to mainstream attention. Amor Prohibido remains the best-selling Tejano album of all time, blasting the subgenre to national attention. Most importantly, it’s the moment where Selena transcended regional stardom and became American pop royalty. –Gio Santiago",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufapi3qzwehJxyZfFBK8jkZjTwMfLnAjWVZQFSnMtR1WiMU3dT5 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/X7niGYieCH8UQ8PGqdUBtg8M6SAMcPegELm2uaNkiXQqSRwp4HaQGxppbNbCMF44CZcGNECmFt4zQZRh1GRha7dMawYceYRW4wZ5aawxnYGHamg7dY8tkSu5G4CBB1UWkYZy8348o4emTCk1EubGSE34brHaYUU1mVNyu | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/6iv9WTw1nhNxSsgKaxMp4E | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/43893705,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63331ab4800c1a0f8721bb21/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Selena%2520-%2520Amor%2520Prohibido.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Selena-Amor_Prohibido_1994.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,111,Green Day,Dookie (1994),Reprise,"Reprise Every decade gets the punk rock it deserves. The brutal imperialism of the ’70s inspired the biting satire of the Dead Kennedys; the ’80s gave us Tipper Gore and, in response, Danzig. But by the ’90s, a decade into the far quieter brutality of Reaganomics and the Moral Majority, punk’s targets had become evasive. Absent any obvious villains, what could a teenager in the Oakland suburbs rebel against other than himself? Dookie, the Bay Area band’s major label debut, packaged up their neurotic, goofy, inward-facing jitters as neat, whip-fast pop perfection. Combining Brill Building vocal harmonies and palm-muted power chords, frontman Billie Joe Armstrong made apathy sound apoplectic. From “Burnout”’s disarmingly cheerful descent into total numbness to the bleakly sardonic portrait of urban decay on “Welcome to Paradise,” Dookie reached for humor to communicate helplessness. It was a clever sleight-of-hand that allowed Green Day to mask despair with dick jokes. For the downtrodden and the downwardly mobile, masturbating until you lose your mind can feel like rebellion, too. –Arielle Gordon",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam6nTGc3zEVbHR1J3JWJLFFR94LZN6Anug28sj6BufinnS4b1 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/ho5L3zdaYSc6AAnBd4uCzvQscAyrNJS2pATNPUhyGs49Uw9ghDqMPdqDaauWeD2PisepKxCC4QS8oaKf52H9x5CDXPvU4pp5CzbVGkqx6ygdbF1yLWMuFY6Za3PQiHBXyWHyynphnq4jtKAcqN8fxq5krK | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/4uG8q3GPuWHQlRbswMIRS6 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/225469 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KTsXHXMkJA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63331b4f8f0d7ac40b58df19/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Green%2520Day%2520%2520-%2520Dookie.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Green_Day-Dookie_1994.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,110,Gang Starr,Moment of Truth (1998),Virgin,"Virgin DJ Premier’s trademarked plinky piano loop kicks in seconds into “Work” and you go “uhh”—like, this is an insane oatmeal raisin cookie “uhh”—only for Guru to instantly echo your satisfaction with an “uhh” of his own. “I put in work,” he preens, “and watch my status escalate.” A quarter century later and 12 years since Guru left the planet, Moment of Truth’s status remains undisputed. The 1998 album—Gang Starr’s fifth total, and second after Guru’s landmark Jazzmatazz teamed him with Dr. Lonnie and Roy Ayers, among others—collects 20 tracks of spare Premier hip-hop beatcraft plus radically refined enunciation from Guru (calling himself “king of monotone,” a rare moment of self-deprecation, on the title cut). In the decades since, I’ve mostly listened to instrumentals of these tracks, luxuriating in Premier’s jazz snatches and other exotica-tinged samples, and meditating on the void left by Guru’s premature death. –Marc Weidenbaum",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/X7niGYieCH8UQ8PGqdUBtg8M6SAMcPegELm2uaNkiXQqSRwp4HaQGxppbNbCMF44CZcGNECmFt4zQZRh1GRha7dMawYcem9NgYABmUChcZhWfMfDyLjZn8415MCSny61SRH46XG9rqryU9Acfc5qKGXCfKvbdBN52sTJP | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5f6Nz2v1DESbpu1NerEql2 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/163843,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63331be6800c1a0f8721bb23/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Gang%2520Starr%2520-%2520Moment%2520of%2520Truth.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Gang_Starr-Moment_of_Truth_1998.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,109,Elastica,Elastica (1995),Deceptive / DGC,"Deceptive / DGC During Britpop’s heyday, Elastica were unjustly denied the same respect as peers like Blur and Suede in the powerful British music press. The best bits of “Connection” and “Waking Up”? Just rip-offs of Wire and the Stranglers. The band’s initial hype? It was little more than prurient interest in frontwoman Justine Frischmann's love triangle with Blur's Damon Albarn and Suede's Brett Anderson. But Elastica’s only real sin was making it all look so easy. Frischmann wrote wry lyrics about car sex, alcohol-fueled erectile dysfunction, and the tedium of making tea, and wrapped them around taut, bouncy hooks that got to the point and moved on. Elastica packs 15 tracks into a spring-loaded 38 minutes; Frischmann told anyone who wanted more to just rewind it. Good advice, then and now. –Jessica Suarez",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1qHvJtp7yYaMCX6xyunG6WyfYqgHLLUJXDXYzLLkpw13aQF | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/Ehjr9t1bfyFgs5GtcpxVsAdcRJm1vtb9Ubjx5sTFJYB6r2e4TjtG8vb1rkTFisrhHbExGSy1DgZK5HrzBQjdeFLuEEKV6e7s1Wxwg74bTYYGyR1rrnJajqv8U4tu6hSLLDhMdHFfRYdyNxZuse1spaShAUrDM | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/00MAXeszCotk3g9q8KYJlZ | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/35978050,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63331c979d26f5817514abb2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Elastica%2520-%2520Elastica.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Elastica-Elastica_1995.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,108,Mary J. Blige,What’s the 411? (1992),Uptown,"Uptown From the first refrain of her early single “Reminisce,” a mournful, sensual ex-sex jam, it was clear Mary J. Blige was not fronting. Her voice was raw with the travails of heartbreak and sounded perfectly imperfect, sidestepping the vocal flawlessness celebrated in R&B by letting emotion lead first—a revolutionary notion in the era of Jodeci’s choral masterpieces and Mariah’s operatic gymnastics. Her sound, too, signaled an evolution from new jack swing towards a more explicitly intertwined hip-hop and R&B, imbuing it with Blige’s emotional resonance and a Bronx-Yonkers vernacular. “Real Love” was a juggernaut that earned her the moniker the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul (initially a Puffy-inspired marketing gambit for radio stations confused by her porous genre lines), but every song on Blige’s debut knocked, even the slow jams. She was just 21, cool, and mad New York, embodying tough-girl sexy in oversized jerseys and doorknockers, and her entrance into the pop landscape was a revelation. –Julianne Escobedo Shepherd",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1rQh2WJddPpNftFmU4DxFM8rJCqFz8EBzTb57zJiFRKN3aB | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/7pktVSmKrEArFkpBqdMfGLHcpT6HuRciy3DF2VQWPYp65rc5KR9UUdfUYoaaPFxyTdqmiWj63Tye2G3skZVhupGVE8NfSN1GUep5ozppaJ5sPNZBaXKSA7kfZBCQqLeJwbQUAzLCus8XMgLMaZuAFsTaLUChwMLfSZVu | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5Q3xLiKnY4ShDuQda7qfg2 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/4533367,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63331d3752d4bd45efccbe4e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mary%2520J.%2520Blige%2520-%2520What_s%2520the%2520411_.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mary_J_Blige-Whats_the_411_1992.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,107,Smog,Knock Knock (1999),Drag City,"Drag City Bill Callahan has said that he intended Knock Knock, the seventh album under his Smog alias, to be a “teenage” album: big riffs, boundless attitude, wildcat and lightning bolt on the cover. Yet the songs, many of which were conceived behind the wheel of his Dodge van as he abandoned South Carolina following a breakup, examined entirely adult feelings and themes like empathy, self-knowledge, and regret. From the romantic promise of the opening “Let’s Move to the Country” to the kiss-off of “I Could Drive Forever” and the bruised farewell of the closing “Left Only With Love,” Knock Knock is charged with the pleasures and terrors of domestic comforts: budding families, abusive fathers, lonely suburban streets. In fact, the only song explicitly about adolescence, “Teenage Spaceship,” is a look back at a moment of serenity that Callahan seems to know he’ll never experience again. But the record’s keen-eyed depiction of promise and disappointment—paired with Jim O’Rourke’s inventive and exacting production—makes it one of the best in Callahan’s catalog. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1rQf5GnXdaN3trmzB9d7hjWYQZxG3RmyvmTcpe6Kuihde27 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/7EaqjGTiGVEZV17h8f56rTA6wXfeUBxFYyCZyWhithNoYDbspYy91PFy2zjsVdfZDudF8n92ctsgNTXa8VzXvAWsFLmZitdw4ppov35AqmdYVQvgAYc6FXjg4aKMEeJAd7ckm2mFVhXivaau2wby1 | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://smog.bandcamp.com/album/knock-knock | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3XzbVl7oibSdnmpCGzCK6A | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/111775115,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63331da2800c1a0f8721bb26/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Smog%2520-%2520Knock%2520Knock%2520.png,/dataset/artwork/Smog-Knock_Knock_1999.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,106,Tortoise,TNT (1998),City Slang,"City Slang Forget you’ve ever heard the term “post-rock,” and all its associations—windy album titles, yawning orchestral dirges, the word “cinematic.” Instead, try thinking of Tortoise’s third album, TNT, as the sound of several galaxies on a slow collision course. In the early ’90s, within the wake of Seattle’s grunge boom, at least five Billboard cover stories aimed to position Chicago as a grunge capital to rival the Pacific Northwest’s. Bands balked, alliances formed: Men from acts like Slint, Eleventh Dream Day, and Bastro blended with free jazz saxophonists and theatrical no-wavers for a strangely harmonious cosmic phalanx of punk, avant-garde, and jazz, intent on moving as far as possible from alt-rock’s earthbound mud. What came next was a strange, inconsistent universe: a constellation of spaghetti Western, Reichian patter, fusion noodling, krautrock locomotion. Skyward and too-much, Tortoise was an evolution—proof of entropy, a will to explore the colder perimeters of space, marginal by definition and design. –Mina Tavakoli",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2uxxCQ7Rfr7UdzaA2Zhf91GSEj296CGdcDtJKv6414tXY6CYHD4gRanNgp6FmttpZ95piYqozLaYFhHjuZWpk3K8JeNskNf4Pt8KW5v8bwk6ueCgXG5BTQX8Ve13DGpvv9WFEfifM | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8nansyqULpE8awBcBxybcmwRdNwmAjQJqXPnb27cgL4Vzo84YBtKZT5WKpYNqgSQMLb6dW9SDm1VfssSvfENk6ATpsCPAfbPhY5MV7h | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://tortoise.bandcamp.com/album/tnt | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/4JwjxPyISbFEUeh267bYbg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63331e2d52d4bd45efccbe50/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Tortoise%2520-%2520TNT.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tortoise-TNT_1998.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,105,Digable Planets,Blowout Comb (1994),EMI,"EMI Blowout Comb is among the lushest and most sublime of hip-hop albums: Unhurried tempos invite dreamy contemplation, while samples from old jazz records carry fragrant clouds of vibraphone and Fender Rhodes. Floating above the grooves, the deeply musical voices of Ishmael “Butterfly"" Butler, Mary Ann “Ladybug Mecca” Vieira, and Craig “Doodlebug” Irving are three points of a perfect triangle, so confident in their message of Black liberation they need never shout. The sonic beauty and effortless style are woven into a complex emotional tapestry—amid joyous odes to the group’s Brooklyn home are lines about racist policing, incarcerated heroes, and neglected communities—leading to an album that meets you wherever you are and sounds different every time you put it on. –Mark Richardson",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1mNfKbu3ECzJ78WeuG82pu6N3RT5XdFJ6pZU5AQKLQDL58w | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/MKEh7BpQXwWWp1Y3i6D9RjWuqrJsu9zvnz9d36jPMPvD98gTrNrqcRAvCcYCX4oSM9jZscHurCooXc4F442PjYSAu9nqaXvSfKP4Ymr2rubbMJ91FYSbkowV6Vj7K3a9LFFaEt3DS8gpwdJRW57nYLodRViULiYKD | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://pendulumrecords.bandcamp.com/album/blowout-comb | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5gvlpKnnINq8Z1YICdtiBt | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/1408942,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63331eb38f0d7ac40b58df1b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Digable%2520Planets%2520-%2520Blowout%2520Comb.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Digable_Planets-Blowout_Comb_1994.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,104,Pet Shop Boys,Behaviour (1990),Parlophone,"Parlophone Drugs and success’s pressures rocked much of England’s great gay ’80s wave before AIDS did: The Pet Shop Boys nevertheless ascended while others overdosed. But by 1990, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe knew their self-described “imperial phase” of staggering worldwide success was over. So on this, their fourth album, they emphasize elegy over energy, and often symphonic melodies rather than club-centric rhythms. Their drollery is still intact: a former editor of UK pop bible Smash Hits, Tennant takes down smug stars like only he can on “How Can You Expect to Be Taken Seriously?” But what gives the entire project life are the ghosts of countless AIDS fatalities summoned by meticulous analogue synth work overseen by Giorgio Moroder’s former collaborator Harold Faltermeyer, particularly on the haunted masterpiece, “Being Boring.” For those who survived, “All the people I was kissing/Some are here, and some are missing” remains one of pop’s saddest rhymes. –Barry Walters",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufdsoxnXcsSnVNc65bgPh6PFmMqF3gaFQEwMttEyimRghfHuPD5 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2h8zKZvUAqv9bScU3SWqLSQ14Mhv9oyTckCaWdKvQAMSEwpzRk9ZyFaLQTRhk6jgnu2rrAr2KwPPBGAYCm5mR38tzShbtmQjWDDUWh8qL8MmHAjELZXfxuyuxJicAM1FrbsMvtuyreL2GjbaXtnz1wsbyKiihZusnu5fPVtj8UbeQjcp9H | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/23uqrSQB0iXBCRx2Zc8STp,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63331f4ce02a17d9175e55e4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Pet%2520Shop%2520Boys%2520-%2520Behaviour.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Pet_Shop_Boys-Behaviour_1990.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,103,Air,Moon Safari (1998),Virgin,"Virgin As French house music started burning up dancefloors in the late ’90s, Moon Safari arrived for everybody who was trying to chill at home near the stereo. Air’s Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel made slinky electronics-bolstered lounge music—hookup jams that were at once of their era and an undeniable product of ’70s popular culture. Dainty robot voices sing “Kelly watch the stars” on a wistful track in homage to Jaclyn Smith’s Charlie’s Angels character; the instrumental “Ce Matin-lá” carries sweeping Bacharach and Love Unlimited Orchestra vibes, while Beth Hirsch’s vocals made the songs sound “like a space-age Carpenters,” as Godin once put it. It’s a bold series of vintage looks, but the duo’s earnestness makes Moon Safari camp without caricature. –Evan Minsker",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1mN3vMFPxBpmUesQiQeRL5iE1RfSTFWpH9dGHZ4oioSNdwH | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/5bwkygcD8TrHGdppHZSrwYPBcY7KL4rNhn7wPE5csqh9eBoYusiekNLU1NC9W1rwgTSxUn9pKQ4onuMDhZrhwx9sjB9aDAF1vkercvNxeaH9Miyg16NtKHdKvdGk8pTPmZL4E5pSksYdhVauTgLtaV3QKVUptpSf | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/206GTDefY2qRMQxYXmfb0a | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/43710473,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63331ff7f2e57bfbb7050064/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Air%2520-%2520Moon%2520Safari.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Air-Moon_Safari_1998.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,102,Wilco,Summerteeth (1999) ,Reprise,"Reprise Wilco’s 2002 album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is widely seen as the fault line dividing their formative roots-rock phase and their more boldly experimental second act, but its 1999 predecessor, Summerteeth, had already demonstrated an equally urgent desire to break free from their past. It’s just that, where Yankee infamously deconstructed their sound into dissonance and drones, Summerteeth aspired to be nothing less than the alt-country Pet Sounds. But the album’s hair-raising orchestral ascents and Mellotron-swirled luxuriousness can’t mask the deep distress in Jeff Tweedy’s lyrics—written during a rough patch in his marriage, songs like “She’s a Jar” and “Via Chicago” teeter perilously on the edge of where domestic disturbances turn into crime scenes. Today, Summerteeth also stands as a pristine portrait of the troubled relationship between Tweedy and late Wilco co-founder Jay Bennett, before well-documented discord triggered their aesthetic divorce. –Stuart Berman",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam6ofQ5LRjd2cotaNnRGM74ycFDmh9NXkhCGK5WaS7X37g5VM | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/5bwkygcD8TrHGdppHZSrwYPBcY7KL4rNhn7wPE5csqh9eBoYusiekNLU1NC9W1rwgTSxUn9pKQ4onuMDhZrhwx9sjB9aDBDaeRHH5E2a6b7XgY7Gaz3FrQxh8YwtoRCit965dneCGRSygEkxiCr7BWHg2AriNPDm | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1JpaFJzzcsiulO6MdIcQdK | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/369108,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333208c1dccce609e416373/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Wilco%2520-%2520Summerteeth.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Wilco-Summerteeth_1999.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,101,Built to Spill,Keep It Like a Secret (1999),Up / Warner Bros.,"Up / Warner Bros. Built to Spill’s most reassuring album, and the last of their trio of consecutive great ones, Keep It Like a Secret comforts like a hug from a friend who doesn’t usually do hugs. Band leader Doug Martsch cut through the cynicism of ’90s alt-rock with unabashed earnestness, singing about psyches and bodies buckling under the weight of societal pressures while insisting we’re more than the weight of our adolescent traumas. “Count your blemishes/You can’t, they’re all gone,” he sings on “Carry The Zero,” as guitars cry along. You can be forgiven for joining them. –Evan Rytlewski",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufamCgZYcZgFKbji3SaQmvddCidKRc1sdcoqFDYb6qHNGAsVWpT | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/29CLTwheRZNbn8esbYm7MXCvBW5AqRiuV2rkxzL68ZhZakTS8MPQjntM9eJYYf8EpCq592XdCBpDEyUwpZUBUL7o8wUGv77bDYmuMU5Qh7fMCA3T7pmTAKRBf4GJDVSpN4bEJjQmL4NF2xS6h7kqaJqY5a5JkJ5ykaFyt19Uqkb4Y3 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2PKZhfPrgMmK5zug2pqdHA | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/34433618,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63332129800c1a0f8721bb28/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Built%2520to%2520Spill%2520-%2520Keep%2520It%2520Like%2520a%2520Secret.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Built_to_Spill-Keep_It_Like_a_Secret_1999.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,100,Jim O’Rourke,Eureka (1999),Drag City,"Drag City At the end of the ’90s, underground music’s foremost hyphenate tossed a surprising title onto the dashboard: singer-songwriter. Before Eureka, Jim O’Rourke had played hurdy-gurdy on more tracks than he’d sung lead. Nowadays, there’s a sizable audience that associates him not with noise collaborations or guitar experiments but a clutch of exquisitely wrought pop-rock releases from the turn of the century. Warm yet prickly in the rumpled tradition of Harry Nilsson, the album includes allusions to the perilous performance art of Chris Burden, a poignantly faithful Bacharach cover, and finely crafted chamber-pop arrangements played by the cream of Chicago’s jazz and indie rock scenes. Guiding it all are the steady hands of O’Rourke, who can set a cello and steel pan to dance, or make a shaker sound meditative. –Brad Shoup",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufiiarcdB4At2E9Bk5qJEtWBNAHNtExfTLL582f2aE4KWhSHHCf | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/ho5L3zdaYSc6AAnBd4uCzvQscAyrNJS2pATNPUhyGs49Uw9ghDqMPdqDaauWeD2PisepKxCC4QS8oaKf52H9x5CDXPvU4rHGDPGP1SMhikJJwuWbfbYhvD6V8NdjHnLMmUaYstpUiZLUKgDAJjecywjKa3 | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://jimorourke.bandcamp.com/album/eureka | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/244161234,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333220f8f0d7ac40b58df1d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jim%2520O_Rourke%2520-%2520Eureka.png,/dataset/artwork/Jim_ORourke-Eureka_1999.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,99,The Flaming Lips,The Soft Bulletin (1999),Warner Bros.,"Warner Bros. Few records have fundamentally shifted the trajectory of a band’s career as The Soft Bulletin did for the Flaming Lips. Nine albums and 16 years into their existence, The Soft Bulletin redirected these presumed one-hit wonders from the cut-out bin to the top line on the festival poster, transforming an irreverent fuzz-rock band into deeply philosophical emissaries of circus-sized orchestral spectacle, nun puppet and all. But while it’s impossible to hear the opening drum strike of “Race for the Prize” without picturing exploding confetti cannons and human-sized plastic bubbles, The Soft Bulletin’s breathtaking symphonic-rock rapture is ultimately a function of escapist fantasia crashing into cold, hard truths. Spinning real-life stories of drug addiction and the loss of parents into sweetly sung, wondrous fables, the album remains an indispensable support system for dealing with the problems and stresses that await us outside the venue once all that confetti gets swept up. –Stuart Berman",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufdqv1HhWEsXUCjHUABQJsSM1Jw7AhJvnFgcjfJXmHeNqDwNJrF | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/meh9fHuiYWLjqSgj7XHZWWWEHEHsDNtLyJtA7tHqnKwM7w8ZUnQNeCSNeb3E3hQnYn62ABcNP6jQGetLxhRE5Xxv9HWQ56VaMgK5fd37DUMrxSWoLqMcW9yt7jxfXG1oyZehLicxBb2KwAejmxGsD8u2vjcxkAutXThmvo4yR | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1mJFgPeuLhU1PzLNBURdJC | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/75023234 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvfxKbpoxRE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633324d3cb86801423062e66/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The%2520Flaming%2520Lips%2520-%2520The%2520Soft%2520Bulletin.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Flaming_Lips-The_Soft_Bulletin_1999.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,98,Smashing Pumpkins,Siamese Dream (1993),Virgin,"Virgin In the video for “Today,” Smashing Pumpkins’ breakthrough single, Billy Corgan stars as a dorky ice cream man who reads comic books and imagines sexy couples making out all around him. He is by far the least cool-looking person in the clip, and that’s the point. With their second album, the Chicago quartet dive-bombed into a rock era defined by rawness and DIY humility armed with guitar-god solos, drum theatrics, and production that made every second of the 62-minute opus sound as pristine as the Hope Diamond. Siamese Dream was an alternative to punk piety, and it soon became an alt-rock blueprint for generations to come. Throughout the record, Corgan coos and sneers as he works through troubling childhood memories and suicidal depression, his trauma turning triumphant when matched with so many squealing riffs. “Life’s a drag!” he sings, smearing the last word across five ecstatic syllables, and making human existence sound like a bummer that’s very much worth living. –Ryan Dombal",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufambngiF5drHq7RsPvmSFut4onZrqS64u3xYYoWX5iJ5Zm1yEb | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2YfVS2JkEsZbGaVN2xMzcCAf2EcdufCigRyF44GJ5f29ratuBWwUyZKgmpFrhqhmxswYt6NmeGB7aN5jK2UM9Lmk6hBoKRw4nJj979e92mc836SxWaoFyDQ9eSjZLKLXNmrjYz91ZjobQDubefNE1bkiMTWJPXQiorB | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/0bQglEvsHphrS19FGODEGo | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/10643304,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633325e412e43930baa6dcc4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Smashing%2520Pumpkins%2520-%2520Siamese%2520Dream.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Smashing_Pumpkins-Siamese_Dream_1993.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,97,A Tribe Called Quest,Midnight Marauders (1993),Jive,"Jive Faced with the task of following up 1991’s classic The Low End Theory, A Tribe Called Quest responded by adding just the right touches of conceptual breadth and subtle innovation. From its multiple album cover designs celebrating a community of (literal) hip-hop heads to its playful, proto-Siri interludes, Midnight Marauders positioned Tribe as unifiers and humanizers amid modern life’s estrangements. The record was at turns thoughtful (the N-word defense language discourse “Sucka Nigga”) and self-deprecating (“8 Million Stories,” a comical chronicle of mundane struggles), but it most dominantly emoted joy. Across a dazzling boom-bap production-scape that merged Blue Note, original school breaks, and Quiet Storm classics, Q-Tip and Phife sounded ebullient, their vocal chemistry offering a comprehensive study in abstract/wisecrack interplay. From statements of purpose like “Award Tour” to the ecstatic rhyme exercise “Lyrics to Go” to the bawdy pick-up lines of “Electric Relaxation,” the pair exuded comradery and affection. It was Tribe’s true love movement. –Jeff Mao",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam6rCRnW3c9x5GTWYnWfQ1ZVW6uWup8RZuBACf5hrXQhMhCiX | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/meh9fHuiYWLjqSgj7XHZWWWEHEHsDNtLyJtA7tHqnKwM7w8ZUnQNeCSNeb3E3hQnYn62ABcNP6jQGetLxhRE5Xxv9HWQ4uWDe4QeNsaCDybNsXv2syWn8EBmbVrq7ebBk5nAoQCxxqyfJ7cpELXuZmqVvJbu8Jc12gmXGtawm | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/4v5x3Oo3UjQ9YmF3hRAip5 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/1104286,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633326801dccce609e4163ae/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/A%2520Tribe%2520Called%2520Quest%2520-%2520Midnight%2520Marauders.jpg,/dataset/artwork/A_Tribe_Called_Quest-Midnight_Marauders_1993.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,96,Primal Scream,Screamadelica (1991),Shock,"Shock Primal Scream made it all sound far too easy on Screamadelica, whose combination of classic songwriting and electronic production left an early high-water mark for forward-thinking rock music in the 1990s. Listening to the Scottish group’s third LP, it seemed only natural that house, blues, soul, dub, ambient, rave, and psychedelic rock should come together in 65 minutes of joyful music; it seemed somehow right that a gang of MC5-obsessed rockers on their critical uppers should create a work of ecstasy-blasted euphoria that provided the Day-Glo yin to Nirvana’s turbulent yang. The results were the epitome of unfettered musical instinct, as Primal Scream and their motley crew (including producer/DJ Andrew Weatherall, ambient-house pioneers the Orb, singer Denise Johnson, former PiL bass player Jah Wobble, and Rolling Stones producer Jimmy Miller) powered through the history of modern music and into the future, operating on inspiration and too many early mornings. Its ragtag bag of influences meant Screamadelica sounded a lot like many people, but no one sounded quite like Screamadelica, an album both perfectly of its time and light years ahead of the rock/dance curve. –Ben Cardew",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam7WPMRWYh2CiwLRZzWzi2Zrwefgg1ffaC3gSkQCRHhLoxLmy | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2YfVS2JkEsZbGaVN2xMzcCAf2EcdufCigRyF44GJ5f29ratuBWwUyZKgmpFrhqhmxswYt6NmeGB7aN5jK2UM9Lmk6hBoKRvzYMw8rR27onu6HDBWpJQGLciybVy4BRtu3oKHtGzLYwta7CUN6ktf6sqzdJ4Nq9182GK | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/4TECsw2dFHZ1ULrT7OA3OL | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/35247980,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633326d9800c1a0f8721bb2c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Primal%2520Scream%2520-%2520Screamadelica.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Primal_Scream-Screamadelica_1991.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,95,Ice Cube,Death Certificate (1991),Priority,"Priority No Jheri curl, no mercy. Over molten funk and soul loops, Ice Cube spends Death Certificate accosting every American person, demographic, and structure that he sees as an impediment to Black power. The concept album—divided into a death side mirroring the times and a life side imagining an improved future—is fiendishly specific and textured, gangster rap as sworn deposition and apocalyptic fever dream. When Los Angeles exploded in protest the following year over the acquittals of three LAPD officers who brutalized Rodney King, Death Certificate’s caustic verses evoking fiery Black insurrection proved prophetic. But the album’s urgent mood relies on tension as well as outright flamethrowing. Cube plays both storyteller and polemicist, couching the threats to burn it all down in slow-building narratives set in hospital waiting rooms, jail cells, and Korean-owned package stores. As he brings these locales to life with humor, wit, and irritation alongside rage, the album reveals itself to be more testament than manifesto—one rapper’s constant proximity to death informing an unapologetic vision of life. –Stephen Kearse",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufemb78zXNxrK5nCesQqN1DhGZp1Zhbdm5J2zUV2Lm5xFd2PC8K | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/meh9fHuiYWLjqSgj7XHZWWWEHEHsDNtLyJtA7tHqnKwM7w8ZUnQNeCSNeb3E3hQnYn62ABcNP6jQGetLxhRE5Xxv9HWQ4fLsjyw4zP1DTwQVUr9kQGd7P36GRWuMpDD4je3DkQkzUnDfdxs6m42b9RexRyLzJVWG9yTDJ8scP | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/062N80S3hs96dOhFzmvfLj | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/202134871,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63332788f2e57bfbb7050068/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ice%2520Cube%2520-%2520Death%2520Certificate.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ice_Cube-Death_Certificate_1991.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,94,No Doubt,Tragic Kingdom (1995),Trauma / Interscope,"Trauma / Interscope Gwen Stefani’s heartbreak became No Doubt’s glory, fueling the SoCal ska-pop group’s powerhouse third album, Tragic Kingdom. The soon-to-be-iconic frontwoman wrote her way through a breakup with the band’s bassist, Tony Kanal, resulting in a series of hits that juxtaposed her pain with frolicking rhythms and liberal explorations of ska, disco, and new wave. But it was “Just a Girl,” the album’s snarky wink of a lead single—with muscular, looping guitar from Tom Dumont backing Stefani’s affected warble—that captured the feminist attitude of the time and helped them conquer the mainstream. With Tragic Kingdom, No Doubt seemed to ask: What if, instead of crying over all that hurt, you could kick the door down, throw one helluva party, and skank your way better? –Amanda Wicks",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1rZc87emZjYTP1sLQcwj9o29yZdCiJkUAu1eeazSCZU4aEw | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/X7niGYieCH8UQ8PGqdUBtg8M6SAMcPegELm2uaNkiXQqSRwp4HaQGxppbNbCMF44CZcGNECmFt4zQZRh1GRha7dMawYcetaEJyGkYHhTcWnjgpRquYqGovd6oe5N8RLjXsGTdAzRcxTtbrCDcTS4RGd2wNoc9ijaZVvWo | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3VekjWskUut57hx6W9wqL8 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/35971908,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633328039dd3784d119dceb3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/No%2520Doubt%2520-%2520Tragic%2520Kingdom.jpg,/dataset/artwork/No_Doubt-Tragic_Kingdom_1995.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,93,Beck,Odelay (1996),DGC,"DGC Listening to Odelay is like watching a Vegas revue made from the trash we left behind. He’s karaoke country, he’s toy-commercial rap, he’s rhinestone-studded soul. You get the sense Beck is having fun with it, but also that he’s lost in translation: After all, “I’ve got a devil’s haircut in my mind” doesn’t make sense no matter how passionately you scream it. As much as the album captured the eclecticism of mid-’90s bohemia, it also glimpsed the attention-deficient moment to come. This is music that came out before most people had cell phones, when the internet came from a plug in the wall. Where early hip-hop had used sampling and collage to bring disparate sounds together, Odelay created a feeling of almost perpetual dislocation, but also of wonder: The lights that keep flashing and the pings that keep pinging whether you know where they’re coming from or not. –Mike Powell",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufeJFLareLMtxLLmxNcv6DUB5KhV3ZkBc757uN4fbAJ5VVNeNp3 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/ho5L3zdaYSc6AAnBd4uCzvQscAyrNJS2pATNPUhyGs49Uw9ghDqMPdqDaauWeD2PisepKxCC4QS8oaKf52H9x5CDXPvU56Y551VAWG2G5fdWXoeiaM2uFypHvZjSS1hwoewxHXoSRGDigZx1n538PZJwGF | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1Pus5h1qGedCn4CtOuPVtp | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/79169803,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333288b9dd3784d119dceb5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Beck%2520-%2520Odelay.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beck-Odelay_1996.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,92,Autechre,Amber (1994) ,Wax Trax!,"Wax Trax! Autechre’s second album soothes with one hand and abrades with the other. The comforting touch makes the irritant all the more effective; there’s so much warm bathwater flowing over your skin that you don’t realize it’s being sanded away. The Manchester electronic duo released Amber on Warp as the label entered its most emblematic era, when albums from Aphex Twin, Nightmares on Wax, and Boards of Canada would pinch UK dance music into a tight, heady corner. The record taught successive generations of hyperfocused sound sculptors that you didn’t need more than a handful of off-the-shelf tools to render lurid, immersive environments; that nausea could feed pleasure rather than upend it; that with enough patience, fertilizer, and poison, impossible landscapes can grow. –Sasha Geffen",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam7EUwZtaceN1BLN5iabZJzhNUNFfEcp9LxA1rvg4mKfrMYVH | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/36TDN37JM9t1EvKKNRQCGk3CY6xhpL8WggqiWdjnLMJ4zBzMchvYX7vd3g1nFoMMe8FPVsZtHzDAnYLLnLqKuNeiDtw9sRUwe8EiJNQQeJP2L8gkthMbZNtBApNuKZxN83yWTze8QU2CGhRhV83Vwm4f | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://autechre.bandcamp.com/album/amber | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/7EfhvG3RwdhzXrFlkDVxg4 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/16024625,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333291de02a17d9175e55e7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Autechre%2520-%2520Amber.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Autechre-Amber_1994.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,91,Weezer,Weezer (Blue Album) (1994) ,DGC,"DGC Mainstream pop culture was not always so obsessed with superheroes and nerds named Sheldon; for many years, rock stars were insatiable creatures, not insecure dorks. Weezer leader Rivers Cuomo wasn’t single-handedly responsible for this shift, but his bespectacled presence from 1994 onward was like a flare to the sky for rock geeks everywhere. The wholesomeness of the first and greatest of Weezer’s color-coded eponymous albums—from the Beach Boys harmonies and X-Men lyrics to the Happy Days-inspired “Buddy Holly” video coming preloaded on Windows 95—is matched by a sour note, upon closer listening. You can hear it in the ultra-crisp hard-rock riffs, the loud-soft dynamic cribbed from the Pixies, and most of all, the record’s animating tension, between crushing vulnerability and uncomfortable jokes about the opposite sex (if released today, someone would surely call it an incel classic). This is the dream-shame space of kids who fear the rules but long to break them, of boys and girls who feel rejected before they even try, and it is one of the most powerful forces that can propel a modern guitar record. No wonder Blue and its even more curdled follow-up, 1996’s Pinkerton, became classics of third-wave emo and sensitive indie rock alike. –Jill Mapes",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1rQwqWSQH5M1CnRcvfexUeZaumvyo1VNZkKqVN8DhQTRgcB | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/ho5L3zdaYSc6AAnBd4uCzvQscAyrNJS2pATNPUhyGs49Uw9ghDqMPdqDaauWeD2PisepKxCC4QS8oaKf52H9x5CDXPvU5J2H3oyM3toXkK7DqYNiynFvGWMBRWCNTrNadesRc2BuL4JWC5FvgFJUApL54o | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1xpGyKyV26uPstk1Elgp9Q | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/3345768,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633329cc10c581ffac68d20e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Weezer%2520-%2520Weezer%2520%255BBlue%2520Album%255D.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Weezer-Weezer_Blue_Album_1994.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,90,Ghostface Killah,Ironman (1996),Epic Street,"Epic Street Ghostface Killah recorded Ironman in a burst of uneasy adrenaline, fresh off the incarceration of his best friend and a frightening diabetes diagnosis. The fact that he’s never been happy with the result—“deadlines will fuck you up,” he told Okayplayer in 2021, on occasion of the album’s 25th anniversary—only testifies to the impossibility of confining the splatter of his unruly mind to one canvas. Without the Al Green flips on “Iron Maiden” and “260” or the sunlit Jackson 5 sample on “All That I Got Is You,” there would be no soul loops as rap fans understand them today—a young Kanye West cited Ghostface as the originator of his style, and made the beats for The Blueprint with him in mind. Without Ghostface’s furry Kangols and two-toned Wallabees, Cam’ron would have never worn pink or driven a Laffy Taffy-colored Range Rover; without the comic-book style lettering on the front, a young Daniel Dumile would have never donned the mask to become MF DOOM. Ghost’s influence spread so wide in part because he felt so human and touchable. In a group of rough shouters, he raised his voice in anxiety as often as in anger, and he remains the only Wu member capable of making you weep for him, as he did on the Mary J. Blige-assisted “All That I Got Is You.” He would refine his bugged-out panoramas on 2000’s Supreme Clientele, but Ironman injected the first operatic note into gangsta rap, and it’s trembled with strange, ungovernable emotions ever since. –Jayson Greene",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam6puHuCsaD9yiAzfRrCa2XhBi3G1kwZa6MnhajoedPDeAkVR | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/ho5L3zdaYSc6AAnBd4uCzvQscAyrNJS2pATNPUhyGs49Uw9ghDqMPdqDaauWeD2PisepKxCC4QS8oaKf52H9x5CDXPvU4x1DyqKW11BMGnd9K1EFYhXLrbHqFGtyQ6tjswVKuqsD9xrKgRJVZhCF2voeJ7 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2jCjUgaDh9lVGju6u3cGvK | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/1270792,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63332a7dd997a1f3e8a0cef7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ghostface%2520Killah%2520-%2520Ironman.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Ghostface_Killah-Ironman_1996.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,89,Sonny Sharrock,Ask the Ages (1991) ,Axiom,"Axiom Even in jazz, singularity can be a burden. With asthma precluding him from the sax, Sonny Sharrock bent and hammered his guitar strings to sound like the tenor players he worshiped. The style he developed in the ’60s—which sometimes suggested the sound of someone forging a sword out of lava—made him an odd fit in a scene that had tilted from free jazz toward fusion. He bowed out in the mid ’70s but emerged a decade later, his gifts fully appreciated and intact. His last release before his death at 53, Ask the Ages was the culmination of this comeback: a taut, modern set showcasing his tonal and compositional abilities. He recruited two key figures from John Coltrane’s spiritual-jazz era, drummer Elvin Jones and saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, and set them loose on prickly modal slouches, skronky workouts, and some of his stickiest melodies: “Who Does She Hope to Be?” is a candidate for the most plaintive ballad—in any genre—of the decade. –Brad Shoup",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam7SScqYmBGMsTXRVjfU1CDEdSX3LxFCr7g77FFKTzRE3otqy | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2YfVS2JkEsZbGaVN2xMzcCAf2EcdufCigRyF44GJ5f29ratuBWwUyZKgmpFrhqhmxswYt6NmeGB7aN5jK2UM9Lmk6hBoKQxQvqytvHbaDYMw2SWsWqXpqdeHt3JfhGA1MbC6PEnMJjL6JMikiGczvCTaxdLx5QvV5AB | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/0Fx1VWICKcxrZqHJp2l8Jw | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/35708647,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63333d85e02a17d9175e55e9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sonny%2520Sharrock%2520-%2520Ask%2520the%2520Ages.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sonny_Sharrock-Ask_the_Ages_1991.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,88,Sonic Youth,Goo (1990),DGC,"DGC When Sonic Youth signed with major label DGC for their 1990 album Goo, some feared they had abandoned the underground. As if. Goo takes the destructive bliss defined by its predecessor Daydream Nation and sharpens it—but only a smidge. The resulting songs are some of their finest, from the warped “Dirty Boots” to Kim Gordon’s devastating tribute to Karen Carpenter, “Tunic (Song for Karen).” As usual, Sonic Youth were ahead of the curve: One year later, punk would break and every major label would invest in alternative bands that they hoped could crash the charts. (For their part, DGC crossed their fingers that an album called Nevermind would match the sales of Goo.) But few bands ever “sold out” and remained as untouchably cool as Sonic Youth. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1rQgxtkRhKmBf1ecHtf6LWcn6dn64eWnhjvThgukEomMZBH | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/UWxN5ZEu9McrNbWY8o36qGTBDgMaP1LsE744YS6juBDEQncwJt6nLhF4KorDsNqBDyGyPLES9Rxgmi5wE6xwTezpnJFhRgLMxokijSvDnBU3vsWb4EwFs4jSxFgRQGErzdzMY8xGPSW9or4aVDEDGP | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iYYQwB0oH9FVyVlaOXZdr | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/3525076,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331c199f2e57bfbb7050005/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sonic-Youth-Kool-Thing.png,/dataset/artwork/Sonic_Youth-Goo_1990.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,87,DJ Screw,3 ’N The Mornin’ Part Two (1996),BIGTIME,"BIGTIME DJ Screw was an effortless curator of vibes, an intuitive conductor of rhythm and a notorious workaholic known for his nocturnal habits and nonstop hustle. The basics of chopped and screwed are simple: two copies of the same record are slowed down side-by-side, with one track a beat behind the other to create the stuttering “chopped” rhythm. But Screw was a turntablist wizard before he ever slowed music down, and there’s an electric unpredictability to his mixing that never resorts to formula. 3 ’N the Mornin’ Part Two is one of Screw’s signature works not just because it was one of the few retail projects he released during his lifetime, but because it’s such a vivid time capsule of Texas rap—essentially, an extended studio session with local legends like Lil’ Keke, Big Moe, and Point Blank. In the years since, his music has spread from the trunk speakers of Houston to the earbuds of the world, passed along like folklore through burned CDs and zip files, revived by Drake samples and Megan Thee Stallion freestyles and the Moonlight soundtrack, summoned by every kid making vaporwave remixes in their bedroom. But there’s no mistaking homage for the original—it’s only screwed if Robert Earl Davis made it. –Nadine Smith",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufanoKdZmJzS2Ztnx3ppyFWRmEeChHaqCiy8icQfwJHXiAJSWhy | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/4Q5NDE1dgN4W84pNLsng6VFE1cdfSddbd9XvoFPPLK4asobvNMdQAXBUzYuEpauMz3G1A7Xq7NYJ9i6Dd6qPvj1foZZrkhH1jqa3vStqGyspaGagYpjxj5ggekb9FD4fKXfjuSxrwvudrECmMzcqZLBAFqbgS4Bw7iSKpx1ZCj5 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2F7xZ22zn1KZRlM4v6M9de | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/38386485,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63333fdc800c1a0f8721bb2f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/DJ%2520Screw%2520-%25203%2520_n%2520the%2520Mornin_%2520(Part%2520Two).jpeg,/dataset/artwork/DJ_Screw-3_N_The_Mornin_Part_Two_1996.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,86,Spiritualized,Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space (1997),Dedicated,"Dedicated In Jason Pierce’s musical quest to hit as many pleasure receptors as real heroin, the high has never been more pure and terrible than on Spiritualized’s 1997 masterpiece. Painstakingly constructed from performances by the band, a string quartet, a gospel choir, and Dr. John, Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space blurs shoegaze sleep paralysis into full-throated gospel deliverance into lullaby harmonica blues. The noise burns like a sunspot, the light at the end of a tunnel stretching from the first church bell chime of the title track to the decaying ebb of “Cop Shoot Cop…,” the ultimate comedown. Never duplicated, Ladies and Gentlemen is an album of bared teeth and tender romantic underbelly, a secret password to the hearts of the surliest old heads in indie rock. –Anna Gaca",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufeHryhmVryoPgTpbMiebWbCs88q3c6rtEwt6gpCE9e3QSqCGcK | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/32ZjHBEcANQ5znEtfywfuDew5mP7JSZTbEhWXqjfKUWLhs1aKFqJc4xKe8d3Qhu6VbXALAYfKoDKUSvH7bu9DYDavkzaJDJnPB6X1yJq615CLB66Jdgn49BrmEgvoMyPwbGEuo1rrhht9NSEWqKjgmLehhZhNKdQobfMHoycLNX6pdbCFY9wAJsTTDD6FX4sao61BZgMsuvzPYy9 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/56YzQ0dhmRMDryZsrjdHun | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/134049292,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633340b052d4bd45efccbe58/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Spiritualized.png,/dataset/artwork/Spiritualized-Ladies_and_Gentlemen_We_Are_Floating_in_Space_1997.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,85,Godspeed You! Black Emperor,F♯ A♯ ∞ (1997),Constellation / Kranky,"Constellation / Kranky Upon first listen, you might mistake Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s first album of chilling and expansive post-rock for an apocalyptic prophecy intercepted from an extraterrestrial frequency. “We’re trapped in the belly of this horrible machine/And the machine is bleeding to death,” the narrator of “Dead Flag Blues” states in a deadpan growl. But for each foreboding drone, there’s a glimmer of hope: jubilant glockenspiel, wistful bagpipes, the crashing drums halfway through “Providence.” GY!BE were not only interested in illustrating our broken world, but also in radicalizing listeners to do something about it. Like the penny flattened by passing trains that comes with each vinyl copy—a symbol of the force needed to bend and break capitalism—F♯ A♯ ∞ is both a warning and an inspiration. –Nina Corcoran",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufaouESx2WLsqcqN1gGGfBrqdtsmJ2R63jVcSqugSNYdY5qiYd9 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2QvS63bbj2Qv8FXWwJEcmHMBrxtMGgBhuZDbCu3Ru3MM4Sxw7F3JDmvEbtbdpGZJGcV9e79ciDCwEUJoUXasxYcKBVwxSnt7mpn1ca8Ny3Xt9yPzHFgo9XJ6M9gnVFJG5AoENifadQTixxEjNCwd | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://godspeedyoublackemperor.bandcamp.com/album/f-a | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/7sh2Z8jj1iySpHRAnGd9w5 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/18056906,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333417d4e7c28d8b1f4c505/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Godspeed%2520You!%2520Black%2520Emperor%2520-%2520F#a#_.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Godspeed_You_Black_Emperor-F_A__1997.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,84,OutKast,ATLiens (1996),LaFace,"LaFace ATLiens is simultaneously an excavation into the city of OutKast’s childhood and a farewell to it. It is a solemn ruin of cross streets, landmarks, aggrieved ballads, and defensive young men talking past one another. Its muted funk licks and fathomless basslines are transmissions from a subterranean bunker, or, if you prefer, deep space. The slow contemplation yields intricate characters—dour pimps, half-aware caricatures, backwoods philosophers. Yet the miracle of ATLiens lies in its digression. “Babylon,” for instance, is at once a graphic account of Andre 3000’s sexual history and a heartfelt tribute to Big Boi’s late aunt. This yin and yang would prove OutKast’s undoing, but on ATLiens it makes for a fascinatingly humane dialogue, creative partners maintaining brilliant correspondence while failing to meet one another’s eyes. –Pete Tosiello",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam6waw3xP9CFZbhUWyCzv8AXxKtnMuySuTo8cPsbDRoroS6CT | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/ho5L3zdaYSc6AAnBd4uCzvQscAyrNJS2pATNPUhyGs49Uw9ghDqMPdqDaauWeD2PisepKxCC4QS8oaKf52H9x5CDXPvU4kXzMeipU6oQEijnMKY3wbTNcJ3hRNcuRA7TYBCks4FQ3gih4Rm4GVJ5f8m46P | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1IaBCF26OjgYwUCEPaIyC0 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/43956,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333422153f23a34218e58ec/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/OutKast%2520-%2520ATLiens.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/OutKast-ATLiens_1996.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,83,Slint,Spiderland (1991),Touch and Go,"Touch and Go Spiderland is the loudest quiet record of the ’90s, a harrowing experience of psychic despair and physical desolation whose impact was as significant as its record sales were fallow. (To tweak the old saying, less than 10,000 people bought a copy but every one of them started a post-rock band.) The members of Slint were four regular guys from Louisville, Kentucky, prone to goofs and pranks—that they made such a profoundly bleak record characterized by negative space and brooding contemplation speaks to the mundanity of depression and its unbreakable hold on the spirit. As the story goes, singer Brian McMahan checked himself into a psychiatric hospital the morning after recording was finished. His vocals toggle between plaintive spoken word and pained howls, as David Pajo’s guitar lines stretch and wobble like power lines swaying in the wind. The songs are beyond summary, because to say that “Good Morning, Captain” is about missing someone is to say that Moby Dick is about going fishing. Thirty years after it reshaped rock music with the potential to create an unknowable atmosphere, Spiderland is still a portal to a haunted America where ghosts lurk in every forgotten crevice. –Jeremy Gordon",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufdr7eZp2H1ecZdeHkpnJG7vZbVbJe4GHZpQqTePfzLswAKUpPd | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8nansyqULpE8awBcBxybcmwRdNwmAjQJqXPnb2Qeq93UEk6y7UHHnveKx7GrahbdDyHbE4ajSnbRBekeTiXFtRFhut4cYTC8d5pVARq | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://slint.bandcamp.com/album/spiderland | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2NnkLRaeX33d1Mn8ZLgTo8 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/61685321,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633342b7925ae3b60287abfd/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Slint%2520-%2520Spiderland.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Slint-Spiderland_1991.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,82,The Chicks,Fly (1999),Monument,"Monument The Chicks begin Fly, their fifth album, by running from love, and they end it ready to say goodbye to a relationship that can’t be fixed. Heralded by Natalie Maines’ twangy yelps and pace-quickening arrangements of banjo, violin, and guitar, the trio fight against domestic standards, instead painting relationships with men as dangerous, limiting, and boring. “Goodbye Earl,” which tells the story of two best friends who murder an abusive ex and then start a farm together, is Fly’s emotional centerpiece: a snarling, intensely funny quest for justice and a celebration of the safety found in bonds with other women. Their desire to find wild and unruly love shines through, but often as a means for self actualization rather than yearning for any particular person. Fly laid the groundwork for the group’s more explicitly political era, too: These were women who honored their truest desires and paid no attention to what others wanted from them. –Vrinda Jagota",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufamJopeULwRbVX5W7Se1SRknvX9qVjd6BWhNwYwkSFzjEAqCoD | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/7EaqjGTiGVEZV17h8f56rTA6wXfeUBxFYyCZyWhithNoYDbspYy91PFy2zjsVdfZDudF8n92ctsgNTXa8VzXvAWsFLmZiqZkit4hh1SdHNv2RLhY9kHKRyafdC84kRwxqt4v1K5v8dCynpV1aghJK | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3y6G5El2I6QrJA9BdfAbqA | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/211826912,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633343344632279182b1c6b9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The%2520Chicks%2520-%2520Fly.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Chicks-Fly_1999.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,81,Radiohead,The Bends (1995),Parlophone,"Parlophone Between the grunge pastiche of Pablo Honey and the outsize art-rock of OK Computer, The Bends arrived as an unlikely milestone for Britpop and for Radiohead itself. The band worked with mainstay producer Nigel Godrich for the first time, and Thom Yorke blew his previous songwriting out of the water, signaling a visionary future. Some of the quintet’s most reliable traits emerged: stadium-singalong balladry; cryptic lyrics about capitalist dread, artificiality, and paranoia; deceptively complex guitar lines that could split the ground open or gorgeously float through space and time; Yorke’s unmistakable falsetto. Radiohead managed to expand upon this framework en route to most acclaimed rock catalog of the past 30 years because the template was so undeniable. –Max Freedman",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufbEYyTVWvWUtWRRxZjjVTJt2u4WoS22eUVcqvqeYu1Lani5WTm | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8nansyqULpE8awBcBxybcmwRdNwmAjQJqXPnb2SiNDAVUdCGvMFas9D4XDWAf8W5ySvVpFc6SF1UQrvk4bQuv1UgjaW3jqvA7BzwMPh | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://radiohead.bandcamp.com/album/the-bends | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/35UJLpClj5EDrhpNIi4DFg | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/58990497,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633343c3afa92f85cc3e4fd8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Radiohead%2520-%2520The%2520Bends.png,/dataset/artwork/Radiohead-The_Bends_1995.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,80,Bikini Kill,The C.D. Version of the First Two Records (1994),Kill Rock Stars,"Kill Rock Stars Using hardcore’s aggression for unapologetic feminist expression, riot grrrl pioneers Bikini Kill kicked down the door of the patriarchy and male-dominated punk scenes. Their song “Rebel Girl,” in which frontwoman Kathleen Hanna declares her devotion to “the queen of the neighborhood” who embodies the revolution, became the undisputed riot grrrl anthem after the release of the band’s studio debut Pussy Whipped in October 1993. But the band brought their older music to the front on this 1994 LP, unequivocally affirming for a new global audience that their revolution was far more than a one-off battle cry. Songs like “Suck My Left One,” about defiance in the face of incest, and “White Boy,” a white-hot rage against sexual assault (“I can not scream from pain down here on my knees/I’m so sorry that I think!”), went in hard and intensified Bikini Kill’s unrelenting message. –Evie Nagy",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufdtCfBgoJQCF7rDUHpt5QycDVZFPdsh3RhjSvpSsigERhpAERR | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/29CLTwheRZNbn8esbYm7MXCvBW5AqRiuV2rkxzL68ZhZakTS8MPQjntM9eJYYf8EpCq592XdCBpDEyUwpZUBUL7o8wUGv7UaMtruhn9yWuxBAq2Uu4U9G5EhYQZt3t63yeBne1Nfdhzp3WNTUzNxjjuuDkWXeRqz8zuXsHVRF4yxfm | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://bikinikill.bandcamp.com/album/the-first-two-records | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/6U4EMkDA3CZarmG5t3Bqze | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/94566649,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333452f5fedcce4b8a2daa2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bikini-Kill.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Bikini_Kill-The_CD_Version_of_the_First_Two_Records_1994.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,79,DMX,It’s Dark and Hell Is Hot (1998),Def Jam,"Def Jam Amid the frenzied mourning that erupted in New York City following DMX’s tragic passing last year, it was easy to forget that Earl Simmons had once seemed like a lost cause, passed over by Bad Boy for the more bankable LOX after early single “The Born Loser” flopped at Columbia. But this trial by failure proved to be his salvation. By the time Def Jam gave him a shot, DMX was a 27-year-old vet who wasn’t about to take his second chance for granted. It’s Dark and Hell Is Hot is a chilling, introspective debut album that laid waste to the shiny suit era by cashing in on X’s hard-won vantage point. “Ruff Ryders Anthem”’s bruising clarion call sets the stage for an odyssey through a man’s fractured soul, one that can cook up Faustian bargains (“Damien”) while playing God’s ventriloquist as self-therapy (“The Convo”), preach a gospel of retribution (“Get at Me Dog”), and bask in everlasting forgiveness (“Prayer”). It’s a toast to a new king as he sits atop a throne of blood. –Phillipe Roberts",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufdtCcVkLgiuAzyQ9uRH36zjwjQN3pHk7ZF3jvLmfSV9cBdL2g3 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/8UAFzxJzvSuaw23YMmcgLo6XFpPbbtLCUmg6umLWhEHCQYzpUDSpXHL8eXe2qEKQdafD22TNrb3ntHw6iua336RrUYSD1WsK933tSSpGHyrvk4H6DXUqYCPNtJahXQLnyp69Ggv68VVEi3EVsFDKndXLfNZ17KEBVVNViDzeLXf82rkqENF | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2xIhksIizs6gWdRBYdiTLc | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/105504510,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633345c212e43930baa6dcfc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/DMX%2520-%2520It_s%2520Dark%2520and%2520Hell%2520Is%2520Hot.jpg,/dataset/artwork/DMX-Its_Dark_and_Hell_Is_Hot_1998.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,78,The Magnetic Fields,69 Love Songs (1999),Merge,"Merge After Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, but before Sufjan Stevens promised to write an album after every state, the most ambitious music project known to indie heads was 69 Love Songs. The album delivers exactly what the title says, styled as cowboy ballads, folk songs, synth pieces, and countless other genres, all tied together with Stephin Merritt’s devastatingly clever lyrics. Merritt has maintained that it’s not an album about love, but about love songs—devotional, yes, but only to the tropes of the genre. He’s a scholar of pop music, and Love Songs is his thesis. But all of that is easy to forget once immersed in the world of the album itself, which is endlessly generous with its vignettes and listeners alike. They wouldn’t be love songs if they didn’t charm us off our feet, waltz us through familiar scenes which suddenly feel eye-openingly new, and leave us swooning—even when we think we should know better. –NM Mashurov",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufduQonPECgnnt1mwX8fHkDYbc1CstsUwUH1Bj1wajnSnG7J8A7 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/MKEh7BpQXwWWp1Y3i6D9RjWuqrJsu9zvnz9d36jPMPvD98gTrNrqcRAvCcYCX4oSM9jZscHurCooXc4F442PjYSAu9nqZzLQGx9o1Yfc76N9f6QoFfjzCWwrnJnNSmMX3HAU8fav67waQFLYbGyVncgJ5EVn1aGZH | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://themagneticfields.bandcamp.com/album/69-love-songs | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2GuROKcqyHdpIDcgxml1C7 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/37267701,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633346594e7c28d8b1f4c507/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The%2520Magnetic%2520Fields%2520-%252069%2520Love%2520Songs.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Magnetic_Fields-69_Love_Songs_1999.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,77,The Roots,Things Fall Apart (1999),MCA,"MCA If Things Fall Apart was Questlove’s idea of going pop, then the Roots drummer and bandleader’s vision of commercial appeal was so rich and multi-faceted that just about anything could qualify. The Philadelphia hip-hop group’s fourth album boasts one of the most breathtaking ballads of the neo-soul era they helped guide, “You Got Me,” a Jill Scott co-write that overflows with bittersweet strings, a serene Erykah Badu chorus, and the brash introduction of Philly rapper Eve. But as you might expect from a record named after the seminal Chinua Achebe novel, it’s also some rigorously heady stuff, bookended by dialogue from Spike Lee’s Mo’ Better Blues and a graphic spoken-word poem. And with dual MCs Black Thought and Malik B. trading verses with their usual improvisatory verve, joined by such formidable verbal sparring opponents as Mos Def and Common, it’s closer to an old-school rap battle than the personality-driven myth-making that was then crossing over from the hip-hop charts. Still: take one listen to the loopy flows of the J Dilla-produced “Dynamite!,” and Things Fall Apart sounds like—if not pop exactly—then the impressionistic shape of art-pop to come. –Marc Hogan",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufamD7ZVUPCQdTRahFWBgMVD7eWZEHdf34VweJYyybg6Pn1EmSs | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/meh9fHuiYWLjqSgj7XHZWWWEHEHsDNtLyJtA7tHqnKwM7w8ZUnQNeCSNeb3E3hQnYn62ABcNP6jQGetLxhRE5Xxv9HWQ56Vaha2kkFqr5CHojCn85g2KZ4skJZVhdwwYMg7QtsD5mbaBCPMVLMj1CCjLjfiL1F3WKFwfCByX9 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/0qbl8aNaCUOvX8HGsZYLfh | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/35712362 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuELGO_-lEU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633346fece47f3e4782d79a3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The%2520Roots%2520-%2520Things%2520Fall%2520Apart.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Roots-Things_Fall_Apart_1999.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,76,The KLF,Chill Out (1990) ,KLF Communications,"KLF Communications As a creation story for the ’90s, Chill Out has it all. Emerging in the first months of the decade from a British rave scene approaching its apogee, this sublime suite of anti-music was all about appropriation—a quintessential ’90s methodology. From its origins in a contested DJ collaboration to its majestic tapestry woven from samples of Tuvan throat singers, BBC jingles, and bursts of Fleetwood Mac and Van Halen, the record exalted the gathering obsession with musical borrowing (aka theft) in late 20th century pop. But aside from its situationist hijinks, the KLF’s most listenable album also sounded—quite literally—like a dream. The cornerstone of an entire genre, Chill Out’s hypnagogic fantasy of a twilight trawl across the Deep South established the gold standard for early-hours comedown music—one only rarely matched in the decades since. –Alex Niven",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWebqCRw7o4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333476e800c1a0f8721bb31/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The%2520KLF%2520-%2520Chill%2520Out.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_KLF-Chill_Out_1990.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,75,Nirvana,In Utero (1993) ,DGC,"DGC By 1993, Kurt Cobain was ailing from chronic stomach pain, exacerbated by a poor diet and his scoliosis, which he treated unsuccessfully with heroin. In February of that year, In Utero wasn’t so much made as it was purged from Nirvana’s digestive tract, tasting of copper and smelling of offal. Recorded live in a Minnesota studio by Steve Albini in a two-week sprint, the album was in exercise in rejection: of the glossy sound of Nevermind, of Nirvana’s sudden fame, of bodily organs, of life in general. Cobain sang about kissing open sores, eating cancer, anemia, milk, shit, umbilical nooses—an undigested litany that hints that his pain was much more of his body than in his mind. The singer’s vocal cords sound either lightly sandpapered or heavily scalpelled, recorded without any overdubs. He is alternately angry, sarcastic, spiritual, caustic, wearing his heart on his sleeve only because he’s turned his body inside out for all to see. –Jeremy D. Larson",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufaoCP3HNgmfncVbn4fKNN3vco2yVs1HwtSdYoMGfkbePFJEH5u | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/RLUH3gniSGMDt1DBTaNBBubd7V6MVPTfeVqQQXu3asKBqjuhDLs9ouAfGgknjeNfMSGsr6DLCu3ZNVdTAButNFzUtK9R4i8uTooLHJ9J5z6CxSaotAuNksTicWLwnCQxVymLCyv7YnSzECzXb2Koeegt21NGTANWMQEX4rscBwGrjdxU4gAbarqKsBzu3GP | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/7wOOA7l306K8HfBKfPoafr | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/2570599,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333483f12e43930baa6dcfe/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Nirvana%2520-%2520In%2520Utero.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nirvana-In_Utero_1993.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,74,Missy Elliott,Supa Dupa Fly (1997),,"It didn’t take much for Missy Elliott and Timbaland to rewrite the visual and aural rules of hip-hop with 1997’s Supa Dupa Fly. An inflated garbage bag jumpsuit, a universe of celestial, serrated beats, and a love of the eccentric. Timbaland’s mosaic production style—often spacious, with room for a chorus of crickets, some beatboxing, or masterfully placed soul samples—were the ideal foundation for Missy’s ruminations on fuckboys, booty calls, and heartache. With staccato raps and catchy flows, Elliott struck a perfect balance between romantic vulnerability and self-assured flexing, an approach that felt like uncharted territory within a world that hypersexualized women. The album also assembled late ’90s R&B and rap luminaries like Lil’ Kim, Busta Rhymes, and Aaliyah, showcasing an industry in transition. At the moment of hip-hop’s commercial surge, this pair of Afrofuturists was envisioning how the genre could stretch its imagined boundaries in the new millennium. The fact that it only took two weeks in the studio to bring Supa Dupa Fly to life is just further proof of the depth of the duo’s prescient vision. –Isabelia Herrera",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam7WMqX8GU7DX7rdoy6WLqsCn6yNeybuyJnNm4QaDw9o6yjoH | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2YfVS2JkEsZbGaVN2xMzcCAf2EcdufCigRyF44GJ5f29ratuBWwUyZKgmpFrhqhmxswYt6NmeGB7aN5jK2UM9Lmk6hBoKRwDQ7RTkGQFL6zZstotYKbmJ7wiWVWuzNgnJkMDafXyJ7Ly3FFYmkXf244ALmmCmKr7g5H | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/6UkdyvPElK6JDkyeRClbI2 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/2303999 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHcyJPTTn9w,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633349204632279182b1c6bb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Missy%2520_Misdemeanor_%2520Elliott%2520-%2520Supa%2520Dupa%2520Fly.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Missy_Elliott-Supa_Dupa_Fly_1997.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,73,Yo La Tengo,I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One (1997),Matador,"Matador This was not Yo La Tengo’s first great album, nor their second, but it marked the first time that they were so great in so many different ways at once. While the New Jersey indie trio had by this point perfected the connection between close-mic intimacy and freakout solos, I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One shows them brimming with ideas, including sample-punctured meditations (“Moby Octopad”), tightened-up pop (“Stockholm Syndrome”), and dialogues between ambient crickets and a slide guitar (“Green Arrow”). The album is as quiet and gentle as a winter snowfall, as loud and electric as a spring thunderstorm, as free and fun as a summer bike ride, and as durable and dependable as, yes, the world’s best autumn sweater. –Steven Arroyo",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufbFMUYsFyHuYAAt1Y1gGr8TEewtRmDUaYr6BLhNdxVU59s6Euq | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/9B6f5kDzu8NHvXoaHv3DG2nyvAqsMpecz6tC3fsLqkeurwqcephAjA87bwxTP2gCSiVzaXuAtKU9FVXHC8Cxc7dbrJnyhFXyMJGmwW13jmYg6bmaXTQcmsVChVfvVmnH3baRN7cRPCmzPWYpdM4hdkG7siFZ6p1sZGRHu1uUvr19JqKrwjzRZMuuHHEMUSqQef | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://yolatengo.bandcamp.com/album/i-can-hear-the-heart-beating-as-one-25th-anniversary-deluxe-edition | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3V18DIKvRuwdxc2LE4wuac | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/49793689 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38iyHpJtylg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63334992d997a1f3e8a0cef9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Yo%2520La%2520Tengo%2520-%2520I%2520Can%2520Hear%2520the%2520Heart%2520Beating%2520as%2520One.png,/dataset/artwork/Yo_La_Tengo-I_Can_Hear_the_Heart_Beating_as_One_1997.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,72,De La Soul,De La Soul Is Dead (1991),Tommy Boy / Warner Bros.,"Tommy Boy / Warner Bros. A fraught follow-up to their irresistibly confectionary debut, 1991’s De La Soul Is Dead is a sui-generis act of ingenious world building and uneasy vibes. Its closest antecedent in music history could be Sly and the Family Stone’s 1971 landmark There’s a Riot Goin’ On, which likewise evinced newly formed skepticism regarding utopian ideals while exhibiting a thrillingly novel sonic palette. The two groups’ migration from optimistic self-determination to anguished acknowledgement of an insurmountable power structure roughly traces the tortured start-and-stop trajectory of every consequential American liberation movement, and the blood is all over these tracks. From the self-negating album title to the skittering don’t-fuck-with-us-’cause-you-think-we’re-hippies warnings of “Please Porridge” to the infectious but spiritually wobbly “Keepin’ the Faith,” De La Soul Is Dead is the sound of a group taking inventory of their early success with pronounced wariness and a vaulting sense of musical adventure. –Elizabeth Nelson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4dLwK1foFQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63334aa71dccce609e4163b2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/De%2520La%2520Soul%2520-%2520De%2520La%2520Soul%2520Is%2520Dead.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/De_La_Soul-De_La_Soul_Is_Dead_1991.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,71,Pulp,Different Class (1995),Island,"Island At age 16, Jarvis Cocker drew up an ambitious manifesto for his new band, then called Arabicus Pulp: “The group shall work its way into the public eye by producing fairly conventional, yet slightly offbeat, pop songs [...] then begin to subvert and restructure both the music business and music itself.” Nearly two decades later, the frontman and his group did manage to capture the attention of the masses via Different Class, a full-length that alchemized bubblegum, glam, and luxe new wave into artful pop preoccupied with social divisions and furtive couplings. Anchoring it all is “Common People,” the stinging insta-anthem about a sculpture student slumming it with a normie, that got Pulp to No. 2 on the UK charts. The album may not have upended the record industry at large, but it did illuminate a path forward for the band’s fellow mis-shapes, mistakes, and misfits. –Robert Ham",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam7SUh6fhnARviqwcR3W7VFFk9fbCsvF2jchYk3LrptgtFoWj | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/3Hvxm9czoAnByw5bJudy155hRgz4HyCyJ9tDMR4K1xHECoF6vhWARjTQ54iHw6M2V82vephGvLgQcNz7yaB625AFTrokYLweYaY5RwPBpD2VoDqFfuMatynaGbWXLLLYsTfDgNkR42qaxaKXMEZupcWBz3m9jgDCKLEqKsh | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3ly9T2L4pqTZijFgQssd3x | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/637093,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63334be1363ea4ab8f34fdc9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Pulp%2520-%2520Different%2520Class.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Pulp-Different_Class_1995.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,70,Pavement,Slanted and Enchanted (1992),Matador,"Matador Pavement weren’t the only early-’90s band that turned noise into something like pop—Nirvana and Sonic Youth did the same—but the low-key charm of Slanted and Enchanted felt different. Whatever angst they might’ve felt was sublimated by a bookishness and sense of grandeur that made even their feedback seem sweet. In an unearthed 1982 high school newspaper profile on singer Stephen Malkmus, he’s pictured in lacrosse gear, looking dreamily toward the horizon under the headline “Athletics, punk band occupy Malkmus’ time.” The jocks, the nerds, the freaks—maybe it wasn’t as simple as The Breakfast Club made it seem. The title comes from the poet Emily Dickinson: “Tell all the truth/but tell it slant.” They sound like boys but their mystery runs deep. To gentle hearts inspired by punk’s freedom but wigged out by its intensity, they served as proof that not every revolution demands a fight. –Mike Powell",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufbFSMh4gupAHgB5NUQnAz3d3NARzHXcKpjqzbxCRgi9GGxof1V | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/meh9fHuiYWLjqSgj7XHZWWWEHEHsDNtLyJtA7tHqnKwM7w8ZUnQNeCSNeb3E3hQnYn62ABcNP6jQGetLxhRE5Xxv9HWQ54wtiWnuZCTPvUiGuxtGwEYV5sUJ5y9CkgRwmAknR4nULsShp4npQioUHDjRtunAtgWF8aPiARLRh | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://pavement.bandcamp.com/album/slanted-enchanted | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/7o14zVcXSRk7clV6QCEdOD | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/2275868,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63334c83d997a1f3e8a0cefb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Pavement%2520-%2520Slanted%2520and%2520Enchanted.png,/dataset/artwork/Pavement-Slanted_and_Enchanted_1992.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,69,GZA,Liquid Swords (1995),Geffen,"Geffen Staten Island is lonely. Time moves slower; the winter feels a little more frigid than in Brooklyn or Jersey; the limited ways to get off the island sometimes make you feel like you’re trapped. More so than any other Wu-Tang Clan album, group or solo, Liquid Swords is Staten Island’s. GZA’s still, quiet, and grim nature captures the mood of a borough that feels like exile. The bedrock is made of dark and brooding beats—with the R&B samples stripped of all color, it’s arguably the greatest production work of RZA’s hot streak. All the Wu members are here, but their larger than life personalities are reserved without being muted, handing over the centerstage to GZA’s pensive, dense, and descriptive rhymes. Bullets hit first floor window panes and bust up dice games on “Cold World”; the world-building on “Hell’s Wind Staff/Killah Hills 10304” is full of imagination as the song gradually builds from drug-dealing in real-life New York City locations to a Narcos plot. The album is lined with clips from the bleak 1980 samurai flick Shogun Assassin, where blood sprays and battles are treated like an inevitability. At a time when the Wu solo records were from the roughhousing, quotable, and larger-than-life personalities like Method Man, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, and Raekwon, the gravity of Liquid Swords pulled rap into a new orbit. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1qHveScA74jAHvjtY24SgRaEXdfVn3DPW9vUotf42mR1419 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/7pktVSmKrEArFkpBqdMfGLHcpT6HuRciy3DF2VQWPYp65rc5KR9UUdfUYoaaPFxyTdqmiWj63Tye2G3skZVhupGVE8NfSKNBVMxcAJpTkQAQNWoMCZpKd6LUgKvvkVd16SzcUQ7LtkosF4B1gGAk7imAU6b3kgcm3WJP | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3k8xoyOXkGgZxUKgpmxz4P | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/637866,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63334d7112e43930baa6dd00/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/GZA%2520-%2520Liquid%2520Swords.jpg,/dataset/artwork/GZA-Liquid_Swords_1995.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,68,Bob Dylan,Time Out of Mind (1997),Columbia,"Columbia Motorcycle crashes and crashed marriages, spiritual awakenings and amphetamine escapades: Despite rounds of severe real-life turmoil, Bob Dylan had never gone four years without releasing new music, at least until the late ’90s. Nearing 60, was he done? Time Out of Mind suggests he wondered that very thing. An album of bedrock existential doubt and loneliness so pervasive that death itself seems the only cure, this is a Dylan record without precedent or parallel, blues draped across his back like a translucent mourning shroud, as if he were sitting shiva for himself. In a humid Miami studio, producer Daniel Lanois conducted a sterling band of multiple drummers and keyboardists, shaping the eerie haze through which this Dylan-in-doubt could drift. “There’s not even room enough to be anywhere,” he grumbles during a song about making one’s own deathbed. He was wrong: No other ’90s album by Dylan’s aging peers invented a new space for its maker like these 11 haunted beauties. –Grayson Haver Currin",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam6puHSUQMcDF3S6cXXVSTCaPnegxB4hqgRSxReDDceKrhNJP | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/3Hvxm9czoAnByw5bJudy155hRgz4HyCyJ9tDMR4K1xHECoF6vhWARjTQ54iHw6M2V82vephGvLgQcNz7yaB625AFTrokYNEUBabq8mexxMYp1hjk3JWT6CM9Z8UFKxZBcXv4ZrkZqPdVGZkx2es3YwWV7p3vPQiXZTxTmQF | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/185DHT5SvszXRrezx3lOjt | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/1268043,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63334e1c4632279182b1c6bd/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bob%2520Dylan%2520-%2520Time%2520Out%2520of%2520Mind.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bob_Dylan-Time_Out_of_Mind_1997.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,67,Beastie Boys,Check Your Head (1992),Capitol,"Capitol After their skull-snapping 1989 sample-go-‘round Paul’s Boutique flopped, the Beastie Boys wiped the slate clean. Michael Diamond, Adam Horovitz, and Adam Yauch set up shop in their Los Angeles headquarters (complete with skateboard ramp and basketball court) and started jamming on the instruments they had put down when they left hardcore punk behind. Inspired by the funk classics they had been mining for samples, they set out to create some grooves of their own. “A lot of the theory was, let’s make a record that’s like the dope break parts,” said Diamond. The blend of punk, funk, and hip-hop on Check Your Head—from the fuzzed-out, stuttery hit “So What’Cha Want” to a Biz Markie guest spot to a blistering cover of Sly Stone’s “Time for Livin’”—established the archetypally ’90s skate-rap-rock aesthetic. And on soul-searching songs like “Gratitude” and “Stand Together,” the Beastie Boys’ startling transformation from superbrats to enlightened activists had begun. –Alan Light",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam7bUtiQjkJ975SXqFkE1ZDny8EctbDQMjXf8MVUU2emeypnP | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/5562jUBkjoEKG5nQnQVZTNNDEjjo25wooQswhmFuC7qXVBj65ku9Ezdvzr8tutFuL3uB4LmXqZLrWUQGquXWYwmo5MMe8yFfjiusJbqEqn9YoiViuUwT6uE1RQHnHLRU5LamENDBbgmcWnAjct2Ni7LarvFEXniBWzeG1mZKKkJ6pkG6TnqPftTUAKngXd44gWZoVYkdh | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/7CSP7J60QKIBCqOV64qILq | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/2407839,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63334e9f4632279182b1c6bf/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Beastie%2520Boys%2520-%2520Check%2520Your%2520Head.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beastie_Boys-Check_Your_Head_1992.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,66,Cat Power,Moon Pix (1998),Matador,"Matador Chan Marshall wrote all of her fourth record as Cat Power in one evening while living in a barn with fellow songwriter Bill Callahan, and it plays like a summer thunderstorm in the middle of nowhere. At the time, Marshall was under pressure and about to give up on music, and you can hear that urgency, that weariness. Moon Pix is primarily a tempestuous, feel-bad listen: It’s 4 a.m., stumbling drunk, drop-your-keys-on-the-front-porch shit. Her bleariness on a song like “Metal Heart” is palpable; the shuffling drum machine loop on “American Flag” can’t help but make your soul grow tired. On Moon Pix, Marshall sings like she has to, like it’s the only way she can make you understand how she’s feeling. And she does. –Sophie Kemp",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufbFSMbgsbCJ9ETC7nvdV1TwtV8P2yXKPHXnHZhXnsf2BeQcmgf | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/Ehjr9t1bfyFgs5GtcpxVsAdcRJm1vtb9Ubjx5sTFJYB6r2e4TjtG8vb1rkTFisrhHbExGSy1DgZK5HrzBQjdeFLuEEKV6hyrmiDLoYRzTLgyvZUP7qxw4Y14yZHzkC31gAuUB5upNtqSWDCMzthHTWq3W4Tj1 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/6AoSTHrd6oEaeUYBEGdLTb | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/49793710,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c85cfd997a1f3e8a0cbcb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Cat-Power-Cross-Bones-Style.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Cat_Power-Moon_Pix_1998.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,65,MF DOOM,Operation: Doomsday (1999),Fondle 'Em,"Fondle 'Em In 1994, after his brother’s sudden death and the cancellation of his group’s album due to its controversial cover, a dejected Daniel Dumile disappeared into the streets of New York City. He resurfaced years later at Nuyorican Poets Cafe, wearing a stocking over his face and performing a new song called “Doomsday,” in which he announced his new, villainous mission “to destroy rap.” Soon, Dumile would ditch the stocking for a metal mask and fully assume his new form: MF DOOM. On his debut album, DOOM drew himself as a self-effacing, mentally disturbed outcast who was hell-bent on seeking revenge on the industry that forced him to hide his face. His absurdism was evident in his punchlines and his production, filled with Scooby-Doo grunts, offbeat drums, and beat drops that acted like comedic rimshots, but DOOM also conveyed tenderness through R&B flips and diaristic lyrics about his late brother. Operation: Doomsday didn’t destroy the rap industry; instead, it paved the way for fellow villainous weirdos to flourish. –Arjun Srivatsa",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufamR1EyqLAtJzi4TpxkQJo9dW56UpFKX53iBbFAeKJTrbM3VPy | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/C5BN9bLtpHgEyx7MNKKgBuARJsGD6hr8syYpzKwm7ov8AmmcLX1wqVhpxRVNUGC12W9K4TdWhvkmUmqtuoTcQJy39iMVYPcZLxyFybdnNsVqzyjgq8ryX1zsTEkgjYHryNzxvvMCRy1AbnRwpW4Wz8s8Epd6L8oosengxzwoBE96PJdqFb1SxNF | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/4UG3kz6qoHtNI1glQ2wdon | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/6333457 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwjGlsdj5ks,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dc6b7e02a17d9175e5506/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/MF-DOOM-Rhymes-Like-Dimes.jpg,/dataset/artwork/MF_DOOM-Operation_Doomsday_1999.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,64,Tricky,Maxinquaye (1995),Island,"Island Tricky’s debut album, Maxinquaye, hit No. 3 in the UK album chart and helped spawn a genre—trip-hop—that became synonymous with bourgeois lifestyle music. Yet listening back today, it still sounds more jarring than that legacy would suggest. An unholy fusion of soul, hip-hop, and the soundsystem heritage of Tricky’s native Bristol, the album’s largely languid pacing conceals an undercurrent of dark, chaotic energy. There is torrid sex (“Suffocated Love”), occult rap (“Hell Is Round the Corner”), even a sample of Smashing Pumpkins’ “Suffer” spun into curdled bliss (“Pumpkin”). A cover of Public Enemy’s “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos” is sung insouciantly by Tricky’s muse and romantic partner Martina Topley-Bird atop a bed of full-tilt heavy metal. Tricky himself is largely a phantom presence, directing affairs from the shadows. But where their voices intertwine—hers a sultry blues cry, his a husky, smoked-out whisper—it feels almost indecent. –Louis Pattison",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam7TaE9pTwNQSngfSu2FyWVoHQCaRXdNn8e8gvV9HCadAqbAK | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/5bwkygcD8TrHGdppHZSrwYPBcY7KL4rNhn7wPE5csqh9eBoYusiekNLU1NC9W1rwgTSxUn9pKQ4onuMDhZrhwx9sjB9aDAEWDV3WBxWnhEr8og3en5YNY4JwWTJBHTwd93AXctiMpPFXu8SmE5c4fy3yeYtG7Ztf | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/7qlZpMib7D0riFPQ5JHDT8 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/637039,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333509d12e43930baa6dd02/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Tricky%2520-%2520Maxinquaye.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tricky-Maxinquaye_1995.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,63,R.E.M.,Automatic for the People (1992),Warner Bros.,"Warner Bros. No band did more to establish the idea of “college rock” and the indie rock ethos than R.E.M. As a young group of Georgia sweeties, the band steadily built a devoted following while rejecting any commercial maneuvers that could sacrifice their artistic drive. When their sound and distribution leverage finally intersected with the mainstream, 1991’s Out of Time made them superstars. But a year later, it was Automatic for the People that set R.E.M. up for immortality. It’s ironic, then, that many at the time suspected that frontman Michael Stipe was nearing his end. His gaunt appearance and indeterminate sexuality fueled false rumors that he was dying of AIDS, bolstered by the new album’s sublime grappling with nostalgia, depression, and death. Heart-gripping ballads including “Drive,” “Nightswimming,” and “Everybody Hurts” were made richer in both tragedy and hope by stirring string arrangements from former Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones. Anything but a last gasp, Automatic for the People breathed powerful life into R.E.M.’s ascent for decades to come. –Evie Nagy",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufbEYkHkVFupQPagAW2TkVTiTYnP1PWzBGd3iU8q1B4AbgDEpBm | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/8UAFzxJzvSuaw23YMmcgLo6XFpPbbtLCUmg6umLWhEHCQYzpUDSpXHL8eXe2qEKQdafD22TNrb3ntHw6iua336RrUYSD1UmUCh3zky1hgPTBH4QRTwvCFBajbyU2uWfX9iMSqkWMVTbcKWBfTHoQwovnaCZCd1ABBuTWNegpXawz1dJeqMM | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/0BiNb8HYR4JvuxUa31Z58Q | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/58758339,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63335108d997a1f3e8a0cefd/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/R.E.M.%2520-%2520Automatic%2520for%2520the%2520People.jpg,/dataset/artwork/REM-Automatic_for_the_People_1992.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,62,Juvenile,400 Degreez (1998),Universal / Cash Money,"Universal / Cash Money 400 Degreez stands as the ultimate Mannie Fresh production—a sweaty, irresistible ride through the sights and sounds of New Orleans’ Third Ward. The beatmaker always excelled at squeezing the soul and funk out of programmed drums and keyboards, but his partnership with Juvenile—a mealy-mouthed, melodic rapper from the Magnolia Projects—resulted in a mélange of bounce and rap that was darker and more viscous than anything he’d done before. Juvenile would come to Mannie with fully written verses, and Mannie would make beats on the spot that molded to his cadences. The effect is music and voice in total symbiosis: See the album’s masterpiece, “Ha,” where Juvenile’s talky flow dips in and out of Mannie’s groove, a rhythm inside a rhythm. –Mano Sundaresan",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1rQgVVT196J3NdaGvUF3bY4VKDeXxrXQrKQPfQ3YJKrpvZR | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/MKEh7BpQXwWWp1Y3i6D9RjWuqrJsu9zvnz9d36jPMPvD98gTrNrqcRAvCcYCX4oSM9jZscHurCooXc4F442PjYSAu9nqZxt3p88nWYTFYXXiWkWD5wDocPGA5N67kgMd9hgfNixPGQReRNUzrxR4AndfYMGFSKXhD | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/6wpqS71CJr3I0dLguYiZdJ | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/35695716,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63335197cb86801423062ea0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Juvenile%2520-%2520400%2520Degreez.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Juvenile-400_Degreez_1998.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,61,Massive Attack,Blue Lines (1991),Wild Bunch / Virgin,"Wild Bunch / Virgin In the decade leading up to Blue Lines, Bristol was home to reggae soundsystems, post-punk bohemians, and some of the UK’s earliest converts to hip-hop. Massive Attack emerged from this ferment of overlapping undergrounds. The group’s core of 3D, Daddy G, Mushroom, and Tricky were crate-digging DJs and MCs who’d grown up on 2-Tone and post-punk, and chose to rap using the faltering phrasing of English speech patterns rather than pretend to be American. They were inventing a new archetype of the meditative MC, a British homegrown mode that would blossom with Tricky’s solo album Maxinquaye, the street-level reveries of Mike Skinner, and Dizzee Rascal’s more introspective moments. But while the mumbled flows, samples, and scratching identify Blue Lines as hip-hop, the album’s scope is expansive, embracing soul and reggae with achingly melodic contributions from Shara Nelson and Horace Andy, and nodding to the grandeur of film scores and jazz fusion. Rolling at a languid 90 BPM—or slower—Blue Lines reflects the spliff-tempo metabolism of Bristol’s stoners. Massive were hardly slackers, though; ambitiously conceived and immaculately achieved, the landmark Blue Lines mapped out directions that would define the British ’90s and reverberate to this day. –Simon Reynolds",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufanhrWvbDCFCNxAaqs7kC29tUusp53WojaY8rHbNsr6xNKjFhV | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/ZxssCo8SeuM6mRcDQfvUeNTNYQAjiyZjfaBb5th84ZcVLxECX7vxkf5SkeET5snFJTZe3XRRTsHKXPjnFy2ozExhNZkG18gAti4foBXnU9EqdfpZWL8HWxSAF57qnW9pV3fkKhFXed5P5aNU5RDJNUXwoRq56j3az88EThSwJvEJUY9VZ58F | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5mAPk4qeNqVLtNydaWbWlf | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/17691643,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633351ff7688464689951d1c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Massive%2520Attack%2520-%2520Blue%2520Lines.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Massive_Attack-Blue_Lines_1991.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,60,Mariah Carey,Butterfly (1997),Columbia,"Columbia Fueled by the tantric edging of an extramarital liaison and the pleasure of “finally getting a shot of good Vitamin D,” as she cheekily put it in her memoir, Butterfly is Mariah Carey at 28, reawakened by “breathless and fervid” love affairs, as well as a post-divorce freedom to fully embrace Black genres in her music and write from the heart. She is a babydoll with a tear-soaked pillow; a sexy-ass vixen; a technician and a tone poet. Few but Carey can sing “My All” on a technical level, but Butterfly rarely feels like vocal showboating; her voice weaves textural tapestries over in the cut R&B, and she takes audible pleasure in her instrument’s elasticity. Particularly heavenly is the five-song hang suite at Butterfly’s center, a showcase for the strength she finds in vulnerable sensuality, as well as sympatico with peers like Mobb Deep and Bone Thugs-N-Harmony—collaborators she lavishes in layers of harmony like tweezed gold leaf. –Owen Myers",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam6pthT3TjD3iJXMDpfuCCeWbRh2MyA4AE3ZC2iFLqwXtNipK | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/Ehjr9t1bfyFgs5GtcpxVsAdcRJm1vtb9Ubjx5sTFJYB6r2e4TjtG8vb1rkTFisrhHbExGSy1DgZK5HrzBQjdeFLuEEKV6cgyqEv1UGWkHuMZ864vEieCU5yayRXcC6C8rxmPorHAonxBNMucNJsvgsDxbwjFq | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/7aDBFWp72Pz4NZEtVBANi9 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/30015542,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633352744180c08bebb59bf9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mariah%2520Carey%2520-%2520Butterfly.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mariah_Carey-Butterfly_1997.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,59,JAY-Z,Reasonable Doubt (1996),Priority / Roc-A-Fella,"Priority / Roc-A-Fella A quarter century later, it’s hard to see JAY-Z as anything but the lordly figure he has become, but his first album is a reminder that nothing about him or his success was inevitable. Inspired by Nas’ Illmatic, the Brooklyn-by-way-of-Trenton, New Jersey high school dropout and drug dealer crafted some of the most crushing tales of poverty, hustling, and street politics in hip-hop history on Reasonable Doubt. The street details are intricate and vivid. The hustler aspires to the big time, but he’s not quite dreaming of a mogul’s life. He takes his wages to Vegas—to bet against Mike Tyson—so he can get a break on his taxes. He buys the whole car and never leases. This is the good life as imagined by someone balanced on the edge between making it and oblivion. –Jayson Buford",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufduhpy1gC22MooVMBxRsysH3yckjY3BWs1LdRxEoePi5EhwHe3 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/B7jB7s3t6nATUHhGS3LABK1jRyUqXu5qUiD3X7BcXCzdH57FA1micAPWpwPFjkbPZ83VowWmGRrwDA37nhRX9jMpqYqMBRzqnehZ7mmsoTvDZk44YqmXFw2wbcwNhP8oP3r2gE4G83z2xgxtCzvXVVTNoJKrTH2Df3NEDw6j | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3YPK0bNOuayhmSrs0sIIBR | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/115084360,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633355a512e43930baa6dd04/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jay-Z%2520-%2520Reasonable%2520Doubt.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/JAY-Z-Reasonable_Doubt_1996.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,58,Slowdive,Souvlaki (1993),Creation,"Creation By the time frontman Neil Halstead turned up to record Slowdive’s second album, with his iconic shaggy hair shorn off after a “bad acid experience,” it was already clear that the group, once heralded as a boundary-pushing act in the nascent shoegaze scene, was in crisis. Halstead’s relationship with bandmate Rachel Goswell was unraveling, the British music press were beginning to use the group as a punching bag, and Alan McGee, head of their label Creation Records, openly disliked their new songs. Emotions were raw, but that’s always where Slowdive thrive. Souvlaki has since become a touchstone for virtually every reverb-clouded, feelings-forward act that has come in its wake. Part of the power of these songs has to do with their uncomfortable closeness: The Halstead-sung acoustic closer “Dagger” is so intimate that Goswell had a hard time listening to it for years. But even amid all that heaviness, the music still manages to float above—an attractive notion, then and now. –Colin Joyce",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufdr7byqRitBgdHa8k9ABPUL93QnukP6RM6jemKg9SZNWD691e3 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/474N76DNT3n1smUARtCDRxekNNF3vu1wV1AjPQDHqP1vtSJ1LCXeQzuZpXEemqE59HpZutecPp2RwSa5M2keJW5WWHAAzVX3YaDT7SJ2JSemGWNaPjFnQJt7uzJkWCrWd33ks68GQMS2M5UZHgjJXgjxNwyu | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/53eHm1f3sFiSzWMaKOl98Z | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/4869383,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333562e8f0d7ac40b58df56/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Slowdive%2520-%2520Souvlaki.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Slowdive-Souvlaki_1993.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,57,Mobb Deep,The Infamous (1995),RCA / Loud,"RCA / Loud It’s strange to think now that Prodigy and Havoc had already been dropped by their label before making The Infamous, as a commercially dead debut record and the explosion of their Queensbridge peer Nas had sent Mobb Deep skidding to the gutter. But it was precisely from this gloom that their perfectly formed second LP would emerge. There’s storytelling here that Davids Chase and Simon would admire, along with one-liners and street aphorisms that have punctured and filtered through pop culture ever since. (Just try to find a lyric catchier or more visceral than “Rock you in your face, stab your brain with your nose bone.”) Perhaps the only thing to top the pair’s relentless lyricism is the sampling—so delicate and precise, yet rough edged, crackling, and endlessly intriguing. There’s a minute-long YouTube video breaking down the piano sample on “Shook Ones Pt. II” that’s been watched millions of times since it was posted in 2011. It took years for anyone to figure out how Havoc did it in the first place; even now, knowing how he pulled it off can’t explain its genius. –Will Pritchard",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufeJ3u5gutY4yxzwZRZKjM5AsP8cooMTYcCp6Gy1BzcDKBs5Ao5 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/MKEh7BpQXwWWp1Y3i6D9RjWuqrJsu9zvnz9d36jPMPvD98gTrNrqcRAvCcYCX4oSM9jZscHurCooXc4F442PjYSAu9nqakms9NXqhnC7hkAf7nrEDqDLaeHxFTZPGrKzFinBL9bGXZwNAiV8haaqhYUFonWRY6gZ1 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1cCAb1vN8uUsdfEylVmTLs | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/1845906 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-QS4CTtltg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633356a41dccce609e4163b5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mobb%2520Deep%2520-%2520The%2520Infamous.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Mobb_Deep-The_Infamous_1995.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,56,Scott Walker,Tilt (1995),Fontana / Drag City,"Fontana / Drag City Scott Walker turned the act of bucking expectations into its own class of performance art—a lifelong piece urging his career as a renegade pop star into increasingly thorny terrain. 1995’s Tilt was especially jagged; 11 years after releasing the orchestral Climate of Hunter, Walker burst from the abyss with a disturbed industrial opera. Walker’s voice is booming and grand, towering even amid blasting pipe organ and chopper-blade percussion. His lyrics are stark, cryptic, and terrifying, though he later lamented that critics missed the comedy in his work (the subtly raunchy “Rosary” affirms his humor). The purchasing public were also prone to confusion; in the early 2000s, Walker reflected on one fan’s assessment: “I had a guy sit down next to me in the tube,” he recalled. “He said, ‘I have to tell you, I’m a big fan of yours. I bought your last two records… and I’m never going to buy one again!’” The man exited the train, leaving Walker delighted. It was all part of the performance. –Madison Bloom",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam7e5WLCCDdzRa8n2e5rmse5DA87k3KFYhALJ2i6dGJSWdLju | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/36TDN37JM9t1EvKKNRQCGk3CY6xhpL8WggqiWdjnLMJ4zBzMchvYX7vd3g1nFoMMe8FPVsZtHzDAnYLLnHTVVAU8BatVswbZ3Da8gLcxiwZpWdmrRSFzvReYggqDn5TMqs1GND2sUnASfC7oqXYB3cZy | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/0vd2UrnAUlxVHlVFwmgiNC?si=L3iNL98AS3eelT20257l8Q | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/639123,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333590162b037a9a1513b64/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Scott%2520Walker%2520-%2520Tilt.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Scott_Walker-Tilt_1995.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,55,Madonna,Ray of Light (1998),Maverick / Warner Bros.,"Maverick / Warner Bros. Inspired by the deaths of her mother and her friend Gianni Versace, as well as the birth of her daughter Lourdes, Ray of Light is Madonna’s most heartbroken and most ecstatically joyful album. Fusing icy electronica and new-age music with elements of trip-hop, Britpop, and grunge, Ray of Light found Madonna trying, with all her might, to evoke the blackest depths and most euphoric joys of the human heart. The album’s title track sounds like it was forged inside a meteor; the surreal, pitch-black poem “Mer Girl” is as still as death itself. The grief of the latter is an insurmountable tide, while motherhood, evoked in the former, acts as a ballast against it. No other Madonna album, before or after, has captured a feeling so vast. –Shaad D’Souza",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam6oZT96toZFdd3nF8HEYMJun4T4UFzQH2LqmoqQBVWbvE8Fu | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/Ehjr9t1bfyFgs5GtcpxVsAdcRJm1vtb9Ubjx5sTFJYB6r2e4TjtG8vb1rkTFisrhHbExGSy1DgZK5HrzBQjdeFLuEEKV6kN86L6KmM3srGxNyHq38pALpHTcj5cscCFaCA4b62sWJXNQ8Qnkn3YkKJHe4s9GF | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/6cuNyrSmRjBeekioLdLkvI | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/1669846,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63335a0ff2e57bfbb70500a0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Madonna%2520-%2520Ray%2520of%2520Light.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Madonna-Ray_of_Light_1998.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,54,Scarface,The Diary (1994),Rap-A-Lot / Noo Trybe,"Rap-A-Lot / Noo Trybe In 1991, Brad Jordan was already Houston’s definitive orator of desperation, struggle, and occasional triumph. Three years removed from his introduction to America on the Geto Boys’ “Mind Playing Tricks on Me,” the rapper aptly named Scarface settled into a wizened, often bleak groove on his third solo album, The Diary. Steeped in the Southern blues, with syrupy yet morose production from Mike Dean, N.O. Joe, Uncle Eddie, and Scarface himself, The Diary is a tour through the mind of a paranoid and fatalistic man who happened to end up speaking for thousands of listeners who also stopped giving a fuck a long time ago. Face crafts a picture of failed redemption on “I Seen a Man Die,” takes aim at media hypocrisy and the demonization of gangsta rap on “Hand of the Dead Body” alongside Ice Cube, and ultimately damns America and society at large for making him, his peers, and his fans what they are. A bleaker picture never sounded so rich. –Brandon Caldwell",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufaoCQSwxyQtth2EwwLkLrvq2tH8MahUfre9z12MoZymt4Ux6Gs | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/Ehjr9t1bfyFgs5GtcpxVsAdcRJm1vtb9Ubjx5sTFJYB6r2e4TjtG8vb1rkTFisrhHbExGSy1DgZK5HrzBQjdeFLuEEKV6mLo3JZRqct66ndGpfU1eax68t6qni71FxZZ8f4TTbapo6qLZzvpHF45rbj28e5Ky | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2Z1lDWB2EfTUKV5ILxjdvu | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/22330975,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63335acccb86801423062ea2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Scarface%2520-%2520The%2520Diary.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Scarface-The_Diary_1994.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,53,Aphex Twin,Selected Ambient Works Volume II (1994),Warp,"Warp Richard D. James once told David Toop that Selected Ambient Works Volume II was meant to feel like “standing in a power station on acid,” swimming in electrical hum. The 1994 album marked an austere new extreme for a style that, in the early 1990s, was mostly associated with chillout rooms and post-rave comedowns. Crashing partiers would have found little comfort here: SAW II’s more than two dozen tracks are as ethereal as the vapor rising from dry ice, and as stark as one of Dan Flavin’s fluorescent tubes. It was a far cry from the lush pads and splintered breakbeats of Aphex’s much more reassuring Selected Ambient Works 85-92, released just two years before, and the polar opposite of the hyperactive drill’n’bass he’d take up with 1995’s …I Care Because You Do. But the album’s singularity is part of what makes it so special—as though James had snuck into one of his beloved substations, swallowed a tab, and switched on his recorder, in the process picking up a frequency that was never to be repeated. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufdqv2c2Zyexe4y4y7Sn5FykSShW13QafgFkYeGiYVf9xVikkRq | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2FTC5bHweKNXpHC9thPgiTMZ7CKV7gyqnq3T43d9US4PEFsoPMbz36ZSb45vo7Po67YwfeFw1VePqcR4tiByG9dEytLCG87wb4JyjQh6y5Tzg1bcBbWKsdntaEdXzeMfd1TNJzq6v6fSzHtBfXP24FzSJsYFCiuDdsm2G8vEzTgLbCSTEw9iqtZXQKyyd | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/17vHPMmoxN5B8cdhCDeMTe | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/16024086,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63335bb362b037a9a1513b66/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Aphex%2520Twin%2520-%2520Selected%2520Ambient%2520Works%2520Volume%2520II%2520.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Aphex_Twin-Selected_Ambient_Works_Volume_II_1994.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,52,Sade,Love Deluxe (1992),Epic,"Epic Sade would remain largely quiet for the remainder of the ’90s, but the icier electronic textures of Love Deluxe functioned as a bridge between the art pop scene of the previous decade and the trip-hop of the next, as their jazz-inflected sophisti-pop evolved from the warmth of the live club to the cold steel of the studio. The stiff breakbeat of “No Ordinary Love” is a sharp opening turn, and as the song progresses and lightly metal guitar riffs intertwine with Sade Adu’s yearning voice, it becomes apparent why Deftones would later cover the song. On their earlier records, the band’s playing is parallel to Adu’s instrument, loosely flowing with an improvisatory ache, but on Love Deluxe, their function is more perpendicular—an almost robotically precise machine that creates a chilling sense of counterpoint to the singer’s natural warmth. Once unfairly derided for sounding too smooth, Sade’s Love Deluxe prefigured the chilled-out turn the British music scene would take in the years to come. –Nadine Smith",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam6pthuty6zTTnLM63P5vAo1N6vZVMDZi43FkYgEQUSNE3oyD | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/5bwkygcD8TrHGdppHZSrwYPBcY7KL4rNhn7wPE5csqh9eBoYusiekNLU1NC9W1rwgTSxUn9pKQ4onuMDhZrhwx9sjB9aDA5dKjoCKDEM3CqHKQEeExeV9ZYMZSA4m7MdBpjHjcT2rPgsBHSYUUCssNBXXBdC2D3y | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2PfGKHtqEX58bHtkQxJnWG | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/149574907,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63335c3d2ca381f0210fb7e3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sade%2520-%2520Love%2520Deluxe.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sade-Love_Deluxe_1992.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,51,Alanis Morissette,Jagged Little Pill (1995),Maverick,"Maverick At a time when female singer-songwriters were getting just popular enough to have their talents regularly diminished by the rock establishment, Alanis was the most popular and most misunderstood of all. Her famous misuse of irony in “Ironic” (or was it intentional meta-irony?) left her even more open to mockery and the danger of being a flash in the pan. But Pill embodied a sharp, unashamed, sometimes hilarious range of emotions from rage to deep affection that listeners could relate to on a molecular level. “You Oughta Know” was the primal scream of a betrayed lover that dispenses with melancholy to embrace mess; “Head Over Feet” marveled at the long-resisted realization that healthy relationships can exist after all. We laughed at Alanis, but we also cried, yelled, and laughed with her. –Evie Nagy",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam7Th4a6RQRZmg91JTEukv6VUNwbMh81FHunTfYLHb4zwLUpB | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/4iheeJwWD8ieNhakwNtVbCeWuwR1qfJRV7bDBka8akcakztZ2NpTMJ2tSVUJ3Lf4GkGgvH9aXEKTzZ2kWz8WEthRX2c5Pdw1tmMutKzuEAnQjMvPqudT8V7WQC44Fxh7F9VJ2brtAV9U8vgrCEGrCXHGdQp9Quk4NXeYLpY6zt8Y4fMShMxD85Cs6s | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5Ap3F8CxjjsQKZGASDcHNA | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/308569,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63335d544e7c28d8b1f4c50b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Alanis%2520Morissette%2520-%2520Jagged%2520Little%2520Pill.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Alanis_Morissette-Jagged_Little_Pill_1995.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,50,Elliott Smith,Elliott Smith (1995),Kill Rock Stars,"Kill Rock Stars Getting people to agree on the one skill that made Elliott Smith an icon is nearly impossible, because there’s too many to choose from. On his sophomore album, he established his wealth of talent and set its everlasting influence into motion. Recorded in friends’ basements with a stripped-down setup, Elliott Smith showcases everything that would define Smith as a singular artist: haunting lyrics (“Needle in the Hay”), odd guitar tunings and chords that sound easier to play than they are (“Southern Belle”), double-tracked vocals that add a depth and warmth to his voice (“St. Ides Heaven”), a songwriting style driven by delicacy and intuition (“Alphabet Town”). From the album’s epochal opening strums onwards, Smith appears like an apparition surrounded by fog, equal parts dream and omen as he invites you to let the haze envelop you, too. –Nina Corcoran",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufeJ4d6UuQCu5oi7AhAuDDAuVBzu2pjkhcNnz8eQxfPv6WBSE9h | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2YfVS2JkEsZbGaVN2xMzcCAf2EcdufCigRyF44GJ5f29ratuBWwUyZKgmpFrhqhmxswYt6NmeGB7aN5jK2UM9Lmk6hBoKRAwiMXbyi2wgtmV4jsTPG3dueL48DjB8KXuSgYP85bFeb2CfmGGo3JHRrvtmM2S7VKNcsD | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/60C4r1YwIxsliktUL6eXfw | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/19117048,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63335ec31dccce609e4163b7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Elliott%2520Smith%2520-%2520Elliot%2520Smith.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Elliott_Smith-Elliott_Smith_1995.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,49,DJ Shadow,Endtroducing... (1996),Mo' Wax,"Mo' Wax The expressive possibilities of sample-based music were still unfolding in the ’90s as 1) hungry copyright lawyers began litigating the artform into oblivion, and 2) America’s rap mainstream began a hard-pivot into dirty-realist minimalism. All of which made the Sistine Chapel-scaled achievement of Endtroducing… that much more impressive. Mostly instrumental and entirely sample-based, it fused an astonishing variety of fragments—of Metallica, Björk, Giorgio Moroder, Meredith Monk, Funkadelic, and even private press high school band recordings, many scavenged from the record shop on the album’s iconic cover—using the fairly primitive tools that Sacramento, California record nerd and DJ Josh Davis had at his disposal: an Akai MPC60 sampler, a Technics SL-1200 turntable, and an Alesis ADAT digital recorder. The result is a crate-digger fantasia that collapses time and space, creating polyglot virtual supergroups of the living and the dead, the known and the unknown. It expanded—and exploded—the idea of what a hip-hop album could be, dazzlingly positing an art form that was capacious and voracious enough to contain multitudes. –Will Hermes",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufdthgk5JeNMJ3jopoTxp9q18aycHB94CHekvs2wvKcbdKPhokX | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2YfVS2JkEsZbGaVN2xMzcCAf2EcdufCigRyF44GJ5f29ratuBWwUyZKgmpFrhqhmxswYt6NmeGB7aN5jK2UM9Lmk6hBoKRAy7xrUKNopJWESAWYwZVgyMTJW5u8bzqWJuM6cSXERbhmCFY6ctUbdWSdRWbbzKoVwPrK | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/4wvqGLk1HThPA0b5lzRK2l | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/102048718,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63335f4d10c581ffac68d213/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/DJ%2520Shadow%2520-%2520Endtroducing.jpg,/dataset/artwork/DJ_Shadow-Endtroducing_1996.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,48,Fugees,The Score (1996),Columbia,"Columbia The Score—featuring U.S.-born Lauryn Hill and Pras Michel and Haitian immigrant Wyclef Jean—is suffused with a refugee’s sense of being forever unstuck from place and time, voracious about using every bit of cultural material it can find, like someone collaging together the elements of an identity. What is subtext in so much of music is text here—it’s an album about lives built in opposition, never wholly assimilable in a hostile land, which is to say it’s an immigrant’s album (and also an album about New Jersey). Even Hill, the star of the show, comes off here like a stranger in her own country. There’s a dizzying moment when Jean sings a version of Bob Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry” (the cover would later be remixed as a duet with Bob’s son Stephen). The song folds into itself not just the original but the cover by Boney M. and the mordant sample of the cover by East Orange, New Jersey’s Naughty by Nature, evoking at once the Haiti that Jean left, the Brooklyn he arrived in, the Jamaica that Bob Marley knew, and the Jersey of the Fugees’ present. There's something so moving about it—as if the song were trying to wrap its arms around the diaspora. –Tommy Craggs",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam7AXvVBfqWHbcLWSzRpKbtA9pTv9CRLmDwzqu2LMKoi6QTeb | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/Ehjr9t1bfyFgs5GtcpxVsAdcRJm1vtb9Ubjx5sTFJYB6r2e4TjtG8vb1rkTFisrhHbExGSy1DgZK5HrzBQjdeFLuEEKV6mLo3JaXpwrhPXBceJArzXQLEbfPbVKruWe5GRnMv9omVdx3MAbaoxaL5dh9crkFd | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/4z6F5s3RVaOsekuaegbLfD | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/107394129,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63335fdc8f0d7ac40b58df58/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Fugees%2520-%2520The%2520Score.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Fugees-The_Score_1996.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,47,Sleater-Kinney,Dig Me Out (1997),Kill Rock Stars,"Kill Rock Stars Dig Me Out is one of the rare rock albums that makes a case for rock as a revivifying force and does not whiff. Music is the air that Sleater-Kinney breathes; their voices are your favorite song, and you must know that committing to loving these women makes you liable to live in lyrical infamy. If you didn’t get the message, it’s there in their refined interplay and surging drama. In this corpus of sound, bolstered by robust rock, blues, and a fresh sense of playfulness, Corin Tucker, Carrie Brownstein, and Janet Weiss got their satisfaction and stoked appetites that other forces were intent on diminishing. It was their biggest success to date, shaking off the vestiges of the post-riot grrrl era and euphorically laying siege to the cloistered rock establishment. “Can’t take this away from me,” Brownstein sings on “Words and Guitar,” with matter-of-fact tartness. –Laura Snapes",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufaoukZMpW9KxvwiAzjvhPSYjV6N86uqmJnCWpGybKtipEa9G2o | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/29CLTwheRZNbn8esbYm7MXCvBW5AqRiuV2rkxzL68ZhZakTS8MPQjntM9eJYYf8EpCq592XdCBpDEyUwpZUBUL7o8wUGv6qKtpTJGH55fYSseGNpkRuxkLaeHSNBxfrbhYZxLGzDRUZAHrapMB6PmNm7VfNeHNn6CZagwBb8k3sWCK | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://sleaterkinney.bandcamp.com/album/dig-me-out-remastered | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3tshnNFNhHrO6NUQ0BHw42 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/76727835,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633360498f0d7ac40b58df5a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sleater-Kinney%2520-%2520Dig%2520Me%2520Out.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Sleater-Kinney-Dig_Me_Out_1997.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,46,UGK,Ridin’ Dirty (1996),Jive,"Jive It was their third album, and their last chance. The Port Arthur, Texas duo Bun B and Pimp C had watched Jive Records bowdlerize their music for years—stripping samples, switching backing tracks, launching clueless and half-hearted promotions—and this time, their only request was to be left alone to make the album they heard in their heads. Ridin’ Dirty was the result. Like Dr. Dre in the West, Pimp C dreamed of rap albums as layered and luxuriant as soul classics by Curtis Mayfield or Isaac Hayes. On Ridin’ Dirty, every breath sounds drawn in real time, every key feels pressed down by a finger right next to your ear. N.O. Joe, a mentor to Pimp C, played many of the drum tracks live, giving them the feel of a late-night band. Even Bun B’s mesmerizing verse on “Murder”—a blizzard of interlocking lines, enjambment, and darting emphases meant to show the world that the South contained a rapper every bit as technically fearsome as JAY-Z or Nas—was recorded in a single take, with no punch-ins. It sold respectably. Promotions and media coverage remained sparse. Pimp C, who passed in 2007, wouldn’t live to see Ridin’ Dirty become what it is today: The Chronic of the South, a single-album stand-in for “Texas rap,” and one of the most pained and enduring documents of street struggles ever recorded. –Jayson Greene",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam6puHqvhGJYWHpbiebU5p1YdSdXYgQanQPmMtSW3W8k3PPib | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/5bwkygcD8TrHGdppHZSrwYPBcY7KL4rNhn7wPE5csqh9eBoYusiekNLU1NC9W1rwgTSxUn9pKQ4onuMDhZrhwx9sjB9aDB3kNuKtXTViXmvQwFpbqXRZMqeSK9eFktTWxKZrz9Ktq6ZqFrx2rr99whLD528Yt55u | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/4jTPQq9PSlKMOm1yLx2ATN | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/4955778,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633360d64e7c28d8b1f4c50d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/UGK%2520-%2520Ridin%2520Dirty.jpg,/dataset/artwork/UGK-Ridin_Dirty_1996.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,45,Destiny’s Child,The Writing’s on the Wall (1999),Columbia,"Columbia Legendary girl groups aren’t created overnight. Watch clips of a baby-faced Destiny’s Child rehearsing or revisit the countless interviews where former members detailed the “Olympic-style” training regimen that would catapult them to fame. Their work ethic and talent caught the industry’s eyes by the time the group's members—initially Beyoncé Knowles, Kelly Rowland, LaTavia Roberson, and LeToya Luckett—were still in high school, and their second album, The Writing’s on the Wall, kept the world’s attention. Produced by an all-star roster of seasoned industry professionals like Missy Elliott, Kandi Burruss, Kevin “She’kspere” Briggs and Rodney Jerkins, the album combined sophisticated R&B production with the exuberant theatrics of young women. There were controversial and empowering anthems, homages to The Godfather and Set it Off, playful threats to have AOL shut down their email because a man wouldn’t stop messaging them, a slew of the decade’s most reliable party-starting bangers. It was also the launching pad for contemporary pop’s most enduring and evolutionary star, one that Beyoncé consistently pays homage to through periodic reunions and nostalgic home movie clips. –Heven Haile",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam6pthuyPCJaqzDckEkhUAgELA1KV6zgEJY7VHu21EPv8Py6s | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2h8zKZvUAqv9bScU3SWqLSQ14Mhv9oyTckCaWdKvQAMSEwpzRk9ZyFaLQTRhk6jgnu2rrAr2KwPPBGAYCm5mR38tzShbtnUv6FFXnUpxYSeCrnuNYZqaVA9pYFK2h4CX7cRZV1uCtDTTefAb1QKgqKrzdkasACphsjYfbFoUhSkuHhPqmD | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/283NWqNsCA9GwVHrJk59CG | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/1321114 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lf9_3-XSxSE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333616c1dccce609e4163b9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Destiny_s%2520Child%2520-%2520The%2520Writing_s%2520on%2520the%2520Wall.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Destinys_Child-The_Writings_on_the_Wall_1999.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,44,Stereolab,Emperor Tomato Ketchup (1996),Duophonic / Elektra,"Duophonic / Elektra “Olv 26,” the sixth song on Stereolab’s 1996 album Emperor Tomato Ketchup, opens with the pulsing of a drum machine, the hissy and primitive sort that were attached to electronic organs in the 1960s and ’70s. These “rhythm boxes,” as they were known back then, came with preloaded patterns for particular styles: waltz, cha cha, bossa nova, rock’n’roll. But to contemporary ears, their mechanized beats suggest rudimentary early stabs at genres that didn’t yet exist: synth-pop, house, hip-hop, techno. Stereolab’s fourth album lives in this historical interzone, coming off simultaneously like the past’s vision of a glorious future that never quite came to pass, and an attempt at recreating an idyllic past they never experienced for themselves. Lætitia Sadier, Tim Gane, and their cohort were students of the sorts of music the rhythm boxes were trying to emulate, but also of krautrock, punk, disco, classical minimalism—anything that found its groove through stripped-down repetition. On Emperor Tomato Ketchup, they synthesized all of it. The sense of lost futures was not only an aesthetic proposition, but a political one as well: Joyous in tone but often scathing in subject matter, the album imagined a borderless utopia of sound while denouncing the powers that be for preventing such a paradise from manifesting in the world outside your headphones. –Andy Cush",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufdubduSxsGbnGGCRN2ZvxyUs6vfQFmqvWzPWHqrxdA6o7k7cyy | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/PEbHSas7Jt1b5tzL8bQBkN56HvgEKoKidXGJ8n4we1YzzHJziVgBw42E21AEPbbPdiCkK6DY2Sv4EQTZ7pJK8ja5QVgdCTnCUUyqG8dmYFXJ17yBKiNPiYbrCoqrGnYcWV29ZFS22GzYZFoy6q4xeMmcGXNdVUAyMi6EYbb6SQsmCfbq | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://stereolab.bandcamp.com/album/emperor-tomato-ketchup-expanded-edition | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/6SI4L8ARoPuOCGcnBrnIkn | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/94896896,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333624112e43930baa6dd06/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Stereolab%2520-%2520Emperor%2520Tomato%2520Ketchup.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Stereolab-Emperor_Tomato_Ketchup_1996.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,43,Le Tigre,Le Tigre (1999),Mr. Lady,"Mr. Lady Evolving from Kathleen Hanna’s post-Bikini Kill solo project the Julie Ruin, Le Tigre were a leftist School House Rock girl group rolling their eyes at electronic music elitism. Their debut album opened with the question “Who took the bomp?”, inverting the doo-wop standard to declare that nothing is fresh, only repurposed. But Hanna and collaborators Johanna Fateman and Sadie Benning didn’t just offer criticism; there was also gray space, and solutions. “What’s Yr Take on Cassavetes?” is meditative proto-cancel culture wrestling with a problematic fave over a mechanical heartbeat, while “Hot Topic” suggests a host of artistic palliatives, from David Wojnarowicz to No Limit soldier Mia X. Above all, Le Tigre is pure, exuberant fun—not to mention the album that called Rudy Giuliani a “fucking jerk” before the rest of the country knew it to be true. –Claire Lobenfeld",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufaohN2qqkXdCH7ZEtgZjisF4Ro32WUUgqJiFzuPDhoEw2G973R | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/Ehjr9t1bfyFgs5GtcpxVsAdcRJm1vtb9Ubjx5sTFJYB6r2e4TjtG8vb1rkTFisrhHbExGSy1DgZK5HrzBQjdeFLuEEKV6hUnFCovt3twTx2iqjXMc35rp33fbnJCuzx2PBKxKydQCVYG76MA5oo1g7bv5gDaK | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/0dSSZGzoukzrFBnG07J45i | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/92268617 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXmsLe8t_gg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633362d08f0d7ac40b58df5c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Le%2520Tigre%2520-%2520Le%2520Tigre.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Le_Tigre-Le_Tigre_1999.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,42,TLC,CrazySexyCool (1994),LaFace / Arista,"LaFace / Arista With their impressive debut, 1992’s light-hearted Ooooooohhh… on the TLC Tip, the Atlanta trio of T-Boz, Left Eye, and Chilli introduced themselves as the girls next door of new jack swing. On their follow-up, TLC remade the template for R&B and hip-hop hybrids altogether. CrazySexyCool is best remembered for its massive coming-of-age hits: horn-stabbed infidelity narrative “Creep,” socially conscious Stax-horns singalong “Waterfalls,” consummately horny slow jam “Red Light Special.” But its brash spirit is embodied in the cameo-filled interludes, like when Chilli prank calls Puff Daddy and feigns arousal only to reveal, as her moans give way to a flush, that she’s on the toilet. On guitar-blazing finale “Sumthin’ Wicked This Way Comes,” Left Eye even trades introspective verses with a pre-ATLiens André 3000. Collectively, TLC always prevailed. Their cover of Prince’s winking come-on “If I Was Your Girlfriend” may have lost the implied gender reversal of the original, but it cheekily demonstrated what the world would learn on TLC’s next album, 1999’s FanMail: These women would suffer no scrubs. –Marc Hogan",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam6wayUc1kjvg6bFCcvLdwikphMFJVq4d35GDxYYMAcnyrdab | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2YfVS2JkEsZbGaVN2xMzcCAf2EcdufCigRyF44GJ5f29ratuBWwUyZKgmpFrhqhmxswYt6NmeGB7aN5jK2UM9Lmk6hBoKR4i5YwH4ZPhPtCyDw3814s4Us6djhLEnV3euFRqH1cSaE5CRS42TNg8NLkYW1KJ9F74Ehy | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5eg56dCpFn32neJak2vk0f | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/667700,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633363b62ca381f0210fb7e5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/TLC%2520-%2520CrazySexyCool.jpg,/dataset/artwork/TLC-CrazySexyCool_1994.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,41,Raekwon,Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… (1995),Loud / RCA,"Loud / RCA Inspired by John Woo’s The Killer and Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… stars Raekwon as Lex Diamonds, a Henry Hill-like character who uses a cryptic mix of street slang and Five Percenter mathematics to narrate the life and crimes of his gang, the Wu-Gambinos. As Tony Starks, Diamonds’ right-hand man, Ghostface Killah raps with the hot-headed swagger of Joe Pesci in a Scorsese film—in rhymes and skits they plot their hits, throw jabs at competitors, and dream about getting out of the game for good. RZA’s production acts like a gritty score for their braggadocious bars; his sample choice is at its murkiest, with dark piano chords, unintelligible moans, and crying violins creating an aura of uncertainty that emphasizes Raekwon’s stories of the struggle. Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… was a cinematic masterpiece, expanding the lore of the Wu-Tang Clan and ushering in a new era of mafioso rap. –Arjun Srivatsa",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam6pthT67SbGsBFjywdszgVfnEsEnpXe2MbuTVHEmsiYfQLNo | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/PEbHSas7Jt1b5tzL8bQBkN56HvgEKoKidXGJ8n4we1YzzHJziVgBw42E21AEPbbPdiCkK6DY2Sv4EQTZ7pJK8ja5QVgdCbc2sZBkrDoPi8TCmoJ2xAGUk6WWka4FvADyVN6qfTnHVu8rVkzRku7DKZo726JbpqpX2gYzytbmjL8MKnHH | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/7btiyhWzUfzxN3ijSiBpC8 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/1805232 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpmtMyr6orE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633364341dccce609e4163bb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Raekwon%2520-%2520Only%2520Built%25204%2520Cuban%2520Linx....jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Raekwon-Only_Built_4_Cuban_Linx_1995.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,40,Nine Inch Nails,The Downward Spiral (1994),Nothing / Interscope,"Nothing / Interscope The Downward Spiral is the full blossoming of Trent Reznor’s compositional genius and insatiable id. His wants are extreme (to break it up; to smash it up; to fuck you like an animal; to fuck everyone in the world), his alienation is profound. Paradoxically, his yelps of pain were never more uncompromising and never more commercially impactful. A loose concept album chronicling a slow-motion descent into addiction and suicide, The Downward Spiral fit snugly with the angst and self-hatred of the grunge revolution that ended with Kurt Cobain’s death in a Seattle greenhouse, weeks after this album was released. But musically, NIN’s greatest work bypasses grunge in favor of subtle textures and mangled nods to the art-rock of Reznor’s youth. Its stature as a masterpiece was assured well before Johnny Cash took a liking to its most haunting song, further cementing the album’s eternal anguish. –Zach Schonfeld",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1qJovvguLLEnC57tv3ZEWPBEgHXUG4P5hngqZTxZKq2HmXh | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/FzrGcxRntjxTYBr5CjAbZDfnRiGpg8gXpYfWT8VoaEipXEh8ZG3fF2DGZ1oa12e7ckyDhDq5M858hSN2iLkcC8RxGWk2cTBjLuYGQLxuZDiP1yFCPaBGLnqHDnK3ipkv4ceABa3pXvFMqD8FaofCgJqTpa6QGMCNtr1waYHYkkrf | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3nJnyDV8fwFpffo0EyHQto | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/637208 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AHCfZTRGiI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633364a9afa92f85cc3e4fda/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Nine%2520Inch%2520Nails%2520-%2520The%2520Downward%2520Spiral.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nine_Inch_Nails-The_Downward_Spiral_1994.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,39,2Pac,All Eyez on Me (1996),Death Row / Interscope,"Death Row / Interscope Luxurious in gangsta allegory, this 27-track opus from hip-hop’s Shakspeare in Karl Kani is all Alizé, no absolution. It’s an ungovernable object of flawed glory and gore crammed with tales of guns and gold, peppered with emotional conflict, and propelled by 2Pac’s outlaw brand of storytelling. The first two tracks he put on wax for the record—the snub-nosed “Ambitionz Az a Ridah” and the elegiac “I Ain’t Mad at Cha,” both recorded in the hours after his release from an eight-month stint in jail due to a sexual abuse conviction—typify the intoxicating polarities of All Eyez on Me, of what makes it such an entrancing work, in spite of its rank misogyny. The album is profuse with classics, including the era-defining “California Love,” but where it finds illumination—something Pac chased his entire career, trying as he could to evade the growing darkness around him—is in its funk-rich sound and range. Every Pac is given face: people’s champ, pariah, renegade. By September 1996, only seven months after the record’s release, Pac would be dead, killed in a storm of gunfire on the Las Vegas strip. We haven’t stopped looking for him since. –Jason Parham",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufemJLMRuKVhGLc8rcxeDigZFWEmvpm9emUCHczBwFvPvB65im9 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/X7niGYieCH8UQ8PGqdUBtg8M6SAMcPegELm2uaNkiXQqSRwp4HaQGxppbNbCMF44CZcGNECmFt4zQZRh1GRha7dMawYceYRFy9QnMRYzPHqrgGu5NP3FsedsbYii6BEw5rAeeL6T44d5cge4czuJkheJmjivwq4ix8qej | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/78iX7tMceN0FsnmabAtlOC | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/43746383,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333659210c581ffac68d215/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/2Pac%2520-%2520All%2520Eyez%2520on%2520Me.jpg,/dataset/artwork/2Pac-All_Eyez_on_Me_1996.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,38,Janet Jackson,janet. (1993),Virgin,"Virgin Released a few months before Janet Jackson made her film debut in the John Singleton picture Poetic Justice, janet. oozed maturity from a distinctive and ravenous narrator tapping into the intimacy of blues and the expansive improvisation of jazz. Urged on by trusted collaborators Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, Jackson co-wrote and co-produced every song on the record, and her gift for arrangements culminated in a project that was revelatory without pretense and assertive with its candor. A deeply personal undertaking, janet. irrevocably shifted the public and private inclinations of a society raised to visualize and consume: Tracks like “That’s the Way Love Goes,” “If” and “Any Time, Any Place” illustrated the depths and context of her desire and longing for liberation. The record had a seismic influence on artists working inside pop and R&B, as well as a generation that would make pleasure and sexual autonomy a cornerstone of their brands and lyrical signatures in hip-hop. –Tarisai Ngangura",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1mBeYfihx33GtDfBDm8UQfY4NkZY3gEiwtfSRrFPLLucZnj | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/AF4hZrJoZxC84SKr5YhNkUxhvHJs9uSA2Ar2Do9q6QaLbRW9zbdL7wZg6oCSkKar6rzWJSC9PyWiC1JNK8YJSAZSwvE29byAxdkjLXCW8HFi2Frj3sRqNa9bMFYqogtZ3JzRdjiMieL8nz3iVHgxnJ8WF | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/7qIuZgsMkRuh7rzi4qVcpg | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/2501081,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63336646aa79394c9a3e7fdc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Janet%2520Jackson%2520-%2520janet..jpg,/dataset/artwork/Janet_Jackson-janet_1993.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,37,Fiona Apple,Tidal (1996),Sony,"Sony In the summer of 1996, Fiona Apple’s piano-thudding debut revealed a fully formed voice that quickly cut through the fuzzed-out alt-rock of the era. Music executives who heard Tidal before it came out thought they were being tricked; it seemed impossible that songs like the knowing “Shadowboxer” and eviscerating “Sleep to Dream” could have come from a self-taught 18-year-old. Made with producer Andrew Slater, Apple’s music on Tidal is informed equally by the stylings of hip-hop, and jazz titans like Ella Fitzgerald, with lyrics that glide with the rhythmic grace of a poet. It is the sound of an artist emerging with a sense of clarifying self-sufficiency, opening up pivotal space for listeners who experience the world with the same vivid intensity. Apple’s incisive songwriting, smoky alto, and endlessly perceptive lyrics on Tidal remain as potent as ever. The delicate “Sullen Girl” and “Never Is a Promise” soothe the soul by opening up and nursing traumatic wounds; the instantly infamous “Criminal,” written in 45 minutes to satisfy Sony’s demand for a radio single, moves with seductive, snarling energy for a coolly insouciant bloodletting. The emotional flotsam that Apple sifts through—falling violently in and out of love, coping with depressive fallout, and finding a sense of self and purpose through it all—resonated with an entire generation and beyond, setting off tremors that reached everyone from Kanye to Olivia Rodrigo. It also led to her 1997 VMAs acceptance speech, a stunningly honest wake-up call to audiences entranced by the world of MTV that would come to define Apple’s ethos as an artist who moves at her own pace and refuses to take any of the industry’s bullshit. Hard-won resilience animates each of Apple’s albums, but it first took root within Tidal’s searingly truthful music. –Eric Torres",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufamCbQgdByqDku7cqaveCD7ii3U5nV784Sph4nRcJ4LQB2eHCX | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/36TDN37JM9t1EvKKNRQCGk3CY6xhpL8WggqiWdjnLMJ4zBzMchvYX7vd3g1nFoMMe8FPVsZtHzDAnYLLnLqKuNeiDtw9sSt45dAbRr2ssLF1CTK7Xo5vtveFESKpZEeExupyBqLdTnr7pdRCbQf2oB5d | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5gVBXH8MT6zfdRkjp7qT18 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/33771515 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vioJwze-KQ&feature=emb_title,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633366ba8f0d7ac40b58df5e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Fiona%2520Apple%2520-%2520Tidal.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Fiona_Apple-Tidal_1996.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,36,Lil’ Kim,Hard Core (1996),Undeas / Big Beat / Atlantic,"Undeas / Big Beat / Atlantic Brooklyn rapper Lil’ Kim’s debut album delivered a pussy power permission slip packaged in a mink coat. Brimming with unblushing sexuality, Hard Core’s humor, tight narratives, and bracing toughness have been an undercurrent in rap for nearly 25 years. There’s no Nicki, no CupcakKe, no “WAP” without these open-mouthed, open-legged bars. Kim’s gifts as a presence and a performer have resonated everywhere from various Real Housewives franchises to the upper echelons of high fashion. She offers a cheat sheet for surviving and thriving when the world wasn’t built for you to dominate. –Claire Lobenfeld",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufamD3dPN1W7p4iNGVBiWuoE8QpnszGhyERwzoATjjL4GqnSBpo | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/Ehjr9t1bfyFgs5GtcpxVsAdcRJm1vtb9Ubjx5sTFJYB6r2e4TjtG8vb1rkTFisrhHbExGSy1DgZK5HrzBQjdeFLuEEKV6fYYQcR3uAX5iktNvCLy3nEjR57gyyGVSEhdDkB7AcTfFkR8zukaQQTYK9MwD9Vsq | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/39xHAZmTUSQJyXt6ebpjKT | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/3029384,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632def5652d4bd45efccbdbb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lil-Kim-Big-Momma-Thang.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Lil_Kim-Hard_Core_1996.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,35,The Breeders,Last Splash (1993),4AD / Elektra,"4AD / Elektra Last Splash thrust the Breeders out of the fetid bedroom environs of their claustrophobic 1990 debut, Pod, and into the surf-grunge sunshine. “Cannonball” took the album platinum, elevating a band previously known as Pixies bassist Kim Deal’s side project to alt-rock superstar status. But so monolithic is the single that it overshadows a record whose greatest asset is its sonic and thematic unity. Like a beach blowout where everyone stays in the sun too long and somebody gets stung by a jellyfish, Last Splash counterbalances its exuberant pop moments with the snarling pith of “Saints” and the light disorientation of “No Aloha.” Squalling instrumentals that riff on surf classics fuse the tracks into a swell of waves that crest in pristine choruses, then disappear into a foam of feedback. Sure, you can extract one perfect song from the flotsam, but it makes an even bigger splash in its natural setting. –Judy Berman",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufdr7eWGp2bM8ScfYTMXbiSSRrFyr2hVZ2ksTbXerA3z4wPGCgT | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/MKEh7BpQXwWWp1Y3i6D9RjWuqrJsu9zvnz9d36jPMPvD98gTrNrqcRAvCcYCX4oSM9jZscHurCooXc4F442PjYSAu9nqaf39kBibhpVSDmiWxhtvFnynwW7Kx3p41SQx3gZhx91QemYGaqXUk1auHKXdFBDYbUifV | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/57F44c0MTziVzHPEuJtH9A | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/157762275,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633368581dccce609e4163bd/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The%2520Breeders%2520-%2520Last%2520Splash.png,/dataset/artwork/The_Breeders-Last_Splash_1993.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,34,Aphex Twin,Richard D. James Album (1996),Warp,"Warp You could spend an entire essay trying to elucidate the alien power of a single measure of Aphex Twin’s Richard D. James Album: the minute choreography of kicks and snares, dancing like electrons around a nucleus; the wistful turn of a particular melodic line; the way an ostensibly mundane sample—say, the snippet of James’ father calling his name that punctuates “4”—becomes almost painfully loaded with feeling when it lands at just the right moment. To hear James tell it, that’s the way he composed the music, tinkering over every stretch of rhythm as if it were a Lilliputian sculpture, spending hours arranging elements that pass by in the span of seconds for the listener. He wasn’t the only musician working in this fashion at the time, and was open about the influence of contemporaries like Squarepusher and Luke Vibert. But, perhaps more than any producer before or since, he found beauty and holism in this microscopic view of music, and never more so than on Richard D. James. The tiny rhythmic vibrations are not mere filigree for the larger arc of a given composition; they are the very heart of it. It’s as if each measure contains the entire album in miniature: galaxies spinning inside every atom. –Andy Cush",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufamJzUHHmRxHLu3BTtXc113Dyx2X5Cxq87oMhEgLi5xUjQKA1q | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/29CLTwheRZNbn8esbYm7MXCvBW5AqRiuV2rkxzL68ZhZakTS8MPQjntM9eJYYf8EpCq592XdCBpDEyUwpZUBUL7o8wUGv7Pvm3Wgnx9UR1HYJL4nrfnXK9ft6gWsa85k7nycrFqF6EpT1ot7kcSuGBVHUzRpC1GqJQzCzVRm1rg3DD | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/43s2fKRQsOSB6rSrxtAXKK | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/16024653,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63336941fccd3fda16c5bf5f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Aphex%2520Twin%2520-%2520Richard%2520D.%2520James%2520Album.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Aphex_Twin-Richard_D_James_Album_1996.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,33,Talk Talk,Laughing Stock (1991),Verve / Polydor,"Verve / Polydor The last two Talk Talk records occupy a particularly rarified space in the history of cult-classic albums. The mythology is irresistible: One-time synth-pop hitmakers get a longer leash to experiment in the studio, dissolve their sound into an imagistic sweep with little precedent in rock, take new pleasure in improvised performance and sprawling moments of silence, and retire on as high a note as one can imagine. But even that lofty narrative doesn’t do justice to the music. On Laughing Stock, the band’s final record, they whiplash between extremes. Sometimes the sound is serene and gorgeous, like the gentle, brush-stroked “New Grass”; and sometimes it’s harsher, as in “Ascension Day,” a thrashing epic that presages the decade’s most explosive post-rock bands. The image that always comes to mind while listening is a sanctuary, but Talk Talk were just as quick to knock down the walls. In the last second of “Ascension Day,” the tape cuts mid-performance, ending the song abruptly and inorganically, suggesting the whole thing is an illusion. The magic was always ours to create. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1rQxEfjrxFmJ3yE9BZQedBAFK2Dw8DAXPXjqEzU2Snd4kt3 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/X7niGYieCH8UQ8PGqdUBtg8M6SAMcPegELm2uaNkiXQqSRwp4HaQGxppbNbCMF44CZcGNECmFt4zQZRh1GRha7dMawYcek2a8k4s2aNMCS76mkV5MdXjoCmBBBQhv98kuMnvgAA2vb4vvRgwHytmw2LAQ1ahjvQdqyGxb | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3NEa40lY9rNpSIALSIKn79 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/34774394,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63336a125c7dee5dc1f59122/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Talk%2520Talk%2520-%2520Laughing%2520Stock.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Talk_Talk-Laughing_Stock_1991.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,32,Lucinda Williams,Car Wheels on a Gravel Road (1998),Mercury,"Mercury Lucinda Williams was two decades into her career at the cross-section of country and rock when she finally released her full-length opus, the album that earned her commercial success, wide acclaim, and status as one of the most influential living songwriters. She had traversed and absorbed the American South on a sensory level. She was 45 years old. With four previous albums under her belt, Williams had endured 20 years of being told “no”: by labels, by producers, by awful men. Heartbreak, romantic and creative, has its way of producing clarity, which she brought to her narratives of drunken angels and metal firecrackers and Greenville, Rosedale, and Jackson. On Car Wheels, everything cohered into a blue-skied open-road travelogue that still feels like freedom. –Jenn Pelly",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1rQfgoPCZo78ke8xHoTy3w6tzpPazRTexpnEUM5zpawmffZ | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/C5BN9bLtpHgEyx7MNKKgBuARJsGD6hr8syYpzKwm7ov8AmmcLX1wqVhpxRVNUGC12W9K4TdWhvkmUmqtuoTcQJy39iMVYJv9XkpJM3Q8e8Tdzq2onC9TPmDw3efL9AvLfKEkWjqGNHgbpXEFMeyv2hGRUwtW7Xb9mojvJPVWwiZjrGP5ZNbCMZm | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3iC6dJobZulVXp0F4Bojig | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/630124,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63336aa5d997a1f3e8a0ceff/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lucinda%2520Williams%2520-%2520Car%2520Wheels%2520On%2520A%2520Gravel%2520Road.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lucinda_Williams-Car_Wheels_on_a_Gravel_Road_1998.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,31,Neutral Milk Hotel,In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (1998),Merge,"Merge In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is a celebration of the unconscious as a source of creative inspiration. Neutral Milk Hotel’s Jeff Mangum, who was driven to make field recordings, loved folk music of all kinds, and had his life changed by the idiosyncratic punk of Minutemen; he worked as hard as any successful musician, painstakingly writing and revising songs until he got them right. But he also trusted that the unexplainable images that bubbled up in his mind were worth setting to music. Aeroplane, the masterpiece of NMH’s brief discography, unfolds like a water-damaged 8mm film of these fragments, with semen-stained mountaintops and scenes featuring Anne Frank, reincarnated as a little boy, pounding out a melody on a burning piano. For those who hear something special in it, the album feels like the product of a rare kind of telepathy, as if versions of your own obsessions have somehow made their way into songs by someone you’ve never met. –Mark Richardson",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1opNinGCVfYPyLKUvk1QLLiHkX8NSsgzB4GVFbxBts75rFd | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/3WVdWb4brEJ3iT5cRmUo31whQ5bFyaGfVKFTjSbA6Aiwe74mFqwbB5h4cfdLN8X8i84F4W9Gnyaw2m9Mpm4JzPecqCBXwECju4PVN9qsBk3gL27zYXY4E5AK99fuuAk5fmkJB8SejMZZBs5uQwhmpNJHX3dhRtrrgNmEw4DZheh1SnwbhMfnd9 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/0vVekV45lOaVKs6RZQQNob | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/37265686,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63336b0c1dccce609e4163bf/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Neutral%2520Milk%2520Hotel%2520-%2520In%2520the%2520Aeroplane%2520Over%2520the%2520Sea.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Neutral_Milk_Hotel-In_the_Aeroplane_Over_the_Sea_1998.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,30,Mos Def,Black on Both Sides (1999),Rawkus / Priority,"Rawkus / Priority Mos Def’s discography is a testament to the idea that Blackness isn’t a monolith. Black on Both Sides, his 1999 solo debut, was the Brooklyn rapper’s attempt to blend his thoughts on racism, dwindling resources, and all kinds of love to create a fluid and biting portrait of Black America on the edge of a new millenium, a marriage of the smooth and the confrontational. Def—who now goes by Yasiin Bey—wasn’t afraid to use his skills as an MC to examine the world’s problems from his soapbox (“New World Water,” “Mr. Nigga”), but Both Sides never feels sanctimonious. He draws connections between the history of Black music and the Five Elements of hip-hop while contextualizing rap’s birthplace as a wellspring of creativity that extends beyond the genre’s origins (“Habitat”). Black On Both Sides is conscious in the literal sense—self-aware, honest, unpretentious, a cornucopia of Black sound to weather listeners through the towering inferno. –Dylan Green",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1rQfgoQd41GKXjVkXoA2JW2fxSyf3ztD7WodXtUexfBTsGP | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/FzrGcxRntjxTYBr5CjAbZDfnRiGpg8gXpYfWT8VoaEipXEh8ZG3fF2DGZ1oa12e7ckyDhDq5M858hSN2iLkcC8RxGWk2cHhQVWiFiGcRCj9GBuEbvynoVrRisvhhPyR85BJRg7enYHPNnt9PRLkaRmCe2EdgaMBcVH23qnRofez7 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5gK2l2LgWY0BA4p9uy27z6 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/569752,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63336b8652d95d0f90c87f6c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mos%2520Def%2520-%2520Black%2520on%2520Both%2520Sides.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mos_Def-Black_on_Both_Sides_1999.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,29,Pavement,"Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (1994)",Matador,"Matador Pavement’s decision to graft a shadow history of ’60s and ’70s California folk-rock and psychedelia onto the abrasive, Fall-inspired noise of their previous sound made total sense once the end product was rendered. But in some ways this obscures what a truly strange and wondrous inspiration it was in the first place. Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain’s 12 tracks are alternately sparkling and insinuating, mournful and ominous and finally cathartic, variously evoking the desert swoon of the Flying Burrito Brothers, the swaggering two-guitar overdrive of Buffalo Springfield, and the eerie chill of jazz pioneer Dave Brubeck. When Stephen Malkmus sings, “Good night to the rock’n’roll era” over the closing tribute to famed concert promoter Bill Graham, “Fillmore Jive,” it’s part funeral and part exorcism: a final postscript for the sandcastle paradise of ’60s utopianism. Freedom’s just another word when everything is lost. –Elizabeth Nelson",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufbFSMh4kdXG5VSDauhufsw3ZJsMU3xa6LeSUieAQnpPag229w1 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/ZxssCo8SeuM6mRcDQfvUeNTNYQAjiyZjfaBb5th84ZcVLxECX7vxkf5SkeET5snFJTZe3XRRTsHKXPjnFy2ozExhNZkG19rzswQZknfushsoevWgRF4We1fRUn6EeR9XpHU8tPQriQgeXR2xk5kN4R6UfAkd8EQKhBrPmXbDJWDQUqez7zzf | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://pavement.bandcamp.com/album/crooked-rain-crooked-rain | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1XFNz6KIvLyIsLFOiLRKqP | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/58085898,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63336c421dccce609e4163c1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Pavement%2520-%2520Crooked%2520Rain%2C%2520Crooked%2520Rain.png,/dataset/artwork/Pavement-Crooked_Rain_Crooked_Rain_1994.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,28,Björk,Post (1995),One Little Independent,"One Little Independent It’s a tale as old as time: a girl from the wilderness hits it big, moves to the city during her Saturn Return, starts clubbing, finds herself amid the chaos and solitude, and makes an art-pop masterpiece. Alternating between feral and tender songs, 1995’s Post is a portal into the pulsing sensuality of British trip-hop and electronica as seen through Björk’s eyes. Like 1993’s Debut, the sound is highly eclectic—from the surprisingly faithful cover of Betty Hutton’s “It’s Oh So Quiet” to the twinges of baroque music—but Post marks the first time Björk really stepped into the tastemaker role she occupies to this day, assembling collaborators from across the underground (Tricky, Nellee Hooper, Graham Massey, Howie B) to work in service of her vision. The music follows the emotion: Every exclamation mark of the soul is met with a freaky horn blast or tribal drum break, every dark glance an industrial beat or a mysterious twinge of harpsichord. And with her supernaturally nimble voice and to-the-point poetry, Björk is able to articulate emotional scenarios with the clarity of discovering there is a foreign word for a feeling that remains ineffable in your mother tongue. On Post, this includes sex without touching, music as life force, death dreams that make you wake up grateful, and the way falling in love can feel like the world’s shortest fireworks display. It’s an album of apathy and desire, restlessness and freedom, capriciousness and control—in other words, Björk’s becoming. –Jill Mapes",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam7TfagsyMS1MFSPJXpBH5tZT1z1knuKA4oPXZEWmvkSZ4kNF | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/UWxN5ZEu9McrNbWY8o36qGTBDgMaP1LsE744YS6juBDEQncwJt6nLhF4KorDsNqBDyGyPLES9Rxgmi5wE6xwTezpnJFhRq3f3ZPE9papgPb9cvDXSins5zfEVWU25fPag4fwDdVBJyXhBAHFE9TBf1 | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://bjork.bandcamp.com/album/post | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2Ul7B1LEHxXzYubtkTMENs | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/33348477 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ojarj6nTM4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63336cd0800c1a0f8721bb34/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bjo%25CC%2588rk%2520-%2520Post.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bjrk-Post_1995.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,27,Public Enemy,Fear of a Black Planet (1990),Def Jam / Columbia,"Def Jam / Columbia In 1990, Public Enemy had a way of making wildly engrossing political art while also reinforcing the very things they sought to destroy. The group was drawing on a strain of Black nationalist political practice that was self-defeatingly conspiratorial, that saw the fiendish workings of long-tentacled cabals behind everything—the media, Hollywood, 911, the music industry, AIDS, and so on. One could read revolutionary anticapitalist or antiracist intent into these ideas when taken in isolation—and that was always easy to do, given Chuck D's immense talent for quotably pungent insights—but the vision uniting them was ultimately a conservative one, given to reactionary essentialisms: a people, a nation (mainly the men), beset from without and sometimes within by a parasitic Other. At Public Enemy’s best, the whole of their music had the potential to create solidarity beyond the narrower ideas being pushed in some of their verses. The “organized noise” cultivated by Hank Shocklee and the Bomb Squad on Fear of a Black Planet was densely allusive, reshuffling and reworking artists and cultural totems and ideas both past and present—James Brown, Sly Stone, Funkadelic, Bobby Byrd, Afrika Bambaataa, sirens, hisses, polyrhythms, Malcolm X’s “Message to the Grass Roots.” The production was a thumping bricolage, the effect of which was to submit Public Enemy into a sort of communal dialogue with the latter half of the Black 20th century. To listen to Fear of a Black Planet was not to become a passive receptacle for Chuck D’s politics, but to open yourself up to what the sociologist Paul Gilroy calls the “restless, recombinant qualities” of the Black Atlantic cultures. Any political meanings you’re tempted to assign to “Welcome to the Terrordome” or “Fight the Power” have to contend with something bigger than words: the feelings of power, love, and liberation that come over a roomful of people who have decided to move their asses, together. –Tommy Craggs",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufamR2NdX1Ly8mZF33t5PZTrzgkPk1rWVv8BqnhwQHJVLPmUdCo | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/PEbHSas7Jt1b5tzL8bQBkN56HvgEKoKidXGJ8n4we1YzzHJziVgBw42E21AEPbbPdiCkK6DY2Sv4EQTZ7pJK8ja5QVgdCUY8smxMWmd6eksGMk3ZJuFrfFjW6WYJTfXAzuc4v4oA78LLDtMNZ2ia3mB5BaHc86v2MMsguxTPVBG6kR9V | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/0aFNb4RDk2hmKKLa0bzXNz | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/2570257,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63336d50e02a17d9175e5621/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Public%2520Enemy%2520-%2520Fear%2520of%2520a%2520Black%2520Planet.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Public_Enemy-Fear_of_a_Black_Planet_1990.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,26,Boards of Canada,Music Has the Right to Children (1998),Warp / Skam,"Warp / Skam In 1998, an album wrapped in a grainy family photo, faces lost to time—or scrubbed from it—appeared on better record store racks. It boasted the imprimatur of not one but two of the decade’s finest labels, Sheffield’s heavy-hitting Warp and Manchester’s mysterious Skam, as likely to put out a Frisbee as it was the latest Autechre side project. But Music Has the Right to Children, the first release from Scottish brothers Michael Sandison and Marcus Eoin that most people were lucky enough to hear, was a revelation. Boards of Canada coaxed breaks into motion as if excavating ancient rock formations while high on their own supply of hairy psych-rock samples (even Hair itself). It’s nostalgic but not dissociative: The album’s most idiosyncratic aspect are the wobbling voices that gurgle, “I love you…,” or, “There are a lot of different me’s…,” mostly summoned from 1970s North American public television, that ancient medium of collective meaning-making. Decades on, Music remains mystical and deeply human, an uncanny valley rung with melodies drifting off all grids. It is folk music for people who use DATs instead of dobros. The faces might be mirrors. –Jesse Dorris",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam7EUwZshX8NkksoEKCh49DiMiBMWUarwEinbvKdmzS1ecZ1m | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/HR4R9gBZvZ4oxn7zw1cHBxQb2fAzhn3u565znTKETyW41CWYM5JTJaBL3WfUDKkySVzFCAGrxRnW92Nj5MA84KBRDY5pNwnWgRUS3FCHwk6XkhH2vVCHsDr77YWSJWb9D8ea2UQA6SqbCsADig2ZGfRPbuJxGmGvRdHgp16hXnZQGZDsJW7gkmYGZWT | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://boardsofcanada.bandcamp.com/album/music-has-the-right-to-children | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1vWnB0hYmluskQuzxwo25a | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/16024556,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63336de012e43930baa6dd08/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Boards%2520of%2520Canada%2520-%2520Music%2520Has%2520the%2520Right%2520to%2520Children.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Boards_of_Canada-Music_Has_the_Right_to_Children_1998.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,25,Belle and Sebastian,If You’re Feeling Sinister (1996),Jeepster,"Jeepster In 1996, Belle and Sebastian approached perfection, twice. First came Tigermilk, a quietly profound debut recorded as a school project. If You’re Feeling Sinister arrived a few months later, an album that presses its nose against a windowpane and peers out at the world beyond, yearning to indulge in beauty and ugliness alike. Writing in the shadow of his yearslong struggle with chronic fatigue syndrome, frontman Stuart Murdoch emerged as a Glaswegian Salinger, a storyteller with an eye for misfits: a track and field star as accomplished in sex as she is in athletics; a curmudgeonly veteran with nostalgia for Roxy Music; a suicidal girl who enjoys S&M and Bible studies. Set atop gorgeous arrangements inspired by swooning ’60s pop and the Velvet Underground at their most melodic, these songs set the standard for pretty much all indie pop that was to come. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufbFMVh7j21MeJxwkLkGiibceWyGFu38Sm1nQJHwvrCfnZsojMu | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/ZxssCo8SeuM6mRcDQfvUeNTNYQAjiyZjfaBb5th84ZcVLxECX7vxkf5SkeET5snFJTZe3XRRTsHKXPjnFy2ozExhNZkG1GmKacm4TYjKxJ611sD8seZkKZY56YsLRgp5g5eytbmAaPVCAsoHUR87ciMNcEax8dKgDxXe854T86y5Bmu62k6F | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/0cR6FGQSOUDEwwapI7yfQZ | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/2274951 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4de-RHHLCBA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63336e98d997a1f3e8a0cf03/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Belle%2520and%2520Sebastian%2520-%2520If%2520You_re%2520Feeling%2520Sinister.png,/dataset/artwork/Belle_and_Sebastian-If_Youre_Feeling_Sinister_1996.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,24,Dr. Dre,The Chronic (1992),Death Row / Interscope,"Death Row / Interscope From the outset, The Chronic announces itself as a revenge record. Dr. Dre had spent the previous five or so years as the underpaid sonic architect of West Coast gangsta rap, and his first solo outing served as retribution to all the haters and exploiters. “Niggas with attitudes? Nah,” his charge Snoop Dogg announced on the intro, “Niggas on a muthafuckin’ mission.” Dr. Dre achieved the sweetest vengeance of all by crafting G-funk, a whole new sound that would become the era’s most influential. Digging into the Parliament/Funkadelic crates, the producer shifted hip-hop’s sonic landscape toward a sumptuous mix of sampling and live instrumentation. In addition to the hypnotic classics “Let Me Ride” and “Nuthin’ but a G Thang,” The Chronic also offered a response to the 1992 L.A. uprising with “The Day the Niggaz Took Over” and “Lil’ Ghetto Boy”—not as explicit political comment but rather by showing the perspective of those living amid the day-to-day realities of street life and police violence. The album’s misogyny is at times overwhelming, but as an unflinching documentary and musical landmark, it has few peers. –Mychal Denzel Smith",Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/Ehjr9t1bfyFgs5GtcpxVsAdcRJm1vtb9Ubjx5sTFJYB6r2e4TjtG8vb1rkTFisrhHbExGSy1DgZK5HrzBQjdeFLuEEKV6mLo3JZMYukEERYqQnLFnbxtNc7fD9QHP7L8QdEsygbpMv8s2WtGeJaKgPqw1qSeF | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/6vdFSyhPjL4dZFkgRtToXH | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/drdre,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63336f5952d4bd45efccbe5e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Dr.%2520Dre%2520-%2520The%2520Chronic.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dr_Dre-The_Chronic_1992.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,23,Elliott Smith,Either/Or (1997),Kill Rock Stars,"Kill Rock Stars Either/Or is the hinge point in Elliott Smith’s story, the last moment where his mastery—of home recording techniques, of his intricate guitar parts, and most crucially, of his acrid, empathetic songwriting—bloomed under protective cover of his relative anonymity. He was surrounded by a close-knit circle of admiring friends, and he recorded many of his most beloved classics—“Between the Bars,” “Angeles,” “Pictures of Me,” “Say Yes”—in their living rooms and bedrooms, or at Jackpot!, the ramshackle studio he helped build with Larry Crane. Within a year, Smith would find himself backstage at the Oscars in a rumpled white suit, listening to the comforting words of Celine Dion as he braced to perform “Miss Misery”—a song he’d recorded in an idle moment at Jackpot!—on national television. He would field phone calls from People magazine; he would become label mates with Randy Newman. Some of his definitive work still lay ahead, but from here on out, he would forever be “Elliott Smith.” If you want Elliott, Either/Or is where you can still find him—cigarettes on his breath, long-necked bottle hooked between his fingers about to tell a silly joke to the friend down the bar. This is where he was closest to us, and thus when his talent seemed most miraculous. –Jayson Greene",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1oxQFQhfLy9EAvuVynDQdpi46cKZhxCFAHLKZEFEyMq6JTd | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/Ehjr9t1bfyFgs5GtcpxVsAdcRJm1vtb9Ubjx5sTFJYB6r2e4TjtG8vb1rkTFisrhHbExGSy1DgZK5HrzBQjdeFLuEEKV6e7YUaEHwUE4gTntWhLZbqcgmwyvAGW3xcKdxj1oELXzP6LLs74rPbPg173UyrFtf | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/6KMdn9HDIqcBPaaok0K34K | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/14830659,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63337045afa92f85cc3e4fdc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Elliott%2520Smith%2520-%2520Either_Or.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Elliott_Smith-EitherOr_1997.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,22,Nas,Illmatic (1994),Columbia,"Columbia Illmatic was to some extent an act of recalibration. When the 17-year-old Nas stunned listeners with his guest turn on Main Source’s 1991 track “Live at the Barbecue,” he was still dabbling in the shock rap that cast him as an adolescent “snuffing Jesus.” Traces of that sensibility sneak onto his debut, but as he neared 20 he became fixated on the passage of time. Visions of his friends locked up (“The World Is Yours”) or “years in the hundreds” (“Life’s a Bitch”) make him write long, sympathetic letters to his incarcerated friends (“One Love”); he’s wistful when he raps about listening to Rap Attack on the radio (“Halftime”) and even about New York drug lords Supreme McGriff and Alpo Martinez—on a song called “Memory Lane (Sittin’ in da Park).” Nas communicates all this through rhymes that are staggeringly dense, their scenes and sentences breaking unpredictably across the ends of bars, their details precise, their virtuosity somehow beside the point. –Paul A. Thompson",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufao1DUXs2ighjR4ab9LtFhjarSD1UreiJCGzNcEkxKZ2S3XDpo | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/474N76DNT3n1smUARtCDRxekNNF3vu1wV1AjPQDHqP1vtSJ1LCXeQzuZpXEemqE59HpZutecPp2RwSa5M2keJW5WWHAAzURdMuMufKdQFygnX2QJwiDGv3yAGRMoAMupeUDtgsUUZm6azbnUdPbvHejjdsBh | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3kEtdS2pH6hKcMU9Wioob1 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/28104732,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633370cde02a17d9175e5623/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Nas%2520-%2520Illmatic.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Nas-Illmatic_1994.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,21,Silver Jews,American Water (1998),Drag City,"Drag City American Water was the sea change in the Silver Jews catalog, a moment when David Berman gave in to melody and made a warm and inviting record. The album has lines that will change the way you see the world and others that rattle around your head like high school lovers in recurring dreams. Its calling cards, “Random Rules” and “The Wild Kindness,” are beautiful songs that make life feel briefly hopeful; when Berman sings, “I’m gonna shine out in the wild kindness and hold the world to its word,” it’s as if nothing bad could ever happen. In between the bookends are handfuls of lyrics that are beguiling and stirring, unable to be shaken; it’s often as if Berman is contorting the landscape to his lyrical whims, turning ordinary observations profound or sinister, depending on the song. The apex of the Silver Jews discography, American Water breathes through the contrast of Berman’s bare profundity and his unruly poetics, brightened by Stephen Malkmus’ playful and virtuosic guitar playing. Life exists in the crevices we can’t explain. –Matthew Strauss",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1rQgkrrGed3ASKT3D95CBUQ98jh1vNaPmQekVXWpyK65XwH | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2YfVS2JkEsZbGaVN2xMzcCAf2EcdufCigRyF44GJ5f29ratuBWwUyZKgmpFrhqhmxswYt6NmeGB7aN5jK2UM9Lmk6hBoKQxLdE2SXaYhoCR77633Yq3T41xDtFQNawLU4VBXUWaL2wdgZGh94uxDfrsrnve2q4u6pKV | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2GbNeQEg5fLtuxjr5nlIpc | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/111769338,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333718b8f0d7ac40b58df60/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Silver%2520Jews%2520-%2520American%2520Water.png,/dataset/artwork/Silver_Jews-American_Water_1998.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,20,D’Angelo,Brown Sugar (1995),EMI,"EMI Looking like a sexy ruffneck, sounding like a mix of Al Green and Prince, and able to write compelling songs on-demand, 21-year-old musical wunderkind D’Angelo was positioned as R&B’s great hope back in 1995. He crafted an idiosyncratic sound for his debut album Brown Sugar, blending jazz and soul with the low-end beatmaking of hip-hop acts like A Tribe Called Quest. Enlisting collaborators like Raphael Saadiq and Tribe’s Ali Shaheed Muhammad,, D’Angelo struck a chord with the after-hours nightclub simmer of title track, the burnished mackin’ music of “Lady,” the paranoid humor of “Shit, Damn, Motherfucker,” and the questing gospel of album closer “Higher.” The singer, songwriter, and producer would delve even deeper into his one-of-a-kind sound five years later with the talismanic Voodoo, but Brown Sugar is where the magic began. –Jason King",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufbFT9TvUtgTJR4HwfDx9z629QkztdPiwUgy4p9gVCnKkPxnwxo | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/MKEh7BpQXwWWp1Y3i6D9RjWuqrJsu9zvnz9d36jPMPvD98gTrNrqcRAvCcYCX4oSM9jZscHurCooXc4F442PjYSAu9nqaXwR1HcPWdeGxuZMW8rhtJ4MTXyqcrhFxNHnzoumoptJ5hydJXmATz7fRPRc4xfTUmrxB | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/4HTVABUq8amDUxBv3zJbX4 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/68372519,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333720452d4bd45efccbe60/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/D_Angelo%2520-%2520Brown%2520Sugar.jpg,/dataset/artwork/DAngelo-Brown_Sugar_1995.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,19,Fiona Apple,When the Pawn… (1999),Epic,"Epic At the time of the release of Fiona Apple’s second album, few knew what to make of the music—one critic compared it to Korn (!)—but everyone thought they knew what to make of Apple herself, their takes plagued by cartoonish misogyny. Apple knew all this; she was always several steps ahead. When the Pawn… is about knowing your patterns, knowing the rubble they’ve made of your life—and knowing you’ll do it again. Producer Jon Brion set a baroque stage of arrangements that careen like off-rails Cirque du Soleil. But he just sketched the blueprints. Apple constructed, then wrecked, the house. She played the piano like assassins use knives. Her vocal roles are larger-than-life: precise and unsingably fast, fit for a technical rapper, or open-throated and dramatic, like a stage diva commandeering an encore. On the thunderous choruses of “Limp” and “Get Gone,” she summons hundreds of women against countless detractors. Her force spares no one, much less herself. –Katherine St. Asaph",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam6puHmTb5krVCkNYMpWw9o2qJVvZUKKAKdaUhbVcDiN1JTeb | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2Vo2MLmraDYcw8gQ4YAhz2X1PpFcB9bTRkBji3JyXyg5vtuAWh9aqVrEH32k2QUs432UPPPrryJV1TjRPkjQk22XTYt65XNDGMJj5ghqix8U3HQMgDncWKacVAwVcotwrcdyiUjAdojXufAGmFAGvhs85MydpmgoPGZVQdFTu3n2pd1NBVs8RB8NroYERyfXdDxzzxP6Ft6gCQoyk8KxBvEGMr3 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3o5EnVZNJXtfPV8tCoagjI | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/1781115,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333729752d4bd45efccbe62/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Fiona%2520Apple%2520-%2520When%2520the%2520Pawn%2520Hits%2520the%2520Conflicts%2520He%2520Thinks%2520Like%2520a%2520King....jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fiona_Apple-When_the_Pawn_1999.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,18,Cocteau Twins,Heaven or Las Vegas (1990),4AD,"4AD By 1990, when Cocteau Twins released Heaven or Las Vegas—their final album for 4AD, the independent UK label that had shepherded their journey from post-punk mystics to ambient-pop dream-weavers—the Scottish trio was under immense pressure. Singer Elizabeth Fraser and guitarist Robin Guthrie had given birth to their first child, yet Guthrie’s drug addiction was dragging down the couple and the group. The world around them was changing, too. The protective cocoon of the 1980s underground had decisively split open; former peers were playing stadiums, and the murky, hermetic sound the Cocteaus had pioneered was being supplanted by louder, sunnier strains of alternative rock. None of that is audible in Heaven or Las Vegas, the most effortless album in their catalog, bursting with light and hope. There are nods to the new decade in programmed beats that hint at dance and hip-hop rhythms, but otherwise they simply sound like themselves distilled into their most potent form. Simon Raymonde’s prominent basslines give the band an unexpected melodic push; Guthrie’s guitars fan out like streams of light, a miracle of transubstantiation; Fraser maintains all her ethereal mystique while sharpening her voice until it cuts like a laser through velvet. At times, an intelligible phrase even burns through the pastel haze, as on “Iceblink Luck”: “Burn this whole madhouse down.” Rarely is a fire so cleansing. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1mNdySSM8JjoZoKFFszKqp4dvpjPzAEz2mBJUnWfjdNSz9h | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/4iheeJwWD8ieNhakwNtVbCeWuwR1qfJRV7bDBka8akcakztZ2NpTMJ2tSVUJ3Lf4GkGgvH9aXEKTzZ2kWz8WEthRX2c5PdfxWtWVQ39LwXvV52Y1sdFsZnfsYvgGwKeG1F8wUYnwMpxcp8oaFtAMtDqWdf4pUzZgEpSEXxgA2PQGxd3jUxCpHnU3jZ | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5lEphbceIgaK1XxWeSrC9E | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/track/2404960,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333732f6984e83cd288d2f5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Cocteau%2520Twins%2520-%2520Heaven%2520or%2520Las%2520Vegas.png,/dataset/artwork/Cocteau_Twins-Heaven_or_Las_Vegas_1990.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,17,Erykah Badu,Baduizm (1997),Kedar / Universal,"Kedar / Universal Baduizm presented like an ideology, but felt more like a spell: the mesmerizing introduction to Ms. “On and On” Badu, a jazz-inclined soul singer with a rapper's cadence who sounded like she invented the meaning of being “in the pocket.” In a decade that practically required shine and flash, the incisive Fort Greene-via-Dallas 26-year-old peeled soul music to its raw heart, purring roaming odes to sex and snare drums, self-assurance and spirituality, and her weariness of social ills and unserious dudes. She did so over Rhodes pianos, boom-bap beats, upright bass and a little band from Philly called The Roots. Kicking off a career-long genius for deploying onomatopoeia in service to the vibe (""boom-klat, boom-klat,"" she intoned on ""Rim Shot (Intro)""), Baduizm was a surprise hit that redirected R&B so fiercely it ultimately became a genre unto itself, a back-to-roots evolution that would eventually be dubbed “neo-soul,” with the silken-voiced Badu as its endlessly cool beacon. –Julianne Escobedo Shepherd",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam7SSuKuee8tFJjmvVenEiHfNJ1516JUxJ9nhQEMfDwPJX5jZ | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/474N76DNT3n1smUARtCDRxekNNF3vu1wV1AjPQDHqP1vtSJ1LCXeQzuZpXEemqE59HpZutecPp2RwSa5M2keJW5WWHAAzTf1rJmbX1cwNb5s5bX5y85UacuD5rZP8Fm9vBdudzbzWEqYfFERChnc9F9cEGno | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3qr4pTBWEU1SVf01j6RAx3 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/633711,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633373b5e02a17d9175e5626/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Erykah%2520Badu%2520-%2520Baduizm.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Erykah_Badu-Baduizm_1997.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,16,PJ Harvey,Rid of Me (1993),Island,"Island Polly Jean Harvey comes on like an unstoppable pestilence on her second album, a wretched presence attacking from every angle who will never let you rest. “I might as well be dead,” she ruminates at the end of “Legs,” which oozes like a toxic spillage. Then she revels in the feint: “But I could kill you instead.” If her debut, Dry, had the texture of scorched earth, then the Steve Albini-produced Rid of Me, with its reckless application of the loud-quiet-loud dynamic, often sounds like the ground being torn up with crude glee. Harvey turns this volatility into her weapon against the obliterating emotional violence and suffocating gender dynamics she exorcizes on this album, framed through a cast of destitute characters. They’re brought to life by an artist whose facility for horror suggested an unsettling affinity with it: Harvey’s catalog isn’t short on frights, but Rid of Me is the one that’ll keep you up at night. –Laura Snapes",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1rQgtrRKX2WXEL9tDasKhyT5TQLkTtes8xsqB4Z49xRGdo1 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8nansyqULpE8awBcBxybcmwRdNwmAjQJqXPnb2NU3fvDJfuJcS46v2B4Aid7oaE7gfDMYsSSCzxedwj27AoaPi5KFdPK38NHur2rKFh | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2fDJpBJhtloxzUENHlU9JB | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/2571171,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333743eafa92f85cc3e4fde/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/PJ%2520Harvey%2520-%2520Rid%2520Of%2520Me.jpg,/dataset/artwork/PJ_Harvey-Rid_of_Me_1993.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,15,Aaliyah,One in a Million (1996),Blackground / Atlantic,"Blackground / Atlantic Aaliyah’s first union with Missy Elliott and Timbaland was a jolt, completely upending R&B through a collective vision of futurism, cyber goth, and sci-fi samples that remain virtually unmatched in scope and impact, as evidenced by the number of contemporary musicians still mining her catalog for inspiration. One in a Million arrived when R&B needed an overhaul, and Aaliyah was the perfect vessel: her breathy but assured alto gave her an aura of mystique, and she possessed a kind of reticence and remove even while singing about her own desire. (Furthering this mystique was the unfounded rumor that her signature side-part and sunglasses were hiding an amblyopic eye.) Her own reasons for this remain cause for speculation—she’d been illegally child-married to R. Kelly for less than a year when One in a Million came out—but the record was unmistakably the sound of her gaining her agency as a young woman and changing the course of music history, all before she even graduated from high school. –Julianne Escobedo Shepherd",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufekhkJYSYWbzKFdqtoU3ZpkdzZg8HqW3RcBAbt22k9FGUdRjS3 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/B7jB7s3t6nATUHhGS3LABK1jRyUqXu5qUiD3X7BcXCzdH57FA1micAPWpwPFjkbPZ83VowWmGRrwDA37nhRX9jMpqYqMBQweYPyfBZuPTRDVwatEDqjsJiNu3j2ywvmtn4jHmHhwiEmvADdGSXaviFsJm8pvEYU33NQ4i85R | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/79EIRdmpPSIWfRlxaZdJbG | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/193698339,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333750352d4bd45efccbe64/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Aaliyah%2520-%2520One%2520in%2520a%2520Million.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Aaliyah-One_in_a_Million_1996.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,14,The Notorious B.I.G.,Ready to Die (1994),Bad Boy / Arista,"Bad Boy / Arista It’s a coming-of-age tale set in a long gone Brooklyn, the cornerstone of a historic moment in hip-hop, the album that made the East Coast feel like the center of the rap universe again. There’s hardly a wasted breath: Biggie’s rapping on his 1994 debut is purposeful, his storytelling is sprawling and intricate yet concise, his voice plows through the funk and soul of Diddy’s handpicked producers like a heavy-duty snow blower. Even the interlude of Biggie just getting busy has a point. It’s all part of a persona mythical enough to feel as cinematic as the Blaxploitation and mafioso flicks he was inspired by, and real enough that his corner boy tales and cold-blooded violence resonated everywhere. He could be vulnerable in more ways than one, whether it was grappling with how his lifestyle had turned a parent’s love into fear on “Things Done Changed,” or imagining taking his own life on “Suicidal Thoughts.” Through all the darkness and fatalism, it’s got a celebratory feel with the smooth maximalism that oozes out of the crossover hits like “Big Poppa” and “Juicy.” There have been rappers who have tried to recapture Biggie’s presence, voice, and ability to be both grounded and larger than life at the same time, but Ready to Die itself is completely inimitable. Murals don’t do it justice. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufapWHxPDU7qHLsnhm39KDQEpsnCabkCW1TatuiQpJdvXsPaMjR | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/8UAFzxJzvSuaw23YMmcgLo6XFpPbbtLCUmg6umLWhEHCQYzpUDSpXHL8eXe2qEKQdafD22TNrb3ntHw6iua336RrUYSD1ZDZKbQgg2yXMW1omxraY4Re3saJFV9G7eWKm2A6MzzKHii4iDsc81nvaoEwab6CKEaWY1ppMmZC7Ek2PjMGq3h | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2HTbQ0RHwukKVXAlTmCZP2 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/362384,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63337582afa92f85cc3e4fe0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The%2520Notorious%2520B.I.G.%2520-%2520Ready%2520to%2520Die.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Notorious_BIG-Ready_to_Die_1994.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,13,Daft Punk,Homework (1997),Virgin,"Virgin The singles are among the most potent dance music gateway drugs we’ve got: One moment you’re digging “Around the World”’s hooky persistence and “Da Funk”’s lowrider squelch, then suddenly you’ve taken up permanent residence in Daft Punk’s world, way out there among lo-pass filters, roller-rink basslines, and stacks of brilliant, rough ‘n’ tumble thumpers from Chicago and Detroit’s rich histories. That two upper-middle-class kids working from a bedroom overlooking Montmartre’s cobbled streets could make these naked influences scalable without losing any of the original stuff’s bite, garnering all-important approval from electronic music’s Black and Latin forebears in the process, was an improbability bordering on absurdity. And while some rave hits can lose their buzz in weeks, Homework simply never cooled off, carrying Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo through the underground, up the pop charts, and into the next century. After a quarter century of DJ culture’s oft-ludicrous mutations, you need only witness the reaction on any half-decent dancefloor when the zipper-on-leather mania of “Rock’n Roll” or “Rollin’ & Scratchin’” drops to understand Homework’s shatterproof place in clubland’s trophy cabinet. That roar is immortality calling. –Gabriel Szatan",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1mK7i4BPtjWoBDWW18dxrBkihMPVuhMsmFdJBsyCzU2gwbZ | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/474N76DNT3n1smUARtCDRxekNNF3vu1wV1AjPQDHqP1vtSJ1LCXeQzuZpXEemqE59HpZutecPp2RwSa5M2keJW5WWHAAzUKNHioPHdW86atDnXVnLDtdPoCx4Em29R52MoUotMATxF5rodJMvkK9pwfv6xH1 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5uRdvUR7xCnHmUW8n64n9y | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/161010,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333761d1dccce609e4163c3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Daft%2520Punk%2520-%2520Homework.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Daft_Punk-Homework_1997.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,12,OutKast,Aquemini (1998),LaFace,"LaFace The dueling personalities at the heart of OutKast have always been the source of their greatness: Big Boi beats the block with his boots, while André dreams of outer space. Their first two records reveled in their own otherness—first as the premier playas in their own community, and then as extra-terrestrials, alienated from the world at large. But on Aquemini, Big Boi and André 3000 embrace the complementary nature of their differences and create something that surpasses the sum of its parts. Weaving funk, soul, gospel, and psych influences through freewheeling recording sessions with live musicians—a departure from the Dungeon Family’s basement production on those early LPs—the duo obliterated the boundaries and expectations for a Southern rap group without ever sounding like anyone other than themselves. André’s relationship with Erykah Badu drew them into the sonic orbit of the burgeoning neo-soul movement, but despite the parallels with the Soulquarians’ Afrocentric Nag Champa vibe on tracks like the sprawling opus “Liberation,” Aquemini is staunchly a record by and of the Dirty South. Its biggest hit manages to flip one of the most iconic moments of the Civil Rights Movement into a giddy harmonica hoedown, and the seven-minute dub session “SpottieOttieDopaliscious” remains singular, a transportive nostalgia trip drenched in sensory input and a timeless horn melody. Stankonia would be their true breakout moment, and by the time they released the companion solo LPs Speakerboxx and The Love Below, their individual star power threatened to swallow the group whole. Aquemini remains their most ambitious attempt to explore the quirks that make them fit together like clockwork. –Matthew Ismael Ruiz",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam6pyk1TGgNUC3oa65dSVVPoRkWZXyyFAbbZ9x21pQLUFn3yu | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/474N76DNT3n1smUARtCDRxekNNF3vu1wV1AjPQDHqP1vtSJ1LCXeQzuZpXEemqE59HpZutecPp2RwSa5M2keJW5WWHAAzTZ5XNf6PJmY4msDXJ2BJc5NgHXNTFe6cGTa2CVkmtn82Bc7M4YCMq7i558GG7b1 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5ceB3rxgXqIRpsOvVzTG28 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/43868,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633376ea10c581ffac68d219/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Outkast%2520-%2520Aquemini.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/OutKast-Aquemini_1998.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,11,Portishead,Dummy (1994),Go! Beat,"Go! Beat Despite its reputation as one of the cornerstones of trip-hop, Bristol trio Portishead’s 1994 debut is much darker—and stranger—than the conventional wisdom might lead you to believe. For one thing, the genre hadn’t yet solidified, and 22-year-old crate-digger Geoff Barrow wasn’t much interested in ambient music anyway. Sampling vintage soul and channeling the spirit of old spy movies, he and 37-year-old guitarist Adrian Utley sketched out a skeletal strain of boom-bap where dial-tone buzz and homemade breakbeats swam in an ocean of silence. It was 29-year-old singer Beth Gibbons who was tasked with filling in that emptiness, but despite the warmth of her Billie Holiday-indebted croon her singing is uniformly forlorn, her presence as unsettling as it is intimate. In the 28 years since, few soundtracks to dorm-room hookups have inspired a greater sense of dread. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1rQMSVKf9rk5vduGhTdsxxwJrVpy1dAghAjWGy2iw4T3ppb | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/AF4hZrJoZxC84SKr5YhNkUxhvHJs9uSA2Ar2Do9q6QaLbRW9zbdL7wZg6oCSkKar6rzWJSC9PyWiC1JNK8YJSAZSwvE29a3VpbFnhdfcmmw6e9RV4BbHSNpq5LKHLhUCYD53E4QgzUeAd6HNZGvytSxjV | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3539EbNgIdEDGBKkUf4wno | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/1765476,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63337754800c1a0f8721bb36/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Portishead%2520-%2520Dummy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Portishead-Dummy_1994.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,10,Nirvana,Nevermind (1991),DGC,"DGC While alternative rock was certainly no secret throughout the ’80s, Nirvana’s uncomfortable rocket ride to the top on 1991’s Nevermind marked the genre’s supernova moment. Launched by “Smells Like Teen Spirit”s bare, twitchy guitar intro and explosive drums, the album’s ennui, angst, and incredible songwriting made it suddenly seem like talented outcasts could rule the world. Many would try to bottle Nirvana’s soured essence in the years following, but few other bands were working with the same quality of raw components: Krist Novoselic’s hypnotic basslines, Dave Grohl’s furious pace, and Kurt Cobain’s ability to create anthemic choruses out of the blunt-edge scrape of a single word. Veering through tempos with an alchemic mix of poignancy and catchiness, Nevermind explored the duality of acceptance and rejection, but never made it feel like a lesson. Fuzzed-out “In Bloom” and chill “Come As You Are” managed to be opposite sides of the same coin, with Cobain sizing up the people who liked all their pretty songs but didn’t fully grasp them, before opening his arms to misfits everywhere. Call it a generational changing of the guard if you must, but these 12 songs connected with young listeners around the world—some who just thought they rocked, and many more who recognized Cobain’s wary POV for what it was: the truth. –Jessica Letkemann",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufamWZnV7ESx6fRrgaLT9cu6ieyR3hwNCYyKBFZAoe7VWJXeENP | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8nansyqULpE8awBcBxybcmwRdNwmAjQJqXPnb2DvZ4BZR6dCDgodef53HQH8Sysgr9PoL9LEoAXF3GGuiuBdV9KbtoJK8KJDkd1Mrz7 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2guirTSEqLizK7j9i1MTTZ | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/77610756,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633377d4e02a17d9175e5629/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Nirvana%2520-%2520Nevermind.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nirvana-Nevermind_1991.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,9,A Tribe Called Quest,The Low End Theory (1991),Jive,"Jive Q-Tip once told Dr. Dre that he made A Tribe Called Quest’s 1993 album Midnight Marauders after listening to The Chronic; Dre told Tip that he knew he had to make The Chronic after listening to A Tribe Called Quest’s 1991 album The Low End Theory. The anecdote is notable as one of the most pointed examples of steel sharpening steel, but also because it puts into proper context how meaningful The Low End Theory is to music history: Remove this record from the timeline, and generations of greatness could have disappeared with it. That includes Tribe’s direct descendants like the Roots, Common, Yasiin Bey, Kanye West, J Dilla, and Pharrell, along with everything that spun-off The Chronic’s branch of influence, from Snoop Dogg to 50 Cent to Eminem. With their second album, Tribe executed a flawless new fusion of ’90s boom-bap and jazz, spearheaded by Q-Tip’s legendary perfectionism, while Phife Dawg’s witty and bombastic performances proved he was no mere hanger-on. There was Busta Rhymes’ incendiary star-making verse on “Scenario” and “Excursions,” which built on a sample of the legendary jazz drummer Art Blakey and additional vocals from Civil Rights era revolutionaries the Last Poets. And perhaps the quintessential Tribe song in “Check the Rhime,” a masterclass in back-and-forth rhyming only Run-DMC could touch. –Mychal Denzel Smith",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam7Aemv5GZVsm4E3jLT4EcT3GkaFuSX4SZbmQBDsSXkTYGqYf | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/meh9fHuiYWLjqSgj7XHZWWWEHEHsDNtLyJtA7tHqnKwM7w8ZUnQNeCSNeb3E3hQnYn62ABcNP6jQGetLxhRE5Xxv9HWQ56VaMgHQDRvWtpFx3hTfusHZ3425RcFA39DBN3admrZsmWJKemVYtXeLv5ygFDMcqYJqKyFgCLHBh | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1p12OAWwudgMqfMzjMvl2a | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/2775344,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63337872370a564bd4b91d5d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/A%2520Tribe%2520Called%2520Quest%2520-%2520The%2520Low%2520End%2520Theory.jpg,/dataset/artwork/A_Tribe_Called_Quest-The_Low_End_Theory_1991.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,8,Hole,Live Through This (1994),DGC,"DGC In 1994, Courtney Love had a hell of a lot to be angry about: unrelenting abuse at the hands of the media and misogynist grunge fans; Child Protective Services’ brief seizure of her infant daughter; husband Kurt Cobain’s personal downward spiral, which ended with his suicide just days before the release of Live Through This, Hole’s second album. She channeled all this into a masterpiece of wrathful beauty—12 tracks bubbling over with poison-candy-apple hooks and some of the most deliciously melodic screams ever recorded. Raging against abusive lovers (“Violet”), victim-blaming (“Asking for It”), impossible beauty standards (“Miss World”), motherhood (“Plump”), and more, Love became an icon for the misfits, the survivors, and the fed-up. Live Through This broke the dam, flooding rock’n’roll with a strain of fury that flowed from riot grrrl to Alanis Morrissette to Paramore to Olivia Rodrigo and beyond. “Just you try to hold me down/Come on try to shut me up,” Love snarled on “Gutless.” Three decades later, nobody has been able to do either. –Amy Phillips",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1rYQvpd1wMdbBBqmxjQHMkvb4Ad35UaAxmgFmdyR1mGYYeo | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/meh9fHuiYWLjqSgj7XHZWWWEHEHsDNtLyJtA7tHqnKwM7w8ZUnQNeCSNeb3E3hQnYn62ABcNP6jQGetLxhRE5Xxv9HWQ4sw9BtDo1SQE1496V2mfiy5fbh5ooeGeY766qHxU8K2uyecqWuwCoYUMfb3V1syzbEoprKtXu1ZqM | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/2Rwf2nPYZQ9aIe4QXACTC7 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/18256340,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633378c2800c1a0f8721bb38/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Hole%2520Live%2520-%2520Through%2520This.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Hole-Live_Through_This_1994.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,7,Janet Jackson,The Velvet Rope (1997),Virgin,"Virgin Having sexually blossomed in public on 1993’s janet., Janet Jackson then turned inward to water her spiritual garden, laying out her open invitation during the title track: “Come with me inside/Inside my velvet rope.” A meta-meditation on her consciousness, 1997’s The Velvet Rope plumbs the depths of Jackson’s mind, from love in retrospect (“Got ’Til It’s Gone”) to love in the metaphysical future (“Together Again”). Here, rope represents not just a relinquished barrier to intimacy, but also a facilitator for bondage play, and the inner world built by Jackson and her trusty collaborators (Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis, and then-husband René Elizondo Jr.) is fully realized. Lyrical and musical themes double back and riff off each other throughout; the proto-footwork snare clatter of “Empty,” for example, reverberates to much different effect in the album’s quiet-storm stunner “Anything.” The resulting cohesion is stronger than on any other Jackson album, particularly during Rope’s back half, a suite of slow jams that mine facets of a full-blown aesthetic of chill. That Jackson would drop such a mellow and musically daring record after signing what was then the biggest recording contract of all time (an $80 million re-up with Virgin) is a quintessentially Janet move: introverted in its extroversion, the quietest of roars. –Rich Juzwiak",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam1naUxMtAFVUiJKDo64N12F8CVt89trUEWDtYdm18sdRdwgf | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/X7niGYieCH8UQ8PGqdUBtg8M6SAMcPegELm2uaNkiXQqSRwp4HaQGxppbNbCMF44CZcGNECmFt4zQZRh1GRha7dMawYcetXqJ284G4YYz5Mp5qnEJ8jvqbFqQWoN9paHCG69GmU69ZrSGaVHxaCsdEwf5sVgTgeH6GsyM | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/6ZANEjETQ9L9pjBuvOAhCQ | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/2906717,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6333794810c581ffac68d21b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Janet%2520Jackson%2520-%2520The%2520Velvet%2520Rope.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Janet_Jackson-The_Velvet_Rope_1997.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,6,Björk,Homogenic (1997),One Little Independent,"One Little Independent Björk immersed herself in London’s club scene for her first two solo albums, but by the runup to 1997’s Homogenic a string of personal circumstances had given her no shortage of reasons to return to her native Iceland. With volatile electronic elements that Björk has likened to the island nation’s active volcanoes, and desolate strings that could conceivably soundtrack an epic Viking film, the album certainly represented a homecoming of sorts. Its title also spoke to Björk’s growing control over the creative process, which she used, with collaborators such as Markus Dravs and Mark Bell, to achieve her most unified sonic palette yet. That stately yet unstable setting—Arvo Pärt meets Aphex Twin—adorns some of the often-cryptic lyricist’s most arresting statements. She’s a fountain of blood in the shape of a girl; a state of emergency is where she wants to be; she knows you can’t handle love. When she unloads these epiphanies in her usual gravity-defying manner, as much trapeze artist as vocalist, the sense of adventure is palpable. In the end, much of the album was recorded in Spain—you really can never go home again—and Björk’s return to a quieter life turned out to be an even greater journey of discovery. By the time the album wraps with the limpid ecstasy of “All Is Full of Love,” it’s clear that by going back to where she was from, Björk had found a new way of moving forward. –Marc Hogan",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam6oa3g3zEdz8Q1xWZ11dcjJzcnMSNWhPPtsuCjRMpYFHeq3y | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/474N76DNT3n1smUARtCDRxekNNF3vu1wV1AjPQDHqP1vtSJ1LCXeQzuZpXEemqE59HpZutecPp2RwSa5M2keJW5WWHAAzUKNHjXqpKJJHGgLNg21jLY1xyQLwbWF2qtj3yYQtEBFj2CAczfppvzw5Vz1CGbD | Platform: Bandcamp - Link: https://bjork.bandcamp.com/album/homogenic | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/0HMsmYvoT1h2x1C4di5faf | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/3126068,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633379b0f2e57bfbb70500a2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bjo%25CC%2588rk%2520-%2520Homogenic.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bjrk-Homogenic_1997.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,5,Wu-Tang Clan,Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) (1993),Loud,"Loud With their debut album, Wu-Tang Clan didn’t just crash through as a group but as a genre unto itself. Built around its own vernacular, in-house producer RZA’s proudly unrefined sonic templates, and every MC’s uniquely towering standard of lyrical excellence, the Wu’s insular world made little concession to convention. And why should it? As a crew of nine outsiders and industry cast-offs repping NYC’s forgotten borough of Staten Island (aka “Shaolin”), self-sufficiency was essential to survival. This urgency informs every battle-tested couplet, from the throttling salvos of their landmark first single “Protect Ya Neck,” which features nearly all of the group’s original members, to Ghostface and Raekwon’s nostalgic laments on “Can It Be All So Simple,” to Method Man and Inspectah Deck’s existential introspection on “C.R.E.A.M.” “Wu-Tang Clan Ain’t Nuthing Ta F’ Wit,” meanwhile, is poetically self-referential on a whole other level: a defiant declaration from consummate rap underdogs rhyming over the sampled theme song to the ’60s cartoon Underdog. Upon its release, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) already sounded legendary. Now, heard as the soundtrack to an origin story of which we know the outcome, its historical legacy equals its undiluted brilliance. –Jeff Mao",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufamQkjzEVWgKJuAq6VPNHtDVvb5EgzX4AvtHXbckgxfZcByF9m | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/qsSkLvaohicCiNF2u5sRy7EaHrr8QBHsmzbUp2chj45Ue8bty9VB33hCfd6DmL3Z7ddgiGYA7eGBKavp844TFtJLVTXSyFc56F3TEtEe7qSwbS515PMwMN8nBWS6bwMZrnsx4fmRqbXnGSGJ51EAVi8myJHLJCYw2hjcqutYqHddHZmxJgZAFmEK | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3tQd5mwBtVyxCoEo4htGAV | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/33913336,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63337a541390abe483e95472/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Wu-Tang%2520Clan%2520-%2520Enter%2520The%2520Wu-Tang%2520(36%2520Chambers).jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Wu-Tang_Clan-Enter_The_Wu-Tang_36_Chambers_1993.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,4,Liz Phair,Exile in Guyville (1993),Matador,"Matador In college, Liz Phair counted the number of women in an art history textbook and was dismayed by her slim findings. Later, from the fringes of a boys’ club indie scene in Chicago, she wrote Exile in Guyville. The void of female perspectives in popular culture was both her 1993 debut’s motivation—Phair positioned it as a counterpoint to an album she deemed canonically male, the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main St.—and the reason for its success. In Phair, listeners found an avatar for a sort of female complexity not abundantly visible in the mainstream: vulnerable, bawdy, vengeful, declaring her desire for a boyfriend “and all that stupid old shit” one minute and brushing off emotional intimacy the next. Phair delivers it all in an unimpressed monotone, and she picks at her guitar like a scab—gestures that point to a constant undercurrent of anger, though her arrangements never surpass a low simmer. Rather, it’s her words, with their offhanded grace and devastating bluntness, that truly burn. –Olivia Horn",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufdscNBSc5X6BXwAwB5s5bo5MyFQpsztfVGJXjaeu3HVJXpGxvo | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/meh9fHuiYWLjqSgj7XHZWWWEHEHsDNtLyJtA7tHqnKwM7w8ZUnQNeCSNeb3E3hQnYn62ABcNP6jQGetLxhRE5Xxv9HWQ4h2kSxrCnW58zr7EnM4sj2pySn8cxZXh6FycDLZ6zmXepo4C4QEStkh3UBT16cRDK6UncDHMjYmPH | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/7sCpW2cLGcRk1zf9zi0Yqd?si=sRasQquOTu-7e2zQodrGvg | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/85848652,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63320eefe02a17d9175e55ce/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Liz-Phair-Fuck-and-Run.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Liz_Phair-Exile_in_Guyville_1993.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,3,Radiohead,OK Computer (1997),Parlophone,"Parlophone OK Computer was the last gasp of the rock monoculture: an incontestable, unrepeatable, and critically consecrated masterpiece of a genre that was too big to fail, yet too limp to preside over a new century. Picking up grunge’s challenge to macho rock orthodoxy, the bookish Oxford five-piece parlayed corporate resistance and righteous angst into an infernal assessment of mainstream conformism, petit bourgeois inertia, and cartoonish celebrity culture. But where grunge despaired at the gravity of it all, and Britpop buried its head in hedonism, Radiohead made a crucial distinction: Seeing the inferno of modern life in all its grotesque glory was not a curse to endure or escape, but a superpower to wield. The band enshrined Thom Yorke’s feverish proclamations in music so valorizingly grand and emotionally involving it left little room for reflection. The electric guitar had all but lost its anti-authority luster, yet here was Jonny Greenwood, combining Pixies-style fretwork and pedal-board wizardry to remake the instrument as the sound of system collapse. Lurching rhythms and electronics flung us into a kingdom on the fritz, where old-world beauty fractured among broken beats and trip-hop tremors. Yorke belted spittle-flecked barbs about fame, sleaze, and corporate lies like a vanquished revolutionary, adopting a paranoid tenor to name conspiracies that everyone knows to be true: consumerism corrupts, capitalism alienates, technology isolates, et cetera. This dire, depressingly real worldview might have stoked a fire in our bellies. Instead, many of Yorke’s disciples were comforted, relieved to feel seen in our infernal little bedrooms and hatchbacks. Rock no longer inspired faith in its revolutionary power, but OK Computer did the next best thing—it made us believe in the spectacle. –Jazz Monroe",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufbEYyTVepdwBZNNLNLGKdVFYcpkMacaEPeCFhWeXQYQXhqs9Z5 | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/MKEh7BpQXwWWp1Y3i6D9RjWuqrJsu9zvnz9d36jPMPvD98gTrNrqcRAvCcYCX4oSM9jZscHurCooXc4F442PjYSAu9nqahD59q6WBUpAVszEwderkELMnJoHZS6m7AYgwHWcLwJvvJCMafDkdUo17xihWat8rdmfR | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/6dVIqQ8qmQ5GBnJ9shOYGE | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/58990510,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dcfdcef6685f1f1f35aa0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Radiohead-Let-Down.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Radiohead-OK_Computer_1997.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,2,Lauryn Hill,The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (1998),Ruffhouse / Columbia,"Ruffhouse / Columbia The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill is the story of a 23-year-old woman experiencing heartbreak and disappointment in a dizzying phase of her life, and choosing to rap about it. Without the backing of her group, the Fugees, a then-pregnant Lauryn Hill allowed herself space to breathe and explore the entirety of her emotions without divorcing those emotions from skill. On her first and only solo studio album, she’s wise and unknowing, as sensitive as she is vigorous in explaining her growing pains. The 1990s weren’t exactly an era for harmonized vulnerability in rap, but Hill was so wildly proficient at singing and emceeing—about everything from Moses to star signs—that she created a new love language for a world of Drakes. With Miseducation, her search for desire and spirituality resonated because it was built on a foundation of honesty: songs about obligations to art, men, and motherhood, packaged into a concept album with interludes that treat love as a necessary, amorphous thing. It’s the way she cloaks the hurt in daggers on the diss record “Lost Ones,” then sings with painful clarity about a relationship’s demise on “Ex-Factor,” a beautifully clear-headed postmortem. For the length of the album, Hill does the dirty work of facing her feelings, and in the process helps her listeners pick up their own. –Clover Hope",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufdrJnuH38BRgGzKcszjg4dqrKytRMGD5Pk8X8e9NcLLsFUHkUT | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/2FTC5bHweKNXpHC9thPgiTMZ7CKV7gyqnq3T43d9US4PEFsoPMbz36ZSb45vo7Po67YwfeFw1VePqcR4tiByG9dEytLCG8AX8Zh9Lpgxzh7a8NzvfaHw5MBPXEtcHMFm9UUssGduUM9PAAVMZANbm3qx5gwpieCfsEpT6eXUZ9poui6MDVHJ6M6qCz2Kd | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1BZoqf8Zje5nGdwZhOjAtD | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/78067535,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63337bee25ed8dd61c96535f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lauryn%2520Hill%2520-%2520The%2520Miseducation%2520Of%2520Lauryn%2520Hill.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Lauryn_Hill-The_Miseducation_of_Lauryn_Hill_1998.jpg
The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,album,1,My Bloody Valentine,Loveless (1991),Creation / Sire,"Creation / Sire You could say, shrewdly, that Loveless combines two main modalities of the ’90s by being the greatest rock album that is made almost entirely of samples—drum loops, guitar feedback, vocals, all sent through an Akai S1000, which could then be triggered from a keyboard—creating a singular melding of dream-pop and acid-house and hip-hop that defined a new genre called shoegaze. You could say its underlying philosophy remains as relevant as ever: that sleepiness is a largely underrated state of being, that our unconscious impulses are far more truthful than our conscious behavior, that the best music should feel like it could go on forever. You could say that its chief architect, Kevin Shields, is influenced by no one more than fellow Irishman Edmund Burke, the 18th-century philosopher who coined the Romantic ideals of beauty and sublime, and who wrote that the richest emotional response from art comes from the “terrible uncertainty” it can elicit. At its heart, Loveless is terribly uncertain. It is the primo example of an auteurist studio album—glacially pieced together almost entirely by Shields in and out of British studios across over two years—yet the frontman and producer buries his and Bilinda Butcher’s lipless vocals in the middle of the mix to recreate the sound of watching My Bloody Valentine in a loud club. Every pitch on Loveless is imperfect—they are glided into and out of tune using Shields’ whammy bar, or they are at war with themselves, 10 to 15 vocal or guitar tracks buried underneath the lead line creating imperceptible microtonal anomalies. And even though Loveless has become something of an audiophile’s totem, Shields himself has said it sounded all right listening to it through his phone speaker. Every time you put on Loveless, the music changes, the emotion shifts, the ceremony is never the same. That’s where its power comes from: its reptilian ability to survive and evolve, to stand for the belief that the best albums are not just something you listen to but something you become a part of. –Jeremy D. Larson",Platform: Amazon - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/23Up7xC9e31Hpx1s8q8fxQRWbLHPH6rhiQpLa8Vgr8QbaoQEaH2HFoyX8naoXoAZ8jW4PqAXmFr2cN6JsnmY428TjrRBauujB7CyiqiWSuKCufam7EZ8jVpYZQzNcfrfESpATpQZt2PtD3G3xdgc25Z1kk4aZMu | Platform: Apple Music - Link: https://cna.st/affiliate-link/474N76DNT3n1smUARtCDRxekNNF3vu1wV1AjPQDHqP1vtSJ1LCXeQzuZpXEemqE59HpZutecPp2RwSa5M2keJW5WWHAAzUkhsTYA8wpsW5Y7vfPfppipDp58jkawmsEQHZCsKL1NzLa5GrTFZa7fnB3e2XB1 | Platform: Spotify - Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3GH4IiI6jQAIvnHVdb5FB6 | Platform: Tidal - Link: https://tidal.com/browse/album/35095273,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63337cac1390abe483e95476/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/My%2520Bloody%2520Valentine-Loveless.jpg,/dataset/artwork/My_Bloody_Valentine-Loveless_1991.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,250,Len,“Steal My Sunshine” (1999),Work / Columbia,"Work / Columbia Of all the great one-hit wonders of the ’90s, Len’s “Steal My Sunshine” might be the most enduring and the most inexplicable. Somehow, a pair of Canadian siblings managed to capture the essence of Southern California in a single that turned into a summertime perennial. The song comes into view slowly, like a mirage shimmering on the edge of a sun-bleached horizon. Its foundational sample of Andrea True Connection’s disco classic “More, More, More” reveals itself as a grounding mantra, then the bliss goes widescreen once Len crash into the verse. Marc and Sharon Costanzo share a lackadaisical vocal affect—it sounds like they hit the studio directly after getting burned on the beach—but where so many slackers couldn’t be bothered to shape their slothfulness into hooks, Len cares deeply about leisure: They’re committed to wasting away the hours that make up a dull day. Because nothing sounds better than doing absolutely nothing. –Stephen Thomas Erlewine",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1fzJ_AYajA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632b7a2de02a17d9175e54b2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Len-Steal-My-Sunshine.png,/dataset/artwork/Len-Steal_My_Sunshine_1999.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,249,Wu-Tang Clan,“Triumph” (1997),Loud / RCA,"Loud / RCA No need to address Inspectah Deck’s opening lines, which everyone who cares about the Wu-Tang Clan already knows by heart, and has probably tried rapping themselves at some point. They’re great, but they stick in your head above the others partly by virtue of coming first. What about Raekwon’s white-gold tarantula, rhymed—unbelievably but perhaps inevitably—with “substantial-a”? Even U-God gets an all-timer in there, singing a song from Sing-Sing, sipping on ginseng. The monumental first single from their sprawling and uneven second album, “Triumph” is the Wu’s last great stand as a nine-man team and one of hip-hop’s greatest posse cuts. Over suitably dusty RZA production, with nothing remotely resembling a chorus, they go in for six minutes about Marvel comics and Mortal Kombat; Tennessee Williams and Laurel & Hardy; champagne bottles and squabbles with rival crews; and, of course, the will of the Wu to rule it all. They were never particularly aligned with commercial trends, but in 1997, at the dawn of the shiny suit era, this sort of wordy mythologizing was especially unfashionable. And yet, with no concessions to the mainstream save its blockbuster music video, it went platinum. The first line of the final verse provides the most apposite reaction: “Ayo, that’s amazing.” –Andy Cush",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPRKsKwEdUQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63320fc710c581ffac68d1fc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Wu-Tang-Clan-Triumph.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Wu-Tang_Clan-Triumph_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,248,Ani DiFranco,“Both Hands” (1990),Righteous Babe,"Righteous Babe Ani DiFranco kicked off her studio discography with a mature song about the end of an affair that she recorded when she was just 18. The opening track off her self-titled debut, which was also the first release from her DIY label Righteous Babe, “Both Hands” hangs sensual recollections on a skeleton of trembling acoustic guitar. Flickering between a slam-poetry cadence and the frantic trill of a Gen X Joni Mitchell, the bisexual-icon-to-be narrated the dissolution of a formative relationship with a person of unspecified gender, whose physical contours read as female. It would take a few years for DiFranco to become the default soundtrack of coffeehouses and women’s centers, but with “Both Hands”—still her most popular track—she arrived as both a throwback to folk’s idealistic hippie heyday and a prophet of sexual revolutions to come. –Judy Berman",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Th-GDhsveM4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c701af2e57bfbb704fe94/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ani-Difranco-Both-Hands.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Ani_DiFranco-Both_Hands_1990.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,247,Fugazi,“Smallpox Champion” (1993),Dischord,"Dischord While colonizing the Americas in the 1700s, officers from Britain enacted biological warfare by intentionally gifting blankets infected with smallpox to Indigenous Americans. Though historians debate if the method even worked, it’s a revolting act immortalized in the diaries of those who pulled it off—and the history lesson at the heart of In on the Kill Taker’s most energizing track. Led by Guy Picciotto’s fuming vocals, “Smallpox Champion” is a scathing condemnation of U.S. genocide filtered through Fugazi’s rousing brand of post-hardcore. Between Brendan Canty’s aggressive tom hits and Ian Mackaye’s wiry guitar noise lies a protest song without any of the typical cliches or moral preaching. Instead, Picciotto delights in the promise of retribution: “History rears up to spit in your face.” By the time its whammy-bar riffs ring out and its “cha-cha-cha” chants start, Fugazi sound almost joyful. “You’ll get yours,” cheers Picciotto. “Woohoo-hoo!” –Nina Corcoran",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C75Aw9-BsTc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632b7eecafa92f85cc3e4e14/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Fugazi-Smallpox-Champion.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Fugazi-Smallpox_Champion_1993.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,246,Wilson Phillips,“Hold On” (1990),SBK,"SBK “Hold On” stitches together the camp and corniness left over from the ’80s, chintzy piano, and what should sound like affirmations stitched on throw pillows—open your heart and mind, tomorrow will be easier, you’re responsible for your own happiness—into a panoramic anthem. The track begins with a tingle of percussion and just the suggestion of strings before those schmaltzy chords chime in. Beneath the sweet sheath of harmonies and lilting melody, Wilson Phillips issue a command: just keep going. It’s a plea packaged as a pep talk: “Hold On” was Wilson Phillips’ first single, and they needed the hit to slide out of their parents’ shadows (consisting of descendants of both Brian Wilson and the Mamas & the Papas, the band was soft-rock royalty). With “Hold On,” they asked to be taken seriously, on their own terms—with the hope that you, too, could recognize your potential, even if only for one more day. –Dani Blum",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIbXvaE39wM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632b80b01dccce609e4161dc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Wilson-Phillips-Hold-On.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Wilson_Phillips-Hold_On_1990.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,245,Refused,“New Noise” (1998),Burning Heart,"Burning Heart Refused get blamed for everything that came after their genre-exploding masterwork “New Noise”: nu-metal, Hot Topic-core, rudimentary techno beats dropped casually into the breakdowns of hardcore songs. But what elevates this song above mere pastiche is its finely tuned balance. Here, the Swedish hardcore band is painfully self-serious, but also looser and more playful than most of their peers and imitators. Every part of the song does its job: The circuitous intro signals the arrival of something momentous, the verses build tension, and the choruses hit with meteoric force. With unwavering confidence, Refused promised a new sound and then actually delivered an opus that pointed a way forward for heavy music in the new millennium. –Mehan Jayasuriya",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkAe30aEG5c,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632b81bd8f0d7ac40b58dc31/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Refused-New-Noise.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Refused-New_Noise_1998.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,244,Deborah Cox,“Nobody’s Supposed to Be Here” (1998),Arista,"Arista Deborah Cox spent the first six months of her music career touring as a backup singer for Celine Dion, a crash course in how to make every note a spectacle. On her breakout hit, “Nobody’s Supposed to be Here,” the smallest shifts are mesmerizing—the jagged edge in her throat when she admits love has knocked her down, the way the vowel caves in when she sings the word “sad,” the shock of shriek that builds up as she belts the chorus. Gentle percussion and chimes swirl in the background, and the song winds around and around Cox’s circular thinking, as she spirals through dejection, hope, and refusal, all leading up to a cathartic key change. “I’m not supposed to care anymore,” she moans as the track trickles out, a final sigh before she gives in. –Dani Blum",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H947PtHmh0Y,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c7041c092b177647856b6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Deborah-Cox-Nobodys-Supposed-to-Be-Here.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Deborah_Cox-Nobodys_Supposed_to_Be_Here_1998.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,243,Dismemberment Plan,“You Are Invited” (1999),DeSoto,"DeSoto By the time the Dismemberment Plan released Emergency & I, in 1999, the band didn’t fit into any existing niche. Born from Washington, D.C.’s punk scene, they twitched around rhythms more like nervous jazzbos. Embraced by indie rock fans, their third album was bankrolled, and then ditched, by an easily distracted major label. Emo? Fine—but “You Are Invited,” the record’s affecting centerpiece, also did icy electronic drum throbs a year before Radiohead’s “Idioteque,” and witty post-punk speak-singing a cultural eon before LCD Soundsystem’s “Losing My Edge.” Its message, delivered by Travis Morrison with genial yearning, was simple: What if you got a sheet of paper guaranteeing you could never be left out of the party again? The uncanny similarity between the “since you’ve been gone” refrain on another great Emergency & I song, “The City,” and Kelly Clarkson’s subsequent smash hinted at D-Plan’s potential to transcend boundaries of genre and scene; on a wide-eyed journey toward fist-pumping catharsis, “You Are Invited” embodies that welcoming generosity of spirit. It’s an all-access pass to self-acceptance—and like the main character in the song, you’ll immediately want to pay it forward to the next person who needs it. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAYldCX27G0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c712162bcbfd19793fb6c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Dismemberment-Plan-You-Are-Invited.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Dismemberment_Plan-You_Are_Invited_1999.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,242,Naughty by Nature,“Feel Me Flow” (1995),Tommy Boy,"Tommy Boy Even the most ambitious spiritual lyrical miracle MC would be hard-pressed to match the pace of Treach’s nimble tongue on “Feel Me Flow.” Yet Naughty by Nature’s missive feels less like a flex than a dare: Can you party as hard as they do? Atop a twinkling sample of the Meters’ “Find Yourself,” this 1995 song-of-the-summer candidate finds Treach stuffing bars with rhymes and mocking the nerds who can’t keep up. The East Orange, New Jersey rap group balanced their grit with a bit of goofiness (not unlike their Newark neighbor Redman), best evidenced by the accompanying music video, in which the whole hood is transported from summer on the block in Jersey to winter on the slopes in Vermont. –Matthew Ismael Ruiz",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLSbWDVI_pw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c71da3cb072de755b47ae/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Naughty-by-Nature-Feel-Me-Flow.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Naughty_by_Nature-Feel_Me_Flow_1995.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,241,Robyn,“Show Me Love” (1995),Ricochet / Ariola / BMG,"Ricochet / Ariola / BMG Robyn Is Here was the name of the Swedish pop wunderkind’s debut album, but could anyone have understood what a poignant and prophetic statement it would be? In the years to come, Robyn would recalibrate pop with her specific brand of shattered euphoria, songs that doused you in glitter even while seeping into your every ache. But as a teen hitmaker, she crash-landed on the U.S. charts with a handful of glinting, gooey singles. “Show Me Love” is a blast of Max Martin confection, with syrupy synths and the sugar rush of Robyn’s belt in the chorus, trapping the burgeoning star in amber. –Dani Blum",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhWEI6-_w9E,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c72398f0d7ac40b58dccf/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Robyn-Show-Me-Love.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Robyn-Show_Me_Love_1995.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,240,Pearl Jam,“Corduroy” (1994),Epic,"Epic The success of grunge presented a quandary for many of its practitioners; accustomed to marinating in the untested righteousness of their anticonsumerism, they now had to grapple with the fact that millions of consumers, among them fist-pumping jocks and radio-loving dilettantes, were now wholly into their stuff. No one suffered more openly on the horns of his stardom than Eddie Vedder, who took every available opportunity to minimize the uncritical worship his band inspired. He also made maybe the best entry in the canon of pop music by famous people about the wages of fame. Pearl Jam’s “Corduroy,” off the band’s third album, Vitalogy, transcends the meager limits of the category by being irresistible about wanting to be resisted. Every move works here, from the tolling guitar arpeggios of the first few bars to Jeff Ament’s prowling bass solo that I swear is an homage to Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain.” “I don’t want to take what you can give/I would rather starve than eat your bread,” Vedder howls at his fans, but the hook undermines his attempt to distance himself from their affections. Fame’s a bummer, the rock star laments, while the world can’t help but hum along. –Tommy Craggs",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S73ypK3As8I,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c72ac10c581ffac68d0c7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Pearl-Jam-Corduroy.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Pearl_Jam-Corduroy_1994.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,239,JAY-Z,“Dead Presidents II” (1996),Roc-A-Fella,"Roc-A-Fella JAY-Z’s classic debut LP Reasonable Doubt sounds like little else in his catalog, with one foot planted firmly in the street and the other set to step into the boardroom. It’s peppered with prominent entries into the rap canon, but few embody his capitalist gangster ethos better than “Dead Presidents II.” The original version—released as a single ahead of the album—features the same gorgeous loop of the piano melody from Lonnie Liston Smith’s “A Garden of Peace,” but its juvenile braggadocio falls flat. The new verses on the album version exude a quieter confidence, with a tone more reflective of an underground kingpin assured of his future success. Of course, Jay’s later claim that “You made it a hot line, I made it a hot song” about the Nas sample that serves as the chorus always seemed disingenuous, because “The World Is Yours” remains one of the defining works of the boom-bap era. But “Dead Presidents II” does evince one of the reasons JAY-Z has managed to maintain relevance as various trends explode and fade into the ether: A preternatural ability to borrow from others to make something truly his own. –Matthew Ismael Ruiz",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3grvCbdONk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c7305d997a1f3e8a0cbc1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jay-Z-Dead-Presidents-II.jpg,/dataset/artwork/JAY-Z-Dead_Presidents_II_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,238,Blur,“Song 2” (1997),Food,"Food After charging through the football stadium in aimless elation, soundtracked to the sound of Damon Albarn’s “WOO-HOO,” Moe Szyslak turns to Homer Simpson and says, impatiently: “We’ve been running around cheering for an hour! Where the hell’s the game?” The 1999 Simpsons bit perfectly taps into the spirit of Blur’s atypically free-spirited “Song 2,” a flippant yet propulsive FRAP of a track that can make grown men earnestly lose their shit before they realize they’ve been had. A parody of post-grunge American rock that was originally presented to their label as a joke, “Song 2” swept up the very market it was meant to be mocking. With its 12-beers-deep nonsense lyrics and car alarm power chords, the track—irresistible as it is—was ubiquitous during sporting events in the ’90s, signaling each touchdown and post-match celebration. May its capacity to cause male onset zoomies never wane. –Emma Madden",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bynKHspJZRA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c7372f2e57bfbb704fe96/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Blur-Song-2.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Blur-Song_2_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,237,Gin Blossoms,“Hey Jealousy” (1992),San Jacinto,"San Jacinto With singer Robin Wilson as his amplifier, Gin Blossoms’ core songwriter Doug Hopkins could wring honey out of his heart’s most festering wounds. The Arizona rock band’s signature hit lights up a last-ditch effort to claw back a lost love from the ruins of one’s own mistakes. “If you don’t expect too much from me/You might not be let down,” Wilson sings, the words rippling out uncannily smooth, their inherent desperation buffed to a shine. The levity in the song’s arrangement—the jangling guitar arpeggios, the shivers of tambourine—belie the weight of the addiction and mental illness Hopkins found himself tangled in while writing, which dragged him to his death a few months after “Hey Jealousy” got a foothold on the pop charts. But the lyrics hide nothing, their abyssal despair and fevered hope laid bare in the curl of a perfect hook. –Sasha Geffen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ah5gAkna3jI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c757f5d15e3865f508d91/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Gin-Blossoms-Hey-Jealousy.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Gin_Blossoms-Hey_Jealousy_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,236,Broadcast,“Echo’s Answer” (1999),Warp,"Warp Every moment of “Echo’s Answer” feels like it is falling in and out of focus. It is a tone and mood befitting Broadcast, a band that was born from ’60s club nights in their native Birmingham, England and grew within a UK scene anchored by similarly psychedelic pop groups like Stereolab and Pram. Broadcast distinguished themselves through dub-like production techniques and jazzy drumming that made their work as slippery and mysterious as the undulating wax in a lava lamp. On this track, though, even the most solid component of the band’s work, the enchanting vocals of the late Trish Keenan, vanishes in the haze with lyrics that elude easy interpretation and a post-production effect that swallows her last line into a wormhole. The only appropriate course of action is to follow her down. –Robert Ham",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZV9OqdFFyk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c75c11dccce609e4161e0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Broadcast-Echos-Answer.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Broadcast-Echos_Answer_1999.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,235,Tracy Chapman,“Give Me One Reason” (1995),Elektra,"Elektra In 1988, Tracy Chapman’s influential self-titled album and breakthrough “Fast Car” presaged the folk revival to come. Yet throughout the ’90s, critics called her music “dour,” never truly grasping the complexity with which Chapman integrated stories of disenfranchisement and poverty alongside her gently melodic love songs. On 1995’s New Beginning, Chapman found her second wind through an album that brightened the corners of her folk music with an eye toward renewal and environmentalism (the CD even came bundled with a coupon for a packet of seeds to be redeemed at her shows). “Give Me One Reason” is the record’s bluesy highlight and her biggest hit to date, strutting along a plucked, head-nodding guitar melody and Chapman’s grainy alto. Centering on an imbalanced relationship, each verse grows more frustrated from a lack of reciprocity; then the band kicks in and the pleading in her voice becomes cathartic, begging for a reason to stay while knowing it won’t come. The bittersweet ultimatum seemed to bloom out of years of romantic frustration, but in Chapman’s voice and arrangement it becomes a balm, guiding listeners through the push and pull of loving someone who can’t give you what you need. –Eric Torres",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6hQ9HSKlIE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c760462bcbfd19793fb6f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Tracy-Chapman-Give-Me-One-Reason.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Tracy_Chapman-Give_Me_One_Reason_1995.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,234,Korn,“Freak on a Leash” (1999),Immortal / Epic,"Immortal / Epic Jonathan Davis knew he was trapped. The Bakersfield misfits of Korn were becoming the outlandish stars of ascendant nu-metal, so to make their third album, they tapped endless industry spoils: a recording budget nearing a million, a ceaseless stream of booze and blow, a vocal coach literally punching Davis in the back. But he also bristled at sudden commodity status, knowing free stuff wasn’t actually freedom. “Freak on a Leash” is the sound of pariahs pounding against asylum walls, of demanding to be let out despite being permanent hostages, “a cheap fuck for me to lay.” Those pinprick guitars are tin snips taken to barbed wire, that lashing rhythm section a sledgehammer against an armored door. The dangerous assault, though, comes after two minutes, with the era’s most unhinged vocal paroxysm—Davis’ beat-boxed glossolalia, 27 terrifying, cathartic, and sort of hilarious seconds where frustration overruns the capacity of language. When Davis commands “Go!” imagine yourself rushing the gates, too, outrunning bullets at your back. –Grayson Haver Currin",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRGrNDV2mKc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c76461dccce609e4161e2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Korn-Freak-on-a-Leash.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Korn-Freak_on_a_Leash_1999.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,233,Cypress Hill,“How I Could Just Kill a Man” (1991),Ruffhouse / Columbia,"Ruffhouse / Columbia The B-side to Cypress Hill’s debut single “The Phuncky Feel One,” this West Coast anthem was much of the world’s introduction to the bong-toking cholos that would help define the gangsta rap sounds coming out of Southern California in the early ’90s. With boom-bap drums punctuated by the squeal of sampled horns, “How I Could Just Kill A Man” is the battle cry of disaffected youth driven to meet violence with violence. In some ways it sits on other side of the same coin as Ice Cube’s “It Was a Good Day”; where Cube’s good fortune guides him away from the gaze of corrupt cops and carjackers, B-Real faces it head-on, dismissing detractors who could never understand the daily dangers he faces. “So how do you know where I'm at, when you haven't been where I've been?” he asks, already knowing the answer: It’s easy to declare violence is not the solution when you never have to face it. –Matthew Ismael Ruiz",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yg-RIOATCbU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c76f31dccce609e4161e4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Cypress-Hill-How-I-Could-Just-Kill-a-Man.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Cypress_Hill-How_I_Could_Just_Kill_a_Man_1991.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,232,Brian Eno / John Cale,“Lay My Love” (1990),Opal / Warner Bros.,"Opal / Warner Bros. Like the best art from devotional poets John Milton or John Donne, one of Brian Eno’s masterworks is a hymnal from a funny angle—not upward, from man to his unknowable God, but southward, from its point of view back down. “I am the wheel,” Eno drones sunnily, in a pop song that sounds aerially suspended. “I am the turning.” Maybe this beatific rush was a product of Eno’s somewhat fighty relationship with collaborator John Cale; maybe it was shaped out of the runoff from the semi-liquid ambient classic Thursday Afternoon, released five years before it; or maybe just from a random pang of bliss in the long wake of his emancipation from Roxy Music. Who’s to say. A single card from Eno’s Oblique Strategies deck of creative prompts might be most explanatory of “Lay Your Love”’s magic, monkish kiss to and from the divine. It bears one word against a white void: “Courage!” –Mina Tavakoli",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCz2KxM9AwY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c774762bcbfd19793fb71/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Brian-Eno-Lay-My-Love.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Brian_Eno__John_Cale-Lay_My_Love_1990.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,231,Celine Dion,“It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” (1996),Virgin,"Virgin Jim Steinman, the mad genius who wrote “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now,” said he was inspired by the novel Wuthering Heights, and compared it to “Heathcliff digging up Cathy’s corpse and dancing with it in the cold moonlight.” This is important to remember, because there is no scene in Wuthering Heights where Heathcliff digs up Cathy’s corpse and dances with it in the cold moonlight. But this haunted and windswept romantic fantasia is what’s conjured by Celine Dion’s spirit-galvanizing rendition of Steinman’s song. Dion, the most successful balladeer of the ’90s, summons all the power in her soul and lungs to commune with the dead, the theatrically proggy arrangement crescendoing behind her. She sings about making love so intense it’s banned by the law; she’s joined by a reassuring chorus who agree, yes, that feeling she remembers is coming back to her now, Dion isn’t just making this up. Her passion hits an apex as she sings “baby, baby, baby” like she’s squeezing her hand through a tight space to reach the afterlife. It’s the stuff of romance novels, even if it never literally happened in one. –Jeremy Gordon",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8fHNdrZTSI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c77ad1dccce609e4161e6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Celine-Dion-Its-All-Coming-Back-to-Me-Now.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Celine_Dion-Its_All_Coming_Back_to_Me_Now_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,230,Cornershop,“Brimful of Asha” (1997),Wiiija,"Wiiija In 2011, Asha Bhosle recalled the time that “Brimful of Asha” helped her through the immigration desk at London’s Heathrow Airport. When the officer on the desk quizzed her on her profession as singer, she offered the silky, languorous indie-pop Cornershop song as a reference—not because it was one of the thousands she’d appeared on over her years as a Bollywood playback singer, but rather because it was one written in her honor. By then—thanks mostly to a pitched-up earworm of a big-beat-era Fatboy Slim remix—the song was a core component of rose-tinted nostalgia for the late ’90s. For a song about recognition—fighting for it, or being denied it—by a political, punkish, Punjabi-led band who’d named themselves after the racial stereotype of British Asians owning convenience stores, Bhosle’s immigration play was perhaps a fitting encounter. After all, in Hindi, the name Asha also means “hope.” –Will Pritchard",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lM7H0ooV_o8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c7807afa92f85cc3e4e80/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Cornershop-Brimful-of-Asha.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Cornershop-Brimful_of_Asha_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,229,Boyz II Men,“Motownphilly” (1991),Motown,"Motown Was life really ever as earnest and pure as Boyz II Men’s “Motownphilly” music video made it out to be? In 1991, when the fledgling Philly group released its first single, it was all youthful exuberance spilling out in oversized pink blazers, matching bow ties, and snazzy horn riffs. (Also: If Tik Tok teens haven’t studied this choreography yet, they are missing out.) Michael Bivins of New Edition and Bell Biv DeVoe appeared on the track, which features classic soul harmonies over a new jack swing beat, as well as a totally gratuitous doo-wop showcase at the end. Not too hard and not too soft, the song ushered in the decade of copycat (and largely whitewashed) boy bands that would follow. –Emma Carmichael",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rciee-oQLoI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c78a2800c1a0f8721b907/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Boyz-II-Men-MotownPhilly.png,/dataset/artwork/Boyz_II_Men-Motownphilly_1991.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,228,Soundgarden,“Black Hole Sun” (1994),A&M,"A&M NASA recently shared what a black hole really sounds like, and it turns out that Soundgarden wasn’t so far off. Summer anthems are rarely as dark as night, but for a band drenched in Seattle’s stormy ethos, it’s fitting that their biggest hit was this masterfully trippy power-dirge. Sporting a famous video full of apocalyptic suburbanites with over-sized eyes, “Black Hole Sun” begins with dreamlike guitars and Chris Cornell in full croon. Eeriness immediately invades, before the crunch of Cornell and Kim Thayil’s drop D guitars drive everything further down the rabbit hole. “Heaven send hell away,” Cornell pleads, “No one sings like you anymore.” The sentiment resonated all the more as it blasted from radios at the crest of the Seattle rock wave, just months after Kurt Cobain died. –Jessica Letkemann",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mbBbFH9fAg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c791f10c581ffac68d0c9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Soundgarden-Black-Hole-Sun.png,/dataset/artwork/Soundgarden-Black_Hole_Sun_1994.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,227,Goodie Mob,“Cell Therapy” (1995),LaFace,"LaFace Just because Goodie Mob were paranoid didn’t mean people weren’t following them. While this ad-hoc crew of OutKast affiliates had never recorded a song together before the sessions that would become 1995’s Soul Food, their debut album’s bone-chilling hit laid out a lasting template for how Southern hip-hop could be at once conscious and crunk. “Cell Therapy” was both menacing and menaced, fucked up by conspiracy theories but also the conspiratorial realities of systemic racism. Its gutturally drawled, often-surreal vision of life near the trap would be familiar to Atlanta viewers, let alone EarthGang or Denzel Curry listeners, and its eerie, dub-cavernous production also set a course so irresistible that it was echoed by Gorillaz and sampled by Travis Scott. But the song’s most resonant association is the moment it soundtracks in Barry Jenkins’ classic 2016 film Moonlight: Our now full-grown hero wakes from a nightmare, looking tough as nails, scarred within by trauma that’s deeper than the red Georgia clay. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1V_xRb0x9aw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c7a108f03c19ff0ab1eee/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Goodie-Mob-Cell-Therapy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Goodie_Mob-Cell_Therapy_1995.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,226,Alice in Chains,“Would?” (1992),Columbia,"Columbia The darkness underneath “Would?” has belied its tenure as a rock radio staple since its release in 1992. Layne Staley wrote the song about Andrew Wood, the lead singer of fellow grunge band Mother Love Bone, who died of an overdose in 1990. All that pain and grief funnels into the song’s final minute, which also happens to be the final minute of Dirt, Alice in Chains’ hour-long march through a fetid Seattle carnival of depression, suicide, and heroin. Staley does a kind of whammy bar dive-bomb effect on his voice on “mista-a-a-a-ke” before unveiling its upper register; drummer Sean Kinney gets a nice fill showcase; the band ends on a unison five-note rubato car honk: “If I would, could you?” The question “Would?” asks becomes hellaciously macabre in light of Staley’s overdose death in 2002, but the song stands as a long-lasting totem of the Seattle scene’s heavy sound and heavier struggles. –Jeremy D. Larson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nco_kh8xJDs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c7a6bf2e57bfbb704fe98/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Alice-in-Chains-Would.png,/dataset/artwork/Alice_in_Chains-Would_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,225,Jawbox,“Savory” (1994),Atlantic,"Atlantic Jawbox’s “Savory” was one of the unlikeliest alt-rock crossover bids of 1994. Instead of gambling on the tidy production style that decided many a punk band’s fate at the time, the Dischord expats drilled deeper into their fiery essence for the first single off their major label debut. Propelled by an evil swing with dangerous riptides underneath, the song keeps things tense even in the tuneful chorus. Though “Savory” aired on MTV’s 120 Minutes and Beavis and Butt-Head, its blunted serration skidded off the mainstream, and the band’s deadpan mien and newfound penchant for formal dress didn’t make their cryptic music any more accessible. But those same intractable qualities set the song apart as one of the heaviest, grooviest, most soulful post-hardcore anthems ever. –Brian Howe",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFvz1JQAPgQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c7abf10c581ffac68d0cb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jawbox-Savory.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Jawbox-Savory_1994.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,224,Luniz,“I Got 5 on It” (1995),Noo Trybe,"Noo Trybe Did Luniz always intend “I Got 5 on It” to sound so sinister? The Bay Area rap duo wrote the song, their lone hit, about going 50-50 on a dime bag, and on paper it’s a celebration of the rituals and etiquette of social smoking. But the musky, nocturnal beat, built from a corroded sample of R&B group Club Nouveau’s late ‘80s hit “Why You Treat Me So Bad,” turned the track into an exercise in paranoia. It wasn’t a stretch, then, when Jordan Peele absorbed the track into the score for his 2019 horror movie Us. The raps invite you to chip in; the beat cautions you to beware. –Evan Rytlewski",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSC9cgvtkRs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c7b7662bcbfd19793fb73/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Luniz-I-Got-5-on-It.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Luniz-I_Got_5_on_It_1995.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,223,The La’s,“There She Goes” (1990),Go! Discs,"Go! Discs Sometimes credited as the opening salvo of Britpop—Noel Gallagher once declared it his favorite song of the ’90s—this delicious single certainly owes poetic debt to the Velvet Underground’s “There She Goes Again.” On first listen it sounds like a lost ’60s classic stripped to the beams, just an indelibly repeated chorus with sly variations over Byrdsian guitar chime. The melody, parsed out over a seven-word juggling of the title, is irresistible; the jangling riffs appeal to a cultural sweet tooth that the Smiths’ Johnny Marr and R.E.M.’s Peter Buck reawakened in the ’80s. The lyrics play with the classic love-is-the-drug metaphor so expertly that the song joined the ranks of alleged pop paeans to heroin while simultaneously inviting an excellent cover by Christian alt-rock charmers Sixpence None the Richer. It’s a perfect earworm that leaves its parting strum unresolved just enough to make you want—need—to hear it again. –Will Hermes",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMfXeuv4kZE&ab_channel=SergioFoobar,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632de91052d4bd45efccbdb7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-Las-There-She-Goes.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Las-There_She_Goes_1990.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,222,RuPaul,“Supermodel (You Better Work)” (1992),Tommy Boy,"Tommy Boy An entire drag ecosystem earning a small country’s GDP would simply not exist without RuPaul’s 1992 single, which ushered in a catchphrase that, 30 years later, lives on in the Drag Race multiverse: “Sashay, shantay.” A club queen who’d frequented New York’s most storied downtown establishments (and the Shaque D’Amour) and established herself as a beloved weirdo in a scene full of them, Ru’s runway-empowerment house track got heavy rotation on MTV when such things still mattered, becoming a mainstream hit in an underdog-friendly year. (Kurt Cobain loved this song, resulting in the iconic photo of Ru and her skyscraper beehive holding a crying Francis Bean at the ’93 VMAs.) Ru was a 6’4 drag queen cheekily instructing listeners to “make love to the camera,” but it didn’t read as a novelty. It was a perfect pop song for the supermodel era, and one that launched a thousand drag careers, with mother Ru and her bigass wig at the forefront, catwalking the filthy streets of ’90s NYC. –Julianne Escobedo Shepherd",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SOryJvTAGs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c7c21d997a1f3e8a0cbc5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/RuPaul-Supermodel.png,/dataset/artwork/RuPaul-Supermodel_You_Better_Work_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,221,Veruca Salt,“Seether” (1994),Minty Fresh,"Minty Fresh The version of you who scrawls venomous graffiti on bathroom walls, who claps back at bullies, who keeps a running hit list and lies awake plotting revenge? She is the Seether, the alter-ego antihero in the song that took Chicago four-piece Veruca Salt from alt-rock obscurity to the main stage of Glastonbury in just a year. “Seether” is bubblegrunge at its finest, all guitar fuzz and pop stickiness and crackling angst animating a personification of anger that just can’t be leashed. “I try to cram her back in my mouth,” co-frontwoman Nina Gordon sings in the verse, but she didn’t really try that hard. The Seether is everywhere, most recently on the lips of Olivia Rodrigo and fans who discovered the song through her live cover—a new generation blessed with a soundtrack for their righteous rage. –Olivia Horn",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPsQcB52V18,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c7c94d997a1f3e8a0cbc7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Veruca-Salt-Seether.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Veruca_Salt-Seether_1994.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,220,Blur,“Girls & Boys” (1994),Food,"Food The nu-disco lead single from Blur’s Parklife, “Girls & Boys” might have been a sonic outlier in their ambitious catalog, but it was quintessentially Blur in its pithy observations of middle-class English culture. “It’s the travels of the mystical lager-eater,” Damon Albarn said of his inspiration: an Essex bloke en vacance, sunburned and stumbling through Majorca nightclubs. “Girls & Boys” remains one of the finest examples of a rock band crossing over into dance music, thanks largely to Alex James’ buoyant bassline and Graham Coxon’s assertively sour guitar work, which provided the tart top note in an otherwise candy-coated banger. His dissonance mimicked Albarn’s paradise, plagued by bad omens like paranoid love and looming unemployment. Is this a holiday—or sun-drenched hell? –Madison Bloom",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDswiT87oo8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c7ceb1dccce609e4161e8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Blur-Girls-and-Boys.png,/dataset/artwork/Blur-Girls__Boys_1994.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,219,Elvis Crespo,“Suavemente” (1999),Sony Music Latin,"Sony Music Latin In 1998, merengue was on its last legs in the Latin music market—until Puerto Rican vocalist Elvis Crespo came along and dropped the surprise smash hit “Suavemente.” Since then, there’s absolutely no way you’ll attend any Latino cookout, wedding, or party without watching everyone run out of their seats to the dancefloor once the opening a cappella—“Suavemente, Bésame/Yo quiero sentir tus labios” or “Kiss me softly, I want to feel your lips”—hits, before exploding into horns, güira, and percussion that feels like unending swooning euphoria. “Suavemente” gave merengue its glorious breakthrough for mainstream audiences; while it may not be the biggest Latin hit of the ’90s, there are few that remain as beloved and feel-good romantic to your tias. –Gio Santiago",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPiEbYSF9kE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c7d4ecb9d29a648704d42/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Elvis-Crespo-Suavemente.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Elvis_Crespo-Suavemente_1999.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,218,Third Eye Blind,“Semi-Charmed Life” (1997),Elektra,"Elektra There’s a sneering swagger to the way Third Eye Blind sang about disaffection and apathy on their debut single, “Semi-Charmed Life.” They were losers like Beck but combative about it, as if to say: Gaze upon us, ye professional managerial class, and despair. Nestled within the sunshine guitar riff and the “doot doot doot” harmonies borrowed from Lou Reed was a cautionary tale about crystal meth addiction, and falling into a lifestyle that sucks up the years before you realize they’re gone. Seemed bad, but on the other hand: doot doot doot, doot doot-doot doot. It was the rollicking Clinton years, the end of history, and “Semi-Charmed Life” was big-tent solipsism for a generation of dirtbags and college graduates wondering “is this it?” as they navigated adulthood during a period of halcyon global stability. Well, we know what came next. –Jeremy Gordon",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beINamVRGy4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c7da2f2e57bfbb704fe9a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Third-Eye-Blind-Semi-Charmed-Life.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Third_Eye_Blind-Semi-Charmed_Life_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,217,Shanice,“I Love Your Smile” (1991),Motown,"Motown That doo-doo-doo-doo refrain: a starburst melody that simultaneously feels like it must have always existed and was surely beamed to Shanice from the heavens in a moment of celestial magic. “I Love Your Smile” is all about young romance and the joy that uncontrollably bursts from your chest cavity. Funky drums and a prominent bassline adds a streetwise undercurrent to the singer’s effervescence. Though the radio edit foolishly omits Shanice’s rap verse, her rudimentary rhymes attest to feelings of doubt, with the sound of thunder bringing a sudden seriousness to her voice. But then she releases the tension with a laugh, making way for a sax solo by none other than Branford Marsalis, the sun bursting through the clouds once more. –Dean Van Nguyen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGXxcSdsXJ4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c7e08e02a17d9175e54b4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Shanice-I-Love-Your-Smile.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Shanice-I_Love_Your_Smile_1991.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,216,Blink-182,“Dammit” (1997),MCA / Cargo,"MCA / Cargo Blink-182 wrote dozens of songs about being teenagers, so it’s ironic that the most enduring is also the most mature. The San Diego trio was riding the tide of local fame when this quintessential ode to growing up came out; within a couple of years, it had vaulted them into the Billboard Hot 100 and late-night TV. Its iconic guitar riff begins by simply moving up the major scale—about as rudimentary as it gets, but thematically perfect for a song about the travails of growing past childhood—with a tempo just fast enough to provide an actual challenge for all the kids it inspired to pick up the instrument. With “Dammit,” Blink-182 evolved from their juvenile skate-punk origins to a (slightly) more grown-up sound, worthy of the radio domination that would soon come. –Nina Corcoran",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_cs8hidCtw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c7e84f7137d56795e57d3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Blink-182-Dammit.png,/dataset/artwork/Blink-182-Dammit_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,215,Blackstreet,“No Diggity” [ft. Dr. Dre and Queen Pen] (1996),Interscope,"Interscope After almost single-handedly reshaping the course of pop music as the pioneer of New Jack Swing in the late ’80s, singer-songwriter-producer Teddy Riley led his group Blackstreet to a career peak with this 1996 party anthem. One of the stickiest hip-hop/R&B hybrids of all time, “No Diggity” is so stacked with pleading, arm-waving pleasures that a stingier producer probably could have partitioned it out into three or four distinct hits. Along with that melodic abundance, the track heaves one larger-than-life voice on top of the next: Dr. Dre’s linebacker huff, Chauncey “Black” Hannibal’s chesty croon (“SHEEEE’S got class AND STYLE”), and an acrobatic verse from rapper Queen Pen. A nodding Bill Withers sample hangs over it all, like the voice of God himself looking down approvingly on this ridiculously good time. –Evan Rytlewski",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KL9mRus19o,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c805dafa92f85cc3e4e82/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Blackstreet-No-Diggity.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Blackstreet-No_Diggity_ft_Dr_Dre_and_Queen_Pen_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,214,Garbage,“Stupid Girl” (1995),Almo,"Almo When he wasn’t stewarding Nirvana’s Nevermind, enigmatic producer Butch Vig spent the first half of the ’90s stripping pop for parts, reworking songs by Nine Inch Nails, EMF, and Depeche Mode and leaving just their core vocals intact. Perhaps it’s unsurprising that when Vig endeavored to condense his pop philosophies into a new venture, he had everything he needed for a hit with “Stupid Girl”—a drum sample ripped from the Clash, guitars pumped through a grab bag of effects, a bassline that flirted with the blues—except a vocalist. Shirley Manson didn’t just fill the void; on “Stupid Girl,” the Scottish singer stared into it and sneered. Manson’s low register added a seductive and soulful element to the surgical studio glean of Garbage’s production, but she also, crucially, added a deadpan simplicity as a lyricist. Was “Stupid Girl” a diss track? Was it empowering? Was it even about a girl? Manson coyly avoided obvious answers, but the tremble in her voice on the final bridge hints that it could just as well be about the woman singing it. –Arielle Gordon",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rn7n6er1_Ik,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c80b3daa29e0a2a030a61/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Garbage-Stupid-Girl.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Garbage-Stupid_Girl_1995.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,213,Lil’ Kim,“Big Momma Thang” (1996),Undeas / Big Beat / Atlantic,"Undeas / Big Beat / Atlantic Lil’ Kim arrived in 1995 as the most colorful member of Biggie’s Junior M.A.F.I.A., multitasking as the mistress, sexual deviant, and superstar in the crew. Her debut album Hard Core is a complicated declaration of freedom, and “Big Momma Thang“ is Kim activating all of her multitudes: filthy, tough, conceited. The minute she spit the first line—“I used to be scared of the dick/Now I throw lips to the shit”—it opened up a wormhole to an explicit world for women both inside and outside hip-hop. The rest of the song, two verses spliced with a few meddlesome Jay-Z bars, is a PSA about her hopes and dreams, including 24 orgasms and carats, and ultimately her worth. –Clover Hope",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpRfpk311NU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632def5652d4bd45efccbdbb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lil-Kim-Big-Momma-Thang.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Lil_Kim-Big_Momma_Thang_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,212,4 Non Blondes,“What’s Up?” (1992),Interscope / Atlantic,"Interscope / Atlantic Built around a vocal performance so huge that it nearly swallows the song’s jangly guitar riff, “What’s Up?” is the sound of wild mood swings happening in real time. Frontwoman Linda Perry sang about being 25, exhausted by the pain of everyday living, and frustrated by the slow pace of personal and political progress, with the sincerity of someone young enough to keep striving for something better. Impossible to slot neatly into a genre, the track threw Perry into conflict with veteran producer David Tickle—who tried to rewrite her lyrics, among other unnecessary interventions—and forced her to fight for the eclectic, eccentric voice that would make her a sought-after pop songwriter in the aughts. The song is essential not just to Perry’s origin story, but also to creating an overwhelming—perhaps chemically altered—rush of emotion that has fueled three decades of crying jags and karaoke jams. –Judy Berman",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NXnxTNIWkc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c816c800c1a0f8721b909/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/4-Non-Blondes-Whats-Up.jpg,/dataset/artwork/4_Non_Blondes-Whats_Up_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,211,Whitney Houston,“I’m Every Woman” (1992),Arista,"Arista By the time Whitney Houston’s rendition of the Chaka Khan anthem “I’m Every Woman” dropped, she was already an international star racking up countless awards, sold-out venues on world tours, and solidifying her spot as one of the greatest vocalists of all time. As a musician, she was on top of the world, which made her first foray into film all the more precarious. The Bodyguard wasn’t exactly a cinematic breakthrough, but it produced the most successful soundtrack of any movie ever, and the ease with which Houston carried its classic banger immediately revived its anthemic status. Pulling out the disco that underlined the Chaka Khan original, Houston’s version brings us to church, soft and welcoming, as her voice carries us for the first full minute before the beat drops. Walk into any nightclub, drag show, or karaoke bar (should you dare), and euphoria will take over the room should this song come on, lifting us up. At that moment, we are every woman. –Samhita Mukhopadhyay",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7_sqdkaAfo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c821462bcbfd19793fb77/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Whitney-Houston-Im-Every-Woman.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Whitney_Houston-Im_Every_Woman_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,210,Temple of the Dog,“Hunger Strike” (1991),A&M,"A&M Pearl Jam didn’t even exist when Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell beckoned Eddie Vedder to duet on this plaintive power ballad, but what began as Cornell’s unfinished elegy for fallen Mother Love Bone singer Andrew Wood came to crown the accidental Seattle supergroup led by members of two of the scene’s biggest bands. Beyond its quintessential Seattle sound—especially those gentle-to-crunchy guitars, courtesy of nascent Pearl Jammers Mike McCready and Stone Gossard—the call-and-response of Cornell’s multi-octave roar and Vedder’s distinctive bari-tenor echoing the same lines over and over elevated the track into a classic. Incredibly, Vedder first stepped up to Cornell’s mic to belt this one out during his week-long Pearl Jam audition in the rehearsal space the then-forming band shared with Temple of the Dog. Spoiler: Vedder got the job. –Jessica Letkemann",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUb450Alpps,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c826952d4bd45efccbcf7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Temple-of-the-Dog-Hunger-Strike.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Temple_of_the_Dog-Hunger_Strike_1991.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,209,The KLF,“3 a.m. Eternal (Live at the S.S.L.)” (1991),KLF Communications,"KLF Communications Residing cozily among Nelson and New Kids on the Block singles, house tracks manufactured by hook-savvy British and European producers made early 1990s pop radio a less traumatic experience. British stadium-house pranksters Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond conceived “3 a.m. Eternal” as a rap-conversant and club-designed worldwide smush; the title parenthetical, another of their knee-slappers, refers to the desk at which Cauty and Drummond mixed this not-live-in-the-slightest track. Yet “3 a.m. Eternal” generates the endorphin rush of a good concert experience and a better dose of MDMA. Besides its walloping rhythm, double-reed oboe solo, and creamy pre-chorus, it hurls spitballs like “bass ballistics” and “sample city through Trancentral,” not to mention the useful maxim “time is eternal.” What many who made “3 a.m. Eternal” a Top 5 hit remember, though, are the chant—“KLF is gonna ROCK YA!”—and a four-note bleep-hook tapped out on one of those period brick cell phones. Not many Euro-house tracks sported one of those. –Alfred Soto",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGvCYB-P_wI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c82be62bcbfd19793fb79/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-KLF.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_KLF-3_am_Eternal_Live_at_the_SSL_1991.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,208,Belly,“Feed the Tree” (1993),Sire / Reprise,"Sire / Reprise By the early 1990s, a decade as a second-string guitarist-songwriter for Throwing Muses and three parallel years in the Breeders still hadn’t brought out the full range of Tanya Donelly’s talent for tweaking Gothic cliches about madwomen in attics. Using demos she had initially prepared for a second Breeders album, she formed Belly, a group that could pivot from twinkling, sugar-spun ballads to impressively muscular power pop. “Feed the Tree,” released in early 1993 after months of buzz, takes advantage of Donelly’s talent for punching holes in the wall with a killer chorus. Tom Gorman’s serpentine riff coils around the verses while bassist Fred Abong and drummer Chris Gorman keep their rhythms flippy-floppy. The result: an unexpected hit, gold-certified album, and Grammy nomination in a year when major-label moguls polished their glasses and studied those weird-ass little “modern rock” bands. Take your hats off, boys! –Alfred Soto",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQJjUbMrt8w,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c83b752d4bd45efccbcf9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Belly-Feed-the-Tree.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Belly-Feed_the_Tree_1993.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,207,Teenage Fanclub,“The Concept” (1991),Creation,"Creation Some of the best power-pop songs are about the feeling of being turned on by music itself as much as any romantic interest: Big Star’s “Thirteen” looked back on “Paint It, Black,” and the Replacements’ “Alex Chilton” paid homage to the titular Big Star frontman. “The Concept,” the misty and melancholic opening song from Teenage Fanclub’s breakthrough record Bandwagonesque, starts out describing a denim-clad girl who buys records by Status Quo, an obscure ’60s group. By the fist-pumping coda—a marvel of searing guitars, bombastic drums, and wistful three-part harmonies—it’s clear that frontman Norman Blake isn’t in love with the girl so much as he relishes the idea of being in the band onstage, basking in the glow of raised lighters. It’s a fantasy that Teenage Fanclub in some sense made real—Bandwagonesque famously beat out Nirvana’s Nevermind on SPIN’s best albums of the year list—and it exists anew every time someone plugs into power-pop’s nostalgic charge. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Er_JOsnwzcI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c841710c581ffac68d0cd/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Teenage-Fanclub-The-Concept.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Teenage_Fanclub-The_Concept_1991.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,206,Mark Morrison,“Return of the Mack” (1996),WEA / Atlantic,"WEA / Atlantic In hindsight, there’s a slight irony to the massive success of “Return of the Mack,” given that Mark Morrison was never quite able to capitalize on his deliciously petty signature song: It’s a return in search of a departure, a comeback without a debut. In the years that followed his smash hit, a slick and triumphant British Invasion of the American R&B charts with a heavy ragga-tinged beat, Morrison’s career would implode due to constant legal troubles—most infamously the time he hired a lookalike to do his court-mandated community service while he went on tour. The resentment and bitterness exemplified by his lone hit might have been Morrison’s undoing when it came to career longevity, but “Return of the Mack” spins negativity into cathartic gold, a walking-on-air anthem designed to be played on repeat during those times when you need to manifest sweet comeuppance into reality. –Nadine Smith",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB1D9wWxd2w,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c846f8f0d7ac40b58dd3a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mark-Morrison-Return-of-the-Mack.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mark_Morrison-Return_of_the_Mack_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,205,New Radicals,“You Get What You Give” (1998),MCA,"MCA No other ’90s artifact about selling out has endured like “You Get What You Give.” New Radicals leader Gregg Alexander yelped about sticking it to the man, trashing cars, and disrespecting his retail premises, all to the kind of peak CD-era pop-rock that fattened the man’s wallet and made U2 jealous. It’s survived because there’s not a drop of cynicism in it. Alexander considers the communal joy of forging an alternative, sung with irrepressible certainty that you are the antidote. The euphoric hit was too pure for this world and only grows more poignant in time: A disillusioned Alexander split up the band one single later, war broke out, and it turned out there was, allegedly, more than enough reason to want to kick Marilyn Manson’s ass in. But for the four-and-a-half minutes of this song—which, by the way, once inspired a defeated Joni Mitchell to keep making music—the dreamer’s disease still rages beautifully. –Laura Snapes",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DL7-CKirWZE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c84f5f2e57bfbb704fe9d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/New-Radicals-You-Get-What-You-Give.jpg,/dataset/artwork/New_Radicals-You_Get_What_You_Give_1998.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,204,Da Brat,“Funkdafied” (1994),So So Def,"So So Def Da Brat’s swift ’90s rise is the stuff of hip-hop fairy tales. After winning a rap competition hosted by MTV, the young Chicago MC met producer Jermaine Dupri, inked a record deal, and began work on her debut album. She dropped the title track in May of ’94; by summer’s end, it had peaked at No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100. Bumping to a sample of the Isley Brothers’ baby-maker “Between the Sheets,” “Funkdafied” wrapped Da Brat’s jabbing, sassy flow in synthesized strings and a slinking bassline. The single baptized Da “Brat-tat-tat-tat” as a trailblazer—a bar-spitting tomboy who resisted the industry’s appetite for more sexualized packaging. As “Funkdafied” cruised the airwaves, she became the first solo female rapper to go platinum. “I’m on a roll in control like Janet,” she snaps in the third verse—her nod to royalty as she snatched her own crown. –Madison Bloom",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pf_si60K9nM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c85845973f1325c6e0d33/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Da-Brat-Funkdafied.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Da_Brat-Funkdafied_1994.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,203,Cat Power,“Cross Bones Style” (1998),Matador,"Matador You could spend a lifetime trying to detangle the spell cast by “Cross Bones Style,” with its twilit guitars and peppy percussion that never quite falls in step with Chan Marshall’s voice. Searching for some kind of impossible salvation in the eyes of a child who has seen too much, her vocals are doubled—weary yet hopeful, meditative and pleading—like a rope that braids and frays. Cat Power’s songs have protested the cruelties we inflict on each other; yet the abstracted poetry of “Cross Bones Style,” inspired by two orphans whose parents were killed in South Africa’s blood diamond mines, is both frighteningly specific and lingers like a myth. –Owen Myers",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eHkclXUNU0&ab_channel=CatPower-Topic,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c85cfd997a1f3e8a0cbcb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Cat-Power-Cross-Bones-Style.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Cat_Power-Cross_Bones_Style_1998.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,202,Mos Def,“Ms. Fat Booty” (1999),Rawkus,"Rawkus The genius of producer Ayatollah’s flip of Aretha Franklin’s “One Step Ahead” is twofold: The sampled song’s lyrics speak directly to the conundrum Mos Def (now known as Yasiin Bey) writes about on “Ms. Fat Booty,” and it’s also conceivably the record playing on the jukebox when the object of Mos’ affection blows him off during their first meeting. This is the rare love song that ends not in bliss or heartbreak but with the speaker’s deflating realization that he simply can’t keep up. The spark of recognition and last-call conspiracy gives way to an infatuation that consumes him but ebbs for her, made all the worse by the fact that you can see it from the front. –Paul A. Thompson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01yUzXQctcM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c8622e02a17d9175e54b6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mos-Def-Ms-Fat-Booty.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Mos_Def-Ms_Fat_Booty_1999.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,201,Hole,“Doll Parts” (1994),DGC,"DGC On “Doll Parts,” singer, guitarist, and songwriter Courtney Love dissects herself into slivers. Fake eyes, legs, and arms all fall at odd angles, their connective elastic snapped. When some men want women, they divide them in this way: reduce them to anatomical segments, seize upon a part, and throw away the rest. Fame can do this to a person, too, a fact that Love knew well by the time Hole released their second album, Live Through This. In the years since the raw smolder of the band’s 1991 debut, Pretty on the Inside, she had become half of a globally surveilled couple alongside Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain, been the subject of multiple media scandals, and felt the scathing, desirous gaze the world casts on a woman who won’t fit any of its molds. With “Doll Parts,” Love crawls inside that mangling hunger and inverts it. She turns herself into plaster and then ignites the replica with her want. In pieces, charred and deformed, she begs to swallow the world, to make it feel the same pain that’s accumulated for decades in her gut. –Sasha Geffen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RD9xK9smth4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c86838f0d7ac40b58dd3c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Hole-Doll-Parts.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Hole-Doll_Parts_1994.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,200,Maxwell,“Ascension (Don’t Ever Wonder)” (1996),Columbia,"Columbia Is Maxwell talking about love on “Ascension (Don’t Ever Wonder),” the second single from Maxwell’s Urban Hang Suite? A woman? God? Drugs? Maybe all of the above, which is why the chorus penetrates your soul: You know the feeling when something takes you to a place you’ve never been before. The album sequencing suggested it was about the throbbing crescendo of intimate and sexual love, which didn’t stop the song from being beloved by church choirs—it is, after all, a Biblical reference. The track evokes an ethereal lightness, an angelic warmth that hugs you and elevates you higher, above yourself, to a new tier of consciousness. –Samhita Mukhopadhyay",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7rm9t5S4uE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c86f252d4bd45efccbcfb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Maxwell-Ascension.png,/dataset/artwork/Maxwell-Ascension_Dont_Ever_Wonder_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,199,Helium,“Pat’s Trick” (1995),Matador,"Matador On the surface, “Pat’s Trick” is an index of mid-’90s slacker-rock tropes: that chunky, rickety groove; that low-slung and loose-stringed sound; those tinny harmonies; and the countenance of bored contempt that singer-guitarist Mary Timony wears in the video. But the wonderful strangeness of her music can’t help but glow through. The lead single from Helium’s Matador debut The Dirt of Luck, “Pat’s Trick” is as mysterious a creature as the one silhouetted in its lyrics. The riffs and words are both squirmy and stunted, surging with the power of change. Too cool to raise her voice, Timony spread it over blistered crags of guitar and slashes of thick bass chords. It’s the most accessible portal into Helium’s thorned, enchanted world. –Brian Howe",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VY3HuDsHyK8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632ca3bcafa92f85cc3e4ec1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Helium-Pats-Trick.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Helium-Pats_Trick_1995.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,198,Acen,“Trip II the Moon (Pt. 1 and 2)” (1992),Production House,"Production House These indelible slices of 1992 hardcore—in the breakbeat sense—build on a delirious premise delivered in chipmunk falsetto. The repeated vocal snippet expresses the foundational rave desire to be taken higher, perhaps by then-nascent smart drugs, perhaps to the title’s heavenly body. (“Pt. 1”’s whirligig ending suggests UFO involvement.) One thing’s for sure: The voice itself couldn’t rise an iota further before slipping beyond human hearing. It pushes at intelligibility much as the track pushes past any semblance of early-’90s pop normalcy. This is a raucous blender montage of samples and effects, the beat a comforting throughline amid candy-colored chaos. Cinematic samples decorate riotous percussion, taking occasional breaks for proto-drop near-silences. “Pt. 2” is downtempo only by comparison: drums deeper, pace considered, vocals sodden from exertion. A trip to the moon means going up, but at some point you gotta land. Acen eases us down. –Marc Weidenbaum",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8v7dRXuzEw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c8877e02a17d9175e54b8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Acen-Trip-II-the-Moon.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Acen-Trip_II_the_Moon_Pt_1_and_2_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,197,L7,“Pretend We’re Dead” (1992),Slash,"Slash In 1991, outraged by Reagan and Bush Sr.’s years of attacks on reproductive freedom and galvanized by Anita Hill’s testimony against Clarence Thomas, the L.A. punk band L7 co-founded Rock for Choice, a benefit concert series raising money for abortion rights groups. (Over the course of the following 13 years, Rock for Choice would feature almost every major alt-rock band, from Nirvana to Rage Against the Machine to No Doubt, and raise hundreds of thousands of dollars.) The following year, L7 released “Pretend We’re Dead,” a protest anthem that bottled their activist spirit into four minutes of grunge perfection. Singer-guitarist Donita Sparks warned against the danger of political apathy over riffs as heavy as bricks; the only way forward was to “turn the tables with our unity,” she beckoned. Thirty years later, the consequences of that unheeded warning are catastrophic beyond anything L7 could have imagined. –Amy Phillips",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAdlZ2F-fs8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c88b01dccce609e4161ed/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/L7-Pretend-Were-Dead.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/L7-Pretend_Were_Dead_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,196,Fiona Apple,“Sleep to Dream” (1996),Work / Columbia,"Work / Columbia Released when she was 18 years old, the first song on Fiona Apple’s debut album is a mature and clear-eyed statement of self-determination—whether you read it as a breakup song or a preemptive, prescient rejoinder to the small minds who would willfully misunderstand her in the early years of her career. Unlike the rest of Tidal’s piano-forward tracks, “Sleep to Dream” builds from the beat up, a rumble anchoring Apple as she spits bars, her words so sharp and precise they could have been written with a scalpel. “I’ve got my own hell to raise,” is her proclamation in the chorus. Through formal innovations and radical forthrightness, she has spent the decades since fulfilling that prophecy. –Olivia Horn",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVHQJlogH0k,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c8912afa92f85cc3e4e86/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Fiona-Apple-Sleep-to-Dream.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Fiona_Apple-Sleep_to_Dream_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,195,Björk,“Venus as a Boy” (1993),One Little Independent,"One Little Independent Not to get all What Women Want about it, but it’s hardly surprising that the idealized male figure Björk rhapsodizes about in “Venus as a Boy” is described in terms of how he makes the narrator feel, and not what he looks like. This is beauty, according to Björk: attentiveness, the capability of making one’s partner feel beautiful, and an apparent willingness to go down on her. She’s not excited by his biceps or the bulge in his pants, but his sense of humor. Sonically, this Nelle Hooper-assisted single from Debut is something like a chanson in the Earth section of Epcot on Mars. Strings recorded at film studios in India do a ton of heavy lifting; every figure sounds like a different variation on swooning. At once intelligible and singular, “Venus” encapsulated Björk’s particular pop genius so preciously. –Rich Juzwiak",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEQ7GDQC-T4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c89bbd997a1f3e8a0cbcf/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bjork-Venus-as-a-Boy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bjrk-Venus_as_a_Boy_1993.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,194,The Sundays,“Here’s Where the Story Ends” (1990),DGC / Rough Trade,"DGC / Rough Trade Released right at the start of the 1990s, the Sundays’ second single had more than one leg stuck in the 1980s, its gentle jangle pop and bookish miserabilism inevitably recalling fellow Rough Trade signees the Smiths. At the same time, “Here’s Where the Story Ends” has such a titanically strong pop melody—conveying a bittersweet tale of nostalgic longing that has withstood covers by artists as diverse as sugary house merchants Tin Tin Out and American Idol runner-up Crystal Bowersox—that it feels untethered to anything as prosaic as the calendar year. “Here’s Where the Story Ends” is an irresistible ode to moping around in your bedroom, borne aloft and into the stars on David Gavurin’s silk-slipper acoustic-guitar textures and Harriet Wheeler’s crystalline delivery. It influenced the gentler side of Britpop and it will resonate for as long as young people feel sorry for themselves—which is to say, probably forever. –Ben Cardew",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHsip5xOenQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c89fcf2e57bfbb704fe9f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-Sundays-Heres-Where-the-Story-Ends.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Sundays-Heres_Where_the_Story_Ends_1990.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,193,Aimee Mann,“Save Me” (1999),SuperEgo,"SuperEgo Aimee Mann spent the ’90s sparring with a music industry that had desperately tried to control her. After leaving the ’80s synth rock group ’Til Tuesday, Mann went through a tumultuous run of contractual battles and label restructurings that left her both adrift and hardened. With “Save Me,” she found a way out. The melancholy song was written for Mann’s third solo LP—and first on her own label, SuperEgo—which shares DNA with the director Paul Thomas Anderson’s Oscar-nominated 1999 film Magnolia. Anderson wrote his screenplay using Mann’s cutting lyrics as dialogue, working together with the singer-songwriter to give flesh and blood to intricate stories about “the ranks of the freaks who suspect they could never love anyone,” as she puts it in the song. Subtly informed by a long period of disappointment, “Save Me” is wry but surefooted, with its loping guitar melodies, shuddering accordion, and gentle percussion. The featherlight production and songwriting belie its inevitable punch: Here, Mann underscores the raw tenderness that comes with searching for help. –Eric Torres",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72fDsC2kX7g,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c8a96ff16f54a7f09ca85/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Aimee-Mann-Save-Me.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Aimee_Mann-Save_Me_1999.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,192,Tony! Toni! Toné!,“Feels Good” (1990),Wing,"Wing “Play this record as frequently as possible. Then, as it becomes easier for you, play the record once a day or as needed.” The old-timey voiceover that introduced the Oakland trio’s first big song set a high bar that this tune would be the cure for what ailed listeners, but that first drum hits like a full syringe of serotonin. With all the sweet harmonies and big beats that defined new jack swing, “Feels Good” stands out as a titan of the genre, a full-bodied five-minute mission to live up to its name, and a catalyst for the prolific career of artist-producer Raphael Saadiq. One of the thousands of songs to sample Lyn Collins’ 1972 James Brown-produced “Think (About It),” “Feels Good” drew heavily from older funk, soul, gospel, and jazz, while also embracing the hard-hitting sound of the era. It was part love song to a girl, part love song to music in general, and all party. –Evie Nagy",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jfoxsfhi-kk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c8bcee02a17d9175e54ba/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Tony-Toni-Tone-Feels-Good.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tony_Toni_Ton-Feels_Good_1990.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,191,My Bloody Valentine,“When You Sleep” (1991),Creation / Sire,"Creation / Sire “When You Sleep” is a firework of emotion gone awry, a love song that leaves you so helplessly and hazily entranced. On their shoegaze-pioneering album Loveless, My Bloody Valentine were intent on making their instruments sound just as destructive as these emotions, and “When You Sleep” is filled with indelible blown-out noise, shattered guitar feedback, and muddled confessions narrowly escaping the surface: “When I look at you/Oh, I don’t know what’s real,” Shields sang, barely perceptible. Was this reality, or was it a dream? Either way, there was no exit. –Gio Santiago",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-Ig71fhUc8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c919710c581ffac68d0d1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/My-Bloody-Valentine-Only-Shallow.jpg,/dataset/artwork/My_Bloody_Valentine-When_You_Sleep_1991.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,190,Gang Starr,“Mass Appeal” (1993),Chrysalis / EMI,"Chrysalis / EMI “It was recorded as a joke,” Gang Starr’s DJ Premier once said of “Mass Appeal.” “We just wanted to make fun of the radio on what it sounded like to get airplay.” The infamous song is smooth like some chinchilla coat worn by a gangster’s daughter—but nowhere near as soft. Guru’s voice, scholarly and crystalline, is compact over Preemo’s precise beat. Even though Gang Starr were non-violent, they weren’t only for the backpackers, either. And while Guru wasn’t a hustler rapper, he was still hardcore, his flow too confident for any posturing or ornamentation. They spoke to so many of rap’s constituencies at once. Preemo might have created this song as a gag, but it stands firm as both criticism and corrective. –Jayson Buford",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9lNbNGbo24,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c907c52d4bd45efccbcfe/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Gang-Starr-Mass-Appeal.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Gang_Starr-Mass_Appeal_1993.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,189,Groove Theory,“Tell Me” (1995),Epic,"Epic Groove Theory only had one album and one hit, but they made it count. “Tell Me” was a simple, sensual admission of affection by singer-songwriter Amel Larrieux that captured all of the genuine nerves and excitement accompanying bubbling romance, set over a heartsick and woozy groove. “If you thought I’d sleep on this/Boy, you're wrong ’cause all I dream about is our first kiss,” she sings, her voice both a sultry come-on and a raw confessional. All of this, combined with the unforgettable melody and producer Bryce Wilson’s bulletproof bassline, made “Tell Me” a near-perfect representative of the best that R&B could be. –Evie Nagy",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THtqUDitQ4I,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c90e0afa92f85cc3e4ebf/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Groove-Theory-Tell-Me.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Groove_Theory-Tell_Me_1995.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,188,Cocteau Twins,“Cherry-Coloured Funk” (1990),Capitol,"Capitol Cocteau Twins entered the ’90s with birth (Elizabeth Fraser and Robin Guthrie’s daughter), death (Simon Raymonde’s father), agony (Guthrie’s substance abuse), and success (their highest charting U.S. single, “Carolyn’s Fingers”). This complex concoction seems fit for a band that melded hope with heartbreak, embodying indescribable emotions through ethereal instrumentals and cryptic lyrics. “Cherry-Coloured Funk,” the opening track to their 1990 tour de force Heaven or Las Vegas, drips with thick, sticky desire. Over lush guitar and churning bass, Fraser begins in an almost sinister low register, painting an abstract bucolic scene, then climbs to an anguished falsetto cry. As a feeling, “Cherry-Coloured Funk” is familiar yet ineffable, and thankfully expressed by a band who understood the inexpressible. –Arjun Srivatsa",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbbUeLkZt74,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c91df62bcbfd19793fb7f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Cocteau-Twins-Cherry-Coloured-Funk.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Cocteau_Twins-Cherry-Coloured_Funk_1990.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,187,Double 99,“Ripgroove” (1997),Satellite / Logic,"Satellite / Logic Movie directors aiming to create suspense or tension have been known to deploy what’s called the Shepard tone, an arrangement that gives the illusion of a continuously rising siren sound. In 1997, UK garage producers were using a similar effect to signal the arrival of something much more thrilling: A big, bulbous bassline to put the wind up your Moschino shirt. In the hands of Double 99, that suspense comes from a wailing, rotating Tina Moore vocal chop that rides atop a trundle of plump kicks before eventually—it’s a long build even by speed-garage standards—a delayed, distorted “brock wild!” summons a walloping bassline that’s become instantly recognizable to ravers of all stripes over the subsequent decades. Just like that Shepard tone, it’s still going. –Will Pritchard",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR3Vw8J8vUo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c92408f0d7ac40b58dd72/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Double-99-Ripgroove.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Double_99-Ripgroove_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,186,Ghostface Killah,"“Daytona 500” [ft. Raekwon, Cappadonna, and Force M.D.s] (1996)",Razor Sharp / Epic / Sony,"Razor Sharp / Epic / Sony Beholding the power of Wu-Tang at their peak was like stumbling onto the world’s most esoteric track meet—cryptic smartasses bombing hammers and javelins all over the field, with points awarded according to the precepts of Supreme Mathematics. “Daytona 500” fulfills the title’s promise of speed: Over a rubbery strut sampled from Bob James’ jazz workhorse “Nautilus,” Raekwon’s leadoff leg effortlessly piles up internal rhymes and mordant asides. Ghost follows with his particular blend of artisanal flexes (“In the Philippines, pick herbal beans”) and invincibility (“I slapbox with Jesus, lick shots at Joseph”). They build a big enough lead for Cappa to break the tape, beer sloshing out of his cup. –Brad Shoup",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1G03xA3SMKo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c929ace259b802f516693/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ghostface-Killah-Daytona-500.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ghostface_Killah-Daytona_500_ft_Raekwon_Cappadonna_and_Force_MDs_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,185,SWV,“Right Here (Human Nature Remix)” (1992),RCA,"RCA In the comments section for a four-minute YouTube clip from 1993’s Free Willy, hundreds have communed to honor a cinematic moment from childhood that gave them “chills.” As Willy’s fins cut through the water, the sound of Michael Jackson’s reinterpolated “Human Nature” shimmers like the sun-jeweled waves, and the sound of SWV’s voices gently rain down like drops of holy water. Chills. Sitting somewhere snug between the ecstatic and absolute serene, SWV’s “Right Here (Human Nature Remix)” belongs as much in the church as it does the Free Willy soundtrack. With its gospel-infused harmonies, Teddy Riley’s remix combines the classic romanticism and cool insouciance of the original with updated, widescreen hip-hop production (including a cameo from his protégé, Pharrell). –Emma Madden",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6l90av9nj58,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c9bb11dccce609e416223/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/SWV-Right-Here.jpg,/dataset/artwork/SWV-Right_Here_Human_Nature_Remix_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,184,Wilco,“Via Chicago” (1999),Reprise,"Reprise In 1999, Wilco were set on blowing up their alt-country identity and stepping further into their truth as aesthetes. On Summerteeth, the band embraced the psychedelia of Beach Boys baroque pop, weaving in ever more textural experimentation. “Via Chicago” is the most stunning signal of what was to come on their 2001 opus, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot: the song deconstructs, as if slowly collapsing on the road back to their city and their people. “I’m coming home/Via Chicago,” Jeff Tweedy sings, gently and wearied, broken yet whole, proof that place is only the first stop en route to the complicated comforts of home. –Jenn Pelly",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7lgner6IO0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c9cbd1dccce609e416225/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Wilco-Via-Chicago.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Wilco-Via_Chicago_1999.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,183,Yo-Yo,“You Can't Play With My Yo-Yo” [ft. Ice Cube] (1991),East West,"East West Yo-Yo made her recording debut in 1990, matching Ice Cube bar for bar on “It’s a Man’s World”—but her second solo single, in 1991, was stratospheric, an infectious declaration laying out Yo-Yo’s plan for woman-domination in the entrenched male landscape of West Coast gangsta rap. Over Cube’s lowrider-slow sample of Earth, Wind & Fire’s “Devotion” and a refrain that cast a mournful pallor over its demands (“don’t try to play me out”), the Compton-born Yo-Yo flowed majestically about her skills, intellect, style, values, and street bona fides, all while laying out a credo for herself and her crew, the Intelligent Black Woman’s Coalition (IBWC). The blessing of Cube lent Yo-Yo some legitimacy in those sexist circles and helped her land a record deal by the time she was 18, but her flow spoke for itself, a protegee turned spiritual predecessor to current rappers as wide-ranging as Saweetie to City Girls to Omeretta the Great. –Julianne Escobedo Shepherd",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHk4sPCkU5s,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c9d508f0d7ac40b58dd74/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Yo-Yo-You-Cant-Play-With-My-Yo-Yo.png,/dataset/artwork/Yo-Yo-You_Cant_Play_With_My_Yo-Yo_ft_Ice_Cube_1991.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,182,Spice Girls,“Wannabe” (1996),Virgin,"Virgin Women. Ever heard of them? For much of the nineties the British cultural landscape had been suffused with the banality of blokiness, to the point where femininity felt like radical counter-programming. The Spice Girls were cartoonish splinters of British girlhood, each of them campishly endowed with femdom archetypes: Scary, Baby, Posh, Sporty, and… Ginger. “Wannabe,” their debut single, was a boisterous, friendship-forward anthem centering the most hoydenish parts of their personalities. The five women delivered sass and brattiness with the giddy mania of a toy commercial—Friendship! Fun! Zig-ah-zig-ah! The track itself is indulgently weird, frantically jittering from one idea to the next without any thought or collecting breath. It sounds like pop music held at gunpoint, but this energy reinscribed a much-needed sense of humor and unseriousness into the genre. –Emma Madden",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJLIiF15wjQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c9dc4ca81299b65ebad5f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Spice-Girls-Wannabe.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Spice_Girls-Wannabe_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,181,Dr. Octagon,“Blue Flowers” (1996),Bulk / Mo' Wax,"Bulk / Mo' Wax Kool Keith has had plenty of receptive collaborators both before and after his initial turn as the time-traveling alien OB/GYN Dr. Octagon, but none understood or complemented him as well as Dan the Automator. On 1996’s Dr. Octagonecologyst, the producer keeps Keith from flying too far into the atmosphere with rocksteady boom-bap, while tickling the rapper’s one-of-a-kind brain with wiggly synth drones, and samples from porn flicks and the cult ’90s comedy Cabin Boy. One clear highlight is “Blue Flowers,” which features a horror-soundtrack-level flip of Bartók’s Violin Concerto No. 2 alongside a jazzy backbeat. It’s unsettling on its own, but Keith cranks up the disquiet with verses that are blood-soaked, heatsick, and wickedly funny. –Robert Ham",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9VYzNUXGDA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c9e55d997a1f3e8a0cc08/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Dr-Octagon-Blue-Flowers.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dr_Octagon-Blue_Flowers_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,180,Usher,“You Make Me Wanna…” (1997),LaFace / Arista,"LaFace / Arista My Way was a path-changing album in Usher’s discography, and on a record where every song had the potential to break out, “You Make Me Wanna…” had to be particularly spectacular to slightly edge out the others. A sublime mix of hip-hop cool and R&B seduction in the vein of Usher’s idol, Bobby Brown, the song is sexy without being lascivious, playful without any childish inclinations, and just a little unbelievable. It’s common to mourn the “death” of smooth, danceable and carefully produced R&B—an apparent bygone of a lost era—yet Usher’s artistry has revealed itself to be committed to his roots, with a deep awareness of the foundational pillars lent to the genre by gospel and soul. As the years have passed, he’s shifted and experimented, all the while pledging allegiance to the melodies that raised and introduced him. –Tarisai Ngangura",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQRzrnH6_HY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c9f2ff2e57bfbb704fea1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Usher-You-Make-Me-Wanna.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Usher-You_Make_Me_Wanna_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,179,Metallica,“Enter Sandman” (1991),Elektra,"Elektra In which prototypical ’80s speed metal headbangers trade in thrash velocity and prog drama for a more straightforward and compact grunge-adjacent churn, in service of a spooky-ooky bedtime story named for a 19th Century continental European shuteye myth you can trace through ’50s girl-group dreamers the Chordettes, dirging ’70s soft-rockers America, a ’30s DC Comic-turned-’80s Neil Gaiman graphic novel, and maybe, just maybe, months after the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein. Add references to the turn-of-18th-Century Protestant children’s prayer “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep,” the Southern folk lullaby “Hush Little Baby,” and Peter Pan’s (if not Michael Jackson’s) Neverland, warn of “the beast under your bed, in your closet, in your head” (for the tween boy in the video, impending puberty maybe?), and you’ve got a sellout that goes bump in the night. Exit light, enter nye-yite, welcome to Metallica’s nightmare. –Chuck Eddy",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNUgsbKisp8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632c9ff9d997a1f3e8a0cc0a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Metallica-Enter-Sandman.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Metallica-Enter_Sandman_1991.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,178,Raekwon,"“Ice Cream” [ft. Method Man, Ghostface Killah, and Cappadonna] (1995)",Loud,"Loud “Ice Cream” sounds just as roughneck as the grimiest Wu bangers, so it’s a little funny that Raekwon hated the song at first because he thought it was “too soft.” RZA turns jazz guitarist Earl Klugh’s plucky riff into a blood-curdling loop that cradles the Chef, Ghostface, and Cappadonna’s confidence-oozing player raps. The three of them sound like guys fighting to get the attention of a beautiful woman who just passed by their block, verbally shoving each other out the way to shout the wildest compliments imaginable. Not all of their hollering has aged well—especially parts of Raekwon’s verse—but it’s still a quintessential New York rap love story: a little too upfront, yet romantic in its own crude way. –Brandon Callender",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgh10of6DKA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632ca32f692dbdf6033321cd/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Raekwon-Ice-Cream.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Raekwon-Ice_Cream_ft_Method_Man_Ghostface_Killah_and_Cappadonna_1995.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,177,Garth Brooks,“Friends in Low Places” (1990),Capitol Nashville,"Capitol Nashville One of the best-selling artist of the ’90s, Garth Brooks was primarily influenced by Texas country acts like George Strait, and he wore a Stetson to prove it. “Friends in Low Places,” the ultimate hat act single, starts off as a nearly a cappella story-song about storming an ex’s high-falutin’ shindig, and Brooks attacks that chorus in a way that justifies every Elvis comparison. The song inevitably climaxes as a barroom sing-along that’s musical and spiritual kin to Lone Star anthems like Tanya Tucker’s “Texas (When I Die).” It’s also Garth’s pledge as a country singer—especially one hailed as the genre’s conquering hero—to bring some low-class kicks to the high-class sales charts and record books. –Stephen Deusner",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7cAycpkivg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632ca39131f8f46af3b69b8f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Garth-Brooks-Friends-in-Low-Places.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Garth_Brooks-Friends_in_Low_Places_1990.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,176,The Prodigy,“Firestarter” (1997),XL / Maverick / Mute,"XL / Maverick / Mute Rave as metal—or oi!, maybe—with indie rock wah-wah borrowed from the Breeders, deep house bam-bam from Ten City, proto-techno “hey hey!” from Art of Noise, and a pyromania-horror concept from Stephen King. Keith Flint, him of the Bozo the Clown hair-tufts, slings Cockney rhyming slang about what a bloomin’ rebel he is— or, per his chants, what a trouble starter, punkin’ instigator, mind detonator, twisted animator he is. That last one was particularly apt since these blokes were nothing if not cartoons—but cartoons with the big beat, sillier and catchier and buzzier than just about anything else on the radio at the time. All told, a master class in how to sell electronic dance music as what looks and feels like a “rock band.” –Chuck Eddy",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmin5WkOuPw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632ca41cf2e57bfbb704fea4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Prodigy-Firestarter.png,/dataset/artwork/The_Prodigy-Firestarter_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,175,Galaxie 500,“Fourth of July” (1990),Rough Trade,"Rough Trade Do you know just how low it feels to think the whole world is enjoying a party and you’re the only one not invited? Or to believe that most every possible comfort—the playfulness of a pet, the ecstasy of a holiday, the warmth of a smile, the silence of your space—is unavailable, denied for some reason you can’t comprehend? That is the listless sadness at the core of “Fourth of July,” a song about wanting to be loved by a crowd too busy to bother. Dean Wareham shuffles around New York, unimpressed by its Empire State Building’s stature and uninterested in its Independence Day clamor. Naomi Yang and Damon Krukowski perfectly illustrate his anxious pacing, their circular rhythm moving like someone who wants to go anywhere but has nowhere willing to take him. What to do when the world shuts you out? Shut yourself in and take a glorious guitar solo that forever wanders, just like you. –Grayson Haver Currin",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L67x9VGfF-g,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632ca4a0800c1a0f8721b90f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Galaxie-500-Fourth-of-July.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Galaxie_500-Fourth_of_July_1990.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,174,Noreaga,“Superthug” (1998),Tommy Boy,"Tommy Boy “Superthug,” the breakout hit from goofily intense rapper Noreaga (aka N.O.R.E.), not only launched a new era of Queens rap, pushing aside the cool and collected storm clouds of Nas and Mobb Deep with one fell swoop of its indelible “what-what-what-what-what-what-what” hook. It also heralded the arrival of producers Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo, aka the Neptunes, onto the international stage. Their signature stuttering drums and sci-fi synths sounded unlike anything playing on Hot 97 at the time, foretelling the innovative path Williams and Hugo would chart for decades to come. –Claire Lobenfeld",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gs9ngd-uq6I,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632ca635afa92f85cc3e4ec3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Noreaga-Superthug.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Noreaga-Superthug_1998.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,173,Elliott Smith,“Waltz #2 (XO)” (1998),DreamWorks,"DreamWorks In the long history of songs about other songs, “Waltz #2 (XO)” ranks as one of the best. Inside a smoky karaoke bar, a man and a woman—two people who may very well be stand-ins for Elliott Smith’s mother, Bunny, and his stepfather, Charlie—select songs that thinly veil their marital strife. She blankly performs the humiliating “Cathy’s Clown,” he sings the pointed “You’re No Good.” Smith uses karaoke night, or as he calls it, “the substitute scene,” to give us this meta novella about pop music and heartbreak. He becomes an audience member inside his own composition, distant and helpless to do anything but silently show his love for his distraught mom, signed with a kiss and a hug. –Jeremy D. Larson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyeryRobP2g&ab_channel=TheEverlyBrothers-Topic,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632deae852d4bd45efccbdb9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Elliott-Smith-Waltz-2.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Elliott_Smith-Waltz_2_XO_1998.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,172,En Vogue,“My Lovin’ (You’re Never Gonna Get It)” (1992),EastWest,"EastWest Lord help the man at the business end of an “Oooooooooooo BOP.” With its searing James Brown sample, stunning vocals, and biting parenthetical title, “My Lovin’” was En Vogue’s 1992 entry into the proud tradition of soul anthems by pissed-off women who were absolutely done being used and disrespected. But the four-member girl group from Oakland added the all-important squad element, and this dirtbag trying to sweet talk his lady back after treating her like crap never stood a chance. What makes you think you can just walk back into her life, indeed. –Evie Nagy",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIuYQ_4TcXg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632ca7c1553704c2255f854a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/En-Vogue-My-Lovin.jpg,/dataset/artwork/En_Vogue-My_Lovin_Youre_Never_Gonna_Get_It_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,171,Slowdive,“Alison” (1993),Creation,"Creation Shoegaze is about capturing the shimmering melancholia at the edge of existence, that too-stoned sense of being unmoored in the world. “Alison,” from one of the best shoegaze acts to ever do it, taps into that sinking feeling of lying in bed, wishing you could stay there forever but knowing you eventually have to face the universe. The song has a shaggy, nostalgic comfort, its warmth shining through like a lazy sunbeam on your face. But it’s also tinged with unbearable loss, as the protagonist addresses a flawed person whose existence animates their being. “I’ll be here in the morning,” Neil Halstead sings, even as he’s the one who needs reassuring. –Cat Zhang",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkM3M3zGcGE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632ca8251dccce609e416227/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Slowdive-Alison.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Slowdive-Alison_1993.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,170,Puff Daddy,"“All About the Benjamins” [ft. the Notorious B.I.G., Lil’ Kim, Jadakiss, and The Lox] (1997)",Bad Boy / Arista,"Bad Boy / Arista You can practically feel the breeze of a whirring cash machine in your face. Produced by Deric “D-Dot” Angelettie of Bad Boy Records’ Hitmen production squad, this instrumental floats like a swarm of wasps, held aloft by a slowed and reversed sample of the opening guitar lick from R&B trio Love Unlimited’s 1977 single “I Did It for Love.” There’s enough room in the pocket of this beat to fit a giraffe riding a 747—or a rap crew at the peak of their powers. Nearly every line is now a certified classic, etched into NYC brownstone, from Puffy’s immortal, Jadakiss-penned opening spray—“Now what y’all wanna do?!/Wanna be ballers, shot callers, brawlers?”—to Sheek Louch’s quest for “colossal-sized Picassos” to Lil’ Kim throwing hexes and Angela Landsbury references at rivals real and imagined. (Legend has it the Lox’s third member, Styles P, was cut from the track by a pre-fame Missy Elliott, who helped with the arrangement.) The production switches to a Jackson 5 flip for Biggie’s anchor verse, suggesting a separate plane of existence: Upon its release months after the rapper’s 1997 murder, this definitive version of “It’s All About the Benjamins” doubled as a statement of defiance and a raucous respite from tragedy. –Ryan Dombal",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0c58ppLPJcQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632ca8a7f2e57bfbb704fea6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Puff-Daddy-All-About-the-Benjamins.png,/dataset/artwork/Puff_Daddy-All_About_the_Benjamins_ft_the_Notorious_BIG_Lil_Kim_Jadakiss_and_The_Lox_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,169,Ace of Base,“The Sign” (1993),Arista,"Arista “The Sign” is the kind of uncomplicated, unserious pop song that’s easy to love: there are those diet-reggae guitar licks, that pulsing drum-machine beat, and vague, chirpy lyrics that you can memorize almost instantly, even though you don’t actually know what the song is about. (Technically, it chronicles a couple discovering a renewed sense of purpose in their relationship, but that’s beside the point). When it was released in 1993 on the Swedish quartet’s debut album, it exploded internationally; even member Ulf Ekberg’s past in a skinhead gang didn’t stop the band’s ascent, though it definitely demanded some damage control. “The Sign” was a product of the Swedish pop machine, a system that produced a certain kind of flawlessly constructed, ultra-polished pop commodity. Exemplified by groups like ABBA in the ’70s, “The Sign” heralded its return two decades later, restoring a formula that would dominate the pop charts in the years to come. –Isabelia Herrera",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqu132vTl5Y,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632cbbe08f0d7ac40b58dd77/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ace-of-Base-The-Sign.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Ace_of_Base-The_Sign_1993.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,168,Beenie Man,“Who Am I” (1998),VP / Slammin' Vinyl,"VP / Slammin' Vinyl Beenie Man understands the power of an eternal groove. The Playground riddim produced by veteran producer Jeremy Harding caught the Jamaican dancehall DJ’s ear, and he reportedly showed up at Harding’s studio with the song that would become “Who Am I” already in mind. “Who Am I” pulses like any good dancehall song, but at its heart is a man shook up about being left by his favorite lover, now forced to confront his own conniving ways with the help of love, shame, and some Luther Vandross interpolations. The track is foundational for modern dancehall and has been interpolated, sampled, and referenced countless times, but few follow-ups have captured the original’s intoxicating mix of love and lust. –Dylan Green",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WI-xQ7IksUc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632caa5a52d4bd45efccbd02/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Beenie-Man-Who-Am-I.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beenie_Man-Who_Am_I_1998.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,167,Oasis,“Don’t Look Back in Anger” (1995),Creation,"Creation Britpop had plenty to answer for (see, especially, Menswe@r). But at its best it worked as a collective celebration of the humane things about the late 20th century: classic pop, social democracy, the fleeting empowerment of working-class culture. Released at the height of Oasis’ Augustan phase, “Don’t Look Back in Anger” epitomized Britpop’s historic sense in both form and context. Musically, away from the nonsense lyrics, it evoked the communitarian early ’70s, with an “Imagine” steal, Harrison-esque guitar licks, and ‘“All the Young Dudes” allusions. More broadly, as it attained Great Singalong status in the late ’90s, the eulogistic anthem came to embody a brief moment when exalting the better side of the past and looking forward to a brighter future seemed to work in harmony. In a decade when surface was depth, no song managed to mean so little and yet so much at the same time. –Alex Niven",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8OipmKFDeM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632caace1dccce609e416229/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Oasis-Dont-Look-Back-in-Anger.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Oasis-Dont_Look_Back_in_Anger_1995.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,166,De La Soul,“Stakes Is High” (1996),Tommy Boy / Warner Bros.,"Tommy Boy / Warner Bros. Three quarters of the way into “Swahililand,” a 10-minute jazz odyssey by the great pianist Ahmad Jamal, you can hear J Dilla’s ears perk up in his record-filled Detroit basement. He recognized a perfect sample, an urgent and dramatic chord progression that became the looping heart of De La Soul’s “Stakes Is High.” The trio’s message on the song was bold—they’d grown sick of the fake shit, the gaudy capitalist-fantasy videos, and the rappers play-acting as drug lords without saying anything substantial about the crack epidemic. “Stakes Is High” was a line in the sand backed by one of Dilla’s most iconic beats—a template for a different way ahead from the stuff getting airtime on MTV. –Evan Minsker",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzOOCnkUlnA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632cabb11dccce609e41622b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/De-La-Soul-Stakes-Is-High.jpg,/dataset/artwork/De_La_Soul-Stakes_Is_High_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,165,Galaxy 2 Galaxy,“Jupiter Jazz” (1993),Underground Resistance,"Underground Resistance “Jupiter Jazz” sounds like one of those airbrushed sci-fi book covers of the late ’70s and early ’80s looks: galaxian synth melodies and whirring, bubbling space noises floating over beats that echo the rhythmic complexity of jazz as played by drum machines. Underground Resistance’s “Mad” Mike Banks may be better known for uncompromising techno and militant aesthetics, but this record is fun and hopeful, as playful rave stabs and dreamy Motor City pads give way to an elegant mission statement about techno as “hi-tech jazz.” Back in 1992, UR’s live band didn’t physically exist yet, but you can see the idea taking shape over EPs like Nation 2 Nation, World 2 World (the EP that contains this track), and 1993’s Galaxy 2 Galaxy. Like all good space explorations, Banks’ endeavor has taken time and patience, but the Galaxy 2 Galaxy live ensemble fulfills the promise of “Jupiter Jazz,” bringing together several generations of Detroit Afrofuturists—from sax players to synth wizards—to play timeless, tireless grooves. –Vivian Host",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xw55wqO5yzU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632cac38afa92f85cc3e4ec5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Galaxy-2-Galaxy.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Galaxy_2_Galaxy-Jupiter_Jazz_1993.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,164,Smashing Pumpkins,“Mayonaise” (1993),Virgin,"Virgin During the recording of Smashing Pumpkins’ Siamese Dream, frontman Billy Corgan demanded absolute perfection from those around him. In liner notes for the album’s reissue, he referenced recording “thousands” of drum takes to tape that had been spliced so much it was disintegrating. It was this relentless drive, in part, that made him stand out from his peers, who were wading through swampy distortion with snarling disaffection. For Corgan, caring was cool—and “Mayonaise,” a lonely meditation on the beauty of owning your shortcomings, was something of a mission statement. Amid a record of songs about abuse, suicide, and bearing the weight of the world, it’s a lushly arranged moment of peace, reframing Corgan’s relentless perfectionism as a kind of perseverance. –Colin Joyce",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vbu_K41efvY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632cad7cf2e57bfbb704feaa/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Smashing-Pumpkins-Mayonaise.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Smashing_Pumpkins-Mayonaise_1993.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,163,Big Pun,“Still Not a Player” (1998),Loud / RCA,"Loud / RCA Big Pun’s trademark ode to the players and pimps continues to ring out in the streets of the South Bronx. Pun was the precursor to the Bad Bunnys and Cardi Bs of the current scene, a hip-hop trailblazer for Latinos all over the map. He created a sound and dialect that was unmatched at the time, rapping in Spanish one moment and then in English the next, dense sheets of compound rhymes pouring out of him, the wordplay at once rapidfire and unhurried. “Still Not a Player” remains a staple of Puerto Rican Day parades; it’s what every papi hears before heading over to the block to hang. Especially in Pun’s native borough, it still sounds like home. –Jayson Buford",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Xue-dOOLiY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632cadffd997a1f3e8a0cc0c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Big-Pun-Still-Not-a-Player.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Big_Pun-Still_Not_a_Player_1998.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,162,R.E.M.,“Losing My Religion” (1991),Warner Bros.,"Warner Bros. “Losing My Religion” is the ultimate back-door hit—so unorthodox in its composition yet so representative of its creators’ strengths. Grown entirely from a single riff on the mandolin, an instrument that was completely new to guitarist Peter Buck at the time, the song captures R.E.M. at their most synergistic, resolute, and vulnerable. Michael Stipe sings like he’s afraid of his own shadow, and he’s stalked and swarmed by Buck, bassist Mike Mills, and drummer Bill Berry as he winces his way through a string of wounded confessions that are both specific-seeming and interpretable, whether through a lens of religion (it wasn’t intended that way), unrequited love (Stipe has cited “Every Breath You Take” as a major inspiration), or the view from the corner or the spotlight. –Steven Arroyo",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/9dKB41x1Db4?t=486,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632caed63ac0cd2d1146dea1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/REM-Losing-My-Religion.jpg,/dataset/artwork/REM-Losing_My_Religion_1991.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,161,Kelis,“Caught Out There” (1999),Virgin,"Virgin Kelis has said that “Caught Out There,” her debut single, recorded when she was just 20 years old, “set the tone for my entire life.” It was an early and formative Neptunes production, with bouncy keyboards and a pew-pew sound effect that can only be compared to laser guns, but their collaboration eventually soured. It was ahead of its time, which meant the timing was off, which makes it a “cult favorite”—a euphemism for “not as popular as it should have been” and a way of signaling taste and discernment that would, rather unfairly, dog Kelis for much of her career. But it was also an anthem for women’s aggrievement, the song that made her, with its ferocious, shouting hook, “the first girl to scream on a track,” as she would later remind us. For all she’s been through over the years, it makes sense that Kelis came out kicking. –Emma Carmichael",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSgp-IIgr4I,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632caf4ae02a17d9175e54f0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Kelis-Caught-Out-There.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kelis-Caught_Out_There_1999.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,160,Yo La Tengo,“Autumn Sweater” (1997),Matador,"Matador Nothing the local coffee shop cues on chilly days can compare to “Autumn Sweater,” a downy song about our sentimental attachment to mementos, but more acutely, about wanting to disappear with the person you love. Is the charm in lead singer Ira Kaplan’s shy, sweet delivery, murmuring his proposal as if his hands are tucked nervously into his pockets, or in the unassuming but lively instrumentation—the rattle of the shakers, the bright tones of the organ, the syncopated groove of the congos? Few songs stake the same claim on a season, the nervousness and possibility stirred up when the air picks up a draft. –Cat Zhang",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIkMeaAfIRw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632cafc23ac0cd2d1146dea3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Yo-La-Tengo-Autumn-Sweater.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Yo_La_Tengo-Autumn_Sweater_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,159,Public Enemy,“Welcome to the Terrordome” (1990),Def Jam / Columbia,"Def Jam / Columbia Public Enemy’s 1990 single “Welcome to the Terrordome” has complicated roots. On the one hand, it’s a musical Molotov lobbed at the powers of white supremacy much like “Fight the Power,” which soundtracked Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing the year before. But it’s also a response to the controversy stirred up by Professor Griff, Public Enemy’s onetime Minister of Information, whose inflammatory anti-Semitic comments brought down a shitstorm of opprobrium on the group, eventually resulting in Griff’s dismissal. Chuck D references the flap in a few lines, and not, admittedly, to his benefit (“Crucifixion ain’t no fiction/So-called chosen frozen”; “Told a Rab to get off the rag”). But the force of his defiance, as he details the indignities visited upon Black Americans, paired with the claustrophobic apocalyptic feel of Hank Shocklee’s production, is nonetheless thrilling, in a real pit-in-your-stomach way. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BBgOlfSLQI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632cb0486e09cfc74d352dba/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Public-Enemy-Welcome-to-the-Terrordome.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Public_Enemy-Welcome_to_the_Terrordome_1990.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,158,No Doubt,“Just a Girl” (1995),Interscope,"Interscope Ska-pop band No Doubt’s 1995 hit “Just a Girl” was a sassy indictment of institutional sexism subtle enough to skank its way onto the charts. Atop a squiggly riff, Gwen Stefani outlines an experience of girlhood inhibited by the patriarchy: “I’m just a girl, all pretty and petite/So don’t let me have any rights,” she sneers. “Just a Girl”’s feminism is cleverly transgressive: beyond her sarcastic delivery, Stefani’s vocals jump from babydoll soft to full-chested belting, playing with the stereotypes of the fragile waif and the angry woman. These identities combine in the song’s final moments. “Oh, I’ve had it up to here,” Stefani belts, her frustration unignorable. But then she lets the final word wilt like a flower. Is she surrendering or wantonly using the infantilization she just spent a whole song decrying as a mechanism of power? Girlhood has always been more complex than it seems. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHzOOQfhPFg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632cb11810c581ffac68d0d4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/No-Doubt-Just-a-Girl.jpg,/dataset/artwork/No_Doubt-Just_a_Girl_1995.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,157,The Cure,“Friday I’m in Love” (1992),Fiction / Elektra,"Fiction / Elektra “Friday I’m in Love” is a happy song. Right? The ebullient jangle of the guitars; that melody, so easy and intuitive and right that Robert Smith was convinced for a while that he’d stolen it from somewhere else; and the titular line, yelped with the enthusiasm of a puppy waiting for a treat. Who could be sad on Friday? Not even Smith. But it only comes once a week, and you already know what the other days are like. Monday: Black. Tuesday, Wednesday: Heart attack. And on it goes until Friday lights us up again, however briefly. The Cure’s final hit is an ode to the ecstasy that finds us only occasionally, taking its unsteady foothold before drudgery washes it away again. Still, those guitars and that melody make clear that it really is a happy song. Smith and the band recognize that joy’s rarity makes it all the more precious, and that finding it for even one day per week is a cause for celebration. Here’s to feeling good roughly 14 percent of the time. –Andy Cush",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucX9hVCQT_U,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632cb17dd997a1f3e8a0cc0e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-Cure-Friday-Im-in-Love.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Cure-Friday_Im_in_Love_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,156,De La Soul,“A Rollerskating Jam Named ‘Saturdays’” (1991),Tommy Boy / Warner Bros.,"Tommy Boy / Warner Bros. De La Soul Is Dead found the group reckoning with their Day-Glo debut, 3 Feet High and Rising, spiking their rap hippie rep with darker humor and edgier storytelling. But they didn’t spend the entire album clearing the air. “A Roller Skating Jam Named ‘Saturdays’” radiates relief, with De La roping in fellow Native Tongues members Q-Tip and Vinia Mojica for a breezy ode to the best day of the week. The verses, the chorus, and even the record scratches glide over Prince Paul’s silky beat, which blends disco, funk, and the Grease theme into a springy delight. Like a Saturday, it is contained but boundless, a Cinderella slipper for the whole squad. –Stephen Kearse",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8MawQnR2gw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dec06f2e57bfbb704fec5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/De-La-Soul-A-Rollerskating-Jam-Named-Saturdays.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/De_La_Soul-A_Rollerskating_Jam_Named_Saturdays_1991.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,155,The Verve,“Bitter Sweet Symphony” (1997),Hut / Virgin,"Hut / Virgin Until the matter was settled in 2019, the Verve’s “Bitter Sweet Symphony” was less a pop song than a rollicking, anthemic full-employment act for intellectual property lawyers. The fight centered around the hook’s sample of four bars of Andrew Loog Oldham’s orchestral version of the Rolling Stones’ “The Last Time,” which was itself borrowing from an old gospel song. The Verve was cut out of a fortune’s worth of royalties, the Stones got fractionally richer, and the whole mess overshadowed what was maybe the best song of the Britpop moment. Just luxuriate in the Spectory thickness of the production—“a prairie-music kind of sound,” in the evocative phrase of the Verve’s Richard Ashcroft, who cited the Temptations and Ennio Morricone as models. It is an epic, the best sort of grandiose, the music soaring where the words want to mope. Maybe all the legal shitfighting wound up saying the thing the lyrics couldn't quite articulate. What better summation of the present era, after all, than the meta-story of “Bitter Sweet Symphony”—some asset-holding boomers got wealthier without leaving the couch and everyone else was stuck holding the bag. –Tommy Craggs",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lyu1KKwC74,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632cb32bd997a1f3e8a0cc10/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-Verve-Bittersweet-Symphony.png,/dataset/artwork/The_Verve-Bitter_Sweet_Symphony_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,154,UGK,“One Day” (1996),Jive,"Jive “Why you let these killas live and take my homeboy son away?” Pimp C asks on UGK’s most significant album, 1996’s Ridin’ Dirty. The moment is a call to God for answers, none of which the man born Chad Butler would ever get. UGK found the darkest piece of the blues over a flip of The Isley Brothers’ “Ain’t I Been Good to You” while charting through nihilism, the loss of friendship, and the finality of death. “One Day” is a solemn funeral procession, where Bun B, Pimp C, and featured rapper Mr. 3-2 understand that being Black can mean your final days come over a “funky-ass dice game,” on the uneven scales of the criminal justice system, or even worse—by an unimaginable act of God. –Brandon Caldwell",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uu5P4pOUuYk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632cb39d42fe027c67463004/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/UGK-One-Day.jpg,/dataset/artwork/UGK-One_Day_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,153,En Vogue,“Free Your Mind” (1992),East West,"East West Appearing on a genre-fluid album laced with doo-wop-like jams like “My Lovin’ (You’re Never Gonna Get It)” and sensual classics like “Giving Him Something He Can Feel,” En Vogue’s “Free Your Mind” took us to rock as thrashing metal guitar riffs layered with keyboards, the group’s signature harmony, and a message of gender and racial unity. “It doesn’t mean that I’m a prostitute, no, no,” these curvaceous Black femmes in thigh-high boots wanted us to know—a radical message at a time when feminism was all but declared dead and a war on women was underway. Slut-shaming and moral judgment were the norm, not the exception, and “Free Your Mind” was an anthem to STFU and leave people be. –Samhita Mukhopadhyay",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7iQbBbMAFE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632cb40342fe027c67463006/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/En-Vogue-Free-Your-Mind.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/En_Vogue-Free_Your_Mind_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,152,Superchunk,“Slack Motherfucker” (1990),Merge,"Merge The only thing worse than a miserable low-paying job is having to compensate for the absolute dud working the same shift, and Superchunk bottled both dimensions of that rage perfectly in their joyously explosive breakout single. The layabout muse of “Slack Motherfucker” was a guy Mac McCaughan worked with at Kinko’s, but the specific dude matters not. He is an archetype that exists in every bad job—the person taking too many smoke breaks, who leans when he could clean, whose lack of work makes it so you have to stay late. When the band shouts the chorus and the final repeated strains of “you motherfucker,” that’s a universal release that anybody can scream along to. –Evan Minsker",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-c_GX2CYkcQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632cb477e02a17d9175e54f4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Superchunk-Slack-Motherfucker.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Superchunk-Slack_Motherfucker_1990.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,151,Origin Unknown,“Valley of the Shadows” (1993),RAM,"RAM If you were at a drum’n’bass rave at any point in the ’90s, chances are you know the feeling of being in “a long, dark tunnel,” a sensation forever trademarked by the sample in Andy C and Ant Miles’ iconic 1993 anthem “Valley of the Shadows.” The track contains little more than arpeggiated bells, a shuffling “Think” break, eerie pads, and a “31 seconds” soundbite from the Apollo 11 moon landing—mostly sounds from a free sample CD that came with a 1993 issue of Future Music magazine—yet it sums up the darkcore aesthetic of early jungle with chilling simplicity (and some seriously deadly sine-wave bass). Nearly 30 years on, Andy C is drum’n’bass’ top DJ, and RAM has over 440 releases to its name. In a genre that’s come to be associated with daredevil drops and over-the-top production trickery, you can still get a mighty rewind off this stone-cold classic. –Vivian Host",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5meT63flnM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632cb61e52d4bd45efccbd04/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Origin-Unknown-Valley-of-the-Shadows.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Origin_Unknown-Valley_of_the_Shadows_1993.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,150,Three 6 Mafia,“Tear Da Club Up” (1997),RED / Relativity / Hypnotize Minds,"RED / Relativity / Hypnotize Minds Three 6 Mafia’s first major-label contract required them to put “Tear Da Club Up” on their next record. In theory, not a huge ask—Chapter 2: World Domination ended up exhuming several hits from the Memphis crew’s previous albums, where Juicy J and DJ Paul continually scraped layers of lo-fi graveyard grime off their horrorcore production style. But they were tired of that particular song. So the ’97 version converts the original’s ambient dread into imminent dread, from the soap-opera piano ostinato to the four-note rising synth figure that chases each verse like Hell’s breaking-news theme. Recent addition Gangsta Boo pops up halfway through to bigfoot the track; it’s no wonder hers is the verse featured in the canny, nu-rock TV ad. Whether or not the song truly was “banned in 17 states,” as that commercial claims, crunk grew from its wreckage. –Brad Shoup",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1ggXeLTeaA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632cb6b569ee15120820abdf/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Three-6-Mafia-Tear-Da-Club-Up.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Three_6_Mafia-Tear_Da_Club_Up_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,149,Elastica,“Connection” (1994),Deceptive / Geffen,"Deceptive / Geffen Swiping the electronic bop that fuels post-punk icons Wire’s “Three Girl Rhumba”—an homage that eventually resulted in a lawsuit that was settled out of court—Elastica crafted one of the marvels of the Britpop era: art-rock reconfigured as a carnal rallying cry. All leftward hooks and innuendo, “Connection” never hits its target squarely—frontwoman Justine Frischmann alludes to its oblique construction by ending her chorus by admitting that “somehow the vital connection is made”—but the single sounds simple, even primal, as Elastica bashes their dive-bomb riff with enthusiasm. As soon as the song takes shape, when the suggestions start seeming like overt flirtations, Elastica pulls the plug: The “Connection” is fleeting, no matter how indelible it may be. –Stephen Thomas Erlewine",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilKcXIFi-Rc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632cb75552d4bd45efccbd06/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Elastica-Connection.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Elastica-Connection_1994.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,148,Eminem,“My Name Is...” (1999),Aftermath / Interscope,"Aftermath / Interscope As with Beck’s “Loser,” you would have been forgiven at the time for taking Marshall Mathers' chicka-chicka-chart debut for a novelty-joke one-shot—nothing indicated a major career on the way. Right off, Slim Shady's gleefully introduced as a class clown and horrible role model (“Hi kids, do you like violence?”— “Primus” in the edited version—“Wanna see me stick Nine Inch Nails through each one of my eyelids?”). But he constantly sets up escape hatches, serving as peanut gallery (“Stop the tape! This kid needs to be locked away!”), and switching out of apparent autobiography only to catalog every satirical way he’ll wreak havoc on English teachers, autograph hounds, his own body (two fake suicides!), and his own Mom. “God sent me to piss the world off”—everybody has a purpose, right? –Chuck Eddy",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNPnbI1arSE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632cbd66cba35ad4ab5bc432/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Eminem-My-Name-Is.png,/dataset/artwork/Eminem-My_Name_Is_1999.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,147,Neil Young,“Harvest Moon” (1992),Reprise,"Reprise “I’m still in love with you,” Neil Young sings during the chorus of his 1992 standard “Harvest Moon.” You could spend a lifetime in that “still.” The Canadian songwriter was in his mid-40s when he wrote it, and he seemed to use every minute of his time here to fuel its sense of romance and devotion. Backed by an autumnal lineup featuring Linda Ronstadt on vocal harmonies, Ben Keith on pedal steel, and Tim Drummond sweeping a broom for percussion, Young lets his guitar summon a vast distance—detuning the lowest string and letting it reverberate through the central riff, fingerpicking the harmonics high up the fretboard during the verses. The sound itself seems to conjure eternity, and the words do, too. Three decades into his career, Young had written plenty of songs about searching for a companion, about the heart-skipping joy of finding love and the ditched-out misery of losing it. Here was his simple, soulful prayer to making it last. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2MtEsrcTTs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632cbdf7d997a1f3e8a0cc12/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Neil-Young-Harvest-Moon.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Neil_Young-Harvest_Moon_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,146,Janet Jackson,“That’s the Way Love Goes” (1993),Virgin,"Virgin Ephemeral, transcendent, sensual, groovy—“That’s the Way Love Goes” is less a song than it is a vibe. From the first bouncy downbeat, your back relaxes, your head nods, and you let out a sigh: That is the way love goes. How can one feel so horny yet so chill at the same time? With Jackson’s whispering vocals over Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis’ delicate, soulful beat, it is one of the greatest songs ever released about the overwhelming yet meditative pangs of lust, hypnotic, like desire itself. “That’s the Way Love Goes” was a mega-hit—the longest-running No. 1 single of any Jackson family artist—and the song, like the janet. album it appeared on, exposed us to a new Jackson: still soft-spoken but confident in her sexuality, her body, and her desire. –Samhita Mukhopadhyay",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b_KfAGiglc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632db681e02a17d9175e54fe/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Janet-Jackson-Thats-the-Way-Love-Goes.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Janet_Jackson-Thats_the_Way_Love_Goes_1993.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,145,The Notorious B.I.G.,“Hypnotize” (1997),Bad Boy / Arista,"Bad Boy / Arista The sirening opening sample clears the streets and the bass shakes the pavement: Even if it weren’t the last single to be released in Biggie’s lifetime, “Hypnotize” would still be an eternal Brooklyn anthem. He’s just that smooth, strutting effortlessly across a Puff Daddy beat that flips a chunky, convivial Herb Alpert bassline into a low-riding crawl. His writing plays off the subtlest nuances of his voice, flashing details as causally as checking his watch: colorful Coogi sweaters, freaky sex in the Lexus, a not-at-all-unconvincing threat to shoot you that turns into a preposterous one to kidnap the DA’s daughter while he’s at it. Yeah, all that—and one of the most iconic vocal hooks in hip-hop. –Anna Gaca",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glEiPXAYE-U,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632db724cd9063ead69606ed/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Notorious-BIG-Hypnotize.png,/dataset/artwork/The_Notorious_BIG-Hypnotize_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,144,Sheryl Crow,“If It Makes You Happy” (1996),A&M,"A&M Women in ’90s rock were marketed by a male-dominated industry as angry, damaged, confessional, or exceedingly quirky. Sheryl Crow fit into the alternative mega-tent of mid-’90s pop, but not really any of these little boxes. The carefree cover of her jazz- and roots-inflected debut, 1993’s Tuesday Night Music Club, could double as a Levi’s ad, and its biggest hit, “All I Wanna Do,” exalts the power of a good beer buzz in the morning. When Crow returned with her self-titled sophomore album in 1996, she was mired in expectations and ideas about her success and sound; she appears on the sepia-toned cover throwing stink eye from behind strands of hair, an attitude matched by the album’s electrified pop-rock. Spiked with chugging guitars, lead single “If It Makes You Happy” works on several levels: as a rejoinder to cross-armed skeptics, an ironic portrait of a Gen-X boheme lifestyle (I like to imagine she’s addressing Troy from Reality Bites), and a question Crow is asking about her own strange life. She references having a miserable time at Woodstock ’94, getting stoned, and making French toast from moldy bread, and her voice on the chorus soars and scrapes in equal measure. For a moment in time, Sheryl Crow was not the kind of girl you take home—and it was glorious. –Jill Mapes",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyihQtBes1I,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632ded641dccce609e4162d5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sheryl-Crow-If-It-Makes-You-Happy.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Sheryl_Crow-If_It_Makes_You_Happy_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,143,Elliott Smith,“Say Yes” (1997),Kill Rock Stars,"Kill Rock Stars “Say Yes” arrives last on Either/Or—standing in the doorway, hesitating, with its shoes on. Elliott Smith actually clears his throat at the outset: Can he come in? Will you hear him out? At this point in Smith’s career, before Good Will Hunting and the Oscars, before the transition to a larger label, listeners came to him for songs of abjection, making the sunny optimism of “Say Yes” seem like a hard sell. It’s a straight-ahead love song, one that dares to hope. Listen closely and you’ll hear just how fragile that hope is: Smith whispers most of the song. He wavers. His fingers pluck out a simple question on the acoustic. He’ll accept no; he’ll leave if he’s not wanted. But if there’s a chance, even the slightest, of yes, he’d like to stay long enough to hear it. –Peyton Thomas",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bxmk09lCzk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632db920e02a17d9175e5500/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Elliott-Smith-Say-Yes.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Elliott_Smith-Say_Yes_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,142,Beltram,“Energy Flash” (1990),R & S,"R & S New York producer Joey Beltram’s 1990 single “Energy Flash” was so brilliantly dumb, there were only two ways it could go: change the world or fall flat on its snarling face. There’s almost nothing to it—pummeling kick drum, impudent sub-bass, vocal sample, and the occasional electronic flourish—but even that seems superfluous when held up against the viscerally compelling, technologically evil riff that runs through the song, a relentless and yet kind of funky half-note sledgehammer that resembles Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid” recreated by murderous robots. “Energy Flash” is well named: The effect is like a high-voltage shot to the neurons that lit up dance floors all over the world; its irresistibly dark momentum shaped the sounds of hardcore, jungle, and techno as the utopian spirit of rave dissolved into a world of bad drugs and police busts. –Ben Cardew",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALsHox5sYCk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dbcf38f0d7ac40b58dde7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Beltram-Energy-Flash.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Beltram-Energy_Flash_1990.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,141,Ice Cube,“It Was a Good Day” (1992),Lench Mob / Priority,"Lench Mob / Priority Ever since Chuck D analogized rap music as television news for Black America, critics, scholars, and fans have referenced how it reflects the everyday injustice and inequality in these communities in a way that’s often missing from mainstream media. But the Black experience is about more than just oppression—something Ice Cube eloquently captured with this joyful single from his 1992 album The Predator. Written at the peak of his solo career, Cube’s good day centers not on the trappings of wealth but on everyday events in his neighborhood; breakfast with his momma, the pickup game in the park, shooting dice with the homies. He experiences the kind of fortuitous luck afforded only to the most blessed: he cleans up at craps, his favorite basketball team beats a rival, and he connects with a girl he’s long pined for. But beneath the happiness of a day when everything seems to go right is a latent anxiety over how easily things could go another way. He may have evaded the carjackers, the cops and the specter of death, but he knows they always lurk just around the corner. –Matthew Ismael Ruiz",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4UqMyldS7Q,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dbe0310c581ffac68d0df/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ice-Cube-It-Was-a-Good-Day.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ice_Cube-It_Was_a_Good_Day_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,140,Nirvana,“All Apologies” (1993),DGC,"DGC The melody to “All Apologies” is so simple it seems as though someone, somewhere, must always have been singing it. Appropriately, it followed Kurt Cobain around for years in different forms: His undated acoustic home demo, thought to have originated around 1990, was pleading and sincere, while the version the band tracked in 1991 but left off Nevermind was sardonic and sloppy. As the song lurched towards its final self, sharpening early lyrics and gaining a cello, it began to radiate a vast, frightening exhaustion. Feelings this big trail us for years before revealing their awesome face, and by the time Cobain was onstage performing it for MTV Unplugged: Live in New York, it had the clarity and finality of epiphany. It’s always been interpreted as a suicide note, but really it’s just a master statement. The song held everything: tenderness and bitterness, anger and acceptance, love and hatred, resignation and revelation. What else could he say? –Jayson Greene",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDilu87kQCk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dbf9a52d4bd45efccbd78/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Nirvana-All-Apologies.png,/dataset/artwork/Nirvana-All_Apologies_1993.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,139,Souls of Mischief,“93 'Til Infinity” (1993),Jive,"Jive The in-the-booth, stream-of-consciousness rap song intro is a trope as old as hip-hop itself; mostly, these are space fillers that add little. But such is the magnetism of “93 ’Til Infinity” that when Tajai Massey says, “Right now, we just maxing in the studio,” all of a sudden you’re right there with him, blunt smoke tickling your nostrils. For a hair under five minutes of breezy, rolling boom-bap, a single sax note glides in and out, pads drift and cut, and the drums—bop your head—don’t ever stop. Tajai and crew toss bars and ad libs back and forth, all in sync, swigging from the same 40 in a freewheeling, effortless jam. By the time the final, closing roll call of who’s chilling sails in, you half expect to hear your own name called out. –Will Pritchard",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXJc2NYwHjw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dc0711dccce609e416297/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Souls-of-Mischief-93-Til-Infinity.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Souls_of_Mischief-93_Til_Infinity_1993.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,138,Soho,“Hot Music” (1990),U.N.I.T.Y,"U.N.I.T.Y New York in 1990 was a vibrant place. Hip-hop and house music were changing by the month, and ruling the clubs in the process. It was also a scary one—the city’s murder rate reached its peak that year with 2,245 killings, a huge increase over 1989. Joseph Longo was perfectly situated to capture that vibe in a bottle. A clerk at the 12-inch storehouse Vinylmania in Manhattan, he became a producer in the late ’80s and by 1990 was producing classics in both rap—Boogie Down Productions’ “Love’s Gonna Get’cha (Material Love)”—and house, under aliases like Earth People and Pal Joey. As Soho, his “Hot Music” reconfigured airy Wynton Marsalis snippets over an all-business kick-drum pattern just off kilter enough to carry more than a hint of menace. “Playing ‘Hot Music’ usually caused chaos,” Longo recalled in 2013. Decades on, it still does. –Michaelangelo Matos",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p30DUmx9v3Q,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dc0e38f0d7ac40b58dde9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Soho-Hot-Music.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Soho-Hot_Music_1990.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,137,OutKast,“Elevators (Me & You)” (1996),LaFace,"LaFace “Elevators (Me & You),” the lead single from ATLiens, was the moment when OutKast became bona fide stars. The beat is unmistakably cool, built around smooth bass, hi-hat drums, and an echoing wood block; there’s just enough there to make the instrumental distinct, but also keep it uniquely mimnal. André 3000 and Big Boi match the understated poise in their verses, every word rolling off their tongues impeccably while telling the world how they patiently planned their ascent, all skill, no luck and no haste. It’s the ultimate come-up song, a track that recounts André and Big Boi’s rise from “Player’s Ball” to ballers. –Matthew Strauss",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqB_UVlhlPA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dc1a138b91b8b13af1b52/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/OutKast-Elevators.png,/dataset/artwork/OutKast-Elevators_Me__You_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,136,Pavement,“Summer Babe” (1992),Drag City / Matador,"Drag City / Matador Was Pavement for real, really? The debate over how much frontman Stephen Malkmus gave a damn dangled perpetually over the Stockton, California band for its entire existence. Beavis and Butt-Head implored them to “try harder”; Robert Christgau saw through their hunched postures and declared them “well-schooled”; Pavement’s original drummer, local hippie Gary Young, split the difference when he remarked, “This Malkmus idiot is a complete songwriting genius.” “Summer Babe (Winter Version)” sketches Malkmus’ balancing act between the court jester and the savant. It takes a foolish confidence to start your debut single with “Ice baby” only two years removed from Vanilla Ice’s billboard-topping single, but the chainsaw revving of distorted guitars tips their hand—they were indeed “schooled” among the no-wave heavyweights of the late ’80s, and they had the hard-fought melodies to show for it. “Summer Babe” careens between self-seriousness and complete nonsense; when Malkmus sings, with an exasperated laugh, “Drop off,” in the final stanza that could be called a verse, it’s as if he’s laughing at himself, sheepishly questioning whether to commit fully to the rock star act. But the beautiful thing about Pavement was that in the end, they always committed. –Arielle Gordon",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHqcBL_a7q8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dc243e02a17d9175e5502/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Pavement-Summer-Babe.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Pavement-Summer_Babe_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,135,Craig Mack,"“Flava in Ya Ear (Remix)” [ft. The Notorious B.I.G., LL Cool J, Rampage, and Busta Rhymes] (1994)",Bad Boy,"Bad Boy The first single released by Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs’ influential Bad Boy Records, Craig Mack’s “Flava in Ya Ear” signaled a paradigm shift for New York rap via Mack’s off-kilter flow and producer Easy Mo Bee’s elasticky head-knock production. With the remix, featuring vets LL Cool J and Busta Rhymes, plus Bad Boy up-and-comer the Notorious B.I.G., Puffy cemented himself as a true forward-thinker. Mack and Biggie—pre-“Juicy”—are all laid-back bravado, a perfect foil for an unhinged Busta. But even amidst this posse cut’s stacked lineup, Biggie’s star power shone through. Nearly thirty years later, “Don’t be mad, UPS is hiring” still stings. –Claire Lobenfeld",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMbELEUfmIA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dc324f2e57bfbb704feb7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Craig-Mack-Flava-in-Ya-Ear.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Craig_Mack-Flava_in_Ya_Ear_Remix_ft_The_Notorious_BIG_LL_Cool_J_Rampage_and_Busta_Rhymes_1994.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,134,k.d. lang,“Constant Craving” (1992),Sire / Warner Bros.,"Sire / Warner Bros. “Constant Craving” signified the Canadian crooner k.d. lang’s official shift away from her alt-country roots toward a blend of klezmer and adult contemporary, a move which afforded its own set of risks and rewards. “I knew it was a hit, and I was mad at it for that,” lang succinctly said of the song in 2018. It’s easy enough to understand—lang’s knotty songwriting, yearning mezzo-soprano, and that slyly sexy chorus are instantly undeniable, which led to new audiences and celebrity once it came out alongside an eerily beautiful video riffing on Waiting for Godot. But the song struck a separate nerve in 1992. What was usually made subtext in pop songs—that specifically queer longing that settles in the forefront of your attention for someone you aren’t supposed to want, an emotion that may not be reciprocated but achingly lives on—was suddenly brought to the surface, sung by a woman who wore all the unmistakable markers of butch iconography, from the spiky gelled bouffant to the sharply tailored suits. lang came out as a lesbian in an issue of The Advocate the same year “Constant Craving” was released, leaving behind a large chunk of her country fan base in the process. But it was a choice that reaffirmed her status as an icon, once the song infiltrated the Hot 100 and assumed a life of its own in the cultural zeitgeist, tilting expectations for lang and all the queer singer-songwriters who have come since. –Eric Torres",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTx7XHqKYgk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dc3951dccce609e416299/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/kd-Lang-Constant-Craving.jpg,/dataset/artwork/kd_lang-Constant_Craving_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,133,The Roots,“You Got Me” [ft. Erykah Badu and Eve] (1999),MCA,"MCA “You Got Me” is a short story and a love song, a duet for three voices and a collective arrival, a ballad that enters with classical guitar arpeggios and exits with a drum‘n’bass break. It’s also the lead single from Things Fall Apart, the Roots’ fourth studio album, recorded with the hopes of helping them finally break big. The devil’s bargain? Switching out Jill Scott, who co-wrote the song, for Erykah Badu, the neo-soul queen of the moment. (The band made up with Scott later by taking her on tour.) Meanwhile, the song—a lovers’ back-and-forth, with Black Thought as the male lead and the female character split between an Eve verse and Badu’s gentle, reassuring vocals—stuck, and helped propel the Roots to the mainstream. Despite the melancholic tone, the song is comforting, committing to the kind of care that keeps a relationship going strong despite the turbulence—as true for the track’s collaborators as for its fictional protagonists. –NM Mashurov",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJCHeEQV454,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dc42dec753dca652306ad/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-Roots-You-Got-Me.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Roots-You_Got_Me_ft_Erykah_Badu_and_Eve_1999.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,132,Sonic Youth,“Tunic (Song for Karen)” (1990),DGC,"DGC The ’90s arrived right on time for Sonic Youth, whose transition from heroes of New York art-punk to bona fide rock stars came six months into the dawning decade with the release of Goo, their major label debut. In style and subject matter, “Tunic (Song for Karen)” embodies their dual citizenship in the mainstream and the underground. For most of the song’s six-minute runtime, it sounds like Sonic Youth as their cult of fans had come to know them thus far: The guitars are dense and dissonant, the groove is propulsive and unrelenting, the vocals follow a dreamy spoken cadence that has more in common with experimental theater than rock’n’roll. But when they downshift into the chorus, a half-time riff that swaggers in tandem with Kim Gordon’s menacing refrain—“You aren’t never going anywhere”—you can practically see the Lollapalooza crowd forming in front of them. The lyrics memorialize and pay homage to soft-rock megastar Karen Carpenter, who died of complications from anorexia—perhaps an unlikely subject for a group whose professed tastes ran toward the avant-garde. But Gordon shows real empathy for Carpenter, inhabiting her wounded psyche and celebrating her resilience in the face of public scrutiny. It’s a fitting encapsulation of early-’90s Sonic Youth: unabashed about chasing fame, but clear-eyed about its dark side. –Andy Cush",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reSOp1domrU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331c199f2e57bfbb7050005/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sonic-Youth-Kool-Thing.png,/dataset/artwork/Sonic_Youth-Tunic_Song_for_Karen_1990.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,131,Fugees,“Ready or Not” (1996),Ruffhouse,"Ruffhouse When Lauryn Hill first sang the hook on “Ready or Not,” she had already decided to leave the Fugees. With tears in her eyes, she laid down a demo for the group to use; a few months later, when she’d rejoined them, she spent five hours trying to re-do the vocals, but no version came close to the rawness of that first recording, the one that gives the song its potent sense of foreboding and focus. Hill sings every word of the Delfonics interpolation with precision and anguish as she, Wyclef Jean, and Pras take turns flexing in the face of their rivals. The song is a kiss-off to other rappers, but her verse and performance also serves as a love letter to her bandmates. It’s a poignant moment of cohesion from a group whose time together was steeped in turmoil. –Vrinda Jagota",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIXyKmElvv8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dc5618f0d7ac40b58ddeb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Fugees-Ready-or-Not.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fugees-Ready_or_Not_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,130,Jeff Mills,“The Bells” (1997),Purpose Maker,"Purpose Maker A figure of Jeff Mills’ stature doesn’t necessarily need a signature tune. But “The Bells” is exactly that: a fulcrum of his DJ sets to this day, and a cornerstone of Detroit techno in general. Unusually, for a tune with such an instant level of recognition, there’s no obvious audience appeasement going on here—no crowd-pleasing sample, no big chorus. Instead, the effectiveness of “The Bells” seems to spring straight from its sleek simplicity. Just a springy 4/4 kick and snare, a pinging riff that dances around the offbeat, and a four-note chime set in a teasing refrain, all arranged to give the sense of a tumble down an infinite wormhole. Mills was playing “The Bells” out as early as 1994, so by the time it finally appeared on his Kat Moda EP in 1997, it already felt like a classic. –Louis Pattison",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KevUFO2moZI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dc5e338b91b8b13af1b54/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Jeff-Mills-The-Bells.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Jeff_Mills-The_Bells_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,129,Green Day,“Basket Case” (1994),Reprise,"Reprise The members of Green Day grew up on the first wave of punk, and rethreaded the genre’s pop fringes through the slacker vibe that would come to define the ’90s. “Basket Case” was a fizzy and petulant self-doubt anthem featuring sex and immortal existential questions like “Am I just paranoid, or am I just stoned?” (The answer was both.) Below its flippant veneer, the track is a sly reflection of ailing mental health: It was written when a 22-year-old Armstrong was struggling with severe anxiety, later diagnosed as a panic disorder. Lines like “Sometimes my mind plays tricks on me” and “I think I’m cracking up” sound blasé and unidentifiably snotty, but they reveal a young man desperately trying to make sense of his own thoughts. “Basket Case” does much more than whine, demonstrating an internalized self-fear finally breaking through to the surface, transferring punk energy to millions of young people coming of age and feeling just like Armstrong did. –Jane Bua",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUTGr5t3MoY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dc652e02a17d9175e5504/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Green-Day-Basket-Case.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Green_Day-Basket_Case_1994.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,128,MF DOOM,“Rhymes Like Dimes” (1999),Fondle 'Em,"Fondle 'Em MF DOOM claims he “came to destroy rap” at the beginning of his 1999 debut Operation: Doomsday, but “Rhymes Like Dimes” proved his love of craft was equal to his love for chaos. He spends over four minutes juggling his disdain for the industry with his innate ability to spit truth, not just rocking a mic but giving people “something to remember like the Alamo.” DOOM’s malevolent and wry words clash with the self-produced beat, a loop of Quincy Jones’ “One Hundred Ways” that plinks and bounces with warm colorful synths. “Rhymes Like Dimes” is both a love letter to and a formal complaint about rap music that also introduced one of the largest personalities in the genre’s history. Who else but a supervillain could manage all that? –Dylan Green",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPCwL__3Lss,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dc6b7e02a17d9175e5506/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/MF-DOOM-Rhymes-Like-Dimes.jpg,/dataset/artwork/MF_DOOM-Rhymes_Like_Dimes_1999.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,127,Shania Twain,“Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” (1997),Mercury Nashville,"Mercury Nashville Shania Twain’s opening credo—“Let’s go, girls!”—isn’t so much a call to arms as a champagne pop, an effervescent invitation to celebrate. Arriving at a time when riot grrrl’s space-claiming had shifted into the capitalistic sheen of girl power, Twain’s twangy pop equated feminism with being unapologetically herself, short skirts and all. Frenetic fiddles over the chorus marked the fading traces of her country music origins, as she deliberately pursued a more global pop audience without any of the hand-wringing that so often precedes that kind of leap. Twain’s ambition, and the swaggering confidence fueling it, found millions of giddy listeners who just wanted to have a little fun right alongside her. –Amanda Wicks",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJL4UGSbeFg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dc77c52d4bd45efccbd7c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Shania-Twain-Man-I-Feel-Like-a-Woman.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Shania_Twain-Man_I_Feel_Like_a_Woman_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,126,2Pac,“Keep Ya Head Up” (1993),Interscope / Jive,"Interscope / Jive One of the greatest tricks 2Pac ever pulled was cultivating a tough-guy persona based on sensitivity. For all his party tracks and songs steeped in misogyny, he wasn’t too cool to show emotion or delve into current events with a comforting sense of empathy. Even by those standards, “Keep Ya Head Up” is an ode to Black women and abortion rights that stands out as a gem in his discography. Producer DJ Daryl’s funky sample of Zapp’s “Be Alright” is the perfect cushion for reassurances of Black empowerment (“Some say the Blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice/I say the darker the skin, then the deeper the roots”) and a full-throated defense of women from rapists and deadbeat fathers in a music world that rarely focused on them. All this clashes with the fact that barely a year after its release in October 1993, 2Pac was convicted of sexual assault. These contradictions have left 2Pac with a complicated yet enduring legacy, but the proud message of “Keep Ya Head Up” remains one of his most powerful. –Dylan Green",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XW--IGAfeas,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dc7f7f2e57bfbb704feb9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/2Pac-Keep-Ya-Head-Up.png,/dataset/artwork/2Pac-Keep_Ya_Head_Up_1993.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,125,Goldie,“Inner City Life” (1994),FFRR,"FFRR “Inner City Life” wasn’t the first jungle tune—the sound was in early creative flush in 1994, when the song was released—but it provided the breakthrough moment for this most British of musical genres and remains jungle’s vertiginous peak. On “Inner City Life,” Goldie, alongside producer Rob Playford, proved that the style’s experimental energy—cut-up drums, bombshell bass, neo-hardcore synths, and dazzling production trickery—could not just co-exist but sit snugly with a vocal from singer Diane Charlemagne that balanced optimism and despair, romance and torment, creating an anthem for youth that was desperate but never hopeless. In the UK, “Inner City Life” grazed the charts and made a star out of Goldie, while jungle would go from strength to strength, dynamiting its reputation as a mere playground for twisted ravers. Twenty-eight years on, the song’s amalgam of innovation and soul remains astonishing. –Ben Cardew",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8u7MNG-ug8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dc864f2e57bfbb704febb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Goldie-Inner-City-Life.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Goldie-Inner_City_Life_1994.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,124,Silver Jews,“Wild Kindness” (1998),Drag City,"Drag City The atmosphere of “Wild Kindness” is heavy, laden with nitrogen gas and cigarette smoke. It’s the last song on Silver Jews’ American Water, the most important album of band leader David Berman’s career. As songwriter and a poet, he’s at the height of his powers here, at his most fluid, macabre, and surreal. The images jump directly into your mindspace, one after another: grass growing in an ancient icebox, drug store hair dye dripping into a cracked motel sink. At the song’s center, Berman tries to wrap his head around what it means to be kind, to watch time slip out of your control. It’s a hallucination that begins with terror and ends with transcendence. –Sophie Kemp",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIKVJRMv1T4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dc97cd997a1f3e8a0cd55/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Silver-Jews-Wild-Kindness.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Silver_Jews-Wild_Kindness_1998.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,123,Bell Biv DeVoe,“Poison” (1990),MCA,"MCA Before “Poison” rocketed them to superstardom, Ricky Bell, Michael Bivins, and Ronnie DeVoe were pretty much only known as “the other guys in New Edition.” That gave them the freedom to try out a risky new sound, a groundbreaking blend of R&B and hip-hop that framed the group’s vocal harmonies in gritty production. At the time, the casual misogyny of the song’s raps were the clearest sign that these guys were done wooing “Candy Girl”s; thirty years later, it’s hard to find anything smooth about lines like “the low pro ho she’ll be cut like an afro.” But that opening dirty snare roll, now as iconic as “Be My Baby,” still finds a way to fill any wedding or bar mitzvah dance floor, regardless. –Jessica Suarez",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAFg2TQk9v0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dc9f9afa92f85cc3e4ed4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bell-Biv-DeVoe-Poison.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bell_Biv_DeVoe-Poison_1990.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,122,Method Man,“I’ll Be There for You/You’re All I Need to Get By” [ft. Mary J. Blige] (1995),Def Jam / PolyGram,"Def Jam / PolyGram At his peak, Method Man wasn’t just the Wu-Tang Clan’s brightest commercial prospect—he was also the member with the most sex appeal, as his charisma and smooth voice made him a natural for the kind of sultry rap-R&B hybrids that dominated the ’90s. Remixing “All I Need”—a love-centric track from his 1994 solo debut Tical—with Mary J. Blige was an easy call, and “I’ll Be There for You/You’re All I Need to Get By” turned Meth’s sweet nothings into an undeniable anthem. As Blige’s vocals coast smoothly over samples of Marvin Gaye and Biggie, Meth’s bars are affectionate without losing the hard edge that got him there: “You didn’t have to funk with me/But you did, now I’m going all out, kid/And I got mad love to give, you my nigga.” –Dylan Green",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XW1HNWqdVbk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dcad6afa92f85cc3e4ed6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Method-Man-All-I-Need.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Method_Man-Ill_Be_There_for_YouYoure_All_I_Need_to_Get_By_ft_Mary_J_Blige_1995.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,121,Radiohead,“Let Down” (1997),Parlophone / Capitol,"Parlophone / Capitol “Let Down” missed out on being OK Computer’s lead single only because the band was unhappy with the music video. You can see it, though, right? It’s a perfect introduction to the album’s themes of automation and alienation: “Transport/motorways and tramlines/Starting and then stopping /Taking off and landing /The emptiest of feelings,” Thom Yorke sings, conjuring the lack of control in getting stuck in traffic or sitting in a tin can at 33,000 feet, and the horror of being stuck within one’s own body. Modern transportation has gotten bigger, faster, and stronger, and it threatens to overwhelm us humans, crushing us like bugs. So why, for God’s sake, does this song feel so hopeful? Its lullaby melody soars freely in ways the song’s protagonist never can, as Yorke’s overdubbed counterpoint overflows and overpowers his words. He sings about being “hysterical and useless” while at the same time showing you what it feels like to be free and unbounded. –Jessica Suarez",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVgHPSyEIqk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dcfdcef6685f1f1f35aa0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Radiohead-Let-Down.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Radiohead-Let_Down_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,120,DJ Shadow,“Midnight in a Perfect World” (1996),Mo' Wax / FFRR,"Mo' Wax / FFRR “Midnight in a Perfect World” nearly caused DJ Shadow’s landmark sample tapestry Endtroducing… to be mothballed entirely. Though a rising star for UK label Mo’ Wax, Shadow was beset by self-doubt, and the burden of finding room for (among others) Meredith Monk, David Axelrod, Rotary Connection, and Organized Konfusion to all perch harmoniously on the same five-minute waveform left him vibrating with stress. In the end, those long hours spent recasting ancient glyphs into a language of his own paid dividends: He mastered the art of lo-fi beats to study to two decades before the trope even had a name. And “Midnight” endures as a peerless companion of choice for introverts, stoners, and late-night ponderers because, in that moment of creation, Shadow was all three. –Gabriel Szatan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InFbBlpDTfQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dd06c52d4bd45efccbd80/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/DJ-Shadow-Midnight-in-a-Perfect-World.jpg,/dataset/artwork/DJ_Shadow-Midnight_in_a_Perfect_World_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,119,Salt-N-Pepa,“Shoop” (1993),Next Plateau,"Next Plateau Like the universe, women’s sexuality is expansive, ever-evolving, and predominantly unexplored by man. The distance traveled between Salt lowering her sunglasses and ogling a guy in a three-piece suit on Coney Island beach in 1993’s “Shoop” video and Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B scissoring onstage to “WAP” at the 2021 Grammys, for example, is galactic. Though it might seem quaint in comparison now, “Shoop” was pioneering when it came out, a sex-positive anthem delivered over a reworked Ikettes hook that encouraged women to go after whomever they wanted, however it was hanging, and whenever they wanted it. Salt and Pepa glide over the track with libidinous gusto, sharing punchlines and inventing new ways to flip hetero conquests and objectify the male form. –Emma Carmichael",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vaN01VLYSQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dd11fafa92f85cc3e4eda/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Salt-N-Pepa-Shoop.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Salt-N-Pepa-Shoop_1993.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,118,Rage Against the Machine,“Killing in the Name” (1992),Epic,"Epic Rarely has a band nailed its sound and agenda from day one like Rage Against the Machine did on its ceaselessly thrilling debut single—not just the blueprint for everything that the Los Angeles quartet would do but the apogee, too. Every component of Rage’s musical battlewagon is firmly in place: the rhythm section’s wrecking-ball funk, Zack de la Rocha’s shattering fury, Tom Morello’s Swiss-Army-knife guitar playing. It’s enough to fool you into thinking that fusing hip-hop, punk, and metal was easy, although the ’90s would provide numerous counterexamples. De la Rocha’s verses targeted the LAPD in the immediate wake of the Rodney King uprising, but he made the song eternal by boiling down decades of protest songwriting into a single personalised roar of denial—“Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me”—that made resistance sound like the most natural, and exhilarating, impulse on earth. –Dorian Lynskey",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWXazVhlyxQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dd1bb8f0d7ac40b58dded/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Rage-Against-the-Machine-Killing-in-the-Name.png,/dataset/artwork/Rage_Against_the_Machine-Killing_in_the_Name_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,117,Dawn Penn,"“You Don’t Love Me (No, No, No)” (1994)",Big Beat,"Big Beat A rejection the whole world embraced, this rocksteady anthem by Kingston’s Dawn Penn has deep roots that still flower today. In 1967, the teenaged Penn sang her song to ska and reggae kingpin Coxsone Dodd, who turned it into a modest hit on the iconic Studio One label. A few more singles followed, but in 1970 she left a music industry she says never paid what she was due. Almost 30 years later, she showed up at producer Clevie Browne and Steely Johnson’s studio with a tape; instead, they re-recorded her first recording in a single vocal take. Penn, radiant among golden-hour horns, sounds wise and defiant over the track’s crisp swing. By 1994, the cult hit became a new standard, and soon everyone from thickets of jungle producers to the legends of 21st century pop music—Rihanna, Mary J. Blige, even Beyoncé—would say yes to Penn’s irresistible hit. As if anyone could possibly say no. –Jesse Dorris",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JEo-GetMRY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dd29ccce3570496344364/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Dawn-Penn-You-Dont-Love-Me.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dawn_Penn-You_Dont_Love_Me_No_No_No_1994.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,116,The Pharcyde,“Passin’ Me By” (1992),Delicious Vinyl,"Delicious Vinyl Thirty years ago, the Pharcyde figured out that silliness can be an avenue into darkness. The L.A. group’s defining song, “Passin’ Me By,” unfolds as a series of vignettes, the four rappers each telling of a love interest that didn’t give them a shot. Producer J-Swift, who was trained as a classical pianist, approaches sampling as a bandleader might, and the track’s locomotive bassline lends it a playful, bluesy rumble. It’s a fitting backdrop for verses that are undercut by a streak of sadness, like Fatlip getting a “return to sender” notice on his love letter, or Slimkid3 growing older with a girl and watching the feelings fizzle out. Sandwiched between these tales is that cloudy saxophone, a slow sigh that draws you into the song’s wistful loneliness. –Mano Sundaresan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-mAK3uB2_0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dd3788f0d7ac40b58ddef/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-Pharcyde-Passin-Me-By.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Pharcyde-Passin_Me_By_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,115,Madonna,“Vogue” (1990),Sire / Warner Bros.,"Sire / Warner Bros. Discovering the art at Susanne Bartsch’s Love Ball in 1989, Madonna was a latecomer to ballroom but a quick study. She made the scene into a pop monument, enshrining the artistry of ballroom in the hetero-mainstream imagination. Over a joyful house beat, co-produced by Madonna and Shep Pettibone, she is as imperious and instructive as Old Way, a capital-M Mother coaching a recruit for the performance of their life, whispering “vogue, vogue, vogue…” over icy synths and Salsoul horns like an invitation to some promised land. “Vogue,” a love letter to the balls as a space for self-actualization, was both the first house record to hit number one, and one of the very few Top 40 hits to unapologetically celebrate queer life at the height of the AIDS epidemic. Although Madonna had sung of the material world’s luster before, the track conjures a vision of luxe living that feels easier to attain: Beauty is where you find it, and you can be as enchanting as those queens of Golden Age Hollywood, no matter how fat your wallet. You’re a superstar and what’s more, you know it. –Owen Myers",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuJQSAiODqI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dd41610c581ffac68d115/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Madonna-Vogue.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Madonna-Vogue_1990.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,114,Bonnie “Prince” Billy,“I See a Darkness” (1998),Palace / Domino,"Palace / Domino Redolent of the beer-fed, Appalachian sort of primitivism that boomed like a rusty gong across Drag City’s roster throughout the ’90s, Will Oldham’s ballad to feeling bad feels, in an uncomplicated way, totally bathetic. His night vision isn’t so much an abstraction as it is a straightforward ability to see the discrepancies between a life internal and a life before those we love. Johnny Cash would cover this song in 2000, in a move so natural that it seems to have been written for him in mind. And why not: Both Oldham and Cash are fluent in the border-crossing between hurt and endurance. Both are aware that pain is no shortcut to profundity. Both know that there is a very small foothold between living with agony, and dying of it. –Mina Tavakoli",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iV4NwSbscg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dd59fe02a17d9175e550b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bonnie-Prince-Billy-I-See-a-Darkness.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bonnie_Prince_Billy-I_See_a_Darkness_1998.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,113,R.E.M.,“Nightswimming” (1992),Warner Bros.,"Warner Bros. Legend has it that Michael Stipe only needed to hear the piano part from “Nightswimming” one time before the entirety of the lyrics appeared to him: the photograph on the dashboard, the shirt left by the water, the indelible image of two moons, side-by-side, in the late-August sky. As he sings the Automatic for the People ballad, accompanied by Mike Mills’ music-box piano and a string arrangement by Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones, it’s easy to imagine it occurring as a stream-of-consciousness recitation from somewhere deep in his psyche. After spending the 1980s in more cryptic, agitated moods, Stipe sounded newly romantic and comfortable, the arrangement pared down to a lullaby, the scenic view stretched out before him. “These things they go away,” he sings, “replaced by everyday.” So he captures it all in the moment, just as it appears. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahJ6Kh8klM4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dd631d997a1f3e8a0cd8b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/REM-Nightswimming.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/REM-Nightswimming_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,112,Ol’ Dirty Bastard,“Got Your Money” [ft. Kelis] (1999),Elektra,"Elektra Ol’ Dirty Bastard once stole the stage from Shawn Colvin at the Grammys, brought an MTV crew to film him fraudulently claiming a welfare check, and upstaged the Notorious B.I.G. at his own birthday party—all of which made him seem like a professional wrestler who never breaks character. He was a brilliant rapper apart from the antics, possessing a generational oddball charisma that labels and mentors can’t teach. Decades of pop music couldn’t sum up the vagaries of unrequited love better than the blunt early lines of his 1999 classic “Got Your Money”—“I don’t have no trouble with you fucking me/But I got a little problem with you not fucking me”—as he whimpers, roars, and slurs his way through a litany of sleazy come-ons. As the millennium approached, ODB was looking to the past; “Got Your Money” is a lifeline to the 1970s, built around a deceptively simple Neptunes production and comely Kelis hook, and boasting a music video stitched together from old Dolemite clips. The nostalgia was respectful, even if the lyrics were not, but the professionally unprofessional juxtaposition made for an indelible pop-rap song and the biggest single of ODB’s solo career. –Jeremy Gordon",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXTzm5GtqVo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dd6a6aeacff0b6b601b8b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ol-Dirty-Bastard-Got-Your-Money.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Ol_Dirty_Bastard-Got_Your_Money_ft_Kelis_1999.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,111,Isolée,“Beau Mot Plage” (1998),Playhouse,"Playhouse Like a handful of the most innovative electronic producers in the 1990s, Frankfurt’s Rajko Müller—better known as Isolée—made an anthem that defined a movement. His single, “Beau Mot Plage” brought microhouse, a cool take on four-to-the-floor that favored sound design over soul, to the mainstream—or at least the big rooms of better clubs. The song’s expert engineering had a bit in common with the stiffly funky clicks and hissing of the endless 12""s that came in its wake. But unlike most of its imitators, Isolée’s track is simply massive. It’s precisely hedonist and balances opposing forces expertly: a thick undertow of bass against melodies that spatter like waves cresting with foam; whirlpools of dub and the forward momentum of an irresistible, if slightly submerged, kick drum. And the astonishing rounds of guitar-like pinging—whether sampled or ersatz, who knows—ground “Beau Mot Plage” like a sandbar between past classics like “Sueño Latino” and “Little Fluffy Clouds” and the work of future pleasure seekers like Four Tet and Octo Octa. Prog in structure, pop in sensibility, on this beach microhouse never felt more macro. –Jesse Dorris",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQy2V_3LRMQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dd743d997a1f3e8a0cd8d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Isolee-Beau-Mot-Plage.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Isole-Beau_Mot_Plage_1998.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,110,Janet Jackson,“Together Again” (1997),Virgin,"Virgin On the surface, “Together Again” borders on Hallmark-card triteness: It features a childlike, major-key melody, a peppy disco-house beat, and a hook that goes, “Everywhere I go, every smile I see/I know you are there smilin’ back at me.” But Jackson wrote the lyric about personal friends she’d lost to AIDS, and the song’s co-mingling of plucky cheerfulness and crestfallen grief makes it both winsome and wistful, echoing the spirit of the Supremes’ classic “Someday We’ll Be Together.” In 1997, the world was in the second decade of the AIDS crisis, yet few mainstream pop stars had creatively responded to the epidemic, despite the deaths of musicians like Freddie Mercury and Eazy E, and the disproportionate effect of HIV and AIDS on LGBTQ+ communities of color. By paying tribute to the departed, this No. 1 hit became an intervention, a cause—an upbeat rallying cry when we needed it the most. –Jason King",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69fx7n-D_nU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dd85bf2e57bfbb704febe/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Janet-Jackson-Together-Again.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Janet_Jackson-Together_Again_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,109,Belle and Sebastian,“The State I Am In” (1996),Electric Honey,"Electric Honey If “The State I Am In” didn’t already exist, Belle and Sebastian would have to go back and invent it. A former long-distance runner, who struggles with chronic fatigue syndrome, records an album on a shoestring budget with a newly assembled group for a school project, and then sits back and watches as the opening track is rapturously championed by the BBC’s Radio 1? The story of the song itself is the type of shaggy-dog tale that the Glasgow band has been delivering with increasing directness for more than a quarter-century since it was originally released on 1996’s Tigermilk. With its nonchalantly ambitious ’60s-style chamber-pop ruminations on spirituality, sexuality, and the meaning of it all (or possible lack thereof), “The State I Am In” is also perhaps the archetypal Belle and Sebastian song. For the many who would discover it as the band’s music trickled across online forums in the late 1990s, it signified a gentle, sophisticated rebuke to the false post-grunge link between aggressiveness and transgressiveness. It also marked a breakthrough for the self-consciously tender sensibilities of likeminded indie labels such as Scotland’s Postcard, England’s Sarah, and Olympia, Washington’s K. Today, after several decades of twee aesthetics rotating in and out of fashion, it simply sounds like a classic record. No one writes them like they used to, so it may as well have been Belle and Sebastian. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHVbiHuqMow,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dd995800c1a0f8721b9b4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Belle-and-Sebastian-The-State-I-Am-In.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Belle_and_Sebastian-The_State_I_Am_In_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,108,Crystal Waters,“Gypsy Woman (She’s Homeless)” (1991),Mercury,"Mercury As in New York, Newark, and Atlanta, the underground club scene in Baltimore was intimate. With Crystal Waters’ “Gypsy Woman (She’s Homeless),” respected local DJs and producers the Basement Boys were able to transpose the sybaritic vibe of local hot spots like the Black Box to similar musical sanctuaries for Black and gay youth outside Maryland. Their instantly memorable, organ-driven rhythm track combined with Waters’ distinctive, jazz-influenced vocals to create a perfect peak-hour club record. Dancing to serious subject matter is a form of exorcism in house music—and the opening bars of “Gypsy Woman” sent the denizens of New York City’s most influential nightclubs running for the dancefloor. –Carol Cooper",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KztNIg4cvE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632dda2a800c1a0f8721b9b6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Crystal-Waters-Gypsy-Woman.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Crystal_Waters-Gypsy_Woman_Shes_Homeless_1991.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,107,Fugees,“Killing Me Softly” (1996),Ruffhouse / Columbia,"Ruffhouse / Columbia The Score functions as the rare hip-hop classic that appeals to a cross-generational pop audience without losing its edge: Its iciest posse cuts satisfy the heads, while Lauryn Hill’s buttery crooning makes your parents happy. It spawned the smash “Killing Me Softly,” a cover of singer-songwriter Lori Lieberman’s 1972 song that was made famous by Roberta Flack a year later. The Fugees version is a wonderfully effective crowd-pleaser while remaining strange and subversive, a study of texture and the ways our bodies respond to space. Its most jarring section is the first verse, after that twangy sample, when Hill sings over a sparse, extended breakbeat, her voice cutting through the mix like a hatchet. It’s a subtly complex record that maps onto the mysterious arc of the Fugees; just a year after The Score launched all their careers, they’d start to dissolve. –Mano Sundaresan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKOtzIo-uYw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632ddaa71dccce609e4162d3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Fugees-Killing-Me-Softly.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fugees-Killing_Me_Softly_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,106,Depeche Mode,“Enjoy the Silence” (1990),Mute,"Mute The crucial thing to understand about Depeche Mode’s main songwriter Martin Gore is that he’s a moralist with a wide self-critical streak, which means that even in the biggest hit from synthpop’s best-selling group, one covered by everyone from Tori Amos and Nada Surf to Breaking Benjamin and Susan Boyle, he insists on being a little creepy. Hence, he undercuts his virtue by calling his beloved “my little girl.” Yet he also honors her with the blazingly romantic line “All I ever needed is here in my arms” and by submitting his little harmonium ballad to a majestic dancefloor treatment featuring a sliding, slinky guitar riff for which many rock bands would indeed sacrifice virgins. You can’t say this Zen valentine hasn’t aged well: While our communication tools manipulate free speech’s equality so effectively that we’re destroying democracy worldwide with constant deafening chatter, savoring silence has become more quixotic than ever. –Barry Walters",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGSKrC7dGcY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632ddb0be8d93ffe5dcad768/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Depeche-Mode-Enjoy-the-Silence.png,/dataset/artwork/Depeche_Mode-Enjoy_the_Silence_1990.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,105,The Aztec Mystic,“Knights of the Jaguar” (1999),Underground Resistance,"Underground Resistance There’s something almost sacred about DJ Rolando’s “Jaguar,” often known as “Knights of the Jaguar.” It’s not just the cascading synth rivulets, the way the driving Detroit claps somehow gel with the off-time ride, or even the full-body rush that comes when the strings tease in at two and a half minutes—there’s something in the way all these elements come together that is truly mystical. Arriving just in time to be an anthem of the 1999 Berlin Love Parade and the first Detroit Electronic Music Festival (today known as Movement) in 2000, “Jaguar” is a melancholy belter that gallops and spirals before ending in a sort of symphonic chaos; you might even say that it’s trance in its purest and least cheesy form. Sleek and swift, it’s a melancholy epic that you never want to be over—a perfect piece of knight music. –Vivian Host",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6xVKcvze74,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632ddba6d997a1f3e8a0cdc3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-Aztec-Mystic-Knights-of-the-Jaguar.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Aztec_Mystic-Knights_of_the_Jaguar_1999.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,104,Adina Howard,“Freak Like Me” (1995),East West / Lola Waxx,"East West / Lola Waxx R&B singer Adina Howard’s biggest hit serves as a member’s pledge for Club Freak: a place where a woman can proudly self-describe as a “dog” and live shame-free in her liberated sexuality. Subverting peacocking rap masculinity over a breezy invocation of G-Funk, Adina leans all the way back in the driver’s seat, refusing to pull out her wallet for any man. The song samples Sly Stone and Bootsy Collins, but its finest flip occurs when Howard transforms the squeaked-out Mary Jane Girls sample from LL Cool J’s girlfriend-wishlist “Around the Way Girl” into an expression of her own needs: “I got you shook up on your knees.” Over the years, “Freak Like Me” has been famously covered by Sugababes and interpolated by Megan Thee Stallion and SZA, continuing to stomp all over whatever’s left of the idea of ladylike decorum. –Claire Lobenfeld",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGSajAGg9h4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632ddc22aeacff0b6b601b8d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Adina-Howard-Freak-Like-Me.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Adina_Howard-Freak_Like_Me_1995.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,103,Weezer,“Say It Ain’t So” (1994),DGC,"DGC In retrospect, the terms of Rivers Cuomo’s Faustian pact were harsh. Can you imagine? After splurging a career’s worth of chops and goodwill in one burst, you’re condemned to walk an earth where your possessive, juvenile songwriting drifts further from acceptability while new generations relentlessly clown your Toto covers as virgin music. But we’ll always have Weezer’s glory years, especially “Say It Ain’t So,” not so much an anthem as an arena wrecking ball swaddled in cringe-resistant cladding and studded with spikes. It’s the most relatable Cuomo has ever been; the focus locks on personal minutiae, framed by a letter offering clemency to the absent father who left his psyche mangled in the first place, yet the feelings evoked are universal. As the track creeps to a volcanic climax, each strained syllable and bent note hits with increasing frenzy, daggers plunged deep into an inescapable past. –Gabriel Szatan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENXvZ9YRjbo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632ddcaaaeacff0b6b601b8f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Weezer-Say-It-Aint-So.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Weezer-Say_It_Aint_So_1994.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,102,Master P,"“Make ’Em Say Uhh!” [ft. Fiend, Silkk the Shocker, Mia X, and Mystikal] (1998)",Priority / No Limit,"Priority / No Limit No Limit Records’ symbol was a tank. And if the label’s colonel, Master P, understood anything, it was how to orchestrate an onslaught—of artists, releases, videos, and hooks—in order to overwhelm listeners via brute force and charm. “Make ’Em Say Uhh!” distilled this approach down to a frenzied posse cut featuring four of his strongest soldiers, including the ever charismatic Mia X and the volcanic Mystikal, touting the tank’s might over producer KLC’s collision of rollicking horn blasts and ominous piano. Yet for all its Louisiana bravura, the song also owed a piece of its sonic soul to Harlem, New York, thanks to P’s clever repurposing of the Masterdon Committee’s early-’80s electro hit “Funkbox Party” for the hook. Ever the strategist, Master P well recognized that the time-tested tactic of synthesizing influences and making them new again may be the most potent weapon of all. –Jeff Mao",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_OxZKktwQc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632ddd6c800c1a0f8721b9b8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Master-P-Make-Em-Say-Uhh.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Master_P-Make_Em_Say_Uhh_ft_Fiend_Silkk_the_Shocker_Mia_X_and_Mystikal_1998.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,101,Smashing Pumpkins,“1979” (1995),Virgin,"Virgin After proving he could fill arenas and headline festivals with the alt-rock epics of Siamese Dream, Billy Corgan wanted more: more noise, more drama, more sprawl, more chaos. His pursuit of more beauty yielded “1979,” an attempt to bottle up the bliss and abandon of youth in four minutes of sentimental pop. Corgan wrote the song in his late 20s, and its classic video captures a day in the life of a disaffected suburban mallrat fondly remembered a decade later. After touring your hometown from a cramped backseat, pinballing through a house party, and stopping for snacks in a fluorescent convenience store, “1979” sounds like the final drive home, quietly hurtling through an inky night lit by halogen street lamps. It’s nostalgic without an ounce of bitterness, and it only grows more poignant as those teenage memories fade in the rear-view mirror. –Jamieson Cox",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aeETEoNfOg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632ddde58f0d7ac40b58ddf1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Smashing-Pumpkins-1979.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Smashing_Pumpkins-1979_1995.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,100,The Orb,“Little Fluffy Clouds” (1990),Big Life,"Big Life As the UK’s first chill-out DJ, former Killing Joke roadie Alex Paterson soothed clubbers with an ecumenical blend of musical oddities. That philosophy informed his defining single as the Orb—ambient house’s ground zero. Rickie Lee Jones dreamily recalls 1960s Arizona skies while BBC presenter John Waite rhapsodizes about the English summer. Ennio Morricone’s harmonica confers with a decelerated Harry Nilsson beat and the scintillating multi-tracked guitars of Steve Reich via Pat Metheny. While fellow sample-hounds Bomb the Bass and S’Express crafted hectic smash cuts of dancefloor commandments, Paterson and co-producer Youth (Killing Joke’s former bassist) liquefied their source material into a benign reverie, propelled by a cheerful acid-house burble. This aesthetic—English whimsy meets big-sky American romance—is also at play in the KLF’s ambient road trip Chill Out, but “Little Fluffy Clouds” condensed it into pop, finally cracking the UK Top 10 upon its re-release in 1993. –Dorian Lynskey",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ecdn5SGT1E,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632ddf3bf2e57bfbb704fec0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-Orb-Little-Fluffy-Clouds.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Orb-Little_Fluffy_Clouds_1990.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,99,Selena,“Bidi Bidi Bom Bom” (1994),EMI Latin,"EMI Latin You know the drill: Your heart swells, your hands sweat, and a stutter seems to appear out of nowhere. It’s that feeling of a simmering crush that Selena bottles on “Bidi Bidi Bom Bom.” The husky, melismatic “yeah” that opens the song is a reminder that Selena’s voice was just as suited for singing about forbidden love and breakups as it was for the thrill of crushing hard. Every element here is designed to produce effervescence, evoking the fast heartbeat of infatuation: the wobbly reggae guitar, the steady cowbell, the pulsing cumbia rhythm. That isn’t accidental; as the story goes, Selena made up a rhyme about a fish swimming in the sea during a soundcheck one day, and eventually “Itty Bitty Bubble” turned into a full song. While the Tejano star’s tragic mythos and cultural martyrdom often threaten to consume her legacy, “Bidi Bidi Bom Bom” is a small slice of the whimsy and joy she left behind. –Isabelia Herrera",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKGbjJarMeA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632e2310afa92f85cc3e4ede/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Selena-Bidi-Bidi-Bom-Bom.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Selena-Bidi_Bidi_Bom_Bom_1994.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,98,The Notorious B.I.G.,“Mo Money Mo Problems” [ft. Puff Daddy and Mase] (1997),Bad Boy / Arista,"Bad Boy / Arista When “Mo Money Mo Problems” arrived in the summer of 1997, Diana Ross’ hiccupping sample and Kelly Price’s sashaying lamentation as ubiquitous as a heat wave, Biggie Smalls had been dead for four months. Mase and Puff Daddy—then nearing the release of their respective debuts—took the lead, playfully plodding through opening verses and goofing on Tiger Woods and Bryant Gumbel in a paradoxically ostentatious video. In that life-after-death context, it was impossible not to hear the song’s tragic irony, like a warning by and for B.I.G. about the fate that may await such a contentious and ostentatious superstar. But the anthem’s enduring power stems from its moral simplicity, epitomized by Biggie’s monstrous minute-long verse, buried in the second half: Stay true to your roots and crew, even as you aspire for the cover of Fortune. This was never a song about dying or problems, really; it was a song about living through a moment’s madness, of making it out intact and sane. –Grayson Haver Currin",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUhRKVIjJtw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632e24258f0d7ac40b58ddf7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Notorious-BIG-Mo-Money-Mo-Problems.png,/dataset/artwork/The_Notorious_BIG-Mo_Money_Mo_Problems_ft_Puff_Daddy_and_Mase_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,97,Beck,“Loser” (1994),,"Proudly celebrating one’s mediocrity was the defining pose of the 1990s, and Beck’s breakout hit was a national anthem for the prevailing mood. “Loser” checked every box for a singalong radio smash, embodying the particular combination of apathy and dry cleverness that made the losers in your life seem inordinately charming—a depressed singer might have asked “Why don’t you kill me?” but in the rapper-rocker-singer’s mouth, it came off like a bored dare. Beck claimed that the verses of cryptic wordplay were freestyle nonsense in an attempt to rap like Public Enemy’s Chuck D, but all of his intents and purposes snapped together on that battlecry chorus. Or maybe he just stumbled into that, too—he wouldn’t be the first of Gen X’s stereotypically and stoned layabouts to fuck around and find transcendence. –Evie Nagy",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgSPaXgAdzE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632e24c31dccce609e4162d9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Beck-Loser.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beck-Loser_1994.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,96,Toni Braxton,“You’re Makin’ Me High” (1996),LaFace / Arista,"LaFace / Arista The lead single from Toni Braxton’s sophomore set Secrets is perhaps best remembered for its playful video: When Braxton isn’t gyrating in a skin-tight white catsuit, she and sitcom gal pals Vivica A. Fox and Erika Alexander size up handsome dudes as they ride up an elevator shaft. The R&B tune—a collaborative effort between Braxton, Babyface, and Bryce Wilson of Groove Theory—skillfully captures the feeling of unbridled lust. Its bass-heavy beat oozes along at a blunted tempo, evoking both ’70s Barry White and ’80s Steve Arrington, as Braxton sings a lyric racier than anything we’d heard from her before: “I can imagine you touching my private parts.” The real centerpiece is her sultry, thick-as-molasses alto—no vocalist of the ’90s better embodied the allure of body heat. –Jason King",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIgOL21S98o,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632e259cafa92f85cc3e4ee0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Toni-Braxton-Youre-Makin-Me-High.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Toni_Braxton-Youre_Makin_Me_High_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,95,Queen Latifah,“U.N.I.T.Y.” (1993),Motown,"Motown In just over four minutes, Queen Latifah takes on street harassment, misogyny, domestic violence, and gangster posturing—and manages to make it all sound more like a block party than a term paper. From the start of her career, she made music that centered Black women’s perspectives and experiences, putting them in direct dialogue with her male counterparts. With “U.N.I.T.Y.,” she directly addresses her Flavor Unit crewmate Apache, whose controversial “Gangsta Bitch” had come out earlier in the year; her opening challenge, repeated throughout (“Who you callin’ a bitch?”) invites yet another response. The song sits comfortably in its unabashed politics, and in her flow: melodic, authoritative, undeterred. –Emma Carmichael",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84DR3VfFO-k,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632e266352d4bd45efccbdf2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Queen-Latifah-UNITY.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Queen_Latifah-UNITY_1993.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,94,Guided by Voices,“Game of Pricks” (1995),Matador,"Matador If you take the phrase “greatest hits” very literally, the everlasting version of Guided by Voices’ “Game of Pricks” is the punchy, professional recording from 1995’s Tigerbomb EP, eventually included on the band’s best-of compilation—a song built for pumping a fist with a beer in the other hand. But underneath GBV’s bullish exterior as the best Midwestern bar band to ever live was an insular and vulnerable core, fomented as songwriter Robert Pollard struggled to find artistic success while working as a schoolteacher in his native Dayton, Ohio. That side of GBV bled through the scratchy version of “Game of Pricks” from Alien Lanes, the hoped-for breakout record that allowed them to quit their day jobs before the presale numbers came in. With the bass turned all the way down and the treble turned all the way up, Pollard’s song sounds like a private letter to a younger self, a crunchy bedroom-pop nugget built around a self-affirming message worth stenciling into your high school notebook: “You can never be strong/You can only be free.” Guided by Voices never made it big, it turned out, but success doesn’t matter when you know yourself this well. –Jeremy Gordon",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlZlst4NBVw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632e271f800c1a0f8721b9bb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Guided-by-Voices-Game-of-Pricks.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Guided_by_Voices-Game_of_Pricks_1995.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,93,Björk,“Human Behaviour” (1993),One Little Independent,"One Little Independent Björk is not an alien, despite the extraterrestrial terms in which she is often described. But as a human woman who, at the time of her 1993 solo debut, baffled journalists simply by being from Iceland, to say nothing of her avant-garde sensibilities, she was well-positioned to offer an outsider’s perspective on “Human Behaviour.” On the surface, her thesis—that we definitely (definitely, definitely) lack logic—is a warning to other interlopers preparing for contact. Really, it names our vagaries, our capacity for misunderstanding and being misunderstood, as essential to the human condition, reframing these isolating experiences as shared ones. Furthering the song’s sense of universality, Björk reached across time and geography to borrow its rattling percussion and commanding timpani riff from the Brazilian composer Antônio Carlos Jobim. The result, the throat-clearing opening of Björk’s foray into experimental dance-pop, is strange and welcoming; it invites you to sit with the unfamiliar. –Olivia Horn",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJiAEdWg1ZM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632e28521dccce609e4162db/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bjork-Human-Behaviour.png,/dataset/artwork/Bjrk-Human_Behaviour_1993.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,92,Chaka Demus / Pliers,“Murder She Wrote” (1992) ,Mango / Taxi,"Mango / Taxi “Murder She Wrote” is a testament to taking your time on your craft. Dancehall duo Chaka Demus and Pliers spent five years working on the song, a natural occurrence in Kingston, Jamaica, where producers would record dozens of versions before landing on the one with enough of the genre’s brash and ineffable blend of memorable lyrics and high-speed rhythms. “Murder She Wrote” was exactly that, a speaker-cracking track that became one of the biggest hits from the ’90s dancehall scene. Built around a riddim inspired by Indian bhangra music and Toots and the Maytals’ 1966 track “Bam Bam,” the song was among the first of its kind to break through in the United States by finding a strong foothold on radio, where that instantly recognizable opening bassline began to wind its way through the country. “Murder She Wrote” has been endlessly interpolated since, but the original is eternal, a staple of sweaty summer block parties everywhere that further pushed the genre forward to international attention. –Eric Torres",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvPihZ4MoxI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632e290ad997a1f3e8a0cdc7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Chaka-Demus-Pliers-Murder-She-Wrote.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Chaka_Demus__Pliers-Murder_She_Wrote_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,91,Busta Rhymes,“Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See” (1997),Flipmode / Elektra,"Flipmode / Elektra There are a million ways a rapper might approach the beat to “Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See.” Sourced from a dusty album cut by 1970s soft-rock hitmakers Seals & Crofts, it consists primarily of negative space: a stuttering bit of bassline here, a snare hit or two over there, but otherwise a blank canvas, its minimalism an encouragement for a vocalist to try out any flow they’d like. A less inventive rapper might have chosen to fill the dead air with words, to keep the rhythm rolling along when the production threatens to sputter out. Busta Rhymes took the opposite tack, cutting off his stream of syllables to emphasize the emptiness that opens up on the fourth beat of every bar. With its periodically muted bursts of virtuosic precision, “Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See” moves like a malfunctioning robot, or a clip of a breakdancer that someone keeps pausing and playing again. It’s the sound of a rapper who was usually the loudest voice on any given track discovering the power of silence. –Andy Cush",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSoQDaXh144,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632e2a451dccce609e4162dd/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Busta-Rhymes-Put-Your-Hands-Where-My-Eyes-Could-See.png,/dataset/artwork/Busta_Rhymes-Put_Your_Hands_Where_My_Eyes_Could_See_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,90,Sonic Youth,“Kool Thing” (1990),DGC,"DGC What’s the point of being cool? Mostly nothing, Kim Gordon’s deadpan monologue suggests. Ostensibly a shot at LL Cool J, whom Gordon had interviewed for Spin and failed to connect with, “Kool Thing” flies at the edge of control, part go-go rave-up, part ideological exorcism. It’s a song coated in sarcasm so thick, it’s almost impossible to crack it—just listen to the way the guitars tag every line in the verse with an acidic shoulder shrug. But the fed-up ecstasy that crowns Gordon’s spoken bridge makes it sound as if Sonic Youth, already well-aware of their fate to be the eternal avatars for a certain kind of white alt-cool by the time they’d recorded this song, had crashed into irony’s outer wall. The song itself is their attempt to navigate the rubble. –Marty Sartini Garner",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDTSUwIZdMk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331c199f2e57bfbb7050005/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sonic-Youth-Kool-Thing.png,/dataset/artwork/Sonic_Youth-Kool_Thing_1990.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,89,Camp Lo,“Luchini AKA This Is It” (1997),Arista,"Arista Among the most evocative acts of New York’s mid-’90s major-label hip-hop boom, the Bronx duo Camp Lo blended Harlem Renaissance verve with Blaxploitation-era sizzle. The sole single from their debut album Uptown Saturday Night, “Luchini AKA This Is It” distills Sonny Cheeba and Geechi Suede’s dynamic energy and vivid—at times impenetrable—vernacular. The song’s heavily referential verses unfold like the ecstatic denouement of a heist film, replete with silk shirts, Italian liqueurs, and sumptuous island getaways. Built around a two-bar horn sample from Dynasty’s luxurious 1980 R&B track “Adventures in the Land of Music,” Ski Beatz’s production captures the rush of 125th Street across its various heydays. Only a group as bold as Camp Lo would dare kick off their career with a victory lap. –Pete Tosiello",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVYxoPUjOHU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632e2c32f6cd3c79af7a7679/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Camp-Lo-Luchini.png,/dataset/artwork/Camp_Lo-Luchini_AKA_This_Is_It_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,88,Massive Attack,“Unfinished Sympathy” (1991),Wild Bunch / Virgin,"Wild Bunch / Virgin The reincarnation of Bristol’s Wild Bunch collective, Massive Attack brought their hometown’s full range to bear on their 1991 debut album, Blue Lines: hip-hop breaks, dub basslines, a rolling hint of house music, and a healthy dose of soul, thanks to their singer, Shara Nelson. But for “Unfinished Sympathy,” they looked beyond the traditional trappings of soundsystem culture. Tracking Nelson’s verses first against a single drum machine, then adding breaks, samples, and scratching, the group ended up getting the synth parts re-recorded by a full orchestra at Abbey Road Studios, dialing up the song’s already cinematic properties and yielding a breakbeat soul classic of epic proportions. The strings may have marked an early instance of rough-and-ready rave culture going upmarket, paving the way for a host of dubious techno-goes-to-the-symphony projects in the decades to come, but “Unfinished Sympathy” remains shot through with a murky urgency that refuses to clean up nicely. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWmrfgj0MZI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632e2d6bf2e57bfbb704fefd/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Massive-Attack-Unfinished-Sympathy.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Massive_Attack-Unfinished_Sympathy_1991.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,87,CeCe Peniston,“Finally” (1991) ,A&M,"A&M From Pride parades to Fire Island, from The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert to the Palladium, it’s not a party without “Finally.” The early ’90s airwaves pulsed with glossy Eurodance, but “Finally” was different—a house track firmly in the Chicago house tradition, with Peniston not as a disposable rent-a-diva but as the fully realized personality at the center. The singer was working retail and doing support vocals on the side when A&M tapped her for a single. She took the lyrics from a poem she wrote in college and turned them into “Finally,” her first and best-known hit, a self-fulfilling prophecy enabling her to live out her dreams. Between the sunny tea dance-ready beat and chorus, and the way Peniston belts, growls, and scats her way through it, “Finally” has become a true anthem for finding community, romance, embodiment, desire, self-confidence, or whatever else might have felt unattainable for way too long. –NM Mashurov",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xk8mm1Qmt-Y,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331b1e9d997a1f3e8a0ce37/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/CeCe-Peniston-Finally.jpg,/dataset/artwork/CeCe_Peniston-Finally_1991.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,86,Sleater-Kinney,“One More Hour” (1997),Kill Rock Stars,"Kill Rock Stars The second song from the third album by the Pacific Northwest trio Sleater-Kinney was the moment when the explosive alchemy of their post-riot grrrl power trio truly coalesced. Before, guitarists and songwriters Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein had primarily sung separately. But here—in a song about their own painful romantic separation, we would eventually learn—they came together, braiding their voices more devastatingly and ecstatically than ever. The tension of Tucker’s aching vibrato holding on alongside Brownstein’s clipped delivery is the image of realism in parting. “One More Hour” described one relationship’s end, but it became a beginning, a breakthrough break-up song that bound Brownstein and Tucker together in beautiful friction. –Jenn Pelly",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VoWc3yypHs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331b2bad1c5ef3d2b69369c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sleater-Kinney-One-More-Hour.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sleater-Kinney-One_More_Hour_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,85,OutKast,“Rosa Parks” (1998),LaFace,"LaFace “Rosa Parks” isn’t the best song on Aquemini (that’s “SpottieOttieDopaliscious”), nor was it OutKast’s biggest to date (that was “Elevators (Me and You)”). But at a moment when labels like No Limit and Cash Money were trying to preserve Southern rap’s regionality while building a national audience, the track’s hollering and harmonica felt like provocations toward listeners who wouldn’t be caught dead in something so country. And while the extraterrestrial imagery connected them to Afrofuturists like Parliament and Jimi Hendrix, it doubled as a joke about how most Americans imagine the rural South as another planet anyway. –Mike Powell",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drsQLEU0N1Y,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331b3f68f0d7ac40b58de9b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/OutKast-Rosa-Parks.png,/dataset/artwork/OutKast-Rosa_Parks_1998.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,84,Erykah Badu,“Tyrone (Live)” (1997),Kedar / Universal,"Kedar / Universal Mere months after lifting neo-soul to new heights with her 1997 debut Baduizm, Erykah Badu had the sheer confidence to release a full live concert album that included many of those same songs. It was a runaway hit, thanks in large part to the non-album radio single “Tyrone.” The titular proto-scrub was the buddy of Badu’s man, who never paid for anything and always brought his dirtbag pal along with buddies Jim, James, and Paul to everything they did together. Badu was always covering their asses, which is why she suggested her guy better call Tyrone to help get his shit out of her house, her voice oozing with raw, mesmerizing, sexy-as-hell contempt. The kicker—“But you can’t use my phone”—was a lyric that made exhausted girlfriends the world over scream with delight, and pledge devotion to the church of Baduizm for life. –Evie Nagy",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YY2-mrsXgMM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331b84250e3f640553c93ac/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Erykah-Badu-Tyrone.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Erykah_Badu-Tyrone_Live_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,83,Innerzone Orchestra,“Bug in the Bass Bin” (1996),Mo' Wax,"Mo' Wax When it debuted, Carl Craig’s “Bug in the Bass Bin”—the first outing under his Innerzone Orchestra alias—sounded like nothing else in Detroit techno, or anywhere else, for that matter. Skilled in the dark arts of razor and tape, Craig sliced into a 1960s easy-listening percussion album to come up with the song’s distinctive beat: a rolling, sliding brushed-snare pattern whose sluggish feel he accentuated with queasy synth glissandi. There’s no discernable downbeat; woozy and ghostlike, it half-slinks and half-floats across the dancefloor. The principal riff is just a call-and-response between a plucked bass note and a few splashes of synths; the whole thing is humid, hazy, hard to get a fix on. Yet UK DJs like Fabio, attuned to the track’s unconventional breakbeat energy, ended up pitching it up to 45, where it meshed with the double-time sounds of jungle and drum’n’bass. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mInY6_o6PCE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331b8e28f0d7ac40b58de9d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Innerzone-Orchestra-Bug-in-the-Bassbin.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Innerzone_Orchestra-Bug_in_the_Bass_Bin_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,82,Radiohead,“Karma Police” (1997),Parlophone / Capitol,"Parlophone / Capitol In its own detached way, “Karma Police” is structured as a stealth microcosm of the first decade of Radiohead’s recording career. Its first two minutes are classic ’90s Radiohead: tuneful and sardonic pop-rock, a bit too dour to fit in with the Britpop craze, yet melodically bright enough to be covered by college kids at open mics for perpetuity. Its haunting final refrain imperceptibly sums up an album’s worth of alienation in seven words: “For a minute there I lost myself.” And its remarkable outro, created by Thom Yorke and Nigel Godrich after the singer told his producer he disliked the latter half of the song, deconstructs it all in a collapsing fizz of samples and noise. “It was the first time we did anything like that,” Godrich later recalled—a foreshadowing of Radiohead’s restlessness and their growing interest in outré electronics. –Zach Schonfeld",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uYWYWPc9HU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331bd3fafa92f85cc3e4f1c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Radiohead-Karma-Police.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Radiohead-Karma_Police_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,81,The Chicks,“Wide Open Spaces” (1998),Monument,"Monument Six years before The Chicks made “Wide Open Spaces” the title track of their major-label debut, it was just an idea in a notebook belonging to a college student named Susan Gibson. Gibson had written the song in frustration: Everyone in her life seemed intent on making decisions for her, so she wrote what would become one of country’s defining feminist anthems in just 20 minutes—a song that saw boundless potential for self-determination in the genre’s history of open road romanticism. Years later, The Chicks turned it into a verdant daydream of a bluegrass song, all sighing pedal steel and resolute sisterly harmonies, and it became the emotional blueprint for a career filled with songs about the treacherous, rewarding work of striking out on your own. “Wide Open Spaces” remains a monument to everything The Chicks wanted to see in the world; the career that followed made good on that promise, and then some. –Shaad D’Souza",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dom7VlltBUc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331be53afa92f85cc3e4f1e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Chicks-Wide-Open-Spaces.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Chicks-Wide_Open_Spaces_1998.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,80,Pépé Bradock,“Deep Burnt” (1999),Kif Recordings,"Kif Recordings In an era of over-the-top French filter house (and over-cranked music in general), Pépé Bradock came through with a second-wave deep-house classic whose dusky palette and earworm grooves made it a staple of DJ crates from Detroit to Berlin. Bradock sails into the sunset on a small but mighty romantic string loop lifted from Freddie Hubbard’s 1979 mellow jazz number “Little Sunflower,” further propelled by hip-shaking tambourines (sampled from Max Roach’s “Driva’ Man”) and a strong, heartbeat-like 125-bpm kick drum. For just over nine minutes, he teases different melodic themes but never loses the utterly hypnotic groove—it’s simple and deep at the same time, a song that instantly becomes the perfect soundtrack to any experience. –Vivian Host",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opvopULDhVI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331bf64c9ea29ce4745a610/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Pepe-Bradock-Deep-Burnt.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Pp_Bradock-Deep_Burnt_1999.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,79,Dr. Dre,“Still D.R.E.” [ft. Snoop Dogg] (1999),Afterrmath / Interscope,"Afterrmath / Interscope After leaving the Death Row empire in 1996 and releasing a couple of projects that landed with a thud, Dr. Dre’s ongoing relevance was far from secured as the 20th century drew to a close. His redemption came in the form of a hit that connected eras. With its pristine strings and a blinging piano loop, “Still D.R.E.” felt like the future. This ultra-high-end form of beatmaking established the template for the Dre-produced hits by 50 Cent, Eminem, and Eve that crushed early 2000s MTV; they’re the kind of productions from which you could launch a luxe brand of headphones. But with Snoop Dogg in the passenger’s seat, Dre also drew a line directly back to his G-funk past. It’s the type of song that’s monumental enough to cement a musical legacy, then, now, and forever. –Dean Van Nguyen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CL6n0FJZpk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331c439d1c5ef3d2b6936d7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Dr-Dre-Still-Dre.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dr_Dre-Still_DRE_ft_Snoop_Dogg_1999.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,78,My Bloody Valentine,“Only Shallow” (1991),Creation / Sire,"Creation / Sire Commentary on My Bloody Valentine tends to focus on the guitar sound—its swarming amorphousness, the way it’s simultaneously soft as snow and hard as nails. Nicknamed “glide guitar” by its inventor Kevin Shields, it’s generated by a technique of fast strumming through sustained tremolo and a studio effect known as reverse reverb. But MBV’s swoon-power, their unmatched ability to make you sway and flutter your closed eyelids, comes as much from the breathy vocals of Shields and Bilinda Jayne Butcher. The Irish-English group liked to talk about their “not-really-there sound”; on “Only Shallow,” Butcher really does sound barely there, a palimpsest of a person wiped out by sensations beyond verbalizing. There are lyrics, but you can hardly make out a word as Butcher’s vocal texture blurs into the surrounding wooze. The opening salvo on the shoegaze classic Loveless, “Only Shallow” showcased another of the band’s under-discussed strengths: melody. Scores of underground rock groups were doing excruciatingly extreme things with guitars in the early ’90s, but nobody melded tuneful and torrential as exquisitely as My Bloody Valentine. –Simon Reynolds",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyYMzEplnfU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331c5d2d1c5ef3d2b6936d9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/My-Bloody-Valentine-Only-Shallow.jpg,/dataset/artwork/My_Bloody_Valentine-Only_Shallow_1991.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,77,A Tribe Called Quest,“Check the Rhime” (1991),Jive,"Jive The cypher is one of hip-hop’s most sacred traditions and one that defined the relationship between A Tribe Called Quest’s Q-Tip and Phife Dawg. Their chemistry was defined by the way their voices, sense of humor, and nuggets of wisdom informed and clashed with one another, and “Check the Rhime,” a highlight from their second album The Low End Theory, is when the two were most in sync. Forget the litany of all-time great quotables, and the minimal bass thump that works its way through your body like a virus. The pleasures of “Check the Rhime” can all be traced back to a timeless chant, the call-and-response between two friends heard ’round the world: “You on point, Phife?/All the time, Tip.” –Dylan Green",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QWEPdgS3As,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331c8f11dccce609e416317/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/A-Tribe-Called-Quest-Check-the-Rhime.jpg,/dataset/artwork/A_Tribe_Called_Quest-Check_the_Rhime_1991.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,76,PJ Harvey,“Rid of Me” (1993),Island,"Island The genius of “Rid of Me” is its performance of feminized sexuality. Here’s Harvey, a girl who lives on a sheep farm in rural England, shrieking about being inescapable and wanting someone to lick her legs. She’s at the peak of her career with a hit album, being as much of a disaffected freak as possible. She sexualizes herself because she can, and the song is deliberately interested in messing with the male gaze, of asking for sex so directly that she almost seems like the Exorcist girl, mid-exorcism. “Don’t you wish you never, never met her,” she repeats, unflinching, throughout the song over sparse electric guitars and the occasional crash of drums. Also: “I’m going to twist your head off, see.” She’s not joking. –Sophie Kemp",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PlaNe3mXl8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331c9ccd1c5ef3d2b6936dc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/PJ-Harvey-Rid-of-Me.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/PJ_Harvey-Rid_of_Me_1993.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,75,Annie Lennox,“Walking on Broken Glass” (1992),BMG / Arista,"BMG / Arista The piano intro of “Walking on Broken Glass” sparkles like a chandelier exploded across a ballroom floor, its crystalline notes falling in sugary shards. Annie Lennox sounds confident as she marches across them on the second track to her solo debut Diva. Carried by Annie Lennox’s silky voice, the song rides intoxicating highs and tragic lows; a string section offers an air of formality around a steady synthetic pop rhythm and a punchy guitar part tucked in the mix. Lennox opens up from her level-headed start into a belted chorus, finding brief deliverance before admitting to the excruciating discomfort of trying to hold it together. Even as she stands among the splintered pieces, the emotional undercurrent of “Walking on Broken Glass” captures the exasperation, ache, and yearning of not giving up just yet. –Allison Hussey",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y25stK5ymlA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331cb0510c581ffac68d1f4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Annie-Lennox-Walking-on-Broken-Glass.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Annie_Lennox-Walking_on_Broken_Glass_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,74,Ghost Town DJ’s,“My Boo (Hitman’s Club Mix)” (1996),So So Def,"So So Def The original version of the Ghost Town DJ’s Miami bass classic “My Boo” was a dancefloor banger beloved by breakdancers and club kids but not exactly a breakout hit. The track didn’t take off until Chicago house legend DJ Mike “Hitman” Wilson put out his remix, with an extended three minutes of atmospheric groove over Virgo Williams’ haunting vocals. The DNA of “My Boo” runs across generations, from the Diplomats to a wobbly remix from witch house wunderkind Balam Acab. But the song is for dancing—it got a deserved second life when two kids from New Jersey started the viral Running Man challenge in 2016. 20 years after the original release, “My Boo” went from an IYKYK classic to a household tune. –Samhita Mukhopadhyay",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLKkk-GnE5s,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331cccce02a17d9175e557b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ghost-Town-DJs-My-Boo.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ghost_Town_DJs-My_Boo_Hitmans_Club_Mix_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,73,Bone Thugs-N-Harmony,“Tha Crossroads” (1996),Ruthless,"Ruthless The original “Crossroad,” recorded during the sessions for Bone Thugs’ sophomore album E. 1999 Eternal, was a somber take on the group’s menacing Midwestern funk and a tribute to their late friend Wally Laird. The second version, a plainspoken hymn written in the wake of Eazy-E’s 1995 death, became the quartet’s first and only No. 1 hit. The synthesis of gospel chords and a subtle Isley Brothers sample lends the effect of a Greek chorus: The rappers hand off brief sing-song verses like sprinters passing a relay baton. Krayzie Bone—a fourth-generation Jehovah’s Witness—is the vocal and emotional anchor. In contrast, Bizzy Bone’s erratic, unenunciated bars carry the mystique of a camp revival. The song’s visceral anguish (“Can somebody, anybody tell me why/I don’t wanna die?”) and audacious faith offers a universal comfort and companionship in the face of the unknown. –Pete Tosiello",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=234aK1Mpc0I,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331cdb685ab3acb6908fa65/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bone-Thugs-N-Harmony-Tha-Crossroads.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bone_Thugs-N-Harmony-Tha_Crossroads_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,72,Natalie Imbruglia,“Torn” (1997),RCA / BMG,"RCA / BMG “Torn” is the happiest sad song in the ’90s MTV canon, the “Soak Up the Sun” of “Paper Bag”s. Natalie Imbruglia, with her silvery little-girl-blowing-bubbles voice, radiates a totalizing innocence even as she sings about an affair that ended in abject shame and devastation. The contradiction turned “Torn,” which was originally recorded by the Danish singer Lis Sørensen in 1993, into an abiding classic: Those opening chords dawn like a sunny day in a cartoon, and then, before you know it, our girl is (allegedly) naked, speechless, bound and broken on the floor. The indelible post-chorus guitar wail was the last-call round at the end of Imbruglia’s bender—a source of uncountable interpretive dance interludes past, present, and future, for as long as karaoke and the absurdity of heartbreak coexist. –Jia Tolentino",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIYiGA_rIls,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331d03c1dccce609e416319/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Natalie-Imbruglia-Torn.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Natalie_Imbruglia-Torn_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,71,Pete Rock / C.L. Smooth,“They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.)” (1992),Untouchables / Elektra,"Untouchables / Elektra In 1990, Mount Vernon, New York native Troy “Trouble T Roy” Dixon died in a freak accident while on tour with Heavy D & the Boyz. When his Westchester neighbors Pete Rock and C.L. Smooth went about eulogizing him with “They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.),” they accomplished something even grander and more profound. Barely into their 20s, Pete and C.L. were already casting back: Pete into his parents’ vinyl collection, C.L. into a rough-and-tumble childhood. The warmth of Pete’s early work is turned up like an electric blanket here, as he threads a hooky sample of jazz saxophonist Tom Scott through rattling snares. C.L.’s clear-eyed verses match the track’s wistful nostalgia, as if he’s flipping through a yellowed family photo album. In the end, Trouble T Roy is an incidental character; “T.R.O.Y.” considers the rush of life, the embrace of death, and the unifying force of love from the vantage of evaporating youth. –Pete Tosiello",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6mdRv0ZdR8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331d0f6800c1a0f8721bafa/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Pete-Rock-CL-Smooth-They-Reminisce-Over-You.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Pete_Rock__CL_Smooth-They_Reminisce_Over_You_TROY_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,70,Everything But the Girl,“Missing (Todd Terry Remix)” (1995),Blanco y Negro / Atlantic,"Blanco y Negro / Atlantic UK duo Everything But the Girl were reeling from a career-tanking flop of an album when Todd Terry’s remix launched all three of them into unstoppable global airplay. That Terry’s take on “Missing” had so much octane in the mid-’90s market speaks to the fluidity and hunger for variety from that era’s radio programming. Deep dance tracks cultivated by far-flung collaborators could be mammoth hits, as likely to ring out in a club as a CVS; former sophisti-pop darlings from Northern England could meld minds with a house virtuoso from Brooklyn and throw sparks across the globe. Tracey Thorn’s voice, let loose from its typical acoustic furnishings, aerosolizes into a fine mist against Terry’s galloping loops. In his mix, her words scale up from quiet reflection to existential yearning: a missing so deep it’d take an ocean to fill. –Sasha Geffen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAkY5m00rpY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331d1a6f2e57bfbb705003e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Everything-But-the-Girl-Missing-Todd-Terry.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Everything_But_the_Girl-Missing_Todd_Terry_Remix_1995.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,69,Foo Fighters,“Everlong” (1997),Roswell / Capitol,"Roswell / Capitol After decades of his dutiful service as Real Rock’s most enthusiastic diplomat, it can be hard to remember a time when Dave Grohl was still trying to figure out what he wanted Foo Fighters to be. So how about this: a guy rooted in mid-’80s D.C. hardcore borrowing half of Sunny Day Real Estate to make a googly-eyed power ballad about his girlfriend, directly and immensely influencing bands like The Get Up Kids and Jimmy Eat World and their subsequent masterpieces. Foo Fighters, the Band Who Broke Emo? Call it a stretch, but the exalted status of “Everlong” is entirely due to Grohl submitting to impulse, drunk in love and swerving far from the middle of the road he’s occupied ever since. As a worthy crush should feel, “Everlong” is paralyzing and exhilarating at the same time, its relentless propulsion and professional polish working in tandem to create an illusory effect, like watching an Olympic speed skater furiously pump their legs while appearing to effortlessly glide. That Foo Fighters haven’t revisited this sound only underscores its resonance as a song that desperately tries to capture a moment when things feel like they can’t possibly be this good again—because they never will be. –Ian Cohen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBG7P-K-r1Y,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331d2b5d997a1f3e8a0cea4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Foo-Fighters-Everlong.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Foo_Fighters-Everlong_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,68,Hole,“Violet” (1994),DGC,"DGC Courtney Love has described “Violet” as a “hex” on a man—purportedly Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins—who wronged her. The feverish lyrics are about assault, exploitation, and the asshole who walks away once he’s taken everything he wants from a woman. It is the most frenzied statement on Live Through This, with a force that connects like a fist hitting a brick wall thanks to its hopped-up guitars and a chorus that’s screamed more than sung. “Violet” is one of the finest expressions of what Love was capable of in this unbelievably productive period, a woman spinning all her vulnerability, destitution, disgrace, power, speed, sex, rage, and violence into a ferocious incantation. –Alex Frank",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G597VdnVBgM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331d3851dccce609e41631d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Hole-Violet.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Hole-Violet_1994.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,67,Robin S.,“Show Me Love” (1993),Champion / Big Beat / ZYX,"Champion / Big Beat / ZYX Good jams never die—they await rediscovery in our bedrooms and train rides, one conversion at a time. Beyoncé understood this adage when she recorded this year’s “Break My Soul,” dependent on 1993’s pop-house hit “Show Me Love.” In its original 1990 version, the track sported electric piano, vocoder, and synthesized string parts closer to the post-disco in which Lisa Stansfield specialized. It awaited an essential remix by Swedish DJ-producer StoneBridge, who added the Korg M1 bassline that both time-stamps and immortalizes it. As for the singer, Robin S. sounds like a regular person, like you and me giving the performance of our lives. Dance music often requires anonymity, the better to project our needs. But Robin’s hoarse, crinkly delivery (thanks to the flu, she has said) expressed the agony of listeners who tried dancing their way out of their constrictions. “Baby, if you want meeee,” she growls before the chorus. Ah, such a fleeting thing, desire. –Alfred Soto",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps2Jc28tQrw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331d437d1c5ef3d2b693712/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Robin-S-Show-Me-Love.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Robin_S-Show_Me_Love_1993.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,66,DMX,“Ruff Ryders’ Anthem” (1998),Ruff Ryders / Def Jam,"Ruff Ryders / Def Jam If you’ve ever fought in front of a crowd (and don’t go starting if you haven’t), you know how much benefit there can be in having your own cheering section. That’s the energy DMX brought to “Ruff Ryders’ Anthem,” as a chorus of voices punctuated every confrontational line with an emphatic “WHAT!?” By 1998, New York rap had spent a few years enthralled with mafiosos, lavish lifestyles, and shiny suits, then came DMX—gritty, growling, on a rampage. His biggest-ever hit is grounded in trauma (“All I know is pain, all I feel is rain/How can I maintain with mad shit on my brain?”) but never lacking in pure bravado (“Light it up like a candle just ’cause I can’t stand you”). The rapper’s breathless verses fill in the space around producer Swizz Beatz’s spare, Casio-keyboard sound, which was novel in its simplicity. As for the hook, well, childhood fire safety drills were never the same again. –Mychal Denzel Smith",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThlhSnRk21E,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331d59ed997a1f3e8a0cea6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/DMX-Ruff-Ryders-Anthem.jpg,/dataset/artwork/DMX-Ruff_Ryders_Anthem_1998.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,65,Elliott Smith,“Between the Bars” (1997),Kill Rock Stars,"Kill Rock Stars Before Sufjan Stevens inspired an army of whisper-voiced acoustic strummers, before Phoebe Bridgers presided over the fetishization of capital-S Sadness, there was Elliott Smith. One of his most enduring tunes, owing both to its prominent slot on the Good Will Hunting soundtrack and covers by artists as varied as Madonna and Beabadoobee, “Between the Bars” conceals its desperate melancholy within a lilting melody that never stops moving forward. Like all of the late songwriter’s best songs, this one contains layers; what seems at first like a comforting lullaby to a troubled lover reveals itself, on repeated listens, to describe the seductive promise of alcoholism. “Drink up, one more time/And I’ll make you mine,” Smith croons, like the world’s most brutally honest beer pitchman. –Zach Schonfeld",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5g-91mwiNs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/632db920e02a17d9175e5500/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Elliott-Smith-Say-Yes.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Elliott_Smith-Between_the_Bars_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,64,The Cardigans,“Lovefool” (1996),Stockholm / Mercury,"Stockholm / Mercury “Lovefool” makes desperation sexy. In the hands of Swedes Nina Persson and Peter Svensson, the crippling embarrassment of trying to save a failing relationship is considered with the carefree elan of a model on vacation. The biggest single by the Cardigans does pop desire differently: it’s about how exhilarating and purely fun it can be to debase yourself in the name of love. (Its popularity in the U.S. is owed, in part, to its placement in both Cruel Intentions and Romeo + Juliet, two films that explore, in backwards ways, the ecstatic nihilism of pursuing a crush.) Persson’s vocals, all coquettish sighs and blissful coos, suggest that there’s more joy to be found in the pursuit than the goal as she delivers her plea with a cartoonish, IMAX-sized wink. Animating the whole thing is a gorgeous, candy-colored daytime disco stomp—a beat so undeniable that it could turn any relationship death march into a parade. –Shaad D’Souza",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NI6aOFI7hms,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331d8feefc35c38a593d8dd/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-Cardigans-Lovefool.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Cardigans-Lovefool_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,63,Arthur Russell,“This Is How We Walk on the Moon” (1994),Point Music,"Point Music When the cellist, composer, and producer Arthur Russell died in 1992, he left behind a pile of music so big that archivists are still sifting through it. There was a little bit of a lot of different things: disco, country, post-minimal “classical” pieces, the spacey beginnings of what we think of as bedroom pop. His genius lived in how many seemingly unrelated points he managed to connect—a vision of creativity more familiar in our curatorial era than it was when Russell was alive. So when you listen to “This Is How We Walk on the Moon,” from 1994’s Another Thought, first ask yourself what it is. Deconstructed folk? With dissonant electronic vocal processing in the middle? And a salsa-ish trombone part toward the end? Then realize that, as a lifelong Buddhist, he seemed more interested in explorations than conclusions. “This is How We Walk on the Moon” is the sound of sound changing. –Mike Powell",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eq5gjfN5lns,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331d9ff8085714fe37b0d9d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Arthur-Russell-This-Is-How-We-Walk-on-the-Moon.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Arthur_Russell-This_Is_How_We_Walk_on_the_Moon_1994.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,62,Warren G / Nate Dogg,“Regulate” (1994),Death Row / Interscope,"Death Row / Interscope If Dr. Dre’s G-funk was marked by its hydraulic lurch, his little step brother Warren G’s version was more like a sophisticated slide. His biggest hit’s understated swagger, and the ease with which the bad-night-goes-good tale unfurls, renders the narrative violence beside the point—it’s all seen through the dewy lens of whatever swell things went down later on at the Eastside Motel. Besides, the beat is so slick, it would be impossible for any sense of menace to stick to it in the first place. Gritty? Of course. But the Michael McDonald sample makes it clear: This is Long Beach yacht rap. –Marty Sartini Garner",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1plPyJdXKIY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331db68f2e57bfbb7050042/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Warren-G-Nate-Dogg-Regulate.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Warren_G__Nate_Dogg-Regulate_1994.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,61,Built to Spill,“Carry the Zero” (1999),Warner Bros.,"Warner Bros. By 1999, all of Doug Martsch’s mildest dreams had come true. Built to Spill, his scrappy Idaho band, had steered its way into the waiting arms of a major label, which had handed him the money and freedom necessary to make a classic—1997’s Perfect From Now On—and the experience nearly broke him. “Carry the Zero,” from two years later, is the sound of a band that has just turned the corner on making a masterpiece. The interplay is still telepathic, the juices of exhilaration are running high, and out pour creations that would never otherwise slip out with such ease. “Carry the Zero” is an exhalation: warm, open-hearted, emotionally generous. Martsch’s voice, a keening wail that reaches so high it seems to be vying for airspace with his soaring leads, unleashes a series of cutting observations that somehow land like pure tenderness (“You’ve become/What you thought was dumb/A fraction of the sum”). Instead of the careful patchwork of Perfect, “Carry the Zero” swirls like some kind of dizzying carousel ride: Brett Nelson’s bassline leaps up and down the scale like a calliope, Scott Plouf’s drums explode like county fair fireworks, and Martsch, the humblest of all of indie rock’s many charisma-averse guitar hobbits, soars and glitters above us, a million brilliant shades of emerald and vermillion. –Jayson Greene",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-f7zsW7EV4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331dc4c800c1a0f8721bb03/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Built-to-Spill-Carry-the-Zero.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Built_to_Spill-Carry_the_Zero_1999.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,60,Moodymann,“Shades of Jae” (1999),KDJ,"KDJ Paradoxically, you can tell Kenny Dixon Jr., aka Moodymann, is a musician by the way he utilizes samples—not just looping or pasting them in, but interpreting them. “Shades of Jae” is the ultimate example: A lolling Bob James keyboard line and a bit of Marvin Gaye’s live version of “Come Get to This” float like wisps of smoke, interacting fleetingly in places and closely in others, but rarely in the same way twice. That teasing quality is shared by the beat itself: The kick drum, house music’s traditional cue that it’s time to dance, comes in only when Moody feels like it. But he teases us so deliciously, and the groove is so resoundingly right-there without it, that if you can resist moving fully to the whole thing you might be in a body cast. –Michaelangelo Matos",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YCgkz_yK1w,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331dda1e02a17d9175e55b1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Moodymann-Shades-of-Jae.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Moodymann-Shades_of_Jae_1999.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,59,Whitney Houston,“I Will Always Love You” (1992),Arista,"Arista By the end of 1992, Whitney Houston had become pop’s golden child, set to star in her first feature film, The Bodyguard. All she needed was a signature soundtrack ballad, and she found it in Dolly Parton’s rustic country ballad from two decades earlier. Originally written about Parton’s creative split from mentor Porter Wagoner, “I Will Always Love You” was recast under Houston’s spell as a heartfelt send-off to a love that’s tender but incomplete. Though she had made a career out of vocal exhibitions, this is the Jersey church girl at her most controlled. The song opens softly, then builds with creeping intensity, her voice carving canyons and shifting timbres along the way. The gut punch is that four-second pause and the chilling high note from beyond that blows you to the back of the room. Staying at No. 1 on the pop chart for 14 weeks, “I Will Always Love You” is the best-case scenario of a powerhouse in command. –Clover Hope",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JWTaaS7LdU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331de78d1c5ef3d2b693717/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Whitney-Houston-I-Will-Always-Love-You.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Whitney_Houston-I_Will_Always_Love_You_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,58,A Tribe Called Quest,“Scenario” (1991),Jive,"Jive For most of its run, A Tribe Called Quest’s 1991 masterpiece The Low End Theory is refined and restrained, all tasteful jazz thump and sophisticated introspection. But for its closing barrage, Q-Tip and Phife cut loose with the New York crew Leaders of the New School on an absolute lung-buster that anticipated the shouty, mic-grabbing styles of Das EFX and Wu-Tang Clan. The energy was undeniable, as was the star-making turn from Busta Rhymes, whose verse doubled as a mission statement for the track, if not his entire being: “Causing rambunction throughout the sphere/Raise the levels of the boom inside your ear.” –Evan Rytlewski",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6TLWqn82J4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331df588f0d7ac40b58df0c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/A-Tribe-Called-Quest-Scenario.jpg,/dataset/artwork/A_Tribe_Called_Quest-Scenario_1991.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,57,Daniel Johnston,“Some Things Last a Long Time” (1990),Shimmy Disc,"Shimmy Disc Daniel Johnston recorded the spare piano ballad “Some Things Last a Long Time” during a 1988 visit to New York City. After he stopped taking his medication, the trip spiraled into a manic episode. In the span of a few days, Johnston was arrested for vandalizing the Statue of Liberty, assaulted at a homeless shelter, admitted into a psychiatric ward, and then released due to clerical error in time to play a gig at CBGB. That “Some Things Last a Long Time” exists at all is a testament to the small army that loved Daniel, that lifted him up when his sanity left him. But Johnston alone renders the song a body blow. He delivers lyrics as simple as nursery rhymes with the somber regret of a deathbed confession. Covers abound, by artists including Lana Del Rey, Beck, and Beach House, but none will last as long, or hurt so much, as Johnston conveying his grief into eternity. –Peyton Thomas",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TV6LPx1ezYs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331e0cb4cd8167e3722209c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Daniel-Johnston-Some-Things-Last-a-Long-Time.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Daniel_Johnston-Some_Things_Last_a_Long_Time_1990.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,56,Erykah Badu,“On & On” (1997),Kedar / Universal,"Kedar / Universal Baduizm’s first single is quintessential literature in the Badu canon, and the neo-soul movement at large. Rarely was she the easiest narrator to interpret, but for as alluringly coded as “On & On” is, there’s a clear political undercurrent girding the track. “My money’s gone/I’m all alone” her sultry alto voice crooned over a slick four-note bassline, the first of many existential declarations—an opening address for a new generation of earth mothers, Afrofuturists, and doobie burners to follow like scripture. Despite—or because of—its elusiveness, the song has become one of the great chilled-out anthems for Black folks building new worlds in a country working hard on their demise. –Gio Santiago",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TW28iWV7nxE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331e146f2e57bfbb7050044/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Erykah-Badu-On-and-On.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Erykah_Badu-On__On_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,55,Madonna,“Ray of Light” (1998),Maverick / Warner Bros.,"Maverick / Warner Bros. A culture-shaping fusion of UK acid house and American dance pop that still betrays its origins as a bluesy travelers’ lament (doesn’t the Zephyr sound like a train?), “Ray of Light” is, simply, a song about flying. The title track of Madonna’s first mystic reinvention started out as a heavy-hearted folk tune recorded by British duo Curtiss Maldoon in 1971; the version she created with electronic producer William Orbit is raving psychedelic pop disco, full of laser arpeggios and sirens that move with the silvery magnetism of ocean fish. A Kabbalah-coded ode to divine femininity with a racing pulse, “Ray of Light” is body music for the embodied consciousness. –Anna Gaca",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQ5OtnBdcWw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331e1d2f2e57bfbb7050046/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Madonna-Ray-of-Light.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Madonna-Ray_of_Light_1998.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,54,TLC,“Creep” (1994),LaFace / Arista,"LaFace / Arista Anchoring their classic 1994 album CrazySexyCool, “Creep” is TLC’s mischievous justification for revenge cheating on a partner who’s abandoned any sense of trust. Smooth, decisive, and almost numb in her delivery, T-Boz sells the feeling of emotional detachment with her signature deep rasp, relaying a message that sometimes the most cathartic response to a messy relationship is to get even messier. Today’s R&B is so rich with women doing dirt that it’s almost quaint to remember an era when a song about a woman cheating as emotional retribution was an aberration. It’s a feat that she waited until the 22nd of loneliness to do so. –Clover Hope",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlZydtG3xqI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331e24f4cd8167e3722209e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/TLC-Creep.jpg,/dataset/artwork/TLC-Creep_1994.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,53,Frankie Knuckles,“The Whistle Song” (1991),Virgin,"Virgin While Frankie Knuckles’ pioneering early tracks were soaked in acid and eroticism, his sound became warmer and more soulful as the genre of “house” solidified. The title of his 1991 album Beyond the Mix captured the essence of deep house: Beyond the music and the musician is the potential for collective experience that dance unlocks, the ego death and emergent sense of togetherness that can come from existing as one unit within the unified organism of a crowd. While elsewhere Knuckles works with vocalists to deliver fervent club Jeremiads over an electronic chorus, “The Whistle Song” is pure sound. There’s no direct address or thematic telegraph, and in its simplicity, Knuckles’ instrumental opus demonstrates the possibility of dance music as pure feeling, unbound from time and language. The titular whistle is our guiding compass in a misty soundscape that dissolves the barrier between musical rhythm and natural ambience. –Nadine Smith",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIdimVDuSEU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331e2c8e02a17d9175e55b3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Frankie-Knuckles-The-Whistle-Song.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Frankie_Knuckles-The_Whistle_Song_1991.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,52,Juvenile,“Back That Azz Up” [ft. Mannie Fresh and Lil Wayne] (1999),Cash Money / Universal,"Cash Money / Universal Not only is “Back That Azz Up” the defining hit of Cash Money, its opening strings are still an alarm call to clear out of the dancefloor if you’re not ready to sweat. There’s Mannie Fresh’s propulsive, funky beat; Juvenile’s direct command to throw ass; the hypnotic flow in his verses have the effect of bounce music; the jolt of adrenaline every time the hook comes back around. It’s all sort of romantic, too, how Juvenile treats a little ass shaking like the blessing that it is. In the future, Cash Money would reach higher commercial peaks, but not much lives on like a twerk anthem. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpQrAbkM3dI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331e37452d4bd45efccbe30/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Juvenile-Back-That-Azz-Up.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Juvenile-Back_That_Azz_Up_ft_Mannie_Fresh_and_Lil_Wayne_1999.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,51,Le Tigre,“Deceptacon” (1999),Mr. Lady,"Mr. Lady When “Deceptacon” came out in 1999, the idea of an indie band being both pop-positive and confrontationally political wasn’t as familiar as it is now. Like the early rock’n’roll it quoted, the song was, in essence, dance music—a quality foregrounded by James Murphy and Tim Goldsworthy’s remix a few years later. And not just dance music, but the kind of immediate, floor-filling shout-along that glossy regional magazines were recommending as bridal-party entrance music. That riot grrrl pioneer Kathleen Hanna, who’d quit Bikini Kill a few years earlier, wrote the song out of frustration with watching feminism’s dilution through stuff like the Spice Girls and Xena: Warrior Princess made sense: This is cute, fun music in part about the cultural complexity of young women having cute fun. –Mike Powell",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kpVqbCpXck,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331e3d352d4bd45efccbe32/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Le-Tigre-Deceptacon.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Le_Tigre-Deceptacon_1999.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,50,Janet Jackson,“If” (1993),Virgin,"Virgin Janet Jackson is staring down an oblivious dude from across the room while thinking some very naughty thoughts. “If you like I’ll go down, da-down, down, down, da-down, down,” she mumbles in a hypnotic monotone, before opening up her voice to underline the innuendo, “Your smooth and shiny feels so good against my lips, sugar.” “If,” the fiercest track from her chart-obliterating janet. album, clears a path for her freakiest fantasies. The production, by Janet and her longtime collaborators Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, is a genre-defying riot—feral guitars that bring to mind prog rocker Robert Fripp smashed together with an artfully flipped Supremes sample and steel-hard hip-hop drums inspired by Public Enemy. Urged on by the turbocharged beat—and a dance-heavy video where Janet memorably pushes a guy’s head toward her crotch—this horny hypothetical of a song is fully realized. –Ryan Dombal",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTSd4vqnMwo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331e4b4784a14640cd40b96/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Janet-Jackson-If.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Janet_Jackson-If_1993.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,49,Mariah Carey,“Always Be My Baby” (1995),Columbia,"Columbia From the moment “Always Be My Baby” begins, it’s immersed in nostalgia. What sounds initially like an acoustic guitar has the artificial shimmer of a romanticized memory, while Carey’s wordless chorus feels Motown-esque, buoyant in the face of what should be heartache. But “Always Be My Baby” is not a breakup song. It’s a song about eternity. Just because something is over doesn’t mean it’s over; every touch is in some way permanent, and anyone who passes through your heart leaves their shape behind. This infinite wave pool of romantic longing was a point of transformation for Carey—her first collaboration with Jermaine Dupri, who helped push her sound further into the gleam of hip-hop. “Always Be My Baby” is, by contrast, in no hurry to get anywhere, certain that even as things change they also recur, making for a cozy, classical R&B song that’s also a portal between worlds, flowing into and out of them forever. –Brad Nelson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfRNRymrv9k,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331e50f10be3c511c19685d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mariah-Carey-Always-Be-My-Baby.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mariah_Carey-Always_Be_My_Baby_1995.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,48,Digable Planets,“Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)” (1992),Pendulum / Elektra,"Pendulum / Elektra “Rebirth of Slick” captures Digable Planets’ preternatural chemistry and indelible cool. From the slowed sample of Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers’ “Stretching” to the buttery rhymes and neat drums, the song exudes a carefree spirit that’s indebted to the Native Tongues but spacier and more inquisitive. The smoothness of jazz rap sometimes veers into corny respectability, but the mood here is loose and playful, the Planets referencing childhood hairstyles, movies, and outfits. Even as the verses showcase everyone’s individual styles, the constant mentions of “we”and “us,” along with the mic-passing riffs that close the song, channel the group’s history of sharing meals together and recording in a closet studio, their cool generated not just by the obscure jazz they all adored, but by their connections to each other. –Stephen Kearse",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cM4kqL13jGM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331e57252d4bd45efccbe34/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Digable-Planets-Rebirth-of-Slick.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Digable_Planets-Rebirth_of_Slick_Cool_Like_Dat_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,47,Deee-Lite,“Groove Is in the Heart” (1990),Elektra,"Elektra You can’t craft a song like “Groove Is In the Heart” without a good ear for timing, a strong sense of camp, and the stamina for digging deep into the crates—all qualities that Deee-Lite’s DJ Dimitry and Lady Miss Kier honed on the late ’80s NYC club scene. Parliament-Funkadelic’s Bootsy Collins, legendary sax player Maceo Parker, and a young Q-Tip guest on “Groove Is In the Heart,” while many more are represented through snippets of sound: the slide whistle and crowd noise from soul singer Vernon Burch’s “Get Up,” Eva Gabor saying “I” on loop from the Green Acres theme in the chorus, a drum loop nicked from Billy Preston to cradle Tip’s rap, and that Herbie Hancock bassline. Without the snap, crackle, and pop of such tactile details, the genre-defying dance hit might not sound so much like a party you never want to leave, where they give out tabs of acid along with a toy noisemaker. In a decade filled with ’70s revivalism, house-inspired pop, hip-hop’s creeping influence, and countless weird one-hit-wonders, Deee-Lite were one of the few good acts at the center of the Venn diagram. –Jill Mapes",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yLHOAkj9ss,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331e5c3e02a17d9175e55b5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Deee-Lite-Groove-Is-in-the-Heart.png,/dataset/artwork/Deee-Lite-Groove_Is_in_the_Heart_1990.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,46,Orbital,“Halcyon + On + On” (1993),FFRR,"FFRR Named after a tranquilizer that Orbital members Paul and Phil Hartnoll witnessed their mother taking during their childhood, the original “Halcyon” unfolds like a drug trip itself, a universe of motion blurs (some of which are reversed echoes of Kirsty Hawkshaw’s vocal from Opus III’s “It’s a Fine Day”) with percussion moving restlessly beneath it like insect legs. The track is far more recognizable in its remixed form, however, due to its placement on the soundtracks for ’90s blockbusters like Hackers and Mortal Kombat. With the subsequent rise of sampling, the remixed “Halcyon”—titled “Halcyon + On + On”—is in many ways emblematic of a decade where music increasingly sounded like a written-over palimpsest. The beat is straightened out, a piano shimmers in the distance like a desert mirage, and Hawkshaw’s voice sweeps like winds over a landscape of pulsing ambient techno. –Brad Nelson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Np_NsRgb4Eg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331e6321dccce609e416320/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Orbital-Halcyon.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Orbital-Halcyon__On__On_1993.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,45,2Pac,“California Love” [ft. Dr. Dre and Roger Troutman] (1996),Death Row / Interscope,"Death Row / Interscope When cable news came of age in the ’90s, L.A.’s public image swiftly became collateral damage. A regional ode for the ages was never more badly needed than in 1995, when the city was firmly under the microscope of a national media eager for more footage of riots or the next Bronco chase. So two of Death Row Records’ greatest creative minds willed one into existence. On “California Love,” Dr. Dre goes into full hitmaker mode by refurbishing familiar pieces of musical history, including a Joe Cocker riff and a Ronnie Hudson refrain, into pure party-anthem bliss. With the special sauce of vintage talkbox vocals from Zapp’s Roger Troutman, Dre and a freshly inspired 2Pac repossessed and momentarily redirected the nation’s attention toward a sunnier view of California. –Steven Arroyo",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/ffklJc_vfuk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331e684800c1a0f8721bb05/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/2Pac-California-Love.png,/dataset/artwork/2Pac-California_Love_ft_Dr_Dre_and_Roger_Troutman_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,44,D’Angelo,“Brown Sugar” (1995),Cooltempo,"Cooltempo “Brown Sugar” is effortlessly cool: In the music video, D’Angelo struts into a dimly lit lounge, sits at the piano, and instantly busts out the sweetest serenade, with smoke from a joint still coming out of his mouth. If you told me that’s how he actually recorded the song, I would absolutely believe it. In an era when much of the popular R&B singles had been inspired by Teddy Riley’s new jack swing slickness, D’Angelo’s debut hit was a slow-burner that felt beamed in from another universe. Inspired by icons like Marvin Gaye, Al Green, and Stevie Wonder, the Virginia-raised singer pulled from those retro roots while addings elements of hip-hop, helping to lay the foundation for neo-soul. The rap influence is in D’Angelo’s look—cornrows and baggy clothes—but also in the tinny drums programmed by A Tribe Called Quest’s Ali Shaheed Muhammad, which give the song an almost slow-mo bounce. Filtered through the singer’s honey-smooth falsetto and mystic allure, the past and present become seamlessly intertwined. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_WzjiTzZBA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331e712afa92f85cc3e4f56/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/DAngelo-Brown-Sugar.jpg,/dataset/artwork/DAngelo-Brown_Sugar_1995.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,43,The Cranberries,“Dreams” (1992),Island,"Island The Cranberries’ “Dreams” is the sensation of butterflies in your stomach incarnate: “Oh, my life is changing everyday/In every possible way,” Dolores O’Riordan sings, capturing the terrifying thrill of entrusting your heart to someone who could shred it to pieces, or make your wildest fantasies come true. With an arrangement that seems to say “go after your heart’s desire, but be careful!,” “Dreams” gallops forward atop sweeping guitar chords and quietly rumbling drums, only to consistently rein itself in. O’Riordan begins each verse from a place of softness, as if she’s floated back to Earth and needs to touch some grass to reassure herself that this is real. But ultimately, the euphoria is too big for words: O’Riordan emits a fierce yodel, opening her throat to the sky and letting those fluttering feelings pour out. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yam5uK6e-bQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331e756e02a17d9175e55b7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-Cranberries-Dreams.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Cranberries-Dreams_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,42,Sade,“No Ordinary Love” (1992),Epic,"Epic If there’s one song that harnesses Sade’s capacity for aquatic melancholy, it’s “No Ordinary Love.” This isn’t only because of the music video’s marine setting, which depicts lead singer Sade Adu as a brooding mermaid who aspires to be a human bride. There are the chugging guitars in the chorus, which crest like the peak of ocean waves; the fluid fog of synths that floats over sparse percussion; and of course, the unrelenting devotion central to the lyrics, which become liquid velvet between Adu’s lips. The oceanic aura that surrounds “No Ordinary Love” might be mellow, but it’s also one of the UK band’s most piercing and desolate moments. After all, that’s what love feels like when it’s elusive, especially after you’ve emptied yourself in service of another: as isolating and bottomless as the sea itself. –Isabelia Herrera",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WcWHZc8s2I,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331e7aad1c5ef3d2b69371b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sade-No-Ordinary-Love.png,/dataset/artwork/Sade-No_Ordinary_Love_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,41,Geto Boys,“Mind Playing Tricks on Me” (1991),Rap-A-Lot / Priority,"Rap-A-Lot / Priority Among the most haunting street-life narratives ever recorded, this masterpiece by Houston’s Geto Boys rewired hip-hop’s supposed binaries—between East Coast and West, conscious poets and amoral journalists—unpacking drug game paranoia over a plaintive loop of Isaac Hayes’ “Hung Up on My Baby.” The ghostly, pitched-down guitar figure sets up some ironic distance from the grim narration while also telegraphing cartoon violence by way of the Blaxploitation classic Three Tough Guys, which starred Hayes and featured his song on its soundtrack. Reprising the candles-in-a-dark-room scenario from the band’s horrorcore salvo “Mind of a Lunatic,” Scarface goes deep, evoking Jim Crow nightmares and a present-day vision of himself “sleeping with my finger on the trigger,” as well as contemplating suicide as an escape, rejecting it on his son’s account, and lamenting the love he lost through his callousness. The song became an emo-rap touchstone, referenced by artists from Biggie to OutKast to Kid Cudi, who credited it with inspiring his breakout “Day ’n’ Nite” and called it “his favorite song in the world.” –Will Hermes",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOccCuTTrAg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331e7f0d997a1f3e8a0ceaa/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Geto-Boys-Mind-Playing-Tricks-on-Me.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Geto_Boys-Mind_Playing_Tricks_on_Me_1991.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,40,Pavement,“Gold Soundz” (1994),Matador,"Matador Pavement started as a scuzzy noise-rock project, but elegance turned out to be their secret weapon. Yes, Stephen Malkmus used the word to mock Stone Temple Pilots in “Range Life” but it was the pot calling the kettle black—from his baseline game to his perfect haircut to his endlessly inventive guitar fills, Malkmus radiates the stuff, and Courtney Love was dead on when she called him the Grace Kelly of rock. “Gold Soundz” was merely one brilliant single among the many the band released across the decade, but it was the first one to show the world just how refined they could be. Every element—achingly nostalgic lyrics, jangly chord progression, succinct guitar solo with a perfectly graceful tone—is arranged just so, not a note or a word out of place. –Mark Richardson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPvhKV3Yg2k,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331e84052d4bd45efccbe36/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Pavement-Gold-Soundz.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Pavement-Gold_Soundz_1994.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,39,Mary J. Blige,“Real Love” (1992),Uptown / MCA,"Uptown / MCA Between its main radio edit and its various 12"" remixes, Mary J. Blige’s “Real Love” came with several different introductions: If the tune’s “Top Billin’” drumbeats didn’t grab you, maybe starting with the guitar riff from “Clean Up Woman” or Mary’s jazzy a cappella ad-libs would. Her raw gift for impromptu gospel and jazz singing paralleled the improvisational impulses of rising MCs and hip-hop DJs; so when Biggie Smalls added a few bars to the remix, you heard his rhymes juxtaposed against isolated melodic phrases that revealed structural similarities in Blige’s delivery. In an era when danceable rap records were increasingly crossing from Black radio to “pop” stations, “Real Love” wed roller-disco tempos to B-girl vulnerability. The combination of kinetic rhythms and passionate, confessional vocalizing became the signature sound for the emergent Queen of Hip-Hop Soul. –Carol Cooper",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvK0zgvX1uE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331e889e02a17d9175e55b9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mary-J-Blige-Real-Love.png,/dataset/artwork/Mary_J_Blige-Real_Love_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,38,Fiona Apple,“Paper Bag” (1999),Epic,"Epic Fiona Apple was in the middle of recording her 1996 debut album Tidal, and she was miserable. Spotting a white dove in the sky, she took it as a sign that everything was going to be okay. Looking closer, she saw that it wasn’t actually a bird at all—it was an airborne plastic bag. She was crushed. Apple turned this sense of disappointment into “Paper Bag” on her magnificent 1999 album When the Pawn… She expresses frustration with a romantic partner she dismisses as a “little boy,” while recognizing that she’s a lot to sign up for (“I know I’m a mess he don’t wanna clean up”). The hint of swagger in the beat and the gorgeous Beatles-y horns in the coda reflect this nuanced mix of melancholy and defiance. “I’m a fucking contradicting little kid most of the time,” Apple said in a 2000 interview, “except in my songs. That’s the only time I can actually focus and go, ‘This is the truth about this. This is the way it is.’” –Alan Light",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BK30r_SIZ-g,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331e8e4d1c5ef3d2b69371d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Fiona-Apple-Paper-Bag.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Fiona_Apple-Paper_Bag_1999.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,37,Stardust,“Music Sounds Better With You” (1998),Roulé / Virgin / Because,"Roulé / Virgin / Because The promise anchoring French house is that one perfect loop can change your life. When producer Alan Braxe, singer Benjamin Diamond, and Daft Punk’s Thomas Bangalter came together as Stardust and clipped a few seconds from Chaka Khan’s “Fate,” they rocketed into the annals of dance music history. “Music Sounds Better With You,” the trio’s lone single, is meant to be shared with other people, emphasizing communal ecstasy in the way Diamond sings “with you!” like it’s lifting him an inch off the ground. The song’s generous bliss laid the groundwork for Daft Punk’s shift from the DJ tools of Homework to Discovery’s accessible craftsmanship, and decades later its basic principle—a tight, filtered nibble of joy—is part of pop music’s lingua franca. –Jamieson Cox",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQlAEiCb8m0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331e9343850e156c9fff591/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Stardust-Music-Sounds-Better-With-You.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Stardust-Music_Sounds_Better_With_You_1998.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,36,Aaliyah,“One in a Million” (1996),Blackground / Atlantic,"Blackground / Atlantic Skittering percussion and squirming sub-bass have dominated rap and pop production for so long now it’s easy to forget that when Aaliyah’s “One in a Million’’ debuted in 1996, Timbaland’s style had yet to gain a foothold on radio or MTV. Just four seconds into the song you hear it, though: the rapid flicker of hi-hats, the element that always made his early work sound as if it were a stuttering transmission from the future. Every time it happens in “One in a Million” it’s like time mutates, lurching forward and then snapping back on itself like a rubbery cartoon character. In this case it mirrors the song’s subject: falling in love with someone so hard that you feel the continual pull of their gravity. And no voice navigated these thickets of drum patterns more capably than Aaliyah’s; she rides the currents of the undulating groove as if she were piloting a hang glider through them. –Brad Nelson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKSz4NE6PwY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331e9801dccce609e416322/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Aaliyah-One-in-a-Million.png,/dataset/artwork/Aaliyah-One_in_a_Million_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,35,Lauryn Hill,“Ex-Factor” (1998),Ruffhouse / Columbia,"Ruffhouse / Columbia Like any great breakup song, “Ex-Factor” has its own mythology: It was reportedly written about Lauryn Hill’s affair with Wyclef Jean, her former Fugees bandmate. But does that even matter? It’s a plea that will serve as a balm for anyone and everyone as long as hearts are getting broken. Featuring one of Hill’s all-time great vocal performances, the song’s genesis alone spans generations and genres: The unsettlingly plaintive opening line is adapted from a Wu-Tang Clan sample of a Gladys Knight & the Pips’ cover of Barbra Streisand’s “The Way We Were”; Hill’s track, in turn, has been sampled countless times since. And with its encouraging ad-libs, it almost sounds like a private duet with and to herself, a reminder in the margins that she—just 23 when she wrote it, yet possessing razor-sharp emotional clarity—deserves better. –Emma Carmichael",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7m148vZDwJA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331e9d83850e156c9fff593/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lauryn-Hill-Ex-Factor.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Lauryn_Hill-Ex-Factor_1998.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,34,OutKast,“SpottieOttieDopaliscious” (1998),LaFace / Arista,"LaFace / Arista If “SpottieOttieDopaliscious” sounds like a fantasy of a night out at the club, that’s because it is. Andre 3000 wrote his verse about a night he almost went to Charles’ Disco as a teenager, but found himself too drunk to walk in the door—“So all the stuff I said after that,” he told an interviewer later, “was made up.” The production has the wooziness of a dream or a memory half recollected from inebriation: humid wah-wah guitar, a reggae-ish rhythm section that ambles along with no particular place to be. And then there’s the horn line, one of the greatest instrumental hooks in pop history, stretching out across eight full bars, both languid and triumphant. Andre and Big Boi deliver their verses like they’re talking to you from across the pool table, more spoken word than rap. In the former’s, revelry erupts suddenly into violence, possibly fatal; in the latter’s, the decision to grind up against a stranger leads eventually to unexpected fatherhood. The club becomes a kind of crucible, not just a venue for drinking and dancing, but a place where the twin possibilities of death and new life lurk in the background of every scene. —Andy Cush",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXmqauitBkM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331ea6dafa92f85cc3e4f5a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/OutKast-SpottieOttieDopaliscious.jpg,/dataset/artwork/OutKast-SpottieOttieDopaliscious_1998.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,33,Alanis Morissette,“You Oughta Know” (1995),Maverick / Reprise,"Maverick / Reprise In 1995, a 21-year-old Alanis Morissette shunned the bubbly sound that had made her a pop star in Canada and released the incendiary kiss-off “You Oughta Know.” Long before Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo angrily called out their exes in song, Morissette explored the rage she felt when her partner unceremoniously tossed her aside. If she didn’t get to escape her feelings, neither would he. Moving from a fugue-like calm to detailed accusations over a roving bass line and refracted guitar, Morissette built catharsis out of her pricklier emotions and helped usher in an era of women songwriters who fervently hungered to be themselves. The song dropped like a lit match on parched earth, becoming the first of three hit singles from her breakout album, Jagged Little Pill. Morissette’s fury became a wildfire, and listeners heard themselves in the burn. –Amanda Wicks",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPcyTyilmYY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331eab4e02a17d9175e55bb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Alanis-Morissette-You-Oughta-Know.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Alanis_Morissette-You_Oughta_Know_1995.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,32,TLC,“No Scrubs” (1999),LaFace / Arista,"LaFace / Arista “No Scrubs” is a cold-hearted diss, but it’s also a song about putting your foot down and finally valuing your self-worth. It would be mean if it wasn’t so funny, especially when they nail the specifics on the bridge: Guys that don’t have a car should keep it stepping, and if your mom is your roommate don’t even try to waste their time. Most of all, it sounds beautiful: Chili’s strong and sweet lead vocals, the angelic background harmonies, the futuristic flourishes of the instrumental, Left Eye’s robotic raps preserved in arguably the definitive Hype Williams music video. It remains the holy grail of deadbeat boyfriend ethers, a sentiment frequently captured but not with the balance of theatrics and truth that TLC had down pat. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrLequ6dUdM&ab_channel=TLCVEVO,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331eb73800c1a0f8721bb07/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/TLC-No-Scrubs.jpg,/dataset/artwork/TLC-No_Scrubs_1999.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,31,Nine Inch Nails,“Closer” (1994),Nothing / TVT / Interscope / Atlantic,"Nothing / TVT / Interscope / Atlantic Hissing “I want to fuck you like an animal” was shocking enough to become a sexily confrontational mantra or a sign of societal decay, depending on who was doing the listening. The second single from The Downward Spiral launched Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails into a new tier of notoriety, a couple of years after Pretty Hate Machine had established him as the aggro prince of industrial rock. Singing from the raw and dangerous perspective of a self-hating obsessive, set to bone-rattling beats that sounded like they were recorded in some grimy sex dungeon, Reznor sounded like he was both tortured and doing the torturing. It was accentuated by a hardcore music video stocked with unsettling imagery like Reznor done up in S&M gear and a very anxious monkey tied to a cross. Still Nine Inch Nails’ most popular song, an enduring strip club anthem for three decades, and a weird one to do at karaoke, “Closer” is the sound of self-loathing as a twisted kind of love letter. –Evie Nagy",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccY25Cb3im0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331ebb8afa92f85cc3e4f5c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Nine-Inch-Nails-Closer.png,/dataset/artwork/Nine_Inch_Nails-Closer_1994.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,30,Brandy / Monica,“The Boy Is Mine” (1998),Atlantic,"Atlantic Brandy laid down her feathery sweet vocals in California, while Monica recorded her tough and soulful melodies in Atlanta. Some have said it’s because their voices weren’t meshing; others have said it’s because they couldn’t stand each other. That they’ve only sung the soap opera-ready R&B classic once together live—on that same night Monica punched Brandy in the face—is reason enough to go with the latter. “The Boy Is Mine” has a simple driving idea: Brandy and Monica have found out that they are dating the same man. It’s fiction, but as they trade stingy jabs, that line between reality and story is blurred, and the way Brandy airily coos “He said without me, he couldn’t make it” probably hurts more than any punch could. Rodney Jerkins’ beat is the perfect backdrop, a harp buildup that could heighten any melodrama and a shimmering and shaking feel that gives the song more edge than it already has. Neither Brandy or Monica outshine each other, as their voices line up like two puzzle pieces. It’s one of the great duets of our time, even if they couldn’t stand each other. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSIOp_K5GMw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331ec1d3850e156c9fff595/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Brandy-Monica-The-Boy-Is-Mine.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Brandy__Monica-The_Boy_Is_Mine_1998.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,29,Massive Attack,“Teardrop” (1998),Circa / Virgin,"Circa / Virgin “Teardrop,” the centerpiece of Massive Attack’s Mezzanine, is themed around water and feels made of it—to this day, downtempo artists are still searching for its depths. The instrumental is narcotic but simple: two bars of harpsichord that vary by one note, sustained piano chords, percussion ticking like a hypnotist’s pendulum. Guest vocalist Elizabeth Fraser’s voice moves like liquid, too, high notes evaporating and melisma cascading like a waterfall. She realized only after recording that she’d written the lyrics for former partner Jeff Buckley, who died when she was recording the song. Those lyrics are a series of oblique what-ifs, meditations on the ideal love she never achieved. She sings her regrets into the waiting abyss. –Katherine St. Asaph",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7K72X4eo_s,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331eccc39e4feaad8560c7c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Massive-Attack-Teardrop.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Massive_Attack-Teardrop_1998.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,28,Britney Spears,“...Baby One More Time” (1998),Jive,"Jive Britney Spears is so thoroughly woven into our cultural fabric—her rise, fall, revival, restriction, and liberation—that you forget she once needed to introduce herself. Her origin story is the stuff of legend: A driven Louisiana teenager met an enigmatic Swede who had written hits for the Backstreet Boys and Robyn. She flew to Stockholm and purposefully stayed up too late the night before recording her vocals, making her voice, as she once put it, “rusty.” Then Spears and Max Martin entered the studio and reshaped the next quarter-century of pop music, like a dam redirecting a river’s flow. “...Baby One More Time” is the dam, a structure crackling with energy. Like so many great pop songs, it taunts the listener by conflating the romantic and the religious: confession, belief, begging for a sign. The spiritual desperation, alongside Martin’s precise melodic techniques, is what makes a high school crush feel like life or death. Would-be stars and ambitious producers have been chasing that transgressive thrill for decades, but it’s tough to top the original sin. –Jamieson Cox",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-u5WLJ9Yk4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331ed2ef2e57bfbb7050048/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Britney-Spears-Baby-One-More-Time.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Britney_Spears-Baby_One_More_Time_1998.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,27,Dr. Dre,“Nuthin’ But a ‘G’ Thang” [ft. Snoop Dogg] (1992),Death Row / Interscope,"Death Row / Interscope Rappers don’t ask for permission when they’re about to fundamentally change the course of pop culture. N.W.A. certainly didn’t with Straight Outta Compton, and yet Snoop Doggy Dogg and Dr. Dre began “Nuthin’ But a ‘G’ Thang” ready to make an entrance and politely requesting that you give them a little space before they freed hip-hop from two decades of tyrannical East Coast rule. Over the most luxurious production ever heard on a rap record to that point, the duo trade lines like they’re just hanging by the grill at a neighborhood cookout; no human being has ever sounded cooler simply spelling his own name. But by the first chorus, Snoop and Dre assume you’re down enough to understand what this and that are like, and if not… just chill to the next episode, because there will be plenty more. Snoop and Dre no longer have to ask us to let us in our homes; it’s been thirty years since “Nuthin But a ‘G’ Thang” and they’ve never left. –Ian Cohen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0F0CAEoF4XM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331ed89e02a17d9175e55be/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Dr-Dre-Nuthin-But-a-G-Thang.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Dr_Dre-Nuthin_But_a_G_Thang_ft_Snoop_Dogg_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,26,Ginuwine,“Pony” (1996),550 / Epic,"550 / Epic “Pony” has got all the makings of a classic, sure: It’s one of Timbaland’s first major hits, its croaking vocoded “yea, yea, hell yea” beat is immediately recognizable at the club, and there are even ready-made dance cues. But there’s so much more. It can be a reach to project yourself into the panty-dropper protagonist of a sexy club anthem, but Ginuwine’s unbridled commitment to the bit (saddles! jockeys! ponytails!) has an earnestness to it, empowering even the least likely cowboy to jump on it. “Pony” is both the soundtrack to Channing Tatum’s Magic Mike dancing at his absolute peak, and a down and out Magic Mike cracking a smile and dancing alone in his wood workshop. After all, beyond the bit, “Pony” earns its enduring reign by being a genuinely fun and hot track to grind to—whether in the club or by yourself. –NM Mashurov",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbnoG2dsUk0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331ee47e02a17d9175e55c0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Ginuwine-Pony.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Ginuwine-Pony_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,25,A Tribe Called Quest,“Can I Kick It?” (1990),Jive,"Jive By the time he was 16, Q-Tip had produced much of what would become People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm, the debut album that would earn him and his partners in A Tribe Called Quest the first 5-mic rating from ’90s rap bible The Source. The process was painstaking—he spent hours isolating samples on pause tapes, drawing from his father’s extensive record collection—but the beats it yielded were loose, uncluttered, inevitable. “Can I Kick It?” turns the bassline from Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side” into a looping shrug, which in turn allows him and Phife Dawg to dial the early Native Tongues ethos down from sunny but quasi-militant to bemused. The call-and-response hook reveals the group as adolescent observers of hip-hop’s first decade, but would itself be riffed on by innumerable rappers to come. –Paul A. Thompson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3pyCGnZzYA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6331ee9ce02a17d9175e55c2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/A-Tribe-Called-Quest-Can-I-Kick-It.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/A_Tribe_Called_Quest-Can_I_Kick_It_1990.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,24,Radiohead,“Paranoid Android” (1997),Parlophone / Capitol,"Parlophone / Capitol “Paranoid Android” belongs to the class of epic rock songs that overexert themselves again and again, fully aware of their own absurdity: Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” The Beatles’ “A Day in the Life,” David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.” Recorded in the mansion of a former James Bond girl and pared down from a 14-minute original version, Radiohead’s through-composed theatrical extravaganza changes keys repeatedly, whips out multiple guitar solos, and brings in a choral arrangement while waxing about governmental control. It’s beyond indulgent, a perfect entry into the category of songs that inspire you to sing along like you’re Wayne and Garth. –Nina Corcoran",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thyJOnasHVE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633200d2e02a17d9175e55c6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Radiohead-Paranoid-Android.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Radiohead-Paranoid_Android_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,23,Cher,“Believe” (1998),Warner Bros.,"Warner Bros. “Believe” marked a new era, for Cher and for popular music. For the first time on Top 40 radio, Auto-Tune—producers’ open-secret weapon for perfecting vocal takes—was laid bare for all to hear, on purpose, a reversal of its typical clandestine use. As she sings about trying to regain her footing after heartbreak, Cher’s voice warbles with synthetic oscillation. Warner executives initially scoffed at the effect, but “Believe” became one of Cher’s biggest career hits, reaching No. 1 in the United States and more than a dozen other countries. Just as the song’s production revealed the guts of its operation, Cher’s wide-open vocals exposed her own emotional vulnerability. She isn’t too good to admit she’s not hurting, and she powers through toward salvation, declaring “I don’t need you anymore” as the song hits its peak. And coming from Cher—a confident, charismatic, and massively talented woman who’d been subjected to frequent public ridicule over her personal life—”Believe” took on an extra survivalist edge. Nearly 25 years later, it still dazzles in its defiance. –Allison Hussey",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZXRV4MezEw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63320336800c1a0f8721bb0c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Cher-Believe.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Cher-Believe_1998.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,22,The Breeders,“Cannonball” (1993),4AD / Elektra,"4AD / Elektra When this song cracked the Top 50 in 1993, it made obvious what was always true: Kim Deal, heretofore regarded as a slacker from Dayton, Ohio who played the bass for the Pixies, can write explosive pop songs. On “Cannonball,” the bass is front and center; loud, noisy, mean. Over top of that squall, she cackles into the mic with the bravado and control of a punk rock Mozart. She sings about bongs and goes sadomasochist mode by implying that she’s a little bit of a libertine. It’s sexy, it rocks, and it makes you want to light a car on fire (with your lover). –Sophie Kemp",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxvkI9MTQw4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633203bcd997a1f3e8a0cee4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/The-Breeders-Cannonball.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Breeders-Cannonball_1993.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,21,Beastie Boys,“Sabotage” (1994),Grand Royal,"Grand Royal As Beastie Boys tracked Ill Communication, MCA, Mike D, and Ad-Rock became a scourge to their engineer and co-producer. The tormented Mario Caldato Jr. begged the band to finish the album—to finish a song, for fuck’s sake—and occasionally succumbed to tantrums that involved chucking equipment out of the studio window. “Sabotage,” Beasties’ pummeling, era-defining return to heaviness, was aimed at Caldato (mostly in jest). The trio is at its most indignant on “Sabotage,” with Ad-Rock in particular shrieking like a punk rock Joe Pesci. It may have been a harbinger of much-maligned late ’90s rap-rock—Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, and Papa Roach all released debut LPs in the ensuing years—but “Sabotage” was also an undeniable triumph in the band’s own legacy. The song’s wheezy, robotic scratching foreshadowed the hyper-digital funk of “Intergalactic,” while its modest structure and blaring guitar signaled a return to form. After years of crafting sample-jammed hip-hop, Beastie Boys could still kick the door in, blow out your speakers, and piss off your parents. –Madison Bloom",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qORYO0atB6g,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633205033850e156c9fff599/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Beastie-Boys-Sabotage.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Beastie_Boys-Sabotage_1994.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,20,Underworld,“Born Slippy (Nuxx)” (1996),Junior’s Own Boy / Wax Trax! / TVT,"Junior’s Own Boy / Wax Trax! / TVT The lyrics are an alcoholic cry for help, and much of the song plays out to the isolated thud of a kick drum. Yet “Born Slippy (Nuxx),” a non-album single from improv-heavy UK electronic outfit Underworld, became a sacred text for ravers in the ’90s, not to mention a musical lynchpin to Trainspotting, one of the decade’s most revered movies. These kinds of contradictions are ingrained in the wide-screen techno masterpiece, which combines the most perfectly uplifting three-note keyboard riff with descent-into-hell drums, and stream-of-consciousness verses with a two-word refrain that became shout-along iconic. “Born Slippy (Nuxx)” was one of the most extreme hit songs of what was a pretty weird decade for music, a tone poem of confusion and distress that soundtracked some of the ’90s’ happiest memories, and a reminder that sometimes even the most outlandish electronic producers can stumble across pop gold. –Ben Cardew",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiMrrleH_hI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633205853850e156c9fff59b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Underworld-Born-Slippy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Underworld-Born_Slippy_Nuxx_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,19,Sinéad O’Connor,“Nothing Compares 2 U” (1990),Chrysalis,"Chrysalis As written by Prince, “Nothing Compares 2 U” was already a heartbreak anthem for the ages. The lyrics incorporate enough specifics to conjure the obsessive banalities of a breakup (“It’s been seven hours and 15 days…”) and enough sweeping generalities to express its primal significance. The sparse arrangement is full of space and catharsis, and the chorus melody manages incredible catchiness while also mimicking the fragmented speech of a sobbing breakdown. But nobody could sing it like Sinéad O’Connor, who, in her early 20s, seemed to understand a more existential question at the song’s core. Consider the way she lingers in the unresolved final note of the chorus, twisting and holding the word “you” as if beckoning it from somewhere dark and far away. Or what about the way she changes one line to address a male object of affection but specifically leaves in a very Princian utterance of “mama” during the final verse? It’s around this moment in the music video—a close-up of her face that would define O’Connor’s mainstream image and help sweep the song to No. 1—that her eyes begin welling with tears, and you start wondering if she really is just singing about a breakup, or something else. In retrospect, O’Connor has explained the tears were unplanned, brought on by thoughts of her mother, an abusive figure who tormented the Irish singer throughout her childhood and died in a car accident just before her career took off. Their relationship was complicated, and the song—whose last verse ends with an unanswered plea to “give it another try”—closes without much of a glimmer of hope. There could be no better introduction to O’Connor’s raw talent: a poet of conflicted emotions, using her voice to express feelings that exist between and beyond words. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-EF60neguk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633206181dccce609e416329/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Sinead-OConnor-Nothing-Compares-2-U.png,/dataset/artwork/Sinad_OConnor-Nothing_Compares_2_U_1990.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,18,Pulp,“Common People” (1995),Island,"Island Formed in 1978 by a couple of Sheffield teens, Pulp slogged through lineup and label shifts without commercial success—until the Britpop explosion of the mid-’90s provided a new world stage for their fifth album Different Class and its career-defining lead single. A much sexier, stirring, and more appropriately cynical UK counterpart to “Uptown Girl,” “Common People” was the story of ceaselessly magnetic frontman Jarvis Cocker’s art school dabbling with a rich girl who was excited by the idea of slumming it with poor folks like himself. He humored her—and was happy to sleep with her—but the song was a harsh criticism of class tourism by people who would never know poverty, a populist anthem built for hours of sweaty dancing regardless of socio-economic status. –Evie Nagy",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuTMWgOduFM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6332083a0e6417b8aac61707/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Pulp-Common-People.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Pulp-Common_People_1995.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,17,Portishead,“Sour Times” (1994),Go! Discs / London,"Go! Discs / London Portishead are masters of digital psychedelia, of artificially eroded samples and breaks that encase fiery yearning in soothing layers of ice. Situated in the unbridgeable gap between fantasy and fate, the Bristol trio endures as a monument to our own sublimated desires. “Sour Times” spins this existential despair into a fatalistic noir dreamscape. Vocalist Beth Gibbons tosses and turns over a sinuous bassline and guitarist Adrian Utley’s best Morricone riffing, bathing in the cursed knowledge of a lost love’s inescapable power. The song draws its hypnotic majesty from the thrill of Gibbons’ graceful rage, poised between succumbing to an eternity of longing and spitting venom in destiny’s eye. It’s a haunted waltz for star-crossed androids, damned to soundtrack disconnected hearts far beyond the singularity. –Phillipe Roberts",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=un8EW82GwKc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633208b2e02a17d9175e55ca/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Portishead-Sour-Times.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Portishead-Sour_Times_1994.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,16,George Michael,“Freedom! ’90” (1990),Columbia,"Columbia George Michael’s subdued and pensive sophomore solo album Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1 showed a different side of the frequently bubblegummy superstar, and “Freedom! ’90” laid bare its mission statement: Sometimes the clothes do not make the man. Perhaps to the chagrin of every hungry schoolgirl, the star’s image never graced Prejudice, neither on its cover nor its videos. The music was to speak for itself, and on “Freedom!” it did so using a “Funky Drummer” break and Madchester-y piano riff. The song’s strut mounts until an ebullient choir detonates, repeatedly harmonizing the song’s title. That freedom was to be achieved, in Michael’s estimation, via image revision: “There’s something deep inside of me/There’s someone else I’ve got to be.” Attempting to conjure authenticity in show business is about as easy as declaring yourself vegan while only eating at steakhouses, but “Freedom!” is about concept, not practice, suggesting the journey to happiness rather than the destination. For the classic video, Michael enlisted a slate of high-profile lip-syncers—Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington, Linda Evangelista—who helped provide beautiful scenery on his quest. –Rich Juzwiak",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diYAc7gB-0A,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63320902800c1a0f8721bb0f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/George-Michael-Freedom-90.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/George_Michael-Freedom_90_1990.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,15,Mobb Deep,"“Shook Ones, Pt. II” (1995)",Loud / RCA,"Loud / RCA “Shook Ones, Pt. II” is so rich a text that isolated elements of it communicate more style and biographical depth than nearly any other introduction in hip-hop’s history. There’s the Herbie Hancock piano that Havoc morphed, in his mother’s apartment, into one of rap’s most unmistakable basslines; there’s Prodigy’s opening ad-lib—“To all the killers and the hundred-dollar billers/For real niggas who ain’t got no feelings”—and what it suggests is being elided in his verses; there are those hi-hats, which people believed for years to be the sound of stoves in the Queensbridge Houses sputtering to life. Even the mesmerizing siren loop tells a story: It’s lifted from a song by Quincy Jones, whom Prodigy’s grandfather taught to read music. And still, all of this becomes secondary when P raps—about the burn of bullets in flesh, about hoping to die in a place like Queensbridge, and about how, if you don’t watch yourself, “the next rhyme I write might be about you.” –Paul A. Thompson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nBikBBDeBM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63320986e02a17d9175e55cc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mobb-Deep-Shook-Ones-Pt-II.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Mobb_Deep-Shook_Ones_Pt_II_1995.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,14,Fiona Apple,“Criminal” (1996),Epic,"Epic “I’ve been a bad, bad girl,” Fiona Apple purrs like a vixen in an old man’s sex dream, knowing that at 18, a woman is young enough to get preyed on and old enough to get pilloried. “Criminal” is her most popular song, potent like a spiked drink, selling a leering public a sexual fantasy while pointing out the fucked-up dynamics underneath. A piano trembles as if announcing the sudden onset of an earthquake, and Apple confesses to the sin of being “careless with a delicate man,” her voice dripping with irony. Men are so tough until it’s time to take responsibility, then they’re helpless and angry like children. But Fiona howls out for punishment, sounding irresistible while fessing up to her crime. As a new generation of girls likes to say: I support women’s rights, but more importantly, I support women’s wrongs. –Cat Zhang",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFOzayDpWoI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63320a34d1c5ef3d2b693722/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Fiona-Apple-Criminal.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fiona_Apple-Criminal_1996.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,13,Mazzy Star,“Fade Into You” (1993),Capitol,"Capitol A slow waltz beat, a few Dylan chords, a pedal steel like a lamp from an attic window, and Hope Sandoval’s downy voice, full of melting vowels and pregnant pauses: “Fade Into You” taps into the sweet exhaustion at the end of it all. Marketed as a make-out anthem off Mazzy Star’s major-label debut, it was the mainstream peak for this dream-pop duo that evolved out of psych group Opal, and the platonic ideal of a melancholic slow-dance song. Even as its dusky, enveloping aura echos through Beach House’s deliberate dream pop, Taylor Swift’s glittering indie folktales, and Faye Webster’s weary steel-guitar slides, the ache of the original goes unanswered: The space between us is small yet enormous, the only way forward straight into oblivion. –Anna Gaca",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B327Xt2M3uo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63320a91d997a1f3e8a0cee7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mazzy-Star-Fade-Into-You.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Mazzy_Star-Fade_Into_You_1993.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,12,Lauryn Hill,“Doo Wop (That Thing)” (1998),Ruffhouse / Columbia,"Ruffhouse / Columbia Lauryn Hill is tender and fierce on her first solo single, offering empathy and stern counsel to women and men in troubled relationships. On Fugees songs she’d often harden her flows (or “add a ‘motherfucker’ so you ignant niggas hear me,” as she puts it on “Zealots”), but here and throughout The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, her rapping is conversational, assured. Motown soul, gospel, and hip-hop converge as she glides over bright horns, crisp drums, and a jingly key riff. She sounds bent on channeling every sound and inspiration she’s ever had, harmonizing, scatting, rapping, and humming. The music video features a split-screen motif that pictures her as both modern and retro, but the real takeaway from this song is that she is simply herself. –Stephen Kearse",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6QKqFPRZSA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63320af58f0d7ac40b58df10/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lauryn-Hill-Doo-Wop.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Lauryn_Hill-Doo_Wop_That_Thing_1998.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,11,Daft Punk,“Around the World” (1997),Virgin,"Virgin The music doesn’t begin so much as surface, as if “Around the World” arises from some great depth, that lowpass filter cutting out the high-end without obscuring the “fundamental” signal. And then the song fully emerges, the bass suddenly going like something stolen out from under Bernard Edwards’ fingertips, the hi-hat doing that bright, open chhh business on the offbeat. The up-from-underground stuff turns out to have been sort of poignantly appropriate. “Around the World” was an exhumation, disco as reworked in post-industrial Chicago and Detroit, then adapted anew by two blessed weirdos from Montmartre, Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo. Crucially, Daft Punk retained from Chicago house and Detroit techno the artists’ sense that they were bound up in the larger social dynamics of urban de-industrialization. DJs saw themselves as conduits for the music, not its authors. Daft Punk obscured their identities, just as Juan Atkins and Derrick May did before them. They dressed like anonymous robots because, as Homem-Christo has said, “The energy people send to the stage bounces back and everybody has a good time together rather than focusing on us.” Disco had returned with a radical proposition, hauled up from the underground without, you might say, affecting the fundamental: that the music belongs to the people dancing to it. –Tommy Craggs",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0HSD_i2DvA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63320bb58f0d7ac40b58df12/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Daft-Punk-Around-the-World.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Daft_Punk-Around_the_World_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,10,Bikini Kill,“Rebel Girl” (1992),Kill Rock Stars,"Kill Rock Stars “Rebel Girl” is a call to arms. Fuck the patriarchy! Ride a motorcycle in a minidress! Fall in love with your best friend—not metaphorically, literally kiss her on the lips! Set alight by snarls of guitars and bass, the song tells us that love is a revelation, an invitation to worship your friends, to see them as beautiful, to shout from the streets that girls matter. That we’re angry. That we’re all geniuses. By now, “Rebel Girl” has soundtracked personal revolutions across several generations, from Gen Xer chicks on college campuses to Zoomer girls reading Rookie in their high school computer labs. It’s so impactful because Kathleen Hanna sang so bluntly about loving so fiercely. And loving someone is one of the punkest things a person can do. –Sophie Kemp",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOCWma5vOiQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63320bfd3850e156c9fff59d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bikini-Kill-Rebel-Girl.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Bikini_Kill-Rebel_Girl_1992.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,9,The Notorious B.I.G.,“Juicy” (1994),Bad Boy / Arista,"Bad Boy / Arista Christopher Wallace’s outsized talent as a GOAT-level lyricist is often discussed in terms of his deft wordplay and sophisticated rhyme schemes. From his first hit ""Juicy,"" however, it was also evident how gifted he was as a storyteller. Coalescing all of his prodigious skills over sampled swaths of Mtume’s early-’80s R&B smash “Juicy Fruit,” the song is ostensibly an autobiographical rags-to-riches tale. But B.I.G.’s attention to detail enables the childhood reminiscences (“Way back, when I had the red and black lumberjack/With the hat to match”) and aspirational goals (“Livin’ life without fear/Puttin’ five carats in my baby girl’s ear”) to transcend individual experience. The song endures largely by being eminently human and relatable—whether, like Wallace, you are or ever were young, doubted, and Black, or if you simply embrace the belief that one’s hope for the future, no matter how unlikely, is never merely a dream. –Jeff Mao",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JZom_gVfuw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63320c70d997a1f3e8a0cee9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Notorious-BIG-Juicy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Notorious_BIG-Juicy_1994.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,8,Destiny’s Child,“Say My Name” (1999),Columbia,"Columbia Nearly two decades before Beyoncé delivered Lemonade, her heart-wrenching opus on self-transformation and forgiveness in the wake of a partner’s infidelity, she led Destiny’s Child’s glossy, unflinching interrogation of an untrustworthy lover with “Say My Name.” Beyoncé’s staccato, kinetic delivery—which influenced R&B vocal cadences for years to come—is effortless and unrelenting, underscoring her assertion that she is not one to be played. The song is all bravado, and circles a request so elemental that it shouldn’t even have to be asked: to be remembered, and treated with care and respect by someone who loves you. That tension between the audacity of Destiny Child’s performance and the vulnerability of their titular ask imbues the song with an incomparable poignancy. –Vrinda Jagota",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQgd6MccwZc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63320d0f52d4bd45efccbe39/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Destinys-Child-Say-My-Name.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Destinys_Child-Say_My_Name_1999.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,7,Aphex Twin,“Windowlicker” (1997),Warp / Sire,"Warp / Sire With each new development in electronic music, Aphex Twin’s “Windowlicker” seems that much more prescient. A decade ago, one heard in it the seeds of later developments in dubstep and the rubbery digital manipulations of the Brainfeeder axis, and 10 years on, it sounds like a foundational text for the broader hyperpop universe. This is what happens when quantum-level auditory science meets plain old musical inspiration. At the time of its release in 1999, “Windowlicker” was understood as a surprising nod toward pop. Though Richard James’ work was often accessible and he had remixed artists including Jesus Jones and Saint Etienne, nothing he’d done sounded as straightforward and approachable as the opening moments of “Windowlicker.” The track’s early section, with its eerie warped vocals and hypnotic descending progression, is so indelible you could even imagine hearing it in the wild on the radio. (And so it was in the UK, where the single hit the top 20, powered by the strange and disturbing video by Chris Cunningham.) But embedded within the slippery groove and sighing voices is a feeling that something’s a little off, a notion reinforced when it abruptly shifts tempos and descends into blistering noise. James specializes in music that’s both beautiful and unsettling, and “Windowlicker” reads like a crackly dispatch from the floor of the uncanny valley, where familiar pleasures are there to be enjoyed but—also never quite what they seem. –Mark Richardson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JDiGU2Z5Wc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63320d670e6417b8aac61709/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Aphex-Twin-Windowlicker.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Aphex_Twin-Windowlicker_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,6,Nirvana,“Smells Like Teen Spirit” (1991),DGC,"DGC As much as anything, it was a breakup song. “Who will be the king and queen of the outcasted teens?” Kurt Cobain asked in a discarded lyric from an early draft of “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” One of his biographers is pretty sure he was talking about Tobi Vail, the “over-bored” and “self-assured” riot grrrl vanguardist. The two of them had had a brief romance, which she ended, and Cobain responded in the manner of so many thwarted, sensitive young men, turning rejection into a synecdoche for the oppressions of life writ large. He filled up his journal with violent fantasies and weird drawings. His friends started to worry. And somewhere in this burst of energy, Cobain wrote the perfect pop song. A denial, a denial, a denial. It hangs over “Teen Spirit” like bad weather. Call it the teenage boy’s blues—a young dude’s awakening to the fact that he is caught in the crosswinds of, like, the whole system, man, that panders to him, that fires his imagination, and then constrains him, tells him to chill. Very often it’s sex being denied. Sometimes it’s a car, which is just sex at one remove. Maybe it’s money or a fix. Whatever their subject, the teenage boy’s blues have been the very stuff of pop music since around the time Chuck Berry went motorvatin’ after that Coupe DeVille. The result has been a great deal of regrettable pop songs, but on occasion there have been transcendent exceptions, like the lead single off of Nirvana’s Nevermind. Above all it rips, even still, from that first Gap Band flam to the last, exhausted denial. It’s got a screamy part and a soft part, and right at the point where you expect the song to fuzz out and go totally to shit, there’s a crisp guitar solo that restates the vocal melody from the verse, almost as if Cobain were satirizing himself and having a damn good time of it. Well, he probably was, right? Self-doubt is everything in “Teen Spirit.” The song famously stands outside itself, mocking its own postures, hating its own apathy and irresolution, anthemic in its insistence on being unanthemic: “Oh well, whatever, never mind.” I remember the girls in middle school who had Cobain’s photo taped up in their lockers and thinking how funny it was that they were treating this king of the outcasts like something they'd clipped out of Tiger Beat. But of course they were the ones who were actually seeing Cobain clearly—that underneath all the marketing and self-mythology and fraying cardigans there was a true pop idol, beautiful, androgynous, too wounded to be threatening, a troubadour of their uncertainty. He sang as if he were owed something. That’s the teenage boy’s blues. In the next breath he wondered if he was worthy of any of it. That’s a blues for everyone else. –Tommy Craggs",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTWKbfoikeg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63320dc990c94c777c070eab/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Nirvana-Smells-Like-Teen-Spirit.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nirvana-Smells_Like_Teen_Spirit_1991.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,5,Missy Elliott,“The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)” (1997),Goldmind / Elektra,"Goldmind / Elektra “The Rain” starts with an exhale and a yawn, fitting for a song so playfully trippy it sounds as if it came to Missy and Timbaland in a dream, or maybe after a huge bong hit. Some of the most enduring moments from Supa Dupa Fly—an album that was completed in just two weeks—still sound like studio freestyles, two buddies shooting the shit and making each other giggle in the long spaces between songwriting. The song arrived in the wake of Biggie and Tupac’s murders, when hip-hop needed a lift, and it both positioned Missy and Timbaland as industry lodestars and solidified their sound: so tight, as she raps in the song, that you get their styles tangled. Saying “vroom” and “fricky fricky” over that cricket-propelled, Ann Peebles-sampling beat never sounded too silly; it simply sounded correct. –Emma Carmichael",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHcyJPTTn9w,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63320e9f52d4bd45efccbe3b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Missy-Elliott-The-Rain.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Missy_Elliott-The_Rain_Supa_Dupa_Fly_1997.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,4,Liz Phair,“Fuck and Run” (1993),Matador,"Matador “Fuck and Run” begins like an alarm clock, eviscerating Saturday night. A woman wakes up several beds deep in a spree of Sisyphean sex and almost immediately starts to spiral. She sings about fucking and actually calls it “fucking,” too. It is impossible to understate how big of a deal this was. Liz Phair engineered the single to elevate what she called her “awkward morning-after insecurities” to rock airplay, then rock canon. Her guitar work, sometimes criticized as unstudied, is beefed-up, radio-sleek. Her vocal, though flat and casual, is deliberate; she yanks the melody up to show frustration, mumbles out the vulnerable parts. It takes work to sound this unrehearsed. Any potential mopiness is undercut by Phair’s goofy humor, like how she backs her forever-alone plaints with jingle bells. And any attempt to make “Fuck and Run” into a big statement on hookup culture is undercut by the whole song being a projection in the woman’s head: The guy is just a syllable in her self-fulfilling prophecy; the one running is her. –Katherine St. Asaph",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znF6o0ME0-o,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63320eefe02a17d9175e55ce/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Liz-Phair-Fuck-and-Run.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Liz_Phair-Fuck_and_Run_1993.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,3,Aaliyah,“Are You That Somebody?” (1998),Blackground / Atlantic,"Blackground / Atlantic “Are You That Somebody?” was the song that consolidated Aaliyah’s image as a refined and unapologetic streetwise princess, supplanting the more traditional R&B sound of her work with R. Kelly in favor of something that nudged toward hip-hop soul. The material Timbaland and Missy Elliott created for the singer didn’t require her to scream or over-embellish, but rather forced you to listen harder: Aaliyah’s vocals grew more compelling the softer and more subtle they became. She could grab attention simply by being unusually calm, the gleaming center of a rhythm track that telegraphed emotional chaos in its fits and starts. Learning from catastrophic sample lawsuits against De La Soul in 1989 and Biz Markie in 1991, Timbaland became one of the first producers to create signature hip-hop loops out of obscure sound-effect records and found noises. The baby gurgles that punctuate the song’s stuttering tango are first ridden by Tim’s gravelly vocal affirmations, then by Aaliyah’s hushed, reedy croon. The hybridized sound—intentionally odd, jittery tempos, backed by syncopated commentary—was groundbreaking and reflective of something more: the building of a persona around Aaliyah with an even greater mystique than that Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis had created for Janet Jackson in the years prior. –Carol Cooper",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTMuqL0qx08,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/63320f86e02a17d9175e55d0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Aaliyah-Are-You-That-Somebody.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Aaliyah-Are_You_That_Somebody_1998.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,2,Björk,“Hyperballad” (1995),One Little Independent,"One Little Independent The woman at the center of Björk’s “Hyperballad” has a ritual that keeps her alive. She begins each day by sneaking away from her sleeping partner to the edge of the mountaintop she calls home, where she then tosses random detritus down, down, down until they break into pieces. Sometimes, she imagines what her “body would sound like/Slamming against those rocks,” curious if she would face her demise with eyes open or shut. Earth itself seems to awaken as this haunting fable unwinds, from brushed drums that evoke the sound of wind rustling a field to orchestration as slight and sharp as distant crickets. An acid house superbloom of a chorus bursts from this landscape, and the cliffside ritual is revealed as an act of preservation. “I go through all this/Before you wake up/So I can feel happier/To be safe up here with you,” Björk sings. It’s a track built on polarities: self-obliteration that inspires collective harmony; guttural, thrillingly human vocals set against synthetic sounds; melancholy and exaltation in coexistence. Paving the way for pop cathartics like Robyn, “Hyperballad” imagines a dancefloor as a place of refuge. When the time of transcendence ultimately arrives, Björk’s eyes are definitely open. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=te7PgEGj0z0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633210bd038c497e368dfa9a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Bjork-Hyperballad.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Bjrk-Hyperballad_1995.jpg
The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-songs-of-the-1990s/,1990s,decade,song,1,Mariah Carey,“Fantasy (Remix)” [ft. Ol’ Dirty Bastard] (1995),Columbia,"Columbia Leave it to Mariah Carey, the girl next door, to make pure lust sound so naive, so syrupy sweet, that it could be read as something pious to a passerby. Leave it to a diva at the height of her fame to describe being horny as feeling “kinda hectic inside,” and to articulate it by singing more dizzying runs than an amusement park’s worth of rides. It feels right that she wrote, produced, and recorded “Fantasy” in only two days, roughly the amount of time a person can live solely on the giddiness of a flirtation and the anticipation of an eventual release. Here’s what love at 26, the age at which she put out the song, could feel like. It’s what you want love to feel like for the rest of your life, too. Mariah’s ninth No. 1 came between hits from fellow icons Janet Jackson and Whitney Houston, outperforming both as a historical chart-topping record. “Fantasy” debuted at the top of the Hot 100, making Mariah the first woman to ever do so, and only the second artist to debut at No. 1 after Michael Jackson. Its foundation was a melding of genres—by reworking several elements from “Genius of Love,” the 1981 Tom Tom Club track that was already becoming a staple in rap sample libraries, she and co-producer Dave Hall suggested that pop music could be just as sly, reverent, experimental, and flip as hip-hop. And the remix, produced by Diddy and his Bad Boy collective, served as their proof of concept. By several accounts, it’s a miracle that the remix exists at all. At the time, Mariah’s infamously controlling label honcho husband, Tommy Mottola, 20 years her senior, had hoped to make a family-friendly balladeer out of the singer. He didn’t want her sullying her pristine image, never mind at the hands of a rapper who performed under the name Ol’ Dirty Bastard. (Later in life, the singer would open up about how she, a light-skinned Black woman, was marketed by her label in ways that felt out of her control.) But Mariah, a superfan of Wu-Tang’s 36 Chambers who was known to blast ODB on a pink boombox while riding around in her limo, insisted that the rapper be given free rein. It became a spectacle, involving exorbitant amounts of money at the time—$15,000 for a verse—and several very drunk studio sessions. And so ODB became the song’s ringmaster, opening with what would become one of the most recognizable callouts in block party history, ambling in and out of the song with a swaggering charm, inevitably swerving so hard that his drawl becomes a little bit country, a little bit rock’n’roll. It was chaos, it was genius, it made for a remix so successful that it ended up being responsible for half of the song’s insane sales. But the song also became something much more powerful for Mariah and those who would follow her: It was a declaration of independence, a reclamation of agency and identity, a blueprint for a new kind of pop song that would be replicated for decades to come. –Puja Patel",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tCTm5M3Cp8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/633211a0d997a1f3e8a0ceeb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Mariah-Carey-Fantasy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mariah_Carey-Fantasy_Remix_ft_Ol_Dirty_Bastard_1995.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,200,Malcolm McLaren,Duck Rock (1983),Charisma,"Charisma Malcolm McLaren was something of a pop music Zelig between 1974 and 1982—he managed the New York Dolls, assembled the Sex Pistols, launched Adam Ant, and then stole Ant’s band for Bow Wow Wow, which turned into an early MTV sensation. Inspired by a 1981 trip to New York, McLaren enlisted super-producer Trevor Horn and conceived of an album under his own name that would pay tribute to social music and dancing from around the globe. Hip-hop on record was still in its infancy, but McLaren made it the binding force of his album, hiring the World’s Famous Supreme Team (the crew behind one of the first hip-hop radio shows) to contribute vocals and scratches and serve as a kind of Greek chorus. In an era where the average hip-hop track still consisted of rapping over a warmed-over disco groove, McLaren was throwing South African guitar pop, salsa, new wave, and country & western music into the mix. Yes, Duck Rock is an album that we’d now call problematic, with uncredited borrowing from cultures that were not McLaren’s own and a few exoticizing lyrics from McLaren that make you cringe. But it was also a far-reaching pop music document that looked to a future when sounds and songs would zip around the planet and recombine into exciting new forms. –Mark Richardson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHouVlTqGj4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef5e9bcdabd30d61bcae7f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/200-Malcolm-McLaren-Duck-Rock.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Malcolm_McLaren-Duck_Rock_1983.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,199,Tenor Saw,Fever (1985),Blue Mountain,"Blue Mountain Though it omits some of his best work, including the all-time dancehall classic “Ring the Alarm,” Tenor Saw’s 1985 debut is rightly recognized as a cornerstone of the genre. Not only does this Sugar Minott-produced set deliver the best of Saw’s shallow catalog (the young singer died under mysterious circumstances in Texas only three years after its release), it captures the singular appeal of his spooky yet sonorous wail with songs that speak to each other in a minor-key language all their own. “Roll Call” encapsulates that appeal: Saw transposes the gospel imagery of “When the Saints Go Marching In” to the ghetto heaven of the dancehall, bringing a quasi-religious fervor to his soundsystem boasts. –Eddie “Stats” Houghton",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4HsiXKKKgQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef61c0e1189ea8598b3f6d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/199-Tenor-Saw-Fever.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tenor_Saw-Fever_1985.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,198,Mercyful Fate,Don’t Break the Oath (1984),Roadrunner,"Roadrunner The ’80s saw heavy metal engaged in a sort of arms race, as groups across the world set out to one-up each other in a quest to be the heaviest, the most technical, or the most extreme. Mercyful Fate were adept at all three. On Don’t Break the Oath, the Copenhagen quintet were drawing power from the rollicking tempos of hard rock, the neo-classical techniques of prog, and the brutish heaviness of UK standard bearers Venom. Then, on top of that, they threw in King Diamond, a genuine Satanist whose operatic vocals dripped with evil grandeur, but who was also capable of a pathos-laden wail curiously reminiscent of the Cure’s Robert Smith. Thanks to Diamond’s distinctive corpse paint, Mercyful Fate are often pigeonholed as a sort of proto-black metal band. But ultimately, Don’t Break the Oath isn’t great because it’s a roadmap to some future sound; this is ’80s metal in excelsis. –Louis Pattison",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2B3sJQAJFY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef63b0cdabd30d61bcae81/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/198-Mercyful-Fate-Don%25E2%2580%2599t-Break-the-Oath.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mercyful_Fate-Dont_Break_the_Oath_1984.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,197,Whodini,Escape (1984),Jive,"Jive Whodini’s Escape is a collection of raps delivered fiercely over beats that sound as huge as basketball echoes off a warehouse floor. After enlisting Run-D.M.C. producer Larry Smith, the New York group originally intended to make a rock-oriented rap album. But when Smith ended up throwing a guitar on Run-D.M.C.’s “Rock Box,” Whodini instead retreated into severely cropped drum sounds and synths to produce a rap/R&B hybrid that scraped against an outer emptiness. Synths boil and spark on the top of “Freaks Come Out at Night” like oil leaping in a pan. “Friends” is constantly worried by its underlying rhythms, drum machine sequences trembling across each other like spider legs. Escape is an album of compressed explosions; few rap records since have sounded so big with so little detail. –Brad Nelson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0PAjCjDxj8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef690c70cc063df76254e6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/197-Whodini-Escape.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Whodini-Escape_1984.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,196,Virgo,Virgo (1989),Radical,"Radical Born of Chicago’s burgeoning ’80s house music scene, Virgo’s only LP shares the dreamy yearnings of Mr. Fingers and Joe Smooth while using many of the same Roland drum machines and synthesizers that would define the era. It was largely written in seclusion during a burst of heady collaborative inspiration between producers Eric Lewis and Merwyn Sanders, and it both captures and transcends its moment. Tracks like “Ride” and “Going Thru Life” reach beyond the dancefloor, shimmering like mirages and glowing with an intimate warmth that would make most DJs blush. Virgo is understated throughout, which is perhaps one reason it was so widely slept-on in its time. “Deep” doesn’t begin to cut it: There isn’t a millimeter of wasted space, and each moment surges in confident, monastic introspection. The twisting basslines and searching drums—played by hand without sequencers—take on a human fragility. Listening to Virgo isn’t so much a flashback to Chicago’s house heyday as it is a portal to another dimension. –Daniel Martin-McCormick",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIRqZVtnryE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef69d5cdabd30d61bcae83/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/196-Virgo-Virgo.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Virgo-Virgo_1989.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,195,Cecil Taylor,For Olim (1987),Soul Note,"Soul Note This path-breaking sorcerer of the jazz piano richly deserved—but did not always receive—the support of club owners and record labels. But whenever Cecil Taylor found a supportive new home, he tended to make the most of it. Between 1984 and 1994, Soul Note recorded an unusually vast selection of Taylor’s groups, including the large-ensemble effort “Winged Serpent (Sliding Quadrants)” and a duo outing with percussion icon Max Roach. Yet the pinnacle is For Olim, an inspired live solo performance of potent improvisational intensity and compositional range. Percussive and experimental from the jump, For Olim also offers some pristine pools of reflection on “Mirror and Water Gazing” and “The Question.” After the rigors of the main set, a sequence of compact encores hints at Taylor’s humor and his ability to channel a wide range of emotional states through his virtuosic playing. –Seth Colter Walls",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xk6fRPObK1U,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef6a24433af78380d88577/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/195-Cecil-Taylor-For-Olim.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Cecil_Taylor-For_Olim_1987.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,194,Patrice Rushen,Straight From the Heart (1982),Elektra,"Elektra Straight From the Heart is a holy grail in the hip-hop sampling community—its nine pop songs have been clipped, mangled, and remixed by Slum Village, Grandmaster Flash, Common, Will Smith, Mobb Deep, Faith Evans, and more. It was California dance pop prodigy Patrice Rushen’s seventh album and her first commercial breakthrough. The record is powered by the unforgettable energy of “Forget Me Nots,” a once-in-a-lifetime club track that took over the discotheques in Europe and dancefloors of North America with ease. The album itself is as versatile and thoughtful—a genre-hopping collection of jazz, funk, house, and disco that rolls out like a survey of all the fun the ’80s could offer. –Kevin Lozano",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHxc3e2TJXc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef6a6670cc063df76254e8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/194-Patrice-Rushen-Straight-From-the-Heart.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Patrice_Rushen-Straight_From_the_Heart_1982.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,193,Flipper,Generic Album - Flipper (1982),Subterranaean,"Subterranaean Slow, sludgy hardcore punk seems counterintuitive even today, so imagine what it must have sounded like in 1982. Hardcore was still defining itself when Flipper crashed the party on their first full-length. Their lurching beats, heavy bass lines, and sloshing guitars sounded like punk with a hangover, or maybe the Stooges chugging codeine. Yet Flipper’s reject-it-all lyrics, shouted with anger and irony, proved you could be sloppy and still make a point. It wasn’t always easy to tell exactly what that point was, though. The album’s most famous song, “Sex Bomb,” repeats an empty lyric alongside screams and hoots, as if nothing matters. In other places, Flipper stand up for life—“the only thing worth living for”—and turn nihilism into a blank slate full of potential, much the way Richard Hell’s “Blank Generation” did a half-decade before. Throughout Album - Generic Flipper, the band is bent on upending its own gravity, and sometimes it can all feel like an awesome joke. But Flipper’s first record is much more passionate than a punchline. –Marc Masters",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBNvO39Kw5g,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef6aa7433af78380d88579/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/193-Flipper-Generic%2520Album-Flipper.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Flipper-Generic_Album_-_Flipper_1982.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,192,Salt-N-Pepa,"Hot, Cool & Vicious (1986)",Next Plateau,"Next Plateau Riot grrrl is remembered as ground zero for third-wave feminism, but Salt-N-Pepa were rapping about equality, ambition, and the pursuit of pleasure before Bratmobile could even vote. In retrospect, the debut album by college pals Cheryl “Salt” James and Sandy “Pepa” Denton, with DJ Pamela Greene (soon to be replaced by Spinderella) on the decks, plays like a foundational text of the movement. On Hot, Cool & Vicious, there was no wrong way to be an empowered woman. Career-making hit “Push It” paired the decade’s steamiest synth hook with a dextrous display of female sexual bravado; “Tramp” found them applying the slur to men with one-track minds; “I Desire” was a complete sentence. Sexuality was always central to Salt-N-Pepa’s music, but it was far from the only thing occupying the rappers’ attention on Hot, Cool & Vicious. Tracks like “Beauty and the Beat” and “My Mic Sounds Nice,” odes to the joy of women believing in themselves and each other enough to make music together, were equally vital to the trio’s appeal. If all-female rap crews are as maddeningly rare in 2018 as they were in 1986, it’s certainly not for lack of worthy role models. –Judy Berman",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrL3XMUMjVU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef6af5433af78380d8857b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/192-Salt-N-Pepa-Hot%2C-Cool-_-Vicious.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Salt-N-Pepa-Hot_Cool__Vicious_1986.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,191,Bronski Beat,The Age of Consent (1984),London,"London It’s hard to imagine a more wrenching cri de coeur than the one that pours from Bronski Beat singer Jimmy Somerville. His countertenor pierces through every song on the British synth-pop band’s unflinching debut, conveying pain, anger, righteousness, and freedom all at once. His howls exorcised the vexing truths of gay life at the time, while finding release in the liberating rhythms of dance music. While many artists of the British synth-pop movement were gay, from Soft Cell’s Marc Almond to Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s Holly Johnson, none were nearly as political or outspoken as Bronski Beat. Amazingly, that didn’t stop their tentpole single, “Smalltown Boy”—which dealt with the violence of gay bashing—from hitting No. 3 in their home and cracking the U.S. Top 50. The album also had a sense of humor, found in the cover of Gershwin’s “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” where they stressed the song’s sly line of questioning about what’s written in the Bible. The fact that Somerville only performed with Bronski Beat on this album cemented its legacy as a snapshot of proto-queer-pop power. –Jim Farber",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7Jovvl7GJQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef6b46cdabd30d61bcae85/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/191-Bronski%2520Beat-The-Age-of-Consent.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bronski_Beat-The_Age_of_Consent_1984.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,190,Ini Kamoze,Ini Kamoze (1984),Island,"Island Ini Kamoze’s self-titled 1984 debut was not just the introduction of a talented new voice in reggae. It was also the chosen vehicle for riddim twins Sly & Robbie to usher in a new evolution of the reggae beat. Their innovation is apparent from the album’s very first track, “Trouble You a Trouble Me,” slow in tempo but punctuated by rapid-fire digital filling in every bar. It has been described as “robotic reggae,” but similarities have also been noted to the sound of automatic gunfire echoing off concrete walls—sadly, a much more common presence during ’80s Jamaica than robots. That hard rhythm section is well met by Kamoze’s unique voice and perspective, a Rasta coolly observing ghetto culture with an almost journalistic eye: “Down in the region where I rest/It’s the survival of the hardest/One man well-cool, the next man tense/Some sounds like these across the fence.” A cult favorite, the album’s legendary status was not fully written until Damian “Junior Gong” Marley used Kamoze’s voice—sampled from the second cut, “World-a-Music”—as the sonic cornerstone of his 2005 hit “Welcome to Jamrock”: “Out in the streets, they call it MUR-THERRR!” –Eddie “STATS” Houghton",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3qZ6fuMTOo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef6b7e3e475d0a47e3cf00/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/190-Ini-Kamoze-Ini-Kamoze.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ini_Kamoze-Ini_Kamoze_1984.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,189,Butthole Surfers,Locust Abortion Technician (1987),Touch and Go,"Touch and Go Like a batch of brown acid spiking the American underground, no ’80s band was as hallucinatory and psychosis-inducing as Texas’ Butthole Surfers. Their overwhelming live shows—flaming cymbals! penile-reconstruction videos! frontman Gibby Haynes firing a shotgun!—warped the minds of Nirvana, Soundgarden, Sonic Youth, and thousands of punks along the way. And none of their albums captured that live insanity better than Locust Abortion Technician. From the John Wayne Gacy-indebted cover art to the turbid sounds within, the group’s third LP took a chainsaw to hardcore, psychedelic rock, country blues, Black Sabbath, and, on closer “22 Going on 23,” the sound of mooing cows and the agonizing confession of a sexual assault victim. Butchering every notion of good taste in their path, the Butthole Surfers revelled in the most cartoonish and nightmarish aspects of reality without regret. Or, as Haynes put it here: “If you see your mom this weekend, will you be sure to tell her… Satan!” –Andy Beta",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rxOGbw6lEg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef6bf6c76c693986fbb831/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/189-Butthole-Surfers-Locust-Abortion-Technician.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Butthole_Surfers-Locust_Abortion_Technician_1987.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,188,Yoko Ono,Season of Glass (1981),Geffen,"Geffen If you’ve never actually heard Yoko Ono’s music, you may be surprised by the polish, professionalism, and aesthetic deference here. Released months after John Lennon was shot and killed in front of their apartment building, Season of Glass is, in most senses, a pop-rock album, replete with saxophone breaks and guitar solos, plus nods to doo-wop, disco, and, inevitably, the Beatles. (In the narrative of Ono as an avant-garde firebrand, it’s easy to forget that the album was co-produced by girl-group architect Phil Spector.) The unsettling, sometimes jarring turn here lies in hearing someone as heartbroken as Ono in the context of music so indifferent and pristine. Like the sight of someone crying in a shopping mall, Season of Glass is touching in part because of how sharply it contrasts the real with the fake, the primitive with the alienated and overly evolved. In the album’s liner notes, Ono wrote that she almost scrapped the album because her voice was choking and cracking, because people told her it wasn’t the right time. Then she realized that there were a lot of people out there whose voices were choking and cracking for one reason or another. It’s not like she had a choice: Her extremely famous husband had died. When asked about her candor in The New York Times, about making an album while still so raw, Ono, fortified by grief, responded rhetorically: “What was I supposed to do, avoid the subject?” –Mike Powell",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYx8hanWTiI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef6c57c76c693986fbb833/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/188-Yoko-Ono-Season-of-Glass.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Yoko_Ono-Season_of_Glass_1981.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,187,Tom Tom Club,Tom Tom Club (1981),Sire,"Sire If anyone still gets sentimental about the Lower East Side of the ’80s, a fantasy land where Madonna and Fab Five Freddy partied with the graffiti artists Futura and Keith Haring, we probably have perfect records like Tom Tom Club to blame. As the bassist and drummer of the Talking Heads, respectively, Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz were in love with rubbery grooves and polyrthythms. They might never have formed Tom Tom Club if not for Island Records A&R exec Chris Blackwell, who heard them cover Zapp’s “More Bounce to the Ounce” and asked them to delve deeper. The result is one of those records that is about record collections: Besides having one of the world’s most buoyant grooves, the immortal “Genius of Love” is also a breathless rundown of all the new music electrifying its makers. (“BOHANNON! BOHANNON! JAMES BROOOOWN!”) Tom Tom Club is music about learning that music can be your entire world, even after you have spent your life in it already: It is a paean to inexhaustible joy. It presents New York as the sort of gleeful interracial paradise that sadly only ever existed inside the music itself; this was the early ’80s, after all, amid the early rumblings of the crack epidemic and the AIDS crisis. But this music, weightless and unconquerable, knows nothing about any of that. It is invincible in its innocence. –Jayson Greene",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPUoOulFPdo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef6c9700fae55f57ce2eab/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/187-Tom-Tom-Club-Tom-Tom-Club.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tom_Tom_Club-Tom_Tom_Club_1981.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,186,Paul McCartney,McCartney II (1980),Parlophone / Columbia,"Parlophone / Columbia Like its predecessor, Paul McCartney’s second proper solo album was titled with subtle defiance, forcing the millions who adored the Lennon/McCartney partnership to accept life after the slash mark. A strange, guileless wisp of a synth-pop record, released with the nonchalance of a hiccup from the greatest rock balladeer of all time, McCartney II veers into an eccentric new direction even Beatlemaniacs might not recognize. McCartney had fiddled with synths before, but this album motors almost entirely on them, its Top 40 choruses distilled to essence below cheery keyboards and tinny drum machines. Its gulping electronic beats are so playful that the record can initially scan as shallow—one long, instrumental furtherance of his “Silly Love Songs” sanguinity—but the skill in its arrangement and embrace of technology doesn’t waver. Originally derided as a novelty, McCartney II is now remarkable in its prescience of the lo-fi and bedroom pop movements. The Cute One could be weird, too. –Stacey Anderson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8V1nFCP058,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef6d2638ff5e9b3e6698c7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/186-Paul-McCartney-McCartney-II.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Paul_McCartney-McCartney_II_1980.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,185,Too $hort,Life Is... Too $hort (1988),Dangerous,"Dangerous Once grouped into the Bay Area rap scene, Oakland has become its own hip-hop hub, known for a distinct, simple sound in which the drums kick a little harder and the 808s boom with more intensity. And Oakland’s own Too $hort prophesied this unmistakable vibe with his early albums. Released in 1988, his fifth LP, Life Is...Too $hort, now feels like a glimpse into the following decade. The rapper forced the music industry’s hand, refusing to adhere to their careful language etiquette, beginning songs like “CussWords” by laughing and letting the profanity fly: “To all you bitches, hoes, and all that shit.” Even the instrumentation was ahead of its time, stripping the funk and letting the drums run wild, especially in the incessant hi-hat rattle of “I Ain’t Trippin.” Together, all this made Life Is...Too $hort an early playground for the direction rap would soon embrace. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owltWC8bycc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef6d5a433af78380d8857d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/185-Too-$hort-Life-Is...-Too-$hort.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Too_hort-Life_Is_Too_hort_1988.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,184,Change,The Glow of Love (1980),WEA / Warner Bros.,"WEA / Warner Bros. Recorded in both New York and Bologna, Italy, The Glow of Love is the ultimate cosmopolitan dance record, so well-traveled it seems to have recently arrived from space. Like a Chic album, Glow is designed to magnetize people to a dancefloor, but it also embodies lowercase chic, a luxurious overspill of detail, as if one were watching city lights melt across the window of a limousine. Singer Jocelyn Brown crackles over the first side, but the second side is defined by the low, steady glow of Luther Vandross’ voice. Vandross described the title track at the time as the most beautiful song he’d sung in his life; its sunlit piano figure was eventually sampled for Janet Jackson’s “All for You,” where it was altered to be less about the gentle glow of love than the hard boil of lust. Like other Italo-disco acts, Change’s grooves are drawn to a distant, glittering future; “The End” closes the record by seeming to accelerate up a highway ramp extending into the cosmos. –Brad Nelson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gbAwJJjkEg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef6da1ed51a41ef66cd473/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/184-Change-The-Glow-of-Love.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Change-The_Glow_of_Love_1980.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,183,The B-52’s,Wild Planet (1980),Warner Bros.,"Warner Bros. Campy, subversive, and queer in a decidedly square era, the B-52’s were a party band at heart. After the manic perfection of their 1979 debut put them at the forefront of new wave as well as alongside their Athens, Georgia neighbors R.E.M. in the realm of college rock, Wild Planet doubles down on discarded things like surf rock, exotica, girl groups, and TV theme songs. Their itchy dance grooves are topped by giddy gibberish about everything from digging up spuds in Idaho to being 53 miles west of Venus. But just beneath the bop lie more paranoid elements, from the desperate pleas of “Give Me Back My Man” to the hell ride of “Devil in My Car.” In the face of such fears, the B-52’s offer the only solution possible: Keep dancing out of bounds. –Andy Beta",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAxyoOd7dy4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef6de7ed0e0063602d8628/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/183-The-B-52%25E2%2580%2599s-Wild-Planet.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_B-52s-Wild_Planet_1980.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,182,ABBA,The Visitors (1981),Atlantic / Polar,"Atlantic / Polar For a snapshot of how life changed for young people in Western Europe between the ’70s and the ’80s, you need only compare ABBA in their 1974 Eurovision triumph with the band that released The Visitors seven years later. Gone are the electric blue pantaloons and giddy songs about love, replaced by somber color schemes and songs about nuclear paranoia, divorce, and the jarring melancholy of watching your child leave for school, knowing on some level you are losing them forever. That makes The Visitors sound incredibly bleak, but ABBA don't really do bleak. Here, their pop is so unbelievably well crafted—from the triumphal synth hook on the title track to the subtly waltzing drums on “Soldiers”—that it always feels like there is some kind of hope behind the tears, the sublime melodies picking you up even as the words knock you down. –Ben Cardew",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdEZZV4BTM4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef6e24cdabd30d61bcae87/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/182-ABBA-The-Visitors.jpg,/dataset/artwork/ABBA-The_Visitors_1981.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,181,Nuno Canavarro,Plux Quba (1988),Ama Romanta,"Ama Romanta Thirty years on, Portuguese composer Nuno Canavarro’s lone solo work remains as enigmatic and inscrutable as the day it was first released. Plux Quba was discovered by wily experimenters like Jim O’Rourke, Mouse on Mars, and Oval in the ’90s; from there, it became an influence on early ’00s clicks-and-cuts aesthetes, adventurous producers like Jan Jelinek and Fennesz, and present-day shapeshifters like Oneohtrix Point Never and Yves Tumor. As such a heady list of admirers suggests, Canavarro’s music eludes easy classification. Made up of chiming electronics, processed cries and whispers, electroacoustic études, smeared noise, and scrambled lullabies, Plux Quba skips and glitches between one sound world and the next. At first, it can feel jarring and cracked, yet such shards slowly assemble into an exquisite whole. Plux Quba plays like some long-lost memory, conjuring evocative emotions before fragmenting and falling back out of reach again. –Andy Beta",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8C5DKJ9_og4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef6e47e1189ea8598b3f72/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/181-Nuno-Canavarro-Plux-Quba.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nuno_Canavarro-Plux_Quba_1988.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,180,808 State,90 (1989),ZZT,"ZZT 808 State were a much more radical proposition than their Madchester peers in the Stone Roses and Happy Mondays. Instead of augmenting traditional, jangling psych-pop with dance rhythms, the group started at the other end of the spectrum—rough, squelching acid house—and used it as a base for their wildest impulses. They were huge music nerds, the kind of guys who’d congregate at the record store that member Martin Price owned and listen to everything under the sun. When they started making their second album, 90, they thought carefully about how and where the album should flow and peak, and they infused it with the jazz, prog, and electro they enjoyed in their spare time. There are a few straightforward rippers on 90 (“Donkey Doctor,” “808080808”), but it’s an album that shines when its creators get weird. “Ancodia” tosses a chugging breakbeat, lounge-lizard synths, and kooky vocal samples into a blender; “Cobra Bora” is an acid-funk odyssey that opens with a disco sample before twisting like a corkscrew and whacking you over the head with a cowbell. The surprise UK hit “Pacific State” (present here in its “202” mix) still sounds invigorating today, with its warm chords and hooting wildlife cushioning an oily, goofy saxophone riff. Bold choices like those proved that electronic music could be brainy without being boring. –Jamieson Cox",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeUfDTn5huM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef6ef2a1b27beac5d626e8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/180-808-State-90.jpg,/dataset/artwork/808_State-90_1989.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,179,LiLiPUT,LiLiPUT (1982),Rough Trade,"Rough Trade Some post-punk groups made a big deal about how they were tearing up the rulebook, but listening to the music of LiLiPUT—and the music they made before, under their previous, legally problematic name Kleenex—it's unclear if they were aware that a rulebook even existed. That’s not a comment on the group’s professionalism, or lack of; more that the group’s itchy, playful, irrepressibly danceable music felt truly sui generis. Largely ignored by the punk scene in their native Switzerland, for the sin of being women, they instead found fans in the UK, where they were championed by Radio 1 DJ John Peel, toured with the Raincoats, and fell in with the indie gurus Rough Trade, who released the group’s self-titled debut LP in 1982. “Do You Mind My Dreams” and “Outburst” capture their sound at its most effervescent. In their clattering, cyclical post punk grooves peppered with nonsense chants and horse-like whinnies, it's clear how they exerted a lopsided influence on generations of DIY punk who followed. –Louis Pattison",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-bfkRp6LwA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef6f4fcdabd30d61bcae89/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/179-LiLiPUT-LiLiPUT.jpg,/dataset/artwork/LiLiPUT-LiLiPUT_1982.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,178,Joe Jackson,Night and Day (1982),A&M,"A&M Night and Day revels in self-conscious sophistication as it plays upon shared fantasies of New York. A former angry young man, Joe Jackson eschewed the grit and grime of downtown punks for uptown elegance on this album, which combines salsa rhythms with the refined songcraft of Tin Pan Alley. Despite his affection for bygone eras, Jackson didn’t turn a blind eye to the present. On “T.V. Age,” he yelps about the destructive nature of remote controls with the manic energy of David Byrne, and on “Steppin’ Out”—Jackson’s biggest-ever hit—he makes synth-pop seem as sophisticated and sultry as Cole Porter. The album was designed as two complementary suites that illuminate each other. Following the exuberant Night side, the Day plays like a hangover thanks to the heartbreak of “Breaking Us in Two” and “Real Men,” a ballad where Jackson covertly addresses his sexuality. Such sly nods to modernity root Night and Day in the new wave era, but composer aspirations lend the album a lasting elegance. It remains a quintessential dream of what NYC can possibly be. –Stephen Thomas Erlewine",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xO6FyO0KvT8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef6f8eed0e0063602d862a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/178-Joe-Jackson-Night-and-Day.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Joe_Jackson-Night_and_Day_1982.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,177,Queen Latifah,All Hail the Queen (1989),Tommy Boy,"Tommy Boy All Hail the Queen is a prodigy’s statement of intent. At 19, Queen Latifah was proudly Afrocentric, forwardly feminist, and a brilliant rapper. She was powerful and playful in the same breath, and from the reggae toast chorus on “Wrath of My Madness” to the soft background cooing on “Latifah’s Law,” she could obviously sing, too. Funky with horns out front and at the bottom of its jumpy breakbeats, All Hail the Queen is also the best example of production from the often-overlooked and quietly prolific 45 King, who helped expand both the scope and sound quality of hip-hop beats throughout the 1980s. Over the course of a few decades, as Queen Latifah became the type of ubiquitous talent tapped to sing at Super Bowls and star in biopics and host her own talk show, the force of her debut album was eclipsed. While she would go on to make bigger hits and build bigger stages for herself, she never made a better record than this one. –Jay Balfour",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQYfim5KSaw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef6fcf70cc063df76254ea/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/177-Queen-Latifah-All-Hail-the-Queen.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Queen_Latifah-All_Hail_the_Queen_1989.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,176,Psychic TV,Dreams Less Sweet (1983),Some Bizzare,"Some Bizzare Dreams Less Sweet, the second album by Genesis P-Orridge and Peter Christopherson’s post-Throbbing Gristle project Psychic TV, is as arresting as it is difficult. This is true of both its composition—barking dogs and sirens share airspace with hymnals and lyrics borrowed from “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town”—and its sound. Everything about the album feels on the precipice of exposure and calamity, from the gunshots that pierce the hellish sound loops of “Finale” to the way P-Orridge screams, “No absolutions in the nursery” over a honking car horn. Even the album’s most inviting track, a Velvet Underground-style lullaby called “The Orchids,” is filled with lyrics about shriveling skin and burning eyeballs. Though capable of real beauty, Psychic TV were never going to coddle you for long. –Andrew Gaerig",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaJ9RboM46E,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef702eed51a41ef66cd4a6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/176-Psychic-TV-Dreams-Less-Sweet.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Psychic_TV-Dreams_Less_Sweet_1983.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,175,Godflesh,Streetcleaner (1989),Earache,"Earache Using repetitive percussion, violent samplers, jagged guitar noise, overdriven bass, and distorted vocals, Godflesh hollowed out metal then filled it with existential rage. With their debut studio album, Streetcleaner, the Birmingham, England band took a deep dive into urban despair with an industrial sound that pulled from New York’s Swans and Chicago’s Big Black but felt more metal than either. (Maybe hometown forefathers Black Sabbath provided indirect inspiration.) It’s bleak stuff, for sure, but even as singer/guitarist Justin Broadrick howls like a wounded animal about the hellishness of it all, you can feel a beating human heart beneath. (His knack for infusing emotion into sound surfaced even more clearly in his later work as Jesu.) A couple of years later, in 1991, Godflesh opened for Nirvana, and it’s interesting to think of this brief overlap with grunge when considering how relevant the band’s mechanical despair still feels in 2018—it’s like they foresaw the alienation of the digital age around the corner but kept going. –Brandon Stosuy",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsWv9nFLl_s,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef7057e1189ea8598b3f74/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/175-Godflesh-Streetcleaner.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Godflesh-Streetcleaner_1989.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,174,Ornette Coleman,In All Languages (1987),Caravan of Dreams Productions,"Caravan of Dreams Productions Saxophonist, violinist, and composer Ornette Coleman’s startling intonation could be considered experimental, but his music also contained the warmth and melodic immediacy of the best pop and folk traditions. Still, he spent a lot of time waiting for culture to catch up with him. The harmonic language of his 1972 orchestral work Skies of America famously flustered some members of the London Symphony Orchestra. Then when Coleman was being widely described as a jazz colossus—at least for his acoustic quartet music—he changed the game again in the mid ’70s, moving into electrified, funk fusion with his Prime Time group. Divided between sets by Prime Time and Coleman’s classic acoustic quartet, the double-album In All Languages could be considered a compromise affair. But this divide also manages to highlight the beauty found in all branches of Coleman’s creativity. The two bands even share several of the same compositions, which helps underline the polylinguistic concept advanced by the title. Surprises abound: Which group, acoustic or electric, might be the best fit for a tune titled “Space Church (Continuous Service)”? Turns out, the quartet’s “acoustic” take has plenty of atmospheric grandeur, between Don Cherry’s trumpet and Coleman’s alto sax, while the Prime Time players riff off ’80s drum machine sonics. Both takes have their merits. The album was one of the last times Coleman would offer such a wide array of concepts on a single recording. –Seth Colter Walls",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TOA3I63c-0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef70ae3e475d0a47e3cf02/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/174-Ornette-Coleman-In-All-Languages.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ornette_Coleman-In_All_Languages_1987.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,173,Tina Turner,Private Dancer (1984),Capitol / EMI,"Capitol / EMI After divorcing her abusive husband and musical partner Ike Turner in 1978, Tina Turner released three middling solo albums that had the R&B icon trying country, rock, and disco. None of them found an audience. Unsigned and unsure of what might come next, she dove headfirst into her epic live shows. One gig at the Ritz in New York prompted David Bowie to push Capitol into giving her a deal, eventually leading to her comeback with Private Dancer. On opening track “I Might Have Been Queen,” she howls, “I look up to my past, a spirit running free/I look down and I’m there in history/I’m a soul survivor”—rising from the ashes of an incendiary relationship, born anew. Cultivated with five different production teams in England over two weeks, Private Dancer redefined Turner as a pop-rock force and solo star. The album hits the sweet spot between Turner’s blues roots and new wave aspirations, as she mixes primal reimaginings of singles by Bowie, the Beatles, and Al Green with new material. The album is as finespun as it is prone to pyrotechnic feats, harnessing Turner’s face-melting roars for slick recordings and ushering soul into a neon age. –Sheldon Pearce",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMrGBS3QT_w,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef710de41e8b75450a8193/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/173-Tina-Turner-Private-Dancer.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tina_Turner-Private_Dancer_1984.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,172,Duran Duran,Rio (1982),Capitol,"Capitol With Rio, Duran Duran became a group of ultra-proficient musicians, capable of churning out chart-topping pop songs with effortless aplomb, as well as a teen-baiting boy band, setting schoolgirls’ hearts aflame with their sharp clothes and packaged personas. It was simultaneously style-over-substance and substance-over-style; even the album’s neon and pastel cover art became something of a shorthand for the gilded excess of the ’80s. The title track is the sound of all five members leading at once, John Taylor’s frenetic bassline barely outrunning Nick Rhodes’ typhoon of synths. Super-smash single “Hungry Like the Wolf” sees lead singer Simon Le Bon full of swagger, drunkenly cruising down summer streets on Andy Taylor’s polished guitar licks. Even the slower tracks, such as the sparkling mid-tempo ballad “Save a Prayer,” were orchestrated around rock-solid hooks. Rio sounds like a glossy magazine photo shoot looks, with the whole band making love to the camera. –Cameron Cook",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOg5VxrRTi0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef7156a1b27beac5d626ea/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/172-Duran-Duran-Rio.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Duran_Duran-Rio_1982.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,171,Scritti Politti,Cupid & Psyche 85 (1985),Virgin,"Virgin Formerly a scraggly, Marxist post-punk band, Scritti Politti rematerialized as a completely redesigned pop group on their second album, Cupid & Psyche 85. Pop music, already saturated in symbols and semiotic play, seemed the perfect stage for singer Green Gartside’s densely footnoted lyrics, a forest of references to philosophy and theory. On the opener, “The Word Girl (Flesh & Blood),” Gartside analyzes the linguistic structure of a love song while singing within the linguistic structure of a love song, reeling out in the slow twitches of pop reggae. “Absolute” is an airy pop shimmer built on the concept of the ultimate reality, the thing that contains everything else within it. Cupid & Psyche also contains some of the most texturally intricate pop music ever made, each song a glittering maze of synth horns sprouting from every available surface and Gartside’s light and transparent voice disappearing and reappearing between each pulse. It’s bubblegum music that’s both consumerist and communist in its approach. –Brad Nelson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxWkswSDhPc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef719867803036caadc33f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/171-Scritti-Politti-Cupid-_-Psyche-85.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Scritti_Politti-Cupid__Psyche_85_1985.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,170,Yellowman,Mister Yellowman (1982),Greensleeves,"Greensleeves Winston Foster, aka Yellowman, arguably holds the distinction of being the original king of dancehall. His cadence and signature phrases (“To you! This one dedicated to you!”) are so imitated, in fact, that they almost slide off the ear. But his 1982 LP Mister Yellowman illustrates his seismic impact. On a track like “Lost Mi Love,” a few simple elements—King Yellow’s improvised folktale and producer Junjo Lawes echoey take on the funereal “Dirty Harry” riddim—strike a perfect balance. The resulting mixture is so transporting as to be nearly psychedelic. –Eddie “STATS” Houghton",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11S5QPjx3uU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef71c5e1189ea8598b3f76/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/170-Yellowman-Mister-Yellowman.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Yellowman-Mister_Yellowman_1982.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,169,The Faith / Void,The Faith/Void (1982),Dischord,"Dischord By 1982, punk had transformed into something heavier and darker in America: hardcore. The Washington, D.C., bands the Faith and Void epitomized the genre, as shown on this split LP. At first glance, they seemed interchangeably young, fast, and pissed; both groups spewed their lyrics with venomous intensity atop quadruple-time rock riffs. Both shouted fevered transmissions of paranoia and angst. But beneath their surface similarities was a poetic duality. The Faith, true to their name, found redemption in the chaotic unity of the mosh pit. Void weren’t so sure, railing against family, friends, the scene, and anyone caught in their path; creepy effects, pitch warble, and a singer with a loose sense of cadence give their side a desperate, face-clawing pathos that remains unmatched. –Daniel Martin-McCormick",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r777Fni3JeY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef722367803036caadc341/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/169-The-Faith_Void-The-Faith_Void.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Faith__Void-The_FaithVoid_1982.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,168,Nurse With Wound,Soliloquy for Lilith (1988),Idle Hole,"Idle Hole One of the most moving installations in the field of machines singing to themselves, Nurse With Wound’s 1988 album Soliloquy for Lilith moved away from the caustic barbs typically associated with self-perpetuating noise music. While working with a number of effects units wired up to each other, Nurse With Wound leader Steven Stapleton and his wife, Diana Rogerson, found that their equipment produced different sounds based on how close they were, physically, to the machinery. They composed a series of droning loops via this inexplicable phenomenon, moving their bodies and hearing the electronics respond in turn. Through this unlikely glitch, the couple recorded one of the most beautiful and hypnotic drone albums to date: a deep, patient meditation on time and being, and the magic that can spark when you’re not looking out for it. –Sasha Geffen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nrbf5EU15WI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef72a700fae55f57ce2ead/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/168-Nurse-With-Wound-Soliloquy-for-Lilith.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nurse_With_Wound-Soliloquy_for_Lilith_1988.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,167,Au Pairs,Playing With a Different Sex (1981),Human,"Human Like their contemporaries in Gang of Four, Delta 5, and the Raincoats, UK quartet Au Pairs were political in the face of power inequalities; as the chorus of their biggest song, “It’s Obvious,” goes: “You’re equal but different.” Made up of two men and two women, the group addresses issues both systemic and intimate on their debut album, Playing With a Different Sex; the record is also one of the decade’s tightest fusions of punk, funk, and dub. “Come Again,” which describes intercourse as an often-pleasureless task mandated by society, was banned from the BBC; “Armagh,” a tightly coiled song about abuses faced by protesting female IRA prisoners, only received limited distribution in Northern Ireland. Au Pairs split two years after they released this album, but their uncompromising attitude still ripples outward. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhjIIDkKOPw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef72f7ed0e0063602d862c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/167-Au-Pairs-Playing-With-a-Different-Sex.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Au_Pairs-Playing_With_a_Different_Sex_1981.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,166,Ice-T,Rhyme Pays (1987),Sire,"Sire Ice-T’s vivid first single, “6 ‘N the Mornin’,” was a shock to the system—a crime-riddled cruise through Crenshaw, Los Angeles, infused with details about a brutal stabbing, a uzi and hand grenade discovered by the cops, and women he pimped. The track set the tone for Ice-T’s similarly unsparing debut album, Rhyme Pays, where he continued to depict Crenshaw’s violence with an unwavering eye while criticizing a corrupt LAPD and taking shots at Ronald Reagan. “Squeeze the Trigger” represents how defiant Ice was, aware that his violent content would only make him the most convenient villain in the culture’s growing anti-rap sentiment. But Ice didn’t stop, and his desire to tell his story ultimately helped gangsta rap rise fast to become the scene that would put West Coast hip-hop on the map. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLDM7gOLHio,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef737070cc063df76254ec/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/166-Ice-T-Rhyme-Pays.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ice-T-Rhyme_Pays_1987.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,165,Swell Maps,Jane From Occupied Europe (1980),Rough Trade,"Rough Trade For the earliest generation of rock bands, making records required a modicum of professional ambition. You had to sign with a label, tour, submit to a producer. But punk’s rising DIY tide lifted many misfit boats, securing the decidedly fame-averse Swell Maps an audience outside their native Birmingham, England. Founded in 1972 by pseudonymous teenage brothers Nikki Sudden and Epic Soundtracks, the band took around five years to self-release their first single; decades later, Sudden explained that they simply hadn’t known a band could book studio time without a label until the punk bands started doing it. Swell Maps pasted mostly incomprehensible, drawled vocals into noisy, krautrock-inspired sound collages, straying further beyond the boundaries of any existing genre with each release. Their second album, Jane From Occupied Europe, marked the culmination of that trajectory. It was, most of all, a catalog of thrilling new sounds: “Let’s Buy a Bridge” deployed manic synth gargles of the sort Dan Deacon would trademark in the 21st century. “The Stairs Are Like an Avalanche,” a Jane-era recording that was added to the 1989 reissue, reduced industrial rage to a nearly wordless metallic simmer. Sadly, such generative chaos can never last long. Realizing they’d come too close to the commercial success they’d never wanted, the band broke up before Jane was even finished. –Judy Berman",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHW5lxfieD8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef73b5b3829911c69de814/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/165-Swell-Maps-Jane-From-Occupied-Europe.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Swell_Maps-Jane_From_Occupied_Europe_1980.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,164,Pauline Oliveros / Stuart Dempster / Panaiotis,Deep Listening (1989),New Albion,"New Albion What is “deep listening?” A process, a practice, a way of life? Well, to start, it’s a joke. The term was coined by Pauline Oliveros and some cohorts after they descended 14 feet below the earth (get it?) into an enormous, disused water tank in rural Washington for a recording session. The cathedral-like reverberance of the chamber lasted a mammoth 45 seconds, stretching the sound of voices, trombones, accordions, and more into ethereal waves. Underground in Washington, they located a sound beyond words: geological, ancient, and untamed by any high-minded academic theorization. In this strange, subterranean world, Oliveros and her partners drew out tones so glacial and pure, they seem to have always been there. –Daniel Martin-McCormick",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EskkbBbmDKE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef748d1e25dcfcd388fbca/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/164-Pauline-Oliveros-Stuart-Dempster-Panaiotis-Deep-Listening.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Pauline_Oliveros__Stuart_Dempster__Panaiotis-Deep_Listening_1989.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,163,Ryuichi Sakamoto,"Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983)",London,"London Ryuichi Sakamoto was cast in the 1983 World War II drama Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence before he was even considered to pen the film’s soundtrack. The brash 29-year-old told director Nagisa Oshima that he would agree to star in the film—opposite David Bowie, no less—only if he was allowed to compose the music. Although he’d already crafted numerous important electronic albums, with Yellow Magic Orchestra and on his own, Sakamoto had never scored a feature film before. The title track has since far surpassed the legacy of the movie itself, its piano motif highlighting the humanity of soldiers haplessly embroiled in conflict. Elsewhere, Sakamoto deftly sneaks in electronic elements and hints of ambient, all the while juggling more traditional film cues. And on “Sowing the Seed,” which soundtracks the film’s climactic scene, Sakamoto articulates a powerful moment of desire and despair between Bowie’s Major Celliers and his own character, Captain Yonoi, with just five looping, melancholy notes. –Noah Yoo",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-_-uiNyx5A,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef7543b3829911c69de816/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/163-Ryuichi-Sakamoto-Merry-Christmas%2C-Mr.-Lawrence.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ryuichi_Sakamoto-Merry_Christmas_Mr_Lawrence_1983.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,162,King Sunny Adé & His African Beats,Syncro System (1983),Mango,"Mango A decade into his recording career, King Sunny Adé spread his message to the world at large, becoming one of the first African artists to make waves in Europe and America. As the greatest proponent of jùjú, a Nigerian form of music rooted in the talking drums of the Yoruba people, Adé's guitar prowess spread those mesmerizing rhythms far and wide. On Syncro System, his second album to be released in the West, his guitar is as brilliant as sunlight on water as it speckles his band’s gurgling polyrhythms. The record finds Adé pushing at the boundaries of his trademark sound, adding more synths to the teeming mix, along with all manner of shakers and talking drums. (Seven different percussionists are credited on the LP.) The breezy yet sinewy record further solidified King Sunny’s reign across oceans and continents, showing Africans how their traditional rhythms could mingle with modern technology to make world-conquering music. –Andy Beta",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eelq8J5q6BY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef757ce1189ea8598b3f7a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/162-King-Sunny-Ade%25CC%2581-_-His-African-Beats-Syncro-System.jpg,/dataset/artwork/King_Sunny_Ad__His_African_Beats-Syncro_System_1983.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,161,Richard and Linda Thompson,Shoot Out the Lights (1982),Hannibal,"Hannibal On Shoot Out the Lights, the first couple of British folk sang about a collapsing relationship—a subject they’d often addressed in the past but, this time, turned out to be newly relevant. By the time the album was completed, their own marriage had come undone, right when Linda was pregnant. The symmetry turned Shoot into perhaps the most crushing breakup album this side of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours. At the same time, the music on the Thompsons’ sixth and final album together represented the most beautifully honed work the couple ever produced. By alternating lead vocals on the songs, they were able to present two different perspectives: his on the desperate “Don’t Renege on Our Love” and the violent title track, and hers on the despondent “Walking on a Wire” and the accusatory “Did She Jump or Was She Pushed?” Richard’s guitar work, often bracingly nervous and fleet, became more agitated and wild than ever. Linda’s voice, always warm and knowing, discovered a new balance of empathy and ache. For all the vitriol and need expressed, each side of the album ends philosophically, first with the comforting “Just the Motion” and, ultimately, with “Wall of Death,” which used an amusement park ride as a metaphor for the games of chance life tempts us to play. –Jim Farber",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YykY4-cp32Q,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef75bab3829911c69de818/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/161-Richard-and-Linda-Thompson-Shoot-Out-the-Lights.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Richard_and_Linda_Thompson-Shoot_Out_the_Lights_1982.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,160,Mr. Fingers,Ammnesia (1988),Jack Trax,"Jack Trax Larry Heard invented a new way for electronic musicians to speak to their machines—his programmed drums, synthesizer sounds, and bass lines oozed a sweet sadness and depth of feeling that’s still radical. The period from 1984 and 1988 was among Heard’s most fruitful, and the songs he released as Mr. Fingers during those years provide a template for modern house music. Ammnesia tells that story. It collects 12 of Heard’s greatest hits, and each song is iconic in its own way, from the deep house melancholy of “Can You Feel It” to the proto-acid of the title track. –Kevin Lozano",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqSYhtKBjL4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef761f70cc063df76254ee/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/160-Mr.-Fingers-Amnesia.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mr_Fingers-Ammnesia_1988.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,159,Various Artists,The Indestructible Beat of Soweto (1985),Earthworks,"Earthworks The anti-apartheid movement was one of the dominant human rights causes of the 1980s, and music, both within South Africa and beyond it, played a singular role. The Indestructible Beat of Soweto is protest music by example rather than through any explicit message. Recorded between 1981 and 1984, the dozen songs on this compilation radiate a palpable joy that belies the political oppression of their time and place. It’s both traditional and urban: Loping rhythms, flickering guitar riffs, and shimmering synth licks back a dazzling array of groaning, ululating, harmonizing voices. The singers stick it to the oppressor by mostly ignoring his role in their everyday life altogether. Soweto received fervent critical acclaim, and Paul Simon tapped its township styles—not to mention the closing track’s performers, Ladysmith Black Mambazo—for his own landmark Graceland. The album remains a powerful introduction to South African music, as well as a window to the polyglot nature of contemporary pop. Most of all, it’s a testament to the human ability to dance and sing in the face of crushing adversity. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgPOQiQWL5w,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef87aced0e0063602d8635/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/159-Various-Artists-The-Indestructible-Beat-of-Soweto.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Various_Artists-The_Indestructible_Beat_of_Soweto_1985.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,158,Judas Priest,British Steel (1980),Columbia / CBS,"Columbia / CBS Doubling down on their more accessible sound that first surfaced on 1978’s Killing Machine, the sixth album from the British metal band Judas Priest found them shortening their songs, upping their hooks and melodies, and taking influence from AC/DC, whom they’d toured with in 1979. The lyrics weren’t as dark as on past releases, so instead of S&M, genocide, the apocalypse, and Jack the Ripper, there’s the late-night partying of “Living After Midnight” and the disgruntled down-and-out salvo “Breaking the Law,” which was later heavily adopted by a couple of miscreants named Beavis and Butt-Head. They weren’t suddenly a different band, though: Fronted by Rob Halford’s operatic vocals and powered by the group’s scissoring dual guitars, British Steel showed that Priest could transcend their earlier speed metal races and push towards larger stages without sacrificing what made them special. –Brandon Stosuy",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iB9dnRPeRY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef8c6c433af78380d88581/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/158-Judas-Priest-British-Steel.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Judas_Priest-British_Steel_1980.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,157,MC Lyte,Lyte as a Rock (1988),First Priority / Atlantic,"First Priority / Atlantic It took a bit of nepotism for a talented teenage MC named Lyte to become the first woman with a major-label solo rap LP. When Atlantic wanted to sign her stepbrothers’ group, Audio Two, they had no intention of picking up their rapping sister as well. But Lyte’s stepfather presented the two acts as a package deal, and soon enough, production began on Lyte as a Rock. Groundbreaking and unconfined, the album has a take-on-all-comers bravado buoyed by Lyte’s aerodynamic style. She is unflappable—as cool as Big Daddy Kane, as cerebral as Kool Moe Dee, harder than Salt-N-Pepa but just as cheeky. Her raps fracture in funny places, unfurling vivid stories about rhyming rivals, passersby looking to test her mettle, or those dismissing her talents altogether. That monumental chip on her shoulder was a byproduct of all the naysayers claiming women couldn’t rap, and it drove her to outdo everyone: “If a rap can paint a thousand words, then I can paint a million,” she proclaims proudly on the title track. This is a record about being a woman in a boys’ club and blowing up the spot with uncompromising attitude. She wasn’t in it to pander to the male gaze, or to play affirmative action girl. She was in it to win. –Sheldon Pearce",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxorBfDJCeA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef8d3fed51a41ef66cd4a8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/157-MC-Lyte-Lyte-as-a-Rock.jpg,/dataset/artwork/MC_Lyte-Lyte_as_a_Rock_1988.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,156,Stevie Wonder,Hotter Than July (1980),Tamla,"Tamla Hotter Than July broadened Stevie Wonder’s pop landscape, breaking from his organic soul of the ’70s and looking forward with modern synthesizers and drum programming. There’s a subtly funky country song, a reggae Bob Marley homage, and a giddy R&B jam about a neighborhood dance prodigy. Throughout, Wonder’s politics are urgent and reinvigorated. He sings about housing discrimination, peace in Zimbabwe, and on “Happy Birthday,” he crusades to make Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday a national holiday. The sound may be different, but Wonder’s boundless energy and intelligence remain constant. –Jay Balfour",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=no3gZkTZTzQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef8d7db3829911c69de81a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/156-Stevie-Wonder-Hotter-Than-July.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Stevie_Wonder-Hotter_Than_July_1980.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,155,Elvis Costello & the Attractions,Imperial Bedroom (1982),Columbia / F-Beat,"Columbia / F-Beat Elvis Costello’s seventh album represented a crucial pivot in his career. While his previous release, Almost Blue, had him going country, it did so via covers of Nashville classics, giving the piece a retro air. “Imperial Bedroom” was a far more bracing leap forward, tossing all previous assumptions about what structures Costello’s melodies could take, how his songs could be paced, and how far his character portraits could evolve. There’s no strict rock, punk, or R&B on the album. Instead, there are songs that draw on the sophistication of American standards, yet ones twisted by so many quirks, they can’t be confined to that term. Costello also chose a new producer, forsaking his common ally Nick Lowe for Geoff Emerick, the Beatles’ engineering whiz. That particular switch helps account for the sound’s new sweep. The lyrics, too, showed growth, shading Costello’s earlier vitriol with greater perspective, while also allowing for far more enigmatic imagery. The album announced the maturation of an artist whose reach would not cease. –Jim Farber",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypIz6m3ZZ_o,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef8dbee1189ea8598b3f7e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/155-Elvis-Costello-_-the-Attractions-Imperial-Bedroom.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Elvis_Costello__the_Attractions-Imperial_Bedroom_1982.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,154,LL Cool J,Radio (1985),Columbia / Def Jam,"Columbia / Def Jam LL Cool J was 16 years old when he made his debut, Radio. Ghetto blasters had become a defining marker of early hip-hop, so when LL adopted the loudspeakers as his visual signature, he sent a message: He was a block hero, representing for inner city rebels and b-boys. The album was hard, spare, and overwhelmingly confident: It was the first full-length release from Def Jam and also introduced the masses to Rick Rubin, who produced (or “reduced,” as the back cover joked). Rubin’s spacious, minimal sound brought LL’s flow to the fore. Seething with teenage aggression, overflowing with confidence, and, yes, cool as hell, LL instantly sounded state-of-the-art. He may have rapped that he couldn’t live without his radio, but soon radio couldn’t live without LL. –Eve Barlow",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J70s20Oh_i0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef8dfab3829911c69de81c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/154-LL-Cool-J-Radio.jpg,/dataset/artwork/LL_Cool_J-Radio_1985.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,153,Meredith Monk,Dolmen Music (1981),ECM,"ECM Soon after her 1964 debut in New York’s concert halls, the composer, singer, and pianist Meredith Monk revealed her theatrical talents in the realm of experimental song. She also proved adept at moving between mediums, sagaciously editing and rearranging her stage shows into LPs, starting on her 1971 debut Key. But her skill at writing albums reached a new level with her first recording for ECM in 1981. Dolmen Music’s two halves reflect distinct approaches. Side A collects some of the best songs from two early conceptual shows, focusing on the connection between her writing for piano and her own voice. This is early Monk at her best, with catchy piano motifs working as the ground beneath her vocal acrobatics. As excitable and tinny tones alternate with luminous, slower lines, Monk crafts new dramatic—often wordless—worlds. By bringing conceptual theater inside classical music, she didn’t merely invigorate the latter. She also brought new, contemporary-art audiences along with her. –Seth Colter Walls",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCkFPdo5vQY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef8e6467803036caadc374/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/153-Meredith-Monk-Dolmen-Music.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Meredith_Monk-Dolmen_Music_1981.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,152,Meat Puppets,II (1984),SST,"SST Though hardcore punk later came to adopt strict rules, early on it was adaptable, prone to local mutations. Formed in 1980 in Phoenix, Arizona, by brothers Curt and Cris Kirkwood, Meat Puppets were one of the first bands to sign to SST, the foundational punk imprint run by Black Flag’s Greg Ginn. But if Meat Puppets’ self-titled debut—a bristly fusion of hardcore thrash and Beefheart weirdness—could pass for a punk record, II was very much on its own trip. Its outsider Americana took in Grateful Dead-style jamming, fearsome pulpit sermons, and peyote-addled surrealism. Cowpunk thrashes like “Split Myself in Two” and “New Gods” suggested the trio hadn’t entirely outgrown its hardcore roots, but the moments that linger are the pretty ones, like the shimmering guitar instrumental “Aurora Borealis,” a beautiful acid trip amid the cacti. II found new life in 1994 when Nirvana reprised three of its songs on MTV Unplugged in New York, the three Puppets in tow. –Louis Pattison",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEZLy1ZEWyM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef8eabe1189ea8598b3f80/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/152-Meat-Puppets-II.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Meat_Puppets-II_1984.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,151,The Clean,Compilation (1988),Homestead,"Homestead The Clean had already put out two EPs, catalyzed the New Zealand punk scene, reformed under a new name, and dissolved by the time their music officially hit the United States in 1988. Picked up by the tastemaking Homestead Records (run largely by zine editor and future Matador founder Gerard Cosloy), Compilation included the entirety of 1981’s Boodle Boodle Boodle, showcasing a band that reinvested lo-fi punk with the kind of self-imploding, psychedelia-loving fun often missing from their grim American and British contemporaries. Unafraid to either get totally gnarled (as on their eternal jam vehicle “Point That Thing Somewhere Else”) or uncork pure sunshine (“Tally Ho!”), the Clean’s constant experimentation resisted nearly all of punk’s emergent stereotypes and musical formulas. Finding devotees in Pavement and Yo La Tengo, and inspiring a major indie vogue for all things New Zealand, the Clean soon reunited, turning a bit more jangly in the process. But Compilation still sounds as fuzzed and free as the day it crash-landed on U.S. shores. –Jesse Jarnow",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-JKMhsZeaQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef8eed67803036caadc376/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/151-The-Clean-Compilation.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Clean-Compilation_1988.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,150,La Monte Young,The Well-Tuned Piano (1987),Dramavision,"Dramavision During the 17 years of work that preceded the first release of “The Well-Tuned Piano,” minimalist pioneer La Monte Young was developing and testing everything about the piece—including the unusual tuning he preferred for his custom Bösendorfer Imperial Grand piano, as well as the improvisational approach that he would use when playing it. But despite the deliberate pace of “The Well-Tuned Piano”—this live recording from 1981 lasts five hours—sustained listening reveals that it isn’t all about slowness. Sometimes it’s about the pummeling power of a specific chordal area, explored at intense volume, in what Young terms “clouds.” Sometimes it’s about the (comparatively) swift transitions between themes—as with a section in the third hour that includes the “Hommage à Debussy Sequence” as well as “The Goddess of the Caverns Under the Pool” and “Sunshine in the Old Country.” The piece isn’t officially finished, but this performance, all on its own, is beautiful enough to support decades of close listening. –Seth Colter Walls",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nU8UHQLQ0Qs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64ef8f3db431e9895dfcb741/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/150-La%2520Monte-Young-The-Well-Tuned-Piano.jpg,/dataset/artwork/La_Monte_Young-The_Well-Tuned_Piano_1987.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,149,Anita Baker,Rapture (1986),Elektra,"Elektra The songs on Anita Baker’s second album, Rapture, are all shimmering vehicles for her voice, a contralto as textured and liquid as crushed velvet. Each arrangement is a slow-forming quiet storm that seems to respond sensitively to her muted inner quakings. She’s an impressionistic, painterly singer. The substance of her voice sifts and pours wordlessly through the synth blushes on “Caught Up in the Rapture,” and it shivers with the same weightless ripple produced by the drum machine in “Same Ole Love.” Everything is almost a little too luminous and precise in its drift to be real; Rapture is an R&B record upholstered in a dreamy haze, suggesting, in its varied swells and glitterings from both Baker and her band, that real love is as deep and indefinite as a dream. –Brad Nelson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrfcbNCqH40,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f1f5f471e35446b89df98e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/149-Anita-Baker-Rapture.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Anita_Baker-Rapture_1986.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,148,Rites of Spring,Rites of Spring (1985),Dischord,"Dischord There isn’t enough hot tea and honey on the planet to undo the damage Guy Picciotto must have done to his vocal cords during these sessions. For a mid-’80s D.C. hardcore album, Rites of Spring’s lone full-length was uncommonly melodic. But nobody remembers it that way, because for all the musicianship hidden under the hood, it's hard to register anything other than the fury and agony at the surface. It’s a portrait of crisis driven by one of the most violent, demanding vocal performances ever captured on record. Underscoring the seething despair in his lyrics, Picciotto sang as if choking on a Brillo pad, punishing his larynx until all that remained was a tattered rasp. He effectively turned singing into a form of self-flagellation. Rites of Spring is widely credited as the first emo album, which overstates its footprint somewhat. For generations of bands, the record has been less an influence than an ideal. Musicians may have marveled at Picciotto's sheer commitment to expression, but few dared to replicate it. –Evan Rytlewski",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BegImM7uEkg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f1f63fe63728cf88931a77/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/148-Rites-of-Spring-Rites-of-Spring%2520.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rites_of_Spring-Rites_of_Spring_1985.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,147,Virginia Astley,In the Gardens Where We Feel Secure (1983),Rough Trade,"Rough Trade “Swing gate,” “lambs Sunday afternoon,” “owl, clock, night noises.” These are some of the sounds—or maybe ingredients—credited as part of Virginia Astley’s deeply beautiful In the Gardens Where We Feel Secure, an inimitable album of ambient music. On it, the English artist manipulates and loops such sounds, blending them with earthy piano. Astley occasionally worked on more straightforward pop, but Gardens abandons the normal inclinations of song structure in favor of two side-long suites, an organic recreation of what it feels like to be cradled by a warm British afternoon in the countryside on a slow day. Its feeling is both ancient and eternal—many worlds away from our fast-moving, digital era. –Matthew Schnipper",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bZI_KVlwtM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f1f68ce63728cf88931a79/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/147-Virginia-Astley-In-the-Gardens-Where-We-Feel-Secure.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Virginia_Astley-In_the_Gardens_Where_We_Feel_Secure_1983.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,146,Geto Boys,Grip It! On That Other Level (1989),Rap-A-Lot,"Rap-A-Lot After their Run-D.M.C.-aping debut, Making Trouble, flopped by all conceivable metrics, Geto Boys went through some personnel changes, ending up with a foursome that would put Houston rap—and, to a certain extent, Southern rap—on the map: Bushwick Bill, DJ Ready Red, Willie D, and Akshen, later known as Scarface. The songs on Grip It! On That Other Level blend the real-world horrors of Houston’s 5th Ward with exaggerated savagery from slasher flicks. (“Should I live in reality? Or live in the television?” Bushwick Bill asks on “Mind of a Lunatic.”) The hair-raising scenes of murder and torture are so dark that they’ve often been cited as formative texts for the horrorcore stylings of Eminem and Tyler, the Creator. But beneath those obvious incitements are gut-wrenching truths, revealing the shock raps as a front for latent unease: “This game is dangerous, I’m livin’ in fear,” Scarface admits on “Life in the Fast Lane.” This is music that elicits both pangs and thrills from its studies of violence, all of it coming from a clear-eyed vantage point. The Geto Boys were sociologists; Grip It! is their survey of baser instincts. –Sheldon Pearce",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCcELDwVVIM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f1f6d171e35446b89df990/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/146-Geto-Boys-Grip-It!-On-That-Other-Level.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Geto_Boys-Grip_It_On_That_Other_Level_1989.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,145,Daniel Johnston,"Hi, How Are You: The Unfinished Album (1983)",Self-released,"Self-released These songs are recorded so intimately, it almost feels like an invasion to listen to them. Daniel Johnston’s Hi, How Are You originally came out as a self-released mail-order tape and eventually became among the most influential lo-fi records of the ’80s, to the point that Kurt Cobain famously wore a shirt with the album’s cover drawing at the 1992 VMAs. The record dismissed the conceit that music needed to be created in an expensive studio to resonate emotionally with its listeners. If anything, the record’s tape hiss and flat notes add to its immediacy. It’s easy to imagine Daniel Johnston pounding away on a cheap keyboard on “Big Business Monkey” or fiddling with a kids’ toy on “Walking the Cow.” Even the guitar tracks, like “Despair Came Knocking,” have a tactility to them, like the Austin songwriter is in the room with you as he’s playing. Because Hi, How Are You is an album about loneliness and desolation, the feeling of sharing space with Johnston makes it ring with additional poignancy. He sang these earnest, infectious melodies to himself, into a cheap cassette recorder, but he knew exactly how to reach people across time—to make them feel that, for the duration of a three-minute pop song, they weren’t on their own in this world. –Sasha Geffen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iul0yWUJ5X4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f1f7184db3fa9238b7db2d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/145-Daniel-Johnston-Hi%2C-How-Are-You-The-Unfinished-Album.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Daniel_Johnston-Hi_How_Are_You_The_Unfinished_Album_1983.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,144,The Clash,Sandinista! (1980),CBS,"CBS On their fourth album, the Clash combined their passion for global politics with an embrace of world music, most notably Jamaican dub and reggae. It’s one thing to bemoan the plight of the impoverished on a track; it’s another to do that over a dub reinvention of the same track, as they did with “One More Time” and “One More Dub.” The Clash, of course, did not abandon their guitar origins, turning Sandinista! into an experimental, triple-album behemoth that melded punk’s urgency with reggae’s bent toward social justice. Sandinista! is a near-anthropological undertaking that is in loving awe of its sources, a feat of passion and endurance that the band would never again match. –Matthew Strauss",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awAJpAl1Y5g,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f1f7be2fc71751ad4bfba9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/144-The-Clash-Sandinista!.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Clash-Sandinista_1980.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,143,Descendents,Milo Goes to College (1982),New Alliance,"New Alliance The average song on Descendents’ Milo Goes to College is about a guy fearing what he doesn’t understand, which is basically everything: parents, social hierarchies, the lingering allure of conformity, and women, the most baffling and powerful authority figure of them all. Frontman Milo Aukerman described his band’s spitball attack of a debut as “completely unfiltered,” and like many other documents of ’80s pop rebellion, Milo Goes to College tends towards the highly problematic at points. Give Descendents as much blame or credit as you want for fathering the Warped Tour, but “Marriage,” “Parents,” and especially “I’m Not a Punk” are evidence of what pop-punk does best. –Ian Cohen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fO31nGsNbsg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f1f821e63728cf88931a7b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/143-Descendents-Milo-Goes-to-College.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Descendents-Milo_Goes_to_College_1982.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,142,Midori Takada,Through the Looking Glass (1983),RCA Red Seal,"RCA Red Seal A beautiful demonstration of minimalist composition, Midori Takada’s 1983 solo album Through the Looking Glass was nearly lost to time. Never released on CD and an expensive rarity on vinyl, the four-song, 42-minute album was performed and recorded almost entirely by Takada in just two days, straight to analog tape. Despite its relative obscurity in Western circles, it’s a work that should place her among the most important avant-garde composers of the ’80s. Throughout the album, Takada reinterprets traditional Asian rhythms with a blend of chimes, gongs, and other percussion instruments. This is music that tears open a meditative portal, luring the listener into a new world of tranquility before crescendoing into a gorgeously aggressive wall of transients. The Japanese composer is now 66 years old, but her mission remains unchanged: “In my own way, I create sounds, and by myself, I emit them,” Takada said last year. “It’s that simple. So to speak, it’s like living off the land.” –Noah Yoo",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVtBBRn6rvQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f1f85c71e35446b89df992/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/142-Midori-Takada-Through-the-Looking-Glass.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Midori_Takada-Through_the_Looking_Glass_1983.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,141,Celtic Frost,To Mega Therion (1985),Noise,"Noise If your favorite metal band pisses people off, then Celtic Frost’s relentlessly creative leader Tom G. Warrior probably did it first in the ’80s. Too extreme? His early group, Hellhammer, helped define the sounds of death metal and black metal while being critically slaughtered by the burgeoning underground. Too commercial? Try Cold Lake, Celtic Frost’s collection of croony glam anthems, released to universal disdain in 1988. Between those two poles, Celtic Frost released some of the decade’s most brilliant and influential music. The Swiss metal group’s imperial streak begins with To Mega Therion, their sophomore album, which spread apocalyptic visions over ungodly, vicious thrash metal. As subgenres began to harden into unified aesthetics, this music could not be pinned down: French horns, droning keyboards, and constantly shifting song structures assured that even the most devoted metalheads had never heard anything quite like it. Whatever response they elicited, Celtic Frost never seemed to care much: After all, they reminded us, we’re all going to the same place anyway. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w75KZaC2gzY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f1f89be834db3a5192bd76/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/141-Celtic-Frost-To-Mega-Therion.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Celtic_Frost-To_Mega_Therion_1985.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,140,3rd Bass,The Cactus Album (1989),Def Jam,"Def Jam Perhaps emboldened by the example set by the Beastie Boys three years earlier, New York’s 3rd Bass became the genre’s second major act to be led by white MCs. They also filled a void at Def Jam; following the success of Licensed to Ill, the Beastie Boys left the label due to contract disputes. Yet 3rd Bass’ debut, The Cactus Album, wasn’t a carbon copy—in fact, the crew dissed the Beasties on the album’s second track. Where the Beastie Boys used comedy for levity alone, 3rd Bass was more serious. On “The Gas Face,” MC Serch defended blackness, while Pete Nice took aim at shady record label executives. In that way, The Cactus Album was a bold step away from the Beastie Boys era at Def Jam: Though that group is to be lauded for the trail they blazed, 3rd Bass brought a no-bullshit energy to their music that felt new. –Marcus J. Moore",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5iX8Cb5_Oc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f1f8fc5f7c87f9fc1c9b3b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/140-3rd-Bass-The-Cactus-Album.jpg,/dataset/artwork/3rd_Bass-The_Cactus_Album_1989.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,139,The Durutti Column,Vini Reilly (1989),Factory,"Factory Durutti Column leader Vini Reilly always went against the grain of his fellow Factory Records colleagues. While Joy Division and Cabaret Voltaire did chilly, industrial-tinged post-punk, Reilly rendered bucolic and poignant guitar instrumentals. But as the ’80s wore on, he began to see his instrument as just another machine. So he made another left turn on Vini Reilly, pitting his six-string against an early Akai sampler to sublime effect. Punching in snippets of soul and opera, as well as the likes of Otis Redding and Tracy Chapman to sing what he couldn’t, Reilly’s playing bounces between fado and funk. Utilizing acoustic and electric guitar—sometimes with a band, other times just him solo—Reilly staked out a liminal state, the sampled voices clipped so as to be indecipherable yet still emotionally resonant. The end result is the most eerie and affecting entry in his large catalog. –Andy Beta",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmBlOfpUbeg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f1fd834db3fa9238b7db2f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/139-The-Durutti-Column-Vini-Reilly.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Durutti_Column-Vini_Reilly_1989.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,138,Big Daddy Kane,Long Live the Kane (1988),Cold Chillin’,"Cold Chillin’ Back his ’80s prime, it felt like Big Daddy Kane wasn’t playing fair. He had the rhymes: steady and unbeatable, a multi-syllable flow coming at you like machine gun bullets. Then he had everything else, too: Women loved his suave nature, the way his words slipped through a silky baritone. His first album, Long Live the Kane, also proved that he could talk about topics like Afrocentricity and sound realistic. Kane’s 1988 opus gave us many of the classics in the rapper’s vast repertoire: the combative “Raw (Remix),” “Set It Off,” “Ain’t No Half-Steppin’,” and the playful back-and-forth with Biz Markie on “Just Rhymin’ With Biz.” Long Live the Kane was the foundation for a rapper who could do it all. –Marcus J. Moore",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b90X6EBECq0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f207112f211db3848f5891/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/138-Big-Daddy-Kane-Long-Live-the-Kane.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Big_Daddy_Kane-Long_Live_the_Kane_1988.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,137,Horace Andy,Dance Hall Style (1982),Wackie’s,"Wackie’s Horace Andy had been a prolific recording artist for some 15 years, cutting discs for Studio One and the dub pioneer Bunny Lee, before he made Dance Hall Style. On paper, at least, there’s no reason it should stand out as a classic. Recorded at Wackies, a damp basement studio in the Bronx, it was just six songs long, and some of those had already lived a full life; Andy himself had recorded “Lonely Woman” with producer Derrick Harriott a decade earlier, while “Cuss Cuss” was a cover of a track released by rocksteady stalwart Lloyd Robinson back in 1968. But Dance Hall Style has a special alchemy. Under the guidance of founder Lloyd “Bullwackie” Barnes, Wackies had become a home for skulking heavyweight dub of the first order. The record can be sonically adventurous—on “Stop the Fuss,” a blanket of echo pushes the bass and drums to the point on disintegration—but you’re gripped tight throughout by Andy’s voice: sweet, sinuous, reflecting on greed, division and the Rasta life. One highlight is the penultimate “Spying Glass,” which Andy would later reprise on Massive Attack’s 1994 LP Protection, drawing out its themes of paranoia and surveillance. –Louis Pattison",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2NTe8AY3Q8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f207a971e35446b89df997/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/137-Horace-Andy-Dance-Hall-Style.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Horace_Andy-Dance_Hall_Style_1982.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,136,Neneh Cherry,Raw Like Sushi (1989),Virgin,"Virgin For a few months in 1988, as Neneh Cherry’s debut single “Buffalo Stance” climbed the global charts, it looked like Madonna might have a serious competitor to her pop throne. Particularly irksome for Madonna, probably, was the fact that “Buffalo Stance” effectively beat her at her own game, using the modish club sounds of hip-hop and house to forge pop music that was brazenly cool, instantly memorable, and utterly authoritative. Cherry’s debut album, Raw Like Sushi, which followed in 1989, took a similar approach, plucking from the ’80s club pantheon of new jack swing, freestyle, and go-go to create an audacious global pop fusion that made Cherry’s competitors look like tar-ridden dinosaurs. The fast-moving nature of club music means that today, Raw Like Sushi sounds both incredibly of its time and also strangely modern in its omnivorous outlook, while the razor-sharp observational songwriting on “Manchild”—one of the best songs ever to capture that sinking feeling that life isn’t turning out how you imagined it—ensures its immortality. –Ben Cardew",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GaRRH0zi14,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f209fc71e35446b89df99a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/136-Neneh-Cherry-Raw-Like-Sushi.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Neneh_Cherry-Raw_Like_Sushi_1989.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,135,Big Black,Songs About Fucking (1987),Touch and Go,"Touch and Go Like most things with Big Black, the title Songs About Fucking is something of a sick joke. Frontman Steve Albini actually covers a wide range of unusual topics on Big Black’s second and final industrial noise-punk album: grotesque execution methods, a psychedelic fungus, cats. When sex does appear in these songs, it’s usually as a means of getting at something darker, like perversion, domination, or violence. Save for Albini’s occasional bursts of black humor, the album is unrelenting as it plumbs the depths of depravity; a more accurate title might have been Songs About Cruelty. Such extreme subject matter demands equally extreme music—and by the end of their six-year run, Big Black were more than up to the task. Albini and Santiago Durango’s dueling guitars buzz like metal against metal (not least because they used custom-made metal guitar picks), their Roland drum machine throbs with cold precision, and Albini’s yelp alternates between coiled and unhinged. Yet as uncompromising as Songs About Fucking is, the distance between Big Black and the mainstream would soon shrink. Watch  footage of the band’s final show in Seattle and you might spot a young Kurt Cobain in the audience; as the legend goes, he left the show with a chunk of Albini’s smashed guitar as a keepsake. –Mehan Jayasuriya",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubqWbfg2elQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f20b1071e35446b89df99c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/135-Big-Black-Songs-About-Fucking.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Big_Black-Songs_About_Fucking_1987.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,134,Jane’s Addiction,Nothing’s Shocking (1988),Warner Bros.,"Warner Bros. Many albums on this list can lay claim to inventing the ’90s, but it took a guy like Perry Farrell to sell it. Furthering the tradition of rich kids playacting as counterculture shamans, Farrell knew the value of a good hustle, and Nothing’s Shocking found Jane’s Addiction equally believable as crass cock-rockers, Chili Pepper blood brothers, glam gutter-punks, prog-metal virtuosos, and post-punk magpies, all while adding a healthy dose of classic rock heroism. On a person-by-person basis, Jane’s Addiction is basically Led Zeppelin recreated as Los Angeles street urchins. Whether Farrell was lyrically channeling Ted Bundy, an abandoned child, a junkie, or a prophet, it was all framed in a way that could be easily understood by Midwestern kids from the suburbs. With Farrell repeating this act every summer with Lollapalooza, Nothing's Shocking now stands as a founding document of Alternative Nation. –Ian Cohen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2q0jl6mL-VA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f20b63ca6c75d8042629f4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/134-Jane%25E2%2580%2599s-Addiction-Nothing%25E2%2580%2599s-Shocking.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Janes_Addiction-Nothings_Shocking_1988.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,133,XTC,Skylarking (1986),Virgin / Geffen,"Virgin / Geffen By 1986, XTC had shrunk to a trio: three self-described “garden gnomes” from rural England with dire finances and a frontman who refused to tour. As Thatcherism squeezed Britain, the band were derided by the press as out-of-touch country boys and their label as unsellable oddballs. For their survival, Virgin demanded a surefire U.S. crossover hit. Instead, they were handed Skylarking, a grand English symphony of sun-blasted melodies, shambling psych, and wildly eccentric pop. Miraculously, America loved it. For that, thank producer Todd Rundgren, who culled XTC’s edgier material and sunlit their pastoral whims, perhaps recognizing that American narcissism is rivalled only by its fetish for a teacup-English wonderland. There were few summertime larks in the studio—frontman Andy Partridge apparently threatened to axe Rundgren’s head—but the opulent melodies are unimpeachable. Capitalist satire “Earn Enough for Us,” the one social commentary here, coexists with bucolic scenes of “flower lava” and trees “dancing drunk with nectar”—conflicting ideas, erratic beats, and knotty compositions harmoniously daisy-chained together. –Jazz Monroe",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAvkQUrArgE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f20bd6eb449142e942b164/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/133-XTC-Skylarking.jpg,/dataset/artwork/XTC-Skylarking_1986.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,132,Prefab Sprout,Steve McQueen (1985),Kitchenware,"Kitchenware Prefab Sprout were the vehicle for the brainy songs of Paddy McAloon, a wordsmith who was equal parts clever and inscrutable. Steve McQueen—released as Two Wheels Good in North America to quell a dispute with the titular actor’s estate—was McAloon's stab at pop, a suite of literate songs that draw as much from 1950s rock and country as from Elvis Costello. McAloon is known for his writing, but his lithe voice sells these songs. To hear him lean into the chorus of “Bonny” or “Goodbye Lucille #1” is to feel the acceleration of the cover’s motorbike as it rounds a curve, with Wendy Smith’s lovely backing vocals serving as guide rails. Significantly gussied up by ’80s studio wiz Thomas Dolby, the arrangements match the refinement of the lyrics. Though nostalgia cycles will continue to churn through sounds without end or mercy, the synthesizer that announces “Appetite” tattoos it to a particular moment in the mid-’80s, possibly the last time that a shrewd Englishman with a guitar and studio budget would be seen as the pinnacle of pop sophistication. –Andrew Gaerig",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1S2S5355s48,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f20c2bd95dc711ab63cbb8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/132-Prefab-Sprout-Steve-McQueen.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Prefab_Sprout-Steve_McQueen_1985.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,131,Echo & the Bunnymen,Ocean Rain (1984),Korova,"Korova In America, Echo & the Bunnymen always seemed to be stuck between the Smiths and the Cure on one side and U2 on the other. After three albums that zigzagged between goth dirges and soaring post-punk anthems, everything came together on their fourth album, 1984’s Ocean Rain. Submitting to their tendency toward grandiosity and enlisting a full string section, Echo constructed an album of gorgeous, emotionally shaded symphonic rock. The first half of the record features some of their early jaggedness and their catchiest single, “Silver.” But the second side, opening with the breathtaking “The Killing Moon,” is controlled, elegant, and dramatic—one of the great album sides in rock. –Mark Richardson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQ_QRK_iWrk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f20c7d71e35446b89df99e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/131-Echo-_-the-Bunnymen-Ocean-Rain.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Echo__the_Bunnymen-Ocean_Rain_1984.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,130,Scientist,Scientist Rids the World of the Evil Curse of the Vampires (1981),Jah Guidance / Greensleeves,"Jah Guidance / Greensleeves After starting his musical career in the late ’70s as an apprentice to King Tubby, the originator of dub reggae, Hopeton “Scientist” Brown arguably did more than any other producer to elevate dub into its own genre. Though Lee “Scratch” Perry had already taken the idea behind dub—deconstructing vocal mixes into sound collage via aggressive remixing and use of effects—as grist for full-length albums, the young Scientist surpassed even these masterpieces in sonic inventiveness. 1981’s Curse of the Vampires is one of the greatest dub albums ever, transforming the swing of dancehall’s catchiest tunes into their spookiest, most expansive selves. Historically, this record is a precursor to trip-hop and dubstep, but even encountered as an isolated sonic experience, the tracks are revelatory, uniquely suffused with an eerie joy. –Eddie “Stats” Houghton",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buQJx64pTK8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f20d1be63728cf88931a81/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/130-Scientist-Scientist-Rids-the-World%2520of-the-Evil-Curse-of-the-Vampires.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Scientist-Scientist_Rids_the_World_of_the_Evil_Curse_of_the_Vampires_1981.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,129,The D.O.C.,No One Can Do It Better (1989),Ruthless / Atlantic,"Ruthless / Atlantic Simply put, “The Formula,” from the D.O.C.’s 1989 debut, invented G-Funk. The atmospheric bit of jazz-funk introduced the combination of D.O.C.’s slick flow and Dr. Dre’s creeping funk production, dictating the direction of the next decade of West Coast hip-hop. But No One Can Do It Better didn’t otherwise restrict itself to that formula. On the contrary, its status as an eminently listenable rap classic remains precisely because of the way the D.O.C.’s versatile flow is showcased by a range of production styles. The rapper is always on, even when his cadence is slightly off. D.O.C. would never sound the same again after a serious car accident altered his voice and derailed his career shortly after this record’s release. So No One Can Do It Better is a rare document—even the spoken interludes that stitch it together are tantalizing glimpses of an artist in his prime. –Eddie “Stats” Houghton",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xi74FwnkLFY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f20d892fc71751ad4bfbab/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/129-The-D.O.C.-No-One-Can-Do-It-Better.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_DOC-No_One_Can_Do_It_Better_1989.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,128,AC/DC,Back in Black (1980),Atlantic / Albert Productions,"Atlantic / Albert Productions Before Back in Black, AC/DC were a cult act whose songs included one about everyone in the band getting an STD and another about their bouncing Australian balls. In 1980, Brian Johnson, a Newcastle pub singer who always wore one of those old-timey flat caps, became the impossible replacement for Bon Scott. (His voice, like Scott’s, sounded like the extended yelp of a cartoon character who suddenly realizes his pants are on fire.) When Johnson joined two months after Scott’s death, founding guitarist Malcolm Young—whether from grief, disdain for Johnson’s broad frame, or some combination of both—reportedly called him a “fucking big fat cunt.” Nevertheless, they became the biggest band in world with this album, because nothing could turn off the AC/DC hit factory: They punched Johnson into their hyper-masculine, lizard-brain rock’n’roll with Malcolm and his brother Angus writing the kinds of riffs that sounded good in a car, better in a weight room, and best in an arena. The title track was the death rattle of ’70s rock and the dinner bell for a decade of hook-heavy metal. It also contained their best, most palatable double entendre in “You Shook Me All Night Long,” a song somewhat about premature ejaculation and mostly about an endearing, feverish submission to a woman. Back in Black was an album made by terrific idiots, the true north of mainstream rock in the ’80s. –Jeremy D. Larson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lo2qQmj0_h4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f20dc00202397ec983c485/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/128-AC_DC-Back-in-Black.jpg,/dataset/artwork/ACDC-Back_in_Black_1980.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,127,David Bowie,Let’s Dance (1983),EMI,"EMI After years of heady, singular art rock, David Bowie wanted to open up to his adoring public and talk to other music. So he borrowed the build-up from the Beatles’ “Twist and Shout,” brought in Stevie Ray Vaughan to play blues licks, quoted a line from My Fair Lady, and made the biggest record of his career. Even with all these references, though, Let’s Dance sounds anything but dated, in part thanks to Nile Rodgers’ chipper production and its crisp gated snare—the one true drum sound of the ’80s. Bowie told Rodgers that he wanted the album to sound like a photo of Little Richard in a red Cadillac—that’s “Modern Love.” He wanted something relatively warmer—that’s every note of “Let’s Dance,” a major hit in a minor key. That track has an odd equilibrium: Compared to other slick ’80s chart pop, there’s way too much empty space on “Let’s Dance,” and Bowie’s growling is queasy and unsettling. With its mix of panache and subversion, Let’s Dance became a Trojan horse for the world to discover all the many Bowies hiding underneath the blond bouffant and designer suits. –Jeremy D. Larson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hDbpF4Mvkw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f20e03e63728cf88931a83/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/127-David-Bowie-Let%25E2%2580%2599s-Dance.jpg,/dataset/artwork/David_Bowie-Lets_Dance_1983.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,126,Pet Shop Boys,Actually (1987),Parlophone / EMI,"Parlophone / EMI Neil Tennant was a music journalist before he formed Pet Shop Boys, so it’s little wonder he was adept at melding acid social commentary with pop. There are some particularly clever lyrical turns on this album, especially on “Rent”: “I love you, you pay my rent.” Actually, the duo’s second record, did not shrink from the enormous success of its predecessor, Please. The synths this time are even more over-the-top as they match Tennant’s immediately recognizable vocals, somehow dry and impassioned at once. At the time, he was especially pissed off with Margaret Thatcher’s government and the likelihood of her re-election, and he explores his malaise with privatization and capitalism on “Shopping” and “King’s Cross.” The record even resurrected Dusty Springfield's career after she featured on the wry single “What Have I Done to Deserve This?” On Actually, Pet Shop Boys mastered the art of dealing with the decade's socio-political stresses without sacrificing the need for dance and laughter. –Eve Barlow",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2mBaEhd6RU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f20e3fca6c75d8042629f6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/126-Pet-Shop-Boys-Actually.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Pet_Shop_Boys-Actually_1987.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,125,Peter Gabriel,Peter Gabriel (1980),Charisma,"Charisma Released in the spring of 1980, Peter Gabriel’s third album foreshadowed so much of what would happen in rock music throughout the rest of the decade; not quite adhering to the aural architecture of either post-punk or radio rock, the record nevertheless had a profound influence on both. Gabriel teamed with Steve Lillywhite—a producer who cut his teeth recording experimental punks XTC and Siouxsie and the Banshees—with the intention of pushing through the past into the future. Adopting a strict set of rules, such as the banning of cymbals, but allowing for happy accidents, Gabriel and co. developed a sound that was simultaneously cinematic and hermetic. It’s the articulation of a lively, neurotic interior world. Underneath that eerie, sexy shimmer, Peter Gabriel teems with paranoia about the erosion of humanity, a theme that resonated strongly during the age of Reaganomics and the Cold War. But the record ends with a glimmer of hope thanks to “Biko,” an ode to the slain anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko. By concluding this dark-energy record with a rallying call, not a dirge, Gabriel suggests that humanity is worth the fight. –Stephen Thomas Erlewine",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/luVpsM3YAgw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f20e78e63728cf88931a85/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/125-Peter-Gabriel-Peter-Gabriel.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Peter_Gabriel-Peter_Gabriel_1980.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,124,Bruce Springsteen,Tunnel of Love (1987),Columbia,"Columbia Following the unreasonable success of 1984’s Born in the U.S.A., Bruce Springsteen found himself filthy rich, beloved by millions, married to a model—and scared shitless. Instead of a honeymoon, the self-consciously spare Tunnel of Love plays like the loneliest night of the soul. As he tells it in his autobiography, his first marriage often felt like a countdown to failure. Eternal vows unleashed the singer’s brooding side, and he soon began to suffer anxiety attacks and paranoid delusions. He leans into this discomfort throughout Tunnel of Love, even likening commitment to a terrifying carnival ride—replete with death-scraping screams—on the title track. All of Springsteen’s deep-seated neuroses come forward on the album’s thematic center, “Brilliant Disguise,” and its monochrome music video. The one-shot clip finds him sitting all by himself in a quintessential American kitchen, the same sort of room where Springsteen once absorbed his depressed and drunken father’s anger on a nightly basis. As the camera inches into the singer’s face, the crease in his brow fills the frame. The song’s 3 a.m. confessions lay out Springsteen’s innermost fears, brutal in their candor: Who can I trust? Is my life a lie? Am I capable of love? A year after Tunnel of Love’s release, to the surprise of no one who heard it, Springsteen was signing divorce papers. But as long as there are people lying awake at night, twisting and tugging at their wedding rings, the album will endure. –Ryan Dombal",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idnJnjV_8rg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f20ec7ca6c75d8042629f8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/124-Bruce-Springsteen-Tunnel-of-Love.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bruce_Springsteen-Tunnel_of_Love_1987.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,123,The Go-Go’s,Beauty and the Beat (1981),IRS,"IRS If Ramones’ Phil Spector-produced 1980 album End of the Century proved a connection between girl groups and punks, the Go-Go’s took that idea and ran with it. Not only was the California quintet inspired by the ultra-catchy hooks and compact song structures of the Supremes and their ilk, its members had the advantage of being living, breathing girls. They understood that joy and feminine playfulness were valid emotions to pull into the kind of brash music that had inspired them to form in the first place, after seeing a Sex Pistols show. Though their punk credibility was often underestimated, the Go-Go’s laughed their way into the history books: Beauty and the Beat, their 1981 debut, was the first No. 1 record by a female group who wrote their own music and played their own instruments. The album is full of tough, tight theme songs for the new wave generation. With its driving rhythm section and girl-gang vocals, “We Got the Beat” never quite gets old despite its ubiquity. “Our Lips Are Sealed,” the album’s other smash, fills the listener with a rush of California cool the second its muted guitar chug kicks in. Like many popular albums that are quietly subversive, the non-singles here hew closer to the band’s heavier roots: Songs about sexual autonomy and romantic disenchantment, set to furious drums and eerie electric guitar riffs, are a welcome reminder that no amount of polish could take the grit out of the Go-Go’s. –Jillian Mapes",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iHa4wZzG4g,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f20f042fc71751ad4bfbad/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/123-The-Go-Go%25E2%2580%2599s-Beauty-and-the-Beat.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Go-Gos-Beauty_and_the_Beat_1981.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,122,Beat Happening,Beat Happening (1985),K,"K In 1979, a punk-obsessed teenager from Olympia, Washington named Calvin Johnson wrote a letter to the new wave magazine New York Rocker. “Rock’n’roll is a teenage sport, meant to be played by teenagers of all ages—they could be 15, 25, or 35,” he wrote. “It all boils down to whether they’ve got the love in their hearts, that beautiful teenage spirit.” This idea of youth as an attitude, not an age, would eventually come to define Johnson’s band, Beat Happening. On the trio’s 1985 self-titled debut, they gleefully reinterpret the “rules” of punk. While other underground acts masqueraded as tough guys, Beat Happening proudly adorned their record with a stick-figure cat aboard a rocketship and sang about beachside dance parties hosted by one Mr. Fish. They played rudimentary, raw songs, frequently switched roles, and occasionally ditched proper instruments altogether. Beginning here, Beat Happening used innocence as a vehicle to explore deeper, adult anxieties, emboldening a new generation to make music no matter the means. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTOzct6QOGg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f20f3c62097041dd8c643a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/122-Beat-Happening-Beat-Happening.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beat_Happening-Beat_Happening_1985.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,121,Pretenders,Pretenders (1980),Real / Sire,"Real / Sire It’s easy to come away from Pretenders thinking only about Chrissie Hynde, the band’s dusky-voiced lead singer and composer. Hynde had fled Ohio and immersed herself in punk at its peak, working at Sex Pistols svengali Malcolm McLaren’s boutique and hanging out with the Clash; she fought hard for a spot in a band, only to be rejected time and time again. By the time she formed Pretenders, she could put an iron curtain up around herself on songs like “Precious,” and then yank it down just as quickly, revealing an unexpected vulnerability on hits like “Brass in Pocket.” She only needed 12 tracks to prove she was one of the coolest people on the planet. Hynde also had plenty of help from the other Pretenders, who backed up her raw writing with inventive, tricky musicianship. Jimmy Honeyman-Scott could toss off razor-wire solos like the one slicing up “The Wait” and chiming, romantic leads in equal measure, and the whole band delighted in ripping through unorthodox time signatures at high speed. This version of Pretenders didn’t last long: The band was undone by the summer of 1982, with two of its members succumbing to drug addiction. That sense of impending doom makes this album’s blend of punk energy and pop sophistication sound especially poignant. –Jamieson Cox",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOEq5JeWDnQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f20f7871e35446b89df9a0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/121-Pretenders-Pretenders.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Pretenders-Pretenders_1980.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,120,Run-D.M.C.,Run-D.M.C. (1984),Profile,"Profile Prior to Run-D.M.C.’s eponymous debut album, hip-hop had been mostly written off as party music derived from funk and disco. Such disregard went all the way to MTV—an important barometer for mainstream success at the time—which didn’t air any hip-hop videos. But the acceptance of the genre would change overnight with the swag and no-bullshit attitude the Queens group brought to their rapping. Their flex anthem “Rock Box” was the first rap music video to break onto MTV, notably featuring a guitar riff to pair with Jam Master Jay’s drum machine, along with visuals that left rap’s typically disco-inspired outfits in the past while ushering in ’80s B-Boy style. In the process, Run-D.M.C. became hip-hop’s new shit-talking poster boys, and rap never looked back. –Alphonse Pierre",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yG0vV3RZG_8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f20fb35f7c87f9fc1c9b3f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/120-Run-D.M.C.-Run-D.M.C..jpg,/dataset/artwork/Run-DMC-Run-DMC_1984.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,119,Steely Dan,Gaucho (1980),MCA,"MCA Steely Dan’s seventh album, Gaucho, doesn’t belong to a specific place as much as a specific culture—one filled with high rollers, hustlers, and perverts who while away their hours in luxurious locations, including expensive recording studios. Gaucho belongs to those studios, the places where Steely Dan chased their famously fastidious sound. Meticulous but not stiff, the record glides upon on its well-tailored grooves, offering the elegant degenerates that populate Steely Dan’s songs the louche music they deserved. Legend has it that Dire Straits guitar god Mark Knopfler played hours’ worth of solos only to have a couple of licks surface on the horn-laden strut “Time Out of Mind,” an anecdote that seemingly underscores how Donald Fagen and Walter Becker prized perfection above all else. But really, what Steely Dan cherished was vibe, looking for the right rhythms and instrumentals to serve their concepts—and in that sense, Gaucho is the apotheosis of their art. –Stephen Thomas Erlewine",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bacnz6p6wD4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f2101b71e35446b89df9a2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/119-Steely-Dan-Gaucho.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Steely_Dan-Gaucho_1980.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,118,Philip Glass,Solo Piano (1989),CBS,"CBS By the time Philip Glass released Solo Piano in 1989, he was probably the most famous composer alive. He had a big deal with a major label; he’d collaborated with Paul Simon and Linda Ronstadt; he’d played live on “Late Night With David Letterman.” Solo Piano represented Glass at his most ruminative and stripped-down—beginning-of-the-morning music, or end-of-the-night. It ambles, digresses and—as Glass does—repeats. At times it almost seems to pour out of him like thought, or conversation. You wonder how something so simple could inspire such hatred (and Glass did—and still does—inspire hatred). It may have something to do with the collective delusion that entertainment should feel easy but art should feel hard. Glass wasn’t even a great pianist in the conventional sense—he flubs notes, he muddies phrasing. Where his ensemble pieces had a seamless, ecstatic quality, Solo Piano sounds mostly like what it is: A man alone at the piano. But there is an elegance here that is hard to achieve and harder to replicate. For whatever reputation Glass has as an ambassador of the avant-garde, what emerges on Solo Piano is a vision of contemporary music not for the concert hall but for the living room; of the piano not as a vehicle for systems or ideas, but something more elemental: a companion, maybe, the quiet voice you want to hear when you have nothing else to say. –Mike Powell",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAE6_YZw2fk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f210567905eccfe3dba5d2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/118-Philip-Glass-Solo-Piano.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Philip_Glass-Solo_Piano_1989.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,117,Whitney Houston,Whitney Houston (1985),Arista,"Arista Before her voice beamed into every car and home in America, Whitney Houston had to walk her proving grounds. The songs on her self-titled debut don’t pop to the elastic heights of her later hits; even compared to its chart competitors, the album kept things slow, smart, and safe, with swaying soul ballads and easy dance numbers. But the simplicity of the record’s architecture highlighted all the ways Houston’s voice could shine. On the early single “You Give Good Love,"" she digs her heels in as she hits her notes, a full-body feat of focus and effort. On “How Will I Know,” she rides the seam between a croon and a gasp, gleefully playing her role as a teenager dreaming of love. Her vocal range still astounded, but her success relied on more than technical ability: Houston folded a new emotional expressiveness into the pop voice. She could swing from levity to gravitas in an instant; she could shiver or seethe as the song required. She had the voice to make millions fall in love, and on her first album, she seized her chance. –Sasha Geffen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmpDoaP_bjs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f2109662097041dd8c643c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/117-Whitney-Houston-Whitney-Houston.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Whitney_Houston-Whitney_Houston_1985.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,116,Misfits,Walk Among Us (1982),Ruby,"Ruby During a period when bludgeoning political hardcore was going full steam and the Ramones were making a Phil Spector album, the Misfits were distinctive. Along with their over-the-top imagery of cult horror movies, brooding frontman Glenn Danzig’s narratives set them apart from their peers: Their debut album, Walk Among Us, begins with back-to-back songs about transforming into monsters (a 20-eyed creature and a Martian, respectively). What’s even more impressive is the amount of emotional tumult in the singer’s performances: His portrait of the 1950s character Vampira is downright reverent, and even when he takes on the persona of a head-collecting demon on “Skulls,” there’s genuine longing in his voice. Here, Danzig is the devil, and he’s really good at convincing you to shout along with him. –Evan Minsker",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLXOLTSa_mw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f210cd5f7c87f9fc1c9b41/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/116-Misfits-Walk-Among-Us.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Misfits-Walk_Among_Us_1982.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,115,Madonna,Like a Virgin (1984),Sire,"Sire Like a Virgin caught Madonna in a transitional moment. She was only a year removed from the effervescent electro-pop of her debut, and singles like “Dress You Up” and “Angel” revisited that sound with a little more polish from producer Nile Rodgers. Her voice was still developing, so she sold ballads like her cover of “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore” with raw emotion rather than vocal power. And the soulful “Shoo-Bee-Doo” hinted at the genre exercises that would pepper every Madonna album from here on out. She was an unfinished product, but the rough edges were charming rather than sloppy. Like a Virgin would be a worthy sophomore album if it stopped there, but it’s special because it also boasts the two songs that made Madonna a brilliant and purposeful provocateur, equally adept with irony and melody. “Material Girl” is a bratty celebration of rich boys and fancy toys that doubles as a send-up of Reagan-era materialism, complete with nasal spoiled-princess affectation and dumb-hunk backing vocals. And the indelible title track laid down the blueprint for the virgin-whore dichotomy she’d spend the next three decades exploring; she dominated water-cooler conversations the morning after the 1984 MTV Video Music Awards, where she took the stage solo and gyrated all over her wedding veil. Madonna knew how to get people to listen from the very beginning. Like a Virgin proved she could get them talking, too. –Jamieson Cox",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6iNtdCjwiM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f21105ca6c75d8042629fa/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/115-Madonna-Like-a-Virgin.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Madonna-Like_a_Virgin_1984.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,114,INXS,Kick (1987),Mercury / Atlantic,"Mercury / Atlantic When Atlantic Records president Doug Morris heard the final version of INXS’s Kick, he offered the band a million dollars to go to back to Australia and come up with something else. He was somehow convinced that making a swaggering, slithering, serpentine album that squarely focused on frontman Michael Hutchence’s sex appeal was going to lose the rock fans. And though this album admittedly contains some filler that’s slick and blowzy enough to be palmed off on Huey Lewis, it also includes “New Sensation,” “Devil Inside,” and “Need You Tonight”—state-of-the-art ’80s funk-pop played with enough charisma and volume for the cheap seats. Kick made INXS inescapable, and Hutchence played his “guy she tells you not to worry about” version of Bono for the rest of the decade. –Ian Cohen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JMbJwjs4Bs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f2114ae63728cf88931a87/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/114-INXS-Kick.jpg,/dataset/artwork/INXS-Kick_1987.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,113,Spacemen 3,Playing With Fire (1988),Fire,"Fire It’s often said that the best rock’n’roll isn’t about skill, it’s about feeling—and the music of Spacemen 3 was all about bottling up that feeling, cooking it in a spoon, and letting it course through their veins to the point of numbness. The UK group cut its teeth subjecting proto-punk standards from the Stooges and 13th Floor Elevators to desecrating distortion, but by their third album, Playing With Fire, leaders Pete “Sonic Boom” Kember and Jason Pierce had perfected a brand of minimalist yet magisterial psychedelic rock that all but did away with rock’s essential building block—rhythm—to marinate in the music’s fuck-it-all attitude. It’s a record where every codeine-dripped tremolo effect flares up and fades like a slow-motion shooting star, where every organ drone feels like a sunrise beaming into your third eye, where the scarce drum beats are felt more in the heart than in the hips. –Stuart Berman",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeAgoqvC9rQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f2118e02ad74ed8ddf7def/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/113-Spacemen-3-Playing-With-Fire.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Spacemen_3-Playing_With_Fire_1988.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,112,New Order,Technique (1989),Factory,"Factory New Order never got the chance to become known an albums band. This is not because their albums aren't great—Technique marks the end of a five-album run largely unrivaled in the halls of pop—but because their singles were so damn good. So consider Technique the New Order album for album connoisseurs, their sweetest and most even work. Thirty-three at the time of its release, singer Bernard Sumner aims his always-dopey lyrics at a lackadaisical peace of mind, having dropped any pretense of being dangerous or sexy (two things he never was anyway). There are still nods to the dancefloor—the band were part owners of Manchester’s legendary club the Haçienda, and “Fine Time” is a winking nod to the acid craze sweeping Britain at the time—but the arrangements largely accommodate Sumner’s burgeoning chill. Here, on display, are the little things the band does so well: the way the guitar bites during the chorus of “Run 2,” the vampy piano of “Vanishing Point,” the way “Mr. Disco” takes dance music’s tropes and settles them into a gentle, mid-tempo swagger. The album’s title begins to make sense, technique being something the band's bigger hits always obscured. –Andrew Gaerig",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1tjQqWqqAA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f211c85f7c87f9fc1c9b43/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/112-New-Order-Technique.jpg,/dataset/artwork/New_Order-Technique_1989.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,111,Roxy Music,Avalon (1982),EG / Polydor,"EG / Polydor Everyone knows what romance feels like. But what does it sound like? An answer can be found in Avalon. Roxy Music’s most rapturous album doesn’t just address romance; it embodies it in every sumptuous bass line, sleek guitar progression, and silky vocal caress. It also represents both the apex and the end of the band’s studio career: Their final album of original work, it streamlines all the quirks and smirks of their earlier records, giving way to sincerity and beauty. Everything about Avalon sounds expensive, from the high-thread-count production to the lush arrangements. Yet fathoms of feeling lie beneath the gloss. Bryan Ferry, adopting the most earnest voice of his life, addressed love as a thing both elusive and vital. The melodies, which he largely composed, dance like Fred Astaire, but the synths that drape them suggest something sadder. Andy Mackay’s sax and oboe work lends the music a wan new beauty, while Phil Manzanera tailors his guitar lines with the care of a bespoke suit. Like romance itself, Avalon doesn’t last long, but the memory of it lingers. –Jim Farber",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFVULi5ZkGg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f212094db3fa9238b7db33/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/111-Roxy-Music-Avalon.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Roxy_Music-Avalon_1982.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,110,X,Los Angeles (1980),Slash,"Slash When X’s debut, Los Angeles, came out in 1980, they were among the first L.A. punk bands to release an album. So it’s no wonder they used the platform to represent their city. Fronted by two lovestruck poets, John Doe and Exene Cervenka, X condensed their dueling wails, rockabilly riffs, and concise storytelling into riveting California noir. Through the windows of a vomit-reeking city bus, the band led a guided tour of local racists, junkies, rapists, and psychokillers so fearsome, they made ’70s New York sound quaint. A frenzied cover of the Doors’ “Soul Kitchen” paid tribute to producer Ray Manzarek’s original band of L.A. weirdos, while “Sex and Dying in High Society” set the casting couch ablaze. X’s Los Angeles wasn’t somewhere you’d want to live, but like any great pulp novel, it sure was an exciting place to visit. –Judy Berman",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjKWOOkGopc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f2124d71e35446b89df9a4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/110-X-Los-Angeles.jpg,/dataset/artwork/X-Los_Angeles_1980.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,109,The Cure,The Head on the Door (1985),Elektra,"Elektra The Cure’s sixth LP was also their big American breakthrough—a bright, crisp record nearly devoid of their signature swirling gloom. In this new light, Robert Smith’s dark desires took on positively cheery undertones, from jangly opener “In Between Days” and the eternal synth bop of “Close to Me” to the almost-disco of “Push,” which is basically Blondie viewed through a veil of distortion. It was the only one of the band’s albums to be entirely conceived by Smith, but far from being a hermetic affair, it veered outward, eagerly grabbing at new ideas. And with an added fifth member, multi-instrumentalist Porl Thompson, the sound was tighter and bolder, too. The brief, wondrous record marks a transition point in the Cure’s canon, a snapshot of a band making their way toward sprawling works yet to come. –Eve Barlow",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vf44EwFCAco,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f212f32f211db3848f5893/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/109-The-Cure-The-Head-on-the-Door.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Cure-The_Head_on_the_Door_1985.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,108,Young Marble Giants,Colossal Youth (1980),Rough Trade,"Rough Trade There was nothing colossal about Colossal Youth, the sole album by the Welsh post-punk group Young Marble Giants. Their songs were so muted and spacious that they felt almost confrontational: How do you expect rock music to sound? Why do you need all that noise? In some of the only live footage of the band, filmed in 1980, it’s easy to forget there’s an audience watching. Every song, from the anxious surge of “Searching for Mr. Right” to the slyly funky “Wurlitzer Jukebox,” feels like a private interaction between these musicians, as they stand there smoking cigarettes and gazing into the middle distance with the stillness that comes right before you launch into a fury or collapse in a heap. Young Marble Giants opted for the latter, and their work is continued by a new generation of artists, all stepping on stage to make their quietest thoughts sound immortal. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwXebq6FMAw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f2133171e35446b89df9a6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/108-Young-Marble-Giants-Colossal-Youth.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Young_Marble_Giants-Colossal_Youth_1980.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,107,The Feelies,Crazy Rhythms (1980),Stiff,"Stiff The Feelies wrote much of their 1980 debut, Crazy Rhythms, long before they recorded it, reworking their caffeinated punk over and over as they skittered between suburban New Jersey basements and clubs like CBGB, Max’s Kansas City, and their beloved Maxwell’s. Discovering Brian Eno’s Another Green World with a vengeance, chief songwriters Glenn Mercer and Bill Million spent several years turning their songs into propulsive devices before laying them to tape, as if charting a world of syncopation hidden behind the Velvet Underground’s feedback grooves—and then getting rid of the feedback. Mapping precise parts for second (and sometimes third) drummers, removing extraneous cymbals, and finding the right guitar tones, Mercer and Million’s crazy rhythms weren’t so much unhinged as obsessive, and the album’s recording no less so. Mercer’s vocals sometimes channel a twitchiness adjacent to Jonathan Richman or David Byrne, but the Feelies’ rhythmic ecstasy is perhaps even twitchier; their signature “The Boy With Perpetual Nervousness” is all intricately churning drums and minimal guitar. Finding unexpected range and drama in their pep, from a manic Beatles cover to the exquisite paranoia of “Forces at Work,” the Feelies would inspire Yo La Tengo, R.E.M., and others before returning to the basement for another half-decade of tinkering and Eno obsession. –Jesse Jarnow",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsycGeQsp0k,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f2136b4db3fa9238b7db35/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/107-The-Feelies-Crazy-Rhythms.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Feelies-Crazy_Rhythms_1980.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,106,Laurie Spiegel,The Expanding Universe (1980),Philo,"Philo As much a programmer as a composer, Laurie Spiegel realized the musical potential of computers decades before they became commonplace. Her 1980 album The Expanding Universe was written in the mid-’70s using machines that ran the early programming language FORTRAN and loomed large over a room—a far cry from three-pound laptops with GarageBand preinstalled. The album’s rhythmic and melodic complexities informed electronic composition at its root: The playful, overlapping figures of “Patchwork” stir up the same momentum much of pop music aims for today, while the album’s mesmerizing title track unfolds with cinematic patience across 28 minutes. Before anyone had time to accuse computer music of being soulless, Spiegel was already busy flooding her machines with ghosts, teasing out emotional resonance from a new frontier of mathematical tools. –Sasha Geffen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUgSJt7Q7gw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f213aa2f211db3848f5895/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/106-Laurie-Spiegel-The-Expanding-Universe.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Laurie_Spiegel-The_Expanding_Universe_1980.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,105,Boogie Down Productions,By All Means Necessary (1988),BMG / Jive,"BMG / Jive Boogie Down Productions’ classic 1987 debut, Criminal Minded, delivered proto-gangsta rap with force: “I do not contemplate a battle ’cause it really ain’t worth it/I’d rather point a pistol at your head and try to burst it,” KRS-One rapped. But that all changed when BDP co-founder and producer Scott La Rock was shot and killed in the Bronx just a few months after Criminal Minded’s release. Having lost his friend and running mate, KRS-One made peace the new BDP mandate with By All Means Necessary. This is one of rap’s earliest activist records, directing its fire at government corruption, big business, and the local drug trade. The album promotes safe sex, educating others, and positivity, each message carried by KRS’ sonorous voice, his hard, walloping flows, and his professorial disposition. This is wholesome boom-bap without sanctimony, a powerful elegy through which Scott La Rock’s ghost still lingers. By All Means Necessary also owes a heavy debt to Malcolm X: The album’s title is a reference to a 1964 speech by the civil rights leader, and its cover is a recreation of the famous photo of X at his window with a rifle. And like that photo, this record can be construed as both a call to action for the black community and a warning to those who might harm it. –Sheldon Pearce",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffiW8Zqt9nw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f213f662097041dd8c643e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/105-Boogie-Down-Productions-By-All-Means-Necessary.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Boogie_Down_Productions-By_All_Means_Necessary_1988.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,104,Public Image Ltd,Second Edition (1980),Virgin,"Virgin John Lydon will always be best known for fronting the Sex Pistols, a manufactured band whose impact had as much to do with their style and attitude as their songs. But with his following act, Public Image Ltd, Lydon proved himself a visionary and changed the course of punk’s musical trajectory. Following a 1978 trip to Jamaica bankrolled by Virgin Records founder Richard Branson, Lydon—along with guitarist Keith Levene, bassist Jah Wobble, and a rotating cast of drummers—sought to marry the elastic rhythms and spacious sounds of reggae with punk’s confrontational, nihilist spirit. Second Edition (originally issued in a film canister as Metal Box) is the moment when that vision snaps into focus. Its highlights are punk in spirit and expansive in sound: “Albatross,” the lumbering, nearly 11-minute-long opener, wherein Lydon casts off the yoke of post-Pistols expectation; “Poptones,” which manages to wring an unsettling beauty from jagged shards of guitar, a serpentine bassline, and vignettes pulled from a horrifying story of kidnapping and rape; the spectral “Careering,” which bears almost no resemblance to rock music at all. Second Edition is the sound of a band throwing out the maps and heading into uncharted territory. –Mehan Jayasuriya",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GchkDNHw6Y,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f2142eca6c75d8042629fc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/104-Public-Image-Ltd-Second-Edition.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Public_Image_Ltd-Second_Edition_1980.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,103,Beastie Boys,Licensed to Ill (1986),Def Jam,"Def Jam Hip-hop is black music, so if a group of white rappers were to thrive as the genre still sought its footing, they had to be dope. Luckily, Beastie Boys were, and they gained respect—even when it was begrudging. The Beasties brought raw punk edginess to hip-hop, and while videos for “No Sleep Till Brooklyn” and “Fight for Your Right” poked fun at lame social gatherings and hair-metal culture in a way that spoke directly to suburban white America, a song like “Paul Revere” proved they could rock a mic regardless of skin color. They paved a way for the flurry of rap-rock hybrids, and likeminded artists like Eminem and Kid Rock draw a direct line to Licensed to Ill’s brash irreverence. Songs like Em’s “White America” and Kid Rock’s “American Badass” don’t exist without Beasties’ “Rhymin’ & Stealin’,” with its massive drum sample of Led Zeppelin’s “When the Levee Breaks.” The trio would go on to become generational spokesmen, but they likely weren’t thinking about any of that at the time: They simply wanted to party and bullshit. –Marcus J. Moore",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07Y0cy-nvAg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f214632fc71751ad4bfbaf/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/103-Beastie-Boys-Licensed-to-Ill.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beastie_Boys-Licensed_to_Ill_1986.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,102,Wipers,Youth of America (1981),Park Avenue,"Park Avenue The first Wipers album, 1980’s Is This Real?, established them a vital new voice in punk. Portland’s Greg Sage was a singular presence who could cut traditional guitar scuzz with dramatic vocal performances and stretches of calm. His follow-up, Youth of America, took this iconoclastic bent even further, placing dour monologues about the grim state of the union up against feedback-addled guitar solos. On the title track, whorls of noise and a mesmerizing krautrock bass groove build drama and urgency across 10 minutes—a direct reaction to punk’s penchant for ultra-short songs. Sage has said the song was written about a dystopian dream he had—one where overpopulation led to competition in every facet of life. But Wipers don’t just wallow. There’s a stunning and urgent instrumental song here called “When It’s Over”; before a live performance of it, Sage once told the crowd, “This song is about the beginning… ’cause when it’s over, it begins.” There’s darkness all over Youth of America, but there’s also the possibility of things shaking out. –Evan Minsker",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Njf0M8_Ato,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f214ab4db3fa9238b7db37/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/102-Wipers-Youth-of-America.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Wipers-Youth_of_America_1981.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,101,Alice Coltrane,Turiya Sings (1982),Avatar Book Institute,"Avatar Book Institute After the death of her jazz titan husband in 1967, Alice Coltrane deepened her spiritual practice, adopting the Hindu name Turiyasangitananda and studying under the guru Swami Satchidananda. Many of the solo recordings she released in the ’70s reflected her spiritual practice, but Turiya Sings marked the moment when she detached fully from jazz signifiers and worked to establish her own musical vernacular. With nothing more than organ, harp, piano, and her voice, Coltrane wrote and recorded Turiya Sings as a series of deeply moving devotional hymns. The album boasts some of her most affecting vocal performances; full of reverence and melancholy, her voice tracing spellbinding mantras. Turiya Sings is the sound of a spiritual seeker in full awe of her journey so far, and in full anticipation of the path she has yet to walk. –Sasha Geffen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06a1iOXw5K0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f2150771e35446b89df9a8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/101-Alice-Coltrane-Turiya-Sings.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Alice_Coltrane-Turiya_Sings_1982.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,100,Cyndi Lauper,She’s So Unusual (1983),Portrait,"Portrait The 1980s marked a time when true oddballs could infiltrate the pop machine and transform—through new wave’s armor of shiny synths and perfect beats—into radio-ready superheroes. After the demise of her band Blue Angel, Cyndi Lauper became one. Her solo debut, She’s So Unusual, stands as an all-time great art-pop collage. Then 30 years old, she sang unstoppable covers of Prince (blurring away gender norms) and the new wave band the Brains (complicating its anti-capitalist statement even further). She tied in wild laughter, a Betty Boop sample, and an air of gleeful oddity. It felt all the more heroic given Lauper’s previous difficulties in the music industry and her tumultuous personal path, which found the Queens native fleeing home at 17 to escape her abusive stepfather. Perhaps it was a source of her defiance. Lauper’s four-octave voice always curled slightly into a shout—you could be forgiven, today, for thinking that it’s Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker on “Yeah Yeah.” It was Lauper’s brash delivery and rewritten lyrics that defined the album’s globe-conquering slumber-party anthem, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” Inspired by the women’s movement and the rawness of bands like the Clash, Lauper turned the original song—written by a man, Robert Hazard—from an arguably sexist power-pop tune into an anti-authoritarian, feminist rallying cry. In Lauper’s voice, its lyrics became an ode to girls everywhere who are causing scenes and staking out their right to adventures, time after time. –Jenn Pelly",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wBgcalM4c4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f2154a62097041dd8c6440/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/100-Cyndi-Lauper-She%25E2%2580%2599s-So-Unusual.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Cyndi_Lauper-Shes_So_Unusual_1983.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,99,Kool G Rap / DJ Polo,Road to the Riches (1989),Cold Chillin’ / Warner Bros.,"Cold Chillin’ / Warner Bros. In the late ’80s, hip-hop was flooring the gas pedal: The music and lyrics were moving faster and sounding denser, and there was a collective epiphany taking effect thanks to new sampling equipment. Road to the Riches, the debut collaboration between producer extraordinaire Marley Marl, hard-bitten gangsta rap pioneer Kool G Rap, and DJ Polo, captured these evolutions. Amid hip-hop’s first sampling rush, Marley Marl expanded his sound to channel everything from James Brown to Gary Numan and obscure jazz loops. Meanwhile, Kool G Rap laid the groundwork for everyone from Nas to Wu-Tang to 50 Cent; if your favorite rapper has ever compared themselves to John Gotti, they have Kool G Rap to thank. He rapped about crime brutally with attention to texture and detail, never sounding like a lurid cartoon. Entire generations of knotty rhyme schemes and vivid street storytelling arose from here. –Jay Balfour",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32T2brk1bIM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f9dc0632700da110c07ef9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/99-Kool-G-Rap-DJ-Polo-Road-to-the-Riches.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kool_G_Rap__DJ_Polo-Road_to_the_Riches_1989.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,98,Nirvana,Bleach (1989),Sub Pop,"Sub Pop Punk had a way of making anger sound righteous and fashionable, but Kurt Cobain knew better. Real anger, he understood, is ugly and isolating. On Nirvana’s mercilessly scuzzy debut, Bleach, Cobain railed against zealots, bigots, chauvinists, and father figures—especially father figures—with the awkward, wounded rage of an alienated teen. Cobain was already realizing that punk, which he’d once seen as a respite from the restrictive establishment, had its own tendency toward groupthink. He postscripts “About a Girl,” the album’s most tuneful track and a glimpse at the melodic impulses that would make him one of the defining rock musicians of the ’90s, with “School,” a roaring fuck-you to purists who might object to such a flirtation with pop. Seattle’s grunge scene, he contended, was no better than a petty high-school clique. Cobain never disguised the pain at the root of his rage. “Scoff” rails against a parent who gaslights him into believing the worst about himself. And on “Downer,” he screams some parting advice: “Don’t feel guilty masturbating!” After spending his entire youth feeling boxed-in and ashamed, he wanted everyone who heard him to know they didn’t have to feel the same. –Evan Rytlewski",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkKMsqH_Hbs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f9dc5e6a55c1022814717a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/98-Nirvana-Bleach.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nirvana-Bleach_1989.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,97,The Raincoats,Odyshape (1981),Rough Trade,"Rough Trade Whether you think of it as one of the earliest classics of London post-punk or as a forerunner to feminist rock, the Raincoats’ self-titled 1979 debut was nothing short of revolutionary. The band practiced a quieter but no less groundbreaking form of iconoclasm on its follow-up, Odyshape. Drummer Palmolive’s departure had stripped their music of its signature roiling rhythms, but rather than try to replicate her sound, they used the lineup change as an opportunity to drift even further from rock convention. Drawing on free jazz and incorporating African percussion that complemented Gina Birch’s slithering basslines, the band members settled into more fluid roles. Vicky Aspinall’s violin soared to the foreground of warped folk tracks like “Red Shoes” and oddball ballads like “Family Treet.” Even when their words were inscrutable, Birch and co-frontwoman Ana da Silva’s voices traversed the emotional spectrum, from the sweetness of “Dancing in My Head” to the outrage of “Go Away.” The album offered no “Fairytale in the Supermarket,” the shout-along anthem of quotidian alienation that anchored the Raincoats' debut. Instead, Odyshape lives in a headspace light years away from the ordinary, a travelogue from a heretofore unexplored universe. –Judy Berman",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9b9roOlXqM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f9e3574f99cc8b1d931d9b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/97-The-Raincoats-Odyshape.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Raincoats-Odyshape_1981.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,96,Fela Kuti,Coffin for Head of State (1981),Kalakuta,"Kalakuta Though it’s comprised of just a single song, Fela Kuti’s 1981 opus Coffin for Head of State brims with substance. A moody, simmering example of the Nigerian Afrobeat style that Fela spearheaded, the restrained anger of the disc’s opening instrumental side does not quite prepare the listener for the blistering crescendo it reaches in its second half. Witnessing and decrying the effects of foreign influence across Nigeria, Fela’s ostensible targets are religions like Christianity and Islam, traced out via a whimsical (if generally offensive) impression of frantic prayer. But Fela’s verbal fusillade eventually makes its way to the many “bad bad bad things” perpetrated by the country’s military dictatorship: “Them steal all the money!/Them kill many students!/Them bomb many houses!/Them bomb my house too!/Them killed my mama!/So I carry the coffin.” If his voice seems uncharacteristically enervated, almost quavering with fury, it’s because Fela is narrating the actual events of his life here, including his mother’s death due to injuries sustained during the previous decade’s army raid on his compound. His response was to deliver a coffin to the quarters of the general who ordered the raid, an act of defiance and symbolic justice for which Fela and his partisans were jailed and viciously beaten. All of it is immortalized on this singular masterwork of ensemble funk. –Eddie “Stats” Houghton",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwLYHCCwGT0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f9e39324aa9bdb217461a4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/96-Fela-Kuti-Coffin-for-Head-of-State.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fela_Kuti-Coffin_for_Head_of_State_1981.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,95,Brian Eno / Daniel Lanois / Roger Eno,Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks (1983),EG,"EG While working on a documentary about the Apollo space missions, Brian Eno, his brother Roger, and Daniel Lanois discovered a previously untapped natural resource: the pedal steel guitar as generator of ambient music. Inspired by the country tapes early astronauts brought on early NASA missions and by the vastness of space, Eno set Lanois’ pedal steel adrift inside his comforting synth clouds. (“Zero gravity country music,” Eno called it once.) Though the pedal steel isn’t on every track, it is mimicked elsewhere, providing a central texture for the album. In Eno’s DX7-driven rendition of outer space, Lanois’ occasional melodies act like constellations, drawing out images from the void. Apollo: Soundtracks and Atmospheres is usually grouped with Eno’s ambient albums, but like Lanois’ pedal steel, it stands apart, pointing to worlds still unexplored. *–*Jesse Jarnow",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcWwtQmAt7E,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f9e459d49993aba2e56d4c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/95-Brian-Eno-Daniel-Lanois-Roger-Eno-Apollo-Atmospheres-and-Soundtracks.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Brian_Eno__Daniel_Lanois__Roger_Eno-Apollo_Atmospheres_and_Soundtracks_1983.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,94,Morbid Angel,Altars of Madness (1989),Earache / Combat,"Earache / Combat Generally speaking, death metal is guttural and body-based, while black metal is up there with the ghosts. When the Tampa band Morbid Angel released their debut in 1989, though, they provided a suffocatingly complex template for death metal that bled black. Their intermittently breakneck, slow-mo songs were inspired by a fictional ancient text from the works of fantasy writer H.P. Lovecraft. Fronted by the swamp beast snarls of bassist/vocalist David Vincent, tracks went from laser-focused war anthems to eerie mid-tempo marches to sludgy drop-outs and then back again. (The ghoulish quagmire of the cover art is the perfect mood board, like a piece of origami burning in hellfire.) Emerging from the same humidity as other late-’80s Floridians like Death, Obituary, and Deicide, Morbid Angel’s mix of satanic murk and shiny technicality felt like a complete world. This was due in part to the time the band took to record it: Mastermind Trey Azagthoth, who concocted kaleidoscopic guitar solos, weirdo time signatures, and Pink Floyd-inspired flourishes, famously said he wanted to make a record that forced other bands to run and hide. Mission accomplished. –Brandon Stosuy",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIU7ax2Eq4s,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f9e48324aa9bdb217461a6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/94-Morbid-Angel-Altars-of-Madness.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Morbid_Angel-Altars_of_Madness_1989.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,93,Steve Reich,“Different Trains” / “Electric Counterpoint” (1989),Nonesuch,"Nonesuch Steve Reich’s late-career masterpiece grew out of a family separation. As a youngster, he rode trains between Los Angeles and New York, splitting time between his divorced mother and father. On these trips, he internalized the ch-chk, ch-chk of wheels racing on tracks while his mind wandered outward. “If I had been in Europe during this period,” he reflected later, of the seed of “Different Trains,” “as a Jew I would have had to ride on very different trains.” The piece was evocative in the way of Reich’s pioneering ’70s tape experiments, but increasingly somber in the way of his ’80s work. In the first part, recorded here by Kronos Quartet (and packaged with Pat Metheny’s recital of “Electric Counterpoint”), a string quartet chugs ahead, as American train porters yell out the years like passing stations: “1939! 1940!” Then the strings turn despairing and harried. “1940, on my birthday, the Germans walked into Holland,” a European woman croaks, air-raid sirens leering overhead. Both suites, American and European, invoke longing to reunite a scattered family. The piece found a new tenor for Reich—clear-eyed, anguished, searching—that suited him. He wasn’t a minimalist upstart anymore; he was a moral conscience, albeit as earthbound and lost as the rest of us. –Jazz Monroe",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1E4Bjt_zVJc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f9e4cd4f99cc8b1d931d9d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/93-Steve-Reich-%25E2%2580%259CDifferent-Trains%25E2%2580%259D-%25E2%2580%259CElectric-Counterpoint%25E2%2580%259D.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Steve_Reich-Different_Trains__Electric_Counterpoint_1989.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,92,Fleetwood Mac,Tango in the Night (1987),Warner Bros.,"Warner Bros. From the get-go, Tango in the Night was marred with even more drama and strife than had become typical for Fleetwood Mac. Stevie Nicks was in the throes of a Klonopin addiction and was only present for a few weeks of recording. Lindsey Buckingham was forced to give up tracks he had written for an upcoming solo record, just so the band had enough material to release as an album—and he quit the group as soon as sessions were done. He’s since called it “the worst recording experience of my life.” It’s even more notable, then, that Tango in the Night is undeniably one of the best records in Fleetwood Mac’s arsenal, a flawless study in ’80s rock’n’roll slickness. One of Buckingham’s dearly donated solo tracks, “Big Love,” opens the record and immediately slides the listener into a whirlwind of crystal guitars. Christine McVie, forever the band’s most underrated performer, contributed “Everywhere” and “Little Lies,” two songs as warm and poignant as anything on Rumours or Tusk. And when Stevie was there, she was transcendent: on “Welcome to the Room… Sara,” the pain in her voice is almost unfathomable. Tango in the Night had all the makings of a legendary flop—instead, it sold 15 million copies. It was a victory against all odds. –Cameron Cook",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvF5B0jkTjI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f9e518f974037ed551ff4e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/92-Fleetwood-Mac-Tango-in-the-Night.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fleetwood_Mac-Tango_in_the_Night_1987.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,91,George Michael,Faith (1987),Columbia / Epic,"Columbia / Epic George Michael was never satisfied. He shot to prominence as a tanned, toothy teen idol who sought nothing less than the highest echelon of pop stardom, and by the time he reached that rarefied air, he was thoroughly disillusioned with celebrity. Michael made Faith, his crowning achievement, just as his hunger for recognition began to overlap with his artistic maturity; it was the last moment he believed he’d be gratified by becoming bigger and better than his peers. After reprising “Freedom” with a funereal organ figure, laying Wham! to rest, Michael used Faith to prove that his range as a singer and writer was boundless. He could dip his toe into jaunty rockabilly on the title track and follow it up with Middle Eastern flair, heartfelt soul, and muscular pop-funk. Pleas for sweaty, straightforward sex could sit alongside songs like “Hand to Mouth,” a thoughtful reflection on American poverty, and the elegant “Kissing a Fool.” And on stunners like “Father Figure”  and “One More Try,” the soul behind the denim-clad tush and immaculate stubble came into view: a lonely, longing young man whose queerness was hiding in plain sight. Faith’s chart-crushing success and Grammy win may not have made Michael happy, but the album remains a monument to his tender heart. –Jamieson Cox",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N61LHFFfiik,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f9e55c6a55c1022814717e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/91-George-Michael-Faith.jpg,/dataset/artwork/George_Michael-Faith_1987.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,90,R.E.M.,Reckoning (1984),IRS,"IRS For their second album, R.E.M. lifted the veil. Shedding the mystique they’d cultivated on their 1983 debut Murmur, Reckoning presented their songs with a crystalline mix that hid nothing. It was a risky move—Murmur’s great masterstroke was leaving so much to the imagination—but they had the material to back it up, spry songs with emotions as direct and pronounced as the music. The tension between Peter Buck’s ringing guitars and Michael Stipe’s furtive vocals drives the record. Stipe’s writing was rarely more personal—he blames himself for a relationship gone to ruin on “So. Central Rain,” while on the harrowing “Camera,” he eulogizes a friend, sickened by the fear she’ll be forgotten—yet such grief is offset by the prevalent joy of the music. Reckoning was the album where R.E.M. revealed the root of their longevity, their relentless commitment to reinvention. The band would continue to shed its skin on nearly every album that followed, but there’s nothing like the thrill of hearing them do it for the first time. –Evan Rytlewski",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iFetQJQAWo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f9e5e2b9e392171506a661/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/90-R.E.M.-Reckoning.jpg,/dataset/artwork/REM-Reckoning_1984.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,89,Cocteau Twins,Blue Bell Knoll (1988),4AD,"4AD For a group whose sound is seen as so monolithic and singular, the Cocteau Twins’ catalog is actually surprisingly diverse, from angsty, gothic noise-pop to their early, effervescent post-punk missives. But by the time they released Blue Bell Knoll in 1988, they had permanently settled on the now-classic lineup of guitarist Robin Guthrie, bassist Simon Raymonde, and vocalist Elizabeth Fraser, and all three further locked into the ethereal and glossy sound that they would become best known for. From the to-and-fro melody of “Carolyn’s Fingers” to the summertime jangle of “A Kissed Out Red Floatboat,” each dreamlike track deftly weaves into the next, with Fraser’s lyrical spirals offering their own language of fantasy. –Cameron Cook",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_YT36TvpkE&list=PLb_NPVFApSwvB-iwjbFgLTcHByyU-ZX2H,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f9ef80f974037ed551ff52/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/89-Cocteau-Twins-Blue-Bell-Knoll.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Cocteau_Twins-Blue_Bell_Knoll_1988.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,88,The Stone Roses,The Stone Roses (1989),Silvertone,"Silvertone In 1989, as British clubland raved to acid house, the pre- and post-party belonged to the Stone Roses. For a good decade, the Manchester band’s debut album was inescapable in the UK, uniting ravers, guitar-heads, and pop fans with its exquisite songwriting, snaking guitar lines, Byrds-ian harmonies, and generous layer of psychedelia to cushion the post-club comedown. The Stone Roses is a rock record in sound—even a fairly traditional one until the breakbeat-led rock/rave monster “Fools Gold” was appended to the U.S. release—and it’s easy to imagine a field of flower children picking out the album’s sunlit melodies on acoustic guitars between 1967 love-ins. But its spirit is pure acid house, full of ecstatic release, saucer-eyed emotions, and a newfound confidence to take on the world. Songs like “She Bangs the Drums” and “I Am the Resurrection” became anthems, ones that would fill stadiums three decades later, as The Stone Roses continues to enjoy a rare pan-generational appeal among British music fans. –Ben Cardew",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LezrUMwapJU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f9efeade9e581ade27831d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/88-The-Stone-Roses-The-Stone-Roses.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Stone_Roses-The_Stone_Roses_1989.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,87,Tears for Fears,Songs From the Big Chair (1985),Mercury,"Mercury Curt Smith and Roland Orzabal created pop anthems for emotional turmoil the way their hard-rock contemporaries championed hormonal swagger. The British duo’s sophomore record, Songs From the Big Chair, has more hooks than a 12-round boxing match, production that could turn the air Day-Glo, and smash hits to spare. But beneath all of its pop maximalism is a heart-on-sleeve approach that captures weariness with an almost folk earnestness. “Shout” champions catharsis through Smith and Orzabal’s signature chorus, and its follow-up, “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” takes one look at the power-grab politics of the time and happily opts out. Throw in “Head Over Heels,” one of the decade’s best songs about loving someone with deeply embedded trauma, and the result is a remarkable string of hits that added some much-needed depth to 1985’s pop charts. –Nate Patrin",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9oOS_sXzxk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f9f08b6a55c10228147180/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/87-Tears-for-Fears-Songs-From-the-Big-Chair.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tears_for_Fears-Songs_From_the_Big_Chair_1985.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,86,Guns N’ Roses,Appetite for Destruction (1987),Geffen,"Geffen Appetite for Destruction could only have happened in the late ’80s, a heady and perilous time during which the only way was down. Guns N’ Roses seemed to acknowledge as much with their first notes of their gloriously unstable debut: By opening with a screeching and ridiculous riff-a-thon titled “Welcome to the Jungle,” they established that you could not out-sleaze them if you tried—and god help you if you did. G’N’R were tenacious about their desire to do very bad things, and their commitment yielded a hard rock landmark that showed up all of the cheesy hair bands on MTV. You couldn’t have dreamed up a more appropriately indulgent henchman as frontman Axl Rose, who displayed unbeatable songwriting skills and a voice as undulant as his hips. According to guitarist Slash, “Welcome to the Jungle” was written in just three hours, and “Sweet Child O’ Mine” was almost passed off as a joke song. They went on to indulge in the rewards of fame and fortune, but they would never be as razor-sharp as they were here. –Eve Barlow",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-ylT6eCTIg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f9f0ecd49993aba2e56d50/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/86-Guns-N%25E2%2580%2599-Roses-Appetite-for-Destruction.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Guns_N_Roses-Appetite_for_Destruction_1987.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,85,The Blue Nile,Hats (1989),Linn,"Linn Blue Nile’s Hats is near-glacial in its patience: Synthesizers stretch out until they are miles wide, and frontman Paul Buchanan sings as if he were recently stirred from decades of sleep, announcing the arrival of every new feeling with a deepened appreciation. The results aren’t far off from the romantic synth-pop that ascended the charts in the ’80s, but this album isn’t remotely as self-conscious or theatrical—which may explain why it landed with so little notice at the time (and why we’re still feeling the ripples of its influence today). From the xx to Majical Cloudz to the slow emotional overloads of the 1975, Hats feels like it’s still being gradually, privately discovered. This is music that’s devoted to the very instant of falling in love, and the way the world seems to remodel itself around that feeling. –Brad Nelson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5rx4UNmjeo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f9f120538c1736f90925dc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/85-The-Blue-Nile-Hats.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Blue_Nile-Hats_1989.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,84,Lucinda Williams,Lucinda Williams (1988),Rough Trade,"Rough Trade The old saying goes something like this: “Nobody comes from Los Angeles. Everybody comes to Los Angeles.” People move there to make it, to find jobs or an audience for their art, and Lucinda Williams was no different. After two albums of spare acoustic blues, the Louisiana native headed west, where she worked as a record store clerk and gigged around town. She also made a record for each and every one of the city’s transplants: “The Night’s Too Long” follows a waitress who sells her possessions to move to a place where something actually happens; “Crescent City” tells of a return home, of hanging out with siblings and listening to zydeco. Williams’ rock-tinged country (or is it country-tinged rock?) was rejected by every label until she sent demos to punk haven Rough Trade, who perhaps recognized something punk in her intractability and self-definition. Today, it still stands as one of the fiercest and most thoughtful country records of the decade, a foundational text for the alt-country movement of the ’90s. More crucially, Lucinda Williams continues to influence any artist making music in the lonely spaces between genres and markets, between the place you live and the place you dearly miss. –Stephen Deusner",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0uH79sGSM8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f9f281f1a88b612ac34362/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/84-Lucinda-Williams-Lucinda-Williams.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lucinda_Williams-Lucinda_Williams_1988.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,83,Jungle Brothers,Straight Out the Jungle (1988),Warlock,"Warlock In 1988, three young men from New York took the “concrete jungle” metaphor and ran with it. The MCs Afrika Baby Bam and Mike G, with DJ Sammy B—collectively known as the Jungle Brothers—gave listeners a snapshot of late ’80s New York that brought together Afrocentricity, club culture, and the city’s burgeoning hip-hop scene. Their sound was an unpolished but highly effective extension of what their pioneering DJ forebears like Afrika Bambaataa (Baby Bam’s namesake) had done on the turntables. Their beats were an eclectic mix of samples from acts like the Meters, Lightnin’ Rod, Kool & the Gang, and Manu Dibango, the common denominator for their sources being an undeniable funkiness. The subject matter ranged from cheeky to boastful to socially conscious. With this formula, they laid the foundation for the Native Tongues collective (including De La Soul, Queen Latifah, and A Tribe Called Quest)—which in turn went on to inspire countless artists, from the Roots and the Neptunes to Flying Lotus and Tyler, the Creator. Though the Jungle Brothers rarely get the credit they deserve, we know that in the jungle, roots run deep. –Timmhotep Aku",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SOQLO-YMvU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f9f3564f99cc8b1d931dcf/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/83-Jungle%2520Brothers-Straight-Out-the-Jungle.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jungle_Brothers-Straight_Out_the_Jungle_1988.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,82,Iron Maiden,The Number of the Beast (1982),EMI,"EMI Iron Maiden bassist and chief songwriter Steve Harris watched the spooky 1978 flick Damien: Omen II one night, had terrible nightmares, and wrote one of the great metal anthems of the Satanic Panic. Fittingly, the title track from the band’s 1982 breakout album unfolds like a horror movie: A widower has visions of a cult of devil worshipers, but when he investigates, he finds himself overwhelmed by macabre temptation. The band pummels their way through the song with agitated guitars and thundering drums as frontman Bruce Dickinson wails from the literal pits of hell. The English rockers found inspiration in the pop culture and history books of their youth, whether in the empowering humanism of “The Prisoner” (based on the short-lived TV series of the same title) or the colonialist horrors of “Run to the Hills” (a surprisingly sophisticated narrative that toggles between the voices of European conquerors and Native Americans). The whole record can be a little silly but it’s also dead serious, a line few bands—metal or otherwise—have walked as confidently since. –Stephen Deusner",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMws29eXnVg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f9f3abe318edfee3eb6a7a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/82-Iron-Maiden-The-Number-of-the-Beast.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Iron_Maiden-The_Number_of_the_Beast_1982.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,81,Brian Eno / David Byrne,My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (1981),Sire,"Sire In the downtime between 1979’s Fear of Music and 1980’s Remain in Light, Talking Heads frontman David Byrne and producer Brian Eno constructed a massive map of a music world that extended far past pop. Originally envisioned as the folk music of an imaginary country, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts eventually emerged as something more sophisticated and revolutionary in its use of found sound and samples. Byrne and Eno gathered voices from every source they could find: political radio call-in shows, an impassioned Baptist sermon, Lebanese mountain singers, and a particularly unsettling exorcism. The result is an exploration of folkloric styles and possible cultural intersections that’s both avant garde and danceable. Its border-erasing grooves went on to be adapted by everyone from post-punk bands and early hip-hop groups, but neither age nor familiarity have managed to dull the album’s unknown-transmission allure. –Nate Patrin",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMTi73h5B_U,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f9f3ee9d84b40926e69347/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/81-Brian-Eno-David-Byrne-My-Life-in-the-Bush-of-Ghosts.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Brian_Eno__David_Byrne-My_Life_in_the_Bush_of_Ghosts_1981.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,80,Manuel Göttsching,E2-E4 (1984),Spalax,"Spalax E2-E4 will go down in history as a towering monument to the value of always hitting “record.” Logged in one take by Manuel Göttsching, best known for his work with krautrock titans Ash Ra Tempel, the album was recorded at the guitarist’s home studio as an exercise. Since then, E2-E4 has become a holy grail for jam bands, amateur noodlers, and even some techno producers: a moment of unreplicable artistry with excellence that is immediately felt but difficult to articulate, much less reproduce. The album is built around a two-chord synth riff. The first half entertains a series of zappy, percussive sounds along with the odd synth improvisation, and Göttsching delivers an extended, ropy guitar solo on the back end. Somehow both monolithic and ephemeral, it is the most explicit marriage of krautrock’s dippy expansiveness and its deterministic rhythmic pulse—an extended outre session that can simultaneously please the stoned and the aerobic. –Andrew Gaerig",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=az8OppDHLR0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f9fccb9d84b40926e69349/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/80-Manuel-Go%25CC%2588ttsching-E2-E4.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Manuel_Gttsching-E2-E4_1984.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,79,The Fall,This Nation’s Saving Grace (1985),Beggars Banquet,"Beggars Banquet The Fall’s eighth studio album wasn’t meant as a pop record, and its stakes weren’t particularly high. Yet This Nation’s Saving Grace still feels like a breakthrough, with the Mark E. Smith-led ensemble’s addiction to repetition turning a corner toward accessibility without losing any of the band’s spitfire edge. Part of this is due to Smith’s wife Brix, whose smooth guitar and voice make as big a stamp on the music as her husband’s singing, as well as the addition of classically-trained bassist Simon Rogers, who fits right in while also shifting the band’s sound. But like all other Fall albums, This Nation’s Saving Grace gains most of its octane from Smith himself. Spewing out a geyser of deftly arrhythmic speak-singing and wizened commentary, the frontman shows that he can suddenly transform pretty much any sort of music into something wry and dense. Smith’s most striking alchemy comes on “I Am Damo Suzuki,” in which he grafts together parts of three songs by German krautrock legends Can while still sounding resolutely like no one but the Fall. –Marc Masters",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHpAaYFWADY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f9fd289e5b5cbb61309fd2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/79-The-Fall-This-Nation%25E2%2580%2599s-Saving-Grace.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Fall-This_Nations_Saving_Grace_1985.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,78,Madonna,Like a Prayer (1989),Sire,"Sire By the end of the 1980s, Madonna had positioned herself as one of most important pop icons of the decade—if not the century—through an irreproachable string of hit records. And with her fourth studio album, the brash and bold Like a Prayer, she reshaped the role of “pop star” once again. The clip for the title track, which features a field of burning crosses and sexualized imagery of Catholic saints, pissed off Pepsi enough to drop her as a sponsor, and the Catholic church itself all but officially boycotted her record-breaking Blond Ambition Tour the following year. But Like a Prayer is much more than tabloid blasphemy: “Till Death Do Us Part” and the Prince co-written “Love Song” are surprisingly emotional accounts of her divorce from actor Sean Penn, while the heartrending “Oh Father,” chronicling her experience with paternal neglect, reveals more about Madonna’s interior life than any of her previous songs. Balanced between extremely public and shockingly intimate, Like a Prayer is the record where Madonna not only earned her crown as the Queen of Pop, but rightfully established herself as the Mother of Reinvention. –Cameron Cook",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsVcUzP_O_8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64f9fee49d84b40926e6934b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/78-Madonna-Like-a-Prayer.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Madonna-Like_a_Prayer_1989.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,77,Depeche Mode,Music for the Masses (1987),Mute,"Mute When Dave Gahan opened Depeche Mode’s sixth album with the line “I’m taking a ride with my best friend,” he couldn’t have known that American teens would turn out in hordes to follow him. Their most polished effort to date, Music for the Masses took the British quartet on a crusade around the States that culminated in them playing for 70,000 fans at Los Angeles’ Rose Bowl. The record was commercial enough to dominate the airwaves and countercultural enough to feed its hardcore devotees. New producer Dave Bascombe helped blow out Martin Gore’s near-emo songwriting to arena levels, making the band sound at once intimate and universal. The album’s title was intended to be ironic, playing up their own lack of perceived cool, but by the end of the ’80s, nobody was ashamed to admit that they were into Depeche Mode. –Eve Barlow",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNOsjjFo2mI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fa00905016c1f84df1b748/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/77-Depeche-Mode-Music-for-the-Masses.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Depeche_Mode-Music_for_the_Masses_1987.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,76,Nine Inch Nails,Pretty Hate Machine (1989),TVT,"TVT Trent Reznor’s debut as Nine Inch Nails embraced certain ’80s trends—transgression of religious and sexual purity, a love of ominous synth pop—but, more crucially, the album also predicted a dire strain of outcast angst still to come. Nearly everything that Reznor would inspire and stand for in the ’90s started here in some way, with more lurid danceability thrown in the claustrophobic mix. Never before had industrial rock been packaged with such an eye toward pop music, with cathartic choruses that practically screamed themselves and a charismatic anti-hero as its star. Pretty Hate Machine showed that there was a mass audience for this kind of music, so long as the message tapped into truths so ugly, the mere expression of them felt like a relief to listeners. The album’s two dueling emotions could be viewed as a dark cycle of cause and effect: On “Head Like a Hole,” Reznor boils over with the rage of being fed lies by capitalism, religion, lovers, all of it; on songs like “Something I Can Never Have,” he retreats into the belief that his young life is nothing before it has even begun. Hailing from northwest Pennsylvania and recording many of the album’s demos at the Cleveland studio where he worked, Reznor imbued his record with the anger and hopelessness of the crumbling Rust Belt. Maybe at the time, he thought he was the only one feeling that way, but after millions embraced Pretty Hate Machine, never again was he without his lost cult of followers. –Jillian Mapes",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPEUs-BJzws,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fa00d19c50f6c5d9455f23/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/76-Nine-Inch-Nails-Pretty-Hate-Machine.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nine_Inch_Nails-Pretty_Hate_Machine_1989.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,75,Siouxsie and the Banshees,Juju (1981),PVC,"PVC The godmother of goth is also living proof that patience is a virtue. As a member of the punk scene's infamous Bromley Contingent, Susan Ballion, better known as Siouxsie Sioux, was already UK tabloid-headline fodder in 1976. But the band she formed with bassist Steven Severin didn’t release their first album, The Scream, until two years later, helping to define post-punk and goth-rock in the process. They went in a more electronic direction on 1980’s Kaleidoscope, notably bringing ex-Magazine guitarist John McGeoch and former Slits drummer Budgie into the fold. This revamped roster cohered brilliantly on Juju, an early, jagged peak for the ceaselessly evolving group. Siouxsie’s vocals sound as imperious as ever here, from guttural depths to piercing shrieks, but they are now cast into fine relief by McGeoch’s effortlessly fluid guitar explorations. The doomed majesty of “Spellbound” prophesied not only a whole lot of black eyeliner and teased-up hair, but the future of foreboding guitar bands and commanding frontwomen alike. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdqbYTTSIAc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fa0144f1a88b612ac34364/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/75-Siouxsie-and-the-Banshees-Juju.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Siouxsie_and_the_Banshees-Juju_1981.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,74,Bob Marley & the Wailers,Uprising (1980),Island / Tuff Gong,"Island / Tuff Gong When people think of Bob Marley in the ’80s, they tend to think of his greatest hits collection Legend, which deliberately featured a politically non-confrontational and radio-friendly snapshot of the reggae icon. But the decade’s Marley record that depicted a more authentic picture of him was Uprising, the last released in his lifetime. Recorded as he came to terms with his terminal cancer, Uprising is a definitive musical expression of his Rastafarian beliefs and political agitation. Even though his strength is audibly waning, his voice is still full of life, from the righteous rebellion in “Coming in From the Cold” to the sadness concealed in the upbeat motion of “Real Situation,” a deceptively cheerful song about mutually assured destruction. The Wailers’ taut rhythms and billowing melodies sound lock-tight but beatific, the sound of relaxation as a meditative respite from long, toiling work. Uprising is a stunning final word, the place where Marley’s legend was sealed. –Nate Patrin",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9G14DVxGVM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fa0167538c1736f909260e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/74-Bob-Marley-_-the-Wailers-Uprising.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bob_Marley__the_Wailers-Uprising_1980.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,73,This Heat,Deceit (1981),Rough Trade,"Rough Trade This Heat were a bit out-of-step with their times. Chronologically, they were a post-punk band, but on their second and final studio album, their cerebral song structures, avant-garde abstraction, and pointillist beats and chords were hardly of the moment. Thematically, though, Deceit was right on time. It addressed armageddon and societal meltdown right at the beginning of the Reagan era, when tensions between empires and nuclear threats were daily concerns. As singer/drummer Charles Hayward said, “We had a firm belief that we were going to die, and the record was made on those terms.” Sometimes that feeling is conveyed literally, as in closer “Hi Baku Shyo,” which uses the harrowing sounds of distant winds and scream-like noises to evoke a post-apocalyptic scene. But more often, This Heat dissect the broken state of international politics through chopped-up songwriting, serrated lyrics that are both sharp and open to interpretation, and sequencing that alternates dizzying complexity with gut-punching rock. The result is intentionally unsettling but also oddly uplifting. Deceit’s expression of existential dread is so rich and expansive, it turns out to be inspiring. –Marc Masters",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDq9YHcIip0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fa01cb9e5b5cbb61309fd4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/73-This-Heat-Deceit.jpg,/dataset/artwork/This_Heat-Deceit_1981.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,72,Michael Jackson,Bad (1987),Epic,"Epic By the release of Bad, in 1987, few recognized Michael Jackson as the biker-jacketed outlaw of its cover. He was a global superstar, with all the bizarre proclamations and mythology-souring controversies that entailed. But as his image evolved, the eccentricities—bathing in Perrier, for instance—somehow suited his strangely impersonal music. For Thriller, he had wed delirious dance beats to delirious paranoia. On its follow-up, the leaping falsetto and sha-mones intensified, while personal detail vanished altogether. The song “Bad” illustrates Jackson’s changing identity, his transformation into a pop-cultural symbol. On it, a meticulously funky Quincy Jones and highly strung Jackson sound like they could do anything in the world except break the rules. Aside from the gospel reckoning of “Man in the Mirror,” the remaining tracks reveal Jackson’s vulnerability only by virtue of their white-glove fussiness. He wrote eight of them himself, including “The Way You Make Me Feel” and “Speed Demon,” songs flirting with the sublime yet riddled with unease, designed for a world demanding the impossible: to be sexy and sexless, vulnerable yet dangerous, black and white. For awhile, Jackson was everything at once, a ubiquitous enigma beckoning mystified pop fans into his aura. Bad is his last fling with perfection before a strange, unutterable spell was broken. –Jazz Monroe",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIQmcwSg0nU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fa01eef1a88b612ac34366/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/72-Michael-Jackson-Bad.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Michael_Jackson-Bad_1987.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,71,Motörhead,Ace of Spades (1980),Bronze,"Bronze At one point on Motörhead’s fourth album, Ace of Spades, Lemmy Kilmister growls about the power of rock’n’roll over a rollicking blues riff, then orders the listener to dance until their shoes get hot. In the hands of any other standard rock band, this sort of thing could easily have sounded campy and vintage. Yet even in this mode, Motörhead sound wholeheartedly like Motörhead: burly and searing and massive. They were one of the heaviest rock bands of all time, and they embodied rock’s earliest stereotype—that the men who make it are wild and dangerous. The leather-clad, mustachioed dudes wearing bandoliers on the cover of Ace of Spades are planning—if their lyrics are to be believed—to take your money, shoot you in the back, chase young girls, and literally attack you with a hammer. Even “(We Are) the Road Crew,” a straightforward story about the downfalls of life on tour, sounds like a Western epic. Led by its title track, Ace of Spades cemented Motörhead’s reputation: They were the bad guys, and they were not to be fucked with. –Evan Minsker",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sC7v3vpBpAs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fa02349e5b5cbb61309fd6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/71-Michael-Jackson-Bad.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Motrhead-Ace_of_Spades_1980.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,70,Ultramagnetic MC’s,Critical Beatdown (1988),Next Plateau,"Next Plateau Ultramagnetic MC’s debut album, Critical Beatdown, proposed a maximalist experiment: What if hip-hop was kinetic and menacing and zany all at once? The record hinges on the ingenuity of Ced-Gee’s production; right as a new breed of samplers were hitting the market, the young Bronx producer was at the forefront of harnessing their potential. On this album, he used the just-released SP-1200 to intricately chop up and rearrange drum loops and sound snippets in a way that forecasted hip-hop’s eclectic future. Atop that, Kool Keith flips Critical Beatdown upside-down with his motor mouthed weirdness. Keith was abstract and out-there in an era defined by the concrete, straightforward economy of words. He dropped references to arcane pseudoscience and checked other MCs, sounding like a guy launching into a tirade about aliens on a New York street corner. As Kool Keith looked to the stars, Critical Beatdown expanded hip-hop’s universe. –Jay Balfour",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3gpui_qXp8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fa026c439a11a9c3e22489/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/70-Ultramagnetic-MC%25E2%2580%2599s-Critical-Beatdown.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ultramagnetic_MCs-Critical_Beatdown_1988.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,69,Metallica,Ride the Lightning (1984),Megaforce,"Megaforce In the early ’80s, Metallica was a band single-mindedly focused on speed. But with their second album, Ride the Lightning, they fine-tuned such brute force, with bassist Cliff Burton introducing a sophistication and compositional intricacy into their thrash metal. The resulting gorgeous melodies, acoustic sounds, and classical rigor were enough to convince fans that this was a new band entirely. But the transformation goes deeper. Frontman James Hetfield’s lyrics reached a thoughtfulness here that they never returned to: These hyper-literary songs ruminate on the depravity of death row, mutually assured destruction, suicidal depression, and life after the apocalypse. They’re about the terrors of the real world, and with that groundbreaking sound powering them, Metallica set the gold standard for metal in the ’80s. –Kevin Lozano",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE0m2XkaJaU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fa326ef102d9dbdeb02cb0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/69-Metallica-Ride-the-Lightning.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Metallica-Ride_the_Lightning_1984.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,68,Hüsker Dü,Zen Arcade (1984),SST,"SST Released in the summer of 1984, Hüsker Dü’s Zen Arcade was one large step for the Minnesota trio and an even larger one for then-nascent indie rock. They were still a hardcore band, as was evident in the battering drums and shredded screams, but by easing their collective foot off the gas a bit, Hüsker Dü’s music shot into bolder and more personal dimensions. The album offered an escape strategy for a generation of punks seeking their own paths. Along with labelmates the Minutemen’s Double Nickels on the Dime, Zen Arcade transformed the double-album from a symbol of ’70s self-indulgence into a tool of liberation for the ’80s indie era. Packing in un-hardcore melodies, harmonies, Bob Mould’s wild and sometimes backwards-masked guitar, noise drones, and even a cathartic acoustic strummer in Grant Hart’s “Never Talking to You Again,” Zen Arcade burst forth from the sometimes restrictive austerity of punk. Wearing both its raw emotion and musical inventiveness on its sleeve, the record remains a vital document of a band testing just how far they can push their youthful energy. –Jesse Jarnow",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gioExFj8ULY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fa32b36351e19deab8522e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/68-Hu%25CC%2588sker-Du%25CC%2588-Zen-Arcade.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Hsker_D-Zen_Arcade_1984.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,67,Julee Cruise,Floating Into the Night (1989),Warner Bros.,"Warner Bros. The twisted spirit of David Lynch’s work has become as recognizable as a color, and the ethereal singer Julee Cruise was crucial in helping mix it. When licensing Tim Buckley’s “Song to the Siren” for 1986’s Blue Velvet proved too expensive, Lynch and composer Angelo Badalamenti enlisted Cruise to sing their original, oceanic ballad “Mysteries of Love.” It served as a foundation for the misty dream pop of Cruise’s debut album—which, like Blue Velvet itself, is full of tilted beauty and disquieting innocence so confounding, it makes the skin crawl. On Floating Into the Night, Lynch wrote the yearning lyrics, Badalamenti composed the uncanny music, and Cruise sang elegantly, as if sleepwalking. They arrived at the likes of “Falling” and the stunning, swaying “Rockin’ Back Inside My Heart,” both of which were prominently featured on “Twin Peaks.” The album blurs the edges of what music for film can be, and while these atmospheric songs often accompanied shocking moving pictures, they also trigger shadowy, softened visuals of their own. With Floating Into the Night flowing through headphones, life is instantly a movie—a reminder that, off screen as much as on, things are never what they seem. –Jenn Pelly",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsLJxUEbkG8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fa32fc36fd417c3be9481a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/67-Julee-Cruise-Floating-Into-the-Night.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Julee_Cruise-Floating_Into_the_Night_1989.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,66,Vangelis,Blade Runner (Music From the Original Soundtrack) (1982),Full Moon,"Full Moon One of the first movie scores to fully showcase the possibilities of synthesizers, Vangelis’ Blade Runner soundtrack perfectly compliments the stormy neo-noir of Ridley Scott’s sci-fi classic. Sound and narrative are inextricably woven together, ghostly dialogue fragments leaving cold reverb trails that echo through the rain. Arpeggiated synth bass and emotive electric piano performances on tracks like “Wait for Me” and the iconic “Rachel’s Song” paint a beautiful neon-lit city where danger lurks around every corner. More than accompaniment, Vangelis’ soundtrack feels more like an indispensable character in the film. Yet even removed from the visuals, the influence of the Blade Runner soundtrack stands apart. Sampled and studied by everyone from El-P to Gary Numan to Oneohtrix Point Never, the score remains a touchpoint for musicians looking to tap into an expansive and mysterious mood. –Noah Yoo",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DedR5APQDk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fa33479c50f6c5d9455f56/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/66-Vangelis-Blade-Runner-(Music-From-the-Original-Soundtrack).jpg,/dataset/artwork/Vangelis-Blade_Runner_Music_From_the_Original_Soundtrack_1982.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,65,Violent Femmes,Violent Femmes (1983),Slash,"Slash In 1983, Gordon Gano was a Milwaukee, Wisconsin high schooler who’d built a local reputation as a “pint sized Lou Reed imitator.” Intrigued, a local punk named Brian Ritchie checked out one of his gigs, and soon, the teen was playing alongside Ritchie and Victor DeLorenzo in Violent Femmes. Their 1983 self-titled debut is full of simple, snotty folk-punk songs penned by Gano about adolescent frustrations: insatiable desire, hormonal torment, loneliness. Gano’s discomfort with his increasingly adult body and emotions are mirrored in his alternately high-strung and stuttering voice and the band’s manic, lurching music. While many of Violent Femmes’ critics have acknowledged the record’s unabashed (and catchy) horniness, they tend to brush off its consequent gender-based violence. On “Add It Up,” Gano bitterly laments his nonexistent sex life; later, on “Gimme the Car,” he vows to solve this problem by borrowing his dad’s car, picking a girl up, getting her drunk, and touching her all over. His entitled misogyny is a symptom of his misanthropy, and in turn a reflection of society’s outdated model of masculinity. (“We’ll teach you how to act like a man,” he bellows on “Confessions.”) On one hand, Gano’s honest disclosures, while often deeply disturbing, reveal the emotional maelstroms of many young men. On the other, Violent Femmes is an eternal reminder that some men may never outgrow this mode of thinking. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wotCgOxwgI4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fa33855016c1f84df1b74b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/65-Violent-Femmes-Violent-Femmes.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Violent_Femmes-Violent_Femmes_1983.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,64,Grace Jones,Nightclubbing (1981),Island,"Island Nightclubbing, like its predecessor, 1980’s Warm Leatherette, found Grace Jones working alongside reggae duo Sly & Robbie and their Compass Point All Stars band. “I wanted a rhythmic reggae bottom, aggressive rock guitar, atmospheric keyboards in the middle, and Grace on top,” producer Chris Blackwell once said, and the resulting mix is plush and luxe as a limo. Much of it came from the Warm Leatherette sessions but took on new life, like “Pull Up to the Bumper,” which is equalled only by Prince’s “Little Red Corvette” when it comes to car filth that’s just as hot for the car as for the filth. There’s depth and lyrical darkness, including a nihilistic stalker in “I’ve Seen That Face Before” or the now-questionable presence of a 16-year-old in “Feel Up.” What’s even more remarkable is that over half of Nightclubbing is composed of covers, yet it all seems completely natural to Jones. Bill Withers’ “Use Me” and Flash and the Pan’s “Walking in the Rain” are gender- and dominance-bent; “feeling like a woman, looking like a man” in particular feels written for Jones to intone. The title track refashions the louche vaudeville of Iggy Pop and David Bowie’s original into a sleek expanse of scaffolding and smoke machines. It also contains the one line Grace Jones sings here that rings false: “We learn dances, brand new dances.” When has Grace Jones ever come across as a person who needed to learn anything from anyone? –Katherine St. Asaph",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXHQJteMCK0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fa33df439a11a9c3e224bb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/64-Grace-Jones-Nightclubbing.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Grace_Jones-Nightclubbing_1981.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,63,Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds,From Her to Eternity (1984),Mute,"Mute Nick Cave’s first album with the Bad Seeds opens with a cover of Leonard Cohen’s brooding “Avalanche,” setting the bar absurdly high for Cave’s post-Birthday Party career. Where Cohen stared down humanity’s horror with a practiced stoicism, the Bad Seeds’ goth-punk attack is sharp, their arsenal crammed with every variety of bludgeon. And Cave sounds nearly hysterical on the song, especially when he sings, “Do not dress in those rags for me,” dragging out the accusatory vowels with extreme disgust. His subject on From Her to Eternity is humanity at its grisliest extremes: the seafarers’ duress of “Cabin Fever!,” the all-consuming sexual desire of the title track, the communal bloodlust of “A Box for Black Paul.” Meanwhile, the Bad Seeds play like they’re scoring the short films projecting inside Cave’s fractured skull. It’s ghoulish to the point of ridiculousness, which is the entire point. In the Bad Seeds’ visceral hyperbole is something powerful, as though we’re hearing humankind’s palm read by a fortune teller with a cockeyed grin and a hand snatching your wallet. –Stephen Deusner",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvpaVFATQAk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fa340b36fd417c3be9481c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/63-Nick-Cave-_-the-Bad-Seeds-From-Her-to-Eternity.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nick_Cave__the_Bad_Seeds-From_Her_to_Eternity_1984.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,62,Glenn Branca,The Ascension (1981),99,"99 Glenn Branca is that rare figure who could honestly claim to have reinvented the guitar. An experimental theatre director from Pennsylvania, he touched down in New York just as punk was kicking off. Like Jean-Michel Basquiat, whose graffiti-inspired canvases collided high culture with low, Branca the musician sought to fuse two distinct worlds—rarefied modern classical music and punk rock. He spearheaded the guitar orchestra. Later, he would assemble ensembles of up to 100 guitars, set in elaborate tunings. By comparison, 1981’s The Ascension is positively lean—just four guitars tuned in chorus, backed by bass and drums. “Lesson No.2” and “The Spectacular Commodity” conjure up clanging clouds of discord, race to heady crescendos, or lock into drawn-out codas that feel like being trapped in a thunderstorm, lightning arcing around you. Its magnificent sturm und drang may never be equalled, although one of the recording’s guitarists, Lee Ranaldo, would certainly try in his next group, Sonic Youth; Branca would release their debut EP on his own label the very next year. –Louis Pattison",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wERU4NiAtlE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fa34499d84b40926e6934d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/62-Glenn-Branca-The-Ascension.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Glenn_Branca-The_Ascension_1981.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,61,Talking Heads,Stop Making Sense (1984),Sire,"Sire “Hi, I’ve got a tape I want to play,” David Byrne says at the beginning of Stop Making Sense, the 1984 Talking Heads live album and Jonathan Demme-directed concert film. Wearing white sneakers and a soon-to-be-iconic boxy grey suit, he hits play on a boombox and launches into an off-kilter solo rendition of “Psycho Killer.” It was a bold move from a bolder band: At the height of their popularity, the quartet turned a live show into performance art. The Stop Making Sense album also feels immersive, and there’s a mounting energy throughout the set that translates the live experience into a sit-through listen. This was a band that sang euphorically about architecture and philosophy, making such nerdy topics sound fun. The synths and programmed drums flit between zany and chilling, kitschy and funky, as Byrne’s breathless delivery compliments the anxious isolation of his lyrics; even before a roomful of adoring fans, the singer knew how to sound alone. –Jay Balfour",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTezUIuJHTw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fa349036fd417c3be9481e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/61-Talking-Heads-Stop-Making-Sense.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Talking_Heads-Stop_Making_Sense_1984.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,60,EPMD,Strictly Business (1988),Priority / Fresh,"Priority / Fresh On their debut album, EPMD—the Long Island hip-hop duo of Erick Sermon (“E”) and Parrish Smith (“PMD”)—came through with performances so laid-back, they bordered on sleepy. Their message, by contrast, was brash: They’re the best in the game, they’re strapped, and they won’t hesitate to fuck up errant sucker MCs and biters. Armed with an untouchable arsenal of funk and soul samples, they pepper their verses with pop culture ephemera, nodding to commercial jingles (“Absorb that ass like Bounty, the quicker picker upper”) and spending an entire track inventing a dance based on the 1979 Steve Martin comedy The Jerk (called “The Steve Martin”). The album title isn’t a lie—they’re strictly business, and they press that point with tough bars and straight-faced delivery—but as they prove, hard doesn't have to mean boring. –Evan Minsker",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8R_U6Ozc704,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fa34c99e5b5cbb6130a008/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/60-EPMD-Strictly-Business.jpg,/dataset/artwork/EPMD-Strictly_Business_1988.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,59,Kate Bush,The Sensual World (1989),EMI,"EMI Even way back in 1989—when an Apple laptop weighed 16 pounds and cost $7,300—Kate Bush realized how computers would upend all of our lives. On “Deeper Understanding,” she offers a cautionary tale of a lost soul who takes solace in their pixelated screen, trading in reality for a siren-like computer program. “Hello, I know that you’re unhappy,” she sings, voicing the proto-Siri app. “I bring you love and deeper understanding.” The song is both eerie and eerily prescient, but it is not judgmental. It is shot through with a deep empathy. Such longing for connection and bridging of realms can be felt throughout The Sensual World: The title track is a languorous sex jam that has Bush breathing lust into the Molly Bloom character from James Joyce’s Ulysses; “The Fog” finds the then-31-year-old singer navigating the space separating childhood memories and adult responsibilities; “This Woman’s Work” is an iconic tearjerker about a husband waiting for his wife to emerge from the delivery room, a lifetime’s worth of hope and regret flooding his brain. The connective themes also extend to the album’s music: This must be the only LP ever to combine Irish bagpipes with Bulgarian folk singing and screeching guitar solos by Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour. And yet, for all of its eccentricities and soothsaying, The Sensual World is grounded in a common humanity that knows no specific decade, origin, or sound. –Ryan Dombal",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6PaHuKBv3A,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fa35aa36fd417c3be94820/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/59-Kate%2520Bush-The-Sensual-World.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kate_Bush-The_Sensual_World_1989.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,58,My Bloody Valentine,Isn’t Anything (1988),Creation,"Creation Even as they’ve resurfaced this decade, My Bloody Valentine can still feel like a myth more than a proper band thanks to the legend surrounding their second album, 1991’s Loveless. But its relatively underrated predecessor is also a fascinating listen, capturing the Irish quartet in an exciting stage of metamorphosis before they got swallowed up by forces bigger than themselves. While in-the-red blowouts like “Feed Me With Your Kiss” saw them keeping fuzz-pedal pace with the Dinosaur Jrs. of the world, frontman Kevin Shields was also starting to realize that guitar noise was more a means than an end. “Soft as Snow (But Warm Inside)” is effectively the test run for Loveless’ sonic shape-shifting, with Shields contorting the band’s squall into unrecognizable forms, like someone just discovering that they can bend their elbow backwards. But for all its bullish experimentation, there remains a lyrical clarity on Isn’t Anything that would become all but obscured on the album’s more celebrated successor. “Touch your head, then your hair/Softer, softer everywhere/Fingertips are burning/Can I touch you there?” Shields sings. Such suggestive entreaties remind us of a crucial fact: For a group so synonymous with shoegaze, a genre whose very name celebrates the avoidance of eye contact, My Bloody Valentine could be hornier than a hair metal band. –Stuart Berman",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ze8A33p5-h0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fa35ecf102d9dbdeb02cb2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/58-My-Bloody-Valentine-Isn%25E2%2580%2599t-Anything.jpg,/dataset/artwork/My_Bloody_Valentine-Isnt_Anything_1988.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,57,Galaxie 500,On Fire (1989),Rough Trade,"Rough Trade The liner notes for On Fire include an absurdist, grand tale written by the album’s producer, Mark Kramer, about the Great Chicago Fire, a Las Vegas wedding, caribou stampedes, and the enduring, primitive power of fire—the very power Galaxie 500 harnessed on these 10 songs. His story might be tongue-in-cheek, but these tracks have the raw, unhinged energy to back it up. Dream pop is so often thought of as downcast and demure, but the blazing guitar solos on “Strange” or the screaming saxophone lines of “Decomposing Trees” make it clear that this is an album of propulsion and weight. But its heaviness is in the everyday—the weather, grocery stores, waiting in line, and all the other quotidian details that make up a life. –Kevin Lozano",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFKKKockOu4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fa3629538c1736f9092642/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/57-Galaxie-500-On-Fire.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Galaxie_500-On_Fire_1989.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,56,Bruce Springsteen,Born in the U.S.A. (1984),Columbia,"Columbia For a little while there, Bruce Springsteen had the greatest ass of the 1980s. There it is on the cover of his seventh album, encased in denim and half concealed with a red baseball cap stuffed into his back pocket—a working-class ass, all-American, and more than a little irreverent. The image has a (ahem) cheeky humor that extends to the music inside. After the strident darkness that defined most of his previous three albums, Springsteen streamlines his language and follows a few characters whose hard-knock fates play like cosmic jokes: the big-city boys cavorting in Darlington County who end up in handcuffs, that aging baseball player who realizes his old war stories are boring even him. Springsteen identifies too closely with each of his characters to make them punchlines, but he gleefully undercuts the mythology he crafted throughout the 1970s even as he builds on the sounds of that mythology here, expanding his boardwalk shuffle to include dramatic synths and rockabilly rumble. Across the record, he balances jubilation and tribulation, depicting lives turned hard while making it sound like they might actually push through to better times. –Stephen Deusner",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCFTL4IO6t4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fa36635016c1f84df1b74e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/56-Bruce-Springsteen-Born-in-the-U.S.A..jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bruce_Springsteen-Born_in_the_USA_1984.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,55,Metallica,Master of Puppets (1986),Elektra,"Elektra Everyone who’s picked up a guitar knows how to play the first four notes of “Master of Puppets.” It’s like learning how to say “hello” in metal. From the shredded tubes of Mesa Boogie amps, Kirk Hammett and James Hetfield carved into a monument one of the greatest guitar albums of all time, while Cliff Burton glazed his bass onto the arrangements and Lars Ulrich maintained his fascinating relationship to tempo. People flock to it every day, either through terrestrial radio’s still-going Mandatory Metallica block or the thousands of YouTube covers of fledgling guitarists, drummers, and bassists testing their mettle against four heshers from California. Master of Puppets is ignorant and cunning, slick and lunkheaded. Unspeakable horrors of the military industrial complex, Ken Kesey, televangelism and H.P. Lovecraft: All of it is leathered up and set on fire. From the boggy march of “The Thing That Should Not Be” to the blurry thrash of “Damage, Inc.,” every song is modularly composed, riff by riff, forming a structure so sound that it feels indestructible. It lives on in our basements, guitar tabs, cover bands, and instructional videos, as if we’re trying to rebuild an ancient wonder of the world. –Jeremy D. Larson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17E-zFb-0aE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fa369bf1a88b612ac34368/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/55-Metallica-Master-of-Puppets.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Metallica-Master_of_Puppets_1986.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,54,The Replacements,Tim (1985),Sire,"Sire Tim was supposed to be the moment when the Replacements transformed from charmingly reckless brats into charmingly reckless rock stars. It was the Minneapolis band’s first record for a major label: the Warner Bros. imprint Sire, then home to Madonna, Talking Heads, and the Smiths. In the studio, it was helmed by Tommy Erdelyi, who helped set the sonic template for punk as the Ramones’ original drummer and producer. Hot-shit New York visual artist Robert Longo was tapped to create the album’s cover. But, as with pretty much everything involving the Replacements, things didn’t quite work out as planned: Tim stalled in the lowest depths of the Billboard 200 album chart after its release. Its sound is brittle; the artwork is a pretentious misfire. In hindsight, though, these failures make some cosmic sense, because Tim is an album by, for, and about underdogs. From “Left of the Dial,” a stirring ode to tiny-watt college radio, to “Bastards of Young,” a generational anthem for those embarrassed by the idea of generational anthems, to the hymnlike closer “Here Comes a Regular,” which wrenchingly flips over the band’s debauchery to find shame underneath, the record finds its place out on the fringe. Like a beaten boxer who just won’t go down, Tim wrings glory from defeat. –Ryan Dombal",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8ikJiKWubY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fa36d05016c1f84df1b750/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/54-The-Replacements-Tim.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Replacements-Tim_1985.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,53,David Bowie,Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) (1980),RCA,"RCA Having sunk his teeth into a catalog of vibrant personas throughout the ’70s, David Bowie cracked open the ’80s by plundering the narrative potential of texture. The arch, mock-authoritative Bowie voice still holds sway over 1980’s Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps), but the rich, dark rock’n’roll miasma he cooked up with Brian Eno for the Berlin Trilogy subsides, and something brighter and sharper comes into view. There's the shrill treble line that twinkles over “Ashes to Ashes,” the downward gulping that punctuates the title track, the oozing bass that pulses through “Fashion.” Bowie’s Berlin albums felt like a retreat from the world, but Scary Monsters plays like he’s trying to drink the world in and spit it right back out. It’s delirious with the absurdity of its commercialized new wave era, and drunk on Bowie’s own multifaceted history. Major Tom, the protagonist of his breakthrough hit “Space Oddity,” reappears on “Ashes to Ashes”—not lost on a noble space mission, but as an addict and a cautionary tale. Scary Monsters sees Bowie crashing back to earth, righting himself with a raised eyebrow, and finding so much that glitters in the wreckage. –Sasha Geffen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rvi1uNrLERE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fa3708439a11a9c3e224bd/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/53-David-Bowie-Scary-Monsters-(And-Super-Creeps).jpg,/dataset/artwork/David_Bowie-Scary_Monsters_And_Super_Creeps_1980.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,52,Minutemen,Double Nickels on the Dime (1984),SST,"SST “We jam econo,” is perhaps the most famous expression of Minutemen’s language, a no-nonsense philosophy condensed into a song lyric. But the San Pedro, California trio’s achievement on their 1984 double LP Double Nickels on the Dime isn’t just the brevity of its 45 tracks so much as their wild creativity. With an ambitious sense of musical play absent from so many of Minutemen’s contemporaries, the album is punk in spirit and unpredictable in execution. Born from the intimate creative partnership of guitarist D. Boon, bassist Mike Watt, and drummer George Hurley, the album’s title refers to observing the posted speed limit of 55 mph (the double nickels) in an exact fashion (the dime). Though plenty funny, Minutemen’s dialect goes way beyond inside jokes. Decades later, the album’s logic still challenges and rewards, presenting a musical intelligence to decode. Filled with rhythmic and stylistic left turns, monologues, declarations, and self-immolations, Double Nickels on the Dime is a profound conversation about the liberation of music, the self, and the world beyond—impossible to fully translate except to listen, pogo, and, perhaps, do it yourself. –Jesse Jarnow",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5XwEIUV0_8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fa3742f102d9dbdeb02ce4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/52-Minutemen-Double-Nickels-on-the-Dime.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Minutemen-Double_Nickels_on_the_Dime_1984.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,51,Sonic Youth,EVOL (1986),SST,"SST Dissonance was a Sonic Youth signature from the start, weaved from the strangely tuned guitars of Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo. But it was with 1986’s EVOL that their discordance became an environment unto itself, what fellow noise rocker Lydia Lunch called a “sonic holocaust.” Every track on this album—their first with drummer Steve Shelley, and first for California punk label SST—is drenched in eerie tension, as if a nuclear bomb has exploded (a constant threat during the Reagan era) and these songs are the remains. Plus, there actually is an explosion on EVOL: When Ranaldo recorded vocals for his harrowing car-crash tale “In the Kingdom #19,” Moore tossed firecrackers into the soundbooth, and Ranaldo’s shocked scream became part of the song. But the album’s horror can also be soothing: Kim Gordon’s soft intonations in the Hitchcock-inspired “Shadow of a Doubt” feel like a bedtime story, while closer “Expressway to Yr. Skull” turns Manson-esque murder into a beatific trek into the West Coast sun. On vinyl, the run time of “Expressway” is marked as infinity because it ends with a locked groove, and the unwavering force of EVOL makes it easy to imagine Sonic Youth riding these guitar sounds forever. –Marc Masters",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FaOJn0F5F0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fa3776538c1736f9092644/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/51-Sonic-Youth-EVOL.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sonic_Youth-EVOL_1986.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,50,ESG,Come Away With ESG (1983),99,"99 In the late ’70s, Renee, Valerie, Deborah, and Marie Scroggins’ mom gave her daughters musical instruments to keep them off the streets of the South Bronx. The music they made as ESG (an acronym for Emerald, Sapphire, and Gold) was spare, raw, and funky—mostly comprised of bass, percussion, and voice, with the occasional ghost of a guitar line. It ended up placing them smack in the middle of the Venn diagram of post-punk, rap, and house bubbling up in the early ’80s. During that time, the Scroggins sisters were pretty much everywhere cool music was being made: recording for Factory Records with Joy Division producer Martin Hannett, playing iconic nightclubs like the Hacienda and the Paradise Garage, opening for the Clash and Public Image Ltd. Their sound became one of the building blocks of hip-hop, sampled hundreds of times—and often uncredited—by everyone from Big Daddy Kane to Biggie and Tupac. ESG have continued performing and releasing records in various incarnations on and off through to the present day, tying together the strands of the last four decades of underground music into one minimal, danceable whole. –Amy Phillips",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csFcFiUwU5o,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fa37b2f102d9dbdeb02ce6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/50-ESG-Come-Away-With-ESG.jpg,/dataset/artwork/ESG-Come_Away_With_ESG_1983.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,49,Paul Simon,Graceland (1986),Warner Bros.,"Warner Bros. Graceland is the definitive document of a certain American loneliness, a wry and decisive pivot from the end of the hippie era and the beginning of the yuppie dotage. It’s the creative and commercial pinnacle of Paul Simon’s solo career, and one of the most beloved statements of the early compact disc era. It’s also an album-length meditation on the cheapness of hero worship, the ongoing anticlimax of adulthood, the constant whittling away of expectations by reality. The songs’ narrators are pickled in a wry, circumspect weariness that becomes its own sort of primary color, as evocative of a certain national mood as “Fortunate Son” once was for the Vietnam War. The album has lived such a rich life that directly inspiring one of the most influential bands of the past 15 years is only a footnote in its story. It is also a crucial stop in the ongoing story about American cultural appropriation. The music might sound transparent and effortless, but its backstory is fraught: Simon brought in musicians from South Africa at the height of apartheid, without seeking the permission of the African National Congress. In doing so, some felt he did the unforgivable: He broke a UN-approved cultural boycott, in spirit if not in letter, possibly setting back the anti-apartheid cause. This is a heavy mantle for any album to bear, but the music itself shrugs it off, airy and joyous and glittering. It is impossible to feel any one thing while listening to Graceland; even Harry Belafonte, when Simon consulted him, admitted to “mixed feelings” about Simon’s venture. But among the many lingering messages imparted by Graceland is one that has proved itself true, time and time again: Music goes where people can’t. –Jayson Greene",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eToxrpSQ3Co,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fa38a2f1a88b612ac3436a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/49-Paul-Simon-Graceland.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Paul_Simon-Graceland_1986.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,48,Slick Rick,The Great Adventures of Slick Rick (1988),Def Jam,"Def Jam On The Great Adventures of Slick Rick’s opening track, the rapper vividly imagines three scenarios of female infidelity. The song is boorish at heart, with women being judged for promiscuity in ways men never are, but Rick’s gift for storytelling and detail cuts through his problematic attitude. His scenarios take unexpected twists and turns, like when a husband comes home with a card and flowers, only to find the mailman’s pants crumpled on the floor and his wife out of sight. It’s a narrative whirlwind. The Great Adventures of Slick Rick marked a turning point in hip-hop, the moment when MCs felt emboldened to do more than report their surroundings and come up with funky rhymes. Rick put on voices to represent different characters; he switched up his pace and flow to match them. Nas has called it one of his favorite albums ever, and paid further tribute by framing a cut from this year’s NASIR around a sample of “Children’s Story.” The Great Adventures of Slick Rick has lived on in this way, multiplying across hip-hop via samples, interpolations, and homages. It’s a foundational text that still feels ahead of its time in creativity and irreverence. –Matthew Strauss",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/_twMhgwRoaY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fa3923f1a88b612ac3436c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/48-Slick-Rick-The-Great-Adventures-of-Slick-Rick.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Slick_Rick-The_Great_Adventures_of_Slick_Rick_1988.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,47,U2,The Joshua Tree (1987),Island,"Island The Joshua Tree is when U2’s interest in the United States crystallized into an obsession. Traces of country, gospel, and blues—styles previously alien to the Irish quartet—can be detected throughout the record, as Bono sings about deserts, blue skies, and God’s country: all synonyms for America. This infatuation led every member of the group to sharpen their attack, all emulating the directness of roots music: the Edge’s guitar lines are cleanly sculpted, Bono’s lyrics are clear and openhearted. But the brilliant tension at the heart of The Joshua Tree—and the reason why it still resonates—is how producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, unconcerned with rootsy authenticity, steered U2 toward a moody impressionism where slide guitars and three chord progressions sound cavernous, even ominous. It’s the sound of outsiders seeking greater truths: Each of its three big singles—“With or Without You,” “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” “Where the Streets Have No Name”—are propelled by cinematic yearning, a quality that defines the entire album. –Stephen Thomas Erlewine",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se1FI1Uf118,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fa3aaf36fd417c3be94822/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/47-U2-The-Joshua-Tree.jpg,/dataset/artwork/U2-The_Joshua_Tree_1987.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,46,Dinosaur Jr.,You’re Living All Over Me (1987),SST,"SST Shortly after the release of You’re Living All Over Me, Dinosaur were forced to add the now-familiar “Jr.” to their name in order to avoid legal action from another jurassically inclined rock group. But the revision proved perfectly emblematic of the tension between roaring ferocity and childlike naïvetè at the core of the Massachusetts trio’s second album. Compared to the scatterbrained cowpunk goth of their 1985 self-titled debut, You’re Living All Over Me is absolutely unrelenting in its brute-force focus, with J. Mascis, Lou Barlow, and Murph forging a suffocating sound as crushing as the heaviest metal, as restless as the fiercest hardcore, and as disorienting as the wooziest shoegaze. From a musical standpoint alone, the album is a harrowing experience that leaves you feeling drained and bruised. But it blindsides you with its emotional wallop, too. All that sludgy squall is ultimately a front for Mascis’ achingly tender entreaties, as he delivers each line with the moaning discomfort of an introvert who feels so socially awkward that the mere thought of going outside is liable to give him an ulcer. –Stuart Berman",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJGLp33KsFE&list=RDTJGLp33KsFE&start_radio=1,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fa3b10439a11a9c3e224bf/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/46-Dinosaur-Jr.-You%25E2%2580%2599re-Living-All-Over-Me.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dinosaur_Jr-Youre_Living_All_Over_Me_1987.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,45,Fugazi,Fugazi (1988),Dischord,"Dischord After years of crossing paths in D.C.’s storied hardcore scene, it seemed almost fated that Minor Threat’s Ian MacKaye and Rites of Spring’s Guy Picciotto would eventually form a group together. But even that remarkable pedigree only hinted at the enormity of the music they’d create in Fugazi, a band that made the previous 10 years of D.C. punk feel like a mere test run. For seven feverish tracks on this debut EP, later compiled on 13 Songs, the two contortionists lock themselves in a friendly competition to see whose voice hits harder, with Picciotto’s slithery injections prodding and provoking MacKaye’s rottweiler barks. From “Waiting Room,” the reggae-spiked rally cry that vaulted Fugazi to the top of every major label’s wish list, to “Suggestion,” a feminist redirection of MacKaye’s masculine aggression, the EP tapped a previously undiscovered combination of punk brawn and alt-rock showmanship. Fugazi would go on to release hours of the most inventive post-hardcore ever, but they never recorded anything else so instantly gratifying. –Evan Rytlewski",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KT4j9AVw7Co,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fa3b5a538c1736f9092646/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/45-Fugazi-Fugazi.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fugazi-Fugazi_1988.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,44,Sinéad O’Connor,The Lion and the Cobra (1987),Chrysalis / Ensign,"Chrysalis / Ensign It’s absolutely mindblowing that Sinéad O’Connor was able to exist, let alone thrive, in the pop-dominated chart landscape of the late ’80s. She looked like a punk in combat boots, but her voice was gargantuan, both sweetly innocent and brashly raw. Her music dealt with the love and heartbreak rooted in her native Ireland. She was a living, breathing protest. Five years before she tore up a photo of Pope John Paul II on “Saturday Night Live,” O’Connor pried herself into the public consciousness with her debut album, The Lion and the Cobra. Balanced with enough accessible radio tunes to shift respectable units—new wave-tinted single “Mandinka” was an early staple on MTV’s “120 Minutes”—the album injected the experimental pop sounds of Kate Bush, Peter Gabriel, and Enya (who contributes, in Gaelic, on the moody “Never Get Old”), with a jolt of incandescent, youthful rage. Released a month before O’Connor’s 21st birthday, The Lion and the Cobra’s themes of patriotism, sexuality, Catholicism, and social oppression set the stage for a career marked by a resolute sense of independence. –Cameron Cook",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85xdt0UFai4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fa3b966351e19deab85230/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/44-Sine%25CC%2581ad-O%25E2%2580%2599Connor-The-Lion-and-the-Cobra.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sinad_OConnor-The_Lion_and_the_Cobra_1987.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,43,The Smiths,Hatful of Hollow (1984),Rough Trade,"Rough Trade No release documents the Smiths’ rapid evolution like Hatful of Hollow, their first of many odds-and-ends collections, released just nine months after their self-titled debut. For all of the unnecessary reissues and repackages that followed, Hatful of Hollow shows why the formula was worth repeating. It’s at once breezy and definitive, compiling looser live takes of songs from their debut and one-off singles and B-sides on par with the album cuts. Listening to this collection, it’s clear how the album format occasionally betrayed the humor and nuances of the Smiths’ body of work. “Every day you must say, ‘So how do I feel about my life?’” Morrissey commands in “Accept Yourself,” and he leads by example, with a casual charm binding his sprawling thoughts. Like the band’s iconic cover art, these recordings suggest the most lasting images are candid, collected, and captured in ambiguous, constant motion. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OztC_7nkAd8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fa3bed36fd417c3be94824/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/43-The-Smiths-Hatful-of-Hollow.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Smiths-Hatful_of_Hollow_1984.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,42,Tom Waits,Rain Dogs (1985),Island,"Island Tom Waits was a hard 35 years old when he wrote Rain Dogs in a small rented room in Manhattan. He had always sounded grizzled, even when he was a teenager, but on these strange industrial Americana tunes, his husky voice is less of an affectation. It’s intensely world-weary; he’d been cultivating that seen-it-all persona throughout the ’70s, but somehow he truly grew into it during the decade of Reagan and yuppies and neon.\ Rain Dogs sounded like the culmination of Waits’ career in 1985, building on the piano balladry and jazz-fan jive of his early work as well as the tinkerings of 1983’s Swordfishtrombones to create the pots-and-pans ambience of what sounds like a post-nuclear weirdscape. “Gun Street Girl” reimagines the blues as a magical realist crime travelogue, while “Blind Love” and “Downtown Train” stand as two of his finest torch songs, embracing a teary-eyed sentimentality that sets the visceral quality of the music in sharp relief. Grittier and gruffer than ever, Waits remains the same old raconteur here, cracking wiseacre jokes as he ushers his listeners through the country’s grimy underbelly. –Stephen Deusner",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xa0Hfr1LZaA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fa3c73f102d9dbdeb02ce8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/42-Tom-Waits-Rain-Dogs.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tom_Waits-Rain_Dogs_1985.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,41,Bad Brains,Bad Brains (1982),Roir,"Roir Bad Brains began when bassist Darryl Jenifer brought some Damned albums over to his friend HR’s house. The two played jazz-rock fusion together, several universes away from the unholy squall of hardcore. But as they listened and absorbed the music’s primal energy, they thought: “We could do this.” And that knowledge that they could, in fact, play breathlessly fast, anthemic rock music at near-unbearable intensity better than anyone before or since informs every inch of their debut record. They found euphoria in control; even when playing at a speed where the screws should be flying apart, Bad Brains were contained. On “Don’t Need It,” Dr. Know’s guitar riff seems to blur and run backwards, but he is still relaxed enough at this insane clip to toss in a Van Halen-style guitar solo, furling and snapping triumphantly in the song’s chaotic wake. The rallying cry “Pay to Cum” remains one of the fastest punk songs in history, floating the needle at a brain-sizzling 161 BPM, but HR sails this glistening wave of sound with aplomb, singing the fist-pumping chorus with the clarity and intimacy of a crooner. Elsewhere, HR could shriek like a valkyrie lit aflame or be lovelorn and vulnerable; he could also be both at once in the same 20 seconds, as on “Sailin’ On.” Bad Brains were black punks, storming the gates of a genre with some uneasy white supremacist edges, and instantly vanquishing all comers. Listening to them decades later, it still sounds like they invented velocity. –Jayson Greene",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gex8lvGpV5E,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fa3cb1538c1736f9092648/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/41-Bad-Brains-Bad-Brains.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bad_Brains-Bad_Brains_1982.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,40,The Jesus and Mary Chain,Psychocandy (1985),Blanco y Negro,"Blanco y Negro In the early 1980s, inspired by the Velvet Underground, the Ramones, and Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound, Scottish brothers Jim and William Reid quit their jobs, flipped a coin for the role of frontman, and started a band. The title of their 1985 debut, Psychocandy, aptly embodies the result, swirling together Shangri-Las-inspired bubblegum pop and lo-fi psychedelia. The Jesus and Mary Chain’s means were raw and bold: The Reids’ three-chord guitar melodies screeched with feedback, Bobby Gillespie thumped his two-piece drum kit with mallets, and Douglas Hart’s bass lacked half its strings. What came out was equally disaffected and heartfelt, full of bad boy anthems (“Never Understand”), girl group worship (the lovesick “Just Like Honey”), and angsty romance (“Taste of Cindy”). In interviews, the Reid brothers proclaimed themselves to be the next Beatles, but in reality the duo were terribly bashful. They hid behind dischord like goth greasers, their eyes covered by puffy curls and Ray Bans. Countless subsequent musicians, from My Bloody Valentine to the Dum Dum Girls, found salvation in such shadowy forms. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQ4_dIFXwA4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fa3d0e6351e19deab85232/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/40-The-Jesus-and-Mary-Chain-Psychocandy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Jesus_and_Mary_Chain-Psychocandy_1985.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,39,R.E.M.,Murmur (1983),IRS,"IRS The greatest trick college radio ever pulled was convincing people that  R.E.M. were mostly about a jangly guitar sound. All due respect to Peter Buck’s chiming guitar chords, but R.E.M.’s debut full-length is the work of a cohesive ensemble, one that knew how to deploy small, ingenious touches to get their point across. These tinier effects can also help make the songs emotionally legible—particularly when the lyrics resist easy scanning. What is a “Moral Kiosk,” exactly? The song’s thoughtful production provides resonant clues; as the verses’ occasional dry percussive smacks give way to airier, reverb-strewn vocals, there’s a sense of a world in constant flux (with values and ground rules subject to sudden revision). The quicksilver intelligence throughout these early songs helped define an approach to accessible but richly textured pop that would stand R.E.M. in good stead over the coming decades, as they became one of the biggest bands on the planet. But they were always bigger than “jangle pop.” –Seth Colter Walls",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9DwG84Cank,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fa3ebc9d84b40926e6934f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/39-R.E.M.-Murmur.jpg,/dataset/artwork/REM-Murmur_1983.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,38,Run-D.M.C.,Raising Hell (1986),Profile,"Profile Hip-hop was thought to be a charming little fad until Run, D.M.C., and DJ Jam Master Jay showed naysayers that it was something more. They were the first rap group to earn a gold album, for 1984’s Run-D.M.C., and be nominated for a Grammy. They were fashion icons in Fedora hats, rope chains, and shell toe Adidas, whose music blended sparse electronic drums and electric guitar riffs. Rap at the time sampled funk and soul; Run-D.M.C. were the first to push the genre to a rock-oriented sound. Powered by the massive breakthrough single “Walk This Way,” which helped resurrect Aerosmith’s then-languishing career, Run-D.M.C.’s third album, Raising Hell, became a major commercial hit, catapulting the group to the mainstream and making them global stars. Look past the Aerosmith collab and you’ll find a handful of all-time great classics: the lightning-quick “Peter Piper,” the stuttering bounce of “It’s Tricky,” the playful push-and-pull of “You Be Illin’,” and the anthemic stomp of “My Adidas.” With Raising Hell, Run-D.M.C. cemented hip-hop’s long-term vitality and crossover appeal. –Marcus J. Moore",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMdSVAUHH3s,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fa3efb2778a959845b0aea/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/38-Run-D.M.C.-Raising-Hell.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Run-DMC-Raising_Hell_1986.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,37,Sade,Stronger Than Pride (1988),Epic,"Epic No one would ever call Sade a band with stylistic swerves, but Stronger than Pride, the first album singer Sade Adu produced herself, was a departure, at least in spirit. “I wanted a sound that was empty and hollow so that you would have the voice just coming at you,” she told The New York Times in 1988. While the album hardly sounds empty—Paul Denman’s bass, in particular, is front and center—you can hear it in the hushed stasis—backing vocals, pan flute effects, and only intermittently more—of “Love Is Stronger Than Pride,” or the deconstructed Jackson groove of “Turn My Back on You.” Even when Adu doesn’t sing—as on “Siempre Hay Esperanza,” flecked with Latin jazz and animated by Stuart Matthewman’s sax—her longing presence is palpable. It’s hard to find a sector of music today that hasn’t been touched by this album. It’s been endlessly sampled by hip-hop artists, and it’s found its way to house DJs and producers across the globe. Neo-soul and alt-R&B are clear and obvious successors, as is Drake, who’s called Adu a defining influence. (He also got a tattoo of her. Twice.) Echoes of Adu’s voice—notes piercing with perfect clarity through fog and breath—can be heard in Tracey Thorn and Sinéad O’Connor, and in modern artists like Jessie Ware or the Weeknd’s Abel Tesfaye. Sometimes, “Nothing Can Come Between Us” sounds like the blueprint for half of what’s on the radio. –Katherine St. Asaph",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOe6xJVFIXs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fa3f3a36fd417c3be94826/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/37-Sade-Stronger-Than-Pride.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sade-Stronger_Than_Pride_1988.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,36,Black Flag,Damaged (1981),SST,"SST From the outset, Black Flag was less a band than a state of mind. For their first three years, the hardcore pioneers essentially functioned like a karaoke bar, cycling through three different vocalists who each provided their own sneering interpretations of guitarist Greg Ginn’s circle-pit-stoking songbook. But with the arrival of a young, barely tattooed Henry Rollins in 1981, Black Flag found a frontman who pushed their self-immolating aggression and absurdist social satire to fearsome new extremes. (Who better to draw out the scathing critique from ostensible drinking anthems like “Six Pack” and “Thirsty and Miserable” than a straight-edge singer?) And with Rollins’ predecessor Dez Cadena switching over to become Ginn’s wingman on guitar, Black Flag unleashed a new double-barreled attack that was as unpredictably intricate as it was pulverizing. Factor in a growing affinity for shout-along calls-to-arms, not to mention the closest thing they ever had to a crossover hit, and Damaged is the sound of hardcore’s personal catharsis catalyzing an eternal youth movement. –Stuart Berman",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMLhAuH93bs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fb33a8f102d9dbdeb02d1c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/36-Black-Flag-Damaged.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Black_Flag-Damaged_1981.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,35,The Replacements,Let It Be (1984),Twin/Tone,"Twin/Tone “How old am I?” Paul Westerberg asks at the start of Let It Be, and then he spends the next 30 minutes artfully dodging the answer. The Replacements’ third album marked both the heaving last gasp of their puerile drunk-punk past and their arrival as the preeminent barstool philosophers of American college rock. It remains a lodestar for anyone who has to reckon with the moment when the fleeting bender of youth must give way to the extended hangover that is adult life. Let It Be is a valorous rock’n’roll record reeling from the broken promises of rock’n’roll, wrapping itself in its secondhand Beatles title like a thrift-store jean jacket, debasing KISS’ arena anthem “Black Diamond” into a desperate howl from the void and flipping Mick Jagger’s I-can’t-get-no-satisfaction sneer into the dejected ballad “Unsatisfied.” That such a bracing confessional could come from a band that had yet to completely outgrow singing about boners is startling enough. But what’s most striking about Let It Be is how such a bleary-eyed album now sounds so presciently woke, with Westerberg finding common, disaffected ground alongside gender-fluid outsiders (“Androgynous”) and sexually confused teens (“Sixteen Blue”) at a time when such topics lay far outside the usual boys-in-da-band vernacular. And while technological advances have rendered the titular target of “Answering Machine” obsolete, its long-distance blues still feel visceral in a time when romance is coldly mediated from smartphone to smartphone. –Stuart Berman",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxY76HVhiJ4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fb72d272d7339cc80f3681/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/35-The-Replacements-Let-It-Be.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Replacements-Let_It_Be_1984.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,34,Leonard Cohen,I’m Your Man (1988),Columbia,"Columbia Eight albums into his career, and more than 50 years into his life, Leonard Cohen settled into his sound the way a great building settles into the earth. His voice, dark from the start of his career, plunged to resonant new depths. His arrangements, long given to spare or antique instrumentation, used an array of synthesizers to discover the wonders of modernity. And his lyrics, always his ace, gained a grave new humor. Together, the changes inspired I’m Your Man, an album spoiled with many of the bard’s most quoted, hummed, and pondered creations. The Germanically stern “First We Take Manhattan” may have told a tale of political and psychic terrorism, but it also became the first Cohen song you could dance to. “Everybody Knows,” a taunting oompah, confronted us with the depths of our collective cynicism, and dared to play some of it for laughs. The title track, rich in kink and sensuality, established Cohen as perhaps pop’s oldest sex symbol. Things came to a head in “Tower of Song,” Cohen’s ultimate mission statement: Between cracking self-deprecating jokes about his “golden voice” and his inferiority to Hank Williams, Cohen positioned the creative act as both a prison and a path. –Jim Farber",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rAwdOdhUrA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fb73bf72d7339cc80f3683/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/34-Leonard-Cohen-I%25E2%2580%2599m-Your-Man.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Leonard_Cohen-Im_Your_Man_1988.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,33,Prince,Dirty Mind (1980),Warner Bros.,"Warner Bros. Maybe the most salient fact about Prince’s third album is that he recorded it at home—in other words, a place where he could be whoever he wanted. Not that he bothered to define himself so rigidly. If anything, Dirty Mind marked the moment where the man who once reportedly told a Warner Bros. executive “don’t make me black” (a comment that spoke less to his own identity than those corporately available to black artists in 1980) became uncategorizable. He was a yes/and instead of an either/or: rock and funk and punk and R&B, the slick hunk and trembling virgin, a man as proud to give head as to receive it. Presumably, the surfaces of the songs here—dry, plastic—only made them easier to clean. To that end, most of them are about sex. The ones that aren’t are about things I’m too shy to type. At one point, he even takes it from his sister with a whip, to which he shrieks: “Oh, motherfucker sister motherfucker, can’t you understand?” No. But then again, some things aren’t meant to be understood. –Mike Powell",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvq_1mLs6dQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fb750abde663516afa0d53/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/33-Prince-Dirty-Mind.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Prince-Dirty_Mind_1980.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,32,Pixies,Surfer Rosa (1988),4AD,"4AD Given that so much of indie rock embraced the Pixies’ second album, Doolittle, as a roadmap, it’s easy to forget how their swift, vicious debut didn’t sound like anything else in the American underground in 1988. Nastier than R.E.M., weirder than the Replacements, and more tuneful than Sonic Youth, Surfer Rosa traces tales of broken faces and molestation with a sinister grin. By emphasizing the band’s combustive chemistry, producer Steve Albini placed each member on an equal plane: David Lovering’s thunderous drums wrestle with the guitar squalls of Joey Santiago, while Kim Deal commands as much attention with her backing vocals as Black Francis does with his lead. Returning to Surfer Rosa now—years after its influence was swallowed whole by the mainstream, and the dangerous dream of “Where Is My Mind” was diluted by its omnipresence in commercials—what amazes most is how Albini captured that specific moment when Pixies seemed of another world, driven by menacing spirits that haunted nobody else in college rock. –Stephen Thomas Erlewine",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLmAy5ytcNU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fb78266a95ffd988c708e0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/32-Pixies-Surfer-Rosa.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Pixies-Surfer_Rosa_1988.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,31,Slayer,Reign in Blood (1986),Def Jam,"Def Jam Reign in Blood is a totem of human cruelty, violence, and horror, but its most shocking quality is how desperately it wants to be heard. This was not Slayer’s first great album, but it was their first that was impossible to ignore. The Rick Rubin-produced Reign in Blood felt rehearsed, immediate, eternal—not just an introduction to a band but to a whole new way of being. It’s unclear how many kids in the ’80s listened to Reign in Blood and became Satanists, but it’s safe to say a lot of them decided to grow their hair long and start wearing sleeveless tees, just like their new heroes. The album’s lyrics—composed by guitarists Jeff Hanneman and Kerry King, exploring subjects like Josef Mengele (“Angel of Death”), serial killers (“Criminally Insane”), and necrophilia (“Necrophobic”)—were what initially made the news. But their music is what made it stick. If you could get tattoos of guitar riffs, these ones would be omnipresent: haywire, hellbound things that dig into your subconscious like jackhammers into concrete. Lars Ulrich of Metallica, a group that would become Slayer’s only true thrash metal competitor in terms of creative and commercial longevity, once questioned whether they could make such breakneck intensity last. King laughed it off: “We don’t feel stuck, ’cause we like it. Once we stop liking it we’ll change.” Somehow, Reign in Blood was just the beginning. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_IRxxEYssw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fb7866dc493b51363cee30/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/31-Slayer-Reign-in-Blood.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Slayer-Reign_in_Blood_1986.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,30,Janet Jackson,Rhythm Nation 1814 (1989),A&M,"A&M Janet Jackson’s fourth album was a political statement—for herself and the world at large. Following 1986’s Control, which catapulted the singer to meteoric fame, Jackson wanted to add a more pronounced message to her music, to make art that stimulated the body and the mind. Rhythm Nation 1814 brought the news to the dance floor; as it played, one could almost see Jackson scanning CNN, her ire increasing with each headline. On “State of the World,” she tells the story of a young and struggling mother, urging people around the globe to tackle civic plight together. Elsewhere, she addresses the crack epidemic, the AIDS crisis, and black men being sent to prison at alarming rates. Producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis spun Jackson a dark, almost metallic blend of intense funk on which the singer forced her listeners to “give a damn.” In turn, Rhythm Nation felt urgent, an album that aligned with the reality-based rap of Public Enemy and Boogie Down Productions while also asserting Jackson’s stature as a pop star with meaning. –Marcus J. Moore",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEdrJv39Yrk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fb78b7dc493b51363cee32/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/30-Janet-Jackson-Rhythm-Nation-1814.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Janet_Jackson-Rhythm_Nation_1814_1989.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,29,Eric B. & Rakim,Follow the Leader (1988),MCA / Thomsun Original,"MCA / Thomsun Original Eric B. & Rakim are a time capsule. They arrived with two consecutive classics in quick succession: 1987’s Paid in Full and 1988’s Follow the Leader. Anything after that second album doesn’t seem to matter as much, because the ultimate conceit of Rakim’s lyrics was that he was the best rapper that ever lived, and at that point it was true. Rakim didn’t holler or posture or mug like other ’80s rappers: He muttered, disdainful of anyone incapable of keeping pace. Follow the Leader extended Rakim’s lead, as Eric B. exploded the beats into larger, more complicated territory. The duo were so plugged-in, so light years beyond, that when Rakim rapped, “Let’s travel at magnificent speeds around the universe,” it sounded, for the first time, like a reasonable end point for hip-hop. –Jay Balfour",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScAu8GdiPsI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fb7942cc4fac11a67acce1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/29-Eric-B.-_-Rakim-Follow-the-Leader.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Eric_B__Rakim-Follow_the_Leader_1988.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,28,Bruce Springsteen,Nebraska (1982),Columbia,"Columbia There are people who can’t stand Bruce Springsteen but revere Nebraska. It makes sense. If you’re turned off by his famed exuberance or optimism, then Nebraska can seem like the photonegative: a solitary collection of lo-fi ballads and highway nightmares. Springsteen recorded most of these tracks in his home, in one day, in the dead of winter, with the hopes of bringing them to the E Street Band. As legend has it, while the band hammered away unsuccessfully, trying to find their place in the music, it occurred to him that the record was already done, in its sparse, embryonic form. Considering how much music got scrapped throughout Springsteen’s career, the miracle of Nebraska is that these songs got released at all. The album arrived midway between commercial breakthroughs The River and Born in the U.S.A. The pain on those records could be subdued: It could be chanted away in a crowd of thousands, belted out with a fist in the air. But how exactly do you sing along to Nebraska? You do it alone. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3eu1gW-bQ8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fb7984bde663516afa0d55/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/28-Bruce-Springsteen-Nebraska.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bruce_Springsteen-Nebraska_1982.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,27,Cocteau Twins,Treasure (1984),4AD,"4AD While Cocteau Twins guitarist Robin Guthrie would later bemoan Treasure’s “so 1984” sound of drum machine and DX7 synth, for their fans, the Scottish band’s third album had little to do with the rock music of that decade. Rather, Treasure marked the point at which the Cocteau Twins floated off into their own, hugely idiosyncratic paradise, severing the post punk and gothic rock links of their first two albums in favor of a lustrous, angelic sound. Indeed, other rock music seems brutish and unnecessary when faced with the mystical drift of “Aloysius” or the choral drones of “Donimo.” Best of all, though, is “Lorelei,” an idiosyncratic wonder that marries the divine sound of singer Elizabeth Fraser in full, operatic swoop with Christmas bells, velvet-soft guitar walls, a muscular bass line, and oceans of reverb—creating something of such otherworldly beauty, it felt incredible that mere human beings could have been involved in its creation. –Ben Cardew",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHvEDVu7wXI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fb79bcbde663516afa0d57/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/27-Cocteau-Twins-Treasure.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Cocteau_Twins-Treasure_1984.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,26,Prince,1999 (1982),Warner Bros.,"Warner Bros. Audacity came naturally to Prince, yet he was particularly fearless when he made 1999. Here, he indulges in every one of his fascinations, doubling down on the carnality that fueled Dirty Mind, sharpening the funk of Controversy, modernizing the soul of Prince, and, most importantly, adding a heavy dose of rock that hadn’t been heard on any of his prior records. “Little Red Corvette” may creep into view on the back of slinky synthesizers, but it achieves transcendence when Prince paints it with sheets of squalling guitar—a sound that helped him score his first crossover hit. Elsewhere, 1999 favors the strange and funky over the bright snap of pop. Most of the record pulses to a computerized beat that’s turned warm and weird by Prince’s leer. Sex is always on his mind because he loves it, but it also helps keep apocalyptic fear—most notably on the deceptively joyous title track—at bay. Relentless in its sprawl, 1999 remains a high-water mark of nuclear new wave madness, a record in which pleasure and paranoia intermingle so intensely, they're impossible to separate. –Stephen Thomas Erlewine",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCAiVCNrb3k,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fb79f173d792ec7db5474a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/26-Prince-1999.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Prince-1999_1982.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,25,Arthur Russell,World of Echo (1986),Upside,"Upside World of Echo is a culmination: Using primarily amplified cello and his gentle voice, Arthur Russell finally threaded together his various interests on what would be his last release before his death from AIDS in 1992. There are echoes of avant-garde cello, faint sketches of dance beats, serene minimalism, spectral melodies, a Buddhist spirit of infinity. The whole record feels like a shadow, a whisper, an apparition, a collage—as if the sound really has no edges, no beginning or end. When sales of World of Echo were low, Russell requested a sticker be added to each LP with a single word: “Unintelligible.” But it continues to translate. World of Echo is one of the loneliest albums ever recorded, a series of deconstructions from a person who fit in nowhere, yet it is deeply comforting and self-possessed. It is as if Russell invented a whole new way of being alone. Plenty of artists have made outsider music. None have ever come so close to the feeling of being unreachable. –Jenn Pelly",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPWqDfu_9qc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fb7a38cc4fac11a67acce3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/25-Arthur-Russell-World-of-Echo.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Arthur_Russell-World_of_Echo_1986.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,24,Talk Talk,Spirit of Eden (1988),EMI,"EMI Many bands start out underground and get more mainstream over time; the opposite trajectory, not so much. Talk Talk saw early success with their slightly edgy synth pop, scoring minor hits like “It’s My Life” and “Talk Talk” in the early- to mid-’80s. They were already inching toward a more dynamic and acoustic sound when they were offered an open budget and total control for their fourth album. They took this freedom in a somewhat unconventional direction, enlisting many musicians to jam in a darkened London studio for hours, over the course of months, before the tapes were put together by band leader Mark Hollis and producer Tim Friese-Greene. The results were wholly unmarketable; however, years removed from the expectations of what this band should be, the singularity of Spirit of Eden started to emerge. Now the album, along with its even more structureless follow-up, 1991’s Laughing Stock, are considered cult classics and pioneering works of post-rock. Mixing the elegance of jazz, the fire of rock, and the pace of ambient, Hollis and co. follow the lead of the instrumental improvisations. Tension builds and diffuses on a whim; songs can take five minutes to reach a point of sharp relief amid Hollis’ warbled reflections on salvation. Whether it’s the guttural riff that erupts amid “Desire,” the closing ring of organ that would send shivers down any churchgoer’s spine, or the strategic use of quietness throughout, Spirit of Eden invites the listener into private musical epiphanies. –Jillian Mapes",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVQlFEynONQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fb7a7d7773efb300ecc457/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/24-Talk-Talk-Spirit-of-Eden.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Talk_Talk-Spirit_of_Eden_1988.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,23,Minor Threat,Complete Discography (1989),Dischord,"Dischord The Washington D.C. band Minor Threat’s sensibly titled Complete Discography opens with a song called “Filler,” but it’s all substance across these 26 confrontational tracks. Focusing on staying true to yourself and to your community, the compilation—which stitches together three EPs and one-off bits—skids past in 47 minutes and iterates on the hardcore band’s central thesis that they’re out of step with the world and totally OK with it. Taken as a whole, Complete Discography allows you to follow the development of a group who kept refining an already minimal sound while showing staunch allegiance to a punk ideal (for instance, they’d only play all ages shows with a $5 door fee). Minor Threat were efficient in everything they did: Over their three years as a band, they spearheaded the straightedge movement (no drinking, smoking, or promiscuous sex), created a blueprint for the thinking human’s hardcore, and frontman Ian MacKaye and drummer Jeff Nelson’s Discord label went on to show what can happen when you remove the middleman and decide to do it yourself. In 1983, they called it quits, splintering into other essential acts like Rites of Spring, Dag Nasty, and Fugazi, but in their short time together, Minor Threat proved you could follow you own path while creating a new one for anybody who wanted in. –Brandon Stosuy",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsAu-nOg3Tw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fb7aadcc4fac11a67acce5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/23-Minor-Threat-Complete-Discography.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Minor_Threat-Complete_Discography_1989.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,22,Laurie Anderson,Big Science (1982),Warner Bros.,"Warner Bros. Listening to Laurie Anderson’s first album is like sitting down with a strange form of life that has been studying us for a long time. Sometimes, like on the plane-crash scenario of “From the Air,” it seems to know what it’s doing. Other times, like on the meditative “O Superman,” it’s on the verge of collapse. Its language is patched together from TV shows and public-service announcements, things it thinks actual people say. The less it knows, the more authoritatively it speaks, something Anderson, a woman in a world dominated by men, understands well. The music is simple and spacey, filled with clacking hand drums and computerized drones, fragments of an imagined past and an eagerly projected future, which Anderson describes on “Let X=X” as “a place about 70 miles east of here, where it’s lighter,” either because that’s how the sun moves across the sky or because that’s where the new shopping center is going in. It is minimal but warm, a little bit punk (it doesn’t pretend to know anything) and very beautiful (it understands a lot). If Anderson is a protest artist, the nature of her protest here is something like this: The world is filled with death machines operated by people with no special capacity to do so. Skeptical, meditative, but deeply concerned, Big Science is a picture of the man (always a man) sitting at the button reckoning not with its metaphorical power so much as how red it is, how shiny. But it also captures the feeling—the terror, the wonder, the muted mix of both—of living in such a place, where the coyotes still bay and the philosophers of violence still miss their moms, where the sweetest thing someone can say about their lovers’ eyes is that it’s a day’s work looking into them, because work is all they know. –Mike Powell",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrxV5kwuU24,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fb7ae76a95ffd988c708e2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/22-Laurie-Anderson-Big-Science.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Laurie_Anderson-Big_Science_1982.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,21,De La Soul,3 Feet High and Rising (1989),Tommy Boy,"Tommy Boy 1989 was a contradictory year in hip-hop. While Public Enemy put the match to a black-power powder keg with “Fight the Power,” fellow Long Islanders De La Soul inaugurated the D.A.I.S.Y. Age. The term was short for “Da Inna Sound, Y’all,” but on their debut album, 3 Feet High and Rising, what would come to be known as “conscious” hip-hop took a backseat to the wonders of the subconscious, which played out in candy-colored surrealism, dizzyingly referential wordplay, and, thanks to the album’s game-show conceit, some of the most engaging sketches in the rap canon. The trio of Trugoy the Dove, Posdnuos, and Maseo carried themselves with the irrepressible energy of class clowns on a field trip, keeping up a steady stream of inside jokes, unhinged banter, and schoolyard wisdom. Aided by Prince Paul, the record’s sampledelic production was nothing short of revolutionary—a crazy-quilt piecework incorporating Steely Dan, Hall and Oates, and Johnny Cash that was as kaleidoscopic as Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back or the Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique, but also brighter and airier. Maybe it’s fitting, then, that an album so evocative of flowers and rainbows should have gone the way of the unicorn: Ever since a 1991 legal ruling against Biz Markie, 3 Feet High’s style of rapid-fire bricolage has become financially prohibitive and functionally verboten. Today, given lingering sample-clearance issues, there’s no trace of the album on streaming services or even the iTunes download store. But in a way, maybe that’s fitting, too. A collection of knowing winks and secret handshakes, 3 Feet High and Rising requires a healthy amount of work from contemporary listeners—even if the music goes down as easy as ever. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZoYEr6NdmE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fb7b3273d792ec7db5474c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/21-De-La-Soul-3-Feet-High-and-Rising.jpg,/dataset/artwork/De_La_Soul-3_Feet_High_and_Rising_1989.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,20,Boogie Down Productions,Criminal Minded (1987),Sugar Hill,"Sugar Hill Criminal Minded advanced hip-hop as a storytelling medium and an increasingly complex musical language. Hungry young rapper KRS-One exploded onto the scene with a booming voice, a chip on his shoulder, and a fearlessness that sparked a formative feud in hip-hop: his Bronx versus Marley Marl’s Queens, a rivalry that became known as the Bridge Wars. The group’s producer and DJ, Scott LaRock, immortalized their legacy on wax. Joining them was Ced-Gee, the mad-scientist rapper and sampling whiz of Ultramagnetic MC’s, who contributed more than half the album’s beats. “9mm Goes Bang” and “Remix for P Is Free” pioneered first-person crime storytelling in rap and forged early connections to dancehall. “South Bronx” and “The Bridge Is Over” are the two heavy-knocking shots that dented the previously unpierceable armor of their Queensbridge rivals in the Juice Crew. Criminal Minded’s two bookending cuts—opener “Poetry” and the closing title track—show what separated the chant-along simplicity of old-school rap from a new wave of intricate, sharp-witted lyricism and constantly shifting rhyme schemes. “I’ve listened to these MCs back when I was a kid/But I bust more shots than they ever did,” KRS boasts, drawing a line in the sand that made BDP leaders in the dawning golden age of hip-hop. –Nate Patrin",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPh0aKzdg2I,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fb7b7fcc4fac11a67acce7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/20-Boogie-Down-Productions-Criminal-Minded.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Boogie_Down_Productions-Criminal_Minded_1987.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,19,New Order,"Power, Corruption & Lies (1983)",Factory,"Factory From the moment Ian Curtis’ suicide put an end to Joy Division, New Order’s career has been a story of perpetual reinvention; it’s right there in the name. But whereas their 1981 debut, Movement, was still in many ways a Joy Division album—it would not be hard to imagine Curtis singing over most of those songs—Power, Corruption & Lies made a clean break with the past, beginning with the incongruously major-key melody of opener “Age of Consent.” Could it be that England’s paragons of moroseness had actually found happiness? The story’s more complicated than that, of course, and what makes this album so thrilling is the way it balances the bleak and the giddy, reshaping the group’s stark past into effervescent synth-pop. It’s not that the links New Order forged between post-punk and disco were so unique; plenty of their contemporaries were doing the same. What makes Power, Corruption & Lies stand out is its sumptuousness: Its fizzy synths and springy arpeggios and Tungsten-bright guitars amount to a field of ultra-vivid textures. In those dynamic contrasts lie not just the album’s novelty but also its undying generative power: Its echo can be heard in the work of everyone from LCD Soundsystem to Robyn to Calvin Harris. Pop and club music wouldn’t be the same without it. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIZeIeBbIKI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fb8bf872d7339cc80f36b6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/19-New-Order-Power%2C-Corruption-_-Lies.jpg,/dataset/artwork/New_Order-Power_Corruption__Lies_1983.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,18,Kraftwerk,Computer World (1981),Warner Bros.,"Warner Bros. Released at the start of the 1980s, Computer World foresaw the musical and cultural shifts of the coming years to an eerie degree. The sleek production on Kraftwerk’s eighth studio album predated everyone from synth-pop stars the Pet Shop Boys to techno innovator Derrick May, while “Numbers” would later be sampled on Afrika Bambaataa and Soulsonic Force’s “Planet Rock” (alongside Kraftwerk’s earlier “Trans-Europe Express”), cementing the German group’s place in hip-hop history. Packed with crystalline synth melodies, pendulum-smooth drum machines, and robo-human vocal lines, Computer World made Kraftwerk’s electronic contemporaries sound like bone-wielding cavemen. The album’s lyrical themes, meanwhile, explore computing’s place in society, their chilling sheen of technological disconnect setting the tone for the next three decades of societal slippage. Here, the group’s silicon compound of hope and melancholy rejoices in the possibilities of the computer age, even as they anticipate the sadness to come. –Ben Cardew",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fa7WrCqsTC0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fb8c3572d7339cc80f36b8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/18-Kraftwerk-Computer-World.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kraftwerk-Computer_World_1981.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,17,Prince,Sign o’ the Times (1987),Paisley Park,"Paisley Park Sign o’ the Times—Prince’s 80-minute tour-de-force—is made of broken things. The material came from a variety of scrapped projects: a final album with his backing band the Revolution, a genre-spanning solo set called Crystal Ball, and a project under the pseudonym Camille, in which he pitch-shifted his voice to portray the titular role. If there’s a common link between the album’s wildly different songs, it’s their view of a fragmented world, tormented by violence and death and missed connections. As usual, Prince offers love as the answer: “Hurry before it’s too late,” he sings in the title track. “Let’s fall in love, get married, have a baby.” Of course, Sign o’ the Times is also a blast—a seduction, an invitation to a better place. Accompanying himself on nearly every instrument, Prince had never sounded sharper or funnier or more ambitious. At this point, he was literally writing songs in his sleep—“The Ballad of Dorothy Parker” came to him in a dream—and recording them with such prolificacy that each one maintained that hazy spark of creation. Between our vision and our reality is this thing called life: On Sign o’ the Times, Prince embraced it in all its chaos and contradictions. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEJaV2X7XxY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fb8c7472d7339cc80f36ba/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/17-Prince-Sign-o%25E2%2580%2599-the-Times.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Prince-Sign_o_the_Times_1987.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,16,Madonna,Madonna (1983),Sire,"Sire After the New York City disco rush of the 1970s died, a hustling Madonna pushed her demos around downtown hangouts until she heard the word “yes.” A dancer and Dunkin Donuts employee with her eyes set on global domination, she got a deal with Sire Records and wasn’t going to let anyone tell her what to do. What on earth was she wearing? Why did she sound like Minnie Mouse? And wasn’t dancing over? Never mind: If Madonna said it, Madonna got it. She kicked off a new disco revolution and wrote most of the club tracks on this self-titled debut herself. The cover bears witness to the gaze of an unstoppable future superstar, and with the triple-punch opening of “Lucky Star,” “Borderline,” and “Burning Up,” she set the shimmying pace for a decade dripping in synths, drum machines, and sex. The ’80s music industry may be renowned for excess in both time and money, but Madonna benefits from sounding rushed, coming over like a heady stint on a lit-up dancefloor and setting a benchmark for the decade’s chart pop. More than that, as a forthright statement by a 24-year-old woman singing about her own experience of relationships, it opened doors for swathes of big-haired female stars. –Eve Barlow",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=em-WvFGVChA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fb8cb9dc493b51363cee66/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/16-Madonna-Madonna.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Madonna-Madonna_1983.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,15,Beastie Boys,Paul’s Boutique (1989),Capitol,"Capitol You can’t see to the bottom of Paul’s Boutique. It’s too dense, too wild, too thick. The second some air opens up in the mix—a brief respite from nonstop samples of Johnny Cash or the Beatles or the Commodores or Joni Mitchell or Ramones—another colorful scrap leaps in to smother that space. Would-be experts try to guess the number of samples on it like paleobotanists trying to imagine the ecosystem of the Cretaceous period. A hundred? Three hundred? Producers the Dust Brothers imagined they were making club tracks when they stitched all these pieces together. Who would have the foggiest idea how to rhyme over something this complicated? As it happened: the least respected rappers in the known universe. The Beastie Boys were very popular during rap’s first golden age, but in hip-hop’s inner circle, they were at best an irritant, at worst a harbinger of greater humiliations. No one, it is fair to say, was rooting for them. So when they filled every space of Paul’s Boutique with references as deep and wide as the music—Putney Swope and Yosemite Sam, Travis Bickle and Sadaharu Oh, Raymond Burr and Ponce de Leon—they surprised everyone and established something firm. Whatever happened next in hip-hop, they would not only stick around, they would be at its center. This is where MCA's voice toughened up, where Ad-Rock and Mike D's Whoopee Cushion whines locked permanently into place. Paul’s Boutique laid down coordinates on maps that would be drawn later by everyone from Beck to Girl Talk to Das Racist. Every scrap of rock cross-pollination that would happen over the next 20-plus years can be traced back here, somewhere inside. –Jayson Greene",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbeN3-dfDD4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fb8cf4501977ec48d1e7c9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/15-Beastie-Boys-Paul%25E2%2580%2599s-Boutique.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beastie_Boys-Pauls_Boutique_1989.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,14,Pixies,Doolittle (1989),4AD,"4AD Like all great surrealist masterpieces, Pixies’ sophomore record Doolittle defies logic. Thanks to the steady hand of producer Gil Norton, the Boston quartet’s rapid-fire jumps from brutal punk exorcisms (“Tame,” “Crackity Jones”) to rom-com ready pop hits (“Here Comes Your Man,” “La La Love You”) all manage to mesh together in one strange universe. The ringleader of this circus is guitarist and songwriter Black Francis, who shrieks like a hyena and croons like a gentleman with equal aplomb. Alongside him on Doolittle’s sonic rollercoaster are the rhythm section of drummer David Lovering, guitarist Joey Santiago, and bassist Kim Deal. Together, Pixies crafted jagged pop perfection with oddities aplenty, inlcuding toxic Tri-State sludge, suicidal Japanese businessmen, and a stoner revision of the Bible. Arriving in the final gasp of the ’80s, Doolittle’s trademark loud-quiet-loud pattern went on to shape ’90s rock, with Kurt Cobain famously telling Rolling Stone that “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was his attempt to rip off the dynamic. Perhaps without meaning to, Doolittle showed future generations a new way to reach the masses while remaining uniquely strange. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hCEd8YLKWI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fb8d39750555745603b503/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/14-Pixies-Doolittle.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Pixies-Doolittle_1989.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,13,The Smiths,The Queen Is Dead (1986),Sire,"Sire Morrissey’s romantic misery is so familiar by now, “the Smiths” describes a personality type as much as actual music. Even if their catalog is riddled by throwaways and redundancy, 1986’s The Queen Is Dead is the impregnable jewel at the center. It contains their finest melodies and their wittiest and most devastating set of lyrics. It’s the one time in their entire career where the production isn’t a distraction, and everyone is equally confident and inspired. While nearly a third of the album can be interpreted as Morrissey bitching about the music industry’s continuing inability to recognize his genius, for 37 minutes, he really was who he thought he was—your favorite singer, poet, literary critic, gossip, political firebrand, and the only person to recognize that the smartest guy in the room could also be the loneliest. –Ian Cohen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iey0VOhxV2Y,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fb8d6e7773efb300ecc459/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/13-The-Smiths-The-Queen-Is-Dead.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Smiths-The_Queen_Is_Dead_1986.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,12,Joy Division,Closer (1980),Factory,"Factory Ian Curtis was only 23 when he died by suicide, but his wife Deborah noted years later that, in his lyrics, “Ian sounded old, as if he had lived a lifetime in his youth.” In a sense, he had: Married as teenagers, the Curtises were raising a baby girl. Ian had worked a numbing 9-to-5, led a brilliant post-punk act, fallen into an extramarital affair, been diagnosed with epilepsy and seen his affliction worsen. His premature aging manifested itself in his elliptical verses and a bellow whose timbre was as dignified and distressed as a Shakespearean actor on his deathbed. Curtis’ woeful voice—and the images of cruelty, punishment, and death it sketched in charcoal—distinguished Joy Division’s second and final album, Closer. By that point, only solitude and the work of dark literary heroes like J.G. Ballard and Kafka could help him summon the ghost of beauty. Producer Martin Hannett may have masterminded the lacerating drumbeat on “Isolation” and the gothy, piano-flecked stillness of “The Eternal,” but those sounds serve mostly as pedestals for some of the most exquisite descriptions of hopelessness ever expressed in any medium. If Closer is rock’s bleakest masterpiece, it’s thanks to Curtis, who condensed the triumphs and the pain of a lifetime into just a few decades, chronicling them with all the drama of youth. –Judy Berman",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WS1PU4kZ2ao,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fb8da37773efb300ecc45b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/12-Joy-Division-Closer.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Joy_Division-Closer_1980.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,11,Eric B. & Rakim,Paid in Full (1987),4th & Broadway,"4th & Broadway Paid in Full is a crowning achievement of hip-hop’s first golden age, and of hip-hop in general. It’s one of the genre’s glittering Rosetta Stones, as incisive and instructive now as it was back then. You can explain its mystique by pointing to all of the album’s seismic innovations: Digital sampling as we know it today began with “I Know You Got Soul,” a big-bang moment that blew the mind of a young Chuck D. You could single out Rakim’s internal rhyme schemes, which were such a quantum formal leap for rap that he seemed to have crash-landed in 1987 from a full decade into the future. But formal innovations lose their shock over years; once you’ve been astonished by their novelty, you don’t stay astonished. What truly solidifies Paid In Full’s lofty place in history, and what makes it sound mysterious and untouchable three decades later, is the spartan form of cool it pioneered. Rakim cut a forbidding figure against his peers: He was a stone-faced virtuoso in a sea of party rappers, equal parts exacting and self-assured. With this album, Eric B. and Rakim elevated hip-hop into a deadly serious aesthetic pursuit. –Mehan Jayasuriya",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_59PdEF5RI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fb8ddccc4fac11a67acced/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/11-Eric-B.-_-Rakim-Paid-in-Full.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Eric_B__Rakim-Paid_in_Full_1987.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,10,Sade,Diamond Life (1985),Epic / Portrait,"Epic / Portrait In the mid-’80s, ultra-smooth, diet-soul pop ruled the British airwaves, trafficking in sax solos and funk-lite guitar twang. As Margaret Thatcher’s brand of conservative austerity was all but tearing England’s working class apart, this upbeat, worry-melting music was a welcome reprieve. However, the vast majority of these performers were white, borrowing their sound from traditionally black music; the scene was ripe for a group that could inject an authentic jolt of jazz, soul, and contemporary R&B. Enter Sade. Diamond Life, the group’s debut, is impeccably balanced between honeyed smooth jazz and gripping pop—as its blockbuster singles, “Smooth Operator” and “Your Love is King,” demonstrate. Throughout, frontwoman Sade Adu’s voice is like a full-bodied wine, deep and musky and sweet. Each song deals with love in its different forms: romantic (“Cherry Pie”), platonic (“I Will Be Your Friend”), artistic (“When Am I Going to Make a Living?”). Steadfast and eternal, they’ve spent the ensuing years tweaking the smoldering template set forth offered on this album. –Cameron Cook",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKn54xfmPLE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fb8e1bdc493b51363cee68/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/10-Sade-Diamond-Life.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sade-Diamond_Life_1985.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,9,The Cure,Disintegration (1989),Fiction,"Fiction The stylistic changes, the shifting lineups, the psilocybin and emptied liquor cabinets: Few acts had a more helter-skelter ’80s than the Cure. To trace a path from 1980’s Boys Don’t Cry up to 1987’s Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me is to traverse punky perkiness, black-hearted resignation, foulest bile, insouciant psychedelia, and eyelash-batting pop. But it all comes to a head with 1989’s Disintegration—a sprawling double album that boils down all the Cure’s complexities into two contrasting shades of bittersweet. Robert Smith’s love songs have never been as direct as “Lovesong,” a synth ballad as plain-spoken as a note left on a pillow, nor as evocative as “Plainsong,” a character study written with Raymond Carver’s sense of focus. If the album’s first half epitomizes the band’s unique fusion of melancholy and whimsy, the second half delves into their soul-scouring depths with surging guitars, storm-tossed rhythms, and Smith’s most desperate wails. “Fascination Street” and “Prayers for Rain” draw from the dirge-like moods of their early-’80s work while blowing that feeling up to acid-drenched proportions; like everything on the album, these two songs are intractable, improbable beasts, the kinds of echo-soaked anthems that made the Cure the decade’s unlikeliest alt-rock heroes. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cI0QizfB7qo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fb8e5a501977ec48d1e7cb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/9-The-Cure-Disintegration.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Cure-Disintegration_1989.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,8,Janet Jackson,Control (1986),A&M,"A&M By 19, Janet Jackson had already appeared in several television shows, been married and divorced, and released two bubblegum pop albums. But it wasn’t until Control, a record as genre-defining as it was career-defining, that she was empowered enough to reclaim her body, her art, and her story. Within the album’s nine tracks, Jackson oscillates between warm, feminine sexuality and stony strength. The explosive title track doubles as a mission statement, while screeds like “Nasty” and the kiss-off “What Have You Done for Me Lately” demand respect and raise the standards for who could have the pleasure of her company. Elsewhere, the flirty “When I Think of You” and the sentimental ballad “Let’s Wait Awhile” offset her take-no-prisoners attitude with girlish crushing—the kind of vulnerability that is reflective of a soft heart but isn’t a full surrender. She separated herself from the overbearing men in her life and those who sought to write her narrative, and found more natural collaborators in producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. She did what she needed to do for herself, which remains one of the most revolutionary things a black woman can do. In finding her voice on Control, Janet Jackson cut a path by which future women pop stars could chart their own trajectory. –Briana Younger",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0c-s5wg2HKw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fb8e96cc4fac11a67accef/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/8-Janet-Jackson-Control.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Janet_Jackson-Control_1986.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,7,Sonic Youth,Daydream Nation (1987),Enigma,"Enigma Thirty years after its release, Sonic Youth’s double-album magnum opus remains the defining document of American indie rock. Never before or after would this band—or any other—synthesize the urgency of punk, the abrasion of noise, and the beauty of pop into such a monumental whole. All three of the group’s songwriters are at their peak here. Thurston Moore eases into his eternal place as the wise older brother to the world’s floppy-haired, alternate-tuned guitar boys on anthems like “Teen Age Riot” and “Total Trash.” Kim Gordon, mother of all riot grrrls, tears through such prescient #MeToo ragers as “Eliminator Jr.” and “Kissability.” And Lee Ranaldo, the Deadhead-turned-drone scientist, marries the free-associative legacy of the Beatniks with Warholian downtown cool on “Eric’s Trip,” “Hey Joni,” and “Rain King.” Daydream Nation served as the bridge between the ’80s underground and the ’90s alternative explosion; Sonic Youth signed to major DGC following its release, then helped their friends Nirvana join the same label. The DNA of everything that came before, and everything that came after, is encoded in this album. –Amy Phillips",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbWaT9XMH18,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fb8ecebde663516afa0d5a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/7-Sonic-Youth-Daydream-Nation.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sonic_Youth-Daydream_Nation_1987.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,6,Public Enemy,It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (1988),Def Jam,"Def Jam If the blues is the sound of black pain, then what does black rage sound like? For Public Enemy and its genre-redefining production team, the Bomb Squad, the answer is: noise. Not innocuous, sleep-inducing white noise, but sound that demands attention, leaving the listener transfixed by its source. The alarm, the alert, the impossible-to-ignore signal. Public Enemy’s second album begins with the sirens and warnings of “Countdown to Armageddon,” and the sonic onslaught doesn’t stop until frontman Chuck D and his comic foil, Flava Flav, have taken you through the collective psyche of post-Civil Rights Era, post-black power, and ’80s black America. In 58 minutes, Public Enemy tackle everything from the crack epidemic (“Night of the Living Baseheads”) to state surveillance (“Louder Than a Bomb”); they take aim at the media’s whitesplaining of rap (“Don’t Believe the Hype”) and challenge the fallacy that what you hear and see on TV is gospel truth (“She Watch Channel Zero?!”). What they addressed was timely, but how they addressed it was revolutionary. Chuck’s booming baritone voice was set against the “Wall of Noise” created by himself and the Bomb Squad’s brother duo, Hank and Keith Shocklee, and Eric “Vietnam” Sadler, as they wove together samples of Slayer, James Brown, Malcolm X, and Queen to get their point across. Public Enemy brought the noise, and listeners heard their message loud and clear. –Timmhotep Aku",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3TKEfTdgHM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fb8f1adc493b51363cee6a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/6-Public-Enemy-It-Takes-a-Nation-of-Millions-to-Hold-Us-Back.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Public_Enemy-It_Takes_a_Nation_of_Millions_to_Hold_Us_Back_1988.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,5,Talking Heads,Remain in Light (1980),Sire,"Sire At start of the glorious polyglot carnival that is Remain in Light, David Byrne chirps, “I’m a tumbler.” Talking Heads’ fourth album seems to move similarly, so eager and accelerative that, at times, all it can do is ride its own momentum. It’s the distillation of four New York art punks’ open-hearted curiosity for other cultures, grounded in quiet, binding anxiety. Recorded at Nassau’s Compass Point Studios, it’s the least chill thing to ever come from a vacation to the Bahamas, and we are luckier for it. Remain in Light took the Talking Heads from punk mecca CBGB to dance haven Paradise Garage, with the band trading in their lean, agitated guitars for danceable polyrhythmic jams. Inspired by Afrobeat legend Fela Kuti, the quartet and producer Brian Eno stuffed in brass, keys, double bass, and King Crimson guitarist Adrian Belew over loping funk grooves. Atop the instrumental travelogue is Byrne at his impressionistic lyrical peak, pulling from such bleak prompts as the Watergate hearings, the autopilot of American consumerism, and terrorist bombings to drawl a sharp portrait of a country adrift at the dawn of the Me Decade. Remain in Light is the once-in-a-generation synthesis of global ideas and neighborly idealism, a pop mouthpiece for every wanderer who travels far and wide to understand their home better. –Stacey Anderson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3N5qQrGSuJ4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fb8f677773efb300ecc45d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/5-Talking-Heads-Remain-in-Light.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Talking_Heads-Remain_in_Light_1980.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,4,Kate Bush,Hounds of Love (1985),EMI,"EMI In the decade after punk wrecked itself, British rock splintered into tiny, overlapping scenes: goth and industrial, prog survivors and art-rock innovators, a dozen strains of post-punk, New Romantics and New Pop and synthpop and dream pop. Then there was Kate Bush, an artist whose music shared elements with most of these but who never had much use for genres or cliques. After emerging as a loner teen prodigy in 1978, with a love anthem howled in the voice of Wuthering Heights’ heroine, she kept the weirdness cranked up to 11 after achieving fame and soon drifted far enough from the mainstream to alienate early fans. At that pivotal juncture, Bush decamped to a farmhouse in the country—not to fade into obscurity, but to make hits without compromising her idiosyncrasies. The result was Hounds of Love, which remains both the best Kate Bush album and the most Kate Bush album. A paean to love of all kinds—and, most of all, to love of life—it reeled in listeners with an opening half stuffed with buoyant singles like “The Big Sky” and “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God),” which dreamed of empathy across lines of identity and circumstance. She also found room to explore her literary obsessions amid the ringing choruses: “Cloudbusting” draws on a memoir by the son of Freud acolyte Wilhelm Reich, wrapping its allusions around pliant vocals that soar like birdsong and curl in on themselves with feline grace. And she ran with the freedom those frontloaded hits gave her: Side B is a suite about a sailor that revels in the uncoolness of Irish jigs and the campy call-and-responses of musical theater. But even this highly conceptual sprawl is grounded by arresting images: “There’s a ghost in our home just watching you without me,” she breathes on “Watching You Without Me.” With Hounds of Love, Kate Bush ascended from oddball genius to master alchemist, transmuting her most outré impulses into something irresistible. –Judy Berman",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LE1-W-a9hCI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fb8f977773efb300ecc45f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/4-Kate-Bush-Hounds-of-Love.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kate_Bush-Hounds_of_Love_1985.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,3,N.W.A.,Straight Outta Compton (1988),Ruthless,"Ruthless Straight Outta Compton struck the earth like a meteorite, its impact rippling out across rap into pop culture and politics. The album didn’t invent gangsta rap but it brought the gangstas to the pop charts and squarely into the public imagination, where they were quickly stamped with parental advisory stickers—a blatantly racist act that did little to stem their takeover. N.W.A.’s “reality rap,” reported from within the L.A. ghettos, changed the tones, textures, and scope of hip-hop forever; their songs were portraits of the black struggle turned inside out and weaponized. They delivered a premonition of the 1992 Los Angeles uprising, and every black anti-tyranny initiative that would follow. Ice Cube, Eazy-E, and co. were as unflinching as Public Enemy, yet more unapologetic. They were Nancy Reagan’s worst night terror come to life. A massive debut, Straight Outta Compton is unsparing and defiant, riot rap for the ages. Ice Cube erupted through the speakers as a menace, embracing his role as instigator with punishing verses that threatened to break the status quo and remake it in his image; Eazy-E’s slickness and charisma turned every utterance into hood gospel. In their writers’ room with MC Ren, they made dysfunction a direction, vividly drawing characters who didn’t have time for moralizing because they were too busy just trying to get by. Beneath them, Dr. Dre and DJ Yella laced the throwback funk of Moog synthesizers with turntablism and cracking drum programming, creating beats that felt as colossal as they were groundbreaking. “Fuck tha Police” is an eternal mantra; “Gangsta Gangsta” is a street survivalist epic; the title track is a badge of hometown pride. And as they knew it would, N.W.A.’s fire has outlasted their censors: Three decades later, the same rappers who were once made enemies of the state are now in the Library of Congress. –Sheldon Pearce",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-yi8XZJAzw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fb8fd13f33d370b3470ad2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/3-N.W.A.-Straight-Outta-Compton.jpg,/dataset/artwork/NWA-Straight_Outta_Compton_1988.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,2,Michael Jackson,Thriller (1982),Epic,"Epic Thriller is one of the best-selling albums ever made, and barring some massive and unforeseen shift back to traditional musical ownership, it’ll stay that way until the end of humanity. Listeners exploring the history of pop music will still find their way to Thriller hundreds of years from now, many of them unaware of the context—Michael Jackson’s preexisting stardom, the advent of MTV, the power of the monoculture in an offline era—that enabled the album’s insane success. All of them will press play expecting magic, and none of them will be disappointed, because Thriller’s precision and polish makes its place in the annals of pop feel almost preordained. The album’s producer, Quincy Jones, once told Rolling Stone how he kept a sign in the studio that read, “Always leave space for God to walk into the room.” You can’t find God in Thriller’s credits, but Michael Jackson is something close. He’s an agent of chaos, slithering and leaping through songs that are otherwise buffed until blinding: playful and hammy on the title track, bashful and competitive on “The Girl Is Mine,” wide-eyed with wonder on “Human Nature.” The album’s epoch-defining singles—the frenetic “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’,” the snarling “Beat It,” and the smooth “Billie Jean”—are bold, disparate visions of pop, linked only by Jackson’s charisma. All three songs are colored by the desperation and paranoia that would come to suffocate his work, but here they’re rendered more exciting by their astringency. Jackson just wanted Thriller to top Off the Wall, a smash hit that nevertheless failed to satisfy his considerable ambitions. He ended up creating a high-water mark for musical superstardom, one that’ll stay there until the “Thriller” ghouls start dancing in the streets. –Jamieson Cox",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/sOnqjkJTMaA?t=505,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fb90136a95ffd988c708e5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/2-Michael-Jackson-Thriller.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Michael_Jackson-Thriller_1982.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,album,1,Prince and the Revolution,Purple Rain (1984),Warner Bros.,"Warner Bros. It all poured out of him faster than he could put it onto tape. He was not a perfectionist, contrary to belief; Prince could not wait on perfection. If Purple Rain was to be his masterpiece, it needed to have the spark of a live show, to have the hits to fill the arenas, to pleasure the audience that would spy into his personal life in the semi-autobiographical movie of the same name. So Prince worked up to 24 hours at a time in the studio—writing, recording, programming, and playing. Rehearsals with his new band, the Revolution, could last until sunrise. Prince learned something about the connections between sound and color from listening to Joni Mitchell, and it was “A Case of You,” the tipsy ballad from her 1971 album Blue, that he chose to cover when he debuted more than half of the songs from Purple Rain live on August 3, 1983, in Minneapolis. That show served as the framework for an album so rich, it could become whatever the listener desired: black music, white music, spiritual sustenance, sexual fantasy. No longer just a cult R&B singer, Prince now had the ear of an ever-growing audience with the success of “Little Red Corvette,” and he didn’t want to lose them. So he gave them more glammy guitars and turned the Revolution into a machine that could execute these enormous songs with the lithe feel of a scrappy funk band. Purple Rain was omnivorous in how it absorbed the pop and rock music all around Prince in the early ’80s and refracted it through a brilliant prism. Here was this five-foot-three black man from the Midwest who could conjure a gossamer falsetto that grew into a storm on “The Beautiful Ones.” His voice could shape-shift, catching the spirit like James Brown or issuing an avian call to the dancefloor, as could his Telecaster: It blares, it cries, and it serves as an extension of his body as he shreds an icy solo on “Computer Blue.” At full boil, the record is a full endorsement of gospel music and arena-rock ambition—a strange cosmology formed by his conservative Christian upbringing and his proclivity for wearing heels and assless body suits. Prince spoke to the people during a decade that prided itself on aspiration, sex, and money; from his pen came coy flourishes of romantic scripture and sub-dom fantasies told as casually as a chat over beers. On “Darling Nikki,” he told off the conservative Moral Majority with just a woman, a hotel lobby, and a magazine. And then there’s the closer, the timeless “Purple Rain”: a savior perfumed in petrichor, giving pop music its velvet baptism. Most of what you hear of the song was recorded live at that sweaty and smoky club in Minneapolis, a blinding and momentary flash that singed the essence of Prince into one hymn—the star and artist, giving everything at once. –Jeremy D. Larson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTUSeac7IuQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/64fb904a3f33d370b3470ad4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/1-Prince-and-the-Revolution-Purple-Rain.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Prince_and_the_Revolution-Purple_Rain_1984.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,100,Brian Eno,Before and After Science (1977),Island,"Island There’s no more appropriate way to kick this list off than with a record from Brian Eno, an artist within only a couple of degrees of separation from upwards of one-quarter of this list. Before and After Science, however, could be seen as an odd choice: Not formally groundbreaking, it’s frequently overlooked when discussing great albums from an era that’s romanticized as placing premiums on progression and innovation—and particularly in the context of Eno’s career, which is so full of both. But it’s a lovely, charming album from the dadaist jaunt of “Backwater” to its tranquil second side, whose mood and texture seems to tear a page from Eno’s 1977-78 David Bowie Album Construction Playbook, yet rectifies the divide between his pop and ambient impulses. –Scott Plagenhoef",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4hz99uElvI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650da5caa5fc90931d54661a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/100-Brian-Eno-Before-and-After-Science.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Brian_Eno-Before_and_After_Science_1977.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,99,Neil Young,After the Gold Rush (1970),Reprise,"Reprise After the gold rush of 1960s California rock, most of its main players spent the ’70s slowly hippie-twirling towards irrelevance and rehab resorts. Not so for Mr. Young, who was just hitting his stride as the decade turned over, kicking off a run of 11 great albums in 10 years with After the Gold Rush. One of his few efforts that can’t be considered either the product of Crazy Horse feedback Neil or sensitive-hayseed Neil, Gold Rush is also one of Young’s most consistent records. Holed up in his Topanga Canyon home writing a soundtrack for a never-made Dean Stockwell–scripted film, Young invited his friends to join him on alien-abduction ballads, preachy Skynyrd-provoking jams, and lovesick nocturnal country-blues. Unlike so many of his sun-dazed contemporaries, Young had the right kind of eyes to see the high-water mark, and After the Gold Rush is the departure point on his essential decade-long journey away from the fallout of the 1960s. –Rob Mitchum",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e3m_T-NMOs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650da61ed8aad14260548400/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/99-Neil-Young-After-the-Gold-Rush.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Neil_Young-After_the_Gold_Rush_1970.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,98,Robert Wyatt,Rock Bottom (1974),Thirsty Ear,"Thirsty Ear Rock Bottom was in the planning stages when Robert Wyatt survived a fall from a fourth-floor window, a tumble that left him confined to a wheelchair and ended his career as British art-rock’s most endearingly maverick drummer. It’s impossible not to hear the stretched-out time of convalescence in its drones and long melodies as Wyatt devotes himself to keyboards, whittling at his synths as quizzically as he hones his lyrics, which gnarl with surreal wordplay but temper the brilliantly grounded wit that flashed across his earlier work. With no need to keep up a working band, Wyatt surrounds himself with his best Canterbury colleagues—there are cameos by Fred Frith and Mike Oldfield, as well as regular support from fellow Soft Machine bassist Hugh Hopper—and, bound to the studio, he invented the next phase of his career. The melancholy that buoys his classic “Sea Song” doesn’t block the exquisite melody, which assuages regrets before they can even creep in, and as Wyatt croaks his fascination for the strange real-life lover that he was about to marry, he settles for tapping the beat on a single, handheld drum. –Chris Dahlen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExfewKLuoNc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650da6614137474d729ba15e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/98-Robert-Wyatt-Rock-Bottom.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Robert_Wyatt-Rock_Bottom_1974.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,97,NA,NA,Mango,"Mango I never bought Jimmy Cliff’s optimism in the face of adversity. If Horatio Alger was a ridiculous longshot in the United States, imagine the odds for someone coming from a Jamaican slum. Statistically speaking, that which the people from ghettoized Kingston really want, they never get—no matter how much they try and try. This is political music before reggae artists commonly named names; as in the blues, the only relief from suffering comes when the heart stops beating. In this situation, life without belief would be unbearable. You can hear the weariness even on the party tracks, making The Harder They Come one of the saddest albums of the decade. –Mark Richardson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Znh0OM9jiA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650da82fd8aad14260548402/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/97-Various-Artists-The-Harder-They-Come.jpg,/dataset/artwork/77b0689a-9860-49a6-8378-12e943ade563
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,96,Iggy Pop,The Idiot (1977),RCA,"RCA After the release of the Stooges’ final album, 1973’s Raw Power, Iggy Pop bottomed out. It would take four years, several jailings, and countless beatings before he would get back on his feet to launch his solo career. After a self-imposed exile in a West Coast mental institution, Pop put in a call to David Bowie, as the two had been intending to hook up for years, and a few days later, they’d boarded a plane to Paris, and then to romantic Berlin where they would finish work on The Idiot. The Idiot presents what is probably Iggy Pop’s darkest release, and rightfully so, given the period of his life during which it was recorded. Set to music written primarily by Bowie during the Station to Station sessions, Pop’s lyrics are often reflective and sentimental—“Dum Dum Boys” pines for his Stooges bandmates, while “Tiny Girls” and “Mass Production” lament stupid love—and when they’re not, they’re bitter and scathingly sarcastic (“Nightclubbing,” “Funtime”). Against minimal, mechanical instrumentation, Pop’s delivery is suitably passionless, as he dryly sing/speaks in a deep, unfeeling croak. Musically, it formed the foundation for Joy Division’s cold, caustic creepiness, at times echoing their sound so strikingly it could be mistaken for Unknown Pleasures. In the throes of a crippling bout with depression, it’s clear what was on Ian Curtis’ mind in his final hours. –Ryan Schreiber",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3OaMZojJRg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650da856d8aad14260548404/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/96-Iggy-Pop-The-Idiot.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Iggy_Pop-The_Idiot_1977.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,95,Led Zeppelin,Physical Graffiti (1975),Rhino,"Rhino Physical Graffiti is not the hardest or most influential Zeppelin album. It’s not even their best. But it’s arguably the most essential. At 80 minutes, it’s as insurmountable, grimy, intimidating, and flat-out awesome as the monolithic tenement building on its cover. And it’s about to collapse on all your friends. The tracklist is like the Ten Commandments of hard rock, wielding “Custard Pie,” “The Wanton Song,” “Trampled Under Foot,” “Ten Years Gone,” and “Kashmir.” Some of the most popular bands of the 1980s and ’90s did nothing but rip off those five songs over and over again. Graffiti is also the pinnacle of Zeppelin’s mythology: It contains all the requisite gnomes, swashbuckling fools, and garbled Paradise Lost-garden-car-incest-pie euphemisms. Jimmy Page’s broiling and obstinate riffs flatten the songs' images of Middle Eastern mountains and pristine country landscapes. Robert Plant’s lungs have been seemingly saturated in tar and moonshine. If you must know what John Bonham's thunderous drums are like, cover your head in cement and run into a tsunami. Bizarrely then, the rest of Graffiti is overwhelmed by Page's country and blues fixations. “In My Time of Dying”’s hurling slide-guitar and Plant's entirely blasphemous Christ-lust blast out of a South Carolina shack. The bagpipe-harmonica synths on “In the Light” are sheltered by serenely droning strings. Graffiti proves that not only was Zeppelin powerful enough to sustain a double-album; they were powerful enough to sustain every metal band that came after them. –Alex Linhardt",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vPMbjjYctQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650da8d4ed3298e40ad63e5c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/95-Led-Zeppelin-Physical-Graffiti.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Led_Zeppelin-Physical_Graffiti_1975.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,94,King Crimson,Starless and Bible Black (1974),Atlantic,"Atlantic Experimental bands are always awarded points for making fragmented albums that actually hold together. The mid-’70s Crimson line-up stood for taste and efficiency with a dry, dark wit, and Starless and Bible Black epitomized those qualities. John Wetton’s tersely macho posture suits the lyrics of Richard Palmer-James, who matches the album’s opening squall with the rude awakening of, “Health food faggot.” Even “The Night Watch” skips the mawkishness of other Crimson ballads. The live tracks are mostly improvised, which is one reason Bill Bruford renamed the album “Braless and Slightly Slack.” But the pieces are mostly chafe-free, cropped down to spiky instrumentals that highlight the Robert Fripp-David Cross frontline of sharp guitar and under-the-breath violin and mellotron, all gnashed against Bruford’s clatterwork. And if you can get over how much “Fracture” now sounds like the Simpsons theme song, it’s an aggressively brilliant through-composed set piece, as methodical as it is nasty. –Chris Dahlen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwFYy_Th7BA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650da8f3ed3298e40ad63e5e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/94-King-Crimson-Starless-and-Bible-Black.jpg,/dataset/artwork/King_Crimson-Starless_and_Bible_Black_1974.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,93,Jimi Hendrix,Band of Gypsys (1970),MCA,"MCA Although they were together for less than a year, the Band of Gypsys provided the springboard for some of Hendrix’s most soulful, enduring music. The Experience’s psychedelic maelstrom encouraged Hendrix’s attention-grabbing antics, but Buddy Miles and Billy Cox supplied the funky, backbeat-driven rhythm section he sought at the turn of the decade. “Who Knows,” “Power of Soul,” and “Message to Love” blister with the deep funk rock sound Hendrix was turning towards. And then there’s “Machine Gun.” Quite possibly the most wildly explosive and painfully vivid musical statement ever caught live on tape, Hendrix’s 12-minute psychedelic soul mindbender surged from the tragic violence at Altamont to the chaos and devastation of Vietnam. In this one song, he pioneered the simultaneous use of four different effects pedals and cemented his reputation as one of the greatest guitarists of all time. Talk about shock and awe: If it sounds that insane on the album, imagine what the Fillmore East crowd was feeling that New Year’s Eve. –Jonathan Zwickel",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJw_XqvsSIs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650da9814137474d729ba160/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/93-Jimi-Hendrix-Band-of-Gypsys.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jimi_Hendrix-Band_of_Gypsys_1970.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,92,Kraftwerk,The Man-Machine (1978),Capitol,"Capitol Despite what their song titles suggest, Kraftwerk have never sounded like trains, planes, or automobiles. They sure as hell don’t sound like mannequins or bicycles. They just sound like robots. The Man-Machine remains the most obvious Kraftwerk record: robots making music about robots making music. If 1974’s Autobahn embodied naïve euphoria and 1977’s Trans-Europe Express was thumping desolation, Man-Machine is completely neutral. While the fast-paced world of Ralf Hütter quotes knows no limits of pretension, this is the only album that conceivably expresses his ideal music: No emotions, no philosophies, no performances, and virtually no humor. It is pure technology: the whistles and surging circuitry of unmanned factories; twinkling hydraulic tubes; flaring odometers and cogs; and pre-Pong claw-claps. For the first half of the album, the only remotely human touch is the rolled “r” when Ralf robo-sings, “We are the robots.” But the inhumanity is suddenly broken towards the end with the wry, pop-art commentary of “The Model” and the enrapturing pulsations and wavering reflections of “Neon Lights,” which contain enormously melancholy lines fragile enough to collapse or evaporate under the slightest drum machine. The title track, however, is pure solidification: the sound of amassing troops, pinpointed trajectories and speaker-box opiates of the masses. –Alex Linhardt",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wop47G2qeY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650da9a2d8aad14260548406/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/92-Kraftwerk-The%2520Man-Machine.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kraftwerk-The_Man-Machine_1978.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,91,Throbbing Gristle,20 Jazz Funk Greats (1979),Industrial,"Industrial 20 Jazz Funk Greats’ most impressive trait isn’t the pulverizing factory machinations of Genesis P-Orridge’s blasted allegories—“Pain is the stimulus of pain”; “I’ve got a little biscuit tin/ To keep your panties in/ Soiled panties, white panties, school panties, Y-Front panties”—or its winking pastoral cover art, or those crazy-ass bird calls, sleazy ambient pulsations, and homemade electro-pop grooves. No, 20 Jazz Funk Greats’ most impressive trait is its timelessness. As proven by the recent TG remix project, you don’t need to touch these soundtracks with your grubby synthesizers—you’ll just stain the magic with the ones and zeros of digital cliché. Left to simmer in its own juices, the band’s 1979 masterstroke exhibits no dust crackle or incense-soaked hokum. And outside the sexed-up dance-of-death hooks—“Hot on the Heels of Love” should by now be a matrimonial favorite—songsmiths without a compelling raison d’être would do themselves well to mainline as much William S. Burroughs, Marquis de Sade, Aleister Crowley, Fluxism, and Vienna Actionism as this smarty-pants quartet. –Brandon Stosuy",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXG3dgsPyTY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650da9c6075611b11337fd4d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/91-Throbbing-Gristle-20-Jazz-Funk-Greats.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Throbbing_Gristle-20_Jazz_Funk_Greats_1979.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,90,Fela Kuti / Africa '70,Zombie (1976),Knitting Factory,"Knitting Factory While Bob Marley was railing against “War” in the Western Hemisphere, Fela Kuti was fighting his own battles for the dispossessed on the other side of the world. An anti-militarization anthem, “Zombie” grabbed the African continent’s collective imagination with its lyrical urgency and relentless rhythm. Perhaps Fela’s most effective fusion of funk and politics, it confronted Nigeria’s increasingly corrupt, detached government head-on, and in doing so both united the public and incensed the ruling party. The monstrous line that comes crashing through the title track a few minutes in is one of the most recognizable in Afrobeat, led by Lekan Animashaun’s heaving, incessant baritone sax. Amidst the sinuous roar of drums, bass, and brass, Fela’s commanding vocals drive the song like a drill sergeant, and his massive chorus of background singers keeps time with the chant of “Zombie!” to his every command. The original album is backed by a couple of lesser-known singles; MCA included the title track on a Fela compilation. Whichever version you come across, “Zombie” is a must-have for anyone ready to climb the pinnacle of Afrobeat. –Jonathan Zwickel",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q76UngzHX5Y,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650da9f4eacc5b460e15130a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/90-Fela-Kuti-Africa-_70-Zombie.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fela_Kuti__Africa_70-Zombie_1976.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,89,Devo,Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! (1978),Warner Bros.,"Warner Bros. Q: Were all those plastic helmets and black one-piece leotards just a glib, giggly extension of Devo’s high-art image game, or a deliberate ploy to figure themselves as inanimate and unthinking as the toasters and toys featured on their records? What about when they suggested that mankind had actually evolved from mutant, brain-eating apes—were they just being funny? Is all that cold, synthy new-wave supposed to represent the slow retardation of the human spirit? Is everything in Akron this subversive? What did Brian Eno think? What is the uncontrollable urge? Why did Rolling Stone call them fascists? Is it because they covered “(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction”? Do they actually sleep inside sealed plastic pods? A: They are Devo. –Amanda Petrusich",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jadvt7CbH1o,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650dacb34137474d729ba162/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/89-Devo-Q-Are-We-Not-Men_-A-We-Are-Devo!.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Devo-Q_Are_We_Not_Men_A_We_Are_Devo_1978.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,88,Giorgio Moroder,From Here to Eternity (1977),Casablanca,"Casablanca Italian-born producer Giorgio Moroder built Musicland Studio in Munich in 1969 and, with partner Pete Bellotte, proceeded to invent electronic dance music. Not only did he revolutionize the budding disco movement with his digitally powered “four-on-the-floor” bass drum pulse, but also more than any other ’70s artist, he was responsible for contributing to the birth of house and techno. His productions for Donna Summer are perhaps his greatest achievements in the decade, but the apex of his solo work is 1977’s From Here to Eternity. This brilliant record glides by with the ebb and flow of a modern DJ mix, sparkling with audiophile-precise sound and arguably the finest vocoder vocals in history. The entire first side of the original LP contains five songs morphed together into one mega-mixed suite of hedonistic minimalism; when he croons, “Baby gives sweet loving, leaves me meaning nothing,” he intones the gospel for disco nymphs and club culture forever more. –Dominique Leone",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30hr7DyAuAY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650dad0d6bb8efcbfe0b478b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/88-Giorgio-Moroder-From-Here-to-Eternity.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Giorgio_Moroder-From_Here_to_Eternity_1977.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,87,Roxy Music,For Your Pleasure (1973),Virgin,"Virgin Morrissey recently told The Observer Music Monthly that he could “only think of one truly great British album”: Roxy Music’s For Your Pleasure. Well, conservatively, I can think of at least three great Roxy Music albums (one of which, Country Life, had the misfortune of landing at #101 on our list), though he’s right that For Your Pleasure is the best of them. More ambitious, enigmatic, and expansive than their self-titled debut, Roxy Music’s second album (and last with Brian Eno) perfectly captures the balance and tension between the keyboardist and leader Bryan Ferry. Roxy’s penchant for continental decadence, off-kilter romanticism, and melomania is the perfect foil for Ferry’s vocal affectations and singular quiver. But here—with Eno still on board—the band’s tendency to drift into atmospherics is often tethered by some driving hooks. That’s one of many surface contradictions on an album which features both fictional dance crazes and love poems to blow-up dolls, sounds laboriously crafted but reeks of restless excess, and is fronted by a man who delights in skewering upper-class conventions but seems to want nothing more than to join the jetset. –Scott Plagenhoef",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykMdLEXQ4fQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650dad5a6bb8efcbfe0b478d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/87-Roxy-Music-For-Your-Pleasure.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Roxy_Music-For_Your_Pleasure_1973.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,86,Joni Mitchell,Blue (1971),Rhino,"Rhino There are two ways to hear Blue. The first is as a historical document. If you are white, middle-class, and liberal—and, especially, if the spirit of the feminist movement had touched someone in your family—then Blue encapsulates your mindset in the ’70s. Kids who grew up on “Sesame Street” with Free to Be... You and Me on the hi-fi heard Blue wafting upstairs when Mom and Dad had friends over and the living room started to reek of that funny smoke. This was the perfect hippie comedown record for those young adults with families who wanted to move on to more serene and comfortable bohemianism. But aside from its historical markers, Blue is a fine stripped-down record with extremely solid songwriting—despite the occasionally cringe-worthy lyric. In this way, Blue is like a companion to Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks—a confessional album very much of its time that endures on the strength of fantastic melodies and musical simplicity. –Mark Richardson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq2jhs19_V8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650dad8886e230e669a74cf7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/86-Joni-Mitchell-Blue.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Joni_Mitchell-Blue_1971.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,85,Wire,154 (1979),Harvest,"Harvest By their third album, Wire scarcely resembled the band that a few years earlier had released Pink Flag. They had lost much of their rawness, but none of their edge, pushing into clanging, even chilling electronic textures and oddly moving their catchiest melodies to the front of the mix, conceding to pop convention even as they perverted it. Of course, pop success was about the furthest thing from their minds, as evidenced by the sonic apocalypse of “A Touching Display” and the fractured synth chords of “On Returning,” and the fact that they titled the album’s lead single and most accessible song “Map Ref. 41°N 93°W.” Incredibly, after the restless creativity that culminated in 154, the group claimed that they were fresh out of ideas and disbanded (albeit temporarily), ending one of the greatest three-year runs in rock history. –Joe Tangari",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZ2RvSHK_B8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650dade83084d84e95a493b1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/85-Wire-154.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Wire-154_1979.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,84,Harry Nilsson,Nilsson Schmilsson (1971),RCA,"RCA A quirky day-in-the-life snapshot, Nilsson Schmilsson catches singer, songwriter, and Beatle heir apparent Harry Nilsson in playful mid-life catharsis. That notorious, grainy cover perfectly preserves Harry’s cheerful dejection re: quaint, bygone days of dancing “until a quarter to 10” and blue-collar early morning drudgery. Tempered hope and humor steal every priceless tune, but also, it was 1971, and things were getting pretty weird. On Schmilsson, reticent urbanites go nowhere fast; car pedals and flower petals merge; bits of crap and moonbeams mingle in a woozy Brian Wilson daydream. Throughout the album, producer Richard Perry’s earthy tone befits the album’s post-Revolver heritage; likewise, Harry’s tropical hangover goof-off “Coconut” rivals the Fab Four’s inspired wackiness. Nilsson’s crystalline whisper and wail translate Badfinger’s stilted “Without You” into a glorious, wrenching suicide note set to humble strings and brass. And finally, the underrated closing couplets: “Jump into the Fire”’s motorik and tribal insistence that “we can make each other happy!” simply won’t age, while the eclectic banjo, piano, and ensemble on “I’ll Never Leave You” lushly and gently ease into calm goodnight. Thanks, Harry: I can’t live if living is without Schmilsson. –Judson Picco",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dnUv3DUP4E,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650dae174137474d729ba164/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/84-Harry-Nilsson-Nilsson-Schmilsson.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Harry_Nilsson-Nilsson_Schmilsson_1971.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,83,The Stooges,Raw Power (1973),Columbia,"Columbia If Jesus Christ ever comes down to separate the sinners and saints, the wheat from the chaff and the Iggy Pops from the Kenny Gs, he’ll be in a judgin’ mood, and it might just be Raw Power roaring out of his iPod. Heck, JC’ll probably have a chorus of angels wailing on axes, churning out its maniacal, nitro-fueled riffs as his theme song while he sends us all on the short bus to Hell—’cause rock’n’roll’s a sin, friends. And if anyone asks why we’re all going to sleep with Kurt Cobain, Eric Carr, Chuck Berry, and the rest of a laundry list of rock casualties but it’s somehow all right for him to be listening to “Search and Destroy,” we’ll be enlightened and know that the Big Guy saved a special place for Pop. Why? ’Cause no one sings and screeches the wrath of God quite like Iggy Stooge. ’Cause he’s the father of punk, and we’re a little better off for him passing through. ’Cause the Ramones were just a gleam in Iggy’s eye until they were conceived by Raw Power. ’Cause War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death have nothing on the apocalyptic soul and fire the Stooges bring to bear on this album. ’Cause Iggy might not have died for our sins, but he did the next best thing—he rolled around in peanut butter for rock’n’roll. Amen? –Eric Carr",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjXgxbVXrrU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650daedabbcef9298df0b9e5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/83-The-Stooges-Raw-Power.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Stooges-Raw_Power_1973.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,82,George Harrison,All Things Must Pass (1970),Apple,"Apple With Lennon/McCartney standing on the garden hose of George Harrison’s songwriting career throughout most of Beatlemania, the guitarist celebrated his former band’s demise with a triple-LP deluge. While nothing on All Things Must Pass touches the garment-hem of “Something” or “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” clearly there was a great deal of quality inventory to unload—the “unintentional plagiarism” of “My Sweet Lord” aside—and the first two-thirds of the album (nobody ever listens to that awful jammy third platter) overcomes its dated mysticism. George was self-critical enough to know that his thin voice couldn’t carry a set this ambitious, and so recruited sonic drywall installer Phil Spector to liberally drip syrup all over the album’s dark-tinged Krishna folk-rock. Nevertheless, even recent remasterings make Spector’s echo-drenched symphonics sound endearingly bleached-out, a technical shortcoming that no doubt influenced the many lo-fi orchestras that have riddled the indiescape. George Harrison will forever be the patron saint of rock’n’roll underdogs, and All Things Must Pass is his Confessions. –Rob Mitchum",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDrLTW_sesI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650daf76bbcef9298df0b9e7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/82-George-Harrison-All-Things-Must-Pass.jpg,/dataset/artwork/George_Harrison-All_Things_Must_Pass_1970.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,81,David Bowie,The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars (1972),RCA,"RCA Bowie would eventually live to rue his Ziggy Stardust character to some degree, but the icon remains his gender-bent guitar-rock po-mo Hamlet. In its church of man, squawking pink monkey birds give the alien writer’s block until Mick Ronson freaks out; epic dead-father daydreams portend Earth’s five-year expiration date; “Lady Stardust” is just a dolled-up Marc Bolan, but count the entendres when Bowie demands he “Get some pussy now...” All told, it’s a disfigured sci-fi autobiography strewn with decadent ego-victims and brilliant tracks that don’t fit the plot—all held together by hook after indelible Bowie hook. The Spiders from Mars played a gripping hard-rock/doo-wop amalgam, as retro-theatrical as the then-fresh Grease, yet progressively festooned with grandiose raygun strings and metallic crunch chords. It’s only too fitting that the Sex Pistols would one day cop to ripping Ronson’s riffs. –Judson Picco",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UQvBzo_rJA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650daf9bd8aad1426054840a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/81-David-Bowie-The-Rise-and-Fall-of-Ziggy-Stardust-and-the-Spiders-From-Mars.jpg,/dataset/artwork/David_Bowie-The_Rise_and_Fall_of_Ziggy_Stardust_and_the_Spiders_From_Mars_1972.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,80,David Bowie,Hunky Dory (1971),RCA,"RCA With the androgyny-charged hard rock of The Man Who Sold the World behind him, Bowie retreated to his singer/songwriter roots and came into his own. Hunky Dory marked the true start of what would be one of the most successful careers in rock music, spawning millions of scarily obsessive fans. Here, he delves into Dylan-inspired folk (“Eight Line Poem,” “Quicksand,” and tellingly, “Song for Bob Dylan”), bombastic piano ballads (“Life on Mars?”), and primitive twee-pop (“Kooks,” “Fill Your Heart”). “Oh! You Pretty Things” seamlessly merges science fiction and cabaret; “The Bewlay Brothers” is one of his most musically ambitious closers, despite its nonsensical lyrics; and you can count on one hand the number of songs in Bowie’s catalog quite as awe-inducing as “Life on Mars?”, whose descending piano and grandiose, climactic chorus are delivered with an intense and contagious longing as its character seeks refuge from the disappointment of life. Hunky Dory is by no means his most cohesive release, but it remains one of his most charming, and unquestionably, one of his best. –Ryan Schreiber",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v--IqqusnNQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650dafc74137474d729ba166/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/80-David-Bowie-Hunky-Dory.jpg,/dataset/artwork/David_Bowie-Hunky_Dory_1971.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,79,Randy Newman,Sail Away (1972),Reprise,"Reprise What a curmudgeonly old man Randy Newman has become. The Southerner-by-proxy has long since alienated his hipper associates, and these days gets by with the occasional smarmy remark at the Oscars and reel after reel of finely crafted yet rote Disney soundtracks. It’s almost difficult to remember what a fantastic, optimistically wry young composer he was in the early ’70s. The sentiments of *Sail Away—*his third studio record—range from the title track’s beaming indictment of the hypocrisy of the American Dream via a slave trader’s sales pitch, to the definitive account of the half-assed dad in “Memo to My Son,” to the acidic environmental satire of “Burn On.” He even turns the smoking gun on himself and his “fame” on “Lonely at the Top.” Yet that he could still deliver lines like, “Let’s sing a song of long ago/ When things could grow and days flowed quietly,” without a hint of irony reveals the hopeful, sentimental heart buried in this record. Maybe a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down: Newman’s humble, humane critiques never tasted sweeter or more genuine. –Dominique Leone",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cna4LHtW5ng,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650db31bbbcef9298df0b9eb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/79-Randy-Newman-Sail-Away.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Randy_Newman-Sail_Away_1972.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,78,Fela Kuti / Africa '70,Expensive Shit (1975),Editions Makossa,"Editions Makossa It’s that guitar vamp and the onslaught of percussion, the horns that sound like pure joy, and the fury and humor of a man caught in the crosshairs of a corrupt government. Fela Kuti’s Afrobeat is both protest and celebration. It’s kinetic, complex, and infectious, the sound of Africa awakening from its colonial nightmare full of righteousness and rage. In 1975, Fela’s anger with the Nigerian government brought him face-to-face with its corruption, as police raided his residential compound (The Kalakuta Republic, he called it), equipped with marijuana they planned to plant on him. But Fela was a quick thinker, and he swallowed the supply with which they had intended to frame him. Swapping excrement with a fellow prisoner at the jail, he produced untainted shit for the police, who were forced to let him go or admit their own corruption. Fela turned the whole surreal incident into this absolutely epochal slab of epic funk. Fuck the “world music” tag—this is punk in the purest sense. –Joe Tangari",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNj4Tj18sdo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650db351eacc5b460e15130f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/78-Fela-Kuti-Africa-_70-Expensive-Shit.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fela_Kuti__Africa_70-Expensive_Shit_1975.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,77,David Bowie,Aladdin Sane (1973),RCA,"RCA In 1972, Ziggy Stardust made David Bowie a star on both sides of the Atlantic; in 1973, Aladdin Sane made him, well, one album removed from the album that made him a star. Given the mammoth footsteps of Ziggy’s glam-rock futureworld—and Hunky Dory’s equally impressive array of lushly styled pop—it’s not surprising that Aladdin Sane was largely unheralded. Its relative anonymity, however, is undeserved. Tiring of glam’s cliches and having just penned the album that was arguably the genre’s magnum opus, Bowie found himself between styles at a time when he most needed to capitalize on his nascent superstardom. Rather than release a transparent Stardust Redux, a desperation to build upon his reputation for the avant-garde led Bowie to strike out—seemingly at random—in search of newer, more fertile ground. Jazz, rock, lounge, glam, cabaret, pop, and anything else Bowie and the Spiders could bring to the table is incorporated here. Bowie revels, if only briefly, in the freedom afforded him by forsaking any overarching contemporary style. Aladdin Sane’s only defining characteristic is its carelessly brilliant, gleefully schizophrenic style-hopping. Many artists wallow in limbo for a time, only to have that period rightfully forgotten—but few have ever made artistic purgatory sound this good. –Eric Carr",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rf0fmqWS-kI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650db4166bb8efcbfe0b478f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/77-David-Bowie-Aladdin-Sane.jpg,/dataset/artwork/David_Bowie-Aladdin_Sane_1973.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,76,Blondie,Parallel Lines (1978),Chrysalis,"Chrysalis The funny thing about roots is that you only see the twisted, dirty, ugly things if you dig them up. And so, although Blondie—CBGB’s most successful alumni—got their start in that club’s dirty stalls and nascent punk scene, it would take a hard, reactionary heart to grumble at the sweet pop fruit of Parallel Lines. The album’s duochromatic cover is appropriate for a fence-straddling group that both supported Iggy Pop on his comeback tour and deservedly enjoyed four No. 1 singles. It was with thanks to this record that the band swiftly moved from subway to taxi to limo. From Buddy Holly to Brill Building to burgeoning new-wave, Blondie filtered a quarter-century of American pop into sharp songs about curfew breaking and unrequited love. Some credit for the record’s success is down to ex–glam producer Mike Chapman, who reigned in the nonchalance and occasional sloppiness of Blondie’s first two albums and helped transform “Heart of Glass” from cheeky minimal motorik into a pulsing and sensual dancefloor anthem. An assist also goes to ex-Nerve Jack Lee, who provides two songs, including the opener “Hanging on the Telephone,” which kicks off with the familiar coo of its titular object, a prescient touch for a record that would eventually communicate so much to so many people. –Scott Plagenhoef",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWhkbDMISl8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650db43e3084d84e95a493b3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/76-Blondie-Parallel-Lines.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Blondie-Parallel_Lines_1978.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,75,Led Zeppelin,Houses of the Holy (1973),Rhino,"Rhino More playful than IV but still bubbling with the arcane Middle-Earth folklore that irritated critics, Houses of the Holy is both artistically sophisticated and cloyingly juvenile. It’s the soundtrack to my senior/stoner year of high school, and still reeks of cheap weed and cheaper incense, a swirl of overblown, overwhelming psychedelia in the best possible way. In my mind “No Quarter” and Vivek Patel’s Spencer Gifts–equipped walk-in closet—aglow under velvet-flocked neon posters and a totally rad black light—are one and the same, both hugely significant moments in my musical development. From swaying along with the epic “Rain Song” at a house party by the airport, to air-shredding “The Ocean”’s ecstatic finale in the Lazerium, to a backseat makeout session inspired by the teenage yearn of “D’yer Maker,” almost every song on the album holds the key to some formative memory. And beyond that, they’re some truly original, incomparable compositions, spanning the full breadth of rock’s vast potential. –Jonathan Zwickel",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRt4hQs3nH0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5929aa3113d19756521399c0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/9634570b.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Led_Zeppelin-Houses_of_the_Holy_1973.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,74,Leonard Cohen,Songs of Love and Hate (1971),Columbia,"Columbia Leonard Cohen will not likely be remembered for his voice, reedy and nasal as it is, and musically, the unspoken directive behind his haunting, sparse acoustic compositions has always seemed to be “stay out of the way.” For these reasons, discussion of Cohen’s work always focuses on his words—which, invariably dwarfed by the monstrous poetry of his lyrics, almost seems an insult. Songs of Love and Hate delivers exactly what its title promises—though the emotions are often so closely intertwined that one is virtually indistinguishable from the other—and does so with all the beauty, scorn, venom, and sorrow that has secured his place among the greatest lyricists, living or otherwise. In Cohen’s world of victims, love takes many forms—those willing to love another are damned as frequently as they are redeemed, and the truest hate springs unfailingly from those unlucky souls. Though arguably not as inspired as his first two albums in lyrical character, he makes up for it with unflinchingly raw pathos, for what may be his most emotionally wrenching album; given Cohen’s catalog, that’s no easy task. –Eric Carr",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKEdWBXcgAE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650db49ed8aad1426054840c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/74-Leonard-Cohen-Songs-of-Love-and-Hate.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Leonard_Cohen-Songs_of_Love_and_Hate_1971.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,73,Van Halen,Van Halen (1978),Warner Bros.,"Warner Bros. It’s amazing that the Sammy Hagar v. Diamond Dave debates even take place. Perhaps the David Lee Roth haters are motivated by poor Dave’s more recent car-wreck public appearances or an inability to see the worth in aerobic kicks and bare-chested catsuits, but one look at Van Hagar’s idiotic robotic choreographed strut or the band lounging poolside at Cabo Wabo should settle the argument once and for all. Besides, it’s a bit off the mark to criticize Roth for a lack of earnestness; when his tongue wasn’t in the mouth of a groupie, it was usually in his cheek. That big-grinned spirit infused the best of Van Halen’s music, a time when Dave would use “rock and roll” as an adjective and it all still seemed somehow engaging and mythical. Eddie Van Halen did more than his share to prop up the myth, of course, making “Eruption” the amateur axeman’s white whale and becoming the closest thing that my generation had to a guitar god. Never mind punk—here’s “Atomic Punk.” And “Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love.” And “Jaime’s Cryin.’” And “Runnin’ With the Devil”... –Scott Plagenhoef",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5txwFv-zYM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650db4c74137474d729ba168/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/73-Van-Halen-Van-Halen.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Van_Halen-Van_Halen_1978.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,72,King Crimson,Red (1974),Atlantic,"Atlantic Since their inception, King Crimson had been an unstable element, both musically unpredictable and prone to fall apart and reconstitute with little fanfare. True to form, violinist David Cross departed the band midway through the Red sessions, but not without leaving his arcing, piercing mark on the cathartic improvisation “Providence.” For a band that was very obviously about to splinter, King Crimson’s music sounds remarkably of a single mind. On Red, they achieved a remarkable balance between bone-crushing brutality and cerebral complexity. Aptly, the epic closer “Starless” feels like a summation of all King Crimson had accomplished to that point. Through its strictly controlled verses, hackle-raising crescendo, and wild freak-out coda, the band wrings moments of startling beauty and exuberant energy from the dread and dissonance at the song’s core. Crimson would rise again in the 1980s, but that was a different band with different aims. Red is a fitting swan song for the original, unstable version. –Joe Tangari",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfR6_V91fG8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650db4f2a5fc90931d54661d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/72-King-Crimson-Red.jpg,/dataset/artwork/King_Crimson-Red_1974.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,71,James Brown,The Payback (1973),Polydor,"Polydor Many consider The Payback to be the James Brown swan song. Following its release, the Godfather of Soul struggled to overcome both the disco bug eating away his audience, and the even-then-legendary funk sound that he was all but forced to recycle with hardly the same passion or unintelligibly yelping innovation. It’s a point for discussion, but regardless, this double-LP is unusually consistent for Brown—especially given the conditions of its release: The Payback was assembled from scattered recording sessions during line-up shake-ups, Brown’s soundtrack work, heavy American and European touring, and some serious personal and familial trauma. It’s amazing how well Brown galvanizes his rhythmic bomb-on-the-one reputation on the fiery title track here, and the recourse to recoil that propels the other epic funk numbers here, none of them dropping below eight minutes in length. More than any of his previous funk albums, The Payback displays Brown and company at their most musically precise and restrained. It’s a sort of confidence that doesn’t say it loud so much as its speaks softly and carries a big licking stick. –Nick Sylvester",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7AnofEabgY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650db514a5fc90931d54661f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/71-James-Brown-The-Payback.jpg,/dataset/artwork/James_Brown-The_Payback_1973.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,70,Pink Floyd,The Dark Side of the Moon (1973),Harvest,"Harvest It supplants your beating heart, then tells you to “Breathe.” It made Pink Floyd rich, and made us all sick of “Money.” “The Great Gig in the Sky” is gospel’s soul-wail but when the lunatic on the grass shouts, no one seems to hear. This singularity of irony was also Floyd’s commercial and collaborative supernova; on the follow-up, Wish You Were Here, the band they were in started playing different tunes. How could they not? The Dark Side of the Moon confronts only One-Word Subjects—Time, Madness, War, Religion (“softly spoken magic spells”)—while redefining British psychedelia, space rock, and the concept album concept itself. A great and terrible rainbow of blackness behind the curtain of prog, Dark Side of the Moon blots out the Big Lamp, but puts everything under the sun into tune. The best thing about synching Dark Side with The Wizard of Oz: “Eclipse” bookends the record with rhythmic cardiac pulses just as director Victor Fleming’s camera tracks slowly up a rusted woodsman’s hollow metal body. Thus Dark Side awards its listener their very own heart of sound: “I hear a beat/ Thump, thump/ How sweet...” –Judson Picco",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0kcet4aPpQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650db53fa0109c461ee86575/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/70-Pink-Floyd-The-Dark-Side-of-the-Moon.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Pink_Floyd-The_Dark_Side_of_the_Moon_1973.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,69,Faust,IV (1974),Virgin,"Virgin IV is perhaps Faust’s most accessible record—especially in contrast to the brute force sound scrappery of The Faust Tapes, which saw release the same year—but its accessibility doesn’t come without a turbulent and absolutely stunning struggle in the beginning. The heavy-heaving locomotive churns that run a relentless 12-minute course in the fittingly titled “Krautrock” provides a curious balance for IV’s seven other decidedly more traditional, shorter rock tracks. The rest of these tracks all follow their own distinct traditions, riding off-kilter melodic variations, electronic embellishments, and typically Faustian musical humor. The streamline polish and self-control that separates IV from the band’s earlier recordings seems particularly appropriate for what would be Faust’s final musical statement, a self-eulogy of sorts that would be unfortunately tarnished by the group’s return to the studio in 1995. –Nick Sylvester",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzPUoG3M9gA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650dbeaafaaa3e5b17441dd9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/69-Faust-IV.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Faust-IV_1974.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,68,Herbie Hancock,Head Hunters (1973),Columbia,"Columbia For the segment of the jazz audience that thought modality, free jazz, and Blue Note funk was all rubbish, Herbie Hancock’s Head Hunters was complete fucking anathema. The pianist had truly sold out, forgoing even the old-style-vs.-new-styles compromises he made on Sextant and with the Mwandishi ensemble, jumping headlong into the treasure troves of slick, sexy commercial funk. The sentiment is half-justified: Head Hunters was immediately popular, and in fact, held the record for Best-Selling Jazz Album of All Time until that long-faced, curl-haired rat bastard Kenny G topped it in the ’80s. However, that Head Hunters was simply an accessible commercial success discounts Hancock’s own growth as a musician, not to mention the entire shift toward groove-centered jazz composition that Head Hunters would anticipate. For one, Hancock’s keyboard solo in the second half of many-faced opener “Chameleon” is among the most passionate in his decades-long career, and his minimalist, almost purely percussive approach to electric synthesizer works to perfect effect here when contrasted against his screaming solos that pop out throughout the disc. The rhythm section is a similarly grand story: Hancock actually cut loose his entire band (save Benny Maupin) to hire the funk-friendly bassist Paul Jackson, percussionist Bill Summers, and drummer Harvey Mason. Together, the section managed the delicate restraint that, coupled with Hancock’s bright melodies, teases out the balls-out funk grooves on Head Hunters that the cutesy phrase “jazz-funk” criminally misrepresents. –Nick Sylvester",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbkqE4fpvdI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650dbf2006d3909b82174ec8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/68-Herbie-Hancock-Head-Hunters.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Herbie_Hancock-Head_Hunters_1973.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,67,Pink Floyd,Meddle (1971),Harvest,"Harvest The critics who fault Pink Floyd for making intricately engineered albums as an end in themselves have rarely turned their guns on Meddle. More cohesive than the experiments and soundtracks that preceded it, yet less showy and plastic than the hits that followed, Meddle is an enigma. Its atmosphere—windy and overcast like a restless twilight, sometimes dark or even hostile—ties the album together, making the first part as organic as the side-long “Echoes” and preventing the country and blues nods from sounding trite or out of place. The jumps in scale and attitude fit into a kind of arc—even though the record’s handful of lyrics fail to give you a narrative (why do they want to cut you into little pieces?)—and the sound effects and disembodied voices establish that the band, rather than making soundtracks for movies that don’t exist, crafted albums that were movies. But beyond the technical successes, Meddle is striking because it is without ego. David Gilmour sings lead like a back-up vocalist, they play a side-long piece without a single flashy solo, and the most compelling motif is a single, sonar-like note on the piano. Other art-rock bands would have littered it with armadillo tanks or starship troopers; the Floyd refrained, leaving us to imagine what’s lurking in the fog. –Chris Dahlen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBca3xf-j3o,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650dbf4feacc5b460e151341/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/67-Pink-Floyd-Meddle.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Pink_Floyd-Meddle_1971.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,66,Big Star,Third/Sister Lovers (1978),PVC,"PVC Years of rubberneckers have treated this as a document of Alex Chilton’s professional breakdown, with substance abuse compounding professional failure to break his voice and hunch him to a fragile state. The bleak core of the album, “Holocaust” and “Kangaroo”—which, crassly, are its most covered songs—capture a darker hour than most would care to eavesdrop on. But the album would be tedious if Chilton didn’t put up a fight: All three Big Star albums mixed pure honey power-pop with melancholy reflection. If this record’s frustrations skew it toward darkness, they also yield wild give-a-shit piano solos and unrepeatable squalls, as well as sterling melodies and the pure bliss of “Stroke It Noel.” Third/Sister Lovers’ many imitators only want to be gawked at; the record works because Chilton lets us in and allows us to grasp his experience. –Chris Dahlen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3dYmtbLs20,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650dbf7da0109c461ee86578/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/66-Big-Star-Third_Sister-Lovers.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Big_Star-ThirdSister_Lovers_1978.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,65,Neil Young,On the Beach (1974),Reprise,"Reprise For decades, Neil Young refused to release On the Beach (along with a handful of other, equally noteworthy 1970s albums) in digital format, citing what he considered to be the questionable integrity of 1s and 0s. Warner Brothers finally “convinced” Young to drop his objection, and On the Beach’s first compact disc plopped onto a conveyor belt just last year, forever rescuing it from the distracting buzz of (what had long been considered mandatory!) crackles and spits. Ragged, contradictory, and oddly poignant, On the Beach is a hazy swirl of steel guitar, dobro, Wurlitzer, slide, and Young’s high, lonesome whine. All of Young’s trademark ugly solos, self-implicating lyrics, and cantankerous charm remain intact, but the songwriting here is vaguely softer, an almost apologetic (and certainly dissatisfied) homage to nasty, mid-’70s America. –Amanda Petrusich",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKgj1FNToWY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650dbfa5a0109c461ee8657a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/65-Neil-Young-On-the-Beach.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Neil_Young-On_the_Beach_1974.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,64,Iggy Pop,Lust for Life (1977),RCA,"RCA After weathering a dramatic mid-’70s career nadir that included the split of the Stooges and a stint in a mental institution, Iggy Pop had beaten back his demons and escaped to Berlin with David Bowie, where he was suddenly releasing the best solo music of his career. The first of his 1977 releases, The Idiot, was a self-lacerating look at how he’d sunk so low, emboldened by dark experimental production by Bowie; Lust for Life, released later that year, was a more euphoric effort but no less sharp, trading in The Idiot’s slow, sleazy paces for edgy punk-rock choruses and proud avowals of a new leaf turned. On “Tonight” and “Success,” Pop was as spry as his heyday with the Stooges, celebrating his debaucherous past now with a more skeptical eye; “The Passenger” and “Some Weird Sin” acknowledged the loneliness and myriad vices he was barely keeping at bay, with a wistful tinge to his bawdy yelp. And it didn’t take Trainspotting to make the title track iconic; it was the peak of informed depravity. Pop was still years away from getting clean, but Lust for Life was a mission statement for the ages. –Stacey Anderson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLhN__oEHaw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650dc120a0109c461ee8657c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/64-Iggy-Pop-Lust-for-Life.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Iggy_Pop-Lust_for_Life_1977.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,63,Cluster,Zuckerzeit (1972),Bureau B,"Bureau B Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius had only recently begun experimenting with pop structures on 1974’s Zuckerzeit. Their previous albums as Cluster (and the trio of releases with Conrad Schnitzler as Kluster) were spacy exercises in cosmic ambience, often with dark undertones and spooky, unidentifiable sound effects. However, by this point, they had settled into concise tablets of electronic pop, using primitive drum machines and analog synthesizers to create pastel-colored robo-pop a sight more “human” than that of their Düsseldorf peers in Kraftwerk. Zuckerzeit lurches along with the unbalanced gait of a homemade music machine, yet is ever peaceful, perhaps curious about its own piecemeal construction. As their percolating parts rattle with analog grins, songs like “Marzipan” and “Heiße Lippen” seem perfectly content to drift by in effortless propulsion. Brian Eno (among others) picked up on the earthbound ambience at the heart of this music, but Zuckerzeit’s voice can also be followed through to Cologne and Kompakt, much of IDM, and any other atmospheric dance music you care to name. –Dominique Leone",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tJzcDk9mdU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650dc1666bb8efcbfe0b47c1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/63-Cluster-Zuckerzeit.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Cluster-Zuckerzeit_1972.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,62,The Cars,The Cars (1978),Elektra,"Elektra When Fountains of Wayne topped the charts last year with “Stacy’s Mom,” Ric Ocasek could have sued for custody. The Cars’ debut record provided a template for effortlessly catchy, hook-filled, and radio-friendly rock that has proven every bit as effective now as it was then. While songs like “Stacy’s Mom” use limp verses to justify exuberant choruses, The Cars still stands as an album that never sacrifices its momentum for cheap thrills. From the immortal synth line of “Just What I Needed” to the playful guitar of “My Best Friend’s Girl,” nothing is taken for granted here. And though The Cars has become one of the definitive archetypes for pop music, it’s a record that still has yet to be bested on its own terms. –Matt LeMay",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkSmLh2Hbi0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650dc196d8aad1426054840e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/62-The-Cars-The-Cars.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Cars-The_Cars_1978.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,61,The Beach Boys,Surf’s Up (1971),Brother,"Brother Where were the Beach Boys in 1971? Years after both their fun-in-the-sun heyday of the early ’60s and their masterpiece, *Pet Sounds—*and one album removed from Brian Wilson’s first “return” (the erratic Sunflower)—the band appeared to be at a crossroads. Mike Love had yet to grab hold of the group’s reins, but was exerting a much greater influence on their public persona via message songs like “Don’t Go Near the Water” and the grating “Student Demonstration Time.” Furthermore, the band’s most ambitious music was being resuscitated from the five year-old Smile sessions. Yet, Surf’s Up practically defines flawed greatness, via Carl Wilson’s introspective, exotic folk-pop, manager Jack Rieley’s devastating vocal on Brian’s “A Day in the Life of a Tree,” and Brian’s own gorgeous “’Til I Die”—which might very well go down as his last truly great production. Today the eclectic, relaxed sound of this album is reflected in the work of Super Furry Animals, Stereolab, and Sufjan Stevens, but its power comes from the shy passion and sincere, spiritual convictions of its creators. –Dominique Leone",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46IQu0yuJzU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650dc1c64137474d729ba19c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/61-The-Beach-Boys-Surf%25E2%2580%2599s-Up.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Beach_Boys-Surfs_Up_1971.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,60,John Lennon,Plastic Ono Band (1970),Apple,"Apple Rock stars are, almost innately, liars. They lie about their incomes, lovers, and histories. When the Beatles broke up in 1970, John Lennon was as recognizable as Mao or Nixon. With a few lies, he could have conquered entire hemispheres. Instead, he sat in a small room and yelled. Plastic Ono Band, for all its structured simplicity and pretension, is the most sincere album you will ever hear. Lennon had been practicing primal scream therapy, and the way he bares himself is gripping, often profound, and probably indecent. Even the sarcastic weariness of “I Found Out” and the decrepit self-deception of “Working Class Hero” sound eminently pure and honest. Although the album’s emotional core has somewhat diminished under the weight of innumerable Lennon imitators, the sequences of throttling, atomic screams at the end of “Mother” and “Well, Well, Well” are as horrifying as they ever were, a wall-of-sound of hate and despair. It’s a noise you never hear on an album; it belongs in an emergency room or a church. These are simple songs, composed of two or three easy chords on a lonely piano or grizzled guitar, but even the flotsam is memorable: the clanging bells that start the album, the infamous “Cookie!”, the implosion at the end of “Remember,” the litany of disbeliefs on “God.” They are iconic effects that transform the most personal pop confessional into grand, social myths. Ever the dreamweaver, Lennon would refine his image on Imagine, but Plastic Ono Band still stands as the least expected and most rewarding album an ex-Beatle would ever release. –Alex Linhardt",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBp82OxjU1Y,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650dc2044137474d729ba19e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/60-John-Lennon-Plastic-Ono-Band.jpg,/dataset/artwork/John_Lennon-Plastic_Ono_Band_1970.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,59,Ramones,Rocket to Russia (1977),Sire,"Sire Some revisionist (they’d say “realist”) historians would, in the revealing light of our refined, modern sensibilities, have you believe that “all the Ramones songs sound (whisper now) pretty much the same,” as if that isn’t what made the Ramones famous in the first place. The Ramones made music safe for anyone who could yank two chords—three, in a pinch—out of a guitar at warp-speed and whose lyrical aspirations didn’t go too far beyond the wide world of inhalants. Mindless, directionless enthusiasm can go a long, long way, so long as you have a sense of humor about it. As the first band to be officially slapped with the “punk” tag, the Ramones had built their fake-family name on 1960s power-pop dreams rooted in a foundation of distilled, high-octane rock’n’roll. The thing is, you can only bang on a guitar for so long before you start to pick up a few things, and by the time of *Rocket to Russia—*the Ramones’ third album—you could almost call them musicians. They even slowed down a couple of songs long enough to show off their newfound chops. Hooks, structure, and some power ballads round out their most fully realized album—all without losing one ounce of their flamethrowing aggression. –Eric Carr",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQ38g4X7WE4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650de13eeacc5b460e151345/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/59-Ramones-Rocket-to-Russia.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ramones-Rocket_to_Russia_1977.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,58,Miles Davis,A Tribute to Jack Johnson (1971),Columbia,"Columbia At least in attitude, Miles Davis’ A Tribute to Jack Johnson is something of a bitter bastard child. The soundtrack to the William Clayton film of the same name never received the initial marketing push from Columbia that the record company gave to At Fillmore, and after just a year of shelf time, the jazz-rock masterpiece fell into relative obscurity. The film is about the rise to fame of turn-of-the-century heavyweight boxer Jack Johnson: Both the trials of racism Johnson faced throughout his career and the lavish standard of living with which Johnson reacted to these trials were points of inspiration and sympathy for Davis, and the music here mirrors this iconoclastic spirit. With Jack Johnson, the confrontational Davis intended to make a rock’n’roll album better than any other white musician’s, and some might say he succeeded. The passion informing the album finds counterpart in the mythical story of its spontaneity: In the studio, guitarist John McLaughlin had stumbled into a simple blues-rock groove that drummer Billy Cobham and bassist Michael Henderson soon picked up on, and Miles, who had stepped out from the studio at the moment, suddenly rushed back and belted out perhaps the most clear-throated and magical solo of his entire career. –Nick Sylvester",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5c-iU0kQBro,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650de2036bb8efcbfe0b47c7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/58-Miles-Davis-A-Tribute-to-Jack-Johnson.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Miles_Davis-A_Tribute_to_Jack_Johnson_1971.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,57,Paul Simon,Paul Simon (1972),CBS,"CBS In a folk-rock genre that ostensibly valued authenticity over chart success, Simon & Garfunkel were sometimes accused of being too calculated, too polished, if only in reaction to their unprecedented commercial success. Paul Simon’s songwriting contributions to the group were praised, but his pop roots and staid compositions frequently gave the impression that they’d been intensely labored over, as if focus-grouped to appeal to audiences. After their eventual split, without the collaborative influence of the man he had worked with for half his life, Simon was finally able to flourish as a songwriter. Simon’s commercial sensibilities were as strong as ever before, but by shedding the more conservative demeanor of Simon & Garfunkel and becoming one of the earliest folk musicians to embrace the sounds and rhythms of Jamaica, South America, and Africa, what once sounded forced began to take on new life. His self-titled debut is a masterpiece of breezy eclecticism, pop hooks, and at times, paradoxically in its seeming effortlessness, a greater emotional resonance than almost any of his previous work. –Eric Carr",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0BUsDf0dxY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650de2e4a5499065a4eb6bd2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/57-Paul-Simon-Paul-Simon.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Paul_Simon-Paul_Simon_1972.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,56,Can,Future Days (1973),Spoon,"Spoon The judgment for “Caldron”—the I Ching hexagram that appears in the middle of the royal purple cover for Can’s fifth album, *Future Days—*reads: “Supreme good fortune. Success. Thus the superior man consolidates his fate by making his position correct.” That man is Japanese busker-turned-singer Damo Suzuki, who on this album makes his final appearance with the German group. On Future Days, Suzuki’s once-prominent role as band catalyst dissolves in the ambient washes (think In a Silent Way), and gurgling polyrhythms (think Bitches Brew), his voice wafting through like phantom transmissions. It is the correct posture, and the scarce vocal appearances throughout make it feel all the more human. Can’s least schizophrenic album, it’s also their most satisfying as a whole, as well as their most gorgeous and blissed-out. Bassist/producer Holger Czukay speeds or splices tape, pushes Jaki Liebezeit’s percolations to the fore, and mixes in field recordings to further the pastoral feel. As the side-long closer “Bel Air” suggests, it’s all effervescence, transcendence, pleasure. It’s a hell of a make-out record. –Andy Beta",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThV4wwYSvHY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650de7d4eacc5b460e15134b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/56-Can-Future-Days.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Can-Future_Days_1973.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,55,Nick Drake,Bryter Layter (1970),Island,"Island Consciously or not, Nick Drake was slowly ripping himself apart. After debuting with one of the most fully realized folk albums of its time (1969’s Five Leaves Left), Drake spent his remaining years honing in on two distinct elements of his sound. Bryter Later shows an emboldened, perhaps unwillingly extroverted Drake, one who is less intimate but no less essential. With help from folk-rock icons Fairport Convention, the album reiterates the ornate arrangements of Five Leaves Left while blunting Drake’s potent emotional edge by downplaying his devastating voice. Featuring a handful of almost too-placid instrumentals, the album is perhaps some of the classiest easy listening ever penned. Though Drake’s ingratiating personality was somewhat lost amidst the ostentatious orchestral jags and blindingly gilt sax jams, Bryter Layter can’t help but foreshadow some of the hissing analog rawness of Pink Moon. Slicked-back tunes such as “Poor Boy” and the title track may be sedative, but the unchained, Morricone-esque guitar playing on “Hazey Jane I,” the perfectly maudlin “Fly,” and the bucolic, city-weary “Northern Sky” all show Drake in the messianic mold into which he’s been deservedly lionized. –Sam Ubl",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NO72SaTcijA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650de8476bb8efcbfe0b47ca/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/55-Nick-Drake-Bryter-Layter.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nick_Drake-Bryter_Layter_1970.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,54,Creedence Clearwater Revival,Cosmo’s Factory (1970),Fantasy,"Fantasy Released two years before the brittle rockabilly of pub-rock and seven years before the succinct fury of punk, Creedence’s last great album was a climactic bid to reinvigorate the smoldering, dour dust-ups of 1950s rock. By 1970, rock and pop were becoming ever more electronic or fixated on progression. In stark contrast, Creedence felt timeless; they could have been Andrew Jackson’s house band or funded by the Works Progress Administration. John Fogerty’s perpetually doomed histrionics and ragged blues were played at the speed of ignorant, adolescent rage and at the depth of a dying man’s last words. It’s a critic’s wet dream: an existential Eddie Cochran filtered through a deep knowledge of everything from Delta jug bands to Stax Records. Fogerty is conceivably the only singer that could have injected panicked dread into both Sun Records party-thumpers and wistful soul jams. Although no one listens to Creedence for diversity, Cosmo’s Factory—with the blustering, Sabbath stairmaster riffs of “Ramble Tamble” and the voodoo handclaps of “Run Through the Jungle”—is as “experimental” as the band ever got. And the 11-minute “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” is simultaneously Creedence’s most menacing, torrid, soulful, and yes, monotonous song. Finally, “Lookin’ Out My Back Door” features one of the best single rock verse since Chuck Berry’s “Brown-Eyed Handsome Man,” lyrics drowning in hermetic blues, teeny-bopping idiocy, psychedelic sophistication, and self-reflexive nostalgia: “There’s a giant doing cartwheels/ A statue wearin’ high heels/ Look at all the happy creatures dancin’ on the lawn/ A dinosaur Victrola listenin’ to Buck Owens/ Doo, doo, doo.” –Alex Linhardt",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aae_RHRptRg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650dee2b429ad6b649c9df56/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/54-Creedence-Clearwater-Revival-Cosmo%25E2%2580%2599s-Factory.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Creedence_Clearwater_Revival-Cosmos_Factory_1970.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,53,Steve Reich,Music for 18 Musicians (1978),ECM,"ECM At some point in the past three decades, Steve Reich’s most famous composition was heralded as a subdued, relaxing proto-trance piece. This is patently absurd: 18 Musicians brims with vitality and diversity, a wild shimmer of voices and genres after Reich’s infamous minimalist works. Although he based the piece’s mingled group dynamic on African rituals and Javan Gamelan, 18 Musicians also manages to delve into somber sea shanties, daydreaming folk strains, and prismatic jazz interludes. Lowing clarinets and flitting xylophones spin around in some sort of tropospheric frenzy. Blinking melodies emerge precipitately and almost accidentally, churned by sweltering marimbas and chilled vibraphones. Here, Reich uses some of the most ancient rhythms to produce huge, thrusting propellers that chart whirlwind histories and humid reposes. After 30 years, this album's influence has inevitably spread from Philip Glass to DJ Shadow, but it remains one of the most unique compositions in Western music, an effortlessly accessible introduction to global vibrations, visionary repetitions, and our own internal patterns. –Alex Linhardt",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ou9J844io0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650deebbbbcef9298df0b9ef/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/53-Steve-Reich-Music-for-18-Musicians.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Steve_Reich-Music_for_18_Musicians_1978.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,52,Elvis Costello & the Attractions,This Year’s Model (1978),Columbia,"Columbia While in his late-’70s prime, Elvis Costello was one of pop’s most winning characters: Ever dejected yet stubbornly undeterred, the unobtrusive troubadour turned his calamities of love into ingratiating melodies. One of his most deceptive rock records, This Year’s Model avoids the oft-cloying bitterness of emotional politics by erecting an unflappable façade of proto-punk virtuosity. Unless you’re listening carefully, it’s difficult to recognize the venom behind the limpid cadence of “Hand in Hand” or the deconstructed balladry of “Little Triggers.” But at this album’s core are lyrics sharper than an Iggy Pop needle. Costello always got the last word, and This Year’s Model features some of his most searing (and underhanded) indictments. –Sam Ubl",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shF1R9tdylo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650df0bad8aad14260548411/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/52-Elvis-Costello-_-the-Attractions-This-Year%25E2%2580%2599s-Model.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Elvis_Costello__the_Attractions-This_Years_Model_1978.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,51,Sex Pistols,"Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols (1977)",Universal,"Universal The Sex Pistols didn’t invent punk any more than the Beatles invented rock’n’roll. But like the Fab Four, they formalized an informal dialect into an official, easily understood language. Never Mind the Bollocks is a perfect ready-made punk starter kit—all gob-soaked, anti-authoritarian rhetoric, intimations of violence, and gratuitous F-bombs set to middle-fingered riffs that rev and rip like a rusty chainsaw. The fact that Never Mind the Bollocks sparked a national outrage upon its 1977 release seems almost as quaint today as tales of network cameramen avoiding Elvis’ hips in the ’50s. These days, the album feels less like a threat to topple Buckingham Palace than the soundtrack to a party in a dank council flat that ends in broken furniture and graffiti-strewn walls. With the majority of songs written by unapologetic Beatles fan Glen Matlock (before he was ousted for the proudly less talented Sid Vicious), even Johnny Rotten’s most sneering sentiments are couched in cheerily sloshed sing-alongs (note the soaring harmonies on “Anarchy in the U.K.”), while Steve Jones’ raunchy rave-ups suggest Keith Richards shooting steroids instead of smack. Decades removed from its contentious context, Never Mind the Bollocks stands as an album to be filed alongside Led Zeppelin IV, Back in Black, Appetite for Destruction, and Nevermind—pure, endlessly energizing, fat-free rock records that define a specific era and wholly transcend it. –Stuart Berman",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbmWs6Jf5dc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650df1561c07209e89a38cf1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/51-Sex-Pistols-Never-Mind-the-Bollocks-Here%25E2%2580%2599s-the-Sex-Pistols.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sex_Pistols-Never_Mind_the_Bollocks_Heres_the_Sex_Pistols_1977.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,50,Tim Buckley,Starsailor (1970),Warner Bros.,"Warner Bros. What exactly is the legacy of Starsailor? Beyond the fact that no other music sounds much like Tim Buckley’s abstract expressionist, jazz-laced folk, I’d be hard-pressed to name many artists before or since that are capable of his conceptual range, much less are in a position to be influenced by him. Starsailor is a masterpiece in every sense. It captured its maker at his freest and most willing to throw caution and sales to the wind, while simultaneously at his most creative and most capable of pulling off songs and moods that, from practically anyone else, would sound cartoonish, clumsy and confused. Buckley’s sixth album (in four years) soars from the guttural, wildly romantic force of his singing and the exploratory nature of his band (led by guitarist Lee Underwood). If you need a legacy, search for it in the damaged nightmare-collage of the title track or the furious, desperately emotional performances throughout. As an artistic document, Starsailor stands virtually alone. –Dominique Leone",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_h9KeN7zMw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650df19f06d3909b82174ecc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/50-Tim-Buckley-Starsailor.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tim_Buckley-Starsailor_1970.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,49,Marvin Gaye,What’s Going On (1971),Motown,"Motown Marvin Gaye wasn’t asking a question with title of his 1971 masterpiece; he was making a declaration. The record marked the apotheosis of the Motown sound, and Gaye’s treatise on poverty, war, pollution, and civil strife brims with passion and soul. If it were up to Berry Gordy, Gaye would have cut a few more clones of “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)” and called it a day, but the singer saw so much tragedy and injustice in Nixon’s America (and LBJ’s, for that matter) that he felt must be addressed. Gaye felt so strongly, in fact, that he refused to record anything else until Motown released the masterful protesting title track, with its incidental saxophone magic (a grafted snippet rescued from the cutting room floor) and jaw-dropping vocal performance. “What’s Happening Brother”—Gaye’s triumphantly melancholy tribute to his brother’s readjustment to civilian life—is leant a second melody by the fretwork of James Jamerson and the veteran genius of the Funk Brothers, who rose to the challenge of its complex, fluid arrangements. It’s telling that Gaye never attempted to make another record like *What’s Going On—*it was too perfect a statement to be equaled. –Joe Tangari",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-kA3UtBj4M,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650df262d8aad14260548413/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/49-Marvin-Gaye-What%25E2%2580%2599s-Going-On.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Marvin_Gaye-Whats_Going_On_1971.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,48,Miles Davis,Live/Evil (1970),Columbia,"Columbia From the first snare roll and Mike Henderson’s stone-fucked bassline, it was clear Live-Evil wasn’t just your everyday live Miles set. Released in the wake of Bitches' Brew and Tribute to Jack Johnson, listeners might have been expected to be ready for the muscular, chaotic force of Davis and his band. However, rather than present a straight live document of the December 1970 performances, Davis issued cut-up sections and fragments, augmenting them with enigmatic studio tracks featuring a completely different line-up of musicians. The end result was that Live-Evil stood up next to any of the trumpeter’s great fusion-era works as a recklessly inspired testament to his genius and the interplay of his musicians. Better yet, it absolutely destroys: Any randomly chosen moment during “Sivad” or “What I Say” returns blistered, runaway impressions of horsemen tearing through a fertile landscape without remorse, evaporating anything in their paths with the hooves and fiery breath of their steeds. Live evil? We love Miles. –Dominique Leone",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lb-jR8OSXaY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650df2886bb8efcbfe0b47ce/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/48-Miles-Davis-Live_Evil.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Miles_Davis-LiveEvil_1970.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,47,Al Green,Call Me (1973),HI,"HI Greatest Hits is the only Al Green album most people own (including me for a long time), but the songs on Call Me live up to the standard set by his run of classic singles, even though only a few of them were released as 45’s. Green’s voice is a wonder, sure, but what kills me about Call Me is the overall sound. The presence on this record is as intimate as the contents of a bedside table drawer: It’s about sex and the Bible. Even when the tempo picks up, everything feels personal and close. At his peak, Green was an excellent argument against musical diversity. *Call Me—*like most of his music at this time—is remarkably uniform in vibe and overall sound. Green recorded a range of covers during this period (including country and rock’n’roll standards—Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” is represented here) but they all sounded like Green originals by the time he was through. Green and Mitchell found R&B perfection and strove to pour the rest of pop music into their pristine mold. –Mark Richardson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIdj5uFung4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650df37a1c07209e89a38cf3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/47-Al-Green-Call-Me.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Al_Green-Call_Me_1973.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,46,The Congos,Heart of the Congos (1977),Black Art,"Black Art In 1962, Jamaican independence speeded the process of urbanizing the island nation's social fabric and music. Fifteen years later, producer Lee Perry reinjected pastoral sounds and a rural spirit into Jamaican music via Heart of The Congos. It was just one of many chances Perry took at his Black Ark studio, where he combated his financial limitations with a spirit of invention and, sometimes, an impatience and/or lack of quality control. Heart of the Congos is arguably the only Black Ark album on which only the positive results of Perry’s methodology are manifest. Collaborating with the Congos—one of that era’s greatest harmony groups—Perry dodges cow patties and muddy, dubby pools as Cedric Myton’s falsetto and Roydel Johnson’s rich tenor contemplate spiritual awakening, cultural pride and human weakness. Perry practices a sort of addition by subtraction—refraining from some of his often superfluous ambient noises or sometimes overly whimsical sounds effects—as the vocalists keep on knocking, burning, fishing and crying. The important thing is that they keep on keeping on—until they “reach a higher ground.” –Scott Plagenhoef",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHRzcAFcmV4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650df7444137474d729ba1a0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/46-The-Congos-Heart-of-the-Congos.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Congos-Heart_of_the_Congos_1977.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,45,Talking Heads,More Songs About Buildings and Food (1978),Sire,"Sire More Songs About Buildings and Food transformed the Talking Heads from a quirky CBGB spectacle to a quirky near-unanimously regarded “it” band. New producer Brian Eno can take his due credit for the album’s success, smartly tightening up the rhythm section’s energy for more dance-oriented beats and a more prominent role in general, though without taking the limelight off head Head David Byrne’s nervous sputters. Byrne’s own songwriting was, as the album titled suggested, in the same quotidian vein as ’77, though perhaps Buildings and Food has slightly more vitriol, especially on album closer “The Big Country,” Byrne’s indictment of the South. More Songs About Buildings and Food probably could have survived as a cult album by a cult band, but what really opened up the Talking Heads for a national audience was the band’s slinky cover of Al Green’s famous “Take Me to the River,” which put them on the top 30 singles charts for the first time. –Nick Sylvester",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ar2VHW1i2w,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650df770eacc5b460e15134d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/45-Talking-Heads-More-Songs-About-Buildings-and-Food.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Talking_Heads-More_Songs_About_Buildings_and_Food_1978.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,44,The Clash,The Clash (1977),CBS,"CBS Less than a year after the Ramones chirped about sniffing glue and wanting to be your boyfriend, punk took a quantum leap across the pond. The Clash took that zippy, minimalist rock excitability and added political dimension, singers Joe Strummer and Mick Jones raging with brittle candor about racial inequality (“White Riot”), government bureaucracy (“Remote Control”), unemployment (“Career Opportunities”), and every other brand of young urban malaise. As much as the Ramones were buoyant and straightforward, the Clash were disenfranchised and rebellious, yelling early on with grating, shouting harmonies, “Can’t make no noise/Can’t get no gear/Can’t make no money/Can’t get outta here” (“Remote Control”). They were also quick to breach the borders of their new movement, incorporating reggae into their sound immediately (“Police & Thieves,” a Junior Murvin cover). The Clash and the Sex Pistols were both instrumental in London’s punk uprising, and shared many stages, but it’s telling that The Clash was the first release out the gate. Whereas the Pistols preached anarchy, the Clash begged for advocacy; their left-wing anthems led to them being crowned the “Thinking Man’s Yobs” by NME. They kept corruption and equality in their crosshairs throughout their career, influencing all idealistic young rockers in their wake. –Stacey Anderson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaOmTHaRA1g,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650df79606d3909b82174ece/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/44-The-Clash-The-Clash.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Clash-The_Clash_1977.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,43,Michael Jackson,Off the Wall (1979),Legacy,"Legacy Wherein Michael ducks into Quincy Jones’ closet to shed his boy-suit and emerges as a superhero. His special powers must come from the optic white socks that inexplicably glow beneath the LP fold. Apparently when he wears these radioactive cotton tubes, he writes the best melodies of his career and sings them with a gripping tick-laden vocalese which was still two albums away from annoying. When Michael wants us to dance, we are powerless; “Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough” could coax a quadriplegic out of his wheelchair. When he wants us to cry on “She’s Out of My Life,” we do so because of deal-closing vocal salesmanship and the song’s understated sentiment. Of course, now we feel even more sadness because Michael has for so long been incapable of anything approaching direct human expression. Off the Wall sounds so good, but it’s hard not to go back to that cover: The handsome face smiling at us at a time when a quick and blurry snapshot in an alley was good enough. –Mark Richardson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yURRmWtbTbo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650df7bebbcef9298df0b9f1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/43-Michael-Jackson-Off-the-Wall.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Michael_Jackson-Off_the_Wall_1979.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,42,The Specials,The Specials (1979),2-Tone,"2-Tone Second-wave ska is perhaps the one instance when a pop/rock revival bested the original—in large part thanks to the Specials. While the Clash were chomping at the bit for a “White Riot” in London, Coventry’s multicultural the Specials were finding plenty of things wrong with contemporary England regardless of one’s race. Two years after their formation, the Specials articulated their disenchantment, uncertainty, and ennui on their debut album. Dressed in their distinguished two-tone color scheme and featuring the iconic Walt Jabsco, The Specials recycled the jaunty, staccato rhythms and horns of ska (Prince Buster, in particular) but juxtaposed that upbeat sound with biting, sometimes polemical examinations of race, class, and small-town life. It was a unique approach at a time when being British and looking toward Jamaica meant the dubby death rattles of PiL, This Heat, the Slits, and the Pop Group; and, through bandleader Jerry Dammers’ 2-Tone label, it sparked a cottage industry and an unforgettable string of records. –Scott Plagenhoef",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cntvEDbagAw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650df7ea06d3909b82174ed0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/42-The-Specials-The-Specials.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Specials-The_Specials_1979.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,41,Fleetwood Mac,Rumours (1977),Reprise,"Reprise Many an artist has bled off some pain by writing a breakup album, but few have the guts to chart out their anguish and anger and then draft their ex to sing backup. Yet that is what happens when When Band Relationships Go Bad, and Rumours will forever be the pace car for such artistic ten-vehicle collisions, a musical interpretation of those late-night emails you immediately regret sending. Whether cruelly harmonizing or addressing one another with low-pH valentines, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks circle each other like boxers chained together at the wrist. [LB:] “Packing up, shacking up is all you wanna do (jab!).” [SN:] “Listen carefully to the sound of your loneliness/ Like a heartbeat drives you mad (uppercut!).” Meanwhile, Christine McVie tries to play optimist/referee (“Hey guys, you make loving fun!”) and Fleetwood and Mac try to forget they were once some kind of wanky blues band. Like a David Lynch L.A., Rumours is all bright treble sing-alongs, bowling lane-slick production, and campaign theme songs on the surface, but foreboding bass, cocaine hangovers, and bitter, broken love underneath. –Rob Mitchum",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrZRURcb1cM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650df8126bb8efcbfe0b47d0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/41-Fleetwood-Mac-Rumours.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fleetwood_Mac-Rumours_1977.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,40,The Modern Lovers,The Modern Lovers (1977),Beserkley,"Beserkley If there’s one thing this world will always need, it’s a late-night driving anthem, and Modern Lovers features one of the best. Two chords are enough gasoline for “Roadrunner” to soundtrack any expedition and reaffirm a weary traveler’s will to push ahead. Although Jonathan Richman is something of a weary traveler himself, his knack for extracting love and humor from portraits of mundane Americana and teenage disarray goes unmatched. Patched together from various sessions with John Cale in 1973, the Modern Lovers were defunct by the time their self-titled record had its belated release three years later, but its emotional honesty and musical prescience hadn’t (and hasn’t) waned. Richman laid the pretext for the wry, self-deprecating indie icons of the 1980s and early ’90s; he was the first to stiff-arm rejection, exalt the suburbs, and topple rock stardom’s lofty pedestal of unattainable coolness. It’s difficult to listen to Slanted & Enchanted without feeling Richman’s shockwaves in Stephen Malkmus’ beer-slackened laments, or appreciate Spoon without hearing the honky-tonk piano pop of “Hospital” or the hand-clapped hustle and bustle of “Someone I Care About.” Collegiate and consciously sophomoric, there are few rock albums today so refreshingly unalloyed or innocently timeless. –Sam Ubl",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttvb6-vzzuo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650df83c1c07209e89a38cf5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/40-The-Modern-Lovers-The-Modern-Lovers.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Modern_Lovers-The_Modern_Lovers_1977.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,39,Suicide,Suicide (1977),Superior Viaduct,"Superior Viaduct Nothing about Suicide made sense. Nihilist electro-rockabilly? In 1977? And what was up with the sunglasses? We’ve all heard what a glorious shithole New York City was in the ’70s, and Suicide’s highly theatrical project wallowed in the filth. The blood-curdling screams in the 10-minute murder fantasy “Frankie Teardrop” (aka Taxi Driver: The Musical) get most of the ink, but the pretty stalker anthem/prom night bloodbath theme “Cheree” is just as disturbing. Most of the above comes courtesy of Alan Vega’s expressionist vocal performance, but Martin Rev’s churning electronics were of equal importance. His unusual keyboard tone referenced the sound of ’50s rock’n’roll in a brilliantly subliminal way while the cheap drum loops pointed to a future of relentless, trance-inducing repetition. Suicide have been called the American Kraftwerk but every one of their highways led to a dead-end piled high with twisted metal and charred bodies. –Mark Richardson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_dXp0eF8s0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650df8e13084d84e95a493e5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/39-Suicide-Suicide.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Suicide-Suicide_1977.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,38,XTC,Drums and Wires (1979),Virgin,"Virgin The method is there in the title: By ditching their keyboardist and adding a second guitarist, XTC defined themselves by propeller-armed drums and a skin-cutting guitar sound. It’s pure pop disguised as jittery post-punk, all played with teeth-chattering intensity. The aesthetic is so tight that even the forgettable tracks serve it, but the album also boasts some of the band’s strongest early material. Colin Moulding’s biggest single (“Making Plans for Nigel”) serves as the commercial front for outro, neo-political epics on which Partridge wrings his vocals like laundry and spits out vowels like golf balls. Here, XTC also defined their version of a love song: Stuttering boys are so staggered by the sight of spectacular girls that their feet don’t touch the ground. Dozens of other contemporary bands were more extreme in every way—angrier, more danceable, more adventurous or primitive or whatever—but this triple-jointed sock hop out-charms them all. –Chris Dahlen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZjZBCZWxpg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650df9131c07209e89a38cf7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/38-XTC-Drums-and-Wires.jpg,/dataset/artwork/XTC-Drums_and_Wires_1979.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,37,Elvis Costello,My Aim Is True (1977),Columbia,"Columbia It says a lot about just how bloated rock had become by 1977 that Elvis Costello’s debut album could pass as punk—its most enduring songs are an aching romantic ballad (“Alison”) and a slinky, reggafied romp (“Watching the Detectives”). And beyond those twin peaks, Costello’s backing band—the uncredited Clover—pumped out the sort of good-time pub rock that their past and future frontman, Huey Lewis, would glitz up when they eventually morphed into the News. But if Costello didn’t exactly embrace punk’s nihilistic worldview, he shared its disillusionment with rock’s increasingly ponderous, navel-gazing nature. My Aim Is True is a rescue mission, saving the music from impending irrelevance by reinvigorating old sock-hop tropes with modern anxieties: wage-slave woes (“Welcome to the Working Week”), male inadequacy (“Miracle Man”), lingering post-war fascism (“Less Than Zero”). “I’m not angry!” Costello insists ironically on the album’s nerviest song, but that iconic album cover—of Costello wielding his guitar like a bayonet as if he were Bloody Holly—betrays his real intent: this isn’t mere rock’n’roll, this is war. –Stuart Berman",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uacxy1gQUYY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650df9381c07209e89a38cf9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/37-Elvis-Costello-My-Aim-Is-True.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Elvis_Costello-My_Aim_Is_True_1977.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,36,Pink Floyd,Wish You Were Here (1975),Columbia,"Columbia Flush and exhausted from the unexpected success of Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd resolved to shake things up a bit. For the follow-up, they entered the studio with no conventional instruments, intent on recording a new record comprised entirely of ostensibly normal songs composed on common household objects. Thankfully, they realized after a couple of weeks that it wasn’t working out. One of their experiments with wine glasses is audible under the initial surge from Rick Wright’s magisterial synthesizer, but the rest of the album finds the band spinning road-tested material into studio magic. They bookended three of their finest songs with an epic tribute to Syd Barrett, who himself made a tragically confused appearance at the studio during the sessions. Despite its cinematic sweep and cosmic jamming, Wish You Were Here is ultimately the sound of four men caught in the grinding of a wheel much larger than themselves and striving to understand it, only to find that they know its machinations all too well. –Joe Tangari",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjpF8ukSrvk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650df95f429ad6b649c9df58/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/36-Pink-Floyd-Wish-You-Were-Here.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Pink_Floyd-Wish_You_Were_Here_1975.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,35,The Pop Group,Y (1979),Radar,"Radar Twenty-five years after their untimely implosion, the Pop Group’s lacerated funk has begun to make a noticeable dent in the indie strata. Y, the Bristol post-punk band’s trainwrecked opus, has been co-opted and realigned by the more nefarious members of the disco-punk revival—most notably Liars on 2001’s They Threw Us in a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top. Yet neither Liars nor any of their contemporaries have come close to matching the effectiveness of Y’s arid doomsaying. Unlike most of the late-’70s no-wave types (and perennial imitators), the Pop Group were less concerned with eschewing convention than with vehemently eviscerating it. Listen to how they tear apart a boxy, reverb-laden surf riff on “We Are Time” with Dadaist malice and contempt. It’s impossible to ignore Mark Stewart’s incessant Thatcher-bashing, but Y is so convincing in its hectoring that one can easily imagine it arising from even more amicable circumstances. This is a record of dire necessity, armed for combat against a long litany of ills—none more than typicality. –Sam Ubl",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__LGynhTLz0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650df9854137474d729ba1a2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/35-The-Pop-Group-Y.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Pop_Group-Y_1979.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,34,Various Artists,Saturday Night Fever (1977),Rhino / RSO,"Rhino / RSO If disco had a Beatles it was certainly the Bee Gees, although they never should have tried to make it official by raiding the wardrobe of a certain lonely hearts club band. The Bee Gees and the Beatles overlapped for a while in the late 1960s and early ’70s, anyway, but who knew then that Maurice and the Brothers Gibb were busting with dance beats? Maximum R&B, indeed. The first five songs on this double LP could be considered the greatest album side of all time—or at least, the public thought so, sending four singles to No. 1. At this point, the Bee Gees were hitting home runs every time they stepped to the plate (they have six dingers here) and there are enough good songs by other artists to make you forget the fluffy zeitgeist bombs that are David Shire’s instrumentals. In the record-as-cultural-event sweepstakes, no subsequent release has topped Saturday Night Fever. –Mark Richardson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNFzfwLM72c,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650df9aaa0109c461ee8657e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/34-Various-Artists-Saturday-Night-Fever.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Various_Artists-Saturday_Night_Fever_1977.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,33,Wire,Chairs Missing (1978),Harvest,"Harvest Trailing their landmark debut, Pink Flag, by only eight months, Wire’s Chairs Missing was a shock to the punk community that first embraced them. In a scene where “progressive” was a four-letter word, and keyboards and effects were weapons of the enemy, Wire bravely shrugged off their rudimentary roots and quested for something more. Critics and fans responded badly, and that Wire shared a label with Pink Floyd only added to their infamy. With 25 years of hindsight, Chairs Missing is the most punk record they could have made, taking the scene’s ethics of defiance, disregard, and contempt to the greatest possible extreme. Though by no means a prog-rock opus, the album indulges in pedals, loops, and, yes, keyboards and synths, to brilliant effect, while retaining all of the pop immediacy, compositional integrity, and acute lyricism of its predecessor. Equal credit is due to producer Mike Thorne, who was responsible for squeezing these sounds of primitive machines, and Wire themselves, whose impatience and high standards pushed him to perfect the sounds they imagined. Hilariously, tying this into the whole of the list, Thorne recalls in an article on his website that “Wire said I should play synthesizers on the next album. I said, ‘I can’t move my fingers fast enough.’ They said, ‘If you don’t do it, we’ll get that Brian Eno in.’” This is one rare instance in which I can honestly say that would have been a huge mistake: He’d have killed all the joyous impulsiveness that makes this album one of the most charismatic, unpretentious experimental records the ’70s ever produced. –Ryan Schreiber",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83fpEaEET7k,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650df9ea4137474d729ba1a4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/33-Wire-Chairs-Missing.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Wire-Chairs_Missing_1978.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,32,Pink Floyd,The Wall (1979),Columbia,"Columbia Pink Floyd responded to their outsized ’70s popularity by doing everything bigger, and everything about The Wall was completely over the top: It was a double LP, it was about childhood and drugs and stardom and World War II and death, it featured choirs and sound effects and an absurd amount of studio time, it was accompanied by a major motion picture and an absurdly complicated stage show. Few bands could get away with such grandiosity, but Pink Floyd were shameless in their ambition. And the energy driving that ambition was tearing the band apart. As the ’70s wound down, the tensions between Roger Waters and David Gilmour were reaching the breaking point. Waters wanted grander concepts and heavier themes, and thought the band’s music should flow from their broader ideas; Gilmour thought about music first, how songs were constructed and played. The Wall was the last time Gilmour and Waters found a compromise. While it’s definitely Waters’ show and he wrote the lyrics and the bulk of the music—“Mother” and “Nobody Home” are particularly affecting— the album contains some of Gilmour’s most iconic guitar work (“Comfortably Numb,” “Run Like Hell”) and his most impassioned singing (“Goodbye Blue Sky,” “Hey You”). The melodic largesse was such that the album even had a smash hit single that completely owned the radio: “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2).” The album also felt like an ending, even if everyone involved had a lot more music left in front of them. Roger Waters’ reach would far exceed his grasp in the next decade (put on Radio K.A.O.S. sometime to see how low he’d sink), leaving The Wall as the moment where he was able to realize his craziest dreams. –Mark Richardson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-xTttimcNk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650dfa1706d3909b82174ed2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/32-Pink-Floyd-The-Wall.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Pink_Floyd-The_Wall_1979.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,31,Talking Heads,Fear of Music (1979),Sire,"Sire “We’re in a funny position,” David Byrne told Rolling Stone upon Fear of Music’s release. “It wouldn’t please us to make music that’s impossible to listen to, but we don’t want to compromise for the sake of popularity.” Yet in 1979, Talking Heads were more popular than they’d ever been, as Fear of Music became the first album of what would become known as “new-wave” to break Billboard’s top 25. So it’s odd that, with the exception of the politically charged “Life During Wartime,” Fear of Music is remarkably free of the kind of radio-friendly unit-shifters that marked their previous releases. Instead, Talking Heads’ nervous pop began to turn darker and more exploratory: Tracks like “I Zimbra” and “Animals” toyed with the African polyrhythms that came to full fruition on the band’s definitive statement, 1980’s Remain in Light, while the highly experimental “Electric Guitar” marched to an erratic, misshapen melody and producer Brian Eno’s alien effects. And yet, for every “Drugs”—whose minimalist creep was taken by an imposing stillness and suspended reverb—the album played host to a handful of brighter, more conventional pop tracks (“Cities,” “Paper”), including one of the group’s few ballads (the serene “Heaven”). Talking Heads’ most successful album, 1983’s Speaking in Tongues, was still four years ahead of them, but here, Byrne seems more keenly aware of the balance between the difficult and the approachable than anywhere else in their discography. –Ryan Schreiber",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NywTcGOUkE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650dfa41eacc5b460e15134f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/31-Talking-Heads-Fear-of-Music.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Talking_Heads-Fear_of_Music_1979.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,30,Miles Davis,On the Corner (1972),Columbia,"Columbia On the Corner is the sound of icy hot heroin coursing through the veins. Or so I’ve always imagined—I’ve never sampled the stuff, but if I did, I’d want Miles’ most controversial record spinning on the hi-fi. A more dense, hypnotic, surprising, sensual, down album I’ve yet to hear. They say Miles was looking to connect with kids on the streets. On the Corner blows past the kids and the streets—this is the sound of longing, passion, and rage milked from the primal source and heading into the dark beyond. Of course, the band is incredible: Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea on keys, John MacLaughlin on guitar, and Jack DeJohnette, Al Foster, Billy Hart, and Mtumbe on drums and percussion. But one listen and you understand individual names aren’t important—song titles and run times seem irrelevant as well. An admittedly demanding listen, these 50 minutes of collective madness are so unified and driven even the dude playing sleigh bells rocks as hard and heavy as Miles on diffused trumpet. It sounds impossible but it’s absolutely true—that’s the ecstatic intensity captured on this session. –Jonathan Zwickel",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbbCZaI313A,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650dfa699181c01b733c1b2f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/30-Miles-Davis-On-the-Corner.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Miles_Davis-On_the_Corner_1972.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,29,Can,Tago Mago (1971),United Artists,"United Artists On the surface, Malcolm Mooney’s departure from Can and return home to the States may have looked like a devastating blow, but when the band’s remaining members found Damo Suzuki bussing tables at a restaurant and decided to make him their vocalist, it became a blessing. Suzuki jerked through the band’s open-ended arrangements and lockstep grooves with manic intensity, and it didn’t matter that you couldn’t understand a thing he said (that is, when he was saying anything at all). Suzuki sounds like he’s singing backwards on much of “Oh Yeah,” as drummer Jaki Liebezeit pounds out a hypnotic groove and Michael Karoli flirts with blues-rock in his guitar interjections—even as the torrid texture around him rejects it. Can were as much an expression of collective energy as a rock band, and the energy they released on Tago Mago was like no other—simultaneously primal and intellectual, and utterly crucial. –Joe Tangari",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKpCKBfazX8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650dfaa2d8aad14260548415/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/29-Can-Tago-Mago.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Can-Tago_Mago_1971.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,28,The Beatles,Let It Be (1970),EMI,"EMI Often overlooked among the rest of the Beatles discography, Let It Be rings with more than a handful of truly charming, memorable moments. Though recorded prior to Abbey Road, it was released a year later and could be considered a more fitting coda to the Beatles’ long, winding road. Even as John and Paul were reportedly at each other’s wing-collared throats during the recording sessions, they manage to sound positively infatuated on the tender, Dylan-esque “Two of Us” and the gutsy blues-rocker “I’ve Got a Feeling.” But even though they’re still jointly credited, it’s their solo contributions that most stand out—John’s glistening, Eastern-accented “Across the Universe” and Paul’s anthemic title track burned themselves into the collective unconscious on sheer songwriting muscle. Outside influences probably played a factor, but by the time Let It Be hit the racks, the Fab Four had little collective patience left. With their demise, the world lamented the true “end of the ’60s,” and Let It Be became a mantra for moving on. –Jonathan Zwickel",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xDzVZcqtYI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650dfaceeacc5b460e151351/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/28-The-Beatles-Let-It-Be.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Beatles-Let_It_Be_1970.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,27,Led Zeppelin,Led Zeppelin III (1970),Rhino,"Rhino Ever since Coda plodded onto American shores, Led Zeppelin have been forcibly reduced to the sum of their merch: More an archetype (see the scrawny white kid kicking dirt off the high school steps, sporting black sneakers, black jeans, a three-hair mustache, and a faded Led Zeppelin t-shirt) than an entity, Led Zeppelin were quickly swallowed up by their own dark mythology. Which makes the quiet grace of 1970’s III all the more touching. Largely acoustic and presumably inspired by British folk contemporaries, III sees Led Zeppelin channeling their snarled, black-magic ferocity into sweet, vaguely melancholic bits. Without penning maudlin power ballads or mimicking folk sentimentality, III proved that Led Zeppelin were capable of far more than just their then-trademark raucous reinterpretation of American blues. –Amanda Petrusich",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0Auvlsv860,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650dfaf5bbcef9298df0b9f3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/27-Led-Zeppelin-Led-Zeppelin-III.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Led_Zeppelin-Led_Zeppelin_III_1970.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,26,Stevie Wonder,Innervisions (1973),Tamla / Motown,"Tamla / Motown Stevie Wonder sounds like an innocent. We know he’s not, but how else do you face evil and so passionately forgive it? How do you delve so vividly into racial hatred and the failure of brother to live peacefully alongside brother, yet not give in to anger? When he persuades us so sweetly, “Don’t you worry ’bout a thing,” is he as much a huckster as the Richard Nixon that he pseudonymously lampoons? Is the joke on us that a blind man not only romps through visual metaphors, but makes an album more colorful than anything your eyes will get you—funk, soul, and Latin rhythms dancing with keyboards that are so bright and intense they’ll never sound dated? Wonder’s almost too good to be true here, but the love in his vocals won’t lie: He cut a lot of classic albums in the ’70s, but none hits as persuasively as Innervisions. –Chris Dahlen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zywDiFdxopU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650dfb2406d3909b82174ed4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/26-Stevie-Wonder-Innervisions.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Stevie_Wonder-Innervisions_1973.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,25,Neu!,Neu! (1972),Brain,"Brain It’s always worth the double-take to remember that Neu! founders Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger were early fixtures of Kraftwerk. What Kraftwerk lost with the duo’s departure was a nebulous but undeniably deep emotional core, however much Neu! initially shared in their drone-heavy compositional style. Here, Rother and Dinger—both rhythm instrumentalists by trade—were heavy on the groove and light on the melody, which is instantly made clear on opening track “Hallo Gallo”: With grand, trance-friendly synth figures and an Autobahn rhythmic pulse that doesn’t give up, the song established a distinctly Kraut, distinctly Neu! sound. The rest of the debut follows course with equal success, later turning its focus to ambitious experiments in ambient noise. There’s a curious delicacy with which these experiments are arranged, a disarming, intangible quality at work—I don’t know what it is exactly, but to this day it has guarded Neu!’s debut album remarkably well against the perils of time and countless acts of feckless mimicry. –Nick Sylvester",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAXYMOgHQI4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650dfbfebbcef9298df0b9f5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/25-Neu!-Neu!.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Neu-Neu_1972.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,24,Brian Eno,Here Come the Warm Jets (1974),Island,"Island Clearly, the ’70s was Eno’s decade. With at least four jaw-dropping albums in just a 10-year span, his records split votes faster than Ralph Nader. Don’t be fooled by that “#24” you see up there—Here Come the Warm Jets is his mesmerizing solo debut, a landmark in his career, and arguably his greatest album. Out from under Bryan Ferry’s chart-seeking shackles, Eno—here joined by the rest of Roxy Music and guitar-wizard Robert Fripp—celebrates his departure with all the joy and irreverence of a newly freed man. A master sound manipulator, he indulges all of his just-skewed pop theories and techniques, creating not only vibrant, unique songs, but some beautiful sounds besides. His methods and results are more polished elsewhere, but with Eno’s biting wit and singular innovation at an all-time high, this album is simply too purely enjoyable to ignore. –Eric Carr",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V81btEv0i8U,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650dfc2b4137474d729ba1a6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/24-Brian-Eno-Here-Come-the-Warm-Jets.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Brian_Eno-Here_Come_the_Warm_Jets_1974.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,23,Ramones,Ramones (1976),Sire,"Sire The Ramones’ self-titled debut album, released in 1976, birthed not just punk, but the modern rock uprising; it set the rubric for grunge, indie rock, and all other movements that stripped the bombast of its predecessors and made them look instantly, hopelessly stuffy. Ramones reclaimed the base elements of rock and pared them down to three chords and a breakneck new pace. From their merrily boorish, messy opening chants of “Hey ho! Let’s go”—a prescient rallying cry for a global sports team clad in black leather—to its terse yet satisfying songs that barely eclipsed two minutes, the Ramones captured the outsider’s urgency. (It took some stones for Joey Ramone to jab at his own rudimentary lyricism, hooting “second verse, same as the first!” seconds into “Judy Is a Punk.”) Ramones lays out, for easy reference, all the hallmarks of first-generation punk, celebrating their youth with an embrace of blithe stupidity (“Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue”), and a few sweet entreaties to the safety-pinned girl next door (“I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend”). Punk was a group effort—the Sex Pistols and the Clash would lend its danger, and Richard Hell and Patti Smith would contribute intellectual edges—but anyone since wanting to know what punk is about has to start by reading the Ramones’ playbook. –Stacey Anderson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXcjg9o9HJ8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650dfc5ba5fc90931d546622/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/23-Ramones-Ramones.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ramones-Ramones_1976.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,22,Wire,Pink Flag (1977),Harvest,"Harvest Pink Flag is one of the strangest British punk albums, a mantle that Wire seem to have willfully embraced. The Sex Pistols embodied the controversy of punk rock; the Damned were the fuck-all abandon; the Clash were righteousness incarnate. But in that rarified pantheon, only Wire truly embodied the brilliant, fiery economy of music and language. On Pink Flag, not a single guttural bark is wasted; not one jagged chord is played in excess when less will suffice. Even when Wire’s blistering anthems are tempered into languid, pop/punk trysts, each track flashes a startling singularity of purpose; every song is a mission, a lone idea to be fully expressed. Wire breathlessly tear through songs as infectious as they are simplistic, aggressive, and focused, taking the “cartoon simple” aesthetic of the Ramones to a louder, nastier extreme. Such economy is impressive in theory but on Pink Flag, it’s even more stunning in its execution. I could go on, but it’d be a waste; the album speaks—just enough—for itself. –Eric Carr",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEJSe8vutnM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650dfc8deacc5b460e151354/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/22-Wire-Pink-Flag.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Wire-Pink_Flag_1977.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,21,Serge Gainsbourg,Histoire de Melody Nelson (1971),Philips,"Philips Histoire de Melody Nelson feels like some sort of ridiculous culmination of popular music, the moment the world had dreaded: a grooving rock-opera paean to statutory rape. The charming fable begins with Serge orchestrating a collision between his 260-horsepower Rolls and a cooing nymphet’s bicycle. Gainsbourg’s voice smacks of ennui and seduction; he sounds like either a middle-school principal or a whore. While he’s humming along over stalking, gangly basslines and purring guitars, Jane Birkin (Gainsbourg’s real-life lover) is so coy in the titular role that she can barely sing her Lolita-like name without breaking into tears—until she begins howling orgiastic tickle-squeals. For some, Histoire’s delirious provocation is the definition of 1970s excess and execration. For others, it redefined the role of pop orchestration, swelling with the sparkling flares of a showtune and turning the most surreally lascivious lyric into a sophisticated epic. And despite the obvious shock value, the album flirts with enough pathos to go through mournful, self-despising moments that challenge the album’s perverse glory. Everyone who listened to the Velvet Underground may have started a band; everyone who listened to Histoire started a Pedophiles Anonymous chapter. –Alex Linhardt",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIDuE4U_fZg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650dfd19d8aad14260548417/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/21-Serge-Gainsbourg-Histoire-de-Melody-Nelson.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Serge_Gainsbourg-Histoire_de_Melody_Nelson_1971.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,20,T. Rex,Electric Warrior (1971),Fly,"Fly Appropriately, Marc Bolan began his ill-fated career as a well-kempt model for John Temple suits. His body was grafted onto cardboard placards and hung in department store windows. On Electric Warrior, not much changed. He’s the cut-out embodiment of a shallow, smutty pulp culture reared on Elvis’ hips and Mick’s lips. Except Bolan knows it, and every line is delivered as archly and ironically as possible: “I danced myself right out the womb,” or, in a sort of ultra-Zeppelin aria, “You’re built like a car/ You got a hubcap.” Bolan’s guitar trembles with dark angst and pop perversion, as well as traces of psychedelic folk. Vocally, the most frequent sound is some sort of neon yawn-hum, halfway between an injured coyote and a ’60s girl group. But more fundamentally, Electric Warrior served as the blueprint for glam and—filtered through the filth of New York Dolls and the Sex Pistols—the genesis of punk’s attitude, if not its sound. Essential to T. Rex’s junkie-vaudeville was producer Tony Visconti (also a key contributor to Bowie’s Young Americans and Berlin Trilogy). Every noise—from the symphony of “Cosmic Dancer” to the grimy warbling of “Lean Woman Blues”—is lobbed out of some dank echo chamber where hobos and supermodels unite for the sake of their zombie heroin. And whether or not you buy into T. Rex’s brand of fashionable sleaze, they are directly responsible for Ziggy Stardust, Mott the Hoople, and—for better or really, really worse—Poison, Whitesnake, and L.A. Guns. –Alex Linhardt",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5pw8BNPn6U,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650dfd51a0109c461ee86580/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/20-T.-Rex-Electric-Warrior.jpg,/dataset/artwork/T_Rex-Electric_Warrior_1971.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,19,Can,Ege Bamyasi (1972),United Artists,"United Artists Can’s various accolades have been well documented over the years, especially in light of hundreds of indie, electronic, and post-rock bands only too proud to flaunt their appreciation of the German outfit. If you consider their hallmarks as precise, metronomic funk, lean group improvisation, and a keen sense of how the avant-garde could be integrated into popular music, then logically (or mathematically, as Jaki Liebezeit might have it), 1972’s Ege Bamyasi was their crowning achievement. The beats were tighter, the excursions more abrupt and on point, the songs compacted, and the mood a focused paranoia fit for astronauts and acidheads alike. Damo Suzuki screams, “Hey you! You’re losing, you’re losing, you’re losing, you’re losing your vitamin C!” as if fully aware of the dark, radioactive pit surrounding him, yet he is also typically cathartic in the face of overwhelming restraint and efficiency. Ege Bamyasi proved that Terry Riley, La Monte Young, and the Velvet Underground were not only revolutionary in their own rights, but could inspire music equally as unprecedented and alluring. It showed that there really was a place to go beyond rock while retaining its power and thrust. Years after the fact, the exact details about what went down in Cologne during the album sessions are hazy, but this album’s sharp detail and droning stare reveal everything you need to know. –Dominique Leone",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QgOGl5Oes0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650dfd77d8aad14260548419/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/19-Can-Ege-Bamyasi.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Can-Ege_Bamyasi_1972.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,18,Miles Davis,Bitches Brew (1970),Columbia,"Columbia In February 1969, Miles Davis weighed 135 pounds. He told reporters: “I figure if horses can eat green shit and be strong and run like motherfuckers, why shouldn’t I?” Boxing coach Bobby Allah, who had been training Davis since the mid-’60s, told Newsweek in 1970: “Even at 43 he acts like 25.” The previous December, in an interview with Rolling Stone, Davis had explained: “Playing trumpet is hard work. You have to feel strong... It’s not the note you play, it’s what you do with it. And it takes strength to bend notes and to keep from breaking phrases in fast tempos.” That Miles Davis had to relinquish meat, chew on wheat germ and bits of fruit, and study boxing in order to train his body to perform the songs on 1970’s Bitches Brew is not a particularly surprising revelation. One of the most revolutionary jazz records of all time, Bitches Brew is also a phenomenal act of physical prowess (see “Miles Runs the Voodoo Down,” especially), hinged almost exclusively on the thick call-and-response tension established by the frontman and his players, the dark space between Davis’ huge, meandering trumpet huffs, and his ensemble’s collective sputters. Mixing big rock beats with abstract jazz noodles, splicing together bits of improvisation and ominous incantations, Davis used Bitches Brew to lay the creepy foundation for a genre that would later be watered down from cathartic to stupidly harmless—but here, at the birth of fusion, Miles Davis proved that soldering elements of rock to jazz could be a wholly transformative, bone-breaking pursuit. –Amanda Petrusich",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QCOJo9YH9M,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650dfd9feacc5b460e151356/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/18-Miles-Davis-Bitches-Brew.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Miles_Davis-Bitches_Brew_1970.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,17,Funkadelic,Maggot Brain (1971),Westbound,"Westbound It’s not enough that Funkadelic’s third album contains the greatest opening line of the ’70s: “Mother Earth is pregnant for the third time, for y’all have knocked her up.” The album then proceeds to blow the doors of perception right off their hinges with the greatest studio guitar solo ever recorded, courtesy of Eddie Hazel, whose impetus was George Clinton telling him to play “as if your momma just died.” He unleashes 10 minutes of soul-searing six-string napalm, both killing and birthing millions before your ears while Clinton cuts the backing band away. So, how could that tripping Motor City collective—much less anyone else—follow that up? Funkadelic do it with echoplexed gospel, fried Sly Stone slink, stoned blaxploitation strut, near-heavy metal shredding, proto-dub drum flange, and ticklish other unmentionables. In short, they turn all that heaviness into a mind-altering block party for all the folks. It all comes to a head with another lengthy track, a hallucinatory slab of audio collage that mixes more incendiary Hazel guitar with cuckoo clocks, cowbells, vibraslaps, hash-sticky band jams, airplane departures, crying babies, crowd chants for “More pussy to the power/ More pussy to the people,” and a frenzied rave that cannot be brought to a halt. Maggot Brain proves that Funkadelic’s rock-based sound was digging other worlds way before Parliament’s mothership ever landed. –Andy Beta",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dh3bleXWaCk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650dfdc7d3a704075b908910/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/17-Funkadelic-Maggot-Brain.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Funkadelic-Maggot_Brain_1971.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,16,Buzzcocks,Singles Going Steady (1979),IRS,"IRS Many of the more glaring or contentious omissions from this list are from genres typically considered to be “singles-oriented”: among them, disco, funk, soul, pop, reggae... and punk. In Britain, the roughly two years between the November and December 1976 releases of “New Rose” and “Anarchy in the UK” and the dissolution of the Sex Pistols was a fertile, feverish time, fueled by a string of crucial 7'' records from artists who, for the most part, aren’t reflected in this (or most any) favorite albums list. (Stand up for your token bow, the Subway Sect, the Jam, the Stranglers, the Damned, the Only Ones, X-Ray Spex, the Adverts, the Vibrators, the Undertones, Siouxsie, etc.) So, Singles Going Steady is our lone homage to the glorious, usually chaotic, often homemade punk single. Like most of their best contemporaries, the Buzzcocks articulated the quotidian anxiety and social fears of young Britain, but did so armed with intensely infectious melodies and hooks. Romantics at heart, the band are burned by misplaced affections, led astray by broken promises, and even driven to obsessive self-love. Were the Howard Devoto–era Spiral Scratch EP included, the album could be bettered, but as it stands, Singles Going Steady is a breathless document and one of most fantastic marriages of pure pop sensibilities and aimless ennui. –Scott Plagenhoef",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lce9nny6PaY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650dfdf0d3a704075b908912/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/16-Buzzcocks-Singles-Going-Steady.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Buzzcocks-Singles_Going_Steady_1979.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,15,The Who,Who’s Next (1971),Decca,"Decca Are the Who the godfathers of synth-pop? They’re remembered for begetting the rock opera, the windmill strum, and the sadly ironic hope-they-die-before-they-grow-mold reunion tour, but Who’s Next makes a case for Pete Townshend & Co. as the ideological forefathers of the 1980s keyboard revolution as well. Certainly, synth-pop as we know it today doesn’t typically come Marshall-stacked with battering-ram barre chords and towering, megalomaniacal drum fills, but Townshend’s fascination with his fancy new ARP led to the first truly popular album predominantly based on the instrument—from the hyper gobble-loop at the start of “Baba O’Riley” through the extended laser-show breakdown of “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” For an album that brought the banner instrument of anti-rockists into public consciousness, Who’s Next is paradoxically also the first record on which an arena-rock band sounds downright Wembley Stadium–large. Producer Glyn Johns removed the thin sound of the Who’s early days, and the result was Roger Daltrey’s voice finally filling out the fringe-jacket, Keith Moon clattering away with greater clarity than ever, and John Entwistle contributing the only listenable song of his writing career. The pretentious arrangements and sloganeering of Who’s Next may have solidified the band as one of the decade’s most imposing dinosaurs but by retaining that mod versus rocker edge underneath the pomp and mysticism, the Who were the one thunder lizard set up to survive the oncoming punk asteroid. –Rob Mitchum",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHhrZgojY1Q,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650dfe1a429ad6b649c9df5a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/15-The-Who-Who%25E2%2580%2599s-Next.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Who-Whos_Next_1971.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,14,The Velvet Underground,Loaded (1971),Cotillion / Atlantic,"Cotillion / Atlantic Though Lou Reed might be more widely remembered for some of the most provocative and contentious experimental rock of the 20th century, his influence stretches equally far within the rock’n’roll mainstream. A spot-on portent of Reed’s vibrant solo career, Loaded witnesses the Velvet Underground emerging from the druggy maw of their late-’60s work to pen some of the best vanilla rock anthems of the era, with the typically reticent Doug Yule assuming a more conspicuous role. The album is staggering not for its consistency, diversity, or technical proficiency—something the band came to stylize—but for the ardor and joie de vivre with which it explores the capacious boundaries of its form. Sadly, Loaded often comes recommended with one glaring stipulation: “It’s a good starting point, if you’re looking to get into them.” But the album is too good to be relegated to sub-intellectual standing; from the dripping tongue-in-cheek melancholy of “Who Loves the Sun,” to the sultry narrative swagger of “Sweet Jane” and “Rock & Roll,” to the maudlin-but-oh-so-irresistible “Oh! Sweet Nuthin’,” Loaded proves the Velvets top-shelf geniuses with a vocabulary fit for the hoi polloi. It’s here that they finally chose to break the din of their histrionic, often difficult ’60s triumvirate, striking the hot iron of rock in a transitory period—and what a way to do it. –Sam Ubl",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhwSPRY51gs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650dfe406bb8efcbfe0b47d2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/14-The-Velvet-Underground-Loaded.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Velvet_Underground-Loaded_1971.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,13,Nick Drake,Pink Moon (1972),Island,"Island During full lunar eclipses, the Earth’s shadow may cause a reddish light to drop across the moon’s surface, sullying its face with a dull, bloody cast. Most ancient mythologies agree that a pink moon should almost always be understood as an omen of impending strife (if not apocalypse) and taken as a generous signal to pause and prepare for trouble. Recorded in just two days, Nick Drake’s 1972 swan song was a quick and somber departure from his previous effort, the buoyant, heavily orchestrated Bryter Layter. Unfortunately, Drake’s sudden stylistic shift has made it even easier to twist the spotlight of martyrdom directly onto Pink Moon’s 11 tracks: The songs on Pink Moon are almost always eclipsed by the circumstances of Drake’s (presumed) suicide two years later. Impending mortality—regardless of whether it’s been posthumously applied or not—drips from every sharp strum and breathless whisper, coating the album’s 26 minutes in a wash of disembodied melancholy. The cumulative effect feels both eerily preemptive and genuinely touching; everything about Pink Moon seems to point down, from the descending piano of the title track to Drake’s flat, eerily prophetic promise, “Take a look/ You may see me in the dirt.” Ultimately, Pink Moon’s beauty is as terrible as it is touching—a harsh, gray tribute to the inevitability of big lunar promises. –Amanda Petrusich",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wCkmuRkZz4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650dfe6aa0109c461ee86582/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/13-Nick-Drake-Pink-Moon.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nick_Drake-Pink_Moon_1972.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,12,The Stooges,Fun House (1970),Elektra,"Elektra It’s fitting that there’s only one degree of separation between Fun House and “Louie Louie.” That degree is producer Don Gallucci, who played keyboards for the Kingsmen on the slapdash Richard Berry cover that unwittingly became the nexus point for punk’s sloppy abandon more than a decade after its 1962 release. When Gallucci assumed control of the boards in 1970, he immediately realized what John Cale, who produced their debut the year before, hadn’t—that the Stooges’ primal energy and snarling attitude needed a bare-bones casting to be at its most effective. Gallucci captures the raw intensity of the band’s live show with next to no embellishment—Steve Mackay’s guest sax contributions simply bleed into the album’s molten texture, mingling with Ron Asheton’s chaotic, wah-drenched guitar in a dance of fire-breathing monsters. Scott Asheton and Dave Alexander pummel harder than Daley’s riot squads in ’68, and there, simultaneously towering over and drowning within the vortex, is Iggy, ranting in the tortured shouts of a man who knows he might not be around much longer if he keeps living this way. If you set your TV eye on the album art, you’re met with the contours of Pop’s skin-and-bones physique as he struts through what might be Hell, microphone held high overhead—the cover promises Iggy in the maelstrom, and that’s exactly what Fun House delivers. –Joe Tangari",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SD-uF8uisA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650dff094137474d729ba1a8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/12-The-Stooges-Fun-House.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Stooges-Fun_House_1970.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,11,The Rolling Stones,Exile on Main St. (1972),Rolling Stones,"Rolling Stones Released in the 1970s amidst post-Beatles uncertainty, post-Altamont rage, and the beginning stages of bloated arena rock, Exile on Main St. probably saved the soul of rock’n’roll. With this seemingly accidental masterpiece, the gritty country blues the Stones tested on earlier records is perfected but not polished, coherent but far from sober, aspiring but hardly blessed. In its broad thematic scope and timeless instrumental arrangements, the album doesn’t so much break new ground as utterly embody a classic rock ideal: It’s the great American album, shockingly consummated by ballsy British louts. Stylistically speaking, Main St. runs the gamut from Gram Parsons’ cosmic honky-tonk to Muddy Waters’ lush, booze-drenched symphonies. They’d always been some of the greatest interpreters of American music; Exile on Main St. is the paean to their influences. There’s a beatific, run-down acceptance in the gospel blues of “Let It Loose,” the barroom sing-along “Sweet Virginia,” and the worksong-like “Sweet Black Angel,” but these are mere mile markers on a sprawling scenic route through consistently powerful songwriting and apt production. Good ol’ boy anthems like “Rocks Off” and “Loving Cup” never made it to radio, yet stand as some of the Rolling Stones’ most enduring and soulful work. Treading confidently into alt-country’s fresh terrain and the dense and muddled mist of modern rock, Exile stands proudly as the most influential album by one of rock’n’roll’s most effortlessly innovative bands. –Jonathan Zwickel",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sqk1kdjk5o0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650dff2ed8aad1426054841b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/11-The-Rolling-Stones-Exile-on-Main-St.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Rolling_Stones-Exile_on_Main_St_1972.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,10,Brian Eno,Another Green World (1975),Island,"Island After taking two strides away from Roxy Music with Here Come the Warm Jets and Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy), Eno finally created an album that crystallized his delicately subversive relationship to pop music. As Chris Ott put it in a review of the remastered edition of this album, “Eno ripped rock and roll apart, never losing sight of its precepts. No one could mistake Another Green World for anything other than a pop album, but at the same time, it is unrecognizable as such.” This paradox is a very real one, and as listeners, we feel the intensity with which Eno combines his potent pop sensibilities with their very deconstructions. Obviously standout tracks “Sky Saw,” “St. Elmo’s Fire,” and “I’ll Come Running” take part in this paradox to a degree, but the essential Eno character lies most in the album’s unassuming (but very human) sinews. When these pockets of vulnerability are forced to bubble over—as does the almost sheepishly virtuoso guitar work on “Golden Hours,” or the warm washes of beautiful synthesizer melody on “Becalmed,” or the swaying guitar line that grows in confidence with repetition at the end of “The Big Ship”—it’s hard to imagine moments in pop music so authentically real, and so simultaneously spiritual. –Nick Sylvester",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QKEpoDYqdo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650dff59429ad6b649c9df5c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/10-Brian-Eno-Another-Green-World.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Brian_Eno-Another_Green_World_1975.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,9,Joy Division,Unknown Pleasures (1979),Factory,"Factory One of the best—and worst—aspects of Catcher in the Rye is that so many people feel they can relate to Holden Caulfield. J.D. Salinger created a character who found himself at odds with the values of the world—problems so germane to everyday life that empathy seems the natural reaction. Because people gravitate toward reflections of their own distress, this empathy somehow lightens our burden, but to reduce someone’s troubles to a known quantity and equate them to our own also cheapens them, doesn’t it? Decades after Ian Curtis’ suicide, he’s frequently discussed as barely more than a caricature of depression and death. He has made a transformation from a real person to a Caulfield-esque everyman. Curtis’ work with Joy Division is the catharsis that lets his pain become our pain, and we relate. Or we think we can. It’s unfair, both to him and his music. Many, including myself, have written about Curtis’ songs in the context of his own tribulations as a tool to leverage some kind of insight. For once, I had hoped to write about Joy Division from a different place, but I can’t. To do so feels negligent. I will say this: Unknown Pleasures was the second CD I owned, having been improbably drawn in by only the band name and cover. I feel fortunate to have experienced the urgency, foreboding, and perfection of this album—from the distance of Martin Hannett’s production, to the driving smack of Stephen Morris’ snares, to the grim pulse of Peter Hook’s bass, to Bernard Sumner’s brittle guitar—having never seen the name “Ian Curtis” outside of the liners. All I knew was that his alienation seemed impossibly close and more earnest than any music I had ever heard. And, yeah, I—like so many others—felt I could relate. –Eric Carr",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juD4ayBbHdY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650dff7e6bb8efcbfe0b47d4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/9-Joy-Division-Unknown-Pleasures.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Joy_Division-Unknown_Pleasures_1979.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,8,Gang of Four,Entertainment! (1979),EMI,"EMI The first time I heard Gang of Four was in high school when I purchased their reunion travesty Mall for 99¢. I listened to it and filed it away, writing the band off as just another overrated hype. But even with “Colour from the Tube” and “Don’t Fix What Ain’t Broke” swept into forsaken corners of my memory, something about the band pulled me back to them, and eventually the gravity of fate forced me to blindly shell out for an import copy of Entertainment! And there, in the musty air of the old hotel I called home, it became clear there were hundreds of musical possibilities that had never crossed my mind. Entertainment! may have been a sarcastic title, but it wasn’t inaccurate. The album is caustic and bursting with disgust for unethical capitalism, opportunist politicians, and consumer society, among other things, but it’s also crafted with amazing pop sensibility—and is, of course, remarkably danceable. Dave Allen’s wild bassline on “Damaged Goods” spills over with hooks; “I Found That Essence Rare” subversively lays lines like, “See the girl on the TV dressed in a bikini/ She doesn’t think so, but she’s dressed for the H-bomb,” into an insanely catchy melody barked by a manic Jon King over Andy Gill’s airless guitar and Hugo Burnham’s frenzied drumming. Like any defining record, Entertainment! seems doomed to be the source of an unceasing stream of copies and copies of copies, but even as the pale imitations pile up, Gang of Four’s debut remains singular, a powerful call to arms and out of apathy. –Joe Tangari",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byCqOvRMOvo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650dfff8a0109c461ee86584/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/8-Gang-of-Four-Entertainment!.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Gang_of_Four-Entertainment_1979.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,7,Led Zeppelin,Led Zeppelin IV (1971),Rhino,"Rhino We must be lying to ourselves: There is no way this album should not be #1. If my fellow PFM writers could go to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’s memory-erasure clinic and wipe out everything related to this record and band—the radio overplay, the Spinal Tap jokes, Robert Plant asking, “Does anybody remember laughter?”—and hear IV again for the first time, it would be at the very top of this list. Because when the riff from “Black Dog” hits you for the first time, you come face to face with God. Nothing is bigger than Led Zeppelin IV. It tears your skin and grinds away your doubt and self-hatred, freeing the rage and lust and anger of cockblocked adolescence. Listening to this album is like fucking the Grand Canyon. Some people call “When the Levee Breaks” the album’s true epic, because it sounds like the blues while “Stairway to Heaven” sounds like druids. But that was the fucking point. Zeppelin understood that you spend your days under the weight of shit, so they show you the way out with a moronized stewpot of myth, Tolkien and California daydreaming, a place where you can pray for greatness from battles you’ll never fight. Zeppelin spanned it all, because they knew sometimes you wield the Hammer of the Gods and sometimes you just get the shaft. –Chris Dahlen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwiTs60VoTM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650e002106d3909b82174ed6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/7-Led-Zeppelin-Led-Zeppelin-IV.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Led_Zeppelin-Led_Zeppelin_IV_1971.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,6,Kraftwerk,Trans-Europe Express (1977),Capitol,"Capitol The day will soon come, if it hasn't already, that Trans-Europe Express joins the ranks of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Exile on Main St. as a record that simply cannot be written about. Like those two, Kraftwerk’s masterpiece not only represents a high point of its era—delivering on pop promises years in the making and establishing a voice theretofore unheard—but contributes to an archetype informing almost anything released afterwards. It quickly became impossible to ignore what the German quartet had accomplished, in both artistic and technical terms. That its breakthroughs actually managed to filter into the popular music arena relatively quickly was a rare bonus. Twenty-seven years later, we’re given the task of explaining what’s so great about a record that, by most accounts, is not only a primary color for pop producers and electronic musicians, but somehow still seems ahead of the curve. When in doubt, fall back on the music: The cold, sleek synth textures, and disaffected vocals might seem robotic (and of course, Kraftwerk nurtured that image), but they are also perfect realizations of the same minimal, streamlined tension that colored punk and new-wave. The spacious motorik of “Europe Endless” and stark, industrial funk of “Metal on Metal” both reveal a band perfectly at home in the 21st century decades before it began, and serve notice to anyone within earshot that the Digital Age was upon us. And it would be fantastic. –Dominique Leone",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6b5XHOuxk2U,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650e00493084d84e95a493e7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/6-Kraftwerk-Trans-Europe-Express.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kraftwerk-Trans-Europe_Express_1977.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,5,Bob Dylan,Blood on the Tracks (1975),Columbia,"Columbia Plenty of critics and fans blame the relative lifelessness of Bob Dylan’s early ’70s work for the quasi-religious codification of 1966’s Blonde on Blonde, which, by 1975, was widely considered to be the last of Dylan’s “great records”—the massive and untouchable creative apex of a career presumably destined for prompt disintegration. It’s possible to argue that all of Dylan’s post-Blonde records had the exact same mystifying effect on *Blood on the Tracks—*namely, allowing Dylan to stage his next reinvention, and to glibly position himself as the much-anticipated “next Dylan.” Blood on the Tracks is arguably Bob Dylan’s most personal record: less surreal and more self-conscious than anything he’d ever done, emotionally charged, and impeccably sung. Blood on the Tracks was famously re-recorded in two deviant sessions—first in New York, and then in Minneapolis. The New York sessions (widely available as the Blood on the Tapes bootleg) saw Dylan acting especially protective of his new material, refusing to explain his unusual open-tunings to Deliverance, his backing band. Deliverance guitarist/banjoist Eric Weissberg later noted that Dylan was not particularly concerned with “correcting obvious mistakes” (check Dylan’s fingernails and coat buttons scraping against his guitar strings on both New York versions of “Tangled Up in Blue”), and plainly admitted that “if it was anybody else,” he “would have walked out.” Unsurprisingly, Deliverance can only be heard, in their entirety, on “Meet Me in the Morning.” Three months later, Dylan opted to re-record a handful of cuts at Studio 80 in Minneapolis. Deliberately thwarting the stark intimacy and sparser instrumentation of the New York versions, the Minneapolis sessions saw questionable lineup changes (an entirely new band, culled from local players) and considerable lyric revision, with Dylan seizing his last chance to retract, fudging the original lyrics to pad his songs with trademark detachment. The resulting record is stunning in its diversity: sentimental but clever, impressionistic but specific, confessional but confounding—and unbearably easy to love. –Amanda Petrusich",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8v8QIHZJkI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650e0070429ad6b649c9df5e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/5-Bob-Dylan-Blood-on-the-Tracks.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bob_Dylan-Blood_on_the_Tracks_1975.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,4,Sly and the Family Stone,There’s a Riot Goin’ On (1971),Epic,"Epic Taken along with the quick mudslide from Woodstock to Altamont, the drug deaths of Janis, Jim, and Jimi, and the piling bodies in Vietnam, Sly and the Family Stone’s There’s a Riot Goin’ On is a telling indication that the utopian 1960s were really a bad trip. After four albums of uplift party plans on which Sly sang, “You can make it if you try,” his sing-alongs now went: “Look at you fooling you.” Sly and his rainbow-coalition band crumbled during these recordings, leaving him and a few of his drug buddies to lay tracks to a tape made thin from constant erasing and re-recording (the story going that Sly would lay groupies to tape, then lay the groupies, erasing their voices afterward). No one who was there quite remembers who played what, and to even further muddy the mud, it was wrapped up in a warped, alien American flag (what sort of stars are those?) and a messy photo collage of faces, bereft of credits. All of There’s a Riot’s pleasure centers and nerve endings are frayed from coke, dope, flesh, flash, and, above all, disillusionment. Every single sound is weary, wasted, creaking, cracked, and sleep-deprived, like a somnambulant zombie stumbling through the graveyard of ideals on the pavement of good intentions. The singles (“Family Affair,” “Running Away”) exude a façade of empty positivity, a bitter resignation to the darker forces bubbling underneath. Chicken-scratch guitars claw at caskets, human drummers meld with undead drum machines, and frightened voices fissure with the crisp horn lines, yet it all sounds incredible, prescient. Listen to the paradoxical 0:00 of the title track, to how hip-hop took that stripped drum sound and furthered Sly’s bleak music, to how Miles got his groovebox back, to how the wasted Brits—from Primal Scream to Julian Cope—copped their dope from the grooves. Listen close, because there’s no way in hell a major label will ever again let out this much horrible truth. –Andy Beta",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YST-JQ1bREA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650e0098a0109c461ee86586/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/4-Sly-and-the-Family-Stone-There%25E2%2580%2599s-a-Riot-Goin%25E2%2580%2599-On.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sly_and_the_Family_Stone-Theres_a_Riot_Goin_On_1971.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,3,Television,Marquee Moon (1977),Elektra,"Elektra Its title track is over 10 minutes long. Its lengthy and numerous guitar solos are individually credited in its liner notes. But at its core, Television’s Marquee Moon is shockingly economical—a tightly wound web of simple guitar parts wrapped around Tom Verlaine’s straightforward and impressionistic songwriting. Taken out of context, the guitar solos on Marquee Moon aren’t just unimpressive; they’re downright illogical. Everyone who plays guitar will, at some point, learn the solo from “Stairway to Heaven,” but it’s practically impossible to sit down and actually play anything from Marquee Moon. Like the Velvet Underground before them, Television’s songs focus on interplay and exploration, rather than individual melodies and chord progressions. This, of course, is just icing on what is unquestionably the finest release from one of the most talented bands to be nurtured by the scum-soaked floors and paint-chipped walls of 1970s CBGB. The subtle buildup of “Marquee Moon,” the nervous energy of “See No Evil,” and the melodic tension of “Guiding Light” are all songwriting masterstrokes, articulated perfectly by able and adventurous players. The punk scene from which Television emerged is often cited as discarding the concept of musicianship entirely. And in a sense, this is exactly what Television did with Marquee Moon, recasting virtuosity as a function of the brain, not the fingers. –Matt LeMay",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlbunmCbTBA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650e00bf3084d84e95a493e9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/3-Television-Marquee-Moon.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Television-Marquee_Moon_1977.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,2,The Clash,London Calling (1979),CBS,"CBS In a 2000 interview with George Plimpton for The Paris Review, gonzo overlord Hunter S. Thompson explained: “An outlaw can be defined as somebody who lives outside the law, beyond the law, and not necessarily against it.” William Faulkner, in an interview with the same magazine conducted nearly a half-century earlier, offered this: “The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life... and hold it fixed so that 100 years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again.” Deeply and fervently preoccupied with revolutionizing both the political and artistic standards of their time, the Clash opted to dedicate themselves to cross-breeding an entirely new kind of artist-outlaw, as violent as it was cerebral. 1979’s London Calling became the ultimate expression of that collective fascination, a double album both intensely unsettling and undeniably clever, full of mouthy indictments and unbridled celebrations. That most contemporary “punk” music actually sounds nothing like the Clash is not surprising; by the late 1970s, principle songwriters Joe Strummer and Mick Jones had been mining musical traditions (reggae, dub, rockabilly, roots) so diverse that to recreate the Clash’s specific recipe circa London Calling has become nearly impossible. Twenty-five years later, the record still moves—an astoundingly diverse, ambitious, and inspired bit of politically charged punk rock, as relevant and revolutionary today as it was in 1979. –Amanda Petrusich",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ertt3o1x65c,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650e00ea429ad6b649c9df60/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/2-The-Clash-London-Calling.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Clash-London_Calling_1979.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,album,1,David Bowie,Low (1977),RCA,"RCA Exhausted from his fame and the excesses that came with it, David Bowie decamped to Berlin in 1976. As he detoxed from celebrity and controlled substances, he righted himself by immersing in art, striking up a collaboration with Brian Eno—former wildcard in Roxy Music—while retaining his partnership with Tony Visconti, the producer who first worked with Bowie in 1969. That continuity is a key factor in Low, a record that hurtles toward an undefined future while embracing ambiguity. Low has sly structure throughout. All the dreamscape instrumentals on the second side shimmer, but they’re not freeform; they’re composed. The first side is underpinned by the avant-funk of guitarist Carlos Alomar, bassist George Murray, and drummer Dennis Davis, the same trio that played on Station to Station. But while that 1976 record remains a height of Bowie's self-indulgence—its title track sprawls out over 10 minutes—Low is stripped to its basics, often containing nothing more than a rhythm track or a glassy wash of synthesizers. It lingers as a savvy artistic choice but also a pragmatic decision born out of angst: Bowie was suffering a severe case of writer’s block. It’s a situation he addresses directly on “Sound and Vision,” in which he sits in a room, waiting for the muse to arrive. In the song, Bowie is passive and depressed here, and elsewhere on Low, his melancholy is even more palpable; “Warszawa” floats in a meditative reverie, haunting in its glum pallor, spiked with guttural harmonies and high yelps. Its scant vocals are voluble, in context; Bowie originally planned to sing on several cuts, including the opening “Speed of Life,” but either couldn't find the words or decided they’d be better as stark, vivid instrumentals. Still, Low isn’t a sad album because it wields a fierce sense of adventure. Its core asks how to find a way out of darkness, then does so brilliantly. At his lowest point, Bowie forced himself to reimagine his creative process, retaining parts of his past while pushing forward. Low is an album about rebirth, which is why it still possesses the power to startle. –Stephen Thomas Erlewine",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3L58KyHC_M,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650e011d1c07209e89a38cfb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/1-David-Bowie-Low.jpg,/dataset/artwork/David_Bowie-Low_1977.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,200,Ennio Morricone,"Il Buono, Il Brutto, Il Cattivo (1966)",Parade,"Parade Composer Ennio Morricone and director Sergio Leone worked in tandem throughout the 1960s on Italian spaghetti westerns, and their masterpiece is The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. The entire three-hour epic is conjured fully in the first five notes of Morricone’s theme, that mythical coyote howl. Then comes the anachronistic kang of electric guitar, the strident trumpet, and wooden flute; you can feel the dirt from the graveyard and smell Clint Eastwood’s cigar. Before the film was shot, Morricone and Leone worked out musical themes for the three main characters, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is one of the greatest soundtracks in history because it feels like the movie was retrofitted to it. What should happen during “L’Estasi Dell’Oro (The Ecstasy of Gold)”? Let’s just have a guy run around in circles for a few minutes. What about “Il Triello (The Trio)”? How about three guys just stand there and stare at each other? These are thrilling moments in cinematic history, devoid of dialogue—just the tactile, otherworldly music of Morricone guiding the film into the sunset. –Jeremy D. Larson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yn2xSNv0TSk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500899ed4b4b48f6ed2366c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/200-Ennio-Morricone-Il-Buono-Il%2520Brutto-Il%2520Cattivo.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ennio_Morricone-Il_Buono_Il_Brutto_Il_Cattivo_1966.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,199,Donovan,Sunshine Superman (1966),Epic,"Epic Before the Summer of Love, there was the Season of the Witch. In it, Donovan Leitch transformed from the Scottish Bob Dylan into the Sunshine Superman, a paisley-clad and permed psychedelic who wrote fables about rotund angels, Arthurian queens, and Sunset Strip nightclubs where Fellini dream women danced with sequins in their hair. Donovan drew his formula from Celtic mythology, hillbilly American folk, Indian sitar ragas, Beat poetry, and the occasional bongo solo. The 20-year-old gypsy also conscripted future Led Zeppelin members Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones as session men on the title track, which soared to No. 1 in the United States. In the process, Donovan hallucinated the modern archetype of the guitar-picking mystic, one that would be borrowed by Marc Bolan, pre–Hunky Dory David Bowie, and the Tolkien fanatics who’d just shared his studio. –Jeff Weiss",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OGUO3Oc84I,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650089d578e14fa92af4c736/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/199-Donovan-Sunshine-Superman.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Donovan-Sunshine_Superman_1966.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,198,Andrew Hill,Point of Departure (1964),Blue Note,"Blue Note The fifth album from the Chicago-born pianist Andrew Hill catapulted him to the top tier of forward-looking jazz composers of the ’60s. As Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane pioneered jazz’s “New Thing” movement, loosening the shackles of long-established chord progressions, Hill’s tight-knit pieces played within them, drawing on post-bop, avant-garde, and the blues. Point of Departure is at once abstract and dynamic, labyrinthine and lyrical, dizzying and dense with ideas. In this session, Hill found his perfect foil in the adventurous woodwind multi-instrumentalist Eric Dolphy (who would tragically die just three months later). Joined by several other talented collaborators, they soar to the furthest reaches of Hill’s ever-shifting compositions, offering a fearless moment in a tumultuous era for jazz. –Andy Beta",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZM3rAxcAm9I,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65008a097035c6082dade44f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/198-Andrew-Hill-Point-of-Departure.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Andrew_Hill-Point_of_Departure_1964.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,197,Cecil Taylor,Unit Structures (1966),Blue Note,"Blue Note Among the most intense of the early free jazz albums, pianist Cecil Taylor’s 1966 Blue Note debut, Unit Structures, still challenges notions of musical freedom. Recorded during the same season that the psychedelic ballroom scene was starting to bubble in San Francisco, Unit Structures did more to disassemble music than nearly all of the light-show-drenched psychedelia that followed. The album is by no means easy listening; the atonality is unrepentant. But Taylor’s septet finds numerous gorgeous spaces as they interpret “free jazz” not just as the freedom to improvise but the freedom to invent musical worlds and hidden syntaxes. The only way to tap into the “rhythm-sound energy found in the amplitude of each time unit,” as Taylor wrote in the liner notes, is to listen reverently. –Jesse Jarnow",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fu8RfkxiZeE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65008a4145471ded722c6bb8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/197-Cecil-Taylor-Unit-Structures.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Cecil_Taylor-Unit_Structures_1966.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,196,Wanda Jackson,Rockin’ With Wanda (1960),Capitol,"Capitol To read most rock histories, you’d think women started picking up guitars sometime in the mid-1970s. The truth is, pioneering singer-guitarists like Wanda Jackson and Sister Rosetta Tharpe were as instrumental as any male musician in helping rock’n’roll coalesce out of rockabilly, country, R&B, and blues in the 1950s. Jackson, nicknamed “The Queen of Rockabilly,” even toured with—and dated—Elvis when she was a teenager. The best introduction to Jackson’s early work is Rockin’ With Wanda!, an exhilarating compilation of two-minute masterpieces that showcase her remarkable range. There’s the plaintive country balladry of “Sinful Heart,” the proto-girl-group hearts and flowers of “A Date With Jerry,” and clap-along jump rope jams like “You’re the One for Me.” But her charisma really shines on her fastest, toughest, most boastful tracks. Along with her famous novelty single “Fujiyama Mama” (a big hit in Japan, despite its distasteful references to Hiroshima and Nagasaki), “Hot Dog! That Made Him Mad” and “Don’a Wan’a” were the riot grrrl anthems of their day. –Judy Berman",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPfdzp3JB1A,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65008ad0299cfecb59445193/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/196-Wanda-Jackson-Rockin%25E2%2580%2599-With-Wanda.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Wanda_Jackson-Rockin_With_Wanda_1960.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,195,Nilsson,Aerial Ballet (1968),RCA Victor,"RCA Victor Harry Nilsson’s third LP, Aerial Ballet, is where his work shifts irrevocably, moving from the quirky psychedelic pop that was tapering off in the late 1960s into the more naturalistic singer-songwriter style of the looming ’70s. By the time Aerial was released, Nilsson hadn’t scored a hit for himself, but he had written mind-bending, orchestral songs for the Shangri-Las, the Turtles, and the Monkees. But the more low-key aspects of Aerial Ballet reflect the soft rock that would become increasingly popular in the next few years. Ironically, the album’s two most famous tracks are a cover of Fred Neil’s “Everybody’s Talkin’” and Nilsson’s own “One,” which the rock group Three Dog Night would turn into a major smash soon after. Both songs are the perfect encapsulations of Nilsson’s unusual yet direct approach to making music: embedding lyrical gut-punches into catchy folk-pop riffs and experimental production techniques. Even before Nilsson made his mark as one of the most coveted songwriters of his generation, Aerial Ballet served as a snapshot of the unconventional style that would make him a cult icon. –Cameron Cook",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYzY7-V5vxY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65008b059d1ddc41f1e80742/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/195-Nilsson-Aerial-Ballet.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nilsson-Aerial_Ballet_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,194,Donald Byrd,A New Perspective (1964),Blue Note,"Blue Note In 1963, Donald Byrd, already a leading light of bebop as a trumpeter and bandleader, set out to make what he called “an entire album of spiritual-like pieces.” The result was A New Perspective, a sort of symphony in five movements that incorporated blues, doo-wop, and even opera into its more conspicuous hard bop and liturgical influences. Brought to life by an ensemble that included a young Herbie Hancock and a sizable choir, A New Perspective is often dominated by the haunting, otherworldly passages Byrd wrote for its fluid female voices. But unlike other bop compositions of the era, which drew on popular melodies and forms as grist for improvisation, A New Perspective incorporated its hard bop forays into an ambitious art-music framework closer in structure to a classical oratorio like Handel’s Messiah. It’s perhaps one of the purest embodiments of Nina Simone’s famous assertion that the innovative project categorized as “jazz” might better be characterized as “black classical music.” –Edwin “STATS” Houghton",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NPchdtfP0Q,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65008b3f299cfecb59445195/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/194-Donald-Byrd-A-New-Perspective.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Donald_Byrd-A_New_Perspective_1964.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,193,The Beach Boys,Surfer Girl (1963),Capitol,"Capitol After worshipping waves, babes, and automobiles for two records, the Beach Boys began to look inward on Surfer Girl. Thanks to the success of Surfin’ USA and “Surf City,” a No. 1 track written for their SoCal pop peers Jan and Dean, Capitol allowed Brian Wilson to produce an entire Beach Boys record for the first time; he pulled out all the stops, introducing string arrangements and more session players into the group’s sound. Though Surfer Girl contains “Catch a Wave,” “Little Deuce Coupe,” and other songs about the Californian myth, two moments emerge as more searching masterpieces. One is the title track, a sleepy love ballad and a sincere expression of longing that portrays the ocean as a delicate place where “love could grow.” And “In My Room” moves even deeper into Wilson’s vulnerability, with nary a mention of romance. Instead, it pays tribute to the sanctuary of the childhood bedroom, a place where Brian and his brothers could escape their abusive father/manager, Murry Wilson, and sing together in peace. In these breaks from the Beach Boys’ pop gaiety, Wilson began to probe the wistfulness at his core, hinting at further genius to come. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsczqBSCUnA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65008c4b299cfecb59445197/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/193-The-Beach-Boys-Surfer-Girl.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Beach_Boys-Surfer_Girl_1963.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,192,Link Wray & the Wraymen,Link Wray & the Wraymen (1960),Epic,"Epic You can’t quite call Link Wray’s debut album his signature effort, since his first and most famous garage-rock single, “Rumble,” isn’t on it. But his next three subsequent, equally great singles are, as well as a tune called “Ramble” that’s basically a self rip-off of “Rumble.” Add a ripping rockabilly jam called “Raw-Hide,” a few homecoming-dance-worthy rock numbers complete with swinging horns, and some more solid originals, and what could’ve sounded like a hodgepodge turns out to be a dead-spot-free display of Wray’s talents. Most of Link Wray & the Wraymen bears a distinct sonic style that’s still influential today—especially Wray’s high-octane riffs, which basically invented the power chord. The album is also a charming family affair—brothers Vernon (rhythm guitar) and Doug (drums) were Wraymen—though Link’s the clear sonic leader, making the case for a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction that somehow still hasn’t happened. But the list of Hall-of-Famers who worship him—Dylan, Townshend, Page, Springsteen—is testament enough to his power. –Marc Masters",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-meviSnJjA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65008c879dde163bde31d4c8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/192-Link-Wray-_-the-Wraymen-Link-Wray-_-the-Wraymen.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Link_Wray__the_Wraymen-Link_Wray__the_Wraymen_1960.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,191,Amon Düül II,Phallus Dei (1969),Liberty,"Liberty Amon Düül began as a radical art commune in Munich, one whose extended jam sessions were open to all. Soon, the most musically adept members went their own way, and this splinter group made their debut with Phallus Dei. In Latin, the title means “God’s Penis”—as statements of intent go, this is certainly up there. Krautrock didn’t exist yet, but 1969 was the year when the political, musical, and social currents running through the German counterculture began to coalesce into actual recorded music. Pink Floyd and Hawkwind are obvious touchstones, though Amon Düül II felt distinct from much of the prog in the UK or U.S., their music unprissy and shot through with a primal weirdness. “Kanaan” weaves together Eastern scales, rolling hand percussion, and the operatic keening of Renate Knaup into something mystic and heavy, while “Dem Guten, Schönen, Wahren” is a hallucinogenic nightmare of delirious falsetto vocals, curdled acid-folk, and beer-hall chanting. And the title track is 20 minutes of gale-force psych and mangled violin that resembles a Germanic Velvet Underground. –Louis Pattison",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AK6HRAGletk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65008cc8d4b4b48f6ed23670/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/191-Amon-Du%25CC%2588u%25CC%2588l-II-Phallus-Dei.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Amon_Dl_II-Phallus_Dei_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,190,Judy Collins,Wildflowers (1967),Elektra,"Elektra Wildflowers sets three of Judy Collins’ songs alongside covers of Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell, and her take on Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” turned into the hit that launched this album up the charts. Though a product of the acoustic guitar-favoring Greenwich Village folk scene, Collins was by this point singing over lush orchestral arrangements, with sweet choruses of clarinet and flute complementing the effortless formality of her own voice. It’s that formality that can be a stumbling block to enjoying an album like this some half a century later, but Collins’ powdery femininity is ultimately an impeccable match for the tender naturalism that fills the lyrics of her songs, where love stories play out amid images of “lilies and lace” and “amethyst fountains.” –Thea Ballard",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKrVhKxdlPQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65008d02e1736377acbdb2b0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/190-Judy-Collins-Wildflowers.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Judy_Collins-Wildflowers_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,189,The Cannonball Adderley Quintet,"Mercy, Mercy, Mercy! Live at “The Club” (1966)",Capitol,"Capitol While Cannonball Adderley may be the bandleader on Mercy, Mercy, Mercy! Live at “The Club,” the record is arguably as much a showcase for his brother’s songwriting and playing. Nat Adderley wrote the two opening numbers, “Fun” and “Games,” which are hard bop at its most enthusiastic and mercurial; his playing is appropriately ecstatic, buoyed by joy into gymnastic flights and contortions. The focus also inevitably drifts to pianist Joe Zawinul, three years before he played the sustained organ notes that opened the title track of Miles Davis’ In a Silent Way; here, his composition “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy” merges soul and jazz in the hybrid timbre of his electric piano. But it’s the polyphonic sense of play in the group’s improvisations, particularly in Cannonball’s solos, that lends the session its aura of excitability and invention. It doesn’t matter that it wasn’t actually recorded at a club but in a Los Angeles studio, to which they invited a small crowd: It only contributes to the feeling that this record, from start to finish, was produced in a totally imaginative space. –Brad Nelson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsKqrXj4V1U,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65008e0c0717cb033b8d3d96/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/189-The-Cannonball-Adderley-Quintet-Mercy%2C-Mercy%2C-Mercy!-Live-at-%25E2%2580%259CThe-Club%25E2%2580%259D.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Cannonball_Adderley_Quintet-Mercy_Mercy_Mercy_Live_at_The_Club_1966.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,188,Dave Van Ronk,Folksinger (1963),Prestige,"Prestige Dave Van Ronk was a ubiquitous figure of Greenwich Village folk culture, one so essential and deeply rooted that he struggled to attract ears beyond it. Ironically, it was a scene he never quite fit into, literally or figuratively: A 6-foot-5 Swede and early mentor to Bob Dylan, the dive-bar philosopher cast a keen ear to blues traditions instead of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger’s acoustic, Americana strums. On Folksinger, Van Ronk’s somber masterstroke, he filters plaintive 12-bar traditionals through jazzy folk paces and a mournful yet bristling growl. His crawl through the standard “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me” is almost oppressively intimate, its spare fingerpicked guitar and slow-pooling croon as stifling as the solitude he’s succumbing to. His soulful yet chatty pass through “Cocaine Blues” brings a modern sheen to the addict’s tale, rivaling Dylan’s reedier, less convincing turn. For such troubles, Joan Baez called him “the closest living offshoot of Leadbelly,” while the Coen brothers loosely based Inside Llewyn Davis on him, finally giving this perennial outsider his due. –Stacey Anderson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYZ0VHRTwwM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65008e4d45471ded722c6bba/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/188-Dave-Van-Ronk-Folksinger.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dave_Van_Ronk-Folksinger_1963.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,187,Jefferson Airplane,Surrealistic Pillow (1967),RCA Victor,"RCA Victor Surrealistic Pillow is to San Francisco what The Velvet Underground & Nico is to New York: an iconic album that captures a city’s sound circa the Summer of Love. Surrealistic Pillow finds the band compiling their cornerstones of crunchy psychedelia, languid blues, and freewheeling jamming—but this time, they have Grace Slick, a femme fatale alto with the fury of a valkyrie. Coupled with Rick Jarrard’s Spectorian production, melodically top-heavy and immediate, Slick’s jagged hooks on “Somebody to Love” and “White Rabbit” earned Jefferson Airplane their reputation as the first big San Francisco band. Surrealistic Pillow is high-definition psychedelia that’s both exotic and approachable. –Zoe Camp",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1FnOH26tZQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65008ec99d1ddc41f1e80744/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/187-Jefferson-Airplane-Surrealistic-Pillow.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jefferson_Airplane-Surrealistic_Pillow_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,186,The Kinks,Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) (1969),Reprise,"Reprise Arthur could’ve been the Kinks’ Tommy. Commissioned to accompany a teleplay co-written by frontman Ray Davies, it was forced to stand on its own after the TV movie was scrapped. So instead of a zeitgeist multimedia experience, this follow-up to The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society became the band’s second great, quintessentially English concept album in as many years. In a 1970 interview, Davies joked that Arthur was “about the rise and fall of the British Empire, which people tend to associate me with,” and he told that story through the eyes of a character based on his brother-in-law, Arthur Anning. After opening with the soaring “Victoria,” a rock monument to the Queen’s bygone Britain, the carpetlayer’s tale descends into the horrors of the World Wars on “Some Mother’s Son” and “Mr. Churchill Says.” Its centerpiece is a one-two punch of sarcasm on “Australia,” a sing-along escape anthem, and “Shangri-La,” a folk hymn to suburban consumerism. But while Davies is barbed, he still shows a grudging empathy for his countrymen, lending an undertone of sweetness to a history lesson that could have come off as merely bitter. –Judy Berman",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zmag4OUFQYw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65008f0200c361fe1f460efc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/186-The-Kinks-Arthur-(Or-the-Decline-and-Fall-of-the-British-Empire).jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Kinks-Arthur_Or_the_Decline_and_Fall_of_the_British_Empire_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,185,Charles Mingus,Mingus Plays Piano (1963),Impulse!,"Impulse! Few humans were ever able to wrestle melody out of an upright bass or command a cacophonous jazz band like Charles Mingus—though all that is basically irrelevant on this album of solo piano works. The idea seems a bit incongruous, like if Eddie Van Halen decided to release an oboe-only record in his prime, but Mingus was no dilettante on the keys. At a young age, he was mentored on the instrument by the quick-fingered jazz titan Art Tatum, and this album of originals, reinterpretations, and spontaneous performances adds another dimension to his staggering talent. Unlike Mingus’ full-band albums and shows, which could be rambunctious affairs that teetered on the precipice of chaos, Mingus Plays Piano is gorgeously spare, incorporating elements of jazz, blues, and his beloved classical music. Opener “Myself When I Am Real” was largely made up on the spot, a shapeshifting ballad that doubles as a spiritual portrait of Mingus’ own creativity. Elsewhere, there are skewed standards, quiet confessionals, and an eight-and-a-half minute ode to Mingus’ America, a complex and troubling place where black men like him were often left out. The record’s haunted soul still speaks to artists like Blood Orange’s Dev Hynes, who sampled “Myself When I Am Real” to introduce his own profound and personal treatise on being black in America, Freetown Sound. Truth, beauty, liberty—it’s all here. Unadorned. –Ryan Dombal",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kez2quxYV1Y,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65008f489dde163bde31d4ca/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/185-Charles-Mingus-Mingus-Plays-Piano.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Charles_Mingus-Mingus_Plays_Piano_1963.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,184,BBC Radiophonic Workshop,BBC Radiophonic Music (1968),BBC Radio Enterprises,"BBC Radio Enterprises The BBC Radiophonic Workshop was founded in 1958 as a space in which composers, musicians, and engineers experimented with techniques for producing sound under the auspices of soundtracking BBC programming. Released a decade into the Workshop’s tenure, this compilation collects 31 short works by Delia Derbyshire, David Cain, and John Baker. Though these pieces were designed for functional use in broadcast programming, taken together, they present a view of the strange, brilliant sonic terrain being forged at the Workshop. Many of these pieces are essentially jingles, driven by lilting melodies, but even the most cloying of tunes are uncanny in their construction, featuring experimental techniques ranging from musique concrète tape-collage to recording and sampling odd everyday sounds. Derbyshire dips into the weird, particularly, and her work would prove invaluable to generations of electronic experimentalists who followed her, including Aphex Twin and the Chemical Brothers. She relishes in new sounds and unsettling melodic forms; the metallic clatter and modulated vocals of a track like her “Ziwzih Ziwzih OO-OO-OO” anticipates the twists that pop would soon take. –Thea Ballard",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh4awCSSwCs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65008fa600c361fe1f460efe/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/184-BBC-Radiophonic-Workshop-BBC-Radiophonic-Music.jpg,/dataset/artwork/BBC_Radiophonic_Workshop-BBC_Radiophonic_Music_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,183,Mickey Newbury,Looks Like Rain (1969),Mercury,"Mercury According to the chorus of Willie Nelson and Waylon Jenning’s song “Luckenbach, Texas (Back to the Basics of Love),” the Holy Trinity of country music includes Willie himself, Hank Williams, and the somewhat lesser-known Mickey Newbury. The latter’s 1969 album Looks Like Rain might get chalked up as a record by a songwriter’s songwriter, but his music served as an offering to pop, soul, and country singers alike: Jennings, Kenny Rogers, Solomon Burke, Roy Orbison, and Jerry Lee Lewis all covered his songs. He became the spiritual forefather for the outlaw country movement, and later for indie singers like Bill Callahan and Will Oldham. Here, Newbury accompanies his songs of unbearable heartbreak with acoustic guitar, but he also couches them in church choirs and sitar, as well as the sounds of chimes, rain, and distant trains, creating a singular album that might best be described as ambient country. –Andy Beta",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QGbAwQvBuQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65008ff29d1ddc41f1e80746/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/183-Mickey-Newbury-Looks-Like-Rain.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mickey_Newbury-Looks_Like_Rain_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,182,The Soft Machine,The Soft Machine (1968),Probe,"Probe Soft Machine’s self-titled debut album is a Rosetta Stone for adventurous rock music. The British band’s founding lineup—bassist and baritone vocalist Kevin Ayers, shirtless drummer and devastating high tenor singer Robert Wyatt, organist Mike Ratledge, and Australian guitarist Daevid Allen—ranked alongside Pink Floyd in London’s psychedelic underground. After visa issues forced Allen out, the remaining trio toured with the Jimi Hendrix Experience and finally cut an LP with Hendrix’s producer. The Soft Machine unites psych-rock frenzy with modern-jazz improvisation, a refreshingly new idea at the time, and the joyful medley kicked off by opener “Hope for Happiness” still breathes with discovery. Better yet is the Ayers-led “We Did It Again,” a brutishly minimalist link between the Kinks’ “You Really Got Me” and krautrock’s motorik that could stretch out to a trance-inducing 40 minutes live. Today, the Soft Machine are known as pioneers of prog-rock, jazz fusion, and the Canterbury scene, and their members have enjoyed fruitful avant-garde careers. This debut captures a pregnant moment when all paths remained open. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oac-wACVTtY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65009032299cfecb59445199/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/182-%2520The-Soft-Machine-The-Soft-Machine.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Soft_Machine-The_Soft_Machine_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,181,Lesley Gore,I’ll Cry If I Want To (1963),Mercury,"Mercury Lesley Gore’s debut album, which she began recording when she was just 16, follows a party attended by a teenage love triangle: herself, her beau Johnny, and that interloper Judy. For a record that kicks off with seven songs about sobbing, I’ll Cry If I Want To maintains an impressively consistent, candied sweetness throughout; produced by Quincy Jones, the album epitomizes the sound of early-1960s girl-group pop, airtight in structure as it soars, dreamy-eyed, through tales of young love and loss. Gore eases through shimmery choruses and lovelorn ballads, but she also embraces despair, spite, and other less lovely parts of being a young woman. Before she released the second-wave feminist anthem “You Don’t Own Me,” Gore was, in a way, already carving out room for women within the narrow parameters of girl-group femininity. –Thea Ballard",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCOvsd-AQuE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500907800c361fe1f460f00/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/181-Lesley-Gore-I%25E2%2580%2599ll-Cry-If-I-Want-To.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lesley_Gore-Ill_Cry_If_I_Want_To_1963.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,180,Wilson Pickett,The Exciting Wilson Pickett (1966),Atlantic,"Atlantic Despite his charismatically gruff vocals and emphatic style, Wilson Pickett was just one more struggling R&B singer until Atlantic Records sent him down to Stax studios in 1965. There, he recorded his career-making “In the Midnight Hour” and “634-5789 (Soulsville U.S.A.),” among other hits. But Pickett alienated his fellow musicians in Memphis, to the point where Stax president Jim Stewart nixed further recording there. So the singer trekked even further south to Muscle Shoals, Ala., where he recorded at the legendary FAME Studio. Pickett’s third album chronicles that journey, playing like a battle between the Stax house band and the FAME crew. The edge may go to the Alabamans, mostly for Roger Hawkins’ relentless drums on “Land of 1,000 Dances,” but as a whole The Exciting Wilson Pickett helped distinguish Southern soul as grittier, rawer, and more immediate than its northern and Midwestern counterparts. The album established Pickett as a major star, a compelling bandleader who could mold these dynamic groups into his own vision. –Stephen M. Deusner",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDurLIXSzec,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650090b8e1736377acbdb2b2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/180-Wilson-Pickett-The-Exciting-Wilson-Pickett.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Wilson_Pickett-The_Exciting_Wilson_Pickett_1966.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,179,Art Ensemble of Chicago,Message to Our Folks (1969),BYG,"BYG In the spring of 1969, Lester Bowie moved his band, the Art Ensemble, to Paris. To afford the tickets, the Chicago trumpeter sold his furniture. “He put an ad in the [Chicago] Defender,” collaborator Roscoe Mitchell recalled in 2015. “‘Musician sells out.’” By July, the group found itself at the Pan African Cultural Festival, where they rubbed elbows with other avant-garde jazz composers, Nina Simone, and the Black Panther Party leader Eldridge Cleaver. Message to Our Folks was compiled during an intense week of recording sessions in the French capital with musicians the Art Ensemble met at the festival. Equal parts gospel, bebop, and abstract dissonance, Message pays homage to jazz music’s foundation while reaching for outer space, offering a shining example of unfiltered black art and compelling Afrofuturist music in the vein of Sun Ra. The Art Ensemble’s music remains difficult to grasp, but the spirit of it—the complex sonic arrangements, the “all for one” ethos—can be heard in modern-day jazz leaders like Kamasi Washington and Shabaka Hutchings. –Marcus J. Moore",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tnUByfa_YA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500ae19e1736377acbdb2bc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/179-Art-Ensemble-of-Chicago-Message-to-Our-Folks.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Art_Ensemble_of_Chicago-Message_to_Our_Folks_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,178,Wendy Carlos,Switched-On Bach (1968),Columbia,"Columbia The earliest electronic music was equal parts experimental art and temperamental science project. When Wendy Carlos recorded this suite of Bach pieces, she could only play around one measure at a time before her delicate synthesizer fell out of tune. She worked with inventor Robert Moog himself to build her prototype, a decade before touch-sensitive keyboards became standard. The nuance of Carlos’ playing here feels miraculous: “Prelude and Fugue No. 7” manages to segue from crystallized harmony to dainty counterpoint, while “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” sheds its usual stately ceremony, trilling the melody like a bird. Switched-On Bach sold more copies than any previous classical album, bringing a mass audience to an alien medium. Her choice of material had its strange logic: Writing to glorify God, Bach often composed with no particular instrument in mind. He never heard a synth’s unearthly tones, or a drum machine’s divine precision, but his notes reveal the beauty of every device. Long before music melted into data, Carlos presided over a kind of transcendence. –Chris Randle",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500ae56e1736377acbdb2be/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/178-Wendy-Carlos-Switched-On-Bach.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Wendy_Carlos-Switched-On_Bach_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,177,Herbie Hancock,Empyrean Isles (1964),Blue Note,"Blue Note Pianist Herbie Hancock was already an elite jazz session player when he led this set for Blue Note. Trumpeter Freddie Hubbard had likewise distinguished himself as a post-bop player with an edge by working with drummer Art Blakey and avant-garde reed player Eric Dolphy. Here, joined by some of Hancock’s rhythm section colleagues from Miles Davis’ quintet, they could have turned any group of tunes into one hell of an album. But Hancock was also hard at work on his compositional craft. His four original pieces on Empyrean Isles prompt motifs based on brisk chord changes as well as scale-based improvisation. Nearly two decades before his embrace of turntablism on “Rockit,” Hancock was already signaling his intention to swing between radically different formal designs. –Seth Colter Walls",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHhD4PD75zY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500af19299cfecb594451cd/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/177-Herbie-Hancock-Empyrean-Isles.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Herbie_Hancock-Empyrean_Isles_1964.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,176,Townes Van Zandt,Townes Van Zandt (1969),Poppy,"Poppy In the late 1960s, when he was a hard-luck troubadour gigging around Texas and Tennessee, Townes Van Zandt was something of a cult figure: a songwriter already being likened to the great Hank Williams by admirers like Emmylou Harris. Such a comparison cuts both ways, emphasizing the graceful economy of his lyrics and the Hill Country lonesomeness in his vocals, but also acknowledging the self-destructive tendencies that ultimately undermined his career. On Van Zandt’s third record, he was still figuring himself out, so he took another go at “For the Sake of the Song,” the title track from his 1968 album about a woman who won’t stop singing sad songs to her old man. He similarly recut “I’ll Be Here in the Morning” and “Waiting Around to Die,” the latter arguably the saddest outlaw defense country music has devised. He largely dispenses with the florid arrangements of his previous albums, stripping every song down to its essentials: his dexterous picking, that glorious Lone Star warble, and the occasional flourish of flute or pedal steel. Like all of his records, this one failed to find anything resembling a mainstream audience, but so many years later, it has become the bedrock of his legacy. –Stephen M. Deusner",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8GGwzt5WIw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500af63299cfecb594451cf/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/176-Townes-Van-Zandt-Townes-Van-Zandt.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Townes_Van_Zandt-Townes_Van_Zandt_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,175,Ella Fitzgerald / Count Basie,Ella and Basie! (1963),Verve,"Verve Truly, the album should be called Ella and Basie and Quincy. Count Basie and Ella Fitzgerald had been winding around each other in elegant, wayward jazz-royalty circles for a few years, but it took a young Quincy Jones, then under Basie’s wing, to pull these two forces into the same orbit for a full album. Together, they cut one of the most enduring and beloved records to bear either Fitzgerald’s or Basie’s name. Jones’ arrangements make the off-kilter chemistry between Fitzgerald and Basie’s band crackle to life: As musicians, they had almost too much in common. The horns in his band punched with a lead singer’s brio, while she sang like a horn, winding and unpredictable, the words mere containers for the sounds she made. Fitzgerald’s trail of records is long and studded with forgettables, but on Ella and Basie!, she is at her peak—mercurial, tart, apple-wry. She worms her way into the deep pockets of space that Basie’s band leaves for her on “Them There Eyes” and wails her way into the stratosphere, sounding drunk on the possibilities open before them. –Jayson Greene",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4di3edcDpWc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500afba00c361fe1f460f37/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/175-Ella%2520FitzgeraldCount-Basie-Ella-and-Basie!.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ella_Fitzgerald__Count_Basie-Ella_and_Basie_1963.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,174,Patty Waters,Sings (1965),ESP-Disk,"ESP-Disk The first side of Patty Waters’ debut album offers seven short, subdued tunes intoned solemnly over hushed piano playing—masterful but easy to miss, given what happens on the other side. As Burton Greene, the pianist who accompanied Waters, put it, “Patty kept going on with the ballad routine. I thought, this chick is sitting on a big egg; this egg is going to be some kind of monster, and I’ve got to help her hatch that egg.” That egg turns out to be a 14-minute interpretation of the traditional song “Black Is the Color of My True Love’s Hair,” and Waters cracks it wide open. After a few minutes spent meditating on the melody, accompanied by Greene’s trio, she unleashes every tone and noise her voice can conjure. Her burning strangulations of the word “black” are so direct and bracing, she seems predict the fury soon to erupt in anti-war protests and riots around America. But she also taps into something universal: the extreme energy and emotions that only artistic freedom can access. –Marc Masters",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHwkx92wHPA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500b04e50a6829ae558f851/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/174-Patty-Waters-Sings.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Patty_Waters-Sings_1965.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,173,Duke Ellington,Far East Suite (1967),RCA Victor,"RCA Victor Is this a linked “suite,” or just a bunch of songs? Does it really carry a significant “far east” influence? These questions are fun to ponder, though the answers aren’t hugely consequential. Because what Far East Suite does offer is one of the pianist’s large ensembles in a set of music co-composed with the Duke’s longtime collaborator, Billy Strayhorn. Which means it is automatically part of one of the most exalted catalogs in American music. During “Bluebird of Delhi (Mynha),” a clarinet theme that may seem slight at first ends up taking majestic flight over the ensemble’s delirious riffs. And the ballad “Isfahan,” a feature tailored by Ellington and Strayhorn for the altoist Johnny Hodges, has long been recognized as a tour de force saxophone performance. Ellington created some essential music after Strayhorn died later that year, but this final moment in their long collaboration is a pinnacle of their poetically swinging genius. –Seth Colter Walls",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFCku__tLM0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500b08678e14fa92af4c73b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/173-Duke-Ellington-Far-East-Suite.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Duke_Ellington-Far_East_Suite_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,172,Eddie Palmieri,Justicia (1969),ESP-Disk,"ESP-Disk The montuno—the interlocked bass and percussion groove of Cuban son music—has been convincingly ID’ed as the sonic godfather of the drum-and-bass breaks that characterize American funk. Eddie Palmieri’s 1960s releases reunited these divided streams. Justicia represents the peak of this period, combining the latest Cuban dance craze (a rhythm known simply as “Mozambique”) with elements of blues, soul, and psychedelic rock: the ahead-of-its-time “My Spiritual Indian” wanders around a hypnotic, bluesy chord before descending into a sublime Afro-funk groove augmented by Thelonious Monk-inspired piano work. “Verdict on Judge Street” pushes Palmieri’s jazz conceits even further, building up plonky, dissonant ghost notes that trip over each other in contradictory rhythms yet still remain danceable. Tying these elements together is Justicia’s unapologetically activist vision and the soulcat slang of late ’60s pro-black, anti-colonial street protests; it peppers the English portions of the LP’s mostly Spanish lyrics. There are clunky moments, like Palmieri’s somewhat wooden vocal cadence on the spoken-word “Everything Is Everything,” a sort of English-language key to both the album’s politics and its kitchen-sink genre fusion. Yet Justicia remains a formidable testament to Palmieri’s inventive powers. –Edwin “STATS” Houghton",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiBWZ2am48Y,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500b0c47035c6082dade485/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/172-Eddie-Palmieri-Justicia.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Eddie_Palmieri-Justicia_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,171,Various Artists,Golden Rain (1969),Nonesuch,"Nonesuch Kecak (pronounced “ket-chak”) is a percussive Balinese chant performed by some 100 men squatting in concentric circles, all hooting and hollering in simian syncopation. Although rooted in an exorcism ritual that dramatizes a monkey-filled tale from the ancient Hindu epic The Ramayana, the music and dance performance is a relatively modern phenomenon dating to the 1930s. Self-described “musical tourist” David Lewiston included a kecak track on all three albums of Balinese field recordings he released on Nonesuch, but the 22-minute side B of 1969’s Golden Rain is the iconic example. Lewiston taped performances in all their messy vitality, achieving an in-the-moment energy more reminiscent of jazz or punk than lab-coated ethnomusicology. Golden Rain’s “The Ramayana Monkey Dance” remains as astounding now as it must have been for late-night FM audiences. The first side of the compilation is given over to two luminously chiming tracks of gamelan, the trance-like Indonesian traditional music played on marimba-like gongs. The Paris Exposition of 1889, when Claude Debussy encountered Javanese gamelan, has long been considered a turning point for modern music. For the vinyl era, Golden Rain stands as a similar epiphany. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2y5vC8T23E,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500b11100c361fe1f460f3b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/171-Various-Artists-Golden-Rain.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Various_Artists-Golden_Rain_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,170,Roland Kirk,The Inflated Tear (1967),Atlantic,"Atlantic He was a showman, an eccentric, an advocate, and a scholar—but at the core of Roland Kirk’s appeal, there’s the staggering fact that his performance is the sound of one man harmonizing, thanks to his striking ability to play multiple horns at the same time. One of his earliest records for Atlantic, The Inflated Tear inaugurates his idea of jazz as what he, like Nina Simone, called “black classical music,” a wide-ranging tradition that included everything from the cutting-edge avant-garde to generations-old musical traditions to contemporary pop styles. He could start with a melodic and thematic premise as simple as the slow march of “The Black and Crazy Blues” or a base as familiar as Duke Ellington’s “Creole Love Call” and guide his band to places that tapped the deepest spaces of mood-altering sonics. The purity of lighthearted joy on the flute-led tribute to his young son, “A Laugh for Rory,” the manic giddiness of “Lovellevelliloqui”—it’s all overwhelming, so it’s even more of a rush when Kirk goes on one of his spectacular solo runs, like the Coltrane-rivaling tenor sax fusillade of “Many Blessings.” –Nate Patrin",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kkajti9LoZw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500b15778e14fa92af4c73d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/170-Roland-Kirk-The-Inflated-Tear.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Roland_Kirk-The_Inflated_Tear_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,169,The Sonics,Here Are the Sonics!!! (1965),Etiquett,"Etiquett Rock’n’roll can be a lot of things, but for a certain snapshot of mid-’60s teenage delinquency—an inner world fueled by shaggy Rat Fink scuzziness and drive-in horror double features—the genre reached its ideal form in the Sonics. They weren’t necessarily the first garage rockers, but nobody embodied the style better, from the moment their debut single “The Witch” peeled fake woodgrain off speaker cabinets in 1964. The formula, as ruthlessly displayed on their 1965 debut LP Here Are the Sonics!!!, was simple: Make every instrument hit with the force of a brand new Pontiac GTO smashing through a guardrail. And if you’re going to get that raucous, make sure you’ve got a frontman like Jerry Roslie, whose range stretches from a demented bellow to an unhinged shriek—all in the service of songs about getting your kicks from drinking poison, tearing around in a “turn-on red” Mustang, and absolutely losing your mind over rejection. Throw in some rock and R&B standards performed as though they were all written by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins at his coffin-busting wildest, and you’ve got the big bang explosion that set the standard for everyone from the Cramps to Nirvana to the White Stripes. –Nate Patrin",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVWAE6n_G4Q,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500b1b6299cfecb594451d1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/169-The-Sonics-Here-Are-the-Sonics!!!.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Sonics-Here_Are_the_Sonics_1965.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,168,The Peter Brötzmann Octet,Machine Gun (1968),BRQ,"BRQ When hard-blowing free jazz reaches a certain intensity, you start to wonder how far it can go and what its limitations of expression might be. Machine Gun is one idea of how such an impassable sonic barrier might present itself. On it, the German saxophonist Peter Brötzmann and seven fellow improvisors—including British saxophonist Evan Parker and Dutch drummer Han Bennink, who would all make a serious mark in European free jazz—are still tethered to jazz proper, with variations on themes and melody and groove, but the result sounds closer to what we now call noise music. Machine Gun is a roaring mass of energy that serves as an auditory Rorschach test: Given its title and its initial release during a violent, tumultuous, and war-wrecked year, the album can easily inspire fear, horror, and images of violence. But its spirit of collective invention, and the sheer delight of musicians pushing their instruments beyond their design, also yields an equally vivid joy. It’s the sound of eight creative people confronting musical barriers and working together to annihilate them. –Mark Richardson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxTZ2qA4brE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500b1e99d1ddc41f1e8077e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/168-The-Peter-Bro%25CC%2588tzmann-Octet-Machine-Gun.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Peter_Brtzmann_Octet-Machine_Gun_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,167,The Impressions,Keep On Pushing (1964),ABC-Paramount,"ABC-Paramount With “Keep On Pushing,” penned in the middle of the civil rights movement, Curtis Mayfield channeled his gospel roots into a moment of motivation. The song’s message of strength and persistence had been stewing in him his whole life—a meditation on love, faith, existing on the streets of segregated Chicago, and how he thought things ought to be. Aided by his bandmates Fred Cash and Sam Gooden’s harmonies, Johnny Pate’s horn arrangements, and of course, the warm flourishes of his electric guitar, Mayfield’s stunning falsetto exuded the power and strength he preached. Keep On Pushing was the Impressions’ first attempt at a proper album—their previous records were essentially singles collections. Every song is crafted just as beautifully as the title track, with Pate’s expert arrangements backing the trio’s earworm harmonies. Mayfield cements his soul icon status with songs about love affairs that are new (“Talking About My Baby”), forbidden (“I Ain’t Supposed To”), and gone (“Long, Long Winter”). And while Chicago blues is certainly present, gospel is the key ingredient. One year after Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, the Impressions’ version of the spiritual standard “Amen” is arranged as a march. Mayfield’s first proper LP with the Impressions hinted at the artistic intent that would follow: Not long after its release, the Impressions would further soundtrack the movement with “People Get Ready,” “We’re a Winner,” and several other classics. With Keep On Pushing, Mayfield became a star, and it was just the beginning. –Evan Minsker",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQdkPVGs8RQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500b21f9dde163bde31d4d1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/167-%2520The-Impressions-Keep-On-Pushing.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Impressions-Keep_On_Pushing_1964.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,166,The Byrds,The Notorious Byrd Brothers (1968),Columbia,"Columbia In 1968, the Byrds could be described as Sgt. Pepper’s-curious: a band longing for experimentation but still in touch with their jangly roots. There are moments when they sound like a conservative dad’s worst nightmare: aloof, stoned, and gently rebelling. “Things that seemed to be solid are not,” goes one trippy line from “Change Is Now,” and the song’s guitar solo is the sound of thousands of high school longhairs being threatened with military service. But for every early, intrepid use of a Moog synthesizer, there’s something like the gentle cover of Gerry Goffin and Carole King’s “Goin’ Back,” which came with its own confession: “A little bit of courage is all we lack.” The Notorious Byrd Brothers catches the band in a space between, it’s the sound of psychedelic pop’s sugars fermenting, but not yet turning into alcohol. –Andrew Gaerig",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aG_4f1vuZY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500b26650a6829ae558f856/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/166-The-Byrds-The-Notorious-Byrd-Brothers.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Byrds-The_Notorious_Byrd_Brothers_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,165,Sonny Rollins,The Bridge (1962),RCA Victor,"RCA Victor After releasing over 20 albums from 1953 to 1959, Sonny Rollins found himself being named in the same breath as John Coltrane and Miles Davis. But at the height of his fame, the tenor saxophonist disappeared from the jazz scene. Convalescing from the stresses of addiction and success, he began practicing on the Williamsburg Bridge’s pedestrian walkway, far from the peering eyes of the world (save the chance passerby). Those three years of meditations led to The Bridge, an album that turns panoramic NYC vistas into ballads and bop of utmost soul. Stylistically, the record doesn’t veer far from the hard bop of Rollins’ celebrated 1956 LP Saxophone Colossus, but it digs a little deeper. The nimble title track, in particular, is a snapshot of his new level of control as his solo winds through a series of tempo changes. While his peers started to explore the structural limits of the genre with free jazz in the early ’60s, Rollins went further into what he knew, into himself, discovering a fount of grace in the process. –Kevin Lozano",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbfY465lgUY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500b2a4e1736377acbdb2c0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/165-Sonny-Rollins-The-Bridge.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sonny_Rollins-The_Bridge_1962.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,164,The Beatles,A Hard Day’s Night (1964),Parlophone,"Parlophone Beatlemania was well underway when the Fab Four created A Hard Day’s Night; they were also simultaneously filming their first feature, and the flurry of activity forced the songwriting team of John Lennon and Paul McCartney to focus on cranking out their first album of original tunes. Some tracks echo their earlier songs and influences—girl groups, Motown, and even Tin Pan Alley—but by synthesizing these sounds, the Beatles wound up with a style that felt like the start of something new. It’s not just the songs, it’s the grace notes: the double-tracked vocals on “Any Time at All,” the country-rock gait of “I’ll Cry Instead,” the 12-string George Harrison wields throughout. The album also opened the floodgates for all the beat groups and blues combos lying in wait in the UK, ready to cross the Atlantic once America was ready to hear them. Every band in the British Invasion owes a debt not just to the Beatles but to A Hard Day’s Night specifically: It is the record that created a whole new world. –Stephen Thomas Erlewine",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srwxJUXPHvE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500b31b00c361fe1f460f3d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/164-The-Beatles-A-Hard-Day%25E2%2580%2599s-Night.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Beatles-A_Hard_Days_Night_1964.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,163,Big Brother & the Holding Company,Cheap Thrills (1968),Columbia,"Columbia Janis Joplin proved she was an electrifying performer at the Monterey Pop festival, but she didn’t cement her legend until the next year, on the fourth track of Big Brother & the Holding Company’s major-label debut. “Piece of My Heart” is spare for a Big Brother track, with Sam Andrew and James Gurley’s rock guitars forced into the background by Joplin’s annihilating vocals. She squeezes out the chorus as though she is about to tear open her chest cavity. Like the rest of Cheap Thrills, “Piece of My Heart” derives some of its power from John Simon’s canny production. By adding crowd noises to Big Brother’s studio recordings, he creates the impression that Joplin was fronting San Francisco’s rowdiest bar band—climbing up on a table, beer mug in hand, to howl about heartbreak to an audience of emotional drunks. On “Turtle Blues,” a ballad that mingles old-school blues piano with nimble guitar riffs, you can hear a glass shatter. The first 10 seconds of “Ball and Chain,” which transforms Big Mama Thornton’s classic into a languid acid-rock jam, sound like a false start. These moments could have felt like gimmicks if Joplin’s sincerity and fervor hadn’t endowed the album with such intimacy. –Judy Berman",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEAlRCg5haM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500b3507035c6082dade487/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/163-Big-Brother-_-the-Holding-Company-Cheap-Thrills.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Big_Brother__the_Holding_Company-Cheap_Thrills_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,162,Dr. John,Gris-Gris (1968),ATCO,"ATCO Mac Rebennack was far from the bayou in 1968. As a session musician in Los Angeles, he sat in with Frank Zappa, Phil Spector, and the Wrecking Crew at the height of the city’s psychedelic heyday, before the Manson family murders cast a pall over the Laurel Canyon dream. But despite being recorded in Spector’s favorite studio, Gold Star, not a sliver of local sun cuts through the mist of Gris-Gris, Rebennack’s debut album as his voodoo-inspired persona Dr. John the Nite Tripper. It’s a direct portal to his hometown of New Orleans, a sinewy swamp-funk jam that simmers together Afro-Caribbean percussion, earthy congas, whirling electric guitars, and pernicious flutes. Dr. John proves instantly at ease on opener “Gris-Gris Gumbo Ya Ya,” purring as he proclaims himself “the last of the best” medicine men, a French Quarter Rasputin as shifty as he is seductive. From there, he offers a collection of eccentric pleasures—aural charms and amulets amassed to foster luck and ward off evil spirits. –Stacey Anderson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijZUoSsnRPU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500b38d50a6829ae558f858/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/162-Dr.-John-Gris-Gris.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dr_John-Gris-Gris_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,161,White Noise,An Electric Storm (1969),Island,"Island On November 23, 1963, one day after the assassination of JFK, British TV viewers were treated to their first episode of “Doctor Who,” an iconic TV series that would introduce not only the wonders of time travel and lo-fi monsters but also the sonic joys of early electronic music, thanks to the work of the fabled sound effects unit the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Five years later, Radiophonic composers Delia Derbyshire and Brian Hodgson joined classical bass player David Vorhaus in White Noise, an experimental electronic act avant la lettre. Their debut album, An Electric Storm, is astonishingly original. Side A is ostensibly in the lineage of ’60s psychedelic pop, home to the same darkly experimental melodic instincts that drove early Pink Floyd or the United States of America. Here, though, the music is adorned with tape-spliced electronic collages and sound effects, from the scrabbled circus sounds on “Here Come the Fleas” to the unsettling—and very “Doctor Who”—electronic pulses on “Firebird,” which create the impression of shifting sonic sands beneath the listener’s feet. Side B, however, is something entirely new, a terrifying theatrical soundscape of ghastly sonic intensity. One year later, Kraftwerk would release their debut album, but the future of electronic music had already arrived. –Ben Cardew",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ldkzp5PzDE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500b3c7d4b4b48f6ed23677/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/161-White-Noise-An-Electric-Storm.jpg,/dataset/artwork/White_Noise-An_Electric_Storm_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,160,Phil Ochs,I Ain’t Marching Anymore (1965),Elektra,"Elektra Aesthetes who sneer at so-called “protest music” like to pretend that all songs with political agendas are strident statements of the obvious—sermons devoid of beauty, nuance, and especially humor. But Phil Ochs, a self-described “singing journalist” and a Dylan for the student-radical set, recorded some of the funniest, smartest, and prettiest tracks of the ’60s on his second album, I Ain’t Marching Anymore. The hilarious “Draft Dodger Rag” finds a would-be soldier telling the draft board he’s got epilepsy, a ruptured spleen, and, by the way, “I always carry a purse.” He also issues a scathing leftist critique of labor unions’ racism, over violently strummed acoustic guitar, on “Links on the Chain.” Ochs’ most memorable songs make their points through poignant storytelling. The rousing title track is an allegory of a mythical soldier who’s spent over 150 years fighting for America and can no longer stomach imperialist violence. “Here’s to the State of Mississippi” closes the album with a vividly painted panorama of enforced ignorance, systemic bigotry, and police violence. These songs succeed as both art and political critique; it’s just unfortunate that, 50 years later, not one of them sounds like the relic of a less enlightened time. –Judy Berman",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRU_ruqnR6Q,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500b40d78e14fa92af4c73f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/160-Phil-Ochs-I-Ain%25E2%2580%2599t-Marching-Anymore.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Phil_Ochs-I_Aint_Marching_Anymore_1965.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,159,Ray Barretto,Acid (1968),Fania,"Fania Although not nearly as “out there” as its title and artwork suggest, Ray Barretto’s 1968 experiment in Nuyorican soul is nevertheless an essential trip. It’s a missing link between the insanely catchy yet quickly dated Latin boogaloo sound of the early ’60s—a New York phenomenon that Barretto helped take international with his hit “El Watusi”—and the more expansive, Afrocentric Latin sound of the 1970s. Its strongest soul/boogaloo tracks have a Memphis-via-Harlem swing that captures the fierce, aspirational joy of mid-’60s soul. Still, these moments are ultimately outshone by the pure, virtuosic salsa workout of “El Nuevo Barretto,” which opens the album. Its combination of Cuban roots and R&B vamping clearly foreshadows the more mainstream Latin rock of Carlos Santana. But if Acid is notable for its prophetic fusion, its real treasures—the bass-heavy, eight-minute jam “Espiritu Libre” and the minimalist title track, with its relentless Afro-Cuban drums—are not so much ahead of their time as they are removed from time, difficult to assign to a particular decade or hemisphere. –Edwin “STATS” Houghton",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mhq5cmJG61Y,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500b43ee1736377acbdb2c2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/159-Ray-Barretto-Acid.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ray_Barretto-Acid_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,158,Alice Coltrane,A Monastic Trio (1968),Impulse!,"Impulse! Alice Coltrane’s solo debut, A Monastic Trio, is also her tribute to her husband John Coltrane, who died the year before—a star-is-born/star-is-extinguished moment that remains unique in music. Anchored by Jimmy Garrison’s heavy bass frequencies, which take the modal structure of blues into something beyond it, its compositions sound like death. Coltrane’s resonant harp sets an ecstatic base for the strangled cries of Pharoah Sanders’ bass clarinet and tenor sax improvisations, and the album’s opening passages convey struggle and discord before giving way to celestial string trills and a lighter second side. Whether this sonic transformation is meant to embody John’s spiritual journey or Alice coming to terms with her grief, it is the rare instrumental album that is a difficult listen, both for the emotions it confronts and its willingness to push the boundaries of conventional music. It is equally difficult to forget. –Edwin “STATS” Houghton",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szyTT-YbAIk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500b47d9dde163bde31d4d3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/158-%2520Alice-Coltrane-A-Monastic-Trio.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Alice_Coltrane-A_Monastic_Trio_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,157,Merle Haggard,Mama Tried (1968),Capitol,"Capitol By 1968, Merle Haggard had made a comfortable niche singing honky-tonk-influenced songs about tough stuff like being a drunk and going it alone. At sharp but comfortable odds with the orchestral dressings of late-’60s Nashville—“countrypolitan,” they called it—Mama Tried is an album of difficult situations described with frankness and care, where a man sings of remembering his father’s hands broken and bleeding from work or the sight of his mother bedridden with disease his family was too poor to treat. At no moment does Haggard perform with undue sentiment; at no moment is his sound calibrated for pity. If anything, there’s something dreadful about Haggard’s ability to get on with it. True believers in sin, his narrators don’t bother seeking absolution through song. They wait for God, and already have a pretty good idea of what God’ll say. Blame the career-defining title track for inspiring hundreds, possibly thousands of tattoos worn by people with a dozen stories to tell but no good way to say they’re sorry. –Mike Powell",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jz0itz4dm1g,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500b5247035c6082dade489/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/157-Merle-Haggard-Mama-Tried.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Merle_Haggard-Mama_Tried_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,156,Ornette Coleman Trio,Live at the “Golden Circle” Stockholm Vol. 1 (1965),Blue Note,"Blue Note Ornette Coleman’s music is a study in contradiction: He questioned structure and his ideas launched the free jazz revolution, but he also had an infallible ear for melodies you can hum. He developed densely theoretical justifications for his boundary-pushing music, but his tone and approach were indebted to early days spent playing blues and R&B in bars. He was greatly admired by virtuoso players, but he was drawn to untutored playing, whether via his own experiments on trumpet and violin or by recruiting his 10-year-old son to drum on a record. It was never possible to boil Coleman’s music down to one or two concerns, but so much of what made him remarkable can be heard on At the “Golden Circle” Stockholm Vol. 1. After an early run of quartet records with provocative titles (The Shape of Jazz to Come, Change of the Century, This Is Our Music), Coleman spent the rest of his career experimenting with instrumentation, arrangements, and settings. His 1965 tour of Europe found him performing in a trio with bassist David Izenzon and drummer Charles Moffett. With Coleman’s alto saxophone alone in front, he indulges his boundless melodic imagination, treating his new tunes like putty to be reshaped with each passing bar. His horn bellows, squeaks, and wails while also communicating on a microscopic level, with subtle shifts in phrasing and intonation that bring to mind the human voice. Golden Circle (and its equally fine, if further out, Vol. 2 companion) serves as both a terrific introduction to Coleman’s music and a towering highlight from his first decade. –Mark Richardson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRkgQjGYAEM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500b5869dde163bde31d4d5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/156-Ornette-Coleman-Trio-Live-at-the-%25E2%2580%259CGolden-Circle%25E2%2580%259D-Stockholm-Vol.%25201.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ornette_Coleman_Trio-Live_at_the_Golden_Circle_Stockholm_Vol_1_1965.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,155,Moondog,Moondog (1969),Columbia Masterworks,"Columbia Masterworks The release of Moondog’s second self-titled album followed a 12-year hiatus, though in that time the iconoclastic poet and musician certainly wasn’t silent: Installed, as always, in his Viking garb on the streets of New York, he was in the company of Beat poets and members of all corners of the city’s musical avant-garde. (He even lived with Philip Glass for a period.) This album sees him trading in the shuffling modesty of his older recordings for a series of fully realized micro-symphonies that nevertheless retain his loving, oddball spirit. Many songs double as tributes to artist friends and inspirations: “Witch of Endor” was composed for a Martha Graham ballet; “Symphonique 6 (Good for Goodie)” and its woodwind swing nods to Benny Goodman; and “Lament I, ‘Bird’s Lament’” pays tribute to Charlie Parker with a free-ranging alto sax solo. Leaning as much on the bombast of European classicism as it does on the new rhythms coming out of New York minimalism, Moondog absorbs the essence of an era while peering beyond it. –Thea Ballard",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxrr3Rh2nmc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500b5c350a6829ae558f85a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/155-Moondog-Moondog.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Moondog-Moondog_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,154,The Delfonics,La La Means I Love You (1968),Philly Groove,"Philly Groove For most of the ’60s, soul music was defined by the pop-minded sounds of Detroit and the bluesier rhythms of Memphis, but with this album, Philadelphia elbowed its way to the table. Spearheaded by producer/conductor Thom Bell, the Delfonics’ fastidiously orchestrated debut introduced the world to an imagining of R&B so suave and gentlemanly, it made the tuxedoed crooners of Motown sound like motorcycle-riding bad boys. At a time when soul was becoming faster and funkier, this effortlessly smooth group made an album with two Burt Bacharach covers on it. The Delfonics’ sound became the foundation for some of the best soul music of the early ’70s, much of it also recorded with Bell, including classics from the Spinners and the O’Jays. As durable as the template proved to be, though, few of the Philly soul full-lengths that followed cast quite the same spell as La La Means I Love You, nor committed so completely to its pristine, white-marble vision. It’s still impossible not to be swept away by the sheer decadence of it all. –Evan Rytlewski",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5rarHgxGAA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500b67300c361fe1f460f40/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/154-The-Delfonics-La-La-Means-I-Love-You.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Delfonics-La_La_Means_I_Love_You_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,153,Max Roach,We Insist! Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite (1960),Candid,"Candid In 1959, drummer Max Roach and writer Oscar Brown Jr. began working on a civil rights-themed suite for jazz ensemble and chorus. They planned to debut it in 1963, in the 100th anniversary year of the Emancipation Proclamation. But when sit-in demonstrations against segregation began, Roach and his collaborator moved up their timetable. The urgency of the two 1960 recording sessions that resulted in We Insist! Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite still prove dramatically gripping, just as the political themes that spurred the bebop drummer remain salient. On “Driva’ Man,” Brown’s lyrics sketch the practices of sexual assault on plantations. Vocalist Abbey Lincoln handles Roach’s world-weary melody with defiant grace as saxophonist Coleman Hawkins projects mournfully. On the wordless “Triptych,” Lincoln creates a sense of drama and resolution by moving through textures of solemnity, rebellion, and repose. Whether in the company of a Nigerian percussionist (“All Africa”) or working with bop stylists like the trumpeter Booker Little, Roach’s playing is as sharp as his arrangements. By building successfully on jazz’s previous political messages (including Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit”), We Insist! played a catalyzing role in the music’s next decade of protest. –Seth Colter Walls",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHV9JnBVpcs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500b69d9d1ddc41f1e80780/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/153-Max-Roach-We-Insist!-Max-Roach%25E2%2580%2599s-Freedom-Now-Suite.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Max_Roach-We_Insist_Max_Roachs_Freedom_Now_Suite_1960.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,152,Jacques Brel,Ces Gens-là (1965),Barclay,"Barclay Jacques Brel defected from the bourgeoisie as a young man, abandoning his stuffy Belgian family for the cabaret nightclubs of 1950s Paris. By 1966, he was an international icon, packing concert halls in New York, London, and throughout the Soviet Union. That year, a dozen before his death, the master songwriter threatened to retire from music, but not before releasing Ces Gens-là, a slippery chanson classic. In charismatic vignettes, Brel presents a cast of flawed and unreliable narrators—jealous lovers, inspired drunks, would-be superstars. His theatrical delivery conceals intimate observations, and he exorcises his characters’ unrealized dreams just when we might question their motives. On the song “Jef,” strings lurch across a tightrope of discord, mirroring the precarious friendship between a heartbroken alcoholic and his stargazing, gutter-dwelling savior. On the title track, the narrator deliciously satirizes a family of bourgeois degenerates: imitates their porcine soup-slobbering, laments their impatience for a rich relative’s death. As strings part the sky, he announces the family’s gravest crime: forbidding his relationship with Frida, the family daughter. Was his vicious class commentary a farce? Either way, a final twist somewhat validates their reservations: Our narrator—passionate, lovably flawed—half-confesses to having slit cats’ throats. “They didn’t smell good,” he reasons. Brel could not, at the very least, be accused of writing stock characters. –Jazz Monroe",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZh2ggOfglU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500b6e67035c6082dade48c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/152-Jacques-Brel-Ces-Gens-la%25CC%2580.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jacques_Brel-Ces_Gens-l_1965.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,151,La Monte Young / Marian Zazeela,The Black Record (1969),Edition X,"Edition X By 1969, La Monte Young already had a significant influence on the trajectory of popular music. A guru of drone switched on by the hum of electrical generators and high winds that surrounded his childhood home in rural Idaho, come the early ’60s, Young had relocated to New York, where he founded the experimental performance group Theatre of Eternal Music. Among his players was a young John Cale; shortly after, Cale took up his viola as part of a downtown rock band called the Warlocks, soon to be renamed the Velvet Underground, and the rest is history. The Theatre’s ’60s recordings have emerged only as bootlegs, so it’s the so-called Black Record—its unofficial name a reference to the calligraphed cover by Young’s wife, collaborator and fellow Theatre member Marian Zazeela—that stands as the earliest official example of Young’s recorded work. Handily, its two side-long tracks neatly encapsulate Young’s late-’60s process. Untethered from the 12-note Western music vocabulary, the pair experiments with long, droning pitches that seem to collapse time around them. On “31 VII 69 10:26-10:49 PM,” Young and Zazeela vocalize around a single glowing sine wave, while on the flip (“23 VIII 64 2:50:45-3:11 AM”) we hear a gong acquired from the sculptor Robert Morris played with a double bass bow. The result is a yawning metallic void that presages everything from Brian Eno’s ambient music to the amplifier armageddon of Sunn O))). –Louis Pattison",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mv-Ddu3TQx0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500b7289dde163bde31d4d7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/151-La-Monte-Young-Marian-Zazeela-The-Black-Record.jpg,/dataset/artwork/La_Monte_Young__Marian_Zazeela-The_Black_Record_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,150,John Coltrane,Olé Coltrane (1961),Atlantic,"Atlantic Olé Coltrane is a curious record in John Coltrane’s career. It’s his last session as a bandleader for Atlantic; it features one of his largest ensembles, including two bassists—Reggie Workman and Art Davis—and Eric Dolphy on flute. It precedes the spiritual and interstellar exploration of his work for Impulse! Records. Over the previous years, he had developed a method of improvisation, classified by critic Ira Gitler as “sheets of sound,” in which he would vertically and vertiginously stack arpeggios in his solos. So it’s strange that Olé is, in a way, Coltrane’s most horizontal album, if only for how much real estate he cedes to the rhythm and groove. This is especially evident on “Olé,” which unfolds for 18 minutes on a hypnotic rhythm sustained by the fixtures of John Coltrane’s band, pianist McCoy Tyner and drummer Elvin Jones. Workman and Davis, meanwhile, try to destabilize this groove by drawing strange, pulsing magnetic fields and sawing their basses so vigorously, they form long, dark shadows into which the song sinks. When Coltrane finally takes his solo, 13 minutes into the track, what pours out of his saxophone isn’t a toppling structure: Instead, one hears him scraping against the upper limits of his range. It sounds like he’s starting to escape the atmosphere. –Brad Nelson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUSMON8eO9Y,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500b764e1736377acbdb2c4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/150-John-Coltrane-Ole%25CC%2581-Coltrane.jpg,/dataset/artwork/John_Coltrane-Ol_Coltrane_1961.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,149,Son House,Father of Folk Blues (1965),Columbia,"Columbia Eddie James “Son” House, Jr. did not sell his soul; he was not blinded by lye. If he seems less mythologized than the average bluesman of his era and stature, it’s largely because he was alive to record this album and subsequently receive polite applause at colleges and folk festivals for a decade afterward. But there’s no questioning his bona fides: House was blues bedrock enough to have once shooed away a young Robert Johnson. His rediscovery in the ’60s resulted in Father of Folk Blues, an album that’s even more stripped-down than his ’40s Library of Congress sessions with Alan Lomax, driven by his slinky steel guitar work and deceptively sweet vocals. More than a guitar player, House was a singer and a writer: Eight of this album’s nine songs are credited to him, and “Death Letter” and “Levee Camp Moan” have become classics in their own right. He may have never made a deal with the devil, but House paid a different cost, taking terrible jobs as a chef and railroad porter, waiting until someone cared. Father of Folk Blues is the payoff. –Andrew Gaerig",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDaom3evUGk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500b7ea00c361fe1f460f42/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/149-Son-House-Father-of-Folk-Blues.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Son_House-Father_of_Folk_Blues_1965.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,148,Roberta Flack,First Take (1969),Atlantic,"Atlantic Roberta Flack’s singing is like a fever. Even as her vocals gather mass and volume, there is the sense that she is communicating something so intimate and honest that it burns from the inside. She returns to certain phrases and words in a way that widens their definitions; on her glacial recording of the Donny Hathaway/Robert Ayers–written “Our Ages or Our Hearts,” from her debut album First Take, she sings, “I thought… I thought we had a love that was true.” The second “thought” is broader than the first, drawing the unabridged history of a relationship into itself. On First Take, Flack’s singing and spacious piano playing blend soul, blues, jazz, and folk. The arrangements are dense, but they almost exclusively express themselves in flourishes; in the opening track, “Compared to What,” the horn section abruptly sprouts out of the chorus. It’s a remarkable song on a remarkable debut, Flack expressing political and personal dissatisfaction while barely raising her voice. “Hate that human/Love that stinking mutt,” she sings in an angry simmer. “Try to make it real/But compared to what?” The fire in her voice flickers beyond a composed surface, but it still burns. –Brad Nelson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C39ltA1nvUc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500b84978e14fa92af4c741/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/148-Roberta-Flack-First-Take.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Roberta_Flack-First_Take_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,147,Don Cherry,Eternal Rhythm (1969),MPS,"MPS A crucial player in the birth of free jazz in the early ’60s, trumpeter Don Cherry discovered an even freer world on Eternal Rhythm. Recorded in Berlin in November 1968, the album found him working with a transcontinental, all-star cast that included guitarist Sonny Sharrock and avant-garde French percussionist Jacques Thollot, establishing the Oklahoma City-born Cherry as a joyous visionary and global intermediary. Finding shapes on the far side of complete freeness, the LP’s two side-long suites encompass clouds of group improvisation but also mini ensembles, coalescing motifs, and solo flute pieces. Throughout, the constant chime of melodic percussion gives the music a rolling lightness, even as the ensemble hits full density on “Autumn Melody,” an earthy grounding for Sharrock’s splintering guitar. Open-eared and timeless in spirit, Eternal Rhythm remains a glowing doorway to music from the other side. –Jesse Jarnow",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gm6RpQuS3_M,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500b86c78e14fa92af4c743/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/147-Don-Cherry-Eternal-Rhythm.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Don_Cherry-Eternal_Rhythm_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,146,Jorge Ben,Samba Esquema Novo (1963),Philips,"Philips Though most widely known for launching the endlessly covered “Mas, Que Nada,” Jorge Ben’s debut album is a bossa nova masterpiece rounded out by 11 other equally immortal, if less imitated, songs. Raised in Rio by an Ethiopian mother, the 18-year-old Ben infused fresh blood into the city’s established sound, incorporating a stronger samba influence in his rhythmic guitar style than his predecessors. Likewise, his vocal style was much less restrained, as likely to slide upward into a soaring, yipping cry for joy (“Uála Uálalá,” “A Tamba”) as it was to remain in the quiet, warm lounge tone most associated with the genre. Samba Esquema Novo is one of most distinctive bossa nova albums ever recorded and a tantalizing glimpse into Ben’s unique oeuvre, which straddles bossa, samba, Tropicália, and Afro-funk. His impact as a songwriter and sonic innovator is particularly foreshadowed on the spooky, minor-keyed passages of “Quero Esquecer Você” and “A Tamba.” Though he has often been overlooked in comparison to contemporaries like Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso, and Sergio Mendes, particularly outside Brazil, his contribution is no less major. –Edwin “STATS” Houghton",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8S7-y9p96g,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500b8e7299cfecb594451d4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/146-Jorg-Ben-Samba-Esquema-Novo.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jorge_Ben-Samba_Esquema_Novo_1963.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,145,Archie Shepp,Blasé (1969),BYG,"BYG Before taking up the saxophone, Archie Shepp studied drama, training that proved belatedly useful: The players on Blasé sometimes seem to be trading off monologues, circling each other at his direction. Shepp’s theatrical form of jazz estranges tradition—the first sound heard here is blues harmonica, off-key and dissonant. The hymn “There Is a Balm in Gilead” is pared down to a resounding nothing: muted flugelhorn, piano keys faintly brushed. Like much of the album, one of five Shepp recorded in the same year, it wouldn’t work without the singer Jeanne Lee, who gives that title such ironic sting: “Blasé, ain’t you, daddy?/You, who shot your sperm into me/But never set me free.” Warmth and reproach mingle in her voice, like a handful of cinders. The notes contort while crawling on ahead, intimately menacing. –Chris Randle",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CHSUCIg1oE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500b9239dde163bde31d4d9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/145-Archie-Shepp-Blase%25CC%2581.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Archie_Shepp-Blas_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,144,David Axelrod,Song of Innocence (1968),Capitol,"Capitol In 1968, a former boxer turned producer, composer, and A&R man sets to work on his most ambitious project yet: an orchestral tone poem based around Song of Innocence and of Experience, a book of poems published by the visionary English author William Blake some two centuries before. David Axelrod had previously been the creative force behind the Electric Prunes’ Mass in F Minor, a psychedelic religious opera sung in Latin that all but killed off the hapless garage rockers that were its unlikely vessel. Despite that album’s noble failure, Axelrod somehow assembled an ensemble of some 30 players—including members of L.A.’s hotshot session players the Wrecking Crew—to bring Song of Innocence to life. Baroque and of rarefied atmosphere, “Holy Thursday” and “The Smile” blossom with sumptuous strings, horns, and scorching electric guitar leads. But you can also hear hints of Axelrod the pugilist in the album’s punchy, funk-inflected drum breaks. Song of Innocence was seen by some as a folly, but by the 1990s, Axelrod’s work was being rediscovered by a generation of crate-diggers like DJ Shadow and Madlib, who recognized the holy, beautiful vision writ through his grooves. –Louis Pattison",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hw1oONIzcfM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500b95f00c361fe1f460f44/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/144-David-Axelrod-Song%2520of-Innocence.jpg,/dataset/artwork/David_Axelrod-Song_of_Innocence_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,143,Alexander “Skip” Spence,Oar (1969),Columbia,"Columbia A catalyst behind the early San Francisco rock scene, Alexander “Skip” Spence followed up a stint as the drummer in Jefferson Airplane by joining the star-crossed psych rock outfit Moby Grape. It didn’t go so well: While working on an album in New York, Spence took a fire ax to his bandmates, landing him in the Tombs and, eventually, Bellevue. After his discharge from the mental hospital, he went to Nashville and cut the entirety of Oar in four days with himself on every instrument. By turns shambolic, astonishing, silly, and shattered, the album is a haunting snapshot of an artist mastering country, loose-limbed rock, ghostly gospel, free-love ditties, and drum’n’bass abstraction as his mental state crumbles. There’s no darker portrait of the perils of the psychedelic era. –Andy Beta",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1OAeMwNEGg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500b99684fe4743de69fe7b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/143-Alexander-%25E2%2580%259CSkip%25E2%2580%259D-Spence-Oar.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Alexander_Skip_Spence-Oar_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,142,Frank Sinatra,September of My Years (1965),Reprise,"Reprise The dewy-eyed oldie “It Was a Very Good Year” is on the shortlist of songs that define Frank Sinatra’s midlife resurgence, but the title also describes the year he was having when he sang it. In 1965, at age 50, the Voice got his second wind: He was the subject of the Emmy-winning special Frank Sinatra: A Man and His Music and made his directorial debut in None But the Brave, which he also starred in and produced. He was shadowed by Gay Talese for what would become the mythic Esquire article “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold.” He bought his first Learjet, and two albums he released would go on to win Album of the Year Grammys. As he entered his golden years, Sinatra was solidifying his legend. Even amid this career renaissance, twilight was clearly setting on the storied songman. So it’s fitting that September of My Years, the first of those two Grammy-winners, is a traditional pop standard-bearer about learning to accept growing old. The aging Lothario gazes longingly at young lovers and remembers his conquests, and he gazes reflectively at himself through the looking glass, catching glimpses of the man he once was. The album’s extended metaphor—autumn signaling the coming of the end—presents a bittersweet backdrop for his soul-searching. This collection of sentimental songs from a self-professed playboy feels as essential to his myth as any of the swanky displays of his youth; the writing is wistful and evocative and his voice swells into lush, crescendoing strings. September of My Years is graceful and meditative, willingly accepting of a time-imposed truth: “That world I knew is lost to me.” –Sheldon Pearce",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIH3YVWiLYw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500b9da45471ded722c6bc2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/142-Frank-Sinatra-September-of-My-Years.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Frank_Sinatra-September_of_My_Years_1965.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,141,Shirley and Dolly Collins,Anthems in Eden (1969),Harvest,"Harvest On 1969’s Anthems in Eden, English folk singer Shirley Collins and her sister Dolly delved into the past to give the modern folk scene a kick up the ærs. Shirley refashioned a clutch of traditional numbers into a song-cycle about women in wartime. Dolly arranged the material for David Munrow’s Early Music Consort of London, featuring the strange, dissonant sound of crumhorns and sacbuts. Together, they imbued this Old English material with disarming new vitality. Anthems opens with “A Song-Story,” which describes a relationship between a young woman and a blacksmith who are besotted with one another. He betrays her, and a valuable, progressive lesson rings through their centuries-long tale (“There’s no trusted man/Not my own brother/So girls, if you would love/Love one each other”). Along with stories of personal treachery, Anthems offers a subtle indictment of war’s effect on the British working classes. Romantic, earthy, vengeful, and above all self-possessed, the album tells a timeless narrative of innocence and experience, and suggests that sacrifice is only worth making on one’s own terms. –Laura Snapes",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ni9mFFlTQ_w,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500ba1350a6829ae558f85c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/141-Shirley-and-Dolly-Collins-Anthems-in-Eden.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Shirley_and_Dolly_Collins-Anthems_in_Eden_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,140,Mary Lou Williams,Black Christ of the Andes (1964),Mary Records,"Mary Records Upon her conversion to Catholicism in the 1950s, piano innovator Mary Lou Williams all but disappeared from the world of jazz. The following decade, she emerged from her prayerful isolation with this visionary 10-song LP. Initially an eponymous release, subsequent reissues formalized its title as Black Christ of the Andes—a reference to St. Martin de Porres, a dark-skinned 17th-century healer who symbolized racial harmony and was later canonized by Pope John XXIII. The first track is Williams’ largely a cappella hymn to the saint, its choral exclamations driven by traditional, mid-century pop-group harmony. But Williams also throws in startling, modernist harmonic material, reflecting her connection to bebop. Toward the end of the song, her piano makes a swooping entrance—and when the singers join her, there are swinging rhythms and call-and-response vocalizations in the reverent mix. This rich variety sets the tone for the rest of the album, which moves from the avant-garde solo piano strains of “A Fungus A Mungus” to the rousing and sanctified small-band groove of “Praise the Lord.” In earlier decades, jazz was seen as principally belonging to the secular realm, but Williams showed how swinging compositions and spiritual reflection could be one and the same. –Seth Colter Walls",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kRT9M8h3JE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500ba5ad4b4b48f6ed23679/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/140-Mary-Lou-Williams-Black-Christ-of-the-Andes.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mary_Lou_Williams-Black_Christ_of_the_Andes_1964.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,139,Stevie Wonder,For Once in My Life (1968),Tamla,"Tamla The story of Stevie Wonder’s first decade in music is his rise from young talent to true auteur—no small accomplishment for an artist working in Motown’s famously controlling machine. Wonder hadn’t completed that arc yet at age 18 when he released For Once in My Life. It was already his 10th LP, but this record marked some major milestones, including his most writing credits yet on an album and his first production one. Most significantly, it marked the first of Wonder’s pop albums to feature the clavinet, the instrument that would come to symbolize his creative ambitions. Song for song, For Once in My Life is stronger than Wonder’s previous albums, but it’s the sheer eagerness of his performances that makes it stand out. By 1968, he’d fully grown into his adult voice, and he lets it soar here, eager to show off all its new tricks. You can hear Wonder take a deep breath and smack his tongue against the roof of his mouth before hitting the show-stopping note on “I Don’t Know Why,” and by the end of the song, he’s practically run himself ragged. Even would-be ballads like the title track get an ebullient, swinging treatment. The last thing Wonder wanted to do, at this point in his career, was slow down. –Evan Rytlewski",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4h7isV7Fnj0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500bc2745471ded722c6bc4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/139-Stevie-Wonder-For-Once-in-My-Life.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Stevie_Wonder-For_Once_in_My_Life_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,138,Sun Ra and His Arkestra,The Magic City (1966),Saturn Research,"Saturn Research Keyboardist, bandleader, and self-proclaimed spaceman Sun Ra released more than 20 albums over the course of the ’60s. They all have their charms, but The Magic City is particularly vehement about being jazz on Ra and his Arkestra’s terms and no one else’s. Named after a train station sign in Ra’s hometown of Birmingham, Ala., “The Magic City” itself is a 27-minute group improvisation, with Ra playing fractured figures on a piano and reeling spacey whistles out of a Clavioline (sometimes simultaneously). For most of the piece, he pulls two or three musicians at a time into the spotlight, then out again; the Arkestra probes tentatively around the neon-light field of the imaginary place their leader is evoking, and sometimes erupts into swaggering clusters of horns. As a further backhand to jazz convention, the album includes both “Abstract Eye” and “Abstract ‘I’”—two versions of the same piece that suggest the flexibility of what a “composition” could mean to Ra and his group. –Douglas Wolk",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFDJTA2kA_A,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500bc85299cfecb594451d6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/138-Sun-Ra-and-His-Arkestra-The-Magic-City.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sun_Ra_and_His_Arkestra-The_Magic_City_1966.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,137,The Isley Brothers,It’s Our Thing (1969),T-Neck,"T-Neck As It’s Our Thing opens, Ronald Isley catches a woman in a compromising situation. She’s been sleeping around, but Isley preempts any fears that he might rat on her. It’s all right, he assures her: He’s been cheating on his girl, too. And so sets the tone for one of the most exuberantly hedonistic soul albums of the ’60s, a judgment-free celebration of free love and freedom in general. Autonomy was strong on the Isley Brothers’ minds at the time. They’d spent the previous few years on Motown, where they’d begun to feel out of place—Isley’s untamed voice often clashed with the smoother songs they’d been assigned to record, and the group had grown resentful as the label continually passed its surefire hits to other artists. Without Berry Gordy overseeing their image, the Isleys were free to run with their wild side, writing every song on It’s Our Thing themselves, and concocting a looser, funkier, and kinkier record than anything Motown would’ve allowed. The group would reinvent themselves ceaselessly over the next decade-and-a-half, but It’s Our Thing marked the moment where they first grasped how infinite the possibilities were. They could sleep with whomever they wanted. They could make whatever music they wanted. –Evan Rytlewski",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tqc_EhmL8-E,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500bcc4e1736377acbdb2c6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/137-The-Isley-Brothers-It%25E2%2580%2599s-Our-Thing.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Isley_Brothers-Its_Our_Thing_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,136,Roy Orbison,Crying (1962),Monument,"Monument On the engagement ode “She Wears My Ring,” Roy Orbison allows himself a rare moment of pure joy. “She swears to wear it with eternal devotion,” he beams. Alas, this bliss is short-lived. On the album’s very next track, he’s all alone once again: It’s his wedding day, but all he has to hang on to is that same cold, gold ring. She’s gone. Ardent devotee Bruce Springsteen, who copped Orbison’s melodramatic delivery on Born to Run, once described the singer as “the coolest uncool loser you’d ever seen.” His tinted shades gave him mystique, but he was a pining romantic at heart, an introvert who could turn a teary pop ballad into an opera for the ages. He wasn’t particularly suave onstage, like Elvis, or even that cute, like the Everly Brothers, but his dweebiness made his tales of unrequited love that much more believable. When he sings “love hurts” in that sterling, warbling tenor, you can practically see the bruises. –Ryan Dombal",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLC9o_unLq4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500bd0f50a6829ae558f85e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/136-Roy-Orbison-Crying.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Roy_Orbison-Crying_1962.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,135,Fred Neil,Fred Neil (1966),Capitol,"Capitol Originally a singer-songwriter cog in the Brill Building pop machine, Fred Neil and his fathoms-deep baritone soon found a more accommodating setting in the Greenwich Village folk boom of the early ’60s. There, he mentored budding young folkies like Bob Dylan, Karen Dalton, Tim Buckley, and David Crosby and released a self-titled album that still resonates in its profundity. “The Dolphins” and “Everybody’s Talkin’” remain evocative classics, as humble and mysterious as the folk music standards Neil and cohorts previously emulated at Café Wha? The album ranges from harmonica and 12-string folk staples to ruminations that shimmer with electric guitar lines. Spare and serene yet with an underlying sadness, Neil proved that “searching for the dolphins in the sea” wasn’t just a metaphor but a life goal, soon turning his attentions from music altogether and towards dolphin conservation in South Florida instead. –Andy Beta",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uu1xgYOpdHs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500bd4700c361fe1f460f46/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/135-Fred-Neil-Fred-Neil.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fred_Neil-Fred_Neil_1966.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,134,Duke Ellington / Charles Mingus / Max Roach,Money Jungle (1963),United Artists,"United Artists Already an immortal songwriter and composer, Duke Ellington refused to fade into the background, even as he reached his sixties. And with the one-day 1962 session that resulted in Money Jungle, he took the rare step of paring down his big band sound by playing in a trio with two artists decades his junior: bassist Charles Mingus and drummer Max Roach. Together, they catalyzed a rhythm section that pushed Ellington’s melodic and improvisational chops to the limit. On the title track, Ellington enthusiastically reckons with the avant-garde. The album’s quieter moments—the softly rustling “Fleurette Africaine” and the romantic, subtly bluesy “Warm Valley”—find odd-angled routes towards reverie. The album closes with two old standards from Ellington’s 1930s heyday—a deliriously joyful take on Juan Tizol’s “Caravan,” and a lush meditation on the Ellington-composed “Solitude.” They advance the past into the future on terms even a musical forefather like Duke could welcome. –Nate Patrin",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qs8WXRecsuk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500bd8a299cfecb594451d8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/134-Duke-Ellington-Charles-Mingus-Max-Roach-Money-Jungle.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Duke_Ellington__Charles_Mingus__Max_Roach-Money_Jungle_1963.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,133,Aretha Franklin,Aretha Now (1968),Atlantic,"Atlantic Aretha Franklin’s 15th album, Aretha Now, came into a world on fire. The United States was in turmoil in 1968, reeling from the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy; amid protests and uprisings, troops waged war in Vietnam. Perhaps on purpose, Franklin reflected those tensions on her opening song, “Think,” a volcanic soul stomp that cries for freedom. As the story goes, Aretha Now was recorded in five days under the watch of producer Jerry Wexler, who also oversaw her smash Lady Soul earlier that year. Aretha Now turned out to be a barnburner in its own right, slightly overshadowed by its predecessor yet no less potent. On “You’re a Sweet Sweet Man,” for instance, Franklin sounds especially resonant, and her cover of “Hello Sunshine” might be better than Wilson Pickett’s original. Aretha Now captures Franklin ascending to the height of her power, helping her earn her rightful title as the Queen of Soul. –Marcus J. Moore",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8DOybU8eEM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500bdd978e14fa92af4c745/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/133-Aretha-Franklin-Aretha-Now.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Aretha_Franklin-Aretha_Now_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,132,The Flying Burrito Brothers,The Gilded Palace of Sin (1969),A&M,"A&M In a flowery West Coast scene that dismissed George Jones and Porter Wagoner as conservative squares, Gram Parsons of the Flying Burrito Brothers treated country 45s as sacred texts. What’s more, he adopted their bedazzled Nudie suit uniform, tricking his out with pills and pot leaves. The band, formed by Parsons and Chris Hillman after they left the Byrds, played to Parsons’ strengths: a deep knowledge of country music, a strong voice, a pretty face, rock star friends, and a trust fund that kept him stocked with drugs and flashy duds. The Gilded Palace of Sin—the band’s first and best record—establishes their identity perfectly. The warm, loose twang of Kleinlow’s pedal steel underscores Parsons and Hillman’s harmonies. They offer up morality tales about music industry greed (“Sin City”), groupie culture (“Christine’s Tune”), draft-dodging (“My Uncle”), and in true country tradition, heartbreak (“Hot Burrito #1”). They also expand beyond country’s confines, covering two classics by the Muscle Shoals songwriting legends Chips Moman and Dan Penn. Gilded Palace is a testament to the band’s omnivorous nature: They blurred the lines between country and rock, James Carr and Lefty Frizzell, churchgoers and hippie boys. –Evan Minsker",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rVzsEXk3kQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500be16d4b4b48f6ed2367b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/132-The-Flying-Burrito-Brothers-The-Gilded-Palace-of-Sin.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Flying_Burrito_Brothers-The_Gilded_Palace_of_Sin_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,131,Jimmy Cliff,Jimmy Cliff (1969),Trojan,"Trojan If the 1972 soundtrack to The Harder They Come spread the sounds of reggae worldwide, that film’s star and soundtrack curator sowed the seeds for the incoming revolution three years earlier with his self-titled album. Jimmy Cliff was already a hero in his native Jamaica, a celebrity since he was a teen, but this is the record that brought the 21-year-old singer to an international audience. It includes some of Cliff’s most enduring songs—“Many Rivers to Cross,” “Vietnam,” “Wonderful World, Beautiful People”—and each one became a reggae standard in its own right, covered endlessly after Cliff let them loose into the world. The album also saw him showing off his range as a songwriter who was equally comfortable penning mournful ballads and incisive protest songs as he explored the flexibility of a sound on the cusp of its breakthrough. –Kevin Lozano",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aUwlvInopg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500be7ae1736377acbdb2ca/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/131-Jimmy-Cliff-Jimmy-Cliff.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jimmy_Cliff-Jimmy_Cliff_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,130,Various Artists,A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector (1963),Philles,"Philles A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector is an advent calendar of tracks featuring the producer’s trademark opulence. But its grand soundscapes, from sweeping strings to clanging bells, would be nothing but window dressing without its talented cast—most notably Darlene Love, whose soaring, bittersweet vocals on “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” challenge the season’s easy cheer. Throughout, Spector retrofits Yuletide standards with his maximalist Wall of Sound style, helping the Crystals breathe new life into “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” and the Ronettes revive “Frosty the Snowman.” –Zoe Camp",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EvZOXEoJ84,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500bea49dde163bde31d4db/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/130-Various-Artists-A-Christmas-Gift-for-You-from-Phil-Spector.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Various_Artists-A_Christmas_Gift_for_You_from_Phil_Spector_1963.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,129,The United States of America,The United States of America (1968),Columbia,"Columbia Their name was a provocation—“a way of expressing disdain for governmental policy. It was like hanging the flag upside down,” as the group’s Dorothy Moskowitz told Terrascope. But if you were young in 1968, there was a lot going on—LSD, Vietnam, The White Album, Stockhausen—and the United States of America somehow sounded like all of it at once: a counterculture state-of-the-union address. Their debut album was the work of a group of UCLA students working under the direction of Joseph Byrd, an ethnomusicologist and former student of John Cage. Byrd, a card-carrying Communist, envisaged an avant-garde rock band with radical politics at its center, and from that combustible starting point came a suite of music that pulls in all directions. Fuzz-rock and musique concrète leaks into traditional jazz and ragtime, with Moskowitz’s beautiful but affectless voice a rare constant. By any conventional yardstick, it’s a jumble, but think of it as the musical equivalent of a Rauschenberg collage and it all makes sense. –Louis Pattison",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewbCMIV_b_E,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500c04e9dde163bde31d4dd/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/129-The-United-States-of-America-The-United-States-of-America.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_United_States_of_America-The_United_States_of_America_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,128,John Coltrane,Live at Birdland (1964),Impulse!,"Impulse! “One of the most baffling things about America is that despite its essentially vile profile, so much beauty continues to exist here,” writes the poet LeRoi Jones (aka Amiri Baraka) in his liner notes to Live at Birdland. Throughout the 1960s, John Coltrane mastered this paradox, turning harrowing sadness into sublime beauty and vice versa. Live at Birdland, one of his most accessible and engaging albums from the decade, offers plenty of straight-up beauty, especially in Coltrane’s lilting version of Mongo Santamaria’s “Afro-Blue” and two other tunes recorded at an October 1963 concert. But one piece recorded in a studio, “Alabama,” goes deeper, melding tragedy and grace into something epic despite lasting only five minutes. Written in reaction to the Birmingham church bombing just weeks prior, timed to match the cadence of Martin Luther King Jr.’s memorial speech, “Alabama” is played by Coltrane’s classic quartet with both solemnity and hope. It’s a stirring, timeless example of how music can grapple with incomprehensible human acts. –Marc Masters",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8iKZUBDrJQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500c087186e9934b3bf8a1b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/128-John-Coltrane-Live-at-Birdland.jpg,/dataset/artwork/John_Coltrane-Live_at_Birdland_1964.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,127,The Monks,Black Monk Time (1966),Polydor,"Polydor The Monks were rock’n’roll’s original trolls. In an era when British Invasion bands were sparking sexual revolutions and denying Jesus’ chart appeal, the Monks cheekily pledged allegiance to the monastic tradition, foregoing mop-tops in favor of tonsures. At the dawn of the guitar-god age, they wielded a banjo player. And where most young men their age were starting bands to get girls, the Monks seemed more interested in repelling them with caveman-stomped kiss-offs like “I Hate You.” But the Monks’ novel nihilism was driven by very real neuroses. While budding U.S. rock bands could spout off about their teen angst from the comfort of their parents’ garages, the Monks were formed by five American GIs stationed in Germany, staring down the possibility of getting shipped off to Vietnam. That cloud of dread consumes even the most joyously anarchic songs on their 1966 debut. The opener “Monk Time” rolls out on a bouncing-ball beat like some children’s-show theme song for juvenile delinquents, but it’s overtaken by Gary Burger’s unsettling shrieks—“Stop it! I don’t like it!”—as if he were suddenly overcome by PTSD. Even when not directly addressing the horrors of combat, Black Monk Time is a discomfiting listen. –Stuart Berman",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6wVbs7t6Ns,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500c13245471ded722c6bc6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/127-The-Monks-Black-Monk-Time.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Monks-Black_Monk_Time_1966.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,126,Tammy Wynette,D-I-V-O-R-C-E (1968),Epic,"Epic Tammy Wynette didn’t take long to peak. She was only just a couple of years into her career by 1968, but already in the middle of a long run of consecutive No. 1 hits that cemented her stardom. She released her signature song, “Stand By Your Man,” that year, as well as her tearjerker of a third album, D-I-V-O-R-C-E, which captured some of her most harrowing performances. The main attraction is the title track, about a couple’s attempt to hide their divorce from their not-yet-literate 4-year-old child by spelling out the word instead of saying it. Wynette had a gift for sniffing out the sorrow in any material she was handed, though, so even the obligatory covers typical of country albums from that era soared—especially anguished takes on the Beatles’ “Yesterday” and country fiddler John Hartford’s “Gentle on My Mind.” Producer Billy Sherrill helped pioneer the “countrypolitan” sound—a sometimes overblown tangle of strings, choirs, and twang—but with Wynette, he always cleared plenty of room for her sterling voice, allowing every quiver and catch in her throat to speak for itself. –Evan Rytlewski",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFV3SQEpb2Y,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500c1a4e1736377acbdb2cc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/126-Tammy-Wynette-D-I-V-O-R-C-E.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tammy_Wynette-D-I-V-O-R-C-E_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,125,Sonny Sharrock,Black Woman (1969),Vortex,"Vortex Sonny Sharrock’s 1969 debut as a bandleader, Black Woman, is a distinguished free jazz record because of three things: the restless thrum of Milford Graves’ drumming, which never assembles into anything as coherent as a pulse; the antlered progressions of Sonny’s guitar playing; and the voice of Linda Sharrock—singular, gorgeous, uniquely capable of deconstructing itself in real time. When all those elements align in “Peanut,” they seem to produce a shimmer; when they stutter and fall apart, as they do often in “Portrait of Linda in Three Colors, All Black,” each part separates into its own bracing fraction. That Linda rarely sings any recognizable words is key: Black Woman tries to give shape to a nameless personal and emotional betweenness—between fraternity and isolation, between singing and screaming, between joy and pain. –Brad Nelson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VrRLfskBVw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500c1e150a6829ae558f860/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/125-Sonny-Sharrock-Black-Woman.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sonny_Sharrock-Black_Woman_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,124,The Kinks,Something Else By the Kinks (1967),Pye,"Pye While many of their British Invasion peers were hypnotized by the escapist allure of psychedelia, the Kinks offered a focused view of the cruel absurdities of real life. Their fifth album, Something Else, may boast all the telltale trappings of circa-’67 rock production (harpsichords, chirpy horns, woozy sound effects, bird calls), but they’re used to subtly color rather than to distort songwriter Ray Davies’ wry, acutely detailed portraits of workaday drudgery, paycheck-draining impoverishment, and family dysfunction (a subject he was all too familiar with). But on Something Else’s swooning closer, “Waterloo Sunset,” Davies’ withering social commentary gives way to a quiet reverence for his surroundings. Part love song, part urban travelogue, part zen mantra, “Waterloo Sunset” serves the same function as psychedelia—inviting us to block out the bustle and grime of city life and bask in a natural wonder—but with a sobering sense of clarity. –Stuart Berman",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8zg71dDTsw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500c2369dde163bde31d4df/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/124-The-Kinks-Something-Else-By-the-Kinks.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Kinks-Something_Else_By_the_Kinks_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,123,Marvin Gaye,In the Groove (1968),Tamla,"Tamla Marvin Gaye and Norman Whitfield hated each other, but the producer Whitfield brought out a newfound intensity and fervor in Gaye’s performances on In the Groove. (Gaye later said his collaborator had him “reaching for notes that caused my throat veins to bulge.”) The strategy worked, though this album’s biggest hit almost didn’t even see the light of day: “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” was shelved for a full year before being added to In the Groove at the last minute. The song became Gaye’s first single to top the Billboard 100 when it was later re-released as a single, eventually selling more than 4 million copies. It cemented the singer’s financial stability and gave him the leverage he needed to break free of Motown’s strict quality-control system and invent a whole new take on soul music a few years later. –Kevin Lozano",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdR-MA1iIZc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500c255d4b4b48f6ed236ad/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/123-Marvin-Gaye-In-the-Groove.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Marvin_Gaye-In_the_Groove_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,122,Mulatu Astatke,"Afro-Latin Soul, Vol. 1 (1966)",Worthy,"Worthy The title is sublimely generic; the “Ethiopian Quintet” credited as backing band is mostly Puerto Rican. Mulatu Astatke would become better-known for the records he made after returning to Ethiopia in the 1970s, but Afro-Latin Soul is trickier than it first appears. His idiosyncratic style, fusing the traditional pentatonic scale with Western jazz chords, remained half-formed—this album resembles Latin dance music of the period, led by someone learning the jams secondhand. On tracks like “Askum,” there’s a charming sense that Astatke  is speeding up to match the tempo of the audience. He wrote lyrics for “I Faram Gami I Faram,” uncharacteristically, and got sideman Louis Rodriguez to sing them in Amharic, along with a trumpeting elephant. The vibraphone you hear everywhere doesn’t comfort or lull; it gives each groove a blurred weight, as if moving through the immaculate lacquer of dreams. –Chris Randle",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LByRa73A5JE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500c28778e14fa92af4c747/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/122-Mulatu-Astatke-Afro-Latin-Soul%2C-Vol.-1.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mulatu_Astatke-Afro-Latin_Soul_Vol_1_1966.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,121,Desmond Dekker and The Aces,Israelites (1969),Pyramid,"Pyramid In June 1969, a few years before Jimmy Cliff, Johnny Nash, and Bob Marley introduced reggae to the pop mainstream, Kingston group Desmond Dekker and the Aces cracked the Billboard Top 10 with “Israelites,” beguiling American listeners with an off-kilter, upstroke rhythm, Dekker’s high-pitched croon, and lyrics that linked hardscrabble Jamaican life to Old Testament myths. Dekker had released several Jamaican hit singles through the ’60s (and topped the UK charts in 1967 with the rude boy ode “007 (Shanty Town)”), but the U.S. success of “Israelites” led to a quick LP follow-up helmed by legendary producer Leslie Kong. Far from a simple cash-in, Israelites shows the depth of Dekker’s crossover capacity. Covers of Bill Anderson’s 1960 country hit “Tip of My Fingers” and a ballad version of “For Once in My Life,” a 1968 up-tempo smash for Stevie Wonder, share space with purely Jamaican tunes like the sassy “Rude Boy Train” and “It Mek” (island patois for “that’s what you get”). Unfairly classified as a “one-hit wonder” for the surprise success of “Israelites,” Dekker’s historical role is much more significant: He was the first Jamaican pop diplomat. –Eric Harvey",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAqXvP_2urs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500c2ca00c361fe1f460f48/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/121-Desmond-Dekker-and-The-Aces-Israelites.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Desmond_Dekker_and_The_Aces-Israelites_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,120,Pink Floyd,The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (1967),Columbia,"Columbia As a no-show on classic-rock playlists, Pink Floyd’s debut is rarely anyone’s starting point with the band. But even if the British group had ended with the dismissal of original leader Syd Barrett following the release of Piper at the Gates of Dawn, their place in psychedelic rock would be assured. The album is one of the mode’s greatest achievements, finding space for both fractured fairy tales and 10-minute interstellar freakouts while making both sound equally mind-altering (and frightening). It also makes a tragic hero out of the troubled, brilliant, and ultimately doomed Barrett. Fifty years later, it’s possible to see Pink Floyd as everything punk and indie rock sought to tear down as well as a foundational influence on those same movements. –Ian Cohen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOta1fulN1Y,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500c34900c361fe1f460f4a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/120-%2520Pink%2520Floyd%2520The%2520Piper%2520at%2520the%2520Gates%2520of%2520Dawn.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Pink_Floyd-The_Piper_at_the_Gates_of_Dawn_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,119,The Meters,The Meters (1969),Josie,"Josie There were dozens of instrumental R&B hits in the ’60s, but most of them were showcases for a star soloist. New Orleans’ the Meters, the house band for Allen Toussaint, evolved into an impossibly tight funk ensemble without a leader and with no shortage of personalities. Their breakthrough hit “Cissy Strut” bounces equally between all four members, including drummer “Ziggy” Modeliste, whose cymbal smashes are direct commands to the hips. The group whipped up most of their debut album quickly when “Cissy Strut” started climbing the charts, offering the dance grooves they’d honed and hardened in eight-hour gigs at the Ivanhoe club on Bourbon Street. It’s remarkable how much open air there is in The Meters’ funk: Keyboardist Art Neville glides as the rest of the musicians snap and crack, and burners like “Sophisticated Cissy” and “Ease Back” slow down sensually while heating the dance floor up. –Douglas Wolk",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9IGwqUAwdU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500c4dd78e14fa92af4c749/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/119-The-Meters-The-Meters.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Meters-The_Meters_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,118,The Beach Boys,Smiley Smile (1967),Brother,"Brother After Brian Wilson’s epic Smile project came crashing to earth in 1967, the Beach Boys knocked out a quickie album to replace it. Filled with casual re-recordings of songs and fragments considered for Smile, along with two earlier singles that sound completely out of place in their baroque grandiosity (“Good Vibrations” and “Heroes and Villains,” the latter of which was labored over endlessly as Smile’s planned centerpiece), Smiley Smile seems at first like a Beach Boys album to skip, a final squib from the towering ambition of the previous few years. But over time, Smiley Smile has developed a small cult of its own, attracting those drawn to its stripped-down, highly spontaneous, and deeply stoned vibe. Partly recorded at Wilson’s house, it has the feel of a mixtape, with a zany instrumental interlude, tape-warp nuttiness, explosive fits of laughter, and sound effects; the songs, about hair loss and visions of distant lands and the essential goodness of vegetables, have the cracked and colorful logic of daydreams. Considering how significant the Beach Boys were in the pop landscape at the time, it’s baffling that a major record label would release an album this goofy and slight. But Smiley Smile is a record of startling intimacy, and it basically invented the kind of lo-fi bedroom pop that would later propel Sebadoh, Animal Collective, and other characters. –Mark Richardson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgRESp8aLO0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500c50145471ded722c6bc8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/118-The-Beach-Boys-Smiley-Smile.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Beach_Boys-Smiley_Smile_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,117,Serge Gainsbourg,Initials B.B. (1968),Mercury / Philips,"Mercury / Philips In the 1960s, the talk was of Swinging London, not Swinging Paris. So few people would have expected a French man who turned 40 in 1968 to make one of the most elegant albums of the decade. Recorded largely in London, Initials B.B. marries Serge Gainsbourg’s peerless sense of dramatic melody with some of the finest orchestral pop production the 1960s could offer, incorporating elements of jazz, yé-yé, chanson, and the baroque pop of the Left Bank with just a soupçon of Rubber Soul–era Beatles. From the cascading strings and imperial brass of the title track to the soulful cheek of “Marilu,” the heartbreakingly doomed love song “Bonnie and Clyde” to the swinging environmental critique of “Torrey Canyon,” not a second is wasted in this taut, 31-minute masterpiece. It evokes London fog and Parisian élan, contemporary pop nous and eternal orchestral splendor, in a way that makes even the most modish Anglo-American pop acts of the era look spectacularly ungainly. –Ben Cardew",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdvrnOpuydg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500c5509d1ddc41f1e80782/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/117-Serge-Gainsbourg-Initials-B.B..jpg,/dataset/artwork/Serge_Gainsbourg-Initials_BB_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,116,Miles Davis,Nefertiti (1968),Columbia,"Columbia Of the run of albums Miles Davis made with his quintet in the 1960s, Nefertiti is the most alien and the most beautiful. The tunes, all of which were written by members of his band—three by saxophonist Wayne Shorter, two by pianist Herbie Hancock, and one by drummer Tony Williams, leaving only Davis and bassist Ron Carter without a credit—are eerily beautiful explorations of the possibilities of space and repetition, pointing in the direction of In a Silent Way. The pieces float and drift and breathe, with gently curling melodies held aloft by Williams’ astonishingly fluid approach to cymbals. This was Davis’ last purely acoustic album, as in the coming years he would explore dark, churning electronic noise. Nefertiti found him leaving the world of the traditional jazz combo on a brilliantly atmospheric note. –Mark Richardson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iu0IfC_IUaA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500c59400c361fe1f460f4c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/116-Miles-Davis-Nefertiti.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Miles_Davis-Nefertiti_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,115,The Fugs,The Fugs First Album (1965),Broadside / Folkways,"Broadside / Folkways Before there was punk, there were the Fugs: antagonistic, hilarious, and radically political to the bone. They were anarchic beat poets in the East Village who took folk instruments they could sort of play and didn’t give a damn. Their debut album was originally called The Village Fugs Sing Ballads of Contemporary Protest, Point of Views, and General Dissatisfaction—though “sing” is subjective, as their vocals are fabulously off-key. The Fugs’ ringleader Ed Sanders is one of the most crucial figures in countercultural history: He founded the bookstore Peace Eye and the arts journal Fuck You and, among other late-’60s antics, he attempted to levitate the Pentagon and staged a funeral for flower power in San Francisco. On their debut, the Fugs sing-song a surreal pop ditty about dying (“Carpe penum!/Sing, children, sing!/Death is a’coming!”) and, on “Nothing,” abrasively equate several sacred bohemian staples—Allen Ginsberg, church, sex, The Village Voice—with “nothing, nothing, nothing.” The record was originally released on the legendary labels Folkways and later ESP-Disk, which earned the Fugs their share of people who considered them very talented con artists. Their music was so anti-establishment, though, that it didn’t matter. Evoking the virtues of ugliness with a charisma that couldn’t be faked, the Fugs remain inspiring. –Jenn Pelly",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUIiB1JvTGc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6500c5e245471ded722c6bca/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/115-The-Fugs-The-Fugs-First-Album.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Fugs-The_Fugs_First_Album_1965.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,114,Thelonious Monk,"Straight, No Chaser (1966)",Columbia,"Columbia It might be possible to ascribe an additional weight to Monk’s Straight, No Chaser based on the 1988 documentary of same name, which features footage of the man on tour and in the studio. That documentary’s image of Monk as an idiosyncratic, sometimes impenetrable artist with odd habits and an even more off-kilter playing style is one of the most detailed looks into the creative process of a jazz musician. But the album, named for a standard Monk first recorded in 1951, has its own perspective, in which his unpredictably timed moments of rhythmic and melodic dissonance are recorded at a continuously evolving state. Reworked original compositions like the title cut, “Locomotive,” and “We See” nail down deceptively lighthearted riffs before sprawling out into conversational improvised exchanges. It’s a versatile approach that he and his quartet apply slyly to the far-flung material of the other artists they interpret. You wouldn’t think there’s a lot in common between Rentarō Taki’s Meiji-period Japanese folk song “Kōjō no Tsuki” and the Cab Calloway–popularized 1930s standard “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea” (the latter of which arrives as an almost giddy solo piano rendition), but an artist as boundlessly rule-breaking as Monk always found a way through. –Nate Patrin",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCmP2tmcSMg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650b3443075611b11337fc5f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/114-Thelonious-Monk-Straight%2C-No-Chaser.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Thelonious_Monk-Straight_No_Chaser_1966.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,113,Harry Partch,The World of Harry Partch (1969),Columbia Masterworks,"Columbia Masterworks Any popular musician who takes a public liking to creaky, homemade sounds devised in the pursuit of a singular vision is singing the song of Harry Partch. By the time Columbia Records discovered him and released the 1969 album The World of Harry Partch, which offers the most popular overview of his work, the itinerant Californian had spent decades honing the notes of that song, which happened outside of conservatories, outside the boundaries of “classical” and “popular,” and outside of the Western scale. He began by tinkering with violas and soon was inventing his own menagerie of instruments, beautiful creations with magnificent names like “the Quadrangularis Reversum” and the “Cloud-Chamber bowls,” all tuned to his own 43-tone scale. The music he made with all of those bespoke noisemakers was too luminous and defiantly odd to fit into any existing culture; to a mildly curious new listener, it may have just seemed like a collection of out-of-tune bongs and clonks. But if you probed deeper, you found your way into music both richly detailed and ancient-sounding. These pieces, with their elemental pulses and crystalline webs of rhythm, shivered with the sort of holy feeling you might get upon entering a network of caves. The odd tones swim up to your ears like bioluminescent creatures, while Partch’s dry, avuncular voice patiently explains them all to you. The World of Harry Partch was a late-breaking shaft of career sunshine for a man who had grown grudgingly accustomed to obscurity: He was a truly independent musician, in a time when that term was much lonelier than it is today. “I am supremely indifferent as to whether anyone chooses to follow in my footsteps,” he professed in 1959. But follow they did: From La Monte Young to Tom Waits, Jack White to Matmos, Partch remains the patron saint for anyone seeking to reconnect us to the physical miracle of sound. –Jayson Greene",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7nm9kRH7jc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650b4228e10fdf887a8cbcb0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/113-Harry-Partch-The-World-of-Harry-Partch.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Harry_Partch-The_World_of_Harry_Partch_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,112,The Paragons,On the Beach (1967),Treasure Isle,"Treasure Isle Originally an uptempo ska vocal group, the Paragons redefined themselves into a Jamaican rocksteady act in the late ’60s, when singer John Holt joined their ranks. On the Beach, their lone album with Holt before he bolted for a successful solo career, remains a high-water mark of that era in Jamaican music; it’s a succinct and breezy encapsulation of the short-lived rocksteady sound, full of lilting rhythms, sparkling horns, and vocal harmonies sweeter than tropical fruit. Holt’s songwriting yielded outright classics like “Wear You to the Ball,” “Only a Smile,” and “The Tide Is High”—songs subsequently covered by admirers as diverse as Gregory Isaacs, UB40, and Blondie. –Andy Beta",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sOOjK6g9OY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650b424bd8aad1426054831c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/112-The-Paragons-On-the-Beach.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Paragons-On_the_Beach_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,111,Tom Zé,Grande Liquidação (1968),Rozenblit,"Rozenblit Tom Zé’s debut isn’t as obviously experimental as some of his 1970s albums, from which David Byrne would largely compile 1990’s Brazil Classics 4: The Best of Tom Zé, the Brazilian musician’s introduction to a worldwide audience after years in obscurity. But even absent the monosyllabic lyrical experiments and unorthodox instruments (a typewriter, a food blender) that pepper his later work, Grande Liquidação’s explosive color and creativity offers a fascinating snapshot of a young talent blossoming amidst cultural upheaval. “São, São Paulo/Quanta dor” (“São Paulo/So much pain”) begins the album’s very first song, a dulcet tribute to the Brazilian city’s eight million inhabitants; “First lesson/Stop being poor,” he admonishes in “Curso Intensivo de Boas Maneiras” (“Intensive Course of Good Manners”), a subversive look at social norms in post-coup Brazil. Like his comrades in the Tropicalía movement, Zé asks what it means to be a modern Brazilian, constructing magpie-like arrangements in which organs thrum and stacked horns suggest a tropical Sgt. Pepper’s. Through it all, Zé’s playful, slightly pinched voice transmits both wry wisdom and indefatigable cheer. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-WWZcN3Hn0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650b428fe10fdf887a8cbcb2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/111-Tom-Ze%25CC%2581-Grande-Liquidac%25CC%25A7a%25CC%2583o.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tom_Z-Grande_Liquidao_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,110,The Shaggs,Philosophy of the World (1969),Third World,"Third World As the story goes, the Shaggs were born from a palm reading. When Austin Wiggin was young, his mother predicted that he would marry a strawberry blonde, have two sons whom she would never meet, and also have daughters who would form a popular band. After the first two parts came true, Austin took fate into his own hands: He removed his teenage daughters Dot, Betty, and Helen from school and confined them to constant rehearsals, where they attempted to create pop music on instruments they could barely play. The New Hampshire trio’s only studio record, Philosophy of the World, more closely resembles Captain Beefheart than their beloved Herman’s Hermits. Their discordant voices and clunky mimicry of pop melodies may be off-putting at first, but beneath the awkward instrumentation are three girls singing earnestly about their lost family cat (“My Pal Foot Foot”) and a lover’s cruel side (“Sweet Thing”). Though the Shaggs never reached the level of fame their father desired, much to their surprise, Philosophy of the World eventually became a cult favorite: Frank Zappa called them “better than the Beatles” and Kurt Cobain dubbed it one of his favorite records. Who could have predicted that? –Quinn Moreland",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5T2kaFiFgg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650b42c5d8aad1426054831e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/110-The-Shaggs-Philosophy-of-the-World.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Shaggs-Philosophy_of_the_World_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,109,Terry Riley,A Rainbow in Curved Air (1969),CBS / Columbia Masterworks,"CBS / Columbia Masterworks In 1969, Columbia Records was looking for classical LPs that might “capture the imagination of the young audience,” and Terry Riley was uniquely suited to the task. Over the previous decade, he had steeped himself in minimalism, a new style of American classical music that relied on elements like sustained tones (La Monte Young’s Trio for Strings) or a restricted range of melodic material, explored over long durations (Dennis Johnson’s November). Riley was friendly with Young and Johnson, and inspired by both, but he also brought new elements to the party—including an interest in tape loops and fast, rhythmic pulses. On A Rainbow in Curved Air, Riley’s layers of fast keyboard riffing on Side A have a rock-ready, psychedelic edge that was quick to filter into the pop consciousness. (The Who’s “Baba O’Riley” gives the composer a sideways name-check.) His droning, multi-tracked soprano sax lines on the Side B opus “Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band” connect with elements of the experimental jazz zeitgeist, like the marathon solos of John Coltrane. As indebted to these artists as he was forward-thinking, Riley bridged their aesthetic spheres, calmly creating a new hybrid sound—all without seeming to contort a muscle. –Seth Colter Walls",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKg_R1W94G0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650b4330075611b11337fc61/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/109-Terry-Riley-A-Rainbow-in-Curved-Air.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Terry_Riley-A_Rainbow_in_Curved_Air_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,108,Charles Mingus,Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus (1963),Impulse!,"Impulse! The music of bassist, composer, and bandleader Charles Mingus was an inventive mix of jazz past and present. But Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus is literally old and new: All but two of its tracks are re-recorded versions of songs that had shown up on previous Mingus albums, confusingly (or perhaps deceptively) given new names. But the results are the opposite of retread. Two 11-piece ensembles, both heavy on brass and sax, breathe such fresh, vibrant life into some of Mingus’ best tunes that it often sounds like they’re trying blow them up. His mass of horns push “Better Get Hit in Yo’ Soul” to a much louder, denser plane than its appearance on his 1959 album Mingus Ah Um, while the frenetic pace of “II B.S.” makes the 1957 version on The Clown, with the name “Haitian Fight Song,” seem almost tame. Given how driven and sharp the performances are, it’s shocking that Mingus would soon hit a dry spell, releasing no more group studio albums for the rest of the decade. Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus is a fitting coda to a seven-year stretch of greatness, by a musical mind always able to reimagine the past—even his own. –Marc Masters",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiAPH5RobEc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650b4369d8aad14260548320/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/108-Charles-Mingus-Mingus-Mingus-Mingus-Mingus-Mingus.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Charles_Mingus-Mingus_Mingus_Mingus_Mingus_Mingus_1963.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,107,Four Tops,Reach Out (1967),Motown,"Motown The Motown songwriting team of Holland-Dozier-Holland created classics for everyone from the Supremes to the Miracles, and one of their last recordings for the Detroit label helped cement its trademark sound. Belted by lead singer Levi Stubbs, the Four Tops’ “Reach Out, I’ll Be There” is a soaring paean to romantic loyalty that topped the charts in October 1966. On the vocal group’s accompanying album, Stubbs’ voice ties together Motown’s famed anthemic choruses and lyrical love songs under the same aching banner. Even two Monkees covers are injected with a shot of openhearted soul, showing that the Four Tops’ appeal could cross over the period’s racial music divides in every direction. –Cameron Cook",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1d1ZvDzrWk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650b43a0dc33d2bb960c14b2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/107-Four-Tops-Reach-Out.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Four_Tops-Reach_Out_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,106,Ornette Coleman,Free Jazz (1961),Atlantic,"Atlantic No tune, no chord changes, no key. Four top-flight musicians in the left channel, four more in the right channel, enough tape for a whole album. Go. Ornette Coleman was already a famously polarizing artist when he and his one-off “double quartet” recorded Free Jazz, and although the idea of improvisation without a theme wasn’t entirely new, nobody had filled an entire album with such experimentation before. John Tynan’s zero-stars review in jazz bible Down Beat—paired with an opposing five-star review—called the group “eight nihilists... with one common cause: to destroy the music that gave them birth.” Still, records don’t get genres named after them by playing it safe, and time has been kind to Coleman’s dare—it’s obvious now that the “free” in the title means “no longer captive,” rather than “the ultimate devaluation.” It’s also clearer in retrospect that Free Jazz isn’t totally without structure: A more-or-less composed fanfare introduces each musician’s turn as the leader of the group’s conversation, and the double rhythm section keeps the pulse steady until bassist Charlie Haden, always a revolutionary, nudges them out of it. Over these epochal 37 minutes, you can hear the group shaking off the constraints they’d always taken for granted. –Douglas Wolk",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0i4miN_r4g,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650b43cedc33d2bb960c14b4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/106-Ornette-Coleman-Free-Jazz.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ornette_Coleman-Free_Jazz_1961.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,105,Simon & Garfunkel,Sounds of Silence (1966),Columbia,"Columbia In a decade obsessed with fashion, there was little cool about Simon & Garfunkel, a bookish duo who looked like they would be more at home poring over folk history books than dropping acid in Haight-Ashbury. This studiousness occasionally creeps into Sounds of Silence, their second album, which includes songs based on an Edwin Arlington Robinson poem (“Richard Cory”) and a newspaper article about a suicide (“A Most Peculiar Man”), as well as a cover of an instrumental guitar piece by the British folk revivalist Davey Graham (“Anji”). However, any sense of intellectual fastidiousness is overcome by songs like “The Sound of Silence,” “April Come She Will,” and “I Am a Rock,” which speak to universal human truths like loneliness, depression, and the impossibility of communication via uncluttered arrangements and crystal harmonies that let the celestial melodies breathe. The effect is quietly devastating, and it seems fitting that an album of such lasting emotional truths has been preserved by the Library of Congress so future generations can cry their eyes out to them, too. –Ben Cardew",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2nN-Yrt1EU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650b4443e10fdf887a8cbcb4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/105-Simon-_-Garfunkel-Sounds-of-Silence.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Simon__Garfunkel-Sounds_of_Silence_1966.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,104,Patsy Cline,Sentimentally Yours (1962),Decca,"Decca There was a fullness to Patsy Cline’s vocal delivery, a confidence that heartbreak was the only proper state of being. Her brilliance as a singer allowed her to transcend a wide range of material. Sentimentally Yours, Cline’s third and final album, includes just two songs written specifically for her: “She’s Got You” (which climbed both country and pop charts) and “Strange.” The rest of the album consists of songs popularized by others, but Cline finds a way to make them her own. She added country flair to the pop standards and reigned in the honky-tonk for a note of elegance. She revived the languid “Heartaches,” turning it into a surprise breakout single, while imbuing two Hank Williams songs (“Your Cheatin’ Heart” and “I Can’t Help It (If I’m Still In Love With You)”) with stoic nous more than lonesome blues. Patsy Cline’s singular voice makes Sentimentally Yours entirely hers, teasing out the songs’ nuances that would’ve been less in others’ hands. –Matthew Strauss",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/hrFyfTQ5ILQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650b4482075611b11337fc65/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/104-Patsy-Cline-Sentimentally-Yours.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Patsy_Cline-Sentimentally_Yours_1962.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,103,Stan Getz & João Gilberto,Getz/Gilberto (1964),Verve,"Verve In late-1950s Rio de Janeiro, Antônio Carlos Jobim and João Gilberto started a quiet revolution. Jobim, known for his “soft and sophisticated” compositions, teamed with the hushed singer-guitarist Gilberto to create bossa nova, which teleported the swaying rhythms of Brazil’s samba dance style into a more intimate setting. American saxophonist Stan Getz, whose plush yet understated approach the jazz world called simply “the Sound,” was a natural fit. When Jobim, Gilberto, and Getz came together, the result was bossa nova’s crowning achievement. The Sound met the new sound on 1962’s Jazz Samba, a chart-topping album featuring guitarist Charlie Byrd. Then, what might’ve looked like a fad instead blossomed into Getz/Gilberto. The supple melodies of bossa nova’s American interpreter meld perfectly with the lullaby vocals of the artist who’d defined it. Some of the piano, and most of the eight songs—about stars, seas, love, moonlight, and a certain girl from Ipanema—are by Jobim. The overall effect is of saudade, a beautifully untranslatable Portuguese word for melancholy longing that appeared in the title of Jobim and Gilberto’s first bossa nova record. This is heightened by the casual elegance of Gilberto’s then-wife, Astrud, making her fateful singing debut. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8VPmtyLqSY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650b44bd9937f59a00c2cc77/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/103-Stan-Getz-_-Joa%25CC%2583o-Gilberto-Getz_Gilberto.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Stan_Getz__Joo_Gilberto-GetzGilberto_1964.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,102,Elvis Presley,From Elvis in Memphis (1969),RCA,"RCA “I had to leave town for a little while,” sings Elvis Presley at the outset of From Elvis in Memphis. Back in 1969, those words rang true. The singer appeared absent during the height of the British Invasion, making movies that held little interest for him or his audience. Presley’s patience with Hollywood ran out in 1968, though, pushing him to turn a Christmas television special into a showcase for his undiminished skills. Following that famed comeback performance, he was determined to prove his artistic worth, so he set up shop at Memphis’ American Sound Studios and recorded a set of songs that saw no boundary between rock, soul, country, and schmaltzy pop. This wasn’t Elvis getting back to his roots: In ’69, Memphis was the epicenter of American cool, the place where Southern soul took hold, and by associating himself with the city, Presley reckoned with modern music. Just as crucially, he decided to sing songs that had no interest in separating love from memory and regret—a far cry from the teenage exuberance of his earliest records. So while his culturally explosive Sun Sessions sides from the 1950s retain their excitement, From Elvis in Memphis cuts deeper. –Stephen Thomas Erlewine",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Guu3h0wcd64,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650b4513075611b11337fc67/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/102-Elvis-Presley-From-Elvis-in-Memphis.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Elvis_Presley-From_Elvis_in_Memphis_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,101,The Mothers of Invention,Freak Out! (1966),Verve,"Verve Birthed by the theatrical Los Angeles “freak” scene—a cousin of the Bay Area hippies—the Mothers of Invention’s Freak Out! predicted, and in some ways outdid, the LSD-gobbling Summer of Love by about a year. This debut double album was concocted by the drug-despising Dadaist Frank Zappa as a self-consciously smart-assed statement, one that smirked at the “turned-on” generation with songs that were themselves undeniably psychedelic. Freak Out! features some of rock’s earliest and headiest forays into experimental composition and tape looping, sequenced amid ominous pop pastiches like the folk-rock suicide note “I’m Not Satisfied,” the doo-wop throwback “Go Cry on Somebody Else’s Shoulder,” and the Watts Riots–inspired blues lament “Trouble Every Day.” Paul McCartney would later claim that Sgt. Pepper’s was the Beatles’ attempt at making a Freak Out!, but from their debut forward, the Mothers were clearly on their own trip. –Eric Harvey",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fQKVcKxCUY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650b4554d8aad14260548322/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/101-The%2520Mothers%2520of%2520Invention%2520Freak%2520Out!.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Mothers_of_Invention-Freak_Out_1966.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,100,Sun Ra,The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra (1965),ESP-Disk,"ESP-Disk Sun Ra was a Gemini. “That’s one reason I have the big band,” he  explained to a critic toward the end of his tenure on Earth. “I want to hear the alto, then I want to hear the tenor, then I want to hear the trumpet, then I want to hear the rhythm, then I want to hear me—keep moving, that’s my nature.” Ra changed his name, dressed in brilliant raiments, and elaborated a whole Afrofuturist cosmology, but he’d still come up on Duke Ellington. The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra shows his Arkestra navigating between big-band cohesion and loose improvisation, between the concert hall and the stars above. The label ESP-Disk, which released this album, probably wanted more composed, neo-classical jazz, but Ra spent his life frustrating such desires. Halfway through “Outer Nothingness,” the band abandons any horn charts they’d mapped out; there are long moments of silence, and then the leader’s bass marimba, each strike so deep and resonant that the wood might have landed from a distant planet. Eternity looms behind every latitude they claim, and on Heliocentric Worlds, Ra captures the sound of unity straining to hold itself together. –Chris Randle",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSueTJVavG0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650b4598e8164243500efe2d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/100-Sun-Ra-The-Heliocentric-Worlds-of-Sun-Ra.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sun_Ra-The_Heliocentric_Worlds_of_Sun_Ra_1965.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,99,Gilberto Gil,Gilberto Gil (1968),Philips,"Philips Even before it had a name, Tropicália was introduced to the masses at the 1967 TV Record music festival in São Paulo, when the 25-year-old Gilberto Gil brought out a teenaged Os Mutantes to perform “Domingo No Parque.” With acoustic orchestration, electric guitar, and twangy berimbau, the now-classic song told the story of a crime of passion using fragmented word-scenes. It was controversial, overturning conventions of Brazilian song structure and themes typical of música popular brasileira. Gilberto Gil, the album it soon appeared on, also made waves. From the world of Anglo-American pop, Gil absorbed the Beatles’ psych-rock sensibilities and Jimi Hendrix’s electronic effects and vocal stylings. From his home of Bahia, Gil drew on Afro-Brazilian traditions like capoeira and samba, mashing up snippets of honking horns with ocean waves and absurdist poetry. To the Brazilian military dictatorship, all of this read as provocative and threatening, and in 1969, they exiled Tropicália’s original masterminds, Gil and Caetano Veloso. But by then, Gil had already helped spark an entire Brazilian counterculture. –Minna Zhou",Platform: YouTube - Link: http://youtu.be/R00THJHe4MU?t=12m52s,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c4fe7cdd360b1835ef76a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/99-Gilberto-Gil-Gilberto-Gil.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Gilberto_Gil-Gilberto_Gil_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,98,The Rolling Stones,Aftermath (1966),Decca,"Decca The Rolling Stones glimpsed the dark side of the ’60s several years before Altamont, probably because they’d already enjoyed more than their share of sex and drugs by the time hippie kids started flooding Haight-Ashbury. Their sixth album in two years was also the first Stones LP written entirely by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, and its best songs make the aggression of “Get Off of My Cloud” sound polite. “It was the period where everything—songwriting, recording, performing—stepped into a new league,” Richards recalls in his memoir, Life. For proof he wasn’t exaggerating, look no further than the album’s opening track. Rock’s most nihilistic hit to date, “Paint It, Black” finds Jagger confessing urges worthy of a serial killer over an intoxicating collage of guitar, sitar, and kick drum. Sure, Aftermath indulged the Stones’ misogyny on the bitchy diss track “Stupid Girl” and tamed a shrew on “Under My Thumb,” a nasty piece of work that Brian Jones’ bouncy marimbas rendered irresistible even to legendary feminist critics. But with Jones ditching his guitar for a closetful of exotic instruments and the band channeling their touring musicians’ homesickness on the record’s 11-minute culminating blues jam, “Goin’ Home,” they also pushed rock forward. –Judy Berman",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5yvTbiZmFM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c5033e8164243500efe60/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/98-The-Rolling-Stones-Aftermath.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Rolling_Stones-Aftermath_1966.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,97,Randy Newman,Randy Newman (1968),Reprise,"Reprise You’d have trouble finding an album by a young person more at odds with youth culture than Randy Newman’s 1968 debut. At a time when the zeitgeist was occupied with free love and third eyes, Newman—then 24—was writing ragtime-influenced orchestral vignettes about abusing your friends (“Davy the Fat Boy”) and shipping your parents off to die in Florida (“Love Story”), a sound too cruel for squares and too square for anyone else. Newman, who went on to make a good life as a cult favorite and composer for Disney movies, has maintained he would’ve done better if he’d written more love songs. But those who can get on his wavelength of jaundice and disappointment, of kids who never visit and can’t wait to leave when they do, of the forever teased if remembered at all, know that love songs are exactly what these are. –Mike Powell",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiymdfK9lpk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c50739937f59a00c2ccad/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/97-Randy-Newman-Randy-Newman.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Randy_Newman-Randy_Newman_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,96,Howlin’ Wolf,Howlin’ Wolf (1962),Chess,"Chess Like so many ’60s LPs, Howlin’ Wolf wasn’t designed as a proper album, per se. It rounds up all the A and B sides from the six singles the Chicago bluesman released between 1960 and early 1962, a time when he was on a hot streak, at least artistically. Wolf hadn’t hit the R&B charts since 1956, the year rock’n’roll reshaped popular music, yet at least half of this record consists of songs known by anybody with a passing familiarity with 20th century blues: “Little Red Rooster,” “Wang Dang Doodle,” “Back Door Man.” In the hands of all the ’60s British blues boys—not to mention all the Americans who followed—these songs lost their tension, with the focus shifting from songs to solos. Still, the appeal of the 12 songs on Howlin’ Wolf  is the wild, rangy groove of the Chess house band and, of course, the full-blooded roar of Wolf. Whether he’s murmuring or howling, the singer seems to keep some essential part of himself in reserve, which is why the music can seem so intimidating so many years after its recording. –Stephen Thomas Erlewine",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0aIjyX7vwI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c50a8dc33d2bb960c14e6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/96-Howlin%25E2%2580%2599-Wolf-Howlin%25E2%2580%2599-Wolf.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Howlin_Wolf-Howlin_Wolf_1962.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,95,The Doors,The Doors (1967),Elektra,"Elektra “If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, Infinite.” So hypothesized the poet William Blake toward the end of the 18th century. More than 150 years later, his theory would become a counterculture mission statement when the novelist Aldous Huxley referenced the quote in the title of his 1952 mescaline memoir The Doors of Perception, which in turn inspired rock’n’roll’s most notorious romantics to call themselves the Doors. Though their self-titled debut may have launched a thousand trips, it’s anything but hippie-dippy. Instead of endless possibility or untapped potential, frontman Jim Morrison’s notion of infinity suggests an ever-present, invariably destructive cosmic malaise filled with agonizing bar crawls, sordid hook-ups, and, of course, death. How marvelous, then, that as the void closes in on the album’s crown jewel, “Light My Fire,” the predominant mood is cathartic rather than catastrophic. –Zoe Camp",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXqPNlng6uI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c5123075611b11337fccf/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/95-The-Doors-The-Doors.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Doors-The_Doors_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,94,Nina Simone,In Concert (1964),Philips,"Philips So much of Nina Simone’s power manifested in performance. She was a commanding presence with a rare and extraordinary voice that could cut into even the most hardened skeptics. She didn’t so much communicate pain as inflict it, requiring anyone within striking distance to share her distress. But she was also elegant, capable of capturing and holding a crowd’s attention with sweeping gestures. She had a peculiar showmanship: part entertainer, part instructor, both charmer and empathic guide. She injured; she healed. Simone’s virtuosity is on full display at Carnegie Hall during the three live shows that comprise In Concert, in which she emerges a civil rights emissary. The album is powerful, funny, and haunting, a daring exploration of bondage and discomfort. “This is a show tune, but the show hasn’t been written yet,” she says during the first protest song she wrote, “Mississippi Goddam,” coaxing laughter out of her mostly white audience. What immediately follows is a full-fledged condemnation of American values and black displacement. “Lord have mercy on this land of mine,” she sings. “I don’t belong here/I don’t belong there.” Simone is constantly disarming her audience, and it is still affecting to hear her sing “Old Jim Crow” now, as it must’ve been then, amid lynchings, bus attacks, and church bombings. As black bodies continue to be endangered, rendered lifeless, and unavenged today, her voice echoes through time, reminding us that we are scarcely disconnected from the sins of the past. –Sheldon Pearce",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfNaAn4WHC4&list=PLEu-xF2IkuWSBldY6mWixe6hHEnzE0_nc&index=7,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c5146e8164243500efe62/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/94-Nina-Simone-In-Concert.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nina_Simone-In_Concert_1964.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,93,Van Dyke Parks,Song Cycle (1967),Warner Bros.,"Warner Bros. A former child actor and L.A. session player, Van Dyke Parks became a noted producer in the ’60s, eventually finding himself sitting in Brian Wilson’s sandbox in an attempt to help the Beach Boy wunderkind follow up Pet Sounds. But as that album, Smile, failed to come to fruition, Parks turned his attentions to Song Cycle. Made up of a decidedly unfashionable mélange of vaudeville showtunes, bluegrass, and clashing orchestras, Song Cycle remains one of the most precious and winking albums of its era. Sure, it sounded hopelessly outdated amid the psychedelic swirl of the late ’60s, but Parks sneakily anticipated a future time, when musicians as diverse as Joanna Newsom, Rufus Wainwright, and Skrillex would seek him out for eclectic collaboration. –Andy Beta",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxOVjZW6U-k,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c5199075611b11337fcd1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/93-Van-Dyke-Parks-Song-Cycle.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Van_Dyke_Parks-Song_Cycle_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,92,Gal Costa,Gal Costa (1969),Philips,"Philips Gal Costa begins as though in the midst of alien invasion, with UFOs whizzing by and a lone pedestrian screaming. The scene, which bookends the opening track “Não Identificado” (“Unidentified”), is a hint that this seemingly saccharine love song isn’t all it appears to be. Gal, like her Tropicálista cohort, often cloaked her social critiques in absurd or sentimental images and sounds, drawing on everything from Brazilian Cinema Novo to kitsch. Gal Costa classics like “Divino Maravilhoso” are clear in their political undertones, while tracks like “Baby” and “Lost in the Paradise” are hazy, surreal songs that comment on everything from bourgeois living to the state of South America. Where fellow Tropicálistas Os Mutantes shot their political statements through with freaky dystopic psychedelia and edgy humor, Gal Costa veils hers in gauzy melodies and bossa nova–indebted vocals. Able to channel bossa icon João Gilberto as much as blues rocker Janis Joplin, Costa’s delivery is dreamy yet trenchant, making Gal Costa a coil of barbed wire wrapped in silk, an unidentified object ready to cut. –Minna Zhou",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6khZzKCSomE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c51cacdd360b1835ef76c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/92-Gal-Costa-Gal-Costa.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Gal_Costa-Gal_Costa_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,91,James Brown,Say It Loud - I’m Black and I’m Proud (1969),King,"King Funk was born with a grunt. After a gig in the late ’60s, James Brown started dictating rhythms to his bandmate Pee Wee Ellis in measured, guttural noises. Brown and Ellis turned the exchange into 1967’s “Cold Sweat,” the first true channeling of Brown’s crazed genius and the revolution of the drum break, to boot. “Cold Sweat” was a funk landmark, but the duo’s breakthrough came in 1969, when they recorded “Say It Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud,” weaponizing funk for black empowerment. The song is the only splash of overt activism on the album bearing its name, but far from the only splash of color; Say It Loud is a vibrant selection of funk love songs slathered in blues, featuring the smoldering shrieker “Goodbye My Love, Pts. 1 & 2” and the self-explanatory “Shades of Brown.” The consummate entertainer and authoritarian, Brown displays full command of the band, funneling his revolutionary visions through them and combining secular swing with big gospel soul. “That’s what created funk music—gospel and jazz mixed together by James Brown with a little help from God,” Brown once told Guitar World. Say It Loud is among his boldest works, smooth and slick and strutting—proudly black in each utterance. Inside its grooves, Soul Brother No. 1 refuses to compromise. –Sheldon Pearce",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ft9sqsgkCLo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c520ed8aad1426054835a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/91-James-Brown-Say-It-Loud%2520-%2520I%25E2%2580%2599m-Black-and-I%25E2%2580%2599m-Proud.jpg,/dataset/artwork/James_Brown-Say_It_Loud_-_Im_Black_and_Im_Proud_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,90,Françoise Hardy,Tous Les Garçons Et Les Filles (1962),Disques Vogue,"Disques Vogue The early-’60s French “yé-yé” scene was made up mainly of young women who sang sexually-charged bubblegum written by older men. Françoise Hardy stood apart, both by maintaining autonomy over the lonesome yearning in her songs and by writing most of them. Her music would grow more intricate and eclectic over the years, most notably on 1971’s bossa nova–tinged masterwork La Question, but the reasons she ruled over the yé-yé period are apparent on her debut album. Tous Les Garçons Et Les Filles squeezes bouncy charm out of little more than twangy guitar, prominent bass, shuffling percussion, and Hardy’s disarmingly conversational (even if you don’t converse en français) vocals. The title hit, a loveless narrator’s solitary waltz across streets filled with adoring couples, feels like the platonic ideal for songs of this familiar trope. Perhaps it was translated so many times because it can’t be improved upon. But the rest of the album also finds an enduring middle ground between rockabilly shimmy and Gallic introspection, delivered by the most glamorous wallflower in France. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSPj37TX-XU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c68b7a2e329b140ef08a3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/90-Franc%25CC%25A7oise-Hardy-Tous-Les-Garc%25CC%25A7ons-Et-Les-Filles.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Franoise_Hardy-Tous_Les_Garons_Et_Les_Filles_1962.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,89,The Temptations,Cloud Nine (1969),Gordy,"Gordy In the middle of 1968, the Temptations were at loose ends. They’d kicked out their difficult star tenor David Ruffin, and when Otis Williams, the group’s rock-solid baritone anchor, went to songwriter/producer Norman Whitfield and said he wanted the group to keep up with Sly and the Family Stone’s innovations, Whitfield dismissed the idea. Fortunately, he changed his mind quickly. “Cloud Nine,” the first signal of their new direction, was a major hit—angry, funky, and hipper than Motown had been in a while—and it won the label’s first Grammy. The centerpiece of the subsequent Cloud Nine album was an even more startling Whitfield/Barrett Strong invention: “Runaway Child, Running Wild,” which segues into harrowing screams and an instrumental jam by Motown’s house band, the Funk Brothers. The Temptations’ psychedelic soul period would continue for the next few years, with Whitfield treating the group’s voices as the brightest hues in his palette. –Douglas Wolk",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bXJDLcy3yA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c69da3084d84e95a4930d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/89-The-Temptations-Cloud-Nine.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Temptations-Cloud_Nine_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,88,13th Floor Elevators,The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators (1966),International Artist,"International Artist The first LP from Austin rock band 13th Floor Elevators was purportedly also the first record to refer to its sound as “psychedelic.” Accompanied by a lurid red-and-green illustration of an eye within an eye, its liner notes—written by founding member and electric jug player Tommy Hall—lay out a blueprint for what the term might mean: In essence, humanity is stilted by what he calls its “vertical” organization of thought, and psychedelic drugs offer a way to see beyond such a limited structure. So rather than seeking a deliberate fringe sound, Hall wrote, “It is this quest for pure sanity that forms the basis of the songs on this record.” Here, their search involves sunburnt, agitated garage rock that wedges Hall’s freak texture between Roky Erickson and Stacy Sutherland’s blues-inflected guitars. For all its trippy philosophies, this ultimately accessible album doesn’t necessarily strain the limits of the mind too much, and perhaps that’s the point: As the lyrics to “The Kingdom of Heaven Is Within You” imply, the experience isn’t about taking a trip to somewhere faraway as much as it’s about zeroing in to where we already are. –Thea Ballard",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIVpHNEPzDM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c6a2c075611b11337fcd6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/88-13th-Floor-Elevators-The-Psychedelic-Sounds-of-the-13th-Floor-Elevators.jpg,/dataset/artwork/13th_Floor_Elevators-The_Psychedelic_Sounds_of_the_13th_Floor_Elevators_1966.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,87,Lee Hazlewood / Nancy Sinatra,Nancy & Lee (1968),Reprise,"Reprise Having penned and produced several of Nancy Sinatra’s biggest hits, including “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’,” Lee Hazlewood, the gravel-throated cowboy songwriter from Oklahoma, gave the Swinging Sixties some of its most enduring anthems. When the pair met up for the duet album Nancy & Lee, the tongue-in-cheek quality of their previous chart-toppers was all but eclipsed by a more robust, intense incarnation of country-tinged psychedelia. On each of the album’s 11 tracks, Hazlewood and Sinatra’s voices intertwine in a sort of intoxicated tango, their harmonies almost out of sync and yet perfectly tempered. Each artist holds their own: On “Some Velvet Morning,” Hazlewood’s sober verses are uplifted by Sinatra’s angelic chorus. They coast through a beaming cover of the Righteous Brothers’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” with an air of sweet resignation, a sentiment that carries them through the album. Though certainly a collection of pitch-perfect country-pop tunes, Nancy & Lee is first and foremost a document of a flawless collaboration, two musicians marrying their bespoke styles for an album that would be the apex of both their careers. –Cameron Cook",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=791z7Nb985Y,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c6c2d3084d84e95a4930f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/87-Lee-Hazlewood-and-Nancy-Sinatra-Nancy-_-Lee.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lee_Hazlewood__Nancy_Sinatra-Nancy__Lee_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,86,Marvin Gaye / Tammi Terrell,United (1967),Tamla,"Tamla In the ’60s, Marvin Gaye was Motown’s solo male sex symbol amid a roster of vocal groups, and Berry Gordy exploited his matinee idol charm by pairing him on albums with Mary Wells and Kim Weston. It was on 1967’s United when Gaye finally met his match, however, in 22-year-old Philadelphia firebrand Tammi Terrell. Discovered at 15 by Luther Dixon, Terrell carried herself like a wily veteran in the studio, pushing Gaye toward some of his finest vocal performances. Gordy paired them with newly signed Motown songwriters Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson, who served as the duo’s behind-the-scenes counterparts. They merged Gaye’s smooth, vulnerable tenor with Terrell’s bold soprano on the crossover gospel-pop classics “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” and “Your Precious Love,” transforming the perfectly matched pair into the embodiment of mainstream African-American puppy love. Though the duo would release two more collaborations, this was the only LP with Terrell’s full participation: during a performance of “Mountain” two months after United’s release, Terrell collapsed into Gaye’s arms, the earliest indication of a brain tumor that ended her life less than three years later. While this tragic early end casts United in a sad light, the album’s sincere, simple expressions of youthful romance endure. –Eric Harvey",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FI13bBdapc8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c6c919937f59a00c2cd45/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/86-Marvin-Gaye-Tammi-Terrell-United.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Marvin_Gaye__Tammi_Terrell-United_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,85,The Byrds,Sweetheart of the Rodeo (1968),Columbia,"Columbia Sweetheart of the Rodeo has inspired thousands of denim jacket patches and tasteful alt-country bands, but that took time. Upon the album’s release a half century ago, it caused a crowd mutiny at the Grand Ole Opry; the legendary Nashville radio DJ Ralph Emery even accused them of being hippies while they were guests on his show. Maybe the Byrds flew too close to the sun: Nine of the 11 songs are covers taken from the Louvin Brothers, Bob Dylan, and Merle Haggard. And no matter how respectful they were to the source material, as far as the Ralph Emerys were concerned, the Byrds were longhairs trying to sully the most pure of American music. Sweetheart of the Rodeo may not have made country cool, but it showed the volatility of two competing visions of Americana coexisting in the same space. If you can’t picture how Sweetheart of the Rodeo would be received right now, just find a record that has its genre’s purists up in arms—it is probably a glimpse of the future. –Ian Cohen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxzV5XoLpto,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c6cf99937f59a00c2cd47/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/85-The-Byrds-Sweetheart-of-the-Rodeo.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Byrds-Sweetheart_of_the_Rodeo_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,84,Ray Charles,Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music (1962),ABC-Paramount,"ABC-Paramount Ray Charles’ 1962 album Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music was hailed as a pioneering fusion of Nashville C&W with the swinging R&B for which Charles was known, but the LP is so much more than that. With sweet strings and swooning vocal arrangements by Marty Paich, producer Sid Feller helped Charles pick out the songs to record but ceded full creative control to the 31-year-old genius singer and keyboardist. Taking on Hank Williams (“You Win Again,” “Hey, Good Lookin’”), Don Gibson (“I Can’t Stop Loving You”), and traditional songs he could claim as his own (“Careless Love”), Charles’ performances instantly reveal the illusory boundaries between genres. The mere existence of Modern Sounds was a statement: an album of “hillbilly” songs, as the music industry once called them, recorded by a black man as the civil rights battles of the ’60s were heating up. And though the album didn’t make a dent on the country charts, its enormous popular success began to break down barriers inside Nashville, musical and otherwise. It helped bring a generation of black artists to country music, and—in a sense, blessed by Charles’ cool—even helped country music itself in its move towards a more contemporary and mainstream image. Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music are tunes about feeling bad that still feel exquisitely good. –Jesse Jarnow",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3rqszwlnLM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c6d40075611b11337fcd8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/84-Ray-Charles-Modern-Sounds-in-Country-and-Western-Music.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ray_Charles-Modern_Sounds_in_Country_and_Western_Music_1962.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,83,Morton Subotnick,Silver Apples of the Moon (1967),Nonesuch,"Nonesuch With a $500 grant from the Rockefeller Foundation burning a hole in his pocket, the composer Morton Subotnick commissioned inventor Don Buchla to create an “electronic music box.” Then, with his new Buchla 100, Subotnick made Silver Apples of the Moon. The sounds on it seem like the byproduct of an experiment gone wrong: Its eerie tones, elliptical pulses, enigmatic thumps, and waves of cybertronic wails are still otherworldly. The album is not only the first piece of electronic music conceived specifically for the LP; it’s also, arguably, the first album of electronic dance music. Anchoring the album is a ghostly chorus of beats and rhythms that would bloom into techno two decades later, and Subotnick was dumbstruck when he saw people dancing to the music during early performances. In a decade dedicated to the exploration of the fringes, of moon landings and subatomic exploration, Silver Apples was another attempt to break open the door into the future and walk on through. –Kevin Lozano",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HoljsO22qA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c6d8c075611b11337fcda/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/83-Morton-Subotnick-Silver-Apples-of-the-Moon.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Morton_Subotnick-Silver_Apples_of_the_Moon_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,82,Herbie Hancock,Maiden Voyage (1965),Blue Note,"Blue Note Improvisation is, essentially, spontaneous composition, but within the realm of jazz, the practice evolved so rapidly and dramatically that it came to resemble telepathy. Toward the end of his solo on the title track of Herbie Hancock’s Maiden Voyage, Freddie Hubbard produces a sequence of figure eights on his trumpet that resemble a dragonfly gently skating across the surface of a lake. Hancock and Tony Williams—on piano and drums, respectively—anticipate this shift and become the lake; their playing loses shape and melts into something more liquid and impressionistic. The ensemble on Maiden Voyage—consisting of Hubbard, Williams, George Coleman on tenor saxophone, and Ron Carter on bass—are listening to each other so hard, so attentively, that they seem to merge into one unusually flexible mind, as individual waves merge into a body of water. Presumably this is why Hancock found the sea so fascinating that he had to write an entire concept album about it: It’s an endless improvisation. –Brad Nelson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWC5x9G45yo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c6dc0e8164243500efe67/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/82-Herbie-Hancock-Maiden-Voyage.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Herbie_Hancock-Maiden_Voyage_1965.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,81,The Band,The Band (1969),Capitol,"Capitol The phrase “the old weird America” is useful to the point of being overused. Coined by Greil Marcus in his 1997 book about Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes, it has become easy shorthand for any musical act that draws from sources and sounds predating rock’n’roll. Marcus intended it to describe the strange nation glimpsed through Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music and, by extension, through the songs Dylan and the Band recorded together. But few albums have offered such a majestic panorama of the old weird America as the Band’s self-titled second album. Nothing here sounds up to date. It’s proudly antiquated, pre-modern, the songs stowed for generations in a dusty attic somewhere, cracked and yellowed with the years. Robbie Robertson proves himself a fine storyteller, giving us a Southerner’s view of the Civil War on “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” and a union worker’s Dust Bowl worries on “King Harvest (Has Surely Come).” But really, it’s the Band who brings these characters and this setting to life, arranging and performing these songs to showcase their own eccentricities—and, by extension, the eccentricities of the nation itself. The album’s weirdness has not waned with time, no matter how many subsequent generations of roots musicians borrow its songs or its ideas. –Stephen M. Deusner",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQ_XoqLfn7E,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c6dfa3084d84e95a49311/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/81-The-Band-The-Band.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Band-The_Band_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,80,Karlheinz Stockhausen,Kontakte (1964),Wergo,"Wergo Many musicians would be content with discovering a new way to make music, but German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen set his sights higher: He wanted to help us find new ways to listen. Refined over 700 pages of notation and six months of work with tape machines at Cologne’s Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Kontakte (“Contacts”), was groundbreaking, both in terms of Stockhausen’s process and for electronic music as a whole. The album is about connections, most obviously between acoustic and electronic sounds—cymbals and gongs ring in alien timbres, woodblocks and bamboo claves transform into gurgles or collapse into pure texture. But it’s also about connections in time and space. This is a sparse, abstract work in which distinct moments reach out to one another across a void; live performances of Kontakte often had the audience situated in the middle of four speakers, where Stockhausen’s experiments in spatial movement could be best appreciated. And while the pace of technological advancement means that Stockhausen’s methods on Kontakte would now be considered antiquated, the work itself still stands up, demanding—and rewarding—concentration and contemplation. –Louis Pattison",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjKVJ2z66fk&t=1s,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c6e733084d84e95a49313/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/80-Karlheinz-Stockhausen-Kontakte.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Karlheinz_Stockhausen-Kontakte_1964.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,79,Caetano Veloso,Caetano Veloso (1968),Philips,"Philips In 1968, the same year that the Beatles toyed with the idea of revolution, Caetano Veloso was quietly leading his own in Brazil. Four years earlier, a military-led coup toppled the left-leaning presidency of João Goulart, ushering in a period of cultural repression and censorship. Veloso’s self-titled solo debut sparked the Tropicália movement, setting the standard of speaking out “against the dictatorship without saying anything about it.” Through its embrace of American psychedelia, bossa nova, traditional Brazilian orchestrations, and gentle acoustic guitars, Caetano Veloso rejects the junta’s nationalism and calls for cultural cannibalism, the idea of mixing influences to create a unique entity. Veloso’s lyrics, particularly in the ecstatic “Alegria, Alegria,” use pop culture references like Coca-Cola, Brigitte Bardot, and television to show the Tropicálistas’ embrace of Western culture. Veloso would become a political prisoner the year after Caetano Veloso’s release, proving that even soft protests wield a mighty sword. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecTRYvrO7Xc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c6f49cdd360b1835ef7d3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/79-Caetano-Veloso-Caetano-Veloso.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Caetano_Veloso-Caetano_Veloso_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,78,Creedence Clearwater Revival,Willy and the Poor Boys (1969),Fantasy,"Fantasy Nowadays, we tend to think the cycles of media and fame move at a rate fast enough to bewilder previous generations. But in 1969, John Fogerty was so scared of falling off the charts that Creedence Clearwater Revival released three albums. Willy and the Poor Boys is the last, and breeziest, of those offerings, but that hardly matters: Creedence didn’t meaningfully attempt to differentiate their albums in tone, subject matter, or style. Instead, the business model was this: People need more great songs, so here are some more great songs. Keeping this hectic pace with relevance, Creedence pumped out felt, lived-in anthems. They’re often held up as a quintessential American band, and they were: They lied about their origins, had bad haircuts, and cribbed all their best moves from African-American pioneers. But their sturdiest tie to the land of the free was their frightening, locomotive commitment to efficiency. –Andrew Gaerig",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrMvblpZFq0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c701ed8aad1426054835f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/78-Creedence-Clearwater-Revival-Willy-and-the-Poor-Boys.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Creedence_Clearwater_Revival-Willy_and_the_Poor_Boys_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,77,Silver Apples,Silver Apples (1968),Kapp,"Kapp If Silver Apples sound like they’re rejecting rock on their 1968 debut, that’s because rock rejected them. Singer Simeon Coxe III and drummer Danny Taylor were playing in the Overland Electric Stage Band when Coxe (known since as Simeon) inserted an oscillator into the mix. Their bandmates were so offended that Simeon and Taylor split off into their own group. Adding more oscillators and electronics, Simeon creating a hybrid instrument he called “the Thing,” and the duo made repetitive music that sounded like nothing else at the time. Silver Apples does sound like a lot of music that came after it, though. Taylor’s ritualistic beats and Simeon’s low-end loops predict Can’s ritualistic jams, while their persistent whirr presages the throbbing pre-punk of Suicide, whose Alan Vega championed Silver Apples around New York. Still, there’s plenty on Silver Apples that hasn’t been replicated, particularly Simeon’s austere falsetto, which floats like an apparition conjured by the duo’s grinding grooves. It’s spooky and trippy but also profoundly calm, a record that still haunts rock simply by standing outside of it. –Marc Masters",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8vqOmFa9sg&list=PLKYRDY38H2b0Azc6wG7NJpdPaLXDvCmoN,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c7053d8aad14260548361/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/77-Silver-Apples-Silver-Apples.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Silver_Apples-Silver_Apples_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,76,Steve Reich / Richard Maxfield / Pauline Oliveros,New Sounds in Electronic Music (Come Out / Night Music / I of IV) (1969),Odyssey,"Odyssey The ’60s were a heady time for experimental electronic music. David Behrman, who produced this essential compilation, was at the helm of the Music of Our Time series for Columbia and its Odyssey sub-label, bringing the way-out sounds of electronic composers like Karlheinz Stockhausen to the masses. New Sounds showcased three radically different approaches: The first track on the A-side, Richard Maxfield’s “Night Music,” is a tape collage of pulses meant to evoke “the antiphonal chirping of birds and insects on a summer night.” Pauline Oliveros’ “I of IV,” which takes up the entirety of the B-side, is a real-time studio performance of squealing oscillators and tape delay, with an expressive character that would prefigure noise music and freeform electronic improv for decades to come. But the highlight of the set is undoubtedly Steve Reich’s “Come Out.” Composed as part of a benefit for the Harlem Six, a group of black teenagers who were arrested and beaten by police, Reich’s piece takes a single line from one of the boys’ testimony—“I had to, like, open the bruise up, and let some of the bruise blood come out to show them”—and loops it across two tape recorders playing out of phase with each other. Turning a documentary artifact into an ominously psychedelic meditation on violence, it is both a cornerstone of minimalism and an enduring snapshot of the decade’s upheavals. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVXc9Veo_B8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c7098a0109c461ee8652f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/76-Steve-Reich-Richard-Maxfield-Pauline-Oliveros-New-Sounds-in-Electronic-Music-(Come-Out-_-Night-Music-_-I-of-IV).jpg,/dataset/artwork/Steve_Reich__Richard_Maxfield__Pauline_Oliveros-New_Sounds_in_Electronic_Music_Come_Out__Night_Music__I_of_IV_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,75,Toots and the Maytals,Sweet and Dandy (1969),Beverley’s,"Beverley’s Toots and the Maytals were nearly a movement unto themselves within Jamaican music, and Sweet and Dandy catches them at their peak. Its all-time classics, including “54-46 That’s My Number” and “Pressure Drop,” gave reggae much of its sound and momentum, harnessing the forward motion of ska into a slower, chugging tempo, emphasizing the bass work and double-time guitar that are now hallmarks of the genre. (Omitted here, however: Toots’ 1968 hit “Do the Reggay,” which also gave the burgeoning sound its name.) Toots’ songwriting here shaped reggae deeply. “54-46” indelibly recounts his prison experience (he had served time for marijuana possession), complete with cinematic dialogue, while “Pressure Drop” distills the revolutionary impulse of the ’60s to a single melodic phrase that’s been covered by everyone from the Clash to Keith Richards. His vocals are unstoppable, a transporting Pentecostalist shout that’s been compared to James Brown and Otis Redding—not so much because it’s derivative in style, but because it’s their equal in firepower. –Edwin “STATS” Houghton",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcfn79H0crM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c70e6eb13366372c29820/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/75-Toots-and-the-Maytals-Sweet-and-Dandy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Toots_and_the_Maytals-Sweet_and_Dandy_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,74,John Fahey,The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death (1965),Universal,"Universal John Fahey’s first four albums included the word “death” in their titles, but only the last one framed it as a miracle. With The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death, Fahey suggests that the character he invented on his debut LP, Blind Joe Death, had morphed into something divine, and the music suggested it, too. It’s one of the steel-string guitarist’s most joyously diverse works, a mix of traditional tunes, adaptations, medleys, and inventive originals. Fahey often employed tunings and techniques that he invented himself, but Transfiguration is less about prowess than passion, with every track conveying emotion, enthusiasm, and a reverent awe for the material. There’s a raw edge to the recording—strings buzz, notes echo, even a dog barks—that fits Fahey’s mission to get to the core of things. His playing is precise, to be sure, but The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death is much more about revelation than refinement. –Marc Masters",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3msgiiZcuE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c7156075611b11337fcdc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/74-John-Fahey-The-Transfiguration-of-Blind-Joe-Death.jpg,/dataset/artwork/John_Fahey-The_Transfiguration_of_Blind_Joe_Death_1965.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,73,Joni Mitchell,Clouds (1969),Reprise,"Reprise “We are the first generation to see the clouds from both sides,” Saul Bellow mused about air travel in his novel Henderson the Rain King. “What a privilege!” By the time Joni Mitchell’s Clouds was released a decade later, her signature song “Both Sides, Now”—inspired by Bellow’s words—had already traveled the globe. In 1967, she gave it to Judy Collins, who made it a hit. Later, Frank Sinatra changed its title; Marie Laforêt translated it to French; Leonard Nimoy twisted it into a joke about the Starship Enterprise. It was the first time—though certainly not the last—that Mitchell’s music flew away to find a life of its own. Clouds, her hushed and hazy sophomore album, marks the end of an era for Mitchell. The bright-eyed, flower-wielding self-portrait she painted on the cover seems to narrate each of its gentle, intricately fingerpicked folk songs: “Aging children, I am one,” she tells us in one of its most psychedelic refrains. On masterpieces to come, Mitchell would paint deeper portraits of the characters she introduced here, fascinated by what keeps them together, what drives them apart, what lingers in the aftermath. On Clouds, she crafts a gorgeous still life as she watches from afar, high above the earth, where there’s only two sides to see things from. By 25, she’d already mastered both perspectives: Soon, she’d discover that there were infinitely more. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7Xm30heHms,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c718ceb13366372c29822/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/73-Joni-Mitchell-Clouds.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Joni_Mitchell-Clouds_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,72,Led Zeppelin,Led Zeppelin (1969),Atlantic,"Atlantic Few classic rock bands had the kind of slow and careful buildup that Led Zeppelin had. The members were all seasoned studio professionals by the time they found each other, steeped in the British blues scene, with seemingly no kinks to work out. They locked together like muscle fibers, instantly and irrevocably, and they flexed. There are precious few secrets or left turns in Led Zeppelin’s discography: They made the Led Zeppelin album, over and over again, and you picked your favorite. This one happened, temporally, in 1969, but that still seems like a mistake. Culturally, it feels like a chunk of the 1970s that crash-landed on the wrong side of the calendar. With the first 30 seconds of “Good Times Bad Times”—track one of their first album—they basically defined what the next 10 years of rock music would sound like. The most perfect-sounding E power chord in rock history, underlined by rock’s most indelible thumping toms; drum fills like rushing water, crystalline and emphatic and happening everywhere. Like all the best Zeppelin music, it is resistant to argument: It is a physically satiating sound for those who crave it, and repulsive to those who hate it, but every reaction to Zeppelin occurs in the limbic system, in dank areas far beneath the bland cubicle of your neocortex. All of the things that might make someone wrinkle their nose at Led Zeppelin are here, in abundance: the British folk longueurs; the straight blues rips, muddy and a little ponderous; the hammy, howled lyrics about women spending your “hard-earned pay.” But so are some of the most staggering sounds a rock band ever made. –Jayson Greene",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsZG7n7ries,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c738fa0109c461ee86561/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/72-Led-Zeppelin-Led-Zeppelin.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Led_Zeppelin-Led_Zeppelin_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,71,Sam Cooke,Ain’t That Good News (1964),RCA,"RCA Sam Cooke’s optimistic swan song, Ain’t That Good News, was clouded by tragedy. Before he finished recording the album, Cooke’s 18-month-old son Vincent drowned in the family’s swimming pool. Only nine months after it was released, the soul singer was shot and killed in a motel. The motel’s manager alleged that Cooke burst into her office and attacked her, and that she fired in self-defense; the circumstances were disputed. A bullet pierced his heart, a sad bit of symbolism for the man who wrote “Cupid.” Bad news marks Ain’t That Good News’ place in history but, displaced from that reality, it consists primarily of warmth and romance: falling in and out of love, spending a Saturday night trawling for a bedmate, basking in sunny days spent counting cash. These are feel-good romps and ballads anchored by the most stirring voice in soul, croons that would come to define a generation and influence several more. Cooke sings of intimacy and longing with a tenderness that slows time. But then there’s “A Change Is Gonna Come,” a harbinger of social justice that became a trademark for the civil rights movement. “It’s been too hard living/But I’m afraid to die,” he sings, revealing long-held black anxieties before circling back to the hopeful refrain. The fear of death only strengthens Cooke’s resolve to see a brighter future, to find hope amid strife as only he could. –Sheldon Pearce",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Up_e3GRV484,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c73c7d8aad14260548363/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/71-Sam-Cooke-Ain%25E2%2580%2599t-That-Good-News.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sam_Cooke-Aint_That_Good_News_1964.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,70,Leonard Cohen,Songs From a Room (1969),Columbia,"Columbia While Leonard Cohen’s work would eventually lift skyward in the form of standards, hymns, and prophecies, the music on his sophomore album is something humbler: country tunes. In writing it, he abandoned his initial sessions in Hollywood with David Crosby and headed to Nashville, where he filled the studio with banjos and buzzing jaw harps. Nashville welcomed him: The album’s opening song, the immortal “Bird on the Wire,” was covered by both Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson. Kris Kristofferson famously requested its opening lines be inscribed on his grave. Like the best country music, Songs From a Room flows with a casual grace, belying some of the songwriter’s darkest poetry—meditations on life, death, and all the pain and drinking along the way. In “The Butcher,” Cohen rambles in a bold, conversational speak-sing while his guitar stumbles, as if in agony. In its final lines, Cohen bears the word of God: “Lead on, my son,” he instructs. “It is your world.” On Songs From a Room, this sounds like both a blessing and a burden. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlTOfw5dz-g,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c7400bbcef9298df0b9cf/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/70-Leonard-Cohen-Songs-From-a-Room.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Leonard_Cohen-Songs_From_a_Room_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,69,The Who,The Who Sell Out (1967),Track,"Track Designed as a satirical valentine to the pirate radio stations of London, The Who Sell Out is premised as a collection of faux 45s intercut with mock ads, a record where the concept lies entirely on the surface. Forget any sense of narrative or deeper meanings, the tropes that often sink concept albums: This is inherently pop art, an album where the style is substance and the style is so strong, it doesn’t matter that the Who leave some loose ends hanging. (See: when Pete Townshend doesn’t write a final stanza for “Tattoo,” or when the album’s very concept is abandoned shortly into the second side.) The first edition is impossible to find now, as it’s been replaced by two subsequent expansions with more music and commercials that enhance the parody. In any incarnation, though, The Who Sell Out plays to all of the band’s contradictory strengths: It’s furious and funny, vulnerable and impervious, artful and artless in equal measure. The Who never made another album like it, and they never made a better album or one that captured their personality so thoroughly. –Stephen Thomas Erlewine",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvkTx87viHU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c7436d8aad14260548365/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/69-The-Who-The-Who-Sell-Out.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Who-The_Who_Sell_Out_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,68,Simon & Garfunkel,Bookends (1968),Columbia,"Columbia The boho idealism of the ’60s didn’t display itself entirely in flower-strewn festivals and fiery political sit-ins—sometimes it took the form of a rumpled introvert on a bus watching the prairie whirr by, wondering if he was headed toward contentment. Paul Simon wrote Bookends when he was 27, a rising folk star slightly too sophisticated for the waning Greenwich Village scene; he sang about his mortality with a twinge of envy, eager to claim the wisdom that would surely amass with the wrinkles. At the core of Simon and Garfunkel’s self-produced fourth album is a song cycle about a life’s journey, from youth to old age. The duo harness the shifting perspectives of maturity and disillusionment via gently clever melodic motifs and cautiously openhearted vignettes; the melodramatic nursery rhyme chorus of “Save the Life of My Child” matures into the plaintive, uneasy guitar wanderlust of “America.” The pair, usually so luminous in harmony, fracture and sidestep each other gingerly in “Overs,” rising in feeble hope before slinking away, spurned. By the time they’re perched together on a park bench, elders quietly appraising the sunset, they’ve served a stately rebuff to another ’60s credo—it doesn’t sound like a drag, so much, getting old. –Stacey Anderson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13olfeD026g,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c7476eb13366372c29824/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/68-Simon-_-Garfunkel-Bookends.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Simon__Garfunkel-Bookends_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,67,Thelonious Monk,Solo Monk (1965),Columbia,"Columbia Raised on the bottom-heavy sound of stride pianists like Fats Waller or Willie Smith, Monk was a radical enamored with the past, someone who didn’t break with tradition so much as bend it into weird new shapes. Split between standards and originals, Solo Monk—one of several albums of solo piano he released—is a good walking companion, or music for the hypothetical parlor. It’s charming, funny, and beautiful but not so beautiful that you worry what it might try to sell you. These are not bop abstractions but Polaroids, snapshots in which someone blinks, or where half the landscape is obscured by the photographer’s thumb; not the finessed but the flawed, the inimitable, the real. As a listener, the revelation is coming to hear the wrong notes without pining after the right one. –Mike Powell",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMYkPh3YA2E&list=PLW6eDyatTzJtpZq-SG60Pj5Lr-cEcngVk&index=17,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c74abe8164243500efe69/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/67-Thelonious-Monk-Solo-Monk.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Thelonious_Monk-Solo_Monk_1965.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,66,Buffy Sainte-Marie,Illuminations (1969),Vanguard,"Vanguard The Canadian singer Buffy Sainte-Marie made her name in the early-’60s Greenwich Village folk scene with protest songs informed by her Native heritage and a breathtaking vibrato. But her sixth album, Illuminations, embraced a more adventurous sound: It was one of the first records to use the analog Buchla synthesizer to treat vocals, and it is possessed of the cosmic energy its title suggests. When the psychedelic edges of its Leonard Cohen–penned opening track, “God Is Alive Magic Is Afoot,” suddenly begin to quaver—the song’s organic sound turning synthetic—it is startling and then astonishing, the sound of a woman peering into the future. The charging, independent-woman anthem “Better to Find Out for Yourself” still feels ahead of its time as her words—“Take it from me/A man can be more trouble than you’ll ever know!”—tumble into each other thrillingly. Illuminations offered a vision of the freak-folk scene that would take three more decades to form in America. Sainte-Marie’s audience dwindled in the ‘60s, and it wasn’t just because her music was growing odder: Her records were quietly blacklisted from U.S. airwaves during Vietnam, due to the government’s belief that she was “determined to encourage widespread citizen protest.” With this monumental roadblock, Sainte-Marie’s record sales declined, but in the last few decades Illuminations is being heard at last. –Jenn Pelly",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZV7xoS1E4U,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c74e6cdd360b1835ef7d5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/66-Buffy-Sainte-Marie-Illuminations.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Buffy_Sainte-Marie-Illuminations_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,65,Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band,Safe as Milk (1967),Buddha,"Buddha As anyone who’s heard the unfettered skronk of 1969’s Trout Mask Replica can attest, Don Van Vliet would go on to make much more alien and lacerating music. In fact, from a 2017 vantage point, it’s hard to hear now what was so radical about Safe as Milk, Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band’s debut album, that A&M declined to release it. Delta blues and R&B are driving forces; “Zig Zag Wanderer” captures the kind of hot-blooded twang that British Invasion acts tied themselves up in knots trying to imitate; “I’m Glad” is a woozy doo-wop number in debt to Stax and Motown. But there are rumblings of stranger things afoot, like the live-wire Theremin that runs through “Electricity,” to say nothing of a young Ry Cooder’s lithe guitar work, which whips around the edges of the music like leaves signaling the onset of a storm. The fulcrum is Van Vliet himself, crooning and bellowing like a man possessed, luxuriating in the grain of a voice that seemed to know neither its upper nor lower limits. Years later, he would say that, in his youth, he chose music over sculpture because “it’s more perishable; it’s more swirling, like smoke.” While his wispiest abstractions were still a ways off, Safe as Milk is where he lights the embers. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhsIzW2Nz_0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c75763084d84e95a49345/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/65-Captain-Beefheart-and-His-Magic-Band-Safe-as-Milk.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Captain_Beefheart_and_His_Magic_Band-Safe_as_Milk_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,64,The Jimi Hendrix Experience,Axis: Bold as Love (1967),Track,"Track The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s 1967 debut, Are You Experienced, was the sort of epochal record that made even the rowdiest rock’n’roll of its day seem instantly square, while demoting the most revered guitar gods back to mere-mortal status. Hendrix wasn’t just the greatest, most wildly inventive six-string slinger of his generation, he was also its most outrageous showman: a hot doggin’, lighter-fluid-squirting, sexy MF to which all future aspiring sexy MFs would bow before, a psychedelic shaman who used garage rock as a portal into the great unknown. So what could he possibly do for an encore? Prove that he was one of the best singers and songwriters in the game, too. Axis: Bold as Love was released just months after his debut, but Hendrix worked in dogs’ years, packing in a half-decade’s worth of artistic growth into a minuscule window of time. While he would go on to famously cover Dylan, Hendrix was already channeling Bob’s iconoclastic essence on the militaristic strike “If 6 Was 9,” where he not only declares, “I’m going to wave my freak flag high,” but delivers the stormy gust in which it can valiantly flutter. And on the titanic “Bold as Love,” Hendrix established the jive-talkin’ swagger and cosmic majesty of glam rock at a time when Bowie was still making small talk with gnomes. Still, Axis: Bold as Love’s most immersive moments are its most intimate, like the brief, beautiful ballad “Little Wing”—vivid, emotionally resonant vignettes that remind us Hendrix was as much a master of words as wah-wah pedals. –Stuart Berman",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLV4_xaYynY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c75aadc33d2bb960c151a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/64-The-Jimi-Hendrix-Experience-Axis-%2520Bold-as-Love.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Jimi_Hendrix_Experience-Axis_Bold_as_Love_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,63,Laura Nyro,New York Tendaberry (1969),Columbia,"Columbia Laura Nyro had a tendency for making up words that conveyed sensation rather than action. “Can you surry? Can you picnic?” the Bronx-born singer asked on “Stoned Soul Picnic,” from her second album, 1968’s Eli and the Thirteenth Confession. (Well, can you?) She named her third album for one of them: 1969’s New York Tendaberry referred to the “warm, tender core she perceives deep inside the city’s grating exterior,” as New York Times reporter William Kloman observed it. Nyro—then 21—didn’t just perceive it, but raised it from beneath the sidewalks in a rapturous reckoning between “health and sickness, god and the devil.” New York Tendaberry is aggressively romantic, and Nyro is among the greatest evangelists for New York’s wonder in the face of all contradictory evidence—the conniving sailors and Bowery prowlers, “ravin’ crazy gamblers,” destitute addicts and sleazy landlords that populate her record. She often took a horse and cart through Central Park to the studio, where she worked long, luxurious nights by candlelight, playing for love rather than any need for precision. Nyro’s energy on Tendaberry is uncontainable, vaulting between wispy piano and godly rage, leaving the band to play catch up (and add overdubs later). She was following a more profound rhythm. “You want to dig the vibrations I’ve been getting?” she asked Kloman. “The real United States of America is about to be born. That’s what’s coming out of the revolution.” –Laura Snapes",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22iul7iNZIM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c75e5eb13366372c29826/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/63-Laura-Nyro-New-York-Tendaberry.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Laura_Nyro-New_York_Tendaberry_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,62,Etta James,At Last! (1960),Argo,"Argo Etta James doesn’t ask for much on her debut album, At Last! All she wants is a lover who writes, someone for whom she could make bread and treat right, a “Sunday Kind of Love” that lasts “past Saturday night.” James had a difficult early life; she was essentially abandoned by her young mother, never knew her father, and abused by the man who encouraged her singing. Still, on At Last!, she opens her heart to the world, and the microphone can hardly contain her outbursts of desire. But only in its famous title track, a joyous relief in love found, does James’ voice get to relish in unbridled softness. James could have chosen to sing more celebratory standards instead of such candid ballads, but perhaps the former girl-group member knew already that she could broadcast the blues like no one else. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxBwcl2V83Y,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c761dcdd360b1835ef7d7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/62-Etta-James-At-Last!.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Etta_James-At_Last_1960.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,61,Nick Drake,Five Leaves Left (1969),Island,"Island Had this list been made at the time of Nick Drake’s death in 1974, or even a decade later, his debut album would never have appeared on it. Five Leaves Left (named after the warning in Rizla rolling papers’ packaging) had sunk with barely a ripple, as had his subsequent records. His posh murmur, studious fingerpicking, and musings on mortality and alienation had, perhaps, been too polite to raise a fuss. But Drake’s flame was maintained by a cult that grew larger and more devoted over time, as well as by his producer, Joe Boyd, whose contract with Island Records specified that Drake’s music could never go out of print. With every year, the quiet, thoughtful Five Leaves Left sounds more elegantly wrought, and Drake’s performances and songwriting bear fruit like an overlooked grove. –Douglas Wolk",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cche-h83qNQ&list=PLYgM_FnR5KabRpOdWlsvX8QXRl6o6SntO&index=6,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c7652a0109c461ee86563/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/61-Nick-Drake-Five-Leaves-Left.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nick_Drake-Five_Leaves_Left_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,60,Grateful Dead,Live/Dead (1969),Seven Arts / Warner Bros.,"Seven Arts / Warner Bros. Since you can’t currently walk into a brunch joint or turn over a celebrity photo without some Grateful Dead merch scurrying out, it’s helpful to remember that, for most people, the band required a great amount of editing to appear presentable. Live/Dead was the first such sonic haircut, and it still resulted in a 75-minute double LP in which the shortest song—outside of the ""And We Bid You Goodnight"" outro—is nearly seven minutes long. The album remains a compelling document of the band at a time when they were able to slip effortlessly between blues-rock powerhouse and cosmic voyagers, often twice or more during the same composition. The version of their cornerstone jam “Dark Star” that opens the album has effectively functioned as a red pill/blue pill fork in the road for college freshmen for nearly 50 years: This is either all the Dead you’ll ever need, or you embrace it and stay in wonderland. –Andrew Gaerig",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQ1_IbFFbzA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c76bee8164243500efe9b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/60-Grateful-Dead-Live_Dead.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Grateful_Dead-LiveDead_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,59,Bill Evans Trio,Sunday at the Village Vanguard (1961),Riverside,"Riverside If Sundays are inherently mournful, it’s fitting that one of the greatest live jazz albums doubles as a partial requiem. As Bill Evans, bassist Scott LaFaro, and drummer Paul Motian descended into the Village Vanguard basement on this early summer Sabbath, they created a form of musical telepathy as original and animated as the Alice in Wonderland waltz they covered. Before Evans formed his virtuosic trio, he’d been the pianist in the immortal sextet that shaded Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue. He was a heroin-shooting, Buddhist, classically trained player who looked like a nebbish bookkeeper stashed in the Sterling Cooper basement, but according to Davis, he played like “crystal notes or sparkling water.” Until Sunday at the Village Vanguard, piano trios largely existed as centerpieces for the bandleader, but here, Evans commands a triad as psychically tethered and footloose as the Magi. Reimagined numbers from Miles Davis, Cole Porter, and George and Ira Gershwin elegantly toast LaFaro’s originals in which he bends the bass with balletic grace underneath Evans’ Zen restraint. Less than two weeks later, LaFaro, 25, would die in a car accident, becoming a tragic myth immortalized by one Sunday recording, the applause for his genius still ringing in perpetuity. –Jeff Weiss",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUCyjDOlnPU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c8b33e4e74545b38d7241/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/59-Bill-Evans-Trio-Sunday-at-the-Village-Vanguard.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bill_Evans_Trio-Sunday_at_the_Village_Vanguard_1961.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,58,Johnny Cash,At Folsom Prison (1968),Columbia,"Columbia “Hello, I’m Johnny Cash.” The Man in Black was one of the biggest stars in country music when he played a series of shows at Folsom Prison in January 1968, yet that simple statement suggests a proper reintroduction. Part country singer and part punk rocker, he roars through the rowdy set with such violent intensity that you’d think he was trying to incite a riot; every song—including the one by Glen Sherley, in Folsom for armed robbery—addresses the harshness of the setting. The album also conveys a humanistic warmth because Cash, then still overcoming his own addictions, was trying to understand the circumstances of every prisoner in that room and talk to him directly. One of the most electric live albums in any genre, At Folsom Prison demonstrates how country music might speak for a population that has been denied a voice. –Stephen M. Deusner",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06wMNow3npo&index=5&list=PLObfDMQjQ2KZCDVKe4S76qANG1Uu6KTL9,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c8b6ca0109c461ee86567/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/58-Johnny-Cash-At-Folsom-Prison.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Johnny_Cash-At_Folsom_Prison_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,57,The Ornette Coleman Quartet,This Is Our Music (1961),Atlantic,"Atlantic When This Is Our Music was released in 1961, some seasoned jazz listeners of the day took it as a work of sacrilege. Heard through modern ears, it’s not immediately clear why. The melodies are bright as buttons, the likes of “Blues Connotation” have undeniable swing, and there’s even a standard in the shape of George and Ira Gershwin’s “Embraceable You,” played all languid and lovely. But placed in the continuity of a discography, you can hear Ornette and band stretching the form, his improvisations becoming more elastic, the restraints of harmony and structure fraying and beginning to fall away. This is undeniably a group effort: a 23-year-old Don Cherry shadows Ornette’s piercing alto sax with tart pocket trumpet, while bassist Charlie Haden and drummer Ed Blackwell share a bubbly energy, equal parts play and purpose. This Is Our Music captures Ornette in a state of beautiful transition, a record both bold and undeniable. –Louis Pattinson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LM3e-UTnOI0&index=4&list=PL1z26GSODZJ1nV_S-zOmF2QFi710xxSIa,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c8bbbe8164243500efecd/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/57-The-Ornette-Coleman-Quartet-This-Is-Our-Music.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Ornette_Coleman_Quartet-This_Is_Our_Music_1961.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,56,King Crimson,In the Court of the Crimson King (1969),Island,"Island King Crimson became royalty quickly. Their breakthrough show was at London’s Hyde Park alongside the Rolling Stones in 1969, before an audience of hundreds of thousands. When their debut album arrived later that year—a bold and overwhelming brew of British folk, free jazz, psych-rock, and proto-metal—it won over audiences around the world, expanding young minds and inspiring fellow artists. In a rambling, near-indecipherable exaltation of the record, the Who’s Pete Townshend called it “an uncanny masterpiece,” like “everything multitracked a billion times.” In the Court of the Crimson King was a window into the decade to come. Its long, immersive, Mellotron-heavy songs helped define the sound of progressive rock, acting as a blueprint for future acts. Ironically, the band it introduced would soon cease to exist: By the following year, guitarist Robert Fripp would be their only original member remaining, leaving behind Greg Lake’s stately, sad-eyed vocals, Ian McDonald’s skronking saxophone, and Michael Giles’ skittering drums. Fripp could have spent his career following up this album, refining its indulgences and recreating its successes. Instead, he moved on. Having already seen one future, he began his search for the next one. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwkO1y4bTEE&list=PLecmVSL7rdzvkFszfmvX3RnHCAIm_8Fx_,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c8bf3bbcef9298df0b9d1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/56-King-Crimson-In-the-Court-of-the-Crimson-King.jpg,/dataset/artwork/King_Crimson-In_the_Court_of_the_Crimson_King_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,55,Bob Dylan,The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1963),Columbia,"Columbia With his second album, 21-year-old Bob Dylan documented the tempestuous world in front of him in the moments before headlines became history. “Oxford Town” recounts the violence with which civil rights movement protests were met; “Talkin’ World War III Blues” sees its protagonist haunted by the promise of nuclear war; “Blowin’ in the Wind,” which is based on the African-American spiritual “No More Auction Block for Me,” turns philosophical questions into a counterculture anthem. For an album that’s largely just guitar and voice, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan is expansive, with Dylan broadening his observations through poetic musing and wry humor. Songs like “Girl from the North Country” and “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” further extend the record’s reach, positioning intimate romantic melancholy on equal footing with the analysis of political chaos. And he’s reaching out to the rambling, electrified sound he’d soon embrace: Propelled by a howling refrain, the seven-minute “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” cracks open contained folk mannerisms. Through generations, the album has become a living monument to a moment in American youth culture, made up of songs that can still teach us how to feel. –Thea Ballard",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5al0HmR4to,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c8c38bbcef9298df0b9d3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/55-Bob-Dylan-The-Freewheelin%25E2%2580%2599-Bob-Dylan.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bob_Dylan-The_Freewheelin_Bob_Dylan_1963.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,54,Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band,Trout Mask Replica (1969),Straight,"Straight By the late ’60s, eccentrics were in vogue. With an eye on the psych fringes, labels had learned to package the weird and wayward as outsider kitsch. Into this era of pop perversion, Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band swaggered like angry gods. A blues-fueled collision of free-jazz wit and rock’n’roll energy, their art-rock calamity Trout Mask Replica confronted and ridiculed rock orthodoxy—too bewildering to emulate, too fast and deranged for casual consumption. For every new band formed off the back of The Velvet Underground & Nico, Trout Mask Replica might have driven a few to dive out the fire escape. Part of the record’s legend stems from its listener-repellant veneer, a dizzy array of free-association poetry and cubist illogic. A studio tyrant, bandleader Don Van Vliet took pains to craft this illusion of perpetually combusting genius. He commandeered a house in Los Angeles’ Woodland Hills neighborhood and ran it like a zoo; one member claims he was fed nothing but soybeans for a month. The Captain dictated the music note by note, sculpting the band to fit his skewed vision of virtuosity. Together, they produced something both surreal and intimate: the abstract vision of a man untouched by time, attuned to nature’s untamed rhythms. None of it makes sense, then everything does. –Jazz Monroe",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGtB0hNN8EU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c8c79a0109c461ee86569/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/54-Captain-Beefheart-and-His-Magic-Band-Trout-Mask-Replica.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Captain_Beefheart_and_His_Magic_Band-Trout_Mask_Replica_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,53,Pharoah Sanders,Karma (1969),Impulse!,"Impulse! Pharoah Sanders’ legend was well-established by 1969—he’d received his name from Sun Ra (changed from Farrell Sanders) and was the final horn player to play alongside John Coltrane. He’d already recorded some albums of his own by the time he saw Leon Thomas yodeling at a jazz club, and immediately asked him to join his band and write some lyrics “that would enlighten people.” The result is “The Creator Has a Master Plan,” a 32-minute, multi-side opus with a beautiful sentiment at its core: “Peace and happiness for every man.” Three percussionists, two bassists, a flautist, and a French horn player accompany them on their spirit journey, and it’s not all breeziness and calm. At times, Thomas’ unhinged voice intertwines with Sanders’ bleating, blown-out sax. Closing with the much more succinct “Colors,” an ode to the Earth’s natural beauty, Karma proved to be a crossover hit beyond jazz circles, charting after being picked up by freeform rock radio. It remains a comforting reminder in times of upheaval and uncertainty. –Evan Minsker",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgx5-ylAXrQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c9136cdd360b1835ef7d9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/53-Pharoah-Sanders-Karma.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Pharoah_Sanders-Karma_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,52,Karen Dalton,It’s So Hard to Tell Who’s Going to Love You the Best (1969),Capitol,"Capitol For a time, Karen Dalton was all but a tall tale of the folk era, a singer so tragic and beautiful that she seemed unreal. Her debut album didn’t sell well at the time, but the ensuing decades—and reissues—have given It’s So Hard to Tell Who’s Going to Love You the Best its due. Dalton was a subtly sophisticated guitar and banjo player, and this album of covers accurately captures how direct and piercing her playing could be. But it’s her voice in particular that still sounds shockingly new—that reedy Appalachian delivery coupled with her ability to elongate words and vowels to their limit has yet to be reproduced by anyone else. –Kevin Lozano",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KMopiKPTbw&list=PLMD_6Pu3wv7w3eIKSOCgwhfBKrvzhz8gS,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c923ae4e74545b38d7243/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/52-Karen-Dalton-It%25E2%2580%2599s-So-Hard-to-Tell-Who%25E2%2580%2599s-Going-to-Love-You-the-Best.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Karen_Dalton-Its_So_Hard_to_Tell_Whos_Going_to_Love_You_the_Best_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,51,Os Mutantes,Os Mutantes (1968),Polydor,"Polydor Os Mutantes were known for their tongue-in-cheek humor, provocative costumes, and DIY instruments, but they represented a serious movement. The three kids from São Paulo were the youngest stars in Brazil’s Tropicália scene, the enfants terribles who helped defy the country’s oppressive military regime through rock music. The subject matter on their debut album is sneakily serious, despite the goofy exteriors: “Panis et Circensis” highlights the contrast between an upper class occupied with fanciful dreams and a lower class beholden to ruthless cycles of birth and death, and “Trem Fantasma” starts with lively samba drumming before sinking into a soft horror story about a couple boarding a ghostly train ride. Even the band's covers of otherwise anodyne pop songs (Françoise Hardy’s “Le Premier Bonheur Du Jour,” the Mama and the Papas’ “Once Was a Time I Thought”) are twisted into something more grotesque. But despite Os Mutantes’ strangeness, it was their keen pop sensibility and wild experimentation that most shaped the Tropicália movement. For the short time they were together, they were the ultimate funhouse mirror, distorting and redrawing the lines of what Brazilian music could be. –Minna Zhou",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMpyQzS-PzA&list=PLfoAN1k4WZEYghXJgYhveVdwvUT8WccHj,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c929ee4e74545b38d7245/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/51-Os-Mutantes-Os-Mutantes.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Os_Mutantes-Os_Mutantes_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,50,MC5,Kick Out the Jams (1969),Elektra,"Elektra The MC5 were deeply entrenched in the White Panther Party—a militant, far-left, anti-racist group cofounded by their manager, John Sinclair. His influence on the message and mayhem of their debut album, Kick Out the Jams, cannot be overstated—he even wrote the gatefold manifesto. This iconic live album is, as singer Rob Tyner screams, a testimonial—a sermon on the power of frantic, firestorm rock’n’roll. It’s an album with loud, catchy songs about lust (“I Want You Right Now”) and songs with nonsensical party earworms (“Rama Lama Fa Fa Fa”). They’ve got a heavy blues ripper about their city engulfed in flames (which, recorded in Detroit on Halloween weekend, feels prescient), and they channel Sun Ra’s limitless dissonance on “Starship.” If the goal was to get people to come together, as Sinclair wrote, they did so by whipping them into a frenzy, inspiring legions of future punks with their insistence to “kick out the jams, motherfuckers!” before riding into fuzzy, belligerent, immortal grooves. –Evan Minsker",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-y871cCYOyU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c92f6dc33d2bb960c151c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/50-MC5-Kick-Out-the-Jams.jpg,/dataset/artwork/MC5-Kick_Out_the_Jams_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,49,The Shangri-Las,Leader of the Pack (1965),Red Bird,"Red Bird Best believe that two decades before Nicki Minaj was born, the Shangri-Las were the baddest bitches in Queens. Formed by two sets of sisters, they were the girl group known for being hard-as-nails in real life and in their aching, baroque pop songs. They wore leather with ripped stockings and fell for tortured bad boys out in the streets. The Shangri-Las’ songs were like stage shows in miniature, with revving engines, wounded strings, and strange, labyrinthine plot lines; this was melodrama. Their best-known song, “Leader of the Pack,” is a candy-shop romance-turned-tragedy about a boyfriend who dies in a motorcycle accident. “Give Him a Great Big Kiss” was covered a decade later by the glam-punk maniacs the New York Dolls. The Shangri-Las perfected an entire emotional state: vulnerability coupled with herculean resolve. One “Leader of the Pack” line sums them up completely: “They told me he was bad/I knew he was sad.” Leader of the Pack testifies to the resilience of teenage girls in a male-dominated space, timeless because it came from somewhere real. As singer Mary Weiss said in 2001, “I had enough pain in me, at the time, to pull off anything.” –Jenn Pelly",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R825oQEiFik&list=PLjCiWhO7qT3_zIKPmy6Uyiq9F_EWo3-DM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c93e3d8aad14260548397/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/49-The-Shangri-Las-Leader-of-the-Pack.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Shangri-Las-Leader_of_the_Pack_1965.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,48,Can,Monster Movie (1969),Music Factory,"Music Factory The cover of Monster Movie credits its creators as “The Can,” a collective name that adheres nicely to ’60s rock band conventions. And for the album’s first half, at least, Can do resemble a conventional group: “Outside My Door” sounds like an attempt to pare down Pink Floyd’s “Interstellar Overdrive” into howling garage rock, and their narcotic twist on the traditional nursery rhyme “Mary, Mary So Contrary” reinforced the spiritual kinship between psychedelia and children’s entertainment. But in Malcolm Mooney, Can possessed a singer who was as liable to follow as lead: As “Father Cannot Yell” transforms from a ragged, Velvets-styled rave-up into a vacuum-sealed motorik thrust, his panting vocal tics lock into Holger Czukay’s bass groove like human maracas. And on “Yoo Doo Right”—the 20-minute colossus that devours all of the second side—the band explores variations on a theme like a painter retracing the same pattern until the colors and shape distort into an unrecognizable blur and the canvas tears open to reveal a portal into another dimension. Powered by the thundering thwacks and elastic rhythms of Jaki Liebezeit—the John Bonham of the avant-garde—“Yoo Doo Right” prophesied the hypnotic, heart-racing ebb and flow of electronic music using traditional rock instrumentation. From there, Can would drop the “The”—and also any pretense of functioning like a regular rock band. –Stuart Berman",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHqcNj0Pv6c,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c9554dc33d2bb960c1520/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/48-Can-Monster-Movie.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Can-Monster_Movie_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,47,The Zombies,Odessey and Oracle (1968),CBS,"CBS Colin Bluntstone’s psych-pop group needed to die before a sudden revival secured their immortality. After crafting Odessey and Oracle, the British daydreamers watched its impeccable lead singles nosedive; commercially adrift, the band split, and their label stalled the album’s release. That this preternaturally catchy trove eluded enormity speaks to the shifting sands of late-’60s pop, where Sgt. Pepper’s and the White Album were fomenting an appetite for formal experimentation. Odessey and Oracle is relatively modest, an autumnal twist on Pet Sounds, but like that record, it coheres into something more than comfort food: a sweet, tonally complex meditation on the insularity of sadness and the dizziness of bliss. It’s music of chances missed and summers past, full of lingering question marks—even the gorgeous “This Will Be Our Year” has you second-guessing its sun-dappled optimism, just as you might spend a cloudless afternoon glued to an old flame’s Instagram feed. It’s fitting that, when the LP closer “Time of the Season” became a hit in 1968, the group refused to reunite, prompting promoters to animate a phalanx of fake Zombies to take the stage. The moment a good thing dissolves is just when you realize it’s precious. –Jazz Monroe",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w906iqJohUY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c96d9075611b11337fd10/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/47-The-Zombies-Odessey-and-Oracle.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Zombies-Odessey_and_Oracle_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,46,The Beatles,Rubber Soul (1965),Parlophone,"Parlophone Every Beatles album fundamentally shaped how pop music is understood, so Rubber Soul is one of the most important records ever made, by default: Floppy-haired pop pin-ups discover Dylan and drugs, write songs about something other than love, and present their ideas as a coherent piece rather than a couple of hit singles padded by filler. Rubber Soul was an even exchange between pop fans and folkies: While it was likely the first time Beatlemaniacs encountered a sitar, the album also forced self-serious Llewyn Davis types to reckon with generational statements like “In My Life” and “Nowhere Man” coexisting with the pure pleasures of “Drive My Car” and “I’m Looking Through You.” Even in 2017, whenever a pop singer makes a serious turn, or an anointed serious band says they’ve learned to embrace pop, Rubber Soul can’t help but enter the conversation. –Ian Cohen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o092SAztQj0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c987edc33d2bb960c1522/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/46-The-Beatles-Rubber-Soul.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Beatles-Rubber_Soul_1965.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,45,Scott Walker,Scott 4 (1969),Philips,"Philips Scott 4 is when Scott Walker started seeing things. Often celebrated as his break from the sunny boy-band pop of the Walker Brothers, Scott 4 is a uniquely haunting work, featuring some of the reclusive crooner’s most indelible images. In its opening verses, he watches a knight play chess with death and searches for him through a town ravaged by plague. Later, he gazes in horror as a massive hand bursts through the clouds to wreak havoc upon the earth. Walker’s first collection of all-original material, originally released under his birth name Noel Scott Engel, Scott 4 highlights his growing mastery of the abstract. His voice, too, had never been stronger—seducing with stately charisma in “Dutchess,” summoning both vicious rage and empathy in “Hero of the War,” stretching the syllables of “Boy Child” against an otherworldly arrangement that sounds like sunrise on a distant planet. Alone at the microphone, Walker acts as a guide through the nightmarish world that is opening up before him, threatening to disappear into its darkness at any moment. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6XPXC-AKZ0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c9afaa5fc90931d54660f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/45-Scott-Walker-Scott-4.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Scott_Walker-Scott_4_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,44,Jane Birkin / Serge Gainsbourg,Jane Birkin/Serge Gainsbourg (1969),Fontana,"Fontana By the time Serge Gainsbourg met and fell in love with the British actress Jane Birkin in 1968, he had already been the poet laureate of French song for a decade, from his early jazz- and Latin-influenced records through the yé-yé boom of the mid-’60s. In that time, Gainsbourg had positioned himself as a somber playboy, known for duets and collaborations in which his brooding demeanor came crashing up against the sensuality of his female counterparts. After writing massively successful pop singles for France Gall and Brigitte Bardot, Gainsbourg found in Birkin both the youthful innocence of the former and the full-blown sexuality of the latter. Throughout their 12-year relationship, she was able to channel his creative energy into her own unique output. Jane Birkin/Serge Gainsbourg is a love letter read out loud by its recipient: Every note and lyric is meant to highlight a certain aspect of Birkin’s persona though Gainsbourg’s lens, from her breathless delivery of every line to her heavily accented, coquettish French. The culmination of their artistic and carnal union is “Je t’aime… moi non plus,” the slinky disco classic that was deemed so pornographic, it was banned by the BBC. For a man who made a career out of loving women, Jane Birkin/Serge Gainsbourg is his greatest affair ever committed to vinyl. –Cameron Cook",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3Fa4lOQfbA&list=PLZkyblN9phC8suwnhX80Y3kUbYvFrUR8k,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c9be8eb13366372c29828/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/44-Jane-Birkin_Serge-Gainsbourg-Jane-Birkin_Serge-Gainsbourg.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jane_Birkin__Serge_Gainsbourg-Jane_BirkinSerge_Gainsbourg_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,43,Miles Davis,Sketches of Spain (1960),Columbia,"Columbia In the winter of 1959, Miles Davis, the birther of cool, sat in the studio with a flautist, trombonist, and trumpeter behind him, his collaborator Gil Evans conducting an orchestra nearby. With great care, he began to feel out notes, placing them delicately within the Andalusian world Evans was building around him—a realm of flamenco touches, Third Stream music, and alternately straight-ahead and swung rhythms that thrust and parried around each other. Sketches of Spain conjures an impressionist, classical mood, one that runs counter to Davis’ peak from the previous year, the soaring and mercurial Kind of Blue. Though he was at the peak of his celebrity in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Davis never settled—so here he was now, back down to earth, reorganizing Joaquín Rodrigo’s guitar concerto and adapting the traditional flamenco seato voice to his trumpet. For Davis, setting these notes to tape was exhausting; he later said of the process, “I was drained of all emotion.” Yet as the storm of free jazz brewed in the distance, here was the spirit of both the written and improvised note at its peak. –Jeremy D. Larson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHEzyqhDASw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c9c27a5fc90931d546611/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/43-Miles-Davis-Sketches-of-Spain.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Miles_Davis-Sketches_of_Spain_1960.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,42,Nico,Chelsea Girl (1967),Verve,"Verve Nico invented goth. On her debut album, Chelsea Girl, she sounds like a subterranean sorceress singing of her lost dreams by the light of the moon. After feeling like a “mannequin” in the Velvet Underground—and allegedly getting kicked out on account of lateness—the O.G. sad girl struck out on her own with a handful of compositions by then-teenager Jackson Browne, naming her album after the 1966 Warhol film she starred in. Nico’s minor-key contralto is defiantly flat, even over melodies this glorious: “These Days,” penned by Browne; “I’ll Keep It With Mine,” which Dylan gave her; “Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams,” one of Lou Reed’s early Velvets tunes. With John Cale’s assistance, the sound of Chelsea Girl is an even more accessible mix of pop and the avant-garde than the Velvet Underground had yet achieved. Nico’s grave voice attracts all its pieces with magnetic force; her spectral, centering singing is like a manifesto for living, a mix of dignity, severity, drama, and grace. To New Yorkers, hippies were scum, and it’s written all over Chelsea Girl’s noise guitars and quiet, unsettling elegance. When producer Tom Wilson overdubbed flutes to lighten the sound, Nico was disturbed. In 1967, this was flower power deflated, all wilted and pressed roses in a jet-black book. –Jenn Pelly",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-eU1WlI1No&index=2&list=PL8xsLjV27mIuDNPcBZvK-FZMnMf3rTwJh,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c9c5dd8aad14260548399/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/42-Nico-Chelsea-Girl.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nico-Chelsea_Girl_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,41,Terry Riley,In C (1968),Columbia Masterworks,"Columbia Masterworks Consider this record a placeholder. “In C,” the first major composition by Terry Riley—and a landmark of 20th-century minimalism—is defined by its performance and the iterations it entails. This particular performance stands as the first widely available Riley release; playing with members of the University at Buffalo’s Center of the Creative and Performing Arts, Riley’s path here involves a long, treble-heavy build to crescendo, and then an extended comedown. Which is all fine, but perhaps the most compelling aspect of “In C” is how much there is left to explore, as this performance errs on the side of politeness and too many versions of the piece have succeeded it. Indeed, a simple change of orchestration can still reveal unplumbed depths. Some of the more entertaining online performances feature faltering rhythms, or a mass of guitars, or tubas. “In C” isn’t a record you measure against Pet Sounds or Blonde on Blonde—it’s a record you recreate with the six other nerdiest kids in band class. –Andrew Gaerig",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_Hg9isDmqo&t=1066s,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650c9c93075611b11337fd12/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/41-Terry-Riley-In-C.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Terry_Riley-In_C_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,40,Ike & Tina Turner,River Deep – Mountain High (1966),London,"London Given their disastrous marriage, which in retrospect seems more like a hostage situation than any sort of legitimate partnership, it can be difficult to see past the dire infamy of Ike and Tina Turner’s relationship and focus on the music. But River Deep – Mountain High is the essential chronicle of their union, a record in which soul defiantly skirts extreme emotion on its way to catharsis. Performed by another singer, the LP’s eponymous track could have merely been another rock’n’roll song about undying love; infused with Tina’s almost superhuman wails, it’s an epic odyssey of obsession, pain, and longing. Bearing the full weight of Phil Spector’s production, this was the album that made Tina a star; reportedly, Spector paid Ike $20,000 up front to not contribute to the River Deep sessions, thus securing Tina’s stellar, unencumbered performance—the first true incarnation of an unshakable artist. –Cameron Cook",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHBEw9I999o,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650ca0ca3084d84e95a49377/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/40-Ike-_-Tina-Turner-River-Deep%2520%25E2%2580%2593%2520Mountain-High.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ike__Tina_Turner-River_Deep__Mountain_High_1966.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,39,The Jimi Hendrix Experience,Are You Experienced (1967),Track,"Track The bleary riff that opens “Purple Haze” is the sound of psychedelia distilled—built on the most ear-troubling and unnatural-sounding interval in all of Western music, the introductory tritone contains all of the era’s unstable energy in a few notes. When Jimi’s voice arrives soon after, he sounds a thousand miles away, swathed in so much reverb that he seems to be in danger of slipping away. Here, too, there is something fundamental to Hendrix, the sense that he was here to dissolve upon contact. Are You Experienced is the sound of a brilliant, humming engine of a mind allowing itself to overheat and melt down on purpose. This was the fundamental and most thrilling promise of psychedelia, and this album still delivers it without a hint of dated goofiness. It was his debut album with drummer Mitch Mitchell and bassist Noel Redding, but it came after a run of rigorous schooling in blues and rock’n’roll: Hendrix had played behind the likes of Sam Cooke, Jackie Wilson, and B.B. King. And on “Hey Joe,” or on “I Don’t Live Today,” you can hear all those lessons efflorescing in one brilliant plume. The lore has it that, during the making of the record, Hendrix cherished a sort of erupting spontaneity. “There are many things that were just done in the studio, created in the studio, written in the studio, played once, and never played again—onstage or anywhere else,” Mitchell remembered years later. It is this drive to constantly reinvent, the terrifying confidence and exhilarating freedom it brought, that makes Are You Experienced such a tireless cultural totem. –Jayson Greene",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2SlSokLN4c,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650ca38c3084d84e95a49379/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/39-The-Jimi-Hendrix-Experience-Are-You-Experienced.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Jimi_Hendrix_Experience-Are_You_Experienced_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,38,Bob Dylan,Bringing It All Back Home (1965),Columbia,"Columbia In 1965, Bob Dylan set himself aflame. Bored with playing the guitar alone onstage and inspired by the Beatles, he decided, once again, to reinvent himself. For his fifth record, Bringing It All Back Home, Dylan infused his folk tunes with rock’n’roll energy and Beat surrealism. Gone is the familiar tumbleweed Guthrie disciple searching for answers in the wind; in his place is a Kerouacian mystic whose breathless spewing can barely keep up with his strumming. Though Dylan had by now abandoned overtly finger-pointing songs, here he casts a scornful eye on the pressures confronting youth culture, the cruel punishments of capitalism, and America’s nightmarish early days. With the exception of the sleepy “Mr. Tambourine Man,” even the record’s acoustic second half is caustic and cynical. Dylan wrote in the record’s liner notes that he had “given up at making any attempt at perfection,” but Bringing It All Back Home shows that the meaning of perfection changes when one welcomes chaos. –Quinn Moreland",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGxjIBEZvx0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650ca474bbcef9298df0b9d5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/38-Bob-Dylan-Bringing-It-All-Back-Home.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bob_Dylan-Bringing_It_All_Back_Home_1965.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,37,Led Zeppelin,Led Zeppelin II (1969),Atlantic,"Atlantic “When it comes down to making out, whenever possible, put on Side One of Led Zeppelin IV.” In 1982’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High, this is the most important part of Damone’s five-point dating plan for the awkward Ratner, but he chose the wrong Zep album. Robert Plant himself called Led Zeppelin II “very virile”—an understatement. Recorded during a six-month span where Led Zeppelin seemingly did little else but tour and fuck, their second album of 1969 is the final document of the band in all their zero-entendre glory. Granted, it basically created cock-rock; every solo since influenced by either “Heartbreaker” or “Moby Dick” has been called masturbatory. But it’s not just anthems like “What Is and What Should Never Be” that granted young lust such a mythic aura: “Ramble On” throws in a Lord of the Rings reference to let the nerdy shut-ins know that this could possibly be you with a lucky roll of the 12-sided die. Even if Led Zeppelin II was borne of partying with the GTOs in the Chateau Marmont, no album sounds more like the product of the backseat of a station wagon. –Ian Cohen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bcIjILqORM&list=PL1ISz320o_O8mEWJJ8LthQtl0yGj2-bbI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650ca581bbcef9298df0b9d7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/37-Led-Zeppelin-Led-Zeppelin-II.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Led_Zeppelin-Led_Zeppelin_II_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,36,John Coltrane,Giant Steps (1960),Atlantic,"Atlantic Giant Steps is an auspicious title for an album and, as the first record John Coltrane released during his storied run at Atlantic Records, it’s also an accurate one. The album builds on the music Coltrane made as a sideman for Miles Davis, but where Miles deliberately restrained himself and his band on the epochal Kind of Blue, Coltrane tests his limits. Not everything Coltrane discovers is frenetic—he’d never before written a ballad as lovely and gentle as “Naima,” not coincidentally recorded with a different combo than the rest of the record. But Giant Steps’ allure lies in how it’s pitched expertly between his hard bop past and his exploratory future, a restless mix of beauty and adventure. –Stephen Thomas Erlewine",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQCdF3UtGqQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650ca5c4075611b11337fd14/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/36-John-Coltrane-Giant-Steps.jpg,/dataset/artwork/John_Coltrane-Giant_Steps_1960.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,35,The Rolling Stones,Beggars Banquet (1968),Decca,"Decca Though they spent much of 1967 embroiled in drug-related dramas, the Rolling Stones weren’t very good at sounding stoned. So following Their Satanic Majesties Request, the band’s atypically whimsical, commercially disappointing entry in the psychedelic sweepstakes, they got back to the grit, reconnecting with blues, country, and gospel. And if the Stones sounded out of place in the Summer of Love, they felt right at home in the following year’s Summer of Protest: Beggars Banquet is the dirty-ashtray petri dish where disillusionment breeds lawlessness, desire leads to transgression, and sinners are celebrated as saints. It’s primarily an acoustic record, but one that uses tourniquets for capos and dirty syringes for bottleneck slides. Never before had a band of celebrity rock stars produced music that sounded so squalid and so at ease mired in the filth. The album marks the moment when the Stones’ sensationalistic, lock-up-yer-daughters reputation gave way to a genuinely sinister energy, as summoned through the demonic voodoo grooves of “Sympathy for the Devil,” the finger-slicing strums of “Street Fighting Man,” and the predatory menace of “Stray Cat Blues,” a song so lecherous it should come with its own arrest warrant. Not coincidentally, in the album’s wake, the Stones’ mythos shifted from tall tales of acid, cops, and strategically placed Mars bars to one permanently tainted by death—of band members, of concertgoers, of the ’60s dream itself. –Stuart Berman",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltV77YiztLg&list=PL3JDLvAb_utiCaG43P2mcOaNmAbQcrndi&index=6,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650ca609a0109c461ee8656c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/35-The-Rolling-Stones-Beggars-Banquet.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Rolling_Stones-Beggars_Banquet_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,34,Otis Redding,Otis Blue: Otis Redding Sings Soul (1965),Volt,"Volt As a child, Otis Redding wanted to be like Little Richard, the larger-than-life showman who represented his hometown of Macon, Georgia. So in his early days, he closely emulated the rock trailblazer, even winning a formative talent show for 15 consecutive Sundays by performing “Heebie Jeebies.” Later, he fronted Richard’s backing band, the Upsetters, when the singer abandoned rock for gospel. Richard’s explosiveness informed the swing and swagger in Redding’s soul, but Redding also idolized Sam Cooke, the preeminent soul man. Both artists helped shape Otis Blue, an album planted squarely at the nexus of soul, rock, and blues. Redding’s poise and sophistication is only matched by his full-throated breaths of fire, backed by Isaac Hayes on piano, the influential Stax Records session musicians Booker T. & the M.G.’s, and the Stax house band the Mar-Keys. Many of the songs were familiar, and the ones that weren’t soon would be, but Redding makes each his own. There’s a strutting Temptations rework, a version of Cooke’s civil rights anthem “A Change Is Gonna Come,” a spin through the Stones’ “Satisfaction,” and “Respect,” the song that would later become Aretha Franklin’s calling card. Mostly cut in just 24 hours, Otis Blue is the masterwork of Redding’s tragically short career. –Sheldon Pearce",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHNDkZX-Om8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650ca659497c1d29d3d6421f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/34-Otis-Redding-Otis-Blue-Otis-Redding-Sings-Soul.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Otis_Redding-Otis_Blue_Otis_Redding_Sings_Soul_1965.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,33,Love,Forever Changes (1967),Elektra,"Elektra In 1967, Love’s third album, Forever Changes, was a flop. It barely dented the charts or exerted much impact beyond the Los Angeles scene it so pessimistically chronicled. Frontman Arthur Lee wrote much of the album while the band was holed up in a mansion once owned by Bela Lugosi, which afforded him a distant view of the city below and an opportunity to imagine the biblical destruction that would surely befall humanity. The resulting songs are psychedelia at its darkest and most apocalyptic. Trading electric guitars for acoustics and chamber strings, the music can be startlingly gorgeous, yet Lee’s songs are full of literal double-talk: strange voices intoning words over his own lyrics, as though censoring his thoughts even as he thinks them. The album takes a cynical view of hippie piousness and has remained horrifically relevant in America. In true psychedelic fashion, Forever Changes changed with the times, regenerating itself for Watergate in the ’70s, for the Cold War in the ’80s, and again for modern times and the war on terror, where these songs sound especially prescient. –Stephen M. Deusner",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPbNpIG8x_s,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650ca6dcdc33d2bb960c1526/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/33-Love-Forever-Changes.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Love-Forever_Changes_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,32,Neil Young & Crazy Horse,Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (1969),Reprise,"Reprise Birthing two rock archetypes on one album, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere was a triumph for 23-year-old Neil Young. Anchored by a couple of gnarly guitar jams with his new backing band, Crazy Horse, Young’s second LP found the right settings for his singular musical personality. Young seemed to know it instantly, releasing Everybody Knows only six months after his self-titled, overdub-drenched failure of a debut. As much as lead guitarist Danny Whitten and his compatriots serve as jamming partners on “Down by the River” and “Cowgirl in the Sand,” they are equally gorgeous on the easy, breezy title track, investing the ragged mojo with real harmonies. There’s plenty of jangling folk, too: a violin-aided jam on “Running Dry (Requiem for the Rockets)” pointing towards further horizons, and the hypnotic “Round & Round (It Won’t Be Long)” seeming like it should be at odds with the nine-minute “Down by the River” that follows. And yet both fit comfortably next to each other, each reaching for the same dreaminess in different ways. While much of popular rock and folk would get slicker soon, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere planted a flag for sloppy transcendence, both quiet and loud at the same time. –Jesse Jarnow",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsZjKQEN1tY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650ca720eb13366372c2985a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/32-Neil-Young-_-Crazy-Horse-Everybody-Knows-This-Is-Nowhere.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Neil_Young__Crazy_Horse-Everybody_Knows_This_Is_Nowhere_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,31,The Ronettes,Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes Featuring Veronica (1964),Philips,"Philips “Whoa-oh-oh-oh.” When Ronnie Spector, née Veronica Bennett, sings her signature phrase on the Ronettes’ only studio album, it means so much. Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes Featuring Veronica sounds like a teenager’s fantasy of love, a heart beating out of its chest, and Ronnie’s voice is the truth that grounds it. She and her fellow Ronettes met Phil Spector when the arch-producer was still laying the foundations for his Wall of Sound with richly layered hits by Darlene Love and the Crystals, and Ronnie didn’t sing like them. But her quavering earnestness turned out to be exactly what the cavernous grandeur of her future (ex-)husband’s “little symphonies for the kids” was missing. Ronnie’s ability to belt simple lyrics with raw power made her an early rock star. Unusually for its genre and producer, this album gathers all the singles that prove it; even more unusually, their mood and meaning is enriched by the non-singles. Do the gender dynamics feel uncomfortably stodgy in the spirited “Chapel of Love,” recorded before the Dixie Cups’ chart-topping take? Maybe. But their raucous cover of Ray Charles’ “What’d I Say”—which this trio of mixed-race Spanish Harlem kids once used to conquer Midtown’s Peppermint Lounge—shows why they were the girl-group era’s “bad girls.” Teenage fantasy doesn’t last. “Be My Baby” still thumps. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNbs1MwIcmA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650ca7fe3084d84e95a4937b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/31-The-Ronettes-Presenting-the-Fabulous-Ronettes-Featuring-Veronica.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Ronettes-Presenting_the_Fabulous_Ronettes_Featuring_Veronica_1964.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,30,Albert Ayler,Spiritual Unity (1964),ESP-Disk,"ESP-Disk In 1961, Ornette Coleman released the landmark album Free Jazz, kicking off a decade of immense exploration for jazz. John Coltrane, once the genre’s mainstream VIP, was one of many inspired to push his horn’s sound to its furthest reaches; where Coltrane went, others followed, and free jazz’s furious squeal became commonplace. By 1964, when tenor saxophonist Albert Ayler released Spiritual Unity, the genre was already ripe for reimagining. A trio record with Gary Peacock on bass and Sunny Murray on drums, the playing on Spiritual Unity is deeply loose and casual—at times it sounds like they are practicing. Ayler’s horn dips in and out, often leaving Murray and Peacock space to tool around on their own. That makes Ayler’s presence, and the moments when he revs himself up, feel earned, special. Unique among early free jazz players, Ayler often favored supremely catchy melodies, as on the beginning of “Ghosts,” a song he recorded over and over throughout his career. His tenor is rich and strong, and while not sloppy, it careens across the scale like he’s the marshal of some kind of drunk parade. Peacock and Murray follow behind, just as beautifully blitzed. Instead of pushing ahead to break ground, Ayler found you could be equally free if you pulled back. –Matthew Schnipper",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQzJsGAHsVM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650ca84ca0109c461ee8656e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/30-Albert-Ayler-Spiritual-Unity.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Albert_Ayler-Spiritual_Unity_1964.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,29,Aretha Franklin,Lady Soul (1968),Atlantic,"Atlantic Aretha Franklin finished recording Lady Soul at the end of 1967, a few months after her righteous cover of “Respect” topped the pop charts, and just days after that song’s writer—her friend Otis Redding—died. Such unprecedented highs and devastating lows would come to define Frankin’s 1968. You can hear the extremes in Lady Soul’s two lead singles, “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” and “Chain of Fools.” The former she considered a love song to the Lord, made evident in her delivery, one of pop’s most crucial gospel moments; the latter, a searing condemnation of a no-good man, was turbulently autobiographical. According to producer Jerry Wexler, Franklin showed up for the final Lady Soul sessions looking like she’d been beaten by her then-husband/manager Ted White. The push and pull of codependent, volatile romance drives much of the album, particularly in “Sweet Sweet Baby (Since You’ve Been Gone)” and “Good to Me As I Am to You,” two songs Franklin wrote (but White also took credit for). The stunning closing ballad “Ain’t No Way” is where Franklin reaches the sort of quiet clarity that arrives amid restless nights: Love simply can’t survive if both parties won’t nurture it. On Lady Soul, this once-in-an-era voice grappled with her own fight for respect at home, the one she had emboldened so many women to take up. It was her turn, and this was her time. –Jillian Mapes",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWOpINYVU38,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650ca97e4137474d729ba122/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/29-Aretha-Franklin-Lady-Soul.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Aretha_Franklin-Lady_Soul_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,28,The Beatles,Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967),Parlophone,"Parlophone To not a few people, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is a religious text: The genesis of the concept album, endless multi-tracking, album covers as art objects, and songs about drugs best heard while on them. And to the group, it was a biblical undertaking: By the time its 700-hour recording process was over, they had emerged less a band than a musical co-op. Meet the mustachioed Beatles, whose curious, panoramic lens to the world now captured German oom-pah (“When I’m Sixty-Four”), rubato Eastern thought (“Within You Without You”), and stuffy Britishisms (“Lovely Rita”). Here, through all their eager collaboration, so many perfect little moments bloomed into a fractal garden of psychedelic pop, a wondrously overstuffed, pompous masterpiece that celebrated the freedom to ignore barriers and act on youthful impulses. Many of the greatest albums of the ’60s looked outside the artist, preserving in amber what was happening in fractious and romantic times. But Sgt. Pepper’s reacted more to what was happening in 1967 inside the Beatles, the biggest band in the world. They were restless, more within than without: John tripped back to his home near Strawberry Field and George spun into ego-death and tamburas, leaving Paul and Ringo sheepishly holding on to pop songs for dear life. But for all of Sgt. Pepper’s big conceits, it is still such a massively human accomplishment, the sound of four Liverpool lads embracing the circus only they knew how to conduct. –Jeremy D. Larson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usNsCeOV4GM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650ca9c7bbcef9298df0b9db/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/28-The-Beatles-Sgt.-Pepper%25E2%2580%2599s-Lonely-Hearts-Club-Band.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Beatles-Sgt_Peppers_Lonely_Hearts_Club_Band_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,27,The Kinks,The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society (1968),Pye,"Pye Bright, young, and fueled by the success of their 1964 single “You Really Got Me,” the Kinks traveled to America to tour. It went badly. The band fought often and drank more. At a taping of “The Dick Clark Show,” singer Ray Davies ended up getting into a fistfight with someone he thought worked at the TV station, but who knows. They were banned by the American Federation of Musicians for several years, effectively foreclosing on the possibility of broader success. Resigned, they acquiesced to being what they already were: British. Their 1967 album, Something Else, retreated from the increasingly libertine world of rock into little harpsichord-led sketches of quotidian English life. The full title of The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society was itself a flag: an eschewal of nifty, rock’n’roll constructions like Kinda Kinks and The Kink Kontroversy for the blandness of small-town record halls, the sleepwalking outskirts of bureaucracy, of entities both official and irrelevant. The songs—sunny, folksy, nostalgic but ambivalently so—seem to stand on a hill as the world around them goes dim. Here, at the height of hippie culture in the popular imagination, one can hear about things like steam trains, riverside picnics, gluttonous cats, and falling in love with the village prostitute, Monica. Talking to an interviewer in 2002, Davies suggested that such homespun quaintness was his own “form of psychedelia.” The strangest place is invariably right outside your door. –Mike Powell",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaDoVAaqHaE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650caa274137474d729ba124/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/27-The-Kinks-The-Kinks-Are-the-Village-Green-Preservation-Society.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Kinks-The_Kinks_Are_the_Village_Green_Preservation_Society_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,26,The Velvet Underground,White Light/White Heat (1968),Verve,"Verve When they entered the studio in the fall of 1967, the Velvet Underground were in such a groove that they insisted on recording live, at the same volume they played onstage. The small Scepter Studios in Manhattan couldn’t properly handle such levels, though, resulting in a smeared, chaotic record filled with hammering riffs, pounding beats, and Lou Reed guitar solos pushed way past the red. White Light/White Heat is the most vivid expression on wax of Reed and John Cale’s symbiotic partnership: On “The Gift,” Cale gives a droll reading of a hilarious short story Reed wrote in college, while during “Lady Godiva’s Operation,” the pair actually finish each other’s sentences. But their most explosive chemistry comes during the 17-minute monster jam “Sister Ray,” as Reed’s guitar and Cale’s organ battle to see who can break the tape first. It cemented White Light/White Heat’s status as the band’s most difficult album, but also the one that inspired the most extreme and exciting music for decades after. “That’s the litmus test,” guitarist Sterling Morrison once said. “If you like that album, then you like the Velvet Underground.” –Marc Masters",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70KwXqF7PlI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650caba5eb13366372c2985c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/26-The-Velvet-Underground-White-Light_White%2520Heat.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Velvet_Underground-White_LightWhite_Heat_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,25,Sly and the Family Stone,Stand! (1969),Epic,"Epic From its big-top opening drum roll to its closing jam “You Can Make It If You Try,” no album captures the utopic, empowered, euphoric (and short-lived) ideals of the Love Generation as perfectly as Stand!, Sly and the Family Stone’s crossover smash. As rock’s first co-ed, integrated band—with an auteur every bit the equal of Brian Wilson—Sly and the Family Stone perfected a vivacious rock, soul, and pop formula. But the album wasn’t just wide-eyed exuberance; Stand! also touches on simmering racial tension, inner-city blues, and ever-increasing paranoia. As they first squared off against the darkness that would define their 1970s output, Sly and his bandmates went high instead of low, then took all of their listeners higher. Stand! inspired the likes of Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, and George Clinton to strive for new artistic vistas, and its gospel has renewed for a new generation of voices that includes D’Angelo, Erykah Badu, and Kendrick Lamar. –Andy Beta",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpUfuG8f4c4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650cac134137474d729ba126/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/25-Sly-and-the-Family-Stone-Stand!.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sly_and_the_Family_Stone-Stand_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,24,Van Morrison,Astral Weeks (1968),Warner Bros.,"Warner Bros. No rocker got bitter quicker than Van Morrison. With just one solo album to his name, the 22-year-old singer-songwriter was already desperate to be relieved from his recording contract—sick of the industry, fed up with the phonies. To fulfill his obligations with Bang Records, Morrison recorded a spiteful set of acoustic songs in one afternoon, proudly mocking the people who helped turn his latest single, “Brown Eyed Girl,” into a smash hit. Then he walked out the door and made his masterpiece. “The approach was spontaneity,” he later recalled about recording Astral Weeks. Many of the songs arrived full, in bursts of stream-of-consciousness inspiration with his session musicians; you can hear the excitement in each instrument. Acoustic guitars and pianos, flutes and harpsichords, string arrangements and saxophone solos all seemed to fit together behind Morrison’s wild, fragmented bursts of poetry, like it was all too much for him to describe at the moment. While Astral Weeks’ ecstatic blend of genres was massively influential, there’s still no record quite like it. It plays like endorphins kicking in, happy just to be alive and in motion. Never again would Van Morrison sound so hopeful, so carefree, so young. –Sam Sodomsky",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByJo2XTtuVc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650cac70075611b11337fd16/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/24-Van-Morrison-Astral-Weeks.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Van_Morrison-Astral_Weeks_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,23,Isaac Hayes,Hot Buttered Soul (1969),Enterprise,"Enterprise Isaac Hayes dismissed his first album, 1967’s Presenting Isaac Hayes, as something he threw together while half-drunk. If he was going to make another record, he wanted creative control. Stax Records granted his wish, and so this trusted soul hitmaker—co-writer of “B-A-B-Y” and “Soul Man”—decided to make an album with elaborately arranged covers of schmaltzy pop songs. Under his command, these songs were dissected, busted apart, and milked for everything they were worth. Here, Hayes turns Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s “Walk on By” into a 12-minute opus, one in which his hushed, bruised vocals give way to an overwhelming horn hook. On “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” he stretches Glen Campbell’s tearjerker across 19 minutes, spending the first eight-and-a-half in spoken word mode, telling a story of betrayal, and by the song’s end, our narrator can barely read the 3 a.m. highway signs through his tears. Hayes didn’t have any grand sales ambitions for Hot Buttered Soul, but his long cuts and high drama made him a star, one who pried the creative doors open for the artists who followed. –Evan Minsker",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6pfRe9d1Q0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650cacceeb13366372c2988e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/23-Isaac-Hayes-Hot-Buttered-Soul.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Isaac_Hayes-Hot_Buttered_Soul_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,22,The Supremes,Where Did Our Love Go (1964),Motown,"Motown Diana Ross, Mary Wilson, and Florence Ballard’s 1962 debut album, Meet the Supremes, won them the nickname of the “no-hit Supremes” around Motown’s Detroit headquarters. Had Berry Gordy not seen something in them—a certain poise he thought he could market to white audiences—perhaps the Supremes would have been cast aside, like so many other young female vocal groups from the early ’60s. But a trickle of Holland-Dozier-Holland hits became a flood, and from these Gordy compiled Where Did Our Love Go. It was once the highest-charting album by a female group and the first album to yield three pop No. 1s (the title track, “Baby Love,” and “Come See About Me.”) More than any other LP from the first half of the decade, this is the record that solidified Motown’s position as a massive commercial force. Recorded piecemeal between ’62 and ’64, Where Did Our Love Go captures the Supremes’ sonic progression, from longing early harmonies to the dynamic soul that became their signature. The themes are unflinching in their commitment, mostly to romance itself. For pop’s leading demographic, teen girls, it was a revelation to hear young, female voices sing relatably about matters of the heart. –Jillian Mapes",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXWEAR0B17I,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650cae20a5fc90931d546613/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/22-The-Supremes-Where-Did-Our-Love-Go.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Supremes-Where_Did_Our_Love_Go_1964.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,21,Nina Simone,Pastel Blues (1965),Philips,"Philips Nina Simone was a Juilliard-trained classical pianist and a preternaturally adroit interpreter of jazz, folk, and pop, but in 1965, she was singing the blues. In January, Simone’s friend Lorraine Hansberry, who wrote A Raisin in the Sun, died from cancer; in February, on Simone’s 32nd birthday, her friend Malcolm X was assassinated. Within weeks, Simone was performing during the Selma-to-Montgomery march and warning Martin Luther King, Jr., “I’m not nonviolent.” Simone’s pain hangs all over Pastel Blues, which brilliantly reaffirms that the blues isn’t only a music of rural pathos but also of urban protest. Its vibrant, piano-centered tracks include some of her best. A cappella opener “Be My Husband,” Simone’s then-husband Andy Stroud’s adaptation of an old prison song, testifies powerfully that love is work. Though Simone would later object to Billie Holiday comparisons, here she transforms “Strange Fruit,” the anti-lynching song Holiday defined, from mournful to damning. “Sinnerman,” Simone’s epic take on a traditional spiritual, rumbles headlong toward Judgment Day. Perhaps it has become so widely repurposed because Simone knew to withhold absolution. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/9ch5IWTavUc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650caf81a5fc90931d546615/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/21-Nina-Simone-Pastel-Blues.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nina_Simone-Pastel_Blues_1965.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,20,The Stooges,The Stooges (1969),Elektra,"Elektra The Stooges’ debut album practically dared listeners not to flee in the other direction, whether from disgust or boredom. The album’s second song finds Iggy Pop—a knot of pure sinew given to stripping shirtless, smearing himself in peanut butter, and surfing across the crowd—drawling a bizarrely submissive love song about curling up like Fido. Song three, “We Will Fall,” is a 10-minute, drum-free dirge suggestive of Hare Krishnas on heavy Quaaludes. Even the album’s crackerjack opener, the nihilist “1969,” begins with four bars of plodding wah-wah and quarter-note snares, like a turgid fake-out to scare off the squares. But anyone who stuck around quickly discovered the pleasures of the Stooges’ gut-punch approach. The teenage ennui of “1969” still sounds as timely as ever; “Real Cool Time” amounts to a defiant cry of lunkheaded joy. And “I Wanna Be Your Dog” summons one of the most sinister riffs in rock’n’roll. The album is unabashedly savage, fuzzy as a moldy peach, subtle as a hangover. Nevertheless, John Cale’s production on the album harnesses just enough studio magic to make them sound positively otherworldly, from the swollen low end, dark as a bruise, to the blown-out sonics of Ron Asheton’s guitar solos. Throughout, in unexpected pockets of silence, handclaps pop like fireworks. What could be more American than that? –Philip Sherburne",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NL45zGLp0lU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650cafd2eb13366372c29890/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/20-The-Stooges-The-Stooges.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Stooges-The_Stooges_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,19,Dusty Springfield,Dusty in Memphis (1969),Atlantic,"Atlantic “I wish I’d been born coloured,” British belter Dusty Springfield once told an interviewer. “When it comes to singing and feeling, I just want to be one of them and not me. Then again, I see how some of them are treated and I thank God I’m white.” Springfield walked a racially-charged line with her music, but it wasn’t always this way. After scoring tame pop hits early on, she signed to Atlantic Records, then the heart of soul music, and set about making the kind of music she’d long favored. Recorded at Memphis’ famed American Sound Studio using musicians favored by Aretha Franklin, Dusty in Memphis was marked by the pressure Springfield felt following in the Queen of Soul’s footsteps. Not only was Springfield inspired to re-record the bulk of her vocals in New York, but her biggest hit—the sexual coming-of-age memento “Son of a Preacher Man”—was originally rejected by Franklin (who later covered it). Springfield had a dreamier approach to cinematic soul, one that allowed her to extol the benefits of morning sex and lament the loneliness of lurid affairs while still appealing to an easy-listening crowd. Though she may have doubted her ability to compete with the emotional depths plumbed by her black peers, what she created in their model was a perspective all her own. –Jillian Mapes",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuJbSCKshAg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650cb2bca0109c461ee86570/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/19-Dusty-Springfield-Dusty-in-Memphis.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dusty_Springfield-Dusty_in_Memphis_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,18,The Rolling Stones,Let It Bleed (1969),Decca,"Decca Popular thinking has it that the 1960s ended with Altamont, the Manson killings, or the Beatles’ split. But Let It Bleed, the Rolling Stones’ eighth album released in Britain, could also make a strong claim to killing the decade’s dream. Released at the end of 1969, Let It Bleed brilliantly captures the ’60s fantasy turned dark, more blood in the streets than flowers in the hair. A feeling of imminent doom hangs over the record in its apocalyptic lyrics of war, rape, and murder, in its edgy blues riffs, and in Mick Jagger’s sneering, lascivious vocals. It can be felt in the murderous, hard Chicago blues of “Midnight Rambler,” in the anguished cry for help of “Gimme Shelter,” and in the strutting filth of “Monkey Man,” which celebrates depravity while parodying the band’s popular image. This desperation was expressed by the Stones at their very musical peak, when they were loose enough to let a song like “Let It Bleed” swing and hadn’t slid into the occasional sloppiness of their 1970s recordings. Let It Bleed may not be the most original album of the ’60s, with African-American influences hanging heavily over its nine songs, but it is one of the most brilliantly atmospheric, endearingly brutal, and downright menacing albums of the decade. –Ben Cardew",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMb3WhwjHxo&index=7&list=PLO7qHzM7XJ7VDeRIwfY1q5_ipFSBtDyJ8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650cb31bcdd360b1835ef7db/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/18-The-Rolling-Stones-Let-It-Bleed.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Rolling_Stones-Let_It_Bleed_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,17,Charles Mingus,The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady (1963),Impulse!,"Impulse! Charles Mingus was one of the 20th century’s great composers and improvisers—traits distilled nowhere so clearly as on this 40-minute extended composition from 1963, a work for 10 players that often sounds more explosive than any progressive big-band or orchestral opus. Down-home blues, Ellington swing, and classical textures are all here, though no single style is able to fully capture this unpredictable but ultimately joyful music. The opening track builds to a state of fevered wailing, after starting from a solo drum pattern devised by Mingus to suggest three different tempos. ""Track B-Duet and Solo Dancers"" offers sweet balladry, before quickening into a passage of locomotive crunch. In any given moment, the piece is always holding multiple potential moods in reserve. These bustling ideas seem to stand in for Mingus’ own psyche—a view that the composer all but endorsed by inviting his personal psychologist to contribute liner notes for the album. On this elaborate project, even the clinical asides from a doctor prove lyrical: “His music is a call for acceptance, respect, love, understanding, fellowship, freedom—a plea to change the evil in man and to end hatred.” –Seth Colter Walls",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yt8oHy69-fY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650cb3acd8aad1426054839b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/17-Charles-Mingus-The-Black-Saint-and-the-Sinner-Lady.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Charles_Mingus-The_Black_Saint_and_the_Sinner_Lady_1963.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,16,The Beatles,Abbey Road (1969),Apple,"Apple Everyone knows now that the Beatles hated each other by the end. But Abbey Road, the final album they recorded, has become a fantasy of togetherness that both the world and the band itself needed to indulge. After the acrimony spurred by Let It Be’s jam-session approach, Paul McCartney and producer George Martin called for one more record featuring the collaboration and cohesion of the band’s early days. But they only got halfway there. The first side featured standalone songs that represented their individual visions, including George Harrison’s most stunning compositions with the Beatles (“Something,” “Here Comes the Sun”), and flashes of rawness from the two main songwriters (“Oh! Darling,” where McCartney pushes his voice to its limit, and “I Want You (She’s So Heavy),” in which John Lennon predates heavy-metal transcendence). Side two, on the other hand, fed into the idea that the Beatles could still work together in the name of ambitious art. Though its songs were written separately and stitched together by McCartney and Martin, the run from “Because” to “The End” has a beauty that exceeds the value of any given part. “Because” wouldn’t be a great song if John, Paul, and George hadn’t nailed the eerie three-part harmony, just as “The End” wouldn’t hit nearly as hard without Ringo’s only on-record drum solo and those dueling guitars. McCartney knew what was coming and turned a sentimental eye towards closure, ultimately offering one of the most quoted lines about love in pop’s history (“And in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love you make”). Now that is how you end a band. –Jillian Mapes",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4Ta5w8iqzs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650cb403cdd360b1835ef7dd/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/16-The-Beatles-Abbey-Road.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Beatles-Abbey_Road_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,15,Eric Dolphy,Out to Lunch! (1964),Blue Note,"Blue Note When Eric Dolphy recorded Out to Lunch!, the saxophonist/flautist/clarinetist assembled a group that lacked a piano as its central, chordal engine. He replaced it with an instrument that was more crystalline, as well as depthless: a vibraphone, here played by Bobby Hutcherson. No one player solos through the space where a piano should be so much as they talk sensitively and intuitively to each other inside of it, which makes even the most free and explosive phrases on the album blend into a dynamic, harmonious conversation. Like a good dialogue, it can degenerate into anomie or brief parentheses of silence, but just as often, the different voices almost symphonically align to express an idea that they couldn’t have discovered separately. As Dolphy was quoted as saying on the original liner notes for the album, “Everyone’s a leader in this session.” –Brad Nelson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tnPkQufnZY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650cb43f0d1f2a228d653089/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/15-Eric-Dolphy-Out-to-Lunch!.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Eric_Dolphy-Out_to_Lunch_1964.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,14,Bob Dylan,Highway 61 Revisited (1965),Columbia,"Columbia Along U.S. Route 61, blues music was born and Bessie Smith died. The highway was a northbound escape route for those seeking to leave the poverty of the Mississippi Delta, and a southbound escape route for James Earl Ray after he assassinated Martin Luther King, Jr. It also connected a young Jewish man from his home in Minnesota to the Southern music he’d adopt and find new clarity in. Highway 61 Revisited documents an era’s rising tide of anger and disassociation—not to mention Dylan’s own. In 1965, having outgrown his acoustic guitar and the Greenwich Village scene, he rewired the meaning of folk music, plugging in and writing about truths and untruths, the clowns of state, the circus of relativism, and the plight of the worker, all with a comic cynicism and romantic yearning. The studio sessions were chaotic and musically undefined; his lyrics went on for pages; a slide whistle factored in prominently. But out of this tangle of blues and country, he hit upon the countercultural chasm between the youth of the ’60s and elder generations, concluding with a smirk: “Because something is happening here, but you don’t know what it is.” Dylan created this text as a map of America, its history rooted in oppression, filtered through the lupine howl of a 24-year-old bohemian nipping at the heels of Rimbaud and Verlaine. But its wisdom remains perplexing: How could Ma Rainey and Beethoven both fit into a two-chord song that moves like a locomotive on fire? How do Paul Griffin’s honky-tonk piano parts and Dylan's limerick-level verses stay this potent? Dylan’s surreal travelogues reflect his uncertain world, and his most powerful moment on the album is a confession of what he doesn’t know: “How does it feel?” he asks. “How does it feel?” He smirks again, and says you might find whatever you’re looking for down on Highway 61, the central nerve that separates and unites America. –Jeremy D. Larson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxLMr784l0Q,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650cb4a24137474d729ba128/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/14-Bob-Dylan-Highway-61-Revisited.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bob_Dylan-Highway_61_Revisited_1965.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,13,The Jimi Hendrix Experience,Electric Ladyland (1968),Track,"Track Jimi Hendrix as guitarist is legend enough. A southpaw innovator who thought in noise and texture as much as notes and chords, he defined one of the most important aspects of psychedelic rock by splitting the difference between Chicago blues and free jazz. Electric Ladyland was the point when it became clear why he was making all that transcendent racket. It offered virtuosity in the service of worldbuilding—the old ways of hooky, three-minute rhythm & blues finding renewed purpose in this brave new Aquarian frontier. Hendrix was a master of both the boundless potential and the immediate simplicity of rock, as he proves on this double LP, the third blueprint-redrawing album he released with bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell in a year and a half. In Ladyland, he puts the stompy kazoo funk of “Crosstown Traffic” and his supercharged cover of Earl King’s “Come On” in the same universe as the supernatural ritual of “Voodoo Chile” and the underwater, post-apocalypse utopian vision of “1983… (A Merman I Should Turn to Be).” All these sides can be heard in a four-minute microcosm, too: Hendrix repossesses “All Along the Watchtower” so thoroughly, reshaping a desolate folk-rock lament into a harrowing escape plan, that Bob Dylan himself couldn’t hear his song afterwards without Jimi’s transformations haunting him. –Nate Patrin",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLV4_xaYynY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650cb4e7d8aad1426054839d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/13-The-Jimi-Hendrix-Experience-Electric-Ladyland.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Jimi_Hendrix_Experience-Electric_Ladyland_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,12,The Velvet Underground,The Velvet Underground (1969),MGM,"MGM After the hedonistic moments of their first album gave way to the hard-rock hallucinations of White Light/White Heat, the Velvet Underground took an unexpected turn for the spiritual. Lou Reed once grasped for transcendence on “Heroin,” but the masochists and dope fiends that had colored the band’s previous releases largely receded into the background on their self-titled third album. In their place was introspection, empathy, and even sweetness. Tracks as rollicking as “Beginning to See the Light” and as whispery as “Jesus” sound like prayers for salvation. For an account of adultery, “Pale Blue Eyes” is disarmingly zen, with Reed ceding his claim on a married soulmate over watery strumming and distant shakes of tambourine. You don’t have to know that the folksy lullaby “Candy Says” was a portrait of transgender Warhol superstar Candy Darling for its characterization of the human body as a prison to resonate. The band kept their underworld mystique alive on “The Murder Mystery,” a nine-minute collage of lurid narratives that later appeared as a poem in The Paris Review. That the track doesn't sound jarring amid all that sincerity only confirms that grit was always VU’s schtick, not their true subject. –Judy Berman",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj8GaTUumEo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650cb528bbcef9298df0b9dd/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/12-The-Velvet-Underground-The-Velvet-Underground.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Velvet_Underground-The_Velvet_Underground_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,11,Leonard Cohen,Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967),Columbia,"Columbia A 33-year-old Leonard Cohen arrived to the folk scene a stranger in a strange land, with the aura of someone much older. He beheld you from the cover of his debut album with doe eyes and a grim mouth, in a black-and-white photo that seemed to belong to the 1940s more than the 1960s. His music was similarly out-of-time, with unforgettable lyrics that blew in like a breeze from some remote isle, perfumed with odd scents—tea, oranges. He played guitar gently and with great precision, the same way that he sang. He might have been friends with Lou Reed and Bob Dylan, but he didn’t strum or holler, and Songs of Leonard Cohen existed in a world without rock’n’roll. Cohen’s path to the recording studio was wayward and ambling, animated by an inner melody that only he seemed to hear. He began his career as a published writer, typing out love poems about the ovens of Auschwitz and serenely filthy novels about sex and drugs. He carried all of this with him to the studio, and Songs of Leonard Cohen feels like the continuation of a larger story. There are characters in these songs, people with names that Cohen clearly knows intimately and expects you to know as well. Now that Cohen has passed, his discography sits like a holy stone city, and this record is the church at the city’s center: You can walk around it, listen to the echoes, put your hands on the smooth stones. You can read its address by the moon. –Jayson Greene",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9CScf2VYUE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650cb577075611b11337fd18/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/11-Leonard-Cohen-Songs-of-Leonard-Cohen.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Leonard_Cohen-Songs_of_Leonard_Cohen_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,10,Aretha Franklin,I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You (1967),Atlantic,"Atlantic The Queen of Soul’s reign began here. Groomed as a jazz-pop singer by Columbia, Aretha Franklin jumped to the R&B powerhouse Atlantic for her 11th album, I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You. The label’s big idea was to “let Aretha be Aretha.” For the Memphis-born daughter of a Detroit preacher man, a 24-year-old mother of three who was trapped in a troubled marriage, that meant singing about adult emotional complexities with world-weary wisdom and barrel-chested expressiveness, accompanied by her own gospel piano chords, a bottom-heavy Muscle Shoals rhythm section, and punchy horns. It also meant hits, actual hits. Franklin’s biggest solo smash is still this album’s reinvention of Otis Redding’s “Respect” as a dancefloor-ready call to consciousness, spelled out and spiced up with sock-it-to-me backing vocals by her sisters (“Ree,” as in “ree-ree-ree-ree-respect,” was their nickname for Aretha). The bluesy title track enacts a toxic codependency; the country-molasses waltz “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man” could keep any couple together. Franklin showed her songwriting strengths, too, especially on the candidly lustful “Dr. Feelgood.” But she was more apt to lay claim on songs made famous by male R&B greats—not only Redding but also Ray Charles and, twice, her hero Sam Cooke, whose civil rights anthem “A Change Is Gonna Come” she reimagines no less boldly than “Respect,” proclaiming, “My change is gonna come.” –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzPXozDgvYs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650cb596bbcef9298df0b9df/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/10-Aretha-Franklin-I-Never-Loved-a-Man-the-Way-I-Love-You.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Aretha_Franklin-I_Never_Loved_a_Man_the_Way_I_Love_You_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,9,Miles Davis,In a Silent Way (1969),Columbia,"Columbia In 1969, Miles Davis was in search of a new sound, and In a Silent Way is the soundtrack to that search. At 42, he had already reinvented jazz a few times, and with the genre on the cusp of being completely eclipsed by rock and pop, he pivoted once again, taken with the psychedelic electrics of Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone. But this album isn’t a trend hop as much as it’s a soothsaying outlier—it hinted at what would become known as jazz fusion in the ’70s, but it also wafted into Tortoise’s post-rock of the ’90s and Radiohead’s most outré experiments of the 21st century. Even now, it still stands out of time, in limbo, floating. “Why don’t you play it like you don’t know how to play the guitar?” That’s the advice Miles gave to his guitarist, John McLaughlin, while recording the record’s title track. On the surface, the suggestion is nonsensical. In practice, it’s a skeleton key opening doors to sounds unheard. So as McLaughlin’s clean notes begin to slowly unwind at the start of the song, electric pianos and organ quietly dot the background, like errant raindrops after a sunshower, and then Miles’ rasping horn begins its own quest out of the darkness. Everything has to earn its intrusion into the silent void. Consider how Davis mainstay Tony Williams, one of jazz’s great drummers, rides his hi-hat—and only his hi-hat—throughout the entire first half of the record before switching to an unfussy, rim-click metronome on the second side. This is music made by a bunch of geniuses who are doing everything they can to not sound like a bunch of geniuses. Nevertheless, genius ensues. –Ryan Dombal",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yeEZ-bx63c,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650cb647075611b11337fd1a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/9-Miles-Davis-In-a-Silent-Way.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Miles_Davis-In_a_Silent_Way_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,8,The Beatles,Revolver (1966),Parlophone,"Parlophone Both a landmark and a pivot, Revolver bursts with the creativity of four men in their 20s discovering Indian scales, tape loops, psychedelics, baroque string arrangements, surreal kid-folk, fuzz pedals, and themselves. Already possessing the world’s ear following several years of increasingly ranging hits, Revolver continued the quartet’s transfiguration from lovable moptops to lovable visionaries, reinventing rock with an effortlessness akin to magic. The album signaled the dawn of a stoned and eclectic pop age, from the cheeky garage snarl of George Harrison’s “Taxman” to the radiophonic swirl of “Tomorrow Never Knows,” John Lennon and producer George Martin’s first psychedelic opus. Even a half-century after being absorbed into rock’s lingua franca, Revolver not only sounds fresh but fun, perfectly bottling the exuberant rush of youth while pioneering new songwriting modes and production tricks with nearly every verse, chorus, and middle eight. –Jesse Jarnow",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuS5NuXRb5Y,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650cb6763084d84e95a493ae/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/8-The-Beatles-Revolver.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Beatles-Revolver_1966.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,7,James Brown,Live at the Apollo (1963),King,"King When James Brown pitched the idea of a live LP to King Records founder Syd Nathan, he was famously rebuffed. So Brown bankrolled Live at the Apollo himself, providing coffee to those freezing in line outside the legendary Harlem venue where, hours later, he would make the best live album of all time. Live at the Apollo documents a disciplined, exhaustively road-tested touring unit and a hungry 29-year-old frontman who’d gone nine singles between hits. From emcee Fats Gonder’s nickname-filled introduction to the airtight rhythm workouts, from the nearly 11-minute exaltation of “Lost Someone” to the breakneck medley bookended by “Please, Please, Please,” the James Brown Revue teased, tested, and defied the clock this evening. But just as essential were the fans on this Wednesday night in fall 1962, screaming and begging as the Cuban Missile Crisis threatened global devastation outside. Soon enough, listeners worldwide would share the passion that Brown’s Apollo audience had for him. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kq3ec1Rp54E,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650cb6f44137474d729ba12a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/7-James-Brown-Live-at-the-Apollo.jpg,/dataset/artwork/James_Brown-Live_at_the_Apollo_1963.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,6,Bob Dylan,Blonde on Blonde (1966),Columbia,"Columbia Bob Dylan put out seven albums in his first four years on Columbia, a creative arc perhaps best represented by a hot-air balloon going straight up into the stratosphere. In this formulation, Blonde on Blonde—lucky No. 7, released when Dylan was hungry and it was his world—is the point where his music reaches the edges of space, the frightening limit beyond which it could go no further. This is the album with the most intricate melodies, the harshest harmonica bleats, the most tangled imagery; it subtweets John Lennon, tells you where to hang your binoculars, and correctly notes that to live outside the law, you have to be honest. It’s the one with Dylan’s funniest jokes but it’s also filled with crushing heartbreak, and it’s the one with the best drumming and the fattest organ sound. Dylan never made another record like it. Blonde on Blonde is a sprawling and messy double-album, a record that opens with an adolescent joke about weed and closes with an epic, surreal, and deeply moving side-long meditation on love. Improbably, despite its length and speed-addled excess and rhymes that are approximately 20 percent duds, it all hangs together, not unlike a mattress balancing on a bottle of wine. About two months after its release, Dylan may or may not have taken a motorcycle ride that ended in a crash, and the balloon that shot skyward would drop a few thousand feet. The view was still great, but the air wasn’t quite so thin, and the mercury sound wasn’t quite so wild. –Mark Richardson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljbxm_sKC90,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650cb72ea0109c461ee86572/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/6-Bob-Dylan-Blonde-on-Blonde.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bob_Dylan-Blonde_on_Blonde_1966.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,5,Nina Simone,Wild Is the Wind (1966),Philips,"Philips On the morning of September 15, 1963, a bomb planted by members of the Ku Klux Klan went off underneath the stairs of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four young black girls. Like many, Nina Simone was galvanized by the tragedy. After making her name with memorable takes on love songs and showtunes, she felt a new responsibility to help the black community with her art. The next year, rage fueled “Mississippi Goddam,” her first musical reaction to such injustices; “Four Women,” the lone song she wrote on Wild Is the Wind, is more subdued but just as cutting. She details the stereotypical roles available for black women in civil rights-era America—the old auntie, the biracial outcast, the prostitute, the revolutionary—embedding histories of slavery, colorism, and oppression into music sparse enough to soundtrack a supper club soiree. Without those four girls in Birmingham, “Four Women” may have never come to be. The song would help set her creative course as she became increasingly involved in the movements around her. The rest of Wild Is the Wind zeroes in on a more romantic brand of heartbreak. In 1966, Simone was in the middle of her tumultuous relationship with husband and manager Andrew Stroud, who often tried to steer her away from cultural commentary in favor of less heavy—and, potentially, more commercial—material. But even when she’s playing the more traditional balladeer on “Lilac Wine” or the album’s title track, Simone’s tremulous voice conjures world-churning drama out of every curling phrase. In turn, each song adds a haunting humanity to her sketches of black womanhood. –Ryan Dombal",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXLUdLEpWT0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650cb766cdd360b1835ef7df/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/5-Nina-Simone-Wild-Is-the-Wind.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nina_Simone-Wild_Is_the_Wind_1966.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,4,The Beatles,The Beatles (1968),Apple,"Apple With Sgt. Pepper’s, the Beatles invented the rock album: What it might sound like, what sort of artwork might accompany it, how it might look displayed on the shelf. It was a wildly audacious gambit for a group of kids, and just 18 months later, with The Beatles, they shattered their own idea completely, with an object so heavy and unyielding the shelf collapsed. The idea of a smartly sequenced, tightly stitched suite of songs goes out the window: What we hear on the White Album, as it’s now universally called, is an assembly line of products with no operator. You can stare at the tantalizingly blank sleeve until you go snow-blind, trying to decode it. Nothing about it makes any kind of sense, and you will never meet a living soul who insists all the songs on it are worth keeping, nor will you find two people who agree on which songs to cut. The only real story binding its four sides occurs offstage, in the Beatles’ soap opera of creative differences; in band mythology, this was the moment the ship sailed irreversibly towards the iceberg, with three squabbling creative forces bent on wresting the wheel from one another. But cocooned inside the music, we don’t hear the bickering. As a result, the White Album is entirely what you make of it. The wild tonal variants, the hairpin turns from mocking and specious (“Glass Onion,” “Back in the U.S.S.R.”) to nakedly emotional (“Blackbird,” “Julia,” “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”) to scabrous and ugly (“Yer Blues,” “Helter Skelter”)—we draw our own maps. Generations of songwriters have taken one or more of its dead-end roads and hacked a new subgenre out of the brush, from Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk to the Clash’s London Calling to Elliott Smith’s XO. To record your White Album is to make something that tugs and bursts at its own seams. To listen to your White Album is to never reach the same set of conclusions. –Jayson Greene",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYjrqu60DvA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650cb7acbbcef9298df0b9e1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/4-The%2520Beatles-The-Beatles.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Beatles-The_Beatles_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,3,John Coltrane,A Love Supreme (1965),Impulse!,"Impulse! John Coltrane’s classic quartet—featuring pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison, and drummer Elvin Jones—hit a pinnacle of their expressive potential together in the recording session that took place on December 9, 1964. Given all that it contains, the album put to tape on that day can seem paradoxically compact: It’s not quite 33 minutes long, so how is it possible for there to be so much space for each soloist to shine? Enough time for Coltrane, as composer, to make the spiritual stakes of this four-movement suite so dramatically clear? A Love Supreme’s unusual power remains as mysterious as its pleasures are durable. There are an impressive number of Coltranes that we can hear. His solos are full of passages that show off his sturdy tone as well as his fluid melodic variations, but, in a surprise move, he also sings the album’s title during the opening “Acknowledgement.” Occasionally, he ventures high-register notes on his tenor sax that seem to gasp with airy vulnerability. Jimmy Garrison’s bass creates a mood of risk as well as grace as he steadily navigates a series of fresh chords at the end of “Pursuance.” Pianist McCoy Tyner and drummer Elvin Jones foster breakneck swing or deep reflection, given the needs of the moment. In A Love Supreme’s liner notes, Coltrane describes the album as a “humble offering to HIM.” But this is no easygoing tribute; personal and social struggle informs it throughout. As Ashley Kahn observes in a recent reissue set essay, Coltrane’s drafted score for A Love Supreme references the closing chord of “Alabama,” his earlier tribute to the victims of the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. A Love Supreme carries a similarly complex spirit, working at a celebration of life while also confronting the reality of terror. To make good on the effort, the album strikes an interfaith posture: Some of its blues cries come from the black church, and Coltrane’s chanted vocals suggest Eastern spiritual traditions. Just as the album demands much of its composer and his fellow players, it also encourages us to enlarge our own capacities. –Seth Colter Walls",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9-HmsN6KO4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650cb7e6eb13366372c29892/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/3-%2520John-Coltrane-A-Love-Supreme.jpg,/dataset/artwork/John_Coltrane-A_Love_Supreme_1965.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,2,The Beach Boys,Pet Sounds (1966),Capitol,"Capitol Before Pet Sounds, rock existed in the declarative, the shouting of the succinct: The Beatles wanted to hold this, the Stones couldn’t get that, the Kinks wanted you then. Even the Beach Boys were content to party there, ankles in the surf, harmonizing salt-flecked snapshots of the Southern California idyll. But on the group’s 11th album, Brian Wilson turned his attention inward, to ask questions without clear answers—and, along the way, invented the modern pop auteur. Pet Sounds is an album of grand, immediate pleasures: rhapsodic falsettos, deep melodies elated by strings and brass, blips of bike horns and barking dogs. But it also bows to a central humility—the unknowability of love—and in doing so, reaches grace. To other bands, affairs were prizes won and lost, the products of obvious motives and crisp faults. But here, Wilson writes in the wistful, patient meditations of the perennial outsider; he has no explanations on how romance endures, or why it leaves, or where innocence is lost. Whether marveling over his wife’s fidelity in “You Still Believe in Me,” or bidding goodbye to his heart’s ideal on “Caroline, No,” he is wide-eyed. In “God Only Knows,” the most beautiful pop song of the ’60s, Brian and lyricist Tony Asher direct cherubic vocalist Carl Wilson to be helpless with awe, alighting on a willfully unromantic suggestion—that love is a sustained choice, after it’s a lightning bolt—inside a melody so sublime it becomes a sonnet. None of this is delivered in absolutes; Wilson’s most confident resolution on the album is that he doesn’t fit in, that he “just wasn’t made for these times.” He was ahead of them, while channeling centuries before. On Pet Sounds, Wilson introduces many tropes now central to pop music: the lone savant who conducts the band and the recording studio; the pensive observer, too gentle for this world; and the song cycle, a succession of tracks with entwined emotional and musical motifs. It’s no accident these are contemporary updates on classical composers, like Wilson’s beloved Gershwin and Beethoven. Here, as producer and arranger, he coaxes in elements of their symphonies—plus exotica, baroque, calypso, and a funhouse of eccentric instruments—electronically stacking it all into a roiling wave of sound, topped with the most spiritual and psychedelic harmonies the Beach Boys would ever swoon. Today, Wilson continues to speak to the romantic in every listener, in the radiant spaces between what is known. –Stacey Anderson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULmiYdnU3Bc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650cb82ecdd360b1835ef7e1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/2-The-Beach-Boys-Pet-Sounds.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Beach_Boys-Pet_Sounds_1966.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,album,1,The Velvet Underground,The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967),Verve,"Verve The dream of the underground as an autonomous zone takes root here: a sense of style that would pave the way for glam rock; a sense of nihilism that would bulldoze a clear path for punk; an uncompromisingly avant-garde sound that would lead to post-punk and beyond. There was their subject matter, decadent and depraved: whips and furs, back-alley blowjobs, tragic heroines, and also heroin—lots of heroin. The hippie phenomenon was a populist movement, as relatable to teenagers as bubble-gum pop had been a few years prior, and the Velvets were anything but. They invented a whole new kind of cool, their sound raw and shambolic: “Femme Fatale,” despite its glamorous premise, sounds like it was recorded in a broom closet. Lou Reed’s voice is high and nasal, and Nico—a fashion model and actor from Fellini’s La Dolce Vita and Warhol’s Chelsea Girls—sounds about as lively as an IV drip. The record was grotty and lo-fi, the sound of a reel-to-reel tape retreating into a turtle shell. And yet they had noise, much from their avant-gardist John Cale, a classically trained violist who turned his education into droning, seesawing, nails-on-a-chalkboard frequencies. When they performed, incongruously, at a formal dinner for the New York Society for Clinical Psychiatry in 1966, one shrink called them “a short-lived torture of cacophony.” Today, it’s easy to see The Velvet Underground & Nico as a solipsistic record, given all the social and political problems of the era that it ignores; the Velvets weren’t so much turning on and dropping out as digging in and shooting up. If the contemporary underground begins here then so too, perhaps, does its occasionally blinkered perspective. Art for art’s sake can be a hell of a drug. But for all of their danger and debasement, there was also something cozy about the Velvet Underground. “Sunday Morning” is a song about taking stock of the “wasted years,” yet it’s as gentle as a lullaby. “Heroin,” despite Reed’s bleak decision to “nullify my life,” turns two chords and a motorik beat into a burbling sunrise pulse that feels like rock’n’roll heaven. Far from “closing in on death,” the Velvet Underground were zeroing in on the sound of the future. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3E5YIP-DvU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/650cb86ca5fc90931d546617/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/1-The-Velvet-Underground-The-Velvet-Underground-_-Nico.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Velvet_Underground-The_Velvet_Underground__Nico_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,200,The Kinks,“Sunny Afternoon” (1966),Marble Arch,"Marble Arch While already rightly revered as bratty garage rockers by the time of this track’s release, the Kinks truly excelled when singer Ray Davies took a more observational, wry approach to songwriting—and “Sunny Afternoon” is one of his wriest on record. As the song’s ground-down, sadsack narrator, Davies sounds utterly exhausted by the task of telling his miserable tale, backed by a descending chromatic bassline that nearly flatlines by song’s end. –Adam Moerder",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIKsHh3BFPI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511ab7b44ea361be4c1361b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/200-The-Kinks-%25E2%2580%259CSunny-Afternoon%25E2%2580%259D.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Kinks-Sunny_Afternoon_1966.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,199,Nina Simone,“Black Is the Color of My True Love’s Hair” (1964),Colpix,"Colpix The famous Celtic ballad begins with a lustful list of physical attributes—a true love’s hair, face, eyes, and hands—but Nina Simone’s voice is less than interested in the material world. She emits a spectral trill, as confident and crestfallen as a death-row inmate. Even the skeletal piano feels too heavy for Simone’s vaporous devotion. –Alex Linhardt",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWmCbEbMmeU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511ac04c658832af10ef4d8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/199-%2520Nina-Simone-%25E2%2580%259CBlack-Is-the-Color-of-My-True-Love%25E2%2580%2599s-Hair%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Nina_Simone-Black_Is_the_Color_of_My_True_Loves_Hair_1964.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,198,Dionne Warwick,“Walk on By” (1964),Scepter,"Scepter People talk about “perfect pop” and I generally have no idea what they’re talking about. “Walk on By” is perfect pop, though, in the strictest sense: not a hair is out of place, no smudged eyeliner, nothing to taint its inherent loveliness. Any Bacharach/Warwick collaboration is a pick hit to click, but this is the most famous for a reason. Poised to the brink of formality, the song moves with the utterly unhurried grace of a woman in a ball gown. Perfect composure is one way to keep the tears inside, after all. –Jess Harvell",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AO073fekFfA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511acf9c658832af10ef4da/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/198-Dionne-Warwick-%25E2%2580%259CWalk-on-By%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Dionne_Warwick-Walk_on_By_1964.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,197,Charles Mingus,“Solo Dancer” (1963),Impulse!,"Impulse! The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady is regularly cited as a masterpiece of jazz orchestration, but that hardly accounts for the sheer fury of Mingus’ creativity. “Solo Dancer” is like a jazz diagram of the psyche or a chronology of the 20th century: a swarming assembly of neon alto, cracked trumpets, chromatic discord, and prolonged lyricism. –Alex Linhardt",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgs0_TDS7Fs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511ad9eced9ec3c06537f3c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/197-Charles-Mingus-%25E2%2580%259CSolo-Dancer%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Charles_Mingus-Solo_Dancer_1963.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,196,Irma Thomas,“Time Is on My Side” (1964),Imperial,"Imperial Though Thomas is widely acknowledged as the Soul Queen of Nola, I’ve always thought she never got a fair shake (e.g. neither “Ruler of My Heart” nor “Don’t Mess With My Man” made this list). The Rolling Stones eventually made this song a smash, but all they did was jack Thomas’ steez in full, changing nary a note, save one small thing: They could never belt like her. –Sean Fennessey",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cP-c2Aq47Cs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511aed30391186e6f24ce60/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/196-Irma-Thomas-%25E2%2580%259CTime-Is-on-My-Side%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Irma_Thomas-Time_Is_on_My_Side_1964.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,195,James Brown,“Night Train (Live at the Apollo)” (1963),King,"King Sure, the official version (released in 1962) moves and grooves just fine, especially with Brown doing double duty on the mic and on the drums. But compared to what’s on Live at the Apollo, it’s doing the standing still. On the greatest stage in the world, Mr. Star Time goes up and down the eastern seaboard in record time, shouting out the stops the train ain’t stopping at, while the band throws more and more coal into the engine. –David Raposa",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZF_rZrH4yBY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511afb9b8cfe8bfab6f6f50/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/195-James-Brown-%25E2%2580%259CNight-Train-(Live-at-the-Apollo)%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/James_Brown-Night_Train_Live_at_the_Apollo_1963.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,194,The Foundations,“Build Me Up Buttercup” (1968),Uni,"Uni This is the stuff mixtapes are made of: an infectiously catchy melody that sugarcoats a protagonist’s romantic plight, and lyrics that instantaneously connect with red-blooded love birds. The Foundations’ career may have burned short and hot, but their pop chops and puppy-dog pathos remain timeless. –Adam Moerder",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iol0B-clFFM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511b0936561d2f81edeecdc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/194-The-Foundations-%25E2%2580%259CBuild-Me-Up-Buttercup%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Foundations-Build_Me_Up_Buttercup_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,193,Johnny and June Carter Cash,“Jackson” (1967),Columbia,"Columbia About a haranguing wife that, in the fourth verse, transforms into a creature far more badass than her “big talkin’” husband, “Jackson” puts to song the time-honored tradition of doing crazy things to fix a crazy relationship. The story is almost as romantic as that of the two lovers who sing it. –Zach Baron",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3NJC18Oi04,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511b232a5dbf05feca8d0f2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/193-Johnny-and-June-Carter-Cash-%25E2%2580%259CJackson%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Johnny_and_June_Carter_Cash-Jackson_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,192,Alton Ellis,“I’m Still in Love With You” (1967),Studio One,"Studio One With Alton Ellis crying eternal affection above a gentle, stuttering riddim, this is the perfect starry-eyed Jamaican wedding song, right? Not quite. ""You don’t know how to love me, not even how to kiss me—I just don’t know why…"" he sneaks in, slyly mixing tragedy in with the love-drunk refrain. Unrequited love has rarely seemed so tantalizing. –Ryan Dombal",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yR8XrBKLc1E,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511b2f47756f3ec5c3978e6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/192-Alton-Ellis-%25E2%2580%259CI%25E2%2580%2599m-Still-in-Love-With-You%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Alton_Ellis-Im_Still_in_Love_With_You_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,191,The Cannonball Adderley Quintet,"“Mercy, Mercy, Mercy” (1966)",Capitol,"Capitol It wasn’t really recorded at “The Club”—that was just a trick to get some publicity for a new venue on Chicago’s South Side. Instead, Adderley got some friends together in the studio and plied them with drinks while the band cut this bit of surging, euphoric gospel. Every whoop, though, is true and from the heart. –Mark Richardson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4rXEKtC8iY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511b367a5dbf05feca8d0f4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/191-The-Cannonball-Adderley-Quintet-%25E2%2580%259CMercy-Mercy-Mercy%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Cannonball_Adderley_Quintet-Mercy_Mercy_Mercy_1966.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,190,Leonard Cohen,"“So Long, Marianne” (1968)",Columbia,"Columbia “So Long, Marianne”’s acoustic strum and weepy concertina crank up once Cohen weighs his conflicting desires for shelter and freedom, establishing a recursive loop of lamentation and joy. Love is a filament of web binding him to a ledge—stronger than its fragile appearance would imply; it’s easier stretched than severed. –Brian Howe",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgEiDc1aXr0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511b3e33d43116998c257bf/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/190-Leonard-Cohen-%25E2%2580%259CSo-Long-Marianne%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Leonard_Cohen-So_Long_Marianne_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,189,The Sonics,“Strychnine” (1965),Etiquette,Etiquette A song about drinking rat poison and liking it more than either water or wine. Garage-rock proto-punks the Sonics—without their raw fuzzed-buzz and Gerry Roslie’s roll’n’roll howl—played rock that couldn’t help but shock and awe. –Zach Baron,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7Nffq0bOgE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511b6917756f3ec5c3978e8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/189-The-Sonics-%25E2%2580%259CStrychnine%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Sonics-Strychnine_1965.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,188,Tyrannosaurus Rex,“Debora” (1968),A&M,"A&M Pre-glam, pre–T. Rex Marc Bolan recorded this hand-drummed Lord of the Rings Brit folk spasmodica. Among other things, it’s another great example of Bolan’s unmistakable influence on Devendra Banhart and the Hairy Fairy crew. The jumpy verbal string of “Dug a re dug n dug a re dug re dug” and lines like “O Debora, always dress like a conjurer/It’s fine to see your young face hiding/’Neath the stallion that I’m riding” confirm why Bolan named his book of poetry a very Danzig-sounding The Warlock of Love. But really, he’s Donovan with chops. –Brandon Stosuy",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hMjclJ1tfU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511b6d69a3a3b0fec7f879d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/188-Tyrannosaurus-Rex-_Debora%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Tyrannosaurus_Rex-Debora_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,187,The Walker Brothers,“The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore” (1966),Smash,"Smash Before Scott Walker was a shivery avant-gardist, he was a shivery crooner pinup, and this spaghetti Western anthem was his band’s biggest hit. Like the Righteous Brothers by way of the Free Design and Ennio Morricone, this was light years away from his current coordinates, but no less cinematic. –Mark Pytlik",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q11ium_-Lv8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511b6e844ea361be4c1361d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/187-The-Walker-Brothers-%25E2%2580%259CThe-Sun-Ain%25E2%2580%2599t-Gonna-Shine-Anymore%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Walker_Brothers-The_Sun_Aint_Gonna_Shine_Anymore_1966.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,186,The Hollies,“Bus Stop” (1966),Imperial,"Imperial Never mind that “Bus Stop” evokes a gentler counterculture in which the youth of the nation enacted mating rituals—attraction, pairing, commitment—underneath a pedestrian umbrella. From the first sprinkles of acoustic guitar to the stormcloud minor chords, from the desperate harmonies of the chorus to the sweet idea of falling in love out of the rain, this Hollies hit is all hook. –Stephen M. Deusner",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=It75wQ0JypA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511b7310391186e6f24ce62/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/186-The-Hollies-%25E2%2580%259CBus-Stop%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Hollies-Bus_Stop_1966.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,185,The Temptations,“Get Ready” (1966),Gordy,"Gordy On the verses, “Get Ready” is a tense and unforgiving stomper, but the chorus turns the song into a sweeping drama, a transcendent whoop of joy—and throughout it all, Eddie Kendricks’ angelic falsetto floats overhead like a balloon caught in a gust of wind. –Tom Breihan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PV97roslmt0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511b75c0391186e6f24ce64/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/185-The-Temptations-%25E2%2580%259CGet-Ready%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Temptations-Get_Ready_1966.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,184,James Brown,“Mother Popcorn (You Got to Have a Mother for Me)” (1969),King,"King No words can describe this song’s throbbing physicality better than the singer’s own “Jump back baby, James Brown’s gonna do his thing.” That “thing” involves a hysterical performance that switches from a sexualized grunt to a bizarre, high-pitched whine without warning. And with a horn chart snaking around a squirmy guitar line, Brown’s band does its thing, too. –Stephen M. Deusner",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eoSXpNZD9o,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511b77979071ef7eef3fcae/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/184-James-Brown-%25E2%2580%259CMother-Popcorn-(You-Got-to-Have-a-Mother-for-Me)%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/James_Brown-Mother_Popcorn_You_Got_to_Have_a_Mother_for_Me_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,183,Bobby Darin,“Beyond the Sea” (1960),ATO,"ATO The aural definition of “wistful,” the lyrics to “Beyond the Sea” scan as if there should be doubt that the song’s distant lovers will meet again. In his reading of the song, Darin doesn’t sound so sure; even when his band gets raucous, he sits it out and comes back as melancholy as ever. –Joe Tangari",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8OlDPqYBLw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511b9627756f3ec5c3978ea/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/183-Bobby-Darin-%25E2%2580%259CBeyond-the-Sea%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Bobby_Darin-Beyond_the_Sea_1960.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,182,Patsy Cline,“She’s Got You” (1962),Decca,"Decca Money can’t buy love, but roving hands can steal it, and on this countrypolitan waltz, Cline sounds irrevocably bereaved, running through possessions she has, and the precious one that no longer belongs to her. I think there’s a piano in my beer. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWCUh6tf7PA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511b983acc3041461af889d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/182-Patsy-Cline-%25E2%2580%259CShe%25E2%2580%2599s-Got-You%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Patsy_Cline-Shes_Got_You_1962.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,181,France Gall,“Laisse Tomber les Filles” (1964),Philips,"Philips In 1964, Gall was a 17-year-old ingénue, but her mentor—a promising 36-year-old lecher named Serge Gainsbourg—turned garish jailbait euphemisms into an art form. Accompanied by swooning trumpets and speakeasy bass, Gall makes her way through a tawdry jukebox-slapping cabaret populated by alcoholics and nymphettes. If pop music is supposed to combine virginity and carnality, “Laisse Tomber les Filles” might well be the pinnacle of yé-yé ecstasy. –Alex Linhardt",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWRCJhsz5t4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511b9ef44ea361be4c1361f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/181-France-Gall-%25E2%2580%259CLaisse-Tomber-les-Filles%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/France_Gall-Laisse_Tomber_les_Filles_1964.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,180,The Barbarians,“Moulty” (1965),Laurie,"Laurie This song is best known for being the inspirational tale of the band’s hook-handed drummer, but I’ll put up the chorus of “Moulty” against any other from the decade—“Louie Louie,” “Mony Mony,” anything—as being the biggest, loudest, and most unintelligible, made all the more dynamically triumphant by the aw-shucks verses. –Rob Mitchum",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25x3aIWs76E,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511ba4379071ef7eef3fcb0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/180-The-Barbarians-%25E2%2580%259CMoulty%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Barbarians-Moulty_1965.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,179,Bembeya Jazz National,“Armée Guinéenne” (1969),Editions Syliphone Conakry,"Editions Syliphone Conakry Updating an old folk song honoring warriors and dedicating it to Guinea’s then-fledgling armed forces, Bembeya Jazz created a hypnotic masterpiece. Balafon and percussion underpin Cuban-influenced horns and vocals, but Sekou Diabate’s lead guitar steals the show as the fluid lifeblood of the song. –Joe Tangari",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUfVHeRgN_U,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511ba679a3a3b0fec7f879f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/179-Bembeya-Jazz-National-%25E2%2580%259CArme%25CC%2581e-Guine%25CC%2581enne%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Bembeya_Jazz_National-Arme_Guinenne_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,178,Otis Redding,“I’ve Been Loving You Too Long (To Stop Now)” (1965),Volt,"Volt Few performer/musician combos have enjoyed better, tighter dynamics than the ones forged between Redding and the Stax house band. The players follow his lead at every note, offsetting his soul-wrenching performance with austere horn ascensions and demonstrative punches. Redding makes the climax massive, but the band downplays it sweetly, internalizing his proclamation and making it an intimate exchange as much between the singer and band as between a man and a woman. –Stephen M. Deusner",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZ6OrrkeVFo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511ba857756f3ec5c3978ec/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/178-Otis-Redding-%25E2%2580%259CI%25E2%2580%2599ve-Been-Loving-You-Too-Long-(To-Stop-Now)%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Otis_Redding-Ive_Been_Loving_You_Too_Long_To_Stop_Now_1965.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,177,The Tammys,“Egyptian Shumba” (1963),United Artists,"United Artists It’s not just that this girl group’s gone wilder than any garage band on the list—it’s that they’re possessed. The Tammys bop hard and bratty, but by the chorus they’re literally growling, barking, and squealing like sexed-up hyenas; in the bridge you can hear them shudder and jerk their way into a frenzy. It’s their party and they’ll scream if they want to. –Nitsuh Abebe",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Er8PN385PEA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511baa8a5dbf05feca8d0f6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/177-The-Tammys-%25E2%2580%259CEgyptian-Shumba%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Tammys-Egyptian_Shumba_1963.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,176,MC5,“Kick Out the Jams” (1969),Elektra,"Elektra This one’s a classic before it even starts, thanks to Rob Tyner’s still-startling introduction (take the title, add “muthafuckahhhs!”). Though punk more in intent (“Let me be who I am!”) than action (essentially, post-Who/Jimi Hendrix blooze-rock, but sloppier), this remains an eternal rallying cry for anarchy in the USA. –Stuart Berman",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XhQRFO4M7A,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511bad79a3a3b0fec7f87a1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/176-MC5-%25E2%2580%259CKick-Out-the-Jams%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/MC5-Kick_Out_the_Jams_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,175,Loretta Lynn,“Don’t Come Home a Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ on Your Mind)” (1967),Decca,"Decca Loretta Lynn hates drunk sex (or something). Loves the Iraq War, though. She said as much at a pre–Jack White Taste of Chicago. But “Liquor and love, they just don’t mix,” teases Lynn on 1967’s “Don’t Come Home a Drinkin’”, with honky-tonk pedal steel and juke-joint piano. See, lady is crazy! –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBnkAkmLtaw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511bb1b0391186e6f24ce66/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/175-Loretta-Lynn-%25E2%2580%259CDon%25E2%2580%2599t-Come-Home-a-Drinkin%25E2%2580%2599-(With-Lovin%25E2%2580%2599-on-Your-Mind)%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Loretta_Lynn-Dont_Come_Home_a_Drinkin_With_Lovin_on_Your_Mind_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,174,Darlene Love,“Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” (1963),Philles,"Philles Love’s woe-steeped holiday ballad is the best Xmas present Phil Spector ever gave. The track features all of the producer’s trademarks and his dense arrangement provides the perfect backdrop for Love’s rich voice, making it easy to understand why this has become an integral part of the Christmas music canon. –Cory D. Byrom",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UV8x7H3DD8Y,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511bb3d44ea361be4c13621/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/174-Darlene-Love-%25E2%2580%259CChristmas-(Baby-Please-Come-Home)%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Darlene_Love-Christmas_Baby_Please_Come_Home_1963.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,173,Phil Ochs,“I Ain’t Marching Anymore” (1965),Elektra,"Elektra Of all the protest songs Ochs penned, “I Ain’t Marching Anymore” is the strongest. Ochs’ narrow tenor and staccato guitar propel this anthem about a soldier who up and stops killing. It’s an urgent rebuke against the war in Vietnam, but Ochs also takes the high road: He doesn’t rip into the old men who start the wars that get young men killed—he just puts down his gun and walks away. –Chris Dahlen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gv1KEF8Uw2k,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511bb5e874ad9be80dca956/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/173-Phil-Ochs-%25E2%2580%259CI-Ain%25E2%2580%2599t-Marching-Anymore%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Phil_Ochs-I_Aint_Marching_Anymore_1965.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,172,Archie Bell & the Drells,“Here I Go Again” (1969),Atlantic,"Atlantic Whether it be “Tighten Up,” “I Can’t Stop Dancing,” “Dancing to Your Music,” “Dance Your Troubles Away,” or “Dancin’ Man,” these dudes sure liked to dance. But with this Gamble & Huff swift-string strut, Bell and Co. took on a different kind of hustle. “I should have learned my lesson, you hurt me before/But every time I see ya, I keep running back for more,” blows Bell, breaking down romance’s inexplicable two-step with a purposeful stride. –Ryan Dombal",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9mvRxzsZDg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511bb7da5dbf05feca8d0f8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/172-Archie-Bell-_-the-Drells-%25E2%2580%259CHere-I-Go-Again%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Archie_Bell__the_Drells-Here_I_Go_Again_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,171,Neil Diamond,“Sweet Caroline” (1969),Uni / MCA,"Uni / MCA When I was little, my best friend’s mom—who’d seen Neil Diamond in concert a dozen times—told me he had “a nice tush.” It was a strange moment—almost traumatic. I was just a kid for chrissakes, and this was an authority figure. But Neil had that kind of power over women and this single is one reason why. It also explains why 12 Songs was a bad idea. –Mark Richardson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vhFnTjia_I,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511bba144ea361be4c13623/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/171-Neil-Diamond-%25E2%2580%259CSweet-Caroline%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Neil_Diamond-Sweet_Caroline_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,170,Françoise Hardy,“Tous Les Garcons et Les Filles” (1964),Disques Vogue,"Disques Vogue The beat sways, Hardy sings, you swoon. The space between the guitar, bass, drums, and vocals—and that’s all there is on this song—is palpable, and Hardy’s vocal is a nonchalantly solitary midnight waltz through swinging Paris. Makes me want to learn French. –Joe Tangari",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aLoezucIzk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511bc0b874ad9be80dca958/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/170-Franc%25CC%25A7oise-Hardy-%25E2%2580%259CTous-Les-Garcons-et-Les-Filles%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Franoise_Hardy-Tous_Les_Garcons_et_Les_Filles_1964.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,169,Stevie Wonder,“Uptight (Everything’s Alright)” (1966),Tamla,"Tamla After two years without a major hit—an eternity in the Motown days—and with his voice making the troublesome transition from “Little” to big, 15-year-old Stevie Wonder (with help from a cavalcade of horns) literally laughs through his woes on this No. 3 smash. It’s all in this rich girl/poor boy tale: the freakish optimism, opulent funk, and sneaky sociology. Here, the full breadth of Wonder’s talent starts to come into full view. –Ryan Dombal",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDbyOLzEyfk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511d163acc3041461af889f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/169-Stevie-Wonder-%25E2%2580%259CUptight-(Everything%25E2%2580%2599s-Alright)%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Stevie_Wonder-Uptight_Everythings_Alright_1966.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,168,Albert Ayler,“Ghosts” (1964),Impulse!,"Impulse! Ayler first recorded his signature piece “Ghosts” in 1964, and it eventually became his most frequently played composition. The shortened version that appears on his 1967 Impulse album Love Cry is perhaps the purest distillation of Ayler’s ecstatic marching-band mode, as he and his brother Donald volley the theme’s simple fanfare back and forth with a joyous, Pentecostal fervor. –Matthew Murphy",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtiSA2RKDzc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511d1e9a5dbf05feca8d0fc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/168-Albert-Ayler-%25E2%2580%259CGhosts%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Albert_Ayler-Ghosts_1964.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,167,Stone Poneys,“Different Drum” (1967),Capitol,"Capitol It’s not you, it’s Linda Rondstadt. Only in her 1967 Stone Poneys version of Monkees guitarist Mike Nesmith’s “Different Drum”, the country-pop diva would never put it so blandly. “I ain’t saying you ain’t pretty/All I’m sayin’ is I’m not ready,” she avers, standing proud with Nashville strings and “In My Life”–like harpsichord. So… can we stay friends? –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMVvRImExKc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511d2bd79071ef7eef3fcb2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/167-Stone-Poneys-%25E2%2580%259CDifferent-Drum%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Stone_Poneys-Different_Drum_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,166,The Flirtations,“Nothing But a Heartache” (1969),Deram,"Deram This is girl-group pop with all the swoony drama that the genre demanded, but it’s also tense and brittle: The horn stabs and string whooshes anticipate the funk and disco that were in their embryonic stages in 1969, and the group sings about heartache like they’re sharpening their teeth. Northern Soul kids picked up on this one for very good reasons. –Tom Breihan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97zgi3Ri2Go,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511d2f0a5dbf05feca8d0fe/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/166-The-Flirtations-%25E2%2580%259CNothing-But-a-Heartache%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Flirtations-Nothing_But_a_Heartache_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,165,The Monks,“Monk Time” (1966),Polydor,"Polydor It’s beat time, it’s hop time, it’s Monk time! It’s American punk GIs in Germany destroying everything in sight with overdriven organ, guitar feedback, and electrified banjo. This was not your rank-and-file Army beat group, raging against Vietnam, the Bomb, and complacency. –Joe Tangari",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOLS8NeGL4U,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511d37a9a3a3b0fec7f87a3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/165-The-Monks-%25E2%2580%259CMonk-Time%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Monks-Monk_Time_1966.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,164,Frank Sinatra,“It Was a Very Good Year” (1965),Reprise,"Reprise Frank walks the same balancing act as Jay-Z, somehow pulling off the aging Don Juan character and even making himself sympathetic. Strings weep and oboes hum while Sinatra looks back on all the girls he’s fucked with a fond, eloquent melancholy, never dropping his swagger but still letting weariness seep in. Masterful. –Tom Breihan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydcUaTpiHgQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511d42e0391186e6f24ce9e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/164-Frank-Sinatra-%25E2%2580%259CIt-Was-a-Very-Good-Year%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Frank_Sinatra-It_Was_a_Very_Good_Year_1965.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,163,Cromagnon,“Caledonia” (1969),ESP Disk,"ESP Disk A stately funereal march for a whole army of whispering maniacs, “Caledonia”—with its pre-industrial stomp and pre-modern bagpipery—evokes nothing so much as the distant and terrifying future. Like pretty much everything else on the ESP-Disk label, Cromagnon made songs so far ahead of their time we’ve yet to catch up. –Zach Baron",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8jOhqOsouM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511d49b3d43116998c257c3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/163-Cromagnon-%25E2%2580%259CCaledonia%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Cromagnon-Caledonia_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,162,The Who,“I Can See For Miles” (1967),Classic Records / Track Record,"Classic Records / Track Record At the time of this song’s release, the Who weren’t pleased with its chart success—it only reached No. 10 in the UK. But while it found them stretching out a bit, it’s really classic Who, with loose, airy verses, tight, catchy choruses, and plenty of wailing from both Pete Townshend and Keith Moon. –Cory D. Byrom",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kb5mRBMZbYo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511d4fd79071ef7eef3fcb4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/162-The-Who-%25E2%2580%259CI-Can-See-For-Miles%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Who-I_Can_See_For_Miles_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,161,The Zombies,“She’s Not There” (1964),Decca,"Decca It’s counterintuitively groovy, with its minor-key darkness and halting drum part, but “She’s Not There” is as arresting and mysterious as the girl it describes. Singer Colin Blunstone exudes cool on the verses, obeys the frenzy of the chorus, and lets Rod Argent unload on one of rock’s best electric piano solos. –Joe Tangari",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKBRc8zNQ30,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511d6559a3a3b0fec7f87a5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/161-The-Zombies-%25E2%2580%259CShe%25E2%2580%2599s-Not-There%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Zombies-Shes_Not_There_1964.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,160,Os Mutantes,“A Minha Menina” (1968),Polydor,"Polydor In 1968 Brazil, it constituted a political statement for Os Mutantes to perform their brash and radical form of Tropicália. But you’d never guess it from the playful, sunny bounce of “A Minha Menina,” which combines propulsive Latin rhythms, delirious doo-wop choruses, and trebly fuzz guitar to frame a near-perfect slice of carefree boy-meets-girl pop. –Matthew Murphy",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEpSFOibJho,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511d6b544ea361be4c13625/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/160-Os-Mutantes-%25E2%2580%259CA-Minha-Menina%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Os_Mutantes-A_Minha_Menina_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,159,Pink Floyd,“Astronomy Domine” (1967),Tower,"Tower In a pre–Dark Side of the Moon world, “Astronomy Domine” was Pink Floyd’s calling card, single-handedly generating every space-rock cliché and exposing rock’s true psychedelic potential. Forget Jerry Garcia and Jefferson Airplane: According to Syd Barrett’s brilliantly warped songwriting, mind expansion and intergalactic research could only be conducted through NASA morse code, academic electronics, time-rippling guitar echoes, and tabernacle vocals about Saturnian staircases. –Alex Linhardt",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJh9OLlXenM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511d6decf94a7b5a28d994b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/159-Pink-Floyd-_Astronomy-Domine%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Pink_Floyd-Astronomy_Domine_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,158,P.P. Arnold,“The First Cut Is the Deepest” (1967),Immediate,"Immediate Everyone from Rod Stewart to Sheryl Crow has covered this Cat Stevens–penned number, but no one has owned it like Arnold, whose delivery suggests a lively mix of brassy self-possession and courageous vulnerability. Her devastating interpretation outshines the fussily Spector-ian orchestration, making the song a massive monument to a profoundly broken heart. –Stephen M. Deusner",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1-g5VG2pWg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511d7049a3a3b0fec7f87a7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/158-P.P.-Arnold-%25E2%2580%259CThe-First-Cut-Is-the-Deepest%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/PP_Arnold-The_First_Cut_Is_the_Deepest_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,157,Aretha Franklin,"“Do Right Woman, Do Right Man” (1967)",Atlantic,Atlantic Fuck Dr. Phil. Fuck Oprah. Fuck “Lovelines” and Dr. Drew. The blueprint to how to treat a woman is delivered by the woman with the voice we all want to educate us. Aretha opens plainly with “Take me to heart and I’ll always love you.” Is there any better way to explain this? –Sean Fennessey,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TE5j9wVPeLQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511d730a5dbf05feca8d101/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/157-Aretha-Franklin-%25E2%2580%259CDo-Right-Woman-Do-Right-Man%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Aretha_Franklin-Do_Right_Woman_Do_Right_Man_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,156,Loretta Lynn,“Fist City” (1968),Decca,"Decca The greatest catfight song of all time would be just another sad attempt by a done-wrong woman to stick up for her no-good man if it wasn’t for the vicious glee with which Lynn delivers her threats. It’s almost as if she encourages him to cheat, just so she can get off on beating up the bitch afterward. –Amy Phillips",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgylOni0JSI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511d76c44ea361be4c13627/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/156-Loretta-Lynn-%25E2%2580%259CFist-City%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Loretta_Lynn-Fist_City_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,155,Creedence Clearwater Revival,“Bad Moon Rising” (1969),Fantasy,"Fantasy “Bad Moon Rising” remains the apotheosis of midnight dread: sly rockabilly, cheery resignation, and stab-your-friends paranoia. For all of Fogerty’s lyrical simplicity (“I hear the voice of rage and ruin”), he manages to unite Cambodian monsoons, tear-gassed riots, postdiluvian Apollo missions, and bayou homicide under one ominous eclipse. –Alex Linhardt",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BmEGm-mraE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511d7923d43116998c257c5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/155-Creedence-Clearwater-Revival-%25E2%2580%259CBad-Moon-Rising%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Creedence_Clearwater_Revival-Bad_Moon_Rising_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,154,The Kingsmen,“Louie Louie” (1963),Jerden,"Jerden You can blear the words and miss your cues. You can play it in a marching band, with the tubas bobbing up and down, farting the hook. You can even, like radio station KFJC, spin 823 different versions by different bands for a straight 63 hours. Go ahead, try anything—because you can’t fuck up “Louie, Louie.” –Chris Dahlen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4V1p1dM3snQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511d8287756f3ec5c3978ef/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/154-The-Kingsmen-%25E2%2580%259CLouie-Louie%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Kingsmen-Louie_Louie_1963.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,153,Lorraine Ellison,“Stay With Me” (1969),Warner Bros. / Seven Arts,"Warner Bros. / Seven Arts “Stay With Me” starts with a slow-rotating piano line and a whisper-coo vocal, before it wells up and explodes into one of the great scenery-chewing choruses of all time. An orchestra drops bombs, and Ellison’s voice abandons all restraint, clawing and rasping and howling at the man who’s about to leave her. –Tom Breihan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TOaUxgkLSg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511d8630391186e6f24cea0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/153-Lorraine-Ellison-%25E2%2580%259CStay-With-Me%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Lorraine_Ellison-Stay_With_Me_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,152,The Association,“Never My Love” (1967),Warner Bros.,"Warner Bros. While the Association’s happy-together harmonies might make them seem like just another chirpy pop group aching to be hoisted upon Charles Manson’s petard, there’s a wispy melancholy to “Never My Love” that lifts it above the rabble. This reassuring affirmation of amour is a California dream that knows the alarm could go off at any time, which, in a world of silly love songs, makes all the difference. –David Raposa",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6OLTpVedmw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511d8973d43116998c257c7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/152-The-Association-%25E2%2580%259CNever-My-Love%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Association-Never_My_Love_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,151,David Axelrod,“The Human Abstract” (1969),Capitol,"Capitol This is the kind of primary-source material that lets DJ Shadow records get described as “cinematic”—a bottomless piano figure that ramps up through funk bass, guitar shards, and what we’d now call “breakbeats” to hit a string-drenched climax. This, you know, is the kind of stuff the cool kids listened to. –Nitsuh Abebe",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nurl0YewBA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511d8b87756f3ec5c3978f1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/151-David-Axelrod-%25E2%2580%259CThe-Human-Abstract%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/David_Axelrod-The_Human_Abstract_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,150,Bob Dylan,"“It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” (1965)",Columbia,"Columbia In many respects, “It’s Alright, Ma” was Dylan’s last word on overt protest music, and he channeled this comprehensive social diatribe with such otherworldly fury that it seemed to awe even himself. “I don’t know how I got to write those songs,” he told Ed Bradley in a 2004 “60 Minutes” interview. “Try and sit down and write something like that.” –Matthew Murphy",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYajHZ4QUVM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511d8f20391186e6f24cea2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/150-Bob-Dylan-%25E2%2580%259CIt%25E2%2580%2599s-Alright-Ma-(I%25E2%2580%2599m-Only-Bleeding)%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Bob_Dylan-Its_Alright_Ma_Im_Only_Bleeding_1965.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,149,Archie Bell & the Drells,“Tighten Up” (1968),Atlantic,"Atlantic Prozac on wax—one of the simplest, most joyous soul-shouting dance numbers of the decade, built on the only chords that matter. The Drells send their major sevenths strutting and scratching back and forth like they know they’ve found the perfect groove, and the whole thing just beams; you’d be hard pressed to find someone who can hear it without smiling back. –Nitsuh Abebe",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wro3bqi4Eb8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511da4788eebb95d50d2c31/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/149-Archie-Bell-_-the-Drells-%25E2%2580%259CTighten-Up%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Archie_Bell__the_Drells-Tighten_Up_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,148,The Velvet Underground,“Sister Ray” (1967),Verve,"Verve It may clock in at 17 minutes, but “Sister Ray” is rock’n’roll debased to it purest, most puerile form: blow jobs, smack, and a ceaseless riff that sounds like “96 Tears” getting cooked in a spoon. Some 26 years later, Jon Spencer would claim, “My father was Sister Ray!” He’s just one of a million garage-rock deviants with a claim to child support. –Stuart Berman",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53F5nY68cBM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511da770391186e6f24cea4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/148-The-Velvet-Underground-%25E2%2580%259CSister-Ray%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Velvet_Underground-Sister_Ray_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,147,Nina Simone,“Sinnerman” (1964),Philips,"Philips It’s the end of the world and whoever sings this spiritual is trying to find a way out. Simone, raised in church, understands the scriptural underpinnings and sounds like she’s riding her piano into town with a column of flame trailing 10 feet behind her. “Urgent” doesn’t begin to describe it. –Mark Richardson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QH3Fx41Jpl4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511daa479071ef7eef3fcb8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/147-Nina-Simone-%25E2%2580%259CSinnerman%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Nina_Simone-Sinnerman_1964.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,146,Terry Riley,“In C” (1968),Columbia Masterworks,"Columbia Masterworks Where Steve Reich’s 1974 modern classical piece “Music for 18 Musicians” throws up a wall of sound that even a packing Phil Spector would have trouble penetrating, Terry Riley’s “In C” hangs like a beaded curtain. Here, minimalism isn’t some totalizing force but a loose scrim dividing sound from silence, music from chaos, and chance from design, as the players attack cell-based arrangements like tipsy bingo players throwing chips to the wind. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNi0bukYRnA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511dad37756f3ec5c3978f3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/146-Terry-Riley-%25E2%2580%259CIn-C%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Terry_Riley-In_C_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,145,Tammy Wynette,“Stand by Your Man” (1968),Epic,"Epic Listening to Tammy Wynette’s hit song now, it’s tough to decide who’s being insulted more—the wife who should forgive her philandering husband, or the husband who, being “just a man,” apparently can’t keep his libido in check. Regardless, the track’s hallmarks—swinging rhythm, teary steel guitar, and aching vocals—are definitive, making it one of the most popular and best-loved songs country music has yet produced. –Cory D. Byrom",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AM-b8P1yj9w,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511db0a44ea361be4c13629/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/145-Tammy-Wynette-%25E2%2580%259CStand-by-Your-Man%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Tammy_Wynette-Stand_by_Your_Man_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,144,Bobbie Gentry,“Ode to Billie Joe” (1967),Capitol,"Capitol Our “Law & Order”–corroded minds can all-too-easily guess what the singer and Billie Joe tossed off the bridge that night, but this Southern Gothic story-song is still a creeping horror for the way Gentry teases out each character’s reactions to a tragedy—and for the dread that sinks in with every revelation. –Chris Dahlen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZt5Q-u4crc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511db3bb8cfe8bfab6f6f83/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/144-Bobbie-Gentry-%25E2%2580%259COde-to-Billie-Joe%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Bobbie_Gentry-Ode_to_Billie_Joe_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,143,Scott Walker,“Big Louise” (1969),Smash,"Smash With his trembling baritone croon and God’s string section by his side, Scott Walker skillfully straddles the line between true pathos and nauseating bathos. With the weight he imparts to lyrics that are both clumsy scraps of poesy and poignant images (“She’s a haunted house/And her windows are broken”), it doesn’t matter if the song is about an aging prostitute or his favorite soup spoon—he sings this sad tale as if it’s escaping upon his very last breath. –David Raposa",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7zeQXpYaig,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511db6d79071ef7eef3fcba/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/143-Scott-Walker-%25E2%2580%259CBig-Louise%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Scott_Walker-Big_Louise_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,142,Procol Harum,“A Whiter Shade of Pale” (1967),Dream / London,"Dream / London This song, given a bit more than its fair share of exposure via high school dances and movie previews, is nevertheless a pristine example of how far a great melody and chord progression will take you. It doesn’t matter that it’s a Bach rip, or that nobody really knows what Gary Brooker is singing about. –Dominique Leone",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mb3iPP-tHdA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511dbfd88eebb95d50d2c34/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/142-Procol-Harum-%25E2%2580%259CA-Whiter-Shade-of-Pale%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Procol_Harum-A_Whiter_Shade_of_Pale_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,141,The Supremes,“Baby Love” (1964),Motown,"Motown The four-bar intro, the ponying piano rhythms, a young Diana Ross’ naifish vocals, the sugary vocal callbacks, the key change; simple economy of songwriting was one of Motown’s defining characteristics, but few tracks from the label’s golden era came as perfectly packaged as this one. –Mark Pytlik",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_y6nFjoVp4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511dc3c2608271ae68b0a68/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/141-The-Supremes-%25E2%2580%259CBaby-Love%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Supremes-Baby_Love_1964.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,140,Donovan,“Season of the Witch” (1966),Epic,"Epic Better known as a dippy, soft-spoken mystic, Donovan’s claws came out for “Season of the Witch.” This psych-pop seether indicts the singer’s own folkie utopia (“Beatniks are out to make it rich,” he growls) with toothy licks and an organ sheen that may or may not have been courtesy of Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones. –Brian Howe",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAzTnsSgs2s,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511f35f7756f3ec5c3978f5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/140-Donovan-%25E2%2580%259CSeason-of-the-Witch%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Donovan-Season_of_the_Witch_1966.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,139,The Impressions,“People Get Ready” (1965),ABC-Paramount,"ABC-Paramount This song’s sense of strained optimism, of hope in the face of overwhelming sadness, is almost impossibly gorgeous. Everything floats: Curtis Mayfield’s coo, the bluesy guitar, the lighter-than-air strings. When I die and I’m walking toward a faraway glimmer of light, I want this to be the soundtrack. –Tom Breihan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l04yM7-BWbg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511f814b8cfe8bfab6f6f85/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/139-The-Impressions-%25E2%2580%259CPeople-Get-Ready%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Impressions-People_Get_Ready_1965.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,138,The Righteous Brothers,“Unchained Melody” (1968),Verve,"Verve “Unchained Melody” is an unparalled slow dance song. It keeps turning and unfolding, like an endless, ever-growing love... and yeah, it’s sappy, and deathly sincere. But it’s also stately, and undeniable. Like a great bridge that’s been shot in front of too many sunsets, it can still get to you—depending on your date. –Chris Dahlen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiiyq2xrSI0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511f9e93d43116998c257c9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/138-The-Righteous-Brothers-%25E2%2580%259CUnchained-Melody%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Righteous_Brothers-Unchained_Melody_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,137,The Dixie Cups,“Iko Iko” (1965),Red Bird,"Red Bird Part schoolyard taunt, part Mardi Gras chant, part found-sound experiment, “Iko Iko” was allegedly born when New Orleans’ Dixie Cups started singing a hometown melody during downtime in the studio, accompanying themselves by hitting an ashtray, a bottle, and a chair for percussion. Not until the reign of the Neptunes would anything this weirdly minimal again reach the top of the charts. –Amy Phillips",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Yrt3Pnk9qA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511faa54512f598eae04e1c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/137-The-Dixie-Cups-%25E2%2580%259CIko-Iko%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Dixie_Cups-Iko_Iko_1965.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,136,Jimi Hendrix,“Voodoo Child (Slight Return)” (1968),Reprise,"Reprise The stock of the Legendary Rock Titans is taking a dip as idols of the 1960s are replaced on classic rock radio playlists by various Sammy Hagar projects, but I refuse to live in a world where “Voodoo Child” is left behind. This rocks God even when He’s playing hard to get. –Dominique Leone",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZBlqcbpmxY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511fcb5ab718e2e6622f3b8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/136-Jimi-Hendrix-%25E2%2580%259CVoodoo-Child-(Slight-Return)%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Jimi_Hendrix-Voodoo_Child_Slight_Return_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,135,The Kinks,“Shangri-La” (1969),Reprise,"Reprise “Shangri-La” makes the quotidian epic, blowing up the fireside rocking chair ride of the pensioner and the commute of the indebted laborer into a cinemascope portrait of the British middle class. It’s not all tea and sympathy: Check the charging middle eight, as vicious a smackdown of the complacent life as any. –Joe Tangari",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kt0IXkIVvo4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511fdf48f58497cde045104/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/135-The-Kinks-%25E2%2580%259CShangri-La%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Kinks-Shangri-La_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,134,Brian Wilson,“Surf’s Up (solo piano version)” (1966),Capitol,Capitol The lonely boy in his room finally gets the baroque and puzzling lyrics his most complex music deserves. For all the Phil Spector worship and industry cash lavished on fireman’s hats—and once you get past the cutesy intro—“Surf’s Up” shows all Brian needed was a piano to knock you on your can. –Mark Richardson,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3TRns_zssM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511fe45748378d11a42846d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/134-Brian-Wilson-%25E2%2580%259CSurf%25E2%2580%2599s-Up-(solo-piano-version)%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Brian_Wilson-Surfs_Up_solo_piano_version_1966.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,133,The Monkees,“I’m a Believer” (1966),Colgems,"Colgems With some of the most recognizable opening notes in pop music, this Neil Diamond–penned gem showcases everything the Monkees had to offer: The melody is infectious, the chorus begs for a sing-along, and by the end, Mickey Dolenz’ vocals are as impassioned as anyone’s. –Cory D. Byrom",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB9YIsKIEbA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511fee8748378d11a42846f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/133-The-Monkees-%25E2%2580%259CI%25E2%2580%2599m-a-Believer%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Monkees-Im_a_Believer_1966.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,132,Louis Armstrong,“What a Wonderful World” (1968),ABC,"ABC There’s a battle in here. Without that C# major chord—the one that hits on “and I think to myself”—you might never know it. But in that teetering moment before the chord’s resolution, “What a Wonderful World” makes a subtle heartbreaking gesture to all the darkness rapping at its door (bigotry, weariness, defeat), in turn making it just hard enough for you, the listener, to entirely dismiss its optimism, at which moment the battle becomes yours. –Mark Pytlik",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3yCcXgbKrE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511fffe6c4aa074394a7a01/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/132-Louis-Armstrong-%25E2%2580%259CWhat-a-Wonderful-World%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Louis_Armstrong-What_a_Wonderful_World_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,131,The Byrds,“I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better” (1965),Columbia,"Columbia Of all the songwriters who rose with the Byrds—Roger McGuinn, David Crosby, Gram Parsons—Gene Clark is the least decorated. But that’s OK—in just 2:35 he basically invents modern power-pop, showing a generation of underdogs (from Big Star to Tom Petty to Teenage Fanclub) how to hide their spite in a joyous, jangly Rickenbacker chord. –Stuart Berman",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to-RVV_3anw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651200263b06d865a933a10b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/131-The-Byrds-%25E2%2580%259CI%25E2%2580%2599ll-Feel-a-Whole-Lot-Better%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Byrds-Ill_Feel_a_Whole_Lot_Better_1965.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,130,John Coltrane,“My Favorite Things” (1960),Atlantic,"Atlantic John Coltrane never stopped finding new things in this song. By Live in Japan it was going on for an hour with blistering solos that could peel paint. But this first take is delicate and lyrical, soft but never frail. And the key change after the chorus is among the most joyous sounds in recorded music. –Mark Richardson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHVarQbNAwU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6511f0e771768eb7b2671079/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/130-John-Coltrane-%25E2%2580%259CMy-Favorite-Things%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/John_Coltrane-My_Favorite_Things_1960.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,129,Harry Nilsson,“Everybody’s Talkin’” (1968),RCA Victor,"RCA Victor It’s still shocking to me that Nilsson didn’t write the harrowing “Everybody’s Talkin.’” A notoriously conflicted guy, Nilsson recorded the Fred Neil song for his 1968 album Aerial Ballet, but it didn’t blow until it became the theme for the 1969 film Midnight Cowboy. It remains one of the truest recordings of emotional distress ever recorded. Too bad Forrest Gump screwed it up for everyone. –Sean Fennessey",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AzEY6ZqkuE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651316dd2d4d79805f95fe43/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/129-Harry-Nilsson-%25E2%2580%259CEverybody%25E2%2580%2599s-Talkin%25E2%2580%2599%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Harry_Nilsson-Everybodys_Talkin_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,128,Buffalo Springfield,“For What It’s Worth” (1967),ATCO,"ATCO Originally a Stephen Stills track about a club closing in West Hollywood, “For What It’s Worth”—like Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind”—ended up more symbol than song. Neil Young’s insistent, single-note echoes are the sound of a conflict begun; the sides are forgotten—only the flavor of dissatisfaction and dissent remains. –Zach Baron",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp5JCrSXkJY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651317049ceff36b73f9e3e6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/128-Buffalo-Springfield-%25E2%2580%259CFor-What-It%25E2%2580%2599s-Worth%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Buffalo_Springfield-For_What_Its_Worth_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,127,George Jones,“She Thinks I Still Care” (1962),United Artists,"United Artists Elvis Presley and the Flying Burrito Brothers have recorded this masterpiece of self-delusion, but it forever belongs to Jones. Not only is he able to wring out every drop of sad-sack pathos but he’s able to do so with enough natural charisma for listeners to fully sympathize with the song’s vaguely creepy proto-stalker narrator. –Matthew Murphy",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UquXUYfHYok,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6513172897a58a378ac56a9c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/127-George-Jones-%25E2%2580%259CShe-Thinks-I-Still-Care%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/George_Jones-She_Thinks_I_Still_Care_1962.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,126,Led Zeppelin,“What Is and What Should Never Be” (1969),Atlantic,"Atlantic Skip the circular medieval hippie-isms, the coital dynamics, the pinging flytrap slide solo, and Plant’s underwater sound effects for a moment. Skip to the 3:33 mark, right when it seems about to disembark. At that exact point, just try not to flail off Page’s staccato sucker punch. –Ryan Dombal",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrqMdja4eYs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6513175a04888bf23636384e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/126-Led-Zeppelin-%25E2%2580%259CWhat-Is-and-What-Should-Never-Be%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Led_Zeppelin-What_Is_and_What_Should_Never_Be_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,125,Miles Davis,“Shhh/Peaceful” (1969),Columbia,"Columbia From Davis’ cosmic In a Silent Way, “Shhh/Peaceful” forecasted a time when only the blur of motion and pulsating waves of rhythm could describe what was happening outside one’s window (or through one’s monitor). Musically, it’s colored with blue ambience and the electric ghosts of drone. But is it jazz? Nobody cares. –Dominique Leone",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-OzELPUXqQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65131774f91f403600ca7df4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/125-Miles-Davis-%25E2%2580%259CShhh_Peaceful%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Miles_Davis-ShhhPeaceful_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,124,The Velvet Underground,“Venus in Furs” (1967),Verve,"Verve John Cale’s screechy viola buzzes like a beeline through trebled guitars and Maureen Tucker’s slow-plod drums. Lou Reed’s lyrics reference Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s 19th century novel, Venus in Furs, in language and imagery that matches (and then laps) that book’s late-romanticism: “Whiplash girl child in the dark/Clubs and bells, your servant, don’t forsake him/Strike, dear mistress, and cure his heart.” The sound is lusciously decadent. The march itself feels so perversely languorous—a parade for fur-wearing women and those who desire to submit to them. –Brandon Stosuy",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwzaifhSw2c,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65131790d2186a47bf690458/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/124-The-Velvet-Underground-%25E2%2580%259CVenus-in-Furs%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Velvet_Underground-Venus_in_Furs_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,123,The Supremes,“I Hear a Symphony” (1965),Motown,"Motown You can’t blame Holland-Dozier-Holland if this sounds like “Where Did Our Love Go?”—after a rare lackluster performance by a Supremes single, Berry Gordy released an inter-Motown memo telling his staff that this group will release nothing less than No. 1 singles. In response, one of the greatest songwriting teams in American history wrote a soaring anthem that encapsulated the greatness of their entire body of work within one perfect three-minute single that, naturally, reached the top of the charts.  –David Raposa",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_T9SEY8eLyk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651317ab9ceff36b73f9e3e8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/123-The-Supremes-%25E2%2580%259CI-Hear-a-Symphony%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Supremes-I_Hear_a_Symphony_1965.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,122,Patsy Cline,“I Fall to Pieces” (1961),Decca,"Decca Patsy Cline had a “one of the guys” reputation—she supposedly could drink, cuss, and fight with the best of them. You’d never know it from this weepy pop-country gem. Of strong personal significance for Cline, “I Fall to Pieces” allowed her to break through on her own terms; the walking bass, dry snare, and vocal harmonies were the perfect backdrop for a booming voice that was best heard on heartbreakers. –Cory D. Byrom",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuZTk1hdpMs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651317ce04888bf236363850/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/122-Patsy-Cline-%25E2%2580%259CI-Fall-to-Pieces%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Patsy_Cline-I_Fall_to_Pieces_1961.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,121,Glen Campbell,“Wichita Lineman” (1968),Capitol,"Capitol Campbell’s 1968 hit, penned by Jimmy Webb, helped define his career with its slick production and strong melody. The underlying sadness in his smooth vocals was pure country, but the sweeping strings and sparkling production were a fresh pop addition. –Cory D. Byrom",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651317ea4bf72e4949851fbb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/121-Glen-Campbell-%25E2%2580%259CWichita-Lineman%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Glen_Campbell-Wichita_Lineman_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,120,? and the Mysterians,“96 Tears” (1966),Cameo Parkway,"Cameo Parkway On the smartest/dumbest two-note Farfisa riff in history, “96 Tears” went to No. 1 at a time when a couple of shifty looking guys from Saginaw, Mich., with a shaky grasp on rock’n’roll could do such a thing. I read somewhere, possibly apocryphally, that once at a Suicide show before they performed “96 Tears,” Alan Vega screamed “your national anthem, whether you know it or not!” Works for me. –Jess Harvell",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7uC5m-IRns,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6513181a9ceff36b73f9e3ea/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/120-_-and-the-Mysterians-%25E2%2580%259C96-Tears%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/_and_the_Mysterians-96_Tears_1966.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,119,Silver Apples,“Oscillations” (1968),Kapp,"Kapp Where Morton Subotnick’s “Silver Apples of the Moon” congealed, the Silver Apples’ shiny electro-acoustic baubles actively grooved. Their penchant for quivering electronics—and the self-conscious content of their lyrics, paying tribute to same—laid the groundwork for Krautrock (not to mention American Tapes) with a dazzling, not-quite-three minutes of tribal drumming, gamelan timbres, folky modal harmonies, train whistles—and of course those pesky waveforms, oscillating wildly. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1xOZyBc2Ck,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651337b68bfae97d996196bf/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Silver-Apples.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Silver_Apples-Oscillations_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,118,NA,NA,Mustang,"Mustang Bobby Fuller sits in the prison yard with not a hair or a note out of place, and his guitar shines like the sparks off the bullet that ended his life as a free man. As cool a killer as any in rockabilly, he makes the sing-along confession of the title iconic in a song that’s fast, hostile and, doomed—just as Fuller’s own legend was sealed when he was found dead at the height of his stardom, in a suicide that’s still believed to be murder. –Chris Dahlen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgtQj8O92eI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651337e82d4d79805f95fe47/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/118-The-Bobby-Fuller-Four-%25E2%2580%259CI-Fought-the-Law%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/77287dfe-9f08-4b15-81f9-9e6bc4aa74f8
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,117,Ben E. King,“Stand By Me” (1961),Atco,"Atco I always thought this song was longer. King’s telling us that he can endure the end of the world if he has the love of a good woman. But with that steadfast bassline behind him, he doesn’t sound like he needs help—just that he’s looking for a more perfect union, the kind of love that makes us more than just men and women. You hear what that sounds like in the strings, which are almost too beautiful—and stop right before they get mushy. –Chris Dahlen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwZNL7QVJjE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6513384fd99f3918ab3730dc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/117-Ben-E.-King-%25E2%2580%259CStand-By-Me%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Ben_E_King-Stand_By_Me_1961.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,116,Jefferson Airplane,“White Rabbit” (1967),RCA Victor,"RCA Victor Don’t pay attention to the lyrics. Just don’t. Pay attention to the snaking guitar line, the bolero beat, and Grace Slick’s tremulous voice. And even if you hate hippies as much as I do, pay attention to the closing crescendo. It slays everything in its path: hippies, punks, yuppies, metalheads, even Jefferson Starship. –Amy Phillips",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WANNqr-vcx0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651338af04888bf236363852/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/116-Jefferson-Airplane-%25E2%2580%259CWhite-Rabbit%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Jefferson_Airplane-White_Rabbit_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,115,The Kinks,“Victoria” (1969),Reprise,"Reprise With “Victoria,” Ray Davies turns the social critique that always lurks in his songcraft to take on, well, the history of the British Empire—in under four minutes. And as the song moves from wistfully nostalgic verses to soaring, patriotic choruses, he pretty much nails it. God save the Kinks. –John Motley",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VzsQoR806c,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651338f5d2186a47bf69045d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/115-The-Kinks-%25E2%2580%259CVictoria%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Kinks-Victoria_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,114,Nancy Sinatra,“These Boots Are Made for Walkin’” (1966),Reprise,"Reprise The descending bassline that opens the song feels like a playground taunt, and so does everything else: Sinatra’s blithe and flirty delivery, the skeletal tambourines, even the glorious, stomping horn riff that bursts into the song in its final 20 seconds. “Boots” is maybe the finest bitchy kiss-off in pop history. Take notes. –Tom Breihan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbyAZQ45uww,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6513391ca6372dc864faf310/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/114-Nancy-Sinatra-%25E2%2580%259CThese-Boots-Are-Made-for-Walkin%25E2%2580%2599%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Nancy_Sinatra-These_Boots_Are_Made_for_Walkin_1966.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,113,The Easybeats,“Friday on My Mind” (1965),United Artists,"United Artists Bursting out in fab psychedelic Technicolor, Australia’s Easybeats sounded the horn for anyone who’s ever pined for the weekend. Angels at the chorus go, “toniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiggggghhhht,” and if only for a few seconds, tease visions of the city and everything that’s going to happen there. “Friday on My Mind” is the jam. –Dominique Leone",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iW2_Ec3uEU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65133945a6372dc864faf312/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/113-The-Easybeats-%25E2%2580%259CFriday-on-My-Mind%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Easybeats-Friday_on_My_Mind_1965.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,112,Steve Reich,“It’s Gonna Rain” (1965),,"Steve Reich’s most famous tape-loop finds a frothing black-magic Pentecostal minister prepping for street-riot Armageddon. With the assistance of Reich’s gap-ridden tape splicing, his voice transforms into a series of beeps, springs, fans, and artillery fire. Occasionally, it approaches something that resembles serrated doo-wop or the Psycho theme. Fluttering pigeons turn into marching boots. Despite all the violence, “It’s Gonna Rain” is a testament to man’s ability to wrest melody from speech and rhythm from insanity. –Alex Linhardt",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vugqRAX7xQE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651339879ceff36b73f9e420/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/112-Steve-Reich-%25E2%2580%259CIt%25E2%2580%2599s-Gonna-Rain%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Steve_Reich-Its_Gonna_Rain_1965.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,111,Stevie Wonder,“I Was Made to Love Her” (1968),Tamla,"Tamla For much of his career no one could fill the world with silly love songs as superlatively as Stevie Wonder. The sunshine soul of 1967’s “I Was Made to Love Her” easily shows up the emptiness of most modern melisma, as the 16-year-old singer’s churchy rejoicing lends a happy ending to a choir-and-harmonica Romeo and Juliet tale of parental disapproval and all-conquering hubba-hubba. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pYux5-d1Es,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651339e004888bf236363854/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/111-Stevie-Wonder-%25E2%2580%259CI-Was-Made-to-Love-Her%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Stevie_Wonder-I_Was_Made_to_Love_Her_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,110,The Four Tops,“It’s the Same Old Song” (1965),Motown,"Motown Oh, that groove—it’s so irresistible an entire orchestra had to get involved. Levi Stubbs pumps anguish into the tortured lyric about a guy who can’t escape the song he and his girl once shared. Once loved, now it’s the pain in his heart going out on the airwaves. –Joe Tangari",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uS2nWLz-AbE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65133a07f91f403600ca7df6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/110-The%2520Four-Tops-%25E2%2580%259CIt%25E2%2580%2599s-the-Same-Old-Song%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Four_Tops-Its_the_Same_Old_Song_1965.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,109,The Byrds,“Eight Miles High” (1966),Columbia,"Columbia Calling this psychedelia’s greatest pop moment will probably ignite a shitstorm from the peanut gallery, but what the hell, I’ll say it anyway. Normal adjectives like “serpentine” do violence to the guitar playing on “Eight Miles High”; 12 strings manage to snare John Coltrane modal chaos, Indian ragas, and chiming bucolic folk. Not bettered by the (very fine) Hüsker Dü cover, even for those like me who prefer their freakouts to sound like heavy weather. –Jess Harvell",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxyOhFBoxSY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65133a28f91f403600ca7df8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/109-The-Byrds-%25E2%2580%259CEight-Miles-High%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Byrds-Eight_Miles_High_1966.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,108,Harry Nilsson,“One” (1968),RCA Victor,"RCA Victor It opens with a single note over and over and we know the song immediately, no matter who’s performing it. I grew up on Three Dog Night’s R&B bombast so returning to Harry’s original I forget how wispy and ethereal this tune could be. Definitely the loneliest version out there. –Mark Richardson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haT8g7oKnns,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65133a4714eec4f15fc79237/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/108-Harry-Nilsson-%25E2%2580%259COne%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Harry_Nilsson-One_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,107,Bob Dylan,“Visions of Johanna” (1966),Columbia,"Columbia A song that never really ends, about a girl he’s never really gonna find, in a place that he’ll never really leave. Joins fellow Dylan track “Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again” as one of the most immaculate songs about being eternally, existentially, stuck in the same place. “He’s sure got a lot of gall, being so useless and all…” –Zach Baron",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UG8Hi-fpyLI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65133a709ceff36b73f9e422/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/107-Bob-Dylan-%25E2%2580%259CVisions-of-Johanna%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Bob_Dylan-Visions_of_Johanna_1966.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,106,Desmond Dekker & the Aces,“007 (Shanty Town)” (1967),Trojan / Spectrum Music,"Trojan / Spectrum Music The King of Ska brought this loping anthem, about rudeboys that “bomb up de town,” to hordes of tenderfoots. But with a voice as compact and emotive as his, Dekker was capable of enrapturing even the biggest xenophobe. The only reason people can get away with loving ska is still Dekker. –Sean Fennessey",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqgWuMcHc3g,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65133a939ceff36b73f9e424/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/106-Desmond-Dekker-_-the-Aces-%25E2%2580%259C007-(Shanty-Town)%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Desmond_Dekker__the_Aces-007_Shanty_Town_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,105,Simon & Garfunkel,“America” (1968),Columbia,"Columbia A short, wistful trip, Bookends’ soft-focus acoustic highlight “America” wasn’t actually a single until it appeared on 1972’s Greatest Hits. Whenever. Dewily harmonious Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel do the she’s-leaving-home myth maybe half as good as Nabokov, but it’s priceless for the gabardine spy alone. –Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFAoWwUwknc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65133ac98bfae97d996196c1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/105-Simon-_-Garfunkel-_America%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Simon__Garfunkel-America_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,104,King Crimson,“21st Century Schizoid Man” (1969),Atlantic,"Atlantic King Crimson announced itself to the world with this seven-minute hellstorm of gonzo guitar, shifting meters, and nasty sax. Greg Lake sounds like he’s being eaten by robots, and there’s hardly anything more fantastically filthy than Robert Fripp and Ian McDonald’s opening guitar/sax riff. –Joe Tangari",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MM_G0IRLEx4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65133aefa6372dc864faf314/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/104-King-Crimson-%25E2%2580%259C21st-Century-Schizoid-Man%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/King_Crimson-21st_Century_Schizoid_Man_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,103,Merle Haggard,“Mama Tried” (1968),Capitol,Capitol,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKuc4nfJByc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65133b0c14eec4f15fc79239/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/103-Merle-Haggard-%25E2%2580%259CMama-Tried%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Merle_Haggard-Mama_Tried_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,102,Sly & the Family Stone,“Everyday People” (1968),Epic,Epic,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUUhDoCx8zc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65133b28d2186a47bf69045f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/102-Sly-_-the-Family-Stone-%25E2%2580%259CEveryday-People%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Sly__the_Family_Stone-Everyday_People_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,101,Pink Floyd,“See Emily Play” (1967),Columbia,Columbia,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPf56QaRXhg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65133b444bf72e4949851fbd/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/101-Pink-Floyd-%25E2%2580%259CSee-Emily-Play%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Pink_Floyd-See_Emily_Play_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,100,The Isley Brothers,“It’s Your Thing” (1969),T-Neck,T-Neck,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tqc_EhmL8-E,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65133e4d2d4d79805f95fe49/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/100-The-Isley-Brothers-%25E2%2580%259CIt%25E2%2580%2599s-Your-Thing%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Isley_Brothers-Its_Your_Thing_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,99,Jimi Hendrix,“All Along the Watchtower” (1968),Polydor,Polydor,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLV4_xaYynY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65133e7295ba5475b8f8dceb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/99-Jimi-Hendrix-%25E2%2580%259CAll-Along-the-Watchtower%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Jimi_Hendrix-All_Along_the_Watchtower_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,98,The Zombies,“Care of Cell 44” (1968),CBS,CBS,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AbLstAAbcM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65133e925df745afddd15bcd/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/98-The-Zombies-%25E2%2580%259CCare-of-Cell-44%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Zombies-Care_of_Cell_44_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,97,The Maytals,“Pressure Drop” (1969),Beverley’s / Trojan,Beverley’s / Trojan,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnalP_-5NfE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65133eb4283dc2f83780f03f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/97-The-Maytals-%25E2%2580%259CPressure-Drop%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Maytals-Pressure_Drop_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,96,The Shangri-Las,“Give Him a Great Big Kiss” (1965),Red Bird,Red Bird,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipJOa1UG764,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65133edb04888bf236363856/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/96-The-Shangri-Las-%25E2%2580%259CGive-Him-a-Great-Big-Kiss%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Shangri-Las-Give_Him_a_Great_Big_Kiss_1965.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,95,Sam Cooke,“Cupid” (1961),RCA,RCA,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r01rjeTAwf8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65133f0092de97a15126c663/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/95-Sam-Cooke-%25E2%2580%259CCupid%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Sam_Cooke-Cupid_1961.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,94,Simon & Garfunkel,“Mrs. Robinson” (1968),Columbia,Columbia,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9C1BCAgu2I8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65133f1c8bfae97d996196c3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/94-Simon-_-Garfunkel-%25E2%2580%259CMrs.-Robinson%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Simon__Garfunkel-Mrs_Robinson_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,93,Can,“Yoo Doo Right” (1969),Mute,Mute,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkA4Y3CcyKw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65133f3d0c3a472486299a92/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/93-Can-%25E2%2580%259CYoo-Doo-Right%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Can-Yoo_Doo_Right_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,92,Nick Drake,“River Man” (1969),Island,Island,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idcaRTg4-fM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65133f635df745afddd15bcf/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/92-Nick-Drake-%25E2%2580%259CRiver-Man%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Nick_Drake-River_Man_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,91,The Who,“Substitute” (1966),Reaction,Reaction,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eswQl-hcvU0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65133f80283dc2f83780f041/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/91-The-Who-%25E2%2580%259CSubstitute%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Who-Substitute_1966.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,90,The Angels,“My Boyfriend’s Back” (1963),Smash,Smash,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDZK6LCPMGs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65133f9c90557c5a6cb7f0f1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/90-The-Angels-%25E2%2580%259CMy-Boyfriend%25E2%2580%2599s-Back%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Angels-My_Boyfriends_Back_1963.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,89,The Stooges,“1969” (1969),Elektra,Elektra,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NL45zGLp0lU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6513418d14eec4f15fc7923b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/89-The-Stooges-%25E2%2580%259C1969%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Stooges-1969_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,88,The Kinks,“You Really Got Me” (1964),Pye,Pye,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTTsY-oz6Go,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651341b3d99f3918ab3730de/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/88-The-Kinks-%25E2%2580%259CYou-Really-Got-Me%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Kinks-You_Really_Got_Me_1964.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,87,The Miracles,“The Tracks of My Tears” (1965),Tamla Motown,Tamla Motown,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCwkZrj2VT4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65134275d99f3918ab3730e0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/87-The-Miracles-%25E2%2580%259CThe-Tracks-of-My-Tears%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Miracles-The_Tracks_of_My_Tears_1965.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,86,The Left Banke,“Walk Away Renée” (1967),Smash,Smash,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqAh1dQu_pg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65134297f91f403600ca7dfa/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/86-The-Left-Banke-%25E2%2580%259CWalk-Away-Rene%25CC%2581e%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Left_Banke-Walk_Away_Rene_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,85,Roy Orbison,“Crying” (1962),Monument,Monument,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQrgeeS_qbo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651342c204888bf236363858/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/85-Roy-Orbison-%25E2%2580%259CCrying%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Roy_Orbison-Crying_1962.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,84,The Rolling Stones,“You Can’t Always Get What You Want” (1969),Decca,Decca,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7S94ohyErSw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651342e5d99f3918ab3730e2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/84-The-Rolling-Stones-%25E2%2580%259CYou-Can%25E2%2580%2599t-Always-Get-What-You-Want%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Rolling_Stones-You_Cant_Always_Get_What_You_Want_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,83,Neil Young & Crazy Horse,“Down by the River” (1969),Reprise,Reprise,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1gxkRve4Q0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6513430ad2186a47bf690461/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/83-Neil-Young-_-Crazy-Horse-_Down-by-the-River%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Neil_Young__Crazy_Horse-Down_by_the_River_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,82,Elvis Presley,“Suspicious Minds” (1969),RCA,RCA,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxOBOhRECoo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65134351d99f3918ab3730e4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/82-Elvis-Presley-%25E2%2580%259CSuspicious-Minds%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Elvis_Presley-Suspicious_Minds_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,81,Sam & Dave,"“Hold On, I’m Comin’” (1966)",Stax,"Stax Look, it’s not brain surgery. You come up with an absolutely undeniable monster of a six-note horn riff. You put it over a wound-tight funk vamp that breathes and lunges and builds to a fiery climax. You find a couple of guys to bray and scream and plead and rage over it with a sort of churchy zeal. That’s it. You are now Isaac Hayes and Dave Porter, and you’ve written maybe the greatest Southern soul song of all time. You’ll start getting burger-commercial royalties in about 30 years. –Tom Breihan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65134374d99f3918ab3730e6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/81-Sam-_-Dave-%25E2%2580%259CHold-On%2C-I%25E2%2580%2599m-Comin%25E2%2580%2599%25E2%2580%259D.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sam__Dave-Hold_On_Im_Comin_1966.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,80,Bob Dylan,“Subterranean Homesick Blues” (1965),CBS,CBS,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGxjIBEZvx0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651343c75df745afddd15bd3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/80-Bob-Dylan-%25E2%2580%259CSubterranean-Homesick-Blues%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Bob_Dylan-Subterranean_Homesick_Blues_1965.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,79,Gal Costa,“Baby” (1969),Philips,Philips,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ey65touQaY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651438d85df745afddd15bd9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/79-Gal-Costa-%25E2%2580%259CBaby%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Gal_Costa-Baby_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,78,Sly & the Family Stone,“I Want to Take You Higher” (1969),Epic,Epic,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqWQzOzK3kw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651439734bf72e4949851fef/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/78-Sly-_-the-Family-Stone-%25E2%2580%259CI-Want-to-Take-You-Higher%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Sly__the_Family_Stone-I_Want_to_Take_You_Higher_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,77,The Velvet Underground,“Heroin” (1967),Verve,Verve,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zjQhMH8p0E,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6514398f04888bf2363638bc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/77-The-Velvet-Underground-%25E2%2580%259CHeroin%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Velvet_Underground-Heroin_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,76,BBC Radiophonic Workshop,“Doctor Who (Original Theme)” (1963),Decca,Decca,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USijQAth1Tc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65143b9b04888bf2363638be/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/76-BBC-Radiophonic-Workshop-%25E2%2580%259CDoctor-Who-(Original-Theme)%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/BBC_Radiophonic_Workshop-Doctor_Who_Original_Theme_1963.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,75,Simon & Garfunkel,“The Boxer” (1969),CBS,CBS,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3LFML_pxlY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65143bb804888bf2363638c0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/75-Simon-_-Garfunkel-%25E2%2580%259CThe-Boxer%25E2%2580%259D.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Simon__Garfunkel-The_Boxer_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,74,James Brown & the Famous Flames,“Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag” (1965),King,King,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwJ0uGm4-uw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65143bd204888bf2363638c2/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/74-James-Brown-_-the-Famous-Flames-%25E2%2580%259CPapa%25E2%2580%2599s-Got-a-Brand-New-Bag%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/James_Brown__the_Famous_Flames-Papas_Got_a_Brand_New_Bag_1965.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,73,Bob Dylan,"“Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” (1963)",Columbia,Columbia,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-Y3KfJs6T0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65143bee8bfae97d996196ff/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/73-Bob-Dylan-%25E2%2580%259CDon%25E2%2580%2599t-Think-Twice-It%25E2%2580%2599s-All-Right%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Bob_Dylan-Dont_Think_Twice_Its_All_Right_1963.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,72,Van Morrison,“Sweet Thing” (1968),Warner Bros.,Warner Bros.,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFAp3aRJ2vA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65143c0814eec4f15fc7929d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/72-Van-Morrison-%25E2%2580%259CSweet-Thing%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Van_Morrison-Sweet_Thing_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,71,Jimi Hendrix,“Manic Depression” (1967),Polydor,Polydor,,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65143c228bfae97d99619701/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/71-Jimi-Hendrix-%25E2%2580%259CManic-Depression%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Jimi_Hendrix-Manic_Depression_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,70,Patsy Cline,“Crazy” (1961),Decca,Decca,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QEDb3xzdec,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65143c3b9ceff36b73f9e428/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/70-Patsy-Cline-%25E2%2580%259CCrazy%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Patsy_Cline-Crazy_1961.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,69,Dick Dale & the Del-Tones,“Misirlou” (1962),Deltone,Deltone,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIU0RMV_II8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65143d768bfae97d99619733/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/69-Dick-Dale-_-the-Del-Tones-%25E2%2580%259CMisirlou%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Dick_Dale__the_Del-Tones-Misirlou_1962.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,68,The Shirelles,“Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” (1960),Scepter,Scepter,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbxxkwBQk_o,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65143dcc4bf72e4949851ff1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/68-The-Shirelles-%25E2%2580%259CWill-You-Still-Love-Me-Tomorrow%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Shirelles-Will_You_Still_Love_Me_Tomorrow_1960.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,67,Neil Young & Crazy Horse,“Cinnamon Girl” (1969),Reprise,Reprise,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwwzWqjw7Tw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65143df2f91f403600ca7e2e/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/67-Neil-Young-_-Crazy-Horse-%25E2%2580%259CCinnamon-Girl%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Neil_Young__Crazy_Horse-Cinnamon_Girl_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,66,The Paragons,“The Tide Is High” (1967),Treasure Isle,Treasure Isle,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQXqkiKXiHc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65143e1ea6372dc864faf317/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/66-The-Paragons-_The-Tide-Is-High%25E2%2580%259D.png,/dataset/artwork/The_Paragons-The_Tide_Is_High_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,65,The Mamas & the Papas,“California Dreamin’” (1966),Dunhill,Dunhill,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhZULM69DIw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65143e4cd2186a47bf690463/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/65-The-Mamas-_-the-Papas-%25E2%2580%259CCalifornia-Dreamin%25E2%2580%2599%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Mamas__the_Papas-California_Dreamin_1966.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,64,Del Shannon,“Runaway” (1961),Big Top,Big Top,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0S13mP_pfEc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65143e764bf72e4949851ff3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/64-Del-Shannon-%25E2%2580%259CRunaway%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Del_Shannon-Runaway_1961.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,63,Stan Getz & João Gilberto,“The Girl From Ipanema” [ft. Antônio Carlos Jobim] (1964),Verve,Verve,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RftwDBVVpDQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65143e9f04888bf2363638f4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/63-Stan-Getz-_-Joa%25CC%2583o-Gilberto-%25E2%2580%259CThe-Girl-From-Ipanema%25E2%2580%259D-%255Bft.-Anto%25CC%2582nio-Carlos-Jobim%255D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Stan_Getz__Joo_Gilberto-The_Girl_From_Ipanema_ft_Antnio_Carlos_Jobim_1964.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,62,The Rolling Stones,“Street Fighting Man” (1968),Decca / London,Decca / London,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUO8ScYVeDo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65144069d99f3918ab3730ea/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/62-The-Rolling-Stones-%25E2%2580%259CStreet-Fighting-Man%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Rolling_Stones-Street_Fighting_Man_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,61,The Supremes,“You Keep Me Hangin’ On” (1966),Motown,Motown,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phhwkbD1E2c,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651440852c3b12093afc7824/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/61-The-Supremes-%25E2%2580%259CYou-Keep-Me-Hangin%25E2%2580%2599-On%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Supremes-You_Keep_Me_Hangin_On_1966.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,60,Sly & the Family Stone,“Hot Fun in the Summertime” (1969),Epic,Epic,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Yg7123Snhk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651440a314eec4f15fc7929f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/60-Sly-_-the-Family-Stone-%25E2%2580%259CHot-Fun-in-the-Summertime%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Sly__the_Family_Stone-Hot_Fun_in_the_Summertime_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,59,The Velvet Underground,“Sunday Morning” (1967),Verve,Verve,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qK82JvRY5s,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651442e9d99f3918ab3730ec/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/59-The-Velvet-Underground-%25E2%2580%259CSunday-Morning%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Velvet_Underground-Sunday_Morning_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,58,The Beatles,“I Want to Hold Your Hand” (1964),Parlophone / Capitol,Parlophone / Capitol,,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6514437c04888bf2363638f6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/58-The-Beatles-%25E2%2580%259CI-Want-to-Hold-Your-Hand%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Beatles-I_Want_to_Hold_Your_Hand_1964.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,57,Tommy James & the Shondells,“Crimson and Clover” (1969),Roulette,Roulette,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpGEeneO-t0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651443f09ceff36b73f9e45a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/57-Tommy-James-_-the-Shondells-%25E2%2580%259CCrimson-and-Clover%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Tommy_James__the_Shondells-Crimson_and_Clover_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,56,Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot,“Bonnie and Clyde” (1968),Mercury / Fontana,Mercury / Fontana,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDAuaStv2Kk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6514440d14eec4f15fc792a1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/56-Serge-Gainsbourg-and-Brigitte-Bardot-%25E2%2580%259CBonnie-and-Clyde%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Serge_Gainsbourg_and_Brigitte_Bardot-Bonnie_and_Clyde_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,55,Jackie Wilson,“(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher” (1967),Brunswick,Brunswick,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzDVaKRApcg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6514442e14eec4f15fc792a3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/55-Jackie-Wilson-%25E2%2580%259C(Your-Love-Keeps-Lifting-Me)-Higher-and-Higher%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Jackie_Wilson-Your_Love_Keeps_Lifting_Me_Higher_and_Higher_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,54,The Monkees,“Daydream Believer” (1967),Colgems,Colgems,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvqeSJlgaNk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651444525df745afddd15bdd/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/54-The-Monkees-%25E2%2580%259CDaydream-Believer%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Monkees-Daydream_Believer_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,53,Led Zeppelin,“Whole Lotta Love” (1969),Atlantic,Atlantic,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0utAHY3xo4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6514446ca6372dc864faf319/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/53-Led-Zeppelin-%25E2%2580%259CWhole-Lotta-Love%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Led_Zeppelin-Whole_Lotta_Love_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,52,Ray Charles,“Georgia on My Mind” (1960),ABC,ABC,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mQgoKNgTmc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651444882c3b12093afc7826/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/52-Ray-Charles-%25E2%2580%259CGeorgia-on-My-Mind%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Ray_Charles-Georgia_on_My_Mind_1960.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,51,Ike & Tina Turner,“River Deep - Mountain High” (1966),A&M,A&M,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZSv6-vF5gQ,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651444a614eec4f15fc792a5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/51-Ike-_-Tina-Turner-%25E2%2580%259CRiver-Deep-Mountain-High%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Ike__Tina_Turner-River_Deep_-_Mountain_High_1966.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,50,Love,“Alone Again Or” (1967),Elektra,Elektra,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gV9doWWI8tA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651444c9f91f403600ca7e60/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/50-Love-%25E2%2580%259CAlone-Again-Or%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Love-Alone_Again_Or_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,49,Lee Hazlewood & Nancy Sinatra,“Some Velvet Morning” (1968),Reprise,Reprise,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sb-SVPJM4L4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6514453d14eec4f15fc792a7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/49-Lee-Hazlewood-_-Nancy-Sinatra-%25E2%2580%259CSome-Velvet-Morning%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Lee_Hazlewood__Nancy_Sinatra-Some_Velvet_Morning_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,48,David Bowie,“Space Oddity” (1969),RCA,RCA,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYMCLz5PQVw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651445644bf72e4949851ff5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/48-David-Bowie-%25E2%2580%259CSpace-Oddity%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/David_Bowie-Space_Oddity_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,47,The Beatles,“Eleanor Rigby” (1966),Parlophone / Capitol,Parlophone / Capitol,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuS5NuXRb5Y,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6514457d8bfae97d99619735/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/47-The-Beatles-%25E2%2580%259CEleanor-Rigby%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Beatles-Eleanor_Rigby_1966.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,46,The Creation,“Making Time” (1967),Hit-Ton,Hit-Ton,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hEb2vOOaxI,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651445988bfae97d99619737/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/46-The-Creation-%25E2%2580%259CMaking-Time%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Creation-Making_Time_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,45,Dusty Springfield,“Son of a Preacher Man” (1968),Atlantic,Atlantic,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjydOI4MEIw,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651445b2f91f403600ca7e62/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/45-Dusty-Springfield-%25E2%2580%259CSon-of-a-Preacher-Man%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Dusty_Springfield-Son_of_a_Preacher_Man_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,44,The Supremes,“Where Did Our Love Go” (1964),Motown,Motown,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i27X2xAtnaA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651445cd04888bf2363638f8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/44-The-Supremes-%25E2%2580%259CWhere-Did-Our-Love-Go%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Supremes-Where_Did_Our_Love_Go_1964.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,43,Vince Guaraldi Trio,“Linus and Lucy” (1965),Fantasy,Fantasy,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6zypc_LhnM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651445e804888bf2363638fa/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/43-Vince-Guaraldi-Trio-%25E2%2580%259CLinus-and-Lucy%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Vince_Guaraldi_Trio-Linus_and_Lucy_1965.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,42,The Band,“The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” (1969),Capitol,Capitol,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jREUrbGGrgM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6514460504888bf2363638fc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/42-The-Band-%25E2%2580%259CThe-Night-They-Drove-Old-Dixie-Down%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Band-The_Night_They_Drove_Old_Dixie_Down_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,41,Leonard Cohen,“Suzanne” (1968),CBS,CBS,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svitEEpI07E,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651446215df745afddd15bdf/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/41-Leonard-Cohen-%25E2%2580%259CSuzanne%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Leonard_Cohen-Suzanne_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,40,The Zombies,“This Will Be Our Year” (1968),Date,Date,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmuswTEGF-U,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6514463cd99f3918ab3730ee/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/40-The-Zombies-%25E2%2580%259CThis-Will-Be-Our-Year%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Zombies-This_Will_Be_Our_Year_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,39,The Rolling Stones,“Sympathy for the Devil” (1968),Decca,Decca,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBecM3CQVD8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65144692a6372dc864faf31b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/39-The-Rolling-Stones-%25E2%2580%259CSympathy-for-the-Devil%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Rolling_Stones-Sympathy_for_the_Devil_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,38,The Meters,“Cissy Strut” (1969),Josie,"Josie When the first moments of the first song of your first album are as crisp and chilling as the “Aaaaaa-yah!” and fat chords that open “Cissy Strut,” hyperbole tends to abound. New Orleans demigods and house band for Allen freakin’ Toussaint before they were out of their infancy, the Meters were the peak of precise, slashing through each other’s instruments and whipping up funk like it was chicken salad—thoroughly, deliciously, and fast.",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_iC0MyIykM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651446ac5df745afddd15be1/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/38-The-Meters-%25E2%2580%259CCissy-Strut%25E2%2580%259D%2520.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Meters-Cissy_Strut_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,37,Simon & Garfunkel,“The Sound of Silence” (1965),Columbia,Columbia,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fWyzwo1xg0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651446c54bf72e4949851ff7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/37-Simon-_-Garfunkel-%25E2%2580%259CThe-Sound-of-Silence%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Simon__Garfunkel-The_Sound_of_Silence_1965.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,36,13th Floor Elevators,“You’re Gonna Miss Me” (1966),Contact / International Artists,Contact / International Artists,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OytJYBfwUk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651446e18bfae97d99619739/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/36-13th-Floor-Elevators-%25E2%2580%259CYou%25E2%2580%2599re-Gonna-Miss-Me%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/13th_Floor_Elevators-Youre_Gonna_Miss_Me_1966.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,35,Johnny Cash,“Ring of Fire” (1963),Columbia,Columbia,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=It7107ELQvY,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6514470414eec4f15fc792a9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/35-Johnny-Cash-%25E2%2580%259CRing-of-Fire%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Johnny_Cash-Ring_of_Fire_1963.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,34,The Who,“The Kids Are Alright” (1965),Brunswick / Decca,Brunswick / Decca,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afam2nIae4o,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6514471fd2186a47bf690465/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/34-The-Who-%25E2%2580%259CThe-Kids-Are-Alright%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Who-The_Kids_Are_Alright_1965.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,33,James Brown & the Famous Flames,“It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World” (1966),King,King,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFeu9UABqmc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6514473cf91f403600ca7e64/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/33-James-Brown-_-the-Famous-Flames-%25E2%2580%259CIt%25E2%2580%2599s-a-Man%25E2%2580%2599s-Man%25E2%2580%2599s-Man%25E2%2580%2599s-World%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/James_Brown__the_Famous_Flames-Its_a_Mans_Mans_Mans_World_1966.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,32,Ennio Morricone,"“The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (Main Theme)” (1966)",Parade,Parade,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0-DlkLfEiM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651447565df745afddd15be3/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/32-Ennio-Morricone-%25E2%2580%259CThe-Good-the-Bad-and-the-Ugly-(Main-Theme)%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Ennio_Morricone-The_Good_the_Bad_and_the_Ugly_Main_Theme_1966.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,31,Nico,“These Days” (1967),Verve,Verve,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_z_UEuEMAo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651447718bfae97d9961973b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/31-Nico-%25E2%2580%259CThese-Days%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Nico-These_Days_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,30,The Shangri-Las,“Leader of the Pack” (1964),Red Bird,Red Bird,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5vFOpVGjVc,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6514478c9ceff36b73f9e45c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/30-The-Shangri-Las-%25E2%2580%259CLeader-of-the-Pack%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Shangri-Las-Leader_of_the_Pack_1964.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,29,The Kinks,“Waterloo Sunset” (1967),Pye,Pye,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_MqfF0WBsU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6514481e8bfae97d9961973d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/29-The-Kinks-%25E2%2580%259CWaterloo-Sunset%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Kinks-Waterloo_Sunset_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,28,Otis Redding,“(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay” (1968),Volt,Volt,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTVjnBo96Ug,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65144836f91f403600ca7e66/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/28-Otis-Redding-%25E2%2580%259C(Sittin%25E2%2580%2599-on)-The-Dock-of-the-Bay%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Otis_Redding-Sittin_on_The_Dock_of_the_Bay_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,27,The Velvet Underground,“I’m Waiting for the Man” (1967),Verve,Verve,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hugY9CwhfzE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6514484ef91f403600ca7e68/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/27-The-Velvet-Underground-%25E2%2580%259CI%25E2%2580%2599m-Waiting-for-the-Man%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Velvet_Underground-Im_Waiting_for_the_Man_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,26,The Beatles,“I Am the Walrus” (1967),Capitol,Capitol,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnfP31tNXWs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6514486c803e73d0c31172da/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/26-The-Beatles-%25E2%2580%259CI-Am-the-Walrus%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Beatles-I_Am_the_Walrus_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,25,The Rolling Stones,“Paint It Black” (1966),Decca / London,Decca / London,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4irXQhgMqg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651448874bf72e4949851ff9/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/25-The-Rolling-Stones-%25E2%2580%259CPaint-It-Black%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Rolling_Stones-Paint_It_Black_1966.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,24,The Supremes,“You Can’t Hurry Love” (1966),Motown,Motown,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YU8oNu3pdS0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651448a4d2186a47bf690467/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/24-The-Supremes-%25E2%2580%259CYou-Can%25E2%2580%2599t-Hurry-Love%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Supremes-You_Cant_Hurry_Love_1966.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,23,Etta James,“At Last” (1961),Argo,Argo,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-cbOl96RFM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651448bca6372dc864faf31d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/23-Etta-James-%25E2%2580%259CAt-Last%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Etta_James-At_Last_1961.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,22,Marvin Gaye,“I Heard It Through the Grapevine” (1968),Tamla Motown,Tamla Motown,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hajBdDM2qdg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651448d6f91f403600ca7e6a/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/22-Marvin-Gaye-%25E2%2580%259CI-Heard-It-Through-the-Grapevine%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Marvin_Gaye-I_Heard_It_Through_the_Grapevine_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,21,The Beach Boys,“Good Vibrations” (1966),Capitol,Capitol,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eab_beh07HU,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651448f451422dc9a8597ae4/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/21-The-Beach-Boys-%25E2%2580%259CGood-Vibrations%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Beach_Boys-Good_Vibrations_1966.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,20,The Shangri-Las,“Out in the Streets” (1965),Red Bird,"Red Bird The Shangri-Las perfected pop melodrama, and their best songs feel like a synthesis of Douglas Sirk, Beatlemania, Hells Angels, and a support group for middle-aged manic depressives. Yes, the group addressed the most lurid elements of 1960s suburbia, from rape and death to skull-smashing bikers and abused dropouts. But “Out in the Streets” accomplishes the tremendous feat of transforming teen-beat puppy love and leather-laced fetishism into the foundations of adulthood: nostalgia, boredom, and guilt.",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHYFpLJbIgE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6514490f5df745afddd15be5/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/20-The-Shangri-Las-%25E2%2580%259COut-in-the-Streets%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Shangri-Las-Out_in_the_Streets_1965.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,19,The Beatles,“Tomorrow Never Knows” (1966),Parlophone,"Parlophone Where did this come from? Drugs, you say? Well, sure… Timothy Leary was involved, as he so often was in those days. His book The Psychedelic Experience, itself based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, served as an inspiration. LSD had come to the boys a year earlier and Lennon had imbibed and things were changing fast. In another year, the minds of John’s fellow Beatles would begin to look rather small, Yoko was someone smart and hip to talk to, and the end was nigh. But here the Beatles are together—Paul’s the avant-garde one, as he’d later say, bringing in the tape loops—and the band together is a serious force.",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHNbHn3i9S4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/6514499551422dc9a8597ae6/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/19-The-Beatles-%25E2%2580%259CTomorrow-Never-Knows%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Beatles-Tomorrow_Never_Knows_1966.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,18,The Crystals,“Then He Kissed Me” (1963),London,London,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cE_jOD2Fxvs,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651449b54bf72e4949851ffb/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/18-The-Crystals-%25E2%2580%259CThen-He-Kissed-Me%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Crystals-Then_He_Kissed_Me_1963.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,17,Creedence Clearwater Revival,“Fortunate Son” (1969),Fantasy,"Fantasy For all the hype about the 1960s being a time when politics and music merged into a great shining sword that thwarted racism and ended war, few of the era’s protest songs have retained significant power outside of their initial context. Yet “Fortunate Son” has lost none of the ferocity with which it was initially written and recorded. Sure, it’s great to hold hands and sing “We Shall Overcome” together, but angry times call for angry songs, spelled out in blunt language and bold colors.",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40JmEj0_aVM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651449dc31071d494cbb5869/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/17-Creedence-Clearwater-Revival-_Fortunate-Son%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Creedence_Clearwater_Revival-Fortunate_Son_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,16,The Stooges,“I Wanna Be Your Dog” (1969),Elektra,"Elektra No, Iggy Stooge (not yet Pop) doesn’t want to be your boyfriend. He wants to be your dog. Backed by fuzzed-out riffs and thumping bass, Ig speak-sings his intentions: “I’m so messed up/I want you here.” And by the chorus, he sounds as hollow as a zombie, insistently repeating: “Now I wanna... be your dog.” With a single phrase, he turns the pop trope of puppy love into a disturbing ode to submission, self-effacement, and sheer animal instinct.",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJIqnXTqg8I,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/651449f8d2186a47bf690469/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/16-The-Stooges-%25E2%2580%259CI-Wanna-Be-Your-Dog%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Stooges-I_Wanna_Be_Your_Dog_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,15,Aretha Franklin,“Think” (1968),Atlantic,Atlantic,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53qpjd7jJYo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65144a16f91f403600ca7e6c/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/15-Aretha-Franklin-%25E2%2580%259CThink%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Aretha_Franklin-Think_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,14,The Beach Boys,“Don’t Worry Baby” (1964),Capitol,"Capitol We’ve all been there. Shooting our mouths off about our cars until, finally, it’s time to put up or shut up. We hope that nothing goes wrong, but there's so much that could. We’d be sunk, really, if it weren’t for the encouragement of that special girl. With her love riding shotgun, suddenly the makeshift drag strip at the abandoned drive-in theater doesn’t seem quite so foreboding.",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lW0YGC68qP4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65144a3314eec4f15fc792ab/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/14-The-Beach-Boys-%25E2%2580%259CDon%25E2%2580%2599t-Worry-Baby%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Beach_Boys-Dont_Worry_Baby_1964.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,13,The Band,“The Weight” (1968),Capitol,Capitol,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFqb1I-hiHE,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65144a5751422dc9a8597ae8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/13-The-Band-%25E2%2580%259CThe-Weight%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Band-The_Weight_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,12,The Rolling Stones,“Gimme Shelter” (1969),Decca / London,Decca / London,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbmS3tQJ7Os,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65144a7104888bf2363638fe/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/12-The-Rolling-Stones-%25E2%2580%259CGimme-Shelter%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Rolling_Stones-Gimme_Shelter_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,11,Led Zeppelin,“Dazed and Confused” (1969),Atlantic,Atlantic,Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yO2n7QoyieM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65144a91803e73d0c31172dc/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/11-Led-Zeppelin-%25E2%2580%259CDazed-and-Confused%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Led_Zeppelin-Dazed_and_Confused_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,10,Desmond Dekker & the Aces,“Israelites” (1969),Uni,"Uni The dearly departed Desmond Dacres will have to argue with Toots Hibbert and Lee Perry over who actually invented reggae, but “Israelites” is as good a starting place as any. Dekker’s mighty lament for the sufferer’s woe of the titular tribe still rides ska’s backbeat, but clipped to a stately lilt. The organ and stabbing guitar lock with percolator percussion for a groove that’s irresistible, but never bouncy like prime ska. The warm, glowing, muffled quality of Perry’s recording—a ghostly halo of echo and reverb—was at least partially created by feeding seemingly paltry two-track recordings back into themselves. Dekker’s voice produces Perry’s nimbus all on its own. The swaying, heat-warped quality of “Israelites” feels like gospel and the blues, and considering the song links Biblical trials with the hustle of modern poverty, the comparison’s not as far off as it might seem. “Get up in the morning/Slaving for bread, sir/So that every mouth can be fed/Oh, oh, the Israelites.”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxtfdH3-TQ4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65144ab031071d494cbb586b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/10-Desmond-Dekker-_-the-Aces-%25E2%2580%259CIsraelites%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Desmond_Dekker__the_Aces-Israelites_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,9,The Who,“I Can’t Explain” (1965),Decca / Brunswick,"Decca / Brunswick You could stop this song after four seconds and still hear why the Who’s first single launched their career back in 1965, why they continued to open shows with it decades later, and why it remains a favorite more than 40 years on. Those syncopated bursts of contained explosion constitute one of the most perfect power-pop riffs ever strummed, and the only way to improve on it is to add Keith Moon’s hyperactive drumming to fill in the charged silences between the chords. If that’s all there was to “I Can’t Explain”... well, it would have probably still made the list, but the snake attached to that head is a great song as well as a persuasive argument against originality in rock.",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3h--K5928M,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65144ad0d2186a47bf69046b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/9-The-Who-%25E2%2580%259CI-Can%25E2%2580%2599t-Explain%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Who-I_Cant_Explain_1965.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,8,Johnny Cash,“Folsom Prison Blues (Live at Folsom Prison)” (1968),Columbia,"Columbia “Hello. I’m Johnny Cash.” That opening line, so deadpan and needless—everybody, especially in Folsom, knows who Johnny Cash is—may be the genesis of the Man in Black myth, even more so than the song “Man in Black.” Making such a humble introduction, Cash sounds larger than life—definitely larger than prison—and he delivers an electric, excited performance on his signature Sun hit.",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMGH-2IZPY0,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65144af3a6372dc864faf31f/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/8-Johnny-Cash-%25E2%2580%259CFolsom-Prison-Blues-(Live-at-Folsom-Prison)%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Johnny_Cash-Folsom_Prison_Blues_Live_at_Folsom_Prison_1968.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,7,The Beach Boys,“Wouldn’t It Be Nice” (1966),Capitol,"Capitol Love songs in rock and roll can be many things—lusty, lecherous, pining, resigned, anguished, sweet—but “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” is the rare one that feels genuinely innocent. It kicks in with a music box harp figure that’s quickly obliterated by Brian Wilson’s Phil Spector–sized drum sound—it’s the sound of reality briefly shattering fantasy. The reality for these lovers is that they’re simply too young to be out on their own. But they can imagine, and their fantasy magnifies every child’s naïve wish to become an adult—freedom without the mortgage, cars that need fixing, and lack of adequate health insurance.",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZBKFoeDKJo,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65144b1336de690f314c12d8/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/7-The-Beach-Boys-%25E2%2580%259CWouldn%25E2%2580%2599t-It-Be-Nice%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Beach_Boys-Wouldnt_It_Be_Nice_1966.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,6,The Ronettes,“Be My Baby” (1963),London / Philles,"London / Philles Phil Spector hasn’t descended into self-parody the way some others on this list have, but certainly not for lack of trying. Trigger happy, possibly unhinged, and now sporting a bizarre Hair Bear Bunch afro, if Spector had been a star in his own right, his trials and travails would be all over Court TV. Thankfully, he hid behind the mixing desk and the biggest, blackest shades this side of Jack Nietzsche, thereby preserving some of his legacy. (Like you can listen to “Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough” without a reflexive twinge of sadness.) Critic David Toop has talked about the disconnect between hearing “Be My Baby” on record and seeing the Ronettes live on stage, lost in cavernous British theaters in their immaculate print dresses, their live backing bands not even able to approximate the force of Spector’s Wrecking Crew. The first time I ever really heard “Be My Baby” was on a PBS special of all things, on a TV with a shitty mono speaker—and even then it felt Cinemascope wide and THX intense.",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2g_FD_sYazk,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65144b2d5df745afddd15be7/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/6-The-Ronettes-%25E2%2580%259CBe-My-Baby%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Ronettes-Be_My_Baby_1963.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,5,The Beatles,“A Day in the Life” (1967),Parlophone / Capitol,"Parlophone / Capitol The Beatles had attempted ambitious mosaics before (“She Said She Said,” “Tomorrow Never Knows”), but Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’s epic finale catalogues every explosive element of the Fab Four. George Martin’s production revolutionized pop music with its avant-garde opulence. Lennon and McCartney’s aural bricolage elevates and parodies itself, and their lyrics distance the group from naiveté and Summer-of-Love idealism. Lest we forget, the opening line notes how someone “blew his mind out in a car” and finds Lennon cackling at corpses, media saturation, and humanity’s natural disposition toward violence.",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usNsCeOV4GM,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65144b554bf72e4949851ffd/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/5-The-Beatles-%25E2%2580%259CA-Day-in-the-Life%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Beatles-A_Day_in_the_Life_1967.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,4,Bob Dylan,“Like a Rolling Stone” (1965),CBS,"CBS From its first double-drum crack (which Bruce Springsteen later described as the sound of someone “kicking open the door to your mind”), to its mythical opening couplet (a perfectly seething “Once upon a time...”), “Like a Rolling Stone” is one of Dylan’s strangest and most enthralling moments, a big, shambling statement that hovers on the verge of total dissolution, threatening to shimmy your record player (and, potentially, your entire life) off the shelf and onto the floor. One minute in, when Dylan finally hits the chorus, glibly hollering “How does it feeeel?” to an unnamed subject (or possibly himself), his sneer is so convincing it’s difficult not to feel deeply ashamed of everything you’ve ever done, but still desperate for five more minutes of lashings.",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxLMr784l0Q,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65144bd851422dc9a8597aea/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/4-Bob-Dylan-%25E2%2580%259CLike-a-Rolling-Stone%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Bob_Dylan-Like_a_Rolling_Stone_1965.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,3,Sam Cooke,“A Change Is Gonna Come” (1964),RCA Victor,"RCA Victor Filtered through a vessel of honest hurt, message and moment meet modern gospel. Suffering from the recent death of his 18-month old son Vincent and troubled by the omnipotent specter of racism, Cooke caught the unsteady temperament of a nation. Struck by Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind,” the Mississippi native detected the folk movement’s crucial sense of understanding; they “may not sound as good but they people believe them more,” he once said. Sam Cooke sounds pretty great on “A Change Is Gonna Come.”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEBlaMOmKV4,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65144c03d99f3918ab3730f0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/3-Sam-Cooke-%25E2%2580%259CA-Change-Is-Gonna-Come%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Sam_Cooke-A_Change_Is_Gonna_Come_1964.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,2,The Jackson 5,“I Want You Back” (1969),Motown,"Motown Writers and producers Freddie Perren, Fonce Mizell, and Deke Richards originally envisioned this as the backing track for a Gladys Knight and the Pips song, but Berry Gordy had other ideas. With a little rewriting he heard it as the perfect vehicle to introduce five kids he’d just signed from Gary, Ind. And as was so often the case throughout the 1960s, Gordy was right.",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SH5GfdB3G0k,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65144c2251422dc9a8597aec/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/2-The-Jackson-5-%25E2%2580%259CI-Want-You-Back%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Jackson_5-I_Want_You_Back_1969.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6405-the-200-greatest-songs-of-the-1960s/,1960s,decade,song,1,The Beach Boys,“God Only Knows” (1966),Capitol,"Capitol I’m sure you’ve read these: “the world’s greatest song,” “Brian Wilson’s masterpiece,” “the most beautiful piece of music ever recorded.” Yes, the initiation into the Museum of Western Popular Music is always rough, as credible historians rush to summarize our collective experiences in short phrases. But for better or worse, “God Only Knows” is the kind of song that’s almost impossible for me to talk about divorced from the way it makes me feel: sad, in love, honestly grateful, but also a little hopeless. Even in mono, it’s like being swept up by a wave of compassion but still getting bruised.",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkPy18xW1j8,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/65144c3ed2186a47bf69046d/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/1-The-Beach-Boys-%25E2%2580%259CGod-Only-Knows%25E2%2580%259D.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Beach_Boys-God_Only_Knows_1966.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9980-the-50-best-albums-of-2016/,2016,year,album,50,21 Savage / Metro Boomin,Savage Mode,Slaughter Gang,"Rapper 21 Savage and producer Metro Boomin’s Savage Mode is a heavy, dark collaboration between these two young Atlanta stars. Though many artists draw their verses from lived experience, there is something uniquely dour in Savage’s storytelling. His narratives are accented by the production’s rhythmic twitches; low, round bass buoys his flat, vocal fry monotone. Flutes, xylophones, and old video game effects contrast with the harsh whisper of Savage alongside Future on “X.” “Feel It,” a love song, seems hopeless, but Savage’s near-percussive repetition of “I can feel it in the air” is intoxicating. This record presents a slow burn and a singular mood: grim music for grim times. –Erin Macleod Listen: 21 Savage/Metro Boomin: “No Heart”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wtwpUwxQik,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/23534/homepage_large.ae9b1153.jpg,/dataset/artwork/21_Savage__Metro_Boomin-Savage_Mode.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9980-the-50-best-albums-of-2016/,2016,year,album,49,Porches,Pool,Domino,"Since Aaron Maine began releasing music as Porches, his style has evolved from down-home alt-country to synth-streaked, lo-fi pop. Pool, Porches’ second album and first on the indie mainstay Domino Records, was another shift, diving headlong into the lacquered keys and prickly guitars of quintessential ’80s pop in a way that recalls circa-2009 chillwave. With mixing by ace Chris Coady, the bid for professionalism paid off in a set of elegantly restrained, melancholic synth-pop tunes that showcase Maine’s aching falsetto. The laconic yet vivid lyrics, with references to weed, water, and other music, belie Maine’s background in painting. There's even a heartstopping saxophone solo. What saves Pool from getting lost in its own glossy vibes is an underlying sense of intimacy, helped no doubt by its being recorded mainly in Maine’s Manhattan apartment, and by some warmly enigmatic backing vocals from Greta Kline, better known as Frankie Cosmos. A follow-up EP of Pool demos, Water, further attests to the sturdiness of Maine’s craft. –Marc Hogan Listen: Porches: “Underwater”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ssQqfuaKRY,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/22823/homepage_large.577ea3bd.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Porches-Pool.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9980-the-50-best-albums-of-2016/,2016,year,album,48,Frankie Cosmos,Next Thing,Bayonet,"Greta Kline is the girl on the F train scanning the subway car’s bounty for inspiration, scribbling her thoughts in a notebook. As Frankie Cosmos, her muses include New York City, animals, the touring life, memories, friends, growing up—big topics that she distills with a few carefully chosen words and notes and sounds. Near the end of her brief, brilliant album Next Thing, backed by a simple backbeat and ringing guitars—think the Strokes minus any and all machismo—the 22-year-old breaks down nothing less than the paradox of life in two tidy lines: “When you’re young, you’re too young/When you’re old, you’re too old.” The record’s 15 songs all clock in around the two-minute mark, a brevity born of wisdom rather than laziness. Kline is a keen editor of feelings and fragments. She knows exactly when to end a song, which can be just as important as knowing when to start one. –Ryan Dombal Listen: Frankie Cosmos: “Outside with the Cuties”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IJB0aD8gSA,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/23100/homepage_large.e6f8e4d7.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Frankie_Cosmos-Next_Thing.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9980-the-50-best-albums-of-2016/,2016,year,album,47,Kamaiyah,A Good Night in the Ghetto,Self-released,"On A Good Night in the Ghetto, the young Oakland MC Kamaiyah captures lightning in a bottle. Confident and nuanced, it’s a self-contained piece of Bay Area hip-hop with clear lyrical nods to Too $hort, as the funkified, fleshy beats recall DJ Quik. Kamaiyah chronicles her young life via a series of drunken and stoned nights (“Out the Bottle”) and a supply of sexual conquests (“Niggas,” “Break You Down”) that are notable in how bold and plainspoken she is about them. Kamaiyah’s style descends from fellow West Coast rappers like Suga Free, but it’s also very much her own, blending equal loves of Cali hip-hop and ’90s vocal groups like TLC. Bay Area producers such as P-Lo, 1-O.A.K., and Trackademicks blend new jack swing and radio R&B samples for this young, agile rapper. The YG-featuring “Fuck It Up” and life-affirming hit single “How Does It Feel?” leap out of the speakers and onto many DJ sets, but it’s the overall triumphant vibe of A Good Night in the Ghetto that merits repeat listens. –Matthew Ramirez Listen: Kamaiyah: “How Does It Feel”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74htbsjhzLk,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/23046/homepage_large.9682145a.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kamaiyah-A_Good_Night_in_the_Ghetto.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9980-the-50-best-albums-of-2016/,2016,year,album,46,Pinegrove,Cardinal,Run for Cover,"The Montclair, N.J. group Pinegrove have two logos: one, a small box intersected with an identical box, is favored among their legions of young and tattooed fans, as evidenced in an endless stream of RTs on the band’s page. The other is an ampersand. This summer, when Pitchfork interviewed the band’s frontman, Evan Stephens Hall—a 27-year-old of highly enthusiastic, bookish charisma—he said he’d thought about publishing a pamphlet on Pinegrove iconography. Both symbols, he said, are intended to reflect an ethos of multiplicity, of many simultaneous realities, and thus of radical empathy. On Cardinal, Hall’s plainspoken lyrics belie this epistemological headiness, but you can feel the compassion in their raw alt-country arrangements, in phrases that reach and erupt. Pinegrove songs are appealingly episodic. “Aphasia,” the best one, is about moments when language falters. The narrative leading “Size of the Moon”—moving furniture to dance, the liminality in love—is basically Taylor Swift’s “Out of the Woods.” When people call Cardinal “emo,” what they mean is there’s bracing lucidity to lyrics such as “I saw Leah on the bus a few months ago/Saw some old friends at her funeral,” or “Maybe I should have got out a bit more when you guys were still in town/I got too caught up in my own shit/That’s how every outcome’s such a comedown.” Life, as ever, demands such clear-headedness. It demands we learn how to talk with one another. Cardinal contains that power and hope. –Jenn Pelly Listen: Pinegrove: “Old Friends”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAtGGZjVRdo,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/22816/homepage_large.fe7c14db.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Pinegrove-Cardinal.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9980-the-50-best-albums-of-2016/,2016,year,album,45,William Tyler,Modern Country,Merge,"In a post-truth age, who needs words, anyway? Certainly not William Tyler, whose guitar talks the talk on Modern Country, his fourth album. A former member of Lambchop, Kurt Wagner’s long-running Nashville-based country-soul collective, Tyler’s ambitions always pointed further out than just being a solo guitarist. When he released his debut in 2008 (under the name the Paper Hats), Tyler’s instrumentals mixed in drones, and subsequent releases have featured clattering avant jams (2014’s Blue Ash Montgomery cassette) and pedal steel-laced krautrock covers soaring towards the Western horizon (2014’s Lost Colony EP). But like the genre it takes its name from, Modern Country is extremely accessible. Welcoming of every experimental deviance, the album firmly establishes Tyler as a link in the chain of experimental American guitarists who know that sometimes, lyrics just spoil the fun. –Jesse Jarnow Listen: William Tyler: “Gone Clear”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHzr4rJ9guA,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/23254/homepage_large.8e780eab.jpg,/dataset/artwork/William_Tyler-Modern_Country.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9980-the-50-best-albums-of-2016/,2016,year,album,44,Kevin Gates,Islah,Atlantic / Bread Winners' Association,"At the time of this writing, Kevin Gates’ major label debut, Islah, is one of only two rap albums released this year to be awarded platinum certification by the RIAA (the other being Drake’s massive, guest-star-laden VIEWS). It’s a remarkable accomplishment for an album with no featured guests, apart from the Ty Dolla $ign/Trey Songz/Jamie Foxx trifecta on the bonus track “Jam.” It’s all Gates, a summation of his career that pushes him into new but logical directions. At once too-much-coffee intense, disarmingly gentle, and unfashionably sincere—often all at the same time—Islah is a lot to take in, but having zero chill is one of Gates’ greatest strengths. On “Ain’t Too Hard” he raps, “Sometimes emotions get the best of me clearly/And I ain’t never try to straddle no fences.” May he never aim for the middle ground. –Renato Pagnani Listen: Kevin Gates: “2 Phones”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiY_iKSpWLM,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/22589/homepage_large.d1a46c97.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kevin_Gates-Islah.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9980-the-50-best-albums-of-2016/,2016,year,album,43,Weyes Blood,Front Row Seat to Earth,Mexican Summer,"Though Natalie Mering wears her ’70s rock influences proudly on her sleeve, Weyes Blood is careful not to rehash the past. Gorgeous synth strings, blocky piano chords, and vast harmony stacks lift her powerful, baroque voice. She often sings about modern topics; on “Generation Why,” she amusedly recounts her fractious relationship with technology. “Goin’ to see end of days/I’ve been hanging on my phone all day/And the fear goes away,” she lilts as phantom background vocalists rise alongside a rumbling organ and acoustic guitar plucks resound, seemingly from a dream. Front Row Seat to Earth has many of these moments, where Mering’s vocals and arrangements coalesce into a melancholy, beautiful cry to the heavens—not a plea to a higher power, but a declaration of worthiness in the present day. –Noah Yoo Listen: Weyes Blood: “Generation Why”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_UKDPR7k_E,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/23902/homepage_large.084883fd.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Weyes_Blood-Front_Row_Seat_to_Earth.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9980-the-50-best-albums-of-2016/,2016,year,album,42,Vince Staples,Prima Donna,Artium / Blacksmith / Def Jam,"Vince Staples cites “Kurt Cobain dreams,” but the suicidal Nirvana frontman serves as a stand-in for anyone who ever felt the walls close in. If rock/rap star alienation is its own genre, Staples rehabilitates it on this barely 20-minute EP—part F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Crack-Up,” part psychedelic gangsta rap industrial rave brawl soundtracked by James Blake, DJ Dahi, and No I.D. Unlike his more self-pitying peers, Staples lucidly dissects his psychological disintegration. We see the pitfalls and contradictions of celebrity—the pressures that mount when you need to escape poverty and violence but can’t turn your back on the place that raised you. Prima Donna is existentially trapped music—when you’re too wealthy to complain but branded a consumer product, forced to answer condescending questions, and smile for inane selfies. When Staples sings in that wounded croak, “this little light of mine,” it’s hard to imagine anyone else so artfully distilling the darkness. –Jeff Weiss Listen: Vince Staples: “Prima Donna”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxw1Zef3EO0,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/23694/homepage_large.88a25161.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Vince_Staples-Prima_Donna.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9980-the-50-best-albums-of-2016/,2016,year,album,41,Huerco S.,For Those Of You Who Have Never (And Also Those Who Have),Proibito,"Huerco S.’s ambient album For Those of You Who Have Never (And Also Those Who Have), was this year’s great salve. It evoked that liminal state between awake and asleep, when your whirring brain slows down enough to let your body rest. The burbling, drunken loop of “Lifeblood” is in constant danger of being overtaken by a lush drone, while “Marked for Life” drags warmth from what sounds like the flickering glow of a million computer screens. But the real feat of this record is the sequencing, beginning with the pillowy ambient of “A Sea of Love” and ending with a look to the stars via “The Sacred Dance.” In between, the album lurches and drifts through underwater atmospherics, subtle sonar pings, and blunted nostalgia trips via the sound of ’70s science films. At the right volume, it can muffle the outside world entirely. Much has been made of how these tracks cut off abruptly, like the producer didn’t know how to end them. It’s consistently jarring, but it also makes sense. Endings require answers—or at least some gesture toward certainty. But when that certainty is impossible, For Those… acts as an antidote. –Sam Hockley-Smith Listen: Huerco S.: “Promises of Fertility”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feJ61KVCyCY,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/23224/homepage_large.c2ae4352.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Huerco_S-For_Those_Of_You_Who_Have_Never_And_Also_Those_Who_Have.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9980-the-50-best-albums-of-2016/,2016,year,album,40,Vijay Iyer / Wadada Leo Smith,A Cosmic Rhythm With Each Stroke,ECM,"The core of the album by the pianist Vijay Iyer and his mentor, the trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith, is its title suite, commissioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art as a tribute to the late Indian artist and photographer Nasreen Mohamedi. The suite ranges in mood from the quieter “Uncut Emeralds” to the rumbling intensity of “A Cold Fire”—all titles stemming from Mohamedi’s diary entries—and coheres into a minimal yet layered partnership that connects two generations and two approaches, as well as echoes the thoughtful minimalism of the visual artist. Iyer and Smith worked together previously in Smith’s Golden Quartet, but this is the truest expression yet of their relationship: Here, they are united in palpable fondness and awe. –Erin Macleod Listen: Vijay Iyer/Wadada Leo Smith: “Passage”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLxVisyR0o4,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/22827/homepage_large.07bbdbe9.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Vijay_Iyer__Wadada_Leo_Smith-A_Cosmic_Rhythm_With_Each_Stroke.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9980-the-50-best-albums-of-2016/,2016,year,album,39,Moodymann,DJ-Kicks,!K7,"For Moodymann’s entry in the DJ-Kicks series he creates a hazy world, feeling free to invent a space where singer Cody ChestnuTT’s blunted “Serve This Royalty” is mashed up against Detroit rapper Dopehead like they were always meant to play next to each other. It’s not about making a huge statement, it’s about making a series of small ones. Years and genres are disregarded as Moodymann pieces together a mix linked by disconnect. Each of these tracks is just slightly off—marred by a drum stutter, a muffled throb of bass, or a piece of fuzzy sound. By the time he gets around to revitalizing Jai Paul’s modern classic “BTSTU”—which sounds like a revelation here—it’s clear that there’s another subliminal theme at play: Each song is an epiphany, a bedroom artist pushing his or her idiosyncratic tendencies into the world at large. –Sam Hockley-Smith Listen: Dopehead: “Guttah Guttah”",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/22889/homepage_large.eaeea878.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Moodymann-DJ-Kicks.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9980-the-50-best-albums-of-2016/,2016,year,album,38,Schoolboy Q,Blank Face LP,Interscope / Top Dawg,"Like Snoop Dogg’s Doggystyle or Clipse’s Lord Willin’, Blank Face LP is gloriously, unrepentantly street, an album disinterested in crossover or concession. Shadowy and ochre and starkly soulful, it dips low and knocks hard. Miguel, Kendrick Lamar, Kanye West, Jadakiss, Vince Staples, and others drop in and out, but almost as soon as they’ve surfaced, dense plumes of figurative Cali weed smoke swallow them whole and you forget they were even there. The scenery-chewing Schoolboy Q won’t be faded or upstaged as he spits clipped, curving darts straight into your consciousness. Redemption isn’t necessarily foremost on the South Central L.A.’s rapper’s mind here: For every “Let’s put the guns down and blaze a spliff,” there are eight or nine equivalents of “I was out here sellin’ dope at 14, what it do?/I was out here fuckin’ hoes at 14, what it do?” Blank Face’s triumph lies in how it weaves these extremes into a realized, lived-in world, each vignette bleeding naturally into the next, and in Q’s lyrical and tonal commitment to a version of his youth that past releases only touched on. –Raymond Cummings Listen: Schoolboy Q: “THat Part” [ft. Kanye West]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ_DHRI-Xp0,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/23467/homepage_large.f83a8e54.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Schoolboy_Q-Blank_Face_LP.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9980-the-50-best-albums-of-2016/,2016,year,album,37,KING,We Are KING,KING Creative,"KING’s first album is rendered in just the right number of brushstrokes; songs like “Carry On” rely heavily on negative space, free of clutter and pretense. Their competence and earnestness is also reflected in three tracks that reappear from the trio’s 2011 EP, presented here in “extended mixes” that display a half-decade of shrewd tweaks and revisions. All these fragments coalesce into one synth-led, R&B-heavy, deeply soulful whole. KING work best as impressionists; “Red Eye” sounds like a bout of sleep deprivation mixed with a little desperation and a good bit of sex. The signature song is “The Greatest,” a delightfully off-kilter ode to Muhammad Ali: It’s no wonder Prince spoke so highly of these new Los Angeles royals. –Paul A. Thompson Listen: KING: “The Greatest”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbpSV3gBRfk,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/22779/homepage_large.9a724c28.jpg,/dataset/artwork/KING-We_Are_KING.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9980-the-50-best-albums-of-2016/,2016,year,album,36,Jamila Woods,HEAVN,Closed Sessions,"On the first Tuesday in July, police killed Alton Sterling. On Wednesday, they took Philando Castile. The following Monday, Jamila Woods showed us HEAVN and reminded us that despite everything, there is still hope. In her glowing solo debut, Woods seeks and creates her own refuge, proclaiming graceful pride in her blackness and her hometown of Chicago. On “LSD,” an ode to the city (via Lake Shore Drive) featuring Chance the Rapper, she sings, “A body of water inside me/Reminds me of oceans, though I’ve never known one/I’m born by a cold one”—in one fell swoop, linking Lake Michigan to the Atlantic, and herself to her ancestors. On “VRY BLK,” Woods flips the children’s clapping game Miss Mary Mack into a quietly devastating commentary on police brutality. She also stitches anecdotes from other Black women into her songs, telling of a place where Black girls with “braids filled with bubbles” chant Assata Shakur, where the CD man still walks up and down 79th, where young love blooms on Emerald Street. Throughout HEAVN, members of Chicago’s young musical vanguard lend themselves to Woods' warm vision: Noname delivers poetic raps, Nico Segal offers jazzy trumpet lines, oddCouple makes cushy beats. Chicago is her heaven, which, she comes to realize, was also inside her all along. –Minna Zhou Listen: Jamila Woods: “HEAVN”",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/jamilawoods/heavn,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/23529/homepage_large.261a7f48.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jamila_Woods-HEAVN.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9980-the-50-best-albums-of-2016/,2016,year,album,35,Hamilton Leithauser / Rostam,I Had a Dream That You Were Mine,Glassnote,"Hamilton Leithauser, late of the Walkmen, and Rostam Batmanglij, formerly of Vampire Weekend, took a nod from David Byrne and Brian Eno when deciding how to bill their album together, and that was telling: Like those pioneers’ two classic collaborations, I Had a Dream That You Were Mine keeps both of its creators’ identities intact. In combining two of the recent indie-rock realm’s more distinctive artistic sensibilities, though, this first full-length from Hamilton Leithauser and Rostam transports both someplace altogether wonderful and different. What would the disheveled-yet-debonair voice of the Walkmen sound like over finger-picked classical guitar? ...with saxophone? ...alongside the dulcet Angel Deradoorian on a Disney-esque symphonic reverie? Now we know. Between dry shooby-doo-wops and barstool howls, with a slide guitar here and a smattering of synths there, I Had a Dream updates mid-20th-century pop tropes—and tweaks its makers’ musical trademarks—for a thoroughly engrossing, richly enjoyable album rooted in nostalgia and loss. “I use the same voice I always had,” Leithauser roars early on, and it’s true of both parties here. Although Leithauser is touring the material without Batmanglij, who’s increasingly busy as a pop producer, let’s hope that, unlike Byrne and Eno, it doesn’t take them 27 years to reunite. –Marc Hogan Listen: Hamilton Leithauser/Rostam: “A 1000 Times”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9FILAkKinQ,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/23716/homepage_large.b4d4b6b1.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Hamilton_Leithauser__Rostam-I_Had_a_Dream_That_You_Were_Mine.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9980-the-50-best-albums-of-2016/,2016,year,album,34,Kevin Morby,Singing Saw,Dead Oceans,"By most accounts, classic rock had a good year in 2016. Beyoncé sampled Led Zeppelin. Frank Ocean sampled the Beatles. The Oldchella Festival found the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, and Neil Young uniting for a block of music that previously existed only on classic rock radio. And then, on a more modest scale, there was Kevin Morby’s Singing Saw: an album steeped in this tradition with ideas so ingrained in our collective conscious as to feel idiomatic. But the most striking thing about Morby’s music is less his set of influences and more his ability to locate the internal geography that has informed them all. The album, tellingly named after an instrument whose eerie warble sounds like wind howling against a window, finds wisdom in the natural world. Morby lets his songs unfold with an organic sense of inevitability. When he asks for trumpets in “Destroyer,” they appear. In the title track, he wanders behind the house as percussion chirps around him like crickets. And in “I Have Been to the Mountain,” the album’s most momentous anthem—one that eulogizes Eric Garner, giving Singing Saw its deepest sense of urgency—Morby gazes heavenward to find he’s become a part of his surroundings, and that they are as attuned to him as he is to them. “A sky that mirrors,” he muses. “A sky that stares as I sing.” —Sam Sodomsky Listen: Kevin Morby: “I Have Been to the Mountain”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hpZqvrYFXI,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/23005/homepage_large.8ded819b.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kevin_Morby-Singing_Saw.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9980-the-50-best-albums-of-2016/,2016,year,album,33,Maxwell,blackSUMMERS’night,Columbia,"Though blackSUMMERS’night was Maxwell’s first album in seven years, the final product doesn’t sound overwrought or overworked—in fact, parts of it seem half-erased or smudged. In that sense, it recalls There’s a Riot Goin’ On, where the number of overdubs melt and obscure the original tracks until the voice at the center seems to be singing against a production of ghosts. The horns that were central to Maxwell’s previous album are now almost parenthetical, swelling out of the corners of songs like “Fingers Crossed” and then sinking back into silence. This makes for an album the pleasures of which, beyond Maxwell’s newly grainy voice, can be as abstract as they are immediate: The disco pulse of “All the Ways That Love Can Feel”  exists between two margins, a stereo space in which guitar and organ sounds merge like inkblots. “The Fall”’s drums give the song a jazzy digression that resembles the shiver of autumn leaves. Beneath their generous detail, though, the songs on blackSUMMERS’night are still Maxwell songs; it’s music as furniture—not in the Erik Satie ambient sense, but music you can sink into and feel something resembling an embrace. –Brad Nelson Listen: Maxwell: “1990x”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQobX9bZkog,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/23405/homepage_large.09fa1333.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Maxwell-blackSUMMERSnight.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9980-the-50-best-albums-of-2016/,2016,year,album,32,Elza Soares,A Mulher do Fim do Mundo (The Woman at the End of the World),Mais Um Discos,"Elza Soares’ story ought to be a tragedy: The 79-year-old Brazilian singer has survived political exile, enduring racism, and marital abuse by a national icon. But since emerging from the Rio favelas in the 1950s, she has channeled that horrific biography into an display of perseverance in the face of adversity—both her own and her country’s. “While there are still black people taking a beating, we will have music to make,” she has said. Soares recorded her last studio LP, 2004’s Vivo Feliz, with her 26-year-old rapper husband. Its follow-up, again made with artists decades her junior, is a work of staggering, coruscated beauty. Musicians assembled from São Paolo’s samba sujo (“dirty samba”) scene abrade and mutilate Afro-Brazilian rhythms, with staccato guitars that splice eerie post-punk with primal post-hardcore. Soares’ what-is-this-shit rasp thrashes through the noise. In the chorus of “Pra Fuder,” or “To Fuck,” she pelts out the titular refrain like a dancer on hot coals; on “Maria da Vila Matilde,” she offers her domestic abuser a faceful of scalding water, then calmly refills the kettle to welcome the cops. She is always in character, but often that character is Elza Soares, the Brazilian myth. On the title track, written in her honor by Rômulo Fróes, Soares attends an apocalyptic carnival, seeming to hover overhead. She wanders through the “confetti rain,” past “angel wings…scattered on the ground.” “There, in the parade,” she growls, as the chorus explodes like so many streamers, “I left my black skin, my voice...My home, my solitude...Woman at the end of the world, I am.” In A Mulher do Fim do Mundo, she has made the album of her life, in every sense. “I go on singing,” she croaks finally, “Till the end.” –Jazz Monroe Listen: Elza Soares: “Mulher do film do mundo”",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/23546/homepage_large.5510766a.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Elza_Soares-A_Mulher_do_Fim_do_Mundo_The_Woman_at_the_End_of_the_World.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9980-the-50-best-albums-of-2016/,2016,year,album,31,Whitney,Light Upon the Lake,Secretly Canadian,"Emerging from the ashes of Smith Westerns, guitarist Max Kakacek and Julien Ehrlich created a sound tinged with late-’60s, harmony-soaked nostalgia. Ehrlich’s lyrics are winsome, celebrating an America of yawning skies and infinite possibilities, and the arrangements are big, fitting for Whitney’s large touring presence. “No Woman” uses strings and horns as perfect punctuation, while the “na-na-nas” of “Golden Days” call for arms-around-the-shoulders-style camaraderie. Light Upon the Lake isn’t about grand statements or shifting paradigms but is instead a place of escape and comfort, a perfectly rendered example of guitar-pop at its best. –Nathan Reese Listen: Whitney: “No Matter Where We Go”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SN-9ZAr2ePQ,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/23211/homepage_large.ad25691c.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Whitney-Light_Upon_the_Lake.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9980-the-50-best-albums-of-2016/,2016,year,album,30,Esperanza Spalding,Emily’s D+Evolution,EMI,"Before Emily’s D+Evolution, Esperanza Spalding was a certain kind of artist—the kind who performs at the White House, who wins Grammys as reliably as you and I file taxes. Somewhere along the line, she must have squinted at all this and decided it was boring, because on Emily’s D+Evolution—a runaway buggy of jazz fusion, folk rock, and prog—she exploded it. Sinewy, lean, and containing some three-dozen hairpin turns across its 12 tracks, the album feels pitched somewhere between master’s thesis and decathlon. It is a heroic feat that would feel fatiguing if Spalding weren’t nearly cackling with glee through it all. Even when the music conjures Joni Mitchell fronting Yes, Spalding sings and plays with mortal urgency, exploring questions about gender roles, about the existence of evil and temptation, about humanity’s ability to self-destruct, and about the need for love and courage in the face of it all. “We could change the whole story of love,” she pleads on the open-hearted ballad “Unconditional Love.” By the ferocity of her conviction, you are almost swayed into believing it. –Jayson Greene Listen: Esperanza Spalding: “Earth to Heaven”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xv8KaD5qPC0,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/22885/homepage_large.31d39fa4.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Esperanza_Spalding-Emilys_DEvolution.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9980-the-50-best-albums-of-2016/,2016,year,album,29,Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith,EARS,Western Vinyl,"Exploring the Buchla synthesizer, says composer Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, has led her to think differently about her surroundings: “When I hear any sound in the entire world, I end up thinking, ‘How would I have made that?’” This appears to be the challenge she presented herself while creating her masterwork EARS. An uncanny valley of burbling aquatic sounds and the chatter of birds, insects, and amphibians mark “Wetlands,” while “Rare Things Grow” is full of sloshing, dripping movement. Smith has discussed the patience required to understand a modular synthesizer, and that manifests in this slow-building music, which blurs the line between organic and synthetic. Vocals are processed beyond comprehension; woodwinds tangle with Smith’s electronics. The album’s artwork is a painting full of flora and fauna, some recognizable while others are seemingly fictional. Similarly, EARS teems with life both knowable and incomprehensible. She’s built a world of her own. It’s a good place. —Evan Minsker Listen: Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith: “Existence in the Unfurling”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlqJ40xDbdY,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/22872/homepage_large.e4b15a72.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kaitlyn_Aurelia_Smith-EARS.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9980-the-50-best-albums-of-2016/,2016,year,album,28,NxWorries,Yes Lawd!,Stones Throw,"Months after breaking through with his vibrant, heartfelt album Malibu, Anderson .Paak continued to drape himself in his most garish threads—literally and metaphorically. On Yes Lawd!, his collaborative project with bohemian beatmaker Knxwledge, you can picture the satin-smooth soul man peacocking in a blaxploitation joint, draped in a gaudy-as-hell coat with matching fedora. Knxwledge, meanwhile, chops up the samples into quick-fire sonic sketches; this is a beat tape of lean soul, grubby basslines and hard drum loops. .Paak delivers his low-level hustler anecdotes with a broad grin etched across his face. This is old-school gold, as vintage as .Paak’s plaid jackets. For best results, try bumping it on a convertible’s tape deck. –Dean Van Nguyen Listen: NxWorries: “Lyk Dis”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hEm94gx1y8,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/23804/homepage_large.6f69af23.jpg,/dataset/artwork/NxWorries-Yes_Lawd.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9980-the-50-best-albums-of-2016/,2016,year,album,27,Noname,Telefone,Self-released,"Aside from their name, an emerging rapper’s hometown is one of the most important details to know about her. On Telefone, Noname’s stunning debut, her native Chicago is a central character; even though her chosen moniker hints at a guarded public persona, any reservedness disappears as she takes us through the Windy City. Sometimes she evokes the nostalgia of childhood summers, eating ice cream on her front porch as she watches her friends hit the “Diddy Bop.” Then, abruptly, she describes her peers as being “Casket Pretty,” because any one of them could be buried looking just as beautiful as they are in the instant before their life is taken. Similarly dark prospects are juxtaposed with happy beats throughout Telefone: warm church organs, snapping fingers and major-key vocals from friends and collaborators like Cam O’bi and Eryn Allen Kane. The record would be completely devastating if it weren’t so charming. Any city, even one whose narrative is frequently reduced to one of danger and unrest, is inhabited by people who want the best for themselves and their loved ones. On Telefone, Noname invites the listener to see this through her eyes by opening up about her joys, her loves, and her losses closest to home. –Vanessa Okoth-Obbo Listen: Noname: “Diddy Bop” [ft. Raury and Cam O’bi”]",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/noname/03-diddy-bop-ft-raury-cam-obi,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/23610/homepage_large.1c0dfe78.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Noname-Telefone.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9980-the-50-best-albums-of-2016/,2016,year,album,26,Parquet Courts,Human Performance,Rough Trade,"The Brooklyn band Parquet Courts have the misfortune of seeming smart, which they are. But under the art-punk jigsaw puzzles and copious amounts of thinking, there are feelings, too: ordinary ones like I miss you (“Berlin Got Blurry”), nobody understands me (“Paraphrased”), and I feel kinda lonely (“One Man No City”). They are clearly felt if not always clearly stated. Romantics at heart, Parquet Courts keep their wits up; sensitive, they yell as often as possible. Even richer and more layered than Austin Brown and Andrew Savage’s lyrics is the band’s music, which sounds both working-class and sophisticated (“Human Performance”), country (“Outside,” “Pathos Prairie”), and city (“Captive of the Sun,” “Two Dead Cops”). It is as psychedelic and gristly as Manhattan traffic at dusk. In other words, Parquet Courts continue to rock, with and without quotation marks. –Mike Powell Listen: Parquet Courts: “Outside”",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/22909/homepage_large.3d7f0f9d.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Parquet_Courts-Human_Performance.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9980-the-50-best-albums-of-2016/,2016,year,album,25,Kaytranada,99.9%,XL,"Many talk about it, but this year, a handful of guys—DJ Paypal, Sporting Life, and this crazy kid from Quebec—actually stomped on the line connecting archival black music tropes to the ever-branching threads of electronic music. 99.9% got everything right by “Track Uno” (among the best song titles of the year): the junk-bin funk sample lands like a transmission from the early-’80s radio sets that birthed Detroit techno, even leaning back into scratchy A.M. static before the drums plunge. Kay’s drums are like his glasses: at once nondescript and trademark, their Dilla-ish wonkiness frame the many different voices he invites to play throughout the record. From legitimizing Craig David’s comeback to prodding Syd tha Kyd out front, Kaytranada might’ve made R&B great again by dancing around it like an election pun. Still, turn up your bass and blast “Lite Spots,” and it becomes quickly apparent how futile it is to overthink his style. For every R&B remix that inspires a thousand Soundcloud jockeys, he drops an inimitable freak-out like this Portuguese chop job—hard evidence that a featured guest or obtuse sample can’t distract from his strong hand when he chooses to show it. –Matthew Trammell Listen: Kaytranada: “Glowed Up” [ft. Anderson .Paak]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaWesK-nWts,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/23235/homepage_large.ac919768.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kaytranada-999.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9980-the-50-best-albums-of-2016/,2016,year,album,24,Car Seat Headrest,Teens of Denial,Matador,"This is how bands are made in 2016: Not in the garage or in the basement, but in the backseat of your mother’s car. Graduating from a period during which he released approximately 11 albums of smart but scrupulously ambition-free indie rock through Bandcamp, songwriter Will Toledo stabilized his lineup, expanded his sound, and resigned himself to his talent. A feel-good album about people chemically incapable of feeling good, Teens of Denial reckons mental illness, alienation, and a blooper reel’s worth of false epiphanies without angst or coddling, the only real redemption being a chance to fuck up again. And if you don’t have the time for lyrical exegesis, you can pump your fist instead—the music certainly warrants it. How Toledo manages to keep such close company with depression and still find the will to rock is a mystery. That he does it with humor is a miracle. Pray that he never takes happiness seriously. –Mike Powell Listen: Car Seat Headrest: “Fill in the Blank”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_a1hPwXiWw,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/22996/homepage_large.2365f6ed.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Car_Seat_Headrest-Teens_of_Denial.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9980-the-50-best-albums-of-2016/,2016,year,album,23,Jenny Hval,Blood Bitch,Sacred Bones,"Midway through pop avant-gardist Jenny Hval’s sixth album, Blood Bitch, her frequent collaborators Annie Bielski contemplate the record’s concept. “It’s about vampires…. It’s about blood,” Bielski concludes. True, as Hval has said, Blood Bitch is indeed a look into “the purest and most powerful, yet most trivial, and most terrifying blood,” but it is also about desire, capitalism, and self-discovery. As she considers these ideas, Hval's voice floats skyward, tethered to her worldly concerns only by pulsing beats that conjure the throb of menstruation. Rarely does an album focus so fully on the dignity and beauty of female fluids. This year saw the female body and her rights attacked relentlessly, as if the capacity to reproduce automatically prohibits autonomy. Blood Bitch gives power to the rejected body with a simple encouragement: “Don’t be afraid, it’s only blood.” –Quinn Moreland Listen: Jenny Hval: “Conceptual Romance”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY7eLAVrfK4,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/23717/homepage_large.4171f275.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jenny_Hval-Blood_Bitch.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9980-the-50-best-albums-of-2016/,2016,year,album,22,YG,Still Brazy,Def Jam,"The pivotal moment on YG’s set-throwing sophomore album, Still Brazy, is “Who Shot Me?” a song that attempts to uncover who exactly tried to kill the rapper last June. It’s like opening a film with a flash-forward to the violent, climactic ending, narrated by the victim, who’s reflective and conscience-stricken. In his 11th hour, isolated and angry, YG scrolls back through his memory bank seeking to identify the shooter from the long list of enemies he’s made as a rich gangsta. What spirals out is a polished gangland parable, brimming with paranoia and panic. YG assesses the short history of his wrongdoings, and subtly examines the cycle of bloodshed incited by sporting colors. His resulting value realignment brings about a turn toward social consciousness, producing snapshots of black American ghettos, addressing race relations and police brutality, and offering up the most succinct and righteous denunciation of Donald Trump on record—the useful chant of “Fuck Donald Trump,” devoid of any substantial politics, filled with literal vitriol. As it smoothly stitches together swatches of g-funk and P-Funk, Still Brazy coolly stares down the barrel. –Sheldon Pearce Listen: YG: “FDT” [ft. Nipsey Hussle]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlIREcAu0PI,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/23333/homepage_large.e308ca36.jpg,/dataset/artwork/YG-Still_Brazy.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9980-the-50-best-albums-of-2016/,2016,year,album,21,Young Thug,JEFFERY,300 Entertainment / Atlantic,"Before hearing JEFFERY, you could be forgiven for not buying into the hype around Young Thug. Maybe you thought he was sub-verbal, not post-verbal, and the only talent Jeffery Lamar Williams had was a knack for getting attention; even wearing a dress on the album’s cover seemed like a stunt. But JEFFERY’s opener, “Wyclef Jean,” laid down the gauntlet in bar one: “Ok my money way longer than [a] NASCAR race.” The magic is partially in the words and the silliness, but also in Thug’s melodicism and attitude—that slurry, undeniable voice, urging you to imitate him. Then the song unfolds into one of the most unpredictable pop jams of the year, with a mid-song rappity-rap showcase unfurling into JEFFERY’s crowning achievement. If you don’t get hype to “Future Swag” or “Floyd Mayweather,” or aren’t prepared to respect the fury of “Harambe,” you are the one left in the cold. On “Kanye West,” when you hear Wyclef Jean’s voice bringing things full circle, Young Thug demands to be celebrated. And so we do. –Jonah Bromwich Listen: Young Thug: “Kanye West”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAhNZO7Fwd0,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/23736/homepage_large.7f0be354.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Young_Thug-JEFFERY.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9980-the-50-best-albums-of-2016/,2016,year,album,20,Nicolas Jaar,Sirens,Other People,"Patience has always been a part of the Nicolas Jaar experience. His melodies and references reveal themselves slowly. Though he’s been consistently active as an artist and label owner since his debut LP, Space Is Only Noise, a formal follow-up was slow to materialize. When Sirens arrived, its cover was obscured by scratch-off foil; the first track is an amorphous, 11-minute sound collage. Sirens is more assured and aggressive than Space; “No,” the album’s centerpiece, is a lightly stepping pop song, sung in Spanish. Jaar has spoken eloquently about how Sirens straddles the political and the personal but in the music itself, the contradictions feel smaller and more ethereal. The first half of the album ends with “Leaves,” another collage, wordless until he shares a snippet of himself, as a child, having a discussion with his father. This is peak Jaar: equal parts intimacy and obscurity. “Space Is Only Noise had all these little tunnels in it, and I’ve tried to go into every single one of those tunnels ever since,” said Jaar earlier this year. The tracks on Sirens feel like those explorations: They take unexpected turns, double back, break for a sandwich. Jaar is investigating these tunnels on Sirens; we wait, patiently. –Andrew Gaerig Listen: Nicolas Jaar: “No”",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/23884/homepage_large.53fdc12f.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nicolas_Jaar-Sirens.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9980-the-50-best-albums-of-2016/,2016,year,album,19,Rihanna,ANTI,Westbury Road / Roc Nation,"After seven LPs, Rihanna finally made a great album, rather than a collection of zeitgeist-dominating bangers surrounded by filler. What makes ANTI work (work work work work) is the presence of Rih’s no-fucks-given (but secretly a few fucks given) attitude in every crack and corner. Her stoner queen comes out in “James Joint,” an all-too-brief gem of Stevie Wonder warmth. The savage boss she perfected in “Bitch Better Have My Money” (and across social media) comes full force on “Needed Me,” the quintessential “Oh, you caught feels?” anthem. It’s only as ANTI continues that Ms. Fenty realizes maybe no woman is an island, no matter how many platinum records she racks up, diamond ball gowns she wears, or skull-sized blunts she smokes. By the time we get to old-school piano ballad “Higher,” Rihanna raspily belts out what is essentially a drunk voicemail to a man she has to admit she still thinks about. Whoever he is, he doesn’t deserve her. –Jillian Mapes Listen: Rihanna: “Work” [ft. Drake]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HL1UzIK-flA,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/22849/homepage_large.10d96102.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rihanna-ANTI.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9980-the-50-best-albums-of-2016/,2016,year,album,18,Mitski,Puberty 2,Dead Oceans,"Mitski Miyawaki’s Puberty 2 is a case study of the modern condition, a record for this era crippled with worry. The Brooklyn musician told Pitchfork in June that one of her goals as an artist is “to always make clear that I am a real person,” and on her fourth album, that realness is a bittersweet proposition. Puberty 2 is vividly, excitingly, and sometimes crushingly human, containing all the ups and downs of maintaining emotional sanity as told through her guitar’s indie fuzz. To convey a range of tenuous emotion, Mitski uses uncomfortable metaphors, nuanced lyrics about instability and unpaid rent. On “Happy,” for instance, contentment is a one-night stand that leaves just as quickly as it came. The song “Fireworks” may or may not be about pushing back distressing tears, but when its chorus explodes into a starry crescendo, it feels like a liberating cry shared amongst friends who need it most. Even with its nerves, there’s something incredibly comforting—hopeful, even—about Puberty 2’s half-hour minutes of catharsis. –Alex Frank Listen: Mitski: “Your Best American Girl”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_hDHm9MD0I,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/23310/homepage_large.fb8680a3.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mitski-Puberty_2.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9980-the-50-best-albums-of-2016/,2016,year,album,17,Leonard Cohen,You Want It Darker,Sony / Columbia,"You Want It Darker will always be linked with Leonard Cohen’s death. Singing while seated in his living room medical chair, he calls himself “broken and lame.” He looks back on his past, with regrets, and says goodbye on “Traveling Light” and “I’m Leaving the Table.” Several times, he notes that he’s out of the game. He’s joined by the choir from his childhood Montreal synagogue and sings the same prayer that was offered at his funeral: “Magnified, sanctified be Thy holy name.” You Want It Darker is one of the world’s greatest poets putting his house in order. Through the darkness and mortality, there’s levity. Backed by gospel organ and a bluesy guitar solo on “If I Didn’t Have Your Love,” he sings about the revitalizing powers of love. At one point, a subtle dick joke even finds a place in the mournful fray. As usual, Cohen oscillates between heft and humor, love and death. It closes with a string reprise of “Treaty”—a gorgeous requiem followed by just a few more words from Cohen. “I wish there was a treaty between your love and mine,” he sings. And with that beautiful notion of surrender, he’s gone. –Evan Minsker Listen: Leonard Cohen: “You Want It Darker”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0nmHymgM7Y,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/23958/homepage_large.28cf55b9.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Leonard_Cohen-You_Want_It_Darker.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9980-the-50-best-albums-of-2016/,2016,year,album,16,Kendrick Lamar,untitled unmastered.,Top Dawg Entertainment,"Even Kendrick Lamar’s afterthoughts are fiercely thought-provoking. Last year, his To Pimp a Butterfly—an 80-minute opus of plush jazz-funk grooves, intricate rhymes, and ruthlessly self-interrogating philosophical excursions—was close to a consensus album of the year. This March, Lamar followed with untitled unmastered., a work that’s as different from TPAB in presentation as it is sonically and thematically similar. Its cover is an unadorned green box, and untitled is a 34-minute set of eight numbered and dated tracks. It further cements Lamar’s singular position in both hip-hop and popular culture while deftly sidestepping the non-musical noise that generally accompanies such lofty status. At its best, untitled is just as potent as TPAB. Where TPAB breathed the sound of jazz back into rap, untitled more closely embodied the jazz spirit: living in the moment, embracing mistakes, and foregrounding the music with the quiet confidence of a virtuoso bandleader. –Marc Hogan Listen: Kendrick Lamar: “Untitled 02”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qt3bNjORLe8,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/23037/homepage_large.1bcdfd6b.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kendrick_Lamar-untitled_unmastered.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9980-the-50-best-albums-of-2016/,2016,year,album,15,Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds,Skeleton Tree,Bad Seed Ltd.,"Nick Cave’s songs have always been the scrim between the visceral dark of this world and the promised light of another; the Australian songwriter, our high priest of goth, is the docent moving freely between them. He has for years offered this sweaty and bloody vision of life: at times bawdy and carnivalesque, other times fueled by ample heroin, libido, and hair gel. Though Skeleton Tree was released following the tragic death of his son Arthur, it is still another excavation of humanity, this time deeper and more austere, taking place in a zero-gravity cathedral of grief. Here, Cave steps into the hereafter to look beyond the simple rituals of mourning and into the state of the soul. Where goes love when it is interred? Instead of succumbing to the weight of death, these songs have a certain airiness. Above the music of Warren Ellis and his fellow Bad Seeds’ latter-day tranquility, Cave’s words float unbound. Always one to avoid mawkishness, Cave reveals the ugliness within himself with gruff self-examinations like, “You believe in God but you get no special dispensation for this belief now” (“Jesus Alone”). These articulate moments are surrounded by more surreal imagery—rabbit’s blood, mermaids, stars splashed across a ceiling. But the faith that hums in Cave’s sacrament is not vengeful or supernatural; it’s vulnerable and uncertain. Through his art, Cave has tried to wrest some good from so much evil. One cannot exist without the other, and so this, his most painful and human album, is filled with love and the divine. –Jeremy D. Larson Listen: Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds: “I Need You”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAMZYpZi_M4,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/23721/homepage_large.208541ce.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nick_Cave__the_Bad_Seeds-Skeleton_Tree.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9980-the-50-best-albums-of-2016/,2016,year,album,14,Blood Orange,Freetown Sound,Domino,"It seemed overnight that Dev Hynes, a London ex-pat who’d arranged himself as defiantly individualist, was seized by the cause for representation, sparking dialogue in stylish circles that had largely avoided such messy threads. This was Freetown Sound’s primary concern: enlivening genres and eras past, people in margins, and cultures in shadows. Hynes’ patented style of nimble, vintage quirk funk carries excellently on “Best to You”—Empress Of remains an effortless duet partner—and is pushed to its conceptual peak on “E.V.P.,” a Downtown ’81 pose made even sharper with help from Debbie Harry. The format blossoms out by the second half, with vaporous meditations like “Hadron Collider” and “Thank You” bearing Hynes’ most palatable writing and production work yet. On the latter, he sums up his shrewd sheepishness through vocals from Ava Raiin, one of 11 female guests: “Thank you for all your praise,” she sings, “even if you promise me a way out of your gaze.” Freetown Sound stirs up the hymnal punk of Coastal Grooves and runway soul of Cupid Deluxe, combining all of Hynes’ most fascinating angles to earn the ogling it got. –Matthew Trammell Listen: Blood Orange: “Best to You” [ft. Empress Of]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACinCwmWalY,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/23401/homepage_large.eacc2030.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Blood_Orange-Freetown_Sound.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9980-the-50-best-albums-of-2016/,2016,year,album,13,Anderson .Paak,Malibu,EMPIRE / OBE / Steel Wool / Art Club,"There are better songs than “The Waters” on Anderson .Paak’s star-making 2016 release, Malibu, but none lay out his musical history with the precision of its opening lines: “Tried to tell n*ggas/In 2012, n*gga/Working hand to hand and no avail/Volume one was too heavy for you frail n*ggas/So I got leaned like codeine and pills.” So he’s been hustling, making soulful music for a minute. But he couldn’t find an audience until the machete-sharp verses he contributed to Dr. Dre’s Compton made him a name to watch. All of a sudden, an audience was there. A couple lines later, .Paak says, “I can do anything but move backwards.” By 2016, the Oxnard native understood what the most precocious people take the longest to learn: Try to do everything and you won’t be the best at any one thing. On Malibu, .Paak’s focus is primarily on his voice and his flow. He learned to trust his collaborators, and got a slew of amazing beats in return. That’s how you make dreamers like “The Bird” and “Your Prime,” inventive combos like “The Season/Carry Me” and funk bangers including “Am I Wrong” and “Come Down.” And while for .Paak, success must have seemed like it was a long time coming, for the vast majority of his fans, Malibu was only the beginning. –Jonah Bromwich Listen: Anderson .Paak: “Come Down”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OqrcUvrbRY,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/22694/homepage_large.0e1836c9.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Anderson_Paak-Malibu.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9980-the-50-best-albums-of-2016/,2016,year,album,12,Bon Iver,"22, A Million",Jagjaguwar,"Bon Iver’s first two albums trafficked in distinct emotional impressions. They evoked three-dimensional spaces: whether or not one knew the real-life backstory, For Emma, Forever Ago conjured the den of a small backwoods cabin, while Bon Iver, Bon Iver rang out from a mountaintop. But 22, A Million takes place solely within its own stereo image: It’s an electroacoustic obstacle course that constantly destroys and rebuilds itself, smudging out prospective mise-en-scènes before they can fully form. When the ol’-reliable, fingerpicking Justin Vernon rears his head at the beginning of “29 #Strafford APTS,” he quickly falls victim to a series of elaborate pranks: Tracks speed and slow abruptly and non-sequitur horn fanfares, seemingly borrowed from a lost Moondog record, bleed into the mix. Versions of himself sing different lyrics on top of each other, rendering his emotional pleas inscrutable. Why did Vernon force that lovely Lyle Lovett-as-choirboy voice of his into dubious battle with those vocal shadows, plus a chipmunked Mahalia Jackson? To test whether his voice was strong enough to shine through it all? If so, he passed the exam: His stylistic signatures remain intact even in the record’s most deformed moments, especially his rare ability to transfer the natural rhythms of breath and speech into vivid melody. The incongruities of 22, A Million hammer it home: This is a record about the perpetually dissatisfying search for the divine, or really anything to hang one’s hat on, within an overwhelming, constantly regenerating digital present. –Winston Cook-Wilson Listen: Bon Iver: “29 #Strafford APTS”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9utVR5Q67_k,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/23843/homepage_large.985e010a.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bon_Iver-22_A_Million.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9980-the-50-best-albums-of-2016/,2016,year,album,11,Danny Brown,Atrocity Exhibition,Warp,"Danny Brown is great on social media and an engaging interviewee and he puts on a good show, but solitude is the essence of his art. His music always circles back to one man in a room, struggling with his demons. In Atrocity Exhibition, the scene is set from the first verse, with Brown sweating like he’s at a rave though he hasn’t left his room in three days—he’s forever the guy who gets all the teeth-grinding anxiety of the drug experience but none of the communal joy or release. But then, “mind expansion” has never been the point of Danny Brown’s experiences with chemicals; he smokes blunt after blunt because he’s trying to poison the thoughts that plague him, fill them with so much dope that they drown in the bathtub and leave him at peace. And the fact that he finds a way to share those thoughts, bouncing horror against dark humor, makes his listeners, at the very least, feel less alone. If XXX was a room-clearing explosion and Old found him picking up the broken pieces to see how they fit together, Atrocity Exhibition is where Brown slows down and sinks deeper, exploring how wisdom might possibly emerge from pain. –Mark Richardson Listen: Danny Brown: “Really Doe” [ft. Kendrick Lamar, Ab-Soul, Earl Sweatshirt]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spfsdpuvUyQ,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/23910/homepage_large.7d68020e.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Danny_Brown-Atrocity_Exhibition.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9980-the-50-best-albums-of-2016/,2016,year,album,10,Radiohead,A Moon Shaped Pool,XL,"For a band that has cultivated a roughly 25-year bond with their fans through alienation and obfuscation, the plucking of heart strings on “Burn the Witch” signifies a new mode of operation: less clever, more giving, more human. For once in Radiohead’s career, there are other people on their album: the beds of violins, violas, and cellos are played by members of the London Contemporary Orchestra, then arranged by Jonny Greenwood in a newfound romanticism. Songs are archly composed, as finely detailed as ever—and at times, like on “Daydreaming,” monumental. Whereas The King of Limbs was anemically written using proprietary computer software, A Moon Shaped Pool was recorded to tape on 8- and 16-track recorders, capturing the early, genius impulses of the group. The other person who orbits around this album: Thom Yorke’s former partner of 23 years. Impressions of loss ring out; in his heartbreaking turn of phrase, he is “trapped in your full stop.” There’s something elliptical about this album, best represented by the long-awaited studio version of a fan-favorite track from the 1990s, “True Love Waits.” By the end of the album, we are inches away from these sustained piano notes, so much so that we can hear the felt of the keys rubbing up against each other. Yorke’s pure tenor is recast as the voice of a man who just woke up, exhausted and phlegmatic. After eight albums of labyrinths and paranoia and rabbit holes, Radiohead finally let us in. –Jeremy D. Larson Listen: Radiohead: “Burn the Witch”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yI2oS2hoL0k,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/23244/homepage_large.e3c43867.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Radiohead-A_Moon_Shaped_Pool.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9980-the-50-best-albums-of-2016/,2016,year,album,9,Angel Olsen,My Woman,Jagjaguwar,"By all accounts, Angel Olsen didn’t set out to make a pop record with My Woman, and while it remains funny to call any album with a nearly eight-minute centerpiece a “pop record,” her fourth LP is concentrated and undeniable—more confident and less dissonant than her previous work. Olsen, whose voice is resolute but still soft in places, sounds like a person who has figured out much of what she needs and what she’s willing to endure to get it. “I want to follow my heart down that wild road,” she sings on “Sister,” the album’s long, anchoring jam. Her vocals have taken on a wizened texture, the warmth of knowing, of having lived and discovered. “You learn to take it as it comes, you fall together, fall apart.” –Amanda Petrusich Listen: Angel Olsen: “Intern”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODW74zyKHZg,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/23679/homepage_large.b536a49e.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Angel_Olsen-My_Woman.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9980-the-50-best-albums-of-2016/,2016,year,album,8,ANOHNI,Hopelessness,Rough Trade / Secretly Canadian,"If war is politics made physical, and politics is war made verbal, then ANOHNI howls from the sliver of sanity between the two. On “Drone Bomb Me,” she whimpers, taking the voice of a young Afghan girl, asking that a random strike “Blow my head off/Explode my crystal guts.” Of global warming, her lips curl into a sneer: “I wanna hear the dogs crying for water/I wanna see the fish go belly-up in the sea.” She lobs similar vitriol at Barack Obama, NSA surveillance, Guantanamo Bay, and any other matter of CNN carnage. This would founder as a dire sermon from other musicians, but ANOHNI’s voice is as lucidly beautiful as her prophecies are grotesque. Her range is wide, from low soprano to racking falsetto, and her tone quavers with tearful, light vibrato that dances over Oneohtrix Point Never and Hudson Mohawke’s stuttering production. Even a simple line like “I don’t love you anymore” is a shot through the heart; when she turns that acuity towards her more topical subjects, it is debilitating. On HOPELESSNESS, ANOHNI’s songs reflect horror at every turn; eyes wide, she wails upward as the weapons rain down. –Stacey Anderson Listen: ANOHNI: “Drone Bomb Me”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUEoic7ro_o,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/23157/homepage_large.8b15048d.jpg,/dataset/artwork/ANOHNI-Hopelessness.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9980-the-50-best-albums-of-2016/,2016,year,album,7,A Tribe Called Quest,We got it from Here... Thank You 4 Your service,Epic,"Even in their heyday, A Tribe Called Quest were often mistaken for soothsayers. It was an easy error to make if you weren’t listening very closely—if you focused on the lilt of their voices, say, or their spacious, inviting beats. But Tribe were always revolutionaries. And on their first new album in 18 years, a miracle that the year 2016 barely deserved, they are returning to fight. “The Space Program,” for one, is a song-length metaphor for gentrification, dedicated to “Tyson types and Che figures.” These are the radical spirits Tribe are calling for, the energies they wish to summon. The rounded stand-up bass plunks genially along in the background, but Q-Tip uses his time to salute Bree Newsome, the woman who scaled the South Carolina statehouse flagpole to remove the Confederate Flag nine days after the hate-fueled 2015 Charleston killings. The vibe is welcoming, as ever: You can come in and wipe your feet on the rhythm rug, but after that, it is time to confront some sobering realities. On “We the People...,” Q-Tip addresses state-sanctioned figures and paranoiac actors who find themselves in a “killing-off-good-young-n*gga-mood,” and on “Whateva Will Be,” he envisions an uprising, signing off with, “in some universe, this verse will be true.” He sounds older; they all do. The mixing seems purposefully ragged, with echo trails left on many of Phife’s vocals, Jarobi’s mutters buried. Q-Tip’s production leaves some wrinkles in as well, with unusually sharp drums that hit like peeling soup can lids. Maybe this is an honest way of acknowledging their age while showing their character. It was a final ride into the sunset for the most beloved rap group in history—its outcome assured, its standoff graceful. –Jayson Greene Listen: A Tribe Called Quest: “We the People...”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAoqWu6wmfI,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/24092/homepage_large.98b81f8d.jpg,/dataset/artwork/A_Tribe_Called_Quest-We_got_it_from_Here_Thank_You_4_Your_service.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9980-the-50-best-albums-of-2016/,2016,year,album,6,Chance the Rapper,Coloring Book,,"On Coloring Book’s “Same Drugs,” Chance the Rapper sings, “Don’t forget the happy thoughts/All you need is happy thoughts.” On the Chicagoan’s third mixtape, he believes in the power of positive thinking. But the closer you listen, the more complicated the record becomes. While light in tone and sound, Coloring Book also touches on sin, veering track-to-track from “God song” to “flawed human song.” Chance parties “All Night”; he deserves a “Smoke Break”; he’s got “No Problem” threatening major labels. On “Blessings,” he bestows his most praise on God, simultaneously accepting goodness and admitting helplessness. “Blessings keep falling in my lap,” Chance sings, because it is out of his control; they could just as easily fall to the person next to him. Coloring Book glides across the surface, full of wonder, but it remains a truly special record because of the existential concerns that simmer just below. –Matthew Strauss Listen: Chance the Rapper: “Blessings”",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/chancetherapper/blessings,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/23246/homepage_large.c5e30897.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Chance_the_Rapper-Coloring_Book.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9980-the-50-best-albums-of-2016/,2016,year,album,5,Kanye West,The Life of Pablo,Def Jam / G.O.O.D. Music,"Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo may be a masterpiece, but it’s a lumpy one. It’s got tracks that play too long, songs that barely feature Kanye, perfect moments scattered deep, deep into the tracklist. So while not flawless in a traditional sense, TLOP’s hyperactive bent is what makes it great. Consider its most memorable moments, all unhinged and/or collaged: West praying for Paris, Kelly Price belting it, Future’s Young Metro warning, Madlib’s boom bap, André 3000 harmonizing with Arthur Russell, Max B calling from prison, approximately seven seconds of Young Thug. Remember the blown release dates, the title changes (R.I.P. Swish), the schadenfreude of catching Taylor Swift in a lie. The pleasures of Pablo are varied and tactile, sometimes extramusical, sometimes illicit, sometimes religious, always scarily committed. It’s a record for the greedy made by a glutton willing to share. The man’s overzealousness can lead to some strange places: Recently, a sleep-deprived Kanye declared his allegiance to Donald Trump, which was an odd moment from the guy who scared the shit out of Mike Myers by saying “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” on live TV when no one else would. Soon after the recent outburst, he was hospitalized. Whatever he genuinely believes about the people running this country, it seems clear that he is a musical genius who appears to have some serious problems. His baser instincts may reveal him as a stressed-out perfectionist, which, while not a lifestyle to ascribe to, makes his artistic output pretty much unparalleled. In his search to create Pablo is a messy marriage of his previous two albums, Yeezus and My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy; its production is not as tight as the former, nor are its wild moments as blissful as the latter. But the album can be as compelling as those anointed classics, its highs arguably higher, its lows a lot weirder. Listening to Pablo is a chaotic experience, so seems about right it was made by someone with a unique perspective on reality. –Matthew Schnipper Listen: Kanye West: “Ultralight Beam” [ft. Chance the Rapper, The-Dream, Kelly Price, and Kirk Franklin]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4w08DXtXn8,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/22851/homepage_large.1192269b.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kanye_West-The_Life_of_Pablo.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9980-the-50-best-albums-of-2016/,2016,year,album,4,David Bowie,Blackstar,Columbia / RCA / ISO,"It’s hard to escape the gravity of an album that offers up an artist’s farewell. That task is even more difficult when the record includes a song entitled “Lazarus,” or a promotional video laden with sickbed imagery. But when listening to David Bowie’s final studio set, it’s important to avoid letting the singer’s death dominate your thoughts entirely—if only because Blackstar is so creatively alive. Before fans knew Bowie was ailing, before his collaborators confirmed that they knew he was suffering, what we had, on release day, was one of the artist’s best records. The singles demonstrated that Bowie had outdone a prior experimentation with jazz textures (on 1995’s Outside). Here, his decision to collaborate with saxophonist Donny McCaslin’s band paid off handsomely. The ensemble is capable of moving between hurtling rock and the more abstract atmospherics heard during the title track’s transitional sections. By the time the last song “I Can’t Give Everything Away” hits, there’s an exuberance that’s miles away from the mood of the grim opener. Bowie’s brief harmonica tones communicate some weariness, but also joy. McCaslin reaches for exultant high notes while soloing behind the singer. Ben Monder’s guitar spirals through lines of bluesy invention. Though it has the limitations of life in view—right down to its title—the track also makes good on a death-defying boast offered by Bowie, several songs earlier: “I’ve got drama, can’t be stolen.” –Seth Colter Walls Listen: David Bowie: “Blackstar”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kszLwBaC4Sw,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/22635/homepage_large.1a2fb918.jpg,/dataset/artwork/David_Bowie-Blackstar.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9980-the-50-best-albums-of-2016/,2016,year,album,3,Beyoncé,Lemonade,Parkwood / Columbia,"This year led to a lot of re-imaginings, including a colossal re-think of what we mean when we talk about protest music; suddenly, the old definitions don’t make sense. Lemonade, Beyoncé’s sixth solo album, isn’t expressly political in the grand, didactic tradition of “Blowin’ in the Wind.” But these songs (and the album's accompanying film, a densely layered portrait of what it means to be a black woman in America in 2016) still feel like a call to arms—a mandate to reassess everything, whether it’s relationships with those we hold dear or the methods by which we fight for what we believe. The institution Lemonade critiques most explicitly is marriage: On its surface, the record is a recounting of infidelity and betrayal (or, possibly, a sneaky meta-commentary on celebrity coupledom, a way of actualizing and profiting off the rumors that have dogged Beyoncé and Jay Z for years). But it doubles as a how-to guide for anyone keen on self-reclamation. Here, Beyoncé suggests, is how you get yourself back: by transforming anguish into art. That lesson—and others, about conviction and forgiveness, and how those things can co-exist—feels more essential than ever before. –Amanda Petrusich Listen: Beyoncé: “Formation”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrCHz1gwzTo,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/23207/homepage_large.34791a57.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beyonc-Lemonade.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9980-the-50-best-albums-of-2016/,2016,year,album,2,Frank Ocean,Blonde,Self-released,"The oddest image Frank Ocean’s Blonde conjures is one of his former arch-nemesis. In 2006, Chris Brown accepted the trophy for Best New Artist at the BET Awards, and, reading from notes scribbled on his hotel card envelope, he thanked, “My manager Tina Davis, who I brought up here, who been with me from day one, pushing me, telling me to sing—I ain’t no rapper. Smile.” Frank Ocean ain’t no rapper. He doesn’t sing all that forcefully either. And he certainly hardly smiles. His hook has always been his glowing pen, which he used to complicate the image of a male R&B artist through his awe-drawing lyrics on nostalgia, ULTRA and channel ORANGE. So, throughout Blonde, it’s fun to hear him indulge the inner-rapper we’ve occasionally seen him flash, in content if not form: the groupies on “Nikes,” the Jagger-swagger on “Solo,” the interlude on “Good Guy,” the “I been out here head first/Always liked the head first” on “Nights.” After creating as much room around himself as contracts and silence would allow, he filled the moat with dense verses, only iced with melody. “Self Control” even opens with a pitched-up bar or two, before melting into the album’s highpoint: “Keep a place for me,” a helium voice sings, “I’ll sleep between y’all, it’s nothing.” Ocean’s gift, toyed with on Endless and crystallized on Blonde, is his ability to find space where there shouldn’t be any. It’s no coincidence he came up with rappers, and a blessing that he didn’t end up one. –Matthew Trammell Listen: Frank Ocean: “Nikes”",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/23692/homepage_large.5f06f7f6.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Frank_Ocean-Blonde.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9980-the-50-best-albums-of-2016/,2016,year,album,1,Solange,A Seat at the Table,Columbia / Saint,"“And do you belong? I do.” The assertion sits atop an essay that Solange Knowles wrote in the waning weeks of summer. In the text that followed, she recounted a painful, much-publicized recent incident: A group of women had pelted her, with words and then trash, as she stood to dance at a Kraftwerk concert in New Orleans. She recalled her resolve to stay positive for the sake of her young son and his friend, also in attendance, and remembered assuming that she must have been imagining their violation: “Certainly a stranger would not have the audacity.” But that charity proved misplaced, and disappointingly familiar: As a woman of color, she had been dismissed, scrutinized, and harassed by strangers in predominantly white spaces before. She knew well the emotional labor of turning the other cheek. When A Seat at the Table dropped three weeks later, it became clear that the essay’s title pulled from the lyrics of “Weary.” It’s a wistful ballad that explores how, when you’re constantly fighting for the base amount of respect, graciousness can be downright exhausting: “Be leery ’bout your place in the world/You’re feeling like you’re chasing the world/You’re leaving not a trace in the world/But you’re facing the world.” A Seat at the Table is full of similar admissions, delivered with a rare and beautiful empathy. In it, Solange often speaks to the universal experiences of youth (new love, confusion, heartbreak), but does not shy away from her own journey; the specificities of black life are proudly inextricable from her accounts. On “Mad,” she offers a poised reply to a damaging stereotype commonly affixed to black women, flipping accusations that they’re always angry into an uplifting rebuttal: “You got the light, count it all joy!” Floating over Raphael Saadiq’s lush soul arrangements, she travels “70 states” to escape such pressures, turning to sex, alcohol, isolation, and material pursuits on the haunting ballad “Cranes in the Sky”—but the journey leads her back to where she began, looking inward for strength. A Seat at the Table has a gorgeous sense of flow; ideas of identity commingle easily with social commentary as lithe R&B melts into spoken interludes. The latter happens with a cinematic ease; the interludes sew the album together like plot points of a larger narrative. Solange’s mother, Tina Lawson, makes an impassioned appearance, saying: “It’s such beauty in black people, and it really saddens me when we’re not allowed to express that pride in being black, and that if you do, then it's considered anti-white. No! You’re just pro-black. And that’s okay.” This segues beautifully into the standout track “Don’t Touch My Hair,” a measured stance against the misguided act of reaching for a black person’s crown. Much like the know-how required to care for this hair, which is often passed down by a maternal figure, Lawson’s words offer a glimpse of the love for her heritage that she instilled in her daughter. Other monologues feature Solange’s father recalling the trauma of school integration (“We lived in the threat of death every day”) and an introspective Master P, who crystallizes one of the album’s salient themes: “If you don’t understand my record, you don’t understand me—so this is not for you.” On her third album, Solange has reclaimed every part of her narrative and has done something undeniably inspiring. In 2016, when it still seems like a radical act to release a record that catalogues the nuances of black womanhood, she has done so with stunning candor. A Seat at the Table is a contemporary take on the protest records of yesteryear, steeped in the tradition of vanguard singers who critiqued society’s ills from the female perspective. It is an offer of solace for anyone working towards their own glory, and for those whose right to dignity is long overdue. –Vanessa Okoth-Obbo Listen: Solange: “Cranes in the Sky”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0qrinhNnOM,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/23923/homepage_large.f4b40c2b.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Solange-A_Seat_at_the_Table.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,100,Lil Peep,“Kiss”,Self-released,"Lil Peep is not the boy you take home to meet your mother. He may look like a scuzzed-up Justin Bieber but, with his copious face and neck tattoos (including one of Lisa Simpson scorched into his Adam’s apple) and a penchant for lyrics about cocaine and suicide, he makes Justin Bieber look like a picture of pure innocence. The 20-year-old Long Island native is a devotee of both trap wildman Waka Flocka Flame and emo heroes My Chemical Romance, and he’s racked up millions of SoundCloud plays as an unholy combination of the two. His best song so far, “Kiss,” is a power ballad at its core—but you’ve never heard a power ballad quite like this. Peep sounds like a zombie version of the late Alice in Chains singer Layne Staley as he explores newfound vulnerabilities (“Nobody knows the me that you do”), takes solace in his outsider status (“I’m a freak/That’s why nobody’s friends with me”), and offers some semi-sweet nothings (“I think of you on blow”). A woozy mix of trap hits, tinny guitar strums, and sleigh bells(!) set an ominous tone, but just then, as the song seems destined to fade out, Peep’s voice rings out from the bleakness, begging for one more chance. Give it to him. –Ryan Dombal",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/18603/homepage_large.f977e8fc.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lil_Peep-Kiss.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,99,Sturgill Simpson,“Welcome to Earth (Pollywog)”,Atlantic,"The opening track to Sturgill Simpson’s ambitious third LP begins grandly, as Simpson intones, “Hello, my son, welcome to Earth” with the solemnity of a bible reading. He then establishes the record’s themes of fatherhood, love, and selflessness in the beginning of this lovely ballad. But it’s at the 2:43 mark that “Welcome to Earth (Pollywog)” astonishes by breaking out into a wholehearted, exciting honky-tonk jam. Simpson, meanwhile, shifts his tone and sings about the regret he feels, having to tour during the most precious moments of his newborn son’s life. Warmth emanates from Simpson’s greatest point of vulnerability: When lamenting missing his son, the entire thing explodes with love and joy. On an album of universal themes, “Welcome to Earth” is defining and contagious. –Matthew Strauss Listen: Sturgill Simpson: “Welcome to Earth (Pollywog)”",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/sturgill-simpson/welcome-to-earth-pollywog,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/463/pollywog.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sturgill_Simpson-Welcome_to_Earth_Pollywog.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,98,Moor Mother,“Deadbeat Protest”,Don Giovanni,"“Poetry is my hardcore,” the artist Camae Ayewa, aka Moor Mother, told Pitchfork this summer. “Deadbeat Protest,” from her astounding debut album Fetish Bones, is both at once: an 83-second industrial-noise rap with the all-caps ferocity of Death Grips, but irreducible, more explicitly political, more necessary. “I'm in line at the soup kitchen,” she spits with a low, cooly unspooling monotony, as if threading lyrics to hold together a great tapestry of reality. “These pigs wanna blow my mind/These people wanna stop my grind.” The grating abrasion of “Deadbeat Protest” drones on, as Ayewa’s concrete-hard flow curlicues over it. She grunts and roars, shreds her voice, bends it like rubber. It’s a picture of American upheaval, and it seethes, all energy barreling into the future without permission. –Jenn Pelly Listen: Moor Mother: “Deadbeat Protest”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2Ftfb9QYZQ,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/18474/homepage_large.3bf4b8a1.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Moor_Mother-Deadbeat_Protest.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,97,Olga Bell,“Randomness”,One Little Indian,"You might expect a conservatory-trained composer to lack fluency when it comes to electronic music, but Olga Bell makes herself right at home on the dance floor with “Randomness.” Kinetic and catchy, it's among the most straightforwardly clubby tracks on her third album, Tempo, and demonstrates Bell’s ability to flow between dance, R&B, hip-hop, and experimental modes. In fact, you’d never guess that Bell hasn’t spent her entire career as an electronic producer, or that her last record was a Russian-language folk song cycle. Bell may have set out to use overtly commercial (and even “almost kind of gross”) sounds, but the sheer exuberance of “Randomness” overrides her use of dance music’s most familiar hallmarks. The thumping beat and frosty synthesizer hook are about as true to convention as they come, but Bell brings a distinct spark of personality, her vocals landing with a slight sting. If you’ve never had the pleasure of mouthing the words, “You've got that shit eating grin when there’s nobody smilin’” while going full-tilt in a crush of moving bodies, here's your chance. –Saby Reyes-Kulkarni",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/18108/homepage_large.8d0e9ccb.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Olga_Bell-Randomness.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,96,Kodak Black,“Vibin in This Bih” [ft. Gucci Mane],Dollaz N Dealz,"How is it that Kodak Black—a young Floridian rapper who sounds like a combination of a half-asleep Lil Boosie, a more sing-songy Lil Wayne, and Juvenile minus about two decades of life experience—is able to sound so wise? Part of it is that voice, which manages to croak and float; it doesn’t seem like anyone should be able to do both. The other part is his complete disinterest in being flashy. “Vibin in This Bih” is just two vocabulary-obsessed rappers doing what they do best. Kodak is a vibrant, economical writer: “People rootin’ for the hustler, I think I’m on next/At your neck, I don’t get tired, I ain’t gon’ rest.” His verse is quietly hypnotic, each line its own story, and then Gucci comes in, palpably reveling in his newfound freedom. They’re a great pair, but Kodak carries the track. He may not be asking for our attention, but he’s already earned it. –Sam Hockley-Smith",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/18357/homepage_large.c5db3f7a.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kodak_Black-Vibin_in_This_Bih_ft_Gucci_Mane.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,95,Kamaiyah,“I’m On”,Self-released,"Doubling as Kamaiyah Johnson’s mission statement and her come-up fiesta, “I’m On” is taut, direct, and throwback hazy. Producer Drew Banga bolsters the 24-year-old Oakland, California MC’s vocals with tambourines and splashy tropical keyboards, recalling late-’80s/early-’90s R&B minimalism. Kamaiyah slides effortlessly from rapping to singing and back, retracing bleak yesterdays and brighter tomorrows with a dispassionate, no-bullshit rasp. “Remember when I didn’t have shoestrings?” she asks. “Now I pull up, hop out, watch that coup swing/Big money, get money, we do things.” As she relates, her rise seems equally incredible and inevitable: Her hard pluck overcame the hardest of luck, steering her from going hungry to scoring features on YG and E-40 tracks. In “I’m On,” Kamaiyah seems unfazed by her burgeoning success, but it’s hard not to celebrate her. –Raymond Cummings",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/kamaiyah/01-im-on-prod-drew-banga,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/463/imon.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kamaiyah-Im_On.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,94,Cate Le Bon,“Wonderful”,Drag City,"No song on Cate Le Bon’s Crab Day better exemplifies the album’s curious balance of sweetness and dissonance than “Wonderful,” a song whose seemingly chipper refrain—“Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful”—belies its anxious, caustic mood. Atonal guitar figures skitter like spiders across pumping barroom piano, marimba flourishes, and sour bursts of throaty saxophone skronk. The net effect suggests a fender-bender between the Slits and the Velvet Underground, with Raymond Scott as the lone eyewitness. As usual, “cryptic” barely begins to describe the Welsh singer-songwriter’s approach to narrative; if you’ve ever repeated a word to yourself until all meaning leached out of its suddenly alien contours, her verses here will have a certain uncanny familiarity. Ultimately, the song adds up to a kind of giddy riddle with an answer only Le Bon knows. But whatever she may mean by the declaration, “I wanna be a ten-pin ball,” knocking down the pieces and picking them up again proves endlessly fascinating. –Philip Sherburne Listen: Cate Le Bon: “Wonderful”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnZh4E0_7KM,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/18060/homepage_large.7da31af5.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Cate_Le_Bon-Wonderful.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,93,Danny Brown,“When It Rain”,Warp,"In inner cities, the saying “when it rains, it pours” often correlates to gunshots. This is especially true in Danny Brown’s hometown. Violent crimes were down 13% in Detroit last year and still, the city still only finished behind St. Louis in murder rates. Brown’s “When It Rain” is a careful taxonomy of Detroit criminology that identifies the many types of gunmen in the so-called City of Boom, what drives them (poverty, mostly, but sometimes greed), and how locals, including Brown himself, try to escape from death’s grasp. His flow is skittering and his vocals bend out of shape into his signature squeal. The way he cuts perspectives together is jolting; he relates with both the shooters and the victims, the jailed and the free. Over a collage of percussive sound that rumbles with a thunderous boom, he is strikingly eloquent: “Dark clouds hanging all over our head/No sunshine and them showers be lead.” –Sheldon Pearce Listen: Danny Brown: “When It Rain”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVyGxlgeAjc,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/18369/homepage_large.600be068.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Danny_Brown-When_It_Rain.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,92,Sheer Mag,“Can't Stop Fighting”,Self-released,"Sheer Mag’s “Can’t Stop Fighting” is another entry in their ironclad canon of classic, beefy rock’n’roll. Kyle Seely’s guitar sound is still enormous and catchy; Tina Halladay still comes through with a dominant growl. They make adrenaline-filled guitar music, which is good, because the narrative here starts out rough: The song opens with a scene from the femicide in Ciudad Juárez. One minute, a woman is walking home after a late shift at the maquiladora. Eight days later, she’s still missing. “We can’t stop fighting, we can’t stop fighting,” sings Halladay. It’s a grisly narrative—one that likely has more in common with Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 than the Philly band’s day-to-day reality. By the end of the song, it’s a battle cry to fight palpable enemies—both the neighborhood assholes and the so-called “friends” who refuse to empathize. Sheer Mag are mad as hell, they’re not going to take it anymore, and they've got hooks. –Evan Minsker",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/17978/homepage_large.8ef8eb65.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sheer_Mag-Cant_Stop_Fighting.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,91,21 Savage / Metro Boomin,“No Heart”,Slaughter Gang,"Tellingly credited to 21 Savage and his producer Metro Boomin, the Atlanta rapper’s deliberate, chilling summertime EP Savage Mode worked a few notes (icy synths, ominous low-end, spoken-word delivery) into a fully crystallized aesthetic. “No Heart,” a song that could be summed up as Fredo Santana meets the xx, is the record’s highlight. 21 Savage’s autobiographical imagery could be dismissed as horrorcore but his delivery makes it work as he subtly alters his flow with each verse, signaling a different train of thought. In the end, the song becomes less about its shock value and more about how 21 Savage tells this story—it’s a treatise on the GBE-meets-Ka aesthetic, a wisp of a banger confident in both its content and how it presents its story. –Matthew Ramirez",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/21savage/no-heart,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/463/savagemode.jpg,/dataset/artwork/21_Savage__Metro_Boomin-No_Heart.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,90,Pinegrove,“Old Friends”,Run for Cover,"Pinegrove’s 2015 compilation Everything So Far began with Evan Hall singing, “I resolve to make new friends/I like my old ones but I fucked up so I’ll start again.” It was boisterous and optimistic and rightfully so; making new friends in one’s twenties can be simply a matter of resolve. But it gets harder with every year into adulthood, and this past February, the British Journal of Psychology and Pinegrove’s “Old Friends” came to the same conclusion as to why that is: Intelligent people become too goal-oriented and less vulnerable or, as Hall puts it, “Too caught up in my own shit/That’s how every outcome’s such a comedown.” “Old Friends” finds Hall in one of his solipsistic moods, making hyper-detailed observations of his surroundings yet feeling disconnected from the people closest to him. “I should call my parents when I think of them/Should tell my friends when I love them,” he sighs, the should making it unclear whether he’s had an epiphany or just another clever thought that will come and go like a joke about the Port Authority. Even as the economic and romantic anxieties of millennials continue to be exhaustively documented, “Old Friends” feels like a fresh take—maybe making new friends isn't as important as keeping the old ones. –Ian Cohen",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/17894/homepage_large.f3000fe3.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Pinegrove-Old_Friends.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,89,Frankie Cosmos,“On the Lips”,Bayonet,"Greta Kline, aka Frankie Cosmos, has a gift for songs that are demonstrably grounded in real life, with arrangements anyone could play, but which still seem like miniature epiphanies. Next Thing highlight “On the Lips” has all the trappings of quintessential indie-pop: keenly observational lyrics, sprightly guitar strums, and a wistful chorus about a kiss that never happens. But Kline packs so much into the track’s sub-two-minutes: musings about watching David Blaine, a curious lyrical aside that gave the title to Cosmos’s 2013 effort im sorry im hi lets go (where “On the Lips” originally appeared, in rougher form), and an existential question that never gets answered. It’s a song less about kissing than about believing, even at the risk of looking foolish. “I don’t want magic that looks real,” Blaine himself once said. “What I want are real things that feel like magic.” That’s an apt description of what Kline accomplishes here. –Marc Hogan",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/18087/homepage_large.d60bd2b7.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Frankie_Cosmos-On_the_Lips.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,88,Rihanna,“Needed Me”,Roc Nation/Westbury Road,"This year, a photo of Rihanna made the rounds in which she’s wearing super pointy heels, a giant coral jacket that might as well be a sleeping bag, and a T-shirt that reads “YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE.” It’s unclear if she’s wearing pants. Seems like a safe bet that’s what she was wearing when she recorded “Needed Me.” Has Rihanna ever delivered a more apt lyric than, “Didn’t they tell you that I was a savage?/Fuck ya white horse and ya carriage”? “Needed Me” may be a steady 110 BPM, but it slinks along like she recorded it in a steam room. Producer DJ Mustard borrows from the UK house tradition of the disembodied voice, and all the cut-up vocals echo like ghosts of the men Rihanna swallowed whole. –Matthew Schnipper Listen: Rihanna: “Needed Me”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfN4PVaOU5Q&oref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DwfN4PVaOU5Q&has_verified=1,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/463/anti.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rihanna-Needed_Me.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,87,Alicia Keys,“In Common”,RCA,"If you follow Alicia Keys on Instagram, you already know she’s drawn to Nigerian pop acts like Wizkid and Davido, part of the ascendant Afrobeats sound. Part UK funky, part soca, part dancehall, part soda pop bubble, this Nigerian/Ghanaian hybrid became the sound of the year, so it made sense that Ms. Keys and producer Illangelo wove those vibrant tropical patterns into “In Common.” It’s a rare, welcome instance of Keys moving out of her musical comfort zone and riding the humid groove, and she took it all the way to the DNC stage. It would have been easy enough to pair that genre’s bubbling rhythm with a lyrical bauble, but Keys instead twists the love song trope of “opposites attract.” “If you could love somebody like me/You must be messed up too” simultaneously indicts and embraces the dysfunction, insecurity, and maddening laws of attraction that undergird modern love. –Andy Beta Listen: Alicia Keys: “In Common”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IhC8ZC5pNs,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/463/HERE.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Alicia_Keys-In_Common.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,86,Bat for Lashes,“Sunday Love”,Parlophone,"Bat for Lashes’ The Bride is a concept album about a woman left stranded at the altar when her fiancé is killed in a car crash en route to their wedding. Overdramatic? Yes. Heavy-handed? Sure. But Natasha Khan has always excelled at sweeping up the listener in grand tides of feeling, and the widowed bride’s emotional rollercoaster ride proves to be an ideal vessel for her songs. “Sunday Love” takes place after the bride has raced out of the church, jumped behind the wheel of her car, and sped away to embark on a grief-stricken solo honeymoon. The track’s nervous, pulsing rhythm mimics the paranoia of the lyrics (“I see her in every place I go,” “She's in my bedroom/Now I can't fight”), contrasting with Khan’s lilting vocals and harp melody to conjure a swirling descent into madness. The Bride ends with redemption through self-love, but no story earns its happy ending without a fight. “Sunday Love” is the bottom the bride must hit in order to begin her crawl upwards towards the light. –Amy Phillips Listen: Bat for Lashes: “Sunday Love”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBfZooPrmfo,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/463/thebride.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bat_for_Lashes-Sunday_Love.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,85,Angel Olsen,“Sister”,Jagjaguwar,"“The thing about getting older is that instead of deciding that you’ve figured it out, you get better at realizing you never will,” Angel Olsen told Pitchfork earlier this year. Olsen reaches a similar conclusion at the end of the ambling journey she takes on “Sister,” the Crazy Horse-flecked centerpiece of her third album, My Woman. “All my life I thought had changed,” she pleads again and again throughout the last half, before an eruption of a solo from guitarist Stewart Bronaugh. Though some may think Olsen is singing about her actual sibling, her inward reflection suggests that the sister is within, the parts of herself that she’s learned to love over time. Like many existential struggles, these are hard-earned realizations, not eureka moments—a fact that’s echoed by the song’s pacing and its video’s loose plotline. Few singer-songwriters could sustain an introspective slow-burn the way Olsen does here, but then again, few singer-songwriters have the lyrical skill and vocal range that she does, either. –Jillian Mapes",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mIA1r2ZELU,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/18508/homepage_large.fe76e00e.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Angel_Olsen-Sister.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,84,G.L.O.S.S.,“Give Violence a Chance”,Not Normal,"One of the most puzzling reactions to Donald Trump’s election within the music community has been, “Well, at least there’ll be some good punk rock in the next four years.” As if life in America up until this point hadn’t already been vitriolic fodder for anyone on the outskirts—as if punk had always been the realm of straight, white men, sequestered in suburbia, who apparently needed the threat of an orange boogeyman to bang out a record. In reality, this is merely the moment where the true 21st century punks—the black kids, the queer, the transgendered, the anarchists—are put to an even more arduous task than before. “Give Violence a Chance” by G.L.O.S.S. (which stands for “Girls Living Outside Society’s Shit”) may just serve as one of their anthems, a two-minute call-to-arms to cut the kumbaya and start bashing back. Spewed across a booming buzzsaw riff, frontwoman Sadie Switchblade screams with a rage so potent, you could slice through it with a rusty boxcutter. “When peace is just another word for death/It’s our turn to give violence a chance,” she yells, giving life to a scary realization the vulnerable can face when confronted with hate: You better get them before they get you. –Cameron Cook",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/18003/homepage_large.7856ec94.jpg,/dataset/artwork/GLOSS-Give_Violence_a_Chance.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,83,Huerco S.,“Promises of Fertility”,Proibito,"Huerco S. once described listening to ambient music as a means of coping with anxiety while traveling; he noted, too, that his own most recent LP, For Those of You Who Have Never (and Also Those Who Have), had a similar calming effect on him. “Promises of Fertility” is the most distilled example of this, a track that stretches and softens the atmospherics that colored in the grainy house music of his earlier work. It’s comprised of a glistening melody that wanders above tape hiss—vaguely reminiscent of hold music, but decelerated to the point that time seems to disintegrate. The track begins and ends in the middle of a note as if, for seven minutes, Huerco is tuning us into a radio frequency that will transmit this loop forever. It’s dreamy but neutral in its expression and, in turn, utterly narcotic. –Thea Ballard",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/18301/homepage_large.f36b4e96.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Huerco_S-Promises_of_Fertility.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,82,Ariana Grande,“Into You”,Republic,"For a little while last year, Ariana Grande seemed close to a Bieber/Britney-esque freefall. After the whole donut-licking scandal, the flop of intended comeback single “Focus,” and her breakup with Big Sean, the familiar narrative of child star-turned-sexpot-turned-trainwreck appeared to be playing itself out again. But the release of the mature, self-assured Dangerous Woman, and the various hits it spawned, ended up crushing haters’ doubts under the spike of Ariana's high-heeled go-go boot. “Into You” has haunted pop radio for the past several months, as songs produced by Max Martin tend to do. A throbbing, slow-burning come-on, “Into You” captures the thrill of the moment just before an illicit kiss, when the will-they-or-won’t-they tension becomes almost unbearable. “A little less conversation and a little more touch my body,” she demands, channeling Elvis and Mariah Carey, the progenitor of Grande’s particular strain of vocal bombast. And now we know: Ariana Grande is not going away any time soon. –Amy Phillips Listen: Ariana Grande: “Into You”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ekZEVeXwek,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/463/intoyou.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ariana_Grande-Into_You.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,81,Deakin,“Golden Chords”,My Animal Home,"There’s a beautiful irony in Deakin’s “Golden Chords.” The album it comes from, Sleep Cycle, was born from a controversial Kickstarter project long delayed due to Josh Dibb’s creative doubts and “fatal perfectionism.” That delay upset many, but the final music was worth it—not despite the struggle, but because of it. “Golden Chords” is an honest meditation on uncertainty and self-esteem, an attempt to escape artistic paralysis by, as the Animal Collective co-founder sings, “shak[ing] these broken chords till they turn gold.” Dibb gives himself this pep talk using soft acoustic guitar strums, subdued percussion loops, and a whispery falsetto. He opens the song so confused about how to combat his creative funk that every solution feels wrong. Yet small stabs at positivity build up until Dibb sounds nearly restored: “In time/You’ll revive what you thought dead … Stop believing your being’s been shattered and distorted/’Cause, brother, you’re so full of love.” That he’s right makes “Golden Chords” a meta-victory: a song about how strife can lead to triumph that proves its own point. –Marc Masters",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/18192/homepage_large.e35b223a.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Deakin-Golden_Chords.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,80,PJ Harvey,“The Wheel”,Island,"PJ Harvey’s “The Wheel” is a song haunted by war and human rights atrocities, but it’s no dirge. Everything is handclaps, saxophone, and momentum leading to a call-and-response singalong chorus. “Watch them fade out,” she sings at the end, repeatedly, about the wall of “sun-bleached” photographs of the disappeared. Then, the song itself abruptly fades. Harvey has written about global conflicts before, but “The Wheel,” about the state of Kosovo, could well be her most vibrant attempt—a potent combination of rock’n’roll gusto and stone-faced reporting. –Evan Minsker Listen: PJ Harvey: “The Wheel”  ",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ReW0jJkag8,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/17936/homepage_large.163b6904.jpg,/dataset/artwork/PJ_Harvey-The_Wheel.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,79,Mr. Fingers,“Qwazars”,Alleviated,"“What’s going on? Quasars.” The spacey sample is repeated a handful of times across this slowly evolving six-minute track by Larry Heard, aka Mr. Fingers. He’s engaging in a bit of mystery-building, one that has been central to dance music for decades: Make some common elements—a pulsing synthesizer, some hi-hats and a snare that have been shifted off-axis just so—feel stranger than they really are. Though he’s working with pretty simple stuff, that does not mean what Heard has done here is easy. The opening kick drum and pulse land so softly that “Qwazars” feels like a baby shampoo version of Heard’s rawer work under the Fingers alias 30 years ago. The ringing tones that dot the track are given their star moment in the final minutes. It takes a deft hand to recreate what the future sounded like in the mid ’80s; it takes an old hand to realize that’s what we still want the future to sound like now. –Andrew Gaerig",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/17975/homepage_large.a90960bd.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mr_Fingers-Qwazars.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,78,serpentwithfeet,“blisters”,Tri Angle,"The lead song and title track on serpentwithfeet’s debut EP, “blisters” might have been spontaneously produced from the ether, so airy are its harp and strings and so weightless serpentwithfeet’s own falsetto. But it is also a song about suffering, from its title to its sorrowful subject matter, in which unrequited love stands in for a more existential kind of trauma, one connected to ideas about blackness and sexuality and articulated in the heartbreaking refrain, “Forgiveness has not forgiven it.” serpentwithfeet is no stranger to contradictions—his forehead bears tattoos reading “SUICIDE” and “HEAVEN”—and the Haxan Cloak’s production on the song does an admirable job of living up to the singer’s multitudes. The funereal drumbeat’s handclaps sound like splashing water; a lonely clarinet traces a line of flight out of the song’s gridded repetitions. But even these sounds pale next to the vividness of the singer’s own richly imagistic lyrics. In just six carefully chosen words—“Concrete has hurried itself into blue”—serpentwithfeet gives us one of the year’s greatest opening lines, the kind that sinks its hooks into you and refuses to let go. –Philip Sherburne",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/18462/homepage_large.c604b03c.jpg,/dataset/artwork/serpentwithfeet-blisters.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,77,Skepta,“Man”,Boy Better Know,"Skepta’s “Man” lays out some friendly parameters for how not to ingratiate yourself to this Mercury Prize-winning grime icon: Don’t seek attention, don’t tell people you’re his cousin, and, most of all, don’t ask for a pic for the ’gram. Driven by an excellent Queens of the Stone Age sample and ominous, relentless bass, the frenetic track is one of the most concise singles on Konnichiwa. This year has highlighted how audiences expect pop and rap artists to reinvent themselves regularly if they want to hold our attention. However, it’s equally rewarding to hear Skepta refine his voice as he stays loyal not just to his friends and family, but to the sound he’s helped build. Plus, “Man” sneaks in one of the best disses of 2016: “Dressed like I just come from P.E.,” he brags to an interloper. “You’re dressed like you just come from church.” –Thea Ballard",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/skepta/man,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/18193/homepage_large.d81ce35a.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Skepta-Man.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,76,Ka,“30 Keys”,Iron Works,"The Brooklyn rapper Ka likes to keep things economical. His introspective music is self-released and nearly always self-produced. By those standards, “30 Keys” counts as a lavish indulgence: Roc Marciano provided the beat, and you can make out some drums. “In this trade, ain’t afraid to get splashed or busted,” he recalls, slipping the borders between past and present. “Even for small numbers, none are vastly trusted.” His frayed rasp frames crime as an existential act: “I don’t wanna do it, gotta do it.” Ka also directs his own videos, and this one cuts between shots of the MC in sparse rain and scenes from old blaxploitation movies, lingering on incidental details; the opening is somebody loading a DVD for half a minute. Extreme close-ups cut off the top half of Ka’s face. Like much of his work, “30 Keys” uses abstract language to yield bigger truths. –Chris Randle Listen: Ka: “30 Keys”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T17WjDXoQz0,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/17917/homepage_large.98c8217e.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ka-30_Keys.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,75,Travis Scott and Young Thug,“Pick Up the Phone” [ft. Quavo],Epic,"“Pick Up the Phone” is nominally a Travis Scott song, but in nearly every way that matters, it belongs to Young Thug. That’s Thug leaning like grandma, comparing cheating to treason, paying his sisters’ tuition in crumpled fives and 10s. It’s Thug rapping “Mama told me don’t hate on the law/Because everybody got a job/Because everyone wanna be a star,” a tossed-off parable that doubles as a reflection of modern state violence. For him, “Pick Up the Phone” is a tour de force, a reminder that no matter how scattered or inscrutable his solo output becomes, he can cut through the din with a perfect piece of pop. By the time Quavo swoops in to coin the word “discriminize” and say, “I thought I was right/Then I had to man up/I was wrong,” it’s already a wrap. –Paul A. Thompson Listen: Travis Scott & Young Thug: “Pick Up the Phone” [ft. Quavo]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZDinQ92OZQ,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/463/pickupthephone.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Travis_Scott_and_Young_Thug-Pick_Up_the_Phone_ft_Quavo.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,74,The 1975,“Somebody Else”,Interscope/Dirty Hit,"The 1975’s “Somebody Else” describes someone caught between the emotional phases one passes through after a breakup, as if stuck between colors in a gradient. It touches on the kind of confused feelings people usually bury for fear of looking like an asshole—but the 1975 frontman Matty Healy isn’t afraid of looking like an asshole. “Somebody Else” embodies this post-breakup ambivalence in both its lyric and its sound—there’s a swerve to the opening synths that makes it seem like they’re evolving from one hue to another, a damp echo to the atmosphere that makes every instrument sound slightly hazy and drunk and too cool for itself. Unlike their previous singles, the band sound like something less defined and more introspective, a position from which they are able to give shape to something vanished. “I don’t want your body/But I hate to think about you with somebody else,” Healy sings, drums pulsing behind him like the vague, sourceless ache of a hangover. –Brad Nelson Listen: The 1975: “Somebody Else”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bimd2nZirT4,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/463/the1975.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_1975-Somebody_Else.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,73,Schoolboy Q,“That Part”,Top Dawg/Interscope,"Like a lot of rap pairings, this Schoolboy Q/Kanye West track is less a meeting of minds than a negotiation between agents. Nearly anybody can land nearly any feature for the right price, and at first Kanye almost seems to be mocking the transactional nature of guest verses here, filling an alarming number of bars with the word “OK”—you can almost imagine Schoolboy’s face sinking when he heard it for the first time. It’s a fake-out, though. Soon Kanye is feeding off the energy of his fellow hothead, firing off some of his most memorable zingers of the year (“Rich n*gga, still eatin’ catfish/That bitch ain’t really bad, that’s a catfish”). And in what could be an apology for all those “OKs,” he even throws in a wild, half-improvised walk-off verse where he brags about having Scottie Pippen at his wedding and comes this close to making a Ray J reference but stops short, just to fuck with people. Never let it be said that when you pay for a Kanye verse, you don’t get your money’s worth. –Evan Rytlewski Listen: Schoolboy Q: “That Part” [ft. Kanye West]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ_DHRI-Xp0,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/463/thatpart.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Schoolboy_Q-That_Part.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,72,Moses Sumney,“Lonely World”,Self-released,"There are two sides to Moses Sumney as we understand him now. The first is the solo live performer, a powerful presence that constructs sonic journeys onstage using only his voice, his hands, a guitar, and some loopers. The second is the recording artist, a more reclusive specter that has just begun to take shape in the world’s eye. After channeling Nina Simone’s pained timbre in the verses, Sumney slowly reveals “Lonely World” as an attempt to extend his insular artistry. It’s a sonic mission that recruits some of the most viciously capable contemporary musicians—Thundercat, Animals as Leaders’ Tosin Abasi, Son Lux drummer Ian Chang—to craft counterpoints and supporting textures for Sumney’s intricate harmony stacks. The result is a song that begins as a flickering flame, eventually fanning into a chaotic wildfire before it’s extinguished with a whisper. –Noah Yoo",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/18549/homepage_large.a4360dae.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Moses_Sumney-Lonely_World.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,71,Isaiah Rashad,“Smile”,Top Dawg Entertainment,"These are usually some of the most fun rap songs: When a newly famous artist returns to his neighborhood to flaunt his newfound stature for awed childhood friends and rub his success in the face of anybody who doubted it. For a victory lap, though, Isaiah Rashad’s trip back to his native Chattanooga, Tenn., is pretty bumpy. On “Smile,” the TDE rapper wakes in a fog of depression, gets in a seriously ugly spat with his baby mama, picks a losing argument about Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter IV, and struggles to resist the bar of Xanax tucked in his back pocket. The beat is convincingly triumphant—a Southern-fried flip of a savory Brazilian soul number—but when Rashad brags about kicking back and enjoying his worry-free life, the person he’s most trying to convince is himself. –Evan Rytlewski Listen: Isaiah Rashad: “Smile”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCdXKePZDpU,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/17923/homepage_large.b10b1c61.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Isaiah_Rashad-Smile.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,70,Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith,“Existence in the Unfurling”,Western Vinyl,"This year brought to light the talents of Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, whose use of the Buchla Music Easel announced a new voice on the device. Her third album, EARS, was one of the most exhilarating experimental albums of the year, an ever-shifting landscape in which to lose yourself. And it all led to the majesty of the closing track, the 11-minute epic “Existence in the Unfurling.” Amid the fretting arpeggios of her Buchla, Smith’s digitally warped vocals emerged from the circuits, only to camouflage themselves anew amid the timbres of fluttering woodwinds and saxophones. As the piece expands past the three-minute mark, it transforms into a sonic odyssey, exploring a realm between minimal composition and transcendental electronics, providing in this wearying year a much-needed source of wonderment. –Andy Beta",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/18057/homepage_large.337a5d03.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kaitlyn_Aurelia_Smith-Existence_in_the_Unfurling.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,69,Vince Staples,“Prima Donna” [ft. A$AP Rocky],Def Jam,"In the first verse of “Prima Donna,” the highlight from his hard, baleful EP of the same name, Vince Staples buys a new house and blows his brains out on the kitchen wall. Women stop by afterward to admire the splatter, thinking it’s modern art. That’s a Vince Staples joke. Ha ha. Vince has never really been one for inclusive humor: He wants it to hurt when he elbows your ribs. The production by DJ Dahi hurts, too: Each downbeat sounds like a collapsing column Staples barely dodges. When he makes fun of himself, the pain is still there: As a newly minted star, he is going to “pull a Wavves on the Primavera Stage,” maybe the least glamorous self-destructive behavior a rapper could boast about. His airless squeak of a voice bounces around inside a hollowed-out beat, which nosedives and the end, his voice disappearing into a blender with an A$AP Rocky sample. When it's over, we’re left with ashes and ambivalence, as we are with every great Vince Staples song. –Jayson Greene",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/18507/homepage_large.62260625.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Vince_Staples-Prima_Donna_ft_AAP_Rocky.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,68,Nao,“Girlfriend”,RCA / Little Tokyo,"Nao’s particular variety of R&B has the efficiency and even the pneumatic qualities of good design, every instrument angled or curved so that it sounds assembled without any human intervention. The chorus of “Girlfriend” is like this: the guitar, synth, and Nao’s voice collapsing into a single harmonic cylinder. If it could be hung in an art gallery, it might look like a tube of neon. But within this precisely shaped environment, Nao primarily expresses anxiety, as if she’s reacting to a kind of airlessness around her. “Feels like pretty doesn’t know me/Only shows up when I’m lonely,” Nao sings, her voice generating internal harmonies like Prince, from whom the phrasing of the chorus is sort of borrowed, and from which the fractal design of her harmonies is certainly borrowed. The song’s construction is sensitive to this; whenever Nao’s vocal doubles or triples, the track itself seems to hiss with pleasure. –Brad Nelson",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/18302/homepage_large.a3328bba.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nao-Girlfriend.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,67,Young M.A,“OOOUUU”,NA,"Rap crews and studio wizards have long known that a hit song comes when you capture the vibe of friends wildin’ out and crystallize their energy as sound. No song this year did that better than Young M.A’s self-released breakout hit “OOOUUU.” The title alone is a kind of litmus test: How you say it reveals your level of excitement and conviction. The Brooklyn rapper sing-slurs it, confident and drunk, boasting and charismatic, six letters that spelled arrival when “OOOUUU” made rounds on the street before rap royalty started jumping on remixes. M.A and her crew stunt in the video—another winning vibe that has landed more than 100 million party-crashing views. A young brown lesbian bending a male-dominated industry around her flow—this is a story we need to hear and repeat. But what’s the limit of a vibe? Explaining how she wasn’t going to explain a line in the song, M.A said: “All the dykes out there, they know exactly what I’m talking about. It ain’t for a guy to understand. If you don’t understand, you don’t gotta understand it.” –Jace Clayton Listen: Young M.A: “OOOUUU”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVf_4Ns3qLU,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/463/ooouuu.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Young_MA-OOOUUU.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,66,KING,“The Greatest”,King Creative,"During the intro to “The Greatest,” right as the ladies of KING ask, “Who wants a run with the number one?”, there is a short glissando on the keyboards. This sound, and all its variations, is one of the best things you can hear in an R&B song: a cue to get ready because it’s. About. To. Go. Down. The band immediately delivers on this promise, letting the synths kick fully before launching into three minutes of pure electro-soul bliss. The track’s harmonies and retro flourishes give it the feel of an ’80s R&B love song. And while that’s certainly part of the story, KING are more concerned with self-love: the belief that you can be the best at whatever you set your mind to. The single, off their debut We Are KING, was written in honor of Muhammad Ali, “the modern marvel man to stand behind.” A few months after we got “The Greatest,” we lost the Greatest—making what was already a terrific song work doubly as a tribute to Ali’s legacy of winning. –Vanessa Okoth-Obbo",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/weareking-1/02-king-the-greatest,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/463/king.jpg,/dataset/artwork/KING-The_Greatest.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,65,Savages,“Adore”,Matador,"“Adore” was born as a song about Savages frontwoman Jehnny Beth’s refusal to suppress her desires. “Is it human to adore life?” she asks over and over, pitying the repressed and their prudish norms. Nearly 12 months and untold tragedies later, her question now sounds like a radical act of resistance. She repeats it with a cool steadiness, as if jutting her jaw in the face of someone who’s determined to break her; when the chorus drives towards a crescendo worthy of Queen, Beth pulls back and lets her question hang as a lonely provocation rather than a proclamation of false triumph. Clinging to hope in a condemned landscape, she pulls off the grave romance of the great fado and cabaret singers—until she turns her question into a statement. “I adore life,” she intones, first sadly, but then as a rapturous invocation, her voice ascending through key changes and effervescing alongside Savages’ apocalyptic climax. As we enter 2017, hope is a privilege, but love and truth are still the path to the sublime. –Laura Snapes Listen: Savages: “Adore”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7ZpPsaMNMM,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/17895/homepage_large.9ed0b1a8.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Savages-Adore.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,64,Porches,“Be Apart”,Domino,"When he first started Porches, the New York musician Aaron Maine played charming indie rock only really set apart by his insouciant tenor. On this year’s Pool, his first album on Domino, he almost completely ditched the guitars to make an off-kilter, laconic dance record, one in which his minimalist approach yielded to a new intimacy and lyrical sparsity. Like all good synthpop songs, “Be Apart” is immediately catchy, its keyboard line bouncing off like a poolside volleyball no one can be bothered to chase. “I wanna be apart/Of it all,” Maine croons, stuck in limbo between the exuberant discovery and blasé isolationism of youth. You can't get much more bedroom-pop than a song literally about not leaving home, and the anxious melancholy that seeps out of “Be Apart” is palpable. –Cameron Cook",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/17908/homepage_large.62a8de77.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Porches-Be_Apart.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,63,Cass McCombs,“Bum Bum Bum”,Anti-,"A good Cass McCombs song is like a locked door: mysterious, resolute, matter-of-fact, inaccessible. Whether there’s anything behind it or not is irrelevant. “I’m not here to convince anyone to like what I do,” McCombs said about his most recent album, Mangy Love. “I’m really comfortable with people disliking it,” he went on hermetically, adding that he wasn’t sure he liked it himself. “Sent a letter to my congressman, the Ku Klux Klan, from my pierced hands,” he sings on “Bum Bum Bum.” “They sent me back an Apple phone, a fine-hair comb and a bell tolled.” In one line, he plays the cynic, the satirist, the surrealist, the citizen of disgust—in other words, an authentic Californian, wise to bullshit but still up for the occasional smudge stick. The band grooves behind him like soft-rock scarred by an indigestible truth. Never the kind of guy for whom people start fan clubs, McCombs continues to find his purpose outside comfort, in the lost art of questioning everything. –Mike Powell",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/18503/homepage_large.7fd6b9a4.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Cass_McCombs-Bum_Bum_Bum.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,62,Drake,“Controlla”,Cash Money/Young Money Entertainment,"In an era when Drake songs about women feel colder than a Toronto winter—callous, hardened, without optimism—“Controlla” is a reminder that he can still turn on the charm when he wants to. Rather than stew in his usual contempt, Drake spends the duration of the VIEWS hit attempting to prove his worthiness, emphasizing his dedication (“I made plans with you, and I won’t let them fall through”) and willingness to take her needs seriously (“I do it how you say you want it”). And, because it’s Drake, being a little bit extra: “I think I’d die for you/Jodeci ‘Cry for You.’” The music slinks down the Jamaican coastline, painting in reds and oranges rather than his usual muted blues and grays. “My last girl would tear me apart, but she never wanna split a ting with me,” he sings, yearning for true collaboration. It low-key might be the most romantic thing Drake has ever sung. –Renato Pagnani Listen: Drake: “Controlla”",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/463/views.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Drake-Controlla.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,61,Sampha,“Blood on Me”,Young Turks,"London’s Sampha has made his name so far as a guest vocalist, singing on tracks by SBTRKT, Drake, Jessie Ware, and more. His ability to blend in with such different surroundings speaks to his flexibility and expressive range; his great skill is to find the essential feeling at the heart of a song and amplify it. “Blood on Me,” a single from his forthcoming debut album (due early next year), is a song built around a single emotion: fear. As Sampha moves through the breathless set-up, we follow him as he flees nameless and faceless pursuers down dark alleyways. Somehow he manages to convey paranoia, anxiety, panic, and desperation while never losing sight of the melody, and when the chorus arrives and the tension explodes, it’s pure catharsis. –Mark Richardson Listen: Sampha: “Blood on Me”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oM1DFL43Lk,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/18512/homepage_large.684bfcec.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sampha-Blood_on_Me.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,60,Maxwell,“1990x”,Columbia,"This was another boundary-bulging year for R&B, but every experiment needs a control group. Maxwell played that role beautifully with “1990x,” a song that sounds old but doesn’t feel it. The gleaming chamber-funk arrangement is zippered together with contemporary tightness, while the music is both hard and soft, as if made of the glares and glints of a revolving diamond. All this incandescence is faintly ironic: Though he now often sports perfectly tailored suits, in the ’90s Maxwell was part of a countercurrent to the shiny suit era, dousing R&B in oceanic cool, beatific consciousness, and earthy threads alongside the likes of Erykah Badu and D’Angelo. He’s always been a little out of time and off-trend, which is apt of his music’s fundamental appeal—an insistence on revving up weathered musical modes with fresh insight and an evolving perspective. In a year when R&B was ruled by youthful passions and roiling politics, Maxwell brought back classic soul with lyrics that weren’t about protest, predation, or property, but about what it’s really like to be in love, a bubble he has a rare talent for pausing and thinking inside of. “1990x” is sex music for grown people who’ve gotten past all that conquest and insecurity stuff, somehow capturing the silence of the romantic moment in lush, vivid sound. It’s music for having, not for wanting; a song for knowing who you are, not searching for it. –Brian Howe Listen: Maxwell: “1990x”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQobX9bZkog,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/18371/homepage_large.5978644d.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Maxwell-1990x.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,59,Whitney,“No Woman”,Secretly Canadian,"Drop “L.A.” into a song lyric (as Whitney do in the third line of “No Woman”) and it will generally establish a few basics—announcing the song as part of a long pop continuum of songs about Los Angeles, evoking a mindset and a myth as well as the actual city. A brief mention of L.A. is the only concrete detail in “No Woman,” and it acts as a floating emotional signpost as much as a physical place. Starring Max Kakacek and Julien Ehrlich, both ex-Smith Westerns, and drawn from their affable debut Light Upon the Lake, the song is a tale of lost love and wandering, with no fixed narrative and a distinct lack of resolution. The “haze” Ehrlich sings about pervades “No Woman” like both California sunshine and the unnamed presence Ehrlich mourns. Produced by Foxygen’s Jonathan Rado, it also fogs over a cleverly unfolding arrangement that achieves density without drama, light percussion never quite succumbing to melodrama while horns and strings sway like props in the gentle breeze of the stage-set version of L.A., the one that lives most vividly in the imagination. –Jesse Jarnow",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/17981/homepage_large.afd8146d.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Whitney-No_Woman.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,58,Young Thug,“Digits”,Atlantic,"Young Thug is rap’s enigma wrapped in contradiction—an ATLien swathed in Greek mythology, an androgynous fashion cognoscente who packs a pistol. And the paradoxes continue on “Digits.” Thugger counts his cash and flashes his ice on the song, but this is no gaudy show of strength. Over London on Da Track’s creeping keyboard riff, the rapper sounds mournful as he contemplates the unbreakable patterns facing all hustlers: “You can lose your life but it gon’ keep goin’.” But it’s the virtuosity of the performance—his nimble, infinitely melodic flow at its most tuneful—that makes this a standout moment from an artist who takes joy in eluding any type of final form. –Dean Van Nguyen",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/18136/homepage_large.e9ece0bf.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Young_Thug-Digits.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,57,Jamila Woods,“VRY BLK” [ft. Noname] ,Closed Sessions,"As I type this, another police officer has gotten away with killing a black man. This time, in Charlotte, North Carolina, where a prosecutor has determined Brentley Vinson’s actions were justified in the September shooting of Keith L. Scott. It’s the latest in what feels like a brutal assault on black people at the hands of law enforcement: Eric Garner, Philando Castile, Sandra Bland, and the list goes on. On “VRY BLK,” singer Jamila Woods fights racial oppression with a regal sense of purpose, declaring her blackness with the utmost pride and nobility. Woods asks bold questions, holding cops accountable for their actions. “If I say that I can’t breathe, will I become a chalk line?” she wonders. “Your serving and protecting is stealing babies’ lives.” This song—like others from her excellent debut album, HEAVN—outlines the beauty of being black, using cavernous soul to punctuate the theme. It speaks to the connection you feel with fellow people of color. No matter who you are, you’re still family. –Marcus J. Moore",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/18444/homepage_large.95f57807.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jamila_Woods-VRY_BLK_ft_Noname_.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,56,Desiigner,“Panda”,"G.O.O.D. Music, Def Jam","If you had to name the most ubiquitous debut of 2016, it would likely be Desiigner with his mega-hit “Panda.” While the general public’s introduction to the song came through Kanye’s The Life of Pablo, “Panda” quickly took on a life of its own and became unavoidable—it got played in the club, blasted on the street, and stuck in your head for hours at a time. “Panda” is ominous but also great fun thanks to its knocking drums, lurching strings, and constant stream of ad-libs. It’s a case study in the modern conglomeration of rap: A New York rapper buys a beat from a London producer he’s never met and crafts a Southern hip-hop song that ends up topping the charts. –Noah Yoo",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/lifeofdesiigner/desiigner-panda,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/463/pandaart.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Desiigner-Panda.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,55,Gucci Mane,“1st Day Out tha Feds”,Atlantic,"“First Day Out Tha Feds” is a homecoming anthem in the truest sense. Gucci Mane wrote the lyrics during a three-year stint in federal prison, recorded the vocal within an hour of returning home, and released the song less than 24 hours after his release. But even though this song introduced the world to Gucci Mane 2.0—trim, self-possessed, exacting in his delivery—it’s hardly triumphant. The new Gucci is sober in more ways than one: Off alcohol and drugs for the first time in 17 years, he’s now taking an unflinching look at his former life. The track’s accounts of prison life are harrowing, but its most striking moments occur when Gucci turns his focus inward. “I did some things to some people that was downright evil,” he raps, before admitting, “My own mama turned her back on me/And that’s my mama.” Thankfully, the story has a happy ending: Gucci has never looked better, often appearing so grateful to be on earth that he’s downright beaming. But as “First Day Out Tha Feds” reminds us, this happiness was hard won. –Mehan Jayasuriya",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/18312/homepage_large.05fd821b.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Gucci_Mane-1st_Day_Out_tha_Feds.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,54,dvsn,“Hallucinations”,Warner Bros. / OVO Sound,"“Hallucinations” solidified dvsn. It was the fourth and final single released ahead of Sept. 5th, the debut from the once-mysterious Toronto duo of Daniel Daley and Nineteen85, who up to that point had specialized in slow jams. While the song didn’t rewrite dvsn’s entire ethos, it finally showcased Daley’s impressive vocal capabilities, reaching higher places with newfound verve. Nineteen85’s production chops were never in question—he’s the architect behind some of Drake’s greatest pop hits—but instead of providing atmosphere, “Hallucinations” builds with Daley’s falsetto in mind. Lyrically, Daley conveys only necessary details, leaving enough room for listeners to fill in with their own memories. Most who’ve endured heartbreak can understand how disorienting it feels to now only see the one you love in dreams. dvsn capture the haunting accurately, with wounded beauty rather than gut-wrenching pain. –Matthew Strauss",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/17900/homepage_large.ceb83d88.jpg,/dataset/artwork/dvsn-Hallucinations.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,53,Kaytranada,“Glowed Up” [ft. Anderson .Paak],XL,"The lines between hip-hop, house, R&B, and bass music have never felt as blurred as they have in the past few years, with 2016’s most compelling example arriving via Kaytranada. The Montreal-based, Haitian-born producer’s debut, 99.9%, shows off so many different ways to build a groove that singling out a centerpiece feels reductive. “Glowed Up” is a standout in part because it powerfully contrasts the slippery elasticity of the upbeat dance cuts. Consider it a dizzy comedown after a steady dose of stimulants, a mid-album respite of E-funk that’s halfway between L.A. Reid and L.A. beats. That latter factor is not just Anderson .Paak-driven, though the obvious charm comes from his wiseass strut-drawl—half toilet jokes (“No bullshit in mi casa/Laxatives in your chowder”), half resilient artistry in the face of fame’s looming pressures (“Even when you’re far out there in the sun/You’re still in the hands of the one who cares for you”). It’s also the fact that the beat’s air-suspension glide really does shine like a full-spectrum light, warm chords where Brian Wilson’s theremin meets Junie Morrison’s ARP. That it finds an extra gear to rev low in during the left-turn third verse is just showing off, and the best kind of it. –Nate Patrin Listen: Kaytranada: “Glowed Up” [ft. Anderson .Paak]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaWesK-nWts,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/18171/homepage_large.38b6c698.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kaytranada-Glowed_Up_ft_Anderson_Paak.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,52,YG,“Who Shot Me?”,Def Jam,"On June 12, 2015, a still-unknown assailant opened fire on YG outside an apartment complex in Studio City, California. One bullet hit the rapper in the hip; YG and his friends drove to the hospital. He refused to cooperate with the cops and checked himself out after less than 24 hours. For a year after the shooting, YG’s only comment of substance on the incident was an aside in his song “Twist My Fingaz”: “I tried to pop first, got popped at/Got hit in the hip, couldn’t pop back.” But “Who Shot Me?,” the second song from his superb Still Brazy, deals with the psychological fallout. The color of his would-be killer’s pistol sticks in his brain, beside a list of suspects and designs for potential R.I.P. t-shirts. Through it all, YG’s more concerned with the mental states of his friends and family than he is with beating his chest. He’s cool and calm, unnervingly so. You learn a lot about yourself in a crisis. –Paul A. Thompson Listen: YG: “Who Shot Me?”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgEDgAWvS6c,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/463/whoshotme.jpg,/dataset/artwork/YG-Who_Shot_Me.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,51,Esperanza Spalding,“Earth to Heaven”,Concord,"Emily’s D+Evolution, Esperanza Spalding’s first album since besting Justin Bieber at the Grammys, has finally earned the jazz musician plaudits beyond the world’s music students and academy elders. “Earth to Heaven” isn't the most surprising cut on the album—see the plunging vocals of “Good Lava” or the cover from the Willy Wonka soundtrack—but it’s the most indicative. There’s funk and art-rock in the hopper, but also Joni Mitchell and Stephen Sondheim. Spalding’s phrasing is that of an actress, flipping nimbly from coy to blunt in the space of one line. There’s plenty of material to work with here: Spalding’s pilgrim’s prog moves dispassionately from Ecclesiastes to science to earthy self-help. It always returns to the same idea, though: getting to heaven, maybe, but in the meantime driving a groove into the ground. “All legacies end here,” Spalding sings. Theologically, perhaps. Musically? Not remotely. –Katherine St. Asaph Listen: Esperanza Spalding: “Earth to Heaven”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xv8KaD5qPC0,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/18050/homepage_large.3cef764f.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Esperanza_Spalding-Earth_to_Heaven.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,50,Parquet Courts,“Human Performance”,Rough Trade,"Parquet Courts have a reputation as the kind of obtuse, smirking lit-punks that built the indie rock pyramids of yore, so it’s notable that “Human Performance” is about pop music’s most basic-ever sentiment: grieving lost love. The song contains no double entendres or glancing witticisms; even the central conceit—that, minus love, singer Andrew Savage is a husk merely acting as a human—is well-trodden ground. The change in tone makes you realize how Savage’s lyrical jigsaws can be affecting instead of dazzling, how he’s able to turn familiar sentiment into striking lines by breaking in odd places and lovingly positioning his syllables. It is the first Parquet Courts song I have walked away from feeling that Savage is not smarter than me, but sadder. –Andrew Gaerig Listen: Parquet Courts: “Human Performance”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aiex9fYyuQg,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/18162/homepage_large.d5a30e2e.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Parquet_Courts-Human_Performance.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,49,Aphex Twin,“CHEETAHT2 [Ld spectrum]”,Warp,"We’re not used to hearing Aphex Twin dole out slow-motion, four-to-the-floor beats—and at just 100 BPM, “CHEETAHT2 [Ld spectrum]” dips about as low as techno is inclined to go. But that sullen andante trudge allows the British electronic musician to get the most out of the unusual instrument that the song pays homage to, and which he presumably used to record it: the Cheetah MS800, a digital synthesizer known for its woozy timbres (and once described as “the most difficult instrument to program on the planet”). Here, that translates to background pads that shimmer like a heat mirage, and a midrange bass melody that writhes like a greased pig on ice. It’s unusual to hear Aphex Twin strip his tracks down like this, but that focus on the texture of his sounds—and few producers know how to program a synthesizer quite like he does—ends up making this no-frills record one of his most immediately satisfying releases in ages. –Philip Sherburne Listen: Aphex Twin: “CHEETAHT2 [Ld spectrum]”",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/18428/homepage_large.f8c959b6.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Aphex_Twin-CHEETAHT2_Ld_spectrum.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,48,Blood Orange,“E.V.P.”,Domino,"“E.V.P.” starts with a fat synth belch, like rubber boots squawking on wet linoleum. A studio rat as well as a solo act, Dev Hynes is especially good with evocative noises, and that synth seems to arrive straight from New York’s Danceteria circa-1982, still draped in scarves and trailing glitter. The song it announces is the centerpiece of his luminous and compassionate album Freetown Sound, and it pulls all of that album’s various threads—yearning for freedom, awareness of injustice, unbridled joy at the presence of the body, fear for its vulnerability—into one dense, breathing heat of tangled limbs and yearning. On an album containing a metropolis of characters, cameos, and sonic details, “E.V.P.” is the most populous: Every sound, from the neener-neener synth whines and stiff funk guitars evoking “Slippery People” to the scratchy Arthur Russell strings, impart some indescribable flavor to the broth. It all resolves into a melody so generous it nearly overflows the borders of the song. No one wrote a chorus of this scale all year, or even seemed to try. In “E.V.P.” Hynes is alone, soaring unaccompanied in the sky. –Jayson Greene Listen: Blood Orange: “E.V.P.”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Woj9YtolLKw,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/18433/homepage_large.eacc2030.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Blood_Orange-EVP.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,47,Chance the Rapper,“All Night” [ft. Knox Fortune],Self-released,"Chance the Rapper does not want you to ride home in his car. To hear Knox Fortune, the Chicago singer and producer who lilts the song’s boozy hook, tell it, this ungenerous theme was the original concept behind “All Night.” But Chance is nothing if not magnanimous. The reasons he gives for refusing to chauffeur our drunk asses—we talk politics, we falsely claim to be his cousin, we fart—are amusing enough to be worth the rejection. Kaytranada’s tipsy instrumental, which posits Chance snugly within Chicago’s deep house legacy, also evokes SaveMoney crew founder Vic Mensa’s 2014 house love letter “Down on My Luck” (previously remixed by the Montreal producer). But like Chance’s gleefully eccentric, shape-shifting lyrical observations, the strobe-lit four-on-the-floor thump here is irresistibly inviting. Turns out, the most extroverted song on Coloring Book was a sly curmudgeon’s plea for privacy. –Marc Hogan",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/chancetherapper/all-night-feat-knox-fortune,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/18275/homepage_large.480df066.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Chance_the_Rapper-All_Night_ft_Knox_Fortune.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,46,Hamilton Leithauser / Rostam,“A 1000 Times”,Glassnote,"Hamilton Leithauser didn’t need Rostam Batmanglij’s help to go pop—fans of the singer’s old band, the Walkmen, know that his voice alone can convey the urgency of a radio jam. So just short of the 30-second mark on the tragic “A 1000 Times,” when Leithauser uncorks his signature yelp, it doesn’t feel like something new. It feels like rediscovery, a welcome return. That sensation is a perfect fit for a song that drifts through the past as it charts the winter to come, acknowledging both the constant temptation of unrequited love and the hard reality that it’s all an overbaked fantasy. Meanwhile, Batmanglij’s touches—the playful keys, the harmonies, a carnival atmosphere reminiscent of Vampire Weekend’s best—offer the type of subtle accompaniment that takes a song from good to great, forging a wistful epic that’s in line with the hurt at the song’s heart. –Jonah Bromwich",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/18501/homepage_large.807f77b2.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Hamilton_Leithauser__Rostam-A_1000_Times.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,45,Kevin Morby,“I Have Been to the Mountain”,Dead Oceans,"“I Have Been to the Mountain” is a misleadingly upbeat track that’s actually about the death of Eric Garner, killed by police after repeatedly saying, “I can’t breathe.” The song, built on a tense bass line, guitar skronk, a horn section, and a choir, is also an explicit rejection of cynicism. Kevin Morby’s voice has settled into a curved and pockmarked take on young Bob Dylan, humming with wisdom and, because it’s necessary, some spite too. “I Have Been to the Mountain” is about injustice, and helplessness in the face of injustice, but it’s also about that feeling that when things go inexorably wrong, the only thing anyone can do is work to make them better. –Sam Hockley-Smith",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/17979/homepage_large.8ded819b.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kevin_Morby-I_Have_Been_to_the_Mountain.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,44,Anderson .Paak,“Come Down”,EMPIRE / Art Club / Steel Wool / OBE,"“Come Down” is equal parts celebration and warning. Anchored by a fat G-funk bassline, the standout track from Anderson .Paak’s solo breakthrough Malibu sways under the weight of the artist’s hard-earned braggadocio. Even though he knows ascending to greater heights could lead to a longer, harder fall, he can’t help but flirt with the edge. One moment, a group of onlookers taunts, “You might not ever come down!”; the next, he flips it and channels James Brown, shouting, “Wanna get down!” The Hi-Tek production is remarkably spacious, but .Paak finds a way to fill out that space by imagining the people and sounds in it, including rowdy crowds, his own multiple personas, and—why not—a clip from the 1978 Malibu surf movie Big Wednesday. It’s his world, after all. He can get as high as he wants. —Minna Zhou",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/17909/homepage_large.2a388923.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Anderson_Paak-Come_Down.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,43,Joey Purp,“Girls @” [ft. Chance the Rapper],Self-released,"Save Money crew-member Joey Purp’s latest, iiiDrops, tackles the multitudes of his native Chicago, veering between frustration and frivolity, political verve and spiritual angst. One of a few excursions is standout jam “Girls @,” buoyed on a Neptunes-catchy Knox Fortune beat and heaps of irreverent glee. Purp spends half of it winking to the camera, seemingly fretting over “Where the girls at?” while playfully notching up his date demands: credit cards, heels, Birkin bags, and a topless Benz. In truth, he sounds more impish than self-serious, like a cruising bachelor giggling to his buddy in the passenger seat, indiscriminately firing champagne emoji into their address books. When Chance chimes in, he’s all lovable chutzpah: He eyes a bookworm “reading Ta-Nehisi Coates, humming ‘SpottieOttieDope’” then goofily asks to borrow a girl’s iPhone and car. His absurd charm—“Where the mid-sized girls? You bad!”—should make Purp’s flash ridiculous; instead, they sync like a glorious double act. –Jazz Monroe",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/18292/homepage_large.7e340da9.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Joey_Purp-Girls__ft_Chance_the_Rapper.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,42,French Montana,“Lockjaw” [ft. Kodak Black],Epic,"French Montana has made a career out of being upstaged. On song after song, he has charmingly brought someone more popular to the party, like Nicki Minaj or Drake, and proceeded to bask in their glow. But the Bronx-raised MC has quirks and chops worthy of a main attraction, and on “Lockjaw,” he graduates to big-brother status and invites upstart Kodak Black to shine on his dime. They’re not an obvious pair—Kodak slurs out in croaks, French mumbles in a conversational sing-song—but the duo are entirely complementary in the moment, boasting through gritted, MDMA-addled teeth. The beat’s hard drums make it instantly familiar as its eerie background echoes ensure this song never grows old. It’s an anthem that demands open car windows and doors, an invitation to bite down and stunt. –Jay Balfour Listen: French Montana: “Lockjaw”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIHR7rUeGTc,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/18348/homepage_large.b927d026.jpg,/dataset/artwork/French_Montana-Lockjaw_ft_Kodak_Black.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,41,Beyoncé,“Sorry”,Columbia/Parkwood,"“Sorry” is not sorry. Not even close. Beyoncé’s most flagrant kiss-off of the year is cold as fuck, but there’s no angst, no furrowed brows, no lashing out. She glides through her revenge as effortlessly as a figure skater, carving an outline of her oppressor’s severed head into ice. She flips the bird for fun. She has the balls to grab her crotch. She turns two words—“boy” and “bye”—into a devastating GIF factory. The essential video only goes deeper, as she expands the song’s meaning across time and place. The interiors were shot at Louisiana’s Madewood Plantation, a grand locale that once hosted brutal beatings of slaves and now hosts Queen Bey in a throne and Serena Williams as her twerking accomplice. Beyoncé and her chorus line of ancient spirits also sport body paint from the Yoruba tradition, white ink imbued with a lasting sacredness. And then there’s Becky and her good hair—a throwaway whodunit wrapped in pointed racial signifiers. At the end of the video, Beyoncé lets out a photo-ready smile before quickly turning deadly serious and delivering that guillotine chop of a final line. She’s in complete control. She’s having a great time, but she’s not kidding around. –Ryan Dombal Listen: Beyoncé: “Sorry”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxsmWxxouIM,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/463/lemonade.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beyonc-Sorry.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,40,Young Thug,“Kanye West”,300 Entertainment,"Hip-hop has always been mercurial, but in 2016, fluidity itself—from form, to function, to delivery—became rap’s defining trait. Young Thug’s “Kanye West” is this trend crystallized, melted down, and imbibed via ayahuasca ceremony in an Atlanta club basement. The track went through several working titles—“Elton John,” “Wet Wet,” “Pop Man”—but the final is most fitting. Just as The Life of Pablo tried to turn the idea of an album into an ever-changing endeavor, Thugger sees music as a product of the moment; titles matter little, albums less, and songs gush from the internet like water from a spigot. The production is almost totally removed from a traditional trap sound, filled with humid tones, booming 808s, and childlike flourishes—it’s as if Phil Collins, circa Disney’s Tarzan soundtrack, made a song about anal sex and female ejaculation. Then there’s Wyclef laying down dad-rap couplets goofy enough to soften Young Thug’s filthiest metaphors: “Play truth or dare/Jumpin’ in the pool with no swim wear gear,” he sings. That the two vastly different artists collaborated at all boggles the mind, but the result is Young Thug at his most fully realized and fully weird. –Nathan Reese",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/youngthugworld/pop-man-feat-wyclef-jean,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/18509/homepage_large.69eeff5c.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Young_Thug-Kanye_West.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,39,Jessy Lanza,“It Means I Love You”,Hyperdub,"You’d be hard pressed to assign a single genre signifier to what Jessy Lanza does in this song. Somehow, she crams Yellow Magic Orchestra, Mariah Carey, feverish footwork, and an infectious South African tabla beat into a terse and tightly compressed floor-filler. The more time you spend with it, the more it opens up and the more its composite pieces become mysterious. Her voice is just as coolly inscrutable as the beat as she hammers away at a few simple phrases: “When you look into my eyes boy/Then it means I love you.” Even when she disappears into the song’s thick shroud of beats, her confident presence remains palpable, and the song lingers in the ears like a fresh secret. –Kevin Lozano",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SU4Vb_Atp0Y,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/17944/homepage_large.befcfc62.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jessy_Lanza-It_Means_I_Love_You.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,38,Weyes Blood,“Do You Need My Love”,Mexican Summer,"The soft-rock melancholy of Weyes Blood’s “Do You Need My Love” has the faded feel of a lost classic—a ’70s AM-radio gem unearthed from a box of dusty 45s. The easiest comparison to make is to the bittersweet ballads of the Carpenters, and judged on that scale, Natalie Mering holds up well. Her wistful voice and the music’s richly textured arrangement strike a tone both soothing and sobering. She even adds a chorus of “ba-ba-ba”s to remind us this is pop music, not Sylvia Plath poetry. Still, “Do You Need My Love” exudes a darkness that even Karen Carpenter didn’t touch often. Mering’s opening sentiment—“tired of feeling so bad”—pervades the song. She sounds weary and lost, stuck in an eternal limbo of unrequited love. “Passion is the only thing/Passion must mean everything,” she insists, rationalizing her inability to think about anything else. As her doubts gather over swelling chords, “Do You Need My Love” starts to sound as much about our modern problems as hers. Like many people alive right now, Mering is caught in a land of questions without answers; hearing her give that feeling a voice is pretty inspiring. –Marc Masters",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/18516/homepage_large.6b53db35.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Weyes_Blood-Do_You_Need_My_Love.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,37,Noname,“Yesterday”,Self-released,"Noname is here to remind us of Chicago’s most lasting hip-hop tradition, one that provides a throughline from Chance to Kanye to Common to No I.D., leading all the way back to the city’s history as an incubator for jazz and soul. Her debut mixtape, Telephone, hearkens back to these roots; its sound is warm and sepia-toned. Fittingly, the album’s opening number, “Yesterday,” is all about remembrance. Noname memorializes a departed grandmother and brother, longs for her own childhood, and wonders who will remember her when she’s gone. The song’s chorus is simple, direct, and utterly heartbreaking: “When the sun is going down/When the dark is out to stay/I picture your smile, like it was yesterday.” As always, the future of Chicago rap remains inextricably bound to the city’s rich musical past. –Mehan Jayasuriya",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/noname/01-yesterday,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/463/yesterday.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Noname-Yesterday.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,36,Kendrick Lamar,“untitled 02 | 06.23.2014.”,Top Dawg / Interscope,"According to the entry dates on his demo/diary collection, untitled unmastered., Kendrick Lamar recorded this track just six days after he turned 27—an age that’s assumed grave significance in the annals of pop history. Fittingly, “untitled 02” represents the purest, most potent distillation of the survivor’s guilt that wracks so many of his rhymes. It may not have made the cut for his 2015 masterpiece To Pimp a Butterfly, but in its Compton-via-Cotton Club trap-jazz sprawl and the conflicted ruminations on what it means to be a successful black man in modern America, “untitled 02” retroactively previews Lamar’s next album. It’s part Top Dawg Entertainment office party, part funeral for the friends who got locked up or gunned down. And nowhere is that inner tension and turmoil felt more acutely than in the line where TDE president Dave Free rolls up to show off his brand new Porsche 911, and all Lamar can think of is planes crashing into buildings. –Stuart Berman Listen: Kendrick Lamar: “untitled 02 | 06.23.2014.”",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/463/untitled.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kendrick_Lamar-untitled_02__06232014.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,35,Kevin Gates,“2 Phones”,Atlantic / Breadwinners Association,"Plug, load, bitches, dough: Judging by the evidence of “2 Phones,” Kevin Gates’ life is more complicated than most. But on the song of his career (so far), he juggles the difficulties just fine. “2 Phones” is a song about distrust and near-paranoia, yet it feels fearless. The chorus is so catchy it invites mimicry, even parody—try replacing “phones” with two of whatever happens to be lying around you—but Gates isn’t joking, and the song is an anthem of desperation. His multiple phones are a necessity, as an alternate means for survival had music not panned out. Fortunately for Gates, that urgency manifested into a triumphant performance. Whatever the reason, the phone keeps ring ring ringing. –Matthew Strauss",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/17966/homepage_large.1b9795df.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kevin_Gates-2_Phones.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,34,Chance the Rapper,“Summer Friends” [ft. Jeremih and Francis and the Lights],Self-released,"Chance the Rapper’s “Summer Friends” packs an astonishing amount of detail into less than five minutes. By the time the Chicago rapper runs down the people, places, and things that surrounded him as a kid—from JJ and Mikey and Lil Derek to day camp to the dollar bills he folded like lawn chairs after mowing yards—you feel like you’re watching a film with wide shots and saturated colors, eyes darting from one image to the next. Chance’s rapid, uninflected sing-song delivery jumps from section to section in order to get everything in; he’s sitting with us in the present moment, while the ghostly vocals carry the ache of the past. His story juxtaposes the simple innocence of childhood with the danger and complexity that, for those who grow up in a certain time and place, is always lurking just outside the frame. –Mark Richardson",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/chancetherapper/summer-friends-feat-jeremih-francis-the-lights,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/463/coloringbook.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Chance_the_Rapper-Summer_Friends_ft_Jeremih_and_Francis_and_the_Lights.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,33,D.R.A.M.,“Broccoli” [ft. Lil Yachty],#1EpicCheck,"People love an underdog story. We also seem to love goofy songs about weed. “Broccoli” is both. Virginian font of sing-song hip-hop euphoria, D.R.A.M., in his joyful warble, recounts with touching matter-of-factness how he went from a precocious preschooler to the 26-year-old owner of an unlikely 2015 hit called, of all things, “Cha Cha,” and then on to noshing on lox and capers at a restaurant as strangers gawk. Now 28, he has another sleeper success in this collaboration with likeminded Atlanta rapper Lil Yachty. Released first on SoundCloud, consisting of little more than Yachty flirting around and D.R.A.M. braying infectiously (also “sleazily,” “greasily”) about pesos and Alfredo, all over a cheerful keys-and-claps loop, “Broccoli” ended up going top five. In February, it will vie for a Grammy against Drake’s “Cha Cha”-indebted “Hotline Bling.” If grinningly ridiculously ear to ear for almost four minutes is therapeutic, then loving “Broccoli” may actually be good for you, too. —Marc Hogan",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/18173/homepage_large.055cffaa.jpg,/dataset/artwork/DRAM-Broccoli_ft_Lil_Yachty.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,32,Kanye West,“No More Parties in LA” [ft. Kendrick Lamar],Def Jam / GOOD,"Essentially a microcosm track of The Life of Pablo, “No More Parties in L.A.” may just be Kanye West’s most urgently scatterbrained banger. Despite 12 songwriter credits, it seems nearly accidental, like West’s real-time fever dream jammed between conference calls, gym sets, and Twitter bouts. So swathes of Walter Morrison, Ghostface Killah, Larry Graham, and Johnny “Guitar” Watson cuts are accordioned into tangled, thorny funk; so guest MC Kendrick Lamar, reveling in his recent triumphs, is at his punniest here. (“Come Erykah Badu me/Well, let’s make a movie.”) “No More Parties” feels vital and alive because West seems to have more thoughts percolating than he can express. All is breathless shorthand: the gesticulated self-mythology surveying, the Glamorama SparkNotes, the over-specific sex-talk, that cock-eyed callback to “Real Friends,” the unmistakable impression that West’s got more creative irons in the fire than there are hours in the day. “Pink fur, got Nori dressing like Cam/Thank God for me” segues neatly into “Whole family getting money/Thank God for E!” The lyric, like the song as a whole, links West’s past, present, and future—he is rapping like we never thought he would again, even though he’s light-years removed from the baller with a backpack who used to wear bear costumes on his album sleeves. –Raymond Cummings",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/17921/homepage_large.868c6503.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kanye_West-No_More_Parties_in_LA_ft_Kendrick_Lamar.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,31,A Tribe Called Quest,“Dis Generation”,Epic,"We Got It From Here...Thank You 4 Your service operates on several levels: It is a revival and a requiem, an affirmation and a farewell. “Dis Generation” functions as its fulcrum, providing a pivot between A Tribe Called Quest’s past and a hip-hop that will exist without them. To that end, Q-Tip nods at Joey Badas$$, Earl Sweatshirt, Kendrick Lamar, and J. Cole, but he’s not so much passing the torch as placing the new guard into a continuum that predates him. Even so, the hazy, soulful shimmer of “Dis Generation” deliberately evokes A Tribe Called Quest’s prime. In sampling Musical Youth’s “Pass the Dutchie” for its hook, they draw a direct line back to 1992, when the same song provided a rhythm for the “Vampire Mix” of “I Left My Wallet in El Segundo”—and the group revels in the lush production, trading jokes, devoting a large passage to compatriot Busta Rhymes, and looking at the present with clear eyes. In “Dis Generation,” A Tribe Called Quest bridge eras with poignant joy, writing with a sense of middle-aged wisdom about what’s been gained and lost, still hopeful for what’s to come. Even if things won’t be like they once were, culture is built upon the passing of generations. –Stephen Thomas Erlewine Listen: A Tribe Called Quest: “Dis Generation”",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/18608/homepage_large.b09d5f35.jpg,/dataset/artwork/A_Tribe_Called_Quest-Dis_Generation.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,30,Drake,“One Dance” [ft. Wizkid and Kyla],Cash Money / Young Money Entertainment,"Drake’s business model has proven to be very successful. It’s basic licensing: When he hears something he likes, he stamps his name on it, adds a few verses from his tried-and-tested playbook, and calls it a hit. So it goes with “One Dance,” arguably the earworm of the year. The song includes two features: one of them a sample of the all-but-unknown singer Kyla Reid, whose velvety voice provides an essential hook, along with echoey punctuations by Nigerian artist Wizkid. These valuable outsiders provide the foundation to which “One Dance” returns whenever Drake’s stock melodicism needs a jolt of momentum. But is Drake’s strategy canny tastemaking or stealth exploitation? Kyla was thrilled when the song was released with her name on it; she pissed off her neighbors by blasting it 20 times in a row. “Once Dance” has since hit No. 1 in over 10 countries. It became the most streamed song in Spotify’s history. The business model works again. Everyone’s happy. —Jonah Bromwich Listen: Drake: “One Dance” [ft. Wizkid and Kyla]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=36&v=GG8kG4YJz7A,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/18160/homepage_large.5b4f15d2.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Drake-One_Dance_ft_Wizkid_and_Kyla.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,29,Bon Iver,“22 (OVER S∞∞N)”,Jagjaguwar,"Bon Iver’s 22, A Million is far from the kind of music made for mass consumption, yet something about it resonated for many. Through a thick haze of newfound inscrutability and looping weariness, Justin Vernon’s voice emerges as one of the most powerful tools in music. Opening track “22 (OVER S∞∞N)” is comprised of sounds that often seem broken, or maybe just organized with chaos in mind. But his voice corrals everything together, allowing those brief pockets of sweet saxophone hiss, swells of strings, and spectral choruses to have direct emotional impact. The tangling of Vernon’s recent digital inhumanity with warm empathy makes for something that is poignant for reasons that are hard to articulate, but viscerally felt nonetheless. –Kevin Lozano",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/463/22over.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bon_Iver-22_OVER_SN.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,28,Beyoncé,“Hold Up”,Columbia / Parkwood,"Lemonade is Beyoncé’s most reflective album, as she refuses to play the one-dimensional scorned woman the past few years of tabloids have reduced her to. “Hold Up” finds her peeved (to say the least), but she doesn’t sound peeved. The samples are a bit prickly, a bit twitchy, but the track ultimately projects calm—an Andy Williams fragment ends up somewhere between new age and reggae—and the video is as much about smashing shit as dancing around the shards with the whole neighborhood. It’s a stream of consciousness—Beyoncé’s vocals and lyrics outpace the track throughout—but for all the emotional liability, the fears about “looking jealous or crazy,” and the vow to fuck up a bitch, the lyrics are ultimately completely contained. As always, what Beyoncé presents the listener is utterly unflappable, idle musings upon lodging a baseball bat into the windshield of the unworthy. To call her “crazy” would be wrong; it’s a mark of skill and gravitas that “Hold Up” makes perfect sense. –Katherine St. Asaph Listen: Beyoncé: “Hold Up”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeonBmeFR8o,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/18207/homepage_large.5b1e1500.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beyonc-Hold_Up.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,27,Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds,“I Need You”,Bad Seed Ltd.,"In a break between sessions for what would become Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds’ 16th album, Cave’s 15-year-old son Arthur fell to his death from the white cliffs of Brighton. And while the music was mostly arranged and all the lyrics written by that point, that tragedy shadows Skeleton Tree like a ghost. For grief of this magnitude and proximity, words founder for even the stoutest of poets. And while Cave’s ink-black prose has detailed death of every sort over the decades, on “I Need You,” you can hear him abut that wordless void, dealing with a pain that rekindles in line at the grocery store. “Nothing really matters” and “I need you” are as timeworn as any string of three words can be, but even if Cave can’t quite suss a new metaphor, he contorts his voice to convey the anguish instead. He drawls out these lines like an old country act as Bad Seed Warren Ellis shadows that heartache via his microKORG. Wringing the rrr of “matters” and eee of “need” like a dishrag, Cave reveals an unsounded sadness and the paucity of language to express it. –Andy Beta Listen: Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds: “I Need You”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAMZYpZi_M4,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/18520/homepage_large.4c7c9db8.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nick_Cave__the_Bad_Seeds-I_Need_You.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,26,Danny Brown,"“Really Doe” [ft. Kendrick Lamar, Ab-Soul, and Earl Sweatshirt]",Warp,"Several tracks on Atrocity Exhibition portray Danny Brown in a state of private anxiety, but “Really Doe” displays the MC at a peak of ebullience and oddball sociability. Over droning bass tones and a manic xylophone loop, the Detroit rapper proffers sex brags full of unexpected metaphor (“That hoe want my piccolo”), and compares the force of his rhyming to the blast from a C4 explosive. His emphatic release is matched by everyone else on this posse cut: Kendrick Lamar switches up speeds and rhythmic stresses, handling the chorus with a couplet that claps back against rivals. (“I ain’t boomin’—that’s a goddamn lie, whoa/Really doe, like really doe.”) Earl Sweatshirt pivots from “countin’...dubs” to hanging “on a mountain with monks.” And Ab-Soul giddily recalls snatching his mom’s wedding ring for a session of elementary school “show-and-tell.” The upside is obvious: When you’re getting sick of your own interiority, invite some of your more intrepid friends over to the house. –Seth Colter Walls Listen: Danny Brown: “Really Doe” [ft. Kendrick Lamar, Ab-Soul, Earl Sweatshirt]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spfsdpuvUyQ,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/18533/homepage_large.b6fee46a.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Danny_Brown-Really_Doe_ft_Kendrick_Lamar_Ab-Soul_and_Earl_Sweatshirt.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,25,Frank Ocean,“Nikes”,Self-released,"In the years since 2012’s magnificent Channel Orange, we eventually stopped asking when, but if there’d ever be a new Frank Ocean album. He’d drop a song or two, tease us with sporadic Tumblr posts, then fade into the ether just as abruptly. So in a way, Blonde opener “Nikes” encapsulates everything Ocean has been to us in his career: moody, elusive, mysterious, heartwarming. Pitched to a nearly chipmunk falsetto, the singer looks at himself and his environment, wondering what’s become of such a beautiful mess. It’s woozy and all over the place, steeped in drunken sadness and off-the-cuff reflection. “Pour up for A$AP,” Ocean muses at one point. “R.I.P. Pimp C/R.I.P. Trayvon, that nigga look just like me.” Still, “Nikes” isn’t just about societal ills, it’s a kiss-off to gold-diggers looking for a pay day: “These bitches want Nikes, they lookin’ for a check/Tell ’em it ain’t likely.” That sentiment isn’t a shock coming from a guy like Ocean, of course: You can get a piece of him, but don’t get too attached. –Marcus J. Moore Listen: Frank Ocean: “Nikes”",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/463/blonde.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Frank_Ocean-Nikes.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,24,Radiohead,“Daydreaming”,XL,"“Daydreaming” begins—like countless Radiohead songs before it—in the midst of a nebulous disaster. But something’s different here. In an oeuvre animated by technological angst, political indignation, and the threat of ecological catastrophe, this song is rare in that it exists “beyond the point of no return,” instead of on its cusp. “It’s too late,” Thom Yorke concedes, his tone dripping elegant defeat. “The damage is done.” The song’s innocent title is misleading—there is a sense, in the sleepwalking piano motif and disembodied vocal fragments, of a post-traumatic, amnesiac daze. That the narrator’s circumstances remain shrouded feels less like Radiohead-being-Radiohead than a sort of radical expressionism, the work of someone who has waded so deep into troubled thoughts that only abstractions remain. Yet there is room, in Yorke’s coda, for a flicker of exposition: “Half of my life,” he sighs repeatedly, vocals reversed and entombed in reverb. Yorke, 47 when A Moon Shaped Pool came out, had recently separated from his partner of 23 years—about as long as Radiohead have been releasing music. “Daydreaming” is a reckoning with those years, and, in one way or another, an elegy to them. –Jazz Monroe Listen: Radiohead: “Daydreaming”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTAU7lLDZYU,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/18247/homepage_large.b173f9c8.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Radiohead-Daydreaming.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,23,David Bowie,“I Can't Give Everything Away”,ISO/Columbia,"For decades, David Bowie dropped the best breadcrumbs in rock, and embraced the fans who did the sleuthing: What fate befell Major Tom? Was the Thin White Duke steeped in the occult? So when his 25th album, Blackstar, closed on an overtly cryptic note, it was easy to fall down this next rabbit hole, and wonder what, exactly, he was sing about atop this inquisitive jazz-pop. “With blackout hearts, with flowered news/With skull designs upon my shoes,” he sang resignedly—but was that a grace note of frustration? And how about that warbling, plaintive melody—what bounty was he withholding? It was the shortest Bowie or his followers ever reveled in one of his mysteries; two days after Blackstar’s release, he passed away. And so we learned that this beguiling, openhearted performer had created a gracious farewell with his final album, and particularly this song—the last this shepherd of the fringes would ever sing to his flock. It’s a gentle confirmation of what we knew: that he still had worlds within him, and that he would never have time to express them all. Because every time the song ends, Bowie is gone again. –Stacey Anderson Listen: David Bowie: “I Can't Give Everything Away”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZscv36UUHo,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/463/blackstar.jpg,/dataset/artwork/David_Bowie-I_Cant_Give_Everything_Away.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,22,Jenny Hval,“Conceptual Romance”,Sacred Bones,"In Chris Kraus’ I Love Dick, romantic rejection becomes its own form of creativity. Spurned by the sociologist Dick, Kraus in turn rejects consummation as the end point of infatuation, and in doing so, interrogates the intersection of failure and desire. Named for Kraus’ “conceptual romance,” the centerpiece track of Jenny Hval’s Blood Bitch finds the Norwegian visionary opening a similar portal. On the precipice of heartbreak, she loses herself in her “combined failures” rather than succumb to sentimentality, and she arrives at a revelation. “I understand infatuation, rejection/They can connect and become everything, everything that’s torn up in your life,” she sings, a faint trace of hysteria shaking her calm voice. Here, sensation and loss aren’t the voids they’re usually framed as, but the tangible fabric of existence. “Conceptual Romance” is an anthem for over-thinkers and individuals, for those who value anticipation over payoff. Though going by Hval’s insidious, dusky melody—the very best of her catalog to date—she’s more of a natural at seduction than she’d like to let on. –Laura Snapes",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/18457/homepage_large.7488c469.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jenny_Hval-Conceptual_Romance.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,21,Solange,“Don’t Touch My Hair” [ft. Sampha],Columbia,"The personal is the political. And in Solange’s “Don’t Touch My Hair,” the political is black agency and resiliency in the face of the everyday. Blackness comes with certain truths in this country. Our blackness is laden with history, adversity, and overcoming. For black women, that is especially true. Admission into white society often inscribes sacrifice of the mind and body. We suppress our emotions in the face of hate. But recently many black women have refused to suppress their hair and, in the process, reclaimed bodily autonomy. We will no longer conform. “Don’t Touch My Hair” gives these ideas musical form: “You know this hair is my shit/Rode the ride, I gave it time/But this here is mine,” Solange sings in the chorus. She has gone through the process of reclaiming her coils. And although its height and structure and beauty leave others in awe, her hair is not something to sully with your confusion or questions or hands. They are “the feelings I wear,” Solange sings, but also her “pride” and “glory.” It's not just hair. It was never just hair. –Britt Julious Listen: Solange: “Don’t Touch My Hair”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTtrnDbOQAU,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/18552/homepage_large.fa67239b.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Solange-Dont_Touch_My_Hair_ft_Sampha.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,20,Car Seat Headrest,“Fill in the Blank”,Matador,"Car Seat Headrest’s Will Toledo burst through this year like he’d been preparing his whole life for it, making his previous work seem like merely a dress rehearsal. Throughout the dense and knotty songs on Teens of Denial, his first album of new material since signing to Matador Records, you can hear Toledo’s attempt to divulge all he knows: about drugs, about friendship, about youth, about life. But its opening number, “Fill in the Blank,” compressed the album’s 70-minute sprawl into one vicious rock song. When Toledo, dressed a bit like the cool older brother at his sister’s Bat Mitzvah, performed the song on Colbert this summer, he made its energy physical, stuttering and shaking with the song’s all-caps lyrics sheet projected behind him (“YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO BE DEPRESSED/YOU NEVER TRIED HARD ENOUGH TO LIKE IT”). Even as Toledo sings about having seen too much of the world, he doesn’t seem like he’s about to turn away in defeat; he’s now ready to take it all on. –Sam Sodomsky Listen: Car Seat Headrest: “Fill in the Blank”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_a1hPwXiWw,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/18175/homepage_large.92367a62.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Car_Seat_Headrest-Fill_in_the_Blank.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,19,Leonard Cohen,“You Want It Darker”,Sony,"There’s a beautiful story about Leonard Cohen that starts after his father’s funeral. Cohen was nine. Mourning, confused, faced with the infinite mystery of death, Cohen snipped the wing of one of his father’s bow ties, stuffed a small note inside it, and buried the tie in the yard. “I’ve been digging in the garden for years, looking for it,” Cohen said later. “Maybe that’s all I’m doing, looking for the note.” The story’s themes–ritual, testament, the unearthly ways we bear our earthly pain–became the anchors of Cohen’s songs. His 14th and final album, You Want It Darker, opens with its title track, written in direct address: “If you are the dealer, I’m out of the game/If you are the healer, it means I’m broken and lame.” Thirty years ago, he would’ve said the same thing to a lover, but at 82, he talks mostly to God. You think his voice—spectral, bottomless, the sound of wind sweeping across an empty cave—indicates a connection to the beyond, but Cohen’s explanation was more terrestrial: “500 tons of whiskey and, you know, a million cigarettes.” But that is—or was—Leonard Cohen, an artist for whom the gutters of life were shortcuts to heaven. –Mike Powell Listen: Leonard Cohen: “You Want It Darker”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0nmHymgM7Y,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/18536/homepage_large.df53b5a0.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Leonard_Cohen-You_Want_It_Darker.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,18,Bon Iver,“33 ‘GOD’”,Jagjaguwar,"In between two incongruous moments—a tossed-off reference to the aggressively hip boutique hotel chain the Ace and a sped-up sample of country singer Jim Ed Brown’s “Morning”—something truly strange happens to Bon Iver’s “33 ‘GOD’”: It is besmirched by bird shit. You ears might not have noticed, but it's right there in the lyric video: What could pass for a manipulated string sample is rendered, in the style of a stage direction, as “(bird shit).” Its intended purpose is as inscrutable as anything in the song’s free-associative lyrics, which veer from diaristic fragments (“Sent your sister home in a cab”) to perfect couplets marrying the sublime with the quotidian (“I could go forward in the light/Well I better fold my clothes”). But that very inscrutability goes to the heart of what makes the song so fascinating—not just lyrically but also musically, as Vernon’s ruminative piano chords are tossed this way and that by odd squalls of digital interference. There’s clearly some kind of crisis of faith going on here; the song is prefaced by an excerpt from this oft-quoted passage from Psalm 22: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish?” But Vernon’s willingness to crap on his own canvas proves his disinterest, even in the eyes of God, in taking himself too seriously. Perhaps everyone writing tortured genius exegeses of songs that were never meant to be unpacked should take a page from his book. –Philip Sherburne",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuhudy0A6nA,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/18510/homepage_large.23b4f53b.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bon_Iver-33_GOD.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,17,Anderson .Paak,“Am I Wrong”,Empire/OBE/Steel Wool/Art Club,"Dancing and self-consciousness make for one of the uneasiest combinations in music. But Anderson .Paak makes it work on “Am I Wrong” by sneaking it in under the cover of a supremely self-assured performance, shooting off about free time being precious and social effort not going to waste. As far as deflections go, Schoolboy Q playing retro-disco “Love Boat” guest star is a major one; you'd be excused for thinking it's the heart of the track, all no-worries party liberation. And that electric-piano glow sparks daydreams of unheard circa-In Our Lifetime Marvin Gaye/Donald Byrd collaborations, but still pulses like it’s too wavy for ’80. Time’s precious, but only an extended 12” mix could make “Am I Wrong” sink in deeper—and leave plenty of room for ambivalence and confidence to hash things out. –Nate Patrin Listen: Anderson .Paak “Am I Wrong” [ft. Schoolboy Q]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvPeJLcK2Lk,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/463/malibu.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Anderson_Paak-Am_I_Wrong.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,16,Mitski,“Your Best American Girl”,Dead Oceans,"The lead single from Puberty 2—the album that took Mitski Miyawaki from being a good, heartfelt singer-songwriter to the architect of her own graceful vision—is a perfect glass terrarium of a song. Within it, heartaches grow like moss: the desire to be seen for who you truly are by the person you love, the chill of knowing that even the most tender touch can’t bridge some cultural gaps, the knowledge that you’ll have to say goodbye sooner than you wanted to. It’s both universally resonant and personally specific. Even the rock convention she adopts—contrasting spacious, stripped-down verses with a blown-out, full-bore chorus—is done deftly, and lands with a hollow ache. Turn this song in any direction and you’ll find a new perspective to view its tiny, complete world. –Jes Skolnik",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/18061/homepage_large.3f67e6a3.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mitski-Your_Best_American_Girl.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,15,Blood Orange,“Best to You” [ft. Empress Of],Domino,"Dev Hynes is one model of what a pop auteur should aspire to in 2016: sonically omnivorous, constantly evolving, driven by righteous anger against systemic injustice while empowering marginalized people. But his best-known songs are about the way people hurt each other in the most intimate spaces. “Best to You” leaps from its hazy, funkadelic surroundings, a poison-penned duet wherein Hynes’ female counterpart plays against type. Empress Of’s Lorely Rodriguez begs to forfeit her independence and identity to be nothing to a someone of her choosing: “I can’t be the girl you want but I can be the thing you throw away.” And surely, some took Rodriguez’s airy delivery, the percolating, chillwave-meets-Afro-pop percussion, and the song’s title at face value and ignored the lyrics, including it on Spotify mixes as a presumptive love song. But the key is right there on Freetown Sound’s cover: That young couple in their bedroom might appear temporarily immune to the indignities that Hynes documents painfully on the rest of the album, but they're not safe from their own private cruelties. –Ian Cohen Listen: Blood Orange: “Best to You” [ft. Empress Of]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACinCwmWalY,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/18419/homepage_large.eacc2030.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Blood_Orange-Best_to_You_ft_Empress_Of.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,14,Kanye West,“Real Friends”,Def Jam / GOOD,"“Real Friends” is a sober moment amid Kanye West’s chaos. Primarily produced by West, the beat is relatively throwback and very tight, with echoed boom-bap drums and ambient keys that ring out, sad as hell. Here, Kanye delivers The Life of Pablo’s truest lines, a litany of complaints and regrets against himself, his family, and his friends. “When was the last time I remembered a birthday?/When was the last time I wasn’t in a hurry?” he asks himself, as if poring over diary pages. Then Ty Dolla $ign swoops in, backing him up, his golden warble the emotional underline to Kanye’s acid. The song nearly ends with Kanye vowing to “throw dirt” on his enemies, but then a chorus of angels enters from stage left and blesses the whole sorry state of affairs. It’s not a flashy song but an honest one. –Matthew Schnipper",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/17906/homepage_large.97307e19.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kanye_West-Real_Friends.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,13,Frank Ocean,“Pink + White”,Self-released,"Whether he’s casually sidestepping the Grammys, following up a No. 1 album with minimal tour dates, or emerging from a thorough profile with his mystique intact, Frank Ocean’s disregard for the status quo has defined his year. This fact is also evident throughout “Pink + White”’s chill-inducing waltz. The song relegates the world’s biggest pop star to an uncredited support vocal spot. Meanwhile, Frank’s lyrics flow in a stream of consciousness too meticulous to be candid. The images he paints feel at once heart-achingly intimate yet vague. He doesn’t name his muses. His stories arc without exposition or resolution. All this while he strings scenes of a post-Katrina New Orleans (“In the wake of a hurricane.../Nose dive in the flood lines/Tall tower of milk crates”) and waning childhood (“Remember life/Remember how it was/Climb trees, Michael Jackson, it all ends here”) into one of the sweetest melodies of 2016. At this point, it’s futile to try and pin Ocean down. His art is paradoxical at every level. The more critics attempt to parse his identity, the more fluid it becomes. –Corey Smith-West Listen: Frank Ocean: “Pink + White”",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/463/blonde.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Frank_Ocean-Pink__White.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,12,Chance the Rapper,“No Problem” [ft. 2 Chainz and Lil Wayne],Self-released,"“No Problem” is nothing but infectious. There’s a chipmunk soul vocal loop (not a sample), an instantly memorable and recognizable hook, and a callback to another great rap song. But despite its vibrancy—Chance the Rapper’s primary mode throughout Coloring Book—the song is a departure for Chance. Blessed with a voice that transitions seamlessly between rapping and singing, the Chicago artist has never leaned on Auto-Tune or other noticeable vocal enhancements. His light rasp and trademark yips are part of his charm. But on “No Problem,” he adds just enough of a computerized touch to make the song stand out without entering robotic territory. He also includes two big-name veterans on the track: Lil Wayne and 2 Chainz drop by and Chance laps them both, but there’s nothing competitive or bloodthirsty about the song. “No Problem” is Chance’s unsigned-artist manifesto, his way of him telling the major labels, “I can do what you can do, only much, much better.” –Matthew Strauss",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/chancetherapper/no-problem-feat-lil-wayne-2-chainz,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/18269/homepage_large.480df066.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Chance_the_Rapper-No_Problem_ft_2_Chainz_and_Lil_Wayne.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,11,A Tribe Called Quest,“We the People...”,Epic,"Rappers can often be heard observing (and decrying) the differences between idealism and practicality. But on A Tribe Called Quest’s “We the People...”—the second track from their refined final album—they take this yardstick to the nation at large. After a synth-led introduction, Q-Tip’s first rhymes momentarily stall the song’s forward motion, as he throws down a challenge to the Constitution’s opening statement: “We don’t believe you/Cause ‘We the People’/Are still here in the rear/Yo, we don’t need you.” With the culture in a “killing off good young nigga mood,” the MC reports on a chasm that still exists between the nation’s abstract virtues and its daily, lived reality. After noting how gentrification threatens vulnerable communities, Q-Tip proposes a cynical redraft of the national credo: “All you Black folks, you must go/All you Mexicans, you must go/All you poor folks, you must go.” For good measure, he includes some other targets of resurgent white nationalist politics: “Muslims and gays, boy, we hate your ways.” The melody he attaches to this chorus is pointedly simplistic, near-monotone, and devoid of the vibrant personality of his opening bars. In the second verse, it’s up to the late Phife Dawg to reenergize the culture under assault. He does so with boldness and wit, nominating Tribe’s pluralist swagger as an aphrodisiac: “We got your missy smitten, rubbing on her little kitten/Dreaming of a world that's equal for women, with no division.” –Seth Colter Walls Listen: A Tribe Called Quest: “We the People…”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vO2Su3erRIA,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/18610/homepage_large.b09d5f35.jpg,/dataset/artwork/A_Tribe_Called_Quest-We_the_People.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,10,Rae Sremmurd,“Black Beatles” [ft. Gucci Mane],Eardruma,"“Black Beatles” is the moment Mike WiLL Made-It discovers a new universe while Rae Sremmurd find new ways to plug their irresistible voices into the pocket. There’s an elemental depth to the composition—Mike WiLL is on some Steve Reich shit. Such an industrial, looming beat became the soundtrack to the viral Mannequin Challenge where people froze, a tacit acknowledgment that the song’s buoyant flair is tempered by a monolithic quality so immense it stops time (fittingly, the Mannequin Challenge helped the brothers overcome underperforming album sales and score their first #1 record). With the fatherly presence of Gucci Mane, hot off his rejuvenated life post-prison, the song crams as much joy into itself as possible, the two young rappers and their Atlanta dad trading bars, comparing themselves to the most hallowed group in rock history. Swae Lee, the same guy who penned the irresistible Beyoncé hook “OK ladies, now let’s get in formation,” turns a meme (“Get you somebody that can do both”) into a sweet croon. By the time Slim Jxmmi declares, “Me and Paul McCartney related!” near the end, this pair has efficiently turned the song’s simple conceptual gag into a reflection of their own songwriting prowess. –Matthew Ramirez Listen: Rae Sremmurd: “Black Beatles”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8m9zhNAgKs,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/18487/homepage_large.7a5da091.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rae_Sremmurd-Black_Beatles_ft_Gucci_Mane.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,9,Radiohead,“True Love Waits”,XL,"For the longest time, it seemed like “True Love Waits” would remain one of the great songs never put to tape in a studio. Originally written around the time of 1995’s The Bends, Radiohead have played it live for years, and its ever-evolving form—from a delicately strummed version to one made opaque by reverb—has been chronicled by bootleggers and fans along the way. Though the band did release an official, stripped-down concert recording of the song in 2001—which producer Nigel Godrich once called “that shitty live version”—the mystery remained. But then, 21 years after it first graced a stage, “True Love Waits” showed up to close A Moon Shaped Pool. Fans have speculated that Thom Yorke’s own broken heart resulted in this definitive take; it’s more cracked and brittle than any bootleg, with pianos that pull at the singer’s voice like spirits tugging at the corporeal world. Lines that once felt like a plea—“just don’t leave”—sound hopeless now, Yorke singing to his departed lover. Whatever the reason the band felt the song was finally ready, “True Love Waits” is an elegiac coda to one of Radiohead’s most inward-facing albums and a fitting treatment to a song that many already considered a classic. The wait was worth it. –Nathan Reese Listen: Radiohead: “True Love Waits”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7JPH-ZtZSw,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/18252/homepage_large.5d81cc0b.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Radiohead-True_Love_Waits.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,8,Angel Olsen,“Shut Up Kiss Me”,Jagjaguwar,"Angel Olsen opens My Woman with a dreamy prediction that she will “fall in love with you someday.” That haze is short-lived; when “Shut Up Kiss Me” rolls around a few minutes later, she’s suddenly full of determination. “Someday” now translates to “immediately.” There’s no time for debate in her demand to “shut up kiss me hold me tight.” My Woman’s most rockin’ number cuts straight to the point. Olsen is no stranger to frank expression, but the dogged determination of “Shut Up Kiss Me” shows off many new tools in her arsenal. After her initial attempts at reconciliation prove futile, Olsen pulls out her final tactic: throaty temptation. As she offers herself as a vessel for her lover’s anxieties (“I could make it all disappear/You could feed me all of your fears”), something within Olsen snaps, and the gravity of the situation is truly felt for the first time. In the song’s self-directed video, this moment is represented by Olsen being dragged away on her roller-skates until she falls to the ground, her voice spinning off-kilter until it dissolves past words. There’s no resolution here, but there’s also no doubt that Olsen will get back on her feet and keep trying. –Quinn Moreland",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/18414/homepage_large.ba264203.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Angel_Olsen-Shut_Up_Kiss_Me.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,7,Rihanna,“Work” [ft. Drake],Roc Nation / Westbury Road,"It’s likely that the sweeping popularity of Rihanna’s “Work” led the way in a windfall of dancehall-inspired pop tunes throughout the year, from Tory Lanez’ “Luv” to Sia’s Sean Paul-featuring “Cheap Thrills,” bringing Caribbean riddims and vernacular to the top of the Billboard 100 for the first time in about a decade. (In a year where ethno-nationalism swept the United States, this feat proves Rihanna can be just as political as, say, the Knowles sisters.) Elsewhere in “Work,” Drake is at his earnest best, playing the emotional foil to Rihanna’s chorus while assuring her that he’d pick her over an equally hot, talented twin. The beat is magical and minimal, with Boi-1da leaving enough space to allow the two superstars to propel the song forward. In a year that gave us two AubRih songs (and plenty of relationship-status speculation), “Work” stands out in its urgent beauty. –Noah Yoo Listen: Rihanna: “Work” [ft. Drake]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HL1UzIK-flA,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/17942/homepage_large.163876d7.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rihanna-Work_ft_Drake.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,6,ANOHNI,“Drone Bomb Me”,Secretly Canadian / Rough Trade,"At the center of Luigi Russolo’s 1913 manifesto “The Art of Noises” is a letter from his friend and fellow Futurist F.T. Marinetti. It is a punch-drunk, stream-of-consciousness string of gibberish meant to replicate the concussive tumble of trench warfare—a breathless, onomatopoeic blast of “zang-tumb-tuumb” climaxing in an “orchestra of the noises of war swelling under a held note of silence in the high sky.” A “held note of silence” isn’t a bad description for the way Anohni’s voice cuts through the rapid-fire chaos—the rat-a-tat drums, the martial fanfare—of Hudson Mohawke and Oneohtrix Point Never’s production in the devastating “Drone Bomb Me,” which she has described as a “love song” from the perspective of a 9-year-old Afghani girl whose family has just been killed by a drone strike. But when she sings “I want to die” in a voice so clear it could stop bullets in mid-air, she turns the Futurists’ macho posturing on its head. In place of noise, Anohni gives us a melody that’s almost unbearably gorgeous. In place of Marinetti’s lust for war and “scorn for woman,” she posits radical empathy—an empathy so extreme, in fact, that it may make you a little uncomfortable. “Blow my head off,” she sings, giving voice to the little girl’s extravagant death wish. “Explode my crystal guts/Lay my purple on the grass.” –Philip Sherburne",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/18084/homepage_large.b5aa5403.jpg,/dataset/artwork/ANOHNI-Drone_Bomb_Me.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,5,David Bowie,“Lazarus”,ISO/Columbia,"There is no resurrection in “Lazarus.” The song arrives as a moment of tension: a lumbering melody tugged along by mournful saxophones and guitars that sound like heavy doors slamming shut. In it, our narrator finds himself in danger. He drops his cellphone and heads to New York City, desperation never too far behind. He has a fleeting vision of himself in the not-so-distant future: “I’ll be free, just like that bluebird.” After a chaotic squall—the kind of wild, jutting rhythm that Bowie used to ride toward the heavens—things abruptly fade, giving the song an eerie, elliptical end. In his last video, Bowie acts out that finale, looking terrified before flashing a sudden devilish smirk and retreating into the darkness. You forget for a second that he’s acting; then you remember he’s not. –Sam Sodomsky Listen: David Bowie: “Lazarus”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-JqH1M4Ya8,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/463/blackstar.jpg,/dataset/artwork/David_Bowie-Lazarus.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,4,Frank Ocean,“Ivy”,Boys Don't Cry,"“Oooh I could hate you now/It’s quite alright to hate me now,” sings Frank Ocean with all the tenderness in the world, “but we both know that deep down/The feeling still deep down is good.” A shimmery guitar intertwines with his voice, and the snake-space formed by their movement is mesmerizing. The only other musical element in this ballad of reflection and regret is a bassline whose understated propulsion allows for subtleties of timing that a rhythm section would deny. Love songs that trade in high-contrast emotions draped over straightforward song structures may be aspirational but they rarely ring true, which is why this love song stays with us, irrefutable and unexpected: “I had no chance to prepare/Couldn’t see you coming.” After climaxing with a scream, “Ivy” ends amid a scrabble of indeterminate noise. By including the sound of a song being abandoned, Ocean voices what every bruised lover knows: Messiness both fucks with grace and makes it possible. –Jace Clayton Listen: Frank Ocean: “Ivy”",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/18496/homepage_large.27e0e270.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Frank_Ocean-Ivy.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,3,Solange,“Cranes in the Sky”,Columbia,"“Cranes in the Sky” is a wondrously wrought song about emotional precarity and recovery. If the body and mind are some personal city unto itself, for Solange, the cranes looming above are powerful symbols of how omnipresent and ugly the work of self-care can be. With the help of Raphael Saadiq’s magnificently spacious production, she weaves together a series of defeats and diversions into some landscape of possible healing. It’s a small epic about coming to grips with yourself, framed as a deep, warm, musical embrace. –Kevin Lozano Listen: Solange: “Cranes in the Sky”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0qrinhNnOM,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/18556/homepage_large.c7b8ec6c.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Solange-Cranes_in_the_Sky.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,2,Beyoncé,“Formation”,Columbia / Parkwood,"No one was quite prepared for Beyoncé’s “Formation.” The video dropped with little fanfare—just an unlisted link on her website during a Saturday afternoon in the dead of winter. But by the next day, when Bey appeared at the Super Bowl halftime show with Coldplay and Bruno Mars, a new era had dawned. Both song and video were defiant, proud, political: Beyoncé flicked off the camera, sprawled before us, drowning atop a police car. She was taking a stand for herself and for larger issues like Black Lives Matter and police brutality, no longer conforming to the structures around her. Mike WiLL Made-It’s production begins piercingly, with sparse trap beats rolling into a marching-band stomp. Spindly synths bubble below the surface, a complement to aggressive, proudly black lyrics: “I like my negro nose with Jackson 5 nostrils,” Bey sings at one point. Here, plainly and strongly, is a woman redefining her long-established role as an entertainer; a few months later, upon the release of Lemonade, we also learned that this was a woman advocating for the resiliency and internalized power of all black women in a world that denigrates our minds and bodies. –Britt Julious Listen: Beyoncé: “Formation”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZDEX2ggvao,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/17969/homepage_large.55257b73.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beyonc-Formation.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2016 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9981-the-100-best-songs-of-2016/,2016,year,song,1,Kanye West,"“Ultralight Beam” [ft. Chance the Rapper, The-Dream, Kelly Price, and Kirk Franklin]",G.O.O.D. Music / Def Jam,"I’m tryna keep my faith. But I’m lookin’ for more. Kanye West has always stood before us a troubled, hungry soul, a Rorschach blot of desperation and exuberance. During his frantic, decade-long scramble to the pulsing center of pop culture, he has often seemed a man cursed by dissatisfaction, doomed to pull repeatedly from a thermos of salted water. It’s been hard not to wonder, whether you hated or loved him: What drives this guy? Can anyone keep this up? Somewhere I can feel safe. And end this holy war. As 2016 dawned uneasily, West seemed, for the first time, capable of succumbing to the exhaustion that was the flip side of his blazing creative energy. He was in the second half of his 30s; he’d had his second child; he was trying to corral an unruly mess of an album that seemed to keep defying basic order and structure. So he opened the album with a prayer. The song is at least 30 percent silence. Silence is not a common guest on Kanye West’s albums. Here, it is the star. Pray for Paris. Pray for the parents. “Ultralight Beam” is an exalted space, a promise of redemption and healing that felt more fragile and unlikely as the year wore on. It is a song of Godlike perspective from a man who spent most of the year appearing to have none. It’s a Kanye West song with almost no Kanye West in it. Oh, he is responsible for it—technically speaking, he is the reason that Kirk Franklin and Kelly Price are here, sharing space with The-Dream and Chance the Rapper; he’s the motivation behind this thumping, sleepy beat and those rafter-quaking gospel harmonies. But apart from dispensing some words of kindness and benediction, he barely appears. Whatever we are meant to experience inside of this little space, we need him out of the way. He seems to understand this. This is a God dream. This is everything. Not much felt safe or certain in 2016, the year of crumbling structures and looming threats realized. Humanity’s penchant for destroying itself, for tearing at societal bonds, took its raging turn in the spotlight. There was precious little empathy or palpable love to be found. We all seem exhausted. On November 22, West checked himself into a hospital, shortly after unraveling onstage, for “temporary psychosis due to sleep deprivation and dehydration.” He spent Thanksgiving there, canceling future tour dates. Weeks earlier, his wife had been held up at gunpoint in a brutal robbery. As the darkness closes in, “Ultralight Beam” pulses outward, neither dimming nor brightening as it offers its unchanging message: This is a God dream. This is everything. Everything. –Jayson Greene Listen: Kanye West: “Ultralight Beam” [ft. Chance the Rapper, The-Dream, Kelly Price, and Kirk Franklin]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkBKJMTCHGk,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/463/lifeofpablo.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kanye_West-Ultralight_Beam_ft_Chance_the_Rapper_The-Dream_Kelly_Price_and_Kirk_Franklin.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/,2015,year,album,50,Dawn Richard,Blackheart,Our Dawn Entertainment,"At once vast, inventive, unfashionably earnest, and rapturously liberated, Blackheart is a stunning personal statement from Dawn Richard. Recorded around the time of her grandmother’s death and father’s cancer diagnosis, as well as the demise of her former band Danity Kane, the album is deep and raw, emotionally epic even in its sonic plateaus. Its genre-busting scope is also a form of catharsis, coming from a 31-year-old industry vet who is finally her own boss (not to mention manager, label, and publicist). ""Blow"" pledges to ""Forget this modest shit/ We taking all of it"". The beats, co-produced with Noisecastle III, are a revelation, sending R&B spinning into any and all nearby galaxies. Blackheart’s sounds are ambitious not just in breadth and scale (though highlights ""Calypso"", ""Warriors"", and ""Castles"" are staggering by any metric) but in their detail, too. As ""Projection"" simmers down, ambient afterthoughts swing in and out of earshot in parabolic arcs: Synths undulate, Björk-ish vocals teem, woodwind flutters, shutters flicker. Though it’s part two in a slated trilogy, Blackheart feels like the completion of an artistic vision. —Jazz Monroe",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/dawn_richard/dawn-richard-ft-aundrea-fimbres-phoenix,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/21374/homepage_large.70e74a8f.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dawn_Richard-Blackheart.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/,2015,year,album,49,Natalie Prass,Natalie Prass,Spacebomb,"What made Natalie Prass’ first album stand out from the seemingly endless pile of Authentic American Roots Music wasn’t how real it felt, but how artificial. Like Elvis in Hawaii or a leather sofa with a plastic slip cover, Prass and her collaborator Matthew E. White’s blend of '70s soul, variety-show country, and music theater is a perpetual mixed signal. Gritty one minute and detached the next, it's confessional in subject matter but brittle, even chilly, in delivery. The façade is moving in part because of the occasional ways it cracks. Take ""Christy"" (""a name that isn’t too short or too sweet… Christy""), a song Prass says she wrote as a study on the idea of the Other Woman but didn’t register until a few years later, when the song happened to her. All from a former teenage LARPer who once had an epiphany about the majesty of life while dressed as a werewolf and staring at the moon. Sometimes it only takes a whisper to say how you really feel; sometimes it takes a hundred flutes. —Mike Powell Natalie Prass: ""Bird of Prey""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXJJSPUpAQE,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/21357/homepage_large.dea00a83.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Natalie_Prass-Natalie_Prass.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/,2015,year,album,48,Shamir,Ratchet,XL,"It'd be fine if all Shamir Bailey had going for him was the virtuosity of his voice—his countertenor is capable of subdued softness and piercing force in equal measure. But it's the place that voice is coming from, and the people it's built to connect with, that brings Ratchet to light as something more than just a hell of a performance. Shamir is an outsider with a lot of territories to be outside of. He was raised in a tourist city that he depicts in the deceptively bubbly leadoff cut as more of a temporary destination than a permanent home (""Vegas""), simultaneously living through and numbed to the social connections of party culture (""Make a Scene"", ""Hot Mess"") as he carries a binary-rejecting genderqueer identity. So his only recourse is to stand defiant with a voice that shuns the simplicity of macho posturing for razor-witted shade (""On the Regular""). That perspective is essential to his songs' insight, a wide-scope view that makes the emotions that drive his desire the great equalizer. There's a lot of ambivalence, guilt, and fear in his music, whether he's letting a relationship corrupt him (""Demon"") or fighting through the repercussions of it all to try and come out stronger in the end (""Call It Off""). With producer (and former Pitchfork contributor) Nick Sylvester warping versatile post-Jaxx house into immediate pop and R&B, Ratchet is one of the best albums in recent memory that damn near anyone can get psyched up—or introspective—to. That Shamir pulls it off in a way that sounds so joyous and anthemic, well, that's what a virtuoso does. —Nate Patrin Shamir: ""Call It Off""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10Kc7RK2rOs,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/21847/homepage_large.611afec6.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Shamir-Ratchet.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/,2015,year,album,47,DJ Koze,DJ-Kicks,!K7,"While DJ Koze’s playful, low-key attitude has always made him one of dance music’s more peripheral figures, it’s also made him one of its most valuable resources: The studiously unserious guy who makes you wonder what seriousness is for. It’s one of the reasons the DJ mix suits him so well—DJ mixes being a form of collage and collages being a form of joke, a place of distant connections and unusual juxtapositions. Amongst the heavy-lidded hip-hop and effervescent, late-night house on his contribution to the DJ-Kicks series, we get Koze’s idea of a climax: William Shatner doing faux-beatnik spoken word—surprising not because of how much it stands out, but by how cosmically it fits. —Mike Powell",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/k7-records/dj-koze-i-havent-been-everywhere-but-its-on-my-list-from-dj-kicks,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/21935/homepage_large.ac3198f8.jpg,/dataset/artwork/DJ_Koze-DJ-Kicks.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/,2015,year,album,46,Tobias Jesso Jr.,Goon,True Panther,"""Hollywood"", the centerpiece of Tobias Jesso Jr.’s debut album Goon, offers a cautionary tale to those enraptured by bright lights, huge billboards, and glistening walks of fame. ""Think I’m gonna die in Hollywood,"" sings Jesso, who spent some of his twenties haplessly trying to become a big time pop songwriter in Los Angeles, dreaming of working with his favorite artist, Adele. It is a somber song about failure, written by a guy coming to terms with his own youthful illusions. So it’s more than a little ironic that ""Hollywood"" caught Adele’s ear earlier this year, causing her to enlist Jesso to write for her record-busting new album. If Jesso’s unlikely redemption story was the plot of an actual Hollywood film, it would be tough not to call bullshit. But at the same time, considering the plainspoken glories of Goon, his breakthrough makes a certain kind of cosmic sense. Jesso’s years as a wannabe songwriter weren’t fruitless after all: along with supplying some character-building roadblocks, they helped him hone a durable, open-ended technique. Throughout the album, he tackles subjects that know no expiration date—desire, heartbreak, betrayal—with arrangements and melodies that Paul McCartney could covet. As if to test the foundations of Goon’s songs, Jesso and his jazzbo live band spent the year showing off dramatically revamped renditions in styles ranging from reggae, to dixieland, to metal, to funk. Indeed, these shameless musings of a lovelorn fool hold up quite well. Some Hollywood stories never get old. —Ryan Dombal Tobias Jesso Jr.: ""Hollywood""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEeueAZUVeM,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/21422/homepage_large.44e3ab4b.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tobias_Jesso_Jr-Goon.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/,2015,year,album,45,Jim O’Rourke,Simple Songs,Drag City,"There was something reassuring about Jim O’Rourke turning up in 2015 and using the title Simple Songs as a banner to tack across a set of deeply quixotic music. The album’s often difficult, sometimes purposefully stodgy, with O’Rourke carrying a newly gruff voice that bears a sailor’s bark, sometimes recalling unlikely figures like British bawler Joe Cocker. If it shares a singular trait with the other ""pop"" albums he’s made for Drag City, it’s in its complete removal from time and space—now, as then, this music exists in a vacuum, the result of a rare vision, moving from weathered to cozy, pushing and pulling horns and strings into places only O’Rourke can fathom. It can seem impenetrable at first, with tracks often deeply compressed under the weight of ideas. It’s in the passing of time that Simple Songs finds its shape, causing it to slowly take on new, largely autumnal-shaded colors. Mostly, the power of allusion is foregrounded—you never get a great sense of who O’Rourke is from this music, with vague trails of humor and sadness and anger left behind, all left to make sense (or not) in the mind of the listener. —Nick Neyland Jim O'Rourke: ""Friends With Benefits""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5z60wXBLYQ,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/21757/homepage_large.428bd068.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jim_ORourke-Simple_Songs.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/,2015,year,album,44,Jazmine Sullivan,Reality Show,RCA,"Jazmine Sullivan’s return to music after a four-year silence is inspired by lives both imaginary and tragically personal. In 2011, she abruptly declared on social media that she was leaving the recording industry; the announcement represented a breaking point after quietly suffering in an abusive relationship. Sullivan was later rejuvenated by writing lyrics that empathized with all women, no matter their circumstances: the carefully preserved beauty who trades on her looks in ""Mascara"", the unemployed single mother turned bank robber in ""Silver Lining"", the ""Stupid Girl"" who is objectified and then cast aside like a used toy by men. Delivered with a spirited voice, and a sense of purpose, these songs could be a musical accompaniment to Alice Walker’s ""In Love & Trouble"". ""My flaws don’t look so bad,"" Sullivan sings on ""Masterpiece (Mona Lisa)"". ""Every part of me is beautiful, and I finally see I’m a work of art."" The 27-year-old Philly artist may have outgrown urban pop radio; her third album is the first in her career that hasn’t generated a major hit (although it found some success in urban adult contemporary). But Reality Show is a significant milestone for Sullivan, and for those of us who believe that modern-day R&B, despite its increasing blandness, can still inspire life-affirming art. —Mosi Reeves Jazmine Sullivan: ""Let It Burn""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EATQP3_fFg,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/21441/homepage_large.4666ac83.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jazmine_Sullivan-Reality_Show.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/,2015,year,album,43,Destroyer,Poison Season,Merge / Dead Oceans,"Dan Bejar's stabs at what it means for indie to sound both ""pop"" and ""mature"" (scare quotes intended) hit a lavish peak with 2011's Kaputt, but it also stirred his ambivalent reaction to its place in his world. Refinement doesn't always require second-guessing, but when that does happen, you can get something as stirringly anxious as Poison Season. Like Alex Chilton inverted, Bejar sings of dream lovers and trips to Bangkok, only in ways that reveal the disillusionment inside the rock'n'roll fantasy—the fatigue of an alt-pop hero who strives to sidestep the limelight. And in the process, Destroyer snatches irony from the grip of cheap comedy and resettles it in chilly melancholy. The bookend songs take the thought of falling in love with Times Square or a radio station, scrub it clean of the scuzzy romance of '70s NYC singer-songwriter myth, and reveal it to be a case of corporate Stockholm syndrome. Big cities are boundaries to escape (the John Carpenter-alluding ""The River"") or speculation-damaged husks of their former selves (""Oh, it sucks when there's nothing but gold in those hills,"" from ""Girl in a Sling""). And the haunting moments out of vanished-past arrangements—Nelson Riddle strings and soured Chicago horns—are the compellingly bitter flourishes to an album where nostalgia feels less like an escape than a reminder that the ways things go to shit simply shift with the tides. Even the Roxy/Springsteen charge-ahead wallop of ""Dream Lover"" feels like a deliberately hollow victory, the closest he gets to fun being ""someone's idea"" of it. But sometimes, intangible ennui is a great way to connect. —Nate Patrin",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/destroyerband/dream-lover/,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/21965/homepage_large.6c7895a5.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Destroyer-Poison_Season.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/,2015,year,album,42,Jenny Hval,"Apocalypse, girl",Sacred Bones,"In a year when women were further solidifying Audre Lorde’s ideas on self-care as a radical act, Jenny Hval’s Apocalypse, girl rang out like a call of dissent. ""What are we taking care of?"" she sings on ""That Battle Is Over"", as she questions the messages the media feeds her about personal fulfillment via childbirth, via marriage, via consumption. Above all, Apocalypse, girl is a darkly composed treatise on having a body as a sort of peculiar plight, with Hval wrapping her lingering questions about sexuality and politics in minimalist, slow-jazz instrumentals. A sense of chest-clutching spirituality lingers throughout, with Hval’s voice moving between whispering confession and wailing over organs like she’s experiencing Saint Teresa’s transverberation herself. On Apocalypse, girl the body is a thing to subvert: to find ecstasy in metal binds, to soften canonical cock rock, to embrace self-doubt. To take care of oneself, Hval suggests, is to keep questioning how exactly one is supposed to physically exist in this world. —Hazel Cills",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/sacredbones/jenny-hval-that-battle-is-over,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/21894/homepage_large.aa92fe00.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jenny_Hval-Apocalypse_girl.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/,2015,year,album,41,Jeremih,Late Nights: The Album,Def Jam,"The biggest difference between the Late Nights With Jeremih mixtape and Late Nights: The Album—the R&B star’s long-delayed, exquistely executed third record—is space. The mixtape was an exercise in how much Jeremih could wring from an ever-shifting background of luxurious-sounding beats and an impressive Rolodex of features (the answer: a lot). The album sounds like the result of three years of a continuous stripping away, to the point where the appearance of 2014’s (excellent!) single ""Don’t Tell ’Em"" is jarring, perhaps indicative of another direction Jeremih thought about going. Every song finds Jeremih exploring how much room he can chisel between the air in the beats. Label drama, tonal shifts—none of this matters in the rarefied air Jeremih’s breathing. Whether it’s the potential wedding jam ""Oui"", the wheezing drone of ""Royalty"", or closer ""Paradise"", which works an orchestral fake-out before giving way to a finger-picked groove, Late Nights launches every sound, every syllable, every beat, every verse into a heightened reality where alcohol doesn’t lead to hangovers, drugs are purely a pleasurable experience, and sex is without regrets. —Matthew Ramirez Jeremih: ""Oui""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtcP0PFifpE,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/22643/homepage_large.23346138.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jeremih-Late_Nights_The_Album.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/,2015,year,album,40,Jlin,Dark Energy,Planet Mu,"If there were ever a place to get lost inside yourself, it’s Gary, Ind. I’ve only stopped there to get gas, but I’ve probably driven through it 100 times: The factory stank is oppressive enough to make you roll up the windows. It’s been hemorrhaging residents and funds for decades; in 2013, Gary’s redevelopment director wagered 6,500 of the 7,000 city-owned properties were abandoned. And that’s where Jlin, the woman responsible for the year’s most haunting footwork album, lives. ""I can’t create from a happy place. It feels pointless,"" Jlin said of Dark Energy. From the start—""Black Ballet""’s doomy strings and operatic wails, churning in vicious spin-cycle—this is music that evokes unnamed, encroaching panic above all else. ""Guantanamo"" loops a small girl’s voice: ""Leave me alone, leave me alone."" Often the percussive stabs sound like sharp little sighs. Footwork as a form has always been in direct conversation with the body, even its name addresses the music’s physical effect. But Dark Energy feels more interested in exploring the psyche—a portrait of the dark corners of the human spirit in a ghost town of steel and smoke. —Meaghan Garvey",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/dummymag/jlin-erotic-heat,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/21718/homepage_large.5d22f88f.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jlin-Dark_Energy.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/,2015,year,album,39,Holly Herndon,Platform,4AD / Rvng Intl.,"Holly Herndon’s Platform was named for the work of design strategist Benedict Singleton, and it’s a title that packs a lot in: the geometric language and corporate obfuscation of media-tech talk, a space for boosting fellow artists’ work (which, it’s worth noting, Herndon does; on Platform she curates the work of dozens of others), the sense of something elevated. Indeed, each track on Platform bursts with more ideas and theories and gorgeous musique concrète scrambling than many artists manage on entire albums, and proves Herndon’s whirlwind imagination as a composer. The through-line, though, is an argument for the undervalued artistic utility of the voice. Herndon goes beyond the standard voice-as-instrument tropes, the pitch-shifting and snippetizing that are pro forma for art-pop these days—though she certainly excels at these, such as on ""Chorus"", which comes off as a cappella performed to the beat of a crumbling tectonic plate. Herndon’s interest, rather, lies in the human element, and how it can be exploited. Sometimes it’s playful: the voiceover-perfect advertising timbre of ""Locker Leak"", which pulps Philip Glass, Greek yogurt, social media jargon, and contextless taglines to dizzying effect. Elsewhere it’s disarming; the surveillance agent of ""Home"" evokes EMA’s ""Neuromancer"" (""I know that you know me better than I know me"") but has less to say about Technology These Days than about loneliness, and desire, and how closeness never quite guarantees connection. Perhaps the most misunderstood track on Platform is ""Lonely at the Top"", which ruthlessly exploits the disembodied close-mic’d intimacy and swaddling femininity of ASMR. It’s as close to a shortcut to immersion as audio’s got, and Herndon and vocalist Claire Tolan use it to deposit the listener, quite literally forcibly, into the megalomaniacal and quite possibly sexual fantasy of an executive weaned on Tolan’s just-world-hypothesis coo: ""All of your achievements just seem like your natural right."" The effect is rather like slipping into a warm bath, then realizing it is poison and under your skin. —Katherine St. Asaph",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/21725/homepage_large.cc73984a.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Holly_Herndon-Platform.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/,2015,year,album,38,Arca,Mutant,Mute,"Arca’s 2014 masterpiece Xen was a dense, gnomic self-portrait of producer Alejandro Ghersi as a cryptically erotic extraterrestrial, and many of the obsessive fans that came up in its wake were still untangling its plentiful knots when he dropped Mutant just over a year later. Of the two records, Mutant is less fraught, and more direct. Ghersi’s insistence on avoiding straightforward, repetitive beats makes it hardly more danceable than its predecessor, but the album frequently offers meaningful nods to less thoroughly deconstructed forms of electronic music on tracks like ""Alive"" and ""Snakes"" that seem to have sizeable chunks of jungle and breakbeat hardcore in its heavily altered genetic code. Arca’s work is best appreciated when you take your attention away from the intricately wrought details and let it just wash over you. The sensation this time around is warmer and tinged with uncomplicated hedonism, the sound of Arca’s alien alter ego getting past its issues and going out clubbing. —Miles Raymer",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/arca1000000/vanity,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/22534/homepage_large.39d465c8.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Arca-Mutant.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/,2015,year,album,37,Empress Of,Me,Terrible,"“Should I be afraid?” Lorely Rodriguez asks in the opening seconds of Me, her debut LP under the Empress Of moniker. She sounds hesitant, but Rodriguez has little reason to be—over Me's 10 tracks, she makes a strong case for herself as one of the most confident, skilled pop artists of the year. The delicate, '80s-nodding Systems EP from 2013 laid the groundwork for Rodriguez's technical prowess, but Me presents the Empress Of project at its boldest: Rodriguez's voice is front and center, and the melodies that anchor it are contained in airtight, dancefloor-ready synths. It's unsurprising that Rodriguez wrote and recorded the entire album herself during an isolated five-week stay in Mexico, pressure-cooking all of her ideas into existence. Rodriguez is adept at negotiating her status in the world through song, whether it be scrutinizing privilege or vilifying cat-callers. She just as easily taps into the emotions around spiky relationships, too: ""Got to get high to get by without you,"" goes the chorus of ""To Get By"", a depressing sentiment tempered by the song's giddy electro pulse. As its title suggests, Me is a reflective debut, but it's far from self-obsessed; in the middle of fitful pop gem ""Need Myself"", she lasers in: ""I think I'm the one I need."" Rodriguez is sharing a secret, telling listeners that loving yourself—no matter how impossible it may seem—is always within reach. —Eric Torres Empress Of: ""How Do You Do It""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLDCjV5TsYc,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/22242/homepage_large.6a1575bf.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Empress_Of-Me.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/,2015,year,album,36,Janet Jackson,Unbreakable,BMG / Rhythm Nation,"Janet Jackson's Unbreakable marks a return to form but, like her best records, it's also a gentle expansion of that form. Jackson, and her longtime collaborators, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, bend their flexible R&B so that it absorbs a wide range of aesthetics, from DJ Mustard’s space-age electro, to Joni Mitchell’s acoustic contemplation, to a kind of blurred country soul. It is a record about intimacy and relationships—personal, political, metaphysical. Even Jackson’s single concession to EDM, ""Shoulda Known Better"", flows and recedes with the drift of a magnetic field as she sings reflexively against the shimmer. Throughout the album, the bass tones are either subtracted or located exclusively in the drums, giving these songs the unstable gravity of a feather. It’s a shaky weightlessness that mirrors the vulnerability and wisdom of Jackson’s own voice. —Brad Nelson",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/janetjackson/no-sleeep,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/22327/homepage_large.172ff89a.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Janet_Jackson-Unbreakable.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/,2015,year,album,35,Neon Indian,VEGA INTL. Night School,Transgressive / Mom & Pop,"VEGA INTL. Night School has one golden rule it requires of listeners: get dancing. It’s an easy request to make, considering that Palomo has pushed his solo act to its most enjoyable, accessible peak. Over an hour of catchy electro-dance tracks, Palomo draws on all the style, energy, and excess of the '80s for a set of glitchy, sample-happy romps. Many songs here openly call back to his past solo work as VEGA, coming across as an extended DJ set best suited for gleaming discotheques where clubgoers are dressed in garish get-ups, everyone’s eyes are a little glazed over, and last call never, ever comes. Palomo stretches his production dexterity into other genres with VEGA INTL., too, threading songs like ""Annie"" with dubby reggae and “The Glitzy Hive"" with bright-eyed disco. There's an extended techno breakdown (""Techno Clique""), an ode to an '80s porn mag (""Dear Skorpio Magazine""), and a sultry murder mystery (""Baby's Eyes""). It's a lot to take in, but VEGA INTL. Night School is one of the most rewarding trips into lurid '80s nostalgia in a year filled with them. —Eric Torres",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/neonindian/slumlord/s-hiskg,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/22305/homepage_large.4a7f78fc.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Neon_Indian-VEGA_INTL_Night_School.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/,2015,year,album,34,Carly Rae Jepsen,E•MO•TION,Interscope / School Boy,"""Pop music is a challenge."" No one knows this better than Carly Rae Jepsen, who stumbled into one of the decade's most ubiquitous songs and then had to stumble out from under it. (""I, personally, am sick of hearing myself on the radio,"" she recalls saying around the time the dust had settled.) Jepsen spent two years convincing her label to let her write her own songs, finding the right collaborators, and even appearing in a Broadway musical for a change of pace. She came out the other side with E•MO•TION, an album that highlighted her gifts, captured the hearts of a newly dedicated fanbase, and went criminally overlooked commercially. The album's chart performance is a shame, because E•MO•TION deserves more than a cult following. Jepsen is a songwriter capable of wringing exceptional things from standard pop forms, and she sells it so well that you might not even notice its genius until you really listen. She has a way with odd turns of phrase (""Who gave you eyes like that/ Said you could keep them?"" or ""Warm blood feels good""), she can frame simple ideas in beautiful ways (""When I'm close to you/ We blend into my favorite color""), and she can bend clichés to her will and make them feel vital and new again (""Run Away With Me""). And that doesn't even cover half the songs on the record. Every song on E•MO•TION takes a different feeling and makes it seem like the most important thing in the world. The album is always on the cusp of something—of falling in love, of heartbreak, or even, in the most Carly Rae Jepsen of all feelings, of just finally realizing that you might kinda like someone. An artistic triumph if not a commercial one, this record proves Jepsen's point: Pop music is a challenge. But on E•MO•TION, at least for an hour, it sounds totally effortless. —Andrew Ryce Carly Rae Jepsen: ""Run Away With Me""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeccAtqd5K8,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/21939/homepage_large.1f4d0473.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Carly_Rae_Jepsen-EMOTION.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/,2015,year,album,33,Archy Marshall,A New Place 2 Drown,XL / True Panther,"Archy Marshall’s A New Place 2 Drown feels like a record found underneath a chair in a pub’s dark corner, down there with blackened coins and decades-old cigarette butts. The music gurgles like something coughed up from a manhole, a supremely atmospheric mix of beat styles ranging from '90s rap to early '00s grime. The Londoner Marshall, best known for his King Krule project, vocalizes in a space that triangulates between singing, rapping, and heavily intoxicated slurring. When he delivers lines like ""Even though you fucked him I don’t really give a shit"" and ""When it rains it fucking pours/ Sky opens its mouth and spits to the floor,"" he hints at a grim and broken world, one where you expect the worst and usually get it. —Mark Richardson Archy Marshall: ""Arise Dear Brother""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uv-oRiUtbRc,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/22627/homepage_large.2da1063f.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Archy_Marshall-A_New_Place_2_Drown.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/,2015,year,album,32,Dr. Dre,Compton,Interscope / Aftermath,"After a gestation so lengthy it threatened to replace the Beach Boys’ SMiLE as most tragic victim of its auteur’s unassailable perfectionism, it turns out Dr. Dre’s fabled third album Detox had to die in order for the good doctor to serve his hungry base with fresh prescription. Using the occasion of the N.W.A. biopic Straight Outta Compton as both muse and news peg, Dre set about the seemingly insurmountable task of bridging three generations of California gangster rap on a record both of-the-moment and observant of the history that made all of it possible. From the ashes of Detox rose Compton, a self-mythologizing swan song that unfurls the story of the man and his city in pristine, cinematic sound. Like 2001, which painted Dre as mentor and studio maven extraordinaire, Compton deftly recasts its creator’s lengthy waits between albums as a mogul’s never-ending quest for capital. That it succeeds, while uniting Cali rap talent from the '80s (Ice Cube), '90s (Snoop, Above the Law’s Cold 187um), '00s (The Game), and today (Kendrick Lamar, Anderson .Paak), speaks to the enduring legacy of Dre as one of hip-hop’s great business and creative minds. That Compton slaps from end to end while sounding like little else than itself? That’s why you wait on genius. —Craig Jenkins Dr. Dre: ""Genocide"" [ft. Kendrick Lamar, Marsha Ambrosius, and Candice Pillay]",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/22197/homepage_large.8ef1a836.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dr_Dre-Compton.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/,2015,year,album,31,Kelela,Hallucinogen EP,Warp / Cherry Coffee,"When L.A. artist Kelela announced her Hallucinogen EP, she said of its themes: ""It speaks to the narcotic that is loving someone. It makes you exhilarated, it makes you feel drained, it’s in your body and it affects you so completely."" But if love is the drug here, Kelela's not an addict jonesing for a fix, she's a soothsayer on a vision quest. The record's six tracks—ranging from glossy R&B to freestyling dance-pop to minimal trip-hop—each find her cool, smoky voice illustrating one illusory exchange after another. She doesn't impart the visions themselves, but rather interprets how they manifest before her. We see desire as imagined glances across a room, sex as a rush of chemicals and phantom gestures, heartbreak as a silhouette lost to a crowded dancefloor, regret as calls and letters left unanswered. Kelela's way with rich imagery made Hallucinogen deep as the burgundies and purples in its artwork, but her natural charisma is why it felt so magnetic in the first place. Hers isn't just a voice you want to hear, it's one you want to hear from. Flanked by the likes of Arca, Kingdom, and DJ Dahi on production, Kelela gives every outré beat a center of gravity, every reimagined trope a touch of singularity. She's come a long way since Cut 4 Me in 2013. This year solidified the hunch that Kelela wouldn't—no, couldn't—stay secondary to her big name collaborators. —Patric Fallon",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/kelelam/rewind,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/21700/homepage_large.32de06df.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kelela-Hallucinogen_EP.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/,2015,year,album,30,Deerhunter,Fading Frontier,4AD,"Bradford Cox has called himself a terrorist, received oral sex from a stranger while singing, demanded the need for more ugly people in music, and claimed that as a homosexual, his only job is to sodomize mediocrity. Gentle Ben he is not, and when we last heard Deerhunter on 2013’s Monomania, they’d acquired an aggressiveness that reflected Cox’s antagonism toward social complacency. Then, Cox was seriously injured after being hit by a car in late 2014. The incident gave him some perspective, and presaged Deerhunter’s return to a softer, psychedelic, unabashedly gorgeous sound. Call it the cosmic Americana: Fading Frontier’s influences are hook-heavy, radio-friendly rock acts like Tom Petty and R.E.M., as refracted through the prism of Deerhunter’s weirdness. It sounds like light emitting from the stars, framing Cox’s preoccupation with mortality—a recurring theme for the band, but now contextualized by a literal bodily threat. He worries about going to the old folks’ home, and asks how to conquer the the fear that consumes his day-to-day. ""I’ve spent all of my time chasing the fading frontier,"" he sings, afraid of giving up after coming so far. On that song, he chants ""I’m living my life"" over and over, like a man hypnotized into a routine. But all that heightened sensitivity doesn’t mean Deerhunter’s lost its nerve. ""Snakeskin"" is one of the friskiest songs they’ve ever written; its first lines, ""I was born already nailed to the cross/ I was born with a feeling I was lost,"" could open one of Faulkner’s Southern gothics. They still sound like Deerhunter, basically—older, and a little worse for the wear, but on their feet. They feel the black shroud at all moments, but they’re finding a way to live. That’s something to be monomaniacal about. —Jeremy Gordon Deerhunter: ""Snakeskin""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CG6jk5Q90DA,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/22303/homepage_large.4d62ad34.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Deerhunter-Fading_Frontier.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/,2015,year,album,29,Rae Sremmurd,SremmLife,Interscope / Ear Drummer,"Amidst a year of protests across American cities and college campuses, you may have noticed the unexpected persistence of a little song called ""Swag Surfin’"". Logic would dictate that the lead single from Fast Life Yungstaz’ only album, 2009’s Jamboree, should not have made it this far: history hasn’t been especially kind to the swag-rap era, and F.L.Y. almost immediately faded into obscurity, jewel-toned polos and all. Yet there was the triumphant black student body of the University of Missouri, swag-surfing en masse to celebrate successful protests against campus racism. A silly song, maybe, but one that brought light! It’s too soon to say for sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a similar fate befell the brothers Sremm, who dropped the year’s most exuberant, hit-heavy rap album in the first week of January so that everyone else could spend the rest of the year geting esoteric and emo. The duo’s sound is darker than F.L.Y.’s, but they share a distinct ""T-T-T-TOTALLY DUDE"" ethos: a pious devotion to partying, dumb jokes, casual (protected!) sex, and everything else great about being a young adult with newfound disposable income. SremmLife was a burst of minimalist stadium-trap, ecstatic Spring Breakers-core EDM, and giddy strip club joints with secret Jeremih bridges. It single-handedly sustained Mike WiLL Made-It’s relevance and made grumpy dad Kanye smile. It was the album everyone in Atlanta was too depressed or sedated to make. Music like this renders the concept of the ""novelty song"" meaningless: its weightlessness is its purpose. —Meaghan Garvey",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/raesremmurd/rae-sremmurd-no-type-prod-by-mike-will-made-it-swae-lee-of-rae-sremmurd | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iTsbnr8e_8,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/21382/homepage_large.452c117c.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rae_Sremmurd-SremmLife.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/,2015,year,album,28,Beach House,Depression Cherry,Bella Union / Mistletone / Sub Pop,"Beach House’s fifth collection, Depression Cherry, often sounds like nothing they’ve done before. There’s hazed-out synth noise and rattling electronic drums backing gently warped harmonies, a fragile ballad featuring an eight-person community college choir, distorted guitar psychedelics, percussion that comes off like a woodpecker or a clock attacking a metronome. Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally take bits that would normally function as quick introductory snippets and let them overflow and guide entire compositions: shots of noise that, in the past, might float somberly in the background now swallow an entire song. Conversely, they're not afraid to loop Legrand's crystalline vocals or bury them in fuzz. The record feels intimate: two people outside of their comfort zone with just four hands to piece it all together. It hearkens to their first couple of pre-Sub Pop records, but with the skills they picked up and displayed on career pinnacles, Teen Dream and Bloom. Even with the return of Chris Coady as co-producer, it’s not as ""perfect"" as those albums, but the scars make it all the more beautiful. —Brandon Stosuy Beach House: ""Sparks""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfITojs_mNg,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/21949/homepage_large.9c17ddf5.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beach_House-Depression_Cherry.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/,2015,year,album,27,Sleater-Kinney,No Cities to Love,Sub Pop,"Sleater-Kinney returned with a song about exhuming your idols, and their comeback album hit like a fist through a grave. The reformed Portland trio were hungry, and they knew that we had been starved of a successor. Corin Tucker, Carrie Brownstein, and Janet Weiss rekindled their unique language and taunted us with it, crafting jut-jawed cadences that were often impossible to sing along to. They tainted their eighth record's wall-to-wall firebrand choruses with their signature drop-tuning, which hardened their agitated declarations against softening to easy slogans. It couldn't have been anyone else, but it didn't sound like anything they had made before. Even now, 11 months after its release, it still sounds jarring, corroded and full of fight. No Cities to Love finds Sleater-Kinney pile-driving through corrupt power and fear, through the enablers of mediocrity. It's a timeless record about a marginalized struggle—a song like ""Fangless"", about the impotence of patriarchy, will never go out of style—though its nuanced take on liberation is novel. Sleater-Kinney may fight back and celebrate togetherness, but they also illuminate the ongoing battles inherent in sustaining pleasure: the way love can become ""a ritual of emptiness,"" the loneliness of ""the shout of a room."" No Cities' best line was its simplest. It comes at the end of gruff Go-Go's romp ""A New Wave"", when Brownstein moans, ""I can be, I can be, I can be-e-e."" That swaggering openness to unlimited possibility was what made Sleater-Kinney's comeback so potent. They returned to see what they would become, rather than to rehash what they had been. —Laura Snapes",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/sleater-kinney/bury-our-friends,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/21417/homepage_large.c8f55f3f.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sleater-Kinney-No_Cities_to_Love.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/,2015,year,album,26,Deafheaven,New Bermuda,Anti-,"New Bermuda’s five songs are howled tales of sickness and health, alternating stories of lost ambition with frantic fever dreams. The gut-wrenching noise that spills forth from lead singer's George Clarke’s throat transcends its tone of shrieking menace, his lines filled with unsettlingly beautiful imagery: man’s passion being carried off ""by some lonely driver in a line of fluorescent light,"" humanity’s ""ugliness stretching toward the chandelier."" But Deafheaven don't just rattle off romanticist tropes, and the narrative power of New Bermuda has a strength that’s independent of its lyrics. They illustrate and expound upon the words with huge shifts in dynamic range, from the sublime crescendoes at the heart of ""Luna"" or cross-genre experiments like the post-rock meeting gritty thrash on ""Baby Blue"". The result is a crushing, concise, and unexpectedly celebratory journey, the sweet, molten earth to Sunbather’s ghostly air. —Zoe Camp",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/antirecords/deafheaven-brought-to-the-water/,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/22285/homepage_large.d5ac1316.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Deafheaven-New_Bermuda.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/,2015,year,album,25,Earl Sweatshirt,"I Don't Like Shit, I Don't Go Outside",Columbia / Tan Cressida,"On ""Grief"", the lead single from I Don't Like Shit, I Don't Go Outside, Earl Sweatshirt proudly confesses, ""I ain't been outside in a minute/ I been living what I wrote."" That sentiment does not apply to his previous work: his violent and fantastical debut mixtape EARL, and 2013's Doris, a playground of wordplay with a wide range of beats. It was a foreshadowing for the album that was to come, one that finds Earl more focused than he's ever been as a lyricist, songwriter, and producer. In his own words, Earl is ""grown."" For him, being an adult means he takes responsibility for his actions (""Trying to pay my momma rent, figured that's just what I owe her""), guards himself from outsiders (""I only trust these bitches 'bout as far as I can throw 'em""), and maintains a thorough work ethic (""My days numbered/ I'm focused heavy on making the most of 'em""). In addition to what he's saying, Earl's also condensed how he's saying it. He still has the ability to spin dizzying internal and end rhymes, but instead chooses to emphasize diction, clarity, and pacing to truly emphasize the gravity of his words. I Don't Like Shit captures a particular moment and specific murky, grated sound, in which it revels for only about 30 minutes. I Don't Like Shit is a just brief foray into Earl's psyche, but it might be as long as he can handle someone else in his head. —Matthew Strauss Earl Sweatshirt: ""Grief""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZ5Mu2gs-M8,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/21690/homepage_large.6283beab.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Earl_Sweatshirt-I_Dont_Like_Shit_I_Dont_Go_Outside.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/,2015,year,album,24,Thundercat,The Beyond / Where the Giants Roam,Brainfeeder,"Death is the scariest, most certain thing we’ll all ever face. As sure as you’re reading this, you will die, and you can only hope for a peaceful transition to the other side. Thundercat has been preoccupied with the topic for the past few years: 2013’s Apocalypse was shaded by the death of his friend and collaborator, Austin Peralta, and his work on Flying Lotus’ You’re Dead! helped convey what the spirit might endure as the body passes away. But while FlyLo used frenetic psych-jazz to conceptualize death, Thundercat takes a reflective stance on The Beyond/Where the Giants Roam, using improvised funk and R&B to mourn. On ""Hard Times"", Thundercat channels what the soul must feel when death takes hold. By the last song, ""Where the Giants Roam"", he’s at peace with the afterlife, even if the journey is unclear: ""Nothing in this world I know/ Can you tell me who you are?"" The Beyond continued where You’re Dead! left off, when the pain of dying fades and the darkness slowly sets in. Thundercat’s EP helped cement a great year for Lotus’ Brainfeeder label. Along with You’re Dead!, the bassist appeared frequently on Kamasi Washington’s The Epic and Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly, two landmark albums that celebrated blackness and kept jazz at the forefront. Thundercat was especially brave on The Beyond, walking through a world many of us don’t want to acknowledge and making it sing. —Marcus J. Moore",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/brainfeeder/thundercat-them-changes,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/22019/homepage_large.fa076f40.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Thundercat-The_Beyond__Where_the_Giants_Roam.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/,2015,year,album,23,Kurt Vile,b’lieve i’m goin down,Matador,"On his sixth album, our journey to the center of the Kurt Vile is lubricated by production that's as warm and smooth as a slug of whiskey. Recorded mostly at night, partly in the desert, and buttressed by banjo and piano, it's a quiet, hold-you-close record that goes easy on the effects, and values presence above all else. Incongruously, it's also fueled by jokes. Vile has always been sly, but here, as often as not, he's a real knee-slapper, whether it's his headache ""like a shop vac coughin' dust bunnies"" or a lyrical cameo from the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man—and that in the album’s emotional center of gravity, too: ""That's Life, tho (almost hate to say)"", a bittersweet bout of philosophizing that doubles as a eulogy. His acid sense of humor lies just beneath the surface of his idiosyncratic tone—a drawl that shifts between Leonard Cohen and Joey Ramone and Bob Dylan and Black Francis—and it surfaces unexpectedly in his odd stresses and enjambments, his quixotic determination to squeeze any thought into the space of a bar, to hell with the rhythmic feet. ""Hopefully I just get a little more fine-tuned and a little more real and vulnerable all the time,"" Vile told the A.V. Club, trying to pinpoint what was different with this album. Which brings us to ""Wild Imagination"" and one of the best lines on the whole record: ""I'm afraid that I am feeling much too many feelings simultaneously, at such a rapid clip."" It's the game face he wears when feeling those feelings, and staring down that fear, that makes b'lieve i'm goin down such a delight. —Philip Sherburne Kurt Vile: ""That's Life, tho (almost hate to say)""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS8liHemX1g,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/22104/homepage_large.5f30eab1.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kurt_Vile-blieve_im_goin_down.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/,2015,year,album,22,Panda Bear,Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper,Domino,"Years ago, a friend and I half-jokingly came up with a genre to describe how Noah Lennox always sounded like he was singing while stuck down a very deep well: cavewave. In 2015, it doesn’t seem like Lennox ever emerged from the underground. His music as Panda Bear is hallucinatory and slippery, always on the verge of dissolving into shadow while still managing to keep a firm foot on the ground. He doesn’t literally come face-to-face with Death on Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper, but the album hides his increasingly adult concerns—fatherhood, middle age, his dog—within all that melodic weirdness. On its most haunting track, ""Tropic of Cancer"", he sings about watching his father submit to brain cancer, a harp looping against what sounds like wind blowing through the trees. Lennox, whose koan-like observations have never suffered from obfuscation, beautifully sums up how the death of a close one sections off a life we knew: ""You can’t come back to it."" The shortest song on the album takes its name from Shadow of the Colossus, a video game about a young man who navigates a mysterious land in search of nameless monsters. The protagonist’s name is Wander, fittingly, because you’ll walk and walk and walk, exploring your surroundings with no destination in sight. It’s how I see Lennox: an explorer moving through the fog, bumping into life’s overwhelming realities and finding a way to meet the challenge. —Jeremy Gordon",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/21348/homepage_large.c5d9fc4f.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Panda_Bear-Panda_Bear_Meets_the_Grim_Reaper.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/,2015,year,album,21,Donnie Trumpet & the Social Experiment,Surf,Self-released,"The most important song on Surf, the blindingly optimistic album that Chicago icon Chance the Rapper released this year with his crew instead of a proper solo follow up to Acid Rap, is called ""Wanna Be Cool"". That’s because the chorus is ""I don’t wanna be cool,"" repeated joyously and relentlessly, and the rest of Surf drives this point home with the zeal of an anti-drug a cappella group invading your fifth-grade lunchroom. Consider: Chance made this album with a guy who goes by the name ""Donnie Trumpet,"" which wouldn’t even be a cool sobriquet among marching-band geeks. He invited goofballs like Big Sean to do fake-Lyricist Lounge raps on it (""My older bro was on the honor roll/ And the other one was always up in front of the honor, so/ I’m in the middle like the lining of divide signs"") and got current-day Busta Rhymes to sound happy again (on ""Slip Slide""). He snagged the funniest verse King Louie spit all year (""If your bitch from Paris, then Paris is terrible"") and put it on a pop song that sounds like a circa-'99 Sugar Ray single. The album makes your cheeks hurt; it feels like doing the chicken dance at your cousin’s wedding. This energy is Chance the Rapper’s gift to the universe, the superpower he brings to rap. ""Don’t you look up to me...if you learn one thing today,"" he chides tenderly. The album has the aura of the kind of big brother you fantasize about even if you have a big brother: wise, funny, concerned, engaged, no-bullshit, authoritative but equal. And it is so committed and nuanced, even with all of this sunshine, that it reminds you that joy is an emotion with millions of gradations, a feeling you can soak in, nurse, and cultivate the same way you might do with melancholy. —Jayson Greene",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/donnietrumpet/donnie-trumpet-the-social-experiment-sunday-candy,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/21920/homepage_large.04db1a45.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Donnie_Trumpet__the_Social_Experiment-Surf.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/,2015,year,album,20,Floating Points,Elaenia,Luaka Bop / Pluto,"Sam Shepherd, the nexus of Floating Points, has always produced tracks that just skirt the fringes of the dancefloor and its mercurial trends. Early singles like ""Love Me Like That"" and ""Vacuum Boogie"" playfully bounced between rubbery disco and boogie at a time when his fellow countrymen were making warehouse-shaking dubstep. Even when he embraced bass music, it was garlanded with vintage soul voices and sumptuous strings. So it’s not unexpected that seven years into his career, he’s eschewed easy categorization on his debut album, Elaenia. Helixed into Elaenia’s DNA is everything from primitive circuitry pulses to Alice Coltrane’s divine songs, from Herbie Hancock’s ARP thrusts to late ’60s soul. The album moves between solo exploratory electronics to full-blown ensembles taking flight and makes it all sound of a piece. It’s that rare album that speaks to the current year yet could have emanated from 40 years prior. Outside of time, Floating Points’s closest peers could also be found well beyond the electronic idiom: His spiritually questing music has more in common with jazz players like Kamasi Washington, Joshua Abrams, and Gregory Porter than what turns up at your local club’s DJ sets. In taking a divergent path, Floating Points soared skyward. —Andy Beta",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/floatingpoints/peroration-six,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/22402/homepage_large.6af0bda1.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Floating_Points-Elaenia.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/,2015,year,album,19,Future,Dirty Sprite 2,Epic / Free Bandz,"Fingering the bleakest moment on Future's DS2 is more of a barstool debate than a critical one, but I'll take it up anyway and point to the interlude on ""Kno the Meaning"", deep into the record's latter half. Future stops rapping, which he's only half-doing at this point anyway, and outlines in loopy spoken word what happened after his DJ, Esco, was arrested in Dubai: ""People didn't even understand that my hard drives that I recorded all my music for two years straight was on this…was on this one hard drive that Esco had and he was locked up with it so I had to record new music. That's when I did Beast Mode."" It's as if he's so dejected by this loss (of music—no mention of the 56 nights Esco spent in prison) that he couldn't pull together a cohesive verse and just had to talk out his heartbreak. Is this what it sounds like when Future goes to therapy? If not straight lamenting, the rest of DS2 feels equally bummed out. Future's best songs have always been his heaviest, and here he wastes no time swatting at sunshine. DS2 is 18 songs with just one feature (Drake). The rest is Future alone at his rawest, song after song. The sound of his voice here is tinged sour, scratchy like he never stops smoking and/or just woke up. But his rapping is nimble and dreamy, partially because he never seems to fully pronounce anything, even when he hits double time. It’s a strange effect. And it’s a strange record. The production is mostly slow and sad, peppered with alarms, weezy keyboards, hi-hats at the tempo of anxious toe-tapping. On the verse before the interlude on ""Kno the Meaning"", Future says the best thing he ever did was fall out of love. He says it like it’s nothing. What kind of darkness is this guy experiencing? On ""Rotation"", he outlines some of the more money/more problems aspects of his life as a rich person. Sure, shortly after he says with a glint of pride, ""Ask me how it feels to be a millionaire."" But notice he doesn’t answer the question. —Matthew Schnipper Future: ""I Serve the Base""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEQz-BbWF0A,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/22071/homepage_large.3d56dd9d.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Future-Dirty_Sprite_2.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/,2015,year,album,18,Julia Holter,Have You In My Wilderness,Domino,"If Holter’s past work—capital A art-pop, by turns inscrutable and bewitching, or both at once—has resembled a series of deeply considered treatises on the past, on Have You in My Wilderness she sinks more fully into the character (and characters) of her songs, their desires and fears too urgently present to tolerate any overarching, sense-making narrative. While the resulting shapes are broadly familiar, they’re rendered alien and strange by the sheer closeness of details, like placing your eyes almost against the skin of a lover. Anything can happen in these songs. A boot-knocking country shuffle can suddenly become submerged on a reef of moaning strings, or a gossamer-winged pop song drowned in a multi-tracked rainshower of a thousand little Julia Holters, because she has the commitment to follow through exactingly on each of her smallest and most fragmented impulses, and then to forge them into songs like skyscrapers, their greatness the exact sum of their glittering parts. Like past alchemists Robert Wyatt or Jane Siberry, Holter combines meticulousness and lightheadedness, a studied discipline with a wide-eyed bewilderment. She’s like a scrupulous technician tasked with producing moments of seemingly unselfconscious immediacy. ""Show me now/ Show me your second face,"" she asks on ""Night Song"", but it’s the album itself that offers a parade of second faces, ornately sculpted masks as windows to the soul. —Tim Finney Julia Holter: ""Sea Calls Me Home""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OERixQR-hxY,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/22086/homepage_large.8c307c2c.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Julia_Holter-Have_You_In_My_Wilderness.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/,2015,year,album,17,Drake,If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late,Cash Money,"Drake undertook a hard-left personal rebranding in 2015, a process he kicked off in early February with his fourth full-length, If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late. Every action flowed from his warning shots on ""No Tellin’"": ""Please do not speak to me like I’m that Drake from four years ago/ I’m at a higher place."" If everyone called him soft, the muscles and abs he put on constant display on Instagram said otherwise. The toughness of the album’s opening bars pushed back against accusations that he was just a singer (""When I pull up on a nigga/ Tell that nigga back back/ I’m too good with these words/ Watch a nigga backtrack""). Too calculating? Remember, this million-selling album was scheduled to drop for free. Above all, Drake dripped sauce and self-confidence, so much that even the ghostwriting allegations—audio included—from his beef with Meek Mill couldn’t slow him down. His barbed words even clashed with upper management on ""No Tellin’"": ""Envelopes coming in the mail…hoping for a check again, ain’t no tellin'."" The title of the album was widely interpreted as a contract-releasing taunt to Cash Money boss Birdman, but it could have summed up his year: On If You’re Reading This, the goal is forward motion, and allowing the past to remain rather than endlessly mining previous sorrows. With each step of progress through white society, black people are told not to ask for what they’re owed; not to flaunt confidence, or reach boldly for what brings joy. If You’re Reading This was not an album for reserved satisfaction. Instead, the opener clearly set out its goals: ""If I die I’m a motherfucking legend."" —David Turner Drake: ""Know Yourself""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Df2f00DBrOQ,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/21538/homepage_large.a8c69ffb.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Drake-If_Youre_Reading_This_Its_Too_Late.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/,2015,year,album,16,FKA twigs,M3LL155X,Young Turks,"FKA twigs always felt fully formed, but with M3LL155X, her third EP and first release since LP1, Tahliah Barnett grew into her dualities: calmly commanding, fierce yet tender, by turns threatening and submissive. On ""Figure 8"", she’s an angel whose ""back wings give the hardest slap that you’ve ever seen."" ""Glass & Patron""’s narrator feigns insecurity–""Am I dancing sexy yet?""–before twigs flips the script, singing as a menacing photographer over a dystopic dance-studio beat. Even when vulnerable, on the exquisite ""In Time"", she radiates wisdom. Lyrically, the song maps love’s extremities—heightened states of yearning, idealism, and resentment—and climaxes in a romantic bust-up. But the vocal, navigating a precarious beat, surveys the wreckage from a safe space. The narrator suggests that, having dredged their insecurities for verbal ammo, the couple have emerged stronger. The vision is piercing and true, even if delirium never seems far off. —Jazz Monroe FKA twigs: ""In Time""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHHE12Mp2J0,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/22250/homepage_large.91be6bde.jpg,/dataset/artwork/FKA_twigs-M3LL155X.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/,2015,year,album,15,Björk,Vulnicura,One Little Indian,"On Vulnicura opener ""Stonemilker"", Björk phrases an early lyric—""Find our mutual coordinates""—in such a way that it spotlights the phrase ""mutual core,"" the name of a song on 2011’s Biophilia. It’s one of many dredging processes employed on Vulnicura, a shattering breakup album that tempers its literal account of midlife divorce with deconstructions of love, grief, and selfhood. It’s ultimately the melodrama that makes the album click. Witness her soaring demand for ""emotional respect"" on ""Stonemilker""; her contempt of her partner’s ""joy peak, humor peak, frustration peak"" on ""Lionsong""; her extraordinary claim, in ""Black Lake"", that ""I honored my feelings/ You betrayed your own heart/ Corrupted that organ."" So raw is that song that she later admitted, ""I was really embarrassed ... I can still hardly listen to it."" Having renounced its shame, Vulnicura becomes a one-woman rhapsody so radically cathartic it is practically avant-garde. —Jazz Monroe Björk: ""Lionsong""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWHpoJT3qK4,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/21447/homepage_large.9ee25a14.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bjrk-Vulnicura.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/,2015,year,album,14,Young Thug,Barter 6,Atlantic / 300 Entertainment,"When Young Thug announced that he would be swiping his album title from Lil Wayne's Carter series—a homage that later morphed into a diss—the popular assumption was that he would be following the lead of his primary influence and making Barter 6 a proper crossover release. It turned out to be just a mixtape, hastily compiled in an effort to preempt the impending leak of 100+ songs from a stolen laptop. If anything, Barter 6 has more in common with Wayne's less heralded post-Katrina masterwork Dedication 2—a ferocious display of rapping qua rapping by an artist in his prime with zero concern for the marketplace. It's an unexpectedly subtle tape from an artist who is so frequently pegged as a weirdo rapper. Thug's eccentricities are undeniable but they take more nuanced shapes here. He stretches tire screech ad lib into new vocal dimensions and indulges his oft underrated lyrical side through De La Soul-type flits of structure like ""Motor running/ Spent them commas/ Now it's thunder."" And by the album's second half he all but completely abandons the sort of spastic pressure-and-release flows that defined hits like ""Danny Glover"", instead hammering away endlessly at the same rhyme patterns in the service of tragedy. He'll frequently lock into a single rigid flow and stay trapped there for several more bars than he needs to, still escalating the intensity by the sheer rising stress in his voice. This tension isn't fully resolved until the album's final seconds when the beat fades to silence and Thug finally gets a chance to clear his throat. —Andrew Nosnitsky Young Thug: ""Constantly Hating"" [ft. Birdman]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVv0VrTrAqk,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/21799/homepage_large.06f9da6e.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Young_Thug-Barter_6.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/,2015,year,album,13,Joanna Newsom,Divers,Drag City,"Since her 2004 debut, scribblers like me have been trying to find useful ways to talk about Joanna Newsom’s wildly idiosyncratic, anachronistically baroque brand of music-making; fact is, her work is so novel and unprecedented it’s nearly impossible to effectively contextualize. Divers, her fourth full-length, is a folk record that’s remarkable not for its smallness but its ambition—its vast, unspooling arrangements, its points of unexpected intersection, its newness. Despite all that, Divers never feels over-thought. Instead, it’s marked by moments of tremendous, startling vulnerability. ""Anecdotes"", the record’s opener, contains what might be the most heartbreaking coda I’ve ever heard sung: ""Nor is there cause for grieving, nor is there cause for carrying on"", Newsom announces, her voice high, calm. Divers is lousy with these sorts of perfectly drawn endings, like on ""Waltz of the 101st Lightborne"", in which she gives a startlingly clear-eyed summation of love and its disrepair: ""But there was a time/ We were lashed to the prow of a ship you may board, but not steer/ Before ‘You and I’ ceased to mean ‘Now’"". Newsom is often praised for her virtuosity—both as a harpist and as a writer of odd, looping melodies—but here, it’s just as often her lyrics that do the undoing. —Amanda Petrusich Joanna Newsom: ""Sapokanikan""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ky9Ro9pP2gc,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/22384/homepage_large.5649bf69.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Joanna_Newsom-Divers.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/,2015,year,album,12,Father John Misty,"I Love You, Honeybear",Bella Union / Sub Pop,"Boredom may be the privilege of people who don’t have to struggle to stay alive, but you can’t blame Josh Tillman for feeling so…blah. Tillman looks at America and sees a hollowed-out middle class, a generation obsessed with their phones, mass culture used by the bourgeoisie to keep people sated and divided. That’s enough to make anyone cynical, regardless of their comforts. Bearing witness to his pomp and circumstance as he portrays Father John Misty, the one guy who really knows how it is, can be like arguing with the smartest philosophy major in the freshman dorm: Sure, he gets it, but you still want him to get over it. But what grounds Tillman’s sense of superiority is how he believes in the oldest and corniest solution for all the world’s troubles: each other. I Love You, Honeybear is the story of his courtship of his wife, Emma, and his jesterly antics can’t hide the way he’s taken over from the inside-out by his love for her. ""People are boring,"" he sings, ""but you’re something else."" Tillman sings about making spontaneous love in the kitchen, smiling as he walks with Emma, rolling around in the dirtied sheets, and wanting to settle down in spite of his doubts about everything. The music is warm, sensuous, and ambitious, a wino singing like Gram Parsons as he’s backed by an orchestra. Though his cynicism remains, it’s made secondary to something bigger than himself. ""Maybe love is just an economy based on resource scarcity,"" he asks, ""But what I fail to see is what’s that gotta do with you and me?"" There are uncomfortable moments—Tillman turns vitriolic when his wife gets hit on at a bar, and he’s downright demeaning about a kind of woman he hates, even after they’ve gone home together. Still, this lingering combativeness feels honest—an admittance that where there’s love, there’s hate. The clarity of his belief in the former makes I Love You, Honeybear believably and compellingly romantic, filled with sentiment as it avoids sentimentality. It’s one grand joke he’s letting you in on, and if it doesn’t tug on your heartstrings or tickle your funny bone, Tillman has a question: ""Why the long face, jerkoff?"" —Jeremy Gordon",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/fatherjohnmisty/father-john-misty-bored-in-the-usa/,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/21400/homepage_large.8a2cb994.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Father_John_Misty-I_Love_You_Honeybear.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/,2015,year,album,11,Oneohtrix Point Never,Garden of Delete,Warp,"Being a teenager is complicated. Daniel Lopatin’s ambitious electronic album Garden of Delete focuses on the angsty rock music that soundtracks so many teenage struggles and then splatters it against the wall. In an interview with Vulture, Lopatin said, ""I want the kid that works at the mall to like this record,"" and you really can imagine that kid finding something to latch onto in G.O.D.’s brilliant, teeming universe. G.O.D., which Lopatin has called ""a self-portrait"", comes off like someone channel surfing at 3 a.m. on a weekend. Unlike past OPN outings, the record features a variety of vocals (somber, warped, violent) and shredding guitars amid the hairpin turns and digital age pyrotechnics. It’s Lopatin's heaviest album so far, but also his most fragile. At times, you’ll find yourself wanting to figure out how to dance to its weirdo rhythms. Or you’ll think of a Nine Inch Nails cassette melting in the sun. Mashing together power ballads and warped takes on pop hits with grinding noise, techno, melancholic drone, and blunted hiss, G.O.D. is romantic, frantic, chilly, jubilant, ghostly, and sometimes sad. There are references to troubled kids and kids just saying the dumb and brilliant stuff kids say: ""I'm just going to start off by doing some stupid stuff because that’s what I do. It's in me, my blood,"" one brags in “Mutant Standard"". G.O.D. does an incredible job of evoking the gorgeous, thrilling mess we needed to get through to finally enter adulthood, except you can tell it’s been painstakingly pieced together, nothing left to chance. Before the record was released, Lopatin offered up a G.O.D. cosmology, one that featured an invented band, Kaoss Edge, and a teenage alien collaborator/troll with bad skin named Ezra. You can go to real blogs and Twitter accounts and other pages run by these entities, and they often interact with Lopatin’s online. Of course, you can safely assume Ezra is part Lopatin—he’s said so himself—but the bigger idea is that we all were at some point. —Brandon Stosuy",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/oneohtrix-point-never/ezra,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/22400/homepage_large.753fb3c9.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Oneohtrix_Point_Never-Garden_of_Delete.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/,2015,year,album,10,Kamasi Washington,The Epic,Brainfeeder,"For a minute there Kamasi Washington was The Guy Who Played Saxophone and Created the Jazz Arrangements on the Kendrick Record, but it didn’t take long for his astonishing album The Epic to develop a life of its own. Nothing about its success makes sense: a triple album with almost three hours of music, featuring a 10-piece jazz band, often augmented with a string section and a full choir, released on Flying Lotus’ Brainfeeder imprint? In an era when we supposedly measure the direction of our consciousness by counting clicks, it didn’t add up. But The Epic turned out to serve a need many people didn’t know they had. Here’s one possible explanation: With reissue culture and the vinyl revival in overdrive, people are rediscovering jazz created when the music was a more significant part of the cultural conversation. The work of John Coltrane, Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders, and the Art Ensemble of Chicago offered an avant-garde that was formally daring, grounded in the history of American music, and, for many of these musicians, deeply political and connected to the African-American struggle for equality. The Epic taps into this spirit but forgoes the fiery and explosive jazz of the late '60s for the period just after, when jazz, pop-soul, and R&B came together to find common ground after the tumult of the previous decade. Free jazz players incorporated vocals, and song-oriented superstars were thinking about how their art might expand and change the world. The Epic has plenty of straightforward jazz and solo trading, but its most striking elements are when genres clash in unpredictable ways—songs that sound like they floated in from a Broadway musical (""Henrietta Our Hero""), impossibly grand massed vocals and strings that could soundtrack the next Flash Gordon reboot (""Askim""), brilliantly textured mood pieces evocative of Miles Davis’ mid-'60s quintet (""Seven Prayers""). It’s a lifetime of creative thought packed into one release, and the grand scope and sweep of the thing was an act of generosity in itself. —Mark Richardson",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/brainfeeder/kamasi-washington-miss-understanding | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRinfAmd3aY,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/21824/homepage_large.0441ce5e.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kamasi_Washington-The_Epic.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/,2015,year,album,9,Courtney Barnett,"Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit",Mom & Pop / Marathon Artists / Milk!,"Courtney Barnett's debut album has the kind of weary worldview usually associated with an artist's later efforts. She scares off expectations by roaring, ""Put me on a pedestal and I'll only disappoint you"" because she knows she's ""just a reflection of what you really wanna see."" And who really knows what they want? Not Barnett. Sometimes portrays a young woman struggling with how to be for other people when she's not sure how to be for herself. The 28-year-old Australian barely ventured a viewpoint in her songs without retracting it a line or two later. ""What do I know anyhow? … Guess everybody's got their different point of view."" Sometimes is full of wry epics spun from insignificant seeds, whether house-hunting, buying fruit, or sleepless nights spent staring at the ceiling. In a way, Barnett's tangent-prone songwriting style reinforces her point about reflections: everything is copy and any angle is possible. (Though good luck writing it as well as she can.) Spotting a newspaper story about dredging when you're in an existentially bad mood can lead to morbid contemplations about the point of it all, sure. But from her counter-arguments and shrugs, a subtle, certain songwriter emerges. Barnett tries out a lot of different modes on Sometimes: laconic country-tinged ballads, Nirvana ragers, and Lemonheads-y choogle. She sticks to one voice though. Literally a monotone, but a funny one, where roadkill is a ""possum Jackson Pollock"". It's a marvel of intensity and feeling that quietly questions where we find value, and its price. —Laura Snapes",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/courtney-barnett-milk/pedestrian-at-best,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/21535/homepage_large.43bd497f.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Courtney_Barnett-Sometimes_I_Sit_and_Think_and_Sometimes_I_Just_Sit.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/,2015,year,album,8,Miguel,Wildheart,RCA / Bystorm,"That moment when an artist throws taste to the wind and the results aren’t self-indulgent, but revelatory: that’s when he’s reached the pinnacle of his skill, earned absolute trust from his audience, and that’s the blissful high Miguel sustains on Wildheart. Three years ago, he signposted his ambitions with a record title like Art Dealer Chic. Now he nails everything he tries, from the chugging guitars of opener ""A Beautiful Exit"" to the appearance of Lenny Kravitz—hardly a critically rehabilitated guy—on album closer “Face the Sun”. Throughout, he writes about sex with enough candor and playfulness to make everyone else sound like high schoolers bragging about their imagined conquests. Everything on Wildheart is a risk, even the tracks that seem conventional. “Waves” could have been awkward leisure-suit funk, the kind of thing that dragged down Giorgio Moroder and Nick Jonas this year. But Miguel is both a beefier vocalist and a more imaginative producer, and “Waves” is one of the album’s highlights. His charisma, a sheer omnivorous force of personality, turns whatever he touches into into jams. ""Hollywood Dreams"" treads approximately zero new ground, but Miguel tears into California corruption like he’s annexing it all for himself. Miguel’s passions are clear—kink, futurism, '70s rock—and singularly his. ""The Valley"" is set to scattershot percussion and noir clank that would be at home on a Holly Herndon album; its follow-up, ""Coffee"", balances porn with lyrics so intimate they could only sketch a single specific person. Wildheart’s most autobiographical track, ""What’s Normal Anyway"", skirts the line separating ""disarmingly earnest"" and ""uncomfortably on the nose"", but never comes off as anything other than exactly what Miguel wanted to say, exactly how he wanted to say it. —Katherine St. Asaph",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/21986/homepage_large.689223b5.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Miguel-Wildheart.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/,2015,year,album,7,D’Angelo / The Vanguard,Black Messiah,RCA,"As a song called ""1000 Deaths"" chugs to life on D'Angelo's first album in 14 years, the voice of Black Panther Fred Hampton is heard decrying the ""megalomaniac"" powers that be who stand in the way of peace for blacks and whites alike. ""We've got to fight them,"" the controversial civil-rights leader concludes, ""to make them understand what peace means."" At age 21, Hampton was shot and killed in a police raid on a Black Panther base on Chicago's West Side in December, 1969; though the authorities claimed that they were justified in the incident, a subsequent federal investigation found that only one shot was fired by the Panthers, while nearly 100 were let off by the cops. Forty-five years later, and just eight miles south of Hampton's slaying, an unarmed 17-year-old named Laquan McDonald was shot 16 times by a single police officer—the latest atrocity involving America's lethal refusal of black being. The intractability of this refusal is drawn out within the layers of Black Messiah, through the scarred guitars, the murky vocal harmonies, the grooves that never fully settle. It's a sad testament to an enduring struggle D'Angelo himself describes as a ""charade""—though the album's grainy black-and-white cover looks like something from Hampton's heyday, it was actually taken during Brooklyn's Afropunk Festival in 2014. But for all of its somber complexities, Black Messiah still manages to cling to its title's sense of rejuvenation. It's not all hopeless. A self-described optimist, D'Angelo also sings of sex, love, nostalgia, and faith across the record, which breathes with enough analog warmth to convert the staunchest vinyl skeptic. ""Another Life"", the album's finale, is a tribute to the smoothness of Philly Soul, a style that soundtracked America's burgeoning black middle class in the mid-'70s. The song fantasizes of a forever romance as heavenly piano chords and D'Angelo's pure falsetto slide it into the slow jam canon. And yet, at its core, the track feels like a mirage. It's no coincidence that Black Messiah's most luscious moment is also the one that looks beyond our own world. —Ryan Dombal D'Angelo / The Vanguard: ""1000 Deaths""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2r5yqjlVrI,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/21347/homepage_large.dc7a8dc5.jpg,/dataset/artwork/DAngelo__The_Vanguard-Black_Messiah.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/,2015,year,album,6,Sufjan Stevens,Carrie & Lowell,Asthmatic Kitty,"We’re only getting better at distracting ourselves from death, which makes sense, because death is terrifying. We get lost in screens, sex, stories, drugs, dreams, work, and music to forget the fact that, one day, the planet will spin without us; if there is noise, then there is not silence. Over the last 15 years, Sufjan Stevens has employed a particular sort of overflowing aesthetic maximalism to stave off that empty feeling. His songs are often marked by melancholy, but then strings, horns, blips, and banjo enter, and we’re swept away, saved from the bottomless pit below. On Carrie & Lowell, though, he forces himself—and his listeners—to face the brink with a stripped sound. The album’s first song is called ""Death With Dignity"" and its opening lines are delivered in a hush: ""Spirit of my silence I can hear you/ But I’m afraid to be near you"". Carrie is the troubled mother Stevens hardly knew, who died in 2012; Lowell is the loving step-father who to this day helps run Stevens’ independent record label. They seem to represent the entirety of this songwriter’s psyche: the interminable longing for and eventual loss of the woman who gave him life as well as the tremendous gratitude for and admiration of a man to whom he has no blood ties. While Carrie & Lowell is certainly not a party record, it’s not a pity party record either—it never devolves into mere mope for mope’s sake. Even if Stevens is making less noise than usual, these 11 elegies fill up a grand space. In the end, there’s comfort in knowing that this album will outlive us all. —Ryan Dombal Sufjan Stevens: ""Should Have Known Better""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJJT00wqlOo,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/21486/homepage_large.dbfa1978.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sufjan_Stevens-Carrie__Lowell.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/,2015,year,album,5,Tame Impala,Currents,Interscope,"Oh, you were getting used to Kevin Parker as a contemporary guitar hero? Too bad, because he's apparently been listening to a lot of Air and DeBarge, on headphones, in his bedroom, with his axe tucked away in its case. He's gone past the title of 2012's Lonerism to total desolation on Currents, whose every lyric makes the absence of anyone else in his studio evident. Even when he's talking to someone else, it's someone who's not in his life any more. (The chorus of ""'Cause I'm a Man"" pretends to be defensive bluster, but its context makes it clear that it's an outburst of shame addressed to an empty space.) There's still a bit of Parker's elegant guitar here, but he's mostly rerouted his perfectionistic craftsmanship to synthesizer tones and drum programming. If you want the old Tame Impala back, that's not about to happen: ""Maybe fake's what I like,"" he murmurs on ""New Person, Same Old Mistakes"". The weightless, drifty sounds in the foreground of Currents conceal the jagged edges of lyrics whose core topics are failed romance and emotional paralysis. The album's centerpiece, ""Eventually"", anticipates the slow, merciful erosion of heartbreak, and Parker sings it as if a perfectly breathy falsetto was the only thing that could cushion the blow of a breakup. —Douglas Wolk",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/21842/homepage_large.04192b63.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tame_Impala-Currents.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/,2015,year,album,4,Vince Staples,Summertime '06,Def Jam,"Jay Z famously said, ""Y’all respect the one who got shot, I respect the shooter."" Vince Staples lets you understand both perspectives better than anyone else currently rapping. You sense the powerlessness that leads someone to pull the trigger, their rage at having their story dismissed, the corrosive socioeconomic conditions that end in pine boxes, wilting roses, and another set seeking retribution. Summertime '06 chronicles the north Long Beach of nearly a decade ago, the city where the skinny carry strong heat, where the bandanas are brown ""like the dope daddy shooting in the kitchen."" The ex-shooter eulogizes the corpses, the snitches, and those condemned in the penitentiary—tracing his own escape route to sober celebrations on a mezzanine in Paris, lamenting those who never made it out. He’s not a conscious rapper, he’s a conscience rapper—attempting to make it to heaven in spite of those he may or may not have helped to hell. He says more in a bar than most say in an album (""I need to fight the power, but I need that new Ferrari."") No one has done contrition like this since Clipse. It’s all here: semi-automatic blasts and seagull sounds, Christ juxtaposed with crip walking, suntanned assassins trapped in surf-adjacent slums. He riffs on racial profiling, drug addiction, educational failures, police brutality, and white folks chanting ""nigga"" at concerts. He’s the halfway point between Ice Cube and Ian Curtis. Listen once more to the doomed pop of ""Summertime"", his voice practically disintegrating as he repeats, ""this could be forever, baby."" He’s scarred enough to know that’s it’s a lie, still hopeful enough to believe that if he says it loud enough, things could actually change. —Jeff Weiss",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/christianrich/vince-staples-senorita-produced-by-christian-rich,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/21977/homepage_large.97efc203.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Vince_Staples-Summertime_06.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/,2015,year,album,3,Grimes,Art Angels,4AD,"""B-E-H-A-V-E never more!"" sneers Claire Boucher, like a subversive punk cheerleader, on the stadium-worthy ""Kill V. Maim"". ""You gave up being good when you declared a state of war,"" she proclaims, delivering the final three words in an intense, throaty scream. The little snap from a traditionally feminine pop vocal into a full-on battle cry sounds like a slap in the face to an industry that regularly demotes Boucher’s artistic status to that of a ""girly"" female vocalist. Because Art Angels makes it clear that Grimes is not a voice on the sidelines, but a player in the field: a music producer who’s honing her skills like she’s sharpening a well-crafted sword. The move from the ghostly electronica of Visions is not Grimes ""going pop,” but rather evidence of her musical touch growing more versatile and vibrant. The album teems with bubbly, maximalist pop-leaning music, all jangly guitar samples, thumping bass drums, and Boucher’s voice layered and warped into addictive sing-alongs. It has two distinct personalities: the dark, fighter-stance synth-pop of songs like ""Kill V. Maim"" and the Janelle Monáe-featuring club-ready banger ""Venus Fly"", or lighter, bubblegum jams like ""California"" and ""Belly of the Beat"". Whether over minimalist piano ballads or macho guitar rock, Boucher faces those who’ve doubted her, tackling fame-hungry vampires, platonic heartbreakers, privileged men, and more. She's taking all the heat and intensity that comes along with an Internet-fueled spotlight and radiating that energy outward, blinding detractors and putting on an epic light show for everyone else. —Hazel Cills Grimes: ""Flesh Without Blood""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tv9YoYCKNoE,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/22568/homepage_large.59ef246f.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Grimes-Art_Angels.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/,2015,year,album,2,Jamie xx,In Colour,Young Turks,"The Persuasions' ""Good Times"" is one of those songs where the good times are always just about to come. ""I can’t afford the fancy dancing places/ But as long as you have faith in me/ We’ll have ourselves a grand time"", the a cappella group proclaims on its 1972 single, locked in the future tense. Jamie xx sampled a line from the song for In Colour’s dancehall-tinged song of the same name, but he tellingly lets the original track play in full during live performances. The point is obvious when the sampled section hits: This was clearly the right selection. In Colour is an album full of perfect decisions like this. The London producer honed the knack for subtleties that he first flashed in his 2011 solo one-off ""Far Nearer"" and on Gil Scott-Heron’s remix album We’re New Here, establishing himself as a solo force in his own right. The album tread broader stylistic territory than the hushed guitar minimalism of his main group the xx, from Popcaan and Young Thug’s gleeful profanity on ""Good Times,"" to the Aphex Twin ambient lullaby ""The Rest Is Noise,"" to the fractured vocal samples of ""Sleep Sound,"" which recalls the blissful techno shimmer of the Field. The wistful thread tying this all together was that unbridgeable distance between past and present: You heard it in the soaring synth melodies and disembodied rave chatter of the opener, ""Gosh"". But it’s ""Loud Places"", where Jamie xx takes fellow xx-er Romy Madley Croft’s vocals to one of those ""fancy dancing places"" in search of ""someone to be quiet with, who will take me home,"" where the good times are closest at hand: ""I feel music in your eyes/ I have never reached such heights."" In Colour distills that feeling. —Marc Hogan Jamie xx: ""I Know There's Gonna Be (Good Times)"" [ft. Young Thug and Popcaan]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjLBB-TMa84,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/21726/homepage_large.8f09545c.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jamie_xx-In_Colour.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/,2015,year,album,1,Kendrick Lamar,To Pimp a Butterfly,Interscope / Aftermath / Top Dawg,"At this point, it should be no surprise that Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly is the Album of the Year on numerous lists, including this one. Upon its release, it was universally lauded. It was only March, but the writing was on the White House walls: To Pimp a Butterfly was an opus, a statement, a feat. It felt weighty, labored, accomplished. One hour and 20 minutes of big ideas handled with complexity, it was a dextrous addition to the canon of art expressing disenchantment with fame and success. It launched a thousand thinkpieces, and forced critics to think deeply about music—to the point that it was still generating back-and-forths about its merits, as late as last month, eight months after its release. Commercially speaking, it set first-week streaming records on Spotify, meaning that it was being listened to as fervently as it was being debated. It's also Black as fuck. ""Blackness"" is a concept that remains fluid and intangible, but so solid that one can feel it when it’s present. And it was all over Butterfly. From the opening notes (a sample of Boris Gardiner's ""Every Nigger Is a Star"") to the closing—a fabricated conversation with Tupac Shakur—the album is packed with Blackness. Kendrick may not have given the public much advance warning for Butterfly’s rich sound—the luxe spillover of stripped funk and jazz grooving of Terrace Martin, Kamasi Washington, Flying Lotus, Thundercat, and many others—but he made his thematic intentions abundantly clear with the pre-release singles. The first, ""i"", with its Isley Brothers sample and message of self-love, was initially overlooked for its subversion; while Black folk were telling the world that #BlackLivesMatter, Kendrick turned the message inwards: ""I love myself."" It was the amendment to his controversial statements to Billboard magazine that veered uncomfortably close to respectability politics. (""What happened to [Michael Brown] should've never happened. Never,"" he told the magazine. ""But when we don't have respect for ourselves, how do we expect them to respect us? It starts from within. Don't start with just a rally, don't start from looting—it starts from within."") At a moment when his peers remained fixated on finding worth and esteem from the world and things around them—the power of celebrity, the trappings of material excess, the numbing of drugs, the escape of sexual conquest—Kendrick emerged as a grounded Black hippie. He was enthralled with all of the same things as other rappers, but not beholden to them. He escaped into pussy on ""These Walls"" but philosophized as he stroked: ""Walls telling me they full of pain, resentment/ Need someone to live in them just to relieve tension/ Me? I’m just a tenant."" When he got drunk on ""u"", he turned to self-loathing: ""Mood swings is frequent, nigga/ I know depression is restin' on your heart for two reasons, nigga."" When he gassed up his luxury vehicle on President Obama's favorite song of the year, ""How Much a Dollar Cost"", he encountered God in the form of a beggar. None of these things are explicitly Black, but the lens through which they were filtered was undoubtedly so. From its vernacular to its point of view, To Pimp a Butterfly was about dealing with the survivor's remorse of escaping the poverty of Black America, while also relating to those still there. On ""Institutionalized"", when he took one of his hood friends to the BET Awards, he noted: ""You lookin' at artistses like they harvestses/ So many Rolies around you and you want all of ’em/ Somebody told me you thinkin' 'bout snatchin' jewelry."" Nowhere is Blackness more front and center than on the album’s second single, ""The Blacker the Berry"". It was the song that most clearly announced Kendrick's lack of fucks about the comfort of his white audience. Perhaps it was a retort to his previous Grammy snubs; maybe it was a reaction to seeing ""Swimming Pools (Drank)"", his anti-drunk song, turned into a pro-drunk song in the mouths of bros. Whatever his reasoning, ""The Blacker the Berry"" provided white people with no entry into the song: There is hardly anything on the song for Taylor Swift to lip sync in her car unless she was going to deal with psychic turmoil of mouthing ""My hair is nappy, my dick is big, my nose is round and wide/ You hate me don't you?/ You hate my people—your plan is to terminate my culture/ You're fuckin' evil, I want you to recognize that I'm a proud monkey."" He labeled the song as the ""emancipation of a real nigga"" and, even in a society where whites regularly rub ears with the n-word, it was abrasive and unsettling. All of this Blackness is important. Important because sometimes white people need to take a metaphorical seat—to sit down, shut up, and listen to conversations in which they are a cultural object, not the center. This is not an easy task. White people have been way too comfortable for way too long in this country, in this world. Way too comfortable with the way they choose to see reality solely through their own gaze, way too comfortable with their sense of entitlement over the planet and its resources, way too comfortable with their appropriation of culture in ways large and small, way too comfortable with the stories they tell, the lies passed off as the history of mankind. Way too comfortable with the things they pick up, way too careless with the way they put them down. But Kendrick was willing to discomfort the comfortable. He took all of the acclaim he had received as a critical darling from his major label debut—the rightfully extolled good kid, m.A.A.d city—and doubled down on his Blackness, not for the entertainment of white people, but in near-total disregard for their experience of his conversation. He was Miles Davis playing with his back to the crowd, and in that sense, it's a miracle that this record has found the audiences that it has found. It's an album by the greatest rapper of his generation, where his rap skills are perhaps the least noteworthy talking point. An album so dense with ideas that it made the novelistic turns of his debut—a thoughtful and textured, gang culture-adjacent coming-of-age story—seem quaint and straightforward by comparison. It's an album that is on this list not only because of its merits, but because it's presumably why so many albums are not here, this year—it's not a stretch to reason that To Pimp a Butterfly had something to do with why Kanye West and Drake didn't release proper studio albums in 2015. It's an album with such gravitas that the runaway success of Adele's 25 seems inconsequential. It's not just the album of the year; it's the voice of a moment in time. —kris ex Kendrick Lamar: ""Alright""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYnenIWZjwE,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/21657/homepage_large.d47a5880.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kendrick_Lamar-To_Pimp_a_Butterfly.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,100,Dâm-Funk,"""Free""",Stones Throw,"Funk has always concerned itself with liberation, and Dâm-Funk has long been an advocate for funk-as-freedom; he’d like nothing more than to lift your mind, your body, and your soul away from whatever’s holding it down. ""Free"", the closing track of Dâm’s wordless STFU EP, is a luxuriant ride from the boulevard to beyond the stratosphere. Over a bed of head-snap drums, twinkling Casios, and blunted bass, Dâm breezes down the block and off into the unknown. The eight-minute ""Free"" is a masterfully composed track, tidy as a cleanroom and filthy as a Black & Mild-stuffed ashtray, every chiming piano and wriggling keytar hanging, seemingly, in midair. More than that, though, it’s a testament to Dâm’s ability to make the music of the past—the mechanized precision of post-disco R&B and the subwoofer-decimating synths of left-coast g-funk—feel an awful lot like the future. It’s like the man said: Open up your funky mind, and you can fly. —Paul Thompson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeeYUXjp_ro,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/17514/homepage_large.63361a2b.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dm-Funk-Free.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,99,Unknown Mortal Orchestra,"""Can't Keep Checking My Phone""",Jagjaguwar,"On Multi-Love, Ruban Nielson applied his knack for layered hooks to his own polyamorous entanglement. Multi-Love’s jittery core untangles the anxiety of balancing partners, of unlearning the traditional forms of hetero marriage, and of doing so while that phone in your pocket begs your eyes to stay glued to its screen. ""Can’t Keep Checking My Phone"" rattles with a nu-disco beat, finding its pulse in an octave-hopping bass line. Nielson’s production leaves plenty of open air for his blocky vocal phrasings to occupy as he stacks syllables that mimic a clipped long-distance conversation or shards of SMS swapping. All the while, a pitched-down version of his own voice haunts his words, as guilt and a yearning for freedom orbit each other. If ""Can’t Keep Checking My Phone"" isn’t the first disco slapper about wanting to chuck your iPhone in the nearest harbor, it’s got to be the most unexpectedly tender. —Sasha Geffen",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/17447/homepage_large.c0d72531.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Unknown_Mortal_Orchestra-Cant_Keep_Checking_My_Phone.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,98,Protomartyr,"""Dope Cloud""",Hardly Art,"Proof that there’s life in post-punk beyond basic retreads of bands beloved in the 1980s, Detroit’s Protomartyr have restless energy to spare, both in their captivating live performances and their sharply structured songwriting. ""Dope Cloud"", built around propulsive drumming, a rickety and memorable guitar riff, and blown-out choruses, is both an ode to and a warning about escapism as a survival strategy. Vocalist Joe Casey’s perfectly blasé lyrics and delivery remind us that though it may feel good in the short run to plunge headfirst into hedonism, and that feeling good has value, it’s really not much of a lifelong solution to our continual search as a species for meaning and utility in this random and heartless universe. —Jes Skolnik",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/17645/homepage_large.74924fa9.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Protomartyr-Dope_Cloud.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,97,Frankie Cosmos,"""Young""",Bayonet,"One of the nice parts about getting older is watching younger people discover things that have been second nature to you for years. Among college-aged musicians playing the sort of lunchpail indie pop they were born too late to hear in the '90s, Frankie Cosmos seems like an outlier. Brief, simple, and direct in word but vast in sentiment, her best songs have the stature of haiku—it takes longer to hear them than it does to listen. ""With this I’m scraping by/ I guess it’s cute that I tried,"" she sings on ""Young"", a self-portrait of a wallflower who seems to prefer her parties from a safe distance at the top of the stairs, as gentle as a lullaby and as sharply worded as hardcore. It all comes and goes in two minutes, with a five-second silence in the middle. Because wisdom is nice but time—time is of the essence. —Mike Powell",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/17804/homepage_large.7123a5ed.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Frankie_Cosmos-Young.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,96,Isaiah Rashad,"""Nelly""",Top Dawg Entertainment,"Defying the conventional wisdom that rappers need to flood the market with as much material as possible in order to stay on the radar, Isaiah Rashad has kept a low profile since releasing his sleeper debut Cilvia Demo in early 2014, limiting his output to just a few guest verses and this very subdued single. ""Nelly"" is Rashad’s down-to-earth answer to every overly enthusiastic song comparing love to a hit single. ""We can’t be no number one,"" he confesses upfront to neighborhood girl who appears to share his lot in life, ""but we can be the jam."" Like most Rashad tracks, it’s dense with autobiographical detail—in just two leisurely verses, he details his modest upbringing, his practical view of romance, and the low ceiling he sees hanging over his career. He can’t promise the world, and he refuses to feed the false hope that he’ll become a star and magically make this poor girl’s problems disappear. The best he can offer is some empathy, and someone to share a blunt and pass the time with. True to his word, ""Nelly"" wasn’t a number one hit—not even close—but it was, in its own understated way, a jam. —Evan RytlewskiIsaiah Rashad: ""Nelly""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jW986OIWhqQ,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/17707/homepage_large.926e0b7b.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Isaiah_Rashad-Nelly.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,95,WOKE,"""The Lavishments of Light Looking"" [ft. George Clinton]",Adult Swim,"After the horror of the November attacks in the French capital, Thundercat released a gorgeous track simply titled ""Paris"". It made its way around the web, and some admirers, in their private moments, griped about the fact that it lasted hardly more than a minute. But Thundercat was involved with another, equally moving track this year with a far more significant runtime: ""The Lavishments of Light Looking"", which was released by the supergroup WOKE (Flying Lotus, two members of Shabazz Palaces, and Thundercat on bass). The track was a paean to open-mindedness, approachable in its phantasmagoric psychedelia even as it preached transcendence through music. Its explicit spirituality was a balm for those aching from a news cycle filled with demagoguery, suspicion, and fear. When artists attempt to be political, the risk is often that of reductionism: politics are easier to translate into a speech than into a song. But with ""Lavishments"", WOKE managed not to evoke the anxieties of the time, but to repel them, appealing instead to a higher sentiment. —Jonah Bromwich",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/17709/homepage_large.83593d52.jpg,/dataset/artwork/WOKE-The_Lavishments_of_Light_Looking_ft_George_Clinton.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,94,DJ Koze,"""XTC""",Pampa,"There are two sides to DJ Koze: the hypnotizing shaman who spins one groove into another with ultimate finesse, and the winking illusionist who laughs at the shaman idea and teases you for your mindless devotion. Viewed alongside the finely tuned whimsy of his excellent DJ-Kicks mix from this year, ""XTC"" is a pretenseless, steady burner. Its lush, trance-inducing atmosphere, detailed with Koze’s typical quirky percussion, makes it one of his most straightforwardly satisfying recent productions. But it's just like Koze not to leave it there: a woman’s voice, ruminating on what ecstasy might provide for someone seeking enlightenment, emerges out of the mix. ""I heard you say once that a lie is sweet in the beginning, and bitter in the end,"" she murmurs. ""Is the drug like the lie, and meditation the truth? Or am I missing something that could really help me?"" It’s a straightforward monologue with ambiguous implications. Is Koze cultivating a lie? Is he trying to reveal the truth? As the track progresses, it gets sharper and toothier, generating more and more friction, until eventually the tidal harmonic washes transition into something jittery and obsessive, like a person compulsively playing with a zipper. The question lingers, a nagging dichotomy that nods towards the self-aware state of electronic music. How long will it be before intellectualism and hedonism collapse back together? Are we missing something that could really help us? —Abigail Garnett",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/17515/homepage_large.7beba353.jpg,/dataset/artwork/DJ_Koze-XTC.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,93,Bully,"""I Remember""",Columbia / StarTime,"""I Remember"" is a song of betrayal, about how the more we share, the more vulnerable we become. Each line carries a small part of a much larger story, and as fragments of hurt whiz past like spinning knives, it mirrors the process of memory itself. Bully's Alicia Bognanno sings in a melodic scream that any '90s alt-rocker could envy over basic-but-catchy punk chords, and the spaces between her declarations hold even more than the actual words: ""I remember getting too fucked up...I remember showing up at your house....I remember the way your sheets smelt."" That's how our minds work: a picture, a smell, a taste, a box of photos—all become imprinted, the senses bound to feelings that are later assembled into narrative, leading then to the long process of figuring out what it all meant and what happens now. —Mark Richardson",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/17375/homepage_large.798020ac.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bully-I_Remember.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,92,Cool Uncle,"""Break Away"" [ft. Jessie Ware]",Fresh Young Minds / EMPIRE,"With the mythology built into pop music fandom, it can be easy to fall into a ""born too late"" mindset, where you believe that the music made before your time is somehow more sincere, more real. Obviously, this is bullshit, and every generation has its own version of this FOMO, but sometimes revisiting old sounds yields something so spectacular that the retro-worship urge is irresistible. With Cool Uncle, Grammy-winning R&B producer Jack Splash teamed up with soul singer Bobby Caldwell, who has been quietly releasing records since the late '70s, and hit this precise sweet spot. From the staccato electric piano line, to the swishy cymbals to the background horn section, ""Break Away"" sounds so pointedly retro you'd be forgiven for thinking it was a cut from some obscure compilation of forgotten slow jams. But the presence of Jessie Ware, who owes considerable debt to Caldwell's contemporaries, gives ""Break Away"" an undoubtedly modern flair. While it would have still been a brilliant track sung solo, Ware's butter-smooth vocals not only hold their own against Caldwell's seasoned tenor, but form an ideal partnership. It's a perfect balance of then and now. —Cameron Cook Cool Uncle: ""Break Away"" [ft. Jessie Ware]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqcXfC49g90,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/17759/homepage_large.beb309d9.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Cool_Uncle-Break_Away_ft_Jessie_Ware.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,91,Kamaiyah,"""How Does It Feel""",Self-released,"Kamaiyah is a rapper and singer from Oakland with only a couple of songs to her name, and somehow one of them is already perfect. ""How Does It Feel"" bubbles like the Moët she drinks in the video, a song about the good life from someone who doesn't live it. The music zooms giddily up a West Coast rap highway, touching on electro, G-funk, and the Bay Area sound. Kamaiyah sing-raps about the most American feeling of all: ""I wonder/ How does it feel to be rich?"" It is celebratory, yearning, triumphant, and bottomlessly sad all at once. It will sound as good the day you get fired and get day-drunk at a TGI Fridays as the day you hire a party bus to celebrate your promotion. It is a song about perseverance and hunger, about ambition and appetite, and every other emotion that has kept the flame alive in hip-hop since its inception. Not a bad introduction.  —Jayson Greene",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42t0ij0wj-U,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/17866/homepage_large.061476a1.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kamaiyah-How_Does_It_Feel.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,90,Ty Dolla $ign,"""Blasé"" [ft. Future and Rae Sremmurd]",Atlantic,"Despite taking place in Los Angeles, Ty Dolla $ign’s opus Free TC most resembles a Broadway play, complete with a wide-eyed, scene-establishing opener, a Babyface-assisted aria, and a closing song literally titled ""Finale"". The many moving parts hit some kind of crescendo with ""Blasé"", featuring Future and Rae Sremmurd, which loses all context on the radio and in DJ setlists, but even then is perceivable as part of a larger core. The propulsive banger is something of an outlier in Ty’s long, varied discography—he’s never aimed for a radio hit without leaning on West Coast slap, and ""Blasé"" is pure blurry, Atlanta-inspired low end. The hook is all about twisting typical hip-hop boasts into ""who cares?"" declarations—we’re in the club, we’re buying bottles, we’re driving Maseratis, blasé blasé blasé. There’s a slightly menacing tinge in everyone’s voice that makes it seem like this good time might be the last time: ""I ain’t scared to die, on my dead homies"", Ty sings, straining to hit his upper register. Ty Dolla $ign has made a career out of writing about his needs and how they mingle with disposability—toot it and boot it, how many girls can fit in his cabana, these hoes ain’t loyal—and here he sleepily lands on the most raucous song of his career while sounding like a somnambulant party machine, the guy still going well past 2 a.m. on a Wednesday. But what of it? —Matthew Ramirez",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/17552/homepage_large.77088bf7.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ty_Dolla_ign-Blas_ft_Future_and_Rae_Sremmurd.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,89,Natalie Prass,"""My Baby Don’t Understand Me""",Spacebomb,"What do you do when you realize you have nothing in common with the person you love, when it suddenly hits you that your entire relationship has been a slow process of growing apart? Is there any going back after a realization like that? Natalie Prass isn’t singing in hypotheticals on the lavishly orchestrated opener to her debut album—she really needs to know, and she’s posing the questions to you directly: ""Where do you go when the only home you know is with a stranger?"". For all the Dusty in Memphis comparisons her album invited, Prass isn’t a belter like Springfield. She’s got a small, pleasant voice, the kind that doesn’t so much sing over other instruments as draw them in, and on ""My Baby Don’t Understand Me"", a magnificent congregation of strings, horns, and woodwinds shows up to console her, to offer hope when she needs it most. Like so many classic soul songs, it starts plaintively then picks itself up, and in the spirit of Gladys Knight, it ends redemptively with that most bittersweet symbol of farewells and fresh starts: a train. —Evan Rytlewski Natalie Prass: ""My Baby Don't Understand Me""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdfZnWsps34,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/17281/homepage_large.46991e9a.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Natalie_Prass-My_Baby_Dont_Understand_Me.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,88,Shamir,"""Demon""",XL,"Not all great loves make you a better person. Nestled between the party tracks of Shamir’s debut Ratchet is secret weapon ""Demon"", a downturned love song that draws its fire from the underworld. ""I’ve gone and sold my soul/ If I’m a demon, baby, you’re the beast that made me"", Shamir sings over one of Ratchet’s sparser beats, ""Falling from grace, but falling oh so gracefully"". Dressed in sensual tones, ""Demon"" flips the lover-as-savior narrative on its head. Shamir isn’t looking for redemption, or to be ushered out of a past life into a purer one. Love is a means and an end in itself—and if it happens to corrupt you irreversibly along the way, so be it. —Sasha Geffen Shamir: ""Demon""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5OzO4uF_1A,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/278/Shamir-Ratchet.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Shamir-Demon.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,87,Tate Kobang,"""Bank Rolls (Remix)""",300 Entertainment / D1 Entertainment,"Regional rap hits often feel casual and lived-in. If Tate Kobang's feathery ""Bank Rolls (Remix)"" feels a little extra so, it's because Baltimore's been inhabiting this beat for more than a decade now: it was sourced from an old Tim Trees track produced by Rod Lee, an artist who knows something about being a local hero. Originally a short freestyle, the lyrics are dotted heavily with neighborhoods and street names, but Kobang abstains from boasts and shit-talking. The general mood is ""I have friends in lots of these places!"", and when Kobang expanded the track upon signing a label deal, the line he spun into a quasi-chorus was, ""I love my city/ Ask about me and I bet they know me."" As baldly personable as Kobang comes off, the star of the track is Lee's beat, a minimal funk oddity that bears the same relationship to, say, the Neptunes' productions as the Ramones do to the Supremes: a stilted, charming facsimile. The watery Rhodes piano lick that accompanies the chorus acts as a sublime counterpoint to the snub-nosed bass bursts. It's a beat that deserved a second life, strong enough not just to hit the same city twice but to propel a favorite son forward. —Andrew Gaerig Tate Kobang: ""Bank Rolls (Remix)""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qzd41AnY9zI,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/17694/homepage_large.ab80abcc.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tate_Kobang-Bank_Rolls_Remix.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,86,Savages,"""The Answer""",Matador,"The first single from Savages' forthcoming album is an exercise in tension-building and suspense—no small feat in the context of a lunging, steel-toe-booted mosh-pit of a song. Gemma Thompson's buzzsaw guitar keeps moving away from its central chord and immediately dodging back to it, with a rhythm that lands just off the beat. (When she finally breaks free of that chord's gravity, more than a minute into the song, it's like a smack to the face.) Thompson, Fay Milton, and Ayse Hassan lock into the song's high-friction riff in a mode that's way too rare these days; for all the comparisons Savages get to late-'70s British post-punk, their rhythm section is closer to the obsessively precise mania of the Jesus Lizard. What, then, is the answer that Jehnny Beth is whooping and snarling about? Love, but not the fuzzy kind. ""The Answer"" is about love as a cruel obligation, as fuel for corrosive jealousy, as the gift other people get that you know would ruin you. ""If you don't love me you don't love anybody"", Beth keeps repeating to someone—or to herself. Whether it's a hope or a fear, it's a desperate one. —Douglas Wolk Savages: ""The Answer""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoxXKKQYJYQ,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/17762/homepage_large.d953fafe.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Savages-The_Answer.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,85,Lower Dens,"""To Die in L.A.""",Ribbon Music,"According to singer Jana Hunter, the initial writing sessions for Lower Dens third full-length were not a merry time. ""We hadn’t played together for a while, and we were in a cold, dark space—physically and emotionally,"" she explained earlier this year. Somewhere along the line, the Baltimore-based band realized that it had fallen into a kind of bad-vibe feedback loop. They took a breather and reconvened a month later with a new goal—to avoid writing miserable music while feeling miserable. There’s no telling where ""To Die in L.A."" fell in this process, but I’m guessing it came after the break. The song has many strengths—it's catchy, economical, and perfectly paced. It makes lush and melodic pop seem like a natural extension of Lower Dens’ minimalist aesthetic, rather than a calculated change in scene. It is best, though, in how elegantly it shifts from anxiety to relief. Listening to the first lines, you’d think Hunter had slipped in her pledge toward positive thinking, but when the chorus arrives the music and lyrics align in uplift. It's possible to give the lyrics a darker reading, with the singer confessing a desire to shift positions of advantage (""Time will turn the tide""). But it feels more hopeful than that—an incantation against gloom and a melody you could hold on an indefinite mental loop. —Aaron Leitko Lower Dens: ""To Die in L.A.""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2iSVHh_Wn8,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/17301/homepage_large.f72dd8c4.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lower_Dens-To_Die_in_LA.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,84,Titus Andronicus,"""Dimed Out""",Merge,"If you ask their army of devotees why +@ is their life-changing, vital force, it's because no band gives more of itself. This band does not come equipped with brakes, nor does its leader Patrick Stickles. On a 29-song, double concept album, ""Dimed Out"" is the loudest advocate for Stickles’ hyper-driven maximalist ambitions, and it manages a trick we usually associate with hip-hop, not indie rock: Coining new slang and using it as a statement of purpose. Yeah, ""Dimed Out"" probably soundtracked some drinking games this year, but it goes deeper than that: Titus wants to transcend and to take you with them. You can see it in Stickles’ online persona as well, which fosters a cult of personality that can involve starting a one-sided beef with Kendrick Lamar, dominating his own Genius page, and making an overt bid for King of New York. ""Dimed Out"" overdoes it so you don't confuse it with just punk music. —Ian Cohen Titus Andronicus: ""Dimed Out""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dX6LL7b8Y0,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/17464/homepage_large.7fe7d00d.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Titus_Andronicus-Dimed_Out.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,83,Moses Sumney,"""Seeds""",Terrible,"Moses Sumney is one of seemingly hundreds of artists to benefit from rapid advances in both the quality and availability of live sampling, looping, and layering technologies. But while his embrace of these devices adds a dimension to his music, there's an earthy richness to his performances that suggests he could go on for hours with nothing but a handful of jazz chords on his guitar and his astonishing voice. That voice is a truly beautiful instrument, whether he’s folding it into pillowy, wordless backing harmonies or using his otherworldly falsetto to put an exclamation point on a verse. He sounds not quite like anyone else, his style a big-armed embrace hugging the expressive jazz of Billie Holiday, Thom Yorke at his most atmospheric, or Antony Hegarty at her most reflective. His guitar here is simple, precise and propulsive, humbly underpinning the haunting drama of the full piece of music, where ghostly choirs swoop in and out, and an icy orchestral blast comes out of nowhere at three minutes to turn the whole thing on its head. Sumney is still at the very beginning of his career, but his utterly singular work so far points to great things ahead. —Joe Tangari",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/17470/homepage_large.33d38c79.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Moses_Sumney-Seeds.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,82,Chairlift,"""Ch-Ching""",Columbia,"Inspired by New York City, ""Ch-Ching"" marvels with its magnitude: from the trunk-rattling bass and whip-crack snares to the pop and hiss beneath the meandering melody. Like the city itself, the song's every square inch belies tiered, towering architecture. While its sonic immediacy and textural diversity make it a stellar pop song, the primary source of ""Ch-Ching""’s appeal is that it avoids the expected. Listen to the way Caroline Polachek’s willowy soprano shimmies effortlessly among ghostly whistles and hollow whoops, or how the syncopated brass lends the steeled hip-hop framework a bit of antiquated charm. ""Ch-Ching"" is like nothing Chairlift have done before, and is one of the more bombastic and brassy pop singles in recent memory. —Zoe CampChairlift: ""Ch-Ching""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWSFlqBOgl8,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/17750/homepage_large.c9208089.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Chairlift-Ch-Ching.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,81,Jenny Hval,"""That Battle Is Over""",Sacred Bones,"Unsettling in its combination of lyrical bleakness and meditative instrumental beauty, ""That Battle Is Over"" finds Norwegian experimental artist Jenny Hval capturing 2015’s dystopian global political and cultural climate with terrifying accuracy. Late capitalism has devoured much of our free will, rendering individual boycotts and identification with movements toothless: What, then, is the point of struggle? Over droning organ and rhythmic hand drumming, Hval’s bending and swooping internal monologue, forced outward, wrestles with that question from the position that change is still necessary, even if it seems impossible. What has capitalism done to us? How has it eroded our sense of self? Can we still take care of ourselves and one another in such a world, or are we just going through the motions, despite our best intentions? As we sit perched on the edge of a rotting empire, we find resonance even in knowing others are aching the way that we are. Direct but never didactic, Hval cuts to the marrow. —Jes Skolnik",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/17362/homepage_large.f6ac1264.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jenny_Hval-That_Battle_Is_Over.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,80,Dej Loaf,"""Me U & Hennessy"" [ft. Lil Wayne]",Columbia,"Dej Loaf came into the year with the kind of cosigns that dreams are made of: Drake on Instagram, a slew of high-profile ""Try Me"" remixes, a slot on Erykah Badu’s year-end tour, a feature with Eminem. In 2015, she followed through, putting out her first studio EP #AndSeeThatsTheThing, while touring on Nicki Minaj’s Pinkprint Tour, after getting a shout-out from Nicki herself at the BET Awards. By contrast, Lil Wayne was dealing with his Cash Money fallout, the indefinite postponement of Tha Carter V, and a slew of disappointing solo releases. Remixing Dej’s ""Me U & Hennessy"" was one of his more successful musical contributions of the year. His involvement brought wider attention to the slow-burning drunk sex jam that had originally appeared sandwiched in the middle of Dej’s Sell Sole mixtape. Yet compared with some of the other sexytime songs Dej put out this year (""Hey There"" ft. Future, ""My Beyoncé"" with Lil Durk, ""Shawty"" ft. Young Thug), there’s something a little less affectionate and starry-eyed about this one. The song slides and grinds by the flicker of a ""couple candles"", and there's an immediacy to Dej's lyrics. But there’s also a more tangible distance between the two, at least for Wayne: ""Girl you don’t love me, you just love my doggy style,"" he drawls. ""I guess chemistry is true, but I don’t know if it’s the Hennessy or you""—a brief thought he quickly eschews for more threesome- and dick-related pastures. Dej for one, per her characteristic, slightly-detached persona, is happy to keep it about the moment. —Minna Zhou Dej Loaf: ""Me U & Hennessy"" [ft. Lil Wayne]",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/moaninmonkeys/dej-loaf-feat-young-thug-shawty-prod-by-young-roc | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfmV7zUoliU,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/278/lil-wayne-102688-152872.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dej_Loaf-Me_U__Hennessy_ft_Lil_Wayne.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,79,YG,"""Twist My Fingaz""",Def Jam,"In rap’s criminal cosmology, the gangbanger was superseded over a decade ago by the hustler. Gangsta rap’s basic themes of allegiance to an effort far greater than one individual person has been replaced with the coldblooded entrepreneurial mindset of the trap era. Yet over the past couple years, gangsta rap’s been making a stealthy comeback, thanks to efforts by artists as diverse as Freddie Gibbs, Kendrick Lamar, and YG. Following up his DJ Mustard produced debut album, My Krazy Life, the one-off single ""Twist My Fingaz"" reaches back to the mid-'90s for a nasty, funk-fueled beat, as well as lyrics that pair shots at a new generation of studio gangstas with an exuberant evocation of gang’s favorite nonverbal ways of signalling affiliation. Hearing it’s like living in a world where the G-funk era never ended. —Miles Raymer YG: ""Twist My Fingaz""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z58pxp04PZo,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/17589/homepage_large.36bbc1c1.jpg,/dataset/artwork/YG-Twist_My_Fingaz.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,78,iLoveMakonnen,"""Whip It (Remix)"" [ft. Migos and Rich the Kid]",Self-released,"Like all the best Migos songs, ""Whip It"" sounds like it is made of pre-chewed gum balls and carcinogens. The beat starts with a dinky piano patch harking back to Master P; it's so dinky that reigning Atlanta Dink-Master Zaytoven might scoff at it. The song is a toy menagerie and iLoveMakonnen is lead toy. He's so sociable he even makes whipping crack sound like a rainy-day project for two (""My friend Makonnen is teaching me how to whip it""). The song is abjectly, joyfully disposable-sounding, but that hook jabs your brain like the upraised staple in the centerfold of a comic book. —Jayson Greene",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/17409/homepage_large.c4ed3d3c.jpg,/dataset/artwork/iLoveMakonnen-Whip_It_Remix_ft_Migos_and_Rich_the_Kid.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,77,Majical Cloudz,"""Downtown""",Matador,"""Downtown"" is, on one level, a song about the good times in a relationship, when things are flush with excitement and discovery and everything seems perfect: ""Nothing you say/ Will ever be wrong/ Cause it just feels good being in your arms."" But the way Devon Welsh sings the words, and the way Matthew Otto's skeletal instrumentation floats around them like a ghost, makes you think that at least some of it can be placed in the past tense. The line, ""There is one thing I’ll do, if it ever goes wrong, I’ll write you into all my songs"" may be the one thing that exists in the present. It’s hard to know for sure, but when a love song comes this close to an elegy, it brings to mind fellow melancholic romantics like Morrissey, Robert Smith, ""God Damn the Sun"" Michael Gira, and Leonard Cohen, which is a good place for Majical Cloudz to be at this point in their career. That it includes some of the best lyrics of the year—""And if suddenly I die/ I hope they will say/ That he was obsessed and it was okay""—shows that Welsh can back up deep sentiments with sharp, smart writing. —Brandon Stosuy Majical Cloudz: ""Downtown""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Rihk7_2BVw,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/17733/homepage_large.2e9046d8.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Majical_Cloudz-Downtown.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,76,Empress Of,"""Standard""",Terrible,"It takes an immense talent like Brooklyn transplant Lorely Rodriguez, aka Empress Of, to write and produce a catchy, heartfelt pop song about income inequality without it feeling forced, corny, or patronizing. There’s no poor-them charity or Hallmark Channel pathos in the gut-wrenching chorus to ""Standard"", from Rodriguez’s stunning debut album. When ""survival"" means different things to different people across the globe, understanding the material details of others’ lives can be a catalyst for genuine connection. Instead of preaching, Rodriguez’s empathy resonates on a seriously human scale, getting its multilayered pop hooks into our hearts and heads as we nod along. —Jes Skolnik Empress Of: ""Standard""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ht5d7gVqo1I,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/17658/homepage_large.6a1575bf.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Empress_Of-Standard.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,75,Lana Del Rey,"""High by the Beach""",Interscope,"In 2015 it became clear that Lana Del Rey's aesthetic wasn't just ""a phase,"" and ""High by the Beach"" is a song that only she could have sung. For every trite platitude—""lights, camera, acción""—there's an equal and opposite profundity (""You could be a bad motherfucker/ But that don't make you a man""). While ""Getting high by the beach"" is a vision not totally consistent with the manicured sad-girl aesthetic that has become LDR’s trademark, it's also a vision she executes perfectly—what could've been a painfully-literal complainers' anthem sounds breezy and somehow dignified. It’s moody and literal, sure, but it sounds, for once, like Lana has nothing to prove. —Molly Beauchemin Lana Del Rey: ""High by the Beach""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnxpHIl5Ynw,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/278/CLmu6f2UkAAdhtt.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lana_Del_Rey-High_by_the_Beach.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,74,Frank Ocean,"""(At Your Best) You Are Love"" (Aaliyah/The Isley Brothers Cover)",Self-released,"In 1976, the Isley Brothers wrote and recorded ""At Your Best (You Are Love)"" for Harvest for the World, their 14th studio album; by then, the Brothers were a six-piece, ringed with gold medallions and bedecked in full disco-fringe, playing a smoother, slinkier iteration of the galloping rhythm and blues they’d built a career around. Almost two decades later, in 1994, seven years before her death, Aaliyah included a cover of the song on her debut LP, and this year, on what would have been her 36th birthday, Frank Ocean posted a high, spectral version of it—just voice and some wobbly keys—to his personal Tumblr. There might be no greater testament to Ocean’s extraordinary skill as an R&B singer than the way he turns the Isleys’ hokey bromides (""You are a positive, motivating force within my life"") into something fully devastating, a lament that also feels healing, generative, kind. In Ocean’s voice, the song becomes about the futility of trying to understand a partner who’s dragging around a past you can’t begin to unpack, much less comprehend: ""When you feel what you feel, it's hard for me to understand,"" he sings, his voice unraveling a little at the edges. ""So many things have taken place before this love affair began."" Feeling the full weight of history and all the complications it has wrought: There might be no better summation of the last 12 months. —Amanda Petrusich Frank Ocean: ""(At Your Best) You Are Love""",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/17293/homepage_large.8a0c1ce3.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Frank_Ocean-At_Your_Best_You_Are_Love_AaliyahThe_Isley_Brothers_Cover.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,73,Rick Ross,"""Foreclosures""",Def Jam / Maybach,"Rick Ross’s charade has always hinged on regality over reality, but it’s hard to remain stately in a drought. Last year was tough on MMG, and the cracks in the small empire gaped with the release of two full-length duds from label-boss Rozay himself. On his first lead single of 2015, Ross toned it down for the better. He’s realistic and cautionary about the industry—cutting remarks about malicious publishing deals anchor the first verse—and he’s more endearing for it. A subtle, extended 50 Cent diss hits harder than the corny jabs the two usually exchange; sincerity about Meek Mill is more honorable than bawsy rhetoric. At the bottom of it all, as ever, is money, and ""Foreclosures"" is Ross’ believable dark side warning. ""Learn to walk a tightrope/ Ever seen a rich nigga go broke?"" he snarls over a dramatically streamlined J.U.S.T.I.C.E League beat. It’s a delightfully preachy takedown, but before it all starts, Ross admits, ""I see it from both sides, I feel a nigga pain."" —Jay Balfour",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/17664/homepage_large.bf3756a1.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rick_Ross-Foreclosures.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,72,Hudson Mohawke,"""Ryderz""",Warp,"The rider is a mysterious figure. Bob Dylan sang about two of them approaching in the distance with the howling wind. Jim Morrison saw him as a killer in the night, stalking women and children. D.J. Rogers told us to watch out for the riders, too, and his warning became the core of the biggest, most blown-out track on Hudson Mohawke’s first solo album since he made his name with the TNGHT project. ""Ryderz"" begins with a mostly untouched minute of Rogers’ original, and it takes a lot of gall to gank a sample that completely. But when the rat-a-tat 808s and neon synthesizers begin to whizz and bang over Rogers’ lyrics, you remember that subtlety has rarely been the point of Mohawke’s most memorable music. It’s not so much a curated Fourth of July fireworks display as it is a match thrown into a car stuffed with Roman candles. The agitation of the sampled vocals is revealed by the colossal drop, which suggests the best way to heed a warning is not with words but with a show of strength. —Jeremy Gordon",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvusWQluJ6I,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/17438/homepage_large.ebe173d9.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Hudson_Mohawke-Ryderz.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,71,Father John Misty,"""The Night Josh Tillman Came to Our Apartment""",Bella Union / Sub Pop,"Jesus, what an ugly song. The story of a one-night stand in which no one escapes persecution, least of all songwriter/performer/narrator Josh Tillman: He can't get it up and, perhaps more damningly, misidentifies his company's linguistic faux pas as a malapropism. ""The Night Josh Tillman Came to Our Apartment"" surpasses the already high levels of cynicism and bitterness that exist in Tillman's second record as Father John Misty, the excellent I Love You, Honeybear. It's essential that bile at this level of toxicity be delivered via song, because if someone just started talking like this you'd stop them short and advise them to take a round off. There's a ton of posing and preening on Honeybear, and even more during Tillman's excellent live show, in which he fully inhabits his arrogant, louche hippie persona. But when I saw him earlier this year, I found myself hoping he wouldn't play ""The Night Josh Tillman…""; Tillman summoning the necessary contempt for the performance seemed like it would kill the party dead. (He never played it.) ""The Night Josh Tillman…"" is fascinating, darkly thrilling, and vicious. It's like a lot of the unattractive things that people do when they're drunk, or high, or lonely, or horny, or some combination. Tillman's retelling walks the same line between dark humor and obscenity. —Andrew Gaerig Father John Misty: ""The Night Josh Tillman Came to Our Apartment""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iY37fixfN_A,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/278/Fjm-iloveyouhoneybear.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Father_John_Misty-The_Night_Josh_Tillman_Came_to_Our_Apartment.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,70,DJ Rashad / DJ Spinn,"""Dubby"" [ft. Danny Brown]",Hyperdub,"Don't let Danny Brown's overstated rep as a drug-rap hedonist overshadow his essential musicality—the yelping sing-song variation of his flow may have been initially inspired by Adderall, but his Detroit-raised enthusiasm for a wide scope of electronic music propels the way he goes in. The through-line between Detroit ghettotech and Chicago ghetto house means the already-eclectic Brown knows what to do over peak-level juke beats from the immortal team of DJ Spinn and the late DJ Rashad. ""Dubby"" nails the sweet spot between relentless percussion and gliding soul-jazz atmosphere, and with all that lineage to ricochet off, Brown's verses feel as much like a merging of formative interests as it does an opportunity to show off. The graceful rampage of his choppy, on-the-kick delivery (""Idon'tknow'aboutwhereyafrom butthisishow my! hood! work!"") makes the track's aggressive joy breathe deep. Never mind getting high to it—get high from it. —Nate Patrin DJ Rashad/DJ Spinn: ""Dubby"" [ft. Danny Brown]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49cQHfWzn0o,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/17638/homepage_large.21931a97.jpg,/dataset/artwork/DJ_Rashad__DJ_Spinn-Dubby_ft_Danny_Brown.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,69,Sufjan Stevens,"""Fourth of July""",Asthmatic Kitty,"After trying on a variety of different stylistic hats over the past few years—folk troubadour, unwitting historian, electronic dabblist, full-time Christmas caroler—the mercurial Sufjan Stevens got back to his roots with Carrie & Lowell, both literally and figuratively. A meticulous examination of his childhood and the complicated relationship between himself, his stepfather, and late mother, the album delivers the kind of emotional wallop that made his early records such commanding listens. It offers the kind of lyrical directness and emotional candor that, from a lesser artist, could be treacly and precious. In Sufjan’s hands, however, the songs soar, offering a reverie bordering—as so much of his best work does—on the religious. ""Fourth of July"" is the album’s emotional centerpiece, a rumination on his mother’s death that doesn’t flinch when broaching mortality—both hers and ours. ""It was night when you died, my firefly,"" he sings. ""What could I have said to raise you from the dead?/ Oh, could I be the sky on the Fourth of July?"" The song itself is a kind of hushed explosion—at once a dialogue between Sufjan and his mother (""Shall we look at the moon, my little loon/ Why do you cry?"" she asks him) and bittersweet examination of how we choose to face our ends. It’s hard to imagine too many artists capable of selling the line ""We’re all gonna die"" and wringing out so many layers of meaning. As the line is repeated—surrounded by hushed piano and a choir of backup voices—it becomes less a nihilist warning or an admission of defeat. It’s a reminder to live, to embrace, to remember, to sing. —T. Cole Rachel Sufjan Stevens: ""Fourth of July""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTeKpWp8Psw,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/278/Sufjan_Stevens_-_Carrie_%26_Lowell.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sufjan_Stevens-Fourth_of_July.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,68,Björk,"""Lionsong""",One Little Indian,"A nine-song play-by-play of the demise of her relationship with artist Matthew Barney, Vulnicura was one of 2015’s most emotionally rending releases—densely layered, meticulously produced, and as creatively ambitious as anything Björk has ever done (which is no small statement). ""Lionsong"" is not necessarily the most devastating track on the album, but it’s arguably the best. The song documents a painful limbo—the claustrophobia of being held hostage by someone else’s emotions. ""Maybe he will come out of this loving me/ Maybe he won't,"" she sings, as a cauldron of strings, electronic blips, and her own soaring, multi-tracked voice surges around her. The song is less of a plea for love as it is a request for respect. ""I demand clarity,"" she sings, before admitting, ""Somehow I'm not too bothered/ I'd just like to know."" Like the rest of Vulnicura, the song seems to exist in a realm beyond intimacy—the sound of an artist at her most stunningly vulnerable. By so fearlessly and meticulously cataloguing her own emotional anguish, Björk manages a rare trick. She explores one of the most primal and well trod of all human narratives—heartbreak, the collapse of family—and still ends up sounding strangely like the future. —T. Cole Rachel Björk: ""Lionsong""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWHpoJT3qK4,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/278/vulnicura.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bjrk-Lionsong.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,67,Rae Sremmurd,"""This Could Be Us""",EarDrummers / Interscope,"""This Could Be Us"" is the most irresistible track on Rae Sremmurd's relentlessly catchy debut album SremmLife. It's the record's ebullient light amid forceful club-ready bangers. While the Sremm brothers spend much of the album doubling up on the success of 2014 hits ""No Flex Zone"" and ""No Type"" with songs filled with heavy bass, scattered synth, and loudly chanted hooks, ""This Could Be Us"" finds younger brother Swae Lee free to sing his heart out. His high-pitched vocals are endearingly sweet, especially when combined with a consistent ""Chopsticks""-like piano melody and innocent one-liners like, ""I ball like Tracy McGrady."" Further, Rae Sremmurd take an otherwise ironic meme in #ThisCouldBeUsButYouPlayin—useful for scoffing at potential paramours’ lack of interest—and use it with complete sincerity to plea for a second chance at love. Such wide-eyed innocence and giddiness give the track a palpable joy. On tracks like this, Rae Sremmurd successfully turn hip-hop into pop. ""This Could Be Us"" is what happens when they focus hard on just the latter part of the equation. —Matthew Strauss Rae Sremmurd: ""This Could Be Us""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYbh6ob_R9M,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/278/Rae-Sremmurd-This-Could-Be-Us-2015-1280x1280-e1431566095934.png,/dataset/artwork/Rae_Sremmurd-This_Could_Be_Us.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,66,Jazmine Sullivan,"""Dumb"" [ft. Meek Mill]",RCA,"R&B’s tradition of tell-off records runs deep. When the genre was last in the spotlight, in the late '90s, we saw some classics of the form, including Destiny’s Child's ""Bills Bills Bills"" and Blu Cantrell’s ""Hit ’Em Up Style (Oops!)"". But those looking for a more contemporary example of the staple should start with the track that kicked off Jazmine Sullivan’s album Reality Show. Sullivan had grown disenchanted with the music industry after slugging it out in the trenches since signing to Jive Records at 15. In 2011, she announced that she would be retiring. ""Dumb"" was a ferocious annunciation of her return to music, its drumline rhythms and foreboding Greek chorus supporting her fierce declaration of superiority over the song’s subject, a man foolish enough to cheat. Sullivan has said that the song wasn’t based on anything that had happened to her, but that she wanted to be sure to do ""a woman’s anthem"" for her first song back. It’s a fitting sentiment for an era where the voices of black women are finding new arenas in which they can be heard, dismissing any and all of those who would deny them that space. —Jonah Bromwich Jazmine Sullivan: ""Dumb"" [ft. Meek Mill]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VulY3T8nc0g,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/17295/homepage_large.bbb053bc.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jazmine_Sullivan-Dumb_ft_Meek_Mill.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,65,Deerhunter,"""Living My Life""",4AD,"""Live in the now!"" Garth so famously beseeched Wayne. That’s much easier said than done, particularly from the dark side of 30. Deerhunter attempt to make this bitterest of pills easier to swallow with maximum yacht pop creaminess on ""Living My Life"", a languid grudge match between pure mindfulness and past and future ghosts. If ""will you tell me how to conquer all this fear?"" is a riddle Bradford Cox poses to himself, ""living my life"" is the mantra-like answer he incessantly chants in reply. Couched in a gauzy, anesthetized splash of guitars and electronics, this dilemma achieves the sort of wary, anthemic grandeur we demand of our high-grade rock'n'roll: a sad song that feels happy, or at the very least capably anesthetizing. Yet no matter how many times any of us listen to ""Living My Life"" on repeat, a moment will arrive where headphones or earbuds must be cast aside to confront the very frightening, very tense world beyond ourselves, with all its attendant fear and loathing. —Raymond Cummings Deerhunter: ""Living My Life""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vaQ-Y6kLOM,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/278/unnamed%20%2848%29.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Deerhunter-Living_My_Life.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,64,Chance the Rapper,"""Angels"" [ft. Saba]",Self-released,"On ""Angels""—the rumored first single from Chance the Rapper’s next mixtape—which debuted on ""Colbert"", Chance addresses the flimsy narrative that he’s the conscious pop star ego to Chief Keef’s guttural id head-on, confidently telling the world, ""Oooh, I might share my next one with Keef/ Got the industry in disbelief/ They be asking for beef."" Take these lyrics to heart: Kill the drill vs. conscious mentality you have about Chicago’s rap scene. Norwegian producer Lido (Halsey, Banks) channels a sunny day driving down Lake Shore Drive with equal parts gospel harmony and kettledrum, while Donnie Trumpet and the Social Experiment provide a big, cushioned horn section. Not just a feel-good throwaway in a year that needed some sunshine, ""Angels"" also served as a commendable guerilla radio promotion by a local act that barely saw love on the air. The play worked, by the way. You can hear Saba’s flawless ""City so great/ I feel like Alexand'"" hook during morning and afternoon rush now. (It’s important to call this out as a lot of local acts don’t get that shine. If you regularly listen to Chicago radio, you’d think Drake was the one born in Chatham, not Chance.) Be it overhyped controversy over Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq or underhyped controversy over various cover-ups in local government, in 2015 we needed a megaphone reminding the world that these statistics you see on the news are still humans, that good people still live out south in Chicago and that it’s still juking out here. Lucky for us, ""Angels"" had our back. —Ernest WilkinsChance the Rapper: ""Angels"" [ft. Saba]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um58FToonqk,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/17780/homepage_large.3d479388.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Chance_the_Rapper-Angels_ft_Saba.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,63,Chromatics,"""Shadow""",Italians Do It Better / Adult Swim,"After years of searching, Johnny Jewel and his nightbreed cohort have perfected the afterlife love ballad, which means they’ve perfected the Chromatics song. ""Shadow"", a post-disco ""Teen Angel"", slipped out this year while we waited for Jewel to finish tinkering with the perpetually imminent Dear Tommy. We’re still waiting, but judging by this necromantic teen dream, like M83 minus the bombast, it will be worth it. With an immaculately moonlit minimal house setting and a radiant hook worthy of peak Cure, ""Shadow"" is so subtle it blurs out into timeless myth—or maybe it is just a breakup. But the forensic evidence is there. A gleaming knife of guitar is swaddled in black-velvet ambiance like a hidden murder weapon. A couple is driving at night, trying to escape a dead-end town. ""We’re watching all the streetlights fade,"" Ruth Radelet sighs in a silvered voice the size of a drive-in screen, ""and now you’re just a stranger’s dream."" Think about that—streetlights might recede as you drive away, or just wink out, but why would they ""fade""? The verb seems to fatally ricochet back onto the speaker, who must be turning into a ghost to see things that way. Likewise, the amorphous music lingers at a threshold. Precisely where does that haunting stepwise arpeggio, twisting our couple so inexorably toward their fates, overtake that knocking drum, like footsteps approaching down a hallway? Where do the cold vapors trailing from the vocals stop and the warm ones curling off the guitar begin? What’s at the distant end of this purgatorial tunnel of reverb? ""For the last time,"" Radelet sings eight times, as if she knows but isn’t saying. —Brian Howe",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/17661/homepage_large.8ad22bb8.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Chromatics-Shadow.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,62,Blood Orange,"""Sandra's Smile""",Domino,"""Sandra's Smile"" isn't a protest song as much as a platform for Dev Hynes to grapple with the kaleidoscope of emotions he experienced as a result of the death of Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old black woman who was arrested for a minor traffic violation in July only to be found dead in her Waller County jail cell three days later. A haunting, shimmering slice of R&B with a beat that eerily recalls a beating heart, the track captures a remarkable range of emotions in just over three minutes: exhaustion, confusion, anger, deep-rooted fear, all buoyed by a hopefulness that cannot be extinguished. ""Sandra's Smile"" refuses to admit defeat, forcing us to confront an ugly—and for too many, literally deadly—reality head on without sanitizing its message so that it goes down easier. —Renato Pagnani Blood Orange: ""Sandra's Smile""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLPsk89aUKw,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/17778/homepage_large.cbf09178.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Blood_Orange-Sandras_Smile.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,61,G.L.O.S.S.,"""G.L.O.S.S. (We're From the Future)""",self-released,"""Singing in G.L.O.S.S. is kind of like getting to be a superhero,"" Sadie Switchblade told Bitch earlier this year. ""Like weaponizing a lifetime of anguish and alienation."" On their demo tape, the Olympia hardcore band burn the no-future scripture of punk history to the ground. Its opening track is pure insurrectionism—Sadie delivers a monologue for her fellow transwomen with a thrilling rage (""we’re fucking future girls, living outside society’s shit!""), before blasting off into a 90-second blur of furious noise. And she makes the group’s total irreverence unmistakably clear: ""The straight boy canon is a royal bore,"" she shouts, emptying her lungs with soul-cleansing gale-force. It’s a tough-as-hell mission statement from the most necessary hardcore band of 2015. —Jenn Pelly",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/278/a2679751509_16.jpg,/dataset/artwork/GLOSS-GLOSS_Were_From_the_Future.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,60,Neon Indian,"""Annie""",Transgressive / Mom & Pop,"Alan Palomo, one of the earliest and strongest voices of chillwave, released two Day-Glo bright albums before vanishing from sight for four long years. In the meantime, his peers moved on to fuzz-rock (Toro y Moi), garage rock (Ariel Pink), and screwed-down strangeness (James Ferraro). When Neon Indian broke his sabbatical this summer with ""Annie"", he doubled down on his '80s obsession. But instead of returning to chillwave’s vision of warped VHS tapes and MTV memories, now Palomo immersed himself in the decade’s songcraft, from its biggest freaks (Prince) to its one-hit blips (Matthew Wilder). ""Annie"" is the best Balearic song of the year, the sort of silken, breezy, featherweight faux-reggae, faux-tropical pop synthesis that acts like Scritti Politti and Duran Duran confected for play on la isla bonita. It sounds sterling in the present even as it inhabits a bygone time where there were such things as ""answering machines."" —Andy BetaNeon Indian: ""Annie""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTuT1s-YPLE,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/17501/homepage_large.8a405bb3.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Neon_Indian-Annie.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,59,Janelle Monáe / Wondaland Records,"""Hell You Talmbout""",Wondaland Arts Society,"The Electric Lady bonus cut ""Hell You Talmbout"" was already eye-opening in its original form, evoking claustrophobia in a wide-open space as its street-crime snapshots intruded on lives spent trying to be lived. But after the events of the past couple of years, Monáe tore every allusive word out of the original and brought her crew in to replace them with a cry of rage and a seemingly endless roll call. The names in themselves speak volumes: there are the familiar ones that brought the Black Lives Matter movement into the fore (Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown), the ones less instantly recognizable but no less demanding of justice (Tommy Yancy, Jerame Reid, Philip White), and the ones who evoke not-so-distant memories of cases that turned a national spotlight on trigger-happy police (Amadou Diallo and Sean Bell). As a musical performance it all cuts to the essence, riding off rolling-thunder drumline momentum and a church mourner's chorus, a marcher's anthem that keeps its structure simple and strong enough to carry the burden of all those names. It's what happens when the demands for recognition that ""I Am—Somebody"" are ignored by the people with your life in their hands, beats for the streets when the streets are taken over by the people. —Nate Patrin",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/17632/homepage_large.fb08f76f.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Janelle_Mone__Wondaland_Records-Hell_You_Talmbout.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,58,Nicolas Jaar,"""Fight (Nymphs IV)""",R&S,"Nicolas Jaar leaked music slowly this year. Outside of his unofficial Soviet movie OST Pomegranates, his only 2015 releases came in the form of Nymphs, a series of three new singles released periodically from summer through fall. Capping off the chain is the standalone ""Fight"", an eight-and-a-half minute exercise in snaking beatwork and destabilized melody. Jaar slices up his voice and tosses the resulting syllables into the fray, grinding his upper register in the nervous machinery. The track doesn’t follow lyrics so much as it lets phrases glance off its central apparatus like pixels of light off a disco ball. ""So don’t you fight,"" Jaar insists at the dissolving finish. ""Fight"" takes an explicit look at the workings of the human body, how they connect and disconnect from the sounds they process. Jaar finds sympathy with the body’s quieter experiences, the ticks and hums that move in the background of our inner lives, and Nymphs as a sequence not only echoes those movements but extrapolates on them. Here’s a producer who’s always been as interested in the murk beneath the surface of his work as the surface itself; on ""Fight"", he finds plenty of glitter in both. —Sasha GeffenNicolas Jaar: ""Fight (Nymphs IV)""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JM6lRdPO7So,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/17741/homepage_large.ad9b5102.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nicolas_Jaar-Fight_Nymphs_IV.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,57,Destroyer,"""Dream Lover""",Dead Oceans / Merge,"""Dream Lover""’s unruly saxophones squeal a filthy poem of irresponsible adventure and unlikely romance. It sounds exhausted, and liable to collapse—as if Dan Bejar were acquiescing to just one last romp before seriousness sets in. ""I think I used to be more fun,"" he admits. As much as the 43-year-old Canadian tries to act the Scrooge of indie rock, even he can't completely negate the joy in his own music. It was recorded with the studio doors flung wide, horns squalling at full blast, and made it onto Poison Season in spite of the inherent pop DNA that Bejar found so aberrant. —Laura Snapes",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/17499/homepage_large.6c7895a5.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Destroyer-Dream_Lover.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,56,Earl Sweatshirt,"""Grief""",Columbia / Tan Cressida,"Earl Sweatshirt is good at writing about anxiety, and writing about anxiety is difficult. Perhaps the only thing more difficult than writing about anxiety is writing about good writing about anxiety. And when you live with anxiety you tend to cherish the rare art that manages to hit such a high level of simplicity as to relieve it. So why shake that all up and start over again by trying to break down ""Grief"" for you? Wouldn't retracing his ""I just want my time and my mind intact"" a few dozen times consecutively in a Jack Torrance style do more justice to this work than any amount of half-baked word goop about how well Earl distills the boom bap nihilism of Mobb Deep into Tumblr generation numbness or whatever? I mean let's be real—you are not going to read anything as beautiful, calming, or complete as even the shallowest bar on this song anywhere on the Internet today or tomorrow or next year. So go outside and like shit already. Earl did that so we don't have to go through that. —Andrew NosnitskyEarl Sweatshirt: ""Grief""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZ5Mu2gs-M8,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/17386/homepage_large.2aee6d0f.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Earl_Sweatshirt-Grief.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,55,Nao,"""Inhale Exhale""",Little Tokyo,"With ""Inhale Exhale"", London upstart Nao—Caracal scene-stealer, ex-Jarvis Cocker backup singer, and possibly-maybe foil for international man of mystery Jai Paul and his brother A.K.—offers up a smash-that-wasn’t, a rippling bundle of nerves in the guise of a brilliantly ambiguous pop song. Through a stream of scattered imagery—rivers, oceans, churches in the wild—""Inhale"" finds Nao cataloging her demons over what sounds like a spaceship gaining sentience; ""it’s me,"" she insists a little past the halfway mark, ""it’s not you,"" marking what may be the first time in history that particular kiss-off is delivered in earnest. The tightrope-walking ""Inhale"" inhabits that all-too-familiar space between composure and abandon, when you and your cool are separated by a single breath. —Paul Thompson",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/17490/homepage_large.bff0be47.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nao-Inhale_Exhale.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,54,Jeremih,"""Oui""",Def Jam,"""Oui"" is easily the least debauched song on Jeremih’s shamelessly pleasure-seeking third LP Late Nights, and it’s all the better for it. Taking a page from The-Dream’s catalog of similarly lovelorn R&B stunners, ""Oui"" is like a shot of warm sunlight in Late Nights’ nocturnal glow, a heart-in-your-throat, no-frills love song that breaks devotion down to its simplest terms (""There’s no oui without you and I""). That clever sweetness paid off in a big way, making for an instantly likable comeback single. Jeremih saves his best trick for last, when the beat falls away on the bridge to make room for a vocal riff on Shai’s 1992 hit ""If I Ever Fall in Love"". With ""Oui"", Jeremih made it stunningly clear—there’s no other R&B lothario we’d rather spend time with. —Eric TorresJeremih: ""Oui""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caNRc1ER8p4,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/278/homepage_large.4933ab7f.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jeremih-Oui.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,53,ANOHNI,"""4 Degrees""",Secretly Canadian,"The discussion around climate change is among the grand farces of our age, pitting the endless labor of scientists and activists against a general state of political inaction and conciliatory half-measures from powerful nations. ""4 Degrees"", the first song released from ANOHNI’s upcoming HOPELESSNESS, for which the singer formerly known as Antony collaborated with producers Hudson Mohawke and Oneohtrix Point Never, cuts to the quick of the issue with a disturbing ferocity. An apocalyptic vision of extinction, it equates a central shrug of indifference (""It’s only 4 degrees"") with purposeful, systematic violence, turning it into a death wish for all life on Earth. Curling out of a steadily intensifying boil of drums and orchestration, ANOHNI’s distinctive vibrato becomes a violent oscillation, the voice of an avenging angel bent on punishing the innocent. A catalog of dying animals calls to mind an anti-Noah’s Ark narrative, the enlightened human willing each one in turn to its death. Even more powerfully, the song coincides with ANOHNI’s own decision to leave the name Antony behind and release music under the name she uses personally. How much courage and how much anger does it take to make such a brutal statement alongside your own professional reinvention? J. Ralph, the composer who worked with ANOHNI for the music in the documentary Racing Extinction, recently commented on the idea of mass extinctions whittling the world’s sounds down to a single voice. ""4 Degrees"" is the prelude to that moment, a savage stirring of frustration and catharsis run through with bitterness. —Abigail GarnettANOHNI: ""4 Degrees""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fi0q0O4V5Qs,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/17851/homepage_large.cb467670.jpg,/dataset/artwork/ANOHNI-4_Degrees.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,52,FKA twigs,"""in time""",Young Turks,"Few modern artists communicate longing as well as FKA twigs does, and on ""in time"", she nestles snugly into the idea of a future that may never come. Over pinched but percolating synths, she pines for the familiarity she and her lover knew before they slowly became estranged. She illustrates this disconnect in the little asides: ""In time, your hands on my body will resonate through me/ Like they did before."" It's a half-hearted attempt to convince herself things will get better or that they even can. ""in time"" is one of the most sumptuous moments on the singer-producer's EP, M3LL155X, a stunning audiovisual experience that encapsulates her strengths as an artists and auteur. twigs and co-producer Tic crank out a production that clicks and bumps in bursts, creating the little pockets though which her muted voice breathes. ""in time"" is the centerpiece that anchors the project, rounding out her previously shapeless and wispy soundscapes into something more solid and whole. —Sheldon PearceFKA twigs: ""in time""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHHE12Mp2J0,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/17626/homepage_large.91be6bde.jpg,/dataset/artwork/FKA_twigs-in_time.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,51,David Bowie,"""Blackstar""",Columbia,"As a boy, David Robert Jones loved a book called Starman Jones by science fiction icon Robert Heinlein. It helped spark Jones’ fascination with space, one that’s sustained him throughout the decades, long after he changed his named to David Bowie and launched his career in earnest with 1969’s ""Space Oddity"". Bowie’s latest single, ""Blackstar"", is both an extension of that fascination and a reinvention of it. Unlike the relatively restrained astral voyages of ""The Stars (Are Out Tonight)"" and ""Dancing Out in Space"" from his last album, 2013’s The Next Day, ""Blackstar"" is one of Bowie’s cyclical retreats from rock convention; its 10-minute sprawl is fractured, episodic, and experimental, with a chant of Gregorian proportions bleeding into movements of jazzy syncopation, atmospheric pop, and breathtaking orchestral ecstasy. The overall impression is one of cosmic awe—a filmic immersion in Bowie’s science-fictional universe that doesn’t even need the song’s astounding video to vividly evoke. Bowie’s longtime producer Tony Visconti has admitted that Blackstar, the upcoming album due January 8, was influenced by Kendrick Lamar, and that’s evident in the single’s fluid lushness and elastic dimensionality. Still, there are plenty of clues in ""Blackstar"" that Bowie still genuflects before Scott Walker, from the art-rock gauntness to the cryptic mystique of his refrain, ""I’m a blackstar"". Bowie’s timbre is haunting and stentorian, and that enormity is driven home by the scope of his vision: Steeped in pomp, space, and myth, ""Blackstar"" not only rekindles his conceptual fire, it reestablishes his nomadic orbit around science fiction. —Jason HellerDavid Bowie: ""Blackstar""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kszLwBaC4Sw,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/17839/homepage_large.d411b55d.jpg,/dataset/artwork/David_Bowie-Blackstar.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,50,Kurt Vile,"""Pretty Pimpin""",Matador,"Kurt Vile is the pied piper of easy vibes and carefree contentment. His voice is a graceful, assured mumble, and his songs take their time to make their points, suggesting that the singer rushes to do little but relax. Sometimes, though, even bros get the blues. During ""Pretty Pimpin"", the anthem of and thesis for the anxiety-tinged b’lieve i’m goin’ down…, Vile awakes to a state of ""Once in a Lifetime"" confusion. He’s caught off guard by the face staring back from the mirror and the circumstances that brought him to this moment, as he brushes his teeth and considers (at least briefly) combing his cascade of curls back, like an adult working a normal 9-to-5. ""Who’s that stupid clown blocking the bathroom sink?"" he quips. Even though slightly out of his mind, Vile sidesteps his worries long enough for a sly smile, realizing that, in spite of onset of middle-aged responsibility, the man in the mirror remains ""pretty pimpin."" —Grayson Haver Currin Kurt Vile: ""Pretty Pimpin""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98AJUj-qxHI,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/17585/homepage_large.814b378f.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kurt_Vile-Pretty_Pimpin.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,49,Beach House,"""Sparks""",Bella Union / Mistletone / Sub Pop,"Dissonance and distortion have never played a big role in Beach House's music. For all their pervasive melancholy, they tend to keep their harmonies consonant and their signal clean. But both qualities creep into ""Sparks"", a song whose very name implies friction. The gleaming guitar lead is caked in fuzz, the looped vocal that runs beneath is encrusted with static. But it's the organs that really buzz, throwing off harmonics like a sharpening wheel tosses tiny points of light, in a steady cycle of tension and release, tension and release. It's not all so rough—Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally singing in unison is as smooth as the onset of night, and the whole song radiates a hush reminiscent of Yo La Tengo's nocturnal And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out. The lyrics suggest a hazy vision of homecoming and all the bittersweet emotions that come with it. ""And then it's dark again/ Just like a spark,"" they sing, in a twist that is subtle but significant: treating sparks not as a symbol of light, but its opposite. Everything fades to black eventually, just some things quicker than others. —Philip SherburneBeach House: ""Sparks""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfITojs_mNg,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/17554/homepage_large.9c17ddf5.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beach_House-Sparks.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,48,Kelela,"""Rewind""",Warp / Cherry Coffee,"Where 2013’s Cut 4 Me showed off Kelela’s dexterity with languorous, metallic club music and R&B, on ""Rewind"" she increased the pace to a well-suited sprint. A standout from this fall’s Hallucinogen EP, ""Rewind"" uses heavy, So So Def-nodding bass and lazy keys to speak to that singular, spark of a moment when you connect with another person, drawing on ""the narcotic that is loving someone,"" as she explained. ""It makes you feel drained, it’s in your body and it affects you so completely."" It’s fitting, then, that ""Rewind"" is so utterly catchy, with a spacious, lean bounce to it that lends itself exceptionally well to dance (see: the runway models who memorably broke out into elaborate choreography during the song at an Opening Ceremony fashion show this fall). The song’s ecstatic pulse and Kelela’s airy, polished vocals are enough to make you as lightheaded and in love as the song’s dizzying subject. —Eric Torres",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/17663/homepage_large.a5cb8fe8.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kelela-Rewind.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,47,Dr. Dre,"""Genocide"" [ft. Kendrick Lamar, Marsha Ambrosius, and Candice Pillay]",Aftermath / Interscope,"Dem Jointz get the production credit for ""Genocide"", but it's tough to listen without hearing Dr. Dre's fingerprints on the brash, frequency-hogging mix. Blame it (or celebrate it) for chasing older ears, this brittleness demands attention from the motorcycle-revving opening seconds. While Dre brags about loading up Pro Tools over a loping groove, the song opens up like a trap door beneath the listeners' feet. Candice Pillay's patois leads into Floetry's Marsha Ambrosius, singing a hook that would have fit a No Limit CD two decades earlier. Neo soul and gangster rap, past and present, murder and mass killings, a tree and its forest: ""Genocide"" suggests a multitude of perspectives vying for dominance, and an uncertain verdict. The album's heart pumps with the charged energy of a younger artist throughout—weariness seems anathema to Dr. Dre. Yet Compton was a definitive product of 2015, its age showing in the colliding visions of its collaborators, with only Dre's unifying sensibility holding everything together. His weather-damaged vocals color the record with the desperation of a race against time. Yet despite some fraying around the edges, he remains bellicose and confrontational. His chest-beating verse clears the way for Kendrick Lamar, who leads the song to its darkened exit: ""Fuck your hope."" —David DrakeDr. Dre: ""Genocide"" [ft. Kendrick Lamar, Marsha Ambrosius, and Candice Pillay]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOzgdsvDuPA,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/17619/homepage_large.48d32e85.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dr_Dre-Genocide_ft_Kendrick_Lamar_Marsha_Ambrosius_and_Candice_Pillay.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,46,Oneohtrix Point Never,"""Sticky Drama""",Warp,"For his latest album as Oneohtrix Point Never, Daniel Lopatin has created a rich (if opaque) narrative about an adolescent alien, a narrative buttressed by digital ephemera outside the album proper. The fake Twitter accounts and rabbit-hole websites that sit outside Garden of Delete’s running time provide an interesting way to ponder the record’s engagement with juvenile dolor, but none of that would have mattered if the music didn’t also communicate Lopatin's themes. Referencing nu-metal riffs, black-metal blast beats, and dance music hooks, ""Sticky Drama"" isn’t just the album’s most immediately arresting cut. It’s also the album’s best advertisement for Lopatin's kitschy evocation of teenage sadness. It helps, too, that the song’s lyrics are rendered fully unintelligible by Lopatin’s filters. Just as with opera, sometimes you don’t need to follow every word, precisely. The range of instrumental color tells you what the singer is feeling—and what the composer thinks about the character’s psychology. —Seth Colter WallsOneohtrix Point Never: ""Sticky Drama""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=td-e4i2BL_Q,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/17798/homepage_large.08941972.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Oneohtrix_Point_Never-Sticky_Drama.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,45,Joanna Newsom,"""Leaving the City""",Drag City,"During her five years away, Joanna Newsom tied the knot and became a film star; given her knack for turning personal conflicts into wild musical imbroglios, this album could’ve gone anywhere. Divers’ first single, the poetic nonfiction piece ""Sapokonikan"", was reliably ambitious. Drawing parallels between historical, romantic, and cultural forms of erasure, it felt closer in spirit to a Harper’s pitch than any familiar folk idiom. Followup ""Leaving the City"", however, suggested she’d been wrestling with the same shit as many of the rest of us. A reflection on urban aspiration vs. rural modesty, it takes a macabre trip through gold fields where ""the light will seep and the scythe will reap"" towards a remarkable chorus. As a cacophony builds, internal rhymes fidget anxiously down its meter. From the soul-searching emerges a catch-22, that the price we pay for slowing time is an intimate awareness of its passage. —Jazz MonroeJoanna Newsom: ""Leaving the City""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keke7BGzJPI,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/17693/homepage_large.69a39c34.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Joanna_Newsom-Leaving_the_City.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,44,Courtney Barnett,"""Pedestrian at Best""",Mom & Pop / Marathon Artists,"This is peak Courtney Barnett: ""I think you’re a joke,"" she incants, kicking out the final couplet of her most genius chorus, ""But I don’t find you very FUU-uuu-UUU-uuu-UUU-uuu-UUU-uuu-NNY!"" Barnett hollers that word for five full seconds—a drawl that’s so monotone and unhinged it’s like she’s finding some power inside her that she never knew was there. It sounds like the kind of confident psychic joyride that introverts typically only have in their own heads, but Barnett projects it to the heavens in one long taunting exhalation—a shy girl’s dream. It’s a testament to Barnett’s considerable talent that the most epic song on her debut LP is also the most fun. The subterranean blues of ""Pedestrian at Best"" are spit too fast for anything like Dylanesque cue cards, but you try and catch them all: ""The rats are back inside my head/ What would Freud have said?"" Barnett speak-sings, and while she sets her stakes high, she is not self-serious, as her conclusion attests: ""I’m a fake! I’m a phoney! I’m awake! I’m alone! I’m homely! I’m a Scorpio!"" If you’re a quiet person with an overactive mind, prone to self-deprecation, you’ll feel seen in Barnett’s music, but ""Pedestrian at Best"" does one better. It offers an invitation to shout it back, to laugh, and maybe, for a second, to even feel cool. —Jenn PellyCourtney Barnett: ""Pedestrian at Best""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-nr1nNC3ds,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/17305/homepage_large.c7bb85dd.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Courtney_Barnett-Pedestrian_at_Best.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,43,Rich Homie Quan,"""Flex""",Think It's a Game / EMPIRE,"On his breakout single ""Type of Way"", Rich Homie Quan couldn’t suppress the tinge of guilt he felt about his own success. He could sense the jealousy that his car, his watch, and his general good fortune stirred in others, and judging by his remorseful croon it genuinely pained him. Two years later he's over all that. On ""Flex (Ohh Ohh Ohh)"" he flashes not one luxury watch but six of them, relishes his penthouse view, and broadcasts his latest windfall to the world ($100,000 for just two days work, on top of that cold $2 mil he made off a mixtape). If those figures make anybody else in the room feel some type of way, so be it. Over a springy, Mustard-on-Prozac beat from Nitti Beatz and DJ Spinz, Quan hopscotched through the most jovial rap single of the year, and his cheer was infectious. And that’s to say nothing of the video, which spawned one of the year’s most memorable dances, a flamboyant victory strut as slap happy as the song itself. —Evan Rytlewski",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KKbdErJkiY,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/17270/homepage_large.e1a5239b.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rich_Homie_Quan-Flex.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,42,Future,"""I Serve the Base""",Epic / Free Bandz,"If we’re ranking Future personas (and we always should be), the shit-talking ""I do these drugs, they don’t do me"" Straight Outta Zone 6 Future should garner as much hoopla as ""bummed out with love while floating in a sea of codeine"" Future. While the latter brings us some downright scary moments, the former often gives us better music. Take ""I Serve the Base"", a damn near perfect song. As the unofficial intro to DS2, Future uses a beat from Metro Boomin that sounds like Atlanta-by-way-of-Spacely Sprockets to get everyone on the same page, letting you know things are better on his end since the Ciara breakup and subsequent Beast Mode/Monster/56 Nights three-play. ""They tryna take the soul out me/ They tryna take my confidence and they know I'm cocky/ Fuck another interview, I'm done with it/ ...A nigga was depressed/ Now my mind back healthy"" and that it’s back to business as usual. —Ernest WilkinsFuture: ""I Serve the Base""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEQz-BbWF0A,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/278/MTMxOTE2NDk4NzQ5OTMzNTc4.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Future-I_Serve_the_Base.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,41,Sleater-Kinney,"""A New Wave""",Sub Pop,"In 2000, Sleater-Kinney ended their riot-grrrl fatigue anthem ""#1 Must Have"" with a powerful reminder: ""Culture is what we make it, now is the time to invent it."" Fifteen years later and they’re still looking to invent a new kind of culture, except this time the prospect is more hopeful, re-energized on their song ""A New Wave"" as a call to action. ""No outline will ever hold us,"" Carrie Brownstein sings in between playing masterful, howling electric guitar solos. ""It’s not a new wave, it’s just you and me."" This is a rousing song about breaking through the confines of ceilings and ill-fitting labels, the means of destruction being the realization that there’s much more to being than boxes, bodies, or waves. ""I am raw material, make me plastic make me fuel,"" Brownstein sings, every word in strong enunciation. Vague regarding its targets, ""A New Wave"" emerges as a universal song for anyone who wants to exist without outlines, to get to a basic foundation where to measure power is to measure love. —Hazel CillsSleater-Kinney: ""A New Wave""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIP0iIxHLY4,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/278/sleaterkinney-nocities-1425.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sleater-Kinney-A_New_Wave.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,40,Kanye West,"""All Day"" [ft. Allan Kingdom, Theophilus London, and Paul McCartney]",Def Jam,"There was much talk in the year following Yeezus, as Kanye West campaigned (and succeeded) to needle his way into the mercurial fashion world, of the Chicago hip-hop polymath having lost touch with the pulse of black America in his quest for personal recognition. In his proper return to rapping this year, after the campfire singalongs ""Only One"" and ""FourFiveSeconds"", West made damn sure to snap back hard, reading the riot act to detractors high and low with his most statistically profane performance to date. ""All Day"" is unadulterated swag rap of the grittiest variety, and you can feel in it the percolating frustration of the post-millennial black creative to leverage community cred against success in society proper. It sucks that hip-hop is a world where our freest thinkers have to continuously cycle back and flash their bonafides, but as a poignant reminder that Kanye West is indisputably black and unapologetically Chicago, ""All Day"" stings. —Craig JenkinsKanye West: ""All Day"" [ft. Allan Kingdom, Theophilus London, and Paul McCartney]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfQOawFwx6w,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/278/kanye-west-so-help-me-god.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kanye_West-All_Day_ft_Allan_Kingdom_Theophilus_London_and_Paul_McCartney.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,39,Grimes,"""Kill V. Maim""",4AD,"""Kill V. Maim"" is Art Angels’ most bracing action scene—and, as ever, Claire Boucher plays all the roles. In a sole pre-chorus, over stadium-crushing beats, you can hear a whole lineage of pop defiance: Grimes morphs from a metallic growl à la Onobox to a sly Barbie-via-Nicki hair-flip to a deranged cheerleader taunt (with the particular ear-piercing squeal of Brittany from ""Daria""). At least conceptually, her pivoting vocal escapades recall Kathleen Hanna in Bikini Kill—how Hanna contorted her voice to show that identities are performed (indeed, Art Angels feels like the album that Hanna’s l'écriture féminine Julie Ruin character dreamed of). No one can sing the words ""Italiana mobster looking so precious"" with quite the naturalistic ease of Grimes; still, ""I’m only a man, and I do what I can"" might be her most subversive and quotable couplet ever. ""Kill V. Maim"" is Grimes as pure iconoclast. No one else in pop—mainstream, avant-garde, or otherwise—could do this, and it’s hard to imagine that anyone would even try. Boucher says ""Kill V. Maim""—with its storyline of an unstoppable villain on her worst behavior—was ""written from the perspective of Al Pacino in The Godfather Pt. 2, except he’s a vampire who can switch gender and travel through space."" It’s some kind of a miracle that you could start there and end up with an interstellar banger like this. Even among Art Angels’ raw balladeering and its throat-scraping screams of Pharmakon-calibre, ""Kill V. Maim"" emerges as the record’s daring peak. It’s a hype song for all the kids who almost got beat-up at Homecoming—the sound of a secret pep-rally for the freaks. —Jenn Pelly Grimes: ""Kill V. Maim""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCIn3OuhwTY,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/278/Z335000949.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Grimes-Kill_V_Maim.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,38,Jack Ü,“Where Are Ü Now” [ft. Justin Bieber],Mad Decent / OWSLA,"In the past, a honey-voiced kid like Justin Bieber would have ruled the Rat Pack, a bad boy belting out unbeatable pablum. Now he’s a weirdo too, at least thanks to Skrillex and Diplo (recording here as Jack Ü). On ""Where Are Ü Now"" he sings like an angel with a voice made of pure sunlight, and then Diplex just kinda screw around with him on their computer, transforming him into the year’s catchiest dolphin for the hook, rewinding him, and all sorts of other kooky shit. Great songs are often made of either beauty or madness, and often we settle for neither. ""Where Are Ü Now"" is both, pushing music forward while keeping it on the straight and narrow with his exceptional skills. —Matthew Schnipper",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/17361/homepage_large.39e3df1b.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jack_-Where_Are__Now_ft_Justin_Bieber.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,37,Janet Jackson,"""No Sleeep""",BMG / Rhythm Nation,"Even if she hadn’t re-emerged with her first studio album in seven years, Janet Jackson was already embodied in R&B’s 2015 landscape—the sound of her work with producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis was everywhere. Janet’s defiant spirit echoed in the likes of alt-R&B stars like FKA twigs and Kelela, her coos in more mainstream singers like Tinashe and Jhené Aiko, and in Carly Rae Jepsen’s recent work with another Jam-Lewis acolyte, Dev Hynes. Even the men amalgamating pop, R&B and rock—Miguel, Jason Derulo, and the Weeknd—worshiped at her altar. When Jackson returned with ""No Sleeep"" she embraced her status as elder stateswoman. Rather than bend to the current trends of uptown funk and electronic hybrids (ground she’s already trod in her formidable catalog), she returned with an air of assurance, never needing to rise above the purr of pillow talk to set the mood. Working with Jam & Lewis to conjure this quiet storm, Janet also documented the wee hours of the night. She sings of a time that’s around ""half past five,"" but here it’s a time where touch and feel is the realest of sensations. —Andy Beta",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/17544/homepage_large.9acc71be.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Janet_Jackson-No_Sleeep.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,36,Jamie xx,"""Loud Places"" [ft. Romy]",Young Turks,"It’s hard to find much to complain about in the dazzling slow-motion rave of Jamie xx’s In Colour, especially when it comes to what is possibly the album’s most euphoric highlight, ""Loud Places"". But still, many crowed about how the track, featuring vocals from his xx bandmate Romy Madley-Croft, not only works better as an xx song proper, but is the best xx song released since the trio’s self-titled debut in 2009. But this is a fundamental misunderstanding of ""Loud Places"", which doesn’t really belong to any one person or group, Jamie included. Instead, it’s a love letter to both the records that shaped him (it’s built on a generous sample of Idris Muhammad’s joyous 1977 dance-funk track ""Could Heaven Ever Be Like This"") and the people who helped him reach such lofty heights. ""Didn’t I take you to higher places you can’t reach without me?"" Croft sings just before the swelling nu-gospel hook kicks in. The answer is a grateful, emphatic yes. —Zach Kelly Jamie xx: ""Loud Places"" [ft. Romy]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNDgYLYOV7Y,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/278/713WaG%2BJUDL._SL1500_.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jamie_xx-Loud_Places_ft_Romy.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,35,Drake,"""Energy""",Cash Money,"Built primarily with trap snares over a four-note piano line, ""Energy"" is largely without flourish. It also finds Drake at his most dismissive. He's got countless responsibilities and daily frustrations, so instead of fighting back against everyone ""trying to drain [him] of [his] energy,"" he just brushes them off. Why should he concern himself with anyone else when he's the one at the top of the game? ""I got people talkin' down, man, like I give a fuck,"" he raps. And so while he was lyrically cryptic in his past feuds with the likes of Common and Kendrick Lamar, Drake stuck to his ""Energy"" mantra and wasted little time on his beef with Meek Mill—just two quick, successive diss tracks. It's been some time since he's needed the ""sensitive"" angle to find success, and he no longer relies on the myth-building of ""Started From the Bottom"". ""Energy"", with its hater-baiting video, is Drake's standing magnum opus: Complain about him all you want, try to take his crown from him. He'd like to see you try. —Matthew StraussDrake: ""Energy""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LnBvuzjpr4,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/17332/homepage_large.34b433b4.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Drake-Energy.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,34,D.R.A.M.,"""Cha Cha""",#1EpicCheck / EMPIRE,"Despite how it might look, the nickname D.R.A.M. has nothing to do with ""drama,"" though the Virginia rapper found plenty of that with his deliriously bubbly ""Cha Cha"". D.R.A.M. stands for ""Does Real Ass Music,"" so it follows that ""Cha Cha"" is a real-ass song. Though the original version of ""Cha Cha"" samples some of the illest fire ever recorded, D.R.A.M. maintained the song’s bounding energy in future, royalty-free versions in a way that attracted inevitable attention. To be sure, ""Cha Cha"" is a horndog’s anthem. D.R.A.M., rippling with enthusiasm, is at the bar where Latin girls go, hoping to score with a ""Dominican that resembles Taina."" D.R.A.M.’s equipment is minimal—that looping SNES beat complete with the Mario ""coin"" sound, a little functional Spanish, a fondness for Latin cuisine, a splash of liquid courage—but the appeal is universal. The joy in ""Cha Cha"" will be sensed mañana, and every future mañana. —Corban Goble D.R.A.M.: ""Cha Cha""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkixendW3yo,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/17531/homepage_large.52789f19.jpg,/dataset/artwork/DRAM-Cha_Cha.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,33,Panda Bear,"""Tropic of Cancer""",Domino,"When a parent becomes terminally ill, one of the first things the children may experience is a vertiginous feeling of unreality. Time moves in a different way than you're used to. Things that seemed important a day before become suddenly trivial. The future collapses and rockets ahead simultaneously, like one of Hitchcock's dizzying dolly zooms. For anyone who has been through it, the way Noah Lennox recounts his own family's experience of his late father's cancer will probably feel eerily familiar, from the initial denial—""When they said he's ill/ Laughed it off as if it's no big deal/ What a joke to joke no joke,"" he sings, in a dazed deadpan—to the unexpected forms that acceptance may take. When I met up with Lennox in Lisbon earlier this year, he explained that the song's more cryptic lines (""Sick has to eat well too"") were a way of expressing ""sympathy for disease, trying to forgive disease""—of seeing disease as ""just another thing in the universe that's trying to survive."" It's an unusual perspective, but from the sound of the song, you can tell he's not being ironic: Rarely has Lennox's falsetto sounded more like a choirboy's, and the combination of the ""Last Post"" bugle call that introduces the song and the misty Tchaikovsky harp that comprises its melody perfectly evokes that fragile serenity that comes when the worst is finally over, and there's no longer anything to be afraid of. —Philip Sherburne Panda Bear: ""Tropic of Cancer""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qgshAuvxxg,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/278/Panda_Bear_Meets_the_Grim_Reaper.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Panda_Bear-Tropic_of_Cancer.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,32,Alessia Cara,"""Here""",Def Jam,"Pop hits have the habit of dismissing pessimism and angst as uncomfortable, unsellable emotions—mere hurdles meant to be cleared. It could feel as though, to make it to the top of the charts, you needed to approach PSA levels of positivity, assuring everyone everything will always get better. But what about those who are cool with feeling bummed out and serving as the perennial wallflower? Enter Alessia Cara’s ""Here"", written by the teenager after suffering through a night at an insufferable party full of boys who wouldn’t leave her alone, music she didn’t like, and cliques with which she never even hopes to click. Cara’s lyrics sport the specificity of a diary entry, with in-the-room details making these three minutes vivid. And above a stomping, defiant beat, her voice dips into low, annoyed murmurs and leaps into strident, sure-of-herself commands. Unapologetic but not rude, Cara argues that indifference is OK and that being uncomfortable isn’t unacceptable. She is positive about seeming negative. ""Here"" is an overdue anthem for a choir of universal introverts—happy to be singing in the privacy of their own homes, alone or in intimate, familiar groups.  —Grayson Haver Currin Alessia Cara: ""Here""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKp2CrfmVfw,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/17459/homepage_large.af321185.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Alessia_Cara-Here.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,31,Kamasi Washington,"""The Rhythm Changes""",Brainfeeder,"Buried within saxophonist Kamasi Washington’s sprawling three-hour debut album, The Epic, ""The Rhythm Changes"" is a bit of a digression, an island of R&B shuffle in an ocean of blissed-out and ebullient spiritual jazz. Sung by Patrice Quinn, it has the lush arrangement and easy-going feel of a '70s Stevie Wonder tune. It also has the positive message—about the nature of change, about the passing of time. But ""The Rhythm Changes"" does not feel out of place, even when juxtaposed against the record’s screechier extremes. It comes off like a secular prayer, a call-and-response hymn that offers a different path to the transcendent mood that preoccupies the bulk of The Epic. Though Washington and his bandmates spend the middle of the song swapping solos, it’s only in the outro—when the whole ensemble chimes in together, buoyed by a string arrangement and then a choir—that the song reaches its heady, slightly cosmic, culmination. —Aaron Leitko Kamasi Washington: ""The Rhythm Changes""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkLz4MyDmuE,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/278/epic.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kamasi_Washington-The_Rhythm_Changes.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,30,Missy Elliott,"""WTF (Where They From)"" [ft. Pharrell]",Atlantic,"Sometimes I like to treat myself to a Missy Elliott video mini-marathon. I watch as many clips as I can stand in the middle of my workday before my fidgeting can no longer be contained in an office chair (usually three or four). I was reminded I was overdue for a Missy session the first time I watched the video for ""WTF (Where They From)"", Elliott's first single in years. The first time I watched it, I could feel the grin spread across my face, and then I watched it again. And again. You can measure the success of a Missy Elliott single by the force of its liberating glee, and she was having more fun here, sounding freer and more invincible, than she has since 2007's ""Lose Control"". —Jayson GreeneMissy Elliott: ""WTF (Where They From)"" [ft. Pharrell]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KO_3Qgib6RQ,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/17821/homepage_large.97f82a7d.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Missy_Elliott-WTF_Where_They_From_ft_Pharrell.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,29,Julia Holter,"""Feel You""",Domino,"The music of L.A. art-pop composer Julia Holter usually comes pre-loaded with big ideas that might carbon-date back to Ancient Greece or Jazz Age Paris. But beyond passing thoughts such as ""I should read Colette"" or ""What’s ekstasis again?"", listeners mainly jettison this stuff, like the bundled software you delete from a new laptop to make it yours. What we care about are the wondrous musical forms Holter spies through her erudite keyholes, and she flings the door wide open on ""Feel You"". Though she can’t be pinned to a single cultural register, many of her most striking songs are roughly one part '70s West Coast pop and two parts early music. She flips the ratio on one of the most luminous songs ever set on a rainy day. ""You know I love to run away from the sun,"" Holter sings in a powerful, purposeful flit. There’s something of baroque music in the buzz of a harpsichord and the ingenious chorus, where a thorny scale stands out against the easily resolving chords of the verses, but a pert bubblegum bounce dominates. Though thoughtful and unique, the song is perfectly immediate, and there’s a type of artistic maturity in that simplicity. Music can always borrow gravitas from scholarly footnotes, but here, the Rosetta Stone is Holter herself, though not in a ""confessional"" sense. Rather, she records her direct impressions of an inhabited world, not of her reading. The impetus becomes the sheer capacity of her nimble, emotive voice and the stickiness of her un-automatic melodic choices. A festival parade passes by; the mist is smeared with city lights; someone was wearing a raincoat—these are the kinds of glimpses one actually remembers, outside of the stories constructed in memory, much less narratives polished smooth by antiquity. After all the studious settings, Holter turns out to be her own best subject. You feel her. —Brian Howe Julia Holter: ""Feel You""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2JgMniIpRM,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/17572/homepage_large.491a2aa8.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Julia_Holter-Feel_You.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,28,Carly Rae Jepsen,"""Run Away With Me""",Interscope / School Boy / 604,"In what should have been the lead single for her critically beloved but relatively inert third album E•MO•TION, Carly Rae Jepsen shot another Cupid’s arrow right at her sweet spot of transcendent genericism and got something explosively romantic as a result. ""Run Away With Me"", like Annie’s ""Heartbeat"" or Robyn’s ""Dancing On My Own"", is purified and paradigmatic; Jepsen goes so breathless with longing that the object of her affection begins to seem less like a person and more like pop music proper, its solitary and universal embrace. The track begins with a blistering riff—some bagpipe-cum-saxophone-cum-trumpet monster, woozy with rainbows and a slight kazoo fizz—and then kicks into Jepsen’s babydoll verses, as triplets beat softly underneath. The drums build, fill, metastasize, and by the chorus, ""Run Away With Me"" is racing. It’s a Gravitron of the genre—neon, dizzying, and ruinous, built with factory precision. Embedded deep within the machinery are six Swedish sorcerers pulling the biggest levers in their possession. The track’s centrifugal yearning pins you fully, blasts glitter into the sky. —Jia Tolentino Carly Rae Jepsen: ""Run Away With Me""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeccAtqd5K8,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/278/8b2538984230c17e71c0b3defd0055bf.600x600x1.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Carly_Rae_Jepsen-Run_Away_With_Me.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,27,Thundercat,"""Them Changes""",Brainfeeder,"Throughout 2013’s ""Heartbreaks + Setbacks"", Thundercat surveyed the gradual decline of a relationship. On ""Them Changes"", the bass virtuoso has moved beyond the day-to-day struggle and has fully arrived at devastation. His heart is no longer breaking—it’s gone. ""Nobody move,"" he instructs, ""there’s blood on the floor."" Right at the jump, he instills a sort of crime-scene panic, and soon enough, he sheds some of the hyperbole and gets to the heart of the matter: He’s been dumped and is getting very drunk to dull the pain. His burbling funk jam about feeling debilitated and broken is, ironically, fueled by the same Isley Brothers beat that’s sampled on ""It Was a Good Day"". Such a shitty day needs a banger, and it’s only appropriate that Thundercat’s powerhouse collaborators/besties Flying Lotus and Kamasi Washington come through with contributions. Washington’s wildest solo begins right as the song fades out, and Lotus’ work is largely atmospheric. In its position as the centerpiece of his otherwise sedate mini-album The Beyond / Where the Giants Roam, ""Them Changes"" also serves as the midpoint between Thundercat’s two best overall looks: It’s got emotional turmoil sung in a bruised falsetto, and it’s got expertly performed six-string bass funk. This year, Pharrell pledged his allegiance to Thundercat after hearing ""Them Changes"". ""He is a necessity,"" Pharrell said, and he isn’t wrong. —Evan Minsker",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/pharrellbrasil/othertone-episode-3-with-pharrell-scott-vener-puff-daddy-thundercat-e-chelsea-peretti#t=26:28 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngyk7CJbJyw,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/17571/homepage_large.22af60fa.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Thundercat-Them_Changes.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,26,Tame Impala,"""Eventually""",Interscope,"""Eventually""—what a loaded word Kevin Parker used to name the bittersweet ballad at the center of Currents. Likewise, it's a thought you'll find at the crux of pessimists and optimists alike, the hinge of their secret doubts and quiet hopes swaying back and forth as it's pushed along by time. And it's true, only time will tell. To hear Parker sing it himself in all the song's warm technicolor glow, you'd peg him a reformed defeatist, if only because, after all the times he's seen love go south, there's probably nowhere to go but up. It's right there in that heart-wrenching chorus, those two lines delivered in the weightless breakdown of Tame Impala's rockist synth-pop: ""But I know that I'll be happier, and I know you will, too."" Parker can't see the future, but damn if he hasn't been through this before. Why ""Eventually"" stands out among an album of wall to wall masterworks is its apparent duality, the tension of someone wanting to believe what experience plucked from their heart. Sure, the band's crystalline chords shimmer, their slinky bass lines sway, their drums bounce and pop, but you can't escape the trampled empathy in Parker's voice. That dichotomy sets us up for the song's best trick, one second of bated-breath silence after the music swells to the rafters. It's our moment of truth, the hinge on which we can move on from our deep-seated doubts or cling to them like a deflated life raft. ""Eventually"" won't tell us what happens next, but it sure does make the future look bright. —Patric Fallon Tame Impala: ""Eventually""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHe8kKO8uds,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/17479/homepage_large.f5aee5a0.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tame_Impala-Eventually.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,25,D’Angelo,"""Sugah Daddy""",RCA,"So this guy shows up all of a sudden, and it's that one guy. Fourteen years ago you thought you had something good going, and all of a sudden he ghosted—stopped returning your calls. Or anyone's. Every so often you heard a rumor about him: he wasn't doing so hot, or he was trying to pull himself back up from not-so-hot. You'd basically given up hope and moved on. And now here he is on your doorstep... and goddamn is he in incredible shape. Kinkier than ever, too. That's how ""Sugah Daddy"" presented D'Angelo at the tail-end of last year. It supercharges its funk by understating it: a clap-slap-snap beat, staccato piano stabs, and a dubbed-out, phased-up horn section, just barely tracing the contours of a groove that swings like hip-bones. Nothing obscures D'Angelo's voice, or rather his voices, as they casually dive and flip between registers, the kind of vocal performance you can't pull off unless you're utterly sure of your power. Every line is either an offhanded aside or rendered in harmonies so tight that no single melody dominates them. There's a bit of Prince in his phrasing, a bit of Funkadelic, and a lot of a knowing smirk—when you lean in to make out what he's singing, that's when he makes his move. ""Sugah Daddy"" plays on the pop history of both of its title's words; its lyric just barely stays on the right side of the line between super-creepy and super-hot. And it's definitely the sexiest song ever to mention a queef. —Douglas Wolk D'Angelo: ""Sugah Daddy""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPp6pTrNw44,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/17256/homepage_large.bdf86919.jpg,/dataset/artwork/DAngelo-Sugah_Daddy.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,24,Erykah Badu,"""Cel U Lar Device""",Motown / Control Freaq,"By dancing like nobody’s watching in that liminal space between the personal and the universal, Erykah Badu’s ""Cel U Lar Device"" deserved more than its share of any ""smart"" gadget's data plan in 2015. Drake, of course, picked up this game of telephone with his meme-able, undeniable ""Hotline Bling"", which itself reaches back to communal memory via a sparse '70s soul sample that could evoke civil rights protests, radio background music, or Virginia hip-hop up-and-comer D.R.A.M.’s own 2015 hit ""Cha Cha"". And yet OVO Sound's ""Marvins Room"" drunk-dialer can’t help but invest his Proustian mobile-phone reminiscence with ickily in-character, psychosexual condescension. Not his sometime mentor Badu, whose gender-flipping ""Hotline"" rework doesn’t seem overly fussed about her missing caller. The Toronto rapper/singer's successful slickness becomes the Atlanta R&B/hip-hop crossover godhead’s transcendent absurdity, four minutes turn into six-and-a-half, and—as she and co-writer Seven, her son with André 3000, put it here—""such ‘n’ such""; the difference is embodied in plainspoken ""cell phone"" for Badu’s whimsical yet sophisticated ""cellular device."" Since expanded into an entire But You Caint Use My Phone mixtape, ""Cel U Lar Device"" solidified a commercial smash as part of Internet-era folk culture, and confirmed that we’re connected most deeply when we’re casually, cosmically (maybe a little weirdly?) ourselves. Plus, like the Slits’ ""I Heard It Through the Grapevine"" or Ananda Shankar’s ""Jumpin’ Jack Flash"", you can play it around people who’re sick of the original. When the gong hits, the bass drops out, or the actually hotline-style pre-recorded greeting rings out about DJing a relative's Slip N Slide party, the moment will feel like yours and yours alone. —Marc Hogan Erykah Badu: ""Cel U Lar Device""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCr8V5wAroA,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/278/download.png,/dataset/artwork/Erykah_Badu-Cel_U_Lar_Device.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,23,Future,"""March Madness""",Free Bandz,"As all great street rappers do, Future walks the line between hero and villain, and the divide is typically defined by a listener's willingness to fully engage with his work. From a distance, he's an artist who glorifies Xanax binges, but if you let his music engulf your spirit you'll realize that it's about how there's no glory to be found in a Xanax binge because the world is a horrible place and only pain is real. (Fig. 1.) Usually his tales are in the sound itself—he raps in brutalist nursery rhymes that reveal meaning through repetition and over beats that derive their power from the amount of pressure they put on your chest—but ""March Madness"" is the one track in his recent output that explicitly connects his struggle to the struggles of the world around him. ""All these cops shooting niggas—tragic"" is an incomplete thought, like basically every phrase to fall out of Future's mouth this year, but it might just provide a tangible enough source of trauma through which literal-minded listeners can recognize his more abstract cries for help. —Andrew Nosnitsky Future: ""March Madness""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BRTIvyFYwA,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/17407/homepage_large.8f05ae34.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Future-March_Madness.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,22,Drake,"""Know Yourself""",Cash Money,"It took virtually no time for ""I was running through the six WITH MY WOES!"", from Drake’s ""Know Yourself"", to become pop music’s decodable du jour. Whether you choose to acknowledge Drake’s definition of ""woes""—it’s an acronym for a mantra his crew lives by, working on excellence—or have decided to remain blissfully ignorant in keeping with an entire lane of Internet-y Drake merchandise, it matters not. What matters is that that particular musical moment (about 1:47 in, right when the beat drops) disabused listeners from the notion that this was your run-of-the-mill retail mixtape. In a year splattered with Drake’s agendas—fuck Meek Mill! New Raptors jerseys! I made a mixtape with Future! I can dance!—it’s best to default to one of his older maxims. Once the beat dropped in ""Know Yourself,"" nothing was the same. —Corban Goble Drake: ""Know Yourself""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79AR0VC5wCA,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/278/Drake-If-Youre-Reading-This-Its-Too-Late.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Drake-Know_Yourself.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,21,Kendrick Lamar,“The Blacker the Berry”,Top Dawg Entertainment,"""The biggest hypocrite of 2015"" is the title that Kendrick Lamar gave himself on the opening verse of ""The Blacker the Berry"". That ain’t true. Objectively, subjectively, there are no advanced metrics or corrupted voting committee that would give Lamar that designation. Except that the only person who matters in that assessment is the one with the mouth that declared it true. Lamar is his own harshest critic, and when he closed the song saying ""Why did I weep when Trayvon Martin was in the street/ When gangbanging made me kill a nigga blacker than me,"" there was rightful questioning of respectability politics. But that reading didn't take into account Lamar’s nuance. The fuller context of To Pimp a Butterfly showed Lamar’s double consciousness tossing and thrashing with every issue: black-on-black violence, systematic racism, the strife of fame, and frustration over none of what’s he’s achieved being able to change all of that. Back in 2011 on ""Ab-Soul's Outro"" he calmly rapped, ""See I spent 23 years on this earth searching for answers/ ‘Til one day I realized I had to come up with my own."" ""The Blacker the Berry"" showed neither a sell-out nor revolutionary, but freed Lamar to once again wander unmarked trails, looking for guidance. —David Turner Kendrick Lamar: ""The Blacker the Berry""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtUsEbbVBuo,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/17322/homepage_large.9ab1d0f2.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kendrick_Lamar-The_Blacker_the_Berry.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,20,Fetty Wap,"""Trap Queen""",300,"In some respects, ""Trap Queen"" is a song that only could have become popular now: It’s a genre-bending collision of styles that worked its way up from an unknown rapper’s SoundCloud to nearly the very top of the Hot 100, and getting millions of unsuspecting pop fans singing along about the process of buying, processing, and selling bulk amounts of cocaine. But in most other ways, it’s really a timeless song. In cascading, melodic waves it replicates the giddy, weightless sensation of falling in love as effectively as anything by the Beach Boys or the Jackson 5, and if you peel away the Jeezy-ish level of technical detail about cooking crack you’re left with same themes of devotion, trust, and domestic eroticism that people have been writing lyrics about for centuries. Fetty’s method of infusing trap with an addictive bubble gum rush proved the validity of this sugary wave of pop-rap, and in coming years we’ll most likely see his formula copied more times than we can count, but what will make ""Trap Queen"" a classic is the way it makes the familiar seem so new, just like any good longterm relationship. —Miles Raymer Fetty Wap: ""Trap Queen""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_kF4zLNKio,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/278/694274eb49f35ea1ad1acc36ab99390e.640x640x1.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fetty_Wap-Trap_Queen.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,19,Vince Staples,"""Norf Norf""",Def Jam,"Vince Staples could be one of the great gangsta rappers of his time, if he weren't utterly appalled by the notion of selling inner-city despair as breezy entertainment. ""I'm a gangsta Crip/ Fuck gangsta rap,"" he sneers on ""Norf Norf"", and it's an important distinction. Yes, he spent his youth running with the Crips, and while he doesn't apologize for that, he's not trying to glorify it, either. Staples dedicates much of his bracing debut album Summertime '06 to sucking the glamor out of the gangster fantasy, needling listeners with unceasing descriptions of violence and dehumanization, and refusing to offer a hopeful takeaway. He narrates without editorializing; usually his disdainful voice telegraphs his disgust for him, but on ""Norf Norf"", he relies on another tool to underscore the cruel absurdity of the street life: a seasick Clams Casino beat. A demented drone set to the stalled sputter of a motor that's been gutted for parts, it neutralizes the machismo in Staples' outlaw raps. —Evan Rytlewski Vince Staples: ""Norf Norf""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mb6Jc4juSF8,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/278/Summertime-06.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Vince_Staples-Norf_Norf.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,18,Jamie xx,"""Gosh""",Young Turks,"The thing I thought most about while listening to ""Gosh"" wasn’t Special Request or Zomby or any of the other early-'90s rave revivalists you could easily slot the song next to, but Talking Heads’ ""The Big Country"", a ballad by an art-school band about a man who can’t grasp America until he sees it from a plane. Like ""The Big Country"", ""Gosh""—and all of Jamie xx’s In Colour—is a study in perspective: How cars become ants and roads become veins and how things that are very far away can suddenly seem uncannily close. Or like photography, the way taking certain angles on certain objects render those objects abstract, forcing you to see them again for the first time. As ""Gosh"" dilates slowly from close-up to panorama, it’s like that: The farther away we get, the more intimate the picture becomes. Twenty-three years ago the electronic label Warp put out a compilation called Artificial Intelligence, which took dance music out of the clubs and domesticated it for home use. The cover was a drawing of a skinless alien blowing smoke rings from a Barcalounger. Now aliens can take their earbuds on the subway, ""Gosh"" rattling around their heads like an urban lullaby. —Mike Powell Jamie xx: ""Gosh""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dErdvJrv8JE,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/278/713WaG%2BJUDL._SL1500_.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jamie_xx-Gosh.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,17,Grimes,"""REALiTi""",4AD,"Grimes has always treated ""REALiTi"" as a purely practical matter. The song arrived earlier this year in demo form as an apologetic gift to fans: ""poorly recorded in the first place and never meant to be heard by anyone,"" wrote Claire Boucher, ""so it’s a bit of a mess haha."" Recorded during a fairly fruitless period of creative isolation in Squamish, it finds Boucher contemplating the divide between her old life and the one she lives now, with no trace of drama, regret, or ultimatum; that’s just is how it is these days. It's a refreshing enough sentiment, but ""REALiTi""'s transcendent vibe eclipsed its plainspoken origins. As with Julia Holter's Have You in My Wilderness, the links to Boucher's past work are clear, but the composition behind its burbling synths and handclap rhythms feels fathoms deeper. Testament to Boucher’s skill as a producer, that depth isn't a matter of extra reverb, as it might have been on 2012's Visions. When Boucher revamped ""REALiTi"" as a CD- and digital-only Art Angels bonus track, she ditched the blur of the demo in favor of pin-sharp focus that captured its iridescence—the way it glimmers melancholy and euphoric depending on the light. ""REALiTi"" is an aura photo of a perfect pop song, one whose flowing color reveals all Boucher’s unspoken defiance and anxiety in nuance. The more you listen, the more it gives—it’s no surprise to find a seamless 10-hour loop of it on YouTube. —Laura Snapes Grimes: ""REALiTi""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6k4Ww-M4deg,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/17367/homepage_large.389a7e6d.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Grimes-REALiTi.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,16,Donnie Trumpet & the Social Experiment,"""Sunday Candy""",self-released,"Chance the Rapper cooked up a star-making campaign this year, and ""Sunday Candy"", off Donnie Trumpet and the Social Experiment’s Surf, was its warm, gooey center. An impossibly sweet, plainspoken song that compares love to holy bread on Sundays, ""Sunday Candy"" was written for Chance’s grandmother, an unmatched force of positivity in his life growing up in Chicago. That quality alone gives the song an aww-inducing relatability for a lot of us (""you singing too, but your grandma ain’t my grandma!""), but the love that ""Sunday Candy"" describes can be paired with just about anyone, from a crush to a parent to a friend. Surf had no shortage of joyful live instrumentation, but it all comes together best here, with piano, trombones, trumpets, a chorus, and a gorgeous vocal turn from Jamila Woods that makes the song feel like the final, breathtaking moment in a musical (that perfect, Grease-indebted music video certainly helps). ""Sunday Candy"" is uplifting in a way no other song in 2015 could possibly be, a moment of much-needed love and joy from an artist filled to the brim with both. —Eric Torres Donnie Trumpet & the Social Experiment: ""Sunday Candy""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4ooH8frBWg,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/278/116f742b5549943a62a40a7e9ab3f55f.1000x1000x1.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Donnie_Trumpet__the_Social_Experiment-Sunday_Candy.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,15,Adele,"""Hello""",XL,"Now that 25 is the fastest-selling album in the history of the galaxy and Adele has single-handedly saved the music industry, resurrected the monoculture, and brought about world peace, it’s kinda weird to remember that there was a time when her triumphant return was not a sure thing. Adele’s years away from the spotlight had potentially portended a lengthy (or permanent) retreat from public life. Or, God forbid, a comeback full of happy songs. But the gale-force wind storm whipped up by ""Hello""’s first ""HALLO FROM THE OTHER SIIIIDE"" blew away all that: the high priestess of heartbreak was back, and heartbreakier than ever. ""Hello"" proves that Adele continues to be better than anybody else in current pop music at communicating the misery of lost love. It’s a rock-solid, no-frills torch song that makes absolutely zero concessions to the fact that it was released in 2015. (The sepia-toned video, starring a flip phone and an old-school British telephone box, drove that point home.) It sounds like it could have been written at pretty much any point in history since the days of Alexander Graham Bell. But thank God it came out now, when we needed Adele the most. —Amy Phillips Adele: ""Hello""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQHsXMglC9A,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/278/adele-25-cover.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Adele-Hello.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,14,Miguel,"""Coffee""",RCA / Bystorm,"""I wish I could paint our love,"" Miguel sings at the beginning of ""Coffee"", and the design of the song itself is painterly, a surreal, weightless swirl, like milk blooming through a cup of joe. Miguel wrote a song about love and lust and located all of its tension in a precise image: making coffee for someone else. Of course, he makes this very small, terrestrial image sound like falling through infinite shapeless atmospheres, because, as with 2012's ""Use Me"", Miguel's artistry is in conveying closeness and vulnerability as they actually feel, as ambiguous blurs of pressure and release; because intimacy is about bodies and their positions in space but is also about achieving a kind of bodilessness; because just after waking, reality still contains some of the texture of a dream. —Brad Nelson Miguel: ""Coffee""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUadnObGX_k,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/278/Coffee%20-%20Single.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Miguel-Coffee.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,13,Rihanna,"""Bitch Better Have My Money""",Roc Nation,"If, in 2015, women of a certain age and circumstance find themselves being consistently thwarted by any one behavior, it’s instinctive, nonsensical apologizing. Earlier this year, ""Inside Amy Schumer"" featured a skit—""I’m Sorry""— in which a panel of highly decorated women dependably and repeatedly sorry’d for things that were plainly not their fault: Dude brings you a cup of coffee when you asked for water? Fuck an apology, friend! Thus, when Rihanna released ""Bitch Better Have My Money""—arguably the least apologetic song of the millennium, if not in the whole of recorded music—it felt like a revelation, a corrective, a necessary and instructive text. Rihanna has never been much for equivocating (if she believes ""top"" and ""car"" rhyme, who are we to suggest otherwise?), and her agenda here is straightforward: Pay me what you owe me. Don’t act like you forgot. She flatly delivers her demands over a big, echoing beat; her Barbadian patois imbues the words with an unexpected loveliness. It’s hard to imagine any other contemporary artist delivering these lyrics quite so convincingly, or with such beautiful bile. —Amanda Petrusich Rihanna: ""Bitch Better Have My Money""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3eAMGXFw1o,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/278/CA_wJ9UUkAE-QNj.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rihanna-Bitch_Better_Have_My_Money.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,12,The Weeknd,"""Can’t Feel My Face""",Republic,"Cocaine. Once again, Abel Tesfaye is talking about cocaine. For years, it’s been easy to knock Tesfaye for the avoidability of his self-inflicted hell. It stands to reason that if one feels bad about taking drugs and having sex, one might simply stop taking drugs and having sex. But there’s a levity to ""Can’t Feel My Face"" absent from the rest of Beauty Behind the Madness. The snappy bass line is excavated from Off the Wall-era Michael; the Jacksonian sweetness of Tesfaye’s voice counterbalances the potential severity of his lyrics. He’s singing about the possibility of overdosing on cocaine and/or his lady love, but he sounds happy about it. He loves it! If it’s a lie, he sold it well enough to become a bonafide pop star for the first time in his career. —Jeremy Gordon The Weeknd: ""Can't Feel My Face""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqt8Z1k0oWQ,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/17519/homepage_large.7cdfc295.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Weeknd-Cant_Feel_My_Face.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,11,Sufjan Stevens,"""Should Have Known Better""",Asthmatic Kitty,"As with the rest of Sufjan Stevens’ masterful Carrie & Lowell, ""Should Have Known Better"" derives much of its force from its harrowing autobiographical account of Stevens’ relationship with his late, troubled mother. (""When I was three, three maybe four, she left us at that video store."") Yet most of the song’s emotion is directed inward, as Stevens’ grief ripples into regret and self-recrimination, with his lyrics illustrating just how difficult it is to write any truly happy sentences that begin with the words ""I should have"".  Before the song draws to a close, however, its singer has internalized enough tough wisdom (""The past is still the past, a bridge to nowhere"") to permit in a glimmer of light, ""My brother had a daughter, the beauty that she brings, illumination,"" granting both song and album a rare moment of peace and the prospect of renewal. —Matthew Murphy Sufjan Stevens: ""Should Have Known Better""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJJT00wqlOo,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/17370/homepage_large.dbfa1978.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sufjan_Stevens-Should_Have_Known_Better.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,10,Vince Staples,"""Lift Me Up""",Def Jam,"While being black in America has never been easy, being black in America in 2015 is culturally, economically, and politically nightmarish in ways that are nearly existential. It’s often possible to fall into a double-bind of perceived judgments, where others’ seeming disdain becomes a lens through which to view one’s own appearance, speech, mannerisms, even skin tone. The first full song on Summertime '06 confronts this notion head on. ""I’m just a nigga,"" Vince Staples begins, his flow flailing somewhere between swagger and shrug, ""until I fill my pockets/ And then I’m Mister Nigga."" From there, the Long Beach-born MC is off and loping through rhetorical thickets so dank and dense with allusion that true meaning becomes a quest without tangible rewards, and paranoia and reality blur deceptively. Producers DJ Dahi and No I.D. grind together pensive, bleary synthesizer chords so cryptically that the song’s vision of daily life floods with haunted house dread. Yet the throbbing chorus of ""Lift Me Up""—brightening slightly, multiplying Staples into titular echoes—eases this polemic into the realm of uneasy triumph. This isn’t the discernible tenor of Black Lives Matter protests; it’s the bass pulse rumbling inaudibly, just beneath the surface of things. —Raymond Cummings Vince Staples: ""Lift Me Up""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRQHBz1Pf84,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/278/Summertime-06.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Vince_Staples-Lift_Me_Up.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,9,Courtney Barnett,"""Depreston""",Mom & Pop / Marathon Artists,"According to TripAdvisor, there are precisely five ""Things to Do"" in the Melbourne suburb of Preston—and coming in at number two on that list of attractions is…the local library. This is the humdrum setting of ""Depreston"", which finds Courtney Barnett considering a move away from the town’s quaint coffee shops to a place further out, where green space is plentiful. But whereas previous generations found solace in the predictability of tree-lined streets and boxy houses, this 28-year-old can’t help but feel depressed while eyeing the innards of a deceased estate, the ghosts of the past tugging at her in the form of left-behind war photos, sugar cans, and, most pointedly, a handrail in the shower. The house may have been someone’s dream, but not hers. The minor tragedy plays out in Barnett’s calm, scratchy drawl along with a vaguely country-fied guitar and backbeat. ""Depreston"" could not be more low-key if it tried, like an old Jeff Tweedy demo, but this does not make its emotional climax any less devastating. When the hook finally comes around—""If you’ve got a spare half a million/ You could knock it down and start rebuilding""—Barnett’s scattered observations come into focus. This is a song about not being able to own things. About letting go of ancestors’ desires. About the price of denying death. It’s a generational anthem that’s not anthemic at all. —Ryan Dombal Courtney Barnett: ""Depreston""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NVOawOXxSA,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/17351/homepage_large.7e8de3f0.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Courtney_Barnett-Depreston.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,8,D'Angelo,"""Really Love""",RCA,"""I don’t know if I trust you, but I really love you,"" whispers a woman credited as just Gina, in Spanish, at the end of the dark, stringed, flamenco swoon that introduces ""Really Love"". Her voice fades like a memory, and a harp from a dream sequence dissolves the scene; the beat and the soft-shoe bass start knocking, and the track—an indelibly cinematic single and instant classic off D’Angelo’s magnificent surprise album—sweeps you off your feet. Written closer to Voodoo’s release than to the Santa-like drop of Black Messiah and leaked in 2007 by Questlove to Triple J, ""Really Love"" feels as worn-in as it does serendipitous. It’s a relationship that’s teased and frustrated over a decade, which rises, in this six-minute rekindling, to the level of the streetlights and stars. For the length of the track, a hundred dusty particulars weave into a fantasia, in which love sounds effortless but tastes hard-won and real. ""I’m not an easy man to overstand,"" sings D’Angelo, who falsetto-croons his affection like he’s cajoling, even apologizing: ""I’m in really love with you."" By the end, your heart has synced up to that lopsided, soft, gilded refrain. —Jia Tolentino D'Angelo: ""Really Love""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVsQwJfWzoI,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/278/dangelo-black-messiah.jpg,/dataset/artwork/DAngelo-Really_Love.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,7,Grimes,"""Flesh Without Blood""",4AD,"In the three years since Visions launched her into the upper echelon of indie stardom, Claire Boucher made headlines more as a fashion icon and a lightning rod than as a musician. But any doubts about her skill as a consummate polymath producer were detonated with the release of ""Flesh Without Blood"". A deceptively joyful combination of a hopscotching beat, lilting melody, and Boucher’s featherlight cooing, Art Angels’ lead single is the rare breakup song about a non-romantic relationship. (Grimes says she doesn’t write about love anymore.) Written ""for a former best friend of mine,"" about ""being really disappointed with someone who you really once truly admired,"" ""Flesh Without Blood"" contains some of the most quietly devastating lines of the year: ""I don’t see the light I saw in you before/ ...And now I don't care anymore."" It served as a razor-sharp reminder that Claire Boucher is a musical force to be reckoned with, a woman remaking pop in her own image. —Amy Phillips Grimes: ""Flesh Without Blood""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tv9YoYCKNoE,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/17777/homepage_large.59ef246f.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Grimes-Flesh_Without_Blood.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,6,Young Thug,"""Constantly Hating"" [ft. Birdman]",300 Entertainment / Atlantic,"Young Thug released a lot of crucial music in 2015, but few songs make a better case for him as a virtuoso vocal performer than ""Constantly Hating"", the snaking opener from his debut retail release Barter 6. Thug turns a shrinking violet of a beat, from Atlanta's newest master of understatement, Wheezy, into a playground for his wildest improvisations. The song is one continuous zig-zag. He creates extreme dynamics at unexpected junctures, delivering much of the first verse in a facetious stage whisper. Though they build carefully on one another, every sticky phrase sounds like some crooked fractal of the whole, and could be the basis of an entire song for a lesser artist (""I'm a beast, I'm a beast, I'm a mobster,"" ""I let that choppa go blocka blocka, get back son,"" ""I can’t stop stacking fucking figuuures""). Eventually, Birdman drops in like a block of granite. Run another two or three times through ""Constantly Hating"", and every mischievous detail embeds itself into your longterm memory. —Winston Cook-Wilson Young Thug: ""Constantly Hating"" [ft. Birdman]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVv0VrTrAqk,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/17451/homepage_large.14989890.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Young_Thug-Constantly_Hating_ft_Birdman.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,5,Tame Impala,"""Let It Happen""",Interscope,"""Let It Happen"" functions as the neon-trimmed, infinity-mirrored portal into Currents, an album that sees Kevin Parker expunge the last vestiges of weed-scented elephantine riffage from Tame Impala’s arsenal in favor of shimmering soft-rock, digi-R&B beats and French house filters. You can hear that process of abandoning past orthodoxies play out in both Parker’s zen-koan lyrics (""Try to get through it/ Try to bounce to it"") and the song’s labyrinthine structure—when the track locks into a looped synth-stutter near the halfway point, it serves as both a nostalgic throwback to the sound of skipping vinyl and a battering ram into a new dimension. And true to the song’s fatalist philosophy, Parker uses the recording console like a Ouija board, sliding in and out of the song’s many sections as if guided by some subconscious, supernatural force. But despite its seven-minute sprawl, ""Let It Happen"" remains a highly intimate, interior experience. This isn’t so much psych rock as psyche rock—the sort of insta-jam that feels like it’s being broadcast to you via telepathy rather than a stadium PA. —Stuart Berman",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/17369/homepage_large.1160340e.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tame_Impala-Let_It_Happen.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,4,Kendrick Lamar,"""King Kunta""",Top Dawg Entertainment,"To Pimp a Butterfly was rolled out with a feint (""i"") and a pump-fake (an unreleased, untitled record that only appeared live on ""The Colbert Report""), followed by advanced hype from Pharrell, who promised an ""unapologetically black"" and ""AMAZING"" single that might set the world ablaze. In talking up its musicality, Pharrell may have set expectations too far afield for a record more interested in sly cleverness than brash novelty. ""King Kunta"" is less concerned with capital-I Innovation, instead unspooling an interconnected web of references musical and lyrical, historical and emotional. Produced by Terrace Martin and Sounwave, the uptempo, four-on-the-floor breakbeat channels Curtis Mayfield via DJ Quik, its musical touch-points as layered in potential interpretations as the lyrics themselves. Witness the friction of its contradictions: a universally compelling funk groove that's survived generations of barbecues carrying its gravely serious conceit, a reference to the torture of ""Roots""' protagonist. Meanwhile, Kendrick grins knowingly, his bemusement front-and-center while the details shift, oblique one moment and transparent the next, depending on your perspective. In a snap, a private joke becomes pregnant with significance. Just one example: a line about ""sharing bars"" now sounds like prophecy, while reinforcing the song's unspoken promise—to endure in the name of principle. —David Drake Kendrick Lamar: ""King Kunta""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOgdRVm-zzw,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/17380/homepage_large.d47a5880.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kendrick_Lamar-King_Kunta.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,3,Jamie xx,"""I Know There’s Gonna Be (Good Times)"" [ft. Young Thug and Popcaan]",Young Turks,"The first time through Jamie xx’s In Colour, ""I Know There’s Gonna Be (Good Times)"" might scan as the album’s outlier, coming as it does after the dizzying pinnacle of ""Loud Places"". Profane instead of reverent, sun-bright instead of club-dark, drunk instead of ecstatic, ""I Know There’s Gonna Be (Good Times)"" is about getting low instead of climbing high. Built from little more than a snare roll, finger snaps, and chimes, Jamie xx made a breezy pop confection that alights on dancehall, trap, as well as doo-wop without ever settling on any one sound. On top of the beat, Jamie relies on the yipped boasts of Young Thug, the toasts of Popcaan, and deft placement of a sample from a cappella group, the Persuasions. When reached about the news that his old band’s 1972 song had been sampled, Jimmy Hayes of the Persuasions explained the song as a come-on: ""I ain't got no money in my pockets, they don't jingle, but as long as we can get together everything is gonna be alright,"" and Young Thug updates that sentiment, crowing, ""I'ma ride in that pussy like a stroller."" The repeated shout of ""I know"" becomes a protest in its own way, three very different people uniting in defiant belief. —Andy Beta Jamie xx: ""I Know There's Gonna Be (Good Times)"" [ft. Young Thug and Popcaan]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkUKFdacHvo,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/17485/homepage_large.e42eaea9.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jamie_xx-I_Know_Theres_Gonna_Be_Good_Times_ft_Young_Thug_and_Popcaan.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,2,Drake,"""Hotline Bling""",Cash Money,"""Hotline Bling"" is the Drake singularity, the moment where he becomes self-aware and he wields his infamy like a weapon. Even the song's rise to fame mirrors the kind of ""Started From the Bottom"" myth Drake loves—it dropped unceremoniously with minimal promotion and gradually became inescapable. And why not? ""Hotline Bling"" took the wispy stale air of sad-drunk, ""Marvins Room"" Drake and suffused it with warm, tropical colors. It’s the perfect thing to soundtrack the end of summer when the sky gets a little pinker and your summer flings come to an end. That ""Hotline Bling"" found such immense popularity illustrated an arguable skill of Drake's to pluck songs from their regional hit purgatory and put his own stamp on them, with the original performer usually left to languish in Drake's shadow. ""Hotline Bling"" is essentially a reworking of D.R.A.M.'s ""Cha Cha"", which is in turn a reworking of Timmy Thomas' ’70s hit ""Why Can't We Live Together""; by autumn, the song slipped out of Drake's control entirely, becoming fodder for jokes, wedding DJ sets, and gimmicky covers and interpretations. Erykah Badu reinvented it with a version almost as good as the original, while Justin Bieber pulled a stunt that required fans to call an actual hotline to hear Bieber croon the song into their earpiece. It wasn't Drake's song anymore—it was everyone's. In typically calculating fashion, Drake absorbed all that attention and then spun it back on the public. Dropping a music video—a vision of Drake pulling awkward shapes against pastel-colored James Turrell walls, purportedly designed to encourage fans to make their own memes and jokes—almost five months after the song first debuted made it an event all over again. Because if there's anything Drake knows, it's that people can't be laughing at you if you're laughing with them. That idea is core to ""Hotline Bling."" That one of the softest Drake tunes ever dominated airwaves in the wake of the Meek Mill beef was the best revenge he could hope for—the words ""you gettin' bodied by a singin' nigga"" from ""Back to Back"" became a self-fulfilling prophecy. As huge as its success was, ""Hotline Bling"" still never gave Drake that coveted #1 spot; he was held at bay first by his fellow Canadian the Weeknd, and then by Adele (or maybe it was the fault of his own business decisions). Whatever it was, it hardly mattered, because at that point, ""Hotline Bling"" was barely a song at all anymore. It was one big goofy, self-aware cultural force. And there's nothing that sums up Drake—as shrewd, manipulative, and lovable as he was in 2015—better than that. —Andrew Ryce Drake: ""Hotline Bling""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxpDa-c-4Mc,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/17609/homepage_large.ee5af306.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Drake-Hotline_Bling.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2015 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9765-the-100-best-tracks-of-2015/,2015,year,song,1,Kendrick Lamar,"""Alright""",Aftermath / Interscope / Top Dawg,"When To Pimp a Butterfly was released in mid-March, it was not quite a third of the way through what, by any measure, has been a miserable year. The world, and America in particular, and for minorities specifically, has experienced a veritable buffet of social garbage. And it looks like there's a decent chance the same will be true next year, too. Will we be alright, as Kendrick Lamar assures? And who is that ""we""? In the realm of the pop anthem, ""we"" have had a long life. Perhaps it’s the ""we"" who are champions, who will rock you. But more likely it’s the same ""we"" who shall overcome. ""Alright"" spoke to black Americans oppressed and murdered, these days so frequently by those on the government payroll and sworn to protect. ""We hate popo,"" Lamar raps, ""wanna kill us dead in the streets for sure."" It’s a basic sentiment that in this country has become undeniably truer day after day. But after Lamar’s dirge comes the chorus: ""We gon' be alright,"" an ebulliently simple five-syllable refrain, a future-tense assertion of delivery to a better, more peaceful place. In more than one instance, the song’s chorus was chanted at Black Lives Matter protests. It has soundtracked a movement. That's largely due to its holistic sentiment as a siren against innumerable injustices, but it has just as much to do with the fact that it's a great hook on a ferociously catchy song, produced by Sounwave and Pharrell Williams, with marching band propulsion and a jazz band's breezy reeds. On it, Lamar acts as master of ceremonies as much as rapper. He starts the song with an incantation borrowed from Alice Walker: ""All my life I had to fight,"" before detailing a world wracked with addiction, lust, greed, and Satan—basically all the sins and their mayor. Then Pharrell comes in to sweep it all away. ""We gon' be alright!"" That this chorus is so infectious is no accident; it’s sung by the same guy who made ""Happy"". An argument could be made that the track's power is in the hook, the verses superfluous. And that might be true. Surely you can recite the chorus with no knowledge of the song, or even who sings it. Isn't that anonymous accessibility what makes an anthem? In that sense, with ""Alright"" did Kendrick Lamar write something timeless by writing something bigger than himself, something whose jubilant recitation turns us all into the author? That future tense is always coming, and in a sense it already came. In the time since the song was released, there’s been the murder of Freddie Gray, the suicide of Sandra Bland, the recent police cover up in Chicago, the shootings in San Bernardino, in Colorado, massacres in Beirut and Paris. Things, may in fact, be getting worse. Will we be alright? Who knows. But we’ll at least be together. —Matthew SchnipperKendrick Lamar: ""Alright""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-48u_uWMHY,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/17553/homepage_large.7e1a7af6.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kendrick_Lamar-Alright.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/,2014,year,album,50,Ben Frost,A U R O R A,Mute / Bedroom Community,"Ben Frost puts a lot of thought into his music, technically and conceptually. His song titles and interviews pack his dense, throbbing scrawls with allusions to everything from biochemistry to Ghostbusters. This is somewhat ironic, as the main capacity of his music is to overwhelm rational thought. It registers in the limbs and viscera, not in the mind. On A U R O R A, mostly recorded in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Frost mostly jettisons the guitars and classical instruments of prior albums, though standout deep cut ""Sola Fide"" does sound like a catastrophic collision between chamber music and a rave. Instead, he doubles down on heavy synths and heaving drums courtesy of powerhouses such as Greg Fox (Liturgy), Thor Harris (Swans), and Shahzad Ismaily. The result has a rough but elaborate physical presence—something huge and shuddering running on filthy kerosene, about to snap a belt or throw a bolt and maim the operator. But Frost is never overpowered by his brawny, chaotic material. However strong it is, his will is stronger, and gales of distortion bend to his command with clarity and definition. His prior marquee album, 2009’s By the Throat, was excellent but less single-minded in its pursuit. This is the one that really grabs you and doesn’t let go. —Brian Howe",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/benfrost/ben-frost-venter,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/20509/homepage_large.51389443.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ben_Frost-A_U_R_O_R_A.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/,2014,year,album,49,Mr Twin Sister,Mr Twin Sister,Infinite Best / Twin Group,"Lots of indie bands have mined the giddiness and sexual empowerment of the disco era, but few have tapped into the cultural fracture that followed it. The language of identity crisis is all over Mr Twin Sister’s second album, right down to the fact that they added a ""Mr"" to their name for this self-released sophomore effort (and then named the album after their newly christened selves). Mr Twin Sister is slicker, sexier, a little more concerned with mortality (the band endured a serious van accident in 2013), and the quintet’s lyrics often chase several possible threads: On ""Out of the Dark"", singer Andrea Estella declares that ""I am a woman, but inside I’m a man, and I want to be as gay as I can!"" A minute later, she looks back and wonders: ""What ever happened to poor, dear me?” Mr Twin Sister are also adept at following the trickle-down of commonalities between house, electro, and new wave (especially on ""Rude Boy"", which suggests a shared lineage with Tom Tom Club’s ""Genius of Love""). And like any honest survey of nightlife music, Mr Twin Sister's high highs (""In The House of Yes"", ""Twelve Angels"") are followed quickly by low lows (""Blush"", ""Crime Scene"")—the two sides of the same airy fantasy. —Abby Garnett",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/mrtwinsister/out-of-the-dark,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/21032/homepage_large.e7ff5d95.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mr_Twin_Sister-Mr_Twin_Sister.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/,2014,year,album,48,Clark,Clark,Warp,"In a year full of social and political upheaval, you have to wonder about the role of electronic music in the grand scheme. Being largely instrumental, the genre isn't exactly primed to deliver clear and direct messages outside of its own context, let alone fiery missives or storm-bringing manifestos for a general populous to rally around. But electronic music can still serve vital purposes during tumultuous times of desperation and discontent. Perhaps most readily, it can provide a much needed escape for our troubled minds, though it can also reflect the boiling unrest within our hearts. Chris Clark's self-titled seventh album, 45 minutes of vivid atmosphere and controlled chaos, managed to do exactly both. —Patric Fallon",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/throttleclark/unfurla,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/21147/homepage_large.3829453e.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Clark-Clark.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/,2014,year,album,47,Shellac,Dude Incredible,Touch and Go,"Dude Incredible is an honest representation of gifted musicians playing punk rock together with patient breath and coiled abandon. The bass, drums, guitar, and vocals each end up being showcased on their own at various points on the album, and each might rightly be described as the ""lead"" instrument; the songs are magnanimous and co-operative because, after more than 20 years of making records together, the seasoned team managing them trusts each other like brothers. The lyrics, often presented in unaffected, tuneful speech or guttural screaming, convey incisive, comedic, and thoughtful ruminations on the following: human interaction and behavior; fighting; vandalism; political machinations and opportunistic/piss-poor leadership; looking at things and being looked at by things; and at least one dispute about the conclusion of an instance of sexual intercourse. To paraphrase a line from the title track, all of Shellac’s records are fit, but some of them are spectacular. Dude Incredible is definitely the latter—a lean batch of nine intriguing, blood-pumping songs that tromp, clatter, and ring out like nothing else ever could. —Vish Khanna",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/21080/homepage_large.eb4ffb30.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Shellac-Dude_Incredible.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/,2014,year,album,46,Ariana Grande,My Everything,Republic,"Ariana Grande was unstoppable this year. The former Nickelodeon star conquered the radio, the charts, the tabloids, the TV circuit, and the meme factories, ascending from Victoria Justice/Miranda Cosgrove purgatory to the Katy/Miley/Gaga A-list on the strength of a powerhouse voice and a charmingly goofy off-mic persona. In a single week this fall, she duetted with Little Big Town on the CMA Awards, partnered with Major Lazer on Lorde’s Hunger Games soundtrack, and gyrated with the Weeknd in the ""Love Me Harder"" video. Girl was everywhere. But what a delight it was having this pint-sized, big-haired, dimple-cheeked, cat-eared, not-a-girl-not-yet-a-woman in our lives. My Everything was a time capsule of the year in chart pop: the Max Martin-fueled saxobeat riot of ""Problem"" (with ubiquitous Iggy Azalea feature), the Zedd-fueled arena-EDM rocket blast of ""Break Free"", the Ryan Tedder-fueled power ballad ""Why Try"". There’s even a DJ Mustard nod in the ""Hands on Me"" breakdown, for maximum 2014-ness. Holding it all together were those octave-leaping pipes, as Ariana carried on the vintage Mariah/Xtina tradition of sharp, streetwise divadom. —Amy Phillips",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8eRzOYhLuw,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/20995/homepage_large.35c4daff.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ariana_Grande-My_Everything.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/,2014,year,album,45,Andy Stott,Faith in Strangers,Modern Love,"Faith in Strangers begins with a series of slow, mournful foghorn blasts that faintly resembles Seefeel's great 1995 album Succour, but the sound may as well have come from light years away. It sounds like the intergalactic equivalent of whale song—the indecipherable cries of beings that are beyond us in every sense. Whether sloughing off creaky music-of-the-spheres drones or rubbing your face in filthy, overdriven drum and bass—less breakbeat science than breakbeat slagheap—Stott's latest, bleakest album has a way of making you feel very, very small. But there's a comfort there, too, even if said comfort is just warming one's hands with the embers of a tube amp as it overloads. —Philip Sherburne",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/modernlove/andy-stott-faith-in-strangers,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/21283/homepage_large.a0908a64.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Andy_Stott-Faith_in_Strangers.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/,2014,year,album,44,A Sunny Day in Glasgow,Sea When Absent,Lefse,"Cult band returns after four years in hiding, signs to a new label, hires a hotshot producer, molds their unpredictable, sui generis music into four-minute pop songs, and confirms their fans’ worst fears. This is pretty much what happened to A Sunny Day in Glasgow on their wondrous fourth album Sea When Absent, but leave it to these guys to make the same old song completely unrecognizable. This wasn’t about a small group of protective devotees fretting about antiquated ideas of ""selling out."" Rather, as a band with no established frontperson and no established homebase making genreless music that’s nearly impossible to pull off live, A Sunny Day in Glasgow is a pretty terrible business proposition. So when they earnestly announced their free agency late last year, the greater concern was that they couldn’t be a traditional buzz band with a traditional hit record even if they tried. We’re in luck if they can try harder than they did here; drawing as much from blaring rock and banging hip-hop as their other previous, ill-fitting tags of ""shoegaze"" or ""dream-pop,"" Sea When Absent is clear-eyed and cloudbursting, seemingly incompatible sounds best described by seemingly contradictory feelings—""incapacitating calm,"" ""frightening infatuation,"" ""aggressive joy."" You’ll never get it quite right, but calling Sea When Absent ""ordinary"" is the only way you’ll get it wrong. —Ian Cohen",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/lefse-records/bye-bye-big-ocean-the-end,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/20700/homepage_large.345ccda2.jpg,/dataset/artwork/A_Sunny_Day_in_Glasgow-Sea_When_Absent.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/,2014,year,album,43,Madlib / Freddie Gibbs,Piñata,Madlib Invazion,"Freddie Gibbs is a technician who folds his words into flows so neat the seams never show—and the success of talents like that often rest on the shoulders of a producer. Retro-leaning beats invite pithy ""real hip-hop"" barbs; hew too mainstream and you risk landing in limbo with the overqualified, underappreciated Gunplays of the industry. As a promising allegiance with Jeezy’s CTE World label blossomed and ultimately disintegrated, Gibbs charted a new course, teaming with mercurial SoCal producer/multi-instrumentalist Madlib for a slow drip of EPs over three years. Their collaborative full length, Piñata, sees the duo meeting styles halfway, Gibbs’ gruff, despairing storytelling taking flight on his producer’s woozy, stoned instrumentals. Few who’ve followed either artist could have reasonably predicted this union would form or float (Madlib barely makes rap anymore), but it did, and Piñata is a monument to the enduring magic of raw beats and bars. —Craig Jenkins",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/rappcats/freddie-gibbs-madlib-deeper,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/20126/homepage_large.5d549a79.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Madlib__Freddie_Gibbs-Piata.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/,2014,year,album,42,Owen Pallett,In Conflict,Domino / Secret City,"In Conflict's title captures not only its thematic fixations but also its contradictory quality of ominous loveliness, like a lover who wields his beauty as a surgical instrument. Shimmering strings and rippling piano lines are punctuated by hollow, metallic drum beats and disintegrating synthetic rubble, sound giving way to sound like violent weather patterns dissolving into one another. Above and around, Pallett’s preternaturally smooth voice offers a narrative unity of memory, judgment, and regret, the sonorousness of its croon like a floodlight affording no sympathetic shadows in which to hide. Its omniscience feels increasingly cutting as the words and music slide from the nostalgically self-diagnostic (""a copy of The Dispossessed/ Your room a holy mess"") through the elegiacally metaphysical (""the terror of the infinite … that it will never come again is what makes our life so sweet"") to the erotically specific (""you hooked your pinkies on my jeans""—a snapshot from the best-written sex scene of 2014), like a series of windows glancing upon the irreconcilable ""gap between what a man wants and what a man will receive."" In Conflict makes for endlessly uncomfortable listening not through ugliness, but through the ceaseless, yearning, searching dissatisfaction of its prettiness, an iron cage as torturous as it is intricately wrought. —Tim Finney",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/20612/homepage_large.a3bc45d5.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Owen_Pallett-In_Conflict.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/,2014,year,album,41,Leon Vynehall,Music for the Uninvited,3024,"British producer Leon Vynehall is relatively young, but his genteel, elegant compositions are marked by a respect for the history and cultural context of his genre and an awareness of the world around him. The title of his first lengthy release, Music for the Uninvited, is a nod to the queer people of color who shaped the genesis of house music, dancing and forming communities to escape the marginalization that pervaded the rest of their lives; his production is studded with well-aged samples, voices from generations gone by speaking from beyond the void. They complement and embody songs that move in unexpected ways, percolating and building before achieving a stately grace. Vynehall’s reverence for the past doesn’t get in the way of his personality, either: he’s shaped by N64 classics and skateboarding tricks, possessed of a quiet confidence. His sense of self and regard for his ancestors form the base from which his vital, brainy music takes flight. —Jamieson Cox",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/axel-boukhalet/leon-vynehall-its-just-house-of-dupree,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/21320/homepage_large.cf89c36a.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Leon_Vynehall-Music_for_the_Uninvited.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/,2014,year,album,40,Ty Segall,Manipulator,Drag City,"In the time it takes you to read this, Ty Segall will have likely written five new songs, if not recorded another full-length album. As one of rock’s most productive and prolific artists, Segall manages to outpace his peers in terms of pure volume and (most of the time) in quality. The breakneck speed at which Segall produced his earlier material was often reflected in the recordings, which frequently rejected polish in favor of rapidly recorded fuzz. In contrast, Manipulator—which boasts 17 tracks written and recorded over a span of 14 months—is the most meticulously crafted thing Segall has ever released, an extended play synthesis of literally everything that he does so well. Though his aesthetic generally remains buried in a dirty garage located someplace in the early '70s, Segall’s knack for whipping up airtight hooks and kooky turns of phrase save his takes on psych-glam-garage-boogie from sounding like overly-serious Jack White-style pastiche. While the album doesn’t scrimp when it comes to serving the amped up scuzz-rawk rippers that fans have come to expect from him, Manipulator gets extra interesting when Segall shows off his more pastoral side. If there’s a problem with Manipulator it’s just that the record is almost too much of a good thing—too many competing vibes corralled into one stall, too many single-worthy tracks in one place fighting for air. —T. Cole Rachel",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/20894/homepage_large.8e7507d5.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ty_Segall-Manipulator.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/,2014,year,album,39,Ought,More Than Any Other Day,Constellation,"""I think you can find all the elements that you can find in great literature in mundane experiences,"" Harvey Pekar once said. Though he was a noted jazz man, you can't help but think that he might've liked More Than Any Other Day, the debut from the nervy art-punk Montreal collective Ought. 2% or whole milk? What's the weather like? Are you my friend? More Than Any Other Day is an album full of questions, a lot of them—at least on the surface—seemingly mundane. But, as with Pekar, they're integral parts of the bigger day-to-day quandaries everyone ponders constantly. Do you feel it like I feel it? What's in it for me? Are we lost forever? Ought don't offer many answers, but instead suffer the what-ifs with us (together, today!), all wrapped up in lurching math-rock exercises (""Pleasant Heart""), obtuse Byrne-ian funk (""Around Again""), and good ol’-fashioned punk proselytizing (""Today More Than Any Other Day""). Tim Beeler whispers and rants and crows and sings (the latter only sometimes, and unspectacularly), earning himself a spot alongside Protomartyr's Joe Casey as one of the best everyman frontmen we've got. As Pekar said, ""It makes you feel good to know there's other people afflicted like you."" —Zach Kelly",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/constellation-records/ought-habit | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpqQRDaaNI0,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/20454/homepage_large.c2abfa7b.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ought-More_Than_Any_Other_Day.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/,2014,year,album,38,Hundred Waters,The Moon Rang Like A Bell,OWSLA,"It was already hard enough to classify Hundred Waters’ alchemy of exploratory electronics, conservatory-level chops, and folk earthiness and now we gotta throw ""arena rock"" into the mix. Their OWSLA debut The Moon Rang Like a Bell had a rollout you'd expect from a bankrolled band bent on world domination, spawning five singles, three gorgeous videos, an all-star remix EP, a record release party/vision quest in the Arizona desert, and a star-crossed, snowed-in tour with Interpol that postponed a Letterman performance. Well, say what you will about Skrillex’s music, but as a label head, he’s not always looking for the big drop. Nothing about The Moon Rang Like a Bell ever felt like a push for the breakout hit that would turn Hundred Waters into the ""new tUnE-yArDs"" or Dirty Projectors or any of the other indie A-listers they were compared to last time out. Instead, they were gentle nudges, reminders of an album that requires patience due to its unusual way of establishing a relationship with the listener. The band shares its most intimate secrets first: you immediately hear Nicole Miglis completely exposed with an a cappella prayer, there’s conspiratory laughter, a scrambled Skype conversation with her partner on ""Broken Blue"", police sirens ringing outside their downtown Los Angeles apartment during the mesmerizing gospel of ""Murmurs"". Once they’ve earned your trust, Hundred Waters makes dazzling third, 12th, and 25th impressions, as the confluence of their astounding technical proficiency and boundless sonic scope somehow manages to be subtle. The Moon Rang Like a Bell is a bold, confident album that still plays coy—""I wish you would see what I see,"" Miglis sings on ""Murmurs"". But first, she asks to be shown love and if you oblige, Hundred Waters show you their entire world. —Ian Cohen",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/hundredwaters/02-murmurs,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/20526/homepage_large.1bc1eb7a.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Hundred_Waters-The_Moon_Rang_Like_A_Bell.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/,2014,year,album,37,Perfect Pussy,Say Yes to Love,Captured Tracks,"At the poles of Say Yes to Love, two rhythms compete furiously. At one, you've got Garrett Koloski bringing up the drums, shifting tempos and hammering fills like he's escaping an oncoming firestorm. At the other, Meredith Graves pounds her voice into the ground. Between them, squalls of guitars and synthesizers fan each other's flames. No one makes it out in one piece. Graves' language takes patience to decode and it's worth it: Her lyrics are the key to sinking this record into your bones. ""I have a history of surrender,"" she declares on ""Driver"". ""I eat stress and I shit blood/ And buddy, I'll tell you, it never gets better."" She runs down a list of lies, ""lies like I will be protected."" On ""Interference Fits"", she sings, ""I met my despair at midday light/ And it was amazing, and I almost cried"". Say Yes to Love comes with a question mark hanging invisibly at the end of its title, but its reluctance to embrace love unequivocally only strengthens its refusal to accept woundedness as a defining state. Graves sings like a person who's been hurt, again and again, from all angles in a country that systemically dehumanizes women, queers, and anyone else who doesn't play by the status quo. But she sings like she's found power in that hurt. She refuses defeat with every syllable. Say Yes to Love is the sound of someone looking deep inside themselves and realizing what they thought was broken is actually a source of strength—and then making a whole lot of triumphant noise about it. —Sasha Geffen",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/capturedtracks/interference-fits,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/20292/homepage_large.fc67552e.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Perfect_Pussy-Say_Yes_to_Love.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/,2014,year,album,36,Tinashe,Aquarius,RCA,"The sort of slow, churning R&B popularized by Drake and adopted by scores of underground singers and producers around the globe finally delivers its first front-to-back great album with Tinashe’s Aquarius. How did she get it so right? By taking cues from that aesthetic but not letting it define her. The record is submerged in beats that slur and slosh, with Tinashe’s breathy vocals never sinking too deep. This is a decidedly of-the-moment LP, but it succeeds the same way any good R&B album does: with generous songwriting and strong singing. ""2 On"", one of the finest singles of the year, is instructive in this sense—every part of the song is sung so distinctly that it feels like the choruses of a bunch of tracks were ripped away and fused together. It’s easy to let your head swim through Aquarius, but Tinashe announces herself as its centerpiece throughout, from her slight falsetto on the slippery ""Feels Like Vegas"" to the '90s throwback belter ""Thug Cry"". And on an album this consistent, it’s fitting that she saves the best for track 16, the flickering piano ballad ""Bated Breath"", where she unleashes a series of runs on the phrase ""all alone"" that are as boldly emotional as any other diva’s. Aquarius is the muted thump of Soundcloud dreams, but so much more.  —Jordan Sargent",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/tinashenow/tinashe-2-on-feat-schoolboy-q,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/21152/homepage_large.0d9d3429.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tinashe-Aquarius.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/,2014,year,album,35,Shabazz Palaces,Lese Majesty,Sub Pop,"Lese Majesty is Shabazz Palaces getting interstellar, a set of intricate, enigmatic, yet meaningful suites complete with an (initially) impenetrable multidimensional blueprint/map connecting it all in the liner notes. Beneath the visuals, the album contends with a strain of Afrofuturism that puts its faith in finding unities in contradictions and clarity in riddles (""I'm having my cake and I'm eating cake,"" ""facts stated to enhance what is pre-born,"" ""we try to unreproduce six tension intervals""), reconciling structure and formlessness, forethought and spontaneity. Attempting to transcend the physical yet being constantly aware of how that physicality is constantly being threatened is a hell of an undertaking—more apparent this year, though nothing new. Here the state is depicted in hip-hop revelation story ""...down 155th in the MCM Snorkel"" as ""Escaping the bleak, pursuing a feeling/ Pressure pushed them towards the instinct of brilliance."" Those unwary peers who lived through those same origins but shrug that brilliant instinct off are damned to the tune of meter-defying breaks and tactile, synthesized bass-church/musique concrète production that turns human language into primordial elements of cosmic influence. It's humbling stuff that urges you to dance but knows full well that, to do so, you'll need to relearn new and better steps. —Nate Patrin",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/subpop/shabazz-palaces-forerunner-foray,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/20857/homepage_large.cc761557.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Shabazz_Palaces-Lese_Majesty.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/,2014,year,album,34,Cloud Nothings,Here and Nowhere Else,Carpark / Mom & Pop,"If 2012’s Attack on Memory was the moment where Dylan Baldi’s bedroom-project-turned-power-trio first flashed its surprisingly sharp teeth, Here and Nowhere Else is the sound of Cloud Nothings gnawing on flesh and drawing blood, inflicting wounds both physical and psychic. This is an album that begins with a bruising rumble (""Now Hear In"") and then, over the course of a breathless eight songs and 32 minutes, just turns more feral and ferocious as it exposes the cruel irony of a relationship’s end: i.e., that it really just marks the start of a whole new round of head games and deceptions. Despite the album’s frenetic, intensifying momentum, the overall feeling is one of crippling dysfunction, best summed up by Baldi’s agitated, laryngitis-inducing howl on ""No Thoughts"" (""You don’t really seem to care/ And I don’t even talk about it""), where he effectively loses his shit over an ex’s inability to give a shit about him pretending to not give a shit. But remarkably, the more aggressive and unhinged Cloud Nothings get, the sharper Baldi’s melodic instincts become: In its first 100 seconds alone, the closing pop-punk pick-me-up ""I’m Not Part of Me"" swiftly cycles through two alternate verse/chorus pairings that could each handily support their own stand-alone song. Really, Cloud Nothings’ fourth album could not have been more appropriately titled: Here and Nowhere Else is the most relentlessly single-minded, maniacally focussed indie rock album released this year—a break-up record pitched at breakneck speed, blurring the line between introspection and insanity. —Stuart Berman",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/cloudnothings/im-not-part-of-me,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/20281/homepage_large.1e6df0d9.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Cloud_Nothings-Here_and_Nowhere_Else.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/,2014,year,album,33,Rich Gang,Tha Tour Part 1,,"Humans are complicated. Young Thug is complicated, Rich Homie Quan is complicated. These are two young black men who hail from Atlanta and rap about everything. It's not just that they cover a wide variety of subject matter that rotates on a song-to-song basis, but that every single song they make seems to touch on their entire spread of thoughts and emotions. In a matter of a seconds, a tender Rich Gang ballad can fill up with seething death threats, or a string of superficial boasts can flip to reveal a moment of absolute vulnerability. Sometimes, they massage these shifts subtly with melodic cues or vocal tics; sometimes, they move about through more traditional means of lyricism. In the middle of ""Hate I"", a track that is ostensibly about hating to fall in love with pussy, Quan blurts out ""I just wanna live"" and stretches the last two syllables across three bars. This should be enough to send chills up even the numbest of spines in this terrible world, where the right to be and stay alive is not always granted to young men of Quan’s complexion. But then the other Givenchy drops and his voice cracks and ""don’t give no fucks ’bout who I kill"" comes out of the speaker, and it’s hard to know what to feel other than still completely crushed. Tha Tour Part 1 is Quan and Thug's first collaborative tape and it's the most complete project that either has been involved with to date. It's somber and hilarious and violent and loving and genius and ignorant and refined and sloppy and beautiful and hideous and human. It's everything that great rap music has always been, which is to say it's everything that is everything to those who create and consume it. —Andrew Nosnitsky",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/21344/homepage_large.58218671.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rich_Gang-Tha_Tour_Part_1.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/,2014,year,album,32,White Lung,Deep Fantasy,Domino,"Those blitz speed black metal tremolos, the guitar that never ceases jabbering into every corner of the mix, Mish Way's hoarse roar: White Lung seemed to sprint screaming across the expanse of 2014. The songs on Deep Fantasy move like gusts of wind stretching a sail to ripping point, and listening to the group triggers fight-or-flight feelings of exhilaration and panic. Slow down the blur, however, and you find a Chinese finger trap: These were alt-punk songs stitched together from hundreds of riffs, complicated solos, and sections burned for kindling while Mish Way hollered and gasped about rape culture, body dysmorphia, and life-or-death battles for human dignity. —Jayson Greene",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/dominorecordco/white-lung-down-it-goes/s-Qzvo6,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/20682/homepage_large.753d433e.jpg,/dataset/artwork/White_Lung-Deep_Fantasy.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/,2014,year,album,31,Taylor Swift,1989,Big Machine,"Even in its self-contradictions, 1989 is generous: is there anything more riveting than a Type A person’s ""fuck it"" phase? Of course the grand acts of big city rebellion on Taylor Swift’s fifth album are hilariously PG: ""Oh yeah? You think I’m demure? Well how ‘bout I cut up this shirt?"" The entire premise—that 1989 is Swift’s ""first official, documented pop album""—rests on a similarly crafty fallacy, that her catalog hasn’t been shaped by whip-smart pop instincts all along. It’s that patented humblebrag pantomime again: ""Little ol’ me? A pop star?"" It’s so perfect, though—that Swift’s big-deal stylistic pivot is, in fact, utterly un-transgressive. In reality, 1989 isn’t such a departure from the glossier moments of Red: conversational but crisp, informed but not steered by Max Martin, yuppie in spite of a preoccupation with social hierarchy. Still, if Swift insists she is now a pop star, let it be known that she does ""pop star"" better than any of her peers, with the knowing passive-aggression of a student who’d rather quietly carry a group project than tell her classmates they’re doing it all wrong. This strategic coyness can be Swift’s most maddening quality, but on 1989, she owns it unlike ever before, popping the Chandon with a big ol’ wink for all the Crazy Bitches to clink to the douchebags’ toasts. She’s harnessed the power of her all-consuming self-awareness, investing in the meme economy with quivering poker-face, her returns matched only by Drake’s: if they hate, then let ‘em hate, and watch the ""basic bitch"" think pieces pile up. Is there any doubt she knew full well, on ""Blank Space"", how uncannily ""long list of ex-lovers"" sounded like ""lonely Starbucks lovers""? Those who accuse Swift of ironing out her narratives on 1989 aren’t wrong: those efficiently personal details once stitched into her songwriting have been democratized. But it’s unrealistic to frame this as selling out. (Taylor Swift does not sell out. She sells more.) Maybe, instead, it’s the realization that obsessive mythologizing of past and future is way less fun than having tons of sex and carting your cat around New York City. To be clear: ""Global Welcome Ambassador"" Swift’s New York is not the city where you buy loosies from the corner bodega, and it is certainly not the city where police murdered Eric Garner in cold blood for allegedly selling them. Swift’s New York involves some tricky camera angles: a close-up of the festive Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, the surrounding protest signs conveniently just out of frame. It would be silly to consider her penthouse view as anything other than what it is: a commercial. But, whoopsy daisy! Wouldn’t you know it? She’s better than everybody at those, too.  —Meaghan Garvey",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-ORhEE9VVg,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/21345/homepage_large.2446efc1.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Taylor_Swift-1989.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/,2014,year,album,30,Iceage,Plowing Into the Field of Love,Matador,"Elias Bender Rønnenfelt, Iceage’s 22-year-old vocalist, has the kind of voice—flustered, careening; part-growl, part-drunken drawl—that sounds as if it were conjured from somewhere deep in his small intestines. On the Danish band’s third LP, a stunning collection of loose, rollicking punk jams, Rønnenfelt sings mostly about being extraordinarily angry: ""I don’t care whose house is on fire, as long as I can warm myself at the blaze,"" he announces in the somersaulting opener ""On My Fingers"". Rønnenfelt’s mania can be terrifying, but there’s beauty in his rage, too, like on the piano-addled ""Against the Moon"", in which he sounds defeated and morose, dragged along by a cluster of low, droning horns. What’s most important, though, is that Rønnenfelt’s not sorry, not even a little bit: ""Whatever I do, I do not repent,"" he shrugs. —Amanda Petrusich",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/21039/homepage_large.9bcb510c.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Iceage-Plowing_Into_the_Field_of_Love.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/,2014,year,album,29,How to Dress Well,"""What Is This Heart?""",Domino / Weird World,"Tom Krell’s third album as How to Dress Well is a brave confession. It is radically, exposing-the-fifth-dimension honest. It is perm-era Whitney Houston as a white boy cooing about the power of powerlessness. It is teenage angst simmering into adult anguish. It is Young Thug poring over the sublime with Immanuel Kant. It is emo, R&B, and post-taste pop built for imaginary charts. It is a couple million copies away from a ""What Is This Fart?"" ""Weird Al"" parody. It is as serious as Nietzsche’s moustache. It promises to stay before it leaves. It is the tinny on-hold music that makes you want to run away with him forever. It seeks love in a world full of ""love."" It is a bad dream that feels too real. It respects family enough to tell them the truth. It’s self-help with a brain and blood. It knows death but it doesn’t long for death. It’s hopeful, somehow. —Ryan Dombal",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/howtodresswell/repeat-pleasure,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/20654/homepage_large.bc2dad80.jpg,/dataset/artwork/How_to_Dress_Well-What_Is_This_Heart.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/,2014,year,album,28,Pharmakon,Bestial Burden,Sacred Bones,"Diamanda Galas once said, ""My voice was given to me as an instrument of inspiration for my friends, and a tool of torture and destruction to my enemies."" Margaret Chardiet of Pharmakon understands this. But in her world, the enemy is the self. Her grisly album covers (featuring maggots and animal organs), song titles (""Body Betrays Itself""), and frank interviews provide context for her particular take on noise music, but even without all that, it's obvious that this is music about pain. There's a mysterious connection between pain and sound: When our bodies experience trauma, we remember buzzes, bells, clicks; we remember our own voices, even when they sound like they come from far away. On her second LP, Chardiet coughs, hacks, spits, and screeches, as metal-on-metal clangs hammer beneath her. It's music about living inside your body and feeling revulsion, but despite the horror, there's also something comforting there, a shared space for raw experience that feels transformative. One of the paradoxical qualities of extreme noise music is that when it reaches a certain volume, you feel utterly alone, cut off from the world. It explains how harsh tones can obliterate thought and become meditative. But if you're wired a certain way, Chardiet's noise music is relatable. She enters a hyper-intense world on Bestial Burden, and you are right there with her. —Mark Richardson",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/sacredbones/pharmakon-body-betrays-itself,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/21111/homepage_large.8b722a78.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Pharmakon-Bestial_Burden.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/,2014,year,album,27,YG,My Krazy Life,Def Jam,"YG hails from Compton, California and, like more than a few of his fellow Comptonites, he is what you would call a gangsta rapper. In fact, his debut album My Krazy Life is the first pure gangsta rap album to be released on a major label in many years. (And the way the triple beams have been tipping, it might also be the last.) It meets both the literal definition of the genre—YG boasts constantly about his Blood affiliations—and also the classical one. This is not the all-too-common contemporary sort of braggadocious street rap where death and wealth are used as competitive or stylistic props. This is narrative, panoramic, and consequence-driven hip-hop in the vein of '90s legends like MC Eiht and Spice 1. Frighteningly efficient hitmaker DJ Mustard handles the bulk of the production and, as with everything he has thrown to market this year, these are sparse and formulaic party records—four to five notes played with one finger that hang in the air until his ubiquitous Mustard on the beat, hoe! drop summons the 808s. But he saves his best work for the homie here, and fleshes that skeleton out with an appropriately haunting layer of wheezy G-Funk nostalgia. YG maximizes this minimalism with snarling flows and writes in a smart, simple voice that serves pride, drama, and regret in equal doses. That's roughly the path his thinly constructed storyline follows, too, from neighborhood anthems to carefully executed heists to the inevitable sad phone calls to mom from lock-up. Despite its turn-up functionality, My Krazy Life is a tragedy at its core. It's a record about a life from which escape (or even escapism) is not an option, where one's best hope is to live long enough to apologize. —Andrew Nosnitsky",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/20371/homepage_large.04356a8b.jpg,/dataset/artwork/YG-My_Krazy_Life.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/,2014,year,album,26,Ex Hex,Rips,Merge,"Another bleary morning, and Mary Timony finds herself with some joker passed out on her floor. This seems to happen a lot; the leadoff track to Ex Hex—Timony's 2005 solo LP, from which her newest band took their name—found Timony stepping over a warm body en route to the Corn Chex and, nine years later, there they are again, sprawled out all over Rips highlight ""Waterfall"". This is the point where I remind you of Timony's long tenure as a musician, scratch my head over the untimely demise of the one-and-done Wild Flag, or rattle off all the Ford-and-Carter-era classic-rock touchstones to whom Ex Hex raise their denim-encircled fists. But nuts to that: with Rips, Timony, Laura Harris, and Betsy Wright made themselves an all-killer, no-filler power-pop record, the kind that's far too fun to get bogged down with details like ""who’s ripping off whom?"" or ""want me to call you a cab?"" Rips is a promise delivered, a dozen songs you swear you’ve heard before but you never quite seem to get sick of. Ex Hex's dispatches from the rock'n'roll frontlines often play like pep talks, urging whoever's listening to forget their good-for-nothing exes, secure themselves a beverage or three, and enjoy the party. While Timony bemoans the cooler-than-thou set on ""War Paint"", her lifer status lends a certain knowing air to Rips, a sense that she's been to enough of these little shindigs to know just how to get through them without too many cigarette burns in the carpet. And, sure, the uptick in economy on display throughout the lean, mean Rips certainly stands in opposition to Timony's labyrinthine back catalog. But you don't need to know Mary to know Rips rules… although you do need to get the hell off her floor. —Paul Thompson",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/mergerecords/ex-hex-dont-wanna-lose/,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/21132/homepage_large.7c5fcea2.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ex_Hex-Rips.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/,2014,year,album,25,Azealia Banks,Broke With Expensive Taste,Prospect Park,"Following endless delays, a highly publicized split with Interscope, and a wealth of divisive Twitter feuds, it was starting to seem more and more likely that Azealia Banks’ long-gestating debut would never emerge from the sealed vault at her former label’s headquarters. And yet, seemingly on a whim this past November, the Harlem rapper posted a link to the album, now released through indie imprint Prospect Park. Coming three long years after ""212"" and two after Banks’ strong Fantasea mixtape, Broke With Expensive Taste spurred expectations that inevitably fell into two camps: those who eagerly anticipated whatever Banks had been working on for so long, and those whose interest had waned after one too many slapdash singles Banks issued in the interim. But the wait was worth it: Broke With Expensive Taste is Banks at her most gleefully propulsive. As the album weaves through '90s house samples, AraabMuzik-assisted trap beats, salsa breakdowns, and glassy synth work from UK producer Lone, it’s up to Banks’ springy, infectious flow to keep it all from falling apart, a feat she carries off with extraordinary ease. The grab-bag approach to genre is a huge part of what made Broke With Expensive Taste such a thrilling, singular listen in 2014, providing a host of new access points into Banks’ music taste. Broke may not be perfect, but it affirmed that Banks’ rapid-fire talent behind the mic is not something to be dismissed. —Eric Torres",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/yung-rapunxel/chasing-time,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/21256/homepage_large.de7eef66.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Azealia_Banks-Broke_With_Expensive_Taste.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/,2014,year,album,24,Parquet Courts,Sunbathing Animal,What's Your Rupture? / Mom & Pop,"The first of the two albums Parquet Courts released this year is all about being trapped in a home, or exiled from it. It's the particular hell of the touring rock band, or of the cat that someone in that band misses a lot. (Cats, in fact, are evoked all over the record, most notably on the title track, a hardcore blowout that made its first appearance as sheet music—the joke being that its score is mostly just a single chord jackhammered quadruple-fortissimo.) Part of what they're stuck inside is the lineage of bands for whom guitars are devices of chaos, like their inescapable comparison points Pavement and the Velvet Underground; part of what they're stuck outside of is the ability to mean things without referring to and assessing the past. (What they hear on ""Instant Disassembly"" isn't the ""fine, fine music"" of the Velvets' ""Rock and Roll"", it's ""the last classic rock band's last solid record""). So they focus their considerable wit and formidable sneers on reference and assessment: if ""Ducking & Dodging"" is the hundredth killer rewrite of ""Keep A-Knockin'"", ""Vienna II"" is the Fall's ""In the Park"" appearing the second time as farce. —Douglas Wolk",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/krazypunx/parquet-courts-instant-disassembly | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ul4GJkerx6U,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/20620/homepage_large.5aca6a9e.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Parquet_Courts-Sunbathing_Animal.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/,2014,year,album,23,Lykke Li,I Never Learn,LL,"Imagine an ad campaign called ""Lykke Li Knows""—with respect to Bo Jackson—in which the Swedish singer demonstrates all the ways she knows sadness: the lingering melancholy of coming across a letter from an old lover; the self-directed barbs after realizing that after all this time you still haven't learned any better; the grandiloquent delusion of imagining your feelings as the skies and stars, the natural world raging along with your despair. Lykke Li Knows. At the start of her career, Li would talk about being a little bit in love, or how she was too shy, shy, shy to acknowledge her heart. For her third album, I Never Learn, she drops the coyness, trades bouncy beats for acoustic guitars, and stages gloom as epic theater or classic literature, descended from Anna Karenina or Madame Bovary. At times, there’s a detachment that gives her a cold strength—then, her voice shifts to pleading and penitent, a reminder that for all her melodramatic unapproachability, she’s only human. Like all great romantics, she has the audacity to love without self-consciousness, regardless of the attendant heartbreak. She reminds us to do the same. —Jeremy Gordon",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/lykkeli/gunshot | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXVAiFBEpwA,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/20527/homepage_large.43f6dc8c.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lykke_Li-I_Never_Learn.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/,2014,year,album,22,Future Islands,Singles,4AD,"It’s an increasingly rare music-business success story: A band from a small city slogs it out on the road playing house shows for a half-decade. Then they sign to a big label, release the best album of their career, deliver a rapturously received performance on a late-night talk show, and suddenly find themselves near the upper echelon of the indie universe. It’s kind of heartwarming. Future Islands’ sound has grown in proportion with their fanbase, and Singles presents a metamorphosis from dinky, basement-show electro-punk to full-blown, florid new romantic synth-pop, born to be heard thundering from the stages of large concert halls and festivals. It’s uplifting self-help music, defiantly uncool, and proudly vulnerable, with spiritually minded lyrics bellowed by a guy who looks like Jack Black and sounds like Dave Gahan and Nick Cave (with a splash of Cookie Monster). Indeed, Samuel T. Herring has emerged as one of the most dynamic frontmen in rock, a larger-than-life physical presence who specializes in the kind of un-self-conscious, awkward movements we all bust out when we’re alone in our homes. He dances like nobody’s watching, but for Future Islands in 2014, everybody was watching. —Amy Phillips",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/future-islands/seasons-waiting-on-you,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/20331/homepage_large.c406d674.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Future_Islands-Singles.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/,2014,year,album,21,Brian Eno / Karl Hyde,High Life,Warp,"High Life an unusually overt album—all electric guitars, big beats, and clear catharsis. To the album’s benefit, there is evidence of the cherished Eno of the '70s and early '80s: the architect behind some of the most singular art-pop releases of those decades and one of the first rock musicians to introduce gestures from Western-influenced African pop and dance music into post-punk and new wave. Eno and Underworld’s Karl Hyde battle against heavily syncopatedand subtly mutating percussion tracks; the songwriting is understated, but not indulgently so: hypnotic, not soporific. If Eno was threatening to become just that guy phoning in soundscapes and lending Coldplay an air of mysticism, he reclaims his status on High Life as an artist capable of visionary pop. —Winston Cook-Wilson",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/warp-records/dbf-eno-hyde,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/20766/homepage_large.9e0fc0ea.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Brian_Eno__Karl_Hyde-High_Life.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/,2014,year,album,20,Vince Staples,Hell Can Wait EP,Def Jam,"Long Beach, Calif., rapper Vince Staples wasted no time with his debut EP Hell Can Wait. The digital-only release should not confined to earbuds or laptop speakers; it should blast from cars across the country, as people march and flood city streets. The harsh metallic crunch that rings from the opening track ""Fire"" climaxes in the ear splitting 21-second intro of ""Blue Suede"", the track where Staples tersely explains the mindset to be black in 2014: ""Young graves get the bouquets … Hope I outlive them red roses."" The politics of Staples move between the personal nightmares of his father as a petty drug dealer (""Screen Door"") to broader disgust for the entire judicial system (""Hands Up""). Though his father’s harmful actions are detested by Staples’ mother, a young Vince directs his hate at the police, who just won’t leave his family alone; he’s frustrated at the crime-ridden world he sees, but sees no solution in trading drive-bys for drive-bys from those in blue uniforms. ""Hands up don’t shoot"" became the protest motto across the United States in the wake of Ferguson’s protest against the death of Michael Brown but, here, Staples knows the sad truth that skin speaks louder than words, actions or the law. —David Turner",Platform: YouTube - Link: http://youtu.be/EuupBHUGbYo,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/21087/homepage_large.fcd762cc.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Vince_Staples-Hell_Can_Wait_EP.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/,2014,year,album,19,Sharon Van Etten,Are We There,Jagjaguwar,"Sharon Van Etten’s first two albums were made for crying alone and 2012’s ""It"" album Tramp called for communal displays of emotions, but Are We There turns a corner. Inherent in the album is the reality of Van Etten’s life over the last few years, touring and inching closer towards the nebulous concept of success in modern indie rock. Like anyone who spends the majority of her working life on the road, Van Etten has created coping mechanisms for her ""real"" life. That comes across in the studio in-jokes behind closing track ""Every Time the Sun Comes Up"" and the easy R&B grooves that make ""Our Love"" and ""Taking Chances"" two of her strongest songs to date. Van Etten’s signature earnestness isn’t exactly in short supply, either; ""Your Love Is Killing Me"" is the most eloquently written song about ""crying uncle"" in a relationship. ""Afraid of Nothing"" possesses the fearlessness of someone who’s seen the world precisely because she pours her heart out; after you do that, what’s so scary about an uncomfortable phone call to the person who knows you best? ""A love letter to the road"" is a common description for art, but what Sharon Van Etten made is an ode to realizing that we’re never done moving forward. —Jillian Mapes",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/jagjaguwar/sharon-van-etten-every-time-the-sun-comes-up,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/20600/homepage_large.2592e138.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sharon_Van_Etten-Are_We_There.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/,2014,year,album,18,Arca,Xen,Mute,"If we had to give it a name, 2014 was the Year of the Body. How fitting that in a moment of digital saturation, we now turn our attention to the physical world, particularly the flesh we find ourselves living inside. Arca's album Xen comes at these questions from a more abstracted place; these instrumentals may not speak, but they certainly feel like music about boundaries and space, the instability of borders, the impossibility of locating the ""normal,"" the constant desire for change and the nagging sense of loss that always accompanies it. It conveys all this by treating every unit of music as something to be altered. But Xen remains inviting even with all its experimentation—the album initially sounds ""off"" in a way that makes you want to listen closer rather than turn away, until you hear music that's alive with possibility. Here, the rules of music are always in the background, but they're kept in the frame to show us the beauty that can happen when they're broken. —Mark Richardson",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/arca1000000/arca-thievery/,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/21074/homepage_large.4dcc3cc2.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Arca-Xen.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/,2014,year,album,17,Flying Lotus,You're Dead!,Warp,"Rarely are a concept album’s objectives stated so cleanly as those of Flying Lotus’ You’re Dead! Right from the foreboding drone that launches this terrifying spirit journey, it’s apparent the album title is a briefing. You’re dead. What’s next? Steve Ellison’s fifth opus imagines a trek from frightened denial to acceptance not unlike Argentinian writer/director Gaspar Noé’s offbeat Enter the Void, where a murdered man’s essence floats around the scene of the crime searching for the strength to let go. You’re Dead!’s early race from drone through frenetic bop, fusion, and hip-hop attempts to dramatize the jarring disorientation of a soul shaken loose from its body and, later, the spacious succession of airy grooves leading the way to the final cut ""The Protest"" feels like a progression toward closure. Ellison sees a freedom in death that the living often don’t: The school children dancing at their own funeral in the gutting clip for the Kendrick Lamar-assisted ""Never Catch Me"" are no longer bound by mortal constructs like pain and sorrow—they run clear out of the door into the evening sky. —Craig Jenkins",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/flyinglotus/coronus-the-terminator,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/21115/homepage_large.e8895358.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Flying_Lotus-Youre_Dead.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/,2014,year,album,16,St. Vincent,St. Vincent,Loma Vista,"The backlash over St. Vincent’s SNL performance back in May had less to do with the quality of her songs than with the demeanor of her performance. Here was A.) a woman B.) wailing on a guitar C.) without resorting to those constipated grimaces that let you know the player is really feeling it, man. Instead, Annie Clark stood nearly stock still on that stage, gesturing in a coded sign language and climactically baby-stepping up and down the stage; she churned out those showily compact riffs while wearing a stoical countenance that hinted at supreme confidence and self-possession. She tore through ""Birth in Reverse"" and ""Digital Witness"" as though she were inventing a new language of rock performance. This particular mission earned her self-titled fourth album such pejoratives as ""pretentious,"" ""cerebral,"" and ""cold,"" which Clark has the audacity to embrace rather than counter. St. Vincent is a gloriously eccentric album, one that shows off her formidable facility with riffs that turn themselves inside out. If you can get on her wavelength—which isn’t that difficult—this is also a very funny album, as Clark the songwriter makes Big Statements as Big Punchlines. She snorts pieces of the Berlin Wall with a friend and prefers your love to Jesus. An ordinary day in America involves taking out the garbage and masturbating: ""I’m still holding for the laugh."" It may not be her wildest album (that’s still Strange Mercy), but St. Vincent is certainly the one that is most Annie Clark: giving full rein to all her eccentricities and chuckling to herself at the thought of a popular audience. —Stephen M. Deusner",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/st_vincent/digital-witness,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/20224/homepage_large.67094c10.jpg,/dataset/artwork/St_Vincent-St_Vincent.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/,2014,year,album,15,Angel Olsen,Burn Your Fire for No Witness,Jagjaguwar,"It is hard to imagine Angel Olsen posting on Twitter and not feeling a bit ridiculous. The Midwestern folk singer has spent the better part of her 20s making art dedicated to the notion that solitude is necessary for growth and survival. Burn Your Fire for No Witness—an aphoristic title worth inking to one's skin, if ever there was one—is Olsen's masterwork, taking the pained beauty of her raw 2012 debut Half Way Home and stretching the scope of her sound. You'll hear echoes of Leonard Cohen's dim-lit hypnosis on ""White Fire"", and the aching ghosts of an old-souled country jukebox in her ecstatic warble, but listen closely and you will learn from Olsen in a way that feels newly classic. Each line is immaculately written. ""I feel so much at once that I could scream/ I wish I had the voice of everything,"" she emotes wildly on the sublime ""Stars"", and often it seems that she does. Individualism as a virtue is not hard to detect. Burn's arc pings from strength in self-reliance, Zen-like therapy, and laughable loneliness to more complex vulnerabilities: forgotten dreams, grave rejection, the impossibility of connecting with a person who is right next to you. The trope of ""sadness"" has loomed in culture this year, but not always with the dignity, wisdom, and light that is apparent in Olsen's music. The most piercing moments on Burn are born in our racing minds when we're alone with our thoughts, the toll of love that is only imagined, the madness of unspoken obsession: ""Here's to thinking that it all meant so much more,"" ""I wish it were the same as it is in my mind,"" ""Thought I felt your heartbeat/ It was just my counting."" Listening to this record, stitching her words into the fabric of my life, I've felt time and again that Angel Olsen is decoding my soul, articulating with grace all these feelings that seem completely ineffable. To quote her first great song: ""I used to think I was the only one."" —Jenn Pelly",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/jagjaguwar/angel-olsen-white-fire/ | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rt5lbTYscy0,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/20152/homepage_large.737a1388.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Angel_Olsen-Burn_Your_Fire_for_No_Witness.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/,2014,year,album,14,Real Estate,Atlas,Domino,"""This is not the same place I used to know,"" Martin Courtney sings on the deceptively wistful ""Past Lives"", ""but it still has that same old sound."" Atlas has that strange feeling tattooed all over its soft skin; this is the same band that made two reverb-heavy, atmospheric pop albums about suburban idyll, but it’s also not. A bunch of native New Jersey-ites who now mostly shack in Brooklyn, Real Estate have polished their once fuzzy sound into clean, well-detailed structures that sound more ""sprawl"" than ""suburban,"" and trade stoner-friendly impressions for more pointed confessions. Lead single ""Talking Backwards"" sounds so obviously like a beatific love song, it’s easy to overlook that it’s actually an anxiety-riddled yelp of frustration. Atlas comes from the viewpoint of someone who once spent long afternoons lying around staring at the ceiling but doesn’t really do that anymore, and who maybe knows he never will again. (Courtney and his wife had their first child this year.) More than ever, Courtney’s chord progressions worry at their own moments of sweetness like you might prod at a toothache. ""Crime"" aches with the disquiet that makes you ""toss and turn all night,"" while Matt Mondanile’s plangent guitar lines vibrate with impossible clarity against the dissonant murk of ""The Bend"". Feeling grown-up may seem like an extraneous milestone these days (especially if you’re a twentysomething in a band), but the future still gets smaller and creeps closer, and eventually it starts to look more and more like something you already know. Welcome to the eternal melancholy of adulthood. —Abby Garnett",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/real-estate-the-band/talking-backwards-1,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/20264/homepage_large.d9f36f89.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Real_Estate-Atlas.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/,2014,year,album,13,Spoon,They Want My Soul,Loma Vista,"For the better part of the last two decades, Britt Daniel has established partial residence for Spoon in a parallel universe very close to our own. If not quite ""a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind…both shadow and substance,"" then it’s about as close as American indie rock gets to it. Spoon often sounds like other bands—as revealed earlier this year, that’s part of their point—but there’s always something a bit different, a bit unsettling. In 2010 Daniel finally gave a name to the emotional and sonic wormhole he’s long located: ""The Mystery Zone"". That’s the space-time twist that holds ""The times that we met/ Before we met,"" those wobbly, resonant left-handed piano chords and the screams that cut off mid-word. The Mystery Zone is where ghosts linger, where Everything Hits at Once, and what freezes the ""walking through the door"" climax of ""Metal Detektor"". On the band’s eighth album They Want My Soul, we first enter the Mystery Zone on ""Inside Out"". After being transported by a sustained, echo-laden organ note that accompanies us to the other side, Daniel tells us what he sees and feels, not unlike Rod Serling introducing a ""Twilight Zone"" episode: ""Time's gone inside out/ Time gets distorted with/ This intense gravity."" Now that James Murphy’s retired, Daniel is indie rock’s preeminent sensitive sound-synthesist, and of course ""Inside Out"" is about trying to understand the laws of attraction: ""There’s intense gravity in you/ I’m just your satellite,"" he mewls, while trippily chewing scenery with far-off echoes, synth washes, and, yes, harp glissandos. In a more conventional setting, Side B rocker ""Let Me Be Mine"" takes us to the Mystery Zone via his long-held fascination with emotional memory. Daniel begs someone to ""auction off what you love/ It will come back sometime."" On the sleek punk closer ""New York Kiss"", a dramatic liplock is ""just another place/ a place that your memory owns."" But why soul? One way to think of the term in the rock realm is as code for ""authenticity,"" and such signifiers are all over the album—""Rent I Pay"" and the title track are both fierce, swag-laden diatribes against incorporation into The Machine. But Daniel’s always been interested in the Mystery Zone idea of soul, too—what the Ancient Greeks called our post-mortem ""shade in the underworld."" When Daniel sings ""time keeps on going when/ we got nothing else to give,"" he's reminding us of exactly this. While countless bands wander around in fugue states, repurposing what made them successful without any memory of how or why they got there, Spoon have long turned their success inside out. Daniel and Jim Eno’s ultra-rare combination of inventiveness and consistency situated the band in the ""yawn, another great album from these guy""” status way back on 2005’s Gimme Fiction. In the decade hence, epitomized on They Want My Soul, they simply make Spoon Albums that still manage to unsettle our expectations about how indie rock music should sound. Maybe this is Spoon’s greatest trick: the only band to make listeners wonder if they’re the ones in the Mystery Zone, after all. —Eric Harvey",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/spoontheband/inside-out | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzlG28B-R8Y,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/20739/homepage_large.767bdf78.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Spoon-They_Want_My_Soul.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/,2014,year,album,12,Mac DeMarco,Salad Days,Captured Tracks,"""You're no better off living your life than dreaming at night,"" Mac DeMarco deadpans on ""Brother"". For a guy you just know still laughs at poop jokes, he really sells the existential despair in a way few may have expected when DeMarco emerged with a half-baked project called Makeout Videotape. There’s always been a slight divide between Mac’s goofball persona and his sweet and salty songs, but Salad Days may very well become known as his big shift. Not only has the production advanced beyond anything that could reasonably be called lo-fi, DeMarco’s third solo album sees him transitioning from semi-nonsensical tracks about cigarette brands to far more personal writing. By opening up, he’s moved beyond a mere aesthetic and a big personality, two qualities that are crucial to breaking through in music these days. DeMarco’s asked to be taken seriously in a way that strives beyond, ""Hey, this guy’s like an unwashed Harry Nilsson."" Looks like he’s outgrown his slacker title. —Jillian Mapes",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/capturedtracks/brother,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/20377/homepage_large.41cf09c1.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mac_DeMarco-Salad_Days.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/,2014,year,album,11,Perfume Genius,Too Bright,Matador,"On the first two Perfume Genius records, Mike Hadreas quietly flirted with greatness, usually in the guise of piano-driven songs operating on a level so desperately intimate that you felt as if you were being let in on some sort of beautiful, albeit harrowing, secret. On Too Bright Hadreas all but destroys any lingering perceptions of weakness or frailty with a record that is, among other things, a kind of treatise on gay panic and the horrors of the body. The album’s centerpiece—the much-heralded ""Queen""—is the record’s undisputed banger (""No family is safe when I sashay,"" he triumphantly declares), but Too Bright shines brightest in it’s weirder moments. ""Fool"" flirts with finger-snapping doo wop, while ""My Body"", with it’s whispery ""I wear my body like a rotted peach"" line, is the most visceral and haunting. Elsewhere the record vacillates between psyched-out, blippy electronica (""Grid"", ""Longpig"") and the kind of staid piano ballads (""No Good"", ""Don’t Let Them In"") that have previously been Hadreas’ stock in trade. Ultimately, it’s an album of extremes, told in the voice of someone righteously coming into their own. Listening to previous Perfume Genius albums often felt like something akin to eavesdropping, but on Too Bright Hadreas has command of the audience. ""I don't need your love... I don't need you to understand/ I need you to listen,"" he sings on ""All Along"". It’s a line that nicely sums up Too Bright’s modus operandi. Without even trying, Hadreas simultaneously implodes and illuminates gay stereotypes while articulating the feelings a lot of us queer folks didn’t even realize we had been dying to express. The record doesn’t just demand that you stop and listen; it basically implores you to bow the fuck down. —T. Cole Rachel",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/21031/homepage_large.a680acc8.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Perfume_Genius-Too_Bright.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/,2014,year,album,10,Caribou,Our Love,Merge / City Slang,"If you didn't know better, you might say Dan Snaith had come home. The mathematics Ph.D. from small-town Canada built a reputation as a talented musical shape-shifter through his evolution from early, humbly cast electronic releases (originally under the name Manitoba) to full-band psychedelic pop, which broadened into the headphones-oriented indie dance of 2010's Swim and even the outright club fare issued under his Daphni alias on 2012's Jiaolong. Rather than veer off in another new direction, Our Love refines that eclectic history and concentrates it on pop's most universal, most personal theme. While Our Love's burbling synths, dappled drum grooves, and honeyed falsetto melodies might have come to represent Caribou's comfort zone, what helps drive even the prospective sing-alongs (""Can't Do Without"", the title track) is a sense of melancholy and restraint that carry the weight of maturity; this sparingly deployed sophistication is present, too, in Owen Pallett's violin arrangements. When Snaith does step into comparatively new territory (woozy R&B, on Jessy Lanza-fronted ""Second Chance""; elements of rap, with the sampled voice on the Daphni-like ""Mars""), he retains an analogue warmth distinguishing his brand of romantic moderation from the year's more overtly futuristic minimalists. That the track actually titled ""Back Home"" happens to be a burst of synth-pop breakup drama just goes to show domestic bliss is anything but low stakes. Snaith may have gone full circle with an album centering around love, but it's no heart-shaped box. —Marc Hogan",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/caribouband/cant-do-without-you,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/20992/homepage_large.7bac2cc7.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Caribou-Our_Love.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/,2014,year,album,9,Ariel Pink,Pom Pom,4AD,"It’s often difficult to comprehend Ariel Pink’s take on life, both in his music and through his troll-like approach to interviews. The sense of confusion was only heightened on Pom Pom—often deliriously so, as he takes one long schizoid dash between styles and ideas, leaving you feeling like a human pinball falling into the drain at its close. It’s not unusual for his interviews to read like he’s at war with himself, appealing to be loved while defending the Westboro Baptist Church. Whether you agree with him or not, his purposeful message-jamming at least reflects the deranged path he treads through this record. There’s nothing on Pom Pom Pink hasn’t tried before, but the execution is sharper, wittier, and even more touching than in the past. It’s common to approach a double album with a fear of sprawl lying in wait, but this reads as his most succinct set of songs to date, where whacked-out takes on '80s infomercials and nods to pure pop structure all feel more worked on than before. There are less loose ends leading nowhere, coupled with a greater sense of purpose and drive. Pink may know how to push all our buttons, but he’s also an intelligent songwriter whose work resonates far deeper than the superficial tactics he deploys to promote it. —Nick Neyland",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/21187/homepage_large.b02cb19b.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ariel_Pink-Pom_Pom.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/,2014,year,album,8,Todd Terje,It's Album Time,Olsen,"Todd Terje has built a career out of the soft-pedal. For example, roughly twice each year I remember that his nom de guerre is a sly, Scandinavian riff on the name of New York house producer Todd Terry. It's in this context that some of the feather-light tracks on his long awaited debut, It's Album Time, feel not like window dressing for the big hits (""Inspector Norse"", ""Strandbar""), but rather a really gentle laugh track. The giddy adventures of imagined international playboy Preben and the thrift store Tropicalia of ""Svensk Sås"" are fitting for an album that begins with an explosion and ends with applause: curtains up, crowd hushes, ""It's Album Time!"" marquee flickers to life. The chewy center of this tootsie roll pop is ""Johnny and Mary"", Terje's collaboration with Bryan Ferry. The song arrives with a heavier heart than the rest of It's Album Time and leaves a sting Terje spends the rest of It's Album Time trying to salve, a reminder as to why we're doing a goofy dance in the first place. But mostly It's Album Time is warm and ebullient and silly. Its festooned giddiness reminds me of Barry Manilow's ""I Write the Songs"", with Terje only too happy to play the hammy, inclusive music man. He writes the songs that make the whole world do little jigs in their kitchen. —Andrew Gaerig",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/toddterje/johnny-and-mary/ | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VH2SVes0E8,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/20355/homepage_large.1b314148.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Todd_Terje-Its_Album_Time.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/,2014,year,album,7,Sun Kil Moon,Benji,Caldo Verde,"Mark Kozelek is a collage of uncles: Tough one minute, tender the next, filled with wisdom and haunted by regret—the kind of solitary man who seems like he wouldn’t have much to say but when he starts talking can’t seem to shut up. If there’s one image that defines Benji, it isn’t of his cousin Carissa getting killed in an aerosol-can fire, or of him punching a childhood classmate who didn’t see it coming, but of him in line at Panera Bread. You’ve seen them there on the highway or next to strip-mall laundromats—they make sandwiches. Their logo is of a woman cradling a loaf of bread like it was a baby. Everything on the menu costs about eight dollars. We live in a great age for the diary: the more specific, the more universal; the closer I get to me, the better chance I have at reaching you. In every naked arrangement and half-mumbled line, in every digression from the amazing into the ordinary, Kozelek does the best he can to sneak up on his own life. What’s startling about his stories isn’t how tragic they are, but how easily their tragedies get swept away by everyday trivia, like the movie he saw or what he ordered for lunch. Hidden among the digressions is a quiet reminder that life goes on. Panera: it might not be what defines you, but it is where you go when you need to eat. —Mike Powell",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/20057/homepage_large.8512d235.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sun_Kil_Moon-Benji.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/,2014,year,album,6,Swans,To Be Kind,Mute / Young God,"Imagine, for a moment, that you never knew Michael Gira relaunched his powerhouse band Swans five years ago, or that they’d issued two great albums and toured extensively behind them in the interim. Now picture your hypothetical disappointment upon reading that their third such LP, To Be Kind, had cracked the Top 40 in two countries. In what kind of world would Swans, once a syndicate of pure invective and aggression, reunite to play major festivals and ostensibly soften their sound enough to become pop stars? Had Gira rewritten ""Failure"" to be called ""Success""? Relax, or actually brace yourself: To Be Kind remained on Billboard’s Top 200 for only two weeks. And the two-disc, two-hour set is one of the most unflinching achievements of Swans’ on-and-off 30-year career. The first album from Swans’ revitalization was intriguing but mostly suggestive of what was to come with The Seer, another two-disc tirade that moved between monolithic jams and sensitive comedowns. But To Be Kind captures the feeling of blunt force trauma that the new Swans have created onstage nightly for the last half-decade. The 34-minute ""Bring the Sun/Toussaint L’Ouverture"" is a lashing epic of flung imprecations and sinister throb, coalescing in a coda heavier than most of the year’s best metal. ""Oxygen"" is a concise browbeater that finds Gira yammering and yelling over squealing saxophone and a rhythm section that treats the word ""rhythm"" like a punching bag. Bands often talk about struggling to capture their live energy and force in a recording studio. And reunited acts often fight to find the spark and gusto that once made them matter. Just ahead of his 60th birthday, Michael Gira helped Swans do both at once. —Grayson Haver Currin",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/muterecords/swans-oxygen-radio-edit/s-rnaFv,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/20541/homepage_large.dfa26de1.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Swans-To_Be_Kind.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/,2014,year,album,5,Grouper,Ruins,Kranky / Yellowelectric,"In our oversaturated digital present Grouper's 10th studio album, Ruins, stands out like a close-up whisper in a packed elevator. Recorded in 2011 on a four-track, during an artist residency in the small coastal Portuguese town of Aljezur (population 6,000), these eight songs—four with vocals, two instrumentals, two distended ambient pieces—feature Liz Harris singing along to minimal piano. Her voice is joined by crickets, frogs, rain, a pulsing heartbeat of a drum, and a microwave powering up after she'd lost electricity. It feels like a field recording of someone digging deeper into themselves, someone who keeps playing even after the lights go out. Harris has said she composed the material before and after jogs, trips to the beach, and long walks through the ruins of estates and a village, and that she was mostly alone when she did these things. The album is best experienced honoring the solitary way it was composed: it's quiet music that resonates loudly. Headphones bring out smaller details, allowing you into Harris' spare, heartsick lyrics (""Sometimes I wish/ That none of this had happened,"" ""I hear you calling and I want to go straight into the valleys of your arms and disappear there""), but you can also stand back a bit and let the sounds fill the room like an ocean breeze. And these are more than melancholic love songs. Harris has said Ruins is ""A nod to that daily walk. Failed structures. Living in the remains of love."" She was clearly thinking deeply about someone in particular when she wrote the album, but Ruins is also political music in that it reminds us we can absolutely unplug and live simply if we choose. These ""failed structures"" can take on various forms. There are governments and their systems, yes, and there are also the smaller ""tears [that] fall down in patterns on the window"" and eventually smear into a whole and evaporate. In the end, the saddest, most vulnerable structure is the human body—none has ever survived forever, or lasted for the ages—but Ruins reminds us how much poetry and beauty can be found in the simplest moments before that inevitable silence. —Brandon Stosuy",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/kranky/grouper-call-across-rooms,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/21054/homepage_large.5a266580.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Grouper-Ruins.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/,2014,year,album,4,Aphex Twin,Syro,Warp,"Perhaps no figure in electronic music casts a heavier shadow than Richard D. James. He spent the '90s reinventing himself perpetually, trampling through aliases and existing subgenres—acid house, ambient, drum'n'bass, whatever—and emerging with strange and brilliant derivatives on a near yearly basis. So it came as a surprise (and maybe a slight disappointment) when Syro, his first official album after 13 years of relative reclusiveness, proved to be anything but a surprise. In fact, if you had imagined a new Aphex Twin album in 2004, it probably would've sounded a lot like the one he ended up releasing in 2014. But here's the thing: Despite the incessant projections of his audience, Aphex Twin was never principally about innovation. His discography is merely a running series of genre studies, warped instinctively by a perfectionist with a bizarre creative voice. Syro feels like the logical culmination of these efforts, as the genre he's bending and perfecting this time is the amorphous one that he instinctively spent his career creating: a bubble-and-spazz hybrid of acid squelches, spongecake melodies, and scattershot rhythms. He's advanced this form to almost incomprehensibly complex levels, too. Apart from the mecha-Satie digestif ""aisatsana [102]"", each second of the record is so intricate, so delicately packed with moving parts that it makes just about all of his contemporaries look like amateurs by comparison. But that technical proficiency is a bit of a red herring as well. The real reason Syro works is because the natural joy that defined James' earliest and best works is still very palpable. His voice is his voice. —Andrew Nosnitsky",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/20984/homepage_large.3e27e54a.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Aphex_Twin-Syro.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/,2014,year,album,3,The War on Drugs,Lost in the Dream,Secretly Canadian,"Lost in the Dream revolves around War on Drugs linchpin Adam Granduciel's personal struggles—with loneliness, depression, death. And the frontman’s weariness and dislocation is articulated not just through words but also the album’s overall sound—a sound that has often been discussed in derisive terms by non-fans averse to a contemporary album calling back to mid-'80s Springsteen, Bryan Adams, and Dire Straits. Which is all fair. But Lost in the Dream’s indebtedness to that era and its production quirks serves a larger purpose. Between, say, 1980 and 1986, heartland rock collided with synth-heavy new wave, and the results could sometimes be awkward. But there's a terrific tension in these sorts of hybrids, a tension that this album exploits to brilliant effect. The sound of Lost in the Dream is both ""authentic"" (guitars, acoustic instruments) and ""artificial"" (synthesizers, dewy reverb). The guitars have the wet electronic sheen of Talk Talk. Granduciel's voice is often processed to the point of unintelligibility. Drummer Charlie Hall is Klaus Dinger in a straw hat, keeping it steady and regular as the joints hitting the tires on I-80. Yet for all the album’s American-ness, Lost in the Dream has a decidedly across-the-pond tinge, one eye on the highway and one gazing off at the Balearic Islands. It all meshes seamlessly to give these songs of heartbreak and loss a proper context, conveying the feeling of living inside an experience while also feeling like you're floating out there somewhere far away, watching it all happen. —Mark Richardson",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/secretlycanadian/the-war-on-drugs-red-eyes/ | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwkrNNeVTWk,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/20300/homepage_large.9419e472.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_War_on_Drugs-Lost_in_the_Dream.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/,2014,year,album,2,FKA twigs,LP1,Young Turks,"FKA twigs’ LP1 reflected the mood of its times. While there’s nothing explicitly about The World here—the centers of action on LP1 are almost entirely corporeal—the themes of this myopically personal album echo social and cultural dramas that ran through the whole of 2014. The emotional morass, the fixed misery, the desperation for recognition, the dignifying power of love and respect, a quest for pleasure that never ebbs—twigs is pleading the modern condition, as well as her own. Nevertheless, the quiet, sensual revelations came like they were dispatched in a post-coital haze, doling directions, requests, and a map of her fantasies in percussive coos that are 85% sigh. The album orbits from bed to head and back again, though she’s often alone, giving light to the topography of her needs, nasty or otherwise. Even when she sings of being together, as on “Two Weeks”, it’s only in her brain, distilling a freaky tableau vivant she is trying to put into someone else’s head; it’s certainly the slinkiest zipless fuck 2014 offered. But it’s not some baby-making you-and-me all night long love, it’s very much individuals working towards a connection that they know is doomed. And ultimately, at its sinewy, sub-bass-laced heart, LP1 writhes in its doom. The lo-bpm R&B futurism of the production matches the album’s fixed circuit of feeling; it’s airless and without anchor, leaving space for twigs' voice between dense clouds of synthetic boom. It is a testament to her vulnerability and vision that a listen to LP1 puts us into another world—down in the fetid depths of her depression and desire. —Jessica Hopper",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/20816/homepage_large.48a48155.jpg,/dataset/artwork/FKA_twigs-LP1.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9558-the-50-best-albums-of-2014/,2014,year,album,1,Run the Jewels,Run the Jewels 2,Mass Appeal,"This is volume for the voiceless, a silver bullet for the wolves, and a redistribution of sovereignty. It’s venom to immobilize cheaply uniformed imposters, flatulent greedheads, and cynical buffoons perverting the truth on cable news. When institutions lacked authority and insurrection seemed permanently imminent, El-P and Killer Mike hurled 11 grenades, offering redemption through untrammeled rage. If justice remained elusive, retaliation could be had as fast as closing your eyes and counting to fuck. On the brimstone tablets of Run the Jewels, destruction is the first commandment. The others are equally timeless: never compromise art for the sake of temporary commerce, protect the purity of your teenaged ideals, never worship false idols, and always smoke the finest medicine. So for 38 minutes, the most scorched-earth tag team since Ax and Smash eviscerate crooked cops and Grand Dragons, spineless politicians and the grandly disappointing competition. It’s the middle finger in rap form, with regional differences resolved through the harmonious alienation of Pimp C’s ""fuck the law"" and Biggie’s ""fuck the world."" Anger isn’t enough. If you’re going to be a revolutionary banging on your adversaries, your adolescent convictions have to be seared with the wisdom of adulthood. Identifying targets is easy—artful rebellion on the edge of 40 isn’t. But their experience lends authority and accuracy. They’ve seen enough cycles to know that corruption can’t be cleared like clogged arteries. They seek answers that transcend gestures of momentary appeasement. As Mike bellows, you can unmask and depose Donald Sterling, but the ""man behind the man behind the man behind the throne"" remains anonymous and omnipotent. The subversive attitude extends to the production. The nitroglycerin reprisals of Public Enemy and early Ice Cube have been stripped for parts, re-assembled, and converted into lethal infernal machines. This is the modern soundtrack for sedition. Guerilla army rap. Or, in Mike’s estimation: MJG meets the Weathermen. Blast it loud enough and the roaches will wave white flags and the walls will crumble into paste. In an era when the great rap group has become an endangered species, Run the Jewels have forged a truly collaborative partnership. This feels like the by-product of two best friends bouncing ideas off each other, buoyed by blunts and the occasional fistful of psilocybin. The effect reminds you of vintage OutKast, two unique and equal talents that became indivisible—accentuating each other’s strengths, curbing each other’s excesses, and finishing each other’s jokes. Despite its Molotov politics, Run the Jewels 2 doubles as a old-fashioned swaggering shit-talking rap record; they flex and banter like they’re openly gunning to be cast in a Pulp Fiction remake. It’s been long held that discontent is the first sign of progress in a man or nation, but Killer Mike and El-P have been ornery and irate for far too long to sustain patience. Occasionally, you receive the anti-heroes you need, and this was the year when we realized how right they’ve always been. No other album distilled such unrestrained fury, nor reminded us how frustratingly little has changed. When this record’s truths become unrecognizable, we’ll know that we’ve finally made progress. We can chart our evolution from here. —Jeff Weiss",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/massappealrecs/close-your-eyes-and-count-to-fuck-feat-zack-de-la-rocha | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAr3crpwEr0,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/21227/homepage_large.e0491b02.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Run_the_Jewels-Run_the_Jewels_2.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,100,Elisa Ambrogio,"""Superstitious""",Drag City,"""I would do anything for love."" That’s a nice sentiment, but it promises too much. Magik Markers’ frontwoman Elisa Ambrogio isn’t expressing her admiration by promising riches or Herculean tasks on her gentle Immoralist opener ""Superstitious"". Instead, her day-to-day habits and the way she views the world have been altered exponentially by love. Suddenly, this woman who never believed in psychics, the supernatural, astrology, or superstition is checking horoscopes, wishing on stars, avoiding black cats, pulling apart wishbones, and keeping her fingers crossed. Backed by a piano and persistent drone, she asserts that she’s doing it all ""to keep you loving me."" Even if she second guesses how effective or silly this might be (""it’s all in my head"", she sings), she’s got a good thing going. If any small gesture to the universe can help keep that intact, she’s doing it. —Evan MinskerElisa Ambrogio: ""Superstitious""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3gRyyGZN9A,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/107/ambrogio.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Elisa_Ambrogio-Superstitious.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,99,Steve Gunn,"""Milly's Garden""",Paradise of Bachelors,"Steve Gunn’s cotton baritone has a casual malleability that lets him morph into whatever his songs need him to be. When you contrast that seemingly effortless shape-shifting with his high-in-the-mix, layered guitar melodies, the words often take a backseat. He's destined to garner the Grateful Dead and John Fahey comparisons while his contemporary and sometime bandmate Kurt Vile gets the classic-rock shoutouts. But Gunn’s Deadhead tendencies are coupled with an ability to turn a phrase in a way that can make his songs sound like instant classics: ""Your faith is savage, and your mind is damaged,"" he sings on the chorus. And those guitars. Try to count how many you hear on this song’s extended jam (a loaded descriptor, but still accurate; this is more than a guitar solo). It’s nearly impossible, yet the whole interlude feels open and uncluttered. Gunn’s playing is as precise as it is circular, always taking us back home before we get sick for it. —Joel Oliphint",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/16984/homepage_large.52386298.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Steve_Gunn-Millys_Garden.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,98,Merchandise,"""Green Lady""",4AD,"A fever dream of grandstanding stadium rock, woodblock drum machines, and a turbulent opening passage reminiscent of THX’s infamous, childhood-scarring Deep Note, ""Green Lady"" marks the completion of Merchandise’s metamorphosis from moody Floridian punks to bona fide New Romantic revivalists. Given the ballad’s lush trappings, a more appropriate title would have been ""Green Monster""—every sweep across the fretboard feels monumental, and every chord change the crossing of a chasm (despite the simpering synths). As Carson Cox lies hydrated but agonizing in an insane asylum (""They threw me in the nut house/ Distracting me with coffee and tea""), his titular love—epithetic of absinthe, of course, but also addiction and madness as a whole—remains at large, flaunting her criminal allure against a backdrop of shimmering, simmering guitars. Listening to Merchandise’s '80s-indebted rock, the centuries-seeped tradition of Southern Gothic seems like the last thing on anyone’s mind, and yet, ""Green Lady"" represents a canon revitalized, a shadowy spectacle of faith and violence captured under an emerald lens. —Zoe CampMerchandise: ""Green Lady""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8M6OLS2JBZU,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/17029/homepage_large.6ad5237e.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Merchandise-Green_Lady.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,97,Copeland,"""Advice to Young Girls"" [ft. Actress]",self-released,"Surely among the most heartening developments of an otherwise dismal 2014 was the continued rise of social media as a gathering spot for long-marginalized groups to make themselves heard. While Inga Copeland's masterful ""Advice to Young Girls""—her Because I'm Worth It collaboration with fellow UK deconstructionist Actress—urges young women to slip past their parents and band together in the streets, it's likely that most anybody who's heard the lurching, dimly lit song did so in isolation; that's just how we hear things these days. Besides, Copeland's deadpan vocals and the track's digitized porch-rocker creak don't exactly scream ""meatspace""; rather, Copeland's sage entreaties—""there will be all these things,"" she promises, ""for you to discover and claim""—float through the laptop speakers like 140 character-hits of strength and solidarity. The cracked utopia that ""Advice"" imagines is one in which young women are free to do as they please, to redraw the boundaries of a society that so often seems to be walling them in. Illuminating and impertinent, ""Advice to Young Girls"" is a rallying cry for this perpetually plugged-in age; Copeland's vision of a street-sweeping girl-gang might not roll down your street anytime soon but, in 2014, it was never more than a hashtag away. —Paul Thompson",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/107/copeland.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Copeland-Advice_to_Young_Girls_ft_Actress.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,96,DJ Quik,"""Pet Sematary""",Mad Science,"Storied L.A. rapper and producer DJ Quik creates detailed, sometimes fussy, and often eccentric music that manages to retain an acute pop sensibility and, more importantly, an incorruptible smoothness—call him hip-hop’s Todd Rundgren. On this year’s The Midnight Life, Quik built beats around banjo licks and train noises that threatened to out-funk his former collaborator Dre, and ""Pet Sematary"" was a perfect lead single. Its ornate but in-the-pocket production is as silky and flawlessly orchestrated a track as Quik has made since the late '90s, and it boasted one of the best lead-off lines for a rap verse this year: ""Now what they want to go cancel Arsenio Hall for?/ Now we got no place to kick it, that's so uncalled for."" Hall’s talk show rose to prominence in the early '90s, around the same time that Quik was finding commercial success, and he appeared on ""Arsenio"" a few times both to rap and DJ; last year—on a newly resurrected version of the show—the rapper announced the release of The Midnight Life. In a song that mostly celebrates living in the present—more focused on the narrative of maintaining than reclaiming glory—the nostalgic line feels poignant; like second-time-loser Arsenio, the perpetually ""most underrated"" Quik has been declared down for the count more than once, and may now be winding down himself. But as in the case of most of Quik’s work, the complaint is just a point in the rapper’s tangled constellation of talking points (mainly, taunts and come-ons to adversaries, fair-weather fans, and the female population of South Central at large), which are as full of ingenious contradictions as his beats. —Winston Cook-WilsonDJ Quik: ""Pet Sematary""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlkTGOTF-L8,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/17150/homepage_large.a2929c41.jpg,/dataset/artwork/DJ_Quik-Pet_Sematary.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,95,Cymbals Eat Guitars,"""Jackson""",Barsuk,"As a lifelong Midwestern boy, I suppose I’ll never really ""get"" New Jersey. Thankfully, Cymbals Eat Guitars do their best to explain. ""Jackson"" takes the form of a drive through the Garden State, to the woods, Six Flags, and somewhere called Manalapan—a drive long enough that the Klonopin wears off, the sun goes down, and the ghosts of the sainted dead make their presence known. Joe D'Agostino sings like someone struggling to keep his eyes on the road as the band slowly builds behind him—guitars humming with melancholy, drum fills signaling when to hold hands, phantom harmonies showing he’s not alone. It’s a prom song for the space-sick, a slow dance by car headlights, a living epic whispering ""indie rock’s not dead"" while screaming into the night. Evil will find you, as D’Agostino senses shadows shuffling among the trees. All he—or anyone—can do is stay moving. You don’t have to be from Jersey to figure that out. —Jeremy GordonCymbals Eat Guitars: ""Jackson""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHSIHm3Zjr8,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/107/lose.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Cymbals_Eat_Guitars-Jackson.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,94,Taylor Swift,"""Out of the Woods""",Big Machine,"Though ""Shake It Off"" had been uncoiled weeks earlier and cemented Taylor Swift’s somewhat vague ""'80s-pop"" agenda, the release of ""Out of the Woods"" was the moment where it all snapped into place. Working with Jack Antonoff of Bleachers and Fun., Swift creates a chant-along that’s Taylor-made for a Reagan-era flick, though I can’t imagine Harry Styles standing on any lawns in Nashville anytime soon. (I feel like Harry Styles doesn’t raise his arms for anyone. For more Harry Styles fanfic, please visit my Tumblr.) On ""Out of the Woods"", Swift and Antonoff build a monster chorus worth the price of admission, but in the glorious last minute, they deploy all their weapons—from the shuttering drums to the cascading perfection that is Swift’s vocal performance—for 2014’s Best Breakdown. —Corban Goble",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqMm_nrJH78,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/107/1989.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Taylor_Swift-Out_of_the_Woods.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,93,The New Pornographers,"""War on the East Coast""",Matador / Last Gang,"Dan Bejar has always projected a love/hate attitude toward his hometown of Vancouver. His Destroyer songbook is dotted with withering displays of civic shame (""Well, Vancouver made me, I guess it’s true"") and ad hominem attacks on local music-industry institutions (""medium rotation, the shock of the new/ and a memo from Feldman’s saying ‘everything is true!’""), but then he also used the serene black-and-white cover of 2011’s Kaputt as a postcard advertisement for the city’s natural beauty. ""War on the East Coast""—the valorous standout on the New Pornographers’ punchy Brill Bruisers—only heightens this ambiguity: ""Last night I dreamt/ Vancouver dressed up in the ocean,"" Bejar begins (echoing the opening line from Sr. Chinarro’s ""Babieca"", covered on Destroyer’s 2013 Five Spanish Songs EP). But while his delivery makes it hard to tell if this eco-disaster fantasy has instilled him with fear or elation, it’s a vision that demands immediate action, in the form of a pulse-quickening, synth-powered sprint straight outta town. Because for all its apocalyptic intimations, ""War on the East Coast"" is, at heart, an old-fashioned, swing-from-the-chandeliers, sweep-her-off-her-feet love song—an invitation to savor that romantic, movie-worthy kiss as the world crumbles all around you. —Stuart BermanThe New Pornographers: ""War on the East Coast""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NylQcFQ_V6s,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/107/pornos.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_New_Pornographers-War_on_the_East_Coast.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,92,iLoveMakonnen,"""I Don't Sell Molly No More""",self-released,"The rise of MDMA in rap lyrics was a funny development—it’s been delightful and silly to hear the most masculine of artists boast about gobbling up a drug whose primary effects include heightened emotional sensitivity and giggling fits. It’s only appropriate, then, that the official molly send-off comes courtesy of the year’s most celebrated rap outsider, a touchy-feely type whose natural state seems like it could be characterized by… well, heightened emotional sensitivity and giggling fits (and a mannequin head ripped from the hair salon where he used to work). ""I Don’t Sell Molly No More"" sums up iLoveMakonnen’s appeal in a neat little bundle: the Sonny Digital-supplied UFO beat, the simple swag-rap bounce, the whispery and accidental-sounding vocal modulations, the #Based, sing-songy drama-nerdiness—all executed with the flip confidence of a kid happy to poke some fun at the bandwagon-jumping of his molly-popping elders. And like clockwork, Wiz Khalifa and Gucci Mane pulled up to the remix like a couple of bodybuilders in a yoga class, there to help Makonnen wave goodbye to an era. —Carrie Battan",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/sonnydigital/ilove-makonnen-ft-wiz-khalifa-and-gucci-mane-i-dont-sell-molly-no-more-prod-by-sonny-digital,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/107/makonnen.jpg,/dataset/artwork/iLoveMakonnen-I_Dont_Sell_Molly_No_More.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,91,Hundred Waters,"""Murmurs""",OWSLA,"In one of 2014’s quietest revelations, Gainesville quartet Hundred Waters transcended one of pop music’s most shopworn clichés. An upstart group emerged from nowhere in 2012 with a polished, wholly unique debut record, is subsequently chased by every noteworthy major-indie, chooses instead to take Skrillex’s money…and succeeds on all counts. The Moon Rang Like a Bell expands on the promise of their debut album without sacrificing anything about what made it good. They upgrade their IDM faerie-queene origins to the oddball electro/R&B mainstage of FKA twigs, Purity Ring, and How to Dress Well, in other words, but on ""Murmurs"", singer/songwriter Nicole Miglis still manages to sneak in the word ""thee."" The group sets ""Murmurs"" in the kind of ice palace pioneered by the Cocteau Twins or Homogenic, but Miglis pitches her voice to a pained upper register that Björk or Elisabeth Fraser never went. It’s a breakup song themed around a missed birthday—images of candles and wishes abound—but the production’s combination of churchly solemnity and far-off, slow-motion industrial clamor suggest something much more universal: the consistent drone of modern life co-existing with timeless cycles of loss and rebirth. Above all, though, is the song's devotion to ""thee,"" that constant, all-too-human desire to view experience through someone else’s eyes. —Eric Harvey",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/hundredwaters/02-murmurs,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/16957/homepage_large.d56ac5b3.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Hundred_Waters-Murmurs.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,90,Protomartyr,"""Scum, Rise!""",Hardly Art,"Protomartyr frontman Joe Casey slurs his words aggressively, perhaps in retaliation for some affront. Building off the maniacal propulsion of four decades’ worth of forebears (from the MC5 all the way through the Stripes), Protomartyr manage to sound somehow meaner and more devil-may-care in their attack, as though the slow-motion death throes of their hometown has abraded their not-quite-garage-rock down to the bone. But those mangled lyrics are crucial, revealing Casey to be a daring and even funny storyteller with an eye for absurdist details (something about the colors of Santa Claus) and a keen understanding of the implications of small acts of defiance. Following a pack of Dickensian urchins as they set fire to the bar where their deadbeat dads drink away their days, he barely even needs to point out the civic allegories of the crime. ""Scum, Rise!"" plays like a short, sharp anthem for anybody left in Detroit when the lights finally go out. —Grayson Haver Currin",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/16482/homepage_large.63cfaed7.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Protomartyr-Scum_Rise.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,89,Cloud Nothings,"""I'm Not Part of Me""",Mom & Pop / Hi-Note / Stop Start / Wichita / Hostess / Carpark,"Though these Cleveland indie-rock veterans have given the world plenty of towering monoliths of \m/ in their prolific, five-year career, the ferocious Here and Nowhere Else closer ""I’m Not Part of Me"" is the best song they’ve ever done. The snarling break-up anthem—""I’m not telling you all I’m going through,"" Dylan Baldi seethes, again and again—finds the Cloud Nothings frontman wrestling with the impact of a dead relationship, roaring ""I FEEL FINE!"" as if he can trick his brain into feeling good again. In the year of the so-called ""emo revival,"" ""I’m Not Part of Me"" produced a deafening pulse. —Corban Goble",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/16568/homepage_large.8b24436c.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Cloud_Nothings-Im_Not_Part_of_Me.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,88,Lauryn Hill,"""Black Rage (Sketch)""",Self-released,"There was a time when the killing in a Lauryn Hill song was done softly and figuratively, through the power of music. That time was long ago. In the late 1990s, a false rumor about the singer/songwriter who would become perhaps rap's most gifted recluse supposedly saying she'd rather die than have white people buying her albums spread so widely there's a Snopes.com page dedicated to debunking it. Over the years since the former Fugees member's sole solo studio album, 1998's The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, as she has drifted in and out of the public eye, her self-aggrandizing statements and unfortunate habit of showing up late for live shows have continued to divide, in ways that still say more about the culture than about her. When Hill went to prison to serve a three-month sentence for tax evasion in 2013, she opened herself to further miscomprehension by discussing her conviction in terms of slavery, colonialism, and institutionalized racism. It might not have played well in Peoria, but she was bringing up a legacy America has yet to escape, in ways that became tragically obvious this year. In the same pre-prison pronouncement, Hill said, ""You have to remain focused to cease from rage."" In 2012, she had premiered a spoken-word piece titled ""Black Rage"", which turned the lyrical framework of Rodgers & Hammerstein's ""My Favorite Things"" into a prolix litany of the crimes that one group of people have perpetrated against another, and a stinging endorsement of anger as an antidote to fear; in later live versions the interpolation became, like John Coltrane's classic cover, a musical one, as well. When the artist, now known professionally as Ms. Lauryn Hill, shared ""Black Rage (Sketch)"" in late August, with a call for peace in Missouri, the times had caught up with her song. She once told an interviewer, ""If I make music now, it will only be to provide information to my own children,"" and this sketch, recorded in her living room, benefits by couching its broad social themes in family-like intimacy; her kids' voices can be heard behind her deepening, huskier roar, along with acoustic guitar and a murmuring rhythm. Some will share Hill's fury, some won't, but her unexpurgated message of focused resilience points toward part of what has been missing all along: A mutual understanding. To promote a new pay-for-view concert video, Hill recently shared a clip of herself performing the Fugees' ""Ready or Not"" live in Brooklyn. In the song, as on the original, she raps, ""While you're imitating Al Capone/ I'll be Nina Simone."" Simone, the subject of a controversial upcoming biopic, prefigured aspects of Hill's career trajectory in her own evolution toward racial confrontation. Simone reportedly warned Martin Luther King Jr., on meeting him, that she wasn't nonviolent. ""Not to worry, sister,"" King responded; she even later insisted upon being called ""Doctor Nina Simone."" You'd never guess it by the ongoing rounds of backlash against Hill, which prompted Talib Kweli to write an essay defending her this year, but this mere Ms. has yet to go as far in her radicalism as the late legend, who, singing the then-new ""Mississippi Goddam"" at Carnegie Hall in 1964, blithely informed a mostly white audience, ""Oh but this whole country is full of lies/ You're all gonna die and die like flies."" But ""Black Rage (Sketch)"" belongs to that tradition, one of righteous indignation in the face of injustice, speaking to the persecuted wherever they may be, whatever they might look like. And it shows that, for all the actual death and cruelty in the headlines, the sound of music can still be quietly devastating. —Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1DzIvl26xI,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/17064/homepage_large.d8027510.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lauryn_Hill-Black_Rage_Sketch.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,87,Viet Cong,"""Continental Shelf""",Jagjaguwar,"""Continental Shelf"" at first sounds like a full-on submergence into the gothic new wave of three decades ago. A turgid beat grinds under mirroring guitar riffs as voices moan couplets like ""Don’t want to face the world/ It’s suffocating."" Soon enough, though, things get harder to peg: a dreamy chorus floats atop rolling percussion, ghostly backing coos, and languid lines about fingertips fondling liquid gold. That kind of mood melding has become a Viet Cong specialty in their short life so far, but usually the quartet achieves their tonal kaleidoscope at a faster, more krautrock-like clip. (They even managed to rev up the churning engines of Bauhaus’ ""Dark Entries"" on their debut EP). ""Continental Shelf"" shows they don’t need speed to navigate feelings; their seemingly innate ability to generate mountains of atmosphere from drenched guitars and echoing vocals is more than enough. Really, it’s mostly the guitars, which ring so densely and thoroughly they seem to live beyond the end of the song, like sirens beckoning you to play it again. —Marc Masters",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/17166/homepage_large.0ecb287d.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Viet_Cong-Continental_Shelf.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,86,Vince Staples,"""Blue Suede""",Def Jam,"In rap music, mortality rivals sex and smoke for the most common subject, but it’s rare that a vision glints as ominously as Vince Staples’. ""Young graves get the bouquets,"" he growls, referencing the slow singing and flower-bringing on the north side of Long Beach. But instead of mourning the dead, he offers an agnostic prayer that tells you all you need to know. His dreams don’t extend to old age, but just long enough to live past the bouquet-withering. The blocks around Staples are a series of battles with a constantly updated casualties list. You either ""live or die for the whoopin' or the Crippin"". Step on the wrong blue suede shoes and risk a pine box six feet below soil. ""Blue Suede"" is the updated version of the LBC dramas of Snoop and Tha Dogg Pound—down to the ""Bitches Ain’t Shit"" icebreaker of its first bars. He hits every classic West Coast gangsta rap signifier from cop killing to cognac. (Of course, he’s only 21, so there’s a Pikachu reference, too.) It’s only right that the producer Hagler Tyrant took his name from a champion prizefighter. ""Blue Suede"" channels the bloodbath synths of ""Duel of the Iron Mic"" and the bone-crushing low end of ""Born to Roll"". The rest belongs to Staples, C-Walking on the rooftop for every extra day he gets to live. If Kendrick Lamar is a gangsta rapper in the guise of a conscious rapper, Vince Staples is the inverse: The gangsta by birthright, never given the chance to opt out. All he wanted was the Jordans with the blue suede in ’em; all he got was war. —Jeff WeissVince Staples: ""Blue Suede""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJLfCBBcZAo,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/17047/homepage_large.bea4cb91.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Vince_Staples-Blue_Suede.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,85,Arca,"""Thievery""",Mute,"""Thievery"" surfaces like an alien reggaeton transmission during the second half of Xen, the debut album from Venezuelan-born producer Alejandro Ghersi. While Ghersi's been making a name for himself courtesy of ambitious production work for Kanye West, FKA twigs, and Björk (and an imploded remix of Shakira's ""Hips Don't Lie""), Xen is far from a singles record; it's more about multitudes. But while the collection is best experienced as a fractured whole, ""Thievery"" is the closest you get to a fully breathing takeaway. The collection's named after Ghersi's gender-ambiguous alter ego, and the music itself is fluid and open to different alignments: structures interlock then fall apart before re-engaging in new ways. It sounds like what you'd get by shattering a mirror and creating dance music from its shards, and it moves with an elegant classical bent, each jagged track polished then carefully placed. On the forward-jabbing ""Thievery"", Ghersi folds dance-music conventions—chopped vocals, chiming pulses, a wobbling pace—into that anti-template, something that disorients like a car skidding sideways across ice. And for all its brainy micro-movements and shifts, you can absolutely locate the groove. —Brandon Stosuy",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/arca1000000/arca-hips-dont-lie,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/17101/homepage_large.24024dd6.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Arca-Thievery.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,84,Father John Misty,"""Bored in the USA""",Sub Pop,"Prediction for 2015: The new Father John Misty album, I Love You, Honeybear, is going to inspire rapturous reviews and unreadable think pieces. Even more than FJM’s 2012 debut Fear Fun, Honeybear is a mind-bending amalgam of sublime beauty and potentially polarizing irreverence. It will either profoundly move your soul or profoundly annoy the shit out of you. Or it might do both at the same time. Either way, it is an indelible statement by one of the most interesting singer-songwriters working today. ""Bored in the USA"" embodies the album’s aesthetic: Josh Tillman’s tenor is as lovely singing about ennui and his desire for deliverance from ""white Jesus"" as it was harmonizing on those Fleet Foxes records approximately 27 years ago. Whereas the Clash were once bored with the USA, Tillman feels displaced inside his own country, a feeling all too familiar this year in the midst of near-weekly national tragedies. But lest he allow his white-liberal earnestness to get out of hand, Tillman undercuts the pathos of ""Bored in the USA"" with a laugh track, reminding us that this is show business, and he’s only playing a role. This is not to say that the world isn’t in need of saving, only that the possibility of a hero doing the saving for us is an illusion. —Steven Hyden",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/17207/homepage_large.a0a6b19d.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Father_John_Misty-Bored_in_the_USA.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,83,Ought,"""Habit""",Constellation,"Tim Beeler of Montreal’s Ought is theatrical in his words and phrasing, often pressing buttons in a conversational manner. ""Is there something you are trying to express, yeah?"" is such a loaded, backhanded question, begging its recipient to say something already. ""Habit"" unfolds like an argument about the intangibility of feelings and the way a divergent group—a city, classes of people, a generation, a band—is galvanized by such inscrutable things via conversations or, more mystically, telepathy. It delves into the shakiness of common ground in a thrilling way. —Vish Khanna",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/16858/homepage_large.196aadc2.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ought-Habit.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,82,Jessica Pratt,"""Back, Baby""",Drag City,"Normally, Jessica Pratt's nylon-strung guitar and paper-thin voice bend around dark moments like melted wax and her folk songs get tangled up in the shadows of life they so accurately detail. But not here. Inside the sparse ""Back, Baby"" is the breezy pop song she plays when the skies are clear, blue, and unconditional. You can tell by that little bluesy bounce in her voice when Pratt sings ""When you sa-a-a-id that you want me to believe"" and the rhythm of her fingernails strumming throughout. There's practically a beach and a palm tree in the background. She shines a light on that first hint of confidence that comes when you’re just a little bit removed from love, which is why the song flows along such a straight line. Her steady hand makes it a perfectly geometric, bookended with the words: ""Sometimes, I pray for the rain."" It's just a little pang of wanting someone, in a perfect day of missing someone. —Jeremy Larson",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/17205/homepage_large.d1fa694a.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jessica_Pratt-Back_Baby.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,81,Andy Stott,"""Faith in Strangers""",Modern Love,"Andy Stott’s two EPs from 2011, We Stay Together and Passing Me By, were primordial. The songs didn’t glitter or bounce or swing. They weren’t ""hazy"" and they certainly weren’t pretty. Instead, they lurched to life. Each one was like a piece of wet cement slowly decaying as it oozed across the greyest landscapes that never existed. The sounds Stott was playing with on those records signified both a step forward and a placeholder, and you had to be in the right mood (sad and/or existentially depressed about the state of the world) to connect with them. That pair of EPs were such daunting listens that it didn’t seem possible for Stott to sustain the momentum (or lack thereof). Sure enough, the LP Luxury Problems came soon after, adding haunting vocals that emerged as forlorn beauty from the muddy dirges he’d been creating. Now, here we are with the title track from Faith in Strangers, which is actually upbeat and somewhat positive by Stott’s standards. That is to say, it sounds like a lovelorn comedown at the end of a long night. Drums skitter like bugs, and occasionally a harsh fluorescent zap winds its way through distant vocals, a post-punk bassline, and a fuzzy downtempo loop that is the perfect soundtrack for that period just before dawn, when it’s still pitch black outside, but you have that vaguely uneasy feeling that the sun is about to start rising. ""Faith in Strangers"" is a logical progression from Stott’s more difficult work; it’s still not an easy listen, but it is a compulsive one. There’s an emotional rush that comes with knowing that Stott is opening the door to let the tiniest bit of light in. I wouldn’t call it happy, exactly, but happiness is all relative anyway. —Sam Hockley-Smith",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/17167/homepage_large.5c3725e1.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Andy_Stott-Faith_in_Strangers.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,80,Shellac,"""Dude Incredible""",Touch and Go,"Does ""Dude Incredible"", the title track of Shellac’s first album in seven years, owe a debt to Neil Young and Crazy Horse? There’s the chunky, twangy riffage and acidly nasal vocals—and, for a couple of minutes, it doesn’t seem entirely insane to think Steve Albini might bust out a sky-opening guitar solo. Albini’s perversity, though, perseveres. The trio chops that classic-rock chug into splinters, in the same way that Albini’s music since Big Black has always impishly undermined any sense of comfort or decency. Yet there is an odd kind of familiarity to ""Dude Incredible"": A study in power dynamics of both the musical and sociopolitical kind, the song is a steely echo of everything Albini has accomplished over the past 30 years, compressed into a six-minute tangle of devolved, abrasive post-rock. On the 20th anniversary of their debut album, At Action Park, Shellac put a bow on itself—and it’s made of razor wire. —Jason HellerShellac: ""Dude Incredible""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StooJzxAfrc,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/107/dudeincredible.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Shellac-Dude_Incredible.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,79,A Sunny Day in Glasgow,"""In Love With Useless (The Timeless Geometry In The Tradition Of Passing)""",Self-released,"""In Love With Useless (The Timeless Geometry in the Tradition of Passing)"" is the stuff Buddhist koans are made of: a song that conveys both weight and weightlessness, floating like a butterfly while punching like a prizefighter. It’s five minutes of alchemized loveliness, a snapshot of an ineffable feeling other bands labor their entire careers to create. Jen Goma’s soaring vocal, which flickers in and out like a radio signal on the fritz, is the secret ingredient, resolving order from chaos where lesser shoegaze acts would be content to aimlessly circle the point. Somewhat cheekily, the band released a lyric video to promote the song, as though these lyrics—hidden among gossamer guitars and harmonies textured into a sensory assault as relentless as time and precise as geometry—could ever be what you're supposed to focus on. Even so, the key to understanding ""In Love With Useless"" might be one of those lines you would’ve missed had they not spelled it out: ""Dreams that were buried coming up,"" with Goma singing like someone shooting straight into the atmosphere. —Jeremy Gordon",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHOSVjjy4qA,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/16494/homepage_large.4e292922.jpg,/dataset/artwork/A_Sunny_Day_in_Glasgow-In_Love_With_Useless_The_Timeless_Geometry_In_The_Tradition_Of_Passing.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,78,Rustie,"""Attak"" [ft. Danny Brown]",Warp,"In the midst of an album that tried a bunch of things and succeeded at enough of them, Rustie's collaboration with Danny Brown stood out by turning what could've been easy rave-tent bait into a crossover antidote. A mutated reflection of what mainstream EDM-rap could've become in more dangerous hands, ""Attak"" shakes cores thanks to both artists' gravitation towards the mutability of grime's influence. Rustie's beats push familiar tics through rigorous paces, with crowd-pleasing build-ups to trunk-rattle bass and trap-style snare rolls set against a bloodletting, serpentine synth hook. Danny Brown is Danny Brown, which is to say his yelp jukes breathtakingly around doubletime orthodoxy—he switches up emphasis with what seems like every other line and still glides through hitchless, his diatribes personalized (""Used to trap O.T. with the D/ On the Greyhound bus, one pair of jeans"") and his craziness focused. The cure for the common banger. —Nate Patrin",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/17004/homepage_large.a4b96bfb.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rustie-Attak_ft_Danny_Brown.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,77,Rae Sremmurd,"""No Flex Zone""",EarDrummers Entertainment,"""No Flex Zone"" is less of a song and more of a movement, and the din of its mechanism—""THEY KNOOOOWWWW BETTER""—far outweighs its speculative shortcomings. ""No Flex Zone"", too, serves as an introduction to Swae Lee and Slim Jimmy, two brothers from Tupelo, Miss., who deliver earwormy, Migosian verses as if they were characters on ""Squidbillies"" and whose hit anti-stunting song contains a prodigious amount of stunting. (""Won a gold medal, and a gold bezel,"" ""Freak hoes, got several,"" etc.). With the duo’s Mike-WiLL Made-It-exec-produced album out early next year, remembering the absurdly named Rae Sremmurd—""Drummer’s Ear"" backwards, idk—is a worthwhile pursuit in 2015. —Corban Goble",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/raesremmurd/rae-sremmurd-no-flex-zone-prod,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/107/sremmurd.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rae_Sremmurd-No_Flex_Zone.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,76,Röyksopp / Robyn,"""Do It Again""",Cherrytree / Interscope,"""Do It Again"" is the Robyn track we’ve been waiting for since 2010’s synth-pop sad-girl opus, Body Talk. It’s a pulsating behemoth that finds the artist boasting what she does best: reconstructing heartache into universal refrains, all wrapped around a palpable, otherworldly hook crafted by frequent collaborators, Röyksopp. The marrow of Röyksopp and Robyn’s mini-album of the same name, ""Do It Again"" is, in itself, a neatly-drawn circle that illustrates its own point: repetition provokes addiction, repetition is addiction. In a succinctly symmetrical five minutes, Robyn parses the nuanced cycle of pain and pleasure in the context of an unhealthy relationship, every time reasoning with herself, pleading, ""One more time."" Ttransparent phrases express the dizzying nature of being caught in a cycle, but as with Robyn classics like ""Call Your Girlfriend"" and ""Dancing on My Own"", it’s just another feeling to move past with panache and lots of fist-pumping dance moves. It’s pop jubilation worthy of repetition that promises no pain at all. —Melody LauRöyksopp / Robyn: ""Do It Again""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btBSxtKzF6Q,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/16901/homepage_large.267176b5.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ryksopp__Robyn-Do_It_Again.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,75,Pharmakon,"""Bestial Burden""",Sacred Bones,"Noise aficionados have long kept up with Margaret Chardiet's work, from her beginnings in the Far Rockaway DIY experimental music scene to her recent triumphs in the press and on tour with Swans, but Bestial Burden marks the zenith of her crossover success. The percolating, howling chaos of ""Bestial Burden"" sacrifices none of the intensity and calculating horror of her earlier output, yet this album has made her as well known as an aggressive, confrontational noise artist can hope to be. To the ancient Greeks, pharmakós was the ritual sacrifice or exile of a chosen victim, and Chardiet's decision to take on the name of this ancient curse at first seemed to reflect her status as an outsider. But, as her position continues to strengthen and evolve, it seems that the tables have turned: the hunted has become the hunter, and not even the Fates themselves can tell who will be her next victim. —Kim Kelly",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/sacredbones/pharmakon-bestial-burden,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/17181/homepage_large.94de61a4.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Pharmakon-Bestial_Burden.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,74,Holly Herndon,"""Chorus""",Rvng Intl.,"The other side of ""Chorus"", a 12'' single issued at the start of the year by the globally minded electronic producer Holly Herndon, sounds like an audition tape for the relatively esoteric sound-art label Editions Mego. During ""Solo Voice"", slivers and snapshots of her voice twist into pointillist spires—chirpy and more musical than the most recent experiments of clear inspiration Florian Hecker, but only by degrees. Even Herndon’s most kinetic work has always seemed as driven by ideas as approachability, and ""Solo Voice"" is an unabashed expression of the former. Could a disembodied and dissected human voice be built into something new with computers? ""Chorus"" explores a similar line of inquiry. Herndon splits her simple, fetching melody into bits, so that her words seem sung by a cyborg programmed with a speech impediment. Syllables end abruptly, stand alone, and stretch over open space. But Herndon twists those samples of herself around beats that sometimes boom and burst like dubstep and sometimes stutter and sprint like IDM. In the space between the two, Herndon laces a panoply of fragments gathered piecemeal as she browsed online. The result, vividly illustrated in a subsequent video collaboration with Japanese artist Akihiko Taniguchi, blurs the relationship between web and browser, machine and user, data and devourer. Herndon becomes the principal input in a system bigger than herself, and she tries to be altered without being absorbed. It’s a canny reflection on our digital lives, rendered with a physicality that pulls it back into our own mainframe. —Grayson Haver Currin Holly Herndon: ""Chorus""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHujh3yA3BE,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/16544/homepage_large.b6059446.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Holly_Herndon-Chorus.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,73,Makthaverskan,"""Asleep""",Run for Cover,"For about a century now, songwriters have put a lot of emotional stock in dreams. They tell us that we all want someone to be dreaming of us, that we want to see that special someone in our dreams, that we want a dream lover so we don’t have to dream alone. In those songs, being dreamt about is a pure and beautiful expression—a surefire sign of an uncomplicated infatuation. It’s no wonder Maja Milner sounds completely crushed as she belts the devastating truth about what’s running through the mind of the person she loves: ""It’s not me you’re dreaming of."" The Makthaverskan singer delivers that phrase over and over again, twisting the knife further with each new repetition. The Gothenburg band are responsible for one of the year’s most indelible pop songs about heartache, and while there aren’t many lyrics in ""Asleep"", the few phrases employed raise the question: Is being slighted in dreams a more devastating blow than an actual breakup? At least Roy Orbison had some beautiful dreams before he woke up to a harsh reality—Milner doesn’t get that kind of reprieve. —Evan Minsker",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/prtls/makthaverskan-asleep | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVHAQX5sSaU,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/107/makthaverskan.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Makthaverskan-Asleep.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,72,Ty Segall,"""The Singer""",Drag City,"After three years of releasing music pretty much as he wrote it, Ty Segall allowed himself one full year to record Manipulator, his A-to-Z double-album survey of '70s rock'n'roll. And while the record’s harder-edged material (""Feel"", ""It’s Over"") is as strong as ever, it’s the LP’s softer cuts that saw the largest payout from the extra time and studio polish. On ""The Singer"", Segall goes glam rock, nailing the theatrical vibe of Ziggy Stardust-era David Bowie and Slider-era T. Rex right down to the whispered backing vocals and syrupy string-section hits. It’s a sort of slow and moody spiritual successor to ""Goodbye Bread"" and a reminder that, if there’s one thing that sets Segall apart from his peers, it’s that he can so easily pivot from amp-exploding heaviness to soft and spaced-out balladry. —Aaron Leitko Ty Segall: ""The Singer""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Quou6o05g5A,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/107/manipulator.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ty_Segall-The_Singer.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,71,Parquet Courts,"""Sunbathing Animal""",What's Your Rupture? / Mom & Pop,"""I cannot slow the pace at which I yearn"" is how Andrew Savage distills the agony of half-requited love, the particular torment of hanging around someone else’s restaurant job, waiting to see if you might score the kind of post-shift, walk-me-home embrace that makes you feel ""more real and alive,"" if just for a couple minutes. Parquet Courts might play fast and loud (and with a kind of sneering abandon that recalls early Pavement), but ""Sunbathing Animal"" is still a tender song about admitting that we can’t always control what and who we want. Over a relentless drum beat and some tangled guitar, Savage sounds frustrated by himself more than anything; no one, after all, wants to be this devoted to a person who seems significantly less sure. Still, ""Sunbathing Animal"" is a cathartic romp—the aural equivalent of banging your head against the wall until it hurts enough to stop. —Amanda Petrusich Parquet Courts: ""Sunbathing Animal""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igvbkKcRz5o,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/16825/homepage_large.1cfbc064.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Parquet_Courts-Sunbathing_Animal.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,70,Azealia Banks,"""Chasing Time""",Prospect Park,"More than anything else, ""Chasing Time"" feels unencumbered, by your or our or Azealia Banks’ own expectations for what her art should be. Its neon synth chords and stalking, syncopated house beats and half-time chorus are always charming, but remain less remarkable in themselves than for how easily they become swept up in the momentum of Banks' performance. The rapper mostly acquits herself well on Broke With Expensive Taste, but ""Chasing Time"" is perhaps the only time she sells herself equally as a singer (in truth, perhaps the one time she stumbles upon a melody worth selling): ""I’m born to dance in the moonlight,"" she sighs delightfully in the pre-chorus, her breathy optimism for once as bewitching as her stuttering Lil’ Kim twists on the verses. It could be a startling glimpse of an alternate reality Azealia Banks, one who somehow avoided an endless succession of career-stalling obstacles (many self-imposed) and instead became a pop star bigger than the Igloo Australia she lampoons. Except that, while it plays, that prospect doesn’t seem startling at all. —Tim Finney",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/yung-rapunxel/chasing-time,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/107/azealia-chasing-time.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Azealia_Banks-Chasing_Time.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,69,Rich Gang,"""Lifestyle""",Cash Money / Republic,"Every few years a new artist completely alters the gravitational pull of hip-hop, and in 2014 that person was Young Thug. A rapper who had once seemed happy to refract mainstream rap from the margins suddenly found himself at the culture’s center, which makes ""Lifestyle"" easily one of the most earned celebratory anthems of the year. Still, it’s a study in contrasts, with menace and exhaustion seeping out of a song that floats on soft piano chords and a synth melody that sounds like a relaxed whistle. ""Done did a lot of shit just to live this here lifestyle,"" goes the song’s iconic opening line, and Young Thug sounds concerned only with his own survival. He jumps into bed with 40 women and yawns, telling them that he’s only here to protect his sons, daughters, brothers, sisters and mother. Later he threatens to piss on his underlings while in the same breath relaying a statement told to him directly by God. How could he be more sinister? ""I’m on the top of the mountain puffin’ on clouds"" he taunts in the chorus, and it’s a line as striking for its imagery as its solitude. It’s immediately preceded by one so quietly seething that it’s unintelligible. After a perfectly raspy verse from Rich Homie Quan, it’s the outro from Birdman—who somehow wrangled one of the biggest rap hits of the year out of two guys signed to other labels—that ends the song as it deserves. ""Sitting in middle of this ocean… Pacific that is,"" he drawls, sharpening his Bond villain shtick to its finest point. Of course, it’s easier to digest ""Lifestyle"" if we pretend not to know how the story ends. —Jordan SargentRich Gang: ""Lifestyle""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGt_JGHYEO4,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/107/richgang.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rich_Gang-Lifestyle.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,68,Grouper,"""Clearing""",Kranky,"Throughout her career as an ambient-minded songwriter, Liz Harris has only occasionally hinted at pop melodies and instrumental clarity. Appropriately for the genre, most of her material has utilized bleary tape drones and vocal obfuscation to evoke new worlds. But after a red herring in the reverb-laden album opener on Ruins, ""Clearing"" offers newfound focus on more terrestrial, human concerns. Presented with only a midrange piano part as accompaniment, rather than swaths of echoing keyboard lines or distended keyboard explorations, Harris' vocals are largely comprehensible for the first time. Lyrics delving into romantic disaffection (""Maybe you were right when you said I've never been in love"") and self-hatred (""It's funny when we fuck up/ No one really has to care"") are intimately stripped down, and all the more affecting because they're so plainly stated. As she skulks through the track's downcast five minutes she manages to emphasize simplicity in form and content. It's as if, after years of deliberate abstraction, Harris suddenly, and devastatingly, decided that some of life's most troubling questions are somehow simple enough to be addressed directly. —Colin Joyce",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/kranky/grouper-holding/s-sZHos,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/107/ruins.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Grouper-Clearing.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,67,White Lung,"""Face Down""",Domino,"If White Lung make fang-bearing music about social ills, ""Face Down"" is their magnum opus. Singer Mish Way’s unilateral rally cries on the hook—""Ugly dies face down,"" ""The dumb won’t make a sound,"" and ""All the world’s pretend""—betray it as a personal-political manifesto, and her seductively abrasive vocals get punched out with cogent force. Her lyrical daggers resonate because they speak to a deep, self-conscious force with adrenaline-addled accuracy. No one’s hiding behind obscure metaphor here: ""You say it's vile/ And you're right."" —Molly BeaucheminWhite Lung: ""Face Down""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUIaj338JoE,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/16935/homepage_large.aee2f5a7.jpg,/dataset/artwork/White_Lung-Face_Down.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,66,How to Dress Well,"""Words I Don't Remember""",Self-released,"Memories are made, memories are lost, memories are buried, memories are uncovered, and, if we're lucky, memories are shared. How to Dress Well understands at least that much; since 2010's Love Remains, he has intimated maudlin recollections while evoking our vague memories of classic songs and the moments when they've meant the most to us. And much like an uncovered memory, the singer/songwriter returned this year with newfound clarity and significance with the smoldering ""Words I Don't Remember"". Over the single's luminescent synth chords and rhythmic R&B bones, Tom Krell sings like he's dictating a letter to a lost love who's just in the other room. He can no longer feel the emotions they once shared, so he asks with quiet conviction, ""What is there for me to say but words I can't remember?"" He uses the weight of memory and how it can shift to detail his internal drama, and the way it plays out results in nothing less than a near-perfect song. —Patric Fallon How to Dress Well: ""Words I Don't Remember""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbOCLEIKZOo,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/16740/homepage_large.e4b7df57.jpg,/dataset/artwork/How_to_Dress_Well-Words_I_Dont_Remember.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,65,Iceage,"""The Lord's Favorite""",Matador,"""Come here and be gorgeous for me, now,"" sings Iceage frontman Elias Bender Rønnenfelt. It’s a casually stated demand. Having traded in the dark pummel of New Brigade and You’re Nothing for a dust kickin’ country-tinged choogle, he sounds as though he’s sitting on the throne of privilege. In the darkness across from a woman in sweat-smeared makeup and white high heels, he stares into her eyes, contemplates hurting her, and declares that he’s God's favorite person. Even if he’s just saying all this stuff while drunk at a strip club, he’s got the hubris and certainty of a mad king. When he notes that ""now is the time I should have whatever I desire,"" that last word is overemphasized with a deep snarl. But while the sentiment here seems to conjure the black-hearted ghost of Joffrey Baratheon, Iceage’s out-of-character cowpunk is one of the band’s more upbeat ventures to date. ""It’s about megalomania and love,"" Rønnenfelt said. Those two things are a dangerous combination, but they’re balanced excellently on ""The Lord’s Favorite"". You never know when his delusions of grandeur will override his affections. —Evan MinskerIceage: ""The Lord's Favorite""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roB4hRdLlas,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/17001/homepage_large.53993c88.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Iceage-The_Lords_Favorite.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,64,Leon Vynehall,"""Goodthing""",3024,"""Goodthing"" must be the result of an elaborate heist. A sample this honeyed, a deployment this smooth, surely is the result of modish French cons pilfering Prince Paul's MPC circa 1994, or cracking the code to some heretofore unknown J Dilla storage locker. The point man behind this scheme is quietly ascendant UK producer Leon Vynehall, who uses the sample in question—a clip from Vesta Williams 1986 jam, ""Don't Blow a Good Thing""—to propel a stylish, sweet house track, which has become an area of expertise. Vynehall seems to know what he has in this hook, playfully dicing it while surrounding it with niceties like he's arranging cushions on a couch: a gentle hi-hat pattern, billowing pads on the upbeat. The bassline braces, providing crucial support but funky enough not to put on airs. ""Goodthing"" is rain on a car window: familiar motion, pleasantly obscured focus, a twinge of sadness if you're feeling so inclined. It's a track worth savoring, especially after Vynehall went to the trouble of stealing it for us. —Andrew Gaerig Leon Vynehall: ""Goodthing""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSxXoDXCyYc,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/107/vynehall.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Leon_Vynehall-Goodthing.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,63,Eno/Hyde,"""Return""",Warp,"If all you care about is the destination, this is not the track for you. ""Return"" is a song that revels in the journey, where every moment is a small, new arrival. Brian Eno and Underworld’s Karl Hyde have each built careers on music that values the power of repetition and the power of a melody equally, and this is a study in how the two can work together. Its basic rhythm track is just some drums and the same guitar phrase over and over, but the effect is one of remarkable movement, as if through endless rolling fields of cash crops or over waves. Vocals float in this ocean, some singing words and others saying nothing at all, and it all feels right, like it’s taking exactly the amount of time it needs to. The music’s power of illusion is such that the guitar that comes in near the end feels as though it’s ascending when it’s really just repeating a few notes. It’s the kind of thing that can make you feel like you’ve been everywhere by the time it ends. —Joe Tangari",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/107/highlife.jpg,/dataset/artwork/EnoHyde-Return.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,62,YG,"""Left, Right""",Def Jam,"Is YG an album rapper, an artist capable of making great tracks but sincerely focused on big-picture themes and ideas? Or is he a singles rapper who simply strung together so many hits that he ended up with a terrific album? ""Left, Right"" argues for the latter. It’s all id, a raunchy pop single reminiscent of the best of the Ying Yang Twins, and produced by one of the architects of contemporary hip-hop. DJ Mustard’s work on the track here is both archetypal and unique, his standard, minimalist, staccato G-funk blending well with sudden drops, chants, and handclaps. Even if YG isn’t exactly thinking with his brain on ""Left, Right"", the attitude, humor, and energy that made My Krazy Life such a compelling listen are all on display here. He uses a math joke as a come-on and evinces a sex-positive attitude toward his opposites. He gets City-High-cheeky when the woman defends her work, saying she needs to make money. Most importantly, he has fun, tearing through what could have been an empty genre exercise like it’s a piece of meat and ending up with the sex jam of the year. —Jonah Bromwich YG: ""Left, Right""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1aZjlpvpS0,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/107/yg.jpg,/dataset/artwork/YG-Left_Right.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,61,Perfume Genius,"""Fool""",Matador,"At the center of ""Fool"" is one of 2014’s most transfixing musical moments: After two short verses the song’s finger-snapping rhythm falls away, leaving only a quiet keyboard drone and Mike Hadreas’ shivery falsetto, soaring ever higher until it reaches an impassioned crescendo that would sound as natural in a church basilica as in a conventional pop song. This interlude is all the more arresting for being so unanticipated; it’s as if the song had simply cracked in half to reveal a concentrated beam of light radiating from within it. According to Hadreas, the song was informed by the frustrations borne from ""situations where I camp it up, make myself into a sort of novelty character to ease things along."" And while that adds weight to the spare economy of the song’s lyrics (""I tither and coo/ Like a cartoon""), it does little to prepare you for ""Fool""'s sheer expressive force, its complex breadth of emotion, or the remarkable way Hadreas can seem to use his voice to at once reveal his psychic wounds while simultaneously providing a balm to help heal them. —Matthew Murphy Perfume Genius: ""Fool""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2Oqi8Ddqw4,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/107/perfume.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Perfume_Genius-Fool.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,60,Ariel Pink,"""Picture Me Gone""",4AD,"Ariel Pink's got a reputation for sonic anachronism, but it's still kind of wonderful that his most affecting song to date is aHoward Jones-style early-'80s new wave ballad whose lyric includes the terms ""iCloud"", ""selfie"" and ""Find My iPhone."" Sung from the perspective of a father who's telling his children that he has no physical images of his existence to leave them, it has a cute conceit and a melody that swoops and dives like a Polaroid caught in an updraft. But it's also surprisingly rich in subtext: this is a song about eradicating oneself from digital as well as corporeal memory, and Pink's lyrics keep slipping into the pervasive language of marketing. The key line might be one that switches from the first verse to the second, ""when I was only 45."" You can think of that 45 as middle age, but it might be more fruitful to think of it as the speed of a seven-inch single. Pink belongs to the first generation of musicians in a while whose work barely exists as physical artifacts; can a song that can't be discovered on a battered old record preserve a legacy any more than another selfie in the cloud? —Douglas Wolk Ariel Pink: ""Picture Me Gone""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YS87mPfD_yI,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/17203/homepage_large.b8b46c0a.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ariel_Pink-Picture_Me_Gone.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,59,Alvvays,"""Archie, Marry Me""",Transgressive / Polyvinyl / Royal Mountain,"There’s the timeliness of Alvvays’ ""Archie, Marry Me"", and then there’s the timelessness of it. The track is a portrait of modern love; combining newfangled romance with the aching roots of traditional unions still firmly planted in singer Molly Rankin’s lovelorn pleas (the lovebird chirping intro also underlines this point). Young lovers may fantasize about marital bliss, but the rigid reality favors lingering student loans over floral arrangements. And while talk of alimony and simply signing some papers may sound mundane and stripped of courtship, Rankin’s sincere yearning convinces us otherwise. Moody guitar riffs glide from contemplative, reflecting her subject’s explicit ""contempt for matrimony,"" to the surf-rock tides rushing into the chorus as if Rankin’s sweet ""hey""'s have the power to nullify any existing doubts. This is the maudlin ideal of the 21st century and perhaps the anthem of every twee-as-fuck wedding for years to come. —Melody Lau",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/alvvays/archie-marry-me-1,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/17157/homepage_large.ef2b119a.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Alvvays-Archie_Marry_Me.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,58,Against Me!,"""Transgender Dysphoria Blues""",Total Treble,"From her first words on her first album since she told the world she was a woman, Laura Jane Grace sings like she's unbottling years and years of stress. ""Your tells are so obvious,"" she shouts on the title track to Transgender Dysphoria Blues. ""Shoulders too broad for a girl."" Addressing herself or someone like her in the second person, she goes down the roster of gender crimes: ""You've got no cunt in your strut/ You've got no ass to shake,"" she sings in what must be the year's most biting couplet. ""You want them to see you like they see any other girl/ They just see a faggot/ They hold their breath not to catch the sick."" Behind her, Against Me! slams down the sort of cowpunk rhythm that crackled across the band's first album, Reinventing Axl Rose, more than 10 years ago. Grace sang about her friends and family with poignancy and compassion then. Over her career, she's slowly turned the lens in on herself, examining the crevices she used to try to ignore. With ""Transgender Dysphoria Blues"", she's finally screaming what she's been hinting at for years like she doesn't care who hears it. There's nothing like hearing that freedom in her voice. —Sasha Geffen",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/107/againstme.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Against_Me-Transgender_Dysphoria_Blues.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,57,Dej Loaf,"""Try Me""",Self-released,"Out with it: did rap suck in 2014? If you’re judging solely by major label retail albums, then yeah, kind of. But why would you? If anything, the dearth of great releases from rap’s heavy hitters leveled the playing field for newcomers, creating a space where the year’s most memorable songs bubbled up from the underground. Still, Drake’s presence was felt, even as he hung back. There was no more effective A&R in 2014, no better diviner of ""It""; the abiding power of his co-sign made record deals seem as foregone as cassette tapes. Ever since a casual shout-out on Drake’s Instagram sent her career skyward, I’ve struggled to pinpoint exactly what Dej Loaf’s ""It"" factor entails, though the Detroit MC’s ""Try Me"" has become a part of my world. Effectively detached from the dominant trends of the year, there’s something ineffable about the song’s appeal. Attempts at synopsis often point out the cognitive dissonance between subject and sound—DDS’s spun-silk beat almost approaches preciousness, a weird juxtaposition against Dej’s free-associative threats to those who mess with her ""fomily""—but that’s what you say to sound smart, not why you fold a song into your life. I think it’s as simple as earnestness, a trait that’s become embarrassingly quaint in contemporary rap. Maybe it’s Twitter’s tendency to hyperbolize, but it often feels like rap fandoms have separated towards two extremes in recent years: stubborn classicism versus aggressive traptimism. There’s a lot of merit to the latter camp's motives: it's important that street rap and party music receive the same critical focus as more supposedly ""serious"" works. But taken to its extreme, it can walk an untenable line, rejecting anything so corny as sincere engagement with the world in favor of the proudly frivolous. Were this year’s ""Migos > Beatles"" memes necessary, or ironic? It can get confusing, and sometimes disillusioning. ""Try Me"" is a cool song, but Dej Loaf isn’t really a ""cool rapper."" She’s withdrawn, a little nerdy, diaristic, already exhausted. Her rap name comes from a loafer. There is no posturing to ""Try Me"", which sounds like an escaped inner monologue. Things can be as straightforward as this: all-white outfits are cool, because they make you feel like an untouchable millionaire. Black clothes are cool too, but for other occasions. Sincerity isn't dead. —Meaghan Garvey",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/moaninmonkeys/dej-loaf-try-me,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/17099/homepage_large.c3b86c84.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dej_Loaf-Try_Me.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,56,Migos,"""Fight Night""",300 Entertainment / Quality Control,"Simplicity is one of hip-hop's most reliable strategies, one rarely wielded as effectively as the Migos-on-igno anthem ""Fight Night"". The track stood out immediately on the duo's first 2014 mixtape, No Label II, a perfect example of how to make a punchy (no pun, etc.) DJ Mustard rip-off into a Top 40 smash. It worked by upending expectations, shirking the typical Migos formula—from the slower, Zaytoven-style Atlanta production to a thumping uptempo West Coast approach—in a fashion that proved timely, but also purposeful. In its misunderstanding of a pre-existing template, it reached more directly for the pop jugular. Each line was quotable, delivered with the unapologetic confidence of a group willing to say whatever they can get away with. While perhaps not always the best bedroom strategy, ""Fight Night"" does hit on the mania of lust more directly than anyone else.  —David Drake",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/migosatl/migos-fight-night,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/107/fightnight.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Migos-Fight_Night.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,55,Kendrick Lamar,"""i""",Top Dawg Entertainment,"Kendrick Lamar's mother should be proud. After famously proclaiming himself the King of New York on last year's hotly debated ""Control"" guest verse, the Compton, California rapper was relatively quiet through the bulk of 2014; leave aside the Drake-shading cypher and the handful of guest verses (let's forget his Imagine Dragons collaboration, firebreathing as it was, too) and ""i"" was the only proper new Lamar song released as of early December. Like some of the year's other best songs, this deceptively uptempo, familiar-sounding meditation on self-empowerment was undoubtedly timely, but in a way it was all but preordained, and it only continues Lamar's conquest of audiences that aren't as hung up on minute-to-minute trends. The ""I love myself"" refrain picks up on the same part of the zeitgeist that brought us iLoveMakonnen, Lil B's ""No Black Person Is Ugly"", or the closing ""put your love on top"" admonition of Beyoncé's late-2014 ""Ring Off""; the relevance of the verses, which progress past paranoia to others' visions of urban warfare and finally to an inner war, should also be clear. But Lamar's mom almost foretold the song's uplifting theme on 2012's good kid, m.A.A.d city, urging him to ""give back with your words of encouragement"" at the end of ""Real"" (a song where Lamar repeats, ""What love got to do with it when you don't love yourself?""). Negative comparisons to Pharrell's escapist ""Happy"", what's more, amount to backwards compliments for the Lamar song's Isley Brothers-channeling approachability, which somehow makes a strangled scream and multiple mentions of suicide safe for a summer 2015 barbecue. The car horns and future-jazz outro follow through on Lamar's promise to trust his muse as they hint at an even fuller potential. Congrats, Mrs. Lamar, now could you please tell your son's fans what's next? —Marc HoganKendrick Lamar: ""i""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aShfolR6w8,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/107/I-by-Kendrick-Lamar.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kendrick_Lamar-i.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,54,Spoon,"""Inside Out""",Loma Vista,"In interviews leading up to the release of They Want My Soul, Spoon frontman Britt Daniel professed his newfound appreciation for Dr. Dre’s 2001—a dated reference for anyone under 30 but a heartening one for an inveterate guitar band who has their formula down so pat I sometimes confuse their newest good record with the good record they put out before it. Never have they seemed less like themselves than on ""Inside Out"". Part of it’s the hotel-lounge drum loops and sparkling arpeggios of harp, so light they sound carbonated. But it’s also the song’s air of ease: Where the band once used mystery to suggest threat, here it suggests wonder. Twenty years in and it's reasonable to start talking about aging gracefully, but Spoon never sounded like a band that would be around for 20 years and still don’t—they’re too small, too cool, too fixated on the dark parts near the margins. —Mike Powell",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/spoontheband/inside-out,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/107/spoon.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Spoon-Inside_Out.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,53,Perfect Pussy,"""Interference Fits""",Captured Tracks,"On ""Interference Fits"", Meredith Graves’ vocals vie for space beneath the song’s blissfully distorted surface, balancing warmth and dissonance within a patiently unfolding onslaught of noise. The charm comes from the way her words jostle for room amongst the barreling drums and feedback: there’s a sense that what you can't hear is just as important as what you can. Some lyrics, like the emotionally loaded ""Since when do we say yes to love?"", rear up out of the mix while others remain obscured, and that’s part what makes ""Interference Fits"" so empowering: Her sheer will to be heard lends a freeing sense of ambivalence to the calamity, and her resolve is tenacious even as she gets drowned out in sound. —Molly Beauchemin",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/16714/homepage_large.3455b239.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Perfect_Pussy-Interference_Fits.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,52,Todd Terje,"""Delorean Dynamite""",Olsen,"""Delorean Dynamite"" is the ultimate in flashy nu-disco. It’s big, happy, and self-satisfied. It starts at a low rumble and climbs to almost unbearable altitudes. It sneaks into your garage and then revs the engine, spins the wheels and flips the high beams on and off. It’s exactly what we’ve come to expect from Todd Terje, lover of cartoons, devoted musical emulation and video-form kitsch koans (what is the sound of one classic car selling itself on YouTube?)—a broad, perfectly charted exercise in the slow build on an album that deviated in unlikely ways from this exact formula. Ever the shrewd crowdpleaser, Terje placed the song directly after the significantly pruned ""Strandbar"", and then made it half of a paired centerpiece with the uncharacteristically sedate ballad ""Johnny and Mary""—placement that makes the track’s gentle final minute feel like a drop off a cliff into a warm ocean. Terje’s skill with this kind of heady propulsion is unmatched, and ""Delorean Dynamite"" is where he reminds us exactly how high he can climb. —Abby Garnett",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9H5WTTOUfg&app=desktop,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/16619/homepage_large.74bbe99c.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Todd_Terje-Delorean_Dynamite.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,51,Owen Pallett,"""I Am Not Afraid""",Domino / Secret City,"""I Am Not Afraid"", the track that kicks off the gorgeous In Conflict, is as much a riddle as it is a song. Those who may have arrived at Owen Pallett’s music by way of his theoretical explications of pop tracks wouldn’t have been surprised at the obvious intelligence of the writing here, or the foreboding and beauty of the music behind it. It would have been more discomfiting to reckon with the intense strangeness of lyrics that seem several worlds away from the crush-love-heartbreak-repeat cycle of the pop music Pallett clearly understands so well. Pallett has said that In Conflict is the first of his records on which he tried to write lyrics that were both non-allegorical and autobiographical. But even if the material ""I Am Not Afraid"" draws upon comes from Pallett’s own life, the song is extraordinarily rich in imagery and metaphor, whether it’s Pallett leaving his ""violin unattended in a cab or restaurant"" or sharing lyrics like ""They told me to chew on a toothpick/ They told me to take a deep breath."" These are depictions of anxiety and anger—heady emotions clashing with the record’s central message that its subject is not afraid and salvation may be found in discipline. So while there’s clearly that eponymous conflict in effect here, the idea motivating the song remains fleeting. The music of ""I Am Not Afraid"" is mostly gorgeous as it transitions from violin to piano and back, but it is also strange, and sometimes frightening (a result of Pallett dropping what he calls ""black notes""—i.e., the exact wrong note for the melody—into the mix). Accepting the discomfort of the very music here, and accepting the discomfort of the lyrics, becomes both a metaphor and a microcosm of the experience that those born into any of the groups that hold dominion (whites, males, cisgenders) must undertake to reckon with their unearned status. To draw on what Pallett has said directly, this musical and lyrical confusion also functions as a metaphor for his own ""displacement and dysphoria."" By taking the political and rendering it both personal and deliberately inscrutable, Pallett has managed to confound in the best way possible and create a relatable pop experience for voices that are too often ignored. —Jonah Bromwich",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/107/owen.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Owen_Pallett-I_Am_Not_Afraid.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,50,Taylor Swift,"""Style""",Big Machine,"Dating back to her earliest records, Taylor Swift’s songs have navigated the familiar tropes of Western romance: Romeo and Juliet, cheerleader versus geek, the shy girl who falls for the rebellious boy, Prince Charming and his white horse. On her shapeshifting new album 1989, ""Style"" is perhaps one last look at the version of Swift who sees herself in broadly drawn characters—in this instance, a ""classic"" girl wearing red lipstick who has fallen for a slick-haired, white-teed guy with the ""James Dean look"" in his eye. But where those early songs were often parables, this one is more of an allegory: Swift dredges up iconic imagery of the American '50s as a way of framing an on-again, off-again relationship so intense that its essence feels infinite. But ""Style"" also seems like a distilled look at a future version of Taylor Swift. Though it is structured like so many of her previous tracks, it’s not her meticulous songwriting that throws you into a headrush. Instead it’s her vocals, tense and restrained, misting emotion in cascading sighs and implied ellipses. But more so it’s the instrumentation from Max Martin and Shellback, which traces a line from Jan Hammer to ""Teenage Dream"". Swift delivers wallops in small moments, so her producers bust out the heartstoppers: a pre-chorus riff that’s like a car screeching short, then undulating waves of keyboards underneath the hook that feel like the wind blowing through your hair. Most stunning of all is a guitar figure that scribbles its own story of indefinite lust across the night sky. —Jordan Sargent",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/107/1989.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Taylor_Swift-Style.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,49,Run the Jewels,"""Blockbuster Night Pt. 1""",Mass Appeal,"Ever since their debut, it's been easy to think of Run the Jewels in terms of sheer mass annihilation, rap Road Warriors tagging together to bring Doomsday Devices on everyone in their path. It doesn't hurt that El-P's beats continue to be so dusty and grimy that they sound like they've been dragged through the Paris-to-Dakar rally; this one's got gravelly molasses bass fuzz built to asphyxiate ears. But the mayhem is run through god-tier one-liners (El: ""It's all a joke between mom contractions and coffin fittin’s""; Mike: ""I give a fuck if I'm late, tell Satan be patient"") and pure technique that makes the most of assonance, internal rhymes, alliteration, and every other trick that lesser MCs try to substitute for personality. Since both El-P and Killer Mike have used their inseparably complementary tendencies to make their personalities the whole point, it's here where all those traits run rampant: They're out for justice (word to Seagal), beholden to knocking down competitors and lifting up allies, bringing out the dead and laughing at the inevitability of joining them. —Nate Patrin",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuWQyfGa1yI,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/17059/homepage_large.60fc2402.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Run_the_Jewels-Blockbuster_Night_Pt_1.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,48,Lykke Li,"""Gunshot""",LL,"Lykke Li’s ""Gunshot"" is too cathartic to be a sad song and too sad to be a cathartic song. Despite lyrics that suggest an emotional morass of regret over a failed romance, it explodes with an uplift that makes stark and incapacitating heartache sound triumphant. ""And the shot goes/ Through my head and back,"" Li cries on the song’s life-affirming build, an assertion that somehow sounds hopeful in a narrative of despair. The sparse, meandering interludes that punctuate the chorus underscore its unspoken euphoria by way of contrast—and yet, the specificity of the song’s anguish at earlier moments (""I am longing for your poison/ Like a cancer to its prey"") tames this feeling. ""Gunshot"" invokes a rare balance between sorrow and liberating acceptance. —Molly BeaucheminLykke Li: ""Gunshot""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIruwzhozTc,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/107/lykke.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lykke_Li-Gunshot.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,47,Nils Frahm,"""Says""",Erased Tapes,"A good part of Nils Frahm’s rise to prominence in the past two years no doubt came from word of mouth surrounding his live shows. Some of my best musical moments have been watching someone’s reaction after taking them to see him for the first time. He’s a composer whose music strives for simplicity and directness even across a multi-part suite, and a talented pianist whose fingers say more than his lovable between-song banter. What I’m getting at here is that Frahm’s music is best heard in the live setting, and that’s why Spaces, a live album, was easily his best record yet. While the excellent Spaces, which comprises several different performances, might not totally capture the experience of seeing a Frahm concert, the eight-minute ""Says"" comes the closest. You can almost see him running between his instruments, setting loops and adding little flourishes to his gradually blooming wall of sound. There’s a particularly great moment about five minutes in, when the rising synth line takes off as if it were finally breaking free, and then it does an upward dance that feels both wounded and victorious. It’s one of those moments on Spaces—and in his concerts—where you figure out that Frahm is no average pianist, nor an average modern classical composer. Instead, he’s a near-genius who makes emotional epics that scale the heights of post-rock with the mere stroke of his fingers. —Andrew Ryce Nils Frahm: ""Says""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIwwjy4slI8,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/16524/homepage_large.5a042668.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nils_Frahm-Says.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,46,Mr Twin Sister,"""In the House of Yes""",Infinite Best / Twin Group,"Overuse of the term ""guilty pleasure"" has rendered the phrase virtually meaningless; let it be said that drinking alone is one of the few activities that still earns that description. In the past, its musical tributes have emphasized the ""guilty"" part, coming from grizzled boozehounds like Merle Haggard and George Thorogood who have willingly done hard time and paid hard fines for breaching the social contract. In the spirit of ""Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe"", Mr Twin Sister’s ""In the House of Yes"" makes a compelling argument for the ""pleasure"" principle. It’s a glittery disco wherein Andrea Estella wonders aloud, what would a club night be like without the rude boys on the dance floor, the cover charge, the wait at the door, the ridiculous drink prices, the shitty music, and the struggle to find a cab ride home? It would be pretty fucking awesome, that’s what. Cup in hand, dancing alone in her room, Estella sinks deeper into alcohol’s warm embrace until she hits the floor and wakes up knowing exactly how she got home, who she woke up with and where to get breakfast. All the while, a voice in her head repeats, ""You’re the one!""—it doesn’t get any better than this, does it? That’s the lie ""In the House of Yes"" tells you, and the one that all solo drinkers believe to their ultimate destruction.  So one of the year’s most seductive songs is also one of the most morally corrupt. —Ian Cohen",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/mrtwinsister/in-the-house-of-yes | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zn_SGLtiz2U,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/17102/homepage_large.0b2083c9.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mr_Twin_Sister-In_the_House_of_Yes.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,45,Ariel Pink,"""Put Your Number in My Phone""",4AD,"Though it mimics '60s sunshine pop and '70s adult-contempo cheese, ""Put Your Number in My Phone"" reminds me more of something less likely: a joke remix of a Tiger Woods adultery-scandal voicemail. The similarities are eerie: both are about revealing and manipulating personal information; both use actual voicemails as musical motifs; and both explore the blurry line between intimacy and deception. Where Woods begs someone close to him to hide his secrets from the world, Pink begs someone to get close to him while hiding a secret: he has no real intention of reciprocating that intimacy. The parallels may seem trivial, and certainly without the voicemail that reveals Pink’s betrayal, ""Put Your Number in My Phone"" would simply be well-crafted pop—a deft web of love-letter couplets and sugary melody. But the reality check of a voice wondering why Ariel hasn’t called back gives the song’s sparkle a dark undercurrent. The effect is not unlike the way the plastic sheen on celebrities’ public lives glosses over stickier truths. Pink’s music is always at its best when he’s mixing layers that way, complicating and confusing what at first seems simple, and with ""Put Your Number in My Phone"" he’s left yet another messy message. —Marc MastersAriel Pink: ""Put Your Number in My Phone""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEkomaBTppY,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/17088/homepage_large.e90dea4e.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ariel_Pink-Put_Your_Number_in_My_Phone.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,44,Angel Olsen,"""Lights Out""",Jagjaguwar,"Angel Olsen spent most of her year conducting an exquisitely private conversation with herself in front of audiences. ""No one's gonna try it for you, darling, no one,"" she sings plaintively on ""Lights Out"", from her fiercely enigmatic and still-arresting Burn Your Fire For No Witness. The song, a late moment of piercing clarity, has a drowsy feel, as do the guitars, which speak through the half-yawn of light distortion. ""Just when you thought you would turn all your lights out, it shines,"" she muses, in one long drifting leaf of a melody, keeping the thought alive and following it all the way down to the floor. She lingers lovingly on every phrase, stretching out the words as if she was looking to hide something inside them. The song sounds like a private prayer that Olsen shares with us because she's confident we'll never truly plumb its meaning or crack its surface. Sometimes, all you need is one good thought, strong in your mind. —Jayson Greene Angel Olsen: ""Lights Out""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95rdyhLYOi0,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/107/burnyourfire.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Angel_Olsen-Lights_Out.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,43,Ariana Grande,"""Love Me Harder"" [ft. The Weeknd]",Republic,"It’s been an art from blues to Britney: the song as extended double entendre, one that can come off either unassailably clean or unspeakably filthy depending on the listener’s life experience and cleanliness of mind (or nearness to a Google searchbox). ""Love Me Harder"" is sort of the opposite: even when it’s clean it sounds teasingly off, and even when it’s dirty, it sounds so disarmingly spit-shine clean. Much of it’s the premise: pairing a singer who was a babysitter on Nickelodeon less than half a year ago with a singer whose discography contains endless variations on permanently corrupting young ingenues, with no apologies and no inclinations to change that. Even more of it’s the execution: organ peals timed like winks after each line; Grande switching emotional beats like poses, her voice either knowing beyond her years or just polished to sound like it, with no indication as to which; Tesfaye revisiting the sturdy nocturnal electro-house of his Kavinsky collaboration (a sound that’s been fast adopted by the pop trickbook, from megastars to newcomers), leering about his rep and finding a way to describe hardcore porn acts in PG terms. When these tracks fail, they’re the most embarrassing failures an artist can have; when they succeed, the sleight of song can be breathtaking. Here’s to a generation of kids realizing horrifying things in 2020 about their teenage jam—and what lodged it in their mind. —Katherine St. Asaph Ariana Grande: ""Love Me Harder"" [ft. The Weeknd]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSW2zeM3yLU,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/107/ariana.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ariana_Grande-Love_Me_Harder_ft_The_Weeknd.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,42,St. Vincent,"""Prince Johnny""",Loma Vista,"St. Vincent is known for the way she can make a guitar sound like it’s made of rubber stretched to the point of snapping, and she's also known for her brittle funk and unabashed kookiness. ""Prince Johnny"" isn’t really that kind of song, though. The guitar is reined in but still wickedly effective. Nothing is smeared or off-kilter. It takes a basic beat that could have been funky and makes it the foundation for something lovely and drifting, a song whose beauty belies the conflict and spit in its lyrics. Those lyrics tease you with the huge ""whoa-ohs"" of the refrain a few times before you actually get there, that makes it more rewarding when you do reach it. Her records contain plenty of choruses that stick in your brain, but this may be the most simple and direct of them all. St. Vincent’s core appeal lies in her eccentricities but she doesn’t actually need to lean on them to make brilliant music. —Joe Tangari",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/st_vincent/prince-johnny-radio-edit,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/16615/homepage_large.88301105.jpg,/dataset/artwork/St_Vincent-Prince_Johnny.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,41,The War on Drugs,"""An Ocean in Between the Waves""",Secretly Canadian,"This is a murky song. This is a song about murk. It opens on a ""travelin’ man"" who is watching someone, presumably a woman, walk toward him in the rain. It’s a stock image out of a film noir, and Adam Granofsky keeps the dark scenery coming. There are wild winds blowin’, black suns risin’, and nail guns blasting through hearts. At no point does any of this clarify the song’s meaning; clarity is in fact Granofksy's elusive femme fatale. What is the protagonist seeking? What exactly does an ""ocean in between the waves"" signify? Everything? Anything? Nothing? ""An Ocean in Between the Waves"" parallels the confusion Granofsky experienced as he was making it; the title could very well describe the sound in his head that he was chasing and couldn’t pin down. He was the restless protagonist, and that sound was the barely visible figure in the thunderstorm. Like the rest of Lost in the Dream, ""An Ocean in Between the Waves"" is a questing epic with an uncertain destination. The only way out for Granofsky was to keep moving, to keep grasping in the dark, to keep questing forward. The exhilaration of this song—which Granofsky labored over for months before reworking his original demo at the last moment—is that you can hear him finally catch the wave in the final 90 seconds. When that guitar solo kicks in, it’s like a ray of light cutting through an everlasting night. It’s not clear whether Granofsky will be okay in the end, but at least he’s no longer lost. —Steven Hyden",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/107/warondrugs.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_War_on_Drugs-An_Ocean_in_Between_the_Waves.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,40,Jessie Ware,"""Tough Love""",PMR / Friends Keep Secrets / Interscope,"Pop music doesn’t really do tough love. Utter heartache? Sure. Total infatuation? Of course. But the twisting formulations that combine feelings of angst and fidelity are somewhat harder to shrink-wrap into three-and-a-half minutes of music. Enter Jessie Ware, whose work thus far is marked by such fraught negotiations of the heart—she wants to believe but, as a level-headed 30-year-old, she also doesn’t want to be fooled. So while the newlywed’s uneven second album includes songs called ""You & I (Forever)"" and ""Champagne Kisses"", she titled it Tough Love. And its first single is all about the restraint, resilience, and vulnerability that comes along with anything worth keeping. The expert vocalist—who is wholly capable of runs that would make a ""Voice"" judge weep—ventures to a heretofore unexplored upper register here, forcing her to work for every note. Meanwhile, the interstellar throb of a beat never breaks its orbit, instead finding a home in the stratosphere between heaven and Earth. It’s not an easy place to be, but it’s not a bad place either. —Ryan Dombal",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/jessieware/tough-love,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/16958/homepage_large.c0ad8160.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jessie_Ware-Tough_Love.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,39,Real Estate,"""Talking Backwards""",Domino,"Real Estate are defined by their tremendous empathy. It’s the beating heart behind those glossy, clean guitar melodies, the warmth lifting Martin Courtney’s sweet, thin voice. It’s been there since their early recordings; this is the band that spent six minutes asking, ""Budweiser? Sprite? Do you feel alright?"" on their self-titled 2009 debut, like a benevolent senior helping a freshman bandmate through their first party. They’re all a little older now, and the kindness once reserved for friends is now saved for their partners and families. ""Talking Backwards"", the lead single from their third album, Atlas, is a song about disconnection framed by another classic Matt Mondanile guitar lead, yearning and yet effortless. The tone is relaxed, the corners are rounded—this is still a Real Estate song, after all. But when Courtney sings, ""And the only thing that really matters/ Is the one thing I can’t seem to do,"" you can tell it’s eating him up inside. That kind of dad-level concern is never going to be cool, but it helps to forge the connection Courtney is trying to salvage, and the result is yet another surprisingly touching song in a discography full of them. —Jamieson Cox",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/real-estate-the-band/talking-backwards-1 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCWR7e85mVE,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/107/atlas.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Real_Estate-Talking_Backwards.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,38,Bobby Shmurda,"""Hot Nigga""",Epic,"Vine killed the radio star. Exhibit A: 2:17 - 2:22 of Bobby Shmurda’s ""Hot Nigga"" video. Over a beat snatched from a two year old Lloyd Banks mixtape cut the Brooklyn rapper spits a bleak, unending verse of ever-mounting tension and teenage menace. It’s quiet for song and artist until someone loops up the five second video highlight where the kid tosses his fitted in the air and flops into a loose limbed marionette routine. The beat’s fierce, the dance is hilarious, and the hat never lands. A star is born. ""Hot Nigga""’’s video and Vine took it places a hookless New York drill song wouldn’t have made it otherwise, but its unflinching locomotion is really the draw. You hear those air raid sirens, and you are whisked into a maelstrom. Parties across the country exploded into bedlam at the very drop. ""Hot Nigga"" embodies trap’s power to shut off the mind and speak directly to the body. It’s rap as sledgehammer, as battering ram. —Craig Jenkins",Platform: YouTube - Link: http://youtu.be/pBXniiEgmMk?t=2m17s,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/107/shmurda.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bobby_Shmurda-Hot_Nigga.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,37,Charli XCX,"""Boom Clap""",Atlantic / Asylum / Neon Gold,"The early story on Charli XCX's career was overshadowed by the multi-platinum success of her co-write with Icona Pop, ""I Love It"", a song that was a world-wide number one and soundtrack to all manner of consumable goods, for what seemed like an entire year. The outsized smash of ""I Love It"", made the mere multi-year (2011-13) omnipresence of Charli's own ""Nuclear Seasons"" seem like peanuts, and the media sidestepped that fact, which, at best, was erroneous. (Despite, indisputably, being in an era of music dominated by solo female pop artists, the Top 40 forever presented as a catfight competition as if there can only be girl that wins.) But few seemed to see bigger picture developing: two hits is a trend, two hits that climb and build and stay everywhere for two years—that's a track record. That the success of ""Boom Clap"" is being painted as a comeback is evidence of how little credence is given her clear ambition and enormous talents as a songwriter. ""Boom Clap"", with it's slinky electropulse and weak-kneed sensuality, has, unsurprisingly and rightfully, dominated our lives, dancefloors, playlists and shopping experiences since summertime; the song's Fault in Our Stars-driven momentum pushed back the release of Sucker by several months, to allow full cultural saturation—which is fait accompli at this point. Slick but not breezy, sweet but not saccharine, effortless but not the least bit dumb: it's the perfect summer crushbait anthem, always over too soon. —Jessica Hopper Charli XCX: ""Boom Clap""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxxajLWwzqY,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/107/boomclap.png,/dataset/artwork/Charli_XCX-Boom_Clap.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,36,Mac DeMarco,"""Passing Out Pieces""",Captured Tracks,"Was there a better musical sentiment this year about the mundane wear-and-tear of living life in the public eye than ""Passing out pieces of me/ Don’t you know nothing comes free?"" With that couplet, punctuating the first single from Mac DeMarco’s second album, he captures the strange emotional toll of a life lived via commercial exchange. Salad Days is an album all about growing up, after all, and ""Passing Out Pieces"" is the song where the great-grandson of a noteworthy Canadian railway legislator takes stock of his own station in life. Often unfairly derided as an ironist who jams MOR classic rock ad nauseum at his live shows, DeMarco’s actually amongst the most earnest of modern male singer-songwriters. He’s also, as one would expect, a dweller—prone to twisting a mundane word until it loses all meaning—and on ""Pieces"", he steps outside himself and watches his life float by. His vocal is foregrounded to the degree that it makes his conversational tone seem psychedelic, and the production only adds to the woozy folk-rock vibe. Instead of a train barreling off into the distance, the song plays like a carousel—a mega-stoned take on ""Gotta Get Up"", say—going round and round, while DeMarco adopts the practical pallor of a berobed Harry Nilsson. ""There was a time when we could dance until a quarter to ten,"" Nilsson sung on that album’s opening track. ""We never thought it would end."" ""Passing Out Pieces"" is the song where DeMarco himself catches wind of the end, but isn’t quite ready to stop yet. —Eric Harvey",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bfTTeZOrs4,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/16549/homepage_large.95586545.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mac_DeMarco-Passing_Out_Pieces.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,35,FKA twigs,"""Pendulum""",Young Turks,"If you’ve ever watched one of those TV shows where a team of self-appointed experts tries to record the paranormal activity of a house, you already get FKA twigs. Her music flickers in the periphery, barely perceptible. Most of the time it seems less like a planned performance than like something captured, and whenever some element of it—some flutter of voice or strange buckshot of drums—comes to the forefront it vanishes just as fast, leaving you to wonder if it was there at all. ""Pendulum"" is an ice cube of a song: The longer it sits out, the more fragile it seems. There is something seductive about it, but something uncertain too. Is it R&B? It has the shape of R&B and the intimacy of it too, but most of the time it feels too elusive to actually hold. And if R&B is designed to bump, ""Pendulum"" just shivers. Most of the time it is almost impossible to understand what twigs is singing, though the longing in her voice is clear—not just for the unspecified lover on the other side of the song, but so that she might stay fastened to the ground for just another minute before becoming unstuck again. —Mike Powell FKA twigs: ""Pendulum""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cw6H9YsTLek,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/17014/homepage_large.48a48155.jpg,/dataset/artwork/FKA_twigs-Pendulum.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,34,Tobias Jesso Jr.,"""True Love""",Self-released,"Tobias Jesso Jr. isn't the first guy to have his heart squashed by Los Angeles. After failing to make it as a pop songwriter, breaking up with his girlfriend, getting hit by a car, and—icing on the cake—moving to to Vancouver to help care for his ailing mother, balloons fell from the ceiling as Jesso became the world's one billionth failed songwriter. So he dusted off his sister's old piano, wrote a few heart-stricken ballads, and posted them to Youtube. What happened next was unlikely: An email to Chet ""JR"" White (whose band Girls had just broken up) led to a True Panther signing and bam—Jesso's back on his feet, with a debut tiled Goon slated for next year. His breakthrough track, ""True Love"", is perhaps an even less likely success. About as bald-faced and hopelessly romantic as music in 2014 comes, Jesso calls on the spirits of the underdog singer-songwriters of the '70s (think Randy Newman circa Good Old Boys), nicks the melody from Nelly's ""Dilemma"" almost wholesale, and delivers one of the best lump-in-your throat choruses of the year. Which isn't to mention that it sounds like a half-tempo version of the saddest '80s sitcom theme song ever recorded. But there's something so worn and natural about it, it's hard to think of it as anything but the purest declaration of the heart. Call up the YouTube video for ""True Love"", and you'll find a family photograph of Jesso at maybe seven or eight-years-old, looking up at the camera with his fingers poking at a cheap Casio keyboard. It's hard not to believe the kid would make it after all. —Zach Kelly Tobias Jesso Jr.: ""True Love""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WYHDfJDPDc,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/17008/homepage_large.1148b376.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tobias_Jesso_Jr-True_Love.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,33,Ariana Grande,"""Problem"" [ft. Iggy Azalea]",Republic,"Ariana Grande was already on the fast track to pop stardom before the release of her second album, with a #1 debut and top 10 single in her back pocket and developing command of her feathery, agile vocals. What she didn’t have was a claim to any kind of distinct sound. Her reference points—the richness and honey of '90s R&B, the vocal tapestries of doo-wop—were pleasant but obvious, and her voice couldn’t escape comparisons to grand dame/elusive chanteuse Mariah Carey. ""Problem"", the first single from her sophomore effort, My Everything, marked a simple shift that still managed to flip the script, a small update to her reference points that sent her sound screaming into the present. In came a raucous ""Thrift Shop"" horn riff, an uncredited Big Sean summoning the spirit of the Ying Yang Twins, and a verse from Iggy Igz. But most important of all was her dominating vocal performance: staccato bursts, smooth hook mastery, fluttering high notes, a near-complete avoidance of hard consonants. The girl who couldn’t escape the past suddenly sounded like the perfect flag-bearer for contemporary pop; half a year later, she’s strung together four top 10 hits and the year’s funniest series of pictures. No problems in sight. —Jamieson CoxAriana Grande: ""Problem"" [ft. Iggy Azalea]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QK8mJJJvaes,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/16899/homepage_large.5f268a43.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ariana_Grande-Problem_ft_Iggy_Azalea.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,32,Swans,"""Oxygen""",Young God / Mute,"Michael Gira turned his 21st-century comeback into a hat-trick with To Be Kind. Swans’ third, overstuffed full-length in the past four years, the album is as meaty and musky as the veteran group has ever been, although the disc’s most visceral moment is given its most atmospheric name: ""Oxygen"". Gashed open by skronk guitars and stabbed with free-jazz brass-squawk, the song writhes and bleats like a sacrificial offering while Gira performs his ceremonial duties with a howling, apeshit fanaticism. Cajoling, wailing, pleading, urging, ululating, and speaking in tongues, he whips his band to the brink of collapse as pitilessly as James Brown or Iggy Stooge. Gira turned 60 this year; he sounds simultaneously 30 years younger and 3,000 years older. This year saw no shortage of bands peddling less than pleasant noises in the pursuit of unlocking us from logic, but ""Oxygen"" made it elemental. —Jason Heller Swans: ""Oxygen""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jSdTBGhDSg,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/16866/homepage_large.adcb813a.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Swans-Oxygen.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,31,Aphex Twin,"""minipops 67 [120.2][source field mix]""",Warp,"Hearing a new Aphex Twin album this year was less of a culture-shock than the comebacks of other '90s legends such as My Bloody Valentine. This isn’t really because Richard D. James has updated his music to sound contemporary, though this lead track from Syro does obscure any acid or jungle timestamps. Rather, it’s because the contemporary still sounds so deeply like him. The mellow ""minipops"", cleansed of hostile frequencies, is in the pop mode of his classic ""Windowlicker"", but the sleek pastoral synthesizers and percussive chop could easily be from a Four Tet song. The bells reverberate with Pantha du Prince. The night-stalking bass might have crept out of Booka Shade, and the modulated vocals evoke another long-running act that molds the times instead of following them, Daft Punk. But this twinkling minimalism still has that only-as-James-can-do-it twist. You can hear his inimitable voice—mischievous, hyperactive, a little remote, a little goofy, and sentimental on the sly—in the almost linguistic quality of the chattering instrumental lines. You can hear it in the organic rather than mechanical feel of progression, the economical dynamic shifts, the masterful understatement of ornaments such as the pitch-shifted rill around the 1:20 mark. And you can hear his literal voice more plainly than ever before, as the computerized effects melt away, leaving it bare and vulnerable. This isn’t a return to form, but a reclamation by one of its prime architects. In accelerated modern time, it’s like Beethoven walking into a modern symphony and going, ""Still?"" —Brian HoweAphex Twin: ""minipops 67 [120.2][source field mix]""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBS4Gi1y_nc,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/17082/homepage_large.3e27e54a.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Aphex_Twin-minipops_67_1202source_field_mix.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,30,A. G. Cook,"""Beautiful""",PC Music,"Of all the ""cute"" songs to emerge from PC Music’s reign of musical terror in 2014, ""Beautiful"" might be the cutest. It’s also the most confrontational. Though A. G. Cook and his many associates have made a dayglo patchwork out of bits and pieces of some of the most unfashionable music around, nothing in their catalog does it quite like ""Beautiful"". Choosing obnoxious Eurodance as its foundation, this one is built on a frothing rapid of pounding donk notes and gasping chipmunk vocals. It sounds like a rushing trance anthem miniaturized for a children’s TV show. What’s most confrontational about ""Beautiful"", however, is its earnestness. Where other PC Music songs this year had a whiff of self-awareness, ""Beautiful"" is pure joy, more about naive puppy love than lust. In a year full of complaints that PC Music could seem like some cynical, ironic exercise in turning bad taste into high concept, ""Beautiful"" is at least one moment that feels completely exempt. It’s a pastiche, sure, but it’s one so lovingly done that it nails the unique appeal of a sector of music that would never be taken seriously otherwise. And what’s ironic about that? —Andrew Ryce",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/pcmus/beautiful,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/107/beautiful.jpg,/dataset/artwork/A_G_Cook-Beautiful.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,29,Spoon,"""Do You""",Loma Vista,"Spoon frontman Britt Daniel spots the love of his life over a vomit-soaked bag in the waning hours of an otherwise ordinary bar crawl. Slumped over, ""half out of a bag"" and expelling the contents of his stomach for all the city to see, his eyes meet hers, and a love affair emerges in spite of it all, carried aloft on the contradictory currents of romantic idealization and crushing, even depressing foresight. Indeed, the narrative’s opening upchuck is but a prelude for the greater malaise to follow: the topsy-turvy timbre of the guitars, slowly deflating like old party balloons beneath Daniel's wilting falsetto, is the perfect sonic accompaniment to the song's mounting defeatism. By now, he's enough years and broken hearts behind him to know how most modern relationships pan out (particularly those that start within feet of bars): the passion dwindles, communications cease, monogamy becomes an afterthought, and before long, he’s puking into another bag at another bar. That doesn’t mean Spoon have lost hope—if anything, ""Do You"" is a plea against rumination, a spirited ode to the Indian Summer in every relationship where ""it’s late in October but tar’s still melting in the street."" A vital perspective, to be sure—especially as we schlep deeper and deeper into the Tinder age. —Zoe Camp",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/spoontheband/do-you,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/16976/homepage_large.64654775.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Spoon-Do_You.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,28,Grouper,"""Holding""",Kranky,"Online communication has fostered an age of unprecedented access, where you can get to know strangers you may never actually meet better than you know your best friends. But it’s also enabled a system of strangely interactive anonymity, in which a user can fully participate in limitless conversations without ever revealing their true identity. In that latter scenario, your best friends can become digital ghosts. That’s the way that the music of the very private Liz Harris, particularly her solo output as Grouper, has long felt. Hidden behind a haze of static, tape hiss, and effects stretched atop her vocals and guitar, it was clear that there was always a real person with real feelings and ideas on the other side of the microphone, no matter how much she warded herself with sound. It’s always been telling that Grouper maintains no substantial web presence. On Ruins, a stunning album Harris recorded with an upright piano and a portable four-track in Portugal, she finally steps into admittedly dim light. To that end, there’s no moment more vulnerable and open than ""Holding"", a sad-and-sweet, seven-minute letter about love, loss and the hellish limbo that lingers between the two. Printed lyrics accompany Ruins, but they’re not necessary, as you can understand Harris’ gentle voice and the way that romance collapses line by poignant line. ""We build our own unfolding,"" she sings at the end of the first verse, that final word sliding away as though into darkness. By song’s close, that process has left her reaching for tatters and ruins: ""There’s nothing left to hold to,"" she sings, faulting and hesitating as she eases her fingers from the piano. The last track before an instrumental epilogue, ""Holding"" is Harris’ beautiful signature at the end of her own post, a gentle and emotional end to near-anonymity. —Grayson Haver Currin",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/17182/homepage_large.2ddd893f.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Grouper-Holding.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,27,Sharon Van Etten,"""Your Love Is Killing Me""",Jagjaguwar,"At nearly six-and-a-half minutes, ""Your Love Is Killing Me"" is Sharon Van Etten’s longest song. It’s also arguably her best set of lyrics, her most disarming vocal performance, and certainly the purest distillation of her favorite themes: the depravity of romance and the physical toll of emotional commitment. ""Break my legs so I won’t walk to you,"" she sings over a Morricone guitar. ""Cut my tongue so I can’t talk to you."" It’s a beautiful piece of music that conveys ugly emotions, but there’s a dignity in her self-mutilation, a contradiction that shows just how much she has grown as a singer, as a songwriter, as a musician, and as a producer in the last five years. ""Your Love Is Killing Me"" is one long, unsettling crescendo of post-rock guitars, military snare drum rolls, and window-smashing piano chords. The song builds and builds, but it never crests; there is no catharsis, no resolution, which would be troubling for any listener if Van Etten’s fraught vibrato didn’t signal someone too self-possessed to put up with any dude’s bullshit for very long. —Stephen M. Deusner",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/16931/homepage_large.2592e138.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sharon_Van_Etten-Your_Love_Is_Killing_Me.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,26,Beyoncé,"""Partition""",Columbia,"Beyoncé hasn’t been a traditional singles artist for years—4, her 2011 opus, didn’t even put anything in the top 10. And when you Beyoncé not only an album into the world but over a dozen songs with prime-time-ready videos, the formula’s bound to be shaken even further. The obvious industry singles—Ryan Tedder collab ""XO"", erstwhile Katy Perry song ""Pretty Hurts"", whatever “Standing on the Sun” was supposed to be in the months Before Knowles—floundered; even ""Drunk in Love"", a bona fide hit that rode the pomp and TV performance circuit to No. 2, seemed more like a populist underdog fighting chart trends than a preordained smash. Yet there were alternatives: 14 songs, all different, yet each personality-packed, like a personality quiz without any of the data-mining malaise—except the sort that produces people’s-choice singles. And the people’s choice, it turns out, was ""Partition"". If Beyoncé-the-statement was reducible to a single track, this would be it. Jay-Z asserts his presence without actually commandeering the track to rap about breastses and breakfast. Beyoncé thoroughly enjoys her reverie, fetishizing their own celebrity because who else gets to do it? And the track balances no-nonsense hitmaking—the hook’s her most traditionally urban radio-ready since B’Day, the beat roaring from simmer to insatiable and back within seconds—and nonchalant trolling. If you think ""Partition"" is a load of oversharing in a cab seat, Beyoncé is mocking you via a French Big Lebowski lecture. If you think ""Partition"" is a big cameras-flashing FEMINIST TRIUMPH, Beyoncé will make you frame that around a goofy Big Lebowski quote, knowing you’ll share it on all platforms anyway. It’s provocative, let’s say; it gets the people going. —Katherine St. Asaph Beyoncé: ""Partition""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ12_E5R3qc,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/107/beyoncealbum.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beyonc-Partition.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,25,Vic Mensa,"""Down on My Luck""",Virgin EMI,"From its opening notes, which recall the clean, heady transcendence of Inner City's techno classic ""Good Life"", Vic Mensa's Stefan Ponce-produced ""Down on My Luck"" is a hip-house record that understands how dance music works. With four-on-the-floor ever-present on Top 40 radio, you'd think more artists outside mainstream pop would move in this direction. All too often, those who do end up pandering to an audience looking for hip-hop's superficial accents. In Chicago hip-hop's competitive environment, Vic had the misfortune of reaching national attention in the wake of Chance the Rapper's breakthrough, and even though he can spit circles around the best rappers in practically any other major urban center, it took a radical new approach to grab a piece of the spotlight. What ""Down on My Luck"" captures that few hip-house records have before is dance music's very texture and ambiance: the feeling of being at once among a crowd and alone, that cocktail of physical release and emotional vulnerability. Its closest point of comparison might be Kid Cudi's lonely stoner, although where that record set a mood, Vic Mensa constructs a world. The dancefloor offers a push away from comfort and familiarity, a vision of alternate possibilities: witness the song's bridge, its moment of clarity, an offer of escape. —David Drake",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=998P6HEzCdI,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/16937/homepage_large.7e14e7bd.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Vic_Mensa-Down_on_My_Luck.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,24,St. Vincent,"""Digital Witness""",Loma Vista,"Annie Clark seems like the kind of person who would name her fourth album St. Vincent and then quietly snicker when people referred to it as ""self-titled."" Since 2007’s debut Marry Me, Clark’s entire aesthetic derives from deep immersion into not just various personae, but into the very idea of persona. When she sung the phrase ""I’m not anything"" less than a minute into her first album, after all, she repeated the word ""any"" seven times—shedding its semantic skin and becoming a declaration of principle: ""I’m not Annie, Annie, Annie, Annie…"" ""Digital Witness"" is her latest statement of purpose, and it’s her most political yet. Twenty-first century media immersion is the target, and as if coming from Clark’s giant face beaming from the side of a blank building façade in a dystopian near-future, she intones: ""I want all of your mind."" Or perhaps it’s more mundane than that. In 1978, Clark’s erstwhile collaborator and primary influence David Byrne wrote a song about a couple who decided to make their own sitcoms, because their TV reception sucked and nothing good was ever on, anyway. Thirty-six years later, faced with massive, wall-mounted flatscreen monitors showing imagery with higher definition than reality itself, Clark declares, ""people turn the TV on it looks just like a window."" If watching TV has become more real than the 3D version outside, then what’s to be done with the miniature TVs in our pockets? The chorus, which transforms the verses’ funk-by-Mondrian into something more cathedral-shaped, addresses this via a mini-thinkpiece on selfiehood, contrasting everyday acts shot to be witnessed with the need for (private) confession. Though on the surface, Clark asking ""What’s the point of even sleeping?"" resonates like an out-of-touch crank who still has a flip-phone, it’s more likely that she’s thinking along the lines of a filmmaker who asked a similar question a half-century ago. What if the point of sleeping was to be watched doing so? ""We have this feeling that we're being watched, and our psychic response is to make ourselves transparent,"" Clark explained earlier this year. ""The real currency in the future will be privacy."" This is true, but it also might be part of an artistic long con for Clark: if average lives enter permanent airplane mode, that means top-notch performers like Clark herself (if not 2014’s most noteworthy digital witnesses) can assume the throne. Watching her mechanistically perfect live performances of ""Witness"", it’s hard not to think that this is Clark’s goal for this particular St. Vincent mission statement: establishing the artist’s performance as a sacred place. Get back to your seats. —Eric Harvey",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/st_vincent/digital-witness | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6ZVEMzvZIY,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/16470/homepage_large.30db8666.jpg,/dataset/artwork/St_Vincent-Digital_Witness.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,23,Flying Lotus,"""Never Catch Me"" [ft. Kendrick Lamar]",Warp,"A whole universe of sound breaks out and crackles like an electric shock in the speedy ""Never Catch Me"". There are many reference points, from jazz-tinged drum'n'bass guru Roni Size to the gleeful mania of OutKast’s ""B.O.B"" to early '90s jazz rap, but the way Kendrick Lamar is used on the track highlights how confident Steven Ellison is with his music. Kendrick’s an important, vital part in it, but still just a part, serving a greater whole, caught up in a rush that makes it feel like you’re a cartoon character grabbing the back of a moving train. It’s hard to imagine anyone else using such ecstatic talent in quite the same way, but the best post-breakout FlyLo music always feels like a partnership of equals, with everyone forging together in the name of increasingly out-there concepts. ""Never Catch Me"" manages to distill all of that, plus some incredibly virtuosic chops, while never forgetting to make it fun as hell to listen to. —Nick Neyland Flying Lotus: ""Never Catch Me"" [ft. Kendrick Lamar]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lXD0vv-ds8,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/17077/homepage_large.09f810ed.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Flying_Lotus-Never_Catch_Me_ft_Kendrick_Lamar.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,22,Ex Hex,"""Don't Wanna Lose""",Merge,"Ex Hex is what happens when a woman bred of D.C. hardcore—Mary Timony, formerly of Helium, Wild Flag, and Autoclave—goes for the shimmy and swagger of 1970s and '80s power pop and glam, compacting the chords and burning down any lingering whiff of the cock-rock era's all-boy-clubhouse. ""Don't Wanna Lose"" kicks out Rips, this three-piece girl gang's garage-pop gift of a debut LP. It's the most direct and confident song Timony's put to tape, glaring at a man who won't make up his mind—and who knew cold hearts could sound like such joy? This self-empowered song cooly shakes-it-off, so to speak, warding off romantic uncertainty and blue feelings with guitar-slashes deserving of a windmill or four. Just try listening to this—a chorus to holler into a hairbrush, hooky riffs worth air-guitar-ing—with both feet on the ground: ""I don't wanna lose your love/ It's in my hand, it's just a question of/ If you're gonna stop messing around/ You better hurry up, don't let me down."" ""Don't Wanna Lose"" puts an unlikely spring in your step—little hurts you can dance away. —Jenn Pelly",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/mergerecords/ex-hex-dont-wanna-lose/,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/107/exhex.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ex_Hex-Dont_Wanna_Lose.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,21,Sophie,"""Lemonade"" / “Hard""",Numbers,"In a year that was all about ""disruption"" and ""frictionlessness""—whether Uber's carjacking of the taxi business or U2's hijacking of our iPhones—the PC Music crew knew a thing or two about both. For an indicator of how they stirred shit up, just see any comments thread related to the collective's work. And did anything sound more efficiently lubricated than PCM associate Sophie's oilslick synth patches or his space-elevator vocals? The mystery producer slid into our 2014 like the tubular yellow water slide of this double-A-sided single's cover art, including a Boiler Room ""appearance"" where he was represented by a drag proxy. It figures that he'd opt for visceral motifs, like the lascivious chant of ""L-l-lemonade,"" the rubbery rebound of ""Hard""; this was bubblegum pop as run through a supercollider, and the most genuinely futuristic sound to come around in ages. —Philip Sherburne Sophie: ""Lemonade"" Sophie: ""Hard""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdLvp630plc,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/107/lemonade.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sophie-Lemonade__Hard.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,20,Nicki Minaj,"""Boss Ass Bitch (Remix)"" [ft. PTAF]",self-released,"If there’s anything that makes the Peter Rosenbergs of the world more indignant than sparkly pop music, it’s being on the wrong side of history. Nicki Minaj gets that, which is precisely why she’s such an excellent troll. After spending last year leisurely owning every track on which she deigned to lend a guest verse, she entered 2014 with an agenda, leveraging a toned-down makeover and a string of no-punches-pulled remixes to taunt naysayers into frothy, late-pass concessions of her greatness. Of course, this ""return to fundamentals"" turned out to be an elaborate set-up for the punchline that was ""Anaconda"", perhaps her most explicitly girl-oriented single in a catalog full of them. The funniest part of this whole scheme, in retrospect, is that all the evidence was hidden in plain sight. Come on: the track that set the tone for all the bandwagon boot-licking was ""Boss Ass Bitch"", a remix of snappy L.A. trio PTAF’s lowkey-viral hit, on which Nicki’s silver tongue was apparently enough to distract from the fact that she was slandering half of the audience. Her plain-spoken flexes read like an especially misandrist selection from Grapefruit, Yoko Ono’s book of avant-garde instructionals: ""Imagine one thousand suns in the sky at the same time/ Let them shine for an hour/ Fuck his best friends, then make them yes-men."" (Not to mention, it was a high-water mark for emoji utilization in rap: no combination of words could have been more evocative than that red heart and kissy-face.) It’s likely that many dudes who came around to Nicki early this year have already lost interest, having deduced that The Pinkprint won’t actually be Illmatic With Tits—but it’s too late. The joke’s on them. (That’s Rule 4.) —Meaghan GarveyNicki Minaj: ""Boss Ass Bitch (Remix)"" [ft. PTAF]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6ihCQZK-r0,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/107/nicki.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nicki_Minaj-Boss_Ass_Bitch_Remix_ft_PTAF.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,19,Sun Kil Moon,"""Carissa""",Caldo Verde,"Mark Kozelek’s Sun Kil Moon project has taken on many shapes since its inception, shrinking from the full band guitar theatrics of 2003’s Ghosts of the Great Highway through baroque voice-and-guitar on 2010’s Admiral Fell Promises and back to something in the median on this year’s Benji. But the rambling, ripped-from-the-headlines songwriting of recent releases proved the most perplexing development until it snapped into focus on crushing Benji opener ""Carissa"". The story’s short but wild: Mark gets a call about a second cousin’s peculiar death via exploding aerosol can, remembers an uncle who met a similar demise, and plots a trip back to Ohio to get answers and pay respects. ""Carissa"" examines the baffling frailty of the human body and the sheer randomness of adversity, but what Kozelek seems to turn over most in his grief-wracked mind is the casual drift of his and Carissa’s trajectories thanks to circumstance (her family, his career) and the unwitting finality of it all: the false notion we carry that the people and places we leave behind lie in wait for our return. —Craig Jenkins",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/107/benji.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sun_Kil_Moon-Carissa.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,18,Panda Bear,"""Mr Noah""",Domino,"In his solo work and as a member of Animal Collective, Noah Lennox has always had a talent for making strange and out-there sounds register as playful and innocent. Even still, he has his work cut out for him on ""Mr Noah"", from his upcoming fifth solo LP, Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper. Where Lennox’s previous solo productions were built by stacking loops like so many Lego bricks, ""Mr Noah"" somehow ups the ante on density—it's a song so packed with spooky and animalistic electronic squiggles that listening to it is a little like trying to get comfy on a haunted waterbed. Lennox's voice is the only thing providing firm ground. Last year, on Daft Punk's ""Doin' It Right"", the 36 year-old sang a duet with a vocoder, lending his mellow, personable presence to an album that sought to re-establish live instrumentation in dance music. On ""Mr Noah"", his multi-tracked harmonies play a similar role, helping to flip a song full of dream-like audio graffiti into something more familiar, comforting, and human. —Aaron LeitkoPanda Bear: ""Mr Noah""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmXIIL2tmR8,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/17179/homepage_large.0db656eb.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Panda_Bear-Mr_Noah.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,17,Tinashe,"""2 On"" [ft. Schoolboy Q]",RCA,"Tinashe's ""2 On"" was one of Top 40 pop's most graceful reprieves in 2014. When most every pop genre was engaging in (unfortunate) flirtations with the corniest hallmarks of EDM, the '90s R&B traditionalism  in ""2 On"" was a familiar, seductive comfort—a rare hit that didn't seek to bludgeon us with tools of Ibiza. The DJ Mustard-produced track is all slinky regulation, mirroring Tinashe's singing, which hardly rises above a post-coital coo. Her voice is smooth, flawless—she's from Aaliyah-school of smoldering, Monica without gymnastic range—but there's a lot of power in her whisper voice. While the lyrics work every cliche of turntness (save for Schoolboy Q's trip downtown), the cool understatement of the rest of the song makes it feel more like a post-party song, a pre-dawn vamp, a fade out of pleasure. It's small, personal, concise; ""2 On"" succeeds and stands out on the merits of what it doesn't do as much as what it's working with. —Jessica Hopper",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/tinashenow/tinashe-2-on-feat-schoolboy-q,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/107/2on.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tinashe-2_On_ft_Schoolboy_Q.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,16,Young Thug,"""Stoner""",1017 / Asylum / Atlantic,"It wasn’t so long ago that being a Young Thug fan felt like you were in on rap’s most rewarding secret. Revelling in the unpredictability of his I Came From Nothing mixtape series, I can honestly admit that, no, I didn’t see his success coming: even at his poppiest, Thug felt way too weird to transcend cult status. Even on his breakthrough release, 2013’s 1017 Thug, the bits that rose to the top were highly tweetable but barely marketable; keep in mind, this was still pre-""Versace"", a song that would be used as a punchline by ""serious"" rap fans as often as it would be celebrated later that year. That feels like ages ago. Thug closes 2014 as, if not quite a household name, an unavoidable presence in the rap landscape. A short list of stars who co-opted his once-singular swag this year includes Nicki Minaj, T.I., Gucci Mane, and Lil Wayne (his closest spiritual progenitor, who at this point feels prudish in relation), not to mention the dozens of impressionable ATLiens who’ve practically made his yelps and chirps into its own subgenre. It isn’t that Thug’s succeeded in spite of his quirks: they’ve become the hook. The odder he gets, the more people respond, his endless idiosyncrasies feeding the insatiable demand for clicks that’s come to reshape online media. Such a near-sighted focus on the ""weirdness"" sells Thug short. Of his three major singles this year, each highlighted a distinct facet of his skill set. ""Danny Glover"" was peak zaniness, probing the outer limits of what constitutes catchiness; ""The Blanguage"", in collaboration with producer Metro Boomin, presented Thug as a deft lyricist and effective balladeer. But best of all was ""Stoner"", in which words fell short as descriptors and functioned instead as measurements of rhythm and space. If anything, it made more sense as a grime song than a rap song, with Dun Deal’s spare beat challenging Thug to find new ways to make himself comfortable within it. It struck a precarious balance between restraint and release: an unsure hand could've sent the whole thing toppling. It wasn’t weird—it was masterful. —Meaghan GarveyYoung Thug: ""Stoner""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6iQAEL7fHA,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/107/stoner.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Young_Thug-Stoner.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,15,Lil B,"""No Black Person Is Ugly""",BasedWorld,"All too often, Lil B's work can be reduced to a joke, a problem with which he can be complicit, delivering every word with a knowing wink. The risk of 2014's ""No Black Person Is Ugly"" is two-fold: absolute statements suggest hyperbole, an evident exaggeration. (If there was any doubt, the video's title on YouTube sets the expectations for you: ""MOST POWERFUL SONG OF THE DECADE?"") Yet, rather than undercutting his message, the song's grand gesture is one of pure sincerity. Its Gábor Szabó guitar loop blankets the listener in summery warmth and, in concert with its chorus, produces an ""Everybody Loves the Sunshine"" for our time, charged with poignancy. At certain moments, B’s words jut out from the song's formal shape, suggesting it may have been freestyled, yet no statement seems any less consciously made than the one before it. Preternaturally in touch with the moment, B hits on the predominant controversies of our time: police brutality, media representation, rape, violence. Like Kendrick Lamar's ""i"", ""No Black Person Is Ugly"" treats self-love as a radical panacea for the moment, a method of wrestling with grand antagonisms on a personal level. —David DrakeLil B: ""No Black Person Is Ugly""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83p69JhDnwU,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/17020/homepage_large.ee104cfc.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lil_B-No_Black_Person_Is_Ugly.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,14,QT,"""Hey QT""",XL,"It’s never been more socially acceptable for music nerds to declare their love for mainstream pop, but what happens when two of dance music’s most innovative new voices team up on a salute to the genre that inches toward parody? ""Hey QT"" is just one swap of a vocal line away from being a Jock Jam—and that’s precisely the point. On the campy debut single from PC Music boss A. G. Cook and London producer Sophie's XL-signed QT project, epic EDM build-ups and synths designed to elicit clap-alongs are tempered by vocals so high-pitched and British, it’s hard to know what to make of it the first, say, five times you hear ""Hey QT"". ""There’s something I want to say,"" the ""sparkling future pop sensation"" at the heart of the fictional QT project repeats. When she finally gets to her point, she just needs to make sure she’s being properly adored, like any burgeoning pop star should be. —Jillian MapesQT: ""Hey QT""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6_ikWlJu_0,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/17065/homepage_large.31b246e6.jpg,/dataset/artwork/QT-Hey_QT.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,13,Todd Terje,"""Johnny and Mary"" [ft. Bryan Ferry] (Robert Palmer cover)",Olsen,"We don’t actually know how long Bryan Ferry spent puzzling over his cover of Robert Palmer’s minor 1980 hit ""Johnny and Mary"" before Todd Terje finally unlocked it for him, but 2014 certainly provided the perfect context in which to revive this riddle about the tragicomedy of male privilege. Mired in the midst of a minor tragicomedy of his own in the form of a fizzy disco smash that utterly refused to die (2012’s ""Inspector Norse""), Terje’s perspective on ""Johnny and Mary"" involved slowing it down by nearly 100 BPM and infusing it with some slow-burning Vangelian pomp. The setting not only proved an ideal backdrop for Ferry’s luxurious, searching performance, it also milked the last bits of pathos out of what was surely Palmer’s finest song. There were too many moments this year where it felt like so many of us lacked, as the song says, a sense of proportion; ""Johnny and Mary"" made that very sad idea sound sublime. —Mark Pytlik",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/16798/homepage_large.34be41a6.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Todd_Terje-Johnny_and_Mary_ft_Bryan_Ferry_Robert_Palmer_cover.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,12,Drake,"""0 to 100 / The Catch Up""",Young Money / Cash Money / Republic,"Drake's love of all things Wu-Tang Clan permeated last year's Nothing Was the Same, and he continued to wear this influence on his sleeve in 2014. Produced by his in-house squad of beatmakers (Boi-1da, Noah ""40"" Shebib, and Nineteen85 all get credits on this one), ""0 to 100/The Catch Up"" captures the dirt-under-the-nails menace of vintage RZA beats, and it's easy to imagine Raekwon et al. firing off poisonous darts in the twisted alleyways of the track's first half, before it switches up to something more familiar and amniotic. Equal parts origin story and myth-building exercise, the song is a quintessential example of Drake's ability to blur the lines between shit-talking and introspection. His adenoidal yelp has matured into a formidable snarl, giving his boasts a weight they lacked just a few years ago. He's also become ruthlessly efficient, waiting but two bars to introduce the song's infectious and instantly-memed hook. But for all its bluster, at the heart of the song is an artist too busy stressing over the future to enjoy being at the top. His solution? Keep moving forward, because anything less is moving backwards. Released for free on SoundCloud back in June and now nominated for a Grammy (for Best Rap Song), ""0 to 100/The Catch Up"" is also a message aimed at Drake's competition, and it couldn't be any clearer: my toss-offs are better than your singles. It's both a boast and a challenge, as well as one hell of a power move. —Renato Pagnani",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/octobersveryown/drake-0-to-100,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/107/0to100.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Drake-0_to_100__The_Catch_Up.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,11,Shamir,"""On the Regular""",XL,"Channeling electronic music and house alongside the free-flowing rhymes of De La Soul, 20-year-old Shamir Bailey’s instantly memorable ""On the Regular"" has rightfully become his calling card. Following this summer’s Northtown EP and a subsequent signing with XL, Shamir’s latest single merges chiming cowbells, fidgety synths, and a healthy dose of confidence for what is easily 2014’s most joyful kiss-off to the haters. The braggadocio fits the wunderkind well; his switch from swift rapping to a crooning tenor occurs with a new, self-assured swagger here that puts any doubts about his arrival to rest. If Northtown proved that Shamir had talent (see: the slick, Sylvester-indebted disco-funk banger ""If It Wasn’t True""), ""On the Regular"" exposed an effervescent side of the young artist, achieving an experimental sound simply by reveling in his own cheeky, gawky sincerity. —Eric TorresShamir: ""On the Regular""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lp9GgdCgMXk,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/17194/homepage_large.7dca3d41.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Shamir-On_the_Regular.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,10,Michael Jackson,"""Love Never Felt So Good (Original Version)""",Epic,"Despite claims of endlessly fruitful archives, Michael Jackson’s forgettable first posthumous album, 2010’s Michael, suggested otherwise. Soon enough, the nagging worry that we would never hear another great unreleased Jackson song ever again began to harden into sad fact. And then: ""Love Never Felt So Good"". The track was released in three separate versions this year, including a winning, swing-laden disco take and a contemporized Timbaland/Timberlake update, but it’s this spare piano-and-vocal demo put to tape in the first half of 1983 that sounds the most lasting. Jackson wrote and recorded the track with Vegas crooner—and onetime child star—Paul Anka, who was attempting a comeback at the time and wanted to place a duet with Michael on his new album. But at the start of '83, Thriller was just starting to become the universe-expanding behemoth we all now know. Realizing a collaboration with an aging lounge act may not be the best career move for the biggest pop phenomenon since the Beatles—in modern terms, this would be a little like Drake suddenly dropping a single with Engelbert Humperdinck—Jackson backed out at the last minute. Given Michael’s artistic trajectory, this also makes sense, because ""Love Never Felt So Good"" is the sort of unabashedly joyous pop song the singer was trying to grow out of back then. But after decades of paranoia, angst, and dwindling musical returns leading up to his grim 2009 death, the track now sounds like a much-needed respite from the darkness. Without any extraneous embellishments, the demo functions as a singing clinic, with Jackson putting enough force through his lungs to make the the hook’s stacked vocals sound three dimensional. Meanwhile, his finger snaps and beat-boxed hi-hats could very well serve as this year’s most swinging percussion. At the end of the song, we hear him coming down to Earth: ""All right, that’s fine,"" he deadpans, ostensibly following a vocal take, not sounding tremendously impressed. In 1983, ""Love Never Felt So Good"" was another classic-sounding song made by someone hell bent on the future; in 2014, it’s a reminder of why everyone fell in love with Michael Jackson in the first place. —Ryan Dombal",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/michael-jackson-xscape/love-never-felt-so-good-original-version,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/107/xscape.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Michael_Jackson-Love_Never_Felt_So_Good_Original_Version.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,9,Future,"""Move That Dope"" [ft. Pharrell, Pusha T, and Casino]",Free Bandz,"Just when Future was on the brink of dissolving into a purple puddle of structureless, cooing R&B, ""Move That Dope"" arrived to remind you of his eternal street-rapper status. Everyone here raps like a maniac, but it doesn’t really matter who they are or what’s being said—this one’s for the workhorses, not the overthinkers. It’s brawn over brains on a never-ending assembly line powered by the battery-acid lurch of Mike WiLL's twisted take on Salt-N-Pepa’s ""Push It"". (This is maybe the only major rap single of the year that would have been made actively worse by a Drake verse.) Whip it, push it, work it, move it, harder, better, faster, stronger—the sheer physicality, the just do it quality of ""Move That Dope"" is so powerful that it’s hard to imagine work getting done any other way. —Carrie Battan",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/16612/homepage_large.8fe40f24.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Future-Move_That_Dope_ft_Pharrell_Pusha_T_and_Casino.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,8,Perfume Genius,"""Queen""",Matador,"There are qualities about Mike Hadreas that make him seem heroic: His songbook takes on themes of trauma and addiction, the body and identity, all in a way that seems designed to protect us—a reminder that we're not alone in our otherness. This year, Hadreas has been selling T-shirts depicting an emasculated Eminem, a proper jab at one of popular music's most problematic living artists. On the shirt, Slim is clad in coral lipstick, just a few shades lighter than the tint Hadreas wore on his watershed ""Letterman"" performance in October, contorting a slow, sultry sway through ""Queen"". Indeed, Hadreas' work as Perfume Genius has opened a crucial dialogue over the past half decade. Recall the 2012 incident with his 16-second YouTube ad for Put Your Back N 2 It getting censored for ""promoting mature sexual themes"" because it featured two shirtless men hugging. As there's no shortage of topless folks on YouTube, the message from Google was clear: it was the queerness that was unsuitable and—as the corporation wrote in a statement—""not family safe."" And so, should you need convincing, the quaking ""Queen"" is empirically necessary. ""No family is safe/ When I sashay,"" Hadreas asserts through expressive breaths on the refrain of the year, channeling personal rage into a surreal energy, addressing gay panic—the idea that one's visible otherness as a gay individual makes people uncomfortable, that it’s perceived as a threat to the straight world. Hadreas sounds just as defiant and poetic in 2014 as Patti Smith did in 1975 telling us how Jesus did not die for her sins. And like Smith's earth-shattering subversions of the female archetype, Hadreas' provocations are confident, uncompromising, epic—he appoints himself ""queen"" and owns the supposed flaws of his sexuality (""cracked, peeling, riddled with disease"") with a deviant wink and demonic smirk. One would expect music that is both radically politicized and universal from someone who grew up listening to ""a lot of badass feminist music"" and who says he's seen Sleater-Kinney at least 13 times. His words alone have such inspired power—imagine them publicly broadcast on a marquee in LED lighting, like a Jenny Holzer installation—but ""Queen"" does not just illuminate the potential of explicit language. It has few aesthetic precedents, though it pushes the borders of pop and avant-gardism in a way Arthur Russell would have appreciated. The cool drag of a drum contribution from PJ Harvey collaborator John Parish morphed the song into what has been aptly described in interviews as ""stoner glam."" There is a tornado swirling—a deep, booming low-end; abrasive synths rolling into an ecstatic dreamscape; passing clouds made of soul—and Hadreas is at the eye of the storm, a light steadily beaming from the chaos of the world, stepping into the future. ""Queen"" is a gay anthem, but it also empathizes broadly with all people who biologically have less direct access to the top seats in society. In a year that rendered the world's rampant, widespread injustice so depressingly apparent, what could keep us believing that all this music stuff matters so much? It's songs like ""Queen"" and the sea changes they summon that give it purpose. The future of pop belongs to people like Hadreas, who will take us forward to new places we didn't know we needed to go. Surrounded by this loud, extreme music, it sounds like nothing can hurt him now. —Jenn PellyPerfume Genius: ""Queen""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbe94RDsKmk,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/16988/homepage_large.573ceecf.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Perfume_Genius-Queen.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,7,Beyoncé,"""***Flawless"" [ft. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]",Columbia,"Since the surprise-release of Beyoncé last December, everything Queen B has touched turned to gold. Case in point: ""***Flawless"". Through the sheer force of her awesomeness, Bey willed this deeply political, deeply weird, deeply disjointed collage of song fragments and soundbites into one of the most exciting tracks of the year. Just think about the astonishingly random component parts of this many-headed Hydra: a recording of Beyoncé’s childhood group Girls Tyme losing on ""Star Search"", a trap banger called ""Bow Down"", a TED Talk by the writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and a self-empowerment anthem boasting a meme-inducing catchphrase. (Not to mention Nicki Minaj’s scorched-earth rhymes and Yoncé’s own Elevator-Incident-referencing rap verse on the remix.) Beyoncé’s defiant silhouette standing in front of the word FEMINIST at the MTV Video Music Awards was one of the defining pop music images of 2014. She woke up like this, she’s flawless, she’s a feminist. And, as this track declares, we all can–and should–be all of those things, too. —Amy PhillipsBeyoncé: ""Flawless"" [ft. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56qgO0C82vY,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/107/beyoncealbum.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beyonc-Flawless_ft_Chimamanda_Ngozi_Adichie.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,6,Run the Jewels,"""Close Your Eyes (And Count to Fuck)"" [ft. Zack De La Rocha]",Mass Appeal,"""Fashion slave, you protested to get in a fucking lookbook/ Everything I scribble’s like The Anarchist’s Cookbook..."" Run the Jewels is a breakneck collision of two experts MCs’ joy of hardheaded rhymes and cutting disdain for the machinery of rap stardom, and Run the Jewels 2 highlight ""Close Your Eyes (And Count to Fuck)"" dispenses healthy doses of El-P and Killer Mike’s outsider agitprop with a snarling, shit-eating grin. Mike and El trade rhymes Run-D.M.C. style about all the places the guys who run rap are currently fucking up on the job until the last minute, when Rage Against the Machine frontman Zack de la Rocha, whose voice is sampled in the song’s production, jumps out with an incendiary guest verse riddled with sci-fi and jazz references (""I’m Miles Ahead of you, you can sip my Bitches Brew""), merging three strains of government distrust and dystopic boom bap into one. —Craig Jenkins",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/107/homepage_large.e0491b02.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Run_the_Jewels-Close_Your_Eyes_And_Count_to_Fuck_ft_Zack_De_La_Rocha.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,5,The War on Drugs,"""Red Eyes""",Secretly Canadian,"Beer commercial rock usually doesn’t mince words; ""Red Eyes"", on the other hand, purees and liquefies them. After dozens and dozens of listens to War on Drugs’ skyscraping breakthrough, only one vocable has made itself truly discernible and so the meaning had to be derived from context. The tearful title alludes to Adam Granofsky’s well-documented creative and romantic struggles during the making of Lost in the Dream, and so it could be heard as a prayer for resilience during the most troubled of times. The music tells a different story, not just of maintaining, but having blind faith rewarded with triumph on the other side. Granofksy battles through his typically torrential reverb and unyielding rhythms before summoning the escape velocity for a chorus that rockets towards stratospheric heights never thought possible for War on Drugs. And so ""Red Eyes"" doesn’t soothe so much as soothsay: when that chorus hits now, you’re reminded of how Lost in the Dream took Granofsky from the guy fronting ""Kurt Vile’s old band"" to a festival-headlining dude in US Weekly and how it became a go-to album for so many others just trying to get out of 2014 with their sanity intact. But the moment before ""Red Eyes"" lifts off into the unknown, you get that one word of intelligible English: ""WOOO!"" I’ll drink to that. —Ian Cohen",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/107/Lostinthedream.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_War_on_Drugs-Red_Eyes.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,4,Caribou,"""Can't Do Without You""",Merge,"Marvin Gaye’s 1965 hit ""Ain’t That Peculiar"" is about being in the fog of love, where it can feel good to hurt, lies sometimes sound like the truth, and tears of joy and tears of pain can be tough to tell apart. A screwed-down vocal sample from that song props up ""Can't Do Without You"", which also takes on the confusing complexities of relationships, albeit from a different angle. Rather than waxing poetic, Caribou’s Dan Snaith turns form into function; as Gaye’s voice repeats its devotion unabated for nearly four minutes—all while the producer’s homespun psychedelic beats swirl near the precipice of control—the effect turns from heartwarming, to obsessive, to ecstatic. So when Snaith pipes up at the end, he sounds more exasperated than smitten: ""And you’re the only thing I think about/ It’s all that I can still do."" This is grown-up interdependence moonlighting on the dancefloor—kinda giddy, kinda repetitive, kinda endless. —Ryan Dombal",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfU6bGfMfyY,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/16951/homepage_large.e649308d.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Caribou-Cant_Do_Without_You.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,3,FKA twigs,"""Two Weeks""",Young Turks,"""Fuck alternative R&B!"" FKA twigs proclaimed, and she was right—if nothing else, for all those wolf-cries of flimsy Aaliyah simulacra that have littered blogs in the 2010s, rendering any legitimate comparisons to the R&B icon hopelessly impotent. But, but—have you seen the ""Two Weeks"" video? It’s impossible to ignore the Queen of the Damned influences as twigs plays both goddess and courtier, her quiet drama instantly making Kanye’s ""moving painting"" feel comparatively po-faced. The comparison goes deeper than that, though: on ""Two Weeks""—the first time twigs’ pop potential made even remote sense—she redefines ""diva"" for 2014 and beyond in a way that no one since Aaliyah has done so effectively. In its universe, whispers and screams hold equal power, and attraction is revealed as something far more complicated than a cut-and-dry binary of ""hot"" versus ""not."" ""Two Weeks"" bursts into bloom in the humid space between physicality and sentiment; to call the desire expressed here ""lust"" feels insufficient, crass even, but emotions alone are all but children’s playthings. ""I know it hurts"": toying with what exactly ""it"" entails becomes its own foreplay. When another R&B deity commanded me to bow down, I’d never considered taking it literally; beholding ""Two Weeks"", I prostrate myself at twigs’ altar, submitting to whatever is yet to come. —Meaghan GarveyFKA twigs: ""Two Weeks""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L53gjP-TtGE,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/16971/homepage_large.245a22bb.jpg,/dataset/artwork/FKA_twigs-Two_Weeks.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,2,iLoveMakonnen,"""Club Goin Up on a Tuesday"" [ft. Drake]",Self-released,"It works because it’s original. It’s simple. It’s weird. You can sing it—even I can sing it. Is it rap? If you got in a time machine and took it back to 1990, rap fans would look the other way and step over you like street garbage. And who was Makonnen? Maybe a singer. Certainly not a lyricist. Who has ever made so much of the word ""choosey,"" or of a day on which most people just check the mail and think about tomorrow? Like Lil B or Morrissey or thousands of cosmic introverts before him, he presented himself as a poet of the margins, patron saint of the small, adopter of the unwanted. Then there’s the part where he takes psilocybin and someone films him listening to Drake on his track for the first time. He giggles like he’s being tickled. And isn't that the point? The joy? The all? —Mike Powell",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/17041/homepage_large.7314eb3b.jpg,/dataset/artwork/iLoveMakonnen-Club_Goin_Up_on_a_Tuesday_ft_Drake.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2014 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9555-the-100-best-tracks-of-2014/,2014,year,song,1,Future Islands,"""Seasons (Waiting on You)""",4AD,"A couple of years ago Future Islands were a tiny indie band on Thrill Jockey, gradually assembling a small but devoted cult. This year they got about as close as an indie rock band can to being a household name. You know what happened in between: a performance on “Late Show With David Letterman”, which found lead singer Sam Herring wilding out and owning the stage with some seriously goofy and committed dancing. Letterman was thunderstruck, and he sensed the gravity of what he’d just witnessed instantly. A meme was born. But while these digital fragments will always cling to this song and are the reason many people heard it, the song itself needed to matter. All the pieces, starting with the arrangement and production, fell into place. The new wave of the ’80s was and is often mocked: funny haircuts, too many synthesizers, too much melodrama. But it also happens to the genre that best expresses a certain kind of open-hearted yearning. You can tell that Future Islands bassist William Cashion has listened to his share of Peter Hook, and he understands that his instrument is charged with translating emotion musically, seesawing between the “It’s like this, no, it’s like this” chord changes. The synths hover and sweep like credits could roll at any moment. Like the ephemera that surrounds it, “Seasons (Waiting on You)” contains important things that seem in opposition but music, magic stuff that it is, somehow holds together. You can laugh about it and cry about it at the same time, giving in to its hyper-dramatic thrust makes you feel vulnerable and exposed but also gives you power. Herring was born with that growling voice but there’s always one layer where it sounds a little ridiculous, and then underneath that is a deep core of passion. The song is a little moment that became a huge one because it expressed something beautiful and recognizable, which is to say it’s quintessential Future Islands. If you ever seen the band live, Herring stalks the stage like a James Brown or a Bruce Springsteen, beating his chest—he simply will not rest until he has personally reached and won over every person in the room. Irony is out the window, even if humor is not. On “Seasons”, he and the band demand human connection, acting as if it’s a matter of life and death, which of course it is. —Mark Richardson",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/future-islands/seasons-waiting-on-you | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ee4bfu_t3c,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/107/futureislands.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Future_Islands-Seasons_Waiting_on_You.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9293-the-top-50-albums-of-2013/,2013,year,album,50,Pusha-T,My Name Is My Name,Def Jam / GOOD,"At a time in pop music where immediacy counts more than ever, Pusha T’s official debut album got pushed back so many times that it had started to become the rap-world shorthand for a project left to die on the shelf. But instead of becoming a liability, My Name Is My Name’s repeated delays ended up becoming an advantage. Pusha’s bluntly unadorned flow has always been best suited to skeletal arrangements (revisit the decade-old “Grindin’” if you need a vivid reminder), so My Name dropping into the thick of a craze for minimalist rap worked out pretty well for him. As one of the more ardent affiliates of Kanye’s G.O.O.D. Music crew, it’s not surprising that the album shares some of Yeezus’ stark sonics, but the beats are more comfortably luxurious. With so much experience working with stripped-down sounds, Pusha has become a master of making a lot out of very little. Push never oversells his songs, but listen through My Name enough times and you start uncovering the wealth of subtle hooks it has hiding in plain sight. —Miles Raymer Pusha T: ""Numbers on the Boards""",Platform: YouTube - Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DawrlSwHUiM,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/19471/homepage_large.c4897c03.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Pusha-T-My_Name_Is_My_Name.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9293-the-top-50-albums-of-2013/,2013,year,album,49,Julia Holter,Loud City Song,Domino,"""Try to make yourself a work of art/ Like me,"" sang Julia Holter, the experimental L.A. pop singer, on her debut record, the one based on an ancient Greek play. This year's Loud City Song is the first Holter record to be made outside of her bedroom, but compared to that early sentiment, it feels especially external. The album is based on the 1958 Parisian musical Gigi, but was also inspired by Holter's life in the city—it is set distinctly within the context of the urban pastoral, conjuring the ambient noise of a bustling metropolitan area through swarming horns, or images of patrons walking on the streets with a cool-sung cabaret piece. Loud City Song thus feels big, alive, and more ambitious than anything Holter has done, working with free jazz instrumentation of trombones, strings and double bass to explore a new sense of theatricality. One of her most miraculous talents is how she takes these high concepts and keeps them inviting and unpretentious while still requiring valuable patience and a certain steadiness of mind to appreciate the record as one full, cohesive, and uplifting piece. —Jenn Pelly",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/dominorecordco/julia-holter-maxims-i,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/19573/homepage_large.4ad323d6.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Julia_Holter-Loud_City_Song.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9293-the-top-50-albums-of-2013/,2013,year,album,48,Speedy Ortiz,Major Arcana,Carpark,"If there’s a lesson to be learned from Major Arcana, it’s that retroactivity doesn’t need to be of the museum-display variety. The sophomore album by Massachusetts’ Speedy Ortiz strains the strangled chords and corkscrew interplay of 90s guitar heroes like Helium’s Mary Timony, Polvo’s Ash Bowie, and Chavez’s Matt Sweeney into jaggedly axed anthems. But singer/guitarist Sadie Dupuis’ syrup-and-snake-venom inkwell overflows with here-and-now urgency, as does the whole album’s spring-loaded tenseness. “Tiger Tank” strikes a harrowing harmonic itch that Dupuis’ vocal melody circles but refuses to scratch, and “Gary” lurches between darkness and dawn like a synesthesia-stricken vampire. “Plough”, on the other hand, is a singsong cipher that pits pop hooks against pinprick riffage and a disorienting falsetto trill that taunts logic. Nirvana’s In Utero celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2013, but Major Arcana is the real celebration—as well as the overdue prompt to mutate or die. —Jason Heller",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/carparkrecords/speedy-ortiz-no-below/s-yPP1h,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/19439/homepage_large.6d3a86cc.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Speedy_Ortiz-Major_Arcana.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9293-the-top-50-albums-of-2013/,2013,year,album,47,The Range,Nonfiction,Donky Pitch,"James Hinton’s debut as the Range, Nonfiction, came out of nowhere. What it did not do was come out of nowhere to floor you, knock you backward, or slap you in the face. The effect was more like the polite dosey doe you dance when bumping into a stranger. ""Oh, um."" ""Heh."" ""Sorry."" ""Yep."" Nonfiction will pass without incident if you let it, but it managed to graze many of the year's trends—a re-exploration of grime, of breakbeats, and of drum & bass—while maintaining its personality and isolation. Sampladelic music is rarely so self-contained. The interjecting voices—mostly anonymous grime MCs—don't feel like conversations but footnotes, references to outside texts. Nonfiction pilfers many of its samples from deep-crate YouTube clips, but the album avoids commenting on technology or media consumption. Hinton mined the service like you would a zine, a pirate radio station, or any other mercurial broadcast that feels like it's beamed directly to you: by internalizing its strangeness and mimicking its appeal. —Andrew Gaerig",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/donky-pitch/the-range-metal-swing/s-Z4cGX,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/19871/homepage_large.4fe9c0fd.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Range-Nonfiction.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9293-the-top-50-albums-of-2013/,2013,year,album,46,M.I.A.,Matangi,Interscope,"Let's have a brief moment of stock-taking: 2013 is a year in which Jay Z is recording advertisements for smartphones and Kanye West is recording minimalist industrial rap as means of revenge against the fashion industry. The two men duking it out for the title of Soul King are both white, and the de rigeur style of rapping is… singing. Beyoncé is on track to sell a record number of an album she didn't even promote. Who could blame Maya Arulpragasam for making an album that feels a bit strange? Matangi sounds like M.I.A.'s spiritual side picked a fight with her inner rebel, her inner rebel slapped back and then they cracked up about it and hopped in bed to create a record full of humor. Amidst the grimy lurch and clatter of these beats—her best since Kala—is a rare, relaxed version of M.I.A. saying some truly left-field, whimsical stuff. She's making fun of Angelina Jolie's Lara Croft; she's rattling off lines like, ""there's 36 Chambers in my Wu-Tent,"" and, ""my blood type is no negative""; she's singing her own loopy, off-key version of a bedroom jam over a Weeknd beat and calling it “Sexodus”. And for once, everyone else is making her seem relatively normal. —Carrie Battan M.I.A.: ""Come Walk With Me""",Platform: YouTube - Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_11uQVI21mQ,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/19893/homepage_large.83cc2c2d.jpg,/dataset/artwork/MIA-Matangi.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9293-the-top-50-albums-of-2013/,2013,year,album,45,Fuck Buttons,Slow Focus,ATP,"Fuck Buttons’ debut, 2008's Street Horrrsing, featured distorted, near-black-metal vocals along with the expansive, low-tech electronics, letting the listener know there were humans in the room. Then came 2009's Tarot Sport, a less duct-taped collection that found Benjamin Power and Andrew Hung disappearing a bit into the background, exploring electronic music more head on without entirely tightening the seams. Four years later, they offered up their self-produced third album, Slow Focus, a finely polished collection that matches the shiny decadence of the jewels on its cover. It's also the moment Fuck Buttons removed their fingerprints entirely from the equation, giving us alien, otherworldly sounds to mull over with less noise-rock mediation. And it's a revelation. The music’s as muscular as ever, it's just more efficient—maximalist minimalism?—and no matter how many times you listen to these seven tracks, you discover previously unlit corners. Unlike the past compositions, there's no levity or moments to catch your breath: Each song's pile of colorful synthesizers and deep, dark percussion adds up to a go-for-broke anthem, and they obviously haven't reached their limit. The way the duo's learned to layer and accrue detail, you get the sense that these whirling, pulsing pieces could snowball endlessly, growing larger and more beautiful each second, blowing off the roof only to diagram the sky. It's cool songs from Tarot Sport were played at the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony. Too bad this wasn't ready for it. —Brandon Stosuy",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/alltomorrowsparties/fuck-buttons-brainfreeze-edit,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/19489/homepage_large.43873204.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fuck_Buttons-Slow_Focus.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9293-the-top-50-albums-of-2013/,2013,year,album,44,Justin Timberlake,The 20/20 Experience,RCA,"Just like Jon Hamm's ""bubble""-encased Drew Baird character on ""30 Rock"", we let Justin Timberlake get away with so much. His 2013 started strong (we'll get to that in a moment) but his bit part in an excellent Coen Brothers movie was overshadowed by a leading role in one of the worst major studio films of the year (trust me, I saw it), not to mention an album that managed to offend domestic abuse survivors and HBO viewers in one fell swoop. His most fervent admirers (trust me, I'm one of them) could only hide their eyes with embarrassment. ""I'm not cut out for it,"" Timberlake bitterly complained about the avalanche of late-year criticism to GQ in a piece titled ""#Hashtag of the Year"", a confirmation of his ubiquity in the face of all odds. A resolute showman who spent the first phase of his nearly two-decade career facing constant scrutiny, it can sometimes seem that Timberlake's main goal isn't to be good—it's to be liked. ""Drink You Away"" be damned, though, Justin Timberlake continues to be liked (loved, by many) and the first volume of The 20/20 Experience provides plenty of reasons why. Sure, just writing down some of the album's most notable conceits—the best nü-metal deep-cut weeper since Limp Bizkit covered the Who, a power ballad about looking at yourself in the mirror, the only Michael Flatley-meets-Miami Sound Machine mashup you ever need to hear—might suggest that a few pairs of Bad Idea Jeans were worn in the studio. And yet, along with Timbaland and J-Roc (who were more or less left for dead after that embarrassing ""electronic"" Chris Cornell album), Timberlake ended up with one of the year's most enjoyable pop records, a document of endless musical largesse that earns its 70-minute runtime with lush sonics and a moony-eyed fixation on monogamy so hopelessly corny that it ends up coming across as totally endearing. It's disappointing that Justin Timberlake didn't put out two great albums in 2013, but as hindsight (har har) suggests, that one of them ended up being very good is nothing short of a miracle. —Larry Fitzmaurice Justin Timberlake: ""Mirrors""",Platform: YouTube - Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TH2tp72T13o,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/18934/homepage_large.d80b538a.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Justin_Timberlake-The_2020_Experience.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9293-the-top-50-albums-of-2013/,2013,year,album,43,The National,Trouble Will Find Me,4AD,"The National couldn’t have been more out of step with 2013’s pop-worshipping zeitgeist. As the hippest of the hip in indie-rock circles tripped over themselves to pay homage to Beyoncé and Justin Timberlake, here was a band steadfastly committed to the thankless task of delivering excellent National albums. It’s tempting to take Trouble Will Find Me for granted, now that the National is a couple of records removed from its “beloved underdog” period. On previous records like Boxer and High Violet, the National staked its claim as the preeminent chroniclers of office-bound and apartment-confined urban drone-ism. These guys are Springsteen for people named Dylan and Skylar who worry about their 401K’s going bankrupt like Frankie and Mary fretted about the factory shutting down. On Trouble Will Find Me, the National faced the challenge of maintaining this creative momentum as it entered the band’s middle age, and responded with a record imbued with similar uncertainties about what happens to life once it starts to slow down. The fear of loss—whether it’s the loss of love, security, or a sense of  purpose—haunts this record, sometimes literally (like on “Demons”, which invite Matt Berninger to “stay down”) but mostly figuratively (like on the amazing “Pink Rabbits”, where a drunk still pines for a woman who has long since forgotten him). Trouble Will Find Me might not have bowled listeners over when it came out in May, but for many of us it continued to linger, as National records do, revealing new truths and soothing old wounds, an out-of-step record perfectly suited for out-of-step listeners. —Steven Hyden",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/19219/homepage_large.91787d75.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_National-Trouble_Will_Find_Me.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9293-the-top-50-albums-of-2013/,2013,year,album,42,Rhye,Woman,Republic / Innovative Leisure / Loma Vista,"Anonymity made for a perfect introduction to the elegantly minimal soul confections of Rhye, the duo of singer Mike Milosh and producer Robin Hannibal. It sharpened the peculiarly acute intimacy of absence, which is the softly beating heart swaddled in the gentle instrumental folds of Rhye’s debut, Woman. Hannibal’s tracks have a priceless offhanded grace, whipping the warmest, lightest froth from creamy pianos and synths, saucy horns and slinky basses, and effervescent drums popping off cushiony strings. The smooth, porous strains let Milosh’s multitracked voice, a thin and chilly slip that moves as lightly as a hummingbird, penetrate deeply. Milosh inhabits his highest range as freely as most of us chitchat, and while he’s not a demonstrative singer, he’s precise. Saccharine and sexy, bold and timid, it’s hipster R&B for xx rather than R. Kelly fans; a point of view distinct from Jamie Woon’s techno-leaning existential angst or the Weeknd’s dark, strident drive. The heartbreakingly lovely “Open” blossoms in a lush bouquet of Vivaldi-like strings, glowing brass and scintillating harp before a sax licks out as the spongy bass line drops, and Milosh flows out of his wordless hum and starts to bounce. He sounds so authentically beatific that I long misheard “Mmm, but stay” as “Namaste,” and it totally worked. Beyond a dazzling opening stretch including “The Fall” and “Last Dance”, deep cuts like “One of Those Summer Days” extend the quiet storm into stately oceanic depths. “Don’t call me love unless you mean it,” goes an indelible refrain tucked amid the feathery disco-funk of “Shed Some Blood”, which perfectly sums up the coquettish blend of tenderness, sensitivity, and insolence that sets Rhye apart. —Brian Howe Rhye: ""Open""",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/rhyemusic/rhye-open,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/18891/homepage_large.f71966d8.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rhye-Woman.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9293-the-top-50-albums-of-2013/,2013,year,album,41,Mutual Benefit,Love's Crushing Diamond,Other Music,"Jordan Lee said that he felt powerless while he watched his loved ones hurting. He doesn’t divulge many other details about what he went through, but here’s what we know: He quit his job in Boston and moved in with a friend in St. Louis. There, he wrote songs about what he’d been going through, which makes Love’s Crushing Diamond Lee’s therapy. His lyrics are economical, beautiful, and sometimes crushingly sad. They tell stories, but the characters are faceless and the details are vague. There are bursts of semi-specifics, like the line on “Golden Wake” about Lee quitting his job. “That Light That’s Blinding” paints the portrait of someone sweating out toxins, feeling like dying, and, yes, seeing a blinding light. “I couldn’t stop it from washing over you,” Lee sings to his struggling loved one. He worked for months to envelop his words with warm, gorgeous string arrangements, and he dotted everything with field recordings: wind chimes, creaking floors, the flicker of a lighter, the sound of kids’ toys, and the muted twinkle of an old piano. Lee moved around a lot while working on Love’s Crushing Diamond, collecting the small bits of sound that pop up throughout the album. His nomadic inclinations also turn up in his lyrics: “I’m on the slow train rollin’ through that city,” he sings. While traveling, he looks inward, singing, “My mind is muddled, our hearts are empty, my body seems so temporary.” It’s a fragile album with delicate sonic dressings. On the first and last track, Lee sings that “the river only knows to carry on.” The phrase seems to embody two related ideas: Trauma is inevitable, but letting go and moving forward is paramount. —Evan Minsker",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/mutual-benefit/advanced-falconry,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/19861/homepage_large.f69233c6.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mutual_Benefit-Loves_Crushing_Diamond.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9293-the-top-50-albums-of-2013/,2013,year,album,40,Parquet Courts,Light Up Gold,What's Your Rupture? / Dull Tools,"Light Up Gold is record-collector-rock for record-collector-rock-collectors, 34 gone-too-quick minutes of chin-stroking, bowl-cashing, amp-ruining, Socrates-dying-in-the-fucking-gutter punk. Parquet Courts are staunchly image-conscious about not having an image whatsoever, and on Gold, they perhaps accidentally dial in on that miracle middleground between art school and the CBGB’s bathroom, Malkmus and ""New Rose"". What pushes the trio beyond their peers is a preternatural ability to locate the exact second when teenage kicks give way to a realization of their place in the world—the time when you critically analyze the deeper meaning of the junk in your pockets. The first 5:42 of the record, among the best 1-2 punches of the year, outlines the alpha and omega of their response to their life station: sarcasm and nostalgia. “Master of My Craft” blasts “Ex-Lion Tamer” through Jonathan Richman’s car stereo, with co-frontman Austin Brown’s manifesto sounds made via cut-up method from a publicist’s Linkedin account. Then a single drumstick click smash-cuts into “Borrowed Time”, on which Andrew Savage perfectly encapsulates inspiration arising from squalor—thoughts dripping on his head from the ceiling. Then there’s the dopey majesty of “Stoned and Starving”, the “Hallogallo” of slack-jawed bakedom, barreling into an unknown future where you’re still high as fuck. It’s 2013’s “Nothing Ever Happened”, if everything actually did happen right behind you and you were too completely blazed to turn around at the bodega counter. “I don’t know too much, I just got the keys,” Brown sings on “Yr No Stoner”. Now, to find the car. —Eric Harvey",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/krazypunx/parquet-courts-stoned-and,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/18583/homepage_large.61c85a5c.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Parquet_Courts-Light_Up_Gold.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9293-the-top-50-albums-of-2013/,2013,year,album,39,A$AP Rocky,LongLiveA$AP,Polo Grounds / RCA,"Although it seemed like the long-awaited culmination of a two-year narrative when it came out, A$AP Rocky's proper debut surprisingly managed to, in many ways, set the tone for the year ahead in hip-hop. It is a cool album, exactingly deliberate and consistent in its construction, yet effortless in its handle on the zeitgeist. Other rappers borrowed the album's visual aesthetic and made album covers in grayscale; other kids borrowed the A$AP look and flooded rap shows in their screen printed shorts. And make no mistake, it's Rocky's love of screwed down vocals specifically that helped the effect seep into the DNA of so many Soundcloud producers. LongLiveA$AP projects a sense of unruffled self-assurance and flawless taste that's easy to latch onto. Many of its best moments hinge on other artists—Drake and Kendrick Lamar's breezily confident verses on ""Fuckin' Problems"", a succession of scene-stealing guest spots on ""1 Train"", Skrillex's batshit production on ""Wild for the Night"", the eerie juxtaposition of Santigold and Clams Casino on ""Hell"", Gunplay's demand for a porterhouse steak—but these never fail to read as anything other than an expert work of curation on Rocky's part. Whether he's rapping slick bars about fashion, bluntly dismissing racial prejudice, or simply ceding the stage to his talented friends, he's at the center of things, the image of unflappable coolness. And rap, it happens, is pretty great when it's acting cool. —Kyle Kramer",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/18698/homepage_large.6b4217c1.jpg,/dataset/artwork/AAP_Rocky-LongLiveAAP.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9293-the-top-50-albums-of-2013/,2013,year,album,38,Boards of Canada,Tomorrow's Harvest,Warp,"Considering they update their official website as many times in a decade as Perez Hilton does in a day, 2013 must have felt like a four alarm fire for Scotland’s Boards of Canada. From the release of their fourth full-length in 15 years as well as the corresponding reissue of their major EPs and LPs, through to an accompanying marketing campaign that prompted BoC fans to roll out their tinfoil hats, protractors, and astrology wheels in the name of a fresh clue, the brothers Sandison enjoyed a prolific year that thrust them back into the spotlight and cemented their status as a legacy act. Tomorrow’s Harvest is neither as deep nor as nuanced as their previous records, but it should go down as a worthy contribution to that legacy. In addition to magnanimously calling back to some of the brothers’ biggest moments (see: “Palace Posy” as a companion piece to 1998’s “Aquarius”, “New Seeds” to 2006’s “Dayvan Cowboy”, etc.), it also offered up a new shade to Boards of Canada’s sound, one that married their familiar whirly-gigging synths and loping rhythm sections with yawning horrorshow arpeggios and a faint undercurrent of dread. It's thrilling to hear these new themes of death and decay slowly seep into the dominant dewey-eyed late-90s nostalgia narrative; one wonders what they’d sound like if they went digging even deeper into the dirt. —Mark Pytlik",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/warp-records/reach-for-the-dead,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/19292/homepage_large.23e67eef.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Boards_of_Canada-Tomorrows_Harvest.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9293-the-top-50-albums-of-2013/,2013,year,album,37,Jon Hopkins,Immunity,Domino,"Jon Hopkins practiced self-hypnosis for a decade before he finally got it, right around the time he started on his fourth full-length, Immunity. The British electronic producer and composer’s output has always had a trancelike, meditative quality—from Opalescent’s gentle guitar tones to the horror-cinematic soundscapes of 2010’s Monsters (and, in between, his work with Brian Eno and King Creosote)—but it wasn’t until Immunity that everything clicked into place for Hopkins both mentally and musically, almost like lock and key. The album even begins with the sound of Hopkins unlocking his studio door before settling into a beat that scuffs up his pristine ambience with a new intensity. The video for Immunity highlight “Open Eye Signal” perhaps best demonstrates this. A kid skateboards smoothly through time and space, the camera focusing on the scene’s grit: his black eye and bandaged wrist, a flaming tire, a man on fire, abandoned townships. His constant forward motion is soothing to watch even as moments of unease keep it from being just another beautifully shot video. Between the piano interludes of “Breathe This Air” and labored breaths permeating the crunchy, simmering “Collider”, Immunity also lurches from pretty to pinprickly, taking the listener on a similarly fantastic journey through Hopkins' brilliant mind. —Harley Brown",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/jonhopkins/open-eye-signal,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/19279/homepage_large.40d785e5.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jon_Hopkins-Immunity.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9293-the-top-50-albums-of-2013/,2013,year,album,36,Chvrches,The Bones of What You Believe,Glassnote,"“I am gonna come for you with all that I have,” Lauren Mayberry sings on “Gun”, from Chvrches’ full-length debut. Such a forceful sentiment might sound overbearing if The Bones of What You Believe wasn’t so insistently and so genuinely compassionate, if the synths didn’t sound so massively sparkly on “Tether”, if the choruses of “The Mother We Share” didn’t scale monumental heights. Before forming Chvrches, these three Glaswegians all had a jump on becoming jaded insiders: Iain Cook and Martin Doherty paid dues in Aerogramme and the Twilight Sad, respectively, and Mayberry, in addition to serving time in a twee-folk act, had studied music journalism. Yet, there was something refreshing and deeply moving about Chvrches in 2013. They wore their hearts on their sleeves and risked falling on their faces, but Bones succeeds precisely because it sounds so musically and spiritually generous. These songs are far too ambitious to be mere comfort food, and the trio are too concerned about each and every one of you to care much about any particular trends or scenes. —Stephen M. Deusner Chvrches: ""The Mother We Share""",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/chvrches/the-mother-we-share,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/19716/homepage_large.21aa0ef6.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Chvrches-The_Bones_of_What_You_Believe.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9293-the-top-50-albums-of-2013/,2013,year,album,35,Phosphorescent,Muchacho,Dead Oceans,"The gatefold of Muchacho features a detail shot of a Nudie suit. The background is dark, and there’s a peacock framed by light purple flowers. It’s not nearly as colorful or garish as Gram Parsons’ iconic drug cornucopia pattern. This one’s unassuming, feasibly the sort of thing you could wear out of a Western clothing shop without looking like a cartoon cowboy. Matthew Houck is embracing his country roots, but he never plays them up to the point of honky tonk hucksterism. Fiddles, piano, pedal steel, even horseshoe-clopping percussion are all implemented on his new album, but they’re never the focal point. Houck’s band on Muchacho have chops, but they never show off. When Kyle Resnick plays his trumpet, the sound doesn’t blare—it’s nestled beneath Houck’s ragged, seemingly sleepy vocal. Everything’s tempered, supplemental, and gorgeously produced by John Agnello. Muchacho is full of allegory, with lyrics about “the wounded master,” rolling away the stone, the shepherd, the lamb, and so on. These are reasonably common lyrical tropes in country and folk traditions, and Houck balances those moments with more familiarly contemporary imagery. On “Down to Go”, he sings about partying to numb the hurt, and all the while, he openly acknowledges the social stereotypes that come with being a heartbroken country balladeer. While his friends tell him he’ll write some great music about his heartache, he points out that he’s still hurting, “aching and ornery.” Over Ricky Jay Jackson’s looming pedal steel, he paints a picture that’s bruised and familiar. It makes sense why this album’s origin story—Houck's break up and trip to Mexico—is frequently referenced when Muchacho is discussed. The record's sentiments and backstory pair well, sort of like For Emma and Justin Vernon’s Wisconsin cabin. —Evan Minsker",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/deadoceans/phosphorescent-song-for-zula,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/18716/homepage_large.36422597.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Phosphorescent-Muchacho.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9293-the-top-50-albums-of-2013/,2013,year,album,34,Forest Swords,Engravings,Tri Angle,"No-one does atmosphere like Forest Swords. The Manchester producer excels at evoking shades and shadows, slippery feelings, and the yawning, life-sized chasm between doom and triumph. On his debut album Engravings, he fulfills the early promise of his 2010 EP, Dagger Paths, by carving out a fully inhabitable world from such fertile matter. Throughout, the drums are slow and steady, observing time in an offhand yet hypnotizing manner. Pipes call out in celebration, and in warning. Guitar lines curl ominously. All criss-cross in what feels like a deeply meaningful yet undefinable way. Forest Swords is not interested in telling a story, it seems, but in making the listener an unquestionable part of it. Like its predecessor, Engravings occupies nameless territory. One minute it sounds like a forgotten Eastern folk music, the next the soundtrack to a Leone western, and the next again like the future memories of music our children’s children will one day have. It’s this fluidity that is at the heart of the album’s power. Nameless, placeless, timeless: Engravings rejects boundaries and scrabbles to unearth the subconscious instead. —Ruth Saxelby",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/forestswords/theweightofgold/,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/19596/homepage_large.f2e8fe13.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Forest_Swords-Engravings.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9293-the-top-50-albums-of-2013/,2013,year,album,33,Burial,Truant / Rough Sleeper,Hyperdub,"Right as our year-end assessment was about to go live and the calendar year of 2013 gave way to 2014, a time when music writers, publicists, and editors are off-duty, the mysterious electronic music producer known as Burial slipped his latest release, Rival Dealer, out into the world, with no press or forewarning, just beyond a Year-End list’s grasp. Ever since he emerged in 2005, the man known as William Emmanuel Bevan (unless…) has operated according to his own tenets. At the end of 2012, for instance, he released the staggering two-track, 25-minute “Truant/ Rough Sleeper”, which continued to resonate through this year. Comprised of crackling, forlorn, hoar-frosted etudes that faded together into a dream-logical suite, Burial’s acumen isolated these voices calling from a post-Skynet world and made them into something harrowing yet ultimately redemptive. You could hear Burial’s netherworld sound seep into the music of underground producers as well as bigger names like Skrillex. And—if you listened closely—you could also hear Burial in the intermission music for Kanye West’s Yeezus tour. —Andy Beta",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/18690/homepage_large.6101ae6f.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Burial-Truant__Rough_Sleeper.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9293-the-top-50-albums-of-2013/,2013,year,album,32,DJ Koze,Amygdala,Pampa,"For years DJ Koze has been a closely guarded secret, a savant of silly, machine-tooled funk. Following almost a decade of remixes and sporadic singles, the solo collection Amygdala blew his cover. A long, ink-smudged love letter to dance music, friends, and living gently, its excesses are charming: rhythms tumbling off one too many glasses of wine, fidgety synths too cavalier with scented candles. The lightly stepping ""La Duequesa"" features steel drums and swelling Motown strings. There's a weird-uncle vibe to the proceedings, from the preposterous art to the normally pompadoured-and-leather-jacketed Matthew Dear singing ""It's a serious world/ I'm a magical boy."" Later, another Dear track offers Koze acolytes a mantra: ""When I notice the world is falling apart/ I will run a bath."" For naught, though, as our meetings are now overrun, extra folding chairs required, sheet cake expenditures up 29%. It is Koze's fault, and he will be softly chided. —Andrew Gaerig",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/pamparecords/dj-koze-feat-caribou-track-id/s-iMzAe,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/18990/homepage_large.22721248.jpg,/dataset/artwork/DJ_Koze-Amygdala.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9293-the-top-50-albums-of-2013/,2013,year,album,31,Autre Ne Veut,Anxiety,Mexican Summer / Software,"2013 may very well stand as the year the word ""literally"" lost its meaning, or at least the year where it was redefined to include its misuse as a tool for melodramatic overstatements. Autre Ne Veut's Anxiety is a crashing, clanging, caterwauling expression of this sort of literally. It is music for literally feeling torn apart inside, for literally feeling like the world is collapsing. It is not safe; it is not proper; it is not tastefully reserved. It's very real and very raw. In a year in which blogs were littered with electronically tinged distortions of R&B and synthpop in a similar vein to Autre Ne Veut, Anxiety discarded the form's prevailing principle of slick prettiness for uninhibited, pure emotion. Sure, the results are melodramatic, but that's how big emotions are portrayed. You don't stand in front of the mirror and think ""someday I'm gonna die"" to yourself, as singer Arthur Ashin does on ""Gonna Die"" and not play it up a little, even if you totally mean it. You don't curl up in bed and whimper ""don't ever leave me alone"" into the phone with any sort of decorum. Anxiety is fists-clenched, teary-eyed catharsis, whether in the feedback screeches and false optimism of ""Counting"", the careening guitar riffs in the back of ""Ego Free Sex Free"", or the crescendoed crash of tour de force opener ""Play by Play"". The intensity is unrelenting, and the effect is staggeringly beautiful. There's literally nothing quite like it. —Kyle Kramer",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/spunkrecords/autre-ne-veut-play-by-play,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/18844/homepage_large.d58283cd.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Autre_Ne_Veut-Anxiety.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9293-the-top-50-albums-of-2013/,2013,year,album,30,Deerhunter,Monomania,4AD,"On the last few Deerhunter records, grit and gloss have struggled to split the available sonic real estate. For every set of shimmering and uplifting chords, weirdo-equilibrium had to be restored using a blast of feedback or a flood of woozy delay-pedal-washes. With Monomania, the Atlanta-based band’s sixth LP and first without longtime bassist Josh Fauver, the grit gets the upper hand. Here, singer/guitarist Bradford Cox appears to have swapped out his cherished Stereolab and Echo & the Bunnymen LPs for the collected works of Royal Trux, playing up his band’s already established yen for gristly garage rock and dabbling in the loose and bluesy vibes of 70s Rolling Stones. But even though nearly every track is pushed into the red, Monomania ranks among Deerhunter’s most subdued efforts. The distortion masks what is otherwise a set of fairly introspective breakup songs, with Cox singing about getting ditched (“Back to the Middle”), obsession (“Monomania”), and some fantasized dominant/submissive relationship dynamics (“Dream Captain”). It's not a record that pleased all the band's fans, particularly those who prefer their epic space-rock turns, but it's a compelling left-field turn that shores up Deerhunter's other big strength: Unpredictability. —Aaron Leitko Deerhunter: ""Monomania""",Platform: YouTube - Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYUENZQ84-E,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/19160/homepage_large.4e1b9a92.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Deerhunter-Monomania.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9293-the-top-50-albums-of-2013/,2013,year,album,29,The Haxan Cloak,Excavation,Tri Angle,"Most of what you’ve heard about Excavation, the second album by London producer the Haxan Cloak, is probably true: An instrumental concept record about the slow slide or sudden drop into death, these are 51 rather harrowing minutes, filled with forlorn strings and dismal noise, collapsing rhythms and macabre vocal cuts. The bass is plangent and massive, padding clicking beats and gray layers with the tonal dominance of drone metal. During “Miste”, a character struggles to catch his breath against the string-painted creep of mortality; during “The Mirror Reflecting (Part 2)”, a beat mimics a heartbeat but soon stumbles over itself, ultimately fading against a backdrop of hair-rising oblivion. Without a word, Excavation alternately conjures drowning, suffocation, heart attacks, and sheer senescence—a chronicle of suffering and uncertainty, rendered in exquisite existentialist onomatopoeia. This is Burial, making good on the name, or Demdike Stare, slipping into grimm robes. But the end-to-end thrill of Excavation comes not from Bobby Krlic’s fatalistic fixation. Rather, throughout these 11 tracks, there’s a constant sense of surprise, a reveling in the musically unexpected that suits the subject matter. The pieces shift suddenly into hopeful radiance or plummet without warning into their own abysses. For all of Krlic’s determinism, Excavation is paradoxically nebulous, as though the producer is, with this music, feeling his way through life toward its inevitable, unpredictable end.  —Grayson Haver Currin The Haxan Cload: ""The Mirror Reflecting (Part 2)"" ",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/tri_angle_records/the-haxan-cloak-the-mirror/s-akwVe,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/18930/homepage_large.6fb21ae2.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Haxan_Cloak-Excavation.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9293-the-top-50-albums-of-2013/,2013,year,album,28,Run the Jewels,Run the Jewels,,"If Killer Mike’s El-P-produced R.A.P. Music went over like a modern day Amerikkka’s Most Wanted, where West Coast microphone fiend Ice Cube ducked out of N.W.A. and traveled East to lay down intractable political screeds with Public Enemy’s Bomb Squad production team, then Run the Jewels, the pair’s self-titled debut as a group, is “Burn, Hollywood, Burn”: Cube and P.E. reuniting in song to show that they’ve shared a message all along. Mike and El’s album-length mind-meld zeroes in on bleak gallows humor as the common ground between the Definitive Jux founder’s scorched dystopian grit and the ATLien’s wizened country paeans. The beats favor the claustrophobic but swinging production of El’s 2012 end-of-the-world dance party Cancer 4 Cure, and the punchline game’s perpetually set to “immolate” (El: “You wanna hang? Bring your throat/ I got stools and a rope.” Mike: “I stand on towers like Eiffel/ I rifle all of your idols.”). Run the Jewels documents an improbable pairing going unbelievably swimmingly, a rap nerd’s fantasy draft brought to ball-busting life in a volley of clenched-fist threats and side-splitting snark. —Craig Jenkins",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/19410/homepage_large.e231dd24.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Run_the_Jewels-Run_the_Jewels.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9293-the-top-50-albums-of-2013/,2013,year,album,27,Neko Case,"The Worse Things Get, the Harder I Fight...",Anti-,"Neko Case has always seemed less a songwriter than an atmospherically generated force of nature: a voice with the richness and warmth of a chinook sweeping down from the Rocky Mountains, an utter disregard for societal convention, a volatility that must be borne out of a cyclone hanging with menace over the Indian Ocean. And yet The Worse Things Get, the Harder I Fight…, her most vulnerable and human record to date, is also her best. Case’s balance of tender and tough has never been more delicate, and her eye for keen observation only grows truer with time: a mother’s frayed nerves finally splitting at a bus stop, a stack of faded calling cards left to gather dust in a shoebox, a puffy-sleeved relic from decades past. Her indelible voice forms the core of every song, whether it’s flecked with harmony or swaddled by blooming horns or standing alone, nearly naked; its clarity can be disarming. But she hasn’t lost any of her bite: whether picking bits of bully from her teeth and shredding gender constructs on “Man” or refusing to puke up sonnets on “Night Still Comes,” Case retains the ferocity that grants her albums their visceral thrill. Bile-soaked poems be damned—she remains miraculous. —Jamieson Cox Neko Case: ""Man""",Platform: YouTube - Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unNa-9qGkfI,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/19645/homepage_large.edd2ee21.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Neko_Case-The_Worse_Things_Get_the_Harder_I_Fight.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9293-the-top-50-albums-of-2013/,2013,year,album,26,James Blake,Overgrown,Republic,"James Blake emerged in a string of singles and EPs made from alien alloys of singer/songwriter fare, classical music, solemn gospel, pop R&B, and the softest, sultriest strains of dubstep. When it came time for his first LP in 2011, he abandoned the R&B samples that had made him trendy, emphasizing his austere but opulent production style and the indie choirboy side of his musical persona. Those who wished for more “I Never Learnt to Share”-style grandeur, less “Lindesfarne” twee got just what they wanted on second album Overgrown, where the frilly piano-man is relegated to little corners like “Dim”. Most of the record is given to shadowy, imperious electronic soul, with dubstep lingering in the halftime drums and swimmy sub-basses. The cool subtlety of the music is offset by some of his hottest, most brash vocal performances—take the falsetto-prone singer’s new adventures in vocal fry, like the spine-chilling low-register plunge of the word “constellation” on “I Am Sold”. It's a gesture that lets us know exactly what time it is there: nighttime. While deeply reflective and sad, the music seethes pure sex, and not even RZA musing about the fingertouch of a newborn kid dilutes the vibe. —Brian Howe James Blake: ""Retrograde""",Platform: YouTube - Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p6PcFFUm5I,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/19037/homepage_large.b7213934.jpg,/dataset/artwork/James_Blake-Overgrown.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9293-the-top-50-albums-of-2013/,2013,year,album,25,Drake,Nothing Was the Same,Young Money Entertainment / Republic / Cash Money,"Nothing Was the Same is a feat of maturity. It boasts a stylistically broad array of singles but gleams like a single piece of crystal when consumed in full. Drake’s rapping is at its tightest; he’s chosen his guest features wisely and sparingly. With the help of producer pal Noah Shebib, he's learned to edit himself down to a restrained 13 tracks. The muted beats and themes cascade effortlessly. Which makes it all the more thrilling to catch the little flashes of Drake's diminishing oafishness, the geeky roughness around the edges of such a gorgeously spun and scrupulously chiseled piece of work. ""A few bottles on the table,” he whispers. “A few waters."" Drake is still the only rapper concerned with keeping his friends hydrated while they're turning up, and too loyal to stop them from fucking up the best music videos of the year with their teenage-boy buffoonery. It’s impossible to hear Drake moan, “Peaking, I'm peeeeaking"" without blushing and averting your eyes in shame. He just wants some head in a comfortable bed? Cringe. There's the Drake we’d almost forgotten, the guy who charms with his fumbles and who is not quite self-aware enough to realize he can't pull off a line like that yet. It’s our good fortune that he probably never will. —Carrie Battan Drake: ""Hold On, We're Going Home"" [ft. Majid Jordan]",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/octobersveryown/drake-hold-on-were-going-home,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/19704/homepage_large.87d4db64.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Drake-Nothing_Was_the_Same.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9293-the-top-50-albums-of-2013/,2013,year,album,24,Oneohtrix Point Never,R Plus Seven,Warp,"If Daniel Lopatin’s Oneohtrix Point Never project leaned on the reset button for 2011’s Replica, on R Plus Seven there’s a natural continuation of thought. This isn’t exactly a career summary, but it does bring back some of the vapor-trail electronics of earlier OPN efforts while also building out a few of the crackpot concepts of that prior record. On certain tracks those worlds collide. Lopatin isn’t so much interested in malfunctioning circuitry as he is in the primitive ways of machines at the birth of computing. It can be simultaneously thought-provoking, funny, and startling, but it’s not a patchwork of thoughts loosely stitched together; there’s a warped logic to the way transitions happen, from manic machine noise to bubbly bass tones to snippets of deranged chatter. R Plus Seven is an uncannily accurate embodiment of the kind of second guessing your brain indulges in late at night after a long lack of sleep, where you need to loop back on things just to be sure they actually happened. —Nick Neyland",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/warp-records/oneohtrix-point-never-zebra,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/19728/homepage_large.8f4faae3.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Oneohtrix_Point_Never-R_Plus_Seven.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9293-the-top-50-albums-of-2013/,2013,year,album,23,DJ Rashad,Double Cup,Hyperdub,"DJ Rashad focuses on a regional scene—Chicago footwork—with its own way of dancing, moving, and emphasizing rhythmic structure, and then sees what else he can weave into its DNA: bounce rap (“Pass That Shit”), jungle (“I'm Too Hi”), house (“Leavin'”), hardcore techno (“Acid Bit”), and R&B (“Only One”). That he molds these styles to fit some brilliant drum programming is the key to his success; all you have to do is isolate the snares and follow their unpredictable, but eminently danceable paths to get an idea of just how snatch-your-breath these beats are at the core. And the melodies he strings together to wash over them—piano and synthesizer chords that jump from hover to shudder; cut-up mood-altering vocals from Tupac in Juice mode (“I Don't Give a Fuck”) or peak-disco First Choice reconfigured by Shep Pettibone for the dawn of house (“Every Day of My Life”)—coats a gleaming veneer of recognizable, personality-driven order over a huge engine of what seems like chaos. But it's chaos you can move to, once you figure out how. —Nate Patrin",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/hyperdub/dj-rashad-every-day-of-my-life,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/19820/homepage_large.3f2dc555.jpg,/dataset/artwork/DJ_Rashad-Double_Cup.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9293-the-top-50-albums-of-2013/,2013,year,album,22,Waxahatchee,Cerulean Salt,Don Giovanni,"You've probably met some of the people in Katie Crutchfield's songs. You might even be one. Eavesdropping on entwined couples through paper thin walls? Sitting in the car, sifting through stems and seeds? Waking up next to somebody who'll be sleeping through the morning? You've been there; you've done that. Crutchfield has a way of making the early-20-something tableaus of Cerulean Salt—her second LP as Waxahatchee—feel impossibly (and sometimes uncomfortably) real. The people of Cerulean Salt drink too much, fight too easily, feel too deeply, make promises too big to keep. With just a few words, Crutchfield places these characters among all-too-recognizable scenery: hollow bedrooms, closets clogged with empty bottles, riverside consolations in pickup flatbeds. Cerulean Salt was recorded quickly, at her parents' place in Alabama, an urgent-sounding record about people who aren't getting where they want as fast as they'd hoped. So they get through the days the only way they know how, ruled by seasons and inexplicable sadness, opting for misery over dispute. Sound familiar? —Paul Thompson",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/don-giovanni-records/swan-dive,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/18886/homepage_large.2d507a6d.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Waxahatchee-Cerulean_Salt.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9293-the-top-50-albums-of-2013/,2013,year,album,21,Blood Orange,Cupid Deluxe,Domino,"Dev Hynes is one of those artists who fortifies his own identity by inviting other musicians to bask in the coral glow of his vision. Cupid Deluxe is ostensibly a reclamation of his own turf after a year in the background as a go-to writer and producer for the likes of Sky Ferreira and Solange—and he would not have been wrong to try to seize a bit of glory for himself—but he still chose to keep the more anonymous Blood Orange moniker instead of breaking out under his real name. He remains a shadowy figure even on his boldest album, communicating in breathy whispers or casual background chatter and ceding much of his ground to his guests. Call it shyness or humility or grace, or just call it savvy: Cupid Deluxe is proof that Hynes is more effective working in a collage of subtle shades than with force. His friends have never sounded as slick as they do in his calm, self-assured company—Samantha Urbani achieves new heights of sultriness; Dirty Projectors’ Dave Longstreth is suddenly a soulful presence; rapper Despot harnesses the throwback coolness of a Beastie Boy. Let Hynes put his fingerprints on your work and together you’ll turn to gold. —Carrie Battan",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/bloodorange/youre-not-good-enough,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/19928/homepage_large.680201b4.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Blood_Orange-Cupid_Deluxe.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9293-the-top-50-albums-of-2013/,2013,year,album,20,Jai Paul,Jai Paul,Self-released,"As of this writing, 673 people have signed an online petition imploring Jai Paul's label, XL Recordings, to release his debut album. ""The 'leak' was seriously the best album of this year,"" insists the petitioner, referring to 16 demos that unceremoniously surfaced on Bandcamp in April only to be swiftly removed and denounced by both Paul and XL amidst rumors of a stolen laptop. Though the notoriously painstaking London artist—who works with his bassist and brother Anup—has only released two singles over the course of the last two and a half years, the global breadth of the petition’s signees suggests a wide reach, including fans in France, Korea, Colombia, and New Jersey. This cosmopolitan base matches the music that makes up this not-album, from its samples of both traditional Indian music to snatches of ""Gossip Girl"" dialogue, from its Princely guitar solos to all those half-drunk beats that wear their Dilla love with pride. Unfortunately, even if the petition hits 10,000 signatures, it probably won't change much. Indeed, by all accounts, XL would like to see a proper Jai Paul album most. Even considering the surrounding controversy, these tracks give us insight into an artist who doesn't seem like a machiavellian internet hype-master as much as a doubter, a tinkerer, an idealist. In his only interview thus far, from 2011, he said, ""Music to me was just a hobby and, in a way, I didn't care about showing it to anyone."" And that internal struggle—so elusive in our show me, show me, show me social media world—plays out in these songs, where he sings, perhaps prophetically, ""In the company of thieves/ Will I stay or will I leave?/ Will they steal away my life?/ Will I go down without my fight?/ I might."" Paradoxically, Paul's apparent ambivalence toward a music industry that's desperate to support him has only stirred the fervor of those willing to drop £7 on a shady looking Bandcamp page. When he's ready, we will be, too; if he's not, at least we've got something. —Ryan Dombal",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/jaipaul/jai-paul-jasmine,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/20015/homepage_large.72473839.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jai_Paul-Jai_Paul.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9293-the-top-50-albums-of-2013/,2013,year,album,19,Earl Sweatshirt,Doris,Columbia / Tan Cressida,"When Earl raps, he gazes far off into the distance, so cosmically bored is he by our interest. Watch him on “Sway in the Morning,” at god knows what hour, slumped in front of a fluorescent-lit table: This freestyle is an industry rite of passage, and yet this one is different, precisely because Earl is there, and everyone, in that moment, exists to please him. Sway plays beat after beat; Earl, with the contemptuous purity of a teenager, waves each one away.  ""What would you prefer?"" Sway asks courteously, his industry-vet eyes narrowing with the effort of getting inside Earl's head. When he drops ""Drop It Like It's Hot (Remix)"", a grin cracks Earl's face; his head bops goofily. The physical relief that washes over Sway's body, as he leans back, is palpable. This is the relationship Earl has to the world: We want, more than anything, to hear him rap. We will stand and wait expectantly for minutes, years. Frankly, it's awkward, maybe even a little pathetic. Being a functioning teenager, he doesn't exactly relish handing expectant adults what they're waiting for, and thus the first voice we hear on Doris belongs, hilariously, to Frank Ocean's cousin. This ambivalence is the dance of Doris, the story of Earl Sweatshirt: How do you do what you want when strangers seem to want it even more badly than you do? ""Don't nobody care about how you feel,"" Vince Staples teases on the intro to ""Burgundy"". ""We want raps."" Sooner or later, he's going to have to give up the goods. So he sighs, leans in, opens his mouth. The second he does, our anticipation justifies itself. Quite simply, there hasn't been a more viscerally enjoyable and economical rapper working in years. Earl's POV leaps from the front seat of a car into the sky in a single line (""Ride dirty as the fucking sky that you praying to""); family communications break down into a series of sound effects (""Mama often was offering peace offerings/ Think, wheeze, cough, scoff, and then he's off again""); Earl sprouts a ballooning gut and morphs into a fattened hedonist (You know me, drugs out front the telly/ I'm couch-drunk, ready to fuck/ Count 'fetti and bucks/ Count loud as I slap loud cross the belly""). Try wrestling free of the line ""hard as armed services/ y'all might'a heard of him"" once he utters it. But Earl's heart is in here, too—his father, his mother; that fabled camp for troubled teens, being outed by Complex; girls, fame, puppy love, being true to yourself. ""Breaking news that's less important when the Lakers lose/ There's lead in that baby food,"" he deadpans on ""Hive"". He can tell you are a little dumb, maybe. But he'll oblige, eventually. He even assented to Sway at last, unleashing a verse so devastating that Sway nearly doubled over when it was finished. Earl's verdict? ""That was butt."" —Jayson Greene",Platform: YouTube - Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4qPM8k2Mkc,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/19575/homepage_large.3ba307f9.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Earl_Sweatshirt-Doris.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9293-the-top-50-albums-of-2013/,2013,year,album,18,Janelle Monáe,The Electric Lady,Bad Boy,"Early on, Janelle Monáe rarely exhibited doubt or vulnerability, not only because she is a bona fide Icon, but also because there has always been another, important correlative to her vibrant self-expression: like any science fiction author, she uses her medium to explore deeply rooted social ills and present an alternative vision of how the revolution might look. Her first EP and LP, Metropolis: Suite I (The Chase) and The ArchAndroid, were vast in scope, and the futuristic dystopian epic they told—that of Cindi Maywether, a cyborg fugitive hunted for the crime of falling in love with a human—was an entertaining but tightly packed narrative. Monáe, while adept and self-assured, had some difficulty getting her work to resonate with an audience not already receptive to concepts like ""identity politics"" or ""Afropunk."" With The Electric Lady, the masterful, guest-packed double album she's called a prequel to ArchAndroid, Monáe hit her stride. The record is still fearless and luxurious, but now it's accessible, too; songs like ""Dance Apocalyptic"" and Miguel duet ""Primetime"" still resonate without metaphorical context, but the narrative is there if you want it. The powers of ""Q.U.E.E.N."" (""Are we a lost generation of our people?/ Add us to equations but they'll never make us equal"") and ""Ghetto Woman"" (a paean to her mother's uphill battle) are self-evident. Nearly every track pulls its own weight, both individually and in the context of a larger work about inequality and spiritual rebellion. Her Electric Lady isn't a robot, she's an evolved life form. That distinction turned a highly sophisticated, empirically likable work into an organic classic—one that lets people in. —Devon Maloney",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/atlanticrecords/queen-feat-erykah-badu,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/19665/homepage_large.9ad07f91.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Janelle_Mone-The_Electric_Lady.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9293-the-top-50-albums-of-2013/,2013,year,album,17,Haim,Days Are Gone,Columbia / Polydor,"It's all there in Este Haim's bass face. It really is. When so many rock bands—you know, those things with guitars and drums and hooks you can remember—can seem hopelessly self-defeating, shamed, bored, or worse, Haim make no apologies. They're excited about their own songs enough to look like shocked tiger cubs taking their first swim while playing them. This enthusiasm is contagious, and it's why these three sisters from L.A.'s San Fernando Valley are responsible for the most appealing pop-rock record since Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. Days Are Gone chronicles the mistakes, triumphs, and confusions our hearts go through as we navigate our 20s, with Este, 27, Danielle, 24, and Alana, 22, bridging the gap between young-adult and adult-adult. Their harmonies and vacuum-packed arrangements put forth a unified front as they try to escape dependency on ""Let Me Go"" (replete with a wriggling guitar solo) or snub-out some lying son of a bitch on ""My Song 5"" as a snap beat gives their middle fingers some extra swagger. The hot emotions are tempered with contemplation, vulnerability; ""Go Slow"" simmers with an ache reminiscent of Kate Bush—another performer who's never been afraid to show her feelings on her face. Meanwhile, the shaggy ""Honey & I"" gloriously splits the difference between those twentysomething Sundays when all you want to do is sleep and the Fridays when you can't close your eyes. ""Love wasn't what I thought it once was,"" sings Danielle, looking past teen dreams with her head high, ""I'm not afraid no more."" And just as the track seems poised for an ecstatic conclusion, it dials back cautiously. This is growing up. —Ryan Dombal Haim: ""The Wire""",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/haimtime/haimthewire,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/19767/homepage_large.faea8900.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Haim-Days_Are_Gone.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9293-the-top-50-albums-of-2013/,2013,year,album,16,Bill Callahan,Dream River,Drag City,"Twenty-three years on, Bill Callahan somehow found a way to whittle down his craft yet again. That in and of itself would be a feat on this remarkable run, spanning from his last album as Smog, 2005’s A River Ain’t Too Much to Love, and reaching to what might be an apex or else a stunning vantage point here. After the questing/questioning of 2009’s Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle and the arid landscapes of 2011’s Apocalypse, two albums stripped yet full of open-spaces and silences, what was left to pare down? What distinguishes Dream River from his previous albums is nearly imperceptible. Callahan still uses the percussion of Brian Beattie, the arcing timbre of flautist of Beth Galiger, and the Cheshire Cat-like psychedelic guitar of Matt Kinsey. Callahan’s cinematographer’s (or is it a cartographer’s?) eye remains sharp; he still sings of eagles and wildlife, the contours of rivers, the pinging of winds, in much the same way that an Edu-period haikuist might perceive an interior state by gazing upon the outer world. Though did Bashō ever write about the taste of pilgrim guts? Throughout Dream River, the dominant image is of a parabola: the trajectories of javelins and arrows, of gulls and buzzards in flight and landing, the easeful touchdown of small planes, of love itself. And, arching over it all, the movement of time’s arrow. No matter the heights achieved, one must always plummet back down. But when Callahan sings, “Time itself means nothing/ But time spent with you,” there’s a sense of love within. “I always went wrong in the same place/ where the river splits towards the sea,” he sings on the song that serves as the album’s heart, “Small Plane”, finally realizing that he could instead merge into something larger. Callahan has long been indie music’s itinerant musician, but for the first time in his music, there’s also a sense of home. —Andy Beta",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/19684/homepage_large.a1d5ea65.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bill_Callahan-Dream_River.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9293-the-top-50-albums-of-2013/,2013,year,album,15,Sky Ferreira,"Night Time, My Time",Capitol,"Let's get one thing straight from the start: that image over there on the left is not supposed to turn you on, it's supposed to make you feel gross. Sky Ferreira's Night Time, My Time is emboldened by the power to make you feel icky, constantly balling up our cultural obsessions with voyeurism and confession and live-tweeted female breakdowns only to hock them back in our faces like poison spitballs. ""It ain't your right,"" she sneers early on overtop a tarnished, motorik beat, and you almost get the feeling that she's talking about our right to be listening in on such intimate declarations at all. A minute later, through a clenched jaw: ""I'll only warn you one time/ I've got a stilted view."" It's not just empty provocation. This record is not polite, this record does not wait for permission; reality show casting directors take note because this record did not come here to make friends. Night Time, My Time is blown-speaker, smeared-lipstick pop—would-be radio hits with that last topcoat of paint left incomplete. It's a little bit retro—""Omanko"" is jet-lagged Suicide; ""I Will"" is Blondie with overgrown roots; ""24 Hours"" is a song I am bummed John Hughes did not get to hear before he died—but its overall sensibility is undeniably 2013. The unfinished-basement textures are the work of Producer of the Moment/Most Valuable Ex-Hippos Member Ariel Reichstadt, and if it had a kindred spirit in the many things he had a hand in this year it was Charli XCX's True Romance—another record that seethed and blushed and oh-my-God-ed and just felt at all times unapologetically alive. But Night Time, My Time gave us the added bonus of long-delayed gratification: a brave and uncompromising artist who'd languished so long in the dentist office waiting room of the music industry finally hears her name called—and finally gets a chance to bare her fangs. ""The way I was before, I'm not her anymore,"" Ferreira surges on ""Heavy Metal Heart"", flinging off each syllable with wild abandon, like she's shaking off the last scales of old skin. —Lindsay Zoladz",Platform: YouTube - Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w536Alnon24,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/19873/homepage_large.ebf19562.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sky_Ferreira-Night_Time_My_Time.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9293-the-top-50-albums-of-2013/,2013,year,album,14,The Knife,Shaking the Habitual,Mute / Brille / Rabid,"Of all the ways The Knife have provoked audiences over the years—trading in sprightly synth-pop for dread-ridden electro-goth, crafting impenetrable found-sound operas about Charles Darwin, turning up at awards shows in attire that puts Björk to shame—words have never been their weapon of choice. But on Shaking the Habitual, words are what matter most. Even as it pushes the Swedish duo to uncompromising extremes (this album doesn’t so much clear the dancefloor as tear a fissure right through it), the album stands as the Knife’s most humane, compassionate work to date. It’s a concept album but, instead of thrusting its narrative upon you, it asks that you take control of your own. Throughout the 96-minute record, Karin Dreijer Andersson can be heard talking about “stories” the way Gollum talks about rings—as a precious and empowering life-source. For Karin and brother Olaf Dreijer, stories are the building blocks of history as it is told—and, conversely, the instrument through which centuries-old socio-economic power structures can be dismantled. Of course, the Knife recognize that’s a tall order for any single album, so they dutifully lead by example, bulldozing their ice-sculpted sound and reshaping it into percussive belly-dancer thrusts, extended sound-collaged drones, and hot-wired techno. But the clamor ultimately works in service to a clarity of vision, a philosophical throughline that connects the Knife to a roll call of radicals ranging from Margaret Atwood and Judith Butler to Fugazi and Salt-n-Pepa. Quoting the latter, Olaf sings, “let’s talk about gender, baby, let’s talk about you and me,” just as the nine-minute electro-punk gut-puncher “Full of Fire” comes to a sudden halt. Here, such jarring gestures signal not the end of the story, but your cue to start telling yours. —Stuart Berman The Knife: ""Full of Fire""",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/theknife/full-of-fire,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/19042/homepage_large.2b1fbd74.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Knife-Shaking_the_Habitual.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9293-the-top-50-albums-of-2013/,2013,year,album,13,Kurt Vile,Wakin on a Pretty Daze,Matador,"Kurt Vile gets a lot of ink for being a supremely chill, modest family man, so what could possibly inspire him to say something like, “in this day and age, ‘punk ideals’ are totally irrelevant”? Specifically, punk idealists who took issue with his decision to license a year-old song to Bank of America, a windfall that required no work whatsoever and allowed him to support his wife and buy better diapers for his daughter. Did Patrick Stickles not get the joke on “Puppet to the Man”? But in a more general sense, it’s a realization that gets described more tactfully throughout Vile’s masterful fourth LP, the lightbulb moment when all those old designs for life, including your own, just don’t apply to reality anymore. None of these revelations come quickly during Wakin' on a Pretty Daze: On the opening quasi-title track, Vile rouses himself from slumber, laughing at people and machinery who feel like anything they have to say is particularly urgent. On the album’s closer, he spends 10 minutes trying to distill a lifetime of joy and pure pain into a “Goldtone” lasting no more than a split second. In between, Vile’s music is in a wakeful, meditative state, both searching and confident in the manner of a guy who’s learned to trust his life experience rather than someone else’s pat advice. Meanwhile, his blue-collar roots are no longer the stuff of PR one-sheets in “KV Crimes”, a cowbell-led parade through the streets of Philadelphia worthy of Rocky and “Snowflakes Are Dancing”, which earns its telltale rhyme of “Springsteen” and “pristine”. It all unfolds at the pace of life itself, a virtuoso work that sounds so effortless that even a supremely chill, modest family man can’t help but testify on ""Was All Talk"", “making music is easy, watch me!” —Ian Cohen",Platform: YouTube - Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGTwH8eCn5o,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/19046/homepage_large.69b2dbee.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kurt_Vile-Wakin_on_a_Pretty_Daze.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9293-the-top-50-albums-of-2013/,2013,year,album,12,Chance the Rapper,Acid Rap,,"At a passing glance of a Tumblr timeline it'd be easy to mistake Chicago's Chance the Rapper for any number of new jack blog-savvy revivalist rappers struggling their way around high-pitched Pharcyde chatter and ""93 Til Infinity"" instrumentals. And certainly the production on Acid Rap, with its sampled nods to J Dilla and Tribe Called Quest, leans towards that sort of single-minded throwback. But as a rapper, Chance's nostalgia is immersive, not constructed. It's telling that he openly cites the influence of under-heralded West Coast crew Freestyle Fellowship, a collective that emphasized perpetual stylistic reinvention on a micro level (and provided the big bang for both Pharcyde and Souls of Mischief's elastic flows). So where the A$APs of today pick up hand-me-down and watered down cadences and beat at them repeatedly and the Joey Badasses struggle through existing patterns that are usually far above their competency level, Chance is going back to the point of origin and rebuilding the old styles from scratch. Every track here is kicked in a different cadence—usually jazzy and always frantic—and it's striking to hear that model applied by a young rapper whose raw foundational material is Kanye and Eminem. He's using the same toolbox as the greats but drawing on very different blueprints. Chance's writing takes a similarly expansive approach to history. For a 20-year-old, Chance's point of view is oddly melancholic and sentimental, but this perspective only strengthens his narratives. He writes with a vivid sensory memory—you can smell the blunt guts or hear the fireworks and mistake them for gunfire in his words. It's a paradoxically level-headed approach on an album where the performance is so unhinged and the second line is ""the acid made me crazy."" But maybe the title—and Chance's whole Woody Woodpecker meltdown rap style—is a bit of a misdirect. Acid Rap isn't about the trip, it's about the flashbacks. —Andrew Nosnitsky",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/19293/homepage_large.199a1849.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Chance_the_Rapper-Acid_Rap.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9293-the-top-50-albums-of-2013/,2013,year,album,11,Darkside,Psychic,Matador / Other People,"Psychic is a declaration of psychedelic liberation. It’s the sound of lava lamps being unplugged, black light mushroom posters trashed, and wah-wah pedals pawned. It’s Nicolas Jaar and guitarist Dave Harrington re-imagining Pink Floyd if Ricardo Villalobos substituted for Syd Barrett. Leave it to a Brown graduate to elude all stoner cliché. Every college freshman to alternate bong rips and guitar riffs has vainly toyed with the conceit of updating Dark Side of the Moon. Most experiments wind up as morbidly embarrassing as Trustafarians with dreads. Darkside are brazen enough to lay it down flat in the title of their project. The heartbeat thump, lunar spacing, and spooky post-production clatter ring the same alarms. You hear the reverberations of Meddle’s 22-minute trip, “Echoes”, but they’re re-routed through a vapor trail of krautrock, trip-hop, Italo-disco, and minimal techno. If the narcotic canon was constructed for isolated journeys, Psychic is communal, funky and loose, the by-product of ideas emerging from jams. Dave Harrington’s falsetto levitates closer to Off the Wall than another brick in it. Jaar contributes the Gauloises rasp expected from a former scholar of French deconstructionism. His grooves are propulsive and his imagery is spare: paper trails on mountains, fruits on a table, wooden houses to live in, herbal palliatives sempiternal in bloom. The fear and interior bug-outs are swapped for neon-fringed skylines, meditative clarity, crowded dancefloors and empty freeways. Psychic is as cosmopolitan and refined as its Ivy League pedigree would intimate. It gets sweaty without losing its cool. It envisions an ambulatory future from a waxen past. Now someone needs to figure out what movie it syncs up best with. —Jeff Weiss",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/daftside-2/golden-arrow,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/19779/homepage_large.b0dd057e.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Darkside-Psychic.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9293-the-top-50-albums-of-2013/,2013,year,album,10,Arcade Fire,Reflektor,Merge,"I hear you’re buying a synthesizer and an arpeggiator and are throwing your hurdy-gurdy out the window because you want to make something real. And for three records now, that’s what Arcade Fire have been making in earnest, mostly at the sacrifice of something cool. This time they searched the streets of Haiti and Jamaica and brought back rala music and reggae. They found James Murphy and mixed in disco. They dug up some Kierkegaard, whose essay titled “The Present Age” has this skeleton key passage: “…A passionate age pushes forward, establishing new things and destroying others, raising and tearing down. A reflective, passionless age does the opposite, it stifles and hinders, it levels.” Arcade Fire found their reality in this new Reflektive Age—one of both stifling inaction and now paralytic technology—and that reality is on trial all throughout the band’s massive double album. They’ve had a referendum on disaffection since “Wake Up” and technology since “We Used to Wait”, but on Reflektor it all comes to a head, mashed up in a super-saturated, kaleidoscopic double LP. One minute the rhythms plod like a 12” disco edit played at half speed, the next they explode into a carnival street party. If Arcade Fire have been accused of being too moody and mawkish in the past, this is, at last, a record that’s more for the feet and body than it is for an aching heart. They wrote their big arena songs early in their career, and they can now fill the enormous space they carved for themselves like a polyglot band, fluent in many languages—sentiment and irony, Italo disco and island syncopations, English and French—to try and balance their inflated presence on the world stage. They will never be a cool band. They will never quit these pretentious things. They keep digging tunnels, looking for that damn connector. —Jeremy D. Larson Arcade Fire: ""Reflektor""",Platform: YouTube - Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7E0fVfectDo,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/19859/homepage_large.79062484.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Arcade_Fire-Reflektor.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9293-the-top-50-albums-of-2013/,2013,year,album,9,Savages,Silence Yourself,Matador / Pop Noire,"Savages are serious. If you don’t believe it from the music, there are CAPS LOCK MANIFESTOS on their Facebook and website and an earnest missive to individual identity right on the front cover of Silence Yourself. But all that text and pretense is just static that fades to nothing when you press play on this band’s debut, which is bracing and sharp enough to cut through the noise of daily life and deliver all of the band’s messages more effectively than any of the metadata that comes with it. Savages clearly draw their most important influences from the immediate post-punk era. It’s there in Ayşe Hassan’s razor-toned bass, Fay Milton’s tight, economical drumming, and Gemma Thompson’s guitar, which swings between riffs and peals of shattering noise on a dime. Jehnny Beth’s howl has that spirit, too. But Savages are much more than just some echo of the years-ago post-punk revival; they're also a band, locked in with each other, never wasting a note, and honest enough about their sound that they don’t bother with genre exercises like sneaking in a disco beat or dub passage. They cut the album in a series of live takes in the studio in the hope of capturing some of their stage show’s raw energy, and it’s a testament to their quality as a band that it’s not a gimmick. That chance to feed off each other is essential to Silence Yourself’s dark power. This is not an easy kind of music to make memorable, and dynamics are important to the way Savages do that. “City’s Full” and “Shut Up” seem straightforward enough at first glance, but they twist and turn in sophisticated and subtle ways that are hard for a group to master and harder to simulate when you’re recording in separate rooms. Savages may have post-punk aesthetics, but they have classic rock chops, and that matters. It makes their seriousness something to take seriously. —Joe Tangari",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/pop-noire-radio/savages-husbands/s-wUDfA,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/19171/homepage_large.903733f6.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Savages-Silence_Yourself.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9293-the-top-50-albums-of-2013/,2013,year,album,8,Majical Cloudz,Impersonator,Matador,"Two years ago, Devon Welsh hadn't found his voice. After a couple of small-run releases, he and Majical Cloudz partner Matthew Otto released an album called II in 2011. The Canadian duo's aesthetic back then was fairly similar to how many of their peers sound now: smooth, distant electronics with snippets of fuzzy samples, and motifs rooted in R&B and weirdo-pop alike. That same year, the pair were featured on ""Nightmusic"", a track on close friend Claire Boucher's breakout LP as Grimes, Visions; Welsh and Otto's contributions to the song blended in so well that it was hard to tell if they were even there at all. Considering the 10 tracks that make up Impersonator, though, it's hard to imagine these guys blending into any sort of background. This is music about fear and uncertainty presented without any trace of fear and uncertainty. Any one song on Impersonator consists of a just a few warm tones along with maybe a soft backbeat or some processed guitar or strings thrown in for texture. These sounds can be inviting or chilly, sometimes simultaneously—but they can't help but feel like window dressing for Welsh's dramatic baritone, which serves as the project's nakedly emotional anchor. His words can be uncomfortably direct, breaking language down to its most basic form to communicate a message. The songs are almost invigoratingly vague; closing track ""Notebook"" sounds like a diary entry, though it's hard to tell whose diary it's from. What he says feels raw, but he remains out-of-reach enough to present his and Otto's unique art as a canvas possessing all the enveloping blankness of one of Welsh's signature white T-shirts. —Larry Fitzmaurice",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/19231/homepage_large.30c06206.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Majical_Cloudz-Impersonator.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9293-the-top-50-albums-of-2013/,2013,year,album,7,Daft Punk,Random Access Memories,Columbia,"As much as they’ve strived to protect their mystique, to the point where we know more about their robot helmets than the people behind them, Daft Punk have always been very open about their intents. “Da Funk”, “Digital Love”, “Robot Rock”—these weren't just songs, they were skyscraping neon billboards advertising the duo’s sound and vision. With Random Access Memories, Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo provide us with an even more intimate look at their creative process, by essentially compiling a curated mix of their greatest inspirations. Except instead of simply putting together a bunch of tracks by their most beloved artists, they went out and hired their idols to appear on new songs of their own. As such, RAM plays out like a nostalgia-trip-as-theme-park-ride, a dizzying journey through the past 40 years of pleasure-center-pushing pop. The phone-book-length liner notes list at least five iconic recording studios and a small army of veteran soft-rock session players, making the gatefold vinyl sleeve less an indulgence than a practical necessity; when you play this album on iTunes, the display may as well show all the money spent on it with each passing second. And yet, as much as the record harkens back to a bygone golden age of limitless budgets and cocaine-encrusted console boards, the utopian sonic ideal it presents—with psychedelia, prog-rock, disco, electro, indie-pop, house, and even the odd trap beat all fusing into the same blissful frequency—could only be realized today. The spare-no-expenses approach yields such an embarrassment of riches that even this summer’s most indelible Pharrell-fronted dancefloor seducers are the mere crust for a Paul Williams hero sandwich. But the transitions from sleek, Chic funk to theatrical orchestro-disco opuses and back feel as smooth as the station-to-station glide of a vintage Harmon/Kardon receiver. And the luxuriant sonic details are ultimately secondary to the earworm melodies that materialize in all sorts of surprising forms: the Julian Casablancas cameo “Instant Crush” makes it clear that Daft Punk are better at writing latter-day Strokes songs than the latter-day Strokes are at writing Daft Punk songs; the Panda Bear collab “Doin’ It Right” yields the “My Girls” sequel that Centipede Hz disavowed; while “Fragments of Time” sees house producer Todd Edwards performing stellar Steely Dan karaoke in lieu of a presumably unavailable Donald Fagen. But the most illuminating insight into Daft Punk’s craft comes through the voice of perhaps their greatest influence. On the documentarian funk-fusion of “Giorgio by Moroder”, the Italo legend reveals the rationale behind his oft-imitated aesthetic: “I wanted to do an album with the sounds of the 50s, the sounds of the 60s, of the 70s, and then have a sound of the future.” With Random Access Memories, Daft Punk show that the best way to pay respects to a hero is not to merely emulate their sound, but to make their strategies your own. —Stuart Berman",Platform: YouTube - Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtjucCWeOf4,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/19217/homepage_large.5d2966f4.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Daft_Punk-Random_Access_Memories.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9293-the-top-50-albums-of-2013/,2013,year,album,6,Deafheaven,Sunbather,Deathwish,"Drunk texts, filmic interludes, a real-time drug deal, and an obsession with money—this is neither Drake nor Kendrick, but rather Deafheaven, the California band behind one of this year's most moving rock records. On Sunbather, Deafheaven radiantly fuse post-rock, shoegaze, and black metal into an aggressive swell of pastel-shaded guitars, blast beats, and confessional screams. But those mixed-in rap tropes are telling. Perhaps more than any other group making widescreen guitar music this year, Deafheaven were triumphantly post-genre. The band's approach is singular in its warm duality—a downpour of emotional energy with drama, melody, and blaring light. The sounds get under your skin like a second skeleton. The primary theme of Sunbather is a conflicted relationship with wealth—not relating to the abundance around you but still desiring the unknown. The crushing momentum of ""Dream House"" and ""Sunbather""—both symbols of all the things frontman George Clarke does not have—feels like the weight of sinking reality. But you could hear this as American Dream music, songs that struggle for a space of self-creation, because even with its harrowing themes, Sunbather prioritizes a dark beauty. There are spoken-word passages, including a reading from The Unbearable Lightness of Being. There are the sounds of a preacher in downtown San Francisco shouting at a crowd, projecting a most unfortunate Judgment Day. And there is also the voice of a nervous, broke Kerry McCoy, the band's guitarist and songwriter, doing a drug deal (he had been using opiates at the time). Clarke encouraged McCoy, also his best friend of over a decade, to sample the meeting; ""It's raw and soul-bearing,"" Clarke said, ""The evils of hell mixed with one's own personal hell [of] addiction and self-worth."" This is a small, street-level piece in the grand picture of Sunbather, but its directness helps make everything click. For an album that can feel supernatural, Sunbather is in essence uncannily grounded. —Jenn Pelly",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/19249/homepage_large.7e252f9a.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Deafheaven-Sunbather.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9293-the-top-50-albums-of-2013/,2013,year,album,5,Danny Brown,Old,Fool's Gold,"On 2011's XXX, Danny Brown perfected one of the more compelling personae in music: an unhinged oddball with a funny haircut and a funnier voice who had an insatiable hunger for drugs and sex—and plenty of highly creative ways to tell you all about it. XXX was party music but it was never just party music; there was an undercurrent of darkness and danger and a little regret, even as Brown pursued his vices with gusto. Listening to it reminded me of a line on Neil Young’s album Tonight’s the Night, about a hopeless junkie named Bill who was up on a hill and who was ""having a ball rolling to the bottom."" XXX felt like watching that tumble in action— thrilling and frightening and voyeuristic in equal measure. But the rapper on XXX, as multi-faceted as he could be, turned out to be hiding someone even more interesting: Danny Brown. There’s still party music on Old, but it also includes more reflective songs. The album’s title was brave and felt like a dare: In this line of work, age usually equals death, but Brown—a virtual unknown toiling away in Detroit until he was 30, who had years away from the spotlight to practice, write, think—doesn’t shy from it. He knows that hip-hop is youth culture and wonders how to grow old within it. Not so long ago this was a purely hypothetical question because hip-hop itself was still just a baby. But the last decade we’ve seen it answered by different artists in different ways. On Old, this is how Danny Brown goes about it: You look back on your life and find joy and regret and pain and try and figure out what it all means. You think about where things went wrong and what you were subjected to and where you fucked up. You find collaborators to help you bring your concerns to life. You don’t let go of youthful excess and you allow yourself to do some stupid shit sometimes, to remember what it feels like, and because it’s still fun. You remember who’s important. You have some laughs. You endure. —Mark Richardson",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/xdannyxbrownx/kush-coma-feat-a-ap-rocky,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/19758/homepage_large.822cd3f7.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Danny_Brown-Old.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9293-the-top-50-albums-of-2013/,2013,year,album,4,My Bloody Valentine,m b v,Self-released,"We are in peak reissue/reunion culture for people who are afraid that the new will never be as good as the old. A similar fear reverberated around the world on February 2, when My Bloody Valentine let loose their first new album in 22 years. You remember where you were. You remember the 403 errors. The desperation: “hi can someone pls DM me a working link thx.” It’s just 10 months later, and the very act of downloading mbv feels nostalgic. That’s how fast things move now. Not for Kevin Shields, of course. That’s not his tempo. For a generation raised, drugged, and sexed on Loveless, the stakes were pretty high; for those who came into Loveless retroactively, there was a secret hope that mbv could be their own Loveless—a long shot. Because Loveless in 2013 is just a simulacrum, and the Gen-X’ers know that. They were there in '91 and lord that patina of authenticity over the latecomers. There’s an imprecise feeling for all who missed the introverted bliss of Loveless, and the entire microculture of shoegaze that went with it. Kids can co-opt the vibe of the 90s, but the genuine article will always be absent, drowned in the wake of time. In an unprecedented occasion, mbv connected the old and the new. At first, the album seemed to exist only in reference to the band’s heyday, with its monogrammed title, entirely analog recording, and mythical arrival. From the opening flourish of “She Found Now” it sounded just like a proper My Bloody Valentine record: those dropped tunings, that gated reverb, those heartbeat drums, Kevin Shields and Belinda Butcher cast once again as Ghost Who Sings 1 and Ghost Who Sings 2. But then mbv started to bend into the present, revealing that it wasn’t a continuation of Loveless at all. This album is for the kid who’s home on a Friday night blowing smoke through a dryer sheet in a dorm room and the parent who’s doing the same in their home office because their child is sleeping. It’s a new blueprint for making a sexy, druggy, rock'n'roll record. These are how guitars work: They hang like tendrils for Shields and Butcher to float through, they drone imprecisely around a pitch like a bagpipe, they make harmonics that floss your equilibrium. And these are how songs go: They shift around from chord to unrelated chord just to make you dizzy, or sometimes they do nothing for three-and-a-half minutes except get a little bit louder. In just nine songs, they manage to detach from the 90s and float in the ether, there for any generation to claim as their own. —Jeremy D. Larson My Bloody Valentine: ""Only Tomorrow""",Platform: YouTube - Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2358mPrs9Q,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/18923/homepage_large.7171036f.jpg,/dataset/artwork/My_Bloody_Valentine-m_b_v.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9293-the-top-50-albums-of-2013/,2013,year,album,3,Disclosure,Settle,PMR,"It felt like every time I went shopping this year, I heard a Disclosure song. There is a certain primness to Settle that makes the debut album from young British brothers Guy and Howard Lawrence appealing to the people who decide what you hear when you buy clothes. Every element in a Disclosure song—every click, every kick, every bubble, every whoosh—fits just so, attaining a level of tailored togetherness that is both humbling and aspirational. That delicately presented perfection could also make Settle too faceless to linger in your memory: A mannequin dressed like the coolest person you know is still nothing but a shiny hunk of plastic. But I frequently get completely lost in this album—in the sweep of ""Latch"", in the whispers of ""Defeated No More"", in guest vocalist Eliza Doolittle's elongated vowels, in the operatic sighs of ""Help Me Lose My Mind"". Settle has its own motives, but I turn to it to get sucked into the undercurrent of my own mind. Dance music has long been therapy, the dancefloor a place for redemption and salvation. But I only danced to Disclosure once this year; instead, I played this album over and over in transit—when riding the subway or walking or flying, in those rare moments when I didn't feel like I was being swallowed in noise, both literal and figurative. There, its therapeutic values remain; when I listen to Settle, the thing I hear loudest is the space. —Jordan Sargent Disclosure: ""Latch""",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/disclosuremusic/latch-ft-sam-smith,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/19280/homepage_large.e117b531.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Disclosure-Settle.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9293-the-top-50-albums-of-2013/,2013,year,album,2,Kanye West,Yeezus,Def Jam,"Kanye West premiered ""New Slaves"" by projecting his likeness onto buildings around the world. Turns out that moderately audacious publicity stunt (by his standards) was mere foreshadowing for the riskier ambitions of Yeezus, where he projects his most combative and caricatured self for 41 frenzied minutes, virtually taunting those who fail to meet him on his own terms. In turn, Yeezus increased that cohort drastically. The singles got nowhere near as much rotation as the purposefully provocative talking points. “Strange Fruit”, apartheid, and the Civil Rights sign were given new power through perversion. ""Black Skinhead"" and ""New Slaves"" dismissed nuanced political debate for righteous rage. And instead of showing gratitude for his impending fatherhood, Kanye gave us morally bankrupt songs like ""Hold My Liquor"" and ""I'm In It"" that doubled as preemptive cop-outs from any future custody battles. Since its release in June, Yeezus has been outsold by J. Cole's hedge-betting Born Sinner... and cosigned as a masterpiece by the guy who made Metal Machine Music. Kanye might be a bit little iffy on the specifics, but there's no doubting Yeezus' thesis: There's a war going on outside, and you don't have to turn your dial too far from ""Ellen"" to see it. Both musically and politically, this album bears the strain and tension of an increasingly stratified America, one that leaves the disappearing middle class a howling void. Unlike the star-studded opus My Dark Beautiful Twisted Fantasy, Yeezus is harsh and minimal, aligning itself with scavengers and subversives who accentuate Ye’s most daring impulses: Daft Punk (in taser-tag Human After All mode), witch house wastrels Salem, Chicago drill MCs King L and Chief Keef, and cocky production innovators including Hudson Mohawke, Gesaffelstein, Young Chop, Arca, and Evian Christ. Hip-hop's fundamentally altered landscape is proof enough that Kanye constructed his perfect doomsday device with Yeezus: Once “On Sight” judders to life, everything sounds radioactive, with an unpredictable blast radius that stretches past pop music—things will never be the same for croissants, Toyota Corollas, Deepak Chopra, or 300, to name a few. But more than anything, it ends up mutating the guy closest to it, and Yeezus finds the 21st century’s most fascinating musical figure powered by poison and poisoned by power. I guess every supervillain needs his theme music. —Ian Cohen",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/19360/homepage_large.a2fb43da.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kanye_West-Yeezus.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9293-the-top-50-albums-of-2013/,2013,year,album,1,Vampire Weekend,Modern Vampires of the City,XL,"""Ya Hey"" is, like so much of Modern Vampires of the City, something at once tender and impossibly grand—a break-up song about God. ""Oh, sweet thing,"" Ezra Koenig coos. ""Babylon don't love you."" Then comes an even more backhanded kiss-off: ""But you love everything."" You love everything. The same could (and has) been said of Vampire Weekend, with and without the italicized sneer. Back in 2007, when their self-titled CD-R first started making its way beyond Columbia's campus, you'd have been hard-pressed to read something about them that didn't balk at their cultural omnivorousness—an Ivy League indie-pop band that name-checks Lil Jon and Peter Gabriel in the same sustained breath? Half a decade later, it is equally hard to imagine this same fact surprising anybody. As Modern Vampires showcases, a transformation has taken place within Vampire Weekend—they've grown into a mature, ambitious band whose music is now both airier and weightier than it used to be. But a broader cultural shift has occurred, too. The lines that used to separate different kinds of music are starting to look more and more old-fashioned, and the rigid identities by which people used to make musical taste a game of us-vs.-them are crumbling like old buildings. We are moving in the direction of a place where everybody is allowed to love everything. And the album's more lighthearted moments—the crash-pop of ""Diane Young"" or the half-rapped, harpsichord-kissed Souls of Mischief nod ""Step""—feel like an anarchic celebration of this. But there's also an unshakable sense of gravitas anchoring these songs. Multi-instrumentalist Rostam Batmanglij (who co-produced with the ubiquitous Ariel Rechtshaid) is as eloquent with atmosphere as Koenig is with words; every track on here has its own weather. The arrangements on career-to-date peaks like ""Obvious Bicycle"" and ""Hannah Hunt"" are meticulous but well-ventilated—chatter drifts in, as if through an open window, providing hazy backdrops for Koenig's lyrical searching. ""I'm not excited, but should I be?/ Is this the fate that half of the world has planned for me?"" a disillusioned narrator sings in ""Unbelievers"", glancing around at a shitty job market, mounting student loans, and a culture that likes to blame all its ailments on the helpless young. On Modern Vampires, Vampire Weekend reject the narrative that has been used to describe their generation: In the clock-smashing slow-motion of ""Hannah Hunt"", somebody takes the Paper of Record—you imagine it's turned to one of those Trouble With Millennials articles—and tears it into pieces. But this record also tears up the narrative that has up until now defined Vampire Weekend. Modern Vampires is such an overwhelmingly humane album that it makes all those words that used to stick to them (elitist, pretentious, preppy) seem outmoded, too. Maybe what this album is really breaking up with is dogma—anything that limits the scope of your perspective and what (or who) you can love. It believes in nothing so much as this moment, speaking in pitch-shifted tongues, and finding its own heaven in the Cloud. —Lindsay Zoladz Vampire Weekend: ""Step""  (See next page for contributors' top 10s)",Platform: YouTube - Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mDxcDjg9P4,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/19157/homepage_large.5cbf0d08.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Vampire_Weekend-Modern_Vampires_of_the_City.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,100,Factory Floor,"""Fall Back""",DFA,"Nik Colk Void’s vocal takes are usually subsumed by the music, with the band giving them no more or less importance than any other instrument. “Fall Back” is one of the rare exceptions to that rule on Factory Floor, with Void's deadpan delivery sounding more assertive than it does elsewhere. It’s a change that suits them, giving the sound a pop edge that harks back to the feel of the pre-album 2011 single “R E A L L O V E” . It’s also the closest the album gets to the band’s face-shredding live shows, where the constant shudder of their electronic backing hits as hard as a cold punch to the stomach. “Fall Back” finds a way to make distance a virtue, actively alienating and antagonizing Factory Floor’s audience by building stern barriers to entry. —Nick Neyland",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/14718/homepage_large.573a4e93.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Factory_Floor-Fall_Back.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,99,Thee Oh Sees,"""Toe Cutter - Thumb Buster""",Castle Face,"Thee Oh Sees have proven that they’re capable of delivering a motorik burner or two. Floating Coffin has a couple, but with “Toe Cutter / Thumb Buster”, John Dwyer and the band show some restraint. The vocals are quiet and falsetto, and the tempo is steady. Even when they’re singing in a relative whisper, it’s deceptive—they’re mumbling a murderous narrative about “sounds from far below” and “blood upon the ground” and “silence all around.” Even the smallest sonic elements read as ominous if you focus on them for long enough, like the shaker, which scrapes persistently in the back of the mix. Thee Oh Sees have dozens of songs from albums, split 7”s, and flexi-discs that are full of muscle and power. This one’s strength comes from its simplicity: One repetitive, hypnotizing, buoyant riff, some sweet voices, a dark story. —Evan Minsker",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/15075/homepage_large.3d0c2591.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Thee_Oh_Sees-Toe_Cutter_-_Thumb_Buster.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,98,The Range,"""Metal Swing""",Donky Pitch,"Looking at James Hinton's biography, you'd assume we were talking about a wacky new neighbor on ""The Big Bang Theory"" and not one of the most slyly gratifying electronic musicians to come along this year. The Brown University grad majored in physics, has a self-professed love for math and cosmology, and spends too much time on YouTube. And though little of this specifically informs ""Metal Swing"", the final track on his first album as the Range, it does show how well Hinton works with contradictions. So while his pedigree might be low-key geek, ""Metal Swing"" is anything but eggheaded, leading with its gut instead of its brain. Built around a cyclical piano-based melody and a tip-toeing bass line, its internal rhythm feels almost tidal: Cautious, hypnotic, a little uneasy. And then, all of a sudden: ""Why's this guy threatening?"" The voice belongs to an unidentified, Cockney-accented UK rapper spewing puffed-chested and carefully calculated bluster. There's very little about ""Metal Swing"" that feels threatening—to have empty schoolyard barbs anchor the track seems almost counterintuitive. But therein lies the subtle but risky mechanics at the heart of ""Metal Swing"", a demonstration of how incongruent shapes can create a strange, rewarding harmony. —Zach Kelly",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/16086/homepage_large.57606341.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Range-Metal_Swing.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,97,Foxygen,"""No Destruction""",Jagjaguwar,"You might have listened to Foxygen’s “No Destruction"" a dozen times, but only really heard that one line. The one where singer Sam France bluntly states his East Coast vs. West Coast preferences. “You don’t need to be an asshole/ You’re not in Brooklyn anymore,” he blurts while the band channels the loose and free-wheelin’ sounds of Loaded-era Velvet Underground. “No Destruction” is not a tirade against Williamsburg, gentrification, or hipsterdom, though. Actually, it’s not immediately clear what it’s about. It starts off as a breakup tune with a living-well-is-the-best-revenge slant, but France quickly abandons this linear narrative for a series of stoney stream-of-consciousness couplets (“I know they’re gonna try to take away my big mouse/ Take the panels off my greenhouse”). If you pay attention, you can get the gist of his dilemma: It’s over. She’s gone. It's all in the past. But France's grasp on the past sounds a bit unreliable. And there is nobody left to burn one in the subway with. ""No Destruction"" is goofy, but it's not necessarily a joke. It finds a sweet spot that balances snark and sentiment, that touches on 60s rock nostalgia while never taking itself too seriously. —Aaron Leitko",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/foxygen/foxygen-no-destruction-we,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/14745/homepage_large.8e4d5f8a.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Foxygen-No_Destruction.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,96,Ty Segall,"""Sleeper""",Drag City,"Though Sleeper is a gentler record than any other in Ty Segall’s catalogue, the title track does have a specific precursor: 2011’s “Goodbye Bread”, another album opener, was an annunciation of sorts, a broadening of the range we’d come to expect from one of California’s leading garage rockers. It was the prettiest thing Segall had done up to that point, and the saddest. And with “Sleeper”, he makes good on that promise of depth, channeling pain and anger into one of his most poignant songs. Segall both writes and plays with a sincerity that never devolves into sentimentality, but his voice is strained, his guitar is heavy and loose, and there’s a subtle otherworldliness, an ethereal lilting feedback buried within that’s only revealed once the song’s reached its end. —Jonah Bromwich",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/28/segall-sleeper%202.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Ty_Segall-Sleeper.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,95,Swearin',"""Dust in the Gold Sack""",Salinas,"Much of what is written about fuzz-pop outfit Swearin’ finds a way of mentioning that frontwoman Allison Crutchfield is the twin sister of Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield. The connection is useful in highlighting the siblings' aptitude for guitar-driven melody, as the Crutchfield sisters churn out indie rock like Beyoncé churns out hair flips, and on “Dust in the Gold Sack”, the band makes it look easy, assembling tangled riffage and crashing cymbals. But for all that expertise, ""Dust in the Gold Sack"" is every bit as raw as it is cathartic, a place where “booze overnighted” and “grudges unrequited” loom large and then evaporate in the same exhale. —Molly Beauchemin",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/wichita-recordings/swearin-dust-in-the-gold-sack,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/28/Swearin-Surfing-Strange1%202.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Swearin-Dust_in_the_Gold_Sack.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,94,Duke Dumont,"""Need U (100%)"" [ft. A*M*E]",Blasé Boys Club,"London producer and DJ Duke Dumont, a Switch mentee who’s been spinning since he was 15, knows his way around hypnotically straightforward dance music. “Need U (100%)” helped jump-start the recent house music revival along with artists like Rudimental and Disclosure and shortly after its release, Dumont told FACT he almost didn’t work with a guest vocalist at all, debating whether to cut in an a cappella track instead. What a shame that would have been. The song’s clap-happy beat and whiplash breakdown need little adornment, but 18-year-old singer A*M*E adds a pulse-resuscitating vocal jolt that was noticeably absent from the Debbie Deb and Monifah samples on Dumont’s 2007 Regality EP. “Give me one hundred/ Need you one hundred percent,” she sings (or rather demands) with the same “Yeah, what are you going to give me for it?” teasing of her own breakout single, “Play the Game Boy.” Except this time they’re both playing, and everyone on the dance floor is a winner. —Harley Brown",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/dukedumont/duke-dumont-need-u-100-ft-a-m,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/28/duke-dumont%202.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Duke_Dumont-Need_U_100_ft_AME.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,93,David Bowie,"""Love Is Lost (Hello Steve Reich Mix by James Murphy)""",Columbia,"David Bowie announced the release of The Next Day, the album he’d spent three years shaping in secrecy, on his 66th birthday, only two weeks into this year. The record’s continued rollout throughout 2013 suggested that, despite his age, Bowie was an old legend interested in new tricks. Chief among them was a 3xCD collector’s version. It followed much later in the year, keying on new songs and, most saliently, a 10-minute remix of The Next Day’s coming-of-age terror tale, “Love Is Lost”, by Bowie acolyte James Murphy. With the single and its edit, Bowie effectively joined the remix and YouTube masses. Murphy’s longest remix in a decade, his rendering is both reverent and revisionist. (He references composer Steve Reich in the title, largely because he turns the sound of a crowd clapping into a rhythm that shifts in phase against the rest of the music at the start. That idea comes from the minimalist’s own “Clapping Music”). He uses every verse and refrain here, and he repurposes the tune’s anxious organ. But Bowie’s rock original gives way to Murphy’s vivified disco, as he rearranges the song’s order entirely and leans more heavily on its central lament than its actual narrative: “Oh what have you done?” he implores Bowie to repeat above colorful keyboard splashes and a springy beat that builds up only for its own comedown. It’s posed less as a question of blame and less as one of general despair: What are you going to leave behind, exactly? —Grayson Haver Currin David Bowie: ""Love Is Lost (Hello Steve Reich Mix By James Murphy)""",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/davidbowie/love-is-lost-hello-steve-reich,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/16176/homepage_large.29e8b3a1.jpg,/dataset/artwork/David_Bowie-Love_Is_Lost_Hello_Steve_Reich_Mix_by_James_Murphy.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,92,Lil Durk," ""Dis Ain't What U Want""",Def Jam,"One of the fascinating things about Chicago's drill music movement is how insular it’s remained, even in light of the massive hype and controversy that has surrounded it. For better or worse, its participants have mostly stayed their creative course, rapping in a vacuum, disengaged from the hand-wringing and concern-trolling that’s surrounded their work and community. Lil Durk's ""Dis Ain't What U Want"" is the type of line-drive street banger that the 21-year-old’s gotten incredibly efficient at producing, but it also stands out as perhaps the first of the drill records to make eye contact with those outsiders and onlookers. The hook inverts Keef's ""I Don't Like"" thesis to place the impetus of disgust on the audience instead. Durk's message is similarly blunt—""Fuck TMZ, fuck Breaking News and ABC/ I can't do no shows 'cause I terrify my city/ They say I terrify my city""—but maybe it needs to be. Much like fellow Southsider Chance the Rapper's baiting line ""I know you're scared, you should ask us if we scared too,"" ""Dis Ain't Want U Want"" forces the listener to engage the artists directly, not as totems of a damaged system, but as actual breathing human beings with feelings and fears of their own. —Andrew Nosnitsky Lil Durk: ""Dis Ain't What U Want""",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/defjam/lil-durk-dis-aint-what-u-want/s-46bCP,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/28/lildurk_620.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lil_Durk-_Dis_Aint_What_U_Want.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,91,Forest Swords,"""Thor's Stone""",Tri Angle,"Flickering ""Thor's Stone"" is an instrumental that evokes an image of hand-carved pan pipes or some ancient villager blowing through a conch shell. Its texture seems essentially primitive, an invocation meant to summon an unseen spirit. (I suspect this element prompted Lee “Scratch” Perry to spend much of his remix of the song gabbling about “evil energy.”) Balanced within Matthew Barnes’ personalized hybrid of skeletal dub, emotive drones, and shuddering beats, these primitive tones meet the modern in a way that enables “Thor’s Stone” to feel at once ageless, out-of-time, and wholly unique. —Matt Murphy",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/15569/homepage_large.c7fbdb45.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Forest_Swords-Thors_Stone.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,90,Yo La Tengo,"""Ohm""",Matador,"High-profile rock bands rarely thrive for long, and it’s nothing short of astonishing that Yo La Tengo is still batting over .300 nearly 30 years into their existence. On “Ohm”, they sound up-to-date but ready to walk away for the simplest reason: 'cause it’s been fun. There’s always been a push-and-pull in their output between still lifes and splattered abstractions, and they’ve been unafraid to wander as far as necessary in either direction. “Ohm” has them occupying the center, its circular riff unfolding over a soft, rustling rhythm before Ira Kaplan’s familiar guitar fuzz both curdles into sludge and cuts through the dissonance. Where it’s usually easy to tell who’s singing what, here Kaplan, Georgia Hubley, and James McNew’s voices are braided into a hushed mantra of inner tranquility. “Nothing ever stays the same, nothing’s explained,” check; “sometimes the good guys lose,” check; “the harder we go, the longer we pry,” check. It makes more sense the more they repeat it. —Jeremy Gordon Yo la Tengo: ""Ohm""",Platform: YouTube - Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Py2KOyrtq6o,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/14694/homepage_large.c6bed31a.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Yo_La_Tengo-Ohm.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,89,Young Thug,"""Picacho""",Brick Squad Monopoly,"Pokémon, I'm told, are grouped by type: grass, fire, water, electric, ""normal."" Atlanta's Young Thug may have saddled himself with rap's most generic moniker, but don't mistake the guy for a normal-type anything. Case in point: ""Picacho"", four minutes of unchecked eccentricity named for that yellowest of Pokémon. Or, sort of, anyway; as Jay Neutron's beat Jigglypuffs around him, Thug walks through the club, decked out in diamonds so sparkly, they ""just peek at you."" ""Picacho"" is overloaded with Thug's not-normal cadences, what-in-the-world metaphors, and peculiar—and peculiarly catchy—way with melody, coming off something like Auto-Tune-era Lil Wayne attempting to out-oddball any-era Lil B. Like his 1017 label boss Gucci Mane in his glory days, Thug flips the almost-titular Pokémon's name every which way he can, serving up one of the year's most unlikely earworms in the process. Thug's otherworldly sing-raps float right over ""Picacho"" in a manner that makes better-known space-cases like Future sound positively earthbound. It's a deliriously inventive, break-the-mold performance by one of rap's fastest-rising weirdos. —Paul Thompson",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/28/Young-Thug-1017-Thug-608x608%202.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Young_Thug-Picacho.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,88,Grouper,"""Vital""",Kranky,"""Vital"" is one of the most crushing Grouper tracks to date: we hear dim guitar strums echo under Liz Harris’ somber, inaudible self-harmonizing, and, in the distance, ambient tape hiss hits like crashing waves. There are hints of vocal melodies, like little hymns humming under the wreckage, but the words are warbled and distant, eventually disappearing without explanation. These are moments that serve as a reminder of the ways music about death can bring out the most subtly, eerily gorgeous dichotomies: it's haunting but calming, confusing but meditative. ""Vital"" comes off like Liz Harris is trying and failing. It's devastating, vulnerable, and real. —Liz Pelly",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/14693/homepage_large.1f99f96a.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Grouper-Vital.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,87,The National,"""Pink Rabbits""",4AD,"The closer the National inch toward ""boring""—or at least the cartoon version of ""boring"" that their detractors paint over them—the better, more powerful, more complex, more human, their music grows. On Trouble Will Find Me, Matt Berninger's husky murmur was at its most subdued, the tempos reined-in to their most stately, and the heat dialed down to a one-bubble-every-hour kind of simmer. Everything important they have to say about humanity occurs at this temperature—from this vantage point, they have the ability see things that others don't. Things like the ""white girl in a crowd of white girls in the park"" that Berninger picks out astutely on ""Pink Rabbits"", Trouble Will Find Me's emotional centerpiece and maybe the most resonant song the band's ever made. The song has almost no rhythmic motion—the drum rolls are mournful little stutters punctuating a falling sigh. It's the first National song one could credibly imagine being sung by, say, Elton John, and in fact, there is a conspicuous trace of  ""Goodbye Yellow Brick Road"" in its DNA. It's their grandest, warmest expression of Berninger's brand of wry empathy, one that recognizes the banality of our daily heartbreak and treats it with tenderness. ""You didn't see me, I was falling apart,"" Berninger sings. But this song sees you. —Jayson Greene The National: ""Sea of Love""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIWmRbHDhGw,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/28/The-National-Trouble-Will-Find-Me%202.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_National-Pink_Rabbits.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,86,Ty Dolla $ign,"""Paranoid"" [ft. Joe Moses]",self-released,"So, Ty Dolla $ign has a problem. I'll let him tell it: ""I see two of my bitches in the club, and I know they know about each other."" His lilting drawl indicates not dread but a perverse excitement. As he lets us know later—""Both my bitches drive Range Rovers/ None of my bitches can stay over""—it's not like this is going to follow him home, anyway. The 28-year-old brat is R&B's most brazen player and this is his Jerry Springer moment, trapped in a love triangle of his own construction with DJ Mustard's slippery organs and rattlesnake hi-hats playing the role of host nudging the trio towards the explosive final act. Except ""Paranoid"" has no conclusion. Was Ty being set up or was he just paranoid? Did the girls—in the same red bottoms and fragrance—even see each other? My guess is that in Ty Dolla $ign's world this is such a frequent occurrence that the resolution isn't even worth mentioning—if he even sought one out in the first place. —Jordan Sargent",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/tydollasign/02-paranoid-ft-joe-moses,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/28/BEACH-house-2%202.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ty_Dolla_ign-Paranoid_ft_Joe_Moses.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,85,Janelle Monáe,"""Q.U.E.E.N."" [ft. Erykah Badu]",Bad Boy,"A common criticism of Janelle Monáe is that the idea of her music outstrips the reality, and in this case that's completely true. ""Q.U.E.E.N."", the early advance track from her sophomore album The Electric Lady, was also her first single since a low-key guest turn on 2011's Grammy-winning fun. chart-topper ""We Are Young"". Like that song, ""Q.U.E.E.N."" has a subtle but crucial cameo, here by fellow grand soul-funk-pop starship trooper Erykah Badu, and its message of follow-your-arrow transcendence came as label brass were pitching the album as the one that would get Monáe over on mainstream radio. Her outsider's anthem was supposed to help make her an insider. That didn't quite happen. ""Q.U.E.E.N."" failed to crack Billboard's Hot 100, and Monáe was shut out of this year's Grammy nominations, but it's the insiders' loss. The success of Lorde's similarly convention-critiquing, sovereignty-themed smash drives home the audacity of this one's concept. Come on: A Prince-ly (and, later, Prince-remixed) celebration of difference that segues via classic Badu-ism ""the booty don't lie"" to a collective-conscious-rap outro? No wonder radio was confused. But even if Monáe/Badu's ode to freakiness made others uncomfortable, it enjoyed a built-in audience of alone-dancers and mirror-twerkers who love it for what it is, not what it might've been. These two women could only ever be royals. They just happen to rule their own galaxy. —Marc Hogan",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/atlanticrecords/queen-feat-erykah-badu,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/28/JANELLE-MONAE-ELECTRIC-LADY-e1376434058729%203.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Janelle_Mone-QUEEN_ft_Erykah_Badu.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,84,Chvrches,"""Recover""",Glassnote,"There’s nothing particularly complicated about Chvrches' formula: the 1980s synth-pop palette buffed to a contemporary shine; the wide-eyed vocal, courtesy of Lauren Mayberry, that falls to just the right side of hysteria; the occasional shouty ""oh"" refrain. What makes it so good is the conviction with which it’s delivered—not to mention the ruthless efficiency with which this Scottish trio hits the emotional bullseye time and time again. “Recover” certainly doesn’t hang around: we’re launched into the anthemic stratosphere within 25 seconds of that first steroidal snare hit, and there we remain pretty much for the duration. Personal drama—in this case, a relationship hanging in the balance—is presented in heart-burstingly epic terms. With these sorts of high theatrics, there’s always a risk of overshooting and landing on something absurdly overblown. But Chvrches’ aim proved to be unerring. —Angus Finlayson Chvrches: ""Recover""",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/chvrches/recover/s-udJcr,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/28/CHVRCHES-Recover.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Chvrches-Recover.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,83,My Bloody Valentine,"""New You""",self-released,"My Bloody Valentine’s comeback after a 22-year lapse in albums, mbv, was both a surprise and a complete lack of one. That dichotomy is embodied by “New You”, an mbv cut that suggests the past two decades may just have been a daydream trapped in a spiral in mastermind Kevin Shields’ inner ear. Tethered to the loopy funk that underpinned much of 1991’s epochal Loveless, “New You” lopes along hypnotically as singer-guitarist Bilinda Butcher exhales notes like lungfuls of fog. It isn’t the most immediately catchy or tinnitus-inducing moment of dream-pop bombast on mbv, but “New You” marks the moment where the album, and My Bloody Valentine as a whole, slips back into a confident gear. Every watermark of the band’s classic work is still at play, but here there’s a soft, haunting nuance to the melodic bends and sweetly stuttering tremolo that feels only as new as mbv needed to be. —Jason Heller My Bloody Valentine: ""New You""",Platform: YouTube - Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRqCxuF2bms,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/28/mbv%202.jpg,/dataset/artwork/My_Bloody_Valentine-New_You.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,82,Jon Hopkins,"""Open Eye Signal""",Domino,"Sometimes it seems like electronic music has two primary molds: austere minimalism and extreme party-starting maximalism. Neither is more valid than the other, and there's plenty of middle ground between, but it's rare that an artist manages to take elements of both and meld them successfully. Enter Jon Hopkins, or rather, shift your gaze to Jon Hopkins, who has been on the periphery of music for awhile: collaborating with Imogen Heap, Brian Eno, and Coldplay, releasing a good-not-great solo album in 2009, and then bursting forward this year with ""Open Eye Signal"", an exceptional song that never collapses under the weight of its crunchy synths. It also never really commits to a full-on drop. Instead, it's nearly eight minutes of carefully constructed bliss that weaves ambient howls between pulsing synths that stack on top of each other until they disappear completely, giving way to the track's final two minutes of warped percussion. —Sam Hockley-Smith",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/15299/homepage_large.aedcd13c.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jon_Hopkins-Open_Eye_Signal.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,81,Disclosure,"""Help Me Lose My Mind"" [ft. London Grammar]",PMR,"There were a number of human voices featured on Settle, the staggering debut album from the English duo Disclosure. Surfacing amid Guy and Howard Lawrence’s muscular house productions, they ranged from hip-hop preacher Eric Thomas to Friendly Fires’ Edward Macfarlane to Jessie Ware, while album highlights introduced fellow up-and-comers like Sam Smith and AlunaGeorge. But they saved the most heart-arresting vocal turn for last. Introducing London Grammar’s Hannah Reid to the world on album closer “Help Me Lose My Mind,” Disclosure slowed their tempo down to 110, coupled a closed hi-hat beat to a rattle that swelled and receded like cicadas, and created a track that sounds like a lost 90s classic. Reid’s voice falls somewhere between Everything But the Girl’s Tracey Thorn or Beth Orton on those early Chemical Brothers’ productions. When she confesses at the chorus “You help me lose my mind/ And you believe something I can’t define,” it makes for one of the year’s ineffable moments. —Andy Beta Disclosure: ""Help Me Lose My Mind"" [ft. London Grammar]",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/disclosuremusic/help-me-lose-my-mind,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/28/disclosure-london-g%202.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Disclosure-Help_Me_Lose_My_Mind_ft_London_Grammar.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,80,Future,"""Karate Chop"" [ft. Casino]",Freebandz/Epic,"There’s no widespread consensus as to whether Future’s strangely mournful Auto-Tuned croak qualifies him as a singer, a rapper, or some wholly new species of vocalist, but whatever it is, fans could probably listen to him do it while reading from a software manual and still be happy. He put this theory to a test with “Karate Chop”, where his staccato-fied rhymes, supremely druggy performance, and computer-assisted warble reduce his verses to a jumble of phonemes that you have to squint at to recognize as actual words. Combined with a beat by wunderkind producer Metro Boomin’ that pairs a Hendrix-y synthesized guitar lick with blaring Inception-style horns, the song announced his new push into updating 60s psychedelia for the digital age—which would become clearer when he and his Freeband Gang released the Black Woodstock mixtape a few months later. “Karate Chop” was one of two Future/Lil Wayne collaborations to chart this year (“Love Me” was the other), as well as one of two Future-featuring songs (along with Rocko’s “U.O.E.N.O.”) to have its success derailed by a rapper’s stupidly offensive lyrics. But the facepalm-worthiness of Lil Wayne’s line about Emmett Till in the official remix does little to take away from the purity of the track’s Future-ness. —Miles Raymer Future: ""Karate Chop"" [ft. Casino]",Platform: YouTube - Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usLpu87pCMw,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/28/future-karate-chop-download-casino.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Future-Karate_Chop_ft_Casino.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,79,Omar Souleyman,"""Wenu Wenu""",Ribbon Music,"""Wenu Wenu"" makes a pretty convincing case that a forty-something wedding singer could, in fact, be the world's coolest dude. The leadoff track to the Four Tet-produced album of the same name—Souleyman's 500th, give or take—does what just about every dabke song before it does, trading off between cooly ecstatic vocals and writhing synth lines (courtesy of Souleyman's longtime keyboardist Rizan Sa'id) over an insistent thump. But the synth's gone neon, and the beat's transformed into a club-conquering monster, leaving everything about ""Wenu Wenu"" a little brighter, a little livelier, a little more joyful. In the middle of it all is Omar, calling for his ""precious beloved"" between bursts of rapturous keys. Souleyman's mastery of the dabke form was never in question; ""Wenu Wenu"", with an assist from Four Tet's crackling, crystalline production, just dials up the brilliance.—Paul Thompson",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/omar-souleyman/omar-souleyman-wenu-wenu,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/28/CS2265745-02A-BIG%20%281%29%202.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Omar_Souleyman-Wenu_Wenu.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,78,Mariah Carey,"""#Beautiful"" [ft. Miguel]",Island/Def Jam,"Amidst the continuing onslaught of reflexively anthemic club-R&B stompers, the carefree laziness of #Beautiful could almost be considered polemical, except that its makers are too fully immersed in the execution to ever come across as calculating. Still, you have to wonder at the combination of the arrangement’s casually lurching summer-funk raunch with Miguel’s opening offer to let you “hop on the back of my bike…”, something like the musical equivalent of a Ryan Gosling “Hey Girl” gif. You have to wonder, too, at the patience with which Mariah waits to make her proper entrance on a song billed to her, but of course she knows exactly what she is doing. Her eruption of harmonies in the second verse shifts the song from the realm of the deeply satisfying to that of the unexpectedly thrilling. If there is a strategy behind all of this, it’s simply to explore the pleasures afforded by the meeting of minds of two pros, artists so intimately attuned to their craft that they can knock off what already feels like a songbook standard without ever seeming to try. —Tim Finney Mariah Carey: ""#Beautiful"" [ft. Miguel]",Platform: YouTube - Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oe1wtkkt9-E,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/28/Mariah-Carey-Beautiful-2013-1200x1200.png,/dataset/artwork/Mariah_Carey-Beautiful_ft_Miguel.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,77,Julia Holter,"""Hello Stranger""",Domino,"Barbara Lewis’ original version of “Hello Stranger”, her 1963 hit that describes a chance encounter with an old friend or former love, is imbued with a spirit of easy-going tranquility. For her version of “Hello Stranger”, Julia Holter magnifies this odd sense of peace into a near total stillness, as if the outside world has ceased all noise and movement around the two characters within the song. Musically, she reduces it almost entirely down to her voice and a patient swell of droning strings, allowing herself the space to deliver one of her most expressive vocal performances to date. Especially in its context at the center of Holter's kinetic Loud City Song album, “Hello Stranger” comes across as a dream-like interlude. With wisps of Lewis’ familiar melody moving through like an apparition, the listener is left to wonder whether the song’s chance encounter is real or simply a wishful fantasy of its narrator. Either way, Holter delivers the song with a warmth and easy grace that suggests a calm acceptance in the face of possible romantic loss, finding enough pleasure in the interlude to reward the risk. —Matt Murphy",Platform: YouTube - Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3Y1O9eVKRs,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/28/CS501461-01A-BIG%202.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Julia_Holter-Hello_Stranger.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,76,Fuck Buttons,"""Brainfreeze""",NA,"The 2012 London Olympics overlooked the 10-minute songs and four-letter words to include Fuck Buttons in their opening ceremonies, though judging from “Brainfreeze”, the Bristol duo shouldn’t expect a call from Rio officials. The leadoff track from their juggernaut third LP Slow Focus still abides to the “faster, higher, stronger” ideal of “Olympians”, but there’s no way it would ever pledge allegiance to some flag. That sort of sappy sentimentality is completely foreign to the merciless mercenary Andrew Hung and Benjamin John Power have created here, which never lets emotion get in the way of following commands and completing a mission. Whereas Street Horrrsing sought to burrow to the earth’s core and Tarot Sport broke the ozone layer, “Brainfreeze” plows forward without remorse, taking eight minutes of marching orders from brutalized war drums and flattening everything in its path, the shrieking synths and grinding gears making an example of anything that refused to get out of the way. It’s a ballad for the universal soldier, one that doesn’t understand god or country, only progress and industry. —Ian Cohen",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/alltomorrowsparties/fuck-buttons-brainfreeze-edit,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/28/Slow-Focus-fb%202.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fuck_Buttons-Brainfreeze.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,75,Youth Lagoon,"""Mute""",Fat Possum,"There’s an ambition to “Mute” that made it clear Trevor Powers had increased the scope for his Youth Lagoon project in the couple of years since it debuted. The song covers so much ground, taking so many turns along the way, that it’s a surprise it only lasts for six minutes. When it reaches the full-of-stars guitar line that closes out the song, it feels like a beginning, not an end. There’s something distinctly childlike about Powers’ vocal, which is pitched close to the innocence and wonder of Mercury Rev’s Jonathan Donahue. Like much of that band’s Deserter's Songs, “Mute” feels like a song that’s been around forever, waiting for someone to discover it. —Nick Neyland",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/14905/homepage_large.a94c46f5.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Youth_Lagoon-Mute.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,74,M.I.A.,"""Come Walk With Me""",Interscope,"M.I.A. “Bad Girls” was a standout in its year because it was so undeniable, even for skeptics. “Come Walk With Me” is the opposite, noting every bit of hating the haters have got and driving a drone straight through them. The first half, a languid, sunsick take on a girl-group ballad, is everything said haters found grating about M.I.A. deliberately stretched to the limits: a singsong-to-the-point-of-apathy melody that rewrites government surveillance into mash notes and love songs into YOLO parlance.“It’s cool, it takes two, so I’m gonna still fux with you,” Maya sings. Then she pulls out the Switch switch-up: right after saying she's kinda over throwing her hands in the air, there's a hands-high dance break made of self-samples (“Bamboo Banga”, the baby from Switch’s “Bad Girls” mix); right after clowning the gadgetry/social-media panopticon, the sounds from two different Apple products (Macbook’s volume crank-up, Photobook’s selfie timer) arrange into galloping trance, like chiptunes without the retromania. It’s exhilarating and undeniable after all: quotable as a tweet (most Favstar-worthy: “can you give me some of what you went and gave them,” like dialogue from The Circle if it were a romance novel), yet weirdly poignant. In a year in which the zeitgeist was endlessly fascinated with the imagined courtship habits of millennials, it turns out M.I.A. might have written the year’s best digital love song. —Katherine St. Asaph M.I.A.: ""Come Walk With Me""",Platform: YouTube - Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_11uQVI21mQ,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/28/maya%202.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/MIA-Come_Walk_With_Me.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,73,Big Sean,"""Control (HOF)"" [ft. Kendrick Lamar and Jay Electronica]",G.O.O.D. Music,"Con · trolled – verb Definition: The act of decimating rivals to inflict public humiliation. Characterized by exhibition of no mercy or sympathy for perceived weaknesses in an opponent. Etymology: The verb first came to usage on August 12, 2013, when G.O.O.D. Music stocking stuffer Big Sean dropped “Control” on Twitter. The seven-and-a-half minute song featured the ghost of Jay Electronica and Kendrick Lamar, with the latter name-checking his peers with the scorched earth purism of Edward Snowden. Within three hours of it leaking, edits had been made to expunge any trace of Sean or Electronica. Within several days, Tumblr had been converted into an infinite “Control” meme. Kendrick’s “King of New York” line prompted responses from New York rappers as futile as attacking Gozer with blades of grass. It sparked a beef between Kendrick and Drake, “the soft rapper he tucked into his pajama clothes.” LeBron James tweeted: ""This is real hip hop at his best! We going crazy over here people!!” Phil Jackson even took a break from meditating atop a totem pole to gently lecture about the value of mentorship. This wasn’t the best Kendrick Lamar-featured song of 2013. That would be “Jealous” with Fredo Santana or “Nosetalgia” with Pusha T. But it had the most impact—effectively ending the rap “Super Friends” era and ensuring that being “Controlled” replaced “Renegaded” and “Ethered” in the lexicon of verbs of mass destruction. You can’t inherit the rap throne; it’s something you have to usurp. And this was the sound of King Kendrick annexing new lands, sticking his flag into the hearts of men. —Jeff Weiss",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/15861/homepage_large.be7f2a99.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Big_Sean-Control_HOF_ft_Kendrick_Lamar_and_Jay_Electronica.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,72,Darkside,"""The Only Shrine I've Seen""",Matador / Other People,"Darkside (Nicolas Jaar and guitarist Dave Harrington) break real rules—”The Only Shrine I’ve Seen” isn’t elongated or exaggerated pop or the build and burn of traditional dance. It is warped, weird, living in fits and starts, loose rattling paving the way for a full-scale global disco breakdown that dissipates soon after its entrance, leaving the track to live on an uneven use of space. The lyrics are cryptic, the vocals messy, with overdubs all over the place. But all eight minutes of “The Only Shrine I’ve Seen” is executed with such grace that you forget just how strange it really is. On “Shrine,” Jaar and Harrington commit musical blasphemy and make that freedom sound sacred. —Jonah Bromwich",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/28/darkside%202.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Darkside-The_Only_Shrine_Ive_Seen.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,71,Arctic Monkeys,"""Do I Wanna Know?""",Domino,"Despite the guitars, the greaser comb-backs, and the breathless U.K. indie-hype hope a decade ago, Alex Turner isn't just being contrary when he shrugs off the current rock scene. His Arctic Monkeys are huge festival headliners in an era where, Nine Inch Nails and AM collaborator Josh Homme's Queens of the Stone Age aside, huge festival headliners don't swagger—Mumford & Sons, anyone? Applying the cocksure lessons of last year's glam-disco-R&B watershed ""R U Mine?"", ""Do I Wanna Know?"" adroitly establishes a fresh set of peers. See it in soulful singer Sam Smith's simmering rendition, or in how Turner downplays comparisons to Drake but then faithfully covers ""Hold On, We're Going Home"". Picture Turner spilling drinks on his settee listening to ""Marvins Room"": ""There's this tune I've found that makes me think of you somehow,” Turner sings. Is this it? Some questions are best left rhetorical. —Marc Hogan Arctic Monkeys: ""Do I Wanna Know?""",Platform: YouTube - Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpOSxM0rNPM,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/28/Arctic-Monkeys-AM-artwork%202.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Arctic_Monkeys-Do_I_Wanna_Know.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,70,Neko Case,"""Man""",Anti-,"“Show, don’t tell” is common advice, but hell, why not do both if you’re really out to make a point? This was Neko Case’s strategy with “Man”, the lead single from her sixth album, The Worse Things Get, the Harder I Fight… First of all, it’s garage-rock riffs and pulsating percussion like a pack of galloping horses, no respite for three-and-a-half minutes. Part of what makes “Man” such a revelation is that on previous releases, Case had seemingly told everyone else’s stories in haunting detail except her own. (I mean, c’mon, she’s known for having written songs from a tornado’s perspective.) But ""Man” would still convey strength musically even if its lyrics didn’t roar quite so loudly (having an actual guitar solo helps with that). It’s proof that when you’re dealing with a subject as sticky as traditional gender roles, leaving little up to interpretation can make all the difference. —Jillian Mapes Neko Case: ""Man""",Platform: YouTube - Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unNa-9qGkfI,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/15587/homepage_large.8b2ffa81.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Neko_Case-Man.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,69,2 Chainz,"""Feds Watching"" [ft. Pharrell]",Def Jam,"""Feds Watching"" dovetailing with Edward Snowden's NSA leaks was one of the most delightful accidents in pop culture this year. Of course, the song has nothing to do with those feds, and it doesn't have much to do with the feds that merely spy via binoculars, either. 2 Chainz achieved solo stardom late—he’s only two albums deep into his career at age 36, and in listening to his new album B.O.A.T.S II: Me Time, you get the feeling that he fears waking up one day only to find it all gone. So this is a late bloomer's YOLO anthem over a screeching Pharrell beat, a call to enjoy it while you've got it even if doing the head bop in your drop top doesn't help you escape your existential dread. In that sense it might be a year late, but better that than never. —Jordan Sargent 2 Chainz: ""Feds Watching"" [ft. Pharrell]",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/defjam/2-chainz-feds-watching,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/15678/homepage_large.2caef4bf.jpg,/dataset/artwork/2_Chainz-Feds_Watching_ft_Pharrell.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,68,Kurt Vile,"""Goldtone""",Matador,"Though it clocks in at 10 minutes, “Goldtone” isn't so much the grand finale of Kurt Vile’s Wakin on a Pretty Daze as the comedown that you never want to come down from. The song very much feels like the promised-land destination Vile has been inching toward throughout his ragged and intermittently glorious five-year solo career, with an instantly mesmerizing mélange of serene Sunday-afternoon acoustic strums, churchly organ hum, Casiotone maracas, and angelic harmonies that really make you wish Side D of Daze’s vinyl edition came with a locked groove. Vile may not be in the War on Drugs anymore, but amid the song’s honey-slide haze, he wages his own private one: “Sometimes, when, I get in my zone, you’d think I was stoned/ But I never, as they say, touch the stuff.” However, Vile’s slackadasical drawl suggests he wouldn’t frown upon others for using his music for such purposes. All of this makes “Goldtone” this year’s gold standard for not taking drugs to make music to take drugs to. —Stuart Berman",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/28/Kurt-Vile-Wakin-On-A-Pretty-Daze-608x608%202.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kurt_Vile-Goldtone.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,67,Daft Punk,"""Doin' It Right"" [ft. Panda Bear]",Daft Life Limited / Columbia,"Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories succeeded because it was both a little bit of everything and a unified album statement. They picked up Paul Williams for theatrical bombast (""Touch""), Julian Casablancas for robo-cool (""Instant Crush""), and Todd Edwards for yacht rock (""Fragments of Time""). To get some indie pop into the mix they called upon Animal Collective’s Panda Bear, whose previous guest spots usually sounded much better in concept than execution. Not this time, though. The track Daft Punk built around him plays perfectly to his strengths, taking his genius with short, catchy, and repetitive melodic phrases and building a hooky mid-tempo electro-pop tune out of them. A little bit of joy, a little bit of yearning, a whole lot of simplicity: night, right, magic, and everybody’s dancing. ""Doin’ It Right"" is the album’s best example of machine precision grafted onto gentle human warmth. —Mark Richardson",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/15456/homepage_large.667d9a9d.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Daft_Punk-Doin_It_Right_ft_Panda_Bear.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,66,Chance the Rapper,"""Chain Smoker""",Self-released,"Chance the Rapper is this year's musical zeitgeist personified, and Acid Rap is this year's indie success story. His resolve to be independent has as much to do with his age-—the major label music industry has been in decline almost as long as he has been alive—as it has to do with him being an MC born of Chicago. Chance got up by being the city's charismatic teenage mayor, his independence both a matter of necessity and ingenuity. ""Chain Smoker"" is his sweetest thesis, an artistic topography wrapped up in electric piano and melancholy. In the span of an 18-bar verse, he lays it out: He's not that good boy (mistakenly press-posited against Keef's bad), he's our flawed Chi-savior, ""rappin', trappin', trippin'"" but trying to stay in this life. His brags are humble; Chance knows much of his appeal is based on his proximity to the ground, that his life and perspective is just barely removed from Southside sophomores that give him dap on the street. He's an emissary from true life. —Jessica Hopper",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/15378/homepage_large.4ec3b851.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Chance_the_Rapper-Chain_Smoker.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,65,Robin Thicke,"""Blurred Lines"" [ft. T.I. and Pharrell]",Interscope / Star Trak,"I still love ""Blurred Lines”, and have since the first time I heard it. Now that it's transformed into a song you maybe don't admit to loving in polite company, I like to think back to March, when it felt destined to be just another one of Robin Thicke's cult hits. It emerged unannounced in the shadow of ""Get Lucky”, which was our parents' funk rolled out as what the marketing industry calls a pivot. ""Blurred Lines"" felt like a quirk—something stupid and fun and unconcerned with whatever might exist beyond the moment (like, say, lawsuits.) Where ""Get Lucky""—the two songs will be intertwined for decades—was laid down over 200 times so that it came out just right, ""Blurred Lines"" was written and recorded in a few hours. That ethos permeates a track that was merely supposed to spark the night's fire, to loosen the limbs and ease the mind. That it then played continuously for the entire summer, an entire different sort of fantasy. —Jordan Sargent Robin Thicke: ""Blurred Lines"" [ft. T.I. and Pharrell]",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/interscope/robin-thicke-blurred-lines,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/28/robin-thicke-blurred-lines-album-cover-1373911639%202.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Robin_Thicke-Blurred_Lines_ft_TI_and_Pharrell.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,64,Prurient,"""You Show Great Spirit""",Blackest Ever Black,"During the last 15 years, Dominick Fernow has been unfathomably prolific. The head of Hospital Productions and the producer behind Prurient, he’s become a principal contributor to the metastasis of power electronics, harsh noise and, really, all things unapologetically forceful. He’s run a record store, launched a new label, pushed Cold Cave toward goth-pop indulgence, anchored a black metal band and as Vatican Shadow, mined wartime propaganda for scattershot techno lurch. Especially given Prurient’s shifts from tortured noise to synthesizer wobble and, more recently, aggressive electronica, drawing any single through-line between Fernow’s output seems impossible. But “You Show Great Spirit”, the 10-minute closer of Prurient’s only 2013 full-length, comes close. Lurid synthesizers, anxious rhythms and caustic vocals shape the start, a vaguely pretty prelude that lures the listener toward the horizon-line pulse. Those sounds serve as the window dressing for the house beat that eventually arrives, a succession of hits that transfer Fernow’s previous aggression from the head directly to the body. But what elevates “You Show Great Spirit” is what has slipped between those booms without notice: subtly damaged sheets of sound that are noxious, malignant, and hidden like carbon monoxide. Fernow pulls the poison forward in the mix toward the end, but by then, the damage has been done, the trick executed: All along, you’ve been dancing to Prurient—yes, the harsh noise dude. —Grayson Haver Currin",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/blackest-ever-black/prurient-you-show-great-spirit,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/28/Electronic-Beats-Prurient-Through-The-Window-940x954%202.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Prurient-You_Show_Great_Spirit.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,63,Young Galaxy,"""Pretty Boy (Peaking Lights Remix)""",Paper Bag,"What if everything awesome lasted for two-and-a-half more minutes of awesomeness? This is the utopia envisioned by Peaking Lights’ blissed-out remix of Young Galaxy’s already buoyant “Pretty Boy”. Maybe it’s because Peaking Lights and Young Galaxy are both married couples, but the level of love explored here goes beyond romance and into the realm of spiritual connection. Over a New Order-goes-to-the-beach groove enhanced by Peaking Lights’ bubble bath of hand percussion, Catherine McCandless sings lyrics inspired by Patti Smith’s Just Kids and the Smith-Mapplethorpe ideal of creative soulmates. But you don’t have to be a starving artist trying to scrape by in the big city to relate to lines like “When we were lost / We found each other” and “We were each other’s only family.” Who doesn’t want the kind of partnership that protects against isolation, “disbelievers,” and the uncertain future? For six-and-a-half minutes, this song makes it seem possible for anyone and everyone. —Amy Phillips",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/14868/homepage_large.ac69ae27.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Young_Galaxy-Pretty_Boy_Peaking_Lights_Remix.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,62,Vampire Weekend,"""Ya Hey""",XL,"Nearly four minutes into “Ya Hey”, Ezra Koenig finally finds grace: a chill creeping in with the terror of twilight, a moment of solitude amongst thousands of people, a perfect transition from Desmond Dekker into the Rolling Stones. It does not come easily. “Ya Hey” lands with a thud befitting its thematic density; it finds a brilliant, bold band asking questions that typically fall outside the purview of even the most ambitious pop songs. Religion is shot through the prisms of fanaticism and sin: one party looks to zealotry and atheism and finds the grey area between the two untenable, and another transgresses by dim light, only to worry about forgiveness in the next breath. And in between, a simple question about belief: who could ever live that way? The song itself offers an answer, or at least a way out. Unpronounceable names chopped up into warped, wordless exaltation, an arrangement that’s a model of restraint until it explodes into ecstasy, the sort of deft lyrical touch that sends other songwriters scrambling for their notepads. “Ya Hey” is full of tiny windows into the sort of grace Koenig can only stumble upon by chance one night on the festival grounds. This is Vampire Weekend’s gift to us: they suffer the darkness, and in doing so grant us glimpses of light. —Jamieson Cox Vampire Weekend: ""Ya Hey""",Platform: YouTube - Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-BznQE6B8U,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/15396/homepage_large.dc22a15c.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Vampire_Weekend-Ya_Hey.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,61,Charli XCX,"""You (Ha Ha Ha)""",IAMSOUND,"Beautiful songs about heartbreak are a dime a dozen, but jumping-on-the-bed levels of jubilance inspired by botched love? Now we’re talking. With True Romance single “You (Ha Ha Ha)”, Charli XCX takes great pleasure in proclaiming, “I was right,” merges it with “boys are stupid” undertones, throws in a dash of “you’ll be sorry” and actually laughs at the poor sod. This dark joy is matched musically by a substantial Gold Panda sample that could even make Tumblr’s weird pop elite attempt a shimmy. There’s also a mysterious undercurrent of production effects: the way it builds and builds to dizzying levels, stops except for a single beat and Charli spitting nostalgic lines, and crescendos all over again. Maybe it’s a metaphor for how the lies we tell ourselves about the ones we love can spiral out of control until we finally make it stop, or maybe it’s just an impeccably-produced piece of pop perfectly engineered to toy with our emotions. Either way, it’s enough to lose yourself in, hypnotized by the avalanche of “you you you you” and “me me me me” that won’t let up.—Jillian Mapes",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/charlixcx/charli-xcx-you-ha-ha-ha,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/28/charli-xcx-you-ha-ha-ha-608x608%202.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Charli_XCX-You_Ha_Ha_Ha.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,60,Thundercat,"""Heartbreaks + Setbacks""",Brainfeeder,"Feelings don’t come easy on the Brainfeeder label. The name “Heartbreaks + Setbacks” should be a big indicator of the song’s primary concerns, but with Thundercat the bass god, it’s rarely a direct path. Stephen Bruner fights with his words the way the beat fights with that zig-zagging funk, co-written by Brainfeeder associate Mono/Poly. Under the co-production auspices of Flying Lotus, the track fills out with celestial textures, hybrid R&B moments, and a fluttering bassline that could very well have been some long-lost deep cut on a 70s fusion record. Thundercat has never been one to shy away from his chops, but here he restrains himself, simply aligning with the pop-lock rhythm and singing “Love, love, love, love” as his voice enters his falsetto. It all builds to the bass solo outro, which is the proggiest thing you'll hear this side of a Victor Wooten solo record. Thundercat makes the five-string bass sound like it's got soul, and that is no less than a monumental feat.—Jeremy D. Larson",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/15295/homepage_large.c7b6ca60.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Thundercat-Heartbreaks__Setbacks.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,59,Majical Cloudz,"""Bugs Don't Buzz""",Matador,"Live, you forget that Montreal singer-songwriter Devon Welsh has a bandmate, producer Matthew Otto, just as you forget you're surrounded by other people in the room, and that he's not just reading to you from his diary. Welsh sings serious songs that are sweet but painful, universal but highly specific, and ""Bugs Don't Buzz"" exemplifies his approach. The song, featuring Welsh over basic piano notes, is directed at a person he can imagine dying with in ""slimy wet darkness,"" as he whispers thoughts like: ""Bugs don't buzz when their time approaches/ We'll be just like the roaches, my love."" When death does approach, we all want a few more minutes, and the end can be horrible, loud, and messy. Welsh knows this, it seems, and he shifts the opening notion that ""the cheesiest songs all end with a smile/ this won't end with a smile"" to ""the happiest songs all end with a smile/ this might end with a smile."" While death is inevitable, finding someone to wait it out with you isn't; that he has someone in mind makes ""Bugs Don't Buzz"" deeply optimistic. —Brandon Stosuy",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/15383/homepage_large.5375dd65.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Majical_Cloudz-Bugs_Dont_Buzz.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,58,Sky Ferreira,"""Nobody Asked Me (If I Was OK)""",Capitol,"Much of the talk surrounding Sky Ferreira's long-awaited debut full-length, Night Time, My Time, focused on Gaspar Noé's cover photo, which depicted Ferreira nude, and seemingly scared, in the shower. Instead of figuring out how the imagery might tie into the record's themes, or listening to Ferreira’s own explanations, people came up with their own theories. This sort of underestimating seems to have inspired the sentiments of a few of Night Time’s strongest tracks, including dark pop gem ""Nobody Asked Me If I Was Okay"". The song addresses a lover, but the fuzzed-out four minutes offer the perfect karaoke choice in any life situation for anyone who’s felt like they wanted to be heard and weren’t. Strong observations (""Everyday people tell me something else that I know"") float around in producer Ariel Rechtshaid's swirling morass, but the real keeper is the booming chorus—""Nobody asked me if I was okay/ No no no no no no no""—words that even sound good shouted by those of us who can’t sing. —Brandon Stosuy",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/28/homepage_large.ebf19562.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sky_Ferreira-Nobody_Asked_Me_If_I_Was_OK.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,57,Classixx,"""All You're Waiting For"" [ft. Nancy Whang]",Innovative Leisure,"Nancy Whang has carved out an interesting niche as a sort of Loleatta Holloway figure for the DFA era. The connection isn't in the timbre of her voice—in the spotlight, she's a little too coolly aloof to fit the classic definition of disco diva status—but rather as a name that suggests a given dance song will be excellent just by association. What she did for top-notch Juan MacLean tracks like “Happy House” and “Feel So Good” gets another turn here, a simmering lead vocal that feints at detached reserve but puts too much gusto in the feeling of getting into the groove to keep that emotion hid. And while there's no unfamiliar startlement to the squiggly electropop/ house concoction Classixx build up—analog bass, handclaps, glimmering descending spaceship glory shining multicolored lasers everywhere, all that good stuff—it suggests that this strain of dance music is still alive with possibility. —Nate Patrin",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/15344/homepage_large.0d97f20f.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Classixx-All_Youre_Waiting_For_ft_Nancy_Whang.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,56,Chief Keef,"""Citgo""",RCA,"Chief Keef’s major label debut Finally Rich was a blast of hooky, bratty youth revolt charged with real life fatalism, bleak dispatches from a kid who discovered the fragility of life much too soon. But if you stayed around for the credits, you got a reprieve. Finally Rich’s deluxe edition chased the album proper with the bonus cut “Citgo”, which drew Keef’s tuneful abandon out of the drill scene bluster of “I Don’t Like” and “3Hunna” and plunked it down on greener pastures. Young Ravisu’s beat (which Keef found by searching his album's title on YouTube—very internet) sounds like a shimmering snatch of early ambient period Brian Eno bombed out with overly anxious drums. And ad libs on top of ad libs: Keef’s every line passes through a carnival funhouse’s allotment of croaks, giggles and barks on the sidelines. Stripped of drill music’s attendant double-coat of palpable danger for once, Keef gets to sound like a guy just dicking around in the studio with friends, and the fun they’re having on “Citgo” is positively infectious. —Craig Jenkins Chief Keef: ""Citgo""",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/interscope/chief-keef-citgo,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/28/Chief-Keef-Finally-Rich-608x608%202.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Chief_Keef-Citgo.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,55,Justin Timberlake,"""Mirrors""",RCA,"In a year in which we hit the Justin Timberlake saturation point in about August—almost a full month before his quarter-cooked The 20/20 Experience, 2 of 2 would fill the end-of-aisle displays at your local Target—Timberlake’s multi-chambered pop opus “Mirrors” stands up as the purest artifact from the Experience. It’s the crowned-jewel love song on an album of love songs, an ode to marriage, both his own and his grandparents’, that will have even the staunchest of bachelors shopping for rings on their lunch break. (As long as there is enough money left over to continue purchasing Bud Light Platinum and enjoying it responsibly). Despite its epic scale—eight minutes of Timbaland-and J-Roc-engineered swirl that errs on the side of “maximal”—Timberlake’s performance is built of simple elements and universal hooks. It’s a song that’s hard to get tired of, even though every a cappella group on your local college campus has likely already seized the opportunity. (So many beatboxing parts!). It’s the Timberlake return to form we were promised. And in the end, “Mirrors” is the lovelorn status update we never saw coming. —Corban Goble Justin Timberlake: ""Mirrors""",Platform: YouTube - Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWwIJlotDy4,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/28/Justin-Timberlake-The-2020-Experience%202.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Justin_Timberlake-Mirrors.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,54,Rich Homie Quan,"""Type of Way""",self-released,"Atlanta pumped out quite a few of the year's biggest rap anthems—Young Dro's ""F.D.B."" and Migos' ""Versace"" to name two from this year—and then and to round the year off comes ""Type of Way"". Rich Homie Quan sounds deadly serious over a beat that blares out like a Mike WiLL Made It remix of the ""Cops"" theme. He barks out line after line in a warbly lilt, mangling syllables in a manner that evokes dancehall's feverish rush. It's the kind of song where you rap along before you even know all the words. It also cinched one of 2013's most encouraging trends: big tunes bubbling up from the underground rather than being rooted entirely in major label money. Coupled with an endearingly low-budget video, Rich Homie Quan's breakout has all the trappings of a DIY anthem: a killer beat from a relatively unsung producer, a hook so obvious that it makes you wonder how it's never been done before, and several mixtapes' worth of personality in just four minutes. Songs like this launch careers. —Andrew Ryce",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/jayy_dillard/rich-homie-quan-type-of-way | Platform: YouTube - Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KKbdErJkiY,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/28/Rich-Homie-Quan-Still-Goin-In-Reloaded-608x608%202.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rich_Homie_Quan-Type_of_Way.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,53,Deerhunter,"""Monomania""",4AD,"The title track of an album named after single-minded focus turned out to be a magicianly exercise in distraction. When Deerhunter debuted ""Monomania"" on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, the sleight of hand was almost literal: Wigged frontman Bradford Cox's fingers were disturbingly bandaged, and the camera followed him as he walked offstage, snatched someone's water, and waited for an elevator rather than finish out his vocals. On Monomania, too, the insistent repetitions, white noise, and motorcycle sound effects at the end of the song could turn attention away from the rest of its Bible-belted longing, ostensibly for another man. And just what was Cox being so monomaniacal about, anyway? Wasn't this a sloppy, tossed-off return to some garage-punk ideal? True enough, the song has a scabrous bloodthirstiness not heard from the Atlanta band since 2009 bonus album Weird Era Cont. But often overlooked is how it carries out that record's vision of a ""cassette cathedral."" Not your fact-checking older cuz's lo-fi, ""Monomania"" epitomizes the way Deerhunter ""strung together a bunch of eight-tracks so they were like microphones"" for Monomania, building a magnificently detailed sonic edifice without losing that grainy demo-lover's aesthetic. Pals the Black Keys called this approach ""transcend-fi,"" but that too potentially distracts. And that's just it: Refusing to distinguish romantic obsession from musical fixation, provocation from hooks, and finally (""mono, monomania..."") sense from nonsense, ""Monomania"" is where Deerhunter make a junkyard-art point so undeniable they had to point away from it for it to be understood. —Marc Hogan Deerhunter: ""Monomania""",Platform: YouTube - Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYUENZQ84-E,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/15231/homepage_large.b7f8967b.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Deerhunter-Monomania.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,52,Pharmakon,"""Crawling on Bruised Knees""",Sacred Bones,"“Crawling on Bruised Knees” is the last track on Abandon, from Margaret Chardiet's noise project Pharmakon, and even in the context of the rest of the album, it's the most unsettling. The metal-on-metal rhythm that drives the track is a prime example of noise using industrialization against itself, using machines to exhume feeling lost by technocracy. The thunderous beat hits deeper than any other drum pattern this year-- extreme music groups should sample it wholeheartedly. Chardiet's warbling voice sounds like a distress call from an alien world, and the reinforcements aren't around to hear it. She convinces you, at least for the song's duration, that there is no return. Her dystopia becomes yours. There is no great catharsis; disease looms over long after the album's ceased. Wolf Eyes' John Olson recently proclaimed noise to be dead; “Knees” proves it isn't so. —Andy O'Connor",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/15210/homepage_large.6b09ef0b.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Pharmakon-Crawling_on_Bruised_Knees.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,51,Arcade Fire,"""Afterlife""",Merge,"Never mind all the high-concept pre-release hijinks that they engaged in this year: at their core, Arcade Fire are ruthless creatures of habit. Since 2004's Funeral, they've saved the (arguably) best song for (almost) last, with the five-minutes-and-change hands-across-Montreal moment squeezed in the penultimate slot on each of their albums. So here we are with ""Afterlife"", the latest and perhaps greatest entry in this tradition, and its placement is especially crucial on the sprawling, ambitious Reflektor. Appearing at the tail end of the album's dense, almost suffocatingly maudlin second disc, the effervescent, radiant shuffle of ""Afterlife"" is a very necessary cold glass of water to the face, with an earwormy wordless chorus that closely resembles Howie Day's Alexandra Patsavas-core smash ""Collide"". Bucking Reflektor's fixation on societal alienation and fear of technological dependency, ""Afterlife"" dials back the hand-wringing to address the one force that, try all you might, you can't fight: death itself. Lyrically, Win Butler drops his megaphone and his guard, cursing the notion of even considering what happens after we pass our expiration dates before trying, in vain, to take a stab at knowing the unknown. And it all leads up to a pleading chorus so ebulliently undeniable that Butler cuts the third verse in half, just to get to it sooner. Throughout 2013, Arcade Fire spent a lot of time, musically and otherwise, making sure we know they exist. But their most sincerely affecting move came when they took a moment to consider: What happens when we don't? —Larry Fitzmaurice Arcade Fire: ""Afterlife""",Platform: YouTube - Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ca9ub9rpNK4,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/16385/homepage_large.a50bbeb3.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Arcade_Fire-Afterlife.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,50,Phosphorescent,"""Song for Zula""",Dead Oceans,"""Song for Zula"" is a haunted, rueful tune that wears its gravity lightly. Matthew Houck's lyrics portray the post-traumatic stress of a soured relationship (""I saw love disfigure me/ Into something I am not recognizing""; ""I will not open myself up this way again"") and the narrator's attempts to will himself out of his funk. But the music itself—a four-chord bass-and-drum-machine vamp topped with swirling strings—never loses its cool. There's no chorus, no sense of resolution, just mounting desperation. The futility of the protagonist's struggle plays out anew in each verse: Houck's voice will rise to a gorgeously fragile peak, only to dissipate into a wounded mumble. When he sings the final line—""I could kill you with my bare hands if I was free""—it's clear that ""if"" is the operative word. For now, our narrator is powerless, imprisoned in this eerily placid nightmare of a love song. —Hank Shteamer",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/deadoceans/phosphorescent-song-for-zula,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/14661/homepage_large.13da7fc3.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Phosphorescent-Song_for_Zula.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,49,Courtney Barnett,"""Avant Gardener""",House Anxiety / Marathon Artists,"Courtney Barnett might want to try working backward more often. The 25-year-old Australian's most immediately remarkable gift is in her lyrics, razor-detailed narratives that can be wittily rambling and self-deprecating. That's where her songwriting process generally starts. ""Avant Gardener"", she has said, was different—the music, an archetypal slacker-rock rumble that tops bone-simple bass with psych-scraping twang-squall, came first. Maybe that's what makes it such a natural backdrop for her deadpan, spoken-sung tale. A first-person account of guilt-driven Monday yardwork leading to anaphylactic shock would be unusual in any style. Barnett's recitation of specifics, at once matter-of-fact and punning, cleverly cultivates the similarity between a medical emergency's altered state of consciousness and the drug-induced kind—and that's even before she compares an inhaler to a bong. Crucially, Barnett also knows which particulars to leave out: A mention of ""Uma Thurman post-overdosing kickstart"" resonates without needing to name the movie, and for American ears, the use of Celsius rather than Fahrenheit, ""triple 0"" instead of 9-1-1, or ""pseudoephedrine"" instead of ""pseudoephedrine"" just make it all feel truer to an individual voice and perspective. Before Barnett has finished tending her personal garden, she zooms out to cover all human frailty — ""I'm not that good at breathing in"" is, sooner or later, a universal complaint. By transforming the humdrum into the sublime, her song roundaboutly lives up to its title. —Marc Hogan",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/15921/homepage_large.d2c00bcb.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Courtney_Barnett-Avant_Gardener.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,48,Pusha T,"""Numbers on the Boards""",Def Jam / G.O.O.D.,"The rest of My Name Is My Name is more ambitious, more ornate, and more willing to bend radio rap sounds in Pusha T's own image instead of the other way around. But ""Numbers on the Boards"" is a lesson in exactitude. Distilling the considerable charms of Pusha's first solo album into a svelte two minutes and 44 seconds, each element is pared back to its absolute minimum. The production is Kanye (with the help of Don Cannon and 88-Keys) at his most RZA-esque, all droning bass and clattering percussion, and Pusha's scrunched-nose sneer hasn't sounded this locked in since Malice was rapping at his side. Pusha's greatest strength has always been his ability to flash his fangs with the kind of effortlessness that could be mistaken for disinterest—his menace is the kind that's scarier because you know he's not even breaking a sweat. ""'88 Jordan leaping from the free throw,"" he boasts. ""Numbers on the Boards"" is one of the most efficient 50-point games in recent years. —Renato Pagnani Pusha T: ""Numbers on the Boards""",Platform: YouTube - Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DawrlSwHUiM,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/28/numbers-on%202.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Pusha_T-Numbers_on_the_Boards.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,47,DJ Rashad,"""Let It Go""",Hyperdub,"On this highlight from the Rollin EP released by the UK’s Hyperdub label back in the spring, Chicago producer DJ Rashad found the sweet spot between jungle and footwork. A place where the regulating rhythm of the ""Amen"" break and the erratic tempo of footwork made a new kind of sense together. The song is all transitions, from breakneck keys to lonely strings; there are oceans between each movement in terms of pace, yet in Rashad's hands they melt into one as if they were always meant to be together. In the title's simple refrain are a thousand permissions—to grieve, to accept, to forgive, to move on, to love-- each peeling away like onion to reveal a new skin with which to face the world afresh. Hugely potent, thick with loss and longing, ""Let It Go"" turned out to be symbolic of the journey footwork itself has taken from insular scene to global influence, mirroring the triumphant rise of Rashad himself.—Ruth Saxelby",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/15117/homepage_large.8e1e1f44.jpg,/dataset/artwork/DJ_Rashad-Let_It_Go.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,46,A$AP Ferg,"""Hood Pope""",A$AP Worldwide / Polo Grounds / RCA,"Things are looking bleak in the Trap Lord's dominion. Nothing but hooligans, little kids, and clowns running around this circus, oblivious to their need for nurturing. But is that sort of street-level engagement really within the job description of the Hood Pope? Sounds like A$AP Ferg is as familiar with the actual occupational requirements of the Pope as most of us are. As far as we know, the guy emerges from a poof of smoke to serve as a figurehead, a conduit to the divine draped in gaudy jewels, driving around in a bulletproof, customized vehicle that moves at the speed of this Veryrvre track. You want guidance? Sound advice? Go see your pastor, your gym teacher, Donnie McClurkin or something. “Hood Pope” is a mass blessing, a proclamation from on high to do as Ferg says, not as he does. So in the meantime, all he asks is if you feel this shit, motherfucker sing along. Praise the Lord. —Ian Cohen",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/15806/homepage_large.21cba8c2.jpg,/dataset/artwork/AAP_Ferg-Hood_Pope.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,45,Glass Candy,"""Warm in the Winter""",Italians Do It Better,"Artists on the synth-disco label Italians Do It Better tend to present themselves as chilly, look-don’t-touch types too far removed from the tawdry realms of human concern to form basic connections with. Turns out that when they fall, they fall hard. Three chords and sprinkled with enough glitter to fill a factory’s worth of snowglobes, “Warm” is the kind of love song they never seemed capable of: Immediate, forthright, almost too close for comfort. For as much credit as house producer Johnny Jewel gets (and deserves), this moment belongs to singer Ida No, who delivers her lines with the cosmic giddiness of a motivational speaker or a close friend uncorked by psychedelics. “If you should ever look in the mirror and wonder who it is that you are, and wonder what it is that you came for,” she says during the song’s talking middle section, taking you by the shoulders and brushing the hair out of your eyes, “well, I know the answer. You’re beautiful. You came from heaven.” For seven minutes, believe her. —Mike Powell Glass Candy: ""Warm in the Winter""",Platform: YouTube - Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Akjt-RuNc6U,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/12336/homepage_large.eb1ce56f.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Glass_Candy-Warm_in_the_Winter.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,44,Parquet Courts,"""Stoned and Starving""",What's Your Rupture?,"On ""Stoned and Starving"", Andrew Savage is walking through Ridgewood, Queens—that much we can feel. The deadpan Parquet Courts singer often recalls Jonathan Richman circa the Modern Lovers, but here, as on ""Borrowed Time"", he and the band sound especially distinct. A buried motorik beat evokes the forward-moving rhythm of the city, while guitar clangor drones on and on like the buzz of the subway running overhead, as it does in this area of New York. Savage is an urban troubadour of the mind—he's flipping through magazines, high and hungry, deciding on peanuts or candy, exploring his terrain. With that, he makes a whole universe of a street corner, turning a tiny daily mundanity into the theater of the rock song. The guitar riffs throw themselves out, then reel back in slowly, conjuring the chemically-heightened anxiety of indecision. Parquet Courts understand the resonant power of geography; on ""Stoned and Starving"", they're a proper New York band not just in location but endearing smart-slacker character, one fixed to their own time. —Jenn Pelly",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/14678/homepage_large.c578e87a.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Parquet_Courts-Stoned_and_Starving.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,43,FKA twigs,"""Water Me""",Young Turks,"FKA twigs told an interviewer earlier this year that she dashed off the lyrics and melody to ""Water Me"", the eeriest ballad of 2013, ""in about seven minutes,"" just double the length of the song itself. On one hand, this feat is totally comprehensible; plenty of iconic songs were written quickly, and ""Water Me"" is filled with cavernous space, thanks in large part to twigs' now-Yeezus-credentialed collaborator Arca. On the other, considering how potent the song's simple lyrics actually are, that she flung them on a page in just minutes seems almost too good to be true. Haunting and heartbroken, ""Water Me"" is abandonment embodied; it floats detached and orbiting in space, frozen, yet perpetually falling. The devastation is palpable, but so is the despairing realism, the one that made the song strike home this year, amidst myriad defeats concerning sexuality and rights: there is no vindication here, nor may there be tomorrow. Twigs' pain is small and guarded, but it is direct, and it echoes. In the song's video, she sheds a solitary thick, plasmic tear as she sings, ""I promise I can grow tall/ When making love is free."" Such a deeply rooted, elemental sentiment hints that perhaps ""Water Me"" wasn't such a difficult song to write after all. —Devon Maloney FKA twigs: ""Water Me""",Platform: YouTube - Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFtMl-uipA8,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/15811/homepage_large.7fefe955.jpg,/dataset/artwork/FKA_twigs-Water_Me.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,42,Todd Terje,"""Strandbar (disko)""",Olsen,"Norwegian DJ Todd Terje has the enviable skill of making the outside world melt away when he enters into one of his euphoric disco cuts. “Strandbar (disko)” is his latest anthem, an almost nine-minute club jam that somehow gets higher and higher with every turn it takes. There are subtle shifts in tone—some gloriously splodgy bass, a dip into piano house—all in service of a groove that cuts right through the center of the track. Terje is a master of the patient build, always knowing exactly when to add another layer, never over-egging his gorgeous palette of sounds despite the strong reliance on repetition. What’s most interesting about “Strandbar (disko)” is how it captures a moment—when golden rays of morning sun shoot into the eyes of ecstatic clubbers—but can also recreate that feeling in seemingly any time or space. It’s a portable piece of elation you can carry around in your pocket, ready to provide a bolt of energy that effortlessly outstrips any artificial stimulant. —Nick Neyland",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/15595/homepage_large.620fe60b.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Todd_Terje-Strandbar_disko.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,41,Janelle Monáe,"""PrimeTime"" [ft. Miguel]",Bad Boy,"For all the up-front futurism Janelle Monáe has built into her image, she sure can make a song that feels like you’ve been living with it for years. Part of it is the way “PrimeTime” reveals itself in the context of The Electric Lady, floating in on the heels of a chattering skit with its ghostly backing vocals and muted guitar. More importantly, though, it’s that stunning chorus and the way that, even at such a slow tempo, the beat feels like it can’t stop as Monáe delivers one of her most impressive vocals and Miguel beams in from across the galaxy to supply his guest verse. Her music can get wrapped up in concepts and symbols, but here even the most obvious one, a Minneapolis-in-85 guitar solo, feels freighted with meaning. “PrimeTime” gives us a peek behind the persona at the beating, emotional heart inside the android, and it glistens like a cosmic disco ball. —Joe Tangari",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/atlanticrecords/janelle-mon-e-primetime-ft,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/28/JANELLE-MONAE-ELECTRIC-LADY-e1376434058729%203.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Janelle_Mone-PrimeTime_ft_Miguel.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,40,Kanye West,"""Bound 2""",Def Jam,"Just to fuck with you, Kanye West capped off the barbed-wire Yeezus with soulful outlier  “Bound 2”, a taste of what Yeezus could’ve been or maybe was at one point in time but now will never be. To make things worse, he then performed the song on ""Jimmy Fallon"" and took it into an even livelier place—what we thought was a single underground tunnel to sunlight might have actually been an entire underground network of fluorescent caves that not even James Turrell could dream up. But, because he’s never done, Yeezus then threw the eephus, gifting the world the bizarre and uncanny “Bound 2” video which, whatever you think of it, and thanks to a little outside help, is a lock to be the most memorable visual of this year or next. On an album that takes itself awful seriously throughout, “Bound 2” is something that recontextualizes the entire affair, leaving more questions than answers. Is there a backlog of similarly-angled, soul-dappled B-sides sitting in a studio (or penthouse suite) somewhere? Is Charlie Wilson the secret weapon of the year? What would Jeromey Rome think? Did Kanye just make an album about his penis? “Bound 2” is Kanye’s last laugh. We ain’t got the answers. —Corban Goble Kanye West: ""Bound 2""",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/halonyc/you-aint-got-the-answers | Platform: YouTube - Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqxgOXrorzE,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/28/yeezus.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kanye_West-Bound_2.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,39,Waxahatchee,"""Swan Dive""",Don Giovanni,"""Swan Dive""'s skeletal, lilting jangle is folk-punk 101, and the pattering, Buddy-Holly-heartbeat percussion taps against the guitar as elementally as a summer cloudburst. But when Waxahatchee singer-guitarist Katie Crutchfield sings lines like “I will grow out of all the empty bottles in my closet,” she wrings a quietly raging pathos out of the unrequited love song. For every line about “dark winter morning” and “a swan dive to the hard asphalt,” she gulps back all the unexpressed lusts and unsaid regrets that pave the road to pop absolution. Or at least she seems to be banking on that possibility, even as “Swan Dive” floats to its own graceful, half-hopeful halt. —Jason Heller",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/don-giovanni-records/swan-dive,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/28/waxahatchee_cover_mid_highres%202.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Waxahatchee-Swan_Dive.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,38,Migos,"""Versace""",self-released,"You might think of Migos as an ultramodern triumph, a signpost in an era when the right hashtag-ready catchphrase can help an artist bypass conventional industry avenues and land a hit on the charts seemingly overnight. But to do so would be to overlook the circumstances under which Migos developed their signature style: good old-fashioned hunger and impatience. Like most of their songs, “Versace” sounds like it was recorded in a hurry—""Versace Versace Versace Versace Versace! Versace Versace Versace Versace Versace!""—because it was recorded in a hurry. “It should take you 15 minutes to make a song, and then get out of there,” Quavo told SPIN earlier this year, explaining that the trio are typically pressed to record their songs and get them in the hands of local Atlanta DJs. They just wanted to move out from under mom's roof, and maybe get a little famous in the process. The urgency of their process translated to the year’s most distinct style—a relentless frenzy of exuberance that made everyone from Drake to Justin Bieber to Donatella herself excited by words THAT!areSPOKEN!LikeTHIS! (SPOKENLIKETHIS? LikeTHISLikeTHIS!) How will Migos sound when they’re no longer compelled to rush? I can’t wait to find out. —Carrie Battan",Platform: YouTube - Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5pEJhPNlq4,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/28/Migos-YRN%202.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Migos-Versace.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,37,Perfect Pussy,"""I""",Self-released,"You are passed a link to a Bandcamp page for a group called Perfect Pussy. You remember seeing that name in your Twitter feed a few times, something about gigs at a place you never go to. You think of all the indie bands with joke names that turned out to make joke music, how those names could be something to hide behind, an invitation not to care. You hit play on the Bandcamp and hear a song called ""I"" rattling in your headphones; you think of Times New Viking, of Hüsker Dü, of punk rock bands that have energy and anger and a glowing ember of warmth and inclusion deep inside the raging guitars. You listen to barked lyrics that you can’t understand but somehow you feel you get them anyway. Then you hear the whole thing explode in a glorious shouted refrain and you realize this band is going to be part of your life for the foreseeable future. —Mark Richardson Perfect Pussy: ""I""",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/16097/homepage_large.0fe27b71.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Perfect_Pussy-I.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,36,Rhye,"""Open""",Polydor / Seven Four / Innovative Leisure,"Before anyone even knew the identity of L.A.'s Rhye, there were already multiple videos online for their song “Open”. In the first, a then-anonymous Mike Milosh sang a stripped-down version to his wife; the second soft-focused on couples having sex, as if showing us proof that his seduction tactic worked. But “Open” isn’t necessarily about getting some, or getting someone from a barely lit lounge to the bedroom. It’s a testament to unabashed intimacy and vulnerability in the face of “perversely sexualized” songs like, say, this one. Sexuality definitely finds its way into “Open” (“shake in your thighs” followed by “sound in your sighs” only means one thing in this case), but for Rhye it’s more about what isn’t said than what is. “He move in space with minimum waste and maximum joy,” sang Sade, a dead ringer for Milosh’s melting croon, and the same holds true for Robin Hannibal’s minimally arranged horns, strings, and finger snaps. By the end of the song he's joined Milosh in the spotlight, finishing ""Open"" with a bright, unresolved flare of a note, not unlike a sharp intake of breath. —Harley Brown Rhye: ""Open""",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/rhyemusic/rhye-open | Platform: YouTube - Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CT3OOVacHo,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/28/open%202.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rhye-Open.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,35,A$AP Rocky,"""Fuckin' Problems"" [ft. 2 Chainz, Drake, and Kendrick Lamar]",RCA,"Featuring four of the most charismatic characters on the hip-hop landscape all working together, “Fuckin’ Problems” feels like a Top 40 reimagining of a cypher, where instead of one-upping each other with wordplay, the rappers try to outdo each other in pop appeal. Produced by Noah “40” Shebib and a pseudonymous Drake (working under his Instagram alias Champagne Papi), “Problems” is propelled by a buzzy, catchy synth-bass line that Rocky, Drake, and Kendrick go at using a wide arsenal of audience-charming tactics, including, but not limited to, references to decade-old pop-rap songs, groan-worthy puns, and dick jokes, in every case delivered with a cocky grin so blatantly manipulative that it’s hard to hate. (For his part, 2 Chainz basically wrote two lines that are so hilariously sing-along-able that it doesn’t matter that he just repeats them about a dozen times.) In the end it’s hard to say who came out on top—Rocky’s Keith Sweat reference, Drake’s Nelly quoting, and Kendrick’s “Halle Berry/ Hallelujah” line are all about equally entertaining, and 2 Chainz’s hook could probably stand fine on its own. But really everyone’s a winner: Aside from Drake, it was the highest charting single any of the four have had, while the rest of us got an earworm that never seems to get old. —Miles Raymer",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/asvpxrocky/f-kin-problems,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/28/AAP_Problems_CVR_5by5_RGB%202.jpg,/dataset/artwork/AAP_Rocky-Fuckin_Problems_ft_2_Chainz_Drake_and_Kendrick_Lamar.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,34,Haim,"""Falling""",Polydor/Columbia,"In 2013, lots of well-established R&B dudes—Justin, Robin, Pharrell—pulled on their sequin socks and aimed squarely for 1983 Michael Jackson territory. But three twenty-something sisters from L.A. opened their debut album with one of the year's best takes on MJ’s lithe, dramatic funk-pop. “Falling” is a lot of great things, but best of all, it shows that the Haim sisters know, like Michael, how to carefully build tension and then gloriously release it. The sub-bass rumbles that start the song continue throughout the spacious first verse behind Danielle’s double-timed vocal spurts, “Billie Jean”-style breath puffs, and tip-toeing guitar licks. Then, what feels like release—a chorus that introduces a Heaven or Las Vegas-style goth tint to a Motown-disco melody, before dropping off into cavernous echo. The second verse introduces Este’s slap-bass, laying the groundwork for the return of the chorus, which just keeps ascending, transforming a lyric rich with indecision—when you’re stuck in the middle, and the pain is thunder—into a straight-up motivational anthem. —Eric Harvey Haim: ""Falling""",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/haimtime/haim-falling | Platform: YouTube - Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyZbkXpB-sw,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/28/HAIM-Falling-2013.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Haim-Falling.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,33,Run the Jewels,"""Banana Clipper"" [ft. Big Boi]",Fool's Gold,"El-P classified “Banana Clipper” so I don’t have to: This is ""Chernobyl talk.” Tough-guy rap, in other words, delivered by two artistic soul-mates and Big Boi, accentuated by the hardest beat on Killer Mike and El-P’s late-career opus Run the Jewels. Big Boi’s verse doesn’t even sound like a feature; he fits in effortlessly, comfortable within the one rapper-one producer dynamic to which Mike and El have brought a renewed awareness. Punchlines don’t come predictably at the end of each bar, they’re bundled together in packs and served up with assonance, alliteration, internal rhyming, and good old fashioned insults. The tricks hit fast, hard and with no phoniness. That’s what Run the Jewels is all the way through and “Banana Clipper” is the quintessence. It shows that “throwback” has always been a crummy way to think about the current wave of boom bap. After all, tropes can be exhausted, but a well-executed style will always reign supreme. —Jonah Bromwich",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/28/run%20the%20jewels%202.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Run_the_Jewels-Banana_Clipper_ft_Big_Boi.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,32,Disclosure,"""White Noise"" [ft. Alunageorge]",PMR,"Aluna Francis has heard enough. ""Lately, I've been thinking: if you want to get tough, then let's play rough,"" she asserts on ""White Noise,"" a pointillist pop-house highlight from Disclosure's mighty Settle. ""White Noise"" finds Francis—she of AlunaGeorge—at the end of her rope, weary from too much romantic tug-of-war. ""I'm hearing static,"" she informs her soon-to-be ex-overexplainer, ""you're like an automatic—you just want to keep me on repeat and hear me crying."" You can tell she means business. Francis' terse, ever-so-slightly sped up delivery makes it seem like she's singing through clenched teeth, fed up with being put down. Lyrically, ""White Noise"" is a declaration of independence, but the track feels like true collaboration, nailing a perfect midpoint between AlunaGeorge's future-pop and Disclosure's technicolor house revivalism. The track's lithe and punchy, and the hook sports one of the fiercely cool Francis' best performances to date. With ""White Noise,"" Disclosure and AlunaGeorge sneak one of the year's finest pop songs onto what might be 2013's greatest electronic album. —Paul Thompson Disclosure: ""White Noise"" [ft. AlunaGeorge]",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/disclosuremusic/white-noise-ft-alunageorge,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/28/84dab7a4.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Disclosure-White_Noise_ft_Alunageorge.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,31,Lorde,"""Royals""",Lava / Republic,"Familiarity may breed contempt, but even factoring its ubiquity in the back half of the year, the amount of vitriol that's been hurled at ""Royals"" has been remarkable. Much of that bad feeling no doubt comes by the accusation that the song's ""anti-hip-hop,"" stemming from a misreading of the lyrics so flagrant that it seems almost deliberate. Behind signifiers like Cristal and gold teeth (which haven't been specific to hip-hop for a while now, as anyone familiar with Ke$ha and Katy Perry is well aware), it's a song about a bunch of broke kids in the middle of nowhere who think they have it all figured out and resent society pressuring them to conform their desires to someone else's priorities— in other words, pretty much the same story as every piece of art about teenagers that's ever been created. There’s also the fact that it’s actually a decent rap song, at least as judged by the definition of rap songs that pop-minded artists like Drake (an acknowledged influence on all of Lorde’s Pure Heroine) have been radically expanding. Whatever the song is and what it’s about, it’s a radically strange and aesthetically daring composition to have spent so much of the year atop the Hot 100. —Miles Raymer Lorde: ""Royals""",Platform: YouTube - Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlcIKh6sBtc,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/28/homepage_large.f2072684%202.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lorde-Royals.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,30,Daft Punk,"""Touch""",Columbia,"“Touch” is everything people used to think Daft Punk wasn’t: sappy, long-winded, obsessed with the past and invested above all in the power of things only humans are capable of. But remember that this is the same group who met their first label contact at Euro Disney and once performed on top of a pyramid made of lasers—musical theater has always been right around the corner. Led by Paul Williams—a songwriter most famous for “Rainbow Connection”—the song spends eight minutes piling on Moog filigree, trumpet solos, children’s choirs, and two-hundred some-odd other things in Pro Tools only to contract to the sound of Williams’ voice and some lonely piano chords ripped from the encore of a lounge singer’s routine. Clever as ever, Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo hedge their bets: “If love is the answer,” the choir sings, “you’re home.” And what if it isn’t? If they know, they’re keeping it under their helmets. —Mike Powell",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/28/homepage_large.5d2966f4%202.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Daft_Punk-Touch.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,29,Savages,"""She Will""",Pop Noire / Matador,"Savages appeared fully grown, like four battle-ready Athenas from the head of Zeus, with a nuanced manifesto that rejected apathy, misogyny, and cell phones at concerts, and they commanded disciples immediately. Their quick emergence is perhaps not the most remarkable thing about the London-based four-piece, whose dark post-punk thrives on its agonizing discontent and refusal to compromise, but it certainly speaks to the power of their conviction. ""She Will"" was not their debut album's lead single—that honor went to ""Husbands""—nor is it the most distinctive Savages song, thematically speaking, on debut Silence Yourself. (That's probably opener ""Shut Up""). What makes ""She Will"" transcendent is its forceful simplicity, the easy way it conveys the sadness and anger that birthed Savages, in such a quick yet subcutaneously complex portrait. Frontwoman Jehnny Beth depicts the life of the song's purposeful subject, a sexually, spiritually free woman eventually stifled by norms and expectations, as a cold list of facts, totally free of sentiment. Drummer Fay Milton beats a crash cymbal with barbaric intensity and systematic exactitude. The song builds with perfect balance, its creators maintaining its concise gallop with a militant control. Even the title of the song is unrelenting and austere. From the first lick to Beth's final, orgasmic yelp, ""She Will"" is a compact tragedy belonging unmistakably to our time, delivering passion through a dispassionate lens, passing responsibility for its ending, ultimately, to us. —Devon Maloney Savages: ""She Will""",Platform: YouTube - Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kebq-cENNn0,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/15140/homepage_large.8d4e2599.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Savages-She_Will.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,28,Kingdom,"""Bank Head"" [ft. Kelela]",Fade to Mind,"Kelela and Kingdom’s attempts at R&B—together and separately—tend to be deconstructed, purposefully ungainly affairs, the wreckage of skyscrapers endlessly pounded with wrecking balls. “Bank Head”, by contrast, plugs into the science of surfaces that’s always been R&B’s calling card. Specifically, it calls to mind Janet Jackson’s peerless 1997 percussive ballad “Empty”, through both its luxuriant, tantric expanse and its balance of pillowy softness with taut rhythmic rigor, the echoing claps and rippling kicks creating a delicate web of tension and release. In keeping with the vibe, Kelela offers her most Janet-like performance, singing in a high, whispery coo that is more tactile and intimate for its fragility, as if she’s succumbing to the groove’s temptation right alongside you. “Like kickin’ an old bad habit”, she muses as “Bank Head” begins, but if anything the effect is the reverse: right, there’s that familiar feeling, let it in, let it rush over you. —Tim Finney",Platform: YouTube - Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ceh6wkT_Jw,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/15204/homepage_large.a0cad322.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kingdom-Bank_Head_ft_Kelela.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,27,Chvrches,"""The Mother We Share""",Glassnote,"“The Mother We Share” pulls off a tricky alchemy. It's simultaneously difficult to pin down but very easy to fall in love with. Widescreen yet intimate. Sonically bright yet thematically dark. Menacing yet comforting. As precise as assembly-line EDM, yet as sweeping as an epic romance story’s movie trailer. The lyrics refuse to cohere into a single straightforward emotion, instead seesawing between love and hate and devotion and betrayal. Is it about siblings? Lovers? God? Mother Earth? Singer Lauren Mayberry never shows her hand. It’s a mystery that can’t be solved. But perhaps the most impressive trick of all is that over a year after the song’s release, with Chvrches having been through the buzz-band wringer of countless remixes, interviews, on-air performances, and blog chatter, “The Mother We Share” still sounds fresh, exciting, and defiantly Now. —Amy Phillips Chvrches: ""The Mother We Share""",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/chvrches/the-mother-we-share,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/28/Chvrches-The-Bones-Of-What-You-Believe1.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Chvrches-The_Mother_We_Share.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,26,My Bloody Valentine,"""Only Tomorrow""",self-released,"“Only Tomorrow” has a celebratory air to it, mostly manifested in the giant whoosh of sound that scoops up everything around it at key points in the song. Listening to My Bloody Valentine can be a reflective experience (“To Here Knows When”, “Cigarette in Your Bed”), but it’s often strangely visceral, too (“Soon”, “You Made Me Realise”). Here, they bridge both those inclinations, with Kevin Shields trailing slug-like guitar lines across the song's dynamic frame, and Bilinda Butcher delivering a heavy-hearted vocal that still lacks any recognizable peer. They flexed the boundaries of their sound to a greater extent elsewhere on mbv, leaving tracks like “Only Tomorrow” to work as a stark reminder of how effective they are at coating candied pop moments with an almost suffocating density. There are few clues as to when this was recorded or how old the song might be, but “Only Tomorrow” carries the unmistakable sound of a band caught up in a moment, excited to be out there making music again. —Nick Neyland My Bloody Valentine: ""Only Tomorrow""",Platform: YouTube - Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2358mPrs9Q,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/28/mbv%202.jpg,/dataset/artwork/My_Bloody_Valentine-Only_Tomorrow.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,25,Danny Brown,"""Kush Coma""",Fool's Gold,"“Kush Coma” was the first single released prior to Danny Brown's album Old, and in retrospect, that's given it a strange double life. The dazed robot-funk hook is enough to make it an obvious lead single. Its all-build beat vibes off the peak-is-everything ethos of EDM while grounding its 808s in pure club hip-hop. And then there's the excess of Danny's “blunt after blunt” lifestyle, which scans on first read like a celebratory mania (“Nuggets the size of Rakim rings/ Got my head looking like a fatality screen”), backed up by the stoner-goon clobber of A$AP Rocky's guest verse. But the song, which arrives late on Old's deceptive “hedonist” second half, isn't so much a break from the album’s bleak poverty-to-hustle first half as it is the end result of how Danny's chosen to self-medicate the PTSD that haunts him and informs some of his best work. Whether it's the weed or the pills, what matters isn't just that Danny’s walking on clouds barefoot, it's that he feels something besides stress and anxiety. If the side effects mean “my forehead's sweaty, my eyelids heavy, feeling like I ain't goin' make it,” so be it. He's escaped worse. —Nate Patrin",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/28/homepage_large.822cd3f7%202.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Danny_Brown-Kush_Coma.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,24,Jai Paul,"""Str8 Outta Mumbai""",NA,"Thanks to the peculiar case of Jai Paul and the release of 16 demos said to be the ever-elusive UK producer/ singer's debut album, most of us first knew ""Str8 Outta Mumbai"" simply as ""Track 2"". But ""Str8 Outta Mumbai"" turned out to be a near-perfect title in context. It's not the first breakthrough moment we've had with Paul, but rather the first breakout moment. And it's a big-sounding one at that: laser flashes, spangled percussion, that loopy little earworm melody that you catch yourself whistling while waiting for the bus. For anyone who doubted that the guy who brought us the sultry mope of ""Jasmine"" and ""BTSU"" wasn't capable of dropping a blooming, summery quasi-banger, here's your proof. It sounded like the product of being stuck between two stations, frequency disruption and all: on one, there was ebullient vintage Bollywood pop, on the other, Velvet Rope-era Janet. The pirate radio jam of the year. —Zach Kelly",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/28/e35f0ad7.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jai_Paul-Str8_Outta_Mumbai.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,23,A$AP Ferg,"""Shabba"" [ft. A$AP Rocky]",Polo Grounds / RCA,"You know how things go: one strong gimmick in a hook, and suddenly it might as well be laid over a goofy photograph in Impact font. “...Like I'm Sha, Shabbaarrr Ranks” is the mode in which a lot of people decided they were doing things once Ferg floated the idea, and if that means more young’ins infatuated with all things A$AP sought out some classic dancehall to up their status, that should all balance out in the end, right? So with the mimetic aspect of this song out of the way, let's contend with what a monster it is: Ferg's rubberband flow tauntingly flossing about making raw-dogging his key to relationship trust, rocking gear like it's Mortal Kombat couture, and running with a crew that he immortalizes in a mere five lines – Twelvy and Illz as kush supply/demand, Ty Beats as producer-murking phenom, Ty Nast as the other half of a mutual girlfriend-theft team. Even with all the punchlines, it's a performance driven almost entirely by charisma – factory-line machinery beats assembling a disco-lit 25-foot riser for Ferg and Rocky to ascend, their Morse code stutter-step voices slipping into a semi-patois flow so catchy it could get away with saying less than it actually does. —Nate Patrin",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/15689/homepage_large.416d5c96.jpg,/dataset/artwork/AAP_Ferg-Shabba_ft_AAP_Rocky.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,22,Majical Cloudz,"""Childhood's End""",Matador,"Some songs are chilling, and then there’s “Childhood’s End”. A single gunshot leads to a single casualty in the song’s opening lines, but the rest of the song is all implication.  “It’s weighing down, weighing down, weighing down on me,” sings Devon Welsh, without pinpointing where the pressure’s coming from. He stretches the pronoun as far as his sonorous voice can take it, however, and that goes a long way. The phrase dangles there until you are forced to interpret it for yourself. Unlike most songs on Impersonator, “Childhood’s End” moves relatively briskly, thanks to busy drum programming moving underneath Matthew Otto’s minimalist synth waft. There’s a clear middle eight to go with that hook and the conservative remaining structure, but otherwise, “Childhood’s End” is a place of wintry desolation. No other song on Impersonator managed to communicate so much—overwhelming dread, terror, isolation—with so little. —Mike Madden",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/15194/homepage_large.f876b0c7.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Majical_Cloudz-Childhoods_End.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,21,James Blake,"""Retrograde""",Republic,"James Blake has spent much of his career burrowing into the crevices of sadness, exploring the particulars of loneliness with a worrisome tenacity. Is he all right? Will he ever really be all right? Now that he's in love, you'd think the answer would be an easy yes, but like every other emotional conundrum in his songs, it's a bit more complicated than that. ""Retrograde"" will go down as the exact moment when he exited his hermetic cave of existential, world-weary grief and found a way to make being in love sound…actually about as lonely as not being in love. It's complicated. Or complicated enough that even though he's clearly made a connection, he still wants to go deeper, not that it'll solve anything. In the world Blake's created on ""Retrograde,"" isolation is something that is incurable and deeply rooted. When he croons ""You're on your own in a world you've grown"" over blurry synths and the hiss and snap of synthetic handclaps, he could be singing to himself or he could be singing to his partner. Either way, they're now alone together. Life could be worse. —Sam Hockley-Smith James Blake: ""Retrograde""",Platform: YouTube - Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p6PcFFUm5I,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/14899/homepage_large.d19e4185.jpg,/dataset/artwork/James_Blake-Retrograde.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,20,Kurt Vile,"""Wakin on a Pretty Day""",Matador,"There are plenty of heavy lessons tucked throughout Wakin on a Pretty Daze, but “Wakin on a Pretty Day”, its nearly-10-minute opening track, is a paean only to ecstatic oblivion, to living low, low, low: “Don’t worry about a thing/ It’s only dying,” Vile sings in his gentle drawl. It might be a sleepy kind of truth, but there’s still something spectacularly freeing about it, especially when paired with Vile’s spacious guitar riffs, which unfurl like prayer flags in the forest—soft and easy. All he wants is for everyone and everything to slow down a little: let your phone ring, think up some good jokes, be fried. The worst thing that can happen, he intimates, is that it all ends, and there’s not much we can do to change that anyway. In our hyper-accelerated times, there’s something subversive about Vile’s live-and-let-live vibe. It’s been awhile since submission sounded this good. —Amanda Petrusich",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/14909/homepage_large.104606d2.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kurt_Vile-Wakin_on_a_Pretty_Day.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,19,The Knife,"""Full of Fire""",Mute,"There’s a Margaret Atwood poem that goes: “You fit into me like a hook into an eye—a fish hook, an open eye.” The Knife, who named two interludes on Shaking the Habitual after Atwood works, share a thought or two on hookiness. Comeback single “Full of Fire” doesn't adhere to the comparatively compact sounds of 2006's Silent Shout or the crowd of cheerily synthy, proudly Knife-loving acts that followed, yet it is undeniably catchy—like a trap for prey, perhaps—as it careens through nine-plus minutes like a tilt-a-whirl hitched to a tower of terror. It’s among the group’s most sonically inventive, even playful, songs—there is a dick joke in there—but everything the Knife throw in, which is a considerable amount, is repurposed into a weapon. This includes Karin Dreijer-Andersson’s vocals, gender-bent as usual and pitch-screwed into an exhausted fry; here, they almost work as call-and-response, each mode weary of the last. The lyrics are half-gasped and clipped, like a stream of omnidirectional weariness: toward men, powerful men, men’s stories, powerful men with women’s stories, and everyone who gave that list a smarmy nod. “Liberals giving me a nerve itch” is like a pre-emptive strike against all the lazy social-justice plaudits Shaking the Habitual would receive, while its most “accessible” line, “let’s talk about gender, baby,” is tacked on like an afterthought and twisted into a sneer. Dreijer-Andersson sings questions that trail off with a sickly trill, leaving the answers inside the dystopian music. There’s nothing about gender on Shaking the Habitual that isn’t best expressed when it sounds like neurons shaking themselves into panic. —Katherine St. Asaph The Knife: ""Full of Fire""",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/theknife/full-of-fire,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/28/THE-KNIFE-FULL-OF-FIRE-608x608.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Knife-Full_of_Fire.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,18,Drake,"""Worst Behavior""",Cash Money / Young Money Entertainment / Universal Republic,"Everyone has their own brand of worst behavior. For some, it means taking a shit with the bathroom door open. For others, it's about telling a parent that their child resembles a cartoon character. It could involve stunting down some stairs, eating in a pool, or perhaps getting ""drunk enough for everyone who has a birthday this week."" In a way, we are defined by our worst behavior—even (especially?) when such behavior takes the form of pudding farts. Drake's worst has him flexing, ogling the zeroes on his checks, and defeating a handicapped Serena Williams on the tennis court. But ""Worst Behavior"" isn't so much about the what as much as the why—it's powered by a blinding sense of indignation that's spring-loaded for maximum comeuppance upon any and all who have ever doubted this middle-class Canadian child star. The song begins with what sounds like a flying saucer landing, as if the rapper rented a UFO from Area 51 and flew it to a poor old hater's backyard just so he could tell them to fuck off. Drake's Tourette's flow matches the beat's halting clatter, each incensed shout—remember?!... muhfucka?!—hitting like a bomb in the dark. Yet for all of the track's brutal vengeance and YOLO 2.0 recklessness, the wounds at its core place it beyond bluster; to get to #MadDrake, you still need #SadDrake. So this one's also for those who were told they'd never amount to much, who couldn't do anything right, whose mom never came to pick them up. Remember? How could you forget. —Ryan Dombal Drake: ""Worst Behavior""",Platform: YouTube - Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70Vo9X95EM4,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/28/NWTS-Standard%202.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Drake-Worst_Behavior.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,17,SOPHIE,"""Bipp""",Numbers,"“Bipp” is one of those alien transmissions that seems designed to flaunt how little it sounds like anything else. Its roots are in freestyle—a strain of chipper, mid-80s dance-pop brought to the mainstream by artists like Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam—but its execution is deliberately warped, turning what might’ve once been just a regular old party into one of those parties where you suddenly see a stranger in a goat mask flash through your periphery. Call it inspiring, call it perverse, but there’s a glee here, a devilish razzle-dazzle that puts Sophie in a line of antagonists from the Residents to Aphex Twin. It doesn’t help that the beat threatens to drop but never does, suspending the track in moments of hot, awkward silence. “I can make you feel better,” the singer chirps, maybe a woman, maybe a man, either way screwed-up on digital helium. What “better” means in this case may require some preliminary discussion. —Mike Powell",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/15625/homepage_large.94e41a20.jpg,/dataset/artwork/SOPHIE-Bipp.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,16,Blood Orange,"""You're Not Good Enough"" [ft. Samantha Urbani]",Domino,"Part of the appeal of Blood Orange's Cupid Deluxe is that it sounds familiar from the instant you first put it on, which in turn adds resonance to its tales of loneliness. ""You're Not Good Enough"" is a prime example: the lockstep funk guitar and drum machines recall prime-era Prince, but they're more robust and sanguine than the Purple One's skeletal funk. Where most of the record is practically dripping with pathos in all its pastel-hued John Hughes glory, however, Dev Hynes' intent is a little more layered here. Listen carelessly and ""You're Not Good Enough"" could be a feel-good ditty. But in reality it's a straight-up fuck-you, one loaded with insecurity and indecision. The chorus—""I never was in love/ You know that you were never good enough""—is almost taunting when sung in such cheery, sing-songy cadences, and its follow-up line (""fall asleep right next to me"") implies the kind of resentment that festers in an unhappy relationship. The simple development from one line to the next makes for a devastating impact, transforming the song from a bitter kiss-off into something fraught with inner conflict and turmoil. Meanwhile, the music continues to spring along, like a depressed person putting on a good face. —Andrew Ryce",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/bloodorange/youre-not-good-enough,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/16285/homepage_large.056a7dcb.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Blood_Orange-Youre_Not_Good_Enough_ft_Samantha_Urbani.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,15,Bill Callahan,"""Small Plane""",Drag City,"Seven of the eight songs on Bill Callahan’s Dream River come peppered with flute, fiddle, or piano. During “Summer Painter,” for instance, the woodwinds—and, then, the lack thereof—help mark the move between the halcyon and a hurricane. But “Small Plane” is just a reverie of electric guitar, a trickle of percussion, and a trace of bass. It’s so spare that the baseline hiss of the microphones in the studio becomes an unnamed fourth instrument. This musical simplicity suits a song where so many things seem to go unsaid, where as many questions are raised as answered. Ostensibly, “Small Plane” is about love and faith, in which an emblem of domestic life and a cession of self-sovereignty suggest that Callahan has finally found the person who will be by his side when he dies. But he is riding high only on the belief that this won’t end in a nose-down crash and a fit of flames. “Danger/ I never think of danger,” he sings, his oaken baritone set broadly in the mix, his temptation of fate almost tragically funny. “I really am a lucky man.” Callahan teases with the truth, opening in the past tense—“You used to take me up,” he sings, so as to foretell the imminent end—and ending with a surprise shift away from his own dub-like dream, as he looks ahead for signs of trouble. There’s just one tick between the past and the future, one miss between heartbreak and happiness, one decision between forever and never. On “Small Plane,” Callahan explores both sides of those binaries without landing on either. He’s a veteran of restraint now wise enough to leave metaphorical space for each listener to touch down or crash on their own. These flights, after all, are chances we’ve all taken. —Grayson Haver Currin",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/28/dreamriver%202.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bill_Callahan-Small_Plane.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,14,Vampire Weekend,"""Step""",XL,"Vampire Weekend have always steeped their songs in cultural minutiae, and this one reads like a line-by-line love letter to the musical universe they’ve molded into their catchy, knowing catalogue: Souls of Mischief, Jandek, Modest Mouse, Talking Heads, YZ, Bread, Grover Washington, Jr., Run-D.M.C., Rakim. Taken at its word, “Step” ruminates on a departed lover and makes a tender plea for domesticity not dissimilar to what Animal Collective asked for five years ago in “My Girls”. But Vampire Weekend aren’t admitting what they want, but what they need: ""I can't do it alone,"" admits Ezra Koenig, before laying out a litany of life lessons that make it sound like he's old enough to know what he’s talking about. He’s no longer aiming at a strawman of the culturally appropriating college bourgeoisie, but rather everyone giving it a shot. “Step” is smaller in detail and yet bigger than anything Vampire Weekend have ever done—bigger than girls, music, or love itself. It’s as big as the world we live in. —Jeremy Gordon Vampire Weekend: ""Step""",Platform: YouTube - Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mDxcDjg9P4,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/15133/homepage_large.3c32383c.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Vampire_Weekend-Step.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,13,Earl Sweatshirt,"""Sunday"" [ft. Frank Ocean]",Columbia / Tan Cressida,"""Sunday"" is stained with the conflicted ambivalence that characterizes much of Earl Sweatshirt's major-label debut, Doris. On the track, he apologizes to his girlfriend for his absence, and it sounds like we're being let in on a quiet argument. Even though only one side is given voice, it's the kind of disarmingly human interaction in which egos get bruised even as both parties attempt to make amends. Earl doesn't paint himself as a saint either, ending up half-drunk and stumbling by the end of the scene and even getting defensive at one point. (""I'm fucking famous if you forgot/ I'm faithful despite all what's in my face and my pocket."") Even so, there's tenderness to be found, even if it's fleeting: ""I know the dark isn't coming… for the moment, if I can hold it."" Then Frank Ocean arrives and hijacks the track (something he's done before). It's a guest spot that doesn't rely on the novelty of ""Frank rapping"" but rather achieves its takeover through the kind of impressively dense verse that keeps revealing anew. ""Sunday"" could've slotted onto last year's Channel Orange and felt right at home, fitting in with that album's L.A. languor. Along with ""Super Rich Kids"", we've got two classics from this pairing now. It's easy to imagine many more. —Renato Pagnani",Platform: YouTube - Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzi24Nssiow,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/15883/homepage_large.bd3e4aea.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Earl_Sweatshirt-Sunday_ft_Frank_Ocean.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,12,Sky Ferreira,"""I Blame Myself""",Capitol,"""I feel like I have to shout to get my point across because people don't listen to me,"" Sky Ferreira told New York magazine this year. The 21-year-old pop singer has been fighting the major-label machine for her own voice for some time now, and ""I Blame Myself"" lays out the emotional core of her long-winded journey to a debut record. It's about being strongly misunderstood. ""How could you know what it feels like to fight the hounds of hell?"" Sky shouts in bouncing lines full of urgency, resisting detractors who have only a superficial sense of who she is. ""You think you know me so well."" These words are fit to be both shouted in karaoke bars and scrawled in private notebooks—rendered in all-caps— because it's deeply empowering to let them flow through and out of your system. It's not hard to see Sky as a pop icon for bullied high school weirdos. She wraps her troubles up into a confession, claiming responsibility for the baggage of a past life in the face of a new one. It makes her a very likable character, one who empathizes with her own critics on the titular refrain: ""I know it's not your fault/ That you don't understand/ I blame myself,"" she sings, direct and bold, as if she's finally focused the camera on her biggest idea. —Jenn Pelly",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/28/homepage_large.ebf19562.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sky_Ferreira-I_Blame_Myself.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,11,Kanye West,"""Blood on the Leaves""",Def Jam,"On Yeezus, Kanye West milled down brutal images of black power, oppression, and decadence into a volatile powder, then packed it into clangorous electro shell casings and shook them until they blew up in his hands. ""Blood on the Leaves"" could be its most dangerous payload as it welds together—seemingly at random—TNGHT’s “R U Ready” and a bizarrely elided sample of Nina Simone singing “Strange Fruit”. A conceptual enigma, the track doubles as a bright and open-hearted moment of release on a dank, tense record. Skin is ultimately what’s at issue here. On the surface, “Blood on the Leaves” is just an anthemic breakup tantrum. Kanye recriminates about legal proceedings and yearns to return to the start, “When you tried your first Molly/ And came out of your body.” The surging horns illustrate the memory's ecstatic intensity, and a full-throttle vocal performance blasts through the pitch correction. But that lyric takes on a more dire connotation in the context of the sample, evoking lifeblood itself pouring out of black bodies. It’s the subtlest of many high-contrast juxtapositions of racially charged glamour and squalor Kanye forges on Yeezus, which could all be traced back to the way that “Strange Fruit” bracingly counterpoised idyllic images of the rural South and artfully shocking ones of lynchings. Through what at first seems an edgy non sequitur, Kanye has drawn a long and visionary line from modern images of success to historical ones of degradation. Against a backdrop of emotional turmoil, icons of status are invoked with a sense of anger and betrayal. In intimate personal relationships and mass political systems alike, the weight of the past bears down on the individual. But only Kanye would dare make that correlation explicit, equating the bitter harvest of divorce to that of American slavery. That’s what makes him our most genuinely iconoclastic pop star. “Blood on the Leaves”, more than anything else on Yeezus, melds repulsive content and magnetic music into a strike that leaves the taste of real blood in your mouth. —Brian Howe",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/28/yeezus.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kanye_West-Blood_on_the_Leaves.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,10,Autre Ne Veut,"""Play by Play""",Mexican Summer / Software,"""Play By Play"" is the epitome of desperation. From the opening pleas of ""ba-a-a-by"" through the concluding, frantic ad libs, the song is a little nonsensical and completely soulful, as mastermind Arthur Ashin stumbles gracefully through vocal hook after hook over an array of glistening 80s synths. Catchy as it is, ""Play by Play"" is made up of a series of unintuitive zig-zags, the antithesis of modern R&B's earworm silkiness; it takes all of two minutes to even get to the first chorus, but the verses are too giddy for that to matter. It's not the kind of giddiness that comes from excitement, but rather from a relentless pounding in your stomach. Ashin twists and yelps like he's trying to escape his own body. Every slip into falsetto is more wrenching than rousing. It represents the conflict at the heart of Anxiety, an album obsessed with need, self-torment and dependence, and Ashin makes these subjects palatable through sheer force of will. ""I just called you up to get that play by play by play/ Don't ever leave me alone"" is not a couplet that lands lightly, and his character wouldn't be a sympathetic one if he didn't sound so goddamn earnest. Autre Ne Veut's upfront, heart-and-entrails-on-sleeve quality can be divisive, but such rawness quickly becomes endearing due to the deepness of each cut. You could call it accidental, unwieldy brilliance, but something tells me every second of Ashin's glittering self-loathing is deliberate. —Andrew Ryce",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/spunkrecords/autre-ne-veut-play-by-play,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/14847/homepage_large.1febf401.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Autre_Ne_Veut-Play_by_Play.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,9,Deafheaven,"""Dreamhouse""",Deathwish,"Many have taken stabs at making extreme metal that's meant to exalt and transcend. And while spirituality isn’t something San Francisco’s Deafheaven explicitly traffics in, there’s a sense of ritual—and of reaching higher—that lifts its sophomore album, Sunbather, and especially its opening barrage, “Dreamhouse”. Over nine minutes in length, the song ditches any attempt at a delicate, drawn-out intro—a convention that both its primary forebears, black metal and shoegaze, rely on—and instead hurls itself into the teeth of chaos. Only it isn’t chaotic at all; within moments, the blur of blastbeats, distortion, and screams resolves itself into a sculpture of shattered glass. It isn’t as if shoegaze hadn’t dealt with bleakness before, or black metal with brightness—or the two seemingly unrelated genres with each other. But “Dreamhouse” achieves the acrobatic paradox of being weightless and enslaved to gravity at once, emotionally as well as sonically. The group’s roots in hardcore help unlock the track’s mystique; a wrenching, desperate, destroy-to-create positivity bleeds from each of guitarist Kerry McCoy’s melodic updrafts and euphoric swells, and singer George Clarke’s incomprehensible shrieks bypass literal translation to instead rely on a kind of cancerous catharsis that’s evolved from a thousand shitty basement screamo shows. The details of this particular dream are either forgotten or impossible to contain in language; instead, Deafheaven assemble them into a monument, step inside, and light a match. —Jason Heller",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/15379/homepage_large.d59bd266.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Deafheaven-Dreamhouse.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,8,Daft Punk,"""Get Lucky"" [ft. Pharrell]",Daft Life Limited / Columbia,"It's one of the great trojan horse operations in recent pop history: A reedy disco song about dancing and getting laid disguised as something of far more import. This is in part good marketing: Daft Punk's return could not feel trivial. But the idea that a song need address anything besides dancing and fucking is one of the core fallacies that contributed to disco's banishment in certain circles, a fate Daft Punk needed to avoid. So through some horseshit about a phoenix and a lot of stoopid repetition, Daft Punk ensure that their version feels bigger and more astral than it should. ""Getting lucky"" becomes a communal, zen-like state, not just an Art Basel after party that ended particularly well for Pharrell. Stave off sleep and your fortunes may take a cosmic leap. The song's message, or refreshing lack thereof, is a red herring; Nile Rodgers' tickling guitar figure stimulates the track. It's an ineffable sound that functions as both rhythm and melody, peacekeeper and agitant. That constant flick of treble tempers Pharrell's endless bravado without dampening his enthusiasm, a true feat. It allows ""Get Lucky""—a song that was rolled out in three separate stages—to be simple. To be dumb. People used to tease Sonic Youth, noting that as time went on, only half of their band name was still applicable. We could say the same about Daft Punk. They've left us the better half.—Andrew Gaerig",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/15320/homepage_large.667d9a9d.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Daft_Punk-Get_Lucky_ft_Pharrell.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,7,Disclosure,"""Latch""",Sony,"""Latch"" is a song about love, possession, of wanting someone so badly and holding on so tight you never want to let go. Locking in. And the key to its appeal is the huge contrast between the verses and chorus, the way the former simmers and the latter pops. Young and heretofore obscure vocalist Sam Smith, who will be singing this one as an encore for the rest of his days, gets the dynamics just right, going from close mic’d croon to an otherworldly falsetto that made idiots of those who couldn’t help sing along but could never hope to hit those notes (guilty). The way the song wallows in the pleasure of electronic pop brings to mind early 80s new romantics, but the wobbly bass and hissing percussion situate it in a tremendously exciting present. It’s a mix of elements designed for endurance. Indeed, ""Latch"" actually extends back to October 2012, when it was released as a single in the UK, but hearing it in the context of Disclosure’s incredible debut Settle gave it a second life in 2013: On an album loaded with fantastic songs, this was the one that stood just a little higher, the one most likely to have me hitting the back button. —Mark Richardson Disclosure: ""Latch""",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/disclosuremusic/latch-ft-sam-smith,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/28/DISCLOSURE_LATCH_1400x1400_copy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Disclosure-Latch.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,6,Haim,"""The Wire""",Columbia,"""You know I'm bad at communication,"" Danielle Haim begins, and throughout the next four minutes of no-hashtag-required pop perfection, there are plenty of reasons to believe this is true: A chorus muttered so low that it has spawned all sorts of goofy mondegreens (personal favorite: ""I fumbled a white gay man through the wire""), a vocabulary comprised solely of hahhhs and ooofps and chickah-ahs that is more cryptic and expressive than the whole emoji keypad, the word ""retire"" pronounced in the native accent of a country that I would have great difficulty pointing to on a map. And yet somehow, like any great pop song, “The Wire” speaks a universal language: The fact that even your mom is now pronouncing this band's name correctly points to how rapidly and widely these three sisters conquered in 2013. Any sentient human being could find something to like about this glorious song, whether it’s the lithely odd Joni-esque vocal melody, the crisp, cheerleader-Don-Henley heartbeat, or that deliciously cheesy pocket-arena guitar fill at the very end. Oh, #PopPerfection isn’t your thing? Well guess what, Cool Guy: The demo rules too. However one-size-fits-all it may be, though, “The Wire” is an anomaly. We tend to prefer our Female Empowerment Jams sung by a solitary woman who has already been knocked down, only to rise from the ash in a belted-out chorus of smoke-machine-ready grandeur. Plenty of songs did that trick to great, cathartic effect this year, but “The Wire” is something rarer and more humane: a break-up song without a villain. “I didn’t go and try to change my mind, not intentionally,” Danielle shrugs, pronouncing every line like a my bad instead of a fuck you. And anyway, as she hands off the lead vocals to Alana and then Este in the subsequent verses, we get the sense that she’s not going to be completely alone. That's the big-hearted brilliance of ""The Wire"", an arena-ready crowd-pleaser that still manages to feel like a shared secret between sisters. —Lindsay Zoladz Haim: ""The Wire""",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/haimtime/haimthewire | Platform: YouTube - Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snPgFNMCXBs,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/28/haim-the-wire.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Haim-The_Wire.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,5,Ciara,"""Body Party""",Epic,"Ciara Princess Harris was just 10 years old when Ghost Town DJ's' ""My Boo"" was released on Jermaine Dupri's Atlanta-based So So Def Recordings in 1995. A mid-level radio hit, it received a low-slung ""Quiet Storm Mix"" courtesy of Jonathan Smith, who was still a few years away from ripping a ""YEAAAHHHHH!""-sized hole through the fabric of mainstream pop as Lil Jon. Nine years later, Ciara scored her first #1 hit with the title track to her 2004 debut LP, Goodies, an intoxicating party anthem with production touches from Smith. Nearly a decade after that, a full-circle moment's arrived in the form of ""Body Party"", Ciara's own slowed-down reconfiguring of the enduring R&Bass classic that is ""My Boo"". So while it's fair to refer to this song as 90s nostalgia—the video's overt True Lies striptease homage as well as its nods to ""My Boo""'s original pool-house clip, certainly add fuel to that fire—there's something deeper going on here: ""Body Party"" is a tribute not only to the city of Atlanta but also a chunk of its considerable musical legacy. The track's major players—Ciara, her co-writer and boyfriend Future, and current hot-streak producer Mike WiLL Made It—all rep the A, and the song is the greatest achievement of the year for all three of them. It doesn't take regional genuflection, though, to appreciate a track that brings together two of pop music's sometimes-sold-separately Big Issues—love and sex—with such ease. ""Body Party""'s sonic layout is spare and ingeniously simple, but there's myriad details: the aqueous squish on every downbeat, Ciara's soft mimicking of Mike WiLL's signature drop, and Future's gorgeous coo that trickles down the chorus, an aviary call that gives a new meaning to the phrase ""put a bird on it."" Ciara concludes each verse with a wordless exclamation that conveys total, overwhelming ecstasy. She can't lie. —Larry Fitzmaurice Ciara: ""Body Party""",Platform: YouTube - Link: http://youtu.be/jZdMFB4BhrQ,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/28/artworks-000042127158-495yud-original.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ciara-Body_Party.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,4,Arcade Fire,"""Reflektor""",Merge,"In 2007, music critic Sasha Frere-Jones famously declared Arcade Fire guilty of being white, by using the Montreal sextet as the exemplar of contemporary indie rock’s disavowal of syncopation, groove, and the sort of cross-cultural miscegenation that has traditionally fueled pop music’s greatest evolutions. His piece certainly got the band's attention: member Will Butler even sent Frere-Jones an mp3 containing bits of Arcade Fire songs that betray the direct influence of black music. But with the sultry bottom-end bump of “Reflektor”, Arcade Fire turn in the best possible retort—even if it's six years late. As the first teaser of their powerhouse match-up with producer James Murphy, “Reflektor” feels no less momentous for sounding exactly like the LCD 12"" remix of “Neighbourhood #3 (Power Out)” that never happened. It’s hardly the first Arcade Fire song to rail against the sedentary, disassociative effects of computer-age technological dependency, but the critique is heard in the 4/4 funk as much as Win Butler’s lyrics: this band has gone disco not as an escapist antidote to modern malaise—and not just because their heroes in the Clash did the same thing on their fourth album—but to embrace dance music’s communal, connective, IRL qualities. Like many of Murphy’s signature productions, the pulse builds and builds and builds—mixing in everything from piano-house rolls, to Colin Stetson’s sensuous sax lines, to Owen Pallett’s string arrangements, to a blink-and-miss-it David Bowie cameo—until it’s on the verge of collapse. Even Win’s repeated incantation of “reflectors,” “resurrectors,” and various other “-ectors” transform his words into a rhythmic device of their own, like a verbal cowbell. But then, chaos and ecstasy are not mutually exclusive ideals. You can’t build a disco ball without a thousand little pieces of broken glass—all the better if they're bits of your computer screen after you kick it in. —Stuart Berman Arcade Fire: ""Reflektor""",Platform: YouTube - Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7E0fVfectDo,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/15999/homepage_large.fded2f60.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Arcade_Fire-Reflektor.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,3,Vampire Weekend,"""Hannah Hunt""",XL,"In a parallel universe, Ezra Koenig might produce a great American novel, or at least the type of short stories to land him on The New Yorker's 20-Under-40 list. Consider the genesis of ""Hannah Hunt"": The flesh-and-blood woman behind the name of Modern Vampires of the City’s centerpiece was a college classmate. “We were in the same Buddhism class and we sat next to each other and stuff,” he explained to me nonchalantly. “I loved her name so much and thought it would be a great name for a song.” From those humble beginnings, Koenig crafted a devastating character that won’t leave you. Hannah Hunt is sharp but impulsive, destructively short-sighted in spite of her freakish perceptiveness. She’s nerve-wracking and slippery and large-hearted. She’s the one you want in the passenger’s seat on cross-country road trip, even if she’ll end up in tears at the beach. She won’t stop testing your limits, even when she means better; “If I can’t trust you, then dammit, Hannah!,” Koenig cries, his voice piercing the ballad’s meticulous baby’s-breath arrangement like an outburst at a pristine, Upper West Side dinner table. Hannah Hunt hasn’t won your trust yet, but you’ll give her another chance. —Carrie Battan",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/28/vampire-weekend-mvotc%202.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Vampire_Weekend-Hannah_Hunt.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,2,Kanye West,"""New Slaves""",Def Jam,"It's tough to remember now, but in the moments before Kanye West performed ""Black Skinhead"" and ""New Slaves"" on ""Saturday Night Live"", it seemed possible that the walls might finally be closing in around him, that the most inspiring pop culture run of the millennium might actually be tapering off. He was palling around with Big Sean on rap radio, picking through Kim's closet on reality television. His most recent project, the cluttered and uncooked label compilation Cruel Summer, was uncharacteristically careless. Maybe Kanye would recede slowly; it happened to everyone eventually. He'd had an inspiring run, after all. From the first moments of those ""SNL"" performances, however, it became clear that we might not even be at the halfway point. The two songs he debuted felt alien, inchoate, possibly tuneless, and gave the immediate sense that a sleeper cell had been activated somewhere soft and vulnerable. ""New Slaves"" was the purest and most direct expression of Kanye's latest all-consuming message: You are going to let me in, and the further in you let me in, the more shit I am going to break. ""New Slaves"" is the hardened cartilage of Yeezus, the leanest and grisliest piece of music on an album without a single yielding surface. There isn't a wasted breath or unnecessary word; every single thought cleaves through meat. ""My mama was raised in the era when/ Clean water was only served to the fairer skin,"" he begins. Can you get closer to the point than that? You can: ""I know that we the new slaves/ I see the blood on the leaves/ I see the blood on the leaves/ I see the blood on the leaves,"" he seethes, the hate and shame of systemic racism coming through more vividly with each repetition. Yes, Kanye is a wealthy man, and yes, the particulars of his rage might be convoluted, involving his lack of access to the upper reaches of the fashion industry. But its source comes from an acute, unwavering awareness of a central fact: Even in the elite corridors of power where he now walks, some doors are still locked. On ""New Slaves"", he transforms into the hordes demanding entry. To paraphrase the words of his one-time mentor: The whole industry could hate him; he'll flail his way through. —Jayson Greene",Platform: YouTube - Link: http://youtu.be/tso0NA70294,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/28/yeezus.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kanye_West-New_Slaves.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2013 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9288-the-top-tracks-of-2013/,2013,year,song,1,Drake,"""Hold On, We're Going Home"" [ft. Majid Jordan]",Young Money Entertainment,"It’s had a rough century, but things were looking up for the institution of marriage this year. Six more states legalized same-sex unions and beyond that, wedding DJs got an infusion of surefire new material—“Blurred Lines”, “Suit & Tie”, “Get Lucky”, amongst others—ubiquitous, charming songs by well-groomed, well-meaning men whose subject matter and rhythms won’t put anyone on the spot. “Hold On, We’re Going Home” also cracked those playlists, but while your grandfather can sing along to it without embarrassing himself and the light-stepping groove allows people to move without necessarily “dancing,” Drake expresses the kind of personal, ceremonial vows you hear at the altar rather than the after-party. See, Drake’s never had a problem with intimacy, just commitment. Elsewhere on Nothing Was the Same, he makes life very difficult for Courtney from Hooters on Peachtree, Porscha from Treasures, and other women in his past that he hoped would be “the one.” Not the best he ever had, not the girl who can do better. ""Hold On, We're Going Home"" has him eyeing someone in the present with whom he can envision a future and let go of the past. What happens when they get home is left unsaid. They might make love, they might fall asleep on the couch. But either way, being together means they can be themselves. That’s a feeling you can’t micromanage or overthink, and “Hold On” is delivered with necessary immediacy, its handful of crucial lyrics latching onto a cyclical melody. It’s a deceptively simple song that drew out instant covers from artists of all stripes—out of love, respect, and surely envy. They won’t be the last, because “Hold On” promises all we can ask for from a pop song (or another person): hot love and emotion, for richer or poorer, for better or worse, in sickness and in health. Endlessly. —Ian Cohen Drake: ""Hold On, We're Going Home"" [ft. Majid Jordan]",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/octobersveryown/drake-hold-on-were-going-home | Platform: YouTube - Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eyofVmrw2g,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/28/3x7eh1lp26ttzzcpil1teafvg.475x475x1.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Drake-Hold_On_Were_Going_Home_ft_Majid_Jordan.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6753-top-50-albums-of-2007/,2007,year,album,50,Tinariwen,Aman Iman: Water Is Life,World Village,"It’s easy to get caught up in the story of Tinariwen: They descend from some of the world’s last truly nomadic peoples-- the Kel Tamashek or Tuareg-- and formed in a refugee camp. But the narrative is just background, a conversation piece that’s not necessary to enjoy their work. The electric crunch of “Cler Achel” is breathtaking-- especially the way it contrasts with its hypnotic massed vocals-- and “Matadjem Yinmixan” whirls with the force of a cyclone. You can feel the empty spaces; these musicians locate their home in the music, a sound that feels like it’s been part of the world as long as we have, as essential as blood, as elemental as fire. –Joe Tangari Listen: Tinariwen: “Matadjem Yinmixan”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovXX8K8WXVg,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/9869/homepage_large.ef0e5bee.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tinariwen-Aman_Iman_Water_Is_Life.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6753-top-50-albums-of-2007/,2007,year,album,49,Dizzee Rascal,Maths + English,XL,"Dizzee Rascal’s best asset as an MC is his directness. There’s no side to him, no great tricks or poetics, just an urgent sincerity giving the best tracks on his third album extra wallop. His hilarious demolition of a former mentor on “Pussy’ole” is a highlight, but his trump card in battle is contempt. “Find a pretty girl and settle,” he advises a rival, stinging worse than more elaborate insults. Elsewhere, Dizzee brings endearingly wide-eyed cheekiness to stripclub raps (“Flex”) and horndog summer jams (“Da Feelin’”), and teams up with fellow straight-talker Lily Allen for a bouncy meeting of bullshit detectors. When he turns his hand to big-picture musing on “Excuse Me Please” he sounds gruesomely naïve, and it’s a shame there’s not more high-impact storytelling like “Sirens.” But for all the guest stars and style jumps, Dizzee’s kept his rawness and focus. –Tom Ewing Listen: Dizzee Rascal: “Pussy’ole (Old School)”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eo5EXmhz01E,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/10119/homepage_large.48f6421f.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dizzee_Rascal-Maths__English.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6753-top-50-albums-of-2007/,2007,year,album,48,Robert Wyatt,Comicopera,Domino,"Robert Wyatt reconvened his own big band-- featuring friends Brian Eno, Paul Weller, and Roxy Music’s Phil Manzanera-- for his first album in four years, and his first for Domino. The result, Comicopera, is a slyly ambitious, dolefully funny three-sided concept suite, taking in alcoholism and aging, the continuing fiasco in the Middle East, the horror of world politics, and the consolations of the imagination. Best of all, though, is what we least expected from the longtime cult hero: “Just As You Are”, a bittersweet duet, co-written with his wife, Alfie, and sublimely sung by Wyatt and Brazilian bossa nova queen Monica Vasconcelos. –Stephen Troussé Listen: Robert Wyatt: “Just As You Are”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lymjL6wOkN8,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/10566/homepage_large.b79bd197.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Robert_Wyatt-Comicopera.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6753-top-50-albums-of-2007/,2007,year,album,47,Yeasayer,All Hour Cymbals,We Are Free,"With its caterwauling vocals, half-African guitar-runs, queasy rhythm section, and fixation on xylophone loops, this Brooklyn quartet’s debut should be a muddled mess of post-TVOTR Williamsburg claustrophobia. But despite their often world-weary lyrics, dystopian angst isn’t Yeasayer’s defining trait; their hazy psychedelia aims for gooey warmth, not stressed isolation. When they rock out, as on “Wait for the Wintertime”, they do it with dub-metal swagger, bending fuzzy riffs around airy trumpet sighs. When they groove, as on “Sunrise”, they layer their drum-ripples into disorienting waves. And when they bliss out, as on “2080”, they do it with breathless intensity. But as confounding as their studio trickery can be, Yeasayer still make sure to end the album on an uncomplicated heart-tugging note, singing a devotional group-hug hymn to their friends and family. For these four, sound is religion. –Tom Breihan Listen: Yeasayer: “2080”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4AzDc1yAkQ,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/10605/homepage_large.fa63b9ec.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Yeasayer-All_Hour_Cymbals.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6753-top-50-albums-of-2007/,2007,year,album,46,Marissa Nadler,Songs III: Bird on the Water,Peacefrog,"In a year marked by the chaos of UK new ravers, L.A. noiseniks, and Baltimore freaks and geeks, the muted hues of Songs III: Bird on the Water almost felt subversive. With understated grace and startling consistency, Marissa Nadler cooed lovelorn, wayworn, and woebegone across these 12 tracks, content to tread paths trodden a thousand times over if it meant finding the one detail all those before her had missed. So what if these weren’t the combustible songs from fashionable forward-thinkers? Nadler was still killing us, albeit softly. –Matthew Solarski Listen: Marissa Nadler: “Diamond Heart”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQHOz6qpXqM,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/9773/homepage_large.7ed577d5.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Marissa_Nadler-Songs_III_Bird_on_the_Water.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6753-top-50-albums-of-2007/,2007,year,album,45,Ricardo Villalobos,Fabric 36,Fabric,"The internet hasn’t been kind to mix CDs. With vast archives of up-to-date club sets trading online, the idea of paying $20 for a session recorded six months ago seems absurd. Ricardo Villalobos’ Fabric mix turned that problem on its head, devoting his entire session to new productions of the loopy percussive tools and stoned flights of timbral fancy he uses to anchor his sets. Less esoteric than his recent releases for Cadenza and Perlon, but less pop than his remixes for Beck and Depeche Mode, Fabric 36 hones in on the groove and won’t let go, molding jazz-kit samples, hissing synths, and a battery of effects around rambling, pitched-up bits of dialogue and bizarre outbursts of taiko drumming. The album climaxes with “Primer Encuentro Latino-Americano de la Soledad”, an edit of a song by Chilean prog-rockers Los Jaivas that proves once and for all Villalobos is no mere minimalist. –Philip Sherburne Listen: Ricardo Villalobos: “Mecker”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rnwePPJEEQ,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/10492/homepage_large.7505b773.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ricardo_Villalobos-Fabric_36.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6753-top-50-albums-of-2007/,2007,year,album,44,Les Savy Fav,Let's Stay Friends,Frenchkiss,"In the six years since the release of their last proper full-length, Go Forth, many of Les Savy Fav’s stylistic tics have emerged as full-on musical fads. The band could have easily cast itself as unsung trendsetters with Let’s Stay Friends, but instead they chose to downplay their best-documented strengths, sanding their angular edges and streamlining their dance-punk grooves. The result is a solid, multifaceted, and stubbornly gimmick-free indie rock record. Tim Harrington’s lyrics are still sly and clever, and his delivery still tightly wound and frantic, but Let’s Stay Friends finds him coming into his own as a more versatile-- and occasionally downright tuneful-- singer. The rest of the band follows suit, branching out into new expressive territory without sacrificing its well-honed energy. For a group as explosive as Les Savy Fav, the understatement of Let’s Stay Friends may be the ballsiest thing they could have done. –Matt LeMay Listen: Les Savy Fav: “Raging in the Plague Age”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9BOY9jNYPM,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/10482/homepage_large.b819e4ba.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Les_Savy_Fav-Lets_Stay_Friends.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6753-top-50-albums-of-2007/,2007,year,album,43,Stars of the Lid,And Their Refinement of the Decline,Kranky,"In 2001, Stars of the Lid released The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid, a meticulous, methodical 2xCD set of build-and-release hums and drones that would have served as a worthy career pinnacle for many bands. SotL’s Adam Wiltzie relocated to Belgium, and bandmate Brian McBride headed west to lead the University of Southern California debate team. The duo’s long-awaited 2xCD followup, And Their Refinement of the Decline, was therefore eventually composed and recorded on two continents. Another set of deceptively slow and simple songs, Refinement eases between strings, horns, a children’s choir, a harp, electronics, and gently washing guitars. –Grayson Currin Listen: Stars of the Lid: “A Meaningful Moment Through a Meaning (Less) Process”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PE50PZG5aw,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/9878/homepage_large.2cdabb66.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Stars_of_the_Lid-And_Their_Refinement_of_the_Decline.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6753-top-50-albums-of-2007/,2007,year,album,42,Ghostface Killah,The Big Doe Rehab,Def Jam,"Even though it harbored the most cinematic treatment of Method Man’s balls yet put to tape, Big Doe Rehab ’s crystalline rap narratives left some unimpressed. A few dissenters instead hailed the hallucinogenic properties of the Wu’s 8 Diagrams and noted, correctly, that the Tony Starks of “Jay Cutler on dust“ had misplaced his strawberry kiwi stash and suddenly started to make sense. Like Jay-Z, Ghostface here turned to the unlikely hitmaking team of Diddy, Sean C, and LV in search of a pipeline to the PCP-strewn streets of his past and found it, to the delight of action-movie connoisseurs and the chagrin of those in rap to see just how far the form could be stretched. –Zach Baron Listen: Ghostface Killah: “Yolanda’s House”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBq4IxO6lDs,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/10752/homepage_large.3acfd6e8.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ghostface_Killah-The_Big_Doe_Rehab.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6753-top-50-albums-of-2007/,2007,year,album,41,Life Without Buildings,Live at the Annandale Hotel,Absolutely Kosher / Gargleblast,"A live album by a practically unknown band, released five years after they broke up, and containing one previously unreleased song... what’s the big deal? The deal is that it’s a salvaged jewel. Life Without Buildings chopped and riffed like a souped-up variation on late-period Velvet Underground (check out the piercing harmonics guitarist Robert Johnston flings out on “Juno”), but their most distinct feature was singer Sue Tompkins, a stammering Glaswegian language artist who turned phrases over and over, inverting and examining and disassembling and reassembling them a word or a syllable at a time. Their repertoire, already vivid on their lone studio album, Any Other City, was riotously alive in performance: Tompkins’ play with her lyrics’ rhythm and rhetoric is thrilling, and everyone sounds like they’re so wound up they’re about to bound off the stage. Plus, that new song (“Liberty Feelup”) is a knockout. –Douglas Wolk Listen: Life Without Buildings: “Love Trinity”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqdWuG2Qd4g,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/10340/homepage_large.6c3dacb3.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Life_Without_Buildings-Live_at_the_Annandale_Hotel.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6753-top-50-albums-of-2007/,2007,year,album,40,Beirut,The Flying Club Cup,Ba Da Bing!,"Zach Condon’s 2007 output-- split across the Lon Gisland EP and sophomore album The Flying Club Cup-- displayed the deft hand largely absent from 2006’s Gulag Orkestar, a promising, much-loved but one-horse debut. On Lon Gisland, Condon continued to swoon and croon, his voice its own brass instrument, but the addition of a full band colored his vision with ornate and riveting melodies. Swathed in Gallic scenery, instrumentation, and waltz rhythm, follow-up Flying is a love letter to France-- playful, profound, even a little poppy-- with fresh melodic ideas that nevertheless retain Condon’s increasingly impressive stylistic fingerprint. –Liz Colville Listen: Beirut: “A Sunday Smile”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbGiDxg8kwM,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/10561/homepage_large.5bb87fd4.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beirut-The_Flying_Club_Cup.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6753-top-50-albums-of-2007/,2007,year,album,39,The White Stripes,Icky Thump,Warner Bros.,"Unlike Samson and Metallica, cutting Jack White’s hair only made him stronger. With Icky Thump, the White Stripes returned from Hollywood exile to remind us why we fell in love with them in the first place: monster classic rock riffs (“You Don’t Know What Love Is [You Just Do as You’re Told]”, “I’m Slowly Turning Into You”), gleeful, messy stomping (“Rag and Bone”, “Bone Broke“), goofball experiments (“Conquest“, “St. Andrew [This Battle Is in the Air]”). The garage may be lined with platinum now-- and cluttered with new toys like synthesizers, horns, and bagpipes-- but Jack and Meg are still candy cane children bashing away in their little room, as odd and loose as ever. More bands should try having this much fun. –Amy Phillips Listen: The White Stripes: “Icky Thump”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OjTspCqvk8,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/10153/homepage_large.858e2586.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_White_Stripes-Icky_Thump.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6753-top-50-albums-of-2007/,2007,year,album,38,Wu-Tang Clan,8 Diagrams,SRC / Universal Motown,"While we were wondering whether RZA would attempt to regurgitate the Wu-Tang Clan’s mid-90s halcyon days or bring his crew into the modern rap world, the producer had other plans. 8 Diagrams-- the Wu’s first album in six years-- is a collage of stoned spaghetti loops, psycho-babble hooks, and gritty, abstract lyricism. Think the Brothers Grimm battling it out with Maggot Brain while Willie Hutch coos in the background and you’re beginning to get the picture. The album is brooding, dynamic, dense, and ultimately, one of the most singular hip-hop releases of the year. Sure, it’s occasionally alienating, and requires multiple listens to locate its subtle charms, but it also accomplishes something rare for a modern Wu album: It reveals a new musical chamber, and adds one more chapter to one of the most storied groups in hip-hop history. –Sam Chennault Listen: Wu-Tang Clan: “Wolves”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-O8YoV2UVwc,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/10762/homepage_large.87840af5.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Wu-Tang_Clan-8_Diagrams.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6753-top-50-albums-of-2007/,2007,year,album,37,Grizzly Bear,Friend EP,Warp,"Grizzly Bear played vanishing bedroom pop on Horn of Plenty and baroque psych-folk on Yellow House. That they revealed their third incarnation with an extended EP mostly comprised of revamps, covers, and remixes is a token of their warranted confidence as players and arrangers. The once-tiny “Alligator” now swells to cavernous proportions and “Little Brother” gets wired with jumper cables, laying down a psych-rock template that persists through the EP’s alternately melting and jagged Crystals cover. More than a nostalgic retooling of the recent past, the Friend EP is a teaser for the near-future of indie rock’s most elegant, ambitious outfit. –Brian Howe Listen: Grizzly Bear: “Granny Diner”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v__w761JwRo,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/10665/homepage_large.0b8b1fe9.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Grizzly_Bear-Friend_EP.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6753-top-50-albums-of-2007/,2007,year,album,36,Iron & Wine,The Shepherd's Dog,Sub Pop,"Sam Beam finally completes the jump from his sparse voice-and-guitar beginnings into full-band, maximalist splendor. The Shepherd’s Dog is an eclectic, complex record, the disparate imagery of the lyrics merging with the organic texture of the music to create a dream-like flow. “House By the Sea” rises from a Reichian pattern to a rubber-rhythmed song cut with dashes of West African music, “Pagan Angel and a Borrowed Car” clatters with Americana signifiers, and “Flightless Bird, American Mouth” is a drop-dead gorgeous closer. Beam’s approach to singing has grown in sophistication, and he layers his distinctive whisper falsetto into billowing clouds of harmony all over the record. –Joe Tangari Listen: Iron & Wine: “Flightless Bird, American Mouth”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwZNGaMrwcE,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/10495/homepage_large.8cbbf7ae.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Iron__Wine-The_Shepherds_Dog.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6753-top-50-albums-of-2007/,2007,year,album,35,Black Lips,Good Bad Not Evil,Vice,"Though they’ve been around since before the great garage-rock renaissance of 2001, Atlanta’s Black Lips wouldn’t hit their stride until 2005’s Let It Bloom-- long after the movement had breathed its last corporate co-opted gasp. And this year, as the world at large finally sat up and took notice, they managed to breathe new life into a sound nearly as old as rock’n’roll itself. On Good Bad Not Evil tunes about Hurricane Katrina, holy war, and original guitarist Ben Eberbaugh’s tragic death are framed as abused-lover howlers (“Katrina”), under-the-boardwalk boasts (“Veni Vidi Vici”), and knucklehead honky-tonk (“How Do You Tell”). The band’s other 2007 release, live LP Los Valientes del Mundo Nuevo, recapped their career over the sloppy hoots and hollers of Tijuana dive-bar regulars, but here, Black Lips cemented their reputation not as bone-headed revivalists, but as clever punks with songwriting chops to match their genre’s progenitors. –Marc Hogan Listen: Black Lips: “Bad Kids”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrNSjItTfes,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/10430/homepage_large.fedc464f.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Black_Lips-Good_Bad_Not_Evil.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6753-top-50-albums-of-2007/,2007,year,album,34,James Blackshaw,The Cloud of Unknowing,Tompkins Square,"The Cloud of Unknowing borrows its title from a 14th century mystical Christian text primarily concerned with contemplative prayer. It’s a name that suits fingerpicking guitar virtuoso James Blackshaw especially well, since it’s not difficult to picture his work as a intuitive quest for the divine. Using only his 12-string guitar and an occasional violin or glockenspiel, Blackshaw effortlessly reconciles various elements of Renaissance string music, UK folk, and 20th century composition. Bracketed by its long-form title track and the exquisite “Stained Glass Windows”, the album achieves a certain natural symmetry, as Blackshaw allows each of his numerous interlaced melodies to build with an exceptional patience. And though traces of dissonance lap at the edges, what’s most striking here is the profound elegance of the album’s architecture, Blackshaw’s stunning technical prowess, and the unwavering confidence of his contemplative vision. –Matthew Murphy Listen: James Blackshaw: “The Mirror Speaks”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jn5sHyFgnmk,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/10097/homepage_large.61cc0104.jpg,/dataset/artwork/James_Blackshaw-The_Cloud_of_Unknowing.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6753-top-50-albums-of-2007/,2007,year,album,33,King Khan,What Is?!,Hazelwood,"Garage rockers and retro revivalists might act as if they’re in a universe separate from our own, but don’t let the analog hiss or those sweet fuzz tones on What Is?!  fool you: King Khan’s ears are everywhere, and this is his thesis on just how much range the genre can cover. Chalk it up to a frontman with a killer deadpan, and a band that can pick up stomping, treble-heavy power-pop jams, pristine Sunday morning AM jangle, gritty soul, and some serious uncharted psychedelia, all without losing its humor or bite. –Jason Crock Listen: King Khan & the Shrines: “Land of the Freak”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDmxHDx0SBQ,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/10187/homepage_large.001c9416.jpg,/dataset/artwork/King_Khan-What_Is.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6753-top-50-albums-of-2007/,2007,year,album,32,Sally Shapiro,Disco Romance,Diskokaine / Paper Bag,"Forget retread; what Sally Shapiro and producer Johan Agebjörn did for Italo-disco on Disco Romance might best be described as rehabilitation. Making no secret of their affinity for several of the genre’s forgotten acts, Agebjörn and his accidental muse/vocalist delivered on the promise of “I’ll Be By Your Side” with a collection of songs sleeker and more sophisticated than many of their stylistic forbearers. This is Italo-disco refurbished for the future, still hellbent on capturing our hearts, but now that much smarter about getting to them. –Matthew Solarski Listen: Sally Shapiro: “Jackie Jackie (Spend This Winter With Me)”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uhiLCEmu-I,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/9578/homepage_large.b9630ceb.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sally_Shapiro-Disco_Romance.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6753-top-50-albums-of-2007/,2007,year,album,31,Deerhoof,Friend Opportunity,Kill Rock Stars,"Asked to describe the Justin Theroux movie they’ve scored, Deerhoof settled for “OCD rom-com.” Which might make Friend Opportunity their ADD pop album. Recorded off the back of tours supporting Radiohead and the Flaming Lips-- and self-consciously aspiring to the grandness of those bands’ production-- Friend Opportunity is among the group’s richest, most focused records to date, and shows that the departure of guitarist Chris Cohen hasn’t hindered their ambition. Practically every song seems to casually coin a new genre: marching-band merseybeat (“+81”), Stravinskyian j-funk (“Believe ESP”) and even, on “Whither the Invisible Birds?”, the supper-club space ballad. –Stephen Troussé Listen: Deerhoof: “The Perfect Me”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7etn2czISU,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/9636/homepage_large.7c829dfa.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Deerhoof-Friend_Opportunity.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6753-top-50-albums-of-2007/,2007,year,album,30,Caribou,Andorra,Merge,"Dan Snaith’s last two albums have pushed in the direction of sunny psychedelic pop, but only flashes of fleshed-out melodies shone through. Using the radiant, winsome chamber-pop template established by the Zombies, Andorra represents Snaith’s headfirst dive into writing and singing pop songs. It’s Odessey and Oracle fan-fic, sure, but Snaith engineered plenty of himself into the formula he’s been working toward since 2003’s Up in Flames. His towering percussion arrangements, motorik rhythms, and multi-layered instrumentation are all here, but now they serve firm melodic structures-- underscoring the spookiness of “Afterhours”, and giving the bashful choruses of “Melody Day”, “Eli”, and “Sandy” color and lucidity. –Eric Harvey Listen: Caribou: “Afterhours”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEue_c5hWOg,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/10364/homepage_large.b9228d1b.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Caribou-Andorra.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6753-top-50-albums-of-2007/,2007,year,album,29,Bon Iver,"For Emma, Forever Ago",Jagjaguwar / Self-released,"There’s a reason Bon Iver’s origins are recounted every time the name is mentioned. Justin Vernon’s debut under that moniker actually does sound like it was recorded in a remote Wisconsin cabin during a lonely winter and after a disappointing break-up (in this case, the dissolution of his former band, DeYarmond Edison). These nine spectral songs about lost love convey that isolation through Vernon’s alternately puzzling and pointed lyrics, but even more crucially through the music’s eerie, unfolksy ambience. The best bedroom auteur album of the year, the self-released For Emma, Forever Ago shows new possibilities for the old sensitive-guy-with-a-guitar genre, and will see wider release via Jagjaguwar in February. –Stephen M. Deusner Listen: Bon Iver: “Skinny Love”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssdgFoHLwnk,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/10512/homepage_large.3f142536.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bon_Iver-For_Emma_Forever_Ago.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6753-top-50-albums-of-2007/,2007,year,album,28,Dinosaur Jr.,Beyond,Fat Possum,"At first, “Almost Ready” sounds like a cruel tease. The first song on Beyond, with its perfectly sloppy J Mascis guitar and irresistibly mopey hooks, doesn’t just nearly match Dinosaur Jr. classics “Little Fury Things” and “Freak Scene”-- it actually sounds like it was made in the same room, by the same guys, around that time. But there’s no way all of Beyond could hold up to masterpieces like You’re Living All Over Me or Bug, right? So, so wrong. From the wistful stomp of “Crumble” to the drifting melodics of “We’re Not Alone” to two prime Lou Barlow pieces, Beyond is the great lost 1980s Dinosaur Jr. album many of us had long forgotten we were waiting for. That it seems so effortless and natural is just icing. –Marc Masters Listen: Dinosaur Jr.: “We’re Not Alone”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sm9Unl9Bl48,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/9940/homepage_large.c3daa65b.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dinosaur_Jr-Beyond.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6753-top-50-albums-of-2007/,2007,year,album,27,Arcade Fire,Neon Bible,Merge,"Following 2004’s Funeral was hardly a pressure-free endeavor, but Neon Bible, Arcade Fire’s self-produced sophomore LP, is packed with just as many bombastic anthems-- if a bit more grown-up. Tracks like “(Antichrist Television Blues)” earned the band surprise comparisons to Bruce Springsteen, an analogy that feels strangely apt given the Boss’ history of political (and personal) indignation. Frontman Win Butler howls and broods, spewing righteous accusations, shouting about the ocean and falling bombs, while his bandmates push and push. Consequently, Neon Bible is one of the most unapologetically propulsive records of the decade, constantly hurtling forward, on, up, and out. –Amanda Petrusich Listen: Arcade Fire: “My Body Is a Cage”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pyp34v6Lmcc,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/9764/homepage_large.c1116fca.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Arcade_Fire-Neon_Bible.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6753-top-50-albums-of-2007/,2007,year,album,26,Various Artists,After Dark,Italians Do It Better,"After five years of enthusiastic revivalism, you’d think Italo-disco had no more depths to reveal. Which gives the dark Italo revelations of the Italians Do It Better label a strangely transgressive air-- surely this belated aesthetic pinnacle could only result from a deal with the devil. No surprises, then, that on the label’s After Dark compilation what stands out is the awesome pagan solemnity with which the artists approach their reference points. Check the Mirage remix of Indeep’s “Last Night a DJ Saved My Life”, wherein spectral synthesisers cast a deathly pallor over the original’s hedonism. But the artists’ own songwriting is more startling: The glassy textures of Chromatics’ “In the City” seep through the song’s airy femme-pop like a slow-acting poison, while on Farah’s “Law of Life” a troubled state-of-the-world soliloquy is set against synth loops so portentous you’d be forgiven for believing that the world was (very quietly) ending. –Finney Listen: Chromatics: “Hands in the Dark”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13gxiapsaRs,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/10160/homepage_large.5eaac4f7.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Various_Artists-After_Dark.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6753-top-50-albums-of-2007/,2007,year,album,25,The Tough Alliance,A New Chance,Sincerely Yours / Summer Lovers Unlimited,"There’s a reason people remember William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” speech but can’t recall the actual winner of the 1896 election. Nothing sells politics like big, heavy-handed one-liners, and the Tough Alliance know no music better solidifies these maxims than pop. While their catchy hooks and carefree island vibe can sound hyperglycemic, they sucker punch you with Situationist politics and an aggressive optimism unique in popular music. Thanks to incendiary live shows, the ironically challenged have accused the duo of encouraging violence and anarchy, but considering the cult of personality found on these two releases, it’s hard not to grab a 2x4 and join the revolution. –Adam Moerder Listen: The Tough Alliance: “Silly Crimes”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zn5D3msfAUk,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/10472/homepage_large.26cac649.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Tough_Alliance-A_New_Chance.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6753-top-50-albums-of-2007/,2007,year,album,24,Dan Deacon,Spiderman of the Rings,Carpark,"Spiderman of the Rings is the most joyful album of 2007. And it wants to share that joy, to seep its DayGlo cartoon giddiness into the darkest recesses of black-clad hipsterdom. Why fold your arms when you can paint the town neon? Why pout when you can bounce? It’s impossible to feel like a mature adult listening to Dan Deacon’s hyperactive opus. The Woody Woodpecker cackling, the lyrics about “ghosts and cats and pigs and bats with brooms and bats and wigs and rats that play big dogs like queens and kings and everyone plays drums and sings,” the entire “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse” aesthetic-- this music zeros in on the basest childhood impulses towards things that are bright and shiny. In Deacon’s world, the drugs are replaced with Kool-Aid, everyone’s friends, everyone likes to dance, and nobody cares how they look. Naïve? Sure. Refreshing? Definitely. –Amy Phillips Listen: Dan Deacon: “Wooody Wooodpecker”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oG0o5SADikY,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/10019/homepage_large.0e3558b4.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dan_Deacon-Spiderman_of_the_Rings.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6753-top-50-albums-of-2007/,2007,year,album,23,Studio,Yearbook 1,Information,"In 2007 no trend was more decadently tailored to the idiosyncrasies of music obsessives than the return of Balearic-- that hippie-chic interzone of supremely supine dance-rock. For those grown disillusioned with further tweaking of the disco-punk template, Balearic’s unfashionable expansiveness and unabashed splendor can be both a restorative tonic and an illicit thrill. Swedish band Studio dominated the field through the sheer ambition and invention of their delactable fusions. Offering impossible visions of Can making a Happy Mondays tribute album or the Cure backed by Fela Kuti, the music moves imperceptibly from bouncy percussive workouts to undulating seas of dub echo and glittering starsailor guitar, all wrapped in a perfectionist 80s art-rock sheen. On Yearbook I, a compilation of work to date, Studio effortlessly unite their disparate inclinations into one nation under a groove. –Tim Finney Listen: Studio: “Life’s a Beach!”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GAu09vgukk,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/9720/homepage_large.81cdbb98.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Studio-Yearbook_1.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6753-top-50-albums-of-2007/,2007,year,album,22,Okkervil River,The Stage Names,Jagjaguwar,"Self-aware theatricality is nothing new to indie rock, but few bands have taken it as far as Okkervil River did on The Stage Names. Tearing down the fourth wall with passion and skill, Okkervil River created a sprawling and self-referential musical world both clever and deeply affecting. Abandoning or conspicuously undermining conventional signifiers of sincerity, The Stage Names emphasizes the emotional power of theater and craft, sneaking in numerous references to other bands and songs, as well as to Okkervil themselves. This complexity allows the band to communicate not only through the palpable force of Will Sheff’s voice, but also through reference, citation, and irony. In embracing their artifice, Okkervil River crafted their most moving album yet. –Matt LeMay Listen: Okkervil River: “Unless It’s Kicks”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gN7FyzHM9Xo,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/10315/homepage_large.d776e67e.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Okkervil_River-The_Stage_Names.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6753-top-50-albums-of-2007/,2007,year,album,21,Dirty Projectors,Rise Above,Dead Oceans,"A re-imagining of Black Flag’s Damaged, Rise Above was made mostly from mercurial Dirty Projectors frontman Dave Longstreth’s memory. Here, he focuses on social neuroses, using baroque compositional curveballs to spotlight problems with alcoholism, depression, and police ignorance, while Black Flag’s elemental hardcore fury cedes to his vision of twisted guitar lines, rising string sections, Dirty South beats, and perfect vocal accompaniment. Black Flag opened Damaged with “Rise Above”, but that’s how the Projectors end it, leaving on a note of hope. The sound is different than it was two decades ago, but the problems remain the same. –Grayson Currin Listen: Dirty Projectors: “Rise Above”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAzQ_Y--Z30,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/10382/homepage_large.3c436f17.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dirty_Projectors-Rise_Above.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6753-top-50-albums-of-2007/,2007,year,album,20,Liars,Liars,Mute,"The fourth album from Berlin/L.A. trio Liars opens with the best one-two punch of the year: the riff-riot “Plaster Casts of Everything” chased by the bouncy “Houseclouds”. But once you stop hitting repeat on those gems, the rest of the record is just as addictive-- and just as simple and direct. So far the band’s only constant has been change, so maybe it’s no big shock that their new obsession is stripped-down takes on past inspirations like shoegaze, trip-hop, Butthole Surfers-style freak-rock, and even an unabashed Jesus and Mary Chain rip. What is surprising is how well the band’s distinctive elements hold up: The dominating drum beats, the murky, hypnotic production, and especially Angus Andrew’s rangy voice. It all adds up to another beautiful curveball from a band that clearly has a lot more in store. –Marc Masters Listen: Liars: “Plaster Casts of Everything”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhGl-lQFZSs,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/10393/homepage_large.2d478389.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Liars-Liars.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6753-top-50-albums-of-2007/,2007,year,album,19,Feist,The Reminder,Cherrytree / Interscope,"Not even those who fell under the spell of Leslie Feist’s 2004 breakthrough Let It Die could have anticipated a follow-up as full-bodied and satisfying as The Reminder. Where that earlier record was a half-and-half collection of originals and covers that charmed in spite of its wobbly make-up, The Reminder showcased a more ambitious, prolific, and surefooted Feist. And while the sudden ubiquity of the caramel-sweet “1-2-3-4” might make it tempting for curious onlookers to dismiss Feist as indie’s all-dancing, “warm fuzzy”-dispensing answer to MOR pop, The Reminder is about as conflicted about love as they get. From the frosty motorik of “My Moon My Man” to the desolate spaces of “The Water” to the tentative celebration of nervy highlight “Past in Present”, this is a more complicated and considered record than any Starbucks-invoking kneejerker would have you believe. –Mark Pytlik Listen: Feist: “1234”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABYnqp-bxvg,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/9991/homepage_large.1b8401c4.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Feist-The_Reminder.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6753-top-50-albums-of-2007/,2007,year,album,18,Kanye West,Graduation,Roc-A-Fella / Def Jam,"Kanye West’s Graduation is flossy even for a classic “I’m rich, bitch!” hip-hop album. On his 2004 debut, the big-headed Chicagoan famously couldn’t pronounce Versace; now he’s putting the “Christian in Christian Dior” and dropping Fifth Ave. brands like like Hermes and Goyard into his rhymes without hesitation. But even with the exploding offshore accounts and worldwide arena crashing, Kanye isn’t satisfied. Having conquered the pop world on almost every imaginable scale, he challenges himself here by trying to turn a Can song into a stadium anthem about the dark side of groupie-dom. Then he takes on critics of his rhyming acumen by dueting with the best rapper alive-- and besting him. “Wait ’til I get my money right,” he chants on “Can’t Tell Me Nothing”-- a patently ridiculous statement for a man who has Louis Vuitton’s Paris HQ on speed-dial. If Graduation is any indication, Kanye will never be able to simply sit back and relax. That sucks for him... but it’s great for everyone else. –Ryan Dombal Listen: Kanye West: “Stronger”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsO6ZnUZI0g,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/10462/homepage_large.b0b4aa4c.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kanye_West-Graduation.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6753-top-50-albums-of-2007/,2007,year,album,17,The National,Boxer,Beggars Banquet,"In Matt Berninger’s creaking moans and the band’s dramatic, dynamic shifts, the National attempt to express nothing short of the all-encompassing dread of 21st century American life. But against all odds, the band keeps pretension in check, and demonstrates why the band has drawn comparisons to such disparate, dissimilar acts as Joy Division and Bruce Springsteen. The influence of the Boss lurks behind at least some of the group’s most stirring statements, providing the populist spark that sends “Mistaken for Strangers”, “Fake Empire”, “Apartment Story”, and “Ada” straight to your heart and soul. Except on Boxer the darkness isn’t on the edge of town-- it’s descended over our heads like a suffocating cloak as the band tries in vain to claw its way out. –Joshua Klein Listen: The National: “Fake Empire”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KehwyWmXr3U,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/10054/homepage_large.7a4f09b9.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_National-Boxer.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6753-top-50-albums-of-2007/,2007,year,album,16,Lil Wayne,Da Drought 3,Young Money Entertainment,"In which our deranged, slurry-voiced Louisiana rap superstar takes two hours out of his busy schedule to wax eloquent about drugs, guns, sex, cars, monsters, robots, Rocky films, Tonya Harding, and his wicked crush on Ciara. Wayne’s been finding his voice over the past couple of years, honing his bizarre croak into a vehicle for intuitive free-association and inexplicable digression. In 2007, he went into overdrive, reportedly recording several new tracks every day for months at a time, and this 2xCD mixtape is both the purest and most wide-ranging display of that voice we’ve yet heard. Wayne hijacks many of the year’s most iconic rap beats and runs crazy-eyed loops around them, batting them around like a kitten with one of those dangly-string toys. When he’s on, his demonic hypertext ramblings feel like prophecy-- and with Da Drought 3, that’s true of almost every track. –Tom Breihan Listen: Lil Wayne: “Upgrade”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmZV662IMSo,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/10041/homepage_large.863c4a85.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lil_Wayne-Da_Drought_3.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6753-top-50-albums-of-2007/,2007,year,album,15,Justice,†,Vice / Because / Ed Banger,"An album this contentious and divisive ( XLR8R named it one of the best and worst albums of 2007) has to be doing something right. In Justice’s case, that “something” is rechanneling house music into something noisier and more aggressive, all claustrophobic compression and double-wide midrange frequencies. Fans and detractors alike claim it’s part of a move toward big, dumb rock-friendly posturing, but that overlooks Justice’s real strengths: Following in Daft Punk’s footsteps by converting the seething abrasion of Human After All into Homework-caliber grooves, turning danceable basslines into joint-torquing spasms, and splitting the difference between the New Wave of British Heavy Metal and Rick James/Zapp/Cameo digital funk (with a good dose of pop-and-lock electro and Italo-horror prog for emphasis). Plus, it’s hard to fault the egalitarianism of any band that includes AC/DC, Shalamar, and Pharoahe Monch in their liner-note thank-yous-- a list notably concluded by two entities: God and MTV. –Nate Patrin Listen: Justice: “D.A.N.C.E”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sy1dYFGkPUE,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/510/Justice_Cross.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Justice-.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6753-top-50-albums-of-2007/,2007,year,album,14,Deerhunter,Cryptograms / Fluorescent Grey EP,Kranky,"Few bands kept the blogs busy this year like Deerhunter-- be it for their music, run-ins with muggers, onstage meltdowns, line-up changes, or frontman Bradford Cox’s countless questionable blog posts-- but the Atlanta indie rock iconoclasts’ second record demanded listeners turn off their computers and switch on their turntables. Recorded sequentially in two separate sessions several months apart, Cryptograms takes full conceptual advantage of vinyl’s traditional two-side split to chart a linear progession from psychosis to serenity. The album’s ambient interludes serve as crucial mediators, easing the transitions between the equilibrium-upsetting reverberations of “Lake Somerset” and “Octet” to the stripped-down distorto-pop melancholy of “Strange Lights” and “Hazel St.”, a disarmingly poignant portrait of a 16-year-old Cox wishing he could fit in with other suburban kids. That Cryptograms ’ vinyl edition comes packaged with the four-song Fluorescent Grey effectively confirms the EP’s status as the album’s third side, providing a more lucid look into Cox’s psyche. –Stuart Berman Listen: Deerhunter: “Spring Hall Convert”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9STd-67_Ft8,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/510/Deerhunter_Cryptogram.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Deerhunter-Cryptograms__Fluorescent_Grey_EP.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6753-top-50-albums-of-2007/,2007,year,album,13,JAY-Z,American Gangster,Roc-A-Fella / Def Jam,"1930s gangsters, 70s Motown, 80s DePalma, 90s Shawn Carter-- it’d be a stretch to call Jay-Z a postmodernist, but few MCs exhibit the kind of passion for wrapping themselves in pop culture history that he does. American Gangster is, of course, an album sparked by the story of an inner-city drug kingpin getting rich off addiction in the midst of a war-torn and recession-plagued America, but it plays more like a retro-tinted version of the same scenarios laid out by your typical present-day hustler epics. That permanency of the grind, and the nationwide-spanning misery that fuels it, could be why Jay-Z fits so comfortably in Frank Lucas’ shoes, but he’s also entrenched himself as a rap Scorsese: He’s now so far past the point of familiarity with the criminal (and artistic) empire story that he can embellish it, elaborate on it, and run virtuosic rings around it as much as he sees fit. –Nate Patrin Listen: Jay Z: “Roc Boys (And The Winner Is)...”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Revmkhxu7dk,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/10672/homepage_large.2d930fab.jpg,/dataset/artwork/JAY-Z-American_Gangster.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6753-top-50-albums-of-2007/,2007,year,album,12,No Age,Weirdo Rippers,Fat Cat,"A Los Angeles-based two-piece with a penchant for guitar fuzz, No Age are poised to dominate in 2008: The band (guitarist Randy Randall and vocalist/drummer Dean Spunt) recently signed to Sub Pop, and were extensively profiled for a New Yorker feature on L.A.’s burgeoning art-punk scene, a community anchored-- like No Age-- by the all-ages/alcohol-free performance space The Smell (check it looming on the cover). Weirdo Rippers, their debut long-player, culls material from five vinyl-only EPs (each released on a different label), and offers up a thick, heady haze of gurgling guitars and tip-tapping drums. The record is noisy and disorienting, but beneath all those pedals and hums, Weirdo Rippers is also perfectly soft and melodic: The more you listen, the clearer it gets. –Amanda Petrusich Listen: No Age: “Everybody’s Down”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5XqOv150dQ,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/10139/homepage_large.611326ad.jpg,/dataset/artwork/No_Age-Weirdo_Rippers.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6753-top-50-albums-of-2007/,2007,year,album,11,Jens Lekman,Night Falls Over Kortedala,Secretly Canadian / Service,"I didn’t always love Jens Lekman. I thought I heard too much Magnetic Fields in When I Said I Wanted to Be Your Dog, too much Belle & Sebastian and too much filler in EP compilation Oh You’re So Silent Jens. I was wrong: Both previous LPs have moments of bittersweet, sample-crowned crooning to rival anything on Night Falls Over Kortedala. Lekman’s latest, however, is the singer at his most focused, spectacularly succeeding as an artist of wit and heart. Wry storytelling plus an Avalanches-like propensity for pop theft help the gentle crooner bring us to his Iraqi hairstylist’s beauty salon, a tidy Swedish countryside, or the dinner table of a semi-closeted lesbian friend’s conservative father-- crossing decades (sometimes continents) of recorded sound. “I have a love for this world/ A kind of love that will break my heart/ A kind of love that reconstructs and remodels the past,” Lekman sings. There’s your 1,000-word review in one squeeze-box-backed epigram. –Marc Hogan Listen: Jens Lekman: “A Postcard to Nina”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1DaGZ9k5m4,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/10425/homepage_large.dd4d033c.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jens_Lekman-Night_Falls_Over_Kortedala.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6753-top-50-albums-of-2007/,2007,year,album,10,Burial,Untrue,Hyperdub,"With Burial’s 2006 debut, it helped to have some investment in dubstep; Untrue is for everyone. Or at least anyone who’s ever walked home alone on some late night, soaking in the creaky sounds of a city asleep. No album in 2007 conveyed so much loneliness through the sheer palpability of its atmosphere. To listen to Untrue is to be thrust inside a world whose blurred dimensions are marked by hisses, crackles, and indeterminate noises somewhere in the distance. But the record will be best remembered for its ethereal singers, beamed in from another plane and wailing away into the void. Their voices, which are key to the record’s wide appeal, still don’t work quite as expected. Rather than humanizing or softening the stark backdrop, they reinforce the music’s sense of alienation. They’re the voices you miss; the ones you’ll probably never hear again. –Mark Richardson Listen: Burial: “Archangel”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7hBUL9kk1Y,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/10670/homepage_large.a7366144.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Burial-Untrue.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6753-top-50-albums-of-2007/,2007,year,album,9,The Field,From Here We Go Sublime,Kompakt,"Philosophers and poets use the notion of the sublime to capture the feeling that comes from witnessing something so vast and stunning that language is rendered moot. Axel Willner, on his solo debut From Here We Go Sublime, has seemingly taken it upon himself to do just that. His mixture of quickly repetitive glitches, deep house, and lush washes of sound may be far from revolutionary, but his synthesis is virtuosic: The melodies from “Silent” and “Across the Ice” consist solely of numbed vowel sounds; 10-minute epic “The Deal” floats an ethereal Elisabeth Fraser-sounding vocal over the softest, slightest rhythmic variations; and the title track exhales the Flamingos’ doo-wop vocals, which hover and disappear like puffs of chilled breath. From Here We Go Sublime was released on the cusp of this past spring, but it sounds even better as winter tightens its grip. –Eric Harvey Listen: The Field: “Over the Ice”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQxEVhyvA0I,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/9836/homepage_large.94db9773.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Field-From_Here_We_Go_Sublime.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6753-top-50-albums-of-2007/,2007,year,album,8,Battles,Mirrored,Warp,"You know the costume parties where everyone gets lazy or cops out-- bad sweaters, sunglasses, funny hats-- and then someone shows up in a full-on gorilla suit? That would be Battles, the unlikely instrumental supergroup featuring four serious musicians from far-flung backgrounds who congealed into one elastic, impishly inhuman groove machine on this year’s Mirrored. Displaying humor and charm without words, yet still feeling authorless and monolithic, the album calls attention only to its machinations: The most endurance-testing riffs, the most tweaked vocals, the tallest crash cymbals. Other artists preened, strutted, crooned, and sauntered to the top in 2007, but from their jaw-dropping half-man/half-laptop/all-amazing compositions down to their design sense, no one showed up to the party as prepared as Battles. –Jason Crock Listen: Battles: “Atlas”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpGp-22t0lU,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/10037/homepage_large.90da4abf.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Battles-Mirrored.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6753-top-50-albums-of-2007/,2007,year,album,7,Spoon,Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga,Merge,"Spoon’s sixth album serves as a reaffirmation of some of the group’s greatest gifts: concision, efficiency, and an indomitable knack for doing more with less. It’s not that Britt Daniel has less to say: Even the most deceptively spare songs (like the atmospheric hiccup “The Ghost of You Lingers”) pack so many ideas into their brief spans that they don’t just bear close listening but grow in impact with each successive one. The group’s pairing of melody and ruthless economy injects idiosyncratic pop songs like “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb” and “The Underdog” with such wonderfully weird and inventive craft that reveling in their ingenuity and tapping your toes become inextricably linked activities, making the disc the perfect mind/body split: blowing the former while moving the latter. –Joshua Klein Listen: Spoon: “The Underdog”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7v0KCoPMTdU,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/10199/homepage_large.28a720f8.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Spoon-Ga_Ga_Ga_Ga_Ga.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6753-top-50-albums-of-2007/,2007,year,album,6,Animal Collective,Strawberry Jam,Domino,"Whimsy is a trait best served in small doses, and no question Animal Collective’s Strawberry Jam is steeped in it. But what tops the group’s kaleidoscopic swirl of surreal strangeness is its sense of sonic wonder, relishing the unlimited potential of colliding sounds in the sampler age. Strawberry Jam shapes runaway ideas into something greater than the sum of their mystery parts. A perfect companion to AC member Panda Bear’s Person Pitch, the record finds Avey Tare taking the reins and shaping chaotic songs like “Peacebone”, “For Reverend Green”, and “Chores” into twisted pop gems. The only missing piece of the puzzle is a sold-out crowd singing and dancing along to each blurry, burbling, deliriously blissed-out song like they’re not half as bizarre as they really are. –Joshua Klein Listen: Animal Collective: “Fireworks”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztvr09J7KK4,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/10454/homepage_large.7ed5e809.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Animal_Collective-Strawberry_Jam.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6753-top-50-albums-of-2007/,2007,year,album,5,Of Montreal,"Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?",Polyvinyl,"Whereas most people seek professional counseling or self-help gurus, Kevin Barnes remedied his relationship and depression woes by pulling his head out of the psych-pop clouds and making the best album of his life. This therapeutic LP also holds a paradoxical distinction as Barnes’ most challenging and most widely received work to date. Sure, there’s this Georgie Fruit alter-ego running amok, ripping off Ziggy Stardust, interchangeably wishing sex and violence upon women, and frightening off many long-time Of Montreal die-hards. But behind all the glam and soul theatrics, Barnes just wants to talk love and sadness. Despite wearing his heart on a rhinestone sleeve, he humbly begs for chemical stability, religious epiphany, and any other means of dragging himself out of the dumps. Amazingly, amidst the emotional havoc, Barnes’ melodic clarity remains as sharp as ever, making Hissing Fauna a perfect storm of catharsis and craftsmanship. –Adam Moerder Listen: Of Montreal: “Gronlandic Edit”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBfgQvM7wtE,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/9622/homepage_large.191fde29.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Of_Montreal-Hissing_Fauna_Are_You_the_Destroyer.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6753-top-50-albums-of-2007/,2007,year,album,4,Radiohead,In Rainbows,Self-released / ATO,"The fact that OK Computer-era holdover “Nude” finally ended up on In Rainbows is both ironic and fitting. The chorus is soggy even by Radiohead standards: “Don't get any big ideas/ They're not gonna happen.” Over the last decade, Radiohead have come up with so many grand schemes, and nearly all of them came to pass. In 2000, they released an album that subverted and warped everything that made them famous-- somehow making them even more famous. This year, they decided to let fans decide how much they wanted to pay for their album-- and, if reports are to be believed, ended up collecting more money from the release than they could’ve earned from a major-label deal. Seems like Radiohead have a knack for these big ideas. Then again, the music on the new album consists of much smaller notions and subtle pleasures. In Rainbows is classic Radiohead, but it’s hardly a retread. The paradoxes don’t end there; it’s easy-going but tense, comfortable and anxious, fatalistic and hopeful. During the album’s most cathartic release, on “All I Need”, Thom Yorke wails, “It's all right/ It's all wrong,” while stuck in some blissful limbo. The big ideas, whether momentous or ethereal, are still in strong supply, and yes, they're still happening. –Ryan Dombal Listen: Radiohead: “15 Step”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrVKSKQKO1c,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/10586/homepage_large.7055fb4d.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Radiohead-In_Rainbows.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6753-top-50-albums-of-2007/,2007,year,album,3,M.I.A.,Kala,XL / Interscope,"Kala’s music mirrors its politics: A seething economy of sampling, borrowing, and sharp deals. Continent-crossing pop is still M.I.A.’s M.O., but her second album adds time travel-- reaching back to childhood Bollywood hits on the rapturous “Jimmy” and rave memories on “XR2”, then forward to a world of cheap AKs, insurrection, and “selfish little roamers.” M.I.A. believes the children are our future, and though the bush gang on “Mango Pickle Down River” are cuter, the ones singing on “Paper Planes” are fixing to kill. That song’s Clash sample mixes melancholy into the beats, but most of Kala builds on Arular’s thrill-power. “If you're dead from the waist down it's easy staying down”, she raps on “World Town”, so constant joyful motion is the answer-- a new noise, dance, slogan, joke, or hook every half minute. This M.I.A. is poppier, noisier, riskier, and more significant than before. Even if she’s only half-right about the world, then you and I are probably fucked, but our slide into chaos could have no more remarkable soundtrack. –Tom Ewing Listen: M.I.A.: “Paper Planes”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewRjZoRtu0Y,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/10369/homepage_large.84594075.jpg,/dataset/artwork/MIA-Kala.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6753-top-50-albums-of-2007/,2007,year,album,2,LCD Soundsystem,Sound of Silver,DFA / EMI,"You play some rock, you do some drugs, you hit the clubs, you make some beats, you’re young. Eventually you get older and your back hurts if you’re out too late and you get a real job, start doing “unplugged” sets, and sell off your collection except for the good Bowie records. Or: You’re James Murphy, who realized that growing (the fuck) up could make his rock deeper and his dance music bolder, and that actually there’s no reason for them not to be the same thing. Of course, the second LCD album is informed by the records Murphy devoured as a kid, from Steve Reich to Yello, but it’s also fresh enough to raise chills: angry, elegiac, hilarious, totally idiomatic, sequenced as well as any LP this decade, and given both mass and momentum by his perspective and experience. I cannot wait to hear the records he’s making when he’s 55. –Douglas Wolk Listen: LCD Soundsystem: “Someone Great”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwoLACv_srQ,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/9831/homepage_large.85537afc.jpg,/dataset/artwork/LCD_Soundsystem-Sound_of_Silver.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6753-top-50-albums-of-2007/,2007,year,album,1,Panda Bear,Person Pitch,Paw Tracks,"When it came out this spring, Person Pitch seemed like a soundtrack to the thaw. Coming two-and-a-half years after Young Prayer, Panda Bear (Noah Lennox)’s spare and quietly devastating predecessor, the new album brought with it the vague expectation of that first warm breeze. Summer hit, and the record delivered on its initial promise: Lennox has said that he wanted to capture in sound the feeling of sunlight in Lisbon, and someday, when we're all old and senile, we may erroneously recall visiting Portugal in 2007. The music’s oranges and reds and golds were perfect for the fall, and now that the days are short and the ground icy, Person Pitch sounds like something we’ll be curling up with in hibernation. It remains a fixture. Compared to our No. 1 album last year, the Knife’s Silent Shout, Person Pitch is less likely to be a social experience. This is a headphones record. Still, despite its inward focus, Person Pitch doesn't feel closed-off. Sometimes when I’m listening, I imagine what it might have been like to make it. I picture Lennox at his computer borrowing sounds and samples from odd places and shaping them into something personal and true. It seems like something to aspire to. With its bright harmonies, loops that veer from lulling to ecstatic, and reverb that lends each sound a hazy twinkle, Person Pitch feels friendly and conversational, if beautifully streaked with psychedelic disorientation. But mostly, it just feels overwhelmingly positive and unfailingly generous. –Mark Richardson Listen: Panda Bear: “Comfy in Nautica”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MT3NVv7IZ8Q,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/9839/homepage_large.e2dd97fd.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Panda_Bear-Person_Pitch.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,100,Ost & Kjex,“Milano Mugolian (A Thrilling Mungophony in Two Parts)”,Dialect,"Ost & Kjex is a leftfield minimal house duo from Norway. Mungolian Jet Set are also Norwegian, but a totally non-minimal, Baeleric-kitchen sink collective. Mungolian specialize in remixes that remove most traces of the original song in favor of extended excursions into disco-fied neo-exotica, often using live instrumentation and newly recorded vocals. In this case, MJS turn a good house track (originally O&K’s “Milano Model”) into a multi-movement suite of polka, throat singing, and an update of “Thriller”. The last three or four minutes contain enough “bow-bow” bass, huge drums, funky guitar scratch, and vocals to make Sparks jealous-- and to convince listeners that MJS are among the most original and accomplished dance outfits around. Plus, they’re funny. –Dominique Leone Listen: Ost & Kjex: “Milano Mugolian (A Thrilling Mungophony in Two Parts)”",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/524/milanomodel.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ost__Kjex-Milano_Mugolian_A_Thrilling_Mungophony_in_Two_Parts.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,99,Broken Social Scene Presents: Kevin Drew,“Backed Out on the…”,Arts & Crafts,"Though anyone can buy his signature Fender guitar and Nike sneakers, there’s no substitute for the real J Mascis. Broken Social Scene have their fair share of Mascis-like guitar exercises, but none of them match the blazing squall performed by the man himself on BSS frontman Kevin Drew’s “Backed Out on the....” A chugging mid-tempo rocker well within the Broken Social tradition, the signature slow-burn of “Backed Out” is masterfully stoked by Mascis’ unerringly energetic playing. Drew’s admiration for Mascis is well documented, but “Backed Out” is more lively jam session than reverent homage, and the song is that much better for it. –Matt LeMay Listen: Broken Social Scene Presents: Kevin Drew: “Backed Out on the…”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZW3BN_nwpzc,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/524/kevindrew_albumart.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Broken_Social_Scene_Presents_Kevin_Drew-Backed_Out_on_the.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,98,Old Time Relijun,“Indestructible Life!”,K,"“Indestructible Life!” is 210 glorious seconds of unhinged, maniacal squawking: Vocalist/guitarist Arrington de Dionyso wails, his voice desperate and deranged, while his bandmates pound out spastic noise-rock, highlighted by Ben Hartman’s inscrutable sax blows and upright-bassist Aaron Hartman’s deep, dutiful plucks. Somehow, “Indestructible Life!” manages to be liberating and terrifying all at once: Imagine cruising downhill on a Huffy (top speed, streamers waving, basket full) and realizing that the brakes are dead. Stop thinking about dodging cars and dogs, quit squeezing the hand levers, and give into the futility and adrenaline-- it might be scary, but it’s also a shitload of fun. –Amanda Petrusich Listen: Old Time Relijun: “Indestructible Life!”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sy_ebE2BoWA,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/524/RelijunCatharsisinCrisis.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Old_Time_Relijun-Indestructible_Life.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,97,Sir Richard Bishop,“Ecstasies in the Open Air”,Drag City,"Sir Richard Bishop’s status as one of the acoustic guitar’s most intriguing voices hinges on three principles: 1) His eclecticism and enthusiasm for a range of sounds, 2) A technical dexterity that allows him to explore those styles freely, and 3) An indefatigable interplay between curiosity and technicality. The epilogue to Polytheistic Fragments, which casually crosses from modal drone to Chet Atkins country, “Ecstasies in the Open Air” allows familiar elements to sublimate into a peaceful breeze. Notice the smooth Hawaiian steel guitar and glimpses of “Strawberry Fields Forever” that pump from a little organ and twinkle from an electric lead. –Grayson Currin Listen: Sir Richard Bishop: “Ecstasies in the Open Air”",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/sir-richard-bishop/ecstasies-in-the-open-air-polytheistic-fragments,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/524/sirrichardbishopecstasies.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sir_Richard_Bishop-Ecstasies_in_the_Open_Air.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,96,Times New Viking,“Teenage Lust!”,SiltBreeze,"Rather than using lo-fi recording techniques to superficially enhance or obscure their sound, Columbus-based Times New Viking captalize on the urgency and slapdash charm of the medium. “Teenage Lust!” sounds like it was recorded straight to a cassette recorder in a dirty basement, heightening its impetuous cries of “I don’t want to die in the city alone.” The song’s sometimes-overlapping boy/girl vocals create the impression of a band falling all over themselves to get through a take, getting lost in their own energy without stopping to fine-tune or set up more than one microphone. –Matt LeMay Listen: Times New Viking: “Teenage Lust!”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRAhGG8Xkp4,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/524/timesnewviking.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Times_New_Viking-Teenage_Lust.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,95,Groove Armada,“Song 4 Mutya (Out of Control)” [ft. Mutya Buena] ,Columbia,"The girl who put the “grr” in Sugababe went solo with a snoozy album of measured soul-pop maturity. But this collaboration finds Mutya Buena playing with her grumpy fire, teetering toward an ex-created freak-out. Her counter-vocal plays nervous conscience-- “Don't panic panic Mutya!”-- but the wrath is building. Luckily for her, and for us, she gets even, not mad, swapping tense electropop for a skylarking synth climax and freewheeling New Order bass. And bonus! We discover that Mutya is one of the most scansion-friendly names in pop. –Tom Ewing Listen: Groove Armada: “Song 4 Mutya (Out of Control)” [ft. Mutya Buena]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnvxN62WtBY,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/524/groove_armada.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Groove_Armada-Song_4_Mutya_Out_of_Control_ft_Mutya_Buena_.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,94,MGMT,“Time to Pretend”,Columbia,"As a rock band, you’re allowed one big, dumb anthem. So, in the tradition of “Cut Your Hair” and “Cannonball”, MGMT shamelessly indulge in one simplistic, escapist hook for four guilt-free minutes. Drug binges, transplanting to Paris, supermodels: Other self-aware bands have romanticized delusions of grandeur before, almost always with a monstrous grain of salt marring their dream. But “Time to Pretend” puts a Matrix -like spin on it-- if the rock star lifestyle doesn’t even exist, why not lose yourself in the fantasy? –Adam Moerder Listen: MGMT: “Time to Pretend”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9dSYgd5Elk,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/524/mgmt_timetopretend.jpg,/dataset/artwork/MGMT-Time_to_Pretend.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,93,Antibalas,“Beaten Metal”,Anti-,"It’s surprising that the lead instrumental from a political album (Security) by a political band (Antibalas) manages to make a plea for revolution. Composed by tenor saxophonist Stuart Bogie, “Beaten Metal” is marked by conflict, as when opposing horn sections sound off in stereo or when each new lead instrument (guitar, clavinet, organ, beaten-metal percussion) elbows the other out of the mix. With quick splashes of colorful sound and some slowly building drama, “Beaten Metal” sounds brazen, rhythmic, and powerful-- like Edgard Varese coming of age after hip-hop. –Grayson Currin Listen: Antibalas: “Beaten Metal”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-azpduB34WI,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/524/antibalassecurity.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Antibalas-Beaten_Metal.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,92,Air,“Mer du Japon (Kris Menace Remix)”,Virgin,"Kris Menace (aka French house producer/DJ Christophe Hoeffel) worked some serious magic on remixes this year for Róisín Murphy and LCD Soundsystem-- and last year’s mix of Stars on 33’s “I Feel Music In Your Heart” with frequent partner Lifelike may be the single greatest “filter disco” track outside of their own “Discopolis” from 2005. KM’s take on Air's “Mer du Japon” is a compact, almost perfectly orchestrated treatise on the climax: Beginning with the crash of waves on a beach, mystical piano chords, and the barest appearance of the original verse vocal, little time is wasted diving into a hard disco pound and the gushing release of hi-hat and synth chords-- which is actually an effect of compressing the track so much that every ounce of sound ends up oversaturated yet still gorgeous. –Dominique Leone Listen: Air: “Mer du Japon (Kris Menace Remix)”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDdflb0X-Uk,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/524/airmerdujapon.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Air-Mer_du_Japon_Kris_Menace_Remix.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,91,Menomena,“The Pelican”,Barsuk,"“The Pelican” works like a fireworks show, a series of explosions building to an overloaded finale. The piano and drums lurch forward to do battle with the ragged, stretched guitar while the whole band gives an all-out vocal performance full of harmonies and shouting. Forget walls of sound-- the song is a dump truck of sound driving through your living room. Here, Menomena move beyond their textural and atmospheric approach to recording and create a song with a vicious bite. –Joe Tangari Listen: Menomena: “The Pelican”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTTimWemU5o,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/524/menomenapelica.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Menomena-The_Pelican.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,90,Miranda Lambert,“Gunpowder & Lead”,Columbia,"The wronged-woman trope is one of country music's oldest, but that doesn’t lessen the impact of hearing Miranda Lambert singing about standing in the door with a loaded shotgun in hand, waiting for her abusive man to come home: “His fist is big but my gun’s bigger/ He’ll find out when I pull the trigger.” There’s no grim determination in Lambert’s voice; instead, she sounds positively amped, like she’s hopping around in anticipation, absolutely delighted at the prospect of putting a bullet in this jerk. Her band’s charged-up Southern rock mirrors that exhilaration, building from a slow simmer to a raging climax, complete with layers of screaming guitar-twang and gospel-choir hosannas. This isn’t a murder-ballad warble; it’s a call-to-arms, and anyone still unconvinced about the Nashville assembly line's ability to marry movingly specific storylines with infectious jams needs to hear it. –Tom Breihan Listen: Miranda Lambert: “Gunpowder & Lead”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyGAvulgWmw,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/524/gunpowderandlead.png,/dataset/artwork/Miranda_Lambert-Gunpowder__Lead.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,89,Air France,“Beach Party”,Sincerely Yours,"It was a Balearic year, from Studio’s dubby grooves to A Mountain of One’s pastoral come-downs. More than a few artists took the ambient, Ibiza-born genre’s island origins literally, with song titles like Studio’s “Life's a Beach!”, Boat Club's “Warmer Climes”, and, yes, “Beach Party”. Here, bass, summery acoustic guitars, and shaker-stirred percussion waft over warm Caribbean waters, but as with Sincerely Yours label chiefs the Tough Alliance, Air France are also up to some mischief: Those vocals, floating just out of reach, quote Lisa Stanfield’s global 1989 hit “ll Around the World”. Ready for repeat trips, “Beach Party” is a true desert-island record. –Marc Hogan Listen: Air France: “Beach Party”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxMLaPsx2SU,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/524/airfrance.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Air_France-Beach_Party.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,88,The New Pornographers,“Myriad Harbour”,Matador,"New Pornographers fans seem to fall into two categories: Those who think on-and-off touring member Dan “Destroyer” Bejar’s songs are the highlights of the group's albums, and those who program around them. “Myriad Harbour”, Bejar’s dry-witted travelogue of a band trip to New York, converted at least some of the unconvinced. His singing is so mannered that when he claims “the boys with their homemade microphones/ Have very interesting sounds,” it’s impossible to tell if he's being scaldingly sarcastic or dead serious. But the song’s constantly shifting arrangement makes its images of the city flash by like snapshots in a slideshow. –Douglas Wolk Listen: The New Pornographers: “Myriad Harbour”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCMHJgqgWng,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/524/myriadharbour300.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_New_Pornographers-Myriad_Harbour.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,87,Sophie Ellis-Bextor,“Me and My Imagination”,Polydor,"Some things Sophie Ellis-Baxter can’t do without: the three-minute song, disco strings, pop glitter, and men that play hard-to-get. This standout track from her third solo album is more of the same from a UK pop factory that produces pop hooks most Americans adore only when in the mouths of teenage babes or Gwen Stefani. Radio programmers, please note: Pure sugar like this will go a long way toward making the usual Top 40 placebos easier to swallow. –David Raposa Listen: Sophie Ellis-Bextor: “Me and My Imagination”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ip76O6g3hZs,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/524/SophieEllisBextor.png,/dataset/artwork/Sophie_Ellis-Bextor-Me_and_My_Imagination.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,86,Rekid,“Next Stop Chicago”,REKIDS,"Rekid (aka Matt Edwards, better known as Radio Slave) offers an unusual tribute to Chicago house, pairing a skipping rhythm with gloopy acoustic guitar samples and the eerie flutes of English folk music. Its emphasis on tension, though, is pure Radio Slave. Focusing on hissing hi-hats and ragged guitars, Edwards effects a moon-stomping glide that's rare for house music; even his vocal samples-- soulful and tortured refrains which begin “I feel like” and quickly spin into a guttural blur-- seem to point away from the body and toward a realm untethered by gravity. –Philip Sherburne Listen: Rekid: “Next Stop Chicago”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dplz8FJXo4s,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/524/nextstopchicago.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rekid-Next_Stop_Chicago.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,85,BARR,“The Song Is the Single”,5RC,"Not to backhand singer/performance artist Brendan Fowler, but this track’s not merely “the single,” it's a justification for BARR’s catalog of occasionally irritating, always puzzling music. Making Eddie Argos sound like Paul McCartney, Fowler’s spoken-word has little regard for conventional verse/chorus structures, but “The Song”’s all the better for it. I thought Schoolhouse Rock’s “I’m Just a Bill” was confusing, but Fowler’s instructional description of single-making begs for Cliff’s Notes. Fortunately, you’re rewarded with each listen, deciphering additional lines until you finally understand the lyrics-- or at least the words themselves. –Adam Moerder Listen: BARR: “The Song Is the Single”",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/524/barr-thesongisthesingle.jpg,/dataset/artwork/BARR-The_Song_Is_the_Single.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,84,50 Cent,“I Get Money”,Shady / Aftermath,"When you’re a world-conquering chart-rap dictator, your biggest challenge is keeping your audience rooting for you. On 16 of the 17 tracks on Curtis, 50 Cent failed miserably, ineptly swinging between risible gloats and club-rap panders. But “I Get Money”, a dizzy explosion of swaggering fuckface bravado, went a long way toward redeeming its maker. Audio Two’s 1988 minimal-rap classic “Top Billin’” gets transformed into a couple of impeccably timed snare-hits and a stuttering, addictive refrain: “I get money, money I got,” repeated ad infinitum while a truckasaurus-roar of a bassline smashes its tiny pieces into even tinier pieces. Over a monster track like this, 50 returns to the charming supervillain we first fell in love with: playground-taunting his baby’s mother, threatening to make your whole clique breakdance via automatic weaponry, and swiping Naughty by Nature’s deathless hey-hos. Just nasty. –Tom Breihan Listen: 50 Cent: “I Get Money”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GO22Z0T3qPE,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/524/Curtis_50cent.jpg,/dataset/artwork/50_Cent-I_Get_Money.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,83,Sonic Youth,“I'm Not There”,Sony BMG,"At first glance, Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes gem “I'm Not There” seems an odd match for Sonic Youth, or for most anybody else-- the original is too inscrutable, too private to reward cover versions. Yet there's something about the song's otherworldly, trance-like cadence that fits surprisingly well into SY's wheelhouse, and Thurston Moore seizes the occasion to deliver a remarkably understated and affecting vocal performance. Displaying uncommon restraint, Sonic Youth use their submerged electricity not so much to flesh out the song as to simply illuminate its winding, dusky corridors, adding their own signature while keeping the original's abiding senses of loss and mystery intact. –Matthew Murphy Listen: Sonic Youth: “I'm Not There”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHjNPjcWyYw,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/524/sonicyouth_notthere.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sonic_Youth-Im_Not_There.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,82,Tinariwen,“Matadjem Yinmixan”,Independiente,"The title of Tinawiren’s “Matadjem Yimmixan” translates roughly to “Why can’t we all get along?” Indeed, the song plays out like a chant of affirmation, a call-and-response from these Tuareg desert tribesmen looking to one another for support in a world pushing them and their ancient traditions to the margins. That they do it with the hypnotic backing of sinewy electric guitars, however, demonstrates that coexistence between old and new isn’t as hard as it seems. In fact, coming from these Mali music masters, the union can be downright celebratory. –Joshua Klein Listen: Tinawiren: “Matadjem Yimmixan”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovXX8K8WXVg,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/524/tinariwen_single.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tinariwen-Matadjem_Yinmixan.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,81,Modest Mouse,“Dashboard“,Epic,"There’s an awful lot going on in Modest Mouse’s “Dashboard”-- swooning strings, horns, chicken-scratch guitar strums, propulsive drums, even Isaac Brock’s affected yelp. It’s easy to get lost in all that, until you step back and realize that “Dashboard” is just about perfectly arranged to maximize these myriad elements into a cohesive whole, which hinges on one central lyrical motif: “The dashboard melted, but we still have the radio.” It’s a silver lining take on the get-the-hell-out-of-town themes that have driven many great car songs, including this one. –Joshua Klein Listen: Modest Mouse: “Dashboard”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=penvn9VL32Y,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/524/dashboard_modestmouse.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Modest_Mouse-Dashboard.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,80,Grizzly Bear,“Little Brother (Electric)”,Warp,"Where so much contemporary pop music hinges either on pithy chord changes or studio precision, Grizzly Bear prove that their songs are more malleable-- and more durable-- than most. Last year’s “Little Brother” was a swirl of acoustic finger-picking, wheezy keyboards and sighing vocal harmonies; this version foregrounds clipped, ever-so-slightly distorted electric guitars swimming in reverb and darkened by rushing snare rolls. Contradictions abound: The lead vocals sound more grounded, and the harmonies more unearthly, than before; this version is five seconds longer than last year’s, yet seems to slip past in half the time. If anything, plugging in has given the band a broader dynamic range, as it ushers the song from its meticulous intro to a blustery climax without ever seeming to break a sweat. –Philip Sherburn Listen: Grizzly Bear: “Little Brother (Electric)”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSaBRP6wpK4,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/524/grizzlybear_littlebrother.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Grizzly_Bear-Little_Brother_Electric.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,79,Magik Markers,“Taste”,Ecstatic Peace!,"The idea of noise-makers Magik Markers showing up on any kind of top-tracks list would have seemed beyond absurd only a year ago. But BOSS defied a lot of expectations regarding this versatile duo, starting with the presence of an actual single : the swaying, hypnotic “Taste”. Elisa Ambrogio's poetic wordplay and seductive cadences evoke Patti Smith, but her guitar fuzz and Pete Nolan's country-rock stomp make “Taste” like an outtake from Neil Young's underrated Greendale. ""I cannot take your want/ And make it a need"" croons Ambrogio, nailing the attraction of this powerfully simple tune. –Marc Masters Listen: Magik Markers: “Taste”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrYS9FW73EA,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/524/magikmarkers_taste.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Magik_Markers-Taste.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,78,Amy Winehouse,“Tears Dry on Their Own”,Island,"Her husband’s in jail, she’s started hanging out with Pete Doherty, and she can’t seem to make it through a live performance without wiping her nose-- but, as Back to Black’s centerpiece ballad attests, it’s Amy Winehouse’s trainwreck and she’ll cry if she wants to. The understated melancholy of “Tears Dry on Their Own” contrasts sharply with the image of brazen barfly we see plastered in the tabloids: A post-break-up, I-will-survive affirmation, but one punctuated with a reluctant shrug of the shoulders rather than a proud fist-pump to the chest. And if the song’s writing predates her marital strife, surely this is the tune Winehouse hums to herself when the guards at Pentonville Prison inform her that visiting hours are over. –Stuart Berman Listen: Amy Winehouse: “Tears Dry on Their Own”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojdbDYahiCQ,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/524/amywinehouse_tears.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Amy_Winehouse-Tears_Dry_on_Their_Own.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,77,The National,“Mistaken for Strangers”,Beggars Banquet,"Welcome to the working week. For Matt Berninger, being in a band was an escape from the 9-to-5 grind. Even though he’s gone from full-time to contract-based graphic design work, Berninger still mines those days for the antsy anthems on the National’s third album, Boxer, plumbing fears of white-collar assimilation. On the jostling “Mistaken for Strangers”, he sings the chorus-- “You’re mistaken for strangers by your own friends”-- not as a putdown, but as an embodiment of corporate existential crisis. Powered by Bryan Devendorf’s tension-ratcheting drums and Padma Newsome’s mournful horn arrangements, the song portrays a go-getter “showered and blue-blazered” and lit dramatically by the “silvery silvery Citibank light.” The Dessner twins’ guitars lend his paranoia a kind of dignity, even as he’s worried that work will make him a void. Berninger’s pessimism, however, is more mundane than that, and therefore more ominous: This is just “another uninnocent, elegant fall into the unmagnificent lives of adults.” –Stephen M. Deusner Listen: The National: “Mistaken for Strangers”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgRsYkKb1eI,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/524/mistakenforstrangers_national.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_National-Mistaken_for_Strangers.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,76,Klaxons,“Golden Skans”,Polydor,"Now that they’ve gently cotton-swabbed the last remnants of those siren attacks out of their long-suffering eardrums, it seems like the right time to ask: Did new rave really do Klaxons any favors? Sure, it bestowed them the quasi-honor of heading up a temporary movement-- a rite of passage for any aspirational British band-- but it also meant that a lot of listeners already engaged in a more meaningful intermingling of indie and electronic musics kept a precautionary, hype-safe distance. It’s too bad, because tenuous dance links aside, Klaxons are actually a great band, and “Golden Skans”, with its drippy harmonies and serpentine chorus, was among the best rock singles released all year. –Mark Pytlik Listen: Klaxons: “Golden Skans”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-SJjFcnsGs,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/524/klaxons-goldenskans.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Klaxons-Golden_Skans.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,75,Escort,“All Through the Night”,Escort,"“Giveittomesayittomeworkitwithmeifyou’rereadyI’mabouttoPOP”: It takes approximately two seconds-- maybe two-and-a-half-- for Zena Kitt and Toy to belt out that sexual call-to-arms, and that efficient, libido-driven liveliness carries over to “All Through the Night”-- one of the best New York disco tracks since West End Records’ early 1980s heyday. On first impressions, the song sounds like disco-funk revivalism as fantasy-band speculation-- what if the Revolution and Chic joined forces?-- but further listens reveal the way every instrument and vocal hook seems to be a snappy, rhythm-locked retort to something else happening in the track, giving it a hyperactive precision. Even the song’s climax (in both senses of the word) sounds meticulous. –Nate Patrin Listen: Escort: “All Through the Night”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqRDct1IDI8,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/524/Escort-allthruthenight.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Escort-All_Through_the_Night.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,74,Black Lips,“Katrina“,Vice,"“Katrina” posits the Black Lips as either the most politically engaged garage-rock band in the U.S., or the most wantonly oblivious one. It’s a two-chord rhumba that seems to directly reference the most catastrophic natural disaster in recent American history. But then, given the song’s faithful adherence to Nuggets’ snot-punk tradition (right down to the staccato guitar breaks swiped from Them’s “Gloria”), it could just as easily be about some crazy chick who’s done singer Jared Swilley wrong. Doesn’t really matter: Even if the song isn’t about a hurricane, it rocks you like one. –Stuart Berman Listen: Black Lips: “Katrina”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QxwA4ZCioI,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/524/black-lips-katrina-vice.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Black_Lips-Katrina.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,73,The Twilight Sad,“Cold Days From the Birdhouse”,FatCat,"A romantic but realistic examination of growing pains and teenage indiscretions, “Cold Days From the Birdhouse” is also an exercise in restraint. Its tension is teased from a bed of slide guitar, gauzy feedback, and a repetitive piano note that replaces the rhythm section. Yearning and imploring, frontman James Graham mourns phone calls, hotel rooms, romantic gestures, and ruined plans. His band responds: The drums and bass explode, battering an accordion’s drone and a guitar’s din. Graham-- conjuring all of the salt of his Scottish sneer-- responds with an interrogation: “So where are your manners?” –Grayson Currin Listen: The Twilight Sad: “Cold Days From the Birdhouse”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NjktxpaB70,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/524/twilightsad_fourteenautumns.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Twilight_Sad-Cold_Days_From_the_Birdhouse.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,72,Ted Leo & the Pharmacists,“La Costa Brava”,Touch & Go,"On paper, the lyrics read like yacht rock, giving Ted Leo a chance to show off his Spanish pronunciation while giving directions to a Mediterranean hideaway. But in the midst of chewing over politics on every song off his latest album, Leo saved his sweetest melody for a six-minute oasis. “Everyone needs a Sunday some days,” he says, and its fantasy becomes all the more bittersweet and poignant because, even in this song, he still reveals how desperate things have become. With a tune like this, we’d have granted him a little respite from the firebrand-ism, but as usual, he had to go and be clever and thoughtful about it. –Jason Crock Listen: Ted Leo & the Pharmacists: “La Costa Brava”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JXCd-V_D5s,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/524/tedleo_lacostabrava.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ted_Leo__the_Pharmacists-La_Costa_Brava.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,71,The Shins,“Turn on Me”,Sub Pop,"Around 1990, indie pop listeners dreamt about their sound taking over the world, and the Shins’ commercial triumph feels a bit like aesthetic vindication. The highlight of Sub Pop’s first #2 album isn’t fundamentally different from what, say, Pam Berry’s old band Black Tambourine were up to: A killer kiss-off from the perspective of the kiss-ee, with a guitar hook descended from “Then He Kissed Me” by way of the Magnetic Fields. Anita Robinson from Viva Voce chimes in on the cute-as-Chickfactor “fond of Y-O-U” bit, and the guitar break could have shown up on a DIY 7”. –Douglas Wolk Listen: The Shins: “Turn on Me”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIRmyfKOAfM,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/524/theshinsturnonme.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Shins-Turn_on_Me.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,70,Cassie,“Is It You?”,NextSelection Lifestyle Group,"Caught in the tug of war between production, performance, and persona, what happens to the humbly great r&b song? At first glance, “Is It You” is ignorable, devoid of any distinctive qualities: Cassie’s singing is sweet and understated, the emotive guitar-dominated arrangement is pleasant more than startling, and the song’s tangle of hope and uncertainty is instantly familiar. But it’s precisely this which makes “Is It You” such a tantalizing proposition: With every possible obstruction to pop transcendence gently moulded away, we’re left only a gleaming paean to the first flush of romance and it’s all the more affecting for its modest universality. –Tim Finney Listen: Cassie: “Is It You?”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-i39fqbvgA0,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/524/cassieisitu.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Cassie-Is_It_You.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,69,Roísín Murphy,“Overpowered”,EMI,"Surprisingly picked up by EMI after her beautifully kooky Herbert collaboration Ruby Blue tanked, ex-Moloko maverick Roísín Murphy returned in 2007 with renewed pop ambition and a single-minded dedication to the dancefloors of the early 1980s. Lead single “Overpowered” pitches her somewhere between the sci-fi Italo of La Bionda’s “I Wanna Be Your Lover” and the premier disco of Evelyn King, while Murphy headily ponders the metaphysics of romance in a chemically determined world. Arty and smartly seductive, “Overpowered” is a sublime reminder of the glory days of New Pop. –Stephen Troussé Listen: Roísín Murphy: “Overpowered”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlFjf1pWk2c,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/524/roisinmurphy_albumart.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rosn_Murphy-Overpowered.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,68,Black Kids,“I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance With You”,self-released,"There’s something weirdly out of time about this song. It was on a self-released EP this year, but I could swear I heard it playing over the credits of some 1980s John Hughes film. But then when I picture the scene where the song’s story takes place, I’m seeing a high school gym with streamers out of a sock-hop. The phrase “he’s got two left feet…” is pure Arthur Murray, but “…and he bites my moves” suggests the kids in question grew up in the post-hip-hop era. The references, like the kinda sloppy playing (hey, it’s a demo), are all over the place. But there’s a thread throughout, and it’s an eternal pop aspiration: to transform insecurity into a joyous, world-conquering sing-along. –Mark Richardson Listen: Black Kids: “I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance With You”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOV6I4fYnvQ,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/524/blackkidsdancewu.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Black_Kids-Im_Not_Gonna_Teach_Your_Boyfriend_How_to_Dance_With_You.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,67,Devin the Dude,“What a Job” [ft. Andre 3000 and Snoop Dogg],Rap-A-Lot,"There’s a pre-dawn haziness as Snoop, Devin, and Andre 3000 paint a weary, blurry portrait of the rap life. This is, after all, a song about job dedication from two of hip-hop’s biggest stoners and an MC who’s repeatedly expressed an ambivalence about the genre. Devin compares the game to a “pigeon coop,” while Snoop is more upbeat as he promises to “keep spittin’ the truth on these fools like a reverend.” But really, this is Andre’s song, and he’s funny, poignant, and sweet as he takes aim at downloaders, threatening to “come to your job, take your corn on the cob,” and recalls meeting a couple who grew up on his music. –Sam Chennault Listen: Devin the Dude: “What a Job” [ft. Andre 3000 and Snoop Dogg]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T1jdreS6ko,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/524/devinthedude.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Devin_the_Dude-What_a_Job_ft_Andre_3000_and_Snoop_Dogg.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,66,King Khan & the Shrines,“Welfare Bread”,Hazelwood,"Some in the throwback set mine garage rock’s steady stomp, while others run their ideas through dusty speakers to seek authenticity. From their proto-psych forebears, King Khan & the Shrines lift everything but the squeal; that, Khan’s got on his own. The results are assuredly righteous, and “Welfare Bread”, from What Is!?, is their best meetup of sound and song. The one about love on the skids is familiar to anyone who’s heard “Livin’ on a Prayer” (so, anyone), but Khan’s growl and choice “ooh-la-las” push it into the red. –Paul Thompson Listen: King Khan & the Shrines: “Welfare Bread”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdiuy5QMXE8,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/524/kingkahns_welfare.jpg,/dataset/artwork/King_Khan__the_Shrines-Welfare_Bread.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,65,DJ Khaled,"“We Takin' Over” [ft. T.I., Akon, Rick Ross, Fat Joe, Birdman & Lil Wayne] ",Koch,"Though hip-hop uniter DJ Khaled probably fielded hundreds of calls, texts, and emails in order to make this song possible, he’s not its star. Neither is Akon, who gives “We Takin’ Over” its Nature’s Vocoder luster. It’s not Rick Ross, Fat Joe, or Birdman-- though all three inconsistent MCs graciously turn on the after-burners here. Anchorman Lil Wayne slays with his best guest spot of the year... but even he takes a backseat to Timbaland protege Danjahandz’s mars-attacks instrumental. While it’s tempting to dub the beat “hip-hop’s future,” it’s doubtful anyone will be able to replicate such sci-fi giddiness anytime soon. –Ryan Dombal Listen: DJ Khaled: “We Takin’ Over” [ft. T.I., Akon, Rick Ross, Fat Joe, Birdman & Lil Wayne]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9g2szHsoz0,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/524/wetakinover.jpg,/dataset/artwork/DJ_Khaled-We_Takin_Over_ft_TI_Akon_Rick_Ross_Fat_Joe_Birdman__Lil_Wayne_.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,64,No Age,“Neck Escaper”,FatCat,"No Age’s brilliant Weirdo Rippers hits lots of different targets, but most of them are pretty hectic. The wistful “Neck Escaper” is an exception: Calm and subdued, it’s like an oasis inside a hailstorm. Randy Randall’s sprinkling guitar and Dean Spunt’s primitive drumming drift through the first half of the song dreamily. When Spunt’s dejected vocals slide in-- “All the shit piled up/ Smells like someone died”-- Randall’s guitar raves up into a chorus, shocking the track to life. Then suddenly, this brief gem is over, and begging to be replayed. –Marc Masters Listen: No Age: “Neck Escaper”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T52ZTNlrM04,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/524/noageneckescaper.jpg,/dataset/artwork/No_Age-Neck_Escaper.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,63,Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings,“I'm Not Gonna Cry”,Daptone,"Georgia-born soul singer Sharon Jones has the kind of voice that’s so boundless, so easy and ecstatic, it makes singing sound like the most fun thing anyone could ever think of doing. Curiously omitted from 2007’s 100 Days, 100 Nights and released instead as a 7” single, “I’m Not Gonna Cry” features the expert skronk of Daptone Records’ beloved house band, the Dap-Kings (who plenty will recognize from Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black, where they provided similar support), but it’s Jones’ vocals that shine brightest. When she declares that she’s done-- “Ooh, I’m not gonna cry/ Tears not gonna fall from my eyes,” she bays, unflinching and proud-- there’s no uncertainty in her tone, making “I’m Not Gonna Cry” the year’s most graceful exit. –Amanda Petrusich Listen: Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings: “I’m Not Gonna Cry”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W842GnuPxLU,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/524/i%27mnotgonnacrysharonjones.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sharon_Jones__the_Dap-Kings-Im_Not_Gonna_Cry.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,62,Cool Kids,“I Rock”,Chocolate Industries,"Less bragging than putting the stats on the back of the baseball card, Cool Kids’ “I Rock” said in shorthand what their group name said outright. Cool Kid Mikey Rocks rocks, likes bikes, good grammar, Vans, and minimal beats that knock. Chicago’s humble brethren to their scene’s first couple, Kid Sister and A-Trak, played retro in photo shoots but disowned the gimmick: “Sayonara to afros and old flows.” Of course, the only thing more tongue-in-cheek than that line was the next: “The concept of rocking shows is so old.” Didn’t stop ’em though, did it? –Zach Baron Listen: Cool Kids: “I Rock”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrCfNhN2GFA,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/524/coolkidsirock.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Cool_Kids-I_Rock.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,61,!!!,“Heart of Hearts”,Warp,"Compared to the more academic investigations of leftfield disco, krautrock, and trance that color their back catalog, “Heart of Hearts” finds !!! getting literally and figuratively out of their minds. This communally spirited dancefloor heater maps the excellent sound design of their more cerebral experiments onto a visceral steamroller of centrist disco-funk. Skittering slivers of guitar, strutting bass, and sparking livewire synths tap out a Morse code exhortation to shake something, while Nic Offer’s scat-like vocal and the splashy percussion lock together like herringbone. The closest “Heart of Hearts” gets to a momentum-derailing tangent is the false ending, which only accentuates the song’s propulsion. –Brian Howe Listen: !!!: “Heart of Hearts”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDq8Krv6irE,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/524/chkchkheartofhearts.jpg,/dataset/artwork/-Heart_of_Hearts.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,60,The White Stripes,“Rag and Bone”,XL,"The White Stripes’ first foray into sustained, mid-song sketch comedy (""Meg, look at this place! It’s like a mansion! Look at all this stuff!""), “Rag & Bone” is a goofy homage to talking-blues, featuring faux-casual lyrics about pawing through other people’s things. The White Stripes can occasionally seem distressingly self-serious, and “Rag & Bone” is a delightfully inane antidote, four minutes of quasi-threatening bandit talk and head-banging electric guitar. If you’ve ever coveted your neighbor’s entertainment center, or considered crawling through someone’s window to snatch their shit, “Rag & Bone” should make for a perfect post-heist anthem. –Amanda Petrusich Listen: The White Stripes: “Rag and Bone”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5vnyeqh2UY,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/524/ragandbonewhitestripes.JPG,/dataset/artwork/The_White_Stripes-Rag_and_Bone.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,59,Lil Wayne,“Upgrade U”,Young Money Entertainment,"Weezy F. Baby exhibits a gleeful intensity as he absolutely murders Beyonce’s 2006 hit, “Upgrade U.” His flow lunges, pivots, and leaps off the beat as he pays tribute to Apollo Creed, smokes “weed by tha acre,” and spits “like a retard.” “I’m so motherfuckin’ high I could eat a star,” he concludes at the end of the first verse, and his performance here is a sugar rush. Sure, the NOLA stunna is basically emptying his rhyme cache here, but damn if this isn’t both funny and amazing. –Sam Chennault Listen: Lil Wayne: “Upgrade U”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZ4J-pi34pg,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/524/dadrought3.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lil_Wayne-Upgrade_U.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,58,Shellac,“The End of Radio”,Touch & Go,"Their 15-year career has given Shellac time to hone rage into a fine instrument, and “The End of Radio” hits a nerve somewhere between desperation and disdain. It continues in Shellac’s tradition of stunning, challenging album openers that offer more questions than answers: How did this narrator become the last DJ standing? Why does he go on for eight minutes? Why are the vocals so low in the mix? As usual, when the guitars kick in with teeth-rattling chords that slither up the fretboard, you know the time for pondering those thoughts is over. –Jason Crock Listen: Shellac: “The End of Radio”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0touDYOFch0,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/524/italiangreyhound.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Shellac-The_End_of_Radio.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,57,Electrelane,“To the East”,Too Pure,"This changeling, now-on-hiatus quartet appeared in early 2007 with No Shouts, No Calls, a breathtaking raincloud of rock. Like much of the album, “To the East”-- its most timid, yet adventurous track-- contains a blood-pumping bassline and glittering guitar, but from that fairly ordinary start, the song charges up and out of the room, brought to a boil by a persistent kickdrum and a masterful vocal duet. The accent-less, consonant-less cords of Verity Sussman are in complete opposition to the percussive qualities of the instruments, which makes for one gorgeous and memorable duel of instrument versus voice. –Liz Colville Listen: Electrelane: “To the East”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlSfPmqiplY,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/524/electrelaneeast.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Electrelane-To_the_East.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,56,Aesop Rock,“None Shall Pass”,Definitive Jux,"Cate Blanchett’s Jude Quin may have been 2007’s most effective channeling of 1965/66 Bob Dylan, but Aesop Rock’s “None Shall Pass”-- the most appealing single yet from the verbose Def Juxer-- hits the same judgmental notes as “Positively 4th Street” and “Like a Rolling Stone”. Attempts to decipher or decode Aesop’s lyrics are often futile, but here, Biblical retribution is called for as he aims his vengeance at those who preach one thing and practice another. This includes those who “flash that buttery gold” as well as ""comply and conform, miles outside of the eye of the storm."" It’s nothing Aesop hasn’t tried dozens of times before, but “None Shall Pass” is a step above: He lithely and calmly navigates Blockhead’s beat-the-clock track, the virtuosity of his delivery making the song undeniable. –Eric Harvey Listen: Aesop Rock: “None Shall Pass”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEBGCOCxLgA,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/524/aesoprocknoneshall.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Aesop_Rock-None_Shall_Pass.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,55,Studio,“No Comply”,Information,"If Jens Lekman, Air France, and the Tough Alliance were concocting anthems for sunshine-soaked shorelines this year, then fellow Swedes Studio were cooking up a little something for the beach at night. Imagine it: a row of lanterns strung up on a line between Tiki huts and moving in time with “No Comply”’s elastic beat, clouds parting to let moonlight glisten upon crests of waves just as those cascading synth sparkles set in, and these guys inviting us “to fall in love” and providing an ideal aural setting for amorous overtures. –Matthew Solarski Listen: Studio: “No Comply”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oren6FV08MM,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/524/studionocomply.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Studio-No_Comply.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,54,Joanna Newsom,“Colleen”,Drag City,"The sole new song on the Joanna Newsom & the Ys Street Band EP, “Colleen” is, on the surface, one of the iconoclastic singer's more straightforward yarns, owing a larger-than-usual debt to traditional British folk structures. With a brilliant unspooling melody-- its chorus punctuated by a classic high-pitched Newsom yelp-- and a typically extravagant word count, “Colleen” sets a tale of a young woman who has seemingly forgotten that she was once a whale. Though this intricate fish-out-of-water narrative remains open to interpretation, at heart it addresses the need to remain true to one's own nature-- something that has thankfully never been a issue for Newsom as musician or composer. –Matthew Murphy Listen: Joanna Newsom: “Colleen”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YHQgSd9fzk,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/524/joannanewsom_colleen.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Joanna_Newsom-Colleen.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,53,Bat for Lashes,“What's a Girl to Do?”,Parlophone,"Falling out of love has rarely sounded this frightening. “What’s a Girl to Do” perverts the “Be My Baby” drum beat into a fluid but dreary stomp by juxtaposing it with a bone-chilling, gothic keyboard. Singer Natasha Khan switches between coolly detached melodicism and Black Box Recorder-like spoken passages where she dryly discusses her lover’s shattered promises. Throw in a kick-ass video featuring Khan riding a bike at night with a synchronized entourage of guys in freaky animal masks, and you’ve got some seriously spooked-out pining going on. –Joe Tangari Listen: Bat for Lashes: “What’s a Girl to Do?”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jfu_gfttSY,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/524/batforlashesgirltodo.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bat_for_Lashes-Whats_a_Girl_to_Do.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,52,The Clientele,“Bookshop Casanova”,Merge,"The Clientele emerge from the haze of suburban light into the fluorescent glare of retail lighting, dressing up a dance groove in a cardigan and thick black frames. Turns out the band's reverb-heavy production and breathy vocals sound pretty damn great next to a choppy guitar part and a speedy tempo. Alasdair MacLean sets up an odd tension with the lines, “I come undone/ Let's be lovers,” suggesting a battle between inner jitters and outward confidence. The fuzz guitar solo and elegant string arrangement display no such uncertainty, racing into your ears with energetic grace. –Joe Tangari Listen: The Clientele: “Bookshop Casanova”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5d9CSl7KKQ,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/524/theclientelebookshop.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Clientele-Bookshop_Casanova.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,51,Kanye West,“Good Life” [ft. T-Pain],Roc-A-Fella / Def Jam,"Because a grouchy neighbor was forced to knock on my door after I let this song repeat seven too many times the morning it leaked. Because when Kanye performed it while gliding through a swanky hotel suite on the VMAs, I felt a pang of stupidly irrational “wish I was there” regret. Because it features two of my favorite goofball/genius pop personalities living up to their hitmaker status. Because the most rap-along-able line happens to promote a healthy diet. And because of the complex irony that goes along with Kanye’s rejiggered “In Da Club” swipe: “Fifty told me, ’Go ’head, switch your style up, and if they hate let ’em hate and watch the money pile up.’” He’s good, you’re good, we’re good. –Ryan Dombal Listen: Kanye West: “Good Life” [ft. T-Pain]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KPnQUJDzAs,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/524/kanyegoodlife.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kanye_West-Good_Life_ft_T-Pain.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,50,Dude ’N Nem,“Watch My Feet”,TVT,"The most unashamedly functional subgenre of rap’s recent mutations, Chicago’s “juke house” bypasses the brain to appeal directly to the body-- the trick is in how the slow grind of the verses gives way to manic, house-like choruses of bouncing 4x4 beats and chanted invocations. If you don’t get it, Dude ’N Nem are here to help: “Don’t watch me…watch my feet!” they command over and over again on this song’s mindlessly brilliant hyperspeed chorus, knowing that this music is less about lyrical insight and more about supportive in-soles. If you can’t watch theirs, play “Watch My Feet” and watch your own. –Tim Finney Listen: Dude ’N Nem: “Watch My Feet”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCZ-nJ7XdmE,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/524/watchmyfeetdude.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dude_N_Nem-Watch_My_Feet.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,49,Yeasayer,“2080”,We Are Free,"“2080”, the indie hit from Yesayer’s debut, All Hour Cymbals, closes with a choir of children joyfully singing. That the sound of these tots doesn’t come across as exploitive, manipulative, or creepy is a testament to the song’s alchemy of styles. As the band reclaim the past through Afropop polyrhythms, post-punk soundscapes, classic-rock chords, and indie-rock songwriting, Chris Keating, singing in a staccato learned from David Byrne but without the Head’s detachment, fears the future but realizes it’s only what we make it. The band blasts through two sung choruses before shouting about their progeny repopulating the earth, then hands the mics over to the younger generation. Reconciling pessimism with optimism is as impressive as juggling so many trendy styles without sounding merely like the Brooklyn band of the week. –Stephen M. Deusner Listen: Yeasayer: “2080”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olzw8qi6Ptw,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/524/yeasayer_2080.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Yeasayer-2080.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,48,Liars,“Plaster Casts of Everything”,Mute,"In retrospect, it’s a no-brainer that the expectation-thwarting Liars would follow their esoteric run of recent years-- the muddy drones of They Were Wrong, So We Drowned and the cellophane planes of Drum’s Not Dead -- with the only surprising move still available to them: A reconciliation of their primordial force with traditional songcraft. “Plaster Casts of Everything” reeks of black leather-- guitar thunderbolts and an emphatic rock percussion support Angus Andrew’s careening falsetto. This is the sound of a visionary band’s earthshaking landfall after a long voyage through thinner atmospheres. –Brian Howe Listen: Liars: “Plaster Casts of Everything”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhGl-lQFZSs,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/524/liars_plastercasts.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Liars-Plaster_Casts_of_Everything.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,47,T2,“Heartbroken”,All Around the World,"Bassline house can be seen as the latest flex in the “hardcore continuum,” that coil of British street music winding back to rave. Or, with “Heartbroken” a fixture on the UK charts, you can see it as potential salvation for moribund British pop. Or you can take “Heartbroken” as a blissful one-off, with Jodie Aysha’s raw, nervy vocals the ideal foil for T2’s fudgy snakes of bass. How about all three: “Heartbroken” is the instant-appeal outrider for a strain of garage-derived dance music that might just bring underground and mainstream back into glorious alignment after a lost half-decade. 2008 should be massive. –Tom Ewing Listen: T2: “Heartbroken”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTsHWzvJWDQ,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/524/t2heartbroken.jpg,/dataset/artwork/T2-Heartbroken.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,46,Deerhunter,“Wash Off”,Kranky,"Deerhunter entered 2007 as relatively untested art-punk provocateurs with a MySpace full of anti-testimonials by squares and Yeah Yeah Yeahs fans. After dozens upon dozens of gigs, including their first European headlining tour, the Atlanta noise-rockers end the year a polished, pummeling live band-- with a Technorati listing full of still more ridiculous anti-testimonials by hipsters and bloggers. So not everybody has the stomach for lanky dudes in dresses, ambien(t) drones, or impulsive stage antics, but the Fluorescent Grey EP’s “Wash Off” is exactly what those deterred by Deerhunter’s larger-than-life image are missing out on: Expert New Zealand-informed indie rock with the year’s best monotone bassline and a cascade of echoey, head-banging speed-psych climaxes. How totally perverse. –Marc Hogan Listen: Deerhunter: “Wash Off”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdSFt8r4yIA,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/524/deerhunterwashoff.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Deerhunter-Wash_Off.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,45,The Honeydrips,“Fall From a Height”,Sincerely Yours,"Life would be so much easier if we could put our personal miseries in perspective to the eventual collapse of the universe. Unfortunately, Mikael Carlsson, like all of us, can’t rationalize his pathos so cleanly, though “Fall From a Height” serves as a beautiful homage to existentialism-- Scandinavia’s version of baseball and apple pie. Carlsson doesn’t even pretend his sad-sack bit’s novel (hence the Annie Hall and Rebel Without a Cause soundbites), but the song’s chilly melody ranks among the year’s catchiest, made even more memorable by the Field’s tender remix. –Adam Moerder Listen: The Honeydrips: “Fall From a Height”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTD2d5HqKxk,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/524/honeydripsfallfromheight.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Honeydrips-Fall_From_a_Height.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,44,Pantha du Prince,“Saturn Strobe”,Dial,"Hamburg’s Dial label has its formula down pat: unfussy house beats + atmospheric bluster + bell tones galore = a goth-tinged approach to dance music that values cool detachment as much as hot sweat. Pantha du Prince (aka Hendrik Weber) assumed the mantle of Dark Lord of Dial with his moody, opalescent album This Bliss, and ""Saturn Strobe"" is the record’s most serious moment, thanks largely to a melody borrowed from Howard Skempton’s 1990 composition Lento, an Arvo Pärt-like meditation for strings. Weber injects the passage with muscular drums, walking sub-bass, and bells that bristle with uncontrollable overtones, turning lento to allegro without sacrificing a lick of gravitas. –Philip Sherburne Listen: Pantha du Prince: “Saturn Strobe”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qpC4MlrJpU,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/524/panthaduprincebliss.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Pantha_du_Prince-Saturn_Strobe.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,43,Deerhoof,“The Perfect Me”,Kill Rock Stars,"At some point in the past five years, Deerhoof perfected their hold on a sound that at times seems almost too good to be true. “The Perfect Me” is music for both video games and crushes. Power chords that don’t ever play typical power chord progressions, Greg Saunier going apeshit on cowbell, pristine and soaring melodies sung over cathedral organ-- this is superhero music, but instead of lame tights and boots, the heros wear paper masks that jut out around the ears so they can hide miniature daggers. “Dude, that sounds like progressive rock.” And in under three minutes, no less! –Dominique Leone Listen: Deerhoof: “The Perfect Me”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7etn2czISU,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/524/deerhooffriendopp.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Deerhoof-The_Perfect_Me.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,42,Spoon,“Black Like Me”,Merge,"The piano keeps stumbling, Britt Daniel’s vocals tail into shivers or shrugs, and when the song reaches its pleading, open-armed peak it suddenly just... stops. It’s a study in incompleteness, driven by faith in the possibility of connection. Emotionally, “Black Like Me” is heartland indie rock territory, and Spoon know the tiny details that make songs bleed you a little. So there should be a micro-second pause between Daniel’s “Tell me what you know you want” and the final backing “Oh Yeah.” But there’s not. The weird kids rush heartbreakingly in, too early, too eager, too lonely to wait. –Tom Ewing Listen: Spoon: “Black Like Me”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJXYpDdKn-c,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/524/spoongaga.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Spoon-Black_Like_Me.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,41,Los Campesinos!,“You! Me! Dancing!”,Arts & Crafts / Wichita,"Nobody expects a septet of Pavement-obsessed collegians in Cardiff, Wales, to strip 21st century indie pop down to its most exhilarating fundamentals. Even as a MySpace-only demo, “You! Me! Dancing!” did just that-- and not only in its exclamatory title. Spruced up by Broken Social Scene producer Dave Newfeld for the Sticking Fingers Into Sockets EP, the song’s entire six-plus minutes now shine even more brightly with youthful enthusiasm-- from its gold-sounding slowpoke intro to its scuzzy riffs, infectious boy/girl shouts, violin- and glockenspiel-splashed choruses, and whimsically narrated coda. Art Brut’s little brother just discovered K Records. –Marc Hogan Listen: Los Campesinos!: “You! Me! Dancing!”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj6SO_yKMe8,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/524/loscampesinosyoume.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Los_Campesinos-You_Me_Dancing.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,40,Beirut,“Elephant Gun”,Ba Da Bing!,"Cynical types read some of Gulag Orkestar’s bleary Balkanisms as yet another impetuous youngster reaching back a bit beyond his years, a position aided by lyrics that occasionally (even by songwriter Zach Condon’s admission) read as postscripts. The same can’t be said for “Elephant Gun”, Beirut’s big show-and-prove moment from the Lon Gisland EP. It’s among Condon’s best-realized tunes to date, from the delicately strummed intro to the lilting horn line at its core to its moonstruck accordion fadeout. And his words-- unadorned as always-- are especially striking, touching on stagnation, senescence, and, yes, the seasons, again and again. Not bad for a kid. –Paul Thompson Listen: Beirut: “Elephant Gun”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWSz_PAfgNc,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/524/beirutelephantgun.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beirut-Elephant_Gun.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,39,Sally Shapiro,“He Keeps Me Alive”,Paper Bag,"Did anyone sound as tenderhearted this year as Sally Shapiro, the Swede with the sad voice, pseudonymous standoffishness, and durable debut album? Shapiro made her shyness seem like a virtue, but ""He Keeps Me Alive"" gave us the illusion that we knew her. Written by producer Johan Agebjörn, the song describes another devastating romantic dilemma: Shapiro loves a man who keeps her at a friendly distance. “And I try and I try and I try to be satisfied/ Cause after all he keeps me alive.” Granted, he’s leading her on, holding her hand even as he tells her it goes no further. As she tries to keep her head up, Agebjörn mirrors her optimism in the rubbery beats and glassy synths of his Italo-disco accompaniment, making her heartache all the more acute by rendering it danceable. –Stephen M. Deusner Listen: Sally Shapiro: “He Keeps Me Alive”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoF2WS046Q8,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/524/SallyShapiro_DiscoRomance.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sally_Shapiro-He_Keeps_Me_Alive.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,38,Matthew Dear,“Deserter”,Ghostly International,"After the crescendoing adulthood ennui of LCD Soundsystem’s “All My Friends”, this is the come-down sequel. “My friends have come and gone,” sings Matthew Dear, shapeshifting into a sad-eyed robot. Like his brother in ambiguous-yet-affecting letdown, this electro-pop star looks back at his roaring twenties with a tough single tear: “Everything that you’ve done, nothing seems to be what it’s worth.” But “Deserter” isn’t a barren wasteland of unfulfilled hopes; it’s a motivational screed beamed straight into the mirror: “Just keep on searchin’/ Don’t be uncertain/ Your life will only be just what you want it for.” –Ryan Dombal Listen: Matthew Dear: “Deserter”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0Nu1qwT8os,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/524/asabreedmatthewdear.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Matthew_Dear-Deserter.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,37,Blonde Redhead,“23”,4AD,"With 23, Blonde Redhead made an album that strove for a huge sound instead of repeating the insularity of Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons or the creaky antiquity of Misery Is a Butterfly. The title track establishes a new sonic standard for the trio, who worked with producer Alan Moulder to achieve a sense of dream-pop sophistication through dense, polished atmospherics. Reflecting Moulder’s previous work with Curve, Ride, and the Jesus and Mary Chain, “23” is a sleek bullet train hurtling toward an unknown destination, but carrying plenty of emotional baggage along for the trip. Kazu Mikino’s pained, glassy delivery expresses a feeling of grief, and her words only offer a slight glimpse toward her true sentiment: “He was a friend of mine/ He was a son of God/ He was a son of a gun.” –Eric Harvey Listen: Blonde Redhead: “23”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7FqUNlEdwA,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/524/blonderedhead23.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Blonde_Redhead-23.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,36,Okkervil River,“Our Life Is Not a Movie or Maybe”,Jagjaguwar,"The lyrics are a bummer, all about how the real world can never live up to the drama of the silver screen. (“It’s just a life story, so there’s no climax.”) But the music! It’s a wild, barreling celebration of the pleasures of rocking the fuck out, shouting in the wind, and breaking down into random noise just for the hell of it. Will Sheff strongarms these two opposing forces into working together for the greater good of laughing in the face of disappointment. Because he knows that even if life can’t deliver the satisfaction of the cinema, sometimes a song can. –Amy Phillips Listen: Okkervil River: “Our Life Is Not a Movie or Maybe”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROlCPlnCIfo,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/524/okkervilstagenames.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Okkervil_River-Our_Life_Is_Not_a_Movie_or_Maybe.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,35,Dirty Projectors,“Rise Above”,Dead Oceans,"Brooklyn’s Dirty Projectors (vision of Brooklynite David Longstreth) cemented beautifully this year with the help of Angel Deradoorian and Amber Coffman’s honeysuckle backup vocals. “Rise Above”, the joyful closing title track from an album of (extremely) loose interpretations of Black Flag’s Damaged LP, finds the two commanding bass and guitar, exchanging ornate, chatty dialogue with their bandleader. But what their distinctive sound obscures is the striking universality of Greg Ginn’s underdog lyrics: “Society’s arms think they’re smart/ I find satisfaction in what they’re lacking ’cause/ We are born with a chance/ And I’m gonna have my chance,” aches Longstreth, who could be addressing the U.S. government, authority figures interfering with early hardcore shows, or detractors who “just can’t get past that voice.” –Liz Colville Listen: Dirty Projectors: “Rise Above”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAzQ_Y--Z30,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/524/riseabove.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dirty_Projectors-Rise_Above.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,34,The Tough Alliance,“Silly Crimes”,Sincerely Yours / Summer Lovers Unlimited,"“Thankfully they stayed as naïve as they were cynical about it all,” read the liner notes to the Embassy’s Futile Crimes, the first album ever released on Swedish label Service. ""Or maybe it’s the other stupid way around."" These words apply just as well to the Tough Alliance, whose “Silly Crimes” came soon after ditching Service for their own Sincerely Yours imprint. Their syncopated beats face those of the Kitsuné or Ed Banger labels, but pigeon noises, self-reflective verses, and an innocent, synth-gleaming chorus point toward a pop ideal that transcends what TTA would call “the spectacle.” Cynical? Naïve? Hey, it’s the sound of two people doing whatever the fuck they want-- as silly and delinquent as pop itself, but hardly futile. –Marc Hogan Listen: The Tough Alliance: “Silly Crimes”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PR-KSV2wlCk,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/524/TTAwaves.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Tough_Alliance-Silly_Crimes.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,33,Dinosaur Jr.,“Almost Ready”,Fat Possum,"Dinosaur Jr. made coming back after years away look almost too easy. J Mascis’ creak sounded like a millon-year-old man from the beginning anyway, and he’d always insisted the songs were just country music turned up to 11. His lyrics almost baited the cynical: “I’ve been wondering if the message sent, wondering if I made a dent...” Even the most fervent believers had to ask if it was more than nostalgia, but contrary to the often fickle expectations of indie rock audiences, some formulas cannot be broken or grow tired. “Almost Ready” is loud and buoyant enough to fit on any of the band’s records, and would be a standout track besides. –Jason Crock Listen: Dinosaur Jr.  “Almost Ready”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGlYsDxCyAo,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/524/beyondinosaur.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dinosaur_Jr-Almost_Ready.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,32,R. Kelly,“I'm a Flirt Remix” [ft. T.I. & T-Pain],Jive,"R. Kelly’s more-jokes-than-hooks strategy on his Double Up LP was great for water-cooler laffs, but something like “Sex Planet” is about as empty-calorie obvious as an “SNL” “Trapped in the Closet” parody. The problem might have something to do with “I’m a Flirt”, an unfairly stacked auto-smash that packs in more ear-biting bits than a Girl Talk mix. “Now I swear to tell the truth and the whole truth/ When it comes to those I be pimpin’ like I supposed to,” Kels proclaims, at once flipping-off the U.S. Department of Justice and chalking-up his immaculate flirtatiousness to a simple matter of divine right. –Ryan Dombal Listen: R. Kelly: “I’m a Flirt Remix” [ft. T.I. & T-Pain]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPr4F8dplFg,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/524/rkellyflirt.jpg,/dataset/artwork/R_Kelly-Im_a_Flirt_Remix_ft_TI__T-Pain.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,31,Cortney Tidwell,“Don't Let Stars Keep Us Tangled Up (Ewan's Objects in Space Remix)”,Ever,"The Ewan in question is British (though currently based in Berlin) producer/DJ Ewan Pearson, whose work for Goldfrapp, the Rapture, and Franz Ferdinand (among many others) have made him one of the most in-demand remixers going. And for good reason: As “Don’t Let Stars Keep Us Tangled Up” demonstrates, Pearson has a gift for extracting the most important elements in his source tracks, and orchestrating dense rivers of lush disco-house around them. Nashville indie-folk singer Tidwell’s modest, pretty vocal is kept intact, but instead of her original plaintive guitar accompaniment, we get a crisp house kick and layers of fuzzy, mildly spaced-out Debussy chords with electro-glitter for flavor. In the hands of a lesser producer, this could have turned into formless mush. On the contrary, this is beautiful. –Dominique Leone Listen: Cortney Tidwell: “Don’t Let Stars Keep Us Tangled Up (Ewan’s Objects in Space Remix)”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSsNY2_Pqg0,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/524/cortneytangled.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Cortney_Tidwell-Dont_Let_Stars_Keep_Us_Tangled_Up_Ewans_Objects_in_Space_Remix.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,30,Dan Deacon,“Wham City”,Carpark,"Dan Deacon listened to the happy hardcore of the 1990s and the cartoon jingles of his childhood, looked around at his racks of bastard electronics, and then set about concocting the most fanciful art-damage to come out of Baltimore since Animal Collective. “Wham City”, a manifesto of sorts for Deacon’s populist crew, is emblematic of his blending of infectious circuit-bent melodies and haywire musical architecture. His breathless lyrical cadence flits through a teetering tower of fragment-loop synth trills and sound effects, and with each subsequent listen, it becomes more amazing that Deacon’s Tinkertoy funhouse doesn’t collapse under its own weight. –Brian Howe Listen: Dan Deacon: “Wham City”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlvA1GMBzW8,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/524/dandeaconspidermind.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dan_Deacon-Wham_City.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,29,Arcade Fire,“Keep the Car Running”,Merge,"On hand to capture Win Butler and Régine Chassagne’s October duet with Bruce Springsteen were videographers Robert Brockie and Ryan Carey. Their widely circulated tape relayed the concert consensus at the surprise opening chords of the Arcade Fire’s “Keep the Car Running”: oh my god…What the fuck! Yeaaaahhh! That it was carpetbagging Canadians who ultimately lived America’s #1 rock’n’roll fantasy camp was a tribute to their song, a jittery getaway soundtrack that imagined the Boss’ good ol’ boys gone post-millennial and paranoid. –Zach Baron Listen: Arcade Fire: “Keep the Car Running”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEZockGkEyY,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/524/arcadefirekeepthe.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Arcade_Fire-Keep_the_Car_Running.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,28,Dizzee Rascal,“Pussy’ole (Old Skool)”,XL,"Appropriating a heavy-hitting sample usually looks better on paper than it winds up sounding (see: Wu-Tang vs. the Beatles). But just as Kanye West did to Curtis Mayfield’s “Move on Up” a few years back, ""Pussy’ole"" finds Dizzee Rascal taking an iconic track (Rob Base and DJ EZ-Rock’s “It Takes Two”) and sharpening it, leaning not just on the euphoria and familiarity of the original but ratcheting up its pop pleasure with a galloping, insistent production and forceful rhymes. Sadly, not many people heard it-- or much from Rascal’s Maths + English LP, which wasn’t even released in U.S. shops. Were Rascal to have issued his three records to date in reverse order, he would likely be an indie superstar now-- moving from amped-up populism to the avant-garde. As it stands, an artist that a lot of our readers likely feel is overrated is now on a path to becoming underappreciated. –Scott Plagenhoef Listen: Dizzee Rascal: “Pussy’ole (Old Skool)”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eo5EXmhz01E,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/524/dizzeerascalpussy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dizzee_Rascal-Pussyole_Old_Skool.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,27,Lil Mama,“Lip Gloss”,Jive,"We’re living in a golden age of schoolyard rap right now. Every week, it seems, a new, sublimely simple catchphrase/ringtone/dance rises up from the playground to conquer the Hot 100. But due to, um, scheduling conflicts, Soulja Boy, MIMS, Shop Boyz, Hurricane Chris, and their friends couldn’t join us on Pitchfork’s Top Tracks list today. (Hey, Dude ’N Nem made it! Hey guys!) Lil Mama deserved to claw her way near the top, though, with her rapid-fire bragging about a certain liquid cosmetic (and other things, if you’re a Freudian) over the year’s most astonishingly minimal beat. Time will tell if 17-year-old Niatia Kirkland is the next Lil Wayne or the next Skee-Lo, but for now, she’s poppin’, and that’s all we need to know. –Amy Phillips Listen: Lil Mama: “Lip Gloss”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5ck6TJQ5Ow,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/524/lilmamalipgloss.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lil_Mama-Lip_Gloss.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,26,Jay-Z,“Roc Boys (And the Winner Is...)”,Roc-A-Fella / Def Jam,"As vérité cinema, American Gangster was a wash-- inspired by The Godfather, Goodfellas et al., panning over the life of a hustler who was nominally Jay-Z when he wasn't Frank Lucas or Nicky Barnes, Erik Estrada or Robert DeNiro. Amidst the mash-up of a dozen life stories, “Roc Boys” struck the autobiographical note: “And the winner is Hov!” This “black superhero music” was the success the jaded and over-satiated Kingdom Come wasn't: Happy to be there, grateful to those who'd helped, and chiseled, down to the entendres-- “Thanks to all the hustlers and most importantly, You: the customer.” –Zach Baron Listen: Jay-Z: “Roc Boys (And the Winner Is...)”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Revmkhxu7dk,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/524/jayzgangster.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jay-Z-Roc_Boys_And_the_Winner_Is.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,25,Kanye West,“Can't Tell Me Nothing”,Roc-A-Fella / Def Jam,"At first, it sounded like a weird capitulation, Kanye West giving up his ecstatic soul-samples for DJ Toomp’s dark, heaving Southern synths and trying on Young Jeezy’s sneering slow-flow. (None of which did much to redeem that one god-awful lyric about the devil wearing Prada and Adam and Eve wearing nada). But then the strut of that chorus sunk in, and the self-aware defiance and bitter regret of Kanye’s self-reliance anthem took hold: “I feel depression, under more scrutiny/ And what I do? Act more stupidly.” Jeezy’s sampled ad-libs float through the track like a ghost, and the low, sampled moans slowly eased their way past Toomp’s foghorn keyboards. Kanye’s fully-on-display egotism doesn’t make his confusion any less poignant; throughout, he seems to be struggling to say something that never quite comes to him. And that Prada/nada line? Funny thing about Kanye’s lyrical clunkers is that they eventually become endearing. –Tom Breihan Listen: Kanye West: “Can’t Tell Me Nothing”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E58qLXBfLrs,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/524/kanyenothing.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kanye_West-Cant_Tell_Me_Nothing.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,24,Gui Boratto,“Beautiful Life”,Kompakt,"This nine-minute workout by Brazil’s Gui Boratto might read cloyingly with a refrain that goes “What a beautiful life, what a beautiful world,” but its churning chord progression squeezes out an essence more bittersweet than saccharine. The song’s surface-- woven from pock-marked synths, radiant ride cymbals, and bright snares-- feels crusted in rough-cut diamonds. That there are only three chords in the whole thing somehow makes its sense of yearning that much more urgent. Masterfully repetitive, it’s the little details-- close harmony vocals, high-necked New Order basslines-- that keep your heart breaking long after you’d thought it’d been sufficiently shattered. –Philip Sherburne Listen: Gui Boratto: “Beautiful Life”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFoJM2tTFlY,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/524/600x600bb.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Gui_Boratto-Beautiful_Life.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,23,Simian Mobile Disco,“I Believe”,Wichita,"In a year when acts like Justice and Klaxons raced to the first nosebleed, rockers-turned-DJs James Ford and James Anthony Shaw kept a relatively sober disposition. “I Believe” was the eye of 2007’s electronic hurricane, its heartbeat rhythm untainted by stimulants, its earnest dancefloor romance all-natural. I can’t even believe SMD have ever touched a guitar; usually stray riffs or fuzz effects haunt a rock-electro crossover, or at least tongue-in-cheek winks to mollify dance-phobic listeners. But here, the punk residue’s wiped totally clean, and “I Believe” ends 2007 as a stunning highlight from the year’s most successful post-op dance act. –Adam Moerder Listen: Simian Mobile Disco: “I Believe”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AG9REBW3b2s,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/524/SMD-believe.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Simian_Mobile_Disco-I_Believe.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,22,Animal Collective,“Peacebone”,Domino,"Animal Collective’s music often skirts silliness, but “Peacebone” is almost pure goof. Opening with the cartoonish non-sequitir “Boneface!,” the cut briefly sounds noisy and abstract. But once Geologist’s electronic squiggles coalesce into melody, Avey Tare weaves a surreal nursery rhyme, his monster tale sounding like an alternate-universe theme to “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse”. The huge hook of the chorus and the weird ya-ya yelps of the bridge only add to the helium-injected giddiness. By the end the band hits a delirious peak, a final dollop of whipped cream on this irresistible, tooth-decaying sundae. –Marc Masters Listen: Animal Collective: “Peacebone”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxvGHQHiY70,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/524/animalcollective-peacebone.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Animal_Collective-Peacebone.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,21,M.I.A.,“Boyz”,XL / Interscope,"An anti-patriarchy song that doubles as a flirt; a political song that doubles as a dancing-and-drinking song; yet another song where M.I.A. tries to mash up the entire Third World at once-- soca synths, Indian drumming, dancehall patois-- and pretty much succeeds. (There's a cheering crowd deep in the mix to vouch for her.) “Boyz” is stuffed with clever gestures, starting with the chorus' scuffed-CD skip, but the cleverest is hidden in the middle chant: It sounds like “how many how many boys are crazy?” Listen closer for the qualification: the war-starters are “no money boys.” –Douglas Wolk Listen: M.I.A.: “Boyz”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcN1i6Qcjxg,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/524/miaboyz.jpg,/dataset/artwork/MIA-Boyz.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,20,Radiohead,“All I Need”,self-released,"It’s not difficult to imagine “All I Need” as a snapshot of the same poor soul Radiohead sang about 14 years ago in “Creep”: The kid who once felt it necessary to brashly proclaim his weirdness and inadequacies over bursts of feedback has internalized and sublimated all that awkwardness. Now, he proclaims his love through metaphors that are at best mildly pathetic, and does so in front of a musical backdrop that undercuts the song’s melody with bursts of warm dissonance. The result is a haunting song that’s more about the void one feels without love than the sensations of finding it. –David Raposa Listen: Radiohead:“All I Need”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioPDGJIf2QI,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/524/inrainbows.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Radiohead-All_I_Need.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,19,The Field,“A Paw in My Face”,Kompakt,"In April 2007, indie kids and crate-diggers collectively fainted during the final few seconds of “A Paw in My Face”, when the elastic guitar sample they’d been geeking out on revealed itself to be Lionel Richie’s “Hello”. More than a pop-cultural jibe, the sample provides a distant heat source to Axel Willner’s arctic trance, already warmed by a cardiac thump and hi-hats, as he sweeps polished-granite synth bricks across the ice like a curler. –Brian Howe Listen: The Field: “A Paw in My Face”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jfRsIoTC4c,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/524/herewegosublime.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Field-A_Paw_in_My_Face.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,18,Chromatics,“In the City”,Italians Do It Better,"“In the City” is one of a handful of recent Chromatics songs to evoke the feeling of gliding at 25 mph through an hours-past-midnight downtown club district as everyone quietly fades off the streets. The song’s minimalist Italo-disco drone pulses through a fading-buzz haze, with synth arpeggios and a fidgety guitar riff pacing back and forth across a beat that seems slower than it really is. Ruth Radelet sings like she’s murmuring in her sleep, gasping fragments of narrative-- “shining pistol,” “shimmer diamonds,” “concrete river”-- to make wistfully dreamlike noir-pop. –Nate Patrin Listen: Chromatics: “In the City”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFOxribt3kA,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/524/chromaticscity.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Chromatics-In_the_City.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,17,Burial,“Archangel”,Hyperdub,"On “Archangel”, the enigmatic London dubstep artist Burial works in his typical fashion to disguise the origins of his source material. Manipulated vocals are allowed to rise up through the gaslit scenery, their pitch-shifted voices removed of all history or identity. This effect-- when combined with Burial’s eerie canned strings and flickering beats-- results in some of the most lonesome and deeply evocative music around. “Tell me I belong,” an androgynous voice cries, and it’s left to the listener to decide if this is the sound of one calling out to the angels for deliverance, or the displaced voice of the archangel itself, answering back through the shadows. –Matthew Murphy Listen: Burial: “Archangel”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8k_f2QK77ew,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/524/burialuntrue.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Burial-Archangel.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,16,Feist,“1 2 3 4”,Cherrytree / Interscope,"If this song only brings to mind an unending onslaught of fine consumer products, then please step away from the television and give it a second chance. At the very least, try to appreciate the peculiar timbre of Leslie Feist’s voice-- airy but substantial, expressive without resorting to over-emotive shows of force. Maybe take a moment to bask in the song’s charmingly coy regret, and try to enjoy the moment when the band’s restraint gives way to a euphoric torrent of strings and horns. Sure, it’s a bit overplayed, but every so often a song’s beaten into the ground because it totally deserves the exposure. –David Raposa Listen: Feist: “1 2 3 4”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABYnqp-bxvg,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/524/1234feist.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Feist-1_2_3_4.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,15,Jens Lekman,“A Postcard to Nina”,Service / Secretly Canadian,"“A Postcard to Nina” belongs to that rarified pantheon of humorous pop songs that remain funny long after the sixth, seventh, eighth listen-- there’s a seemingly endless supply of sweet, tender LOLs to be unraveled from this swooning little ditty. Its plotline (Jens must pose as lesbian Nina’s boyfriend to please/deceive her father) is pure Woody Allen, its attention to detail that of a finely wrought literary short story. And by the lite-funk coda, we’re swept away on a tide of horns and wood block towards a land of universal tolerance and acceptance. –Amy Phillips Listen: Jens Lekman: “A Postcard to Nina”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1DaGZ9k5m4,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/524/JensLekman_NightFalls.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jens_Lekman-A_Postcard_to_Nina.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,14,Caribou,“Melody Day”,Merge,"Dan Snaith’s Manitoba/Caribou discography has thus far presented a linear journey through the past, starting with pre-millennial folktronica (2000’s Stop Breaking My Heart) back through early 90s shoegazer (2003’s Up in Flames), mid-70s krautrock (2005’s The Milk of Human Kindness), and, with this year’s Andorra, to 1966, when pop exploded from black-and-white into Technicolor. “Melody Day” places Snaith’s androgynous vocal amid a snow-globe flurry of 60s signifiers-- glockenspiel cues, sleigh-bell shuffles, flute flourishes, songs named after girls who have the kind of names that only exist in songs-- before that glass-shattering chorus triggers one of Snaith’s signature blitzkrieg drum breaks and transports us right back to the here and now. –Stuart Berman Listen: Caribou: “Melody Day”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7Oe1DN5VDA,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/524/melodyday.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Caribou-Melody_Day.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,13,Of Montreal,“The Past Is a Grotesque Animal”,Polyvinyl,"A 12-minute meditation on regret with a disco beat? From these guys? Good thing Kevin Barnes and co. know what separates an idle jam from a damn great song, and they pepper Hissing Fauna’s epic centerpiece with enough machinated guitar squalls, namechecks, and detours into the absurd to keep our eyebrows arched throughout. Best of all, this thing builds, and by the time Barnes incites us to “tear the fucking house apart!” we’re right there with him, inches from flinging the headphones through the computer screen or careening the car into oncoming traffic. –Matthew Solarski Listen: Of Montreal: “The Past Is a Grotesque Animal”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vn-eFXxLXTM,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/524/montrealthepast.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Of_Montreal-The_Past_Is_a_Grotesque_Animal.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,12,Spoon,“You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb”,Merge,"Soul music has specialized in rendering unreconciled inner torture as celebratory, and “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb” proves that Spoon can seamlessly combine that tradition with indie rock’s tendency toward coy romanticism. On its surface, “Cherry Bomb” is a throbbing romp with Smokey Robinson tendencies toward lyrical wordplay. Digging a little deeper, we see Britt Daniel’s own deeply conflicted heart on full display: Few contemporary singers could break up with a girl by saying “life could be so fair,” and have those words not come across as empty. Spoon’s sense of hollowness, as always, resides at a sonic level, allowing plenty of empty space for emotions to reverberate. Most impressively, during a year when ’60s-influenced soul music forced its way back into the popular consciousness from all angles, Spoon may have just created the most appealing and enduring Motown cop of all. –Eric Harvey Listen: Spoon: “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkA-L3mK7q8,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/524/spoongaga.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Spoon-You_Got_Yr_Cherry_Bomb.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,11,Grinderman,“No Pussy Blues”,Anti-,"Ninety-nine percent of blues songs are about not getting pussy, but leave it to Nick Cave and a couple of his baddest Seeds to make blueballs sound like the second coming of the Black Plague. For all its sub-atomic Stooges squall-- first-time guitarist Cave doesn’t so much play his instrument as get electrocuted by it-- “No Pussy Blues” is really a requiem for the lost art of romance: An admission that flowers, poetry, and serenades just don’t cut it in a post-Paris world where the most coveted fashion accessory is “a revolting little Chihuahua.” –Stuart Berman Listen: Grinderman: “No Pussy Blues”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nxqlb1--uKc,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/524/nopussyblues.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Grinderman-No_Pussy_Blues.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,10,Jay-Z,“Ignorant Shit” [ft. Beanie Sigel] ,Roc-A-Fella / Def Jam,"Some rappers turn outtakes into mixtape fodder; Hova turned one into an album highlight. “Ignorant Shit” showed up in its earliest form as a widely bootlegged circa-2003 Black Album castoff, and even then it was sick: Just Blaze’s vintage electro-gloss made for a pristine banger and Jay is funny without being jokey, wrapping narrative around an unforcibly catchy cadence (“‘That’s him!’ I’m usually what they whisper ‘bout/ Either what chick he with, or his chip amount/ Cause I been doin’ this since ‘CHiPs’ was out/ Watchin’ Erik Estrada, baggin’ up at the Ramada”). And the new Imus-baiting verse rocks well next to the sarcastic profanity of the radio-unfriendly hood-Carlin hook. –Nate Patrin Listen: Jay-Z: “Ignorant Shit” [ft. Beanie Sigel]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eqz5wRjpRPM,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/524/jayzgangster.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jay-Z-Ignorant_Shit_ft_Beanie_Sigel_.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,9,Animal Collective,“Fireworks”,Domino,"It’s a song about self-doubt, distance, and the desire to reclaim that sublime but fleeting moment when everything made sense. “That sacred night where we watched the fireworks” is the place to return to here, and the song paints a vivid picture: The scratchy rhythm pulse and ringing guitars bring to mind open sky; Avey Tare sings loud and clear, like he wants to make sure he’s heard above the din; and then the melody, which sticks in my head like nothing the band has written, tumbles down like a still-glowing ember. Animal Collective made their name by bending familiar music-- rustic folk, Beach Boys harmony, swirly psych-rock-- into unfamiliar new shapes; with “Fireworks”, they sound weary of abstraction. The goal here is simply to connect, and they succeed mightily. –Mark Richardson Listen: Animal Collective: “Fireworks”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztvr09J7KK4,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/524/animalcollective-peacebone.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Animal_Collective-Fireworks.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,8,Justice,“D.A.N.C.E.”,Ed Banger / Downtown / Vice,"Those who grabbed onto “D.A.N.C.E.” in the early stages of its steady, interminable ascent from cutesy scenester anthem to ubiquitous Kanye-beloved pop jam are now likely to hear those children of the chorus as children of the corn-- it has stubbornly remained on dance music’s radar for the bulk of the calendar year. Part of that is due to its almost comically long string of remixes; between Jackson, Jacques Lu Cont, Alan Braxe, Tittsworth, MSTRKRFT, and Justice themselves, everyone and their artfully mustachioed hangers-on had a go at improving on “D.A.N.C.E.”’s many charms. Pretty much all of them failed, and no wonder: How do you improve on something that manages to sound about 18 months ahead while at the same time evoking the joy of vintage Jackson 5? –Mark Pytlik Listen: Justice: “D.A.N.C.E.”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCnBrrnOefs,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/524/justicedance.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Justice-DANCE.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,7,LCD Soundsystem,“Someone Great”,DFA / EMI,"Faced with the mortality of a relationship, James Murphy’s artistic burden changed: After the fateful morning of “Someone Great”, it no longer seemed enough to coolly dissect how sensations form scenes; it became time to consider the fragile emotions of the people within them. His voice, faced with a set of circumstances he avoided in the past, sheds its cool façade and betrays a boyish frailty in the face of sheer confusion. The glockenspiel chimes that accompany each word Murphy sings help pierce the bleary warble that hounds him, and suspends him within that frozen moment. As he re-situates himself using the only constants that remain-- coffee, the weather-- he triggers a fresh sense of self-awareness, resigning to the everyday responsibilities of adulthood, which seem liberating in this context. It’s cold comfort, though; in Sound of Silver’s next song, we learn that growing up, too, is a form of anxiety that keeps coming till the day it stops. –Eric Harvey Listen: LCD Soundsystem: “Someone Great”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwoLACv_srQ,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/524/someonegr8.jpg,/dataset/artwork/LCD_Soundsystem-Someone_Great.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,6,UGK,“Int’l Players Anthem (I Choose You)” [ft. Outkast]  ,Jive,"On December 4, Pimp C, one half of UGK, was found dead in a Hollywood hotel room. With Pimp gone, we’ll never get another song like this one, a summit meeting of three of Southern rap’s greatest duos. Three 6 Mafia’s deliriously gorgeous Willie Hutch loop swoops and dives, while Outkast and UGK trace a relationship from beginning tof end. On his starry-eyed, arrhythmic verse, Andre 3000 sounds like a lovestruck kid, his loopy grin clearly audible. Andre’s verse lends a humane warmth to the greasy pimp-talk that follows, but the song really achieves liftoff the instant he trails off, as both Paul and Juicy’s atomic bass-rumble and Pimp C’s derisive sneer hit the track. Things get more complicated when Bun B and Big Boi enter, one enthusing about prostitution prospects while the other dizzily recounting a rough divorce. But both rappers attack the track with such glee-- Bun’s commanding baritone effortlessly playing off Big Boi’s playful hiccup-- that the joy of the delivery overwhelms the squalor of the words. And that’s “Int’l Players Anthem”: a life-affirming blast of a song that’s somehow become a dirge. –Tom Breihan Listen: UGK: “Int’l Players Anthem (I Choose You)” [ft. Outkast]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awMIbA34MT8,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/524/UGK.jpg,/dataset/artwork/UGK-Intl_Players_Anthem_I_Choose_You_ft_Outkast__.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,5,Rihanna,“Umbrella” [ft. Jay-Z] ,Def Jam,"Having been touted by Def Jam as reggae-pop princess, electro vamp, and apprentice Beyonce, who would have guessed that Rihanna would find her calling as the voice of defiant fidelity in a faithless world? The-Dream's early demo of “Umbrella” was supposedly passed on by both Mary J. Blige and Britney Spears, but it's hard to imagine how either could have improved on this world-conquering rendition. As a girl in Barbados, Rihanna's idols were Whitney and Celine, but even on a turbo-ballad like this, she'll never have those kind of diva chops. Instead, it's precisely her vocal modesty-- the apparently artless, trailing “ey, ey” in the chorus, where a stronger singer might have succumbed to melisma-- that made the song all the more irresistable. –Stephen Troussé Listen: Rihanna: “Umbrella” [ft. Jay-Z]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvBfHwUxHIk,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/524/ririumbrella.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rihanna-Umbrella_ft_Jay-Z_.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,4,M.I.A.,“Paper Planes (Remix)” [ft. Bun B and Rich Boy],XL / Interscope,"From 2004 onward, M.I.A.’s global agitprop, Third World solidarity, and guerilla-pop war zone trappings saw her transcending electroclash by sounding like, well, electro’s Clash-- and that was before she sampled “Straight to Hell”. The spine of “Paper Planes” is brilliant: Cranking up the bass on the most mournful track in the Strummer/Jones catalog, tying in an interpolation of the “Rump Shaker” hook with gunshots and cash registers, and dropping it on top of a supple boom-click beat that ringtone rappers would piss themselves for is stunt production at its finest, and instead of describing a no-man’s land with no asylum, Maya’s making paper by scoring immigrants some visas. The hustler-as-freedom-fighter tone is especially effective in the remix, where Rich Boy’s casually triumphant drawl turns boilerplate gun-as-girl talk into defiant cop-heckling and Bun B extends his head-before-hands hustle technique “from the Third World countries to the second and the first.” –Nate Patrin Listen: M.I.A.: “Paper Planes (Remix)” [ft. Bun B and Rich Boy]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USgFcIVzjCc,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/524/miaremixes.jpg,/dataset/artwork/MIA-Paper_Planes_Remix_ft_Bun_B_and_Rich_Boy.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,3,Panda Bear,“Bros”,Paw Track,"Freed from the strategic abrasions of Animal Collective, the solo Panda Bear quickly succumbs to pure loveliness. The epic “Bros” drifts through several movements, all vying to outdo the last with voluptuous prettiness. From sighing multi-tracked vocals to jewel-box loops to caramelized guitar riffs, each layer adds hypnotic depth to a song whose gorgeousness seems dangerously excessive from the start, a sugar-rush that might end in psychosis. Doubled-over with luscious detail, the swelling arrangement shimmers like the air above the pavement on a hot day, its hazy swirl achieving a completeness not likely to be recaptured by next year’s inevitable throngs of imitators. –Tim Finney Listen: Panda Bear: “Bros”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQUrf6DpXjc,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/524/pandabearbros.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Panda_Bear-Bros.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,2,Battles,“Atlas”,Warp,"Schäffel stole a beat from Gary Glitter, and Battles stole it back. It’s a beat with substance and force: immense and all-encompassing, like the song’s title; martial, like the band’s name. The guy pounding it out is John Stanier, formerly of Helmet, whose name inspires hushed, reverent tones from anyone who’s ever sat on a drum stool. Like the rest of the band, he’s a virtuoso, but here he applies his skills in a new way. People talk about the collective chops of Battles, but “Atlas” boils down to more than technical prowess; it gathers and focuses all the bound-up energy that comes from years of study and points it like a weapon in one direction: forward. –Mark Richardson Listen: Battles: “Atlas”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpGp-22t0lU,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/524/battlesatlas.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Battles-Atlas.jpg
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6752-top-100-tracks-of-2007/,2007,year,song,1,LCD Soundsystem,“All My Friends”,DFA / EMI,"Fidgety piano chords played with clunky imprecision, a ticking rhythm section, and an opening line worthy of a great novel-- so begins our favorite song of 2007. Like most of LCD Soundsystem’s future Best of candidates, “All My Friends” starts out handling like a rickety shopping cart and ends up blazing like a house on fire. What’s special about this one is the story that plays out in between; where James Murphy used to take perverse pleasure in making up his lyrics on the spot, this is proof that he’s too sharp a writer to leave his words to chance. “All My Friends” is about a lot of things-- guilt, drugs, the weight of expectation-- but mostly, it’s about aging, about how the template for growing older is melting away, and about what decisions we make for ourselves in light of such lowered expectations. This is a song about building a compass, and for Murphy, that journey not only starts with his friends: it ends there, too. –Mark Pytlik Listen: LCD Soundsystem: “All My Friends”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9wnbPUgq6c,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/524/lcdallmyfriends.jpg,/dataset/artwork/LCD_Soundsystem-All_My_Friends.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,100,Clams Casino,Instrumental Mixtape,Self-released,"Wherein a part time beatsmith links up with Soulja Boy and the almighty BasedGod on Myspace to lace their stoned earnestness with thick cumulus cover. In peeling away the singularly outré vocals from a dozen of Clams Casino’s finest weird rap nuggets, Instrumental Mixtape fully exposes the playground of textural oddities swirling underfoot—human voices splayed like chewing gum, birdcalls, and acres of white noise. It’s a wonder as much for sound as for sheer improbability, too, an ace beat tape from a producer without a working knowledge of the form, an ambient shoegaze watershed from a full-time physical therapy student who’d never heard of the stuff. —Craig Jenkins",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/16401/homepage_large.2bff67f8.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Clams_Casino-Instrumental_Mixtape.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,99,Jai Paul,Jai Paul,Self-released,"Jai Paul is a ghost in the machine, haunting the Internet with unanswered questions. Who is this guy making this polyglot space-funk that sounds like it’s being beamed in from another star? Why has he only officially released two songs in four years (the muffled miniature masterpieces “BTSTU” and “Jasmine”)? What’s the real story behind this allegedly leaked collection of alleged demos? Why the hell did he sample “Gossip Girl” and cover Jennifer Paige’s “Crush”? As of this writing, 16 months have passed since these tracks mysteriously appeared on Bandcamp. Sixteen months of complete silence from Jai Paul, only adding to his legend. If he never releases another note of new music, it would actually be kind of perfect. —Amy Phillips",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/jaipaul/btstu-edit,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/20015/homepage_large.72473839.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jai_Paul-Jai_Paul.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,98,Earl Sweatshirt,Earl,,"It's hard to remember, but there was a brief moment when Odd Future felt refreshingly small. Before the blog hype, the Los Angeles rap collective existed in a vacuum of carefully lo-fi Tumblr-distributed zip files. It was teenage lightning in a bottle and it never got more potent than Earl, the eponymous debut of a 16-year-old rap prodigy bred on the syllabic havoc of Eminem and backed by the crumpled Neptunes plod of producer/guru Tyler, the Creator. The young Sweatshirt was a shock rapper, to be certain, but he shocked in the service of a greater vulnerability. For all its bluster, Earl is an oddly introverted record, one that would almost certainly sink to the bottom of today's rap internet. That's the sad irony of OF's rise: we thought we were witnessing the future of music—a creative ecosystem where children could be left to build their own universes unfettered—when we were actually enjoying the last gasp of this past. —Andrew Nosnitsky",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/20974/homepage_large.a7126f27.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Earl_Sweatshirt-Earl.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,97,Rustie,Glass Swords,Warp,"Cramming a fleet of synth sounds into a series of quick, bright blips of pop music, Glasgow's Russell Whyte did not know when to stop when it came to Glass Swords, his debut album. His willfully overzealous style, which Simon Reynolds called “digital maximalism,” conjures thoughts of The Legend of Zelda: MDMA Edition, or a computer that throws up double rainbows every minute of every day, or maybe robots popping and locking in an underwater club years after humans have been mercifully extinguished. In other words, it sounds like the future: overloaded, swift, and perhaps a bit anxious. The producer drove his point home even further on a two-hour Essential Mix from 2012, which seamlessly mixed mainstream rap and R&B with his own tracks, sounding like Top 40 radio beaming in from a hyperworld a few galaxies away. —Ryan Dombal",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/warp-records/rustie-all-nite/s-sk7a9,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/17071/homepage_large.72ec58f5.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rustie-Glass_Swords.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,96,Young Thug,1017 Thug,,"Neither toxicologist nor translator can interpret Young Thug. His vocabulary is a creole of Atlanta trap slang, Hopelandic, and the language of thought—the yeows, yelps, and coos used by babies to communicate. His bloodstream is equal parts Strawberry Jolly Ranchers, promethazine, tropical Fanta, marijuana, molly, and alien drugs beamed in from the plug on Betelgeuse. It is possible to explain him in terms of conventional lineage. There’s the croaking syllable plasticity of Lil Wayne circa the lunar peaks of his Martian phase. But Thugga hails from one planet further out, an inhospitable and volcanic sphere of choppy rock where the strip clubs only accept hundreds. He shouts out Fabo and OJ the Juiceman. Gucci Mane is his spiritual advisor. But when he looks in the mirror, 22-year old Jeffrey Williams only sees a meal ticket and occasionally Princess Leia buns. The eccentricity makes him compelling, but it doesn’t make him great. His hooks are sticky as resin. His craggy voice sounds ancient and energetic at the same time. You might question the lifestyle decisions, but few make self-destruction sound so gleeful. He spells out “l-e-a-n-i-n-g” on “2 Cups Stuffed” like Styrofoam and codeine were presents under the Christmas tree. The condo is an aspirational ideal, a metaphor for highness, a place to store his imaginary Grammys, and to fuck nannies. That is, if he’s not in Jamaica or Siberia smoking weed from Nigeria. It also sounds like he’s taking a trip to Alberia, a country from Howl’s Moving Castle, which actually makes more sense. He belongs in an animated world of mad hatters, sorcerers, witch’s curses, and carpet-bombing. Or at the very least, Pokémon, as an evil Pikachu where he can level up, blind you with diamonds and use his lightning rod at will. Since last February’s release of 1017 Thug, Thug has ascended to the throne as Atlanta’s next star. His singles “Stoner”, “Danny Glover”, and “Lifestyle” earned him airplay across the South, but this mixtape is when he announced his arrival. It’s unclear where he came from or where he’s going next, but none of the minor logistics matter. When you enter a different world, you don’t expect to speak the same language. —Jeff Weiss",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/some12fwit-1/12-young-thug-picacho-feat | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4l2e80vR0w,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/19086/homepage_large.df697f74.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Young_Thug-1017_Thug.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,95,Nicolas Jaar,Space Is Only Noise,Circus Company,"Jaar’s debut is the kind of loose, subliminal music that suggests a beautiful place just out of reach, like the sound of the ocean playing from inside a conch shell. It fogs together, it falls apart, it builds up only to dissolve into giggles and splashing. Foreplay, basically, and though Jaar uses samples and occasionally defers to the backbone of a 4/4 beat, that doesn’t make him techno, nor do his jazz inflections and French-film dialogue make him smarmy. He’s a thinker and a sensualist—someone who just wants to slide in close enough to see what you dream. —Mike Powell",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/16214/homepage_large.63185fe9.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nicolas_Jaar-Space_Is_Only_Noise.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,94,How to Dress Well,"""What Is This Heart?""",Domino / Weird World,"Tom Krell used his first two albums to fuse noise and traditional song structures, creating devices to obscure his own nakedly emotional pleas. On “What Is This Heart?”, his third and most striking album, he emerges from the darkness, facing himself and the world around him with disorienting clarity. You only need to glance at the quotes surrounding the album title to guess that Krell is a Ph.D. student, but “What Is This Heart?”’s intense, soul-searching honesty transcends any pretense of academia, steamrolling through rubbery R&B, swelling drone, and plaintive acoustic balladry. The elliptical question posed in the album’s title is never answered, and that’s OK; the album's raw power comes from following Krell’s journey into the center of himself, even as he holds up a mirror to our own uncertainties. —Larry Fitzmaurice",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/howtodresswell/repeat-pleasure,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/20654/homepage_large.bc2dad80.jpg,/dataset/artwork/How_to_Dress_Well-What_Is_This_Heart.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,93,Tim Hecker,"Ravedeath, 1972",Kranky,"Tim Hecker has always been more of a synthesist than a bellwether—someone who pulls together disparate styles from forbidding worlds into music that might make sense to an outsider. Based around recordings of a day playing pipe organ in an Icelandic church, Ravedeath sounds less like music than the remnants of it—a haunted, hollowed-out record that reflects Hecker’s fascination with what he calls “digital garbage.” Part of what makes the album appealing is that it’s middleweight: Sturdy without being oppressive, ethereal without feeling limp. And given how high-minded and abstract rhetoric surrounding electronic music can get, Hecker has an eerie talent of reminding you that behind all the gauze and processing is a human, stumbling around with his hands. —Mike Powell",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/16219/homepage_large.a8e0787d.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tim_Hecker-Ravedeath_1972.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,92,Bat for Lashes,The Haunted Man,Parlophone,"Natasha Khan's breakout album as Bat for Lashes, 2009's Two Suns, exulted in high drama and mythic sweep, but its secret weapon was a synth-pop crush anthem named after The Karate Kid. Follow-up The Haunted Man ups the ante conceptually while also aiming all the more keenly at the emotions. It starts with a prayer and ends with ""a new religion being born,"" taking excursions into both druidic revelry and ghostly military choirs, but the electronically starry ""Marilyn"" and heartbreak-pinpricked ""All Your Gold"" are direct hits to rival any Ralph Macchio ode. The most refreshing departure is pared-down piano ballad ""Laura"", about someone who is ""more than a superstar."" If The Haunted Man's balance between pastoral grandeur and a boldly contemporary voice fit nicely into the digital-era folk music of 2014 albums by How to Dress Well or Hundred Waters, Khan herself has left albums behind the past couple of years, when her collaborators have included Beck, Jon Hopkins, and Damon Albarn. More than superstars, all. —Marc Hogan",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/batforlashes/bat-for-lashes-laura | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk5kBLkYFlc,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/18358/homepage_large.8dc55636.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bat_for_Lashes-The_Haunted_Man.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,91,Actress,Splazsh,Honest Jon's,"Each of Darren Cunningham's songs contains a universe. They might be lo-fi on the surface, but listen closely and there are layers upon layers of sound going into infinity. That quality made Splazsh a landmark record, taking the electro and techno influences of Cunningham's debut Hazyville and imploding them into less familiar shapes. He ended up with the stilted house on ""Hubble"", rusty and disjointed funk on ""Get Ohn"", and, most memorably, a fantastically jagged Prince edit in ""Purple Splazsh"". On his second album, Cunningham found a way to make deeply repetitive dance music sound more interdimensional and otherworldly than it ever has, and Splazsh is still a trip like no other. —Andrew Ryce",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/15433/homepage_large.4dc52374.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Actress-Splazsh.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,90,Waxahatchee,Cerulean Salt,Don Giovanni,"There are plenty of aspiring musicians who recite diary entries atop simple guitar strumming, but most don’t write dispatches that bring PostSecret realness the way Katie Crutchfield does. On her second album as Waxahatchee, Crutchfield smoothed out the lo-fi production, making her emotions even more explicit. Cerulean Salt recalls the stripped-down end of ‘90s alt-rock and Saddle Creek sad-boys, but Crutchfield’s highly specific, overwhelming exhaustion of having to Figure It All Out resembles a young Jenny Lewis, too. If the coping mechanism for her terrible twenties is hooky songs about self-conscious pillow talk, marital regret before anyone’s even put a ring on it, and swan-diving to one’s own graceful death, here’s hoping she doesn't grow up too fast. —Jillian Mapes",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/don-giovanni-records/waxahatchee-coast-to-coast,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/18886/homepage_large.2d507a6d.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Waxahatchee-Cerulean_Salt.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,89,Emeralds,Does It Look Like I'm Here?,Editions Mego,"During their seven-year lifespan, synth-heavy trio Emeralds put out dozens of headspace-expanding releases. But the Ohio-based trio’s proper albums always stood out above its flood of cassettes and CD-Rs, none more so than the group’s fourth full-length. Because Does It Look Like I’m Here? is heavy with analog synths and arpeggios, it’s easy to draw comparisons to any number of gurgling krautrock LPs from time beyond memory, but it was very much a record of its moment, an excellent synthesis of the previous decades’ best, weirdest ideas—from the grit of the then-thriving U.S. noise scene to the digital scuzz of Austrian electronic musicians like Fennesz and Pita, whose label, Editions Mego, released the album. More than any of that, it’s a dense, beautiful, and uplifting work that found the trio embracing melody and grounding its atmospheric improvisations with incessant sequenced rhythms. —Aaron Leitko",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/15328/homepage_large.9e38653b.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Emeralds-Does_It_Look_Like_Im_Here.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,88,Arcade Fire,Reflektor,Merge,"To read this sentence is to immerse yourself in the very universe that Arcade Fire fears: a world in which we are not present, but plugged in, craning our necks to peer at brightly-lit screens. Courageous and reckless in all the right ways, Reflektor's ""here-goes"" mentality was realized via producer James Murphy's spinning disco ball, leading to death-defying highlights like ""We Exist"" and ""Afterlife"". From the throngs of nocturnally-crazed street folk populating ""Here Comes the Night Time"", refusing to go back inside, to Orpheus and Eurydice and their dimension-defying love (and loss), to ""Joan of Arc"" herself, Reflektor is populated by characters who actively seek to escape systems of control, but the path to the exit leads through the dance floor. —Zoe Camp",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/19859/homepage_large.79062484.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Arcade_Fire-Reflektor.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,87,FKA twigs,LP1,Young Turks,"“Sex music” is tricky to nail: it can come off as too on-the-nose and premeditated, and if it deviates too far off topic, it becomes a distraction. On her searing full-length debut, FKA twigs already has the sub-genre figured out. Everything’s way sexier when sex itself is circled hungrily like an exceptionally prurient vulture, but never quite reached, and here it’s represented in long-distant memories (“Numbers”) and almost-tangible hallucinations (“Two Weeks”). In FKA twigs’ bedroom, there is no consummation, only coveting—which is fitting for an album imbued with such an alien take on piety, such as “Closer”’s canticle-like shape, beamed in from some frostbitten lunar cloister. Don’t get it twisted, though, as desire and desperation are not the same, as LP1 closes with a self-satisfied (ahem) trill: “When I’m alone, I don’t need you.” —Meaghan Garvey",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/20816/homepage_large.48a48155.jpg,/dataset/artwork/FKA_twigs-LP1.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,86,Real Estate,Atlas,Domino,"Real Estate have always been a band aware of their own strengths, and many of their best qualities—subtlety, melodic precision, graceful interplay of voice and guitar—have sharpened over time. Atlas is Real Estate’s most mature album to date—virtually every track on the album makes some reference to the passage of time, measured either in hours or miles spent behind the wheel. Any listener of a certain age will recognize a familiar ache when Martin Courtney sings “I’m just trying to make some sense of this/ Before I lose another year,” on “The Bend”. Yet there’s also a befuddled sense of gratitude that courses through such grown-up love songs as “Horizon” or “Had to Hear”, suggesting that Real Estate have already realized that time is on their side. —Matthew Murphy",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/real-estate-the-band/crime-1,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/20264/homepage_large.d9f36f89.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Real_Estate-Atlas.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,85,Swans,To Be Kind,Mute / Young God,"When Michael Gira announced in early 2010 that, after more than a decade without Swans, he’d be leading a new version on the road and in the studio, he made his intentions of advancement clear: “It’s not some dumb-ass nostalgia act. It is not repeating the past.” His hopes to press Swans ahead have been manifest since that year’s My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky and, even more so, on 2012’s massive The Seer. But To Be Kind, the third and most demanding album since the return of Swans, is too commanding, unyielding, and impatient to make room for relics. The band contorts primal rhythms and brutalizes basic melodies, turns gentle moments into death-trap bait and hits each crescendo with ecstatic malice. In an era of noncommittal cash-grab resurrections, Swans have become one of the few act to use their legacy as a stepstool for what’s to come—a commitment that helped push To Be Kind into the Billboard 200 and the band that made it into the position of irrefutable authority. —Grayson Haver Currin",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/20541/homepage_large.dfa26de1.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Swans-To_Be_Kind.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,84,A$AP Rocky,LIVELOVEA$AP,,"Everyone’s always trying to bring New York back, but early in the decade, there were few artists attempting to move the city’s sound forward. Outer-borough crews aped boom-bap, pining for the days when the local product ruled hip-hop. But Rakim Mayers, named after Gotham’s original god MC, went a different way, repping Harlem by way of sounds from Houston and Cleveland.  Rocky took cloud-rap and imbued it with charisma and hustle. He did what New York has always done: synthesized and repackaged the most popular sounds of the moment, put a pretty face on the cover, and watched it take the fuck off. —Jonah Bromwich",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/live-love-asap/peso,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/17163/homepage_large.898d4498.jpg,/dataset/artwork/AAP_Rocky-LIVELOVEAAP.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,83,Tame Impala,Innerspeaker,Modular,"There’s something hard to deny about a band that can make a convincing song that sounds like John Lennon trapped in an amber of dive-bombing synth and phaser-coated guitar. Tame Impala did it 12 times on their debut, wrenching a classic wooly psych sound into the 21st century, imbuing it with a heavy groove and a distinctly modern iridescence. It takes sharp songwriting to cut through this much atmosphere, and the band shows skill and range running from the insistent throb of “Solitude Is Bliss” to the breathless take-off and non-stop ascent of “Runway, Houses, City Clouds”. —Joe Tangari",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/tame-impala/solitude-is-bliss,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/15333/homepage_large.7ea586f7.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tame_Impala-Innerspeaker.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,82,Chief Keef,Finally Rich,Interscope,"The most uncharacteristically candid moment of Finally Rich is an interview snippet that opens album cut “Ballin'”, on which 17-year old Keith Cozart reflects, “They thought I was gonna be some motherfucking screw-up or something. They thought I was gonna be, like, bad all my life.” The sentiment applies just as easily to post-Back From the Dead critical response as it does any other swath of naysayers; as his post-Finally Rich output has grown increasingly, and pointedly, obtuse, it isn’t totally out of the question to suspect that Cozart crafted one of rap’s best major label debuts in recent memory purely to spite us all. But if Finally Rich remains the only artifact of Cozart as a legitimate pop force, you’d be hard-pressed to ask for more singular proof. Though the hallmark of its biggest tracks is the slurry, adaptive nihilism that’s come to define Chicago street rap, its most transcendent moments (“Kay Kay”, “Citgo”) reveal a tenderness that shines through the cracks in Cozart’s armor. —Meaghan Garvey",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/chiefkeefsosa/chief-keef-i-dont-like-feat-1,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/18667/homepage_large.20581ba3.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Chief_Keef-Finally_Rich.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,81,Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti,Mature Themes,4AD,"You’d think Ariel Pink would have felt some pressure when following up Before Today; his cleaned-up 2010 breakthrough found a lot more fans than just the scores of lo-fi artists he had influenced in the previous decade. But if you’ve spent any time down the wacky rabbit-hole of Pink’s persona, the idea of him worrying about pleasing anyone other than himself seems a bit ridiculous. So Mature Themes finds Pink exploring continuations of Before Today’s sound (the pure pop of the title track), retreats to early obscurity (the muffled “Schnitzel Boogie”), imaginary crowd-pleasers (swingers like “Live It Up” and “Baby”), and goofy novelties (the gem “Kinski Assassin”). Throughout all its satisfactions and puzzlements, every note sounds like Ariel Pink, and considering how often artists that face a new spotlight tend to overthink their own personalities, Pink’s ability to thoroughly be himself was a mature feat. —Marc Masters",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/18112/homepage_large.e6f1f25a.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ariel_Pinks_Haunted_Graffiti-Mature_Themes.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,80,Mac DeMarco,2,Captured Tracks,"For his full-length debut under his own name, Montreal-based Merry Prankster Mac DeMarco decided to dial back the tape-warped weirdness of his earlier recordings, moving his delirious brand of music from the barroom to the bedroom. Grimy odes to tobacco products (both of the smokable and chewable varieties) still abound, but 2's greatest development was DeMarco's overwhelming sincerity. By upping the fidelity and indulging in breezy AM Gold love songs like ""My Kind of Woman"" and ""Still Together"", he set up the dichotomy that’s made his persona—the grubby, gap-toothed lothario who might put a drumstick up his unmentionables, as well as the devoted boyfriend who'll fill records with heartfelt ballads about the longevity of his relationship—so appealing. —Colin Joyce",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/capturedtracks/mac-demarco-my-kind-of-woman,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/18366/homepage_large.46f10fc3.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mac_DeMarco-2.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,79,Big Boi,Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty,Def Jam,"Big Boi started recording Sir Lucious Left Foot for Jive two years before Obama’s inauguration but it didn’t come out—on Def Jam—until the second summer of his administration. Still, for someone this gifted at weaving double-time bars around thumping Reagan-era electro-funk, the last thing Big Boi had to worry about was sounding dated. Though Jive’s lawyers kept André 3000 off the record (completists should seek out “Lookin’ 4 Ya” and “Royal Flush” online), the George Clinton/Too $hort-featuring slow burn “Fo Yo Sorrows,” the strip-club noir of “Tangerine” and the Gamble & Huff sheen of “Shine Blockas” (respectively featuring T.I. and Gucci Mane, two heirs to Big’s own Atlanta legacy) situate Left Foot amidst the trumpet, growl, and rumble of the A’s club culture while guaranteeing they rattle trunks and DJ booths in any time and place. Now, if he can just get Kate Bush to return his calls. —Eric Harvey",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/15478/homepage_large.891f23d1.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Big_Boi-Sir_Lucious_Left_Foot_The_Son_of_Chico_Dusty.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,78,Darkside,Psychic,Matador / Other People,"When Darkside did their imploded take on Daft Punk's Random Access Memories, it felt like a reminder to the French duo that you could make use of golden-era influences without slavishly trying to recreate them. Psychic is an even better testament to the same idea: You'll hear disco, funk, Pink Floyd, and some seemingly ""uncool"" six-string noodles, but classy electro savant Nicolas Jaar and guitarist Dave Harrington warp and hollow them out, creating a tasteful, finely-honed space that feels more suited to interiors than a dance floor. What’s more, Darkside somehow managed to make this expansive, carefully plotted ""head"" album translate into one of the most ecstatic live shows going—with the help of some literal smoke and mirrors, naturally. —Brandon Stosuy",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/daftside-2/paper-trails,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/19779/homepage_large.b0dd057e.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Darkside-Psychic.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,77,Kendrick Lamar,Section.80,Top Dawg,"In the same way Kendrick Lamar's autobiographical major label debut good kid, m.A.A.d city was a masterpiece by design, his breakout indie effort Section.80 was emphatically not a masterpiece. Kendrick kicked around the very loose theme of generational politics but wasn't too closely attached to it, and, unburdened by expectations, he was free to indulge in masterful technical displays of rapping and songs that are fun for no reason other than being fun. This freedom came with a few missteps as well—the more ambitious concepts turned muddled at points, and a few of the musical choices were downright brutal (cue the sunburnt grunge/lounge fusionist singer of ""Ronald Reagan Era"")—but that was part of the charm, too. Section.80 was a persona-setting effort, the soft launch of a grand talent. Kendrick was showing us Kendrick, he didn't need to tell us his story. —Andrew Nosnitsky",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/topdawgent/kendrick-lamar-hol-up,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/16776/homepage_large.2d538998.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kendrick_Lamar-Section80.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,76,Jessie Ware,Devotion,Universal Island / PMR,"Devotion is an album of questions, the most important of which gets asked before the album's a minute old: ""Ready to love, but do you want it enough?"" These 12 meditations approach the question from varying angles and distances, and by album's end, Jessie Ware has realized her answer, even if she never receives one in return. ""I'm on my way,"" she proclaims, and it's the first time that we hear from her honest-to-God relief. That breathtaking voice, composed of steel as much as velvet, dusts everything with a dignified elegance that makes her emotional turmoil as alluring as its lush, inviting surroundings. An album that feels equally a product of its time and timeless, it makes the old-fashioned ethos of love as an active decision feel like something even irony-fueled millennials can get behind. —Renato Pagnani",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/jessieware/running,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/18114/homepage_large.ed0b398b.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jessie_Ware-Devotion.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,75,The Caretaker,An Empty Bliss Beyond This World,History Always Favours the Winners,"Before exploring the haunted, Kubrick-stained interpretations of An Empty Bliss Beyond This World, let's admit something simple: this album asks us to listen to music—namely, pre-war parlor music—we otherwise wouldn't, and to listen to it in a very strange way. And An Empty Bliss…, like many of Leyland Kirby's albums, is an album about listening. The source material is above all nice, intended to gently entertain families or revelers, to grease the wheels of a social experience. So Kirby's trick is not just that he turns pleasant music spooky, but that he turns a fundamentally civil experience into an insular, gnomic one. There's a gnawing sense that he's exploiting the material, deploying it in a manner counter to its nature. Or perhaps companionship has, for decades, defrayed this music’s inherent unease. These are helpful things to keep in mind while listening to An Empty Bliss, though closing the blinds and sitting with your back to a wall are still encouraged. —Andrew Gaerig",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/16637/homepage_large.acb40c9a.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Caretaker-An_Empty_Bliss_Beyond_This_World.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,74,Caribou,Swim,Merge,"Leave it to Caribou's Dan Snaith to find the common ground between two genres that don't, on the surface, seem all that similar. Swim marries the insistent propulsion of dance music (nods are made to strands such as minimal techno and four-on-the-floor house) to the diffuse sprawl of 1960s psychedelia. Snaith loosens up the rigid forward momentum of beat-driven genres into something a bit softer and slightly out of focus; he also provides direction to the more diffuse and avant-garde elements he borrows (check out the wailing, off-key saxophone that ushers ""Kaili"" across the finish line). But thanks to his strength with composition—a knack that here is matched by the anguish at the core of the album—he always sounds in control of all the balls he's juggling. Calling it a bummer dance record only goes half as far as it needs to; Swim is a dance record that's had its heart ripped into a tiny million pieces. —Renato Pagnani",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/caribouband/odessa,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/15198/homepage_large.8ff16070.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Caribou-Swim.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,73,Cloud Nothings,Attack on Memory,Carpark,"Three years ago, it would have been reasonable to argue that Dylan Baldi got lucky. The Ohio teen's scuzzy punk-pop songs were rudimentary, but of-the-moment, and it turns out he was swallowing a fair share of skepticism for his very own art. The Steve Albini-produced Attack on Memory was comparatively a no-future monster, with Jade Tree-style emo aggression that left We Who Downloaded Diary Off KaZaa nearly blindsided. This was Cloud Nothings in black-and-white and 3D where their music had formerly sounded so easy. Baldi remains an unexceptional frontman in the scope of contemporary rock—almost proudly so, an everyman—but as a kinetic four-piece, Attack on Memory launched an era of Cloud Nothings that can no longer be credited to mere chance. Cloud Nothings always made an interesting case study in the New American Rock Dream, the one that goes from bedroom to blog to being big in Japan (and most everywhere else). But Attack on Memory is a reminder that even in the face of moderate success, it is necessarily cool to change. —Jenn Pelly",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/wichita-recordings/cloud-nothings-stay-useless | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vg6blGL3jhA,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/17319/homepage_large.6d5f6176.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Cloud_Nothings-Attack_on_Memory.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,72,Danny Brown,Old,Fool's Gold,"As much as he'd been defined circa XXX by his pharmaceutical namedrops and his place in hip-hop's tightening relation to electronic club music, Danny Brown the man made it clear on Old that there's a difference between getting high to escape to somewhere and taking drugs to escape from somewhere. In the album's first half, he answers bandwagoner demands for more Molly rap and cynical calls to hear ""the old Danny Brown"" by laying out just why the current Danny Brown turned out the way he did: he was a dope boy because he was sick of watching his family hustle against encroaching poverty (""25 Bucks"") and getting rolled for food stamps as a kid (""Wonderbread""), only to find out that there still wasn't any way out of his trauma (""Torture""). If there's any humor, it's morbid; if there's any glamorization, it's of the fact that somehow Danny made it out. But even as he switches his voice from Hybrid-era gruffness to the sing-song taunt-flow that's laced dozens of cuts that made his name since, his ultra-lucid storytelling and encyclopedic turns of phrase still dwell on coping with the lingering stress he never entirely could leave behind. Even in the production's flipside switch from minor-key basement boom-bap to grime and dubstep-informed futurism, the weight never entirely slips off his shoulders. —Nate Patrin",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/xdannyxbrownx/kush-coma-feat-a-ap-rocky,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/19758/homepage_large.822cd3f7.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Danny_Brown-Old.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,71,Girls,"Father, Son, Holy Ghost",True Panther,"Christopher Owens has the weight of the world on his bony shoulders, constantly threatening collapse. And the beauty of Girls involves helping the singer stay up by simply listening to his plain pleas for human decency in a culture mired in cynicism and hate. This shakiness, however beguiling, could not last; Girls broke up a year after Father, Son, Holy Ghost’s release. But they went out rewriting the classic-rock canon in their own image—guitar solos, six-plus-minute epics, and warm electric organs abound. Coming from another voice or band, lines like, “I'll have to forgive you if we're ever gonna move on,” could be totally useless hippie flotsam, but coming from this voice and this band, it sounds like nothing but the truth. —Ryan Dombal",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/16935/homepage_large.8d7c821e.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Girls-Father_Son_Holy_Ghost.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,70,Killer Mike,R.A.P. Music,Williams Street,"Like Plan B's Ill Manors across the pond, Killer Mike used R.A.P. Music to drop macro racial politics via street-level evidence on a beleaguered America, unloading on systemic injustice with accounts of no-knock raids gone violent and families torn apart by the civic virus. R.A.P. Music sounds tough from top to bottom, as El-P provides a muscular backbone behind Mike's push against an unstoppable, oppressive force with a carousel of faces. From Reagan to corrupt cops, the bureaucracy takes hit after hit and keeps on coming. R.A.P. Music is such an incisive, incontrovertible indictment of contemporary America that it should be placed on every school system’s syllabus. —Jake Cleland",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/17701/homepage_large.a269b51a.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Killer_Mike-RAP_Music.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,69,Blood Orange,Cupid Deluxe,Domino,"If Prince were a humble introvert, he might have produced Cupid Deluxe, which brings a contemporary curatorial sensibility to the funky R&B and synth-pop of the '70s and '80s. But it’s too idiosyncratic to be reduced to period pastiche. Instead, below production that consists of bubble bursts, oiled whizzes, and black crayon scrawls of bass, it’s a fossil record of the life of mercurial performer Dev Hynes. The kalimba on “Chamakay” and the highlife guitar on “No Right Thing” allude to ancestral African roots. A classical background lurks in the burnished winds and horns that open “Chosen”; 2-step haunts “High Street”. A cover of English alt-rockers Mansun’s “I Can Only Disappoint U” seems random but is actually a song that Hynes loved as a teen. It also taps into pervasive themes of self-doubt, and modesty is what makes the album great: Hynes stays out of the music’s way. He focuses on blending understated details and spotlights his collaborators—setting up Despot with a cunning overture on “Clipped On” and letting Caroline Polachek lead “Chamakay”, where she speaks volumes with an extra vocal shiver on the word “game.” Cupid Deluxe is a study in making the most of what you’ve got, which is to say it’s a study in cool. —Brian Howe",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/bloodorange/youre-not-good-enough,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/19928/homepage_large.680201b4.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Blood_Orange-Cupid_Deluxe.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,68,Erykah Badu,New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh,Motown,"“I guess I'll see you next lifetime,” shrugged Erykah Badu on her 1997 debut album, turning away a potential suitor with thoughts of reincarnation—it’s a cosmic kiss-off that’s both completely spaced-out and tuggingly sincere. That honesty of the heart lies at the center of Return of the Ankh, which has Badu exposing her thoughts on love—her fickleness, her faults, and her power—backed by some of the most in-the-pocket grooves since D’Angelo’s Voodoo: She’s 20 feet tall, she’s a gold digger, she’s fucking your friends, she’s loyal to a fault, she’s a hot-blooded killer. These conflicting messages aren’t inconsistent as much as they are wisely omnipotent. There are no regrets, just many lifetimes happening at once. —Ryan Dombal",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/14307/homepage_large.b7a26543.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Erykah_Badu-New_Amerykah_Part_Two_Return_of_the_Ankh.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,67,The Weeknd,House of Balloons,Self-released,"It didn’t take long for all of Abel Tesfaye’s new-fangled ideas about R&B to sound straight-up normal. Next to Ty Dolla $ign’s deadpan ratchet music, his brand of bruised, unfeeling lechery— once almost radical in its severity—now feels naïve. He lacks the hard-edged narratives and the radio-ready production of an August Alsina, or the unpolished approachability of legions of SoundCloud boys. His mentors, those behind Drake’s OVO Sound label, are now cranking out singers and singer-rappers so complete they make the Weeknd sound like the beta version of some music bot developed in a lab outside of Toronto. Such is the cruel destiny of an album as smart and fresh House of Balloons—it’s only a matter of time before any forward-thinking ideas become generic. —Carrie Battan",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/16371/homepage_large.59e88335.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Weeknd-House_of_Balloons.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,66,Todd Terje,It's Album Time,Olsen,"Terje Olsen, a Norwegian producer who cut his teeth on disco edits and runs with the space-disco crowd that includes Hans-Peter Lindstrom and Prins Thomas, has produced some of the most beloved club hits of the last decade. Over that same span, a peculiar personality emerged, manifested visually in a series of eccentric album covers designed for him by the artist Bendik Kaltenborn. Ten years after Olsen’s first official single as Todd Terje, Kaltenborn depicts him as a world-weary lounge pianist—working on three tropical cocktails, no less—on the cover of his debut album, It’s Album Time. The album showcases Olsen’s tongue-in-cheek approach to the musical plundering enabled by a globalized, and temporally boundless, digital age: in his world, the light mambo-fied riff on “Svensk Saas” becomes the perfect prelude to the towering neo-disco workouts “Strandbar” and “Delorean Dynamite”. It’s high-proof escapism, served with a wink. Best of all, It’s Album Time concludes in Todd Terje’s broadest gesture thus far, “Inspector Norse”, a track that converts the staccato hop-scotch melodic sense of early B-side “Reinbagan” into an intergalactic joyride. —Abby Garnett",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/toddterje/delorean-dynamite | Platform: YouTube - Link: http://youtu.be/HGvcdr1A0p0,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/20355/homepage_large.1b314148.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Todd_Terje-Its_Album_Time.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,65,Crystal Castles,Crystal Castles,Fiction / Last Gang / Universal Motown,"The overdriven, insanely gorgeous electronic noise-pop of Alice Glass and Ethan Kath's second self-titled album sounded great in 2010 and would make even more sense if it were released today. It may be too early to call these icy, anguished, very catchy songs timeless, but the Toronto duo's melancholic romanticism and existential dance-tripping is the perfect soundtrack for today's tear-drenched, ultimately empowered @sosadtoday generation. It might be the best goth album of the last decade (fittingly, parts were recorded in an abandoned church in Iceland, a garage in Detroit, and a log cabin in Ontario), and the single version of ""Not In Love"" featuring Robert Smith is the best Cure song in at least 20 years. —Brandon Stosuy",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/crystal-castles/celestica,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/15242/homepage_large.2a599bc7.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Crystal_Castles-Crystal_Castles.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,64,Haim,Days Are Gone,Columbia / Polydor,"Haim are the rock game Jennifer Lawrence. Their appeal is obvious: women who come off as “just one of the guys” while maintaining an effortless femininity. Women who always seem to be having fun, always kicking ass, always ready to party. It’s easy to hate on Cool Girls like this, but Haim use their powers for good. They make the cheesiest shit in the world seem totally awesome—shit like ‘70s soft rock and ‘80s lite-R&B, Fleetwood Mac and Sheryl Crow. Shit like having been in a band with your sisters since you were a little kid, like choreographed dance moves and extreme bass face. Song titles like “Forever”, “Falling”, “Let Me Go”. And thus, Haim flip the script on Cool Girl. They turn her into a savior of the uncool. —Amy Phillips",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/haimtime/haimthewire,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/19767/homepage_large.faea8900.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Haim-Days_Are_Gone.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,63,Four Tet,There Is Love in You,Domino,"Whether you were a fan of Four Tet’s idyllictronica or his more adventurous breakbeats, there was reason to wonder if Kieran Hebden might ever come back from his mid-’00s jazz explorations. But his fifth album (and last for a label that wasn’t his own) found Four Tet re-energized by—of all things—the 4/4 pulse of dance music. Traces of his previous sounds (harp plucks, glitchy data, free jazz spurts, experimental INA-GRM gurgles) twined around house beats like streamers around a maypole, while Four Tet revealed a new lyricism in his productions. On exemplary songs like “Love Cry” and “Sing”, he showed the next generation of producers how the barrier between indie and electronic, between the bedroom and the dancefloor, between the abstract and the catchy, was ultimately permeable. —Andy Beta",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/14902/homepage_large.1c526157.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Four_Tet-There_Is_Love_in_You.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,62,The Knife,Shaking the Habitual,Mute / Brille / Rabid,"Shaking the Habitual is the sound of Karin Dreijer Andersson and Olof Dreijer taking the dark, tightly controlled sound of 2006's Silent Shout and opening it up for a shaggy, 97-minute trek into tribal EDM, extended drone, and sweaty dance-psych. All of which is based, in part, on queer and feminist theory—but also, environmentalism, commercialism, ethics, inequality, the nuclear family. So, yeah, it’s political, and Shaking stands as an incredibly strong punk record as well as a smart experimental dance collection. Most of all, it shows what can happen when music intersects with, and becomes, a life—the album as vast, teeming universe. —Brandon Stosuy",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/theknife/a-tooth-for-an-eye,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/19042/homepage_large.2b1fbd74.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Knife-Shaking_the_Habitual.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,61,Dirty Projectors,Swing Lo Magellan,Domino,"Dave Longstreth has a restless, relentless mind, and as he leapt from concept to concept over the back half of the 2000s—a loose narrative anchored by Don Henley’s theoretical depression, a version of a classic Black Flag record made without hearing it for a decade-plus, an EP spent inhabiting the minds of whales with Björk—the only constant in his work was the intensity of his quest for deeper meaning. Swing Lo Magellan is the record where he turns his gaze inward, reflecting on what it means to search, resulting in a collection of songs that find a fine balance between simplicity and complexity. There’s still no mistaking Longstreth’s bold, experimental compositional style—rhythms dribble and stutter, acoustic guitars shimmer and spit weird chords—but in writing straightforwardly about love, fear, and their intersection (like on the simple, devastating “Impregnable Question”), Longstreth has never seemed this ineffably human. —Jamieson Cox",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/dominorecordco/dirty_projectors-gun_has_no_trigger,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/17967/homepage_large.91cf14ca.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dirty_Projectors-Swing_Lo_Magellan.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,60,PJ Harvey,Let England Shake,Vagrant / Island Def Jam,"The protest song has fallen on hard times in the 21st century, at least compared to the century prior. PJ Harvey’s Let England Shake sought to settle that score, steeping raw-boned folk in thick, deep murk while stridently ringing the alarm against empire. Harvey once sang of memory, sensation, and lust; that’s all gone now, luxuries for the innocent. Let England Shake didn’t save the protest song, let alone stop any wars. But it reminded us that a state of red-eyed wakefulness is better than the alternative, and that hopelessness can be transformed into its own kind of hope. —Jason Heller",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/16213/homepage_large.b1e8be89.jpg,/dataset/artwork/PJ_Harvey-Let_England_Shake.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,59,Miguel,Kaleidoscope Dream,RCA,"Real intimacy is a tough thing to cultivate. To hear Miguel tell it, it’s all about fear—in order to get truly close, fear needs to be acknowledged, and then left behind. It’s a dynamic that propels Kaleidoscope Dream, an album remarkably devoid of that fear on both sonic and lyrical levels. There’s a bravery to his mixture of R&B, funk, rock, and swirling psychedelia, genres strung together by his daring and agile voice; he howls and whispers, begs and pleads, seduces and suggests. But the real courageousness lies in his willing to appear nervous, corny, jealous, and scared. He asks if you still believe in love, implores you to use him, shyly inquires if he’s the only one in your life, invites you to smoke a joint to get over it all. These are normal questions that take a lot of confidence to ask on record, and in asking them, Miguel pulls us into his warm, assured embrace. —Jamieson Cox",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/miguelofficial/adorn,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/18313/homepage_large.99369138.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Miguel-Kaleidoscope_Dream.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,58,The-Dream,Love King,Def Jam,"Befitting a man capable of the self-mythology required to declare himself the Love King, a bit of R&B mythos: it’s been said that one’s predilection for Love Hate or Love vs. Money, the first two installments of The-Dream’s “Love” trilogy, boils down to a preference between Prince and Michael Jackson. Love King, its final chapter, is harder to pigeonhole. Sure, there’s the requisite Prince worship worn proudly on his slick leather sleeve—never better than on “Yamaha”, the album’s clear showpiece—but it exists unmistakably within the universe of Terius Nash, a precarious balance of pop osmosis, obsessive songcraft, well-timed petulance, and Homeric tug-of-war between heart and dick. Appropriately enough, the album also has the most self-aware moment of Nash’s career: “I’ll never be a pop star, I’m too raw,” on the spectacularly unsubtle “Panties to the Side”. It's half brag, half lament, and it’s not just prescient—it’s liberating. —Meaghan Garvey",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/15507/homepage_large.5f720c1b.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The-Dream-Love_King.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,57,tUnE-yArDs,w h o k i l l,4AD,"The nature of Merrill Garbus’ appeal summarized in one line: “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing.” The bold, inventive auteur behind tUnE-yArDs drops that bit of pop culture ephemera in the middle of her brilliant second album w h o k i l l, and the line is an unintentional tribute to the decadent, spiky complexities that comprise her singular vision. In Garbus’ world, every option is on the table—hand-claps, guttural growls, sing-song patter verging on the framework of rap, nursery-rhyme chanting—but there's nuance, too. With Nate Brenner providing low-end bedrock and the assistance of a trusty looping device or two, Garbus approaches a minefield of topics—police brutality, the relation between gender dynamics and sexuality, body-image issues, racial tokenism—and refuses easy answers. She also understands that if you’re gonna shake things up, you'd better make some room to dance around, too. —Larry Fitzmaurice",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/16438/homepage_large.752440a8.jpg,/dataset/artwork/tUnE-yArDs-w_h_o_k_i_l_l.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,56,Chance the Rapper,Acid Rap,,"Overflowing with ideas, Acid Rap is everything and the kitchen sink stuffed into a 54-minute box, its contradictions jutting out at odd angles. Chance was world-building, and that meant a radical inclusiveness. It's the product of a detail-oriented MC whose art is equally a product of agency and accident. He knows his craft backwards and forwards, but he expresses it with the careening enthusiasm of the ultimate multi-tasker. Unapologetically earnest, Chance has an abiding faith in people and love's power. But Acid Rap is also shot through with doubt and a distrust of easy solutions. Eager and enthusiastic, but still reckless and juvenile, he smokes cigarettes like a badge but does drugs like an idealist. Improvisational in spirit yet carefully crafted, it's a record that utilized juke rhythms, a live band, Quincy Jones keyboards, Sun Ra funk, and comfortable Native Tongues boom-bap. It's eager to please, and at the same time it yields to no authority. —David Drake",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/19293/homepage_large.199a1849.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Chance_the_Rapper-Acid_Rap.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,55,Andy Stott,Luxury Problems,Modern Love,"Andy Stott’s early singles lurched between micro-genres of techno (tech-house, minimal, dub techno, and so on) like someone blotto at a club. But beginning with the EPs We Stay Together and Passed Me By, Stott brought his productions into deadly focus. His drums turned into bludgeons and the empty spaces filled with blackness and dread; it was dance music closer to Sunn O))) and Merzbow than the type you’d hear at a superclub. Luxury Problems added just a glint of light, which came in the form of Stott’s old piano teacher, Alison Skidmore; she added operatic vocals and wordless sighs which Stott then submerged in his turbid productions. Here, Stott struck a perfect balance between angelic beauty and the body-pummeling beat. —Andy Beta",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/modernlove/01-numb,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/18386/homepage_large.a77eb974.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Andy_Stott-Luxury_Problems.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,54,Frank Ocean,"Nostalgia, Ultra.",Self-released,"It was by some misfire of either branding or timing that Frank Ocean was lumped in with emotionally deadened blog-bait avant-R&B, because his freebie debut Nostalgia, Ultra had a whole lot of life in it. The secret of Nostalgia is that it's not actually a genre-defying album. Yes, there’s the Coldplay and MGMT beat-jacks that bookend the album, but the middle was mostly filled out with more organic offerings from radio staples like Tricky Stewart (Beyoncé, Rihanna) and Happy Perez (Miguel). Frank pushed forward through songwriting, not sonics, finding the midpoint between old school instincts and new school content. His narratives are naked and almost psychedelically vivid in the style of the best Prince or Marvin songs, but the themes of Coachella jaunts and fatherless childhoods are decidedly millennial. —Andrew Nosnitsky",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/16267/homepage_large.084ee64d.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Frank_Ocean-Nostalgia_Ultra.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,53,Beach House,Bloom,Sub Pop / Bella Union,"Beach House’s early albums were dreamy, but slight; they suggested romance but didn’t have the strength to commit to it. By Bloom, they had, well—let’s say the title resonated across metaphors: floral, sexual, spiritual, developmental. Blame the rhythm section, which seemed to suddenly grow hips, or singer Victoria Legrand, who stalks the album with the certainty of a palm-reader you dread to admit was right all along. “One in your life,” she warns on “Wishes”—“it happens once and rarely twice,” dark cliffs and lightning bolts implied. Like the moon, she looks pretty up there but that doesn’t mean she can’t control the tide. —Mike Powell",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/beachhouse/myth,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/17774/homepage_large.f251d544.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beach_House-Bloom.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,51,Sky Ferreira,"Night Time, My Time",Capitol,"Pop culture history repeats, first as irony, and then as simple truth: “I’ve got a lust for life,” Sky Ferreira sighs, and it’s less reference than resonance, a trace of the past that responds to the urgent needs of now. As with Haim’s Days Are Gone (with whom it shares a producer), the soupy, smeared, and overdriven new wave pastiche pop-rock of Night Time, My Time imagines pasts that never existed. The Jesus and Mary Chain joining Transvision Vamp? Curve kidnapping Cathy Dennis? This slippery retro sound, instantly familiar but resolutely unplaceable, perfectly matches Ferreira's recurrent message, delivered to disappointing lovers and a judging public alike: you don’t know me like you think you do. But even when the singer pushes everyone away, the nagging hooks and intoxicatingly viscous arrangements pull you back in; for once the pop star as car crash in slow motion narrative delivers a soundtrack to match. —Tim Finney",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/19873/homepage_large.ebf19562.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sky_Ferreira-Night_Time_My_Time.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,52,James Blake,James Blake,A&M / ATLAS,"Even though it's virtually the same image that appeared on his Klavierwerke EP a few months prior, there's something perfect about the blurred, two-faced portrait of James Blake that also adorns the cover of his full-length debut. Now cast in a cold, soft cerulean hue, Blake had announced his Blue Period—ambitious for a kid barely out of college with only a few EPs under his belt. But after covering so much ground over the course of those releases (CMYK's hyperkinetic pop, the knotting of his own voice and classically trained piano chops on Klavierwerke), he’d earned it. James Blake is a document of an artist at a creative crossroads—a preposterous claim to make about a debut, if only we weren't talking about a brain that works as fast as Blake's. Instead of doubling down on his more idiosyncratic impulses, he used his big moment to pull back into himself, offering 11 tracks that were crestfallen and complicated, but never confused in their intent. James Blake is a singer-songwriter album at its core, with personal, simple songs fighting against the tug of the bleary, pitch-shifted present and the beat-fractured future. Maybe it wasn't what some wanted from the genre-shifting wunderkind, but from the aching futurist gospel of ""I Never Learnt to Share"" to the uneasy iridescence of opener ""Unluck"", Blake's blues proved to be not only definitive, but lasting. —Zach Kelly",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/16180/homepage_large.f2eff121.jpg,/dataset/artwork/James_Blake-James_Blake.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,50,Godspeed You! Black Emperor,Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!,Constellation,"A post-rock ensemble with orchestral ambitions and the heart of a squat full of Crass-patched crust-punks: Godspeed You! Black Emperor had no right to exist in the first place, let alone survive long enough to make Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend!. But they did, and it’s a damn good thing. As the indie world grew in size but shrank in scope, Allelujah! kicked open the airlock, letting the gravity of its vast, ragged sound vacuum the place clean. Then Godspeed filled that void back up with paranoia, wonder, and the transcendental sense that music may yet find a way to fuse with the soul. —Jason Heller",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/18462/homepage_large.f5947ac3.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Godspeed_You_Black_Emperor-Allelujah_Dont_Bend_Ascend.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,49,Oneohtrix Point Never,Replica,Mexican Summer / Software,"Replica is the sound of ambient music resurfacing: whipping its head around, sputtering for air, delighted at its own physicality. The album seems intent on throwing you off its scent, whether via its ghoulish cover art or its attack-on-memory conception: Daniel Lopatin famously sourced some of Replica’s sounds from old VHS cassettes. So while all signs point to Replica being a treatise on reminiscence and reproduction, it’s an album whose noises and voices feel bodily and present. Replica is the rare album of abstract, manicured sound that hovers instead of retreats. Even “Remember”, which features a sampled voice instructing us to do just that, is an affirmation that memory diving is an active, participatory pursuit. It’s a choice, one that Replica in turn gulps down and spits out, never allowing itself to slip into passivity. —Andrew Gaerig",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/mexicansummer/oneohtrix-point-never-replica,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/17174/homepage_large.69b59191.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Oneohtrix_Point_Never-Replica.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,48,Majical Cloudz,Impersonator,Matador,"In 2012, Devon Welsh decided that he should make his and Matthew Otto’s Majical Cloudz records “as simple as possible—down to just the emotions and lyrics.” Simplicity is what gives Impersonator, an LP with sparse, unassuming instrumentation, its power. Welsh has a commanding vocal presence, and when he uses simple loops to embolden the emotions he’s conveying in his lyrics, he demands attention. He stares directly into your eyes and professes his love. With urgency, he tells you that things won’t end well. Sometimes he picks you up, sometimes he crushes you. A few times, he breaks the fourth wall, writing songs about what it’s like to write songs that are this personal. By making himself vulnerable, Welsh conveys that it’s OK for you to feel vulnerable, too. —Evan Minsker",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/majical-cloudz/childhoods-end,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/19231/homepage_large.30c06206.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Majical_Cloudz-Impersonator.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,47,Waka Flocka Flame,Flockaveli,Warner Bros.,"Prodigy of Mobb Deep once called hip hop ""heavy metal for the black people,"" but the analogy didn't become reality until the reign of Waka Flocka Flame. His Flockaveli was an all-engulfing affair, with Waka's capillary-popping battle cries and onomatopoeic gun sound adlibs bringing both gangsta rap and headbanging (or, if you will, dread-shaking) back. Much of this success can be attributed to producer Lex Luger, whose infinity thumps and rolling high hats would prove to provide the blueprint for the street rap that followed (and, more regrettably, the strain EDM known as ""Trap."") But Flockaveli was also a communal space, a collection of minor posse cuts that afforded Brick Squad bit players like YG Hootie and the late Slim Dunkin the same shine as the headliner. Like most great gangsta rap (and gangs), it was more about loyalty than destruction. —Andrew Nosnitsky",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/15846/homepage_large.a78e436a.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Waka_Flocka_Flame-Flockaveli.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,46,Vampire Weekend,Contra,XL,"Vampire Weekend’s 2008 debut was precision engineered to inspire music critic hot-takes, stirring up a bonfire of class, race, privilege, and appropriation and leaving it coy and cloudy whether their country club aesthetic was oblivious or tongue-in-cheek. Opening Contra with a horchata/balaclava rhyme slyly threw gas on those flames, but by the end of the record they’d shown their true hand: an updated, musical interpolation of Less Than Zero, simultaneously condemning and participating in rich kid excess. The last two songs, “Diplomat’s Son” and “I Think Ur a Contra”, buttress their lyrical depth by stretching VW’s sound far past chirpy, vocabulary test ska-pop and into the richer territory expanded upon in Modern Vampires of the City, placing Ezra Koenig’s tenor within a sonic backdrop of chip-tune reggae, swirling strings, and unpredictable rhythms that feels lush but hauntingly hollow, a personality crisis in a popped collar. —Rob Mitchum",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/14843/homepage_large.9422057f.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Vampire_Weekend-Contra.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,45,Future,Pluto,Epic / A1 / Free Bandz,"In the last few years, Atlanta rap has spawned both huge street hits and quirky micro-trends that quickly cycle out of style, so there wasn't necessarily much reason to get excited about Future based on his early successes. His established sound was no accident, though, and the uncompromising Pluto proved it. “Same Damn Time” offers a Jupiter-sized turn up, but Pluto is at its best in deep space, when it relies on Future's imperfect croak of a voice and uses the chilling, robotic sounds of Auto-Tune as an effect to heighten emotions. The combination lets pain bleed through on “Permanent Scar”, highlights triumph in “Straight Up”, and draws a stellar picture of love on “Astronaut Chick” and “Turn on the Lights”. Jump-starting the careers of producers like Mike WiLL Made It and Sonny Digital, Pluto wasn't just another Atlanta trend; it reinvigorated Auto-Tune's artistic potential and took the whole city's sound to outer space. —Kyle Kramer",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/17723/homepage_large.87fe0714.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Future-Pluto.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,44,Chromatics,Kill for Love,Italians Do It Better,"Johnny Jewel doesn't just write albums, he tells stories like an auteur filmmaker. Kill for Love is less a big-screen blockbuster than it is an art-house cult classic. With 17 vignettes featuring glittering synth-pop, minimalist Italo, and flourishes of kraut and glam rock, Chromatics' 2012 LP illustrates a disconnected ensemble drama. It's an epic, a near hour and a half of vamps, tramps, lovers, and addicts awash in a metropolis illuminated only by flickering neon signs and dim street lights. Singer Ruth Radelet intoxicates you with cooed lines about bygone starlets and nocturnal passion, as Jewel crafts timeless soundscapes which feel as cinematic as they do immediate and unforgettable. No other album in the past five years evoked such vivid, detailed imagery with a sound palette so pointedly austere. —Patric Fallon",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/johnnyjewel/chromatics-kill-for-love-single,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/17616/homepage_large.e5d7172a.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Chromatics-Kill_for_Love.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,43,JAY-Z / Kanye West,Watch the Throne,Def Jam / Roc-A-Fella / Roc Nation,"To get a sense of how greatly a Jay Z/Kanye West joint album loomed over the public’s imagination, look no further than that album cycle’s most definitive document: Funkmaster Flex’s unveiling of Watch the Throne’s first single, “Otis”, live on Hot 97 the night of July 20, 2011. “For you new rappers, go back to the lab and reassess your whole album and career,” Flex bellowed, sounding more ferociously fired up than ever. “Things have just changed for the summer. It's not our fault, it's yours!” He spun the track back countless times and then paused it to advise civilians to “go into the store right now and put your hand into the cash register for no reason,” citing his own InFlexWeTrust.com traffic numbers: this is more or less how the next 22 minutes proceeded. The resulting album, Watch the Throne, couldn’t top this moment, though it provided many memorable joints: ""Niggas in Paris"", “Gotta Have It”, “No Church in the Wild”, the bonkers deluxe cut “Illest Motherfucker Alive”. Jay Z and Kanye pulled the Bored Rich Person’s Gambit and made this album because they could, and what they create on Watch the Throne is thrilling fun that now stands as the hallmark for rap world opulence. —Corban Goble",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/user6607115/funkmaster-flex-premieres-otis,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/16852/homepage_large.f2a3e6f6.jpg,/dataset/artwork/JAY-Z__Kanye_West-Watch_the_Throne.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,42,Kurt Vile,Wakin on a Pretty Daze,Matador,"By most objective standards, Kurt Vile's music has grown increasingly ""boring""—he hired a real producer and developed an interest in extended guitar solos, drum machines, and phaser pedals. His songs can last up to 10 minutes, and he talks about his kids a lot. At 11 songs and well over an hour, Wakin on a Pretty Daze is presumably where the indulgences of prog-rock and dad-rock align, but even if the terminally chill Vile were the type to be bothered by those critiques, he can only dignify them with a response of, ""What's your hurry?"" Vile canvasses the astoundingly trivial, the mundane, and the most important shit imaginable, and whether it's ruminating on ""Air Bud"", a forgotten friend, what it means to be a good father, or the meaning of life itself, these things take time. Vile gives you all the space you need, offering the occasional ""whoo!"" or classic rawk riff as encouragement, a reminder that all of this wakeful meditation can result in a physical payoff. The guy once said ""Life's a while"", and on Wakin On A Pretty Daze, he learned to take it as it comes. —Ian Cohen",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/19046/homepage_large.69b2dbee.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kurt_Vile-Wakin_on_a_Pretty_Daze.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,41,Drake,Nothing Was the Same,Young Money Entertainment / Republic / Cash Money,"""I'm just feeling like the throne is for the taking/ Watch me take it."" Drake threw down the gauntlet with that line from ""I'm On One"", released just before the sun rose on the summer of 2011; a few months later, he would assume it with confidence thanks to Take Care, a sprawling, stylistically broad document of life as an ascendant young superstar. Nothing Was the Same, then, is a record hardened by the pressures of wearing the crown: it’s darker, more muscular, laser-focused. Songs that shed light on a wide spectrum of emotion—think of “Marvins Room”, proud and horny and jealous and lonely, and faded to boot—are replaced with concentrated bursts of feeling, with single-word descriptors: triumphant Drake, nostalgic Drake, lovelorn Drake, paranoid Drake. There are moments of light and charisma scattered throughout the record, of course—this is the work of one of this generation’s great communicators, silver-tongued and agile, confident and self-aware, always making plays for both the bedroom and the block. But it’s mostly the sound of someone reaching a summit and realizing just how lonely it can be at the top. —Jamieson Cox",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/octobersveryown/drake-hold-on-were-going-home,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/19704/homepage_large.87d4db64.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Drake-Nothing_Was_the_Same.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,40,Burial,Rival Dealer EP,Hyperdub,"It took a shorter format for Burial’s work to dilate outward into broader spaces. The London-based producer’s albums are still striking pieces in their own right, but the EP has unshackled his imagination and delivered him into impossible new worlds. Rival Dealer is the most complete Burial statement to date, coming off as a pivotal moment in his career, where he sounds as alone in the music world as the alienated voices that creep up around the corners of these tracks. The combination of industrial-strength toughness, gender politics, and sheer ambition brings it close to the world the Knife were sketching out on Shaking the Habitual, although this is a far more introspective piece. Despite broadening the scope of his vision, Burial’s music remains a reflective experience, where the shades of grey he chips out with each release only become bolder, sharper, and more defined. —Nick Neyland",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/20013/homepage_large.0c4740e7.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Burial-Rival_Dealer_EP.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,39,Beyoncé,4,Columbia,"It wasn't preordained that Beyoncé would become who she became. In 2011, the field was crowded with big names—Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Katy Perry, Ke$ha—and the sound of pop was concentrated on a small handful of ideas. Beyoncé's previous album, I Am... Sasha Fierce, had big hits, but fans weren't exactly jumping to defend the project as a whole. The temptation to fall into the pop pipeline was there, but with 4, Beyoncé chose to play the long game, making an album that leaned toward the more adult sounds of classic R&B. Only Beyoncé could have made an album like this: it takes a big, controlled, and emotive voice to make a slow-burning song like “1+1” sound taut and transcendent, and a specific personality to infuse a song like “Countdown” with a snarl and swagger. By bringing in the ideas of more underground darlings like a pre-Channel Orange Frank Ocean and Major Lazer, 4 avoided the trappings of safe, later-career bids, instead setting up the perfect platform for Beyoncé as the pop star, a queen for all the people. —Kyle Kramer",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/16704/homepage_large.66eaeff7.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beyonc-4.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,38,EMA,Past Life Martyred Saints,Souterrain Transmissions,"Past Life Martyred Saints has often been praised as ""confessional,"" a word that artists tend to find problematic for its condescending and gendered overtones. So EMA's debut is not a confessional record, if only because that word also connotes a resultant catharsis, and there is none to be had here. Erika M. Anderson may air grievances, hurl accusations, and generally get a lot of shit off her chest, but when she dumps on you, both parties end up feeling like they need to shower twice. Her images are of pants stained with menstrual blood, blue scars and self-inflicted cuts, goth makeup and Nordic paganism, gun fanatics on the prairie, fat bluebirds and emaciated teens. On ""California"", she sings of being ""So fucked, it's 5150,"" the state code for involuntary psych hold, and most of the lyrics here read like scribblings on an intake form. For these reasons, Past Life Martyred Saints has also been praised as ""shocking,"" but it endures in large part because of how casual it is. It never sounds like an endorsement for its mental and physical squalor and the music is not particularly demonstrative, adhering to neither of the typical FEEL MY PAIN methods of expression, i.e., solo singer/songwriter fare or brazen punk. Anderson doesn't do a lot of screaming on here, the guitars are often clumsily strummed, and there's barely any drums; ""The Grey Ship"" spends most of its time swaying between two seasick chords, ""California"" is pretty much slam poetry over distorted violins, ""Butterfly Knife"" is four minutes of dull scrapes with a rusty blade. The loudest rock song has a Phil Collins sample, and there's a field holler about computers. This is not to say Anderson's pain is more ""real"" than that of her peers, but the skewed ratio of eerie calm to thrashing anger has an unusually unnerving effect; this is the sound of someone you once thought you knew, crossing one invisible line after another, unaware of how fucked things have become. This earned Anderson comparisons to both Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain, yet that doesn't fit either. They offered wish fulfillment; you hear them ache and hope that your turmoil could allow you to blaze with such comet-like brilliance. Anderson closes Past Life Martyred Saints comparing herself to a red star, common, cool, slow-burning and hard to detect with the human eye. More fitting for a record that seemingly came out of nowhere and pulled so many into its absorptive void. —Ian Cohen",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZrKAR32WKU,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/16498/homepage_large.90a594e6.jpg,/dataset/artwork/EMA-Past_Life_Martyred_Saints.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,37,Danny Brown,XXX,Fool's Gold,"Detroit rapper Danny Brown’s breakthrough album was a comprehensive showcase of the malleable style he had been piecing together for nearly a decade on record—across his run of hardnosed drug-rap mixtapes, a stint as Tony Yayo’s protégé, and his undersung debut. Every element of XXX registered immediately as unusual—the unwaveringly shrill but playful delivery, the severe electronic production, the paucity of features, the detail-oriented studies of Adderall abuse, male-on-female oral sex, and the depths of depression. The second side is still surprising, even after the bolder costume changes of last year’s Old; Brown delivers a harrowing collection of coming-of-age narratives and character sketches in his lower, more distinctly human register, tackling more standard-issue beats without genuflecting excessively to any Golden Age influences. Underrated in the midst of all of the attention-grabbing verses is Brown’s songwriting ability, as one only has to hear anything on XXX once to remember it well. The album proved to be the finest possible introduction to one of the most charismatic and unexpected emcees in recent memory. —Winston Cook-Wilson",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/foolsgoldrecs/15-party-all-the-time,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/16880/homepage_large.2393785c.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Danny_Brown-XXX.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,36,Robyn,Body Talk,Interscope / Konichiwa / Cherrytree,"Even Robyn couldn't stop laughing about opening for Katy Perry in 2011. The booking made sense on a fundamental level because they’re both pop stars, but there was no masking the cynical transaction. Perry gained credibility; Robyn, who’s never had the fanbase befitting of such a well-defined personality, got a bigger stage. As crossover experiences go, though, the impact was minimal; Robyn has never been the bigger-than-life idol who sucks up all the attention, but the big sister or best friend right there in the room with you. Body Talk, which is sequenced like a greatest hits compilation of the first two Body Talk EPs with a few more bangers thrown on for good measure, is her manifesto. Songs like “Dancing On My Own”, “Hang With Me”, and “Call Your Girlfriend” are lessons for how a person should live, and come back to one idea: Honesty. Honesty is Robyn’s virtue—honesty with those who might love you too much, or much too little. She sounds so strong on this album, backed by synthesizers networked into a planetary defense system ready to blast whatever comes its way, making jokes about robots having feelings because she knows that resilience doesn’t equal invincibility. She spits at a thousand detractors—her landlord, her drinking, her boyfriend—like Amy Poehler telling Jimmy Fallon, “I don’t fucking care if you like it.” Body Talk fulfills pop’s promise of limitless self-affirmation, while not just acknowledging but celebrating the cracks in the facade. It also makes you want to dance like a shadow-boxer. The consensus is that Robyn is an underrated pop star, which is a backhanded compliment—an admission that you’re either too clever for the game, or just not that good at reaching people. A pop star with indie cred is like a quarterback with a great fastball; it maybe means you should change jobs. But it wouldn’t be the same if she tried to sound any bigger. She’s perfect for the people who need her. —Jeremy Gordon",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/robyn/dancing-on-my-own,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/15921/homepage_large.1ecd7353.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Robyn-Body_Talk.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,35,DJ Rashad,Double Cup,Hyperdub,"From the time that it began finding its way to a wider listenership thanks to YouTube videos and eager compiler/facilitators like Planet Mu's Mike Paradinas, Chicago footwork was regarded as a music of motion—of bewildering polyrhythms, triple-time cadences, slow-fast moiré patterns of cross-hatched blur. But DJ Rashad's Double Cup proved that footwork could also be a music of stillness, hanging in mid-air as though suspended by those whirring beats. Brimming with soulful samples, Double Cup took footwork's jagged, skeletal form and padded it out until it ballooned like a Botero sculpture—lush, sensuous, and wryly humorous. Just check the plangent vocals and piano glissando of ""Show U How,"" cycling like the world's most heartbreaking game of Chutes 'n' Ladders. The album is a collaborative effort, but from the opening ""Feelin"" all the way through, it was impossible not to notice that Rashad was laying his soul bare with every cheekily looped vocal; ""Every day of my life,"" indeed. The hole his passing has left is immeasurable, but there are hints at its vastness in every hesitating beat and stuttering vocal of this masterful album. —Philip Sherburne",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/19820/homepage_large.3f2dc555.jpg,/dataset/artwork/DJ_Rashad-Double_Cup.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,34,Death Grips,The Money Store,Epic,"Being a Death Grips fan is a lot like loving a troubled dog: it shits all over your apartment and flies off the handle at other dogs and neighbors, you're constantly apologizing for it, and you lay awake nights praying it doesn't eventually bite the kid in 2B, because you know you'll have to put it down. Zach Hill and Stefan ""MC Ride"" Burnett went ahead and took care of that last little bit of unpleasantness for us, but their rabid reputation still lingers. Case in point: The Money Store, the pair's best and most accessible of their five LPs, a feral, perversely funky but thoroughly 'noided exercise in hostility that goes down like a frothy pint of battery acid. It's a record that not only sounds dangerous and volatile, but convinces you that the people that made it are, too. Burnett barks like a tinfoil-hatted transient, his blunt-force raps tethered only to his lips by the swelling of saliva in his foaming throat. Hill's genre-fucked production slams and grinds and skips and short-circuits (sometimes all at once), an assurance that if you play it at a particular volume, you'll be rendered sterile. They burn down the club with ""Hustle Bones"", build it right back up on ""I've Seen Footage"", tear it to the ground again with ""System Blower""—and in at least a few dozen of hell's infinite discos, ""Hacker"" is playing as we speak. Death Grips burned so white-hot here that the breakdown was inevitable, but as it stands alone today, The Money Store is a retroactive apology for all the grief. —Zach Kelly",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/17673/homepage_large.566c99ce.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Death_Grips-The_Money_Store.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,33,Arcade Fire,The Suburbs,Merge,"When they introduced themselves to us, Win Butler and Régine Chassagne were contemplating death and eternity. Two albums later, they were puzzling out boredom and disconnection. In The Suburbs, the streets hadn’t yet frozen over, but the neighborhood was still desolate. This was a version of existential crisis that anyone with a carpeted basement could relate to, and it brought this famously grand, sweeping band perilously close to mundanity. But the band’s touch with allegory didn’t disappear, it simply grew lighter. There is a suburban war at the heart of the album, but the lyrics observe the conflict in the manner of a television left on in the next room. “By the time the first bombs fell/ We were already bored,” Butler sings on the opening song. The album rewinds and scrambles itself multiple times—the opening invitation of “Grab your mother’s keys, we’re leaving” repeats itself towards the end, and in the record's emotional pinnacle, “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains”), Chassagne rides her bicycle forever, futilely seeking the end of the rows of houses.  The emotional thrust comes from the characters’ decisions to unball their fists and seek a higher peace with their surroundings—“I’m moving past the feeling,” Butler croons, at both the beginning and end. But like the endlessly falling bombs, the forever-restarting car, or the scrolling rows of houses, he never stops moving. Regret sits with us, like arthritis or sciatica, and the only viable option is to learn to live with it. —Jayson Greene",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/15575/homepage_large.78bcb854.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Arcade_Fire-The_Suburbs.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,32,Kurt Vile,Smoke Ring For My Halo,Matador,"In 2010, Kurt Vile picked up an acoustic guitar and recorded a song called “I Know I Got Religion”. “Now I stopped using picks and not a thing between me and my guitar,” he sang, sweetly. Suddenly, there was nothing to hide behind, and he followed those instincts all the way to his most clear-eyed and vulnerable album ever, Smoke Ring for My Halo. Here he introduces you to Kurt Vile, a guy who just wants to stay home with his family. He offers a plaintive admission that being on tour is like Lord of the Flies. “I’m just playin’,” he clarifies, “I got it made. … Most of the time.” Later, he says he doesn’t want to change or stay the same, work or sit around. He thinks he’ll never leave his couch, because he’s always wistful about it when he’s gone, but then again, it’s not always that way. That’s the Kurt Vile of Smoke Ring—a guy who knows his own mind and is frequently second-guessing his own overstatements. —Evan Minsker",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/16270/homepage_large.e914e687.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kurt_Vile-Smoke_Ring_For_My_Halo.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,31,Daft Punk,Random Access Memories,Columbia,"If Daft Punk’s 2006-07 Alive tour famously lit the fuse for North America’s EDM explosion, Random Access Memories was their contrarian, back-to-basics response to all it had wrought: the bottle-service packages, the click-bait Electric Daisy bikini galleries, the festival body counts. Of course, in true Daft Punk maximalist fashion, the remedy for all this decadence was more decadence: a 74-minute prog-disco opus that took three years, some 20 collaborators, and a rumored million-dollar budget to execute. Still, for all its immaculate, painstaking recreations of Jimmy Carter-era populence, Random Access Memories is really a catalog of simple, body-movin’ pleasures—often culled straight from the source—that remind us of a time when losing yourself to dance didn’t necessitate a trip to the first-aid tent. —Stuart Berman",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmpsBeaVrkE,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/19217/homepage_large.5d2966f4.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Daft_Punk-Random_Access_Memories.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,30,Titus Andronicus,The Monitor,XL,"There are so many ways to chant “U-S-A,” each one revealing a perspective on what makes America. I’ve heard it used to celebrate World Cup goals, jingoistic pro wrestlers, the death of Osama bin Laden—and, in 2010, a handful of Titus Andronicus shows when the band was riding high on the success of The Monitor. On the band’s sophomore effort, Patrick Stickles was a Jersey boy who saw the Civil War in a bad move out West and sung about his profound self-loathing as just another American tradition. Interstitial political speeches written by historical figures like Abe Lincoln and William Jennings Bryan, read by famous friends, sketched the idealized America he dreamed of; polemics like “The Battle of Hampton Roads” and “Four Score and Seven” howled with rage and fire, detailing the shitty country Stickles saw around him. It felt good to empathize, even as that empathy obscured a greater despair. Those mildly self-deprecating “U-S-A” chants were reminders that, for an evening, us losers were in this imperfect union together. —Jeremy Gordon",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/merokrecords/titus-andronicus-a-more,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/15052/homepage_large.d22a5fa5.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Titus_Andronicus-The_Monitor.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,29,Japandroids,Celebration Rock,Polyvinyl,"The most quoted line from Celebration Rock is the only one that may have some basis in Japandroids' real life experience. ""If they try to slow you down/ Tell 'em all to go to hell"" is certainly a universal sentiment, one that can be applied to your high school guidance counselor or the Phoenix Coyotes' blueliners. But just think for a second how it relates to Brian King and David Prowse, guys who realized they're lifers in a game rigged entirely to their disadvantage. Punk rock isn't expected to celebrate anything other than the outdated Kurt Cobain archetype, co-opted by fashionistas and tastemakers as a perverse enforcer of elitist, 1% ideals. Audiences are seen as a burden, anyone who parrots even his most nebulous principles is invariably applauded. Meanwhile, aspiring for apolitical, communal uplift is viewed with suspicion. Those born into artistic wealth are lauded for both their God-given gift and their means of squandering it in the face of the less fortunate, either by wanton prolificacy, drugs, self-negation or self-harm. If you were merely born with Kurt Cobain's haircut, you can land a modeling contract. And here we have two beer-drinking guys in t-shirts and jeans from Vancouver, on a label primarily known for Midwestern emo. They use distortion and amplifiers for their intended purpose, to exaggerate already outsized songs rather than obscure them. ""Here we are now, entertain us""? Fuck that—King and Prowse write lyrics by imagining themselves as someone who paid $20 to sing them back to the guys on stage. Entire career arcs were completed in the three years it took Japandroids to come up with a half hour of music they were proud of. This is the context that led King, the creative voice behind the most beautiful, life-affirming rock record of the decade to say, ""I don't consider myself to be a very creative person."" There are many superficial reasons to love Celebration Rock and most of them make the listener well up with incapacitating joy and hug complete strangers at Japandroids shows—every triumphant guitar riff, every blazing solo, every drum fill and every WHOA-OH-OH! strives to be the best part on the record, demonstrating an irrepressible joie de vivre because they want you to believe that every waking moment could be the one that changes your life forever. But Celebration Rock can move you to tears if you recognize the profundity in King's point of view and relate to it: it's the antithesis of ""effortless cool,"" an album created by people born without ""the gift"" and are ready to go to any fucking length to get as close to it as humanly possible. And that means hitchhiking to hell and back on Fire's Highway for a blitzkrieg love and a Roman candle kiss, swearing off sleep to work the adrenaline nightshift just in case a generation's bonfire starts to burn, taking your lover's hand and fighting through fear and uncertainty, hearts beating like continuous thunder. For people who understand that, Celebration Rock is holy scripture, eight prayers that don't ask selfishly for ""the gift,"" but for the opportunity to meet fellow travelers on the same spiritual path to true nirvana. We don't wait for those nights to arrive, we yell like hell to the heavens; Celebration Rock is heaven yelling back. —Ian Cohen",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/17735/homepage_large.6cc98599.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Japandroids-Celebration_Rock.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,28,My Bloody Valentine,m b v,Self-released,"A 22-year gap between albums is inconceivable to most bands, but in the case of My Bloody Valentine’s mbv, it seemed almost fitting. The pioneering shoegaze group took so long to follow 1991’s iconic Loveless, it eerily underscored just how utterly untethered from time and place the band’s music has always been. And on mbv, that wash of disorientation is liberating. Kevin Shields and crew churn vertigo into euphoria, and their legion of imitators once again had to gasp. There is no past or future to mbv, no up or down; instead, it bobs around the firmament of indie rock like a rogue planet, blithe and beatific. —Jason Heller",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/18923/homepage_large.7171036f.jpg,/dataset/artwork/My_Bloody_Valentine-m_b_v.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,27,Bon Iver,"Bon Iver, Bon Iver",Jagjaguwar/4AD,"If Bon Iver's literally woodshedded debut For Emma, Forever Ago vaguely evoked Iron & Wine's deeply rooted melancholy, Bon Iver seemed cut free not just from its contemporaries but from the material world itself. The multi-tracked close harmonies that raised goosebumps on For Emma were still here, and as visceral as ever. But they were imbued with a whole new degree of ethereality thanks to fuzzy Pro Tools logic that paired bowed cello with blast beats, turned Colin Stetson's bass saxophone into a sawtoothed monster, and floated wheezy synths that dissolved on the tongue. Between echoes of Michael McDonald and Bruce Hornsby, there was the thought that this might be the revenge of soft rock as a legitimate aesthetic pursuit, but it was so much more than that: mood music too mercurial to settle into still life, Sunday-morning frequencies too wily to be mistaken for the merely tasteful. With presence couched in distance, and distance measured in the trembling of the hairs on your neck, the album unrolls like a road trip taken according to half-remembered instructions scrawled on a scrap of paper in a shaky hand. —Philip Sherburne",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/boniver/calgary,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/16670/homepage_large.d44901b5.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bon_Iver-Bon_Iver_Bon_Iver.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,26,Deafheaven,Sunbather,Deathwish,"Depression, lust, addiction, and hope all course through Sunbather, the classic second album from Deafheaven. Granted, these lead-heavy concepts are delivered through lead singer George LeSage Clarke’s wind-tunnel howl, a vocal approach that’s a direct descendant of black metal’s searing burn and liberally applied throughout this massive album like brushed oil. But that’s what lyric sheets are for, and anyway, where Sunbather’s going, we don’t need lyric sheets. Carved up into seven interlocking pieces that demand to be consumed as one overwhelming whole, Sunbather is impossibly transportive, its scope and range providing a canvas onto which listeners can project their own experiences. The constant swell-and-break that Deafheaven pull off over this carefully considered hour of music undoubtedly owes debts to post-rock, but while that genre is often called “cinematic,” the sweep of Sunbather is all unspooled film, doused in lighter fluid and set ablaze. Deafheaven's potent mix of beauty and brutality made Sunbather a true crossover album; it gets under your skin, regardless of your familiarity with corpse paint and burning crosses. This is a truly psychedelic blend of the last 30 years of rock music—shoegaze’s tremolo-abusing pulse, prog’s intricacies and sense of pacing, heavy metal’s swinging melodic tendencies—and Sunbather’s assault renders these genre-specific details as one, making for one of the more distinctive rock albums in recent memory. —Larry Fitzmaurice",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/19249/homepage_large.7e252f9a.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Deafheaven-Sunbather.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,25,Bill Callahan,Apocalypse,Drag City,"Bill Callahan has never been sad. Reflective, maybe; quiet, definitely—an artist who draws the margins of seemingly unremarkable moments toward the center. More and more, his songs feel like scripts: flat on the page but illuminated in performance. His words mean less than the pauses between them, what he says less than how he says it. (Maybe that’s why he’s always been cagey about poetry, whose line breaks don’t imply the passage of time but the shifting of thought—and which crucially doesn’t require a speaker to come alive.) And though his baritone has only become warmer and more self-assured with each album, even calling him a “singer” on Apocalypse feels wrong: He’s an actor in sound, living his songs in real time. —Mike Powell",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/16394/homepage_large.344223f1.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bill_Callahan-Apocalypse.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,24,Disclosure,Settle,PMR,"Only two years ago, Disclosure released a single, ""Tenderly"" b/w ""Flow"". At the time, it seemed an inventive take on big-room house, but in retrospect, it hinted at the unique breed of savvy revivalism Disclosure would soon bring to the pop charts. Settle heralded the arrival of a strangely future-forward sound that joined pop aesthetics with crunchy house production and swooped it all up into tidy songcraft. It was such a radio-ready collection, it helped rejuvenate English dance-pop, lending extra momentum to the careers of artists like Jessie Ware and AlunaGeorge. But even more surprisingly, Settle sounded like an inspired pop album, not a set assembled to cash in on the success of a few singles. All of which was even more impressive considering the project's two small-time producers, brothers Guy and Howard Lawrence, were at the time 22 and 19, respectively. By now, most of your friends have probably tried on a Disclosure Face, and it’s hard to believe there was a time when “Latch” wasn’t a Top 10 hit. Even Mary J. Blige has tried to hitch her wagon to this star. But it’s worth remembering that not many people can make music like this. The brittle kiss-off “White Noise” and the swooning club hymn “Help Me Lose My Mind” are as different as two songs that access the same dance-floor-primed pleasure centers can be. Especially understated tracks, like the repetitive “Grab Her!” (an unlikely highlight of their live show), share the same resourceful mix of spontaneity and careful editing—and just try not to forget yourself when singer Sasha Keable glides into the chorus of ""Voices"". Settle is a breakthrough album that feels like it could only have been made by the very young: the basis is pure pop elation. —Abby Garnett",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/disclosuremusic/when-a-fire-starts-to-burn,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/19280/homepage_large.e117b531.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Disclosure-Settle.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,23,St. Vincent,Strange Mercy,4AD,"On her first two albums as St. Vincent, Annie Clark didn’t exactly play it safe, but she did keep her eccentricities in check, trafficking in self-consciously clever arrangements and lyrics. So it was all the more startling when Clark unleashed the mighty Strange Mercy, which refuses to play in the background. This is an album that fights for attention, and Clark’s arsenal is impressive: the isosceles guitar licks of “Cruel”, the synth-guitar footrace that ends “Surgeon”, the Wall Street ventriloquy of closer “Year of the Tiger”. She has chops for miles and an artily aggressive playing style that—thank the gods—has no truck with tired, tortured soloing. Strange Mercy was the one thing we never expected from St. Vincent at the time: one of the decade’s best and most adventurous guitar albums. —Stephen M. Deusner",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/16940/homepage_large.ff09b428.jpg,/dataset/artwork/St_Vincent-Strange_Mercy.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,22,M83,"Hurry Up, We're Dreaming",Mute,"Anthony Gonzalez’s motivations are, on some level, pretty crass. He saw fellow countrymen Daft Punk soundtrack the Tron reboot, and in 2009, he moved to Los Angeles in hopes of doing something similar. He learned how to be a frontman while touring with Dave Gahan, Brandon Flowers, and what’s-his-name from Kings of Leon. And after a couple of critically-acclaimed LPs that never scored a real pop hit, he specifically modeled Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming after the archetypal, indulgent double album of the cash-flush CD era, one that sold over 10 million copies and is also named Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. Maybe people noticed these things, but most likely, no one cared. Whether it was re-imagining Loveless on crude synthesizers or Blade Runner and Pretty in Pink on very expensive synthesizers, Gonzalez’s main artistic goal has always been to spread love by rendering reality more dreamlike; this time out, he was just more honest about wanting to do so on the biggest possible scale. As a result, everyone who came in contact with Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming became a fantasy version of themselves. “Intro” allowed Mute to recognize the inner pop-goth goddess in recent signee Zola Jesus, and after two decades of alt-rock struggle in Savage Republic, Medicine and Electric Company, the self-explanatory “Splendor” allows Brad Laner a regal procession into the Hall of Fame. Throughout, White Sea’s Morgan Kibby establishes herself a songwriting auteur rather than a muse or voice-for-hire, a teen internet poet named Claudia Lewis becomes an electro-funk namesake, and the album producer’s 5-year old daughter rambles about magical frogs and becomes the most interesting storyteller on Earth. And then there’s Gonzalez himself, who’d previously teased at alternate universe, “What if?” hits. “Midnight City” became the real thing, crashing KROQ playlists, earning Gonzalez a Grammy nomination, a production credit on a Killers song, an orchestral headlining performance at the Hollywood Bowl, and a lucrative gig on an ill-fated Tom Cruise blockbuster. It’s no wonder he hasn’t been able to follow Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming yet: this is the album that made all of Gonzalez’s dreams a reality. —Ian Cohen",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/17014/homepage_large.be990fa7.jpg,/dataset/artwork/M83-Hurry_Up_Were_Dreaming.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,21,The War on Drugs,Lost in the Dream,Secretly Canadian,"Not only will the War on Drugs not object if you compare the cinematic heartland-rock fantasias on Lost in the Dream to Dire Straits or “The Boys of Summer”, they’ll probably agree with you. War on Drugs chief architect Adam Granduciel is an unrepentant sucker for the big hooks and bigger emotions of 80s-era headbands-and-denim rock, and his affectless approach reveals untapped reserves of feeling lurking behind the gloomy reverb and icy synths. Written and recorded in the aftermath of a romantic breakup, Lost in the Dream doesn’t obscure the wounds on Granduciel’s heart—song titles include “Suffering”, “Burning”, and “Under the Pressure”. But it also doesn’t skimp on the catharsis, which arrives like a stampeding cavalry during the rousing guitar workout “An Ocean in Between the Waves”. —Steven Hyden",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/secretlycanadian/the-war-on-drugs-red-eyes/,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/20300/homepage_large.9419e472.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_War_on_Drugs-Lost_in_the_Dream.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,20,Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti,Before Today,4AD,"Listening to Before Today now, it's hard to see it as anything other than exactly what it is: a funny, strange, richly detailed piece of revisionist pop helmed by one of music's most notable eccentrics. But when it was released in 2010, it was greeted with shock and skepticism. What did a dingus like Ariel Pink do to deserve to even be involved in making a record as good as Before Today? How did this cantankerous weirdo get it together (and keep it together) long enough to lead a band as pro-sounding as the one Pink gathered for this recording? Why is a meltdown-prone provocateur like Pink now the go-to influence for a generation of young, obtuse music makers? ""I'm just this fake musician who really gets off on people thinking [that] he's a musician,"" he told Pitchfork a few years ago. A mighty cynical statement, sure, but not a totally untrue one. With Before Today, Pink finally pulled off his big moment, one that many had hoped for, but few thought he was capable of. Pink’s been doing his fake-it-'til-he-makes-it schtick since Animal Collective plucked him from Beverly Hills' nether-regions in 2004, freaking out the squares for the next half-decade with a series of homemade releases that were either brilliantly intolerable or intolerably brilliant. So when Before Today came along—a sharply produced fever dream of schlocky ‘70s and ‘80s lite-rock radio fluff—it felt entirely suspect, as if its 12 tracks had been wormholed from some wiggy alternate universe instead of meticulously crafted in a studio. But even skeptics found Before Today scratching that ungettable itch, its timeless screwball charm feeling somehow alien and inborn at the same time. The funky downtown vamp of ""Beverly Kills"", the unctuous downer grooves on ""Menopause Man"", the cloud-bursting chorus that made ""Round and Round"" eternal—there was nothing else like them in their respective orbits. Before Today was no fluke, but rather a lovingly made, beautifully realized piece of work, a nifty garage sale oddity that was too good to keep secret. Every time you put it on, it's like finding something you didn't know you lost. —Zach Kelly",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/15377/homepage_large.8df288c5.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ariel_Pinks_Haunted_Graffiti-Before_Today.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,19,Flying Lotus,Cosmogramma,Warp,"At the top of the decade, it was time for Flying Lotus to make the album he’d always dreamed of making: Cosmogramma, a cosmic drama, a record that would incorporate all the different sounds that he loved. He’d always wanted to include live instrumentation in his records, but was waiting for the ""right people."" Sure enough, a cast of players helped push his astral explorations further than they had been pushed before. Thundercat’s skittering bass, Miguel Atwood-Ferguson’s dramatic string arrangements, Rebekah Raff’s harp, Ravi Coltrane’s saxophone—these are load-bearing elements, essential in defining the album’s tone and making Cosmogramma feel major. It started in late 2008, just after his great album Los Angeles, when he created a song called “Computer Face//Pure Being”. It’s one of his all-time bangers; on an album with no lack of spacey jazz explorations, “Computer Face” has an orbital pull to it. With its frenetic beat and elated melody, it stands out on an album long on standout moments. ""I felt different creating it,"" he said, and he kept chasing that energy to craft his best and most ambitious LP to date. Cosmogramma plays out like an epic journey—the only pauses come when you stop to flip the record, and it all culminates in an exploration of the “Galaxy in Janaki”. There’s no need to get caught up in where, or what, that galaxy is. (It’s likely a nod of reverence to his aunt, Alice Coltrane, whose spiritual discourses helped provide the album’s conceptual backbone.) Cosmogramma, according to Flying Lotus, is a term for ""the studies that map out the universe and the relations of heaven and hell."" ""I need to know you’re out there somewhere,"" sings Thom Yorke on ""...And the World Laughs With You"", highlighting that Cosmogramma isn’t about scientific precision. It’s exploring the cross-section of all there is: this world and the afterworld, darkness and light. —Evan Minsker",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/15251/homepage_large.9586ed22.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Flying_Lotus-Cosmogramma.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,18,Joanna Newsom,Have One on Me,Drag City,"""You need to eat, just like you need to listen to music,"" Joanna Newsom told Arthur magazine in 2006, right around the release Ys. ""[B]ut it never feels good if you do it like that. So I am trying to set my life up in a way where I don’t have to listen to music anyway other than putting on a record and sitting and listening."" In this increasingly distracted age, Newsom's impossibly generous third LP Have One on Me still feels like an anomaly: two hours, give or take, to clear everything else away and just listen. It's not an album you put on while you fiddle with your phone or rearrange your furniture; it's something you spend time with, taking in every bow and quake in Newsom's exquisitely wrought songcraft. Have One on Me, more than just about any other album of this young decade, seems designed with the utmost care, and it requires of its listeners that same kind of patience and deliberation. Four years on, Newsom's westward-bound song-cycle of loss and renewal still has stories to share and secrets to reveal. It's a record about finally figuring out what it is you want, casting aside all the things you can no longer bear, and reconciling your old self with the new one. And it, like us, keeps changing, keeps deepening, keeps accruing new meaning with each passing year. I confess I don't play it all that often, and when I do, I don't always get all the way through it in one sitting. But every few months or so, on a slow Saturday morning, I'll carve out a couple hours to take it all in. Years later, it remains a marvel, grand and immaculate, a world unto itself. —Paul Thompson",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/15000/homepage_large.e63def14.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Joanna_Newsom-Have_One_on_Me.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,17,Swans,The Seer,Young God,"The Seer has to be the least inspiring album on this list. Can you imagine someone sitting through all two hours of this album, picking up a guitar, and thinking, “Yeah, I’m gonna give that a shot”? Not when every second of The Seer—all 7,152 of them—makes its inconceivable degree of difficulty very, very apparent. For beginners, you need three solid decades of experience in the most uncompromising post-punk S&M and the most earthy freak-folk just to get started, as well as the impatience to come up with the two-note chromatic riff of “Mother of the World” and the patience to play it for five straight minutes without variation. And let’s not forget the sheer physical stamina required here: have you considered what it takes to begin writing a song like “The Seer”, let alone to see it through to its 32-minute completion? Do you think they recorded it on its first take? You’ll also need to ask your acolytes for some reciprocity and mend some fences, as Low’s eerie harmonies bring doomsaying proclamation “Lunacy” to light, Karen O finds peace amidst the post-apocalyptic calm of “Song for a Warrior”, and the subtext of “The Seer Returns” is basically “Jarboe Returns”. I mean, fuck, do you even have any friends named Thor? If all of that isn’t discouraging enough, Swans dropped To Be Kind as a sequel two years later just to prove that they’re the only ones capable of doing something like this. Look, there are plenty of records here that will grow on you, ones meant to be reconsidered after an indifferent first experience, some that can make you see what’s possible for the future. The Seer is nothing of the sort. It wrests your appreciation through intimidation, an impressive, awe-inspiring work that lets you know what music is capable of on rare occasions. Of course, you might hear it and think it’s all bullshit, and you might set out to tear down every one of these old ideas. If so, congratulations—you’re where Michael Gira was 30 years ago, so you may as well give it a shot. —Ian Cohen",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/18141/homepage_large.07924400.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Swans-The_Seer.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,16,Destroyer,Kaputt,Merge / Dead Oceans,"The braintrust behind the satirical online series ""Yacht Rock"" never transcended the realm of mere internet phenomenon to become an Apotowian mainstream-movie powerhouse. But they can at least take this to heart: when you consider the course of overground indie-rock over the past 10 years, ""Yacht Rock"" now seems less of a parody than an uncanny prophecy. Once-verboten devices like New-Agey synths and saxophone solos have displaced discordant guitars, while prevailing facial-hair practices among emergent artists gamely conform to ‘80s-Loggins standards. But as an early indie-rock acolyte who’s old enough to remember when such lite-FM signifiers represented all that was vulgar and vile about ""'Me' Decade"" overindulgence, Dan Bejar embraced the smooth on Kaputt for reasons that have nothing to do with nostalgia. Rather, this is precisely the sort of sickly sleek record that Bejar’s craven first-person characters would’ve been listening to 30 years ago while thrusting their six-figure paychecks up their noses or in a table dancer’s G-string. Of course, in his vivid rendering of ’80s excess, Bejar effectively holds up a mirror to our post-recessionary present. On two separate songs, he croons, “wrote a song for America… who knew?”, as if to reinforce the notion that this record’s thematic resonance was a fortuitous accident, like a dream that only makes sense after much morning-after reflection. But Kaputt is a concept album in its yuppie-scummy sound as much as its lyrical concerns—whenever that omnipresent brass section blares out atop Bejar’s cautionary-tale narratives, it’s less a champagne-room mating call than an air-raid siren signaling the fall of an empire.—Stuart Berman",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/16127/homepage_large.cdf989af.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Destroyer-Kaputt.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,15,Grimes,Visions,4AD / Arbutus,"""Everybody thinks that I'm boring/ Many people think I've got no clue."" There's not a chance these words apply to Grimes in 2014. But when Claire Boucher sang them on her debut tape, 2010's Geidi Primes, she sounded more than a bit defeated, as if caged in her mind. Listen to any of Boucher's cassette recordings from that era in succession with 2012's Visions, and the truth reveals itself: Aside from being one of the most monumental ""post-Internet"" releases in any genre, Visions is the sound of a young web-addled person who continued believing in herself long enough to become free. “Modern” is the only word for Visions, an intensely nuanced master-work of pop collage, pegging down bubblegum synth-pop and 90s R&B and K-pop and metallic IDM with Boucher's distinctive falsetto, variously featherlight or fierce. Along with 2012's ""Vanessa"", Visions soundtracks Grimes' ongoing claim for space in the continuum of great pop eccentrics. In the time since its release, this record has become omnipresent; at least in New York, I cannot go a week without hearing it at some bar or café, but most often it loops in my head, an antidote. It is hard to imagine that Grimes used one of these little boxes in front of us to make magic. The Internet can be a kind of prison—with its subliminal trappings of tabs and streams and data-mining likes and tweets—but Grimes' ability to morph the endless nature of web culture into something that is pointed and pleasurable gives me hope. It is a more appealing expression of infinity, sung from a high-pitched human heart, one of ecstasy, hurt, and calm bliss. Amid comparisons to fellow ""Small Pop"" case-studies like Sky Ferreira and Solange, it can be hard to remember that this is a girl who, just five years ago, tried sailing down the Mississippi River on a DIY houseboat with live chickens and 20 pounds of potatoes. A streak of self-reliance still pervades her music and its encompassing world of video, performance, and written word—a gravity center for fans of both mainstream and underground music, if those words have retained any meaning. Boucher has now tried writing for Rihanna, but the occasional wordlessness of Visions reminds me more of Elizabeth Fraser. She is at once signed to Jay Z's management firm and an inspiration to Kathleen Hanna, who has noted her admiration of Grimes' ""feminist electronic punk"" music. Last year, when Allison and Katie Crutchfield (of Swearin' and Waxahatchee) covered the album's greatest achievement, “Oblivion”, Katie commented on the song's theme of street harassment: ""It's something a feminist punk band would write about,"" she said. ""I felt politically aligned with [""Oblivion""]."" Boucher's own list of the ""Greatest Songs of All Time"" put Mariah Carey alongside Butthole Surfers. Grimes' seemingly endless power lies in these multitudes—Visions is some kind of nirvana, capturing every element at its peak. —Jenn Pelly",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/arbutus-records/grimes-oblivion | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-aWEYezEMk,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/17368/homepage_large.42bf6de8.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Grimes-Visions.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,14,Beyoncé,Beyoncé,Columbia,"Where were you when Beyoncé sneak-released Beyoncé? I was asleep, but plenty of my peers were watching videos and Gchatting deep into the night. When I woke up on December 13, 2013, the pop landscape was different. It was too early to say for sure if we'd have to swap out our respective albums of the year, let alone the decade so far, but this much was clear: As pundits kept proclaiming the death of the album, ""the album"" itself had been redefined. Any record that happened to be merely great suddenly had a tougher case to make. And yet, now that the novelty has worn off, Beyoncé endures on these lists because it's staggeringly great. David Bowie and My Bloody Valentine had already demonstrated the power of surprise, issuing music earlier in 2013 with no advance warning; ""Weird Al"" Yankovic hinted at the idea of the ""visual album"" with 2011's Alpocalypse, which had a video for every song. The real shock of Beyoncé was that a seasoned pro who looked to be headed toward adult-contemporary blandness and inoffensive commercial tie-ins had instead used the most adventurous means her money could buy to express an alternate vision of contemporary adulthood. Settling down, having kids, working hard at your job: It's not always easy, sure, Beyoncé tells us; but within that fairly conventional setting there's more to grown-up intimacy than music's myriad aging Lotharios—coming soon to an arena or state fair near you—could imagine. How Beyoncé redefined the album carries over to how you want to define Beyoncé itself. The videos count, right? And what about the bonus tracks? But Beyoncé's indomitable vision is plain to see. There's the arena-ready romance of ""XO"", a song that John Mayer cannily re-recorded as his own single; the idiosyncratically explicit bawdiness of The Big Lebowski-quoting, Monica Lewinsky-alluding ""Partition"", new-D'Angelo-album substitute ""Rocket"", and Skittles-sexualizing ""Blow"". As the thrill of ""serfbort"" wears off, even the unappetizing secret language Jay Z seems to be using to address the mother of his child on ""Drunk in Love"" can become strangely endearing. Those not interested in Beyoncé's lyrical concerns can still get lost in the music's dark, lush textures; the eerie throb of ""Haunted"" deservedly launched a search for little-known producer Boots, who shares credits on the album with such big names as Pharrell, Timbaland, and The-Dream. Politics inevitably factor into this discussion, and I'm not sure who the person is to sort out what Beyoncé means in an area where people have such strong pre-existing views. You certainly don't need to be told how you feel about the ""perfection is the disease of a nation"" sloganeering of opener ""Pretty Hurts"", or the TED Talk sample on feminism amid the Houston-rooted ""bow down, bitches"" hip-hop of ""***Flawless"". At its essence, though, Beyoncé masterfully demonstrates one human being's evidently triumphant quest for the deceptively simple life goal a young ""Miss Third Ward"" describes in the album's opening seconds: ""To be happy."" One day in late December 2013, we woke up like this. And whatever the calendar says, that day isn't over yet. Whether sharing an irrepressibly ribald remix with Nicki Minaj or booking a performance at the upcoming MTV Video Music Awards, Beyoncé is still standing on the sun. —Marc Hogan",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/20016/homepage_large.dd0f91c0.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beyonc-Beyonc.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,13,Real Estate,Days,Domino,"There are people who find Real Estate a little too sedate, like the Chill Situations Twitter come to life; as someone who's considered using his entire lunch break to pet the neighborhood dogs, though, they're just my speed.  Like the Grateful Dead, whom they’ve covered live, Real Estate are principally concerned with maintaining the vibe; unlike the Dead, they’ve managed to refine their melodies to a sparkling precision, rather than let them sprawl for miles. Their second album, Days, launched like a pointed reaction against overt aggression, against rudely distorted guitars and elbows thrown in throbbing mosh pits. Instead, the band wrote songs that sounded like clouds drifting by. “Our careless lifestyle, it was not so unwise,” Martin Courtney sang on “Green Aisles” over Matt Mondanile’s sleepily sketched guitar lines, a graceful voice affirming its inner harmony. “I don’t think rock'n'roll needs 'masculine arrogance',” a teenaged Jonathan Richman once wrote to Creem magazine regarding an unfavorable review of the Four Seasons. “You call them ‘featherweights.’ They’re heavyweights to me.” This would have knocked him out, too. —Jeremy Gordon",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/real-estate-the-band/green-aisles | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wkm6cn9MEps,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/17053/homepage_large.dc7156db.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Real_Estate-Days.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,12,Drake,Take Care,Young Money Entertainment / Universal Republic / Cash Money,"As the calendar flipped from 2010 to 2011, you could still reasonably front on Drake. He had already established himself as one of the brightest stars in rap—in a stunningly brazen admission on the 2010 track “Money to Blow”, Lil Wayne rapped “We gon' be alright if we put Drake on every hook”—but it wasn’t difficult to poke holes in the art behind his unparalleled chart success. Wayne was right that Drake had displayed preternatural ability as a hook writer, but his lyrics were overly eager and simplistic, relying mostly on obvious and corny metaphors that were often jammed to fit the “hashtag” flow that had infected all of rap, with Drake as patient zero. On the one hand, Drake fans could point to his unassailable numbers. On the other hand, there was “Two thumbs up/ Ebert & Roeper.” But as 2011 wore on, Drake began to obliterate all of that, first with a series of refined one-off tracks (“Dreams Money Can Buy”, “Trust Issues”, ""I'm on One"") and then with Take Care, a masterstroke of an LP that represents basically all you could ask for in a sophomore album. Where its predecessor Thank Me Later had the feel of being designed from a First Album Checklist—beats from Kanye West, Swizz Beatz, and Timbaland, check; verses from Jay-Z, T.I., and Young Jeezy, check—Take Care is one of the most idiosyncratically written and produced albums of a generation. Drake’s triangulation of droopy-lidded Houston screw music and Aaliyah’s whispered R&B changed urban radio, but here he cracks that sound open in a myriad of creative ways. On “Shot for Me” and “Crew Love”, the album’s darkest tracks, he nicks bass wobbles from James Blake. On “Take Care” he buys throbbing house music from Jamie xx by way of Gil Scott-Heron. “Cameras” sharpens an oozing Jon B. album cut into a fine point, “The Ride” molds the Weeknd into a soul sample, and “Look What You’ve Done” lifts piano and vocals from a YouTube video of stylistic forbearer Static Major. For good measure, “Doing It Wrong” interpolates Don McLean and features original harmonica playing by Stevie Wonder. This is Drake—and his longtime producer 40—pouring his entire life into the sound of an album while still maintaining a connection to the hyper-contemporary trends (the ethos of screw and Timbaland’s R&B productions drive the album) that he himself had ushered in. All of which would’ve been for naught had he not improved as a rapper and made himself more approachable as a personality. The jokes here—“Pull all your skeletons out the closet like Halloween decorations”— are still goofy, but in a way that is endearingly imaginative. More importantly, we get a clear-eyed look into Drake the person, from the testosterone-fueled party boy to the struggling MC to the caring son to the desperate and emotionally reckless ex-boyfriend. Some of these personas are harder to reckon with than others, but they nonetheless feel genuine and honest. Though Drake already carried a reputation of “introspection,” on Take Care we are offered the full scope of his life as a manner of reflecting upon our own. The Take Care album cycle began to wrap up with “HYFR (Hell Ya Fucking Right)”, released as a single in April 2012. At that point, Drake was just months away from breaking Jay-Z’s record for most number one singles in the history of the Billboard Hot R&B/Rap chart. It was widely accepted that his sophomore album was a classic. In the “HYFR” video he gets “re-Bar Mitzvah’d.” We see him read from the Torah and hoisted up on a chair during the traditional horah dance. Lil Wayne is in the audience. The symbolism was 20/20: the boy had become a man. —Jordan Sargent",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/17183/homepage_large.67ce3bba.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Drake-Take_Care.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,11,LCD Soundsystem,This Is Happening,Virgin / Parlophone / DFA,"You know that feeling when you really want to be somewhere but you can’t be there, and you know there’s a thing happening and you’re missing it? That’s pretty much what the intro to This Is Happening is like. Here was a hugely anticipated record from a band known for unimpeachable decision-making, and the first song on it made us wait outside the club for a minute and a half while the band played before finally opening the door. If anyone could toy with our expectations like that and get away with it, it was James Murphy, who hung up the band after this record in the exact sort of deliberate way you always figured he would. Dance music about dance music never sounds like an interesting idea when you say it out loud, but Murphy and company made it into something vital, something filled with understanding of the way time slips by, second by second, minute by minute, year by year. Murphy found himself growing old in a world where everyone was supposed to die young. He wasn’t getting up in the morning and brushing his teeth with a bottle of Jack before rushing back out the door. He was finding it hard to get up at all. And so we get “I Can Change”, that signature LCD song that pulls the revelry inside-out, turning the most ecstatic emotions over and over in its hand to find all the gut-wrenching doubt and terror that go with them, hand-in-glove. Even though his vision for the band was as fresh and unique as they come, Murphy was always first and foremost a fan of music, and he references everything from Talking Heads to Barbara Streisand, going to Berlin with Bowie and picking a fight with a critic along the way. He brought it all together without seams. He did his best singing right before he said goodbye to us and hung his band up. He wasn’t afraid to confound us, and he wasn’t afraid to stare the consequences of too much fun, too much love, and too much rock in the eye and turn them into a song we could all feel at home in. This is not a perfect record, but it wouldn’t be as compelling or generous if it were. Turn it up and let the volume spike on the first song. Let it exhaust you. Let it exasperate you. Let it shut the door (twice) on terrible times. It’s been five years, but this is still happening. —Joe Tangari",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/15307/homepage_large.0024dd9d.jpg,/dataset/artwork/LCD_Soundsystem-This_Is_Happening.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,10,Fiona Apple,The Idler Wheel...,Epic,"Some albums become classic because everything ends up sounding like them. The Idler Wheel is getting there because in 2012 it sounded like nothing else, and it still doesn’t—it almost doesn’t sound like a Fiona Apple album. On a macro scale, you can sort of see what’s going on; The Idler Wheel is as if Apple extrapolated an entire album from the anxiety-tremor percussion of “Fast as You Can” and the tumbling logorrhea of “Not About Love”. You can trace individual songs to their antecedents if you try: “Regret” and “Valentine” are slow seethes of a kind with “Sullen Girl” and “Red Red Red”. “Left Alone” is “Get Him Back” as tragicomedy, turning calcified emotional deadness into sad-clown vaudeville; many songwriters attempt this theme and most make it gripping, but only Apple, with her cabaret background, would practically throw in jazz hands. But while the most outré moments on Apple’s previous albums were contained in tangents, The Idler Wheel is a whole album filled with them. The Idler Wheel is so singular it confounds every narrative one can apply to it. “Hot Knife” and “Left Alone” are chokingly thick with sound, while tracks like “Periphery” owe a clear debt to Apple and Jon Brion’s lush, discarded first take of Extraordinary Machine. Critics that accused Apple of emotional overindulgence—musically or otherwise—clearly disregarded “Werewolf”, a breakup postmortem of which the most prudish of advice columnists would find disarmingly well-adjusted. Those dismissing her as a sulk definitely skipped the final two tracks, the latter of which, “Hot Knife”, hits the blood like a big Halloween-costume syringe of crushed-out dopamine; this far into Apple’s career and several years out, it still sounds like the first time she or anyone else processed falling in love. When songwriters attain the “genius” tag—as Apple unquestionably has—they do it by sounding so resolutely them that every lyric is like they’re writing in their own private, untranslated language. The joy of relating to these songs is like figuring out the translation of a word or two, and Apple’s genius is in making found-sound idiosyncrasies sound like the rumblings that everyone’s got inside them. In making words and images nobody else would put together, the songs on The Idler Wheel sound like the most universal sentiments in the world. —Katherine St. Asaph",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/fionaapple/werewolf/s-mqT39,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/17892/homepage_large.762bfaa8.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fiona_Apple-The_Idler_Wheel.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,9,Sun Kil Moon,Benji,Caldo Verde,"It seems weird to use the word for an album so muted and quiet, but when it arrived early this year, Benji was shocking. For much of the record, arrangements consist of a fingerpicked nylon string guitar. The tunes are just barely tunes, as Mark Kozelek sing-speaks the lyrics and worries more about fitting all the words in than he does about the conventions of rhyme and meter. How could a record that sounds so simple and states things so plainly be this moving? Kozelek had for some time favored stripped-down, detail-packed narratives about the particulars of his life, but he needed a thread to tie them together and transform the fragments into something powerful. Here, that binding idea is death. It’s not that every song on Benji is about someone close to Kozelek dying (though most of them are), but they all focus on relationships between specific people. And underneath the mundane observations about Kozelek loving his mother and father and having fun thinking about his friend Ben and telling the story of his first kiss is the pulsing reality that there’s only one way it all ends. But while there’s a long history of music explicitly about this territory, rare is the album with this much empathy and, ultimately, acceptance. That last part, delivered with a wisdom that takes some living to access, is the key to the whole thing, why these songs, despite their subject matter, are so uplifting. Even in the face of the worst horror imaginable, Benji tells us, the only way through is to keep on keepin’ on, making your way in the world with a heavy and open heart. —Mark Richardson",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/20057/homepage_large.8512d235.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sun_Kil_Moon-Benji.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,8,Kanye West,Yeezus,Def Jam,"You could say Yeezus is about sex, religion, race, celebrity, regret, and true love—and you’d be wrong. Yeezus is the Album About Everything, an unrestrained id stomping through a landscape of sputtering drum machines, queasy klaxons, and synths sharp enough to cause lacerations. Clocking in at a svelte 40 minutes, Yeezus is unbelievably dense for what is easily Kanye West's shortest album; he packs so many ideas, statements, and unreliable narratives into it that language itself becomes clipped and brutish; “Racism” becomes “racim”, Deepak Chopra becomes “Deepak Chopa”. The thoughts come quick and fast, taking shapes that are energizing, audacious, brave, and repulsive—sometimes all at once. Contradictions arrive in clusters; on “Blood on the Leaves”, tales of courtside seating-as-apartheid and wasted-cocaine regrets are laid out as Nina Simone wages an intergalactic war with TNGHT's flattening synthetic horns. Throughout Yeezus, Kanye claims to be a lot of things—a wolf, a king, a priest, a reincarnation of a still-alive Shabba Ranks—but he remains, tantalizingly, at arms’ length. Sonically, Yeezus is similarly impossible to categorize, a record that moves from nasty to terrifying to contemplative. Much has been made of how it stands out in relation to Kanye’s catalog, but squint a little and you can see the call-backs to his past work—the hyperspeed soul of The College Dropout, 808s & Heartbreak’s electronic isolation, Graduation’s opulent bray, Late Registration’s considered orchestration, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy’s proggy sprawl. Underneath all the chaos, Yeezus’ strangest moments unfold with an eerie sense of patience: the fizzling synths on the end of the sad-eyed “Guilt Trip”, the tangled guitar fantasia that emerges midway through “Hold My Liquor”, the 65 proclamatory seconds before “Blood on the Leaves” unleashes one of the most satisfying beat-drops of the last five years. The guest list on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy resembled an IMDB page for an entire year’s worth of Oscar winners, while Yeezus treats its collaborators like band logos written on the back of a spiral notebook, squashing their voices into one claustrophobic space. Dozens of people worked on Yeezus—even the guy from Salem gets a writing credit—but it’s a testament to Kanye’s all-encompassing vision that the end result sounds like nobody but him. When Yeezus saw release, a colleague suggested that Kanye had, for the fourth time, changed hip-hop’s sonic trajectory. A year isn’t much to measure the legacy of something as titanic and intangible as Yeezus, but so far, that person was wrong: nothing sounds like Yeezus. The dip of notable hip-hop and electronic releases in 2014 suggests that the shock of innovation froze both genres in their tracks. Even so, it’s a mistake to think of this music as “futuristic”: when Yeezus is in the air, time stands still. —Larry Fitzmaurice",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/19360/homepage_large.a2fb43da.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kanye_West-Yeezus.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,7,Tame Impala,Lonerism,Modular,"How do you make a psychedelic rock album about the future? Tame Impala did it with Lonerism by setting their sights on achieving pure interstellar pop pleasure. Lonerism has plenty of familiar 1960s-era signifiers: Lennonesque vocals, lysergic-powered string sections, harpsichords that sound like guitars, guitars that sound like harpsichords, and so on. But the sum total of these references is a futurist sensibility that belongs to no specific era, but rather is dedicated to exploring the space between abstract weirdness and conventional pop-rock melodicism. With his stated intention to write ""cheesy pop songs"" that he re-worked and perfected while stationed in a tiny Paris apartment, Kevin Parker sought to bridge Syd Barrett and Kylie Minogue on his would-be masterpiece, simultaneously engaging in an ecstatic exploration of the mind and an exhilarating celebration of the body. Lonerism isn’t dance music, but it sets out to push the same buttons. “Apocalypse Dreams” could be the best disco song ELO never wrote, and no matter the thrust of the mighty guitar riff on “Elephant” or the wonder of Parker’s beatific vocal on “Feels Like We Only Go Backwards,” Lonerism is built from the bottom up, with kinetic drum fills constantly pushing the songs heavenward. Like all great psych-rock, Lonerism is ultimately an exercise in introspection—an exploration not of space but inner space, as Roger Waters once said of Dark Side of the Moon. Parker knows his music history, and with Lonerism he successfully indulged his auteurist, Brian Wilson/Paul McCartney pop genius fantasies. But what ultimately makes Lonerism such a captivating listen is how it pulls your forward into an uncertain, exciting sonic terrain where the tangible past is reconfigured into an intangible set of fresh possibilities. —Steven Hyden",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/tame-impala/feels-like-we-only-go,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/18319/homepage_large.140bf2a7.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tame_Impala-Lonerism.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,6,Vampire Weekend,Modern Vampires of the City,XL,"Pigeonhole them as fops and rich kids if you want, but Vampire Weekend have long outgrown such petty concerns. Coming from a band whose early press included a Teen Vogue story doting on the recent purchase of a Ralph Lauren sweater embroidered with tiny dogs, Modern Vampires was a tough, pensive album, burdened by thoughts about mortality (“Don’t Lie”), personal failure (“Ya Hey”), and the lengths to which people go in order to give their lives a little meaning (“Unbelievers”). An observer of life more than a student of books, Ezra Koenig keeps his big ideas tethered to small, everyday details, and usually ends up confessing that for all his occasional insights, he’s just a guy in the street trying to sort it out like everyone else. Never has the synergy between him and Rostam Batmanglij been so realized. These are fussy, precise songs—built with ticking clocks, processed saxophones, sounds old and new, natural and anything but—but they project with the clarity and size of anthems. If the band seem like overachievers, it’s not because they want power, but because achievement is its own reward. Don’t hate them because they’re beautiful; hate them because their ambition paid off. —Mike Powell",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/19157/homepage_large.5cbf0d08.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Vampire_Weekend-Modern_Vampires_of_the_City.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,5,Beach House,Teen Dream,Sub Pop / Bella Union,"At one time Beach House were a modest, bookish secret, a band with two beloved little albums that sounded like residents of cramped, dusty spaces—a mildewy small-town antique shop, or disintegrating cardboard in an attic. They hinted distantly at sensuality, as if once they had might has been someone's makeout music, long since mothballed and forgotten. Alex Scally's synths and drum programming fit neatly into the mid-’00s fascination with faded, analog objects, and Victoria Legrand's low and alluring voice rose faintly above them, suggesting a vibrant spirit captured only on a crackly 78. Now, Beach House tour internationally, and Legrand's contralto rises into festival skylines from Primavera to Coachella. They've joined the top tier of powerhouse indie acts, alongside Arcade Fire and the National, and Volkswagen even tried to rip them off. It's a place no one would have previously thought to slot them, and it was entirely due to 2010's Teen Dream. The album was a glorious hinge point, springing the duo from the broom closet and ushering them permanently into the open field, bringing all of their previously muted allure with them. Produced by Chris Coady and released on Sub Pop, it was everything their first two albums were (alluring, romantic, remote, faintly mysterious) and everything they were not (overwhelming, sweeping, grand). Scally's guitar sounds, which had always been soft-edged, swelled into the new space, bringing the band closer to the majesty of My Bloody Valentine. And on autumnal anthems like “A Walk in the Park”, Legrand graduated from siren into someone more forceful and interesting—someone who had fallen permanently beneath the spell of Stevie Nicks' arm scarves at an early age, for sure, but also a corporeal woman with dark, elliptical thoughts about love and loss. —Jayson Greene",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/14903/homepage_large.20945b0e.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beach_House-Teen_Dream.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,4,Frank Ocean,Channel Orange,Def Jam,"Days before Channel Orange became available on his website, Frank Ocean posted a note to his Tumblr. It was a love note, poetically worded but simply stated, to a boy he'd shared an intense summer relationship with, only to discover the boy had a girlfriend. Or something like that. The details were hazy, but the message was crystalline: Frank Ocean was coming out after several years of private torment, on the eve of his long-delayed major label debut. ""Before writing this I'd told some people my story. I'm sure these people kept me alive, kept me safe,"" he wrote. ""I feel like a free man. If I listen closely... I can hear the sky falling too."" ""The night I posted it, I cried like a fucking baby,"" he told GQ shortly afterward. It was an extraordinary moment, one in which ""the personal and political merged into publicity,"" as Eric Harvey wrote in a lovely turn of phrase for BuzzFeed that year. The note, and its clear-eyed bravery, merged into the discovery of Channel Orange itself, an album that exists in a liminal space entirely of Ocean's creation. The music had some clear sources: It cribbed a gently astonished, pillowy feeling from Shuggie Otis, to whom Ocean seems to be paying direct tribute to with instrumental sketches like ""White"". And the ""domesticated paradise, palm trees and pools"" of ""Sweet Life"" is a well-scrutinized pop landscape, from Steely Dan and Fleetwood Mac and onward. But the mood and tone of Channel Orange, a mix of superhuman empathy and wisdom, remains unique. Ocean's characters struggle for human-sized achievements—grace through sorrow, hard-fought self-acceptance. His eye catches emotions of all sizes: a wail of desolation (""Bad Religion""), a tender late-night glance at a sleeping baby (""Sierra Leone""), and a junkie's descent (is there a sadder observation of addiction's effects than ""your family stopped inviting you to things""?). The songs melt through each other's borders, sometimes stopping after just a verse and a chorus and sometimes flowing through nearly 10 minutes. It's a sturdy, exquisite act of craftsmanship, one that creates a legacy no matter what its creator does or doesn't do next. —Jayson Greene",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/frank-ocean/pyramids,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/18028/homepage_large.45e3c196.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Frank_Ocean-Channel_Orange.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,3,Deerhunter,Halcyon Digest,4AD,"By the turn of the decade, Deerhunter had already come close to perfecting their synthesis of the last five decades of popular rock music—from the Everly Brothers to Sonic Youth—with their art-damaged, avant-garde sensibilities. Their ambitious, enigmatic Southern Gothic rock was refined and perfected on Cryptograms and Microcastle / Weird Era Cont., forging a distinct sound from a complex network of influences. In many ways, the band mirrored an ancestor, Georgia brethren R.E.M.: both groups challenged their listeners, treated atmosphere and texture with the same importance as melody, and were led by charismatic queer oddballs in Bradford Cox and Michael Stipe. On Deerhunter's first four full-lengths, that sort of queerness was mostly relegated to the realm of the subliminal: off-hand lyrical references, little sonic suggestions, hints of pent-up lust and frustration and loneliness. And then, like a bolt from the blue, Halcyon Digest: the sexual and social undercurrent that had laid in waiting for almost a decade exploded to the forefront, a burst of thematic clarity mirrored by a shift towards pristine, direct recording and composition. The album is one of the great documents of the queer experience; it's a true digest, a collection of stories and elements of the gay experience pulled from real life, literature, and the province of the mind. Halcyon Digest gives voice to characters that never had a chance to speak for themselves, to feelings that are too often relegated to journals and goodbye notes. On the cover there's Dennis Dinion, an Atlanta-area school teacher taking part in the 1982 Miss Star Lite Pageant on 1983's doorstep; it was the club's last night open. At the center of heartbroken requiem ""Helicopter"", there's Dima Marakov, a Dennis Cooper protagonist who went from studying fashion design in Russia to gay pornography and forced prostitution. There's the nameless child of the autumnal, jangling ""Memory Boy"", dealing with swirling October lust and his father's shame. ""Revival"" casts homoerotic passion in the language of religion, with Cox putting on his sluttiest moan; ""Don't Cry"" and ""Sailing"" are documents of loneliness and pure isolation. The album ends with a sprawling expression of platonic love. Courage, hope, sadness, loss, the beautiful and the grotesque, the divine and the queer: it's all here, rendered in painstakingly personal detail. There's a truly generous message at the heart of Halcyon Digest, one intended for anyone who's struggling or feeling alone regardless of personal circumstance: you are not alone, and you will know moments of joy that justify your fight. Less an individual collection of memories than an anthology, it transcends the limitations of its form. This is more than an album: it's a tribute to those of us who aren't able to find the peace they deserve, and a celebration of everyone who makes it through to the other side. —Jamieson Cox",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/15744/homepage_large.7a4e0af0.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Deerhunter-Halcyon_Digest.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,2,Kendrick Lamar,"good kid, m.A.A.d city",Interscope / Aftermath / Top Dawg,"Music this resonant—of a moment in time, of a turning point in a genre, and especially of the person making it—is typically seen as a sign that an artist's finally figured out who they are. But Kendrick Lamar's greatest album (so far) is such an achievement because it lays out the vivid picture of a younger self who hasn't figured out who he is—only what he's good at—and is surrounded by others unwilling to let him come to an identity easily or naturally. The core of the conflict on this album is powerfully familiar, albeit in multiple definitions of the term. On one end, there's the family itself, traditionally religious and tight-knit and constantly mindful of teenage Kendrick's well-being but mostly present through voicemails and tape recordings and things Kendrick has borrowed from them (his mother's van, his father's dominoes). On the other, there are all the outside forces that his classmates, friends, enemies, complete strangers, and the whole city of Compton are pulling him through—threatening his life through antagonism or peer pressure, an immediate end via gunbarrel or a slow death disguised as a celebration. It's an immersive experience, musically. Filtered through the legacy of Compton and the hip-hop that took the city's tribulations and victories international, the production and guest roster is powerfully cognizant of its G-funk precedent (complete with torch-passing Dre and MC Eiht guest spots). But it's also restless, anxious, wanting to step out of its elders' shadows and forge its own path through hazy ambience and minimalist soul. And Kendrick has many ways to command that atmosphere. There's his next-level storytelling, so detailed and evocative of places you've been or seen—L.A. or otherwise—it renders the entire idea of music videos redundant. There's his ability to step into other peoples' shoes and truly inhabit outside perspectives and mindsets in a way scarcely heard since late '90s OutKast. And there's that rare knack he has of being technically, lyrically, and narratively-minded all at once, with a three-way focus that doesn't sacrifice clarity for flash or intricacy for coherence. But what pushes him into rarefied territory is his ability to own his ambivalence, his confusion at the unknown, and his coming-of-age work at just figuring shit out. Even when he's at his most top-of-the-world boastful—""Backseat Freestyle"" being the early-album highlight of premature triumphalism—he keeps switching up his style through repetitions of the same verses and hooks just to find the one that registers right. The majority of the time—staring down bottomless Solo cups in ""Swimming Pools (Drank)"", pushing himself into isolation (""Bitch, Don't Kill My Vibe""), trying to figure out if there's any escape from his seemingly imminent mortality (""Sing About Me, I'm Dying of Thirst"")—a voice in the back of his head projects outwards to ask if this is really what he's about. good kid, m.A.A.d city plays like a eulogy for the person Kendrick could've been trapped into dying as, or a remembrance of people who really did find their lives cut short or derailed because their search for identity led them through routes that warped them into lost souls. —Nate Patrin",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/topdawgent/kendrick-lamar-backseat,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/18431/homepage_large.25b1edda.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kendrick_Lamar-good_kid_mAAd_city.jpg
The 100 Best Albums of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9465-the-top-100-albums-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,album,1,Kanye West,My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy,Def Jam / Roc-A-Fella,"This is a list that ranks sustained musical greatness in the new decade, so Kanye West’s name absolutely deserves to be at the #1 spot. But wouldn’t it be more accurate if it was just Kanye West’s name? If Benz vs. Backpack was the dichotomy that defined his early creative struggle, now it’s Kanye West vs. The Album, an antiquated format that increasingly seems ill-equipped to quantify the magnitude and influence of his multimedia celebrity and forward-thinking artistry. Yes, your grandparents and cousins and coworkers know who he is, but could you have a conversation with them about any of his songs? When was the last time they heard “Power” or “All of the Lights” in a public setting without their permission? West’s decade-long imperial phase is every bit as impressive as those of Prince, Michael Jackson, and Stevie Wonder... except on the charts and on radio playlists. Where’s his document of pop culture singularity? Well, sometimes the moment calls for a There’s a Riot Goin’ On or a Stankonia rather than Thriller or Purple Rain, a reality check for the fractious, dystopian present where “who will survive in America?” doesn’t seem like a rhetorical question. And the fact that an album that captured the beautiful, dark twisted reality of 2010 still managed to sell 1.5 million copies is one of its lesser triumphs. Smarting from his Taylor Swift and Bonnaroo PR disasters, the death of his mother, and his first critical failure, all while incapacitated by his volatile relationship with Amber Rose, the disharmony of Kanye West’s personal life was in tune with the state of hip-hop, the music industry, and the economic and political state of America as a whole midway through the first Obama administration—still unable or unwilling to process the turmoil of a hard couple of years, still tripping off the power, hedonism, and nihilism engaged in mortal combat. Equally accounting for West’s artistic adaptability and personal stubbornness, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy builds a monument as Rome burns. While his first two masterworks presented a complex and complete portrait of a man, you likely bought The College Dropout and Late Registration on CD and could resolve the contradictions and flaws by cutting out the skits and skipping the last couple of tracks. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy impresses with its impenetrable wholeness. Befitting a record that owes its creation to a mythical, Dream-Team recording process on a Hawaiian island, there’s one way in and no guaranteed means of escape: unusually lengthy songs impervious to fast-forwarding are filled with guitar solos, extended outros, surprise guest verses, and French horns. It's post-Twitter, pre-Vine and Snapchat; the decade's information overload with a vinyl-era attention span, forcing you to acknowledge and appreciate every stumble on the way to an emotional and musical breakthrough. And so, everything fascinating about Kanye West, the person, is inextricable from Kanye West, the artist, and becomes shorthand for nearly everything fascinating about pop in 2010. “Sex is on fire/ I’m the King of Leona Lewis”, the ""Obama-nation of Obama’s nation"" and, in between, a guy who out-raps Raekwon on his A-game. Nicki Minaj’s terrible British accent and a guest verse that altered the landscape like none other since Busta Rhymes’ on “Scenario”. “All of the Lights” has about 50 Grammys in its credits and yet it’s mixed like a Sleigh Bells song and features Fergie rapping about sniffing coke. A mogul gets emotional and schizophrenic during “Blame Game”, a harrowing breakup song that ends with Chris Rock discovering a new part of Pussy Town. Aphex Twin and King Crimson are beautifully sampled, the already dumbass “Iron Man” melody is dumbed down even further on a song about fucking a porn star, which is also about Kanye West's spiritual awakening. 808s & Heartbreak is redeemed with the 9-minute opus “Runaway”; the first half was used for a beer commercial and the second for the true death of Auto-Tune, a burial at sea. The careers of Pusha T and Charlie Wilson are revitalized, while in the span of 16 bars, the career of CyHi Da Prince begins and then ends with indignity and schadenfreude worthy of Lamar Odom and Matt Leinart. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy asks “Can we get much higher?” and ends with polite applause. Which is ridiculous in light of its bold conception, but let's not forget its sillier working title (Good Ass Job), the untested G.O.O.D. Friday rollout, and the fact that Kanye West's cultural cachet was at its lowest point. The easiest way to separate My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy from the baggage of its critical and commercial praise is to remember and appreciate the instability of its moment; there was no guarantee that this wasn't going to be a career-killing flop. But in 2014, the best way to appreciate My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is to step outside the fortress and meet the neighbors. West broke the ground upon which the new decade’s most brilliant architects built their masterworks; Bon Iver, Take Care, Channel Orange, and good kid, m.A.A.d city don’t exist without the blueprint of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. The list ends here because it’s where the decade truly begins. —Ian Cohen",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/15935/homepage_large.831179e9.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kanye_West-My_Beautiful_Dark_Twisted_Fantasy.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,200,Father John Misty,"""Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings""",Sub Pop / Bella Union,"Despite J. Tillman's creative proclivity (both as a one-time member of Fleet Foxes, and as a solo artist) over the past decade, it took a fake name for him to hit it big. ""Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings"" is a disarmingly catchy ballad hewn from decades of downcast Laurel Canyon rock and dressed up in the finest imitation-Parsons jacket a Sub Pop advance could buy; it views the world through the conflictory lenses of libido and loss, sobriety and drug binges. At its core, it's an elegy for a love tainted by the reaper's touch. ""Someone's gotta help me dig,"" Tillman moans to his lady, but is he referring to his deceased relative or someone—or something—further into the void, just beyond his grasp? Heard next to the clattering backbeat, it's that very barfly philosophizing that makes this Fear Fun cut so lovable. —Zoe Camp",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/subpop/hollywood-forever-cemetery,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/13075/homepage_large.938ae5db.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Father_John_Misty-Hollywood_Forever_Cemetery_Sings.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,199,Lindstrøm & Christabelle,"""Lovesick""",Smalltown Supersound,"In early 2010, the producer Hans-Peter Lindstrøm took a break from disco to release a low-lit electro-pop album with the Norwegian-Mauritian singer Isabelle Sandoo. I say Sandoo is a singer, but what she does is more like pillow talk set to a beat, which she follows with the casual interest of a cat batting at a toy. She sighs, she feints, she commands attention with little to no effort at all—an approach that reaches back through a history of pilled-out disco divas all the way to the torch singers of the ‘50s, who managed the uncanny trick of making cold feel hot. “Are you gonna be there?” she wheezes on “Lovesick”—“are you sure you’re gonna call back?” Grammatically, it’s a question, but it doesn’t sound like she cares much about the answer. —Mike Powell Lindstrøm & Christabelle: ""Lovesick""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCsR3go7xJ8,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/87/lindstromchristabelle.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Lindstrm__Christabelle-Lovesick.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,198,Migos,"""Versace""",Quality Control,"Rap purists hate Migos. Haaaate them. From the jump, the ""empirical lyrical miracle"" crowd have taken this young Atlanta trio—who've adopted Gucci Mane as their God MC and spit triplets about Norbit and Takis instead of, I dunno, their Adidas—as the three brand-loyal horsemen of the rap apocalypse. But when's the last time anybody in the backpacker crowd coughed up a hook as indelible as ""Versace"", these dudes' brain-sticking tribute to Gianni and them? Or snuck quite so many internal rhymes into a verse without leeching all the joy out of it? The impossibly catchy, sneakily hilarious ""Versace"" always reminds me of a lesson from another Southern spitter, once reviled, now revered: ""If we too simple, then y'all don't get the basics."" —Paul Thompson",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/87/migos.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Migos-Versace.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,197,Purity Ring,"""Fineshrine""",Last Gang / 4AD,"Despite her sing-song vocal patterns, Megan James' lyrics focus on darker, harsher subject matter than you might expect. Take ""Fineshrine"", a song about loving someone so much you want to disappear into their guts: ""Get a little closer, let fold/ Cut open my sternum, and pull/ My little ribs around you/ The rungs of me be under, under you."" When you pair words like that with Corin Roddick's ebullient, gently dark instrumentation, it's part Grimms' fairy tale, part moving meditation on never being close enough, of not being able to save someone when it's their time to disappear. —Brandon Stosuy",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/13781/homepage_large.e76f1269.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Purity_Ring-Fineshrine.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,196,The Men,"""Bataille""",Sacred Bones,"The Men—aka NYC’s most inscrutable band—are currently five albums deep into a career that has zigzagged between scorched-earth punk rock to cacophonous hardcore guitar squalls a la Sonic Youth to jangly folk vibes and Grand Funk-style American classic rock (sometimes all on the same record). “Bataille”—from the band’s 2011 album Leave Home—is a blast of exquisitely blown out r-a-w-k that inexplicably takes its name from that of a famous French intellectual. Despite an opening riff that could almost trick you into thinking you were about to hear a druggier version of Motörhead’s “Ace of Spades”—and the fact that the song sounds as if it might have been recorded inside an echo-filled cave lined with steel—“Bataille” is a kind of glorious post-punk explosion that manages to cram about 50 different musical ideas into four short screamy minutes. At a time when the Men were at their most wonderfully schizophrenic, “Bataille” manages to harness all of the band's conflicting ambitions—doom, drone, punk, pop, and abject noise—and squeeze them into one track. It’s totally possible to listen to this song a thousand or so times and never really make out a single clear vocal, but it hardly matters. “Bataille” isn’t about words; it’s all about pure release. —T. Cole Rachel",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/sacredbones/the-men-bataille | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iwC2QljLn4,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/87/themen.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Men-Bataille.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,195,Rihanna,"""Only Girl (In the World)""",Roc Nation / Def Jam,"“Only Girl (In the World)” represents the pinnacle of bright red-haired, Loud-era Rihanna—brassy, carefree, sexual, and maybe just a little bit selfish—complete with club-thumping production from hitmakers Stargate and a pitch-perfect extended selfie of a video (which, for what it’s worth, premiered one week after the initial release of Instagram). Coming from someone like Katy Perry or Beyoncé, the demand to “make me feel like I’m the only girl in the world” would have felt coy, maybe even inappropriate. But from Rihanna, whose career at the time was plagued with accusations of raunchiness and exhibitionism, it sounds like an honest request. As a career-defining single for a pop starlet, “Only Girl” is perfect because it’s grounded in the idea that egomania can be orgasmic. The video’s wish-fulfillment quality only adds thrust to the rush of empowerment: If the song demands fireworks, give the woman fireworks! How could you deny her? —Abby GarnettRihanna: ""Only Girl (In the World)""",Platform: YouTube - Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pa14VNsdSYM,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/12055/homepage_large.522af323.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rihanna-Only_Girl_In_the_World.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,194,Blawan,"""Getting Me Down""",White Label,"Something of a locus for the turn towards house (and away from dubstep) that UK dance music underwent around the turn of the decade, ""Getting Me Down"" had been lighting up dancefloors almost a year before it was officially released. But even that couldn't soften its landing when it finally hit like a meteor strike in 2011. The R&B edit to end all R&B edits, ""Getting Me Down"" took an overused Brandy vocal and gave it a giddy, hopped-up backing track, full of the growling basslines and sledgehammer percussion that would come to define the much harder techno material Blawan would produce later. It’s now an outlier in the catalog of one of this decade’s most uncompromising techno producers, but then how could it not be—""Getting Me Down"" would stand out in any context you put it in. —Andrew Ryce Blawan: ""Getting Me Down""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIkhewd69SE,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/87/gettingmedown.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Blawan-Getting_Me_Down.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,193,Jay Electronica,"""Exhibit C""",The Dogon Society / Decon,"Eventually, Jay Electronica will release a full-length album. It's difficult to say what level of interest or excitement will attend it—truly powerful, charismatic artists tend to have the ability to organize the pop-culture narrative around their movements, however erratic or infrequent. Jay Electronica, however, seems bent on riding this theory all the way out—the news feed for his career in the last three years resembles a basement refrigerator containing only baking soda. It may create a capital-M moment, or it might drop uselessly like a pod from a rotted tree. What is certain, however, is that it will happen safely outside the corona of excitement and possibility that surrounded the release of ""Exhibit C"", released in final days of 2009. That moment arrived perfect and already preserved in amber--as Just Blaze, keeper of the East Coast flame, pushed a Billy Stewart sample beneath a filter, Jay Electronica told the most coherent and compelling story he's ever bothered with, painting a vision of himself as homeless, sleeping in the rain, fighting off hunger pangs, receiving visitations from angels. The irony, of course, is that despite all the agonizing waiting, he knocked the song out in 15 minutes. —Jayson Greene Jay Electronica: ""Exhibit C""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lrVO3pPDP4,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/87/exhibitc.png,/dataset/artwork/Jay_Electronica-Exhibit_C.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,192,Addison Groove,"""Footcrab""",Swamp 81,"The British producer Addison Groove—Antony Williams, better known as the dubstep artist Headhunter—discovered Chicago juke and footwork the way most non-Chicagoans did back in the late '00s: by watching videos of dancers on YouTube. He made ""Footcrab"" as a way of folding juke tracks into his own DJ sets; the song is paced according to dubstep's conventional tempo, but the stuttering vocal loops and syncopated toms are more in keeping with footwork's hyperkinetic flutter. While ""Footcrab"" isn't really a footwork track, it helped whet European palates for the form, hitting shelves shortly before Planet Mu brought out actual footwork records from DJ Nate and DJ Rashad, and finding its way into the boxes of DJs from Ricardo Villalobos to Mr. Scruff; a B-side remix from DJ Rashad and DJ Spinn, meanwhile, closed the circle. —Philip Sherburne Addison Groove: ""Footcrab""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcGsLohUscg,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/87/addisongroove.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Addison_Groove-Footcrab.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,191,Chvrches,"""The Mother We Share""",National Anthem,"Chvrches achieved maximum likability with ""The Mother We Share"", and you can prove it with the following: ""likable"" became the desperate, last line of defense for people trying to find reasons to dislike it. They'd have a point if Chvrches were really trying to be an indie rock band, but the Scottish trio are done with that part of their lives; two of the members did stints in miserablist post-rock bands while Lauren Mayberry has the double indignity of a law degree and a failed career in music journalism. After years of trying to appeal to various groups of stock-still, grimacing dudes, Chvrches crowd-please with equal and opposite force with a single so brilliant and on-target, they put a damn neon bullseye on the album cover. The original version was good, the one on The Bones of What You Believe was a charm offensive, an already-sharp song given diamond-cutting production. So there's nothing ""edgy"" about the lazer-guided melodies, bombastic synth-drums, and heat-seeking timeliness: it's ca. 2013 electro-pop performed like rock, while Mayberry's sisterly cadence turns her vague lyrics into something familiar and comforting, dropping an f-bomb in the perfect place, so you could fool yourself into thinking this was indie rock rather than pop made by former indie rockers. As we speak, major labels are blowing a lot of money in search of bands who can sound anything like this and Chvrches nailed it on the first try in their basement. If you have to dislike ""The Mother We Share"" for any reason, make it that. —Ian Cohen",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/chvrches/the-mother-we-share,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/87/chvrches.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Chvrches-The_Mother_We_Share.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,190,Ty Segall Band,"""I Bought My Eyes""",In the Red,"Ty Segall is capable of writing more good songs in one year than many of his peers manage in an entire decade. In 2012, he let loose with three full-length albums while fidgeting with a variety of genres (psych-folk? garage-glam?). But it was Slaughterhouse—the only one recorded under the moniker of “band”—that showed Segall’s true prowess when it comes to fusing fury with melody. “I Bought My Eyes” is four minutes of stoner rock euphoria—a track that builds from a simple guitar line into a boiling fuzzed out monster of Stooges-worthy riffs and Neanderthal drums. In a perfect fantasy scenario, this is the song you’d be blasting if you found yourself driving a flaming Trans Am as it zoomed skyward off the side of a cliff. At a time when the very term “garage rock” has become nearly meaningless (or, in many cases, a total pejorative), Ty Segall’s messy and masterful take on the genre kicks every conceivable kind of ass, making goofy songs filled with breakneck guitar lines, hooks seeming made for hair-tossing, and lots of “ooh ooh oohs” sound like the best and most necessary thing in the world. —T. Cole Rachel",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/13671/homepage_large.c7885e66.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ty_Segall_Band-I_Bought_My_Eyes.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,189,Best Coast,"""When I'm With You""",Mexican Summer,"If she's too simple, her detractors don't get the basics. Yes, it's a song about how when Bethany Cosentino's narrator is with someone, she has fun. Yes, it's one of at least three Best Coast songs that rhyme ""lazy"" with ""crazy,"" a statistic that seems both lazy and crazy. But Cosentino and bandmate Bobb Bruno's success in capturing the lazy, the crazy, and especially the fun, fun, fun of new love's dumbstruck swoon is what helped them survive chillwave's 2009 beach-bum deadbeat summer. Southern California's proudest indie ambassadors have kept maturing and thriving, but they've never made a better postcard for paradise than this bit of surf-flecked fuzz-pop. And anyway, it was at least two-dimensional all along: When Cosentino howls that ""I hate sleeping alone,"" she lays bare the loneliness that makes the rest of the track's joy so much sweeter. When it's playing, which isn't often enough considering this single isn't even on the vinyl edition of 2010's Crazy for You, I have fun. Don't we all hate sleeping alone? —Marc Hogan Best Coast: ""When I'm With You""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nN1XzxOQWrA,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/87/crazyforyou.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Best_Coast-When_Im_With_You.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,188,Rhye,"""The Fall""",Polydor / Seven Four / Innovative Leisure,"Following an indie-R&B trend of dank themes and abstract sonics, a once-anonymous L.A. duo countered with minimal soul music of delectable sweetness and immaculate clarity. On a record done up in the plush upholstery of '80s soft rock and smooth jazz, the acoustic disco of “The Fall” stands out, as Robin Hannibal spins a glittering web of strings, horns, and pattering snares. Against its forward motion, serene piano chords softly pound at the backs of the bars, lingering as if trying to freeze time, like romance does. The lyrics are similarly caught between propulsion and drag, alternately addressing a lover who is about to leave and one who has gone. Milosh’s creamy contralto has equivocal zones of temperature, often so hot or cold you can’t tell which. His voice sounds feminine less because it’s high than because it’s soft, cleansed of aggressive effects. Though sultry, the song feels refreshingly virtuous, even chaste. Behind Rhye’s temporary anonymity was something so ordinary that, weighed against the twisted drives of the Weeknd, it felt rare: a gentle guy singing to his wife. —Brian Howe",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/14330/homepage_large.226247bb.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rhye-The_Fall.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,187,Florence and the Machine,"""Shake It Out""",Universal Republic / Island,"Throughout the Big Music boom of the early part of the decade, no voice boomed bigger than Florence Welch’s. That five-alarm howl would go on to propel her to dizzying heights of dancefloor domination and Hollywood glamour, but nowhere did Welch sound more gloriously skyscraping, more monumentally huge, than on “Shake It Out”. This song is release, an embodiment of the ultimate in pop catharsis. Lyrics about casting off the devils of the past, blown heavenward by church organ and a backing choir (featuring a then-unknown Jessie Ware). A chorus that feels like coming up for air after nearly drowning. A 10-second-long, sinus-clearing high note. “Shake It Out” is truly one of the great sonic exhales of this decade. —Amy PhillipsFlorence and the Machine: ""Shake It Out""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17ozSeGw-fY,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/12525/homepage_large.dbdcb1a2.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Florence_and_the_Machine-Shake_It_Out.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,186,Skrillex,"""Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites""",Big Beat / Mau5trap,"An American Warped Tour upstart adopts a burbling dance underground and drags it screaming into the mainstream. Derided and championed with colorful analogies typically involving dial-up modems and Autobot intimacy, Skrillex's take on dubstep lit a match under the feet of young folks hunting for ever more aggressive sounds and infuriated purists with its redline perversion. Without ""Scary Monsters"" tracks like Taylor Swift's ""I Knew You Were Trouble"", Britney's ""Hold It Against Me"", and even Kyary Pamyu Pamyu's ""Invader Invader"" would sound radically different. Bass drops and wobbles have become another de rigueur influence on pop music along with EDM at large, and while those sounds might have found such a prominent spot in the Top 40 eventually, the jarring, alien ferocity of ""Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites"" gave them a shove. —Jake ClelandSkrillex: ""Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNoKguSdy4Y,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/87/skrillex.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Skrillex-Scary_Monsters_and_Nice_Sprites.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,185,Bon Iver,"""Perth""",Jagjaguwar / 4AD,"The tracklist of Bon Iver's second LP is equally split amongst real places, specific landmarks, and real-sounding places that Justin Vernon made up. Fitting that its opener entirely conflates the physical and imaginary aspects of a geographical location: there's Perth, Australia, ""the most remote city on Earth"", and ""Perth"", which presents it as the literal edge of civilization. A heraldic, ascending introductory reverie, the clatter of field snares, an avalanche of muddy, gritty distortion triggering resounding tremors of double kick drums—these all feel like echoes from a violent and costly military strike, as reverb surveys the eerie detente like a hovering cloud of gunsmoke and last breaths. But what exactly happened in ""Perth""? Tough to say, as with most songs on Bon Iver, memory is incapacitated by both photographic recall and total blank spots. Perhaps ""Perth"" is just the rummy, revisionist war story of Justin Vernon laying waste to the Myth of Bon Iver; convincing himself he actually went out to that cabin in the woods because he could convalesce by making as much noise as he wants. —Ian Cohen Bon Iver: ""Perth""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bo6lKQYVUBU,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/87/boniver.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bon_Iver-Perth.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,184,Parquet Courts,"""Stoned and Starving""",What's Your Rupture?,"There comes a time in a rock singer's life when the dream is just not what you thought it was going to be. The cyclical nature of touring grows tiring; planes lose their romance; and weed, somehow, is no longer a vehicle to cerebral possibility. The jokers in Parquet Courts have killed their best song, ""Stoned and Starving""—a flawless go at smoked-out guitar squall and droning New York street poetry. Or they have, at least, retired it. ""I was reading ingredients/ Asking myself should I eat this,"" Andrew Savage spoke-sang, rejecting the status quo with subtlety and humor. The song captures the essence of Parquet Courts, a breed of intellectual slackerdom that is all too rare nowadays. Less than two years since it entered our collective consciousness, ""Stoned and Starving"" is already a myth. Thurston must be proud. —Jenn Pelly",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/14678/homepage_large.c578e87a.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Parquet_Courts-Stoned_and_Starving.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,183,Yo La Tengo,"""Ohm""",Matador,"When Ira Kaplan, Georgia Hubley, and James McNew sing “Lose no more time resisting the flow”—softly repeating the latter half in delicate, three-part harmony—they’re giving us an unscientific but wholly valid life lesson: Things fall apart, so don’t waste your time kicking against the goads. “Sometimes the bad guys come out on top; sometimes the good guys lose,” they sing. People change. People die. Cry, but don’t lose your mind. “Ohm” conveys musically exactly what’s being instructed lyrically. The annular guitar and hypnotic chanting offers a fugue state—a way to find that flow and ride it for seven minutes. At the same time, the song’s own beauty and brilliance is the flip side of the coin, because Yo La Tengo are the good guys. And it’s comforting to know that sometimes the good guys win. —Joel Oliphint Yo La Tengo: ""Ohm""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Py2KOyrtq6o,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/14694/homepage_large.c6bed31a.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Yo_La_Tengo-Ohm.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,182,Kavinsky,"""Nightcall"" [ft. Lovefoxxx]",Record Makers,"Vincent Belorgey is a Parisian producer whose career output has gravitated to a specific story, an alter-ego soundtrack for something that only exists in the orbit of his serrated, intense electro-house. But his own mise en scene, a blurry neo-noir/VHS slasher flick pastiche of post-mortem restlessness and gleaming sports cars, could still thrive when grafted to somebody else's vision. And whatever separates the undead-in-a-Ferrari backstory of Kavinsky from Ryan Gosling's enigmatically violent wheelman in Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive is overcome by mutual influence. A sleepwalking dirge compared to the uptempo precedent set by earlier cuts like ""Testarossa Autodrive"" and ""Wayfarer"", ""Nightcall"" lives and dies (and un-lives) by its tension—and not just the tension of the music's gothic synthpop, like a Depeche Mode 45 flipped down to 33 ⅓. It's really in the exchange between Kavinsky's robotic wraith of a voice, promising unnerving revelations on the border of rekindled romance and transformative horror, and Lovefoxxx's ambivalence, a confused longing that knows she's talking to a phantom but doesn't entirely believe it. —Nate Patrin Kavinsky: ""Nightcall"" [ft. Lovefoxxx]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MV_3Dpw-BRY,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/87/kavinsky.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kavinsky-Nightcall_ft_Lovefoxxx.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,181,Schoolboy Q,"""There He Go""",Top Dawg,"Status and opulence have always been a virtue in hip-hop. “There He Go”, making incredible use of a Menomena sample, illustrates what success looks like during the initial come-up. Q doesn’t have bodyguards with him just yet when he takes a trip to the mall, but when he gets there, people recognize him. (“They be like ‘there he go!’”) He might not be famous enough to have his CD stocked in the FYE just yet, but he’s still got money. (“Got my daughter swaggin’ like her mothafuckin’ daddy, though!”) He lives in a house with a patio. (“What a motherfuckin’ view.”) Oh, and obviously, he has tons of sex. It’s a song by a man who isn’t quite acquainted with A-list decadence, but with his wild-eyed delivery, you can tell he’s loving this, and you’d love it, too. —Evan Minsker Schoolboy Q: ""There He Go""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnnYiW5dnhQ,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/87/schoolboyq.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Schoolboy_Q-There_He_Go.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,180,Kelela,"""Bank Head""",Fade to Mind,"Kingdom and Kelela's ""Bank Head"" was on no fewer than three EPs, albums, or mixtapes last year, and that's not counting the instrumental version. That each record was excellent is probably not a coincidence. The Los Angeles-based underground bass impresario once used vocals as just another percussive element to mangle with electronics, as can be heard on both sides of his still-vital 2010 ""Mindreader""/""You"" 12"" single. When the Kelela-fronted ""Bank Head"" first surfaced, ahead of Kingdom's Vertical XL EP, it made clear this D.C.-bred, L.A.-based singer was an artist too formidable to fade into the backdrop; ""Bank Head"" later showed up on her own head-turning Cut 4 Me and Solange's #BrandyDeepCuts-realizing Saint Heron compilation. So we're left with that Cassie-esque tendril of a voice, wispily curling upward like cigarette smoke, and a UK house-minded futurist's sleek, pillowy interior decorating. Plenty of songs these past several years have been based around a steady handclap. In a dynamic that's similar to the one animating her near-contemporary FKA twigs, when Kelela coos that ""I need to let it ... out,"" the applause doesn't express release. It's just more rising tension. Like the potential new love the song haltingly describes, this one's an across-the-room infatuation that turns out to be a keeper. —Marc Hogan",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/fadetomind/kelela-bank-head-extended-prod | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsqNfyFXJTc,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/87/cut4me.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kelela-Bank_Head.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,179,AraabMuzik,"""Streetz Tonight""",Duke,"Over the last five years, AraabMuzik has never stopped adapting. In 2010, he was best known for his work with Cam’ron and Vado—remember that duo?—and for producing what was thought to be the Diplomats’ comeback track, “Salute”. Then in 2011, with the release of Electronic Dream, an album that subsumed 90s trance into chill-out fodder, he not only pulled a 180, but somehow got the car airborne. “Streetz Tonight” moves from the dozen-car-alarms-going-off-at-once freak-out of AraabMuzik’s early production and samples Kaskade’s “4AM (Adam K & Soha Remix)” to create pure unencumbered bliss. True to form, AraabMuzik didn’t stick with this style; he went back to rap production and even tried his hand at both dubstep and trap. But “Streetz Tonight” found him connecting dots once assumed to be on different planes. —David Turner",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/araabmuzik/araab-muzik-streetz-tonight | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYvg8i_wO2A,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/87/araabmuzik.jpg,/dataset/artwork/AraabMuzik-Streetz_Tonight.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,178,Ty Dolla $ign,"""Paranoid"" [ft. Joe Moses]",Taylor Gang / Atlantic,"Ty Dolla $ign records often seem to exist in a world where the mood doesn't necessarily run in parallel with the lyrics, where the song's spirit isn't always captured by the transcript. ""Paranoid"" is simple at first, and more inscrutable as you look closer: we see a scenario where two women are in the club trying to set him up. Is he being paranoid? Or is it a figure of speech? Less a story than a situation, a thought flickering through his mind, ""Paranoid""'s lyrics, like a game of dozens, seem improvised and free-associative, cheekily disrespectful: ""Both of my bitches drive range rovers/ None of my bitches can stay over."" Guest rapper Joe Moses—replaced by B.o.B for the official Atlantic version, but c'mon—only adds to the record's tonal ambiguity, stunting about his car full of women but ending the record wishing his girl would give him a call while singing the Five Heartbeats. —David Drake",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/tydollasign/ty-dolla-sign-paranoid-ft-b-o | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLT4-j2Uu-E,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/87/mustardparanoid.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ty_Dolla_ign-Paranoid_ft_Joe_Moses.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,177,Mac DeMarco,"""Passing Out Pieces""",Captured Tracks,"The recording process for Mac DeMarco’s second full-length wasn’t wildly different from that of 2, his breakout 2012 LP. For both records, he chain-smoked while writing and self-recording every instrument in a small room. But while 2 had him writing about about being in love—with girls, cigarettes, and otherwise—he sounds beaten down in the lyrics of “Passing Out Pieces”. After returning from a huge year of near-constant touring, he sat on the floor of his tiny Brooklyn room and took a minute to assess the consequences that come from life on the road and, perhaps more notably, having a meme-worthy public persona. “Seems that every time I turn, I’m passing out pieces of me, don’t you know nothing comes free?” As rhetorical questions go, that’s a pretty heavy one. —Evan Minsker",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/16549/homepage_large.95586545.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mac_DeMarco-Passing_Out_Pieces.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,176,Jessie Ware,"""Running (Disclosure Remix)""",PMR,"When ""Running"" first appeared in early 2012, Jessie Ware was still best known for her appearances on records by Joker and SBTRKT, so it was something of a shock to hear her voice not framed by brittle electronic minimalism. Co-produced by Julio Bashmore and the Invisible's Dave Okumu, ""Running"" presented Ware as a neo-neo-soul artist, essentially, her languorous voice practically melting into a reverb-heavy pool of live funk drums and electric guitar. It fell to the then-unknown duo of Disclosure to flip the song into a bumping, flexing UK garage tune, all pumping chord stabs and sped-up vocals, sounding like it came straight out of 2-step's millennial heyday. It's still one of the best things the brothers have done. —Philip Sherburne",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/13189/homepage_large.50ff8106.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jessie_Ware-Running_Disclosure_Remix.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,175,Jamie xx,"""Far Nearer""",Numbers,"In 2011, UK-based electronic music wasn't much fun. The weight of Burial’s influence, as well as the abstractions found in James Blake’s genre-shattering series of 2010 EPs, blended into a nebulous sub-genre that initially kept listeners at a distance befitting an academic lecture. At first, Jamie Smith didn’t seem like the type to yank the scene out of its bookish, serious torpor—there’s the all-black attire, the legacy-artist remix project, the fact that he and his bandmates only recently started (sort of) smiling in promo photos—but with “Far Nearer”, that’s exactly what the xx’s percussionist-cum-beatmaker did. With splashy steel drums, a bouncy-ball rhythm, and a forcefully twisted vocal sample of Janet Jackson’s “Love Will Never Do (Without You)”, the beaming, benevolent tumble of “Far Nearer” smashed post-dubstep’s gray-tinted windows and, for seven ecstatic minutes, finally allowed some light to shine through. —Larry Fitzmaurice",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4i9Mba9keHA,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/12215/homepage_large.fdf234a6.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jamie_xx-Far_Nearer.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,174,Arcade Fire,"""Reflektor""",Merge,"Of all the musical technophobes to flourish in this digitally fraught era, Arcade Fire are perhaps the only act to condemn futurism while simultaneously embracing its trappings. As Lindsay Zoladz aptly noted in her review of their glitteringly fretful fourth album Reflektor, there is irony laced throughout the record's very existence, considering it streamed on YouTube before receiving a physical release. On the title track, vocalists Win Butler and Régine Chassagne are practically exuberant in their fruitless search for ""a connector"" to truly bridge the gap between people, lamenting our digital lives for the alienation they breed while simultaneously making an impact because of them. It's a love-hate thing. ""Reflektor""'s contradictions—much like the social tech it criticizes—embody the existential anxiety that has come to define this generation as it struggles to distinguish good from evil in the cloud-based darkness. It's not a spiteful rejection or a superior warning, but an apprehension: We don't know yet whether our Internet-fuelled fears of isolation, abandonment, and insincerity will truly amount to anything. They probably won't destroy us, or our ability to find one another entre le royaume, des vivants et des morts—in fact, future generations will surely regard this fear as quaint. But the worry is essential to understanding ourselves right now. —Devon Maloney Arcade Fire: ""Reflektor""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7E0fVfectDo,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/15999/homepage_large.fded2f60.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Arcade_Fire-Reflektor.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,173,Phosphorescent,"""Song for Zula""",Dead Oceans,"“Some say love is a burning thing, that it makes a fiery ring,” Matthew Houck sings by way of introducing “Song for Zula”, the beating, aching heart of his career-best LP Muchacho. In two short lines he alludes specifically to Bette Midler’s “The Rose” and Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire”, two love songs famous for not sugarcoating the dark and torturous aspects of romance. Houck isn’t trying to join their ranks (he is as reverent toward his heroes as he is ambitious in his music). Instead, “Zula”, with its fiddle eddies and synth smears that sound like pedal steels floating in space, uses heartache and despair as a jumping off point for a tender-hearted rumination on the efficacy of pop music: Can a song express the infinite gradations of heartache and despair? Or are even the best and most popular love songs simply inadequate vessels? Expecting no clear answers, Houck finds none. But he doesn’t let the song end until he implicates his listener: “O and all you folks, you come to see, you just stand there in the glass looking at me,” he sings, pouring what he can of his heart out. —Stephen M. Deusner",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/deadoceans/phosphorescent-song-for-zula,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/14661/homepage_large.13da7fc3.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Phosphorescent-Song_for_Zula.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,172,Earl Sweatshirt,"""Earl""",self-released,"At some point I have to believe that what bothered people about the violence in Earl’s music wasn’t how serious it sounded but how casual. Blasphemy, necrophilia, cannibalism, date rape, intravenous drug use, playing a trumpet after jamming it into someone’s butt and trying to catch fish with clumps of your own vomit—it’s all here, rapped in the bureaucratic hum of someone ordering an omelet. If only he seemed actually capable of hurting someone. Instead, he was what he was—a smart suburban kid playing games, collecting his offenses like they were trading cards. “I’ve seen a three-year old who didn’t really know how to speak but who fully knew how to use an iPad,” he said in a subsequent video for the New Yorker’s website, going on to lament “how socially retarded kids are about to be… because of all the shortcuts there are.” Maybe he wasn’t the problem after all, just someone around to document it. And if you took a double take at the word “retarded”, note that he’s using it correctly. —Mike Powell",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/87/earl.png,/dataset/artwork/Earl_Sweatshirt-Earl.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,171,Janelle Monáe,"""Tightrope"" [ft. Big Boi]",Bad Boy / Wondaland Arts Society,"James Brown, Atlanta hip-hop, Prince, politics, dancing robots: Janelle Monáe’s bricolage knows no bounds on the feverish funk of ""Tightrope"". It's a tour de force in which those disparate sounds and ideas join forces to shatter the fourth wall of her cinematic, post-apocalyptic cyborg plotline with astonishing impact. As Monáe scales back the lush orchestration and cinematic flourishes to reveal the brassy heart beating inside, the struggles of The ArchAndroid protagonist Cindi Mayweather transcend those of an afrofuturistic heroine if only for a moment, and become synonymous with pure R&B bliss, all ""classy brass"" with a little bit of voodoo, too. —Zoe CampJanelle Monáe: ""Tightrope"" [ft. Big Boi]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwnefUaKCbc,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/87/tightrope.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Janelle_Mone-Tightrope_ft_Big_Boi.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,170,Grizzly Bear,"""Sleeping Ute""",Warp,"Grizzly Bear could have coasted on the success of Veckatimest and its gentle, lovely hit single, “Two Weeks”. Instead, they roughed up their sound, challenging themselves and their listeners, moving beyond the narrowness of chamber pop. “Sleeping Ute” was the first salvo, percussive explosions from Chris Bear causing ripples in Dan Rossen’s aggressive guitar, before swelling over into a shaky calm. Suddenly, this tasteful four-piece dabbled in psychedelia, and the pathos was no longer left to the lyrics, but leapt out of the music itself. There was darkness. We weren’t surprised to learn, eventually, that “Sleeping Ute,” was one of only two songs salvaged from an early Shields session that went awry. There’s a chaos here that seems barely-harnessed, and nearly foreign to the docile Grizzly Bear we knew before. Great bands evolve or they dissolve: Grizzly Bear used “Sleeping Ute” to show which way they were going. —Jonah BromwichGrizzly Bear: ""Sleeping Ute""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hk3tURx8a2Q,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/87/shields.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Grizzly_Bear-Sleeping_Ute.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,169,Taylor Swift,"""We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together""",Big Machine,"Though Taylor Swift’s 2012 hit “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” contained the most artistic uses of “What?!” and “Like, ever” in recorded history, it’s notable for plenty of other reasons. Serving as the centerpiece of Red—Swift’s best, most balanced record to date—“We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” signified Swift’s bid for universal domination, enlisting golden-touch pop producers Max Martin and Shellback to gild her bratty bombshell. Though it’s a cupcake of a single—and don’t mind me getting a little self-conscious here—Swift aimed for the jugular: “I'm really gonna miss you picking fights/ And me falling for it screaming that I'm right/ And you would hide away and find your peace of mind/ With some indie record that's much cooler than mine.” Other songs on Red successfully channeled contemporary sounds far from the traditional textures of previous, CMT Awards-dominating outings—think the dubstep drops on “I Knew You Were Trouble” or the surging jolt of “22”—but “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” exhibits the pure terror of Swift’s towering talent as a songwriter. A couple years out, it’s easy to see that few have landed the crossover leap like Swift did with “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together”. Like, ever. —Corban Goble Taylor Swift: ""We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA4iX5D9Z64,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/87/taylorswift.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Taylor_Swift-We_Are_Never_Ever_Getting_Back_Together.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,168,Lil B,"""Wonton Soup""",BasedWorld,"“Hop up out my car (swag!). Then I drop my roof...Then I park my car. Then I fuck your bitch.” If it's possible to get to the point of a rap song more succinctly, it hasn't been done yet. Then again, it's only in a post-Lil B world that doing so would matter. For an artist who has so resolutely rejected the idea of what a rapper or a rap career has to be, Lil B's influence this decade has been considerable. And besides introducing the world to the idea of swag, he's spent a lot of time turning rap's values—from traditional ideas of lyricism to familiar lyrical expressions of success—inside out. Lil B approaches the world as a limitless realm of possibilities, each to be explored with equal care and fascination—and this allows for a song about making soup and boasts about being like a children's book author (“bitches suck my dick 'cause I look like J.K. Rowling”). Eat that wonton soup: With ideas that simple, stunting is no longer just a habit; it's a mantra. —Kyle Kramer",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zN6mEQ8m9A,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/87/blueflame.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lil_B-Wonton_Soup.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,167,Zoo Kid,"""Out Getting Ribs""",House Anxiety,"When Archy Marshall—now known as King Krule, once known as Zoo Kid—released “Out Getting Ribs” he was a meek-looking 15-year-old with violent red hair, big ears, and a voice that sounded like it had been submerged in warm beer, raked over coals, and then dragged through a bunch of sawdust. It was a shock hearing that come from someone who was only a teenager and looked even younger. What was even more shocking, though, was how Marshall integrated his influences: some of Elvis’ swagger, dank dubby echoes, and a fractured, laconic guitar lick that tangles and splays out around Marshall’s bile-filled yelp, which occasionally slinks into a defeated mutter. Since that song’s release, Marshall’s expanded his world: injecting jazzy flourishes into his music and collaborating with rappers, but even with all that new context, “Out Getting Ribs” still sounds like the work of a lonely old soul tapping into something ominous and true. —Sam Hockley-Smith",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/12072/homepage_large.355929ad.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Zoo_Kid-Out_Getting_Ribs.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,166,Haim,"""Falling""",Polydor / Columbia / National Anthem,"“I can feel the eyes are watching us so closely,” Danielle Haim coos on the first song of her eponymous sister act’s first proper album, which arrived after a solid year of blog-brewed buzz, and the predictably attendant skepticism over their prefab kinder-pop past and Hollywood connections. The only rational response to such intense scrutiny? Dance like no one’s looking. For all its studio-sculpted precision, “Falling” is ultimately about the messy maelstrom of emotions that the best pop music readily elicits: the heart-racing hot flashes, the weak-kneed elation, the dizzying weightlessness. And as the song piles on all manner of pleasure principles—punched-in string fills, ’80s cop-flick guitar squeals, resort-band drum rolls, ping-ponged harmonies—“Falling” becomes its own proof of concept. “Nothing’s gonna wake me now, 'cause I’m a slave to the sound,” Danielle declares just as the song reaches lift-off, an open invitation to join her for a tango in the night. —Stuart Berman",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrM7xJpZbnw,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/14923/homepage_large.c96de86a.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Haim-Falling.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,165,Majical Cloudz,"""Childhood's End""",Matador,"Because of his intimate first-person lyrics and compelling stage presence (imagine a sensitive, strong hardcore guy into Leonard Cohen), it's natural to think of Majical Cloudz as one person, vocalist Devon Welsh. It's his diary we're hearing, and his manly baritone delivering it. That feeling's amplified by the video for ""Childhood's End"", which stars Welsh's father, Kenneth Welsh, the actor who played the villain Windom Earle on ""Twin Peaks"". In the clip, Welsh, playing a melancholic Henry Darger figure, is older than you remember him, and more fragile. And the song discusses a father's death, childhood ending, mortality (""Our fate, it is sealed/ At birth we made a deal""), and feeling all that weight but accepting it. On its own or with the visual, it’s the perfect example of Majical Cloudz's ability to make the personal universal. —Brandon Stosuy",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05gZ4lYi-Ho,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/15194/homepage_large.f876b0c7.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Majical_Cloudz-Childhoods_End.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,164,Fucked Up,"""Queen of Hearts""",Matador,"Fucked Up's ideological bent insists equally on rulemaking and rule-breaking. They smash through the formal constraints of hardcore punk so easily that they build extra sets of restrictions for themselves just to make it more of a challenge. Like all the other songs on their mammoth punk opera David Comes to Life, ""Queen of Hearts"" has a three-word title, the weight of plot and character and setting and concept to carry, and lyrics delivered on the business end of Damian Abraham's battering-ram scream. (In this case, they're about an exhausted factory worker falling in love with a political activist.) But when Cults' Madeline Follin turns up to sing (sing!) the part of the activist, Veronica, a whole other thing is happening. The band's instrumental attack remains stalwart and unbowed, but Follin's voice turns ""Queen of Hearts"" into luminous pop--the same kind of instant, complete transformation the song describes. —Douglas Wolk Fucked Up: ""Queen of Hearts""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhgOt7YFN0I,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/87/queenofhearts.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fucked_Up-Queen_of_Hearts.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,163,Young Thug,"""Danny Glover""",self-released,"Young Thug feels like an end point. The eccentric Atlanta rapper’s vocal manipulation and disregard for basic rules of hip-hop makes a Lil Wayne even at his most out-there feel dangerously close to normal. “Danny Glover” thrives on its delivery as Young Thug’s cadence hops across a dozen different lanes, never simply settling on one. The unresolved tension when his voice is placed on the blown bass of an 808 Mafia beat causes an almost immediate reaction. The inclination isn’t to bob your head; it’s to jump, flex, and swing every way your body allows, following each ad-lib as it opens a portal into another world. —David Turner",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/hpgmusic/young-thug-danny-glover-prod,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/87/dannyglover.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Young_Thug-Danny_Glover.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,162,Big Boi,"""Shine Blockas"" [ft. Gucci Mane]",LaFace,"Daddy Fat Sax couldn't catch a break. Around the turn of the decade, as OutKast's prolonged post-Idlewild hiatus started to look an awful lot like a permanent split, Sir Lucious Left Foot—Big Boi's long-promised solo debut—sat gathering dust in major-label purgatory. After floating a string of increasingly spectacular singles onto the internet, Big Boi tweeted out ""Shine Blockas"", in which he and a near-peak-era Gucci Mane just float over Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes for four solid minutes. ""Blockas"" remains one of the young decade's most powerful mood-enhancers; while La Fleur shouts out Madea and hastily rolls 150 kush blunts, a 'lac-riding, safe-stuffing Big Boi—one of the greats, past and present—employs his perennially legit penmanship to big-up himself. The breezy, utterly beauteous ""Shine Blockas"" is a song about doing what you do, and doing it damn well, an utterly effortless performance from just about the last guy in the world anybody should've counted out. It wasn't long after ""Shine Blockas"" arrived to near-universal raves that Lucious Left Foot finally got itself a release date. You might almost say he called it: ""tryna block my shine just ain't gon' happen, so don't try."" —Paul Thompson Big Boi: ""Shine Blockas"" [ft. Gucci Mane]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GK23f_xtZY,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/11566/homepage_large.6f5c4278.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Big_Boi-Shine_Blockas_ft_Gucci_Mane.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,161,Tame Impala,"""Solitude Is Bliss""",Modular,"Fuckin' stoners, man. ""Solitude Is Bliss""? Going full Spicoli on a first impression is risky, but for Perth psych saviors Tame Impala, the pizza was already on its way to the classroom. As the lead single from their voluminous debut full-length Innerspeaker, ""Solitude Is Bliss"" could've easily been dismissed as the sound of another group of young dudes rifling through their parents' record collections. All the warning signs were proudly on display: Innerspeaker's infinity mirror cover art, the tubular, delay-drenched guitars, the chunky, tumbling drums. At one point, those drums cool out for a second as frontman Kevin Parker actually sings, ""There's a party in my head, and no one is invited."" But wait a minute now. In the hands of a lesser band, all this black-lit bong-rattling would have scanned as regurgitation, leaving Tame Impala to be tossed on the heap with every other acid damaged late-’60s revival act. In the hands of Parker and co., however, ""Solitude Is Bliss"" is an exercise in constraint and precision, a rare rock song that's both melty and invigorating. Tethered to the insistent charge of its central hook, Tame Impala never had a chance to float too far away from that rocket-powered ship. It's a little beheaded and bloodshot, sure, but still makes for one hell of an introduction. —Zach Kelly",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/11896/homepage_large.9d872a8d.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tame_Impala-Solitude_Is_Bliss.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,160,Jeremih,"""773 Love""",self-released,"The song that made us all forget ""Birthday Sex"" even happened, ""773 Love"" was the polar opposite of Jeremih’s one-time one-hit-wonder: subtle, sensual, and sleek. Going from quiet storm to hurricane and back again in the blink of an eye, Jeremih floats through it all like the expert crooner we didn’t know he was. A standout on the Late Nights mixtape, “773 Love” had all the hallmarks of the dark, indie-friendly R&B that came to rule the roost in 2012, but also none of its bullshit—just pure lust and emotion, and the silky computer love of a then-wet-behind-the-ears Mike WiLL Made It, whose unmistakable fingerprints were all over its pearlescent ribbons of synth. —Andrew Ryce",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/87/jeremih.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jeremih-773_Love.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,159,Ab-Soul,"""The Book of Soul""",Top Dawg,"The Book of Job as re-lived in Carson, California, all arbitrary curses suffered through the sensitive retinas of Ab-Soul, TDE’s black sheep with black lips. “The Book of Soul” is a brutal chronicle over a Bobby McFerrin piano loop. The first scars come from a childhood battle with Stevens-Johnson syndrome, which left him near-death and purblind, covered in boils and blisters like a biblical plague. He survives to withstand the minefield of junior high. Eventually, Soul gets the girl, the rapping career, and a cessation of the torments. But just as the darkness starts to subside, his high-school sweetheart and frequent collaborator, Loriana Johnson, commits suicide. The gruesome details are omitted, but the pain can’t be blotted out. Few rap songs are as nakedly confessional, skeptical, or sad. “The Book of Soul” is about addiction and agnosticism, self-doubt, and the bleak revelation that not only do heroes eventually die—everyone around them does, too. —Jeff Weiss Ab-Soul: ""The Book of Soul""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nitz50WxwOY,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/87/controlsystem.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Ab-Soul-The_Book_of_Soul.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,158,Arcade Fire,"""Ready to Start""",Merge,"“Ready to Start” comes on the heels of “The Suburbs”, it’s the brash, angry answer to that track’s longing for a stable life (better known as the Heartbreaking Anthem for New Suburban Dads at a Crossroads.) It’s an injection of paranoid youth—one of those moments when Arcade Fire made good on all those Bruce Springsteen comparisons and created a song that, like the Boss’ best moments, was anxious to break free of itself, but unable to actually do so. Lyrically, Win Butler flips the nostalgic sprinkler-soaked blacktops of “The Suburbs” on their heads in favor of lines like “I would rather be alone/ Than pretend I feel alright,” which should get your inner 17-year-old heart pumping. By the time “Ready to Start” came out, Butler was pretty far from being a teenager, but he could still sing like had plenty of queasy angst to work through. —Sam Hockley-Smith Arcade Fire: ""Ready to Start""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Euj9f3gdyM,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/87/suburbs.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Arcade_Fire-Ready_to_Start.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,157,Titus Andronicus,"""A More Perfect Union""",XL,"It’s the Battle Hymn of New Jersey, reigning champion of the ongoing “greatest opening salvo” contest, and a glorious anthem for Titus Andronicus. They emptied out every trick in the bag — shout choruses, Thin Lizzy pub guitar solos, Springsteen allusions, Billy Bragg allusions, Civil War allusions, caustic nationalism—for an anthem that makes “Born In the USA” seem downright patriotic. It’s Patrick Stickles' stump speech, and at their shows, fans rallied around him chanted and cheered at the absurdity of our nation’s pock-marked history and as it repeats itself over and over. Stickles will play the fiddle as America eventually burns itself to the ground. That is, except for Jersey, of course. We should try to save Jersey. —Jeremy D. Larson",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/merokrecords/titus-andronicus-a-more | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZD4ezDbbu4,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/87/themonitor.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Titus_Andronicus-A_More_Perfect_Union.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,156,Disclosure,"""Help Me Lose My Mind"" [ft. London Grammar]",PMR,"The requisite ballad of any given radio-ready pop record can be a tenuous affair, and is often more of an exercise in form than an album standout. As the sole slow jam on Settle, brotherly duo Disclosure's breakout debut album, ""Help Me Lose My Mind"" is an inherent outlier, but the track cannot be overlooked. This is a confident love song closing out the record's smokey dancefloor workouts and elastic deep-house, diving head first into the thoughts and emotions that quietly underpin the previous 13 productions. With London Grammar's Hannah Reid delivering her wistful ruminations with an effortless refinement, ""Help Me Lose My Mind"" transformed from the seeming afterthought of a jam-packed LP into one of Disclosure's most enduring and beloved singles. —Patric Fallon",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/disclosuremusic/help-me-lose-my-mind,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/87/settledisclosure.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Disclosure-Help_Me_Lose_My_Mind_ft_London_Grammar.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,155,Meek Mill,"""Dreams and Nightmares (Intro)""",Maybach,"Meek Mill does not have an inside voice. His sustained shout-rap style, first honed as a teen on Philadelphia's notoriously intense battle circuit and amplified exponentially in the years since, is so overwrought that Twitter turned it into an all-caps trending punchline last year (""MEEK MILL RAP LIKE HE JUST WALKED THROUGH A SPIDERWEB"" ). But jokes aside, no contemporary rapper does physical catharsis better than Meek when he's on and he's never been more on than he was when recording the triumphant intro to his otherwise underwhelming debut album. On paper ""Dreams & Nightmares"" wallows in standard issue rags-to-riches cliches but Meek turns these ideas into power through the sheer velocity of his performance. In just four minutes of continuous rapping—with no hooks and very few snares—he managed to condense and conquer an entire lifetime of pain. —Andrew Nosnitsky Meek Mill: ""Dreams and Nightmares (Intro)""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8gfqs1-NuE,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/87/meekmill.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Meek_Mill-Dreams_and_Nightmares_Intro.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,154,Savages,"""Husbands""",Pop Noire,"Our domestic lives are supposed to be places of refuge, but what if, one day, the whole thing went to hell and we suddenly couldn’t be certain of the thing we thought was our anchor? Savages came blazing out of the gate with the “Flying to Berlin” single and this B-side, which poses that question in increasingly frantic waves, pitting the stabilizing rhythm of home life against explosions of doubt and panic. The full dynamic power of the band is on razor-sharp display as “Husbands” literally rises from a whisper to a scream over three choruses before cutting out, leaving us to wonder, “What chaos waits to upend the most settled arrangement?”—Joe Tangari",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/13631/homepage_large.8d785ce6.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Savages-Husbands.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,153,Chief Keef,"""Love Sosa""",Interscope,"Though “Love Sosa” isn’t even two years old yet, it feels like we’ve been through a lifetime of ups and downs with Keith “Chief Keef” Cozart, who recorded the infectious single before his 17th birthday. Though a newer, slightly more polished “Love Sosa” opens Chief Keef’s critically successful Interscope debut Finally Rich—a version which, thanks to a spoken-word intro, helps firmly plant you into the world of Keef's Chicago—his vision is made most vivid by its memorable video. Shot by prolific scene documenter D. Gainz, the “Love Sosa” video contains all the hallmarks of the filmmaker’s work. It’s unflashy but well-edited, focusing on the performers and their raw energy, their glee in making a video. “Love Sosa” posits a violent existence—”Hit him with that cobra/ Now that boy slumped over/ They do it all for Sosa”—but the video is innocent, sweet in ways. Though Keef’s best work is often boiled down to its key elements, “Love Sosa” can be considered one of his personal peaks, as well as a peak for the entire style that he pioneered. —Corban Goble Chief Keef: ""Love Sosa""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWyHZNBz6FE,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/87/lovesosa.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Chief_Keef-Love_Sosa.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,152,Gorillaz,"""On Melancholy Hill""",Virgin,"Not all sadness is blue. “On Melancholy Hill” has all of the prismatic colorfulness of the rest of Plastic Beach, but puts its pinks and oranges to work supporting the kind of sad-guy melody that only Damon Albarn ever sings. If this was the only sound he had, it’d be good for about a half-dozen albums, but coming as it does in the flow of Gorillaz’s willfully eclectic output, it stands out for its introverted understatement, less giant cartoon apes pounding the ground in rhythm than sunlight moving slowly across a room. And we’d be content to watch all day. —Joe Tangari Gorillaz: ""On Melancholy Hill""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04mfKJWDSzI,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/87/plasticbeach.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Gorillaz-On_Melancholy_Hill.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,151,James Blake,"""Retrograde""",Republic,"In a field already saturated with male vocalists blending sultry R&B and synthesized music, what sets James Blake apart from the Jai Paul’s, Autre Ne Veut’s, and How to Dress Well’s of the world is his approach to traditional arrangement. Despite the modern programming used to make it, 2013’s “Retrograde” evokes the candor and grace of a soul ballad. Between the restrained interludes and passionate outbursts (“Suddenly I’m hit!”, he croons on the chorus), “Retrograde” sounds beautifully—almost defiantly—lived-in. Synergistic harmonies loop and intertwine, adopting a steady march that harkens to Bill Withers’ “Grandma’s Hands”, while tendrils of falsetto echo atop a tinny claptrack. Blake once told the BBC that all of his tracks “start with piano and vocals”. Maybe that’s why he named this one retrograde: its a ballad that dares to look at the past while managing to nod at the future. —Molly Beauchemin",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/umusic-backstage/james-blake-retrograde-1 | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxjNauWYFfc,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/14899/homepage_large.d19e4185.jpg,/dataset/artwork/James_Blake-Retrograde.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,150,Dirty Projectors,"""Gun Has No Trigger""",Domino,"Some New York bands who helped define the previous decade didn’t have the easiest time adjusting to the 2010s. Not so Dirty Projectors, who came out of the gate with “Gun Has No Trigger”, a moment as startling as anything they’d done. If Bitte Orca sounded like an intimidating work to follow, this was where such fears were quashed, as Dave Longstreth and his band continued to develop a sound that’s unique to them and surprisingly supple. “Gun Has No Trigger” represents two important sides of Dirty Projectors, where human moments morph into precision-tooled professionalism and then get turned inside out again. When Longstreth’s deliberately off-key warble is obliterated by the ray-of-sunlight backing vocals, it’s both relatable and dazzling. That’s something of a motif for this band, who show here how they effortlessly operate between the everyday and the fantastical. —Nick Neyland",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/13379/homepage_large.e3cfff40.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dirty_Projectors-Gun_Has_No_Trigger.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,149,Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti,"""Only in My Dreams""",4AD,"In just over three minutes, “Only in My Dreams” encapsulates what makes Ariel Pink such a captivating and confounding pop figure. On the surface, it’s a jangly slice of AM-radio pop, packed with barbed melodic hooks and based on the classic Brill Building trope of the idealized dream lover as substitute for the unrequited real thing. Beneath the frosting, however, there’s a lingering aftertaste that turns things queasy as the song dips into a minor key and Pink repeatedly reminds his dream, “You’re the luckiest girl.” The implication is that, for the song’s narrator, the real romantic fantasy is not so much having a dream girl to take to the beach as it is to have someone who appreciates just how lucky she is to be with him. In true Pink fashion, this subtle whiff of lovesick bitterness adds enough uneasiness to subvert the whole song, and is perhaps why he's been known to sing its sugared phrases with something resembling a sneer. —Matthew Murphy Ariel Pink's Haunted Grafitti: ""Only in My Dreams""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ta46M5rksBk,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/13853/homepage_large.f0898222.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ariel_Pinks_Haunted_Graffiti-Only_in_My_Dreams.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,148,Rick Ross,"""B.M.F. (Blowin' Money Fast)"" [ft. Styles P]",Maybach,"Rick Ross was a well-paid joke, the undeserving recipient of Def Jam largesse with three #1 Albums and no respect to his name. He decided to change this conversation, and the result was the most unlikely underdog story of rap's last decade. From 2009's Deeper Than Rap to the following year's Teflon Don, he grew into a startlingly powerful performer and rapper, and on the street hit ""B.M.F."", he crested. The song's hook was built directly on the open understanding that he was delusional (""I think I'm Big Meech! Larry Hoover!""), but the triumphant blare of the song transmuted the meaning. The crisp boom of producer Lex Luger's snares matched that of Ross' voice, and ""B.M.F."" became a sort of outsized demonstration of the idea that we all fake it until we make it. You could try to snort at the rich hypocrisy of ""Self-made, you just affiliated/ I build it ground up, you bought it renovated/ Talkin' plenty capers, nothing's been authenticated."" But in the face of ""B.M.F.""'s single-celled-organism forward motion, suddenly that joke wasn't funny anymore. —Jayson Greene Rick Ross: ""B.M.F."" [ft. Styles P]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2MVzP4MaJ0,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/87/bmf.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rick_Ross-BMF_Blowin_Money_Fast_ft_Styles_P.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,147,Rich Kidz,"""My Life"" [ft. Waka Flocka Flame]",self-released,"Some artists tell us what they want; rappers tend to tell us what they already have. In this case: watches, money, steak, women, but, above all, the kind of pride no worldly achievement can replace. While producers like Lex Luger and Drumma Boy were making beats that sounded like Soviet marches, London on Da Track splashed his with purples, pinks, yellows, and teal—a reminder that power feels black and white, but joy is in color. Whatever Waka is shouting will have to remain between Waka and God. As for Skool Boy, he can’t sing, but that’s not the point: He lives his life as though he can. —Mike Powell",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/richkidz4life/rich-kidz-my-life-feat-waka,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/87/richkidz.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rich_Kidz-My_Life_ft_Waka_Flocka_Flame.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,146,Kurt Vile,"""Jesus Fever""",Matador,"It’s hard to pick a favorite track from 2011’s excellent Smoke Ring for My Halo, but “Jesus Fever” is a strong contender by nature of its own jauntiness. Nestled in an album filled with excellent songs that vacillate between sweet stoner riffing and feather-light guitar ephemera, “Jesus Fever” is the closest that the quixotic Mr. Vile comes, at least on this go round, to bonafide pop. Still, the lilting four-minutes of “Jesus” is far from straightforward. As with any Vile track, the vibe is paramount, and here a sunny and strummy guitar hook bounces along as he casually narrates his own disappearance from a world that he’s already grown tired of trying to understand. As he explains it, the “Jesus fever is flowin’ all over” but it never seems to be enough to tether him to the conscious world. Instead, Vile drifts in and out of the scene like a perpetually chilled-out specter. In some ways, “Jesus Fever” is a precursor to more straightforward pop leanings to come on 2013’s Wakin on a Pretty Daze, but here even his most forthright statements tend to be slippery. “When I am a ghost, I’ll see no reason to run,” he sings. “If it wasn’t taped, you could escape this song. But I’m already gone.” —T. Cole Rachel",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/87/kurtvile.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kurt_Vile-Jesus_Fever.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,145,tUnE-yArDs,"""Powa""",4AD,"This old world's not always kind to the mold-breakers, the mavericks, the paint-splattered, ukulele-toting one-of-a-kinders dancing to the beat of their own drum loops. Merrill Garbus does what she does with remarkable self-possession—I mean, she owns that shit—but there are moments on tUnE-yArDs’ still-remarkable w h o k i l l when the self-doubt starts to creep in and take over. ""Powa"", w h o k i l l's slow-burning centerpiece, finds Garbus feeling just a little beaten down by the universe: ""You bomb me with life's humiliations everyday,"" she wails, her head full of Valium. But ""Powa"" isn't a song about succumbing to that feeling; rather, it's about finding something—or somebody—to help set you right when everything else feels wrong. Here we find Garbus and her man—the one who ""likes [her] from behind""—hashing things out between the sheets, intertwining mind and body alike, shoring up enough strength from each other to get back out there and paint the town technicolor. —Paul Thompson tUnE-yArDs: ""Powa""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLb8jWYvYmU,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/87/whokill.jpg,/dataset/artwork/tUnE-yArDs-Powa.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,144,Miguel,"""Do You""",RCA,"""Do You"" drifts into view like a lone cloud slowly passing on a perfect summer day, gently grazing the edge of the sun without blocking it out.  This second single from Kaleidoscope Dream, while dwarfed by its now-canonical predecessor ""Adorn"", is the finest showcase of Miguel's gently psychedelic side. It frames love as a benevolent k-hole, something you fall into and drift around in, taking note of the colors and the way you feel inside your body while also watching it float. It seems impossible that a song with a line like ""I wanna do you like drugs tonight"" could sound this innocent; he slots that thought next to others about playing rock, paper, scissors, receiving advice from his mother, going to matinee movies, and telling pointless secrets. All have equal weight, and that's Miguel's world: a place where the nastiest aside sounds playful and drugs and hugs are two equally valid ways of wallowing in the moment. —Mark Richardson Miguel: ""Do You""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dM5QYdTo08,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/87/miguel.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Miguel-Do_You.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,143,Fiona Apple,"""Every Single Night""",Epic,"After seven years with no new music, Fiona Apple still thought herself an extraordinary machine. She's a music box, made up of a hundred gears whose voice only sounds when a metal comb plucks against her teeth. And this is her attempt to take herself apart, piece by piece. It’s a fight between her brain and her heart, which she says is both made of “parts of all that surrounds me” and is a “meal” that someone is sure to choke on. She's not OK, but she's OK with that. With little more than a celesta plunking underneath her, the song hinges around the loopy, breathless chorus, “I just want to feel everything.” It's an apology, an excuse, a bit of a wish, or a coy flip of words a killer says as she stands over the corpse of her latest victim. It's likely she's the victim, but she's okay with that, too. —Jeremy D. Larson Fiona Apple: ""Every Single Night""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIlLq4BqGdg,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/13503/homepage_large.64ba7147.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fiona_Apple-Every_Single_Night.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,142,Ciara,"""Ride"" [ft. Ludacris]",LaFace,"After the mid-2000s success of ""Oh"" and ""Promise""—and subsequent string of underperforming albums—this single should have been Ciara's comeback. ""Ride"" is the kind of song—lubricious, quavering, ever-so-off-kilter—that her breathy soprano was made for, and its wonderfully obvious central metaphor was the worthy successor to Aaliyah's ""Rock the Boat"", another hypnotic sex jam. Maybe that metaphor was a little too thin—Ciara unapologetically grinds and pops throughout the song's video, celebrating her own body without guilt. There was no edited video for ""Ride"", and it was never played on BET. Thank God she didn't let that stop her from making more body-celebrating slow jams. —Jessica Suarez Ciara: ""Ride"" [ft. Ludacris]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hr4wz4-27PY,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/87/ciara.png,/dataset/artwork/Ciara-Ride_ft_Ludacris.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,141,Kreayshawn,"""Gucci Gucci""",Columbia,"An amateur pops off with a genuine hit—it's nearing 50 million views, aka Bieber numbers—and suddenly everyone has to make sure you know she didn't write her own lyrics, that everyone just liked the beat, it was really the Odd Future cosign, that the writer deserves the credit, that anything can and must be taken from her. But ""Gucci Gucci"", a perfect pop-rap record, has sustained, because Kreayshawn was at its center. Not that collaboration didn't help it come together: DJ Two Stacks' beat was immediate and hooky, and the song's lyrics are eminently quotable. But the spirit of Kreayshawn was what people wanted, what captured our eyes and ears. Down to the quotidian detail, she got what it was like to be a young and urbane hip-hop head in 2011, growing up on the Cool Kids and Curren$y, choosing style over fashion, dealing Adderall out of your backpack and shooting music videos for the gangster rapper up the street. In one record she built a universe—and transformed ""basic"" into the slang term heard round the world. —David DrakeKreayshawn: ""Gucci Gucci""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WJFjXtHcy4,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/87/kreayshawn-gucci-gucci.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kreayshawn-Gucci_Gucci.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,140,Jacques Greene,"""Another Girl""",LuckyMe,"This decade has seen no shortage of dance songs that pluck vocals from R&B and warp them into unfamiliar shapes, and the style definitely sounds dried up in 2014. But ""Another Girl"" emerged just before reworked deep Brandy cuts dominated SoundCloud dashboards, and it still moves with a distinctly human gait. The song centers around several lines from Ciara's remix of Chris Brown's ""Deuces"" and Jacques Greene, like great sample-minded artists before him, rearranges her voice into something that sounds emotionally compelling in a whole new way. —Patrick St. Michel",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/jacquesgreene/lm | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L58lDi9PUn4,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/12191/homepage_large.911733b6.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jacques_Greene-Another_Girl.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,139,DJ Khaled,"""I'm On One"" [ft. Drake, Rick Ross and Lil Wayne]",We the Best / Cash Money,"By 2011, Drake was already a superstar—he and Nicki Minaj proved that Lil Wayne and Birdman’s YMCMB crew could find and cultivate real talent. But the song that built the hype for his sophomore album, Take Care, wasn’t even his; it belonged to DJ Khaled, rap’s unwanted motivational speaker. Drake’s hook of “sip it till I feel it” and “smoke it till it’s done” was drawn from the same fatalistic haze that powered Miley Cyrus’ “We Can’t Stop”, and it still sets the mood for cross-faded music festival summers. Then Lil Wayne, master of drugged-out philosophy, starts with “I walk around the club fuck everybody.” Blunt, but on a Sunday train ride back home, it’s just what a left-for-not generation wants to hear before real life hits back on Monday. —David Turner DJ Khaled: ""I'm On One"" [ft. Drake, Rick Ross and Lil Wayne]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z09lYqdxqzo,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/12205/homepage_large.80bf3876.jpg,/dataset/artwork/DJ_Khaled-Im_On_One_ft_Drake_Rick_Ross_and_Lil_Wayne.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,138,Soulja Boy,"""Zan With That Lean""",S.O.D. Money Gang,"Soulja Boy was always saddled with the label of “ringtone rap,” something that was meant as an insult because it implied the music was unserious. Unseriousness, though, is exactly the point of Soulja Boy. “Zan With That Lean”, with its cartoonish beat, is a pure, unfiltered dose of giddy fun. (Kwony Cash's gloriously tinny production, ironically, would make a better ringtone than anything else in Soulja's catalog.) Boasts like “Girls going wild, lifting up they shirts/ Pull up in that Lambo, that bitch go skrrt skrrt” are silly and awesomely simple, and they also click together perfectly. But lest we downplay Soulja's value to be one of essentialized fun, consider that perhaps no other artist in the past few years has had an ear as close to the streets, and that the way Soulja slathers his voice in Auto-Tune to make a lean-soaked rap song double as melodic pop is years ahead of its time, anticipating artists like K Camp, Young Thug, and the entire genre of Chicago bop. —Kyle Kramer Soulja Boy: ""Zan With That Lean""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DisfSEoixq0,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/87/soulja-boy-juice-power-respect.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Soulja_Boy-Zan_With_That_Lean.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,137,Erykah Badu,"""Window Seat""",Universal Motown,"If you are a person who happens to talk openly about your moderate-to-severe flight anxiety, you have undoubtedly been offered countless relaxation tips, many of which involve prescription drugs, almost all of which are as helpful as someone telling you what they think your favorite food should be. Nonetheless, here’s mine: I close my eyes and listen to “Window Seat” on a loop. The connection is partly explicit, of course: The first single from Erykah Badu’s tender 2010 LP, New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh, is literally about getting on a plane and taking your body, but more importantly your mind, someplace else. But there’s also something implicitly soothing about the song, which grooves along a bright, bouncy keyboard melody and a loping baseline. Even sitting in my bedroom, the song instantly transports me onto a picturesque plane ride: the sunlight is filtering through the window; the clouds below look like the biggest, softest bed ever; ?uestlove’s quietly immaculate drumbeat suggests the type of uninterrupted smoothness that allows me to drop my guard. Badu—who sings of needing to leave her lover but of needing even more to be wanted—requires the song’s healing methods, too. But with her resolute composure she nonetheless succeeds, as she always does, in convincing me that I’m not going to die. —Jordan Sargent Erykah Badu: ""Window Seat""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hVp47f5YZg,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/11870/homepage_large.18c53016.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Erykah_Badu-Window_Seat.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,136,Gang Gang Dance,"""Glass Jar""",4AD,"“It’s everything time,” goes the utterance at the start of Gang Gang Dance’s beatific “Glass Jar”. And at 11 body-elevating minutes, it is a career-summarizing track. Leading up to their 4AD album Eye Contact, the New York band had done world beats as grimy and buzzing as a night market in Flushing, but “Glass Jar” revealed a new lucidity. It allowed the group to add infinite layers of new age and Dead Can Dance gauze yet kept their no wave core, Byzantine riddims, and singer Lizzi Bougatsos’ otherworldly mewl intact. New York bands of multiple generations are prone to draw on other cultures—from Talking Heads to Jon Hassell to GGD brethren Animal Collective—but few could put it all together like the band did here. “Glass Jar” created a sonic hybrid which reveals that everything that converges also rises. —Andy Beta Gang Gang Dance: ""Glass Jar""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_bkNR-zOn8,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/12130/homepage_large.88ea77e2.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Gang_Gang_Dance-Glass_Jar.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,135,Kendrick Lamar,"""A.D.H.D""",Top Dawg,"There's always a moment in an artist's career where things click and they finally figure out how to arrange their talents in the optimal configuration. For Kendrick Lamar, ""A.D.H.D"" was where his God-given ability and potential finally converged. The track is equal parts social criticism and generous compassion, and Lamar never comes off as like he's wagging his finger or judging those with a propensity for Dionysian debauchery. He implicates himself as a part of the problem and presents no magical solution to the malaise of his generation. But ""A.D.H.D"" isn't a shoulder-shrug so much as a powerful appeal for connection and empathy, two things that Lamar realizes need to come before any answers can. —Renato Pagnani Kendrick Lamar: ""A.D.H.D""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjlFqgRbICY,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/87/section80.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kendrick_Lamar-ADHD.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,134,Jessie Ware,"""110%""",Universal Island / PMR,"Sample clearance is a pain in the ass. The process is complicated and uncertain enough that lawyers suggest having a Plan B from the get-go—some advice that Jessie Ware and Julio Bashmore apparently did not consider when they wrote ""110%"". After basing their bubbly, soft-spoken single around a sinister Big Pun sample (""Carving my initials on your forehead""), the pair were ultimately denied rights to the audio, and had to replace the lyric in a retitled version of the track called ""If You're Never Gonna Move"". It's a testament to the inherent strengths of Ware's affably weightless voice and Bashmore's skipping production that such changes had zero effect on the lasting power of ""110%"" and its winsome dance-pop. —Patric Fallon",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/jessieware/jessie-ware-110-1,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/87/devotion.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jessie_Ware-110.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,133,A$AP Rocky,"""Fuckin' Problems"" [ft. 2 Chainz, Drake, and Kendrick Lamar]",Polo Grounds / RCA,"Two years after “Niggas in Paris” reframed the possibilities for minimalist rap about maximalist thrills, A$AP Rocky—the fashion-savvy mini-mogul eyeing The Throne—convened the other biggest rappers in the world to grab their dicks and go gorillas. Despite the star wattage, the “Fuckin’ Problems” beat is its secret weapon, Drake and 40 flipping an Aaliyah coo into a cheerleader chant (turning a pep talk into a pep rally) and unshackling a bass frequency so low it sounds like a torture device. That bass, a mean growl coating A$AP, Drake, and Kendrick Lamar’s schoolyard “beast!” boasts (and 2 Chainz’ Nipsey Russell hook-wordplay) in a sinister sonic ooze, should get a feature credit on the tracklist. A perfect example of four heavyweights playfully sparring on a huge stage. —Eric Harvey",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/asvpxrocky/f-kin-problems | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD7ufhnTUbA#t=171,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/87/fuckinproblems.jpg,/dataset/artwork/AAP_Rocky-Fuckin_Problems_ft_2_Chainz_Drake_and_Kendrick_Lamar.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,132,The War on Drugs,"""Under the Pressure""",Secretly Canadian,"On ""Under the Pressure,"" Adam Granduciel sounds like he's singing into the middle of a canyon. His voice—a Dylanesque mutter, but without the craggy edges—is almost drowned out by the shimmering guitar and constant, relentless forward movement of the track as a whole. For much of its daunting nine-minute runtime, Granduciel is staring into the yawning abyss of the world, ready to burst through, but not quite getting there. That might be true spiritually, but this song—and the rest of Lost in the Dream—also marked the shift that transformed the War on Drugs from a solid career band into one that could change someone's life if they heard it at the right time. ""Under the Pressure"" might take its time to get where it's going, but Granduciel's message is clear and urgent: The world is moving fast—get used to it or watch it all break down. —Sam Hockley-Smith The War on Drugs: ""Under the Pressure""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZ9IXScip68,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/87/lostinthedream.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_War_on_Drugs-Under_the_Pressure.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,131,Miley Cyrus,"""We Can't Stop""",RCA,"Future generations, if they haven’t already, will one day look back on Miley Cyrus with a fundamental inability to understand why this person was such a source of controversy in our time. There will be a disconnect between their world and ours, and whatever that world is, Miley Cyrus is already living in it. In her first interview after pretending to eat a woman’s ass and then grinding her own into Robin Thicke on national television, she told MTV that America had twisted itself up over nothing. “They’re overthinking it,” she said. “You’re thinking about it more than I thought about it when I did it. Like, I didn’t even think about it ’cause that’s just me.” The reason Miley has rankled so easily is she assumes her provocation is a given, as if she’s never considered another mode of existence simply because there isn’t one. Even dating back to 2007, she was telling us about her best friend Lesley waving away her actions with an “Oh, she’s just being Miley,” and nothing has more perfectly encapsulated this attitude than “We Can’t Stop”. Rarely has rebellion in pop sounded so blithe, with Miley mumbling battle cries in a 4 a.m. drawl over a muted beat that sounds like a chopped and screwed version of itself. Many have read this as melancholy but it’s actually flippancy, a language every future generation has known quite well. —Jordan Sargent Miley Cyrus: ""We Can't Stop""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JWh6mAYtsA,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/87/miley.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Miley_Cyrus-We_Cant_Stop.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,130,A$AP Ferg,"""Shabba"" [ft. A$AP Rocky]",Polo Grounds / RCA,"A short and inconclusive list of rappers who have written tracks in the past five years simply to channel the swagger and/or wealth of a single famous person include Rick Ross (“MC Hammer”), Lil Wayne (“Bill Gates”), Kendrick Lamar (“Michael Jordan”), Killer Mike (“Ric Flair”), Mac Miller (“Donald Trump”), and, of course, Lil B (“Ellen Degeneres,” “Justin Bieber,” “Bill Bellamy,” “Charlie Sheen,” “Dr. Phil”—let’s just stop there). But the absolute apex of this bubble was A$AP Ferg’s “Shabba”, an ode to the bejeweled '90s dancehall singer. Ferg doesn’t expand this fleeting microgenre so much as he perfects it with a chorus that has the spot-on rhythmic pitter-patter of a playground chant, a zombie herd’s mantra, or, most vividly to me, an extremely catchy carol. It’s this bit of accidentally classic songwriting that elevates “Shabba” above its brethren, and will one day have you absentmindedly singing about Shabba Ranks sending you eight gold rings, two bad bitches, and one gold tooth on the eighth day of Christmas. —Jordan Sargent",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/15689/homepage_large.416d5c96.jpg,/dataset/artwork/AAP_Ferg-Shabba_ft_AAP_Rocky.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,129,Nicki Minaj,"""Come on a Cone""",Young Money Entertainment / Universal Republic / Cash Money,"When you first saw the tracklist for Nicki Minaj’s Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded, you figured “Come on a Cone” had to be a real rauncher. It is, instead, a seething kiss-off to her naysayers. Her rapping is both precise but wacky and breathless, delivered over a dizzying Hit-Boy beat. But it’s within her demented howls on that hook that she captures her true brilliance as a lyricist: “This ice is so cold/ It should come on a cone.” Quantifying your colossal diamonds with frigid synonym is a snore. Nicki takes that overdone trope and makes you work for it. Yes, her jewels are so gigantic, they’re tantamount to ice cream, but that’s not the only way Nicki flexes. It’s with wordplay, too. Slick Nicki, spitting like she did as a Smack DVD darling, isn’t the only Minaj on the track. Her croonier side pops up to furnish, not one, but two, “put my dick in your face” serenades. Even when she’s going for something more straightforward, Nicki stays repping for the weirdos. —Claire Lobenfeld Nicki Minaj: ""Come on Cone""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pl35X82lF3Q,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/13439/homepage_large.df5a6b26.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nicki_Minaj-Come_on_a_Cone.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,128,Sleigh Bells,"""Rill Rill""",N.E.E.T. / Mom & Pop,"When Alexis Krauss sings “have a heart” in the opening line of “Rill Rill,” she could very well be issuing a directive to herself. Krauss and partner Derek Miller’s debut as Sleigh Bells, Treats, unleashed the sort of relentless woofer-bursting, electro-metal assault that no doubt claimed the lives of many unsuspecting earbuds. But with “Rill Rill,” Sleigh Bells revealed their sonic sadism had its limits, its deceptively sweet schoolyard-style chants and wholesale sample of Funkadelic’s 1971 feel-good classic “Can You Get to That” soothing your aching cochleas like a Q-tip dipped in aloe vera. While it may be damning Miller and Krauss with faint praise to suggest their most eternally engaging song is the one built from another band’s familiar bedtrack, “Rill Rill” illuminates a crucial quality often lost amid the band’s boomboxed bluster: for Sleigh Bells, the cute is as potent as the brute. —Stuart Berman",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/sleighbells/rill-rill | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rrOdcnFbAY,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/87/sleigh.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sleigh_Bells-Rill_Rill.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,127,Fleet Foxes,"""Helplessness Blues""",Sub Pop,"There’s an irony embedded in the title track of Fleet Foxes’ second LP. The song’s message starts out egoless, with a humble plea for enlightenment, but “Helplessness Blues” relies on its lyrics, on its sense of self, like nothing the band had released before. It’s Robin Pecknold’s most confident song, going for broke and celebrating the beauty of life while asking bold, metaphysical questions. And then, inevitably, it takes a right turn back into the pastoral fantasia that had made the band so appealing in the first place. But even here, the folksy landscape painting that completes “Helplessness Blues” is more sharply drawn than their older songs, the plainspoken folk lyricism evoking an analog-age utopia with a grandiose touch. —Jonah Bromwich",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/12100/homepage_large.8fd43e2c.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fleet_Foxes-Helplessness_Blues.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,126,Cloud Nothings,"""Stay Useless""",Carpark,"The anti-nostalgia sentiment of Attack on Memory doesn't seem to hold up to much scrutiny; it often makes Dylan Baldi sound like a guy who wishes he was born a decade earlier. In particular, the listen-and-learn power chord riff of ""Stay Useless"" is an anachronism in 21st-century ""indie rock,"" as are the très cool drum fills and Steve Albini's spartan production—it's a song extracted from a teenager's brain in 1994, wondering why Dookie and In Utero can't get along. Likewise, Baldi was a 20-year old trying to negate Cloud Nothings' widely available early material and he would soon go dark on social media—he could be heard as a burgeoning curmudgeon, wishing it really was 1994, when computer literacy in indie rock was verboten in all forms. But while Baldi's attack on busyness may have been timely in 2012, it decimates nostalgia by finding the equalizer in every post-industrial period—any supposedly life-altering, time-saving technological advance never ends up giving you that time back, you just become more useful to somebody else. Play ""Stay Useless"" to an assembly line worker in 1914, or a Google Glass'd start-up bro on his third Soylent a century later and both will agree: the ""good ol' days"" are a lie. —Ian Cohen",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/12873/homepage_large.e701f447.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Cloud_Nothings-Stay_Useless.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,125,Todd Terje,"""Snooze 4 Love""",Running Back,"Listening to “Snooze 4 Love” is like passing a flashlight slowly across a dark room: The objects in the space don’t change, but your perspective on them does. The song has one melody, one progression, and yet over the course of eight minutes appears to unfold in mystical ways—a trick that puts Terje in the company of composers like Philip Glass, whose music seems to travel incredible distances without ever going anywhere. Like all Terje’s playful, contemplative disco, “Snooze” blurs the lines between kitsch and art—between what we value and what we ignore. To that end, the song is a triumph and a challenge, the chintzy little keepsake that we could never bring ourselves to throw away. —Mike Powell Todd Terje: ""Snooze 4 Love""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tq7qEUnLZto,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/12216/homepage_large.1379fc81.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Todd_Terje-Snooze_4_Love.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,124,Frank Ocean,"""Novacane""",self-released,"Anhedonia is notoriously hard to portray without slipping back into hedonism; one misstep and you’re The Wolf of Wall Street pretending it doesn’t dig the idea of doing blow off a woman’s crack. “Novacane” is just as gonzo-debauched—cocaine for breakfast, bed full of women in Eyes Wide Shut configurations—but only feels bleak. The lewd bits go through the Auto-Tuned motions; the rest is pretty harmonies with flat affect, sentences never really completed. It’s a storytelling song but the chronology is hazy, Ocean drifting from in flagrante delicto to half-memories and back; the first time feels the same as the heartbreak feels the same as the rebound. Radio empathized, as did high-profile remixers (from Dawn Richard as lonely predator to a 14-year-old Becky G way too young to get it), and so Ocean’s career began; blame it on the model songwriting he’d continue to codify, or on how many people recognize the place where emptiness feels like seduction. —Katherine St. Asaph Frank Ocean: ""Novacane""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgeO3sIIqkU,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/87/nostalgia.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Frank_Ocean-Novacane.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,123,Future Islands,"""Seasons (Waiting On You)""",4AD,"It’s impossible to discuss Future Islands in 2014 without bringing up that clip of that performance on that late-night talk show. You know, the one that introduced Samuel T. Herring’s unhinged dance moves to an unsuspecting audience and likely had your aunt asking you what happened to his cartilage. As potentially divisive mainstream performances by indie lifers go (St. Vincent on “SNL”, for example), Future Islands on Letterman came across as charming rather than crazy. What made that performance endlessly rewatchable, however, wasn’t Herring tugging on his t-shirt or pounding his heart as though pop music was the warrior’s lot. It was the song itself, a shamelessly big-hearted anthem with a stoic electro-pop pulse and the sort of chorus that Tom Jones might have belted amid a volley of panties. “Seasons (Waiting on You)” is about people changing, growing apart, trying to connect across an unmendable rift, and Herring sings (and dances and gestures and exists) like a man who refuses to admit that such tragedies are an inevitable consequence of just living life. —Stephen M. Deusner",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/future-islands/seasons-waiting-on-you | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ee4bfu_t3c,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/87/singles.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Future_Islands-Seasons_Waiting_On_You.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,122,Beyoncé,"""1+1""",Columbia,"This is the showstopper—the moment when we stop dancing in the arena and just stand there, awestruck. When our grandest hopes and dreams slip into a sparkling blue catsuit and writhe on top of the piano. When our most idyllic selves are able to collect every last bit of affection left on earth and multiply it tenfold, saving lives, loves, puppies. When Whitney Houston and Sam Cooke and Old Prince are resurrected anew, their gifts even more potent than before. When Stephen Hawking-level mathematics suddenly becomes as simple as a third-grade times table. It’s when we watch a woman float over heads like a god and start to believe in a power bigger than ourselves again. —Ryan Dombal Beyoncé: ""1+1""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qW-geHoAQ8I,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/87/beyonce11.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beyonc-11.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,121,Courtney Barnett,"""Avant Gardener""",House Anxiety / Marathon Artists,"I guarantee that “Avant Gardener” is the only song on this list that fits under the heading “mumblecore ‘Shakey Dog’.” As a guitar tone woozily recreates the disorienting buzz of coming to after passing out, Aussie indie-pop upstart Courtney Barnett offers a blow-by-blow recap of the panic created by that existential tightrope-walk of being young and avoiding basic responsibilities. The dramatic tension here isn’t exactly Bergman-esque—Barnett decides to pull weeds to put off thinking about cleaning up her trashy front yard, then worries about a friend seeing her being administered to by an EMT—but it’s delivered with a country-style unflappability that makes it both groovy and slightly eerie. If you’ve ever run short of breath while trying to settle on a Netflix movie or get the cover back on the futon, you’ll nod along. —Eric Harvey",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf_BsCiJ6Sc,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/15921/homepage_large.d2c00bcb.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Courtney_Barnett-Avant_Gardener.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,120,Janelle Monáe,"""Cold War""",Wondaland Arts Society / Bad Boy,"Janelle Monáe’s The ArchAndroid was an album grand and ambitious enough to come equipped with an overture, epic conceptual suites, and a futuristic sci-fi storyline. But those listeners just looking for a core mission statement need go no further than “Cold War”. Here she makes it clear: her ambition to be and to create whatever she chooses is no abstract ideal but an active battleground upon which she is already deployed. Where much of the album was baroque and expansive, the structure of “Cold War” is sleek and direct, armed with a classic melodic chorus that one can easily imagine the likes of Diana Ross burning down in her prime. Instead Monáe burns it down herself, delivering her deceptively virtuosic vocal with an effortless grace that underscores the fierce conviction of her lyrics and leaving no question about which side is winning in this particular war. —Matthew Murphy Janelle Monáe: ""Cold War""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqmORiHNtN4,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/87/coldwar.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Janelle_Mone-Cold_War.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,119,Future,"""Same Damn Time""",Epic / A1 / Free Bandz,"Neologisms go in and out of vogue, but Future made one to last. Not that his first big coup on rap radio doesn’t belong here on its own merits. Sonny Digital’s co-opted Lex Luger beat could be slotted as a definitive trap sound back in early 2012, while simultaneously, Future gives the only lecture you need on incredulous multitasking. The first verse is calm Future, like “Can you believe this shit,” but by the third he’s gargling glass at the top of his range like, “Literally no one in the world including myself can believe this shit.” But historically speaking, what is “at the same time” without the word “damn”? Not a damn thing. The phrase is still at least 40-tweets-per-hour pervasive. How about descriptive linguistics, how about trap-rap anthems, concurrently? —Jeremy D. Larson Future: ""Same Damn Time""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0Y39QnwRvY,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/87/samedamntime.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Future-Same_Damn_Time.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,118,Le1f,"""Wut""",Greedhead / Camp & Street,"Before “Wut”, Le1f—real name Khalif Diouf—was little more than a background player in the New York rap scene, producing tracks for the likes of Das Racist and Spank Rock. But with the release of his debut 2012 mixtape, Dark York, Le1f came for that same scene’s jugular, carving out a piece for himself. Backed by an immediately likable beat from 5kinAndBone5, “Wut” finds Le1f set at lightning-speed, jumping from tongue-in-cheek braggadocio to subversive come-ons with ease. There could be no better announcement of arrival than “Wut”, and now, two years later, it's paying off: Le1f has since earned a place on XL Records’ roster as well as a late night debut on Letterman, not to mention the ever-growing cadre of young queer rappers that have followed in his wake. —Eric Torres",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hW_B1uJflUc,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/13904/homepage_large.87b8f013.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Le1f-Wut.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,117,Perfect Pussy,"""I""",self-released,"Matching percussive brutality and obfuscating noise with sugar-rush melodies, Perfect Pussy came out of the gate sweet enough for those who found the dryness of hardcore alienating but loud enough to capture anyone in open war against their hearing. Meredith Graves' lyricism is razor-sharp, vacillating between extreme cynicism and radiant optimism, embodying and at odds with the Sad Girl aesthetic. Here the latter is primarily on show even amid self-excoriation. It's too early to tell what Perfect Pussy's legacy might be, but for now, at least, having these brash personal-is-political voices on show is important enough. —Jake Cleland",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/87/perfectpussy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Perfect_Pussy-I.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,116,Four Tet,"""Angel Echoes""",Domino,"I have no idea if Kieran Hebden is a religious man, but if his work as Four Tet is any indication, one could assume that he is at least a spiritual one. ""Angel Echoes"", the opener from his 2010 album There Is Love in You, proves that theory. Assembled from only a few precious elements, it's a deceptively simple song, its bouncing kick drum, muted hi-hat, and celestial bell tones building upon one another until everything reaches a divine plateau. But it's the diced-up, otherworldly vocal sample that centers everything here, transforming ""Angel Echoes"" into a post-modern hymn. As a dyslexic patchwork of voices reassure you that there is, in fact, love in you, the repeated mantra lulls you into a state so blissful and serene, it seems impossible that those same voices could also elicit feelings of fathomless craving and desperation. It chokes you up. Hebden once tweeted that no one would ever be able to figure out the source of that vocal sample. And that's fine. For something this organic and mesmerizing, to explain the magic of how it came to life would be to deny its spiritual impact. —Zach Kelly Four Tet: ""Angel Echoes""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tpe4id7cLnU,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/87/angelechoes.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Four_Tet-Angel_Echoes.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,115,Chance the Rapper,"""Juice""",NA,"The success of Chicago’s drill rap movement rested the weight of documenting the city’s gun violence problem on the shoulders of an array of fatalistic teens delivering amoral dispatches on the damages in the bluntest of terms. But Chicago hip-hop always housed both gangsters and philosophers, and so Chance the Rapper arose, a heady yin to Sosa’s brutal yang. “Juice” knotted the disparate threads of Chance’s skill set into a neat package, somehow flighty and direct, hooky, and verbose. Conversational verses bounded from cast off topical humor to startling profundity and back, creating a semblance of casual messiness that the remainder of Acid Rap would reveal for anything but. As he pinballs around Times Square in “Juice”’s official video you begin to see what’s really going on: too much character for one body to contain. —Craig Jenkins Chance the Rapper: ""Juice""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8nIHZ-0kS4,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/87/acidrap.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Chance_the_Rapper-Juice.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,114,Blood Orange,"""You're Not Good Enough"" [ft. Samantha Urbani]",Domino,"The pop stars he’s written for channel his smooth energy while standing in the spotlight, but Devonté Hynes’ work as Blood Orange sounds like a group of friends having fun together. Each of the elements in “You’re Not Good Enough” are designed to stand out—look, here’s where the guitar boogies in; wait, listen for the keys to pop, struck by someone who’s surely wearing sunglasses indoors. Enlisting his girlfriend, Samantha Urbani, to sing a delightful “fuck you” of a lyric about a lover who doesn’t cut the mustard lends a song a spiteful exuberance—a wave with your arm around a person you actually care for. It’s rude, but so is life. The video, in which Hynes and friends dance in perfect unison, is even more direct: Look at you, now look at us. How could you think you were good enough? —Jeremy Gordon",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/bloodorange/youre-not-good-enough,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/16285/homepage_large.056a7dcb.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Blood_Orange-Youre_Not_Good_Enough_ft_Samantha_Urbani.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,113,FKA twigs,"""Water Me""",Young Turks,"If there exists one defining moment in FKA twigs’ career thus far—and there have been plenty since 2012’s Bandcamp-released EP1—it’s the remarkable, languishing “Water Me”. As the lead single from Tahliah Barnett’s follow-up release for Young Turks, EP2, “Water Me” is a modern masterpiece in balladry, deftly balancing the hushed sensuality of Barnett’s earlier work with dense, atmospheric production from Arca. Hinging on a few seraphic vocal samples, “Water Me”’s power lies not just in its simplicity but also in its unflinching vulnerability, urging you to weigh and scrutinize it as a lover might. But by the time the beat gracefully crumbles around her at the track’s end, all that’s left is Barnett’s plaintive resignation, a coda both starkly enigmatic and painfully relatable: “He won’t make love to me now/ Not now I’ve set the fee/ He said it’s too much in pounds/ I guess I’m stuck with me.” —Eric Torres FKA twigs: ""Water Me""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFtMl-uipA8,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/87/ep2.jpg,/dataset/artwork/FKA_twigs-Water_Me.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,112,Real Estate,"""Green Aisles""",Domino,"Real Estate's music works for people because they relate to it. Sure, the lived-in production values, delectably dazed hooks, and resplendent guitars don't hurt, but something about the New Jersey band's perspective on being young, dumb, and full of glum makes their appeal all the more universal. On Days, their second and perhaps best album, there was less focus on the shoreline than on their debut (not a single song with the word ""beach"" in the title), as the boys moseyed inland toward the tree-lined cul-de-sacs of Anywhere, USA. ""Green Aisles"" is the cleanest reflection of that migration, an almost painfully pretty slice of wistfulness that envelops all the comfort and boredom and possibility that suburban daydreaming allows. Not everyone got to spend their formative years drinking under the pier; ""I rode right past the train tracks on, ancient as a stone/ Blacked out on a bicycle, I made my way back home,"" on the other hand, is a reminiscence that will feel familiar to anyone with a broken curfew and a borrowed older brother's Fiesta. It's a song you'd roll down the windows for, if only the crank wasn't broken. —Zach Kelly",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/12472/homepage_large.588d7110.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Real_Estate-Green_Aisles.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,111,DJ Rashad,"""I Don't Give a Fuck""",Hyperdub,"Released as the title track for a 2013 EP and positioned that same year as a centerpiece for his album Double Cup, it was hard to shake ""I Don't Give a Fuck"" as the ideal of a DJ Rashad signature song. Whether it's the queasy, corrosive wah-wah that opens the track or the juddering, million-RPM touch tone barrage that serves as bassline/melody/counter-rhythm through its peaks, ""I Don't Give a Fuck"" is one of footwork's most frantic displays of chattering, rapidfire oscillation strong armed into an absolute anthem. To see people get down to it is to watch people come to terms with what it is to lock their motions into a beat, or to be knocked around by it—and even sit-down listens send fusillades of synapses through every part of your brain that wants to regulate your movements. The Tupac sample drops another layer of interpretation onto this: the young machismo of Bishop in Juice—a performance of a performance, famously delivered by a man who never did anything lazily—amplifies the knife's edge tension between blowing something off and going berserk, of not giving a fuck out of detached composure and not giving a fuck out of recklessness. —Nate Patrin DJ Rashad: ""I Don't Give a Fuck""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWTsLnYO68U,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/15892/homepage_large.b4c6bb3e.jpg,/dataset/artwork/DJ_Rashad-I_Dont_Give_a_Fuck.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,110,The National,"""Bloodbuzz Ohio""",4AD,"""I still owe money, to the money, to the money I owe/ The floors are falling out from everybody I know."" As the voice of the National, Matt Berninger's writing tends towards the gnomic, the insular, his eye drawn to smaller moments between clutches of close friends. But on this highlight from 2010's High Violet, he struck upon a universal sentiment. Emerging from the bleak trough of the Great Recession, “Bloodbuzz Ohio” felt like a lullabye to hope, a gentle packing away of larger ambitions in the face of realities. The music, which quickens its heartbeat at the midpoint and introduces a chiming piano, allows in the only beam of light, the sort of quiet exhilaration that attends the moments where we square ourselves away with the present. —Jayson Greene",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/11866/homepage_large.2ab1b5f6.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_National-Bloodbuzz_Ohio.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,109,Earl Sweatshirt,"""Chum""",Odd Future,"Earl came back from boarding school and everyone wanted a piece. The teenager had left California anonymous, returned a celebrity, was cheered as he got off the plane. People knew his story, not only fans of Odd Future, but anyone who checked for the magazines that sold it to their subscribers. His past was public, struggles with an absent father and a fiercely protective mother well known. He was a star-in-waiting (they hoped), ready to be molded (they thought). So Earl used “Chum” to take control, showing the world that while he was gifted, he was no stooge. Every line a perfect portrait (“Momma often was offering peace offerings/ Think, wheeze, cough, scoffing and he’s off again”), rawer and more telling than any profile. “Chum” set the stage for a fiercely independent album that showcased a once-in-a-generation talent even as it rejected expectations for what could be done with the gift. —Jonah Bromwich",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/14526/homepage_large.cb3aaed8.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Earl_Sweatshirt-Chum.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,108,Girls,"""Vomit""",True Panther,"The sentiments of ""Vomit"" are simple: ""Nights I spend alone/ I spend 'em runnin' 'round lookin' for you, baby,"" but they're embellished with guitar strums that eventually burst into fuzzed-out classic rock psych solos, complete with gospel choirs. In one sense this is quintessential Girls: Christopher Owens' basic, poignant lyrics, wrapped in JR White's vast constructions, are part of what made the band compelling. But “Vomit” is one of the longer, more involved songs on Father, Son, Holy Ghost, and it comes with a title that nods to Proverbs: ""As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his folly."" As the song repeats its words and wanderings, it's as much about the absent loved one as Owens' search, and when he closes with ""Come in to my heart/ My love,"" it's unclear if he found what he was looking for. Either way, the journey’s still worth it. —Brandon Stosuy",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/12265/homepage_large.5b395f1a.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Girls-Vomit.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,107,Arcade Fire,"""Afterlife""",Merge,"Following the broadened scope of The Suburbs, Arcade Fire doubled down on the stadium shtick with a double album of existential disco opera (shouts to J. Murphy) and a glitzy new stage show. Threatening to disappear up their own arses with fatuous rock star bombast and dubious ethnic dabbling, Reflektor instead came out as a singular, immediately affecting congregation of influences. As swell as “Afterlife” is on record, Arcade Fire's performance at the YouTube Music Awards featuring hot-for-the-minute Greta Gerwig casts a long shadow. Re-enacting a somber breakup, Gerwig's seemingly improvised freak-out is pierced by moments of solitude and then swept away by ecstasy, echoing so many bedroom dancers trying to overcome their own emotional pain by hurtling themselves into the physical. It's the same impulse that had folks sharing that scene from ""Girls"", in which Hannah Horvath chooses how to feel, dancing alone in her room to Robyn. That performance was the literal embodiment of how songs like “Afterlife” fit into our lives: as solution and salvation, a coursing, rapturous suggestion that there might be something after this. —Jake Cleland Arcade Fire: ""Afterlife""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBTTd0gfkn0,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/16385/homepage_large.a50bbeb3.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Arcade_Fire-Afterlife.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,106,Kendrick Lamar,"""Backseat Freestyle""",Interscope / Top Dawg,"As Kendrick Lamar leans against the side of a classic, pristinely detailed drop-top, his arms folded and face stony as an impossibly voluptuous Sherane (or ""Sherane,"" rather) twerks perfunctorily beside him, he gives the camera a knowing, unmistakable look: I've got nothing but time. The video for ""Backseat Freestyle"" is great for a number of reasons (Kendrick's dad's blunted serenade, the lights of the Eiffel Tower twinkling in anticipation of a marathon world-fuck), but it's in that moment—as his own impressive second verse plays on in the background and he glares at you through your YouTube player window—do we better understand the quiet confidence that made him one of the most magnetic voices in hip-hop of the past five years. For all of its physicality, ""Backseat Freestyle"" acts like a toss-off—the title alone is about as dismissively laid-back as they come, which makes a little more sense in the larger context of good kid, m.A.A.d city as a remembrance of K. Dot's pubescent first attempts at rapping. Anything but subtle, it's a thinly-veiled excuse for Kendrick to cockily embrace his it-rapper status, all while camouflaged behind a teenager's hormonal epiphany. Over Hit-Boy's ominous chimes and snares that pop like plastic champagne corks, Kendrick doesn't sound like anything less than a guy at the top of his game, playing both the teacher and the student in double and triple time. For this brief moment in his career, he didn't have to cram it down anyone's throat: ""Backstreet Freestyle"" is the sound of an artist unencumbered, with nothing but time on his side. —Zach Kelly",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZW7et3tPuQ,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/14459/homepage_large.89010c79.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kendrick_Lamar-Backseat_Freestyle.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,105,James Blake,"""CMYK""",R&S,"""CMYK"" crystallized two prevailing trends of the post-dubstep UK diaspora: wild, unhinged experimentation and Aaliyah samples. The latter trend has proved oddly persistent; we have ""CMYK"" to commemorate the former. Before James Blake began his run as a circuit-bent balladeer, he was London's fanciest wunderkind, responsible for the fizziest, most obtuse jams. ""CMYK"" plays Jenga with bass music’s component parts, constantly shifting the equilibrium of melody, rhythm, and bass. Blake actually samples two 90s divas on “CMYK”—Kelis is the other—in a kind of “too sexy!” moment for the form. Aaliyah ghosts around the background, while the product of Kelis’ sleuthing—“her red coat”—is turned into an abstraction. “CMYK” plays like a photo negative of Kelis’ brassy outrage: the track grows clammy and fidgety, eventually cloaking itself in rosy hiss. It’s fitting: Kelis cared about the coat; Blake cares about the color red. —Andrew Gaerig",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/11907/homepage_large.32d44b94.jpg,/dataset/artwork/James_Blake-CMYK.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,104,Burial,"""Kindred""",Hyperdub,"More ambiguous, more ambitious, more frantic, but with a firmer core. More aggressive, more expansive, more soulful, more heartbreaking and somehow more subtle. By the time ""Kindred"" hit, Burial had already established himself as a one-of-a-kind artist, able to pay tribute to his genres of choice (garage and 2-step, and after 2011, house and techno) while transcending their limits. And then he topped himself. “Kindred” found a no-longer-anonymous William Bevan changing his approach, as the first of his “singles as suites” projects. Those tiny shifts in chords, pitch, and tempo that made his music singular were now lent to greater efforts: long, almost classicist songs that fused the whir and hiss of pirate radio with the residue of raves past. The result was a haunting wordless statement that was utterly lucid, one that spoke of desire, loneliness and the complete emotional exhaustion of urban life. —Jonah Bromwich Burial: ""Kindred""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wC16FJTI6XM,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/87/kindred.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Burial-Kindred.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,103,Killer Mike,"""Big Beast"" [ft. Bun B, T.I., and Trouble]",Williams Street,"Killer Mike’s R.A.P. Music is the stuff of hip-hop fanboy dreams: revolution raps from a grizzled Atlanta rap institution served over production from El-P, architect of a gaggle of paranoid sci-fi rap touchstones. A duo who might’ve never met in another era are united as an improbable odd couple. “Big Beast” is a pace-setting introduction, with Mike cracking wise about Atlanta street life as El wields a nuclear thump underfoot. Guest verses from Southern rap heavyweights Bun B and T.I. and a chorus from ATL bruiser Trouble flesh out the track, each belaying the expectant “What the fuck?” with workmanlike rhymes and ineffable cool. In an era riddled with kitchen-sink-rap collaborations, “Big Beast” is one of the weirdest and also the best, a monument to the eroding walls that once bound East Coast and Southern rap to their respective birthplaces. —Craig Jenkins",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/wmstrecs/killer-mike-big-beast-feat-bun?secret_token=s-IXc6O,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/13122/homepage_large.672baa1f.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Killer_Mike-Big_Beast_ft_Bun_B_TI_and_Trouble.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,102,Kurt Vile,"""Wakin on a Pretty Day""",Matador,"I interviewed Kurt Vile on the phone about five years ago. It was late morning, and he immediately apologized. “I just woke up,” he said. “I keep sleeping in later and later.” A cloudy, wake-and-bake haze has always been a key ingredient in Kurt Vile’s music, but nothing has engulfed it in liquid smoke quite like this leadoff track from Wakin on a Pretty Daze—nearly 10 minutes of quintessential Vile as he mumbles his way through a phaser-guitar tribute to the wonders of waking up in your own bed. It can function as either the perfect soundtrack to a warm, sunny day or the antidote to an icy, gray one. “To be frank, I’m fried. But I don’t mind,” Vile sings. Neither do we, KV. In fact, at this point, we expect it. —Joel Oliphint",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/14909/homepage_large.104606d2.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kurt_Vile-Wakin_on_a_Pretty_Day.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,101,Schoolboy Q,"""Hands on the Wheel"" [ft. A$AP Rocky]",Top Dawg,"This track's recent-classic status feels set in stone already, maybe because it has so many contemporary stylistic intersections lurking under the surface. It's got historical value for being an early meeting of two next-gen coastal crews' sharpest tongues: Q plants the ""weed and brews"" hook deep in the skin, gives his lost-weekend lyrics the edge-of-control flow their faded subject matter demands, then lets A$AP Rocky machete out a verse that snaps out whiplash-effect jumps from staccato emphasis to taunting drawl and back. The layers of alt-folk, indie pop, and crossover rap nods in Best Kept Secret's beat—churning '70s stoner-metal electricity via Lissie via Kid Cudi, MGMT, and Ratatat—only make its reach sprawl out further, rock-rap that it's easy to forget is technically rock-rap (though the canvas-thumping less-is-more snares definitely help). It all bristles with the kind of careening energy where they could all wind up doing something stupid, but are just too dialed-in to veer off target. —Nate Patrin Schoolboy Q: ""Hands on the Wheel""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGd9DTTrX4U,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/87/schoolboyq.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Schoolboy_Q-Hands_on_the_Wheel_ft_AAP_Rocky.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,100,Andrés,"""New For U""",La Vida,"The idea of wringing sentimental deep house out of soppy disco strings is neither new nor particularly exceptional; Pepe Bradock pretty much mastered the form in 1999 with ""Deep Burnt"" (availing himself of the buoyant intro to Freddie Hubbard's 1979 cut ""Little Sunflower""), and the trope has remained a staple throughout the genre's sustained revival of recent years. But if anyone has not just the credentials but also the intuitive finesse to make the trick sound vital again, it's Detroit's Andrés—a.k.a. Dez Andres, a member of Theo Parrish's Rotating Assembly, a longtime associate of Moodymann's Mahogani Music label, former tour DJ for Slum Village, and the kind of all-around digger and DJ capable of putting a fresh spin on the hoariest of Michael Jackson chestnuts. Sampling Dexter Wansel's 1978 Philadelphia International tune ""Time Is the Teacher"" Andrés paired wafting strings with rickety drum breaks and deceptively simple bass-and-Rhodes changes to extraordinary effect on “New for U”. It is, in short, an anthem that refuses to pander, floating in a way that seems tailor-made for open-air parties, yet far more durable than that context would imply. It reached ""song of the summer"" status on arrival in early 2012, and in a few short years it's gone on to become a bona fide classic. —Philip Sherburne Andrés: ""New For U""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opvopULDhVI,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/87/andres.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Andrs-New_For_U.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,99,John Maus,"""Believer""",Ribbon Music/Upset the Rhythm,"It’s tough to make out exactly what it is he’s saying, but John Maus pushes out every word on ""Believer"" with conviction. Is he singing ""fee fo fi""? Could be. His voice seems to be emanating from the heavens, so it would make sense if he spoke in the parlance of giants from fables. ""They call me the believer,"" he tells us, his proclamation heralded by elated, crystalline synths and an unrelenting, thudding pulse. That balance is key here—the one between ""beatific"" and ""urgent."" Maus is, after all, a notably intense performer behind a song that could be reasonably categorized as ""rapturous"" or ""blissful."" We don’t know any specifics about ""Believer""’s narrator—everything is delivered in broad strokes—but what’s certain is the inescapable feeling of hope that comes with its central message. —Evan Minsker",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/12179/homepage_large.c460b772.jpg,/dataset/artwork/John_Maus-Believer.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,98,Chromatics,"""Kill for Love""",Italians Do It Better,"It isn't hard to believe Johnny Jewel could get away with murder. The analog-prizing multi-instrumentalist has had his hands on a whole host of outstanding projects in recent years, all without leaving a trace of his Television-repping stage name in the ""Artist"" column. As a producer for—and member of—various bands on Portland's Italians Do It Better, including Glass Candy and Desire, the After Dark compilation guru has tended toward a noir-ish, punk-scuffed take on the rippling synths and whispery vocals of Italo disco. Though much of Chromatics' staggering 2012 Kill for Love points toward Jewel's work on the Drive soundtrack and as one half of the duo Symmetry, the title track is a bombastic rock anthem writ synth-pop. By the time Ruth Radelet coolly intones ""I killed for love,"" it's fair to wonder why Meat Loaf was so restrained about what he'd do for the big ""L."" Clearly, he'd never seen that handsome Ryan Gosling. —Marc Hogan",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/12663/homepage_large.f1a21fcb.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Chromatics-Kill_for_Love.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,97,Sun Kil Moon,"""I Watched The Film the Song Remains The Same""",Caldo Verde,"The whole map of Mark Kozelek, all 47 years of his dogged life, will unfold when you realize his favorite parts of Led Zeppelin are, let’s see: a plaintive seven-minute ballad, a two-minute acoustic instrumental, and a goddamn organ sound. Benji is full of recursive odes to music, and all his experiences and emotions fold into his “beautiful musical world” he has made for himself. He sees his past through an imperfect prism that can hopefully articulate how he’s feeling right now, in this moment, as he's playing his guitar. He’s not defined by his childhood, or his curious empathy with death. He’s not defined by his long-standing remorse for punching some kid on the playground, his aversion to football, or his record contract at 19. He’s defined by music. Don’t believe anyone who says they like “Bron-Yr-Aur” more than John Bonham’s drums, except Mark Kozelek. That’s just exactly who he is. —Jeremy D. Larson Sun Kil Moon: ""I Watched The Film the Song Remains The Same""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqptegyFWbE,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/87/sunkilmoon_benji1.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sun_Kil_Moon-I_Watched_The_Film_the_Song_Remains_The_Same.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,96,Danny Brown,"""30""",Fool's Gold,"It's not often that a song beginning with a line like ""Sent ya bitch a dick pic and now she need glasses"" turns into a frantic meditation on getting older and struggling to succeed, but that's exactly what Danny Brown does here. Over stumbling drums and a chorus of broken horns, he writes about the desperation that he's experienced: from borrowing a neighbor's power to play Nintendo, to heating his house with an oven to…well, this would be the point where the great success story would kick into place, but Brown is not a conventional rapper, and ""30"" is not a story of redemption. The track ends with Brown more successful than he was, still stressed, and still unsure of what will happen next. History shows that he ended up just fine, but the constant mental struggle he's dealing with here, the anguished moments of emotional exorcism, never quite left his music. By the end of the track, Brown is ready to move forward, and keep chasing success or death—in the story he writes in ""30"" they don't really seem so different. —Sam Hockley-Smith",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/foolsgoldrecs/19-30,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/87/xxx.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Danny_Brown-30.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,95,Chairlift,"""I Belong in Your Arms""",Young Turks / Columbia,"“I Belong In Your Arms” is the third track on a record that begins with Caroline Polachek threatening vehicular manslaughter and calling it a “Sidewalk Safari”. It ends with a convoluted breakup-as-trial metaphor, and in between, there’s its lead single, titled “Amanaemonesia”. All of this provides crucial context to understand “I Belong in Your Arms” because it’s not just a love song—it’s the ideal for wish fulfillment amongst self-identifying, shy indie boys and girls, where they stop dithering about and yammering and JUST KISS ALREADY. Polachek’s no different here, as she tries to clever herself out of saying the primal, simple sentiment of “I Belong In Your Arms”: “you’re my crystal and clover”? “Banana split, honestly you’re my remote controller”? But when she’s caught within the irrepressible, hormonal surge of the chorus, she finally sings the title because nothing else will do, in unearthly high notes that don’t seem like her own—nailing the miraculous phenomenon where your heart is so full, your brain shuts down for your own good. —Ian Cohen",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/chairlift/i-belong-in-your-arms,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/13065/homepage_large.4e3173d3.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Chairlift-I_Belong_in_Your_Arms.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,94,Icona Pop,"""I Love It"" [ft. Charli XCX]",Universal / Company Ten,"The only chart-topping song in recent memory to trigger Vanilla Sky associations as it smashes through the speakers, “I Love It” is a giddy, indelible instance of pop-as-generational-itch-scratcher. Assuming that you don’t die after reading this very sentence, you will most likely hear “I Love It” for the rest of your life—at football games, in romantic-comedy movie trailers, and at any celebratory event that has an open bar, be it a wedding, bat mitzvah, or clock-punching free-for-all. Its shout-along, sing-when-we’re-anything attitude is an update of Chumbawamba’s “Tubthumping” that actually wants to be loved; alternatively, you could refer to “I Love It” as a millennial update of “We Are the World”, if Icona Pop themselves hadn’t gone on to write a song with a very similar title. Boneheaded jock-rockers Buckcherry recently offered their own take on the song—which almost makes too much sense—but no amount of dick-swinging can come close to matching Caroline Hjelt and Aino Jawo’s life-affirming, distinctly feminine effervescence, two 48-hour-party-people shouting endlessly and awesomely over a bassline that sounds like a Transformer vomiting rainbows. Live fast, die young, best friends do it well. —Larry Fitzmaurice",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/grillmarketing/icona-pop-i-love-it | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xohWvO9i4c,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/87/iconapop.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Icona_Pop-I_Love_It_ft_Charli_XCX.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,93,Caribou,"""Can't Do Without You""",Merge,"Since the release of 2010’s Swim, Dan Snaith has specialized in variations on genteel, erudite body music. That record was warm and organic, fusing Snaith’s previous full-length genre digressions—the brainy motorik of The Milk of Human Kindness, the rich ’60s pop of Andorra—to propulsive, dance-ready beats; his 2012 album as Daphni, Jiaolong, was a crate-digger’s delight, lean and brittle and lightly funky. “Can’t Do Without You” is the first single from his upcoming sixth LP as Caribou, Our Love, and you can hear Snaith starting to bring those two distinct styles together with the sort of playful inquisitiveness that marks all of his work: a raising of the stakes that's less a drop than a swallow, synths that bloom and balloon like lazy bulbs, a love song that makes obsession seem tender. It’s just another bold step forward from one of music’s brightest minds, the perfect closer for a club in a tea cup. —Jamieson Cox",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/caribouband/cant-do-without-you,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/87/ourlove.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Caribou-Cant_Do_Without_You.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,92,Japandroids,"""Younger Us""",Polyvinyl,"Our best friendships are really just love stories dressed up in different clothing. Leave it to Brian King and David Prowse, those patron saints of platonic male friendship, to write the kind of love song those stories deserve. “Younger Us” is a testament to the power of youth that transcends the sum of its parts; it’s the glance and grin down the pale light of the bar that says, “I will never be this young again.” There’s a definite sadness to the way Prowse and King rummage through the province of their memories, and to the uptick in musical intensity when words can’t express their feelings. They’re redeemed by the surprising maturity of the song’s inherent conclusion: We can never really go back, but we can come close. Songs like this are how we get there. —Jamieson Cox",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/11913/homepage_large.0f8e7cd8.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Japandroids-Younger_Us.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,91,Sky Ferreira,"""I Blame Myself""",Capitol,"Sky Ferreira knows this world is bullshit—like her hero Fiona Apple, she goes with herself, even when warding off the hounds of hell and her complicated trouble-girl rep. Taking no short cuts, the sharp, plainspoken Night Time, My Time centerpiece ""I Blame Myself"" could join the canon of great American pop songs about being misunderstood. It’s easy—basic, even—to tear-down one's detractors by straight-up shredding them to pieces, but it is harder to be rational. Ferreira accepts the challenge. ""I Blame Myself"" is pissed, but empathetic; fierce, but realistic; vulnerable, but strong. It is direct, but not simple. Ferreira's diction is piercing—""I trust you'd never like to guess/ What I think above the shoulders""—turning her own estrangement into a refuge of pop catharsis. When the new wave thud-thud-th-th-th-thuds crank ""I Blame Myself"" wide open, they mean something new. —Jenn Pelly Sky Ferreira: ""I Blame Myself""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSLwYrPbuts,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/87/ferreira.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sky_Ferreira-I_Blame_Myself.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,90,Tame Impala,"""Apocalypse Dreams""",Modular,"On “Desire Be Desire Go”, a cut from Tame Impala’s 2010 debut, Innerspeaker, Australian psych-rock wizard Kevin Parker asked: “Every day, back and forth—what’s it for?” On “Apocalypse Dreams”, he sings another series of questions, but here they seem grounded in a kind of certainty: “Does it even matter? Do I really need it?” The song is the closest thing on the band’s second LP, Lonerism, to a full-on anthem of estrangement, with producer Dave Fridmann refracting Parker’s dream-like reveries into bright, psychedelic sunbursts. And the line could easily refer to a number of concerns typically tied to sophomore releases—money, validation, a comfortable routine. But its exact nature seems irrelevant next to the heady rush of muddied piano chords, martial drums, and billowing falsetto that accompany the question. “Apocalypse Dreams” wrangles with the existential dilemmas of the universe, and nullifies them through an explosion of obliterating beauty. —Abby Garnett",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/13851/homepage_large.17094de6.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tame_Impala-Apocalypse_Dreams.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,89,Crystal Castles,"""Celestica""",Fiction,"Where Crystal Castles’ debut wallowed in glitchy, 8-bit distortion and frantic punk-electronica, the duo’s follow-up took those elements and put them on ice. “Celestica” is a perfect example of the shift into steely territory: backed by a gorgeous melody from Alice Glass, the track blasts through Ethan Kath’s cavernous synths and scraping guitars to reveal a more controlled chaos than what everyone had come to expect from the Toronto noisemakers. According to Kath, the track was inspired by a suicide in the Celestica factories in Canada, wherein a worker allegedly leapt into a tub of hot plastic that was later rumored to still be used in products. It’s the kind of dark, grisly story that bodes well with the duo’s appreciation for all things cold and macabre, but it’s also one perfectly at odds with the huge, crowd-pleasing pulse that makes “Celestica” so memorable. —Eric Torres",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/11885/homepage_large.06d5c7c6.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Crystal_Castles-Celestica.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,88,Vampire Weekend,"""Step""",XL,"An indie-rock variation on the theme of Common's ""I Used to Love H.E.R."", built around a line from Souls of Mischief's ""Step to My Girl""? Sounds questionable, on its face. But confronting the concepts of appropriation and tourism head-on has always been a big part of what Vampire Weekend are up to, and ""Step"" honors its hip-hop ancestors by sounding nothing like them until its final syrup-slurred flourish. Its arrangement bares the most delicate side of Ezra Koenig's voice, but behind the song's flurry of hit-and-run allusions (Jandek! Martin Luther! Run-D.M.C.!), he's singing about a specific side effect of being older and wiser than one's subculturally hyper-particular youth: not being such a goddamn Hipster Ariel about things that other people might love too. —Douglas Wolk Vampire Weekend: ""Step""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C99iG4HoO1c,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/15133/homepage_large.3c32383c.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Vampire_Weekend-Step.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,87,Bill Callahan,"""Small Plane""",Drag City,"In the balance of intrigue between planes, trains, and automobiles, no single form of transportation delights our imagination while driving our anxieties quite like flying. The view is beautiful, of course, but the dramatic and certain end remains one misstep away. That’s the power that Bill Callahan harnesses for “Small Plane”, a steadfast ode to the bliss of domestic contentment that acknowledges the peril inherent in trusting any other vessel, too. Callahan has a reputation for abstruse language, for turning individual kōans into musical mantras. But “Small Plane” is one of the most direct songs of his career, an earnest if elliptical ballad that smiles pleasantly at the thought of traveling with a constant companion despite the knowledge that these situations and their landings haven’t always gone well. Callahan’s wisdom has often seemed childlike, but in both temperament and tone, this is the work of an adult, suddenly comfortable behind the controls. —Grayson Haver Currin Bill Callahan: ""Small Plane""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh5km2xKlfk,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/87/dreamriver.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bill_Callahan-Small_Plane.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,86,The Weeknd,"""The Morning""",self-released,"""The Morning"" is arguably the lightest and prettiest song in Abel Tesfaye's oeuvre, but it didn't start out that way. While the lyrics and melody of the original version remain intact, Jeremy Rose's production—a twisted gnarl that feels like it's moving both forwards and backwards at once—is downright hellish compared to what ended up on House of Balloons. We can thank producers Doc McKinney and Illangelo for extracting the pop song that was hiding in plain sight, replacing the claustrophobia of the original with a spacious and gorgeous throb that lets Tesfaye's falsetto float through the track like the substances he and the girls he sings about are smoking. He might have an icebox where his heart used to be, but, over these five minutes, Tesfaye convinces us there might be some hope left for him yet. —Renato Pagnani The Weeknd: ""The Morning""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wC_dHmtrZ_A,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/87/houseofballoons.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Weeknd-The_Morning.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,85,Jai Paul,"""BTSTU (Edit)""",XL,"We don’t know much more about Jai Paul than we did when the first strains of his mutant pop surfaced in 2010, and it’s frustrating because his music is so left-of-center it stokes our nerdy desire to scavenge for undiscovered tidbits and artifacts to help us process it. “BTSTU (Edit)” is every bit as confounding today as it was on the first play. The entire record exists in a perpetual state of collapse, machines falling apart around that angelic falsetto. What do you mean “Don’t fuck with me, don’t fuck with me”? Why do the drums feel faintly out of pocket? How’d he sneak past us with a hook made out of wet synth farts? The mystery remains every bit as thrillingly offbeat as the music. —Craig Jenkins",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/12181/homepage_large.c0f2c8ad.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jai_Paul-BTSTU_Edit.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,84,Burial,"""Street Halo""",Hyperdub,"It’s a little funny, really—the guy dead-set on keeping his music free from the distractions of persona becomes an unintentional torchbearer for tasteful anonymity, and surrenders good-naturedly, at long last, with a selfie. (He would be a fox, too, the bastard.) It wouldn’t be the first time Burial’s trademarks have backed him into a bit of a corner. When your second album single-handedly brought dubstep to the bedside tables of a sizeable chunk of people who’d otherwise probably have a vastly different understanding of the term today—not to mention fathered a generation of baleful, night-bus-riding bedroom producers—what’s your next move? It turned out to be pretty simple, actually: where Untrue shuffled in anxious circles, giving new meaning to “two steps forward, one step back,” “Street Halo” pulled its hood up, put its boots on the ground, and marched dead ahead in 4/4 time. —Meaghan Garvey Burial: ""Street Halo""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_ijVnXIWBk,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/12161/homepage_large.119d69b7.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Burial-Street_Halo.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,83,Drake,"""Started From the Bottom""",Cash Money,"Drake rarely makes music without a wink or a grin. The former ""Degrassi"" star dares people to mock him because he’s become such a pro at beating sideline jesters to the punch. “Started From the Bottom”, performed with a straight face, is an exception, never tipping its hat to bleacher commentators or to even Drake’s own self-deprecating persona. Here he made a play for the universal because even handouts and Lil Wayne assists can’t guarantee success in this crumbling music industry. “I wear every single chain even when I’m in the house,” he confesses, their weight reminding him that all of these successes are indeed real. —David Turner",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/14872/homepage_large.bf0d56c0.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Drake-Started_From_the_Bottom.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,82,LCD Soundsystem,"""All I Want""",Virgin / DFA,"James Murphy is a student of pop history who borrows without shame, yet he manages to make his thefts into something that sounds fresh and personal. When we first heard ""All I Want"" in 2010, we didn't know yet that it came from what would be the band's last studio album; what we noticed is that its banging piano and Frippish guitar sounded an awful lot like David Bowie's ""Heroes"". It also felt like a spiritual sequel to ""All My Friends"", revisiting some of the same themes from a place of even greater loneliness and self-doubt. Hearing it again a few years on, it embodies beautifully something crucial about LCD: they explored dark feelings in a way that sounded like a celebration. Implicit here is the idea that music is a powerful tool for getting through it all; ""All I Want"" isn't ""about"" that, but rather, an example of the magic at work. —Mark Richardson",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXp1TQPf2pY,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/11881/homepage_large.794d1456.jpg,/dataset/artwork/LCD_Soundsystem-All_I_Want.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,81,TNGHT,"""Higher Ground""",Warp/Luckyme,"A story you sometimes hear about extreme athletes is that in pushing their bodies to their limits, they discover a hyperreal reserve, a point beyond exhaustion where some unknown power takes over and pilots them to glory. Basically, a story in which someone discovers within their limited human capacity a force that seems inhuman. “Higher Ground” is like that: a jock jam so rigorous and bionic that it verges on absurd. (The occasional cheap-sounding samples of a single dog barking helps.) TNGHT’s sleight of hand is that they presented as dance music but got their muscle from Southern rap, which levies its heavy blows in light, dancing syncopations—a sound both bruising but buoyant. Note the state of athletic gear, which makes us look more like tiny spaceships every year. The goal is no longer to commune with our bodies, but to transcend them. —Mike Powell TNGHT: ""Higher Ground""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pXIhCUu584,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/87/tnght.jpg,/dataset/artwork/TNGHT-Higher_Ground.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,80,Lana Del Rey,"""Video Games""",Self-released,"“Video Games” is arguably the most languorous song to rack up 50 million-plus YouTube hits, a testament to the power of a perfectly rendered, red-carpet-worthy persona at a time when viral videos make uneasy celebrities out of common folk. But for a track that launched a thousand outraged think pieces, “Video Games” is, at its core, a simple, tragic portrait of modern romance at its most procedural and loveless. Like Betty Draper teleported to the PlayStation era, Del Rey lets her cool come-ons linger on those million-dollar lips like a dangling cigarette, but the outsized string-section swells only emphasize the emotional emptiness at the core of the interaction, and the pathos of an acquiescent attention-seeker who’ll willingly play the “bad girl” for an unresponsive object of desire fixated on the wrong kind of joystick. —Stuart Berman Lana Del Rey: ""Video Games""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cE6wxDqdOV0,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/12276/homepage_large.1ed843fd.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lana_Del_Rey-Video_Games.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,79,Blawan,"""Why They Hide Their Bodies Under My Garage""",Hinge Finger,"Is this the funniest techno song ever? Let’s at least admit that it’s in the running: as often as the style’s reputation for serious-as-your-life drudgery is overstated, there still aren’t many tracks that elicit a chuckle. Blawan, who has ""K-I-C-K D-R-U-M"" tattooed across his fingers like an 808-addled gutter punk, seems committed to light pranking, so he mangles a Pras sample, somehow flipping it into a deranged interrogation. Which is clever enough, but what really tickles are the bargain-bin, B-movie screams that punctuate the mix. The backing track, which appropriately adheres to a strict, gridded 4/4 template, sounds aqueous and unsure. ""Bodies"" offers the whole package: the raving lunatic, the room whipping menacingly around him, and the chilling-not-chilling screams to remind you it's just a 130 BPM techno gnasher. —Andrew Gaerig Blawan: ""Why They Hide Their Bodies Under My Garage""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KL_Bbyi3ub8,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/87/Blawan-cover.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Blawan-Why_They_Hide_Their_Bodies_Under_My_Garage.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,78,The Knife,"""Full of Fire""",Rabid / Brille / Mute,"The Knife’s Shaking the Habitual is the archetypal Album That Needs Time to Process, and “Full of Fire” is the key to unlocking it. The song needs to be heard in full context to understand the journey this band undertook, but it also takes some maniacal turns of its own. Listen to “Full of Fire” long enough and it becomes akin to a spin-off film, where characters from a bigger work end up getting more fleshed out after undergoing a process of separation from it. Despite creating such a labyrinthian structure, the Knife weren’t completely detached from the outside world. In fact, the strength of this track is in the way it taps into the prevailing mood for tougher sounds over the past five years—the vaunted industrial techno revival in particular—and executes it with an ambition far in excess of this band’s peers. —Nick Neyland",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/14830/homepage_large.e4de16dd.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Knife-Full_of_Fire.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,77,Destroyer,"""Chinatown""",Dead Oceans / Merge,"Kaputt signaled in 2011 a musical shift for Destroyer, with opening track and first single “Chinatown” evoking a late-night dystopia via smears of trumpet, daubs of saxophone, and swatches of pixelated synths. “You can’t believe the way the wind is talking to the sea,” Steely Dan Bejar sings, pointing to a quiet storm swelling on the horizon. For many listeners new to the band, this may be the default Destroyer sound, an accidentally topical mishmash of late ‘70s/early-’80s touchstones that had been dismissed as dated or, worse, kitschy: lite-jazz, fusion-pop, soft-rock. “Chinatown” thrives on its evasiveness: This isn’t Justin Vernon turning his own populist tastes into indie rock. Instead, Bejar uses the sounds of the past to comment on the music of the future: “I can’t walk away, you can’t walk away,” he and Sibel Thrasher sing together, and it’s never clear if that’s supposed to be reassuring or worrying. If this is the song that closed out Bejar’s thirties, he’s feeling either doomed or blessed to be looking down the barrel of his forties. —Stephen M. Deusner",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/87/destroyer.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Destroyer-Chinatown.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,76,Kanye West,"""Blood on the Leaves""",Def Jam,"If you’re ever faced with a spare couple of days and you’re looking to spend them in complete, self-enforced social isolation, a fun thing to do (if you like your fun on the excruciating side) is to try and parse out the best Kanye West song. But what in the fuck sort of metric do you use to weigh something like “Last Call” against something like, say, “Runaway”? So you’re allowed to change the rules towards a slightly more attainable objective: What, then, is the most essential Kanye song? If you will, the most Kanye Kanye song? And lo: has there been a single more Kanye move than swiping a gut-crumpling Nina Simone song about lynching, smashing it against breathless TNGHT horns, and making the whole thing about KANYE? (And love. And hate. And hate-sex. And abortion. And apartheid. And molly—a lot of molly.) Oh—extra points if it fucking bangs. —Meaghan Garvey Kanye West: ""Blood on the Leaves""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q602739kBr4,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/87/yeezus.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kanye_West-Blood_on_the_Leaves.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,75,Beach House,"""Myth""",Sub Pop,"“What comes after this momentary bliss?”, croons Beach House’s Victoria Legrand in a bit of meta-speak on “Myth”. With its imagery of “flying ashes” and being trapped “aeons far from the sun,” the Bloom standout tethers itself to a romantic tradition of soft-eyed glances beyond the grave, but the Baltimore duo’s query could also be directed at themselves. In the case of “Myth”, transient bliss takes the form of narcotic guitar waves and impeccable production, warm and translucent like stained glass. Beach House’s deadly beauty had many opportunities to surface on Bloom, but on “Myth”, that magic was all-consuming. —Zoe Camp",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/beachhouse/myth,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/13283/homepage_large.920ef3a7.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beach_House-Myth.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,74,Grimes,"""Genesis""",Arbutus / 4AD,"It’s impossible to discuss Grimes’ “Genesis” without referencing the music video that made it a classic. Style muse Brooke Candy dressed like a bionic video game character! An albino python! Flaming swords! A mace! But there’s also a feeling that “Genesis”—which is delicate and breathy despite its thick, elastane bassline—is crafted from a similar world of fantasy. Claire Boucher said in an interview that she wanted the video to play with medieval Catholic imagery. And there’s something about the ethereality of her voice and the way “Genesis” lifts and ascends that does make it feel like a creed—not necessarily of religion, but of fairytale. Celestial reverb floods the atmosphere, twinkly chimes evaporate in your ear—all this in concert with Boucher’s other-worldly coo of “everything, everything, everything”. The result is a profoundly hypnotic pop song that's worthy of all the allegory. —Molly Beauchemin",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FH-q0I1fJY,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/12927/homepage_large.d02e984a.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Grimes-Genesis.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,73,Big Boi,"""Shutterbugg""",Def Jam,"The further the two halves of OutKast spun apart, the more it became apparent what each one brought to the fold in the first place. When Big Boi finally caved and went solo with 2010’s Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty, you could tell he was the funk classicist of the group. Lucious lead single “Shutterbugg” advances the point on an army of talkboxes care of deposed super producer Scott Storch; it succeeded as dance floor catnip thanks to a grippingly tuneful but spacious groove, but its real legacy was convincing a hip-hop audience still sick from OutKast withdrawal that Big Boi could lob a 10 ton funk bomb without any help from the other guy. —Craig Jenkins Big Boi: ""Shutterbugg"" [ft. Cutty]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWsvkW6rKkQ,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/11876/homepage_large.3030e977.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Big_Boi-Shutterbugg.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,72,Nicki Minaj,"""Beez in the Trap"" [ft. 2 Chainz]",Young Money Entertainment / Universal,"Nicki Minaj refuses to suffer the fate of other female rappers. She's made this abundantly clear a number of ways, but none so explicitly as in a press conference she thought pertinent enough to include as a track on Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded's bonus edition. ""These other bitches that only did rap and now they're washed and they're living in low-income housing—is that winning?"" she snaps. ""Just so that a nigga in the street can give me a fucking dap? … Get the fuck outta here."" It's a harsh, and accurate, assessment, and she's chosen two evasion strategies: In one, she avoids being pigeonholed as ""just a rapper"" by also going out of her way to be pigeonholed as ""just another pop singer"" with songs like ""Starships"" and ""Turn Me On"". In the second, and infinitely more successful, strategy, she flips all the furniture upside down while remaining inside rap. On ""Beez in the Trap"", Minaj shows just how far she can take this strategy. The beat recalls nothing so much as Clipse's ""Grindin’"", a collection of echoing rain drops in a basement having a conversation with a photocopier. It's a dope song, a trap song, the lyrics full of references to connects and state-to-state routes and bricks. But Nicki is switching roles here, playing a pimp, pulling up to women on the corner, and taunting male rappers: ""Niggas move weight in the South, but live in Hoboken,"" she sneers, in what is easily the greatest Hoboken-based insult of the decade. The video—which mixes platinum-blond hair and pink jumpsuits with four-finger rings, barbed wire with disco balls and glitter, seapunk green wigs with Birdman—finger-paints over the borders even further. —Jayson Greene Nicki Minaj: ""Beez in the Trap"" [ft. 2Chainz]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeIJmciN8mo,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/13368/homepage_large.157d8e6a.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nicki_Minaj-Beez_in_the_Trap_ft_2_Chainz.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,71,Fiona Apple,"""Werewolf""",Epic,"Early on in her career, Fiona Apple lived in a black and white world when it came to chronicling her failed relationships, but with age came the realization that it’s all just gray. Apple takes responsibility for her share of these misgivings with second Idler Wheel single, “Werewolf”, where she tosses off metaphor after clever metaphor atop a sing-song piano melody. As the song moves forward, it picks up steam before going off the rails and ultimately returning to normalcy, mirroring the romance Apple likens here to a shark (her ex) and bloody wounds in open water (herself, just asking for it). Even as the cacophony of children’s screams dominates the foreground, Apple pushes ahead without flinching, as if no one can tell her anything now that she owns the problem. “Nothing wrong when a song ends in a minor key,” she concludes, the irony being that hers started there. —Jillian Mapes Fiona Apple: ""Werewolf""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fby632bPn0E,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/13703/homepage_large.a30bfc95.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fiona_Apple-Werewolf.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,70,James Blake,"""Limit to Your Love"" ",ATLAS,"It's funny and a little difficult to remember now, but, for a time, it was awfully hard to get a fix on James Blake. Just about every aspect of his early EPs reinforced his impression as a slippery figure: his drums, splintering and wobbling around an unstable cadence; his keys, woozy circus organs given extra funhouse buckle; his vocals, severed from their natural pitch and loosed like sputtering rubber balloons. You knew he had something to do with the dubstep scene, given his lurching rhythms and his loose affiliations, but it was hard to say exactly where he fit; what dubstepper, after all, would call a song ""Klavierwerke""? But then, on his self-titled album, everything snapped into focus (never mind the blurry portrait on the cover), with ""Limit to Your Love""—a Feist cover, of all things—providing the boldest outline of all: Dude was a crooner! And a totally compelling one at that, with a clarion alto that leapt easily to falsetto, confident as the declarative piano chords he plunked down beneath. And then, as if to reassure us that he hadn't completely given up bass music to become an Elton John understudy, there it came: that rumble, ominous as the earth shifting. It was the sound of the horizons of this thing called ""dubstep"" cracking wide open. —Philip Sherburne",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbylI4ld5VE,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/12014/homepage_large.9ee9b34b.jpg,/dataset/artwork/James_Blake-Limit_to_Your_Love_.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,69,St. Vincent,"""Cruel""",4AD,"When Strange Mercy was released in September 2011, its second song, ""Cruel"", was one of the strongest intimations yet of the artist Annie Clark was on her way to becoming. One of those perfect pop songs that pulls off the illusion of movement while staying put, ""Cruel"" gallops and unfurls into that spindly, zero-gravity backwards cartwheel by which Clark's body of work is now defined, all while planting its feet in the wide-legged stance Clark often takes to deliver her strikingly memorable riffs. Sure, the song that followed it on the record, ""Cheerleader"", may have been a more forceful statement of intent, individuality, and artistry, but ""Cruel"" came first and, instead of telling, it showed. And as a song that stood on a precipice—emerging at a moment when Clark’s visibility and fanbase was about to multiply exponentially, with the song itself struggling between a desire for acceptance and knowing that acceptance comes at a soul-crushing cost—“Cruel” couldn't have been a more perfectly poised watershed moment in the career of one of this generation's most innovative indie-rock artists. —Devon MaloneySt. Vincent: ""Cruel""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEY9GJAm8bA,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/87/strangemercy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/St_Vincent-Cruel.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,68,Chief Keef,"""I Don't Like"" [ft. Lil Reese]",Glory Boyz / Interscope,"Chief Keef was a kid who made music for other kids. This was clear before anyone outside of Chicago knew him—when he was a star of sorts among black high schoolers in certain neighborhoods—and became even clearer when he exploded into sudden fame on the back of “I Don’t Like”. Keef was as divisive a rapper as we saw in the era covered by this list and, if you were to divide his fans and detractors into two groups, your first step would have been to filter by age. This is a generalization, of course, but “I Don’t Like” likely either made you feel that rap music was dead or had never been more alive, and a majority of the latter group were teenagers and young adults from projects and suburbs across the country. There's a certain adolescent power to “I Don’t Like”, an energy and bluntness that is often the province of the young. This came through in Keef’s writing, of course, but more so in the delivery—his voice is snotty and thrilling, and he bounces off Young Chop’s three-note keyboard riff and bass drums like Mario stomping an endless series of Goombas. He would soon lose interest in that flow, but not before inspiring Kanye West, whose remix of “I Don’t Like” is, in a weird and arguably sad coda, the enduring version of Keef’s biggest hit. —Jordan Sargent Chief Keef: ""I Don't Like"" [ft. Lil Reese]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1JJkMD1hE4,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/87/chiefkeef.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Chief_Keef-I_Dont_Like_ft_Lil_Reese.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,67,The War on Drugs,"""Red Eyes""",Secretly Canadian,"“Red Eyes” isn't actually about staring at TVs, smart phones, and computer screens until your vision blurs; truth be told, it's hard to tell exactly what Adam Granduciel's determined rasp is talking about in his evocative lyrics. And yet the music plays like an affront to this era's cyclical, digitized way of life—using the scope of classic stadium rock and the soul of folky Americana to transport you to another time. So even if the world is set on the path of constant innovation, at least there's a song like ""Red Eyes"" offering serenity for those eager to dwell on the possibilities of living in the moment. —Patric Fallon",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/16418/homepage_large.784c0487.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_War_on_Drugs-Red_Eyes.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,66,Lorde,"""Royals""",Lava / Republic,"What if I told you that a 16-year-old Kiwi became world-famous after a viral single—one she wrote the lyrics to when she was 14, a year after signing to a record deal when she was 13—and within the space of six months, was one of the world’s most beloved personalities? Now what if I told you that the song that spawned that kind of acclaim was the rare piece of art that was good enough to merit the attention? That song is “Royals” and we are going to hear it forever. On the surface, it's an undeniable earworm, a well-produced track that pays homage to classic and current hip-hop sounds while lyrically biting the hand that feeds it. This attitude wasn’t necessarily something Lorde developed along the way, as she grew more confident in herself and in her message, emboldened by her furiously growing legion of diehards; she was sharp-tongued all along. “When I wrote ‘Royals’, I was listening to a lot of rap, but also a lot of Lana Del Rey … all those references to expensive alcohol, beautiful clothes, and beautiful cars—I was thinking, ‘This is so opulent, but it’s also bullshit,’” she told New Zealand publication Listener upon debuting the video, which was released eons before she became famous in Internet Years. Lorde was so over it before any of us even had any clue what “it” was. All good songs incite small riots, and “Royals” was one of those songs where writers and critics raced to connect the dots. How old is Lorde, really? Is Lorde a racist? A classist? A cultural tourist? Here’s the only rational conclusion to jump to—”Royals” is the best song ever inspired by a picture of George Brett. For an artist who seems to dance above the bullshit, “Royals” is the most fitting introduction to a superstar in years. —Corban Goble",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/lordemusic/royals,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/87/Lorde_Royals.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lorde-Royals.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,65,Caribou,"""Odessa""",City Slang / Merge,"From his 2001 debut as Manitoba onward, Dan Snaith underwent a steady album-by-album evolution from glitch-hop alchemist to psych-pop classicist, but exchanging bedroom-beatmaking for festival-rockin’ spectacle disconnected him from the vocation upon which he initially made his name. “In the mid-2000s, when I was making more psychedelic-sounding music, nobody wanted to book me to DJ,” Dan Snaith recently admitted to Rolling Stone; “Odessa”—the deliriously disorienting lead-off track to Caribou’s 2010 release, Swim—was his VIP wristband back into the booth. The synth squiggle that forms the song’s central refrain functions like an eraser wiping a whiteboard clean with a resounding squeak, clearing the canvas for Snaith’s subsequent dance-oriented explorations with his alter ego Daphni and 2014’s house-heavy Caribou offering Our Love. But Snaith’s discotheque detour did not come at the expense of the emotionally resonant songwriting he had gradually developed over the preceding decade: The domestic drama playing out within the lyrics of “Odessa” reminds us that the dancefloor is not just the place where we go out of our heads, but tend to our broken hearts as well. —Stuart Berman Caribou: ""Odessa""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiSa7THgxrI,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/11737/homepage_large.72d1ac26.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Caribou-Odessa.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,64,FKA twigs,"""Two Weeks""",Young Turks,"“Two Weeks” is a transitional moment, where London-based singer FKA twigs shifts into the conversation about pop. It’s filthy, frank, and, at times, funny—a combination that’s difficult to get right, but sounds effortless in her hands. The strength of “Two Weeks” is in its positioning as an entry point into twigs’ world. It’s the sound of her trailing just enough stardust to get people hooked, but not offering too many concrete ideas about who she is or what she’s trying to do. The whole package, including the video, harks back to an older era of opulent pop, where singers felt a little more out of reach, their motivations something to guess at rather than being endlessly explained. In that respect the highly charged sexuality and strangeness of “Two Weeks” is akin to Prince’s Dirty Mind—a record that also documents an artist trying to find their audience without relenting to compromise. —Nick Neyland FKA twigs: ""Two Weeks""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yDP9MKVhZc,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/16971/homepage_large.245a22bb.jpg,/dataset/artwork/FKA_twigs-Two_Weeks.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,63,Girl Unit,"""Wut""",Night Slugs,"“Wut” is one of the most auspicious and shocking UK dance singles of the past five years, less a song than it is a monolith. London producer Philip Gamble’s masterpiece-to-date opens with proclamatory, dancing synth lines before crashing into the foreground with a jarring vocal sample and metallic drums ripped straight from Southern hip-hop’s lineage—and then it does it again, and again, repeating the trick for seven awe-inspiring minutes like a “Benny Hill” montage composed entirely of gruesome car crashes. At the time of its release in late 2010, there was nothing in dance music that sounded like it, and until American dubstep’s annihilating low-end mutated into the bouncy, bawdy sound of trap, things stayed that way. “Wut” exists as the Rosetta Stone for the loopy, colorful, and absolutely bonkers electronic music coursing through mainstream dance culture's veins right now. —Larry Fitzmaurice",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/girlunit/wut,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/12026/homepage_large.37187766.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Girl_Unit-Wut.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,62,Joanna Newsom,"""Good Intentions Paving Company""",Drag City,"Joanna Newsom’s ambition has never been a point of contention: From the rhythmic and lyrical intricacy of her debut and the labyrinthine structures of Ys to the two-hour sprawl of 2010’s Have One on Me, her gall has been one of her operating principles. But detractors have argued that Newsom’s gumption sometimes sold her songs short, webbing her melodies and meanings in messes of motion. Perhaps more than any other song in her catalog, though, “Good Intentions Paving Company” satisfies both camps. These seven minutes are an ornate musical slingshot, but Newsom ties the tizzy to a chorus that lands the first time—“the hook upon which everyone hangs,” she confesses—and the poetic recollection of a day where she wrestles with love, faithfulness and fragility. “Good Intentions Paving Company” is the sound of the once-precocious and protective artist dropping her guard and showing her human side, with faults, confessions, hopes, and misgivings to share. —Grayson Haver Currin Joanna Newsom: ""Good Intentions Paving Company""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCCl3nzL5PI,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/87/joannanewsom-haveoneme.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Joanna_Newsom-Good_Intentions_Paving_Company.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,61,A$AP Rocky,"""Peso""",Polo Grounds / RCA,"How does someone like Wale attempt to protect his honor in a spat against his labelmate Meek Mill in 2014? By saying, “I fuckin play Zelda and fuck wit bitches who teach yoga and paint… I get it. I’m different.” in an Instagram comment. It’s a defense I can’t help but trace back to A$AP Rocky, the poster boy for self-labeled “weirdo” rappers who were never really that weird. But where Wale whimpers, Rocky has always boasted, holding up his self-described outsider status like a giant trophy: “I be that pretty mother fucker,” he announced on “Peso,” a song that blew across New York City three summers ago, sounding like someone had exhaled kush smoke through a giant windchime over Harlem. There was no self-pity, no hand-wringing, no fumbling over the idea of being different—there was just charisma. —Carrie Battan",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/live-love-asap/peso,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/87/homepage_large.898d4498.jpg,/dataset/artwork/AAP_Rocky-Peso.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,60,Future,"""Turn on the Lights""",Epic / A1 / Free Bandz,"At first listen, the concept of “Turn on the Lights” is straightforward enough: a simple declaration of preference for lighting in the bedroom. For a genre deconstructionist like Future, it could even pass for a traditional slow jam, if it weren’t for a single word: flashlight. “Tell her I been looking for her,” Future coos, “...with a flashlight.” Turning on the lights isn’t about enhancing sex—Future just needs to be able to see better so that he can find his soulmate. It’s a line that neatly encapsulates the rapper-singer’s casually peculiar approach to lyricism. In the middle of a deeply sexy, roiling love song is the image of Future, in his warbled, nonsensical splendor (and probably sporting some irreverently cut leather), somberly pointing a flashlight at dark corners, in search of true love. —Carrie Battan Future: ""Turn on the Lights""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIrhcTkHX_A,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/87/future%20%281%29.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Future-Turn_on_the_Lights.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,59,Adele,"""Rolling in the Deep""",XL,"There is no more monoculture, my ass. Whatever your personal feelings about Adele, or retromania, or record sales, or songs that can get remixed by Jamie xx and then turned into a dancehall free-for-all (uh, hello, awesome), it's hard to deny that ""Rolling in the Deep"" is simply bigger, sturdier, and more significant than most other pop-musical artifacts. The then-21-year-old singer's wise-beyond-her-years anthem comes on like a bullhorn with wings, going from back-porch strumming to war-prep drumming to full-on revival meeting in exactly 60 seconds. It feels if not inevitable then irreversible, or at the very least monumental, like Mount Rushmore. Part of that is due to the familiarities within the song—there are fleeting traces of Feist's ""Sealion"" and its antecedent, Nina Simone's ""See-Line Woman"", in the a cappella chorus—but mostly it's just the proportions of the thing itself: the supple force of Adele's own voice, the hypnotic churn of those pianos below, the wind-tossed dance between controlled burn and total conflagration. The fact that it has only been with us for four years blows the mind. —Philip Sherburne Adele: ""Rolling in the Deep""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Chcc_Ci36Vw,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/87/adele.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Adele-Rolling_in_the_Deep.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,58,Haim,"""The Wire""",Columbia,"In a review for The New York Times, the writer Jon Caramanica described the Haim sisters as “impossible to hate,” but I’d say it’s the opposite—they’re as easy to hate as anyone who makes their achievement seem effortless. Witness “The Wire”, a song that synthesizes the pleasures of ‘70s pop-rock so cheerfully that you might not notice it’s about a break up, and they’re the ones doing the dumping. “I didn’t go and try to change my mind, not intentionally,” middle sister Danielle sings at the top of the second verse, confident but nonchalant—a line that may be true, but won’t comfort whoever she’s singing it to. Not that their comfort really matters. If Haim’s story has a moral here, it’s about the importance of a me-first existence in which you do what you need to do for yourself and move on without becoming too hung up. Even the song’s sound—meticulously constructed with the help of producer Ariel Rechtshaid—seems mutant and post-pain. “I just couldn’t take it, I tried hard not to fake it,” Danielle concludes, “but I stumbled when it came down to the wire.” At which point the band strides gloriously into the chorus, leaving their cares behind them like some trail of pink vapor. History is written by the victors; sometimes love songs are, too. —Mike Powell",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/15784/homepage_large.762e922e.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Haim-The_Wire.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,57,Death Grips,"""I've Seen Footage""",Epic,"Death Grips’ “I’ve Seen Footage” now sounds as quaint and innocent as “Love Me Do” compared to the cock-covered album sleeves, Sony-contract breaches, festival no-shows, suicide-note performance art, and increasingly antagonistic albums that followed in its wake. The track was, in retrospect, a Trojan horse outfitted in a sweaty tank top and oversized fluorescent baseball cap—an agit-punk nail-bomb disguised as an electro-rap booty jam (to which one could easily sing, “I/ hear/ ‘Push It’!”) dropped into the middle of unsuspecting hipster house parties. Like the red pill in The Matrix, “I’ve Seen Footage” was a gateway drug into a world of shit—but even though we now know where it takes us, you can’t help but keep poppin’ it. —Stuart Berman Death Grips: ""I've Seen Footage""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCadcBR95oU,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/87/deathgrips.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Death_Grips-Ive_Seen_Footage.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,56,SOPHIE,"""Bipp""",Numbers,"There's a lewdness to ""Bipp""'s refrain—“I can make you feel better""—that telegraphs the song's intent. We are not, in all likelihood, being offered a shoulder massage or a cup of tea. ""Bipp"" arrives in an altered state and seems hellbent on getting us there too—to a place, at least, where its offer starts to sound like a come-on instead of a threat. The track itself has no interest in our well-being. The subs huff and burp, staving off nausea. The chords arrive slurred, and on the beat, like a Basement Jaxx single with a noticeable erection and a (bigger) bag of pills. “Bipp” is a pop song disguised as a club track wearing googly-eye glasses. Which is to say, not a track in which you should put very much trust. “Feeling better,” though, is something it seems to have locked down. —Andrew Gaerig",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/15625/homepage_large.94e41a20.jpg,/dataset/artwork/SOPHIE-Bipp.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,55,Carly Rae Jepsen,"""Call Me Maybe""",604 / Schoolboy / Interscope,"In retrospect, the whole ""Call Me Maybe"" phenomenon was weirdly, uncannily meta, as we all found ourselves suddenly and unexpectedly crushing on a singer who arrived out of the blue singing about… a sudden and unexpected crush. At least, we found ourselves crushing on a song about a crush because, despite the intensity of the infatuation, it never really blossomed into a long-term relationship between the public and the singer—much to the public's loss. A brief recap: Justin Bieber heard the song and tweeted about it in December 2011, promptly amplifying its potential listenership by many millions; by early 2012, Jepsen's single had gone to No. 1 on the Canadian Hot 100, buoyed by national airplay requirements. (NB: The Canadian Illuminati is real.) A deal with Scooter Braun followed, and a change in Billboard's chart methodology to include streaming data facilitated the song's rise. By June it was at No. 1 in the U.S. and, for all intents and purposes, ubiquitous here and everywhere else. (Gotye's equally ubiquitous ""Somebody That I Used to Know"" robbed it of the top slot on Billboard's Year-End Hot 100 chart, but ""Call Me Maybe"" still wound up being the best-selling song of 2012, with some 12 million copies sold worldwide.) Those are the facts of its rise. But what were the deeper reasons for its staying power and its brief conversion into a full-on meme? It's notable that Jepsen's song, with its echoes of early-'00s teen-pop, didn't sound like anything else at the time, on or off the charts; its songwriting, lyrics, and even its production all spoke to an innocence that has become rare in the contemporary music industry—and in pop culture, broadly speaking. (At the same time, the song was just knowing enough, as demonstrated by a video that upended both pinup-girl cliché and heteronormative assumptions about hot neighbor boys.) Sonically, it didn't try too hard. While other pop stars were going for the most expensive-sounding dancefloor effects available, the strings here might have been Garage Band presets. But it still sounded amazing, with every riff in the right place, and unafraid to milk its chorus for every drop of giddy serotonin rush. Lyrically, the song offers a brilliant balance between overstatement and understatement. ""Before you came into my life/ I missed you so bad"" is a logical impossibility, but it's such a charming sentiment, who cares? And, as for the latter, it's right there in that winking ""maybe."" It might be the sweetest, slyest song ever written about emotional projection. —Philip Sherburne Carly Rae Jepsen: ""Call Me Maybe""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UVNT4wvIGY,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/87/carlyrae.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Carly_Rae_Jepsen-Call_Me_Maybe.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,54,Andy Stott,"""Numb""",Modern Love,"After an album of spare, intermittently melodic compositions for the Modern Love label and a string of mechanical, slow-creeping techno singles, Manchester’s Andy Stott re-emerged in 2011 with a pair of darkened dub-techno EPs—Passed Me By and We Stay Together—that re-imagined the ways minimal music could express melody. This run culminated in “Numb”, the most surprising piece of his fantastic 2012 album Luxury Problems, which loosed mellifluous vocals over a rumbling techno skeleton, like smoke wafting above an overturned train. Luxury Problems happened to arrive in the U.S. just after Hurricane Sandy inflicted millions of dollars in damage on the East Coast; for me, “Numb” inadvertently soundtracked New York City struggling to get back on its feet. Its sonorous but discomfiting take on watery dub techno seemed to anticipate the feeling of an infrastructure tumbling: it’s the sound of something comfortable dissipating. —Abby Garnett",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/14306/homepage_large.e1411511.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Andy_Stott-Numb.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,53,"Tyler, the Creator","""Yonkers""",XL,"The sudden success of “Yonkers” provided those unversed in relevant blog subcultures (i.e. most of the music-listening world) with their first taste of Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All. Initially, Goblin’s lead single was disseminated primarily on YouTube, in abbreviated form, with surreal, seasick visuals already in place. Questions emerged: Is that a real roach? What’s the screwed voice saying. . .“Golf Wangs”? How is this kid only 19? People googled Bruno Mars and considered whether they, too, might like to stab him. The record—mature, confident and economical—is still the definitive and most palatable primer on Tyler’s value system and hang-ups: rife with inside jokes, celebrity disses, impossible sexual fantasies, passive-aggressive asides to both father and critics, interruptions from alter-egos, and send-ups or reifications of his own self-mythology. On his future albums, all of these ideas would be examined and re-examined ad nauseam, but they were all there already, encrypted, in “Yonkers.” —Winston Cook-Wilson Tyler, the Creator: ""Yonkers""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSbZidsgMfw,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/12112/homepage_large.9dc9cd7d.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tyler_the_Creator-Yonkers.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,52,Deafheaven,"""Dreamhouse""",Deathwish,"""Dreamhouse"" is the powerful opening salvo to what would unexpectedly become one of the most important and divisive releases of 2013. Deafheaven's Sunbather polarized and intrigued in near equal measure. Was it black metal? Sort of. Was it shoegaze? In a way. Was it screamo? Depending on who you asked. Sunbather was just the right alchemical mix of darkness and light, note-checking Weakling as often as Alcest or Explosions in the Sky. It was accessible without vapidity, fine-tuned to appeal to a vast cross-section of music listeners. It was new, and intense, and kickstarted a new chapter in American metal. ""Dreamhouse"" is the album’s best moment, all bright, insistent chords and howling screams ripped straight from the heart. A beautiful mid-song melody melts into a flurry of black metal intensity then resurfaces, gasping for air and reaching skywards. —Kim Kelly",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/15379/homepage_large.d59bd266.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Deafheaven-Dreamhouse.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,51,Kanye West,"""New Slaves""",Def Jam,"Kanye West takes “No” personally. Labels who shrugged at his leap from the producer’s chair to the booth early on got the rousing The College Dropout. Told he couldn’t sing, he released the sea-changing Auto-Tune opus 808s & Heartbreak. When the fashion industry expressed indifference toward his aspirations as a designer, he took his dissatisfaction to their doorsteps, projecting his grim, monochrome visage on the sides of buildings across the planet with a special “Fuck you” to the lords of haute couture. With the youthful optimism of his breakout single decayed into a cold contempt, Kanye set about defaming international pillars of art and commerce, leering out from Prada on Fifth Ave.: “You see it’s broke nigga racism, that’s that ‘Don’t touch anything in the store.'” Glowering down from Hollywood’s W Hotel, “And it’s rich nigga racism, that’s that ‘Come in please buy more.’” Booming out from France’s Centre Pompidou, from Amsterdam’s Museumplein, and from London’s Royal Opera House, “New Slaves” bookended the state-of-the-disenfranchised address of “Jesus Walks” as Kanye in a seat of power continues to find closed doors to kick down. Abrasively hookless and essentially beatless, “New Slaves” weaponized Kanye’s livewire awareness of the intersection of race and wealth, settling for rattling his doubters where cooperative quietude might’ve sufficed. If black America is a caged bird singing, “New Slaves” is our bird dashing its head against the coop until it’s clear that the graceful dance between the keeper and the kept can go another way if need be. —Craig Jenkins Kanye West: ""New Slaves""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dT3swdCJrrg,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/87/yeezus.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kanye_West-New_Slaves.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,50,EMA,"""California""",Souterrain Transmissions,"“California” is ostensibly a song about bad times and people in unfortunate circumstances. Erika Anderson sounds harried, spending large parts of the song not yelling, but also not sounding very calm. There are allusions to domestic violence, mental illness, and a love “so fucked” it requires a police code. But when I listen to “California”, I don’t feel bad, and I don’t feel harassed; I feel fired up. Which is odd, because “California” is a slo-mo anthem with no triumph, no chorus, and very little redemption. There’s liberty, though, in the way Anderson sails through the song’s blue-green harbor drone, preaching from the hull. So I can’t help but feel excited that I might one day clip through an ether of misfortune with a bullhorn, making my apologies, humming “Camptown Races”, buzzed with the knowledge that palm trees and mountain vistas would just make me worse anyhow. —Andrew Gaerig EMA: ""California""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjSOcoDJYQg,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/87/pastlifemartyr.jpg,/dataset/artwork/EMA-California.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,49,Drake,"""Marvins Room""",Cash Money / Young Money Entertainment / Universal Republic,"Drake’s ascendance has been staked on the unlikely proposition that what people need more of in their lives is misery. His fun is rarely good and never clean, and comes packaged with the kind of morning-after regret that lands most people in recovery. Not content to inherit the lesson that mo money may in fact equal mo problems, he had to go and find out himself. It turned out to be the smartest mistake he ever made. Downcast, luxurious, and resistant to all conventional forms of hope, “Marvins Room” is his apex, his moon landing. If he sounds relaxed, it’s only because being unhappy is just another form of security—the blanket he wears to keep himself insulated from other people. He starts with an apology and moves effortlessly to insult: “I’m just saying you could do better / Tell me, have you heard that lately?”—a line that stands as living, sulking proof that it takes one to know one. Go ahead and hate him—his power move is to remind you that nobody can hate him with the grace and acuity with which he hates himself. —Mike Powell Drake: ""Marvins Room""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwyjxsOYnys,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/87/marvinsroom.png,/dataset/artwork/Drake-Marvins_Room.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,48,Bon Iver,"""Holocene""",Jagjaguwar / 4AD,"After the surprise success of For Emma, Forever Ago, Justin Vernon was trapped inside an image—the lonesome woodsman purging his heart to the walls of a rustic cabin. “Holocene” blows those walls down, projecting impressive vistas onto vast landscapes. Vernon’s voice, though still crabbed and chilled, soars high above frozen hills and valleys of pedal steel, vibraphone, and woodwinds; even the upper and lower notes of the acoustic-guitar figure feel a chasm apart. As opposed to the tiny music of For Emma, “Holocene” was bold enough to spearhead Vernon’s transformation into a Grammy winner and unlikely pop star, yet it remains intimately biographical. The charred-Polaroid lyrics include personal details so concrete you could Google Map them (3rd and Lake in Eau Claire must get some odd pilgrims). And for all its singularity, “Holocene” basically elevates Wisconsin’s native post-rock—its pastoral breadth, distant martial percussion and chiming, beatific weariness—to oracular heights. Vernon sounds like a giant, and we implicitly trust that he can see for miles, miles, miles. —Brian Howe Bon Iver: ""Holocene""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWcyIpul8OE,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/87/boniver.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bon_Iver-Holocene.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,47,Rihanna,"""We Found Love"" [ft. Calvin Harris]",Def Jam,"The road through the last five years is littered with massive Rihanna singles. The stretch covered by this list represents the moment she was busily making her name as a cultural icon, and at least half of her future The Immaculate Collection will come from this period. But of all of them, ""We Found Love"" might be the most enduring and powerful, the one that will live on in cruise ships, football stadiums, ads, and political campaigns. It is her ""Like a Prayer"", and it features her most uplifting melody, one that could easily be rewritten as a hymnal. The hook, which repeats endlessly throughout the song, locates the center of the arc where ""vague"" meets ""universal,"" a dizzy place where large masses of people can pour their collective emotions. —Jayson Greene",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/rihanna/we-found-love,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/87/wefoundlove.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rihanna-We_Found_Love_ft_Calvin_Harris.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,46,Frank Ocean,"""Thinkin Bout You""",Def Jam,"Before he had the same management as James Taylor and Jennifer Lawrence, before he was feuding with Chris Brown and recording with Kanye, Frank Ocean was just a buried songwriter in the music industry who’d only achieved some clout after self-releasing his debut album, Nostalgia, Ultra., under the aegis of Odd Future’s anarchic cool. “Thinkin Bout You” wasn’t even originally written by Ocean for Ocean; it was conceived for Bridget Kelly, a singer who sadly had no chance of owning the song once Ocean self-released his bare-bones demo in the summer of 2011. Idiosyncratic lyrics about bedroom tornadoes and Idaho beach houses drawled in a hesitant, lovesick cadence gave way to a heart-piercing falsetto and a melancholic feeling about forever—a million listeners sighed, and suddenly Ocean seemed like one of his generation’s defining singers, rather than another voice struggling to be heard. —Jeremy Gordon Frank Ocean: ""Thinkin Bout You""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wD8nAt2xJZM,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/87/thinkinboutyou.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Frank_Ocean-Thinkin_Bout_You.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,45,Mac DeMarco,"""Ode to Viceroy""",Captured Tracks,"There’s always been a surprisingly sentimental streak throughout Mac DeMarco’s music, at least to those who understand the shallow depths of his public persona. “Ode to Viceroy” is nostalgic without being cheesy; somehow, a guy who is frequently profiled as acting a fool (here you’ll find him drooling, licking his guitar, eating his girlfriend’s hair, and mooning the camera) still managed to produce an introspective love song—one that balances lo-fi guitar lushness with a healthy dose of slacker. Granted, the muse here is a cigarette—Viceroy is DeMarco’s preferred brand—but the paradox between the song’s tenderness and DeMarco’s zero-fucks attitude still stands. Its rare to hear indie rock that’s so effortlessly thoughtful, but sometimes the burnouts surprise you. —Molly Beauchemin",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/14383/homepage_large.0018cc03.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mac_DeMarco-Ode_to_Viceroy.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,44,Beyoncé,"""Drunk in Love"" [ft. Jay Z]",Columbia,"As of this writing, Beyoncé and Jay Z are approaching the Paris finale of their joint On the Run tour, rumors of their divorce snowballing around them. As the gossip intensifies, so does the couple’s resolve to quietly dismiss it. Every detailed report of their impending demise is matched by a cryptic rebuttal—an Instagram photo of Jay holding their daughter on a beach, or of the couple clinking glasses of liquor while watching the sunset. Meanwhile, “Drunk in Love”—a song that precisely marks the moment when Beyoncé’s career began to overtake Jay’s—sits in purgatory, awaiting the verdict. Someday, it will be heard as a brilliant ruse, a masterpiece of pop theater, or as simply a masterpiece, period. It is grand and sturdy enough to withstand either. —Carrie Battan Beyoncé: ""Drunk in Love"" [ft. Jay Z]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1JPKLa-Ofc,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/87/beyonce.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beyonc-Drunk_in_Love_ft_Jay_Z.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,43,Destroyer,"""Bay of Pigs""",Merge,"A MIDI-disco ""Desolation Row”? A wine-drunk, dope-ripped Homeric epic? A 13-minute treatise on the women Dan Bejar's known and loved? Couched in metaphor, dripping in allusion, ""Bay of Pigs""—to date, Destroyer's longest and arguably finest song—is large; it contains multitudes. Parsing Dan Bejar's voluminous yarn would far exceed my word count, but the real beauty of ""Pigs"" lies in the journey, not the conclusion. As it carries you from a house in ruin to the diseased lights of the discotheque into the shipyards at night, ""Pigs"" spans decades, while its sleek, slate-grey synthetics defy all precedent in Bejar's wide-reaching catalog. The dense, surprisingly danceable, ever-so-slightly daffy ""Bay of Pigs"" is Bejar's moonshot, his attempt to grasp ""the world's unutterable secret."" Years on from its release, it remains an almost intimidating achievement, the kind of song that seems, with every twist and turn, to redraw the boundaries of what a song can be. —Paul Thompson Destroyer: ""Bay of Pigs""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udsJP_QANGY,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/11433/homepage_large.10fdf6ab.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Destroyer-Bay_of_Pigs.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,42,Cass McCombs,"""County Line""",Domino,"It would be charitable to say that Cass McCombs, born in Bay Area commuter satellite Contra Costa County, has mixed feelings about his hometown. “County Line” starts like a Hallmark card but can’t even finish the first verse without wishing eternal torment upon the region. But for all its venom, the song is also about the magnetic lodestone of home, pulling stubbornly back against the drive to escape. It’s fitting that the song (and the bulk of one of its videos) takes place on the highway, the tangled blacktop tether linking you to your origin point no matter how far you roam. With its ponderous pace and oozing, chorus-free structure, “County Line” circles its destination on a ring road, passing the exit for home again and again, conjuring up the courage to take it. The true star of the song is the Rhodes electric piano—Cass McCombs couldn’t have picked a better instrument to put at the center of his melancholic homecoming dirge. Its shimmery tone is reassuring on the surface, an effect culturally amplified by its use in scores of soft-rock classics. But the sound of the Rhodes is also strangely stiff and synthetic, with a lingering, woozy tremolo that seems to slow time itself in unsettling fashion. Compare/contrast it to the instrumental acoustic piano version of “County Line” McCombs did for Pitchfork.tv—still haunting, still a premium bummer jam, but nowhere near as disorientingly smooth. The original’s Rhodes spine is the sound of a visit back to the suburbs, simultaneously sentimental and soul-crushing. —Rob Mitchum Cass McCombs: ""County Line""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOcnITphyjk,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/12094/homepage_large.46df96f2.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Cass_McCombs-County_Line.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,41,Waka Flocka Flame,"""Hard in Da Paint""",Warner Bros.,"Waka Flocka Flame's first solo appearance on the national stage was an odd record. Released as a bonus track on a Gucci Mane mixtape, ""O Let's Do It"" made liberal use of space, with islands of organ notes scattered across an empty canvas. Waka's rapping, amateur as it was, possesed a brusque, direct power, a voice so bold that the rest of hip-hop seemed needlessly subtle and half-hearted in comparison. The promise of this opening shot was only fulfilled when he worked with Lex Luger, who recognized that Waka's voice needed amplification rather than contrast. And so bombast was his future. From its opening notes—an orchestral cyclone that clears the way for Waka's booming entrance—""Hard in Da Paint"" felt immediately familiar. Much has been made of the thunderous congruence between Luger’s gothic template (which subsequently transformed the sound of clubs and radio nationwide) and Waka's forceful energy, but the way his words snap into place with the surrounding atmosphere is just as important: ""Front yard, broad day, with the SK."" That absurdly frank recklessness gives the song's sudden downshifts into space the feel of being perched over an open elevator shaft, Waka's voice pushing out into the void. And the way he placed his words had an unpredictable feeling, too, never settling into a pattern that he wouldn't break moments later—""See Gucci that's my muthafuckin' nigga,"" ""Got a main bitch/ And a mistress,"" ""I'm a die for this shawty, man, I swear to God."" At this point, the song's embedded in the brain of anyone who's heard it out enough, but it’s important to remember how unpredictable and earth-rending the song felt on arrival. At one point, suggesting it had anything more than a good beat was seen as controversial, but as a hundred thousand Lex Luger Jr. beats littered the airwaves for the following two years—none of which seemed to match the aggressive potency and lurching momentum of ""Hard in Da Paint""—its legacy has solidified. Waka may have stuck with primary colors, but ""Hard in Da Paint"" is his most striking portrait. —David DrakeWaka Flocka Flame: ""Hard in Da Paint""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMtJS8jGnt8,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/87/flocka.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Waka_Flocka_Flame-Hard_in_Da_Paint.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,40,The-Dream,"""Yamaha""",Radio Killa / Def Jam,"What distinguished Terius Nash’s Prince-fixation from that of countless others is that he knew that more isn’t just more, it’s everything. “Yamaha” is the ultimate The-Dream tune for the simple reason that it decides to be: It’s not just a “Little Red Corvette” redux—the song is to “Little Red Corvette” as Derrick May was to Kraftwerk, its syncopated beats rippling like every drum machine in Minneapolis playing simultaneously, its gleaming synthesizer chords unfolding like the future at your feet. And finally, there’s The-Dream himself, as ever elevating the mundane to the level of the celestial: “This one is for you/ Wherever you at/ Still got your name tattooed on my baaaaaaack,” he declares, the final word splaying out into an endless harmony like MJ’s silhouette in the video for “Blame It on the Boogie”. Who else could pull it off? Who else would even try? —Tim Finney The-Dream: ""Yamaha""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkBS4zUjJZo,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/11926/homepage_large.3ed0d758.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The-Dream-Yamaha.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,39,Ciara,"""Body Party""",Epic,"“Body Party” is only a year old, but it already feels like a time capsule, one that captures three distinct artists at the peak of their powers. There’s Ciara, breaking free from label trouble purgatory, light and dewy and breathless with the glory of love; the lovelorn cyborg Future, the other half of a blossoming romance, flitting around like an animatronic dove; and Mike WiLL Made It, midway through a true annus mirabilis, flipping the beloved “My Boo” with a delicacy that stirs up nostalgia without copying the song outright. They worked together and wrote one of those songs that can’t help but make you sweat. It’s the kind of heat that couples work up on sticky summer nights when they catch an old spark in each other’s eyes; it moves with the kind of playfulness and confidence that can only spring from consent. And so “Body Party” ends up being the fiery, flirty, totally blissful realization of a fantasy Ciara first expressed almost a decade earlier in a different slow jam. Call it a “Promise” kept. —Jamieson Cox Ciara: ""Body Party""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPm7oCnpld8,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/15056/homepage_large.8e00ae44.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ciara-Body_Party.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,38,Bat for Lashes,"""Laura""",Parlophone / EMI,"For her third studio album, The Haunted Man, Bat For Lashes’ Natasha Khan decided to get naked—both literally (for the album cover) and figuratively—via a batch of pitch-perfect songs that boasted a kind of emotional intimacy more harrowing than anything else she’d ever recorded. In some ways “Laura”—the album’s undeniable centerpiece—is the least personal thing on the record, but the song’s brilliant paean to an aging party girl is somehow the The Haunted Man’s most resonant moment. A gorgeous bit of sustained melodrama, “Laura” deserves to take its place among the great tear-stained teenage anthems of our time. Much like the “girl of sixteen” in Depeche Mode’s “Blasphemous Rumours” or Siouxsie’s rapidly disintegrating “Christine”, Laura is ostensibly anyone deigned to confront the “horrorshow” of the status quo and dared to be fabulous while doing so. The song is dedicated to nightlife impresario “Little” Nell Cambell, though obsessive Bat For Lashes fans theorize that the song is actually a meditation on ""Twin Peaks""' doomed (and dead) heroine Laura Palmer. Regardless of who Laura might actually be, it’s a testament to Khan’s growing genius that she can deliver a line as grandly dramatic as “You’re the train that crashed my heart, You’re the glitter in the dark, Ooh Laura, you’re more than a superstar” and not only make it not sound preposterous, but amazingly heart-rending. For those of us who grew up crying off our eyeliner and hoping our own name might one day be “tattooed on every boy’s skin,” the sanguine melancholy of “Laura” is fantastically bittersweet. —T. Cole Rachel",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDlQKhdo2eQ,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/13918/homepage_large.de6549aa.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bat_for_Lashes-Laura.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,37,Deerhunter,"""Desire Lines""",4AD,"Back in the late-2000s, it was hard to see Deerhunter as anything more than The Bradford Cox Show. Sure, guitarist Lockett Pundt subsisted on a George Harrison-like one-song-per-album ration, and the rhythm section of Josh Fauver and Moses Archuleta was responsible for their most epic jam (“Nothing Ever Happened”). But Cox was the one whose interviews made headlines, whose unpredictable onstage behavior became the cornerstone of band lore, whose photo of poo wound up on the internet. And by the time of 2010’s Halcyon Digest, it seemed as though the line separating Deerhunter from Cox’s more intimate Atlas Sound project was starting to blur, with the record’s first side betraying a similarly slow-percolating dewiness and spectral ambience. So that made the mid-album emergence of Pundt’s “Desire Lines” all the more dramatic and necessary a reassertion of this band’s singular identity and exemplary teamwork. One third nostalgic dream-pop lullaby, two thirds Autobahn-bound motorik guitar odyssey, the near-seven-minute track is a spectacular showcase of Deerhunter’s ability to meld increasingly sophisticated songcraft with their formative textural experimentalism (as manifest in Cox and Pundt’s sterling six-string interplay). And, as it turned out, “Desire Lines” proved to be the definitive portrait of this band’s breakthrough line-up operating at peak strength before a radical reboot, an uncannily prophetic realization of the song’s key adage: “whatever goes up must come down.” —Stuart Berman Deerhunter: ""Desire Lines""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MOECvAlbXk,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/87/halcyondigest.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Deerhunter-Desire_Lines.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,36,Jay Z / Kanye West,"""Niggas in Paris""",Def Jam / Roc-A-Fella / Roc Nation,"If the immediate takeaway from Watch the Throne was its opulence—gold-plated Riccardo Tisci cover opulence, tear-up-a-Maybach-for-the-fun-of-it opulence, rent-out-entire-hotel-floors-to-record opulence—“Niggas in Paris” was both the crown jewel and an exception. On one hand, it's the simplest song on the album, its beat mostly just those unforgettable, doorbell-like nine notes and a thunderous bass drum courtesy of Hit-Boy (and all it does is hit, boy). On the other, it was so much the apotheosis of the Jay/Ye collab that, by the end of their tour, they were performing it a dozen times back-to-back to close out every show. “Niggas In Paris” was a statement, but it was also a million statements, or at least enough statements to be worth playing it 12 times in a row at a concert. Rap's two kings might have had other things to attend to, it said, but they could crank out the best, catchiest music in the world and make it feel effortless. They could make a song in which every single line was a quotable phrase, something worth making into a T-shirt or an Instagram caption or a meme: “that shit cray!”; “don't let me into my zone”; “ball so hard motherfuckers wanna fine me”; “what's that jacket, Margiela?”; “what she order? Fish filet!” Furthermore, they could do it and sound completely unlike their peers. At the height of the dubstep craze/paranoia, “Paris” was the one rap song that successfully incorporated that genre's jarring bass, and it threw some motherfucking church-choir chants straight out of the Kanye playbook on top. Plus, they made sure the biggest rap song in America would be one that a ton of people would feel uncomfortable requesting or talking about or singing all the words to. See, for all its excesses and absurdity, the biggest statement of “Niggas in Paris” is right there in the title: the political stance embedded in the idea of two rappers, two black men, crashing the gates of elite global culture. “We ain't even 'posed to be here,” Jay Z says—on the best party song he'd made in close to a decade—and that's it exactly. The idea of wealthy, successful black men is still transgressive in our society (just look at the vitriol and suspicion heaped on our black president over something as mundane as his birth). “Ball so hard I'm shocked, too,” Jay continues. “Ball so hard I’m supposed to be locked up, too/ If you escaped what I’ve escaped/ You'd be in Paris getting fucked up, too.” That opulence isn't just for the hell of it. “Niggas in Paris” incorporates samples from the comedy Blades of Glory, immortalizing the punchline “nobody knows what it means, but it's provocative—it gets the people going.” It's a great sample both because it prompts the image of Jay and 'Ye watching Will Ferrell movies together and because, with this song, the two know exactly what it means. Damn right it's provocative. Damn right it gets the people going. —Kyle Kramer Jay Z / Kanye West: ""Niggas in Paris""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gG_dA32oH44,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/87/watchthethrone.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jay_Z__Kanye_West-Niggas_in_Paris.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,35,Katy Perry,"""Teenage Dream""",Capitol,"If Edgar Allen Poe were alive and drinking in the summer of 2010, he very well may have fucked with “Teenage Dream”. That’s right: The man who noted that “all that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream” 165 years ago might have found some metaphysical solace in this song sung by a 25-year-old California girl dreaming about a 15-year-old’s dream about what it means to get deliriously rearranged by love. The possibilities of the subconscious, it turns out, are about as lasting as a perfect pop song. “Don’t ever look back,” pleads Katy Perry, while doing exactly that. Though “Teenage Dream” does everything in its power to crack off the rearview mirror, pop the top, and swoosh headlong into an eternity of first touches and skintight Calvins, it endures in part because of this dream-doubling longing, this sense that the teenage dream is so often a dream deferred. That push/pull—between “we can dance until we die” and “we’ll be young forever”—is the song’s unspoken engine. On the surface, you’ve got pop geniuses including Dr. Luke and Max Martin offering their choicest material along with Perry, who turns in a dynamic vocal that knows the difference between the shaky, real-world verses and the heaven-bound fantasia that is the song’s chorus. But they’re all cyphers for our collective paradise, where dreams don’t end. —Ryan DombalKaty Perry: ""Teenage Dream""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41i4uCWST_U,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/87/teenagedream.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Katy_Perry-Teenage_Dream.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,34,Crystal Castles,"""Not in Love"" [ft. Robert Smith]""",Fiction,"Ethan Kath and Alice Glass were once notorious for playing fast and loose with artistic authorship. So when the synth-punk duo snuck an art-damaged take on '80s new-wave outfit Platinum Blonde’s “Not in Love” onto their self-titled full-length from 2010, the traditional gesture it represented—that is, the cover song—seemed quaint. Naturally, then, they doubled down with a remix that featured a more muscular framework, five-alarm synths with an anthemic burn, and one of the best vocal performances in ages from goth-rock honcho and kindred spirit Robert Smith. “Not in Love” is massive, to the point where it produces chills; Depeche Mode would have killed to write something as potent in the past 20 years, and Crystal Castles themselves have since decamped to chillier, more unfriendly territories. Once again, Kath and Glass spun aesthetic gold out of something that was decidedly not theirs, but the high-definition angst of “Not in Love” nonetheless belongs to no one but themselves. —Larry Fitzmaurice",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/12025/homepage_large.f9c4032b.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Crystal_Castles-Not_in_Love_ft_Robert_Smith.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,33,Miguel,"""Adorn""",RCA,"In its original incarnation, “Adorn” was a disarmingly brief two minutes and 19 seconds, all the time Miguel needed to make you the center of his universe. Its brevity held the key to its other charms: neither over- nor underdone, “Adorn” marries simplicity with plenitude. It is perhaps the only great pop song in recent history that yearns for nothing more than what it already holds in its hands. Later, Miguel added a soaring bridge (“look up, sugar,” he implores, then follows your eyes into a falsetto stratosphere), but by then it was already clear what kind of game he was playing, the additional minute only seeming to make the song more preciously singular, more content in its own skin. (And, anyway, it’s still only just over three minutes.) This contentment, even more than the glowing warmth of the bassline and the aching desire of Miguel’s vocals, is the great secret that the singer uncovers at the heart of “Sexual Healing”: great pop can take us to places we’ve never been, but it’s just as important, sometimes, for pop music to feel like coming home. It’s less about making the simple things seem important than making the important things feel simple, if only we’d let them. Like Gaye’s classic, or the Commodores’ “Nightshift”, “Adorn” first and foremost wants to nurture and nourish the listener, to be the song that lightens up the long night of the soul, and it’s bittersweet to realize that this aim, as much as the gently bumping synthetic soul groove, can’t help but feel retro. It’s a feeling, too, that we’re prone to forget about, at least for a time. So much the better: bigger, brasher songs may steal your attention for a while, but Miguel will be waiting patiently, secure in the knowledge that eventually you’ll have to get up get up get up get up and play this song tonight. —Tim Finney Miguel: ""Adorn""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrkEDe6Ljqs,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/87/miguel.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Miguel-Adorn.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,32,Jai Paul,"""Jasmine (Demo)""",XL,"It’s officially called “Jasmine (Demo)” because, when it comes to the best musical mystery of the last few years, nothing is ever really done. The submerged vocals sound like a series of very good guesses. The opening interstellar flange suggests we’re hearing just part of a transmission that could have been playing for hours, if not years. Even Jai Paul’s message of pitiful heartbreak is something of a rehearsal, as if he knows the final feelings will eventually harden or evaporate. But for now he’s exploring in-between states, unsettled places. He’s leaving the door open for what’s next. And why not? To be final is to be dead. —Ryan Dombal",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/jaipaul/jai-paul-jasmine,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/87/jai-paul-jasmine.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Jai_Paul-Jasmine_Demo.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,31,Kendrick Lamar,"""Swimming Pools (Drank)""",Interscope / Top Dawg,"The battle over vocal manipulation in hip-hop was mostly spent by the time the decade started, with Jay-Z’s “D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune)” in 2009 putting a gravestone on the debate instead of the tool itself. But while most artists now use these effects to craft a melodic hook or sand off the edges of their style, Kendrick Lamar tinkers with his vocals to create a whole cast of characters, turning the alcoholism anthem of “Swimming Pools (Drank)” into a fractious one-man argument. Screwed vocals, harmonized raps, pitch-shifting, and an equally diverse set of flows cram a rap-history book of styles into four minutes, and symbolize the battle between Kendrick himself, his family history, his conscience, and the seductive allure of the club. Musically, the song’s personality is just as split: ominous drones under the verses reflect that inner turmoil, but the song avoids being a bleak peer-pressure PSA thanks to a chorus that’s bottle-wavingly perfect, demonstrating the sirens’ call of drinking just as it wrestles with the consequences. —Rob Mitchum",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EWruiIjBmo,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/13880/homepage_large.96ed5bfd.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kendrick_Lamar-Swimming_Pools_Drank.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,30,Autre Ne Veut,"""Play by Play""",Mexican Summer / Software,"The most common backhanded compliment given to an indie song imagines someone more famous taking interest—""oh, [POP STAR] should totally cover it!"" Autre Ne Veut's ""Play by Play"" is a powerhouse that could certainly withstand the overbearing, melismatic ""American Idol"" treatment. Hopefully, it won't ever come to that. The showstopping coda reminds you—over and over again—that singer Arthur Ashin did a stint as a jingle writer. But ""Play by Play"" also comes from an album with a cover sourced from Edvard Munch's The Scream and has a drawn-out introduction sourced from the Isley Brothers’ ""Shout"" (""and...I...said...BA-AY-AY-AY-BEE""). That album is called Anxiety, by the way. This is not something meant to be interpreted with the composure and purpose of someone who knows they're being judged. In order for ""Play by Play"" to make a lick of sense, it needs to be sung with a total lack of chops and self-consciousness, the sort of performance you'll only hear in cars, showers, and karaoke bars. These are the places where ""Play by Play"" is meant to be paid tribute, one enthusiastic and ear-splitting cover version at a time. —Ian Cohen",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/spunkrecords/autre-ne-veut-play-by-play,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/14847/homepage_large.1febf401.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Autre_Ne_Veut-Play_by_Play.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,29,Robyn,"""Call Your Girlfriend""",Konichiwa / Cherrytree,"If you ask the charts, Robyn's biggest American hits were in 1996 and 1997, when ""Do You Know (What It Takes)"" and ""Show Me Love"" hit the Top 10; ""Call Your Girlfriend"" didn't make so much as a ripple on U.S. charts outside of dance clubs. And yet ""Call Your Girlfriend""—written by the Swedish singer with the Swedish dudes who (separately) co-wrote Britney's ""Piece of Me"" and ""If U Seek Amy""—is the Robyn song that everybody knows: the one that got burlesqued on SNL, the one that got covered by pre-teen girls with ""When I'm Gone"" percussion, the one that instantly lights up the floor wherever it's played. As high-energy dance songs go, ""Call Your Girlfriend"" is a slow burner: it takes a few listens to sink in. Its tone keeps doubling back on itself. The arrangement is strobing, celebratory disco; Robyn sings it as if it's a song about personal desolation; on closer examination, the lyrics are deeply empathetic on their surface, even as cruelty and exaltation keep poking through them. (It's also one of those songs whose meaning becomes completely different when a man sings it.) It's a brilliantly constructed song, too. The melody is a series of descending streamers that are almost all attached to a single note, like the steady murmur of a consoling friend. But that calm consistency sets up the zinger of a bridge, in which the chorus's ""you just met somebody new"" is followed, just this once, by Robyn slipping the knife in—""and now it's gonna be me and you""—and then by a peacocking ""instrumental"" passage from which she's not even absent, since it's built from a pitch-altered sample of her voice. What she's suggesting isn't comforting the wronged woman, but consolidating her own victory. —Douglas Wolk",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/robyn/call-your-girlfriend | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbEOr5Weqb8,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/87/bodytal.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Robyn-Call_Your_Girlfriend.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,28,Japandroids,"""The House That Heaven Built""",Polyvinyl,"If you’re looking for self-awareness, don’t look in Japandroids’ direction. In the true spirit of their heroes, peers, and distant relatives, Vancouver’s Brian King and David Prowse are total sensualists—the type of people who would gladly set something they owned on fire just to catch feelings from staring into the warm, inviting glow of the flames. In their mindset, pure intentions reign supreme, and the act of doing something just to feel something is a well-held virtue. It’s why their sophomore effort Celebration Rock, one of the decade’s finest six-string-wielding albums, begins and ends with the sound of fireworks; it’s why they show no shame tapping into the nostalgia of youth, even though “two guys on the cusp of 30” doesn’t exactly scream “old”; and it’s why they decided to name their most enduring sing-along anthem “The House That Heaven Built”, a title more befitting a Michael Landon TV movie than a rollicking live-your-life-how-you-will smasher from two guys who value staying up until sunrise with the fervor of holy communion. In Japandroids’ world, nothing is embarrassing, especially if it lasts forever. “The House That Heaven Built” is, musically, a modern update of another notable Canadian’s tribute to young people, guitars, and young people playing guitars—that is, Bryan Adams’ “Summer of ‘69”—with a throat-shredding, passionate, fast-and-only-fast burn replacing Adams’ comparatively mid-tempo jangle. King screams, his voice sounding as if he believes that all you need is two tin cans and some string to reach the entire world, about houses made of light and blushing bodies being forged in some personification of the afterlife—you know, poetry shit—before leveling any and all pretense with one devastating couplet: “If they try to slow you down/ Tell ‘em all to go to hell.” The line’s a clear reference to King’s own debilitating health issues, and his refusal to ease up on pushing himself for Japandroids’ sake, but knowledge of that compelling backstory is inessential to apprehending the power of “The House That Heaven Built”. Just bring a beating heart, a body that protects it, and a voice that’s capable of singing along—Japandroids handle the rest, and they do it for you, as well as themselves, too. —Larry Fitzmaurice",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9f06QZCVUHg,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/13363/homepage_large.3922871b.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Japandroids-The_House_That_Heaven_Built.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,27,M.I.A.,"""Bad Girls""",Self-released,"In May 2010, Lynn Hirschberg of The New York Times wrote an unflattering profile of M.I.A., in part by taking quotes from different parts of the same interview and re-ordering them. Infuriated by the misrepresentation, M.I.A. posted her own recordings of the interview online, proving her point and forcing the Times to issue a correction. The lesson? No one can collage representations of Ms. Arulpragasam except Maya herself. This is M.I.A.’s m.o.: pasting together digital detritus to craft style statements and political propaganda that are wholly her own. On the very last day of that same year came the Vicki Leekx mixtape, 36 minutes of booming, glitchy dance music, dropped online during the most fallow news day of the year. Like reporters digging through Julian Assange’s epochal data-dump the following April, listeners discovered a gem buried halfway through M.I.A.’s noisy transmission: two-and-a-half minutes of chirpy Bollywave pop titled “Bad Girls”. Taking cues equally from Debbie Harry and Rick Ross, “Bad Girls” stood out as much for what it wasn’t as what it was: a bonafide club banger that smoothed over the edges of its influences instead of drawing attention to the seams. Upon expanding and officially releasing “Bad Girls” as a single in late January 2012— complete with what remains one of the most compelling videos of the millennium—M.I.A. was, for a fleeting moment, at least, the world’s most compelling and controversial pop star, no doubt aided by her headline-grabbing single-finger salute to billions of TV viewers a few days later. With a couple of years to think on it, here’s a question: Is “Bad Girls” better than “Paper Planes”, M.I.A.’s starkly political leftfield hit? I say yes, but I’m also used to ducking when making such a bold statement. Maya knows “Bad Girls” is a different look, chirping, “Cover me/ ’Cause I’m changing lanes” as Danja’s impeccable track whistles and pounds. Yet no matter how perfect the song works as giddy pop, don’t make the mistake of calling it apolitical. “Bad Girls” is as much a political statement as anything M.I.A. has released, the refrain a perfect distillation of the multiple contradictory positions she’s forced to occupy as a loud, brown-skinned 21st-century female artist. “Pull me closer if you think you can hang,” she dares. But we don’t, because we know we can’t. —Eric Harvey",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/miauk/m-i-a-bad-girls | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jO5VV5PISHU,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/tracks/12074/homepage_large.1fbb18dc.jpg,/dataset/artwork/MIA-Bad_Girls.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,26,Vampire Weekend,"""Hannah Hunt""",XL,"All through the song you can feel Ezra Koenig’s knowing smile, peeking through the cracks in the words that so finely paint the excursion of newfound love. We make our way across a country, regrettably tied to some things, happily unbeholden to others. We leave one coast for other, settle in, and soon we're faced with those two terrifying words: “Now what?” Like Ezra and Hannah, the song exists on its own plane in the Vampire Weekend catalog. Nothing sounds quite like it, so simple in structure and baroque in detail, until the last chorus when Koenig drops the smile, the affectation, and poetry: “If I can’t trust you then, dammit, Hannah, there’s no future, there’s no answer.” The smile returns, and their future remains uncertain. —Jeremy D. Larson Vampire Weekend: ""Hannah Hunt""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJCIhDQkqTQ,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/87/vampireweekend.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Vampire_Weekend-Hannah_Hunt.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,25,Disclosure,"""Latch"" [ft. Sam Smith]",PMR,"When we talk about music, we tend to fixate on the concept of influence. By focusing on the ripple effects emanating from artists and albums, we can grant them a significance grander than their commercial performance or enduring popularity, rendering our investment worthwhile. It’s a particularly common concern for music critics: We trace the lineage of new artists and nascent micro-genres, identify chains of samples and sonic cues, chart the slow trickle of ideas over time. So it’s easy to understand why “Latch” is a critic’s dream: It provided the rare opportunity to watch that slow trickle happen in real time, from a shabby studio above an auction house to clubs and radios around the world. Two young brothers from Surrey and a vocalist with titanic commercial ambitions released a single in October 2012; a year and a half later, that single had come close to topping the charts in a dozen countries, launched the vocalist’s own exploding solo career, and remade the pop charts in its own image on both sides of the Atlantic. The revolution was not televised. A lot of great, memorable house-pop has been made in the wake of “Latch”, from Duke Dumont and Kiesza to Clean Bandit and Gorgon City. Disclosure has made their fair share of it themselves. But none of it quite matches this song’s desperation, its sheer drama, its focus on craftsmanship. There’s the beat, Guy and Howard Lawrence setting their pads to tick away in 6/8 as a means of countering house’s standard 4/4 bosh; there’s the sampled ghost in the machine, a nod to the looming shadow of Burial’s spectral proto-dubstep. There’s Sam Smith—now trying to find his voice in classicist crooning and MOR pop balladry—moving from smooth to shrieking in a way that forces you to consider the physical significance of the title. There’s the fundamental pleasure that comes from songs that lock and snap into place like clockwork, possessed of an exquisite sense of structure, percolating and pouring like finely brewed coffee. It all comes together in a song whose ascent into the annals of pop history has been slow, steady, and remarkably rewarding. And now it’s immortal, its tendrils snaking through this year’s biggest hits and new sounds forming as a reaction to its dominance. Talk about not letting go. —Jamieson Cox",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/14188/homepage_large.9832b20f.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Disclosure-Latch_ft_Sam_Smith.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,24,Drake,"""Worst Behavior""",Cash Money / Young Money Entertainment / Universal Republic,"Drake’s instantly iconic “Worst Behavior” started with more one-liners than both Anchorman movies put together and ended up as a potential subject for a future episode of ""Cosmos""—in certain circles, it became the sky we lived under, the air we breathed, the universe we struggled to understand, the fulcrum of memes we jankily shopped together when we were supposed to be working. “Worst Behavior” became colloquial currency. Worst! Motherfuckers never loved us! Hold Up, Hold My Phone! Remember? Once Drake gets going, he realizes he can now get away with anything and proceeds to basically just try shit out as if it could possibly matter now that the whirring, perpetual motion mechanism that is “Worst Behavior” has been set off. “You know me! I’m liable to do anything when it comes to that you owe me!” He starts rapping Ma$e’s verse from “Mo’ Money Mo’ Problems”. He apologizes to his mother after dastardly rapping the dastardly couplet “Bar mitzvah money like my last name Mordecai/ Fuck you bitch, I'm more than high.” It seems possible that all the cultural threads “Worst Behavior” has created in its wake will fade after some time. In the meantime: Does it look like we’re stressing? —Corban Goble Drake: ""Worst Behavior""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ix819fEdHjE,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/87/nothingwasthesame.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Drake-Worst_Behavior.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,23,Solange,"""Losing You""",Terrible,"If it were just her and her husband on that infamous security camera footage, would Beyoncé have needed to change her headline-worthy line from the “Flawless” remix, “Of course sometimes shit goes down/ When it’s a billion dollars on an elevator”? No disrespect meant, because Solange Knowles has never seemed concerned with her drawing power. If the curse of being constantly referred to as a famous person’s little sibling means that no one cares what you do, it must also feel like a form of freedom: No one cares what you do, as long as it isn’t embarrassing to the brand. Slapping your brother-in-law on an elevator… embarrassing to the brand. Goofing off in colorful outfits, growing your hair out, playing with some weird-ass Brooklyn bands… well, that’s just having fun where big sister couldn’t. Still, Solange has always had a hard time showing her pointed individualism could actually lead to meaningful art. The promotional campaign for her second album, Sol-Angel and the Hadley St. Dreams, was aimed at the “intellectual, backpacking, coffee shop, digital kid,” which even intellectual, backpacking, coffee shop digital kids would say is lame. But in contrast to the harried efforts of a marketing team, “Losing You” landed with stunning ease. Instead of sounding like someone with something to prove, Solange glides along a subtle melody provided by Blood Orange’s Devonté Hynes, guided by a plangent sensibility telling a truth the supple percussion tries to dance away. The way she sings the chorus, each syllable spoken independent of each other with an invisible sob in between betrays the song’s sadness amidst all that bounce. Of course it hurts to lose someone, no matter what the colorful outfits might say. It felt true, which is all Solange has needed to be. —Jeremy Gordon",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/14364/homepage_large.1ee8c47a.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Solange-Losing_You.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,22,Arcade Fire,"""Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)""",Merge,"In the scope of the Arcade Fire’s 10-years-and-counting career, “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)” is the most pivotal track the band has committed to tape. It’s the bridge from the heart-on-sleeve guitar rock of their first two albums to the heart-on-sleeve dance rock of their more recent material. The glitterbomb synths and strobe-light beats predict everything the band would attempt on last year’s double album Reflektor, right down to the invigorating equation of dance with defiance. More crucially—especially for a band whose music has grown more and more conceptually grandiose over time—“Sprawl II” sounds like it might have been inspired by real experience, suggesting a collective backstory that might fit each band member and each fan. “They heard me singing and they told me to stop,” Régine Chassagne sings in one of her best performances. “Quit these pretentious things and just punch the clock.” The heroine can barely imagine a world beyond the suburban sprawl, but that desire for something more than a 9-to-5 existence gives her mountains beyond mountains of hope. —Stephen M. Deusner",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/11947/homepage_large.ce1d86ca.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Arcade_Fire-Sprawl_II_Mountains_Beyond_Mountains.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,21,Real Estate,"""It's Real""",Domino,"What too often gets overlooked about Real Estate is that under the breezy songs and sparkly guitars is a band that seems to have lost something profound. The pertinent Japanese concept here (since there is so often a pertinent Japanese concept) is mono no aware, which translates roughly to “the light melancholy we feel when we recognize the passing of all things.” So when Martin Courtney sings about walking on dead leaves or skating on a frozen pond, it’s not to give suburbia some pastoral color but to plant the reminder that in spring the ice will melt and the leaves will return to the trees, and come winter everything will die again. And if they sound noncommittal, it’s only because they’re trying to find the freedom in accepting how little they can do about it. —Mike Powell",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/real-estate-the-band/its-real,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/87/realestate.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Real_Estate-Its_Real.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,20,Daft Punk,"""Get Lucky"" [ft. Pharrell]",Daft Life Limited / Columbia,"Last spring Daft Punk debuted a short clip of “Get Lucky” between sets at Coachella, upstaging almost all of the flesh-and-blood artists who actually performed and kicking off one of the most elaborate album rollouts of the 21st century. For almost all of us, the song existed first as merely a discotheque beat, a short Slinky of rhythm guitar, and Pharrell Williams—pop’s own Rasputin—crooning, “We’ve come too far to give up who we are.” It still stands as the most epic tease of the 2010s, yet somehow the song didn’t disappoint when Daft Punk released the whole thing, and it doesn’t disappoint now that we’ve lived with it for a year. Those 15 seconds blossomed into a full mirrorball world, where the future is reflected and refracted in the past. Daft Punk mainstays Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo hung back so their collaborators can shine: Pharrell projects the barely-contained composure of a guy hosting a kegger while his parents are out of town, and Nile Rodgers' rhythm guitar rebukes the idea that the best guitarists only play solos. If dance music has become the sound of the 2010s, then Daft Punk sought to locate the roots of contemporary pop music in the popularly maligned genre of disco. Conceptually, that elevates “Get Lucky” to the status of monumental triumph for poptimists (and makes Pharrell the Obama to the rockist Tea Party). And yet, this smash hit is more than simply a history lesson or a pick-up anthem. In the crackle of Rodgers’ guitar, in the easy lope of the rhythm section, in the human-after-all groove lies something truly life-affirming: “what keeps the planets spinning, the force from the beginning.” —Stephen M. Deusner Daft Punk: ""Get Lucky"" [ft. Pharrell]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NV6Rdv1a3I,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/15320/homepage_large.667d9a9d.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Daft_Punk-Get_Lucky_ft_Pharrell.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,19,Beach House,"""Zebra""",Sub Pop / Bella Union,"Hearing ""Zebra"" for the first time is its own small journey. It's not the kind with winding roads and endless peaks and valleys, though; this is a slow, steady path that rises with the patience of a band only getting better. Beach House's Teen Dream opener charms you with its utter simplicity—at the song's core is one beautiful, relaxed guitar melody, around which Victoria Legrand sighs breathlessly and wonders, ""Don't I know you better than the rest?"" In a way, ""Zebra"" was our introduction to the band Beach House is today: a pair of peerless artists harnessing stadium-sized emotions and sweeping rock gestures into a modest bedroom-pop aesthetic. It's no surprise, then, that when the music crescendos after Legrand's last iteration of ""any way you run, you run before us…,"" it feels like you've been taken to a vista overlooking lush landscapes in need of exploration. —Patric Fallon Beach House: ""Zebra""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-wfb25WmV4,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/87/beachteendream.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beach_House-Zebra.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,18,Kanye West,"""Monster"" [ft. Justin Vernon, Rick Ross, Jay-Z, and Nicki Minaj]",GOOD / Island Def Jam,"More than any song on Kanye West's stuffed, eventful My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, ""Monster"" demonstrated the album's ""Master of Ceremonies"" approach—bring everyone under one crowded roof and corral them somehow, finding something important for each of them to do. ""Monster"" was Kanye's trickiest balancing act, the one that brought the world the wonderful, hallucinatory image of Bon Iver rolling joints with Rick Ross in a Hawaii studio. Ross, still in the process of molting his troubled early status, made the most of four lines, framing the song as a ""jungle"" and (literally) introducing the song's hook: ""Kanye West samples, here's one for example."" Kanye, rapping in a dead-eyed monotone, coined the catchphrase that defined the unapologetically ugly, venal, and abrasive character he was playing on MBDTF--""Hannh?"" Jay-Z, using one of the least flattering vocal tones in his career, pronounced ""love"" as ""LAAAHF"" and still managed to cut deeply, flashing a vein of real bitterness towards estranged former colleagues who he had ""made millionaires."" Bon Iver showed the world he could snarl. But years later, the only real reason to be singling out ""Monster"", a great song from a uniformly great album, is Nicki Minaj. If Kanye was the album's Master of Ceremonies, then Minaj was the lion, the lion tamer, the sword juggler, and the entire clown car at once. Every voice she'd ever experimented with in the previous three years flashed past you in an Autobahn blur, and every line became a standard. She began by eating our brains. By the time she screamed ""ROAAAR"" at the end, an eternity later, she had a new career. The conversations that led to the current moment, where she feels poised to claim Best Rapper Alive status from most anyone who cares to debate such things, began here. —Jayson Greene Kanye West: ""Monster""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3af4Gz4Daw,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/87/monster.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kanye_West-Monster_ft_Justin_Vernon_Rick_Ross_Jay-Z_and_Nicki_Minaj.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,17,LCD Soundsystem,"""Dance Yrself Clean""",Virgin / Parlophone / DFA,"In retrospect, “Dance Yrself Clean” was the ticking clock counting down LCD Soundsystem’s final moments as a band. But it was also a grand, benevolent gesture of resolve: “We should try a little harder/ In the tedious march of the few,” James Murphy groans at the song's chugging conclusion. As has now been immortalized in the documentary Shut Up and Play the Hits, when LCD went out, they tried pretty damn hard to go out on a high note. “Dance Yrself Clean” stands out for incorporating all the muscular onslaughts of organized noise that made them a thrilling live band—Murphy’s fervent bleats, punkish cymbal-crashing, aggressive but pristine synthesizers—in fits of passion that acknowledge the fleeting nature of the whole fame-and-success thing. When, halfway through the song, Murphy’s world-weary muttering vaults up into a heart-thumping assault (“Don’t you want me to wake up?”), it’s a reminder, potent even three years after their departure, to feel something before you miss it. —Abby Garnett LCD Soundsystem: ""Dance Yrself Clean""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoA0cTC228M,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/87/lcd.jpg,/dataset/artwork/LCD_Soundsystem-Dance_Yrself_Clean.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,16,Todd Terje,"""Inspector Norse""",Smalltown Supersound / Olsen,"A few words and concepts that have been used to describe “Inspector Norse”: fireworks, Space Invaders, human kindness, a flute of champagne, riding around in KITT from ""Knight Rider"", an upscale intergalactic disco party, vaporized gold, the sound of ketamine for breakfast, a moonlit beach, the mothership landing as well as an alien abduction, an eargasm and/or an orgasm. Or, as one YouTube commenter wished: “I want to sniff this song up my nose.” No matter the metaphor, Todd Terje’s 2012 earworm is that rare track that can be all things for all dancers, part nu-disco, part Italo, part synth-funk, part house, a little bit techno. “Inspector Norse” has worked its magic poolside and festival-wide. It both served as the climax of his dizzying debut It’s Album Time and was the opening track for It’s the Arps, his ode to a seemingly outdated synthesizer. The ARP 2600 has done everything from power “Blue Monday” to intensify the funk of “Frankenstein”. It’s added cosmic dust to sleazy disco and provided the voice of R2-D2, but Terje’s genius was to make that old keyboard sound wholly resonant in the present moment. And “Inspector Norse” does exactly that, being vintage yet futuristic, cheesy and transportive all at once. It’s catchy pop of the highest caliber (coming from a guy who made a great dance remix out of “Pop Muzik”): as joyous as “Happy”, as unstoppable as “We Can’t Stop”, as intoxicating as “Drunk in Love”. Despite there being not a word uttered across its ecstasy-enhancing six minutes, “Inspector Norse” –all whiz-banging, constantly peaking, face-tingling, with that transcendent key change at the halfway point of it—is a great pop song. —Andy Beta",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/toddterje/todd-terje-inspector-norse | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYH8DsU2WCk,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/87/toddterje.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Todd_Terje-Inspector_Norse.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,15,Nicki Minaj,"""Super Bass"" [ft. Ester Dean]",Cash Money,"Months before it was released as a single, this little-known bonus track from Nicki Minaj’s debut album was the unexpected beneficiary of a gushing fan letter and impromptu karaoke performance from Taylor Swift live on Nashville radio. That this isolated event could snowball into “Super Bass” becoming a world-striding pop behemoth is indicative of how thoroughly social-media virality has overtaken pop culture this past half-decade, but it was a snowball made possible by the all-embracing charms of the song itself. Its cackling come-ons delivered with the excited sincerity of a first crush, “Super Bass” allows—demands—pop music’s reigning signature bad-girl and good-girl archetypes to find common cause in its love-struck exuberance. Certainly, “Super Bass” reveals Minaj at her oddball but endearing best, simultaneously gratuitous and gregarious as she extols the virtues of a dude who’s “slicker than the guy with the thing on his eye” and threatens to slap any competition treading on her territory (not that she sounds pissed; she would, of course, do the same in their shoes). Where Nicki’s prior stabs at pop crossover predictably toned down her wackiness and wordplay, here everything pulls in the same direction, the irrepressible bubbliness of the tongue-twisting rhymes and the marvelous over-intonation—“I mean…SIGH…sickenin’ eyes”—catalyzing rather than the detracting from its (in retrospect, blindingly obvious) crossover appeal. By the same token, with its glittering electronic façade and childlike, mnemonic vocal hook, “Super Bass” is 2010s pop par excellence—not merely a superior example of hip-hop’s flirtation with EDM, but almost a redemption of the entire concept. Whilst the song would be ignorable without Nicki’s hyperactive verses, it would also be only half as good without the communal release of its singalong chorus, Ester Dean emoting like her face is scrunched up with exhilaration. Having long since graduated from meme to cliché, the status of “Super Bass” as a loveable karaoke standard draws equally from the impossibly tangled intertwining of these threads, the knots tied as firmly as on Eminem’s “Stan” or Kanye’s “Gold Digger”, and more prettily than on either. —Tim Finney Nicki Minaj: ""Super Bass"" [ft. Ester Dean]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSSwUzdk8rU,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/87/pink-friday-cover.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nicki_Minaj-Super_Bass_ft_Ester_Dean.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,14,Sky Ferreira,"""Everything Is Embarrassing""",EMI,"""Everything Is Embarrassing"" is ostensibly a done-with-your-shit kiss-off, and it’s a glorious one, but it's the kind written by someone who needs weeks upon weeks of rehearsal in front of their bedroom mirror before they gather enough courage to actually deliver it. In other words, it's also a triumphant wallflower anthem. It even sounds like it could be playing out entirely in Sky Ferreira's head, the result of being too scared to confront the lout who isn't holding up their end of the bargain. In one of the best uses of delayed gratification so far this decade, Ferreira doesn't even utter the track's titular phrase until nearly two-thirds of the way through. (By contrast, in Dev Hynes' demo for Ferreira, he arrives there before a minute has elapsed.) When she finally does, it carries a finality that the rest of the track does its best to avoid. There's a serenity in Ferreira's voice that reveals she'll likely emerge on the other side just fine. And there’s a generosity, too—after all, the first words that are uttered on the song are ""I know you're trying,"" even if the way Ferreira's vocals are pitched down suggests that there's no comfort to be found in this knowledge. There's the catch: She might be ready to move on, but she's still feeling a million conflicting emotions, and few songs capture that internal strife as honestly and effortlessly as ""Everything Is Embarrassing"" does. —Renato Pagnani Sky Ferreira: ""Everything Is Embarrassing""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEamE0MYPkg,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/14138/homepage_large.c93e7b3e.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sky_Ferreira-Everything_Is_Embarrassing.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,13,Usher,"""Climax""",RCA,"When “Climax” dropped in early 2012, it almost became a hit out of sheer relief. Usher had sounded uncomfortable in his own music for years, having been taken out of the bedroom into Max Martin and will.i.am’s Procrustean bed of beats, and several years’ worth of pop-R&B nobodies were still being floated as “the next Usher.” Diplo hadn’t yet become the guy it’d become a cliché for artists to suddenly collaborate with; Ariel Rechtshaid was mostly unknown. His field of peers, too, looked a lot different: Miguel was the hook singer on Wale’s risible then-hit “Lotus Flower Bomb”; Frank Ocean and the Weeknd were two guys people still thought were doing remotely the same thing; “PBR&B” was a term people used unironically and often. All these contributed to “Climax”’s praise—but, crucially, not its overpraise. It’s no outlier; as an autopsy of a relationship, “Climax” is as unflinching as anything on Confessions, and on the disjointed but underrated Looking 4 Myself it was neither the most searing nor most forward-thinking track. (The former would probably be the album’s Rico Love vehicles; the latter would be “I Care 4 U” and “Twisted,” which anticipated Timbo 2013 and Disco 2014 while no one paid attention.) The genius of a “Climax” is that it’s a big ol’ lie: there isn’t a climax, at least not where you’d expect it. The chorus is less like a hook than a rondo: Usher circling back to a conclusion, over and over, as if he might Groundhog Day himself back into love. And while “Climax” does attempt to build up to one, Usher red-hot and pleading and singing like he hadn’t gotten the chance to in years, it ends with a flaccid crumple, right back to going nowhere fast; the real climax was earlier, about two minutes in, and no one noticed. As a metaphor for a relationship it’s brutal; as a vocal showcase, it still mostly works; as a songwriting trick, it’s as devastating two and a half years on. The “Climax” collaboration was lightning that couldn’t strike twice—Usher and Diplo’s other pairing, Looking 4 Myself bonus track “2nd Round,” all but acknowledged this—but nor did it need to. Diplo, who needed “Climax” far less than Usher did, went off to do his own thing. Usher got not only his first great urban hit in years but also a shot of creative inspiration; this year, “Good Kisser” proved he could replicate similar results with core R&B guys (Pop & Oak, mostly). Most of all, Usher sounded iconic again. People had forgotten it could happen. —Katherine St. Asaph Usher: ""Climax""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNTyfVh3nmU,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/87/usher-climax.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Usher-Climax.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,12,Beyoncé,"""Countdown""",Columbia,"""Countdown"" may not have unseated ""Single Ladies"" as the definitive Beyoncé hit, but it's the song that, more than any other, shows off what she can do. It takes for granted that she is the biggest pop star in the world at its moment—that everyone knows who she is, and who her longtime black-diamond-rockin' boof is, and that she's pregnant with a three, and that she has of course inherited the treasures of every previous generation of pop royalty. She sounds like she's having more fun than any other royal has ever had, too. When she sings ""there's ups and downs in this low-oo-uv,"" there's no suggestion that downs are actually within the realm of possibility. ""Countdown"" is a perfect Twitter feed of a song, skipping to a new tone and a new hook every couple of seconds. (Here are the steel drums, here are the ""Crazy in Love"" horns, here's a dancehall cadence, here's a hashtag-rap couplet...) Beyoncé doesn't have to do more than namedrop Houston Rockets and the ladies she's instructing and Roberta Flack-via-Lauryn Hill's ""Killing Me Softly"" to stake out her territory; it saves her time to go on at length about how happy she is about that boof of hers. And, naturally, ""Countdown"" shines its beams through the unsurpassed carat count of Queen Bey's voice. As well-loved a song as it is, I have never heard it attempted at karaoke; if you're capable of starting a performance cold with the 17-note melismatic cartwheel that opens it, your name probably already starts with a B and ends with a Yoncé. —Douglas Wolk Beyoncé: ""Countdown""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XY3AvVgDns,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/87/countdown.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beyonc-Countdown.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,11,Tame Impala,"""Feels Like We Only Go Backwards""",Modular,"On paper, “Feels Like We Only Go Backwards” reads like an especially cheeky title coming from a band whose retro-gazing worship of classic-rock icons like the Beatles and Pink Floyd seemingly knows no bounds. But from Kevin Parker’s pained opening titular incantation, it’s immediately clear that the song is less about nostalgia than stagnation. The bruised emotional center of Tame Impala’s immaculate sophomore release, Lonerism, “Feels Like We Only Go Backwards” presents psychedelia-as-paralysis, with each cycle through that crestfallen chorus intensifying the queasy, helpless feel of being trapped in a relationship that’s going nowhere. And through that, the scourge of psychedelia in the modern age is revealed: that is, it’s awfully hard to turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream when your life is going down the toilet. —Stuart Berman",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/tame-impala/feels-like-we-only-go,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/14404/homepage_large.bc0d9fbb.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tame_Impala-Feels_Like_We_Only_Go_Backwards.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,10,Drake,"""Hold On We're Going Home""",Cash Money,"""About to go Thriller, Mike Jackson."" That was Drake way back in 2010 on ""Over"", the first single from his first album, Thank Me Later. Over the next few years, Aubrey ""Drake"" Graham's presence in pop music really did start to reach at least a straitened, post-YouTube level of Thriller-like inescapability. His appearances on not only singles from his own subsequent albums, 2011's Take Care and 2013's Nothing Was the Same, but also hits for Rihanna, DJ Khaled, T.I., Lil Wayne, Waka Flocka Flame, A$AP Rocky, Meek Mill, YG, and Romeo Santos — the list goes on — gave an air of prescience to Wayne's rapped 2009 boast, ""And we gon' be alright if we put Drake on every hook."" When Drake went his most musically Michael Jackson-like, he didn't go about it the usual way. He didn't quote from ""Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'"" (itself quoting Manu Dibango's ""Soul Makossa""), like Rihanna's 2007 smash ""Don't Stop the Music"". He didn't obviously point toward a specific song or songs, the way Daft Punk did with Chic's greatest hits on ""Get Lucky"", or Robin Thicke did with Marvin Gaye's ""Got to Give It Up"" on ""Blurred Lines"", to name two other zeitgeist-dominating 2013 tracks. And you can maybe see that in how Drake's song did on the charts: No. 34 for the year, right between Selena Gomez and Maroon 5. ""Billie Jean"" was not even his passing acquaintance. But ""Hold On, We're Going Home"" is patient. It's subtle. It's a song with all singing and no overt Auto-Tune effects by a guy who despite some crooning has always supposedly been a rapper (well, at least since he stopped being a child actor)—and for as long as it's on, that's not even a big deal. There are no words you'd be embarrassed to play in front of your mother; also NBD. Sure, you can dance to it at weddings, but at 100 beats per minute, it's more ""Human Nature"" than ""Beat It"". It's Drake, in-house producers Nineteen85 and Noah ""40"" Shebib, and enigmatic guests Majid Jordan and that Canadian maple-syrup glide and those high-pitched ""gooooin' home"" backing vocals. It's—still—hot love and emotion, endlessly. Drake once said he makes his music strictly for driving at night. This is the ultimate of that. We're going home, and we haven't arrived yet. Hold on. —Marc Hogan",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/tracks/15834/homepage_large.d2c6eb19.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Drake-Hold_On_Were_Going_Home.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,9,Deerhunter,"""Helicopter""",4AD,"Is this heaven or hell? It’s a pertinent question throughout Deerhunter’s fifth album, Halcyon Digest, but perhaps at no other point more than “Helicopter.” In the lyrics, Bradford Cox portrays the final throes of an ugly death lurch. The devil has arrived, the drugs are no longer working, and helicopters are circling like buzzards. “No one cares for me,” Cox sings. “I have minimal needs/ And now they are through with me.” Musically, however, “Helicopter” is all harps and gently lobbed beats, an aural invocation of a stroll through the clouds. It’s a beautiful song about being resigned to a grim fate. —Steven Hyden",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/11972/homepage_large.6a0c556a.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Deerhunter-Helicopter.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,8,Frank Ocean,"""Pyramids""",Def Jam,"Here’s an album’s worth of ideas in just under 10 minutes, during which you will believe, calmly and absolutely, in a universe of pharaohs, pimps, cheetahs, and John Mayer guitar solos. “Pyramids” is that ruby-rare combination of ambitious and unpretentious, the stuff that has you toying with the word “classic” on first listen. And for a song about what we take from each other (above all else, from black women), it’s nothing if not empathetic—has there been a more nuanced portrayal of sex work in pop music? Time moves at the sweaty, inscrutable pace of an almost-believable fever dream, and Ocean’s fine-tuned surreality comes with a gently disorienting sort of synesthesia—a damp huff of a fog machine, the milky perfume of lukewarm bath water. Around that intoxicating midsection where everything starts to melt, possibly including the talkbox, I close my eyes and recurringly see The Dream, a painstakingly fantastical painting of a jungle by Henri Rousseau (a man who’d never once left France): the glossy ferns and glinting lion eyes, a flash of a bird’s tail, and the curves of an unabashed reclining nude. For now, let’s call her Cleopatra. —Meaghan Garvey",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/13733/homepage_large.1ed54799.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Frank_Ocean-Pyramids.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,7,Azealia Banks,"""212"" [ft. Lazy Jay]",self-released,"""They'll forget your name soon/ And won't nobody be to blame but yourself,"" Azealia Banks sings on 2011's viral hit ""212"". In a song packed with visceral taunts and low blows, this line felt like a throwaway, but it turned out to be prophetic—even Banks said it was directed at herself and not, as everyone had assumed, Nicki Minaj. But so what if ""212"" becomes the only Azealia Banks song we ever remember? It sounds as fresh and audacious now as it did three years ago. Over Lazy Jay's ""Float My Boat"", Banks swings slings and arrows, knots of slang delivered by multiple characters. And while “cunt” will still shock listeners in three, six, or nine years, it's Banks’ assonant, monosyllabic lyrics that give ""212"" delicious staying-power. ""You're playing with your butter like your boo won’t true/ Cock the gun, too"" doesn’t sound “of the moment”—it sounds like any moment from 2011 on. If the quick wordplay and multiple voices feel like Nicki to you, remember that the year's only other runaway hit by a female rapper was Minaj's ""Super Bass"", which was awfully soft compared to Banks' promise to ruin cunts everywhere. She hasn't given rappers much to worry about since ""212"" (except seeing her name in their Twitter mentions), but if this masterpiece of shit-talk encouraged at least one rapper to work less Pink and more blue, then that's worth remembering. —Jessica Suarez Azealia Banks: ""212"" [ft. Lazy Jay]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3Jv9fNPjgk,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/87/212.png,/dataset/artwork/Azealia_Banks-212_ft_Lazy_Jay.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,6,Robyn,"""Dancing on My Own""",Konichiwa / Cherrytree / Interscope,"From Gloria Gaynor to Alanis Morissette to Adele, pop music is full of scorned women either falling apart or raging redemptively at the sight of an ex. But rarely are they doing both at the same time, all while shimmying under the disco ball. Enter Robyn’s “Dancing on My Own”, the Body Talk Pt. 1 lead single that’s become the Swedish dance-pop queen’s banner anthem. “Does she love you better than I can?” recalls Morissette’s “Would she go down on you in a theater?” line from “You Oughta Know”, while the chorus hints at the resolve of Gaynor’s “I Will Survive”— but instead of embracing sisterhood, Robyn finds solace in a solo mission. The voyeurism of Adele’s “Someone Like You” factors into Robyn’s curiosity about the other woman—a feeling so overwhelming that she convinces herself it will provide closure, when it actually makes her feel worse. And yet, despite the cattiness, isolation, and desperation, Robyn walks out the other side of “Dancing on My Own” a stronger woman. Balancing the pain of ugly truths with the reality that you’ll find a way to move past them is an incredible artistic feat that has as much to do with the song’s merciless onslaught of synths as it does Robyn’s lyrics. Nothing sounds quite like “Dancing on My Own”: Electronic clicking and ticking are layered atop one another at various tempos, ultimately creating the clipped sonic equivalent of a strobe light. An instant confidence boost takes hold as soon as the beat kicks in, even as Robyn falls apart—or perhaps, in part, because of it. We’ve all been there in some way, whether it’s as the jilted ex giving in to Facebook-stalking urges or even in the role of “always the best friend, never the girlfriend.” The ubiquitous presence of “Dancing on My Own” in pop culture over the past four years—in TV shows like “Girls” and on barroom DJs’ playlists—is a real-talk reminder of life’s low points, and the stunning celebration of overcoming them. —Jillian Mapes",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/robyn/dancing-on-my-own | Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPcyTyilmYY,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/11884/homepage_large.102a4cca.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Robyn-Dancing_on_My_Own.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,5,Kendrick Lamar,"""Bitch, Don't Kill My Vibe""",Interscope / Top Dawg,"Have you and your significant other had “the talk” about “Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe”? You might find out the hard way that the title isn’t going to be the sticking point. It’s the words right before it: “sometimes I need to be alone.” Now, every healthy relationship requires each partner to carve out some space for self-care, that isn’t too much to ask. And because Kendrick Lamar has something of a messiah complex, he fills the verses with loopy conscious rap moralizing about the radio and materialism and how those can obscure the vision of your third eye into your true soul. Or something like that. But then the chorus abruptly asks for a more impure kind of purity, one that exists outside the spiritual realm—sometimes, when you get your drinks and your music just right, the resultant vibe is a power so incredible and fleeting, you want to keep it all to yourself. In fact, another person can only ruin it. Are you really going to tell a loved one how much you relate to that? It’s bad enough to get a quick check with all disrespect saying there are times where you’ll be #4 at best behind “my drink,” “my music” and “my vibe.” How about being told that you’re such a distant #4 that any attempt at protest can only be met with a response of “bitch, don’t kill my vibe”? And Kendrick Lamar is much better with words than you, so what chance do the rest of us have? Well, to me, what’s amazing is how the song that most successfully presents Kendrick Lamar in the way he sees himself—the foremost vessel for the incomparable power of hip-hop—is the one where you really don’t have to pay attention to his rapping. Let’s not forget that the only person who believes in Kendrick Lamar as much as himself is pretty much a billionaire and you could hear Sounwave’s blinding, gilded production here as Dr. Dre outsourcing a tribute to an empire built on expensive headphones. This track is AT&T Stadium, Virgin America, “YOU GET A CAR...AND YOU GET A CAR!”, where we’re all the beneficiaries of an extremely rich person’s idea of altruism, to spare no expense in a show of faith to the customer. And that really gets the point across when you share “Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe” with your partner—“me time” is this languid, this indulgent and this luxurious. When “sometimes I need to be alone” is expressed that way, those are things anyone can understand. —Ian Cohen Kendrick Lamar: ""Bitch, Don't Kill My Vibe""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF8aaTu2kg0,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/87/kendrick.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kendrick_Lamar-Bitch_Dont_Kill_My_Vibe.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,4,M83,"""Midnight City""",Mute,"In the 1980s, every teensploitation flick from Times Square to Night of the Comet to Ferris Bueller's Day Off treated the city as some sort of divine space: a coming-of-age backdrop where misfit kids could congregate with others like themselves, discover new desires and freedoms, and ultimately escape suburban drudgery both pre- and post-apocalyptic. That idea drives this towering single from M83’s intensely cinematic and loosely narrative 2011 album, Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming, which seems to locate its truest inspiration in these old flicks and their heart-on-sleeve naivety. (In fact, the covers for both the album and this single allude subtly to that period with what may be a nod to Juan Piquer Simon’s ’83 b-movie Los Nuevos Terrestriales, better known to MSTies as Pod People). “Midnight City” is the soundtrack for an imaginary film about driving through an urban canyon at night: “The city is my church,” Anthony Gonzalez sings. “It wraps me in its sparkling twilight.” M83’s nostalgia is personal and very particular, but the music makes it sound universal: The rhythm section manages to locate a groove in an XXL pocket, and the synths bark and whir to craft a fanfare that towers like a skyscraper. Upon the album’s release, much was made of Gonzalez’s three-year hiatus, his quote about Hurry Up being “very very very epic,” and even his disclosure of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness as his double-album blueprint. Just two years later, those aspects of the album have largely faded away, leaving the music sounding freshly grandiose. “Midnight City” in particular has lost none of its size and sparkle, especially when that saxophone enters on the outro. At that point it’s clear the song is nowhere near as overwhelming as the teenage emotions Gonzalez is trying to convey. —Stephen M. Deusner",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/12263/homepage_large.ecc1dddf.jpg,/dataset/artwork/M83-Midnight_City.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,3,Kanye West,"""Runaway"" [ft. Pusha T]",GOOD / Island Def Jam,"The salvation of Kanye started small as a pinhole spotlight shining on a single piano key. Wearing a blood-red blazer and novelty-sized Horus pendant at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards, Kanye clinks the opening note like a silver knife on crystal glass before a toast, steadily, at a resting heart rate of 43 beats per minute. Then the Rick James sample descends. Like only the best Kanye samples, it’s weighted from time, warped and ironic. James’ disembodied voice, once an Icarian, cocaine-fueled yawp of wonder is now the ghost of the ego. It stereo-pans from one channel to the other, circling the track like a wolf. “Look at ya! Look at ya!” It’s a warning that should Kanye not check himself, only a mortal's death awaits. It’s imperative that he save himself from himself, and he looks to no one but Kanye for salvation. Thus began Kanye’s own self-sustaining resurrection ecosystem. Every prophet has to have his “Runaway” moment, though—an appeal to the masses. It would become Kanye’s first sermon in a series of many sermons that he would deliver following the release of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy—on radio, on stage, on camera, anywhere. It’s not so much a mea culpa, it’s a pardon. He washes the feet of anyone who’s done some caddish behavior; anyone who’s been addicted to a hoodrat or sent a dick pic or some such. Of course, the toasts to douchebags, assholes, scumbags, and jerkoffs are placeholders for Kanye, Kanye, Kanye, and Kanye. A song about cleansing the ego that becomes so solipsistic is part and parcel what makes “Runaway” such a emblematic, genius pop artifact. And Kanye knew it, too. He elevated “Runaway” to the most lavish level possible. He commissioned an original Condo artwork for the single, depicting a placid-looking ballerina dressed in a black tutu, just like the ones that danced for Kanye in the high-concept, 34-minute film that accompanied the song. This was, he wanted to be certain, art. In his eyes, if everyone could see “Runaway” inside a gilded frame among classic art signifiers, then, yes, you could believe the final three minutes of the song were the baptism and the martyrdom all in one. Through his vocoder, emoting and bleating and bleeding, you could finally believe he was aware of his faults, a regular man, just like you or me. You would remember this myth when a few years later he returned to earth and proclaimed: “I am a god.” Who doesn’t want a little scumbag in their savior? —Jeremy D. Larson Kanye West: ""Runaway"" [ft. Pusha T]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jg5wkZ-dJXA,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/87/runaway.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kanye_West-Runaway_ft_Pusha_T.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,2,Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti,"""Round and Round""",4AD,"“Round and Round” is not just the song that catapulted Ariel Pink from shut-in CD-R savant to festival-level phenom (however reluctantly)—its history offers the clearest insight into the method behind his madness. The song’s original source is obscure even by Pink’s outsider standards: It first surfaced as a severely decayed demo—known as “Frontman/Hold On (I’m Calling)”—in 2009, when fans who ordered merchandise from Pink’s site were rewarded with a customized compilation disc of rarities from his bottomless reserve of home recordings. (Like so many of Pink’s early efforts, its precise date of origin is unknown.) In this primitive, almost inaudible form, the song amounts to just its chorus, which bookends a passage of wandering guitar-noodling before abruptly cutting out, like some AM golden-oldies station fading out of reception during a lonely overnight interstate drive. But the song’s eventual fate belies the popular perception of Pink as the proudly impulsive imperfectionist. Sure, he may have shat out enough songs in the early 2000s to top off a landfill, but for his 2010 4AD debut, Before Today—his first album to be recorded in a proper studio—he savvily salvaged and reshaped some of his most durable scraps, transforming them from half-formed remembrances of great songs into actual great songs. The throwaway hook of “Frontman/Hold On (I’m Calling)” is promoted to the feature attraction of “Round and Round,” but Pink shrewdly keeps it close to its chest like a seasoned card shark, waiting for just the right moment to drop it. Where his pre-4AD albums took the form of randomized compilations, “Round and Round” unfolds like a strategically choreographed parade of Pink’s various whims, rolling out sardonic Stevie Wonder quotes, icy new-waved funk, ringing rotary telephones, and play-by-play meta-commentary before that titanic chorus appears out of nowhere two minutes in and sends the song skyrocketing to the top of the 1980 Billboard AC chart. Hypnotic and startling in equal measure, “Round and Round” remains the gold-standard exemplar of Pink’s peculiar genius: his best songs bear the instant familiarity of something you swear you’ve heard before, but also the dislocating confusion of never being able to place the source. —Stuart Berman",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WpnMVwng0g,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/tracks/11846/homepage_large.dd4bd430.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ariel_Pinks_Haunted_Graffiti-Round_and_Round.jpg
The 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far (2010-2014) | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9466-the-top-200-tracks-of-2010-2014/,2010-2014,range,song,1,Grimes,"""Oblivion""",4AD / Arbutus,"If “Oblivion” says anything about our collective psyche at the midway point of a decade already defined by seismic, globe-altering revolutions, it’s that the personal will always be political. The song recounts a specific sexual assault (“One of the most shattering experiences of my life,” Grimes, who was born in Vancouver as Claire Boucher, told SPIN in 2012) by describing the psychic fallout: “And never walk about after dark/ It’s my point of view/ Because someone could break your neck/ Coming up behind you always coming and you’d never have a clue,” she lisps in her high, pinched voice. It’s a dazzling, paralyzing performance, in part because Boucher sounds almost playful, and in part because the skronking behind her—the song’s springy, propulsive synth line was one of 2012’s most unforgettable—indicates something other than victimization. “See you on a dark night,” Boucher repeats. The song’s video, directed by Emily Kai Bock, features a tiny, pink-haired Grimes lip-syncing “Oblivion” at a McGill football game (and later at a motorcross rally), wearing skeleton gloves and clutching a plastic boom box. There aren’t many women hanging in the stands besides Boucher; one, darting up behind her, swats at the hood of Boucher’s sweatshirt, a vaguely combative gesture that somehow seems more goofy than aggressive. On the field, a squad of taut-bellied cheerleaders, their hair pulled back with candy-colored bows, soar forth and land. Grimes, mouthing the lyrics to “Oblivion,” dances the way people dance when no one is looking: a desexualized, mostly arrhythmic twitching that does not seem to be for the benefit of anyone else at all. The particular kind of masculinity that gets amplified by organized sporting events—the same feral, drooling aggression Bill Buford made infamous in Among the Thugs, his harrowing account of hooliganism among English soccer fans—would be an easy target for a feminist with a video camera, but Grimes is received warmly by the crowd. In that sense, it is a triumph—of perseverance, if not humanity—and it feels consistent with her mission. The subversion of expectation is a part of Grimes’s founding aesthetic, and she frequently marries more defiant genres like noise and punk with propulsive pop production, outfitting her dissent in studio glimmer.  The melody can be so sweet as to feel bubblegum, and when Boucher sings a bit like “I will wait forever”–a line that always jumps out–“Oblivion” starts to seem like a very different kind of lament. But what “Oblivion” ultimately offers is victory. It’s the sound of one woman turning personal devastation into not just a career-making single, but a lasting anthem of transformation.  —Amanda Petrusich",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtH68PJIQLE,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/87/grimes.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Grimes-Oblivion.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,200,Jay Reatard,Blood Visions,In the Red,"A true sleeper phenomenon, Jay Reatard’s breakout record is still creeping up on critics and fans well after its release. Blood Visions is a crossover in the best sense of the term, stealing the raucous energy and attitude of punk, the melodies of power pop, and the rough ingenuity of bedroom recording. Reatard (née Jay Lindsey) uses everything at his disposal to make symphonies of the simplest parts: an impassioned yelp, an acoustic guitar, flying-V riffs, bitter (and occasionally violent) lyrics. All it took was a little bit of actual singing and mixing some melody in with the bile for him to stand up and be counted; but like the album’s cover, he’ll be covered in blood during the counting. –Jason Crock Listen: Jay Reatard: “My Shadow”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4A-sBa5iS4,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/24726/homepage_large.d6f50d79.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jay_Reatard-Blood_Visions.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,199,Deerhoof,Apple O’’,5RC,"“The modern-day composer refuses to die.” So said your parents’ very own modern-day composer Frank Zappa (quoting Varèse), and though countless haters will try to convince you otherwise, originality is always possible. Deerhoof are a case in point: the Bay Area quartet makes music that’s punk, but pop; noisy but pretty; thoroughly composed, but explosively performed. Apple O’ caught them at the tipping point between their noisier early days and the comparatively delicate art-pop of all of their records since. Like many of the best bands of the decade (Animal Collective, LCD Soundsystem, the Knife), Deerhoof makes immediately identifiable music with seemingly scores of imitators—yet, nobody else has managed to produce anything quite like “Sealed With a Kiss,” or the Ravel-esque “The Forbidden Fruits.” If musical hybrids fell like low-hanging fruit in the ’00s, Apple O’ was a ripe, early masterpiece. –Dominique Leone Listen: Deerhoof: “Panda Panda Panda”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfCD8S-EGbg,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/2233/homepage_large.4f025f93.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Deerhoof-Apple_O.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,198,Boris,Akuma No Uta,Southern Lord,"Listen to any random track from Akuma No Uta, and many influences pop to mind—Earth, Motörhead, Stooges, Blue Öyster Cult, Fushitsusha. But listen to the entire album in one long, rapturous sitting, and it’s hard to imagine it being made by anyone but Boris. Charging, smoke-filled, and raw, it’s the tonal opposite of Nick Drake, whose Bryter Layter album cover is recreated on the front. But just as Drake was devoted to gentle sounds and downbeat moods, Boris are obsessively committed to fuzzy riffs and heavy rhythms, whether deployed in long, shivering drones or fiery, chugging blasts. The album’s centerpiece, the swaying 12-minute jam “Naki Kyoku,” actually begins in a reflective mood not far from Drake’s melancholia. But, as on the rest of Akuma No Uta, Boris takes that inspiration and burns it away, leaving a trail of smoke rings that clearly spell the band’s name. –Marc Masters Listen: Boris: “Naki Kyoku”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KE3BbTsKtsk,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/1179/homepage_large.a0e2198c.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Boris-Akuma_No_Uta.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,197,Yeasayer,All Hour Cymbals,We Are Free,"With the kind of crackling analog warmth a lot of listeners wish they got from Animal Collective, Yeasayer’s debut record established a demilitarized zone between some formerly opposite impulses: paranoid post-punk yelps and psychedelic, harmonized chants, noodly guitar riffs and ambient keyboard washes, electronic and acoustic instruments working in harmony. The end result is impossible to categorize, which in modern times of rampant pigeonholing might just be one of the best compliments you could give. –Rob Mitchum Listen: Yeasayer: “Sunrise”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwUctgGIZJQ,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/10605/homepage_large.fa63b9ec.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Yeasayer-All_Hour_Cymbals.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,196,William Basinski,The Disintegration Loops I-IV,2062,"The four-volume set The Disintegration Loops came with an unusually compelling backstory: veteran multimedia artist William Basinski, attempting to digitize tape loops he’d made years ago, found the magnetic material in an advanced state of decay, which caused bits of music to disappear with each pass over the tape heads. So the sounds, hypnotic and magnificently textured in their own right, were literally falling apart and vanishing into the air as the pieces progressed, resulting in music that feels heavy with sadness and loss even as it feels spectral and weightless. Adding another layer of poignancy, the distressed tapes were transferred to digital around the time of September 11, and the Brooklyn-based Basinski created a DVD version of the project, setting the crumbling music to a static video he shot of smoldering Lower Manhattan, an image also used for the CD covers. Born of an unlikely convergence of time, place, and circumstance, The Disintegration Loops has lost none of its overwhelming beauty in the intervening years. –Mark Richardson Listen: William Basinski: “Dlp 1.1”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLsKkjmDeXM,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/573/homepage_large.5e48b7de.jpg,/dataset/artwork/William_Basinski-The_Disintegration_Loops_I-IV.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,195,Bonnie “Prince” Billy,The Letting Go,Palace / Drag City,"The solemn strings that open “Love Comes to Me”—the first track on The Letting Go—indirectly echo the sumptuous opening of Schubert’s String Quintet in C Major, one of the most ethereal pieces of music ever written. Arranged by Nico Muhly, who is quickly becoming indie rock’s unofficial house composer, they signal the album’s feeling of grave finality, implied by the title and reinforced everywhere on the album, from the contented sigh of Will Oldham’s singing to the far-away backing vocals of Dawn McCarthy, who drifts in and out of the album seemingly at her own will. Drained of tension, suffused with wisdom and bottomless sadness, and graced by weary resignation, The Letting Go feels like the calm certainty of someone who has glimpsed the beyond. –Jayson Greene Listen: Bonnie “Prince” Billy: “Love Comes to Me”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-8bY1qYJtU,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/9255/homepage_large.16106211.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bonnie_Prince_Billy-The_Letting_Go.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,194,Pulp,We Love Life,Island,"After an awkward stage that lasted more than a decade, Pulp emerged in the 1990s as the oversexed life of the party. By the end of the decade, they were on the hellish taxi ride home. We Love Life picked up where This Is Hardcore left off, shaking off the hangover to face whatever comes next. Jarvis Cocker squints against the sunlight, going figuratively back underground on “Weeds” and literally underground to a river that flows beneath the city on “Wickerman.” His road to happiness is littered with death, sadness, heartbreak, and confusion, but there’s still room for a joke, and we get Pulp’s best on “Bad Cover Version.” The rest of the group and producer Scott Walker create a sumptuous atmosphere for Cocker’s journey toward a new life. He finally arrives there on the majestic closer, “Sunrise,” a rousing farewell for one of the most original bands of the last 30 years. –Joe Tangari Listen: Pulp: “Bad Cover Version”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xR5xGHPUEew,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/6412/homepage_large.b01b3e7f.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Pulp-We_Love_Life.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,193,Devendra Banhart,Rejoicing in the Hands,Young God,"If New Weird America had actually existed, “This Is the Way” would have been its national anthem. The credo opens Devendra Banhart’s first proper and only essential album and immediately delivers attitude and confidence, declaring Banhart’s prerogatives as an individual (beards, sharing, nostalgia, nature) and his aspirations for overcoming the mundane and mute. Sure, Banhart picks his tinny guitar gingerly and offers his plain words politely, but he’s just a shepherd delivering a proclamation wrapped in sheep’s clothing: “We’ve known/ We’ve had a choice/ We chose rejoice,” he closes, rejecting everything but the brambly, uncertain path ahead. The songs that follow are guileless and spirited, as equally dependent on wry winks (“This Beard Is for Siobhan”) as uncloaked sentiments (“Autumn’s Child”). Michael Gira’s spartan production and strong editing distill the power of Banhart’s vibrato and vision while giving the songs the space such oddball beauties deserve. Simple and elegant, Rejoicing remains the jewel of the nebulous moment it led. –Grayson Currin Listen: Devendra Banhart: “This Is the Way”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9t97Kj_MgM,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/544/homepage_large.608f4694.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Devendra_Banhart-Rejoicing_in_the_Hands.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,192,Art Brut,Bang Bang Rock & Roll,Fierce Panda,"The world won’t listen. Four years after Art Brut (went for) broke, way too many bands are still doing it wrong. Turning their blandness up to 11 and hoping they’ll blend in enough to be anthemic. Expertly borrowing the styles of their heroes—whether that’s the Velvet Underground, Gang of Four, or, hell, the Shaggs—but sorely lacking the spirit. What spirit? Any spirit. Or playing it cool behind the microphone, as if on the off chance someone might hallucinate they have charisma. Like The Modern Lovers for a generation weaned on The Blue Album, Art Brut’s hugely fun debut projected frontman Eddie Argos’ Pulp-like wit onto ironically serious songs about art, girls, and endearingly personal neuroses—I still don’t get all the Italian references. For those about to form a band, they salute you. –Marc Hogan Listen: Art Brut: “Formed a Band”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qryAwfpHG8o,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/471/homepage_large.bd0d4946.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Art_Brut-Bang_Bang_Rock__Roll.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,191,Air,Talkie Walkie,Astralwerks,"Sometimes it pays to know who you are: Air have mined their little vein of electronic music so fastidiously over the last decade that they’re now the de facto gold standard of new-age Gallic pop. Despite that standing, their carefully manicured and occasionally over-polite music tends to be respected by critics rather than revered. This might explain why Talkie Walkie slipped by relatively unheralded; with its baroque arrangements, shivery arpeggios, hushed vocals, and meticulous attention to other micro-sized details, Talkie Walkie remains a quiet masterpiece. Like Beck’s Sea Change, another occasionally maligned Nigel Godrich production, this is an acquired taste that impresses in slow drips rather than showy bursts. As opening trifectas go, though, they don’t come much lovelier than “Venus,” “Cherry Blossom Girl,” and “Run.” –Mark Pytlik Listen: Air: “Venus”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqxTtrcWbIA,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/80/homepage_large.896497e3.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Air-Talkie_Walkie.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,190,Elliott Smith,Figure 8,Dreamworks,"Having completed the transition from acoustic bedroom folk to intricately orchestrated Beatlesque pop with 1998’s XO, Elliott Smith took a more understated approach with 2000’s Figure 8. Not quite as intimate as his earliest records and not quite brash and bombastic like its immediate predecessor, Figure 8 marks a subtle refinement of Smith’s songwriting skills. Figure 8 is notable for its confidence and its discipline—neither of which is a particularly flashy trait. But with this surer footing came deeper expeditions into the timeless gestural language of big-C Classic rock, making Figure 8 one of Smith’s most accessible and enjoyable records. –Matt LeMay Listen: Elliott Smith: “Son of Sam”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afeAUndotas,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/7154/homepage_large.81a8de9a.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Elliott_Smith-Figure_8.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,189,Jamie Lidell,Multiply,Warp,"Listen to Jamie Lidell’s earlier records—his aptly-titled solo debut Muddlin Gear or his Super_Collider work with Cristian Vogel—and you hear a playful yet restless Jack-of-all-trades trying to find his voice. Fast forward to 2005’s Multiply, and he’s found it: As Mark Pytlik notes in his Pitchfork write-up of the album, Multiply is most definitely reverential to its antecedents, and they’re often worn proudly on the sleeve of each track. Whenever Lidell makes a not-so-subtle gesture towards his R&B forefathers, he does so with a healthy amount of polite disrespect—Multiply is seasoned with enough electronic chicanery seamlessly integrated into the mix to remind folks that the record was in fact sharing discography space with equally individual talents like Aphex Twin and Squarepusher. And whether he’s vamping and squiggling like a young eager-to-impress Prince on “When I Come Back Around” or crooning like a heartbroken old soul on the album’s show-stopping closer “Game for Fools,” there’s no mistaking that Multiply is first and foremost a remarkable statement made by a remarkable artist. –David Raposa Listen: Jamie Lidell: “When I Come Back Around”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nW5KSR5PG9Q,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/4717/homepage_large.2d1b7f73.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jamie_Lidell-Multiply.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,188,M83,"Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts",Gooom,"Before he would construct dream-pop anthems out of John Hughes’ celluloid teen angst, Anthony Gonzalez (and then-bandmate Nicolas Fromageau) gave us this behemoth of sound. Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts is the biggest M83 record, leaving listeners—those poor flattened souls—pancaked in its wake. But for all of that weight, the distorted guitar-and-synth walls of run-to-your-grave epics “America” and “0078h” (which always seemed to me just as post-rock as they were shoegaze), there was real warmth to the album. The slower-paced, ethereal qualities of “In Church” and “On a White Lake, Near a Green Mountain” hinted at the romance of future M83 tracks. –Joe Colly Listen: M83: “Gone”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9SpmgFEvKw,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/4944/homepage_large.5cff20b4.jpg,/dataset/artwork/M83-Dead_Cities_Red_Seas__Lost_Ghosts.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,187,Stars of the Lid,The Tired Sounds of...,Kranky,"On The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid, Adam Wiltzie and Brian McBride create a deep pool of drone so heavy that its gravity pulls in sounds around it, swallowing them whole. The band was having a bit of a laugh at its own expense with the self-deprecating album title—this was their seventh record of impossibly thick, slow ambience, and here they expanded their palette of timbres and stretched out over two full CDs to let each piece breathe as deeply as possible. Intense patience is a hallmark of any great drone music; Wiltzie and McBride have patience in spades and bring a designer’s detailed touch to every sound they make to craft an ambient opus that’s as welcoming as it is esoteric. –Joe Tangari Listen: Stars of the Lid: Requiem for Dying Mothers Pt.1",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW4yX2IMWgQ,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/7359/homepage_large.e258a2b2.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Stars_of_the_Lid-The_Tired_Sounds_of.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,186,The Thermals,"The Body, The Blood, The Machine",Sub Pop,"The Thermals’ third full-length is a cautionary tale about the dangers of a totalitarian, theocratic regime, and it could only have sprung from anger and frustration with the George W. Bush administration. The lyrical gravitas of religious iconography and damn-the-man slogans gave the Portland pop-punk band renewed purpose, but it could have been just more hot air if it wasn’t married to such incendiary riffs, sexy, throbbing basslines, and urgent, earnest melodies. Most recent protest music is pedantic and plodding, but with the Thermals’ joyously sloppy delivery and imaginative (and not-so-literal) storytelling, they revitalized the genre for a new generation. –Rebecca Raber Listen: The Thermals: “Here’s Your Future”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=the+thermals+here%27s+your+future,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/9164/homepage_large.c7b1ca32.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Thermals-The_Body_The_Blood_The_Machine.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,185,Scarface,The Fix,Def Jam,"Scarface aficionados might question Facemob’s sole New York-focused Def Jam record as a representative of the artist’s best work. But if The Fix proves anything, it’s that Scarface is a world unto himself, the rare rapper whose utter musical weight, gravitas, and gravitational pull is so strong that an entire city’s aesthetic bends in his direction when he deigns to subsume it. What is so unique about The Fix is that, from a macro view, it doesn’t sound anything like a 2002-era corporate New York rap record, despite Kanye West’s perfect soul basslines and Neptunes guest production spots; Scarface’s lyrics are unchanged, the same stories from the South Side of Houston, the same engagement with the same drug game, the same unyielding honesty and unwillingness to sacrifice ideals. –David Drake Listen: Scarface: “On My Block”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHyqs0PoBgE,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/6907/homepage_large.6bb56edf.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Scarface-The_Fix.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,184,Vitalic,OK Cowboy,PIAS,"While the electronica push of the late-1990s was considered an epic fail well before 2000, it did accelerate the conversation between rock and electronic music. Over the next decade, the sequencer would become a common sight on rock stages, and a legion of DJs (especially the French) responded in kind by infusing house-music juggernauts with the hyper-distorted wallop of power chords. Daft Punk and Justice reveled in gloriously superficial properties of rock, the Aqua-Net, and motivational platitudes. But Vitalic was almost punk, going at his ring-modded synths and acid squelches as if they were his first Sears-catalog guitar. His peers want to inspire you, but sometimes, you worry Vitalic is trying to kill you. –Brian Howe Listen: Vitalic: “My Friend Dario”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOtmWxqN1fY,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/8400/homepage_large.e4dec5c1.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Vitalic-OK_Cowboy.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,183,Arctic Monkeys,"Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not",Domino,"There’s a fine line when it comes to precociousness. Preteen geniuses? Adorable. Deeply cynical, shockingly self-aware 19-year-olds? Kind of a downer. Arctic Monkeys’ Alex Turner is the exception that proves the rule. He cuts the Holden Caulfield figure perfectly, moping around Sheffield and observing the Chav life. The Monkeys initially won freakishly enthusiastic acclaim for their clenched-fist stomp, raucous guitar attack, and sodden attitude on songs like “I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor.” But what endures are the weary ballads. “Riot Van” is so elegant and detailed about the perils of the boys in blue it almost insists on soundtracking an Irvine Welsh novel. “When the Sun Goes Down” is scarily well-written—the type of song that sounds a million years old the moment it begins. Even the jaunty “Fake Tales of San Francisco” is drooling bile. Sometimes growing up too fast ain’t so bad. –Sean Fennessey Listen: Arctic Monkeys: “I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pK7egZaT3hs,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/493/homepage_large.fac45880.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Arctic_Monkeys-Whatever_People_Say_I_Am_Thats_What_Im_Not.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,182,Max Tundra,Mastered by the Guy at the Exchange,Tigerbeat6,"Ben Jacobs had to use words. Crafty and clever as his earlier works were, he had more to say this time, and so he started writing pop songs—intricate and busy songs that balanced on a hair his OCD and his ADHD, but songs that were catchy and wondrous as well. He started to sing (and sister Becky pitched in). He wrote about temp labor, old vinyl, amino acids, and, oh yeah, girls. That was the best bit: Now he could sing about girls and crushes and love. In true British fashion, he brought a modest persona to rainbow-shredding music that charm the heart and overclocks the brain. There’s joy in every byte of his tunes: the joy of gazing at girls, and gazing at light-emitting diodes, and telling the world how glorious they both are. –Chris Dahlen Listen: Max Tundra: “Lysine”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0Fx-_7oN5U,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/5095/homepage_large.2b2d2d95.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Max_Tundra-Mastered_by_the_Guy_at_the_Exchange.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,181,Andrew Bird,Andrew Bird & the Mysterious Production of Eggs,Righteous Babe,"The world ends not with a bang or a whimper, but with a party. Between 2001 and 2003, Andrew Bird doused his Bowl of Fire, moved to a farm, and fell through the stylistic looking glass into a weird world entirely his own. The Mysterious Production of Eggs is the greatest statement to leak out of that world onto a record. Sheets upon sheets of plucked and bowed violin are joined by his singular whistle and painterly voice to frame homicidal personal ads, tales of children’s brains measured for defects, and musings on the long odds of biology. It’s thoroughly original, from the gentle lilt of “Sovay” to the tidal rush of “Fake Palindromes,” the eerie murk of “A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left” and the Ravel-quoting bounce of “Skin Is, My.” When it all caves in, Bird will be there to play amidst the rubble, and you should join him if you can. There will be snacks. –Joe Tangari Listen: Andrew Bird: “Fake Palindromes”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8U7xpGi5SsU,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/709/homepage_large.894e8bbd.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Andrew_Bird-Andrew_Bird__the_Mysterious_Production_of_Eggs.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,180,Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds,Abattoir Blues / The Lyre of Orpheus,Mute,"The script called for Nick Cave to settle into mellow middle age, but the singer clearly would have none of it. Whether it was the departure of longtime potentiator Blixa Bargeld or merely the singer approaching 50, something reignited a fire under Cave and his protean partners the Bad Seeds in the mid-2000s that smolders to this day. But even taking into account the subsequent highs of Grinderman and Dig!!! Lazarus, Dig!!!, the epic Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus remains Cave’s top work this decade. After all, it was on this double-disc opus that Cave not only reinvigorated his already vicious and virile fire and brimstone bluster with equal parts gospel and grunge, but nudged a little bit more humor to the fore as well. Indeed, if the highlights of this collection are too numerous to single out, Cave must take particular satisfaction in rhyming “Orpheus” with “orifice” in the most lewd manner possible. –Joshua Klein Listen: Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds: “The Lrye of Orpheus”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bPSU5WMrdw,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/18061/homepage_large.3078746c.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nick_Cave__the_Bad_Seeds-Abattoir_Blues__The_Lyre_of_Orpheus.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,179,Camera Obscura,Let's Get Out of This Country,Merge,"Whether by proxy, presentation, or straight-up patronage, Camera Obscura’s lace-collared pop seemed doomed to be eclipsed by Belle and Sebastian comparisons. Though valid, 2006’s Let’s Get Out of This Country captured a band getting out from underneath a hefty legacy the best way any group can: great songs. Front to back, this was the Glaswegian sextet’s finest set yet, full of golden melodies made all the stickier and more durable by Tracyanne Campbell’s new tales of heartache. Showroom strings and wedding organ gave the homerun title track and winners like “Lloyd, I’m Ready to Be Heartbroken” and “Come Back Margaret” a schmaltzy pop in which Campbell couldn’t have sounded more capable of juicing your pleasure center, whether you needed a laugh or a cry. Every flourish was in its right place. –David Bevan Listen: Camera Obscura: “Lloyd, I’m Ready to Be Heartbroken”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlryei9U3sg,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/8922/homepage_large.c7ace94b.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Camera_Obscura-Lets_Get_Out_of_This_Country.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,178,Lil Wayne,Tha Carter II,Cash Money,"The first Carter was when Wayne started calling himself the “best rapper alive” straight-faced, but Tha Carter II was when people stopped laughing at that claim. Wayne, once a non-cussing kiddie rapper, had hardened his delivery into an elemental croak, and he’d somehow learned the rare ability to craft punchlines so sticky that they’d bounce around in your head all day. He’d also learned not to show all his cards at once. Instead of just telling us about the gun in his trunk, he let loose with something oblique like this: “Riding by myself, well really not really/ So heavy in the trunk, make the car pop a wheelie.” And perhaps most importantly, this was his first album not produced by Mannie Fresh, and he had the good sense to replace Fresh’s punchy ADD electro with swampy, primordial thuds that gave his jokes urgency and force. –Tom Breihan Listen: Lil Wayne: “Fireman”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y0ChoYgSek,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/4935/homepage_large.00445c9a.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lil_Wayne-Tha_Carter_II.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,177,Broadcast,The Noise Made by People,Warp,"Their first singles ticked off their references—the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, the United States of America, Nico. On this debut Broadcast set about the task of forging them into a world. It’s a strange world too, as antique as the Clientele’s and as skewed and chilly as the Knife’s, its wintry spaces filled with echo and chimes and analog ghosts. But once you start exploring it you’ll find its inhabitants more hospitable than you’d imagined. Singer Trish Keenan can weave spells—the baffling, lingering “Echo’s Answer”—but she can also be tender, beckoning a shy companion on “Come On Let’s Go,” chiding a suspicious lover on “Papercuts.” Broadcast are at home on creaking synths but they can summon a stiff, fogbound groove when needed—like the RZA-esque “Dead the Long Year.” On later releases Broadcast’s confidence and songwriting grew stronger, but they’ve never sounded quite this bewitching or curious. –Tom Ewing Listen: Broadcast: “Come On Let’s Go”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zw5ztuhEat4,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/939/homepage_large.3d1c4f84.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Broadcast-The_Noise_Made_by_People.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,176,The Mountain Goats,Tallahassee,4AD,"For a decade, John Darnielle’s jackhammer strum and lamb-to-slaughter bleat sketched short, tape-hissy tales of big, big rabbits, orange balls of hate, dysfunction, violence, isolation, and a Google Maps’ site worth of geography. In 2002, he changed things up a bit, not only booking an actual studio, but carrying a suitcase of favorite tropes to Florida’s panhandle—home to previous bit players, the alpha couple—for an entire album length’s stay. Good short story writers don’t always make good novelists. But Tallahassee is a vivid, fully realized night-sweat of a song cycle in which the breakdown of your average awful marriage (you probably know a few) assumes gothic proportions. “No Children,” everyone’s favorite mutual-self-destruction sing-along, is unquestionably bleak. But the tracklist abounds with less-celebrated scenes of abject terror and despair, from “The House That Dripped Blood”’s husky chords and open throat of a cellar door, to the delicately lit powder kegs of “International Small Arms Traffic Blues.” Schadenfreude (or empathy) rarely sounded this delicious (or depressing). –Amy Granzin Listen: The Mountain Goats: “No Children”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nVEJoibyso,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/5379/homepage_large.c70c3d58.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Mountain_Goats-Tallahassee.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,175,Various Artists,Total 3,Kompakt,"Like most great compilations, this one stands for slightly more than itself. Total 3 felt, from some vantage points, like the moment when Cologne’s Kompakt label announced itself to the wider world. From here on out, its elegantly cloudy take on minimal techno and microhouse—gusty, sparkling ambience yoked to the steady beat of dance music, low on bangers and high on subtleties—would become a big part of the decade. Of course, Total 3 isn’t just on this list as a stand-in; it’s here because it’s terrific all by itself, because it’s a lot of what earned all that attention. Sedate hustles and throbs, dark crawls, colorful funk, the glorious sentimentality of Jürgen Paape’s “So Weit Wie Noch Nie”—this collection can be mesmerizing, and it’s beautifully built around a core aesthetic. Thinking of it merely as the dance style that crossed over—the warm-bath techno that turned the heads of even the techno-skeptical—does it a disservice; it ignores just how well-formed and flexible and satisfying this stuff can be, no matter whose ear it’s catching. –Nitsuh Abebe Listen: Jürgen Paape: “So Weit Wie Noch Nie”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2dnwsyy5BQ,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/24729/homepage_large.6d927151.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Various_Artists-Total_3.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,174,Okkervil River,Black Sheep Boy,Jagjaguwar,"Doomed folkie Tim Hardin plays Virgil for Will Sheff, touring the Okkervil River frontman through a rock’n’roll purgatory of bloodthirsty drifters, damaged women, and drug-frayed anthropomorphic metaphors. Less “Behind the Music” than either of the band’s excellent follow-ups, The Stage Names or The Stand Ins, Black Sheep Boy is a rock picaresque that’s touched with very little of those LP’s bone-deep cynicism. It succeeds not merely by Sheff’s literate wordplay, dynamically angsty melodies, or even his deep knowledge of a rock-historical footnote, but by the way Okkervil River click together as a band more strongly than they had on previous albums. They serve as both the pit orchestra for Sheff’s staged plays and a clever foil for his unhinged performances, like when they nail the stop-start urgency of “For Real” and impart a bittersweet country shuffle to “A Stone,” or when Jonathan Meiburg undercuts the bleak “Black” with a cheerily ascending keyboard melody that lets a beam of hope shine into Sheff’s dark world. The result is one of the best rock biographies of the decade and a concept album that’s all heart. –Stephen M. Deusner Listen: Okkervil River: “Black”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9K7RokHjYd4,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/5882/homepage_large.dee9e08f.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Okkervil_River-Black_Sheep_Boy.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,173,Matthew Herbert,Bodily Functions,!K7,"Matthew Herbert’s career has zigzagged between styles and approaches—minimalist house tracks, lounge jazz, politically motivated musique concrète—but Bodily Functions is the one album where all his tendencies come together. Recorded with his then-partner Dani Siciliano, the album continues Around the House’s investigations into intimacy and identity both lyrically and literally, with much of the source material sampled from “bodily functions” like clacking teeth and brushing hair. But the music’s too lush to feel pedantic, thanks in large part to Siciliano’s delivery, which swings between defiance and vulnerability, and to arrangements that lean heavily on jazz piano and brushed drums. On the more uptempo cuts, classic deep house provides the blueprint for skippy, tidy rhythm tracks. That Herbert and Siciliano eventually parted ways, in retrospect, may not be surprising: an almost overwhelming melancholy beats at the album’s heart—a sadness so insurmountable it brings its own kind of peace. –Philip Sherburne Listen: Herbert: “The Audience”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3G16ZC-UTA,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/3794/homepage_large.0676add9.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Matthew_Herbert-Bodily_Functions.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,172,Constantines,Shine a Light,Sub Pop,"Music writers get so swept up in classification, we might think a label like “Fugazi-meets-Springsteen” is more important than relating lyrics like “To hell with the mill sallow chorus/ Lift your body out of exile,” or describing the brittle grooves and airplane-hangar roar behind the hoarse protests and prayers of Constantines singers Bryan Webb and Steven Lambke. The Cons’ fury resists getting summarized or blurbed. So what of Fugazi’s (or, sigh, Springsteen’s) wide wake of influence, even in this decade? The Constantines deserve praise for holding to the romance and promise of earlier rock’n’roll while simultaneously deconstructing it, if only for the sake of discovering something. Whatever equation you want to throw at them, the breadth of expression on Shine a Light stuns: The ground covered between “Nighttime/Anytime (It’s Alright)” to “On to You” includes feral, bruised, proud, frightened, and fully confident songs. –Jason Crock Listen: Constantines: “Young Lions”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAXTI-zotpk,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/1575/homepage_large.4d6a97da.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Constantines-Shine_a_Light.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,171,The Go! Team,"Thunder, Lightning, Strike",Memphis Industries,"At the end of the decade, lo-fi had become a fashionable option, a recording approach made less out of necessity than out of fashion. But there’s a third path, and while making a record on a cassette tape in 2009 may be a stubborn and affected act, there is still allure and aesthetic purpose in giving music a grainy feel in spite of GarageBand. See government exhibit labeled the Go! Team, whose 2004 debut used less than ideal recording conditions to evoke documentary-filmstrip soundtracks, TV cop shows, and girl-group 45s. This nostalgia-fetish genre-quilting was nothing new post-Odelay, but Go! Team mastermind Ian Parton proved himself a basement bandleader with an ear for authenticity that didn’t strangle him creatively—switching mid-song from soft-focus flute-driven instrumental to turntablism breakdowns in “Get It Together” or blending 1960s Motown with ’80s Bronx on “Ladyflash.” –Rob Mitchum Listen: The Go! Team: “The Power Is On” ",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-YebyW6xlY,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/3617/homepage_large.5d11d162.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Go_Team-Thunder_Lightning_Strike.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,170,Bright Eyes,Fevers and Mirrors,Saddle Creek,"Bruce Springsteen sounded haunted on Nebraska, where even he found redemption scarce. Counting Crows located Omaha “somewhere in middle America,” a faintly sinister phrase, as if Nebraska’s largest city were an island lost on the plains– isolated, impenetrable, maybe imaginary. Conor Oberst, Omaha’s native son, caught this Nebraska-of-the-mind in amber with Fevers and Mirrors, the pinnacle (and conclusion) of his wrought yet raw early style. It conjures a stark, entrapping world: “This barren land is alive tonight,” Oberst whimpers on “Arienette,” as wolves prowl implacably behind acres of rustling corn. Measurements of time and space accumulate—clocks tick, calendar pages float away, scales tip, the sun reels up and down—and nothing changes. Memories of happiness and presentiments of loss, unearned arrogance and unearned guilt, well-being and addiction, all collide in a stalemate. It’s about helplessness: How a fever takes you violently, and a mirror can only reflect what it sees. It’s about being marooned, somewhere in Middle America, between childhood and adulthood, on the dark island of your mind. –Brian Howe Listen: Bright Eyes: “Haligh, Haligh, a Lie, Haligh”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUSzVFA8ZtQ,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/934/homepage_large.13938636.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bright_Eyes-Fevers_and_Mirrors.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,169,Common,Like Water for Chocolate,MCA,"Like Water for Chocolate isn’t Common’s most classic record (that’s 1994’s Resurrection) but it’s his most fully realized. Much like that record, Like Water is visible evidence of a rapper wrestling with his street background and growing self-awareness, of conservative tendencies and an ambitious need for exploration. Com bravely embraced Jay Dee’s Soulquarian vision for an alternative future, while retaining a distinctly personal sound and identity that situated him outside of his Chicago origins. Com still carried the baggage, both negative and positive, of Chicago’s South Side streets—casual homophobic slurs mar the otherwise-flawless “Dooinit”—but this baggage also charges his raps with the energy that would seep from his voice the closer he came to Gap spokesrapper, his trash-talking (“he fell off ’cause I pushed him”) as believable as his growing personal dimension (“The Light”). It helps that J Dilla wraps Common’s lyrics in the swirling emotional nuance of complex-yet-hooky tracks like “Funky for You.” The end result was a singular record in music history, with a sui generis style both artists would fail to replicate. –David Drake Listen: Common: “The Light”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjHX7jf-znA,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/1552/homepage_large.1a861177.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Common-Like_Water_for_Chocolate.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,168,Califone,Roots and Crowns,Thrill Jockey,"“Leave your memories/ We’re almost new,” sings Califone’s Tim Rutili on “3 Legged Animals,” a standout track on an album his band of nearly a decade almost didn’t make. Breakups, cross-country moves, and an attempt to quit put Califone’s future in question, but, as he suggests, they returned refreshed, capping their best set of songs (fine roots) with their most intricate arrangements (resplendent crowns). Here, Califone bend, break, and blend pedestrian sounds (fiddle moans, horn growls, chiming bells, lurking bass), while Rutili splices standard images—raindrops, pills, bones—until they weave into impressionistic webs. Almost new here, Califone—more than any American act since Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot—struck a righteous balance between the obtuse and the accessible. –Grayson Currin Listen: Califone: “3 Legged Animals”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf8IbtQHvcM,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/9314/homepage_large.9c7ed9f0.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Califone-Roots_and_Crowns.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,167,Annie,Anniemal,679,"Few genres got a bigger boost from file-sharing in the early years of this decade than danceable European pop music. The spread of mp3s around the world allowed for the creation of a thriving global pop underground teeming with shoulda-been hits by coulda-been stars who previously had few options to find an audience outside of the tight playlists of corporate radio. Annie, an enigmatic Norwegian bombshell with a sweet wispy voice and a taste for slick neo-’80s production, was the first of these acts to make it big on the same terms as countless indie bands—well outside the bounds of the mainstream, but beloved by a significant number of fans hungry for the sort of dazzling, witty, and unabashedly hooky pop music that had nearly vanished from American radio. Unsurprisingly, most of the attention on Annie’s debut record, Anniemal, was placed on the singles—the melancholy hyperballad “Heartbeat” and the delightfully coy “Chewing Gum” stand as two of the great almost-hits of the decade—but the entire album is stacked with gems, from Richard X’s effervescent “Me Plus One” to the psychedelic disco meltdown of “Come Together.” –Matthew Perpetua Listen: Annie: “Heartbeat”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9Wf46tLonM,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/452/homepage_large.8ef3f6db.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Annie-Anniemal.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,166,Jim O’Rourke,Insignificance,Drag City,"Despite the Swiftian invective of the title, Insignificance marks a lot of milestones in producer/composer Jim O’Rourke’s career. The third of his records named after a Nicolas Roeg flick, Insignificance marked O’Rourke’s move from Chicago, where he had helped shape the experimental jazz and post-rock music scenes, to New York, and to date remains his solo effort most concerned with pop accessibility. O’Rourke even sings bemusedly in his poor-man’s-Bill-Callahan voice about being on the cusp: the subject of opener “All Downhill From Here” is self-evident, and standout “Therefore, I Am” has O’Rourke offering personal reaffirmation, a fresh start, and a heavy-handed fuck-off to an unnamed subject. “Therefore, I Am” is set against the backdrop of a ridiculously repetitive, infectious guitar riff and Ringo-esque drums—a curiosity for the improvisational O’Rourke, but here it smartly comes off as a smirking indictment of rock alchemy—and it glides into a falsetto chorus with echoes of girl groups or the Beach Boys. O’Rourke carries all it off so elegantly that you’d think he’d address the trivial little matter of pop songcraft a little more often. –Mike Orme Listen: Jim O’Rourke: “Therefore, I Am”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yssil4Jhzjw,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/5957/homepage_large.a8fa2530.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jim_ORourke-Insignificance.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,165,Villalobos,Alcachofa,Playhouse,"The Chilean-born, Frankfurt-raised DJ/producer Ricardo Villalobos spent a decade quietly earning a cult rep for his nervy, elliptical approach to underground techno before he turned dance music on its ear with his 2003 album debut. While he’s often singled out for his purported minimalism, Alcachofa’s real innovation was to recast chugging, 4/4 rhythms in a mercurial casing more akin to krautrock’s shape-changing forms, with loops inside loops inside loops undulating toward a disappearing horizon. The album contains two bona fide anthems. “Easy Lee” sets a cryptic, vocodered chorus to a sparse, tribal backing that feels like it’s made out of plastic and putty; “Dexter” offsets a relaxed, four-square glide with spindly chord changes that seem never to resolve, ratcheting up the tension with every repetition. Less effusive cuts like “Bahaha Hahi” and “Fool’s Garden (Black Conga),” meanwhile, throb with a coiled intensity far out of proportion to the modesty of their materials. –Philip Sherburne Listen: Ricardo Villalobos: “Dexter”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0i1Szq6GM8,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/8368/homepage_large.88fd8265.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Villalobos-Alcachofa.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,164,Les Savy Fav,Rome (Written Upside Down) EP,Southern,"Rome, written upside down. The Statue of Liberty, pixelated and fallen. An analogy for the decline of empires? Maybe, but Les Savy Fav’s fall of America isn’t some political attack—it’s a dystopian vision of a world where empires crumble because there’s no one left to sustain them, where humanity is subsumed by its technology. The band tosses and turns in the throes of its afterfuture dreams on a bed of glitched-up, brittle post-punk that still sounds like the future despite a total lack of obviously futuristic audio signifiers. For about 18 perfect minutes, Les Savy Fav bottled post-millennial dread and served it up cold for a thirsty, anxious audience. –Joe Tangari Listen: Les Savy Fav: “In These Woods”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaVINBiOkEA,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/4690/homepage_large.302da297.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Les_Savy_Fav-Rome_Written_Upside_Down_EP.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,163,DJ /rupture,Uproot,theAgriculture,"With so much music being released every day, strategic listening and contextualization is an art form, of which Jace Clayton (aka DJ /rupture) is a master. He carries the flame for connoisseurship in an era of dilettantism, rejecting rapid consumption and quantity-over-quality: The best is out there; with patience, we can find it, and weave it into a story that says something penetrating about how it feels to be alive, right now. On the surface, Uproot is simply a potent array of music, mixed in a deep field by someone with exquisitely exotic tastes. More fundamentally, it’s a thesis on the collapse of musical borders—between listener and artist, between regional styles, between genres—that has characterized the internet age. On a universal thread of drums and bass, Clayton draws out seamless connections between Brooklyn and Afghanistan, dubstep and ragga, hearing and making. Music is revealed, actually not-ruptured, in all its splendid commonality. For Clayton there are, at most, two kinds: Wonderful music, which should be collected, pondered, and put into a dialogue; and non-wonderful music, for which one simply has no time. –Brian Howe Listen: DJ /rupture: “Reef”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWx7s1S23Gk,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/12669/homepage_large.527158c4.jpg,/dataset/artwork/DJ_rupture-Uproot.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,162,Wu-Tang Clan,The W,Sony,"By 2000, to put it very lightly, the Wu-Tang Clan had diversified their bonds. RZA’s original plan for the group ended with 1997’s Forever, and by the turn of the millennium, many fans lamented the loss of his hold over the group, which had more or less devolved into a watered-down brand stamped onto a variety of middling stuff. In this context, The W was as surprising as it was pleasing, packing some of the RZA’s best production work, and some of the group’s best music. “Hollow Bones” and “Careful (Click, Click)” are two of the scariest cuts in the Wu-catalog, and few songs this decade can match the ardor of RZA’s breakdown on the stunning Isaac Hayes cop “I Can’t Go to Sleep.” Released a mere 18 days before Bush v. Gore would plague us with eight years of that other W, The W provided a fitting soundtrack for those with a freshly bleak outlook on the future. –Eric Harvey Listen: Wu-Tang Clan: “I Can’t Go to Sleep”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2S0zu3M0rY,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/24730/homepage_large.68a56826.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Wu-Tang_Clan-The_W.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,161,Air France,No Way Down,Sincerely Yours,"Joel Karlsson and Henrik Markstedt’s music may be fantasy, but there’s also an unusual, deeply felt awareness that pop interacts with the all too real world around us. Electronic music is often associated with indoors, so they brought it outdoors. Gothenburg gets cold, so they partied on the beach whenever possible. Someday, when the Balearic revival has its week on “American Idol,” their full-length debut—actually two EPs, but they work better together—will stand out for its pop melodies, luxuriantly vivid sense of place, and the wistful quality generated by those sampled, young voices—their sadness is kids’ stuff, but that doesn’t make it imaginary. –Marc Hogan Listen: Air France: “Collapsing at Your Doorstep”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dU1Vpt7q_s,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/12047/homepage_large.58a97367.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Air_France-No_Way_Down.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,160,Deerhunter,Cryptograms,Kranky,"Never mind the lost album sales; the abundance of leaked demos, YouTubed concert footage, and radio-session webcasts at our disposal has ultimately served to take the mystery out of the artist’s evolutionary process—it’s increasingly difficult to be surprised by a band’s new direction when we’ve been riding shotgun the whole time. Back in early 2007, before frontman Bradford Cox’s every move was documented online, Deerhunter used their second album as a canvas on which to chart their aesthetic transformation. Defenders of the album format in an mp3 age often point to the medium’s capacity to take listeners on a journey; on Cryptograms, the journey is the band’s own. The remarkable thing about the record isn’t just that Deerhunter deftly execute strobe-lit psych-punk squall (“Lake Somerset”), acidic disco (“Octet”), and sensitive jangle-pop (“Hazel St.”) with equal conviction, but that they make them all seem like logical points on the same continuum. And those miasmic ambient set pieces aren’t just there as breathers, but rather as emblems of a band that’s being perpetually melted down and reshaped from song to song. –Stuart Berman Listen: Deerhunter: “Spring Hall Convert”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9STd-67_Ft8,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/9650/homepage_large.a5d2e3be.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Deerhunter-Cryptograms.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,159,Girl Talk,Night Ripper,Illegal Art,"Since multitasking is now our national pastime, an entity like Girl Talk was an inevitable phenomenon; as our attention spans shrink to the nano-scale, one song at a time just no longer is enough. All we needed was someone to step up and act as filter to the unstoppable torrent of pop music bursting our cognitive dams, saving us the time of listening to 500 songs sequentially and giving us the best parts in an overlapping and interlocking efficiency! But the flood of internet mashups were unimpeachable evidence that no, not everyone can do this, and along came biomedical engineer Gregg Gillis, the Michael Phelps of cutting-and-pasting, to be our beat-matching hero. Now that Wikipedia has spoiled all the Easter eggs, Night Ripper still sports brilliantly catchy (Big Boi Breeders), bizarrely virtuoso (Juelz Mangum Airplane), and oddly emotional moments (Biggie John) to tide you over as you squeeze a five-course meal into a piece of gum, Willy Wonka–style. –Rob Mitchum Listen: Girl Talk: “Bounce That”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WK3O_qZVqXk,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/9048/homepage_large.dcf10bfb.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Girl_Talk-Night_Ripper.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,158,Destroyer,Destroyer's Rubies,Merge,"In the vivid worlds he creates as Destroyer, Dan Bejar is a cad, a self-conscious socialite, and the bard of a made-up bourgeoisie, and Destroyer’s Rubies is his best-yet work under the moniker. The tics and themes that make his music so undeniably his are all here, as is the shaggy jazz and folk-rock, the coy glam posturing, and the swatches of lives cast in abstruse metaphors. Taken all at once, Rubies is decadent, mapping a haute couture class system of well-off hipster intellectuals, idle painters, subcultural demigods, and of course, the beautiful women always just out of reach; Bejar further cuts his observations with tweedy references to Ezra Pound, Tchaikovsky, the Incredible String Band, and Greek mythology. “I was the dominant theme in a number of places,” indeed: Bejar’s self-referentiality reaches its peak here as well—Rubies is the ultimate index of Destroyer mythology, the artist fitting himself into the background of his work. –Eric Harvey Listen: Destroyer: “European Oils”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaWXfoK0gZU,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/8820/homepage_large.4cca5e08.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Destroyer-Destroyers_Rubies.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,157,Lightning Bolt,Wonderful Rainbow,Load,"If the title of Lightning Bolt’s third LP seems redundant—aren’t all rainbows wonderful?—that’s probably intentional. Because this duo’s pounding, relentless repetition turns superfluity and excess into glorious virtues. Overflowing with Brian Gibson’s airplane-engine bass roar and distorted chants, Brian Chippendale’s punching drums, and a layer of viscous distortion on top, Wonderful Rainbow is an exhausting workout. Its 10 songs loop, cycle, and repeat so rigorously your brain feels a marathon runner’s burn. But each track’s muscular incline eventually delivers a rewarding endorphin high. And, just to make sure their noise mantras came in different colors, Lightning Bolt slipped bits of melody inside almost every machine-like blast. The overall effect is less redundant than generous, making Wonderful Rainbow like a pot of gold at the end of another invigorating sky-ride. –Marc Masters Listen: Lightning Bolt: “Dracula Mountain”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JpHoAnaPK0,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/4726/homepage_large.ad367309.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lightning_Bolt-Wonderful_Rainbow.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,156,Bloc Party,Silent Alarm,V2 / Wichita / Vice,"What a dumb name for this album. Press play and the first sound you hear is a siren-like blare of an open E string announcing with all the subtlety of Funkmaster Flex that SHIT’S ABOUT TO GO DOWN. By the start of 2005, much of the previous year’s optimism and stridency gave way to seriously bummed indifference, but Bloc Party wasn’t havin’ it. Kele Okereke is half Paul Revere, half Bono over fighting-trim tracks that stood out as rhythmically vital and melodically sharp even as it seemed like every new hyped band was getting up for the downstroke. But beyond that, what makes Silent Alarm rise above is the depth of Bloc Party’s passion—the precedents for their high-wire musicianship were easy to spot, but then again, while Gang of Four wouldn’t sniff at “Price of Gas,” their “love” song was “Anthrax,” not “Blue Light” and “So Here We Are.” Future releases would prove this point more obviously, but on Silent Alarm, Bloc Party was a clenched fist looking for another hand to hold. –Ian Cohen Listen: Bloc Party: “Banquet”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdkmhquF60o,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/1121/homepage_large.bdbba4e4.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bloc_Party-Silent_Alarm.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,155,Clipse,Lord Willin',Star Trak,"It’s true that the Thornton Brothers took a great leap after them crackers at Jive stopped playing fair. But during their Arista years, Pusha and Malice seemed to be doing just fine. With the Neptunes as their guardian angels, the Virginia duo did more than just talk dope deals. They had fun on the weekends (“When the Last Time”), they stunted on other rappers (“I’m Not You”), and they built an elegiac shrine to their homestate (“Virginia”). The drugs still mattered, though. To this day there are thousands of people who don’t know what “Grindin’” is about, despite the fact that it is one of the most explicitly told songs ever. Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo in their prime had that effect. After all their misguided evolutions, it’s hard to describe the Neptunes in their prime. Adventurous but ruthlessly commercial; rap purists that broke every rule; futurists with a healthy sense of nostalgia. Together the two duos made a jarring, indelible sound. Just don’t call it coke rap. –Sean Fennessey Listen: Clipse: “Grindin’”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjWAWcx4xdE,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/24731/homepage_large.6b44c779.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Clipse-Lord_Willin.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,154,Ghostface,The Pretty Toney Album,Def Jam,"Ghostface Killah is the preeminent grown-ass man of contemporary hip-hop. What’s truly amazing about the artistic evolution of Tony Starks is how he’s managed to become a wise, world-weary vet without turning into a bitter old crank, pining futilely for the return of some utterly extinct Golden Age. The crazy-quilt headfuck Supreme Clientele may be most folks’ favorite Ghost record of the decade, but personally I’m more compelled by the lived-in contradictions of The Pretty Toney Album, which gives you Ghost spitting brilliant nonsense about $30 dollar bills and seeing the ocean in “my man’s wave,” but also Dennis Coles stinking up bathrooms and affirming that “my boots hang over the telephone wires on Broad.” Ghost spends most of the record sounding harried—by the cops (“Run”), by an ungrateful boo (“Tooken Back”), even by “the two minute and 37 second clock” (“Beat the Clock”). Like most of us, he finds one of his few forms of solace in music, in Ghost’s case the warm, loving soul and R&B of dusty legends like Esther Phillips and the Delfonics. –Joshua Love Listen: Ghostface Killah: “Run”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMSY3zfLxRA,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/3600/homepage_large.20d79937.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ghostface-The_Pretty_Toney_Album.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,153,Jens Lekman,Night Falls Over Kortedala,Secretly Canadian / Service,"From those early days when people thought his name was Rocky Dennis, Jens Lekman has cultivated an impression of complete sincerity at the same time he has remained as ultimately unknowable as Sally Shapiro; he’ll murmur sweet nothings too good to check, play at your neighbor’s house, then move to Australia and drop off the face of the internet. But first, Night Falls Over Kortedala. Nominally a withdrawal into Lekman’s most provincial fantasies, Kortedala lets insularity become a Trojan horse for globalization—after all, Gothenburg is a place where national indie-pop heroes argue over tennis about Christina Aguilera remixes. So Lekman’s sweet, unposturing songs about first kisses, sublime haircuts, out-of-office replies, avocado-related mishaps, and asthma inhalers travel the Earth, using first-class samples when Lekman can’t fly somewhere himself (not even on the red prop plane from the video). Good advice that won’t get you rich: “The best way to touch your heart is to make an ass of myself.” It feels true, doesn’t it? –Marc Hogan Listen: Jens Lekman: “The Opposite of Hallelujah”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roMN1t4amXY,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/10425/homepage_large.dd4d033c.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jens_Lekman-Night_Falls_Over_Kortedala.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,152,Cannibal Ox,The Cold Vein,Definitive Jux,"Before Vordul and Vast Aire broke through, underground hip-hop maintained a line between scientific abstract battlers and real-talk street-rap practitioners—it was a fine one, but few outside Shaolin made a habit of crossing it. With The Cold Vein, Can Ox overstepped that line, straddled it, erased it: pissy project-housing elevators and corner bodegas became Jack Kirby battlegrounds, mathematics were dismantled and reassembled into bleak statistical proofs (“Life is mean/ And death is the median/ And Purgatory is the mode that we settle in”), pigeons turned phoenix, and the combination of Vast’s sociopath-cadence wordplay and Vordul’s relentless internal rhymes turned their lyrics into razors that could cut you sure as any twitchy stick-up kid could. That they still had the capability for indelible love songs (to women in “The F-Wor”; to hip hop in “A B-Boy’s Alpha”) magnified their humanity; that they spit every syllable over the majestic, rust-covered doom of peak-power El-P reinforced their legend. –Nate Patrin Listen: Cannibal Ox: “Iron Galaxy”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBJghl_wmto,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/1273/homepage_large.2dc1a344.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Cannibal_Ox-The_Cold_Vein.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,151,The Walkmen,Bows and Arrows,Recordcollection,"When lead singer Hamilton Leithauser first enters the stage on Bows and Arrows, he is being thrown out of a bar. “You don’t have to say it again, cuz I heard you the first time,” he mutters petulantly—except he croons the line, letting his shit-eating grin seep into the sound until it turns into a sweet nothing. That’s quite a trick, and of all the bratty New York rock bands that broke through in the early ’00s, no one walked this razor-thin line separating sensitivity and callowness quite as deftly as the Walkmen. Leithauser, his warm rasp making him come across like a more emotionally unstable young Rod Stewart, lurches from messy confrontations to moments of disarming empathy, and on “The Rat,” he lays himself completely bare, pleading for recognition with an abandon that is still startling, as his normally bleary-eyed bar-rock band explodes into catharsis all around him. There weren’t many portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-fuck-up albums this decade that brimmed with as much wit, regret, and wry honesty. –Jayson Greene Listen: The Walkmen: “The Rat”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWR1h-5EzUo,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/8433/homepage_large.ffbbb7db.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Walkmen-Bows_and_Arrows.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,150,The New Pornographers,Twin Cinema,Matador,"On Twin Cinema, Carl Newman and his band of moonlighting luminaries (including Neko Case and Destroyer’s Dan Bejar) build a film-studio lot’s worth of outlandish sets, and seek to discover that special something that keeps us returning to pop music. So “Use It” is a powder-keg of kinetic energy, while “The Bleeding Heart Show” (a song so awesome it made a University of Phoenix commercial seem transcendent) commemorates a missed gig with one of the most towering codas of the decade: Fuck playing for a cause—music is the only cause. Yet for all the great moments here—and it’s one after the other—the geeky majesty of “Sing Me Spanish Techno” stands above the rest. –Eric Harvey Listen: The New Pornographers: “Sing Me Spanish Techno”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwE5eB3SXUk,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/5695/homepage_large.c5e5c64a.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_New_Pornographers-Twin_Cinema.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,149,The Tough Alliance,A New Chance,Sincerely Yours / Summer Lovers Unlimited,"Gloriously sunny and unabashedly synthetic, the Swedish duo the Tough Alliance’s second album conveys a shiver of ecstasy concealing a tremor of fear and loneliness. The sonic and emotional largesse of A New Chance still shocks, its endlessly unfolding vistas of heartbreaking optimism feeling touchingly generous—they set themselves up for disappointment so we don’t have to. The duo construct a junkyard of chart-pop’s most ruthless tricks—swooping falsetto harmonies, rickety house percussion, buoyant reggae piano vamps, a swirling mélange of winsome samples—and yet for all this the songs remain as young and unspoilt as a first crush. –Tim Finney Listen: Tough Alliance: “Something Special”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujCx_TYfnrY,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/10472/homepage_large.26cac649.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Tough_Alliance-A_New_Chance.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,148,Erlend Øye,DJ Kicks,!K7,"In retrospect, it’s sort of hilarious people made a big deal of this album as an indie-dance crossover; the notion that rock listeners might recoil in horror at the thought of—gasp!—a minimal beat underneath a pop track. Now, of course, it seems strange if an indie release doesn’t contain some sort of dancefloor bounce. But Erlend Øye’s DJ Kicks was one of the key records that helped eliminate those genre barriers. Though total stylistic confluence may not have been his direct aim, Øye’s gauzy singing of wistful pop classics—“There Is a Light That Never Goes Out,” “Always on My Mind,” “It’s a Fine Day,” etc.—over the day’s top tech-house tracks helped make international beats as palatable as ever. New-jack dance-poppers such as YACHT, Delorean, and the xx each owe him a debt of gratitude, and so do we. –Joe Colly Listen: Erlend Øye: “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHiPpXaoBDw,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/13354/homepage_large.9af053d5.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Erlend_ye-DJ_Kicks.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,147,T.I.,King,WEA / Atlantic,"2003’s Trap Muzik, Tip’s album-length meditation on the thrills and travails of dope-dealing, remains his scrappiest and most emotionally resonant statement. But King is the moment T.I.’s drawly sneer crossed over and turned him into one of the world’s biggest rap stars. And it’s pretty amazing that his grand pop coronation didn’t come at the expense of his antisocial snarl or the bluesy heaviness of his beats. When T.I. drafts an East Coast heavyweight like Just Blaze for two of the album’s greatest tracks (“King Back,” “I’m Talkin’ to You”), it’s not a cynical post-regional stardom grab; it’s just another form of banger for him to tear to pieces. When he softens his approach for a come-on like “Why You Wanna” or a reflective moment like “Goodlife,” he doesn’t compromise his hardness; he just effortlessly taps into a calm, cool Southern-gentleman facet of his persona. But King works best on slow-ride bangers like “Top Back” and “Bankhead” and the almighty “What You Know,” wheelhouse trunk-rattlers from one of the greatest ever to do them. –Tom Breihan Listen: T.I.: “What You Know”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woY6pG-WUZ8,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/8182/homepage_large.2c658cb7.jpg,/dataset/artwork/TI-King.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,146,My Morning Jacket,Z,ATO / Red,"My Morning Jacket probably could’ve remade At Dawn over and over again and still ended up with the same font size on festival bills. That classic-rock archetype still holds a lot of weight and if you don’t believe me, well, Kings of Leon had a top 10 single this year. Though My Morning Jacket kickstarted their critical and popular acclaim repping Kentucky, marathon live shows, Flying Vs, and flying hair, what makes them one of the great rock bands of the decade is how their best record turned out to be a stunningly concise, 45-minute, retro-futurist opus helmed by the guy who produced The Bends. Unified as much by Jim James’ inimitable tenor as a sense of play and adventure, Z housed feathery R&B (“Wordless Chorus,” “It Beats 4 U”), Who-bangin’ pocket-epics (“Gideon”), and their typical six-string slow burn (“Dondante”). Their breakout single, “Off the Record,” managed to be the only song outside of the Sincerely Yours label to evoke the chill-out music of Jamaica and France at the same time. Few albums can be more accurately described as a “gift” than Z—a loved one surprising you with something you didn’t even know you needed, all just because. –Ian Cohen Listen: My Morning Jacket: “Wordless Chorus”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tngOSBtDP0M,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/18119/homepage_large.44d27d18.jpg,/dataset/artwork/My_Morning_Jacket-Z.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,145,The Fiery Furnaces,Blueberry Boat,Rough Trade,"One weird blind spot when people look back at the British Invasion is the tendency of bands to go off on flights of childlike imagination. The more colorful moments of the Who or the Kinks don’t exactly fit into the punk-filtered narrative of rock history, so they’re often written off as weird artsy indulgences. Fortunately, the Friedberger siblings weren’t so dismissive, and Blueberry Boat is a modernized celebration of those weird, wonderful detours, both matching and updating the gaudy, playful ambitions of a young Pete Townshend or Ray Davies. Much is made of this record’s high-calorie composition—suites that seem like 10 songs in one, Matthew Friedberger’s bottomless toy box of bleepy, bloopy synthesizers, sister Eleanor’s word salad. But it’s the album’s starry-eyed sense of adventure that really thrills and sets it apart from mopey indie rock peers—Rudyard Kipling–influenced tales of travel and wonder communicated with nursery-rhyme vocals and radio-play duets. –Rob Mitchum Listen: Fiery Furnaces: “Blueberry Boat”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8j3C3VsEzE,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/3243/homepage_large.20fa79ca.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Fiery_Furnaces-Blueberry_Boat.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,144,Andrew W.K.,I Get Wet,Island,"It’s as streamlined as anything Kraftwerk ever put to tape, and yet sounds like it’s about to come unhinged at any moment. It’s metal if the fans traded their pentagrams for smiley faces. It’s glam for guys who wear off-the-rack Wranglers from Wal-Mart. It’s a joke where the tongue isn’t so much in cheek as goofily dangling like Gene Simmons’ infamous lingua maxima. It’s a Pied Piper in a stained white T, leading an irony-enfeebled generation to a candy colored land of unfettered joy. It’s a pit full of sweaty bodies so overloaded with good vibes that their smell has gone from sour to sweet. It’s a poet who knows shouting “SHE IS BEAUTIFUL” is more effective than, you know, poetry. It’s hard rock in the form of a bear hug rather than a fist to the face or a grind of the hips. –Jess Harvell Listen: Andrew W.K.: “Party Hard”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WccfbPQNMbg,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/183/homepage_large.380a6a71.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Andrew_WK-I_Get_Wet.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,143,The Decemberists,Picaresque,Kill Rock Stars,"Nerdiest indie rock album of the decade? A case could certainly be made: the five-dollar words, the baroque instrumentation, the theater club sleeve art. The frickin’ nine-minute one-act play about an old-timey sailor’s thirst for vengeance. But such is Colin Meloy’s talent that what in lesser hands could easily inspire nothing but wedgies is here successfully raised to the level of weaponry against the perils of machismo. Whether it’s on the playing field (“The Sporting Life”) or in the halls of power (“16 Military Wives,” “The Bagman’s Gambit”), the meek shall inherit the earth—once the strong have fucked themselves over. After Picaresque, the Decemberists made the leap to Capitol Records and kinda sorta grew a pair, exploring harder rock and epic concept albums. But that us-against-the-world magic was lost. The Decemberists were at their best when they were at their wimpiest. –Amy Phillips Listen: The Decemberists: “16 Military Wives”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjgdoQXbJ8M,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/2224/homepage_large.fb547b87.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Decemberists-Picaresque.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,142,Primal Scream,XTRMNTR,Astralwerks,"Over the course of the 1990s, Primal Scream had rightfully earned a reputation as consummate hedonists. But while the rest of the world was ready to party like it was 1999, the Scottish tech-rockers were soberly bracing themselves for the 2000s—which, through their bleary eyes, were already looking plenty bleak even before 9/11 and Bush/Blair wartime alliances muddied the picture further. Arriving in the first month of 2000, XTRMNTR hit the Brits like one of those red pills in The Matrix, jolting hungover New Year’s revelers awake to face the reality of England’s “military/industrial illusion of democracy,” whose true goal is to “exterminate the underclass.” But if the Scream were calling for all-out class warfare, they didn’t skimp on the heavy artillery: shotgunned funk (“Kill All Hippies”), fuzz-punk splatter (“Accelerator”), militant house workouts (“Swastika Eyes”), and brown-acid jazz (“Blood Money”). Of course, the band’s subsequent, increasingly apolitical albums would show that the Scream’s urban-guerrilla guise was as much a fleeting phase as the acid-house love-in of 1991’s Screamedelica and the Rolling Stones jones of 1994’s Give Up But Don’t Give Out. But, even if XTRMNTR was just a pose, who doesn’t love a man in uniform?– Stuart Berman Listen: Primal Scream: “Kill All Hippies”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NM676YszFH4,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/6379/homepage_large.15377e58.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Primal_Scream-XTRMNTR.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,141,Neko Case,Blacklisted,Bloodshot,"By 2002, Neko Case had already emerged as one of the most gifted vocalists on the indie landscape, and with her third solo album, Blacklisted, she established herself as a top-flight songwriter as well. Recorded in Tucson with backing from stalwarts Calexico and Giant Sand’s Howe Gelb, Blacklisted is a jewel of dusky Americana, its every move shadowed by longing and veiled menace. At times the source of this foreboding is clear enough, as on the harrowing “Deep Red Bells”, which is haunted by the specter of the Green River Killer. Elsewhere the danger is more implied, visible only through such cryptic omens as the birds that sound their warnings on “Things That Scare Me” and “Ghost Wiring.” Yet throughout the album Case stands defiant against the encroaching darkness armed with her wit, compassion, and a voice as big and luminous as the western sky. –Matthew Murphy Listen: Neko Case: “I Wish I Was the Moon”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCV-YMD6oXA,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/13317/homepage_large.29d0c40e.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Neko_Case-Blacklisted.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,140,TV on the Radio,Dear Science,4AD,"Dear Science mostly covers the same ground as TV on the Radio’s first two LPs—soulful art-rock, tasteful atmospheres—and it’s easy to gloss over the stylistic chances they continue to take: upswung disco guitars (“Crying”), ballast-funk (“Red Dress”), scat-raps (“Dancing Choose”). Their sound and presence is so naturally large that they never sound like they’ve bitten off more than they can chew, even when they have (catch that line about “foam-injected Axl Rose,” or the monstrous sentiment of “Family Tree”). This is Dear Science’s greatest achievement: making extraordinary, overbearing rock seem like a natural, human act. Something whose creators travel by subway and not jetpack or spaceship. Even if “DLZ” is exactly the type of thing the true cadets—David Bowie, Thom Yorke, Bono—bump in their shuttles. –Andrew Gaerig Listen: TV on the Radio: “DLZ”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-elLcYabJIo ,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/12539/homepage_large.a86c2e63.jpg,/dataset/artwork/TV_on_the_Radio-Dear_Science.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,139,Love Is All,Nine Times That Same Song,What's Your Rupture?,"Quick to fall in and out of love, and with a bit of an obsessive streak, the shouty Swedish-pop five-piece both suited and deserved their instant crit slobber. What’s more remarkable is how Nine Times That Same Song has endured and even thrived where so many similarly lauded contemporaries have begun to sound—well, not “fresh and young” anymore. From the cowbell-clattering “one more time” dance-skronk of “Talk Talk Talk Talk” to the smoldering alt-ballad TV confessional of “Trying Too Hard,” Love Is All had the funny, affecting, tellingly detailed songs to render comparisons to Life Without Buildings, X-Ray Spex, or the Yeah Yeah Yeahs all but irrelevant; along with its lo-fi elbow grease, that 10-times-great-songs spirit gives 9 Times common cause with a resurgent Slumberland’s latter-decade roster. Not falling out means never having to make up. –Marc Hogan Listen: Love Is All: “Talk Talk Talk Talk”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjU7_ecmeqs,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/8821/homepage_large.9c61ff46.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Love_Is_All-Nine_Times_That_Same_Song.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,138,The Libertines,Up the Bracket,Rough Trade,"It’s hard to remember now, but prior to the trials and (drug) tribulations and tabloid fame, Pete Doherty was once simply an up-and-coming musician. He and Carl Barât, whose flat he would later go to jail for burglarizing, led the Libertines—and before Doherty started taking their band name too literally, they mastered a post-modern collage of early blues riffs, twitchy mod rhythms, pub-rock sing-alongs, and heavily accented crooning that was such an adept Clash homage that Mick Jones himself actually produced their debut. There is such innocence and energy to Up the Bracket that it is hard not to be sad when you hear it now. It’s either the sound of unfulfilled promise or lightning in a bottle (depending on whether you’re a glass-half-full or half-empty type of person), but either way, neither Doherty’s Babyshambles nor Barât’s Dirty Pretty Things (nor the Libertines’ own disappointing follow-up) managed to recreate the raw, ramshackle magic of this album. –Rebecca Raber Listen: The Libertines: “Up the Bracket”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0u_g6zNuP_I,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/4709/homepage_large.4dca0602.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Libertines-Up_the_Bracket.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,137,Iron & Wine,The Creek Drank the Cradle,Sub Pop,"Six decades after Woody Guthrie brandished the acoustic guitar as a weapon, contemporary folk music was left battling a limp reputation (see: sadsacks in coffeehouses trilling covers of “Tom Dooley,” pausing only to sip from a complimentary mug of peppermint tea). But in 2002, when Sub Pop got its paws on a collection of four-track home recordings by a Miami-based film professor named Sam Beam, the much-maligned genre got a big, bewildering boost. The Creek Drank the Cradle is a stunning collection of traditional folk music, as tender as it is dark, full of trembling banjo and guitar and odd, skewering images: burning bibles, dead horses, sidewalk girls, empty beds, bloody puppies, lost violins, tugged-on skirts. Beam’s whispery vocals are soft and unassuming, but there’s an ominous bent to his poems (“We found your name across the chapel door, carved in cursive with a table fork,” he warns in “Muddy Hymnal”) that makes this record riveting, despite its prettiness. –Amanda Petrusich Listen: Iron & Wine: “Upward Over the Mountain”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Kh09MuIfIU,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/4082/homepage_large.1c327f78.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Iron__Wine-The_Creek_Drank_the_Cradle.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,136,No Age,Weirdo Rippers,Fat Cat,"Weirdo Rippers isn’t precisely No Age’s debut LP, a collection of early limited-run rarities, or collection of their then-greatest hits. In point of fact, it’s all three; a pretty impressive intro for a couple of fairly modest hardcore dudes, even if they do occasionally make enough noise for 20. Plucking only the best bits from five concurrently released EPs (any and all of which are worth hearing by their lonesome), Weirdo Rippers rearranges all their then-best tunes and a few floaters into a blissed-out blitzkrieg you’d hardly guess wasn’t conceived as a piece. It’s no wonder these dudes took off the way they did, seeing as this was how most people first heard them; Nouns, their proper debut, may be more enveloping and compositionally sophisticated, but Weirdo Rippers finds No Age pushing hooks over haze, kicking out blurry primitively catchy sunsoaked thrashabouts with endlessly expanding ease. –Paul Thompson Listen: No Age: “Everybody’s Down”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5XqOv150dQ,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/10139/homepage_large.611326ad.jpg,/dataset/artwork/No_Age-Weirdo_Rippers.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,135,Sigur Rós,( ),Fat Cat / PIAS / MCA,"To recap, the third album by Iceland’s Sigur Rós seemed built to rank among the most pretentious and esoteric LPs ever made: All of the vocals would be sung in Hopelandic, a vernacular invented by the band. The title would be a set of parentheses with a space in the middle, an invitation for listeners to add their own theme. The eight tracks wouldn’t have names, either, and the artwork would consist of white paper and a few greyscale landscapes. What was next, Jonsi, a split with Reynols? But such restrained exposition augments (), so that its music becomes the movie and not the soundtrack and so that—in the twinkling keyboards of track three, through the narcotic drift of track four, above the coda of track eight that’s more powerful than any crescendo Arcade Fire or Explosions in the Sky has ever put to tape—listening and responding is the only thing left. Do it closely, and—through tears, daydreams, smiles, and goosebumps—you can name every tune. –Grayson Currin Listen: Sigur Rós: “Untitled 3”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeuvegBZFuM,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/7040/homepage_large.53bf8970.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sigur_Rs-_.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,134,Queens of the Stone Age,Songs for the Deaf,Interscope,"Ten years after their Blues for the Red Sun set a gold standard in stoner rock, former Kyuss members Nick Oliveri and Josh Homme—along with Seattle-scene vets Dave Grohl and Mark Lanegan—flat-out exceeded it. Songs for the Deaf pulled off the same feat Blue Öyster Cult and Zen Arcade did in previous decades, delivering a bracing jolt that fused punk and hard rock sensibilities with an artful sense of eclecticism. Singles “Go With the Flow” and “No One Knows” earned their modern rock radio spins, but songs like the Cheap Trick-gone-sour “Gonna Leave You” and garage-psych throwback “Another Love Song” could’ve easily followed them onto heavy rotation, while the more metal-skewing deep cuts (“The Sky Is Fallin’”; “A Song for the Deaf”) grounded the album in a robust heaviness. It’s all held together with a leviathan of a rhythm section, guitars that bristle with a needle-sharp electricity, and a restless narcotic energy that echoes a theme of driving around restlessly, waiting for something good to come on the radio. –Nate Patrin Listen: Queens of the Stone Age: “No One Knows”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s88r_q7oufE,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/6510/homepage_large.33c86983.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Queens_of_the_Stone_Age-Songs_for_the_Deaf.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,133,Erykah Badu,New Amerykah Part One: 4th World War,Motown,"Erykah Badu’s music had undeniably gotten darker and less soul-snob friendly over the course of the decade. But her base appeal remained the same, even if overt nods to out-jazz and underground rap were bound to attract a new brand of fan. What hits you on your 10th play of New Amerykah is not Badu’s sonic invention but the force of her personality—equal parts spiritual seeker, round-the-way girl, boho striver, and cultural scold. You’re getting a real person on New Amerykah, rich in contradictions and ideals and recognizable fears, something still rare enough at her level of fame that it’s both disarming and comforting. The fact that she chose to give herself to us over music so astoundingly odd and beautiful seems like a bonus, really. –Jess Harvell Listen: Erykah Badu: “Honey”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFkHylBiPyQ,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/11327/homepage_large.abee5e54.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Erykah_Badu-New_Amerykah_Part_One_4th_World_War.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,132,Hercules and Love Affair,Hercules and Love Affair,DFA,"“Hercules’ Theme” might be Andy Butler and sultry singer Nomi squeezing into the “Shaft” suit, but in a lovely ironic twist, the best pure club album of the decade devotes most of its emotional energy to delayed gratifications. Discovering that Hercules wandered alone until the end of his life searching for his kidnapped (male) lover, Butler built his long-simmering bow from the raw passion latent in unresolved tension and heartache, and cast the perfect players to fill out the expansive set-pieces. The star of the show, however, is undeniably Antony Hegarty, whose dark, warbly tenor transports perfectly into Butler’s opulent disco. Hegarty takes the airtight arrangements of “Blind” and “Time Will” as mere structural suggestions, investing lines like “I cannot hold half a life” and “when I find myself alone, I feel like I am blind” with a fervor and sensuality that feels downright divine. –Eric Harvey Listen: Hercules and Love Affair: “Blind”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RsfGJsax9E,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/11043/homepage_large.36b23908.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Hercules_and_Love_Affair-Hercules_and_Love_Affair.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,131,The Notwist,Neon Golden,City Slang,"Radiohead’s early-decade recipe of electronic-flavored art-rock served with heaping portions of post-millennial paranoia and disaffection left listeners ravenous to find other bands that could whip up those prickly moods and sonic textures. Enter the Notwist, by no means a bunch of Radiohead acolytes, but a group that happened to be pushing many of the same buttons as the English quintet. Notwist’s 2002 breakthrough, Neon Golden, is a great work of narrow emotional response. Atop taut, hypnotic beds made of things like acoustic guitar, banjo, meditative sax tones, and random electro-junk, vocalist Markus Acher manages to sell lines like “We are satisfied/ From Monday to Friday and on Sunday we cry” through sheer alienated absence of affect. –Joshua Love Listen: The Notwist: “Consequence”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1cLzAos6ng,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/5765/homepage_large.c87b09b0.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Notwist-Neon_Golden.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,130,Clipse,We Got It 4 Cheap Vol. 2,,"Now that Hell Hath No Fury is no longer trapped in record-industry limbo—now that it has taken its rightful place among fellow cult-favorite commercial flops like Bubba Sparxxx’s Deliverance—the We Got It 4 Cheap mixtapes can be seen a little more clearly for what they are: The greatest collection of freestyles recorded over old G-Unit and Dipset beats by Grammy-nominated street rappers trying desperately to break their label contract ever. Vol. 2 remains the purest distillation of the Thornton brothers’ narrow brand of genius, a treasure trove of punchlines so impeccably phrased, turned, and timed that they transcend their punchline status. The insouciance of Pusha and Mal’s drug talk got some white people angrier with each other than at any point since the “Seinfeld” finale, but the writing on this mixtape mounts its own defense of its subject matter, gleaming with a fierce love for words and a helpless fascination with the infinite ways they can be put together to say new versions of the same thing. In short: These are still some of the most quotable raps of the decade. –Jayson Greene Listen: Clipse: “Zen”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YXd05zMDMI,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/13334/homepage_large.6dc74fee.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Clipse-We_Got_It_4_Cheap_Vol_2.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,129,The Streets,A Grand Don't Come for Free,Vice / Atlantic,"Strange that the explosion of social networking sites coincided with Mike Skinner losing touch of his greatest attribute—the ability to sound like someone you don’t know but would still call a friend. That gift was maximized on A Grand Don’t Come for Free, a record that really needed it in the worst way. Overcoming wallpaper beats, impossible plot points (for his next trick, he’ll lose his ATM card in a plasma TV), spoilers, and, well, a plot to begin with, Grand’s frankly stunning replay value stems from creating perfectly drawn vignettes that stand alone as individual set pieces. That first date that’s going a little too well for comfort (“Could Well Be In”). The packed club that still feels like the loneliest place in the world (“Blinded by the Lights”). The heartbreak that’s so crippling that you clutch to clichés like “there’s plenty more fish in the sea” as if they could truly save you (imagine if “Dry Your Eyes” actually kept its rumored hook by Chris Martin). And then the beat switches in “Empty Cans,” and you realize listening to A Grand might be akin to Facebooking an ex, but damn if Skinner rationalizes that too: “Something that was not meant to be is done/ And this is the start of what was.” –Ian Cohen Listen: The Streets: “Dry Your Eyes”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHOf3s70w-c,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/7415/homepage_large.3748194f.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Streets-A_Grand_Dont_Come_for_Free.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,128,Life Without Buildings,Any Other City,D.C. Baltimore,"Sue Tompkins might be the most striking indie singer of the decade. She sounds like an internal monologue. She rattles out streams of words, repeating phrases and fragments like someone compulsively murmuring a list she’s trying not to forget. She rolls and stretches words around in her mouth. She makes girlish exclamations and then whips around to chest-beating boasts, defiant dares, wounded questions. Her voice bounces and twirls acrobatically all around the music, then pulls itself up into passionate demands like lines ripped from an argument: “Look back and say that I didn’t!” She does all this and yet sounds really normal and down-to-earth and awesome about it. Glasgow’s Life Without Buildings backed up her gorgeous high-wire act with perfectly understated guitar work, and made just this one incredible, gem-like album—lovable, beautiful, and moving, the kind of treasure with a mood and aesthetic entirely its own. Then they broke up. It’s a good thing this one’s so endlessly replayable, so worth poring over every tic, stutter, and syllable. –Nitsuh Abebe Listen: Life Without Buildings: “New Town”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smZDTefLZ9M,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/24742/homepage_large.b77d1fed.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Life_Without_Buildings-Any_Other_City.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,127,Sleater-Kinney,The Woods,Sub Pop,"By album seven, the life-cycle of most bands would dictate stagnation, or at least a move towards more “mature” themes. Not Sleater-Kinney. A jump to Sub Pop from longtime home Kill Rock Stars and the enlistment of producer Dave Fridmann kickstarted a short but brave new era for the band. On The Woods, the trio rock out with their cocks out, embracing their inner shag-haired arena gods via florid guitar solos and thunderous low-end crunch, not to mention an 11-minute song about fucking. It was the most body-focused music of Sleater-Kinney’s career, but it didn’t come at the expense of the head: “Modern Girl” coats the emptiness of consumer culture in sugary melody, “Entertain” disses merchants of mediocre art, “Jumpers” offers sympathy for a suicide. It would be the band’s last album (not forever, let’s hope). –Amy Phillips Listen: Sleater-Kinney: “Modern Girl”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ptk7DEYY6LA,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/7128/homepage_large.491909e4.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sleater-Kinney-The_Woods.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,126,Mastodon,Leviathan,Relapse,"This decade, the metal underground dropped its stadium ambitions and turned inward, splitting off into dozens of subgenre variations and bashing away in tiny rooms. Mastodon rose to the top of that pack not by bringing back accessibility or grandeur but by doing crusty, misanthropic churn better than anyone else—which, after all, is how a band like Metallica ascended to stadium status in the first place. Leviathan, still Mastodon’s best, is a concept album about a Herman Melville novel. That’s the sort of dubious idea that you’d think only a stoned American Lit study group or the Decemberists could conjure, but Mastodon make it work by tapping into the primal dread and awe that comes with a gigantic whale smashing the fuck out of a whole whaling ship. Their bile-gargling vocals and juddering riffs and double-bass pummel all work together like a terrible machine, and even something as epically ambitious as the 14-minute “Hearts Alive” stays gripping throughout. –Tom Breihan Listen: Mastodon: “Blood and Thunder”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsdIO8RHMTc,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/5078/homepage_large.a18eb893.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mastodon-Leviathan.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,125,The Books,Thought for Food,Tomlab,"The Books’ debut splits the difference between a joke and a revelation. Sometimes the duo of Paul de Jong and Nick Zammuto act ridiculous: a dead fish realizes it’s dead; a dad disses his daughter. But other samples are anonymous and mysterious, and the music that envelopes them is sublime. From the sweep of a cello to an indescribable clatter, every detail catches the ear, and the instruments are cut and overdubbed so carefully that the seams vanish. These passages are as alluring as the gags are wacky—or maybe the humor helps us give in to a sense of wonder. The Books’ later discs smooth out their rough edges, but this one’s the most fun, and you may still wonder from moment to moment exactly what’s making you smile. –Chris Dahlen Listen: The Books: “Enjoy Your Worries, You May Never Have Them Again”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Cx10MrMYB4,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/848/homepage_large.c0d0f882.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Books-Thought_for_Food.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,124,PJ Harvey,"Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea",Island,"It could have been Polly Jean’s jump-the-shark moment. Having built a career pushing the boundaries of art-diva dramatics, playing it straight was possibly her riskiest move yet. A fashionista glamour shot on the cover? Mousse-slick production? Songs about luuuurve? Uh oh. But it turns out that Happy PJ can be just as compelling as Tortured PJ, and sometimes even as scary (see: the violent lust of “Big Exit,” the unbridled horniness of “This Is Love”). Unfortunately, history added another level of spookiness to the album. After 9/11, Harvey’s reminiscences of romance on the streets of Manhattan and Brooklyn took on a previously unimagined sense of dread. It just isn’t possible to hear “This Mess We’re In,” with duet partner Thom Yorke singing “Can you hear them?/ The helicopters?/ We’re in New York,” the same way again. Following Stories, PJ Harvey returned to unabashed weirdness; the three albums she has released since are as raw as ever. Any further drifting into the chick flick netherworld was thankfully avoided. –Amy Phillips Listen: PJ Harvey: “This Mess We’re In”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTrGowDPjBk,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/3717/homepage_large.d87ccf6b.jpg,/dataset/artwork/PJ_Harvey-Stories_From_the_City_Stories_From_the_Sea.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,123,Four Tet,Rounds,Domino,"There’s exacting and there’s shambling. And then there’s Rounds smack in the middle of the two. Kieran Hebden’s finest LP is a sweet-spot masterclass, zoning out on the precise midpoint between jazz, hip-hop, folk, and Warp-ed electro. There’s as much John Coltrane as there is J Dilla, yet this is no mash-up exercise. Critics called it “folktronica”—about as inelegant a term imaginable for something so seamless. For all of the enveloping drums and whittled acoustic guitars, Rounds’ secret weapon is air. Whether its the oxygen tank breaths that runs through “My Angel Rocks Back and Forth” or the exhaling rubberducky squeaking on “Slow Jam” or the hi-hat’s hiss on “Spirit Fingers,” Hebden humanizes his laptop-born instrumentals with constant sonic CPR. The album starts with a heartbeat; flatlining is inconceivable. –Ryan Dombal Listen: Four Tet: “As Serious As Your Life”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fwbn_sKCVRo,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/3138/homepage_large.566c7497.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Four_Tet-Rounds.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,122,Ryan Adams,Heartbreaker,Bloodshot,"Heartbreaker should be disqualified from such lists: Its raw nerves inspired a legion of jackasses to chord an acoustic clumsily. But these 14 songs, recorded in as many days between the end of Whiskeytown and the release of its swan song, still stun: Emmylou Harris’ harmony on the soul-draining “Oh My Sweet Carolina” recalls her chemistry with Adams’ icon, while Gillian Welch chills the air of “Bartering Lines,” a creeping banjo blues, with steely exhalations. He misses his girl as soon as she’s driving home, and he hates everything—his best records, his favorite friends, her sweetest gifts—when she finally bails. There have been plenty of reasons to pity Adams this decade. Heartbreaker, though, inspires the kind of regret you feel for anyone that’s ever lost at love. –Grayson Currin Listen: Ryan Adams: “Come Pick Me Up”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kM0mjukDGRw,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/35/homepage_large.30151f8d.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ryan_Adams-Heartbreaker.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,121,Broadcast,Haha Sound,Warp,"If there is a nostalgia at work in the music of Birmingham’s Broadcast, it is the wistful nostalgia for an alternate pop-cultural history—a timeline whose canon is dominated by such mad scientists as Joe Meek or the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, synth pioneers Silver Apples, and the vintage soundtracks of cult films like Valerie and Her Week of Wonders. On Broadcast’s second studio album, Haha Sound, the full spectrum of their inventive scavenging is on exuberant display. Considerably more turbulent than their debut The Noise Made By People, Broadcast move gracefully from the primal Krautrock throb of “Pendulum” and raucous, Meek-inspired instrumentals to tracks of almost impossible delicacy such as the lullaby-like “Valerie” or the gauzy “Winter Now.” Above all the tumult, Trish Keenan provides a crucial human element, keeping the album stabilized with her serene vocals and expressive melodies, sounding wholly unflappable no matter how much the ground might pitch beneath her feet. –Matthew Murphy Listen: Broadcast: “Before We Begin”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZNt3geXtJo,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/940/homepage_large.537af7cd.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Broadcast-Haha_Sound.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,120,Ted Leo and the Pharmacists,The Tyranny of Distance,Lookout!,"Choosing favorites among Leo’s output is tough—the reasons for loving any of his records are constant, though maybe more obvious here: Where else in this decade can you find a crate-digger who’ll name his record for a Split Enz lyric? Or some who will wear a Thin Lizzy jacket on the sleeve but writes songs as graceful and approachable as “Biomusicology” or “Under the Hedge”? Formed in between Pharmacists lineups and aided by numerous friends in the studio, Tryanny of Distance sounds cobbled together by the pieces of a lifetime’s listening while still remarkably cohesive and whole. The album only strains to be clever in its compositions, but never arch in its delivery; in fact, when the microphone distorts on tracks like “Stove by a Whale” or “You Could Die (Or This Might End),” it sounds less like a calculated studio affectation and more like the force of Leo’s voice tearing speaker cones. –Jason Crock Listen: Ted Leo and the Pharmacists: “Biomusicology”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoJNYppNlzU,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/4681/homepage_large.e1e60459.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ted_Leo_and_the_Pharmacists-The_Tyranny_of_Distance.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,119,Eminem,The Marshall Mathers LP,Interscope,"Can a monster be a hero? Misfits have run popular music for decades—cast out from modern life, forced to seek refuge in the self. Marshall Mathers fits the bill, but somehow he scared us more. It’s possible he was kidding about all the killing and raping and hating—he’s used the “Can’t take a joke?” defense for years now. But if it’s all a piss-take, then this album doesn’t matter nearly as much. Because although it is finely crafted platform for one of the most technically gifted rhymers of our lifetime, it’s the venom that shook the world. How far can we go together? Eminem observes a fan murder his pregnant wife as an ode to his favorite rapper, and later screams himself into mortal shock before slaughtering his own wife (again). He hoovers drugs and threatens date rape. He bashes gays and murders Dr. Dre. And, somehow, we root for him. What a sick joke. –Sean Fennessey Listen: Eminem: “The Real Slim Shady”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJO5HU_7_1w,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/18276/homepage_large.b7b06250.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Eminem-The_Marshall_Mathers_LP.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,118,The Beta Band,Hot Shots II,Astralwerks,"With a wickedly audacious way around different sounds (psych-rock, funk, hip-hop, breakbeat), the Beta Band not only made music that worked but seemed sublime. That is, when they weren’t screwing the pooch with confounders like “The Beta Band Rap” or “Monolith.” Fans never had it easy, but Hot Shots II, the Scottish prankster’s most consistently good album, made adoring them easier. Unlike the scattershot-brilliant Three EPs or batshit-crazy self-titled joint, the band’s sophomore LP eschews the busier basslines, beats, and samples for a spare set of taut folktronica. There’s some sonic variety, but lead “Squares”—a masterpiece of minimal trip-pop whose strange geometries corset Steve Mason’s wounded drone to heartbreaking effect—is pretty representative of the album’s emotional pitch. For those who love the Beta Band’s reckless exuberance, Hot Shots II probably smacks of a schizophrenic finally taking his meds, only to lose his edge. Sometimes competent has gotta trump brilliant. –Amy Granzin Listen: The Beta Band: “Squares”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkjg3SgUUkY,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/665/homepage_large.eb55721f.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Beta_Band-Hot_Shots_II.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,117,Low,Things We Lost in the Fire,Kranky,"After an eight-year career with only the slightest experimentation on their signature sound, Things We Lost in the Fire may be the quietest quantum leap forward in any band’s catalog. New instrumentation was folded gracefully into Low’s sparse setup as if the three-piece had been master arrangers the whole time, from the trumpet of “Dinosaur Act” to the strings and samples lurking underneath almost every vocal harmony (still front and center here, as always). The familiar tension and tenderness suddenly had an ocean of depth behind every tentative snare tap and guitar strum. That they’d only hinted at it before makes the album all the more stunning; they were suddenly willing to experiment at any turn, but never added a detail that made the song anything less than immaculate. The oppressive drone that leads to the acoustic lullaby of “In Metal” ends the record affirming that growth. –Jason Crock Listen: Low: “Sunflower”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7Qd0mbji0U,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/4831/homepage_large.49e07424.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Low-Things_We_Lost_in_the_Fire.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,116,Michael Mayer,Immer 1,Kompakt,"In the novelty-choked world of the DJ mix, where two-month-old tracks are hopelessly passé, the greatest compliment you can pay Immer is that it doesn’t sound dated in the slightest. Of course it helps that Michael Mayer’s selection sounded timeless to begin with. The Kompakt label’s next great calling card following 2001’s Total 3 compilation, Immer is as moody and windswept as the Mahler sample that crops up near the end, its beat-less strings sounding not a bit out of place amidst melancholy tech-house. “Minimal” is one thing Immer is not. It’s as gorgeously melodramatic, as unashamedly manipulative, as the work of any high-disco auteur or romantic composer. And it’s Mayer’s appeals to the “corny” emotions of his listeners that keeps them coming back when the luster’s worn away from the beat experiments of his sleeker, more fashion-conscious peers. –Jess Harvell Listen: M.Rahn: “Toaster”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQbQGG-oOrE,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/24756/homepage_large.69ce445d.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Michael_Mayer-Immer_1.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,115,The Shins,"Oh, Inverted World",Sub Pop,"Rather than evoking any specific bygone era or sound, Oh, Inverted World creates its own nostalgia. The debut album from the then-Albuquerque-based Shins is bathed in just enough old-timey atmospherics to be entirely immersive, but never comes off as wink-and-nod referential. Underneath the album’s gentle haze is a treasure trove of impossibly graceful pop moments: the overlapping harmonies in “Girl on the Wing,” the concise and charming vocal melody of “The Celibate Life,” the giddy turnaround after the bridge of “Know Your Onion!” By the time Oh, Inverted World became the poster record for “indie goes mainstream”—a good three years after the album’s release—many of us had already internalized it from beginning to end, ensuring that the music itself will live on well past both the hype and the backlash. –Matt LeMay Listen: The Shins: “New Slang”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYwCmcB0XMw,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/7002/homepage_large.c4658813.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Shins-Oh_Inverted_World.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,114,Cam'ron,Purple Haze,Roc-A-Fella,"The album that launched a thousand rap blogs. By 2005 Cam’Ron, surrounded by a coterie of modest MCs just turning the corner (Juelz Santana, Jim Jones), was slithering around the Roc-A-Fella Records office trying to avoid dirty looks from Jay-Z. He’d already scored his long-predicted commercial smash with 2002’s Come Home With Me, so he was playing with house money. Call this a personal project for a relentlessly distant artist; an asshole’s lament. Purple Haze is simultaneously a refined, perfectly A&R-ed follow-up and one of the most confusing, crude full-lengths ever. Cam’s absurdist wit and impressive ability to coil syllables together are at their height. “Down and Out” both justified chipmunk soul entirely and threatened some sort of misogynist victory lap. “Get Em Girls” made opera safe for trunks. And Mizzle lead the most surprisingly knowing series of rap skits since De La had jokes. Cam hasn’t been this good in years. But, really, few rappers have. –Sean Fennessey Listen: Cam’ron: “Down and Out”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YHu0sOM5N4,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/1776/homepage_large.1ad8e81f.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Camron-Purple_Haze.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,113,LCD Soundsystem,LCD Soundsystem,DFA,"Just as his post-millennial post-punk-exhuming peers were getting disposable, James Murphy went quotable, unleashing a reality check of a debut record that delivered on all the promise of his singles—which, B-sides and all, came conveniently bundled on this record’s second disc. While those peers were wearing their influences a little too snugly on their sleeves, Murphy was expertly synthesizing his and then laundry-listing them off en masse for kicks. While others were aloof, Murphy was envisioning house shows for arena bands and offering to “show us the ropes.” And according to the Gospel of James, we were “enfranchised and entrenched,” but “actually really really nice” too. This was indie populism for a new century and a savvier populace, where the wit of the dude pointing fingers from the sidelines and the heart of the dude wilding out right in the middle of it converged to become, well, the “fat guy in a t-shirt doing all the singing.” Yay for him. –Matthew Solarski Listen: LCD Soundsystem: “Daft Punk Is Playing at My House”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj8JrQ9w5jY,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/4916/homepage_large.98a39805.jpg,/dataset/artwork/LCD_Soundsystem-LCD_Soundsystem.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,112,Feist,The Reminder,Cherrytree / Interscope,"Just about every review of Feist’s The Reminder felt compelled to mention her indie rock bona fides and her newfound soccer-mom appeal. A short-lived move to Paris, where she found that “trying to be cool is too exhausting,” spelled out the precariousness of her position, caught between cozy underground and iPod commercial ubiquity. The album feels almost prescient, then, in its sense of loneliness—cut loose from her Broken Social Scene, Feist sounds set adrift in songs awash in images of oceans, steam, fog, snow, wind, and moonlight. Cryptic mini-narratives of love and loss give way to the sense of a longing that can’t find its way into words—“The way home/ And it’s not about a boy/ Although, although”—while lyrics pile up, bleeding through from song to song, accruing a meaning you can’t quite put your finger on. The same goes for the music, though you might not notice it at first: the small, acoustic ensemble, often room-miked and recorded live, conveys an intimacy and immediacy that’s unusual for pop music. Incidental birdsong and the sound of fingers sliding on steel strings conjure an unmistakable sense of presence, one that only makes the album’s essential sense of loss all the more palpable. –Philip Sherburne Listen: Feist: “1 2 3 4”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABYnqp-bxvg,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/9991/homepage_large.1b8401c4.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Feist-The_Reminder.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,111,M83,Saturdays=Youth,Virgin / Mute,"As he gets older, Anthony Gonzalez seems to be getting better at separating riff from reality. Previous records Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts and Before the Dawn Heals Us offered impressive stabs of impressionistic and post-apocalyptic color, sometimes less song than emotive idea or pop culture touchstone. Saturdays=Youth, on the other hand, is if anything pre-apocalyptic, with Gonzalez and Morgan Kibby offering as tribute the purview of adolescence bracing for the catastrophe of adulthood. Inspired by the films of John Hughes and set amidst swaths of Cocteau Twins–esque synths and reverb, Saturdays proffers idyllic archetypes like “Kim and Jessie” and the self-absorbed, semi-suicidal 15-year-old “Graveyard Girl.” That is, Gonzalez’s synth-soaked production, slick and polished, places his conceit in the ’80s of his own adolescence, but his subjects’ angst is immortal, accessible to the listener no matter which decade they call home. –Mike Orme Listen: M83: “We Own the Sky”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWsUNbdc5IM,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/11175/homepage_large.a84088b5.jpg,/dataset/artwork/M83-SaturdaysYouth.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,110,The National,Boxer,Beggars Banquet,"Let’s not tiptoe around the subject: The National are a little boring. Yet they’re boring in all of the right dependable, everyman ways—the ways parties and friends and lagers are boring. Boxer takes the sentiments from James Murphy’s “All My Friends” and stretches them over 12 lurching tracks. Berninger’s lyrics are like a twentysomething survival guide: “Can you carry my drink/ I have everything else”; returning “two armfuls of magazines”; “sometimes you get up and bake a cake or something.” Hell, the lingering sentiment of “Fake Empire”—“Let’s not try to figure out everything at once”—is the single most reassuring thing anyone’s said to me since college ended. The Boxer is an album for those who’ve needed their beers carried once or twice. –Andrew Gaerig Listen: The National: “Fake Empire”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KehwyWmXr3U,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/10054/homepage_large.7a4f09b9.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_National-Boxer.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,109,Band of Horses,Everything All the Time,Sub Pop,"“Now, if you find yourself falling apart,” begins Ben Bridwell, Band of Horses’ bearded, howling frontman on the group’s debut LP, Everything All the Time. Everything is a record jammed with foreboding (“The Funeral” opens with the terrifying promise “I’m coming up only/ To hold you under,” before moving on to its dark-anthem chorus of “At every occasion, I’ll be ready for the funeral”), but each grim couplet is balanced by a moment of cathartic release (usually facilitated by a reverb-soaked guitar). Although the band occasionally gets tangled up in critical comparisons—Bridwell’s high, yawning vocals evoke Neil Young and My Morning Jacket’s Jim James—Everything All the Time is unique in its dissonance and beauty. Ergo: extraordinarily useful when you find yourself falling apart. –Amanda Petrusich Listen: Band of Horses: “The Funeral”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMFWFhTFohk,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/1191/homepage_large.1a0eb755.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Band_of_Horses-Everything_All_the_Time.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,108,Sonic Youth,Murray Street,Geffen,"Murray Street’s propulsive, clean-lined jams skirted outright classic rock for maybe the first time in Sonic Youth’s career, but it wouldn’t be an SY album without the foursome reaffirming they could still do truculent and spaced-out with the best. The result is an album of halves—the first a loose Tom Verlaine/Jerry Garcia shredfest where each snaking, entwining note seems to sparkle; the second a fearsomely compressed and funny brand of cartoon no wave, with bonus dream-pop outro. It’s also the Sonic Youth album with something for everyone: the blow-out-your-eardrums noise kids; the folks who sussed the band’s kinship with Neil Young even before they toured together; the musique concrète fans who wished Goodbye 20th Century hadn’t been a one-off. –Jess Harvell Listen: Sonic Youth: “Sympathy for the Strawberry”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNxHmKLKUxI,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/7228/homepage_large.6614ec74.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sonic_Youth-Murray_Street.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,107,Justice,†,Vice / Because / Ed Banger,"There’s a beauty to be extracted from every horrible noise—it’s a fertile enough philosophy to sustain a band like Sonic Youth for 30 years. But whereas SY found the divine in mechanical errors like mistunings and feedback, Justice’s vocabulary of musical crimes draws from the computer-age lawbook: shitty bitrates, EQ ignorance, and ringtones from blown-out cell-phone speakers. Gathering these wrong moments and sculpting them into a French house shape takes no small amount of craft, and Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay deserve their credit, no matter how much gear is conspicuously left unplugged in live appearances. Their bow on “We Are Your Friends” barely hinted at the glitchy abrasiveness Justice would bring to †, though “Phantom” and “Waters of Nazareth” were a stronger hint of their true M.O. But the broken-antenna fitfulness of “Newjack,” the disco glitz of “Phantom Pt. II,” and the chipper electro-pop of “D.A.N.C.E.” showed how many different molds the duo could pour hot molten diginoise into without repeating themselves. –Rob Mitchum Listen: Justice: “D.A.N.C.E.”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sy1dYFGkPUE,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/10130/homepage_large.10da6024.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Justice-.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,106,Caribou,Up in Flames,Leaf,"The 2003 release of Caribou’s (then Manitoba’s) Up in Flames served as an unofficial death knell for the “indietronica” marketing ploy of the early-to-mid-’00s. While numerous artists had combined songcraft and digitally manipulated sound, none made it seem as natural and intuitive as Caribou’s Dan Snaith, who applied an effortless technical mastery to the heart-on-sleeve charm of indie pop. Snaith manipulated muscular drum loops and digitally fragmented vocals with an ease and homespun charm that would make a lo-fi troubadour blush, and his songwriting chops were just as strong as his production ones—and it’s the unique interplay of the two that makes Up In Flames so remarkable. It’s only fitting that such a record would emerge from an era in which a computer is as familiar and logical a means of expression as an acoustic guitar. –Matt LeMay Listen: Caribou: “Crayon”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJW5orgElVg,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/13526/homepage_large.d70c8823.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Caribou-Up_in_Flames.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,105,Battles,Mirrored,Warp,"Here’s how you know you’ll be into Mirrored: You take a look at that iconic album cover and see a really jammin’ practice space. Here’s how you know you’ll really be into Mirrored: You take a look at that iconic album cover and see a Toys “R” Us. Mirrored’s got plenty of “how’d they pull that off?” moments, but the most impressive technical accomplishment was how it came off like a college caper movie in the vein of PCU, a bunch of highly intelligent wiseacres knocking down ivory towers and teaching the stuffed-shirted deans of math-rock and prog how to have some damn fun, conveying humor, groove, and even a little bit of a sex appeal without a single discernible word of English. Unsurprisingly, Mirrored didn’t set any new trends: for the rest of the decade, indie mostly shifted back to its fascination of working against constraints, whether it was budgetary or just instrumental capacity (though the two often went hand in hand). Which only goes further in illustrating its singularity—you know how sports fans argue about the kind of player they’d create when they’re playing “Madden”? That’s what Mirrored still sounds like—a video game version of a rock group whose only limits are their imaginations, and those things are cranked at 99. –Ian Cohen Listen: Battles: “Atlas”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpGp-22t0lU,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/10037/homepage_large.90da4abf.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Battles-Mirrored.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,104,The Postal Service,Give Up,Sub Pop,"If the Postal Service’s second album never comes out, it wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Give Up is mid-decade indie pop flawlessly preserved in amber, Ben Gibbard and Jimmy Tamborello guiding the courtship between emo and IDM towards a new kind of shy, introspective new wave. But tracks like “Such Great Heights” and “Clark Gable” teeter just barely on the right side of a thin line between sappy and sublime—why tempt fate with another tightrope walk? The legions of pitiful imitators Give Up spawned have proven just how difficult the Postal Service’s alchemy is to replicate, and nothing Gibbard or Tamborello have done since has equaled its dizzy highs, despite Death Cab for Cutie’s platinum-selling, chart-topping successes. So let’s try to forget the TV commercials and cinematic love scenes Give Up’s songs soundtracked, shake it loose from the indie-yuppie lifestyle branding it has come to represent, and stop pinning irrational hopes on its follow-up. Let’s appreciate the album for what it is: An exquisite time capsule that probably can’t—and probably shouldn’t—be duplicated. –Amy Phillips Listen: The Postal Service: “Such Great Heights”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wrsZog8qXg,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/6338/homepage_large.0da23510.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Postal_Service-Give_Up.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,103,Diplo / M.I.A.,"Piracy Funds Terrorism, Vol. 1",Hollertronix,"When Danger Mouse’s The Grey Album began percolating in early 2004, its mashed grapes were more punch line than reason to sweat. But before that same year was out, Diplo and M.I.A. began rolling out Piracy Funds Terrorism, a pre-Arular opus not only capable of completely slaying clubs, but one that also embodied the Indiana Jones–like spirit of both Hollertonix and Ms. Arulpragasam: travel the world (or Web) in search of beats and textures to set the hip-pop and mash-up format afuckingblaze. Baile funk. Dub. Hooks lifted from Clipse and Ciara and the Bangles and oh holy crap, “Big Pimpin.” No matter how disparate the origin, no matter how dusty the crate, Diplo was able to make M.I.A.’s vocals sting. Besides being one of the first true successes of the internet’s mixtape movement, it felt as if M.I.A. was the muse and voicebox he had been searching for all along. Piracy represented a union that funded a weirdly global party, one that hasn’t stopped or been successfully duplicated since. –David Bevan Listen: M.I.A./Diplo: “Galang”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRvWQrGurkQ,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/5542/homepage_large.d0f53cee.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Diplo__MIA-Piracy_Funds_Terrorism_Vol_1.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,102,The Mountain Goats,The Sunset Tree,4AD,"John Darnielle’s back catalog of simple four-chord folk—about the redemption of everyone from Caesar to meth-heads—is a heartbreaking display of empathy. But Caesar and meth-heads probably don’t listen to simple four-chord folk, and short stories probably don’t save lives as often as self-help books. All to say The Sunset Tree, Darnielle’s first to talk about his own adolescence in an abusive household, was also the first to address his audience—the first where a fan could say, “that is my life and hearing someone sing about it makes me feel better” without having to imagine they were someone else. But Darnielle isn’t a diarist or a whiner—over the course of the album he accepts, forgives, and even mourns his abuser. In between, there are jokes, choruses, and full-band arrangements—the kind of primary colors that make for immediate music that doesn’t lose its point when you roll the windows down. Whether he understood his own pain better than the pain of others, I’m not sure, but it does sound like he felt it more. –Mike Powell Listen: The Mountain Goats: “This Year”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ii6kJaGiRaI,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/5385/homepage_large.aea3dafe.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Mountain_Goats-The_Sunset_Tree.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,101,Franz Ferdinand,Franz Ferdinand,Domino,"A major label bow from a more or less no-one band with an attendant out of nowhere hit single that will likely never be bested does not always bode well for a long and fruitful career. Fortunately Franz Ferdinand had a secret weapon, namely that its self-titled debut was full of tightly wound and sneakily clever funk-punk numbers perfectly timed to take advantage of the fact that the white kids were dressing sharper and dancing again. If not all the tracks were on par with “Take Me Out,” many came pretty damn close, and did so with a disarming confidence and ease at odds with the careerist unctuousness of too many would-be stars. It helped that singer Alex Kapranos understood that just because the lyrics should serve the song, that’s no reason to slack on the wit, which subversively lies in wait once you get past the near-blinding surface sheen of what is in essence a band-sized rhythm section. –Joshua Klein Listen: Franz Ferdinand: “Take Me Out”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ijk4j-r7qPA,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/3249/homepage_large.92f891b0.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Franz_Ferdinand-Franz_Ferdinand.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,100,...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead,Source Tags and Codes,Interscope,"Blending exquisite ballast, searching psychonautica, greasy glam, thought-eradicating pummelprog, and bleary spindlerock, Source Tags & Codes operates on a grand scale. Seven years and many diminishing returns later, it still manages to overwhelm like it did whenever you first let it wash over you. Even as “Homage” melts your face or “Baudelaire” boogies its way into your brain, you half-expect whatever’s next to fail. At some point the grandiosity should turn to bloat right? But on the back of 11 well-crafted, brutally executed scorched-earth lighter-raisers, it succeeds. Of course they never did it again; how could they have? –Paul Thompson Listen: ...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead: “Another Morning Stoner”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNf54L5uFZI,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/177/homepage_large.ae0be767.jpg,/dataset/artwork/And_You_Will_Know_Us_by_the_Trail_of_Dead-Source_Tags_and_Codes.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,99,Lil Wayne,Da Drought 3,Young Money Entertainment,"Anyone can play guitar. But really, after Da Drought 3, what else did a free-associating New Orleans rap star have left to try? Auto-Tune? OK, he did that, too. Lil Wayne’s most recent truly great mixtape should probably be remembered as the one that forced its stoned creator to look outside rap if he wanted to get much higher. Drought 3 doesn’t have the gravitas of Dedication 2’s “Georgia...Bush,” but it has everything else except flow-killing DJ tags: Wayne’s fully ripened rasp, top-flight instrumentals, rhymes creative enough to swallow both them and bigger rappers whole, Harry and the Hendersons, Gremlins, Grey Poupon, “Raspberry Beret,” syrup, pills, weed, Bloods, Brett Favre, Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Donovan McNabb, Pam Grier, a Jamaican accent, an insane “Crazy,” a heartfelt ode to Ciara, a hilarious explanation for kissing his hip-hop benefactor. And this: “I don’t rap, I just shit like a newborn.” It’s dedicated to Wayne’s grandma, and he hopes you got it for free. –Marc Hogan Listen: Lil Wayne: “Black Republicans”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8-e6o7cS4M,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/10041/homepage_large.863c4a85.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lil_Wayne-Da_Drought_3.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,98,Cat Power,You Are Free,Matador,"Look at what preceded You Are Free, and you’ll find a performer whose work (both in-studio and onstage) was often derided as amateurish. Look at what follows it, and the backhanded buzzword for naysayers and disgruntled fans is “professional.” You Are Free is, to this point in her career, the last time that Chan Marshall has sounded like the Cat Power most admire—the doe-eyed waif gifted with an awkward poetic grace and burdened with world-weary wisdom. It’s a vulnerable yet confident record, and not just because she’s able to effortlessly incorporate contributions from grunge heavy hitters like Dave Grohl and Eddie Vedder like it ain’t no thing. It’s because it shows Marshall at her best (especially on standout tracks like “Names” and “He War”), when she’s able to be both vulnerable and confident at the same time. It was her next album that she wryly called The Greatest, but it’s You Are Free that has the rights to that honor. –David Raposa Listen: Cat Power: “He War”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZVqNnqEDO8,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/1331/homepage_large.f3d08d79.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Cat_Power-You_Are_Free.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,97,The Dismemberment Plan,Change,DeSoto,"You wake up one morning, last’s night’s ill-advised champagne dump still slick against your brow, crumpled up invitation-to-everywhere next to the bed, and there’s this other person in there. And they don’t leave, either, so you feed every detail through your memory machine until all they ever seem to say is goodbye, and they’re gone. Our new-new-romantic overanxious urbanite narrator of the Dismemberment Plan—let’s call him Travis—seems to have got himself good and heartbroken sometime between 1999’s landmark art-funker Emergency & I and 2001’s Change, and, just like when it happens to you, it weighs on every moment. Change does emo a few better by eschewing melodrama (well, mostly) for the real heartbreak of heartbreak: how very mundane it gets, feeling like shit about somebody. As the Plan grind out a frostier, more languorous version of their frenzied groove, Travis Morrison recounts decidedly uncool but entirely relatable reset-button stuff like calling your dad for relationship advice or gnashing your teeth at friends who start pairing off and not returning your records. How terribly fitting that a difficult record about the troubles with transition would serve as the swan song for a band gone far too soon. –Paul Thompson Listen: The Dismemberment Plan: “Time Bomb”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThSGU1gJl9U,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/13377/homepage_large.a8dc9308.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Dismemberment_Plan-Change.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,96,Spoon,Girls Can Tell,Merge,"For folks smitten with the leaps and bounds Spoon made between their Matador debut and A Series of Sneaks, the three-year wait between the group’s only major label effort and their full-length Merge debut was long and seemingly interminable. But you know how the rest goes: In some ways, Girls Can Tell is as much a nod to the band’s roots as a harbinger of what was to come—album closer “Chicago at Night” dates back to Britt Daniel’s solo days toiling as Drake Tungsten, while “Me and the Bean” was a song originally written and recorded by fellow Austinites the Sidehackers. Those gestures, coupled with the growth of the group’s songwriting evident through, are as fitting a sendoff to Spoon’s salad days as one could hope. Our own Nick Mirov said it best, way way back in 2001: “(T)hey no longer sound like the Pixies, Gang of Four, or Wire...they sound like Spoon now.” –David Raposa Listen: Spoon: “Everything Hits at Once”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dInnbQrYVhQ,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/7313/homepage_large.24022098.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Spoon-Girls_Can_Tell.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,95,Grizzly Bear,Yellow House,Warp,"At once unassuming and swoon-inducingly gorgeous, Yellow House found Grizzly Bear shedding the crackly, lo-fi chrysalis of their formative years. They emerged with a newfound polish to match their growing ambitions, with intricately arranged songs taking shape amidst a rich soundfield. A certain old-timey feel prevails—there’s even a waltz, “Marla,” written 70-odd years ago by a late relative of singer Ed Droste—but the shadowy, dust-moted depth of the music moots its rootsiness. The music couldn’t be further from dub, but something of the latter’s haunted quality inhabits Grizzly Bear’s tape-soaked music. Recorded in a country house near Cape Cod, and featuring a cover photo reminiscent of Edward Hopper’s luminous interiors, Yellow House took the Brooklyn out of the band and made it something more universal. Billowing, multi-part vocal harmonies verge upon the utopian, blowing the New Weird America into a wide-open world where pop meets rural mysticism. –Philip Sherburne Listen: Grizzly Bear: “Knife”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJpC9JqSnJk,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/9201/homepage_large.60d6af15.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Grizzly_Bear-Yellow_House.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,94,Mclusky,Mclusky Do Dallas,Too Pure / Beggars,"We keep our wise-ass friends for basically two reasons: Some are really nice guys once you get to know them, and some are just jerks who say a lot of funny shit. Andy Falkous and Steve Albini have made it clear where they fall, so it’s no surprise they teamed up on Do Dallas—the richest depository of quotable malevolence this side of Hell Hath No Fury. It’s probably a stretch to call Do Dallas “subversive” when the production gives your speakers razor burn and the “ballad” is called “Fuck This Band.” But think about 2002, when the prominent memes of rock music were wish-fulfillment fantasies of empathy, togetherness, hope, solace... heck, most of the anger was more of a cry for help than anything. We all talked a good game back then, but how long before you eventually got back to cutting people off in traffic, pissing on public toilet seats, off-handedly boasting about your cool shit, and caring more about The Bourne Identity and the World Cup than the news? The temptation to be a total dick just because you can carries an enormous power, and Do Dallas was a weapons-grade, vulgar display of that; it was also exactly 36 minutes of the most blisteringly intense pop-misanthropy the decade had to offer, but that’s just Mclusky being better than your band. –Ian Cohen Listen: Mclusky: “To Hell with Good Intentions”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbrT-_Ozm2w,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/5120/homepage_large.5ec93b31.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mclusky-Mclusky_Do_Dallas.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,93,2 Many DJs,"As Heard on Radio Soulwax, Pt. 2",PIAS,"2 Many DJs ushered in the anything-goes, nothing-matters, shuffle-meltdown vibe of ’00s parties, blogs, and DIY remixers, and some have never forgiven them. Before Soulwax’s DJ alter egos, “eclectic” still tended to go hand in hand with “tasteful”—classic mixes like Coldcut’s 1995 Journeys By DJ ranged across a breakbeat genrescape but never lost a sense of discernment. As Heard..., on the other hand, starts with a grotesque hippo-legged prog cover of “Peter Gunn,” slaps Basement Jaxx on the top, and blasts off. So this album, judged by the usual standards of dance mixes—consistency, progression, structure, revelation—is deliberately terrible. In place of those virtues it offers a series of riotous peaks (Dolly! Röyksopp! Skee-Lo! Most of what was good about electroclash!) scattered willy nilly amongst whatever electro sides the Dewaele brothers could clear. The irony is that returning to it, what strikes you is how shrewd their song choices were—licensing-forced covers aside everything here, mashed or unmashed, displays impeccable taste in pop. –Tom Ewing Listen: 2 Many DJs: “Fuck the Pain Away”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzEPOL6esng,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/8092/homepage_large.36a17fd7.jpg,/dataset/artwork/2_Many_DJs-As_Heard_on_Radio_Soulwax_Pt_2.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,92,Björk,Vespertine,Elektra,"The fact that her most explicitly sexual album is also her most submissive might be a bummer to those who got off on Björk-as-huntress power trips of yore. But Vespertine’s docile tranquility offers its own form of strength. “You’re trying too hard—surrender,” she tells herself; “I can’t say no to you,” she admits. After years of forcing her will via dog-maddening squeals and beats that could turn Pluto into powder, Björk holds her armies back while exalting carnal desire with the godliness of Marvin Gaye. On Vespertine, heaven is lust. Whether pleasuring herself backed by angelic harps and strings on “Sun in My Mouth” or allowing herself pleasure on “Cocoon,” the singer whispers and clicks her way to ecstasy slowly, deliberately. On several tracks, Björk’s breaths—some quick uptakes, some smoked sighs—are left intact, providing corporeal commentary to the surrounding hush. This is no one-night stand; it’s honeymoon fodder for saints. –Ryan Dombal Listen: Björk: “Cocoon”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVHpBCjUu8M,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/722/homepage_large.71b5be0f.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bjrk-Vespertine.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,91,The New Pornographers,Mass Romantic,Mint,"Though the ascents of Dan Bejar and Neko Case would retroactively validate the “supergroup” tag, the New Pornographers began their life more like a ragtag musicians’ roundtable, a small group of upstarts and veterans brimming with talent and mutual respect. Yes, Mass Romantic has enough breezy power-pop hooks to fill five or so lesser records. But the real magic of Mass Romantic lies in Carl Newman’s uncanny ability to craft a cohesive record without diluting the personalities at hand—note how Newman picks up a submissive falsetto to complement Case’s lead vocal in “Letter From an Occupant,” and how Bejar’s staggered phrasing is maintained even as “Breakin’ the Law” is transformed from hushed acoustic demo into fist-pumping album closer. The band would go on to release a string of similarly catchy records, but Mass Romantic is their most charmingly character-driven piece. –Matt LeMay Listen: The New Pornographers: “Letter From an Occupant”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBAUQaj6EJo,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/5693/homepage_large.13de9ea0.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_New_Pornographers-Mass_Romantic.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,90,JAY-Z,The Black Album,Roc-A-Fella,"Nobody really took Jay’s retirement seriously, but The Black Album did close one book: It was the last time we heard Jay’s snarling swagger fully intact. Jay had been in elder-statesman mogul stride since The Blueprint, but before his brief respite, he never lost the regal bloodthirst of his younger lines. So along with the expertly delivered elegiac statements of self-importance like “December 4th” and “My 1st Song,” we had haughtily antisocial hardhead anthems like “PSA” and “Threat.” Musically, The Black Album distills The Blueprint’s dusty widescreen soul into something harder, more simplistic, and more stadium-ready. But it also makes room for club-rap synth-beeps and biblical reggae consternation—this time, Jay sticks even harder to the beats, and the Timbaland track doesn’t sound tacked-on. And despite the bullshit whispery Neptunes tracks and a tiny bit of filler, the end result is nearly as viscerally satisfying. –Tom Breihan Listen: Jay Z: “PSA”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LzdKH1naok,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/4171/homepage_large.556c8ce3.jpg,/dataset/artwork/JAY-Z-The_Black_Album.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,89,Wolf Parade,Apologies to the Queen Mary,Sub Pop,"Before there were a thousand articles about the “Montreal scene” or a string of side projects by the band’s busy members, there was simply Wolf Parade’s debut, an unabashedly open-hearted collection of offbeat instrumentation—yes, that is a Theremin on “Same Ghost Every Night”—and timeless melodies delivered by the group’s dueling shivery frontmen. Calling Spencer Krug and Dan Boeckner the Lennon/McCartney of the aughts is reductionist (with Krug as the experimental one who crafts the band’s darker moments, and Boeckner as the populist who creates the epic anthems), but Wolf Parade’s appeal lies in the opposing musical personalities of its leaders. Few songwriters could be responsible for both the bouncing neon synths and David Bowie warble of “I’ll Believe in Anything” and the swaggering slow-burn and breathy, Bruce Springsteen–ish croon of “This Heart’s on Fire,” but Wolf Parade prove that one band certainly could be. –Rebecca Raber Listen: Wolf Parade: “I’ll Believe in Anything”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7G1eLTV89dM,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/8648/homepage_large.f7d8f057.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Wolf_Parade-Apologies_to_the_Queen_Mary.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,88,The Wrens,The Meadowlands,Absolutely Kosher,"Estrangement from spouse and offspring! The push-and-pull of an on-again-off-again relationship! Drugs! Projection! Questionable employment options! Getting used! Repeatedly! And knowing it! Feelings of displacement, even in a longtime locale! Even more breakups! Infidelity! Dreams about death! That unshakeable notion that you’re going to feel like a 17-year-old no matter what your driver’s license may say! Stagnation! Self-doubt! Ambiguity! Trading youthful exuberance for a resignation that borders on bitterness! Golly, can’t wait to grow up! Thanks, Wrens! –Paul Thompson Listen: The Wrens: “Happy”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7X1po2U4pk,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/8599/homepage_large.f3d05a45.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Wrens-The_Meadowlands.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,87,Kanye West,Graduation,Roc-A-Fella / Def Jam,"“I feel the pressure, under more scrutiny/ And what I do? Act more stupidly.” That line from “Can’t Tell Me Nothing,” the first single off Kanye West’s third album, has a way of sticking with you after every agitated all-caps blog post or awards-show freakout the man’s responsible for: West knows he’s making a scene, but like it or not, that’s just what he does. That sense of defiance drives this album’s personality even more than the nods towards house and electro that augment his characteristic soul-infused production. ’Ye reflects on criticisms of his image (“Everything I Am”), gets overcome by the stress of his collaborative/competitive relationship with Jay-Z (“Big Brother”), compares himself to one of the most widely disliked athletes of our time (“Barry Bonds”), and, in “Stronger,” winds up turning the old “what doesn’t kill me only makes me stronger” maxim into an exhibition of self-aware arrogance that somehow scans like actual charm. –Nate Patrin Listen: Kanye West: “Flashing Lights”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ila-hAUXR5U,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/10462/homepage_large.b0b4aa4c.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kanye_West-Graduation.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,86,Belle and Sebastian,The Life Pursuit,Matador,"Belle and Sebastian had been toying with R&B, glam, and funk for much of their existence, but by the time the group recorded The Life Pursuit, their musical chops had finally caught up with the quality and ambition of Stuart Murdoch’s songwriting. Though much of their previous output had come off like charming pastiches of styles from the 1960s and ’70s, the craft on display in “The Blues Are Still Blue” and “Funny Little Frog” left no doubt that these were not approximations, but in fact prime examples of glam rock and Northern soul. Even the non-Murdoch songs, typically a stumbling block on Belle and Sebastian releases, were up to the same high standard. “Song for Sunshine,” a cut authored by Stevie Jackson and Chris Geddes, stands as one of the band’s peaks, and its gorgeous, seamless merger of sunshine pop and Parliament funk is both a total surprise and the perfect counterpoint to anyone who would write the group off as a nothing more than a bunch of shambling, lisping folkies.
 –Matthew Perpetua Listen: Belle and Sebastian: “The Blues Are Still Blue”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQwcqwHvrus,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/635/homepage_large.3824d08e.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Belle_and_Sebastian-The_Life_Pursuit.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,85,GAS,Pop,Kompakt,"The most-played song in my iTunes has no name: It’s “Untitled,” the opening track from Gas’ Pop. The textural wash of Pop, the atmosphere Wolfgang Voigt built from his imagined Black Forest, isn’t an obvious choice but it always seems tailor-made for our lives. It’s a place we can go for function or for emotion, or just if you want to lay around counting ceiling-fan rotations and letting the record’s gentle propulsion move Voigt’s hisses and clicks around your brain. And that kind of utility is rare. People tend to belittle ambient techno as mere background music, but I say, fuck that, Pop is a soundtrack for living. –Joe Colly Listen: Gas: “Untitled”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJg5tY8QZLk,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/24194/homepage_large.a92c51e8.jpg,/dataset/artwork/GAS-Pop.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,84,Super Furry Animals,Rings Around the World,Epic,"If Radiohead spent the turn of the millennium pondering the disassociating effects of technological over-dependency, the Super Furry Animals reveled in the absurdity of it. The Welsh pop futurists’ 2001 opus Rings Around the World touches upon all the Big Issues of our time—military aggression, evangelicalism run amok, environmental disaster—but presents them as the backdrop to some bizarro video-game version of the world: To wit, the war-pig sadists targeted in the psych-folk centerpiece “No Sympathy” quite literally get blasted away by an invading army of happy-hardcore techno beats in its final two minutes. Comedy may equal tragedy plus time, but on Rings, the Furries get their laughs in before it’s too late: “Earth will become Saturn II,” Gruff Rhys declares on the title track, describing a planet so addicted to consumption that it’ll one day be encircled by its own waste. But the giddy glam-rock stomp on which his words are delivered seems to say, “Yeah, but think of how cool that’ll look!” –Stuart Berman Listen: Super Furry Animals: “No Sympathy”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnSpU2tXhhI,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/7479/homepage_large.9afcada9.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Super_Furry_Animals-Rings_Around_the_World.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,83,Joanna Newsom,Ys,Drag City,"In 2004, The Milk-Eyed Mender established that lyrically, rhythmically, melodically, and vocally, Joanna Newsom was unlike anyone else. But her follow-up, Ys, still feels shocking: Arguably the most artistically ambitious indie rock enterprise of the decade, Ys mobilizes a dream team (Steve Albini, Van Dyke Parks, Jim O’Rourke, Bill Callahan, and more) to wrap Newsom’s contrapuntal harp, arresting voice, and vivid librettos in luxurious glory. Despite all the fuss, the songs—or epics, if you will—feel personal. Fairy tale parables of animal liberation and lessons learned through sadness and family illustrate, in the end, the urge only to beat boundaries. This decade has often been ballyhooed as that of the playlist, where genre distinctions have blurred until, “Hey, man, it’s all music.” Ys is the mid-decade curveball reminding you that—no matter how many Elephant 6 projects you can name while listening to that new Weezy joint—you haven’t heard it all yet, and creative imagination is more infinite than an iTunes library. –Grayson Currin Listen: Joanna Newsom: “Sawdust & Diamonds”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vcOvPnl7wE,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/9450/homepage_large.b361695a.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Joanna_Newsom-Ys.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,82,Beck,Sea Change,DGC,"Heading into the 2000s, Beck Hansen was the poster-boy for self-aware emotional detachment—his most famous come-on (“I’m a loser, baby, so why don’t you kill me?”) may have very well helped usher in the (not so golden) age of irony. Still, Beck was routinely acclaimed for his clever, scrappy assemblages and committed crooning about the salesgirls at J.C. Penney; when he released Sea Change—an earnest, unfussy breakup record, sung loudly and without affect—it felt like a revelation, or, at the very least, a crack in the façade. Sea Change is easily Beck’s most melancholy record, and the shift was temporary (its follow-up, 2005’s Guero, recalls the goofy excess of Odelay). But there’s an urgency and intimacy to Sea Change—its heartbreak feels real, and uncontainable—that’s oddly timeless. Maybe sincerity doesn’t age. –Amanda Petrusich Listen: Beck: “Lost Cause”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkNa5xzOe5U,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/613/homepage_large.7815a71f.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beck-Sea_Change.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,81,Hot Chip,The Warning,Astralwerks / DFA / EMI,"Hot Chip hinted at a keen, Prince-like combination of sex, steel, and neurosis on their debut, Coming on Strong. But an upstream to the DFA leagues seemed to invest the group with a new sense of power– now when Alexis Taylor and vocal partner Joe Goddard sang, it wasn’t under a harmless bed of softly stroked keyboards. In its stead poured a tidal wave of alligator jaw hi-hats, battered timpani, and a furious pace. “Boy From School” marked a trembling sense of vulnerability, without sacrificing groove. “(Just Like We) Breakdown” proved a knowing rejoinder to proclamations of wimpdom. But it’s “Over and Over” that reveals most. An exegesis on routine, lovemaking, dancing, boredom, and the ever-eroding sense of the new in the world– “like a monkey with a miniature cymbal”– this is the band fully formed. It’s not so easy to be this excitable about the crush of the regular. Hot Chip make it feel downright essential. –Sean Fennessey Listen: Hot Chip: “Over and Over”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6GDggWPMQk,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/3988/homepage_large.f09b9d26.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Hot_Chip-The_Warning.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,80,The Clientele,Suburban Light,Pointy / Merge,"The first full-length from the London indie pop band, which is actually a collection of singles and compilation tracks, belongs to that rare class of albums that you don’t so much listen to as inhabit. Sure, the songwriting mechanics are sound, with great, ringing guitars, Alasdair MacLean’s sonorous voice, and punchy melodies as robust as those by Love or the Zombies. But the appeal of the Clientele has always been harder to pin down, owing more to a mood and a distinctive point of view. They have a brilliant knack for making the mundane and familiar seem new, powerfully emotional, and unfailingly romantic, and their skill was nowhere more evident than on this collection of crudely recorded songs. The lyrics glitter with offhandedly striking imagery: workers crossing over a bridge on the way home, gardens wet with rain, a bicycle splashing through a puddle, red balloons in the white sky. If you hear MacLean describe these commonplace scenes described and think, “So what?”, then the Clientele is probably not for you. City light, you see, had already been done; the Clientele were working on a smaller scale. The fact that their aesthetic was already so perfect at this point didn’t make things easy for them the rest of the decade, but then, few bands ever get near these heights. –Mark Richardson Listen: The Clientele: “Reflections After Jane”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Hg1zIAh3rc,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/1493/homepage_large.0a270605.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Clientele-Suburban_Light.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,79,Justin Timberlake,FutureSex/LoveSounds,Jive,"Justin Timberlake, finally overcoming the slings and arrows of a poptified youth, knew that Timbaland was the answer to any follow-up questions. Their first collaboration, “Cry Me a River” from Justified, was a chilling kiss-off, equal parts pain and power. Timbaland fortuitously brought along a young protégé named Danja who would challenge the depths of Tim’s weirdness. Together the trio created a modern disco record immune to scoffs and forever cool to middle-class moms, crit slobs, and adoring teens. A rare moment of– yes– monoculture. “SexyBack” is likely a time capsule joke in a decade or two– our very own “Y.M.C.A.”– but for now it is raw enough to avoid gags. Tim and Danja didn’t do too much we hadn’t heard before– they just did it more so. Sitars on “What Goes Around...Comes Around”, gothic keyboards on “Summer Love”, and cascading vocal pops and clicks on “LoveStoned”. Even Will.i.am and Three 6 Mafia calmly adapt to the proceedings. It wasn’t guaranteed that things would go this well for Timberlake. But like most pop icons, it’s taste, maybe more than talent, that puts him over. –Sean Fennessey Listen: Justin Timberlake: “Summer Love”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DIf0F38vas,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/9237/homepage_large.5decb38a.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Justin_Timberlake-FutureSexLoveSounds.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,78,No Age,Nouns,Sub Pop,"When Nouns– the L.A. duo No Age’s proper full-length debut– first appeared in May 2008, it was instantly contentious, at least amongst critics; Nouns is a weird, visceral experience that hits in the gut, if it hits at all. A throbbing, slipshod, impenetrably thick collection of lo-fi punk-rock performed by two lanky dudes in hi-tops, Nouns is ecstatic and gloomy and propulsive, and listening to it– all 30, glorious minutes of looped samples and unintelligible lyrics– is enough to make a girl want to kick down doors. That sense of elation isn’t particularly easy to parse (or replicate), but it sure is powerful. –Amanda Petrusich Listen: No Age: “Teen Creeps”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8bLzYZMq1s,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/11217/homepage_large.a399f141.jpg,/dataset/artwork/No_Age-Nouns.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,77,Missy Elliott,Miss E: So Addictive,Elektra,"If we could crawl inside this album and live in its world, everybody would be perpetually hopped up on ecstasy and globalization, bouncing between New Delhi and Virginia Beach at the speed of a mouse click. Our benevolent overlords: Missy Elliott and Timbaland at their creative peaks, exploring the frontiers of sound, musically and vocally. The joy with which Missy twists her syllables would be bottled and sold, Tim’s genre-synthesizing powers would cure all disease. The word “Tweet” would always refer to the Missy protégé who sings on the opening track, not a means of abbreviated over-sharing. International law would require the getting on of one’s freak on a daily–if not hourly– basis. It would be the summer of 2001 forever; September 2001 would never come. –Amy Phillips Listen: Missy Elliott: “Get Ur Freak On”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPoKiGQzbSQ,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/2734/homepage_large.cbb707b4.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Missy_Elliott-Miss_E_So_Addictive.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,76,Junior Boys,Last Exit,Kin,"Last Exit taught us that you didn’t need to come from a big European city to exude a cosmopolitan cool, and how– with all due respect to Hamilton, Ontario’s Jeremy Greenspan– an ordinary guy could be a heartbreaker to a generation of bedroom-bound, headphone-donning dreamers. Greenspan did it by wrapping wistful words in some of the decade’s most lovingly produced electro-pop– check the phantom percussive tapdance that underpins “Bellona”, or how the tempo pick-ups on “Birthday” suggest increased heart rates. Nevermind that Greenspan was actually generally on the receiving end of the heartbreak. This was music rife with seductive powers, built not for clubs but, to crib Greenspan on “When I’m Not Around”, the night ahead– even if it’s another one spent cooped up at home with your headphones. –Matthew Solarski Listen: Junior Boys: “Birthday”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Hulb3snxWk,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/4290/homepage_large.4af4fc66.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Junior_Boys-Last_Exit.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,75,Ghostface Killah,Fishscale,Def Jam,"History will remember Fishscale as Ghostface’s Magical Mystery Tour: an artist convinced of his own genius empties every chamber on a batshit, pseudo-conceptual headtrip. There’s a “Schoolhouse Rock”-style introduction to coke weight, a song about being spanked as a child, and “Underwater”, where Ghost hallucinates something resembling a Hype Williams-directed subaqueous Super Mario 3 level. Ghost is passionate and loveable as always, though, and in Fishscale’s world according to Pretty Toney the throughline– other than, you know, the fishscale itself– is his yearning for the people around him to behave themselves. To wit: He spends the refrain of the club banger telling a rival crew to “be easy”; he dubs a crime crony too shook to act right a “shakey dog”; he hires Ne-Yo to call out an ex’s revenge etiquette; and leads off the posse cut “9 Milli Bros” by admonishing us to “be nice to the crackheads.” –Eric Harvey Listen: Ghostface Killah: “Back Like That”",Platform: YouTube - Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahbTTJlWnmI,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/3601/homepage_large.12ba4c9e.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ghostface_Killah-Fishscale.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,74,The White Stripes,Elephant,V2 / Third Man,"By 2003, records labels were scrambling to devise new methods to feed upcoming album releases to journalists without opening the floodgates to online leaks, ranging from watermarked promos to encrypted audio streams to couriering CDs in Krazy-Glued Discmen. But, being the traditionalist he is, Jack White chose to deliver the White Stripes’ fourth album to press in a more practical format that both discouraged digitization while actually presenting the music how it was meant to be heard: in a double vinyl set. The gesture represented more than just an easy way to get on the good side of critics; the double-album heft was a symbol that the Detroit duo weren’t about to recoil from the post-White Blood Cells hype; they wanted to go bigger. From the title on down to the 180-gram grooves, everything about Elephant just felt heavier– the apocalyptic goosestep of “Seven Nation Army”; the stop-start strut of “The Hardest Button to Button”; the berserker blues-punk of “Girl, You Have No Faith in Medicine”. Elephant sees the Stripes confidently promoting themselves from flavor of the month to a band for the ages. –Stuart Berman Listen:  The White Stripes: “Seven Nation Army”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0J2QdDbelmY,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/8512/homepage_large.fb7c898c.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_White_Stripes-Elephant.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,73,The Microphones,"The Glow, Pt. 2",K,"“There was a boy; a very strange, enchanted boy. They say he wandered very far over land and sea. A little shy and sad of eye, but very wise was he.” Eden Ahbez, yeah, but doesn’t it sound just like Phil Elvrum, mildly reluctant Microphones/Mt. Eerie mastermind and nature boy of some repute? The Glow, Pt. 2 feels forged from dirt and carved from stone, craggy and elemental and earthy, and yet, with Elvrum’s commandingly vulnerable voice at the center, it’s about as human a record in memory. The intimate-then-grandiose production falls down around you like an out-of-nowhere thunderstorm while Elvrum reports live and direct from the eye. Though it begins with clouds breaking and ends with mosquitoes coming after his warm blood, The Glow, Pt. 2 ultimately rings with a weary, worldly sort of optimism, the sound of our journeyman narrator staring deep into the abyss and making some sense of dread both personal and existential. It remains one of the decade’s finest passion project, every word a plea, every chord another gust of wind. Most remarkable, perhaps, is how it sounds entirely different spitting out of speakers or cascading around your headphones. Enchanted, you might almost say. –Paul Thompson Listen: The Microphones: “I Felt Your Shape”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npqqaE3SFXo,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/5202/homepage_large.fda3e8c5.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Microphones-The_Glow_Pt_2.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,72,Sleater-Kinney,One Beat,Sub Pop,"Man, Sleater-Kinney were just a machine by the time they made One Beat: Carrie Brownstein’s flirty sidelong yip bouncing off Corin Tucker’s open-throated roar, riffs tangling themselves up with each other, fiery hooks exploding out of nowhere. They were in that rare zone where all members of the band knew instinctively how to make each other better, where everyone is in some freaky telepathic alchemical headspace. And that’s where they needed to be; in a way, the band’s entire existence was just lead-up to One Beat. The band recorded the album in the immediate wake of two events: September 11 and the birth of Tucker’s first baby. And all those years of greatness make the band uniquely suited to embody the anxiety and rage and joy and fear and longing of earth-shaking events like those, personal or universal. Whether they were furiously protecting their homes or losing themselves in the adrenaline rush their own music, this was the moment where this band felt huge enough to swallow the universe. –Tom Breihan Listen: Sleater-Kinney: “Oh!”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MG0fuJE2axE,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/21225/homepage_large.a67c62f4.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sleater-Kinney-One_Beat.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,71,Portishead,Third,Island / Mercury,"Portishead began by creating a soundtrack to short-form spy noir To Kill a Dead Man, so it’s fitting the trip-hop band’s unexpected reunion defy the cinematic law of diminishing returns on sequels. Third was an exercise in following rules, namely, not to repeat yourself. The band’s trademark smoky atmosphere, vinyl crackle, and lurking bass were shuffled out in favor of stark strings and the hum and buzz of dread currents. An electric jungle lurks in the crevices of “Silence”. Drums of war beat throughout “We Carry On”, and “Machine Gun” sounds like a battle zone, with fat notes resonating like mortar fire. Instead of capturing imperfections through sampling, the production duo of Adrian Utley and Geoff Barrow willed them into existence, providing a dark, stately beauty that matches Beth Gibbons’ cursed croon. Filled with false starts, the recording process spanned continents. But it just goes to show that perfectionism is worth the wait. –Patrick Sisson Listen: Portishead: “The Rip”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBOaLjtR4mw,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/11206/homepage_large.aeec45fc.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Portishead-Third.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,70,Sufjan Stevens,Greetings from Michigan: The Great Lakes State,Asthmatic Kitty,"Goddamn, did Michigan have a shitty decade or what? Whether we’re talking the auto industry, Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, or the Tigers’ pitiful performance in the 2006 World Series, the 2000s were basically a 10-year series of face-slaps and cock-punches. But even in the worst parts of the state (yeah: Detroit), there’s an aching beauty, either in the crumbling monuments to boom times past or in the earnest, failed attempts to reverse their long misfortune. It took some shy kid with a banjo and a funny name to articulate that enchanting sadness, with 15 songs that range from unaccompanied whispers to gaudy grandeur. An especially dedicated travel guide to his home state, Stevens finds room for Ypsi and Yoopers, the 84 Tigers and Henry Ford, the People Mover, and, most importantly, people– the broken-hearted unemployed of “The Upper Peninsula”, the children of divorce in “Romulus”. Even if he doesn’t get to the other 48, Stevens give his home state the sympathetic but honest portrayal it deserves. –Rob Mitchum Listen: Sufjan Stevens: “Romulus”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUwuT6m5roU,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/7393/homepage_large.5a4b4307.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sufjan_Stevens-Greetings_from_Michigan_The_Great_Lakes_State.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,69,Liars,Drum's Not Dead,Mute,"We tell each other stories about everything, in every medium. But on rare occasions, a work of art face-palms us with the realization that it’s all one big story, many-voiced. The works accomplish this by surpassing what we thought possible for a given artist– we call them “breakthroughs” with good reason. Liars have always been an especially striving band. They hurled themselves against their limits via the concussive dance-punk and anguished drones of their first two albums. But Drum’s Not Dead seemed to exist on the other side of that struggle. Like a record-breaking high-jump, the difference was both miniscule and huge. It’s a great album in its own right, but it matters more when heard in a continuum with the work it took to get there. What else are we looking for in this stuff, except for people like us, driven to try as hard as they can and then, somehow, a little harder? –Brian Howe Listen: Liars: “The Other Side of Mt. Heart Attack”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwhiXr7Xr_Y,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/4707/homepage_large.2d68c9d8.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Liars-Drums_Not_Dead.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,68,Robyn,Robyn,Konichiwa / Interscope/Cherrytree,"Nobody– not Kylie, not Justin, not Mariah– made a more lovable pop album this decade than Robyn. If you need it to be, her self-released breakthrough is an indie-as-fuck fairytale: Freed from proto-Mouseketeer teen-pop servitude and inspired by the Knife, Robyn experiments across genres, emotes from the heart, and gradually amasses a netroots fanbase; she sounds even better live than on the album, of which there are now at least three editions (the original Swedish, the UK version, and the U.S. one, each released in different years as people discovered this once-hidden gem). Despite the artist’s indie CV, Robyn is classic pop: of-the-moment beats and endlessly replayable melodies, “Chappelle’s Show” and Shangri-Las, Missy Elliott and Madonna, Snoop Dogg and Prince, relatable feelings expressed clearly and distinctively and you can dance to ’em, available at a retailer near you via Universal. For a citizen under supposed socialism, Robyn sure kicks Wall Street’s ass at 00s global capitalism. Then again, Lou Dobbs hasn’t seen her birth certificate yet, either. –Marc Hogan Listen: Robyn: “With Every Heartbeat” [ft. Kleerup]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ojHWQrm4UM,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/6841/homepage_large.597a1ad9.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Robyn-Robyn.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,67,The Flaming Lips,Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots,Warner Bros.,"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. To hear Wayne Coyne tell it, the Flaming Lips never had the option of following 1999 critics’ darling The Soft Bulletin with a Radiohead-like hard left into chilly electronic detachment. They were already trying as hard as they could to entertain. So while the geopolitical climate hovered around its early decade bummeriest, the Oklahoma City band struck back the only way it knew how: with meticulously produced, grandly conceived, and, yeah, sometimes whimsically funny existential contemplations. Also, robots. Disenchanted with the virtues of perpetual coolness, these ear-to-ear studio geeks let their square flag fly in the form of their 10th album’s primped acoustic guitars, drippy synths, rounded bass, and mass licensing exposure. Along the way, they shared some of the same graying wisdom that LCD Soundsystem’s “All My Friends” would relate in greater detail a half-decade later. “Life goes fast”? We realize. –Marc Hogan Listen: The Flaming Lips: “Do You Realize??”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPXWt2ESxVY,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/3055/homepage_large.33787706.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Flaming_Lips-Yoshimi_Battles_The_Pink_Robots.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,66,J Dilla,Donuts,Stones Throw,"The final work of James Yancey’s lifetime has the apparition of its creator’s encroaching death looming over it, so there’s a certain poetry in one trick of its structure: It was put together so you could play it in a perpetual loop for the rest of time if you wanted, with the final few seconds of Donuts segueing cleanly and seamlessly back into its first few. Listening to it in that perpetual loop puts its jumpy, trans-genre hip-hop beats and ricocheting soundbite snippets into deep focus: That now-characteristic air-raid siren jostles you into new transitions; you pick up on how samples tend to break apart mid-loop and vibe out on time-shifting deconstruction; you feel the abrupt, bracing jumps from burbly giddiness to foreboding gloom to mournful reflection and back again. Dilla threw everything he’d known into this album and wound up delivering a simultaneous farewell and magnum opus three days before his passing; we should all be so lucky to produce something this moving in the face of our own mortality. –Nate Patrin Listen: J Dilla: “Last Donut of the Night”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fC3Cthm0HFU,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/4314/homepage_large.8df46677.jpg,/dataset/artwork/J_Dilla-Donuts.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,65,Godspeed You! Black Emperor,Lift Your Skinny Fists like Antennas to Heaven,Kranky,"The name “Godspeed You Black Emperor!” appears nowhere in the artwork of their sprawling, 2xCD second album. The lack of a brand feels appropriate to the band’s apocalyptic vision of capitalist society in decay, and if survivors from the future can’t attach a name to this music, so much the better– it feels as though it’s always been there, the way mountains and valleys do. The album’s ravaged landscape of drones, hellish dissonance, rhythmic crescendos, and moments of quiet, transcendent beauty is something in which you can get lost. The voices trapped in the drone– the gas station warning against solicitors, old Murray Ostril remembering the glory days of Coney Island (“They don’t sleep anymore on the beach”)– leaves most of the speaking to the instruments, which march forward as if one mind controls them all. This album is like the world: alive and dead, tarnished but gorgeous, dangerous and worth exploring. –Joe Tangari Listen: Godpseed You Black Emperor!: “Sleep”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQcE4_7-X78,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/3454/homepage_large.e661e567.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Godspeed_You_Black_Emperor-Lift_Your_Skinny_Fists_like_Antennas_to_Heaven.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,64,The Hold Steady,Boys and Girls in America,Vagrant,"Any 2000s album that opens with a Jack Kerouac quote is just asking not to be taken seriously, but Boys and Girls in America opens with such a rock-triumphant ode to beautiful losers– “Stuck Between Stations”– that the Beat words seems apt and illuminating. Veering from the album-length narrative of Separation Sunday, the Hold Steady’s third full-length is almost like a road movie, drug-fueled and aimless and a lot of fun. Taking a more prominent role than he did on previous albums, keyboardist and mustache aficionado Franz Nicolay sings that fist-pumping chorus on “Chips Ahoy!”, spews organ all over “Same Kooks”, and festoons most of these songs with piano and glockenspiel, thereby letting Craig Finn live out his E Street Band fantasies. Even if Sal Paradise hadn’t cracked about boys and girls’ sad times together, the Hold Steady would still be writing the same sad songs about them. –Stephen M. Deusner Listen: The Hold Steady: “Chips Ahoy!”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOFeaedv3Uc,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/9309/homepage_large.71d16fff.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Hold_Steady-Boys_and_Girls_in_America.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,63,Of Montreal,"Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?",Polyvinyl,"Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? is often pegged as a record about Kevin Barnes’ struggle with depression and the temporary dissolution of his marriage. While that is basically true, the emphasis on the author’s biography gets in the way of why the album resonates so deeply with its fans: It’s not about the descent into hopelessness but rather the desperate attempt to restructure one’s character and bust free from the traps set by ingrained neuroses and fickle brain chemistry. The songs are as richly melodic and effortlessly groovy as they are manic and hysterical, and even when Barnes lapses into doubt and self-loathing, the core of the record remains an unshakable belief that not only do we have the power to take control of our psyches, but we’re not alone in the battle. From the start, the rallying cry is “Let’s all melt down together!” and by the end of the album, Barnes successfully transforms his personal torment into a communal catharsis. –Matthew Perpetua Listen: Of Montreal: “Gronlandic Edit”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBfgQvM7wtE,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/9622/homepage_large.191fde29.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Of_Montreal-Hissing_Fauna_Are_You_the_Destroyer.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,62,Dizzee Rascal,Boy in Da Corner,XL,"Grime, in retrospect, was never going to be much of an album-oriented genre. It’s too messy, too boisterous, to sit politely for the space of a CD. Good thing nobody told Dizzee Rascal. Harnessing a desperation born of limited opportunities, Boy in Da Corner looks today something like grime’s lone essential longplayer, as well as the record that essentially broke the music for an audience living outside the range of London pirate radio. Between the music’s spiky, ringtone-inspired rhythms and Dizzee’s rapidfire chat, often all but unintelligible to American ears, the 18-year-old musician balanced the frenzy of the rave– his doubletracked vocals suggest a welter of MCs jostling for the mic– with a more private kind of angst. Ignoring the American hip-hop playbook in favor of London’s multi-cultural street culture, Dizzee arguably paved the way for M.I.A.’s success soon after. Spinning sneering confrontation into unexpected critical acclaim (including the 2003 Mercury Prize) and crossover appeal, Boy in Da Corner is grime’s very own Never Mind the Bollocks: a merger of time, place, sound, and personality, never to be repeated. –Philip Sherburne Listen: Dizzee Rascal: “Fix Up, Look Sharp”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZGvnI37mxk,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/2326/homepage_large.1a8491fa.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dizzee_Rascal-Boy_in_Da_Corner.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,61,Cut Copy,In Ghost Colours,Modular / Interscope,"The Rapture’s “House of Jealous Lovers” pulled the lawnmower cord on a decade that was supposed to break down the walls between indie and dance and make everything sound like New Order with louder guitars. Then disco-punk quickly burnt out its promise and the Rapture became (unfairly) a supposedly dated-sounding scapegoat. Then came 2008, and we were right back where we started– New Order, with (slightly fewer) louder guitars. Granted, Cut Copy were around when dance-punk broke (“Saturdays” was a prime cut), but In Ghost Colours served as the subgenre’s vindication, finally building off the potential of “I Need Your Love”. “So Haunted” is everything we ever wanted from the mixture, barbed-wire Sonic Youth guitars that give way gracefully to synthesizer bliss, while “Hearts on Fire” is a mixed-breed that outshines its parents, tapping into the blog-geist so squarely it was remixed a billion times. –Rob Mitchum Listen: Cut Copy: “So Haunted”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njVf-9PItvY,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/11176/homepage_large.8b3c5533.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Cut_Copy-In_Ghost_Colours.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,60,The Exploding Hearts,Guitar Romantic,Dirtnap,"I can’t think of many bands as aptly named as Exploding Hearts. They played something you might call power-punk– teenage kicks, leather jackets, glue-sniffing, pop tunes so classic they might as well be “I Want to Hold Your Hand”– and they did it with huge hooks and even huger enthusiasm, this chest-bursting ardor that makes it almost impossible not to be on their side. They sounded like teenage dirtbags in love, and they recorded Guitar Romantic with a fuzzy, needle-in-the red energy that makes it sound like they’re having the time of their lives playing every single song. (And just about every single song turns out to be worth the time of your life.) But then their tour van flipped over and three of them were killed, and I guess we can just console ourselves that their contribution to the world of music was so joyful, so vital, so packed with full-throated, heart-exploding life. –Nitsuh Abebe Listen: Exploding Hearts: “Modern Kicks”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVu4Kkig1AM,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/2850/homepage_large.601445d7.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Exploding_Hearts-Guitar_Romantic.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,59,Ted Leo and the Pharmacists,Hearts of Oak,Lookout!,"The 2000s were an extremely fucked-up political decade, yet we didn’t exactly get a deluge of trenchant social commentary from our best and brightest indie rockers. Granted, whenever musicians speak out it’s a minefield regardless of genre, but it’s also no secret that as a scene indie’s a particularly potent hothouse for disengaging irony and noncommittal smarm. And that makes Ted Leo’s achievements all the more remarkable. Leo spent the entire decade fighting the good fight, armed with clear lefty principles and an earnest, ennobling rhetoric that never wavered. Of course, none of us would’ve been jarred from our snarky stupors if Leo’s tunes hadn’t been so ridiculously tight. Hearts of Oak is Ted’s finest hour, packed to the gills not only with fierce, hyper-intelligent agitprop (“The Ballad of the Sin Eater” shaming Ugly Americans for all eternity), but also combustibly catchy pop-punk hooks. –Joshua Love Listen: Ted Leo and the Pharmacists: “The Ballad of the Sin Eater”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RPSO2cJYJ0,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/4682/homepage_large.2c3e1bcf.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ted_Leo_and_the_Pharmacists-Hearts_of_Oak.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,58,The Field,From Here We Go Sublime,Kompakt,"Axel Willner knows that while “sublime” means something in the neighborhood of transcendence, he’s just as interested in the subliminal, or that which goes below the surface. Like inspiration and Kompakt label boss Wolfgang Voigt (of, amongst other things, Gas), Willner shaves precious milliseconds off his often incongruous source material and shapes them into jumbled re-interpretations set to light echoes of dancefloor beats. The Field re-defines the idea of “pop ambient”: his “Kappsta” was the best cut on Kompakt’s Pop Ambient 2007 compilation and a highlight of the series, and Willner’s Sublime turns of phrase spin such delicious yarns as morphing a Christine McVie vocal into trance on “Everyday” or turning a bit of guitar into a beachy dance tune on “A Paw in My Face”. When “Paw” trails off, he lets the sample play itself out and you realize it’s Richie’s tired “Hello”, and Willner has secretly entranced you into elevating soft rock to techno transcendence. –Mike Orme Listen: The Field: “A Paw in My Face”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jfRsIoTC4c,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/9836/homepage_large.94db9773.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Field-From_Here_We_Go_Sublime.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,57,The Rapture,Echoes,Universal / Strummer,"Even as the “House of Jealous Lovers” single still draws rapturous (ahem) praise seven years later, the LP it settled on hasn’t fared so swimmingly. And why not? DFA’s production work with the Rapture signaled what would become one of the decade’s most influential sounds. And as apex of a short-lived, but watershed movement, Echoes ordered indie kids to drop their genre boundary-drawing chalk and start taking beatmakers and synth-players seriously, in turn paving the way for Justice, MGMT, Hercules and Love Affair, and a host of other independent-minded dance acts. But I guess nobody loves a key just because it unlocks doors. So I’ll stump for the songs, shall I? Enough’s been said about “House”– it’s a great cut, obviously, but Echoes is packed with them. Consider the title track and its grand chaos of crosshatched guitars, or “Sister Savior”’s disco fantasia of dizzy beats, or how “Olio” keeps threatening a manic eruption, but instead sustains its whispered scream. And hey, give it up for the perpetually pitchless Luke Jenner. If “Killing”’s screeched climax, “One, two, three, four, kick that fucker out the door!” isn’t lovable, I don’t know the meaning of the word. –Amy Granzin Listen: The Rapture: “House of Jealous Lovers”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HP04nfUi4g,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/6593/homepage_large.0b808232.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Rapture-Echoes.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,56,Dirty Projectors,Bitte Orca,Domino,"In retrospect, every record Dave Longstreth made with whoever he was calling “Dirty Projectors” since 2003 sounds like a promise for Bitte Orca. Maybe it’s that he finally found a backing band that didn’t flinch at 12-hour rehearsals or performing highly advanced variations of rubbing their bellies while patting their heads. It’s his– their– most accomplished record, irritatingly diverse and diversely irritating: shrill voices and polyrhythmic shrapnel; Led Zep drums and juju guitars; the restrained poses of R&B next to fits of well-practiced chaos. The band never smiles. There’s no accident in the music– everything sounds planned to the point of suffocation. But the album’s most representative moment isn’t musical, it’s lyric: Angel Deradoorian on “Two Doves” singing, “But our bed is like a”– followed by either “failure” or “feather.” One is an emotional anvil, the other is a tossed-off joke, and the ambiguity is Longstreth’s unflagging reluctance to be too straightforward– take it or leave it. It’s a wonder to watch humans do things you didn’t think they could do, even if they become a little inhuman in the process. –Mike Powell Listen: Dirty Projectors: “Stillness Is the Move”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMPF6lpM0XM,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/14165/homepage_large.cc6b59a3.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dirty_Projectors-Bitte_Orca.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,55,Animal Collective,Feels,Fat Cat,"Feels is billed as Animal Collective’s “rock” album, but this music couldn’t be more indifferent to the notion. Ringing guitars, rippling piano, and pounding drums are just a way to express a sense of exuberance as big and as purposeless as a forest, sometimes joyfully savage and sometimes softly haunting, but always beyond genre or strategy or intention. Above all, it is what Animal Collective do with their voices here that astounds: whispering, shrieking, muttering, pleading, sighing, their sprite-like presence is somehow thoroughly alien and yet unnervingly intimate, like a forgotten but familiar scent sparking a rush of nostalgia without reference. At their awe-filled zenith– the irrepressible rush of “The Purple Bottle”, the heatstroke harp strokes of “Bees”, the delicate soundworld of “Loch Raven”, above all the yearning and eternal-feeling Faust-hymn of “Banshee Beat”– it’s like they’re letting us listen in on the songs that nature sings to itself. –Tim Finney Listen: Animal Collective: “Grass”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqvBoFpgXQA,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/192/homepage_large.796750c2.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Animal_Collective-Feels.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,54,M.I.A.,Arular,XL / Beggars,"Like many people, I associate Arular with the real beginnings of blog hype; it was the first record release I can remember whose online discourse appeared to supersede or at least inform the mainstream music media’s. In the hyper-self-reflexive and hyper-self-aware blogosphere, Arular quickly became emblematic of that power shift, its conflicted and vaguely counter-revolutionary sentiments providing the perfect soundtrack for the Internet’s own fuzzy insurgency. By rights, a record with that kind of backstory and baggage should have about as many miles left as “Mambo No. 5”, but this still pretty much bangs. From the moody, fuzzed-out minimalism of “Pull Up the People” and “Fire Fire” to the still-thrilling digital Tropicalia of “Amazon” and “Sunshowers” to white-hot dancefloor standouts like “10 Dollar”, “Galang”, and (of course) “Bucky Done Gun”, this varied and flavorful debut proved the hype machine right. –Mark Pytlik Listen: M.I.A.: “Bucky Done Gun”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LFdPVf1diw,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/5543/homepage_large.ce3d846c.jpg,/dataset/artwork/MIA-Arular.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,53,Clinic,Internal Wrangler,Domino,"The man in the scrubs and surgical mask clenches his teeth and breathes a menacing jumble of syllables at you. This is a cold, dark place, where the smallest sounds echo and cut to the core. At that core, though, lies a warm, beating heart. Internal Wrangler may be a confused tangle of inky black punk, buzzsaw surf rock, tribal drums, girl-group atmosphere, sputtering electronics, and lyrics transcribed from alphabet soup, but the jumble is deceptive. This album is a precise procedure, opening an incision with a trio of sharp, jabbing songs, exploring with a jumble of fragments, and finally implanting itself permanently in a way few records so scattered and damaged can. Clinic never quite took another little piece of our hearts that way they did on their first album, but Internal Wrangler offers enough emotional surgery to last a lifetime. –Joe Tangari Listen: Clinic: “Distortions”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ii4lkM1pLjQ,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/1501/homepage_large.4b077411.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Clinic-Internal_Wrangler.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,52,Clipse,Hell Hath No Fury,Jive,"There was a time in the first half of this decade when a Neptunes production credit scored instant access to the Billboard Top 10, and for Clipse’s Malice and Pusha T, their long-standing childhood friendship with Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo should have been the proverbial key that opened doors. However, despite a respectable gold-record showing for Clipse’s 2002 debut Lord Willin’, the duo’s second Neptunes-helmed album was delayed for a good two years in label-merger limbo, culminating in the brothers filing a lawsuits against the unsympathetic suits at Jive Records. But once Hell Hath No Fury finally surfaced in late 2006, the label’s cold-footed reaction made sense– since the dawn of hip-hop, major labels have been eager to market albums that glamorize the gangsta lifestyle; it’s much harder, however, to sell one that normalizes and demystifies it. For Clipse, the life of a pusher-man isn’t cool, it’s just cold, represented here by brown-note electro beats as icy and chiseled as the product they’re slinging. Even the title addendum “ft. Pharrell Williams” provides little in the way of respite from the claustrophobic tension; by the time we hit the downward-spiraled dementia of “Trill”, Pharrell’s assumed a glazed-eye monotone that makes him sound like one of the duo’s old customers, not their pop-star producer. If Malice and Pusha T sound unapologetic about their dope-dealing pasts, it’s because they know that– given the Clipse’s troubled track record as major-label artists– it’s a life they’re prepared to face again. –Stuart Berman Listen: Clipse: “Trill”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dm_vSnOsb5A,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/9490/homepage_large.d018bb5e.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Clipse-Hell_Hath_No_Fury.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,51,Vampire Weekend,Vampire Weekend,XL,"Something about Vampire Weekend– maybe the clothes they wear, the music they borrow, the blue-blooded life they describe, the easy, clever way they carry themselves– takes some music fans right out of their comfort zone and into bewildered, mocking anger. The band know they’re privileged, just like they know the music they’re playing isn’t really any kind of alternative to anything, and they’re happy to tease their audience’s expectations on both counts. Those lyrical nods to Cape Cod and Peter Gabriel are effective trolling at the very least. It’s just a shame for the haters that the music’s such skilful, lovely pop. The band are at least as much Orange Juice as Paul Simon: there’s a hurried delight in their playing– in the bounce of “Campus” and the cascades on “Walcott”– which takes the knowingness out of those lightly worn Afropop references and chamber strings. It’s a joy to see a group take such care putting together an aesthetic, and despite its obvious contrivance when you put Vampire Weekend on they sound absolutely themselves and (whisper it) almost natural. –Tom Ewing Listen: Vampire Weekend: “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wHl9qRsMzw,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/10841/homepage_large.8212e6dc.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Vampire_Weekend-Vampire_Weekend.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,50,Deerhunter,Microcastle/Weird Era Cont.,Kranky / 4AD,"Pop music is often escapist, dwelling on the weakness of the flesh– but usually not like the songs of Deerhunter, where bodies are fevered, insubstantial, and frail. On Microcastle, a ringing set of crashing guitars, chimes, and squalls of noise, people are literally wasting away in six-by-six cells surrounded by concrete. Some are crucified in front of their friends, and drunken children torch an old man in his own garage. But this imagery isn’t for shock value; it’s about escape. Deerhunter’s musical aesthetic– partially composed of smeared sounds and unstable footings– proves a beautiful companion to uncertain lyrics. On tracks like “Little Kids” or “Never Stops”, a framework of driving rhythms and gorgeous melodies is lit up with tracers of noise and feedback. Deerhunter sounds tighter and more fragile than ever on Microcastle, able to sweep up listeners in a tempest of hazy, anxious joy. –Patrick Sisson Listen: Deerhunter: “Little Kids”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YNmaZahEgg,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/12936/homepage_large.12c1d134.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Deerhunter-MicrocastleWeird_Era_Cont.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,49,Antony and the Johnsons,I Am a Bird Now,Secretly Canadian,"The downtown art scene of late 20th century New York left such an impression on the city, it was hard to imagine any artist in the 2000’s could touch on it without sounding like a nostalgia act. But Antony Hegarty confronted that gender-blurring heritage– think Andy Warhol’s Factory, Lou Reed’s 1970s androgyny, the 80s cabaret scene– to create something both reverent and new. Even more daringly, he opened with a showstopper, the devastating “Hope There’s Someone”. But the rest of the album answers that call, exploring complex issues of identity, mortality, and companionship with the guiding light of simple emotion. Antony’s performance-art pedigree gave his history lesson credibility, attracting contributions from icons like Reed and Boy George. But his breathtaking voice and laser-like vision transcend time and place. Every sentiment on I Am a Bird Now comes through loud and clear– even if you know nothing about New York. –Marc Masters Listen: Antony & the Johnsons: “Hope There’s Someone”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyMGEq82uL4,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/463/homepage_large.87971d9e.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Antony_and_the_Johnsons-I_Am_a_Bird_Now.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,48,The Hold Steady,Separation Sunday,Frenchkiss,"From the album’s very beginning– an unaccompanied vocal that ends with a joke it takes a few listens to get– you know Separation Sunday is for the lyric geeks. So there are maybe a few less sing-alongs; instead, we get barrages of noir-worthy imagery and singer Craig Finn’s preoccupations with over-the-counter highs, Christianity, seedy characters, and the bars, churches, and river camps where they meet. The music is as bar-ready as ever, but rather than the big choruses they’d later trade in, Separation Sunday’s memorable moments are stray licks, half-slurred lyrical asides, and the disarming bridges of tracks like “Banging Camp” or “Multitude of Casualties”, all of which shine brighter than the songs that surround them. There’s no typical ebb-and-flow album sequencing here, no breathers, slow jams, or bathroom breaks: Every moment of the record aims to be the best moment. –Jason Crock Listen: The Hold Steady: “Banging Camp”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrRqmhb1cag,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/3937/homepage_large.3be1f8f6.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Hold_Steady-Separation_Sunday.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,47,Joanna Newsom,The Milk-Eyed Mender,Drag City,"She wafted in like a hippie but sang about the pitfalls of poetry. She wrote like a poet but praised the birds for their illiterate flight. Her brave wail betrayed her age and her simple instrumentation– harp and voice, mostly– betrayed how hard the music probably was to play. The record was a breeze for the first 20 seconds. Then she started singing. You either craned your head toward the sound or you left the porch. Her whimsy was obvious and her word choice was, well– let’s say that “boat” doesn’t work because only “caravel” rhymes with “beetle shell.” (I kept the dictionary out after that.) She warped soft acoustic music into art– neither “freak” nor “folk,” just a harpist with a good imagination. The puns were an aside to remind us she wasn’t a stiff. Her debut– to paraphrase author Ben Marcus on the subject of experimental fiction– didn’t compete with paintball for attention; it ferreted out sensitive folks for whom lyric analysis is as spiritually gratifying as dancing. She deserved us and we needed her, puffy sleeves and all. –Mike Powell Listen: Joanna Newsom: “Sprout and the Bean”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47yuiPK01kg,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/5813/homepage_large.06beed35.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Joanna_Newsom-The_Milk-Eyed_Mender.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,46,The Shins,Chutes Too Narrow,Sub Pop,"Behind James Mercer’s melodious whimper and his band’s polite folk-rock is some unheralded meanness– hard-hearted thoughts on relationships; songs that sit like oval pegs in round holes, filled with detours and hiccups. Mercer writes thoughtfully about art and Utopianism but treats a new crush like she’s a game he lost to his erection. He buries a wimp’s anger in tangled words and unexpected codas. But it’s catchy and it’s pretty, so I have to assume that people listen selectively. In 2003, it was hard to find a big indie band that played quite as safely as the Shins. Most of the songs on Chutes were around three minutes long, and it didn’t sound like there were too many overdubs. No bhangra breakdowns, no “electronic manipulations.” It starts with a false start and ends with the sound of thunder– and between, the band scrapes at its own self-imposed limitations in a hundred great little ways. –Mike Powell Listen: The Shins: “Pink Bullets”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XBabozrPGA,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/7003/homepage_large.d6a172c4.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Shins-Chutes_Too_Narrow.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,45,Fugazi,The Argument,Dischord,"The members of Fugazi spent most of the decade working on other projects, but the one time they came together to make an album, they made one for the ages. The Argument is the band’s most nuanced and melodic record, and possibly its best. The refined approach doesn’t come at the expense of intensity, though– some of the record’s most harrowing moments are its quietest, and the album finds the band learning that a whisper can rage as powerfully as a shout. Outside of the masterful anti-eminent domain statement “Cashout”, the record is indirect about its politics without sounding uncommitted, and the band takes its narratives of personal and societal turmoil on wild rides through complex arrangements featuring intricate interplay and unexpected shifts. If we ever get another Fugazi album, it’ll be welcome, but if we don’t, The Argument is a perfect swan song: accomplished, righteous, challenging, and totally vital. –Joe Tangari Listen: Fugazi: “Cashout”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qcu5KT_bwvQ,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/3214/homepage_large.55850474.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fugazi-The_Argument.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,44,D’Angelo,Voodoo,Virgin,"Musically a triumph of hands-on, real-time, old-school soul minimalism, Voodoo is simultaneously tough as old wood and as fragile as a smoke ring. But it’s D’Angelo that makes the album something more than the work of talented young turks neck-deep in classic records. Save the breathtaking single, each vocal performance on Voodoo is a subdued, almost conversational marvel. The phrasing is as idiosyncratic as any great singer you may think he’s homaging; you can’t imagine anyone else squeezing the dangerously wordy chorus of “The Root” into such a shiver-inducing, fluid rush. The delivery, tending more toward a murmur, has an almost unbearable intimacy– maybe the most erotically tactile singing put to disc this decade. –Jess Harvell Listen: D’Angelo: “The Root”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fce41OOpUPk,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/18277/homepage_large.8f50f1bb.jpg,/dataset/artwork/DAngelo-Voodoo.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,43,Luomo,Vocalcity,Force Tracks,"In seconds, we’re off. Lost in a labyrinthine maze of compulsive deep house in which every synth spurt, each softly tearing hi-hat seems to plug into your body like acupuncture. Perhaps better than any other dance album this decade, Vocalcity blurs the line between process and product: when “Class” coalesces from a sea of continental shelf bass and disembodied and dissected sighs into a tremulously romantic diva refrain, it’s like watching cells multiplying to create a life form. But don’t just stand there watching: producer Sasu Ripatti doesn’t merely want you to dance, he wants to make dancing the only possible response. As expansive as they are, these aching grooves come on like snapshots of much longer, broader epics whose tantric possibilities are unnerving– if Vocalcity in fact stretched on forever, what dancer could bear to stop? Luomo provides the soundtrack; you bring the red shoes. –Tim Finney Listen: Luomo: “Class”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcFsEBbEpzI,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/4867/homepage_large.d1053b17.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Luomo-Vocalcity.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,42,Grizzly Bear,Veckatimest,Warp,"A triumph of craftsmanship, the 12 tracks of Veckatimest click and whirr at a deliberate tempo, like a clock tower in a town square. Even the slightest of vocal snippets gets shaped and sanded down with care– the only maybes are on the lyric sheet. And like those triumphant timepieces, it’s the dozen variations on a scene– instruments and effects rearranging themselves– that make things intriguing. Contrast is the key; beautiful vocal harmonies, such as the peeling-like-bells choir kicking off “Dory”, can be a flourish of sound or the longed-for release. Deceptively simple guitar melodies, spiked by sharp notes or riffs, let you know every turn was planned two songs in advance. Talent in music is often measured by extreme gestures, but Grizzly Bear’s greatest skill may be making small moves sound massive. –Patrick Sisson Listen: Grizzly Bear: “Dory”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLlDoKdeG6Q,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/14074/homepage_large.e8c5fabf.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Grizzly_Bear-Veckatimest.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,41,Burial,Untrue,Hyperdub,"Burial’s masterful second album Untrue seems a mass of contradictions. Although the world now knows Burial to be the work of London dubstep producer William Bevan, Untrue remains faceless and largely anonymous, yet also acutely personal and introspective. It is unconditionally linked to both its place of origin (South London), and to a specific musical lineage that traces back through UK garage, yet it has deeply resonated with listeners regardless of physical or musical geography. Though his jittery rhythms and brooding atmospheres are endlessly captivating, Burial’s distinctive treatment of vocal samples provide Untrue much of its enduring fascination. Manipulated and detuned, the disembodied voices that populate the likes of “Etched Headplate” or “Shell of Light” sound uniformly lost and heartsick, their half-heard pleas (“I can’t take no more tears,” “Please hurry and find me”) repeating helplessly into the night like residual hauntings. Yet despite Untrue’s immersive melancholy the album never becomes oppressive– on the contrary, Burial’s moody, evocative dubstep has an allure that always beckons the listener for one more lonely walk beneath its flickering streetlights. –Matthew Murphy Listen: Burial: “Shell of Light”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mkLNYaCJns,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/10670/homepage_large.a7366144.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Burial-Untrue.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,40,The National,Alligator,Beggars Banquet,"The National surely knew it, and a handful of longtime fans likely knew it as well. But it wasn’t until the group toured with opener Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! in fall 2005 that word finally spread of the group’s third album Alligator. A few years later, Alligator remains an unabashedly powerful and deceptively primal work, capable of knocking unsuspecting audiences on their collective ass. But back then, CYHSY was riding an unequaled (if fleeting) wave of buzz that resulted in sold-out clubs and spillover crowds, many of which thinned significantly before the headliners even took the stage. Those who stayed, however, witnessed an incredible transformation, as the National played the hell out of tracks that now feel like inextricable parts of the indie firmament. Songs like “Abel”, “Lit Up”, and “Mr. November” are ringers now, but they hit like a ton of bricks back when no one saw them coming. –Joshua Klein Listen: The National: “Mr. November”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLzChxmkH6s,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/5643/homepage_large.5ef3ddb6.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_National-Alligator.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,39,Boredoms,Vision Creation Newsun,Warner Bros.,"Nu-Baelerica, indie’s fascination with house and techno, Brooklyn noise, freak-folk, the proggy minimalism of Battles, the futuro-hurricane stomp of Orthrelm, the baroque noise-adelia of Panda Bear and Animal Collective, Lindstrøm’s space disco, Optimo’s beardy disco, M.I.A.’s electro-beats, the noise bands who were really jam bands (Lightning Bolt, Hella), the jam bands who were really noise bands (Excepter, Black Dice), any band with multiple drummers, any band whose front man played something with motion-sensors instead of a fretboard, any band who issued a remix album instead of an actual follow-up record (and especially those for whom the remix record was almost as good), any band who connected the dots between no-wave and trance and whose sound could only be described using three to five hyphens, and most of all ANY BAND WHO RECORDED A PERFECT RECORD FOR THE MILLENNIUM THE YEAR BEFORE IT STARTED. Oh wait, there’s only one. Boredoms win. –Dominique Leone Listen: Boredoms: “Arrow up”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZUZdB2B-s8,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/857/homepage_large.22c4eace.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Boredoms-Vision_Creation_Newsun.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,38,Phoenix,It's Never Been Like That,Astralwerks,"Two albums into a career of slick, reedy pop– and more notably, brilliant singles such as “If I Ever Feel Better”, “Too Young”, and “Everything is Everything”– the Versailles quartet Phoenix must have had some sort of epiphany. The opener to It’s Never Been Like That, “Napoleon Says”, narrates an encounter between a Frenchman and a (presumably) American tourist, but the greater effect is to signal the band’s torrid love affair with the rough young curvatures of Brooklyn. Ruffling their polished yacht-rock around the edges by applying measured doses of Strokes-esque rock guitar, It’s Never Been Like That compromised none of the preternatural pop songcraft wizardry of United or Alphabetical, but traded in a litany of odd old touches– palm-muted guitar, disingenuous blue-eyed soul– to arrangements that actually sounded like the guys were having fun. Outstanding single “Long Distance Call”, as the title implies, furthers the metaphor of the trans-Atlantic romance (perhaps inspired by singer Thomas Mars’ baby-mama Sofia Coppola?) as Mars insistently shouts the album’s title in the chorus. The unspoken response: And it’ll never be the same again. –Mike Orme Listen: Phoenix: “Long Distance Call”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owD3d1S0LFg,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/8877/homepage_large.7fce0719.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Phoenix-Its_Never_Been_Like_That.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,37,Yo La Tengo,And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out,Matador,"As the new decade arrived, Yo La Tengo seemed between worlds. They were indie rock vets whose career stretched back to the college-rock 80s, and during the alt-rock years they held their own against Matador labelmates like Pavement with Painful and I Can Heart the Heart Beating as One. But the groups they’d come up with were vanishing and the path forward for a band in their position wasn’t exactly clear. How do you act your age in this business while remaining vital? And Then Nothing Turned Us Inside-Out was the sound of them finding their way. It disappointed some at the time with its subdued sound and slower tempos, but it’s the kind of record that sounded better with every listen. Slow, spare, dreamy, but ultimately grounded, And Then Nothing… radiates warmth and maturity and is never boring. With it, Yo La Tengo showed us that it was possible to make indie rock about grown-up relationships– this is a couples record if there ever was one– and, after a few rough patches, they found themselves revitalized as a recording unit, doing some of the best work of their career by the time the 00s were ending. –Mark Richardson Listen:  Yo La Tengo: “Cherry Chapstick”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkComcEnFHU,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/8723/homepage_large.c2b4e192.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Yo_La_Tengo-And_Then_Nothing_Turned_Itself_Inside-Out.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,36,The Streets,Original Pirate Material,Warner Bros.,"Don’t forget how much this music risked embarrassment. Mike Skinner took the sounds of modern club music (2-step, garage, hip-hop) and made them small, chintzy, and unglamorous– no bright lights, no dancefloor, just someone pasting together beats on his computer in a messy apartment. Unlike London’s grime producers, he wasn’t doing it in the service of world-conquering fierceness. Skinner– young, suburban, Northern– rapped in a plainer voice, clowning about his daily life and telling earnest, unabashedly sentimental stories. I’m sure someone, at some point, told him this was embarrassing, cheap-sounding, and way less cool than proper club music– that his beats were shabby and his confessionals corny. But Skinner, good-humored and palpably sincere, followed his ideas where they led. And as it turns out, it’s exactly that sincerity that makes this record so special– something like having a great conversation on a ratty couch, surrounded by empty pizza boxes, stacks of old video games, and the beats from the cars down on the street. –Nitsuh Abebe Listen: The Streets: “Let’s Push Things Forward”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UGtlUMMkOU,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/7413/homepage_large.2d006a2e.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Streets-Original_Pirate_Material.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,35,Spoon,Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga,Merge,"“I’m in need of someone to take care of me tonight,” confesses Britt Daniel at the close of Spoon’s sixth album. The uncharacteristically direct emotional plea is earned. Because the entirety of Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga dances around the vulnerability of indie rock middle age, when a life playing to blurred faces might seem indulgent and/or hopelessly transient for someone tripping over their friend’s kids. But the band hasn’t given up on an indie rock nirvana typified by bristling loose ends and fallen feelings– it’s the end as no end, and they’ve got it down. The music bubbles, blooms, and cuts away as if struck by unseen forces throughout; Daniel matches it line-for-line with words that confuse, burrow, and– eventually– strike the psyche like a suppressed memory suddenly broken free. “Sometimes I think that I’ll find a love/ One that’s gonna change my heart,” goes the singer. He’s got little reason to believe, but he does anyway. –Ryan Dombal Listen: Spoon: “The Underdog”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7v0KCoPMTdU,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/10199/homepage_large.28a720f8.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Spoon-Ga_Ga_Ga_Ga_Ga.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,34,Radiohead,Amnesiac,Capitol,"Shoes to fill, shadows to escape– Amnesiac had quite an uphill battle when it emerged in spring 2001, mere months after Kid A confounded expectations, and indeed quite before the dust of debate surrounding that record had settled. Yet, lest we (ahem) forget, Amnesiac confounded a couple expectations of its own: namely, it wasn’t the rumored “return to rock” Radiohead record, nor was it a motley collection of inferior Kid A also-rans. What it was was a selection of the great band’s many strengths in convenient digest form: ballads custom built to alter the brain (“Pyramid Song”, “Like Spinning Plates”), paranoid clatter (“Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box”, “Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors”), winning curveballs (“Life in a Glass House”), and, okay, some stuff approximating rock (“I Might Be Wrong”, “Knives Out”). It’s a cheeky record too: Early in the record they give us “Pulk/Pull”, easily the most out-there vocal track to appear on a Radiohead record, while “Glasshouse”’s oft-quoted line about “someone listening in” is as politically unnerved as it is artistically self-aware. If only all “afterthought” albums could be this A-list. –Matthew Solarski Listen: Radiohead: “Pyramid Song”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3M_Gg1xAHE4,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/6559/homepage_large.e75d5920.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Radiohead-Amnesiac.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,33,Basement Jaxx,Rooty,Astralwerks,"As interpretations of classic Chicago house went, Basement Jaxx’s 1999 debut Remedy was hardly a muted and polite take on the genre. But even accounting for the record’s nods towards mutant funk, the Jaxx warped their style into something even grander and crazier on this sophomore excursion. Their palette of voices expanded from a slate of booming divas to a motley collection of neurotic ingénues, haywire sexbots and 2-Tone rudeboys (with the two tones in question being fluorescent pink and neon green). Their rhythms drew from hyperventilating bump-and-grind 2-step (“Romeo”), grotesquely snarling Gary Numan-gone-rave drones (“Where’s Your Head At”), squirrelly, skeletal electro (“Crazy Girl”), and the brashest caricatures of the Prince aesthetic ever devised (“Breakaway”; “Get Me Off”; “I Want U”; “SFM”). It’s so all-encompassingly manic that even the stylistic detours– like the baroque Latin/Mediterranean 60s-pop longing of “Broken Dreams” or “All I Know”’s chirpy Intellivision boogie– sound inextricable from the rest of the album. –Nate Patrin Listen: Basement Jaxx: “Where’s Your Head At”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rAOyh7YmEc,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/567/homepage_large.ba84f63c.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Basement_Jaxx-Rooty.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,32,Fleet Foxes,Fleet Foxes,Sub Pop,"Vocal harmonies became an indie touchstone during the later 2000s, but no band capitalized on that trend as well as Seattle’s Fleet Foxes on the 1-2 punch of their debut EP and LP. Then again, no band had Robin Pecknold singing lead and four other voices backing him up on just about every note (and this was before Seattle solo artist J. Tillman joined the group). Like that Breughel painting on the cover, there’s a hell of a lot going on in Fleet Foxes’ rustically moody songs: Skye Skjelset’s guitar swoops in and out in graceful arcs, allowing the band to glide from one fluid jam to the next and to incorporate an impressive range of styles that transcend the “Southern rock” and “stoner jams” that greeted the album upon release. Those elements helped the band graduate from unsigned to “SNL” in barely a year, but it’s those harmonies that make this one of the most beguiling debuts of the decade. –Stephen M. Deusner Listen: Fleet Foxes: “White Winter Hymnal”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrQRS40OKNE,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/11351/homepage_large.1327b32c.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fleet_Foxes-Fleet_Foxes.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,31,TV on the Radio,Return to Cookie Mountain,4AD / Interscope,"Return to Cookie Mountain is a coy, fantasyland title for an album with tales of ravaged love and alcohol on its breath. Tunde Adebimpe and Kyp Malone’s voices sound heavenly here, but they’re often about the search for absolution. Dave Sitek sets the mood with a synthetic grind– guitars screeching like subway brakes and static combusting like sparklers– that speaks to the elemental tensions of the vocals. It’s poetry for lovers lost (“Suddenly, all your history’s ablaze/ Try to breathe, as the world disintegrates”), regretful (“A recent memory of when we shit our bed of roses”), and broken (“tangled up in the flesh of a girl”). TV on the Radio often get tagged as avant-garde, as if it’s challenging to pick up on the feral intensity of songs such as “Wolf Like Me”. Listen to this album filled with teeth-gnashing, gut-wrenching passion and try to disagree with the idea that love is the province of the brave. –Patrick Sisson Listen: TV on the Radio: “Wolf Like Me”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1-xRk6llh4,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/9019/homepage_large.029923aa.jpg,/dataset/artwork/TV_on_the_Radio-Return_to_Cookie_Mountain.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,30,Boards of Canada,Geogaddi,Warp,"I love this record even though it creeps me the hell out. Or: I love this record because it creeps me the hell out? Or: I love this record out of a deeply embedded respect and admiration for things I do not understand and which also, incidentally, creep me the hell out? On this, Boards of Canada’s toothy second full-length, the Scottish duo mottled their trademark loping hip-hop rhythms and decaying synth patches with more urgent, craggly, sweaty sounds, and in turn revealed just how fine a distinction it is between childlike/naïve and paranoid/schizophrenic. With its gnarly rhythmic patters and sinister atmospherics bouncing around a tightly packed soundstage, this conjured fear, longing, and creeping unease better than anything since Tricky’s Maxinquaye. It is a black forest of a record, full of psychedelia and psychosis and gauzy National Film Board samples of Leslie Nielsen talking about nature; I look forward to never untangling it. –Mark Pytlik Listen: Boards of Canada: “Music Is Math”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7bKe_Zgk4o,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/831/homepage_large.068497d8.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Boards_of_Canada-Geogaddi.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,29,Bon Iver,"For Emma, Forever Ago",Jagjaguwar / Self-released,"The backstory has been repeated so often with such insistence that three years later it’s become a mythic tall tale: Guy breaks up band in North Carolina, decamps to the wilds of Wisconsin, makes a record originally intended to be heard by almost nobody. But what happened next is much more interesting: After Justin Vernon made 500 copies and distributed them himself, the album is picked up by indie juggernaut Jagjaguwar, gets big props from Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold, holds up to hundreds of repeat listens, and get thousands of festivalgoers singing along solemnly to “The Wolves”. Quiet and folkily ambient, For Emma, Forever Ago is an impassioned cry too compelling not to become heard. From those opening strums to the “Flume” to the closing hums of “Re: Stacks”, the album communicates acute loneliness and nurses a pain that has dulled but obviously not died– which is perhaps our own romantic view of ourselves. It’s easy to get caught up in the stories surrounding this out-of-nowhere album, but the music pulls you back to the real world. –Stephen M. Deusner Listen: Bon Iver: “Skinny Love”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssdgFoHLwnk,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/10512/homepage_large.3f142536.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bon_Iver-For_Emma_Forever_Ago.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,28,Kanye West,The College Dropout,Roc-A-Fella,"The truth is that without this album, rap is in an entirely different place right now. And while Kanye West’s growth and experimentation has resulted in some thrilling music, this is bedrock for a generation of MCs. Deeply middle class, musically ambitious but never alienating, emotionally naked: This was not the stuff of pre-2002 hip-hop. The paradigm shift is only now really taking shape as young rappers like Drake, Kid Cudi, Wale, and Asher Roth bend and pull on West’s thorny contradictions. As singles, “Slow Jamz” and “Jesus Walks” made for the perfect dichotomy; light and dark, secular and devout, stupid and smart. But what still moves me are the beautifully told personal notes: retail details while slinging sweaters at the Gap, peeing in the bed as a snot-nosed kid, landing in the same hospital as Biggie after a devastating accident. On Dropout, Kanye wasn’t the best rapper or the best producer or even the best album-maker. But he was the most original. –Sean Fennessey Listen: Kanye West: “Through the Wire”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jr_5yTNvIt4,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/8623/homepage_large.7b1099ec.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kanye_West-The_College_Dropout.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,27,Animal Collective,Sung Tongs,Fat Cat,"My favorite decade theory: You get the best sense of what the decade is about by starting from its midpoint, and going until the next. In true experimentalist fashion, Animal Collective’s Sung Tongs (created entirely by the Panda Bear/Avey Tare duo) arrived a full year before the middle of the aughts, and perhaps more than any other record of the decade, foresaw where indie hearts, ears, and minds would go in the next five years. And while its rustic psychedelia and warm-hearted electronic touches might have extended hands (paws?) outward to the best avant-pop of the previous generation or two, the magic of this record was that it was both innovative and utterly, peerlessly beautiful. Fittingly, it was also a turning point for the band, who by decade’s end were playing Letterman and putting on the biggest light show this side of Daft Punk. How’s that for zeitgeist? –Dominique Leone Listen: Animal Collective: “Leaf House”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPWR98JCCRE,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/190/homepage_large.89f05691.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Animal_Collective-Sung_Tongs.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,26,Fennesz,Endless Summer,Mego,"The title of Christian Fennesz’ 2001 record evokes a few specific things: a 1964 song by the Sandals sampled on the title track, a 1966 film documenting two surfers’ global journey, the Beach Boys’ singles collection. But the thoughts and feelings it inspires are much larger. This isn’t one season without end, but a string of summers fused into the infinite loop of memory. Beaches, pools, ball fields, hazy humidity rippling over pavement: all the images of summer are visible in Fennesz’s analog-to-digital constructions, but they’re refracted through the warping prism of human recollection. This could’ve resulted in a mess of glitches, but Fennesz rearranges his decaying source material into songs, much the way the brain constructs narratives when reliving memories. Noisy and bright, hot and dense, challenging and catchy, Endless Summer slices up sound the way we slice up experience, rescuing the remnants of sunny, sweaty seasons. –Marc Masters Listen: Fennesz: “Endless Summer”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGcPwGqPHO0,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/13410/homepage_large.939e0e00.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fennesz-Endless_Summer.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,25,Madvillain,Madvillainy,Stones Throw,"As individuals and in collaboration with other artists, MF Doom and Madlib have each been responsible for tons of great, grimy underground hip-hop. Even still, Madvillainy was a lightning-in-a-bottle moment, a preternaturally perfect pairing of like-minded talents who somehow managed amidst mountains of pot smoke to submit a brilliantly whole-cloth work of surrealistic shit-talk and superhero fantasia. Madvillainy is famously brief, and to compensate Madlib crams his woozily bass-heavy, key-laden tracks full of off-the-wall samples (Frank Zappa, Steve Reich) and movie snippets, while Doom tirelessly unravels verse after verse of wildly discursive, hallucinatorily vivid, insanely quotable lyrics. There’s little reason to suspect Madvillainy won’t make good on its promise to serve as ""the components which have fueled nightmares for decades to come."" –Joshua Love Listen: Madvillain: “All Caps”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewc1hixzYPY,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/5504/homepage_large.0bc6101d.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Madvillain-Madvillainy.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,24,Yeah Yeah Yeahs,Fever to Tell,Interscope,"Watching the Yeah Yeah Yeahs make their wobbly-but-determined ascent up the pop-cultural stepladder was one of the more heartwarming success stories of the young decade. When their EP hit, the YYYs seemed the definition of a scenester’s band– gawky Brooklyn-via-Oberlin art-fucks with a silly name, some catchy tunes, and a frontwoman who poured beer all over herself onstage and yowled profanities like Wendy O. Williams’s kid sister. Their expiration date felt nigh not long after Julian Casablancas wore a prominent Yeah Yeah Yeahs button onstage with the Strokes. But then, something else happened: they began growing, in wild, uncertain spurts, right in front of our eyes. Fever to Tell, their Interscope debut, was their hip thrust into the mainstream, an attitudinal blast of the shouts, squiggles, chants, and spiny rhythms that they rode to Internet semi-notoriety. And it’s highlighted by “Maps”, the most affecting rock ballad of the decade. With one open-hearted plea– “Wait– they don’t love you like I love you”– we were given our first glimpse of Karen O’s heart, as well as her flowering ambition to one day be “bigger than the sound.” –Jayson Greene Listen: Yeah Yeah Yeahs: “Maps”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIIxlgcuQRU,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/8739/homepage_large.37a18b0f.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Yeah_Yeah_Yeahs-Fever_to_Tell.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,23,Broken Social Scene,You Forgot It in People,Arts & Crafts / Paper Bag,"“I was scared to see if people were going to embrace the idea of a whole shitload of sounds on one album,” said Broken Social Scene’s Kevin Drew a couple months after You Forgot It In People first let out its sprawl in October 2002. By that point, file-sharing had revealed the Internet’s infinite library of sounds and iPods turned strictly organized 500 CD towers into bits of shuffle-ready randomness. So the Ultimate Indie Rock Mixtape vibe of the Toronto group’s breakthrough LP most definitely helped its collective cause and conveniently mirrored the splintering culture that birthed it. While any band could attempt an album full of unexpected genre jumps, few could make it sound like a complete thought; from epic post-rock (“KC Accidental”) to woolly bossa nova (“Looks Just Like the Sun”) to pitch-shifting balladry (“Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl”), the record plays like an all-star team that’s actually trying to win the game instead of merely preening. –Ryan Dombal Listen: Broken Social Scene: “Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDqNL0js0iU,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/945/homepage_large.44da3695.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Broken_Social_Scene-You_Forgot_It_in_People.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,22,M.I.A.,Kala,XL / Interscope,"A thousand blog posts couldn’t achieve what one well-picked soundtrack did: M.I.A’s a star. Listening back to Kala it seems just a trick of history that she wasn’t already– surely our memories deceive us, and “Boyz” was 2007’s summer jam, just like “Jimmy” ruled that spring with its Bollywood disco vamps? But for every fantasy pop triumph on Kala, there’s a hidden door or three. “Paper Planes”’ lyrics are a better pointer than its lilt: Most of the album is a similar road trip through world town, a shanty planet M.I.A. both represents and packages for her tourist audience. There’s no contradiction– the hustle is the world. Other voices break through her sales patter– the heartbreaking kid gang on “Mango Pickle Down River”, the deadpan MC Afrikan Boy on “Hussel”, Timbaland playing the smug first-worlder on “Come Around”. But from “Bamboo Banga”’s “strike match, light fire” promise on, it’s M.I.A.’s own vision, charisma, and ear for a killer slogan that drives the record. Since she emerged, she’s been criticized as an art-school fraud, but as she reminds us over “Bird Flu”’s henhouse apocalypse, “credentials are boring.” In the territories she’s mapping authenticity is a trap, and her skill at baiting and escaping it is what makes Kala so intoxicating. –Tom Ewing Listen: M.I.A.: “Paper Planes”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewRjZoRtu0Y,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/10369/homepage_large.84594075.jpg,/dataset/artwork/MIA-Kala.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,21,Radiohead,In Rainbows,Self-released / ATO,"Are we far enough removed from In Rainbows that we can finally start arguing about how it compares to Radiohead’s other albums? If so, I’ll get us started with something vaguely controversial: I actually think it might be their best. Better than OK Computer, better than Kid A. My reasoning for this is based partly on anecdotal evidence that mostly involves friends who have historically not cared one iota all casually marveling about how good it is. It also considers my nagging suspicion that our tireless and self-conscious canonization of OKC and Kid A have undone some of their magic; when I listen to those records now, I hear our own projections and cultural ghosts just as loudly as I hear the music. In Rainbows, though, remains a shiny, untroubled thing, an architectural marvel with requisite balances between light/dark, simple/complicated and utilitarian/vanguard intact. I still listen to it all the time, occasionally even on Sunday mornings. Some people are now Radiohead fans because of it. –Mark Pytlik Listen: Radiohead: “15 Step”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpqk9MD6vLM,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/10586/homepage_large.7055fb4d.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Radiohead-In_Rainbows.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,20,Interpol,Turn On the Bright Lights,Matador,"Interpol’s 2002 debut has been slighted as being strictly a matter of a specific time and place. The band was quickly saddled with Joy Division comparisons, but its stormy, romantic rock was one of the decade’s sharpest distillations of that common post-punk influence. At its best, Turn on the Bright Lights has the power and pull– and the requisite dryness and ennui– of Television’s “Venus” or the work of early-70s Lou Reed. And so it was, and is, about its time and place: downtown New York recomposed in Giuliani’s wake, proud of its rough history and ever skeptical of its future. This album exudes gritty glamor, careless pride, and that special sad lament of twentysomethings who have nothing to be sad about and everything to look forward to in life. “You’ve supported me for a long time/ Somehow I’m not impressed,” Paul Banks sings on “NYC”. Surely boys, you owe the city more than that. –Patrick Sisson Listen: Interpol: “NYC”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kPON3WmdRw,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/4070/homepage_large.59424c77.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Interpol-Turn_On_the_Bright_Lights.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,19,Spoon,Kill the Moonlight,Merge,"Normally when rock bands enter a “using-the-studio-as-an-instrument” phase, their songs get overworked and overblown, but Spoon moved in the opposite direction, opting for a rhythm-centric economy of sound akin to what Prince achieved on hits like “Kiss” and “When Doves Cry”. Every cut on Kill the Moonlight is stripped to its most essential elements, lending pop songs like “The Way We Get By” and “Jonathon Fisk” a bold, uncluttered urgency, while atmospheric numbers such as “Paper Tiger” and “Stay Don’t Go” come across like loose gestural sketches rendered by the purposeful hand of a master craftsman. The arrangements may be spartan, but the production is rich in detail, with sleek textures scuffed just enough to seem lived-in, and painterly keyboard tones that evoke vivid nighttime imagery. Despite the brilliance of the production, the music is ultimately successful due to Britt Daniel’s sexy rasp, which grounds even the most cerebral moments in the offhand intensity of his raw, immediate passion. –Matthew Perpetua Listen: Spoon: “The Way We Get By”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fp15kxAE3ig,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/7312/homepage_large.47ba3f42.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Spoon-Kill_the_Moonlight.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,18,Kanye West,Late Registration,Roc-A-Fella / Def Jam,"Kanye, you jerk. Late Registration? Perfect. Even in its unruly sprawl. The last time you really seemed to bother to push yourself. To give us over-stuffed, unashamedly contradictory, all-of-you-and-more art that lived up to your autodidact genius entitlement shtick. It arrived at precisely the right time, too, more or less a year after the intriguing if uneven The College Dropout said you’d be someone to fear if you could ever curb the hype-mongering to bear down in the studio. It mixed world-conquering pop crassness (“Gold Digger”, “Diamonds From Sierra Leone”, a friggin’ guest spot from Adam “Maroon 5” Levine for chrissakes) with some of the harmonically oddest hip-hop in the genre’s history (the drunken reverb on the guitars on “Addiction”, the sly, conversational bounce of the strings on “Gone”). Even the throwaways were musically rich: Has any hip-hop track as slight as “We Major” bothered with such an opulent arrangement? You blurred social comment (some of it admittedly a little entry-level) into the enjoyable party-hound doggerel and shouts to mama and grandma. We all know that you’re selling yourself short until you ditch the solipsism shoved through Auto-Tune and bother crafting a true follow-up to this album. –Jess Harvell Listen: Kanye West: “Gold Digger” [ft. Jamie Foxx]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vwNcNOTVzY,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/8624/homepage_large.fab12909.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kanye_West-Late_Registration.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,17,LCD Soundsystem,Sound of Silver,DFA / EMI,"What musty FM rock radio pixie dust did James Murphy scatter over Sound of Silver to make it feel so instantaneously like a classic? Here’s a theory: It’s an occupational hazard of dance music journalism that every so often you laud a record for sounding future-forward only to realize a few years later that your compass was way broke. So maybe a huge part of the overwhelming critical confidence in Sound of Silver had to do with the fact that it wasn’t trading in new untested sounds as much as it was confidently updating a pastiche of the proven past. David Bowie? Check. David Byrne? Check. Brian Eno? Check plus. Combined with Sound of Silver’s inspired songwriting and production, the easy familiarity of those touchpoints gave us something that was easy to immediately absorb and consequently mobilize behind. A dance-rock record from a former punk agnostic, this hybrid of 1970s art-rock and more traditional dance elements conspired for one of the only truly great dance albums of the decade. Simple, right? Ha! Guaranteed that producers all over the world are still shaking their fists in Murphy’s general direction for making it seem this damn easy. –Mark Pytlik Listen: LCD Soundsystem: “Someone Great”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwoLACv_srQ,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/9831/homepage_large.85537afc.jpg,/dataset/artwork/LCD_Soundsystem-Sound_of_Silver.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,16,Sufjan Stevens,Illinois,Asthmatic Kitty,"When Illinois and Late Registration placed #1 and #2 in Pitchfork’s Top Albums of 2005 list, some took it as symbolic, a situation in which a hip-hop record that catered to every single rockist habit in the book still played runner-up to our precious lily-livered indie rock. But they’re a hell of a lot closer than they look: each a staggeringly ambitious, lushly orchestrated big-top extravaganza whose ringleader mixes in frivolous tall tales and Chicago civic pride with heavy meditations on God, mortality, and love, all to suffer criticisms about too many tracks, too many interludes, and too many French horns. No one’s gonna confuse “John Wayne Gacy” with, like, “Drive Slow”, but this sort of context is a helpful reminder that while there might be a discrepancy between these two in terms of ego, it ain’t by that much. Though Stevens hasn’t done much since to counter his image of a banjo-toting Cub Scout, Illinois is a record that took a massive amount of cojones to pull off, taking the framework of the Michigan album that Stevens seemed placed on this earth to make and then blowing it up in every way possible. But while Illinois is ultimately a testament to Stevens’ sky-high confidence in his compositional and lyrical sophistication, it’s also a record that’s almost completely non-autobiographical. Stevens’ self-confidence manifests itself in having enough belief in his own voice to tell everyone else’s story– all geographical namedrops aside, Illinois could’ve been relocated anywhere and it would still be nothing short of universal. –Ian Cohen Listen: Sufjan Stevens: “Casimir Pulaski Day”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EzeW5KoPUI,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/7397/homepage_large.48a46623.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sufjan_Stevens-Illinois.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,15,The Knife,Silent Shout,Mute / Rabid,"The amazing thing about Silent Shout is how whole it feels– the way it summons up every weird gift this Swedish brother/sister duo’s been blessed with and puts it in the service of a sound so astonishingly complete and coherent. (So complete, in fact, that it becomes resistant to explanation: You can describe its attributes, but at some point it just sort of is.) So: There’s the percussive clang of the rhythms. There’s the way the synth arpeggios shudder and swell ominously in and out, like surf against rocks at night. There’s Karin Dreijer Andersson’s otherworldly voice, which gets stretched in every direction, distorted and detuned until the “real” Karin can keen against demonically low doppelgangers and creepily high doll versions. But somewhere within that, there’s just multitudes more: fairy-tale creepiness, waltzes for ghosts, icy energy, stories, elegance, rage, gender critiques, forests, politics, wit, jokes, families, children, Volvo employees, The Godfather. It feels pretty colossal. There are certain aesthetics so whole and singular that we use them as shorthand to refer to other things– stuff can be Lynchian, Dickensian, Pynchonesque. Repeated exposure to this record makes it tempting to start describing things– say, a bird of prey circling an ice-covered lighthouse– as Silent Shout-ian. –Nitsuh Abebe Listen: The Knife: “Marble House”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyN5BYL8l_o,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/4534/homepage_large.ac002cfb.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Knife-Silent_Shout.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,14,Animal Collective,Merriweather Post Pavilion,Domino,"At its core, Merriweather Post Pavilion is very ordinary. The lyrics read like stuff you’d talk about around the grill. Even that UFO at the start of the disc sounds like its drain got clogged. But on their strongest and– not coincidentally– most accessible album to date, celebrating the everyday is the point. High-pitched electronics heighten alertness. Every detail of the daily routine brings joy. The lover you dream about is the one at home. And making that home is the thing that makes life amazing. The hominess may be a departure from their early tribal adventures, but it’s a natural one. The 00s didn’t hurt for talented and idiosyncratic artists striving to make their mark against the generations of records they’d inherited. If Animal Collective outpaced the rest, it’s because they pulled their experiments toward the center– not just by easing the rhythms to an everyday heartbeat, or by penning ever-warmer melodies, but by celebrating the most common connections between human beings. The wrenching confusion and stabs of ecstasy have never been more intense, now that the backstory’s so banal. The masked, pseudonymous Collective may still be in a tribe, but the tribe they’ve joined is our own. –Chris Dahlen Listen: Animal Collective: “Summertime Clothes”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxhaRgJUMl8,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/13028/homepage_large.d8848c55.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Animal_Collective-Merriweather_Post_Pavilion.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,13,OutKast,Stankonia,LaFace,"Look back at the cover of Idlewild. Not the split-screen, we’re-still-a-team version but the original with André 3000 in the foreground, staring intently at sheet music above an antique piano. Then there’s Big Boi, deep in the recess, pimp suit on, mic in hand, ready to rap, shrugging in frustration as if to say, “What the hell are we doing here?” Never did they seem so far apart, and it’s one of the great disappointments of the decade that OutKast, once America’s most promising pop group, have effectively stopped making music together. Still, Stankonia remains. The sprawling LP, as weird and futuristic as mainstream hip-hop gets, finds the duo managing a delicate balance between its two very distinct personas. They drew you in with sugary sweet, ladies-first jams like “Ms. Jackson” and “I’ll Call Before I Come” only to invite Killer Mike to spit vulgarities like “Need her to gobble up jism like school lunches” on the violent “Snappin’ & Trappin’”. Vehemently anti-flossing one minute (“Red Velvet”), they sounded hard as nails the next on “Gangsta Shit”. The tightrope act must have drained them, but one thing seems obvious listening to Stankonia now: OutKast need each other as much as we need them. –Joe Colly Listen: OutKast: “Ms. Jackson”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYxAiK6VnXw,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/18282/homepage_large.7febfc0d.jpg,/dataset/artwork/OutKast-Stankonia.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,12,The White Stripes,White Blood Cells,Sympathy for the Record Industry,"An aspiring young journalist once said to me that the Strokes were our Beatles and the White Stripes our Rolling Stones. If you’ll forgive the reductive nature of the comment, she may have had things backward. Jack and Meg White hit like an adrenaline shot to the chest when they released their third album– mostly because the mainstream media found a peg with the band’s Michel Gondry-directed Lego-to-life video for “Fell in Love With a Girl”. But lo and behold, the band just happened to be arriving at a creative peak at the same time, transmogrifying the scuzzed, tensile garage rock of their first two underrated albums into pop pandemonium. And they were fortunate to exploit their truly strange, typically inspired shenanigans to the press. Siblings, lovers, friends– it ultimately didn’t matter. WBC is still their best album because it is so amazingly true to their ethos– no bass, no overdubs, no bullshit– but also because it so merrily dances between fire and flowers. There is an almost impossible transition from the dark, haunted “The Union Forever”, with its “no true love” caterwaul, to the big-hearted weeper “The Same Boy You’ve Always Known”. Maybe Beatles proclamations are a bit overenthusiastic. But what’s wrong with a little ambition? –Sean Fennessey Listen: The White Stripes: “Fell in Love With a Girl”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTH71AAxXmM,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/8511/homepage_large.b39a21f4.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_White_Stripes-White_Blood_Cells.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,11,Ghostface Killah,Supreme Clientele,Sony / Razor Sharp / Epic,"In 1997, Wu-Tang Forever was released. A mere two years later, thanks to ill-fated tours, internal squabbling, and a run of mostly regrettable solo albums, the Clan entered the new century with almost no momentum. If Ghostface Killah hadn’t been incarcerated in Rikers Island during that span, Supreme Clientele might’ve come out in 1999, but its release in the decade’s first month provided an unexpected millennial rebirth, singlehandedly restoring Wu Tang’s mysterious artistic vitality and positioning Tony Starks as hip-hop’s most consistently astonishing and confounding lyricist. When it first hit, new possibilities in language emerged with a topical breadth that’s become Supreme Clientele’s most underrated aspect. Rap definitely got weirder, but you weren’t getting a straight-up party rhyme like “Cherchez La Ghost” on an Anticon disc; on an El-P record, “Child’s Play” becomes “Stepfather Factory”; and whatever you want to call the indelible character sketch of “Malcolm” (“He eat hams, shitted on his self twice/ Big-hatted Jews rushed a nigga out in Crown Heights”), nobody was on that level. –Ian Cohen Listen: Ghostface Killah: “Cherchez La Ghost” [ft. U-God]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIdPfbwNV3w,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/18278/homepage_large.21a344dc.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ghostface_Killah-Supreme_Clientele.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,10,The Avalanches,Since I Left You,Modular / Sire,"Here’s a curious album: It’s constructed like a hip-hop record, it flows with the momentum of a great dance mix, but its component parts seem to come from strange places– musical soundtracks, oddball comedy routines, and easy-listening thrift-store pop from the 60s and 70s. It skirts cheese but hits the pleasure center of the music-geek brain dead-on, blurring lines we never knew existed: sunny lite-soul congeals into the surrealist coda from a John Cale song, flashes of Camp Lo and De La Soul mutter hooks over some unseemly alternate-reality disco, and a gothic choir gets chopped up and modulated to provide the wordless vocals of a funk jam that, as it turns out, is sourced from an especially dirty Blowfly single. Non sequiturs spring up even as all the musical patches hide their seams; “Frontier Psychiatrist” alone has enough bewildering decontextualized soundbites to count as some kind of deranged dada exercise (“And tighten your buttocks/ Pour juice on your chin/ And I promised my girlfriend I’d get/ A violin”). But Since I Left You isn’t just a well-built assemblage of sample-based plunderphonics, it’s a masterpiece of mood-setting that riffs off an ideal where getting on an airplane and landing in another corner of the world was the most exotic thing a person could do. It’s like a travelogue put through a Steinski filter, an escape to a world so new: “Get a drink, have a good time now, welcome to paradise.” –Nate Patrin Listen: The Avalanches: “Frontier Psychiatrist”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLrnkK2YEcE,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/381/homepage_large.cfca747e.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Avalanches-Since_I_Left_You.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,9,Panda Bear,Person Pitch,Paw Tracks,"Person Pitch is the third solo album from Noah Lennox, yet it seems difficult to take measure of the album except as it relates to his regular work as a member of Animal Collective. (This is partially because Person Pitch was the first AC-related album to really lure some of their more skeptical listeners into the tent.) In many ways, the album seems the most succinct possible distillation of exactly what qualities Lennox brings to the Collective’s kaleidoscopic mix. And it certainly doesn’t hurt Person Pitch’s cause that those very qualities– the beatific melodies, the multi-tracked choral vocals, and the general head-in-the-clouds drift– tend to be the most immediately appealing draws of the AC universe. The premise for Person Pitch is fairly simple– take the production techniques and repetition of minimal techno and apply them to what might otherwise be relatively straightforward dreamy guitar pop. In Lennox’s hands, however, this basic template becomes a pathway for sublime invention, as his layered loops of acoustic guitar, overlapping voices, and stray sound effects encircle his songs like halos of sunlight. The album balances widescale epics “Bro’s” and “Good Girl/Carrots” with such irresistible short pieces as “Ponytail” and the radiant “I’m Not”, resulting in a cohesive whole that is lean, symmetrical, and filled with a continual abundance of fresh surprises and discoveries. –Matthew Murphy Listen: Panda Bear: “Comfy in Nautica”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MT3NVv7IZ8Q,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/9839/homepage_large.e2dd97fd.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Panda_Bear-Person_Pitch.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,8,Sigur Rós,Agaetis Byrjun,Smekkleysa,"They came from Iceland and Radiohead liked them. That’s about all we knew back when Ágætis Byrjun first starting making its way around near the turn of the decade, but in those days, that was enough to get people intrigued. Discovering the music of Sigur Rós was an active process, because a series of questions inevitably followed: How do you pronounce their name? What does it mean? Is that a man or a woman singing? Did I hear right, that the words aren’t actually in any language? Indeed, since Ágætis Byrjun was one of those records that filled a deep-seated need listeners didn’t even know they had, experiencing it was at first a little confusing. Punk had taught us to be skeptical of pure, unapologetic prettiness, so as underground music fans, we’d been conditioned to reject this sort of thing. We were used to it being cut with noise, irony, or emotional distance, which left us unprepared for exquisitely crafted music that asked to be appreciated in the same way as a bright orange sunset or the first snowfall of the season. But we got over it, and once that happened, after we’d given the record a couple of spins, one final question came to mind: Is there any other music like this? –Mark Richardson Listen: Sigur Rós: Starálfur",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6rcPRt7sjA,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/7039/homepage_large.e17d9e74.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sigur_Rs-Agaetis_Byrjun.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,7,The Strokes,Is This It,RCA,"The Strokes helped to keep alive the romantic notion of pre-Giuliani New York, before the Lower East Side became an amusement park and Times Square became Disneyland. At the time, these guys were naïve enough (and good-looking enough) to firmly believe they were the best band in the world; and for a moment, it actually came true. Is This It is a time capsule of that youthful bravado and it would probably sound quaint if the songs weren’t so amazing. Never mind that Julian Casablancas’ detached vocals presaged a good percentage of the music that came out this year– listen to the effortlessness with which the band brings tracks like “Barely Legal” to life, literally laughing during “New York City Cops” because it sounds so damn easy. Part of that was skill, part of it was innocence. These days, even the Strokes know they’ll never make another record this good. That’s not to say they couldn’t come close, but nearly a decade later, we’re all seasoned enough to recognize you only capture this kind of a lightning in a bottle once. –Joe Colly Listen: The Strokes: “Last Nite”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOypSnKFHrE,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/albums/7419/homepage_large.c1b895b7.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Strokes-Is_This_It.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,6,Modest Mouse,The Moon & Antarctica,Epic,"The Moon & Antarctica is easily Modest Mouse’s most ambitious album, a staggering leap in vision and scope from their previous records and a completely self-contained universe. Frontman Isaac Brock’s worldview had always made room for a fair amount of existential loneliness and drugged madness, but from the opening moments of “3rd Planet”, all of those elements suddenly cohered into something serenely whole. It’s as if the garbled transmission he’d been receiving from parts unknown his whole life suddenly beamed in clear, and in three minutes, he spins out a creation myth so bewildering and uncanny that we’re still trying to parse it nine years later. Brock manages to channel this unearthly perspective for an entire album, and everything old, under this gaze, is rendered new and freshly strange: stars become projectors, lives end but no one ever completes them, someone smart says nothing at all. Even Brock’s trademark scathing insults turned trippy: “You were the dull sound of sharp math when you were alive/ No one’s gonna play the harp when you die,” he mutters in “Lives”. If there’s a way into that statement, I haven’t found it yet, but it’s hard not to sense a rare wisdom encrypted in its code.  –Jayson Greene Listen: Modest Mouse: “3rd Planet”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsnELWjsCsA,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/5290/homepage_large.789479e8.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Modest_Mouse-The_Moon__Antarctica.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,5,JAY-Z,The Blueprint,Roc-A-Fella / Def Jam,"When it comes to prophetic hip-hop album titles, Ready to Die was the most tragically accurate of the 1990s. This decade, The Blueprint was rap’s supreme soothsayer: a grand layout too enamored with life to entertain fatalism. Without it, Kanye West may have never gotten out of his mom’s basement. Nas’ “Made You Look” probably wouldn’t exist. And Jay-Z may have become another aged-out rap casualty, gasping for relevance in a realm where 30 may as well be 60. When the album wasn’t mastering tried-and-true hip-hop tropes like the diss track (“Takeover”), the player’s anthem (“Girls, Girls, Girls”), and the puffy-eyed ballad (“Song Cry”), it perfected a lush, sample-based aesthetic that didn’t rip-off Al Green, David Ruffin, and Bobby Byrd as much as it paid homage. Just as The Chronic revived 70s funk, The Blueprint brushed off 70s soul for fresh ears. And at the center is Shawn Carter, then 31, who supposedly recorded the bulk of the record’s vocals in a near-divine two-day, paperless outpour. Reasonable Doubt may be more complex and The Black Album more personal, but Jay’s Blueprint persona is the one that will match his legacy– towering, effortless, and as eternal as its 12-minute finale. ""If I ain’t better than Big, I’m the closest one,"" he claimed– a controversial line at the time. In 2009, the sentiment seems quaint, if a bit modest. –Ryan Dombal Listen: Jay Z: “Song Cry”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5srnNrICJo,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/4168/homepage_large.c77499e7.jpg,/dataset/artwork/JAY-Z-The_Blueprint.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,4,Wilco,Yankee Hotel Foxtrot,Nonesuch,"Jeff Tweedy had allegedly been boning up on World War II while he wrote many of the songs that would become Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, an all too fitting lead-up to Wilco’s well-documented battles with the record industry as well as within the band itself. Touring behind an album still weeks away from official release, Tweedy would often pause to ask how many people in the crowd had downloaded the new Wilco record, and if the substantial show of hands wasn’t answer enough, the folks singing along to every word only amplified the extent to which the disc had made the rounds. More importantly, it was making new fans, too, as burned copies of YHF were passed around like totems with the band’s tacit blessing. But the historic, narrative-defining leak of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was only part of the story. The real story was the resonance of elliptical songs like “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart”, “Ashes of American Flags”, and “Jesus, Etc.”, which often reduced crowds to hushed silence once 9/11 attached a real world frame to Tweedy’s cryptic lyrics. Given the general hoopla surrounding the supposedly “experimental” turn the former alt-country standard bearers were taking, the album itself is a relatively austere work, the subtle sonic tweaks (courtesy of Tweedy’s late collaborator Jay Bennett, with an assist from Jim O’Rourke) complementary rather than distracting, adding an extra layer of enticing mystery to the band’s most unlikely breakthrough. –Joshua Klein Listen: Wilco: “Jesus, Etc.”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBhj73WtiZU,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/8535/homepage_large.7aa808cd.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Wilco-Yankee_Hotel_Foxtrot.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,3,Daft Punk,Discovery,Virgin,"Daft Punk’s first album had helped refresh house music in the mid 1990s; the second went further, rewriting electronic pop’s pleasure principles to such a degree that when it came out a lot of people thought Discovery must be a put-on. They took the joy in the record for irony. Rather, the band had simply plunged into the raw popstuff of their 70s childhoods, from AOR to disco, Buggles to Manilow, rock to robotics. They wanted their listeners to get the rush of context-free delight they had hearing music as kids, and on “Aerodynamic” and “Digital Love” they succeeded wildly, dissolving a decade-plus of dance music good taste. And not all of Discovery looked back. The middle of the album is house music as string theory, with the duo finding dimensions of pleasure coiled within the tiniest loops: “Crescendolls” releases an awesome, gleeful energy by repeatedly triggering one five-second sample. Discovery was simply the decade’s best good-times record, with Daft Punk as pyramid-toting party wizards and the chipmunk Kraftwerk of “Harder Better Faster Stronger” their anthem. But this most celebratory of records has a bittersweet streak, too: Daft Punk know that a rush always carries the risk of exhaustion. Perhaps the album’s most underappreciated track is the sad but gorgeous “Short Circuit”, a three-minute robot graveyard of crumbled transistors and dying LEDs. But from Romanthony’s first blissful, vocoded shout of “one more time!” the dominant emotion on Discovery is joy. A joy that wasn’t afraid to be sentimental and funny as well as hard and futuristic, and is all the better for that. When a generation looks back and tries to catch a fuzzy hold of the music that made them happy this decade, Daft Punk’s will be top of the list. –Tom Ewing Listen: Daft Punk: “Digital Love”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4whD6uAryMs,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/2117/homepage_large.d23a880a.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Daft_Punk-Discovery.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,2,Arcade Fire,Funeral,Merge,"Will there ever be another album like Funeral? Sounds silly considering the second half of this decade has seen plenty of bands establish nice careers by ripping off the communal euphoria that Arcade Fire made fresh after four years of rock records that boasted metropolitan chic, emotional austerity, or lyrical removal– the music was amazing, but it was all kind of a downer. It’s debatable that Funeral itself is even original– considering they share a label, love of archaic brass and string instruments, and an undeniable ability to wring life affirmation in the face of personal tragedy, it might just be a crossover version of Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. But besides being a turning point for indie rock, Funeral was one for the indie community as well. Whether it’s due to increasingly fractious listening habits or the increased ability for dissenters to be heard, Funeral keeps on feeling like the last of its kind, an indie record that sounded capable of conquering the universe and then going on to do just that. The consensus hyperbole that met Funeral resulted in any record that threatened to reach that level becoming met with severe scrutiny or even outright derision. And still, we wonder if there will ever be anything quite like Funeral– something tells me that as music becomes even more readily available to us in the next decade, we’ll still go through it all in the hopes we can find something with the unifying force and astounding emotional payload that only albums like Funeral can provide. –Ian Cohen Listen: Arcade Fire: “Wake Up”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zdNdjF-htY,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/448/homepage_large.2099047d.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Arcade_Fire-Funeral.jpg
The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,album,1,Radiohead,Kid A,Capitol,"Nine years ago this month, Brent DiCrescenzo reviewed Radiohead’s Kid A for this website. As far as its rating, no one blinked. Pitchfork was still a blip then, but if you cared at all about the broad sphere of music that included Radiohead, chances are that you heard something very special in Kid A. It was that exceptional artifact of modern culture– something about which most people could agree. To ears that’d had the second half the 1990s to ingest the rapid developments in electronic music, ears weary of the bankruptcy of post-Nirvana alternative rock, Kid A sounded like a next development in rock music that was both logical and surprising. And, of course, a lot has been written about this record since. “What’s left to be said about Kid A?”, Pitchfork founder Ryan Schreiber wondered when we published our Top 20 Albums of 2000 list. Good question. First, I go back to the old reasons, the ones that were kicked around from the moment the record hit: Thoughts about millennial techno-dread; fragmentation, broken transmissions, garbled communication; the feeling of helplessness that comes from having access to so much information about the world while not having the power to change any of it; the subtle and dramatic ways that electronics are altering our landscape and our consciousness. And there’s still something there, though in some ways it’s all now more intense. Part of our brains moved online in the last 10 years, and this will continue; it’s not a good or bad thing; it’s just the way it is. Refracting these developments through the prism of Kid A, it still resonates, even if so much has changed since. Radiohead were not only among the first bands to figure out how to use the Internet, but to make their music sound like it, and they kicked off this ridiculously retro decade with the rare album that didn’t seem retro. Kid A– with its gorgeously crafted electronics, sparkling production, and uneasy stance toward the technology it embraces completely– feels like the Big Album of the online age. But you know what? I almost never think about that stuff. It all feels true, of course, but when I slide Kid A into the CD player (how’s that for a retro image?), something else happens. Once that drawer closes and the first chords of “Everything in Its Right Place” start– those haunting, clicking keyboard textures and Thom Yorke’s warped voice– all these other ideas feel secondary. Instead, I get lost in the dissonant horn blasts of “The National Anthem” and hypnotized between the play of the drones and the hissy beats in “Idioteque”; I feel the deep pang of yearning and sadness with the title track, and I rest during the gorgeous Brian Eno-like interlude of “Treefingers”. I’m listening to a brilliant album by an especially creative rock band functioning at its peak. Such records have strong melodies, exciting chord changes, unexpected arrangements, and tricky rhythms that you want to hear over and over again. Songs. Kid A has those, too. Ten of them, all great, here, in this order, working together perfectly. For a record with so much baggage and such a reputation for density, the appeal, in the end, is pretty simple: Other records were catchier or better for dancing or more appealingly nostalgic. But no other record captured the complex feeling of the era in such an elegant and beautiful way. –Mark Richardson Listen: Radiohead: “How To Disappear Completely”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZq_jeYsbTs,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/6556/homepage_large.dddaf5bb.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Radiohead-Kid_A.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,200,Beck,“Lost Cause”,"Universal, 2002","The sad-sack, lost-love mumble of Sea Change is so thoroughly down, it’s hard to imagine it producing a single. But Beck managed to inject his stoic sorrow into a few catchy tunes, “Lost Cause” being the catchiest. Kind of the emotional inverse of “Loser”, it marries lyrical futility to an achingly circular melody, which goes up and down like stairs in an M.C. Escher drawing. The rest of Sea Change may be more hypnotic in its resigned sorrow, but “Lost Cause”, like the best mope-anthems, makes you nod along to sentiments that would otherwise have you hanging your head. –Marc Masters Listen: Beck: “Lost Cause”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkNa5xzOe5U,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/Beck_SeaChange.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beck-Lost_Cause.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,199,Portishead,“The Rip”,"Island, 2008","Perhaps the comeback of the decade. Portishead returned in 2008 and the space they’d carved out was somehow more removed and vacant than the phantom, fractured jazz and blues clubs suggested on their two previous records. That pulsing tone that opens the track could have been some dying transmission from one of Dummy’s analog synthesizers, yet the arpeggios that underpin the back half of the track sounded achingly contemporary. And threading a line between the 1990s and now was that voice, reminding us that nobody can spread multi-syllabic words of woe across bars of music quite like Beth Gibbons. –Matthew Solarski Listen: Portishead: “The Rip”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBOaLjtR4mw,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/531/portishead_therip.png,/dataset/artwork/Portishead-The_Rip.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,198,Vitalic,“La Rock 01”,"International Deejay Gigolo, 2001","Before Justice and Daft Punk lit their megawatt crosses and pyramids in the name of all things distorted and danceable, there was Pascal Arbez aka Vitalic and his arena-ready take on four-down party spiking. Seemingly going for as many head bangs as hip flips, “La Rock 01” takes a pugilist’s mentality when it comes to dancefloor takeover-- put up a fight or get knocked out. Arbez pulled off the industrial-tinged techno attack a full four years before his famous French countrymen famously mangled their groove with 2005’s fuzzed-to-oblivion Human After All, and “La Rock 01” in particular sounds like the top of a blog-house family tree that’s still splitting bandwidth on a daily basis. And Arbez makes the machines work for him, whether they’re buzzing like bees on speedballs or causing EQ meters to snap into a billion pieces thanks to a what sounds like a demonic copy machine’s futuristic head-rush chomp. The 1990s promised a electro takeover of all things rock-- it didn’t happen. But Vitalic begins the decade by riding lightning as hard and fast as any musclebound fist-pumper-- and priming the formula that would eventually give rise to megawatt crosses and pyramids around the world. –Ryan Dombal Listen: Vitalic: “La Rock 01”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTVp1E60lF0,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/vitalic_okcowboy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Vitalic-La_Rock_01.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,197,Joanna Newsom,"“Peach, Plum, Pear”","Drag City, 2004","Get past That Voice, and that harpsichord, and all the quirks that make Joanna Newsom either catnip or poison to her admirers and detractors, and what you find here is one hell of a composition. The odd chord progression stays precisely the same for the entire song, but the melody “changes some,” in Newsom’s phrase. So does the tenor of its lyric, from the ooze and floozies and alliteration of its first few verses to the manic, bolting horse and internal assonance (and therefore suggestion of “whores”) in the last few. None of that is obvious at first, but all of it works in the service of the song’s needle-sharp emotional sting. –Douglas Wolk Listen:  Joanna Newsom: “Peach, Plum, Pear”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcHjAUhtSrk,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/531/joannanewsom_milkeyed.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Joanna_Newsom-Peach_Plum_Pear.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,196,No Age,“Teen Creeps”,"Sub Pop, 2008","It’s tempting to hear “Teen Creeps” as a rant against No Age’s home, scene-defining L.A. venue the Smell. “I hate this place,” moans drummer Dean Spunt over guitarist Randy Randall’s gravity-pulled riffs. But the rallying, march-like feel of the track suggests that when Spunt insists, “I won’t end up like them at all,” he’s not pointing at his musical brethren, but scene come-latelys that “wash away what we create.” Or maybe the song isn’t that literal– certainly the music’s hazy hooks stand up to multiple interpretations. That’s the potency of No Age’s rough minimalism: it could mean almost anything, except nothing at all. –Marc Masters Listen: No Age: “Teen Creeps”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEIS3GtAgAg,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/noage_teencreeps.jpg,/dataset/artwork/No_Age-Teen_Creeps.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,195,Love Is All,“Make Out Fall Out Make Up”,"What’s Your Rupture, 2003","Love Is All may specialize in songs that sound sharp and jagged, but their best single is more like a series of rounded upward curves, building up and crashing down like tidal waves confined to a kiddie pool. While the verses in “Make Out Fall Out Make Up” throb like a hangover headache, the choruses blare to the point of nearly collapsing into atonal cacophony, with Josephine Olausson’s trebly yelping rising above the din to absolutely nail the tune’s feeling of overwhelming romantic anxiety. –Matthew Perpetua Listen: Love Is All: “Make Out Fall Out Make Up”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96Azv44sfP8,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/531/loveisall_makeout.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Love_Is_All-Make_Out_Fall_Out_Make_Up.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,194,David Banner,“Cadillac on 22’s”,"Universal, 2003","This is what I figured a brilliant Kid Rock ballad could sound like: Big plastic beats, folksy steel-string guitar, and devotional verses about the heart of the streets. But Kid Rock was a clown and David Banner just turned out to be confused– a guy who earned his savings shouting about pussy and pimpin’ but privately ground his teeth over whether raps about pussy and pimpin’ were really what his community needed. His most detached lyric– “My folks still dumping, my music bumping but I feel nothing”– is also his most engaged. “Record companies don’t give a fuck about ’Cadillac on 22’s,’” he told Pitchfork’s Tom Breihan in a Village Voice interview. Sadly, it figures. –Mike Powell Listen: David Banner: “Cadillac on 22’s”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U61JP4KkFKc,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/banner_mississippi.jpg,/dataset/artwork/David_Banner-Cadillac_on_22s.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,193,Twista,“Slow Jamz” [ft. Kanye West and Jamie Foxx],"Atlantic, 2004","It’s easy to forget these days, but Kanye West– self-serious megastar with a laser-light show and an androgynous girlfriend– was once funny as hell: The two-liner here about Michael Jackson is a great, simple gag, made even better by Kanye’s barely suppressed giggle. The concept of “Slow Jamz”, it being a slow jam about slow jams that namedrops slow jams, could have been a groaner, but young Kanye’s easy charm saves it, and the lite-jungle breakbeat and Twista’s hyperlogia saves the song from just being Jamie Foxx’s karaoke homage. –Rob Mitchum Listen: Twista: “Slow Jamz” [ft. Kanye West and Jamie Foxx]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWmgsfiklcs,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/twista_slowjamz.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Twista-Slow_Jamz_ft_Kanye_West_and_Jamie_Foxx.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,192,Pulp,“Sunrise”,"Island, 2001","There were two fitting epitaphs to Pulp. The first is the “Bad Cover Version” video, a charity song send-up with celebrity musician look-alikes paying tribute to Pulp’s musical legacy; the other– “Sunrise”, the final song on the group’s We Love Life album– wasn’t so celebratory. After spending 20 years chasing fame, Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker realized it didn’t suit him much, releasing first the 1997 hangover LP This Is Hardcore and then the more introspective and conflicted Life. “All my achievements...range from pathetic to piss-poor,” Cocker claims before celebrating the titular sunrise of early semi-retirement. The band itself didn’t seem to want to go as patiently into that good night, closing the song with three minutes of its most ferocious work, a snarling, climatic build and a fitting send-off for one of the more creative acts of our time. –Scott Plagenhoef Listen: Pulp: “Sunrise”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj3pTr4MwM4,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/531/pulp_trees.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Pulp-Sunrise.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,191,Vampire Weekend,“Oxford Comma”,"XL, 2008","There’s plenty about “Oxford Comma” that screams “Kitsch!”: that Lil Jon shoutout, the fact that Vampire Weekend, already with a reputation for overbearing bookishness, wrote a song ostensibly about grammar. But “Oxford Comma” is compositionally brilliant; clocking in at 3:15, it’s a microcosm of momentum-building, beginning with a slow thudding beat before, in short order, ramping to its double-chorus finale, resplendent and victorious without ever being angry or loud or fast. Montessori, finishing school, whatever it took: “Oxford Comma” is well-mannered punk rock. –Andrew Gaerig Listen: Vampire Weekend: “Oxford Comma”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_i1xk07o4g,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/Oxford_Comma_%28Vampire_Weekend_single%29_coverart.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Vampire_Weekend-Oxford_Comma.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,190,Panjabi MC,“Mundian to Bach Ké (Beware of the Boys)” [ft. Jay-Z],"Sequence, 2003","Bhangra never blew up in the U.S. the way dancehall or reggaeton did, but its one shot says something about the ridiculous zone Jay-Z was in for the decade’s first few years. Before Jay got ahold of it, “Mundian to Bach Ké” was a geography-crushing global smash. Jay might not have understood a word of the original, but he heard a dope beat (that “Knight Rider” theme was always meant to destroy dancefloors) and an opportunity to flex regal. And Jay just tore this thing apart, protesting the Iraq war before it was cool and calling himself the black Brad Pitt, taking one of ya chicks straight from under ya armpit– which is always cool. Some days, globalization feels like a good thing. –Tom Breihan Listen: Panjabi MC: “Mundian to Bach Ké (Beware of the Boys)” [ft. Jay-Z]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k419duJ2qm0,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/Panjabi%20MC%20%0E%13%20The%20Album.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Panjabi_MC-Mundian_to_Bach_K_Beware_of_the_Boys_ft_Jay-Z.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,189,The Tough Alliance,“Silly Crimes”,"Sincerely Yours, 2006","Among indie dudes, “pure pop” used to mean “1960s-style pop.” Jangling guitars were a must– nothing too spicy, please. Well, the King of Pop is dead. Was that what he sounded like? How about the sound of global pop culture circa 2009? From heartfelt (OK, gloriously flawed) singing to running a collector’s-mentality record label, the Tough Alliance are way more indie than they’d probably like to admit. But they’ve seldom sounded more purely pop than on “Silly Crimes”, the flagship track from their maiden EP as label owners. Bass-heavy dance beats, sweetly yearning hooks, neon synths, utopian strings, and tropical sound effects– it’s New Waves, not “new wave.” And as frivolous delinquency goes, it’s pretty near a perfect crime. –Marc Hogan Listen: The Tough Alliance: “Silly Crimes”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZW0ZtTTsEQE,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/thetoughalliance-newwaves.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Tough_Alliance-Silly_Crimes.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,188,Jens Lekman,“Black Cab”,"Service/Secretly Canadian, 2005","Oh, you’re so self-conscious, Jens. With a “There She Goes” bounce in his step, Lekman wittily wallows in the guilt of ruining someone else’s good time. Now, all he wants to do is get home and sleep in his own bed, but the poor guy’s missed the last train. So he straps on a harpsichord borrowed from the Left Banke and some violins and casts his lot with the disreputable drivers of the black cabs, singing, “They might be psycho killers but tonight I really don’t care.” If Lekman’s bad nights out beget songs like this, I hope he never improves his social aptitude –Joe Tangari Listen: Jens Lekman: “Black Cab”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xict1Xc4-18,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/jenslekman-you%27resosilent.png,/dataset/artwork/Jens_Lekman-Black_Cab.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,187,Booka Shade,“Mandarine Girl”,"Get Physical, 2005","In 2005, dancefloors were awash in the anthems of what would briefly be known as “electro-house”– big, bold things with a beefed-up midrange as colorful and lovingly sculpted as the neon trim of an import tuner. Booka Shade claimed two of them, the Ibiza favorite “Body Language” and the more driving “Mandarine Girl”. Flush with rubbery riffs and sparkling counterpoints, the latter is essentially trance with swing, its syncopated refrain cycling upwards as fat, tubular synthesizers puff like smokestacks. –Philip Sherburne Listen: Booka Shade: “Mandarine Girl”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_LCL13iww4,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/531/bookashade-movements.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Booka_Shade-Mandarine_Girl.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,186,Fugazi,“Cashout”,"Dischord, 2001","Gentrification and real estate greed were not necessarily hot topics for rock bands to tackle in early 2001, but then Fugazi always have stayed ahead of the curve. Years prior to the final build-up and burst of the housing bubble, Ian MacKaye and company used “Cashout” to forcefully question the motives of real estate developers and the local governments who cater to them. In the process MacKaye delivers one of his most nuanced vocal performances, while the rest of the group matches his every lithe stride with characteristic economy of movement and an innate sense for genuine community action. –Matthew Murphy Listen: Fugazi: “Cashout”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qcu5KT_bwvQ,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/fugazi-theargument.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fugazi-Cashout.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,185,Dead Prez,“Hip-Hop”,"Epic/Loud, 2000","In 2000, Dead Prez were the rare NYC group who recognized Southern rap’s subwoofer-heavy ascension as an opportunity, not a threat. The gargling-demon bassline on “Hip-Hop” kicked as hard as anything Mannie Fresh made that summer. And MCs M1 and Stic.Man used its buzzing urgency as a jumping-off point, slamming through righteous, fiery self-policing sermonism so woolly and ferocious that their preaching didn’t resonate as preaching. When Stic.Man pledged to run up on them crackers in they City Hall, you believed him. But at the end, when they broke away from all the fury to chant about how dope they were, you believed that, too. –Tom Breihan Listen: Dead Prez: “Hip-Hop”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiusDE0KND8,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/531/deadprez-hiphop.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Dead_Prez-Hip-Hop.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,184,Queens of the Stone Age,“No One Knows”,"Interscope, 2002","This powerful slab of punch-drunk boogie rock stands as the most visible piece of QOTSA’s legacy, and not just because it topped the Modern Rock charts. A lot of its indelibility comes from the rhythmic swagger that arose from the combination of Josh Homme’s loping guitar riff, Nick Oliveri’s charging oompah-bass, and frequent ringer Dave Grohl’s memorably tourniquet-tight performance behind the kit. But there’s a sour, mournfully anxious mood under all that force, and the song stands as a bitter counterpoint to the manic pharmaceutical inventory of their previous single, “Feel Good Hit of the Summer”: “We get these pills to swallow/ How they stick in your throat”. –Nate Patrin Listen: Queens of the Stone Age: “No One Knows”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s88r_q7oufE,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/queens-noone.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Queens_of_the_Stone_Age-No_One_Knows.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,183,Beyoncé,“Irreplaceable”,"Columbia/Sony, 2006","Seriously: What kind of numbskull would cheat on Beyoncé? She’s crazy, she’s ringing alarms, and– most important– she’s Beyoncé, almighty one-stop entertainer beamed down from Planet Perfection. But “Irreplaceable” is all about the revelation that there’s some unscripted emotion underneath all those hypnotic sequins. She puts on a good front: “You must not know ’bout me, I could have another you in a minute,” she sings, hand on hip. But the cracked delivery of “another you” gives her away– she sounds vulnerable, crushed, human. By the end of the song, the “another you”s are more strident as she turns back into the high-heeled superhero with invisible pores and quite-visible hips. But even when she loses, she wins. –Ryan Dombal Listen: Beyoncé: “Irreplaceable”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EwViQxSJJQ,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/beyonce-Irreplaceable.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beyonc-Irreplaceable.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,182,Yo La Tengo,“Our Way to Fall”,"Matador, 2000","The English language suggests “falling in love” and “being in love” are two totally separate states. Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley have been falling in love with each other long enough to know better. The wisdom of shared experience informs this song’s still-fluttery reminiscences on new romance, presented with the refined brushstrokes and humble restraint of indie rock Zen masters. It’s the little things you remember: what music you heard, gestures you noticed, what she was wearing around her neck and the day it fell to pieces behind the dresser. And it’s the little things Yo La Tengo get right with “Our Way to Fall”, an intimate anytime wedding march as post-Talk Talk tone poem. I remember the way it sounded walking down the aisle. –Marc Hogan Listen: Yo La Tengo: “Our Way to Fall”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOylOEGY9M4,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/yola-insideout.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Yo_La_Tengo-Our_Way_to_Fall.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,181,Morrissey,“The First of the Gang to Die”,"Attack, 2004","Morrissey’s doomed romantic persona is the perfect vehicle for this update of American gangster mythology, which moves the action from the fedoras, Tommy guns, and speakeasies of 1930s Chicago and New York to the modern mean streets of L.A. His snuffed gangster, Hector, is no angel– he steals “from the rich and the poor and the not very rich and the very poor,” and steals our hearts as well. Morrissey’s grand musical backdrop and emotional distance allow him to croon his way to Hector’s complex inner nobility, and the result is a sensitive anthem for a tough, tough guy. –Joe Tangari Listen: Morrissey: “The First of the Gang to Die”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qgn1Rc0YJ4,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/Morrissey-gang.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Morrissey-The_First_of_the_Gang_to_Die.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,180,Gwen Stefani,“Hollaback Girl”,"Interscope, 2004","“Hollaback Girl” proved divisive with critics, with this publication decrying it as second-rate Queen, but this list’s voters evidently have latched on to Gwen’s feminine sport anthem. Stefani actually wrote “Hollaback Girl” with producer Pharrell Williams in reaction to a derogatory statement made by Courtney Love labeling Stefani a cheerleader. From the outset, it’s pretty obvious that Stefani is a cheerleader, and a damn good one. The cut’s Spartan beat proved wildly successful in the club, with Stefani’s invocations leading legions of ladies (and dudes) in an empowering urban shout-along. –Mike Orme Listen: Gwen Stefani: “Hollaback Girl”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kgjkth6BRRY,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/531/gwenstefani-loveangel.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Gwen_Stefani-Hollaback_Girl.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,179,Bon Iver,“Skinny Love”,"self-released/Jagjaguwar, 2007","People make too much of the cabin thing. Yes, Justin Vernon got his heart broken, hightailed it to the woods, donned some flannel, and emerged with some truly lovely music; it’s a story roughly as romantic as the records he makes. What makes “Skinny Love” so resonant isn’t just the wounded quality in Vernon’s unadorned voice or the easily identifiable chill carried by the track’s slight echo; it’s the fact that we can all imagine holing up while wounded and attempting to make something beautiful while making some sense of it. The only difference is, this guy actually did it. –Paul Thompson Listen: Bon Iver: “Skinny Love”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssdgFoHLwnk,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/531/BI_ForEmma.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bon_Iver-Skinny_Love.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,178,Air,“Cherry Blossom Girl”,"Source/Astralwerks, 2003","A successful marriage of the alien and the sensual is a tricky thing to pull off (check the Svedka she-bot for an example of how this can go horribly, horribly awry), but Air nailed it with this assemblage of FutureSex LoveSounds for the retro-futurist set. The lyrics may be all innocent infatuation, but the music tells a very different story. It’s hard to say which is more seductive: those gentle organic strums, the sci-fi synths, the Kenny G shit, or the way sensuous sounds past and present all come together in glorious communion here. File this one under “pomo-erotic”. –Matthew Solarski Listen: Air: “Cherry Blossom Girl”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fmMK0lfv80,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/531/air-cherryblossomgirl.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Air-Cherry_Blossom_Girl.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,177,Eminem,“The Real Slim Shady”,"Aftermath/Interscope, 2000","As a self-styled controversy-courting public enemy number one, Eminem knew people would be listening closely when he dropped his second album The Marshall Mathers LP. Needless to say, “The Real Slim Shady”, its pop-culture-puncturing first single, went out of its way to chum the waters, and did so with such malicious glee that its instantly dated time-capsule lyrics hardly matter. “May I have your attention please?” asks Eminem politely at the song’s start, but he needn’t have bothered. He knows he’s got it long before he even hits that undeniably anthemic chorus. –Joshua Klein Listen: Eminem: “The Real Slim Shady”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJO5HU_7_1w,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/531/eminem-realslim.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Eminem-The_Real_Slim_Shady.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,176,Xiu Xiu,“I Luv the Valley OH!”,"5RC, 2004","A good Xiu Xiu song is like someone vividly describing his pain. A great Xiu Xiu song is like someone actually hurting himself, right in front of you. This isn’t their most violent effort, but it’s their most scouring; a place where mortar-round drums pound down on rolling bass and chiming guitars, unsubtly conveying the painful insight that some dreams have to be razed, not realized. But the killshot is Jamie Stewart’s plugged-in vocal performance. Couched in his family mythology, it’s both pining and excoriating, his fatal cries pluming out like red mist. It sounds wrenched from a deeper place than even Stewart often goes. –Brian Howe Listen: Xiu Xiu: “I Luv the Valley OH!”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x80OUyGsfIQ,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/Xiu%20Xiu-fabulousmuscles.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Xiu_Xiu-I_Luv_the_Valley_OH.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,175,Usher,“Yeah” [ft. Lil Jon and Ludacris],"Arista, 2003","It’s hard to remember a time when a combination of Southern crunk’s trunk-rattling grit with sleek modern R&B would be considered groundbreaking. But so it was when Usher unveiled “Yeah” in early 2004. “Yeah” was the dirtiest-sounding thing Usher had done to date, but the real draw was Lil Jon’s ferocious-but-slippery production, featuring that crazy keyboard vamp that still sounds thrilling today. It also contains fantastic moments of unintentional hilarity, with lyrics dovetailing with Dave Chappelle’s loving TV mimicry of Lil Jon and the best guest-spot mispronunciation (Ludacris’ “Ursher”) since cats were calling Kanye “Cain” on his own records. –Joe Colly Listen: Usher: “Yeah” [ft. Lil Jon and Ludacris]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxBSyx85Kp8,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/usher-yeah.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Usher-Yeah_ft_Lil_Jon_and_Ludacris.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,174,Los Campesinos!,“You! Me! Dancing!”,"Wichita, 2007","A huge part of Los Campesinos!’ charm lies in their comfort with–and embrace of– being a bunch of nerds. And what’s more nerdy than not being able to dance? How about a song celebrating not being able to dance, but dancing anyway? “You! Me! Dancing!” explodes with the exuberance that comes from realizing that there’s no shame in being uncool, and no shame in doing uncool things like obsessing over long-lost indie heroes like Bis or throwing violin, glockenspiel, and girl-boy shouting over a tinny approximation of a classic rock riff. Fittingly, this track first drew attention via an uncool forum full of nerds: MySpace. –Amy Phillips Listen: Los Campesinos!: “You! Me! Dancing!”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj6SO_yKMe8,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/531/loscampesinosyoume.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Los_Campesinos-You_Me_Dancing.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,173,M.O.P.,“Ante Up”,"Loud/Epic, 2000","Fact: Did you know that every time you play “Ante Up”, M.O.P.’s collaboration with LFO ceases to exist for exactly 4:09 seconds? It’s true; with every unhinged shout of “YAP THAT FOOL!” it becomes increasingly impossible that M.O.P.’s Billy Danze and Lil Fame ever worked with the “Chinese food makes me sick” dudes. It’s just that potent– the purest distillation of the sort of gun-blazing roughneck shit that M.O.P. have been slinging with wild-eyed, suicide-bomber conviction ever since 1993’s “How About Some Hardcore?” The Mash Out Posse do one thing, over and over again, and they do it incredibly well, and if there’s any confusion over what that thing is, then perhaps you are simply unclear on the meaning of either the words “mash” or “out,” or what they mean when put together. –Jayson Greene Listen: M.O.P.: “Ante Up”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUnfFC7wUrs,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/531/MOP-warrierz.jpg,/dataset/artwork/MOP-Ante_Up.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,172,Shellac,“Prayer to God”,"Touch and Go, 2000","It’s not easy to find nuance in hate. Sounding like a country death ballad banged out by factory machinery, “Prayer to God” is a double-death wish with revealing specificity. The setup is simple enough: There are two people here, and the narrator wants God to kill them. Over clamoring chords and the dead-air breaks in between, any other information comes slowly, and the same goes for the blustering climax and teeth-gritting tension from the lyrics’ repetition– all to be deflated by its grim punchline: the most disarming “amen” put to tape. –Jason Crock Listen: Shellac: “Prayer to God”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0jw5qBgUuo,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/shellac-1000hurts.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Shellac-Prayer_to_God.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,171,Talib Kweli,"“Get By (Remix)” [ft. Mos Def, Jay Z, Kanye West, and Busta Rhymes]","Rawkus, 2003","Before he claimed he’d rhyme like Talib Kweli if lyrics sold, Jay-Z appeared on a remix of Talib’s hit single and did just that in a way that made his desperate struggles sound suave. Before his outsized lyrical personality was as famous as his production chops, Kanye West augmented his masterful Nina Simone-derived piano-hook beat with his first truly great turn on the mic. Before both of their verses, Mos Def opened with what’d be his most impassioned performance for years to come. Before the stirring gospel coda, Busta tore shit up. And before I forget: Kweli’s the beating heart at the center of a legendary posse cut. –Nate Patrin Listen: Talib Kweli: “Get By (Remix)” [ft. Mos Def, Jay Z, Kanye West, and Busta Rhymes]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItWuyCGyxS0,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/Talib-Kweli-getby.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Talib_Kweli-Get_By_Remix_ft_Mos_Def_Jay_Z_Kanye_West_and_Busta_Rhymes.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,170,Guillemots,“Trains to Brazil”,"Fantastic Plastic/Polydor, 2005","All swing drums, horn crescendos, and vocal gallantry, “Trains to Brazil” was the Guillemots’ first single and the most stirring encapsulation of the unabashed romanticism of their Through the Cliffs EP and debut full-length, Through the Windowpane. Singer Fyfe Dangerfield turns his eye toward the seemingly intractable conflicts of society: the title refers to Jean Charles de Menezes, who was killed after he was mistaken for a suicide bomber in the aftermath of the London train bombings. But being the obvious idealist that he is, Fyfe concludes, with a largely jazz-trained backing band playing ADD R&B behind him, that we’re all lucky to be alive. –Mike Orme Listen: Guillemots: “Trains to Brazil”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-nwmrKi_a4,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/guillemots-train2brazil.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Guillemots-Trains_to_Brazil.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,169,Ludacris,“Southern Hospitality”,"Def Jam South, 2000","The early Ludacris singles remain the best because they had one quality much of his later music lacks: subtlety. There’s a stark menace to “Southern Hospitality” that makes his punchlines land harder because he’s not overwhelming the music by selling every line as a stand-up’s money shot. An early example of the already miserly Neptunes at their most restrained, the whistling synths are about the only thing coloring the clonk-and-clap drum pattern; it’s stand-out minimalism perfect for a performance with more honest, laconic menace than the rapper would later allow himself. Plus it brought a hip-hop catchphrase to Middle America on the back of something other than a shitty dance-craze record, no mean feat. –Jess Harvell Listen: Ludacris: “Southern Hospitality”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QWQVm9J5DM,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/531/ludacris-backforthefirst.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ludacris-Southern_Hospitality.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,168,Of Montreal,“The Past Is a Grotesque Animal”,"Polyvinyl, 2007","After establishing his mission in the very first line of Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?– “We just want to emote ’til we’re dead”– Kevin Barnes tries his damndest to fulfill it on the record’s 12-minute centerpiece. And for Of Montreal, the past almost seemed like a set-up to blindside listeners with this song. For a band that built its following on “Sesame Street” psychedelia that sounded like eating a box of acid-laced crayons, “Grotesque Animal” is a jarring detour, a prowling, evil drone-rant that eschews Barnes’ usual sugar-high hooks for a diary-reading travelogue of love gained and lost, culminating, inevitably, in screaming sheets of Casio catharsis. –Rob Mitchum Listen: Of Montreal: “The Past Is a Grotesque Animal”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vn-eFXxLXTM,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/531/ofmontreal-hissing.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Of_Montreal-The_Past_Is_a_Grotesque_Animal.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,167,Liars,“The Other Side of Mt. Heart Attack”,"Mute, 2006","The Hollywood ending of Liars’ most essential album, “The Other Side of Mt. Heart Attack” climbs from Drum’s Not Dead’s summit of rhythm, tension, and dissonance into a valley of easy harmonies splayed over chiming guitars. This woozy love song takes its time finding contentment, too, with a beat that sits still and vocals that promise to stretch on forever. In its own angular, art-rock way, “The Other Side” presaged the slow-song, group-vocals that bands like Fleet Foxes and Grizzly Bear turned into tour buses. –Grayson Currin Listen: Liars: “The Other Side of Mt. Heart Attack”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwhiXr7Xr_Y,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/liars-otherside.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Liars-The_Other_Side_of_Mt_Heart_Attack.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,166,Gui Boratto,“Beautiful Life”,"Kompakt, 2007","Brazil’s not particularly known for its techno, but then Gui Boratto isn’t your average techno producer. Armed with a background in radio jingles and engineering credits for the likes of Garth Brooks and Des’ree, Boratto dropped in Chromophobia one of 2007’s most intricately mapped techno expeditions. Most of the record consisted of haunting, wordless sequencer games, but it’s “Beautiful Life”, an eight-minute slab of lo-fi vocal trance-pop, that many listeners remember. Sleepy vocals recorded by Luciana Villanova, who also happens to be married to Boratto, top out the New Order tribute without diminishing the impact of Gui’s techno swath. –Mike Orme Listen: Gui Boratto: “Beautiful Life”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFoJM2tTFlY,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/531/guiboratto-chromophobia.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Gui_Boratto-Beautiful_Life.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,165,Jimmy Eat World,“The Middle”,"Dreamworks, 2001","“Don’t write yourself off yet.” In the world of rock’n’roll, that’s about as good as advice gets. But “it’s only in your head you feel left out, or looked down on,” on the other hand, is a total lie. They really are looking down on you, and they’d rather you not come along at all. But you can’t let the enormity of that hit you when you’re 16 (the hardest age) and in the middle of it. So it’s a good kind of lie, the kind that helps you when you need it most, and J.E.W.’s affirmation, then, is offered as a sort of public service to a nation of insecure teenagers. And if your band delivers that message of hope with the kind of power-pop chorus hook that gives the best couple of Weezer songs a run for their money, you’ve accomplished something. –Mark Richardson Listen: Jimmy Eat World: “The Middle”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKsxPW6i3pM,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/jimmy-eat-world-the-middle-dreamworks-430.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jimmy_Eat_World-The_Middle.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,164,Broadcast,“Come on Let’s Go”,"Warp, 2000","Compared to the heady, slippery stuff Broadcast has created since The Noise Made By People, the lava-lamped bubble-chair groove of “Come On Let’s Go” sounds downright decadent and facile. But if this alluring combination of spy-flavored radiophonics and Trish Keenan’s velvet-honey coo is easy, then I don’t want to know from difficult. –David Raposa Listen: Broadcast: “Come on Let’s Go”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zw5ztuhEat4,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/531/broadcast-cmonletsgo.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Broadcast-Come_on_Lets_Go.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,163,Girl Talk,“Smash Your Head”,"Illegal Art, 2006","The first half of “Smash Your Head” is just a well-executed mash-up, blending Clipse with Fall Out Boy and Nirvana with Young Jeezy and making them sound like they could all have some fun together. But then comes Elton John’s sped-up “Tiny Dancer” piano, and right behind it, Biggie. The collision opens up a new world for each song, making Elton’s piano trills sound like the perfect backing to any story told with heart, and the words that much more poignant. And as Biggie talks above all about a love of music, what that can mean to a kid, and shows how that can be carried into adulthood, he unwittingly sums up Girl Talk’s entire M.O. –Mark Richardson Listen: Girl Talk: “Smash Your Head”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDDdpxEf9hM,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/531/girltalk-nightripper.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Girl_Talk-Smash_Your_Head.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,162,Grizzly Bear,“Two Weeks”,"Warp, 2009","Sunny and psychedelic, sure, but far from trapped in its own 1960s echo chamber, Grizzly Bear’s sweet “Two Weeks” is as welcomingly open as it is sneakily weird. While the band’s celestial “oohs” and “ahhs” soar, the song itself is driven and underpinned by soft piano plinking, shimmering but subtle sonic accoutrements, and a booming beat that’s more song-of-the-summer than inward indie. The track could probably go on forever but instead ends abruptly, which is perhaps the only way it really could end: flying so high above it all, there’s simply nowhere left for it to go. –Joshua Klein Listen: Grizzly Bear: “Two Weeks”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjecYugTbIQ,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/grizzlybear2weeks.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Grizzly_Bear-Two_Weeks.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,161,Christian Falk,“Dream On” [ft. Robyn and Ola Salo],"Data/Bonnier Music, 2006","Dance music– and the act of dancing itself– has long been as much about creating safe havens for outsiders as about crafting moveable beats. Swedish DJ Christian Falk’s “Dream On” plays up that warm inclusiveness: Robyn and the Ark’s Ola Salo check IDs and stamp hands outside the a club tailormade for outsiders, offering sanctuary to pigs, snitches, thugs, lifers, freaks, junkies, and outcasts of all stripes. These may be the very same people many dancers want to get away from, but on this bubbly bit of triumphalism, Falk knows the promises of dance music are nil unless extended to every loser and locked-up intern. –Stephen M. Deusner Listen: Christian Falk: “Dream On” [ft. Robyn and Ola Salo]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypQtJ8z6q5o,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/dreamon.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Christian_Falk-Dream_On_ft_Robyn_and_Ola_Salo.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,160,50 Cent,“In Da Club”,"Aftermath/Interscope, 2002","Sorry to get all meta re: this list for a second, but this result is surely more a reflection of how absurdly hard 50’s star has crashed over the past five years than any real comment on the song’s quality, right? Because seriously: There are probably only a handful of grooves in recent hip-hop as remotely as instantaneous or as happy-making as these chugging chords, and I feel like in 2003, we all understood this a bit better. What else to say– the lyrics are standard-issue party jam bulletproof braggadocio that squarely lay out the terms: 50 doesn’t make love but he still wants to be loved. Other questions: Was this awesome because 50 doesn’t sing in the chorus? Do you think he’s still happy to sell like Eminem? –Mark Pytlik Listen: 50 Cent: “In Da Club”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qm8PH4xAss,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/531/50cent-rich.jpg,/dataset/artwork/50_Cent-In_Da_Club.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,159,Cat Power,“I Don’t Blame You”,Matador; 2003,"In retrospect, it can be easy to view Cat Power’s 2003 album You Are Free as a transitional work, one that marks the closing of a musical chapter for Chan Marshall. On the album opening “I Don’t Blame You”, this desire for artistic liberation is at once literal in Marshall’s lyrics and palpable in her performance. Backed only by a solo piano, Marshall’s voice brims with sympathy as she witnesses a musician tormented by audience expectation, a portrait that bears close resemblance to her earlier onstage self. Yet the song is also tempered by a certain measured distance, a sense of quiet acceptance that mirrors Cat Power’s eventual musical evolution away from such harrowing, introspective bloodletting. –Matthew Murphy Listen: Cat Power: “I Don’t Blame You”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNoj4oXvQI8,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/531/catpower_youarefree.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Cat_Power-I_Dont_Blame_You.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,158,Art Brut,“Formed a Band”,"Rough Trade, 2004","I’m sure I wasn’t the only disappointed one in the room when, one night earlier this summer, Art Brut left “Formed a Band” off their setlist. But I get it, I do. An origin story this powerful can eclipse a band’s subsequent work– even a band of such overwhelming personality and aggressive rock’n’roll theater. Along with sharp-sticked campaigns to call bullshit on the industry and their peers, Art Brut have committed their career to unpacking “Formed” and selling the joys of forming your own (even if, like Eddie Argos, your singing voice is more drunken harangue than golden croon). So maybe we don’t need the three-minute digest version of their career at every show. Actually, maybe we still do. –Amy Granzin Listen: Art Brut: “Formed a Band”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qryAwfpHG8o,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/531/art-brut-formed-a-band-rough-trade-cs.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Art_Brut-Formed_a_Band.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,157,Kanye West,“Touch the Sky”  [ft. Lupe Fiasco],"Roc-A-Fella, 2005","In maybe his last public act before dying, Evel Knievel sued Kanye for jacking his style in the “Touch the Sky” video. He should’ve thanked Kanye for celebrating his goofy-ass legacy. If Knievel didn’t want to see pop’s most dizzily egocentric figure trying on his star-spangled jumpsuit, he should’ve listened a little closer. In some ways, “Touch the Sky” is Kanye at his humblest: Detailing his struggles and failures before exploding into that glorious chorus, outsourcing the beat to fellow Roc-A-Fella house producer Just Blaze because nobody could’ve flipped that Curtis Mayfield sample harder. And when a then-unknown Lupe slickly ducked and weaved through that guest verse, another star was born. –Tom Breihan Listen: Kanye West: “Touch the Sky”  [ft. Lupe Fiasco]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkwQbuAGLj4,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/kanye-sky.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kanye_West-Touch_the_Sky__ft_Lupe_Fiasco.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,156,The Pipettes,“Pull Shapes”,"Memphis Industries, 2006","No offense to the lovely brassy ladies of the Pipettes and the shapes they themselves pull with aplomb, but they’re just the cherry on top of this symphonic sundae. Those gorgeous soaring strings, with center stage all to themselves for the track’s first 30 seconds, are the song’s turbo-charged engine. It’s all listeners, and even the Pipettes, can do to hold on and enjoy the ride. –David Raposa Listen: The Pipettes: “Pull Shapes”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wy7SvZQfeBM,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/pipettes-pullshapes.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Pipettes-Pull_Shapes.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,155,Coldplay,“Clocks”,"Capitol, 2002","Are they a part of the cure or a part of the disease? Well, Coldplay spent the decade securing next-U2 status by swiping Radiohead’s falsettoed grandiosity and stripping it down to a deliriously unthreatening rise-and-swoop formula. So check on in the “disease” column, I guess. But Chris Martin is the rare singer who can write lyrics that mean nothing and sell them like they mean everything, pushing his angelic wail over the glorious tumbling pianos and locked-in cymbal crashes of “Clocks” like Icarus trying to see how far he could push this whole flying thing. “Clocks” is MOR arena-pop done as well as MOR arena-pop can possibly be done. And nothing else compares. –Tom Breihan Listen: Coldplay: “Clocks”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d020hcWA_Wg,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/art_clocks.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Coldplay-Clocks.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,154,Sufjan Stevens,“Casimir Pulaski Day”,"Asthmatic Kitty, 2005","Somewhere between his five-volume Christmas album (surprisingly pretty, by the way) and his conceptual work about the BQE Expressway at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (hula hoops, angel wings, and enormous projections of blow-up gorillas played key roles) it started becoming a little more difficult to recall the simple pleasures of Sufjan’s keenly observed folk-pop. Now that his swelling string sections are permanent parts of the indie DNA it’s hard to remember just how fresh-sounding it all was, and how inviting his loose, communal approach to music-making felt, especially when contrasted with his grandiose, 50-ALBUMS-FOR-50-STATES! ambitions. But “Casimir Pulaski Day”, the modest follow-up to “Chicago”, still retains its campfire glow: a softly plonking banjo and guitar, some muted horns, and Sufjan’s gimlet storyteller’s eye. –Jayson Greene Listen: Sufjan Stevens: “Casimir Pulaski Day”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EzeW5KoPUI,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/Illinois-sufjan.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sufjan_Stevens-Casimir_Pulaski_Day.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,153,Luomo,“Tessio”,"Force Tracks, 2000","“Microhouse,” or house under a microscope? Luomo’s early work honed in on house’s fleshy expanses to reveal a secret world of riotous molecular activity, strewn with dub echo and whispering clicks and snaps. “Tessio” is his most romantic epic, its hesitant build into a voluptuous house groove mirroring the journey of its enigmatic singers from uncertainty to sheltering comfort– “Baby, it’s okay,” they murmur finally, like these simple words could heal a thousand scars of past disappointments. The lingering resonance of “Tessio” as a house anthem full stop confirms that the biology of seduction is unleashed not in a laboratory, but on dancefloors every night. –Tim Finney Listen: Luomo: “Tessio”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O53-C8fMXhI,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/531/luomo-tessio.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Luomo-Tessio.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,152,Life Without Buildings,“The Leanover”,"Tugboat, 2000","It’s beautiful for many reasons– Robert Johnston’s lyrical guitar work and Sue Tompkins’ genius-baby sing-speak embody pure delight. But mostly, it’s beautiful because it feels like the stuff of spontaneous inspiration, the splatter-paint syllables falling into unrepeatable patterns. Remarkably, this is an illusion, as the faithful version captured on Live at the Annandale Hotel attests. The dense wordplay and Rorschach-blot diction make the hundredth listen feel almost as fresh as the first (in 2009, for instance, opening line “If I lose you” sounds an awful lot like “Fallujah”). But the emotional baseline, bursting with love and quavering with doubt, remains satisfyingly constant –Brian Howe Listen: Life Without Buildings: “The Leanover”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SL4_DsUlH8,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/life-without-buildings-the-leanover.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Life_Without_Buildings-The_Leanover.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,151,Santigold,“L.E.S. Artistes”,"Downtown, 2008","On the face of things, Santi White (aka Santogold, now Santigold) would not seem like a person who lacks confidence. Yet there is an undercurrent of self-doubt that ripples through her 2008 breakout single “L.E.S. Artistes”, providing crucial emotional ballast to her buoyant and acerbic songcraft. Though the song takes aim at the poseurs she might see lurking around her Lower East Side neighborhood, lines like “What am I here for?” and “I hope it will be worth what I give up” reflect someone not afraid of turning the same critical eye towards herself, glancing back at avenues not taken while still maintaining her self-assured swagger. –Matthew Murphy Listen: Santigold: “L.E.S. Artistes”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciJDA0tcQfs,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/531/santigold.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Santigold-LES_Artistes.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,150,Junior Senior,“Move Your Feet”,"Crunchy Frog, 2002","Thank you, internet! How else would we have found Junior Senior, a gay/straight Danish duo crafting dance parties from whatever genre ingredients were within arm’s reach. “Move Your Feet” caught the online jet stream, helped no doubt by its 8-bit evil squirrel and talking hot dog video (thanks again, internet!), but also through skilled deployment of roller-rink dance-hit staples: bad rapping, funk guitar, bells, humanism-through-dance. Its timing was exquisite, not just for distribution purposes, but for hitting American indie ears just as their dance music allergies were fading and meet-you-halfway disco-punk was leaving newly-founded indie dance parties unsatisfied. –Rob Mitchum Listen: Junior Senior: “Move Your Feet”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPlQpGeTbIE,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/531/jr_sr_move.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Junior_Senior-Move_Your_Feet.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,149,Dan Deacon,“The Crystal Cat”,"Carpark, 2007","What a lonely, lonely sound. Dan Deacon’s shows are about the high of communal experience– about surrendering your ego to a crush of overheated strangers. But his music is solitary. Cartoons and video games might make twentysomethings flush with nostalgia, but “The Crystal Cat” sounded more like Kraftwerk’s cold futures cast in pixels– a sound, above all, about distance rather than closeness. Yeah, you can twist to it. Yeah, it’s freaky and buzzing and loud. But when Deacon squeals through the hail of synthesizer noise and junked drum machines, he sounds like an astronaut sucked through the airlock– lost. –Mike Powell Listen: Dan Deacon: “The Crystal Cat”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFlBJ1xZK10,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/531/dandeacon-crystal.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dan_Deacon-The_Crystal_Cat.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,148,Air France,“Collapsing at Your Doorstep”,"Sincerely Yours, 2008","It’s a travel-agency ad, not a pop song– an aural scrapbook by Scandinavian youths who’ve probably seen more of Barcelona through postcards than sunglasses. (We sure love music of distance, huh? Swedes dreaming of the beach; New Yorkers dreaming of the jungle; Timbaland dreaming, endlessly, of deep space.) The swishy, euro-pop pose always bugged me until I heard “Collapsing at Your Doorstep”. It’s music driven by longing, not owning. Music that sounds urbane, but like its makers are shut-ins and cinephiles. With Air France, it’s hard to tell what’s sampled and what’s live– in other words, which sun-soaked daydreams are actually theirs, and which we all somehow share. –Mike Powell Listen: Air France: “Collapsing at Your Doorstep”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXmiNoql-1o,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/airfrance-nowaydown.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Air_France-Collapsing_at_Your_Doorstep.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,147,Wilco,“Poor Places”,"Nonesuch/Sundazed, 2002","“A lot of times when you’re playing, if you don’t have any kind of sonic landscape behind you, everything kind of turns into a folk song,” explains Jay Bennett during the documentary I Am Trying to Break Your Heart as Wilco maps out “Poor Places”. Indeed, on paper, this tune comprises four chords, four verses, and a chorus; on record, though, it’s a Rube Goldberg contraption, with tiny parts lurking in the background only to spring the song into surprising directions. A coruscated drone becomes sedate pop becomes that folk number about which Bennett warned us becomes the most damaged minute in some dude’s iTunes library: No incarnation of Wilco has since outfitted Jeff Tweedy’s universal unease so boldly. –Grayson Currin Listen: Wilco: “Poor Places”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiunRkXHP3g,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/wilco-hotelyankee.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Wilco-Poor_Places.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,146,Fennesz,“Caecilia”,"Mego, 2001","Fennesz’s Endless Summer may have been complicated to make, but its effect is simple: sweet melodies poured into mesmerizing noise. “Caecilia” is the prettiest such concoction, burying lapping waves of digital grit under a languorous vibraphone hook. The pairing smoothes the former and toughens the latter until they fuse into a real song. How Fennesz fit all his blips and blurs into a song-mold remains a mystery– it sounds more like they’re organizing themselves, like a flock of birds flying in a V. Many imitators since have attempted that trick, but no other digital magicians keep their secrets hidden quite like Fennesz. –Marc Masters Listen: Fennesz: “Caecilia”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLKzqKdF9Zc,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/531/fennesz-endlessummer.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fennesz-Caecilia.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,145,Broken Social Scene,“Cause = Time”,"Arts & Crafts, 2003","By the time “Cause = Time” appears eight songs into Broken Social Scene’s You Forgot It in People, the Toronto indie-rockestra had covered much stylistic turf– from noisy garage-rock to bossa nova to orchestral folk. But it was this peak mid-album track that both consolidated the album’s textural sprawl and confirmed Broken Social Scene’s own transformation from ambient hobby project to powerhouse rock band. With its cryptic references to menstruation, religion, and numerology, “Cause” isn’t about political activism any more than Sonic Youth’s “Teen Age Riot” was about tossing Molotov cocktails. But by updating classic, class-of-1988 indie rock anthemery with motorik post-rock rhythms, it served as the wake-up call for a new generation of daydream nationalists. –Stuart Berman Listen: Broken Social Scene: “Cause = Time”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GikWha5TC94,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/bss-causetime.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Broken_Social_Scene-Cause__Time.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,144,Justice vs. Simian,“We Are Your Friends”,"Ed Banger, 2003","Only in Paris could something as seemingly uncool and ho-hum as a college radio remix contest birth a worldwide dancefloor sensation. Made using pretty rudimentary remixing tools, “We Are Your Friends” not only won Justice some contest prize, it established them as a force to be reckoned with. The prodigal duo almost completely gutted Simian’s “Never Be Alone” with the same audacity that would make their debut album such a monolith a few years later. However, despite the drastic re-imagining, Justice, always rockists at heart, preserved the original’s fist-pumping immediacy, a detail too many remixes neglect. –Adam Moerder Listen: Justice vs. Simian: “We Are Your Friends”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XD4XqUzeJXA,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/justice-werurfriends.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Justice_vs_Simian-We_Are_Your_Friends.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,143,Feist,“1234”,"Cherrytree/Interscope, 2007","It’s the song that sold a whole bunch of iPods, and gave “Sesame Street” a chance to learn a new way to count. And it’s a tune that vaguely mirrors Feist’s own transformation from beloved Broken Social Scenester to ubiquitous adult-contemporary everywoman– it starts off modest and gentle atop some acoustic strumming (on guitar and banjo), and then gradually builds to an ebullient horn-filled crescendo, with Feist proving to be just as adept at belting as at murmuring, but never at the expense of the song. –David Raposa Listen: Feist: “1234”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABYnqp-bxvg,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/531/feist-1234.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Feist-1234.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,142,The Flaming Lips,“Do You Realize??”,"Warner Bros., 2002","The Flaming Lips nabbed critics with The Soft Bulletin and their carnivalesque live performances, but “Do You Realize??” secured their public spotlight for years to come. Their commercial profile is one of many strange twists and turns over their career, and “Do You Realize??” does more than just announce it: it challenged them to take the vulnerability and earnestness of The Soft Bulletin widescreen, and not fall headfirst into a bucket of sap. The lyrics walk that tightrope precariously, but it’s really only the Lips, after years of spiritual quests, spider bites, flaming cymbals, and constant self-exploration, who can earn them. –Jason Crock Listen: The Flaming Lips: “Do You Realize??”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPXWt2ESxVY,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/flaminglips-battles.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Flaming_Lips-Do_You_Realize.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,141,Britney Spears,“Toxic”,"Jive, 2003","The thing that made Britney’s mid-decade breakdown so distressing is that the lady actually had great pop instincts. It’s not like when Jessica Simpson lost her damn mind and we the listeners lost exactly nothing. Sure, Brit bounced back with Blackout, but for better or worse she was a warbling ghost in her producer’s gleaming machines. “Toxic” was the last great Britney single (so far), the last where it felt like a personality was inhabiting the tune. (Britney always had more individualist pep than her peers, important when you’re dealing with steamroller productions from the mind of Max Martin.) And as a bonus, the backing track remains deeply, enjoyably weird-but-catchy: a club-tempo stepping breakbeat colored by James Bond soundtrack outtakes. –Jess Harvell Listen: Britney Spears: “Toxic”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOZuxwVk7TU,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/531/britneyspears-toxic.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Britney_Spears-Toxic.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,140,Interpol,“NYC”,"Matador, 2003","From “New York, New York”, Ryan Adams’ accidental anthem, to Cat Power’s Sinatra cover, to LCD Soundsystem’s waning-decade lament “I love you but you’re bringing me down,” 9/11’s musical legacy is a still-unresolved mess of bewildered public discourse and private grief. With its aqueous chords and Paul Banks’ quietly desperate, yet poker-faced pronouncements, nothing, perhaps, vents the city’s confusion and ambivalence as elegantly as “NYC”. Everyone always remembers “subway is a porno,” and forgets the chorus, “New York cares,” but this song isn’t just some hipster’s crack-of-dawn crawl home. It’s also an epiphany a lot of New Yorkers reached post-attack: Civic disengagement’s no longer an option. –Amy Granzin Listen: Interpol: “NYC”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kPON3WmdRw,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/interpol-nyc.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Interpol-NYC.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,139,Daft Punk,"“Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger”","Virgin, 2001","Dance songs with instructional chants for lyrics tend to have a short shelf life. So upon first hearing “Harder, Better, Faster Stronger” (and to a greater extent, “One More Time”), I wondered if the new decade had already stumbled upon its “Bodyrock” or “Rockafeller Skank’. But how has “Harder” stood the test of time when so much borderline-brainwashing big beat has turned into dated punchlines? Because even if Kanye made it really tough to find as much novelty in those vocals, there’s just so much else to be amazed at that transcends novelty: go ahead and press play again and try to remember which part is your favorite– the 10 seconds before the intro beat drops? That ridiculous breakdown after the vocals go all widdly-widdly like an electric guitar? There are 138 songs on this list that do a better job of improving your day immediately? In terms of both artists and listeners, this decade has in large part been defined by its pleasure-seekers, and no matter where they sought their thrills, it never seemed like we got too far removed from “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger”. –Ian Cohen Listen: Daft Punk: “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAjR4_CbPpQ,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/daftpunk-harderbetter.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Daft_Punk-Harder_Better_Faster_Stronger.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,138,D’Angelo,“Untitled (How Does It Feel?)”,"EMI, 2000","This single became notorious for its sexually charged video, featuring a series of lingering shots of D’Angelo’s nude body that split the difference between mass voyeurism and personal intimacy. But the rapturous intensity in his lushly multi-tracked vocal performance still holds more weight than any pin-up shot could– swooping and diving, gliding smoothly over the sway of the beat only to punctuate it with a sharp hitch or an extension of his deceptively delicate falsetto into an intense wail. The musical backing only adds to that euphoria, with gospel-soul pianos direct from Aretha’s Muscle Shoals sessions intertwined with pre-Dirty Mind (but still dirty-minded) Prince guitars. –Nate Patrin Listen: D’Angelo: “Untitled (How Does It Feel?)”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxVNOnPyvIU,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/531/d%27angelo-voodoo.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/DAngelo-Untitled_How_Does_It_Feel.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,137,Ladytron,“Destroy Everything You Touch”,"Rykodisc/Island, 2005","The average pop song is a short lesson in delayed gratification– a calibrated crawl from intro and pattern-stamping verse to the big chorus. “Destroy Everything You Touch” has no such self-control: just 16 seconds in, the scorched-earth banger explodes and then gleefully burns for more than four minutes on sarcasm and spite. In an evil-genius marriage of sound and image, the catwalk-perfect “Destroy” partly soundtracks the forthcoming film doc about Anna Wintour, Vogue chief and booster bar none of last-capitalist excess. Marx should be so persuasive. –Amy Granzin Listen: Ladytron: “Destroy Everything You Touch”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTTwlAT_AwU,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/531/ladytron-destory.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Ladytron-Destroy_Everything_You_Touch.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,136,Ghostface Killah,“Shakey Dog”,"Def Jam, 2006","We enter Ghost’s stream-of-consciousness stick-up narrative with the action already in progress, and leave with a “to be continued.” Within this seemingly arbitrary framework, however, Ghost omits no detail: the lady with the shopping cart hiding a cocked shottie, the steak and onions cooking down the hall, the “Sanford and Son” theme. Amidst the soul-superhero horn charts and Ghost’s dizzying thick description, it’s that sustained, soulful vocal note present throughout that gives “Shakey” its bullet-time panopticon perspective, with no bit of minutiae too tiny to mention. Tony Montana reference notwithstanding, “Shakey” is part cinema vérité, part “CSI”. –Eric Harvey Listen: Ghostface Killah: “Shakey Dog”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZEFEHf0pMA,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/ghostface-fishscal.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ghostface_Killah-Shakey_Dog.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,135,The Strokes,“The Modern Age” [EP version],"Rough Trade, 2001","Though they were one of the most talked-about bands of the decade, the Strokes were never among the highest-selling. Maybe it had to do with the fact that their feverishly anticipated debut album, Is This It?, had the misfortunate of dropping just weeks after 9/11, rendering their carefree garage-rock jangle– of which this debut single still stands as the purest distillation– almost instantly out of time and place. But even if the Strokes’ “Modern Age” sounded a lot like Lou Reed’s golden one, the song belongs to that rarefied class of singles that (like “Please Please Me” and “God Save the Queen” before it) divides history between the before and the after– specifically, a modern age defined by a ceaseless parade of definitely-articled, skinny-jeaned, pretty-boy rock bands, and an increasingly accelerated mode of blog-about/spit-’em-out musical consumption. However, divorced from the hyperbole that greeted its release, “The Modern Age” now just sounds like a sweet, innocent ode to fun in the sun– and a poignant time capsule of a world where it’s still Sept. 10, all the time. –Stuart Berman Listen: The Strokes: “The Modern Age” [EP version]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzO7IGWGxu8,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/531/modernage-strokes.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Strokes-The_Modern_Age_EP_version.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,134,Clipse,“Trill”,"Jive, 2006","Clipse’s Hell Hath No Fury is too thick with highlights to truly contain a centerpiece, but there is something about the dark, streamlined “Trill” that beats very close to the album’s steely heart. For the album the Clipse brothers requested only the Neptunes craziest productions, and here Pharell Williams and Chad Hugo dutifully respond by packing “Trill” tight with bass, jittery beats, and motion-sick keyboards. The track’s ultimate brilliance depends entirely upon the way Malice and Pusha T are able to faultlessly balance their matter-of-fact braggadocio above the song’s shifting, precarious instrumental backdrop– as though savoring a brief moment before it all comes crashing down. –Matthew Murphy Listen: Clipse: “Trill”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dm_vSnOsb5A,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/531/clipse-hellheath.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Clipse-Trill.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,133,Belle and Sebastian,“Your Cover’s Blown”,"Rough Trade, 2004","To parse NME’s cheeky comparison from 2004, there’s a bit of bohemian in “Your Cover’s Blown,” but not much rhapsody. “Cover” is more a slinky spy theme for breaking free from scenester security, and Stuart Murdoch plays the puppetmaster with puckish understatement. But this doesn’t mean that “Cover”– still the funkiest and longest song Belle & Sebastian have created– doesn’t create its own form of dramatic tension. The quickly alternating currents of chippy disco rhythms and Bolero-style guitar make Murdoch’s anxiously told tale of surreptitiously splitting the city for the sticks into a quietly garish operetta. –Eric Harvey Listen: Belle and Sebastian: “Your Cover’s Blown”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDGZKYMgOQA,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/belle-sebastian-books.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Belle_and_Sebastian-Your_Covers_Blown.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,132,Panda Bear,“Comfy in Nautica”,"UUAR/Paw Tracks, 2005","Noah Lennox’s to-do list, summer 2005: Go to Coney Island. Clap more. Hear the beauty in thunderstorms. Watch the night skies for UFOs. Define “coolness” without being uncool or getting into one of those boring “what does ‘indie’ even mean anymore, brah?” dormroom bull sessions. Place off-kilter but emotionally packed melodies over repetitive loop collages, establishing a new instrumental paradigm for forward-looking rock and pop musicians. Render Animal Collective’s past yawpy unintelligibility newly intelligible; don’t lose sight of all that you can’t put into words. Capture the sound of the global village chanting. Be less afraid. “Try to remember always/ Just to have a good time.” Underline those last two words. –Marc Hogan Listen: Panda Bear: “Comfy in Nautica”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MT3NVv7IZ8Q,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/pandabear-nautica.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Panda_Bear-Comfy_in_Nautica.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,131,Destiny’s Child,“Say My Name”,"Columbia/Sony, 2000","Beyoncé is a force now, but it would be almost impossible for her to ever again wield the kind of stranglehold over the world’s ears the way Destiny’s Child did at the turn of the millennium. At the time, they so thoroughly dominated the charts and airwaves, the hits just kept coming even when they ditched half the band. “Say My Name” is DC at their peak, riding a tidal wave of feisty righteousness to the ladies club anthem of 2000. The girls stop and start like ultrafine robots, sleekly maneuvering through producer Rodney Jerkins’ arsenal of space-age R&B effects. I could never figure out why the guy in the song even picked up the phone in the first place, though. –Amy Phillips Listen: Destiny’s Child: “Say My Name”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQgd6MccwZc,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/destinyschildsaymyname.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Destinys_Child-Say_My_Name.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,130,Spoon,“The Underdog”,"Anti-, 2007","It’s only fitting that on a song called “The Underdog” Britt Daniel takes a well-deserved victory lap. For folks that remember Spoon’s failed dalliance with Elektra Records, this song’s call to “cut out the middleman” might sound like a long-awaited response to the two-song Saddle Creek single Daniel once recorded in honor of the group’s less-than-honorable A&R rep. But that was a long, long time ago– if anything, “The Underdog” is just emblematic of Spoon’s unabashed embrace of the pop sophistication they’ve been honing throughout their Merge career, critics and naysayers be damned. When the tune’s handclaps give way to a boisterous horn section, it’s a middle finger to any and all doubters and purists, and it’s delivered with an infectious smile. –David Raposa Listen: Spoon: “The Underdog”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7v0KCoPMTdU,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/531/spoongaga.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Spoon-The_Underdog.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,129,Andrew W.K.,“Party Hard”,"Mercury/Island Def Jam, 2001","There’s a place in music for subtlety, layered meaning, and nuance, but it’s somewhere way the fuck on the other side of town from this piston-pumping, steam-rolling, brick-wall-compressed-to-within-an-inch-of-its-life riff machine. Indeed, the first single from I Get Wet wins the decade’s truth in advertising award: It’s called “Party Hard”, it opens with the phrase “When it’s time to party, we party hard,” the verses are about partying (hard), and the chorus features shouts of “Party hard!” over and over. Before Red Bull and vodka became fashionable and sports drink companies made the decade all about the pursuit of eXtreme energy, the movement already had its anthem. –Mark Richardson Listen: Andrew W.K.: “Party Hard”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WccfbPQNMbg,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/andrewwk-partyhard.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Andrew_WK-Party_Hard.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,128,The Mountain Goats,“No Children”,"4AD, 2003","“No Children” would be one of the most lacerating breakup songs of all time...if John Darnielle actually allowed his characters to break up. Instead, Darnielle’s frequently chronicled Alpha Couple are doomed to drown together, “hand in unlovable hand.” As the couple’s male half spews bilious hate-fuckery in the direction of his wife, sprightly piano props him up, symptomatic of the way Tallahassee pushed Darnielle’s previously stubborn lo-fi aesthetic towards studio sheen. Besides, if she’s gone, who would be left for our narrator to hate more than himself? At least they didn’t have any children, thank god. –Amy Phillips Listen: The Mountain Goats: “No Children”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzyft_A9GGU,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/531/mtngoats-tallahassee.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Mountain_Goats-No_Children.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,127,Ciara,“Oh” [ft. Ludacris],"LaFace, 2005","Lyrically, “Oh” could practically be a T.I. track, drunk on the little local-color details that rappers love so much. Musically, it’s not too far off either, Dre & Vidal’s organs copping that sunny “Rubber Band Man” melodicism. But Ciara’s gorgeous robo-sigh of a voice is something else entirely. She floats just above the beat, slowly and breathily pushing it back and forth. When Ludacris jumps on board for one for a typically masterful hyperspeed guest-verse (and good lord he was on a roll back then), he’s the antic, amped-up counterpoint to Ciara’s slow sensuality. Every city deserves a song like “Oh” in its honor; almost none get one. –Tom Breihan Listen: Ciara: “Oh” [ft. Ludacris]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hr4wz4-27PY,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/ciara-oh.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ciara-Oh_ft_Ludacris.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,126,Califone,“The Orchids”,"Thrill Jockey, 2006","Sometimes for better but oftentimes for worse, Califone have forsaken song for sound, reveling in the possibilities of the studio while obfuscating Tim Rutili’s fragmentary ditties. The same holds for British industrialists Psychic TV, who, after a ponderous instrumental introduction, led 1983’s Dreams Less Sweet with “The Orchids”. Lifted by pointillist keyboards and ascendant horns, it remains one of the band’s purest pop moments. Califone one-ups them on this cover: After a violin fanfare, the veterans saunter through what might be the most cohesive, communicative and contagious three minutes of their repertoire. In Rutili’s weary voice, the song’s resilient mantra– “In the morning after the night/ I fall in love with the light”– feels like a testimonial. –Grayson Currin Listen: Califone: “The Orchids”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4e1jgqX0Y8g,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/califone-orchids.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Califone-The_Orchids.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,125,The Field,“Over the Ice”,"Kompakt, 2006","Minimalism tends to work in deep code, with referential gestures that cater to initiates on a very “head” level, but the Field imbues it with huge, rushing feeling: No arcane knowledge required. “Over the Ice” is your pulse, your stride, the blood squeaking in your ears. It’s also the voices in your head, chattering in a benevolent language, and your bright, ringing nerves. It eventually became a permanent part of me, that staccato “da, da-da, da-da, da-da da” still on silent repeat in my head. This might be a problem if it weren’t so salutary, organizing the chaos of ecstatic experience into endlessly hospitable courses. –Brian Howe Listen: The Field: “Over the Ice”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wobxiik9z2s,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/thefield-sunnice.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Field-Over_the_Ice.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,124,Ted Leo and the Pharmacists,“Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone?”,"Lookout!, 2002","Yeah, it’s about the Specials; the key line in Ted Leo’s fedora-tip and hit of liquid sunshine isn’t the second-wave ska roll call, but the one about dancing and being free. And the elements of “Rude Boys”– Leo’s ever-impassioned pleas, the rumbling rhythm section, that overjoyed guitar running up its center– sounds both like that freedom and will easily inspire that dancing. So the message to you, Rudy, isn’t really about bygone days, but about possibility of the future: of being young, of having a favorite sound, and, heck, maybe even of ending your punk song in a round. –Paul Thompson Listen: Ted Leo and the Pharmacists: “Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone?”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzTZzo40PUg,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/531/tedleo-oak.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ted_Leo_and_the_Pharmacists-Where_Have_All_the_Rude_Boys_Gone.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,123,Kanye West,“Jesus Walks”,"Roc-A-Fella, 2004","Oh Kanye. On only his third single ever, he can’t help but congratulate himself inside the actual song for supposedly bringing the Lord back to hip-hop airwaves. But comparing his relationship with Christ to Kathie Lee and Regis isn’t exactly St. Augustine’s Confessions. Instead, “Jesus Walks” is a densely layered premonition of the producer/rapper’s ambitions, from a guy mostly known at the time for playing soul records at the wrong RPM. Militaristic drums, choral melisma, snake-charmer keyboards, and swatches of orchestration made “Jesus Walks” an odd thing to spill out car windows in Summer 2004, if more for the music than the message. –Rob Mitchum Listen: Kanye West: “Jesus Walks”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYF7H_fpc-g,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/jesuswalks-kanye.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kanye_West-Jesus_Walks.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,122,Cam’ron,"“Hey Ma” [ft. Juelz Santana, Freekey Zekey, and Toya]","Roc-A-Fella, 2002","“Why in the world would anybody put chains on me?” croons Lionel Richie on the 1977 breakup ballad “Easy”. In a roundabout way, “Hey Ma”– which nicks the Commodores classic for its summer barbecue beat– asks the same question: Why commit when Cam and Juelz make (um) casual relations sound like a worthwhile be-all, end-all? Even with his reams of rat-a-tat talk and self-directed C-movies soaked in fake blood, Cam is still at his best when flashing that devil-may-care smirk, as on this flirty manifesto. Then there’s sidekick Juelz, who actually is a goofy and eager teenager; “I’m 18 and live a crazy life/ Plus, I’ll tell you what the 80s like,” he raps, stepping to a girl who doesn’t need a fake ID. She laughs; so do we. –Ryan Dombal Listen: Cam’ron: “Hey Ma” [ft. Juelz Santana, Freekey Zekey, and Toya]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m60XKqEEnfg,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/camron-heyma.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Camron-Hey_Ma_ft_Juelz_Santana_Freekey_Zekey_and_Toya.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,121,Johnny Boy,“You Are the Generation That Bought More Shoes and You Get What You Deserve”,"Vertigo, 2004","The title of Johnny Boy’s indie hit convicts us all of, well, something (consumerism, probably? Fashion?), but it’s the London duo themselves that mimic 1960s big-studio mastery with a minimal setup of vocals, loops, and guitars. The same duo who appropriated Robert De Niro’s punkass Mean Streets act for bombastic, teeth-rotting pop. The lesson? We’re all killing everything dead but the tombstones are going to be fucking awesome. So we buy Burberry and Adidas and a couple of never-heard-from-since Brits apply Queen-dynamics to the Supremes and make off for a world where Joey Ramone looks like Steve McQueen. –Andrew Gaerig Listen: Johnny Boy: “You Are the Generation That Bought More Shoes and You Get What You Deserve”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp4GdI_bTD4,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/531/johnnyboy-generation.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Johnny_Boy-You_Are_the_Generation_That_Bought_More_Shoes_and_You_Get_What_You_Deserve.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,120,Phoenix,“If I Ever Feel Better”,"Source/Astralwerks, 2000","Disco meets soft-rock with production so shiny it verges on the antiseptic, which makes it no surprise that I heard “If I Ever Feel Better"" as the outro music on “Entourage” the other night, one of many times Phoenix has served as pop cultural bumper music in the last decade. But what makes “If I Ever Feel Better”, well, better than your typical 21st-century high-gloss yacht schlock is that there’s no studio filter to fake true ebullience or melancholy. When singer Thomas Mars rushes smiling through four flushed “I can try”s, that giddiness is infectious. Plus the music really is awesomely slick and catchy, which should never be discounted when discussing capital-P pop. –Jess Harvell Listen: Phoenix: “If I Ever Feel Better”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub36ffWAqgQ,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/531/phoenix-ifiever.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Phoenix-If_I_Ever_Feel_Better.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,119,T.I.,“Rubber Band Man”,"Atlantic, 2003","The nine in his right and the 45 in his other hand got him in some trouble a few years later. But at the time, nobody minded that Tip was bragging on his arsenal while a mob of school-kids chanted deliriously joyous la-la-las underneath. That’s the thing about “Rubber Band Man”: Its forbidding snarls evaporate when confronted with David Banner’s ice-rink organ and candy-floss melody. Tip’s got a striver’s quiet confidence, reveling in his small triumphs: “But why the rubber band? It representin’ the struggle, man.” Ludacris later made fun of Tip for only being worth a piddling couple hundred grand, but that didn’t last long, either. –Tom Breihan Listen:  T.I.: “Rubber Band Man”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n48RyNTHyz0,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/ti-trapmuzik.jpg,/dataset/artwork/TI-Rubber_Band_Man.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,118,Camera Obscura,"“Lloyd, I’m Ready to Be Heartbroken”","Elefant/Merge, 2006","Lloyd Cole was a lyrical namedropper in his day, but it was the nameless, second-person address in “Are You Ready to be Heartbroken” that had the most lasting effect. Thankfully, one of those moved by it 22 years later was fellow Scot Tracyanne Campbell, who set about crafting that rarest type of response song. “Lloyd” packs the sort of built-up, bittersweet patience that comes from finally replying to an old letter pulled from the bottom of a dresser drawer, and is perfectly situated within Motown-derived pop-soul, giving that indelible refrain equal parts effervescent joy and lonesome resignation. –Eric Harvey Listen: Camera Obscura: “Lloyd, I’m Ready to Be Heartbroken”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlryei9U3sg,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/531/camera-lloyd.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Camera_Obscura-Lloyd_Im_Ready_to_Be_Heartbroken.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,117,Animal Collective,“Leaf House”,"FatCat, 2004","If Animal Collective have a pivot point, it’s here– when their arrangements became lean, spare, and syncopated; when they salvaged their vocals from the margins and evolved beyond the shout and moan; when South American and African music emerged as influences in their sound, not just sidebar bullet points about their record collections. After the humid Here Comes the Indian, I doubt even their most slavish fans expected music as lithe as “Leaf House”. I remember exactly where and when I first heard it– there’s probably still saliva in the carpet. –Mike Powell Listen: Animal Collective: “Leaf House”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPWR98JCCRE,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/animalcollective-sung-tongs.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Animal_Collective-Leaf_House.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,116,The White Stripes,“Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground”,"Third Man/XL, 2002","That loud squeal that opens the first song on the White Stripes’ third album– for many listeners it was their debut– announced the duo’s arrival as neither garage-rock bandwagoneers nor showboating blues revivalists. “Dead Leaves” mapped out a primitive sound that came across as downright innovative in 2001, pairing Jack’s gargantuan guitar riff with Meg’s rudimentarily pounding to create a song that moved effortlessly between cracks of thunder and pockets of quiet. Instead of delivering another screed against women as evildoers (a common blues depiction), Jack sings the tenderest of love-song sentiments: Her every breath is a “tiny little gift,” and he sounds like the most mannish boy for acknowledging it. –Stephen M. Deusner Listen: The White Stripes: “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OyytKqYjkE,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/whitestripes-Dead_Leaves_and_the_Dirty_Ground.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_White_Stripes-Dead_Leaves_and_the_Dirty_Ground.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,115,Dirty Projectors,“Stillness Is the Move”,"Domino, 2009","Imagine the bored, flat, tuneless tones of a thousand underwhelming indie vocalists drove a hipster to the demonstrative gymnastics of Mariah Carey or the playful entreaties of Rihanna. But imagine that listener still musically craved the left-turn dissonance and unpredictability of his favorite arty strivers. Now you understand part of the reason why so many indie acolytes eventually acknowledge the triumphalism of pop, and why “Stillness Is the Move” was such a godsend, pairing Angel Deradoorian and Amber Coffman’s soaring, heart-stopping testimonials with such satisfyingly squiggly guitars and creative melodic and harmonic shifts. –Joshua Love Listen: Dirty Projectors: “Stillness Is the Move”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMPF6lpM0XM,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/531/dirtyproj-stillness.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dirty_Projectors-Stillness_Is_the_Move.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,114,!!!,“Me and Giuliani Down By the Schoolyard (A True Story)”,"Touch and Go/Warp, 2003","The lyrics were already outdated by the time they released this single in 2003 (young folks: Rudy Giuliani was once New York City’s law’n’order mayor, 1994-2001), and frankly Nic Offer isn’t much of a singer. But a) Who cares, and b) Who cares– neither were his models in the Clash, New Order, and Liquid Liquid. !!! advanced all of those bands’ tradition of integrating the urgent abrasion of underground rock into the time-obliterating throb of club music (hint: cowbell!!!). The most thrilling moments of the many packed into ""Giuliani""’s nine minutes come when an electronic pulse emerges from a sour thicket of rock instruments, or when the machines do an echo-dub dive away from the mix and the human noise rises back to the surface. –Douglas Wolk Listen: !!!: “Me and Giuliani Down By the Schoolyard (A True Story)”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaqQYetCH8U,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/531/chkchk-giuliani.jpg,/dataset/artwork/-Me_and_Giuliani_Down_By_the_Schoolyard_A_True_Story.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,113,Kelis,“Milkshake”,"Star Trak/Virgin, 2003","When Kelis and the Neptunes first came together, they were relative unknowns with weirdbeat designs on the charts. Thus began the mutual rise that commenced with 1999’s twerky Kaleidoscope and peaked with “Milkshake”. With its atonal, disruptive clatter, it has the distinction of unofficially ushering in the brief era of the female meme-chasing single (see: “Hollaback Girl”, “My Humps”) while simultaneously being one of the last big-bottomed hits to flourish before being subsumed by the high-end-fixated sing-songy ringtone R&B that remains summer’s hottest look. Speaking of memes, “milkshake” did well in the noughties. But before Henry Plainview drank it, Kelis brought it. –Mark Pytlik Listen: Kelis: “Milkshake”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGL2rytTraA,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/kelis-milkshake.png,/dataset/artwork/Kelis-Milkshake.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,112,Lindstrøm,“I Feel Space”,"Playhouse/Feedelity, 2005","Hans-Peter Lindstrøm certainly wasn’t the first artist to re-imagine Giorgio Moroder and Donna Summer’s classic Italo-disco prototype “I Feel Love”, but he arguably did it best. Indeed, the Norwegian producer’s “I Feel Space” sounds not unlike Moroder launched into outer orbit, its arpeggiated synths and thumping bass so bouncy they could have been recorded in zero gravity. The high-water mark for what became known as space disco? Sure. But “I Feel Space” is an even simpler victory: The employment of traditional music-making expertise– check the sweeping chord changes and perfectly timed handclaps– in the creation of one flawless dance track. –Joe Colly Listen: Lindstrøm: “I Feel Space”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7_edU9T2Ho,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/ifeelspace.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lindstrm-I_Feel_Space.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,111,Aaliyah,“We Need a Resolution”,"Virgin, 2001","R&B has made a craft of apportioning guilt as much as declaring love, but “We Need a Resolution” despairs at ever separating the two. “You got issues, I got issues,” Aaliyah sighs, as always evocative rather than exhibitionist, “but I know I miss you…” The song’s series of questions (“Who should be hurt? Who should be blamed?”) could only have been asked by Aaliyah; any other singer would have given away the answers. Timbaland’s arrangement offers little guidance, its unsettling clarinet melody, chattering beat, and gamelan twinkles balancing on a knifepoint of uncertainty fully as much as Aaliyah’s delicate interrogation. –Tim Finney Listen: Aaliyah: “We Need a Resolution”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQPvgHEMCFs,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/aaliyah-resolution.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Aaliyah-We_Need_a_Resolution.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,110,Dizzee Rascal,“Fix Up Look Sharp”,"XL/Matador, 2003","Dizzee Rascal ends the 2000s as Britain’s biggest urban music star. “Fix Up Look Sharp” was his first record to suggest that might be a safe bet. He had more surprising songs and more challenging tracks but “Fix Up” had the muscle and hunger. That delirious signature yelp of cartoon contempt began here– “your head splits like ba-NARNAR” and the flow demonstrated that Dizzee could make the hugest hook his own. In truth “Fix Up” is as fiercely stark as any 00s production but you simply don’t notice that: Dizzee’s addictive, dominating talent turns it into thrillingly uncompromising pop. –Tom Ewing Listen: Dizzee Rascal: “Fix Up Look Sharp”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZGvnI37mxk,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/dizzeerascal-fixup.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dizzee_Rascal-Fix_Up_Look_Sharp.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,109,Grizzly Bear,“Knife”,"Warp, 2007","There’s a palpable musk around “Knife”, as if it were buried for a long time and then exhumed in 2006. You might peg the date of interment in the 60s, when the Shangri-Las and George “Shadow” Morton were clotting simple yet twisted love songs with mossy production, making them sound all deathy and decayed. There are just a few words, inscribed in a lavish script on the harmonies; a handful of chords. But a whole host of sensations pour through them, and not just emotional ones: The guitars prickle and clutch; the refrains scale ear-popping altitudes. You can, it turns out, feel the knife. –Brian Howe Listen: Grizzly Bear: “Knife”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJpC9JqSnJk,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/grizzlybear-knige.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Grizzly_Bear-Knife.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,108,The Hold Steady,“The Swish”,"Frenchkiss, 2004","The Hold Steady came as a relief to squares who liked AC/DC’s riffs but got tired of searching for value in cock jokes on repeated listens. But they weren’t simple– their songs were long; their verses obsessively detailed; their codas jarring; their theater weird. Craig Finn didn’t need vocal melodies– he had one-liners. This is a guy messing with puns the year Funeral came out. He rants with such force that, with headphones on, you can feel spit showering your eardrums. Though they’re a band best experienced as a big picture, “The Swish” distills their appeal to an essence– a collage of 70s rock dressed in pop-culture trivia and half-remembered stories about drug dealers. A fan’s band from the first song. –Mike Powell Listen: The Hold Steady: “The Swish”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-0fb-DhYh0,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/holdsteady-swish.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Hold_Steady-The_Swish.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,107,M83,“Don’t Save Us From the Flames”,"Gooom/Mute, 2005","The fantasy of dying in your lover’s arms amidst a fiery auto accident has been a pop staple from 1960s teen tragedy songs through the Smiths and beyond. With “Don’t Save Us From the Flames”, M83’s Anthony Gonzalez blows that tradition up into full-screen high definition, the track serving as a bridge between his more abstract earlier work and the explicit melodrama of 2008’s Saturdays = Youth. Here, the adrenaline spike of the car crash is replicated at the nexus of shoegaze bliss-out, ambient oblivion, and stadium rock release. Piledriving drums, headrush guitars, unearthly synths– not a bad way to go out, huh? –Amy Phillips Listen: M83: “Don’t Save Us From the Flames”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpT0rrtwpLg,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/m83don%27tsaveus.jpg,/dataset/artwork/M83-Dont_Save_Us_From_the_Flames.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,106,The Mae Shi,“Run to Your Grave”,"Moshi Moshi, 2008","Who would guess that this hyperactive, riff-happy six-piece could calm down enough to craft an all-together-now anthem? Or that it would be a moving ode to sprinting through life to the end? In the year-plus since its release, the super-sunny ""Run to Your Grave"" has become even bigger and brighter, inspiring a bro-fest video and countless live sing-alongs (the band has even been known to stretch it into passages of solo-guitar folk and freestyle rap). But the humble little LP version remains a powerful bit of pied-piper synth-pop, while still retaining the band’s Casio-freak edge. –Marc Masters Listen: The Mae Shi: “Run to Your Grave”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lxw2BJt1NkA,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/531/maeshi-run2yrgrave.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Mae_Shi-Run_to_Your_Grave.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,105,Grinderman,“No Pussy Blues”,"Mute, 2007","In which Nick Cave proves there are few things funnier than a hyper-literate old man driven to sputtering frenzy by the erection he can’t relieve. It takes bravery to add a fresh twist to a 30-year-career with a song about being hard up, though it probably mitigates some of the sting when you’re mordantly self-aware, happily married, and take to black humor like the proverbial duck. It also helps when the backing track refuses any concessions to the encroaching gentility that seems to invariably come with age. And unlike most rock’n’roll songs about an inability to get your rocks off, you suspect the anti-adolescent “No Pussy Blues” will only become more hilariously apt as you grow older, whatever your gender. –Jess Harvell Listen: Grinderman: “No Pussy Blues”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nxqlb1--uKc,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/grinderman-no-pussy-blues.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Grinderman-No_Pussy_Blues.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,104,Eminem,“Lose Yourself”,"Shady/Interscope, 2002","If this list reflected the number of “no-one-watching, in-the-mirror, punch-the-air self-psyching”-moments a song produced and not the whims of a group of music critics, this song would be such a runaway number one Vegas would’ve stopped taking bets six months ago. It’ll be quicker, so let’s do it this way: raise your hand if you haven’t pumped yourself up for a workout, date, hockey game, or hipster-ogling with “Lose Yourself”? Yeah, pretty much the same number that predicted Em’s most lasting moment would be an almost too-serious soundtrack jig about the perils of a character named (presumably) after a John Updike protagonist. –Andrew Gaerig Listen: Eminem: “Lose Yourself”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Yhyp-_hX2s,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/531/eminem-loseyourself.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Eminem-Lose_Yourself.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,103,Feist,“Mushaboom”,"Polydor, 2003","Just do a cursory search for real estate in Mushaboom, Halifax. Look at the landscape shots. It’s all you really need to know. Feist had been kicking around in punk bands, touring with Peaches, and singing sweet, fucked-up songs with Broken Social Scene for a decade before “Mushaboom”. But then this simple song about simple life in the tiny Canadian town hit and your platonic indie pop ideal was born. Singing in a controlled lilt, Feist performs “Mushaboom” like a plaintive acoustic number that just might fit right in on the Singin’ in the Rain soundtrack. From Peaches to Debbie Reynolds: This is the versatility of a great artist. –Sean Fennessey Listen: Feist: “Mushaboom”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYF0qU5WSew,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/feist-mushaboom.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Feist-Mushaboom.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,102,Cut Copy,“Hearts on Fire”,"Modular/Island, 2007","You once could find Cut Copy’s debut Bright Like Neon Love in the dollar bin at San Francisco’s Amoeba Records. Think you’ll find it there now? Neon Love’s diffident and dreamy synth-pop relegated the band to the fringes of hardcore appreciators. In the interim, their makeover, partially tended to by DFA’s Tim Goldsworthy, morphed them into indie stars, fuelled first by the Hearts on Fire EP in 2007 and a kaleidoscopic game of Human League that casts shadows of Berlin period Bowie. The best part? At 30 seconds in, keyboard stabs and female vocals chime in, and the song evokes the Night at the Roxbury head-whipping of La Bouche or Haddaway. It takes stones to pull that off. –Mike Orme Listen: Cut Copy: “Hearts on Fire”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hN0K974SAtE,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/cut-copy-hearts.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Cut_Copy-Hearts_on_Fire.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,101,Jürgen Paape,“So Weit Wie Noch Nie”,"Kompakt, 2002","Though the original version first appeared on Kompakt’s 2001 Total 3 compilation, many listeners first discovered Jürgen Paape’s luscious “So Weit Wie Noch Nie” when Erlend Øye used the song as the opener for his stellar 2004 DJ-Kicks mix. However you arrived at the track, its five-and-a-half minutes– a swaying, heady blend of weighty bass, spray-can hisses, and warm-blanket synths– remain some of the most thoroughly pleasurable techno of the decade. But what truly sets “So Weit Wie Noch Nie” apart is Paape’s masterful sampling of Israeli-born schlager singer Daliah Lavi’s wispy vocals, which elevates a gorgeous instrumental into something heavenly. –Joe Colly Listen: Jürgen Paape: “So Weit Wie Noch Nie”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2dnwsyy5BQ,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/531/Ju%08rgen-paape.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jrgen_Paape-So_Weit_Wie_Noch_Nie.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,100,Jamie Lidell,“Multiply”,"Warp, 2005","For a long time, Jamie Lidell was a voice in search of a vessel– a “walking talking question mark,” as he put it in another song, who poured himself into his samplers on stage, hoping to find the loop that would straighten him out again. And then with “Multiply”, the lead track off his debut album, he found his container in a Sam Cooke castoff. Just a hair from all-out plagiarizing the melody of “(Sittin’ on) the Dock of the Bay”, Lidell and his collaborator Mocky strung plucky electric guitar figures like so many clothespins along a loose, ropy drum line, with falsetto doo-wops billowing above. Lidell– multitracked, and singing sweetly of the schizo mindset– never sounded so whole. –Philip Sherburne Listen: Jamie Lidell: “Multiply”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkqIsSTWSsc,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/jamie-multiply.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jamie_Lidell-Multiply.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,99,MGMT,“Time to Pretend”,"Columbia, 2008","What makes “Time to Pretend” so universally liked (even by cranky indie rock purists) is its dazzling wire walk between smug, smartass irony and actual lust for the kind of fucked-up celebrity lifestyle that keeps Perez Hilton in bandwidth. MGMT’s perfect sound was an evolution. The duo’s earlier self-produced Casio-chintzy version of the song made no secret of then-college students Ben Goldwasser and Andrew Van Wyngarden’s dry disdain. But Dave Fridmann’s major-label-funded take two is something out of Hieronymus Bosch, a lush pleasure garden of melodies twining like naked limbs, guitars and drums distorted into dirty, Ecstatic grooves. It’s all a little unsettling– decadence always is. But MGMT pull “Pretend” off with the kind of conviction that standing on the precipice of stardom can give you. –Amy Granzin Listen: MGMT: “Time to Pretend”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9dSYgd5Elk,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/mgmt-time.jpg,/dataset/artwork/MGMT-Time_to_Pretend.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,98,Beirut,“Postcards From Italy”,"Ba Da Bing!/4AD, 2006","How fitting is it that this one initially rose to prominence via a nascent blogosphere? The story of “Postcards” is also the story of this hyperactive age of information exchange and accrual. Sure Beirut’s Zach Condon had actually been to the Old Countries, but his appropriation of traditional Yiddish and French styles is still just that, and a tinge of desperation can be felt in this song’s attempt to detach from the very age that, paradoxically, makes it possible. It’s nostalgic, sure. But this wasn’t so much, to crib James Murphy, borrowed nostalgia for an unremembered era. This was a kind of imagined nostalgia, one that could be acquired through the sheer act of looking at old photos– or postcards– and a sentiment that could be convincingly and compellingly evoked by a 20-year-old kid dreaming away in his New Mexico bedroom. It may sound entirely out of time, but “Postcards” is a decidedly 21st century anthem. –Matthew Solarksi Listen: Beirut: “Postcards From Italy”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X61BVv6pLtw,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/beirut-gulag.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beirut-Postcards_From_Italy.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,97,Belle and Sebastian,“I’m a Cuckoo (by the Avalanches)”,"Rough Trade, 2004","Belle and Sebastian believe in traveling light. The Avalanches believe in traveling. On 2003’s Trevor Horn-produced Dear Catastrophe Waitress, “I’m a Cuckoo” was just one audaciously kooky, Thin Lizzy-owing AM pop thrill en route to the even greater lavishness of 2006’s The Life Pursuit. The Avalanches’ reimagining spirits Stuart Murdoch’s cheerfully heartbroken vocal (and not much else) to North Africa for hand-played percussion, wooden flute, and a Sudanese children’s choir. Not only does this version make “Cuckoo” finally sound as carefree as its melody, it also predicts indie pop’s late-2000s turn Africa-ward. (See especially the Tough Alliance and Air France remixes of former Concretes singer Victoria Bergsman’s Taken By Trees project.) So if Murdoch still would “rather be in Tokyo,” he has some traveling left to do. –Marc Hogan Listen: Belle and Sebastian: “I’m a Cuckoo (by the Avalanches)”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6d_de2as3I,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/belle-and-sebastian-im-a-cuckoo-rough-trade.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Belle_and_Sebastian-Im_a_Cuckoo_by_the_Avalanches.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,96,Clinic,“Distortions”,"Domino, 2000","It was hard to know what to make of Clinic when they debuted with a string of singles in the late 1990s. The only points of reference you could formulate to describe them were absurd and floral, like what if Radiohead and the Pixies were broadcasting garage-rock distress skronks from some lunar shore? But this enigmatic new-millennium band dropped its guard a little on the amorous-mixtape staple “Distortions”, which beat the Postal Service to the indie-electronic slow dance by several years. The funny thing is, it’s not really a romantic song. Ade Blackburn may love it when you blink your eyes, but he’s also picturing you dead and thinking about marrying your sister. Despite the devotional tone, you get the sneaky feeling that “free of distortions” is a euphemism for being left alone. –Brian Howe Listen: Clinic: “Distortions”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ii4lkM1pLjQ,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/clinic-distortions-2.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Clinic-Distortions.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,95,Wolf Parade,“I’ll Believe in Anything”,"Sub Pop, 2005","It’ll always go down as a Spencer Krug song, but “I Believe in Anything” testifies to the power of teamwork. Don’t ask me how the blue collar Dan Boeckner ever gelled with an ADD Renaissance fair castaway like Krug, but this freak of a power ballad maximized the group’s disparate strengths. Bands with cobbled-together lineups like Wolf Parade’s too often fall short of the sum of their parts, usually because they don’t have the artistic genius (or compromising skills) to take, say, this wacky funhouse melody and hammer it on repeat until it becomes a Springsteen anthem. It also doesn’t hurt to have Wolf Parade’s heart-on-sleeve conviction. Krug promises to take you to a place where “nobody knows you” or “gives a damn either way”, and the funny thing is, I trust him– even if he does sound like a weirdo. –Adam Moerder Listen: Wolf Parade: “I’ll Believe in Anything”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7G1eLTV89dM,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/wolfparade-apologies.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Wolf_Parade-Ill_Believe_in_Anything.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,94,The Futureheads,“Hounds of Love”,"679, 2005","In the decade of post-punk pastiche overload, too few bands focused on the pop-centric quirk on those classic John Peel radio shows. What made the Futureheads 21st-century p-punk exemplars was their commitment to twee-boy harmonies as dizzyingly overlapping hooks. And it’s the play of voices that made this Kate Bush cover more than a one-note joke. “Play” is right: few contemporary rock bands have sounded like they’re having as much fun as the Futureheads. They almost trip over themselves in transforming Bush’s paean to the slow surrender of control into a race to be the first one wrestled to the ground by love. In a decade when mainstream rock continued its ignoble slide into pure alpha-male-ism, it was beyond refreshing to see four boys embracing one of pop’s most theatrically feminine figures. –Jess Harvell Listen: The Futureheads: “Hounds of Love”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcMAM9B7yAA,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/hounds-of-love.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Futureheads-Hounds_of_Love.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,93,The Game,“Hate It or Love It” [ft. 50 Cent],"Aftermath/Shady/Interscope, 2005","The notion that 50 Cent was ever involved in a song this, well, appealing feels pretty remote in 2009. He’s deep into his late-period-Tyson decline now, the stage in which you brag about hanging out with Bette Midler on your mixtapes, narrate porn films, and (possibly) make an appearance on Foxy Boxing. But man, the Curtis of “Hate It or Love It”– this guy seemed like he might be a star forever. The nimble rhythm of the chant “hate it or love, the underdog’s on top” bobs and weaves around the syncopated bass line, and his evocative opening verse– his last great one– seems to summon Cool and Dre’s summer-soul track into existence: sheepskin coats and gold ropes, Rakim’s “My Melody”, bikes getting stolen, mommy kissing a girl. By the time Game comes huffing onto the track, it’s already all over, which is probably one of the reasons Game refuses to perform this song. He knows who it belongs to, and it still burns him up. –Jayson Greene Listen: The Game: “Hate It or Love It” [ft. 50 Cent]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuMBmK5uksg,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/531/Hate-It-Or-Love-It-Single-cover.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Game-Hate_It_or_Love_It_ft_50_Cent.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,92,Modest Mouse,“3rd Planet”,"Epic, 2000","The world begins and ends in “3rd Planet”, which is kind of a lot to tackle in a rock song. Birth, death, depression, possibly stoned revelations about the shape of the universe itself, all prove conversation fodder on this, the leadoff track to The Moon & Antarctica, one of the decade’s most expansive albums. Rattled by the loss of a child, Brock– one eye on his navel and the other fixed skyward– navigates the cosmic chaos as the band crafts a sound to match the scope of his gaze. Brock’s disarmingly direct lyrics still manage to hint at a well of hurt and self-reflection a few minutes couldn’t possibly hope to resolve– he dares to ask personal questions of the universe, and “3rd Planet” finds him posing some of the toughest ones yet. –Paul Thompson Listen: Modest Mouse: “3rd Planet”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsnELWjsCsA,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/modestmouse-3rdplanet.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Modest_Mouse-3rd_Planet.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,91,Justice,“D.A.N.C.E.”,"Because/Ed Banger/Vice, 2007","Maybe it’s just the “P.Y.T.” reference, but it’s kinda hard to write about “D.A.N.C.E.” at this point without the mind eventually turning to Michael Jackson. Even forgetting the letter-by-letter MJ breadcrumb trail in the lyrics (“P.Y.T.”, “B.E.A.T.”, “A.B.C”), it always felt like this was Justice’s best attempt to soften their pulverizing brand of French touch by locating it in a sweeter time, i.e., somewhere between the Jackson 5 and Off the Wall. Hell, considering the syrupy disco strings, emphatic childlike joy, overstuffed melodies, and unrelenting technical efficiency at the heart of it, you could even build a case for this being a sort of loving metaphor for MJ pre-Thriller. In the world outside of half-baked critical theory, “D.A.N.C.E.” suffered from more practical bugaboos in the form of flagrant and unrelenting overexposure. Swear to God there was a brief period in 2007 where it was government-mandated to appear in 40% of the world’s advertisements and television musical montage moments. Are we ready to hear it again? Probably not quite yet. Good tune, though. –Mark Pytlik Listen: Justice: “D.A.N.C.E.” ",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCnBrrnOefs,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/justicedance.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Justice-DANCE.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,90,The Streets,“Weak Become Heroes”,"679, 2002","The fourth single from the Streets’ 2002 album, Original Pirate Material, jettisoned the cocky Cockney mirth and the jovial 2-step skip of its predecessors in favor of a gently swinging, genuinely heartfelt piano-house ballad. The object of Mike Skinner’s then-24-year-old affections? His first E, its dizzy new heights breathlessly described with a storyteller’s pitch-perfect eye for detail, right down to “Mad little events happen,” which should ring true for anyone who’s ever puzzled over the jigsaw contours of the chemical night. Rising piano chords and muted drums carry as if from at the far end of the field; Skinner metes out observations like crumbly Mitsubishi quarters to the new mates gathered around him, the “weak become heroes” who are both audience and subject of his starry-eyed tale of rave’s star-crossed generation. –Philip Sherburne Listen: The Streets: “Weak Become Heroes”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z1kRhiPE0E,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/thestreets.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Streets-Weak_Become_Heroes.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,89,The Postal Service,“Such Great Heights”,"Sub Pop, 2003","Really, the Postal Service’s sound was an inevitable development. Just as laptops begin infiltrating stages and indie rock began to finally turn away from years of anti-electronic orthodoxy, Ben Gibbard and Jimmy Tamborello made themselves the odds-on favorites to play genre husbandry when “(This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan” grabbed ears on Tamborello’s 2001 Dntel album. So the world was ready for “Such Great Heights” when it finally appeared, a salad of itchy microhouse beats and pointillist synthesizers rescuing Gibbard’s dreamy love song from congealing into a thick Jack Johnson sap (a hazard Iron & Wine helpfully demonstrated). Go ahead and blame the Postal Service for launching the subsequent decade of lazy lap-pop, but it’s a “blame Star Wars for Transformers 2” sort of haterade, assigning guilt to Gibbard and Tamborello for making an updated synth-pop song so perfect, it introduced a new vocabulary to emo kids’ bedrooms, for better or (mostly) worse. –Rob Mitchum Listen: The Postal Service: “Such Great Heights”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wrsZog8qXg,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/postalservice-gr8heights.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Postal_Service-Such_Great_Heights.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,88,The New Pornographers,“Letter From an Occupant”,"Matador, 2002","Carl Newman certainly knows his way around a hook, and I can count three distinct, why-not-just-build-a-song-around-me candidates in the New Pornographers’ barnburning “Letter From an Occupant”: the chorus, of course, “where have all sensations gone?”, and the “song is shaking me” bit. So you take one of Newman’s most strident earworms from a decade that found him in no short supply of them, get the incomparable Neko Case to wow and flutter over top in what’s almost certainly her finest vocal performance on a New Pornographers record, have your band of sorta-superstars pound out some no-nonsense neon behind it, and whaddya know, there’s nary a second that goes by that could be any catchier. Show offs. –Paul Thompson Listen: The New Pornographers: “Letter From an Occupant”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBAUQaj6EJo,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/newporn-letter.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_New_Pornographers-Letter_From_an_Occupant.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,87,Mike Jones,“Still Tippin’” [ft. Paul Wall and Slim Thug],"Asylum/Warner Bros., 2005","“I got the internet goin’ nuts,” Paul Wall drawled near the end of “Still Tippin’”, a weirdly arcane boast at the time but absolutely a true one. Back in the pre-YouTube days of late 2004, the grainy BET Uncut video for “Still Tippin’”, later recut without the girl blowing Slim Thug in the Escalade, circulated online and set everyone to Googling. The appeal of the song wasn’t quite in the rapping, though the rumble-voiced Slim easily won MVP honors there. Instead, it was the hazy, trapped-in-amber feel of the song, the way Salih Williams’ mournful violin moan slowly floated above the trunk-rattling bass, the way the rappers’ unflappable voices lazily wound their way through everything, encapsulating the city’s slow-crawl aesthetic in one bite-size chunk. After “Still Tippin’”, every rapper on the song got a major-label contract, as did half the rappers in the city. None of them became stars, and none of them recaptured the magic of this song. But “Still Tippin’” still sounds like steam rising off hot asphalt. –Tom Breihan Listen: Mike Jones: “Still Tippin’” [ft. Paul Wall and Slim Thug]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYTBsN-KeNE,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/mikejones-stilltippin.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mike_Jones-Still_Tippin_ft_Paul_Wall_and_Slim_Thug.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,86,Mclusky,“To Hell With Good Intentions”,"Too Pure, 2002","By the early 2000s, indie rock had grown largely disconnected from its 80s post-hardcore roots, trading in once-prized qualities like dissonance and provocation for cuddly, campfire collectivism or synth-pop sleekness. But these three cranky Welshmen weren’t going down without a fight– or at least a good larf. Over a bruising backbeat and a riff that feels like chewed tinfoil, Andy Falkous unleashes a veritable Quote-of-the-Day calendar of one-liners (“My band is better than your band/ We got more songs than a song convention”) that skewer the sport of indie-elitist one-upmanship. But the most resonant lines are the least cheeky: “When we gonna torch the restaurant? When we gonna get excited?”– desperate pleas for anarchic abandon that would go unanswered at a time when popular indie rock was forsaking its core contrarian ideologies in favor of strategic placements on episodes of “The O.C.” and Starbucks display racks. –Stuart Berman Listen: Mclusky: “To Hell With Good Intentions”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbrT-_Ozm2w,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/531/Mclusky-tohell.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mclusky-To_Hell_With_Good_Intentions.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,85,Phoenix,“Long Distance Call”,"Source/Virgin, 2006","The best moment during “Long Distance Call” is when singer Thomas Mars, in the second verse, draws the line between “doing well well well” and “only doing just fine.” If that were the entire emotional spectrum the peppy, perpetually lovelost Mars experienced, no one would be surprised. But “Long Distance Call” draws a tension between Mars’ laissez-faire mantra-making (“Your capital letters keep me asking for more”) and his bandmates’ up-off-the-floor-there-pal riffing. “Long Distance Call” is a song about... well, I’m not sure exactly, only about one-third of the lyrics make any sense, which means it’s probably a song about being lost, or at least away (phones– check; lack of cash– check). Like the best summer flings, college road trips, Parisian honeymoons, Phoenix manage to turn romantic confusion and map-less wayfaring into a statement of independence. –Andrew Gaerig Listen: Phoenix: “Long Distance Call”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owD3d1S0LFg,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/531/phoenix-longdistance.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Phoenix-Long_Distance_Call.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,84,Peter Bjorn and John,“Young Folks” [ft. Victoria Bergsman],"Wichita/V2, 2006","Like Jonny Greenwood’s electric-guitar hiccups on Radiohead’s “Creep”, the insidious whistled melody of Peter Bjorn and John’s “Young Folks” was an unintentional, rough-draft accoutrement that effectively catapulted the Swedish trio from indie-pop upstarts to international It Band. But it’s what happens between all that tootin’ that really set our iPods on repeat, with Peter Morén and guest vocalist Victoria Bergstrom (formerly of the Concretes) acting out a tentative courtship between two aloof hipsters who only seem to express any emotion during the rousing chorus, in which they effectively admit they don’t have any (“All we care about is talking/ Talking over me and you”). Innumerable TV-soundtrack appearances and a Kanye endorsement would soon follow, but perhaps the most telling indicator of the song’s remarkable success was that Peter Bjorn and John felt the need to react against it with a difficult follow-up album (2009’s Living Thing). –Stuart Berman Listen: Peter Bjorn and John: “Young Folks” [ft. Victoria Bergsman]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIRE6iw-ws4,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/531/young-folks-resize.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Peter_Bjorn_and_John-Young_Folks_ft_Victoria_Bergsman.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,83,Basement Jaxx,“Where’s Your Head At?”,"XL/Astralwerks, 2001","Most dance music evokes pleasure of one kind or another: movement, sex, freedom. The evil, grinning genius of “Where’s Your Head At?” is that it’s a doctrinaire house record in some ways, but it’s about a really bad trip: failure, stasis, friends getting antsy while you’re stuck in a K-hole. In lieu of factory-sterile, aerodynamic electronics, there are totally septic analog synthesizers lifted from a pair of Gary Numan songs, decorated with an unusually dissonant version of Basement Jaxx’s habitual vacuum-abhorring sound effects and drop-ins. The vocals are a three-dimensional array of disembodied heads screaming that something’s wrong and you’re letting everyone down. The song surges forward into the darkness like a flood in a tunnel (maybe the reason it made its biggest impact on the Tomb Raider soundtrack). And it’s totally hilarious in the context of its era’s sleek, muscular, cheerful dance music. –Douglas Wolk Listen: Basement Jaxx: “Where’s Your Head At?”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rAOyh7YmEc,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/basementjaxx-wheresurhead.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Basement_Jaxx-Wheres_Your_Head_At.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,82,Robyn,“Be Mine”,"Konichiwa, 2005","Sometime between 2005, when Robyn released “Be Mine” in her native Sweden, and last year, when the single finally hit charts beyond Scandinavia, somebody added an exclamation point. Unnecessary! Except to drive home something you’ve probably already noticed: This utterly heartbroken song has a title phrase you see on chalky-tasting Valentine’s Day candy. Exclamation or not, “Be Mine” is made of such paradoxes. Poised vocals express overwhelming emotion. “Racing heartstrings” (as Stephen Deusner said in a p4k review) adorn depressive lyrics. And the spoken-word section, starring old Whatsername’s shoelaces, recounts a scene any real narrator would’ve been too distraught to remember so touchingly. In indie rock, where craft is sometimes viewed with suspicion, angst makes singers sound like Conor Oberst; even Annie’s “Heartbeat”, which opened many indie listeners’ ears to Scandinavian pop in 2004, remains vocally icy and detached. “Be Mine” works by expertly using all the tools of commercial, instantly communicative pop– even when what’s being communicated is deep personal anguish. –Marc Hogan Listen: Robyn: “Be Mine”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCtvP0pdPoA,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/531/robyn-robbyn.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Robyn-Be_Mine.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,81,Deerhunter,“Nothing Ever Happened”,"Kranky/4AD, 2008","“Nothing Ever Happened” came at a moment when Bradford Cox seemingly spent all his time doing one of two things: compulsively writing a litany of often-great songs about the fallibility of his memory and body, and issuing public correctives for the fallibility of his big mouth. Both tendencies made Deerhunter one of the decade’s most continually compelling acts, and both come to a head on “Nothing”, easily the band’s best song. As an aughts indie epic of cathartic self-loathing, the song is Deerhunter’s own “The Rat”, but the failure to go out and see people is the last thing on Deerhunter’s mind. Cox’s terrors are buried deep inside, and to the degree he’s able to access them, they’re released with hushed, uncomplicated passion that finds the perfect fit between Poe, post-punk, and pot. –Eric Harvey Listen: Deerhunter: “Nothing Ever Happened”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_hKjvX3xX0,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/deerhunter-nothing.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Deerhunter-Nothing_Ever_Happened.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,80,Lil Wayne,“A Milli”,"Cash Money, 2008","That tinkling soundtrack trill on the intro is such a great fakeout, with producer Bangladesh mocking late-decade rap’s orchestral fixation before letting the insanity start. And then there it is: the bubbling mantra refrain, the eyepunch snare-hits, the ravenous bass thud. “A Milli” has the simplest beat this side of “Grindin’”, but the feeling you get from it isn’t spartan crunch; it’s gibbering chaos. Part of it is that bent vocal sample, and part of it is Wayne himself, disappearing down rabbit hole after rabbit hole. Bangladesh later complained that Wayne didn’t follow up the millionaire concept of that hammering beat, that he just freestyled the song. But that’s the magic of “A Milli”; it sounds like a random four-minute excerpt from a freestyle that could’ve gone for hours, Wayne chasing tangents until they become catchphrases. What’s a goon to a goblin? Nobody even knows what that means, but there’s a reason none of the hundreds of rappers who manhandled the “A Milli” beat on mixtape freestyles could ever equal the original. (FYI: Fabolous came closest.) –Tom Breihan Listen: Lil Wayne: “A Milli”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8Uhn-dU3Gg,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/lilwayneamilli.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lil_Wayne-A_Milli.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,79,Jay-Z,“Izzo (H.O.V.A.)”,"Roc-A-Fella, 2001","“Izzo (H.O.V.A.)” is essentially an autobiographical song, but the details of the lyrics are so secondary to the track’s feeling of sustained triumphalism that the only thing that comes across loud and clear is the notion that Jay-Z is a force of unstoppable greatness. Self-hagiography has always been a dominant lyrical theme in rap, but the magic here is in the way a young, hungry Kanye West brings out the joy in the rapper’s swagger by framing it in the context of the Jackson 5’s ebullient “I Want You Back” and transfers his ecstatic egomania to the listener like a contact high. At the start, Hov thanks us all for showing up, because we could have been anywhere in the world. Back in late 2001 when it seemed like the Apocalypse was an imminent possibility, there could not have been a more appealing place to be than basking in the glow of this man’s supreme confidence. –Matthew Perpetua Listen: Jay-Z: “Izzo (H.O.V.A.)”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4KmctqE3Io,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/jay-z-izzo.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jay-Z-Izzo_HOVA.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,78,Freelance Hellraiser,“A Stroke of Genius”,"self-released, 2001","The golden rule of mash-ups is the same as it was in 2002: if you can’t show us something new about the source material, don’t bother. It was broken a lot back then, and even more now, but Freelance Hellraiser at least set the bar high. Christina Aguilera and the Strokes find smolder in one another, Aguilera’s purring sultriness transforming the ache in “Hard to Explain” from world-weariness to frustrated desire. Impressively, the Hellraiser predicted the arc of 00s teenpop with this– its turn away from bubblegum R&B to guitar-driven confessionals. While most mash-ups read and play like gimmicks, “A Stroke of Genius” skips free of its origins and fits into the world of Kelly Clarkson and the Veronicas as, simply, a standout pop song. –Tom Ewing Listen: Freelance Hellraiser: “A Stroke of Genius”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzYJxK8X5ro,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/531/the-freelance-hellraiser-a-stroke-of-genius-none.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Freelance_Hellraiser-A_Stroke_of_Genius.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,77,Three 6 Mafia,“Stay Fly”,"Columbia, 2005","A bruising round robin about getting so high your speech sounds screwed and chopped before the remix. By 2005, everyone had heard a soul sample, but most listeners were still getting used to the profound lethargy of tracks like “Still Tippin’”– and “Stay Fly” had both. Tom Breihan called it a “curious departure” in his review of Most Known Unknown, but I’ll dissent. True, for guys who built their reputation barking at each other over minor-key piano arpeggios and airless beats, double-time rapping over a soul sample probably sounded like a sellout. (And it sold– their first Top 20 single since forming in 1991.) But the way they flipped it– it glimmered like a knife under a streetlight; like Psycho, luxurious without losing its edge. –Mike Powell Listen: Three 6 Mafia: “Stay Fly”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBjzAdpZzf0,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/531/36mafia-staylfy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Three_6_Mafia-Stay_Fly.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,76,Hot Chip,“Ready for the Floor”,"EMI, 2007","It’s apropos that the group which put the geek back in funk better than anyone this decade would morph dancing and debate so seamlessly, and cleverly. On the “do it” front, “Ready for the Floor” is the best paean to shaking ass-as-shyness shedding since Marvin Gaye’s “Got to Give It Up”. It’s almost as funky and twice as nerdy, to boot. From the “say it” perspective, “Ready” offers a hand to take the lead in conversation, giving the impression that something important needs to see daylight. The lyrical sentiment might be purposefully illusory, but combine it with that wobbly rhythm and sour synth, and there’s no mistaking that “Ready” is twerpy, charming, intelligent, and irresistible. –Eric Harvey Listen: Hot Chip: “Ready for the Floor”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhASu2OjEcQ,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/hotchip-ready.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Hot_Chip-Ready_for_the_Floor.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,75,Aaliyah,“Try Again”,"Virgin, 2000","Timbaland’s late-90s work with Aaliyah helped usher in an era of R&B singles as modernist pop events– “Try Again” has a claim to be its peak. At the time Timbaland’s use of acid house’s signature 303 bassline sound caught the attention: a decade on what strikes me is how well it suits the song, and its singer. Aaliyah’s great necessary quality as Timbaland’s muse and chief interpreter was poise, the ability to deal nervelessly with whatever fresh unlikeliness he conjured. This lack of showiness led some to dismiss her as bland– with hindsight what she had was mystique. Here the 303 dances around her, dramatizing her hinted come-ons, becoming the itch under her lover’s skin. “I might be shy on the first date– what about the next date?” And then suddenly, no more next dates. “Try Again” stands as a reminder of R&B’s lost possibilities– a snakier, subtler take on the decade’s defining pop form, and a singer who might have been our best guide to its nuances. –Tom Ewing Listen: Aaliyah: “Try Again”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRcAvsZgjXA,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/531/aaliyah-tryagain.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Aaliyah-Try_Again.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,74,The Knife,“Silent Shout”,"Mute, 2005","There are few things more satisfying for a music lover than witnessing an artist making the leap from promise and scattershot potential to full-bore, concentrated vision. Rarely has the statement “We are done fucking around” been made as unmistakably as the Knife managed on the opening title track from 2006’s Silent Shout. Joining the likes of Radiohead’s “Everything in Its Right Place” and Liars’ “Broken Witch”, it’s an album opener that boldly marks a shift from what the artist may have made or meant before. There’s no hook or release here, no foothold to reassure you everything’s going to be all right, just five minutes of ominous vocal intonations and icy synth. It’s the sound of the Knife staring into the abyss and making sure you know full well there’s no turning back. –Joshua Love Listen: The Knife: “Silent Shout”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rF8cCxHgc3w,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/531/theknife-silentshout.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Knife-Silent_Shout.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,73,Animal Collective,“Grass”,"FatCat, 2005","“Grass” was a staple of Animal Collective shows long before it got encoded onto Feels. Live, the band would drift into it subtly– you sometimes couldn’t recognize it until the chorus hit, as Avey Tare chanted along to Panda Bear’s drum crashes. On record, the track’s growth is clearer, merging tribal rhythms, sprinkling guitars, and electronic debris into a cloud-shaking prayer. But “Grass” is primarily an Avey showcase. His wandering vocal style makes arrhythmic polysyllables, off-beat sing-song, and simian screech all sound sublimely musical. Animal Collective aren’t the first to turn lung-tearing screams into a catchy chorus, but nobody has made it seem so natural, even inevitable. And the way the circus-like sound of “Grass” rises around Avey like fast-sprouting foliage in a high-speed jungle, shrieking to this rain-dance is really his only option. –Marc Masters Listen: Animal Collective: “Grass”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqvBoFpgXQA,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/531/animalcollective-grass.png,/dataset/artwork/Animal_Collective-Grass.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,72,The Killers,“Mr. Brightside”,"Universal, 2003","In the decadent, Moulin Rouge-inspired, ham-a-lot video for “Mr. Brightside”, Brandon Flowers and Eric Roberts battle for the love of a ghostly courtesan by playing a game of... checkers. Not chess. Not poker. Not, like, a pistol duel– checkers! Is there a less sophisticated and/or consequential way to settle a score? (Naturally, Flowers eventually flips the board in disgust, ending the brief showdown.) But this band of Vegas showboats are at their best playing to the masses and letting their flamboyant flags fly. Merging Duran Duran makeup, New Order hi-hats, and Bruce Springsteen-ian grandiosity, they gave rock fans a non-geriatric arena-ready alternative to the world’s Nickelbacks this decade, and for that we owe them thanks. Custom fit for a generation weaned on Shakespeare Lite farces like “The O.C.”, the Killers blew up everyday dramas– jealousy! betrayal! heartbreak!– into Gone With the Wind-style epics. Rampant melodrama is their BFF. –Ryan Dombal Listen: The Killers: “Mr. Brightside”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGdGFtwCNBE,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/killers-brightside.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Killers-Mr_Brightside.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,71,Kanye West,“Gone” [ft. Consequence and Cam’ron],"Roc-A-Fella, 2005","There’s something perverse about jacking Otis Redding’s short, spare “It’s Too Late” as the backbone for “Gone”. Arriving late on Late Registration, the sample beams in like a ray of sunlight on a mostly baroque album. But it’s just a set-up for this swelling peak of sonic pomp. Featuring the most insistent and insinuating orchestral Jon Brion composition on an album full of ’em, Kanye cackles at his own grandeur by throwing Cam’Ron– at the height of his asshole savant powers– right in the thick of it. Cam’s verse, not so much a lyrical feat as it is a bit of aural hopscotch (“Bloop bloop” “Whoop” “Poof poof”), is actually an understated moment. After an adequate Consequence verse, “Gone” floats off into nearly a minute of Phillip Glass-ian stabs before a spitting-mad Ye leaps back in: “Ahmmm/ Ahead of my time/ Sometimes years out.” Self-referential, aggressive, funny; it’s one of his best verses ever on one of his finest songs. –Sean Fennessey Listen: Kanye West: “Gone” [ft. Consequence and Cam’ron]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eG9_tQebYDY,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/531/kanye-late.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kanye_West-Gone_ft_Consequence_and_Camron.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,70,Junior Boys,“In the Morning”,"Domino, 2006","The Junior Boys (with or without help from members of Mouse on Mars) are masters at infusing their glistening dance music with an alluring hesitance and awkwardness. Usually the heavy lifting to that end is accomplished mostly by Jeremy Greenspan’s hushed vocals eliding the gaps where the music reconsiders itself. On “In the Morning”, thought, there’s another human element at play– the percussive sound of a voice gasping “oohs” and “ahhs,” like someone singing Michael Jackson ad-libs to themselves. The Boys take these breaths and gasps and turn them into a human hi-hat, merging it perfectly with the backing track’s glistening synth arpeggios. It’s just another example of the group’s gift of synthesis, but just because they’ve done it before doesn’t make it any less impressive. –David Raposa Listen: Junior Boys: “In the Morning”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiI-3uRfaSc,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/junior-boys-intheam.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Junior_Boys-In_the_Morning.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,69,Arcade Fire,“Rebellion (Lies)”,"Rough Trade, 2005","On an album of unabashed melodrama, “Rebellion (Lies)” surges just a little harder and higher than the rest. It’s built like a perpetual motion machine, from the backing vocals that egg Win Butler on through the chorus with a chant of “Lies! Lies!” to the insistent piano to the strings that claw at the guitar in the final push to the sudden ending. It’s like life, vital and flowing right up until the moment it’s over. Butler tries to sort out what he believes about death and dreams from what he’s been told and decides dreams are the better escape: “Come on, baby, in our dreams/ We can live on misbehavior.” More than that, “Rebellion” captures the confusion of unlearning all the things you know are wrong, and does in a way you can sing along to. –Joe Tangari Listen: Arcade Fire: “Rebellion (Lies)”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQvZ4N1RfS8,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/531/arcadefire-rebellion.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Arcade_Fire-Rebellion_Lies.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,68,Dr. Dre,“Forgot About Dre” [ft. Eminem],"Aftermath, 2000","Ostensibly a retort to the baby piranhas nipping at his heels on the barely breathing Death Row label, “Forgot About Dre” actually has far less to do with remembering Andre Young than it does reconsidering him. Seven full years since his last proper solo album, 2001 was an overhaul– more Technotronic than TEC-9, Dre became a programming fiend utilizing tensile synths, razor’s edge keyboard sounds, and sputtering drums. The rigidity is a perfect complement to the frenetic but deeply in-control heart of the song: an emerging Eminem. Em wrote every word of this song, performs one breathless verse and the chorus. His idolatry and pitched-up insanity is on display in equal measure. “So fuck y’all, all of y’all/ If y’all don’t like me, blow me,” Dre blurts. Hardly Marshall Mathers’ most elegant moment as a writer, but it is an attuned response. Dre is an artist, but he’s never been more than vocal muscle. He saves the grace for the track. –Sean Fennessey Listen: Dr. Dre: “Forgot About Dre” [ft. Eminem]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFcv5Ma8u8k,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/drdre-forgot.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dr_Dre-Forgot_About_Dre_ft_Eminem.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,67,Band of Horses,“The Funeral”,"Kids, 2007","One of the biggest trends of the last nine years has been the rise and growing acceptability of licensing as a means of making money in a dying industry. Ten years ago you wouldn’t have caught a Sub Pop band in a car commercial, but “The Funeral” has not only scored spots for the Ford Edge, but also a controversial internet-only ad for Wal-Mart– you may have also heard it on a bunch of TV shows. It’s no surprise that music supervisors would be interested in this track from Band of Horses’ 2006 debut. With its death-haunted lyrics delivered by Ben Bridwell’s sensitively tremulous tenor and a dramatically build that crescendos from the vaporous “oohs” and gentle guitar arpeggios of its opening to the driving guitar chug of its explosive chorus, it makes for an undoubtedly sweeping soundtrack. –Rebecca Raber Listen: Band of Horses: “The Funeral”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMFWFhTFohk,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/bandofhorses-funeral.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Band_of_Horses-The_Funeral.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,66,Fleet Foxes,“White Winter Hymnal”,"Bella Union, 2008","Fleet Foxes’ backwoods Beach Boys debut was nearly flawless– it was American folk music cast to wander in a deep, twisting cavern of reverb, and there it found moments of uncommon beauty. “White Winter Hymnal” repeats the same lyrics and verse melody three times, sung in rich harmony, and that would be satisfying enough given that power of said verse. They aren’t content to merely hypnotize you, though, creating a dynamic series of instrumental arrangements that cast it in a new light each time. The simple, impressionistic lyric explodes in a stunning burst of color and violence on its final line: “And Michael you would fall and turn the white snow red as strawberries in summertime.” The wordless answering vocal and big, twangy guitar that erupt after the verses are just as astonishing, their immensity throwing the song’s intimate imagery into sharp relief. This is one enormous little song. –Joe Tangari Listen: Fleet Foxes: “White Winter Hymnal”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrQRS40OKNE,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/fleetfoxes-whitewinter.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fleet_Foxes-White_Winter_Hymnal.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,65,Justin Timberlake,“Cry Me a River”,"Jive/Media, 2002","Even with that greasy-sponge hair, it was easy to see he was best dancer-singer-talent from the 1990s boy band glut. Still, it was hard to picture the pipsqueak in the too-tight t-shirt from the “Tearin’ Up My Heart” video somehow flowering into the closest thing to a next Michael Jackson (sorry, Usher). In order to bury his Mousekateer past, Justin needed to get a little dangerous. Mix in a hip-hop producer at the a-ha! moment of his pop maturation, a tabloid-ready scandal, and sleek stalker video and “Bye Bye Bye” says so long with the immediate snap of a Timbaland snare. Justin’s “Billie Jean” stabs backs instead of crying wolf, but the parallel remains– like Michael, Timberlake turns black to white, turning off his waterworks with hopes of starting a flood on her end. Meanwhile, Timbaland attacks his big pop break with everything he knows, along with a couple newbies: moody, near-baroque lines, syncopated mouth percussion, vengeful choir, cawing seagulls. The biggest can sometimes be the best, too. –Ryan Dombal Listen: Justin Timberlake: “Cry Me a River”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DksSPZTZES0,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/531/JT-crymeariver.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Justin_Timberlake-Cry_Me_a_River.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,64,Interpol,“Obstacle 1”,"Matador, 2002","Is it any wonder these guys took to numbering their obstacles? They certainly had enough going against them when they shot to indie notoriety in summer 2002: the band members’ lack of personality, those inscrutably awkward lyrics. And has any widely beloved indie act in recent memory seemed so painfully self-aware and shamelessly calculated? Yet there was no denying the galvanizing might of Turn on the Bright Lights, and this early knockout from the record remains the signature distillation of Interpol’s well-apportioned strengths, as if urgency + hook + tempo change = all you’ll ever need to craft the perfect little rock song. Even if we really have no clue why somebody’s repeatedly stabbing themselves in the neck, we can certainly hear the blood pulsing through this thing. –Matthew Solarski Listen: Interpol: “Obstacle 1”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJaGsk3e5ME,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/interpol-obstacle1.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Interpol-Obstacle_1.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,63,The Hold Steady,“Stuck Between Stations”,"Vagrant, 2006","It’s weird enough that Jack Kerouac’s On the Road narrator Sal Paradise winds up in an E Street Band-style rave-up, but poet John Berryman? And we spend half the song inside his head as he stands on a bridge contemplating suicide? What kind of party music is this? The Hold Steady kind, where sharp wit and lyrical depth come in fist-pumping, shout-along anthems. With its crunchy power chords and sharp turnaround into the chorus, “Stuck Between Stations” would have been a great song even if it wound up being about driving around and having a mindless good time, like so many classic rock songs before it. But Craig Finn upped the ante with words about his favorite subject– that moment when the fall-back patterns of youth start to fail and escapist benders are becoming too much to bear– and came up with an unlikely monument to confusion and dislocation. –Mark Richardson Listen: The Hold Steady: “Stuck Between Stations”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbZ1SEy_wxk,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/531/holdsteady-stuck.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Hold_Steady-Stuck_Between_Stations.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,62,The Shins,“New Slang”,"Sub Pop, 2001","“New Slang” was the eerie, indelible little tune that nonchalantly breezed its way into 2000s-era indie rock’s version of Reality Bites; an ambling, wayward thing that never insisted upon itself but also refuses to leave your consciousness. As far as “breakthrough hits” go, it’s a pretty modest affair, a sighing shrug of a song built on a campfire strum and some floating signifiers that could almost pass for Murmur-era R.E.M.: “Dance like the king of the eyesores”; “Dawn breaks like a bull through a hall.” And that’s not even touching on that “dirt in your fries” line, which, as far too many people delightedly pointed out, made a rather odd fit for a McDonald’s ad. But that cognitive dissonance was the other legacy of “New Slang”: An agoraphobic bedroom-pop gem that shuffled its way onto a stage larger than anyone imagined possible, “New Slang” paved the way for Norah, Nick, Juno, and the many lovely, odd, and grating mainstream/indie pairings to come. –Jayson Greene Listen: The Shins: “New Slang”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYwCmcB0XMw,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/531/New_Slang_Shins.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Shins-New_Slang.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,61,Wilco,"“Jesus, Etc.”","Nonesuch, 2002","For all the talk of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’s noisy ambiance, one of its most memorable cuts lacks any scree. The smoky backroom jazz of “Jesus, Etc.”, violin swells conjuring late-night embers of a campfire fiddle jam, sees Wilco branching from careerist jangle to a complex view of America and Americana. Reprise execs famously derided the resulting Yankee Hotel Foxtrot for lacking a viable single; Wilco ended up fleeing the label, YHF masters in hand, for Warner’s more niche Nonesuch imprint. Hindsight may be 20/20, but Reprise’s myopia is doubly startling: “Heavy Metal Drummer” is the obvious throwback summertime jam, evoking Linklater’s idyllic Dazed and Confused, but “Jesus Etc.” is its wizened brother, meditating on last cigarettes amidst stabs of pedal steel and eerily dovetailing with 9/11 (“Tall buildings shake”, “skyscrapers are scrapin’ together”). –Mike Orme Listen: Wilco: “Jesus, Etc.”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efq95Pfqt5U,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/wilco-hotelyankee.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Wilco-Jesus_Etc.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,60,Ghostface Killah,“Nutmeg”,"Epic, 2000","Let’s get the less-obvious highlights out of the way first: The beat, provided by the comparatively unknown Arthur “Black Moes-Art” Wilson, does an amazing transformative job on Eddie Holman’s weepy 1977 break-up slow jam “It’s Over”, turning it into the gleaming, amped-up entrance theme of an undefeated world champion. And the RZA’s in top form on his guest verse, simultaneously at his most funny, bizarre, and awe-inspiring (“Snap the wing off of bats, my battleaxe tongue hacks tracks/ Once the ball drop, I’m’a snatch ten jacks”). But it’s Tony Starks’ world here, and he welcomes you to it with head-spinning free associations, metaphors inside metaphors, furious between-verse rants, and a flow so fluently cool it completely distracts you from the possibility that you’re not entirely sure what lines like “spiced out Calvin Coolidge, loungin’ with seven duelers” or “Hit Poughkeepsie crispy chicken verbs throw up a stone richie” mean. –Nate Patrin Listen: Ghostface Killah: “Nutmeg”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS0XhXsmCRs,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/ghostfacekillah-nutmeg.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ghostface_Killah-Nutmeg.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,59,Radiohead,“Pyramid Song”,"Capitol, 2001","Anything but effete following the immortal one-two of OK Computer and Kid A, Radiohead returned with a record of Kid A session cuts that included this, an absolutely singular track in a catalog with no shortage of standouts. “Pyramid Song” is at once a travelers’ song for those skirting the outer reaches of consciousness (note the aquatic imagery), a nostalgic ode to a dystopian future (“astral cars”), and the slurred, drunken waltz of the damned (that piano). One can’t help but marvel at how the boys’ talents come together on this one, too; budding composer Jonny Greenwood’s orchestral arrangement is impeccable, Nigel Godrich’s sonic touches as producer have seldom been so essential, and Phil Selway’s drumming practically conjures a mist of eerie intrigue around the whole thing. Perhaps most of all, “Pyramid Song” testifies that no matter how far-flung Thom Yorke’s state of feeling, Radiohead are ever capable of bringing us to feel it too. –Matthew Solarski Listen: Radiohead: “Pyramid Song”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3M_Gg1xAHE4,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/radiohead-pyramid.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Radiohead-Pyramid_Song.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,58,The White Stripes,“Fell in Love With a Girl”,"XL, 2002","Remember when the White Stripes got lumped in with hype magnets like the Hives and the Vines? It seemed absurd enough at the time, but revisit the Stripes’ pulse-quickening breakthrough “Fell in Love With a Girl” and you may wonder why any other band got hyped. With Jack White’s stiffening howl, Meg White’s simple beat, and a woo-hoo chorus copped nicely from the Pretenders’ “Middle of the Road”, “Fell in Love” is such well-formulated garage-pop that it could sound sterile in lesser hands. But White’s white-hot guitar gives the song such blinding speed, it almost lobotomizes him. “The two sides of my brain need to have a meeting,” he yelps convincingly. Michel Gondry’s video, which transformed Jack and Meg into blurry Lego figures, caught that manic drive. It lasts less than two minutes, but its hook remains a brain-sticker eight years later. –Marc Masters Listen: The White Stripes: “Fell in Love With a Girl”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTH71AAxXmM,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/whitestripes-fellinlove.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_White_Stripes-Fell_in_Love_With_a_Girl.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,57,TV on the Radio,“Wolf Like Me”,"4AD, 2006","The first time most of us heard ""Wolf Like Me"", it was the leadoff track on an incorrectly sequenced version of Return to Cookie Mountain that leaked months in advance of its street date. In that context, it was stunning– it churned on a nasty bassline, mid-coitus howling, and aggressively shredded guitars, announcing TVOTR as, above all, a rock band, even a sexually charged one. Once ""Wolf Like Me"" got positioned in the middle of the official version of Return to Cookie Mountain, it lost none of its impact– even if its musical content is easily understood, the lyrics made their intent all the more overt– ""Baby doll, I recognize/ You’re a hideous thing inside."" Sometimes the smartest guy in the room just wants to fuck. –Ian Cohen Listen: TV on the Radio: “Wolf Like Me”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1-xRk6llh4,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/TVontheRadio-WolflikeMe.jpg,/dataset/artwork/TV_on_the_Radio-Wolf_Like_Me.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,56,Dizzee Rascal,“I Luv U”,"XL, 2003","“I love you,” a sampled voice announces blandly. It’s clear that things aren’t what they seem, but nothing can prepare for the sudden, abrasive intrusion of pounding kick drums and whipcrack snares, and least of all Dizzee’s voice, overwhelmed and overwhelming. Dizzee remains the greatest MC to emerge from the UK’s grime scene, but he never sounded as good again as on this opening salvo, his throaty flow clotted with outrage and wounded pride. Dizzee was also grime’s greatest dramatist, knowing that a battle of the sexes has to sound like actual warfare to cut through. The music’s sharp angles and trudging grind suggest romance shorn of all its niceties and most of its pleasure. But the act of being more brutally callous than anyone else delivers its own singular and compelling satisfaction. –Tim Finney Listen: Dizzee Rascal: “I Luv U”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YH0KWX2a8zY,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/Dizzee_Rascal_-_I_Luv_U.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dizzee_Rascal-I_Luv_U.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,55,Outkast,“Ms. Jackson”,"LaFace/Arista, 2000","By 2001, you either recognized the visionary virtuosity of Outkast, or you didn’t listen to a lick of hip-hop. With the release of “Ms. Jackson”, the second single from the game-changing Stankonia, the numbers in that latter category shrank considerably as everyone and their mama (and mama’s mama) embraced the duo’s heartfelt address to disappointed mothers, wives, and lovers. Not that Dre and Big Boi tackled post-break-up complications lying down– the track deceptively but deftly bobbles cold defensiveness– but the balance worked perfectly, earning the group its first #1 single. –Joshua Klein Listen: Outkast: “Ms. Jackson”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYxAiK6VnXw,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/531/outkast-ms_jackson_s.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Outkast-Ms_Jackson.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,54,Missy Elliott,“Work It”,"Elektra, 2002","Yes, there’s a beat– a dumbfounding one, so stripped-down and fluid it’s practically gestural, so good you say blah blah blah– and the samples that bookend it (Rock Master Scott at the beginning, Run-D.M.C. at the end) point out just how much more graceful technology has made hip-hop in 20 years. But this is Missy’s show as both a writer and a rapper, and she’s got so much juice she can literally reverse the flow of time. She can end nearly every line with an oh-ah rhyme (half of which are words she made up herself), she can ditch rhymes altogether for an even funnier effect (of course “nails done” matches “hair did”!), and she can totally grind on you and play it off as a giggle– note that she’s not comparing herself to Halle Berry but to “a Halle Berry poster.” There aren’t many more bluntly sexual songs that have turned into hits this elephantine; maybe it slid by because there aren’t many songs that are anywhere near this funny about sex. –Douglas Wolk Listen: Missy Elliott: “Work It”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjIvu7e6Wq8,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/missywork.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Missy_Elliott-Work_It.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,53,The Strokes,“Someday”,"Rough Trade, 2001","Rock fans weren’t exactly fiending for recycled CBGB riffs when the Strokes stumbled upon the popular consciousness in 2001. What they were craving, I think, was someone to put the selfishness, sloppiness, and sex back into rock after a decade of PC causes, benefits, and self-congratulating communities. The placement of “Someday” as the top Strokes song on our list befits the fact that it’s possibly the best distillation of lead singer Julian Casablancas’ irresistible brand of insouciant asshole charm. Musically no less springy and precise than any chart-pop pleasure, “Someday” pins its bad-news reputation on Casablancas’ half-bored roar (“I ain’t wastin’ no more TIME!”) and especially on dickishly shrugging asides like “Alone we stand, together we fall apart” and “My ex says I’m lacking in depth.” Who could resist? –Joshua Love Listen: The Strokes: “Someday”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knU9gRUWCno,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/strokes-somedya.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Strokes-Someday.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,52,Kanye West,“Flashing Lights” [ft. Dwele],"Roc-A-Fella, 2007","Given: “Stronger” came through with the head-smacking, hip-house obviousness. But, if you’re gunning for Superstar First Class like Kanye, obviousness isn’t such a bad strategy. That said, “Flashing Lights” slid past knee jerk “sampling” and blaring positivity, giving us a Euroclub-ready beat that wasn’t “Kanye doing Daft Punk” as much as it was “Kanye doing Kanye.” Alongside the raving pulse are Late Registration strings, prime-cut post-fame paranoia, and a wounded psyche that would later come into full bloom on 808s and Heartbreak. “You on the other side of the glass of my memory’s museum,” he raps. “I’m just saying, Hey Mona Lisa, come home– you know you can’t Rome without Caesar.” It’s classic Kanye– self-possessed, superfluously art-ridden, probably too clever by half. In Kanye’s post-everything museum, da Vinci sidles up next to a bust of Julius; a Karen O-repping blog post follows one dedicated to 10-ft. tall “Chewing Gum Sculptures”; Parisian house mingles with stadium hip-hop. “But what do I know?” goes the hook, pop-pushing curiosity still intact. –Ryan Dombal Listen: Kanye West: “Flashing Lights” [ft. Dwele]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ila-hAUXR5U,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/Flashinglights-yeezt.png,/dataset/artwork/Kanye_West-Flashing_Lights_ft_Dwele.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,51,Jay-Z,“Takeover”,"Roc-A-Fella, 2001","Remember when September 11, 2001 was merely shaping up to be a pretty shitty day for Mobb Deep and Nas? But even if “Takeover” could rid itself of the unfortunate historical heft of The Blueprint’s release date (it doesn’t help that Jay-Z would rap “I dropped the same day as the Towers” in subsequent freestyles), it would still remain this decade’s moment in New York hip-hop where you simply couldn’t be an impartial bystander. There have been diss tracks that have been more personal, more vicious, hell, even more effective– Nas got a bigger career boost out of his response, the simplistic and homophobic “Ether”, which inexplicably (well, not really) was declared the winner by internet scorekeepers who would soon use its title as a slang for smiting one’s enemies at all costs. But there’s never been a better diss song: Kanye West’s “Five to One” flip turned Jim Morrison’s Dionysus into Hercules while Jay calmly doled out dismissals that were all the more perfect for their brevity and focus– “a wise man told me don’t argue with fools…”; “I sold what your whole album sold in my first week”; “you only get half a bar…” That entire third verse. As is the case with so many other spats in real life, Jay-Z and Nas would eventually bury the hatchet in the name of good business, but listen to “Takeover” if you’re ever confused about who’s wearing the pants: Regardless of Jigga’s recent output, “Takeover” will always beam with the righteousness one can only have when they’re clearly playing the upper hand. –Ian Cohen Listen: Jay-Z: “Takeover”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAnGnevKxJE,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/531/jayz-blueprint.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jay-Z-Takeover.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,50,Basement Jaxx,“Romeo”,"XL/Astralwerks, 2001","A criticism you sometimes hear about Basement Jaxx tracks is that they’re too busy. Not unfair– except that leaves out how hyperactivity can inflate a fine song into something fantastic. Imagine a version of “Romeo” played totally straight– a post-Winehouse retro-soul belter. It wouldn’t be too bad, but it wouldn’t be on this list. “Romeo” needs its touches of mixing desk dementia: The way the stomped emphases at the end of Kele Le Roc’s lines set off pinball-combo beats all around your earspace; the way the middle eight dissolves into swoon and flutter; the husky work-gang chants. And so when Le Roc cuts loose it doesn’t sound stagey– more a wholly understandable reaction to all the craziness and tension the Jaxx are pumping in. Frustration has rarely sounded so gleeful. –Tom Ewing Listen: Basement Jaxx: “Romeo”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2wUbgAAydY,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/basementjaxx-romeo.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Basement_Jaxx-Romeo.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,49,Sufjan Stevens,“Chicago”,"Asthmatic Kitty, 2005","The genius of Illinois was the way Sufjan made grand, epic-scale orch-pop out of local-color minutia: Historical footnotes, backwater towns, serial killer biography. But “Chicago” is the moment where all that goes out the window, where eyes turn skyward. “Chicago” is Sufjan’s “Clocks”, his “Such Great Heights”– the song that sounds custom-built to end up in the trailers for indie romantic comedies forevermore. The dizzying melody is all longing, and Stevens builds it up perfectly, piling on the horns and strings and choral voices before letting it repeat about 50 times because he knows we aren’t getting sick of it anytime soon. It’s not an indie pop song. It’s a pop song, pure and simple, and a great one. –Tom Breihan Listen: Sufjan Stevens: “Chicago”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_-cUdmdWgU,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/sufjan-illinoise.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sufjan_Stevens-Chicago.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,48,Panda Bear,“Bro’s”,"FatCat, 2006","Animal Collective’s sprawling catalog has often been defined by the group’s restless spirit and urge to reach new ground. But there is a more meditative and tranquil pace to Person Pitch, the third solo album from AC’s Panda Bear (Noah Lennox), and nowhere is this more evident than on the album’s beatific 12-minute epic “Bro’s”. Constructed of voice and intricately layered samples, “Bro’s” can feel like a single, prolonged exhalation, as Lennox cycles through the song’s simple looped patterns with a light but deliberate touch. Though it makes use of repetition, the track’s landscape is anything but static: Snatches of instruments, sound effects, and voices arrive then disappear, while Lennox’s lyrics gently ruminate on brotherhood and friendship. Above all, “Bro’s” displays an exquisite sense of patience, with Lennox constantly turning up new surprises as he lets his various loops echo back onto themselves, as though determined to leave no possible corner of this song unbrightened. –Matthew Murphy Listen: Panda Bear: “Bro’s”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQUrf6DpXjc,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/531/pandabear-bros.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Panda_Bear-Bros.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,47,Burial,“Archangel”,"Hyperdub, 2007","Burial works like an alchemist on “Archangel”, converting scuffed, accidental rumble into a lithe, swinging 2-step pattern; an instantly nostalgic crackle suggests a worn stylus carving golden filigree out of a favorite record’s ground-down grooves. All that might have resulted in sullen murk were it not for the magic Burial works upon his vocal samples. Detuning a set of R&B a cappellas into weird, warbly chirps, Burial appropriates other singers’ words (“Loving you... holding you... kissing you”) to fit to his own tune. All the warping and collaging turns the song’s sentimentalism almost desperate, as though whatever the artist had to express were too much for a “real” voice to bear. The masked pathos of the gesture only helped confirm the myth around the then-anonymous Burial, but his coming out hasn’t robbed anything from this gorgeous, unforgettable song, which keeps its secrets hidden in cryptic rhythms and molten glissandi. –Philip Sherburne Listen: Burial: “Archangel”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7hBUL9kk1Y,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/burial-untrue.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Burial-Archangel.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,46,Robyn,“With Every Heartbeat” [ft. Kleerup],"Konichiwa/Interscope, 2007","Like Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot success, Robyn’s triumph of personal artistic vision over major-label shortsightedness is one of the great David vs. Goliath music-industry stories of the decade. And it’s poetic justice that “With Every Heartbeat”, the singer’s futuristic electro-pop collaboration with producer and fellow Swede Andreas Kleerup, would become her most successful song to date, eventually reaching #1 on the UK singles chart in 2007. It’s easy to see why people took to it. “With Every Heartbeat” is the best kind of pop hit– one with perspective-broadening ability but catchy enough for anyone to enjoy. And for a song ostensibly about pain and heartbreak, the thing’s downright triumphant in the end. Credit Kleerup’s throbbing arrangement– that synth build!– which pulsates beneath Robyn’s melancholic coos before intensifying into its hair-raising climax. Robyn may be talking breakups here, but she isn’t moping, and that’s partly because the song’s too vigorous to allow for it. –Joe Colly Listen: Robyn: “With Every Heartbeat” [ft. Kleerup]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ojHWQrm4UM,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/531/robyn-everyheartbeat.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Robyn-With_Every_Heartbeat_ft_Kleerup.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,45,Hot Chip,“Over and Over”,"DFA/Astralwerks, 2005","“Over and Over” is Hot Chip’s best “fuck you.” Vocalist Alexis Taylor has a soft tenor that, on singles like “Ready for the Floor” and “Boy From School”, sounds tender at best; at worst, he sounds like a pushover. Not here. “Over and Over”, and its indispensable, brilliant video, plays like a series of dares: “You want laid back? I’ll give you laid back. You want special effects? Here’s the sloppiest green screen job ever.” Over the song’s wobbly two-step and busted guitars, Taylor and co-vocalist’s Joe Goddard sing it mild, yes, but with a dry wit. By the time Hot Chip get to the song’s spell-along countdown, you crave the guitar hook, then the synth organ hook, then the chorus again, though they cruelly withhold the latter, daring you to play it over and over. –Jessica Suarez Listen: Hot Chip: “Over and Over”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6GDggWPMQk,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/531/hotchip-over.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Hot_Chip-Over_and_Over.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,44,Franz Ferdinand,“Take Me Out”,"Domino, 2004","Thanks to incessant cheerleading on the part of the established rock press, retro garage-punk emerged as the predominant strain of post-millennial rock music in 2001. But partway through the decade, aspiring buzz bands realized that, down on the disco floor, they could really make their profits– and that paradigm shift can be scientifically pinpointed to the 55-second mark of Franz Ferdinand’s 2004 breakthrough single. After a tense build-up– wherein Alex Kapranos’ lays out the song’s desire-as-death theme– “Take Me Out” sounds ready to blast off; instead, Franz pull an aesthetic 180 and slow it down into a militaristic, libidinous funk stomp– and even after five years of perpetual play at student discos around the world, that change-up still startles. Franz Ferdinand famously formed to create “music for girls to dance to,” but the Scottish band’s most successful U.S. single to date can be attributed to the fact that their definition of dance music was still heavy enough to lure in those girls’ jock boyfriends. –Stuart Berman Listen: Franz Ferdinand: “Take Me Out”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ijk4j-r7qPA,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/531/franz-takemeout.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Franz_Ferdinand-Take_Me_Out.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,43,UGK,“Int’l Players Anthem (I Choose You)” [ft. Outkast],"Jive, 2007","Plenty of other rappers have availed themselves of Willie Hutch’s “I Choose You” before UGK and OutKast. 50 Cent, for instance, and Project Pat. Even Cam’ron had a go. But none of those matter now. From the second André 3000 cues up the heavenly choir of Hutch’s original with a pregnant “So...,” Project Pat’s “I Choose You” becomes about as relevant as Black Moon’s “Stay Real”, which has the misfortune of sharing its sample source with Jay-Z’s “P.S.A.” André’s nervous-groom routine on the opening verse– “spaceships don’t come equipped with rearview mirrors,” he tells himself, and his giddy butterflies are practically audible– was one of rap’s most winning moments this decade, and that’s before Pimp C stomps all over the track and Big Boi offers his indelible chopped-and-screwed “ask, ask Paul McCartney.” Other rappers relied on the majesty of Hutch’s plush soul choir to elevate their shit-talk: UGK and OutKast, in their last moment together before the death of Pimp C, actually make Willie sound more heavenly. –Jayson Greene Listen: UGK: “Int’l Players Anthem (I Choose You)” [ft. Outkast]",Platform: YouTube - Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siumnbJcFUU,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/531/UGK_international.jpg,/dataset/artwork/UGK-Intl_Players_Anthem_I_Choose_You_ft_Outkast.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,42,Battles,“Atlas”,"Warp, 2007","I’ve heard “Atlas” softly criticized as being more muscle than heart. Beyond the fact that the heart is a muscle, well, that’s a completely reasonable position to hold. When Tyondai Braxton’s cracked whinny rises at an impossible angle over what could initially be confused for any number of shuffle-based beats (“The Beautiful People”, “Rock and Roll Part 2”) it’s like a clarion call to exhibit the sort of physical domination few of us ever get to experience in our cubicle-bound lives. “Atlas” is not a song you put on a mixtape. It’s a song you use when you’re coming to bat in the 9th inning against a fire-throwing closer, to soundtrack an intensely focused 5 a.m. weightlifting session (guilty), to train an army as powerful and precise as John Stanier’s drumming. So yes, “Atlas” doesn’t appeal to one’s emotions so much as it appeals to ideals. Upon hearing it for the first time, Battles’ astonishing technical proficiency set them apart from most other bands. Two years later, you don’t wonder why Battles are better than those guys, but why those other guys aren’t trying to do more to catch up. –Ian Cohen Listen: Battles: “Atlas”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpGp-22t0lU,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/battles-atlas.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Battles-Atlas.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,41,TV on the Radio,“Staring at the Sun”,"Touch and Go, 2004","George Carlin said fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity. In the summer of 2003, both were happening. The U.S. had invaded Iraq, TVOTR’s home city was covered in National Guard, and temperatures hit a record high. Helplessness was a kind of fever, or maybe a real fever, or SARS, or another form of loneliness, but TVOTR understood sex could purify as well as distract: “Beat the skins and let the loose lips kiss you clean,” they commanded. Sonically, it was a primer on what was to come from them: grinding basslines, Tunde Adebimpe and Kyp Malone’s unearthly harmonies, rhythm as pared-down and vital as a heartbeat. By the time the song reappeared on their 2004 LP, it could have soundtracked the war or served as a protest song. The birth rate went up, at least. “I was a lover before this war,” Adebimpe reminded us later on Return to Cookie Mountain. We remember. –Jessica Suarez Listen: TV on the Radio: “Staring at the Sun”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHrTOQ18yzU,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/531/tvontheradio-staring.jpg,/dataset/artwork/TV_on_the_Radio-Staring_at_the_Sun.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,40,The Avalanches,“Since I Left You”,"Modular/XL, 2000","When I found out “U Can’t Touch This” was really “Superfreak”, I was bummed. My only disappointment about the opening track from the Avalanches’ sample-based magnum opus, though, was discovering the song was actually called “Since I Left You”. I could’ve sworn that female vocalist was singing “since I met you.” I cheered up after I realized “Since I Left You” refers not to a breakup, but to an escape. This music is a travelogue to an imaginary, idyllic realm reachable only through forgotten 1960s AM pop, Latin-tinged guitars, and easy-listening schlock. While plenty of people have continued to explore the use of samples, that bacchanalian locale has been the song’s most significant legacy, particularly in the work of artists from chilly Sweden: Jens Lekman, the Tough Alliance, Air France, Studio, and jj. By the way: She really was singing “since I met you.”. –Marc Hogan Listen: The Avalanches: “Since I Left You”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpqm-05R2Jk,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/531/avalances-leftyou.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Avalanches-Since_I_Left_You.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,39,Modest Mouse,“Float On”,"Epic/Sony, 2004","Platinum sales. A #1 album. Magazine covers. Top 40 radio play. Kidz Bop. Why Modest Mouse? Why not a thousand other bands from backwater towns who also spent a decade schlepping across the country in beat-up vans? Only the gods of capitalism and pop know for sure, but, hell, if Pavement had written anything as straightforwardly uplifting as “Float On”, maybe they would have ended up on “American Idol”, too. For three and a half minutes, eternally vexed frontman Isaac Brock breaks through the rainclouds to pay tribute to the audacity of hope. The rhythm section marches forward like the irrepressible human spirit, the out of tune yet utterly undeniable pinprick guitar line seesaws like a rickety carousel, and the shout-along, clap-along, fist-pump-along chorus hits like a ticker-tape parade. Cars crash, money is stolen, jobs are lost– whatevs, man. We’ll all float on, OK. –Amy Phillips Listen: Modest Mouse: “Float On”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTAud5O7Qqk,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/531/modestmouse-float.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Modest_Mouse-Float_On.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,38,T.I.,“What You Know”,"Grand Hustle/Sony, 2006","It may not be possible to sound bigger than T.I. on “What You Know”. Ask T.I.; no one knows better. He spent a few years straining fruitlessly to match it and came up with ESPN-Zone theme songs (“Big Shit Poppin’”) and ""Numa Numa""-sampling self-help anthems (“Live Your Life”). He seems finally to have figured it out, scaling back down to the lean, hungry street cuts he made his name with. Good call. A thousand mixtape rappers have crashed on the rocks of DJ Toomp’s roiling sea of a beat, but T.I. rides that wave of glorious noise with the grinning aplomb and justified self-regard of a rapper who knows he has Made the Leap, that he has stumbled upon “the moment where the rapper becomes the moment,” as Chris Ryan once pithily put it. “You know about me, dog,” he crows, letting loose with an insinuating “yeeaaaaaahhhh” that stretches out so far it starts to feel like an act of public lewdness. Rarely has a rapper’s victory lap felt quite this exhilarating. –Jayson Greene Listen: T.I.: “What You Know”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woY6pG-WUZ8,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/ti-whatyouknow.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/TI-What_You_Know.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,37,Kylie Minogue,“Can’t Get You Out of My Head”,"Parlophone, 2001","How did Kylie make one of the decade’s finest dance-pop anthems? By offering less: less singing, less melody, less feeling. What’s left is a buzzy, insatiable desire, an itch you can’t scratch but maybe can dance out. Kylie is a diva more than singer, understanding intuitively how each coy purr, each insouciant whisper can speak to and for the lust of her audience. The point is not to want her, but to want what she wants: In the right environment, dancing to “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” traces a shared history of hopeful flirtations, irresistible seductions, inevitable disappointments, and the helpless compulsion to repeat the cycle again. If its sleek, synthetic surfaces feel hollow, it’s because fantasy is hollow, a shell for impossible expectation. “Just to be there in your arms…” Kylie imagines, then falls silent while the beat goes on. –Tim Finney Listen: Kylie Minogue: “Can’t Get You Out of My Head”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPwtJ89jes4,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/531/kylie-cantget.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kylie_Minogue-Cant_Get_You_Out_of_My_Head.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,36,Sigur Rós,“Svefn-G-Englar”,"FatCat/PIAS, 2000","Despite the fruitful decade that followed for Iceland’s Sigur Rós, there’s still no better introduction to the band’s majesty than “Svefn-G-Englar”, their first single (released in 1999 in their home country) and the lead track of its worldwide entrance, Ágætis Byrjun. The bowed guitar and billowing voice of Jonsi Birgisson create waves of sound in which steady keyboard and drum lines simply drift like tiny buoys at the mercy of a gentle ocean. But Sigur Rós soon moved on to bigger climaxes, stickier melodies, and richer textures. Listening now, “Svefn-G-Englar” feels mostly like a template. The questions it raised about its makers catalyzed our intrigue and inquiry are, to an extent, the same ones people continue to ask: Is that a girl singing? And is it singing, “It’s you,” over and over? What language is this, anyway, and how are those nautical noises made? Can all future music be this beautiful? –Grayson Currin Listen: Sigur Rós: “Svefn-G-Englar”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtemrZ7-pj0,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/531/sigurros-svefn.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sigur_Rs-Svefn-G-Englar.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,35,Animal Collective,“Fireworks”,"Domino, 2007","On Strawberry Jam, “Fireworks” fades in from the previous track on a stuttering drum machine, giving the impression that it really has no beginning. Hearing it live, Animal Collective give the impression that it might never end. What truly stands out about “Fireworks”, other than its endless and endlessly involving melody, is how starkly it lays out its emotions in such an honest, easily parsed manner. Far removed from the sort of primitivist, childlike affectations often ascribed to Animal Collective, Avey Tare is an adult here, emotionally nude and fearfully alone. Tare greets passersby and is struck by the thought that “I think that I’m only one I see sometimes,” frightened at the possibility that after all these years of fanciful naturism, this is the result of him being honest with himself. –Ian Cohen Listen: Animal Collective: “Fireworks”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztvr09J7KK4,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/animal-strawberry.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Animal_Collective-Fireworks.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,34,M.I.A.,“Galang”,"XL, 2003","Forget the Grammys– what M.I.A. really deserves recognition for is her unwavering dedication to the onomatopoeic and the staccato; the hard consonant and the long vowel; the simple pleasure-giving properties of words. “Galang” may be patois for “go on,” but the word’s real currency, she suggests, is in its stackability, the way it piles on top of itself to galang-a-lang-a-lang. A similar feeling-over-meaning instinct informed many of her future artistic choices, including those related to the complicated and not easily untangled circumstances of the Sri Lankan civil war. Despite its artist-conferred status as protest music, the video for “Galang” features M.I.A. dancing in a stylized wonderland of neon-bright graffitied iconography (bombs, tigers, machine guns) that wears insurgency and inequality like fashion. To a continent that’s often guilty of doing exactly that, “Galang” rang to some as troublesome, a criticism that M.I.A. forcefully rejected without ever convincingly explaining away. This willful conflation of style and substance– and a stubborn refusal to separate one from the other– has become a constant in her career. It’s what makes her relevant and worthy of thought and discussion, and it began here. –Mark Pytlik Listen: M.I.A.: “Galang”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRvWQrGurkQ,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/531/Galang_mia.jpg,/dataset/artwork/MIA-Galang.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,33,Spoon,“The Way We Get By”,"12XU, 2003","Spoon were late bloomers. The first seven years of the band’s career yielded many great songs, but in retrospect, Britt Daniel and Jim Eno spent all of that time gradually refining the elements of their style into a striking aesthetic all their own. “The Way We Get By” is their breakthrough, and it still stands as the track that best defines the Spoon sound: rhythm and melody pared down to the barest essentials; extremely dry piano mingling with tight-pocket percussion; Daniel’s sexy rasp hitting a perfect balance of cool aloofness and genuine emotional investment. The lyrics may namecheck some Iggy Pop classics, but the melodic sensibility is more like an alternate universe version of Billy Joel raised on the minimal punk of Wire. For longtime fans, this mastery of style and form was well worth the wait, but for just about everyone else, it was a revelation. –Matthew Perpetua Listen: Spoon: “The Way We Get By”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fp15kxAE3ig,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/spoon-waywegetby.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Spoon-The_Way_We_Get_By.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,32,Amerie,“1 Thing”,"Columbia, 2005","“1 Thing” is a song without a center, without a floor or ceiling; it seems to hover in midair for four minutes. It comes out of nowhere, with producer Rich Harrison’s flipped-and-splintered drum break from the Meters’ “Oh, Calcutta!” exploding right in your face, and then it’s nothing but breakdown, i.e., the good part. There’s basically no harmonic grounding– no bass, no synths until it’s halfway through, only a few pitch-shifted shards of Leo Nocentelli’s jazz-chord guitar and Amerie’s voice. Her singing refuses to anchor the song, either: the “no-no-no-no-no-oh” that serves as its first hook sounds like it’s flown in from an ad-lib. Even during the verses and choruses, phrases and gasps and wordless flashes of harmony pop up all over the stereo field. There’s no individual Amerie singing it, just momentary impressions of a hundred Ameries, all scraping the roof of emotional response. All of which is to say that it’s a precise evocation of being overwhelmed and swept away by passion. –Douglas Wolk Listen: Amerie: “1 Thing”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbqVg_23otg,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/amerie-1thing.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Amerie-1_Thing.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,31,Jay-Z,“Big Pimpin‘” [ft. UGK],Roc-A-Fella; 2000,"The decade starts here– damn near literally, since the album this song appears on dropped three days before 2000 began. But more than that, “Big Pimpin’” represents the aughts’ increased legitimization of the South as a region that could get shine from NYC, both lyrically and production-wise. UGK’s show-stealing guest spot ensures the former; it was a well-deserved breakthrough for the Texas icons and features the duo at their sharpest, whether it’s Bun B turning a classic rhyme-scheme switch by toying with the pronunciation of “scenario” or Pimp C drawling out eight tracks’ worth of potential hooks in his verse. And Timbaland’s creatively lucrative infatuation with Eastern sounds hits its first jackpot here, with its trilling bellydance melodies refitted into a super-widescreen ass-propulsion motivator. The only thing that hasn’t maintained its freshness: Hova’s declaration that he’ll never give his heart to a woman– though his staccato-yet-sleek time-shifting flow makes it easy to forget he reneged on that by “Crazy in Love”. –Nate Patrin Listen: Jay-Z: “Big Pimpin’” [ft. UGK]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cgoqrgc_0cM,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/531/jayzpimpin.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jay-Z-Big_Pimpin_ft_UGK.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,30,The White Stripes,“Seven Nation Army”,"XL, 2003","The Detroit duo withstood the “Return of Rock” brouhaha to make a niche for themselves as arena-rocking, side-project-glutted, guitar-god-torch-carrying icons that we’ve mostly forgotten the fake-sister mythmaking that set tongues wagging in the beginning. And “Seven Nation Army” is the garage-rock revivalists’ anthem. (Need proof? It’s still in heavy rotation in sporting arenas and strip clubs.) People, right down to those School of Rock tots, have argued about Meg’s proficiency as a drummer, but “Seven Nation Army” wouldn’t have half of its menace were it not for the simplicity of her thumping, insistent floor tom. In the end, though, it is Jack’s guitar– from its descending bass-y riff to its nimble, trebly solo– that whips the song into a furious squall from its rumbling intro. –Rebecca Raber Listen: The White Stripes: “Seven Nation Army”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0J2QdDbelmY,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/whitestripes-7nationarmy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_White_Stripes-Seven_Nation_Army.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,29,Hot Chip,“Boy From School”,"DFA/Astralwerks, 2006","“We tried but we didn’t have long/ We tried but we don’t belong.” With those lines, Hot Chip showed they were more than a bunch of synth-fetishizing goofballs. “Boy From School” wraps itself up in poignant nostalgia– the kind you can’t escape from after spotting a high school acquaintance 10 years after the caps were tossed. It’s about the undeniable desire to go backward and make things right: do that work, behave that way, see that girl. “I got lost/ You said this was the way back,” it concludes, as if stuck in a looping dream. Which would all be a bit bedwetter if not for a thump jacked in from some sort of disco eternity. Hot Chip don’t wallow in their past, no matter how bittersweet. The physicality of the beat and the clarity of the emotions fuse into a twinkling rumble that crystallizes teenage alienation without dwelling upon it. These Brits are bringing clubs into headphones and head space onto the floor; they’re trying, succeeding. –Ryan Dombal Listen: Hot Chip: “Boy From School”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-fu1PQWTBk,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/hotchip-boy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Hot_Chip-Boy_From_School.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,28,Antony and the Johnsons,“Hope There’s Someone”,"Secretly Canadian, 2005","It’s hard to think of a human experience untouched by song. With patience, you could piece together a playlist that chronologically represents everything that’s ever happened to you– birthdays and funerals, weddings and break-ups, workdays and trips abroad, all of it. Or you could simply cut to the chase and put on “Hope There’s Someone”, where we experience the fullness of a lifespan in a few overpowering minutes. At first, it’s small and delicate, like something taking its first tentative steps out of a cracked egg. Gradually, it learns to walk, grows, spreads its wings, soars, and is transfigured into a piano storm that seems very much like death. Antony Hegarty prays for safe passage for as long as he can, then gives in to the immense pressures he’s cultivating, and just howls. Metamorphosis is his leitmotif, glinting in portions through his songs, but he nailed down the entire wriggling shape of it here. –Brian Howe Listen: Antony and the Johnsons: “Hope There’s Someone”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyMGEq82uL4,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/antony-hope.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Antony_and_the_Johnsons-Hope_Theres_Someone.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,27,Clipse,“Grindin’”,"Star Trak/Atlantic, 2002","It’s one of the great triumphs of counterintuitive pop thinking that the 21st century’s definitive hip-hop yayo-chic anthem sounds so sparse. It could be because Pusha T and Malice put themselves on the supply end of the chain rather than the blown-out, hubris-loaded demand that fuels traditional coked-out musical excess. Besides, they’re more concerned with milking charisma out of a profession whose afterthought clients, for all we know, could be anyone from day traders to destitute single mothers. It’s all strictly business anyhow, fodder for some ingeniously cold wordplay (“I move ’caine like a cripple”) and visions of Benz wagons and Gucci Chuck Taylors. That the Neptunes set it to a beat that sounds like car-door slams rearranged into a minimalist, clap-accented drumline only makes it easier to feel complicit in their trade, and if it wasn’t so damned nod-provoking one might start asking some troubling questions about why we’re bobbing our heads to coke rap in the first place. –Nate Patrin Listen: Clipse: “Grindin’”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjWAWcx4xdE,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/531/clipse-lordwillin.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Clipse-Grindin.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,26,Justin Timberlake,“My Love” [ft. T.I.],"Jive, 2006","No one wants to admit it now, but the majority of pop critics had written off Timbaland by 2006. He’d spent almost 10 years rewriting the sonic guidelines for Top 40 hits, expanding both the melodic and rhythmic palette of pop, a pretty respectable run for any producer. But when a few years went by and Billboard’s resident genius slipped into the nether region below the Top 40, pastiching himself to middling effect, plenty of people were ready to call him a spent force. Then: “My Love”. A two-for-one reaffirmation that both Timbaland and the man with his name on the label, then-recently legitimatized boy-band refugee Justin Timberlake, had another round in them. The duo had already drawn attention with the grinding eroto-disco of “SexyBack”, but “My Love” was a full-on leap into the world of slo-mo techno. J.T.’s lyrics are of a piece with a career built on guileless mash notes, but the charm of his double-time choruses dovetails perfectly with Tim’s spiraling club synths. Rarely has a song fulfilled an album title’s aesthetic manifesto so succinctly. –Jess Harvell Listen: Justin Timberlake: “My Love” [ft. T.I.]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjpe7EGyiw8,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/531/timberlake-mylove.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Justin_Timberlake-My_Love_ft_TI.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,25,Rihanna,“Umbrella” [ft. Jay-Z],"Def Jam/Universal, 2007","In pop’s armory of emotions, fidelity is among the trickiest to get right. Too easily its expression tips into the reassuring sentimentality of “That’s What Friends Are For”. This only makes “Umbrella” more startling and precious: In this particular field the song is possibly without peer. The secret was to capture fidelity’s difficulty, its challenge, and Rihanna’s method is pleasingly literal, pitting her pledge of devotion against nature itself: synthesizer chords like a rainstorm and breakbeats like thunder claps or trees crashing to the ground. In the midst of it all, Rihanna herself sounds hard and defiant, abandoning her former girlish sweetness for a steely determination; hence the near-violence of her “um-be-rella-ella-ella,” as impacting and stirring as a war cry. It’s not sensual, but, “Said I’ll always be your friend/ Took an oath, I’m a stick it out till the end,” remains one of modern pop’s most romantic and affecting promises. –Tim Finney Listen: Rihanna: “Umbrella” [ft. Jay-Z]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvBfHwUxHIk,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/531/ririumbrella.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rihanna-Umbrella_ft_Jay-Z.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,24,Radiohead,“Everything in Its Right Place”,Capitol; 2000,"As we near decade’s end, let’s take a moment to pity the poor, patient believers who– when the 00s were but 10 months old– plunked down a dozen or so dollars for Radiohead’s fourth album, Kid A, hit play, and waited for their favorite band to rock out. Sure, Thom Yorke had struggled with fandom and fame touring behind the monumental OK Computer, but what was this shit? If everything was really in its right place, where were the fucking guitars, which they had vowed anyone could play (except themselves, suddenly)? And whose crackling old keyboards were those? And why did rock’s razor-sharp voice suddenly sound as if it’d been broken into bits by a centrifuge? Luckily, every band didn’t follow this song’s lead, but ""Everything in Its Right Place""– a sharp-tongued kiss-off that stood on the shoulders of different giants, like krautrock, Stockhausen, and Squarepusher– poured new possibilities into several previously hermetic circles. And it was too hypnotic to dare apologize. –Grayson Currin Listen: Radiohead: “Everything in Its Right Place”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CXcI8EgHyQ,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/531/radiohead-kida.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Radiohead-Everything_in_Its_Right_Place.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,23,Daft Punk,“Digital Love”,"Virgin, 2001","Only Daft Punk could’ve gotten away with a song this innocent, this oblivious to cool, this unafraid of coming right out and saying what it means. In interviews about “Digital Love”, Daft Punk have mentioned Supertramp as an inspiration, but the first time I heard it I thought immediately of the theme to “The Greatest American Hero”, one of the squarest TV themes of the early 1980s. I suspect the references will be different for everyone comes into contact with the song, which says something about “Digital Love”’s uncanny knack for tapping into pop’s collective unconscious. You hear it and you’re 10 years old again, standing in the vicinity of a radio and thinking about a person you’ve got a crush on, who looms somewhere just out of reach. It’s a love song to the power of music itself, accentuated by the broadcast-style filtering in its first half and the explosive guitar solo in its second. And let’s face it: when you’re young and lonely and by the radio, your feeling for the music and the yearning it inspires counts as much as anything. –Mark Richardson Listen: Daft Punk: “Digital Love”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxzBvqY5PP0,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/daftpunk-digitallove.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Daft_Punk-Digital_Love.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,22,LCD Soundsystem,“Someone Great”,"DFA, 2007","For a guy who habitually neglected to write lyrics before recording, James Murphy turned into a pretty smart songwriter on LCD Soundsystem’s Sound of Silver. On “Someone Great”, he chooses his words carefully and studiously avoids mawkishness or easy sentiment, fully aware that heady introversion can make a song like this all the more affecting. The synthy whir and clockwork drum pattern, not to mention the glockenspiel that shadows his stoic lyrics, suggest the steady passing of minutes, hours, and days marked by intractable absence, and that main scribbly motif strained subtly on its final high note, giving “Someone Great” its warmest approximation of human despair. If most songs about death– either of a loved one or of a relationship– strive to be all heart, Murphy still processes emotions through his head and feet. –Stephen M. Deusner Listen: LCD Soundsystem: “Someone Great”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwoLACv_srQ,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/531/LCD_someonegreat.jpg,/dataset/artwork/LCD_Soundsystem-Someone_Great.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,21,Kelly Clarkson,“Since U Been Gone”,"RCA, 2005","Songs about wresting your self-respect back from a bad lover have an unfortunate tendency to turn into shrill, one-sided attacks. All-American belter Kelly Clarkson, however, had a much less petty take on self-empowerment: “Your loss, sucker. I’m still gonna live my life. And better than ever before.” So, sure, “Since U Been Gone” gave us one of the most blunt rallying cries of the last ten years, a perfectly realized sing-along chorus that will be a karaoke staple for years. But it’s fair to say that no one, even her early post-TV partisans, figured on an “American Idol” winner turning out such a great rock song, let alone a 21st-century indie rock pastiche given a world-conquering pop glaze by Swedish impresario Max Martin. But homage to certain new millennium New York bands isn’t why the song transcends. It’s Clarkson’s go-for-broke performance, those reality show-honed pipes finally put to expressing the unfiltered joy of newfound freedom. –Jess Harvell Listen: Kelly Clarkson: “Since U Been Gone”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7UrFYvl5TE,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/breakaway.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kelly_Clarkson-Since_U_Been_Gone.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,20,The Walkmen,“The Rat”,"Record Collection, 2004","Somebody is pissed, somebody else is reeling from remorse, and everybody’s going full throttle on what has become the signature Walkmen hyperjam. Hamilton Leithauser, unhinged even on a good day, just flies right off the handle and the rest of the band doesn’t slack for a second. Forget secret weapons; everything’s out in the open here and all the more dangerous for it. And Bows & Arrows ain’t the half of it: This is a St. Valentine’s Day Massacre of relentless drums, bass, and guitar. It all comes together with the whiz-bang aplomb of a Scorsese picture– of course remorse is all that’s left when it’s over. Even so, “The Rat” doesn’t need a context or backstory or string of descriptive metaphors to completely knock you over. It’s a headrush of a song that succeeds entirely on its own merits, like the ultimate emo anthem for an alternate dimension where girls don’t exist (sorry, ladies), music is a form of violence, and emo actually means raw, unbridled emotion and nothing more. –Matthew Solarski Listen: The Walkmen: “The Rat”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWR1h-5EzUo,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/531/walkmen-therat.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Walkmen-The_Rat.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,19,R. Kelly,“Ignition (Remix)”,"Jive/BMG, 2002","You have to work very hard indeed to sound this casual. “Ignition (Remix)” is a lazy, buzzed collage of a night on the town put together with a craftsman’s eye. The same trick– making meticulous detail sound almost improvised– is what made “Trapped in the Closet” so shockingly successful and replayable. Here R. Kelly isn’t telling a story so much as throwing out images, but the template is similar: a chassis of easy-rolling steppers’ music that can respond to the slightest change in the singer’s mood. Not a phrase is wasted: When the Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle started a message board thread on 100 reasons for this song’s greatness, every single fraction of “Ignition (Remix)” got its own nomination (and the list went well beyond 100). Personal favorites– the cork-and-glasses onomatopoeia of “Cris-tal poppin’”; the five table-rapping beats that summon the chorus; and, inevitably, “bounce bounce bounce bounce bounce.” Every decade brings us songs whose purpose is simply to bottle the feeling of the best night out it’s possible to enjoy. Call it a service to history: if, as seems likely, future generations judge the 00s as an era of bubble-fuelled idiocy, we will at least be able to point to “Ignition (Remix)” and say, “Yes, but just hear how great it felt.” –Tom Ewing Listen: R. Kelly: “Ignition (Remix)”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6y_4_b6RS8,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/R.-Kelly-remix-national-anthem.jpg,/dataset/artwork/R_Kelly-Ignition_Remix.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,18,Hercules and Love Affair,“Blind”,"DFA/Mute, 2008","It goes without saying that “Blind” captivates any dancefloor. The real story is that Hercules and Love Affair’s Andrew Butler should be applauded for anticipating just how brilliant a disco diva Antony could be, and how physically tactile his quavering voice might sound in a club setting. “As a child I knew that the stars could only get brighter,” he sighs, and rarely before has innocence lost seemed so tragic. “Blind” doesn’t mourn the loss of childhood, but childhood’s dreams of a future in which lasting and meaningful connections might be forged. You dance in response because there is nothing else worth doing, and no other way to understand others that will work any better. A bleak vision, and yet it feels of a piece with all of dance music’s finest expressions of hopeless, unrequited devotion. “Blind” pays homage to this legacy of disco and primitive house, but also offers its own tremulous rejoinder, “What if I don’t just feel alone tonight, but every night?” In doing so, it doesn’t introduce existential angst to the dancefloor so much as reveal how its creeping fear was always already there.. –Tim Finney Listen: Hercules and Love Affair: “Blind”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RsfGJsax9E,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/hercules-blind.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Hercules_and_Love_Affair-Blind.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,17,Annie,“Heartbeat”,"679, 2004","A few great records were made this decade about the memory of dancing: In this one the dance is a stand-in for everything joyful and special about a lost moment. With its urgent builds, “Heartbeat” wills that dance to start again; with her serene delivery, Annie knows that it can’t really. An Internet sensation before that meant much actual success, for most of the 00s Annie made ginger attempts to step from being “our” pop star to being everyone’s. The subsequent success of Robyn and M.I.A. suggests this was no pipe-dream, but since most of Annie’s best songs from “Chewing Gum” to “Anthonio” are exercises in beguiling diffidence it’s not wholly surprising she never managed it. And it hardly matters: hit-laden or not, very few catalogues contain anything as bewitching as “Heartbeat”, a piece of disco handicraft as intimate as it is giddy. Annie’s final verse, taken quiet and half-spoken as the song peaks, is like eavesdropping on a secret wish. As soon as she finishes it the song blows out like a birthday candle. “I won’t forget.” Stardom be damned, neither will we. –Tom Ewing Listen: Annie: “Heartbeat”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9Wf46tLonM,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/annie-heartbeat.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Annie-Heartbeat.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,16,The Rapture,“House of Jealous Lovers”,"DFA, 2002","For a lot of people, “House of Jealous Lovers” was so inextricable from a time (2002) and a place (New York City) that by the time it saw an official album release, it was seen as a hell of a wake for the dance-punk movement that came and went with a speed that was pretty impressive even for indie sub-genres. Me, I didn’t know about any of that shit. In October 2003, I was in a Georgia college town while struggling with an iffy Internet connection– I bought Echoes on a recommendation and played Track 6 on a damn near continuous loop and had to find out who the hell these guys were. I can’t be the only one. However emblematic it is of its DFA-led scene or whatever, sweet Jesus, what a song. All those lame bandwagon acts, the failure of this scene to catch on commercially– the Rapture don’t need to answer for any of that. You need no investment in its importance to find infinite pleasure in that bassline and Luke Jenner’s fearlessly off-key hooks. Even the cowbell hasn’t gotten old. Point being, I can’t imagine ever hearing “House of Jealous Lovers” without wondering if we maybe should give this dance-punk thing another shot, like, right now. –Ian Cohen Listen: The Rapture: “House of Jealous Lovers”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HP04nfUi4g,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/therapture-house.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Rapture-House_of_Jealous_Lovers.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,15,The Knife,“Heartbeats”,"Rabid/Mute, 2002","No matter which iteration of “Heartbeats” you may prefer – the original recording from Deep Cuts, the dance remix by Rex the Dog, the achingly sentimental arrangement from the Silent Shout live disc, or even the cover versions by José González and the Scala choir– the essence of the song is always the same. The tune is strangely immutable, as if no interpretation, however radical, could possibly upset its precise balance of desire and nostalgia. As malleable as “Heartbeats” may be, it is best heard sung by Karin Dreijer Andersson, who invests her cryptic lyrics about a brief, intense love affair with a passion and vulnerability seemingly at odds with her metallic, otherworldly tone. Andersson’s words suggest as much pleasure as pain, but her voice lingers in between, where lust and terror overlap in a moment of profound intimacy. Though the chorus suggests a deep sense of loss and regret, the emphasis is placed on the fleeting connection, which is presented as a sort of magical inevitability. Indeed, there is magic in every note of the song, manifesting itself just as much in the melody as in specific details, such as the subtle decay in the neon-hued synth tones of the original, or the cavernous spaces separating the arpeggiated notes of the live arrangement. Whether performed plaintively or joyously, each version of “Heartbeats” is a miracle in its own right, highlighting a different aspect of the same incredible, life-affirming experience. –Matthew Perpetua Listen: The Knife: “Heartbeats”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcv3v6XfEvM,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/theknife-heartbeats.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Knife-Heartbeats.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,14,Jay-Z,“99 Problems”,"Roc-A-Fella, 2003","With respect to “Hard Knock Life” or “I.Z.Z.O.”, this was Jay-Z’s complete crossover moment, the single that catapulted him out of hip-hop superstardom into everyone’s vernacular. In retrospect, it sounds very much like he knows it; listen to the way his hushed lines at the beginning build into something more sure-footed over time. By the outro, he’s beaming in the direction of producer Rick Rubin, as if the song’s hugeness is now a foregone conclusion. To be fair, Jay-Z pretty much always sounds like he’s attending his own coronation, but in the context of “99 Problems”’s stadium-huge guitar inhalations and exhalations, that exuberance feels especially infectious. And don’t forget the context. Before Jay-Z and Beyoncé were officially a thing, they spent months playing coy with the media. Speculation reached boiling point with the serendipitously-aligned releases of a blatant affirmation in the form of “Crazy in Love” and a blatant denial in the form of “99 Problems”. Of course, everyone knew the story by then, but the fact that this played out the way it did (i.e. with two monstrous singles, the other of which he featured on, playing call and response at the top of the charts) is as much a testament to Jigga’s PR savviness as anything else; you don’t reach this level on music alone. –Mark Pytlik Listen: Jay-Z: “99 Problems”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1ZObiu6kRU,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/531/jayz-blackalbum.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jay-Z-99_Problems.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,13,LCD Soundsystem,“Losing My Edge”,"DFA, 2002","If the songs on this list were chosen solely by how they captured the zeitgeist in independent music, “Losing My Edge” would be an easy #1. The most audacious debut single of the 00s, ""Losing My Edge"" captured the anxiety of trying to use your taste in music as a badge of cool in the era when all music is available to anyone who can afford a broadband connection. Over a beat borrowed from Killing Joke’s “Change”, James Murphy alternates a lament about being eclipsed by ""The kids coming up from behind"" with tall tales of early encounters with Can, Suicide, Captain Beefheart, and other icons of hipster scum. The worst thing about this new generation of interlopers? “They’re actually really nice,” Murphy says, which makes them even more difficult to hate. But while he laid out the essential facts of music fandom in our age and also articulated the central absurdity of forming a band in a time of such excess (What do you do when everything has been done?), Murphy then managed to transcend it all. Yep, we’re fucked: there’s nothing new under the sun, and unlike the kids, we don’t have the advantage of not knowing. So what next, then? You go for it, make music anyway, and do it so well that no one cares what you actually know and whom you’re borrowing from. Which is what he did the rest of the decade. –Mark Richardson Listen: LCD Soundsystem: “Losing My Edge”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xG4oFny2Pk,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/-lcd.jpg,/dataset/artwork/LCD_Soundsystem-Losing_My_Edge.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,12,OutKast,“Hey Ya!”,"LaFace/Arista, 2003","What’s cooler than being cool? How about ebullient songs about life-cracking misery? Those are pretty cool. How about lyrics so sharp that nearly every line in them becomes a catchphrase? And hard funk grooves in weird power-pop time signatures? And presentations of black male sexuality that basically come down to being really clever and funny? Those are cool also. Actually, you know what was really cool? You remember the moment in the fall of 2003 when “Hey Ya!” came out and it sounded like André 3000 had cracked the code and made a record that sounded like everything on the radio and nothing anyone had heard before, and it seemed like the walls between rock and R&B and hip-hop were about to topple and from then on there would just be this enormous pool of popular music that everyone could swim around in? And then there was the equally brilliant paradigm-smashing video for it, and then after that somebody did that “A Charlie Brown Christmas” cut-up video that’s still funny more than five years later? And we all thought that OutKast had come into their true power and had a million more amazing hits in front of them, and didn’t notice that they’d basically already broken up even though to this day they keep insisting that they’re a going concern despite the fact that they don’t tour together and barely appear on each other’s records? God, that was cool. Ice cold. –Douglas Wolk Listen: OutKast: “Hey Ya!”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWgvGjAhvIw,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/outkast-heyay.jpg,/dataset/artwork/OutKast-Hey_Ya.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,11,Gnarls Barkley,“Crazy”,"Downtown/Warner, 2005","Any successful artistic collaboration is going to rely to some degree on serendipity, but Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” seems an especially uncanny intersection of timing and talent. Though the partnership between producer Danger Mouse– fresh off the success of The Grey Album, his Jay-Z/Beatles mash-up– and Goodie Mob rapper/soulman Cee-Lo Green seemed like an intriguing match-up from the start, it hardly seemed like a recipe for an instantaneous worldwide smash hit. Yet from the time it first appeared on the group’s website, “Crazy” became the virtual definition of a viral hit single, eventually becoming the first song to reach #1 on the UK charts solely through download sales. Perhaps the song’s immediate commercial success is a reflection of the spontaneity with which it was recorded. In a 2006 interview, Danger Mouse told Pitchfork that Cee-Lo’s entire vocal for the song had been recorded on the first take, a claim that might seem outlandish if “Crazy” didn’t sound quite so vibrant and alive. Based on a sample from a vintage spaghetti western soundtrack, Danger Mouse’s production is spare and compact, giving Green all the space he needs to fully inhabit the song. And it remains a joy to hear the way Green seizes the moment, his spirited vocal managing to sound both exuberant and wistful, and it quickly becomes clear that other artists might spend a career in the studio and never capture a similar moment of such casual magic. –Matthew Murphy Listen: Gnarls Barkley: “Crazy”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bd2B6SjMh_w,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/gnarls-barkley-crazy-608x608.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Gnarls_Barkley-Crazy.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,10,Arcade Fire,“Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)”,"Merge, 2004","Funeral is a great record top-to-bottom, and it really does work brilliantly as an album, with its interludes, recurring themes, and consistently affecting songs. But sometimes it’s just too intense to absorb all it once, and at times like this, you can just play just the album’s opening track, “Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)”, which encapsulates everything great about the record in one five-minute slab of yearning. “Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)” is a fantasy of teenage escape, imagining a world without parents and adult sadness, in a town buried in snow with tunnels connecting two of the characters. The lyrics paint a surreal and compelling picture, but there’s just as much meaning in the crack of Win Butler’s voice, who is bound so tightly with angst that his singing just sort of escapes in yelping waves. There’s the resonance of the piano, sounding like a creaky old upright playing 100 years ago. And there’s the song’s ecstatic build, all the voices and instruments– and there are a lot of them– joined together in a communal sing-along that both celebrates and mourns. It’s all just so much, man, that sometimes five minutes is all you can take. So ""Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)"" is there for you, until next time. –Mark Richardson Listen: Arcade Fire: “Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VU_2R1rjbD8,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/531/arcadefire-neighborhood.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Arcade_Fire-Neighborhood_1_Tunnels.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,9,Animal Collective,“My Girls”,"Domino, 2009","Leaked in late 2008, right in the middle of an ongoing economic meltdown, “My Girls” was perfectly of its moment, decrying materialism for simpler joys: “I don’t need to seem like I care about material things like social status/ I just want four walls and adobe slabs for my girls!” They don’t sing those lines; they exclaim them amid a whirl of synth beeps and sine waves that started from chaos and coalesced into an exuberant stomp. It may be a strangely sentimental point for an indie group with avant-noise roots to make, but it also signaled another sea change in a decade full of them for Animal Collective. If previously they donned masks and adopted nicknames to hide their identities, coming across as way too esoteric to play to the rafters, on “My Girls” the band step forward as pop stars of their own making, managing the impossible feat of straddling so many different audiences: indie nerds, jambanders, your parents. They could end up being Phish or Arcade Fire or maybe both, but this song is the key to their future: effervescent, heartfelt, inventive, original, and gutsy enough to suggest that we don’t need a stable economy to be rich. –Stephen M. Deusner Listen: Animal Collective: “My Girls”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zol2MJf6XNE,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/531/animalcollectivemygirls.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Animal_Collective-My_Girls.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,8,Radiohead,“Idioteque”,"Capitol, 2000","I’m pretty certain when Paul Lansky was composing his primitive computer piece, “Mild und Leise” in 1973, he didn’t reckon that 27 years later four chords from that work would cause thousands of listeners to spend the succeeding decade spontaneously breaking out in chills whenever they encountered them. Superficially, ""Idioteque"" is just another of Radiohead’s miraculous efforts on Kid A to harness the power and strangeness of several decades’ worth of experimental music and recontextualize it inside of a four- or five-minute “rock” song by a multi-platinum band with tremendous melodic gifts and a spectrally majestic singer. Yet somehow, “Idioteque” has always stood apart, inevitably eliciting greater screams when introduced in concert than any other song that isn’t a long-forgotten, heavily-fetishized B-side. Despite originating from the birth pangs of the technological revolution, “Idioteque” remains one of Radiohead’s most forward-feeling songs, thanks to its abstracted drum patterns and assorted spritzing gadgetry. Perhaps above all else, it captures the philosophical essence of Radiohead– oblique existentialist lyrics that nonetheless unmistakably suggest confusion, helplessness and menace, wedded to a song structure that similarly refuses to offer solace, comfort or explanation. –Joshua Love Listen: Radiohead: “Idioteque”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jX-fDKWGbRs,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/RADIOHEAD_IDIOTEQUE-172609.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Radiohead-Idioteque.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,7,Missy Elliott,“Get Ur Freak On”,"Elektra, 2001","“For those of you who hated,” Missy taunted at the beginning of “Lick Shots”, “you only made us more creative.” By that standard, the song that followed it on Miss E... So Addictive must’ve meant that her and Timbaland were the most-loathed artists of 2001. Eight years after it hit the top ten of Billboard’s Hot 100, “Get Ur Freak On” still sounds like an audaciously leftfield stroke of genius, a song that succeeded wildly in its goal to push futurism, global style, and flat-out hyper-manic absurdity to equally lofty heights. Timbaland’s flair for the accessibly exotic reached its peak here with his bhangra-meets-jungle beat and 50s B-movie sci-fi synths, replacing the stagger-step trap breaks of drum’n’bass with a burbling tabla and subsequently creating a uniquely slippery dance track that bumps hard without a single kick drum. Missy makes a hell of a case for herself as one of the era’s all-time great hip-hop surrealists with her performance here, turning on a dime from sing-song chanting to left-field cartoon opera notes or unhinged screams, all with a voice that’s somewhere between coyly sexy, tear-the-club-up cocky and Spike Jones chaotic. Reclaiming the word “bitch” as a synonym for badass, turning the vocal non-sequitur into an art and big-upping the kind of game-changing otherness that “got the radio shook like we got a gun,” “Get Ur Freak On” has long since established itself as an integral part of the evolution of pop music in the 21st Century– but don’t hold your breath waiting for the day it’ll sound ordinary. –Nate Patrin Listen: Missy Elliott: “Get Ur Freak On”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPoKiGQzbSQ,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/531/missy-freakon.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Missy_Elliott-Get_Ur_Freak_On.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,6,Yeah Yeah Yeahs,“Maps”,"Interscope, 2003","Part of what made “Maps” so disarming was that nothing the Yeah Yeah Yeahs had recorded, up to that point in their then-short career, even hinted that their hall-of-fame single would also be one of the most tender ballads of the decade. Suddenly the jagged art-punk and Karen O’s beer and bile-fueled sneer was put on pause. And in their place was a swooning plea for a lover to reconsider leaving, set to chiming guitar. Which is not to say the song fails to, you know, rock the fuck out at the appropriate moments. “Ballad” here means intent more than form. Guitarist Nick Zinner’s feedback-charged bridge is epic and somehow tasteful. It’s noisy without harassing the ears, and abetted by drummer Brian Chase’s charging cymbals. But O is the real star, the semi-obscure concerns of her verses obviated by the most emotionally naked chorus in a long time. When her voice rises, nearly cracking on “wait, they don’t love you like I love you” before that bridge, you don’t even need to be a native English speaker to catch the last-ditch longing she’s unashamedly revealing in public. And if you think that kind of transparency is easy to pull off without tipping into drivel, there’s decades of failed pop to prove you wrong. –Jess Harvell Listen: Yeah Yeah Yeahs: “Maps”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIIxlgcuQRU,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/531/maps-yeah.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Yeah_Yeah_Yeahs-Maps.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,5,Daft Punk,“One More Time”,"Virgin, 2000","A pool filled with cotton candy Jelly Belly’s at a 10-year-old’s birthday bash. The most drunk-uncle moment at your cousin’s wedding. A dozen cartoon kittens flipping their tails double-time with the boom. Winning both ""The $10,000 Pyramid"" and ""Jeopardy!"" on the same day. Aliens touching down on earth only to give every man, woman, and child their own ghettoblaster. This song sounds like many things. It is not prudent. But it is wise. Because– remember– it’s called ""One More Time"". Not ""Forever"" or ""Infinity"" or ""17 More Times"". This is it. There is an end. The feelings will wear off. But not before the beautifully faceless Romanthony gurgles his way into your chest, knees, brain. Not before Daft Punk distill 25 years of pop and house into five and a half minutes of first-time joy. Not before you lose any and all sense, breath, scream, beg, cry, break, heal, pump, kick, and beam wider than your mouth knows. So keep repeating because you won’t last. ""One More Time"", of course, will. –Ryan Dombal Listen:  Daft Punk: “One More Time”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGBhQbmPwH8,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/531/daft-onemoretime.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Daft_Punk-One_More_Time.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,4,Beyoncé,“Crazy in Love” [ft. Jay-Z],"Columbia/Sony, 2003","If someone told you that the sheet music for “Crazy in Love” was just a lot of exclamation points on a staff, you would believe them, right? From its first moments on til the end, its enormous beats and blaring fanfare pummel everything its path like a brutal force of nature, leaving us all with a clear choice to either turn away or submit to its indomitable power. It’s fitting that this sound would be the basis of Beyoncé Knowles breakthrough hit, as it is the ideal showcase for the singer’s forthright persona and her gift for vocal performances that manage an improbable balance of poised professionalism and feral emoting. Amazingly, “Crazy in Love” isn’t even Knowles at full blast– she comes much harder on later hits such as “Get Me Bodied” and “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)”– but the sheer force of her presence is enough to overshadow a strong cameo appearance by the freakishly charismatic Jay-Z and nearly erase the memory of her former bandmates in Destiny’s Child. She was no stranger to stardom before “Crazy In Love,” but after its blockbuster success, there was no question that Beyoncé had arrived as the definitive female R&B singer of her era, and had become the clear successor to a lineage of superstars including Mary J. Blige, Mariah Carey, Janet Jackson, Whitney Houston, Donna Summer, and Diana Ross. –Matthew Perpetua Listen: Beyoncé: “Crazy in Love” [ft. Jay-Z]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViwtNLUqkMY,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/531/crazyinloveyonce.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beyonc-Crazy_in_Love_ft_Jay-Z.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,3,M.I.A.,“Paper Planes (Diplo Remix)” [ft. Bun B and Rich Boy],"XL/Interscope, 2007","M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes” united people like few other songs this decade, suggesting that given the right synergy of personality, topicality, and marketing, something like a mass audience could still gather around even the unlikeliest of phenomena. Riding the wave of Barack Obama’s outsider popularity, “Paper Planes” felt unusually relevant for pop music in the age of “American Idol”. Here was another outsider, this one a Sri Lankan Tamil raised in London who won over listeners with global-minded beats and revolutionary chic. The third single off her second album, Kala, “Paper Planes” rode from its hipster dance-music niche into broader consciousness on the back of the trailer to Pineapple Express, then made an extended cameo in Slumdog Millionaire, the Oscar-winning film that was the late-2000s’ other great border-hopping underdog story. The song alone is stunning enough, with its skanking sample of the Clash’s “Straight to Hell”, its cash registers and gunshots, its chorus. Every sound tells a story, and every sound bled perfectly at a time of war(s), economic crisis, and a global hunger for change. Artists from Built to Spill to 50 Cent covered or remixed it; T.I. and Jay-Z sampled the song for their “Swagger Like Us” (which, going to No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100, missed M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes” chart peak by one point). The song’s viral spread– appropriate, given the border-hopping lyrics and the backdrop of global flu pandemic scares that M.I.A. referenced on her “Bird Flu”– makes it hard to identify any one version as the definitive one, which only testifies to its status as a kind of cultural fact. Push vs. shove however, we’ve always been partial to this one, where Diplo fills in the song’s few cracks with verses by Bun B and Rich Boy. –Philip Sherburne Listen: M.I.A.: “Paper Planes (Diplo Remix)” [ft. Bun B and Rich Boy]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tB_dTt6QFm0,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/531/mia-remixes.jpg,/dataset/artwork/MIA-Paper_Planes_Diplo_Remix_ft_Bun_B_and_Rich_Boy.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,2,LCD Soundsystem,“All My Friends”,"DFA/EMI, 2007","James Murphy started the decade chastising indie rock for becoming a name-dropping echo chamber of the same tired influences milked again and again. Boy, good thing that’s all changed, huh? But Murphy still did us all a service by eroding indie’s senseless aversion to dance music, using his DFA label and LCD Soundsystem to inject a cocktail of synths and syncopation that the scene has permanently assimilated. Helpfully, after complaining in “Yeah” that “everybody keeps on talking about it, nobody’s getting it done,” Murphy took his own advice and started (mostly) showing rather than telling. On “All My Friends”, Murphy is no longer worried about losing his edge– he’s not even looking for it any more. There’s a Pink Floyd reference, for Pete’s sake. And while the song’s skeletal structure may be virtually unchanged from the steady build of the band’s first singles, the ingredients have been reshuffled: Instead of building off a drum beat, the core of the song is a jumbled piano loop that sounds discordant and uncomfortable until it’s surrounded by a steadily growing army of percussion and the happiest guitar riff Murphy’s ever allowed. By the end, the piano has become euphoric and confident without changing a lick, a neat thematic trick to accompany Murphy’s bittersweet lyrical acceptance of growing old. “All My Friends” survives the high-wire act of growing mature without getting boring, which just might be the lesson Prof. Murphy can teach his peers in the next decade. –Rob Mitchum Listen: LCD Soundsystem: “All My Friends”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9wnbPUgq6c,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/531/LCD_Soundsystem_-_All_My_Friends.jpg,/dataset/artwork/LCD_Soundsystem-All_My_Friends.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 2000s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/,2000s,decade,song,1,OutKast,“B.O.B.”,"LaFace/Arista, 2000","So you’ve spent the past five days clicking through pages of this countdown only to find out that the best single of the 2000s was released just 10 months into the decade. (To the ensuing nine or so years of music: thanks for showing up.) And that it’s the very same song that topped Pitchfork’s Best Songs of 2000-2004 list from five years ago. Now you know how your parents feel when they tune into a long-weekend classic-rock radio countdown for the inevitable valedictory spin of “Stairway to Heaven”. But really, do we have any other choice? “B.O.B.” is not just the song of the decade– it is the decade. Appropriately, the contemporary hip-hop act most in tune with the Afro-Futurist philosophies of Sun Ra, George Clinton, and Afrika Bambaataa, wound up effectively crafting a fast-forwarded highlight-reel prophecy of what the next 10 years held in store. The title– aka “Bombs Over Baghdad”, a phrase that sounded oddly anachronistic in 2000, sadly ubiquitous two and a half years later– is only the start of it. In “B.O.B”’s booty-bass blitzkrieg, we hear an obliteration of the boundaries separating hip-hop, metal, and electro, setting the stage for a decade of dance/rock crossovers. We hear a bloodthirsty gospel choir inaugurating a presidential administration of warmongering evangelicals. We hear André 3000 and Big Boi fire off a synapse-bursting stream of ripped-from-the-headlines buzzwords (“Cure for cancer/ Cure for AIDS”), personal anecdotes (“Got a son on the way by the name of Bamboo”) and product placements (“Yo quiero Taco Bell”) that read like the world’s first Twitter feed. We hear four minutes of utter fucking chaos yielding to a joyously optimistic denouement (a point reinforced by the Stankonia cover’s re-imagination of the American flag, which anticipates a White House set to be painted black). Of course, there is a downside of being ahead of your time– upon its release, “B.O.B.” didn’t even dent the Billboard Hot 100, and merely peaked at No. 69 on the Hip-Hop/R&B Chart. But unlike OutKast’s subsequent number one singles (“Ms. Jackson” and “Hey Ya”) “B.O.B.” is too disorienting and exhausting an experience to ever succumb to over-saturation, and its majesty has never been diminished by ironic cover versions from cred-hungry rock bands. Because even after a decade that’s seen the act of copying music become as easy as a mouse-click, and the process of performing simplified for toy video-game guitars, the future-shocked ferocity “B.O.B.” is something that just cannot be duplicated. –Stuart Berman Listen: OutKast: “B.O.B.”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVehcuJXe6I,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/531/outkast-bob.jpg,/dataset/artwork/OutKast-BOB.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,200,Egyptian Lover,"""I Cry (Night After Night)""",Egyptian Empire; 1984,"Listen on Apple Music The original 808s and heartbreak. ""I Cry (Night After Night)"" might not be Egyptian Lover's most famous anthem (that would be ""Egypt Egypt""), but it remains one of Greg Broussard's most influential. Absent is the Egyptian iconography that situated the Californian DJ/producer/rapper/electro pioneer's early-'80s output squarely in the realm of Afrofuturism while also giving it the faintest whiff of novelty; in its place is the musical equivalent of crying into your pillow after eating a pint of Ben & Jerry's. With ""I Cry (Night After Night)"", Egyptian Lover not only paved the way for the sad robot music that the likes of Kanye West and Future would go on to push farther and into weirder territory, he also helped establish a trope that rappers still employ to this day: the sad-sack confessional that humanizes their bulletproof tough-guy persona, or in Lover's case, his gift-to-womankind lothario status. True to form, he manages to retain a sliver of his egomania even in his darkest hour, claiming his ""Egyptian voice will hypnotize."" After three decades of being entranced by he of the magnificent bouffant, maybe it's time we concede the point. —Renato Pagnani",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjFs9CPGhts,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/214/egyptianlover.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Egyptian_Lover-I_Cry_Night_After_Night.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,199,Tom Zé,"""Nave Maria""",RGE; 1984,"Listen on Apple Music In the late '60s, Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil invited Tom Zé to join the Tropicálistas and light a fire under Brazil’s military dictatorship. Often, the movement’s musical element wed exuberant, traditionally Brazilian sounds with a rock'n'roll pose and jarring descriptions of political violence and social unrest; Zé, a firebrand among revolutionaries, was particularly concerned with the folly of ""globarbarization."" When Tropicália lost the war, Zé sojourned into experimentalism, and in 1984, six years after his previous full-length, he released a revelatory electric opus called Nave Maria. It sold like cold cakes, and the 48-year-old, either too broke or heartbroken to continue, made plans to work at his brother’s gas station. Later that decade, David Byrne chanced upon Zé’s music and released a compilation on his Luaka Bop label. A spiky, wonderfully avant-garde highlight, Nave Maria’s title track makes literal Zé’s claim that he’s ""a composer of only one piece."" The components had already appeared on his 1976 album Estudando O Samba, but the recycled tune–rendered here with a serrated, quasi-metal guitar line–shows Zé’s deep yen to perfect his most madcap compositions, which other artists, were they bright enough to write them, would likely shelve in a moment of unwelcome sanity.Anyone nonplussed need not translate the lyrics, which are pure dada. Gleefully lampooning the state’s Catholic orthodoxy, the tortured narrator embodies a foetal Jesus and dramatizes his birth as a gory, first-person womb bust-out. From that ""inverted orgasm,"" Christ emerges with dismay into an unjust world. Thankfully, though that horror is keenly felt in Zé’s music, he harnesses it with such a manic sense of invention it feels like its own kind of deliverance. —Jazz Monroe",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/214/tomze.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tom_Z-Nave_Maria.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,198,A Certain Ratio,"""Shack Up""",Factory Benelux; 1980,"Listen on Apple Music Manchester’s A Certain Ratio followed the post-punk dictum of finding common ground between contrasting styles. On ""Shack Up"", they landed on a magnetic three-way split between funk, old soul, and the long-raincoat gloom of their hometown labelmates Joy Division. Originally released on the Factory Benelux offshoot partly formed by Ian Curtis’s girlfriend Annik Honoré, ""Shack Up"" came out in the same year (1980) as Dexys Midnight Runners’ ""Geno"" and resembles the bloodless flip side to Kevin Rowland’s unwavering passion. ACR singer Simon Topping emotes in a gray monotone, similar to Ian Curtis, while drummer Donald Johnson, who had arrived the previous year, brings a funky danceability to the song that Factory would explore even further with the emergence of the Happy Mondays later in the decade. But what makes ""Shack Up"" a classic is its ultra-sparse atmosphere, making it feel like ACR were stripping something to its core principles, in the process burrowing to the very core of what makes certain styles tick. —Nick Neyland See also: Liquid Liquid: ""Cavern""",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/certain.jpg,/dataset/artwork/A_Certain_Ratio-Shack_Up.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,197,"Donald Byrd / 125th Street, N.Y.C.","""Love Has Come Around""",Elektra/Asylum; 1981,"Listen on Apple Music Arriving after the disco bubble had already popped, Donald Byrd & 125th Street, N.Y.C.’s ""Love Has Come Around"" is as optimistic as they come. By the '80s, Byrd, an accomplished jazz/funk trumpeter who also taught at North Carolina Central University, had moved to Elektra after a long run on Blue Note and formed a new band that included students from his classes. The group’s second album, 1981’s Love Byrd, saw them teaming up with producer Isaac Hayes, who offered slick production chops as well as his quartet of backup singers, Hot Buttered Soul Unlimited. Hayes turned the band’s well-oiled grooves into one of the loveliest singles of the late-disco period, building a plush arrangement of piano, layered harmonies, moody bass, and Byrd’s own effervescent trumpet detailing. Decried at the time by jazz purists as a cheap bid for popular relevance, ""Love Has Come Around"" today sounds like a perfect bridge between classic soul and the last gasps of lavishly arranged dance music, soon to be eclipsed by house’s love affair with turntables and drum machines. —Abigail Garnett See also: David Joseph: ""You Can't Hide Your Love""  / Imagination: ""Music and Lights""",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/214/donaldbyrd.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Donald_Byrd__125th_Street_NYC-Love_Has_Come_Around.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,196,Dinosaur L,"""Go Bang! #5 (Francois K Mix)""",Sleeping Bag; 1986,"Listen on Apple Music Arthur Russell saw no reason to erect a barrier between the music he performed on his cello at the Kitchen, an artsy downtown performance space, and his records that got played at discotheques like the Gallery and the Paradise Garage. He was hardly alone in wanting to eradicate the boundaries between fine art and pop art; that was a principal belief in the 1980s, particularly within New York's avant-garde milieu of musicians and video artists and graffiti writers and experimental poets. But while noise and classical minimalism were deemed acceptable bedfellows, few downtown types extended that open-mindedness to the city's discotheques, where a mostly gay crowd, many of them black and Latino, were conducting their own experiments in repetition, extreme duration, and altered states. It says something about the open-mindedness of those dancers that Russell got away with some truly weird shit on his ""disco"" records. ""Go Bang! #5"", recorded in June, 1979 and released in 1981 on the album 24→24 Music, under his Dinosaur L alias, is proof of just how far out he could go. Assembling a wide array of musicians from the funk, jazz, and avant-garde scenes, Russell crafted a rippling funk cut driven by liquid bass and some of the hissingest hi-hats that have ever been put to tape, stretched into four dimensions by Julius Eastman and Jimmy Ingram's dueling organ and electric piano. But it was François Kevorkian, a French immigrant and former progressive-rock DJ who learned about disco from playing live percussion alongside Walter Gibbons at the Galaxy 21 nightclub, who would deliver the coup de grace. Kevorkian's mix, released on 12-inch in 1982, used dub delay like a wedge, opening up the track's guts and letting all the pieces fall out to land where they may. The results were as radical as anything to touch vinyl that year; a technically complex amalgam of sound absolutely soaked in pleasure. —Philip Sherburne",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/dinosaur-l.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dinosaur_L-Go_Bang_5_Francois_K_Mix.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,195,Jungle Brothers,"""Straight Out the Jungle""",Warlock; 1988,"Listen on Apple Music By the late '80s, rap was thinking big, entering a golden age that produced maximalist, sample-dense classics like It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, 3 Feet High and Rising, Paul’s Boutique, and Tougher Than Leather. Each of those records was risky and expensive, the product of artists not only with ambitious visions but also the budget to realize them. The Jungle Brothers didn’t have those kinds of resources, though, when they recorded their debut Straight Out the Jungle, released in 1988 on the no-profile independent label Warlock Records. It was the first true masterpiece of the jazz-rap movement, but compared to some of the more sophisticated albums that followed in its footsteps, it’s almost crude. Thankfully, music this kinetic doesn’t need polish. All the elements that would drive the Native Tongues movement were laid out on the opening title track, which stitches samples on top of samples. A stark James Brown groove gives way to jazzy horns that sound like they’ve been dubbed onto the track by a cassette deck; the bridge pastes harmonies from African funk great Manu Dibango’s ""Weya"" over the chorus of ""The Message"", the Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five classic that lent the Jungle Brothers their name. Of course, the JBs’ urban jungle was even more merciless than Flash’s. ""The animals, the cannibals will do you in,"" Mike G raps. ""Cut your throat, stab you in the back/ The untamed animal just don't know how to act."" The Jungle Brothers hit on the same truth that gangsta rappers on the other side of the country were discovering at the same time: Sometimes the rawer the music, the higher the stakes. —Evan RytlewskiSee also: Jungle Brothers: ""What 'U' Waitin' 4""",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/214/jungle-brothers.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jungle_Brothers-Straight_Out_the_Jungle.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,194,Too $hort,"""Freaky Tales""",Dangerous/Jive/RCA; 1987,"Listen on Apple Music For a supposedly delicate art form, people get haiku poetry confused. It’s not all dragonflies on blades of grass: many of the earliest haikus were dick puns and otherwise crude wandering-poet bro humor. It was juvenile, maybe, but not for its own sake—it complemented the reality-grounded, borderline mundane writing style. All the power lies within the extreme, barely-editorialized brevity, capturing and presenting a real life moment with the purest, most direct translation possible. On ""Freaky Tales"", the centerpiece of East Bay icon Too $hort’s major label debut Born to Mack, the 22-year-old coasted through the nearly 10-minute marathon powered by the same plainspoken and often vulgar realism. He leisurely pimp-steps into the pocket of the stripped-down funk loop; it’s an exercise in minimalism, aside from the litany of 38 women Too $hort summarily bangs with varying degrees of misadventure. But these brief, unfiltered snapshots, delivered with purposeful directness, had an elegance to them, despite the twin-sister threesomes and ill-advised bus sex—entire stories condensed into two simple, vivid lines, delivered with unmistakable confidence. It wasn’t that Too $hort wasn’t capable of going deep; he knew he didn’t need to. —Meaghan GarveySee also: Ice-T: ""Girls L.G.B.N.A.F.""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fw0uz88E2gI,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/214/tooshort.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Too_hort-Freaky_Tales.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,193,Kano,"""I'm Ready""",Emergency; 1980,"Listen on Apple Music Not so much a band as a production outfit, the Italian trio Kano were formative to the emergence of Italo Disco, which added a mechanical pulse to dance music via the use of drum machines and synthesizers. Released in 1980, their song ""I’m Ready"" splices a human rhythm section and a pulsing sequenced bassline. The singers trade verses with heavily vocoded vocals, creating a sort of man vs. machine call and response. Even if you don’t recognize the song by name, you’ve probably heard it. A minor hit at the time, a sample of ""I’m Ready"" also forms the backbone of an even more ubiquitous tune: Tag Team’s 1993 hit, ""Whoomp! (There It Is)"". From a commercial standpoint Kano were not a smash, but the group's work has had an enduring presence in underground dance music. And as dance music has returned to the mainstream, Kano's sound has become even more present. When Daft Punk released Random Access Memories in 2013, the French duo praised the dance music of the '70s and early '80s for its use of session players, who added an un-gridded feel and tangible humanity that would later be expunged as pop music came to rely more heavily on programmed and extensive computer editing. ""I’m Ready"" is a perfect example of that sound—organic, yet futuristic. Music that maintains a steady trance-like pulse, but still swings. —Aaron LeitkoSee also: Casco: ""Cybernetic Love"" / Visage: ""Fade to Grey""",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/kanoimready.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kano-Im_Ready.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,192,William Onyeabor,"""Good Name""",Willfilms; 1983,"Listen on Apple Music There’s a tense moment in the 2014 William Onyeabor documentary, Fantastic Man, when the Nigerian musician’s former distributor Obinna Obi reluctantly discloses ""an incident that made people get scared of him."" In the story, a boy visits the enigmatic superstar to chase royalties; Onyeabor responds by chasing him off his property with a pistol. When the kid returns with police they fail to find evidence, and he’s arrested for false accusation. ""That image, and air of a bully, was floating in the air,"" says Obi. The dubious status of Onyeabor’s good name lends a shade of mystique to this 12”, released at the peak of his ascension from Afrobeat bandleader to pioneering, one-man funk magician. The song’s mantra–""I have a good name, I have a good name/ And no money, no money, no money, no money, no money can buy good name""–is complicated by his backstory; Onyeabor was known for extravagant displays of wealth (notably his cutting-edge studio, pictured on the Atomic Bomb sleeve), and in his exaltation of reputability there's a note of remorse, a hint of desperation. That the music is so anthemic, propelled by a party groove that throws together P-Funk, Kraftwerk and Afrika Bambaataa, makes the song's conflicts all the more compelling. —Jazz MonroeSee also: William Onyeabor: ""Body and Soul"" / William Onyeabor: ""Atomic Bomb""",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/214/good-name.jpg,/dataset/artwork/William_Onyeabor-Good_Name.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,191,Alice Coltrane,"""Jagadishwar""",Impulse!; 1982,"Listen on Apple Music Beginning in the late '60s, Alice Coltrane released a brilliant run of spiritually rich records that blended Eastern instrumentation with experimental jazz. But by the end of the next decade, Coltrane—a harpist, pianist, composer and widow to jazz legend John Coltrane—had mostly gone quiet. Rather than performing or recording, she withdrew from the secular world, taking the name Turiyasangitananda and concentrating fully on spiritual life.  ""Jagdishwar"" comes from Turiya Sings, a cassette that Coltrane released via her Ashram’s Avatar Book Institute imprint in 1982, four years after her last major label recording. The song has a very different character from her full band work on Impulse! Where that music was often dense, percussive, and alive with improvisational interplay, ""Jagdishwar"" is more stripped down and solemn. Coltrane’s trademark harp runs are replaced by a wall of luminous synthesizer pads and moody strings. Over top, she chants devotional verses and the shaky, naked sound of her voice pairs strangely with the song’s woozy analog gospel chords. Turiya Sings was not particularly well known or well distributed at the time of its release. However, in recent years the music has found another life and a larger audience through YouTube bootlegs, blogs, and file sharing services. In 1982, ""Jagdishwar"" might have been written off as new age glop. Heard now, it sounds weirdly in harmony with any number of contemporary artists—from R&B singers to experimental musicians. Much like Arthur Russell's World of Echo, it's music that sounds like it was beamed in from a private universe, an artifact that's from the past, but not of it. Written yesterday, but meant for our ears. —Aaron Leitko",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/turiya-sings.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Alice_Coltrane-Jagadishwar.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,190,Gregory Isaacs,"""Night Nurse""",African Museum/Island; 1982,"Listen on Apple Music If there was an award for most creative metaphor for marijuana then Gregory Isaacs would take it for his soulful lament, ""Night Nurse"". It’s a rootsy interpolation of American R&B, guised as a vulnerable lover’s rock anthem ostensibly about a doting romantic partner. A closer read would suggest that ""Night Nurse"" alludes to the prolific Jamaican singer’s dependency to herb. ""I don’t want to see no doc/ I need attendance from my nurse 'round the clock/ 'Cause there is no prescription for me."" Isaacs’ relatively edgy repose stood in contrast to the peppy glam of countryman Bob Marley, garnering him the nickname the Cool Ruler. There’s a direct line between Isaacs’ addled troubadour and the Weeknd’s anesthetized analogies. Drug narratives in pop culture are often demonized for glamorizing usage, but Isaacs and his transcendent, lonely howl convey how complex, and necessary, stories of dependency and addiction can be in the right hands. —Anupa MistrySee also: Gregory Isaacs: ""Cool Down the Pace"" / John Holt: ""Police in Helicopter""",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/nightnurse.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Gregory_Isaacs-Night_Nurse.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,189,EPMD,"""You Gots to Chill""",Priority; 1988,"Listen on Apple Music EPMD weren't the first group to sample Zapp's ""More Bounce to the Ounce"", but they certainly helped usher it into the hip-hop mainstream. Ice Cube, Public Enemy, and Biggie (famously on ""Going Back to Cali"") are among the many artist who followed Erick Sermon and Parrish Smith's lead in lifting from the 1980 funk track. The futuristic, laidback sound (Zapp's robotic vocals sound like proto-Daft Punk) lent itself well to EPMD's early, unhurried swagger rap. ""You Gots to Chill"" stands out for the coolness of its insistence on its own greatness. Other rappers could claim their spot as the best, but lines like, ""To the average MC, I'm known as the Terminator/ Funky beat maker, new jack exterminator,"" delivered without heat, demonstrated the duo were more than capable—not just a couple of cocky rappers. Sermon and Smith didn't have time for any biting sucker MC's, calmly instructing them to step off: ""You gots to chill."" —Matthew Strauss",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/epmd.jpg,/dataset/artwork/EPMD-You_Gots_to_Chill.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,188,Carly Simon,"""Why""",Mirage/WEA; 1982,"Listen on Apple Music In Nile Rodgers’ excellent 2011 memoir Le Freak, the Chic producer shares the golden rule that made him such a prolific songwriter: ""Every song had to have Deep Hidden Meaning… We felt that audiences would be more receptive to multilevel messages, just as long as they liked the groove."" The formula has legs, as the recent success of Daft Punk’s ""Get Lucky"", which Rodgers co-wrote with Pharrell, suggests. But in 1982, Rodgers and his partner Bernard Edwards used it to develop a post-disco pop song performed by Carly Simon, ""Why"". The cheery, memorable ""La-di-da-di-da"" on the pre-chorus stood in contrast to Simon’s sensual, melancholy thesis: ""Why does your love hurt so much?"" This was the two-pronged message Rodgers and Edwards delivered over delicate percussion and a sticky, guitar-led dub groove; DHM at work. ""Why"" did well on the charts, particularly overseas, but the song’s slinky gait meant that its legacy was secured in the club. Simon’s name is on the track but Rodgers and Edwards’ finesse has kept production nerds agog for decades: the extended mix was remastered and reissued as a 12'' in 2011. —Anupa Mistry See also: Chic: ""Soup for One"" / Nile Rodgers: ""Yum-Yum""",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/carlysimon.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Carly_Simon-Why.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,187,Mtume,"""Juicy Fruit""",Epic; 1983,"Listen on Apple Music Long before the Notorious B.I.G. sampled ""Juicy Fruit"" for his debut single, it was the lead track off the New York R&B group Mtume’s 1983 third album, Juicy Fruit. It’s since been sampled by everyone from Warren G to Montell Jordan, but when it was released, ""Juicy Fruit"" was a hit that made its way to roller skating rinks and nightclubs courtesy of a nocturnal groove tailored for summertime cookouts. The group’s bandleader James Mtume was the son of jazz saxophonist Jimmy Heath and had played and toured with Miles Davis for a few years in the '70s. ""I was experimenting with how to take less and make it sound more,"" he explained of the track. ""If you listen to something like ‘Juicy Fruit’, there’s only four or five instruments played. And that was a whole new thing. Also, there was no reverb on nothing. So it sounded like you could have played it in your basement."" Mtume has also said the label didn’t want to release the song because it was too slow; instead, they serviced it to nighttime radio, and it became a daytime hit. —Marcus J. Moore",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/juicy-fruit.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mtume-Juicy_Fruit.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,186,The Clash,"""Rock the Casbah""",CBS/Epic; 1982,"Listen on Apple Music The Clash had pissed off the punks by going hard rock, stymied the rockers by embracing folk and reggae tradition, alienated traditionalists by turning into dub-funk experimentalists, and then, in 1982, shocked everyone by becoming pop stars. The band’s lone stateside Top 10 single, ""Rock the Casbah"" is the Clash’s entire conflicted, contradictory history streamlined into three minutes and 43 seconds, retrofitting the anti-authoritarian protest of their incendiary early singles for the discotheque, sculpting the genre-blurring sprawl of Sandinista! into military trim and upgrading their tommy guns to jet-fired laserbeams. But on top of being their most popular song, ""Rock the Casbah"" is—true to its power-to-the-people message—also the Clash’s most audibly democratic. In contrast to Joe Strummer and Mick Jones’ traditionally stratified vocal turns, ""Rock the Casbah"" complements Strummer’s on-the-ground reporting with Jones’ and Paul Simonon's broadcasted chorus; and, even while in the throes of a heroin addiction that would soon get him ousted from the band, drummer Topper Headon supplies the song’s signature piano hook and its proto-house pulse. Even if Middle Eastern geopolitics have become way too complicated over the ensuing three decades for anyone to suggest that Western rock music could topple caliphates, the unifying potential of ""Rock the Casbah"" remains undiminished. —Stuart Berman See also: The Clash: ""Should I Stay or Should I Go""",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/214/theclash.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Clash-Rock_the_Casbah.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,185,Class Action,"""Weekend""",Sleeping Bag; 1983,"Listen on Apple Music The brains behind Class Action didn’t constitute a band so much as a single idea, and ""Weekend"" was its perfect distillation. So perfect, in fact, that although it became its makers’ only hit together, it did so twice–once in 1978, and again five years later. Driving both conquests was Larry Levan, who'd made Phreek’s original a fixture of his disco temple Paradise Garage. By 1983, the meticulous arrangement had finally exhausted itself, so engineer Bob Blank hustled the old lineup back to the studio to record a post-disco revamp. The sonic overhaul was revelatory, a glimmering network of teasing bass pops, crisp programmed beats, deep-freeze synth zaps. Where the original was all groove, riding a low-key funk bounce, the revamp surges like a chemical rush. It’s a classic in the genre of dancefloor hits that venerate the pre-dancefloor anticipation, thus opening a feedback loop between the desire and its gratification. To boot, it’s a sublime document of sexual liberation. Christine Wiltshire delivers a fiery, taunting sermon on the topic of how to leave one’s man, seasoned with some deliciously cruel scene-setting: As he’s left at home with the kids, Wiltshire steps into the night for a no-strings fling in paradise. —Jazz Monroe See also: Thelma Houston: ""You Used to Hold Me So Tight"" / NYC Peech Boys: ""Don't Make Me Wait""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUAjlpgfNIc,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/classaction.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Class_Action-Weekend.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,184,Wayne Smith,"""Under Me Sleng Teng""",Jammy's/Greensleeves; 1985,"Listen on Apple Music In much the same way that New Orleans R&B transmitted across the Caribbean to influence Jamaican music in the '50s and '60s, it’s fitting that ""Under Me Sleng Teng"", the seismic 1985 single from Wayne Smith, also had roots in old American rock’n’roll. In late 1984, Smith and a friend had gotten hold of a Casiotone MT40 keyboard and played around with the machine’s rock’n’roll preset, which sputtered out a fast and dinky version of Eddie Cochran’s 1959 rockabilly song, ""Somethin’ Else"". Over the delirious beat, Smith voiced his love for spliffs and his distrust of cocaine, taking lines from Barrington Levy's ""Under Mi Sensi"" and Yellowman's ""Under Me Fat Ting"". They took it to producer Prince Jammy, who slowed the synthesized track down to a more acceptable reggae tempo. A few days later, he deployed it at a soundclash against the Black Scorpio Soundsystem and crushed them with the track. Like an earthquake, the revolutionary ""Sleng Teng"" riddim changed the Jamaican music industry overnight, introducing dancehall to the world. Going forward, riddims would be rendered via keyboards and drum machines rather than session musicians and ""Sleng Teng"" became the most ubiquitous riddim, manifesting nearly 400 times to date. Jammy’s digital productions became ascendant on the isle, and when King Tubby was tragically murdered a few years on, Jammy was crowned King. And Smith’s track also pushed Jamaica’s sound closer to that of early hip-hop, starting a cross-fertilization that continues to this day. —Andy BetaSee also: Black Uhuru: ""Sponji Reggae""",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/214/slengteng.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Wayne_Smith-Under_Me_Sleng_Teng.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,183,Loose Joints,"""Is It All Over My Face""",West End; 1980,"Listen on Apple Music The transformation of Arthur Russell from cult favorite into widely praised figurehead is one of the great upsets of pop music history. Russell, a polyglot composer who made odd, personal music, was far likelier to end up a footnote, or sample fodder, than as the subject of documentaries and biographies, to see his archives mined for scraps of magic. But Russell's pensive solo works have always appealed to underground music fans, and a renewed interest in disco and post-disco—spearheaded by labels like DFA—has helped keep his dance productions in rotation. ""Is It All Over My Face"", produced with Steve D'Aquisto under his and Russell's Loose Joints alias, is the finest of those tracks, a collision of disco's pop and exploratory impulses. Featuring famed Philadelphia session musicians the Ingram brothers and released on disco stalwart West End Records, ""Is It All Over My Face"" was not a homespun lark. Still, it was not aimed at the charts, recorded with amateur vocalists exclusively under full moons. The track was meant to encompass the flowing, friendly vibes of David Mancuso's Loft parties, though it never became a mainstay there. ""Is It All Over My Face"" exists in two wildly different forms. Russell's own cut is jammier and features a cadre of mumbling male vocalists; it sold poorly. Paradise Garage resident Larry Levan's more celebrated version highlights Melvina Woods' warbly, off-key vocals; it was a Garage smash and did time on the Billboard dance chart. The track is about dancing, or guilt, or—covertly, funnily—blowjobs. Russell was a gay man attending largely gay dance parties—he served the base, so to speak. But the unusual singsong cadences in which Woods et al. enunciate the song's little koans leave room for interpretation; it's like a group of non-English speakers singing the phrases off of flash cards. Russell compulsively injected oddities like this into his disco. That he made it all work was his genius; that we're still dancing to and celebrating these songs is a triumph of strange. —Andrew GaerigSee also: Shirley Lites: ""Heat You Up (Melt You Down)""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdswF-6Woao,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/214/loose-joints.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Loose_Joints-Is_It_All_Over_My_Face.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,182,Strafe,"""Set It Off""",Jus Born; 1984,"Listen on Apple Music Nominally, Chris Rock’s Top Five is about a cocktail party topic: who are your five favorite rappers? And while the soundtrack featured old school tracks from Slick Rick and LL Cool J, one pivotal scene features the boom-tick of an 808 and the shout: ""Y’all want this party started, right? Y’all want this party started quickly, right?"" At the time of its release in 1984, Strafe’s ""Set It Off"" was at the nexus of New York City’s underground street musics: hip-hop, electro, and boogie, when the borders separating each genre were permeable. The work of Steve Standard (who as legend has it, borrowed the 808 from his friend Cozmo D of Newcleus, who had recently deployed the drum machine for ""Jam on It""), it came to the attention of retired disco DJ Walter Gibbons. Gibbons had remixed the likes of Gladys Knight and the Salsoul Orchestra (and would soon make iconic work with Arthur Russell) and started his own label so as to put out the song. It soon became the hottest track in New York, soundtracking moves by Paradise Garage dancers and breaking b-boys alike. That shout continues to be echoed by everyone from C+C Music Factory to 50 Cent, an old-school party-starter nearly three decades later. —Andy BetaSee also: A Number of Names: ""Shari Vari"" / B.W.H.: ""Stop""",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/214/strafe-set.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Strafe-Set_It_Off.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,181,Womack & Womack,"""Teardrops""",Island; 1988,"Listen on Apple Music Four years on from Wham!’s ""Careless Whisper"", 1988’s ""Teardrops"" provided not only the decade’s other, superior take on the pitfalls of infidelity, but also its best argument for pop powered by restraint rather than excess. The underlying message may be the same—guilty feet ain’t got no rhythm—but ""Teardrops"" swaps desperation for quiet resignation, and impassioned chest-beating for melancholy understatement and resilience; the music may no longer feel the same, but Linda Womack tries to keep dancing. ""Nothing that I do or feel ever feels like I felt it with you,"" she announces with such understated dignity that her sadness feels more real, more intimate than almost any other vision of heartbreak in pop’s archives. Womack & Womack had already proved themselves expert in mining these spaces in between breakups and make-ups, intermingling love and loss so expertly and so effortlessly that the sadness becomes soothing, a crutch you can’t throw away, a lover you can’t leave no matter how badly you fight. If 1983’s Love Wars is the duo’s finest album-length expression of this mission, then ""Teardrops"" is the ultimate single-shot, a simmering soul number of such polite, warm accommodation that it raises the notion of ""background music"" to the level of art, demanding not to be turned up, but that we turn the sound of life down in order to hear it better. Linda takes care to fill only so much space as she needs to vocalize her bittersweet nostalgia, while the arrangement shrugs off her despond with a brisk yet comfortable groove that remembers the ease and familiarity of romance lost in the moment, taking for granted the spontaneous joy now forever denied to its singer. In wistful instrumental stretches the song slides into an extended keyboard solo of unexpected (even for Womack & Womack) minimalism and economy, a slow jazzstep in zero gravity. Its radical uneventfulness captures better than words the song’s fond evocation of love’s smallest scenes of domestic harmony: burnt toast or unmade beds or footsteps on the dancefloor. —Tim FinneySee also: Womack & Womack: ""Baby I'm Scared of You""",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/teardrops.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Womack__Womack-Teardrops.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,180,Patrice Rushen,"""Forget Me Nots""",Elektra; 1982,"Listen on Apple Music In the crowded field that was early '80s R&B soul—with Diana Ross, Chaka Khan, Patti LaBelle, Donna Summer, and Stephanie Mills, among others—Patrice Rushen emerged as a surprise. In the '70s, Rushen was primarily a jazz vocalist and musician who had already produced enough notable material to release a Best Of compilation. When her rhythmic, pop-leaning self-titled album arrived in 1978, Rushen quickly came under fire from the jazz community, which deemed her a sellout. Seeming to prove their point, Patrice earned Rushen her first charting single with ""Hang It Up"". 1979’s Pizazz was even less jazzy, and received similar criticism. After scoring three Top 5 hits on the U.S. dance charts from 1980 to 1981, she finally hit big with the funky ""Forget Me Nots"", a crossover smash about forlorned romance. A prominent sample (and an interpolation) of the song would later be repurposed for Will Smith’s even bigger hit, ""Men in Black"", the Grammy-winning single for the 1997 film of the same name. That shouldn’t count against it: Accompanied by a particularly elastic bassline from noted R&B bassist Freddie Washington, who worked with artists like Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Whitney Houston, Elton John, and B.B. King, Patrice Rushen’s ""Forget Me Nots"" reeks of a longing to rekindle lost love. The memories of forgotten romance refract through the clarity and transparency of her tone. She spirals through a dizzying head rush of emotions with a composure that’s gripping. ""Forget Me Nots"" is imbued with something its platinum successor could never recapture: the slow-burning desire exuded by Rushen’s poised vocal performance. —Sheldon PearceSee also: Patrice Rushen: ""Remind Me""",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/patrice-rushen.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Patrice_Rushen-Forget_Me_Nots.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,179,The Joubert Singers,"""Stand on the Word""",Next Plateau; 1985,"Listen on Apple Music For those inclined to believe that music's power can be as uncanny as it is transcendent, here’s definitive proof. In 1982, Phyliss McKoy Joubert was minister of music at the First Baptist Church of Crown Heights in Brooklyn. Her song ""Stand on the Word"", with the artist credited as the Celestial Choir, was part of a privately pressed compilation album recorded live at the church that spring. A rousing, piano-centered gospel number with a youthful lead vocal and funk underpinnings, the track caught the ear of Walter Gibbons, a disco pioneer who’d more recently become a born-again Christian—and whose studios were nearby. From there, ""Stand on the Word"" eventually spread to such NYC dance-music holy sites as the Loft and Paradise Garage. Gibbons died from AIDS-related symptoms in 1994, so he never got to hear the record’s ongoing diaspora, whether it was providing a climactic moment on Glasgow club night via Optimo’s towering 2004 mix How to Kill the DJ Part 2, inspiring Justice’s joyful ""D.A.N.C.E."" a few years later, or in this decade cracking the French charts via a reissued cover version. A 1985 overhaul, credited to the Joubert Singers, adds some dated-sounding production flourishes, but the original remains untouchable, as certain to lift up a crowd as many far better-known songs from the era. There has been some confusion about this record’s origins—it’s often listed as a remix by the Paradise’s legendary Larry Levan—but disco scholar Tim Lawrence convincingly documents the proper history on his website. Anyway, that murky path from church-pew fervor to dancefloor rapture is appropriate for a tune that can have even avowed atheists belting out, ""That’s how the good Lord works."" As for Joubert, she has remained active as founder of the Glory Gospel Singers; a website lists plans for a ""Stand on the Word"" tour this year. Mysterious ways, for sure. —Marc Hogan",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sncDrO7YIgU,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/joubertsingers.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Joubert_Singers-Stand_on_the_Word.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,178,Nina Simone,"""Fodder in Her Wings""",Carrere; 1982,"Listen on Apple Music Fodder on My Wings was arguably the most honest record Nina released in the period when she seemed to have all but disappeared from music. In the near-decade that she escaped the States to live abroad, the only other studio album she recorded was 1978’s Baltimore, a record she says in her autobiography was made mostly to move her career along. Fodder on My Wings by contrast was a deeply personal, sometimes even playful, compendium of her time in the mid-'70s to mid-'80s spent flitting between Barbados, Liberia, and various European cities. The title track explains everything: ""A bird fell to earth, reincarnated from her birth/ She had fodder in her brain/ Dust inside her wings."" And the dust inside Simone’s wings was thick—an accumulation of years of marital abuse, a falling out with her record label, an unfinished Civil Rights Movement and dear friends who’d died fighting; a lifetime of being misunderstood. Yet despite all of that, like dust, she'd rise. Nina had long called Africa her ""spiritual home,"" and she had been wanting to get back to the Western classical music she was raised on. ""Fodder in Her Wings"" allowed her to make good on both. The track opens with marimba and shekere sounds, before Simone herself enters on a Baroque-sounding harpsichord and classical piano. In a few years, she would remake this song, and she would put it in an album called Nina’s Back. —Minna Zhou",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/214/fodder-on-my-wings.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nina_Simone-Fodder_in_Her_Wings.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,177,The Pretenders,"""Brass in Pocket""",Real/Sire; 1980,"Listen on Apple Music In 1973, Chrissie Hynde wanted to get the hell out of Akron, Ohio, the town where she was born and raised, so she cobbled together some money working odd jobs and set off for England. She managed to get a gig writing for NME, and eventually, she set out to put her own band together. It took a few tries, but she eventually found three guys from Hereford: bassist Pete Farndon, guitarist James Honeyman-Scott, and drummer Martin Chambers. The Pretenders could do breakneck songs in uncommon time signatures (Honeyman-Scott rips on ""Tattooed Love Boys""), but 1980’s ""Brass in Pocket"" was comparably delicate. It’s often thought that Hynde sings from the perspective of someone getting ready for a sexual encounter—the music video where she portrays a pining waitress certainly pushes that narrative—but it’s equally possible that it’s about performing. Regardless, Hynde is her own biggest advocate, doing everything she can to get the attention she knows she deserves. ""I’m special,"" she sings, and her bandmates all concur. Hynde is special, and not just because of her iconic powerhouse alto. She’s an uncompromising and bold figure, the Midwestern badass among Brits who spoke candidly to Kurt Loder in 1980 about consent, fucking ""like a man"", and the realities of touring while on your period. In interviews, Hynde has distanced herself from this song, but it’s easy to hear an origin story here: an Akron girl moves to the UK, picks up some local phrases (""got bottle,"" ""it’s so reet""), and knows that it’s time to elbow her way into the spotlight by any means necessary. —Evan Minsker",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7Hy7uAb_eU,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/214/the-pretenders.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Pretenders-Brass_in_Pocket.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,176,Schoolly D,"""P.S.K. What Does It Mean?""",Schoolly D; 1985,"Listen on Apple Music The Philly rapper Schoolly D’s ""P.S.K. What Does It Mean?"" is rightfully famous for being one of the first gangsta rap records, an early break from recorded hip-hop’s more polite sing-song genesis that incorporated the crude and raunchy language of the street. In that respect it’s been highly influential, inspiring MCs to spin long and detailed and often filthy tales of sex, drugs, and violence (see Ice-T’s ""6 ‘N the Mornin’"", among many others). But before you take in the specifics of Schoolly D’s narrative, ""P.S.K."" is experienced as a sonic assault, with a booming low end and clattering snares that sound like they’re echoing around the guts of an empty oil tanker. You feel it first and parse it later. There’s no harmonic information, nothing in the way of melody, just the relentless 808 and DJ Code Money’s insectile scratching, and it’s not remotely pop, standing miles from the disco and funk grooves that inspired rappers just a few years before (and unlike Run-D.M.C., Schoolly D did not care for rock’n’roll). When someone in 1985 said that rap wasn’t music, that it was just a bunch of noise with someone yelling nonsense over the top, they were imagining something very much like this, a record that dared you to hear sound in a new way. —Mark RichardsonSee also: MC Shan & Marley Marl: ""The Bridge"" / Schoolly D: ""Parkside 5-2""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MtXvtZAPWY,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/214/schoollyd.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Schoolly_D-PSK_What_Does_It_Mean.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,175,K-Rob / Rammellzee,"""Beat Bop""",Tartown/Profile; 1983,"Listen on Apple Music ""Beat Bop""—part sound collage, part straight-up B-Boying-ready freestyle session—is most widely noted for being produced by Jean-Michel Basquiat, making it the artist’s most significant musical contribution outside of his no wave group Gray (though we shouldn’t forget his cameo in the ""Rapture"" video). The single was to be Basquiat’s great tribute to hip-hop culture, including all his own lyrics and was even to feature him as an additional MC. Instead, he was pushed into an ineffectual overseer position. Refusing to read the artist’s lyrics, Rammellzee—in the graffiti world, a rival of Basquiat’s, and sometimes-masked Renaissance man and mystic—and unknown 15-year-old street rapper K-Rob followed their own muse. Their labyrinthine verses are as full of contradictions and ""Did that just happen?"" curiosities as the erratic backing track. The more verbose Rammellzee's haunting, echoing delivery of phrases like ""Just freak that, yeah baba-y"" and ""Rock on to the break of dawn"" make him some Faustian answer to the Sugarhill Gang’s Master Gee. He plays pusherman and pimp, his voice shifting into nasal tones in abstract moments of jubilation; meanwhile, K-Rob, the golden heart, slinks through back alleys, relaying sharp images of poverty and systemic injustice. The record has all the disorderly, miraculous atmosphere of an art happening, the chaos resulting at least partially from the fact that this was the work of a group of strong personalities, who either didn’t know or like each other that well, crammed into a studio making a record with no guidelines. From a production perspective, it is proud too-many-cooks-in-the-kitchen music: Legendary artist, hip-hop experimentalist, and future MTV icon Fab Five Freddy and Basquiat tried their hand at dialing in heavy echo and delay effects while Basquiat’s friends—free improvisers and non-musicians alike—jammed on instruments they might or might not be able to play (fiddles, chimes and beyond) and were faded into the mix at random. The result is what Ramm aptly calls a beat from the ""depths of hell."" The ""Beat Bop"" 12” was too small of a pressing to have a substantial influence on the hip-hop mainstream, but it became a minor downtown club hit during its moment, and later a boon for record collectors and alt-rap enthusiasts. Whatever else it is, Basquiat’s happy accident is among the best work done in the vein of ""avant-rap,"" and one of the great cult rap records of its decade. —Winston Cook-WilsonSee also: Newcleus: ""Jam on It""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHCdS7O248g,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/beatbop.jpg,/dataset/artwork/K-Rob__Rammellzee-Beat_Bop.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,174,Suicidal Tendencies,"""Institutionalized""",Frontier; 1983,"Listen on Apple Music ""Institutionalized"" was the first thrash video aired on MTV, putting a couple of SoCal punks in flannels and baseball caps in the same airspace as Prince, Michael Jackson, and Journey. But the clip was more about staying on message rather than to expanding the channel's range—their pervasive ""I Want My MTV"" campaign was an overt means of mobilizing teens to yell at their parents until the parents yelled at cable providers. And no song outlines the mechanics of 11th-grade rage more clearly than Suicidal Tendencies’ ""Institutionalized"": 1) identify the problem; 2) recognize the problem is not identifiable; 3) get real frustrated; 4) have frustration compounded by the misunderstanding of parents, teachers, churches, schools, etc.; 5) work up the nervous energy to circle pit for about 15 seconds until you collapse and collect yourself to do it all over again. Like most displays of teen angst, it’s a little petty, somewhat aware of its own ridiculousness, pretty funny, and above all a cry for attention—whatever teen spirit may smell like, it’ll always taste like that Pepsi you just can’t have. —Ian CohenSee also: Dicks: ""Dicks Hate the Police"" / MDC: ""I Remember""",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/214/suicidal.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Suicidal_Tendencies-Institutionalized.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,173,Wipers,"""Youth of America""",Park Ave.; 1981,"Listen on Apple Music It was the dawn of MTV and one of the best bands in America would abstain entirely from the music video boom. Greg Sage didn’t want mass appeal publicity for Wipers; he valued mystique. His initial plan was to release a ton of music but refuse to give interviews or share photos. He just wanted to hand over the records and let listeners react without expectation or context—he thought it would encourage thoughtful listening. It was a vision that failed to bring Wipers any commercial success, instead earning them cult hero status. Due to label pressure, Sage eased up on his self-imposed restrictions (except music videos, which he never made), but it’s easy to understand his logic. ""Youth of America"", the quintessential Wipers song, pushes the boundaries of punk, operating with a regimented krautrock-reminiscent rhythm section for over 10 sprawling, unpredictable minutes. Sage’s reputation as a studio wizard is locked with his guitar sound alone—it gradually weaves back and forth between the song’s primary riff and an ominous, psychedelic vortex. This was music unconcerned with its contemporaries—Sage has said he tried to write ""in a futuristic way."" The future portended in ""Youth of America"" was a bleak one—a quasi-apocalyptic nation of oppression via wealth disparity and middle class complacency. Ambitious and disorienting, its theme is still relevant, a hypnotic call to action and a warning that if you don’t participate, things could keep getting worse. —Evan MinskerSee also: Wipers: ""Telepathic Love"" / X: ""Los Angeles""",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/214/wipers.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Wipers-Youth_of_America.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,172,The Sugarcubes,"""Birthday""",One Little Indian; 1987,"Listen on Apple Music By the time Björk Guðmundsdóttir turned 21, she had already led several musical lives: covering the Beatles and Stevie Wonder in Icelandic on a novelty record released when she was just 12 and then going on to wail in restless teenage bands like the herky-jerky Tappi Tíkarrass (translation: Cork the Bitch's Ass) and the goth-tinged post-punk group Kukl. And then, for a laugh, the singer and her subversive friends decided to start a straight-up pop band. The Sugarcubes’ debut single came out on November 21, 1986—Björk’s 21st birthday—and featured a song called ""Ammæli"". It sold a few hundred copies. But over the course of the next year, they re-recorded the track in English, released it in the UK, and, largely thanks to a rave review in Melody Maker, quickly became the biggest Icelandic pop band in history. Despite the song’s international success, though, ""Birthday"" was hardly anyone’s idea of a typical chart smash. ""We started to play pop songs that we thought were similar to what other people were playing,"" keyboardist Einar Melax has said. ""It was a total surprise to us that nobody else thought this was pop."" Instead, it wafts like a swaying and strange post-punk exhale, an easing of muscles after so many guitar shards and stuttering beats. Björk displays the same characteristics that would keep her career going for decades: the sensuous whisper, the guttural yelp, the surreal imagery. She has said the lyrics of ""Birthday"" involve ""a story about a love affair between a 5-year-old girl, a secret, and a man who lives next door"" as well as how children process erotic feelings without knowing what they mean. It’s trying to translate the unexplainable through song and, really, what could be more pop than that? —Ryan Dombal",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3du0GpXE5WY,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/214/sugarcubes.JPG,/dataset/artwork/The_Sugarcubes-Birthday.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,171,King Sunny Ade and His African Beats,"""Ja Funmi""",Mango; 1982,"Listen on Apple Music When King Sunny Ade (real name Sunday Adeniyi) dropped Juju Music in 1982, leading with ""Ja Funmi"", he popularized jùjú music to Western audiences. Jùjú is a Nigerian popular music derived from Yoruba praise singing, and is a cousin to highlife. What King Sunny Ade did with it was help modernize it. He expanded the band section, added Hawaiian steel guitar, and incorporated influences from more contemporary styles like rock and funk. It made him a big star in Nigeria long before his first international release ever happened. That landmark record, Juju Music, happened when Island Records approached Sunny Ade and, in the aftermath of Bob Marley’s death, hoped to bill him as ""the African Bob Marley"" (even though he didn’t make reggae, and Marley had long maintained ties to the continent...). Around that same time, the term ""world music"" was coined as a way to group together all non-English-language music from outside the UK and U.S. These were problematic marketing moves for sure. Yet they succeeded in piquing wider public interest in Ade’s polyrhythmic, anodyne tunes. ""World music"" as an industry started taking off. It's too bad then—or maybe it was a good thing—that Island decided to drop their African Marley a few years later when it turned out he was not their African Marley in record sales. The mighty African Beats dissolved shortly thereafter, and the king of jùjú returned to work, with success, in Nigeria. He would release material internationally years later, but in the meantime, ""Ja Funmi"" had already made its mark. —Minna Zhou",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/juju-ade.jpg,/dataset/artwork/King_Sunny_Ade_and_His_African_Beats-Ja_Funmi.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,170,Cybotron,"""Clear""",Fantasy; 1983,"Listen on Apple Music There's no tiptoeing around it: ""Clear"" is here primarily because it makes one really fucking cool sound. The skipping, phosphorescent synth melody that defines the track is one of those moments where early techno delivered on its promise of futurism, offering up a thrill that no rock or new wave or funk band could duplicate, a thrill still potent enough for hip-hop's most adventurous producer two decades later. Producers all over the world have been trying for more than 30 years, and few have made a sound as indelible and brain-tickling as what ""Clear"" offers. ""Clear"" hails from that period in techno's incubation when most of the music still felt a little too indebted to Kraftwerk, but ""Clear"" sounds more psychedelic and unhinged than other formative Cybotron tracks (""Alleys of Your Mind"", ""Cosmic Cars""). The legacy of ""Clear"", and of Cybotron, is easy to suss out. Entire discographies, like those of Detroit legends Drexciya, were built on top of it, and the stylish electro-punk of bands like Ladytron and LCD Soundsystem owe a debt as well. —Andrew Gaerig See also: Model 500: ""No UFOs"" / Phuture: ""Acid Tracks""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khgIVMUvihg,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/cybotron.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Cybotron-Clear.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,169,The Chills,"""Pink Frost""",Flying Nun; 1988,"Listen on Apple Music There is a loneliness in Chills singer Martin Phillipps’ voice that’s clearly driven by some dark places. ""Pink Frost"" is one of the best songs to capture his malaise, released just as Phillipps and his band were emerging as part of the thriving scene in Dunedin, New Zealand, most of which was being documented by the lauded Flying Nun label. Many members of fellow Flying Nun bands passed through the Chills’ ranks over the years, but Phillipps was always the driving force, apparently in possession of an infinite array of addictive melodies and a huge well of melancholy from which to divine inspiration. At first glance ""Pink Frost"" doesn’t bear many '80s trappings, instead sounding like something from the indie rock scene that blew up around 10 years after its release. Artists such as Pavement and Sebadoh owe a debt to its frayed-around-the-edges presentation, which still has the ability to devastate more than 30 years later. The ultra-thin guitar lines feel like ropes pulling you in with Phillipps offloading a ton of impossible sadness once you’re inside—a place his small but ardent audience have found perpetually enthralling. —Nick Neyland See also: Cleaners From Venus: ""Only a Shadow"" / Feelies: ""Loveless Love""",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/kaleidoscope-world.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Chills-Pink_Frost.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,168,LL Cool J,"""I Can't Live Without My Radio""",Def Jam; 1985,"Listen on Apple Music ""I Can't Live Without My Radio"", the opener from Queens rapper LL Cool J’s 1985 debut Radio, is theoretically a love song to ghetto blaster culture, though it ended up being a lot more than that. Rick Rubin’s minimalist production; LL’s bold, bragging lyrics with their references to b-boy style, his prowess, his neighborhood, and responsible boombox maintenance (buying batteries, ""terrorizing my neighbors with the heavy bass"")—it all helped usher in the new school of hip-hop. This intense, immediate song pulled more from rock in length and sound (Radio's ""Rock the Bells"" sampled AC/DC) versus the meandering disco-inspired old-school typified by something like Sugar Hill Gang's ""Rapper’s Delight"". The track was included in the 1985 movie Krush Groove, a film that looked at the rise of new school hip-hop groups like LL Cool J, Run-D.M.C., and the Fat Boys. In turn, it helped influence the ""golden age"" of hip-hop, embodied by the likes of Boogie Down Productions and Public Enemy. When it was released, though, it was just a song about a dude and the music that literally soundtracked his life. —Brandon Stosuy",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/ll-cool-j.jpg,/dataset/artwork/LL_Cool_J-I_Cant_Live_Without_My_Radio.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,167,Yoko Ono,"""Walking on Thin Ice""",Geffen; 1981,"Listen on Apple Music Yoko Ono was always ahead of her time. ""Walking on Thin Ice"" made it official. She and John Lennon had left the song off of their 1980 album together, Double Fantasy. That album’s biggest A-sides, such as ""(Just Like) Starting Over"" and ""Woman"", successfully matched Lennon’s longstanding melodic directness with a mature perspective and contemporary production sheen. But it was a B-side, the Ono-led ""Kiss Kiss Kiss"", that, as Lennon told an interviewer, was ""getting a lot of rock club, new wave, disco exposure."" The emerging new-wave underground’s debt to Ono’s previous work was real—the B-52’s have acknowledged the influence the avant-garde artist’s shrill screams had on the iconic Athens, Ga. band’s late-'70s breakthrough ""Rock Lobster""—and the six-minute ""Walking on Thin Ice"" would be a ""special kind of disc for them."" Everything changed when, the night after they finished mixing the record, Lennon was murdered. Everything except for the song’s ability to reach an audience now primed for Ono’s vocal eccentricities. With clangorous guitar from Lennon over a murky low-end groove, ""Walking on Thin Ice"" frames Ono’s ominous narrative about life’s uncertainties, punctuated with shrieks. Beyond the new-wavers of the time and the alternative-era iconoclasts who would follow, the influence of Ono—and this song in particular—resonates across the chilly, nocturnal grooves of Johnny Jewel’s Italians Do It Better acts and the unfettered vocal styles of bands from Life Without Buildings to Ponytail and tUnE-yArDs. ""Walking on Thin Ice"" finally lived up Lennon’s pronouncement that it would be Ono’s first No. 1 (on the Billboard Hot Dance Club Songs chart, anyway) in 2003, with a remix-packed reissue; an expansive 2007 reworking with Spiritualized’s Jason Pierce further shows the song’s mutability. The ultimate version, though, might be the sleekly sprawling ""1981 re-edit"" compiled on 2000’s influential Disco (Not Disco) compilation. ""The family who laughs together stays together,"" Ono writes in the liner notes for the 7” single, issued two months after her husband’s death, recounting a personal anecdote about their lives together. Despite a reputation for highbrow seriousness, perhaps one of her most foresighted ideas was one that rock’s misguided anti-Yoko axis had long since forgotten: Great art can make young people dance. As Ono intones dryly on the track, ""That's a hell of a thing to do, you know."" —Marc HoganSee also: John Lennon: ""Watching the Wheels"" / Paul McCartney: ""Temporary Secretary""",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/214/yokoono.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Yoko_Ono-Walking_on_Thin_Ice.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,166,George Benson,"""Give Me the Night""",Warner Bros.; 1980,"Listen on Apple Music For those who first hear Quincy Jones through Michael Jackson's Off the Wall and Thriller, it’s a thrill discovering Jones' prolific output from this era outside of Michael. The tight horns, swooping strings, and instrumental precision all remain in play; only a new character takes center stage. There's Jones' own solo album The Dude, and its can't-miss Chaz Jankel cover ""Ai No Corrida""; his work with Brothers Johnson, especially ""Stomp""; there's Chaka Khan and Rufus' ""Do You Love What You Feel"". But George Benson—a jazz guitarist who had few qualms about dipping into the pop world—was the lucky recipient of one of Jones' best records with the Rod Temperton-penned ""Give Me the Night"". Temperton, a songwriter and member of the band Heatwave, was responsible for Michael Jackson's ""Rock With You"", ""Off the Wall"", and ""Thriller"", and collaborated frequently with Jones. On ""Give Me the Night,"" the ineffable elements of a Temperton record is in place: the assured swagger that offsets its unapologetic sweetness, the sugary euphoria packaged at the song's heart. Meanwhile, the rest of the record dances around it: background vocals scatting, an especially active bassline, those mellow guitar tones with his vocals echoing behind them, strings sweeping through the background. It's an idealistic song, one that envisions every evening as ideal as in memory, a celebration of celebration. —David DrakeSee also: Brothers Johnson: ""Stomp"" /  Quincy Jones: ""Ai No Corrida""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAC7ta1b6X4,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/georgebenson.jpg,/dataset/artwork/George_Benson-Give_Me_the_Night.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,165,Inner City,"""Good Life""",Virgin; 1988,"Listen on Apple Music Inner City was essentially an accident—a collision of Chicago and Detroit sprouted from an instrumental that techno forefather Kevin Saunderson didn't know how to finish. Vocalist Paris Grey helped Saunderson combine his club-ready sound with bona fide pop hooks, and it was an instant smash. ""Good Life"" was Inner City's peak and a reminder that even techno's sacredest cows—the guys who invented the genre itself—weren't averse to a bit of chart-baiting (something that today's dance music snobs could stand to remember). And chart it did: ""Good Life"" hit #4 on the UK pop charts at the beginning of 1989, a time when Britain couldn't get enough of American dance music. In the U.S., it reached a more modest #73, though it remains an enduring favorite in house DJ sets to this day. ""Good Life"" proved irresistible for heads and dilettantes alike, reinforcing a surge of interest in house music that has echoes of today's EDM explosion. And while there's a long lineage to be traced from Inner City—from classic MK dubs in the '90s to Duke Dumont's hits of the past few years—as often is the case with classic dance music, it's tough to beat the original. —Andrew Ryce",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/inner-city.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Inner_City-Good_Life.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,164,Hüsker Dü,"""Pink Turns to Blue""",SST; 1984,"Listen on Apple Music Just as they rose to prominence in the '80s, Hüsker Dü found themselves on the precipice of a breakup due to creative conflicts between principal songwriters Bob Mould and Grant Hart. Mould was the razor-witted go-getter, and Grant was the dark hippie whose continued drug abuse threatened to rip the band apart. As unrest spread through the ranks, Hüsker Dü grew more vulnerable, casting shadows on sunny pop punk and confronting their demons directly. No song embodied the existential shroud as poignantly as Grant’s ""Pink Turns to Blue"", a hardcore rumination on death, transience, and uncertainty. In a subtle act of juxtaposition, the specter of death takes on dual guises: a mournful entity built from slashing guitar chords, and a poetic form conjured through soft, euphemistic language. As Grant desperately attempts to stifle his sorrow through images of fading hues and pacing angels, the churning void refuses to abate. The Zen Arcade standout reiterated Hüsker Dü’s greatest strength: capturing the feelings behind the fury without being torn asunder. —Zoe Camp",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/huskerdu.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Hsker_D-Pink_Turns_to_Blue.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,163,Peter Gabriel,"""In Your Eyes""",Geffen; 1986,"Listen on Apple Music The first video for a single from Peter Gabriel’s 1986 album So was a creative masterstroke, combining then-revolutionary claymation (provided by the creators of ""Wallace & Gromit""), stop-motion, and pixilation technology to successfully rebrand an art-rock outsider as a cutting-edge multimedia pop artist. But the most enduring visual—and the one that made it Gabriel’s most enduring song—is just a single shot of a dude holding up a damn boombox. Say Anything premiered in 1989—closer to the release of Nevermind than ""In Your Eyes"". Still, artists exploring an '80s aesthetic in the 25 years since often let that one scene and its defining song speak for the entire decade that came before it—cosmic stardust emanating from the Fairlight CMI synthesizer, panoramic production, and the transmutation of teenage feelings into adulthood, yearning vocals that exert an unquenchable thirst to love you like no one could possibly fathom… but in a non-threatening way. While Gabriel may have intended Yossou N’dour’s guest appearance (singing in his native Wolof) to make a point about love breaking down barriers of language and race, the song’s history of covers has relegated it to freshman dorms: Sum-41, the dude from Staind, Jeffrey Gaines, 95% of college students who owned an acoustic guitar in the '90s, all of them doing so because they want to be Lloyd Dobler, not Peter Gabriel. The obvious rejoinder to Chuck Klosterman’s claim that, ""countless women born between the years of 1965 and 1978 are in love with John Cusack"" is that even more men were in love with the idea of being John Cusack. While ""In Your Eyes"" might be one of the most influential musical '80s archetypes, Cameron Crowe made Gabriel an accomplice in creating the most influential ""'80s"" personality archetype. —Ian Cohen",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/inyoureyes.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Peter_Gabriel-In_Your_Eyes.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,162,Orchestra Baobab,"""Mouhamadou Bamba""",Stern's Africa; 1984,"Listen on Apple Music From the moment the opening clouds of guitar descend to the moment it ends with an odd, sudden fade, ""Mouhamadou Bamba"" pulses with dark energy. In 1980, Orchestra Baobab were coming off a full decade as one of Senegal’s dominant musical forces, a role they were about to lose to Youssou N’Dour and the mbalax wave, but here they were still at the peak of their power and popularity. This song is vocalist Thione Seck’s tribute to Amadou Bamba, a 19th-century Sufi mystic who founded the Mouride brotherhood that is today one of the most influential strains of Islamic thought in Senegal and Gambia. Seck’s lead brims with passion—his melody careens around the stable choruses of the backing singers, so syncopated that at times it seems to come in from somewhere outside the music. The other singers repeat the name of the spiritual leader and reference the city of Touba, where the Mouride order is headquartered. Seck’s fire is matched by the dazzling lead guitar of Barthelemy Attisso, who originally came to Dakar from his homeland of Togo as a law student and taught himself to play by listening to the radio (he returned to Togo to practice law when the band broke up in 1987). As impressive as it is, his solo isn’t flashy. Rather it seems to converse with the mystical in its own language, deepening the song’s otherworldly essence. It’s hard to make music this funky so mysterious, but Baobab managed the feat. —Joe TangariSee also: Youssou N'Dour & Étoile de Dakar: ""Wadiour""",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/bamba.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Orchestra_Baobab-Mouhamadou_Bamba.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,161,U2,"""Sunday Bloody Sunday""",Island; 1983,"Listen on Apple Music Any skeptic who needs to be reminded that U2 were once a convincingly impassioned group of politically-inflamed upstarts should revisit ""Sunday Bloody Sunday"". Written as a public condemnation of the massacre by British soldiers of unarmed protesters in Derry, Ireland, it does what a great protest song should do, which is demand that it be played as loudly and recklessly as possible. It lurches like a train, opening the band’s third album, War, with a powerful declaration of collective drive—not just towards political justice, but towards a harshly angular, aggressive sound that could only have come from a foursome of very young musicians. It wasn’t the last time they would engage in political grandstanding, but it was the last time they sounded like they were willing to punch you in the face over it. In between the rolling snares and attack-ready guitars are seeds of the theatricality (see Bono’s howling exhortation to ""wipe your tears away"") that would later germinate into the palatial production and grand emotions of The Unforgettable Fire. ""Sunday Bloody Sunday"" is a burning call to revolt with the added bite of youthful ambition, a potent message even now that its urgency has dulled. —Abigail GarnettSee also: U2: ""I Will Follow"" / U2: ""New Year's Day""",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/214/sundaybloodysunday.jpg,/dataset/artwork/U2-Sunday_Bloody_Sunday.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,160,Sheila E.,"""The Glamorous Life""",Warner Bros.; 1984,"Listen on Apple Music One version of history: Prince’s genius is such that it trickles down to everyone he works with, elevating the ordinary and the non-notable of the world. Actual version of history: Prince had—still has—an uncanny knack for spotting (and frequently dating, but still) talented female artists, and giving them world-class platforms. While ""The Glamorous Life"" is undeniably a Prince song, from the worldly would-be celebutante who’s saved from independence by ""the seventh wave"" of making love to the horns that nudge-nudge all the lyrics, it’s a song that went to the right person. Prince’s lyric might’ve come off mocking delivered by someone else, but with Sheila it’s just there, a vessel for her to fill with a star’s worth of potential energy—much of it via percussion solo, deployed live like a sudden tornado. It’s the rare recording that sounds star-making on its own, without the confirmation bias of history, and it’s the rare producer who knows exactly what to do with a star when he hears one. —Katherine St. AsaphSee also: Apollonia 6: ""Sex Shooter"" / Vanity 6: ""Nasty Girl""",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/214/sheila-e.png,/dataset/artwork/Sheila_E-The_Glamorous_Life.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,159,George Clinton,"""Atomic Dog""",Capitol; 1982,"Listen on Apple Music George Clinton had been partying the night he recorded ""Atomic Dog""; then again, he'd been partying quite a bit in those days. George—Dr. Funkenstein, the Starchild himself, mad genius of Parliament-Funkadelic—arrived at the studio fresh from the club; Garry Shider and David Spradley, longtime P-Funk associates who laid down most of what would become ""Atomic Dog"", remember flanking him while he recorded his vocal so he wouldn't start listing to the side. He'd arrived with nothing prepared; it's unclear whether he'd even heard the track before. High as he was, George took one listen to that panting synth, and inspiration struck: A dog. Something about a dog. At the dawn of the '80s, funk got sleeker, sparser, more reliant on synths, less caught up in the cosmos. By 1982, Clinton was a man out of time: beaten at his own game by that skinny motherfucker with a high voice, rocked by a nasty freebase habit, and deeply in debt to any number of ex-bandmates. That ""Atomic Dog"" came together at all is a minor miracle; that it's every bit the equal of his '70s classics is something else entirely. George growls, barks, whinnies, and yawps his way through Shider and Spradley's futuristic bow-wow, offhandedly unloading one slobbery hook after another. It's a gloriously unhinged performance, silly and strange, a kind of alchemical lightning-strike. After years as a favored sample for West Coast hip-hop producers (it appears in no less than 7 Ice Cube songs), nowadays you're most likely to hear ""Atomic Dog"" in commercial spots for kids' movies and pet chow. Woof. —Paul ThompsonSee also: Zapp: ""More Bounce to the Ounce""",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/george-clinton.jpg,/dataset/artwork/George_Clinton-Atomic_Dog.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,158,808 State,"""Pacific State""",ZTT; 1989,"Listen on Apple Music Giving the acid-drenched Madchester rave sound one of its first significant chart boosts by reaching the top 10 in the UK, Graham Massey and Martin Price’s ""Pacific State"" was the perfect cocktail of new age naturalism and club drugs. The sour synths and dry drum programming sounded distinctly North American, while its soothing chord progression and liberally-deployed loon calls evoked some kind of extraterrestrial paradise. One of their last tracks to feature contributions from Gerald Simpson, who would soon depart the group and release his own groundbreaking single as A Guy Called Gerald, ""Pacific State"" was the populist slow burner 808 State needed to cement their commercial appeal. Possibly in ironic rejection, the duo went on to release myriad versions of the track. But its hazy atmosphere, equally evocative of a warm beach with a cool breeze and a club with a packed-in crowd, proved an enduring influence on a new generation of techno producers (Aphex Twin, Autechre, Lone) and bleary-eyed ravers alike. —Abigail Garnett See also: Orbital: ""Chime""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivr57dcs9-E,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/214/pacificstate.jpg,/dataset/artwork/808_State-Pacific_State.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,157,Orange Juice,"""Rip It Up""",Polydor; 1982,"Listen on Apple Music Come 1982, Edwyn Collins had a strong sense of his dues. Fed up with shambling along while charlatans like Haircut 100 commercialized Orange Juice's shtick, he fired his unambitious bandmates and signed up a sharper cohort. His bold move paid off: ""Rip It Up"", the title track of their second album, spent seven weeks climbing the UK singles chart to peak at #8, although it betrayed the fact that Collins was probably bluffing his pop chops rather than making a safe bet at longevity. The conceit of ""Rip It Up"" has been interpreted and perpetuated as a demand for the overhaul of stagnant culture—which in essence, it was. In immediate, intimate terms, though, Collins swaggers his way through the introvert's dream of ripping off their trembling skin and ""arms stuck like glue to my sides."" His character emerges as confidently charismatic as the spirits that strut through the song: Chic's taut guitars, the novel Roland TB-303's playful burble, the uninhibited violence of J.G. Thirlwell on sax, a nod to Pete Shelley's iconoclasm. (""My favorite song's entitled 'Boredom'...""). Funk as liberator trouncing funk as fear. —Laura SnapesSee also: Orange Juice: ""Blue Boy"" / Television Personalities: ""This Angry Silence""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoYiQ8Qsozk,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/rip-it-up.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Orange_Juice-Rip_It_Up.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,156,Siouxsie and the Banshees,"""Cities in Dust""",Polydor/Geffen; 1985,"Listen on Apple Music Pompeii is filled with ghosts. The point in visiting is to try and understand what it must have been like the day the city was engulfed by pumice and volcanic ash. There are petrified bodies—frozen in place at the moment of their death—on display in glass cases. The scene left an impact on Siouxsie Sioux. With ""Cities in Dust"", she imagines the final moments of these people, picturing them running, praying, and ultimately having their lungs and nostrils choked with lava. As an artist and songwriter, Siouxsie has empathy for the marginalized and doomed. In 1981, she wrote ""Arabian Knights"" about women being kept as ""baby machines."" Here, she’s singing to those people eternally stuck in display cases—their city left in dust and their bodies unearthed centuries later. It’s a shimmering bit of black magic pop, her voice howling through the bitter truth that all their stories, triumphs, and cherished memories are long gone even though tourists still stare into the hollow sockets where there used to be eyes. Right, people don’t just call her ""goth"" because of her makeup and color palate. —Evan MinskerSee also: Sinéad O'Connor: ""Troy"" / Siouxsie and the Banshees: ""Christine""",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/214/siouxsie.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Siouxsie_and_the_Banshees-Cities_in_Dust.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,155,A Guy Called Gerald,"""Voodoo Ray""",Rham!/Warlock; 1988,"Listen on Apple Music ""Acid house"" is so named for the slippery, speaker-melting bass burbles produced by the Roland TB-303 synthesizer. But the name also evokes the mind-altering vibe of much of the '80s Chicago house that epitomized the style, evident in titles like Sleezy D.’s ""I’ve Lost Control"" and Adonis’s ""No Way Back"". Chicago acid house captured a specifically urban version of psychological dislocation, but UK groups like 808 State and its erstwhile member Gerald Simpson took the style and explored how it allowed you to get truly lost in the metaphysical sense, wandering free in the jungle of the mind.The great trick of Gerald’s ""Voodoo Ray"" is to marry the two strands, stumbling upon a new brand of mysticism in the process. The merger is so flawless it was unrepeatable: Nicola Collier’s wordless coos and sighs, the bass riffs suggesting the tribal percussion of an alien planet, and a 303 bassline attempting to disintegrate the beat from behind. ""Voodoo voodoo voodoo voodoo ray…"" intones a mysterious voice in the background, a message without meaning but heavy with portent. It suggest an ambiguous religious ceremony, and it’s not clear whether the spirit being awakened is friendly or hostile.""Voodoo Ray"" was one of the earliest dance music tracks to raise such questions of intention and then keep them suspended; as long as the music is so intoxicating it doesn’t need to evoke clearly defined emotions of joy or dread; indeed, the co-existence of joy and dread becomes the point. After this startling debut, Gerald Simpson all but disappeared from public view, re-emerging several years later as a practitioner of the densest, most exotic-sounding jungle. The transition makes sense: having pushed house so far into the lost zone, where else could he go? —Tim Finney",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/214/voodooray.jpg,/dataset/artwork/A_Guy_Called_Gerald-Voodoo_Ray.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,154,Tangerine Dream,"""Love on a Real Train""",Virgin; 1985,"Listen on Apple Music When they weren’t busy laying the groundwork for entire genres of ambient music and breaking ground with their innovative use of sequencers and digital instruments, Tangerine Dream kept up a fruitful sideline soundtracking films. They scored more than 60, covering everything from raunchy comedies to documentaries, horror films, thrillers, and science fiction. Their score for Paul Brickman’s 1983 satire of capitalism and suburban privilege, Risky Business, is comprised of tense, haunting soundscapes that are emotionally a world away from the raucous Bob Seger song that tracks the movie’s iconic solo dance scene. Tangerine Dream’s job in the film’s sound world is to remind us of the feeling of being a physical person moving through the life and caught up in events only marginally under your control; their soundscapes are blood rushing through veins, skin contracting in cold air, and the pounding in your head when you know you screwed up and you’re not sure you can fix it. ""Love on a Real Train"" scores a scene where Tom Cruise and Rebecca de Mornay do it on an empty Chicago ‘L’ Train, and the vivid physicality of the music’s burbling rhythm delivers a thrill every bit as electric as the danger of the situation. —Joe Tangari",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/risky-business-soundtrack.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tangerine_Dream-Love_on_a_Real_Train.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,153,Joe Jackson,"""Steppin' Out""",A&M; 1982,"Listen on Apple Music From all accounts, New York City was a total shithole in 1982: broken glass everywhere, the crack and AIDS epidemics, more than 2,000 murders in that year alone. Meanwhile, the upper tax brackets were busy fomenting the spiritual rot that would inspire Wall Street, American Psycho, and Bright Lights, Big City. And yet, on this 1982 hit, Joe Jackson vows that he and his date will be fearless like children, certain that New York City solely exists to cater to their night on the town (and that all of the bad stuff is happening to somebody else). It’s the same belief in New York’s invincibility espoused by proud capitalists (Frank Sinatra, Jay Z, Taylor Swift), shrewd miserablists (Ryan Adams, Interpol), and every incoming class at NYU. Jackson is none of the above, which makes ""Steppin’ Out"" sound particularly of its time, snowblinded by a Me Decade tunnel vision. Its perky, Kraftwerk-ian bassline and gilded keyboards offer a wide-eyed view of the world—either the result of naivety or a hit of the purest coke. Inevitably, the song served as the most memorable and fitting inclusion in 2002’s infamously amoral video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City: The perfect soundtrack for oblivious optimism in a hopelessly corrupt sewer. —Ian Cohen",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/214/joejackson.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Joe_Jackson-Steppin_Out.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,152,Galaxie 500,"""Tugboat""",Aurora; 1988,"Listen on Apple Music There is a low-budget video for ""Tugboat"" that is as purely impressionistic as a punk Rothko. Frayed at the edges like the fanzines of the era, it was shot in 1988 on a borrowed Super 8 camera, its grainy abstractions all muted sea-blues, with a vaguely apocalyptic twist at the end. If the ""Tugboat"" video were projected to a wall, and you stared at it alone, the tones might just make you cry. ""Tugboat"" became the final track on an album called Today that really was so sad. Galaxie 500 were not the greatest rock'n'roll band of all time, but they were surely among the most graceful. A Harvard-via-NYC dream pop trio born 10 years after punk coalesced and gone by the year it broke, they ripped rock up with wisdom and cool restraint. There could be no better band to comfort anxiety—in 1988 or 2015—than this. ""Tugboat"" was their debut and essence, an ode to an entire way of life that was disguised as a love song. Damon Krukowski stretched the canvas with his atmospheric drumming, a primitive painter who chose sticks not a brush; Naomi Yang’s crucial bass throbbed as naturally as a passing cloud; singer-guitarist Dean Wareham’s expressive and devastatingly simple lines belied a cerebral slackerism, as did his incantatory straight-talk. ""I don’t wanna stay at your party/ I don’t wanna talk with your friends,"" he wearily intoned, ""I don’t wanna vote for your president/ I just wanna be your tugboat captain."" This sentiment, of wanting to get far away from civilization with the only person who matters, is gorgeous, ridiculous, and sublime. The symbol of the tugboat—slow, antiquated, romantic—perfectly underscored how out-of-time Galaxie 500 were, and are. If this is what Liz Phair meant when she sang, “I was pretending that I was in a Galaxie 500 video,” then the notion is utterly timeless, like the quiet exaltation and mystique of feeling just barely outside society, inhabiting a psychic world of your own creation. —Jenn Pelly",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEwouUjDTTE,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/tugboat.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Galaxie_500-Tugboat.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,151,Dead Kennedys,"""Holiday in Cambodia""",Cherry Red/Alternative Tentacles; 1980,"Listen on Apple Music The Internet did not invent entitled college students adopting social justice-related pet projects: it’s as considerable a cornerstone of higher academia as crushing debt. On their classic, caustic callout ""Holiday in Cambodia"", the Dead Kennedys behold this figure and deliver one of the most satisfyingly petty screeds in all of punk. Jello Biafra's gruesome, sardonic vacation pitch—""Slave for soldiers till you starve/ Then your head is skewered on a stake!""—and East Bay Ray’s cheery, ascendant riffs render the song the aural equivalent of a travel brochure from hell, as performed by a bunch of travel agents who could be considered clinically insane. The subject provides an easy, universal target: most of us have met someone who’s ""been to school for a year or two and [they] know they’ve seen it all""—lending the Kennedys’ aggro punk framework a universality relatable to punks and non-punks alike. Schadenfreude never felt so satisfying. —Zoe Camp",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/214/deadkennedys.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dead_Kennedys-Holiday_in_Cambodia.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,150,Beastie Boys,"""Paul Revere""",Def Jam/Columbia; 1986,"Listen on Apple Music Here is an incomplete list of people who have sampled the vwoop-vwoop, vwoop vwooop-boop from Beastie Boys’ ""Paul Revere"": N.W.A, Cat Power, Gang Starr, Das Racist, EPMD, Erykah Badu, E-40 (twice!), the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Public Enemy, and Rick Ross. It is clearly the most iconic vwoop-vwoop, vwoop vwooop-boop in pop history. Adam Yauch made it by running a tape backwards, and then everyone fell backward in the studio, laughing. Or so the story goes. Out of all the songs on Licensed to Ill, ""Paul Revere"" is the only one that doesn’t feel like a time capsule. Its storytelling rhymes, written with Reverend Run, and goofy Western theme introduced many rap-ignorant suburban kids to the narrative possibilities of hip-hop, but it’s that vwoop-vwoop, vwoop vwooop-boop, in all its rubbery warmth, that has reverberated the furthest. It might still be the Beasties’ most elemental contribution to rap music. —Jayson Greene See also: Beastie Boys: ""No Sleep Till Brooklyn"" / Beastie Boys: ""The New Style""",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/214/lincensedtoill.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beastie_Boys-Paul_Revere.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,149,Shannon,"""Let the Music Play""",Mirage/Atco/Atlantic; 1984,"Listen on Apple Music In the liner notes to Madonna’s Immaculate Collection, writer Gene Sculatti singles out two tracks as the foundations of dance-pop: ""Holiday"" (naturally, given the source) and ""Let the Music Play"". Foundational the latter certainly was; it more or less invented the Latin-derived, still-venue-packing freestyle scene, and for a while the genre was synonymous with ""the Shannon sound."" Producer Chris Barbosa’s working title was ""Fire and Ice"", which is descriptive if nothing else: gloomy synth pads, acid squiggles, percussion flickering in and out, everything setting off everything else. Any one of these could carry a song on its own, but Barbosa throws them all in; it’s a Rube Goldberg machine that dances, too. Much writing about freestyle makes a lot of the fact that the vocalists tended to be ordinary, often untrained women—perhaps college students, as Shannon was—and ultimately casts them as ciphers. But Shannon carries the emotional core of the record. Over a melody that winds its way down into mental anguish (much like, in a nice coincidence, Bananarama’s ""Cruel Summer"", which peaked around the same time), Shannon plays the everywoman caught in one of the condensed romances that play out on the dance floor, the sort someone like Katy B would inhabit today. She finds love, loses love, then pleads, with zero irony: ""What does love want me to do?"" And the chorus offers a summation of decades of pop and escapism: ""let the music play, he won’t get away."" She plays it deadly seriously; she’s not after fun but destiny. (The Madonna song ""Let the Music Play"" should be paired with is ""Into the Groove"", with its talk of revelations.) And if she weren’t an everywoman it wouldn’t work; listeners couldn’t imagine themselves in. If Barbosa captures the body, Shannon captures the heart. And neither quite gets away. —Katherine St. AsaphSee also: Chemise: ""She Can't Love You"" / Nu Shooz: ""I Can't Wait""",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/shannon.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Shannon-Let_the_Music_Play.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,148,Al B. Sure!,"""Nite and Day""",Warner Bros.; 1988,"Listen on Apple Music The term ""New Jack Swing"" was coined by Barry Michael Cooper in the Village Voice as an offhand joke, meant to describe Teddy Riley’s bleeding together of hip-hop and R&B. The style may have burned briefly—it peaked in late '80s and faded away into the '90s—but it was the beginning of a momentous relationship. Hip-hop, still the music of troubled Black youth, represented a risk for producers who wished to combine it with the increasingly aging R&B. The merger didn’t exactly ease tensions on all sides (""You can new jack swing on my nuts,"" Ice Cube rapped on 1991’s Death Certificate), but by injecting the swagger of hip-hop, new jack swing established the bridge between two styles that previously kept their distance. Al B. Sure!, a former high school football player, ended up with one of the finest cuts from the style with his debut single ""Nite and Day"". It was more R&B than his other work—Al held off rapping here—but that was the malleability of new jack swing, which didn’t have clear boundaries. The name was sparked by producers crushing genre lines, so of course ""Nite and Day"" could include an electric guitar solo. Into the '90s, Al B. Sure! would work with Jodeci, who led the next wave of R&B singers further into hip-hop. The lines between rap and R&B continue to blur nearly 30 years later, but ""Nite and Day"" showed the early possibilities one could go. —David Turner See also: Anita Baker: ""Sweet Love"" / Bernard Wright: ""Who Do You Love""",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/214/nite-and-day.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Al_B_Sure-Nite_and_Day.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,147,Michael McDonald,"""I Keep Forgettin' (Every Time You're Near)""",Warner Bros.; 1982,"Listen on Apple Music Michael McDonald’s ""I Keep Forgettin’ (Every Time You’re Near)"" is a quiet storm classic whose liquid groove has buttressed other great songs through the years (ask Warren G and Madlib), but its sneaky triumph, beneath the durability of the hook and message, is compositional. It’s a breakup song actually shaped like a breakup. Starting at denial, ""I Keep Forgettin’"" cycles woozily through yearning, regret, and all the other irrational emotions that bubble to the surface in the wake of a grueling split. McDonald’s numb, phantom longing is matched to music (featuring ""Rosanna""-era Toto players) that comes in stormy but slowly clears up, only to drop back into the murky dark again exactly as he comes to the realization that he’s clinging to the apparition of a closeness long since departed. It’s a sad song that refuses to accept that it’s a sad one. Guiding us through it all is The Voice. People say it’s garbled, but what they’re really hearing is wounded tenderness punching through the confines of both register and diction to commute a feeling you don’t need to know the words to get caught up by. —Craig JenkinsSee also: Steely Dan: ""Hey Nineteen""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1plPyJdXKIY,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/michaelmcdonald.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Michael_McDonald-I_Keep_Forgettin_Every_Time_Youre_Near.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,146,David Bowie,"""Modern Love""",EMI; 1983,"Listen on Apple Music Fed up with what he called the ""rock’n’roll circus,"" David Bowie seemed to abandon music altogether in the early '80s; fans accustomed to an artist who released 11 albums in 11 years didn’t hear much of anything in the three years following 1980's Scary Monsters. When he did come back, it was with a new label, a new backing band, and his most cleaned up, least self-consciously artistic persona to date. Though Let’s Dance was perceived by many to be slick, pre-packaged pop, Bowie’s nihilistic musings on ""Modern Love"" act as a subversive force against the track’s smiling rockabilly-meets-Motown bounce. Its feeling is captured beautifully in a cult-iconic scene from Noah Baumbach’s 2012 film Frances Ha: Even as Greta Gerwig’s title character sees her life slowly going to shit, her dash through New York to “Modern Love” is an expression of pure joy—a reminder of the musical spirit that marked Bowie’s return in 1983. —Jonah Bromwich",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/214/bowiemodernlove.jpg,/dataset/artwork/David_Bowie-Modern_Love.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,145,Liquid Liquid,"""Optimo""",99; 1983,"Listen on Apple Music ""Optimo"" is a rare moment in music that remains unscuffed by time, anointed as a benchmark across multiple generations. It’s got a life of its own at this point, stretching far beyond its origins on an ultra-rare EP from New York’s 99 Records—a release that also spawned the Grandmaster Flash-sampled ""Cavern"". ""Optimo"" has found favor in hip-hop, dance, house, and indie rock because it successfully occupies space in between all those styles, gloriously vacuuming up huge portions of music history into its batucada-influenced stride. The first wave of rediscovery for the song came in the late 1990s, when tastemakers on both sides of the Atlantic reissued the band’s songs (on trip-hop label Mo Wax in the UK, and the Beastie Boys’ Grand Royal in the U.S.). Its influence was exemplified by the formation of the influential Optimo club in Glasgow, whose grab-bag approach to DJing reflected the joyful canter through styles on ""Optimo"". James Murphy gave it further exposure by inviting Liquid Liquid to open the final LCD Soundsystem show at Madison Square Garden, lending the story another twist as it continues to cycle in perpetual motion. —Nick Neyland",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/liquidliquid.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Liquid_Liquid-Optimo.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,144,Big Daddy Kane,"""Ain't No Half-Steppin'""",Cold Chillin'/Warner Bros.; 1988,"Listen on Apple Music The summer of 1988 marked the roiling peak of hip-hop’s golden age. Between May and August of that year, practically every week saw the release of a future classic, albums that bridged the gap between the genre’s early days and its commercial explosion in the '90s: Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, EPMD’s Strictly Business, The Great Adventures of Slick Rick, BDP’s By All Means Necessary, Eric B. and Rakim’s Follow the Leader, N.W.A’s Straight Outta Compton. According to legendary beatmaker Marley Marl, though, there was one song that trumped the rest. ""‘Ain’t No Half-Steppin’ was rocking that summer,"" he told VIBE in 2003. ""After Kane came, nothing else mattered."" Granted, Marl might be a little bit biased: He produced Big Daddy Kane’s signature track, which doubled as the centerpiece of the rapper’s debut album, Long Live the Kane. Though the smooth and relatively carefree Kane didn’t have the same gravitas as his understood rival Rakim, he ultimately may be more influential. ""Ain’t No Half-Steppin’"" rolls on a beat that uses its '70s soul sample to soothe rather than stun, predicting future flips by the likes of Q-Tip and Kanye West. Meanwhile, the Brooklyn rapper, who was one of Jay Z’s early mentors, is smart, lyrical, technically deft, and hilarious while stating his dominance: ""I grab the mic and make MCs evaporate/ The party people say ‘Damn, that rapper's great!’"" The song contains all the beatific innocence of '80s hip-hop but doesn’t sound like a relic—a summer jam of the highest order. —Ryan Dombal",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/bigdaddykane.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Big_Daddy_Kane-Aint_No_Half-Steppin.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,143,Anthony Red Rose,"""Tempo""",Firehouse; 1985,"Listen on Apple Music By 1985, the immersive dub productions that King Tubby had perfected on reggae B-sides smacked of overfamiliarity, and Jamaican sound systems pulsed with digital, a more rigid dub offshoot based on preset Casio keyboard rhythms. Legend has it that Tubby, upstaged by King Jammy’s work on digital smash ""Under Me Sleng Teng"", swiftly sidelined his Firehouse label, built the all-digital Waterhouse studio, and enlisted Kingston singjay Anthony Red Rose, all in a bid to outdo his protegé. (Red Rose claims, somewhat improbably, that ""Tempo"" actually came first.) The resulting track is a little unnerving, Red Rose’s conspiratorial, reverb-heavy vocal threatened by a slithering bassline that diffuses dread into the spacious production. It’s also, somehow, inescapably pop, filtering its alien sonics into something hauntingly anthemic. That factor secured ""Tempo"" an illustrious afterlife: After helping midwife ragga in Jamaica, it became something like a standard for UK junglists, with MCs and DJs adopting Red Rose’s vocal as a de facto motif of the genre. But Tubby’s original, all impending doom and spaced minimalism, still feels like the one. —Jazz Monroe",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p_xEZWAtow,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/214/anthonyredrose.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Anthony_Red_Rose-Tempo.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,142,Tears for Fears,"""Head Over Heels""",Phonogram/Mercury; 1985,"Listen on Apple Music Richard Kelly’s 2001 cult classic Donnie Darko helped introduce a whole new generation to some of the more morose musical touchstones of the 1980s (a handful of the soundtrack’s highlights made this very list). While ""The Killing Moon"" or ""Love Will Tear Us Apart"" seem far more suitable to help encourage a young goth’s budding disaffection, it’s ""Head Over Heels"", the fourth single from Tears for Fears’ commercial smash of a sophomore album Songs from the Big Chair, that really defines the film. Scoring one of its most memorable sequences, the song builds and eventually tumbles into its effortless stride, gliding along with the camera through the hallways of Donnie’s high school like a slyly winsome but ultimately grim specter. But to hear it from from the band, that would register as an awfully strange characterization of the song. Writer and vocalist Roland Orzabal has described ""Head Over Heels"" as ""a big love song"" and ""one of the most simple tracks that Tears for Fears have ever recorded."" Which it of course is, an open-hearted, big-tent new romantic sing-along that's loyal to both new wave's insularity and pop radio's unapologetic earnestness. But the fact that it can be translated so differently depending on context, as either an inclusive love song or a cheekily macabre one (but a first class karaoke pick no matter what), its fluid applications speak volumes about Tears for Fears’ universal appeal. In the 30 years since the song’s release, everyone from Billy Corgan to D’Angelo have cited the band as an influence, and revisiting ""Head Over Heels"" in 2015, both of those reference points make total sense. Funny how time flies, indeed. —Zach KellySee also: Tears for Fears: ""Mad World""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsyfGwlf_l0,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/214/headoverheels.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tears_for_Fears-Head_Over_Heels.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,141,Beat Happening,"""Indian Summer""",K/Rough Trade; 1988,"Listen on Apple Music Most of the appeal of Beat Happening lay in its unvarnished simplicity. Relative to the mid-1980s music industry—the gloss of pop, the pomp of rock, the palpable angst of punk—the Olympia, Wash., trio trafficked in DIY directness. By example, Calvin Johnson, Bret Lunsford, and Heather Lewis insisted that the actualization of self-expression needn’t be Rubik’s Cube complex: all one needed was a voice, an idea, a tape recorder, some friends, and a passion for music for its own sake. There was no need to possess Category Whitney Houston pipes or be a virtuoso shredder or have CAA representing you; you didn’t need anyone’s expressed permission. This notion never stopped reverberating outward, and went on to influence artists of varying stripes and disciplines—many of whom never even heard ""Indian Summer"". Revered in underground circles and covered by everyone from the Vaselines to Luna to R.E.M., ""Indian Summer"" both embodies this ethos and upends it. While the frisson between Johnson’s unstudied baritone and the chiming, seesaw guitar offers contrasting delights in its own right, the song’s rich lyrical potpourri—evoking autumn beauty or the fall of industry, childhood reverie or the loss of innocence, the collapse of camaraderie or harvest season—puts the lie to dismissal of this aesthetic as slight or insubstantial. ""Indian Summer"" fits well in any weather, and means something slightly different every time it’s heard. —Raymond Cummings See also: Daniel Johnston: ""Chord Organ Blues""",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/214/beathappening.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Beat_Happening-Indian_Summer.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,140,Bronski Beat,"""Smalltown Boy""",London; 1984,"Listen on Apple Music Bronski Beat had the option to sign to ZTT and get the full treatment—Trevor Horn production and t-shirts screaming ""QUEER"" and ""POOF""—that would be transferred to Frankie Goes to Hollywood, but they said no. Instead, their subdued debut single radically normalized the idea that a young gay man might run away from the ostracization of his hometown—""the love that you need will never be found at home""—allowing for private revelations in front of the TV as your parents read Jeffrey Archer novels on the sofa. At a time when striking miners found allies in the queer community and Britain had its first openly gay politician, the domestic transgression of ""Smalltown Boy"" is an enduring emblem of the times. Its rain-beaten take on disco's enlightened metropolitan whirl retains its sense of subtle subversion—that Jimmy Somerville's rapture sounds a little parochial now is testament to the tides it helped turn. —Laura Snapes See also: Associates: ""Party Fears Two"" / B-52's: ""Private Idaho""",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/214/bronski-beat.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Bronski_Beat-Smalltown_Boy.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,139,Spacemen 3,"""Walkin' With Jesus""",Glass/Taang!; 1988,"Listen on Apple Music When Spacemen 3 emerged from Rugby, England, in the early '80s, their Velvet Underground-influenced post-punk wasn’t completely unique; Jesus and Mary Chain, for one, were mining a similar territory. But few other bands were just as interested in the soar of gospel music as the drone of the Velvets, and certainly none grafted the dreamy intoxication of drugs onto the higher-ground spirituality of religion as powerfully as Spacemen 3. One of their first songs, ""Walkin’ With Jesus"", struck this God/dope fusion with remarkable simplicity. Over an unwavering two-chord organ swing that sounds like it was played while laying down, Jason Pierce hears Jesus promise an eternity in Hell as punishment for indulging in Heaven on Earth. It doesn’t exactly shake him from his drift; once he realizes he should probably take some action, he’s too blissed-out to do anything besides ask Jesus for an extension. Pierce has since insisted the song wasn’t literally about religion, and certainly ""walking with Jesus"" could be taken as a euphemism for shooting heroin (recall how that drug made Lou Reed ""feel just like Jesus’ son."") Either way, ""Walkin’ With Jesus"" is a sweetly beatific way to frame an addict’s internal struggle—as a gentle conversation with a higher power—and it’s a convincing one, especially because the music harnesses the intoxication of the blues (a later version converted the organ sway into a slow, almost raunchy-sounding guitar riff). Pierce would eventually take the tune into straight-up gospel territory with his chorus-laden group Spiritualized. But the hypnotic power of Spacemen 3’s original persists, the kind of fix you could spend a lifetime hoping to capture again. —Marc MastersSee also: Spacemen 3: ""Revolution""",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/spacemen3.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Spacemen_3-Walkin_With_Jesus.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,137,Mission of Burma,"""That's When I Reach for My Revolver""",Ace of Hearts; 1981,"Listen on Apple Music Many of Mission of Burma’s heroic-but-pensive songs lived in the overlap between political anthem and self-reflection, and ""That’s When I Reach for My Revolver"" hangs on the precipice between slogan and introspection. Lines about heroes, dreams, and ""the spirit fight[ing] to find its way"" make it sound like a battle hymn, especially during its all-for-one-and-one-for-all chorus. But there’s also an undercurrent of bleakness running through the song, which ends with a resigned portrait of an ""empty sky"" whose ""dead eyes...tell me we’re nothing but slaves."" Mission of Burma’s blurred lyrical line between attack and retreat finds a perfect analog in the music, which seems to step back and regroup every time it crosses a hurdle. Clint Conley’s bass is the centerpiece—he even gets a solo in between verses—and its downbeat tone makes ""That’s When I Reach for My Revolver"" feel somber even as it rises. Such poignant ambivalence actually infused the story behind the song’s title: Conley found it in an essay by Henry Miller, only to discover later that it had origins in a Nazi play. But Mission of Burma never disowned the phrase—and they didn’t have to, because their music transformed it into something more ambiguous, and more powerful. —Marc MastersSee also: Wire: ""Ahead"" / Mission of Burma: ""Academy Fight Song""",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/missionofburma.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Mission_of_Burma-Thats_When_I_Reach_for_My_Revolver.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,138,Rob Base / DJ E-Z Rock,"""It Takes Two""",Profile; 1988,"Listen on Apple Music Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock’s ""It Takes Two"" went supernova in 1988: The song broke big in dance clubs, in rock clubs. It was popular with older, gay house audiences and with mainstream pop audiences. It sold a million copies, and entered the tiny rarefied circle of songs that regularly received name-checks on big MTV countdowns of Greatest Rock Songs. Predictably, it provoked suspicious glances in the hip-hop community, which only a few years away from the twin takeovers of Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer. But ""It Takes Two"" endures where dated pop-house tracks from the era didn’t. It is rap crossover in its Platonic form —hardcore, quicksilver rhymes, up-to-the minute with the clean technicality and tricky rhythms, laid over a beat so universal that it felt like kid’s music. At the time, it felt like the last gasp of party rap, a song about nothing more than dancing, getting loose, and being fresh on the microphone as hip-hop grew increasingly militarized. Where hip-hop was being pulled into the crack wars, New Jack Swing was smooth, clean-cut, and full of smiles; it channeled an older generation Harlem, that of Frankie Crocker and WBLS. Rob Base’s brief mention of a ""bulletproof vest"" is his sole acknowledgement of the grim realities of the War on Drugs. But the song was no kind of farewell, it was a template. Years later, Harlem rapper Ma$e would skate over colorful Saturday-morning-cartoon beats programmed by Puff Daddy, packing more ear-tickling wordplay into his verses than any fat pop hit requires. These songs would grudgingly impress heads; they would make everyone’s grandmas smile; they would endure for a generation’s worth of party soundtracks. He was balancing on an axis that few people had danced on so nimbly; it is impossible that Rob Base, mugging in the video for ""It Takes Two"" next to Biz Markie, was not in his mind. —Jayson GreeneSee also: T La Rock: ""It's Yours""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phOW-CZJWT0,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/214/ittakestwo.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rob_Base__DJ_E-Z_Rock-It_Takes_Two.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,136,Motörhead,"""Ace of Spades""",Bronze; 1980,"Listen on Apple Music In the face of rock music’s gorgeous gods with their Jesus hair and bare chests, Lemmy’s greasy allure was clear. With his iconic handlebar mustache and facial warts, he was the underdog—the guy that got kicked out of Hawkwind because most of the band’s members flat-out didn’t like him. His excommunication was a blessing; he could start Motörhead in his own gnarly image. They got some traction on the charts with their 1978 cover of ""Louie Louie"", but ""Ace of Spades"" was an aesthetic-cementing moment. In 1979, Lemmy got an ace of spades tattooed on his forearm surrounded by the words ""born to lose, live to win"". That symbol became a mantra of sorts; Motörhead were bad luck incarnate—a trio of cackling hooligans up to no good. Lemmy insists there’s no allegory in the lyrics of ""Ace of Spades"", but even if it’s just a song about gambling, the emphasis is fearlessness. ""You win some, lose some, it’s all the same to me,"" he sings in a throaty gargle over his dive-bombing bassline. The song packed a punch and made a huge impression on headbangers listening across the world (notably: Metallica, Slash, Dave Grohl, Triple H). Motörhead had punk’s ferocity and speed with metal’s guitar heroics and heft. On the album cover, they dressed up as gunslingers—a gig that requires staring down the threat of obliteration. ""But that’s the way I like it, baby, I don’t want to live forever."" —Evan MinskerSee also: Misfits: ""Skulls""",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/214/aceofspades.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Motrhead-Ace_of_Spades.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,135,Pixies,"""Gigantic""",4AD; 1988,"Listen on Apple Music The Pixies’ debut single cemented the loud-quiet-loud template that would characterize so many of their best songs. National treasure Kim Deal has gone on record saying that the song was inspired by a 1986 film adaptation of Beth Henley’s ""Crimes of the Heart"", in which a married Sissy Spacek falls in love with a black teenage boy. The taboo origin story is certainly interesting—""what a big black mess, what a hunk of love""—but it’s the song’s outrageous catchiness and joie de vivre that makes it unforgettable. ""Gigantic"" is a perfect marriage of iconic bassline, magnificently rendered vocals (Deal’s signature coo was made for the lines, ""And this I know, his teeth as white as snow, what a gas it was to see him""), and a rip-roaring chorus that sounds as appropriately enormous as the song title implies. A perfect amalgam of loud guitars and euphoric lust, ""Gigantic"" is everything you want it to be—a big, big love. —T. Cole RachelSee also: Pixies: ""Vamos"" / Throwing Muses: ""Hate My Way""",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/214/gigantic.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Pixies-Gigantic.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,134,Queen & David Bowie,"""Under Pressure""",EMI/Elektra; 1981,"Listen on Apple Music ""This is our last dance!,"" David Bowie declares during the chandelier-rattling climax of ""Under Pressure"", and the man is nothing if not a master of faking his own imminent demise. If anything, ""Under Pressure"" was something of a victory lap for a pair of '70s glam-rock veterans coming off of successful incursions into the post-disco, new-waved landscape of '80s pop—Bowie with Scary Monsters, Queen with The Game. But while its foundational, Vanilla Ice-spawning bassline heeds the most valuable lesson of the latter album—i.e., that John Deacon is Queen’s secret weapon—""Under Pressure"" feels all the more like a special, lightning-in-a-bottle moment for sounding very little like anything Bowie was producing at the time, nor like much else on Hot Space, the funk-influenced Queen album where this one-off single eventually took up residence. Coming from two entities synonymous with outsized extravagance and conceptual grandeur, ""Under Pressure"" is surprisingly spartan. It’s an anthem designed for empty arenas, powered by handclaps and fingersnaps, a two-note piano chime and a dry, vacuum-sealed groove. Brian May assumes a respectful background presence, his glimmering guitar lines providing more candlelight than fireworks, while even Bowie and Freddie Mercury sound more humble and human than usual, descending from their godly realm to empathically address problems—domestic unrest, homelessness—that plague mere mortals. And despite the potential for two of the most flamboyant singers in rock to engage in histrionic warfare, they seem less interested in trying to overpower one another than provide mutual emotional support. Still, even with relatively modest means, Queen and Bowie erect a towering spiral staircase of a song, with each discrete melodic motif ratcheting up the song’s mounting intensity and thrusting the track to dizzying new heights. But its grand finale is ultimately a show of false optimism: as ""Under Pressure"" comes crashing down in its dying moments, that persistent bassline re-emerges from the rubble, underscoring the cruelly cyclical nature of anxiety and release, and hitting reset on the time-bomb that’s ticking inside us all. —Stuart BermanSee also: Queen: ""Another One Bites the Dust"" / Queen: ""I Want to Break Free""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iE0xUK9Tkv8,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/214/underpressure.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Queen__David_Bowie-Under_Pressure.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,133,Fleetwood Mac,"""Everywhere""",Warner Bros.; 1987,"Listen on Apple Music While Stevie Nicks might be the most widely known member of Fleetwood Mac, Christine McVie, to many fans, is the hero. McVie penned many of the band’s biggest hits, and 1987’s ""Everywhere"" stands out, not only as one of the band’s most commercial singles, but also as one of McVie’s strongest. It’s is carefully crafted, spare, and meticulously produced. McVie approaches the vocals with a light touch, and the contrast between that lightness and the songs sweeping sentiment—not only does she want to be with her lover, but she wants ""to be with [them] everywhere""—is reflective of the time in which it was written. In the '80s, bigness, whether it be of sound, or wealth, or hair, was a given, and didn’t have to mean anything serious; McVie tempered this outsized lyrical message with an arrangement that was refreshingly minimal for the time. ""Everywhere"" wasn’t the biggest hit on Tango in the Night—""Little Lies"" and ""Big Love"" charted higher, reaching #4 and #5 respectively—but it’s one of the quintessential songs of the '80s, and an elegant example of Fleetwood Mac’s nimbleness and adaptability. —Maud Deitch Fleetwood Mac: ""Little Lies"" / Fleetwood Mac: ""Big Love""",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/fleeteverywhere.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fleetwood_Mac-Everywhere.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,132,Godley & Creme,"""Cry""",Polydor; 1985,"Listen on Apple Music If this list was about '80s music videos, the work of Kevin Godley and Lol Crème would surely dominate—the former pair of 10cc musicians worked on innovative promos for the Police, Duran Duran, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, and Herbie Hancock’s ""Rockit"" among others. ""Cry"" had a similarly impressive (for the time) visual counterpart, highlighting how important music videos were to breaking songs in this era. Indeed, Godley & Creme’s words on the art of '80s video making in Craig Marks and Rob Tannenbaum’s I Want My MTV form some of the most entertaining and outlandish anecdotes of the era. As such, the idea of hearing ""Cry"" without seeing the video is vaguely unconscionable, even though an entire generation of gamers found the song via the Grand Theft Auto IV soundtrack. Perhaps it needs a visual medium in which to flourish. It wasn’t Godley & Creme’s most outlandish idea (see the magnificently deranged 1977 triple album Consequences for that), but its vaguely operatic leanings and strange, pitch-shifted vocals make it an '80s hit like no other. Godley & Creme were masters at pushing boundaries in music and video—their clip for Duran Duran’s ""Girls on Film"" was banned for its adult content—and ""Cry"" is their best example of both those worlds dovetailing in curious harmony. —Nick NeylandSee also: Spandau Ballet: ""True"" / Police: ""Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic"" / Split Enz: ""I Got You""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxtPRF6NG7I,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/Godley_Creme_Cry.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Godley__Creme-Cry.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,131,Yellowman,"""Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt""",Greensleeves; 1984,"Listen on Apple Music The popularity of the Jamaican vocalist Yellowman helped signal the shift from roots reggae to dancehall, a shift almost as radical as the one that turned funk breaks into early rap. Roots was deep, spiritual music that compressed social ideals into grave, sometimes mystical ballads; dancehall was better known for sentiments that were ""Icky All Over"". Musical values were different, too: Where roots was lush and soulful, dancehall used stiff Casio presets and turned the vocalist into an MC—someone who doesn’t sing over the track so much as inhabit it with one-liners, nursery rhymes, and other bits of half-music. Yellowman was an albino, an orphan, a social outcast—what in patois might be called dundus, a term not just for albinos but for someone who, in the words of F.G. Cassidy and Brock Le Page’s Dictionary of Jamaican English, ""is not up to the mark of normality."" In 1983 he was misdiagnosed with cancer and told he had three years to live; the following year he released ""Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt"", a spare but celebratory piece of music about getting pulled over in his new (yellow) BMW and generally not caring. ""64-46, that’s a BMW!"" he crows, a reference to Toots & the Maytals’ early reggae hit ""54-46 Was My Number"", about a guy who actually does end up in jail. Some people use music to explore their pain. Yellowman used it to set his pain aside for a while. —Mike PowellSee also: Benjamin Zephaniah: ""Dis Policeman Keeps on Kicking Me to Death"" / Willie Williams: ""Armagideon Time""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8agnfXz1y4M,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/yellowman.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Yellowman-Nobody_Move_Nobody_Get_Hurt.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,130,Phil Collins,"""In the Air Tonight""",Virgin/Atlantic; 1981,"Listen on Apple Music Few cultural artifacts scream, ""Ah yes, the 1980s,"" louder than Phil Collins’ ""In the Air Tonight"". It might as well be a demo of the trends that were to dominate popular music in the decade following its 1981 release, while managing to sound like no other extant piece of recorded music. People remember Collins’ breakout single for many different reasons: for the urban legend surrounding its writing (a brutal kiss-off to an ex-lover or an elegy to a dead friend?), for Collins’ washed-out face staring out from the hit video’s digital void, for its tortured, choked vocals, or for that incomparable drum fill. The ballad was also, of course, the bold announcement of Phil Collins the solo artist, who later would go on to have the most prolific run of UK Top 40 singles of any artist of that decade. Perhaps more than anything else, though, ""In the Air Tonight""—written around four space-age synth chords and a thin drip of a drum machine loop—documents Collins’ fervent love affair with the aspirational music technology of his time. The brutish drum sound in the song’s second half was created through a jerry-rigged prototype of the technique that would later become known as gated reverb—which, prior to current imitations, served as a reliable watermark to date pop recordings made between 1982—1991. Vocoder technology was used to create shadowy underarmor for Collins’ main vocal, which in itself was processed into a jagged shadow of itself, drowned in some futuristic outgrowth of the slap-back echo which once sheathed Elvis’ croon. On top of this there are harsh, distorted digital storm clouds—from a synthesizer? guitar? some Frankensteinian combination?—that loom, presaging doom. It’s an exercise in mood like no other: The rare song whose production overshadows (or perhaps exalts) how little there is going on in the songwriting. —Winston Cook-WilsonSee also: Peter Gabriel: ""Games Without Frontiers""",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/philcollins.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Phil_Collins-In_the_Air_Tonight.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,129,This Mortal Coil,"""Song to the Siren""",4AD; 1983,"Listen on Apple Music Tim Buckley’s ""Song to the Siren"" is impossible to ruin—the folk ballad’s self-evidently beautiful melody and resonant extended metaphor transcend pretty much any arrangement (even if no one has figured out what ""as puzzled as the oyster"" is supposed to mean). But while there are many wonderful covers out there, let’s be real: This song was created so that it could be sung by Elizabeth Fraser over Robin Guthrie’s barely-there guitar strum. No other version can touch it. This Mortal Coil was an unusual endeavor, a loose collective that was ultimately a vehicle for 4AD founder Ivo Watts-Russell to turn his favorite obscure songs from the '60s and '70s into impossibly dark goth masterpieces. ""Song to the Siren"" defined the project, and most of that is due to Fraser. In Cocteau Twins, she was known for singing in an indecipherable language that nonetheless communicated; here she’s given real lyrics but she knows all the feeling is in the sound. The way she stretches the phrase ""waiting to hold you"" to its breaking point makes the sense of longing palpable beyond words. —Mark RichardsonSee also: Felt: ""Primitive Painters""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMTEtDBHGY4,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/song-to-the-siren.jpg,/dataset/artwork/This_Mortal_Coil-Song_to_the_Siren.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,128,R.E.M.,"""Radio Free Europe""",I.R.S.; 1983,"Listen on Apple Music It's hard to imagine R.E.M. existing as part of the American underground, given how long they've been embedded in the cultural mainstream. Think about ""Losing My Religion"" making every VH1 list of the Greatest Videos ever, or ""Everybody Hurts"" scoring every sensitive moment spent staring out of a moving car during some sappy melodrama. They made the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on their first ballot, which is as establishment as it gets. Before they were big, there was ""Radio Free Europe"". The first single off their first album, Murmur, is as sexy as the summer heat, as ominous as the kudzu creeping on the LP's cover. The music is sinewy, mysterious, entrancing; the lyrics, once deciphered, sound halfway improvised. It's a magnetic single, one that sounds like the invention of indie rock. They played ""Radio Free Europe"" on ""Late Night With David Letterman"" in 1983 and presented the whole package in one shot. Michael Stipe, chiseled face covered in flowing hair, broods over his microphone. Next to him, Peter Buck and Mike Mills are exuberantly dorky, garage rats playing at being rock stars. Afterwards, Stipe is too shy to talk to Letterman. The performance says: Come in, but don’t expect to learn much. It's enough to transport me to some imagined '80s dorm room, the TV on, wondering who these guys were. They'd become more successful, but they'd never sound as hypnotizing. —Jeremy GordonSee also: R.E.M.: ""The One I Love"" / R.E.M.: ""So. Central Rain""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA57Pafq_NU,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/murmur.jpg,/dataset/artwork/REM-Radio_Free_Europe.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,127,Cyndi Lauper,"""Girls Just Want to Have Fun""",Epic/CBS; 1983,"Listen on Apple Music A moment's reverence, please, for the once-proven dream of unproblematic female pop solidarity. When Lauper left her Queens home at age 17, she took with her a paper bag containing a toothbrush, clean underwear, an apple, and a copy of Yoko Ono's Grapefruit. Thirteen years later, one of Ono's gnomic instructions might have served as the ethos behind Lauper's solo career: ""A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality."" In 2015, Lauper's debut single feels like a fantasy: a globally famous, totally inclusive feminist anthem that preaches pleasure, recognition, and autonomy, and eschews societal expectations. Sure, it achieves that through defiantly simple lyrics that were originally written by a man—Robert Hazard demoed it, Springsteen-style, in '79—but Cyndi Lauper's neat tweaks skewed it from a song that trivialized female desire to one that runs and runs on it. ""Girls Just Want to Have Fun"" is one of those songs you've heard so many times that the actual music is as invisible as the color of your front door, that insouciant riff as instantly recognizable as golden arches on a highway. Blanking out its brutally insistent dazzle—which, like a 24-hour charity cheerleading marathon, does not quit—may be an act of self-preservation. But that's the point: ""Girls"" digs in, stubborn as glitter, Lauper's piercing voice scoring your spine. She and her backing singers are bratty and full of want, refusing prettiness and permission. That pointillist synth that dots the mid-section might as well be a chorus of Dubble Bubble orbs popping in the faces of anyone who would deny them these simple, profound joys. —Laura Snapes See also: Altered Images: ""Happy Birthday"" / Bananarama: ""Cruel Summer""",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/cyndi-lauper.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Cyndi_Lauper-Girls_Just_Want_to_Have_Fun.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,126,Janet Jackson,"""Control""",A&M; 1986,"Listen on Apple Music At this point, it seems as if Janet Jackson and her longtime studio accomplices Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis were always the model for artist-producer synergy, twin forces forever meant to exist in tandem. Like most matters of pop, songwriting, and the industry, though, this theory appears to unravel with a bit with research. In fact, much of Janet’s breakthrough 1986 album Control was originally written for R&B singer Sharon Bryant, but she decided they were too ""rambunctious."" Yet Jackson, who was trying to put her bubblegum teenage years behind her, took charge of Control as no one else could. She wrote the toplines and arranged the complex vocals, which mix spoken-word, nonchalant rap-singing, and little iconic GIF-bursts of ad-libs. She helped with keyboards and synths. She reached into the Jam & Lewis machine and bent every part of it to her will, rearranging all the gears into a coat of armor. ""Control"" is the sound of Janet Jackson underlining her career moves, her decisions, her identity. —Katherine St. AsaphSee also: Janet Jackson: ""What Have You Done for Me Lately"" / Jody Watley: ""Real Love""",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/214/control.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Janet_Jackson-Control.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,125,The Replacements,"""Bastards of Young""",Sire; 1985,"Listen on Apple Music In his entertaining 2007 oral history of the Replacements, All Over But the Shouting, writer Jim Walsh recounts one of the band’s early gigs at the Sons of Norway building in Minneapolis. Walsh suggests that it’s a short leap from there to imagine a young Paul Westerberg transforming the name of the fraternal organization Sons of Norway into the dispossessed ""We are the sons of no one"" chorus on the group’s raucous anti-generational anthem, ""Bastards of Young"". For people listening to the Replacements’ Tim on vinyl (or cassette) in 1985, ""Bastards of Young"" was the opening song of side two, arguably the single strongest album side in the group’s entire discography. Even alongside other such signature gems as ""Left of the Dial"" and ""Here Comes a Regular"", however, ""Bastards of Young"" stands as perhaps the definitive Replacements track. It’s the song that best embodies the general character of Westerberg’s songwriting through its wry mixture of bemusement and exasperation. He sings as one unsure of where he’s headed, yet confident enough in his own instincts to recognize that the directions he’s been given are hopelessly flawed. In typical Westerberg fashion he’ll balance a line of casual brilliance (""The ones that love us least are the ones we’ll die to please"") with another so fudged (""something something something beer tonight""?) that there’s never been total consensus about what he’s actually singing. As was often their habit at the time, the rest of Westerberg’s bandmates join him by speeding the song’s tempo slightly beyond they seem capable to sustain. The result is a song that seems destined to collapse in a heap at any moment, yet somehow manages to stagger a steady path between defiance and self-deprecation, shrugging resignation and pure raw-throated passion. —Matthew MurphySee also: The Replacements: ""Can't Hardly Wait"" / The Replacements: ""Kiss Me on the Bus""",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/The-Replacements-Tim.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Replacements-Bastards_of_Young.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,124,De La Soul,"""Eye Know""",Tommy Boy; 1989,"Listen on Apple Music One of the most innovative rap albums of all time, De La Soul's debut 3 Feet High and Rising changed the way hip-hop approached sampling, but the album wouldn't have resonated so widely if it were merely a playground for producer Prince Paul. De La Soul had the songs to back up their inventive production, and none of them better captured the trio’s good-natured disposition than ""Eye Know"". It's a straightforward love song, with rappers Posdnous and Trugoy the Dove each attempting to woo the objects of their affection with old-fashioned chivalry. ""Sex is a mere molecule in this world of love that I have for you,"" Trugoy promises with geeky sincerity. Though the rappers sound too much like blushing teenagers to expect a return on their overtures, the song made it clear that women were welcome in their D.A.I.S.Y. revolution—a refreshing assurance at a time when sexism was beginning to sour rap music. ""Eye Know"" also has the distinction of being the most feel-good song on what might be the most feel-good rap album of all time. Every sound seems to have been selected for maximum merriment, from the strutting guitar riff and horn licks piped in from ""Peg"", the one Steely Dan song you can play at a party, to the reassuring whistle from Otis Redding’s ""Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay"". From the start, De La Soul were fascinated by expression in its purest form, and it doesn’t get any purer than this expression of sheer happiness. —Evan Rytlewski",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/eye-know.jpg,/dataset/artwork/De_La_Soul-Eye_Know.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,123,Run-D.M.C.,"""It's Like That""",Profile; 1984,"Listen on Apple Music You can divide hip-hop into before and after ""It’s Like That"". The old school died as soon as the drum machines kicked in. By the time Run roared about ""unemployment at a record high,"" another 30 MCs filed for food stamps. Larry Smith laid down the beat, an echoing ricochet of flying sparks, shrapnel, and meteor-slamming boom. Disco and electro-funk replays previously defined the genre. No more. Bambaataa and Busy Bee, Kurtis Blow and Cold Crush had ruled the ""on and on to the break of dawn"" era. But the new school suddenly made 24-year-old elders extinct as an Allosaurus. The newly anointed giants were a leather-clad Hollis trio managed by Russell Simmons, originally named Runde-MC.""It’s like that and that’s the way it is."" A fatalist credo that became the ""So It Goes"" for the gestating hip-hop generation. Those lines stuck in Profile boss Cory Robbins’ head, immediately after Rush brought him the demo cassette. So he gave the group $2,000 to re-record it at Greene Street Studios in SoHo. It sold 250,000 copies. A slightly remixed Jason Nevins version came out in 1997. It felt timeless enough to snap the Spice Girls’ streak of consecutive number one UK Singles. A half-dozen archetypes sprang from the torso of ""It’s Like That"" and its B-side (""Sucka MCs""). It’s simultaneously a complaint lodged at chronic joblessness, a love letter to getting money, a party record telling you to stay young and play, a rebuke to foreign policy war mongering, an existential lament, a Christian affirmation, and an aesthetic attack. It’s stripped down and minimalist punk, rawness as response and weapon. There was no way to go back and an entirely new path stretched forward. —Jeff WeissSee also: Run-D.M.C.: ""King of Rock"" / Run-D.M.C.: ""Peter Piper""",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/run-dmc.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Run-DMC-Its_Like_That.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,122,Grandmaster & Melle Mel,"""White Lines (Don't Don't Do It)""",Sugar Hill; 1984,"Listen on Apple Music Hip-hop had been party music for most of its first few recorded years, but there's such a thing as too much partying, and ""White Lines"" is a snapshot of the moment when drug-fueled fun is just about to crash. (There was a lot of powder floating around at the time—1983 was also the year of Laid Back's ""White Horse"", for instance.) Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five had made the first major political hip-hop single the year before with ""The Message"", but even by then they were already disintegrating. So ""White Lines"", more or less a solo record by the group's MC Melle Mel, was credited on release to ""Grandmaster & Melle Mel"". Flash, their original DJ, was the name everyone knew, but he was long since out of the group at that point; he first heard ""White Lines"" while on his way to buy coke. ""White Lines"" is a record about an intractable problem, from which Melle Mel refused even to exonerate himself (""Now I'm broke and it's no joke/ It's hard as hell to fight it DON'T BUY IT!""; see also the sly double negative in the title). It's also a problematic record itself, not least because its music is lifted wholesale from the New York art-funk band Liquid Liquid's ""Cavern"", released earlier in 1983. (Even Melle Mel's ""something like a phenomenon"" is inspired by a half-audible line from Liquid Liquid vocalist Salvatore Principato.) But the ""Cavern"" grooves are crisped up by the Sugar Hill Records house band (who would soon go on to become Tackhead) and a little ""Twist & Shout""-style vocal figure, and hurled over the top by the horn section that storms in for the song's bridge. And the masterstroke of Melle Mel's performance is that as bitter as it is—the way he sneers the word ""baby"" makes icicles drop every time—it's also funny and even playful: the party, he knows, is going to keep raging until everyone drops, no matter what, so he might as well keep it hopping. —Douglas WolkSee also: Cash Crew: ""On the Radio"" / Funky 4+1: ""That's the Joint""",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/214/white-lines.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Grandmaster__Melle_Mel-White_Lines_Dont_Dont_Do_It.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,121,Slick Rick / Doug E. Fresh,"""La Di Da Di""",Reality; 1985,"Listen on Apple Music The line on Slick Rick is that he’s one of hip-hop’s great storytellers, a guy who realized the narrative possibilities of the medium and constructed songs with plots where one action followed from the next. And ""La Di Da Di"", his breakthrough song with human beatbox Doug E. Fresh, is without question a fine example of his writerly talent. He tells of a day in the life in which he wakes up, falls out of bed, puts his Kangol upon his head, and ultimately watches a mother beat the living crap out of her daughter because they’re both hopelessly in love with him. But while the blow-by-blow of the story and Rick’s running commentary have their charms, the real genius of ""La Di Da Di"" is in the delivery. With this song, he invented a kind of tuneful rapping in which a spoken phrase could become a melodic hook at any moment. The simple melodies found in ""La Di Da Di"" have become part of rap’s DNA, and the song has been repeatedly stripped for parts by the likes of Biggie, N.W.A, and Snoop. To listen to ""La Di Da Di"" now is to trace three decades of history in under five minutes, all of it leading back to Rick’s place. —Mark RichardsonSee also: Audio Two: ""Top Billin'"" / Doug E. Fresh: ""The Show"" [ft. Slick Rick]",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtbU4_XSCWI,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/la-di-da-di.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Slick_Rick__Doug_E_Fresh-La_Di_Da_Di.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,120,Rick James,"""Give It to Me Baby""",Motown; 1981,"Listen on Apple Music Rick James met Salvador Dalí once, at a dinner party in Hawaii. Dalí was supposedly so taken with Rick's appearance—he was one beautiful motherfucker back then—he insisted he draw him. We'll never see the thing; Rick pocketed Dalí's sketch, got stoned, went for a swim, and ruined it. To say the least, Rick James led a colorful life: a draft dodger, a failed pimp (too lenient, by his own admission), ex-bandmate of Neil Young and ex-lover of Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia, Rick picked up the cup of life and proceeded to spill it all over the carpet. ""Give It to Me Baby"" is a song about Rick James' fundamental incompatibility with the non-Rick James lifestyle. James returns from a night out, half in the bag and looking to party, only to find his beloved half-asleep and fully annoyed. He just wants to love her, he pleads, but she's not having one bit of it. Undeterred, James cajoles, hectors, begs; all it seems to get him is a ""say whaaaat?"" Rick's persistence in the face of so much resistance verges on the predatory, but he makes enough show of being turned down, you get the sense he's poking a little fun at himself: the would-be lothario who can't seem to get the timing right. While the sweat-soaked horns and pulse-quickening bassline of ""Give It to Me Baby"" feel a tad out of step with the mechanized precision of most early '80s funk, Rick was never the type to change with the times. Rick was who he was, unapologetically crass, defiantly crude, and—back then, anyway—as alive as anybody ever was. —Paul ThompsonSee also: Mary Jane Girls: ""All Night Long"" / Eddie Murphy: ""Party All the Time""",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/rickjames.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rick_James-Give_It_to_Me_Baby.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,119,Soul II Soul,"""Back to Life (However Do You Want Me)""",Virgin; 1989,"Listen on Apple Music A remix of an a capella track at the end of Soul II Soul’s first LP Club Classics Vol. One (re-titled Keep on Movin’ in the U.S.), ""Back to Life"" is built around two mesmerizing vocal phrases from Caron Wheeler: ""Back to life/ Back to reality"" and ""However do you want me/ However do you need me,"" which (as anyone who's been to a club or party over the last 25 years can tell you) take turns functioning as the song’s central hook. Wheeler, a veteran of London’s lover’s rock scene since the late 1970s, had more than a decade of experience projecting soul not through volume, but via shading and tone, and she doesn’t sing those hooks as much as chant them like mantras. Jazzie B and Nellee Hooper’s production work burnishes her voice with a slight digital sheen, rendering Wheeler's passion slightly paranormal. Wheeler’s vocal is perfect enough on its own, but B and Hooper surrounding it with elements from the past and present to predict the future turn the track into a classic. B, a veteran of London’s sound system scene who’d been dabbling in hip-hop (not nearly a household phrase in the late 1980s, especially in the UK), flipped a Larry Graham drum fill into a proto-jungle rhythm track, incorporated string stabs nodding to Chic and Gamble & Huff, and topped it off with rich piano chords and stop/start squelches owing to London’s quickly boiling-over house music craze. Oddly enough, though, what binds the song together is the amount of open space that B and Hooper leave in the track. ""Back to Life"" is a marvel of elegant restraint—the strings and piano buoy Wheeler above the breakbeat, a serene specter looking down from the top of the block. Five years later, Hooper would take these lessons two hours west to Bristol, where he produced Massive Attack’s sophomore album Protection. In what felt like an act of subcultural diplomacy, ""Back to Life"" soared to #1 in the UK for four weeks during the house-crazed Second Summer of Love (and in the U.S., aided by a video that cut between the group flinging their dreads around Epping Forest and a generic urban rooftop dance party, crossed-over to MTV ubiquity and a Grammy win). The mainstream got a taste of house music that was stately and groovy, not dripping with acid, and which sounded fantastic amid clubbish contemporaries like Black Box’s ""Ride on Time"", Technotronic’s ""Pump Up the Jam"", Janet Jackson’s ""Miss You Much"", and Lisa Stansfield’s ""All Around the World"". ""Back to Life"" was diplomatic in a more meaningful way, too. The song's ubiquity also meant B (whose parents emigrated from Antigua) and Wheeler (a second-generation Jamaican) were representing London’s substantial Caribbean-derived population from the absolute peak of the pop music world. —Eric HarveySee also: Oran ""Juice"" Jones: ""The Rain"" / Black Box: ""Ride on Time""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eH-Ro82nzuE,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/soul2soul.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Soul_II_Soul-Back_to_Life_However_Do_You_Want_Me.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,118,Minutemen,"""History Lesson – Part II""",SST; 1984,"Listen on Apple Music Though San Pedro punk band Minutemen were a trio, with each member contributing an essential part of their uncompromising and efficient sound, much of their energy derived from the long-term friendship between guitarist D. Boon and bassist Mike Watt. ""History Lesson – Part II"" is the story of that friendship. It chronicles the band’s pure love for music (and punk in particular) and their philosophy of ""jamming econo""—or keeping their operation as a band, from songwriting to touring, simple and low-cost—in just over two minutes. This song, and the double album it appears on, Double Nickels on the Dime, influenced countless artists, paved the way for the '90s alternative rock countercultural shift, and helped establish punk firmly as an enduring philosophy rather than a set of aesthetic boundaries. The Boon quote that became a nearly-ubiquitous '90s sticker is, ""Punk is whatever we made it to be,"" and there’s no other Minutemen song that so clearly exemplifies this attitude. Though Boon was tragically killed in a van accident in late 1985, his influence is just as present today as it was in '84, through his recorded work, through his bandmates’ continuation of his legacy, and through anyone who ever heard the line ""Punk rock changed our lives,"" and felt it in their bones. —Jes SkolnikSee also: Minutemen: ""Viet Nam"" / Minutemen: ""This Ain't No Picnic""",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/minutemen.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Minutemen-History_Lesson__Part_II.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,117,Rhythim Is Rhythim,"""Strings of Life""",Transmat; 1987,"Listen on Apple Music In 1988, if you wanted a comprehensive survey of the mutant strains of robotic funk that had risen up in the wake of disco, you couldn't have done much better than to get your hands on The History of the House Sound of Chicago, a mammoth, 15-disc compilation put out by Germany's BCM Records. The box set had it all. Discs one and two, ""The Tracks That Built the House"", focused on the disco and Italo sounds that Frankie Knuckles had been playing at the Power Plant and the Warehouse. Disc three focused on the D.J. International label's roster—artists like J.M. Silk and Fingers Inc.—while disc six, ""Trax Classix"", compiled now-classic tunes from Trax artists like Adonis and Marshall Jefferson. Despite the box set's title, it didn't focus exclusively on Chicago artists; Detroit's Derrick May (aka Rhythim Is Rhythim) and Kevin Saunderson (Inner City) were both included, along with artists from New York, New Jersey, and the UK. That same year, you could find May and Saunderson, along with their Belleville Three colleague Juan Atkins and other Motor City producers like Blake Baxter and Eddie ""Flashin'"" Fowlkes, on another comp, Techno! The New Dance Sound of Detroit, released by a Virgin subsidiary. Over the years, techno and house have assumed a binary opposition in the popular imagination: house and techno, Chicago and Detroit, yin and yang. (Meanwhile, New York and New Jersey get left out of the origin story.) But the coexistence of those two comps offers a useful reminder of the way that, at the time, stylistic divisions were hardly so clear-cut as they seem now. The names of the subgenres were, in large part, a matter of marketing. Both styles were part of the lineage of African-American disco and European synth pop; both balanced a dreamer's brand of techno-futurism with the sweaty business of the right-here-right-now. A visit to Chicago, in fact, had a major impact on a young Derrick May. In Dan Sicko's Techno Rebels, he describes his first experience hearing Frankie Knuckles at the city's Power Plant nightclub. ""Frankie was really a turning point in my life…. When I heard him play, and I saw the way people reacted, danced, and sang to the song—and fall in love with each other [to the music]—I knew this was something special."" He continued, ""This vision of making a moment this euphoric… it changed me."" Of all the possible descriptions for ""Strings of Life"", ""euphoric"" couldn't be more apt. All of the song's elements contribute to that giddy, heart-in-mouth, eyes-wide feeling: the pistoning piano chords, played by his friend Michael James, that never resolve quite as you expect them to; the rushing TR-909 drum programming, pushed dangerously into the red; and, above all, the sandpapered string stabs, harsh and percussive, their timing dangerously uneven. Today, you'll hear people who encountered the song for the first time in a field or a hangar in the late '80s or early '90s describe the experience in rapturous terms, and the same goes for people who heard it a decade later. Surely, the song's almost elemental title hasn't hurt its renown. There are people who, pre-YouTube, knew only of the existence of the song until, one fateful night, they heard a DJ play it and thought to themselves, ""So this must be 'Strings of Life',"" only to discover that they were right. In the Chicago box set, ""Strings of Life"" is included on a disc subtitled ""House – The Future"". (This was hardly the only place you could get May's 1987 single, which was the fourth 12'' single on his Transmat label; it turns up on scads of contemporaneous compilations with names like Jack Trax and Warehouse Raves.) Twenty-seven years later, and 28 since the single itself, it still sounds like the future. Not space ships and hovercars, maybe, not the teleportation devices that May's Transmat label was named after—but utopia, rapture, deliverance. Every time it is played on a packed dance floor, all these years later, it offers a brief, transcendent glimpse of the promised land. —Philip SherburneSee also: Virgo: ""Never Want to Lose You""",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/rhythimisrhythim.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Rhythim_Is_Rhythim-Strings_of_Life.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,116,Sade,"""Is It a Crime""",Epic; 1985,"Listen on Apple Music British jazz&B group Sade’s sophomore far-from-slump Promise catapulted them to indisputable superstardom in 1985. ""Smooth Operator"" had made their debut Diamond Life an international hit the previous year, but Promise was an instant #1, popular enough that, in addition to the three singles, DJs had begun to spin album tracks by '86, the first being the expansive opener ""Is It a Crime"". The six-and-a-half-minute, winding epic is a masterclass in dramatic dynamic shifts. The chorus strips everything away rather than building it up; it’s a near-whisper, the fallout after a wild-eyed, horn-bolstered escalation (""My love is wider than Victoria Lake/ Taller than the Empire state…""). It’s a song about self-doubt and forced emotional restraint, and musically, too, it's all seething indecision. Sade belts as intensely as she ever has, pushing past her normal sheen of breathiness. But the song is really a showcase for why Sade is a band, and not just the first name of its singer. Promise was recorded largely live, with Adu recording vocals with the full ensemble as a guide for rerecording and perfecting later. Somehow, in her retakes, she’s able to respond to and mirror the group's constant tectonic shifts. The band also gets an opportunity to detour off into some straight-ahead jamming: A walking bassline drops in to relieve Adu for a minute, and saxophonist Stuart Matthewman flutters in and out of comfortable tonality. Half after-hours R&B, half rapturous torch song, ""Is It a Crime"" sets the tone for Promise—all dark hues and obsessive sonic detail—and provides one of the best arguments in Sade’s catalog that the group should be viewed as much more than a dispensary for stock-sensual lounge grooves. In fact, they were the most nuanced pop arrangers and performers of their cultural moment. —Winston Cook-WilsonSee also: Sade: ""War of the Hearts"" / Sade: ""Love Is Stronger Than Pride""",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/214/sade.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sade-Is_It_a_Crime.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,115,INXS,"""Never Tear Us Apart""",Atlantic; 1988,"Listen on Apple Music The fourth single from INXS' world-conquering Kick, ""Never Tear Us Apart"" has often shouldered the burden of tragedy; it was never intended to play at frontman Michael Hutchence’s funeral in 1997 or to lend an all-too-apt title to the band’s postmortem documentary last year. It’s hard to hear the song outside of that undesired context, but at its heart ""Never Tear Us Apart"" is a surprisingly straightforward declaration of love, caught somewhere between American soul and a European waltz, between Motown and Prague. It contains one of the most satisfying moments in '80s pop, a moment so curious, so inventive, so unexpected that it becomes endlessly replayable: As Hutchence concludes the second chorus, his words lingering in the cold air, an expectant drumroll gives way to—a saxophone solo. In another context, that instrument might sound lascivious, adding a sexual layer to a sensual song, but here it sounds stately, even monumental, as INXS shed the weight of the world just so it can savor this one present moment. —Stephen M. DeusnerSee also: INXS: ""New Sensation"" / INXS: ""Need You Tonight""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIOVx49stGI,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/inxs.jpg,/dataset/artwork/INXS-Never_Tear_Us_Apart.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,114,Talk Talk,"""Life's What You Make It""",EMI/Parlophone; 1985,"Listen on Apple Music ""The label didn't hear a single."" When that phrase is thrown at a gestating album, it usually turns out to be a thorn in the band's side—even more often when it's a demonstrably pop-friendly group with auteurist aspirations. Yet Talk Talk, who were riding off expectations set by earlier trans-Atlantic new wave-simpatico hits like ""It's My Life"" and ""Such a Shame"", found an ingenious end run around what could've been a deadening compromise. All they had to do was center their label-pleasing song around a simple, hooky sentiment—""Life's what you make it""—around which they could build interrogating phrases (""Yesterday's favorite/ Don't you hate it""; ""Don't try to shade it/ Beauty is naked"") that got more enigmatic the deeper you went. From there, all that was left was to set the words over a slow-motion piano-driven Lee Harris march that was closer to a gothic Sade than anything It's My Life even hinted at, lace it with a recurring guitar wail that sounded like arena rock melting from catharsis, and let Mark Hollis belt out an impassioned lead that built from crescendo to crescendo—there's your hit. ""Life's What You Make It"" was their last brush with mainstream success before the more ambitious, experimental records Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock, albums that jettisoned Talk Talk from the ranks of arty pop and into the realm of cult genius, and this particular transition between the two phases is priceless. —Nate PatrinSee also: ABC: ""Be Near Me"" / Talk Talk: ""It's My Life""",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/214/talktalk.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Talk_Talk-Lifes_What_You_Make_It.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,113,The Isley Brothers,"""Between the Sheets""",T-Neck; 1983,"Listen on Apple Music After the commercial failure of 1982's The Real Deal—an awkward attempt to update their traditional-leaning blend of R&B and funk with the synthesizer-heavy sounds of artists like Rick James and Prince—the Isley Brothers returned less than a year later with ""Between the Sheets"", one of their plushest tracks ever. It's 1,200-thread-count music that doesn't abandon the group's knack for marrying melody to groove. Incorporating the emerging sounds of electro-funk on the Isleys’ own terms this time, ""Between the Sheets"" also benefits from Ronald's unrushed, virtuosic vocals, which set a new benchmark for sensuality. ""Enough of this singing; let's make love,"" Ronald urges as the track darkens thrillingly, pulsing with carnal tension. Rarely has wanting to get it on sounded this life-or-death urgent, or joyous. —Renato PagnaniSee also: Earth, Wind & Fire: ""Let's Groove"" / The System: ""You Are in My System""",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/214/isleybrothers.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/The_Isley_Brothers-Between_the_Sheets.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,112,Nirvana,"""About a Girl""",Sub Pop; 1989,"Listen on Apple Music Then as now, the Nirvana of 1989 debut Bleach has much to recommend and set it apart from contemporaries like the Melvins and Mudhoney: Kurt Cobain’s wounded caterwaul, garrote-wire riffs, a heavy, dynamic melodicism, and a bleak sardonic sense that the album’s production positions front and center. But it was ""About a Girl""—sharp, perceptive, well-constructed, and almost Beatles-esque—that demonstrated a potential beyond grunge’s ghetto. When Tracy Marander, Cobain’s girlfriend at the time, complained that he’d never written a song about her, this was his sweet'n'sour riposte, a winning, winsome plaint of woe from an unemployed layabout whose significant other supported him. ""Girl"", like so many of Nirvana’s best songs, places beautiful songwriting into mortal conflict with bitingly cynical lyricism: Love’s a mystery and romantic cohabitation is bullshit, but at least getting laid demands minimal travel and effort. —Raymond CummingsSee also: Mudhoney: ""Touch Me I'm Sick"" / Nirvana: ""Blew""",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/bleach.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nirvana-About_a_Girl.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,111,The Clash,"""The Magnificent Seven"" / ""The Magnificent Dance""",CBS; 1981,"Listen on Apple Music The Clash came to New York to record in early 1980, just as the Sugarhill Gang’s ""Rapper’s Delight"" was peaking on the charts, and they were fascinated by this new style that suddenly seemed to be everywhere. Guitarist Mick Jones was especially inspired, buying into hip-hop so fully, the story goes, that his bandmates started calling him ""Whack Attack""—a detail that sounds like it must have been made up, until you remember his subsequent run with Big Audio Dynamite. Never shy about exploring outside genres, the band gave this very young one a stab, too. Like most songs on the Clash’s triple-LP triumph Sandinsta!, ""Magnificent Seven"" was made quickly, with Joe Strummer improvising his verses over a militantly funky bassline from Norman Watt-Ray of the Blockheads, who’d been sitting in with the band while bassist Paul Simonon filmed a movie. Strummer’s lyrics play like a freestyled Noam Chomsky essay, detailing a day in the life of a typical, consumer-addled working stiff and growing more allegorical by the verse. Even when he’s rhyming just for the sake of it, it’s amazing how confident Strummer sounds, given how little precedent there was at the time. Blondie’s ""Rapture"" was still a half year away, and Grandmaster Flash wouldn’t release ""The Message"" for another two years. He was running with his gut. The song wasn’t the hit the band hoped it’d be, but it made a mark regardless after the New York R&B station WBLS began spinning Jones’ instrumental remix of the track, ""The Magnificent Dance"", essentially a showcase for the original’s almighty bass riff. ""It was playing all over New York,"" Jones later recalled, ""but they didn’t know at the time it was the Clash, or what the Clash was."" In the scheme of things, the Clash’s contribution to rap is just a footnote, but even 35 years later, that’s still more than all but a tiny handful of rock bands can claim. —Evan Rytlewski See also: The Slits: ""In The Beginning There Was Rhythm"" / The Jam: ""A Town Called Malice""",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/magnificent-seven.png,/dataset/artwork/The_Clash-The_Magnificent_Seven__The_Magnificent_Dance.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,110,Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds,"""The Mercy Seat""",Mute; 1988,"Listen on Apple Music We’re used to hearing people die in Nick Cave songs; the man can wipe out entire towns in a single stanza. But even as it graphically details an executed inmate’s final moments (melting flesh and all), ""The Mercy Seat"" is not a song about death—it’s a plea to our basic humanity. More than simply tell the story of a man being burned alive on the electric chair, ""The Mercy Seat"" is designed to make you feel like you’re the one being strapped in. Over the song’s calamitous extended outro, Cave sings its eight-line chorus no fewer than 14 times in succession, a process that consumes roughly two thirds of this seven-minute behemoth’s running time. But that relentless repetition is as crucial to the song as its narrative detail, with each incantation of the chorus—and the Bad Seeds’ intensifying squall—compounding the agony of an imminent but torturously slow death. Each time Cave’s narrator claims he’s ""not afraid to die,"" it feels less like a hardened con’s final show of bravado than a psychological coping mechanism. Johnny Cash famously covered ""The Mercy Seat"" on 2000’s American III: Solitary Man, embracing it as a critique of capital punishment. And it’s an interpretation supported by the fact that Cave’s subject is not your typical wrongly accused martyr, boasting ""my kill hand is called E.V.I.L."" and facing judgment for crimes ""of which I am nearly wholly innocent."" As that harrowing climax finally simmers down in the song’s final seconds, there’s no sense of resolution: Cave’s narrator may be dead, but the Bad Seeds still tremble and screech like an unsated angry mob, reinforcing the notion that trading an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is the ultimate zero-sum game. —Stuart BermanSee also: Leonard Cohen: ""First We Take Manhattan"" / The Pogues: ""Fairytale of New York"" / Tom Waits: ""Jockey Full of Bourbon""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSl4KX7zBTQ,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/nickcave.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nick_Cave_and_the_Bad_Seeds-The_Mercy_Seat.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,109,The Smiths,"""This Charming Man""",Rough Trade; 1983,"Listen on Apple Music ""This Charming Man"" is the story of the serendipitous meeting between a young man stranded by the side of the road and a dashing bon vivant in a pristine automobile who comes to his rescue. It’s a scene so quintessentially Steven Patrick Morrissey it would border on parody if it weren’t for the fact that ""This Charming Man"" was the second-ever single released by the Smiths. There are references to, subtly and overtly, English modernist author Henry Green’s Loving, the 1972 Laurence Oliver film Sleuth, and avant-garde filmmaker Jean Cocteau (the Moz-designed single sleeve features a still from 1950’s Orphée). The song itself was initially written out of jealousy for Rough Trade labelmates Aztec Camera by guitarist Johnny Marr, and was the band’s first bid for a ""hit""—""something upbeat and in a major key,"" according to Marr. It was a modest success upon release in 1983, but hit number eight on the UK charts in 1992 when it was reissued, becoming the Smiths' highest chart placement ever. It features one of the most beloved guitar tones of the decade, one of Morrissey’s most honeyed and obtuse vocal takes, and one of the most memorable romantic exchanges in pop music history. But I’ve always wondered: On what side of the car door is Morrissey in this story? He’d no doubt tell you he’s not even in the picture, but we know that can’t be entirely true. From a narrative standpoint, he’s the boy with the flat bicycle tire, and in 1983, that made sense. Vulnerable, a little lost but not completely naive, he’s the iconic outsider that made the Smiths a beacon of light for so many lonely young people. But listening today, it’s impossible not to hear him as the driver, a smug and cocksure yet wholly irresistible old rake. ""We all want to grow up and move on and appear to be different to people. And we want people to see us in a different way,"" he said in 1997, bearing down on his forties. ""But, I don't know, I think the personality is very, very strongly cemented, and we just bear whatever shortcomings we have and learn to live with it."" He, of all people, should know so much about these things. So perhaps it’s best to just call ""This Charming Man"" exactly what it is: A perfect song by a perfect band. —Zach KellySee also: The Smiths: ""Hand in Glove"" / The Smiths: ""Panic""",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/charmingman.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Smiths-This_Charming_Man.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,108,Frankie Knuckles,"""Baby Wants to Ride""",Trax; 1987,"Listen on Apple Music The dance floor often gets called a safe space, a welcoming, un-judging womb where the unaccepted can find acceptance, or at least release. You can imagine house music filling this role in Chicago clubs like the Warehouse and The Power Plant in the early and mid-'80s. There you had DJs—primarily gay Latinos and blacks—spinning to largely Latino and black audiences from Chicago's South and West sides, and moreover spinning music produced largely by gay Latinos and blacks. If the weirdness of the music—early Trax Records alongside various and sundry local labels—contrasted a little with the party vibes, that made sense too: life was not easy for these musicians and dancers, so even their parties weren't going to always sound like other people’s parties. Even in this context, Frankie Knuckles ""Baby Wants to Ride"" is terrifying. A jaunty vamp featuring unabashed Prince fetishist Jamie Principle on vocals, the song is a psycho-sexual nightmare full of come-ons that consistently sound more threatening than sexy. The aggressive sexual politics of a gay nightclub can explain the song's content, but not Principle's deranged sneer, or the way the synth chords get all queasy as Knuckles presses them down, a little too long, every time. Who is baby? What else does baby want?There can be no doubt about the song's meaning, as it contains the lyric ""I wanna fuck you/ All night long,"" but Principle also chants ""Na na, na na, naa, naaa, you can't hurt me"" and ""Remember Ethiopia/ Feed the poor""; in the end he comes across as someone who indeed reveres the Purple One but finds him too lucid and prudish. The music—one of the least groovy classic house tracks—does not help matters, constantly egging Principle on, its tingling lead melody a wordless translation of ""Na na, na na, naa, naaa."" It's harrowing stuff, and a stark reminder of just how polite house music has become. And not just because very few modern house songs want to fuck us, but because few producers are as committed to making us feel as uneasy as Knuckles and Principle. The track stands in stark contrast to the smiling, party-rocking superstar Knuckles we said goodbye to last year; the man had many ways to upset a dance floor. —Andrew Gaerig See also: Farley 'Jackmaster' Funk: ""Love Can't Turn Around"" / Sleezy D: ""I've Lost Control""",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/214/babywantstoride.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Frankie_Knuckles-Baby_Wants_to_Ride.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,107,Alan Parsons Project,"""Eye in the Sky""",Arista; 1982,"Listen on Apple Music Never mind that the song's spacey instrumental intro (""Sirius"") later became the badass theme music for the Chicago Bulls: ""Eye in the Sky"" was the moment that the Alan Parsons Project escaped from the residual bloat of the prog rock era and became a legitimate pop act. They had already hinted in this direction with tracks like ""Games People Play"", but even then, the music took a backseat to the conceptual trappings of their albums. But ""Eye in the Sky"" didn't need an entire album's worth of context to make sense—this one was all about songcraft. The secret ingredient to ""Eye in the Sky"" had been under Alan Parsons' nose the entire time: Eric Woolfson. Woolfson was Parsons' chief co-writer, but he didn't sing on an APP track until ""Time"" (from the LP preceding Eye in the Sky). Soft, gentle, and capable of more nuance than other vocalists imparted to buffoonish older songs like ""I Wouldn't Want to Be Like You"", Woolfson's delivery is what sells ""Eye in the Sky"". It's part jealous-boyfriend schtick and part harbinger of the coming technological Big Brother dystopia (a typical Alan Parsons duality), all sung in a croon that sounds like someone breathing heavy on the back of your neck. The album's success would lead Parsons and Woolfson to greater fame and cheesier songs, and the band completely nosedived in the mid-'80s before disbanding altogether. But with ""Eye in the Sky,"" this former progressive rock band mustered up one of the best soft rock songs ever. —Andrew Ryce See also: Don Henley: ""Boys of Summer"" / Til Tuesday: ""Voices Carry""",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/alan-parsons.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Alan_Parsons_Project-Eye_in_the_Sky.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,106,Madonna,"""Borderline""",Sire/Warner Bros.; 1984,"Listen on Apple Music Released in 1983, ""Borderline"" is one of the first laid bricks in the cathedral of Madonna’s mythology, four minutes of emotional helium that became her first Top 10 hit on the heels of an iconic music video. In the clip, Madonna closes the gap between the club kid she was and the glamorous star she’d become as she plays her two beaux—a Latino tough boy and a snobby British photographer—off each other. Ironically, while lyrics refer to the gnawing desolation one might feel while navigating a relationship in which they don’t have any power, Madonna has total control in the video. She makes the tough boy miss his shot at the pool table by simply standing in the doorway; she spray paints the photographer’s car, causing him to flip out. She takes the energy from the song—a bubblegum instrumental given weight by her legible vocal performance—and uses it to dispel all the lingering demons from that bad relationship. There’s so much charisma, it’s easy to see why this was the song that catapulted her toward being the biggest pop star in the world. —Jeremy GordonSee also: Madonna: ""Holiday"" / Madonna: ""Lucky Star""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSaC-YbSDpo,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/borderline.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Madonna-Borderline.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,105,The Cure,"""Pictures of You""",Fiction; 1989,"Listen on Apple Music The liner notes of the Cure’s Disintegration made one simple demand: turn it up, loud. This request actually asked lot of the listener. Disintegration’s fourth single ""Pictures of You"" is overwhelming, even for a fanbase that prides itself on feeling way too much. ""I’ve been looking so long at these pictures of you/ That I almost believe that they’re real,"" Robert Smith wails as guitars layer infinity pools over him for seven minutes—by the end, you might actually believe that ""we kissed as the sky fell in,"" ""[screaming] at the make believe"" and ""crying for the death of your heart"" are real things couples go through. Tally the time Robert Smith has pined for a lost love over the past 40 years and you’ll have hours, if not entire days worth of music. But ""Pictures of You"" is the logical extreme of Smith’s thwarted desires—to completely submerge in the memory of someone else. —Ian Cohen See also: The Cure: ""Fascination Street"" / The Cure: ""Lovesong""",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/214/disintegration.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Cure-Pictures_of_You.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,104,AC/DC,"""Back in Black""",Atlantic; 1980,"Listen on Apple Music Along with Kiss and Ozzy, AC/DC were scourges on the forces of respectability: a convenient villain for the church, the school, the town hall, and the PMRC. Rumors abounded about the band. The name was an acronym for Anti-Christ/Devil Child (not true). Their first singer drank himself to death (true). Their music reportedly inspired serial killer Richard Ramirez, aka the Night Stalker (true). The band only grew more and more popular during the 1980s, even after the death of founding member Bon Scott, perhaps because they somehow became blunter, harder, simpler, and more primal—and they were already all three when they started. ""Back in Black"" remains monolithically perfect, a brick through a window that doesn't sound any less brutal today. New hire Brian Johnson has a formidable set of pipes and sings like he’s peeling off a layer of skin, and Malcolm Young’s rhythm guitar emerges as the rudest element, selling the song’s lewdness as something glorious and unique. That staccato brump! brump-a-bump! sounds like a stifled laugh, Nelson Muntz kicking a baby down the stairs. No wonder teachers and parents were scared. —Stephen M. Deusner See also: Van Halen: ""Panama""",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/214/backinblack.jpg,/dataset/artwork/ACDC-Back_in_Black.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,103,Whitney Houston,"""How Will I Know""",Arista; 1985,"Listen on Apple Music It feels like sacrilege to imagine an alternate timeline where ""How Will I Know"", the third single from 22-year old Whitney Houston’s 1985 debut, ended up a Janet Jackson song, as originally intended. For Jackson, control was freaky and liberating, something you wielded by choice. But for Houston, control was a lifestyle, a guiding principle—forever maintaining the perfect temporary balance between unthinkable technical precision and unchecked emotional release. Later, with Bobby Brown, it was something darker. Control, and its absence, was the core of ""How Will I Know"" beyond mere infatuation, and why it’s gotten so much more affecting with time: the terrifying rush of losing yourself. It was the album’s poppiest, most danceable track, but its persistent reputation as ""lighthearted"" never completely fit a song whose pre-chorus advocates, ""Don’t trust your feelings."" ""Diva"" suggests the immortal, the untouchable; in Latin and Italian, it translates to ""goddess."" But what made Houston such an important one, voice aside, was that she wasn’t fearless or invincible. She’d initially wanted her mother to sing back-up on ""How Will I Know""; early live performances of the song came off as almost shy, not immediately at home on the stage. But the sheer elation from the act of singing was obvious: realizing her own power in real time, letting it charge her up until she was completely electrified. Everything was hard, except for the music. That part was simple. That question—how will I know?—re-emerges in the infamous 2002 Diane Sawyer interview. ""I’m 5’7” and thin,"" Houston swears, responding to Sawyer’s questions about her jarring weight loss. ""That’s not just thin,"" Sawyer persists. Houston looks her dead in the eyes: ""No? What is it, Diane, tell me? Do you know?"" The circumstances have changed, but the issue is the same: fear of the unmanageable void, just outside the jurisdiction of control. Later in the interview, Houston talks of losing the thrill of singing: ""It’s just not fun anymore."" That lost spark is unmistakable on ""How Will I Know"", so pure you want to preserve it forever, and you almost can. —Meaghan GarveySee also: Lionel Richie: ""All Night Long (All Night)"" / Pointer Sisters: ""Jump (For My Love)""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH8xbDGv7oY,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/214/howwilliknow.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Whitney_Houston-How_Will_I_Know.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,102,Michael Jackson,"""P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)""",Epic; 1983,"Listen on Apple Music When it was released as Thriller’s penultimate single in the fall of '83, ""P.Y.T."" seemed fated for a life in Michael Jackson’s singles graveyard. Panned by the press as ""fluff,"" the flirty pop-funk confection came at the tail end of the Thriller era and quickly became the lowest charting of the record’s seven singles (though, this being Michael Jackson, that still involves breaking into the Billboard Top 10). It never got the high-profile video treatment Jackson had gained a reputation for, and he didn’t even perform the song live in his lifetime, putting it in league with fellow Thriller back burner ""The Lady in My Life"". Even with a bit of star power, courtesy of Grammy-winning singer James Ingram who co-wrote alongside Quincy Jones, ""P.Y.T."" just couldn’t ever find the launching pad. Even so, the single persisted as a fan favorite, for good reason: ""P.Y.T."" is one of Jackson’s most well-executed pop songs ever, from its irresistibly plush synth pads and rubbery bassline to the bridge’s famous call-and-response with a background chorus of P.Y.T.s (later revealed to be Jackson’s sisters, LaToya and Janet). It’s also the fastest song in Jackson’s catalog, perhaps providing a clue as to why he didn’t perform it, and other physically demanding songs, onstage. Yet in a 2009 interview with NPR, in which Ingram elaborated on the song’s recording sessions, he said Jackson danced furiously as he recorded, something he hadn’t seen an artist do before. ""Michael came out of the studio sweating,"" he described. ""There’s nobody that could do what he does."" And he’s right: ""P.Y.T."" remains one of the best examples of Jackson’s irrepressible talent, capable of spinning even his filler tracks into gold. —Eric TorresSee also: Dazz Band: ""Let It Whip"" / Jermaine Jackson: ""Let's Get Serious""",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/214/pyt.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Michael_Jackson-PYT_Pretty_Young_Thing.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,101,Eazy-E,"""Boyz-n-the-Hood""",Ruthless; 1987,"Listen on Apple Music Andre Young needed bail money. That was how it started. As the DJ for the Southern California collective World Class Wreckin’ Cru, Young was a prodigy, blowing the minds of partygoers the first time he was allowed in front of a crowd by perfectly syncing up ""Planet Rock"" with ""Please Mr. Postman"". He helped the Wreckin’ Cru ink a record deal with CBS Records, but he was also a tremendous pain in the ass: He had a problem with speeding tickets, and a related problem with showing up for court dates. Perhaps inevitably, he also had a problem with getting thrown in jail. Repeatedly. On one occasion, Lonzo Williams, his mentor and manager, was unmoved. ""Sit in jail,"" Williams told him. So Dre picked up the phone and called a gap-toothed, squeaky-voiced drug dealer named Eric Wright, a fellow pain in the ass who had been bugging Young ceaselessly about recording together for a nonexistent venture he called Ruthless Records. These are the deeply inauspicious circumstances that yielded ""Boyz-n-the-Hood"", a deeply auspicious song. O’Shea Jackson, a poet and rap fanatic, wrote the verses for a New York duo named H.B.O., but they turned up their noses at the beat’s clattering, primitive sound. Wright was in the corner, watching—he was no one’s idea of a microphone fiend, least of all his own; he was trying to be a record mogul. But Jackson and Young called him over to the mic, and L.A. rap would explode shortly thereafter. Like a lot of pop recordings that wind up getting canonized, ""Boyz-N-the-Hood"" has a provisional, make-do quality, like it was several revisions into a good idea gone wrong, and you can feel that casual energy in it even now, as it provides the raw material for a blockbuster Hollywood biopic. Jackson, Young, Wright; Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, Eazy-E. The guys who would become N.W.A were kid-brother types who were borrowing the swagger and energy of big-brother figures. Cube, hungry to establish L.A. as a home for rap, modeled ""Boyz-N-the-Hood"" on ""6 'N the Mornin"" by another local rapper named Ice-T—a very real criminal who had modeled his tough-talking rhymes on the rough sounds of Philadelphia rapper Schoolly D. Eazy was not Schoolly or Ice-T; he was the runt of the litter, the pipsqueak posturing. Because of that—the occasional hiccup in his stage-fright delivery, or the way it cracked or fell out of time with the rudimentary downbeat—the song became something inclusionary, an anthem for scared kids in a scary time, a mask to wear and an evasive strategy to adopt: ""Don’t quote me boy, cuz I ain’t said shit."" A lot of classic '80s rap reaches us faintly today, from across vast stylistic, generational, and socio-economic gulfs. But ""Boyz-N-the-Hood"" doesn’t feel that way. Its particulars always seem to be whispering back at every turn—""front, back, side to side"", ""cruising down the street in my six-fo."" All of those details became DNA, and the song’s nervy mix of fear and bluster became gangsta rap: I move through my unsafe world unafraid, it says, and because of that, I am invincible. —Jayson Greene See also: Eazy-E: ""Eazy-Duz-It"" / Ice-T: ""6 N' The Mornin""",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/eazy-e.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Eazy-E-Boyz-n-the-Hood.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,100,The Church,"""Under the Milky Way""",Mushroom/Arista; 1988,"Listen on Apple Music The Church had already had a taste of the major-label system when they signed to Arista in the late '80s, but it wasn't until they recorded their 1988 album Starfish in Los Angeles that they fully witnessed the excesses of the music industry. Those sessions paired them, uncomfortably, with veteran producers Waddy Watchel and Greg Ladanyi, old-guard industry hands who spent their career recording with acts like Fleetwood Mac, Warren Zevon, and Keith Richards, and who weren't shy about tapping Arista's generous expense account. ""We all had to have our special cars and apartments,"" guitarist Marty Wilson-Piper marveled 20 years later. ""It got so out of control with the egos and the drugs and too much money."" Starfish became the band's best-selling album, but the group has long maintained they could have recorded a better one for a fraction of the price. That might be true. Starfish was the Church’s most straightforward record of the era, and mostly it lets the songs speak for themselves. There is one moment, however, where its invisible production budget reveals itself, and it's the finest of the band's career. Midway through ""Under the Milky Way"", a slow-burning bit of psychedelia built, like most of the band’s best tracks, around the melancholic wonder in singer Steve Kilbey's voice, the song gives way to an insurgent guitar solo synthesized to sound like bagpipes. It barrels through the song, usurping and uplifting it, then driving it to a redemptive close. Even after hundreds of spins, it still sounds surprising every time. Moments this powerful and unexpected don’t come along often. If it took a small fortune to make this one just right, so be it. —Evan Rytlewski See also: Modern English: ""I Melt With You"" / Simple Minds: ""Don't You (Forget About Me)""",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/214/under-the-milky-way.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Church-Under_the_Milky_Way.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,99,Sister Nancy,"""Bam Bam""",Techniques; 1982,"Listen on Apple Music ""Bam Bam"" is one of those songs you know without knowing, a piece of cultural confetti that has fluttered in the margins of pop culture for 30 years. According to the always-fascinating Whosampled.com, it has been sampled 63 times, mostly in hip-hop, as early as 1982 and as recently as 2014, in Major Lazer’s ""Sound Bang"". It was in the 1998 movie Belly and 2014’s The Interview and a Reebok commercial where the former Victoria’s Secret model Miranda Kerr disrobes to her sneakers. Originally written as a riff on a 1966 Toots and the Maytals hit, the song has a simple, almost subliminal quality, like something schoolgirls might chant while jumping rope. Like a lot of early dancehall, it parallels early rap—listen to it alongside Roxanne Shante’s ""Roxanne’s Revenge"", for example, another song by a young woman who sounds both brashly confident and naïve. —Mike PowellSee also: Eek-A-Mouse: ""Wa Do Dem"" / Michigan & Smiley: ""Diseases""",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/sisternancy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sister_Nancy-Bam_Bam.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,98,Violent Femmes,"""Blister in the Sun""",Slash; 1983,"Listen on Apple Music Has anything so ugly ever been this catchy? Piggybacking on one of the more unforgettable riffs in rock history, the equally memorable chorus of the Violent Femmes' ""Blister in the Sun"" throws Gordon Gano’s un-redemptive sneer into whining, yelping overdrive. The single is the crowning moment on a self-titled debut album full of snotty gutter punk that gained a slow but steady following until it achieved platinum status nearly a decade after being released. That extended climax might seem antithetical to the commonly understood meaning of ""Blister"", which is often interpreted as an ode to masturbation, or premature ejaculation. But really, the song’s enigmatic lyrics remain more of an impressionistic dada explosion than anything that can be diagrammed and explicated. (Gano himself has said there’s nothing much there to actually make sense of.) Perfectly adolescent in its mix of cockiness, horniness, desperate insecurity, and dark-edged humor, ""Blister in the Sun"" is also a testament to the fact that two of the three Femmes were barely out of high school when they were lauded by the New York press as the next big thing. But there’s a sophistication lurking beneath the yowling. Brian Ritchie was a preternaturally talented bass player and Vincent DeLorenzo a technically accomplished (and amiably wild) drummer. Both the music they contribute here and the edgy vibe of Gano's singing remind us of the band’s influences: groups like the Velvet Underground, the Modern Lovers, and Television. The Violent Femmes ended up forming an unlikely bridge between those seminal bands and latter day pop punks like Green Day. And ""Blister in the Sun"" remains what the Times critic Robert Palmer proclaimed the album back in 1982: fresh, riveting and genuinely original. —Jonah BromwichSee also: The Dead Milkmen: ""Punk Rock Girl"" / Violent Femmes: ""Add It Up""",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/violentfemmes.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Violent_Femmes-Blister_in_the_Sun.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,97,Chaka Khan / Rufus,"""Ain't Nobody""",Warner Bros.; 1983,"Listen on Apple Music If you were going just off the lyric sheet, ""Ain’t Nobody"" might seem like something straight out of the '50s teenybopper-romantic songbook—stars are flown through, hearts are filled by a kiss, surrender is sweet. On record, the song tells a completely different story. Chaka doesn’t sound happy about the fact that there’s only one person in the world who can make her happy—in fact she sounds distraught over it. Behind her, Rufus has ditched the thick organic funk that they made their name on and gone all-in on the first wave of digital synthesis, and her vocals soar over an icy, thin, and rigidly clean electronic arrangement that only adds to the feeling of alienation. Mobs of post-disco soul acts would follow Rufus down the digital synth-funk path, and since R&B’s recently become the go-to genre for artists tinkering with pop’s sonic DNA, and tinny digital synths have floated back into fashion, there’s a whole new wave of musicians doing the same thing. The song’s greatest accomplishment isn’t the instrumentation, though—it’s the way the whole thing somehow manages to transmute wrung-out romantic desperation into pure ecstasy. —Miles RaymerSee also: Rene and Angela: ""I'll Be Good"" / SOS Band: ""Take Your Time (Do It Right)""",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/214/aint-nobody.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Chaka_Khan__Rufus-Aint_Nobody.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,96,Cherrelle / Alexander O'Neal,"""Saturday Love""",Tabu; 1985,"Listen on Apple Music Everyone else had youthful sexuality covered, but with the form of the duet, mid-'80s R&B claimed as its very own the realm of adult romance. There was Dennis Edwards & Siedah Garret’s slinky and eerie ""Don’t Look Any Further"" in 1984; René & Angela’s seductively strutting ""I’ll Be Good"" a year later; and, perhaps best of all, ""Saturday Love"", 1985’s classiest single by some measure. ""Saturday Love"" is precisely the sum of its very expensive parts: Cherrelle’s breathy drama, darting in and out of her own backing vocals in a manner oddly reminiscent of early Kate Bush; Alexander, the towering loverman unafraid to get gentle; perhaps most of all, producers Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis at the very top of their game during an early-career pinnacle. Their work on Janet Jackson’s Control the following year overshadows practically everything else from the era for its audacity, but ""Saturday Love"" sumptuously drapes itself across the other end of the spectrum, refitting the synthetic sentimentality of Prince's ""Little Red Corvette"" (the snares sounding like they’ve ricocheted off every building in Minneapolis) for a more genteel boudoir. The groove dispenses with dynamism and melodrama in favor of an endless push’n’pull falter-funk that evokes the easy repetition of familiar and practiced lovemaking. The arrangement happily occupies a flushed-but-becalmed locked groove, while Cherrelle and Alexander seem determined not to repeat themselves. Their vocals resemble a parade of inspired vamps and back-and-forth exchanges that would be ridiculous if they weren’t executed so perfectly (Alexander in particular bellowing his longing like it’s the last time he’ll ever be allowed back in the studio). Released today, it would launch a thousand Internet memes. Or, no: released today, the song’s svelte maturity wouldn’t get within a thousand miles of meme culture, let alone the charts. One day hopefully we’ll grow up enough to know better. —Tim Finney See also: Alexander O'Neal: ""What's Missing"" / Sherrick: ""Just Call (Call Collect Mix"")",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/cherrelle.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Cherrelle__Alexander_ONeal-Saturday_Love.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,95,Grace Jones,"""Pull Up to the Bumper""",Island; 1981,"Listen on Apple Music By the '80s, Grace Jones was already undergoing a chameleonic artistic evolution. She’d moved from Paris back to New York and shifted her sound from disco to reggae-influenced rock and pop, contorting each genre into new, unexpected shapes that all had one pressing, common through-line: they demanded that you move to them. Although 1980's Warm Leatherette was met with lukewarm reviews, when Nightclubbing came a year later her foothold as an international icon was firmly established, with the album’s most controversial single, the seductive, dubby ""Pull Up to the Bumper"", doubling as its best. Born out of a Warm Leatherette session in the Bahamas with reggae rhythm section Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare, the song evokes an erotic fixation for cars that edges on J.G. Ballard levels of obsession: there’s greasing, spraying, lubricating, long limousines, and, of course, that nominal bumper. Some radio stations refused to play the song because of its sexual undertones, but Jones, in perfectly Jonesian fashion, didn’t seem to care. She was already a lightning rod for attention at this point, and was often criticized for her gender-binary-ignoring appearance—""The future is no sex,"" she's said. Radio aside, ""Bumper"" turned out to be undeniable, infiltrating dance clubs upon a 1985 re-release and becoming a touchstone for post-disco and later innuendo-laden singles from Lady Gaga, Basement Jaxx, Rihanna and more. —Eric TorresSee also: Grace Jones: ""Warm Leatherette"" / Taana Gardner: ""Heartbeat""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bESGLojNYSo,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/214/pull-up-to-the-bumper.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Grace_Jones-Pull_Up_to_the_Bumper.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,94,Change,"""The Glow of Love""",Warner Bros./WEA; 1980,"Listen on Apple Music While it wasn't his first appearance on wax—Gregg Diamond's ""Hot Butterfly"" predates ""The Glow of Love"" by two years—Luther Vandross' vocal performance on ""The Glow of Love"" was the first to harness the singer's larger-than-life wellspring of emotion. Whatever Change were, on ""The Glow of Love"", they were Luther Vandross' supporting band first and foremost. The album from which this record is culled is full of powerful records; ""Angel in My Pocket"" was a favorite of Paradise Garage DJ Larry Levan, ""A Lover's Holiday"" is a disco classic, and ""The End"" was a proto-Italo record. But ""Searching"" and the title track nearly overshadow them, if only because Vandross had just begun to spread his wings: this was a star, and soon the world would know his name. ""Glow of Love"", co-written by Mauro Malavasi, Wayne Garfield, and the group's bassist Davide Romani, has a name appropriate for a record that radiates warmth, its soft-focus synthesizers serving as a musical halo for Vandross' rise-and-fall vocals, which alight upon notes with a precise delicacy one moment before fluttering into a powerful vibrato the next. Disco had turned to a democratic dancefloor in an era of rock star excess and ego. But as the '80s turned over, Change's debut album, still rooted in disco, pointed in new directions: towards electronics, towards Italo-disco, and towards the introduction of a true star, one whose incomparable voice would loom over 1980s R&B, and return the genre to the singers who would dominate the decade. —David Drake See also: Change: ""A Lover's Holiday"" / Skipworth & Turner: ""Thinking About Your Love""",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/glowoflove.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Change-The_Glow_of_Love.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,93,U2,"""With or Without You""",Island; 1987,"Listen on Apple Music By 1987, Bono was already known as an ecstatic live performer unafraid of the grand gesture; during U2's Live Aid set two years earlier, he famously ran across the massive Wembley Arena stage before venturing toward the crowd in order to slow dance with a fan. The moment occurred as the quartet played ""Bad"", a song that helped bring dewy atmosphere and slow-rolling builds into the realm of arena rock. ""With or Without You"", the first single off of The Joshua Tree, distills the quiet power of ""Bad"" while flipping its gravitational force—instead of shamelessly reaching out for attention, Bono stands in one place in the song's video, as if his feet are crazy glued to the floor. He wants everyone to come to him. That's exactly what happened: ""With or Without You"" was U2's first #1 single in America. Compared with flashy (and oh-so-'80s) contemporary #1s like Starship's ""Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now"" and Cutting Crew's ""(I Just) Died in Your Arms"", the song is a hymn-like oddity, patient and haunted and ambiguous. As Edge's infinite guitar rings out, Bono laments the hardships that come with a bond that's supposed to last forever. The married singer is torn between the roaming life of a musician and the stable comforts of home. As with most great U2 songs, there are no fixed answers here, only big questions writ large. So as the ""With or Without You"" video nears its end, Bono grabs the neck of the guitar that he's been holding close for the last four minutes and starts spinning around like a top—he's moving, but he's still in the same spot. —Ryan DombalSee also: U2: ""I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For"" / U2: ""Where the Streets Have No Name""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zIW8qDPhos,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/u2.jpg,/dataset/artwork/U2-With_or_Without_You.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,92,Fleetwood Mac,"""Gypsy""",Warner Bros.; 1982,"Listen on Apple Music The lore of the excess Fleetwood Mac indulged in at their height of their fame is the stuff of rock legend, a yardstick by which the hedonism of all other bands is measured (save for the Eagles). Amid the unstoppable worldwide post-Rumours ascent of the band, Stevie Nicks penned ""Gypsy"", a pean to before. Back when she was living in a tiny apartment in the Bay Area, waitressing to support herself and then-boyfriend Lindsey Buckingham, back when her best friend and voice coach Robin Snyder was alive. Likely written for the sessions for Nicks’ solo debut Bella Donna, the song eventually surfaced on the band’s 1982 album Mirage, and was characteristic of the more synthetic and slick Mac sound of the '80s. The video for ""Gypsy"" was, at the time, the most expensive music video ever made, and the first ""world premiere"" on MTV. While stadium bands lamenting the humble simplicity of their basement days is a codified part of rock'n'roll, what is really happening here is that Stevie Nicks is singing about her own life and herself in relationship to another woman, about female friendship. Women recording and performing personal songs that they wrote and sang was a relatively new phenomena in rock'n'roll; a hit song authored by a woman about her own creative life and the primacy of another woman in it—the regard of the ""my"" and ""she"" in ""Gypsy""—was almost unheard of—and what makes the song a landmark. —Jessica Hopper See also: Stevie Nicks: ""Gypsy"" (Demo) / Stevie Nicks: ""Stop Draggin' My Heart Around"" (ft. Tom Petty)",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/214/gypsy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fleetwood_Mac-Gypsy.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,91,"Bill Withers / Grover Washington, Jr.","""Just the Two of Us""",Elektra; 1981,"Listen on Apple Music In the early '70s, Bill Withers came out of the gate with three smash hits in a 16-month span: ""Ain’t No Sunshine"", ""Use Me"", and ""Lean on Me"". After the hot start, he quickly plateaued, remaining a mainstay on the R&B charts and urban radio but struggling to recapture his early success. He was finally able to strike gold again in 1981, accompanied by soul-jazz saxophonist Grover Washington, Jr., on the smooth jazz ballad ""Just the Two of Us"". A Grammy winner for Best R&B Song, the track finds Withers at his most inviting, welcoming in both lyric and tone. The saxophone has always been the sultriest of woodwind instruments but, when paired with Withers’ hearty timbre, it turns majestic, soaring through the lower octaves and building castles in the sky. —Sheldon Pearce See also: Chaka Khan: ""Through the Fire"" / Tina Turner: ""What's Love Got To Do With It""",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/justthetwoofus.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bill_Withers__Grover_Washington_Jr-Just_the_Two_of_Us.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,90,Blondie,"""Call Me""",Polydor/Chrysalis/Salsoul; 1980,"Listen on Apple Music Debbie Harry's greatest strength as a singer is her uncanny ability to sound aloof and emotional at the same time and, on ""Call Me"", she sounds as tough as anybody in a state of detached cool could be. Give a little of that credit to producer Giorgio Moroder, who put together a synth-washed hard rock robo-stomp that incinerated AOR pretenders on contact. Give a little more credit to that knuckle-slinging Chris Stein riff, which actually notches an unlikely Who Wore It Better victory against Black Sabbath's ""Children of the Grave"" and unspools into an octane-burner of a solo near the end of the eight-minute full-length version. But it's Harry's song to steal, and her leads possess the confident skill of someone who knows she's got full mastery of her voice but still wants to push it a little further. So we get a 70-story wirewalker floatiness in the verses, a seductively jet-set multilingual bridge, and a come-on that snaps into a collar-grabbing demand in the chorus. The single hit a deserved #1 in 1980 and has long outshone the American Gigolo that spawned it, but go for the extended album version, in which Harry promises a head rush of a decade that the pop world would have to go into overdrive to fulfill: ""Take me out and show me off and put me on the scene/ Dress me in the fashions of the nineteen-eigh-eighties."" —Nate Patrin See also: Bagarre: ""Lemonsweet"" / Romeo Void: ""Never Say Never""",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/call-me.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Blondie-Call_Me.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,89,Fela Kuti,"""Coffin for Head of State""",La Cile/Label Maison; 1981,"Listen on Apple Music When the military stormed Fela Anikulapo-Kuti’s compound and threw his mother out a second story window, he protested by breaking through government gates to deliver a mock coffin to General Obasanjo’s residence. And then he wrote a 23-minute song about it. Released in 1981, ""Coffin for Head of State"" is one of several tracks Fela recorded in response to that 1977 attack on his Kalakuta compound. By then, Obasanjo had had enough of the outspoken, pot-smoking political dissident, and he was sick of the medium the man had invented to carry the message: Afrobeat. A thousand soldiers were sent in, burning down Kalakuta, beating and violating anyone they could; Kuti’s mother ultimately died from the injuries sustained from her fall. Nothing was the same after that, and listening to Fela’s post-Kalakuta music, it shows. On ""Coffin for Head of State"", the themes are as socially and politically charged as ever. Kuti criticizes officials who use Christianity and Islam as crutches for doing ""bad bad bad things."" He hints at a burgeoning obsession with his own brand of Pan-African spirituality (which focused on unity but was also pretty essentialist and misogynist). The satirical humor that often characterized his earlier work grew increasingly bitter and direct. By the time ""Coffin"" came out, the original Afrika 70 that included Tony Allen was no longer, and the soon-to-be Egypt 80 couldn't be the same. They did see international success, but like the marijuana cloud that cloaked the Chief Priest wherever he went, a thin veil of grief would settle over much of his Afrobeat into the next two decades. —Minna Zhou See also: Fela Kuti: ""Original Suffer Head"" / T. P. Orchestre Poly-Rythmo: ""Ecoute Ma Melodie""",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/fela-kuti.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fela_Kuti-Coffin_for_Head_of_State.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,88,"Evelyn ""Champagne"" King","""Love Come Down""",RCA; 1982,"Listen on Apple Music In the 1980s, with the advent of electronics and the shifting texture of popular music, certain producers—from Quincy Jones to Nile Rodgers, Jam & Lewis to Stock Aitken Waterman—became synonymous with certain sonic signatures. Despite his huge influence, one of the most undersung in this category was Kashif Saleem. A solo artist, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and songwriter who'd begun his career at age 15 playing keyboards for disco group B.T. Express, Kashif joined the Mighty M production trio alongside Paul Laurence and Morrie Brown in the early 1980s; with Mighty M and solo, he was in large part responsible for shaping the sound of '80s R&B—and by extension, much of popular music—in disco's wake. And Evelyn ""Champagne"" King's ""Love Come Down"" was an early peak, epitomizing this game-changing sound in a completely singular way. Evelyn ""Champagne"" King's career had been in decline when she began recording with Mighty M; ""Shame"", her 1978 debut single, was a disco smash she'd been unable to match since. ""I'm in Love"", her first single with the production unit, made both her comeback and their careers. But its follow-up, 1982's ""Love Come Down"", was a more radical step forward. Mighty M claimed several inspirations for this new sound; Morrie Brown told Nelson George in Billboard that they'd listen to West Coast producers like Quincy Jones and Leon Sylvers—particularly Sylvers' work on the Whispers' ""And the Beat Goes On""—and try to match it. Kashif—who'd experimented with synthesizers since the late 1970s—found inspiration in jazz and R&B songwriting at a time when disco was at its peak. In particular, the spacious production of Weather Report's Heavy Weather album, and the advice of Miles Davis: ""Sometimes it's just as important where the notes aren't as where they are."" With its distinctive Moog bass and a production style that centered the performer, Kashif's sound marked a move away from disco's four-on-the-floor momentum, towards a bouncier sound where every element had its own discrete, foregrounded space. At its center, King's clear voice rings with celebratory confidence; around it, every instrument seems designed to maximize the emotional punch, that feeling of unambiguous love. —David Drake See also: Evelyn Champagne King: ""I'm in Love"" / Mary Jane Girls: ""In My House""",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/evelynking.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Evelyn_Champagne_King-Love_Come_Down.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,87,Tenor Saw,"""Ring the Alarm""",Techniques; 1985,"Listen on Apple Music ""Ring the alarm/ Another sound is dying,"" runs the refrain of Tenor Saw's ""Ring the Alarm""—a taunt, meant to trumpet the superiority of Sugar Minott's Youthman Promotion soundsystem. (""Four big sound in-a one big lawn/ The don sound a-play the other three keep calm."") ""Ring the Alarm""—sampled or quoted over the years in songs by Naughty By Nature, Fat Joe, Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, Mos Def, Big Audio Dynamite, and even Fugazi—is the story of a sound that just wouldn't quit. The story goes all the way back to 1973 and the ""Stalag 17"" riddim, produced by Winston Riley and featuring organist Ansell Collins and his band. The Riddim Database cites its use in 280 songs (other sources say more than 400), including General Echo's Jamaican #1 hit ""Arleen"" (1979) and Sister Nancy's deliriously dubbed out ""Bam Bam"" (1982). But Tenor Saw's version, released as dancehall was turning digital, coaxed new urgency out of ""Stalag""'s rolling bassline, woozy organ, and glancing guitar and horn accents. His voice sounds far older, or at least wiser, than 19; it's hard to believe that he had debuted just the year before, on a devotional song called ""Roll Call"". He brings his church upbringing to the sweetness of his vibrato, but at moments, like when he imitates the ringing of a bell, there's an edge to his voice that must have tied his competitors' stomachs in knots. —Philip SherburneSee also: Nitty Gritty: ""Hog in a Minty"" / Tenor Saw: ""Golden Hen""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zn3cSCZv8c,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/ring-the-alarm.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tenor_Saw-Ring_the_Alarm.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,86,Tracy Chapman,"""Fast Car""",Elektra; 1988,"Listen on Apple Music Working class narratives might not chart anymore, but escapism has long been universal. Tracy Chapman’s breakout single—the one she is remembered for most, to this day, along with 1997’s ""Give Me One Reason""—was a multi-character study about keeping sane, keeping safe and keeping a dream alive amidst long odds. The politics and plaintive gait of ""Fast Car"" echoes the simple, guitar-led soul of Bill Withers, who holds his working class roots close, even today. Chapman grew up in recession-era Cleveland but the determinism of a refrain like, ""I had a feeling that I belonged, I had a feeling that I could be someone,"" made it an anthem for all: kids stuck in bum towns and broken homes, single moms, desk drones, and dreamers. (Maybe even a few Reaganites?) Its release toward the end of the decade, as the artifice of new wave and glam rock were being phased out and hip-hop was making itself known, makes ""Fast Car"" one of the musical catalysts for the resurgence of liberalism and counterculture in the radical '90s. —Anupa MistrySee also: Suzanne Vega: ""Luka"" / Tracy Chapman: ""Talkin' Bout a Revolution""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Xp9IaqAahc,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/214/tracychapman.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tracy_Chapman-Fast_Car.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,85,Luther Vandross,"""Never Too Much""",Epic; 1981,"Listen on Apple Music As any true karaoke specialist knows, ""Never Too Much"" is one of the world's worst karaoke records. Its melody—repetitive, predictable, over alternating, familiar block chords—lacks any kind of built-in tension. One can't merely hit the marks and pull off a convincing performance. Even though it's an uptempo pop record—perhaps the most accessible of Vandross' long and varied career—it's also a classicist's R&B cut, the magic tied directly to its performer's preternaturally fluid vocal control. This is why ""Never Too Much"" is also proof of Luther Vandross' tremendous, singular talent. Every drop of its ebullient emotion, those feelings deep enough to swim in, are contained within his incomparable voice. He embodies every second of each line, gives each turn of phrase, each syllable, a subtle, glancing grace. This delicate style lays confidently but gently upon this much less subtle musical backdrop, as if the suggestion of anything so selfish as carnality might disturb the sincerity of his devotion. ""Never Too Much"" is not the apex of Vandross as a singer even on his own debut; ""A House Is Not A Home"" more fully illustrates the depth and power of his vulnerable generosity. Yet within the broad strokes of its funk groove, which hand-holds listeners into a feeling of giddy celebration, Vandross' own voice limns his ecstasy in the aching sadness of its absence—the recognition that love is a surrender of control. —David DrakeSee also: George Duke: ""Reach Out"" / Tatsuro Yamashita: ""Love Talkin'""",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/nevertoomuch.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Luther_Vandross-Never_Too_Much.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,84,Slayer,"""Angel of Death""",Def Jam; 1986,"Listen on Apple Music Slayer, looped in with Anthrax, Megadeth, and Metallica as part of the ""big four"" of thrash, took early inspiration from both British heavy metal and punk—throughout their career they’ve covered Minor Threat, the Exploited, GBH, and T.S.O.L, among others. In the spirit of their heroes, their third album, 1986’s Reign in Blood, came off like a blunt kick to the head. It was the first metal release for Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons’ Def Jam imprint, and Rubin recorded and produced it, stripping the Southern California quartet’s sound to its barest essentials, echoing the hardcore they’d grown up with, then speeding it up and making it more evil. Further rejecting concessions, they opened Reign in Blood with their most controversial track, the buzzing, pounding ""Angel of Death"". Written by their late guitarist Jeff Hanneman, ""Angel of Death"" tells the story of the sadistic Nazi war criminal Dr. Josef Mengele, and the physical and psychological human experiments the ""infamous butcher"" performed during World War II—gassing, surgery without anesthesia, burning flesh, creating ""mutants,"" burying people alive. The extreme subject material enunciated in a crystalline snarl by Tom Araya (""Auschwitz, the meaning of pain/ The way that I want you to die/ Slow death, immense decay/ Showers that cleanse you of your life”) delayed Reign in Blood’s release when Def Jam’s distributor Columbia Records balked at the lyrics and the album’s ""Satanic"" artwork and it’s still shocking almost 30 years later. —Brandon StosuySee also: Slayer: ""South of Heaven"" / Slayer: ""Raining Blood"" / Napalm Death: ""You Suffer""",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/214/slayer.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Slayer-Angel_of_Death.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,83,My Bloody Valentine,"""You Made Me Realise""",Creation; 1988,"Listen on Apple Music On record, it lasts only 30 seconds or so. Live, it can stretch up to 20-plus minutes. My Bloody Valentine's album-length shoegaze masterwork is 1991's Loveless, but the title track from 1988's You Made Me Realise is the Kevin Shield-led Irish band's most emblematic song. And the most potent part of that song is the so-called ""holocaust section,"" which melded the Beatles' psychedelic experiments to Sonic Youth's noise-rock pummel, in the process reaching an early pinnacle for a while new and singular style. When ""You Made Me Realise"" arrived, MBV had gone through a couple of vocalists and sonic approaches without quite rising above their contemporaries. As their first record with Shields and fellow guitarist Bilinda Butcher splitting vocals, and first for the financially generous Creation Records, ""You Made Me Realise"" established the group as one to watch, presaging the meticulously explosive studio confections that have followed in the years since. MBV weren't the only band in the mid-to-late '80s combining the percussive/discordant with the sweet/tuneful, of course, but their ambitious admixture was particularly captivating. And all the more so as a joyfully extensive, consciousness-affecting concert closer. Shields and Butcher don't quite make clear here what they've realized—though interpersonally fraught lyrics about death and suicide sure give a hint—but the song itself is the epiphany. —Marc HoganSee also: Cocteau Twins: ""Pearly-Dewdrops' Drops"" / The Jesus and Mary Chain: ""You Trip Me Up""",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/214/bloodyvalentine.jpg,/dataset/artwork/My_Bloody_Valentine-You_Made_Me_Realise.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,82,Tears for Fears,"""Everybody Wants to Rule the World""",Mercury; 1985,"Listen on Apple Music With their debut record The Hurting, Tears for Fears rivaled Morrissey as the poster children for '80s, British, sad-sack pop—the record was a wailing and gloomy new wave exploration into bloodshed, childhood suffering, and mental breakdowns. And while the band’s second album, Songs from the Big Chair, wasn’t too far a leap in terms of tone (the title was inspired by the psychological melodrama Sybil), musically it was a refined deep dive into a pure-pop sound that would make them famous. While The Hurting was a chart-topper in the UK, Songs from the Big Chair broke Tears for Fears in the U.S., and ""Everybody Wants to Rule the World"" led the way, hitting #1. Although just as bleak in its sentiment, the track is a far cry from the Songs from the Big Chair’s thomping and aggressive ""Shout"". It was Tears for Fears Lite™, all their ennui and maddened disdain filtered through a beat you could actually dance to. And underneath the synth-pop sheen, its vague message, a snide lesson in how power-hungry society could be, reached Reagan and Thatcher-era youth fed up with political greed. Today, the track has found a new audience with another pop star turning her nose up on selfish desire for wealth and power, in Lorde’s smoldering, dark cover for the Hunger Games: Catching Fire soundtrack. But what makes the original ""Everybody Wants to Rule the World"" so enduring is its glossy packaging, how it swerves past ""Mad World"" gloom and goes for something that sounds like Roland Orzabal is smiling in surrender. —Hazel CillsSee also: Culture Club: ""Do You Really Want to Hurt Me"" / The Style Council: ""Long Hot Summer""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaVA6sgOpws,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/tearsforfears.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tears_for_Fears-Everybody_Wants_to_Rule_the_World.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,81,Diana Ross,"""Upside Down""",Motown; 1980,"Listen on Apple Music Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers of Chic produced Diana Ross’ 1980 album Diana, but, before its release, the record was remixed without their permission: Ross' voice was moved to the forefront, the bass was reduced, the songs made flatter. Listening to the original Chic mixes of the album can feel like breathing oxygen into compressed airspace; like an unlatched accordion, the original mix unfolds to take up more space. Of course, either version is masterful: a concept record about falling for someone whose love isn't entirely reciprocated, of surrendering control. On ""Upside Down"", her words ring with the confidence of someone who's chosen acceptance: ""Respectfully, I say to thee, I'm aware that you're cheating,"" she sings, as if afraid of upsetting the balance. It's a song about that sensation of ""falling""—a term far too shortsighted to encapsulate the upside-down, inside-out, round-and-round motion of a crush. So just as Edwards and Rodgers’ songwriting suggests a box tumbling down stairs, Ross stands tall inside, enjoying the ride and fearing the landing. —David Drake See also: Surface: ""Falling In Love"" / Chaka Khan: ""I Feel 4 U""",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/214/upsidedown.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Diana_Ross-Upside_Down.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,80,Zapp,"""Computer Love""",Warner Bros.; 1986,"Listen on Apple Music Roger Troutman called his talk box the Ghetto Robot or the Electric Country Preacher; his longtime friend Bootsy Collins called it the Cosmic Communicator, the mythological equivalent to MJ’s sequined glove, a drug addiction: ""We were able to translate this unspeakable sign language into street talk, on-the-corner croonin', babble, and liquid lovemaking... It is forbidden for you to know the secrets. It will always be a mystery."" By ""Computer Love"", Troutman’s family band Zapp had already optimized the golden ratio of bounce to ounce and laid the blueprint for g-funk even more directly than Parliament, but spiritual advisor George Clinton had dipped and album sales were tanking. But then there was ""Computer Love"": that rare, logic-defying union of man and crudely-rigged machine where the latter only heightens the humanity of the former (a balance later mastered by '05 T-Pain, '08 Lil Wayne, and '12 Future Hendrix), power lines sparking in a quiet storm. Credit due to Shirley Murdock and brother Larry Troutman, both co-writers, but the android romance was all Roger—a guy who re-learned the spoken alphabet to better fuse with he and his brothers’ homemade talk boxes that regularly electrocuted him and fucked up his stomach. He was a martyr for the funk in every sense; 14 years later, Larry fired four shots into his brother and then killed himself behind their Dayton, Ohio family studio. But first, and for years thereafter, ""Computer Love"" wedged its way into not just West coast rap legend, but to NYC, Chicago, Baton Rouge, and presumably out into the cosmos. —Meaghan GarveySee also: The Gap Band: ""Outstanding"" / Pineapples: ""Come on Closer""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lK6wOG_aDl8,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/214/computer-love.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Zapp-Computer_Love.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,79,Boogie Down Productions,"""South Bronx""",B-Boy; 1986,"Listen on Apple Music When Queens legends Marley Marl and MC Shan, members of the famed Juice Crew, released ""The Bridge"" in 1985 they didn’t know they’d be starting a firestorm. The record was meant to simply big up their borough, but it was misinterpreted by KRS-One as revisionist history. It’s well-established that the Bronx is the birthplace of hip-hop, but in ""The Bridge"", MC Shan seems to imply otherwise: “You love to hear the story again and again/ Of how it all got started way back when/ The monument is right in your face/ Sit and listen for a while to the name of the place."" If Queensbridge was falsely claiming the rap birthright as its own on wax, then that would be tantamount to a formal attack on the Bronx legacy and a full-on declaration of inner city war. The Boogie Down Productions response was swift. In 1986, BDP released the thumping, Shan-slamming ""South Bronx"", which was equal parts dis record and hometown anthem. KRS-One was already an emerging star in the mid- to late-'80s, but ""South Bronx"" was a defining moment for his budding rap career. It helped to establish him as one of New York’s great emcees, alongside Rakim, Kool Moe Dee, and Juice Crew rappers Big Daddy Kane and Kool G Rap. His blunt rapping and resounding voice are on full display over production from DJ Scott La Rock. ""South Bronx"" would set up several other more direct shots from both sides, in what would later come to be known as the Bridge Wars, an all out clash between Boogie Down Production and the Juice Crew, and its cultural impact is matched only by its signature raps. —Sheldon Pearce See also: Boogie Down Productions: ""My Philosophy"" / Boogie Down Productions: ""The Bridge Is Over""",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/214/boogiedown.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Boogie_Down_Productions-South_Bronx.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,78,The Specials,"""Ghost Town""",2 Tone; 1981,"Listen on Apple Music On the surface, the Specials were an '80s reggae band that grew out of the racially egalitarian two-tone movement, but in essence were more like the Kinks: sharp-minded English guys who used satire to illustrate the ironies of their social world. Released during a deep recession and string of inner-city riots, ""Ghost Town"" was a grotesque musical-theater number that took the metaphor of its title literally, weaving spooky organs and lonesome, quasi-Arabian flutes into bleak, monochromatic dub. It became a hit, which is surprising only because it’s so unrepentantly grim—an instance where pop music didn’t just reflect the fantasies of a society, but the realities. In a little bit of contextual poetry, the band was in the process of breaking up. During sessions, members stood at the edges of the room, not speaking; at one point, one of the guitarists tried to kick a hole in the studio wall. The three biggest English music magazines at the time—Melody Maker, Sounds, and NME—called it the single of the year. —Mike PowellSee also: Madness: ""Our House"" / Musical Youth: ""Pass the Dutchie""",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/specials-ghost-town.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Specials-Ghost_Town.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,77,Metallica,"""Master of Puppets""",Elektra; 1986,"Listen on Apple Music Metallica had little in common with the L.A. metal scene they would eventually escape for San Francisco's burgeoning thrash scene, except for one thing: ambition. Whereas that manifested in the Sunset Strip scene in conquests, both sexual and pharmaceutical, Metallica wanted to elevate thrash metal beyond its origins as a hybrid of the new wave of British heavy metal and hardcore. They already had a stronger grip on arrangements and songwriting than virtually all of their peers when Kill 'Em All came out, but 1986’s Master of Puppets, and its title track especially, remains the hallmark of metal as a creative force to this day. There's no way you could say ""Puppets"" isn't triumphant, with its progressive structure thanks to Cliff Burton, whose presence still looms large almost 29 years after his death, and James Hetfield's snarl and unrivaled rhythm guitar. It's by far one of Metallica's most popular songs, and it still gets a rapturous response from even the harshest cynics (and Metallica's given them plenty of reasons to by cynical over the past two decades). ""Puppets"" flips the script on metal's lust for power by placing the listener as the oppressor and giving them a fuller picture of the wasteland they've created; a serious contrast given that it's on an album bookended by ""Battery"" and ""Damage Inc."", two of metal's greatest odes to senseless destruction as motivation. Knowing this, you'll still chant ""MASTER! MASTER!,"" and that's the beauty of the best protest music. It's not as outwardly sociopolitical as ""Disposable Heroes"" or ""Fight Fire With Fire"", but it still lets you know that the ills of wrath are more likely to kill you than Satan. That terror hasn't diminished since 1986. Metal has never been more healthy creatively than it is today, at least in the underground, but ""Puppets"" represents a rare moment where boundary-pushing and commercial success dovetailed so gloriously. Nothing like them came before, and nothing like them will come after. —Andy O'ConnorSee also: Metallica: ""Creeping Death"" / Metallica: ""For Whom the Bell Tolls""",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/214/Master_of_Puppets.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Metallica-Master_of_Puppets.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,76,Fingers Inc.,"""Can You Feel It?""",Trax; 1986,"Listen on Apple Music Electronic music's biggest point of contention from the uninitiated has always been a perceived lack of humanity in its machine-made sounds. Björk delivered a sharp response to the cynics in a 1997 documentary about the making of Homogenic: ""I find it so amazing when people tell me that electronic music has not got soul. And they blame the computers. They point at the computers like, 'There's no soul here!' You can't blame the computer. If there's no soul in the music, it's because nobody put it there."" Larry Heard, a drummer and budding producer from Chicago, may have preempted Björk's point over a decade prior. As house, techno, electro, and acid began to transform underground club culture in the mid-'80s, Heard was discovering what he could do with these new ideas. ""Mystery of Love"" broke him into the fold in 1985, when the lush, slinky record caught the attention of DJs Frankie Knuckles and Ron Hardy, and for good reason. Coming from a strictly live music background, Heard was an outsider with a fresh perspective, using his Roland TR-707, Juno-2, and Jupiter-6 for more thoughtful pursuits than, say, ""Jack the Dick"" and ""Girls Out on the Floor"". Disco had given house its love for the body, but the soft-spoken musician wanted to put some soul there. During his RBMA lecture, Heard shares the first record he ever bought as a child, Sly and the Family Stone's ""Hot Fun in the Summertime"". Cueing up a selection, he foregoes the most popular song and says, ""This is the B-side that I was more into."" And therein might lie the key to what became the blueprint of deep house: ""Can You Feel It?"" is an A-side track written with the heart of a B-side. Vocalless in its original form, the 1986 single has no hook and eschews all semblance of pop structure, completely surrendering to an endless groove built on jazzy hi-hats and sumptuous chords. It moves you with seduction instead of force, but in a way that encourages heartfelt expression and joyful introspection over pure sex. And the endurance of its legacy can't be overstated; never mind deep house being Beatport's best-selling genre—that fat, gummy bassline alone has touched everyone from Disclosure to Nicki Minaj. About 30 years later, ""Can You Feel It?"" now sounds like a question poised to those lingering electronic naysayers. If your answer is still ""No,"" then by all means make room for the masses who can't soak up enough of this deep, charismatic soul. —Patric FallonSee also: Lil Louis: ""French Kiss"" / Mr. Fingers: ""Washing Machine""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EV1ophtw88g,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/214/fingersinc.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fingers_Inc-Can_You_Feel_It.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,75,Black Flag,"""Rise Above""",SST; 1981,"Listen on Apple Music By the time Black Flag released its debut LP, Damaged, in 1981, the Los Angeles-based hardcore punk band was already on its fourth singer, third EP, and umpteenth U.S. tour. In many ways, the band’s sound and character had already been defined. Still, Damaged is the Black Flag album that most people turn to first. Damaged’s opening track, ""Rise Above"", is a suitable argument for the record’s enduring importance. It’s Black Flag at its most anthemic—a rallying cry that stands as the polar opposite to the inward-looking album-closing title track. It’s also the band’s first recording with then new singer, Henry Rollins. Whether or not you preferred Rollins among the band’s multitude of vocalists, you have to admit he was intense—a more formal front man who brought a heaviness and darkness to Black Flag. The band and record’s influence are incalculable, within the context of '80s hardcore and punk music as a genre, certainly, but also underground rock music in general—from DIY touring, to the independent record business, press, and even visual art. But while a lot of bands followed their lead, nobody else ever sounded like Black Flag. Listening to ""Rise Above"", it’s surprising how raw the recording is, but the band didn't need beefier drums or dialed-in guitars. Its attitude and presence—both easy to detect on ""Rise Above""—were impossible to replicate or fake. The saying goes that all you need to start a band are three chords, but three chords aren’t going to make you into Black Flag. —Aaron Leitko See also: Black Flag: ""My War"" / Circle Jerks: ""Wild In The Streets""",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/damaged.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Black_Flag-Rise_Above.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,74,Dinosaur Jr.,"""Freak Scene""",SST; 1988,"Listen on Apple Music In Our Band Could Be Your Life, author Michael Azerrad memorably details an encounter between Dinosaur Jr.'s J Mascis and Lou Barlow, the bassist he'd booted from the band. Nevermind had just shot up the charts, establishing Nirvana as mega-stars, and Barlow was beyond bitter. ""They fucking beat you to it!"" he fumed. ""You could have done it, you asshole, we could have fucking done it!"" Only years later did Barlow realize that Dinosaur never could have matched Nirvana's commercial appeal, but it's not a stretch to imagine them coming close. Under different circumstances, any number of underground singles could have broken before ""Smells Like Teen Spirit"", becoming the generational anthem that announced punk’s seize of the mainstream. ""Freak Scene"" was perhaps the strongest candidate among them. Mascis showed little interest in becoming a star, but ""Freak Scene"" was proof that he could turn it on if he wanted to. An ode to his complete and utter inability to communicate with other people, the song shuffles from one disheveled guitar tone to the next, each somehow stickier and more impulsive than the last. The song stumbles to a stop after just a few minutes when words fail him. His final lines are clumsy but heartfelt: ""Sometimes I don’t thrill you/ Sometimes I think I’ll kill you/ Just don't let me fuck up, will you?/ 'Cause when I need a friend it's still you/ What a mess."" It's the most self-aware tune Mascis ever wrote, playing his hapless slacker persona for dark comedy, yet that sense of humor doesn't make it any less poignant. Few songwriters have better understood the very real frustration of struggling to find the right thing to say, and few songs have captured it better than this one. —Evan Rytlewski See also: Dinosaur Jr.: ""Little Fury Things""",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/freak-scene.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dinosaur_Jr-Freak_Scene.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,73,Pixies,"""Debaser""",Elektra; 1989,"Listen on Apple Music ""Debaser"" opens Pixies’ second album, Doolittle, a record that sounded more polished, in a good way, than its 1988 predecessor Surfer Rosa, and somehow felt educational. On ""Debaser"", Frank Black referenced Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali’s 1929 silent surrealist short film Un Chien Andalou with a line about slicing up eyeballs, and echoed the film’s title with the repeated ""un chien andalusia,"" a joking mix of English, Spanish, French, and invented nonsense. It was the first time many of us heard about Surrealism, and we were just as naïve and over-intellectual, proud and posing as Black seemed to be—it came to define something about consciously taking the path less traveled, one that may involve seeming degraded or debased to brighter, shinier folk. ""Debaser"" jams what Pixies do best into under three minutes of Black’s wildman vocals, Kim Deal’s ethereal echoes and sturdy bass, Joey Santiago’s angular, earworm guitars, Dave Lovering’s punched-up drums, all locking together seamlessly. It’s an anthem for when you’re old enough to get it, but you’re still figuring things out. —Brandon StosuySee also: Pixies: ""Caribou"" / Pixies: ""Wave of Mutilation""",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/214/debaser-pixies.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Pixies-Debaser.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,72,Bad Brains,"""Pay to Cum""",Bad Brain; 1982,"Listen on Apple Music Bad Brains had many contemporaries on the early '80s hardcore punk circuit, but few actual peers. ""Pay to Cum"" first appeared on a 7'' single in 1980, and though it was technically predated by other hardcore singles such as Black Flag’s ""Nervous Breakdown"", there is no question that it is one of the cornerstones upon which the entire genre was built. With their background in jazz fusion, the Brains were simply better and more versatile musicians than nearly anyone else in their field, and every element of their musical approach was always a notch or two beyond what early hardcore listeners had any right to expect. Their rhythm section was lithe and muscular, guitarist Dr. Know was one of the rare ""punk"" musicians to develop his own distinctive signature guitar tone, and charismatic frontman H.R. was able to slip his voice elusively between octaves and punctuate his live performances with perfectly executed backflips. Over the course of their career together, Bad Brains recorded several different versions of ""Pay to Cum"", each with a few minor variations, none of which stretch on much past the 1:30 mark. Contrast the single with the later album version or various live recordings, and one is struck by how much thought and care H.R. and company put into the blink-and-you-missed-them lyrics and smaller details (more cowbell!) of a song designed to rush by in a mind-bending locomotive blur. Listening to the subtle ways bassist Darryl Jenifer and drummer Earl Hudson bob and weave around the song’s indestructible central riff; one gets an idea of why Beastie Boys’ Adam Yauch once referred to Jenifer as the musician who most influenced his own playing. That broad and lasting influence is one natural result when a band invents a genre and transcends it at the same time. —Matthew Murphy See also: Adolescents: ""Amoeba"" /  Descendants: ""Hope""",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/214/badbrains.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bad_Brains-Pay_to_Cum.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,71,Bruce Springsteen,"""Atlantic City""",Columbia; 1982,"Listen on Apple Music Well, they blew up the Chicken Man in Philly last night… It’s a perfect first line, so evocative and unexpected and strange that it immediately hooks you, even if you don’t know the first thing about mobster Philip Testa. Just who—or what?—is the Chicken Man, and why was he in Philly? The words draw you immediately into the world of the song even as they disorient you, and the next few lines about racket boys and gambling commissions announce a very different boardwalk from the ones that had previously made Springsteen the future of rock'n'roll. This is a world that is collapsing around its hard-luck narrator, who might be a hitman trying to go straight or possibly the guy from ""Thunder Road"" after a few wrong turns. And he’s got a few more wrong turns to make, starting with: Last night I met this guy and I’m gonna do a little favor for him. Telling a story that is essentially true rather than factually accurate, ""Atlantic City"" emerges as the most fully formed demo on Nebraska, Springsteen’s infamously stark sixth album. He recorded these songs at his home in New Jersey, with only a guitar, a harmonica, a minimum of overdubs, and the collected works of John Steinbeck (presumably), and the songs made so much sense in their spare settings that the E Street Band never got their hands on them. ""Atlantic City"" is the only song, however, that doesn’t rely on folk-singer minimalism, as Springsteen strums his acoustic so emphatically that you infer the E Street Band behind him and he overdubs himself howling in the background. His voice becomes an instrument, pure sound, spectral and bodiless—as though ""Atlantic City"" is a ghost story rather than a crime saga. And in a way it is. Everything dies, baby, that’s a fact… —Stephen M. Deusner See also: Billy Bragg: ""A New England"" / Bruce Springsteen: ""Brilliant Disguise""",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/atlanticcity.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bruce_Springsteen-Atlantic_City.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,70,Pet Shop Boys,"""West End Girls""",Bobcat; 1984,"Listen on Apple Music If the '80s were a decade of decadence, then Neil Tennant sounds bored by the spectacle of it all. On the Pet Shop Boys’ first single, he comes across as an exquisitely cynical tour guide, unimpressed by the posturing of West End girls and East End boys and less than shocked by some poor soul’s descent into violence during the first verse. ""There’s a gun in your hand pointed at your head."" Yawn. Ennui is not a virtue, but a survival mechanism in this paranoid version of London, which somehow fueled a dance-pop smash on both sides of the Atlantic. As evasive as it is catchy, ""West End Girls"" already had an unusual life before it topped any chart. Tennant and Chris Lowe first recorded the song with prolific New York producer Bobby O, and that version percolates with a thump and shimmer not too dissimilar to so many other mid-decade club hits. In addition to emphasizing Tennant’s half-hearted rapping, this recording foregrounds the song’s political origins. Sample lyric: ""Who do you think you are, Joe Stalin?"" Fortunately for all of us, the Pet Shop Boys omitted that line when they recut the song with Stephen Hague for Please, their '85 debut on EMI Records. This is the hit version, the one you and I know best, redolent of grimy city streets instead of sweaty dance floors. It’s saturated in nighttime ambience, seedy and slightly claustrophobic, as though the West End were closing in on you. Even when Tennant sings, ""Just you wait till I get you home,"" it doesn’t sound like a sexual come-on. He’s going to make you read Marx and watch old Cagney flicks with him. Rarely does pop make such a virtue of such ambivalence, and even more rarely does ambivalence sound so inviting. —Stephen M. DeusnerSee also: Duran Duran: ""The Chauffeur"" / Section 25: ""Looking from a Hilltop (Restructure)""",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/petshopboys.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Pet_Shop_Boys-West_End_Girls.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,69,Prince,"""When You Were Mine""",Warner Bros.; 1980,"Before there was Sign 'o' the Times, before there was Purple Rain, there was Dirty Mind. The album that Prince started the '80s off with, essentially a collection of bedroom demos, was simultaneously his most innocuous and his most brash. It featured surprisingly graphic sounds about incest, oral sex, and other sordid subjects, with the fidelity and scope of a bedroom demo one-man-band. ""When You Were Mine"", which softened his trademark funk into something closer to jangle pop, was one of the most shocking turns on the whole record. What starts as a typical I-want-you-back-lament turns a corner quickly: ""You let all my friends come over and meet/ And you were so strange/ You didn't have the decency to change the sheets."" That'll raise an eyebrow or two. And then there's the ""I never was the kind to make a fuss/ When he was there/ Sleeping in between the two of us,"" all presented with the same doe-eyed expression. You'd never guess what he was saying unless you listened closely. Surprisingly explicit, fluid with gender roles and expectations (note how the other man is sleeping in between them), and sparsely funky, ""When You Were Mine"" laid the blueprint for all the great Prince songs that would come throughout the '80s. You can hear the desperate confusion of ""If I Was Your Girlfriend"", the straightforward crudeness of ""Let's Pretend We're Married"", the playful brazenness of ""Jack U Off""—it's all there in the chintzy keyboards and flimsy aluminum bass. Capturing Prince in raw and unfiltered mode, it was an early peek at a genius in the making, at his most naked and vulnerable. And it's that vulnerability—confusing, naive, and honest—that makes ""When You Were Mine"" such a memorable moment in a catalogue already overflowing with classics. —Andrew RyceSee also: Prince: ""Dirty Mind"" / Prince: ""Pop Life""",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/dirty-mind.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Prince-When_You_Were_Mine.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,68,Biz Markie,"""Just a Friend""",Cold Chillin'; 1989,"Listen on Apple Music By definition, Biz Markie didn’t fit the standard of what rappers were supposed to be. In the era of Rakim, KRS-One, and Big Daddy Kane, Biz was the anti-lyricist. He was a DJ and beat boxer, so he was undoubtedly hip-hop, but his aesthetic was rooted in a comedy that connected with listeners on a raw level. Released in 1989, ""Just a Friend"" turned singer Freddie Scott’s ""You Got What I Need"" into a lovelorn anthem, the hook sung so terribly that you couldn’t help but embrace its gut-level emotion. And it had great lasting images: The beat itself had raw, hypnotic drums, and the video featured Biz in a Beethoven wig and blazer, banging out the keys. We never find out who the girl was that broke Biz’s heart. (Just call her Blah Blah Blah.) The lasting takeaway? ""Don’t ever talk to a girl who says she just has a friend."" Who knew Biz was so profound? —Marcus J. Moore See also: Digital Underground: ""Humpty Dance"" / Spoonie Gee Meets The Sequence: ""Monster Jam""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aofoBrFNdg,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/214/biz-markie.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Biz_Markie-Just_a_Friend.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,67,Guns N' Roses,"""Sweet Child o' Mine""",Geffen; 1987,"Listen on Apple Music You cannot discuss ""Sweet Child o' Mine"" without talking about the opening riff. It's tied to Slash's essence—to his mop, his shades, his Les Paul, his swing that's hard but not jagged, smooth but not sickeningly slick. Hating that riff is not an option. If it comes on rock radio, even if you know rock radio has contributed to the stagnation of mainstream rock, you perk up and you're not turning it off. Would-be ""guitar heroes"" at Guitar Center can't diminish it. Legions of no-time white-collar bros at karaoke bars who couldn't imitate Axl Rose's sway even if his tight white shorts were grafted onto their skin can't either. Not even a piss-ass performance at last year's Golden Gods could kill that riff. ""Sweet Child"" is the more tender side of GNR's embrace of classic New York sleaze, Stooges' single-minded dedicated to rock'n'roll annihilation, Led Zeppelinesque ambitions, and Thin Lizzy's sincere romanticism, all of which is what ultimately set them apart from the rest of Sunset Strip and made them one of the biggest bands on earth. Unlike bands like W.A.S.P., who found some commercial success but were too poppy for thrashers and too rough for the pop crowd, GNR hit that sweet spot. They had the hooks most of their contemporaries didn't, and while they had a look that MTV embraced—can you name a look as defined as Slash's since?—its punkiness was a shock to L.A.'s toxic neon. And that joyous riff is now imbued with a hint of sadness after their dramatic implosion—""Where do we go now?"" sure came with a heartbreaking answer. —Andy O'ConnorSee also: Guns N' Roses: ""Patience"" / Living Colour: ""Cult of Personality""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7brXycvcWgs,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/sweetchildomine.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Guns_N_Roses-Sweet_Child_o_Mine.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,66,The Replacements,"""Alex Chilton""",Sire; 1987,"Listen on Apple Music Depending on what gossip you choose to believe, the late Alex Chilton may have thought Paul Westerberg tried too hard. Imagine the unshakably insouciant Westerberg, reduced to a fanboy in front of his hero. We're never as uncool as when it comes to what we love, and the Replacements frontman loved Big Star. In 1987, Big Star were still one of those obscure bands cited by heads wise enough to have snagged #1 Record, Radio City, or 3rd before they disappeared into the ether, or some other record head's collection. The Replacements, meanwhile, had just suffered their first serious lineup change, after kicking out lead guitarist Bob Stinson for being an alcoholic. They'd begun as snotty hardcore brats, become heart-on-sleeve drunkards unafraid to sing about androgyny and unrequited love, even signed to a major label in order to get as big as their friends in R.E.M. Only they remained on the fringe of the American mainstream: After releasing two perfect records, 1984's Let It Be and 1985's Tim, to nothing but acclaim from the heads and the college kids, it seemed they might risk becoming one of those bands that almost was. So, they wrote an anthem about the best band that should've been. They imagined a world where children by the millions sang for Chilton—a world where bands that were everything to a few people might be everything to everyone. It was bigger than Big Star—it was the music listener's quest itself, crystallized in those two lines: ""I'm in love/ What's that song?"" It didn't matter that they'd lose more founding members and never make a platinum record as their peers eclipsed them in popularity. With ""Alex Chilton"", they'd staked themselves as a band that didn't mind fucking up now if it meant people might come around much later. By the time of their 2013 reunion, the crowds had come around. The Replacements have been written about in books, inspired movies, become an influence for the Hold Steady, Lorde, Titus Andronicus, Against Me!, and many more artists. In each the three shows I saw, after playing for a rapturous hour to a crowd of all stripes—the punks, and the punks-turned-parents—they'd close with ""Alex Chilton"". A crowd of not millions but certainly thousands, chanting along: I'm in love with that song. —Jeremy GordonSee also: The Replacements: ""I Will Dare"" / The Replacements: ""Swingin Party""",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/pleased-to-meet-me.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Replacements-Alex_Chilton.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,65,Echo & the Bunnymen,"""The Killing Moon""",Korova; 1984,"Listen on Apple Music Formed during the late '70s in Liverpool, England, Echo & the Bunnymen’s music combined '60s psychedelic rock sprawl with post-punk experimentation. Its songs were seemingly guided forward by singer Ian McCulloch’s opaque and gloomy lyrics, rather than the other way around. By 1984’s Ocean Rain, the band—led by guitarist Will Sergeant and McCulloch— cast a more focused eye to pop structure and arrangement. That album’s lead single and centerpiece, ""The Killing Moon"", is, without question, their most widely known and loved song. It's sweeping and romantic, instantly identifiable from its opening mandolin doodle to its sweeping, upward modulating chorus. For his part, McCulloch goes big—invoking fate, the stars, love, and death. It's the perfect synthesis of lysergic imagery and widescreen pop.  During the '80s, the Bunnymen stood out among many of their new wave peers because they favored guitars rather than synthesizers. ""The Killing Moon"" is hardly a minimalist ""band in a room""-style recording, though. It’s a sophisticated pop production that uses classic sounds (a string section) and then-new technology (studio effects) to imbue simple chords with epic scope. —Aaron Leitko See also: Crowded House: ""Don't Dream It's Over"" / Echo & the Bunnymen: ""The Cutter""",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/killingmoon.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Echo__the_Bunnymen-The_Killing_Moon.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,64,David Bowie,"""Let's Dance""",EMI; 1983,"Listen on Apple Music After tackling surreal folk, conceptual proto-punk, androgynous glam, plastic soul, and cocaine-fueled art rock, David Bowie was interested in making one thing in the early '80s: hits. Looking to pay postmodern tribute to the simple power of early rock'n'roll staples like ""Twist and Shout"", Bowie recruited Chic's Nile Rodgers, who was considered something of a disco casualty at the time, to help produce what would become 1983's Let's Dance. The initial sketch of the album's title track came from Bowie, though it was far from an obvious smash. ""It was not a song you could dance to,"" Rodgers has said, describing the folky demo. So the virtuoso musician switched out Bowie's strumming chords with sharp guitar stabs and made room for a groove that could enliven both elite downtown clubs and totally lame weddings—which is precisely what it's done ever since. The song remains Bowie's biggest-ever hit. His plan worked. —Ryan Dombal See also: Gary Numan: ""We Are Glass""",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/bowie-lets-dance.jpg,/dataset/artwork/David_Bowie-Lets_Dance.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,63,Stevie Nicks,"""Edge of Seventeen""",Modern; 1982,"Listen on Apple Music Stevie Nicks was a sucker for theatrics, but over half a decade in Fleetwood Mac had brought her too much of the wrong kind of drama. In 1981, she was dealing with Tusk's flabby 13-month gestation, Lindsey Buckingham's God complex, and a tour of Europe in Hitler's old train, which will do wonders for your coke-induced paranoia. Recorded live in the studio in just a few days, Nicks' solo debut Bella Donna marked her spiritual realignment, casting demons and scrubs (if not drugs) out. Lead single ""Stop Draggin' My Heart Around"" exorcised bad love; prompted by the almost simultaneous deaths of John Lennon and Nicks' uncle, ""Edge of Seventeen"" then looks inward to evaluate what really matters, and comes out honoring lost life through unparalleled determination. Nicks had been plagued with voice issues and bad reviews during the Tusk tour. On ""Edge"", she sings with a purposeful ugliness, yowling and gritty in contrast with soulful backing singers Sharon Celani and Lori Perry, and the iconic, flinty riff that Waddy Wachtel borrowed from the Police's ""Bring on the Night"". The guitar occasionally threatens to spill over into solo histrionics, but stays shuddering in its lane, a barely contained anger. Leave that to Nicks, who delivers the ""whoo"" of her white-winged dove like a knockout punch that gives her great pleasure to administer. Drama was back, but on her terms. —Laura SnapesSee also: Fleetwood Mac: ""Seven Wonders"" / Stevie Nicks: ""Stand Back""",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/stevie-nicks.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Stevie_Nicks-Edge_of_Seventeen.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,62,Art of Noise,"""Moments in Love""",ZTT; 1987,"Listen on Apple Music A mutated difference-splitter between ambient and quiet storm, a track that turns euphoria and tension into facets of a mobius strip, the Dirty South precursor that lurked on the other side of its NYC-hip-hop pastiche A-side—there are a lot of dichotomies you could find in ""Moments in Love"", the flip of Art of Noise's debut single ""Beat Box"", but the one that lingers the most is its pull between minimalism and maximalism. Pure pop sentiment is reduced to a half-crawling, half-floating pulse of codeine electro and a simple phrase rendered as a wisp of smoke through 10-and-a-quarter minutes of meditative waviness. But the Fairlight orchestra stabs and the sighing, clenched-throat robot choir dig so deep that the slightest variation and deviation is nearly as bracing as a flashy solo or melismatic run. Parts fade in and out to shift emphasis from glimmering chimes to sinister bass, and the tenor of that insistent drum pattern flicks from a comforting pulse to the churn of industrial machinery; when the song takes an unexpected detour into minor-key melancholy, it's almost startling. It's as though ""Moments in Love"" was built for the very purpose of finding out how much you could subtract from a pop song while still being recognizably closer to pop than art—though ""Moments in Love"" is brilliant as both. —Nate Patrin See also: Art of Noise: ""Beat Box (Diversion One)"" / Maze: ""Twilight""",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/214/momentsinlove.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Art_of_Noise-Moments_in_Love.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,61,Gang Starr,"""DJ Premier in Deep Concentration""",Wild Pitch; 1989,"Listen on Apple Music Widely considered an all-time DJ track, the strength of ""DJ Premier in Deep Concentration"" does not lie in its technical acrobatics. Its scratches are clean, precise, and inventive, there's no doubt about that, but few scratching showcases manage to create a living, breathing world as effortlessly as Premier does here. That world is late-'80s New York, which is ironic considering that Martin was born in Houston and raised in Texas before ending up as one-half of the most influential—and most associated with New York—duos in rap history. On top of a relaxed yet hypnotic snatch of jazzy piano chords, Premo erects a tribute to his adopted city with his turntables, weaving together samples of everything from train whistles to Billy Stewart trilling to snippets of lines from other rappers, including (of course) his partner-in-crime, Guru. But it's all in service of a very specific atmosphere: ""DJ Premier in Deep Concentration"" conjures the last embers of a New York block party, where the smells of the food served earlier still linger as the dancers contort themselves into human blurs at the precise moment that dusk turns into night. —Renato Pagnani See also: Gang Starr: ""Manifest"" / Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five: ""The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel""",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/gangstarr.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Gang_Starr-DJ_Premier_in_Deep_Concentration.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,60,ESG,"""Moody""",C.T.; 1981,"The overlapping territory covered by post-punk and hip-hop—percussive, polyrhythmic, looped, sparse—is rarely occupied by one band that touches on all three in equal measure. ESG (Emerald, Sapphire, and Gold) was formed by sisters Renee, Valerie, Deborah, and Marie Scroggins in the early '80s, and they possessed a rare ability to not only touch all of those underground scenes, but have an indelible impact on their development. ""Moody"", produced by Factory Records’ Martin Hannett, also responsible for Joy Division’s groundbreaking sound, was their first single. Popular on club floors at the time, ""Moody” was sampled by house artists like Chicago’s Chip E. and Farley ""Jackmaster"" Funk; by Belgian dance-pop duo Technotronic on their crossover radio hit, ""Get Up (Before the Night Is Over)""; by Tricky in the late '90s; and by indie rockers Radio 4 in the early '00s, among others. Artists from TLC to Wu-Tang have sampled other ESG songs, and Kathleen Hanna and Jennifer Herrema of Royal Trux cite the group among their influences. All in all, it’s a pretty incredible—and wholly earned—legacy for a family band raised on Motown and James Brown whose mother encouraged them to enter a talent show in South Bronx, where they lived and were discovered. —Jes Skolnik See also: ESG: ""My Love For You"" / ESG: ""UFO""",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/ESG.jpg,/dataset/artwork/ESG-Moody.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,59,Depeche Mode,"""Never Let Me Down Again""",Mute; 1987,"Listen on Apple Music By their sixth album, Depeche Mode had hit upon something like a groove. The snarkily-named Music for the Masses wasn’t packed with gold singles like its follow-up, Violator, but it saw a minor hit in its slinky track one, ""Never Let Me Down Again"". The song inched to #22 on the UK charts in 1987, but saw greater success outside the band’s home country. ""Never Let Me Down Again"" reached #2 in West Germany, three years before the wall splitting Germany in two would come down. With its two-note lead melody and its winding harmonies, ""Never Let Me Down Again"" counts among Depeche Mode’s more enigmatic cuts. ""Two separate people came up to me after a show one night and said, 'I really like that song.' One of them thought it was a gay anthem and other one thought it was a drug anthem,"" Martin Gore told Rolling Stone in 1993. The relationship outlined in the song is intimate at the very least, and it’s hard to mistake the words ""flying high"" in a decade where narcotics flowed freely, but ""Never Let Me Down Again"" at its bottom line describes power, the bliss of giving into it and the helplessness of losing yourself on its hook. Dave Gahan sings like he’s going limp in service of a higher power, following it wherever it wants to throw him. His voice splits in two and orbits itself, steady, then ascending, then on the verge of collapse. When he reaches that desperate coda—everything’s alright tonight—it’s as though he’s murmuring the maxim to himself, rocking back and forth, waiting for the world and its ugliness to fade. —Sasha Geffen See also: Depeche Mode: ""Everything Counts"" / Depeche Mode: Strange Love",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/214/depechemode.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Depeche_Mode-Never_Let_Me_Down_Again.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,58,Daryl Hall & John Oates,"""I Can't Go for That (No Can Do)""",RCA; 1981,"Listen on Apple Music ""I Can't Go for That (No Can Do)"" is a fascinating song on a number of levels: it was one of the earliest number ones to use a drum machine (the Roland CompuRhythm CR-78 to be exact), Daryl Hall's bassline directly inspired the groove on ""Billie Jean"", or so he claims the King of Pop once admitted to him, the song topped the R&B Billboard chart back when a white act doing so was much more of a blip on the radar than it is today (read Chris Molanphy's excellent feature ""I Know You Got Soul: The Trouble With Billboard's R&B/Hip-Hop Chart"" for a deeper analysis of the history of the R&B chart), and it's been sampled by almost everyone. It also happens to be one of those rare instances where an act's biggest song is also arguably their best. Every corner of the song contains a hook, which is remarkable when you realize just how few components with which the track is made. The less-is-more aesthetic of new wave looked great on Daryl Hall and John Oates, heightening the feeling of spontaneity that Hall's memorable off-the-cuff vamping creates as he draws a line in the sand after an unreasonable request. What exactly it is that Hall can't go for is never revealed, and ""I Can't Go for That (No Can Do)"" succeeds all the more for it, allowing listeners to fill in the blanks with whatever they want and in the process of doing so transforming the personal into the communal. —Renato Pagnani See also: The Police: ""Every Breath You Take"" / Wham!: ""Everything She Wants""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edpkv-6_39E,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/hall%26oates.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Daryl_Hall__John_Oates-I_Cant_Go_for_That_No_Can_Do.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,57,Eric B. & Rakim,"""Follow the Leader""",MCA; 1988,"Listen on Apple Music First impressions rarely come as definitive as this: If Paid in Full didn't convince you of who Rakim was and why he became so revered, this is everything in his arsenal laid out over a masterpiece of synth-meets-breaks production. (Everyone else is sampling the riff from Bob James' ""Nautilus""? Fine: Eric B.'ll sample the ambience.) His flow is immaculate, rattling off run-on barrages of alliteration and internal rhyme schemes (""From century to century you'll remember me/ In history, not a mystery or a memory"") that are a striking Exhibit A if you want to make like Q-Tip's pops and draw a connection from rap vocals to bebop instrumentation. As claims to one's own skill go, it's impressively show-not-tell—his gift would be obvious if he spit in Esperanto—but what he tells is primo, a then-cocky, now-obvious monument to his sway over hip-hop. ""I can take a phrase that's rarely heard/ Flip it – now it's a daily word"" is just the start; he pulls you up into the reaches of space just to give dibs to his impact, invokes Five-Percent Nation philosophy to rewire black self-hatred out of the brain, and reduces competitors to game show contestants sweating for a piece of his prize. Then the ending slams the door on any doubts so loudly it sounds like an explosion. —Nate Patrin See also: Eric B & Rakim: ""Microphone Fiend"" / Eric B & Rakim: ""I Ain't No Joke""",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/214/ericbrakim.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Eric_B__Rakim-Follow_the_Leader.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,56,Bob Marley & the Wailers,"""Could You Be Loved""",Island; 1980,"Listen on Apple Music It’s a staple of tourist trap playlists the world over, known for a flickering guitar lick and an unstoppable hook, but ""Could You Be Loved"" isn’t just a chipper follow-up to 1977’s ""One Love"". From Popcaan to Vybz Kartel, today’s Jamaican musicians have maintained reggae’s directive to raise up the people, but it was Marley—by then, a true rock star—and his bandmates who helped elevate the message beyond the conservative confines of their home island and into the realm of global pop. Included on the group’s final album, Uprising, with the more overtly political ""Redemption Song"", ""Could You Be Loved"" spoke on Marley’s devotion to Rastafari and was a call-to-arms against Babylon (the system that maintains oppression and its agents) in Jamaica and abroad. ""Don’t let them fool ya/ Or even try to school ya, oh no!/ We’ve got a mind of our own."" Pushing back on the encroaching disorder of laissez-faire economics through his music, Marley became a target of Cold War-era suspicion and—as Marlon James alludes to in his sprawling, 2015 American Book Award-winning crime novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings—even the CIA. In the end, ""Could You Be Loved"" couldn’t be stopped. —Anupa Mistry See also: Bob Marley: ""Redemption Song"" / Sugar Minott: ""Good Thing Going""",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/bob-marley.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bob_Marley__the_Wailers-Could_You_Be_Loved.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,55,New Order,"""Ceremony""",Factory; 1981,"Listen on Apple Music ""Ceremony"" holds a peculiar place in New Order’s oeuvre: It was their debut single, but also one of the last songs Ian Curtis wrote for Joy Division. It’s devastating even without that context. The only relic of Curtis on the track was a fuzzy live recording of a performance at Birmingham University 16 days before his death. It was so hard to decipher that Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook had to rewrite some of the vague lyrics, which paint a picture of fatigue, death, and never-ending love. The song plays like it’s wearing a leash, with each ""oh I’ll break them down, no mercy shown,"" chorus disobeying the rest of the track’s peace. And there’s a tedious, muted quality that feels mechanical; no riff, drum-kick, or cold Sumner-does-Curtis utterance overpowers any other part of the song, each note occupying the same amount of silence. ""Ceremony"" doesn’t mirror anything in the Joy Division’s unpolished, dark catalog, nor in New Order’s lighter future work. While ""Ceremony"" closed a door on Joy Division, it did little to open a door for New Order, and the group wouldn’t find their creative footing for a few more years. In a way, ""Ceremony"" is neither a New Order song nor a Joy Division song. It’s a musical snapshot of a band in a depressive, creative limbo; a group who knows that in this moment this song must be finished, but that they can’t mine their old band’s past forever. —Hazel CillsSee also: Echo & the Bunnymen: ""Lips Like Sugar"" / Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark: ""Enola Gay""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OH_tZKDOpU4,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/ceremony.jpg,/dataset/artwork/New_Order-Ceremony.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,54,Roxy Music,"""More Than This""",Polydor/Warner Bros./E.G./Atco; 1982,"Listen on Apple Music Starting with its 1972 debut, Roxy Music built a bridge between prog and glam, laying the foundation for the most ostentatious British punk while signed to King Crimson’s management company, E.G. After a remarkable five-album run (the first two featuring an oft-befeathered Brian Eno), the group took a hiatus in 1976, reforming for a two-album binge with a slimmed-down lineup that concluded in 1980. Bandleader Bryan Ferry, who’d released five solo albums during Roxy’s tenure and hiatus, wasn’t quite done yet, though. Working with a concept built around King Arthur being whisked off to the enchanted mythical island of Avalon after his death, Ferry holed up for months, emerging with the band’s biggest single that bested the year’s crop of louche, MTV-aiming new wavers at their own game. Pop songs are very rarely as lush and unabashedly romantic as ""More Than This"" without tipping over into pure schmaltz (though many old-school Roxy fans who prefer ""Virginia Plain"" or ""Love Is the Drug"" starkly disagree, they’d do well to check the debut’s wistful ""2 H.B."" for an early hint at this direction). The product of extensive studio time conjuring synth-driven soundscapes with ex-Eno producer Rhett Davies, some session musicians, and a (brand new) Linn drum machine, ""More"" is as much pure feeling as song, with Ferry’s pristine falsetto gently bobbing through the verse melody, what Greil Marcus once called his ""Don-Juan-in-Hell persona"" giving way to a long-simmering Smokey Robinson fixation. The structure of the song, such as it is, comes from Phil Manzanera’s melancholy guitar lead, which adds strong, darkly drawn lines around Ferry, riding the currents. Ferry eventually drops out altogether, allowing Manzanera to weave in and out for the song’s last 1:45. ""More Than This"" is a high peak of the New Romantic moment of early 1980s UK pop—released the same year as Duran Duran’s Rio and ABC’s Lexicon of Love—that can also be read as an extended sigh marking the end of a spectacular 10-year run as a band. Yet though there would be nothing more than this for Roxy Music, the song’s influence over time has been vast, audible from ""Careless Whisper"" to Sade, Talk Talk, Tunnel of Love, and later forming a cornerstone of much of the ""chillwave"" trend, a blueprint for Destroyer’s Kaputt, and (particularly via the extended coda) War on Drugs’ Lost in the Dream. —Eric HarveySee also: Grace Jones: ""Love Is the Drug"" / Roxy Music: ""Avalon""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8DJP6XYGDQ,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/more-than-this.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Roxy_Music-More_Than_This.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,53,Kraftwerk,"""Computer Love""",EMI/Warner Bros.; 1981,"Listen on Apple Music There is nothing else quite like ""Computer Love"" in the Kraftwerk discography, and the fact that it has been appropriated by everyone from Coldplay to Glass Candy should say as much. The song appeared on Computer World, which was the last time the German synthpop and electro pioneers made a resounding statement about both our present and future. Perhaps more importantly, they did so with Ralf Hütter's and Florian Schneider's warmest production and songwriting, of which ""Computer Love"" is the pinnacle. ""Europe Endless"" and ""Franz Schubert"" are both brightly upbeat, but feel like watching landscapes from miles above; ""Neon Lights"" is a glittering love letter to city streets at night, albeit written by the mensch-maschines Kraftwerk embodied at the time. Then there's ""Computer Love""—sweet, optimistic, spellbound, and, perhaps for the only time in Kraftwerk's career, vulnerable. It's their most uniquely human song, too, pinpointing with incredible accuracy how we would come to rely on computers for some of our basic needs. It's hard not to wonder if the title ""Computer Love"" was meant as ""love for computers"" or ""love through computers."" Both ideas are now so commonplace and intertwined that they verge on indistinguishable. We pour ourselves into computers, we realize our dreams with computers, and we understand the world through computers; your computer knows more of what's in your head than any human being. But then there's this familiar scenario: It's another lonely night of staring at the TV screen, and you don't know what to do, so you pick up your pocket calculator and find yourself a rendezvous. Yes, we are living in Kraftwerk's Computer World—not just a world they predicted, but one they helped to shape. —Patric FallonSee also: Alexander Robotnick: ""Problèmes d'Amour"" / Kraftwerk: ""Computer World"" / Kraftwerk: ""Tour De France""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EH9meoWmAOM,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/214/computerlove.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kraftwerk-Computer_Love.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,52,The Stone Roses,"""I Wanna Be Adored""",Silvertone; 1989,"Listen on Apple Music An early live recording of ""I Wanna Be Adored"", dating back to 1985, presents the Stone Roses' most famous song in a punkier, harder shell than than what they would eventually release in 1989. In that form, it's something to be snarled rather than belted out. The studio version from the same era, recorded by Martin Hannett, put all the muscle in the guitar riffs, placing the emphasis on the thrust rather than the hover. Fast forward four years later, through innumerable false starts, and the Manchester band had finally landed a proper record deal and made their debut album. It started off with the finished version of ""I Wanna Be Adored"", a marvellously engineered slice of psychedelic rock that would inspire some of the best and worst music of the '90s. Released in the midst of the UK's Second Summer of Love, ""I Wanna Be Adored"" embodied the futurism and rose-tinted nostalgia of the movement. The booming gated drums, Peter Hook-style basslines, and roaring guitars are products of the '80s, but the shimmering textures and Ian Brown's reedy vocals are pure Beatles, putting that band's psychedelia into a new era of decadent drug use. You can hear Oasis in its simple and self-deprecating vocal hooks (""I don't have to sell my soul/ He's already in me"") and the Verve in its commanding bluster, like a storm in heaven rolling by in slow motion. All of its nostalgic power remains today—the power of two Summers of Love put together, even more evocative in retrospect. —Andrew RyceSee also: The Stone Roses: ""She Bangs the Drums"" / The Stone Roses: ""Fools Gold""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nnfq_sko3Gk&feature=youtu.be,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/214/stone-roses.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Stone_Roses-I_Wanna_Be_Adored.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,51,Bruce Springsteen,"""I'm on Fire""",Columbia; 1985,"Listen on Apple Music Of the 12 songs on Born in the U.S.A., seven became singles, and of those seven singles, all became top-10 hits. The fourth of these singles was a slim, quiet two-and-a-half-minute-long song called ""I’m on Fire"". Springsteen has always been better known for his bombast than his restraint—for ""Born in the U.S.A."" and ""Glory Days"" and ""Dancing in the Dark"". ""I’m on Fire"" was a whisper by comparison: a dim, mysterious song that rumbles and throbs without ever coming above ground. Instead of broad character studies and social concerns, we get something internal and erotic, something subcutaneous. And where most of the videos for the album’s singles tended toward live-performance vérité (a reminder that music is made by people), the video for ""Fire"" was abstract and dreamy—an impression of the music instead of an illustration of how it gets made. In live performances from the time, Springsteen would extend the intro to the song to deliver a monologue about standing in the driveway and watching his father through a screen door, drinking alone in the kitchen with the lights out, before Bruce came in and went up to his room, leaving the two of them in the house, awake, alone, thinking. —Mike Powell See also: Bruce Springsteen: ""The River"" / Chris Isaak: ""Wicked Game""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrpXArn3hII,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/imonfire.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bruce_Springsteen-Im_on_Fire.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,50,Madonna,"""Like a Prayer""",Sire/Warner Bros.; 1989,"Listen on Apple Music Madonna filed for divorce from Sean Penn two months before she released ""Like a Prayer"", the title track to the 1989 album that would cement her as a serious songwriter and an unstoppable cultural force as she entered her thirties. In anticipation of her fourth album, Madonna would grace the covers of Interview, Rolling Stone, and Spin. Like a Prayer was her most visible album to date, and also her darkest. ""This is reality, and reality sucks,"" Madonna said in her Interview cover story. She was describing her initial vision for the ""Like a Prayer"" video, which was apparently even more brutal than the one that scandalized the Vatican, but the statement undercuts the whole song, too. Written toward the end of an abusive marriage, ""Like a Prayer"" sees Madonna assume a pose of surrender. Its gospel triumph comes only from its embrace of absolute darkness—""everyone must stand alone,"" she sings into the emptiness. Then she’s falling from the sky, calling to God, or really just any power that will listen. She’s singing from her own rock bottom, waiting for someone—anyone—to carry her back up to the top. —Sasha GeffenSee also: Madonna: ""Like a Virgin"" / Madonna: ""Love Song"" [ft. Prince]",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/likeaprayer.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Madonna-Like_a_Prayer.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,49,Neneh Cherry,"""Buffalo Stance""",Virgin; 1988,"Listen on Apple Music What history gets wrong about ""Buffalo Stance"" is locating it as the 1980s moment for ""feminist"" rap, a tag Neneh Cherry sloughed off at the time. Rather, Cherry was at the vanguard of a particular zeitgeist, of young black women infusing both the club and the street into pop songs. ""Buffalo Stance"" peaked Stateside in April 1989. By the end of the year, there were plenty of similar successes: Technotronic’s ""Pump Up the Jam"" with Belgian MC Ya Kid K, Queen Latifah’s ""Ladies First (ft. Monie Love)"" and ""Come Into My House"", Soul II Soul’s hit with Caron Wheeler, ""Back II Life"". Cherry’s song navigated dualities that stoked curiosity about her: rapping and singing, in both an American and a London accent, lyrics that were cocky but had heart. In the video, she was feminine and tough, in her doorknockers and flight jacket, mocking some dude who thought he could play her. The street tableau Cherry narrates, of a boy with a gold tooth and Lacoste kicks putting women on the corner as a come up, was one that was much more familiar to hip-hop than it was to Top 40 (hip-hop’s presence in the mainstream was still nascent, ""Yo! MTV Raps"" was less than a year old), let alone in a year dominated by hits by Paula Abdul, Roxette, and Mike & the Mechanics’ ""The Living Years"". The song and Cherry’s image were integrated and sure: She seemed like the coolest, most confident woman in the world—cool enough to get away with instructing the DJ to ""get funky!"" —Jessica HopperSee also: Roxanne Shante: ""Roxanne's Revenge"" / Whodini: ""Friends""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWsRz3TJDEY,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/neneh.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Neneh_Cherry-Buffalo_Stance.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,48,Janet Jackson,"""When I Think of You""",A&M; 1986,"Listen on Apple Music This atypical love song is perfect for an album called Control: confident, crisp, precise. On ""When I Think of You"", Janet’s lover sounds like a port in a storm, a talisman she can clutch when the world around her is spinning. Brash, blocky keyboard notes jump out from the back of the arrangement like external stressors, only to be constrained by Jam and Lewis’ ultra-tight rhythms: Nothing can penetrate her cocoon of affection. But when that initial giddy rush starts to sour, the appeal of something sturdier begins to reveal itself. Janet hadn’t yet turned 20 when Control came out, but she had already gone through a marriage and an annulment. Taken another way, those same keyboard hits aren’t agents of chaos—they’re forces from within, the sounds of a heart trying to leap out of someone’s chest. It’s a delicate balance to strike: Janet is turning to her lover for calm, but she’s also trying to protect herself. ""When I Think of You"" isn’t overtly interested in sexual liberation or personal progression like the music of janet. or The Velvet Rope, but it’s a necessary precursor to those records. It’s defined by agency and predicated on action; it treats a healthy relationship as another element of self-care. That might not be a revelatory statement, but it’s another astute one from an artist who would go on to redefine the boundaries of personal satisfaction. —Jamieson CoxSee also: Janet Jackson: ""The Pleasure Principle"" / Gwen Guthrie: ""Ain't Nothin' Goin' on But the Rent""",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/214/janetjackson.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Janet_Jackson-When_I_Think_of_You.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,47,Joy Division,"""Atmosphere""",Factory; 1980,"Listen on Apple Music In 1980, Joy Division released the Factory single ""Atmosphere"", as if submitting a watchword for their band and countless others to follow. In some ways, the production is the song. It's loosely stretched and quietly majestic, with opulent harp-like runs. ""Atmosphere"" stands out in the band’s catalog for its fragile spirit—the strangulated rise of a portentous baritone, always on the verge of breaking. Joy Division had a capital-R Romantic morbidity (the ""Atmosphere"" video shows processions of burial-shrouded figures), as befits a band led by someone whose teen marriage was falling apart, and who struggled with depression and seizures. By the time ""Atmosphere"" was released, Ian Curtis had already committed suicide, at age 23. This, combined with the song's funeral tone and preoccupation with whether or not to walk away, makes it an obelisk for the singer. Curtis' lyrics are open-ended, pointed in rather than out, which accounts for their timelessness. You might need a certain strain of working-class angst to see yourself in a Sex Pistols song, but anyone who's ever felt ashamed can see themselves in ""Atmosphere"". Musical-historical importance aside, it lasts because it has that rarest musical power: making loneliness feel like a good, even beautiful, thing. —Brian HoweSee also: Bauhaus: ""She's in Parties"" / New Order: ""Procession""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EdUjlawLJM,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/atmosphere-jd.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Joy_Division-Atmosphere.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,46,The Jesus and Mary Chain,"""Just Like Honey""",Blanco y Negro; 1985,"Listen on Apple Music Led by a couple of sneering, big-haired Scottish brothers who always seemed on the verge of punching each other’s lights out, the Jesus and Mary Chain provided a blueprint for bands fascinated with burying familiar pop tropes under so many decibels of feedback and sonic sludge. Though their debut album, Psychocandy, is notable for all its high-volume sonic bluster, the Mary Chain’s most famous single is also its softest. A paean to the mythical girl who ""takes on half the world"" and lives inside some kind of magisterial beehive, ""Just Like Honey"" is a classic bad boy love song—a reverby dose of Phil Spector grandiosity that sounds as if it might have been recorded in a smoky cave. Thirty years later, the song remains swoon-worthy in spite of itself. Hearing frontman Jim Reid go on about how ""eating up the scum is the hardest thing for me to do"" might not be most obvious of romantic admissions, but it’s hard to argue with a skinny guy in black leather who repeatedly promises ""I’ll be your plastic toy"" as if his life depended on it. And even though the track has been co-opted over the years by the likes of Sofia Coppola, Volkswagen, and Scarlett Johansson, there are still few things in the musical cosmos that sound more oddly tender than hearing the song’s titular hook over and over as guitar lines crackle and fade behind it. ""Just Like Honey"" certainly isn’t the Jesus and Mary Chain’s loudest moment, but it is undeniably their sweetest. —T. Cole RachelSee also: The Jesus and Mary Chain: ""Head On"" / Psychedelic Furs: ""Love My Way""",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/justlikehoney.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Jesus_and_Mary_Chain-Just_Like_Honey.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,45,De La Soul,"""Me, Myself and I""",Tommy Boy; 1989,"Listen on Apple Music With ""Me, Myself and I"", De La Soul were immediately received by the press as the positive alternative to more confrontational hip-hop acts. The song's Funkadelic sample was smooth and uplifting compared to Public Enemy's more jarring sampling techniques. But the irony to ""Me, Myself and I""—the ultimate song of self-acceptance—is that the group made it at their label's request and it was meant to to convey exactly what they weren't. In a track-by-track review with Rolling Stone for the album's 20th anniversary, Posdnuos explained they had to make a song for the album that ""isn't so over someone's head."" Trugoy the Dove elaborated, ""Originally, it was us trying to make sure we're saying we're not hippies."" In their effort to simplify and clarify, De La found the thesis within their music. The obscure samples, playful rhymes, and bizarre skits weren't intended for overanalysis: That's just who they were. —Matthew Strauss See also: De La Soul: ""Potholes in My Lawn"" / De La Soul: Ghetto Thang",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/214/de-la.jpg,/dataset/artwork/De_La_Soul-Me_Myself_and_I.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,44,Laurie Anderson,"""O Superman (For Massenet)""",Warner Bros.; 1981,"Listen on Apple Music When Laurie Anderson released ""O Superman"" in 1981, she was better known as a performance artist than a musician: In one piece, she replaced the bow hair of a violin with audiotape and the strings with a tape head, playing the tape while standing on ice skates whose blades were frozen into a block of ice. (The piece was over when the block of ice melted.) ""Superman"" was pop, at least by comparison. Two chords, nine minutes long, held together only by a loop of Anderson’s processed voice, the song—if you want to call it that—is monastic in its simplicity, a hymn sung by a lonely angel fumbling with her new answering machine. At times it sounds like a broadcast from a distant star, at times like internal monologue—a voice too close for logic but so far away it almost doesn’t seem human. After 9/11, people talked about its prescience, its paranoia, the chilly sweetness in Anderson’s voice when she sings the words here come the planes. In a 2012 interview with the Walker Art Center, Anderson put the song in a more geologic context: ""This is one long war,"" she said. ""We just keep doing it."" Later in 1981, she got signed to Warner Bros.; the next year, she got a Guggenheim Fellowship. —Mike PowellSee also: Anne Clark: ""Our Darkness"" / Will Powers: ""Adventures in Success""",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/osuperman.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Laurie_Anderson-O_Superman_For_Massenet.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,43,New Order,"""Bizarre Love Triangle""",Factory; 1986,"Listen on Apple Music True enough that New Order were one of the most melancholy of the New Wave pop bands, which may be the key to their endurance—one of their most rapture-inducing songs is a paean to the pleasure of confusion and the inscrutability of happiness in the face of indecision. It’s also one of the most romantic-sounding songs ever dedicated to a sense of inertia. Hardworking and staunchly democratic, the band had spent three albums post-Joy Division crafting music that was at once deeply emotional and resolutely ephemeral. Here that approach reached a sugary peak. In the middle of an album that was more rock-oriented than any of New Order’s previous offerings, ""Bizarre Love Triangle"" is a gilded jolt of irrepressible technophilia, mimicking the sudden, quickly fading bliss of spinning on the dance floor. Which all points to the undeniable fact that it’s not the chorus that really gets the blood pumping. Those feverish, jittery synthesizers swirling above Peter Hook’s percolating bass represent the groundswell of musical optimism that was late '80s synthpop, a movement that prefigured two decades of increasingly high-gloss ear candy. —Abigail GarnettSee also: The Human League: ""Don't You Want Me"" / New Order: ""The Perfect Kiss""",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/214/bizarrelovetriangle.jpg,/dataset/artwork/New_Order-Bizarre_Love_Triangle.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,42,Eurythmics,"""Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)""",RCA; 1983,"Listen on Apple Music Somewhere along the road, ""Sweet Dreams"" entered a dubious canon: that of overdone covers. Basically, everyone wants to make it dark. (Blame Marilyn Manson, probably.) The concept makes sense in a blunt, obvious way; there’s enough darkness in the melody to tempt lesser artists, who could draw each note out torturously long, or lean harder into the prurient undertones of the line ""some of them want to use you…"" Of course none of this is necessary. Modern producers reimagine the '80s as Lite-Brite fireworks or haze of mood, but revisiting the actual decade one’s more apt to find tracks like this: works of ruthless efficiency, no part wasted. The instantly recognizable synth line—a byproduct of Dave Stewart playing a bassline backward—moves like a serrated knife, to which Annie Lennox’s vocal is the sharpener. Some tracks reveal nuances with every listen; ""Sweet Dreams"" just gets more impassive. In place of overt menace there’s a blasé stare – best showcased in the video, one long exhibit of cyberpunk deadpan. Entire genres can be reduced to attempts to sound this unflappable. Few ever do. —Katherine St. Asaph See also: Eurythmics: ""Here Comes the Rain Again"" / Yaz: ""Situation""",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/214/eurythmics.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Eurythmics-Sweet_Dreams_Are_Made_of_This.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,41,Guns N' Roses,"""Welcome to the Jungle""",Geffen; 1987,"Listen on Apple Music Guns N' Roses' second U.S. single, ""Sweet Child o' Mine"", was its first to top the Billboard charts. It's great but atypical, serving as the mandatory power ballad on the hard rock band's 1987 Geffen debut, Appetite for Destruction. There's a reason that first U.S. single ""Welcome to the Jungle"" opens the album and, frequently, concerts. It lays out the band's essential vision of Los Angeles as a Faustian wasteland where you can have anything for a price. Since you're broke and heroin-thin, you pay with blood. Glam metal was a cornerstone of '80s rock radio. Much of it came from L.A. and, accordingly, it had Hollywood-sized dreams. Like their contemporaries, GNR were basically casting themselves in an epic movie. But they sharply parted with the likes of Van Halen and Poison by bringing a dystopian-thriller edge (the understandably scuttled original cover by Robert Williams drives this home) and a bluesy, punky sound to a genre that had gotten very Love Boat. As other pop-metal dudes lived out pink-champagne-bikini-yacht fantasies, GN'R unleashed their junkyard-dog nihilism on Sunset Boulevard and made everyone else look moribund. Growling like an empty stomach, ""Welcome to the Jungle"" thrives on deprivation, not excess. Axl Rose panther-paces L.A. as Slash's perforating, sleepless guitar tone trails him like a bad habit. Rose, an explosive performer with a goblin yowl, has fantastical vocal abilities; just try spitting one ""sha"" and 11 ""nas"" in one second without blowing blubber. In the video—a beneficiary of the power of late-night MTV—Rose has the classic teased hair, trashy glamor and feral beauty, but there is something conspicuously flannel about him. More than anything, he looks like a storybook princess who was raised in a meth lab. Grainy televisual imagery and fetishized mental illness predict the alternative era. And like grunge bands, GNR were more focused on the airing of grievances than lascivious partying. Not that they were sexless, by any means: When Rose gasps ""Feel my serpentine,"" it's perfectly possible he's talking about his dancing, but unlikely. It wasn't all as wild as it sounds. Rose recorded his deceptively loose-limbed lines one at a time, in a thrilling facsimile of peril. ""The most dangerous band in the world"" turned out to be mostly dangerous to themselves, falling apart to drugs, ego conflicts and personal damage after their masterful Use Your Illusion duology. Though it took them 15 years and $13 million to finally eke out Chinese Democracy in 2008, with only Rose left from the classic lineup, they remain one of the best-selling bands ever. Here, in their rawest innocence and greatest hunger, they still sound as lacerating and unstoppable as when they first welcomed us to a darker new era of mainstream rock. —Brian HoweSee also: Danzig: ""Mother"" / Ozzy Osbourne: ""Crazy Train""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1tj2zJ2Wvg,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/gunsnroses.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Guns_N_Roses-Welcome_to_the_Jungle.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,40,The Cure,"""Close to Me""",Fiction; 1985,"Listen on Apple Music Robert Smith spent the first few years of the Cure gazing and then plunging into the abyss of existential horror, and the next few clawing his way back out of that abyss, with a grin on his face drawn on with lipstick. ""Close to Me"" is the peak of the latter period: a festive love song caught in the middle of a panic attack, a song about happiness and erotic bliss sung from the point of view of somebody who's still convinced that it's all about to be ripped away (""if only I was sure that my head on the door was a dre-he-heam,"" Smith hiccup-moans). Smith's voice is right up in your face, with the arrangement's handclaps and heavy breathing almost indistinguishable from the sound of someone leaning in to confide something in confidence. He rolls his words around his mouth, as if he's figuring out if they're delicious or disgusting or both; his lyrics incorporate some of the most freighted words from the first few Cure albums (""sick,"" ""faith,"" ""clean""—remember, this is a man who three years earlier had made ""I will never be clean again"" the hook of a song). The Cure made a point of adjusting their identity on a regular basis—that was the prerogative of new wave—and the big difference here from the band's earlier work is that the arrangement of ""Close to Me"" is straight-up pleasure music. There's no murk, no foreboding, not even guitar, just a rhythm track with a wiggle in its hips and Porl Thompson and Lol Tolhurst's keyboards cooing and plinking at each other. At least, that's all there is on the recording on The Head on the Door: the magnificent single version, released a few weeks later, ramps up the fun by means of a brass band that wanders into the mix halfway through, sounding like they're on their way back from a New Orleans funeral (including a trombone player who, hilariously, doesn't catch on that the song has ended until a moment too late). —Douglas Wolk See also: The Cure: ""A Forest""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yls_lhHdfPc,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/close-to-me.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Cure-Close_to_Me.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,39,Cocteau Twins,"""Lorelei""",4AD; 1982,"Listen on Apple Music ""Lorelei"" ordained Cocteau Twins as the patron saints of thrill-seeking introverts. Sparkly and cascading, the track was the jewel in the crown of Treasure, a phenomenally inventive and introspective album that, despite its majesty and expanse, somehow felt like the safest place in the world. For all the emotional bleakness (described as ""feelings buried, persisting in anxious dreams and suppressed fear, hope and anger,"" in Martin Aston's 4AD tome Facing the Other Way), it’s always been, to me, something too exquisitely nostalgic to haunt. ""Lorelei"" is a fuzzy encounter in the record’s lucid dream, that rare experience of discovery without fear, lust minus urgency. Rather than drawing admiration, it sweeps you into its private spectacle. Listening in is a secret wonder, like spying on teen goths holding hands at Christmas. Aptly, although '80s Cocteau Twins favored non-album EPs over singles, ""Lorelei"" got its break on John Peel’s Radio 1 show, a network for private revelations. The song encapsulates 4AD’s mood and aesthetic—the integration of warmth, light, and ambiguity into austere post-punk—as well as the era, in which indie pop was erecting defenses against mainstream sexualization with displays of childhood and innocence. But rather than an indulgence of fantasy (as in the ultimate twee ideal of love without the sex), ""Lorelei"" felt, in its quiet way, like all the pageantry and tumult of passion, melancholy, and heartbreak at once. —Jazz Monroe See also: Cocteau Twins: ""Carolyn's Fingers"" / Cocteau Twins: ""Love's Easy Tears""",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/cocteau.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Cocteau_Twins-Lorelei.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,38,Salt-n-Pepa,"""Push It""",Next Plateau/London; 1987,"Listen on Apple Music ""Push It"" is one of those rare songs that gets revived with such frequency that you can still come into contact with it accidentally about as often now as you could when it was first released. Over the past decade it’s been reclaimed by a staggeringly broad range of socio-musical groups that encompasses everything from electroclashers to hip-hop nostalgists, underground queer dance parties to fratty '80s retro nights. That kind of ubiquity has its downfalls, namely the kind of dull familiarity that comes with being able to hear a track any weekend for years and years at a time. Listen to it with fresh ears, though, and ""Push It"" reveals itself to be a radically out-there song–a razor blade of the '80s electronic avant garde smuggled into the pop culture mainstream disguised as bubblegum. You’ve heard the song so many times that you probably don’t even remember that half of it is instrumental, just a beat that hovers in some indistinct space between late-'80s rap and late-'80s dance music, and that works equally well when mixed in with Miami freestyle or German industrial. And when Salt and Pepa do take the mic their performance is more forceful than anything this side of Chuck D–clusters of clipped, half-shouted syllables that demolish the preceding century’s ideals of how female performers should conduct themselves on record with a forceful sexuality that makes Madonna (not to mention Big Daddy Kane) seem like a wallflower by comparison. Dipping casually into postmodern territory with a brilliant, gender-flipped Kinks quote; and still, nearly 30 years later, just almost unbelievably hard as fuck. —Miles RaymerSee also: J.J. Fad: ""Supersonic"" / MC Lyte: ""Paper Thin""",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/salt-n-pepa.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Salt-n-Pepa-Push_It.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,37,Tom Tom Club,"""Genius of Love""",Island/Sire/Warner Bros.; 1981,"Listen on Apple Music In the early 1980s, hip-hop broke out of its South Bronx birthplace and inched its way into Downtown NYC. It was in this vibrant, confusing moment, when black rappers and white hipsters began listening to each other’s weird records, that hip-hop as an American pan-cultural force was born. It was a furtive, optimistic, uncertain time, the time of Fab 5 Freddy, Keith Haring, graffiti artist Futura; the time of French culture scavengers like Jean Karakos, who came to New York to form Celluloid Records because of the fascinating American records reaching his stores; it was the time of Debbie Harry, Afrika Bambaataa, Grandmaster Flash. It was the time of cynical rip-off records like ""Buffalo Gals"" and lightning-flash moments like ""Genius of Love"". Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz were the rhythm section for the Talking Heads; as the bassist and drummer, respectively, for the most rhythmically curious punk band in the scene as well as husband and wife, they shared a lot of common interests. Chris Blackwell, the A&R for Island records who was responsible for signing Rakim and for bringing reggae into the United States with The Harder They Come, encouraged the pair to record a song based off their love of Zapp’s ""More Bounce to the Ounce"". Like that song, ""Genius of Love"" is giddy, onomatopoetic, a groove where every sound feels like the walk-on cameo from a different cartoon character. Weymouth and Frantz’s lyrics read almost as a real-time recitation of records being handed to them by Blackwell: ""Wailin' and skanking to Bob Marley"". ""Kurtis Blow!"" We cherish records like ""Genius of Love"" because they tell the most beautiful story we know about music: that it encourages empathy, broadens experience, and leaps over societal boundaries. It’s a fantasy, of course—word to Mariah Carey—and that’s why Tom Tom Club sounds and feels so good, still. It is the champagne-bubble giddiness of a promise that we can never deliver on, that in the first flush of shock and gratification in learning about cultures that we might also become better, more joyful people. —Jayson GreeneSee also: Stacy Lattisaw: ""Attack of the Name Game"" / Tom Tom Club: ""Wordy Rappinghood"" / World Famous Supreme Team: ""Hey DJ""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SgvJY9xxcA,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/214/geniusoflove.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tom_Tom_Club-Genius_of_Love.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,36,Michael Jackson,"""Human Nature""",Epic; 1983,"Listen on Apple Music Though ""Human Nature"" has aged as well as anything from Thriller, it’s weird on numerous levels, one of which is likely to serve as an answer in bar trivia: It was co-written by the dude responsible for ""Africa"". Its weirdness is also contextual, because from this point forward, Michael Jackson’s blockbuster ballads were pleas to save the world or the children or the whales. And ""Human Nature"" wasn’t about a paternity suit or choreographing a gang truce or distrust of the media or being friends with Eddie Van Halen, Paul McCartney, or Vincent Price, which is what makes it such an outlier. It’s the rare song from Michael Jackson’s imperial phase that wasn’t explicitly about the experience of being Michael Jackson. In fact, it’s impossible to picture Michael Jackson doing anything he sings about on ""Human Nature""—being entranced by the skyline of New York City, seeing nothing but possibility in the future, having the wherewithal to make a casually cruel admittance to a one night stand while recognizing how it might serve as a greater truth about man’s biological impulses. But you get the sense that he wishes more than anything that this story could’ve been his and not that of a guy from Toto. While there’s no tawdry, tabloid subtext to ""Human Nature"", you can still understand why a song of such wonder and transparency feels so heartbreaking: Our everyday experiences were as alien to Michael Jackson as his were to us. —Ian CohenSee also: Michael Jackson: ""Let's Wait Awhile"" / Wham!: ""Careless Whisper""",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/214/humannature.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Michael_Jackson-Human_Nature.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,35,Sade,"""The Sweetest Taboo""",Epic/Portrait; 1985,"Listen on Apple Music At this point it’s hard to imagine a world where a song as delicate as ""The Sweetest Taboo"" could capture the international zeitgeist, though once you peeled back the layers, Sade’s music wasn’t always as delicate as it seemed. ""Quiet storm"" had existed as an idea since Smokey Robinson, and there it is at the heart of the song’s chorus: ""There’s a quiet storm, and it’s never felt like this before."" Given that Sade’s immense popularity coincided with the time when the R&B subgenre/soft-rock analogue would crest in the public’s awareness, it’s tempting to read it and the song as somehow encapsulating what this ""quiet storm,"" and what it could be. The paradox is right there in the title—quiet storm was not easy-listening or dentist-chair music, but a crisp, professional, smooth sound that best communicated a certain type of love song, mostly domestic and peaceful, occasionally—frequently, in the case of Sade—anguished.This depth and tension—the most memorable line is ""sometimes I think you’re just too good for me""—no doubt led to Sade’s success, and her influence on everyone from D’Angelo and the '90s neo-soul movement to the current day’s analyzed-to-death ""alt-R&B"" genre. There was always so much lurking behind this music—love, sure, but also the awareness that finding a partner dovetails with anxiety and the vulnerability inherent with intimacy. —Matthew RamirezSee also: Sade: ""Hang on to Your Love"" / Sade: ""Smooth Operator""",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/the_sweetest_taboo.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sade-The_Sweetest_Taboo.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,34,Afrika Bambaataa & the Soulsonic Force,"""Planet Rock""",Tommy Boy/Warner Bros.; 1982,"Listen on Apple Music Afrika Bambaataa was an oracle, and ""Planet Rock"" was a manifesto of what hip-hop was and what it could be. From its inception, it sought to bridge divides. ""I really made it for the Blacks, Latinos and the punk rockers,"" Afrika Bambaataa told Jeff Chang in Can’t Stop Won’t Stop. ""But I didn’t know the next day that everybody was all into it and dancing."" By the time the record dropped in '82, the Bronx River native (née Kevin Donovan) had already established himself as one of the original breakbeat DJs, along with DJ Kool Herc and Grandmaster Flash. As the leader and founder of the Universal Zulu Nation, Bam espoused ""Peace, Love, Unity, and Havin' Fun."" It was a philosophy that fueled the parties he DJ’d, the pre-""Rapper’s Delight"" tapes that had circulated, and eventually the records he cut—including the baddest of them all, ""Planet Rock"". From the track’s opening summons (Party people!) and the lethal bass drop that followed, Afrika Bambaataa and the Soulsonic Force created a world whose guiding principle was simple: rock it, don’t stop it. Sampling Kraftwerk and UK rock band Babe Ruth, Bam, together with producer Arthur Baker and keyboardist John Robie, engineered a futuristic sound built from synths, drum machine, and digital delay. When Bam and crew rapped over the distinctive jing, hiss, and boom of the new Roland TR-808, they popularized it as a major tool not just for hip-hop but for other kinds of electronic and dance music as well. The record became a catalyst for early techno, Miami bass, and electro funk. Afrika Bambaataa became the Father of Electro Funk. ""Planet Rock"" became his satellite. And when it shot into orbit, hip-hop went global. —Minna Zhou See also: Kraftwerk: ""Numbers"" / Mantronix: ""Needle to the Groove""",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/214/planet-rock.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Afrika_Bambaataa__the_Soulsonic_Force-Planet_Rock.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,33,Prince and the Revolution,"""I Would Die 4 U""",Warner Bros.; 1984,"Listen on Apple Music Purple Rain was Prince’s sixth record and the most potent of that legendary run of Dirty Mind, Controversy, and 1999. It sold about 13 million copies in the U.S. alone, and right there, right after ""Darling Nikki"" and ""When Doves Cry"", is arguably the heaviest song in his catalog: ""I Would Die 4 U"", with its propulsive industrial heartbeat. ""I Would Die 4 U"" is a brooding wall of sound that rips through about three genres in under three minutes—one of the shortest, densest tracks of Prince’s career. Known for chasing his sometimes flighty inner muse, Prince envisions himself as a Christ-like figure, turning an ostensible feel-good love song into a messianic anthem, down to its repeated titular pleading, where he re-casts the song, his music, himself as other-worldly. In a long career full of dramatic reinventions, ""I Would Die 4 U"" stands out as the time Prince most urgently made his intentions known. —Matthew RamirezSee also: Prince: ""I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man"" / Prince: ""Little Red Corvette""",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/214/i-would-die-4-u.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Prince_and_the_Revolution-I_Would_Die_4_U.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,32,N.W.A,"""Fuck tha Police""",Priority/Ruthless; 1988,"Listen on Apple Music From one vantage, N.W.A’s story is one of rebellion against surveillance—over-patrolled neighborhoods, racial profiling, closed-circuit cameras—in which the surveilled turn the means of representation back on the state-sanctioned powers-that-be. It was ironic, if not infuriating, then, that the opening weekend of the group’s myth-burnishing Straight Outta Compton film was itself the subject of unnecessary state-sanctioned scrutiny. ""In light of everything that’s going on, we are dispatching additional officers to theaters that are showing the film,"" an LAPD officer told Variety. Zero acts of violence were reported among Compton audience members, but many acts of intimidation were reported about the gratuitous police attendance at many screenings. Rewind to 1989. The song ""Fuck tha Police"" earned N.W.A's label Ruthless Records an obliquely threatening letter from the FBI, which—First Amendment and all—opted to work with regional performance venues to… yes, surveil N.W.A.’s concerts. Cops showed up in force across the country to threaten the group and its fans by simply projecting armed force. When the group recited a few lines of ""Fuck tha Police"" onstage at a Detroit show, cops started threateningly moving toward the stage, breaking the fourth wall and causing the group to flee. Again with the surreal irony: ""Fuck tha Police"" itself was a performative clap back at the militarized police deputized by LAPD Chief Daryl Gates under Operation Hammer, which periodically swept through crack-devastated neighborhoods with tanks and battering rams, terrifying innocent citizens for the crime of being black in South L.A. If ""Straight Outta Compton"" was N.W.A.’s origin myth, ""Express Yourself"" was the media strategy, and ""Gangsta Gangsta"" the genre-branding, ""Fuck tha Police"" was all of that rolled into one package: the brick through the window, the group blasting open an eight-lane freeway for rap discourse that’s still overcrowded today. The word ""fuck"" in the song’s title registered like a body blow (and still does), but the song itself unfolds in a more theatrical way, ""People’s Court""-as-gangsta operetta set to Dre’s take on the sample-heavy soul cacophony pioneered the previous year by the Bomb Squad on Yo! Bum Rush the Show and perfected two months before Compton and Nation of Millions. Straight Outta Compton tells the group’s legendary story in Hollywood patois, but it pales in comparison to the compelling narrative world the group crafted 27 years earlier, let alone the very real war waged by very real officers on the bodies and lives of African-Americans in 2015 on what seems like a daily basis. At one end of the spectrum, this last fact is what the LAPD officer no doubt meant with the blandly bureaucratic ""everything that’s going on."" At the other end, regardless of the knotty infrastructural realities it condenses, is what ""fuck the police"" responds to: Cops killing black Americans, and cops standing and staring at black Americans when they're seeing a movie about a group that raged against cops killing black Americans. —Eric HarveySee also: D.O.C.: ""It's Funky Enough"" / Ice-T: ""Colors""",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/nwacompton.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/NWA-Fuck_tha_Police.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,31,Frankie Knuckles / Jamie Principle,"""Your Love""",Trax; 1987,"Listen on Apple Music Bronx-born Frankie Knuckles left New York City, where he’d come up DJing with Larry Levan, and moved to Chicago in the late '70s just in time to watch disco ""die."" He became the music director at the Warehouse, a safe space for gay men of color to hear the craziest music until noon the next day. (Today, the unassuming West Loop corner is bookended by a yoga studio and an Al’s Beef.) Knuckles’ no-rules sets there invented what we know as house, but no house records were getting pressed or distributed during the Warehouse’s existence. (He left and opened his own club, the Power Plant, around '82; the first house record, Jesse Saunders’ ""On and On"", hit wax in '84.) Knuckles’ passion then was less about producing records than dramatically re-contextualizing them, experimenting endlessly to construct dynamic, community-driven emotional and physical experiences. An '84 demo tape from a South-sider named Jamie Principle entered heavy rotation in Knuckles’ sets. That original version of ""Your Love"" is obviously inferior to the final version Knuckles and Principle re-released together a few years later, which is lusher, harder, more cosmic in its shimmering Italo-sampled arpeggios. Principle is the X-factor here, though it always felt like he didn’t receive proper billing on a track that was originally his. On ""Baby Wants to Ride"", another Knuckles collaboration released as the A-side to ""Your Love""’s B-side on Trax Records, Principle is grimy and raw, an obvious student of Prince’s nastier side. But on ""Your Love"", he is an angel falling in real time, softening Knuckles’ rough edges, bringing the genre closer to pop without sacrificing any of the catharsis—the ultimate house crossover record. There’s this narrative today, mostly on the Internet and outside of Chicago, that house music in the age of EDM is in need of a task force against extinction—that these distant offshoots, like radio-friendly UK pop-house or the booming electronic festival industry, threaten to dwarf or erase house music as it was born. These well-intentioned concerns ignore the fact that house as Knuckles invented it—and Principle brought its emotional drama to new heights—is all still here. It’s not a relic or a memory, but an inextricable part of the Chicago experience over the last three-plus decades. What Knuckles started is all still happening. The Warehouse and the Power Plant might be closed, but Smart Bar, where Knuckles was a resident until he got too sick, still loses it to house every Sunday. Chosen Few, the massive annual house picnic organized by a South side DJ collective who’ve been throwing house parties since '77, is bigger than ever. Footwork, the couple-generations-removed extension of house, is more vital than ever, having gone national the same way house did in its adolescence. House in Chicago isn’t a ""scene,"" something you could isolate and point out. It’s become part of the air, embedded in the city’s DNA. It’s just there. Knuckles once half-jokingly noted he could walk down the street unrecognized in Chicago, only mobbed by fans overseas. But when he died last year, this happened. —Meaghan Garvey See also: Adonis: ""No Way Back"" / Marshall Jefferson: ""Move Your Body""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bu8hVn_0Lq4,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/frankie-knuckles-your-love.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Frankie_Knuckles__Jamie_Principle-Your_Love.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,30,Beastie Boys,"""Shake Your Rump""",Capitol; 1989,"Listen on Apple Music The Beastie Boys were playing in a borrowed sandbox on their debut Licensed to Ill. The attitude may have been their own, but just about everything else, from the slash-and-scratch production and the hair-metal guitars to the trio’s Run-D.M.C. cadences, came on loan from Def Jam’s Rick Rubin collection. It’s no wonder they wanted to leave the label to explore less charted territory, and in the maximalist, proto-big-beat production of the Los Angeles duo the Dust Brothers, they found the original vision they were looking for. Producers were working all kinds of miracles with samples in the late '80s, but none were doing it on anywhere near this scale. Like many a mythologized album, Paul’s Boutique was met with some confusion upon its initial release. A quarter century later, that cold reception boggles the mind. How could anybody, in 1989 or in any other year, hear the album’s kick-off salvo ""Shake Your Rump"" and not be bowled over from the get go? It may be the showiest beat of the '80s, mounding heaps of disco samples from more than a dozen songs, including three alone from Rose Royce’s Car Wash soundtrack, into a high-speed, Rube Goldberg-esque pile-up of breaks, riffs, and fills. At the time the Dust Brothers were hardly considered visionaries. Their biggest credit had been an album with Tone Lōc, a rapper almost comically ill-suited to keep pace with the duo’s hectic funk. The Beastie Boys, of course, proved far more nimble collaborators, matching the beat makers’ lunacy with their own barrage of junk-culture references and in-jokes: Sam the butcher, Fred Flintstone, shrimp boats, onion rings, billy goats, Mango Kangols. Most of them are nonsense, but they whiz by so fast it doesn’t matter. They’re funny as hell just because the band thinks they are, and there’s a real freedom in the group’s slap-happy rhymes. The Beastie Boys were no longer just marketable white faces plastered onto a popular black sound. They were making up their own rules now. —Evan Rytlewski See also: Beastie Boys: ""Hey Ladies""",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/pauls-boutique.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Beastie_Boys-Shake_Your_Rump.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,29,Diana Ross,"""I'm Coming Out""",Motown; 1980,"Listen on Apple Music ""I’m Coming Out"" was designed to be an anthem for Diana Ross’ personal liberation. While in the process of parting ways with Berry Gordy’s Motown after nearly two decades, she enlisted Chic’s Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers for help with her musical revitalization. By any standard, the initiative was a success: Diana became her most successful solo record by a country mile, and it gave her the momentum to escape the label. But no one hears this song and thinks about Diana Ross’ label turmoil. Her fight for creative freedom has been co-opted by millions of people around the world searching for acceptance, self-confidence, or even safety. It was a struggle relevant in 1980, a year before AIDS would begin to erase and stigmatize a generation of young men; it’s a struggle relevant in 2015, when the same-sex marriage debate has been legally resolved and transgender rights are finally receiving the attention they deserve. ""I’m Coming Out"" will mean something as long as there are people around the world experiencing the euphoria of self-discovery. What was once a personal mission statement is now an enduring soundtrack for radiant, radical pride—it’s hard to imagine a better outcome for a piece of music. —Jamieson Cox See also: Inner Life: ""Ain't No Mountain High Enough (The Garage Version)"" / Sister Sledge: ""Lost in Music [Special 1984 Nile Rodgers Remix]""",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/dianaross.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Diana_Ross-Im_Coming_Out.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,28,Kate Bush,"""Hounds of Love""",EMI; 1986,"Listen on Apple Music ""In the trees! It's coming!"" The startled voice that opens ""Hounds of Love"" is spoken by a dead man. It’s taken from a seance scene in the 1957 horror classic Night of the Demon, in which a devilish monstrosity—part ape, part bat, all charmingly ridiculous—forces a bunch of eggheads to consider the existence of supernatural phenomena. At one point, a snooty Satanic leader ponders, ""Where does imagination end and reality begin?"" No wonder it’s one of celebrated fabulist Kate Bush’s favorite films. On the title track of her towering 1985 album, the demon in the trees takes the form of another highly elusive entity that has captured our imaginations for centuries: love. In Bush’s telling, no matter how much she tries to outrun it, love is always chasing her, beckoning her to let her guard down and get lost in someone else. Headlong drums and incessant, sawing strings press the issue as she hems and haws, spinning fables about foxes and dogs before giving into her heart with a flourish: ""Take my shoes off and throw them in the lake!"" she howls, finally carefree enough to commit. Bush was 27 when ""Hounds of Love"" was released, and the song is no teenage trifle; it knows about the pitfalls, dangers, and disappointments that come with every relationship, and it holds enough faith to move forward anyway. —Ryan DombalSee also: Kate Bush: ""Breathing"" / Kate Bush: ""Suspended in Gaffa""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWqrriAGDls,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/houndsoflove.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kate_Bush-Hounds_of_Love.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,27,Janet Jackson,"""Love Will Never Do (Without You)""",A&M; 1989,"Listen on Apple Music There isn’t a modern analog for the fearless daring of Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814 album cycle. Dressed in stark monochrome and executing choreography that resembled hand-to-hand combat more than traditional hip-hop dance, Jackson chased her 1986 breakthrough Control with a brash political gambit. ""Love Will Never Do (Without You)"" seems to hang back on the seriousness of Rhythm Nation’s social consciousness in favor of a simple song of devotion—though ""simple"" does this towering six-minute epic very little justice. Everything in the mix hits like percussion, and Janet’s voice glides coolly over top as she celebrates her lover while sneakily letting him know she could have anyone she wants. Beyoncé stepping out in 1814 gear on a recent Halloween night confirmed what some of us suspected all along: Homegirl’s been taking notes. —Craig JenkinsSee also: Fonda Rae: ""Touch Me"" / Janet Jackson: ""Rhythm Nation""",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/214/lovewillneverdo.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Janet_Jackson-Love_Will_Never_Do_Without_You.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,26,Public Enemy,"""Bring the Noise""",Def Jam; 1987,"Listen on Apple Music Emerging in fall 1987 as part of the Less Than Zero soundtrack, ""Bring the Noise"" would anchor It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, Public Enemy’s totemic sophomore album, the following June. And from Flavor Flav’s hype-man taunts to Chuck D’s granite-solid sixteens to the Bomb Squad’s flurrying jazzbo squall, every aspect of ""Noise"" still stings like a provocation, a dare, a saber rattling before it carves your speakers from the inside. Verses unspool in a flood as turbulent as the production, baiting radio DJs, critics, and audience alike with a breathlessness that suggests they’re rapping through the crowd and into hip-hop posterity. A fleet fluidity informs Chuck D’s flow here, effortless in a dizzying, dazzling way—he’s circling us like a young prize fighter, landing one swift, sure blow after another. It’s exhaustive and inexhaustible, a playful mission statement that dials back somewhat on the agenda-setting, making space for shouts to Sonny Bono, Yoko Ono, and Anthrax, who would memorably cover the song with Public Enemy a few years hence. The group was just warming, and it’s telling that 28 years on, ""Noise"" remains more mesmerizing than the vast majority of rap anthems that would follow it. —Raymond CummingsSee also: Geto Boys: ""Mind of a Lunatic"" / Public Enemy: ""Rebel Without a Pause""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=So0p8tTiCLk,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/214/bringthenoise.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Public_Enemy-Bring_the_Noise.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,25,New Order,"""Temptation""",Factory; 1982,"Listen on Apple Music Specific feelings can become tied to the pop music of a specific decade: The '90s were good for angst and self-loathing; the '70s were ripe for hedonism; and the '80s were a bountiful time for yearning. Through some combination of new synthesizer sounds, new haircuts, and the new image of teen-dom as seen in the movies of John Hughes, a large handful of songs from this era articulated an almost painful desire for someone or something that was just out of reach. New Order’s ""Temptation"" is the greatest song about this feeling ever written. It’s so great, in fact, that the band couldn’t stop recording it. Along with the iconic original near-nine-minute 12” version and a five-and-a-half-minute 7” edit cut in 1982, the UK quartet completely re-recorded ""Temptation"" for the compilation Substance in 1987—and that version, brightened by vocals that are higher and sweetened, is arguably the best known today. (They remade the song once more in 1998, but that take is no one’s favorite.) Though the three versions vary considerably in terms of structure, the core elements are there throughout: Bernard Sumner's ""What Goes On""-inspired chords, a pulsing synth line by Gillian Gilbert, Stephen Morris’ fluttering drums, and the uncannily emotional bass playing of Peter Hook. The song’s two-chord groove is reinforced by lyrics that seem to be about something specific but are really a collection of fragments; every line is designed to run through your head in a moment, probably when you’re walking home by yourself at night, teetering between loneliness and belonging. —Mark RichardsonSee also: The Cure: ""Primary"" / New Order: ""Everything's Gone Green""",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/214/Temptation_single.jpg,/dataset/artwork/New_Order-Temptation.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,24,Pixies,"""Where Is My Mind?""",4AD; 1988,"Listen on Apple Music Presaging the alt-rock boom that came at the beginning of the next decade, 1988's ""Where Is My Mind?"" is a distinctly prescient late-'80s landmark and a song that launched a thousand Nirvanas. As one of the bigger hits off of Surfer Rosa, ""Where Is My Mind?"" invokes powerful, visceral, and oddly wistful sentiments all at once, using the song’s eponymous chorus as both an existential plea and a zany, lethargic rallying cry. Even the song’s production is manic: stark, spiraling guitar licks cohere with fretful acoustic guitar strums and the sound of a human howling, and Frank Black’s lyrics are sung in alternatingly high and low octaves—a delivery that is jarring and unhinged, but still strangely jubilatory. There’s a warmth and wry humor to the way the band’s synthesized textures placate the song’s narrative eccentricity. ""Where Is My Mind?"" is a funhouse mirror of angst and liberation, but few songs in the genre come as neatly packaged as this one. —Molly BeaucheminSee also: Pixies: ""Here Comes Your Man"" / Pixies: ""Monkey Gone to Heaven""",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/214/pixies.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Pixies-Where_Is_My_Mind.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,23,Slick Rick,"""Children's Story""",Def Jam/Columbia; 1988,"Listen on Apple Music With a voice like a deadpan British Bootsy Collins and a storytelling sense that could turn any situation into detailed vérité, Slick Rick built a reputation as an MC that thrived on the outsized. When you outline the narrative of ""Children's Story"", it seems pretty standard: a young man becomes a stick-up kid, attempts to rob and then runs from an undercover cop, gets into a high-speed gun battle, takes and releases a hostage, then finally surrenders once he's surrounded before being shot by the cops anyway. But few rappers before or since have shown Rick’s ability to inhabit multiple characters on this level—it's like a precursor to Kool G Rap's crime narratives filtered through an Eddie Murphy bit. All you have to do is quote certain phrases—""Me'n you, Ty, we gonna make some caaaaash"" or ""Daaaave, the dope fiend shooting dope"" or ""rat-a-tat-tatted and all the cops scattered""—to realize how deeply Rick's sing-song phrasing pulls you along, the quick-witted efficiency and smash-cut pacing turning out far more evocative than its music video ever could. —Nate PatrinSee also: Slick Rick: ""Hey Young World"" / Slick Rick: ""Mona Lisa""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjNTu8jdukA,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/214/slickrick.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Slick_Rick-Childrens_Story.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,22,Talking Heads,"""This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)""",Sire; 1983,"Listen on Apple Music ""This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)"" was an aberration for the Talking Heads. It was more of an exercise in understated musical hypnosis than polyrhythmic, Kuti-quoting funk, well-compressed instead of bursting at the seams, and (in its abashed way) it was a full-blown love song. But it didn’t clear #50 on the Hot 100, despite the Heads’ commercial success with ""Burning Down the House"" a few months earlier. With ""This Must Be the Place"", the band simplified their sound dramatically, condensing their sonic palette to the level of small EKG blips (having switched instruments for a lark, this was nearly all they were able to reliably deliver chops-wise) and wringing out only a few chords. In the process of stripping down, Talking Heads showcased something at the root of their art: David Byrne’s inimitable gift for melody, and his unique ability to make every musical figure seem both familiar and tied directly to the lyrical thought (see ""I feel numb...born with a weak heart/ I guess I must be having fun""). Is there a better moment of catharsis in a pop then the song's final eureka realization, after Byrne gets whacked with the monolithic spiritual hammer and awakes from a life-encompassing daze into unexpected stability? There’s nothing to narrow his eyes at anymore: ""Cover up the blank spots, hit me on the head/ Aaoooh, aaooh, aaooh, aaoooh."" For a band rarely given to addressing issues of the heart head-on, ""Naive Melody"" remains an unexpected and peerless achievement. —Winston Cook-WilsonSee also: Talking Heads: ""And She Was"" / Talking Heads: ""Road to Nowhere""",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/214/talkingheads.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Talking_Heads-This_Must_Be_the_Place_Naive_Melody.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,21,Prince and the Revolution,"""Kiss""",Paisley Park; 1986,"After the commercial and artistic triumph of Purple Rain and the declaration of unpredictability that was Around the World in a Day, Prince cemented his reputation as a master innovator the moment ""Kiss"" pounced out of the radio in 1986. There was no other record that moved like it, and there still isn't. It's shockingly spare for a dance track: dry as ash, with all of its weightless bulk way up in the tweeter zone and no bassline at all. The song's structure and chords come off as unimaginably fresh and alien, which is pretty impressive considering that it's basically just a twelve-bar I-IV-V blues at its core. (The two covers of ""Kiss"" that were minor hits in the next few years—one by the Art of Noise with Tom Jones, the other by Age of Chance—made a point of how little they sounded like Prince's version, and how splendid a song it was anyway.) Prince's original demo for the song was a quick acoustic throwaway he gave to his then-bassist Brownmark's band Mazarati for the debut album they were recording in 1985. The version they worked up with producer David Z was more or less ""Kiss"" as we know it, including the guitar-as-hi-hat riff that provides its beat—as well as a bassline that probably seemed like it obviously had to be there. On hearing that recording, Prince yanked it back from them, leaving credits to David Z for the arrangement and to Mazarati for their background vocals on the version he released. Prince, though, is the one who added ""Kiss""'s crowning touches, including the high-speed strum at the end of the chorus (borrowed from Jimmy Nolen's guitar part on James Brown's ""Papa's Got a Brand New Bag"") and the nearly instrumental bridge (his seemingly ad-libbed line ""little girl Wendy's parade"" had been the working title of the Parade album's opening song ""Christopher Tracy's Parade""). And his stratospheric, deeply sexy, intensely bizarre lead vocal—he sticks to the cloudbusting end of his falsetto for almost the entire song, diving down to baritone a couple of times just to show off a little more—might be his greatest performance. —Douglas WolkSee also: Prince: ""If I Was Your Girlfriend"" / Prince: ""Raspberry Beret""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IACaSSfFx-o,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/kiss.JPG,/dataset/artwork/Prince_and_the_Revolution-Kiss.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,20,Whitney Houston,"""I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)""",Arista; 1987,"Listen on Apple Music ""I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)"", released in 1987, is one of Houston’s most recognizable hits, and one that brings the contrast between the talent and the tabloid story into sharpest relief. It’s a bright, bubbly pop song, bopping through the standard-issue subject matter that is the single girl’s longing for the lighthearted fun of romantic love. Houston’s signature shout after the unmistakable keyboard intro is pure '80s joy, reminiscent of the similarly jubilant openings of both Cyndi Lauper’s ""Girls Just Want to Have Fun"" and Houston’s own ""How Will I Know"". This comparison did not go unnoticed when the song was first released, and critics used it as a reason to pan ""I Wanna Dance With Somebody"" as a lazy imitation of a formula Houston and Lauper had already gotten right. But the years have been kind to ""I Wanna Dance With Somebody"". Houston, then on her second studio album, is youthful, light—the voice on the record is impossible to reconcile with the Houston the public came to know in the years surrounding her death. In the new millennium, big voices have standard issue: from Amy Winehouse, to Adele, Mariah Carey, and Kelly Clarkson, the pop standard is singers with wide ranges, ringing upper registers, and nimble runs. But Houston brought so much more than size to her performances. On ""I Wanna Dance With Somebody"", Houston manages to imbue an otherwise simple, frivolous pop song with a hint of sadness. —Maud DeitchSee also: Whitney Houston: ""Saving All My Love for You"" / Whitney Houston: ""So Emotional""",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/214/whitneydance.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Whitney_Houston-I_Wanna_Dance_With_Somebody_Who_Loves_Me.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,19,Eric B. & Rakim,"""Paid in Full"" / ""Paid in Full (Seven Minutes of Madness Mix)""",4th & B'way; 1987,"Listen on Apple Music ""Thinking of a master plan."" If you know that much, you know the rest; along with ""it was all a dream"" or ""two years ago, a friend of mine,"" it's in perpetual contention for rap's greatest opening line, a scheme set in motion one meticulously chosen word at a time. When Long Island duo Eric B. & Rakim dropped ""Paid in Full"" in 1987, rap was still shaking off the last vestiges of the post-disco era: Run-D.M.C. and LL Cool J may have made rap both bigger and deffer, but elsewhere, plenty of MCs were still yes-yalling in three part harmony. After years where MCs went on and on 'til the break of dawn, ""Paid in Full""—succinct, introspective, painstaking—marked the cleanest break yet from the party-starting tracksuits-and-Kangol era. Rap was never the same. ""Paid in Full"" is a song about necessity: about doing what you have to do to get by, and trying to juggle day-to-day responsibilities with trying to make something for—and not just of—yourself. Rakim needs money; he and Eric B. have taken too long to get their album done (funny, since Paid in Full was recorded in a single week), and their girlfriends have started to complain. Too righteous to return to a life of crime, but with too much to say to settle on a 9-to-5, he returns to the studio and hungrily lays down ""Paid in Full"". From the first, Rakim was a master of the tactile detail: the lint in his pockets, the sweat in his palm, the fish on his plate. In just a few words, Rakim gives you his past, his present, and future, says peace, and fades to black. ""Paid in Full"" unfolds in monochrome; UK production duo Coldcut's kaleidoscopic ""Seven Minutes of Madness"" remix, on the other hand, paints the song in full-on Technicolor. Now this is a journey into sound: the original—that Soul Searchers loop, that Dennis Edwards bassline, Ra's godly verse—is expanded out, scribbled on, dotted with exclamation marks. Coldcut throw anything and everything at ""Paid in Full"": Humphrey Bogart, James Brown, Don Pardo, Ofra Haza. To its credit, the ""Madness"" remix isn't a full-on reimagining: By keeping things rooted in Ra's voice and ""Ashley's Roachclip"", every passing sample only seems to serve as a kind of hosannah, another celebration of the miracle the God MC has made. —Paul Thompson See also: Eric B & Rakim: ""Eric B. Is President"" / Eric B & Rakim: ""I Know You Got Soul""",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/214/paid-in-full.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Eric_B__Rakim-Paid_in_Full__Paid_in_Full_Seven_Minutes_of_Madness_Mix.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,18,Marvin Gaye,"""Sexual Healing""",Columbia; 1982,"Listen on Apple Music Marvin Gaye’s self-described ""seven-year shit period"" started in 1975: two overlapping divorces, crushing debt, depression, addiction, paranoia. He disappeared to Maui, lived out of a van, and attempted suicide by blowing an ounce of coke in an hour. He quit Motown and moved to Belgium in '81, disillusioned and recently 40, desperate for redemption. His mind wandered to the Red Light District, Bob Marley, and Kraftwerk. He never wanted to make a Motown-sounding record again, and taught himself to play his new TR-808 and a Jupiter-8, an analog synth Roland had just introduced. He hadn’t had a hit in years; Midnight Love, his 17th and final album, was do or die. You can’t make something like Midnight Love on drugs alone, but I’m pretty sure you can’t get there without them, either. You don’t stumble on the feverish, all-consuming drum break of ""Midnight Lady"" without knowing the spastic patterns of a coke-binge heartbeat. And that’s why ""Sexual Healing"", Gaye’s first post-Motown single, felt even more essential—in the context of the album, but also within the turbulent mythos of America’s most important soul singer. In its mellow Afro-Caribbean funk and uncomplicated erotica, it really felt as therapeutic as its title suggested: sex as something deeper than id-driven impulse, as a final, homeopathic defense against unraveling completely. And it worked: Midnight Love became Gaye’s best-selling album, and ""Sexual Healing"" the biggest crossover hit of his career. —Meaghan GarveySee also: Leon Ware: ""Rockin' You Eternally"" / Sylvia Striplin: ""You Can't Turn Me Away""",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/214/sexualhealing.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Marvin_Gaye-Sexual_Healing.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,17,Madonna,"""Into the Groove""",Sire/Warner Bros.; 1985,"Listen on Apple Music With two hit albums, Like a Virgin rising in the charts, and one wild MTV wedding cake performance behind her, Madonna’s career was in a very sweet spot in 1985. So it’s no wonder the It Girl would make moves in Hollywood, starring in Susan Seidelman’s Desperately Seeking Susan. It’s there, in the closing credits of the movie, that a demo version of ""Into the Groove"" was not just heard, but also essentially released. ""Music can be such a revelation,"" preaches Madonna on ""Into the Groove"", yet again making the dance floor a place for physical and emotional freedom. Playing shy, she bounces between earnestly begging for company and aggressively making her partner dance right to win her affection. While songs like ""Borderline"" and ""Dress You Up"" were successful dance-pop tracks, nothing Madonna had put out was as club-appropriate as ""Into the Groove"". Penned by Madonna and songwriter Steve Bray, ""Into the Groove"" was initially intended for producer Mark Kamins. But Madonna thought it would suit her new movie well, much to the chagrin of Kamins. The fact that Madonna would give the song such an unconventional debut shows how strong her popularity was at the time and how big of a hit the song really is. With filming finishing right before Like a Virgin was out, Desperately Seeking Susan swiftly became a Madonna vehicle before its release. Ratings were lowered specifically to accommodate the star’s teen fanbase and lead Rosanna Arquette was seen as a supporting actress in Madge’s shadow. The unpolished demo didn’t even land on the film’s soundtrack and was only available as the B-side to ""Angel"" in the U.S., but it’s still regarded as one of Madonna’s best dance tracks. —Hazel CillsSee also: Madonna: ""Burning Up"" / Madonna: ""Think of Me""",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/214/into%20the%20groove.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Madonna-Into_the_Groove.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,16,Fugazi,"""Waiting Room""",Dischord; 1988,"Listen on Apple Music On Fugazi’s 1988 debut EP, opening salvo ""Waiting Room"" established the D.C. band’s growth from the hardcore punk scene its members helped to build. Though ""Waiting Room"" contains the same ferocity, pithiness, and efficiency you’d expect from a song written by members of Minor Threat and Rites of Spring, it’s more complicated than your average punk song was in those days. It’s no surprise that a remarkably diverse roster of artists have chosen to cover this particular anthem over the last several decades. As Fugazi themselves have become the standard-bearers of a strict DIY ethic, so a cover of ""Waiting Room"" immediately references those ethical roots and an idea of rock music created by and for a relatively small community of scrappy kids who are passionate, political, and thoughtful. While the band’s sound would continue to grow over the arc of its existence, ""Waiting Room"" is the song that first defined them, and continues to reverberate with fans new and old. —Jes Skolnik See also: Fugazi: ""Suggestion"" / Minor Threat: ""Minor Threat""",,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/214/fugazi.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fugazi-Waiting_Room.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,15,Sonic Youth,"""Teen Age Riot""",Enigma/Blast First; 1988,"Listen on Apple Music However cheekily, ""Teen Age Riot"" attempted to capture the zeitgeist like this: ""At the time, J Mascis from Dinosaur Jr represented our slacker genius,"" Thurston Moore once said of their guitar anti-hero—a long-haired guy who later turned down an opportunity to join Nirvana—""so in tribute we wrote a song called ‘Rock N Roll for President’ about him being president, which we eventually renamed ‘Teen Age Riot’."" Sonic Youth recorded 1988’s Daydream Nation, their unequivocal masterpiece, that summer at a SoHo studio owned by minimalist pioneer Philip Glass; Public Enemy were there, too, working on the other board. For an album that winkingly took the form of a double LP with an embedded trilogy and fine art on the cover (that candle painting sold for over $16 million in 2011), its opening track, ""Teen Age Riot"", was deceptively simple. But it’s the kind of rock'n'roll song that makes you feel like you could change your entire life—your spirit, desire—if you listened, read, and watched hard enough, perceptive of Sonic Youth’s clues. It sounds like two songs—Kim Gordon’s free-associating dream logic pries it open, followed by some of the most conventionally-structured lyrics that Moore ever wrote—but inside was a sea of possibility. The song had the cool Warholian distance, the unconventional tunings, the dryly evocative turns-of-phrase that made Sonic Youth’s sound, but it had a rare looseness. You can still imagine yourself existing within this one’s world. Steve Shelley’s aerodynamic beat gave it a spacious sprawl, and those wistfully twinging chord changes at the end of each verse beckoned an affecting, reeling invitation: you’re really it. To be clear, no one in Sonic Youth was a teenager when ""Teen Age Riot"" came out; everyone was in their thirties aside from 26-year-old drummer Steve Shelley. But what Sonic Youth rendered a ""teen age riot""—the susceptibility to be galvanized, the openness of spirit, a willingness to care about music that much—was and is a wake-up call you can live at any age, at any time. This is crucial to remember as the narrative around Sonic Youth mutates. It was ""Teen Age Riot"" that gave Sonic Youth the mass appeal to wield real influence and power in popular and unpopular culture, and whether a guitar band will ever do that again remains to be seen. Now something Gordon said of this era in Our Band Could Be Your Life feels especially pertinent: ""We were influential in showing people that you can make any kind of music you want."" —Jenn PellySee also: Sonic Youth: ""Death Valley '69"" / Sonic Youth: ""Schizophrenia""",,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/214/teenageriot.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sonic_Youth-Teen_Age_Riot.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,14,The Smiths,"""There Is a Light That Never Goes Out""",Rough Trade; 1986,"Listen on Apple Music The Smiths mirrored our unguarded states, those dark nights spent staring at the ceiling. ""There Is a Light That Never Goes Out"" sounds like a slogan embroidered on a pillow you’d find in some dusty bed and breakfast, but Morrissey imbued the phrase with vitality. He sings like someone holding on, even as he’s on the verge of collapse; the music is graceful yet firm, accentuated by a stirring synthetic string section. (Despite being a song where the singer moans about wanting to die in a car crash, it sounds excellent from inside a car.) There’s a moment of stunning humility in the lyrics, when the narrator imagines his death coming in a darkened underpass before ""a strange fear"" grips him, and he realizes he wants to live. Many songs are written from a depressed point of view, but few navigate the ontological breakthrough with such subtlety. Then there's the title, which is repeated over and over at the end, Morrissey changing inflections to reflect the myriad interpretations. There is a light that never goes out. It's a life-giving mantra, simple and optimistic—more than the Smiths were known for showing. You can see it in videos of the band performing the song, because Morrissey never sings this bit at the end. He wanders about the stage, letting the audience mouth along to themselves. The moment doesn't have to be emphasized, because it's already felt. It's why the Smiths endure, even when they’re reduced to cliche: To write a song like this, capable of supplying no shortage of people with the inspiration they need to keep going, is a genuine miracle. —Jeremy GordonSee also: Morrissey: ""Everyday Is Like Sunday"" / The Smiths: ""The Boy With the Thorn in His Side""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMfXffgexiU,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/lightsmiths.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Smiths-There_Is_a_Light_That_Never_Goes_Out.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,13,Michael Jackson,"""Billie Jean""",Epic; 1983,"Listen on Apple Music We all know ""Billie Jean"", the song: Its insatiable hook and ribald bassline and Michael Jackson’s plaintive hics launched the pop star into a stratospheric realm of celebrity, decades ahead of reality TV stars and the 24-hour news cycle. Just as, if not more, important is ""Billie Jean"", the video. At the same time that Jackson’s gentle grin smiled out from magazine and newspaper covers all over the world, there were still racial barriers to breach at home in America. Directed by Steve Barron (who would go on to do A-Ha’s ""Take on Me""), the video was among the first by a black musician to air on MTV. It’s absurd to imagine, 30 years on, at a time when videos by black artists set trends, help keep cable music channels afloat, and are the cache driving emerging digital platforms like Tidal and Apple Music. Jackson’s music united people all over the world in an unprecedented way, but it was his image—his smooth brown skin, the glossy Jheri curl and infamous toe stand—that made ""Billie Jean"" so crucial to the commodification of black artists in pop music, and a progenitor of a culture that thrives on ""social media moments."" —Anupa MistrySee also: Michael Jackson: ""Baby Be Mine"" / Michael Jackson: ""Beat It""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi_XLOBDo_Y,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/214/billiejean.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Michael_Jackson-Billie_Jean.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,12,The Cure,"""Just Like Heaven""",Fiction; 1987,"Listen on Apple Music Few bands have a back catalog as deep—or as truly kaleidoscopic—as the Cure. Their discography, which now stretches back nearly 40 years, is a study in extremes—from the most abjectly bleak and funereal goth dirges to the giddiest of Technicolor pop. ""Just Like Heaven"" is gleefully the latter, three minutes of the most immaculate musical confectionary Robert Smith ever concocted. The third single from 1987’s willfully schizophrenic Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, ""Just Like Heaven"" was the first Cure song to crack the U.S. top 40, immediately serving as a kind of gateway drug for a generation of ""120 Minutes""-watching teen misanthropes eager to lap up the band’s black-eyelined majesty. It also cemented Smith’s genius as a songwriter, proving his uncanny dexterity for articulating not only all-consuming melancholy but pure romantic joy as well. The track’s signature drumrolled intro and cascading guitar line—alongside Smith’s opening plea to ""Show me, show me, show me how you do that trick""—is the sound of a million hopeful mixtapes and new wave dance parties springing wistfully to life—a twisting, twirling bit of post-punk wonder that Smith himself once perfectly described as ""a song about hyperventilating—kissing and fainting to the floor."" In short, it’s just like a dream. —T. Cole Rachel See also: The Cure: ""In Between Days""",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/just-like-heaven.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Cure-Just_Like_Heaven.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,11,Prince and the Revolution,"""When Doves Cry""",Warner Bros.; 1984,"Strip away every bit of character—the inscrutable tweets, the shifting attitudes towards the Internet, the label drama, the Paisley Park vault, the Love Symbol, the godly hoop skills and the fucking pancakes—and dig until you reach the foundation: this is what you’ll find. Before the release of ""When Doves Cry"", Prince was an enigmatic studio rat with an ear for controversy and an unstoppable pen. It made him into an icon, a prowling, unbridled star of sound and screen whose commercial potency and creative energy were almost unrivalled. It’s the wellspring from which the Prince of popular imagination springs, and it’s worthy of that designation. This is a strange, singular song; it’s the best marriage of pop instinct and weird, experimental energy in Prince’s discography, which is saying something given he’s had over 30 years to write a worthy successor. It contains his multitudes, every major aspect of his musical being: the shredding guitar god, the Minneapolis funk wizard, the deliberately queer provocateur, the magnetic sexual force, the vocalist poised on the verge of ecstasy. It’s a visionary act from a musical auteur—Prince wrote and recorded all of the parts himself after the rest of Purple Rain was finished—but its biggest innovation sprang from a conversation, and it’s credited to a band. Without a bassline it hangs in the air, shimmering, like an invitation to a purple palace in the sky. At this point in his career, Prince sometimes seems more like an ideal or a guardian spirit than an actual musician. (I think he knows this too, continuing to release fine records and singles that can’t help but riff on past glories.) His existence lets you believe that skepticism and intolerance can be defeated through genius and sheer will—if a tiny man wearing pantyhose and singing like an angel can become the biggest rock star in the world, you can overcome whatever happens to be cramping your style one lousy morning. ""When Doves Cry"" is the cap on his rise and the root of his myth, and it remains economic, innovative, and exciting. This is what it sounds like when a legend is born. —Jamieson CoxSee also: Prince: ""Controversy"" / The Time: ""Jungle Love""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miZxYjqqjZM,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/214/whendovescry.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Prince_and_the_Revolution-When_Doves_Cry.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,10,The Smiths,"""How Soon Is Now?""",Rough Trade/Sire; 1984,"Listen on Apple Music The tremolo pulse that opens ""How Soon Is Now?"" is the kind of sound musicians and listeners spend a lifetime chasing after: something never heard before and never successfully replicated since. Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr admitted that he wrote the song (early working title: ""Swamp"") to channel what he thought Creedence Clearwater Revival sounded like, even though his own knowledge of their catalog didn't go much further than the Gun Club's cover of ""Run Through the Jungle"". The guitar texture, meanwhile, was inspired by Can's ""I Want More"", Bo Diddley's ""Mona"", and Hamilton Bohannon's ""Disco Stomp"", of all things. While Morrissey's lyrics for the song rank among his most achingly direct, as well as his most universal (""I am human and I need to be loved/ Just like everybody else does"") and his portrait of a terrible night out is funny because it's true (""So you go and you stand on your own/ And you leave on your own/ And you go home, and you cry/ And you want to die""), what makes the song such a triumph is ultimately its unique sound—not just that eerie, head-stretching tremolo, but also its shrieking guitar accents and lonesome slide guitar evocative of blues harmonica. That malleable quality, the sense of something being liberally and viciously smeared across the stereo field, would become a key antecedent for My Bloody Valentine's tremulous roar, and shoegaze in general, but at this moment the sound belonged only to them. —Philip SherburneSee also: The Smiths: ""Bigmouth Strikes Again"" / The Smiths: ""Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxAVXsT1mss,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/how-soon-is-now.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Smiths-How_Soon_Is_Now.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,9,Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five,"""The Message""",Sugar Hill; 1982,"Listen on Apple Music Amid the luxury high rises and organic eateries, it’s easy to forget that New York City in 2015 is only a generation removed from a different city entirely. Many of the same city streets lied undeveloped, little more than piles of rubble from dilapidated buildings and tenacious weeds snaking through the devastation, as indelicate urban planning shuttled the rich out of the city and folded the impoverished into cubbyhole apartments. Out of that wreckage, too, bloomed hip-hop. It was both an escape from the perils of an unsafe city and a method of speaking to them. The greatest early expression of hip-hop’s twin power as dance music and social commentary is Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s ""The Message"". Grandmaster Melle Mel cuts to the bloody quick in his opening verse, painting a picture of inner city disenfranchisement—from neighborhoods specked with bombed out buildings and the job market keeping minorities living in them, to the live wire desire to snap under the pressure of pretending these conditions are just the way of the world. It feels like an answer to Bob Dylan’s ""Subterranean Homesick Blues"", casual observation of one’s destitute surroundings as social commentary. Before it, MCs mostly toasted the party while DJs did the heavy lifting. After it, you had to say something. —Craig JenkinsSee also: Kurtis Blow: ""The Breaks"" / Treacherous Three: ""The New Rap Language""",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/themessage.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Grandmaster_Flash_and_the_Furious_Five-The_Message.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,8,Talking Heads,"""Once in a Lifetime""",Sire; 1981,"Listen on Apple Music The narrative arc of Talking Heads’ 14-year career was David Byrne’s slow socialization process and gradual coming-to-awareness of his own soul. The story is told most succinctly in Stop Making Sense, as Byrne proceeds from a herky-jerky, Travis Bickle-style alien exploring late-'70s New York in boombox-accompanied opener ""Psycho Killer"" through the concert-ending revelation of ""Take Me to the River"", where his fledgling attempts at rhythm come full-flower into a Memphis-style baptismal rite. Track that trajectory over the band’s discography—one of the most mesmerizing runs in American pop—and Byrne’s narrative blooms into an allegory for the thinking person coming to terms with their body, with ""Once in a Lifetime"" as the climax. The transfixing moment when the Heads' preternatural knack for rhythmic innovation, chant-along lyrics, chin-stroking abstractions, and cultural syntheses combine into a transcendent total, ""Lifetime"" is also the epitome of 1980s art-pop, the song too far ahead of its time to top the charts, but which would rightfully earn its reputation once everyone else caught up. The inspirations for ""Lifetime"" show a restless, creative band reframing the transmissions from a quickly globalizing world into its own open-hearted pop-patois. As with the sessions that created Fear of Music’s lead track ""I Zimbra"", the band sought inspiration-through-groove, inspired by co-producer Brian Eno's fondness for the Velvet Underground's rhythm-first mantra and a group-wide fixation on West African pop like highlife and Afrobeat (a Byrne guitar line that winds its way through the chorus sounds like King Sunny Ade filtered through the Centipede sound processor). On the verses, Byrne’s Dadaist consumerism koans—inspired by American radio evangelists—are social conscience reduced to abstraction, and the Eno-penned chorus similarly emerged from the ambient auteur humming catchy vowel sounds in the studio. MTV would launch 10 months after Remain in Light’s release, and the ""Lifetime"" clip (featuring Byrne and no one else—democracy works in-studio, but makes bad promo) ran in high rotation for the content-desperate network. Byrne’s abstruseness translated perfectly to a music video format with no clear language, perfect for a group that had invented its own musical Esperanto. The nervy gesticulations Byrne copped from films of epileptic seizures and Japanese dancers became as much a part of ""Remember the '80s?"" argot as the song itself. The fusion of brain and body—Byrne and Eno's theorizing plus Tina Weymouth's brain-burrowing servo-motor bass riff—makes ""Once in a Lifetime"" the embodiment of Byrne’s decade-plus-long neurotic passion play with Talking Heads. But the sum of ""Lifetime""'s idiosyncratic parts have also spent a lifetime piling up into what's now regarded as one of pop’s weirdest anthems. All of the tics, theories, grooves, and happy accidents get caught in the glow of Byrne hollering ""letting the dayyyyyys gooooo byyyyyyy/ once-in-a liiiifetiiiiiiiime!!!"" Like the best pop slogans, it means little to the brain but everything to the hips, lungs, and heart, a band at its peak capturing time while marveling at its expiration. —Eric HarveySee also: Brian Eno & David Byrne: ""The Jezebel Spirit"" / Talking Heads: ""Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-RDJ4Z4XrQ,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/onceinalifetime.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Talking_Heads-Once_in_a_Lifetime.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,7,Joy Division,"""Love Will Tear Us Apart""",Factory; 1980,"Listen on Apple Music It may be impossible to hear ""Love Will Tear Us Apart"" as anything other than rock’s most exquisitely crafted suicide note, recorded just two months before singer Ian Curtis hanged himself at his Macclesfield home and released one month after. However, the song’s most startling quality is not the withering fatalism of Curtis’ lyrics—which address his failing marriage to his wife, Deborah, in discomfiting detail—but the calm, almost contented clarity with which he delivers them. In light of all the torment and anguish he projected throughout Joy Division’s brief lifespan, ""Love Will Tear Us Apart"" is the closest we ever got to hearing Ian Curtis at peace with himself. Even after decades of ubiquity, ""Love Will Tear Us Apart"" retains an uncanny allure. It stands as both Joy Division’s most musically expansive yet lyrically intimate statement, its soft-focus synth lines serving as salve for lines so emotionally devastating (""Why is the bedroom so cold/ You’ve turned away on your side""), you almost feel guilty for dancing to the song at an '80s retro night. What makes ""Love Will Tear Us Apart"" so eternally transfixing is not the mere fact that we know what followed—it’s that you get the overwhelming sense that Curtis knew what was coming, too. —Stuart BermanSee also: Joy Division: ""Atrocity Exhibition"" / Joy Division: ""Isolation""",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/joydivision-1.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Joy_Division-Love_Will_Tear_Us_Apart.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,6,Kate Bush,"""Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)""",EMI; 1985,"Listen on Apple Music After a half decade spent wandering the forests of art-damage, Kate Bush re-emerged (dressed as a druid, on tea-time TV) with one of the most warmhearted distillations of desire ever committed to pop. Compassion was in short supply in the Britain of 1985; meanwhile ""Running Up That Hill"" longs to be understood, but to better understand someone else, too, capturing the balancing act in its tussle between atavism and futurism, vulnerability and might, empathy and lust. On 1982's The Dreaming, Bush, self-producing for the first time, used her newly discovered Fairlight to generate a smorgasbord of exotic samples, indicating gazes set down the rabbit hole. Here, the synth is a divining rod, the padded footprints to Stuart Elliott's heartbeat snare, and the effect is epic without employing her regular windy signifiers of scale. Bush's regained direction is utterly piercing without sacrificing ""Running""'s complex and perilous ascent: Thirty years on, the view from the top is still breathtaking every time. —Laura SnapesSee also: Kate Bush: ""Cloudbusting"" / Kate Bush: ""This Woman's Work""",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/running-up-that-hill.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/Kate_Bush-Running_Up_That_Hill_A_Deal_with_God.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,5,Public Enemy,"""Fight the Power""",Motown; 1989,"Listen on Apple Music Would Do the Right Thing have the same urgency and rising tension running through its first two acts if Spike Lee hadn't hand-picked Public Enemy to provide that core piece of the soundtrack? And would Public Enemy have risen even further from the heights of It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back to a permanent place in hip-hop's top tier if they hadn't amplified its tectonic impact with a song that proclaimed it was just the beginning of their revolution? It's hard to say, but it's even harder to think of a more mutually beneficial pairing that not only resulted in early breakthroughs for both parties, but a call to arms for both their fields. Even without its cinematic origins, ""Fight the Power"" is ruthlessly vivid. The Bomb Squad's expansion of their own production capabilities over the course of the previous year is borne out in just how much sleekness they've added to their high-impact method of building beats: the James Brown DNA's a fusion of ""Funky Drummer"" percussion and a riff from ""Hot Pants Road"", ramped up just enough to match their trademark solar-plexus impact with the motivation to move. (Hence the perfection of Do the Right Thing's opening credits featuring Rosie Perez alternating between dancing and throwing hands, often simultaneously.) And a precedent to the message sneaks in through that barrage, a collage-choir of voices weaving in and out choppily through the beat: a massed ""I"" from the Wailers' ""I Shot the Sheriff"", a robotic ""yeaaaaah"" from Bambaataa's ""Planet Rock"", shouts from Sly & the Family Stone and the Dramatics and Trouble Funk—like all that Black musical expression and rebellion's been leading up to this very point. And in Chuck D and Flavor Flav's world, it's a point of no return. The slogans you probably know already, and they're still full of contagious catharsis over the state of Black disenfranchisement in America: ""Our freedom of speech is freedom or death,"" ""Most of my heroes don't appear on no stamps,"" ""Elvis was a hero to most but he never meant shit to me…"" But P.E. were always more than just sloganeers on the mic—this is also one of Chuck's best pure exhibitions of rhyming, rolling out linguistic dexterity all day every day: just listen to him take off like the Concorde at the outset of the second verse. And Flav riffs like a powerhouse: he was never just a hypeman, but here he's like the knockout blow of a fluid combination, a party-starter in isolation but a fired-up rebel when his voice burst out in tandem with Chuck's. ""Fight the Power"" straddled decades when it was positioned as the climactic final track of 1990's Fear of a Black Planet, but it somehow sounds even less like the '80s as time churns on—from Radio Raheem to Eric Garner, the words still demand to be heard. —Nate PatrinSee also: Public Enemy: ""Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos"" / Public Enemy: ""Don't Believe the Hype""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U35MvblI4og,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/fight-the-power.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Public_Enemy-Fight_the_Power.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,4,New Order,"""Blue Monday""",Factory; 1983,"Listen on Apple Music So much is gloriously wrong with ""Blue Monday"" that it’s hard to know where to start. The song originally began as a way for New Order to avoid playing encores live—something a synthesizer could play without them being onstage. Speaking of lazy, frontman Bernard Sumner admitted to stealing the song’s keyboard pads from Kraftwerk’s ""Uranium"", the arrangement from Klein + MBO’s ""Dirty Talk"", the bassline from Sylvester’s ""You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)"", and the driving beat from Donna Summer’s ""Our Love"". To make matters worse, woeful business decisions surrounded the 1983 single. There was graphic designer Peter Saville’s decision to make the die-cut sleeve look like a 5 ¼” floppy disc, which ended up costing so much to manufacture that every copy of ""Blue Monday"" sold was a loss leader for Factory Records. Running at seven-and-a-half minutes, it was also too long for the pop charts. And since Factory was not recognized by the British Phonographic Industry, it did not qualify for a gold disc—a pity, as ""Blue Monday"" remains the biggest 12” single of all-time, selling over 3 million copies worldwide. Apparently, they did something right. ""Blue Monday"" found one of the most iconic bands of the early '80s moving beyond the shadow of their own tragic post-punk past and into the future. And while the song synthesized dance music of all stripes from that era—classic disco, hi-NRG, Italo, new wave—it also managed to tease out doubt from within those ecstatic sounds. —Andy BetaSee also: New Order: ""True Faith"" / New Order: ""Age of Consent""",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/bluemonday.jpg,/dataset/artwork/New_Order-Blue_Monday.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,3,N.W.A,"""Straight Outta Compton""",Ruthless/Priority; 1988,"Listen on Apple Music If you want to understand the importance of ""Straight Outta Compton"", try to imagine a world without it. There’s an alternate '88 where it bombs, and Ice Cube returns to architectural drafting school in Northern Arizona. Eazy E goes back to selling crack and dodging the battering ram. Dr. Dre rides out his run with the World Class Wreckin’ Cru, sells swap meet mixtapes for spare cash, and never finds the right rappers to implement his vision. Maybe gangsta rap never usurps L.A. electro-funk. Raiders jackets and quicksilver suits co-exist peacefully. Tipper Gore never becomes a shook one. Maybe Inglewood or Watts become alternate Meccas of West Coast rap. Compton never becomes hip-hop’s Hub City and never yields DJ Quik, MC Eiht, The Game, Kendrick Lamar, or YG. Extend this gruesome scenario further and Friday never gets made, Snoop Dogg never expands the English lexicon, and medical marijuana never gets green-lit. How powerful is this song? Even its parody, ""Straight Outta Locash"", is better than 92% of all rap records ever made. It’s both socio-political polemic and AK-47 shoved in the gullet of Ronald Reagan, Daryl Gates, the CIA, FBI, and concerned parents. Police sirens signal the chase, but Eazy, Cube, Dre, and Ren are anti-heroes too heavily armed, aggressive, and sly to get caught. They’re laughing all the way to rob the bank. If militarized tanks crushed the doors of Compton homes, this was the nuclear response: Led by four nihilistic villains who would smother your mother and make your sister think they loved her. In Cold Blood in Compton. If the N.W.A film exaggerates them as Marvel Comic titans, that’s just how this song made them seem. It wasn’t the first gangsta rap salvo, but it might be the one that matters most. Insurrection in its most sawed off form. —Jeff WeissSee also: N.W.A: ""Express Yourself"" / N.W.A: ""Gangsta Gangsta""",,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/214/nwacompton.jpeg,/dataset/artwork/NWA-Straight_Outta_Compton.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,2,Michael Jackson,"""Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'""",Epic; 1983,"Listen on Apple Music ""Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’"" supports the weight of Michael Jackson’s transition from funky boy wonder to Thriller's omnivorous pop demi-god, builds a bridge between his precocious past and troubled future. Off the Wall had sealed Jackson’s solo stardom three years earlier, but it’s music for the end of adolescence rather than the beginning of adulthood. He stumbles over words, trips over his own two feet, floats on the vestiges of disco like he’s drifting through an amusement park lazy river; ""She’s Out of My Life"" is heartbreak as rendered by someone who’s experiencing it for the very first time. Fast forward to 1982: ""Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’"" is paranoid, sharp, angry, and cluttered, and it’s a window into both the righteous martyrdom and broad platitudes Jackson would come to lean on as his career progressed. The song takes on a lot of musical heft too, mostly because it sounds like everything: lithe funk and disco like the kind Jackson made on Off the Wall, aggressive, mathy rock, African pop, experimental music. (Take a minute to listen to Jackson’s array of bizarre backing vocals and sounds—it’s more Laurie Anderson than ""The Lady in My Life"".) This extreme breadth is enabled by one of the greatest rhythms in pop history and one of its most agile vocalists, flitting in and around the song like a hummingbird. There’s a reason Kanye West, perhaps Jackson’s foremost contemporary disciple, chose to reference this song at the height of his foray into maximalism: Jackson had drawn up a blueprint for him almost 30 years earlier. That sheer size—that cavernous, yawning quality—is the ultimate legacy of ""Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’"". If you’re going to become the biggest star in the world, it helps to make the biggest song. —Jamieson CoxSee also: Michael Jackson: ""Smooth Criminal"" / Michael Jackson: ""Thriller""",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VIqA3i2zQw,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/214/startin-somethin.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Michael_Jackson-Wanna_Be_Startin_Somethin.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9700-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1980s/,1980s,decade,song,1,Prince and the Revolution,"""Purple Rain""",Warner Bros.; 1984,"""Purple Rain"" was released into a climate where Prince was known as an R&B artist but had ideas that expanded on the gospel roots of soul and the flamboyance of synthesizers. And so he wrote a brazen homily for the future of music, using a wistful guitar riff, floor-to-ceiling drums, dulcet swells of string and organ, and an indomitable two-word hook meant to be sung by a chorus, a room, an arena full of people. But it’s the sweltering guitar solo—so good it still moves people to tears—that brought the song into the upper echelon of stadium ballads. Purple Rain, the album and the film, were the magic results of Prince’s limitless imagination and bridged an invisible aural divide, premised on race, that, up until that point, only Michael Jackson had truly managed to transcend. And ""Purple Rain"" the song is where it all came together in majestic fashion.The funky and explicit Dirty Mind established Prince as a virtuoso, but for Purple Rain he intentionally fashioned himself as leader of a band called the Revolution (including Wendy & Lisa, who became mythic figures themselves) in order to break with expectations of black artists and find an entry point into white, rock audiences. It seems cynical, but that bifurcation remains to this day, albeit on a more subtle level. It’s what drives Kanye West to defy the limitations imposed on rappers, a narrative that is imbued in the fawning critical response to his sprawling fifth album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Prince no longer wanted to be put into a box, and ""Purple Rain"", mixing the sacred and secular, is the glorious sound of escape.No one in modern pop music, except maybe Beyoncé, can touch Prince’s legacy as a perfectionist. The man, with his wardrobe and rude falsetto and kinetic performances, had perfected ""flawless"" decades before Bey made a song about it. And so it’s staggering to comprehend that the version of ""Purple Rain"" beloved by lovers and sensualists around the world was recorded live in the moment, on stage at a Minneapolis benefit concert in the summer of 1983. The 11-minute recording was snipped of a verse and buffed to a shine, but nonetheless, left largely intact as the still-burning finale on Purple Rain, the album and film that turned Prince into a global superstar. It’s a testament to Prince’s vision and the intense rigor it takes to orchestrate a moment, and it’s something our detail-obsessed world, despite every filter and pitch corrector at its disposal, might struggle with today. And that Prince is so prudent with his image, story, and product but capped his best-loved album with a first-take isn’t a coincidence, but an integral part of his genius. —Anupa MistrySee also: Prince: ""Let's Go Crazy"" / Prince: ""The Beautiful Ones""",,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/214/purple-rain.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Prince_and_the_Revolution-Purple_Rain.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,200,Marianne Faithfull,“Broken English”,Island (1979),"There’s no shame in being a muse—preening in silk robes on the couch, tousled hair parting to reveal full lips pouting around a cigarette, tossing off bon mots of aching elegance that nestle into the subconscious and reappear as pop hits. If that’s how Mick Jagger wanted to spend his days, more power to him. Marianne Faithfull was most famous in the ’60s as the blonde, boho moll of the Rolling Stones frontman, whose career was twined to his and widely assumed dependent on his gifts: her version of the Stones’ “As Tears Go By” was a hit in England; her near-fatal heroin overdose became “Wild Horses,” and her literary interests begat “Sympathy for the Devil;” she co-wrote “Sister Morphine.” But Jagger was also something of Faithfull’s muse, inspiring many entries in her prodigious Decca Records output of the late 1960s. By the end of the 1970s, a decade in which she’d weathered drug abuse and homelessness (and long ended her high-profile love), Faithfull refused to be diminished for one more day. Broken English, her first rock record in 12 years, was the comeback triumph no one expected, not least in how gritty it was. The chilling title track is a prophetic merging of punk and dance, with lyrics that plumb the depths of her losses. “Could have come through anytime/Cold lonely, puritan,” she intones harshly, gliding into a bloodless snarl that would make Johnny Rotten flinch. “What are you fighting for?/It’s not my security.” It’s a terse, battle-scarred declaration of autonomy with hairpin melodic turns, early in its embrace of dance music’s dark possibilities. “Broken English” is the portrait of a true survivor, starting a new era on her terms, alone. –Stacey Anderson Listen: Marianne Faithfull: “Broken English”  See also: Lene Lovich: “Lucky Number” / Amanda Lear: “Follow Me”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ww3FYN7wb5A,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/brokenenglish.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Marianne_Faithfull-Broken_English.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,199,Patrice Rushen,“Haven’t You Heard”,Elektra (1979),"Even as her sensibilities shifted from jazz to fusion to R&B and disco, Patrice Rushen focused on her keyboards while everything else swirled around them. On “Haven’t You Heard,” the piano is an anchor for the song. This can make it feel like an early skeleton of house music, which is appropriate—it was a touchstone of Larry Levan’s sets at the Paradise Garage, and was eventually reborn as gospel house in Kirk Franklin’s 2005 single “Looking for You.” “Haven’t You Heard” is a formally perfect expression of disco. The best disco songs imply infinity in both their length and groove, and always feel as if they’re attached to a black hole. “Haven’t You Heard” enhances time until it feels like the glitter of a cityscape unfurling through a cab window. It manages this even as the lyric itself is private—the literal text of a classified ad. “It only says ‘I’m looking for the perfect guy,’” Rushen sings, searching for connection not through direct communication but with ambient speech. This kind of intimacy, personified by the whispery translucence of Rushen’s voice, is just as easily exported to the dance floor. –Brad Nelson Listen: Patrice Rushen: “Haven’t You Heard”  See also: Anita Ward: “Ring My Bell” / “Herb Alpert: Rise”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bz67Pcqe9WY,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/pizzazz.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Patrice_Rushen-Havent_You_Heard.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,198,Waylon Jennings,“Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way”,RCA Victor (1975),"Like the best outlaw country, “Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way?” looks backwards and forwards simultaneously, finding inspiration in the past even as it wonders what’s around the next curve in the road. Jennings and his peers were traditionalists who bucked the very notion of tradition. All of them had been manhandled by the industry, but few bristled against the mainstream quite as strongly as Jennings, who found himself on a series of poorly planned tours that left him deep in debt to his label and addicted to amphetamines. If this were just a song about all the “rhinestone suits and new shiny cars” that defined country music around the bicentennial, it would have been only a minor antagonism. But outlaw country rarely gets credit for its humor or its self-deprecation, and what lends the song its gravity, aside from the world-weariness of Waylon’s vocals, is his sly assessment of his own place in the industry. Despite the hits he’d been notching for a decade, he was still just another road warrior who idolized Hank Sr. but still saw him as an almost hilariously impossible standard against which to measure himself or anybody else. –Stephen Deusner Listen: Waylon Jennings: “Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way?” See also: Willie Nelson: “Whiskey River” / Jerry Reed: “Amos Moses”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PLPmmfeNd4,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/420/waylon.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Waylon_Jennings-Are_You_Sure_Hank_Done_It_This_Way.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,197,Art Ensemble of Chicago,“Théme de Yoyo”,Nessa (1970),"A healthy portion of Chicago’s musical avant-garde decamped for France in 1969, but the group that made the biggest splash in Paris was the Art Ensemble of Chicago. The band’s exuberant stage show reinforced its members’ organizing slogan—“Great Black Music: Ancient to the Future”—with bassist Malachi Favors often dressed like an Egyptian shaman and saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell donning the garb of a contemporary urbanite. Over the course of a dozen-plus records cut in the 1970s, the band’s sound made good on the malleability suggested by this varied public image, as they created delicate improvisations and noise blowouts alike. On “Théme de Yoyo,” the opening song on a soundtrack to a now-forgotten film, the Art Ensemble’s rhythm section offers up a funk groove. When the group’s notoriously wild horn players enter, they begin by playing things pretty straight—only reaching for avant-garde theatrics in brief pauses of the swinging, mod theme. Guest vocalist Fontella Bass—the wife of Art Ensemble trumpeter Lester Bowie—contributes soulful phrasings that sound downright commercial until you focus on the absurdist lyrics (“Your fanny’s like two sperm whales floating down the Seine”). No matter how out there each instrumentalist ventures, every feature spot contains references to the track’s pop-song foundation. As a piece of free-jazz funk that predates Ornette Coleman’s Prime Time band, “Théme de Yoyo” is an early reflection of the benefits the Art Ensemble reaped from their refusal to be tied to a single genre. –Seth Colter Walls Listen: Art Ensemble of Chicago: “Théme de Yoyo” See also: Brigitte Fontaine, Areski Belkacem & Art Ensemble of Chicago: “Comme à la Radio” / Pharoah Sanders: “Love Is Everywhere”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FN44MvGrNM,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/art%20ensemble%20of%20chicago.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Art_Ensemble_of_Chicago-Thme_de_Yoyo.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,196,Jorge Ben,“Taj Mahal”,Philips (1976),"Jorge Ben’s “Taj Mahal” is ostensibly about the famous tomb in Agra, India. The building was created by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, as a tribute to his fourth wife, Mumtaz Mahal, after her death during the birth of the couple’s 14th child. “Foi a mais linda historia de amor,” sings the Brazilian singer Ben: “It was the most pretty story of love.” The couple’s romance must have been strong stuff: the tomb was commissioned the year after her death, in 1632, and wasn't finished until 1653, at a cost of approximately $827 million in today’s dollars. Ben’s original version of the song, recorded for his 1972 album Ben, is a subdued gem. But the version recorded for his massive 1976 crossover album Africa Brasil exudes joy, sparks flying from every exuberant note. The record would end up getting Rod Stewart—whose “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?” bore a strong resemblance—sued. It’s not difficult, though, to see what Stewart saw in its jubilant DNA (unconsciously, according to his autobiography). “Taj Mahal” captures an unselfconscious excitement, a purity of a deeply familiar feeling, yet projects it at a scale that can cross decades—perhaps centuries. –David Drake Listen: Jorge Ben: “Taj Mahal”  See also: Jorge Ben: “Ponta De Lanca Africano (Umbabarauma)” / Tim Maia: “No Caminho Do Bem”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfrpOhC6858,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/jorge.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jorge_Ben-Taj_Mahal.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,195,Lee Perry & the Full Experiences,“Disco Devil”,Upsetter (177),"This track is really three ’70s reggae classics in one: Max Romeo’s “Chase the Devil,” Prince Jazzbo’s “Croaking Lizard,” and Lee Perry’s mix of both with his own vocals. All this and more gets tossed in the pot in the nearly seven-minute-long “Disco Devil.” “Disco” doesn’t reference the flashy dance genre of the same name but rather the concept of the “discomix,” a 12” vinyl format that contains a vocal song seamlessly followed by a dub remix or a deejay version (meaning a rapped performance over the rhythm track). Perry essentially released a dub version of the Romeo and Jazzbo tracks, then followed it with a dub of the dub. It’s a particularly effective example of Perry’s innovative, eccentric production style that transforms the studio into an instrument itself. The approach to “Disco Devil” demonstrates the many ways he was able to pull pieces of a song apart and put them back together, add snippets of lyrics and sounds, and shape deep bass and rippling guitar to glide as if underwater. –Erin Macleod Listen: Lee Perry & the Full Experiences: “Disco Devil”  See also: Max Romeo: “Chase the Devil” / Augustus Pablo: “Kings Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptown”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKQrylHswEY,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/420/discodevil.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lee_Perry__the_Full_Experiences-Disco_Devil.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,194,Manu Dibango,“Soul Makossa”,Atlantic (1972),"A decade before Michael Jackson lifted it for “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’,” and long before Rihanna sampled Jackson’s version in “Don’t Stop the Music” (and both got sued for uncleared usage), “Soul Makossa” was a disco scene staple. It started as the B-side to a hymn Manu Dibango wrote for his native Cameroon’s football team in honor of their country hosting the 1972 Africa Cup of Nations. By then, the jazz saxophonist was already well established, but the record was a huge flop. In his autobiography, Dibango recalls how kids and adults alike ridiculed his stuttering repetition of that now-familiar refrain: “Ma-ma-ko ma-ma-sa mako-makossa!” It was only when he rerecorded it in Paris, and that version fell into the hands of New York Loft DJ David Mancuso and radio DJ Frankie Crocker, that it spread like wildfire, even cracking the American Top 40. Historically, makossa, the popular Cameroonian dance music, is a mix of soukous, highlife, and traditional Douala dance rhythms. Dibango douses it in soul, funk, and jazz to the point that “Soul Makossa” is more funky proto-disco than it is makossa. But that reimagining is also what made the song such a phenomenon; it played to people’s ideas of what a cosmopolitan African continent sounded like, presented in a format they were familiar with. In the decades to come, “Soul Makossa” would be sampled countless times over, including by the Fugees on The Score and Kanye on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. “Soul Makossa” remains brilliant in its musical malleability. –Minna Zhou Listen: Manu Dibango: Soul Makossa  See also: Chakachas: “Jungle Fever” / Lafayette Afro Rock Band: “Darkest Light”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EF92yOsv3Y8,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/420/manu.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Manu_Dibango-Soul_Makossa.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,193,James Chance & the Contortions,“Contort Yourself”,ZE (1979),"The no wave scene in late ’70s New York was notorious for its room-clearing nihilism. Noisy, confrontational bands such as Mars, DNA, and Teenage Jesus & the Jerks looked to bury the corpse of rock’n’roll by rejecting its rules. Yet one of the most iconic no wave tunes, James Chance & the Contortions’ “Contort Yourself,” is less an anti-song than a body-moving dance-craze ditty. “Now is time to lose all control/Distort your body, twist your soul,” Chance yelps over the tightly wound groove of his quintet, who sound like an unhinged version of James Brown’s band the J.B.’s. But as “Contort Yourself” progresses, Chance’s destructive attitude creeps in. His screams get longer (“Forget about your future!”), his saxophone gets noisier, and slide guitars scrape across the song like rakes over concrete. By the end, Chance advocates total annihilation: “Once you forget your affection for the human race/Reduce yourself to zero, and then you’ll fall in place.” Still, “Contort Yourself” is nihilism you can dance to, and it typified the Contortions’ unique mix of punk, funk, and jazz. That mix would influence many danceable early ’80s New York bands—Bush Tetras, ESG, Liquid Liquid—and point toward the disco scene that eventually took over Manhattan. But no one could replicate the sharp mania of “Contort Yourself,” a song that still twists and shouts. –Marc Masters Listen: James Chance & the Contortions: “Contort Yourself”  See also: A Certain Ratio: “Do the Du (Casse)” / Teenage Jesus & The Jerks: “Orphans”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSnfVfbtNrk,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/buycontort.jpg,/dataset/artwork/James_Chance__the_Contortions-Contort_Yourself.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,192,Brian Eno,“Baby’s on Fire”,Island (1973),"“Baby's on Fire” is barely a song, in the conventional sense—two chords mercilessly alternating for five minutes, a single snatch of melody repeated with almost no variation, a lyric that sidles around clear sense, and a guitar solo that takes up more than half of its running time. It divided the listeners of Eno’s first solo album, Here Come the Warm Jets, into those who got it and those who were left eating its ashes. For all its minimalism, there's a lot going on in this song: a celebration of a catastrophe happening in plain view, knotty wordplay and snappy onomatopoeia, and the vicious camp of Eno’s vocal (there’s an arch, shivering grin behind the way he enunciates, “This kind of experience/Is necessary for her learning”). The track’s centerpiece is the conflagration of Robert Fripp and Paul Rudolph’s all-devouring instrumental break with Eno’s “treatments” spraying fuel all over it. Before “Baby’s on Fire” and Warm Jets, Eno had been the eccentric, glammy keyboardist in Roxy Music; after them, he became known as the ingenious weirdo who thought about sound in ways nobody else did. –Douglas Wolk Listen: Brian Eno: “Baby's on Fire”  See also: Brian Eno: “Here Come the Warm Jets” / Brian Eno: “Third Uncle”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WolumLhpCx4,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/420/warmjets.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Brian_Eno-Babys_on_Fire.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,191,Tom Zé,“Doi”,Continental (1976),"The story goes that, sometime in the mid-’80s, David Byrne found Estudando o Samba (“Studying Samba”) in a record store in Rio De Janeiro. He assumed it would be like the rest of the samba records he was collecting, but its cover gave a hint of something subversive: the image of a barbed wire fence scrawled across a white surface. Of course, Byrne became so obsessed with the record, he tracked Zé down and asked if he could release the album in the States, as the first dispatch of his then-new Luaka Bop records. Soon after, Zé was enjoying overdue fame as samba’s best deconstructionist. Zé grew up in the Hinterlands of Bahia, Brazil, in a village so remote that it didn’t get electricity until he was 17; soon after, he studied modernist composition and hooked up with the tropicalistas in urban Salvador. Zé’s music reflects both these worlds; it’s rooted in rural tradition and laced with a cynical cosmopolitanism. “Doi,” from 1976’s triumphant Estudando o Samba, strikes a perfect balance: its percussion forms from earthy, machinelike clanks, and a minimalist guitar is the only other actual instrument on the song. Its thrust comes from a chorus that feels universal, primordial even, and Zé allows himself to disappear into it. It’s a strange and satisfying effect, and a rigorously intelligent way to balance formal experimentation with heritage. “Doi” exists in some nether-zone between the past and the future, and nothing in music sounds like this, still. –Kevin Lozano Listen: Tom Zé: “Doi”  See also: Tom Zé: “Um Oh! E Um Ah!” / Secos & Molhados: “Sangue Latino”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_wjpr_I3p0,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/420/estudado.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tom_Z-Doi.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,190,Betty Davis,“He Was a Big Freak”,Just Sunshine (1974),"Betty Davis’ voice is where pleasure meets pain, so of course she had to cut a song about S&M. People speculated whether “He Was a Big Freak” concerned her ex-husband, Miles Davis, or her rumored (and denied) lover, Jimi Hendrix. It wasn’t about either, Davis said, though she admitted that her dominatrix’s “turquoise chain” was a reference to Hendrix’s favorite color. Gossip aside, Davis’ act was scandalizing because it starred a powerful young black woman in control of her own desires. On “Freak,” she takes on various roles in order to meet her partner’s needs—housewife, geisha, mother—but sounds so intoxicated by her power that his satisfaction becomes secondary. Her delivery evokes a woman possessed as she roars and vamps through her seduction. Davis keeps switching gears until a new darkness emerges from her throat, and a storm rises from the guitar. Her pointillist funk thrust loses its precision and starts stumbling in the perilous ascent towards climax. Eventually, “Freak” fades out, though Davis is still roaring as the mix dims. It feels like she’s just getting started. –Laura Snapes Listen: Betty Davis: “He Was a Big Freak”  See also: Betty Davis: “Anti-Love Song” / Millie Jackson:“ If Loving You Is Wrong (I Don't Wanna Be Right)”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kY_dtnHkkio,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/420/bettydavis.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Betty_Davis-He_Was_a_Big_Freak.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,189,Idris Muhammad,“Could Heaven Ever Be Like This”,Kudu (1977),"Born Leo Morris, drummer Idris Muhammad played with dozens of jazz giants before and after taking his Muslim name, but found his artistic voice at Kudu, CTI’s soul crossover label, where he collaborated with David Matthews, a keyboardist who arranged and co-wrote several James Brown hits. You don’t have to have a degree in composition like Matthews did to wrap your head around the melodic composure of “Could Heaven Ever Be Like This,” their peak achievement together and Muhammad’s biggest hit. Singular, spiritual, and straight-up gorgeous, “Heaven” silences even the staunchest disco-hater. Elements of the song have been repeatedly sampled and replayed, but its bittersweet harmonies are best experienced the way DJs played it back in the spring of 1977 and for many years to come: from its first effusive note to its very end. Over the course of eight-and-a-half minutes, “Heaven” takes dancers on an exquisite journey, the arrangement soaring from ethereal harp to Brecker Brothers horn blasts to raucous rock guitar. Too otherworldly to be championed by every DJ, “Heaven” was nevertheless so beloved by those who did that it reached No. 2 on Billboard’s dance chart. The only subsequent record to truly do it justice, Jamie xx’s “Loud Places” honors that it’s not simply a dance song, but also a prayer. –Barry Walters Listen: Idris Muhammad: “Could Heaven Ever Be Like This”  See also: Candido: “Thousand Finger Man” / Kiki Gyan: “Disco Dancer”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ojcz5p05RN8,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/idris.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Idris_Muhammad-Could_Heaven_Ever_Be_Like_This.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,188,Junior Murvin,“Police & Thieves”,Upsetter (1976),"Falsetto is frequently used in reggae, but not often is there a track as gently piercing as Junior Murvin’s 1976 classic. As resonant now as it was then, Murvin’s song about the militarization of police reflects reality far beyond Jamaica, leveling the playing field between the illegal and the legal. “All the peacemakers turn war officers,” sings a prescient Murvin. “Police and thieves in the streets, oh yeah/Scaring the nation with their guns and ammunition.” It was an important soundtrack of protest when it was released in London in the summer of 1976, during racial tensions that led to riots during the Notting Hill Festival and unrest in Brixton. The track has been re-recorded a number of times, most famously by the Clash on their debut album. However, the original, recorded in the legendary Black Ark studio, is a textbook Lee Perry production. There’s that perfect amount of echo, carrying Murvin’s vocal improvisations and the humming chorus along, making them bounce off the walls and charge ever forward. –Erin Macleod Listen: Junior Murvin: “Police & Thieves”  See also: Junior Murvin: “Cool Out Son” / Horace Andy: “Skylarking”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Y9NhIHUTeE,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/420/police.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Junior_Murvin-Police__Thieves.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,187,Cerrone,“Supernature”,Cotillion (1977),"On his previous Eurodisco hits, the French drummer Marc Cerrone mirrored Giorgio Moroder’s long, sensual suites with Donna Summer while accentuating both their symphonic splendor and kickdrum wallops. For the title track of his second 1977 album, he took a page from Summer’s “I Feel Love” and similarly traded soaring strings for undulating synths, but did so without the overt sex. Instead, he and cowriter Alain Winsniak introduced an unprecedented strain of dystopian disco dread. Neither Kraftwerk nor Berlin-era Bowie had an immediate international dancefloor impact as profound as “Supernature.” Years before GMOs became a food source and organic crops a common alternative, “Supernature” sang of an imagined past when science introduced agricultural breakthroughs with unanticipated consequences. “The potions that we made touched the creatures down below/And they grew up in a way that we’d never seen before,” warns English session vocalist Kay Garner with a star-quality growl oozing menace and authority. As the track grows more sinister, mutant monsters take their revenge until humanity reverts to a primitive state where it must once again earn its place. How did such a deep sci-fi theme find its way into an album that sold huge numbers and paved the way for space disco, techno, acid house, and other dark dance floor strains? The future new wave icon Lene Lovich wrote these uncredited ecological lyrics. She’d soon use her fame to raise consciousness for animal rights. –Barry Walters Listen: Cerrone: “Supernature”  See also: Space: “Carry On, Turn Me On” / Gino Soccio: “Dancer”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJ5V3OZdIZM,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/cerrone.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Cerrone-Supernature.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,186,The Whispers,“And the Beat Goes On”,SOLAR (1979),"The Whispers formed in Los Angeles in the mid-’60s and were hardly seen as cutting-edge by the time they released “And the Beat Goes On” in 1979. But they were in fact pushing boundaries, thanks in large part to the genius of SOLAR label producer Leon Sylvers, who, along with record producer Kashif, was one of the most important composers in late-’70s/early-’80s R&B. Together, on opposite sides of the country—Kashif in New York, Sylvers in Los Angeles—the two charted a path post-disco, incorporating new electronic elements and playing with grooves. “And the Beat Goes On” was one of Sylvers’ most successful records as a producer, hitting No. 19 on the Hot 100. The groove was so modern, it was the product of a Will Smith one-track-jack in the late ’90s, when the rapper’s “Miami” lifted liberally from the post-disco classic; the record had aged well, its quick strings and electronic textures as fresh as they day they were recorded. –David Drake Listen: The Whispers: “And the Beat Goes On”  See also: Detroit Emeralds: “Feel the Need in Me” / Leon Haywood: “I Want' A Do Something Freaky To You”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwBS6QGsH_4,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/420/andthebeat.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Whispers-And_the_Beat_Goes_On.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,185,Thelma Houston,“Don’t Leave Me This Way”,Tamla (1976),"“Don’t Leave Me This Way” first took shape in 1975 in a more modest arrangement, as a Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes song sung by Teddy Pendergrass. Pendergrass’s tender vocals keep the songs as two distinct components—a verse and a chorus separated neatly by scale and intensity. When Thelma Houston recorded the song for Motown a year later, her arrangement reached for the sky; the version accelerates steadily, a gentle melancholy lifting off into the denser and more pressurized atmosphere of disco. Throughout, Rhodes piano shimmers like light filtering through clouds. Houston’s performance is remarkable: her vocals are as composed as they are exposed, stable as they are sensitive. “I can’t survive,” Houston sings, her voice occasionally collapsing into a whisper. “I can’t stay alive/Without your love.” It’s this complexity that, years later, led the song to be embraced as a metaphor for the devastation of AIDS in the gay community. –Brad Nelson Listen: Thelma Houston: “Don’t Leave Me This Way”  See also: Harold Melvin & The Bluenotes: “Don't Leave Me This Way” / Evelyn ""Champagne"" King: “Shame”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqnLW7pbWI8,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/thelma.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Thelma_Houston-Dont_Leave_Me_This_Way.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,184,The Spinners,“Could It Be I’m Falling in Love“,Atlantic (1972),"It’s ironic that one of the all-time greatest Philly soul acts weren’t even from Philadelphia. The Spinners hailed from Detroit—they were even billed as “the Detroit Spinners” in the UK—and like most of the city’s top talent at the time, they recorded on Motown, where they landed the Stevie Wonder-penned hit “It’s a Shame.” But it was only after signing to Atlantic Records that they truly found their voice. Under the guidance of super-producer Thom Bell, they embodied the sound of ’70s Philadelphia soul: lush, sensual, and ridiculously generous, all strings and bells and orchestral grandeur. That’s a lot to juggle, and some of Bell’s lesser productions collapsed under the weight of their arrangements, especially once disco pressured them to become busier and busier, but the Spinners had the delicate touch to pull it all off. Just years earlier, they’d been shouting and wailing, but the best moments of “Could It Be I’m Falling in Love” are practically whispered; every time lead vocalist Bobbie Smith is offered the opportunity to go loud, he goes soft, letting Bell’s dulcet accompaniments do the singing for him. The restraint adds even more depth to his coos of, “I don't need all those things that used to bring me joy/You've made me such a happy boy.” The ’70s yielded countless songs about falling in love, but few are as blissful as this. –Evan Rytlewski Listen: The Spinners: “Could It Be I’m Falling in Love”  See also: Spinners: “I'll Be Around” / Isley Brothers: “(At Your Best) You Are Love”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6ItXen8mZw,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/spinners.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Spinners-Could_It_Be_Im_Falling_in_Love.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,183,Todd Rundgren,“International Feel”,Bearsville (1973),"Not many can challenge Todd Rundgren as the foremost architect of ’70s rock. As a producer, he shaped defining albums for Grand Funk Railroad, Hall & Oates, and Meat Loaf...but also the New York Dolls, Patti Smith, and the Tubes. In his simultaneous solo career, he stayed one step ahead of the trends he solidified with other artists, veering between soft-rock rebellion, prog fantasias, and experiments in song suites and remakes. Triangulating Rundgren’s busy decade is nearly impossible, but “International Feel”—the lead track from his frenetic A Wizard, A True Star—does a fine job. Recorded at the ad-hoc Secret Sound studio Rundgren built in a New York City loft, the song balances between his audiophile obsessions and pop instincts. It’s Philly soul in a spacesuit, fading in with revving engine sound effects, tickled from all sides by synthesizer sprites, propelled by heavily filtered drums that sound lifted from a Led Zeppelin IV session. The use of “International Feel” in Daft Punk’s 2006 film Electroma only confirmed its otherworldly futurism, and that Rundgren was ahead of his time even as he played a preeminent role in defining it. –Rob Mitchum Listen: Todd Rundgren: “International Feel”   See also: The Move: “Feel Too Good” / Dennis Wilson: “Pacific Ocean Blues”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHb3bgXF3L0,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/awizard.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Todd_Rundgren-International_Feel.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,182,Delta 5:,“Mind Your Own Business”,Rough Trade (1979),"When guitarist Julz Sale, bassist Ros Allen, and other bassist Bethan Peters came together to form Delta 5 in 1979, they decided to double up on the low end because, as Allen has said, “neither of us played guitar, and we thought it would make the music more exciting.” They were not wrong. Part of a contingent of Leeds art instigators that included Mekons and Gang of Four, the socialist funk-punk pioneers released their iconic debut single on Rough Trade just as the ’70s were petering out. The song opens with a tense soda-counter come-on that bleeds feminist sarcasm: “Can I have a taste of your ice cream?” the three women deadpan in unison. “Can I lick the crumbs from your table? Can I interfere in your crisis?” They gnarl knots of guitar noise until the whole song sounds like a collective effort to suffocate those same questions, but only after telling the leader of the pack to fuck right off: “No, mind your own business!” This one genius idea on loop set Delta 5 on their way. –Jenn Pelly Listen: Delta 5: “Mind Your Own Business”  See also: Mekons: “Where Were You” / Slits: “I Heard It Through the Grapevine”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a38HYryTiUA,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/420/delta5.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Delta_5-Mind_Your_Own_Business.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,181,Van Morrison,“Caravan”,Warner Bros. (1970),"“Caravan” fits into an established tradition of songs about listening, a metatextual lyric about gathering with friends and dancing to a song on the radio, made into a song one might gather with friends and dance to. When it appears on a classic rock radio playlist, the lyric becomes abruptly instructional. “Turn it up!” Van exhorts. “Little bit higher! Radio!” Syntax crumbles in the whirl and flutter of his emotions. “Caravan” has a kind of rhomboid structure, its energies constantly building toward an acute angle; the individual instruments in the song—including Van Morrison’s voice—combine and swell into a wordless chorus: “La la la la la la la.” This is, essentially, the vocabulary of rhythm and blues, which Morrison, on “Caravan”’s album Moondance, had finally, almost seamlessly absorbed into his own music, and of which “Caravan” is its most excited expression. –Brad Nelson Listen: Van Morrison: “Caravan”  See also: Van Morrison: “Into the Mystic” / Randy Newman: “Sail Away”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AvJxsgiVSs,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/moondance.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Van_Morrison-Caravan.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,180,The Damned,“Neat Neat Neat”,Stiff (1977),"Stiff Records hustled to ensure the Damned were the first British punk band to get a single to market, issuing “New Rose” just weeks prior to the Sex Pistols’ “Anarchy in the UK.” The full-length Damned Damned Damned was also rushed out, anchored by “Neat Neat Neat,” the nastiest single of the first wave of UK punk. It opens with a bass line so slippery, it’s almost sexy, but once the band kicks in—no more than five seconds later, because in the early days, the Damned never weren’t in a hurry—the recording descends into chaos, growing faster and filthier with every chord change. Words don’t matter so much here—images of violence and desperate dominance bat up against each other, creating a vague menace. But “Neat Neat Neat” isn’t just a performance, as Elvis Costello & the Attractions made clear; their 1978 live revision of the song swapped the abandon for funk, turning “Neat Neat Neat” into tense, profane jazz-rock worthy of Ian Dury and revealing the sharp, cynical song underneath the Damned’s bluster. Still, “Neat Neat Neat” is really about that visceral, ugly rush, a record that hits harder than any other early punk single. The Sex Pistols plodded, the Clash marshaled their forces, but the Damned attacked indiscriminately, wanting to take down everybody in their eyesight. –Stephen Thomas Erlewine Listen: The Damned: “Neat Neat Neat”  See also: Damned: “New Rose” / Wipers: “Better Off Dead”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWXzrpDtpl0,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/420/damned.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Damned-Neat_Neat_Neat.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,179,The Germs,“Lexicon Devil”,Slash (1978),"To watch the Germs perform in the seminal 1981 punk documentary The Decline of Western Civilization is to witness a band living on borrowed time, abused while onstage by an adoring audience, a lurching Darby Crash slurring his vocals beyond incoherence. Inconsistent of lineup and unerringly high, their salvation laid in the sheer quality of their songwriting: catchy yet erudite, desperate yet empathetic, a conduit for connection. At surface level, “Lexicon Devil” is pogo-stick punk bubblegum, a startling burst of left-coast Ramones with all those chummy, hammy “gimmies” that Crash chants. He refuses to fully succumb to punk’s cynicism and anarchism; instead, he dares to openly daydream about dismantling a jaundiced today and building a better tomorrow, welcoming along anyone who can pitch in. “Together we’ll run to the highest prop,” he cries. “Tear it down and let it drop!” It’s a romantic, substantial notion, one that remains well worth striving for. –Raymond Cummings Listen: The Germs: “Lexicon Devil”  See also: Misfits: “Bullet” / Dead Kennedys: “California Uber Alles”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOS_PDHCIws,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/thegerms.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Germs-Lexicon_Devil.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,178,Siouxsie and the Banshees,“Hong Kong Garden”,Polydor (1978),"When Siouxsie and the Banshees released their debut single in 1978, goth was still years away from becoming a subculture and the first wave of post-punk acts were just finding their sounds. The band had been kicking around London for quite a while before that—Siouxsie had been a teenage punk scenester in the Sex Pistols’ orbit, and the Banshees played a disastrous first set at Malcolm McLaren’s historic 100 Club Punk Festival in the fall of 1976. But, as Jon Savage explains in England’s Dreaming, punk was in a dark place two years later. Nazi imagery adopted purely for the sake of provocation, like the swastika armbands Siouxsie often wore, was now attracting real white supremacists. “Hong Kong Garden,” with its chiming electric xylophone-and-drum intro and jagged guitar riff, represented the evolution of a punk aesthetic that had become so stripped down, it was starting to feel reactionary. The song’s pseudo-Asian aesthetic hasn’t aged perfectly, but it did have an explicitly anti-racist message. Its culture-clash lyrics were inspired by the scene at a Chinese takeout in Siouxsie’s suburban hometown of Chislehurst. “I used to go along with my friend and just be really upset by the local skinheads that hung out there and gave the staff such a hard time—really racist, just intolerant,” she told Uncut. Listeners must have been hungry for that message, because “Hong Kong Garden” landed the Banshees their Polydor deal and became a surprise hit, reaching No. 7 on the UK pop charts. –Judy Berman Listen: Siouxsie and the Banshees: “Hong Kong Garden” See also: Patti Smith: “Because the Night” / Magazine: “The Light Pours Out of Me”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS2g7L6cDUM,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/hongkong.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Siouxsie_and_the_Banshees-Hong_Kong_Garden.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,177,Faust,"“It’s a Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl”",Polydor (1972),"If Faust’s eponymous 1971 debut demonstrated a facility for fusing rock, classical, and spindly pop, “It’s a Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl” proved that the German group was capable of mainstreaming its youthful id. “Girl” thrives on crisp drumbeats, droning organs, and a scraping chug of guitars. Sung in English, the title registers as an almost mystic incantation that rises and falls with the mix. The result is a delicious contradiction: the act of repetition engendering hypnotic psychedelia, precision and looseness seeming downright interchangeable. Krautrock would inspire generations to rewrite the pulse of music, but “Rainy Day” found the members of Faust at their most streamlined, intuitive, and accessible; even today, its bedheaded bounce feels new. –Raymond Cummings Listen: Faust: “It’s a Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl”  See also: The Fall: “It's a New Thing” / Amon Düül II - “Rattlesnakeplumcake”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRxvQmTTz5I,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/faust.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Faust-Its_a_Rainy_Day_Sunshine_Girl.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,176,Loretta Lynn,“The Pill”,MCA (1975),"In 1975, Time magazine named “American Women” their Person of the Year, recognizing 12 months when “the women’s drive penetrated every layer of society, matured beyond an ideology to a new status of general—and sometimes unconscious—acceptance.” The feminist movement had helped force through anti-discrimination laws, which gave women a new foothold in the workplace. For the first time ever, American households were shrinking and marriage rates were declining; a few years earlier, oral contraception had been legalized for all women, not just married ones, and Roe v. Wade followed. The last person you’d expect to soundtrack these advances was a 43-year-old country singer who skewed Republican more often than not. Loretta Lynn took a dim view of the women’s liberation movement, preferring to appeal to her female fans about their lives rather than their rights. Whatever she thought, this was a staunchly feminist tactic, as was choosing to record “The Pill,” a pro-birth control track that chimed directly with her own experiences: married at 15, with six kids in total, three of them born before she turned 19. Pastors, particularly in the South, were quick to denounce the song, and it was blacklisted from dozens of country radio stations. But, as with most proscribed art, the controversy only amplified its popularity. It’s an easy sell, anyway: “The Pill” is funny (“This old maternity dress I’ve got is going in the garbage/The clothes I’m wearing from now on won’t take up so much yardage”), burbling along on blithe pedal steel, but its strength derives from its lack of showiness. Rather than laying on the sass, Lynn delivers a straight-talking PSA to women about the liberation that choice brings, and a cool warning to men about their wives’ newfound bargaining power. With every reminder that she’s “got the pill,” she reclaims ground from the patriarchy, jimmying the door open for women to make their way into the world and enjoy carefree sex, just like a man. Lynn’s radical treatise didn’t just enshrine prevention but pleasure, too. –Laura Snapes Listen: Loretta Lynn: “The Pill”  See also: Loretta Lynn: “Rated X” / Loretta Lynn: “Coal Miner's Daughter”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNrFKdqXKJA,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/thepill.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Loretta_Lynn-The_Pill.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,175,Giorgio Moroder,“Chase”,Casablanca (1978),"Any time someone describes a piece of music as “cinematic,” there’s a decent chance they’re thinking, consciously or subconsciously, of “Chase.” Giorgio Moroder’s Oscar-winning score to Midnight Express holds up far better than the film and its now-decried “evil Turks” overtones; remarkably, this was his first soundtrack work and, to the public imagination, the foundational electronic soundtrack. (Technically, Tangerine Dream got there first, but there’s a reason they’re in a parenthetical.) Using the strict synths of “I Feel Love” to generate the mechanical pulse of the action movie, to depict life as heightened and dreamlike and deeper than human, is an obvious idea now, but at the time, it was revelatory. It’s impossible to overstate, let alone list, the amount of composers and films who’ve ripped off “Chase”—it’s responsible for a lot of deeply uncool ’80s kitsch (much produced by Moroder himself) but also for a lot of undeniably transcendent moments. Moroder says he’d already gotten sick of it after two years; the next few decades must have been a special but not-so-secretly gratifying hell. –Katherine St. Asaph Listen: Giorgio Morodor: “Chase”   See also: Giorgio Moroder: “(Theme From) Midnight Express” / Sparks: “No. 1 Song In Heaven”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RI7VrhMSu8,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/mmidnight.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Giorgio_Moroder-Chase.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,174,Dillinger,“Cokane in My Brain”,Mango (1976),"The earliest known instance of the phrase “a knife, a fork, a bottle, and a cork, that’s the way we spell New York” (or something close to it) comes from a 1915 newspaper explaining the recent popularity of nonsense phrases that rhyme with major American cities. (It unfortunately doesn’t explain why they were popular.) The line had long since faded from the collective consciousness when reggae singer Dillinger stepped into Channel One studio in Kingston, Jamaica with producer Joseph “Jo Jo” Hoo Kim—but somehow, in his attempt to vocalize the sensation of a racing and coked-up mind, he managed to pluck those words out of the air. “Cokane in My Brain” was pressed and sent out into a new world that had no idea what the fuck he was talking about, but liked it anyhow. Old-timey American word games weren’t the only source material Dillinger and Kim raided on the track; the insistent beat was a loop lifted from Philly funk group the People’s Choice’s hit “Do It Any Way You Wanna” (played by the studio’s house band the Revolutionaries), and the chorus was borrowed from Reverend Gary Davis’s “Cocaine Blues.” The postmodern pastiche of “Cokane”—not to mention its wired freak-funk energy—would be a major influence on dance music and hip-hop in the coming decades, so it’s fitting that acts like the ’80s avant-electronic group Information Society and modern-day disco revivalists Escort have repurposed Dillinger’s cryptic secondhand jibberish in their own jams. –Miles Raymer Listen: Dillinger: “Cokane in My Brain”  See also: Linval Thompson: “I Love Marijuana” / Dennis Brown: “The Man Next Door”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgKLaBwX_AI,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/420/cb200.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dillinger-Cokane_in_My_Brain.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,173,Eddie Kendricks,"“Girl, You Need a Change of Mind”",Tamla (1972),"In the ’60s, Eddie Kendricks’ falsetto added a plushness and sensitivity to several classic Temptations singles. In the early ’70s, alienated by the new psychedelic digressions of his group, he split and signed as a solo artist to the Motown imprint Tamla. “Girl, You Need a Change of Mind,” from his second solo album, 1972’s People...Hold On, is decidedly unpsychedelic, but there’s something hallucinatory produced by its groove, a spectral presence at its edges. The insistent shudder of the piano, bass, and drums form a kind of stirring rhythmic fog, the horns piercing through. It’s almost a work of impressionism. Lyrically, the song is a straight male fantasy of how love and relationships work; Kendricks considers love a kind of formlessness in which the power discrepancies between men and women disintegrate. “Love, it is an occupation,” he sings, “a true liberation.” His resolve fractures with the shifting tempos and topologies of the seven-and-a-half minute song; at one point, the arrangement is reduced to only conga drums and his falsetto, which is first isolated and then multiplies in shivering fractions. Because of its length and its emphasis on digression, “Girl, You Need a Change of Mind” quickly became a standard in gay clubs, even as the aesthetics of disco were still forming. –Brad Nelson Listen: Eddie Kendricks: “Girl, You Need a Change of Mind”  See also: Eddie Kendricks: “Keep On Truckin'” / Dramatics: “Whatcha See Is Whatcha Get”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1stgt288WA,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/eddie.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Eddie_Kendricks-Girl_You_Need_a_Change_of_Mind.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,172,The Equals,“Black Skin Blue Eyed Boys”,Shout (1970),"“Okay, I’m loosened up now, children!” shouts Derv Gordon, lead singer of the Equals, at the start of the band’s 1970 single “Black Skin Blue Eyed Boys.” It’s not an empty exclamation. Up to that point, the British band had specialized in stomping, happy, bubblegum rock; their preceding single was about taking a bath (1969’s “Rub a Dub Dub”). However, there’s nothing squeaky clean about “Black Skin Blue Eyed Boys:” Whiplash funk, revolutionary grit, and very loosened-up anger coalesce into a bolt of righteousness. Before “Black Skin Blue Eyed Boys,” the Equals—a group made up of white native Britons and black Caribbean immigrants—had relied on their name alone to make a statement about racial unity. Now they were making their point far more explicitly; the song calls for widespread interracial coupling as the path to glory and utopia. Sadly, the Equals’ sudden transformation didn’t last long: guitarist, songwriter, and bandleader Eddy Grant fell ill around the time of the single’s release, forcing him to leave the band. (He’d resurface in the ’80s with his solo hit “Electric Avenue”). But for one brief, shining moment in 1970, the Equals were the most potent, relevant band in the world. –Jason Heller Listen: The Equals: “Black Skin Blue Eyed Boys”  See also: Cymande: “Bra” / Segun Bucknor & His Revolution: “La La La”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtPk5IUbdH0,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/420/theequals.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Equals-Black_Skin_Blue_Eyed_Boys.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,171,The Walker Brothers,“The Electrician”,GTO (1978),"The death-rattle guitar twang and the searing tone clusters that open “The Electrician” make for an almost-comically ominous set piece—coming, as it did, from a reunited ’60s boy band who, only a year earlier, had tried to chart with a Boz Scaggs cover. With their label about to fold—and after a good half-decade of mercenary cover albums recorded to foot rent and bar tabs—lead singer Scott Walker had finally embraced the opportunity to make something of their studio time. Among the four original songs Scott wrote for the Walker Brothers’ final 1978 album Nite Flights, “The Electrician” was the most unprecedented, hinting at the hermetic, committedly avant-garde Walker of today. Like much of his brutalist Bush-era nightmare The Drift, “The Electrician” is a conversation of mangled sentences, circumscribing obscure scenes of pain and despair. Some perceived BDSM dynamics in its lyrics, and while Walker mentioned “lovers” in one ’80s interview, he also alluded to U.S. operations in Chile related to the Pinochet regime. The narrator feels the lash, and then stares bleary-eyed into a divine floodlight of lush, cruelly beautiful strings. The curlicued refrain—one of the most indelible Walker ever wrote—pleads, “kill me.” Brian Eno and David Bowie would offer to produce Walker’s next record after hearing Nite Flights. Eno later called “The Electrician” a future vision for music, one no one ever managed to follow up. –Winston Cook-Wilson Listen: The Walker Brothers: “The Electrician”  See also: Lee Hazlewood: “The Night Before” / Captain Beefheart: “Her Eyes Are a Blue Million Miles”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVwB1cjBs00,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/nite.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Walker_Brothers-The_Electrician.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,170,The Roches,“Hammond Song”,Warner Bros. (1979),"This is one of those songs: Meteoric, out of the blue. Even in the context of upmarket ’70s folk—Linda Ronstadt, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, Phoebe Snow—the Roche sisters were anomalies: Too funny, too weird, too insular to face the camera, or at least to connect with it. “Hammond Song,” the second track on their first album, has more in common with children’s music and the unearthly 16th-century chorales of Palestrina than anything happening around New York in 1979; it’s music of clarity and distance, so out of step with its surroundings that it becomes alien. To dissect their harmonies (occasional, forceful, unprecedented) would only insult them. To dissect their lyrics (perfect, vernacular, the words of a plainspoken friend who always says the right thing) would cloud their wisdom. “They say we meet again/On down the line,” Suzzy Roche sings over an acoustic guitar and the simple click of what sounds like glass on glass. “Where is ‘on down the line’?/How far away?” You only hope that when questions this hard come for you, they’re in a language easier to avoid. –Mike Powell Listen: The Roches: “Hammond Song”  See also: Sibylle Baier: “Tonight” / Michael Hurley: “Werewolf”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09ypwCN9FDc,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/theroches.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Roches-Hammond_Song.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,169,Plastic Bertrand,“Ça Plane Pour Moi”,Sire (1977),"It’s not entirely inappropriate that one of the great early punk songs was created as a trend-hopping cash-in, or that very little is certain about the circumstances of its origin. The Belgian songwriter Yvan Lacomblez seems to have come up with the souped-up Chuck Berry blues, rapid-fire absurdist lyrics (mostly in Belgian French slang with a little English thrown in), and wordless swoon of a hook. Producer Lou Deprijck apparently sang “Ça Plane Pour Moi,” though the credited artist, Plastic Bertrand, claimed for years that it really was his own performance. To confuse things a bit more, an English-language version (“Jet Boy Jet Girl”) with the same backing track and vastly less charming lyrics was credited to Elton Motello—a rock 'n' roll ripoff name, if ever there was one—and appears to have been released first. Motello, aka Alan Ward, had earlier played with guitarist Brian James of the Damned, whose bandmate Captain Sensible recorded a 1978 “Jet Boy Jet Girl” cover that ended up being gerrymandered onto the Damned's 1981 greatest-hits album. Despite all these efforts to reframe “Ça Plane Pour Moi,” it was the delirious Francophone version that became an international hit—even in the States, where it was arguably the first punk song to crack the Hot 100’s Top 50. –Douglas Wolk Listen: Plastic Bertrand: “Ça Plane Pour Moi”  See also: Flying Lizards: “Money (That's What I Want)” / Buggles: “Video Killed the Radio Star”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9B2D2gwms0,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/420/an1.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Plastic_Bertrand-a_Plane_Pour_Moi.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,168,Sun Ra,“Door of the Cosmos”,El Saturn (1979),"Labeling Sun Ra as “progressive jazz” somehow sells his work short; he made cosmic jazz as perplexing as it was vast. His sounds were as confounding as their purported origin: Ra claimed he was sent from Saturn to unite the people of Earth through his music, a bebop for the space age. But his real story is even more remarkable: He was a prodigious black musician and composer who received an academic scholarship to college in the 1930s, overcoming racism and crippling cryptorchidism to helm one of the great fusion jazz movements of the 20th century. With his Intergalactic Myth Science Solar Arkestra, Ra released Sleeping Beauty in 1979, continuing the most prolific decade of his career—it was his sixth release that year alone. At its center was “Door of the Cosmos,” a nearly nine-minute, free-moving track that threatened to provide insight into Ra’s Afrofuturistic, post-racist universe. It’s hard to deny the transcendental properties in the spirited performance: Written and arranged by Ra, the track is a wonder, a shot of that prism of light he claims beamed him down from the stars and started his revolution all those years ago. It’s a maelstrom of sound—drums, bass, trumpet, and vibraphone—that whips up enough speed to power a rocket’s burst, anchored by animated sax playing from Marshall Allen, who now carries on Ra’s legacy as leader of the Arkestra. There’s enough thrust to make you reconsider the odds of interplanetary travel. –Sheldon Pearce Listen: Sun Ra: “Door of the Cosmos”  See also: Sun Ra: “When There Is No Sun” / Sun Ra: “Space Is the Place”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlcBmo7J7oo,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/420/sleeping.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sun_Ra-Door_of_the_Cosmos.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,167,Milton Nascimento,“Tudo Que Você Podia Ser”,Odean (1972),"After the 1964 coup that turned Brazil into a military dictatorship, the regime grew increasingly oppressive, suspending habeas corpus and censoring media and music alike. After Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil were arrested and exiled, the cultural climate in the early ’70s grew increasingly bleak, a time referred to as “vazio cultural” (cultural void) or “o sofoco” (the suffocation). Yet Milton Nascimento and the loose collective of players and poets who comprised Clube da Esquina made some of the most evocative music of the era; their 1972 Clube da Esquina double album holds up against anything from the Beatles or Beach Boys. Taking in rock, doo-wop, bossa nova, jazz and more, Nascimento’s most inspirational moment might be on the three stunning minutes of “Tudo Que Você Podia Ser” (“All You Could Be”). Reminding his audience that “you still think and it's better than nothing,” the carefully chosen words and soaring melody inspired many. It instilled perseverance in those slowly being crushed by the junta. –Andy Beta Listen: Milton Nascimento: “Tudo Que Você Podia Ser”  See also: Milton Nascimento: “Cravo e Canela” / Chico Buarque: “Construção”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pn_xs6EIG4E,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/milton.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Milton_Nascimento-Tudo_Que_Voc_Podia_Ser.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,166,Karen Dalton,“Something on Your Mind”,Paramount (1971),"In Greenwich Village’s storied early-’60s folk scene, Karen Dalton was the one who got away. While her peers signed big money contracts and became international stars, she receded from the spotlight, moving to Colorado where she performed for friends in her cabin. Bob Dylan called her a favorite, and folk singer Fred Neil, in the liner notes of her 1971 album In My Own Time, wrote, “She sure can sing the shit out of the blues.” Her difficult personal life made a successful recording career even less likely—the Oklahoma native was married and divorced twice by the time she was 21, was a victim of domestic violence, and, up until her death in 1993, struggled with drug and alcohol addiction. Producer Harvey Brooks said that her life was a “mess” during the Woodstock sessions for In My Own Time, and a friend remembered that she was in the hospital around the time recording started. “Something on Your Mind,” a song written by Quicksilver Messenger Service’s Dino Valente, another Greenwich Village peer, was the highlight of that strong set. The song is addressed to someone who seems to have abandoned their dreams, wants to hide, and feels like they’ll never stop crying. There’s real weight in hearing Karen Dalton sing the words, “Didn’t you know, you can’t make it without ever even trying?” as she, in the final recording she’d release in her lifetime, implores you not to give up. Fred Neil was right: She could sing the shit out of the blues. But this time, she used her considerable powers to express empathy. –Evan Minsker Listen: Karen Dalton: “Something on Your Mind”  See also: Vashti Bunyan: “Diamond Day” / Robbie Basho: “Blue Crystal Fire”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-tNTtYPuEc,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/420/karen2.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Karen_Dalton-Something_on_Your_Mind.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,165,Donnie & Joe Emerson,“Baby”,Enterprise (1979),"Thirty-eight years ago, Don Emerson Sr. bought a new tractor for his family farm that came equipped with an AM-FM radio. During the hours and hours of chore work, Don Sr.’s sons Don Jr. and Joe glommed onto a strange amalgamation of rock, soul, funk, and R&B through Smokey Robinson, Hall and Oates, Bruce Springsteen, and Kris Kristofferson. Don Sr. decided to build them a state of the art studio on an empty plot of land, and the result of a year's playing was Dreamin’ Wild, the only complete album the Emerson brothers would ever release. Contained in this record is “Baby,” a yearning, sexy, and discomfitingly perfect love song. When it was rediscovered and reissued in the 2000s, it made its way through blogs and was championed deservedly as a lost gem. –Kevin Lozano Listen: Donnie & Joe Emerson: “Baby” See also: Shuggie Otis: “Island Letter” / Delfonics: “Hey! Love”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TdLNiys27A,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/dreamin%20wild.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Donnie__Joe_Emerson-Baby.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,164,Don Cherry,“Brown Rice”,Horizon/EMI (1975),"With an eight-note motif serving as the song’s anchor, trumpeter Don Cherry’s “Brown Rice” is a feat of experimentation. The song is somewhat ambiguous, neither happy nor sad nor angry, suggesting instead a tone of curiosity, a kind of intrigued tip-toe sporadically interrupted by bursts of woodwinds or brass. In the tension between the predictable and the unexpected lies the song's energy, locking in listeners only to take them to unexpected places. Cherry forged a name playing with Ornette Coleman, whose disregard for earlier rules of rhythm, harmony, and melody proved as divisive as they were liberating. “Brown Rice” is a likewise fusion: free jazz is subsumed by the song, leaving just one strand of DNA. Bassist Charlie Haden further pushes boundaries with funky wah-wah bass. Then come those otherworldly vocals by the world music guru Verna Gillis, a music producer who spent much of the mid-’70s recording the musical tributaries of Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America, Afghanistan, Kashmir, and Iran. “Brown Rice” was 180 degrees from Cherry's origins; when faced with limited options, he broke free. When overwhelmed by possibility, his art became one of reassembly. –David Drake Listen: Don Cherry: “Brown Rice”  See also: Archie Shepp: “Attica Blues” / George Duke: “For Love I Come”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBlpvj_kCmc,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/cherryBrownRice.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Don_Cherry-Brown_Rice.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,163,Bruce Springsteen,“Darkness on the Edge of Town”,Columbia (1978),"The mid-1970s were dark times for Bruce Springsteen, as he followed his breakthrough album Born to Run with a drawn-out contract dispute with his former manager. It took a few years for him to disentangle himself legally and get back to making music. Perhaps that long idle period gnawed at him, because Darkness on the Edge of Town, finally released in June ’78, was his bleakest record to date. Recording live in the studio, the E Street Band sounded leaner, rawer, and more strident, yet still capable of achieving an aching grandiosity, while the Boss himself punctured the rock’n’roll romanticism that formed the basis of his first three albums. The album’s title track stands out as one of his most despairing tales, ostensibly about a guy yearning for an old lover and the sense of renewed possibility she represents. That narrator could be almost any character in any of Springsteen’s previous songs: a guy who’s grown up and away from his dreams, who has faced the world and been trampled down. “I lost my money and I lost my wife,” he sings. “Them things don't seem to matter much to me now.” Like so many of the people who inhabit this album, the “Darkness” narrator lives in a haze of longing for the freedoms of his youth. Springsteen’s first three albums had chronicled the thrill of young men and women trying to escape the pain and drudgery of their lives, but this song and its namesake album suggest that they might only find more of the same, wherever they run. –Stephen Deusner Listen: Bruce Springsteen: “Darkness on the Edge of Town”  See also: Bruce Springsteen: “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)” / Bruce Springsteen: “Promised Land”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LpdEyGhNxM,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/darkness.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bruce_Springsteen-Darkness_on_the_Edge_of_Town.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,162,Black Flag,“Nervous Breakdown”,SST (1979),"By early 1979, punk’s second wave was in full force. Black Flag had established a brutal self-promo cycle: relentless rehearsals begat furious flyering begat chaotic, violent gigs typically cut short by police. So it’s of little surprise that the opening track to the Southern California group’s debut release erupts like the soundtrack to a prison riot. Volcanic, whiplash, and deeply nihilistic, “Nervous Breakdown” is all panic and no promise, a mission statement for a journey to nowhere that perfectly embodies the era’s pervasive pessimism. The group’s formative influences—the Ramones, the Stooges, Black Sabbath—were already colliding here in brusque, economical fashion, with vocalist Keith Morris presiding as a wild-eyed, cackling Puck. Almost four decades on, “Nervous Breakdown” stands as a tuneful rejection of a status quo that seemed beyond its audience’s ability to upend. Psychosis, inebriation, social disobedience, and mosh pit bloodletting were reasonable enough alternatives. As a rallying sentiment, it still makes too much sense. –Raymond Cummings Listen: Black Flag: “Nervous Breakdown”  See also: Dead Boys: “Sonic Reducer” / The Bags: “Survive”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5M0KoSLrO08&list=PLyAtErA9_GQPSFBwZvQcJGspeQXPitYnk,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/nervousbreakdown.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Black_Flag-Nervous_Breakdown.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,161,The Nerves,“Hanging on the Telephone”,The Nerves (1976),"The Nerves only released one power-pop EP in 1976 before falling apart two years later. They were a self-contained, punk-spirited trio from California before the notion of D.I.Y. had been codified. Written by guitarist Jack Lee and famously covered by Blondie on Parallel Lines, “Hanging on the Telephone” is a rudimentary guitar song made perfect by all the things it does wrong: the endearingly flat but totally committed whoa-ohs, the abrupt shifts in rhythm, the pained and outsized yearning. Throughout, the Nerves audibly strive for something that is slightly beyond their reach. “Hanging on the Telephone” is a film scene in miniature: The Nerves sound like greasers with their T-shirts tucked in, leaning against the phone booth across the hall, desperate for a voice to pick up on the other end. “If I don’t get your call/Then everything goes wrong,” Lee pleads. “Your voice across the line/Gives me a strange sensation.” His vulnerability powers this little track; even the rattling landline ring that opens it sounds melancholy. It might feel like a relic now, but in an era when our phones facilitate and strain so much around matters of the heart, “Hanging on the Telephone” is more relevant than ever—the most disarming song ever written about the fear of being ghosted. –Jenn PellyListen: The Nerves: “Hanging on the Telephone”  See also: Adverts: “One Chord Wonders” / Saints: “(I'm) Stranded”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiUgasXVcCY,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/420/thenerves.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Nerves-Hanging_on_the_Telephone.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,160,The Chi-Lites,“Have You Seen Her”,Brunswick/MCA (1971),"The Chi-Lites’ late-’60s/early-’70s run was strange and erratic, veering from the instantly recognizable “Oh Girl” to the iconic vamp of “Are You My Woman? (Tell Me So),” later immortalized by Beyoncé. But “Have You Seen Her” towers over the group’s catalog, their weirdest and greatest hit. A fuzz guitar worthy of Os Mutantes (or J Mascis) cuts through the track, the perfect distorted tone conveying anguish and mourning before anyone has even said a word on record. And while the song’s tropes are so ingrained into the fabric of pop, R&B, soul, and rock as to be little more than cliches now, “Have You Seen Her” still packs a wallop. It shifts between its obvious debts to doo-wop’s harmonies and a spoken-word narrative influenced by Isaac Hayes’ Hot Buttered Soul, but with a hook so impeccable and graceful it can imbue a cartoon about a missing fish with wistfulness. It exists outside of time, yet it also serves as a reminder of a very specific moment when gospel harmonies and secular heartbreak were allowed to cohabitate on radio. –Matthew Ramirez Listen: The Chi-Lites: “Have You Seen Her”        See also: Chi-Lites: “Oh Girl” / Temptations: “Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me)”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVYxKRXDT2I,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/forgodssake.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Chi-Lites-Have_You_Seen_Her.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,159,Rose Royce,“I’m Going Down”,MCA (1976),"This is one of the all-time great torch ballads. After the Temptations and Marvin Gaye producer Norman Whitfield left Motown, he found his first hit in the former backing band Rose Royce, who recorded the soundtrack and arguably raison d’etre for ensemble comedy Car Wash. Singer Gwen Dickey’s hyper-emotive performance depicts heartbreak like the last stand of a battle, dissolving into tears halfway then rallying once more into the plea; it’s immaculate, but even without him, the impact lands via puttering bass, keening guitars, and piano that lands like teardrops. “I’m Going Down” is arguably the best-known Rose Royce track, but unlike their future 10th Kingdom theme “Wishing on a Star,” it’s hardly been covered. Aside from reality show aspirants, which hardly count, the only singer to really take on “I’m Going Down” is Mary J. Blige, and even she coats it with enough gloss to blur the message. It’s the rare song that consensus has deemed untouchable. –Katherine St. Asaph Listen: Rose Royce: “I’m Going Down” See also: Rose Royce: “I Wanna Get Next to You” / Jackson 5: “I’ll Be There”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amfmivGnboU,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/rose%20royce.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Rose_Royce-Im_Going_Down.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,158,Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers,“American Girl”,Shelter (1976),"The sustained relevance of “American Girl” can be taken as a cynical parable of original sin: Innocence is false, all who are pure of intent do not stand a chance in this world. Nearly every reading of Tom Petty’s 1976 single has infused it with corruption: The most common is that it’s about a woman who leapt to her death from University of Florida’s Beaty Towers (though that urban myth was busted by Petty himself). Silence of the Lambs took the assumed morbidity and escalated it exponentially by contrasting an oblivious singalong with a gruesome fate. It portended doom for an unwitting Hillary Clinton during her failed 2008 campaign. And there’s arguably nothing more sinful than the umpteen covers of this song by seemingly every milquetoast mid-’90s alt-folk band. And yet, “American Girl” endures, as it should. Sonically, it’s the platonic ideal for American rock music: Bo Diddley meets the Byrds, updated for new wave. It’s got a beat, and you can dance to it. Oh yeah and all right, take it easy, make it last all night, cars, girls, boys—it speaks the universal language. Granted, it’s a classic archetype where the girl is left with a broken heart of gold, and the boy’s out there probably doing what boys do. But both are motivated by rock’n’roll’s profound sense of yearning for something—anything—bigger than what this town can provide, that those promises we were raised on are going to come true. –Ian Cohen Listen: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: “American Girl”  See also: Bob Seger: “Night Moves” / Joe Walsh: “Life's Been Good”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tW9k44sDctI,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/420/americangirl.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Tom_Petty_and_the_Heartbreakers-American_Girl.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,157,Bobby Caldwell,“What You Won’t Do for Love”,Clouds (1978),"When Bobby Caldwell’s “What You Won’t Do for Love” began its chart ascent in 1978, many heard its impeccable groove, soaring arrangement, and sharp depiction of romance and preemptively labeled him one of the next great black soul artists. There was only one problem: Caldwell was a white Floridian. Fearing that the “blue-eyed soul” label would cost Caldwell his black audience, his label, T.K. Records, obscured his appearance for as long as they could. But as live performances revealed the singer’s identity, his song soared in popularity anyway, ultimately cracking the Top 10. Caldwell would remain a working musician for three more decades, but his releases never reached the height of his earliest hit. “What You Won’t Do for Love” wasn’t just a surprising debut that balanced smooth jazz, soul, and pop; it transcended racial lines with equal finesse. White soul singers, from Simply Red to Justin Timberlake, have followed its footsteps ever since. –Corey Smith-West Listen: Bobby Caldwell: “What You Won’t Do for Love” See also: Isley Brothers: “Footsteps in the Dark” / Bill Withers: “Lovely Day”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-9Hd0Xa65M,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/bobby.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bobby_Caldwell-What_You_Wont_Do_for_Love.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,156,William DeVaughn,“Be Thankful for What You Got”,Roxbury (1974),"William DeVaughn’s 1974 single “Be Thankful for What You Got” is a reflection on economic inequality addressed to a disenfranchised black community. It builds its message environmentally; the song shimmers into view like buildings bruising in the heat. “You may not have a car at all,” DeVaughn sings, his voice slipping into a glassy falsetto, “but remember brothers and sisters/You can still stand tall.” It even expresses itself with economy: the arrangement is a lesson in jazzy restraint, all subtleties and small gestures, guitars and organs ebbing until they form a landscape of overlapping shadows. The chorus—“Diamond in the back/Sunroof top/Diggin’ the scene/With a gangster lean”—has been functionally amputated from the song into a larger and more disorganized context; DeVaughn’s words and cadence have been absorbed into the lexicon of hip-hop and modern R&B through both sampling and interpolation, appearing in fragments in songs as varied as N.W.A.’s “Gangsta Gangsta” and Miguel’s “Candles in the Sun.” Wherever it appears, in whatever mutation, it floats in the atmosphere of black urban experience. –Brad Nelson Listen: William DeVaughn: “Be Thankful for What You Got” See also: Timmy Thomas: “Why Can't We Live Together” / Curtis Mayfield: “The Makings of You”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAaOk2BC4gs,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/bethankful.jpg,/dataset/artwork/William_DeVaughn-Be_Thankful_for_What_You_Got.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,155,Chic,“I Want Your Love”,Atlantic (1978),"Of the Chic holy trinity, “I Want Your Love” endures best as a song, rather than a historical landmark (“Le Freak”) or a blueprint for an entire genre (“Good Times”). The group’s essential ingredients are here, with Nile Rodgers’ jangle and Bernard Edwards’ supple bass combining for optimal bounce, but they never quite came together like this. Disco was considered a genre for producers and vocalists, but Chic were a proper band, playing and singing live with such precision they almost sounded mechanical. Here, Chic showcased that sheen while proving they were human after all—the church bells, the sudden blotting of strings that peak during the chorus then reappear later, the stuttered command of the title phrase that pauses long enough to feel menacing. “I Want Your Love” is a disquieting hymn to desire, anchored by a Rodgers/Edwards performance potent enough to suggest the song working its magic in perpetuity, drunk on its own rhythm. –Matthew Ramirez Listen: Chic: “I Want Your Love” See also: Norma Jean: “Saturday” / Sister Sledge: “Thinking of You”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGc3dtxsXFI,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/cestchic.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Chic-I_Want_Your_Love.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,154,T. Rex,“Metal Guru”,Reprise (1972),"Glam-rock wasn’t just about dudes putting on women’s clothing, it was about giving rock ‘n’ roll itself a makeover by filtering ’50s hot-rod rave-ups through ’60s psychedelia and turning pop music into science fiction. At T. Rex’s early ’70s commercial peak, Marc Bolan didn’t so much write tunes as devise characters begging for their own comic book and action figure spin-offs. His songbook is populated by prosaic subjects transformed into superheroes with single, evocative descriptors: “Mystic Lady,” “Rabbit Fighter,” “Cosmic Dancer,” “Baby Boomerang,” “Telegram Sam.” The songs were mostly nonsense, but rather than sounding like gibberish, Bolan seemed to be speaking in an alien code that, to this today, we’re still not cool enough to decode. And “Metal Guru”—the grand-slam capper to a string of four consecutive UK No. 1 singles—is the most deliriously inscrutable of them all. Emerging at a moment when rock stars had stopped getting spiritual guidance from maharishis and were starting to think they were deities themselves, “Metal Guru” is Bolan in excelsis, an all-chorus/no-verse bacchanalia of platform-boot stomps, regal orchestration, and helium-buzzed harmonies. At the time, “T. Rextasy” was a popular buzzword in the British music weeklies, but “Metal Guru” renders it as an actual physical sensation; from its opening blast of symphonic fuzz, the song makes you feel like you’ve been thrust into a New Year’s Eve party one second after midnight amid flying streamers, gushing champagne bottles, and a raging dance floor united in screaming, wordless elation. The song’s swooning, swaying melody famously inspired Johnny Marr to write the Smiths’ “Panic,” but its spirit of instantaneous excess can still be felt today every time Wayne Coyne fires off a confetti cannon. –Stuart Berman Listen: T. Rex: “Metal Guru” See also: T. Rex: “20th Century Boy” / T. Rex: “Jeepster”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jowN9VRCUXk,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/t.rex.jpg,/dataset/artwork/T_Rex-Metal_Guru.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,153,Faces,“Ooh La La”,Warner Bros. (1973),"Faces weren’t a band, they were a gang—five musketeers united by booze and blues. Underneath that drunken revelry ran a bittersweet undercurrent that often manifested as tattered modern folk tunes. Rod Stewart capitalized on this ragged homespun sound on “Maggie May,” the solo single that turned him into a star in 1971, but Ronnie Lane—the other Face who would take lead vocals—shared an affinity for wearing his heart on his tattered sleeve. Both men attempted lead vocals on “Ooh La La,” a sprightly sing-along Lane wrote with guitarist Ron Wood, which wasn't an unusual move in the band's world. Producer Glyn Johns rejected each in turn, choosing instead Wood, who had never fronted the Faces on record before. Where Lang had a wry sense of irony and Stewart was an unapologetic raconteur, Wood sang with a flat, friendly affect, delivering “Ooh La La” like a bedtime story, which in a sense it was. Written from the perspective of a young man remembering his granddad remembering his travails with women, “Ooh La La” is inherently melancholy. Its chorus,“I wish that I knew what I know now/When I was younger” suggests so much regret, but with its clanging acoustic guitars, barrelhouse piano, and harmonies, the song is as joyous as it is sad. So it's a song whose meaning can shift over time. When the Faces cut it in 1973, it felt like closing the book on adolescence; a quarter-century later, Stewart covered it in the wake of Lane's death as an elegy to old friends. Just a year after that, Wes Anderson concluded his coming-of-age comedy Rushmore with ""Ooh La La,"" suggesting that his lead character Max Fischer was the callow youth the song's narrator remembered being, and turning the track—which never was released as a single—into something of a standard. “Ooh La La” endures because of its eternal truths, words written by scamps who had no idea just how wise they were. –Stephen Thomas Erlewine Listen: Faces: “Ooh La La”   See also: Faces: “Stay With Me” / Rod Stewart: “Maggie May”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUGKx_kWaVk,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/420/faces.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Faces-Ooh_La_La.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,152,Harry Nilsson,“Without You”,RCA Victor (1971),"To an even greater degree than his fans in the Beatles, Harry Nilsson had a gift for rehabilitating kitsch as something worth taking seriously. The signs of his mastery were there early—the puns (dumb, brilliant), the violins (corny, gorgeous), the perfumed 1920s swoon—but never as clear as they were when Nilsson stepped into an English recording booth having taken what he once described as “a little mescaline” and, in one take, provided a vocal performance so agonizingly dramatic that Derek Taylor, press officer for the Beatles and one of the first people to hear the recording in full, said it would forever remind him of hemorrhoids. The performance elevated Nilsson from whimsical with a dash of genius to viable commercial presence. It also more or less invented the power ballad, paving the way for artists with very little to say to say it as meaningfully as possible (“Total Eclipse of the Heart,” “I Will Always Love You,” related karaoke offenses too empty to love but too human to resist). Viewed in the wider context of Nilsson’s erratic, inimitable career, the song is a fluke, an instance of an artist taking it to the bank seemingly just to prove that he could. His Grammy acceptance speech, in full: “Thank you very, very much.” –Mike Powell Listen: Harry Nilsson: “Without You”  See also: Carole King: “So Far Away” / Carpenters: “Superstar”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dnUv3DUP4E,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/420/nilssom.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Harry_Nilsson-Without_You.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,151,Townes Van Zandt,“Pancho & Lefty”,Poppy (1972),"Texas troubadour Townes Van Zandt’s songbook is situated somewhere between Hank Williams, Lightnin’ Hopkins, and Nick Drake, but “Pancho & Lefty” stands alone. Perhaps the single greatest song penned in the outlaw country movement, it was Townes’ most evocative number, his greatest hit, the song that validated his stature as the songwriter’s songwriter. But it was also his downfall, the success that Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard had with a cover of the song bankrolling Van Zandt’s descent further into alcoholism and substance abuse in his later years. “Pancho & Lefty” reflects its maker: enigmatic, stoic, hardened, surrounded with death on all sides. Take it as a parable about Pancho Villa, or two desperados (one of whom betrayed the other), or perhaps as a foretelling of Van Zandt’s own life, cursed to perpetually live on the road in cheap hotels, his “breath hard as kerosene,” a singer who can’t sing the blues like he used to do. Seek not the polished studio version that features hand drums, mariachi horns and strings, but the skeletal version from Live at the Old Quarter, or the version he sings on Heartworn Highways, showing a young spry man already waiting around to die. –Andy Beta Listen: Townes Van Zandt: “Pancho & Lefty”    See also: Gene Clark: “Lady of the North” / Willie Nelson: “Blue Eyes Cryin' in the Rain”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvKoWMX9gmU,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/townes.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Townes_Van_Zandt-Pancho__Lefty.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,150,Grateful Dead,“Friend of the Devil”,Warner Bros. (1970),"While known (not incorrectly) for their sprawling, spiraling jams and for being a general acid circus, the Grateful Dead—and, specifically, guitarist Jerry Garcia and lyricist Robert Hunter—contributed a healthy bundle of songs to the modern folk canon. Synthesizing post-psychedelic wisdom with old turns and images pulled from years of devoted folk freakdom, “Friend of the Devil”—co-written with New Riders of the Purple Sage guitarist John Dawson—was a perfect product of the Dead’s short trip from mind-blowing, double-drummer ecstasy to almost literal campfire songs. For the Dead, the country vibes were synchronous with a new mission of writing strummable tunes, hymnals, and gentle boogies for all the longhairs settling down in communes or the suburbs. (The band migrated from San Francisco to the idyllic hills of Marin County just as the Summer of Love was ending.) With its pro-Satanic wink right there in the title, a barely coded countercultural handshake, “Friend of the Devil” remained edgier than the peaceful, easy strums of southern California’s burgeoning country-rockers. With its easy descending lick, “Friend of the Devil” exists outside of recordings and charts, ready to be struck up wherever there’s an acoustic guitar and some space to noodle. –Jesse Jarnow Listen: Grateful Dead: “Friend of the Devil” See also: Grateful Dead: “Box of Rain” / Creedence Clearwater Revival: “Long As I Can See the Light”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9SKxL9CnW0,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/grateful.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Grateful_Dead-Friend_of_the_Devil.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,149,Shuggie Otis,“Inspiration Information”,Epic (1974),"Shuggie Otis’ third album, Inspiration Information, first surfaced in 1974, but it feels tethered to 2001, when a high-profile reissue on David Byrne’s Luaka Bop Records secured its place in the early-’70s soul canon. Up to that point, Otis was infamous as the Frank Zappa sideman who turned down an offer to replace Mick Taylor in the Rolling Stones; his closest brush with pop success came when Quincy Jones turned his 1971 song “Strawberry Letter 23” into a Top 5 hit for the Brothers Johnson six years later. But that Luaka Bop reissue turned wider audiences onto a secret that crate-diggers had professed for years: Otis was less a budding guitar hero than an unsung R&B auteur, the missing link between the funk superstars of yore and modern-day lo-fi bedroom savants. Otis began recording Inspiration Information in 1971, the same year Marvin Gaye dropped What’s Going On and Sly Stone released his murky, drum-machined masterpiece There’s a Riot Goin’ On—and like those records, Otis’ work re-imagines soul and funk as interior experiences. But while his peers were taking temperature readings of an overheated America, Otis was just trying to keep it cool on a rainy day. Inspiration Information’s title track is a lustrous blur of wah-wahed guitars, cranial-massaging organ, and heavenly harmonies, like the wavy effects that signal the start of a movie dream sequence. The song scans as a literal love note, etched on “pencil pad,” but Otis sings of romance in a language that anticipates digital-age courtship. “I’m going to spread some information,” Otis declares. “You, making me happier/Now I am snappier/While I’m with you.” The phrase “inspiration information” is Otis’ peculiar way of saying “love song”—and today, it retains the eternal promise of finding the former in a world overdosing on the latter. –Stuart Berman Listen: Shuggie Otis: “Information Inspiration” See also: Donald Byrd: “(Fallin' Like) Dominoes” / Leroy Hutson: “All Because of You”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNgjmn3YrOM,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/420/shuggieotis2.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Shuggie_Otis-Inspiration_Information.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,148,Wire,“Outdoor Miner”,Harvest (1978),"In 1977, Wire were a punk rock band, arty and snappish and loud; in “Outdoor Miner,”  they mutated into something else. There's nothing overtly aggressive or confrontational about the track: Wire replaces the buzzsaw guitar tones of Pink Flag with a friendly chime, tempers Colin Newman's urgent bark to a clear-eyed murmur (with harmonies!), tables their ""riff until the lyric runs out"" blurt-structures for more conventional verse-chorus-verse forms. ""Outdoor Miner"" is, in fact, as sweet-sounding a pop song as you could hope to hear, but within that framework, it's an exceptionally weird artifact. For one thing, Graham Lewis’ tricky, playful lyrics mostly concern a larval insect, the serpentine leaf miner, which devours its own home. (Wire's previous single, “I Am the Fly,” featured a similar bugs-and-infiltration theme.) Thanks to the band's knack for concision, it's also the very rare case of a song whose single version is substantially longer than the album: EMI, noting that “Outdoor Miner” clocked in at 1:45 on Chairs Missing, asked the band to extend it to be more radio-friendly. (They added a piano solo and a third chorus.) ""Outdoor Miner"" didn't become the crossover hit Wire were hoping for, but it's remained a cult favorite, and it was a point of inspiration for the shoegaze scene: The 2004 compilation A Houseguest's Wish consisted of 19 covers of the song, including versions by Lush, Flying Saucer Attack, and Swervedriver’s Adam Franklin. –Douglas Wolk Listen: Wire: “Outdoor Miner” See also: Wire: “The 15th” / Wire: “Map Ref 41°N 93°W”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5-a6SLrGyk,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/420/wire-outdoor-miner.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Wire-Outdoor_Miner.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,147,Nina Simone,“Baltimore”,CTI (1978),"No one song can sum up Nina Simone’s brilliant and tumultuous career, but “Baltimore” demonstrates many of its main themes: her ability to best pop’s greatest performers on their own songs, her talent for approaching social issues from new emotional angles, and the gulf between her fans’ opinions of her work and her own. While Simone was outspoken in her criticism of the eponymous 1978 album it appears on, complaining in interviews about jazz vet Creed Taylor’s frequently too-slick pop-reggae production, her cover of “Baltimore” has come to be one of her most beloved songs. In his original version, Randy Newman pours on the melodrama in his elegy for a crumbling city, but Simone delivers the lyrics with a world-weary shrug that manages to hit even harder, casually but resoundingly answering the song’s central question—“Ain’t it hard just to live?”—with the heavy, pragmatic truth that yeah, it really fucking is. Nearly four decades later, Baltimore remains a symbol of urban collapse and the unequal distribution of power and justice in American society, and Simone’s tribute has only grown in power. There’s a reason why, when singer Jazmine Sullivan released a cover in the wake of Freddie Gray’s death, it was billed as a Simone cover and not a Newman one. –Miles Raymer Listen: Nina Simone: “Baltimore” See also: Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson: “We Almost Lost Detroit” / Labi Siffre: “I Got The...”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MhTcy-u6LQ,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/baltimore.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nina_Simone-Baltimore.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,146,Donny Hathaway,“A Song for You”,ATCO (1971),"“A Song for You,” written and performed by Leon Russell in 1970, went on to be covered by dozens of singers, some of the most important in popular music: Aretha Franklin, Willie Nelson, Whitney Houston, Karen Carpenter, Amy Winehouse, Christina Aguilera, even Bizzy Bone (with help from DMX). It says a lot then that the song is most closely associated with Donny Hathaway. His 1971 version, part of his eponymous second record, is almost uncomfortable to listen to; it feels like something overheard in a corner booth after midnight. “But we’re alone now/And I’m singing this song to you.” With the exception of some well-placed strings, the arrangement is spare, mainly Hathaway at the piano, singing. Or is he confessing? (“I treated you unkindly…”). He may as well have sung it a cappella. He certainly had the voice—warm, well-practiced, with great range, as good or better than any in that already-breathtaking era of R&B and soul. Hathaway, who struggled with depression through the ’70s, didn’t make it out of the decade. On January 13, 1979, at the age of 33, he was found dead outside the Essex House on Central Park South, below the window of his 15th floor room. It was ruled a suicide and makes this refrain in “A Song For You” all the more affecting: “And when my life is over/Remember when we were together/We were alone and I was singing this song to you.” –Michael J. Agovino Listen: Donny Hathaway: “A Song for You” See also: Donny Hathaway: “I Love You More Than You'll Ever Know” / Harold Melvin & the Bluenotes: “If You Don't Know Me By Now”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeHiio1sTTI,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/420/donnyhathaway.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Donny_Hathaway-A_Song_for_You.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,145,Ramones,“Sheena Is a Punk Rocker”,Sire (1977),"Stories about the Ramones rarely make them seem like a group of guys you’d want to spend time with. Dee Dee Ramone carried an enormous switchblade and once, in a panic, nearly stabbed his landlord. Their famous go-to prank was to put a little urine in their friends’ beer. Their behind-the-scenes reputation was volatile, but their branding instincts were impressive: Even now, after all four original members have passed, the Ramones remain the perfect spirit animals for small-town kids who want to make a break for the big city. The music was as fun as it was familiar; their melodic instincts were cribbed from old surf, girl-group, and bubblegum records, but they brought the volume and power they learned from predecessors like the Stooges and MC5. It was tough music for dancing—music you could experience live if you escaped the suburbs and found a place to crash in New York. And so “Sheena Is a Punk Rocker” is a perfect Ramones song for that reason; the band illustrates Sheena’s escape to New York and newfound life as a runaway punk with bubblegum glee and power chord bliss. There are handclaps, sleigh bells, and saccharine harmonies circling Johnny’s oddly jubilant riff. “Well New York City really has it all,” Joey sings. For those listening in their bedrooms, this was the dream—to dance as hard as possible while the four sketchy dudes from the cover of Leave Home played upbeat songs in a filthy room. –Evan Minsker Listen: Ramones: “Sheena Is a Punk Rocker” See also: The Ramones: “Judy is a Punk” / Vibrators: “Baby Baby”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3TQnMtUYwU,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/sheena.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ramones-Sheena_Is_a_Punk_Rocker.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,144,Elvis Costello & the Attractions,“Radio Radio”,Radar (1978),"Like many of the songs cut in 1977 by Costello’s newly assembled band, the Attractions, the instrumental attack of “Radio Radio” carries a clear punk energy, and the song’s lyrics likewise suggest punk sympathies. In protesting the blandness of the BBC’s playlists—and its refusal to give airtime to certain notorious punk records—Costello’s cynicism is easy enough to identify in the bridge: “They say you better listen to the voice of reason/But they don't give you any choice ‘cause they think that it’s treason.” But the track also changes tenor over its course. One claim—“Radio is a sound salvation/Radio is cleaning up the nation”—is sarcastic early on. Yet by the end, the possibility of grace achieved through broadcasting is so palpable, the singer can obviously envision it for real. On “Radio Radio,” Costello wills a new, more honest radio landscape into being. It’s this gradually emerging idea of a station “broadcasting from within you”—as Costello put it in his memoir—that allows the bashing anthem to transcend the language of the snide takedown and become a call to aesthetic action. –Seth Colter Walls Listen: Elvis Costello & the Attractions: “Radio Radio” See also: Blondie: “Hanging on the Telephone” / Wire: “Ex Lion Tamer”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eifljYPFW-E,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/radio.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Elvis_Costello__the_Attractions-Radio_Radio.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,143,XTC,“Making Plans for Nigel”,Virgin (1979),"XTC never needed to skewer nationalist pageantry to capture the gray essence of 1970s England. Even before the parents in “Making Plans for Nigel” affirm their son’s future in British Steel, their conservative aspirations evoke a very specific backdrop: the black and white lattices of the mock-Tudor suburbs that imprison poor, inert Nigel. His “whole future is as good as sealed,” which plays more like a bad omen than a promise of security, with its jittery musical friction. Shaken by the perceived diss, British Steel reportedly gathered four Sheffield employees named Nigel to talk about job satisfaction for trade publication Steel News. But “Nigel,” off the Swindon band’s third album Drums and Wires, is more tender and complex than a straightforward anti-establishment tirade. For one, Nigel—who “likes to speak and loves to be spoken to”—never gets a voice. And there’s a subtle panic to his parents’ insistence: They’re defensively only making plans for Nigel, certain he must be happy “in his world,” as leader Andy Partridge harmonizes like a soured Beach Boy. He unleashes erratic cries of “wee-ooh!” like party-blowers into bassist Colin Moulding’s funky geometric scheme, distilling the chaos that any well-meaning parent would have felt in 1979 as their kids’ futures became ever less certain. That year’s Winter of Discontent offered economic collapse and unprecedented striking. Entering power on May 4th, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher would ruthlessly sell off nationalized industries like British Steel. On the sleeve of “Making Plans for Nigel,” XTC’s members aren’t listed by name, but as the sons of Vera and Charlie, Eileen and Peter, Margaret and Roy,  and so on. In a splenetic musical era, they sensitively identified the common anxieties shared by both young people and their parents. –Laura Snapes Listen: XTC: “Making Plans for Nigel” See also: The Police: “Message in a Bottle” / Joe Jackson: “Is She Really Going Out With Him?”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AWzbpwUutw,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/drums.jpg,/dataset/artwork/XTC-Making_Plans_for_Nigel.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,142,Cheap Trick,“Surrender”,Epic (1978),"“The next one is the first song on our new album,” Robin Zander declared to a sold-out crowd at Nippon Budokan in Tokyo, turning a simple remark about sequencing into one of the decade’s most famous bits of stage banter. What makes that introduction so memorable is the fact that it so perfectly understates the song that follows: “Surrender” is a stone classic of American power pop, and on the live version, the audience punctuates the performances with a continuous barrage of shrieks and cries. Onstage or in the studio, Rockford’s finest play the song with such urgency that it’s easy to forget just how funny “Surrender” is, both as a response song to the Who’s “The Kids Are Alright” and as a surprisingly sweet-natured story of generational rebellion. The parents are just as weird and as wild as their teenagers, making out on the couch to Kiss and spinning wild tales of the Women’s Army Corps. Even today, “Surrender” plays like the inversion of Bruce Springsteen’s contemporaneous anthems, promising that it’s possible to grow up and settle down without surrendering or giving yourself away. –Stephen Deusner Listen: Cheap Trick: “Surrender” See also: Boston: “More Than a Feeling” / Raspberries: “Go All The Way”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqT5s0j9CFY,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/420/Cheap-trick-surrender1.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Cheap_Trick-Surrender.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,141,The Undertones,“Teenage Kicks”,Good Vibrations/Sire (1978),"Punk’s class of 1977 isn’t known for its sensuality. The closest the Sex Pistols ever came to writing a love song was “Submission,” a chronicle of degradation that mocks itself with kissing sounds. X-Ray Spex took another angle on BDSM, comparing women’s subjugation to sadomasochism in “Oh Bondage! Up Yours!” Even Buzzcocks’ lovesick early singles are mostly about wanting people you can’t (or shouldn’t) have. Maybe that explains why the Undertones’ “Teenage Kicks” affected John Peel so powerfully in the fall of 1978: The Irish band’s enthusiastic slobber of a debut single surrendered wholeheartedly to the basic human urges most British punks either attacked or ignored. But novelty can’t account for why the song could still reduce Peel to tears in 2001. At the time, the legendary Radio 1 DJ offered this simple, perfect explanation for his decades-long obsession with a two-and-a-half-minute paean to young lust: “There's nothing you could add to it or subtract from it that would improve it.” When Peel died a few years later, its opening line, “Teenage dreams so hard to beat,” became his epitaph. At the risk of reading too much into the inner monologue of a dude fixated on bedding the hot girl he just saw in the street, that’s the lyric that makes the song an unparalleled encapsulation of youth. There’s nothing more teenage than the tendency to confuse desire with less carnal forms of aspiration. –Judy Berman Listen: The Undertones: “Teenage Kicks” See also: Television Personalities: “Part Time Punks” / The Only Ones: “Another Girl, Another Planet”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51OB2YoC4sg,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/420/undertones2.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Undertones-Teenage_Kicks.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,140,The Raincoats,“In Love”,Rough Trade (1979),"Sometime after guitarist Ana da Silva and bassist Gina Birch formed the Raincoats at London’s Hornsey College of Art in 1977, the two musicians—who both sang and were only just learning to play—were listening to a lot of Lou Reed’s Transformer. Birch, then a student of conceptual art, heard a song on the glammy, Bowie-produced album that used a striking amount of echo and was amazed to hear two Lou voices at once. With no immediate access to an echo box herself, she endeavored to apply her own D.I.Y. logic. She just repeated her words over and over—“IN IN IN LOVE LOVE”—giving them a primal edge. Aching and dizzy and thrilling and alive, 1979’s “In Love” echoes like a feeling you can’t get rid of. Like love itself, its rave-ups fall in and out at unexpected turns. Co-produced in a rudimentary basement studio with Texan rock eccentric Mayo Thompson and Rough Trade founder Geoff Travis, Vicki Aspinall’s violin lines sear like barbed wire, drawing out drama. Da Silva’s minimalist noise guitar scrapes at the skull. The clatter of Palmolive’s gleeful tom-bashing reels it all in close. “In Love” is The Raincoats’ most direct song, and yet it describes the most indirect feeling ever, one called “lovesick” for a reason that “In Love” proves. It is the sound of infatuation that crawls under your skin and makes you delirious, of butterflies that possess you. Its power is elemental—“I’m so happy/Happy sad,” Birch proclaims, “In love is so tough on my emotions”—capturing the exacerbated pain of uncertainty, the distinct absurdity of love as a concept, the obliterating euphoria of an obsession that becomes an avalanche. The contradictions driving “In Love” are what life is about. If you have a beating heart then you know what “In Love” is, and maybe that’s how it manages to twist you from inside. –Jenn Pelly Listen: The Raincoats: “In Love” See also: Raincoats: “Fairytale in the Supermarket” / Scritti Politti: “Skank Bloc Bologna”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnhF_L4N-ss,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/raincoats.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Raincoats-In_Love.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,139,Throbbing Gristle,“Hot on the Heels of Love”,Industrial (1979),"By the time the UK experimentalists Throbbing Gristle released 20 Jazz Funk Greats in December 1979, disco—and the inclusive freedoms it represented—was more or less on its last legs. Margaret Thatcher was in power, and Reagan was on the horizon. The dire times called for satire. Throbbing Gristle answered that call. Their grotesque music—synthetic and industrial and strange—offered a defiantly skewed perspective. “Hot on the Heels of Love,” a snickering homage to Giorgio Moroder and Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love,” should be a joke, but it doubles as an acerbic love letter to ’70s pop and a rough prototype for dance music to come. The gonzo four-to-the-floor beat, the nursery-rhyme keys, and the sweeps of vocoder madness make it strangely bacchanalian. There is charm in its frailties; it is meant to dissolve, unravel before your ears, and disappear. In some life-affirming way, Throbbing Gristle’s art has always relied upon a radical relationship with standard notions of failure and a satirical understanding of capitalistic success. “Hot on the Heels of Love” is like a guidebook for how to stick a thumb in the eye of normality, its relentless thump offering a profane heartbeat for freaks through the ages, standing up against the oppressive nightmare of picket fences and nuclear families. –Kevin Lozano Listen: Throbbing Gristle: “Hot on the Heels of Love” See also: The Normal: “Warm Leatherette” / Devo: “(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgqRXWFaGXw,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/420/throbbing.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Throbbing_Gristle-Hot_on_the_Heels_of_Love.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,138,Bauhaus,“Bela Lugosi’s Dead”,Small Wonder (1979),"Aesthetic evolution typically unfolds as gradually as evolution in nature, and it’s usually just as hard to pin down when a genre originated as to decide when dinosaurs became birds. Not so for goth rock, though, whose birth we have down to the second: exactly 170 of them into Bauhaus’ debut single, “Bela Lugosi’s Dead,” when Peter Murphy materializes out of a murky fog of dissonant instrumental jamming to declare eternal life as an undead ghoul the new ne plus ultra of cool. He’s freakishly, vampirically convincing enough in this moment to get several successive generations of teenagers, spanning an impressive array of cultures, to join him. “Bela”’s enduring power is surprising, considering how technically flawed it is. The band recorded it live in one take, and it’s clear that they’d only been playing together for six weeks—the guitar goes out of tune at a few points, and Daniel Ash manages to repeatedly flub a four-note bass line. It’s also nine-and-a-half minutes of messing around with a tape delay trying to make dub reggae sound effects (courtesy of David J, mostly). But that fucked-up, falling-apart quality only makes the song creepier and cooler, and it’s partly why “Bela” is still a dance-floor filler wherever goths flock together. –Miles Raymer Listen: Bauhaus: “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” See also: Tubeway Army: “Are ‘Friends’ Electric?” / Iggy Pop: “Sister Midnight”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RoGtU3Y7FA,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/bauhaus.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bauhaus-Bela_Lugosis_Dead.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,137,Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson,“The Bottle”,Strata-East (1974),"Gil Scott-Heron had one of the most distinctive voices in American music. Better still were his lyrics—cerebral, witty, satirical, caustic, sometimes hilarious, informed by American history and the nuanced black experience within it. Scott-Heron was a poet—he had an MFA in creative writing from Johns Hopkins—but he was also a novelist, and his songs had the feel of indelible short stories. For “The Bottle,” though, he took a nonfiction approach, conducting interviews with alcoholics as background. The song, created with vital collaborator Brian Jackson, was rare for Scott-Heron in that it was danceable, and it was as close as the tandem came to a radio hit, despite the heft of the lyrics. Scott-Heron shows up as a character in the song (“They turn to me/And they ask me Gil/Now don’t you think it’s a crime…”) and then finally, foreshadowing a future that would be bogged down by substance abuse, it ends with his declaration: “Look around on any corner/If you see some brother lookin’ like a goner/It’s gonna be me.” –Michael J. Agovino Listen: Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson: “The Bottle” See also: Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson: “Delta Man (Where I’m Comin’ From)” / Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson: “Angola, Louisiana”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5rlZpZcJw0,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/gil.png,/dataset/artwork/Gil_Scott-Heron__Brian_Jackson-The_Bottle.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,136,Isaac Hayes,“The Look of Love”,Enterprise (1970),"Even before it was given the Isaac Hayes treatment, “The Look of Love” was widely considered a work of greatness. Written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David for Casino Royale and originally sung by Dusty Springfield, the song has been covered dozens of times. But as remarkable as the original was, paired with Hayes’ ambitious, uncompromising ear for arrangements, it morphed into something else entirely. Backed by a full horn section and symphony orchestra, Hayes refurbished Bacharach and David’s pop gem into an 11-minute gospel-tinged soul odyssey. Coming through the singer’s silky baritone, even the lyrics take on a new feel; while Springfield sang with a cool, sultry air, Hayes belts out the song’s longing with raw desperation. –Corey Smith-West Listen: Isaac Hayes: “The Look of Love” See also: Barry White: “Never, Never Gonna Give You Up” / Tom Brock: “I Love You More and More”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b6yGWvpdkg,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/isaac.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Isaac_Hayes-The_Look_of_Love.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,135,Marvin Gaye,“I Want You”,Tamla (1976),"Though initially intended as producer and co-writer Leon Ware’s own solo album—and his own Musical Massage makes a perfect companion LP—Marvin Gaye’s I Want You is like few other records in R&B history. At a time when hard-driving disco was the norm, Ware’s lush, elegant instrumentation had a subtle poise that felt out of place. But compared with the aggressive grit of soul stars past, it was far too light, too effervescent to be anything but new. Where “Let’s Get It On” has an obvious carnality, “I Want You” is a song that suggests a heretofore unexplored intimacy, a vulnerability. This music is naked, and Ware’s delicate instrumentation swirls around as lust tips over the edge of uncertainty. This is the grown-up’s “Let’s Get It On,” a song in which the directness is that much more bold: “Oh, I’ll give you all the love/I want in return, sweet darling,” Gaye purrs over a randy funk beat. “But half the love is all I feel/Ooh, it’s too bad, it’s just too sad.” This is no casual fling: these are adult choices, with a singularly earnest intensity typically heard only in private. –David Drake Listen: Marvin Gaye: “I Want You” See also: Leon Ware: “Learning How to Love You” / Minnie Riperton: “Inside My Love”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPIb7uvPG_k,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/420/iwantyou.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Marvin_Gaye-I_Want_You.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,134,Brothers Johnson,“Strawberry Letter 23”,A&M (1977),"Brothers Johnson were a duo of actual brothers who backed Quincy Jones on a number of his ’70s recordings before stepping out on their own. Their biggest hit, oddly, was thanks to 18-year-old singer/songwriter Shuggie Otis, whose hippie-dippie acid trip of a folk song, “Strawberry Letter 23,” they turned into a serious barn burner. It was a bold decision that paid off. “Pretty music I hear/So happy and loud/Blue flowers echo from a cherry cloud,” go the lyrics, certainly the most childlike and shamanistic words ever paired with a bassline as funky as this one. Supposedly an ode to a paramour and her strawberry-scented love letters, the song’s deeper meaning has always been a mystery and is also beside the point. Its poetry is, above all, a vehicle for bass so big you can take a bite out of it, subtle vocal oohing, keys that define “twinkling.” There’s what you could call a guitar solo in the latter third, but really, it’s more of a dainty impression of a rocket launch. The song soared so high, it still hasn’t landed. –Matthew Schnipper Listen: Brothers Johnson: “Strawberry Letter 23” See also: Rufus & Chaka Khan: “Do You Love What You Feel” / Lamont Dozier: “Going Back to My Roots”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwmPlKdNav0,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/%2323.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Brothers_Johnson-Strawberry_Letter_23.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,133,The Abyssinians,“Satta Massagana”,Jam Sounds (1976),"“Satta Massagana” is central to the sound of Jamaica in the 1970s. Though not a hit upon its release, it has since become a common Rastafari chant that expounds that belief’s culture, as well as a classic reggae anthem. The title of the song is an approximation of the Ethiopian language of Amharic, a very loose transliteration of, roughly, “Give thanks to God.”  More than the title that references Ethiopia; allusion to Haile Selassie and Biblical prophecy unspool throughout as the Abyssinians—a trio of Rastafari singers—provide an outline of their beliefs in a chant: “There is a land far far away/Where there's no night, there's only day/Look into the book of life and you will see.” The groove of “Satta Massagana” spurred on many reggae acts in Jamaica, and continues to still. Demonstrating the enduring power of its rhythm, the instrumental was also remade in 1997, giving the telltale horns of the instrumental new life. –Erin Macleod Listen: The Abyssinians: “Satta Massagana” See also: Melodians: “Rivers of Babylon” / Derrick Harriott: “Brown Baby”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UE3qYbB_7-E,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/aby.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Abyssinians-Satta_Massagana.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,132,The Five Stairsteps,“O-o-h Child”,Buddah (1970),"As far back as 1966, before the Jackson 5 had even left Indiana, Chicago’s musical family the Five Stairsteps had scored sizable R&B hits under the direction of patriarch Clarence Burke, the group’s original bassist/co-writer/manager and also a detective for the Chicago Police Department. Though they upped their cuteness factor in the early days by adding three-year-old sibling Cubie, their breakthrough moment remained elusive until 1970, when DJs flipped their cover of the Beatles’ “Dear Prudence” in favor of a song that became R&B’s answer to “Over the Rainbow.” Written and produced by Stan Vincent, a Buddah Records staffer who’d previously scored with Connie Francis and Lou Christie, “O-o-h Child” achieves its extraordinary uplifting effect by starting with the chorus and adding multiple key changes to create a funky, sunshine gospel song about hope. Alohe Burke’s sultry alto anchors the song, and though the childlike voices of brothers Clarence Jr., James, Denis, and Keni are individually unremarkable, together they are utterly disarming, and they all come together for one of pop’s most affecting climaxes. It’s as if the dreams and gains of the civil rights movement got condensed into three minutes of radiant joy. –Barry Walters Listen: The Five Stairsteps: “O-o-h Child” See also: Jackson 5: “Never Can Say Goodbye” / Chi-Lites: “Oh Girl”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIsj8VxQNkw,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/stairsteps.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Five_Stairsteps-O-o-h_Child.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,131,The Rolling Stones,“Miss You”,Rolling Stones Records (1978),"“Miss You” was a saving grace for the Rolling Stones. It was the band’s first No. 1 single in nearly five years, and it opened Some Girls, an album critics immediately hailed as their best since 1972’s Exile on Main St. It was also the final chart-topper of the Stones’ career, and “Miss You” certainly sounds like the kind of energized song that’s made by a band in need of a grand statement. The Stones are notorious for shaping genres to their own ends (the B-side of “Miss You,” for instance, was the exaggerated, near-parody country ballad “Far Away Eyes”), and here they looked to disco to breathe life into their sound. Jagger, never one not to sex things up, sings of Puerto Rican women who are just dyyyiiin’ to meet him, alternating whispers, falsetto coos, and howls throughout. The 4/4 beat is made even more robust by the backing saxophone and harmonica, riding a guitar line so sumptuous that anything Mick Jagger uttered would sound like lust incarnate. –Matthew Strauss Listen: The Rolling Stones: “Miss You” See also: Rolling Stones: “Angie” / Rolling Stones: “Beast of Burden”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hic-dnps6MU,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/missyou.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Rolling_Stones-Miss_You.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,130,Electric Light Orchestra,“Mr. Blue Sky”,Jet (1977),"ELO mastermind Jeff Lynne has always been a shameless Beatles disciple, a fact made evident in the piano pounding that opens his band’s biggest hit: It sounds a bit like how McCartney begins his half of “A Day in the Life.” A songwriter with less of a mad-scientist streak would not have been able to pair such obvious inspiration with a topic as mundane as the weather and arrive at a song this singular in its funk, but meticulous studio rat Lynne packed “Mr. Blue Sky” full of signature touches: a cello and piano crescendo, choral chants, oodles of cowbell, Gibb Brothers falsetto harmonizing, a dreamy Harrisonian solo, and one of the decade’s best uses of vocoder. Electric Light Orchestra was, first and foremost, a band built around the notion that classical and pop were not enemies but, instead, partners in quest of completely over-the-top musical drama. Others had embraced this idea from time to time—George Martin with the Beatles, Brian Wilson on Pet Sounds—but ELO really committed to the symphonic concept without sacrificing hooks, as proggier bands did. So that “Mr. Blue Sky” served as the finale to Lynne’s ambitious “Concerto for a Rainy Day” suite at the heart of ELO’s 1977 double album, Out of the Blue, was not surprising in the slightest. What is surprising is that, nearly 40 years later, “Mr. Blue Sky” remains a go-to sync in TV shows and movies, a shorthand for waking up and tackling that big, beautiful world head on. –Jillian Mapes Listen: Electric Light Orchestra: “Mr. Blue Sky” See also: Electric Light Orchestra: “Turn to Stone” / Wings: “Band on the Run”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLev5Esyz9gxXK5o7MfDm7YcaSyMoPCnvN,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/elo.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Electric_Light_Orchestra-Mr_Blue_Sky.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,129,Toots & the Maytals,“Funky Kingston”,Island (1973),"Toots & the Maytals’ breakthrough album, Funky Kingston, has a broader geography than the title suggests. It joyously pairs the ska, reggae, and rocksteady of the band’s native Jamaica with American soul, from its brassy, frolicking cover of “Louie Louie” to singer Toots Hibberts’ magnetic, Otis Redding-worthy rasp. The title track stands apart as a moment of singular bliss—a leisurely jam of sax, electric guitar, and openhearted harmonies, topped by Hibberts’ keen love for his homeland. “Funky Kingston is what I’ve got for you!” he hollers, sounding improbably relaxed despite winding steadily to gospel levels of reverence. “Went from east to west, yeah/I just play from north to south, yeah!” It’s the rare song that delivers on its promises—the track truly grows funkier, more irrepressible with each of Hibberts’ approximately 500 hoots of its funkiness. Toots & the Maytals never reached the crossover global fame of Bob Marley and the Wailers, despite earning many formidable fans—the Who invited them to open an American tour, but reception was frosty. Still, the group shaped Jamaican music in their effortless merging of the island’s most beloved musical forms. And if the rest of the world could not fully dive into their sound, they still met the band at their finest hour, in “Funky Kingston.” –Stacey Anderson Listen: Toots & the Maytals: “Funky Kingston” See also: Toots & The Maytals: “Time Tough” / Dennis Brown: “Money in My Pocket”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ay2aj7VaHVw&list=PLS0pXxwjgvD1ujoGw_mymrwlH3nlouTWv&index=3,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/420/funkykingston.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Toots__the_Maytals-Funky_Kingston.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,128,Herbie Hancock,“Chameleon”,Columbia (1973),"In the early ’70s, Herbie Hancock, a practicing Nichiren Buddhist, had a vision while chanting his mantra, Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. He saw himself—the hard bop piano legend—playing straight-ahead funk in Sly Stone’s band. It was in that spiritual moment when his jazz transformed. Hancock wrote in the liner notes of the reissue of Head Hunters, “I was tired of playing something heavy. I wanted to play something light....Would I like to have a funky band that played the kind of music Sly or someone like that was playing? My response was, ‘Actually, yes.’” Out of this holy revelation “Chameleon” was born, over 15 minutes of funk and fusion that would introduce jazz into arenas. The four-decade run of “Chameleon” is due not only to Hancock’s vision of the interconnectedness of black American music, but his Head Hunters band’s funk exactitude: Bennie Maupin’s choppy sax riff clicks against Harvey Mason’s well-pocketed drums, and it all marches around Paul Jackson’s iconic six-note bass line, so sticky it would gum up any other engine but this. Mason’s switch to the ride cymbal around the six-minute mark sounds like the sun exploding all over Hancock’s ARP Odyssey synth solo. The song is a rhythmic knot, deceptively complex but savagely cool. Hancock’s pivot to funk and fusion helped amplify traditional jazz in the mainstream, and “Chameleon” was the first song you could feel right in your ribs. –Jeremy Larson Listen: Herbie Hancock: “Chameleon” See also: Miles Davis: “Maiysha” / Lonnie Liston Smith: “Expansions”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYRrIBqKsJ4,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/420/herbie.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Herbie_Hancock-Chameleon.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,127,Diana Ross,“Love Hangover”,Motown (1976),"For just over two-and-a-half minutes, Diana Ross smolders over one of the most sumptuous, loping bassline and velvety string combos that Motown could pull together in the label's post-Norman Whitfield years. “Love Hangover” is a gauzy, low-gravity glide. It has all the buoyancy of floating in water, and Ross's awestruck voice nails the metaphor of being so sprung on someone that even the day after is worth the disorientation. (She also drops maybe the most nonchalantly blissful “hey” to ever hit  No.1.) “Love Hangover” is one of pop’s best portrayals of falling for a person so amazing that it actually hurts. And then, as if all those points have been succinctly and appropriately made, someone flips a switch and every light in this hit single goes out except a strobe. Its extended disco metamorphosis, which accounts for more than five of the song's nearly eight-minute length, turns out to be the hair of the dog—the groove grows even more sinuous while a glimmering electric piano riffs off itself and becomes the rhythm’s secret weapon. Through it all, Ross vamps off the lyrics with a reeling euphoria that transcends her words. –Nate Patrin Listen: Diana Ross: “Love Hangover”  See also: Bee Gees: “More Than a Woman” / Sylvia: “Pillow Talk”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjRYpGj9ntM,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/420/lovehangover.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Diana_Ross-Love_Hangover.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,126,Roxy Music,“Love Is the Drug”,Island/ATCO (1975),"One of the many loveable aspects about glam’s most versatile band is that no matter how far out Roxy Music ventured on an art-rock limb, crooning about European decadence and inflatable darlings, they always came back to fantastic dance songs. After several such UK smashes, they scored their first and only U.S. Top 40 hit in early 1976 with Bryan Ferry’s most iconic lyric set to Roxy Music’s most propulsive and streamlined playing—check how John Gustafson’s bassline pumps and jumps. So undeniable that even prog-rock radio went for it despite its disco beat and attitude, “Love Is the Drug” picks up on David Bowie’s plastic soul phase and drives it straight to the singles’ bar. Starting with the sound of shoes on pavement, the closing of a car door, the starting of an engine, and the skidding of wheels, the track clinches Ferry’s presentation of the rock troubadour as performance artist. He’s too much of a romantic to write about what was yet to be called sex addiction, and he’s too self-aware to fully lose himself in physicality the way his inspirations might. Instead, this is multi-sensual seduction; toe-to-toe, heart-to-heart foreplay that celebrates the thrill of the ritual, the passion of pursuit. And when it winds its way up to the money shot, it’s still discreet: “Dim the lights, you can guess the rest,” he sighs, followed by a swank rat-a-tat by the band’s supremely driving drummer, Paul Thompson, that functions as a wink. Even their funk is gentlemanly. –Barry Walters Listen: Roxy Music: “Love Is the Drug”    See also: Miles Davis: “Maiysha” / Lonnie Liston Smith: “Expansions”See also: Roxy Music: “Virginia Plain” / Roxy Music: “Do the Strand”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0n3OepDn5GU,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/420/roxy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Roxy_Music-Love_Is_the_Drug.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,125,Kool & the Gang,“Summer Madness”,De-Lite (1974),"For four decades, “Summer Madness” has provided fertile ground for hip-hop producers. It’s eight minutes of breezy instrumental synth-soul has been stretched, chopped, and looped countless times. And its iconic rising synth glide has been repurposed so frequently it’s practically canon in certain genres. The song comes from Kool and the Gang's 1974 album Light of Words, which saw the band drawing heavily from their jazz roots, using more complex song structures, and experimenting with analog synths. Issued as a single and supported by a performance on “Soul Train,” “Summer Madness” climbed to No. 35 on the pop charts, and set the tone for funk jazz fusion for decades to follow. Today, the idea that a fusion instrumental pulled together during a 5 a.m. recording session could have a formidable run on the pop charts seems farfetched. But despite the shifting musical landscape “Summer Madness” has remained relevant—in the hands of generations of producers it’s been continuously amended to suit the times, aging gracefully along the way. –Corey Smith-West Listen: Kool & the Gang: “Summer Madness”  See also: Quincy Jones: “Summer in the City” / Isaac Hayes: “Bumpy's Lament”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKRo6s_FqLE,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/kool.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kool__the_Gang-Summer_Madness.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,124,John Lennon,“Jealous Guy”,Apple (1971),"In 1968, the Beatles embarked on a trip that can be heard all over The White Album, traveling to India to study Transcendental Meditation with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Apparently Lennon and McCartney were moved in similar ways: Paul wrote “Mother Nature’s Son” while John came up with “Child of Nature.” The latter was shelved, but Lennon knew he had something special in terms of melody, even if the lyrics didn’t click. As he embarked on a solo career, he turned the tune into a piano ballad that plumbed the depths of masculine insecurity in a way rarely seen from rock icons. Towards the end of the Beatles, Lennon seemed to sneer at McCartney’s sentimentality; for him to write a song as tender as “Jealous Guy,” it had to be emotionally raw and real. Musically, the Imagine standout begins a bit heavy-handed on the schmaltz, but with Lennon laid bare, he starts to loosen up as the percussion and strings behind him grow. Lennon may have been “dreaming of the past” in more ways than one with “Jealous Guy.” “I didn’t mean to hurt you” is an unsettling line to hear in light of what we know about Lennon now, specifically the domestic abuse he admitted to in a Playboy interview shortly before his 1980 murder: “I used to be cruel to my woman, and physically—any woman. I was a hitter. I couldn't express myself and I hit.” Though recorded a decade earlier, “Jealous Guy” bleeds with remorse, as Lennon turns his own pain and shame it into something a listener could use. –Jillian Mapes Listen: John Lennon: “Jealous Guy” See also: John Lennon: “Instant Karma (We All Shine)” / Donny Hathaway: “Jealous Guy”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fieagq8UbIM,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/imagine.jpg,/dataset/artwork/John_Lennon-Jealous_Guy.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,123,Roberta Flack,“Killing Me Softly With His Song”,Atlantic (1973),"These days, we think of the Fugees’ 1996 cover as having introduced a new generation to Roberta Flack’s Grammy-winning 1973 single “Killing Me Softly With His Song,” but Flack wasn’t the first artist to cut it. She heard folk singer Lori Lieberman’s 1972 version on TWA’s in-flight music service and knew she had to do her own version. “But I’d never heard of Lori Lieberman, so I thought I’d see what she’d got going for her that I didn’t have,” Flack told NME shortly after her version became a hit. “Before I heard the song, I thought it had an awfully good title, and when I heard it I really loved it.” Lieberman’s infatuation with Don McLean may have influenced Norman Gimbel’s lyrics (really), but it’s easy to see why Flack was the one who took “Killing Me Softly” to No. 1. This is a song about witnessing a performance that resonates so deeply, the singer might as well be using your soul as an instrument. The experience isn’t a totally emotional one, though; phrases like “strumming my pain with his fingers” and “I felt all flushed with fever” pulse with physicality, and Lieberman’s dreamy voice and acoustic guitar couldn’t do justice to that side of the song. It took Flack’s warm, searching alto, Ron Carter’s teasing bass, and Grady Tate’s throbbing drums to heat up the track without trampling its innocence. –Judy Berman Listen: Roberta Flack: “Killing Me Softly With His Song”  See also: Rufus & Chaka Khan: “Sweet Thing” / Gladys Knight & The Pips: “Midnight Train to Georgia”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/WxY47jh9owA,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/420/killingmesoftly.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Roberta_Flack-Killing_Me_Softly_With_His_Song.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,122,The Beach Boys,“Surf’s Up”,Reprise (1971),"When the sessions for Smile crumbled into a lysergic haze by May 1967, those hallowed songs from Brian Wilson’s “teenage symphony to God” were scattered to the winds, with only fragments to be gleaned from the group’s subsequent albums. Most maddening was “Surf’s Up,” which television audiences had seen Wilson perform in 1966 before the song vanished. Until the codex was reassembled by Wilson in 2004, the closest fans could get to the true majesty and mystique of Smile was when “Surf’s Up” finally surfaced in 1971, as the title track of the band’s 17th studio album. “Surf’s Up” bade farewell to the Beach Boys’ outdated surf-boy personas, right there in the title; it was complex, impressionistic, and the crowning achievement of Wilson and lyricist Van Dyke Parks’ collaboration. The lyrics alight on Tennyson, Maupassant, and children’s songs;the coda of ""The child is the father of the man,"" easily the most effervescent chorus the Boys ever harmonized on, is also a stunning quote of a William Wordsworth poem. –Andy Beta Listen: The Beach Boys: “Surf’s Up”  See also: The Beach Boys: “Feel Flows” / Beach Boys: “Til I Die”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEHtAabekTw&index=10&list=PLApyhECLlb9_B3DBQ99dnvumZ_G9cNiwc,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/surfsup.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Beach_Boys-Surfs_Up.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,121,Neu!,“Hallogallo”,Brain (1972),"Some bands are lucky enough to emerge fully formed, with a distinct style and sound already in place. Neu! arrived with something more powerful: a template. You wonder how quickly Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger realized the persistent “motorik” pattern Dinger beat out wasn't just an element of a song but an album, a band—perhaps krautrock itself. “Hallogallo,” the first song on their first album, was the finest-ever application of this form. It’s exceptionally easy to listen to: The clucking, muted guitar plucks trigger an ASMR-like sensation, so gently do they dot the song’s rhythm. “Hallogallo” is like watching an entire stadium of people exit in the most orderly fashion imaginable: It’s going to take a while, and it’s going to be fine. Rother and Dinger would go on to make this song many more times, maybe too many: They were expertly lampooned/saluted just a year later by Faust. Listening to “Hallogallo” is a good reminder of just how hard it was, for Neu! and everyone else, not to keep making it. –Andrew Gaerig Listen: Neu!: “Hallogallo”  See also: Ashra: “Sunrain” / La Düsseldorf: “La Düsseldorf”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzPUoG3M9gA,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/420/neu.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Neu-Hallogallo.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,120,Serge Gainsbourg,“Melody”,Philips (1971),"By 1971, Serge Gainsbourg was best known outside of France for putting filthy words in young girls’ mouths—he sent France Gall up the charts with a cute song about blowjobs, and got Jane Birkin to pant so heavily on “Je T’aime…Moi Non Plus” that it incensed the Pope. But he saved his sleaziest and most demeaning words for his own Gitanes-stained mouth on L’Histoire de Melody Nelson, a concept album about his pursuit of a 15-year-old English girl whom he knocks off her bike. Yes, it’s a record about a pedophile, but (one imagines) it has less to do with Gainsbourg’s sexual proclivities than being the nastiest vessel he could conceive of for his famous self-loathing. And “Melody,” the record’s grimly foreshadowing opener, is his condition’s apex: a death drive with a dead girl as his compass. Headed nowhere in particular, Gainsbourg drives through dark, dangerous streets in his pre-war Rolls Royce, transfixed by its “serenely indifferent” hood ornament, the Spirit of Ecstasy. This “cursed archangel” was secretly modelled on the mistress of a government advisor to Britain’s motoring industry, who died when her cruiseliner was hit by a German U-boat. Even before Gainsbourg runs into Melody, his aimless drive is marked by a crushing awareness of how easily desire can self-destruct, his cool delivery—coupled with Herbie Flowers’ bleeding funk bass—suggesting a disturbing familiarity with this state of affairs. He expresses little remorse when he runs into Melody—a muttered “merde”—and wastes no time observing how her rumpled skirt has revealed her white underwear. The thought of identifying with Gainsbourg’s nightcrawler is chilling, but arranger Jean-Claude Vannier gives you no choice: The spare, louche arrangements to “Melody” comprise possibly the most erotic seven minutes ever recorded, reaching a stirring hilt just to abandon the listener in a state of creeped-out arousal. –Laura Snapes Listen: Serge Gainsbourg: “Melody”  See also: John Martyn: “Glory Box ”/ Françoise Hardy: “Message Personnel”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ch58q3BCN_0,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/melody.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Serge_Gainsbourg-Melody.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,119,Blue Öyster Cult,“(Don’t Fear) The Reaper”,Columbia (1976),"“Saturday Night Live” tried to turn “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” into a punchline, but Blue Öyster Cult‘s biggest hit was already a beguiling mix of darkness and levity. Speaking with CMJ in 1995, singer/guitarist Donald “Buck Dharma” Roeser said he was “appalled” by the song's longstanding associations with romanticized suicide, driven primarily by his allusions to Romeo and Juliet, “together in eternity.” It was supposed to be “a love song where the love transcends the actual physical existence of the partners,” he explained—but with odd and garbled lyrics like “Valentine is done/Here but now they’re gone,” fans could be forgiven for getting confused. While his mysterious lyrics threaten to overwhelm the melody, the band’s Byrds-like bombast, immortalized in that chiming, arpeggiated refrain and an otherworldly guitar solo, is as dreamlike as it is devastating. And then there’s that cowbell: You don’t need to watch any Will Ferrell sketches to appreciate how the atypical percussion tweaks the drama just enough to render the Reaper—maybe even death itself—a little less scary. –Zoe Camp Listen: Blue Öyster Cult: “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper”  See also: Dire Straits: “Sultans of Swing” / Doors: “Riders on the Storm”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dy4HA3vUv2c,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/blueoyster.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Blue_yster_Cult-Dont_Fear_The_Reaper.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,118,Sex Pistols,“Anarchy in the U.K.”,EMI (1976),"The provocations of Sex Pistols’ “Anarchy in the UK” provide a dividing line as clear as any in popular music. While Patti Smith’s Horses had been out for just under a year and leather and cheekiness were already old hat to the CBGB gang in New York, the Pistols’ debut single captured the new swagger in recorded form like nothing that had come before it. It descended on record stores in November 1976 with a literal call for upheaval—but then what? Johnny Rotten’s sneer was destined to become a caricature before he had finished spitting out the first lyric, a perfectly vivid Cheshire Cat grin for the 1970s that was more shocking than Elvis’ hips, if only because it didn’t require a television set to show it (and also because Elvis wasn’t calling for anarchy). Launching with the forced non-rhyme of “anarchist” and “anti-Christ,” the British band’s cartoon version of the French ideology was a farce in the highest pop art sense, a series of symbols tossed into the milieu like a firecracker. And perhaps because the Pistols’ anarchy only consisted of swearing on television and having access to the excitable echo chamber of the British tabloid press, it totally worked. Banned from radio, the song cracked the UK’s Top 50 before the band was dropped by their label, EMI, barely a month after the single’s release. An obvious counter to the polished glitter of mid-’70s rock, “Anarchy in the UK” would light the fire under countless musicians and cultural theorists (see: Greil Marcus’ Lipstick Traces). It would also earn the band a second paycheck when they signed a new contract with Virgin and re-recorded the song in ’77, and a third when they recorded it yet again for “Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock.” –Jesse Jarnow Listen: Sex Pistols: “Anarchy in the UK”  See also: Sex Pistols: “Holidays in the Sun” / Sex Pistols: “Pretty Vacant”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K07Yq4zGTcI,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/420/anarchy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sex_Pistols-Anarchy_in_the_UK.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,117,Thin Lizzy,“The Boys Are Back in Town”,Mercury (1976),"By 1976, Thin Lizzy hadn’t had a hit in the four years since their fluke success with the traditional Irish song “Whisky in the Jar.” That changed with their sixth album, Jailbreak, which not only cemented Thin Lizzy’s economic hard rock sound and brought them worldwide fame but landed them in the middle of the battlefield between classic rock and punk. Frontman Phil Lynott was a diplomat of cool—a black Irishman with a studded bass strap and hooped earrings—and moved with immunity among genres. He loved the spit of the Sex Pistols and Ramones, and punks loved him back for his unpretentious aura of a street fighter and a poet all in one. Lynott also loved Springsteen, Skynyrd, and Van Morrison, and it’s why “The Boys Are Back in Town” found the pulse of so many that summer. For the punks, it was the last cold sip of beer before they razed the place. For the rest of the world, it became a legendary toast—because, let’s be real, these boys are not here to fight. They're here to party and they brought twin-guitar solos that are so savage and joyful, they could pry a smile from the lips of the dead. We are chained to nostalgia and, 40 years ago, Thin Lizzy wrote the anthem for it. –Jeremy D. Larson Listen: Thin Lizzy: “The Boys Are Back in Town”  See also: AC/DC: “Highway to Hell” / Van Halen: “Runnin' With the Devil”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LpeRS5_ruU,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/jailbreak.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Thin_Lizzy-The_Boys_Are_Back_in_Town.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,116,Richard Hell & the Voidoids,“Blank Generation”,Sire (177),"“Basically, I have one feeling,” Richard Hell told Punk magazine in 1976. “The desire to get out of here.” No surprise then that Hell’s signature song, “Blank Generation,” is a furious anthem in which he snarls, “I was saying ‘Let me out of here!’ before I was even born!” The song itself dodged Hell’s stints in Television and the Heartbreakers, both of whom played it many times before he immortalized it with the Voidoids. Yet “Blank Generation” isn’t a total break from history; it’s a take-off of Rod McKuen’s ‘50s novelty tune “The Beat Generation.” (However, while McKuen “[doesn’t] let anything trouble my mind,” Hell “can take it or leave it each time.”) The song’s most arresting element—Robert Quine’s slashing, dissonant guitar, a precursor to the atonal scrape of no wave—echoes Lou Reed’s farthest-out solos in Quine’s beloved Velvet Underground. These connections to the past make “Blank Generation” more than just a nihilist rant. Hell knew history and was excited to create it anew, which is why he sounds more giddy than morose, more energized than dejected. Hell was notorious for wearing a t-shirt that said “Please Kill Me,” but “Blank Generation” is the sound of something being born. –Marc Masters Listen: Richard Hell & the Voidoids: “Blank Generation”  See also: Richard Hell & the Voidoids: “Love Comes in Spurts” / New York Dolls: “Personality Crisis”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/Y5-HlUAOjGE,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/blankgeneration.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Richard_Hell__the_Voidoids-Blank_Generation.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,115,James Brown,“The Payback”,Polydor (1973),"In 2015, Kendrick Lamar was pissed off, as he had every right to be: Black people were being killed by white people with no consequences at all. So he cut “King Kunta” to let off some steam. “I’m mad, but I ain’t stressin’,” Lamar exclaimed. The cadence and the groove was undeniably James Brown, who created that conversational style some 40 years earlier. The track takes direct cues from “The Payback,” the title track from the Godfather of Soul’s 1973 album, on which he throws verbal jabs over a sparse funk loop that goes on forever. Brown was mad, too, but his target was far more personal: “Get down wit my girlfriend, that ain’t right.” He could deal with just about anything else—scrappin’, shit talkin’—but backstabbing? That crossed the line. And so, “The Payback” was one of the early diss records, providing a basis for the battle rhymes that served as hip-hop’s foundation. The track itself was sampled by everyone from En Vogue to Total to LL Cool J, giving it life beyond ’70s soul, but it also went to No. 1 on the R&B charts in real time, marking one of the last times Brown topped the charts. Makes you wonder, though: Was the recognition payback enough for Brown, or did he get that scoundrel back? –Marcus J. Moore Listen: James Brown: “The Payback”  See also: James Brown: “Down and Out in New York City” / Charles Wright & The Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band: “Express Yourself”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGmK5ZOzi50,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/payback.jpg,/dataset/artwork/James_Brown-The_Payback.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,114,Steely Dan,“Deacon Blues”,ABC (1977),"The eponymous protagonist of Aja’s second single, “Deacon Blues,” is not as direct a proxy for the real-life Donald Fagen and Walter Becker as the cynical Bard College alum of “My Old School” or the Dutchess County pundit of “Barrytown.” But Deacon is the same general character—defiant, deluded, self-aggrandizing—made rarefied and mythological, with a name inspired by the NFL player credited with inventing the sack. More edified by Charlie Parker than human interaction, Deacon ultimately moves to prove his worth by “work[ing] the saxophone.” Fagen and Becker refused to cut the long instrumental bridge dramatizing this—featuring arabesques from Pete Christlieb, a tenor player they admired from the Tonight Show—for a cleaner radio single. Deacon Blues” is the consummate Steely Dan single, perfectly landing their precarious balance between arcane, Ellington-inspired jazz theatrics and strangely radio-ready songwriting. –Winston Cook-Wilson Listen: Steely Dan: “Deacon Blues”  See also: Steely Dan: “Do It Again” / Boz Scaggs: “Lowdown”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yykSHeVXD8I,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/aja.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Steely_Dan-Deacon_Blues.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,113,Gang of Four,“Damaged Goods”,Fast Product (1978),"If you want to know why “angular” is in the critical dictionary, listen to Gang of Four’s first single. Dave Allen’s jumpy bass, Hugo Burnham’s syncopated drums, and Andy Gill’s arid funk guitar interlock in a shape made all of spikes and slashes, like a coded telegram coming in from Moscow. The band wrapped their songs in Marxist critiques of capitalism and spectacle-smashing Situationist gestures, but even for pop, let alone agitprop, “Damaged Goods” is uncommonly infectious, irresistibly danceable, and piercingly personal. The lyrics are pitched into an echo chamber between the ideal of love (“your kiss so sweet”) and the reality of lust (“your sweat so sour”) in a thoroughly commodified society. As is often the case, Gill’s responses to singer Jon King’s calls seem to enter the song from somewhere else; stereo space becomes dialectical. Gill plays like a man with a machete, trying to chop up the poses of punk, politics, and musical commerce—raging at the market from within. After all, this was 1979, and savvy revolutionaries knew how revolutions ended: “Damaged Goods” builds and breaks in clashing waves, flares with glory near the end, and then screeches to a stop on a sudden, curdled chord. –Brian Howe Listen: Gang of Four: “Damaged Goods”  See also: Gang of Four: “I Found That Essence Rare” / Magazine: “Shot by Both Sides”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAMNX1hoyF4,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/gangoffour.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Gang_of_Four-Damaged_Goods.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,112,Sparks,“This Town Ain’t Big Enough for the Both of Us”,Island (1974),"Decades before anyone used the term “toxic masculinity,” Sparks were skewering the concept on their 1974 breakthrough single. It took a bit longer for the band to catch on in the States, but in the UK, “This Town Ain't Big Enough for Both of Us” drove their Kimono My House album to the Top 5. In its time, this was understood as a glam-rock record, and it was hooky and stompy enough to pass in the company of T. Rex and Slade. In fact, it’s something much weirder and more complicated: Sparks’ songwriter and keyboardist Ron Mael and his vocalist brother Russell declared their contempt for stupidity and bonhomie. The title is a Western movie cliché, and the rest of the lyrics are a hilariously vicious indictment of dumb heroic archetypes and the hopeless dudes who try to live up to them. “Zoo time/Is she-and-you time/The mammals are your favorite type,” Russell enunciates witheringly. His voice is a full-on art-song countertenor, a voice that couldn't be much more distant from rock’n’roll machismo, even as Sparks’ rhythm section lays into the song like a back-alley kicking. “This Town”’s final glass-shattering high note is less orgasmic than it is vindictive. –Douglas Wolk Listens: Sparks: “This Town Ain't Big Enough for Both of Us”  See also: Sparks: “Tryouts for the Human Race” / Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark: “Electricity”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNk-oawEiFA,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/420/sparks.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sparks-This_Town_Aint_Big_Enough_for_the_Both_of_Us.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,111,Judee Sill,“The Kiss”,Asylum (1973),"“I’ve been waiting to do this little song here that I just wrote seven days ago, eight days ago,” Judee Sill announced nervously before her first live performance of “The Kiss.” “I can’t decide if this is a romantic song or a holy song.” The convergence of the two constitutes the magic of Sill’s songwriting, which has grown ever more popular and influential following her death in 1979. “The Kiss” is Sill’s signature track because it effortlessly and magnificently balances those two forces. It’s a love song delivered with the gravity of a hymn, with a heavenly, French horn-assisted melody that seems to shift and stretch with every breath Sill takes. If Sill’s story began and ended here, it would still make her one of the saddest figures of the ’70s. In her short discography, “The Kiss” stands out as a moment of clarity, a flash of devastating inspiration in a career marred by both tragedy and rapid evolution. When she introduced “The Kiss” a few months after that initial performance, Sill seemed to have made up her mind: “Here’s a song that will put you to sleep,” she joked. “It’s about the union of the opposites that are in us all.” Nobody understood those dichotomies better than Sill. –Sam Sodomsky Listen: Judee Sill: “The Kiss”  See also: Judee Sill: “Jesus Was a Crossmaker” / Linda Perhacs: “Chimicum Rain”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZt-5jxFEAw,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/420/heartfood.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Judee_Sill-The_Kiss.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,110,Hall & Oates,“She’s Gone”,Atlantic (1973),"Daryl Hall and John Oates were once the Mutt and Jeff of pop: Hall, lanky, blond, pretty, would-be cover material for Tiger Beat; Oates, short, dark, hirsute, the mustache emphatic. Though they are best known for their string of smashes in the ’80s, their first hit came in 1973 with—cue that slow, alluring hi-hat intro—“She’s Gone,” a simple tale of lost love that ultimately turns triumphant. The song’s lines are sly and self-deprecating: “Everybody’s high on consolation;” “I need a drink and a quick decision;” “My face ain’t lookin’ any younger.” And no one sang background vocals like John Oates—each carefully-placed oh-I is basked in anguish. “She’s Gone” sounded like it came out of Philadelphia International’s songbook; a couple of octaves higher, and it could be a Stylistics track. (The R&B group Tavares, four-hours up I-95, covered it the following year and made it a No. 1 soul hit.) The snide (usually white) pop-culturati never paid Hall & Oates much attention, but the black radio stations did. Soon would come “Sara Smile,” “Rich Girl,” and all the rest. Tavis Smiley could hardly contain himself when Oates was a recent guest on his show. “She,” whoever she was, may have up and gone in 1973, but that’s when Hall & Oates arrived. –Michael J. Agovino Listen: Hall & Oates: “She’s Gone”  See also: Hall & Oates: “Sara Smile” / Joan Armatrading: “Love and Affection”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoQYuJCfpZI,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/hall.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Hall__Oates-Shes_Gone.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,109,Elvis Costello,“Alison”,Stiff (1977),"Elvis Costello has put forth a great deal of effort to ensure “Alison” is not misunderstood. In his 2015 memoir, Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink, he wrote that the track is a work of fiction: “It was a premonition, my fear that I would not be faithful or that my disbelief in happy endings would lead me to jill the love that I had longed for.” Much of his anxious justification comes from the common interpretation that his unforgettable refrain, “Alison, I know this world is killing you/Oh, Alison, my aim is true,” is a call to kill this newly conjured woman. It’s funny and fitting that Costello has fretted over his own poeticism for decades, because it’s that same self-loathing and need for approval that makes “Alison” beautiful in its complexity. At its core, “Alison” is a near-perfect ballad, fit for a wedding or prom—any moment that requires a slow song that feels deeply personal. But as Costello’s pain surfaces from being spurned by his dream girl for a man she doesn’t even love, you hear his scorn: He tells her how unhappy she is. “Alison,” in one context, becomes a work of projection, but it’s the song’s multitudes that makes it universal: Love, anger, sadness, and hope are inextricable. Untangling “Alison” entirely requires serious self-reflection. Costello’s continued rationalization shows that not even he can fully comprehend its magic. –Matthew Strauss Listen: Elvis Costello: “Alison” See also: Robert Wyatt: “Shipbuilding” / Jackson Browne: “Late for the Sky”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9GlC9GyF4Y,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/alison.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Elvis_Costello-Alison.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,108,"Earth, Wind & Fire",“September”,Columbia (1978),"“Do you remember” can be the lowest form of conversation or the most powerful way to begin a song. Maurice White legitimately wants to know the answer to that question in Earth, Wind & Fire’s “September,” and there’s a very good chance you might not remember September 21st, an average day in in a not-particularly-memorable month. There are no “Today Was a Good Day” specifics about why this otherwise mundane night turned out to be unlike any other—we danced the night away, our souls were singing, we knew love was real. In fact, co-writer Allee Willis was concerned that “September” was too generalized and begged White to reconsider the “ba-de-ya-de-ba-de-ya” hook. God bless White’s stubbornness, because how many of us knew it as that “ba-de-ya” song? The guileless joy of the hook translates to any language, any situation. Unsurprisingly, it’s one of the songs you’re most likely to hear at weddings, Bar Mitzvahs, even political conventions for both parties—basically any event that’s supposed to be the greatest night of someone’s life. While it certainly sounds like the kind of universal uplift in which Earth, Wind & Fire often excelled, “September” makes a very specific request: they’re asking you to remember that any day—September 21st or May 2nd or February 18th—holds the possibility of magic. –Ian Cohen Listen: Earth, Wind & Fire: “September”  See also: Earth, Wind & Fire: “Shining Star” / Earth, Wind & Fire: “Fantasy”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhTuYKR-ejo,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/earthwind.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Earth_Wind__Fire-September.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,107,Minnie Riperton,“Les Fleur”,GRT (1971),"Minnie Riperton’s later songs are perhaps her most remembered—it’s hard to forget the chirping birds of “Lovin’ You.” But “Les Fleur,” which opens her masterful 1971 debut album Come to My Garden, is the song that set the bar so high. Recorded in 1969, the summer of love’s warmth lingers, with Riperton literally singing from the perspective of a flower. But it quickly becomes clear this is no hippie anthem. Delicate as a petal and effortless as a blossom unfolding, Riperton’s voice flits over the first verse. And then, suddenly and without warning, the song takes actual flight, bursting into a chorus so rapturous and majestic, you can’t help but believe in her naive yet beautiful vision of mankind. By the end of the song, her backup choir is just singing jubilant gibberish as Riperton’s whistle range soars to the stratosphere. Many have tried to go there since (looking at you, Mariah), but you need look no further than “Les Fleur” to realize it’s a height only one songbird has ever reached. –Rebecca Haithcoat Listen: Minnie Riperton: “Les Fleurs”  See also: Rotary Connection: “I Am the Blackgold of the Sun” / Dells: “Love Is Blue / I Can Sing a Rainbow”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npclX84jwFs,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/420/cometomygarden.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Minnie_Riperton-Les_Fleur.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,106,Joni Mitchell,“Free Man in Paris”,Asylum (1974),"“Free Man in Paris” is an homage to Joni Mitchell’s patron and longtime friend David Geffen; it’s an unlikely second single for an album that initially perplexed him. “He was busy trying to sign Dylan for what turned out to be the Planet Waves project,” Mitchell told biographer Mark Bego. “I played Court and Spark for everyone, and Bobby fell asleep and snored all the way through it. When the record came to an end, the people went ‘Huh?’” Dylan’s record would hit #1 but, nearly half a century later, there’s no debate which album won the long game. “Free Man in Paris,” Court and Spark’s second single, was a hit even with its jazzy modalities and verbose chorus. The song captures Geffen, not unsympathetically, at a moment of perceived invincibility: In 1973, he and his wife took a decadent French vacation, and brought Mitchell, the Band’s Robbie Robertson, and his wife Dominique. As Robertson tells it, the Parisian hotel threatened to arrest Geffen after telling him he couldn’t pay the exorbitant bill with a credit card. The comedy of errors was all Mitchell needed to make Geffen her pet Gatsby: the corporate brass turned would-be expat, feeling “unfettered and alive,” but dreading the business piling up at home. “Free Man in Paris” was a swan song to the musical vocabulary Joni was angling to leave behind. It also betrayed the beginnings of her provocative new musical vision: full of open, indeterminate chords with a closer relationship to McCoy Tyner than Jackson Browne, and telling stories as archly observational as they were personal. –Winston Cook-Wilson Listen: Joni Mitchell: “Free Man in Paris”  See also: Joni Mitchell: “Help Me” / Joni Mitchell: “The Hissing of Summer Lawns”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Krn56Ye5_pw,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/420/court.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Joni_Mitchell-Free_Man_in_Paris.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,105,The Doobie Brothers,“What a Fool Believes”,Warner Bros. (1978),"Michael McDonald wasn’t yet a yacht rock icon when the Doobie Brothers tagged him as their lead singer, after deciding they needed another element to fill out their multi-instrumental lounge-funk. But McDonald’s aged, falsetto-tinged baritone turned the Doobies from a regular radio act to one of the most successful bands in America. “What a Fool Believes,” co-written with blue-eyed cohort Kenny Loggins, tackled a thematically nuanced, pointedly adult subject: the unrequited love felt for someone out of the past, and the awkward meeting where it becomes clear both parties see each other very differently. Instead of romantic denouement, what’s left is a void. “She had a place in his life/He never made her think twice” is a particularly devastating summation of that dynamic. Watching McDonald lean into his delivery in live videos from the era—when their ridiculously overstaffed band included two drummers and a bongo player—it looks as though his soul is about to split open, which reminds you that he wasn't just going through the motions. Because who isn’t a fool when it comes to love? Heard now, the Doobie Brothers of the 1970s seem preternaturally confident—unafraid to be unhip, or buttoned-up, they survived their image to leave us with songs like this, which say everything a rock haircut and sharp outfit can’t. No blind faith is required; all the evidence is laid out for anyone to hear. –Jeremy Gordon Listen: The Doobie Brothers: “What a Fool Believes”  See also: Doobie Brothers: “Long Train Runnin'” / Gerry Rafferty: “Right Down the Line”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKYQNtF11eg,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/dobbie.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Doobie_Brothers-What_a_Fool_Believes.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,104,The Clash,“Train in Vain”,CBS (1979),"A refusal to sell-out became a driving tenant of punk rock in the ’80s and ’90s, but first-generation punks were perfectly happy to be heard by as many people as possible. Even the Sex Pistols, for all their anti-establishment leanings, wanted to be huge. Punk purists still struggle to reconcile “Train in Vain,” the catchiest and most widely appealing pop song that Mick Jones ever wrote, so the band created a narrative to explain it away. The myth went that “Train in Vain” was excluded from the original London Calling tracklist because the band was conflicted about it sounding so commercial. In reality, the song was left off the sleeve because it was only added to London Calling after the art had been pressed. The “too commercial” urban legend unraveled further when the band made it a staple of live sets and released it as a single. (Their label didn’t force them to; if anything, it was the Clash that created headaches by tacking yet another track onto an 18-song double LP.) With its peppy Motown rhythm and loving callbacks to oldies songwriting conventions, “Train in Vain” was pure ear candy. It captured the Clash at their most relatable, thanks to its universal themes of heartbreak and rejection, and Jones' pleading, heart-on-sleeve lead vocal turn. Mick Jones never defined the Clash the way Joe Strummer did, but if Strummer was the telegenic poster child for the revolution, Jones was its sympathetic everyman. “Train in Vain” remains his finest hour. –Evan Rytlewski Listen: The Clash: “Train in Vain”   See also: Clash: “Spanish Bombs” / Clash: “Lost in the Supermarket”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUzBgeI5dpc,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/london.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Clash-Train_in_Vain.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,103,Led Zeppelin,“Immigrant Song”,Atlantic (1970),"With its references to Valhalla and setting sail for the mysterious “western shore,” Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” represents the first tick on the folk-metal timeline. The track came together in the summer of 1970, not long after Led Zeppelin launched a world tour in Reykjavik; recalling the song’s origins soon after in a radio interview, singer Robert Plant explained, “We went to Iceland, and it made you think of Vikings and big ships...and John Bonham’s stomach. And bang, there it was: ‘Immigrant Song!’” When Zep unveiled the track in a landmark concert in Bath, France, six days after returning from the actual Land of the Ice and the Snow, it wasn’t just a song premiere, it was a paradigm shift: Now they were a focused fleet of hard-rock vikings, driven by an insatiable bloodthirst manifested in Jimmy Page’s stabbing riffs, John Paul Jones’ rugged bass grooves, Bonham’s unhinged drumming—and, of course, Plant's extended war cry, more the utterance of a Norse demigod than a refrain from the throat of a lanky British lad. –Zoe Camp Listen: Led Zeppelin: “Immigrant Song”  See also: Led Zeppelin: “Over the Hills and Far Away” / Heart: “Barracuda”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EzlXXwTFHY,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/led-zeppelin-imm-song.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Led_Zeppelin-Immigrant_Song.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,102,Elton John,“Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”,DJM/MCA (1973),"“Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” doesn’t exactly paint an enviable portrait of success: “Goodbye yellow brick road/Where the dogs of society howl/You can’t plant me in your penthouse/I’m going back to my plough” sounds more like the bitter lament of a sign-bearing beggar, not a flamboyant multi-millionaire who’d already toured arenas crooning “Crocodile Rock.” So it makes sense that Bernie Taupin, Elton John’s own lyrical Wizard of Oz, wrote these pessimistic words from his perch behind the curtain, leaving his performing partner to sell the pathos onstage. Taupin’s words of ambivalence, when paired with an ascendant pop melody worthy of Broadway, nearly 25 years before John would compose The Lion King, created a wistful aura of bucolic nostalgia that was hard to resist. Of course, the title track of the double album that also boasts “Candle in the Wind” and “Bennie and the Jets” made John more adored than ever, so John and Taupin now get to ponder the irony from their new vantage atop millions of albums sold—possibly while eating a certain ice cream. –Stacey Anderson Listen: Elton John “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”   See also: Elton John: “Bennie and the Jets” / Billy Joel: “Piano Man”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drX8SOjq7QU,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/420/yellowbrick.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Elton_John-Goodbye_Yellow_Brick_Road.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,101,Neil Young,“After the Gold Rush”,Reprise (1970),"Ending with a tidal wave crashing across L.A.’s Topanga Canyon, Dean Stockwell’s screenplay After the Gold Rush could have been the hippie prototype for eco-disaster movies to come. Abandoned before production, the project lived on in the mind of Stockwell’s Topanga neighbor Neil Young, who used the project to spark a creative breakthrough and one of his most enduring songs. On the title track of his 1970 album, Young gave the apocalypse a happier ending, sending the humans into space in silver ships for future regeneration. Alternately an abstract confessional, an early environmental anthem, and a grade-A specimen of what Randy Newman once dismissed as “meadow rock,” Young’s song transcends these labels. As an imagistic declaration that doesn’t totally add up, the song nonetheless conjures a vivid glimpse of Earth before departure, as told from the ground. Performed alone on piano, with only a French horn solo in the middle, the home recording would prove a template for Neutral Milk Hotel’s Jeff Mangum and many other gently verbose songwriters. Like Paul Kantner’s Blows Against the Empire, released later that year, and other ecotopian dreams, “After the Gold Rush” points towards other green worlds. But with Young’s open-hearted creak at the center, it still lives somewhere very close to home. –Jesse Jarnow Listen: Neil Young: “After the Gold Rush”See also: Neil Young: “Heart of Gold” / Neil Young: “Will to Love”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e3m_T-NMOs,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/420/afterhtegoldrush.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Neil_Young-After_the_Gold_Rush.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,100,Brian Eno,“1/1”,EG/Polydor (1978),"The genre’s creation myth involves its maker not being able to hear. Hospitalized after a car accident, Eno struggled to pick out the baroque harp music on the stereo from the rain outside, first with irritation, then with interest. Soon came 1975’s Discreet Music, a landmark album of generative synthesizer blurs. Then he had several musicians, including Robert Wyatt, improvise in the studio, though none of them could hear each other very well. Eno later extracted a section from the session where two pianos happened to entwine in a graceful way. He played the loop at half speed through delays and phased it with synth pulses to breathe mechanical life into “1/1,” the signature track from his first ambient opus, 1978’s Music for Airports. The melody remains alluring through almost 17 minutes of archetype-forging visions of light banking and cracking through clouds, always the same, always changing. But you can also picture the music hanging in strips of reel-to-reel tape, taut and exposed in the air, turning and turning. It’s densely webbed in music history: the drones of La Monte Young, the tape delay epics of Steve Reich, the new age music of Terry Riley, the chance castings of John Cage, and the self-effacing melancholy of Erik Satie, the grandfather of background music as art. Eno, selecting the loops and defining the system, assumed a godlike role over his music, changing how we think about sound in the process. At this point, unevenly overlapping waves of piano and drones that create a kind of insensate intelligence is as familiar to us as a rock band dropping into its slots. It all emanates from here. –Brian Howe Listen: Brian Eno: “1/1”  See also: Fripp & Eno: “Wind on Water” / Tangerine Dream: “Sequent C”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NG19bapbnUU,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/420/eno-ambient.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Brian_Eno-11.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,99,Miles Davis,“Right Off”,Columbia (1971),"In his autobiography, Miles Davis gave short shrift to the soundtrack album A Tribute to Jack Johnson—except to marvel over the fact that Columbia didn’t do much to promote it. “I think one of the reasons was because it was music you could dance to,” the trumpeter hypothesized. Another explanation for the marketing oversight might have been due to Davis’ unstoppable work ethic in this period. He’d recently released the double-album masterpiece Bitches Brew, and would soon oversee a febrile collage of live performances recorded at venues normally associated with rock swagger. By the time of albums like On the Corner, Davis’ fusion was sufficiently layered that it proposed a tension for listeners tasked with its absorption: better to dance through the complexity, or to sit down and concentrate on all the music’s kinetic parts? “Right Off,” the side-length first track on Jack Johnson, doesn’t invite that same stress, as it’s one of the most approachable opuses in Davis’ funk-meets-rock catalog. Over the first 10 minutes, drummer Billy Cobham offers a stable, mid-tempo beat that bassist Michael Henderson matches in his ease. Instead of solos that crowd atop one another, the first bluesy spotlights for Davis and guitarist John McLaughlin are well-separated. As the piece was stitched together from multiple long-jam takes, there are brief respites in the final edit—though the dance feel is never gone for long. And during the final section, the joint exclamations of Davis, McLaughlin, keyboardist Herbie Hancock, and saxophonist Steve Grossman bring this convivial barnstormer to a very memorable climax. –Seth Colter Walls Listen: Miles Davis: “Right Off” See also: Miles Davis: “On the Corner” / Miles Davis: “Bitches Brew”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30t937GYnCA,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/miles.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Miles_Davis-Right_Off.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,98,Jimi Hendrix,“Machine Gun”,Capitol (1970),"To describe 1969 as an eventful year in American history would be a massive understatement. President Richard Nixon took office. Vietnam War protests continued to roil, even as the United States military began a troop draw-down from that conflict. Charles Manson and his followers committed a series of horrible murders. Violence, or the fear of it, seemed to exist everywhere; the psychedelic 1960s were rapidly giving way to the paranoid 1970s. Recorded live at New York’s Fillmore East by guitarist Jimi Hendrix, bassist Billy Cox, and drummer Buddy Miles on January 1, 1970, “Machine Gun” was something more than a Vietnam protest anthem, attempting to reckon with the world’s disorder on a psychic level. Lyrically, the song evinced an aghast bravado that its performance contradicted, with its clipped drum fills, its downcast bass line, and its guitars—tangled, oceanic, furious, searing, distorted—expressing a fundamentally human dismay that no words could approach. No other recording in Hendrix’s oeuvre is as evocative or as deeply felt. –Raymond Cummings Listen: Jimi Hendrix: “Machine Gun”  See also: Mandrill: “Peace and Love (Movement IV)” / Miles Davis: “Honky Tonk”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJw_XqvsSIs,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/machinegun.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jimi_Hendrix-Machine_Gun.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,97,Bob Marley & the Wailers,“Concrete Jungle”,Island (1973),"“Concrete Jungle” is pure reality—it’s a song that engages directly with history’s connection to the present. As Bob Marley sings, ""No chains around my feet/But I'm not free/I know I am bounded/In captivity,” it’s in more subdued tones than his anthemic “Exodus” or “Africa Unite,” but the ideas power the song forward. “Concrete Jungle” provides a pointed critique of inequality and colonialism, while at the same time reaches out to international audiences. The song’s structure is notable, mixing the Wailers’ trademark one-drop bounce with a rock‘n’roll solo by guitarist Wayne Perkins. It’s a one-track lesson in effectively crossing over to international audiences (one of producer Chris Blackwell’s specialties). It may not have the subtle artistry of “Turn Your Lights Down Low,” and it is more poetic about its message than the straightforward “Zimbabwe,” but “Concrete Jungle” demonstrates exactly why Bob Marley & the Wailers, spurred on by Blackwell, were still able to reach hearts around the world. –Erin Macleod Listen: Bob Marly & the Wailers: “Concrete Jungle”  See also: Bob Marley & the Wailers: “No Woman No Cry” / Bob Marley & the Wailers: “War”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y248eQUIXOI,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/thewailers.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bob_Marley__the_Wailers-Concrete_Jungle.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,96,Can,“Future Days”,United Artists Records (1973),"Can were never just one band. This was true literally, as they changed lineups and swapped out duties, and it was more true musically, as they shifted between Franken-styles like ""loud shout-y mini-punk,"" or ""gypsy ambient."" All had their charms. Still, if you were to freeze a single version of the group in amber, the band that made “Future Days” should be the choice. “Future Days” is the finest marriage of Damo Suzuki's building-a-mystery vocal style and the band's more exploratory tendencies. While slow and quiet, it still packs more rhythms than most modern techno. It's not clear what guitarist Michael Karoli is conjuring, but it seems non-threatening. If you are the type of person who insists on knowing how a magic trick was performed, you can probably Google ""Future Days lyrics,"" but you will be doing yourself a disservice. When, near the six-minute mark, the band momentarily swells, it feels like some kind of breakthrough has been made, and they spend the rest of the song retreating into silence. Suzuki, who retired from music for a decade after Future Days, remained there. The rest of the group just formed a new Can. –Andrew Gaerig Listen: Can: “Future Days”  See also: Can: “Moonshake” / Agitation Free: “First Communication”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lsl28RkPso8,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/futuredays.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Can-Future_Days.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,95,Iggy Pop,“The Passenger”,RCA Victor (1977),"The other famous song off Lust For Life, “The Passenger” is slightly less well-known than the title track but every bit as memorable. One of only two tracks from the album not written by producer David Bowie, this one was penned by guitarist Ricky Gardiner, who creates a structurally simplistic track buoyed by a catchy, ringing guitar riff. It’s easy to listen to the intro and envision a million bands at home trying to figure out how to copy it. The song basically repeats itself for five minutes, the guitar riff locking in hypnotically with the drumbeat to underscore Pop’s haunting narrative about being forever on the road. The incanted vocal style here is more akin to his vocals on The Idiot than the more vampirical singing on the rest of Lust for Life; the distorted sing-speaking is essentially the blueprint for Julian Casablancas’s whole approach on the first two Strokes records. The fact that “The Passenger” was never a single is surprising (neither was “Lust for Life,” for that matter), but history has elevated it to the canonical status it deserves. –Benjamin Scheim Listen: Iggy Pop: “The Passenger”  See also: Iggy Pop: “Nightclubbing” / The Jam: “Down in the Tube Station at Midnight”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLhN__oEHaw,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/lustforlifemain.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Iggy_Pop-The_Passenger.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,94,Kraftwerk,“Autobahn”,Philips/Vertigo (1974),"Kraftwerk’s first two albums are both very good and their third, 1973’s Ralf and Florian, is great, but all could be described as krautrock proper—that is, the shaggy experimental work of long-haired German hippies who were born just after WWII. “Autobahn” was something else entirely. It was long, stretching over an entire LP side, but despite its proggy length it had the bones of a pop song, new territory for Kraftwerk. It marked a couple of other firsts for the Dusseldorf band: Their first song with proper lyrics and their first thematic engagement with a specific technology. Later they’d grapple with nuclear power, cycling, radio waves, train travel, and the personal computer, but here they set their sights on the serene German motorway, with its promise of steady movement and adventure. This being a transitional work, “Autobahn” still features flute and even a guitar solo, but the beating heart of the song is the Moog bassline and the lightly chugging electronic percussion, which hum along in endless forward motion like glistening pistons in an air-cooled Volkswagen. That machine rhythm defines the song and gets to the heart of its appeal. Though the chorus refrain is a catchy Beach Boys interpolation, the essence of “Autobahn”’s magic is its trance-inducing repetition. Despite its great length—a single edit of less than four minutes exists and even hit the charts in the U.S., though it’s now mostly forgotten—this was the dawn of sleek electro-pop minimalism, the place where Kraftwerk became Kraftwerk, the reigning visionaries of music’s future. –Mark Richardson Listen: Kraftwerk: “Autobahn”  See also: Harmonia: “Deluxe (Immer Weiter)” / Cluster: “Sowiesoso”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQwxN24MltM,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/420/autobahn.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kraftwerk-Autobahn.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,93,Patti Smith,“Land”,Arista (1975),"There’s a scene in the Patti Smith documentary Dream of Life that catches the New Jersey native discussing what it was like to abandon home for New York City. “There was no chance to be destroyed or really be created there,” Smith says, musing on how “there was no time for daydreaming” in the Garden State despite how much easier life was. “You just lived. And that’s okay for some people, but I always felt something different stirring in me.” So she fled Jersey for the promise of change. “I knew there was stuff inside me that could, like, flower,” Smith goes. “Maybe it would really ruin me. Maybe I’d feel really shitty about it. But at least it would come out.” “Land,” the sprawling climax of Horses, summons this magic from the inside of every person. It does not want you to do easy things and it leads by example. Through Smith’s sinister and surreal tale of a boy named Johnny, by invoking an incantatory American landscape of jazz and dance and New Orleans R&B, through the dream logic of Smith’s beloved Arthur Rimbaud. “Land” is a factual open door to “the sea of possibilities” that Smith still fosters on a molecular level. In 1975, the word “punk” had barely entered the frame, but Patti—ever the wordsmith—knew “possibility” was the sharpest synonym the English language had to offer. “Land” exists to tell people there is more to life than what it seems to provide. Rock’n’roll songs are rarely more explicitly generative than this: It is about creation. It is a meditation on physicality. It sounds like it is pouring from the sky. Like a magnet, it draws things out of people who hear it. It is a directive: manifest. –Jenn Pelly Listen: Patti Smith: “Land” See also: Patti Smith: “Pissing in a River” / Lizzy Mercier Descloux & Patti Smith: “Morning High”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSk6jfln84A,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/420/horses.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Patti_Smith-Land.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,92,Suicide,“Ghost Rider”,Red Star (1977),"Alan Vega made no secret of his affinity for Elvis Presley. That influence is inescapable on “Ghost Rider,” on which Vega’s vocals—direct, scatted, gasped—are similarly lustful, seductive, and dangerous. Martin Rev’s waves of wiry electronics are a resilient hellfire; listening to the song conjures images of Vega hopscotching from one patch of hot coals to another. The brimstone whiff of religiosity squares nicely with the subject whose premise Suicide chose to spotlight: a damned, C-list Marvel anti-hero with a motorcycle and a flaming head. When the New York-based duo recorded this definitive version of “Ghost Rider” in a studio, they had five years of confrontational live performances under their belts. It was more than long enough to cement a dedicated following, one that may not have been fully cognizant of a clear lineage between the piano fervor of Presley, Little Richard, and Jerry Lee Lewis and the sound that the world would come to recognize as “punk.” –Raymond Cummings Listen: Suicide: “Ghost Rider”  See also: Suicide: “Frankie Teardrop” / Suicide: “Cheree”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dn7SBQ6X5HU,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/suicide.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Suicide-Ghost_Rider.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,91,Joy Division,“Disorder”,Factory (1979),"After nearly four decades, the pulsar gracing the cover of Unknown Pleasures has somehow become a fixture in study halls, music festivals, and malls. Right alongside the Dark Side of the Moon prism, the Nirvana smiley face, and the naked chest of Jim Morrison stands a symbol of Ian Curtis, recognized and even sported by people who may have never listened to the music. While there are eras where their influence is stronger than others, Joy Division remains elemental in indie rock, one of those bands kids inevitably stumble upon if they show any desire to dig deeper. And, as is so often the case, Ian Curtis became in death an exaggerated version of what he was in life: an avatar for the crushing yet indeterminate alienation shared by teenagers with the certitude that they’re the only one who feels this way. In other words, a lot of people need a T-shirt to express the exact thing “Disorder” is about: Wanting to experience the sensations of a normal person while feeling like you’re doomed to be on the outside, getting just close enough to see how far away you really are. Unlike their aforementioned peers in high school rock iconography, Joy Division are rarely the subject of an all-consuming listening phase, but rather, serve as an introduction to a completely different way of thinking about rock music: Martin Hannett’s severe production, Peter Hook’s scything bass, Curtis’ wounded bellow and plainspoken vulnerability. These are things that provide relief from the jocks and bullies that still find a way to misread “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Spending a life in indie rock may eventually make you immune to the seismic impact of “Disorder,” but maybe that’s why those arctic whooshes are there at the end—to remind you of the rush of hearing “Disorder” for the very first time. –Ian Cohen Listen: Joy Division: “Disorder”  See also: Joy Division: “Warsaw” / Public Image Ltd: “Public Image”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hym5_1T1ZJo,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/disorder.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Joy_Division-Disorder.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,90,The Congos,“Fisherman”,Black Art/VP (1977),"Producer Lee “Scratch” Perry’s run was unparalleled in the 1970s: working with Bob Marley and the Wailers, expanding spacetime dimensions with his bass-braining dubs, and producing by turns sublime and swampy roots reggae classics: Police & Thieves, War ina Babylon, Revolution Dub, Super Ape. But on the eve of debuting the greatest album of them all, the Congos’ Heart of the Congos, Perry had a falling-out with the label and subsequently the group, and the record sank upon release. But Heart of the Congos has since ascended to its rightful place in the canon, its perfection encapsulated in “Fisherman.” Across a dubbed-out beat that skitters and ripples like a stone across the ocean, the celestial vocal harmonies of ""Ashanti"" Roy Johnson and Cedric Myton sing of poverty and hardship, the fathoms-deep baritone of Watty Burnett adds even more heaviness. But rather than voicing the feeling of having to labor so as to feed the hungry children awaiting them on land (“Lots of hungry belly pickney they a shore”), the song’s true weight comes from its biblical profundity. Invoking the names of Simon, Peter, James, and John, the song alludes to Matthew 4:18, wherein Jesus turned these mere fishermen into his apostles and “fishers of men” at the sea of Galilee. Similarly, “Fisherman” and Perry’s Black Ark production transubstantiates the Congos from mere reggae vocal group into something divine. –Andy Beta Listen: The Congos: “Fisherman”  See also: Congos: “Ark of the Covenant” / Culture: “Two Sevens Clash”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDBvuGAZe3I,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/thecongos.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Congos-Fisherman.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,89,Blondie,“Dreaming”,Chrysalis (1979),"The lead single off Blondie’s fourth album, Eat to the Beat, “Dreaming” finds the band having fully assimilated their CBGB punk beginnings with the pop chops that got them all the way to Top 40 radio in the 1970s’ closing years. Guitarist Chris Stein likes to call the song “a cop of ‘Dancing Queen,’” for good reason. Like all power-pop songs worth their “power,” “Dreaming” doesn’t overcomplicate matters. One listens to it for three reasons. The first is drummer Clem Burke. The second is the hook, one of the greats. The third is the workaday wistfulness (the real mark of ABBA) that underlies the best power-pop and pop-punk tracks. The lyric could only come from a star, the sort of person who can’t have a quick lunch without luring in an admirer: “People stop and stare at me/We just walk on by/We just keep on dreamin’.” But suitors, fame, ’70s star excess, and every hour of every day are all just fodder for the altar of Debbie Harry’s dreaming. –Katherine St. Asaph Listen: Blondie: “Dreaming” See also: Pretenders: “Kid” / The Records: “Starry Eyes”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TU3-lS_Gryk,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/420/dreaming.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Blondie-Dreaming.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,88,The Cars,“Just What I Needed”,Elektra (1978),"As the 1970s wound down, the dominance of heavy guitar rock gave way to shiny synth-pop, and parked between those two oppositional poles were the Cars. The Boston group debuted in 1978 and quickly became instrumental in selling punk subversity to the suburbs thanks to the shrewd songwriting of Ric Ocasek, a black-sunglassed Suicide fan whose drainpipe trousers concealed Beatle boots. “Just What I Needed” opens with an onslaught of hammerhead guitar strikes, but the song is a bowl of meat and potatoes topped with strawberry sorbet, its muscular riffs tempered by laser-beamed synth tones. And though it’s ostensibly a love song, its procedural depiction of desire is closer in spirit to Gang of Four than the Fab Four: Ocasek feeds his lyrics through Benjamin Orr’s aloof voice as if programming a robot, creating a canyon-sized distance between the dewy-eyed sentiments and their delivery. But the moment that killer chorus hits, all of the Cars’ dichotomous strategies—irony vs. sincerity, classicism vs. futurism, punk-schooled antagonism vs. arena-rock accessibility—meld together to forge a modern power-pop template that future bands from Weezer to Guided by Voices to the Strokes would all eagerly adopt. –Stuart Berman Listen: The Cars: “Just What I Needed”    See also: Cars: “Moving in Stereo” / Tubeway Army: “Down in the Park”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byCqOvRMOvo,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/thecars.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Cars-Just_What_I_Needed.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,87,Steely Dan,“Peg”,ABC (1977),"By the time they released Aja in 1977, Steely Dan were situated between fusion and oddball, glamour-obsessed art-pop, comparable to Weather Report and Roxy Music in equal measure. In this light, “Peg” is the perfect Steely Dan song, and one of the strangest hits to ever grace the mainstream. Its subject is famously fuzzy: Peg may refer to aspiring starlet Peg Entwhistle, who moved to Southern California seeking fame, only to jump to her death from the Hollywood Sign in 1932 when her dreams didn’t pan out. Or maybe Peg is a wannabe porn actress and Donald Fagen is playing her sleazy director—that angle sure adds, um, dimension to the couplet “And when you smile for the camera/I know I’ll love you better.” Aside from its star-crossed narrative, Steely Dan’s production process on “Peg” reflected their behind-the-boards meticulousness and ear for rhythm. They arranged chord voicings like genome sequences. They commissioned algebraic guitar solos only to discard them like failed prototypes—“Peg” went through six before they settled on Jay Graydon’s magnificent Polynesian-flavored blues. On the verses, Donald Fagen filters a 12-bar blues through their favored major 7th chord. Add a hook played on a sax/synth hybrid called a lyricon and Michael McDonald and Paul Griffin’s uncanny-valley backing vocals, and ""Peg"" is the essence of queasy listening. Then there’s the rhythm section: Chuck Rainey’s slick funk bass and a deep-in-pocket Rick Marotta opening and closing his hi-hat like he’s tapping out Morse code. A deceptively simple groove combined with an elaborate melodic latticework and a dark narrative about the perils of fame is not usually the stuff of hit pop singles. That’s Steely Dan, though. And with “Peg,” they again landed the kind of pop-rock triple axel that they themselves invented. –Eric Harvey Listen: Steely Dan: “Peg”  See also: Steely Dan: “F.M. (No Static at All)” / Steely Dan: “Kid Charlemagne”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwqLH-1UWUo,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/aja.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Steely_Dan-Peg.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,86,Stevie Wonder,“As”,Tamla/Motown (1976),"It was hard to stand out on Stevie Wonder’s brilliant 1976 album Songs in the Key of Life, but “As,” a seven-plus minute song that starts slow and builds to a pulpit-banging sermon, does just that. As a choir gives a glorious account of all the ways nature would have to turn on itself for Wonder’s love to end (“Until the day that eight times eight times eight is four”), Wonder adlibs, the purity of his voice finally matched by a purity of lyrics. Midway through the song, Stevie preaches a growly, rousing message, and from there the song grows wings and takes off, finding a space to land at weddings ever since. Much has been made about the object of Wonder’s adoration: Is it a woman? God? Or is Wonder acting as God talking to man? In his book on the album, Zeth Lundy said that by 1975 Wonder was giving serious thought to quitting music and moving to Ghana to work with handicapped children. Given where his head was, you could think of “As” as a kind of love letter to the world, Wonder’s spiritual impulses finding their ideal expression. –Rebecca Haithcoat Listen: Stevie Wonder: “As” See also: Stevie Wonder: “I Wish” / Syreeta: “I Love Every Little Thing About You”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWhMyOs0pCQ,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/420/songsinthekey.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Stevie_Wonder-As.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,85,The Isley Brothers,“That Lady”,T-Neck/Epic (1973),"As they fought to stay relevant in a new decade, ’60s R&B groups updated their sounds in mostly predictable ways. They got a little funkier, cribbed moves from disco, dressed flashier, and crossed their fingers that nobody would notice their matching suits fitting tighter than they used to. The Isley Brothers, however, weren't content to merely keep with the times. Looking to pave their own path, the group underwent perhaps the most audacious reinvention of any of the major soul acts of their era. They retooled their lineup so they were no longer a vocal trio but rather a six-piece funk-rock band—hence the title of their 1973 album, 3 + 3 . The new lineup never sounded more jolting than on lead single “That Lady.” It put the spotlight not on Ronald Isley’s velvety falsetto, but rather to freshman member Ernie Isley’s unbridled electric guitar. Fused with the track’s racing Latin rhythm, that frenzied guitar scurries from one warped, synthesized tone to the next; the effect plays like an eight-track tape that got tangled in the deck and lit on fire from all the friction. “That Lady” was a do-over for the Isleys, who'd first recorded an unassuming doo-wop version in 1964 (an eternity ago given the rate music was evolving). It’s poetic, then, that the Beastie Boys and later Kendrick Lamar both sampled the track—in a sense, it was already a remix of itself. And it’s easy to see what those younger artists heard in it. After all these decades, that guitar sounds as wild as ever. –Evan Rytlewski Listen: The Isley Brothers: “That Lady” See also: Donny Hathaway: “The Ghetto” / Jackson 5: “ABC”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1Mvy3E8P2U,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/420/isley.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Isley_Brothers-That_Lady.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,84,The O’Jays,“For the Love of Money”,Philadelphia International (1973),"The O’Jays recorded “For the Love of Money” in October of ’73. On top of witnessing the growing malaise in the country, the R&B and soul group from Ohio had been knocking around the music industry since forming in 1958, plenty long enough to see the ugly side of the business. Titling a song after a bible verse that begins, “For the love of money is the root of all evil” wasn’t just poetic, it captured the spirit of the moment. Never has a song about physical, emotional, and moral ruin sounded so uplifting. Plucked out first with echo and then without, the opening bass riff is one of the most iconic in any decade. Clocking in at over seven minutes, the energy never flags, and the message never overstays its welcome. –Rebecca Haithcoat Listen: The O’Jays: “For the Love of Money” See also: O'Jays: “Backstabbers” / Baby Huey: “Hard Times”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXE_n2q08Yw,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/shipahoy.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_OJays-For_the_Love_of_Money.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,83,The Kinks,“Lola”,Pye Records/Reprise Records (1970),"Oh, the think pieces this song would launch if it came out in 2016. It’s a story built for hot takes: Boy meets girl, girl turns out to be boy, boy is cool with it, girl makes boy a man. Given that the song is nearly 50 years old, it’s astonishing how delicately this gender-fluid tale is told—Ray Davies largely complies with modern trans pronoun standards, and the central thesis of “Girls will be boys and boys will be girls/It’s a mixed-up, muddled-up, shook up world,” could pass as a seriously liberal declaration even today. Gender politics aside, “Lola” is a marvel of musical storytelling, a novella collapsed into just about the catchiest four minutes possible. Minimal touches abound; there’s the use of repeated “Well, I’m not…” statements to characterize the bashful narrator, the pregnant imagery of champagne that tastes like Coca-Cola and “electric candlelight,” the subtlety of the main character’s reveal. “Lola” also condensed the growing melodic maturity of the Kinks’ previous three albums—which largely occurred out of eyesight of the U.S.—into a radio-ready package that finally hit on both sides of the Atlantic, rescuing the Kinks from eternal cult status stateside. While Davies and the Kinks would spend the rest of the decade exploring musical narratives in much less concise and successful fashion, “Lola” still stands as one of the finest rock showtunes in FM rotation. –Rob Mitchum Listen: The Kinks: “Lola”     See also: The Raincoats: “Lola” / John Cale: “Paris 1919”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LemG0cvc4oU,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/420/lolapt1.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Kinks-Lola.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,82,George Harrison,“My Sweet Lord”,Apple (1970),"In December 1969, as the Beatles’ protracted Let It Be sessions drew to a close, George Harrison hopped on a few dates of the soul group Delaney & Bonnie and Friends’ European tour. The stint was a breath of fresh air for Harrison, who was able to experience band life beyond his famous group and become a more confident guitar player in his own right. While noodling around backstage at a press event, he began to pen a gospel song; the result was “My Sweet Lord,” Harrison’s his first solo single that served as both an announcement of autonomy and his humble submission to a higher power. A hymnal disguised as a pop song, “My Sweet Lord” uses simple, repetitive lyrics and mantras (“Hallelujah,” “Hare Krishna”) to subtly indoctrinate its audience into a universal faith. Adding to the effect is the song’s signature use of slide guitar, taught to Harrison by Delaney Bramlett on the 1969 tour; its high pitch resembles the sitar sounds Harrison favored. The song was an immediate hit but also a quick controversy: In 1971, Harrison was accused of copying its melody from the Chiffons’ 1963 song “He’s So Fine.” Eventually, the United States district court ruled that Harrison was guilty of subconscious plagiarism, and Harrison developed an extreme paranoia about songwriting for many years. All ensuing problems aside, “My Sweet Lord” helped ensure the success of one of rock’s first triple albums, All Things Must Pass. –Quinn Moreland Listen: George Harrison: “My Sweet Lord”  See also: George Harrison: “What Is Life” / Paul McCartney: “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72Ym0My5lQY,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/420/my-sweet-lord-geroge-harrison1971%20%281%29.jpg,/dataset/artwork/George_Harrison-My_Sweet_Lord.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,81,The B-52’s,“Rock Lobster”,DB Recs (1978),"Before R.E.M. first murmured or Pylon started gyrating, the B-52’s put Athens, Georgia, on the map–mainly by moving up to New York. When their shows at Max’s Kansas City and CBGB started attracting local press, the band scraped together enough cash to record a single: “Rock Lobster,” a deliriously infectious, kitsch-punk beach anthem. It’s their version of a Frankie & Annette movie, with the genders flipped (“Boys in bikinis! Girls in surfboards!”) and a school of fish almost as outlandish as the band members themselves, with their miniskirts and beehive hairdos. It’s a crazy quilt concoction, a bracing mix of deep-in-the-pocket drumming, surf guitar licks, sci-fi organ chords, and wild vocal gesticulations from Fred Schneider (“There goes a narwhal!”), Cindy Wilson (“Ooowop! Ooowop!”), and Kate Pierson (“Eeeeeeee!”). Amazingly, the song reaches a type of punk intensity, and Schneider yelling “Let’s rock!” as the band clicks into a reckless frug-groove is one of the most thrilling moments of the ’70s. The B-52’s’ energy isn’t necessarily benign—there’s some danger in their absurdities—but it truly is inclusive. If New York’s punk scene was confrontational, “Rock Lobster” made sure everyone was invited to this bizarre party. –Stephen Deusner Listen: The B-52’s: “Rock Lobster”  See also: B-52's: “52 Girls” / B-52's: “Dance This Mess Around”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4QSYx4wVQg,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/420/rocklobster.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_B-52s-Rock_Lobster.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,80,ABBA,“Dancing Queen”,Atlantic (1976),"Imagine, for a moment, that you were given the task of explaining pop music to someone who had never heard it. Not just the genre’s characteristics, but the feeling of pop music, the magic, the unifying power that one song can have over the entire globe. Pound for pound, it would make sense to begin with the work of ABBA, and subsequently, their undisputed, most famous song. By 1976, ABBA had already given Sweden its first Eurovision win, sold millions of records, and were well on their way to becoming the most popular group in the world, but even the most astute of fans wouldn’t have been able to predict the universal success of “Dancing Queen.” A song so confident in its structure that it starts from the middle of its chorus, “Dancing Queen” bottles the out-of-body euphoria that accompanies dancing for dancing’s sake, with no agenda or motive other than pure joy. Their dynamic vocals layered to heaven, Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Agnetha Fältskog narrate a typical night out for the eponymous teenage heroine—teasing men, shaking tambourines, having a blast—and craft not only a pitch-perfect portrait of the hedonistic disco scene they were mimicking via their own, more down-to-Earth Europop, but a nostalgia of the innocence that scene ultimately destroyed. In the Dancing Queen’s club, there are no drugs, sex is playful, and the music never stops: not only is there no comedown, there’s nowhere to come down to. –Cameron Cook Listen: ABBA: “Dancing Queen” See also: Gloria Gaynor: “I Will Survive” / Andrea True Connection: “More More More”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFrGuyw1V8s,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/420/abba.jpg,/dataset/artwork/ABBA-Dancing_Queen.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,79,Talking Heads,“Life During Wartime”,Sire (1979),"There’s something particularly toxic about our air nowadays. Maybe it’s the actual pollutants, the burned fossil fuels and excesses of hairspray. Or maybe it’s the poisonous cloud of rhetoric that seeps from car radios and Facebook comments. It’s never been easier to imagine living in dystopia, and the media will tell you that we already are. Under these conditions, Talking Heads have never felt more prophetic. Their Fear of Music arrived at the very end of the ‘70s as the soundtrack for a world on the brink, in which David Byrne delivers his most potent character: the paranoid, disheveled wanderer surviving on nothing but peanut butter, “connected only to the imminent collapse.” Byrne delivers the song as if transmitting from a supercomputer, his words swift and robotic; the humid 4/4 beat picks away at the listener with creepy yet funky insistence. Byrne wrote the song thinking about the failed revolutions of Baader-Meinhof, the drama of Patty Hearst, and the creative cesspool of Tompkins Square in New York. In that way, those creative origin points were very much of their time, but also part of culture's endless, lurid state of alarm. If there is a time and place for “Life During Wartime,” it is undeniably now. –Kevin Lozano Listen: Talking Heads: “Life During Wartime”  See also: Talking Heads: “Take Me to the River“ / Talking Heads: “Heaven”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NywTcGOUkE,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/420/fearofmusic.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Talking_Heads-Life_During_Wartime.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,78,The Who,“Baba O’Riley”,Decca/Track (1971),"Pete Townshend planned to follow Tommy, the Who’s career-making 1969 rock opera, with Lifehouse, a sci-fi epic that nearly prophesied the internet but never coalesced into a coherent thought. Dream abandoned, the group scrambled to record Who’s Next, a record so brawny, it never indicated it was assembled from the remnants of a failed dream. However, the opener, “Baba O’Riley,” does bear traces of the discarded opera. It unfurls with the imposing majesty of a fanfare, plus the lyrics suggest a larger story: Why is Roger Daltrey singing about fighting for his meals, and who is Sally? Narrative doesn’t matter in “Baba O’Riley,” but words do: how the hints of pacifism are overshadowed by righteous conflict, how the exodus to the happy ones doesn’t seem as liberating as the teenage wasteland itself. Add it all up and “Baba O’Riley” feels like a celebration of freedom. “Baba O’Riley” is tense in a way no other Who recording is, all due to Townshend’s infatuation with synthesizers. The instruments weren't exactly unknown in mainstream rock by 1971, but the insistent, sequenced loop that opens “Baba O’Riley” and underpins the entire recording was something new, and it transformed the Who, turning the mercurial quartet into a lethal weapon. Keith Moon, who lived by instinct onstage and off, had to play to its rhythm, so once he was anchored, the group’s power was concentrated; where it once threatened to burst, it now only gained force. Just as importantly, “Baba O’Riley” is one of the few Who songs where Townshend shares vocals with Daltrey. Usually, Daltrey functioned as Townshend’s mouthpiece, letting him unleash the braggadocio he never could express himself, but here Roger handles the boasts and Pete provides commentary on the chaos surrounding him. Add to it a coda so eccentric, it underscores the drive and curiosity that led Townshend to write “Baba O’Riley” in the first place. –Stephen Thomas Erlewine Listen: The Who: “Baba O’Riley”   See also: The Who: “Don't Get Fooled Again” / The Who: “Love, Reign O'er Me”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2KRpRMSu4g,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/420/thewho.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Who-Baba_ORiley.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,77,The Velvet Underground,“Rock & Roll”,Cotillion (1970),"The Velvet Underground’s first albums introduced all kinds of tragic characters who sought to numb their pain with hard drugs and rough sex. On “Rock & Roll,” Lou Reed prescribed something decidedly more wholesome: the radio. The most unabashedly feel-good song from Loaded, the Velvet Underground's most unabashedly feel-good album, it introduces Jenny, a young girl (and clear Reed surrogate) disillusioned by the world. Unlike so many of the band’s protagonists before her, though, Jenny gets a happy ending: She finds a reason to live in rock music and, as Reed puts it in his signature effusiveness, “it was all right.” In almost any other context, “all right” is shorthand for “good enough” or “merely adequate”—but Reed’s repeated recitations of the word makes it sound like a zen state. All those “all rights” really rang out when Reed revisited “Rock & Roll” a few years later on his blustery live album Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal, this time presenting the track as a glammed-out, 10-minute ripper. In case it wasn’t clear on the grounded original, the live version’s churchy organ accompaniment lays bare: Reed wasn’t just singing; he was testifying. –Evan Rytlewski Listen: The Velvet Underground: “Rock & Roll” See also: Velvet Underground: “Who Loves the Sun” / Lou Reed: “Vicious”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTsYHlnseJI,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/loaded.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Velvet_Underground-Rock__Roll.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,76,Brian Eno,“St. Elmo’s Fire”,Island (1975),"When Brian Eno put out Another Green World in 1975, he was moving away from the pop world. Though the album was significantly more instrumental than the two inspired art-rock records that preceded it, it contained exquisite moments—especially “St. Elmo’s Fire,” a song that seemed to set the stage for much of the dreamy electronica that would follow in the early ’80s and again in the early ‘00s. “St. Elmo’s Fire” puts all of Eno’s musical acumen on display: his confident, honeyed baritone, paired with a sweet melody; a confluence of well-balanced instruments from strange sources that merge into a burbling wall of sound; a cooing polyphonic chorus. There’s also some otherworldly guitar from Robert Fripp, a perfect match of technical prowess and odd effects. Add the tinkly castanet percussion and the bouncy piano rhythm riff, and the result is an absolutely brilliant, weird track that feels like a pop song stolen from the next century. –Benjamin Scheim Listen: Brian Eno: “St. Elmo’s Fire”     See also: Brian Eno: “The Big Ship” / Brian Eno: “Needles In the Camel’s Eye”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PncSKrOAwl8,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/420/stelmo.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Brian_Eno-St_Elmos_Fire.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,75,Leonard Cohen,“Famous Blue Raincoat”,Columbia (1971),"The World War II-era German song “Lili Marlene” originated, a quarter-century before Lale Anderson first recorded it, as a poem by Hans Leip. Though it’s usually performed by a woman, the narrator is a soldier whose undying love for Lili Marlene sustains him through battle. All night, he waits for her under a streetlight. It doesn’t seem like she ever arrives. Lili Marlene comes up at a key moment in Leonard Cohen’s “Famous Blue Raincoat,” a spare track from 1971’s Songs of Love and Hate that combines those emotions beautifully. “The last time we saw you, you looked so much older/Your famous blue raincoat was torn at the shoulder,” Cohen recalls with a lolling incantation that isn’t quite singing, but justifies the guitar accompaniment. “You went to the station to meet every train/You came home without Lili Marlene.” But it’s not just the futile waiting and the poetry that connect the songs; both blur the boundary between narrator and subject. “Famous Blue Raincoat” is a letter without a salutation, which only registers as strange because it ends with an indelible signature: “Sincerely, L. Cohen.” There are clues, though, that what sounds like an olive branch extended to the renegade member of a love triangle is really a conversation between the rational Cohen, in New York, and his romantic alter ego, “one more thin gypsy thief” wandering the desert. The historical blue raincoat, for example, belonged to Cohen. From Love and Hate’s “Last Year’s Man” to 1977’s “Death of a Ladies’ Man,” so many of his best songs radiate ambivalence about his rakish persona. And then there’s that devastating opening couplet: “It’s four in the morning, the end of December/I’m writing you now just to see if you’re better.” Hours before sunrise, days before the end of the year, could Cohen be talking to anyone except himself? –Judy Berman Listen: Leonard Cohen: “Famous Blue Raincoat” See also: Tom Waits: “Tom Traubert's Blues (Three Sheets to the Wind in Copenhagen)” / Jacques Brel: “Ne Me Quitte Pas”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohk3DP5fMCg,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/420/songsoflove.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Leonard_Cohen-Famous_Blue_Raincoat.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,74,Jimmy Cliff,“The Harder They Come”,Island (1972),"Jimmy Cliff’s pure tenor vocals landed him the lead role in the most famous Jamaican film ever made, Perry Henzell’s 1972 crime drama The Harder They Come. Cliff’s title cut for the soundtrack is a star turn in itself, an anthem for striving against the odds that bounces with touches of ’60s ska, roots reggae, and a singalong chorus. Both Cliff’s music and Henzell’s film presented Jamaica more widely than international audiences had ever seen the country before. One scene in particular, Cliff’s character Ivanhoe Martin recording in studio—apparently a true-to-life scene—provided rare insight into the production and instrumentation of reggae just before it became a global phenomenon. The Harder They Come was an excellent primer for Jamaica in the 1970s, and Cliff’s tune continues to inspire; Cher, Joe Jackson, Jerry Garcia and more artists have covered it. –Erin Macleod Listen: Jimmy Cliff: “The Harder They Come” See also: Alton Ellis: “I Am Still in Love” / John Holt: “You'll Never Find (Another Love Like Mine)”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Znh0OM9jiA,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/jimmycliff.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Jimmy_Cliff-The_Harder_They_Come.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,73,Caetano Veloso,“You Don’t Know Me”,Philips (1972),"On December 13, 1968, Artur da Costa e Silva, the president of Brazil’s military regime, signed the Ato Institucional Número Cinco, an executive order which gave him the dictatorial powers to disempower the national Congress, suspend the country's constitution, and begin an aggressive campaign of censorship. One of the regime’s targets were the dissident youth involved in Brazil’s tropicalia music scene. Not long after the signing of the order, they arrested two of the genre’s biggest stars: Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil. The government allowed them to play one last concert to raise money for their plane tickets. In the summer of 1969, Veloso and Gil landed in London, where they remain in exile for three years. They both moved, almost invisibly at times, in rarefied circles, absorbing the wide-ranging influence of London at the turn of the decade. Transa was Veloso’s second album from this period of exile, and it was breakthrough in his ability to convey the alienation he felt in London. Sonically, the album orbits around what he called the “frailties” of his imperfect guitar style, making the album’s scale seem almost private. In the opening song of the album, “You Don’t Know Me,” he writes what is probably his purest and most unvarnished expression of the loss he experienced during those years, “Feel so lonely/The world is spinning around slowly,” he sings. The song floats between Portuguese and English seamlessly, highlighting the essential emotion irrevocably lost in translation. It’s a masterpiece of a song that could only be written from the point of a view of an exile. –Kevin Lozano Listen: Caetano Veloso: “You Don’t Know Me” See also: Caetano Veloso: “Nine Out of Ten” / Os Mutantes: “Baby (1971)”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwjmKMlr9yo,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/420/transa.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Caetano_Veloso-You_Dont_Know_Me.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,72,Roy Ayers Ubiquity,“Everybody Loves The Sunshine”,Polydor (1976),"Just look at the cover of this album: Roy Ayers beaming sassily, hand on his hip, wearing an impossibly yellow t-shirt, standing fairly conspicuously against a backdrop of the same color. This was not a song that was trying to hide, though it’s nimble enough that it could. Vibraphonist Ayers got funky in the ’70s. While his jazz never was without swing, his turn towards the groove is particularly pronounced in this era. But “Everybody Loves the Sunshine” is a subtle, beautiful song, not an exuberant one. “My life, my life, my life, my life/In the sunshine/Everybody loves the sunshine,” go the bulk of the lyrics (also, excellently, “Just bees and things and flowers”). Everyone is feeling the heat, moving slow to the low rhythm of the congas on a song that perfects the art of loping. –Matthew Schnipper Listen: Roy Ayers Ubiquity: “Everybody Loves The Sunshine”  See also: Roy Ayers Ubiquity: “We Live in Brooklyn, Baby” / Donald Byrd: “Think Twice”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WN-N-krSJuE&list=PLXBhPdbWoEws3mM60san-uuPivn595n2T&index=8,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/420/sunshine.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Roy_Ayers_Ubiquity-Everybody_Loves_The_Sunshine.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,71,10cc,“I’m Not in Love”,Mercury (1975),"Though it might not be true that they coined their name from an above-average amount of ejaculate, as rumored, British art-rock band 10cc had a peculiar sense of humor, doing pasty white reggae as well as a song proudly brandishing the title of “The Worst Band in the World.” But the nougat-y nirvana of “I’m Not in Love” finds the band at their sweetest and most sincere. Or were they? Originally conceived as a bossa nova, the band decided to record a version where their harmonized voices comprised the entirety of the song, multi-tracking until they were a 256-voice choir, making for a luminous cloud of sound that still sounds like nothing in pop music. Amid that heavenly choir though, it’s not the sensitive dudes gently insinuating “let’s break up” that give the song its knife twist, but rather the lone woman to be heard, assuaging: “Big boys don’t cry.” “I’m Not in Love” is one of the sentiments rarely voiced in pop: that of the dude who thinks he’s strong, yet can’t move on. –Andy Beta Listen: 10cc: I’m Not in Love See also: Todd Rundgren: “Hello It's Me” / Beach Boys: “All I Wanna Do”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1ENGBDVpe8,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/10cc.jpg,/dataset/artwork/10cc-Im_Not_in_Love.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,70,The Slits,“Typical Girls”,Antilles/Island (1979),"The Slits never soft-soaped their righteousness, not even for other women. On a TV show in Holland, the rag-tag Londoners told Mike Oldfield’s songbird sister that “she was shit, that she was compounding stereotypes and doing a disservice to girls, that she should take a good look at what she was doing and how she was projecting herself and be honest about who she was,” as Viv Albertine wrote in her autobiography. They were mean, sure, but given that the Slits were willing to put up with being spat on and stabbed in the streets for their honest expression—Ari Up’s knickers outside her trousers, Palmolive’s hairy armpits, Albertine’s tampon earring—of course this simpering mopsy got short shrift. Anyone unwilling to join the fight was automatically complicit. Vicious and didactic as they could be, on the generous “Typical Girls,” the Slits attack the system that created these standards of acceptable girlhood, rather than its victims. Typical girls internalize the idea that they’re erratic, ugly, virgins or whores who hate each other on sight—no wonder they’re confused. The band’s antic dub energy never stops bouncing, matching women’s tireless race to keep up with the moving goalposts—“the new, improved model.” But never mind the marketing men; a new, improved model is exactly what the Slits propose with Ari’s gleefully anti-conformist sneer and mocking vaudeville piano. It’s hard to overstate the impact of hearing “Typical Girls” as a teenage girl—it’s exactly like the adrenaline rush that comes from first violating the codes of femininity and realizing how free you feel. Elastic perishes with time, but almost 40 years on, the vigorous spring of “Typical Girls” has never stopped snapping back. –Laura SnapesListen: The Slits: “Typical Girls” See also: The Slits: “Instant Hit” / Lizzy Mercier Descloux: “Fire”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wK2OApmId1c,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/420/163_Slits_Typical.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Slits-Typical_Girls.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,69,Ann Peebles,“I Can’t Stand the Rain”,Hi Records (1973),"It must have been bittersweet sharing a label with Al Green in his prime. While Green’s enormous success certainly created a halo effect for Hi Records’ other soul acts, he also overshadowed his labelmates so thoroughly that none had a chance of truly breaking out. No artist got the shorter end of the stick than Ann Peebles, a sensational talent on par with Green who almost certainly would have been the label’s flagship star if he hadn’t already claimed that mantle. That Peebles was on the label before Green must have made the injustice sting that much harder. Since Green and Peebles recorded with the same house musicians and producer, their records sound remarkably similar, right down those unmistakable organ swoops and the perfectly timed horn punches. But their songwriting approaches set them apart. Where Green’s records exist in a fantasy world where love was the only concern, Peebles introduces a more fully-rounded character, one who had other shit to worry about beyond matters of the heart. She wrote not just about the ways love made her feel, but also the ways it either enriched or upended her life, and no song better captured the latter than her signature hit “I Can’t Stand the Rain.” Accompanied by a chilling timbale riff that mimicked the very raindrops that tormented her (a more daring arrangement than anything on any of Green’s records), Peebles curses unwelcome memories of lost love in her signature sweet but no-nonsense voice. Reminders of heartbreak are always painful and cruel, yes, but when you’re trying to move on, they’re also just a plain nuisance. –Evan Rytlewski Listen: Ann Peebles: “I Can’t Stand the Rain” See also: Jean Knight: “Mr. Big Stuff” / Gladys Knight & The Pips: “If I Were Your Woman”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUoZ3qnNuRo,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/420/annpeebles.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ann_Peebles-I_Cant_Stand_the_Rain.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,68,Bobby Womack,“Across 110th Street”,United Artists Records (1972),"The best moments in the fruitful relationship between blaxploitation movies and soul music came when the auteurs making the scores were inspired to be more sweepingly cinematic than usual. Before he wrote and recorded the soundtrack to the underrated street drama Across 110th Street, Bobby Womack wrote intimate, personal songs designed for nightclub stages and bedrooms—sites of close-range communication. However, on this theme song, he delivers an acrobatic vocal performance from a God’s-eye perspective. With his head in a cloud of glistening orchestral strings and his feet planted firmly in greasy funk, Womack can see all of Harlem, and he cries out at the trouble being sown there by pushers and pimps. “Hey brother, there’s a better way out/Snorting that coke, shooting that dope man you’re copping out,” he sings. “Take my advice, it’s either live or die/You’ve got to be strong, if you want to survive.” The proto-rap talk-singing of his verses would eventually become an influence on hip-hop, and “Across 110th Street” would go on to be his most sampled song, infusing dozens of later works with a taste of its soaring, soulful drama. –Miles Raymer Listen: Bobby Womack: “Across 110th Street” See also: Bobby Bland: “Ain't No Love in the Heart of the City” / Willie Hutch: “Brothers Gonna Work It Out”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sr52mop8iKU,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/420/bobbyw.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bobby_Womack-Across_110th_Street.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,67,Big Star,“September Gurls”,Ardent (1973),"September is when seasonal passions cool to autumnal realities, when the winter looms as the marker of another year gone by. “September Gurls” was the sound of this bittersweet feeling, a power-pop gem not even three minutes long that stands as the best rock song Big Star ever wrote. When they did, frontman Alex Chilton was a former teen star looking for another hit, whose expectations of repeat stardom were quickly curdling due to the vagaries of the music industry. He wrapped his earnestly melancholy sentiments in happy harmonies, as though his heart was expanding at the same time it was being scraped hollow. To hear him sigh over a line like “I loved you, well, never mind” over a backdrop of jingle-jangle guitars during this boy-loses-girl story was to understand why people lie in bed, staring at the wall. “Love is a myth,” John Crowley wrote in the fantasy novel Little, Big. “So is summer.” If, as Paul Westerberg once imagined, children by the millions sang for Alex Chilton, “September Gurls” would’ve burned its way up the charts and made Big Star as big as the Beatles. Alas, it didn’t happen—Big Star became one of those cult bands favored by record heads who valorize obscurity and champion artistic challenge. But they were different; they should have been pop stars. The failure of Big Star to impact the U.S. radio serves as a beguiling reminder that you can have the brightest, best shit in the world, and for a variety of reasons—lack of label support, cultural milieu, band infighting—it might die immediately on the shelf. You might have love and it might not matter, making you a December boy left to feel all types of ways. –Jeremy Gordon Listen: Big Star: “September Gurls” See also: Big Star: “The Ballad of El Goodo” / Flamin' Groovies: “Shake Some Action”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTSJYZyouek,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/bigstar.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Big_Star-September_Gurls.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,66,Lou Reed,“Perfect Day”,RCA Victor (1972),"Sangria in the park, the movies, cute little zoo animals—this is the tenderest Lou Reed’s metal heart ever got. If utopia can exist within a pop song, this Bowie-produced Transformer tune is explicitly it. Reed wanders Central Park and goes full O’Hara. And yet Lou Reed has got to be the least carefree rock star of all time: the O.G. aesthete-punk made his name on being Uptight, not carefree. He made aggressive imperfection look cool. As its strings simmer behind minor key piano lines, it is the total conviction of “Perfect Day”—its chest-clutching sincerity—that makes this sick cabaret song so funny, so endearing, and so surreal. It is a fantastic joke to imagine ’60s Reed unironically singing, “Oh it’s such a perfect day/I’m glad I spent it with you,” until you remember the likelihood of it being an ode to drugs. –Jenn Pelly Listen: Lou Reed: “Perfect Day” See also: Lou Reed: “Satellite of Love” / Lou Reed: “Caroline Says”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wxI4KK9ZYo,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/transformer.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lou_Reed-Perfect_Day.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,65,The Rolling Stones,“Wild Horses”,Rolling Stones Records (1971),"In his autobiography, Life, Keith Richards pauses from slagging off Mick Jagger to praise their songwriting synchronicity, particularly one song: “Wild Horses.” “It was one of those magical moments when things come together….You just dream it, and suddenly it’s all in your hands,” Richards says of the track, written in 1969 but not released for two years. “Once you’ve got the vision in your mind of wild horses, I mean, what’s the next phrase you're going to use? It’s got to be ‘couldn’t drag me away.’” Richards sketched out the plaintive melody and Jagger poured in the lyrics—which explains how the song began as Richards’ ode to his newborn son, and ended as Jagger’s wistful farewell to Marianne Faithfull. (She reportedly gave him the hook, uttering it after waking from a near-fatal drug overdose.) Recorded during the Stones’ much-vaunted sessions at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Alabama, the period that would be captured in their documentary Gimme Shelter, “Wild Horses” was a poignant moment of repose for the Stones, palpable in its uncertainty; the group had survived the ’60s and were encroaching on adulthood, restless as they reached for the sounds to carry them into the next decade. That’s a Nashville-strung guitar Mick Taylor’s strumming with minimalist grace; its seeping melancholy is almost overwhelming when paired with Jagger’s not-so-subtle elegy to Faithfull: “I know I dreamed you a sin and a lie/I have my freedom but I don’t have much time/Faith has been broken, tears must be cried/Let’s do some living after we die.” It’s a farewell to so much, and an invitation to even more. –Stacey Anderson Listen: The Rolling Stones: “Wild Horses” See also: Rolling Stones: “Tumbling Dice” / Rolling Stones: “Rocks Off”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yE2B_kCfvss,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/sticky.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Rolling_Stones-Wild_Horses.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,64,Neil Young & Crazy Horse,"“Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)”",Reprise (1979),"“Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)” will forever carry the load of its prominent mention in Kurt Cobain’s suicide note, cementing “it’s better to burn out than to fade away” as one of the heaviest phrases in rock history. But even before that, the song was a brutally honest, self-inclusive eulogy, aimed at an entire genre. Released mere months before the ’70s ended, it was the thematic centerpiece of Neil Young’s funeral for the Woodstock generation: a high-concept tour that interweaved actual stage announcements from the festival with sadness and sarcasm. “Hey Hey, My My,” along with its acoustic twin, “My My, Hey Hey,” loosely bookended the show and set the angry tone, with Young’s most savage guitar part yet slicing through Crazy Horse’s distinctive thud. It’s still hard to read just how tongue-in-cheek that bitterly snarled “rock'n'roll will never die,” line is meant to be, but either way, Young realizes it’s not his story anymore—it’s Johnny Rotten’s, whose own implosion at Winterland came just months before this song was recorded. Almost 40 years later, rock’s decay may still be in progress, but Young’s harsh critique of the genre—that its time as the primary music of youthful revolution ended with the ’70s—proved correct. –Rob Mitchum Listen: “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)”See also: Neil Young: “Tonight's the Night” / Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young: “Ohio”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQhEvfeJocM,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/420/rustneversleeps.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Neil_Young__Crazy_Horse-Hey_Hey_My_My_Into_the_Black.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,63,Funkadelic,“Maggot Brain”,Westbound (1971),"Many reissues of Funkadelic’s third album, Maggot Brain, come with an alternate full-band mix of the title track, and it’s a decent enough cut—an acid-drenched, jazz-blues instrumental that’s as self-indulgent and self-consciously trippy as other rock efforts of the era. But on the original version, George Clinton pulled down the faders in a fit of lysergically-induced studio brilliance, leaving Eddie Hazel’s guitar solo to make its nearly 10-minute cosmic voyage almost entirely alone. Stripped of all the superfluous instrumentation surrounding it, Hazel’s virtuosity shines through, unobstructed in his fit of furious improvisation that wannabe shredders have since studied with Talmudic intensity. So does the intense anguish that he poured into every string-bending, wah-wahed lick, which makes the song the perfect elegy for the utopian psychedelic revolution of the ’60s that was currently crumbling to pieces around him. Clinton allegedly instructed Hazel to play like his mother had just died, but the lonely heartbreak that drives “Maggot Brain” feels much more vast than that, like the last transmission from a man drifting through space, mourning the fucked-up world he left behind. –Miles Raymer Listen: Funkadelic: “Maggot Brain” See also: Funkadelic: “Good Thoughts, Bad Thoughts” / Bootsy Collins: “I'd Rather Be With You”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOKn33-q4Ao,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/420/maggotbrain.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Funkadelic-Maggot_Brain.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,62,The Modern Lovers,“Roadrunner”,Beserkley (1976),"Jonathan Richman’s Modern Lovers were one of rock’s great coulda-been stories, breaking up before almost anyone had heard of them. In the early 1970s, they recorded demos on both coasts, trying to score a deal with a major label, including the John Cale-produced sessions that were collection on their eponymous 1976 debut, and they recorded at least four studio versions of “Roadrunner” during this stretch. The original incarnation of the band never took off, but “Roadrunner” became a garage-rock standard. In terms of its chords and structure, “Roadrunner,” was a straight rip of the Velvet Underground’s “Sister Ray,” borrowing Lou Reed’s two-chord riff with its sung/spoken verses that could easily be improvised in concert. But Richman, an intensely committed VU fan as a teenager living in Boston, turned the song inside-out. Where “Sister Ray” is a scuzzy celebration of the seedy underbelly of American life, “Roadrunner,” a snapshot of a kid driving Massachusetts Route 128 late at night, sees beauty around every corner, and music tints everything coming through the windshield. This kid is in love with the modern world, modern girls, and modern rock‘n’roll, but he's all alone—he doesn’t feel alone, though, because he’s got the radio on. “Roadrunner” is among the best songs ever written about music’s companionship, how the right song at the right moment can connect you to an imagined community even when you feel like you're the only person in the world. –Mark Richardson Listen: The Modern Lovers: “Roadrunner” See also: Modern Lovers: “Pablo Picasso” / Blondie: “One Way Or Another”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZWoJ8_75Mo,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/420/modernlovers.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Modern_Lovers-Roadrunner.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,61,The Beatles,“Let It Be”,Apple (1970),"There are more versions of “Let It Be” circulating than practically any other Beatles song, and not just because it’s one of their most-covered hits. Joe Cocker performed the song in November 1969, followed by Aretha Franklin in January 1970, then finally the Beatles released their version in March 1970, one month before their public dissolution. With its background harmonizing, the single version feels the most Beatle-y, particularly in comparison to Phil Spector’s orchestra-heavy remix for Let It Be. But as much as some in the band hated what Spector did with the album, his version of the title track makes room for an indelible George Harrison counterpoint—that raw riff, run through a Leslie organ speaker—in the context of a piano ballad emblematic of the sincerity for which Paul McCartney is both adored and dismissed. This is the exact quality that John Lennon poked fun at in early sessions for “Let It Be”—he was not present in final album meetings, having secretly left the Beatles in September 1969—but by the end of the take, even Lennon couldn’t resist his estranged songwriter partner’s gifts. The Beatles wrote an absurd amount of anthems, but none were as meta as “Let It Be.” It was the last single released before McCartney admitted that the breakup rumors were true, and it shared a title with the documentary that explained why. With this No. 1 still heavy in the air by the film and album’s release in May 1970, McCartney seemed to be comforting Beatles fans with his assertion that everything would be OK, as well as his invocation of the mother Mary (on the band’s most gospel-influenced song, no less). Macca was referring specifically to his own mom, who died of cancer when he was a teenager, though he’s insisted that listeners can use the song however they need. The result is a piece of music that can seem trite in some settings, having been used to uplift at charity event after charity event, but the beauty of “Let It Be” is that it's a mantra that scales remarkably well. It is pop’s OG “Keep Calm and Carry On,” which is only fitting given that it soundtracked the end of pop’s OG innovators. –Jillian Mapes Listen: The Beatles: “Let It Be” See also: Paul McCartney: “Maybe I'm Amazed” / John Lennon: “Gimme Some Truth”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Iwok7XHIYs,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/letitbe.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Beatles-Let_It_Be.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,60,Alice Coltrane,“Journey in Satchidananda”,Impulse!/ABC (1971),"Alice Coltrane was on the bandstand accompanying her husband John Coltrane on piano over the last year and a half of his life, and she carried on his spiritual quest for a universal sound after his passing. While her early efforts were contemplative, modal and blues-indebted jazz albums, it was on the eve of her first trip to India that she recorded an album that synthesized her sound into something no longer beholden to her husband’s legacy or to jazz history, instead attaining something transcendental and wholly her own. “Journey in Satchidananda”—despite its title—denotes not an external destination, but rather the discovery and iteration of an internal realm. Named for her guru, Swami Satchidananda, the word also means knowledge, existence, and bliss—three characteristics that course through these six-and-a-half sublime minutes. Augmented by all manner of bells and rattles and tamboura, the bowed bass of Cecil McBee and the serpentine soprano sax of Pharoah Sanders, Alice’s harp merges the timbres of East and West. Envisioning a kind of world music that elevates above all notions of genre, race, and region, she transports listeners to a rarefied space so that all might benefit from this divine sound. –Andy Beta Listen: Alice Coltrane: “Journey in Satchidananda” See also: Alice Coltrane: “Universal Consciousness” / Pharoah Sanders: “Astral Traveling”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZKV3EOj72g,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/420/Journey%20In%20Satchidananda.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Alice_Coltrane-Journey_in_Satchidananda.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,59,Stevie Wonder,“Superstition”,Tamla (1972),"Stevie Wonder released more than a dozen albums and 10 Top 10 singles. Then he turned 21. Having signed to Motown as a pre-teen, Wonder negotiated a new contract as an adult that lent him remarkable autonomy. Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On, Curtis Mayfield’s political funk, and Sly & the Family Stone’s darkly psychedelic There’s A Riot Goin’ On set the stage for Wonder to shape the music of his mind into something transcendent and socially conscious. This desire blossomed on 1972’s Talking Book, and especially its first single, the No. 1 hit “Superstition,” a future-funk opus that has the rare designation of establishing its own category of music—just try to name something before or since that sounds anything like it. As much gearhead as genius, Wonder created “Superstition” in Electric Lady Studios with engineers Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff, who arranged drums, clavinets, keyboards, and electronics in a huge circle around him in the studio, running most things through a series of pedals and phasers. The drums came first: one of pop’s most instantly recognizable intros tapped out on one of the tightest-ever snares leading into an indelible funk groove of swung 16th notes. It sounds easy until you try to play it, and then you realize that Eric Clapton was onto something when he claimed Wonder was “the greatest drummer of our time” in 1974. Then comes the central hook courtesy of a Hohner Clavinet D6, the odd little five-octave electronic keyboard that became his signature sound: a squawking, strutting welterweight bobbing and weaving around the rhythm. Combined with a Moog bassline and a blaring horn chart—all Wonder's creations—“Superstition” invented a new vernacular for pop music, but one that only Stevie could speak. Speaking of vernaculars: The lyrics for “Superstition” came to Wonder while he was on tour with the Rolling Stones in the summer of 1972. While tapping around backstage one afternoon, he riffed on the line “wash your face and hands” (an earworm he remembered from hearing “Shake, Rattle, and Roll” as a child), which he built into a universal doctrine about ritual and belief. The song kicked off an astonishing run of creativity and acclaim, and its hook can also be reshaped into a manifesto for listening to Wonder during this period: believing deeply in something magnificent that you can’t hope to understand. –Eric Harvey Listen: Stevie Wonder: “Superstition” See also: Stevie Wonder: “Sir Duke” / Stevie Wonder: “Signed Sealed Delivered (I'm Yours)”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ec8BGEb7_iA,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/420/superstition.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Stevie_Wonder-Superstition.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,58,Parliament,“Flash Light”,Casablanca (1977),"Just a few years before Star Wars introduced the Force into popular culture, George Clinton’s Starchild character came to Earth to spread the Funk. After Clinton’s Mothership landed, Starchild’s unfunky nemesis emerged in the form of Sir Nose. On 1977’s Funkentelechy and the Placebo Syndrome, Starchild, already strapped with the Bop Gun, pulls an indefensible weapon from his arsenal: the Flash Light. The ritualistic chant echoes like a funky intervention: “Most of all he need the funk/Help him find the funk.” Sir Nose is transformed, finding the spirit of Funkentelechy, and everyone dances into the night, to a wordless celebratory chant that Clinton remembered from a Bar Mitzvah he attended as a teenager: “Ha da da dee da hada hada da da.” The band’s first R&B #1 is where Parliament period, peaks, both mythologically and musically. Written by bassist Bootsy Collins and sung by Clinton, the song’s musical core belongs to the band’s keyboard maestro Bernie Worrell, who played every note on the song save guitar and drums. About those notes: Worrell played the bassline on the song through three interconnected mini-Moogs, and those extra-terrestrial note bends, the rising and dropping chromatic lines and that warmly electronic timbre is one of a handful of musical elements in pop history that created a distinct “before” and “after.” Without that bassline, the next 20 years of club music, synth-pop, and gangsta rap would sound incredibly different. It’s quite the equation: the narrative peak of the decade’s pre-eminent black comic series and Worrell’s E=mc2 of electro-funk add up to one of the 1970s’ most joyous devotional to rhythm and dance. –Eric Harvey Listen: Parliament: “Flash Light” See also: Kool & the Gang: “Jungle Boogie” / Heatwave: “Boogie Nights”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSLrI5gT7iU,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/parliament.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Parliament-Flash_Light.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,57,The Temptations,“Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone”,Gordy (1971),"For all the talk about how the psychedelic idealism of the ’60s eventually curdled into the cynical ’70s, certain shifts in pop music were more like a thin veneer getting scrubbed off to reveal a harder, more truthful core. Just look at where the Temptations went from the Norman Whitfield/Barrett Strong-penned “Psychedelic Shack” (released literally days before the 1960s ended) to the similarly psychedelic-soul-indebted “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone,” penned and produced by the same braintrust for a version of the band that had since lost core “classic five” members Eddie Kendricks and Paul Williams. Both songs moved from classic Motown sound to the heavier, fuzzed-out opulent wildness of funk that would soon permeate R&B, and the focal point had shifted from let-your-hair-down celebration of being what you want to be for a jaw-clenching admission of shame over the one man who could’ve made you who you are. The song’s lyrics are legendarily contentious—a bad-man story that reached back past the old Motown “charm school” facade to paint a bleak but resonant portrait of a broken home—but the music turned out to be even more so. Even before Dennis Edwards’ opening line (“It was the third of September/That day I’ll always remember/’Cause that was the day that my daddy died…”), the nearly four-minute instrumental opening was nearly as long as “Psychedelic Shack” and other recent Temptations single. And producer Whitfield made Edwards do a huge number of takes just to get his voice bitter and riled enough to really sell it. From there on out, it’s the last great tour de force from Motown's old guard, a relentlessly tense crescendo to an unfulfilled promise and the fastest, most unrelenting seven minutes to hit the top of the pop charts that year. –Nate Patrin Listen: The Temptations: “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone” See also: The Temptations: “Ball of Confusion” / The Temptations: “Smiling Faces Sometimes”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgwJHyy6DWI,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/420/papawas.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Temptations-Papa_Was_a_Rollin_Stone.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,56,Bob Marley & the Wailers,“Waiting in Vain”,Island (1977),"We fall because it feels good. “Waiting in Vain” is sad, though—an unrequited love song about the pain of waiting in limbo. “It’s been three years since...” and still, our narrator plans to wait just a little longer, while the tears in his eyes burn. And yet, in its subtle and understated elegance, “Waiting in Vain” is a song that savors even this anguish. Few songs in Bob Marley’s catalog are so endlessly replayable: a simple melody, a groove impossible to wear out. It is at once dark and optimistic. “I don’t want to wait in vain for your love,” goes the chorus, though an unspoken conclusion of “but I will"" is the song’s heart. Marley demands dignity, insisting, “Don’t talk to me as if you think I’m dumb,” and yet still he stays, comfortable in his longing, tapped into the slow, poisonous drip of hope. At the song’s bridge, the music shifts briefly, suddenly, like a flash of possibility: summer is here, then winter, and he’s still waiting. Then the song returns to its temporal stasis, as we push back to that familiar feeling. –David Drake Listen: Bob Marley & the Wailers: “Waiting in Vain” See also: Bob Marley & the Wailers: “Is This Love” / Buster Brown: “Aware of Love”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=admndF6lkvI,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/420/exodus.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bob_Marley__the_Wailers-Waiting_in_Vain.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,55,Sly & the Family Stone,“Family Affair”,Epic (1971),"A mother and her two grown children—one is highly favored; the other, not so much. A newlywed with a wandering eye, willing to risk a marriage for a fling. So much happens on the three-minute “Family Affair,” the lead single from Sly & the Family Stone’s 1971 album There’s a Riot Goin’ On, and it’s a miracle the song came out at all. The band’s previous work was decidedly upbeat, rooted in bright funk and rock-infused soul. Yet by the early 1970s, the group was in turmoil: longtime members had left, and Sly had isolated himself from bandmates. So Sly composed most of Riot on his own, including “Family Affair,” a stripped-down track with a drum machine and light electric keys. Vocally, Sly opts for a grumbling, conversational cadence that adds a certain intimacy. The result is a song that feels like a personal conversation about life’s ups and downs. “Family Affair” turned out to be Sly’s last No. 1. pop single; he’d release other great songs, but never again would he sound so direct, so strained. –Marcus J. Moore Listen: Sly & the Family Stone: “Family Affair” See also: Sly & the Family Stone: “You Caught Me Smilin'” / Ike & Tina Turner: “Proud Mary”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xag5RKD0VHk,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/familyaffair.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sly__the_Family_Stone-Family_Affair.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,54,Can,“Vitamin C”,United Artists Records (1972),"If there is some beautifully dirty cheat code to avant-garde art in the 20th century, it’s repetition. From Duchamp to Warhol to Terry Riley, the brute force of repeating and reproducing an action, a gesture, an image, or a sound eventually revealed something hidden in the concept itself. Can weaponized repetition more successfully than any other rock band. For them, music was never a vehicle for narrative; it’s a device to play with human sensation. “Vitamin C” is Can’s most succinct, straightforward, and successful practice of repetition. The song is a krautrock approximation of plasticine funk, and their maniacal verve in “Vitamin C”’s claustrophobic three minutes is deranged, almost nihilistic. Jaki Liebezeit’s drum line is acrobatic, but so taut that it’s always on the verge of tearing apart. Damo Suzuki’s psycho-babble and Holger Czukay's cyclical bass riff might as well be a psychoanalyst’s pocket watch swinging back in forth, telling you to dance or lose it. –Kevin Lozano Listen: Can: “Vitamin C” See also: Can: “Halleluhwah” / Can: “I'm So Green”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmN9oHa3ZIQ,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/420/vitaminc.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Can-Vitamin_C.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,53,Fela Kuti & Africa 70,“Zombie”,Celluloid (1976),"On “Zombie,” Fela Kuti leads the undead in an extremely militant game of follow-the-leader. “Quick march! Slow march! Left turn! Right turn!” he barks. It’s a mockery of soldiers who mindlessly obey the orders of their equally mindless higher-ups. It’s Fela and Afrika 70 at the height of their musical powers. By 1976, when Kuti dropped “Zombie,” he'd already figured out how he wanted Afrobeat to sound, and he was using it to throw increasingly direct barbs at the authorities. His name too became a political statement, as he replaced the English “Ransome” in “Ransome-Kuti” with the Yoruba “Anikulapo,” meaning “he who carries death in his pouch.” “Zombie” reflects all of those changes, and with its catchy horn riffs and humorous lyrics, it became Fela’s best-selling record to date. Not coincidentally, it was also the one that got him into the most trouble, especially as “Zombie” blew up not long before Nigeria hosted the high-profile Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture. With students in the streets taunting soldiers with the song, the Nigerian government launched a thousand-soldier assault on Fela’s Kalakuta Republic. It brutalized dozens, killed his mother, and nearly killed the Chief Priest himself. Towards the end of “Zombie,” Fela enters with a nimble sax solo, which morphs into a mocking military bugle call that warps into a squelching brass pile-up, which he swiftly extinguishes. It’s as if to warn that any attempts to silence him will not work. –Minna Zhou Listen: Fela Kuti & Africa 70: “Zombie” See also: Fela Kuti: “Water No Get Enemy” / Letta Mbulu: “Mahlalela”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qj5x6pbJMyU,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/zombie.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fela_Kuti__Africa_70-Zombie.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,52,Fleetwood Mac,“The Chain”,Warner Bros. (1977),"A song about a strained relationship on the verge of snapping, assembled from pieces of all five band members’ compositions that had to be spliced together: “The Chain” is nothing if not brutally literal. Famously, the sessions for Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours were fractured by all five members’ breakups—including those of couples Lindsey Buckingham/Stevie Nicks and John/Christine McVie—and “The Chain” is where they were the most bare-nerved, with Buckingham and Nicks’ voices sparring as much as harmonizing and the guitars and kickdrums throbbing like a stress headache. It rides the fine line between desperate reconciliation (“And if you don’t love me now/You will never love me again”) and seething catharsis (“Damn your love/Damn your lies”), the heart pumping acid at the center of a sunshine blockbuster of an LP. –Nate Patrin Listen: Fleetwood Mac: “The Chain” See also: Fleetwood Mac: “Go Your Own Way” / Fleetwood Mac: “Walk a Thin Line”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P160_odTwyY,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/rumors.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fleetwood_Mac-The_Chain.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,51,Black Sabbath,“War Pigs”,Vertigo/Warner Bros. (1970),"Black Sabbath have a longstanding rep as Satan’s band, but at the dawn of the ’70s, they were thinking like hippies, terrified of the world looming over the horizon. “War Pigs” was the Vietnam protest song too dark to be sung en masse at Woodstock, a vision of men as abject creatures crawling through mud: “Now in darkness, world stops turning/Ashes where the bodies burning.” Although the song climaxed with the unforgettable image of “Satan laughing spreads his wings,” anyone paying attention to the horror in Ozzy Osbourne’s voice probably understood: This wasn’t a victory song, it was an end times sermon. The enduring confusion, though, might have something to do with their sound. Their slow, groaning riffs rang so vividly in the ears of so many millions, prompting so many elaborations, that you almost have to adjust to the starkness now; is that really all Tony Iommi played, and how does it work so goddamn well? Iommi’s touch with power chords, and the gooey feel of his distortion when blasted through stereo systems, ensured that Sabbath songs would remain as indelible and perfect as a handprint in concrete, now and forever. For all the bludgeoning volume, Iommi delivered melodies—the coda of “War Pigs”’ is so soaring and orchestral, you can sing it. His contributions were as catchy as Osbourne’s, and the overtones generated by the two diverging and fusing are the reason your arm hairs stand up when “War Pigs” comes on. –Jayson Greene Listen: Black Sabbath: “War Pigs” See also: Black Sabbath: “Paranoid” / Motorhead: “Bomber”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgz__d0VC5k,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/420/warpigs.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Black_Sabbath-War_Pigs.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,50,Sugarhill Gang,“Rapper’s Delight”,Sugarhill Records (1979),"For every minute of this quarter-hour song, there is some footnote that, depending on who you ask, must be addressed. These footnotes are about authorship, about mafia-muscle controlling distribution, about rap crew rivalries. They are about a touring group of Sugarhill Gang imposters, plagiarism, nepotism, publishing rights, alleged arson, money, money, and more money. So mired in controversy is “Rapper’s Delight”—undoubtedly the first rap song anyone outside of New York and New Jersey ever heard—that, of course, there’s a movie in production about the song’s steward, Sugar Hill Records co-founder Sylvia Robinson. The complete story of “Rapper’s Delight” is as long as it is dramatic, but the short tale is that Mrs. Robinson and her son Joey Jr. auditioned Master Gee, Wonder Mike, and Big Bank Hank on a curb outside a pizza joint in Englewood, N.J. Within days, they were the first guys to ever lay down bars in a studio. The three MCs took turns over a live vamp of Chic’s “Good Times” recorded by the studio’s house band (Robinson played keys on the track). Soon enough, this little independent label in Jersey had moved over 10 million records, and “Rapper’s Delight” was a national sensation (or a fad, if you were so inclined). Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash, Cowboy Keith—they were the pioneers of rap in the Bronx, some would say doing it first and better. But across the Hudson, the Sugarhill Gang put hip-hop on the charts and on the radio, broke down doors for everyone behind them, and reclaimed the power of the black voice. –Jeremy Larson Listen: Sugarhill Gang: “Rapper’s Delight” See also: Younger Generation: “We Rap More Mellow” / Incredible Bongo Band: “Apache”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcCK99wHrk0,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/173_SugarHill_RappersDelight.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Sugarhill_Gang-Rappers_Delight.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,49,Dinosaur,“Kiss Me Again”,Sire (1978),"Arthur Russell was not much of a purist. Others did disco with more sheen, rock with more flair. His songs’ key selling point was in their wild enthusiasm, whatever the genre. In the late ’70s, that often took the form of wonky dancefloor burners, of which Dinosaur’s “Kiss Me Again” is the best. Written by Russell and produced by him and his Dinosaur partner, Nicky Siano, it’s an unconventional foil for Donna Summer and the like, featuring Russell’s signature cello and the trombone of his collaborator in classical-leaning projects, Peter Zummo. Oh yeah, and a seriously shredding guitar solo from David Byrne. Halfway through, the song drops out to just a backbeat, and singer Myriam Valle whispers, “One kiss is all it takes.” This is the kind of music made by someone who heard disco once and had to recreate it from memory. It’s not a rejection of the genre’s borders, it’s more a lack of interest in learning that they exist in the first place. –Matthew Schnipper Listen: Dinosaur: “Kiss Me Again” See also: Cerrone: “Give Me Love” / Belle Epoque: “Miss Broadway”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6O92UBBaiI4,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/420/60_Kiss%20Me%20Again.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dinosaur-Kiss_Me_Again.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,48,The Clash,“London Calling”,CBS/Epic (1979),"The apocalypse was very much in vogue in ’70s music. From Funkadelic’s “Wars of Armageddon” to David Bowie’s “Diamond Dogs” to Culture’s “Two Sevens Clash,” humanity’s unease with the geopolitical climate manifested in nightmare scenarios for the world. The Clash gathered up all that fretful energy for one final burst of the decade’s eschatological panic, “London Calling.” Drawing from the clipped rhythms and rubbery undercurrents of reggae and post-punk, the song imagines an England inundated by brutality, technology, and nature itself. “London Calling” was released in December 1979, just as the oncoming ’80s signaled new threats, darker days, and the bona fide end of the century. Margaret Thatcher had just been elected Prime Minister, and the liberating thrill of punk had begun to cool and collapse. Clarion and cataclysmic, the song trapped chaos in a bottle; two years earlier, the Sex Pistols had chanted “No future” in “God Save the Queen,” and the Clash answered them with a fiery last gasp of the present. Even the demise of pop itself—“Phony Beatlemania has bitten the dust,” Joe Strummer spits—is feverishly foretold. Ironically, “London Calling” helped transform the Clash from one of the punk scene’s many casualties into a worthy heir of the Beatles themselves: a band that could routinely emblemize an era in the span of three-and-a-half searing minutes. –Jason Heller Listen: The Clash: “London Calling” See also: The Clash: “(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais” / The Clash: “Complete Control”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfK-WX2pa8c,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/londoncalling.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Clash-London_Calling.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,47,The Cure,“Boys Don’t Cry”,PVC (1979),"The Cure made countless songs about doomed romance, and “Boys Don’t Cry” is the only one that appears rooted in reality: Boy meets girl, boy treats her like crap, boy loses girl and has no one to blame but himself, boy ends up blaming everyone else, anyway. “Boys Don’t Cry” comes from a time when the Cure were pithy, punchy, and pouty. Its title was also co-opted by pop culture phenomena with far more complex takes on identity and sexuality than its inspiration. These two legacies aren’t in opposition, they’re part of a continuum established on “Boys Don’t Cry” that paralleled the Cure themselves: evolving from angry young men to overseers of an all-inclusive utopia where anyone can cry to their heart’s content. –Ian Cohen Listen: The Cure: “Boys Don’t Cry” See also: The Police: “Roxanne” / The Cure: “Killing an Arab”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmAlo-H_RBU,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/boysdontcry.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Cure-Boys_Dont_Cry.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,46,Nick Drake,“Pink Moon”,Island (1972),"By the autumn of 1971, Nick Drake was in a dark mental place, an existence more melancholy than usual. The British musician was living with his parents, paralyzed by depression, and unable to complete the promotional duties of someone with two records out on a major label. By 1972, he was barely speaking. But it was during this period, two years before his fatal overdose on antidepressants, that he recorded his final album and opus, Pink Moon. Since its release, the album’s title track has prompted many interpretations; in nature, a pink moon is the smallest of full moons, occurring each April and signifying the start of spring, new beginnings, and refreshed energy. But rebirth inherently represents death, too, making Drake’s prediction that a “pink moon gonna get ye all” feel both promising and unnerving. That’s the crux of the song—a change is on its way and its power is beyond control. Accompanied only by an acoustic guitar, Drake delivers “Pink Moon”’s message in a straightforward tone—not blunt, just knowing, though he mumbles as if the words are tough but necessary to communicate. In the middle of the song there is a brief, twinkly piano overdub that adds a touch of optimism. This additional instrument gives “Pink Moon” its resonance: for a moment, the mysterious and moody Nick Drake seems content. –Quinn Moreland Listen: Nick Drake: “Pink Moon” See also: Tim Buckley: “Song to the Siren” /  Bill Fay: “Be Not So Fearful”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oA2I8BcOYQg,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/pinkmoon.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Nick_Drake-Pink_Moon.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,45,James Brown,“Get Up (I Feel Like Being A) Sex Machine”,King/Polydor (1970),"By the ’70s, the majority of James Brown’s sharply honed band called it quits. But being the Hardest Working Man in Show Business, Brown was always two steps ahead. He already had his eye on the young Cincinnati brothers Bootsy and Catfish Collins, along with their band the Pacesetters. Together with a few of Brown's older cronies, they became the J.B.’s. In the short year that they were together, they pushed each other in newfound directions and produced a string of smash hits: “Super Bad,” “Soul Power,” “Get Up, Get Into It, Get Involved,” and, most famously, “Get Up (I Feel Like Being A) Sex Machine.” “Sex Machine” was the first record James Brown ever cut with the original J.B.’s, a month or so after he’d flown them in to back him, completely unrehearsed, while the James Brown Orchestra watched from the sidelines. The song itself was essentially a remake of the King's 1968 hit “Give It Up Or Turn It a Loose,” but the changes they made were ones that would come to define funk for the next decade and beyond: Though funk had lived in the drums before, it now moved to the bass. Whereas the Godfather of Soul had a veritable orchestra at his call before, the new crew were more sparse (if only in numbers). Polyrhythmic interplay came to the fore, with the help of the Collins brothers and the original Funky Drummers Clyde Stubblefield and John “Jabo” Starks. Brown’s longtime right-hand man, Bobby Byrd, also got a little more shine on supporting vocals. Sure, many of the original J.B.’s would soon quit to join George Clinton’s Parliament Funkadelic conglomerate. And sure, disco was in the offing. But “Sex Machine” still stands as the first official declaration of a new era in funk. –Minna Zhou Listen: James Brown: “Get Up (I Feel Like Being A) Sex Machine” See also: James Brown: “Funky Drummer” / Lyn Collins: “Think (About It)”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOQ5WnZAwuk,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/sexmachine.jpg,/dataset/artwork/James_Brown-Get_Up_I_Feel_Like_Being_A_Sex_Machine.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,44,David Bowie,“Young Americans”,RCA (1975),"From the drum-roll opening, to David Sanborn’s bleating sax lines, to David Bowie’s assured vocal delivery, “Young Americans” saunters with a swaggering confidence all too fitting of its creator, a man who just recently had been a glam-rock alien. Underneath the hood of nearly every great Bowie song is a musician he found and loaned the keys to the car, from Mick Ronson to Brian Eno to Nile Rodgers; it’s part of how Bowie was able to cover so much musical ground. On “Young Americans,” the layers of collaborators run deep: In addition to Sanborn, longtime Bowie guitarist Carlos Alomar—then new to his band—brought in future R&B superstar and then-back-up singer Luther Vandross for vocal accompaniment and arrangement. At the time, neither Vandross nor Sanborn were well known, but Bowie welcomed them and insisted they to do as they wish. What they wished, it turns out, ended up being the touches it took to elevate “Young Americans” from just another great Bowie tune to ’70s canon. What’s so remarkable about “Young Americans” is how calculatingly sensible it was as the cut to help Bowie finally break into an American mainstream that had mostly ignored his glammy, sexualized personas. With its nods to Philly soul, AM pop, Springsteen, and even the Beatles, “Young Americans” was the kind of song that could appeal to just about anyone in 1975. –Benjamin Scheim Listen: David Bowie: “Young Americans” See also: David Bowie: “Fame” / Mott the Hoople: “All the Young Dudes”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxuDrbiWBbE,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/youngamericans.jpg,/dataset/artwork/David_Bowie-Young_Americans.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,43,Talking Heads,“Psycho Killer”,Sire (1977),"Before he grew into a dignified, grey-haired elder statesmen, Talking Heads’ David Byrne was a wiry know-it-all leading a nerdy band. Over giddy, offbeat keyboards, he sang about highways and buildings in a voice like a pubescent teen. There was something cartoonish about the whole package, maybe even more so than the band intended. In order to be taken seriously, they needed an edge, and 1977’s “Psycho Killer” provided one. The single invited listeners into the mind of a madman and asked them to sympathize with his thoughts. After an impulsive bridge delivered in French brings some sing-along levity, things quickly turn dark again, as Byrne begins shouting like a disturbed man. For the finale, the song erupts into a frantic one-chord frenzy. “Psycho Killer” fundamentally shaped the perception of the band, and the specter of its creepiness loomed over every Talking Heads song that followed. Even on their chipper, seemingly innocuous songs about free spirits and how good it feels to be loved, you had to wonder: Were these secretly the thoughts of a deranged person? –Evan Rytlewski Listen: Talking Heads: “Psycho Killer” See also: Talking Heads: “Thank You for Sending Me an Angel” / Talking Heads: “I Zimbra”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqQGWhge5yo,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/psychokiller.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Talking_Heads-Psycho_Killer.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,42,Althea & Donna,“Uptown Top Ranking”,Frontline (1978),"While artists can now get instantaneous responses and clapbacks to their songs in the form of tweets and Instagram posts, back in the day, you had to go into the studio to cut an “answer record.” When DJ Trinity toasted about his diamond socks and stylish self at the expense of his “big fat thing” on his 1975 hit “Three Piece Suit,” two Jamaican teenagers hopped on the same Alton Ellis riddim and sassed him right back. Only for Althea & Donna, it was just an ad-libbed joke that was accidentally aired by John Peel on BBC Radio. Mortified as they might have been, the listener response was so immediate that the teens soon found themselves perched atop the UK charts, the youngest female duo ever to do so. Lyrically, “Uptown Top Ranking” is as simple and mystifying as the concerns of any teenage girl: being hip, looking good (in khaki, no less), being all about the bass, giving boys heart attacks (“Gimme likkle bass/Make me wine up me waist”). What’s kept “Uptown Top Ranking” a reggae classic is Althea & Donna’s brash insouciance, delivering each line with a lunar orbit-sized eye roll and a copious dose of attitude. –Andy Beta Listen: Althea & Donna: “Uptown Top Ranking” See also: Trinity: “Three Piece Suit” / Marcia Griffiths: “Dreamland”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOcqWuES1Rk,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/420/althea.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Althea__Donna-Uptown_Top_Ranking.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,41,Chic,“Good Times”,Atlantic (1979),"Times weren’t good in 1979: A revolution in Iran sent oil prices through the roof, leading to incredibly long lines at U.S. gas stations. A faulty pressure valve on Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island caused the worst nuclear accident in American history. Pretty soon, the nation would be in a recession. Then here came this breezy disco jam, discounting all of that, proclaiming these were life’s best moments. “Happy days are here again,” goes the opening line to Chic’s “Good Times,” the lead single from Risqué. Co-written by Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards, the song encouraged people to let go and live fully in the present. The world is what it is, they shrugged, so you might as well let loose while you still can. And the sentiment proved infectious; perhaps no other song has been so thoroughly carved up and repurposed. Rap’s first mainstream song begins at 3:09. The instrumental reappears in Queen’s biggest hit of 1980. Vaughan Mason & Crew spun it into a roller rink anthem. “Good Times” served Chic well, too; it became a widespread hit and Rodgers remains an active pop statesman. Who knew a simple bass line could travel so far? –Marcus J. Moore Listen: Chic: “Good Times” See also: Chic: “Le Freak” / Sister Sledge: “Lost in Music”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKTUAESacQM,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/420/chic-good-times.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Chic-Good_Times.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,40,Gil Scott Heron,“The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”,Flying Dutchman (1971),"Here are a few things the revolution won’t do: It won’t star Natalie Woods or Steve McQueen. It won’t be broadcast on NBC, and it won’t make you sexy. Poet/singer Gil Scott-Heron’s landmark “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” served as a battle cry to oppressed black listeners in the early 1970s, those still fighting for equality and civil rights. First recorded as a spoken-word piece for 1970’s Small Talk at 125th and Lenox, Scott-Heron rerecorded the song with a full band for his 1971 album, Pieces of a Man, giving it a noticeable upgrade with a much stronger rhythm section. “Revolution” served as a template for what would become hip-hop less than a decade later. Scott-Heron is essentially rapping on the track, although his words don’t rhyme, and thematically, it still resonates all these years later: “There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down brothers on the instant replay.” The song has been sampled, referenced, and lifted to iconic status. And indeed, the revolution isn’t televised these days—just tweeted, Instagrammed, and Facebooked. –Marcus J. Moore Listen: Gil Scott-Heron: “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” See also: Gil Scott-Heron: “Home Is Where the Hatred Is” / Eddie Kendricks: “My People...Hold On”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwSRqaZGsPw,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/piecesof.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Gil_Scott_Heron-The_Revolution_Will_Not_Be_Televised.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,39,Pink Floyd,“Wish You Were Here”,Columbia/Harvest (1975),"Psychedelic mop tops. Prog doomsayers. Art-rock millionaires. Orwellian behemoths. Punk punching bags. Country crooners? Considering all the big ideas Pink Floyd cooked into their spaced-out arena rock in the ’70s, it makes some kind of ironic sense that their most indelible song is also one of their simplest. You don’t have to put The Wizard of Oz on mute or read Animal Farm a dozen times for “Wish You Were Here” to hit you in the gut. It is essentially a sad, twangy song about loss—of self, of people, of the past. David Gilmour sings Roger Waters’ universal words with the subtle pain of someone who knows he can’t go back. Every human has felt this feeling. For Pink Floyd, in 1975, the emotion held a particular sting. Their previous album, The Dark Side of the Moon, turned them into unlikely superstars, and the fame and fortune dented their collective psyche. Having reached the pinnacle of the rock world, with all its attendant bullshit, the heady quartet couldn’t help but think back to their innocent early days—when it was about the art, man. They had a convenient totem for that bygone era, too: Syd Barrett, the wild-child founding member who did too much acid, lost key bits of his mind, and was subsequently kicked out of the group in 1968. According to the band, Barrett was alive but his soul was barely there—could the same thing be said about Pink Floyd, following their commercial triumph? “Wish You Were Here” puts such self-conscious ennui on full display, flowing through Gilmour’s ageless 12-string riff and Waters’ stubborn refusal to succumb to society’s cage. It’s a victorious admission of defeat. –Ryan Dombal Listen: Pink Floyd: “Wish You Were Here” See also: Pink Floyd: “Us and Them” / Pink Floyd: “Time”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjpF8ukSrvk,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/wishyouwerehere.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Pink_Floyd-Wish_You_Were_Here.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,38,Neil Young,“On the Beach”,Reprise (1974),"In 1974, Neil Young’s long relationship with Carrie Snodgress was coming to an end, and darkness was all around. The year before, he’d recorded Tonight’s the Night, a drunken wake of an album, and his new record, On the Beach, included a song inspired by Charles Manson. The recent sessions were marked by copious consumption of honey slides—an apparently debilitating marijuana delivery system—and the studio was filled with big plush chairs. Lethargy set in. The vibe was dazed and comfortable. “The world is turnin’,” sings Young, quiet and somber, on the album’s title track. “I hope it don’t turn away.” The minor chord jam stretches out for seven minutes as Neil ponders his relationship with his audience—people he knows he needs, though he can’t always face them. He’s self-conscious about his complaints and worries, calling his problems meaningless but noting wryly that doing so doesn’t make them go away. Escapism is fine and maybe even necessary, but it still brings uncertainty. Hanging out on the beach—this postcard ideal of vacation and relaxation—doesn’t ease his mind. Even Young’s delicate guitar solos feel heavy. Here, we see one of the greats grappling with hard truths. He’s an introvert attempting to operate as an extrovert, a magnetic figure who can’t seem to stop alienating people who approach him. “On the Beach” is the sobering moment where good stuff fades and happy relationships pass. It’s not necessarily a fun place to be, but rarely have such feelings been communicated so beautifully. –Evan Minsker Listen: Neil Young:“On the Beach” See also: Neil Young: “Cortez the Killer” / Neil Young: “Ambulance Blues”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZilu4ApCI0,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/onthebeach.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Neil_Young-On_the_Beach.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,37,Suicide,“Dream Baby Dream”,Island (1979),"It’s almost hard to imagine someone sitting down and actually writing “Dream Baby Dream,” a song so simple and immaculate it feels like it’s always existed. But this is precisely the idiom that Suicide worked in. It’s what allowed both their darkest nightmares and their sweetest dreams to feel like they were siphoned directly from the listener’s subconscious, ringing with an eerie familiarity. Produced by Ric Ocasek in 1979, “Dream Baby Dream” was a one-off single later tacked onto their sophomore album as a bonus track. With its burbling music-box melody and breezy chord changes, it plays a bit like the Velvet Underground’s “Sunday Morning” repurposed to suit Sunday night: lying in bed, fading in and out of consciousness, turning your eyes toward what’s to come. But there’s a darkness on the edge of “Dream Baby Dream,” embedded deep within Alan Vega’s frantic delivery and Martin Rev’s bubbling synths. It's a friction that haunts the song's optimistic tone and keeps the flame burning, long after the dream has ended. –Sam Sodomsky Listen: Suicide: “Dream Baby Dream” See also: Lou Reed: “Street Hassle” / Neu!: “Isi”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dV5b64pN0SY,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/174_Suicide_Dream.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Suicide-Dream_Baby_Dream.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,36,Lou Reed,“Walk on the Wild Side”,RCA Victor (1972),"“Shaved her legs and then he was a she.” If only it were that easy. Lou Reed’s breezy yet transgressive single sneaked the outré denizens of Warhol’s Factory right under the noses of mainstream America, spending 14 weeks on the Hot 100 in 1973. It had been only four years since the Stonewall Riots, during which the NYPD brutalized protesters like Holly Woodlawn, the trans woman introduced in the first verse. But Reed’s song—produced by David Bowie, and featuring an iconic sliding bass line from Herbie Flowers and campy saxophone from Ronnie Ross—made New York City sound like a queer paradise, the place where a glamorous, sex-filled life was possible for anyone. “Walk on the Wild Side” was an ideal calling card for Reed in the midst of solo reinvention, showcasing his knack for offbeat characters and casually poetic precision. But as off-the-cuff as the hit sounded, Reed took it (and all his music) seriously—something he made clear when the FCC finally decided to yank the song from radio playlists in 2004. The decision prompted a simple question from an icon who thrived on questioning authority: “What I want to know is: Who do these people think they are?”–Jonah Bromwich Listen: Lou Reed: “Walk on the Wild Side” See also: Lou Reed: “Coney Island Baby” /  Lou Reed: “Wild Child”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oG6fayQBm9w,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/transformer.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Lou_Reed-Walk_on_the_Wild_Side.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,35,Buzzcocks,“Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve)”,United Artists Records (1978),"The Buzzcocks took special inspiration from the Sex Pistols’ quip, “We're not into music, we're into chaos,” and they reached their peak when reveling in romantic anarchy. The Bolton, England, band married their punk predecessors’ brashness with the intuitive melodies of the Beatles and the Kinks (frontman Pete Shelley was a Fab Four disciple) to create some of the most farsighted rock of the ’70s, music that took rare comfort in the unknowns of life and paused to savor the fleeting beauty of young angst. Their first single from Love Bites, “Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn't’ve),” was the Buzzcocks’ debutante moment; before this 1978 release, they’d been another sharp but familiar young troupe with quick, surly punk screeds devoted to the carnal (“Orgasm Addict,” “What Do I Get?”). But, suddenly, Shelley’s bedside manner had changed: he wasn’t wallowing in self-pity or kicking the air after another bacchanal that left him dry. He was appraising with fresh maturity that passion could harm as much as heal, and he was powerless against it: “And we won’t be together much longer/Unless we realize that we are the same,” he sang with a despairing yelp, a distressed cousin to the Beatles’ bucolic calls of unity. Every time he sang “love,” it was with a quizzical sheen. Until now, punk had been a macho spree of broken glass and middle fingers hoisted; Shelley was audacious enough to be introspective, and defeated, by greater forces. –Stacey Anderson Listen: Buzzcocks: “Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn’tve)” See also: Buzzcocks: “Everybody's Happy Nowadays” / Buzzcocks: “What Do I Get”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSM5MpKSnqE,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/lovebites.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Buzzcocks-Ever_Fallen_in_Love_With_Someone_You_Shouldntve.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,34,X-Ray Spex,“Oh Bondage! Up Yours!”,Virgin (1977),"For all the “no future” mythology around the explosion of UK punk in 1977, what’s most striking about X-Ray Spex’s first single, released that year as a one-off on Virgin Records, is its optimism. Riot shields had just debuted in London streets as the fascist National Front marched through a multi-racial neighborhood. Bombs stoked fears of IRA terrorism. In UK punk itself, the Stranglers were succeeding commercially with music glorifying domestic abuse. Into this bleak tumult stepped Poly Styrene—née Marianne Joan Elliott-Said, the biracial daughter of a Somali father and a white British mother who raised her alone—with teeth braces, DayGlo fashion, and, most of all, an electrifying voice. “Oh Bondage! Up Yours!” was as enigmatic as its performer. In interviews at the time, she invoked young people wearing dog chains at a Sex Pistols shows. “A lot of people going around say it’s a free country,” she told one journalist, “which isn’t really true, because we’re all tied up.” Whatever leering expectations audiences might’ve brought to a bondage-themed song, Styrene defied them from her immortal murmur-to-a-shout, revolution-girl-style-now! opening. In the ensuing, full-throated verses, she not only called out misogyny, inspiring generations of female punks, but also gleefully sent up society's twisted relationship toward consumerism. Presiding over the bare-knuckle melee behind her was saxophonist Susan Whitby, aka Lora Logic, whose anarchic playing would be sorely missed from X-Ray Spex’s lone punk-era album, 1978’s still-essential Germfree Adolescents. Styrene died of cancer in 2011, at age 53; her “call for liberation,” as she once described the song, demands to be heard just as loudly in modern global gloom. 1-2-3-4…. –Marc Hogan Listen: X-Ray Spex: “Oh Bondage Up Yours!” See also: X-Ray Spex: “Germ Free Adolescence” / Essential Logic: “Wake Up”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://youtu.be/D8hAqdx7g4M?t=381,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/420/xray.jpg,/dataset/artwork/X-Ray_Spex-Oh_Bondage_Up_Yours.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,33,Ramones,“Blitzkrieg Bop”,Sire (1976),"It’s hard to believe the Ramones considered themselves any kind of revolutionaries when “Blitzkrieg Bop” came out in February 1976. Bedraggled underdogs who had already spent years in go-nowhere bands in Queens, these four fans of Iggy Pop, girl groups, and leather jackets came together in 1974 with zero indication that the world was eager to hear them—or that they’d go so far as to reconfigure the face of pop. “Blitzkreig Bop,” the band’s debut single, overturned every bit of conventional pop wisdom of the era, but its ad hoc radicalism ran much deeper than a boiling down of rock’s excess. As a whole, rock in the ’70s wasn’t as uniformly overblown as punks claimed, nor was punk as crude as its detractors alleged. Rather than being a spasm of knee-jerk minimalism, “Blitzkreig Bop” signaled a different form of symphonic maximalism; in whittling rock down, it found its own, low-budget way of sounding majestic. In Everett True’s Hey Ho Let’s Go, David Fricke claimed that Johnny Ramone championed “hard guitars used as weapons,” but his washes of distortion on “Blitzkreig Bop” are actually lusciously smooth—and Joey Ramone’s gooey, glue-happy vocals strike a giddy balance between violence and innocence. The song that launched the ’70s punk insurrection is just as much an embrace of the decade, with all its virtues and flaws, as it is a shot in the back. –Jason Heller Listen: Ramones: “Blitzkreig Bop” See also: Ramones: “Rockaway Beach” / Runaways: “Cherry Bomb”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1BOsShTyng,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/420/ramones.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Ramones-Blitzkrieg_Bop.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,32,Funkadelic,“Can You Get to That”,Westbound (1971),"One does not come to Funkadelic for reflection. Groove, yes; vaudeville, yes; bitter invectives against American politics next to couplets that rhyme “pussy” with “squishy,” yes. But reflection—reflection is why the Devil invented James Taylor. This with the exception of a short, radiant hymn called “Can You Get to That.” Repurposing a song from their past life as a doo-wop group called the Parliaments, the band mapped the naturalistic introspection of folk onto the broad, inclusive sound of funk, creating something like gospel sung by people on a lot of acid. The lyrics survey life from 30,000 feet: Glory, retribution, gratitude, karma—the great circle, good and bad, tears and laughter in a single swoon. Not to mention one of the last stands by a great American notion called the bass man, whose spiritual authority is derived primarily from the fact that he can go lower than anyone else—to the dirt and the worms and the molten core beyond. –Mike Powell Listen: Funkadelic: “Can You Get to That” See also: Funkadelic: “Standing on the Verge of Getting It On” / Funkadelic: “One Nation Under a Groove”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_lqNz9ofsE,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/420/maggotbrain.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Funkadelic-Can_You_Get_to_That.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,31,Michael Jackson,“Rock With You”,Epic (1979),"As the master of the single, Michael Jackson’s most memorable songs often feel like individually wrapped gifts of pop perfection—hits that contain entire standalone worlds within them. “Rock With You” is something of an exception in that, while it certainly sounds immaculate on its own, it sounds even better in the context of Off the Wall, for which it serves as the sonic thesis. The album successfully positioned MJ as a grown-up solo artist with a confident vision; “Rock With You” is the sound of that confidence. There is, of course, a timeless chorus, but the verses that bridge the hooks together cement “Rock With You” as the mature breakthrough Jackson wanted. Instead of the falsetto of album opener “Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough,” he shows his range with a sensual lower register (by MJ standards, at least); like the 20-year-old he was, Jackson seemed eager to try out grown folks’ way of singing. “Rock With You” is also a pure disco song, arriving at a time when the genre was on its way out. Jackson has been praised for defying trends and delivering greatness into the 1980s, when the song peaked at No. 1, but it took someone like him to grow a bounty on ground no longer thought to be fertile. And so “Rock With You,” while not often reaching the highest echelons of the MJ canon, is a triumph: a slightly surprising hit, a transformative moment, and a groove so moving, it can rock you still. –Matthew Strauss Listen: Michael Jackson: “Rock With You” See also: Michael Jackson: “I Can't Help It” / Michael Jackson: “I Wanna Be Where You Are”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5X-Mrc2l1d0,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/rockwith.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Michael_Jackson-Rock_With_You.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,30,Dolly Parton,“Jolene”,RCA Victor (1973),"Much is made of the beautiful, pined-over subject of “Jolene”—her Pre-Raphaelite hair, her name like a melody to cry into torchlight, whose whims the narrator’s happiness depends upon alone. The lyrics are so simple, they’re prayer-like; the yearning is so thoroughly felt, it’s elemental. And it’s Jolene it’s all directed toward. The ostensible point—“please don’t take my man”—is sung like an afterthought. “Jolene” is not only Dolly Parton’s most-covered track but arguably one of the most-covered songs ever. Though it’s unfairly associated with reality-competition dilettantism of all stripes, those who gravitate toward it most successfully are women–specifically, those who write women with complex inner lives. It’s launched careers, such as Mindy Smith’s (Parton’s favorite version). It inspires auteurs: Tori Amos, Fiona Apple, Susanna Wallumrød, Laura Marling. It is a song with hundreds of interpretations, that sounds like it’s got hundreds more left. –Katherine St. AsaphListen: Dolly Parton: “Jolene” See also: Vicki Lawrence: “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia” / Freda Payne: “Band of Gold”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcDBgXbGskc,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/jolene.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Dolly_Parton-Jolene.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,29,Marvin Gaye,“Got to Give It Up”,Tamla (1977),"Marvin Gaye didn’t want to record a disco single, but he wasn’t in a position to refuse Motown's request. As 1976 drew to a close, Gaye couldn’t complete a sequel to I Want You, nor was his bitter divorce with Anna Gordy getting close to finalized, and both events flattened his wallet. Strapped for cash, he headed over to Europe, where he recorded the in-concert double-LP that became 1977’s Live at the London Palladium—turning over the last side to “Got to Give It Up,” his reluctant disco song. Using Johnnie Taylor’s “Disco Lady” as a foundation (Gaye whispers about a dancing lady throughout the extended coda of the 12-minute mix), he built the song from the groove up, eschewing the rigidity of beat for lithe, elastic funk. Unlike so many disco singles, there is air and swing in the groove, something accentuated by the song’s full-length version, which shifts toward a slippery jazz vamp at the four-minute mark. By that point in the song, Gaye has given himself over to the ecstasy of the celebration he’s created in the studio. He layers murmurs, shouts, and laughter throughout the record, creating an illusion of a swinging party. But the sly joke of “Got to Give It Up” is that it’s a record about itself. Marvin didn’t want to join the disco party but, once he was there, he found rapture. –Stephen Thomas Erlewine Listen: Marvin Gaye: “Got to Give It Up” See also: Marvin Gaye: “Let's Get It On” / Marvin Gaye: “Distant Lover”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4r0-LJZBDM,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/marvin.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Marvin_Gaye-Got_to_Give_It_Up.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,28,Al Green,“Love and Happiness”,Hi Records (1972),"There are few love songs more essential to soul music than Al Green’s “Love and Happiness” because it so naturally communicates the thrills of romance, the enviable bliss of knowing someone intimately. Originally released on Green’s 1972 platinum album I’m Still in Love With You, and overshadowed by its title track, “Love and Happiness” was later released as a single in 1977, presumably as an attempted patchwork fix for waning record sales. The song didn’t hit as big as other Green standard-bearers—chart-toppers like “Tired of Being Alone” or “Let’s Stay Together”—but it had an equally wide impact on American pop culture. Composed with Teenie Hodges—the writer and guitarist behind several of Green’s hits—and produced by Hi Records soul maestro Willie Mitchell “Love and Happiness” builds a bridge between the two emotional states, examining their shared sway over the human spirit. Its very title presupposes that the two go hand-in-hand. The song’s beauty lies in its clarity, with lyrics as brilliantly simple as, “Happiness is when you really feel good about somebody” conveying the harmony in human coupling. But the real magic is in that voice, a velvety, comforting timbre that glides into the upper octaves without even the slightest strain. Its powerful sorcery has been used in films countless times to help sell fairytale romance, that moment when soulmates find each other and you’re sure it’s The Real Thing. –Sheldon Pearce Listen: Al Green: “Love and Happiness” See also: Al Green: “Call Me” / Bill Withers: “Use Me”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZVdIBVffyY,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/loveandhappiness.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Al_Green-Love_and_Happiness.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,27,The Velvet Underground,“Sweet Jane”,Cotillion (1970),"By the time ""Sweet Jane"" made its first recorded appearance, on the Velvet Underground’s Loaded, it had already been heavily rewritten and toughened up—Lou Reed sang it like his listeners already knew the tune he was ad-libbing around. It had also lost its bridge (“heavenly wine and roses...”) in the album’s post-production stage. The versions that the Velvets had long been playing onstage, when they eventually surfaced, were radically different in tone and lyrics. And the “Sweet Jane” that became a radio staple in the mid-’70s, from Reed’s live album Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal, doesn’t even get to the part Reed wrote for its first three-and-a-half minutes—it’s mostly a showcase for Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner’s wailing guitars. Even then, it kept mutating: the caustic “Sweet Jane” that Reed spat out on Take No Prisoners and the impossibly delicate cover by Cowboy Junkies barely seem like the same song. “Sweet Jane” is a riff that's retroactively always been a part of rock music, three characters about whom we learn next to nothing and who don’t really interact, a little bit of an old Dionne Warwick record drifting in from a radio, and a chorus that’s just two words everybody can holler along with. It’s a cloud of fragrant smoke drifting up from under the ground—a document of when the ’60s avant-garde turned into the ’70s mainstream. –Douglas Wolk Listen: The Velvet Underground: “Sweet Jane” See also: Velvet Underground: “New Age” / Leonard Cohen: “Chelsea Hotel No. 2”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUcwNwMKAWs,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/loaded.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Velvet_Underground-Sweet_Jane.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,26,The Stooges,“Search and Destroy”,Columbia (1973),"Iggy Pop had signed a deal with Clive Davis and embarked to England to write and record Raw Power. He waved goodbye to Ron and Scott Asheton, seemingly ending the Stooges in the process. Three months later, the Ashetons followed him across the pond and the band was back together. Iggy’s plans with guitarist James Williamson to start a new group fell apart; the UK’s best players couldn’t live up to the Stooges. Around that time, Iggy would walk confidently through the streets of London in his cheetah skin jacket. “All the old men in London would drive by in their cars and they’d stop and try to cruise me,” he revealed in Please Kill Me. What else could you think when you see a street walkin’ cheetah with a heart full of napalm? On “Search and Destroy,” Iggy is weaponized—the runaway son of the nuclear A-bomb. Williamson’s guitar solos incinerate, and the Ashetons’ rhythm section is all energy. Iggy himself oozes confidence and screams wildly. The song, inspired by articles in Time about the Vietnam War, is one man spitting in the face of authority while simultaneously offering himself up for sex. Structurally, “Search and Destroy” is a perfect rock song, where guitar solos and pre-choruses mount and build to a payoff with wilder screams and bigger guitar solos. From the mouth of the fearless Michigan-born, rolling-in-glass wild card to the ears of kids, this was pure adrenaline. –Evan Minsker Listen: The Stooges: “Search and Destroy” See also: Stooges: “Gimme Danger” / MC5: “Over and Over”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irskrVvKR1E,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/rawpower.jpg,/dataset/artwork/The_Stooges-Search_and_Destroy.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,25,Curtis Mayfield,“Move on Up”,Curtom (1970),"After growing up in Chicago’s Travelling Souls Spiritualist Church, Curtis Mayfield gave the Civil Rights Movement a warm, hopeful soundtrack throughout the ’60s. As the leader of the Impressions, he sang of peace and equality on songs like “People Get Ready” and “Keep on Pushing,” helping to lift Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream. And his voice, high and soft, made heaven sound a little bit closer to earth. By 1970, King was gone. Riots had burned through many American cities, fueled by disillusionment, anger, desperation. Nixon was in the White House, preaching law and order. Black Power was fighting back. Curtis Mayfield wasn’t immune to the turmoil. He still had equality in mind, though instead of imagining everyone hopping on a train to the promised land, he opened his debut solo album with a stark warning cry called “(Don't Worry) If There’s a Hell Below, We’re All Going to Go.” Disappointment lurks through the opening side of Curtis, as Mayfield laments dirty politicians, urban poverty, and the segregationist impulse of whites and blacks alike. He ends the first half of the record with a challenge—over languid strings and horns, he sings, “Pardon me, brother, I know we’ve come a long, long way/But let us not be so satisfied, for tomorrow can be an even brighter day.” Then there are two pops on the snare and “Move on Up” explodes with the light of a thousand suns. This is Mayfield’s American optimism for a new decade—tougher, faster, funkier. The chugging guitar and flared horns nod to James Brown, and the insistent congas keep an open ear to the widening musical dialogue between Africa and the rest of the world. But the striving—the propulsion to keep going forward in the face of any and all adversity—is all Curtis. This thing has so much juice that the kings of sped-up soul, Kanye West and Just Blaze, had to slow it down when they flipped it 35 years later for “Touch the Sky.” The album version ends with an extended outro, five minutes of nothing but groove; the dream lives on inside those undeniable rhythms, wordless, pushing for every inch. –Ryan Dombal Listen: Curtis Mayfield: “Move on Up” See also: Curtis Mayfield: “Superfly” / Curtis Mayfield: “(Don't Worry) If There's a Hell Below, We're All Gonna Go”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1FH9NkrNHU,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/curtis.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Curtis_Mayfield-Move_on_Up.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,24,Led Zeppelin,“When the Levee Breaks”,Atlantic (1971),"If it was even possible to approach Led Zeppelin’s body of work objectively, “When the Levee Breaks” is the most obvious choice for their best song—what else expresses the Mighty Blimp’s power, ambition, grandeur and innovation within its first ten seconds? It made laypeople give a shit about microphone placement. The fact that Led Zeppelin only played it live a handful of times is proof that even Led Zeppelin is in awe of it. How’s this for a legacy: Björk and Beyoncé both sampled “When the Levee Breaks” to make the same point: do NOT fuck with me. It’s also the basis for the hardest track on The Chronic and was called upon when Massive Attack needed something to make freakin’ Mezzanine sound more badass. Does a song like this really need an explanation? –Ian Cohen Listen: Led Zeppelin: “When the Levee Breaks” See also: Led Zeppelin: “Kashmir” / Led Zeppelin: “In My Time of Dying”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onaoNS_A2Og,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/420/llevee.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Led_Zeppelin-When_the_Levee_Breaks.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,23,Bob Dylan,“Tangled Up in Blue”,Columbia (1974),"Bob Dylan started the ’70s on an infamously unsteady foot with the double album Self Portrait, a possibly antagonistic reaction to the heavy burden of fame following his run of masterpieces in the ’60s. But it would take something more devastating than the demands of his celebrity to inspire Dylan to once again to reach the heights of his classic run. Blood on the Tracks from 1975 is one of the rock era’s first comeback albums, and also its definitive breakup album, chronicling the specific combination of confusion, rage, and hopelessness that accompanies divorce with plain-faced honesty and sage wisdom. Like so many of Dylan’s best songs, album opener “Tangled Up in Blue” exists in a wide variety of renditions and arrangements. Before settling on the LP version, Dylan tested out minor chords and shifted the song’s “him-and-her” narrative into the first person, giving it a mysterious swagger and a sharper sense of self. It’s a sad, desperate love song that’s as smart as its writer, leaden with inside jokes (“‘I thought you’d never say hello,’ she said/‘You look like the silent type’”) and allusions. But Dylan saves the real heartbreaker for the final words: a concise, level-headed send-off that, in just two lines, summarizes so many breakup anthems to come: “We always did feel the same/We just saw it from a different point of view.” It ain’t me babe, he says, it’s us. –Sam Sodomsky Listen: Bob Dylan: “Tangled Up in Blue” See also: Bob Dylan: “I Believe in You” / Bob Dylan: “Shelter From the Storm”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwSZvHqf9qM,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/bloodonthetracks.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bob_Dylan-Tangled_Up_in_Blue.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,22,Big Star,“Thirteen”,Ardent (1972),"Fleeting adolescent innocence and bittersweet teen romance are two of pop’s oldest and most cherished tropes, but of the countless songs to include them, few have ever evoked the actual feeling of being young, dumb, and in love—that particular blend of elation, anxiety, and narcissistic conviction—as potently as “Thirteen.” Alex Chilton wasn’t too far out of his teens when he wrote it, and his lyrics—about school dances, gawky insecurity, and undying faith in rock‘n’roll–read like they were plucked straight out of high school mash notes: They’re perfectly, poignantly banal. The melody of “Thirteen” is instantly memorable but deceptively complex, modulating between major and minor keys to evoke the rapid ups and downs of young love. At the same time, it  dances on the verge of corny sentimentality. It’s that little hint of sappiness that gets your defenses down and allows “Thirteen” to hit as hard as it does; it’s also what let a track from an obscure album slowly but surely carve out a place in the modern pop songbook. –Miles Raymer Listen: Big Star: “Thirteen” See also: Big Star: “Holocaust” / Chris Bell: “I Am the Cosmos”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SloqU0o9kgI,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/thirteen.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Big_Star-Thirteen.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,21,David Bowie,“Changes”,RCA Victor (1971),"There’s something pleasantly cryptic about David Bowie singing “turn and face the strange” on one of his most historically popular songs, given he kicked off the ’70s with a series of stylistic “ch-ch-changes” and never looked back. The single, off his fourth studio album Hunky Dory, was the first Bowie song many Stateside listeners heard; it served as a fitting introduction to an American audience still riding off the two-year high of Woodstock and watching the world declare war and peace in the same breath. “Changes” found Bowie touching on the issues of the day, but he was also declaring his independence from the cookie-cutter rock stars that infiltrated U.S. soil at that tail end of the British Invasion. The song found Bowie on the verge—through the rest of the decade he would continue to shapeshift, but “Changes” was his swan song for normalcy, and everything that followed was sheer abstract brilliance. –Kathy Iandoli Listen: David Bowie: “Changes” See also: David Bowie: “Five Years” / David Bowie: “Starman”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fdhI3qUdSs,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/420/hunkydory.jpg,/dataset/artwork/David_Bowie-Changes.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,20,Patti Smith,“Gloria”,Arista (1975),"By 1974, when Patti Smith and her band started playing her version of Van Morrison’s “Gloria” live, she was a learned student of rock iconography. She’d been kicking around the New York scene for a couple of years at this point, writing poetry and the occasional record review, communing with artists, and meeting her heroes at Max’s Kansas City and the Chelsea Hotel. She knew “Gloria,” first released in 1965 by Morrison’s band Them, was garage rock’s original sacred text, the first song every kid who gets an electric guitar learns. Its simple chords have a lizard-brain-level attraction and pop fans are drawn to them instinctively—you think about their basic appeal about as much as an iguana thinks about a heat lamp. On the first song on her debut album, Smith took this coiled lump of primal lust and splattered it across an enormous canvas, using her gift with words to amplify its leering tone. Re-titling the song “Gloria (In Excelsis Deo),” the Latin name for a hymn that translates to “Glory to God in the Highest,” Smith turned a simple song about raging hormones into a surreal psychodrama that touches on sin, rebellion, guilt, idolatry, and undifferentiated desire in a place where anything’s allowed. The entire concept of gender folds in on itself; one moment Smith, a straight woman, is panting about a “sweet young thing humpin’ on the parking meter,” and the next she’s basking in the glow of when “twenty-thousand girls called their names out to me.” Rock’s most lunk-headed riff is married to poetry and one of its simplest expressions becomes very complicated—and when she gets to “G! L! O! R! I-I-I-I-I,” it returns to all those young bands in all those practice spaces, yelling out the letters like the whole world is about to explode. –Mark Richardson Listen: Patti Smith: “Gloria” See also: Patti Smith: “Free Money” / Patti Smith: “Dancing Barefoot”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXXQNtsBXYU,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/420/horses.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Patti_Smith-Gloria.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,19,Kraftwerk,“Trans Europe Express”,Capitol (1977),"“From station to station/Back to Düsseldorf City/Meet Iggy Pop and David Bowie.” So intones Ralf Hütter in Kraftwerk’s “Trans Europe Express.” The reference is more than just one of the best shout-outs in the history of popular music. By not only name-checking the famed pair, who met Kraftwerk in Düsseldorf in 1976, but also Bowie’s Kraftwerk-influenced album Station to Station from the same year, Hütter and his band of increasingly android-like synth-operators completed a circuit in one of the ’70s most profound—and influential—mutual appreciation societies. As quoted in the Kraftwerk biography Publikation, Bowie once praised the group’s sound as “folk music of the factories.” “Trans Europe Express,” with its implacable emphasis on repetition and the joys of a well-kept train schedule, only drove Bowie’s point home. The song extols the virtues of the Continent’s rail system, mixing the band’s minimalist experimentalism with the mechanized tones of what would become known as synth-pop. It marked the German quartet’s turn away from abstract and abrasive sounds, and toward a more cyber-organic approach that mixed emerging synthesizer technology with humanistic—but not wholly human—pop. The voice is cold, but the sentiment is warm. –Jason Heller Listen: Kraftwerk: “Trans Europe Express” See also: Kraftwerk: “The Robots” / Kraftwerk: “Radioactivity”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_85fUIRlmU,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/Trans-Europe_Express_American.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kraftwerk-Trans_Europe_Express.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,18,Blondie,“Heart of Glass”,Chrysalis (1978),"Blondie famously came out of the ultra-punk CBGB’s scene and were at the head of New York's anti-mainstream new wave movement. But after two albums of middling success, mostly in the UK, a reinvention was in order. ""Heart of Glass"" came just in time. Debbie Harry’s potential as a major pop star was evident to anyone who had ever laid eyes on her, and by melding disco’s then-commerciality with her stunning image and big-city cool, “Heart of Glass” propelled Blondie from cult group to household name. This shift in popularity was no mistake: aspects like the presence of both a beat machine and Clem Burke’s virtuoso drumming, and the off-kilter rhythm during the middle eight, made it certain the song would stand out from the slew of disco tracks cluttering the charts. “Heart of Glass” retained enough of Blondie’s DNA to assure they wouldn't become a one-hit wonder, and laid the groundwork for the band’s total assault on pop music in the decade to follow. –Cameron Cook Listen: Blondie: “Heart of Glass” See also: Sylvester: “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” / Amii Stewart: “Knock on Wood”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGU_4-5RaxU,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/420/blondie.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Blondie-Heart_of_Glass.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,17,Iggy Pop,“Lust for Life”,RCA Victor (1977),"Iggy Pop must've had a weird year in 1977. Punk was exploding in America and Britain. But there he was in Berlin, turning 30, with the art-damaged glam rock survivor David Bowie as his svengali. Pop released two albums that year: The Idiot, which came out in March, had a stark, electronic atmosphere that tied it to Bowie’s futuristic Berlin Trilogy. Six months later, Lust for Life went in the opposite direction, embracing retro rock with the same self-awareness as Lou Reed. The album’s deceptively jaunty title track is among punk’s first grown-up songs, with a bass, drum, and cymbal intro that ran longer than some Crass cuts. The protagonist of “Lust for Life,” Johnny Yen, came directly from the pages of William S. Burroughs’ Nova Trilogy, an apparition bearing substances and smut. Pop, who descended into heroin hell around the time Sid Vicious hit puberty, insisted he wouldn’t yield to temptation. “I’m through with sleeping on the sidewalk/No more beating my brains/With the liquor and drugs,” he sang, though he was still a decade away from getting clean. The impact of these lyrics has been diluted since the song’s thoroughly appropriate mid-’90s revival in Trainspotting, making its appearance in a cruise commercial inevitable—although “Lust for Life” was always sly, submerging its revelations in sarcasm and Burroughsian nonsense. Still, it constitutes a moment of genuine maturity from a guy who used to slice himself open onstage. –Judy Berman Listen: Iggy Pop: “Lust for Life” See also: Stooges: “Down on the Street” / Elvis Costello: “Pump It Up”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7dCrtdRtZQ,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/lustforlife.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Iggy_Pop-Lust_for_Life.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,16,Bruce Springsteen,“Born to Run”,Columbia (1975),"Had he not written “Born to Run,” Bruce Springsteen might be remembered today as the guy who wrote Manfred Mann’s biggest hit. He would have likely been dropped from Columbia, the label to which he had been signed in the early ‘70s among a rush of scruffy, promising “new Dylans.” He could have spent the rest of his career resting on the laurels of The Wild, the Innocent, & the E Street Shuffle, his jazzy, NYC-obsessed sophomore album, which had enough ambition and energy to become a cult classic. He could have faded into obscurity, like the self-effacing character he’d pay homage to decades later in “Local Hero,” immortalized in pawn shop paintings “between the Doberman and Bruce Lee.” He could have taken a quiet but safe backroad. Instead, Springsteen put things into overdrive, down a highway jammed with broken heroes. Exploding from one act to another, like an opera in fast-forward, “Born to Run” isn’t written like other rock songs, replacing the typical verse-chorus structure with a more euphoric symphony of wide-eyed proclamations. Beyond serving as the then-26-year-old Springsteen’s star-making turn as a lyricist and composer, “Born to Run” also marks the moment when the E Street Band collectively earned their stripes, from pre-Max Weinberg drummer Ernest “Boom” Carter’s inimitable skitter to Clarence Clemons’ giddy, galloping saxophone solo. Springsteen sings, “I want to know if love is wild…I want to know if love is real,” and Clemons steps to center stage with the answer. The staggering power of “Born to Run” was made even more apparent throughout the mid-‘70s, as other songwriters (“new Springsteens,” Columbia might have called them) tried and failed to rewrite it. Even Springsteen himself never wrote like this again, emerging three years later with Darkness on the Edge of Town, a stark, sad dream he followed into the ’80s and beyond. “Born to Run” is a song that could come from no one else at no other time. Earlier this year, when Springsteen announced the release of his upcoming autobiography, its title seemed inevitable: a name that could be shared by the 500-page story of his life, the once-in-a-lifetime song of his career, and tramps the world over. –Sam Sodomsky Listen: Bruce Springsteen: “Born to Run” See also: Bruce Springsteen: “Thunder Road” / Bruce Springsteen: “Jungleland”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcWVL4B-4pI,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/420/springsteen-born-to-run.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bruce_Springsteen-Born_to_Run.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,15,Queen,“Bohemian Rhapsody”,EMI (1975),"A journey through a cappella choral music, singer-songwriter balladry, virtuoso guitar wizardry, full-on operatic bombast, ramrodding hard rock, and then a subtly unsettling variation of its introductory introspection, Queen’s quintessential hit ties together several radically divergent styles of the era in an absurdly audacious, utterly idiosyncratic way. Nothing tells you more of what you need to know about ’70s pop than “Bohemian Rhapsody.” On the surface, it’s the ultimate over-the-top studio extravaganza in a decade crazed with excess. Flaunting so many overdubs that sections of the tape allegedly turned transparent, it’s also compositionally ultra-compact. There’s little repetition in Freddie Mercury’s melody, and absolutely no chorus. And yet, at its heart, “Bohemian Rhapsody” holds a secret: What the Bismillah is it all about? For decades, the band guarded it fiercely, demurring only to say that it was the composer’s personal business. Ultimately, his lover Jim Hutton confessed that it is the singer’s coming out. Mercury sings to his previous sexual partner/flatmate/best friend Mary Austin that he “just killed a man”—his old hetero self—via his first gay affair; the rift it causes is so traumatic that he momentarily comes to the conclusion that many LGBT people—who even today experience rates of suicide far exceeding their straight brothers and sisters—still at times reach: “I sometimes wish I’d never been born at all.” But Mercury escapes this torment, and plunges himself into a world of man-on-man masculinity embodied by the kick-ass section so beloved by Wayne and Garth and headbangers everywhere. As for the self-hatred and societal obstacles, he gets himself right outta there, and ascends to a place where he can be truly free. Across every religion, that’s the very definition of heaven, of divinity, and that’s why the most secretly gay song of all time is also one of the most universal. It’s the story of Mercury learning to love himself. Who can’t relate to that? –Barry Walters Listen: Queen: “Bohemian Rhapsody” See also: Queen: “Killer Queen” / Queen: “We Are the Champions”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUAitHlJMvw,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/420/Bohemian_Rhapsody.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Queen-Bohemian_Rhapsody.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,14,Stevie Wonder,“Living for the City”,Tamla (1973),"From the time he was a schoolboy, Stevie Wonder felt that being black was heavier and harder than being blind. By the end of 1972, he had the tools to illustrate racism’s manifestation. On “Living for the City,” a song from his 1973 album Innervisions, he placed that harsh lesson within a roaring, archetypal American narrative, the country boy moving to the city. But a black Jay Gatsby doesn’t end up on West Egg. He goes to prison. Working with the producers Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margoileff, Wonder used drums, electric piano, Moog bass, and various vocal takes to build the operatic world of “Living for the City,” seeding it with an allegorical narrative broadly representative of the experience of the black men and women who moved north during the Great Migration. It’s an unhappy story. But Wonder tempers his apocalyptic vision with a call for change in his final verse and, more prominently, through his awe—in the hook that ends every verse, in the wordless choral harmonies—at the city’s promise, “skyscrapers and everything.” You might argue that promise is false. It certainly seems so, given the reality on the ground. The song’s innocent protagonist is sentenced to 10 years in prison, the racist malice of the system clear from the slur an agent of the state tosses at him while locking him up. But the strength of “Living for the City” is such that it gestures toward the ideal as much as the real, that it exudes Martin hope along with Malcolm anger, ’70s experimentation meeting ’60s pop mastery. The city the song’s characters are living for doesn’t exist. It may never exist. Wonder leaves it to us. –Jonah Bromwich Listen: Stevie Wonder: “Living for the City” See also: Stevie Wonder: “Higher Ground” / Stevie Wonder: “Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOxQFQ3rZf4,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/420/innervisions.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Stevie_Wonder-Living_for_the_City.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,13,Al Green,“Let’s Stay Together”,Hi Records (1972),"Faith can be hard. There are trust issues, hiccups, dwindlings. And, in a way, faith in love can be even tougher to uphold than faith in God, since there are two fallible humans at the center of the struggle. But Al Green makes it all sound so easy, and “Let’s Stay Together” holds firm because it raises secular love to churchly levels. It is a vow, something to believe in. The song makes infatuation seem like it can last forever. This is a durable idea: The song hit #1 on the pop charts in 1972, making Green a star; last year, it still ranked among the 50 most popular wedding songs on Spotify. The bond that upholds “Let’s Stay Together” has everything to do with Green’s voice, of course—that raspy, quavering thing, rising and falling with the grace of a blue jay in springtime. It would be foolish not to trust this man. The expert house band at Memphis’ Hi Studios plays its part, too, sliding into an easygoing gallop that offers its own take on eternity. Investigate further, though, and it turns out that Green’s faith isn’t as simple as it may seem. For one, he reportedly was known for spending hundreds of hours perfecting vocals for each of his songs, yet still making the final takes sound as spontaneous as a first date. And then there are the singer’s own personal shortcomings. Later in the ’70s, Green dated a married woman who infamously scalded him with hot grits before killing herself with the singer’s gun. And when he tried wedded bliss out for himself in 1977, it was a disaster, with Green eventually admitting to domestic abuse in court. “Let’s Stay Together,” like so much great pop, is wishful fantasy. Just as the song fully opens up about three minutes in, it unceremoniously fades out. –Ryan Dombal Listen: Al Green: “Let’s Stay Together” See also: Al Green: “Tired of Being Alone” / Al Wilson: “Show and Tell”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqsjPK54niM,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/420/lets.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Al_Green-Lets_Stay_Together.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,12,Joni Mitchell,“A Case Of You”,Reprise (1971),"After the 1960s proved pop’s worth as an art form, rather than mere youthful entertainment, the ’70s seemed wide open for the poets and the dreamers. Joni Mitchell is, arguably, the decade’s greatest of both; her imagery, metaphor, and emotion echoes so loudly in every generation of so-called “confessional” singer-songwriters to follow her, it can be difficult to remember that this was her turf first. “A Case of You,” from her landmark 1971 album Blue, remains her rightful calling card. Out the gate, Mitchell shows an ability to call bullshit on her lover’s empty promises—with a nod to Shakespeare, no less—before spending the rest of the song explaining how she’d built up a tolerance for his ways. Perhaps it would be easy to mistake “A Case of You” as a “stand by your man” kind of song, but Mitchell tempers expectations with her initial scene-setting of a time “just before our love got lost.” As far as eulogies to former loves go, “A Case of You” is so generous and wistful, it becomes something bigger. There is not much to this song, musically speaking: Mitchell on the Appalachian dulcimer, James Taylor on guitar, and Russ Kunkel on drums. To do so little is a privilege, one Mitchell earns with the vividness of her words; there are countless anthems about why love is either rapturous or soul-crushing, but in terms of songs that perfectly capture why it is often both simultaneously, few plumb emotional depth like “A Case of You.” –Jillian Mapes Listen: Joni Mitchell: “A Case of You” See also: Joni Mitchell: “River” / Joni Mitchell: “Blue”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YuaZcylk_o,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/blue.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Joni_Mitchell-A_Case_Of_You.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,11,Bill Withers,“Ain’t No Sunshine“,Sussex (1971),"One of the most captivating ironies of “Ain’t No Sunshine” is that the more it is covered, the harder the original becomes to transcend. It doesn’t matter if it’s reworked by teen-pop icons, jazz greats, or even Japanese enka singers; it all comes back eventually to the first voice to sing it. “Ain’t No Sunshine” wasn’t Bill Withers’ first single, but it felt as hungry, vulnerable, and impassioned an introduction as any great artist’s first time realizing he might just make it in a business worthy of a working man’s skepticism. “Ain’t No Sunshine” is a literal throughline from the era’s Southern soul to the folk-rock movement; Withers’ backing band on this record is basically Booker T. & the M.G.’s, with Steve Cropper swapped out on guitar for Stephen Stills. Still, it was a crossover that wasn’t easy to deduce where it had crossed over from. That made it all the more plain just how powerfully nuanced Withers’ church-of-life voice was, even without the low-swinging second-verse strings or Stills’ pacing-in-a-cage guitar or the anguished solitude of the words themselves. The man sings/ruminates/meditates “I know” 26 times in a row in lieu of a third verse; not only does he get away with it, he turns that audacious verse into a setup for a delivery—“Hey I oughta leave the young thing alone”—that makes even his most secular derivations of gospel sound like a reckoning with the spirit. –Nate Patrin Listen: Bill Withers: “Ain’t No Sunshine” See also: Bill Withers: “Grandma's Hands” / Bill Withers: “Harlem”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJTNUIuassY,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/420/justasiam.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Bill_Withers-Aint_No_Sunshine.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,10,Joy Division,“Transmission“,Factory (1979),"There was always nervy energy to Joy Division’s music, an insistent pulse throughout their songs. Their first single, “Transmission,” is literally about electric signals: It opens with Ian Curtis chanting, “Radio, live transmission,” and its chorus advises letting radio waves propel your body into dance. At the end of the second verse, Curtis’ voice transmits directly into Bernard Sumner’s wiry guitar solo. Curtis knew something about physical electricity: he suffered from epilepsy and frequent seizures, and the frenetic build of “Transmission” has the feel of an uncontrollable short circuit. But there’s a subtext about conformity under it: To Curtis, society is an army of drones that “go on as though nothing was wrong” and are “staying in the same place.” Viewed through that lens, the heady chorus of “Transmission” is not a celebration so much as a warning: all the people who “dance, dance, dance, dance to the radio” are powerless followers led by whatever they’re fed. That Curtis and his bandmates delivered such a bleak message through such heart-quickening sound—the kind that, ironically enough, is impossible not to move your body too—shows just how much power Joy Division could generate. –Marc Masters Listen: Joy Division: “Transmission” See also: Joy Division: “She's Lost Control” / Joy Division: “Shadowplay”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dBt3mJtgJc,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/transmission.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Joy_Division-Transmission.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,9,Fleetwood Mac,“Dreams”,Warner Bros. (1977),"The sessions for Rumors, Fleetwood Mac’s 11th record, were fraught with turmoil. Amidst excessive cocaine use and the pressure of exceeding their self-titled smash, each member of the band faced the collapse of a long-term romantic and creative relationship. Singer Stevie Nicks took a break from one of these tense sessions at Sausalito, California’s Record Plant and retreated to a studio belonging to Sly Stone. Alone in this black-and-red velvet room with only a Fender Rhodes piano and a cassette player, Nicks penned “Dreams” about her crumbling relationship with singer and guitarist Lindsey Buckingham. The pair had been friends since high school, forming a project called Buckingham Nicks, and joining Fleetwood Mac as a package deal. Now, in 1976, they were barely speaking. Nicks returned to the rest of the band and gathered up the courage to play the intimate track in front of its subject. “Dreams” is less of a breakup song than a piece of sage advice. Nicks’ tone is undeniably hopeful and wise as she advises her partner to listen to the sound of his loneliness “like a heartbeat drives you mad/In the stillness of remembering what you had/And what you lost.” Independently of Nicks, Buckingham had written his own response to their relationship’s breakdown, “Go Your Own Way.” Buckingham’s reaction was angry and pessimistic while Nicks’ was spiritual and optimistic. She looked at the situation philosophically and turned to images of nature: “Thunder only happens when it’s raining….When the rain washes you clean, you’ll know.” With “Dreams,” Nicks took the emotional high road and it paid off. –Quinn Moreland Listen: Fleetwood Mac: “Dreams” See also: Fleetwood Mac: “Sara” / Fleetwood Mac: “Landslide”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJ9EDUClEyo,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/rumors.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Fleetwood_Mac-Dreams.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,8,Television,“Marquee Moon”,Elektra (1977),"Punk’s reputation in the ’70s was all about slobbering primitivism and snotty attitude. Yet for a few years, the hottest punk band in New York was a group of literary-minded virtuosos influenced by classic rock, free jazz, and Romantic poetry. Television had a bratty side, too—especially early on with bassist Richard Hell. By the time of their debut LP Marquee Moon, guitarist and singer Tom Verlaine had transformed them into a gothic, street-wise jam band. Marquee Moon’s title track is an 11-minute journey into the outer reaches of Verlaine and partner Richard Lloyd’s guitar interplay. The pair’s modal scale-climbing had been there from the start, but even as they refined and perfected their soloing, a spirit of punk simplicity remained. Nothing in this surprisingly taut tune sounds like noodling; Verlaine and Lloyd’s interlaced guitars always feel grounded, balancing themselves in a back-and-forth swing. The same goes for Verlaine’s lyrics. In simple stanzas that melt Romantic imagery into punk brevity, he’s obsessed with finding balance and closing circles, with trying to even everything out. Lightning strikes itself; a wise man counsels him never to get too happy or too sad; a Cadillac picks him up at a graveyard and brings him right back, a metaphor for the ashes-to-ashes loop of life. It’s powerful poetry on its own, but when paired with Television’s coiled guitar bliss, these words turn “Marquee Moon” into a kind of eternal cycle, one that sounds like it’s still in motion nearly four decades later. –Marc Masters Listen: Television: “Marquee Moon” See also: Television: “Venus” / Johnny Thunders: “You Can't Put Your Arms Around a Memory”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4myghLPLZc,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/marqueemoon.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Television-Marquee_Moon.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,7,Prince,“I Wanna Be Your Lover“,Warner Bros. (1979),"In 1979, funk was in flux. While disco was beginning to exhaust itself, post-punk artists were beginning to discover funk’s power, and synths, vocoders, and drum machines were injecting the genre with futurism. Thanks to the Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight,” which looped Chic, the form was being reimagined on an existential level. Into this turbulent environment stepped Prince with his breakout single, “I Wanna Be Your Lover.” The young Minnesotan’s debut album, 1978’s For You, had failed to crack the public consciousness, and “I Wanna Be Your Lover” was written in haste—a Hail Mary that not only put Prince on the pop map, but let him start redrawing it. Immaculately sculpted and emotionally cool, the song spotlighted everything the burgeoning genius had on tap: skills, hooks, precocious sex appeal, and a preternatural sense of his pivotal place in history. “I Wanna Be Your Lover” is a thing of its era—supple, sleek, and disco-esque—yet it points toward lusher, more ambitious triumphs to come. And as a dancefloor jam, then and now, it simply slays. But it’s also the apotheosis of ’70s funk, boiling down a decade’s worth of musical upheaval and innovation to one essential exit track; after this, pop would never be the same. –Jason Heller Listen: Prince: “I Wanna Be Your Lover” See also: Prince: “Soft and Wet” / Prince: “I Feel for You”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ENwxeC5xJQ,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/147_IWannaBeYourLover.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Prince-I_Wanna_Be_Your_Lover.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,6,David Bowie,““Heroes””,RCA (1977),"When David Bowie died in January, the world had no shortage of options of his songs to stream in their immediate mourning. Mostly, they chose ““Heroes.”” For a single that flopped in the U.S. and didn’t chart above the 20s in England, and a track that undercuts its own sentimentality with self-deprecating quotes in its title, this was an unlikely defining song for his long, varied career. But in the 39 years since its release, ““Heroes”” has gradually shed its quotation marks and become a sincere anthem, an inspirational hymn that champions personal-scale melodrama as insulation from an insane world. ““Heroes”” is an anomaly of Bowie’s Berlin era, really the only song to even resemble a traditional single (despite its chart failings). Yet remarkably, it still plays by the rules of his German exile, pulsing with a steady, hypnotic motorik beat and scrapping early plans for brass and string embellishments in favor of Robert Fripp’s majestic feedback drone and Brian Eno’s chugging oscillators. The only exception is Bowie’s lead vocal, which builds like a Broadway show-stopper from conversational to unhinged at a time when the singer was so uncomfortable with his voice, he barely put vocals on most of his tracks. By the point when Bowie’s vocal cords gloriously give way on “Nothing will drive them away!” the track has become so nakedly emotional, it’s no wonder he chose to hide behind those ironic quotations. But those histrionics also preserved ““Heroes”” in the canon for future Bowie incarnations, and as he grew less misanthropic, the song shed its layers of armor. At Live Aid, in front of the Berlin Wall, for Freddie Mercury, after 9/11, Bowie let the song pay genuine tribute to bravery great and small, changing the song’s core from self-involvement to celebration. So when Bowie died and was honored for his own heroism as a queer rebel, a musical iconoclast, and a dignified cancer victim, there was no better song to turn to—even if Bowie himself would have left the scare quotes intact. –Rob Mitchum Listen: David Bowie: ““Heroes”” See also: David Bowie: “Sound and Vision” / David Bowie: “Golden Years”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQj7Ek2kqxs&feature=related,https://cdn2.pitchfork.com/longform/420/heroes.jpg,/dataset/artwork/David_Bowie-Heroes.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,5,Kate Bush,“Wuthering Heights”,EMI (1978),"At the age of 19, after years of writing her own melancholy songs and being discovered as a sort-of prodigy by Pink Floyd's David Gilmour, Kate Bush exploded onto the top of the UK charts with her searingly high-pitched soprano, wide-eyed stare, and interpretive dance moves, singing her misty version of a story she claims not even to have read at the time. (Legend has it, she wrote “Wuthering Heights” in a matter of hours after viewing a BBC miniseries adaptation that was popular that year.) During this era, both disco and punk were at their peak, two genres whose appreciation rested somewhat on a level of sociability—you had to dance, or pogo, or at least show up in order to participate. Bush forcibly created a space for the quiet kids, the weirdos, the ones who thought black leotards and gothic romances were cool. Kate Bush was the first woman to top the UK charts with a self-written song, which seems unbelievable, but goes to show how necessary it was for her to transform her fantasies into reality. –Cameron Cook Listen: Kate Bush: “Wuthering Heights” See also: Kate Bush: “Moving” / Kate Bush: “The Man With the Child in His Eyes”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BW3gKKiTvjs&list=RDBW3gKKiTvjs,https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/420/110_WutheringHeights.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Kate_Bush-Wuthering_Heights.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,4,Donna Summer,“I Feel Love”,Casablanca (1977),"She was the disco queen. But that’s not all she was. Born in Boston in 1948, LaDonna Adrian Gaines grew up singing in her church’s gospel choir, like so many soul greats of the era. By 1967, Donna Gaines was gripped by the influence of Janis Joplin, becoming the only African-American in a psych-rock band called the Crow. After a stint in New York City, she joined the cast of Hair in Germany, where she eventually got married. In Munich, Donna Summer crossed paths with Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte, a songwriting team who had crafted one of the first UK hits to brandish a synth; together, they created her 1974 debut album, which was more Brill Building than Studio 54. The connections to other styles only multiplied as Summer began her disco ascent. Inspired by the erotic pop of Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg’s 1969 single “Je T’Aime,” she reunited with Moroder and Bellotte for her first U.S. club chart-topper, the famously orgasmic, 17-minute “Love to Love You Baby.” Her next massive hit had similarly deep roots: As the closing track from 1977’s I Remember Yesterday, a concept album exploring historical styles like Dixieland and ’60s Motown, “I Feel Love” was supposed to embody the future of disco. Of course, it did—but in fusing Summer’s “Love to Love You”-style purrs with pulses created entirely with Moroder’s Moog, “I Feel Love” also evoked synth-based records by Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream. Summer went on to have bigger hits—funkier, more overtly political, more Barbra Streisand—but “I Feel Love” was the one inducted into the Library of Congress the week after her death in 2012, at age 63. It’s a funny thing, the way a ’70s dance-music craze that near-miraculously swept up middle America has endured via a cosmopolitan smash like “I Feel Love:” covered by Blondie, reputedly beloved by Brian Eno, and safely canonical in its influence on house, techno, synth-pop, and beyond. Even now, the ever-cresting rush of “I Feel Love” still sounds years ahead. –Marc Hogan Listen: Donna Summer: “I Feel Love” See also: Donna Summer: “Love to Love You Baby” / Giorgio Moroder: “From Here to Eternity”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pv8svBI0fcg,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/420/irememberyesterday.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Donna_Summer-I_Feel_Love.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,3,Marvin Gaye,“What’s Going On”,Tamla (1971),"It was the dawn of the 1970s, and “What’s Going On” almost wasn’t happening. The Four Tops’ Renaldo “Obie” Benson, inspired to write the tune during a 1969 visit to San Francisco, finished crafting his version with Motown songwriter Al Cleveland. But the Four Tops didn’t want to sing a protest song (“I said no, man, it’s a love song,” Benson maintained). Joan Baez didn’t bite, either. Marvin Gaye, at this point an established Motown hitmaker, liked the song—just enough for the in-house vocal group he’d been producing, the Originals. Benson insisted Gaye sing it himself. Gaye’s wife, Anna, told him, “Marvin, this is a perfect song for you.” Gaye needed “What’s Going On” right then. His duet partner and confidant Tammi Terrell had died from a brain tumor. His brother Frankie had come back from Vietnam a haunted man. His marriage to Anna, as it happened, was on the verge of combusting. Meanwhile, after singing about love and relationships on past hits like “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” and “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” Gaye was rethinking his artistic vision. He yearned for audiences “to take a look at was happening in the world.” Gaye finished writing “What’s Going On,” and in June 1970, went into the Motown studios to record it. The (inferior) single version wouldn’t slip out until the following January. Gaye’s production on “What’s Going On” was some of the Tamla/Motown label’s most forward-thinking. The strummy, finger-snapping track stood out from other sleek Detroit assembly-line products for its dreamy saxophone intro, party-like chatter from Detroit Lions football players, and layering of multiple lead vocals, a technique that would become a Gaye trademark. And the song’s laid-back, marijuana-hazy feel still resonates in an era of looser, more impressionistic records. Most of all, Gaye’s airy embrace of love as the balm for social upheaval, and his calm plea not to “punish me with brutality,” remain every bit as relevant today. What’s Going On, Gaye’s 1971 magnum opus, would address other still-timely issues—poverty, the environment—and he would record other major triumphs before his tragic death in 1984. In times of turmoil, few other love songs seem so necessary. –Marc Hogan Listen: Marvin Gaye: “What’s Going On” See also: Marvin Gaye: “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)” / Marvin Gaye: “Inner City Blues (Makes Me Wanna Holler)”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vx3mOga_Q_w,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/whatsgoingon.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Marvin_Gaye-Whats_Going_On.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,2,Michael Jackson,“Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough”,Epic (1979),"Michael Jackson was a monumental figure in global culture, but before he secured that legacy, there was a time he had to break out of his mold and navigate the choppy transition from child star to solo icon. Having found lasting fame at an age where most people are still grappling with their multiplication tables, Jackson already had a sizable career behind him when he teamed up with the already legendary Quincy Jones to cut Off the Wall, his grand entrance into adulthood. “Don't Stop ’Til You Get Enough” has early versions of all the traits that made Jackson’s ’80s music so singular: the playful yet unwavering falsetto, his trademark vocal yelps and gasps (heard here in their incubatory form), the unmistakable ear for what constitutes a mega-hit. The video for the song shows Jackson effortlessly finding the courage to crotch-thrust and soft-shoe his way into his larger-than-life identity. Even if, in some dreary and moonwalk-less alternate reality, “Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough” hadn't been the precursor to two decades of pop music innovation, it would still stand the test of time as a seminal gem from an artist just realizing his limitless potential. –Cameron Cook Listen: Michael Jackson: “Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough” See also: Michael Jackson: “Off the Wall” / Michael Jackson: “Workin' Day and Night”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yURRmWtbTbo,https://cdn4.pitchfork.com/longform/420/rockwith.jpg,/dataset/artwork/Michael_Jackson-Dont_Stop_Til_You_Get_Enough.jpg
The 200 Best Songs of the 1970s | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9935-the-200-best-songs-of-the-1970s/,1970s,decade,song,1,David Bowie,“Life on Mars?”,RCA Victor (1971),"In the ’60s, before he became Starman, David Jones was a struggling songwriter-for-hire, a floppy-haired naïf playing earnest folk. Somewhere during this awkward chrysalis stage, he tried penning English lyrics for an overripe French ballad called “Comme d’Habitude,” eventually turning in a plummy, elegiac trifle called “Even a Fool Learns to Love.” His label rejected his efforts and gave the commission to fellow hack-for-hire Paul Anka, who wrote a song with the melody called “My Way.” The following year, as Frank Sinatra’s valedictory version ascended to Great American Songbook status, another one, floating light years beneath it, tentatively signaled who the next decade would belong to: “Space Oddity.” Hunky Dory was released two years later, and David Bowie’s first transformation was complete. “Life on Mars?,” with its huge, late-Sinatra-sized melody, was Bowie’s private nod to “My Way,” a curtain call for the theatrical schmaltz that nourished his transformation. The song erected a glimmering bridge in the sky between early British dancehall and rock’n’roll, Judy Garland and the Beatles, the innocence of the past and the utopianism of the future. Like Paul McCartney, who snuck hokey Tin Pan Alley-isms into rock’n’roll, Bowie instinctively grasped that divisions between eras—and between genres—were artificial; there was only a grand unifying gesture yet to be made, a synthesis no one else was canny enough to have spotted yet. Bowie was canny enough to spot dozens of these moments over his career, enough to bend reality at his touch: “Life on Mars?” was his first such gesture, and his grandest. No one—not Jimi Hendrix treading the ether of LSD on “Are You Experienced,” not John Lennon cutting and looping drums and gazing into his third eye on “Tomorrow Never Knows""—was operating at this celestial a plane. His opening lines—“It’s a godawful small affair/To the girl with the mousey hair”—telegraphed his new vantage point. On one level, the lines were another private telegram from the life of David Jones, dedicated to his first serious girlfriend. But the whole song was a sweeping statement of disaffection that felt subversively new. The lawman beating on the wrong guy, Mickey Mouse growing up a cow: Bowie sounded positively airy about all of it, as though it couldn’t possibly matter from a safe-enough distance. Somewhere in these lyrics, a bold new idea asserted itself: humans might not have outgrown their use, but their games and futile drama could grow awfully tiring. There was only one more place to go, and that was upwards. Which is exactly where that incandescent chorus sets its sights, boosted by cello stabs that sound like Wagnerian augurs of fate. Floating at this height, Bowie could see everything: Ibiza, Britannia, his mother, his dog, clowns, the mice in their million hordes. When you were up here, you could see how silly it all was, and that it was “about to be writ again.” When his voice hits that note, on that chorus, he streaked across the sky so brightly that generations since—from Freddie Mercury to Prince and Afrika Bambaataa to the Flaming Lips to André 3000— have gazed towards the heavens, recalculating just how high they might reach. –Jayson Greene Listen: David Bowie: “Life on Mars?” See also: David Bowie: “Ziggy Stardust” / David Bowie: “Station to Station”",Platform: YouTube - Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v--IqqusnNQ,https://cdn.pitchfork.com/longform/420/hunkydory.jpg,/dataset/artwork/David_Bowie-Life_on_Mars.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9017-the-top-50-albums-of-2012/,2012,year,album,50,Lambchop,Mr. M,Merge / City Slang,"Lambchop’s two decades of graceful countrypolitan creak are marked by the deliberate pace of the small orchestra’s music-- the slow strings and trickling guitars, the nonplussed rhythms, and the steady voice of frontman Kurt Wagner. Lambchop’s languid Southern stride seems particularly anachronistic in the digital age, with the bulk of the songs on the ornate and affecting Mr. M taking at least five minutes to reach their elliptical ends. This band’s arduous movement rewards persistence. On Mr. M, Wagner leads Lambchop not only with some of his most sumptuous singing to date but also with some of his most lived-in lines. He delivers a panoramic view of the world as it might actually be-- vulnerable to wrath but welcoming to warmth, too, with rivers made by every sort of tear. He moves from the sentimental wonder of “Never My Love” to the shit-talk arbitration of “Buttons”, from the childlike curiosity of “Gone Tomorrow” to the elliptically devastating “Nice Without Mercy"". Sit and ponder a spell, the Nashville gentleman asks; the sound sure is nice. --Grayson Currin",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Lambchop_-_If_Not_Ill_Just_Die.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5ff713d197565213f82d/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Lambchop-Mr_M.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9017-the-top-50-albums-of-2012/,2012,year,album,49,Crystal Castles,(III),Fiction / Casablanca / Universal Republic,"Alice Glass and Ethan Kath's noisy goth-pop/electro-punk sound is so specific it can feel like their three untitled albums are part of a single, slowly-deepening series. In articles surrounding (III), their most sonically consistent and unrelentingly bleak album, Glass spoke more than usual about her lyrics. Because her singing is so buried in noise, you don't often think about specific words when listening to Crystal Castles, so it was interesting to burrow beneath the icy distortion. Here, the words mattered: (III) is filled with meditations on the exploitation of women and children and religious oppression to match those asphyxiated vocals. ""I'm one step away from being a vigilante to protect people and bring justice to the people I love,"" Glass said in an interview. Where Crystal Castles once seemed like substance-free stylists, with (III), they've crafted an album of haunted protest music. --Brandon Stosuy","Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/crystal-castles/crystal-castles-wrath-of-god, http://soundcloud.com/crystal-castles/crystal-castles-affection",https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5ff80c2bba1b7de04e52/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Crystal_Castles-III.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9017-the-top-50-albums-of-2012/,2012,year,album,48,Peaking Lights,Lucifer,Mexican Summer / Weird World,"Peaking Lights’ love of neon-tinted psych-dub loops continues unabated on Lucifer, and if there’s less fuzz on this record, there are still layers of beatific repetition to get lost in. Lucifer is structured like a day, opening with “Moonrise” and closing with “Morning Star”, and along the way moving from the waking brightness of “Beautiful Son” to the dark echo of “Lo Hi” back through the sparkling dawn of “Dreambeat”. The simple progression mirrors the child-like earnestness of the tunes, which could soothe the most despondent baby (I know at least one newborn who can testify). But Peaking Lights’ musical innocence is both genuine and misleading. There are dark rumblings and deep undercurrents on Lucifer, reflecting the album’s titular character, whose name is synonymous with both Venus, bearer of life, and the devil. And it's within that resolution of contradictions that this album finds its real power. --Marc Masters","Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/weirdworldrecordco/02-beautiful-son, http://soundcloud.com/peakinglights/lo-hi/s-2vnFx",https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5ff85e6ef959693273c7/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Peaking_Lights-Lucifer.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9017-the-top-50-albums-of-2012/,2012,year,album,47,Pallbearer,Sorrow and Extinction,Profound Lore,"Hype is a hell of a drug. In certain circles, this album seemed destined for greatness before it was even committed to wax and has more than fulfilled the promise of the Arkansas outfit's 2009 demo. Sorrow and Extinction is moving and graceful and devastating. But what separates Pallbearer from the million and a half other doom bands is soul. Pallbearer's music is straightforward and well-executed, but the atmosphere-- the feeling, man-- that they manage to convey using doom metal's classic template and Southern gothic undertones is magical. Brett Campbell's voice is powerful and flawed, the perfect medium to plumb the depths of misery and redemption that make doom doom. Pallbearer know what it's like to suffer, to be lonely and directionless and stifled, and they ease their suffering the only way they know how: by invoking the spirits of Saint Vitus, Candlemass, and cheap Kentucky bourbon, crossing fingers, and tuning low. --Kim Kelly",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5ff9eb335119a49f13e8/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Pallbearer-Sorrow_and_Extinction.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9017-the-top-50-albums-of-2012/,2012,year,album,46,Rustie,Essential Mix,BBC,"When Russell Whyte sat down to record his two-hour installment of BBC's ""Essential Mix"" series the night before it aired in April, he didn't have a grand plan in mind. He wasn't going out of his way to connect the dots between his own ecstatic sounds-- many of which seem to cite Mario Kart's star-power music as a guiding influence-- and those of both over- and underground hip-hop, dance, and R&B artists. But a mix like this is an ideal outlet for breaking down supposed musical walls; it's where TNGHT's unstoppable ""Goooo"" can lay down the red carpet for Rick Ross, or where Clams Casino can make Juicy J's ""Geeked Up Off Them Bars"" that much geekier, or where Nicki Minaj can share a few minutes of hard-nosed minimalism with up-and-coming Brooklyn banger factory Baauer. Rustie wasn't trying to Define the Future, and that's probably why he did it with such ease. But thinking ahead can cause some confusion in the now. When I caught the 29-year-old Glaswegian at Manhattan's Webster Hall in September, the place was filled with a unique blend of shirtless club bros, cap-down rap kids, and some nerds. So when a drunk friend brushed against a nodding hip-hop dude, things got a little tense. ""Touch me one more time and I'll kill you,"" said the dude. ""I don't believe you,"" responded the drunk friend. They separated. But then, somewhere between Kanye's ""Mercy"" and Rustie's own ""Ultra Thizz"", the two traded warm, beery apologies. The Great Rustie Détente of 2012 was secure. --Ryan Dombal",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/rustie/essential-mix-bbc-radio-1,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5ffa13d197565213f833/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Rustie-Essential_Mix.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9017-the-top-50-albums-of-2012/,2012,year,album,45,El-P,Cancer for Cure,Fat Possum,"El-P's 2012 collaboration with Killer Mike, R.A.P. Music, was the hard left hook to the jaw, but his solo record Cancer for Cure was the body blow-- the one that rumbled your guts, left you sickened and confused. Solitude has always suited El-P, and on this record, he emerged from it with a record so dense and internal that it was impossible to discern the hum of the machines from the hum of his mind. El let his sputtering nerves bleed into every corner of his minutely fussed-over mix, muttering, yelling, and pleading with the same compelling combination of confession and obscurity that has always characterized his music. On “For My Upstairs Neighbor”, he stops an abused woman with a touch of the arm, telling her, “It must have taken every muscle in your body to produce that little twitch you probably thought was passing muster for a smile... But I read the tells, I know the sacred art of bluffing.” The connection is so vivid because El has spent the album, and his career, painting himself as a kindred spirit: Cancer for Cure is what a scream feels like when it never leaves your brain. --Jayson Greene",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/El-P_-_The_Full_Retard.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5ffa13d197565213f835/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/El-P-Cancer_for_Cure.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9017-the-top-50-albums-of-2012/,2012,year,album,44,METZ,METZ,Sub Pop,"The technology to crank your guitar up to huge, ear-busting levels can be purchased over the counter, but bands that can pull off volume while inducing claustrophobia are something special. Metz are such a band. The Toronto-based trio’s Sub Pop debut is pure pummel and ugliness in the best sense. The drums thunder away like they’re being bludgeoned at the bottom of an elevator shaft. The bass and guitar pound minimalist patterns through a curtain of fuzz and grit. The songs sound live-- not in the sense that they were recorded as-performed, but in the way that represents what loud bands actually sound like when they turn up at a grimy club with cement walls. High frequencies bounce through the stereo field. The vocals seem feedback-baked and half-strangled. There are moments when Metz betray a minor debt to grunge, but most of the time, they're out on their own bizzaro wavelength, singing about rats, mental instability, or whatever else conjures up appropriate levels of anxiety. --Aaron Leitko",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/METZ_WetBlanket.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5ffbc0084474cd0c7001/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/METZ-METZ.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9017-the-top-50-albums-of-2012/,2012,year,album,43,Mac DeMarco,2,Captured Tracks,"Mac DeMarco's persona is so willfully slimy (in interviews, he's talked about how he once stuck his thumb up his bumhole and then put it in his mouth at a gig and how he once held a job putting dead pets in body bags) that you might expect his music to be just as tossed-out and childish. But his talent is true. DeMarco's second record of the year, 2, is downright greasy; his unpredictable, louche guitar melodies rise above the warped production and showboat with a laidback, lubricated clarity that’s more “Sultans of Swing” than slovenly slacker. The fact that lead single “My Kind of Woman” drew comparisons to Cass McCombs raised some hackles over the issue of authenticity; here’s a kid previously known as Makeout Videotape whose last record dealt in debauched glamour now playing the sensitive troubadour. But everyone suffers heartbreak, and 2 shot wearily accepting glances at what looked like a hopeless family situation: a clingy father with a meth problem. Whatever the literal truth of DeMarco's persona on 2, at least someone’s putting effort into playing the provocateur-- and without dumbing his music down as part of the act. --Laura Snapes","Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/capturedtracks/mac-demarco-ode-to-viceroy/s-PIVa6, http://soundcloud.com/capturedtracks/mac-demarco-my-kind-of-woman",https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5ffb0c2bba1b7de04e59/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Mac_DeMarco-2.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9017-the-top-50-albums-of-2012/,2012,year,album,42,"Rick Ross
Rich Forever
[Maybach]","We’re all familiar with Rick Ross’ fantasy aspirations at this point: Big Meech, Larry Hoover, John Lennon, Wingstop entrepreneur. Best rapper alive, though? This isn’t a mixtape that comes out and says it like Wayne's Dedication 2 or Clipse's We Got It 4 Cheap, Vol. 2, but there was something immediately different about the aims of Rich Forever-- and it’s not just that one of America’s most proud capitalists was releasing 79 minutes of ridiculously expensive-sounding music for free. When it dropped on January 6, Rozay put hip-hop on notice that the rest of 2012 would be ruled under his martial law; the benevolent, caricatured overlord of Teflon Don becomes something close to a fearfully real tyrant on Rich Forever, and any semblance of pop concession is steamrolled by domineering Lex Luger-style beats and instantly quotable, must-hear verses that can be taken as a threat to anyone who doesn’t appear on the tape. Those that did-- 2 Chainz, French Montana, Meek Mill, Drake, Wale, Future, just to name a few-- would go onto divide and conquer the charts this year after convening on tracks like “Stay Schemin’”, “Fuck ‘Em”, and “MMG The World Is Ours”, street singles that still managed to infiltrate the mainstream and render Ross’ commercial release God Forgives, I Don’t comparatively safe and forgettable enough to earn a Grammy nomination. --Ian Cohen","


Rick Ross: Keys to the Crib [ft. Styles P]

",,Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/11-Rick_Ross-Keys_To_The_Crib_Feat_Styles_P_Prod_By_The_Inkredibles.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5ffc0c2bba1b7de04e5b/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Rick_RossRich_ForeverMaybach-Were_all_familiar_with_Rick_Ross_fantasy_aspirations_at_this_point_Big_Meech_Larry_Hoover_John_Lennon_Wingstop_entrepreneur_Best_rapper_alive_though_This_isnt_a_mixtape_that_comes_out_and_says_it_like_Waynes_Dedication_2_or_Clipses_We_Got_It_4_Cheap_Vol_2_but_there_was_something_immediately_different_about_the_aims_of_Rich_Forever--_and_its_not_just_that_one_of_Americas_most_proud_capitalists_was_releasing_79_minutes_of_ridiculously_expensive-sounding_music_for_free_When_it_dropped_on_January_6_Rozay_put_hip-hop_on_notice_that_the_rest_of_2012_would_be_ruled_under_his_martial_law_the_benevolent_caricatured_overlord_of_Teflon_Don_becomes_something_close_to_a_fearfully_real_tyrant_on_Rich_Forever_and_any_semblance_of_pop_concession_is_steamrolled_by_domineering_Lex_Luger-style_beats_and_instantly_quotable_must-hear_verses_that_can_be_taken_as_a_threat_to_anyone_who_doesnt_appear_on_the_tape_Those_that_did--_2_Chainz_French_Montana_Meek_Mill_Drake_Wale_Future_just_to_name_a_few--_would_go_onto_divide_and_conquer_the_charts_this_year_after_convening_on_tracks_like_Stay_Schemin_Fuck_Em_and_MMG_The_World_Is_Ours_street_singles_that_still_managed_to_infiltrate_the_mainstream_and_render_Ross_commercial_release_God_Forgives_I_Dont_comparatively_safe_and_forgettable_enough_to_earn_a_Grammy_nomination_--Ian_Cohen.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9017-the-top-50-albums-of-2012/,2012,year,album,41,Dum Dum Girls,End of Daze EP,Sub Pop,"End of Daze owed some of its success to the sheer sound of Dee Dee's voice, suddenly so full of velvet and inscrutable regret. But it was also in the black-veil, drama-rich way she deployed it, intoning “I want to live a pure life” on “Lord Knows” like a woman bravely facing a firing squad for unnamed sins. Every gesture on End of Daze rang with that freaky preternatural charisma, the sort of unfairly distributed magnetism that shouts Budding Rock Star, whether it was the “Crimson and Clover” chord progression of “Lord Knows” or the stunning centerpiece cover of Strawberry Switchblade’s “Trees and Flowers”. Her version was nothing but a glimmering single guitar and a sigh, but it created a warm feeling of isolation and loneliness deep enough to live inside. --Jayson Greene ",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5ffd13d197565213f83c/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Dum_Dum_Girls-End_of_Daze_EP.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9017-the-top-50-albums-of-2012/,2012,year,album,40,DIIV,Oshin,Captured Tracks,"The video for DIIV's ""Doused"" is fairly basic: just live footage from one of the approximately 65 billion shows the band played over the last 12 months. What's notable, though, is how excited the young audience is, sweating, arms tentatively outstretched, mouthing along with Zachary Cole Smith's laconic mumble. It's like the entire room was just hanging around, looking for a band like DIIV to give them something to believe in. Oshin is that record. It's lyrically sparse, opting for unanswered existential questions and muttered moments of lost hope. It's a record about growing up lost, and then becoming an adult and realizing that you'll forever be lost anyway. On closing track ""Home"", Smith sings, ""You'll never have a home,"" sounding completely defeated, as if he doesn't even realize that, in Oshin, DIIV created one of their own. --Sam Hockley-Smith",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/capturedtracks/diiv-doused-1 | Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Dive_-_How_Long_Have_You_Known.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5ffd5e6ef959693273d0/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/DIIV-Oshin.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9017-the-top-50-albums-of-2012/,2012,year,album,39,Hot Chip,In Our Heads,Domino,"There's a scene in 500 Days of Summer when Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character breaks into love-struck song while surrounded by animated birds. Alexis Taylor of Hot Chip comes close to that feeling several times on In Our Heads, lost in the universal, often tongue-tying expressions of love and companionship. Except he's singing about something long-lasting rather than instant infatuation. Especially in the face of new research about the hormonal pitfalls of companionship, it’s reassuring that Taylor can still find joy in how amazing it is to wake up every day next to the same morning breath. Hot Chip has always been a little out-there, but the British outfit’s fifth album steers things in a more mature direction without losing any eclecticism. The songwriting often reads like a conversation between date-night dance floor synths and the seriously revealing pillow talk afterwards. Veering confidently between the seven minutes in heaven of “Flutes”, opening bombast of “Motion Sickness”, and more twittering birds on “Let Me Be Him”, Hot Chip manage to stay true to both their loving and fun-loving selves. --Harley Brown","Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/dominorecordco/hot-chip-flutes, http://soundcloud.com/dominorecordco/hot-chip-dont-deny-your-heart",https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5ffe5e6ef959693273d2/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Hot_Chip-In_Our_Heads.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9017-the-top-50-albums-of-2012/,2012,year,album,38,Lotus Plaza,Spooky Action at a Distance,Kranky,"Lockett Pundt, the half of Deerhunter’s songwriting duo who still seems locked in his bedroom when he’s onstage, has made his dream album. Spooky Action at a Distance is a work of forlorn guitar geekdom, packed with awe-inspiring bummer jams that tower over those on 2009’s Floodlight Collective. Pundt still doesn’t get out much, and when he does, he doesn’t have much to say. But that’s why god invented reverb, right? You don’t necessarily go to Lotus Plaza for lyrics, but Pundt is able to wring surprising emotion from stasis. On “Strangers”, a simple anecdote of the most mundane situation-- “You walked in and found/ Me staring at the ground/ What’s wrong, you said/ I shrugged and shook my head”-- gains poignancy by association with Pundt’s resonant, stately lead guitar line. “Monoliths” is the pinnacle of this approach, and the most self-consciously epic track Pundt’s done yet. An ode to the conflicted pleasures of drugged-out isolation substituting for social interaction, it’s 2012’s indie rock version of the Beach Boys’ “In My Room.” When it comes down to it, actually, Lotus Plaza’s entire existence can be summed up in a single lyric from Brian Wilson’s 1964 classic: “There’s a world where I can go and tell my secrets to.” --Eric Harvey","Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/kranky/lotus-plaza-monoliths, http://soundcloud.com/kranky/lotus",https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5fffeb335119a49f13ef/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Lotus_Plaza-Spooky_Action_at_a_Distance.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9017-the-top-50-albums-of-2012/,2012,year,album,37,Future,Pluto,Epic / A1 / Free Bandz,"Halfway into ""You Deserve It"", the crowning track from Future's Pluto, the Atlanta rapper blurts out: ""All this pain I can't even rap/ Sometimes I feel I wanna sing!"" There's a lot of singing on Pluto. And a lot of blurting too. There is also a lot of gurgling and grunting and croaking and stammering and spitting, all of it out of sheer necessity. Future's rap style is barely a rap style. Instead, it's a series of unfiltered feelings exploding into verbal and nonverbal proclamations, then slathered in Auto-Tune. What he lacks in traditional lyrical prowess he more than makes up for in sheer conviction and performance. He pushes against the perimeters of his genre's language, in much the same way that rap's forefathers shattered the expectations of what came before them. But the strangest thing about Pluto is how it remains a completely effective pop-rap album in spite of (because of?) these evolutionary leaps. It's spawned five charting hits, from the raucous ""Same Damn Time"" to the aggressively emo ""Turn on the Lights"", making Future one of the only natural rap hitmakers to emerge this year. But then again, it makes sense. Future's humanity is so transparent in his gurgles that he's like a newborn baby on the mic. It's only inevitable that he'd connect with the world around him. --Andrew Nosnitsky",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/futureisnow/turn-on-the-lights-explicit,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5fffeb335119a49f13f1/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Future-Pluto.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9017-the-top-50-albums-of-2012/,2012,year,album,36,Sharon Van Etten,Tramp,Jagjaguwar,"Produced by the National’s Aaron Dessner and featuring a cabal of Brooklyn-based players (Beirut’s Zach Condon, Doveman’s Thomas Bartlett, Julianna Barwick), Sharon Van Etten’s third full-length concerns the mechanics of bad love-- forces germane, maybe, to all love: fixation, isolation, deep, cataclysmic longing. It’s not so unreasonable to resent someone for forcing you to feel all that shit, and the tiny-but-potent bursts of hostility embedded here (“I want to be over you/ I want to show you”) are gloriously human; Van Etten is a formidable guitarist, but it’s her hazy, lilting vocals that land like an anvil to the chest. “You’re the reason why I’ll move to the city, or why I’ll need to leave,” she admits on “Give Out”, her voice plaintive, resigned to both ecstasy and devastation, to love and its wreckage. Van Etten has said that the album’s most visceral track, the ukulele-led “We Are Fine”, is “about a friend talking you through a panic attack,” but its urgency translates to a cornucopia of annihilatory scenarios. And, in turn, offers some universal solace: “We’re alright,” she sighs. “We’re alright.” --Amanda Petrusich",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Sharon_Van_Etten_-_Serpents.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c600013d197565213f840/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Sharon_Van_Etten-Tramp.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9017-the-top-50-albums-of-2012/,2012,year,album,35,TNGHT,TNGHT,Warp / Luckyme,"There were signs of this coming. The purple movement's fascination with Neptunes production, numerous UK laptoppers toying with trap beats, Diplo-- but it wasn't until Hudson Mohawke and Lunice teamed up as TNGHT that global bass music and American hip-hop finally became one. And while these guys hail from Glasgow and Montreal and arrive with sturdy dancefloor credentials, that’s really the way to think of this EP: a thumping, thwacking lyric-less hip-hop record. The obvious take is that these guys are building off Lex Luger, Hit-Boy, and regional comers like Young Chop, polishing and melodicizing that machine-gun approach, but their own spin on the sound is undeniable: ultra-clean, ultra-modern, less about street grit (though it’s there) than laser-beam precision. But back to the thump. Hit play on walloping centerpiece “Higher Ground”, with its nods to the Pharoahe Monch classic “Simon Says”-- those horns!-- and try not banging your head. Heck, even Kanye’s on board. --Joe Colly",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6001eb335119a49f13f3/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/TNGHT-TNGHT.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9017-the-top-50-albums-of-2012/,2012,year,album,34,Chairlift,Something,Columbia,"Chairlift first came on the radar of the iPod-buying public four years ago with the focus-grouped quirk of their single ""Bruises"", but Something is the record on which they gloriously came into their own weird selves. A newfound penchant for Eurovision-worthy dance moves, catsuits, and playfully high-concept lyrics about fictitious scientific phenomena were all on display in the Brooklyn duo’s video for lead-off single ""Amanaemonesia"", but the tightly propulsive track itself also announced a major leap forward in Chairlift's songcraft. It could have easily gone the other way: losing a founding member can sometimes spell disaster, but Aaron Pfenning's 2010 departure gave Caroline Polachek and Patrick Wimberly an opportunity to restructure into something confident and sleek. Featuring production from Dan Carey (Hot Chip, Bat for Lashes), Something is a record with a new-age brain and a thumping 80s pop heart, pulling equally from the playbooks of Suzanne Ciani and Duran Duran. Polachek's vocals-- every bit as acrobatic as her dance moves-- are expressive enough to transcend influences, though, packing a barking, staccato punch one moment and turning to vaporous falsetto the next. The album's most memorable songs (""I Belong In Your Arms"", ""Met Before"") are as explosive, ecstatic, and prismatic as falling in love. --Lindsay Zoladz",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/chairlift/i-belong-in-your-arms,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c600113d197565213f842/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Chairlift-Something.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9017-the-top-50-albums-of-2012/,2012,year,album,33,Actress,R.I.P.,Honest Jon's,"The music of London producer Darren Cunningham has always been like a faded sketch, hinting at worlds of unimaginable detail obscured by the very medium through which they’re viewed. In the case of Actress, that medium is harshly processed frequencies and mechanical buzz. It’s part of what made his past music so fascinating-- arch rhythms that held entire universes in the pauses between the beats. Third album R.I.P. showed Cunningham open up a little bit, though not in the way you might expect; here, everything was still coated in a primordial goop of digitization and blocky pixel processing, but it was rendered with a distinctly human hand. All broken melodies and wounded lullabies, the only thing more stunning than the album’s deeply personal vision of techno and ambient music was how fragmented and conflicted it sounded across such a unified palette. From the Eno-esque drift of “NEW” to the Heart of Darkness evoking “Caves of Paradise” to straight-up house banger “Lords of Graffiti”, R.I.P. went to 15 very different places in the span of an hour, always returning to a state of wonder as if the album itself was dumbstruck by the strangely beautiful sounds it was making. --Andrew Ryce",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c600213d197565213f844/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Actress-RIP.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9017-the-top-50-albums-of-2012/,2012,year,album,32,Action Bronson/Party Supplies,Blue Chips,Fool's Gold / Reebok Classics,"A horny Albanian-American former chef from Queens going over to Williamsburg to rip bongs, cruise the internet, and record with a dance-music-leaning hipster producer sounds like a recipe for a complete mess. And Blue Chips really is an almost total wreck by most technical standards-- but a deeply fascinating one. No record made by professional musicians in recent memory sounds as likely to fall completely apart at any second: producer Party Supplies leaves rough edges on his beats (at one point, when he turns up a Mac running a sample, he leaves in the telltale bleeps), while Bronson blatantly flubs vocal takes all over the place (“Dreamer” offers 45 seconds of absolute rap bliss before he fucks up a line and the song simply stops). But the lo-fi treatment fits with the weird selection of media that Party Supplies samples (vintage Thai psych-pop, YouTube videos, a song by power ballad icons Extreme), and the desperate quality of Bronson’s performance suits his own take on the louche rap-star lifestyle, which feels distinctly seedy and downmarket. So wrong; so right. --Miles Raymer",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c600213d197565213f846/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Action_BronsonParty_Supplies-Blue_Chips.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9017-the-top-50-albums-of-2012/,2012,year,album,31,Spiritualized,Sweet Heart Sweet Light,Fat Possum,"Never one for subtle metaphors, Jason Pierce introduced Spiritualized’s 1995 album, Pure Phase, by extolling the virtues of his “Medication”, rendering its effects as a sustained, euphoric gospel-soul rush. But after spending much of 2010 on different kind of meds-- thanks to a chemotherapy treatment for a near-fatal liver disease-- Pierce could only describe his state of mind with the single word that graces the artwork of Sweet Heart Sweet Light: huh? The brain-fogging influence of that experience, however, stops at the cover. After all, Pierce has been singing about death, depression, and Jesus since his Spacemen 3 days, so it’d be presumptuous to assume his recent hospital stint had any direct bearing on lines like “sometimes I wish that I was dead, because only living can feel the pain.” What is certain is that Pierce has rebounded from the most tumultuous period of his life with his most clear- and level-headed album to date, one that places Spiritualized’s twin affinities for gospel-hymn grandeur and dissonant psychedelic squall on an equal, complementary footing, rather that in competition with one another. Even at its most epic (the two-part, Autobahn-bound odyssey “Hey Jane”, the carnivalistic swirl of “Headin’ for the Top Now”), Sweet Heart Sweet Light remains approachable, engaging, and in good humor-- rather than float in space, the resurrected Pierce gets his high from keeping his feet planted firmly on the ground. --Stuart Berman __",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/spiritualized/hey-jane-eq-15feb-1?secret_token=s-7F2kB,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6003c0084474cd0c700c/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Spiritualized-Sweet_Heart_Sweet_Light.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9017-the-top-50-albums-of-2012/,2012,year,album,30,The Men,Open Your Heart,Sacred Bones,"When we included the Men's Leave Home on last year’s Top Albums list, there was hope that the band's pulverizing Sacred Bones debut could trigger a revival of truly nasty, abrasive indie rock in the increasingly friendly confines of Brooklyn. In the next six months, they toned down the sonic S&M on the relatively accessible and triumphant Open Your Heart only to shelve the vast majority of it in a live setting. Instead, they test drove material from their next album-- and from the sounds of things, it will possibly head into full-blown Allmans and Creedence territory. The lesson being: It’s risky to use their studio albums to say anything definitive about the Men at this point, so let’s just forget about narratives and evolution and appreciate Open Your Heart as a record that makes them sound capable of doing whatever the hell they want. It cycles through barnstorming classic rawk, searing punk, beer-chugging country, and muscular krautrock. If you basically like any kind of music made with guitars, there’s something for you here. --Ian Cohen",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/sacredbones/the-men-candy,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c600313d197565213f848/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Men-Open_Your_Heart.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9017-the-top-50-albums-of-2012/,2012,year,album,29,Cat Power,Sun,Matador,"Chan Marshall got stuck in Los Angeles with the Endtimes Capitalism blues and from it wrenched Sun. Confident and cool, it was Marshall born again, transformed by her struggles and transfixed by America’s. She tried her hand, at what, in her dark palette, counts as party music, quasi-rapping (“3 6 9”), going sublime about patriotism and New York as it will never be again (“Manhattan”), and doling out love and liberation to little troubled girls. While the album, largely a solo endeavor, was about Marshall coming into her own power as an artist, it was one of the very few in recent years that reflected the current climate of America back to us, without sloganeering; Sun is Chan, of the people. --Jessica Hopper",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/catpower_-_ruin.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6004eb335119a49f13f9/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Cat_Power-Sun.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9017-the-top-50-albums-of-2012/,2012,year,album,28,How to Dress Well,Total Loss,Acéphale / Weird World,"Considering how much music he'd released in various configurations over the past two years, it was easy to forget that Total Loss was actually the proper debut full-length from Tom Krell's experimental R&B project. After Love Remains, which gathered highlights from a series of free downloadable EPs, it was hard to know where he would take his sound next, whether access to better studios and more eyes watching would push HTDW somewhere that didn't play to Krell's strengths. But Total Loss turned out to be the right next step. Krell knows that people turn to his music to feel something, that it's less about the details than the totality of the expression. And this album succeeds by amplifying emotion to the greatest possible degree. At points, like on highlight ""Set It Right"", the music draws from the ego-obliterating power of shoegaze, but the record also brings to mind the soaring drama of Broadway, going for the biggest and most powerful moments at every turn. Turns out Krell never needed to be lo-fi, and here his internally focused music is projected outward to glorious effect, a deep outpouring from a generous heart. --Mark Richardson",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/howtodresswell/how-to-dress-well-ocean-floor/ | Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/How_to_Dress_Well_-__It_Was_U.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6004d7a71d1ea569c841/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/How_to_Dress_Well-Total_Loss.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9017-the-top-50-albums-of-2012/,2012,year,album,27,"__John Talabot
ƒIN
__[Permanent Vacation]","Spanish producer John Talabot moves at his own pace, veering from meditative house grooves to music that encroaches on the pop sphere. His transitions between these worlds are seamless, whether he’s working with guest vocalists or producing slow-reveal instrumental pieces like this album’s gorgeously understated “Oro y Sangre”. The space Talabot works in is often tricky to get right-- dreamy dance music that can work just as well in a club as it can on headphones at home. For much of this record it feels like he’s searching for the perfect sunrise anthem, the kind of record a DJ slips on as dark fades into light and flagging spirits are given a much-needed lift to close out the night. Talabot clocks in for his shift around the same time as Burial, only with entirely different results. For Burial, the early morning hours are all long walks through litter-strewn streets, lost in a cycle of bitter rumination. ƒIN pictures that same time as the point to indulge in a comforting kind of reverie, a quiet moment to get lost in for a few minutes, a place where normal existence can gently fade back into the frame. --Nick Neyland","



        John Talabot: ""Destiny"" [ft. Pional]
        (via SoundCloud)
    

",,"Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/john-talabot/destiny-feat-pional, http://soundcloud.com/john-talabot/so-will-be-now-feat-pional",https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c600513d197565213f84c/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/__John_TalabotIN__Permanent_Vacation-Spanish_producer_John_Talabot_moves_at_his_own_pace_veering_from_meditative_house_grooves_to_music_that_encroaches_on_the_pop_sphere_His_transitions_between_these_worlds_are_seamless_whether_hes_working_with_guest_vocalists_or_producing_slow-reveal_instrumental_pieces_like_this_albums_gorgeously_understated_Oro_y_Sangre_The_space_Talabot_works_in_is_often_tricky_to_get_right--_dreamy_dance_music_that_can_work_just_as_well_in_a_club_as_it_can_on_headphones_at_home_For_much_of_this_record_it_feels_like_hes_searching_for_the_perfect_sunrise_anthem_the_kind_of_record_a_DJ_slips_on_as_dark_fades_into_light_and_flagging_spirits_are_given_a_much-needed_lift_to_close_out_the_night_Talabot_clocks_in_for_his_shift_around_the_same_time_as_Burial_only_with_entirely_different_results_For_Burial_the_early_morning_hours_are_all_long_walks_through_litter-strewn_streets_lost_in_a_cycle_of_bitter_rumination_IN_pictures_that_same_time_as_the_point_to_indulge_in_a_comforting_kind_of_reverie_a_quiet_moment_to_get_lost_in_for_a_few_minutes_a_place_where_normal_existence_can_gently_fade_back_into_the_frame_--Nick_Neyland.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9017-the-top-50-albums-of-2012/,2012,year,album,26,Julia Holter,Ekstasis,Rvng Intl.,"After a series of CD-Rs and cassettes released in tiny editions, Los Angeles-based composer/songwriter Julia Holter raised her profile with 2011's Tragedy and broke through with this year's Ekstasis. Her latest full-length straddled the worlds of high art and pop, moving easily between the ancient and modern. Classic 1980s touchstones like synths, vocoder, and drum machines are her primary building blocks, but Holter also deploys shimmering harpsichord tones and harmonium drones. Singing about statues, a weeping boy in the moon, and people unable to connect regardless of their epoch, Holter's vocals recall 70s singer-songwriters like Joni Mitchell and Judee Sill one moment and Renaissance-period madrigals the next. By moving into accessibility while keeping her unique aesthetic intact, Holter crafted a truly ecstatic art-pop album. --Andy Beta","Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/igetrvng/julia-holter-marienbad-1, http://soundcloud.com/igetrvng/julia-holter-in-the-same-room",https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6006c0084474cd0c7014/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Julia_Holter-Ekstasis.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9017-the-top-50-albums-of-2012/,2012,year,album,25,"Schoolboy Q
Habits & Contradictions
[Top Dawg]","Schoolboy Q's debut wasn't the the headiest or most sonically expansive album to emerge from L.A.'s Black Hippy collective (that distinction belongs to Ab-Soul's Control System); nor was it the smartest or most commercially successful (that'd be Kendrick's opus good kid, m.A.A.d. city). But it was easily the best party record of the bunch, thanks to call-and-response ragers like ""There He Go"", spirited trunk rattlers like ""2 Raw"", and the delirious, A$AP Rocky-assisted lead single ""Hands on the Wheel"". Woozy-but-assertive production by Mike Will Made It and Digi+Phonics serve as a musical reflection of Q's mission statement: ""Am I over faded?/ Hell yeah, it's true/ Turn on a beat, ain't no limit to what I can do."" Also, it should certainly be noted that Q almost single-handedly brought back the bucket hat. There he go, indeed. --Corban Goble","



        Schoolboy Q: ""Grooveline Pt. 1"" [ft. Dom Kennedy and Curren$y]
        (via SoundCloud)
    

",,Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/topdawgent/schoolboy-q-groovline-pt-1,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6006eb335119a49f13fe/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Schoolboy_QHabits__ContradictionsTop_Dawg-Schoolboy_Qs_debut_wasnt_the_the_headiest_or_most_sonically_expansive_album_to_emerge_from_LAs_Black_Hippy_collective_that_distinction_belongs_to_Ab-Souls_Control_System_nor_was_it_the_smartest_or_most_commercially_successful_thatd_be_Kendricks_opus_good_kid_mAAd_city_But_it_was_easily_the_best_party_record_of_the_bunch_thanks_to_call-and-response_ragers_like_There_He_Go_spirited_trunk_rattlers_like_2_Raw_and_the_delirious_AAP_Rocky-assisted_lead_single_Hands_on_the_Wheel_Woozy-but-assertive_production_by_Mike_Will_Made_It_and_DigiPhonics_serve_as_a_musical_reflection_of_Qs_mission_statement_Am_I_over_faded_Hell_yeah_its_true_Turn_on_a_beat_aint_no_limit_to_what_I_can_do_Also_it_should_certainly_be_noted_that_Q_almost_single-handedly_brought_back_the_bucket_hat_There_he_go_indeed_--Corban_Goble.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9017-the-top-50-albums-of-2012/,2012,year,album,24,Purity Ring,Shrines,4AD,"“U guys don’t know how many times I’ve listened to Lofticries on repeat,” Danny Brown wrote on Twitter this fall before giddily rapping over a new version of Purity Ring’s “Belispeak”. Meanwhile, members of the sometimes-zonked Weeknd crew as well as upstart Atlanta rapper (and noted molly advocate) Trinidad Jame$ have also sung the Canadian electro-pop duo's praises. In a way, it should come as no surprise that Purity Ring-- who’ve cited narcotics trendhopper Soulja Boy as a central influence-- have found fans and collaborators among some of music’s loudest MDMA enthusiasts. It is undeniable: the futuristic pop melodies and confectionary vocals found on Shrines slice so cleanly and quickly at the music-listening pleasure receptors that you might believe your serotonin levels have temporarily been thrown out of whack. The effect is compounded by producer Corin Roddick’s love of down-pitched, narcotic layers and vocalist Megan James’ science-fiction narratives, which draw you into a haunted forest where every surface is a glistening piece of crystal. James adds a physicality to the sugary experience with corporeally-obsessed lyrics-- weakened legs, holes drilled into eyelids, sweating lips, starving hips, seeping blood, ripped sternums-- reminding you that the comedown is always just around the corner. --Carrie Battan",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/lastgangentertainment/purity-ring-fineshrine | Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/obedear.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6007c0084474cd0c7016/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Purity_Ring-Shrines.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9017-the-top-50-albums-of-2012/,2012,year,album,23,Miguel,Kaleidoscope Dream,RCA,"Miguel has been posited as a rule-breaking R&B wunderkind but Kaleidoscope Dream is more about how he works within the rules he sets for himself. He offers a sensuous, yearning “Sexual Healing” tribute (“Adorn”), tearful S&M in a multi-layered rainstorm (“Use Me”), and dream-like harmonies and Timbaland-style rhythmic stutters (“Do You...”)-- a succession of costumes that are comfortingly familiar but beautifully designed. The album succeeds in large part due to his excellent and versatile voice, which effortlessly navigates a variety of contradictory poses in both falsetto and baritone, moving from the whispery intimacy of the title track (“body language like piano keys” he murmurs so close you can almost feel his breath in your ear) to the glamorous distance of “Arch & Point”. Sometimes it makes sense to cut through the artifice, but Miguel creates it and then lives up to it. --Tim Finney","Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/miguelofficial/adorn, https://soundcloud.com/miguelofficial/use-me",https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6007eb335119a49f1402/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Miguel-Kaleidoscope_Dream.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9017-the-top-50-albums-of-2012/,2012,year,album,22,Flying Lotus,Until The Quiet Comes,Warp,"Steven Ellison is Flying Lotus, but Flying Lotus isn’t just Steven Ellison. When the name Flying Lotus is attached to a project, it means you’re getting Ellison’s acuity, imagination, and daring, not to mention his prodigious record collection and encyclopedic musical knowledge. But it also means that you’re almost guaranteed to get some Thundercat, you might be getting a Thom Yorke or an Erykah Badu, and you’re definitely getting some talented session musicians whose names you don't know. Until the Quiet Comes, Ellison’s dreamiest effort to date, is also his most openly collaborative. And it's the producer's ability to guide his talented players and channel his fertile imagination through them that gives the record its sense of cohesion, even as it travels from the assembly-line jitterbug of “Putty Boy Strut” to the languid beauty of the Laura Darlington-powered “Phantasm”. All told, Until the Quiet Comes was the waking-dream antidote to Cosmogramma’s delightful excess. --Jonah Bromwich",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6008c0084474cd0c7018/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Flying_Lotus-Until_The_Quiet_Comes.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9017-the-top-50-albums-of-2012/,2012,year,album,21,Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti,Mature Themes,4AD,"Ariel Pink was strictly a cult artist until “Round and Round” brought more people into the tent. The early word pegged Mature Themes as his “freak out the squares” record, i.e., the most predictable response to sudden fame a notoriously unstable guy could have. If you didn’t have the stomach for “Pink Slime”, the patience to endure the seven-minute drone of “Nostradamus & Me”, or the belief that the the cover of Donnie and Joe Emerson’s “Baby"" was sincere, there were plenty of opportunities to hit the exits. But Mature Themes has a wealth of ingeniously crafted pop songs, songs that were weirder, funnier, and more strangely affecting than just about anything else that came out this year. So while Mature Themes is something of an “old Ariel Pink album” intended for his new fans, it’s by no means an act of antagonism. Instead, it's a show of confidence and trust that he didn’t need to remake “Round and Round” to dazzle them all again. Pretty mature shit for an album with a song called “Schnitzel Boogie” on it. --Ian Cohen",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6008c0084474cd0c701a/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Ariel_Pinks_Haunted_Graffiti-Mature_Themes.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9017-the-top-50-albums-of-2012/,2012,year,album,20,Jessie Ware,Devotion,PMR,"The R&B that's crossed over to the indie world has tended to reward mysteriousness, but Jessie Ware presented something very direct: herself, her songs, her voice. Consider the videos for ""Running"" and ""Wildest Moments"", both of which focused solely on an elegantly styled Ware alone in a well-lit room, singing. It would almost seem quaint if it wasn't so refreshing. Ware doesn't bother being hip. She shares a smokiness with Sade but she also shares her comfort with adult contemporary. She came up singing over beats by Joker and SBTRKT, but ditches the club scene altogether for the classy theatrics of Whitney Houston records. A cynic would say that this was no way to make it in 2012, but Ware's vision for herself proved stronger than any formula. Or maybe it's that Ware is so far out in front that everyone else will be catching up next year. --Jordan Sargent","Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/jessieware/running, http://soundcloud.com/jessieware/jessie-ware-110-1",https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60095e6ef959693273e6/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Jessie_Ware-Devotion.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9017-the-top-50-albums-of-2012/,2012,year,album,19,Cloud Nothings,Attack on Memory,Carpark,"Last year, a lot of ink was spilled commemorating the 20th anniversary of Nevermind, though musically speaking, 1991 seemed much farther from 2011 than it actually was. Many indie bands lined up to pay tribute by recording Nirvana covers, but few seemed to be overtly influenced by the bygone rock era that Nirvana came out of. Where were the rock records with a fat bottom end and guitars that left animalistic scrape marks on your forearms? Were indie bands even interested in making that kind of record anymore? Finally, the cacophony cavalry arrived in the form of Cloud Nothings’ Attack on Memory, the first in a series of noisy blows that battered indie-rock throughout the year-- take a bow, Japandroids, the Men, and Screaming Females, among others-- finally restoring some of the piss and vinegar that had been drained out by prog-folk, Brooklynite art-rock, and chillwave. (Doesn’t chillwave already seem like it happened 10 years ago?) But before he could give indie rock a swift kick, frontman Dylan Baldi needed to transform Cloud Nothings. For the first time, he recorded with his touring band instead of by himself. Equally important was his decision to employ Steve Albini, who supplied his trademark ""aluminum bat striking a side of beef"" thud at the center of Attack on Memory’s aggressive thrust. The final result was a shock coming after the sweet, almost twee pop-punk of Cloud Nothings’ 2011 self-titled LP, and a reminder that the 21-year-old Baldi is still in the process of finding his voice and honing his already prodigious songwriting talent. For too long, indie bands didn’t want to get their hands dirty; with Attack on Memory, Cloud Nothings were out for blood. --Steven Hyden",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/wichita-recordings/cloud-nothings-stay-useless | Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Cloud_Nothings_-_No_FutureNo_Past.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c600a5e6ef959693273ea/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Cloud_Nothings-Attack_on_Memory.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9017-the-top-50-albums-of-2012/,2012,year,album,18,Ty Segall Band/Ty Segall & White Fence,Slaughterhouse /__ Hair,In the Red / Drag City,"Lo-fi, garage rock, punk, noise-- Ty Segall is not concerned with these distinctions. He just makes rock'n'roll albums that make sense to him. That's the story behind Hair. Initially, his plan was to do a split LP-- Ty on one half, White Fence's Tim Presley on the other. And then it just evolved into two Bay Area dudes playing each other's songs in the studio, turning them into a symbiotic product of collaboration. There are tracks with more of Presley's psychedelic leanings (""The Black Glove/Rag""), and glam bashers that easily sit in Segall's wheelhouse (""Crybaby""). But the creative delineation isn't so black-and-white-- you can hear them feeding off of each other all over the album. And in a live performance of ""Scissor People"", for example, you see Tim matching Ty's live energy before both devolve into Thurston Moore levels of frenzied noise. Slaughterhouse, meanwhile, sprouted from a similar environment of collaboration, this time with the Ty Segall Band. But the product of Segall, Mikal Cronin, Emily Rose Epstein, and Charles Moothart’s hive mind was something much heavier and darker. Slaughterhouse is an awesomely aggressive ode to screaming, searing punk rock. You know that brand of laughter that comes from witnessing destruction, the laugh that pops up when Jack Nicholson's demented face peers around a corner in The Shining or when somebody smashes a guitar on stage? Throughout Slaughterhouse, those are the reactions Segall and company corner and earn over and over again. Whether it's through the guitar barrage of ""I Bought My Eyes"", the junkyard bark Segall delivers when they rip up Fred Neil’s ""The Bag I'm In"", or the otherworldly shrieks from the album's title track, the LP's an exhilarating ode to punk rock muscle. Segall’s just going to keep doing whatever he wants, which is for the best. It's easy to trust this guy’s instincts. --Evan Minsker",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/tysegallwhitefence_-_iamnotagame.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c600b13d197565213f856/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Ty_Segall_BandTy_Segall__White_Fence-Slaughterhouse____Hair.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9017-the-top-50-albums-of-2012/,2012,year,album,17,Bat For Lashes,The Haunted Man,Parlophone,"The frequent claims that The Haunted Man is a ""stripped-down"" album for Natasha Khan aren’t necessarily wrong, but let’s not get carried away. This is the woman whose prior two albums displayed about as much restraint as a Baz Luhrmann birthday party. So while Haunted is less ostentatious than Two Suns (not least for its cover, which eschews space-queen diorama for something more Mapplethorpe), keep in mind that the album’s gorgeous opening track ""Lilies"" is still inspired by a 1970 film from the dude who directed Lawrence of Arabia. This isn’t exactly strumming-on-a-stool stuff. Haunted doesn’t so much dial back the lavish, LARP-ish folk-prog set pieces of Khan’s earlier work as much as it refines and expands them. The album is built around narratives of self-empowerment and tragedy transcendence typically found in disco and house music-- a line like ""you’re more than a superstar,"" from torchy first single ""Laura"" could have come from the mind of the Scissor Sisters’ Jake Shears. On both ""Lilies"" and the rumbling warrior chant ""Horses of the Sun"", she proclaims joy at simply being alive. The entirety of ""Oh Yeah"" sounds like nothing less than a druidic pleasure ritual. Haunted came together as Khan was restoring her confidence and creativity in the wake of a traumatic breakup. Because she is who she is, this process meant taking classes in children’s illustration and intensive dance instruction, then flying to New York for a Native American medicine ceremony. But it also meant getting in touch with her own ancestry, particularly the story of her grandfather returning home from World War II, shell-shocked and without the emotional resources to deal with it. Khan told the Quietus that Haunted is about ""letting go of the things that haunt me,"" but that’s underselling the scope of this project, which is empathetic, bold, and outlandish. The path she took to shed her psychic baggage meant taking on significant extra weight. --Eric Harvey","Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/batforlashes/bat-for-lashes-laura, http://soundcloud.com/batforlashes/bat-for-lashes-all-your-gold",https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c600b0c2bba1b7de04e79/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Bat_For_Lashes-The_Haunted_Man.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9017-the-top-50-albums-of-2012/,2012,year,album,16,Burial,Kindred EP,Hyperdub,"With Burial, it’s footsteps or fossils. Two-step drums click like heels in shaded pursuit. Sounds are shrouded in mist. You can feel the serotonin of brutal highs thinning into forgotten revelations. The skeletal remains of garage, jungle, and house crushed until they start to bleed black. Disembodied vocals wailing like discontented spirits. Ghost requiems. Kindred sounds like taking a 4 a.m. subway ride and stepping out into a peat bog. It’s been a half-decade since Untrue was nominated for a Mercury Prize and William Bevan was un-hoodied. In the interim, dubstep’s star waxed and wanged. But rather than capitalize on his newfound cult, Burial hardened his isolation, by passing a full-length follow-up in favor of 12"" collaborations with Four Tet, Massive Attack, and Thom Yorke, along with the three-track releases Street Halo and Kindred. The latter is a masterpiece masked as an EP, where Burial unveils everything but his face. The 11-minute title track crackles with static and rain, pixilated fatalities and spearing snares. A saturnine lover coos ""baby, you."" Synthesizers turn sepia. The vocal smears sound celestial and suffering, unearthly but wounded. Like Burial’s best work, it operates as an eraser, bypassing traditional lines of communication and operating as some ancient and abandoned Esperanto. You remember the emotion but never the details. ""There is something out there,"" starts ""Loner."" It ends with a mournful ""hold on."" You’re left to filter the whispers that stalk the in-between. If 2012 found the first wave of dubstep artists dabbling with house, Burial reserved the most crumbling lampless chamber. For his encore, there is ""Ashtray Wasp"", sculpted out of a silvery rickety house beat that threatens to collapse, folding onto itself like some haunted origami for 11 plaintive minutes. Bells faintly peal. Voices echo into another forgotten night. And you hear one final footstep. --Jeff Weiss",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c600c5e6ef959693273ec/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Burial-Kindred_EP.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9017-the-top-50-albums-of-2012/,2012,year,album,15,Dirty Projectors,Swing Lo Magellan,Domino,"For 10 years, Dave Longstreth has made his music more difficult than it needs to be. Dense arrangements, flashy time changes, interlocking melodies, and vocal harmonies so acrobatic that watching the band land them live can feel more like a circus performance than a musical one-- these are the marks of an ambitious artist with big things to prove. With Swing Lo Magellan, he proved them in part by letting them go. This is an album of love songs by a band that until now would’ve never dared to say the word. Its darkest moments-- ""Offspring are Blank"", ""About to Die"", and ""Gun Has No Trigger""-- are cautionary tales by young people fighting against time to hold onto their innocence. Its most social ones-- ""The Socialites"" and the oil-spill story ""Just From Chevron""-- rest in unexpectedly personal places: a girl sitting alone at a party wondering what she’s really worth; a solitary worker going home. At the album's heart is ""Impregnable Question"", a simple song about something irreducibly complex: How to live with someone else. There is sweetness here, and apprehension, and excitement, and fear. Above all though, there is acceptance. Longstreth’s vision is not of two people becoming one, but of understanding that they are and always will be two. That’s where the challenge starts. The sentiment is simply rendered and the music is as stripped-down as the band has ever played. At least one couple I know has already chosen it as the first dance at their wedding, which a writer as careful, self-examining, and quietly confident as Longstreth could probably anticipate. Given his history of being almost compulsively obscure, the heartening thing is that he went ahead and wrote it anyway. But Dirty Projector's aren't giving up their prickly braininess-- after all, the title of the song contains the word ""impregnable,"" which you don’t hear too often in conversation. For some bands, maturity means getting softer. For bands as talented and skeptical of routine as this one, it means getting better. --Mike Powell",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/dominorecordco/dirty_projectors-gun_has_no_trigger,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c600d5e6ef959693273ee/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Dirty_Projectors-Swing_Lo_Magellan.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9017-the-top-50-albums-of-2012/,2012,year,album,14,Andy Stott,Luxury Problems,Modern Love,"Prior to 2011, Andy Stott was workmanlike, both literally-- he painted cars for a living in his native Manchester-- and artistically. His chosen idiom, the reverberating confines of dub techno, had grown largely static, almost by design. But he found found menace and mystery with last year's Passed Me By and We Stay Together EPs. Still, those releases did not prepare us for Luxury Problems, which connects the dots between the hazy, crestfallen dub of 90s pioneers like Basic Channel and Porter Ricks, mid-naughties minimalism, and Burial's vocal alchemy. The resulting mix of fierce rhythms and dewy exultations was like watching a bulldozer pirouette: Stott was harnessing visceral, athletic energy, but it took a great amount of control and coordination to prevent things from ending poorly. These are the tightropes you must walk when you invite your childhood piano teacher to record vocals for your unmade album. The opening track, ""Numb"", on which this gambit is introduced, is like a cinderblock dressed up in lace doilies, but this isn't some misplaced exercise to make hard, obscure sounds go down easy for the uninitiated. One of the great triumphs of Luxury Problems is that it never feels as if it's making you take your medicine. By the time the roof-scraping drum skeleton of ""Up the Box"" arrives, it feels natural, an acid to the soothing choral base. Stott balances these elements so deftly that the result is not a tension, but a deeply personal grace. --Andrew Gaerig",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c600d13d197565213f85a/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Andy_Stott-Luxury_Problems.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9017-the-top-50-albums-of-2012/,2012,year,album,13,Killer Mike,R.A.P. Music,Williams Street,"On his fierce 2006 manifesto ""That’s Life"", Killer Mike threw down a lyrical gauntlet that could double as a campaign theme: ""If you’re really ‘bout intelligence/ You really know I’m right/ If you’re lookin’ for some leadership/ Look for Killer Mike."" Six years later, the long-underground Atlanta rapper and erstwhile OutKast affiliate dropped a bold album that doubled down on this promise, and succeeds on all counts. R.A.P. Music feels anomalous in the 2012 rap landscape: a fiercely political and deeply personal album that addresses rap’s myriad contradictions and embraces history and family, without ever once sounding didactic or nostalgic. Nine years into his career, Killer Mike’s sixth album is easily his best, illustrating a way for aspiring hip-hop intellectuals to keep both feet in the streets, and establishing Mike as rap culture’s pre-eminent diplomat. The album is steeped in the music's history: Ghostface, KRS One, Raekwon, Ice Cube, ""Murder Was the Case"", Gang Starr, and ""Fuck tha Police"" drop by both spiritually and lyrically. But R.A.P. Music is much more than a simple throwback, largely thanks to the production work of 90s underground vet El-P-- maybe the only current rapper/producer capable of making Killer Mike look like a sunny optimist by comparison-- who twists his bleak, mechanistic Brooklyn-derived beats into sleek, trunk-rattling Southernplayalistic doomsday devices. The genius of R.A.P. Music is Killer Mike’s capacity to celebrate rap’s garish narratives and outsize characters while using the storytelling capacities of the form to sermonize and hold forth intellectually. ""Jojo’s Chillin’"" is a three-minute verité narrative of a small-time crook fleeing Atlanta for NYC-- Mike’s own ""Shakey Dog"" staged within the War on Terror’s air-travel security theater. It’s directly followed by the jaw-dropping ""Reagan"", a people’s history of the crack-and-guns 1980s that casts fresh light on the Dark Alliance that turned ""Freeway"" Ricky Ross into a kingpin. He’s the leader of the crooks and the reader of the books, a Player Pentecostal preaching the good word of that Ghetto Gospel. Fuck you, amen. --Eric Harvey","Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/wmstrecs/killer-mike-reagan, http://soundcloud.com/wmstrecs/killer-mike-big-beast-feat-bun?secret_token=s-IXc6O",https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c600e0c2bba1b7de04e7c/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Killer_Mike-RAP_Music.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9017-the-top-50-albums-of-2012/,2012,year,album,12,Godspeed You! Black Emperor,Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!,Constellation,"When Godspeed started touring again in 2010 after a years-long silence, there was little use speculating about the band’s motives. It made no difference why they were back together. This moment in history simply needed them, and there they were. Two years on, we are still trapped in the belly of a horrible machine, where the spiral of austerity and political discord whips up the wreckage of the old economic reality and sends it swirling around our heads to be dashed into ever tinier pieces. And Godspeed are still here, building sonic monuments to a global system that's clawing to avoid history’s dustbin. Their first album in 10 years features two brief clouds of drone and two long but intensely focused instrumentals that should put to bed the limiting idea that this band’s music is somehow ""post-rock."" These two long compositions, ""Mladic"" and ""We Drift Like Worried Fire"", have been in the band’s sets for some time, but on record they take firmer shape as much more than simple exercises in dynamics and tension-and-release. Each begins with its eyes cast down, bowed under the heavy freight of modern confusion, but each finds its way up out of the mire to its own affirming peak as well. But I have a theory that Godspeed’s music isn’t really all about political anger, or even living in trying times-- at its heart, there lies a much more fundamental belief in the basic dignity of people. The peaks of the music that jut upward from the landscapes of dread the band creates speak to it; regardless of the miseries visited upon them, people make it through. They adapt. They find ways to be happy. They overcome. The music of Allelujah! can be dark, chaotic, even mournful at times. It is also immensely moving, and proceeds with a forceful sense of purpose that all of this band’s finest music possesses. And in its moments of release, it urges us on through everything, a paddle passed to the decent, everyday person stuck navigating the creek of economic cataclysm. --Joe Tangari",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c600eeb335119a49f1411/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Godspeed_You_Black_Emperor-Allelujah_Dont_Bend_Ascend.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9017-the-top-50-albums-of-2012/,2012,year,album,11,Japandroids,Celebration Rock,Polyvinyl,"Brian King can't sing ""The House That Heaven Built"". The melody to Japandroids' best song is just above the frontman's vocal range. On a very physical level, it should not work. ""When I first heard it back in the studio, I thought, 'This is terrible! We can't use it!',"" he told me earlier this year. But they did use it, and thank god for that. Like nearly everything else about Japandroids, King's performance on ""The House That Heaven Built"" is the result of a normal man pushing himself to abnormal places-- places most of us are too scared or wary or lazy to go. ""If they try to slow you down,"" he snarls on the song, ""tell 'em all to go to hell!"" He could be talking about an ex, nagging parents, society at large, or even his own vocal cords, but one thing is clear-- ""they"" do not have a chance. As an indie rock band that idolizes both the Replacements and Guns 'N Roses, Japandroids are of a particularly modern ilk. Their crowd-pleasing, call-and-response choruses are completely devoid of the self-sabotaging indie mindset of yore, yet their decidedly austere attitude toward their own sound and presentation-- just two guys, very few overdubs-- couldn't be more DIY. The combination of Celebration Rock's extreme, arena-ready themes (heaven or hell! life or death!) and its workmanlike creation (""It might take a whole month to write a song we think is good,"" King has said) makes for confusing rock'n'roll mythmaking. According to the singer, ""There's a difference between people who are born with that special thing and people who love the people who are born with that special thing so much that they want to try their best to get as close as they can to it."" But it's hard to take King at his word since Celebration Rock does everything it can to obliterate that supposed divide. The album flips Japandroids' limitations into superlatives; their in-studio restrictions mean that these eight songs crash just as hard live as they do in headphones. And King's newfound ambition with the pen means that his lines aren't just fun to sing back to him anymore-- they go way past ""whoa-oh"" to a place equally universal, but more trenchant. His words are about getting off your ass and actually doing something, to stop ""waiting for a generation's bonfire to begin"" and start sparking some fuses: ""We don't cry for those nights to arrive/ We yell like hell to the heavens... HEY!"" It often reads like self-fulfilling prophecy, because whether Japandroids were born that way or had to work like hell to achieve greatness is ultimately irrelevant-- they're there, and they're not looking back. --Ryan Dombal",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/polyvinyl-records/7-the-house-that-heaven-built,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c600fc0084474cd0c7025/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Japandroids-Celebration_Rock.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9017-the-top-50-albums-of-2012/,2012,year,album,10,Grizzly Bear,Shields,Warp,"With Shields, Grizzly Bear got outside of themselves and left behind the domestic comforts of Veckatimest-- where Droste sang, ""Hope I’m ready, able to make my own good home"" on ""Ready, Able"", and ""Take all evening, I’ll just be cleaning"" on ""Foreground"". But on Shields: ""Plod ever onward across some tundra,"" Daniel Rossen sings on the rallying, clanky piano swing of ""A Simple Answer"". ""The sky keeps staring at me/ Frozen in my tracks,"" Droste chants among the ambient warp of ""Gun-Shy""; ""Past the roaring shore. I have nothing left to hear,"" goes the tumultuous ""Half Gate"". The arrangements here are thunderous and billowing, sparse and punishing, rarely polite. The effect is to set the record’s emotional landscape in a desolate, barren space, one where its central characters are either negotiating the physical distance between them and another far away, wondering whether they can cope, or the emotional disconnect with a face staring directly into theirs. That hopeless tundra you reach when you’re at the end of your tether, when you’ve argued into oblivion with no recollection of the original misgiving, and the only definite things that remain are the contrasts between elements: sky and earth, sun and wind. Shields is a magnificent record, where the lights are blazing, but nobody’s feeling very much at home. --Laura Snapes",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c600f0c2bba1b7de04e7e/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Grizzly_Bear-Shields.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9017-the-top-50-albums-of-2012/,2012,year,album,9,Death Grips,The Money Store,Epic,"If there’s one moment that defines The Money Store, it’s the glitch 55 seconds into ""System Blower"": tennis pro Venus Williams screaming as she swings, looped and crusted with so much noise she’s barely recognizable as human. Like every sound on the album, it’s cramped and almost transcendently panicked. It doesn’t blend into its surroundings because there’s nowhere safe to blend. Instead, it breaks off abruptly, back into silence. The Money Store is brutal, beautiful music. Most of the time it sounds like someone dropping a whole apartment’s worth of kitchenware down a staircase while screaming the word ""fuck"" while a block party outside suffers through routine air-raid sirens. In interviews, drummer Zach Hill and Stefan Burnett referenced body artists like Chris Burden, who in the early 1970s inched across a pile of glass on his bare stomach and voluntarily took a bullet in the shoulder-- an exploration of the threshold where physical extremity becomes spiritual epiphany. Listen to the album for two minutes and it sounds chaotic; listen to it for 20 and it becomes meditative, like the moment on a train ride when you stop seeing the landscape as a thousand discrete things flying by and start seeing it as a uniform blur. The 13 songs here are more than jock jams, they’re devotionals. ""We want our music to make people feel empowered, and that's where I could say it's like rap or punk,"" drummer Zach Hill told Pitchfork in April. But rap and hardcore fostered a sense of community; The Money Store doesn’t. Death Grips don't reach out and tell you that you belong. Whenever they speak, they make it clear that the psychic underworld of their music isn’t shared, but guardedly personal. For them, coincidence is more important than logic, and record-release dates have more to do with phases of the moon than the fluctuations of the market. This isn’t just punk as radical individuality, but mysticism. If you’re not seduced by their conceptual framework, that’s fine. You can shout along with Burnett’s collage of abstract threats. You can geek out to Hill, whose grand trick as a drummer is to make his kit sound as though it’s physically running away from him. Or revel in Death Grips' future-primitive grooves, scavenged from YouTube, captured with iPhones and pushed to the point of ecstatic malfunction. For all the abstract talk, the music remains devastatingly concrete. --Mike Powell",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c601013d197565213f85e/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Death_Grips-The_Money_Store.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9017-the-top-50-albums-of-2012/,2012,year,album,8,Chromatics,Kill For Love,Italians Do It Better,"Dusk is the time to listen to Kill for Love. From the pensive, reverb-drowsy introductory rework of Neil Young’s ""Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)"" to the softly drifting ""The River"" and subsequent 14-minute coda that closes things, the album’s submerged in a particular nocturnal mood, made for low lights and lonely nights. ""I just want you to come back, give us all something to do,"" sings vocalist Ruth Radelet in standout ""Lady"" amid a backdrop that yearns away, sounding utterly sapped. Singer Adam Miller gets more explicit still on the next track: ""spend my life inside this room, disappear some more each day,"" his voice processed with vocoders and echoes until it sounds half-vanished itself. At times, it’s hard to imagine listening to Kill for Love with anyone else in the room, let alone an audience; the introspective fog is that thick, that absorbing. Kill for Love isn’t the first time Chromatics worked this aesthetic; last album Night Drive explored the same themes, though not as cohesively, and it’s practically the trademark of leader Johnny Jewel’s label Italians Do It Better. But they got a massive, and massively lucky, signal boost with the success of last year’s Drive, a soundtrack disguised as a movie, that pretends to be about its love story and action pyrotechnics but is really about what plays while Ryan Gosling drives alone into the dark. Chromatics contributed a track, and Jewel composed an entire would-be soundtrack. It’s serendipitous, in a way; the film’s almost like a big-screen adaptation of the group, faithful enough to inspire those moved to venture deeper. --Katherine St. Asaph",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/johnnyjewel/chromatics-kill-for-love-single | Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Chromatics_-_Into_the_Black.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6012eb335119a49f1413/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Chromatics-Kill_For_Love.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9017-the-top-50-albums-of-2012/,2012,year,album,7,Beach House,Bloom,Sub Pop,"You can't blame Volkswagen for trying. Around the same time Beach House released their fourth album, the German carmaker used music suspiciously resembling the reverie-revering Baltimore duo's in a U.K. commercial. If nothing else, the resulting media flurry, in which the band's manager told The Wall Street Journal the commercial came after Beach House rejected multiple licensing offers, undercuts criticisms like that of Flying Lotus, who had tweeted that Bloom sounds just like countless other records. Since 2006's self-titled debut, Beach House have been patiently refining-- and expanding-- a singular, easily recognizable sound. ""Patiently"" might be the operative word in explaining how Bloom became Beach House's first album to crack the top 10 on the Billboard 200 album chart while so many near-contemporaries have faded from view. The differences here are significant enough to reward longtime fans without alienating listeners who might be just tuning in after hearing older material sampled by G-Side or the Weeknd. Victoria Legrand's lethal contralto and gothic organ playing, Alex Scally's side-winding guitar lines and simple drum programming-- both remain, joined by live drums, and burnished again by past producer Chris Coady. And yet, where 2010's Teen Dream added Rumours-era Fleetwood Mac and other styles to the post-Mazzy Star haze, Bloom billows out even further. Plea for remembrance ""The Hours"" alone spans from Abbey Road-like layered vocals to stadium-indie guitar chug. Ghost-ship waltz ""On the Sea"" brandishes viola. Legrand's lyrics are often overlooked, but their impressionistic, fill-in-the-blanks way of expressing deep feeling is too fundamentally characteristic of the group's appeal to discount. On Bloom, her subject is often the ineffable itself-- ""Help me to name it,"" she repeats, referring to ""momentary bliss,"" on intoxicating opener ""Myth""-- along with the one-of-a-kind, the ephemeral, and the sublime. Whether conveyed through visual details or cryptic fragments, these words enhance the mood the meticulously constructed music creates, a mood Beach House have been too smart to spoil by spelling out entirely. --Marc Hogan",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/beachhouse/myth,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6012eb335119a49f1415/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Beach_House-Bloom.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9017-the-top-50-albums-of-2012/,2012,year,album,6,Grimes,Visions,4AD / Arbutus,"Cynics and traditionalists have it tough in today’s populist free-for-all. This year has lobbed a spectacular softball at them, though: a musically untrained young Canadian woman named Claire Boucher who creates bizarro synth-pop with user-friendly Apple software and claims to draw inspiration from anything and everything. She also sings and coos her (largely indecipherable) lyrics in a precious falsetto and dresses in a stylistically scatterbrained way that makes fashion editors drool. The Internet loves her. She’s often mentioned in the same breath as made-up terminology like seapunk and Tumblr aesthetic (though she doesn’t even maintain a personal Tumblr). She has the audacity to both produce and sing. She collaborates with white-girl rappers and makes jewelry that looks like female genitalia. She’s the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Get in your bunkers. Meanwhile Visions, the hypnotic album Boucher released in January, sits in the corner snickering quietly to itself as one of the most optimistic pieces of music we’ve heard all year. It’s a triumphant meeting of human and computer, an album that blows the traditions of both pop and experimental music to pieces and glues them back together in gorgeous, entrancing ways. And for all of the dubious aesthetic trends that have been pinned on Grimes in some way or another, the album remains a singular, inimitable piece of art. No one else is making music that sounds like this, hyper-feminine experimental pop music that revels in a futuristic fantasy in a way that could inspire you to either dance all night or sit and meditate. Forget all of those things Grimes signifies for our future-- if you hopped in a time machine and played Visions for the music lovers of two, three generations ago, they’d probably be itching to get where we are right now. --Carrie Battan",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Grimes_-_Oblivion.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60130c2bba1b7de04e86/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Grimes-Visions.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9017-the-top-50-albums-of-2012/,2012,year,album,5,Swans,The Seer,Young God,"Perhaps it’s just a coincidence that the phrases ""swan song"" and ""Swans song"" signify the exact same thing: that the end is nigh. But on his second album since resuscitating his long-dormant band of pig-fuck pioneers in 2010, Michael Gira orchestrates nothing less than a funeral procession for the end of humanity. The Seer is ugly, grueling, and punishing in a way that only Swans can be: the seismic shovel-loads of industrial-strength sludge and merciless percussive clatter heaped upon the 23-minute closer ""The Apostate"" and the 32-minute title track centerpiece rain down on you like the Biblical plague. But in the propulsive, heavy-Meddle bass throb of ""Avatar"" and blacksmith-molded psychedelia of ""A Piece of the Sky,"" The Seer also evinces a magisterial grandeur and hypnotic allure, elevating Swans’ seedy, sewer-scraping depravity into an extravagant, cinematically scaled noise that effectively transforms the band into Bad Seeds You Black Emperor. There are more pleasurable things you could do in the amount of time it takes to listen to the entirety of The Seer: enjoy a coastal drive from Los Angeles to San Diego; watch five DVRed episodes of ""Modern Family"" in a row; go for a massage and shvitz. But making it through to the other side is very much its own reward. By the time you’re subjected to the public-stoning skronk of the closing ""93 Ave. B Blues,"" you’ll feel physically and emotionally exhausted-- but that sense of debasement is inversely related to just how relieved you’ll feel that you’re still breathing. --Stuart Berman",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60140c2bba1b7de04e88/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Swans-The_Seer.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9017-the-top-50-albums-of-2012/,2012,year,album,4,Tame Impala,Lonerism,Modular,"Kevin Parker's first album as Tame Impala, Innerspeaker, featured a song called ""Solitude Is Bliss""; the astounding follow-up, Lonerism, is an album-length treatise on the power of one. In a recent interview, Parker described the record as dealing with ""The idea of being someone who doesn't feel part of the rest of the world"", and that sense of confused alienation is what makes Lonerism head music in the most literal sense: when you're trapped in your own thoughts, where else is there to go? So the endlessly repeated question ""Why Won't They Talk to Me?"" isn't so much answered as it is shrugged off: ""I don't really care about it, anyway."" Plenty of light pokes through the clouds and the hooks are everywhere-- ""Feels Like We Only Go Backwards"", for one, is an instant classic. But when that female voice pops in during the first third of the damaged epic ""Nothing That Has Happened So Far Has Been Anything We Could Control"", advising that ""Nothing has to mean anything"", you wonder: is this a conversation between two people, or is Kevin Parker simply talking to himself? This sense of complete immersion is the album's greatest gift. Lonerism allows you to lose yourself in the act of Parker losing himself inside the huge, dense, thicket of sound he's created. There's no question that Lonerism ransacks psychedelic pop's past. But it's not about where your influences come from but the places you go when you carry them with you. --Larry Fitzmaurice",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/tame-impala/feels-like-we-only-go,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60145e6ef959693273fd/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Tame_Impala-Lonerism.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9017-the-top-50-albums-of-2012/,2012,year,album,3,Fiona Apple,The Idler Wheel ...,Epic,"Fiona Apple once said, ""If you just made something, you should fucking feel like you've got nothing left in you."" On The Idler Wheel, the singer practices what she's preached and then some, pushing her body into newfound territory that's emotionally exposed and raw. There's fist-clenching, face-contorting, chest-pounding soul; there's undiluted sexual frankness; there's empathy even for animalistic lovers-done-wrong. Apple's fourth album favors unhinged intensity and nuanced expression over refined pop appeal-- a stylistic shift you could have called with 2005's Extraordinary Machine, where she sang, ""Please, please, please/ No more melodies/ They lack impact, they're petty."" In some sense, Apple had to pare down these Songs of Herself to their rhythmic, acoustic essentials to maximize her own voice. ""I know that I have intention,"" Fiona said in 2005, ""but I don't know how to articulate it with instruments [beyond piano]."" Not so any longer. Seven years later, this unexpected masterpiece is Apple's most profound statement. A consistently self-reliant pop-sphere outsider, Fiona Apple is easy to obsess over because she embodies an entire set of principles for living. Her personal journey has always been inherent to her autobiographical records, like volumes in a series of books, chronicling her quest to learn strength against personal struggle, a superficial media, or the misguided music industry she knew was corrupting her. Idler Wheel's songs also present deep-running psychological demons. On ""Valentine"", she moves casually from dark propositions of cutting herself or crying over dinner to playfully loving rhymes. On ""Jonathan"" she calculates and calibrates but begs ""don't make me explain."" You can't just pull out material this brutal. It boils and bursts from somewhere deep. And yet optimism is this record's primary theme, with a repeat lesson that we can always cull something positive from pain. ""I don't cry when I'm sad anymore,"" she sings on centerpiece, ""Left Alone"", its feminist man-playing sing-song scat building to a climactic vocal performance, her voice like spinning helicopter blades capable of carrying you skyward or cutting you in half. Fearless in its embrace of solitude, this song distills what makes Apple such a powerful mediator of human emotion with the most quintessential Fiona lyric ever: ""How can I ask anyone to love me? When all I do is beg to be left alone."" Elsewhere, her verses ebb and flow with lines that are dense or direct. She'll still liken herself to ""a neon zebra shaking rain off of her stripes"" but she'll also say things so strikingly straight they feel like left-turns. ""All that loving must have been lacking something/ If I got bored trying to figure you out,"" she sings on the disdainful ""Periphery"", honing her characteristic rage. ""You let me down/ I don't even like you anymore at all."" Fiona has spent 16 years as a kind of patron saint of self-empowered poetry for those who've needed her most but on Idler Wheel she sounds more liberated from the cages of her past than ever. Now there's no question she sounds free. --Jenn Pelly","Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/fionaapple/every-single-night, https://soundcloud.com/fionaapple/werewolf/s-mqT39",https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6015eb335119a49f141a/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Fiona_Apple-The_Idler_Wheel_.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9017-the-top-50-albums-of-2012/,2012,year,album,2,Frank Ocean,Channel Orange,Def Jam,"The eye of any storm is a place of almost zen-like calm. That’s the funny thing about the whirlwind of hype, headlines, and meaningful words that have encircled Frank Ocean’s Channel Orange since its July release: the record at the center of this tornado is impossibly serene, an epic that constantly shrugs off its own grandeur. It begins not with a swell of strings but the faint and distant sound of a Playstation booting up, as if to joke, in Ocean’s signature deadpan, ""This is what an orchestra warming up sounded like in 2012."" Its interstitials have the fuzzy, clipped, out-of-context quality of cell phone videos, and most of its songs begin and end with the abruptness of the YouTube tabs you closed before the end of the video because you got the point. There are moments when Ocean overshares in sighing falsetto, and then backtracks like he’s deleting a slightly-too-earnest tweet. (A beat after a confession of love: ""No, I don't like you, I just thought you were cool enough to kick it."") All of which is to say that Channel Orange moves with the rhythm of right now, and will always sound like the way noise and music flowed in and out of our consciousnesses in 2012. But also: will always. Because it flows against the current of disposability, hyper-nowness, musical planned obsolescence. It has these gilded edges that you can already tell won’t tarnish. ""Sweet Life,"" ""Thinkin’ ‘Bout You,"" ""Bad Religion,"" ""Super Rich Kids,"" ""Pyramids""-- they feel already not just like timeless classics, but like generation-affirming proof that timeless classics might still be a thing. Channel Orange often seems funny, though you’re not entirely sure you could explain why; half of the record comes off like an inside joke Ocean's got with himself, a punchline whose explanation not even the most staggering Rap Genius could wrench out of the privacy of his grey matter. Still, zoom out a couple clicks and you can tell who the joke is on, which is a lot of people. The joke is on Def Jam, occasionally. The joke is on people clinging to the skeleton of an  ever-changing industry like the rails on an upturned Titanic; there’s Ocean paddling serenely in the mild blue below, like, ""The water’s fine!"" The joke is on people who seem rich but aren’t; the people who pay for expensive news but don’t even watch it. And maybe most of all, the joke is on people who listened with their metal detectors out and noses to the ground, combing Channel Orange for clues and unexpected pronouns like gold watches at the beach. Did they finally realize, as soon as the sun was setting, that they wasted a really gorgeous day at the beach? Frank Ocean found a way to selectively screenshot the stimulus that passes in front of us every day; out of the banalities of modern life-- Text Edit docs and Playstations and taxicab confessions, he made moments, characters, poetry. And like any good, timeless poem, Channel Orange feels both of its moment and above it. It speaks our language of distance and irony and ennui so that we will trust it when it whispers to us, in this kneecap-melting falsetto, that we’re not wrong to believe in something beyond. That was the disorienting genius of Frank Ocean in 2012, singing ""Real Love"" until the scare quotes fell off. In the Year of YOLO, mischievously, he was thinkin' 'bout forever. -- Lindsay Zoladz __","Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/frank-ocean/sweet-life, http://soundcloud.com/frank-ocean/pyramids",https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c601713d197565213f86a/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Frank_Ocean-Channel_Orange.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9017-the-top-50-albums-of-2012/,2012,year,album,1,Kendrick Lamar,"good kid, m.A.A.d city",Interscope/Top Dawg,"Kendrick Lamar is the first to admit he comes on too strong. His 2011 album Section.80 was presented as a manifesto; its visionary follow-up, good kid, m.A.A.d. city, is subtitled ""A Short Film By Kendrick Lamar."" It's variously been described in even loftier terms: West Coast hip-hop incarnate, a morality play guided equally by Jeezy and Jesus, the most important major-label rap album in nearly a decade. It's all of those things, and after selling more than 500,000 copies in its first two months, it's safe to call it something more simple: a hit record. Don't underestimate the importance of this last fact. Section.80 was an auspicious and promising album but it was hardly flawless. To improve, Lamar needed investments of talent, trust, and money. Without a broader belief in his vision, Kendrick doesn't repurpose his thrilling lyrical technique to vividly embody the characters who occupy these self-contained and heartfelt parables. Nor does he unify them through linear and non-linear narrative devices that turn good kid into an open-ended soundworld as vast as Compton itself but as detailed and intimate as a journal entry. And you don't assemble this roster of production and guest rappers without expecting a return on said investment: Just Blaze, Pharrell, Dr. Dre, and Hit-Boy create beats that serve as living environments, lush and warm when expressing joy in the experience of music and young lust, sinister and hard when penetrated by the gang violence and abuse of South Central L.A. that remains a constant in Kendrick's life. The merger of multifaceted storytelling and exquisite music results in a tremendous payoff on ""The Art of Peer Pressure"", the 12-minute stunner ""Sing About Me, I'm Dying Of Thirst"", and ""Real,"" ambitious numbers that likened good kid to similar art-rap opuses like Aquemini, Black On Both Sides, and, yes, Illmatic. But the overwhelming response assures its legend is still being crafted outside the controlled environment of critical opinion. Everything that made you second-guess its ""classic"" attribution is the result of earned ubiquity-- overuse of ""ya bish,"" Lady Gaga demanding ""her"" version of ""Bitch, Don't Kill My Vibe"" be heard, dozens of Soundcloud rappers butchering the ""Backseat Freestyle"" beat, frat parties misconstruing the entire point of ""Swimming Pools (Drank)"", the debates about whether ""Compton"" was even necessary as a closer. Those are the cost of doing business when you ascend to this level of The Slim Shady LP, Doggystyle, or Ready to Die, records that are eternal for both their artistic achievements and their constant presence in cars, radio playlists, parties, and discussions among people who may never set eyes upon a year-end list. Towards the end of good kid, Kendrick's mother pleads with him to ""tell your story to these black and brown kids of Compton...give back with your words of encouragement."" The scope of this album goes far beyond Compton, but her words serve as a fitting coda for a song where Kendrick meditates on what makes him matter. good kid gives of itself. So while the achievement is Kendrick's, the music belongs to everyone: Whether it's other rappers, industry heads, or listeners hoping for redemption after being let down by the former two, everyone can leave good kid, m.A.A.d. city dreaming of something bigger. --Ian Cohen Next: See our writers' individual Top 10s.","Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/topdawgent/kendrick-lamar-swimming-pools#zoomed-artwork, http://soundcloud.com/topdawgent/kendrick-lamar-backseat",https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60180c2bba1b7de04e8a/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Kendrick_Lamar-good_kid_mAAd_city.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,100,Swearin',"""Just""",[Salinas],"Sprung from the ashes of the unsung Alabama rockers P.S. Eliot, Swearin’ quietly emerged this year as one of the Northeast’s most promising young upstarts. “Just”, a standout from their self-titled debut for the tiny Detroit label Salinas, is a 90s indie-punk throwback centered on the ever-popular topic of unrequited love, with gut-wrenching lyrics that put you right in the moment-- from singer Allison Crutchfield recalling a streetlight-illuminated first kiss in her “empty room, dripping wet,” to her other half Kyle Gilbride smashing through his front door, breaking the lock, and going straight to bed, unaffected by the night’s events. The justifier (“Just”) makes clear that what she’s after is only a small thing when the whole world is in her sights. Not bad for under three minutes.  --Laura Snapes",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6043d7a71d1ea569c89c/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Swearin-Just.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,99,Blur,"""Under the Westway""",[EMI],"""Under the Westway"" is another of those grand, reluctant ballads Blur has spent 20 years perfecting-- not the one you play at the bar, but the one that, years later, reminds you of the warmth you felt there and that you haven't felt it since. Blur didn't invent this form; ""A Day in the Life"" belongs here, and so does ""Waterloo Sunset."" It’s the kind of rainy-day, dog-eared British pop song that traps the tedium of life in the amber of art. Blur enrich the tradition by acknowledging that it's a tradition to begin with. As the band falls silent after their climax, the spotlight turns on Damon Albarn. ""On a permanent basis,"" he mumbles, ""I apologize, but I am going to sing""-- because singing is what you do when you can't express yourself any other way, and apologizing is what you do to show that you know the world is already too cramped for your stupid little song. Still, after a simple, descending chord progression that’s been a popular staple since Pachelbel wrote the ""Canon in D"" 300 years ago, he sings it: ""Hallelujah."" --Mike Powell",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6043d7a71d1ea569c89e/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Blur-Under_the_Westway.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,98,Odd Future,"""Oldie""",[Odd Future],"Though the Odd Future crew stayed busy as ever this year, their near-constant string of half-baked LPs, remixes, and castoff tracks cooled their furious, brand-building hype, making it difficult to feel much excitement over any one release. To consider Odd Future a viable franchise going forward, listeners needed reminding why they demanded such attention in the first place. Answering the call was the full-on crew record, The OF Tape Vol. 2, capped by the 11-minute mission statement ""Oldie"". In the song's video, the OF faction horses around in photographer Terry Richardson's studio, like the tight-knit group of kids they are: Domo does his weed raps, Jasper plugs the group's Adult Swim series, even Frank Ocean rhymes ably and without ever sacrificing his kinda-over-it aura. And, most memorably, there was Earl's return: ""Look, for contrast here's a pair of lips/ Swallowin' syrup and setting fire to sheriff's whips."" Sweatshirt might have spent a year ""Ferris-in,"" but he came back as (adult) Simba.  --Corban Goble",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6043d7a71d1ea569c8a0/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Odd_Future-Oldie.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,97,Twin Shadow,"""Golden Light""",[4AD],"George Lewis Jr. is no stranger to narcissism-- we're talking about a guy who brings a cardboard cutout of himself on tour. So it makes sense that the first word uttered in ""Golden Light"", the opening track to Twin Shadow's dark and sleazy sophomore effort Confess, is ""I."" Whether incidentally or as an act of self-mythologizing, Lewis Jr.'s a vagabond by trade, and vagabonds seldom settle down. Here, his yearning becomes its own reward, a quest that's much bigger than what's actually at stake. So the Eau de Springsteen dreams of ""Golden Light"" are projected in widescreen, with moon-sized ringing bells and marching band percussion that can hang with Fleetwood Mac's ""Tusk"". It's the perfect distillation of this singer's enigmatic and morally ambiguous passion. --Larry Fitzmaurice",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6044eb335119a49f145d/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Twin_Shadow-Golden_Light.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,96,Merchandise,"""Time""",[Katorga Works],"After spending a few years getting their point across with hard and heavy music, Tampa, Fla., punks Carson Cox, David Vassalotti, and Patrick Brady decided that they might as well abandon the genre's stylistic constraints and do whatever moved them. As Merchandise, that involved drum machines, gauzy atmospherics and Smiths-ian crooning. ""Time"" is among the catchier tracks on their recent LP, Children of Desire, pairing up new wave romance with Kranky-style sonic fog. It's a path that's been trodden before, but there's a distinctive, murky edge to Merchandise's approach, particularly in lyrics like, ""I fell in love again, though the kind that's like quicksand."" Cox approaches his past relationships with a degree of nostalgia here, but also the awareness that, while there were benefits, it didn't need to last forever. --Aaron Leitko",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/katorga-works/kw-016,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60440c2bba1b7de04ed2/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Merchandise-Time.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,95,R. Kelly,"""Share My Love""",[Jive],"On 2011's hilarious anti-haters screed ""Shut Up"", R. Kelly was mad that his music hadn't received due credit for being responsible for the creation of every child born in the last 20 years. Not three months later, on ""Share My Love"", he seemed more determined than ever to prove that legacy. ""Populate!"" he cries, in a manner befitting biblical exaltation, to a smooth disco-soul backing that feels slightly more romantic than the sticky club grind of the similarly conception-oriented ""Pregnant"". Kelly’s big story this year may have been the continuation of his self-aware absurdist saga “Trapped in the Closet”, but ""Share My Love"" is a fun-loving solid gold homage to Barry White’s Love Unlimited Orchestra, in the vein of his classic Chocolate Factory-era steppers anthems. --Laura Snapes",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60450c2bba1b7de04ed4/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/R_Kelly-Share_My_Love.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,94,Saint Etienne,"""Tonight""",[Universal],"In the seven years since their last album, 2005's stately* Tales From Turnpike House*, Saint Etienne have been easily distracted. There were stints as artists-in-residency, a still-forthcoming book written about the history of pop music, and three film projects. Even the artwork for their latest LP, which embeds 312 (!) song titles within a fictional map of what band member Bob Stanley's referred to as the group's ""hometown"", comes across as the work of a clever group of detail-obsessed scholars. If these high-minded artistic pursuits paint a stiff academic portrait of Saint Etienne circa 2012, then ""Tonight"" is the elbow that rips its way through the canvas, so to speak. The song features co-production by Richard X, and his heavenly touch complements the band's sound perfectly as Sarah Cracknell's ageless vocals unspool a series of details and promises. Anyone present for Saint Etienne's recent return to the U.S. might have chalked up the gray hairs in the crowd to nostalgia, but the pleasures of ""Tonight"" are here and now. --Larry Fitzmaurice",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/saint-etienne/05-tonight-download-single,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c604513d197565213f8c7/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Saint_Etienne-Tonight.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,93,Cassie,"""King of Hearts (Richard X Remix Edit)""",[Jive],"Cassandra Ventura's icy-hot single ""Me & U"" came out of nowhere in 2006 to become an international hit and critical favorite. But after following a series of ill-advised collaborations (Lil Wayne, Diddy, Akon) on what was supposed to be her breakout LP, nowhere is pretty much where Cassie’s singing career has remained. Notwithstanding a steamy Beverly Hills-shot video, a phenomenal ""106 & Park"" performance, and an uncharacteristically hands-off Kanye West remix, ""King of Hearts"" has failed to reassert Cassie as commercial royalty. But the song did earn a reputation this year as a powerhouse club staple with the help of this excellent remix edit by Richard X, which amplifies the original's dancefloor potential while retaining Cassie’s uniquely withdrawn seductiveness. --Marc Hogan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c604613d197565213f8c9/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Cassie-King_of_Hearts_Richard_X_Remix_Edit.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,92,King Louie,"""Val Venis""",[Epic],"Before Chicago drillsmith King Louie named a song after him, I knew nothing of Sean Allen ""Val Venis"" Morley, the undulating, sexed-up, perpetually Crisco-slick Canadian wrestler. Most of what I know of the musclebound lothario's dance (aka Vallin') I learned from this highlight reel. The way Louie uses it, Vallin' isn't just a move-- it's also an attitude, a kind of existential slinkiness. The 26-year-old Louie's in-the-pocket flow and too-cool persona have made him something of a wizened uncle to Chicago's ascendant drill scene. Unlike Chief Keef and company's point-blank exhortations, Louie comes at you from the front, the side, the top, wherever, delivering each of his laser-guided boasts in a relaxed rapid-fire over a pinprick-sharp track from fellow Chicagoan C-Sick. Between the insider Chicago slang and a description of one very stoned trip to Walgreens, Louie spends most of ""Val"" sliding syllables around in testament to his personal awesomeness. ""I'm the man, little did they know,"" Louie reminds us. Vallin' transpires; doubts are erased. --Paul Thompson",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/kinglmusic/king-l-val-venis,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6046c0084474cd0c707d/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/King_Louie-Val_Venis.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,91,Antony & the Johnsons,"""Cut The World""",[Secretly Canadian],"Antony Hegarty's voice is a versatile instrument, but it's especially adept at communicating a sense of spiritual yearning. On ""Cut the World"", he longs for rebirth. ""My heart is a record of dangerous scenes/ My skin is a surface to push to extremes/ But when will I turn and cut the world?"" The song's video gives this open-ended chorus a violently literal spin, but the hopeful surge behind Antony's delivery can also suggest other interpretations, like severing a connection as one might an umbilical cord or an anchor. The piece's lush accompaniment by the Danish National Chamber Orchestra has an inviting warmth but, as usual, it’s Antony's soaring, weightless voice that owns the stage.  --Matt Murphy",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/secretlycanadian/antony-and-the-johnsons-cut,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6047eb335119a49f1460/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Antony__the_Johnsons-Cut_The_World.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,90,Daphni,"""Yes, I Know""",[Jiaolong],"Describing his club-inspired passion project Daphni, Dan Snaith-- best-known for his work as Caribou-- said, ""I'd fallen back in love with moments in small, dark clubs when a DJ puts on a piece of music that you could not have conceived of existing before you heard it."" This crowd-pleasing dance track ""Yes, I Know"" fits perfectly with Snaith's mission. The producer draws something refreshing and new from the juiciest bits of Buddy Miles' 1971 screamer ""The Segment"", counteracting the comfort-food goodness of Miles' ripe horns and buttered croons with deep bass and woozy synths. Much like Teengirl Fantasy's ""Cheaters"", ""Yes, I Know"" leans heavily on a sample but never seems limited by it.  --Zach Kelly",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/caribouband/02-daphni-yes-i-know,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60480c2bba1b7de04edc/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Daphni-Yes_I_Know.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,89,Jeremih,"""773 Love""",[self-released],"One interesting byproduct of R&B's recent growth in stranger and sparser new directions has been watching its more traditional practitioners adapt to the new landscape. As a vocalist, ""Birthday Sex"" hitmaker Jeremih hasn’t moved too far from his origins but his willingness to indulge the more experimental whims of his producers has been crucial to his sustained success. So ""773 Love"" primarily thrives on the imagination of Future and Gucci Mane beatsmith Mike Will Made It. The structure of the track isn't all that far from all those stripped-down, pseudo-sensuous post-Drake numbers that bumper the bangers on urban radio-- it's what happens in the empty space that sets it apart. The organs slowly mutate-- first they crackle warmly, then thin into a filter as if someone had sucked all the air out, before finally expanding into something more digital and expansive. Meanwhile, Jeremih's vocals drown in their own layers, clipping and scratching in no discernible pattern. It's nice to think of these effects as intentional sonic metaphors for the crackling cell-phone conversation about panty drawers and stimulation that is about to take place, but they're just as welcome as meaningless flourishes of style. And while 773-779-5683 probably won't touch ""867-5309"" levels of ubiquity, it very well could become a ""777-9311"" with time. Which is to say that someone in Chicago has likely been receiving some very salacious texts since this song's release. (C'mon Jeremih, you never include the area code!)  --Andrew Nosnitsky",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/08_773_Love.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60485e6ef95969327464/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Jeremih-773_Love.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,88,A$AP Rocky,"""Goldie""",[RCA],"There's a line in ""Goldie"" that illustrates why A$AP Rocky is such a success. He raps, ""It's just me, myself, and I... and motherfuckers that I came with."" As much as Rocky's success can be pinned to his slippery voice and malleability, he's also surrounded himself with a crew of exceptional producers, most notably Clams Casino and, here, Hit-Boy, whose beat twinkles and thumps with clarity. ""Goldie"" is Rocky's most high profile step away from Clams' primordial ooze and it's a good one: ""Cristal go by the cases/ Wait, hold up that was racist/ I would prefer the Aces/ Ain't no different when you taste it,"" is both a flippant take on Cristal managing director Frederic Rouzaud's unfortunate 2006 statement about his distaste for rappers co-opting his champagne and a good natured jab at Jay-Z's luxury brand. It's an effortless moment that could easily get swallowed by Hit-Boy's production, but Rocky makes it stick, his voice welling in the back of his throat in a gummy half-mumble. --Sam Hockley-Smith",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Goldie_prod._Hit-Boy_1.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6049c0084474cd0c7083/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/AAP_Rocky-Goldie.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,87,Lotus Plaza,"""Monoliths""",[Kranky],"There's no Deerhunter. And no Bradford Cox. And no damn monolith. Just Lockett Pundt. In his day job as the guitarist behind one of semi-underground rock's loudest personalities, the Lotus Plaza leader lets his pedals-- and, increasingly on 2010's Halcyon Digest, his songwriting-- speak for him. Opening with a circular-sounding list of negations that recalls John Lennon in soul-baring Plastic Ono Band mode, this sun-baked dream-pop anthem from Pundt's second solo album is a statement of self-belief so convincing it exhilarates. The geometrically precise guitars and the wide-eyed, stoner-friendly lyrical content stay true to the understated artist, while the passionately delivered vocal harmonies suggest he's realized his truths are communal.  --Marc Hogan",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/kranky/lotus-plaza-monoliths,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60490c2bba1b7de04ee1/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Lotus_Plaza-Monoliths.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,86,Chief Keef,"""Love Sosa""",[Interscope],"Chief Keef's first new single since signing with Interscope over the summer is important for what it is, and what it isn't. Though he's one of the most talked about new rappers of the year and the quarterback of Chicago's drill squad, Keef's music is defiantly hard; the only song on his breakout Back From the Dead tape aimed at the opposite sex is called ""Save That Shit"" and it's about how women should stop falling in love with him because he doesn't care like that. Once again: That was his ladies' track. A previous iteration of Interscope may have teamed Keef up with one of their up-and-coming R&B starlets and tried to force some sort of bad-boy-makes-good pop megahit. That didn't happen. ""Love Sosa"" is a testament to artists' power in 2012, even at the highest levels. It's also remarkably, cinematically grim. The ominous intro-- in which we hear Keef come up with the hook, like a meta/mini making-of documentary-- could've awesomely soundtracked several scenes from The Dark Knight. With kindred producer Young Chop once again backing him, the song is like a pristine ripening of Keef's known sound. And while the track's amorous title may read like capitulation on paper, it's actually born of the same electrifying arrogance that got him this far; hate him or love him, he's not going to change. --Ryan Dombal",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c604ac0084474cd0c7086/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Chief_Keef-Love_Sosa.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,85,Major Lazer,"""Get Free""",[Mad Decent/Downtown],"Major Lazer and Amber Coffman are not artists you look to for subtlety. So much of Diplo's work in his reggae-leaning project is aggrandizing and provocative, reliant on vivid, sparking yowls bursting out of the mix, while Coffman's voice often blares. Yet ""Get Free"" is a woodsy shoreline lap, dancehall pared down to the slowest, sexiest shimmer, so slinky and melismatic it would've fit (and probably improved) the latest Rihanna album. Coffman's vocals here completely carry this track, and the weight of the world. Get free from what? Government oppression, homophobia, poverty, society, dangerous, displacing weather? They're all there when she bleats, ""I just can't believe what they've done to me,"" the increasingly incredulous external factors that force a person to believe in their own dreams, and dreams alone. - --Laura Snapes",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/majorlazer/get-free-feat-amber-of-dirty-1,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c604ac0084474cd0c7088/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Major_Lazer-Get_Free.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,84,Lower Dens,"""Brains""",[Ribbon Music],"""If you consume all the music you want all the time, compulsively, sweatily, you end up having a cheap relationship to the music you listen to."" Lower Dens' Jana Hunter didn't mince words when describing her relationship to streaming services, but she may have misapplied them. ""Brains"", the first single off the band's sophomore album, Nootropics, is something you consume compulsively, sweatily. The ceaseless rhythm conjures images of fingers bleeding, and the murmured verses and creeping background organs oppress with the intensity of a receding fever. ""Don't be afraid,"" Hunter sings low and expressionlessly, downplaying and exacerbating the song's intensity in equal measure. ""Brains"" holds the listener in its post-apocalyptic clutches like an addiction, only to leave an empty depression behind when the layers dissolve into a single, resolute guitar at the end of everything. --Harley Brown",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Lower_Dens_-_Brains.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c604b0c2bba1b7de04ee5/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Lower_Dens-Brains.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,83,How To Dress Well,"""Cold Nites""",[Weird World/Acéphale],"How to Dress Well's Tom Krell elegantly merges climatic melody and anti-climatic sentiment on ""Cold Nites"". Had it been on his lo-fi debut Love Remains, the lyric ""cold nights and harder days"" would've prefaced a descent into frayed, blurry melancholy. But in amped-up second album mode, Krell fully commits to the joy in the pain. The desire to unburden himself through song is a motif he's long reached for, but on ""Cold Nites"" his confidence is palpable. His newfound emotional clarity has a lot to do with that. Consider the all-star crew he's rolling with on this Total Loss standout: Krell's no-holds-barred emoting is backed by an original beat from elusive UK producer Forest Swords and sumptuous production by Rodaidh McDonald (the xx, Adele, Gil Scott-Heron). Musically, the real star of the piece-- Clipse-inspired regimented drums aside-- is that offbeat synth croak masquerading as an airhorn. It's almost obscenely inappropriate to the content of ""Cold Nites"", but that’s precisely why it works. --Ruth Saxelby",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c604ceb335119a49f146a/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/How_To_Dress_Well-Cold_Nites.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,82,Schoolboy Q,"""There He Go""",[Top Dawg],"""There He Go"" doubles as a boast track and a birth announcement: Here I am, it says, and I am awesome. For Q, that means having a house with a decent view and dressing his daughter in style. Over a pretty piano loop sampled from Menomena's ""Wet and Rusting"", he takes himself to the mall, gets with a girl there, then runs into her boyfriend, who’s not even mad because Q is that great. Later, he loses money betting on a Lakers game but earns some from iTunes royalties-- a minor victory made major by the sheer joy in his voice. Q isn't a mogul or master of the universe here, and ultimately, that's why ""There He Go"" works: Instead of superhero myth, he builds a daily affirmation for the just-good-enough. --Mike Powell",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c604ceb335119a49f146c/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Schoolboy_Q-There_He_Go.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,81,Liars,"""No. 1 Against the Rush""",[Mute],"Liars told us the title ""No. 1 Against the Rush"" was inspired by the San Francisco 49ers. It's a defensive superlative, perhaps about playing not to lose rather than to win. Similarly, the music is low-key and devoid of any obvious crescendos-- it's the mellowest, most introverted Liars single to date. Lyrics about ""pushing off"" and ""want[ing] you out,"" sung by Angus Andrew in a dejected hum, suggest a desire to repel and withdraw, to self-defend. But for something so reticent, ""No. 1 Against the Rush"" is pretty attractive. And after a few spins, the final chorus actually does seem to soar, even if it never overtly begs for your attention. It's boldness by way of restraint; offense by way of a good defense. --Marc Masters",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/muterecords/liars-no-1-against-the-rush,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c604dd7a71d1ea569c8ae/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Liars-No_1_Against_the_Rush.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,80,Baauer,"""Harlem Shake""",[Jeffree's / Mad Decent],"""Harlem Shake"" is easily one of the most obnoxious singles of 2012. Its tempo is harshly overclocked so the drum and hi-hat fills have a twitchy strobe-light quality, and the beat itself frequently goes half- or double-time at seemingly random moments, and then drops out altogether. Repeatedly. The melody is a nagging little three-note riff played with a squelching synth tone that Baauer pans in a way that suggests a tiny, glow stick-twirling insect flying around your head. There's also a sample of what might be a lion growling that doesn't have anything to do with anything. But properly deployed obnoxiousness is a valid route to aesthetic nirvana, especially in the dance music world, where coming up with wiggy synth tones has become a veritable competitive sport. It's impressive that at age 23, Baauer's already contending with the champions. --Miles Raymer",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c604deb335119a49f146e/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Baauer-Harlem_Shake.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,79,Rich Kidz,"""My Life"" [ft. Waka Flocka Flame]",[self-released],"This is that adrenaline shot straight into your eyeball. To set the scene: ""My Life"" is where filet mignon is served nightly and exclusively. It's where you have sex with a married woman in front of her boss, simply because you can. Headlight-sized Breitling watches are plentiful in ""My Life"", and earning upwards of $230,000 an hour is commonplace. It's where drugs take you ""higher than Bugatti insurance""-- pretty darn high. If ""My Life"" was really my life-- or your life, or Rich Kidz's lives-- I would be either dead of a heart attack at age 24, arrested for indecent exposure, murdered by a jealous husband, and/or Charlie Sheen. Nobody wants to be Charlie Sheen, but everybody wants ""My Life"", because this young Atlanta hip-hop duo make it sound like what god thinks about when he thinks about heaven. They are amped. Really amped. Like winning the Super Bowl and the Oscars and Powerball at the same damn time amped. And then there's Waka. Jesus. In the song's ecstatic in-studio video, we see this man geek himself up-- ""OK! OK!!! OK!$#%! FLEX! FLEX¡!¡!-- and then spring up on those fanfare horns like an atomic jack in the box. Every life needs a little bit of ""My Life"". --Ryan Dombal",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/03_My_Life_Feat._Waka_Flocka.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c604e13d197565213f8cf/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Rich_Kidz-My_Life_ft_Waka_Flocka_Flame.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,78,King Tuff,"""Bad Thing""",[Sub Pop],"The first 10 seconds of ""Bad Thing"" are lifted from a million rock songs: It’s AC/DC's ""If You Want Blood You Got It"", it’s The Replacements' ""I.O.U."", it’s the Hold Steady's ""Constructive Summer"". Some people might argue that this makes King Tuff derivative. Those people are wrong. Rock'n'roll comes out of the blues, and in the blues, it's accepted that certain guitar parts are too good to be used just once, twice, or 1,000 times. Besides, Kyle Thomas is too hung up on the ugliness staring back at him in the mirror to get hung up on being original. After all, he is the ""bad thing,"" and even shredding solos on his Stratocaster can't make him forget it. ""All I ever wanted was everything/ And now I'm being haunted by those dreams,"" he sings in a perfectly rendered loser's whine. For a song about self-abjection, ""Bad Thing"" sounds pretty celebratory. And by the end, he's totally owning it, screaming ""baaaaad thiiing!"" like the righteous dirtball he is. --Steven Hyden",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/King_Tuff_-_Bad_Thing.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c604ed7a71d1ea569c8b0/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/King_Tuff-Bad_Thing.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,77,The xx,"""Angels""",[Young Turks],"If the xx’s debut album wasn’t minimal enough, this year’s follow-up, Coexist, chiseled their sound down further, to mixed reactions. For fans who felt they were left grasping at what wasn't there, the disappointment of hearing the band stumble over an aesthetic they once owned completely was compounded by the strength of the album’s lead single. Only on ""Angels"" did the band’s decision to scale back also manage to amplify what they chose to leave standing. ""Angels"" is a simple, beautiful song about days that end too soon melting into a relationship that continues to grow stronger. Like ""VCR"" before it, it makes the plunge into love feel both momentous and natural, a big moment rendered in real terms: ""With words unspoken, a silent devotion/ I know you know what I mean."" But there are also the drums, the first live percussion to appear on an xx track. At the time they signaled the band's measured diversification of its sound, but now they resonate purely as an example of how so much can be said with so little. Four thumps of the bass drum and a tap of the hi-hat; four beats of the heart and a ripple. --Jordan Sargent",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c604fc0084474cd0c7093/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_xx-Angels.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,76,Blawan,"""Why They Hide Their Bodies Under My Garage?""",[Hinge Finger],"If you're looking for more evidence of Europe's advanced cultural standing-- to go along with universal health care, advanced literacy rates, and elBulli-- consider that the continent's club-goers chant along to Blawan's insidious, very not-pop ""Why They Hide Their Bodies Under My Garage"" when it hits the decks. And it hit the decks a lot in 2012, as European DJs rediscovered a love of hard, concrete-mixer techno. The genius of ""Bodies"" is that it relies on a presumably schizophrenic and murderous narrator asking why there are so many dead people under his house, and the audience response goes something like: ""Wheeeeeeee!"" The track is dark like the Misfits are dark: fully committed, but goofy; stupid, but clever. It's ""ha ha""-scary and totally engaging. ""Bodies"" follows last year's incredible Brandy-jacking ""Getting Me Down"", and has made Blawan cagey about being labeled a ""vocal"" producer. He shouldn’t be. The song is so punchy and fun that it's difficult to tell if the shrill, horror-movie screams that punctuate it are the narrator's victims or just Blawan's own deranged followers shouting his mania back at him. --Andrew Gaerig",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6051eb335119a49f1475/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Blawan-Why_They_Hide_Their_Bodies_Under_My_Garage.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,75,Angel Haze,"""Werkin' Girls""",[Noizy Cricket!! / Biz 3 / True Panther],"It's never been easier for promising rappers outside of the hip-hop establishment, like Angel Haze, to find an audience. But it's just as easy for them to find themselves in reductive trend pieces. Are you rapping while female? Rapping while queer? Doing either while signing to a major? It's exposure, yes, but it can also set an artist up for dismissal. Haze checks all these boxes, but she's mostly managed to escape being stuffed into them. Partly, it's timing; her first mixtape, King, came out last year and saw her dismantle male-gazing tracks like Lil Wayne's ""How to Love"" and Jamie Foxx's ""Fall for Your Type"", not with the expected fierceness but earnest sincerity. ""Werkin Girls"", by contrast, is all boast, but Haze can back it up. The beat shakes and stalks, but it's got no chance of keeping up with Haze, who roars through like (as she says) Rambo, a tractor, a cheetah; a dervish of polyrhythmic triple-time virtuosity concluding in a couple jaw-dropping lines (most quotable: ""like a preteen boy in a church with a pastor""). It'd be a commanding display from anyone, new or not. ""I am multifaceted, bitch,"" Haze says. It should be her rallying cry. --Katherine St. Asaph",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Angel_Haze_-_Werkin_Girls.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c605213d197565213f8d5/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Angel_Haze-Werkin_Girls.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,74,Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti,"""Baby""",[4AD],"Ariel Pink does serious, but he doesn't do it straight. So maybe Donnie & Joe Emerson's ""Baby"" was the perfect cover choice for him and his Haunted Graffiti, a love song that goes down smooth until you notice the chorus: ""Ooh, baby/ You're so baby."" Even in the original, it's hard to tell when sincerity ends and when the ear-flicking begins-- the first chorus glides into a verse about moonlit sex on the beach against a splashing tide. Pink's version is still something that you could play for your parents: it's fit for slow dances under the stars and soft smiles. But the singer twists the lovingly delivered boyish sweetness, nudging you in the ribs with a tossed off cackle, backing vocals that nod to the Flamingos’ “I Only Have Eyes for You”, and a few ad-libs at the end that are obviously just exaggerated sex noises. Hate on the irony if you must, but I like to think the Emersons are somewhere having a laugh.  --Jordan Sargent",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60530c2bba1b7de04eef/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Ariel_Pinks_Haunted_Graffiti-Baby.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,73,Juicy J,"""Bandz a Make Her Dance (Remix)"" [ft. Lil Wayne and 2 Chainz]",[Kemosabe / Columbia],"""Bandz a Make Her Dance"" first popped up as a bonus track on the dubiously advertised ""deluxe"" edition of Juicy J's Blue Dream and Lean mixtape, and the remix appears to be a haphazard consolidation of 2012's most abundant surplus items: Juicy J songs about strip clubs, goofy self-promotion from 2 Chainz, medicated-sounding Lil Wayne guest verses. But the fact that this is a legitimate radio hit is cause for celebration; rap has reached a point where Juicy J can be welcomed as an ignoble elder statesman rather than the guy who was sadly clinging to post-Oscar quasi-celebrity. Mike Will Made It's gorgeously vacant beat serves as a liaison between Three 6 Mafia and their syrup-sipping lineage of the Weeknd and A$AP Rocky; the key is how it avoids the physical conflict of the former and the emotional conflict of the latter as if to remind us throwing stacks of money in a strip club can be fun. ""You say no to drugs, Juicy J can't"" was the slogan that basically rebooted the guy's career and here, he can't say no to irresistible chants and extravagant spending, either. --Ian Cohen",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60530c2bba1b7de04ef1/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Juicy_J-Bandz_a_Make_Her_Dance_Remix_ft_Lil_Wayne_and_2_Chainz.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,72,John Talabot,"""Destiny"" [ft. Pional]",[Permanent Vacation],"This is what John Talabot does: he releases big tracks about big topics meant to be played during big hours. Like Japandroids or Daft Punk or anyone else who trades in anthems, Talabot understands that simplicity is king. There is no sleight of hand; crystalline production aids ""Destiny"", never allowing any one element to disappear. Lots of producers use easy structures like this, but Talabot's are so delineated and friendly that it's like having a tour guide, someone who offers perfunctory but helpful commentary. ""Destiny""'s every looped vocal refrain, on-the-nose bass drop, and tumbling, glittery climax prop up the song's lyrical conceit. Because when you're attempting to riff on sunshine or destiny, it's best to stash the parlor tricks and allow listeners to get swept away in the big ideas. --Andrew Gaerig",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/john-talabot/destiny-feat-pional,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60540c2bba1b7de04ef3/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/John_Talabot-Destiny_ft_Pional.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,71,Thee Oh Sees,"""Lupine Dominus""",[In the Red],"The 25 seconds of treble that open ""Lupine Dominus"" may sound like a test tone, but it's far from static. Instead, it whirrs and shakes like a horse ready to burst through a starting gate, and once Thee Oh Sees launch into a motorik, Can-on-speed groove, ""Lupine Dominus"" certainly feels like some kind of race. Unhurried, sinister chants from John Dwyer and Brigid Dawson add moments of eerie calm, but the rest of the song is an exhilarating storm of searing organ, zippering guitar, and caffeinated drums. It's a simple collection of sounds, but together they're almost too big to contain, spilling with enough energy and noise to fill an entire album. It's yet another Thee Oh Sees song that could beat any other band in a sprint, but also has the stamina to finish a marathon. --Marc Masters",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/TheeOhSees_LupineDominus.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60545e6ef9596932747c/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Thee_Oh_Sees-Lupine_Dominus.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,70,Four Tet,"""Pyramid""",[Fabric],"With Four Tet's 2008 Ringer EP, Kieran Hebden started making a concerted move toward incorporating techno and house influences into the earthy, free-jazz IDM he perfected on Rounds. It was and is a gradual incorporation, and it made a lot of sense: both styles are rooted in epiphany through rhythm. The new approach came to fruition on 2010's There Is Love in You, and Hebden has continued in this vein since, showing that he's equally at home with 4/4 kicks and vocal loops as he is sifting through gamelan music and Alice Coltrane LPs. Taken from this year's singles compilation Pink, ""Pyramid"" finds Hebden pitch-shifting and slowing down the phrase ""I remember how you walked away"" (grabbed from the 2002 Jennifer Lopez single ""Ain't It Funny"") until it sounds like the ghost of an old bluesman. Around it, he gradually erects a track inspired by piston-pumping Detroit techno, and the nine-syllable phrase eventually loses context and turns into a hypnotic elegy of lovelorn rumination, like the simple samples driving ""Love Cry"" and ""Angel Echoes"". Since his earliest Four Tet experiments more than a decade ago, Hebden has always freely mixed the cerebral with the visceral, and on ""Pyramid,"" in the midst of ecstatic rhythmic movement, he crafts an ode to fixation. --Eric Harvey",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c605513d197565213f8db/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Four_Tet-Pyramid.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,69,Le1f,"""Wut""",[Greedhead / Camp & Street],"""Wut"" was the intersection of a ton of Le1f's priceless don't-give-a-fuck attitudes: out-and-proud queerness (""I'm getting light in my loafers/ And I stay getting life 'til life's over""), web-culture weirdness (the video's oiled-up, Pikachu-masked bros begged for Tumblr GIFs, and got them), battle-rap button-pushing (""I make a neo-Nazi kamikaze wanna firebomb""), and styles upon styles upon styles (his second-verse doubletime is berserk). Set it all to one of the most insistent beats of the year-- all morse-code sax blats and handclaps and Suzuki Samurai-overturning bass, indelibly chiseled into your forebrain by the eighth bar-- and that title's implied question turns into a definitive answer. --Nate Patrin",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Le1f_-_Wut.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c605513d197565213f8dd/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Le1f-Wut.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,68,TNGHT,"""Goooo""",[Warp / Luckyme],"This summer, Montreal producer Lunice told Interview that one goal for TNGHT, the self-titled EP he'd just released with Glasgow beatmaker Hudson Mohawke, was to emphasize simplicity. Radio hits were too busy, he insisted, and he wanted these five tracks to be clean blasts: direct, discrete, delirious. To that end, ""Goooo"" uses a half-dozen elemental components, from a soul clap and en masse chants to low-end throb and beginner melodic progressions. By design, you've heard all of this before, maybe even on the FM dial. But the duo stacks these basics with purpose, so that the dogmatic shouts of ""go"" arrive early in the crests between the quaking bass, or so that the boot-stomps arrive when the handclaps don’t, reminding you that you're responsible for two sets of limbs when you're on their dancefloor. There's nothing extraneous or foreign here, nothing that will thwart a rendezvous with this song's incredible momentum. In a year where many of electronic music's most-buzzed artists re-envisioned the roles of bass, voice, and hooks, ""Goooo"" works because it so perfectly executes its fundamentals and trusts in them entirely. --Grayson Currin",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6056c0084474cd0c70a3/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/TNGHT-Goooo.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,67,DIIV,"""How Long Have You Known""",[Captured Tracks],"If you've caught Zachary Cole Smith's band live, you've likely been struck by the frontman's personal styling and on-stage body language, which forms an eerily accurate impersonation of Kurt Cobain circa late 1992, right down to the bleached blonde pageboy cut and the guitar neck throttling. And while DIIV's debut album Oshin doesn't sound anything like Nirvana, its standout track ""How Long Have You Known"" does sound like something Kurt might have liked. It's songwriting basic and indelible enough that an amateur guitarist could probably figure it out in an afternoon, and its melody resembles those of the Raincoats and Half Japanese: the hook is naively simple, but almost impossible to shake. --Miles Raymer",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Dive_-_How_Long_Have_You_Known.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c605713d197565213f8e1/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/DIIV-How_Long_Have_You_Known.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,66,Rick Ross,"""Stay Schemin'"" [ft. Drake and French Montana]",[Maybach],"No one's ever sung as horribly as French Montana does on the chorus to ""Stay Schemin'"". It is an insult to the idea of singing, a mockery of the notion that the human voice can be used to produce musical sounds. The hook itself is a decomposed corpse of Kurtis Blow's ""Daydreamin,"" washed up on a city shoreline nearly unrecognizable years after Nas had already defaced it. It’s the most corrupted rap sound of the year, which is also why it made the perfect theme song for the Untouchable Maybach Music Empire in 2012. I'm betting that in years to come, popular memory will confuse ""Stay Schemin"" as the single off of Ross' God Forgives, I Don't; there’s no way a song this influential and ubiquitous-- the song that unleashed the glorious confusion that was the word ""fanute"" into the world-- was just given away. But placing ""Stay Schemin'"" at the tail end of the 20-track-long Rich Forever was in perfect keeping with Ross's Bond-villain economics: Spend it now, there will always be more.  --Jayson Greene",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60570c2bba1b7de04ef8/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Rick_Ross-Stay_Schemin_ft_Drake_and_French_Montana.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,65,Metz,"""Wet Blanket""",[Sub Pop],"The descriptors that come to mind when you hear Metz' debut LP are harsh ones: pummeling, loud, ferocious, brutal. A cursory listen to ""Wet Blanket"" confirms those adjectives (""We try to take everything we do and make it redline,"" said frontman Alex Edkins earlier this year.) But instead of laying out a continuous and merciless assault over the song's full four minutes, Metz temper their attack here by establishing some calm. More than a minute of the track is dedicated to a repetitive churn, a cool down from the aggression. They gradually pick up energy, and, right at the song's climax, drop a primal scream, launch the volume back into the red, and bash through to the finish, demonstrating a spot-on sense of pacing and a masterful utilization of contrasting elements. --Evan Minsker",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/METZ_WetBlanket.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6058c0084474cd0c70a7/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Metz-Wet_Blanket.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,64,Julia Holter,"""In The Same Room""",[Rvng Intl.],"With its frosty synths and perky drum machine, ""In the Same Room"" initially sounds like a standard bedroom electronic pop song, but it doesn't behave like one for long. Rather than building verses and choruses, Holter structures her lyric as an oblique dialogue between two unidentified characters, with each sung line knotting back upon itself until it becomes unclear which voice is speaking: ""In this very room, we spent the day and looked over antiquities/ Don't you remember? Do I know you?"" These multi-layered vocals produce an alluring daydream haze, yet sound slightly unsettling, as though we’re eavesdropping on a whispered conversation between two spirits in a haunted hotel suite. Holter's subtle arrangement effectively mirrors the song's quiet drama as a harpsichord line tiptoes past and then discreetly exits through another door. Through it all, Holter balances the song's pop leanings and her avant-garde atmospherics with a touch as light and measured as the brushstrokes on an heirloom cameo portrait, miniature in size but not in its residual impact. --Matt Murphy",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/igetrvng/julia-holter-in-the-same-room,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60580c2bba1b7de04efa/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Julia_Holter-In_The_Same_Room.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,63,Passion Pit,"""Constant Conversations""",[Columbia],"If you could manipulate space and time-- maybe nudge the earth slightly off its axis-- ""Constant Conversations"" would be a fine comeback single for Justin Timberlake. The sultry R&B ballad is the most affectionate and graceful song Passion Pit's Michael Angelakos has recorded yet, the one where he quiets his brain's beehive hum enough to fall into a legitimate groove. But while a perfect match sonically, there's little chance J.T. would offer up his gin-binging insecurities as Angelakos does here: ""I never want to hurt you, baby/ I'm just a mess with a name and a price/ And now I'm drunker than before they/ Told me drinking doesn't make me nice."" The song details a guilty plea for forgiveness from Angelakos’ girlfriend after spending too many blurred nights out with the wrong crowd. He even gives these fair-weather hangers-on a voice: When fans sing the track's seemingly optimistic ""oh oh oh"" hook back to him in concert, they're playing the part of the villain-- the casually destructive forces who only ""love you when they need you."" So what appears at first to be a moment of respite is more like an exorcism, an endless reminder of mistakes made. --Ryan Dombal",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60595e6ef95969327483/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Passion_Pit-Constant_Conversations.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,62,Philip Glass,"""73 - 78 (Beck Remix)""",[Kora / Ernest Jenning / Orange Mountain],"During the period Beck covers in this lively extended fantasy on Philip Glass' mid-70s music, the composer had survived finishing the minimalist monument Music in Twelve Parts and was starting to loosen his harmonic tie. This gives Beck more to work with than just rippling arpeggios and while it would have been easy to slip into beat-driven remix mode he exercises considerably more imagination. It's a strange algebra that makes Philip Glass equal the Field times Animal Collective, but that's about what Beck works out in his cool-headed romp through the urban jungle, soulful and pensive and desolate at abrupt turns. It's so much Beck's own that the passages that remain truest to Glass’ works (check in around the 13-minute mark) seem somewhat incongruous when they crop up. Instead of embalming a so-called minimalist's influence, Beck hears the music as something vibrantly alive and repays it in kind, with the kind of cheeky-sincere mojo he's been missing for a while. --Brian Howe",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/dunvagenmusic/nyc-73-78,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6059d7a71d1ea569c8bf/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Philip_Glass-73_-_78_Beck_Remix.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,61,Jessie Ware,"""110%""",[PMR],"Most of Jessie Ware’s full-length debut, Devotion, found her exploring the edges of soulful pop music but on ""110%"", the UK singer trained her focus on bubbly, even-keeled house. And she gave unrequited lovers a new theme song while she was at it. The Julio Bashmore-produced track is easily her LP's most understated offering. When she quietly pines, ""I know you hear me, but can you reach me/ Feel free to touch me, and we can play hard,"" each airy nuance of her vocal melody imbues the stripped-down production's quiet radiance with a potent desire. We all know what she's looking for. Ware's song is about needs and wants, the yearning that inundates sidewalks, workplaces, bars, and dancefloors in unspoken passion. So when she closes with, ""I'm still dancing on my own,"" it feels less like a coy request for a dance partner and more like a mission statement for those content to step to their own rhythm. --Patric Fallon",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/jessieware/jessie-ware-110-1,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c605a13d197565213f8e5/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Jessie_Ware-110.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,60,Anna Meredith,"""Nautilus""",[Moshi Moshi],"Anna Meredith boasts the bona fides of a promising young British composer: She's written for the National Youth Orchestra, had her work performed in Royal Albert Hall, served frequently with the BBC and earned raves from the European press. She's also as maximalist as Skrillex. ""Nautilus"", the triumph that leads her debut *Black Prince Fury *EP, initially suggests an intriguing hybrid of György Ligeti, Steve Reich, and John Philip Sousa. Horns march high and low, ecstatically pulsing with the help of violins. The rhythms blur, counterpoint lines nesting inside of one another. And then there's the drop-- a brutal-given-the-context bassline that swivels with the brass above a simple drum beat, left standing still so as to emphasize the intricacy and insanity of what's happening overhead. ""Nautilus"" could run the risk of painting Meredith into a corner of gimmickry, where the composer is more interested in appealing to the kids with splashes of relevancy than by turning old ideas on their mortal heads. But remember those mammoth antecedents, and listen for the way Meredith treats these five minutes like a tiny symphony, full of foreshadowing and returns and interwoven motion. Also, listen for the drop.  --Grayson Currin",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/annameredith/nautilus-1/,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c605a13d197565213f8e7/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Anna_Meredith-Nautilus.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,59,Mac DeMarco,"""Ode to Viceroy""",[Captured Tracks],"A handful of songs have completely changed my relationship to a word. I hear the name ""Loretta"" and my in my head I sing it like Stephen Malkmus and add the word ""scars""; I mentally draw ""sycamore"" out into 10 syllables, Bill Callahan-style; ""sabotage"" brings Ad-Rock's adenoidal whine into my consciousness. This year, I received another contribution to my music-induced linguistic imprinting in the form of Mac DeMarco's ""Ode to Viceroy"". For the rest of my days, regardless of context, I'll be hearing the word ""Viceroy"" set to DeMarco's profoundly simple two-note melody, a melody that makes it sound like two notes is all anyone ever needs. The man can economize; he knows what it means to try just hard enough to get the job done. The song that follows that initial word is loose and groovy, a blurry little super 8 film that's sort of a paean to his favorite smoke but really more about a vibe, something you screw in like a red lightbulb. It starts with the sun coming in and ends as ""it's getting later."" Nothing much happens in between during this little movie, but you never want to look away. --Mark Richardson",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/capturedtracks/mac-demarco-ode-to-viceroy/s-PIVa6,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c605b13d197565213f8e9/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Mac_DeMarco-Ode_to_Viceroy.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,58,Purity Ring,"""Fineshrine""",[Last Gang / 4AD],"The Edmonton electro pop duo Purity Ring's song titles sound like things kids would say (""Amenamy"", ""Obedear"", ""Saltkin"") and vocalist Megan James emotes with a childlike lilt full of wonder. Live, they surround themselves with shining lamps that hover like sprites and colorful globes that light up when they're hit with a drumstick, but James' lyrics about glimmering guts, dead voices, and piles of bones complicate the duo's fairyland. On ""Fineshrine"", she sings incisive directives like, ""Cut open my sternum and pull/ My little ribs around you."" The way James combines and playfully blurs words here is reminiscent of a poet like e.e. cummings, and her deliberate pacing lands like verse, too. Surrounding those cadences with equally inventive sounds, Corin Roddick constructs fantastical instrumental backdrops that feel like tiny, pulsing creatures. It's a song about loving someone so much you want to move into their chest cavity and build a shrine-- the year's most committed love story as well as an addictive dose of solitary, stay-at-home dance music. --Brandon Stosuy",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/lastgangentertainment/purity-ring-fineshrine,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c605c0c2bba1b7de04efc/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Purity_Ring-Fineshrine.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,57,Killer Mike,"""Big Beast"" [ft. Bun B, T.I. and Trouble]",[Williams Street],"""Big Beast"" displays almost none of the qualities that made Killer Mike's* R.A.P. Music* his critical breakthrough: It's about as nuanced, humane, and political as a tire iron to the skull. But if there's anything subtle about this track, it's that it never really calls attention to how every one of Mike's explosive exclamations (""pow, motherfucker, pow!"") is the sound of a barrier being kicked down. Killer Mike, Bun B, and T.I. on an El-P beat, and it's released by a subsidiary of Cartoon Network? That sort of thing would've never happened even five years ago. So it’s fitting that ""Big Beast"" works as a revolutionary call-to-arms, envisioning a future where rappers are judged not by their label associations, but by their ability to make dystopian bangers. --Ian Cohen",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/wmstrecs/killer-mike-big-beast-feat-bun?secret_token=s-IXc6O,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c605ceb335119a49f1487/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Killer_Mike-Big_Beast_ft_Bun_B_TI_and_Trouble.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,56,Peaking Lights,"""Beautiful Son""",[Mexican Summer],"""Beautiful Son"" is a tribute to the newborn son of Aaron Coyes and Indra Dunis, the Wisconsin couple who make up Peaking Lights, and it's a touching expression of new discovery. The fact that it's built around interlocking parts that circle in place feels just right. It creates a humble, understated innocence for Dunis' words (“My blueberry eyes/ Full of love for life/ Can’t set his feet/ Through starry skies”) to bask in, causing the whole track to radiate an uncommon warmth. Discussion of this band often centers on their use of dubby, low-end textures, but lightness and grace dominates here. There's no clutter, no fuss, and not a single part feels like it shouldn't be right where it is. Each element locks tightly together to etch out its sweetly uncomplicated sentiment.  --Nick Neyland",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/weirdworldrecordco/02-beautiful-son,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c605d5e6ef9596932748b/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Peaking_Lights-Beautiful_Son.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,55,Miguel,"""Do You""",[RCA],"…as in ""Do you like drugs?,"" which is the only information Miguel wants to know about you. He promises ""matinee movies, morning secrets, midnight summers, swim private beaches,"" and a whole run of clichéd activities that sound clichéd precisely because he's never actually done them. What he has done is drugs-- and he would like to do you like drugs, too, which is to say compulsively, vigorously, and until you're all gone. Miguel takes the luxurious tempo of a ballad, but the drum tics and guitar flourishes all work in doubletime-- the twitchy hands of the undernourished and chemically overstimulated. Now he wants to dance real close, and you let him, because you like drugs too, so you believe him when he confesses his fears, but understand that his is the love song of someone who has no idea what love is-- vulnerability at its deepest and irony at its highest. It's a character sketch that puts Miguel in league with writers like Frank Ocean, but also with people like Chris Owens, formerly of Girls, whose disaffected subjects often take a lot more than they've learned to give. What people like this want is to be cradled and nurtured through the dark night of their soul. What they need is a glass of cold water, a good squeeze on the shoulder, and their cab fare. --Mike Powell",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c605d13d197565213f8eb/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Miguel-Do_You.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,54,Savages,"""Husbands""",[Pop Noire],"We were introduced to London's Savages through a series of electrifying black-and-white live videos that evoke the claustrophobic so vividly they could pass for outtakes from Anton Corbijn's Ian Curtis biopic, Control. Ten months later, the circumstances couldn't have been more different, as the group performed their single ""Husbands"" amid the bright coloured lights of the ""Later... With Jools Holland"" stage. But if Savages appeared decidedly out of place on a program that also featured Mumford & Sons, Lisa Marie Presley, and Neil Sedaka, ""Husbands"" tapped into feelings to which most of the show's national viewing audience could no doubt relate: middle-class ennui, and the exhausting effects of unfettered materialism. Where Gang of Four famously equated bad romance with faulty products, ""Husbands"" goes one further, with singer Jehnny Beth tossing her various paramours onto the trash heap along with the rest of her unwanted junk. ""Husbands"" indulges your desire to escape your surroundings while deviously reinforcing the reality of being trapped in them: those shocks of noise that intrude upon the song's steely bass like a jackhammering construction crew outside your bedroom window at 7 a.m. on a Sunday.  --Stuart Berman",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/pop-noire-radio/savages-husbands/s-wUDfA,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c605e13d197565213f8ed/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Savages-Husbands.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,53,Rhye,"""The Fall""",[Polydor / Seven Four / Innovative Leisure],"""I'm just attempting to express love and sensuality in a very honest way."" That's Rhye's Mike Milosh discussing how his songs stand in contrast to how love and sex are often portrayed in modern music. On ""The Fall"", the first single from the new project, you could hear romantic sentiments, lush string arrangements, and muted horn stabs that could've been ripped from a vintage Bacharach and David song, but it never approaches schmaltzy or melodramatic territory. This is quiet, soulful music dripping with atmosphere, and Rhye anchor the song's airy leanings with a firm beat. In a soft, androgynous voice, Milosh sings phrases that cut right to the point: ""Make love to me."" ""Why can't you stay?"" --Evan Minsker",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/rhyemusic/02-the-fall/s-7bLUg,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c605e5e6ef9596932748d/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Rhye-The_Fall.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,52,Sharon Van Etten,"""Serpents""",[Jagjaguwar],"Sharon Van Etten wrote ""Serpents"" in secret. A friend had given her an electric guitar, but she didn't have much faith in her playing, so she squirreled away a batch of stormy songs and didn't bring them out until years later, when she was recording her third album, Tramp. While she's made her name with carefully paced, emotionally harrowing indie-folk songs and performances so quiet they become loud, ""Serpents"" is Van Etten at her wisest and boldest. The track's barbed guitars whip and tangle around her as the singer turns that delicate folk-singer voice of hers into a pained, angry, accusatory howl. She spits her lyrics like venom: ""You enjoy sucking on dreams, so I will fall asleep with someone other than you."" It's an uncharacteristic tune that finds her at her most fearless. --Stephen Deusner",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Sharon_Van_Etten_-_Serpents.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c605fc0084474cd0c70ac/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Sharon_Van_Etten-Serpents.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,51,Kendrick Lamar,"""Backseat Freestyle""",[Interscope],"Kendrick Lamar's portrayal of youthful braggadocio and naïveté draws lines between pills and fast cars, gunplay and chemical tendencies, physical force and sexual desirability. His character is a preteen indulging adult vices, wielding a youthful sense of immortality like a pick-up line for the whole world. ""All my life I want money and power,"" he reckons in the hook, before returning to three increasingly fierce verses that detail his drive for those tangibles. Lamar delivers these proclamations over a Hit-Boy beat that has no such ambitions; rather than surge into a chorus or redirect the motion into a high-energy sprint, the producer lets the bass throb monotonously around a simple percussive patter. In essence, he hands Lamar the keys to the Maserati: ""Vroom, vroom! I'm racing."" --Grayson Currin",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/topdawgent/kendrick-lamar-backseat,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c605fd7a71d1ea569c8cc/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Kendrick_Lamar-Backseat_Freestyle.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,50,Icona Pop,"""I Love It""",[Atlantic / Big Beat / Company 10],"Every single line of this dive-bombing electro-pop breakup burst is shouted in unison by Icona Pop's Caroline Hjelt and Aino Jawo, as if the two Swedish singer/DJs were jumping up and down on tiptoe. Because ultimately, ""I Love It"" isn't just a glorious dancefloor fuck-you to an ex-boyfriend. It's also a celebration of the liberating power of female friendship and 2012's answer to ""Since U Been Gone"". Throwing that ex's shit into a bag and pushing it down the stairs is always exhilarating, but it's even more fun with your BFF. And in a year in which the War on Women intensified on every front, from politics to the blogosphere to the continued existence of Chris Brown, we needed as much of this kind of camaraderie as we could get. --Amy Phillips",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6060d7a71d1ea569c8ce/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Icona_Pop-I_Love_It.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,49,Future,"""Turn On The Lights""",[Epic / A1 / Free Bandz],"No artist this year made a virtue of their flaws like Atlanta rapper Future. His lyrics simultaneously raised and lowered the bar for spur of the moment profundity as his hook-laden yet tone-deaf emphysemic mutterings nestled into the cracks between rap and R&B, while Auto-Tune choruses left him sounding like gloriously damaged goods. Somehow, this alchemic combination makes him a consummately relatable and vulnerable everyman, lost in a world of paranoia and fleeting glory. It works brilliantly on his exuberant anthems, but even better on pseudo-ballads like ""Turn on the Lights"", where, addled by drink and drugs and thwarted desire, he searches in vain for the ideal girlfriend. His guttural exhortations may sound spontaneous, but the gravity of his task is underscored by an involuted arrangement courtesy of Mike WiLL Made It, featuring plaintive, harpsichord-like synth arpeggios that embrace spectral gothic choirs, wordlessly dooming the rapper's quest. Future himself, lost in third-hand idealizations of the perfect woman and torn between boastful fantasy (""I wanna tell the world about you just so they can get jealous"") and remorseful realism (""If you see her 'fore I do, tell her I wish that I met her…""), somehow knows he doesn't deserve the prize, and it's that undercurrent of deflated wistfulness that makes ""Turn on the Lights"" as loveable as it is startling. --Tim Finney",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/futureisnow/turn-on-the-lights-explicit,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6060d7a71d1ea569c8d0/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Future-Turn_On_The_Lights.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,48,Burial/Four Tet,"""Nova""",[self-released],"Collaborations between Four Tet and Burial are beginning to feel like something we can look forward to on a semi-regular basis. ""Nova"" wasn't met with the high-profile enthusiasm of the pair's star-powered 2011 release with Thom Yorke, but the lack of promotional push reflects the unassuming nature of the track, with the pair working loose ideas around house-y piano stabs and itchy beats that bear hallmarks of their prior work. It's fun to guess at who did what on these types of collaborations, but here the distinction is blurred, perhaps highlighting an inevitable consequence of two distinct artists becoming more comfortable working with one another. The word ""mystery"" is often invoked when discussing Burial, but his alliances with Four Tet progressively represent the work of someone who's figuring out how to adapt to a new space in public view. It's hardly the equivalent of either artist laying their whole process bare, but ""Nova"" does feel like the subtle twist of a lens that's bringing a bigger picture into focus. --Nick Neyland",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/four-tet/burial-four-tet-nova,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6061eb335119a49f1492/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/BurialFour_Tet-Nova.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,47,Grizzly Bear,"""Sleeping Ute""",[Warp],"Whether it's the Yellow House, Veckatimest island, or the endless stream of faraway places that populate Ed Droste's Instagram, Grizzly Bear seem to thrive on isolation. Shields opener ""Sleeping Ute"", with its grey hills, dark visions, and dizzying awakenings, conjures up just such a disengagement from the juxtaposed glass condos and vinyl-sided shacks of the band's Brooklyn home. Fragile and earthbound one minute, towering and otherworldly the next, ""Ute"" feels like an escape; a few shaky seconds in, Daniel Rossen's guitar crashes through the seawall, and a flood of drums and a shimmering undercurrent of keys pour from the fissure. ""Ute"" finds Rossen mired in conflict; he wants to stay but he knows he can't, and so, with a heavy heart, off he goes. But Rossen's solitudinous streak can't keep the sweeping ""Ute"" from feeling like an invitation, drawing you deep into Grizzly Bear's weird world. --Paul Thompson",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6062eb335119a49f1494/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Grizzly_Bear-Sleeping_Ute.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,46,Ty Segall Band,"""I Bought My Eyes""",[In The Red],"Even though you know the punch is coming, you're not quite sure how to brace for it. Ty Segall and Mikal Cronin spend the first 40 seconds of ""I Bought My Eyes"" harmonizing ethereally, singing what sounds like a traditional folk song over guitar tones that seem ready to give out any second. Then, Emily Rose Epstein's drums strike and never stop pummelling as the verses slowly disintegrate into a punishing run-through of the coda riff with brief intermissions for Segall to mangle his strings. As the coda returns and cycles back around repeatedly, along with a squealing, sidewinding, anti-solo, the power gains fury with each passing run. ""I Bought My Eyes"" represents a heavier, more visceral side of Segall, and it's solid evidence that he's beginning to set his sights on unlimited musical destinations. --Martin Douglas",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60620c2bba1b7de04f06/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Ty_Segall_Band-I_Bought_My_Eyes.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,45,Spiritualized,"""Hey Jane""",[Double Six / Fat Possum],"Leave it to Jason Pierce to release a nine-minute single filled with character-study lyrics, choir-like backing vocals, and an extended epilogue, and still make it feel more like two-chord garage rock than ""Layla""-style bombast. ""Hey Jane"" could rightfully be called epic, but it's as grounded as it is soaring, with its repetitive chords and driving bass closer to kraut groove than symphonic rock. The first half is gritty and basic, with Pierce doling out lyrics about a ""troubled soul"" who ""hit the fast lane"" and would ""run so fast you get no place."" But he reinvents these tropes through his aching, world-weary delivery, which can make even the hoariest sentiments sound worthy of re-examination. Then everything collapses into silence, and the song comes back even simpler and stronger, chugging toward the heavens like Jane inevitably will (""Hey Jane when you gonna die?/ Live life like a butterfly""). But between gloomy predictions and self-conscious references, the rest is all about repetition. At the end, Pierce and his choir's chants of ""sweet heart, sweet light"" disintegrate triumphantly, like the embers of fireworks falling to the ground. --Marc Masters",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/spiritualized/hey-jane-eq-15feb-1?secret_token=s-7F2kB,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6063d7a71d1ea569c8d6/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Spiritualized-Hey_Jane.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,44,AlunaGeorge,"""You Know You Like It""",[Tri Angle],"In the great tradition of 1980s UK electro pop duos, from Yazoo to Eurythmics, AlunaGeorge unite a strikingly voiced female singer/songwriter with an era-embracing male producer. While on paper they scream focus-group wet dream, there's more at work in their breakthrough single than cultural trainspotting. A passing listen might mistake Aluna Francis' tone as saccharine-sweet, even childlike, but a lean-in reveals a curl of her lip. ""If you want to train me like an animal/ Better keep your eye on my every move,"" she warns, eyebrow arched. With a hook so pop it hurts, George Reid could've easily delivered up a wrinkle-free backdrop but he instead presents a gently warping collage of post-dubstep wobble and R&B trills and chimes. They're tempering the obvious, proudly of-the-times while nudging things forward. --Ruth Saxelby",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60630c2bba1b7de04f08/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/AlunaGeorge-You_Know_You_Like_It.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,43,Dum Dum Girls,"""Lord Knows""",[Sub Pop],"""The bliss I found in ignorance/ A slow burning of Icarus,"" was one of the most evocative couplets to grace a troubled love song this year, but it's a small measure of just how much this band has grown since early singles ""Jail La La"" and ""Bhang Bhang I'm a Burnout"". The old energy of those songs is still very much present, but it's now tempered with crimson and clover. ""Lord Knows"" fairly towers above those old fuzzy rockers and dream pop studies, and the windswept apology of its chorus rings with conviction as it rises. Dum Dum Girls make very fine albums, but End of Daze is the second suggestion that they may just be masters of the EP format; here, they've struck a near-perfect balance of fast and slow, hard and soft, light and shadow, filling 18 minutes with as much drama and complex emotion as possible. ""Lord Knows"" is the way in-- a song about being afraid to fall in love and realizing, too late, that the self-defeating fear is hurting someone else most. --Joe Tangari",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6064eb335119a49f1496/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Dum_Dum_Girls-Lord_Knows.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,42,Gunplay,"""Jump Out""",[Maybach],"Imagine someone older who grew up thinking that the purpose of music was to offer relaxation and illuminate beauty. Imagine this person is maybe a little narrow minded, a little conservative, a little worried that younger people are dragging the world into gutter. Imagine that this person has had very little contact with rap music but assumed before they'd even heard any that they would hate it, that it was all about guns and violence and drugs and terrible language and general contempt for humanity. When our hypothetical person pictures the worst of what rap music has to offer, they're picturing something that sounds pretty much exactly like Gunplay's ""Jump Out"". The towering highlight from his Bogota Rich: The Prequel mixtape is an amoral ode to fucking up everything in sight. The production is an experiment to see how many instruments can be replaced by gunfire. Recurring vocal hooks come from terrorized women shrieking bloody murder. Synthetic string plucks that would normally add tension instead lend an air of grim inevitability. On top of it all is the rapper himself, who seems to be having a very good time inside the mayhem, running down threats and keeping a running log of laws broken, all with boundless energy and professional skill. It's exhilarating to move rapidly back and forth between identifying with Gunplay's character and feeling inside of this hyper-violent and visceral world and pulling back to feel something that approaches shock. --Mark Richardson",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/gunplay_-_jumpout.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c606413d197565213f8f5/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Gunplay-Jump_Out.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,41,El-P,"""The Full Retard""",[Fat Possum],"Going ""full retard,"" as Robert Downey Jr. warns in Tropic Thunder, is something you should never do. The idea is to give a vulnerable performance that promises the possibility of redemption. But El-P isn't concerned with redemption here. His frantic mind is too filled with images of social and political collapse to hope for deliverance: churches of murder, polluted house speakers, and microchips implanted in skin rage through the rapper's rattled consciousness. ""The Full Retard"" is full-on apocalypse rap, a hurried dispatch from an underground bunker recorded moments before government agents and zombie armies storm the gates. Part alarm call, part last-will-and-testament, the song is dedicated to those in ""the bread line, the prison... your floating whip system."" El-P delivers this sermon with a mix of impotent rage and unsettled acceptance, over skittering synths and a percolating beat that counts down with the relentlessness of a terrified heart tapping its final rhythms. --Steven Hyden",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/El-P_-_The_Full_Retard.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60650c2bba1b7de04f0a/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/El-P-The_Full_Retard.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,40,The Men,"""Open Your Heart""",[Sacred Bones],"""Do what you want / Be who you want to be,"" Nick Chiericozzi begs of a reluctant muse on the title track of the latest Men record. And in urging his crush to shed her hang-ups, he also neatly summarizes his band's recent aesthetic trajectory: Open Your Heart left behind its predecessor's blown-out sound to make room for everything from strummy roots-pop to long, shimmering jams. The song itself isn't the same kind of stylistic curveball but it feels just as radical. The template remains wiry and wired as ever, but the message, conveyed in crisp chord changes and a sing-songy hook, is an undisguised plea for connection. --Hank Shteamer",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6065c0084474cd0c70b4/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Men-Open_Your_Heart.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,39,Schoolboy Q,"""Hands On The Wheel"" [ft. A$AP Rocky]",[Top Dawg],"""Hands on the Wheel"" is a nonstop succession of bad ideas. It celebrates drunk driving, being too high to feel your own face, mixing uppers with downers, and not giving a fuck. It's also delivered by two of this year's most compelling rap figures and comes wrapped in an insanely catchy chorus that samples Midwest folk-rocker Lissie covering a Kid Cudi song that was produced by Ratatat and featured guest vocals from MGMT. You'd think this would add up to a complete disaster but that hook is golden, and Schoolboy Q, with his breathlessly blunted growl, still sounds rapt by the subject matter, despite his obvious familiarity with it all. --Sam Hockley-Smith",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60660c2bba1b7de04f0c/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Schoolboy_Q-Hands_On_The_Wheel_ft_AAP_Rocky.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,38,Hot Chip,"""Flutes""",[Domino],"Hot Chip excel at juxtaposing drippy sentiment and dancefloor nonsense, to the point that any perceived negative aspect of these qualities becomes an immediate positive. So it's only natural that one of their best singles to date features an extra drippy sentiment (""One day you might realize/ That you might have to/ Open your eyes"") juxtaposed with dancefloor woodwork (""Work/ That/ In/ Side/ Out/ Side/ Work that more/ Work/ That/ Right/ Side/ Left/ Side"") that is aggressively nonsensical. ""Flutes"" is beautiful, underscoring the versatility of Alexis Taylor's freaks-and-squeaks croon. It also flips the script on Hot Chip's traditional pop-song-dressed-as-dance-song technique: it's a long, arcing dancefloor track, reliant on an insistent kick and cavernous bass, dressed up as pop. That the band drives the action by playing Tetris with Taylor's gibberish makes it all the more theirs. --Andrew Gaerig",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/dominorecordco/hot-chip-flutes,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c606613d197565213f8f9/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Hot_Chip-Flutes.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,37,Killer Mike,"""Reagan""",[Williams Street],"Just in case you missed it, 2012 was an election year, and a weird one at that: Super PACs bulked up, liberals wrung their hands, conservatives ignored the numbers. It wasn't pretty. And putting it all in chilling context was Killer Mike's ""Reagan"", pundit-rap at its finest. Sounding like he's just watched all five seasons of ""The Wire"" in one marathon sitting, Mike's connection of political dots is equal parts scary and satisfying. In just over four minutes, atop a raging El-P beat, he maps out a persuasive juxtaposition of foreign and domestic policy as they relate to arms-for-hostages, the drug war, racial profiling, the U.S. prison industry, and rap culture's enduring self-destructive streak. It could have easily come across as cynical sermonizing or a whacko's paranoid conspiracy theory, but his heartfelt conviction that providing information to his listeners is a means of fighting back serves as the track's exclamation point. Knowledge is power. --Stephen Deusner",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/wmstrecs/killer-mike-reagan,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60675e6ef95969327495/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Killer_Mike-Reagan.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,36,Todd Terje,"""Inspector Norse""",[Smalltown Supersound / Olsen],"Norwegian space-disco warlock Todd Terje's last fit of brilliance, 2011's ""Snooze 4 Love"", was a slow-building steamroller that unfurled over eight patient minutes. By comparison, ""Inspector Norse"" is staccato burst of energy. It starts with a playful thump and wastes no time getting to the song's melodic core, hitting a peak designed to destroy everything around it before retreating back to a sugary modification of that opening thump. The pleasures derived from the song are basic, elemental, and intangible. The narrator of the song's music video says it best: ""There are certain types of electronic music that gives me the urge to dance, and I feel I have to dance when I hear it."" --Larry Fitzmaurice",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/toddterje/todd-terje-inspector-norse,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6067d7a71d1ea569c8e3/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Todd_Terje-Inspector_Norse.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,35,Fiona Apple,"""Every Single Night""",[Epic],"When Pitchfork interviewed Fiona Apple earlier this year, she discussed her internet habits, half-bemoaning her desire to find ""all the information about everything."" This shouldn't be surprising. For an artist whose aesthetic and pace of production decidedly predates the internet era, Apple's concerns with consumptive anxieties seem tailor-made for it. The Idler Wheel opener ""Every Single Night"" is the album's sparsest track, backed by little more than producer Charley Drayton's music-box celeste plucks. And yet it details the most monumental battle that a creative person (or internet user) must face-- the one with their own brain. ""I just want to feel everything,"" she repeats in the track's coda, stretching the words ""I"" and ""feel"" and ""everything"" to their extremes and seemingly taking a childlike joy in doing so. It turns out ""Every Single Night"" is more of a ballad than a lament, a love song to consumption and sensation. --Andrew Nosnitsky",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/fionaapple/every-single-night,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c606813d197565213f8fd/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Fiona_Apple-Every_Single_Night.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,34,Cloud Nothings,"""Stay Useless""",[Carpark],"""Life moves pretty fast these days,"" someone once said. ""If you don't stop and look around once in a while, tl;dr."" In 2012, reflection's a luxury; at best, when things happen, you've got as many seconds as it takes to come up with 140 characters. So ""Stay Useless"" finds Cloud Nothings frontman Dylan Baldi kicking around his own head, seeking out the time and space to get his mind right, and offering a running commentary on his own unsettled nature, knowing only one thing: he could use another minute or two. Something's happened to Baldi by the time we arrive at this mid-album Attack on Memory highlight, but what it is isn't exactly clear; he's hardly had the time to process it before sitting down to bash out the song. The searching results in a one-mope-fits-all, power-chord-assisted paean to passivity a la Superchunk's ""Slack Motherfucker"". It's a soundtrack to your next mental health day, and an examination of a peculiarly modern form of anxiety. --Paul Thompson",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/wichita-recordings/cloud-nothings-stay-useless,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6069eb335119a49f149e/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Cloud_Nothings-Stay_Useless.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,33,Danny Brown,"""Grown Up""",[Fool's Gold/SCION A/V],"A savvy manipulator of his own mythology, Danny Brown has realized that the crazier he seems, the more traction he gains, fitting in perfectly with the current spell of molly-popping freakazoid MCs. But the other, more submerged aspects of his persona-- music lover, steadfast Detroit representative, nostalgic thirtysomething-- are all immediately present once you venture past the surface of his catalog. ""Grown Up"" combines all three of these characteristics, evoking the more abstract moods of early 90s hip-hop while recollecting specifics like eating Cap'n Crunch for dinner and skipping out on homework. But the hard times are over now, and Brown's the greatest; shining while his haters are ""looking like a sour patch."" It's the kind of track only a rapper versed in the schizophrenic history of his genre could execute so well. --Jonah Bromwich",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6069eb335119a49f14a0/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Danny_Brown-Grown_Up.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,32,Sky Ferreira,"""Everything Is Embarrassing""",[EMI],"Languishing in artist-development purgatory since the age of 14, the now-20-year-old Sky Ferreira's career has been littered with frustrations and false starts. But ""Everything Is Embarrassing"", the excellent standout from her Ghost EP, possesses the commanding presence of a born-again debut. The song's whirling, roller-rink ambiance, courtesy of producers du jour Dev Hynes and Ariel Rechtshaid, places just the right emphasis on cavernous percussion, kaleidoscopic textures, and the sort of melodramatic lyrics you can imagine shouted during a particularly operatic couples skate (""Hurts so bad, I don't know what you want from me,"" Ferreira pleads, ""You know I'm trying."") Ferreira sounds perfectly at home in the song's gloomy depths. More than anything else she's recorded to date, ""Everything Is Embarrassing"" holds the promise of a career she can steer on her own terms. It's one of those atmospheric pop bangers that transforms a room and perfumes the air. --Lindsay Zoladz",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Sky_Ferreira_-_Everything_Is_Embarrassing.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c606a5e6ef9596932749b/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Sky_Ferreira-Everything_Is_Embarrassing.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,31,Frank Ocean,"""Bad Religion""",[Def Jam],"About a week before Frank Ocean appeared on ""Late Night With Jimmy Fallon"" to perform this song, he published a now-famous note in which he touchingly professed his love for another man. ""Bad Religion"" was the most direct expression of his newfound freedom on the world-beating full-length Channel Orange, and the gut-wrenching lyric, ""I can never make him love me,"" is packed right into the already-potent hook. With that, a stunning performance became a transcendent one, and a sublime ballad was gilded with fresh significance. Frank sang steeply and beautifully, strings rushing in as he ascended through the phrase, ""If it brings me to my kneeees,"" the most acute moment of ache in a song pregnant with it. It was among the year's strongest performances and proudest arrivals: pure and heart-wrenching amid a hurricane of commotion and indecipherable chatter. --Corban Goble",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c606a0c2bba1b7de04f14/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Frank_Ocean-Bad_Religion.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,30,Kanye West,"""Mercy"" [ft. Big Sean, Pusha T and 2 Chainz]",[Def Jam/GOOD],"Some of the year's most ubiquitous words were also among its eeriest and the most difficult to decipher. The stuttered backdrop sample on G.O.O.D. Music's chilling rallying cry goes: ""It is a weeping/ And a moaning/ And a gnashing of teeth."" Those words, originally recorded by late dancehall artist Fuzzy Jones, have rattled ominously out of car speakers across every city in America for months with such beguiling ferocity that they've become a mysterious cultural force unto themselves. Jones' deeply pained, tongue-twisted patois has helped cultivate a vision of Kanye West's crew as prophetic, leather-clad bandits coming for blood, as opposed to say, the type of guys who rap irredeemable lines like, ""Built a house upon that ass-- that's an ass-state."" The refrain is salvation in the form of pure terror. --Carrie Battan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c606b13d197565213f905/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Kanye_West-Mercy_ft_Big_Sean_Pusha_T_and_2_Chainz.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,29,Carly Rae Jepsen,"""Call Me Maybe""",[Boy/Interscope],"Just when we thought the internet had finally shattered the idea of the all-consuming Song of the Summer into a million little niches, along comes this: A perky 26-year-old ""Canadian Idol"" cast-off masquerading as a moon-eyed teenager managed to get everybody from the U.S. Olympic Swim Team to Colin Powell to Cookie Monster singing along to her mating call. ""Call Me Maybe"" is weirdly old-fashioned; for one thing, she's asking the guy to actually pick up his phone and call her. (Then again, ""Text Me Maybe"" doesn't have quite the same ring...) And in the context of the monolithic Euroclub stomp of so many other 2012 mega hits, this song's zinging strings, dinky disco beats, and honest-to-goodness bridge sound almost quaint. It's enough to remind you of a time long ago, when everyone wasn't famous for 15,000 views. --Amy Phillips",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/igamusic/carly-rae-jepsen-call-me-maybe,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c606b5e6ef9596932749d/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Carly_Rae_Jepsen-Call_Me_Maybe.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,28,Cat Power,"""Nothin But Time""",[Matador],"The first 30-something seconds of ""Nothin But Time"" feel like walking in on a song already well underway, as if there's some encrypted numbers station on which it has always been playing. There's something desperate about it: Who can hear Marshall drawl ""I see you, kid, alone in your room,"" and not imagine her and wizened collaborator Iggy Pop singing to their younger selves? So I think about this manic mantra with its giddy Bowie appropriation and hypnotic empathy and howls of ""you wanna live?"" and then I think about Moon Pix's pensive ""Colors and the Kids"", my go-to binge-listen from ages 15 through 17 (""Must be the colors and the kids that keep me alive/ 'Cause the music is boring me to death""), and I am profoundly jealous of my current self. --Rachael Maddux",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c606c13d197565213f908/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Cat_Power-Nothin_But_Time.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,27,Grizzly Bear,"""Yet Again""",[Warp],"People talk a lot about craft when they talk about Grizzly Bear, as though the band is building furniture instead of making music. But the angle works: their songs are not unlike gorgeous buildings, rich with ornamental detail and constructed so that each room leads into another, with new décor and a unique function. ""Yet Again"" is a marble mansion of a song-- reverberant, beautiful, and slightly chilly. Ed Droste wanders these meticulously kept rooms uneasily, though he's not one to be too specific about the source of his anxiety. Here, he and his partner hide romantic discord from the world and their thoughts from each other, steering around confrontation. Daniel Rossen's guitar plays with the space between them, his big, sharply strummed chords breezing through while drums rumble and electronics nibble at the edges before consuming the noisy coda. Craft is what keeps all those elements so expertly balanced, but it's feeling that make them compelling and lets us feel the ill wind blowing through. --Joe Tangari",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c606c0c2bba1b7de04f18/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Grizzly_Bear-Yet_Again.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,26,TNGHT,"""Higher Ground""",[Warp/Luckyme],"The surprise partnership between powerhouse producers Lunice and Hudson Mohawke pulled a door-smashing ambush this year on an unsuspecting bass music scene still wrapping its head around trap. It bum-rushed the summer so authoritatively that Flying Lotus made it the secret weapon of his Pitchfork Festival set; by fall, BBC 6Music's Gilles Peterson got Kendrick Lamar to freestyle over it, and the damn thing nearly knocked the surefooted rapper off his axis. (""That's a monster,"" he enthused.) The ingredients are deceptively simple: some forceful claps-and-snares interplay; a frantic chop of garage house diva Julie McKnight; fired-up turbine whirs; a fist-pump-provoking tuba riff that stomps like a sumo Godzilla. It captured that same essence that makes people go nuts over Brick Squad atmospherics and translated it into a space-expanding sound that's well on its way to a point beyond the next big thing. --Nate Patrin",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c606d13d197565213f90a/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/TNGHT-Higher_Ground.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,25,Grimes,"""Genesis""",[4AD / Arbutus],"This song lapped at my brain for months before I realized I didn't have a clue what words Claire Boucher was singing. In flashes, I'd catch what I thought were bits about ""black dogs"" or ""bags of hearts."" Lyric site guesses range from ""playing the deck above"" to ""I am a vegabond"" (sic). Like the more lyrically direct ""Oblivion"", ""Genesis"" may be best considered in the context of its video, where Boucher and apparent finalists from ""America's Next Top Model: Beyond Thunderdome"" cavort through some desiccated landscape, subverting feminine stereotypes like there's no tomorrow (and, by the looks of it, there's not). Here is Boucher, dressed as a schoolgirl and wrapped in a python; there she's standing in six-inch platform wedges, holding aloft a flaming katana-- these festering notions of girlhood and fragility splayed out alongside the trappings of sex and power-- and all I can make out is one word, over and over: ""Everything, everything, everything."" --Rachael Maddux",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c606d13d197565213f90c/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Grimes-Genesis.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,24,Chief Keef,"""I Don't Like"" [ft. Lil Reese]",[Interscope],"The old cliche about how rap music is the black CNN was never exactly accurate. Rappers, and street rappers in particular, aren't so much concerned with reporting as they are with just publishing. It's more of an Instagram feed than a news feed-- a series of disconnected images without annotation from a demographic that would otherwise go unrepresented in the media. And this is why Chicago teen Chief Keef's rise to become the preeminent gangsta rapper in a city where the murder rate is spiking has been fitting. He does glorify the violence that plagues his community, to be certain, but at the same time he serves as an indictment of the broken system that created it. Like ""The Message"" before it, ""I Don't Like"" is a unrelenting portrait of the young black man pushed to his edge by poverty. But where Melle Mel remained optimistic-- or at least self-aware-- about the world crumbling around him, Keef speaks for a generation that's become completely numb to the decay. There's no explicit commentary in ""I Don't Like"", no build or release of pain or aggression, just dead-eyed threats and an endless haunting flatness. Producer Young Chop's beat is little more than a two bar melody looped ad infinitum as Keef and rhyme partner Lil Reese rarely break their scowls or their stunted ten-syllable cadence. They don't even muster up enough emotion to hate. They simply don't like. And frankly, that's a lot more frightening. --Andrew Nosnitsky",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/chiefkeefsosa/chief-keef-i-dont-like-feat-1,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c606eeb335119a49f14a7/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Chief_Keef-I_Dont_Like_ft_Lil_Reese.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,23,Dirty Projectors,"""Dance For You""",[Domino],"The simplest song on Dirty Projectors' most straightforward album; Dave Longstreth, for all his furious theoretical machinations, might sigh impatiently at the suggestion that this represents his greatest and most resonant work ever. The melody is so pure and transcendent that if you strip away its signifiers, Bob Marley could have sung it. It is almost certainly the campus-green acoustic-guitar Dirty Projectors song of choice. But ""Dance For You"" is a simple song only in the sense that it is uncluttered. It's about surrendering to the mystery of momentary joy: ""I wanna feel the breath of a force I cannot explain,"" Longstreth sings, allowing the iron will and overactive imagination that has guided his brilliant band to fall silent for a charmed moment. --Jayson Greene",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c606ec0084474cd0c70c6/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Dirty_Projectors-Dance_For_You.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,22,Death Grips,"""I've Seen Footage""",[Epic],"""What's that? Can't tell,"" MC Ride barks at the top of the first verse of ""I've Seen Footage"", an aerobic, acerbic highlight from the first of two records Death Grips released in the past eight months. It's actually a valuable question when applied to the band itself, considering the year that the rapper and his drummer/producer partner Zach Hill have had. Labeled as shock-mongers, hucksters, and phonies while at the same time being heralded as the only punk band that matters right now, their mutant-strong brand of noise rap felt defiantly vital in either context. And it was going to take more than some leaked emails and a few other pieces of low-hanging fruit to distract from something as funk-demented as ""I've Seen Footage"", anyway. Sounding weirdly like Salt-n-Pepa's ""Push It"" if it had been performed by boy soldiers, this is not only the most accessible thing on The Money Store, but a token of the band's innate ability to repulse and attract at exactly the same time. Cancerous guitar noises moan like a melted Furby over a panting beat, as Ride freaks out like a kid watching a bootlegged Faces of Death video for the first time. What's actually on the tape? Can't tell, but to resist a peek would be as perverse and difficult as it would be to just give in and stare. --Zach Kelly",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c606fc0084474cd0c70c8/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Death_Grips-Ive_Seen_Footage.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,21,Jessie Ware,"""Wildest Moments""",[PMR],"In different hands, this is an easy love song, a gift-wrapped ode to summer romance or a sweaty fling. The genius of the track, though, is how Ware flips the arrangement to create something much darker and more complex. Sure, there's love here, but it's the thorny kind-- the type of relationship that isn't working and both parties know it. ""From the outside, everyone must be wondering why we try,"" Ware sings. They stick it out against their better judgment for the dream of something greater. With warmth and force, Ware vocally commands this tightrope act, expressing a whole range of emotions-- doubt, regret, tenderness, but ultimately, hope-- sometimes all at once. Love songs and sad songs are a dime a dozen, and here Ware raises goosebumps with something so messily in the middle. --Joe Colly",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c606feb335119a49f14aa/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Jessie_Ware-Wildest_Moments.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,20,Kendrick Lamar,Swimming Pools (Drank),Interscope / Top Dawg,"Everybody who's ever picked up a bottle has had to look on down that line-- the one that you step over to go from being someone who drinks to a drinker, from getting buzzed to blacking out, from good times to a blurry, precariously maintained stasis. On an already-conflicted album filled with soul-searching ambivalence, ""Swimming Pools (Drank)"" comes off like Kendrick Lamar's brightest moment of clarity, a flash of insight where everything that drives people both towards and away from self-destructive habits merges into one bleary-eyed overview of celebratory oblivion. Kendrick's slippery voice on the verses is enough to pull you away from the message, but when those verses rise out of and then collapse back into the numb, robotic cadence of ""pour up, drank/ head shot, drank/ sit down, drank/ stand up, drank/ pass out, drank/ wake up, drank"" it draws out sensations of wobbly-footed head swimming and the next day's hangover at the same time. But things really open up once Kendrick gets at why they call it liquid courage. When the peer-pressure hook pushes him over the brink, there's a familiar pathos in the ensuing struggle between his abuse-wary conscience and his urge to ride that tore-up vibe to some level of emotional freedom he might not reach otherwise. But that freedom, it turns out, doubles as a straitjacket. The key goes minor, the beats turn brittle, and the consequences dawn on him: ""All I have in life is my new appetite for failure/ And I got hunger pain that grow insane/ Tell me, do that sound familiar?"" Maybe, but rarely in a context this deep. --Nate Patrin",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/topdawgent/kendrick-lamar-swimming-pools#zoomed-artwork,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6070eb335119a49f14ac/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Kendrick_Lamar-Swimming_Pools_Drank.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,19,Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti , Only In My Dreams ,4AD,"There was a two-week stretch this summer where I listened to nothing but ""Only in My Dreams"". The infatuation got so heavy that I started singing it in public without the slightest provocation. It became cripplingly annoying to everyone around me, but I had no shame. The lovelorn beach blanket single from Ariel Pink's Mature Themes is an instant bizarro karaoke classic-- try it sometime, preferably accompanied by tenor and falsetto backing vocals to handle the hook and the bridge. Or do it solo and perfect your best soft British lilt, romantic-cowboy bellow, and tenderhearted slacker. Don't forget to air-strum the 12-string Rickenbacker. The line on ""Only in My Dreams"" is that this is Ariel Pink's best blend of the Byrds and Frank Zappa. It aligns him as the unlikely spawn of the Sunset Strip-- the lost tapes from the gifted fuchsia-haired customer at Brian Wilson's Age of Aquarius health food store. But it's more than that. ""Round and Round"" might have proved once and for all that Pink could write a pop song on par with his predecessors, but ""Only in My Dreams"" proved that he could do it largely free of irony. It never feels like a put on; he wants the girl, the beach, the ocean, the sing-a-long. We never had so much fun. --Jeff Weiss",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6071d7a71d1ea569c8f5/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Ariel_Pinks_Haunted_Graffiti_-_Only_In_My_Dreams_.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,18,Nicki Minaj , Beez in the Trap ,ft. 2 Chainz,"""Man,"" she starts. ""Man."" Nicki Minaj doesn't usually give you this moment of repose, this last chance to turn and run before she opens her mouth and shits on your whole life. Not like you could. You know the second she cocks her head to the side and italicizes that second ""man"" that you're done, paralyzed by this laconic charisma that makes you realize what John Wayne and the baddest Barb on the playground have in common. It has been well documented that we are all Minaj's sons, but never before has she done Disappointed Dad as scathingly as she does on ""Beez""-- her lines pointed, authoritative, terse. Even the roll call at the end of the track is somehow withering. Texas? Miami? Delaware? She's not shouting you out; her flow is straight McKayla Maroney. Nicki has been to your city, she has met with your leaders and your most attractive local news personalities, she has sampled your most beloved regional cuisine, and she is not impressed. --Lindsay Zoladz",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6071eb335119a49f14ae/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Nicki_Minaj_-_Beez_in_the_Trap_.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,17,Chairlift ,I Belong In Your Arms,Columbia,"It's probably pure happenstance, but when Chairlift downsized from a trio to a duo, they wrote one of the best songs about blissful monogamy in recent memory. ""I Belong in Your Arms"" stands as the true jewel in the crown that is Caroline Polachek and Patrick Wimberly's sophomore effort Something, a dizzying rush that takes precisely 10 seconds to hit the ground running. It doesn't look back. Like many of the best love songs, everything you need to know about the message of ""I Belong in Your Arms"" is right there in the title: I'm here, for you, and nothing else makes sense right now, so just take me. Lyrically, Polachek runs through a series of love-letter fragments that any 15-year-old would be proud to have scrawled on the back of their spiral notebook: ""Swear to God/ Double-knot/ What would I do you if I stole ya?"" Then, things get a little weird. ""Nothing to say/ Just put my head on your shoulder,"" Polachek sighs, kicking off the second verse before letting loose a string of half-formed non-sequiturs. Banana split? Remote controller? It all barely makes sense, and why should it? Love is an extreme emotion that makes people feel, say, and do insane shit, from faking their own death to staging a police raid--with helicopters!-- in order to propose their affection. ""I Belong in Your Arms"" is that heart-popping irrationality-- distilled, bottled, ready for consumption. --Larry Fitzmaurice",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/chairlift/i-belong-in-your-arms,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6072eb335119a49f14b0/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Chairlift_-I_Belong_In_Your_Arms.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,16,Solange ,Losing You,Terrible,"Upon the release of ""Losing You"", a question emerged: How much of it was Solange and how much was the doing of producer Dev Hynes? Hynes, fresh off critical acclaim from his Blood Orange work and Sky Ferreira's heartbreak freeze-frame ""Everything Is Embarrassing"", lent enough of the same wistful chill to ""Losing You"" that the songs almost sounded like companion pieces. Solange and Hynes go back a ways-- she'd sung with Blood Orange for quite a while-- and ""Losing You"" demonstrates why the pairing's brilliant. The intro's a sparkly party with snappy beats and a vocal sample that squeals to greet you. But then the party recedes soon enough behind Hynes' hazy synth pad, as if Solange has wandered off into another, quieter room, while the excitement still crackles in the background. The effect is striking; each sound unsettles the other. Amid all this, Solange is brooding-- her relationship's basically kaput, and her thoughts wander in circles. From a lesser artist, this might be excruciating, but just when the track seems to have exhausted its one trick, the fog clears so Solange can take to the forefront, her lightweight adlibs and suddenly plaintive delivery coming off as a final plea. It's not closure, exactly, but who'd want it to be? --Katherine St. Asaph",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/terrible-records/solange-losing-you-1,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60730c2bba1b7de04f24/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Solange_-Losing_You.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,15,Andy Stott ,Numb,Modern Love,"The threshold between the academy and the dance floor proved to be especially rich territory this year: Between Holly Herndon's mix of thumping radiance and disorienting experiments and Ital's pop-laced, noise-friendly sprees, the terms producer, composer, and arranger commingled in surprising shapes. That's perhaps most true for Manchester's Andy Stott, whose wonderful whisper of a record, Luxury Problems, surrounds adequately propulsive hooks in unexpected layers and moods-- fireside warmth, soul-singing poignancy, and electroacoustic grace, among them. Stott has often incorporated beautiful voices into his transcendentally mysterious techno, but he one-upped himself for Luxury Problems by using the sound of Alison Skidmore, his childhood piano teacher, as primary source material. Skidmore opens the album's exquisite lead cut ""Numb"" by repeating the word ""touch""; Stott loops her smoky intonation above a web of luminous drone, cutting clips of her voice in and out of the track. He smartly uses a single syllable to create the song's first miniscule rhythm, her iterative linguistic click suggesting the sound of a faucet dripping into a basin of water. A proper beat eventually arrives, but even this throb tucks itself beneath her sampled one-woman choir-- not subservient to Skidmore's beautifully intersecting lines so much as supportive of them, helping push them to several tiny climaxes. Within their collaboration, Stott and Skidmore deflect several binaries-- pop or techno, soul or electronica, composer or performer, producer or arranger, and, more important, to dance or to dream. --Grayson Currin",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6073eb335119a49f14b2/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Andy_Stott_-Numb.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,14,M.I.A. ,Bad Girls,self-released,"First issued in abbreviated form on M.I.A.'s Vicki Leekx mixtape just a few months after her divisive 2010 album *///\Y/*, ""Bad Girls"" dispensed with that album's hypermediated screencap insurrectionism in lieu of a straight pop-rap banger, her most instantly ingratiating single since ""Paper Planes"". Then, at the top of this year, the track was rightly fleshed out to single length, with producer Danja's beat proudly wearing his mentor Timbaland's influence and blending dancehall stutter-step with touches of Arabic and Indian pop. The video made a splash of its own. Shot on location by Romain Gavras (of the ginger-assassinating clip for ""Born Free"") in Ouarzazate, Morocco, the clip features men and women in traditional Arabic garb stunting with souped-up cars on some ""Otis"" shit. There were political underpinnings, too: in many Arabic societies, a female taking the wheel is a politicized act of civil disobedience. Regardless, Maya's hard as fuck in the video, leading burqa-clad backup dancers and filing her nails while sitting high on the passenger door of a BMW driving on two wheels. Another car-culture anthem from the woman who sampled ""Roadrunner"" and threateningly thumped on Hummer doors. --Eric Harvey",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/igamusic/m-i-a-bad-girls?secret_token=s-mZUV5,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60745e6ef959693274ad/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/MIA_-Bad_Girls.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,13,Chromatics ,Kill For Love,Italians Do It Better,"Chromatics mastermind Johnny Jewel favors the noirishly cinematic, 80s-redolent style known as Italo disco. Kill for Love applies Italo's propulsive rhythms and the rich analog synth tones of minimal 80s film scores to a songwriting framework borrowed from classic rock. It's a successful combination, and a sneaky one-- all of the synthesizers and modulated organic sounds make the record read as purely electronic, which allows Jewel to make use of well-worn rock melodic and dynamic blueprints without them coming off as cliche. ""Kill for Love"" uses the same pattern of build and release that's underpinned an untold number of rock songs, beginning with just a few burbles before dialing up the tension and finally letting it explode in a transcendentally beautiful chorus. It's a deceptively simple and quiet song, with an arrangement that allows it plenty of room to breathe, but it still feels monumental. --Miles Raymer",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/johnnyjewel/chromatics-kill-for-love-single,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6075d7a71d1ea569c8fb/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Chromatics_-Kill_For_Love.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,12,Miguel ,Adorn,RCA,"The beat for Miguel's ""Adorn"" is glittering perfection, a purring retooling of Marvin Gaye's ""Sexual Healing"" so frictionless that the singer just seems to be exulting in having discovered it, or perhaps simply excited to be alone with it for a few minutes. He enters the song with a series of infectious glottal pops and vocal hiccups, like a teenager circling a new car and running his disbelieving hand over the hood. When his voice emerges from behind the wheel, it beams with puppyish joy: Miguel's doing a loverman routine, but he's not pleading. He's just excited for you to find out how good his love will look on you. ""These lips can't wait to taste your skin/ And these eyes can't wait to see your grin,"" are his opening lines, and Miguel lets the anticipation of the song flutter up into his ecstatic, astonishing vocal take, a four-minute mini-aria of giddy butterflies that hovers at the break between his head and chest voice like the surface of a champagne glass. The song's gelatinous thumping bass line is the song's cartoon heartbeat, each pulse sending his voice a little higher into the ether. --Jayson Greene",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/miguelofficial/adorn,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60750c2bba1b7de04f28/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Miguel_-Adorn.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,11,Frank Ocean ,Thinkin Bout You,Def Jam,"""Thinkin Bout You"" traveled a long road before sitting atop one of the biggest breakout albums in recent memory. It first appeared last summer as a bewitching demo that displayed the then-nascent Ocean pushing himself towards the radio with a slinky beat and a creaking falsetto. Then it popped up as ""Thinking About Forever"", the supposed debut single from Jay-Z protege Bridget Kelly-- a nice gift from Ocean, no doubt, but one that never came close to sticking. It finally appeared anew in March, polished and accented with radiant strings courtesy of Beyonce collaborator Shea Taylor, and took its earned place as one of Ocean's most enduring songs. Maybe it wasn't the track that caused a journalist to float questions about his sexuality, but it's hard not to see ""Thinkin' Bout You"" at the forefront of a sea change for music. Quietly slipping into rotation next to artists like Trey Songz and 2 Chainz, it was far from the most boisterous song on the dial, but it was the most powerful. Ocean sung softly, but his words (""My eyes don't shed tears, but boy, they bawl/ When I'm thinkin' bout you"") rang loud. --Jordan Sargent",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/islanddefjam/frank-ocean-thinking-about-you,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6076d7a71d1ea569c8fd/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Frank_Ocean_-Thinkin_Bout_You.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,10,Jai Paul ,Jasmine,XL,"While the rest of the music world seems to run at the speed of light, Jai Paul moves at his own pace. ""Jasmine"" is only his second official single after 2010's ""BTSTU"", which means he knocks out one classic every other year. The paucity of material has created a fervor: There's a 50 page (!) thread over on this Kanye West forum, where users have traded everything from information on where members of Jai's family work, to a community-curated EP of demos. Even with his limited amount of material, Jai has managed to craft his own language: the combination of quick cuts of silence, gurgling synths, and wah-wah guitar doesn't sound like anything else in music at the moment. In the middle is Paul's feather-soft falsetto, sounding distant as ever, yet grounding things in reality. It's impressive just how distinctly Jai Paul this song is, given that we haven't got much to go on so far. His disorientating universe hints at deeper trough of material too; it's difficult to imagine that he's arrived at such a spectral place on a first (or second) attempt. ""Jasmine"" itself suggests something to be discovered, its pleas half-sunk beneath a slowly encroaching funk that finds space between Daft Punk and Dilla. Like ""BTSTU"", the track is custom made for infinite listens-- its undulations lining up with some ineffable sense of human rhythm-- which, considering his careful rate of productivity, is not only good but necessary. --Hari Ashurst",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/jaipaul/jai-paul-jasmine,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60775e6ef959693274b1/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Jai_Paul_-Jasmine.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,9,Fiona Apple ,Werewolf,Epic,"Fiona Apple's words possess a quality that feels broad and universal while being specific and personal enough that you'd swear she has clairvoyant insight into your failed relationship, your anxious morning, your latest convoluted epiphany. The Idler Wheel's soaring piano ballad ""Werewolf"" takes the Fiona experience beyond brooding self-pity and moves gently toward self-improvement. ""I could liken you to a werewolf, the way you left me for dead/ But I admit that I provided a full moon,"" she sings, shifting some of the burden to her own shoulders-- and to ours. ""I could liken you to a lot of things/ But I always come around/ Because in the end I'm a sensible girl/ I know the fiction of the fix."" It's a cathartic lyrical heave that prods your demons and demands you confront them. But as exacting as those lines can be, ""Werewolf"" is still about reassurance and understanding that everything will probably be OK, even if you have to rewrite your definition of the word ""OK."" Apple gets this across with an arrangement that complements her lyrical choices: Like a storied relationship, the music blooms and withers, swaying from a tiny tinker out of a wheezing piano to a full-bodied beast swollen with the sounds of screaming children. ""Nothing wrong when a song ends in a minor key,"" she generously explains throughout, and ""Werewolf"" is proof. --Carrie Battan",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/fionaapple/werewolf/s-mqT39,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60775e6ef959693274b3/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Fiona_Apple_-Werewolf.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,8,Beach House ,Myth,Sub Pop,"""Nothing happens to shatter the perfect surface,"" The Guardian said in a review of Beach House's fourth album, Bloom. It wasn't meant as a compliment. But that bright, mirror-like surface is what makes ""Myth"" one of the Baltimore dream-pop band's most powerful songs to date and places it among the purest versions of the enveloping sound they've refined for almost a decade. Of all the qualities you might have guessed this band would develop after hearing only their introverted debut, ""authority"" had to be near the bottom of the list. But for these four minutes and change, Beach House sound genuinely commanding, tapping into something larger and wiser than themselves. ""If you built yourself a myth,"" Victoria Legrand sings evenly, ""you'd know just what to give."" The one she built is stocked with texture-- fleeting bliss, sunlight, and flying ashes-- in an evocative language of unblemished blankness and malleability. This is just as it should be. A myth is polished by time and use; it's supposed to shine. --Brian Howe",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/beachhouse/myth,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60785e6ef959693274b5/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Beach_House_-Myth.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,7,Tame Impala ,Feels Like We Only Go Backwards,Modular,"More than 40 years after the rise and fall of Syd Barrett, there's no shortage of bands making lysergic-laced psych-rock. The bomb could drop tomorrow and within a few months the cockroaches would probably be writing songs influenced by Magical Mystery Tour. And yet the form isn't fully exhausted; in fact, as Tame Impala proved on the fantastic Lonerism's best track, ""Feels Like We Only Go Backwards"", this music can still blow your brain back to its most purely joyous and least cynical recesses. The Australian band's more obvious influences are immediately apparent on first listen: the Lennon-esque whine of Kevin Parker's processed vocal, the ethereal Pink Floyd keyboards, the jazzy Ginger Baker drum fills. But like the rest of Lonerism, ""Backwards"" is more than a collage of record-collector fetishes. Listen closer and you'll hear the piano loop that kicks the song into the stars, and beyond the woozy drums is an exploratory bassline that never abandons its deep, trance-like groove. Tame Impala's music might be informed by the past, but there's a reason why the group is rarely called ""retro"". ""Feels Like We Only Go Backwards"" cherry-picks great sounds and integrates them into a world that only exists in the space of this song; in 2012, few worlds were as inviting. --Steven Hyden",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/tame-impala/feels-like-we-only-go,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60790c2bba1b7de04f2b/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Tame_Impala_-Feels_Like_We_Only_Go_Backwards.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,6,Bat For Lashes ,Laura,Parlophone / EMI,"""Laura"" is an unadorned piano ballad that appears in the middle of Bat for Lashes' The Haunted Man and serves as its raw emotional core. On first approach, the song resembles White Chalk-era PJ Harvey covering John Lennon's ""Working Class Hero"" and, like the Lennon classic, ""Laura"" blurs the line between compassion and contempt for its subject: in this case, a girl who's the life of the party but dead inside, a tragic figure oblivious to her own tragedy. But despite its threadbare production, ""Laura"" is not wanting for added instrumental embellishment. Its air of isolation is crucial to capturing the helplessness and frustration of Khan's narrator, whose pleas are clearly falling on deaf ears. ""Laura"" was co-authored by Khan and Lana Del Rey's ""Video Games"" wing-man Justin Parker. Like the latter song, it subtly transforms languor into splendor, as slowly unfurling verses gradually yield to a spellbinding chorus (""Laura, you're more than a superstar"") that initially scans as motivational-speaker sloganeering. But the tremble in Khan's voice delivers those words with bitter disappointment. She knows that, in a time when YouTube novelties can set new standards for pop-cultural consumption and Grammy nominations can be attained through strategic ""nourishing,"" being a superstar just isn't all that. --Stuart Berman",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/batforlashes/bat-for-lashes-laura,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6079eb335119a49f14bf/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Bat_For_Lashes_-Laura.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,5,Japandroids ,The House That Heaven Built,Polyvinyl,"My favorite live moment of the year involved watching a crowd, not a band. It happened during the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago. I was checking on something behind the stage during Japandroids' set and when I climbed up the stairs at stage right, I found myself staring at thousands of kids in their teens or early 20s who were singing along to this song's words like they were scripture: ""When they love you and they will/ Tell them all they'll love in my shadow/ And if they try to slow you down/ Tell them all to go to hell."" Watching that joyful connection brought to mind my original reaction to ""The House That Heaven Built"". At first, Japandroids reminded me of music and a sensibility from my youthful wanderings: basement shows, photocopied zines, couches you only saw once. But seeing that sing-along made me think about how punk spirit, however you define it, is something that can't be relegated to the past. There will always be rock kids who go to a show wanting to be saved. In 2012, this was their anthem. --Brandon Stosuy",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/polyvinyl-records/7-the-house-that-heaven-built,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c607a0c2bba1b7de04f2d/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Japandroids_-The_House_That_Heaven_Built.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,4,Kendrick Lamar , Bitch Don't Kill My Vibe ,Interscope,"Kendrick Lamar is part anachronism, part alien, a hood mystic trying to find out what currency creativity still carries in our reblogged world. You see this in ""Radio Run"", a short documentary that follows Lamar through a press junket a few months before good kid, m.A.A.d. city dropped. It's a portrait of an artist poised between past and future, underground and mainstream, questions and answers. Naturally, everybody was asking about the names he'd recently become associated with: Dre, J. Cole, Lady Gaga. ""I love it,"" Lamar said, with genuine gratitude, ""People would probably pay millions of dollars to get these people to back them, but they love my music just like that."" When asked who he'd like to collaborate with next, he answered with a sly smile, pointing out the dangers of spreading himself too thin. ""It gets corny after a while."" That's the crux of ""Bitch Don't Kill My Vibe,"" good kid's early centerpiece and Lamar's clearest statement of purpose: He respects the praise, but he's not trying to make it to the top on anyone's name but his own. And it was almost a very different song. Outspoken Kendrick fan Lady Gaga was slated to sing the hook, but her version was scrapped, reportedly due to behind-the-scenes red tape. And that was lucky. A ""featuring Lady Gaga"" might have garnered the track more radio play, but when she leaked the demo last month, it was obvious that her glinting presence would have violated the song's first and most crucial commandment: ""Sometimes I need to be alone."" ""Vibe""'s a quiet menace: its tone is so even and introspective that its insults (""with all disrespect"") almost pass right over you. The track's hazily unfurling structure and spiritual devotion to the power of creativity make it feel like a long-lost Aquemini cut; Lamar is a man unashamed to be caught talking souls and muses in public. And yet, never once does it get-- to use his feared insult-- ""corny."" Lamar's a fearlessly imaginative rapper who can talk about his third eye and mean something more profound than a dick joke. To me, that's amazing. --Lindsay Zoladz",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c607b0c2bba1b7de04f2f/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Kendrick_Lamar_-_Bitch_Dont_Kill_My_Vibe_.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,3,Usher ,Climax,RCA,"In a year where pop icons like Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift married their own musical agendas to the moment's most popular sound-- DUBSTEP-- Usher's gurgling collaboration with Diplo is the master class of this modern arrangement. And unlike most other tracks mining this popular vein, ""Climax"" doesn't rush to the genre-defining-to-the-point-of-parody drop. Instead, Usher and Diplo approach dubstep from another direction, attacking from the subdued James Blake style of sub frequencies. Diplo's chilly, climbing electronic soundscape brings us to the brink without ever fully delivering blind dancefloor revelation, and Usher matches him letdown for letdown, detailing a relationship's crumble with acute poignancy. ""Climax"" is an unconventional single that boasts conventional strengths-- a memorable bridge, themes of lost love-- put together un-fussily, and performed by one of pop's most enduring personalities. --Corban Goble",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/diplo/climax,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c607b0c2bba1b7de04f31/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Usher_-Climax.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,2,Frank Ocean ,Pyramids,Def Jam,"If you'd have told anyone at the beginning of 2012 that one of the year's most exhilarating singles would be a 10-minute-long R&B burner with three movements and a scorching John Mayer guitar solo so arena-courting that you can almost hear the hydraulic lift whirring under his feet, they'd probably be all: ""Oh, nice-- undiscovered Michael Jackson track?"" Listeners got something much better with Channel Orange, a debut of such unusual quality and breadth that it spawned arguments about which of its songs was actually the standout, or which of a handful of soul, funk, and R&B giants was Ocean's truest inspiration. ""Pyramids"" makes the case for Ocean as a proto-Prince, its alternately wet and starry arrangements shifting in and out of focus while Ocean expertly piles on verses that sketch out a story of ""Cleopatra"" through perspectives and eras; first as the revered pharaoh, then as a modern day stripper living under a pimp's watch, then as a lust object, as admired by her powerless boyfriend. That such an ambitious lyric could succinctly nail the master-and-servant dynamic from so many angles proves Ocean's talent as a storyteller; that he could do so while also shading the word ""cheetah"" with three different meanings (animal, West Coast strip club chain, adulterer) proves his wit; that all of this happens in a song that's light, hooky, and epic all at the same time explains why folks are losing their minds for him. --Mark Pytlik",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/frank-ocean/pyramids,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c607ceb335119a49f14c2/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Frank_Ocean_-Pyramids.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2012 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9015-the-top-100-tracks-of-2012/,2012,year,song,1,Grimes ,Oblivion,4AD / Arbutus,"Some songs reveal themselves to you right away; others take time to figure out. When ""Oblivion"" began circulating as an mp3 in October 2011, certain things were immediately apparent. It was clear that Grimes' music was growing and changing rapidly. Its steely, hyper-minimal beat, layered vocals, and hypnotic, circular melody represented a marked progression from where she'd left off earlier that year with the fine* Darkbloom* EP. ""Oblivion"" was an in-between kind of song; it sounded both chilly and machine-like but also radiated human warmth and imperfection. That's how we heard it as 2011 came to a close, and of course, it boded well for her upcoming album, Visions. But as Claire Boucher's star rose in 2012 and Visions racked up plaudits and she found her way into glossy magazines and was seen on late-night TV, ""Oblivion"" developed a life of its own. The song became a major highlight of Boucher's live sets, which grew wilder and tighter as her crowds and venue capacities increased in size. Part of its beauty is that its meaning was never precisely fixed; the lyrics hinted at dark nights, the threat of violence, the difficulty of finding love and companionship when you can't stay still. But the song was beautifully fragmented and open to interpretation. ""Oblivion"" will be remembered in part for its video, which found Boucher cheerfully dancing and singing amid scenes of cartoonish masculinity. ""Art gives me an outlet where I can be aggressive in a world where I usually can't be,"" she told Pitchfork, ""and part of it was asserting this abstract female power in these male-dominated arenas."" Late this year, she told* SPIN* that ""the song's sort of about being-- I was assaulted and I had a really hard time engaging in any types of relationship with men, because I was just so terrified of men for a while."" So now the image of walking alone at night and fearing a broken neck could mean something more, something specific. It was information from the artist about where the song came from, but even this knowledge didn't define the song completely, and that's to its considerable credit. ""Oblivion"" is a shapeshifter, just like its creator, a song with open spaces and hairline cracks in which you can see parts of yourself. And being impossible to pin down kept it sounding fresh and new again and again, each listen feeling a little like the first one. --Mark Richardson Next:> The text of the full list.",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Grimes_-_Oblivion.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c607dc0084474cd0c70d4/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Grimes_-Oblivion.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/,2011,year,album,50,Youth Lagoon,The Year of Hibernation,Fat Possum/Lefse,"At first, you feel kind of embarrassed for Trevor Powers: Sure, he's just a kid from Boise, but doesn't he realize what he's up against in 2011? A record called The Year of Hibernation from an act called Youth Lagoon is the sort of thing cynics will surely bury alive if they don't ignore it first, especially if it's filled with warbling synths, faraway vocals, and cover art that purchased the essence of 1983 from the App Store. But at the risk of praising The Year of Hibernation as a triumph of naivety, Powers' debut LP made a real and lasting connection like few other records in the past 12 months. It's half an hour of nothing but heart: explosive crescendos straining against the limitations of its production budget, melodies and guitar scribbles drawn in permanent ink but smudged by reverb, overwhelming feelings about escape and heartbreak rendered with simplicity and warmth when most of his peers were content to sing about nothing much at all. The lesson here: Never underestimate the power of emo. --Ian Cohen",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/July.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65b8c0084474cd0c77dc/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Youth_Lagoon-The_Year_of_Hibernation.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/,2011,year,album,49,,Wild Flag,Merge,"In the continual 1990s Memory Lane cruise that was 2011, Wild Flag managed to sidestep the pitfalls of nostalgia. It was no small feat for a group that pulls all four of its members from some of that decade's best guitar bands: Carrie Brownstein and Janet Weiss of Sleater-Kinney, Mary Timony of Helium and Autoclave, and Rebecca Cole of the Minders. But rather than looking back, Wild Flag aims for something timeless. It's a record of passion, liberation, and friendship that fuses 70s punk and careful hints of new wave, full of jagged riffs and psychedelic keys, alternating between Brownstein's fiery howls and Timony's cool drawl. Even with saccharine lifer anthems like ""Romance"", the album's brightest moments come when you'd least expect them. Timony's mid-tempo rocker ""Something Came Over Me"" is full of wah-wah riffs and resonant lines (""I feel faint but never weak"") while the Brownstein-led ""Future Crimes"" is urgent and forward-moving, full of repetitive, angular minor chords and ferocious 4/4 beatkeeping that build to a definitive final line: ""If you're gonna give up on the fight, then I'm gonna call you a liar!"" Words to believe in, especially this year. --Jenn Pelly",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65b8eb335119a49f1b75/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/-Wild_Flag.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/,2011,year,album,48,Toro Y Moi,Underneath the Pine,Carpark,"If you're a promising young artist partly responsible for turning a Hipster Runoff punchline into a viable (but still often maligned) subgenre, what do you do in order to stand out? Do you chart a course in a different direction, or hope that the wheat will eventually separate from the chaff? Chaz Bundick escaped the increasingly long shadow of chillwave by getting a synthesizer and an arpeggiator and (temporarily) throwing his computer out of the window. Anchored by live drums and Bundick's knack for rhythm, Underneath the Pine fuses disco and breezy soft rock with springtime warmth and blooming psychedelic flourishes. With its lively performances and arrangements brimming with color, the album shows that Bundick's musical talent is as strong as his ear for production-- a pleasant surprise for whoever thought his style was destined to go the way of electroclash. --Martin Douglas",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65b9c0084474cd0c77de/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Toro_Y_Moi-Underneath_the_Pine.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/,2011,year,album,47,,Sepalcure,Hotflush,"In an interview with The Guardian last month, Hotflush boss Scuba named ""Outside"", the closing song from bass music duo Sepalcure's self-titled debut LP, as the song he would want to open his next DJ set with. It's a strange choice for a set opener-- ""Outside"" is beatless, essentially four minutes of drone and clipped voices-- but then again, not much about Sepalcure makes sense in the constant forward-thinking climate of bass music circa 2011. As an album, it doesn't really do anything new, and a few of the signifiers that Travis Stewart and Praveen Sharma plunder on Sepalcure were, to some, reaching their expiration dates-- specifically, the use of pitched vocals that Stewart liberally splayed on his album this year as Machinedrum, Room(s). Part of what makes Sepalcure such a deeply enjoyable listen is how familiar it all is, pogoing between juke-derived textures, IDM's click-clack machinery, misty pastoral ambience, and house music's 4/4 insistence while weaving a web of shivering romance that still manages to move bodies. Above all else, Sepalcure offers a necessary reminder that, yeah, change is good, but elegant, refined perfection also has its place. --Larry Fitzmaurice",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Sepalcure_-_Im_Alright.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65ba13d1975652140025/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/-Sepalcure.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/,2011,year,album,46,,Cults,In the Name Of/Columbia,"It's not hard to see why detractors might have underestimated Cults. Young bands with a catchy tune or two aren't exactly rare, and it's only natural to assume the appeal of a sugary-sweet pop song won't last longer than your average rush. The presence of sampled audio from actual cult leaders could understandably strike some critics as gimmicky, too. But still! Even on early internet hits ""Go Outside"" and ""Oh My God"", Cults' songs were more multi-faceted than skeptics acknowledged, their hooks barbed with alternate meanings, their core sound enriched by unexpected influences. The self-titled debut from the New York-via-San Diego duo of Madeline Follin and Brian Oblivion confidently underscored their subtle complexity, balancing 1960s girl-group winsomeness with the darker impulses that lay beneath the best songs from that world, fleshed out with elements from shoegaze, post-punk, and contemporary pop. Best of all, each song was a potential sleeper hit in its own right, from kidnapping fable ""Abducted"" to break-up back-and-forth ""Bumper"". A recent remix with Freddie Gibbs even showed all Cults' talk about loving hip-hop was for real, while at the same time reinforcing the album's theme about the inherent danger of escapism-- whether into a cult or into pop music. --Marc Hogan",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Cults%20-%20Go%20Outside.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65ba0c2bba1b7de05607/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/-Cults.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/,2011,year,album,45,Kendrick Lamar,Section.80,Top Dawg,"Whether due to the encroaching influence of indie and punk or the ascendance of Tumblr culture, amateurism in hip-hop was often hailed as a virtue this year. But Kendrick Lamar ran counter to this trend. It isn't just that he's a technically skilled rapper, although he can certainly hold his own in that department; it's that experience and technique allowed his personality to shine through. Much like other artists in his Black Hippy crew, Lamar's skills feel like byproducts of the discovery of his own voice, and they've allowed him to make things work that might have-- and often did-- fall apart in other rapper's hands. From the slowed, space-y Drake-like production of ""A.D.H.D."" to the stoned sing-song of ""Chapter Six"" to ""Rigamortus""'s throwback jazzy horn loop, he had an overarching vision and the deftness of ability to pull it off. --David Drake",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65ba13d1975652140027/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Kendrick_Lamar-Section80.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/,2011,year,album,44,Colin Stetson New History Warfare Vol. 2,Judges,Constellation,"For indie rock fans, it was almost impossible to avoid seeing Colin Stetson wielding his gigantic bass saxophone at some point during 2011. It felt like he was in more than one place at one time, either guesting with LCD Soundsystem, Bon Iver, and Arcade Fire, or heading out on his own to bring the blacked-out beauty of Judges to life. This album felt like a haven for Stetson to retreat into, a place of sanctuary away from the mass audience his sax-for-hire reputation brought him. His ability to be everywhere at once is matched by the alchemical nature of his craft, where it frequently sounds like he's blowing great lumps of iron ore out of his instrument. The desolate nature of the music on Judges makes it feel like he's the loneliest guy in the world, assembling a great wall of machine noise as a buffer from some untold real-life tribulations. Stetson is a runner who finds elation in the pain physical exercise brings, and his music functions in a similar manner-- if you listen up-close to this album you can hear him huffing and puffing away, creating a taxing whirl of intensity that never lets up. --Nick Neyland",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Colin%20Stetson%20-%20Fear%20of%20the%20unknown%20and%20The%20Blazing%20Sun.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65bbd7a71d1ea569d011/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Colin_Stetson_New_History_Warfare_Vol_2-Judges.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/,2011,year,album,43,Lykke Li,Wounded Rhymes,Atlantic/LL,"In the three years since she released her debut-- 2008's searching and peculiar Youth Novels-- Swedish songwriter Lykke Li got tougher, more commanding: Wounded Rhymes is an aggressive, sometimes brutal meditation on sex and love and the complicated ways they intersect. Li traded in any lingering coyness (""I think I'm a little bit in love with you,"" she once chirped) for force: ""Like a shotgun/ Needs an outcome/ I'm your prostitute/ You gon' get some,"" she intones here, her voice unapologetic. Wounded Rhymes is deliberate and rhythmic where Youth Novels was moony-eyed, and Li wears her newfound confidence well, bolstering it with heavy drums and big choruses. Her vocals are deep and grainy, even when she's confessing her devotion. Somehow, Li manages to make lyrical declarations like ""Sadness is my boyfriend"" and ""My love is unrequited"" sound perfectly self-possessed. --Amanda Petrusich Lykke Li: ""I Follow Rivers"":",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65bcc0084474cd0c77e0/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Lykke_Li-Wounded_Rhymes.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/,2011,year,album,42,"Bass music continued to mutate in a million different directions in 2011-- perhaps the surest sign of its unpredictability is the fact that no one has come up with a better term than ""bass music"" to describe the broader spectrum of dubstep and its discontents. No album better captured this world's sense of possibility than the self-titled debut album from SBTRKT, a journeyman producer and remixer who found his voice by combining lithe grooves grounded in dubstep, garage, and UK funky with economical pop melodies.","Just 43 minutes long, it's a modest record. There's no gatefold sprawl, none of the progressive pyrotechnics that often accompany British underground sounds aimed at crossing over. In fact, it's more coherent than it should be, given the number of vocalists it employs: Roses Gabor, Jessie Ware, Sampha, and Yukimi Nagano and her bandmates from Little Dragon. But from Nagano's squeakily sultry soul to Sampha's smoky James Blake-isms, SBTRKT excels at fusing his singers' idiosyncrasies with his own variable sound-world, by turns lush and jagged. There was no shortage of strong singles, either, from ""Wildfire""-- which Drake anointed with his own remix-- to ""Right Thing to Do"", a perfect example of UK garage that went far beyond mere revivalism. --Philip Sherburne","


SBTRKT: Wildfire [ft. Little Dragon]

",,Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/SBTRKT%20-%20Wildfire.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65bc0c2bba1b7de05609/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Bass_music_continued_to_mutate_in_a_million_different_directions_in_2011--_perhaps_the_surest_sign_of_its_unpredictability_is_the_fact_that_no_one_has_come_up_with_a_better_term_than_bass_music_to_describe_the_broader_spectrum_of_dubstep_and_its_discontents_No_album_better_captured_this_worlds_sense_of_possibility_than_the_self-titled_debut_album_from_SBTRKT_a_journeyman_producer_and_remixer_who_found_his_voice_by_combining_lithe_grooves_grounded_in_dubstep_garage_and_UK_funky_with_economical_pop_melodies-Just_43_minutes_long_its_a_modest_record_Theres_no_gatefold_sprawl_none_of_the_progressive_pyrotechnics_that_often_accompany_British_underground_sounds_aimed_at_crossing_over_In_fact_its_more_coherent_than_it_should_be_given_the_number_of_vocalists_it_employs_Roses_Gabor_Jessie_Ware_Sampha_and_Yukimi_Nagano_and_her_bandmates_from_Little_Dragon_But_from_Naganos_squeakily_sultry_soul_to_Samphas_smoky_James_Blake-isms_SBTRKT_excels_at_fusing_his_singers_idiosyncrasies_with_his_own_variable_sound-world_by_turns_lush_and_jagged_There_was_no_shortage_of_strong_singles_either_from_Wildfire--_which_Drake_anointed_with_his_own_remix--_to_Right_Thing_to_Do_a_perfect_example_of_UK_garage_that_went_far_beyond_mere_revivalism--Philip_Sherburne.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/,2011,year,album,41,Liturgy,Aesthethica,Thrill Jockey,"In the last two years, detractors have been all over Liturgy founder and frontman Hunter Hunt-Hendrix. Especially after making Aesthethica, the year's most debated and arguably most redemptive metal album, he's been ridiculed as the epitome of a Brooklyn metal hipster and blasted as a self-aggrandizing loudmouth. Liturgy is indeed comprised of musicians who look like people working at your favorite neighborhood bar. And Hunt-Hendrix published his theories on the advancement of black metal, first presented as a lecture, as a short book subtitled ""A Vision of Apocalyptic Humanism"" earlier this year. But Aesthethica thrives on that kind of conviction. The tidal drum-and-guitar swell at the close of ""Returner"", the automatic rage of ""Generation"", the blissful build of the album's stoner metal aberration, ""Veins of God""-- when they're happening, Liturgy makes these moments feel like the most important things in the world, as if rock'n'roll itself has been waiting since its inception to be played with such belief. Hunt-Hendrix isn't an especially great black metal vocalist. Here, though, he hurls his words with the mania of a revolutionary and the spirit of a rebel. Time will tell if he's either; Aesthethica at least stands any test of now. --Grayson Currin",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Liturgy%20-%20Generation.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65bcd7a71d1ea569d013/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Liturgy-Aesthethica.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/,2011,year,album,40,AraabMuzik,Electronic Dream,Duke,"One of the predominant themes in the electronic music of 2011 was the incorporation of previously unfashionable, even unthinkable elements and styles into existent genres. But no one took a more literal stab at it than Dipset-affiliated producer AraabMuzik and his album Electronic Dream, which throws his memorable MPC antics right on top of entire trance songs. Kaskade, Jam & Spoon, Ian van Dahl: this is the real stuff, not just slyly winking hints. There was a precedent for this, particularly the Dipset Trance Party mixtapes, but Electronic Dream exhibits a new level of directness, calling modern hip-hop's dance-obsessed bluff. The effect of Araab's MPC demolition is more hazy than rousing, the anxious, palpitating heartbeat at the center of it all, manipulating trance's preoccupation with ecstasy and pitching songs down wholesale. Kaskade's ""Streetz Tonight"" is rendered a burnt-out lullaby, and the jittery coke high of ""Lift Off"" is the farthest thing from trance's usual warm and fuzzy embrace. A lot of artists tried to make cotton-candy riffs and fist-pumping melodies acceptable in 2011, and AraabMuzik did it transparently enough to make even the staunchest of snobs reconsider aversions to the big and obvious stuff. --Andrew Ryce AraabMuzik: ""I Remember"":",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65bd0c2bba1b7de0560b/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/AraabMuzik-Electronic_Dream.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/,2011,year,album,39,The War on Drugs,Slave Ambient,Secretly Canadian,"Slave Ambient is both an organic, flowing record born from experimentation and an album where individual tunes can stand alone as anthems. So atmospheric interludes like ""Original Slave"" and ""The Animator"" bump against songs like ""Brothers"" and ""Baby Missiles"", which have more structured melodies and well-defined verses. The result is a big album that's lined with subtle tinges of percussion and noise that give it shape. And then there are the expansive tracks that grow and bleed into each other until they reach moments like the ""Come to the City"" suite, where War on Drugs frontman Adam Granduciel drawls out the album's thesis statement: ""I've been ramblin'."" --Evan Minsker",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/The%20War%20on%20Drugs%20-%20Baby%20Missiles.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65bdc0084474cd0c77e2/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_War_on_Drugs-Slave_Ambient.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/,2011,year,album,38,Sandro Perri,Impossible Spaces,Constellation,"Toronto-based Sandro Perri has been following his whims for a decade now, from the addled drones of Polmo Polpo to the hairy disco of Glissandro 70. He once released an album as a tribute to an Arthur Russell side project (Dinosaur L), while a solo EP, Plays Polmo Polpo, re-imagined his own work. Perri, it seems, is an artist for whom identity is a state of flux, not a resting place. Impossible Spaces teases out the whimsy, contentment, and anxiety of that instability. He prods with buzzing, precise orchestration, and a guitar that sounds cleansed by a Brita filter. Honey-voiced like the Sea and Cake's Sam Prekop, nervously poetic like Russell, Perri is a sober, Sunday crooner. He spends a 10-minute song empathizing with a ""wolfman,"" which is perfect: Perri is constantly on the verge of crisis, an experience he is likely to find pleasantly challenging. Near the end of the ascendant ""How Will I?"" he centers himself: ""Ah, I get closer to the flame/ And panning out in all directions I seem to want to come back to a simple refrain... How will I give?"" The message, from an artist as open and warm as Perri, stings: Plausible spaces can be just as taxing as the impossible ones. --Andrew Gaerig Sandro Perry: ""Changes"":",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65be5e6ef95969327b7a/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Sandro_Perri-Impossible_Spaces.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/,2011,year,album,37,Iceage,New Brigade,What ' s Your Rupture?,"The early buzz around Iceage focused on the age of the band members, the lack of information about the group, and the fact that folks tend to leave their shows with bloody noses. These Danes are teenagers, sure, but anyone who went to high school after the guitar was invented shouldn't be surprised to learn that 18- and 19-year-olds are making dark, nihilistic music. The blood? That's what happens at punk shows. And there was a time, not long ago, when you didn't know everything about a band before they'd even released a 7"". The most important thing to know about Iceage is that they gave us this near-perfect, 12-song, 24-minute debut LP, a collection that nails the blasted, chaotic energy of UK post-punk and the midnight ambiance of 1980s goth and California death rock and adds no-wave wrapped hooks delivered by baby-faced, vacant-eyed frontman Elias Rønnenfelt, a guy who basically wandered out of some early Dennis Cooper novel. Rather than telling us about Iceage, the talk surrounding the band only highlighted what had been missing in underground music as of late, and New Brigade helped fill that void. --Brandon Stosuy",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Iceage%20-%20New%20Brigade.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65bed7a71d1ea569d015/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Iceage-New_Brigade.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/,2011,year,album,36,Kate Bush,50 Words For Snow,Anti-/Fish People,"50 Words for Snow begins with a thirty-five minute triptych of never-quite-resolving piano figures, barely-there percussion, and Kate Bush's warm, generous middle-register vocals disappearing into the landscape that provides this album's thematic and sonic framework. She communes with a snowflake, watches a ghost in Lake Tahoe, and makes love to a snowman, but the oddity of these scenarios recedes before the sensuousness of the performances, less like the falling of snow than the slow undulation of water. Compared to these mysterious pinnacles, Bush seems less comfortable in the once familiar terrain of relationship melodrama or the delight of language. It's as if, having now crossed over into the world of nature that she began to explore on her previous album, Aerial, the human has become a foreign country. But if she never comes back, then this self-loss is our gain: The further Kate Bush drifts into pared-back, elemental simplicity, the clearer it becomes that there is no one else in popular music like her. --Tim Finney",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65bfd7a71d1ea569d017/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Kate_Bush-50_Words_For_Snow.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/,2011,year,album,35,Frank Ocean,"Nostalgia, Ultra.",self-released,"Chris Breaux, who goes by Frank Ocean, is a male R&B singer with male R&B contradictions: As much as he wants to listen to his heart, he can't completely ignore his dick. He covers a Coldplay ballad about childhood with absolute dedication but ends it with the rude sound of an alarm clock: The dream is over. A minute later, he's back in a mutually destructive relationship, and has the guts to remind himself that he got what he wanted. The cover of the album features a striking orange 1980s BMW, but on ""Swim Good"", he's stuck driving a Lincoln Town Car over a cliff. In a skit called ""Bitches Talkin'"", the ladies tell him to cut it out with the damn Radiohead; in ""Songs For Women"", he obliges-- he's an indie kid when it comes to alienation but a pragmatist when it comes to sex. The boy in him wails, the adult wins out. The victory-- if you can call it that-- is bittersweet. --Mike Powell",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Frank%20Ocean%20-%20Songs%20for%20Women.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65bf0c2bba1b7de0560d/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Frank_Ocean-Nostalgia_Ultra.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/,2011,year,album,34,Katy B,On a Mission,Columbia/Rinse,"The club has been the preferred setting of pop for a while now. Not any specific club, you understand: ""the club"" in the abstract-- a virtual territory where almost-real avatars of our stars can pose, brag, flirt, and fuck. So the first reason to love Katy B is that she makes clubbing suddenly real again, writing songs like ""Katy on a Mission"" and ""Lights On"" that are warmly observed miniatures of how wonderful, funny, and occasionally sad going out can be. Their easy candor carries over into her songs about relationships. She is fascinated by liminal moments-- the anticipation at the start of a night; the points where attraction and danger meet-- and has a light, lilting voice far better suited to nuance than grandstanding. And she's a tour guide for London nightlife, from the bubblegum dubstep of ""Perfect Stranger"" to the brisk UK funky of ""Why You Always Here"" and the jazzy soul of closer ""Hard To Get"". Katy B went to the same stage school as Adele, and like her 21, On a Mission mixes the artful and the personal-- but it's as proudly modernist as Adele is soaked in tradition. --Tom Ewing",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65c00c2bba1b7de0560f/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Katy_B-On_a_Mission.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/,2011,year,album,33,Fucked Up,David Comes to Life,Matador,"You can think of Canadian bomb squad Fucked Up as legal masterminds, finding one loophole after another in the draconian protocols of hardcore punk: You never said we couldn't write a metafictional rock opera. You never said we couldn't overdub Rubber Soul*-type twelve-string lead guitar. You never said we couldn*'t use extra voices that sing harmonies instead of screaming. You never said... Or you can just give yourself over to the riffs of this massive project, and the way they send maniacal singer Pink Eyes hurtling toward its involuted plot like a huge, bald Angry Bird. Named after a song that's been in their repertoire for years, David's conceptual hyper-abundance spills over beyond the album itself to the delightful David's Town LP (a compilation of ""early-80s British D.I.Y. bands"" in various modes, all of whom are Fucked Up themselves) and a string of related singles (in the course of which they smash David's fourth wall). And anyway, they seem to like their draconian protocols just fine: Note that every song on David has a three-word title. You never said the old rules had to be the only ones. --Douglas Wolk",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Fucked%20Up%20-%20The%20Other%20Shoe.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65c0eb335119a49f1b77/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Fucked_Up-David_Comes_to_Life.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/,2011,year,album,32,Panda Bear,Tomboy,Paw Tracks,"Hymns are designed to unite a crowd of people in praise, aiming for a communal religious trance through the power of group vocalization. On Tomboy, Noah Lennox tests whether a congregational spirit can still be achieved by a single voice slathered with enough multi-tracked harmonies and reverb, a chorus of one worshipping secular matters. Reviving the compact confessions of Young Prayer and filtering-- and filtering, and filtering-- them through the textures of Person Pitch, Lennox limits his psychedelic excursions to the borders of the home this time around. Overlapping layers of voices and hand-claps try to drown out the dark burbles and rhythmic undercurrents that nibble at each song's foundation. Instead of the pagan freak-out of his other band, Tomboy is a humanist hymnal, full of self-motivating mantras and introspection about growing old and distant from the world. Taking direct instructions for life-- ""you can count on me,"" ""got to do what you've got to do""-- and magnifying them with cathedral acoustics gives them a secular spirituality, finding God in the details of everyday life, leaning on echo to feel less alone. --Rob Mitchum Panda Bear: ""Afterburner"":",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65c0d7a71d1ea569d019/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Panda_Bear-Tomboy.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/,2011,year,album,31,Ty Segall,Goodbye Bread,Drag City,"Volume has long been Ty Segall's thing, but craftsmanship? Eh, not so much. But on his Drag City debut, Goodbye Bread, the San Francisco-based garage rocker dials back his pop-destructive impulses and shows off his softer side. As singer-songwriters go, Segall is closer to Alex Chilton than Bob Dylan. These are lurching and cacophonous tunes that place a premium on psychedelic gristle, but Goodbye Bread's best moments are possessed of an emotional breadth that has, up until now, been lacking in Segall's oeuvre. The falsetto-driven title track drips with the sweetness of a faded T. Rex record, while the record's heavier excursions, like ""The Floor"", could have slipped onto the B-side of Nirvana's Bleach. Goodbye Bread is where we learned that, in addition to being a cathartic rocker, Segall is a skilled purveyor of sludgy grooves and stoner romance. --Aaron Leitko Ty Segall: ""Goodbye Bread"":",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65c10c2bba1b7de05611/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Ty_Segall-Goodbye_Bread.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/,2011,year,album,30,Tim Hecker,"Ravedeath, 1972",Kranky,"Every year, the residents of Baker House, a dormitory near the Charles River on the MIT campus (officially Building W7), push a non-functioning, beyond-repair piano off the roof of the building. It falls six stories and lands near the tennis courts. The first Baker House Piano Drop, done in 1972, is captured in the photo on the cover of Tim Hecker's Ravedeath, 1972. There's actually a unit of volume, the Bruno, named after the racket made by the impact. Hecker chose the image because it reminded him of ""digital garbage,"" and he set out to make an album that decayed right in front of the listener but never disappeared entirely. The basis for the album is a day's worth of organ recordings made in a Reykjavik cathedral; Hecker uses processors, synths, effects, and production techniques to encrust the pure tones of the organ in a prismatic swirl of crackling noise. These pieces have real body and movement, the organ piercing the noise like points of sun through a dense canopy. Hecker never gives us a literal recording of the piano drop, but you get the sense that this is what it would sound like, slowed down and stretched over fifty minutes, each splinter breaking free and wire snapping, leaving behind only the purest echo. --Joe Tangari",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/01%20The%20Piano%20Drop.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65c2d7a71d1ea569d01b/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Tim_Hecker-Ravedeath_1972.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/,2011,year,album,29,DJ Quik,The Book of David,Mad Science,"""I don't give a fuck about you, you, her, him, that bitch, that nigga, y'all them,"" hisses DJ Quik on the very first line of his eighth album. To be fair, not many rappers will cop to ""giving a fuck,"" but Quik is able to stay truer to his word than most. As the lone luminary of classic Compton who isn't off producing TBS sitcoms or spinning Dr. Pepper cans on his finger, Quik has both an audience and total autonomy. That freedom is a rare, valuable commodity these days, and where last year he used it to release an album with fellow MC Kurupt that was as rewarding as it was experimental, in 2011 Quik rediscovered the comfort zone from where he produced a number of classic party albums, and from a listener's perspective that's a very good place for him to be. And though the backbone of The Book of David is those patented funky party records, it's when Quik lashes out at his doubters, his family, and Pharrell (!) on tracks like ""Fire and Brimstone"" and ""Ghetto Rendezvous"" that the album most comes alive. Rap will always be a young man's game, but this year the hardest and most fun rap album of the year came from a guy who is turning 42 in January. --Jordan Sargent",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65c2c0084474cd0c77e4/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/DJ_Quik-The_Book_of_David.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/,2011,year,album,28,Cut Copy,Zonoscope,Modular,"Relative to Cut Copy's In Ghost Colours, the reaction to Zonoscope was muted. As good as the transcendent build-and-release of ""Need You Now"" was, when compared with the former LP's lead singles, it felt like a sidestep instead of a leap forward. But even if it didn't carry the shock of its predecessor, Zonoscope won out on the strength of Cut Copy's craftsmanship, showing just how skilled they are at adapting their influences and making them their own. So we got well-rendered moments: the Tango in the Night-era Fleetwood Mac sheen of ""Take Me Over"" and the sunshine pop harmonies of ""Where I'm Going"" interlaced with songs full of sharp hooks, patient builds, and choruses that grew more ingratiating with every spin. And when Cut Copy experimented with songwriting structure, as on ""Pharaohs & Pyramids"", which mixed Chicago house with the group's new wave feel for melody, they were even better. Above all, Cut Copy showed that they know how to weave new songs from familiar touch-points and that they have the songwriting chops to make the patchwork feel of a piece. --David Drake Cut Copy: ""Need You Now"":",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65c2c0084474cd0c77e6/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Cut_Copy-Zonoscope.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/,2011,year,album,27,Beyoncé,4,Columbia,"If you're one of the most successful and talented people in the world and are married to another one of the most successful and talented people in the world, there's danger in releasing an album about how awesome your relationship is. But 4 works thematically because Beyoncé isn't bragging; she's singing about how she feels happy, at ease, and loved. Since that's all anybody really wants, who could be mad at it? Beyond that, the record is a showcase of what Mrs. Carter-Knowles does so well, which is collecting great beats, singing her lungs out over top of them, and offering something for everybody along the way. You've got the so-thumping-it's-almost-silly club banger (""Countdown""), the even-your-mom-loves-it tearjerker (""1+1""), the empowerment jam (""Best Thing I Never Had""), and a few more heaters. Personal contentment, it seems, has done wonders for her artistic restlessness. --Joe Colly",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65c35e6ef95969327b7c/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Beyonc-4.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/,2011,year,album,26,The Field,Looping State of Mind,Kompakt,"To say the Field has only one trick is to miss the point. Yes, Axel Willner plies a very specific, idiosyncratic sound, spinning discreet micro-samples into fluffy ambient techno clouds. But not only is it an aesthetic worthy of repetition, it's also proven surprisingly pliable and expressive three albums on. Looping State of Mind can't recreate the surprise of From Here We Go Sublime, but it manages the considerable feat of synthesizing that album's cohesion of mood with the more opened-up sound and fleshed-out live instrumentation of Yesterday & Today, from the deep bassline that drops into the mid-tempo drift of ""Is This Power"" to the Matthew Dear-like vocal mumbles of ""Burned Out"". And while much of the album is content with gorgeous reiteration (centerpiece ""Arpeggiated Love"" is like the ur-Field song), it also sees Willner stretching his sound to some new limits: ""Then It's White"", with its patient, melancholy piano line, is possibly the softest thing the Field's ever done, which is saying a lot. Big change-ups are flashy, but in his career as in his tracks, the Field finds great potential in repetition, subtly varied. --Eric Grandy",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/The_Field_-_Then_Its_White.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65c3d7a71d1ea569d01d/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Field-Looping_State_of_Mind.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/,2011,year,album,25,Gang Gang Dance,Eye Contact,4AD,"On 2008's Saint Dymphna, Gang Gang Dance made their most succinct set of statements to date. Their desire to sift a broad range of pan-global signifiers through concise pop frameworks continued on this year's Eye Contact, but it also found them building bridges to their past. The sprawling opener ""Glass Jar"" felt like a half step back to the spliced-up experimentation of 2005's Hillulah, where the rich seam of inspiration they were dipping into needed a greater expanse of time to properly come to fruition. But those echoes didn't prevent this relentlessly forward thinking group from evolving, particularly in the treatment of Lizzi Bougatsos' vocals, which were given more clarity than ever before. On tracks like the infectious ""MindKilla"", that brighter approach opened up the possibility of Gang Gang Dance functioning as an off-kilter pop act, ready to court a wider audience than the one they've patiently built over the past decade. It's something they haven't achieved yet, but judging from the manic joy of their live shows this year, in which Bougatsos fully embraced her frontwoman role, it stands to reason that the next album could push them further in that direction. --Nick Neyland",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Mindkilla.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65c413d1975652140029/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Gang_Gang_Dance-Eye_Contact.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/,2011,year,album,24,Julianna Barwick,The Magic Place,Asthmatic Kitty,"In the last decade, what's long been categorized as indie rock has metastasized toward the mainstream, a process that's been abetted by placement in soundtracks for bands from Bon Iver and Broken Social Scene to Iron & Wine and Imogen Heap. There are a dozen reasons for the incorporation of such artists into major motion pictures, not least of which is their collective feel for texture: As concerned with the song's surroundings as they are with the songs themselves, these bands engender atmosphere. Julianna Barwick's The Magic Place seems like a natural fit for scores and such; the nine largely a cappella and generally wordless tracks of her second LP create five-minute windows into seemingly infinite worlds of sound, where one little melody bobs to strange rhythms. Indeed, music this pretty often runs the risk of being confined to scores, functioning more to affirm an on-screen moment's importance or majesty than to create it. But Barwick's correlated senses of timing, restraint, melody, and momentum shape their own drama. This is rare music for making even pedestrian gestures seem significant, for making the humdrum resonate newly with wonder. --Grayson Currin",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Julianna%20Barwick%20-%20The%20Magic%20Place.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65c45e6ef95969327b7e/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Julianna_Barwick-The_Magic_Place.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/,2011,year,album,23,Bill Callahan,Apocalypse,Drag City,"""I watch 'David Letterman'… in Australia!"" Bill Callahan has often written and sung about the distances between us, people and places and times in our life. He has not done so in a funnier or a truer way than on ""America!"", a song written from the throes of an international tour, where a late-night talk show is the only thing that can make you feel closer to home. But ""America!"" shapeshifts, from a lonely hotel room night cry into a spiraling self-examination of patriotism and military service. Callahan names names: Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, and Mickey Newbury, among others, by their rank and title, before muttering ""I never served my country."" The song, until then a gentle acoustic stroll, spiders out into distorted, unconstructed riffs. It's a damned strange and wonderful song, one that is both searching and goofy, violent and interior, incisive and oblique. So, you know, a Bill Callahan song. After 14 albums, Apocalypse marks a great moment of clarity for Callahan-- he's never sung better or with more strength, his wobbly voice now a tough, controlled baritone. Apocalypse-- a title that seems as much about the incineration of the world around us as it does a cruel joke about overusing that word to describe things that aren't so bad-- has just seven songs. But there is gravitas, a heaviness in each of them, even when things get dependably strange-- flutes! whistling! whimsical punctuation!-- as on the hepcat gambol ""Free's"". That song is followed by the heaviest of all, ""One Fine Morning"", a hall of fame Callahan number (few else could get away with the grandiosity of imagery) that's nearly nine minutes long. It finds him singing, optimistically, ""We're gonna ride out in a country kind of silence."" --Sean Fennessey Bill Callahan: ""Riding For the Feeling"":",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65c513d197565214002b/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Bill_Callahan-Apocalypse.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/,2011,year,album,22,The Caretaker,An Empty Bliss Beyond This World,History Always Favours the Winners,"Can the simple addition of vinyl crackle turn a jaunty tune into a melancholy listen? How long can you repeat a snatch of melody before the happiness drains away and it turns faintly unnerving? Is it possible to create a sense of something's-not-right-here eeriness through the kind of music that once got your great-grandparents slow dancing? Leyland Kirby's Caretaker project sets out to answer these questions. Inspired by both the mental disintegration of Alzheimer's disease and the ballroom sequences in Kubrick's version of The Shining, An Empty Bliss Beyond This World evokes haunted heads more than haunted houses. Kirby uses the simplest materials-- short samples taken from literally warped LPs of romantic standards and static-ridden 78s of 1920s dance band music-- to create music that carries an almost unbearable sense of loss. And the surface fuzz becomes an inadvertent instrument in its own right. Foregrounding it, Kirby adds texture and variety to those brief instrumental phrases, and as with artists like Philip Jeck, he realizes that vinyl noise now carries its own unique emotional charge. Combined with Kirby's evocative song titles, Empty Bliss conjure an elderly listener replaying the same old favorite, over and over, as they struggle to get back to the joy they felt hearing it for the first time. --Jess Harvell",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/TheCaretaker_-TinyGradiationsOfLoss.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65c55e6ef95969327b80/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Caretaker-An_Empty_Bliss_Beyond_This_World.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/,2011,year,album,21,Jay-Z / Kanye West,Watch the Throne,Def Jam/Roc-a-Fella/Roc Nation,"At a time when economic disparity seems to bisect every cultural and political paradigm, the least sensitive thing you could possibly do-- aside from declare pizza a vegetable-- would be to release a record that often reads like a Kardashian sister's letter to Santa tucked into a gold-embossed Riccardo Tisci envelope. But remember, we're dealing with two professionals here, both smart enough to know that rap as reality is as important as rap as escapism. Watch the Throne may have felt wretchedly excessive at times, but as anyone who can attest to getting down to ""Niggas in Paris"" seven or eight or nine (or ten!) times in a row can tell you, it's sure fun to play dress-up to. Maybe there was something in the more relatable elements presented here-- ruminations on the price of fame, fatherhood, and race-- that lead us to take momentary respite from this embarrassment of riches and try to grasp the bigger picture. Maybe not: For these guys, overblown excess is a rewarding means unto itself. --Zach Kelly",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65c6eb335119a49f1b79/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Jay-Z__Kanye_West-Watch_the_Throne.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/,2011,year,album,20,Nicolas Jaar ____,Space Is Only Noise,Circus Company,"Nicolas Jaar borrows his sense of structure from techno-- rhythmic, repetitive, linear-- but Space Is Only Noise isn't dance music. What it is, I'm not sure, but Space's musical amphibiousness-- the exploratory, inconclusive way it straddles so many different sounds-- is also what made me keep revisiting it: While this album is not unfriendly or difficult to listen to, it never really gets up to shake your hand, either. Jaar's source material is either acoustic or has a frizzed, old-shoe texture: movie dialogue, water, Ray Charles, children. The tracks are hitched to melodies and generally last between three and five minutes, but they don't feel like songs. On the few occasions when Jaar opens his mouth, he chants cosmic nonsense in a low, strange voice. In nearly every case, he errs on the side of telling you too little instead of too much. Part of the experience, then, is making constellations out of what's left in the mix. Several minutes into ""Keep Me There"", for example, we hear the sound of a couple giggling quietly, followed by the eruption of horns. Think about it. Get R-rated. There's something alluring-- sexy, even-- about patience. --Mike Powell",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65c75e6ef95969327b82/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Nicolas_Jaar_____-Space_Is_Only_Noise.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/,2011,year,album,19,Danny Brown ____,XXX,Fool ' s Gold,"Fueled by Danny Brown's complex, oddball personality, XXX is a careening ride with its own kind of nervy logic. ""I Will"" is a lewd, kinda sensitive ode to performing oral sex that recalls Lil Wayne's transgressive mixtape days; ""Scrap or Die"" is a totally un-snarky corrective to Young Jeezy's ""Trap or Die"", cleverly unveiling a side of poverty connected to the small-stakes sale of scrap metal to junkyards. ""Bruiser Brigade"" is pretty much a hardcore song complete with crew vocals, and whoa--""Adderall Admiral"" samples This Heat's ""Horizontal Hold"" and Hawkwind?! And then, on the absolutely devastating second half of the record, the other shoe drops and all the drinking and drugging finally catches up with Danny. So he projects his neuroses onto pill-popping college girls, traces the roots of his vices to a fucked-up family, and speaks on the damn near post-apocalyptic climate of his Detroit hometown until all the pain comes rushing right back on album closer ""30"", a victory rap lap with a drunken horn beat, tugged along by a swaggering celebration of success and a nagging death wish. Danny Brown is loads of fun to listen to because he raps like a maniac, hilariously and tragically, about any and everything, but XXX stays on your iPod thanks to its precarious balance between being wildly unhinged and conceptually sound. --Brandon Soderberg",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Danny%20Brown%20-%20Monopoly.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65c85e6ef95969327b84/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Danny_Brown_____-XXX.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/,2011,year,album,18,Atlas Sound ____,Parallax,4AD,"Bradford Cox is hardly the first artist to maintain a primary band and solo career concurrently. But where most performers in that position maintain an oppositional relationship between the two gigs (take, for example, Thurston Moore's work within and without Sonic Youth), in Cox's case, each new release represents the next stage in an ongoing dialogue between his projects. And with his latest one-two tandem of Deerhunter's 2010 release Halcyon Digest and this year's Atlas Sound LP, Parallax, he's hit a new high watermark of mutually inspired activity. Where it was once a receptacle for Cox's most outré ideas, Atlas Sound has now become a reservoir for some of his most accessible songs, as Halcyon Digest's flirtations with AM-radio gold sounds (""Don't Cry"", ""Revival"", ""Memory Boy"") are furthered refined into Parallax's pristine ""Mona Lisa"" and ""Angel Is Broken"", while the baroque flourishes of Halcyon's epic closer ""He Would Have Laughed"" are compacted into the wondrous ""Te Amo"". But if Parallax suggests Cox is becoming ever more comfortable with the idea of being a pop singer-- or at least playing the role of one on the Mick Rock-shot cover-- he still applies enough textural disorientation to lend these instantly familiar ""Modern Aquatic Nightsongs"" an alien, isolated quality. Parallax is a desert-island disc in every sense of the term: even the most radiant moments emit the desolate ambience of a life spent alone among the wind and the waves. --Stuart Berman",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Atlas_Sound_-_Te_Amo.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65c8eb335119a49f1b7b/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Atlas_Sound_____-Parallax.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/,2011,year,album,17,Clams Casino ,Instrumentals,self-released,"17. Clams Casino: Instrumentals [self-released] There's a startling moment on Clams Casino's debut mixtape when a phlegm-soaked scream rises above the gorgeous murk before quickly being subsumed once again. It sounds like the last gasp of all the East Coast rap this New Jersey producer grew up on-- Dipset, Wu Tang, Mobb Deep-- making its presence known, handing the beat down. When I interviewed Clams (real name Mike Volpe) in March, his claim to fame was working with internet concern Lil B; by year's end, he had production credits on a No. 1 album as well as the debut from the hottest-tipped new hip-hop star around, A$AP Rocky. Not bad for a guy who was soliciting random rappers on MySpace not so long ago. And even though he's deservedly gaining notice and collaborators for his slow-moving tracks-- which combine Houston's screwed pace and New York's punchy bap and some supremely chillaxed ambient muzak you might hear during a massage-- this tape shows that the Clams Casino sound is best heard on its own. It's heavy, like each track is carrying a medicine ball on its back. It's soothing-- bird chirps and wave crashes can be heard across the tape. And it's completely faded, with each track instantly puffing up its own druggy cloud. Volpe doesn't only represent a new era sonically, but creatively as well. Instead of digging in dusty basements for apt obscurity like instrumental rap forebears DJ Shadow or RJD2, this beatmaker finds his sources randomly online: ""To find things to sample, I used to just type a random word-- like 'blue' or 'cold'-- into LimeWire or BearShare and download the first 10 results,"" he told me. ""I had no idea who the artists were or anything."" This modern technique sounds like one of Brian Eno's oblique strategies, a way to spur inspiration while making music. But it's also the only way Volpe knows. He's not seeking out muses in scratchy vinyl. He's seeking out feelings, words, whims, and then letting the sounds come to him. --Ryan Dombal",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Clams%20Casino%20-%20Numb.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65c95e6ef95969327b86/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Clams_Casino_-Instrumentals.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/,2011,year,album,16,Kurt Vile ____,Smoke Ring For My Halo,Matador,"For such a skilled and prolific artist, Kurt Vile sings an awful lot about being lazy. Virtually every track on his masterful fourth album speaks to a desire for rest, sloth, or some form of quiet solace. ""I don't want to work but I don't want to sit around all day frowning,"" he sings. This apparent longing for inactivity, combined with the album's enveloping, melancholic sound, serves to reinforce the impression that these songs are things that somehow just happen, as though Vile himself would be powerless to stop them, even if he wanted to. But by all evidence Vile's slacker fantasy is, for now, purely aspirational. On Smoke Ring For My Halo and its attendant follow-up EP, So Outta Reach, each track is filled with finely-wrought lyrical and instrumental detail, displaying a level of craftsmanship that belies Vile's nonchalant delivery. Particularly entrancing are acoustic tracks like ""Runner Ups"" and ""Peeping Tomboy"", where Vile's delicate fingerpicked guitars can summon the spirit of his late, lamented compatriot Jack Rose. On ""Jesus Fever"" and ""Society Is My Friend"", he displays an admirable knack for offhanded melodic hooks that can embed themselves seamlessly into memory, ready to slink into the hum of daily life at a moment's notice. And though Vile's slippery drawl sounds ideally suited to deliver such self-deprecating nuggets as ""My whole life's been one long running gag,"" this hangdog appearance can be deceptive. It's hard work making music this easy. --Matthew Murphy",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65c913d197565214002f/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Kurt_Vile_____-Smoke_Ring_For_My_Halo.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/,2011,year,album,15,Fleet Foxes ____,Helplessness Blues,Sub Pop,"In early 2009, Robin Pecknold rented a house about 50 miles north of Seattle to start work on Fleet Foxes' sophomore album. The folk-rockers' self-titled 2008 debut had already sold more than a half-million copies worldwide and topped various year-end lists (including Pitchfork's). Majestically updating age-old American folk music with well-chosen patches from Brian Wilson's ornate orchestral pop and the windswept contemporary indie rock of My Morning Jacket or Band of Horses, Fleet Foxes was a tough act to follow. It took two years of obsessive tinkering, and at least temporarily cost Pecknold his girlfriend, but Helplessness Blues succeeds on an Ansel Adams scale. Musically, Fleet Foxes stay true to sun-dappled acoustic guitars and dewy choirboy harmonies, adding 1960s British psych-folk nuances and even a flurry of free-jazz skronk; fans of Simon and Garfunkel, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, or Van Morrison's Astral Weeks should be on familiar ground. Where the debut's lyrics were timeless and impressionistic, however, Helplessness Blues' concerns are specific and of-the-moment. Out of a generation and an upbringing that insists on the unique specialness of every single person, Pecknold asks whether freedom might not, after all, be about more than rugged individualism. Borrowing and stealing from a rich musical tradition, Helplessness Blues reminds us what's ours. In the process, it joins the pantheon of source material for some other young searcher to take and make new. As his earnest and idealistic narrator envisions at the end of the title track, Pecknold has become ""like the man on the screen."" --Marc Hogan",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Fleet%20Foxes%20-%20Grown%20Ocean.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65caeb335119a49f1b7d/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Fleet_Foxes_____-Helplessness_Blues.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/,2011,year,album,14,Shabazz Palaces ____,Black Up,Sub Pop,"Every generation gets the MF Doom it deserves. And the mercurial Metal Faced Villain, whose up-from-the-tombs resurrection re-wrote the template for enigmatic abstraction in hip-hop, has lain dormant long enough to create a vacuum for the role of veteran rap Lazarus. Enter Shabazz Palaces, a Seattle duo whose creation myth invokes a totally different testament. They are led by the 40-ish Ishmael Butler, who was once known as Butterfly in Digable Planets, architects of eccentric smoke-wreathed cellar jazz. Currently, he's creating a cosmology rife with Nation of Islam imagery, old-time anarchistic Pacific Northwest politics, and an aesthetic as dense, dark, and drugged as tar opium. Black Up expands upon Shabazz's interstellar EPs from 2009. Some song titles read like Dave Eggers conceiving imaginary chapters of Where the Wild Things Are: ""The Kings New Clothes Were Made By His Own Hands"", ""An echo from the hosts that profess infinitum"", ""A treatise dedicated to The Avian Airess from North East Nubis (1000 questions, 1 answer)"". ""Youlogy"" ignores the last half-decade of backpack backlash by taking direct aim at the corporate machines and rappers in $700 Alexander McQueen jeans. Self-produced, the beats are wobbling and wind-lashed-- doom sounds over sulfurous rants worthy of W.E.B. Dubois. Shabazz Palaces snarl with the obverse image; the older gods reminding us that not only the young can lead rebellions. --Jeff Weiss",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Shabazz%20Palaces%20-%20%20Swerve...%20The%20Reeping%20of%20All%20That%20Is%20Worthwhile%20%28Noir%20Not%20Withstanding%29.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65cad7a71d1ea569d021/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Shabazz_Palaces_____-Black_Up.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/,2011,year,album,13,EMA ____,Past Life Martyred Saints,Souterrian Transmissions,"Erika M. Anderson comes across as an artist out there on her own, difficult to lump into a scene, movement, or sound. Yes, she covered Nirvana, and her songs have the druggy, blues-tinged spiritual heaviness of grunge; yes, she sang about how bodies can hold harrowing memories, which rightly reminded some people of Courtney Love; and OK, the tone of her voice, direct and tough and confident but also tinged with sweetness and vulnerability, reminded some of Liz Phair. But Past Life resonated so deeply with what can fairly be described as a growing cult because there seemed to be so little standing between us and the music. The line of transmission seemed a little shorter, the narrative surrounding its creation a little less essential. EMA's debut didn't stand for anything, it just was. Past Life may have been cathartic to make, but it felt less like a personal statement and more like an acknowledgment of shared understanding. Anderson's songs have blood and viscera and ache but they never feel like exhibitionism because we've felt these things, too. In ""Red Star"", the narrator evokes the cosmos as a relationship disintegrates, and the song builds and builds until the ""like a red star"" refrain becomes ""like a blue scar."" And then the album comes to an abrupt end. Blue scars are the ones that hurt, and the movement from infinite scale down into this small, private pain-- the absurdity of that juxtaposition-- is partly what gives Past Life its power. Ultimately, it's an album about exploration, and as a blur of faces and scenery moves by, the woman at the center struggles to figure out her place. And as we listen to her struggle, she helps us figure out ours. --Mark Richardson",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/EMA%20-%20Milkman.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65cbeb335119a49f1b7f/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/EMA_____-Past_Life_Martyred_Saints.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/,2011,year,album,12,James Blake ____,James Blake,A&M/Atlas,"12. James Blake____: James Blake [A&M/Atlas] James Blake: ""Limit to Your Love"": What if someone had told you, in 2010, that James Blake would make one of the most commanding songwriter albums of 2011? At the time, Blake was known to us only as a mercurial young Londoner with a knack for fitting incompatible parts into elegant contraptions. Whether crafting liquid-crystal dubstep, phantasmal R&B, or introverted Teutonic techno, he could make broken-down mechanisms whir like Swiss clockwork. Still, we had no cause to suspect that Blake would be the one to pull ahead and give the emergent movement of moon-eyed electronic music a superlative statement. In hindsight, though, you can see exactly how he got to his fierce debut LP: cautiously, by degrees of addition and subtraction, and in plain view. Once the authorial voice and piano crept in on his Klavierwerke EP, it was simply a matter of shifting the proportions, throwing big shadows across the wall. On this album, Blake did the one thing we didn't expect, giving it an aura of fearless exposure: He carefully extracted most of the dubstep and R&B, leaving behind cavities of space that he filled with his voice. But the unexpected breadth and eerie absences of Blake’s breakthrough were part of its magic, but only part. After the element of shock wore off, an uncanny aesthetic remained to be reckoned with. All year, the album lurked on the edge of my mind. It ceased to be an idea and became a place, where a single voice, falling, without direction or scale, became indistinguishable from the one in my own head. --Brian Howe",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65cc13d1975652140031/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/James_Blake_____-James_Blake.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/,2011,year,album,11,St. Vincent ____,Strange Mercy,4AD,"11. St. Vincent____: Strange Mercy [4AD] On her first two albums as St. Vincent, Annie Clark's signature instrument was her strong, clear, and expressive voice. Never indulging technical or emotional fireworks, she sang more from the brain than the gut, which made her pristinely orchestrated art-pop even more cerebral. But Strange Mercy finds St. Vincent paring down to a straightforward rock lineup in the studio, ditching the involved arrangements, and spotlighting the chaos of Clark's guitar: the choppy riffs of ""Cruel"", the sneaky punctuation of ""Neutered Fruit"", the solos that don't sound quite like solos, the themes that mushroom into uncomfortable shapes. ""Chasing an abstraction,"" she called it earlier this year. Her guitar doesn't upstage her voice so much as it becomes a slightly antagonistic duet partner, often taunting or contradicting her lyrics. Strange Mercy is always on its toes, always toying with some new idea, always building toward the oddly satisfying payoff. The song might be a narrative or an uncomfortable explication of the life of an indie rock artist, and the ambiguity, not to mention the ambivalence, stings. By totally embracing that off-kilter danger, Clark opened up a raw and brave new vocabulary. --Stephen Deusner",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65ccc0084474cd0c77e9/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/St_Vincent_____-Strange_Mercy.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/,2011,year,album,10,The Weeknd ____,House of Balloons,self-released,"When the Weeknd magically appeared from the internet ether, there was something truly total about it all: they had the visual aesthetic down, immaculate production, and in Abel Tesfaye, one of the year's most distinctive new talents. House of Balloons takes the NyQuil tint of recent efforts by artists like Drake and The-Dream to a place of uncomfortably photorealistic, gritty darkness: that it's sung with a cherubic voice so clear and sweet only makes it more unsettling. Moving beyond the usual tropes of drugs and excess, House of Balloons presents a world of overdose, withdrawal, chemically-paralyzed sex and vaguely violent seduction, with Tesfaye rendering hip-hop's celebratory narcissism into something downright detestable. And yet this mysterious entity manages to pull it all off with music that embodies the self-indulgent nature of its own Dionysian decadence, sprawl and all. Seven-minute epics like ""The Party & the After Party"" and ""Loft Music"" perfectly reflect the rapidly unraveling personality on display, while ""What You Need"" infuses up-to-date production values into the best Sade ballad in years, oozing silk even as it bleeds itself out. Yet no matter how conceited the Weeknd becomes, through the faux-psychedelic swirl of follow-up Thursday and pretentious conceptual videos, they've never been anything less than captivating. Inventive, frightening, and dangerously accessible, House of Balloons is an album whose licentious charms are impossible to resist, its uncensored visions of nocturnal saturnalia soothing and disturbing in equal measure. --Andrew Ryce",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65cd5e6ef95969327b89/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Weeknd_____-House_of_Balloons.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/,2011,year,album,9,Real Estate ____,Days,Domino,"Real Estate's sophomore set is another slab of sleepy suburban sprawl, wasted miles, and those long teenage hours spent hammering out what's real and shrugging off what isn't. Frontman Martin Courtney casts a wistful (but not too wistful) gaze back to his more guileless years, nodding to something like a lost innocence, letting a few phrases say so much. There's a grace and understatement to everything Courtney and company muster that seems to slow everything down just a bit, like they're out a little past curfew and don't want to arouse any suspicion. With slowhand Matt Mondanile's guitar cruising along at about 25 MPH, Days plays like a townie's guided tour through the very same localities they charted on their debut, offering back-of-my-hand stops at all the highlights. It's not a record that smacks of ambition, exactly, but it gathers its strength in seeming incredibly comfortable with where it's from and what it's doing there, even if it's not too far from where they've been all along. Somewhere in the languid byways of ""Municipality"", I can hear these Jersey guys tottering around Ridgewood or doing donuts in Montclair, gulping down Frostys as friends talk shit in the backseat. A careless lifestyle? Perhaps. But, the way Real Estate tell it, not so unwise. --Paul Thompson",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65cd13d1975652140033/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Real_Estate_____-Days.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/,2011,year,album,8,Drake ____,Take Care,Cash Money/Young Money/Universal Republic,"""Weezy and Stunna my only role models/ Hef and Jordan my only role models."" On ""Lord Knows"", Drake toasts to four absurdly rich and successful assholes who are by all accounts manipulative, emotionally unavailable, and altogether miserable human beings. So while they might be Drake's peer group, they are not the men he aspires to be on Take Care. Boasting more complex songwriting, vastly improved mic skills, and an astounding curatorial ear, Drake opened himself up to pretty much everything the human condition has to offer. With partners Noah ""40"" Shebib and the Weeknd in tow, Take Care integrates dubstep, house, blaring Young Money boasts, New York City thunder, quiet storm, and cloud rap to form the dark center of 2011's pop universe. And yeah, ""I blew six million on myself and it felt amazing"" isn't something any of us will relate to any time soon, but the elemental sensations underpinning the mood swings connecting the title track's wounded heart, the stunning emotional bottom of ""Marvins Room"", and the earned triumph of ""Underground Kings""-- intoxication, depression, friendship, hatred, jealousy, empathy, lust, loneliness, ego, doubt-- make Drake's experience no more contradictory and complex than our own. In fact, the only emotion that might be missing from Take Care is contentment-- closer ""The Ride"" might sound like a victory lap for his sophomore album, but then Drake promises ""my junior and senior will only get meaner-- take care."" So what do you give the man who has it all? The gift of thinking he doesn't. --Ian Cohen",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65ceeb335119a49f1b81/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Drake_____-Take_Care.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/,2011,year,album,7,tUnE-yArDs ____,w h o k i l l,4AD,"07. tUnE-yArDs____: w h o k i l l [4AD] Though Merrill Garbus' percussive w h o k i l l pulls from a variety of genres and cultures, when listening to it I kept coming back to Walt Whitman. The two fearlessly gleeful weirdos share a penchant for celebrating real live flesh, and they also have a thing for rewriting national anthems in their own, scribbled hands. w h o k i l l's opening salvo is a killer: ""My country, 'tis of thee/ Sweet land of liberty/ How come I cannot see my future within your arms?"" If ever there were a year that needed songs asking questions like that one, it was 2011. True to its times, w h o k i l l is a hand-rendered map of a shrunken country: fractured in the face of economic inequality, dwindling natural resources, and seemingly insurmountable political and social divides. ""With my eyes open, how can I be happy?"" Garbus shouts midway through ""My Country"", but the bravery and the genius of w h o k i l l is in how it never once closes its eyes, undaunted by ugliness, internal struggles (Garbus sometimes uses vocal loops in such a way that it sounds like she's having a heated argument with herself), or even the most complex revelations. In ""Riotriot"", the sheer full-throated power of her voice turns a squirmy confession into something strangely liberating: ""There is a freedom in violence that I don't understand/ And like I've never felt before!"" w h o k i l l's 10 songs-of-self are testaments to the power of an idiosyncratic voice, and they're also reminders of the deceptively simple human demands that unite us. In mid-October, a few miles from her country's capitol building and a few more from the city's branch of the Occupation, I saw Garbus open a sold-out show with the call-and-response chant she's opening all her sets with these days. ""DO YOU WANT TO LIVE?"" she asked the audience. The unanimous roar that followed was as inevitable as it was affirming: YEAH! --Lindsay Zoladz",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65ce5e6ef95969327b8b/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/tUnE-yArDs_____-w_h_o_k_i_l_l.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/,2011,year,album,6,Oneohtrix Point Never ____,Replica,Mexican Summer/Software,"In the two years since Daniel Lopatin collected the best of his limited-run output as the 2xCD Rifts, his Oneohtrix Point Never project has become one of the new synth-music underground's most reliable purveyors of trippy, arpeggio-heavy psychedelia. Last year's Returnal marked an intensification of his method and an amplification of his range-- from pure noise to breathtaking lyricism-- but it didn't significantly break with his established mode. Replica does. For one thing, it's the first time that sampling has become central to OPN's music. While Lopatin hasn't retired his trusty Roland Juno 60, it plays a supporting role, adding color and texture to loops sourced from bootleg DVDs of old television ads. Knowing the backstory supports the techno-nostalgia at play in all Lopatin's music, but it's not necessary to appreciate the sonics themselves, which are severed from any obvious referent-- there's nothing kitschy or crassly retro here. Instead, the new sounds and textures have the effect of breaking open what, until now, had felt like a hermetically sealed world. The smeared mush of frequencies that characterized previous records falls away, revealing lilting cartoon xylophones, quizzical hiccups, and delicate percussive loops that crunch like boots in snow. ""Up"" employs tribal drum machines of a type unimaginable on an OPN record until now-- and in 7/4 time, at that-- while ""Child Soldier"" features reconfigured R&B voices over lasers and dentist drills. Lopatin even indulges in stately piano melodies, proving that last year's unlikely collaboration with Antony wasn't as out of character as it seemed at the time. It's an immaculately paced album, veering from placid ambient interludes to quietly chaotic constellations of found sound; Replica's subjects are media, memory, and the space-time continuum, but the mind/heart dichotomy is the axis around which it revolves. --Philip Sherburne",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Oneohtrix_Point_Never_-_Sleep_Dealer.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65cf13d1975652140035/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Oneohtrix_Point_Never_____-Replica.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/,2011,year,album,5,Girls ____,"Father, Son, Holy Ghost",True Panther,"05. Girls____: Father, Son, Holy Ghost [True Panther] As its title indicated, Girls' 2009 debut, Album, was a triumph of simplicity, from its familiar 50s-rock references to all the songs about Lauras and Lauren Maries to the way ""Hellhole Ratrace"" copped the ""Hey Jude"" trick of repeating the same refrain over and over again to create an instant sing-along anthem. But anyone who's read a single article about Girls knows that leader Christopher Owens' life hasn't been all pizzas and bottles of wine, and this darker subtext came to the fore on the band's second full-length. This is a heavy record-- and not just because Girls try to flex some surprising Black Sabbath muscle on ""Die"". For an album that begins with Owens' self-deprecatingly acknowledging his ""bony body"" and ""dirty hair,"" Father, Son, Holy Ghost is brimming with confidence and fearlessness, as Girls tackle tough subject matters-- fading romance, spiritual emptiness, reconciling with family-- with the weightiness they deserve, by eschewing Album's ramshackle scrappiness for the classic-rock-radio sophistication of Billy Preston-era Beatles and early-70s Pink Floyd. (Should you not have a copy of The Dark Side of the Moon handy, the gospelized climax of ""Vomit"" would no doubt match up really well with the tornado scene in The Wizard of Oz.) And where Album frontloaded its most immediately engaging songs, everything on Father, Son, Holy Ghost feels like a steady build-up to the late-act stunner ""Forgiveness"", eight minutes of understated devastation that feels like we're eavesdropping in on the most difficult conversation of Owens' life. Girls were too quick to name their debut record-- even more so than its predecessor, Father, Son, Holy Ghost is a capital-A Album. --Stuart Berman",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65cfeb335119a49f1b83/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Girls_____-Father_Son_Holy_Ghost.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/,2011,year,album,4,PJ Harvey ____,Let England Shake,Vagrant/Island Def Jam,"PJ Harvey: ""The Words That Maketh Murder"": ""How is our glorious country sown?"" That question, or some strain of it, faulty premise and all, was at the root of pretty much every important thing that happened in 2011. Whether Occupy Wall Street, the London Riots, or the Arab Spring, this year's dominant political ideology was the kind of upheaval that can only be sparked when pat answers to elemental questions-- What do we believe in? What do we deserve?-- no longer satisfy. And although Let England Shake-- a rickety den of ghost-war stories, tremulous pastoralism and good old fashioned muckraking-- was one of PJ Harvey's most critically adored records, it also spawned its fair share of haters. Amongst detractors, the infamous bugle call that rips clumsily through ""The Glorious Land"" became a talisman of Let England Shake's supposed heavy-handedness. But when I hear that Reveille, I don't hear finger-wagging; I hear Harvey antagonizing us with war's blinking single-mindedness. I hear Harvey saying that war is (tone)deaf, dumb, and mute, and that the only way to stop something with no sense is with an equal and opposing act of visceral destruction. ""How is our glorious country sown-- not with wheat and corn."" The notion that humanity is not at the heart of progress is hardly a new one, but it rang rawer than usual this year, and no other record even came close to capturing that. --Mark Pytlik",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65d013d1975652140037/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/PJ_Harvey_____-Let_England_Shake.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/,2011,year,album,3,M83 ____,"Hurry Up, We ' re Dreaming",Mute,"03. M83____: Hurry Up, We're Dreaming [Mute] M83 [ft. Zola Jesus]: ""Intro"": Anthony Gonzalez set expectations stratospherically high in interviews leading up to Hurry Up We're Dreaming, name-checking such totems of feverish excess and emotional overload as Smashing Pumpkins' Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, the Beatles' White Album, and My Bloody Valentine's Loveless. But what he eventually unveiled-- 22 tracks of horizon-spanning, unabashedly epic synth rock, a double album without a wasted moment (yes, even including that five-year-old's monologue about magic frogs)-- still managed to confound those expectations. It's hard to think of anyone in indie rock in 2011 who aimed higher, and hit that aim more squarely, than Gonzalez. His working formula for this audacious feat seemed to be Steal All the Good Parts: If a sound has ever made you break out into a foolish, cheesed-out grin you couldn't suppress, it's probably here. String orchestras, glacial expanses of synthesizers, children's choirs, ringing rounds of mandolin, screaming woolly saxophone-- Hurry Up We're Dreaming doesn't just draw liberally from the spirit of the massive rock albums Gonzalez name-checked, it practically swallows them whole, regurgitating and redistributing them into something listeners from every corner of the music universe can hear a piece of their lives in. --Jayson Greene",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65d10c2bba1b7de05619/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/M83_____-Hurry_Up_We__re_Dreaming.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/,2011,year,album,2,Destroyer ____,Kaputt,Merge,"The cover of Destroyer's Kaputt finds Dan Bejar in front of the picturesque lookout point in Vancouver's Queen Elizabeth Park. Walk a few steps away from that spot in the park, and you'll find another view with a charmingly meta bronze sculpture called ""The Photo Session"" in the middle of it. The 1984 piece is made up of four life-size people, one photographer and his three American-tourist subjects, and the idea is for actual sightseers to mingle with their metal counterparts, creating a peculiar mix of old and new, breathing and bronze. It turns the typical cheese-ball vacation photo into something weirder and self-reflexive. That same uncanny effect goes gauzy all through Kaputt, which has Bejar soaking up some of his favorite high-fidelity records-- Roxy Music's Avalon, Steely Dan's Aja-- and filtering their reverbed, horn-spouting sounds through his own unique, free-associative consciousness. The languid music constantly flirts with bad taste stalwarts like lite jazz and soft rock and, in doing so, jumbles our own preconceptions. The result is disorienting-- and wholly pleasurable. And it turns out these open-ended instrumentals are the perfect foil for Bejar, who abandons his characteristically stuffed and manic lyrical style for something more relaxed. Indeed, he recalled recording some of the album's vocals ""while lying down on the couch."" After 15 years, this is where Bejar stops worrying about being the cleverest indie rock writer around, which is OK because he's been doing this so long that the smarts simply flow out of his brain anyhow. Kaputt is an album of mantras about uncomfortable truths made comforting by Bejar's impossibly casual delivery: He's been there, he's seen death and drugs and evaporated dreams, and he wouldn't trade in one spec. On what may be the record's most beatific-sounding hook, on ""Song for America"", he duets with guest singer Sibel Thrasher: ""Winter, spring, summer, and fall/ Animals crawl toward death's embrace."" It's a sing-along, Bejar-style. His understated humor is intact, but Kaputt is no joke. It would be far too easy for Bejar to simply poke fun at so many swishy synths, lounge-lizard inflections, and cruise-ship bass lines, but he does something much tougher here. He redeems them. --Ryan Dombal",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65d113d1975652140039/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Destroyer_____-Kaputt.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/,2011,year,album,1,Bon Iver ____,Bon Iver,Jagjaguwar,"01. Bon Iver____: Bon Iver [Jagjaguwar] Bon Iver might be the record that frees Bon Iver from the myth of Bon Iver: from the endlessly repeated creation saga (cabin, heartbreak, Wisconsin), from the detailed evocations of his beard, from the loaded allusions to his partnership with Kanye West. Bon Iver opens with six long seconds of silence, a clearing. Keep this in mind. Unlike 2008's For Emma, Forever Ago, which operated mostly within established folk idioms, Bon Iver is unfamiliar, expansive, and searching. Here, spread over shimmery soft rock, Justin Vernon's falsetto is imbued with a childlike longing-- not for a person or a place, but for meaning. He pushes that voice to exigent altitudes, manipulating it in a way that feels both generous and self-effacing; it melts onto the surface of these songs, becoming another strata, a texture, an easy analogue to all the keyboards and sax blows and effects-laden guitar. Talking about the album's copious layers-- and there are dozens, stacked like bricks-- without employing dopey language (even Vernon has referred to these songs as ""soundscapes"") or barely graspable metaphors has proved a bit of a critical challenge. Ultimately, it feels sufficient just to say that Bon Iver is masterfully assembled-- an ambitious, occasionally devastating exercise in arranged sound. There's also the album's hazy narrative arc. Songs are titled after real places (""Lisbon, OH"", ""Calgary"") and fake places (""Hinnom, TX"", ""Minnesota, WI""), but there's no significant difference between the actual and the imagined. So much of Bon Iver concerns memory-- how the passage of time affects our bodies and the way we love, how we reckon with old mistakes, how we abandon prior versions of ourselves-- and to that end, Vernon is a deceptively sharp linguist, mixing nonsensical phrases (""Armor let it through, borne the arboretic truth"") with deliberately specific references (""3rd and Lake, it burnt away/ The hallway was where we learned to celebrate""). It's dream-logic, the way memory works. And while listeners might be tasked with supplying the connective tissue, Vernon and his backers provide ample support, a rubric for introspection. Eventually, these songs start to play like emotional Mad-Libs, and a declaration like ""I was not magnificent,"" with its excruciating combination of hubris and humility, becomes an undeniable prompt, a blank to fill in. A cue for whatever kind of self-examination 2011 might have wrought. --Amanda Petrusich",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: https://soundcloud.com/boniver/calgary,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65d25e6ef95969327b8d/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Bon_Iver_____-Bon_Iver.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,100,Thundercat,"""For Love (I Come Your Friend)""",Brainfeeder,"Ideally, a debut single should showcase an artist's aesthetic and influences while holding just enough back to make them seem new. Thundercat managed to do just that with this cover of a 70s fusion jazz track by George Duke. It was an unorthodox way to introduce a bassist in a Native American headdress who hails from South L.A., but who needs a roadmap when you have Flying Lotus production, a celestial falsetto, belt-unbuckling bass, swirling harps, and the ashram float of Alice Coltrane. Like the best jazz (and the Brainfeeder imprint itself), ""For Love (I Come Your Friend)"" is exceptionally patient. There is no desire for the quick fix or the quack remedy. Duke's version is faster, pointing towards the dawn of disco, while Thundercat travels deeper into a primordial imagination. The lyrics invoke earth, time, and sand, and so does the atmosphere. --Jeff Weiss",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/ForLoveICome.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65ead7a71d1ea569d040/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Thundercat-For_Love_I_Come_Your_Friend.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,99,Ill Blu,"""Meltdown""",Numbers,"""Here come the drums!"" That rallying cry of the jungle generation comes roaring through every second of ""Meltdown"", but the track is no throwback. Instead, Ill Blu condense 20 years of British dance music's biggest obsession-- building tracks out of (almost) nothing but rhythm-- into four tighter-than-tightly wound minutes that could have only come from 2011. The drums on ""Meltdown"" roll out at an adrenaline-jacking tempo that's perfectly suited to 3 a.m. raving-- and not just because of the trance-inflected melody that tries to offer some small relief from the drum assault. It's what the machines might play to celebrate when they finally overthrow humanity. --Jess Harvell",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65ea13d1975652140056/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Ill_Blu-Meltdown.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,98,Unknown Mortal Orchestra,"""Ffunny Ffrends""",Fat Possum,"The drum sample on ""Ffunny Ffrends"", lifted from the Pointer Sisters' disco classic ""Yes We Can"", should indicate that Unknown Mortal Orchestra are a welcoming bunch. When you dig into ""Ffunny Ffrends"", it's not hard to come away with feelings of acceptance and inclusion. At times it feels as if you're being beckoned into a sing-along at the chilliest campsite on the planet, with singer Ruban Nielson gleefully leading everyone down the road to frostbite. If the song teaches us anything, it's that there's still plenty of crushed beauty to be extracted from the kind of lo-fi roots Unknown Mortal Orchestra are sourcing for inspiration. And like the best examples of that genre (Guided by Voices, Smog, early Beck), it's the love of pop ingenuity and craft that give this song its emotional weight. --Nick Neyland",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Unknown%20Mortal%20Orchestra%20-%20Ffunny%20Ffrends.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65ebc0084474cd0c7803/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Unknown_Mortal_Orchestra-Ffunny_Ffrends.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,97,Fever Ray,"""The Wolf""",Watertower,"Remember Catherine Hardwicke's revisionist fairy tale film Red Riding Hood? Neither does anyone else. But while Hardwicke failed at crafting a horror blockbuster, she did get one thing right: If you want to scare the shit out of people, get this lady to sing them a song. Like pretty much everything Karin Dreijer Andersson has done since the Knife's Silent Shout, ""The Wolf"" is deliciously terrifying. It's all tension and menace and something terrible happening just offscreen, the threat of unknown danger seeping in through droning synthesizers and hollow drums. And then there's Andersson's lustful voice, breathing heavily and erupting in primal yowls that mimic the song's namesake. It's the perfect soundtrack for a tale as old as time that also just happens to be a parable about the perils of female sexual awakening. My, what big teeth you have, Fever Ray. --Amy Phillips",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65eb5e6ef95969327ba8/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Fever_Ray-The_Wolf.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,96,Peaking Lights,"""All the Sun That Shines""",Not Not Fun,"A love song for the cavemen, ""All the Sun That Shines"" is the first big pop move from the post-Excepter school of psychedelic seekers (Sun Araw, Eternal Tapestry, et al). The rippling highlight of Peaking Lights' album 936, this track finds Aaron Coyes and Indra Dunis in full-on devotional mode, chanting its single-line mantra skyward over a mesmeric wriggle of synths and snaking guitar. It's a hypnotic performance, with Coyes and Dunis' voices meeting in odd places as they attack the song's central statement from all angles. ""All the Sun That Shines"" is so melodically generous that it seems made for sharing, the soundtrack for your next sun salutation or couples' mud bath. --Paul Thompson",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Peaking%20Lights%20-%20All%20the%20Sun%20That%20Shines.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65ecc0084474cd0c7805/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Peaking_Lights-All_the_Sun_That_Shines.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,95,Kendrick Lamar,"""A.D.H.D.""",Top Dawg,"On ""A.D.H.D."" we find Kendrick Lamar, one of the most uniquely socially aware MCs in rap, out of place and out of mind at some typical house party. He walks around sulking, sipping cough syrup, bummed out over his generation's disaffection. He meets a girl, they go back to his apartment and make out, get interrupted by an offer to smoke up, and they oblige. If that sounds like a Drake song, you're not too far off. But where Drake meditates on how he collides head-on with girls, friends, and family at the intersections of his pre- and post-fame existences, Lamar self-medicates-- it helps him cope with his discontent over the treatment of the American underclass since the Reagan era. Part of the brilliance of ""A.D.H.D."" is that instead of directly using politics to make an overt statement, he weaves his observations into the storyline where they hover like a dark cloud and influences the characters' decisions in organic and unavoidable ways. And if that sounds familiar, well, ""A.D.H.D."" just may end up being the calling card of a poet laureate. --Jordan Sargent",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65ec13d1975652140058/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Kendrick_Lamar-ADHD.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,94,Sepalcure,"""Pencil Pimp""",Hotflush,"As Sepalcure, Travis Stewart and Praveen Sharma slid in right before the whistle to remind us that electronic music devices can do more than evocatively sputter and fritz. ""Pencil Pimp"" whirls on a machine-lathed spindle of Chicago footwork, capturing a feeling of curtailed tension and lurking danger with its soulful vocal clips and warm synth pads. There are no gestures of rebellion or subversion, only an argument for well-made music at a time when it might seem besieged. ""Pencil Pimp"" demonstrates why we feel so comfortable breaking the mold: We know someone will come along who feels passionate enough to cast it again, tempered even stronger. --Brian Howe",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65edd7a71d1ea569d042/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Sepalcure-Pencil_Pimp.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,93,Wild Flag,"""Romance""",Merge,"""Romance"" is Wild Flag's statement of intent; an album-opening barrage of expertly crafted and playfully rendered hooks that instantly establishes the band as a natural progression from frontwoman Carrie Brownstein's work with Sleater-Kinney. In interviews, Brownstein has cited the radio hits of Beyoncé and Rihanna as inspiration for the relentlessly catchy structures of Wild Flag's tunes. You can really hear that influence in ""Romance"", which bears no stylistic resemblance to such songs, but shares a density of direct, instantly memorable hooks. And though there are many, many songs about the magic and power of music, there's a desperation in these verses (""You were my maker, my re-creator, my reason to live"") that adds poignancy and urgency to the tune's ecstatic lines. ""We've got an ear for what's romance,"" they sing in the chorus, sounding like the world's leading authorities on the topic. --Matthew Perpetua",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65edc0084474cd0c7807/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Wild_Flag-Romance.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,92,Jacques Greene,"""Another Girl""",LuckyMe,"2011 was a banner year for R&B appearing in unexpected places, but few instances sounded as euphoric as in Jacques Greene's ""Another Girl"". Like its 2010 predecessor, Girl Unit's ""Wut"", ""Another Girl"" twists and turns on single-syllable eruptions of joy. Here the primary motif is a Ciara sample from her song ""Deuces"": ""You got me feeling like a…"" Greene builds from it slowly, allowing those smaller samples to skirt around each other alongside a synth line that restlessly moves left and right. Sometimes you're asked how you feel and you don't quite have words to respond; depending on the day, a spin through ""Another Girl"" could be the answer. --Hari Ashurst",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/jacquesgreene/lm,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65ee5e6ef95969327baa/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Jacques_Greene-Another_Girl.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,91,Thee Oh Sees,"""The Dream""",In the Red,"Ever since Thee Oh Sees turned the corner from psych-folk sit downs to full-blast garage rock, the band's founder and frontman, John Dwyer, has been itching to get more percussion into his band. In 2008, they penned a song called ""Two Drummers Disappear"", which was driven by dueling kits. A year later, the ""Quaddro-Spazzed '09"" single found drummer Mike Shoun indulging in an Iron Butterfly-worthy solo. Still, it wasn't quite enough. ""It's great to watch if there are two drummers-- there's not enough of that,"" Dwyer explained in a 2010 interview. As it turns out, he was right. Fleshed out with a full-time second kit courtesy of the Intelligence's Lars Finberg, ""The Dream"", from Thee Oh Sees' second album of the year, Carrion Crawler / The Dream, finds common ground between Can's hypnotic rhythms, the Misfits' punk gristle, and James Brown's ability to milk a vamp for all it's worth. --Aaron Leitko",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Thee_Oh_Sees_-_The_Dream.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65eec0084474cd0c7809/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Thee_Oh_Sees-The_Dream.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,90,Grimes,"""Vanessa""",Hippos in Tanks/Arbutus,"On last year's debut Geidi Primes cassette, 23-year-old Montreal artist Claire Boucher (aka Grimes) secured her spot as a standout among a web-bred generation of eerie bedroom-pop recorders. On ""Vanessa"", from 2011's Darkbloom, she took her songwriting to the next level. The high pitch of her angelic falsetto soars and swirls over hi-hat hits and lush synths, bringing to mind bewitched versions of 90s pop divas from whom Boucher draws inspiration. She is a self-described ""post-internet"" musician, and this track provides an antidote to 2011's persistent Retromania, proving that in an era of distracted listening and hyper-stimulation it's still possible to take familiar influences and create something that feels wholly new. --Jenn Pelly",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65efd7a71d1ea569d044/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Grimes-Vanessa.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,NA,NA,"SBTRKT ""Wildfire [ft. Little Dragon]""",Young Turks,"If you wake up one day to find that your genre of choice has been suddenly co-opted by bandwagoneering rock-bros, there are a couple of good ways to shrug it off: Network with people who share your ability to imbue music with shapeshifting versatility, take it to somewhere it hasn't been, and slap the prefix post- onto it. SBTRKT does just that, and ""Wildfire"", the first single from his self-titled debut, is a savvy lure. Little Dragon's Yukimi Nagano drops a vocal in full diva mode, wrapping her sultry voice around words that sound romantic until you catch the underlying threats. And what she's given to work with is a track that winds its way through a couple different satellites of landmark R&B, a slinky slow-jam 80s drum machine holding the door open for fat synths that draw a path of lineage from dubstep all the way back to ""Pony"". --Nate Patrin",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/SBTRKT%20-%20Wildfire.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65efc0084474cd0c780b/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/5e40be51-4808-42ae-965e-e8e7e656edff
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,88,Cities Aviv,"""Coastin'""",Fat Sandwich,"Until recently, Memphis was mostly known to casual rap fans for Three-Six Mafia, MJG, and Hustle & Flow. Cities Aviv (born Gavin Mays) is a key part of a new rap renaissance in the Bluff City. He released an excellent full-length debut, Digital Lows, but had the temerity to hold back his best track for a 7"" single: On ""Coastin'"", he expertly lays out the difference between himself and his hometown, fashioning a subtle, but hardly soft, critique of current hip-hop conventions. ""I find it kinda hard to call Memphis home,"" he raps in a desperate, staccato flow. ""If everybody here wanna be Wayne or Three-Six, I guess I don't fit within the AutoZone."" Digital Lows proved Mays is adventurous and deeply knowledgeable with his samples, but ""Coastin'"" achieves much more: orchestration pulled from Shirley Bassey's ""Easy to Be Hard"" lends Mays' riveting self-examination a sense of drama, even majesty. When he says, ""By the time I'm 25, yeah the world is mine,"" you believe him. --Stephen Deusner",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65f00c2bba1b7de05636/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Cities_Aviv-Coastin.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,87,Zoo Kid,"""Out Getting Ribs""",House Anxiety,"It's hard to discuss ""Out Getting Ribs"" without referencing its striking video; where aspiring artists often resort to elaborate treadmill-choreography gimmicks or painstaking stop-motion trickery to rise above the YouTube tide, the video for ""Out Getting Ribs"" has transfixed over half a million viewers precisely because it's every bit as raw, flawed and disarmingly intimate as the song itself. Teen angst is the lifeblood of rock'n'roll, but it's usually communicated by young adults several years removed from the adolescent experience. Coming from 17-year-old Archy Marshall, this plea for love and cry of loneliness sounds downright apocalyptic-- opening lines don't get much more brazen than ""Hate runs through my blood."" What elevates ""Out Getting Ribs"" above solipsistic misery is the beautifully tranquil guitar lines that help soothe the marks left by Marshall's cutting sentiments, yet are still as raw as the emotions he's grappling with. The song is a bracing introduction to a wise-beyond-his-years artist who's managed to channel the uninhibited indignation of a young Billy Bragg by way of Bradford Cox's homespun experimentation; even more remarkable is the fact that, in light of his recent name change and embrace of more sophisticated songcraft, this song already feels like a time capsule just a year after its release. --Stuart Berman",Platform: SoundCloud - Link: http://soundcloud.com/truepanther/the-noose-of-jah-city,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65f0eb335119a49f1ba5/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Zoo_Kid-Out_Getting_Ribs.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,86,Blawan,"""Getting Me Down""",self-released,"Blawan first drew attention with tracks that wielded wild drums like a toddler banging on household objects, but his most powerful moment this year came when he reined in those tendencies for a straightforward house thumper.  A lot of the impact in ""Getting Me Down"" comes from that Brandy vocal, squeezed and wedged into a galloping beat that recontextualizes the R&B slow-jam original as a sugary, hyped-up rush that's dangerously contagious. Released discreetly after months of dubplate domination, the track's landing was titanic: it was impossible to walk around record stores in London in May without hearing it blaring from speakers, or go to a club night without it being rinsed at least once. For the first half of the year, ""Getting Me Down"" was an event, and listening back to it at year's end, it's easy to see why. So few tracks combined candyfloss rave, UK garage hysteria, and dubby dread (check the growling basslines) into something that sounded so universal yet so subversive, helping to kick off a new impulse in the bass music world that was all about house. --Andrew Ryce",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65f15e6ef95969327bb0/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Blawan-Getting_Me_Down.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,85,Junior Boys,"""Banana Ripple""",Domino,"""Banana Ripple"" is the latest entry in Junior Boys' one-an-album series of odes to lust (""Bellona"", ""In the Morning"", ""Hazel""), but it's also the longest song that Jeremy Greenspan and Matt Didemus have written. The song's genius lies in its 50/50 split of pure pleasures: The first half is an easy-walking, occasionally brassy plea for affection (a subject that practically defines Greenspan's silky voice at this point), while ""Banana Ripple""'s incredible back half blooms with Jam & Lewis synth squiggles and melodic ecstasy. It makes sense that the track was chosen to close out It's All True-- can you imagine having to follow it? --Larry Fitzmaurice",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65f1eb335119a49f1ba7/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Junior_Boys-Banana_Ripple.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,84,Iceage,"""You're Blessed""",What's Your Rupture?,"""You're Blessed"" closes Iceage's debut album, New Brigade, with an appropriate roar, and it offers a bracing summary of everything the upstart Danish quartet does best. Iceage transcend formula through their youthful exuberance and sheer force of conviction-- even when their choppy English lyrics make it hard to identify exactly what those convictions are. During the chorus, frontman Elias Rønnenfelt sings almost wistfully of holding himself together while the slashing, Wire-like guitars and jittery rhythms suggest that his efforts to do so are futile. The song's hardcore velocity and sudden mood shifts leave the band little room for error, and in the finest punk tradition it sounds as if Iceage are playing right up to the limits of their technical abilities. As a result, the threat of imminent collapse hovers over the track, giving the performance an anxious, heightened edge that needs no translation. --Matthew Murphy",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65f15e6ef95969327bb2/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Iceage-Youre_Blessed.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,83,Tiger & Woods,"""Gin Nation""",Running Back,"""Gin Nation"" has been floating around on DJ mixes and white labels for some time, but it finally saw official release in 2011. This was also the year that the song prompted questions such as, ""Can Imagination's incredible slow-disco cut 'Music & Lights' conceivably be improved upon?"", ""Is this what Theo Parrish would sound like if he'd attended a state school?"" and, ""Can I singlehandedly get #ginnation trending on Twitter on a given Friday night?"" (Answer key: debatable, leaning yes; probably; and sadly no.) It's too easy to over-complicate an edit like this, and ""Gin Nation"" succeeds as the year's finest ""this isn't rocket science"" jam, haughty and old-school enough to look lesser party jams in the eye and laugh. --Andrew Gaerig",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65f20c2bba1b7de05638/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Tiger__Woods-Gin_Nation.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,82,John Maus,"""Believer""",Ribbon/Upset the Rhythm,"In interviews, John Maus makes efforts to articulate the complex intellectual framework that guides his songwriting, frequently dropping Heidegger and Adorno references to scribes who just wanted to chat about chillwave. But these heavy ideas shouldn't obscure the simpler truth that ""Believer""-- the closing tune from his album We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves-- is appealing in part because the keyboards are cranked up really, really loud. Garish arpeggios and synthesized starwipes cascade over an anemic drum machine pulse, pounding pop melodies into a tuneful, but mushy pulp. Because he makes use of old-school synthesizers and Falco-worthy chord progressions, Maus' music is sometimes saddled with an 80s retro tag, but you'd be hard-pressed to find anything quite like it from the Reagan era. With its thrift-shop keys dialed up to the max, ""Believer"" conjures nostalgia for a phony but still familiar yesteryear that's eerier than anything the Human League ever dared put to tape. --Aaron Leitko",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65f30c2bba1b7de0563a/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/John_Maus-Believer.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,81,Yuck,"""Get Away""",Fat Possum,"Yuck are sweet kids with grime under their nails who, with ""Get Away"", bashed out some of 2011's best romantically frustrated pop-punk. As a bonus, the track doubled as one of the year's best tributes to lo-fi 90s indie rock. Despite the fact that Yuck were still teething when bands like Sebadoh were doing van tours, these UK-based youngsters nail period details with an eerie accuracy. They sound like they've just discovered that loud guitars can help mend a broken heart; throw on ""Get Away"", and you're back in high school, headphones on in study hall, pissed at the world, breaking pencils as you use your desk for a drum. Or maybe you're in still in high school reading this, in which case you should pull out that Bic and start scribbling ""YUCK"" on your Converse soles right now. --Jess Harvell",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65f3c0084474cd0c780f/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Yuck-Get_Away.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,80,Fucked Up,"""Queen of Hearts""",Matador,"If you grew up identifying with punk, you probably thought of musicals and rock operas as the enemy. But when you hear ""Queen of Hearts"", the opening scene of Fucked Up's full-blown concept album David Comes to Life, it somehow makes sense: the band manages to retain the intensity of their earlier days while creating something character-driven and musically ambitious. The guitars windmill in rock'n'roll gestures big and unabashed enough to bury the band's snarling hardcore roots, Damian Abraham's gruff barking vocals are sweetened by a duet with Madeline Follin of Cults, and the chorus is so damnably catchy that the fact that it's basically two people introducing themselves won't stop you from singing, ""Hello, you must be David/ I am Ver-on-i-ca."" Even before you hear the rest of the album or read its ambitious lyrics sheet, all the weight and scope is promised in these lines: ""Let's be together/ 'Til the water swallows us."" The song might serve as the introduction of the album's main characters, but it's an anthem in its own right. --Eric Grandy",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Fucked%20Up%20-%20Queen%20of%20Hearts.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65f40c2bba1b7de0563c/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Fucked_Up-Queen_of_Hearts.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,79,Kelly Rowland [ft. Lil Wayne],"""Motivation""",Universal Motown,"What made Kelly Rowland's ""Motivation"" so much sexier than everything else on R&B radio in 2011? The pacing. In a year when a high-tempo, bastardized form of house dominated charts, this Jim Jonsin-produced number stood out by being the slowest of slow jams. His Houston-speed backing track is stripped virtually naked, down to a few steely synth groans and a syrupy drum clap, and it moves forward only by lurching. Sometimes the beat drops out for 10 seconds at a time. It oozes. That leaves Rowland, who lacks the star power of her former bandmate Beyoncé, to let her guard down and go for it vocally. She coos. She moans. Her lyrics don't bother with innuendo, in fact they're almost hilariously literal. (""Go longer"", ""Push harder, you're almost there now."") It's over-the-top, but it works because the production calls for it. Oh, and then there's Weezy, who swings by for an economical but spot-on guest verse. He drops a few vaguely raunchy metaphors and then gets out of the way, understanding that, on this one, the beat is the star. --Joe Colly",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65f4eb335119a49f1bab/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Kelly_Rowland_ft_Lil_Wayne-Motivation.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,78,Sandro Perri,"""Changes""",Constellation,"You'd need a big piece of paper to make a Venn diagram of 2011's interwoven trends, and even then, you'd have to leave a little room in the corner for one lone circle: There's no accounting for Sandro Perri. Leaving behind the techno-based dilettantism of Polmo Polpo, ""Changes"" charges into a world of impromptu invention. I mean, what is it? Disjointed Afrobeat? Homespun glam? Some kind of kraut-pop mutant? Yep. At times, ""Changes"" seems to be made of nothing but sutures, a song that bursts forth as if discovering itself bar by bar. So many changes, how does it never go wrong? --Brian Howe",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65f5d7a71d1ea569d050/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Sandro_Perri-Changes.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,77,Cults,"""Abducted""",Columbia/In the Name Of,"When Cults showed up early last year with little more to their name than a Bandcamp page and a couple of catchy songs, folks rightly wondered where they might go next. Their first single, ""Go Outside"", was a killer slice of psych-inflected indie pop, with buoyant beats, xylophone leads, and sprightly boy/girl vocals. Could the duo stretch out this simple, if effective, aesthetic to fill an entire LP? And could they, like, write an actual chorus? Those questions are quickly answered on the opening track of their debut self-titled album, when an exploding bass throb cuts through the strumming guitar and Madeline Follin's tin-can vocals. ""Abducted"" is an indie pop punch to the gut, with Follin and Brian Oblivion trading off lyrics that alternate between heartbroken and casually resigned. Follin's impassioned vocals expertly foil the track's upbeat, C86 jangle, and ""Abducted"" provided an affirmative answer to anyone who doubted whether Cults had it in them. --Tyler Grisham",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65f5eb335119a49f1bad/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Cults-Abducted.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,76,Julianna Barwick,"""Prizewinning""",Asthmatic Kitty,"Julianna Barwick's music is all about breath, and her looped vocal arrangements layer gossamer ""oohs"" and ""ahhs"" until they take on an oddly spiritual power. But ""Prizewinning"" kicks her formula up a notch. Her usually omnipresent voice sits out the first minute of the track, instead drawing us in with a faint, rhythmic pulse. Barwick's celestial vocals gradually flood the track, confirming that there is indeed reverb in heaven. But the true surprise comes three minutes from the end, when the pulse strengthens to a marching, parade-like beat and the song raises its voice louder than you'd ever expected, and the percussion takes on the quality of celebratory banging on pots and pans. Barwick's music has a way of sounding both transcendent and handmade, which, like ""Prizewinning""'s joyful conclusion, is some kind of magic. --Lindsay Zoladz",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65f6eb335119a49f1baf/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Julianna_Barwick-Prizewinning.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,75,Washed Out,"""Amor Fati""",Sub Pop,"In Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry, French philosopher Jacques Maritain described ""a kind of musical stir, of unformulated song, with no words, no sounds... audible only to the heart."" Washed Out's quiet mastermind, Ernest Greene, has mentioned the book as an influence on sophomore album Within and Without, and the reference is especially appropriate for the record's second single, ""Amor Fati"". Titled after a Latin phrase about accepting one's fate, the song could've been distant and impenetrable: Greene's reverb-thick phrasing remains so indistinct that for months I half-thought he was reassuring us ""you'll be all right on the internet,"" which, well, never mind. On an emotional level, though, the track's slow-driving continental synths, freestyle-ready electronic beats, and evocatively layered, lugubrious vocals communicate a sense of mellow grace that precedes and transcends literal meaning. It's the most immediately striking song on a lushly physical LP. Before you understand it-- in fact, almost before you really hear it-- you feel it. --Marc Hogan",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Washed%20Out%20-%20Amor%20Fati.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65f75e6ef95969327bb8/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Washed_Out-Amor_Fati.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,74,Dum Dum Girls,"""Wrong Feels Right""",Sub Pop,"This year, Dum Dum Girls emerged from the murky facade of 2010's I Will Be to establish a more distinctive voice. ""Wrong Feels Right"" was the opening track from the He Gets Me High EP, and it signaled a new direction: The guitars sounded cleaner, the drums were no longer muddied by reverb and Kristin ""Dee Dee"" Gundred's vocals showed a newfound confidence and boisterousness. That confidence bleeds into her lyrics. Older songs like ""Jail La La"" and ""Rest of Our Lives"" painted evocative pictures, but tended to leave a lot unsaid; ""Wrong Feels Right"" is more direct-- it goes for the gut. There's not much in the way of mystery here, as the band illustrates the excitement of falling in love, and Dee Dee sounds euphoric and ready to take on the world. --Evan Minsker",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65f70c2bba1b7de05642/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Dum_Dum_Girls-Wrong_Feels_Right.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,73,tUnE-yArDs,"""Powa""",4AD,"For an artist so devoted to making rock songs in ways they've never been made before, Merrill Garbus of tUnE-yArDs is exceptionally clever about connecting her work to the music of the past. ""Powa"" is a song about sex as release from everything else but it reaches out to grasp bits of older songs about intense feeling. Garbus makes a joke of her penchant for phonetic spellings here: In practice, she pronounces ""power"" with one syllable, as in hymns (""Your pow'r inside/ It rocks me like a lullaby"" could nearly be a gospel line). She calls her lover ""rebel rebel,"" which calls up David Bowie's conflation of political and erotic radicalism. She yodels the word ""love"" like she's channeling Robert Plant circa ""Whole Lotta Love"". Her birdlike whoops of bliss at the end of the song call back to Minnie Riperton's ""Loving You"". Then there's the song's stocky bass-and-drum pulse, and the echo-chamber shudder that surfaces every few lines and overtakes the recording at its end. This is a very modern, very North American song, but its slow urgency comes from 1970s Jamaican dub. --Douglas Wolk",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65f85e6ef95969327bba/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/tUnE-yArDs-Powa.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,72,Britney Spears [ft. Nicki Minaj & Ke$ha],"""Till the World Ends (The Femme Fatale Remix)""",Jive,"""Till the World Ends"" was already the best Britney single since ""Toxic"", an ecstatic Euroclub floor-filler about wanting to dance until the world ends and other important matters. Then they added the Nicki Minaj verse. In her 45-second evisceration, Nicki manages to squeeze in chicken noises and the words ""poultry,"" ""Epsom salt,"" and ""Ricki Lake""-- not to mention the immortal diss ""Sniff, sniff, criiiies/ I done slayed your entire fucking liiiiife."" (Fact: In 2011, pretty much any song in the world could be made infinitely better by the addition of a Nicki Minaj verse.) Sprinkle a little bit of Ke$ha, the song's co-writer, on the chorus, and you've got a three-headed diva Hydra that sums up the recent changing of the femme pop guard from airbrushed and perfect to (relatively) weird and chaotic. It's the year's greatest quickie cash-in remix created to boost the chart position of a floundering single. Considering the ubiquity of the practice, that's saying something. --Amy Phillips",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65f9c0084474cd0c7815/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Britney_Spears_ft_Nicki_Minaj__Keha-Till_the_World_Ends_The_Femme_Fatale_Remix.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,71,The Men,"""Bataille""",Sacred Bones,"Slobbery yelps over raging guitars is an indie noise-rock formula that's practically three decades old at this point. Yet Brooklyn's The Men found a little crack of originality somewhere in that approach's battered veneer. On ""Bataille"" they honor their sloppy forefathers by keeping it simple and stupid. The song's big drunk chords and talk/yell/scream desperation hurtle forward like an old motorcycle whose engine remains powerful but whose body has a few screws loose. The riffs are thick and heavy, but that's not what makes them feel like they're sticking your veins in an open wall socket. It's the persistence, the way the band bangs their head against the song's brick wall, bleeding all over the stereo spectrum. Maybe ""Bataille"" is actually trickier than it seems. At first, the music sounds like it has one level, but by the end everything has bounced and slammed around so much, the riffs sound like a 3-D mosh pit, all color and flash. --Marc Masters",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65fad7a71d1ea569d056/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Men-Bataille.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,70,Holy Ghost!,"""Jam For Jerry""",DFA,"On ""Jam For Jerry"", Holy Ghost! concentrate New Order's grief-pop into five perfect minutes. Their spirited live shows usually end with this one, but this tribute to late drummer Jerry Fuchs (!!!, the Juan MacLean, Maserati) is placed in the middle of their self-titled debut, allowing the melancholy to reverberate through the second half of the album. In-the-moment details like ""writing numbers on our hands, out of batteries"" are tragically mundane, and even the awkward responsibilities that fall into your lap while mourning are observed here, making this guilt-ridden track lived-in and real. Despite the song being absolutely devastating, there's also a stiff-upper-lip sensitivity that is its own kind of coping. ""I get the feeling I've done something half wrong"" confesses to that unfounded but unavoidable guilt one feels when someone you love is gone forever. A line like ""you set the tempo, set the pace"" turns music terminology into a touching epitaph. Note that the title is ""Jam For Jerry"" rather than the more ponderous ""Song For Jerry"". And the way that the song never quite explodes into catharsis speaks to the necessary (though only temporary) escapism dance provides. --Brandon Soderberg",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65fad7a71d1ea569d058/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Holy_Ghost-Jam_For_Jerry.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,69,Neon Indian,"""Polish Girl""",Mom & Pop/Static Tongues,"Neon Indian's Alan Palomo has seen way too many sci-fi movies. Even if it weren't for the excellent video that accompanies ""Polish Girl"" -- a strange, touching tale of unrequited love in the time of near-singularity-- the track itself would be proof enough. So it's probably not a total coincidence that the same year we find out about a Blade Runner sequel, we're also offered this steamy hookup jam that's strictly for the cybernetic. Era Extraña, Neon Indian's sophomore effort, was a record with at least four or five songs that could've comfortably made this list, all future-leaning and surprisingly sultry. But ""Polish Girl"" remains the best-- worthy of lead-single honors and still the flat-out hookiest, it's light years away from the material on debut Psychic Chasms. There's a ton to like here-- Palomo's comely vocal, those raygun blurts, that body-rocking rhythm track-- but nothing stood up to that simple, impossible-to-get-out-of-your-head synth hook. With only a few key strokes, no one has so quickly and willingly outed themselves as a replicant as Palomo does here. --Zach Kelly",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65fb5e6ef95969327bbc/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Neon_Indian-Polish_Girl.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,68,The Joy Formidable,"""Whirring""",Atlantic/Canvasback,"The Joy Formidable aren't headlining soccer stadiums quite yet, but you wouldn't know it from listening to ""Whirring"". An aerobic rush of a song that builds to the kind of explosive alt-rock chorus that would've blown the roof off of ""120 Minutes"" circa 1995, it's the kind of thing that gets you pumped to run up a steep hill, lift heavy objects, or defeat Bob Dole's Presidential run. Frontwoman Ritzy Bryan's sugary vocals hearken back to a time when Belly was on the cover of Rolling Stone, as her guitar chimes like church bells and the drums slap away at an unseen enemy. The album version adds a sprinting, satisfying three-minute noise coda that's as long as the song itself, cementing the Joy Formidable's status as prime purveyors of bubble-grunge nostalgia. --Amy Phillips",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65fbeb335119a49f1bb7/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Joy_Formidable-Whirring.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,67,Rihanna [ft. Calvin Harris],"""We Found Love""",Def Jam,"As much as Rihanna's highly publicized private struggles and darkly domineering performative persona have shaped her into a compelling pop figure, she still makes one hell of a cipher. Musically, the Calvin Harris-produced smash ""We Found Love"" is pure house hedonism, and it calls for a singer who can surrender herself in equal measure. But here's the thing: If it were just some no-name vocalist blissfully exhorting, ""We found love in a hopeless place,"" ad nauseum, then it wouldn't be half as effective, because the surrender wouldn't mean anything to us; it wouldn't feel earned. She may not be as outsized a personality as Lady Gaga or Beyoncé, but right now Rihanna's making the entire pop world bend to her whims, and if this song is powerful enough to make her lose herself, then the rest of us don't stand a chance. --Josh Love",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65fc13d1975652140066/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Rihanna_ft_Calvin_Harris-We_Found_Love.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,66,DJ Quik,"""Killer Dope""",Mad Science,"DJ Quik will spit in your eye and smile. That's what makes him so infuriating to his enemies and endearing to his fans. He doesn't diss, he taunts. Your hair is falling out; he's 41 and his is growing in. Plus, he still has his virtuosic chops. Cue the clichés about revenge and good living. David Blake understands that there's no more painful insult than the truth and he's always been an honest artist. It's bad enough that he can't lose. Should you cross him, he will ensure that you can't win. ""Killer Dope"" is quintessential Quik: a warm bronze bath of horns and ivories, offset by lyrics that regurgitate the poisons that have coagulated inside ""America'z Most Complete Artist."" He's still throwing up signs to the hometown, shouting out South L.A.'s Carver Park and keeping it ""Avenue."" There's asphalt wisdom about how the ""street never changes/ Only faces do."" But notably, there are enough insults directed at his family to make Al Bundy blush. He'll simultaneously give all of his homies a blunt, while ""getting high on his enemies' supply."" ""Killer Dope"" summarizes The Book of David: For Quik, the sun is always shining and there are always enemies to put up on that summer jam screen. --Jeff Weiss",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65fceb335119a49f1bb9/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/DJ_Quik-Killer_Dope.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,65,Fleet Foxes,"""Grown Ocean""",Sub Pop,"Fleet Foxes figured things out musically between their first and second albums: Helplessness Blues sounds as though they've grown into the big sound they created for themselves. In the process, though, they seem to have lost a sense of their place in the world. The album is full of questions, some too big to answer, some with no answers at all, and it all ends here on a completely unresolved note, one last a cappella verse tumbling out of the burbling instrumental rush and stepping toward the future with a certain unease. It almost hurts how up-in-the-air that final ""always going"" is. Placing this song at the end cuts against the grain. It's the most propulsive thing on the album, the one that does the least to put a neat little bow on anything. It starts a story instead of completing one. ""Grown Ocean"" is sort of optimistic in that way-- it's the starting point for the explorations to come, the first song of the rest of your life. --Joe Tangari",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Fleet%20Foxes%20-%20Grown%20Ocean.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65fd13d1975652140068/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Fleet_Foxes-Grown_Ocean.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,64,Toro Y Moi,"""New Beat""",Carpark,"For Chaz Bundick, a man whose legacy was at one point feared to be forever beholden to a tote bag, this song turned out to be a wonderfully weird blessing. Still working within the parameters of a sound he's spent the past few years carving out as Toro Y Moi, ""New Beat"" placed his music in a sparkling new light. It spoke to the same aesthetic as his earlier music but softly superimposed a big, beautiful disco ball against all those warped VHS pastels. ""New Beat"" is Studio 54 re-imagined as a rooftop party, but with Bagel Bites instead of caviar, and mushroom tea instead of coke. Maybe it's that squirrelly synth line that suggests there's something a little hammy going on here, but for a guy like Bundick, taking himself too seriously could've been a death sentence. I can't recall a time this year when there were more than three people in my apartment and this thing didn't get played. --Zach Kelly",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65fdeb335119a49f1bbb/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Toro_Y_Moi-New_Beat.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,NA,NA,NA,NA,"Even before his debut album was finished, Justin Vernon was hard at work debunking the image that threatened to overshadow the genre-bounding music he was making. But even with his fondness for Auto-Tune, his collaborations with multi-hyphenate collectives like Gayngs and Volcano Choir, and his admittance into Kanye West's exclusive creative coterie, introducing his long-awaited follow-up with a track like ""Perth"" turned more than a few heads. Bon Iver's music has never lacked grand gestures, but they've rarely been made so overtly, with the martial drum roll that's featured throughout the track crashing into some purposeful guitar downstrokes to create the sort of epic maelstrom that's rarely been heard outside of a late-period Talk Talk album. But despite the big-budget pyrotechnics, Vernon still makes this song (and the album it's from) sound as intimate as a man playing a solitary guitar to an audience of one. --David Raposa",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65fe0c2bba1b7de0564a/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/a2ee79c8-e485-41b0-8154-b114dfb9b1b1
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,62,Liturgy,"""Generation""",Thrill Jockey,"There's a circus-act quality to ""Generation"". How long can Liturgy keep hammering at this high-speed cycle of riffs and beats before their eyes dilate and their arms and legs turn to mush? It's a feat similar to those in high-concentration minimalist loops like Steve Reich's ""Drumming"" or Rhys Chatham's ""Guitar Trio"". Trying to dissect what the band's doing while it's happening is like trying to fix a roller coaster while you're riding it. The fact that the riffs are so heavily metallic makes the song even more dizzying-- it's like sticking some great metal records in a blender, which is why it's also so similar to math-rock. As the clanging chords fly by, you might think you've heard all these sounds before, but you've never heard them this way. --Marc Masters",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Liturgy%20-%20Generation.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65fe5e6ef95969327bc2/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Liturgy-Generation.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,61,Eleanor Friedberger,"""My Mistakes""",Merge,"Eleanor Friedberger is a one-of-a-kind vocalist. She invented a new kind of phrasing, a blocky, percussive way of spitting lyrics that lets you know it's her before she's finished with the first syllable. ""My Mistakes"", a tune that mostly moves between two basic chords, turns out to be the ideal backdrop for her quirky diction. The ultra-simple and catchy structure grounds it and gives her opening to wild out on the melody, and she takes full advantage of it, breaking thoughts over multiple lines and stanzas (""I wore the same outfit on the day the Hasid followed me in his car along Park/ Not Avenue/ But the one in Brooklyn"") without worrying where they will land. Great lines pile up (""I do my best thinking when I'm flying down the bridge,"" ""He's ignoring me like it's 2001,"" ""In tube top and shorts that Vice called 'pull-me-down; she's got kind of a native vibe' before that was so cool""), there's a ringtone-ready keyboard riff, and the shuffling beat feels like an invitation to do a goofball dance in place. All that and a great saxophone break-- can't ask for much more from a guitar pop song. --Mark Richardson",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Eleanor%20Friedberger%20-%20My%20Mistakes.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65ffeb335119a49f1bbd/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Eleanor_Friedberger-My_Mistakes.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,60,Adele,"""Someone Like You""",Columbia/XL,"""Someone Like You"" straddled an interesting line in 2011. It's one of the biggest selling songs from the year's most commercially successful record, yet something about it feels intensely private, too. It's not a song to share with other people perhaps, but instead a song that taps into a potent wellspring of feelings that reside deep inside everybody. Its ubiquity this year also ensured that wherever you were-- on a bus, shopping for groceries, in a taxi-- this song was waiting right around the corner. It brought back memories, like a familiar whiff of perfume, the taste of certain meal, or the sound of a name, and as a break-up song, it felt definitive. --Hari Ashurst",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c65ffd7a71d1ea569d05e/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Adele-Someone_Like_You.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,59,"Mr. Muthafuckin' eXquire [ft. Despot, Das Racist, Danny Brown, and El-P]","""The Last Huzzah! (Remix)""",Mishka,"If you can measure a posse cut's merit by its number of quotables, Craig Mack's ""Flava in Ya Ear Remix"" was basically the boom-bap Bartlett's. ""The Last Huzzah! (Remix)"" is that robotic George Jetson futuristic shit come to life. Hip-hop for the ""meta"" era, inter-textual and absurd as an episode of Community. The video gently parodies the Puffy-led cut, with ""Bad Boy"" chants substituted for those of eXquire hollering ""Breast Milk, you made my day."" Despot weighs Lucky Charms on a scale and flings cereal aimlessly. A back-up dancer in a cop uniform lazily writhes like she got lost on the way to a Robert Palmer video shoot. Kool A.D. is ""translating Don Killuminati into Spanish"" and is ""Immortal Technique"" #obnoxious. Heems is ""the worst rapper on the track, third coolest."" Danny Brown jaws at competitors, his rhyme style highly evolved beyond the bob and weave jabs of '94. His jokes are practically hyperlinked. El-P essentially invented snarling skeptic rap, so he's in perfect stride, snapping about jangled numerologies and political references to the black smoke of riot-scarred London. While eXquire closes like Busta, grabbing a chunk of belly and bragging that he still ""takes his shirt off like Nelly."" This is how you do things when you want to be around next year. --Jeff Weiss",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Mr._Muthafuckin_eXquire_-_HuzzahRemix_ft._Despot_Das_Racist_Danny_Brown_and_El-P.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c66005e6ef95969327bc6/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Mr_Muthafuckin_eXquire_ft_Despot_Das_Racist_Danny_Brown_and_El-P-The_Last_Huzzah_Remix.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,58,PJ Harvey,"""The Words That Maketh Murder""",Island Def Jam/Vagrant,"Polly Jean Harvey is playing Cassandra here, a mad prophetess whose forced jollity keeps leaping up into hysteria. She's bearing witness to the atrocities of war, singing in a shellshocked tone, thinking in circles that keep looping back to a few images of horror (""soldiers fell like lumps of meat""). For a while, she can't break away from a single pealing riff, even when the song's logic demands it. And when she does, she's joined by a chorus of strapping-sounding men, repeating their chants in lockstep. (Great line: ""I've seen a corporal whose nerves were shot,"" evidently from lower-ranking soldiers being more corporeally shot.) Harvey and the guys spend the final minute of the song repeating ""what if I take my problem to the United Nations""; that's a variation on a line from Eddie Cochran's much-covered rockabilly rant about youthful political impotence, ""Summertime Blues"". It's a way of saying: I can't do anything. Rock can't do anything. The United Nations can't do anything. And teenage boys are going to keep being made to slaughter each other. --Douglas Wolk",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c66000c2bba1b7de0564e/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/PJ_Harvey-The_Words_That_Maketh_Murder.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,57,The Weeknd,"""House of Balloons""",self-released,"This late in the year, after a mostly forgotten second mixtape and Drake's album and an apparent co-sign for the dubious rap career of one heir to the Tommy Hilfiger fortune, it can be easy to forget just how thrillingly out of nowhere a song like ""House of Balloons"" felt during the Weeknd's cryptic initial campaign. Not because Abel Tesfaye was among the first to cross-pollinate hazy indie sensibilities with R&B, but because of how all-consuming (to the point of suffocation) House of Balloons' voice and style and sense of mood could be. Its title track offered inroads via its wholesale Siouxsie and the Banshee's swipe-- the original ""Happy House"" guitar line slowed down to just a slightly more torturous crawl-- but even committed fans of R&B heard something unique here: a persuasive voice, a perfectly unlikeable persona, a distinctive hand with production. The track is Tesfaye at his best, emoting in an androgynous falsetto one minute, muttering unbelievable curses the next. It's messy, conflicted, and full of promise. --Eric Grandy",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c660113d197565214006e/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Weeknd-House_of_Balloons.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,56,M83 [ft. Zola Jesus],"""Intro""",Mute,"M83 have been opening their shows with this one, and it's possible that there will never be a suitable replacement for the rest of the project's existence. The first hit of whispers and oscillating synths on ""Intro"" are announcement enough for any momentous event, Anthony Gonzalez's impassioned howls are wind-tunnel strong, and the vocal turn by Zola Jesus' Nika Roza Danilova stirs up some real meteorological mischief, showing how well she does Big in a year where Small seemed to be her own band's M.O. As with many songs on Hurry Up, We're Dreaming, most of ""Intro""'s lyrics are unintelligible-- with M83, it's all about feeling, anyway-- but one particular phrase stands out: ""Carry on."" Will do. --Larry Fitzmaurice",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c66010c2bba1b7de05650/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/M83_ft_Zola_Jesus-Intro.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,55,Destroyer,"""Chinatown""",Merge,"The 1980s have been fertile territory for so many young indie bands in recent years, but few have scoured darker corners than Destroyer, whose ninth record lays claim to critically devalued soft-pop from the early years of that decade. From the peculiar fade-in and drum clicks of opener ""Chinatown"", it's clear Dan Bejar's intent isn't simply nostalgic: the song doesn't merely revisit the period (3 a.m. in 1981) or the place (any empty midtown Manhattan street), but transforms hoary conventions into a palette for early-2000s experimentation. ""Chinatown"" bustles with smears of distorted trumpet and pleading saxophone, jostling against clockwork synths and a rigid drumbeat. Bejar presides over it all with an especially conspiratorial vocal, turning the refrain (""I can't walk away, you can't walk away"") into a special contract between artist and audience. On first listen, it can be a disorienting experience, but the immediately immersive ""Chinatown"" simply asks you to erase any preconceptions you might have about Destroyer-- or about the early 80s, or about saxophones-- and give this precisely evoked world a chance to surprise and seduce you. --Stephen Deusner",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6602c0084474cd0c781b/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Destroyer-Chinatown.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,54,Jamie xx / Gil Scott-Heron,"""I'll Take Care of U""",XL/Young Turks,"It'd be a misnomer to call Gil Scott-Heron's exceptional 2010 release, I'm New Here, a ""comeback""-- the word implies a certain celebratory vigor, whereas I'm New Here's weighty industrialized blues yielded vividly grim dispatches from a hard life that wasn't getting any easier. So Jamie xx's remix project We're New Here represented something more than just a ploy to repackage the work of a hip-hop godfather for a new generation of hipsters; it was an opportunity to recontextualize the long-suffering Scott-Heron's words in more forgiving conditions, a mission that took on added resonance when he passed away three months after the project's release. In this light, the deep-house redux of ""I'll Take Care of U"" functions both as the album's emotional climax and a farewell address from Scott-Heron, its silken piano line and incessant throb undercut by a melancholic guitar refrain that provides the album's most pertinent sonic connection to Smith's day job. In its original form, Scott-Heron's version of Brook Benton's ""I'll Take Care of You"" was a bittersweet pledge of commitment from a man whose troubled life often left him without the means or wherewithal to provide. But thanks to Smith's efforts-- and, in particular, his reuse of this track on one of the biggest hip-hop albums of the year-- we can hope Scott-Heron's loved ones will indeed be taken care of. --Stuart Berman",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c660313d1975652140072/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Jamie_xx__Gil_Scott-Heron-Ill_Take_Care_of_U.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,53,Real Estate,"""Green Aisles""",Domino,"""Green Aisles"" slipped out just ahead of the release of Days, serving as an early signpost of the new maturity in Real Estate's work. There's an autumnal feel to much of their material, but nowhere more so than on this track. It's all crushed brown leaves crinkling underfoot and collars being pulled up in the face of brisk winds. That it surfaced toward the end of September was a masterstroke of marketing. But it's unlikely that the unassuming members of Real Estate care much for that-- this is the archetypal group just out there doing their thing, with little care for the whims of the industry. ""Green Aisles"" is their most nostalgic song to date, perfectly nailing the feeling of looking back to youthful excesses without regret. Everything delicately falls into place around singer Martin Courtney's small-town reminisces, including one of the most tasteful guitar non-solos heard all year. That's one of Real Estate's greatest assets-- their sense of creating space by knowing exactly when not to play, helping songs like this to feel like a refreshing gulp of air. --Nick Neyland",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6604c0084474cd0c781d/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Real_Estate-Green_Aisles.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,52,Action Bronson,"""Larry Csonka""",Fine Fabric Delegates,"It came to my attention in 2011 that a disturbingly large number of people don't even know who fucking Larry Csonka is. Unfortunately for them, the Action Bronson song of the same name didn't provide any clues. Csonka, the bruising Miami Dolphins fullback with the Burt Reynolds mustache and that weird cyclops facemask, doesn't even appear until the last line of this song, and for no real reason other than it's fun as hell to say his name. While the footballer in question had a reputation as tough guy in the 1970s, the Queens-bred rapper evoking him comes over like a lovable goofball. Action Bronson is far more convincing when talking about food (cracked pepper, handmade crust, prosciutto, and olives from Tunisia all make an appearance here) and weed than he is about about kicking ass or picking up women. But he knows how to laugh at himself (he takes a break mid-song because he's ""straight out of surgery"") and the staccato horn-punch beat gives him room to spread his undeniably derivative (hard not to hear Ghostface, especially when he says ""style"") but exceedingly likable flow. --Mark Richardson",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c66040c2bba1b7de05656/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Action_Bronson-Larry_Csonka.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,51,Todd Terje,"""Snooze 4 Love""",Running Back,"I recently noticed that the running time of the mp3 of Todd Terje's ""Snooze 4 Love"" in my iTunes is 8:08. Surely the reference wasn't intentional, but the happy accident nonetheless highlights what makes the Norwegian space-disco wonder's touch so special. His work's filled with surprises that take a while to sink in. Ace single ""Snooze 4 Love"" is a steam-operated study in the power of addition and subtraction-- some pronounced bass here, a hypnotic synth riff there, now here comes a time-stands-still break. The key to it all is his patience. Terje is always willing to take the the scenic route, and ""Snooze 4 Love"" is one of his most deliciously rewarding journeys. --Larry Fitzmaurice",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c66055e6ef95969327bcf/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Todd_Terje-Snooze_4_Love.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,50,Atlas Sound,"""Mona Lisa""",4AD,"""Mona Lisa"" is the tranquil center of Parallax, an album otherwise focused on expressions of profound disconnection and unrequited longing. The lyrics are as ambiguous as the smile in its namesake painting, but the music is jangling folk-rock bliss, echoing the understated harmonic complexity of early R.E.M. and the spacey strum of George Harrison's ""My Sweet Lord"". It may be the most overtly pop song of Bradford Cox's career thus far, but he can't help but to spike its mellow vibes with foreboding. Since so many of Cox's songs deal with anxieties about vulnerability and passivity, his phrasing on the song's bridge-- ""your baby's sleeping, sleeping""-- makes him sound vaguely concerned for that baby's safety. For now, though, the panic is only fleeting. --Matthew Perpetua",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c66050c2bba1b7de05658/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Atlas_Sound-Mona_Lisa.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,49,Katy B,"""Broken Record""",Columbia/Rinse,"Few artists of this or any other year have managed to marry dance music's avant-garde to pure pop propulsion the way Katy B did in 2011. Over producers Geeneus & Zinc's swift, changeable beat-- flitting confidently between the dynamism of UK funky and the clatter of drum'n'bass-- she chops through the urban jungle of ""Broken Record"" with a lithe confidence that makes most American popsters' recent dubstep turns seem demure. Caught between sweet dream and a beautiful nightmare, the words of a would-be paramour leave her sleepless, gloriously conflicted; Katy seems to spend ""Broken Record"" sorting out the contents of her own head, her stiff-lipped delivery on the verses gives way to a desperation on the bridge, turning just a touch unhinged on that circuital cry of a chorus. ""You're holding every breath I take,"" she sings, and it's one of those lines that means nothing outside the song but absolutely everything in it. A lesser singer might get swallowed up amidst the bob and weave of ""Broken Record,"" but here as elsewhere, she's charting a course all her own, dodging bass wobble, hurdling a swarm of snares. --Paul Thompson",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6605c0084474cd0c781f/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Katy_B-Broken_Record.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,48,Kreayshawn,"""Gucci Gucci""",Columbia,"It's been seven months since we first heard Kreayshawn's divisive breakout track, but YouTube commenters are still grappling over its door-kicking video. Some choice quotes from the last 10 minutes alone: ""Ok i was able to watch 3:11 of a white girl rly trying to be something she isnt what do I win,"" and ""I know this is shit, yet I'm incredibly drawn to it..."" The debate rages on for good reason. Kreayshawn's grand entrance is both a face-to-palm sociological mindfuck and a hunk of youthful and infectious DIY pop-rap perfection, the pinnacle of what purists might insist on writing off as guilty pleasure. But memes matter, so whether you're scoffing or grinning, there's no denying that ""Gucci Gucci"" and its ensuing mayhem (27 million YouTube views, a record deal said to be worth a million dollars, unending streams of thinkpieces and GIF-based fan Tumblrs) is one of the least boring things that happened in music all year. And for that, even the most stalwart naysayers owe Kreayshawn a little love. --Carrie Battan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6606c0084474cd0c7821/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Kreayshawn-Gucci_Gucci.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,47,Battles [ft. Matias Aguayo],"""Ice Cream""",Warp,"In the video for ""Ice Cream"", when Ian Williams first plays that carnival-ready riff on his odd-angled keyboard, there's a cocky look on his face, like he found something so great he just has to brag about it. You can't blame him. His pumping chords are definitely killer, cutting through the song's swirl of spastic drums, reflecting guitars, and echoing vocals from guest Matias Aguayo. And since the keyboard part is so sturdy, the rest of the band can basically jam around it, creating a joyous mix that sounds sharp and free in equal measure. In this band's hands, a few choppy chords can be the seeds of an ever-sprouting tune. --Marc Masters",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6607eb335119a49f1bc3/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Battles_ft_Matias_Aguayo-Ice_Cream.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,46,Ty Segall,"""Goodbye Bread""",Drag City,"Monday is definitely the least punk rock day we've got, which explains why even Ty Segall, perhaps the reigning king of the garage, sounds subdued and defeated on this anthem for the start of the workweek. The wild animal of last year's ""Girlfriend"" has been tamed, forced to wash his hair and wear a suit, as the song creeps along at a plodding tempo and only allows time for one brief fuzz-pedal solo at lunch break. Peeling back the distortion is always a risky move for anyone who made his name at full throttle, but ""Goodbye Bread"" confirms that Segall cleans up nicely, with a surprisingly capable upper register and a melodic gift that remains intact even under the unforgiving glare of naked production. As the initial noisy blast of the San Francisco garage-psych scene starts to fade, bands will have to prove they're capable of surviving without constantly needling the red. Here, Segall shows he's comfortable even with the volume knob a few clicks to the left. --Rob Mitchum",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c660713d1975652140074/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Ty_Segall-Goodbye_Bread.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,NA,NA,NA,NA,"Bombast hasn't always fit Drake comfortably. On ""Over"", the lead-up single to last year's Thank Me Later, he dropped fame-weary, grocery-bagged braggadocio over a Frankenstein fusion of orchestral bluster and slick head-knock. That was then, though. Drake's grown a bit, so on ""Headlines"", the attitude's more modest and subdued. Greatly utilizing his trademark sing-song vocal style, he cycles through thought after fresh thought, allowing us to eavesdrop on his unfiltered inner monologue. All sides of Toronto's boy-ish wonder are showcased here: the egotist, the regretful/regrettable lothario, the goofy punchline kid, the eager-to-impress self-doubter. It goes over Boi-1da/Noah ""40"" Shebib's team-up beat, a punchy build-up with tantalizingly little actual payoff, which makes sense since ""Headlines"" is about promising what's to come, while questioning whether all that great shit will ever really arrive. --Larry Fitzmaurice",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6608c0084474cd0c7823/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/0fac3ccb-0994-4d8c-863b-70f40ee44e9c
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,44,Nicolas Jaar,"""Space Is Only Noise If You Can See""",Circus Company,"Nicolas Jaar may run his own label, come aggressively hyped in certain dance music circles, and enjoy a bohemian Chilean background that leaves him only one degree of separation from homegrown techno god Ricardo Villalobos, but you sure wouldn't know it from ""Space Is Only Noise If You Can See"". With its squelching bassline and dada stonerisms, the title track from Jaar's pleasingly confounding breakout LP sounds like the work of someone more familiar with names like Falco, Taco, and Yazoo than Hawtin, Voigt, and Mills. ""Grab a calculator and fix yourself,"" he advises in deadpan, while unleashing a garden variety of wet reverbs and sawtooth filters on an otherwise minimal groove. For a record so lauded by serious techno nerds, Space Is Only Noise was not without its kitschy and oddball detours, and none was more memorable than this. --Mark Pytlik",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c66085e6ef95969327bd1/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Nicolas_Jaar-Space_Is_Only_Noise_If_You_Can_See.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,43,Panda Bear,"""Last Night at the Jetty""",Paw Tracks,"I imagine ""Last Night at the Jetty"" is what doo-wop would sound like if sung by monks: It's got doo-wop's drifting rhythms and yearning melodies, but immediacy has been replaced by something lonely, meditative, and almost processional. Doo-wop ballads were designed for nostalgia: friends say goodnight, lovers leave, we lose something and mourn the time we had it. A lot of the music we covered this year invoked the 1950s in ways that were more deliberate-- Girls, Dirty Beaches, and Lana Del Rey, for starters. Noah Lennox is not the pompadour type. Instead of building his world out from a specific reference, he takes the reference, strips it back to its essence, and covers it with the tumbling synthesizers and limitless reverb that make his music what it is: The sound of simplicity nudged toward sacredness. --Mike Powell",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Panda%20Bear%20-%20Last%20Night%20At%20The%20Jetty.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6609eb335119a49f1bc5/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Panda_Bear-Last_Night_at_the_Jetty.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,42,Jay-Z / Kanye West,"""Otis""",Roc-a-Fella/Island Def Jam,"The moral that Kanye and Jay-Z extracted here from Otis Redding's ""Try a Little Tenderness"" has little to do with the content of that classic, the singer's musical legacy, or anything else of consequence-- it basically boils down to, ""Wow, I'm rich."" It's called ""Otis"" to make sure everyone recognizes the expensive sample, which is played for a minute at the beginning, before being sliced down to one gruff, pouncing cut, and drowned in gloss. The duo fashions a cosmopolitan Candyland, a place where it's somehow possible to ride in multiple vehicles at once and where you count your passports at the Mercer Hotel while sipping complimentary champagne. ""Sophisticated ignorance"" is touted as Kanye takes a moment to secure his own soul. Then, for no reason mere mortals can discern, Jay heads to Cuba to smoke a cigar with Castro. In wealth-conscious 2011, it was hard to ethically justify this Robin Leach shtick, but the irresistible panache and merry absurdity with which it came across made me feel like Ye when he found out about blood diamonds: How can something so wrong make me feel so right? --Brian Howe",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c66095e6ef95969327bd3/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Jay-Z__Kanye_West-Otis.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,41,Frank Ocean,"""Novacane""",self-released,"For a song that goes a long way in trying to establish a dispassionate distance, ""Novacane"" is seriously obsessed with scene-setting details. And it's not just that Frank Ocean notes the ""cocaine for breakfast"" (yikes) or the Coachella chick that's paying for her dentistry degree by doing porn, but that he does so with a bemused detachment that's not really all that detached. He might be fronting like the Drakes and post-808s Kanyes of the world, but there's too much self-effacement happening for Ocean not to realize the inherent humor in his own drama. If Ocean really is on that visionary Kubrick shit like he claims, then ""Novacane"" could very well be his Dr. Strangelove. --David Raposa",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c660beb335119a49f1bc7/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Frank_Ocean-Novacane.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,40,Burial,"""Street Halo""",Hyperdub,"""I love [club] music, but I can't make that sort of stuff,"" said Burial in a 2009 FACT interview. ""But I can try and make the afterglow of that music."" With its non-syncopated gulps of bass, head-down pulse, and smeared subs, ""Street Halo"" is the closest Burial has come to trading his characteristic afterglow for straight-up glow. The track's roiling heaves are all but ready to boom alongside house, techno, whatever. Granted, this is still a Burial tune. Which means grit instead of gloss, vinyl cracks in place of space, loneliness more than collective ecstasy. There's that wood block knock again. And those distant vocals that signal an event that's already occurred rather than the here-and-now. While pioneering electronic acts are often known for their fickleness and addiction to innovation, it's become increasingly clear that Burial is more than happy to stay in his lane, slowly adding new bits and bobs along the way. Thanks to a release strategy that puts quality over quantity and a looseness that speaks soul to power, this single-minded path isn't repetitive as much as comforting in its reliability. --Ryan Dombal",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c660b0c2bba1b7de0565a/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Burial-Street_Halo.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,39,Shabazz Palaces,"""Swerve... the reeping of all that is worthwhile (Noir not withstanding)""",Sub Pop,"""Black is you, black is me, black is us, black is free,"" Ishmael Butler chants for an interstitial minute at the end of ""Swerve..."", a highlight from his excellent Black Up LP. A lyrical reference to the Herbie Hancock-sampling Digable Planets track ""Escapism (Gettin' Free)"", this is one of the very few moments where the ex-DP rapper nods explicitly toward his early-90s backpack roots. Repeatedly listen to ""Swerve"" and ""Escapism"" in succession, and you'll begin to notice more common threads; the cadence of the verses and the timing of the beats are strikingly similar. Both exude the same groove. In refusing to speak openly about what makes Shabazz Palaces tick, Butler invites us to listen carefully and lets the music speak for itself, spinning hidden histories all the while. --Carrie Battan",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Shabazz%20Palaces%20-%20%20Swerve...%20The%20Reeping%20of%20All%20That%20Is%20Worthwhile%20%28Noir%20Not%20Withstanding%29.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c660bc0084474cd0c7825/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Shabazz_Palaces-Swerve_the_reeping_of_all_that_is_worthwhile_Noir_not_withstanding.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,38,Purity Ring,"""Ungirthed""",self-released,"Canadian electro-pop duo Purity Ring were one of several 2011 acts to gain blog-wide notice on the strength of just a couple of songs. Such attention can act as a springboard, or it can cripple. Yet each time I revisit ""Ungirthed"", I grow more eager to hear the duo's first full-length, and increasingly grateful that the torrent of hype hasn't diminished the power of anything they've done so far. The song is filled with contemporary elements that typically make for cold, alienating songs-- an MPC stutter; deep, echoing background vocals; lyrical references to teeth, knuckles, and piles of bones; hints of dubstep wobble. Still, the thrust of this song is warm, immediately accessible electro-pop confection, largely because Megan James' girlish vocals are airtight and sit high in the mix. It's an alluring contrast, one that's been able to keep them on the promising end of the internet speculation spectrum heading into 2012. --Carrie Battan",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Purity%20Ring%20-%20Ungirthed.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c660ceb335119a49f1bc9/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Purity_Ring-Ungirthed.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,37,A$AP Rocky,"""Peso""",RCA/Polo Grounds,"On the surface, the phrase ""internet rapper"" is an easy way to slam social-media-savvy, 2.0-driven MCs who don't have a presence in the brick-and-mortar world. But A$AP Rocky has proven to be a symptom of a web-borne phenomenon in a more important way: Just as it's no longer a big deal to have breezy conversations with people in other hemispheres, adherence to a regional musical style is no longer a given. Sonically defining himself by Southern/Midwestern hip-hop rather than the sounds of his NYC homebase is a ballsy maneuver, especially when he redraws the map with ""Peso""'s opening line: ""I be that pretty motherfucker/ Harlem is what I'm reppin,'"" drawled over a twinkling syrup-swoon throb. But beneath the borderline-minimalist simplicity is the hospitable arrogance of an artist so comfortable in his element that Who beats Where a hundred times over. --Nate Patrin",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c660dd7a71d1ea569d062/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/AAP_Rocky-Peso.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,36,Jamie xx,"""Far Nearer""",Numbers,"No one expected maximalism from Jamie Smith-- his beatwork for the xx is basically indie rock cast into black lace-- but the bright, winding grooves of solo track ""Far Nearer"" realign our expectations for his capabilities. In three short years, he has shown not just fantastic taste but enviable range, too. Steel drums are this song's predominant element, recalling the warm-climes blissouts of John Talabot and the wannabe-warm-climes blissouts of the Tough Alliance. The drums are bright and airy enough to lift the underlying electric pianos out of their minor-key ghetto. And the positive-vibe momentum is such that the main, tuned-up vocal sample never settles into default bluesy bluster-- imagine dubstep's rhythms being air-lifted out of London by brightly colored animal balloons. --Andrew Gaerig",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c660d5e6ef95969327bd5/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Jamie_xx-Far_Nearer.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,35,Charli XCX,"""Stay Away""",This Is Music,"As far as gloom-popper Charli XCX's ""Stay Away"" is concerned, love isn't just a battlefield -- it's all-out nuclear war. Percussive hits take on the drama of bombs in slow motion as the UK teen utters every line like a dying breath, making the track's mood feel positively apocalyptic. Charli's performance sounds wizened beyond her years (""Never learn/ Never learn/ Never learn"" she chastises herself), but she also captures that eternally youthful feeling of heartbreak-as-catastrophe. Thanks to luscious, 80s-flecked production courtesy of increasingly go-to producer Ariel Rechtshaid (Glasser, Cass McCombs), the song amounts to much more than a collage of retro-chic signifiers. ""Stay Away"" creates its own devoutly anguished emotional universe, one that leaves us forever grateful that Charli's crush didn't heed her titular request. --Lindsay Zoladz",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c660dd7a71d1ea569d064/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Charli_XCX-Stay_Away.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,34,Cut Copy,"""Need You Now""",Modular,"At this year's Pitchfork Music Festival, there was a moment in Cut Copy's set when the band invited the whole crowd to ""go crazy""-- pretty obligatory festival fare. But what was less-than-typical was the astronomical level of the crowd's exploding reaction. It was kind of overwhelming if you were caught in the middle, and demonstrative of exactly the kind of feeling that Cut Copy specialize in: the weightless uplift, the rush of euphoria, all effortlessly rising out of their currents of cool, gently gliding Balearic pop. And no song from Zonoscope did that upward mood shift better than ""Need You Now"". Six minutes long, it doesn't really open up until it nears the five minute mark, when singer Dan Whitford ratchets his alternately deep and sighing voice and a drum machine roll leads into synths flashing all over each other like so many rave lights. It's a moment worth waiting-- and going crazy-- for. --Eric Grandy",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c660eeb335119a49f1bcb/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Cut_Copy-Need_You_Now.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,33,AraabMuzik,"""Streetz Tonight""",Duke,"It's just an edit, really. The Dipset-affiliated producer simply loads up his MPC with a prog-house track from three years ago (Adam K & Soha's remix of Kaskade's ""4 AM""), fiddles with the pitch a little, shifts the breakdowns, underpins it with his own snares, and comes out with something approximating an anthemic take on neo-hip-house. Seems easy enough-- so why is it so transcendent? There's a vivid shift when the peak-and-peak-and-peak dynamics of arena trance are retrofitted to adhere to the more consistently emphatic structure of a hip-hop instrumental. And while the way ""Streetz Tonight"" snaps from yearning slow-glide fluorescence to strobe-light euphoria is a good jolt, the way it switches back is what really hits. All the pressure and melancholy hidden beneath the surface closes in and reforms into something transfixing. AraabMuzik could toy with those dynamics forever, but he doesn't: The song wraps up by slickly segueing into the Jam & Spoon sugar buzz of ""Golden Touch"", and the abrupt silence that hits after this last moment of exhilarated high acts as its own emotional exclamation point. --Nate Patrin",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c660ec0084474cd0c7829/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/AraabMuzik-Streetz_Tonight.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,32,Cold Cave,"""The Great Pan Is Dead""",Matador,"""This song,"" wrote Cold Cave frontman Wesley Eisold on the band's Tumblr, ""is about magic, preservation, youth, and movement."" It's also about being smacked in the face by a brick made of crushed Big Country CDs. The same hyper-compression that made their Cherish The Light Years album exhausting as a unit made Cold Cave's music exultant in smaller doses-- drum machines and keyboards hammering at heart-attack speeds, making this song surge and flex while Eisold battles to ride it out. A bunch of acts, from the Horrors to M83, drew from widescreen 80s pop in 2011, but nobody channeled its absurd, romantic sense of mission as well as Cold Cave did here. Eisold's unstoppable ""I WILL come running,"" shouted into the teeth of his music's storm, is only the most joyous moment in a song that's as unashamedly huge and heroic as possible. --Tom Ewing",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c660f5e6ef95969327bd7/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Cold_Cave-The_Great_Pan_Is_Dead.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,31,The Field,"""Then It's White""",Kompakt,"The name of the Field's third album, Looping State of Mind, might be a sign that producer Axel Willner realizes he's known for a specific kind of trick. But ""Then It's White"" doesn't really fit the pattern. Even in a discography that's definitely not lacking for haunting or meditative moments, ""White"" is especially notable for how soothing and inviting it is. The track unfolds in a gradual, naturalistic fashion across eight minutes, elegant piano gliding into minimal drums gliding into panning voices. It's music for people who find the sound of clattering airport boards too jarring, and offers listeners the type of comedown they never realized they needed. --David Raposa",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/The_Field_-_Then_Its_White.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c660fc0084474cd0c782b/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Field-Then_Its_White.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,30,Clams Casino,"""Motivation""",self-released,"Listen to New Jersey hip-hop producer Clams Casino's ""Motivation"", with its disembodied moans and craggy atmospheres, and you might envision an extremely fertile, smoked-out cipher taking place in some abandoned funhouse. It's evocative. The beat was originally heard backing up an impassioned Lil B but, on its own, ""Motivation"" takes on new life, its giant drums and cymbal spikes crushing down unencumbered. Though it sounds like an especially welcoming invitation for any rapper, this instrumental tells its bombastically somber tale perfectly well without accompaniment. --Zach Kelly",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Clams%20Casino%20-%20Motivation.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6610eb335119a49f1bcd/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Clams_Casino-Motivation.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,29,Jai Paul,"""BTSTU (Edit)""",XL,"""Don't fuck with me,"" warns Londoner Jai Paul at the top of his breakout track. On paper, it sounds pretty tough. On record, though, Paul sings the line in a fragile falsetto that makes Chris Martin seem downright manly in comparison. The juxtaposition between message and delivery was intriguing enough for Drake to sample on his internet track ""Dreams Money Can Buy"". Soon after, Beyoncé also took a snippet of ""BTSTU"" for her song ""End of Time"". Meanwhile, all sorts of dancers-- hip-hop, experimental, hilariously amateur-- have uploaded ""BTSTU"" routines on YouTube. A lot of people, it seems, are fucking with this guy. After originally gaining notice as a demo in 2010-- so long ago that we once linked to it on something called MySpace-- ""BTSTU"" was granted official release by XL in April. Anticipation is high for Paul's forthcoming LP, and it's all based on this song, an off-kilter pop tune that's automatically raw, bright, new. The palm-slap beat is a little dirty and drunk as it recalls the unmistakable lope of one J Dilla. Video game sounds bloop about before horns come in and fade out entirely too soon. Though he has yet to offer any sort of follow-up, this song's hook could explain his absence: ""I know I've been gone a long time, but I'm back and I want what is mine."" It'd be foolish to doubt him. --Ryan Dombal",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Jai%20Paul%20-%20BTSTU.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c66100c2bba1b7de05660/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Jai_Paul-BTSTU_Edit.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,28,Danny Brown,"""Monopoly""",Fool's Gold,"Even in a rap environment so accepting of weirdos and outsiders, 30-year-old Danny Brown still cuts an odd shape. His haircut would be at home at a Panic! at the Disco concert circa 2006, and his jeans, as is slowly becoming legend, are so tight that they allegedly cost him a deal with 50 Cent's G-Unit. But Brown has lived his whole life poor in Detroit, where bare truth pushes ""survival of the fittest"" beyond cliché. Despite his anti-masculinity, Brown still comes off as one of the hardest, baddest rap dudes in the game, and ""Monopoly"" is his hardest, baddest song. Squawking and growling over a beat that gurgles sub bass synths, Brown talks some high-grade shit, peppering his verses with hilarious insults as cutting as they are idiosyncratic. Like when he compares a record label to an overbearing pageant mom: ""Guess who's the little bitch? That's you."" --Jordan Sargent",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Danny%20Brown%20-%20Monopoly.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6612d7a71d1ea569d06a/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Danny_Brown-Monopoly.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,27,The Rapture,"""How Deep Is Your Love?""",DFA,"If you were nervous about the Rapture's comeback, well, you weren't alone. After their lukewarm third album, Pieces of the People We Love, the Brooklyn-based dance punks vanished into the major-label ether, rematerializing only at random intervals to treat audiences in Europe or Australia to an encore performance of ""House of Jealous Lovers"". And the new material that did leak out during the interim-- like ""No Sex For Ben"", squirreled away on the Grand Theft Auto IV soundtrack -- was not auspicious. But ""How Deep Is Your Love?"", the first single from In the Grace of Your Love, turned out to be a fine reintroduction, smoothing post-punk angst into gospel yearning. It's a song about grappling with loss-- not casual betrayal or bruised feelings, but a heavier adult loneliness. For the first time in ages, the band seemed confident that its music could be a vessel for something more profound than bumping and grinding, even if it still made you want to bump and grind. --Aaron Leitko",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6612eb335119a49f1bd1/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Rapture-How_Deep_Is_Your_Love.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,26,Beyoncé,"""1+1""",Columbia,"Following Beyoncé's work on ""1+1"" is like a journey to the center of her craft, a stripping away of every distraction until all that's left is her voice. Without it, ""1+1"" would be a muted ballad: Its simple guitar line and stardust-sprinkled strings serve no purpose other than to evoke a sense of familiar romantic intimacy, and then to elegantly step aside while Beyoncé delivers one of her most wonderfully impassioned performances ever. ""1+1"" possesses that slightly scary intensity that has been R&B's worst-kept secret weapon since Whitney Houston's ""I Have Nothing"", but it also demonstrates perfectly how Beyoncé stands apart from every other big-chested diva getting her Whitney on. She lets the song sing through her with a clarity that is never clinical, a strength that never sabotages, and an expressiveness that is precisely as sentimental as its subject matter requires. Beyoncé is R&B's field marshal, demanding of her listeners and herself an absolute fidelity to the music's emotional possibilities, with a perfectly modulated vehemence that is as captivating as it is tyrannical. ""Pull me in close and don't let me go,"" she commands, but here it's her own grasp that is thrillingly assured. --Tim Finney",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6613d7a71d1ea569d06c/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Beyonc-11.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,25,Soulja Boy,"""Zan With That Lean""",S.O.D. Money Gang,"Young star gets rich, grows up, and takes drugs: It's a showbiz story about as old as time, and in rap music right now, seemingly no young star is taking as many drugs as Soulja Boy. Weed, syrup, pills, and who knows what else are his muses, and this year he's found a woozy place where life seems perpetually submerged in a Styrofoam cup. The slow-mo re-work of ""Zan With That Lean"" gives you the full double-cup treatment, but it's on the original where Soulja finds bliss in pure pop. The song features him rattling off disconnected images from the life of a modern day Richie Rich in a delivery so carefree that he may have just stepped in the booth and rapped about what he did that afternoon. But it's the chorus, sung by underling Kwony Cash, that drops the laid-back pretense for outright exuberance, getting to the heart of what it must feel like to have more money than you know what to do with. When Cash sings, ""I keep the hammer on me/ I ain't worried 'bout a thing,"" his delivery lilts just a tad, and instead of coming off as an absurd display of misplaced testosterone, it feels like the truest expression of emotion from kids whose big decisions include which stores to hit up at Lenox Square Mall. --Jordan Sargent",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6613c0084474cd0c7831/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Soulja_Boy-Zan_With_That_Lean.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,24,Kurt Vile,"""Jesus Fever""",Matador,"Kurt Vile offers his fair share of dour material on Smoke Ring For My Halo, but ""Jesus Fever"" initially sounds like it's going to buck that trend. Sonically, it's probably the breeziest song on the album; the central riff is light and optimistic, and Vile's tone is vaguely hopeful. But alongside the freewheeling acoustic guitar, Kurt's singing about inevitability: No matter what, we're all going to go, and hey, maybe believing in something makes that a little easier to cope with. With lines like, ""If it wasn't taped you could escape this song, but I'm already gone,"" it's almost like he's addressing us from the grave. Heavy stuff. Fittingly, the ebullient melody makes that message a lot easier to face. --Evan Minsker",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c66145e6ef95969327bdf/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Kurt_Vile-Jesus_Fever.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,23,Adele,"""Rolling in the Deep""",Columbia/XL,"Few songs this year were as frequently, thoroughly, or enthusiastically slaughtered as ""Rolling in the Deep"". I heard it belted inexpertly from more passing car windows than I recall hearing ""And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going"" in 2006. Adele's voice has that effect-- a full-throated, window-rattling holler, rounded and creamy at the center, alluringly pock-marked at the edges, it is the kind of singing voice that bids you to join in before good sense intervenes. The kind of voice you listen to just to hear what it can do. But ""Rolling in the Deep"" isn't an empty exercise in vocal calisthenics, or some cheap singing-competition bait. From its thumping, elemental opening, where Adele growls some classic pop scorned-woman stuff (""don't underestimate the things that I will do"") through its wistful bridge, where she softens slightly amid some distinctly Carole King piano, to the howl of that chorus, the track is a songwriting master class in gathering drama. You caterwaul along to it because its payoff is so huge, so liberating. --Jayson Greene",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c66155e6ef95969327be1/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Adele-Rolling_in_the_Deep.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,22,Bill Callahan,"""Riding For the Feeling""",Drag City,"In his third decade of recording, Bill Callahan is in the prime of his career-- unless, as he's done for years, he just keeps getting better. For now, though, ""Riding For the Feeling"" establishes a new outline of why Callahan's best songs touch deeper and deeper nerves. Deceptively simple, ""Riding"" eschews complexity both musically and lyrically, with plain language and images and a band that circles around and sidles behind a languid acoustic guitar shuffle. The focus at first sits with his perfect baritone, handing out a common refrain on departures-- ""It's never easy to say goodbye""-- with patience as steady as the tune itself. With each successive verse, though, the scope of Callahan's concerns expands; he's restless not with a lover but with himself, his art, his audience, and his need to say something profound. And so he arrives at the title's mantra, an axiom of intentional ambiguity that he repeats almost playfully. After more than 20 years, Callahan's music still feels uncomfortably personal, as if writing and singing allow him to tease though his troubles on tape. --Grayson Currin",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6615c0084474cd0c7833/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Bill_Callahan-Riding_For_the_Feeling.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,NA,NA,NA,NA,"From the start, Aubrey Drake Graham has never confined himself to rapping. Before Toronto cohort the Weeknd was sampling Siouxsie and Beach House, Drake was crooning on Lykke Li remixes and trading verses with Bun B over Billy Joel's ""Uptown Girl"". Clearly, this guy was interested in something bigger than rap stardom-- or at the very least, something different. That's even before being Jewish, Canadian, and a former child actor enters the equation. Since he first broke, we've had no shortage of signs that Drake wants to be not just the Best Rapper Alive but the Best Pop Star Alive, or the Realest Pop Star Alive, or whatever-- and the pinnacle of Drake's exquisite weirdness so far is ""Marvins Room"". His decision to leak such a moody, downbeat track before the album's release rather than a more typical radio single was bold, and the fact that stations played it again and again anyway spoke to his current game-changing status. So, OK: ""Are you drunk right now?"" That's the voice on the other end of the phone, and it belongs to one woman Drake can't have. The answer, of course, is yes-- and how. Producer Noah ""40"" Shebib keeps the accompaniment low-key and otherworldly, with woozy tones and minimal beats better suited for late-night headphones listens than club blast-offs. Not that you'd want to go shouting these lyrics anyway, as Drake's confessional come-ons grow increasingly explicit and pathetic (""I hope no one heard that""). That it all ends with the sort of delicately pretty piano playing you used to be able to hear in fancy department stores is ridiculous, yet strangely appropriate. Though Kanye West was the first pop star to toast himself as a ""douchebag"" in song, Drake luxuriates in the role here-- and somehow makes it seem attractive. Self-loathing has rarely sounded so sublime. --Marc Hogan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6616eb335119a49f1bd7/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/a254a5b7-f028-4fdd-8fb9-fa731286ffff
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,20,Gang Gang Dance ,Glass Jar,4AD,"20. Gang Gang Dance: ""Glass Jar"" [4AD] Is this the peak of Gang Gang Dance's slow-burn evolution? All the elements of ""Glass Jar"" were present at various points on GGD's earlier records. Some of the sounds here first appeared in 2004, when the band dropped the far more unstable Revival of the Shittest, the kind of record that suggested a band on the verge of musical disintegration rather than any sort of longevity. (Listening to the spacey mix and smooth instrumental surfaces of ""Glass Jar"", it's almost hard to remember that GGD were correctly tagged as a noise act in their earliest days.) But those elements have never been combined in such an assured way and to such epic ends, moving from peak to peak so gracefully that you can't sense the seams, even though the track starts and finishes in two very different worlds. The song's free-form approach calls to mind the intros to improvised jazz records and the Boredoms' sun-chasing prog. The beatific keyboards draw equally from new age and 80s art-rock and deep house. The chintzy synth fanfares are gleaned from grime. Fake steel drums are swiped from a dancehall single. A motorik pulse keeps breaking into all sorts of ethnic percussion flourishes. The vocals suggest an anime pixie covering all your post-punk favorites. None of these pieces seem like they should fit together-- and eight years ago, GGD themselves probably wouldn't have found a way to meld them into 11 perpetually climaxing minutes. Wherever the pressure's coming from, bands are a lot less likely to experiment in public while sticking to what they love best the way this band has. ""Glass Jar"" may or may not turn out to be GGD's apex, but it's a testament to what can happen when a group feels free enough to develop at its own pace, audience expectations be damned. --Jess Harvell",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6616c0084474cd0c7835/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Gang_Gang_Dance_-Glass_Jar.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,19,Lana Del Rey ,Video Games,Stranger,"19. Lana Del Rey: ""Video Games"" [Stranger] Lana Del Rey is an extremely unlikely indie fave, but that's OK-- it doesn't look like the rest of the world knows what to do with her, either. It's not often that you come across a breakout artist who so thoroughly disguises her own level of awareness or intent. Listening to ""Video Games"" for the first time, hearing those chords paired with that voice, was a true WTF moment. Literally: ""What the fuck am I hearing right now? Who is this person and where did she come from?"" Among other things, ""Video Games"" is Del Rey's withering critique of the dehumanizing desires and stunted emotional capacities of men, and it would be powerful enough even if she were just momentarily putting on the guise of a tragic sex kitten in order to make her point. The fact that her overarching persona is more or less inextricable from that cartoonish bombshell, however, adds another fascinating, unnerving layer to the performance. The song's net effect was a mixture of that opening sense of mystery tempered with what we learned (or didn't learn) about a woman once known as Lizzy Grant. As a song, it should be too over-the-top to work-- the stereotypical tastefulness of the music, the breathiness of Del Rey's vocals, the utter sadness and desperation so blatantly present in the lyrics. But it clicks because she never winks, not even when the tape stops rolling and the cameras are turned off. --Josh Love",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6617eb335119a49f1bd9/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Lana_Del_Rey_-Video_Games.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,18,St. Vincent ,Cruel,4AD,"18. St. Vincent: ""Cruel"" [4AD] About a minute and a half into ""Cruel"", Annie Clark uncorks what might be the most demented mini-guitar solo of the year. It sounds positively alien, as if someone has physically cut the song open with a primitive tool and roughly inserted her playing inside of it. But despite the thick layer of knotty scuzz on the guitar and Clark's rubbery phrasing, the thing is shiny and neat enough to fit. Clark has always done ugly beautifully, but she one-ups herself on ""Cruel"", a song built around bloody clashes. Its main guitar fanfare is celebratory but brittle-- it could break if you leaned too hard on it. And she sounds almost joyful repeating the word ""cruel,"" building it into a whole chorus, stretching it out, bending it around the riff. Most impressively, she wrestles all these hard and soft components into a pretty breathtaking and actually sort of danceable pop song. It's a special talent, and one that Clark has made her signature. She makes it all sound so effortless that sometimes you have to listen for the strangeness in order to hear it. --Joe Tangari",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c66175e6ef95969327be5/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/St_Vincent_-Cruel.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,17,Oneohtrix Point Never ,Replica,Mexican Summer/Software,"In 2011, we spent a lot of time fishing coins from the well of childhood memory and worked hard to convince ourselves that they still glowed brightly. But on ""Replica"", Daniel Lopatin showed us the tarnished undersides of those coins. Absent the giddy sugar-rush of candy-colored nostalgia, he did it with sheer sonic craft cast in the mold of tragedy. ""Replica"" is a slow, new-age apocalypse anchored by a gracefully drooping piano figure, glistening on top but hollow underneath. The phrase never unfolds in quite the same way twice, but one thing about it is always roughly the same: It begins on a note of desperate hope and closes on a note of slumping despair. The drifting, repetitive, melancholy, cartoon imagery of its video attaches a substance to the tragic sensibility; memories of childhood that feel more like lost innocence than happy reverie. Lopatin, previously known for his sun-streaked synth arpeggios, has perfectly captured nostalgia's dusk. There are some things-- innocence high among them-- we just can't get back. Instead, we produce flawed copies, each a subtle deformation of the last, like a piano figure played over and over with a trembling hand. --Brian Howe",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6618eb335119a49f1bdb/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Oneohtrix_Point_Never_-Replica.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,16,"Tyler, the Creator ",Yonkers,XL,"16. Tyler, the Creator: ""Yonkers"" [XL] On ""Yonkers"", Tyler, the Creator's repellence and magnetism coexist in their purest forms, and the song somehow scans as daring pop music despite having no chorus and strong ties to some of the most abrasive indie rap of a decade prior. But we have to acknowledge the impact of its pitch perfect video, one of the few moments from this year that felt like a true, capital-E Event in hip-hop. It consummated an unholy union of sound and vision that heralded Tyler's introduction to the exo-Tumblr populace. You remember where you were when you first saw it. When I listen to ""Yonkers"", it really can be February 10, 2011 all over again. When Tyler spits, ""I'm a fucking walking paradox/ No, I'm not,"" I can forget the shitstorm of thinkpieces that Goblin inspired as well as the disappointment seemingly suffered by everyone except the 150,000 people who actually bought it. Hearing those creaking machine noises and that sickly bassline, I can forget Odd Future's Adult Swim version of Jackass and their own jackass behavior. As he signs off barking, ""Actions speak louder than words/ Let me try this shit,"" and swings from a noose, I can forget the stupendously unfunny ""Bitch Suck Dick"" and its equally lame video. And then ""Yonkers"" ends, and I'm back in the present once again, reminiscing on the last time Tyler, the Creator rose to the occasion, and hoping it really isn't the last time. --Ian Cohen",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c66195e6ef95969327be7/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Tyler_the_Creator_-Yonkers.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,15,The Weeknd ,The Morning,self-released,"On their two polished and carefully marketed releases this year, Toronto R&B enigmas the Weeknd-- singer Abel Tesfaye and producers Doc McKinney and Illangelo-- told stories about the most depraved kind of nightlife, parties you'd never want to attend. Participants were drug-addicted, morally defunct, sad, or some combination of the three. But while the content was bleak, the sounds were often gorgeous. Nowhere does that contrast come together better than ""The Morning"", the soaring centerpiece of their out-of-nowhere debut mixtape, House of Balloons. The song succeeds in part by fucking with your expectations of how R&B tracks usually function. The production is so large and rich-- whining guitars and sparkling synths hinting at a massive refrain-- that you expect the vocal to match it. Instead, Tesfaye sings softly, almost dejected. There's beauty and pain in the way his falsetto aches, but at the same time he's singing about ""pussy ass niggas"" and ""a house full of hoes."" When that chorus finally opens up, you expect redemption that never comes: ""All that money, the money is the motive,"" Tesfaye croons. Whether he's talking about himself or the people around him, it doesn't matter: Everyone at this party is compromised. --Joe Colly",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c66190c2bba1b7de0566e/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Weeknd_-The_Morning.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,14,Girls ,Vomit,True Panther,"14. Girls: ""Vomit"" [True Panther] The story here is straightforward enough. ""Nights I spend alone/ I spend 'em runnin' 'round lookin' for you, baby,"" Christopher Owens gargles, his voice cracked like dry skin stretched across an overworked knuckle. But ""Vomit"" is a proper romantic odyssey, with all attendant twists and disclosures, calamities and redemptions. Which is to say: It's not that simple. The song starts as a slow, desperate dirge, a sinister lope down a bleak city street. You can practically see the orange-red tip of Owens' lit cigarette, the way his hands are crammed in his jacket pockets, the yellow pallor his skin takes under a streetlight. There's the Lloyd Dobler, sad-sack archetype-- the heartbroken boy outside your window-- and then there's Owens, a more complicated suitor, nearly angry, possibly menacing, and at least as volatile as that craggy, psych-aping guitar. ""Looking for love"" is a noble mission, though, and as the song progresses through its six-and-a-half minutes, Owens becomes more knowable, and ""Vomit"" more anthemic-- a ""November Rain"" for listeners prone to long, lonely walks. Eventually, there's a rousing gospel choir, and an earnest imploration: ""Come into my heart,"" Owens begs. There's a bruised quality to all of Girls' best songs, and it's especially palpable on ""Vomit""-- even the title evokes a particular kind of desperation, a sense that your body is rejecting its circumstances. Find the person you love or risk turning yourself inside out. --Amanda Petrusich",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c661ac0084474cd0c783b/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Girls_-Vomit.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,13,tUnE-yArDs ,Bizness,4AD,"13. tUnE-yArDs: ""Bizness"" [4AD] As the first track released from this year's w h o k i l l, ""Bizness"" was a winning thesis statement, and for tUnE-yArDs' Merrill Garbus, it had an unprecedented urgency. The track's playful vocal flutters and fearless howls accompanied a barrage of saxophone climbs and skittering beats, as Garbus constructed a powerhouse of sound. So it's no small feat that the track's triumphant sound is only one part of the equation. ""People need to feel heard,"" Garbus told me in a 2009 interview, ""and that's part of what I do."" She's a musician with a strong social conscience, and her lyrics bear weight. ""Bizness"" finds Garbus perpetually speaking up for the oppressed (""I'm a victim, yeah!""), which makes this a song of liberation in the most literal sense, no doubt emphasized by her empowered female stance. Throughout, Garbus draws conceptual parallels to one of her most interesting and oft-cited influences: Woody Guthrie. ""[He] was out in the people,"" Garbus told me. ""He was talking to people about their problems. I don't want to be an artist who's not connected with people and their lives."" Like Guthrie, Garbus has a knack for writing simple lyrics that become brilliant with repeat listens. Here, she chants, ""don't take my life away,"" more than 20 times, a defiantly personal plea that could easily act as a collective rallying cry in these times of global economic strife. ""Bizness"" is that rare mode of folk that's politically charged and highly listenable without taking any shortcuts. It's an eccentric reminder of the rewards that come when music has an indomitable social foundation. And like Garbus herself, ""Bizness"" is ultimately dedicated to freedom. --Jenn Pelly",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c661ad7a71d1ea569d072/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/tUnE-yArDs_-Bizness.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,12,Jay-Z / Kanye West ,Niggas in Paris,Def Jam/Roc-a-Fella/Roc Nation,"""Got my niggas in Paris and they goin' gorillas, hah?!"" There it is: hah?! Go ahead. Say it. Out loud. It's fun. And there's nothing that summarizes the wonderfully obnoxious platinum-crusted one-percent-ness of Watch the Throne better than Kanye West's go-to ad lib. Hah?! is funny, memorable, annoying, dumb, genius, earth, water, sky-- it's the entire known universe in one impossibly indignant syllable. Nobody knows what it means because it means everything. Kanye actually says hah?! in ""Niggas in Paris"", but this instant new stadium-rap blueprint is also the closest Mr. West and Jay-Z came to translating hah?! into song form on Watch the Throne. It is essentially one long hah?! The raps are on super-stunt, always. This is one of those tracks where a mere mention-- Olsen twins, Margiela jackets, Audemar watches, motherfucking fish fillet sandwiches-- is akin to being knighted with relevance both actual and meme-based. Co-producer Hit-Boy's instrumental isn't shy either as it hurdles asteroids upon some tranced space-invader shit handed down from Bambaataa's ""Planet Rock"". On a scale of hah? to hah! the beat is HAH! No question. And while the song is a highlight on record, it took on new life live. On the first night of the Watch the Throne tour, Jay stopped it right after a particularly spirited Kanye hah?! and demanded a rewind. Based on priceless YouTubes (""Niggas in Paris"" is so good it might sound better when experienced via blown-out fan bootlegs), it was a genuinely unexpected and ecstatic moment in the middle of a megawatt arena gig. Since then, they've been forced to up their own ante, bringing the track back nine times in Chicago, turning it into a surreal competition with no discernable endpoint. Welcome to the Throne. --Ryan Dombal",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c661beb335119a49f1bdd/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Jay-Z__Kanye_West_-Niggas_in_Paris.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,11,James Blake ,The Wilhelm Scream,A&M/Atlas,"A year ago, writers were falling over ourselves to anoint James Blake the next in a long line of saviors of electronic music, the heir apparent to Burial's oblong dubstep innovations, if not the impossible shapes of Richard D. James. But, as Blake proved with multiple varied releases throughout 2011, he's not going to fall into any predetermined role, however complimentary it may be. ""The Wilhelm Scream"", a standout from Blake's song-centric long-player, is a ballad like so many ballads before it: just a smattering of lines, a hushed, pleading voice going for gut-wallop. But set this one next to Adele or Coldplay, and you'll realize not just how much is missing, but how much is gained in leaving it out. Digging into an obscure tune from his father's all-but-forgotten band, Blake confesses uncertainty (""I don't know about my dreams""), then resignation (""might as well fall""), as the track-- just a couple of synth gurgles, a few weird creaks and bangs-- transforms itself slowly. It's the sound of Blake's uneasy mind eventually emptied onto tape. His voice is lovely running up and down the side of the track, but without the flourishes that billow into the room in its second half, ""Wilhelm"" is barely a husk of a song. As it runs, ""Wilhelm"" gradually reveals a much darker, more conflicted song than its first bars would suggest: a pop song from a bygone era, deconstructed, wiped clean, then reconfigured into something strange and new. Perched between the experimentation Blake made a reputation on and his more recent explorations of odd-angled pop, ""Wilhelm"" deftly balances both. --Paul Thompson",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c661b0c2bba1b7de05672/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/James_Blake_-The_Wilhelm_Scream.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,10,"DJ Khaled [ft. Drake , Rick Ross , and Lil Wayne ] ",I'm on One,We the Best/Cash Money,"It was the year's most ubiquitous mixtape beat, dominating radio and bringing together three of hip-hop's biggest stars. The instrumental, with its atmospheric texture wedded to a memorable, addictive, slashing melodic loop, is a masterpiece of subtle confidence and understated strength that sustains through implied gesture rather than obvious show of skill. It frames some of the more evocative lyrics of the year, the best of which come from Rick Ross' middle verse, from the purple flowers burning his chest to his supremely over-the-top sexual conquests in London. But it's Drake's chorus that really gives the song its power and spurs its hedonistic internal logic. As the beat's melancholy drifts along, the 25-year-old rapper mixes his past, present, and future into a heady brew: ""I don't really give a fuck, and my excuse is that I'm young/ And I'm only getting older, somebody should have told you...."" --David Drake",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c661ceb335119a49f1bdf/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/DJ_Khaled_ft_Drake__Rick_Ross__and_Lil_Wayne__-Im_on_One.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,9,Azealia Banks ,212,self-released,"09. Azealia Banks: ""212"" [self-released] It's quite an achievement at this stage in the game to get noticed via dirty talk, but the first time you hear ""212"" that's what sticks with you. Azealia Banks' perfectly timed, sweet-voiced threat as the track drops out (""Imma ruin you, cunt"") is the song's hotline to virality, its VIP pass to buzz. So she's an internet novelty? Hardly. ""212"" works because its popcraft and its shock tactics are each other's Trojan horses-- concentrate on one and the other sneaks up on you. One reason ""ruin you, cunt"" feels like such a payoff is that Banks spends an entire verse of quick, unshowy rapping setting up its run of vowels. Banks uses the peaks, breakdowns, and drop-outs of Lazy Jay's bouncy ""Float My Boat"" to give her Minaj-style vocal-shifts some context: from sassy and chatty during the build ups to cartoon rage as the synths rear up around her at the song's end. If it were judged only on its visceral thrill, ""212"" would still be one of 2011's best, an unashamed banger in a mostly mid-tempo year. But the more you dig into the song, the more you can hear details and decisions that suggest a scary degree of pop talent. --Tom Ewing",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c661cd7a71d1ea569d074/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Azealia_Banks_-212.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,8,Cass McCombs ,County Line,Domino,"As a man who's gone on record requesting that his tombstone read ""Home at Last,"" Cass McCombs is no stranger to travelling, and on ""County Line"", he sets the scene on the road straight away: ""On my way to you, old county/ Hoping nothing's changed."" A long drive is what comes to mind, and the slow chug of the music fits right in with a feeling of Zen-like zoning, watching headlights drift left and right around you. On any trip back to a place you once knew well, it can feel like every passing road sign rewinds another year in the spool, until everything becomes a little more familiar and intense. So too in ""County Line"", as McCombs' voice grows ever slightly more insistent along the way. Where the song really burns is when McCombs slides into the lilting chorus, his voice swooning to his upper register and then back again. It's a tender hook, underpinned by the engine-like ""woah, woah, woah, woah, woahs"" in the background. But despite the song's gentle refrain, there's a bitter aftertaste here-- a sense that the journey, or return to wherever (or whoever) it is, is not exactly a welcome trip. There are no simple answers in McCombs' songs, and this one is no different. He once again leaves us ponderous, gently pushing forward yet always aware of what the past has done. --Hari Ashurst",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/01%20County%20Line.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c661d0c2bba1b7de05674/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Cass_McCombs_-County_Line.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,7,Beyoncé ,Countdown,Columbia,"The first Destiny's Child singles were broadsides backed up by joyful jitter-funk, kiss-offs aimed at bad boyfriends, lackluster lovers, and guys who just couldn't take a hint. Losers who creep around behind their trusting partners' backs, lames who flood inboxes with unwanted advances, frauds, and misers of all stripes. Beyoncé made telling them off, crushing their egos, and sending them home to mama sound like a total blast. As recently as ""Irreplaceable"", an older and wiser Ms. Knowles was finding empowerment in relationships gone wrong, sounding less aggrieved than emboldened by finally laying down the law. I mean, do I even need to bring up ""Single Ladies""? But Beyoncé's been enjoying domestic bliss for some time now, and on the evidence of ""Countdown"", Jay-Z has yet to get on her bad side. If anything, his devotion has ignited Queen B's most delirious hymn to being head-over-heels since ""Crazy in Love"". This track is a virtuoso performance from singer and producers alike, so giddy with the thrill of having someone have your back that it can't sit still. The tempo shifts are like a smitten lover trying to calm herself down only to start babbling about how awesome everything is all over again a moment later. ""Countdown"" can't stop spinning out new musical ideas every few seconds because maybe this zinging synth riff or this crazy orchestral percussion crescendo will help you catch the feeling, too. Beyoncé cycles breathlessly through every vocal trick at her command, from church choir ululating to fierce fast-rap, and somehow it's both overwhelming and infectious, coming off like the most emotionally affecting sound effects record ever recorded. Sure, we've all been in love. But it's doubtful we've ever sounded this damn excited about it. --Jess Harvell",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c661dd7a71d1ea569d076/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Beyonc_-Countdown.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,6,Destroyer ,Kaputt,Merge,"Dan Bejar is sometimes knocked for his use of ironic humor, as though any trace of such a device instantly renders the music heartless. But while ""Kaputt"" may be clever in its references and lite-jazz affect, it's incredibly evocative on a gut level, with its swirl of woodwinds and synth-pop textures setting scenes as vivid in detail as old photographs and as vaguely defined but deeply felt as a dream. At its core, ""Kaputt"" is a celebration of imperfect memories and the world of the past that we construct in our minds from bits of pop culture. In this case, it's a world built of stray lines from old music magazines: ""Sounds, Smash Hits, Melody Maker, NME/ It all sounds like a dream to me."" Only one of those publications still exists today; the back issues are mostly lost to time. But even if these snapshots of a particular era were meant to be disposable, their ideas linger on in the back of readers' minds as, say, biases against certain musical instruments. Like saxophones. ""Kaputt"" almost entirely comprises sounds that were considered extremely uncool (if not outright taboo) by rock fans up until recently, but Bejar isn't trolling his audience. The listener's knowledge of fickle rock fashion is part of the song, and this context is essential to its poignancy: Every cultural moment eventually passes, and each will seem alternately ridiculous and romantic in hindsight. --Matthew Perpetua",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c661e0c2bba1b7de05676/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Destroyer_-Kaputt.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,5,Real Estate ,It's Real,Domino,"Even Real Estate's most ardent supporters admitted that their 2009 self-titled album was a bit on the hazy, noncommittal side. (That was even part of the draw for a few of us.) On that record, the Ridgewood, New Jersey, natives were rocking the beach, fetching cans of Sprite and Budweiser from the cooler. Two years later, ""It's Real"" finds them scraping off tree bark to proclaim their love. As it turns out, clarity in both sound and emotion suits them well. Propelled by an instantly memorable guitar lead from Matthew Mondanile that would make any Postcard Records band seethe with envy, the track has frontman Martin Courtney spouting an uncomplicated, addictive vocal melody that's plaintive without being apathetic, emotive but not cloying. The uncertainty in the first verse quickly falls away and is replaced by a confidence in his love. Before, not even a summertime poolside jaunt could quell the creeping dread of adulthood. Now, the brutal cold of a frozen-solid river evokes wistful romantic nostalgia. ""It's Real"" nails the feeling of when love goes from being The Great Intangible to something that settles in your bones. --Martin Douglas",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c661fd7a71d1ea569d078/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Real_Estate_-Its_Real.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,4,Nicki Minaj ,Super Bass,Cash Money,"Nicki Minaj's sea-parting verse on Kanye West's ""Monster"" dared you to imagine how much more twisted the game would be on her own turf. So it was a resounding bummer when her first proper album, Pink Friday, ended up so deferential to the strictures of pop radio; tepid tracks like ""Your Love"" and ""Right Thru Me"" curbed her boundless imagination in favor of easy hits. Considering its ubiquity this year, it's easy to forget that the song that got Minaj back on track-- and what's become the most successful single by a female rapper since Missy Elliot's 2002 hit ""Work It""-- wasn't even supposed to be a single. ""Super Bass"" was originally a Pink Friday bonus track and only later released as a single in the U.S. due to the demand of fans, including Taylor Swift. Unlike the softer cuts on Pink Friday, ""Super Bass"" reinvents the love song as something that's never mawkish but instead contagiously gleeful. The carbonated beat and Minaj's exuberant verses find the perfect alchemy of idiosyncrasy and pop appeal. The result is one of those impossible-not-to-love mega-hits-- even harder to find these days given the internet's tendency to help us all burrow into our respective niches-- that momentarily levels the ground between music critics and little girls in tutus: We're all just singing along. --Lindsay Zoladz",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c661feb335119a49f1be5/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Nicki_Minaj_-Super_Bass.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,3,EMA ,California,Souterrain Transmissions,"03. EMA: ""California"" [Souterrain Transmissions] If you crossed paths with Erika M. Anderson in 2011, chances are she made you uncomfortable. On ""California"", she throws out a litany of boasts disguised as confessions, seemingly attempting to agitate everyone within earshot. Unimpressed by the opening couplet, ""Fuck California/ You made me boring?"" Perhaps the next line, about selling her menstrual-blood-crusted red pants to a friend, will induce the desired squirming. No? How about the Bo Diddley-quoting, ""I'm just 22/ I don't mind dying,"" sung like a psalm? Or, ""I saw Joseph carrying the gun/ I saw Mary carrying the gun/ I saw grandma carrying the gun?"" Anderson speak-sings all of this in a fluid ramble that only slows to hit a melodic note every few bars, timed to one of the song's shimmering, tectonic-shift chord changes. It sounds like her thoughts are too scattered or overwhelming to adhere to the melody she's dreamt up for them, so you can listen dozens of times and still never guess the next phrase correctly. She never stops blind-siding you. The charismatic performance freeze-frames the worst, clammiest parts of brash youth-- the raw nerves masked by brittle swagger, the wadded-tissue carelessness with which you treat your body. It's a moment when you're screaming to be seen, and ""California"" sounds as magnetically cool as every fuck-up sounds in her own head. ""I'm begging you please to look away,"" Anderson pleads. Not a chance. --Jayson Greene",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6620c0084474cd0c7845/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/EMA_-California.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,2,Bon Iver ,Holocene,Jagjaguwar/ 4AD ,"02. Bon Iver: ""Holocene"" [Jagjaguwar/4AD] I had never knowingly heard a Bon Iver song until this past summer. I hadn't avoided Justin Vernon's music; I just never sought it out. I'd read about the cabin in the woods, and that was enough to suggest that it probably wasn't for me. Then, one night in July, driving around Portland, Oregon, shuttling another load of boxes between my mom's old house and her new assisted-living home, I found myself transfixed by an unfamiliar falsetto streaming from the speakers of my rental car, faltering and fumbling, a mirror of my own emotions. ""Holocene"", the song that got me, has remained moving in the months since, in moods sunny and stoic as well as worn out and wrung dry. Beneath the surface beauty of the chiming guitars and close harmonies, far more ambivalent tensions are at play-- pedal steel sighing against muted vibraphones, weary handclaps, a quiet squall of clarinets. The rising and falling chord changes create a sense of motion that develops throughout the whole song, a tide-like ebb and flow that ends with an abrupt denouement, so swift it withholds almost as much pleasure as it yields. It doesn't hurt that the lyrics are vague enough to lend themselves to open-ended interpretation. (""Hulled far from the highway aisle,"" I read, and feel none the wiser, even after trying out various homophones.) The way they're overdubbed, consonants garbling together at the edges of Vernon's fraught falsetto, only further smudges their intelligibility. Beyond the cryptic references presumably knowable only to Vernon and his intimates, we're left with a few boldly declarative statements: ""At once I knew I was not magnificent,"" surely a universal feeling, at least outside the 1%; and ""I could see for miles, miles, miles,"" a tweak on an old staple from the Who, but with the drama inverted, the horizon internalized and turned back upon itself. Anyone who's ever driven late at night towards an unknown destination will recognize this stretch of road. --Philip Sherburne",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6620eb335119a49f1be7/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Bon_Iver_-Holocene.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2011 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/8726-the-top-100-tracks-of-2011/,2011,year,song,1,M83 ,Midnight City,Mute,"01. M83: ""Midnight City"" [Mute] The strange career arc of M83 has seen Anthony Gonzalez move from epic drones to futuristic bombast to romantic new wave. Though there are clear threads, it's been a process of zooming in, from expansive and open-ended drift to small, tightly-packed nuggets of pop emotion. And that long movement over the event horizon leads to ""Midnight City"", M83's most powerful and emotionally triumphant track. Gonzalez has been comfortable in the realm of proper songwriting for a while, showing expertise in terms of fitting verses, choruses, and instrumental bridges into tracks you might play alone at a piano. But what's most striking about ""Midnight City"" at first is that a huge part of its story comes from sound alone: its four compressed minutes pack in propulsive beats, urgent layers of vocals, loads of catchy synths, an insistent rhythm loop, and a zeitgeist-y saxophone outro that lets it all unravel just when it gets to be too much. Beyond the force of the sound, ""Midnight City""'s code is tough to crack. You can listen to it a ridiculous number of times without needing to know what Gonzalez is even singing about. On one hand, it's simply an impressionistic ode to city life, but it also feels like his ultimate tribute to the music that brought him here. He's talked in interviews about the influence of the Smashing Pumpkins' Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, and from one angle ""Midnight City"" comes off like Gonzalez's ""1979"". The parallels are there, from the instantly memorable riff to the gentle sense of longing, but ""Midnight City"" feels like a song destined to move and change as it continues into the future. Rather than tapping into our collective memory, it's a soundtrack for building new ones. --Brandon Stosuy",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6621c0084474cd0c7847/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/M83_-Midnight_City.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7893-the-top-50-albums-of-2010/,2010,year,album,50,Wavves,King of the Beach,Fat Possum,"When Nathan Williams served up his new Wavves LP in August, it didn't seem like much time had passed since his insanely blown-out album just a year earlier. Inadvertently or not, Williams had become a polarizing figure in the indie world, and it seemed like he'd never really gone away. And he was definitely listening: Williams, alongside Billy Hayes and Stephen Pope-- Jay Reatard's former rhythm section-- gave their new set of songs their studio due, and the result is an intelligible, self-flagellating, high-fiving jaunt into pop-punk whose punch suggested Williams was brushing all that dirt off his shoulder. On his spinning piledriver of a single ""Post Acid"", the SoCal lifer sings in search of some grounding while on a bad trip: ""I'm just having fun with you."" That's all this was ever meant to be. -- David Bevan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b1aeb335119a49f1eac/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Wavves-King_of_the_Beach.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7893-the-top-50-albums-of-2010/,2010,year,album,48,Forest Swords,Dagger Paths,Olde English Spelling Bee / No Pain in Pop,"Forest Swords-- the alias of Liverpool's Matthew Barnes-- was one of a number of acts in 2010 to attempt a critical reconsideration of goth, mining the music for its dread but setting aside any element of camp. Signed to New York's Olde English Spelling Bee, Forest Swords was often mentioned in the same breath as American acts like Salem and Balam Acab, but his sluggish tempos and general sense of resignation have more in common with England's Demdike Stare and Raime, while his dislocated dub and spindly, post-punk guitar lines echo Germany's Anika. Meanwhile, the influence of Seefeel, from neighboring Sheffield, can be heard all over Forest Swords' approach to space. (Taking those points of reference into account, Forest Swords' gloom seems more timely than merely trendy.) Dagger Paths can't ever be mistaken for anyone else, either, thanks to the jagged dovetailing of machine beats and trad, slightly stunted rock arrangements, and the way delay feedback and distended voices go rippling across the surface of it all. Only 34 minutes long, all of it spent lingering in a kind of delectable despair, it's the perfect mood piece: single-minded, but never running out of ideas. --Philip Sherburne",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b1bd7a71d1ea569d35d/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Forest_Swords-Dagger_Paths.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7893-the-top-50-albums-of-2010/,2010,year,album,47,Women,Public Strain,Jagjaguwar,"There's irony in the title of Women's second album, and not just the retrospective irony considering the onstage fight that cut their fall tour short. At first, Public Strain sounds private and subdued-- a mix of distant meditations and loose basement jams. But as the album progresses, things get more complicated. The repetition of ""China Steps"" is tense, the tightly wound guitar grind of ""Drag Open"" has a cutting wind chill, and even the Feelies-style strum of ""Locust Valley"" bears an insistent pulse. So when you listen to it all again, the first half sounds not so much mellow as pregnant with foreboding. In the mp3 age, making an album whose beginning depends on its end is a daring trick, but Women pulled it off on Public Strain, a looping cycle of songs that neatly inform each other. --Marc Masters",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b1beb335119a49f1eae/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Women-Public_Strain.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7893-the-top-50-albums-of-2010/,2010,year,album,45,Gil Scott-Heron,I'm New Here,XL,"On his first album in 16 years, Gil Scott-Heron takes the measure of his life and finds that the pain of regret is not enough to kill his pride in the man he has become. The album followed drug problems and imprisonment, but he emerges clear-eyed from his tribulations, and late-life masterwork I'm New Here stands comfortably with the best of his 1970s material. Scott-Heron's ability to probe the darkness without surrendering to it is balanced by the music, a stunning electro-blues concoction that sounds less modern than futuristic. At the center is his voice, and whether he's singing out in a baritone blues croak or speaking calmly about his childhood in Jackson, Tennessee, with his grandmother, it has weathered to become an enthralling instrument. --Joe Tangari",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b1ceb335119a49f1eb0/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Gil_Scott-Heron-Im_New_Here.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7893-the-top-50-albums-of-2010/,2010,year,album,44,Kylesa,Spiral Shadow,Season of Mist,"There's a whole lot of great psych-metal coming out of Georgia and its surrounding areas these days: Mastodon, Baroness, Withered, Black Tusk. And on Spiral Shadow, two-drummer Savannah monster squad Kylesa tower above all of them, heroes among heroes. Kylesa's Static Tensions was one of 2009's best metal albums-- a roiling, spitting, heaving beast of an album that never let up in its Southern sludge-boogie, hardcore fury. The grimy riffs hit just as hard on the follow-up, but the band also widens its scope, getting more downright melodic than anyone expected. Middle Eastern-tinged guitar flourishes whiz by, the grooves slow and deepen, and co-leader Phillip Cope occasionally allows himself the sort of staggering, psych-damaged guitar solo that recalls Built to Spill's Doug Martsch way more than Slayer's Kerry King. Increasingly, the band's Laura Pleasants steps to the front, her head-spun wail offering terrific counterpoint to Cope's scraggly roar. And at the center of everything sits ""Don't Look Back"", the sort of triumphantly bleary alt-rock anthem that we almost never get to hear anymore. --Tom Breihan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b1d5e6ef95969327ef5/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Kylesa-Spiral_Shadow.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7893-the-top-50-albums-of-2010/,2010,year,album,43,Tame Impala,Innerspeaker,Modular,"There couldn't have been a less sexy M.O. for 2010 than Tame Impala's. Instead of Pet Sounds, their psychedelic lodestone is Magical Mystery Tour; the Australian band's 60s-inspired rock is plenty chill, but never wavey, witchy, or anything else too du jour. In fact, their unapologetic retro yen feels almost anachronistic, in a year when nostalgia was often filtered through digital effects and technological affect. That's not to say that it isn't a laboriously (and thrillingly) produced album, thanks in part to the mixing of Dave Fridmann, a veteran producer who has worked with the Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev, and MGMT, among others. The froth on their fuzzboxes and buzz of their Humbuckers is never anything less than perfect; like all good stoners, they know that texture is as important as riffs. They just happen to have both in spades. There aren't a ton of stand-out songs-- the cathedral reverb, narrowly filtered vocals, and ringing harmonies do tend to blur together. But they change up keys, tempos, and rhythms enough to keep it interesting. More than that, Tame Impala always keep you on your toes, no matter how many times you think you've heard the song-- by them or any other artist. --Philip Sherburne",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b1d13d1975652140343/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Tame_Impala-Innerspeaker.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7893-the-top-50-albums-of-2010/,2010,year,album,42,Drake,Thank Me Later,Young Money Entertainment,"Every so often, hip-hop locates an artist who causes listeners to vehemently choose sides yet still sells a ton of records. Thank Me Later did that with Drake. Why did some people take to it? Well, I could bring up Drake's impeccable ear for beats, the pristine sequencing, or even the endearing goofiness of the lyrics, but ultimately his charm can be summed up in one line from ""Over"": ""What am I doing? That's right, I'm doing me."" Chris Rock once joked that ""Mo Money, Mo Problems"" was the most popular song almost nobody could relate to, and Drake's greatest accomplishment is making the same case-- that someone who has everything would trade it for a dorm room and his mother's happiness. But while Drake's personal life is undoubtedly inextricable from Thank Me Later, you don't need to be a celebrity to relate to it-- just someone who's ever felt dissatisfied with society's idea of success. --Ian Cohen",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b1ed7a71d1ea569d361/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Drake-Thank_Me_Later.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7893-the-top-50-albums-of-2010/,2010,year,album,39,Best Coast,Crazy For You,Mexican Summer,"For an album of such modest intent-- girls meets boy, girl loses boy, girl locks herself in bedroom and pines over him for all of eternity-- it's remarkable that Crazy For You became such a polarizing artifact, the simplicity of its execution seemingly matched only by the divisive discourse surrounding it. But whether you think Bethany Cosentino's boy-crazy jangle-pop mash notes sound timeless or tired, classic or clichéd, you can't deny her sense of commitment-- her unwavering attempts to evoke that sense of disappointment in staring at a phone that never rings practically transforms Crazy For You into the world's first accidental concept album. And snicker all you want at Cosentino's remedial rhymes (miss/kiss, crazy/lazy, friend/end, etc.), but, as the swoon-worthy chorus of ""ooohs"" on ""When the Sun Don't Shine"" attests, her siren of a voice can sell a song without any words at all. --Stuart Berman",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b1fd7a71d1ea569d363/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Best_Coast-Crazy_For_You.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7893-the-top-50-albums-of-2010/,2010,year,album,37,Zola Jesus,Stridulum EP,Sacred Bones,"Conventional wisdom says that when Zola Jesus aka Nika Danilova releases her next LP, it'll be the one that rockets her into dark music superstardom (whatever that means). Only thing is, she's already planted that flag with the cathartic and bleak but gorgeous Stridulum EP. Prior to this record, her powerful voice was buried in tangled guitar murk, but on these six songs she ratchets up the intensity, cuts out any hiss, and sings to friends and lovers with grandiose conviction wise beyond her years. Songs like ""I Can't Stand"" pair an intensely beautiful industrial pulse with Danilova's thick, rounded voice towering above the entire world, making lyrics like, ""I can't stand to see you this way,"" sound not like empty comfort, but, impossibly, like rock solid assurance from a complete stranger. --Sam Hockley-Smith",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b20eb335119a49f1eb2/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Zola_Jesus-Stridulum_EP.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7893-the-top-50-albums-of-2010/,2010,year,album,36,Emeralds,Does It Look Like I'm Here?,Editions Mego,"Emeralds were a little tricky this year. After 2009's way-far-out What Happened, you expected the Ohio drone aesthetes to launch even crazier cosmic blastoffs, but instead they toned things down and went more ambient. That lessened their initial wow-factor some, but ultimately gave the record longer legs. Alongside guitarist Mark McGuire's excellent solo effort, Does It Look Like I'm Here? became the year's go-to zone-out soundtrack, the album to reach for when other avant-noise LPs felt too abrasive. Even when muted, the band's head-spinning moments were still very much present: check the oscillating synth patterns of 12-minute centerpiece ""Genetic"", constantly unfurling and re-spooling around the extended guitar lines at the song's core. Magnify certain moments like this, or let the whole thing just wash over you. --Joe Colly",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b20d7a71d1ea569d365/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Emeralds-Does_It_Look_Like_Im_Here.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7893-the-top-50-albums-of-2010/,2010,year,album,35,Gorillaz,Plastic Beach,Virgin,"Few albums this year have done such a striking job of wringing appeal out of deep-rooted melancholy as the third record by Gorillaz, who have been freed from the group's cartoon-band constraints to provide Damon Albarn's deftest work of pop modernism in the past decade. At its peaks-- the blissfully tense electro-funk of ""Stylo"", the longing pop-house of ""On Melancholy Hill"", the title track's Morricone-meets-Moroder spaghetti western new wave-- Plastic Beach provides the thrills of hooky, well-crafted pop with a feeling of baroque dejection. And its sleek production is craftily undercut with a cast of voices that mutter wearily (Mark E. Smith on ""Glitter Freeze""; Lou Reed on ""Some Kind of Nature""), belt heartachingly (Bobby Womack on ""Stylo"" and ""Cloud of Unknowing""), lonesomely serenade (Little Dragon's Yukimi Nagano on ""Empire Ants"" and ""To Binge"")-- or, as Albarn does more compellingly than he has in ages, wail with a haunting ennui. --Nate Patrin",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b2113d1975652140347/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Gorillaz-Plastic_Beach.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7893-the-top-50-albums-of-2010/,2010,year,album,34,Crystal Castles,Crystal Castles,Last Gang / Universal Motown,"Crystal Castles are a standoff kind of band. Run-ins with security and fans, as well as plagiarism accusations made for an uneasy build-up to an already tough task of following up a debut album that defined a fleeting subgenre. The band approached the challenge with the same ethos of their live show-- diving in at the deep end, lead single ""Doe Deer"" provoking the haters with its bombed-out fury. It turned out to be a sleight of hand for one of the most surprising successes of the year. On this year's Crystal Castles, the band hammered the spectral shapes of the first album into something with focus and menace. It also had a heart, ""Celestica"" and ""Empathy"" proving to be two unexpectedly warm moments. It goes some way toward gathering up the shitstorm and blowing it into the distance. --Hari Ashurst",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b22eb335119a49f1eb4/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Crystal_Castles-Crystal_Castles.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7893-the-top-50-albums-of-2010/,2010,year,album,32,"Tyler, the Creator",Bastard,self-released,"After a few decades of murders and crack deals, gangsta rap bloodthirst has lost a lot of its sting. But here we have a teenage skate-rat snarling in a demonic, asthma-wrecked rasp, talking about rape and dismemberment and coke-snorting and throwing in homophobic slurs, and suddenly every wound is fresh again. Bastard is a rough listen, to be sure; if you can hear it without wincing every 30 seconds or so-- without feeling some genuine despair-- you might have some serious problems of your own. But as with the most successful transgressive art, its ugliness digs deep into your brainpan and stays there. And only some of the value here is of the shock variety. Tyler's nihilistic gargle has cathartic star-power the same way DMX's livewire grunt once did, and many of the antisocial jokes are genuinely funny: ""I go to Obama rallies screaming out 'McCain!'"" The self-produced, spaced-out, lo-fi beats transform warped, woozy skronk-noise into rap thump. Ariel Pink is a favorite of Tyler's, and it shows. In all its violent weirdness, Bastard forms its own universe, and he doesn't do it without context. At the end of the opening title track, Tyler lets us know exactly where all this animosity might come from: ""Fuck a deal, I just want my father's email/ So I can tell him how much I fuckin' hate him in detail."" --Tom Breihan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b220c2bba1b7de0595d/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Tyler_the_Creator-Bastard.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7893-the-top-50-albums-of-2010/,2010,year,album,31,Woods,At Echo Lake,Woodsist,"If last year's Songs of Shame proved Woods could stand among their peers on the Woodsist roster, At Echo Lake finds the Brooklyn band (headed by Woodsist founder Jeremy Earl) rising above them. In addition to Earl's deeply affecting songwriting not skipping a beat, the arrangements are significantly more expansive, hosting an entire world of musical ideas in their slender 29 minutes. Sounds, samples, and solos hover above, float through, and oscillate underneath the most stylistically varied collection of songs Earl has penned over the course of several albums: Distorted rumbling underscores dark acoustic ballad ""Pick Up"", while lively instrumental ""From the Horn"" is bolstered by a backwards guitar solo. Best of all is the eerie ""Death Rattles"", where Earl softly sings, ""God only knows, just to be by your side/ I would be there all night, I would be there all right,"" a devotional as chilling as it is lovelorn. Woodsist has released quite a few good albums over the years (including some by Woods themselves), but At Echo Lake is a record so stunning it deserves to have its entire name run across its label's banner. --Martin Douglas",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b23c0084474cd0c7b09/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Woods-At_Echo_Lake.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7893-the-top-50-albums-of-2010/,2010,year,album,29,The Fresh & Onlys,Play It Strange,In the Red,"When someone tells me an album has no bad songs, I get dubious-- not about the claim, but about how ambitious a record that avoids failure could be. Well, there's not a bad song on Play It Strange, and yet there's ambition all over it. The Fresh & Onlys' mix of Buddy Holly melody, Byrds twang, and beatific joy might seem conservatively retro, in line with the garage leanings of San Francisco comrades Thee Oh Sees, the Mantles, and Sonny & the Sunsets. But the band constantly stretches those parameters, whether in the sprawling, eight-minute ""Tropical Island Suite"", the bombast of ""Who Needs a Man"", or a deceptively dark opener ironically titled ""Summer of Love"". So while it's fair to call Play It Strange a non-stop hit parade, the Fresh & Onlys deserve just as much credit for shooting at tons of different targets. --Marc Masters",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b240c2bba1b7de0595f/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Fresh__Onlys-Play_It_Strange.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7893-the-top-50-albums-of-2010/,2010,year,album,28,The National,High Violet,4AD,"In 2005, the National were a band struggling for recognition, drunkenly and desperately clinging to a shit-kicking vitality while staring down deadening day jobs. Perhaps that's why they named their next album Boxer, but on High Violet, they've fought their way to the top only to turn their struggles inward. ""Terrible Love"", ""Bloodbuzz, Ohio"", and especially ""England"" are examples of a controlled turbulence that the National can now call their own. Every orchestral swell is rigorously planned and exactingly performed while Matt Berninger tries to reckon with the obligations of finances and family through the sort of hard-won wisdom and humor that one acquires only when abandoning the concern about losing one's edge as an aging male. See, that's the problem with using ""dad rock"" as a slur: You could stand to learn a lot from your old man. --Ian Cohen",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b24c0084474cd0c7b0b/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_National-High_Violet.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7893-the-top-50-albums-of-2010/,2010,year,album,26,Twin Shadow,Forget,4AD / Terrible,"Looking to the 1980s for inspiration has been common for quite a while, and Twin Shadow, with a serious taste for the analog synths and ticking electronic drums of new wave, can certainly be lumped with this trend. But George Lewis, Jr.'s debut proves to be more than a revisionist sum of its parts, held together tightly by an airy co-production job courtesy of Grizzly Bear's Chris Taylor and an ear for a great hook. The record is steeped in heartbreak and longing, as the dewy-eyed sound of the New Romantics is filtered through the weathered gaze of someone trying to forget. As Lewis sings on standout track ""Slow"", ""I don't wanna believe/ Or be in love."" --Hari Ashurst",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b250c2bba1b7de05961/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Twin_Shadow-Forget.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7893-the-top-50-albums-of-2010/,2010,year,album,25,Sufjan Stevens,The Age of Adz,Asthmatic Kitty,"In the time since 2005's beloved Illinois, Sufjan Stevens had released an album of outtakes, collected his Christmas music, and directed and scored an experimental film. But looming over these projects was a big question: When was he going to release the next proper album? The half-joke that he was going to do 50 albums about the 50 states had long stopped being repeated, but no competing ideas had taken hold. What would his new songs sound like? The All Delighted People EP earlier this year hinted at a change in direction, and then when The Age of Adz finally arrived, it turned out that he had delivered the perfect follow-up. It's an album built on earlier ideas that doesn't seem like a retread, and it also explores new thematic terrain. Taking a more personal tack with songs inspired in part by a long and serious illness, The Age of Adz infused the busy orchestration Stevens has become known for with a sparkly electronic sheen and featured bolder melodies and stronger vocals. Big-hearted, warm, and ambitious, the album felt immediately provocative even as it provided a sense of relief. It's also the kind of album that has a lot to explore and sounds better with every listen, so if Sufjan takes his time with the next one, this should hold us for a while. --Mark Richardson",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b26eb335119a49f1eb6/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Sufjan_Stevens-The_Age_of_Adz.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7893-the-top-50-albums-of-2010/,2010,year,album,24,Hot Chip,One Life Stand,Astralwerks / Parlophone / EMI,"At first, all the straight-faced talk about wanting happiness and shining lovelights might make One Life Stand seem like an egregious misstep for the reliably frenetic Hot Chip. Sure, these recombinant pop mavens play up their more rambunctious side in public (as seen in Peter Serafinowicz's WTF video for ""I Feel Better""), and their music's never less than enjoyable (as the title track and ""Hand Me Down Your Love"" can attest). It's their skirting of the line between profound and po-faced that makes One Life Stand so exhilarating; I doubt it's a mistake that the album's most affecting and emotional tune is titled ""Slush"". One wrong move, or one false note, and that's the sort of mess Hot Chip would've had on their hands. But there's no mistaking this album's heart-on-sleeve sincerity for anything less than completely genuine. --David Raposa",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b265e6ef95969327efb/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Hot_Chip-One_Life_Stand.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7893-the-top-50-albums-of-2010/,2010,year,album,22,Girls,Broken Dreams Club EP,True Panther,"Girls' 2009 debut, Album, was an instant classic, a blast of dizzy, wounded love from a band with an immediate, innate grasp of all things guitar-pop. But frontman Christopher Owens has had a rough life, and people with rough lives have a sad tendency to flame out early. It's easy to imagine Album being Girls' one great statement before the demons that helped Owens write his songs drowned his voice completely. So it's a great relief to hear Broken Dreams Club, a clear indication that this band is in it for the long haul. Broken Dreams Club comes from the same aesthetic universe as Album, but it's relaxed to the point of languor. Old-school Nashville pedal steel and crisp Cotton Club horns find their way in, and a warm oldies-radio vibe pervades. But we're still dealing with despair and hopelessness, and Owens still expresses this stuff in the most simple and direct terms possible: ""When I said that I loved you, honey, I knew it from the very start/ When I said that I loved you, honey, I knew that you would break my heart."" At the center of it all sits ""Carolina"", a lazy sprawl that takes the band's own ""Hellhole Ratrace"" to a more peaceful place. --Tom Breihan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b275e6ef95969327efd/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Girls-Broken_Dreams_Club_EP.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7893-the-top-50-albums-of-2010/,2010,year,album,20,Oneohtrix Point Never,Returnal,Editions Mego,"Photo by Erez Avissar Peter Rehberg's Editions Mego label enjoyed some halcyon days in 2010, with releases by Emeralds, Mark Fell, and Brooklyn bedroom composer Daniel Lopatin. The vaporous, mostly beat-less electronic sound favored by Lopatin's Oneohtrix Point Never previously sprawled out in abundance over his 2009 compilation, Rifts. But Returnal marked a paring down of the OPN sound into easier-to-digest segments, while still retaining Lopatin's fondness for creating a soundworld shaped by barely-formed husks of noise, where icy electronic fragments curl up into the atmosphere like a bank of fog rolling into view. This isn't music without precedent-- Lopatin owes a debt to Robert Fripp's 'Frippertronics' experiments, in particular his 1981 record Let the Power Fall, from which the core OPN sound is mined. This is demonstrated on tracks like ""Describing Bodies"" and ""Stress Waves"", where the distinct lack of bass plunges the ambiance into sub-zero chills, and wisps of rudderless synth drones are cast adrift and left to coil into infinity. But this isn't simply an exercise in machine noise set in motion-- there's a sense of human pathos burrowed deep in the placid heart of this music. Returnal also finds Lopatin stretching the OPN framework via the combustible noise of ""Nil Admirari"" (a Latin phrase that translates as ""to marvel at nothing"") and the vocal-driven title track. His delicate reworking of the latter with Antony, combined with his warped take on 1980s pop fetishization in his side project Games, sets an impressively high benchmark for whatever comes next. --Nick Neyland",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b285e6ef95969327eff/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Oneohtrix_Point_Never-Returnal.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7893-the-top-50-albums-of-2010/,2010,year,album,19,How to Dress Well,Love Remains,Lefse / Tri Angle,"Photo by Erez Avissar Over the past two years there's been a proliferation of nostalgic music obscured by its own sound, of songs that sound like they died 20 years ago and have been decomposing ever since. But the engine of nostalgia is loss, which is one of the reasons How to Dress Well stood out so prominently: Of course the best format for this brokedown and distant style was a lone choirboy's sexless recitation of 20-year-old R&B ballads, the kind of songs we listen to when we're experiencing loss, or at least want to be reminded of someone else's. In an early interview, How to Dress Well's Tom Krell said that when he was recording ""Ready For the World"", he imagined how a child would feel hearing someone through the floor, crying over the sound of the radio after having been dumped: an image of loss and distance, but also of uncanny presence. Most of Krell's lyrics are unintelligible, but the intended emotional message of the music-- feel it or not-- is consistent. And while the production depends on lo-fi's opacity, it never covers up his quivering falsetto, a show of confidence a lot of young lo-fi musicians can't or don't make. The album's strangest trick might be how representative it is of a now-common aesthetic while still sounding so exceptional in light of its peers. --Mike Powell",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b2913d197565214034b/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/How_to_Dress_Well-Love_Remains.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7893-the-top-50-albums-of-2010/,2010,year,album,18,Erykah Badu,New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh,Universal Motown,"Photo by Kathryn Yu In Erykah Badu's New Amerykah diptych, political unrest and emotional solvency have been disseminated equally. One for the revolutionaries (that's Part One) and this one, for the lovers. The peanut butter and chocolate occasionally melt together, but mostly this is a divided series. ""I need your attention,"" Badu whinnies on ""Window Seat"", a song whose video used nakedness-- she literally sheds her clothes-- as a political tool promoting unencumbered openness. Great video, muddled concept. But as with all of Badu's untrained, unstrained music, it works far better as an expression of feeling over foment. Where the first installment rattled the same bones as Funkadelic and Sly Stone, Ankh finds Badu channeling softer, warmer sounds. The elegant astral stylings of Syreeta Wright, in particular, seem a clear inspiration, while timeless hip-hop source material-- songs from Eddie Kendricks and Sylvia Striplin and phrasings made famous by Biggie-- is re-contextualized here. Badu is playful throughout, at one point posing as a gangster's side chick seeking recompense, but by the time we arrive at the 10-minute closer, ""Out My Mind, Just in Time"", she is officially turning herself over to the one. ""I pray for you, crochet for you, make it from scratch for you,"" she sings on the song. It's hard to tell whom she's talking to, but it's always you. --Sean Fennessey",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b29eb335119a49f1eb8/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Erykah_Badu-New_Amerykah_Part_Two_Return_of_the_Ankh.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7893-the-top-50-albums-of-2010/,2010,year,album,17,Caribou,Swim,Merge,"Photo by Charles Taylor Bergquist Dan Snaith, aka Caribou, called Swim his attempt to make ""liquid dance music,"" and it's possible that there is no more evocative summation of his album's sound as that. It is the most propulsive record of his career, full of 4/4 pulses and strafing keys, and yet it is too diffuse for dancing-- every sound seems to simultaneously roll toward you and gracefully recede, washing from left to right or dipping below a muffled filter. It makes for a gorgeously tactile listening experience; the drums hit with a soapy slap, burbles and sucking sounds eddying in all corners of the viscous mix. It is a record you immerse in, a record that surrounds you, and Snaith's high, frail singing-- about acrimonious dead-end relationships, about mortal struggles with drug addiction-- is almost alarmingly intimate. It might not reliably pack dancefloors on this planet, but if there is a club somewhere in the galaxy where the blue squid lady from The Fifth Element is a regular, my guess is that Swim never stops playing. --Jayson Greene",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b2a0c2bba1b7de05965/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Caribou-Swim.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7893-the-top-50-albums-of-2010/,2010,year,album,16,Sleigh Bells,Treats,N.E.E.T. / Mom & Pop,"Photo by Erez Avissar Like much of the best pop, Sleigh Bells sound thoroughly calculated-- their collision of aesthetics and poses is so striking it risks feeling phony. Initially, even the positive criticism was hedged. The mix of blown-out noise and bubblegum hookwork seemed gimmicky: People assumed they'd see through it by the end of summer. But what the band are so carefully sculpting isn't diffidence, it's excitement: overdriven riffs, monster beats, and Alexis Krauss' layered babble all designed for chain-reaction impact. The band lay out their shtick in the first 30 seconds of ""Tell 'Em""-- machine-gun beatbox, imperious riffing, and sing-song prettiness from Krauss. Elsewhere on Treats you can hear fragments of pop's past-- Lush on ""Rachel"", the Shangri-Las on ""Kids""-- but mainly Sleigh Bells stick to their own, new-minted sound, and it helps the thrills stay fresh. The most convincing take on Treats-- the one which makes emotional sense to me-- is that it's a kind of teenpop: the mess, posturing, chaos, and unrelenting immediacy of an adolescent's headspace crushed into two-minute blurts. But the record doesn't really need decoding. Either you grin when ""Crown on the Ground"" unleashes those cartoonish speaker-busting beats or you don't. There's a videogame delight here in explosions and effects for their own sake, an irrepressible joy that's Sleigh Bells' biggest asset and the foundation of this record's surprising endurance. --Tom Ewing",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b2a13d197565214034d/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Sleigh_Bells-Treats.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7893-the-top-50-albums-of-2010/,2010,year,album,15,Robyn,Body Talk,Konichiwa / Cherrytree / Interscope,"Photo by Eirik Lande Anyone who's had the good fortune to see Robyn wreck a stage knows that the Europop eminence is a star right down to her bone marrow. But the Body Talk series was still a titanic act of hubris-- three pure-gold mini-albums in one calendar year, from someone who hadn't released a new LP in a half-decade. And in the end, we got this instant greatest-hits album: The best songs from each installment in one place, peak after peak after peak for 15 tracks. Everyone has some quibble with the tracklist (""None of Dem"" over ""Include Me Out""? Really?), but hearing all these songs in one place is just an exclamation point at the end of an amazing pop year. Musically, Body Talk is single-minded in its pursuit of dancefloor frenzy . Synths ripple, drums pound, massive choruses explode outward at the exact right moment. Robyn knows better than anyone else how to make efficient house-pop bangers like these; these tracks' moving parts work together in mechanistic harmony. But at its most transcendent, Body Talk also tells stories like a great country record. There's the spurned girl finding comfort in the beat (""Dancing on My Own""), the other woman calmly telling you how to move on (""Call Your Girlfriend""), the fuck-buddy pulling you close with one hand and pushing you away with the other (""Hang With Me""). And even in the lesser moments, there's plenty to love: The gleefully goofy Snoop Dogg collab, the furious frustration-dump, the line about dancing ""to the beat of bad kissers clicking teeth."" Robyn has pulled off her grand, ridiculous idea. Standing ovation. --Tom Breihan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b2bd7a71d1ea569d36b/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Robyn-Body_Talk.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7893-the-top-50-albums-of-2010/,2010,year,album,14,Flying Lotus,Cosmogramma,Warp,"Photo by Kathryn Yu ""Wonder if i have any chance in hell getting a Grammy nomination this week. If I ever had a shot, this is the year."" That was what Steven Ellison, aka Flying Lotus, tweeted on November 29; two days later, the nominations were announced, and Ellison's Cosmogramma was nowhere to be found. FlyLo subsequently went off, and while the Grammys don't really matter, it's understandable that he was upset. Cosmogramma is an event record, a knowingly audacious ""album's album"" that plays like a love letter to the most adventurous, forward-thinking music released on Warp. Its epic scope and fully realized nature invokes some of the classic LPs under the long-running label's umbrella: Music Has the Right to Children, Music Is Rotted One Note, Richard D. James Album, One Word Extinguisher. Cosmogramma represents ambition for ambition's sake, exceeding its own lofty goals on every level. In 2010, the ease of home recording meant that everyone was a ""producer,"" but it's still just as difficult to ""produce"" decent music. The first half of the year found many upstarts trying (and failing) to replicate the woozy post-Dilla amniotic haze of FlyLo's 2008 breakout, Los Angeles; after Cosmogramma came out in May, imitators were stopped dead, left wondering how it was possible to fuse drum'n'bass, four-on-the-floor house, downtempo, jazz, and a dozen other genre tics while still rising well above pastiche. Ironically, some of the releases that came out on his label Brainfeeder this year seemed like a peek behind the curtain of Cosmogramma's individual components: Lorn's martial, chaotic constructions, Teebs' honey-flowing pastoral preoccupations, Daedelus' warm Tropicália touches. All these reference points, and yet Cosmogramma still sounds like a work of art that is wholly individual and unique. Fuck a Grammy: now that's reason to celebrate. --Larry Fitzmaurice",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b2beb335119a49f1eba/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Flying_Lotus-Cosmogramma.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7893-the-top-50-albums-of-2010/,2010,year,album,13,No Age,Everything in Between,Sub Pop,"Photo by Eirik Lande Compared to its two full-length predecessors, the proper LP Nouns and the singles and EP collection Weirdo Rippers, Everything in Between took a few more listens to sink in. The new album was less frantic and less experimental, leaving behind a certain amount of punk bite and shoegaze dreaminess. It didn't wash over you or grab you by the throat; on this album, the songs were what counted. So as No Age's aesthetic drifted toward a sound that can best be described as classic indie rock in the late 1980s/early 90s mode, the group brought along the shifts in mood and subtly affecting tunes that made the best from that era so beloved. No Age had never sounded this vulnerable but also never this confident, like they had finally settled into an approach that suited them best and now they were capable of taking the songs wherever they needed to go. So you had the youthful rush of ""Fever Dreaming"" alongside the wounded and downcast ""Common Heat"" next to the trashy brattiness of ""Sorts"", and it all hung together like one thing. Everything in Between found No Age not so much growing up as growing outward, finding new possibilities in directness and simplicity. --Mark Richardson",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b2c0c2bba1b7de05967/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/No_Age-Everything_in_Between.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7893-the-top-50-albums-of-2010/,2010,year,album,12,Janelle Monáe,The ArchAndroid,Bad Boy / Wondaland Arts Society,"Photo by Kathryn Yu Philip K. Dick boogies like James Brown in Janelle Monáe's future, so how could it possibly be a dystopia? Her hugely ambitious full-length debut-- more Sign 'O' the Times than Kid A-- continues the ongoing story of android-human romance that she began on her 2007 EP Metropolis: Suite I: The Chase, set in a world that resembles a funkier Brazil crisscrossed with action sequences and love themes. Divided into suites bookended by orchestral overtures, the whole thing could easily curdle into concept-album hokum, but Monáe nods to the metaphorical potential of the sci-fi underpinnings (android/Other/African-American) without overplaying them. She understates her ideas and trusts her listeners to get them. --Stephen M. Deusner",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b2dc0084474cd0c7b0d/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Janelle_Mone-The_ArchAndroid.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7893-the-top-50-albums-of-2010/,2010,year,album,11,Arcade Fire,The Suburbs,Merge,"Photo by Eric Kayne That Spike Jonze seized upon 2004's exuberantly one-dimensional ""Wake Up"" as the ideal wrapper for the ragged, pre-adolescent confusion of Where the Wild Things Are might easily have felt like a backhanded compliment to a songwriter of Win Butler's aspiration. By connecting Arcade Fire with the film, Jonze foregrounded the band's own formative period; by connecting the dumbstruck incomprehension that comes with childhood to their 40-story bluster, he inadvertently critiqued it. Six years later, they're a different band, and The Suburbs marks the culmination of that change. Where once stood a group of marching and occasionally baying idealists now stands something more considered, more complicated, and, well, more conflicted. On paper, a concept record about something as banal as the suburbs sounds prone to terrible cliché. Fortunately, Butler spares us any neat and tidy disapproval of two-car garages and manicured lawns in favor of something considerably more measured and conflicted-- a full-bodied account of all the sweetness and strangeness of that life in all its multitudes. He aches just as much as he spits, reminisces just as much as he resolves, and veers between sounding like a revolutionary (""Ready to Start"") and an old man (""We Used to Wait""), in turn painting a surprisingly nuanced picture of thirtysomething inertia. The Suburbs isn't so much about feeling old as it is about not always feeling young, and ""that feeling"" is bittersweet and complex. --Mark Pytlik",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b2dd7a71d1ea569d36d/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Arcade_Fire-The_Suburbs.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7893-the-top-50-albums-of-2010/,2010,year,album,10,Titus Andronicus,The Monitor,XL,"Photo by Sanchez and Kitahara Hold Steady frontman Craig Finn appears on The Monitor as the voice of Walt Whitman, and his inclusion on the album is a fitting one. With their intricately wordy barroom sing-alongs, the Hold Steady, at their best, occupy some ideal middle ground between charged-up classic rock swagger and literary ambition. To the young people in Titus Andronicus, the Hold Steady are elder statesmen, and The Monitor is their attempt to equal their forefathers' classics. Titus arrived more or less fully formed on 2008's The Airing of Grievances, playing their fists-up Jersey punk anthems as knotty, muffled fuck-yous. But The Monitor pushes everything onward and upward, past ambition and into something like insanity. The band tries out violins, pianos, horns, bleary folk interludes, gang-shout chants, an epic, multi-part, 14-minute finale, and a loony concept that messily marries a bad breakup to the American Civil War. But they do all this with verve and charm and confidence, anchoring their wanderings with 10-megaton chorus roars and riffs that sound like they've been around forever. Frontbeard Patrick Stickles bellows every lyric in a scraggly yowl, sounding like the world is crumbling around him and the only thing holding the sky up is the righteous noise from the band behind him. And all year, everywhere Stickles went, his monuments to personal desolation whipped up sweaty, joyous moshpits. To some kid somewhere, he's already an elder statesmen. --Tom Breihan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b2e0c2bba1b7de05969/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Titus_Andronicus-The_Monitor.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7893-the-top-50-albums-of-2010/,2010,year,album,09,Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti,Before Today,4AD,"Photo by Erez Avissar The subjects of Before Today are pretty grim: the psychological torment of gender confusion (""Menopause Man""), the self-destruction that comes with infatuation (""Can't Hear My Eyes""), a woman who kills her maid out of a desire to preserve order in her estate (""L'estat (Acc. to the Widow's Maid)""), hating and disappointing your father (""Little Wig""). Steely Dan covered similar thematic ground, but Ariel Pink doesn't have Wayne Shorter and Bernard Purdie backing him up. So rather than mock with sophistication, he goes for mock-sophistication, using music from his childhood (commercial jingles, soft rock, and goth-pop) not as a means of fetishizing the past, but as a way of showing how it haunts both him and his surroundings. The entire album is a buildup to and comedown from ""Round and Round"", a pristine ""hit song"" about how the drudgery of pop product mirrors the drudgery of everyday life. And it ends with a Public Image Ltd. rip that echoes that band's assertion that revolutionary rhetoric is baloney. All of this cynicism would be reprehensible were it not for Pink's a) songwriting ability and b) personality, both of which are considerable. Months later, all of these songs are still catchy, vibrant, and even pretty funny. At a concert at Chicago's Metro last month, a crowd of people danced to Pink's many vocal affectations, the singer's face contorting into grotesque characterizations of mock-hysteria. It was the ideal live realization of Before Today: seemingly phony but implicitly touching, both creepy and moving. --Tal Rosenberg",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b2eeb335119a49f1ebc/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Ariel_Pinks_Haunted_Graffiti-Before_Today.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7893-the-top-50-albums-of-2010/,2010,year,album,08,James Blake,The Bells Sketch EP / CMYK EP / Klavierwerke EP,R&S / Hessle,"Photo by Morgan Levy Each EP James Blake released this year functioned like a mini-essay on styles he could've spent whole albums with: the lurching, noisy The Bells Sketch, CMYK's reconstituted gospel and R&B, and Klavierwerke's quiet, warped constructions of Blake's own voice and piano playing. Not all of them were front-to-back amazing; what's amazing is that they all came out in the same year. Part of the fun of liking Blake's music was not having to wait long to hear his new ideas-- we got quarterly updates, a series of variations in which he somehow managed to develop a voice so strong that people are already imitating it. He still pledges allegiance to dubstep, but his actual sound is more like a computerized collage of black American music-- compositionally, he owes more to early jazz like Erroll Garner than Burial. For tracks that lean so much on space and silence, they're intense, even devotional, and as effective as they might be on the dancefloor (though I wouldn't know here in America), he sounds best when anchored by solitude. Sometimes I hear good new bands and get the feeling that they tapped into something that had always been there and always had to be there. Instant familiarity. With Blake, it's like I'd walked into the kitchen and saw a big prickly triangular fruit in the fruit bowl. Didn't recognize it. Didn't know what to do with it. Sniffed at it. Poked at it. Tried it. Liked it. Couldn't stop eating it, and couldn't get the taste anywhere else. Newness isn't everything, so it helps that he's also talented and hardworking. About a year and a half ago, he hadn't even released his first single. Since then, his music has been reviewed here seven separate times. We'll stop when he gives us a reason to. --Mike Powell",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b2f0c2bba1b7de0596b/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/James_Blake-The_Bells_Sketch_EP__CMYK_EP__Klavierwerke_EP.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7893-the-top-50-albums-of-2010/,2010,year,album,07,Joanna Newsom,Have One on Me,Drag City,"Photo by Shannon McClean I keep staring at the box Have One on Me came in, this matte black object that fits a little strangely on my shelf. I'm thinking about moving it, how it'll have to go along with the other big ones, how that's sort of a hassle. Mostly I'm thinking about how I'm going to hang on to it for a long time-- not a thought I always have about music these days, even the stuff I really love. Something about Have One on Me feels very permanent, as though I've had it longer than 10 months, like it'll be around forever. Many of 2010's big albums were bolder, more immediate, pushed more boundaries, took bigger risks. Certainly, almost all of them were shorter. But few could match the richness, the scope, the humbling poise with which Have One on Me unravels. Since Ys, Newsom's voice has deepened, evincing new character and grace. Her compositions flow more freely, the delicate bend and spindle of her music shedding some of the fussiness that marked Ys' epics. And here, the realms she conjures feel less fantastic, more familiar, decidedly habitable. This was the Joanna Newsom album that made converts of the naysayers, the one that was just as good as it was impressive, the one you could lose yourself in for days on end. If it didn't live on the turntable, it was a comfort knowing it was just there, in reach; returning to it throughout the year revealed new qualities of light, as Newsom's lyrics grew richer, her meanings more tangled with personal experience. Speaking on one part of Have One on Me almost seems to do disservice to the other parts; it is so large, it's tough to see all at once, and few records this year still feel like they have something to give even after dozens of listens. Have One on Me is just a big thing; an album of uncommon grace and refinement, a triumph of the LP form, and, yeah, a hefty old box full of records and pictures and words. And, now, a year's worth of memories. --Paul Thompson",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b2fd7a71d1ea569d36f/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Joanna_Newsom-Have_One_on_Me.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7893-the-top-50-albums-of-2010/,2010,year,album,06,Vampire Weekend,Contra,XL,"Photo by Aaron Vanimere In which a band of misidentified elitists empathetically comes to terms with their elitist hangups only to be sued for $2 million by a former luxury model-turned-teddy bear entrepreneur who currently lives behind gates in one of the most affluent areas of America. Contra is not for fighting, though. It's for finding common spaces in a world desperately clinging to outmoded binaries: us vs. them, red vs. blue, Oxford comma vs. no Oxford comma. So while it was easy to scoff at the now 52-year-old Contra cover star Ann Kirsten Kennis as she talked about squeezing millions out of Vampire Weekend in a misappropriation-of-image suit while looking like a Wasp-y caricature in Vanity Fair, maybe it's not that simple. Maybe her sign-off on the Polaroid was forged by its photographer, as she claims. Maybe rich people who own ornate vases and fluffy lapdogs can be exploited, too. Plus, a passing detail in the VF piece-- that Kennis' hair was just starting to grow back after chemotherapy treatments for breast cancer when she first saw the Contra cover-- is exactly the type of humanizing tidbit Ezra Koenig might allude to in one of his songs. (The case is still pending.) ""Don't call me a Contra 'til you've tried,"" sings Koenig near the end of the album. The line-- delivered with a new-found solemn eloquence-- could read as a defense against his band's naysayers. And while there will always be those who are turned off by their popped collars, flighty arrangements, and overarching neatness, Vampire Weekend graciously refuse to let those people define them. --Ryan Dombal",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b31eb335119a49f1ebe/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Vampire_Weekend-Contra.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7893-the-top-50-albums-of-2010/,2010,year,album,05,Beach House,Teen Dream,Sub Pop,"Photo by Sanchez and Kitahara As if you needed more evidence that the traditional boundary between mainstream and indie is becoming ever more difficult to delineate, consider that a movie-star-marrying top-40 idol and a shy dream-pop duo from Baltimore's avant-underground each released albums in 2010 with practically the same title. But if Beach House's Teen Dream didn't quite have the same chart impact as Katy Perry's Teenage Dream, the album represents no less of a populist breakthrough for its makers. (And, hey, a No. 43 placing on the Billboard Top 200 ain't too shabby either.) Teen Dream did little to alter Beach House's core characteristics-- slow-motion beats layered with hazy keyboard drones, rippling guitar figures, and Victoria Legrand's melancholic melodies-- but greatly amplified them to the point of redefining the band's essence, from that of introverted knee-gazers into an assured, emotionally assertive force. Liberated from the textural fog that permeated Beach House's first two albums, Legrand's voice exposed its rough edges, greatly enhancing the sense of longing and hurt underpinning songs like ""Lover of Mine"" and ""Silver Soul"". Advance copies of Teen Dream first started circulating last December, and its billowy synth lines and sleigh-bell accents made it perfect winter listening. But the album made even more sense as the warm weather arrived-- Teen Dream captures Beach House in the midst of a great thaw, the frosty surfaces melting away to reveal full-blooded passion. --Stuart Berman",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b325e6ef95969327f01/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Beach_House-Teen_Dream.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7893-the-top-50-albums-of-2010/,2010,year,album,04,Big Boi,Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty,Def Jam,"Photo by Eirik Lande Ladies and gentlemen, the best hip-hop album of 2007-- or 2015, take your pick. Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty became notorious for frustrating the bottom-line industry heads at Jive to the point where they just sat on it-- not enough easy-sell, cheap-hit material, they told Big Boi. They wanted a ringtone; they got ""Tangerine"", which proved problematic in that cell phones don't have big enough subwoofers. They wanted a ""Lollipop"" knockoff; they got ""Shutterbugg"", an 808 funk monster so uncompromisingly true to the Dungeon Fam legacy that its answer to Weezy's Auto-Tune was a Jimmy Spicer ""The Bubble Bunch""-style robo-voice loop run through a vintage talkbox. Now, nearly three years after it should have been released, the long-stewing record not only sounds like a right-album-at-the-right-time classic, it sounds like something lesser artists are going to keep catching up to half a decade from now. Nobody does retrofuturism quite like the production team assembled here, and in advancing the sounds of mothership space-funk (Organized Noize's ""Turns Me On"" and ""Fo Yo Sorrows""), Southern trunk-rattle (Mr. DJ's ""Daddy Fat Sax""; André 3000's ""You Ain't No DJ"") and slow-jam gangsta soul (Lil Jon's ""Hustle Blood""; Cutmaster Swiff and Big Boi's co-production ""Shine Blockas""), the sound of Sir Lucious Left Foot is an exercise in recognizing traditions and pushing them miles ahead. Big Boi crowns it all with a lyrical acumen so detailed and charismatic-- acting as benevolent hustler, knuckle-dusting elder statesman, trickster smartass and street-level philosopher-- that he easily proves to the rest of the world what heads knew all along: there is no ""that other dude"" in OutKast. --Nate Patrin",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b330c2bba1b7de0596d/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Big_Boi-Sir_Lucious_Left_Foot_The_Son_of_Chico_Dusty.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7893-the-top-50-albums-of-2010/,2010,year,album,03,Deerhunter,Halcyon Digest,4AD,"Photo by Loren Wohl Indie rock has been obsessed with fidelity for the last few years, carving out micro-genres based on how much audio fog cloaks a group's songs. With their bedroom recording roots, Deerhunter have floated along this competition with grace, a psych-rock band skilled at conscripting the sonic demons hiding in the margins of amateur recording. But there's also beauty to be found in the places where unfiltered sunlight finds gaps in the clouds, and the embrace of that contrast gave Deerhunter a valuable new weapon on the haunting Halcyon Digest. The band's new trick is apparent from the first note on ""Earthquake"", one of the most head-turning album openers of the year, where the sharp edge of a scything backwards loop is softened with ambient washes and brittle electro-acoustic sounds as delicate as porcelain. From there, the album warbles expectantly between the band's phased-out trademarks and a higher-definition clarity, before fulfilling the promise of the opener in the heartbreaking ""Helicopter"", where the production is so shimmery and bright it's hard to look at it without squinting. When your major themes are aging and death, hiding your emotions under layers of tape-hiss can be a cop-out. On Halcyon Digest, Deerhunter demonstrate that the ache of mortality can be even more wounding in the bright glare of daytime than late at night. --Rob Mitchum",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b33d7a71d1ea569d371/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Deerhunter-Halcyon_Digest.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7893-the-top-50-albums-of-2010/,2010,year,album,02,LCD Soundsystem,This Is Happening,Virgin / Parlophone / DFA,"Photo by Leigh Ann Hines Anticipated both by James Murphy's proclamations that this might be the final LCD Soundsystem album and by teasing videos of the band holed up in Rick Rubin's L.A. mansion, clad all in white, This Is Happening could only have been an event. And the album, like the title, delivers without a moment's hesitation: What could have been the document of a band fighting for its place in the pecking order turns out to be something far more personal and far more important. This Is Happening doesn't just keep step with the times; it's the portrait of an older, wiser Murphy, arch and guarded in equal measure, who's intent upon keeping two steps ahead of himself, never mind the competition. However you want to process Murphy's biography and the whole New York rock backstory, the music on the album more than carries its own weight, interpolating Bowie and Eno's studio aura through several generations of downtown dance-rock and canonical house in a way that seems genuinely new; with This Is Happening, the ""DFA sound"" becomes less about its influences than Murphy's own worldview, as Murphy quits leaning on funk-punk clichés and makes every song count. Listen back to Sound of Silver, and a song like ""Time to Get Away"" sounds like filler, a way for Murphy to find his voice and bide the time-- at least, compared to ""Pow Pow"" and ""Home"", the only tracks on the new album that have any truck with old-school DFA-style funk at all. Maybe what Murphy learned the most from Eno and Bowie is the importance of melody. On the last album, ""You Wanted a Hit"" would have been a jarring punk-funk thing, but here it's smoothed out and sadded up by a single, demure keyboard line; same goes for ""Pow Pow"", which starts with rote congas, stubby bass, and spoken ranting, and eventually blossoms into something gloriously harmonic and yearning. As on the last album, there's a careful balance between rockers and brooders, but even the more straightforward club jams, like ""One Touch"", are darker and more urgent than before. And if follow-ups to ""Someone Great"" and ""All My Friends"" are missed, ""All I Want"" and ""I Can Change"" offer potent emotional mile-markers for Murphy's state of being in 2010-- just one point in a line that he's clearly not tired of filling in. (""Never change,"" his ass.) --Philip Sherburne",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b340c2bba1b7de0596f/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/LCD_Soundsystem-This_Is_Happening.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7893-the-top-50-albums-of-2010/,2010,year,album,01,Kanye West,My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy,Def Jam/Roc-A-Fella,"Bearing witness to Kanye West's very public 2010 has featured many joys, none greater than watching everyone unspool his myriad updates, achievements, and indiscretions into piles of meaning. His persona went to cataclysmic places this year-- there were times when he deserved his own cable news ticker. But, somehow, West managed to transcend the preposterous talk show appearances, the too-good-to-be-true Twitter account, the live breakdowns, the Horus chain, the free-MP3 stunt(ing), the press blitz, the breakups, the make-ups, the dick pics, the furniture pornography, the Rosewood movement, the NO NEGATIVE BLOG VIEWING, the living paintings, the short film, and the rest of the lot. Through all that noise, we obsessed first and most deeply over the eye of the storm: the album. --Sean Fennessey",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b34d7a71d1ea569d373/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Kanye_West-My_Beautiful_Dark_Twisted_Fantasy.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,100,These New Puritans,"""We Want War""",Domino,"Few recent British rock bands seem to have much grasp of the islands'musical history prior to the 1960s, so These New Puritans' fascination with 17th century choral music would be refreshing even if it didn't pay off artistically. But it does, and while the music may owe a structural debt to classical forms, the results could hardly sound more futuristic. Over seven and a half minutes, ""We Want War"" experiences countless mood swings, with swells of chopped-up, haunted voices playing perfectly against martial drumming, darkly arranged orchestration, and Jack Barnett's signature mumble. Here, These New Puritans distinguish themselves among the most restless UK indie acts, proving they have the vision and talent to make their most ambitious ideas connect at a gut level. --Tom Ewing",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b4cd7a71d1ea569d387/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/These_New_Puritans-We_Want_War.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,98,Male Bonding,"""Year's Not Long""",Sub Pop,"""Year's Not Long"" is about as close to a mission statement as Male Bonding can get. It first appeared as the grungier half of a split 7"" with Eat Skull last year, but found new life in 2010 as the opening swing from the London trio's Sub Pop debut, Nothing Hurts. Though they gave the song's sonics a shower and shave, its bleeding, blistering pace commanded attention. The trio absolutely bullrides its way through this thing, like it's the only song they can (or care to) play. When frontman John Arthur Webb stops strangling his guitar three quarters of the way through, it's not to catch his breath. Instead, he wails the song's title over a high-rise crescendo that, when it finally breaks, sends the whole thing out with one, last, fuzzy crash. In eight seconds. --David Bevan",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Male%20Bonding%20-%20Year%27s%20Not%20Long.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b4dd7a71d1ea569d389/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Male_Bonding-Years_Not_Long.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,97,Ramadanman,"""Don't Change for Me""",Hessle,"The trend in UK bass music last year was the razor-sharp, juttingly melodic 'purple' craze spearheaded by artists like Joker, Guido, and Gemmy. This year, many producers took the opposite tack, embracing cold, metallic textures, IDM-indebted rhythmic structures, and negative space that at times felt almost antagonistic. The arrhythmic splatter of juke music was deployed on singles from Addison Groove and the Night Slugs camp, while techno-leaning producer Untold's ""Fly Girls"" brought dry, whip-cracked beats to the club floor. But it was David Kennedy, co-founder of UK label Hessle Audio, who pushed the sound to an extreme with this gorgeous closing track to the self-titled EP he released under his Ramadanman guise. What starts with tense cymbal hits patiently unfurls into something more silvery, with patches of skittering 'ardcore-indebted rhythms and spectral vocal samples. --Larry Fitzmaurice",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b4d13d1975652140357/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Ramadanman-Dont_Change_for_Me.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,95,Ty Segall,"""Girlfriend""",Goner,"The purest strains of rock'n'roll have always seemed to stem from what neurobiologists often refer to as ""the lizard brain,"" the primitive parts of the mind that control basic functions such as breathing, eating, and reproducing. ""Girlfriend"", by SF garage-rocker Ty Segall, is a perfect model, eschewing higher-order function and complex cognition in favor of focused primal urge. The song's mixture of power chords, bam-thwack drums, and lyrics about a girl is so time-honored it's eligible for Social Security, but when it's done well, it still gets the heart racing. And usually, doing it well means sticking to the basics, a rule Segall closely follows; the only decoration is a thrilling one-finger, one-note piano solo, bringing a noisy clatter to a fight-or-flight crescendo. --Rob Mitchum",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Ty%20Segall%20-%20Girlfriend.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b4eeb335119a49f1ec7/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Ty_Segall-Girlfriend.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,94,Kelis,"""Acapella""",Interscope,"Kelis' makeover from skewed R&B starlet to Fembot Fatale wasn't tough to predict. If you heard her guest spot on last year's Basement Jaxx opener ""Scars"", you got a taste of the robot princess that would emerge from the darkness of a year spent divorcing her husband, Nas, while pregnant with the couple's child, Knight. The David Guetta-helmed ""Acapella"" is explicitly about her newborn son, before whom her ""whole life was a cappella."" Kelis expresses this sentiment with almost operatic vigor, and her heartbreaking candor breathes life into the cyborg character she's adopted for her latest album, Flesh Tone. And while Lady Gaga's dancefloor-aimed influence is clear, the way Kelis blends human warmth with the icy chill of Guetta's electro-pulsing production places her closer to Robyn's end of the android-pop constellation. --Tyler Grisham",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b4fc0084474cd0c7b17/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Kelis-Acapella.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,93,Freddie Gibbs,"""National Anthem (Fuck the World)""",Decon,"Anyone wading through the sea of mixtapes and leaked tracks by Freddie Gibbs in the past year or two can find the perfect summary of his career to date on ""National Anthem (Fuck the World)"". He recalls his drug-dealing past, his signing and departure from Interscope, and the return to his native Gary, Ind., all delivered in a cadence that can accelerate into a blizzard of words or slow down to a more measured take in the space of a couple bars. Credit is due to LA Riots' steely beat and string-laden samples, but it's Gibbs' burning desire to put his past behind him and seek atonement for his treatment at the hands of the major-label system that hits hardest. --Nick Neyland",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b4f13d1975652140359/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Freddie_Gibbs-National_Anthem_Fuck_the_World.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,92,Matthew Dear,"""You Put a Smell on Me""",Ghostly,"If you read something weird and leering into the title of ""You Put a Smell on Me"", you'd be absolutely correct. But on an album in which Matthew Dear found a new center between his work as a banging techno DJ/producer and a brooding pop songmaker, ""You Put a Smell"" was a sultry paean to lewdness and lust that seemed to come from a haunting, effectively inhuman, distance. Synthesizer arpeggios corkscrew out of it in a manner similar to Dear's beloved club guise Audion, but the drums lay back and slink-- all the better to make room for his low, louche voice as he tries to lure his target home. --Andy Battaglia",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b505e6ef95969327f0c/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Matthew_Dear-You_Put_a_Smell_on_Me.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,91,Liars,"""Scarecrows on a Killer Slant""",Mute,"Liars' Sisterworld was loudly touted as the trio's ""L.A. album,"" but at its center was ""Scarecrows on a Killer Slant"", a track that feels like a redemptive half-step back to the witchy rural New Jersey setting of They Were Wrong, So We Drowned. The hollowed-out guitar grind and astringent drum march provide a raggedy schemata over which Angus Andrew spins almost every vocal trick he's ever tried, from chant-along screams to subtly twisted falsetto to sinister backing harmonies. This is Liars finding a suitably grubby meeting place for their conjoined fascinations with brash pop and strung-out noise, ultimately reaching that spot where they sound like they're sticking a knife in your back and smiling sweetly while they do it. --Nick Neyland",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b50c0084474cd0c7b19/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Liars-Scarecrows_on_a_Killer_Slant.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,90,Abe Vigoda,"""Crush""",Bella Union / Post Present Medium,"""Crush"" moves like an obsession driven forward by illogical desires. Michael Vidal's impassioned vocals are among the hookiest he's ever put to tape, but he also allows himself to be carried along by the sonic assault. The chorus delivers a teasingly brief endorphin rush, as Abe Vigoda make it unclear whether they're running from disaster or maniacally chasing after it, and the closing feedback evokes the smell of burnt rubber. It's also fitting that it shares a title with songs by Jimmy Eat World and Jennifer Paige; at the core of this confusion is something innocent-- a crush destined to go unrequited because nothing can match its intensity. --Ian Cohen",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Abe%20Vigoda%20-%20Crush.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b51eb335119a49f1ec9/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Abe_Vigoda-Crush.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,89,Usher [ft. Nicki Minaj],"""Lil Freak""",LaFace / Jive,"Usher knows damn well that fans weren't crazy about the grown-ass, wifed-up character he presented on 2008's Here I Stand. People want sexy Usher, and that's exactly what he gave them with the enormous threesome ode ""Lil Freak"", with help from sparkplug rapper Nicki Minaj, who spits a highlight verse about recruiting a third for her and Usher's night in. Both shine, but it's producer Polow Da Don who steals the show, cutting up a hook from Stevie Wonder's ""Living for the City"" to create an epic backing track of deep, reverberant bass and orchestral sweep that just gets bigger and bigger as the song progresses. He knows it, too: Polow lets it go instrumental for a whole minute and a half at the end, and it stays thrilling up until the last second.  --Joe Colly",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b51d7a71d1ea569d38b/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Usher_ft_Nicki_Minaj-Lil_Freak.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,88,DOM,"""Burn Bridges""",Burning Mill,"In pop music, it's traditional to sing about the joy of new love, the sadness of passing love, the bitterness of lost love, and the acceptance of unrequited love. But the mix of cynicism and stoicism with which Worcester, Mass.-based trio Dom paint relationships on ""Burn Bridges"" is a rare beast. If you can make out the mumbled lyrics from under the cascading synths and fuzzy production, you'll hear the sound of a man rejecting closeness from friends and lovers alike, and offering advice on how others can similarly cloister themselves from the disappointment intimacy brings: ""Make yourself an island."" It'd be a heartbreaking sentiment if they didn't sound so damn happy about it. --Rebecca Raber",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/DOM%20-%20Burn%20Bridges.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b5113d197565214035b/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/DOM-Burn_Bridges.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,87,Perfume Genius,"""Mr. Peterson""",Transparent,"""Mr. Peterson"" epitomizes the quiet depth that Mike Hadreas of Perfume Genius displayed on his debut album, Learning. Its creaking pedals and thumping keys prime us for the physical intimacies to come. A teenaged narrator gets a romantic note and a Joy Division tape from a teacher, and he smokes weed in his truck. There's only the implication of sex, though clearly a line of authority has been breached. But it's to Hadreas' immense credit that ""Mr. Peterson"" isn't a didactic message-song. This happened, he says. Make of it what you will. The narrator's apparent indifference leaves us alone with our judgments of each plainspoken revelation. After the teacher's suicide, the masterfully ambiguous closing lines maroon us somewhere between sympathy for the devil and our own sense of moral justice, with a profound respect for Perfume Genius' acute understatement. --Brian Howe",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Perfume%20Genius%20-%20Mr%20Peterson.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b52eb335119a49f1ecb/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Perfume_Genius-Mr_Peterson.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,86,Glasser,"""Apply""",True Panther,"Cameron Mesirow clearly had her ideas worked out long before she roped in Fever Ray co-producers Van Rivers and the Subliminal Kid for Ring, her debut album as Glasser. Compare the album version of ""Apply"" to the one she did a year before (on GarageBand), and it's hard not to think that the final mix is fuller, richer, ""better,"" but also largely a question of nuance. Mesirow has said that her talents lie in arranging, a skill set you can certainly hear in her artfully layered sheets of percussion, synthesizer, and voice upon voice upon voice. (More than the frequently cited Kate Bush, Glasser often sounds like a punkier Juana Molina.) But in the deft shifts of key and intensity of ""Apply"", Glasser's facility with arrangements also translates into powerful songwriting, with the immediacy of what can only be called ""heart"" deftly reformatted for the tools at hand. --Philip Sherburne",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b52c0084474cd0c7b1b/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Glasser-Apply.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,85,Wavves,"""Post Acid""",Fat Possum / Green Label Sound,"""Post Acid"" was the valiant return that few expected from Wavves' Nathan Williams after a run of bad decisions and fuck-ups. In this giddy fit of splashy pop-punk, Williams made clear that he's as snotty and brash as ever: ""I'm just having fun with you,"" the gleefully parasitic chorus shouts, rightly suggesting that the world takes him a little too seriously. But Williams is definitely not fucking around here. ""Post Acid"" is tightly wound, trading in the gravely, lo-fi tumble of the old Wavves in favor of something clear and jagged. After spending much of King of the Beach ruminating on what an idiot he's been and the few qualms he has about continuing to be one, ""Post Acid"" is a moment of clarity: It's only rock'n'roll, you guys. From this guy, it's a perfect admonition. --Zach Kelly",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b535e6ef95969327f0e/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Wavves-Post_Acid.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,84,Gil Scott-Heron,"""New York Is Killing Me""",XL,"Gil Scott-Heron doesn't have to tell you all the shit he's seen over the years. You hear it in his voice, which has grown coarse and deep with the years, its gravelly texture evoking an unending succession of bad days. ""New York Is Killing Me"" is urban blues refined and re-formed for the 21st century, drawing on his own life experiences-- his childhood with his grandmother, his early angry success, his stints in Rikers-- for maximum drama. Richard Russell's production is eerie and otherworldly, building an unbearable tension out of snaps and handclaps, and interjecting ambient studio noise, crash cymbals, and a choir that rises out of nowhere. It's the sound of the city closing in on Scott-Heron, suffocating and strangling him, yet he remains stoic as he longs for the unlikely refuge of his hometown of Jackson, Tennessee. A bleak portrait of New York as a 70s slum rather than a post-Giuliani theme park, the song makes an odd but immensely affecting comeback that reminds you just how old he is and how long it's been since we've heard from him. --Stephen M. Deusner",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b53d7a71d1ea569d38d/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Gil_Scott-Heron-New_York_Is_Killing_Me.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,83,Surfer Blood,"""Floating Vibes""",Kanine,"It starts with a big riff and a big beat and somehow finds its way to a sweet chamber-pop coda, and as such ""Floating Vibes"" might be the song that points as much to Surfer Blood's potential as it does to their current quality. There's no doubt they can handle a gigantic, fuzzed-out riff and some fine unison vocals, but it's also exciting to hear them so confidently working to build their sound out and survey some new ground. There's a coiled guitar lead waiting to spring at every turn, and every cosmic aside leads inexorably back to that heavy fuzz progression that keeps the song grounded. The lyrics echo the return in their assertion that whoever is leaving the narrator will be back again. What Surfer Blood winds up with is a pocket-size suite that doubles as a great indie rock song and a possible way forward. --Joe Tangari",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Surfer%20Blood%20-%20Floating%20Vibes.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b540c2bba1b7de05973/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Surfer_Blood-Floating_Vibes.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,82,Spoon,"""Written in Reverse""",Merge,"That poor piano. Spoon's Eric Harvey bides his time during the venomous Transference centerpiece and full-band temper tantrum ""Written in Reverse"" just bashing the hell out of a few very untickled-sounding ivories; by the time it's over, it sounds like the studio floor must be covered in splinters. While typically unflappable, Britt Daniel sounds positively unhinged here, snapping and snarling as he recounts a particularly nasty communication breakdown: ""I wanna show you how I love you,"" he pleads, but frustration sets in; a light bulb has gone off, and it turns out ""there's nothing there."" In the midst of the uncharacteristically noncommittal Transference, the near-derangement in Daniel's vocal here feels gloriously feral and desperate. So much of Spoon's best work has felt like an elaborate subtraction problem, but in 2010, their strongest track just left it all out there. --Paul Thompson",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b55eb335119a49f1ecd/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Spoon-Written_in_Reverse.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,81,Forest Swords,"""Rattling Cage""",No Pain in Pop,"""Rattling Cage"", a post-whatever's-after-post-dubstep track filled with decontextualized samples and loops, and yawning with interpretive possibility, sounds like it's trying to make more than a musical point. Like Burial and his fellow dystopian discontents, Liverpool producer Matthew Barnes condemns Britain's urban spaces as prisons of poverty, violence, and despair-- exhibits A - Z in the case against modern capitalism. But Barnes doesn't say it in words, at least not English ones. A foul wind, a woman's wail, metallic clang, and a spectral organ articulate the stakes and solution. Or do they? The video makes a modest (or at least, less-violent) proposal: more inner-city music-education funding. As far as public policy goes, it's probably a little naïve. But damn, what an auspicious start. --Amy Granzin",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Forest%20Swords%20-%20Rattling%20Cage.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b55c0084474cd0c7b1d/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Forest_Swords-Rattling_Cage.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,80,The Radio Dept.,"""Heaven's on Fire""",Labrador,"Let's say you're one of your country's most underrated bands. Let's also say, hypothetically, you're a little irritated by that fact, but you're clever and talented enough to realize that nobody wants to hear a dreamy soft-rock band's sour grapes. For the Radio Dept., a long-running Swedish pop group that previously had their biggest international success with the Marie Antoinette soundtrack, ""Heaven's on Fire"" is a perfect solution. Originally titled ""Spring Time"", the song is as radiant as the season: all cheery keyboards, jazzy guitars, and muted reverb. But Thurston Moore's anti-capitalist opening rant-- omitted from a version I've heard over corporate airwaves-- isn't here just for kicks. ""When I look at you, I reach for a piano wire,"" Johan Duncanson murmurs on the song's second verse. Later he worries that ""everyone"" seems to be siding with ""charlatans."" Hell is other people; this song is something else. Heavenly subversion. --Marc Hogan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b56d7a71d1ea569d38f/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Radio_Dept-Heavens_on_Fire.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,79,Delorean,"""Real Love""",True Panther,"At first, the unnerving and violent video treatment ruined ""Real Love"" for me-- Delorean always came off like ambassadors to the kind of Mediterranean getaways and open-air raves where all sadness is banished, and I hadn't heard much this year that sounded more uplifting. But in retrospect, it took the shock value of the visual for me to realize why it's called ""Real Love"": the bloodthirsty dogs aren't killers, but creatures motivated by the same primal urges that drive our fantasies, and the economy of Ekhi Lopetegi's lyrics give the listener free range to reckon with its emotional complexity: while the piano vamps and Ibiza beats try to put a positive spin on things, the vocal sample embodies the resignation of asking, ""Will we ever meet again?"" and knowing the answer all too well. --Ian Cohen",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Delorean%20-%20Real%20Love.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b560c2bba1b7de05975/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Delorean-Real_Love.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,78,Die Antwoord,"""Enter the Ninja""",Cherrytree / Interscope,"Whether you think these guys are South Africa's Yelawolf or just the zef Joaquin Phoenix, it's difficult to deny the instant, insistent appeal of Die Antwoord's de facto theme song and accompanying, overnight meme-making video. Both the song and the clip are pure cheese, but delivered with the utmost commitment. Main MC Ninja nimbly boasts about (duh, what else) his ninjitsu bona fides over a foundation of stereo-panned arpeggios, trance lead synths, and canned yet kinetic kicks, snares, and skittering hi-hats. Yo-Landi Vi$$er sings a supplicant, elfin-voiced chorus that rhymes ""samurai"" with ""butterfly."" The video is all ridiculous mean-mugging from Ninja and Comic-Con schoolgirl sexuality from Vi$$er. Plus: those haircuts! Those tattoos! The progeria! During the breakdown, Ninja goggles at just how awesome his own song is, and how he overcame all the doubters to get here: ""Look at me now, all up in the Interweb!"" So, yeah, it's a novelty, but a great one, and rarer than that: a gag that wills itself real. --Eric Grandy",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b5713d197565214035d/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Die_Antwoord-Enter_the_Ninja.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,77,Rihanna [ft. Drake],"""What's My Name?""",Def Jam,"Following Rated R's demon-baring melodrama with a bona fide party record might be the savviest thing Rihanna's ever done. ""What's My Name?"" reminds us that Rihanna's always been an alpha-female, empowered and satisfied; girls have been demanding that their paramours speak their names for pop-eons, but Rihanna's request feels more like a threat than a request. Drake's guest-strutting here is endearingly corny (note to dudes: ""The things that we could do in 20 minutes, girl,"" isn't, like, incentive), but it gives Rihanna the perfect platform to steam: She's interested, but mostly she wants to know what you can do for her. ""Not everybody knows how to work my body, knows how to make me want it,"" she warns. Now, it's less about whether or not you remember her name, and more about whether or not you've got the balls to say it out loud. --Amanda Petrusich",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b57d7a71d1ea569d391/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Rihanna_ft_Drake-Whats_My_Name.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,76,Here We Go Magic,"""Collector""",Secretly Canadian,"Most guitar-based indie bands don't have anything new to say these days, just vaguely new ways to say them. Retro is a starting point we take for granted-- the challenge is making your rehash sophisticated and seamless. In a way, it's a moment in culture that makes minor standouts like ""Collector""-- a song with zero surprises-- sound slightly surprising. It's not the first song to juxtapose a light, folksy touch with a rhythmic urgency, and it's not the first to play a staccato beat with a long, blurry synth line-- a hypothetical bibliography here would be pointless. But the songs that make ""Collector"" sound familiar don't make it sound irrelevant. There's a hurried, ramshackle quality that the Feelies wouldn't tolerate, and a scruffy edge Eno would tamp down. And I always get so lost in the pulse of the song that I forget the lyrics: ""I've got a mild fascination… for the collectors,"" Luke Temple sings. Makes sense. --Mike Powell",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Here%20We%20Go%20Magic%20-%20Collector.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b58c0084474cd0c7b1f/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Here_We_Go_Magic-Collector.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,75,Toro Y Moi,"""Blessa""",Carpark,"Chillwave engulfed indie pop this year, and though Toro Y Moi provided good vibes just like the rest of those post-grad loafers, Causers of This eschewed privileged ennui so it could soundtrack wizened acceptance. Most of Causers comfortably wrestles with a soul-crippling break-up, but the intro track ""Blessa"" tackles the peculiar, mid-recession feelings of working a job that's just totally whatever: ""I found a job/ I do it fine/ Not what I want/ But still I try."" From those possibly generation-defining lines, to the introductory Beach Boys sigh, and Dilla-tinged, one step forward, two steps back beatmaking, ""Blessa"" is the sound of slow but steady progress-- and that's preferable to one more hypnagogic ode to lazy, hazy days. --Brandon Soderberg",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b595e6ef95969327f10/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Toro_Y_Moi-Blessa.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,74,Sade,"""Soldier of Love""",Epic,"In an age when artists are expected to maintain a steady stream of new music and obsessively update fans about their every move, Sade is the calm at the eye of the storm, musically and commercially. The beloved but elusive R&B group led by the singer of the same name heralded their first album in a decade with few interviews, videos, or TV appearances, and no tour until next summer, and still sold over a million copies, scoring the number one album in the country for three straight weeks. The lure of the aching title track certainly helped, as it subtly updates Sade's trademark spa seduction soundtrack with military percussion and a sense of fierce but restrained urgency, punctuated by stabs of rock guitar. Simultaneously of the moment and ageless, ""Soldier of Love"" reminds us of the virtues of self-control. Times may change, but Sade is eternal. --Amy Phillips",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b590c2bba1b7de05977/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Sade-Soldier_of_Love.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,73,Wild Nothing,"""Chinatown""",Captured Tracks,"Wild Nothing's ""Chinatown"" finds just the right mix of melancholy and urgency. The flute-like synths, rollicking percussion, and honeyed vocals on the chorus all shape an astral atmosphere, but there's an air of infinite possibility tangled in all this lushness. ""We're not happy 'til we're running away,"" sings leader Jack Tatum, and the song makes the appeal of escape easy to understand. It calls back to the kind of daydream born of adolescent pining, when hearts are tender and ecstasy is felt most intensely. Swirl it all together and the result is a terribly sad, terribly pretty mix that's wonderfully woozy and sublime. --Zach Kelly",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Wild%20Nothing%20-%20Chinatown.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b5ad7a71d1ea569d393/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Wild_Nothing-Chinatown.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,72,No Age,"""Glitter""",Sub Pop,"""Glitter"" is a pop song. You can hear which words drummer-singer Dean Spunt is singing (not yelling) into his microphone. There's a longing, universal hook that repeats: ""I want you bad underneath my skin."" A guitar solo pops up right where we know it should. There's its namesake glam back beat. ""Glitter"" has a blistered shininess we've never heard from this L.A. duo who are keeping the idea of punk alive and relevant more than just about anyone nowadays. Because while ""Glitter"" could've been a legitimate alt rock hit when that phrase meant something, No Age have not gone pop. Not at all. After continually exorcising the noise that they broke in on, these two are keeping it punk by keeping their sound moving, shifting, unpredictable. Plus, guitarist Randy Randall's pedal-pushing squeal is the stuff of Mascis and Thurston and Shields-- guitar heroes who know something about turning reckless sound into song. --Ryan Dombal",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/No%20Age%20-%20Glitter.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b5a0c2bba1b7de05979/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/No_Age-Glitter.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,71,Salem,"""King Night""",IAmSound,"Whether for their inclusion in ill-named subgenres, the morphine-sip rap of Jack Donoghue, or their blatant appropriation of Dirty South snares and cymbals, the ostensibly lazy, extremely loud Midwestern misfits Salem inspired a load of ire in 2010. Butwhat else should you expect from a band that uses its first glimmer of the mainstreamspotlight to corrode ""O Holy Night"", a two-centuries old Christmas carol aboutChrist as redeemer that doesn't take a Christian to spot? ""King Night"" lacessynthesizer smears and snipped-and-stretched vocals from a choir above drums and bass that look to demolish systems. About three minutes in, thestatic-and-synth destruction open wide, revealing the carol's chorus intact, hinting atredemption that instantly evaporates. The vocals get buried, the drums roll in, and thespirit of Salem-- too decidedly sinister for laziness-- shines. --Grayson Currin",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Salem%20-%20King%20Night.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b5ceb335119a49f1ecf/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Salem-King_Night.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,70,NDF,"""Since We Last Met""",DFA,"NDF's debut single for the DFA label, ""Since We Last Met"", floats for nearly 11 minutes in a film-grain loop appropriate for a song about the passage of time. With production from producer Bruno Pronsato and vocals from the D.C.-based Sergio Giorgini, the song seems imbued with a sort of thoughtful wistfulness. The percussion is a subdued heartbeat rush, a palpable recollection of a stronger, now-distant excitement. This thrill is tempered by the emotions that well to the surface with each lightly tapping chord, capturing an elusive poignancy that hits like a catch in the back of your throat. The production suggests contradictory emotions, while the half-spoken vocals are reminiscent of Luomo's snatches of conversation, a place where words imply more than their literal meanings. The song mirrors that feeling where something uneventful and casual on the surface conceals a tangle of feelings happening in a conflicting rush below the surface. --David Drake",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b5dd7a71d1ea569d395/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/NDF-Since_We_Last_Met.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,69,Woods,"""Suffering Season""",Woodsist,"Vibe has always come easy to Woods. Since their earliest improv-heavy jams, the Brooklyn-based psych-folk group has demonstrated a gift for eerie psychedelic murk. That they turned out to be awesome songwriters is just an added bonus. ""Suffering Season"", from the band's most recent full-length, At Echo Lake, finds them batting high in both games. Here weirdo chops are perfectly wedded to jangling hooks. ""To rise past the suffering season, hold it back up now and let it begin,"" sings Jeremy Earl, his wavering voice made liquid with tremolo and delay. ""Who knows what tomorrow might bring?"" A fuzz-frazzled 12-string lead adorns a chorus of Phil Spector-style ""oohs."" It's a fully sing-along-able tune made all the more expansive through the band's perfectly pruned taste for noise. --Aaron Leitko",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b5d0c2bba1b7de0597b/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Woods-Suffering_Season.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,68,Kingdom [ft. Shyvonne],"""Mind Reader""",Acephale / Fool's Gold,"You get about 45 seconds warning from Ezra Rubin-- aka Kingdom-- before ""Mind Reader"" explodes in your hands. At that point, it's too late to duck or cover, and all you can do is lean into it, bear the brunt of the blow. Stacking dubstep, diva house, Jock Jams, and what sounds like a couple cash registers humping, ""Mind Reader"" is a blast to the head, powered along by the sheer kinetic force of its many moving parts. As Rubin folds more and more buzzes and whirrs into the pinball machine of a mix, Shyvonne cooly loses her patience with a partner expecting a little too much clairvoyance. At times the madcap, every-direction-at-once production threatens to spin itself out, lose its center, but Shyvonne's increasingly insistent pleas-- and Kingdom's slingshot reflexes-- holds the track together through every breathless second. When it ends, you'll find yourself asking just what was that while picking the shrapnel from your teeth. C-crazy. --Paul Thompson",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b5ec0084474cd0c7b21/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Kingdom_ft_Shyvonne-Mind_Reader.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,67,Drake,"""Over""",Young Money / Cash Money,"Popular rap and R&B is a slash-and-burn game right now. Find a crooner who can sorta sing and kinda rap and stick him on anything and everything until he tumbles into self-parody-- and then, drop him. Think: T-Pain. Drake has so far successfully avoided that same fate by releasing a cogent debut album, and maintaining a relationship with quasi-in-house producers like Boi-1da who put together the regal, marching band clatter of ""Over"". Everybody from Eminem to Diggy Simmons to G-Side's 2 Lettaz were far more compelling over this beat than Drake, but the king of hashtag rappers (""I can teach you how to speak my language-- Rosetta Stone"") sounds great and comfortable on the thing, and in this context, that's far more important than straight-killing it. --Brandon Soderberg",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b5f13d197565214035f/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Drake-Over.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,66,The National,"""Bloodbuzz Ohio""",4AD,"The National aren't a singles band; not just because their albums are so cohesive but because individual tracks within those albums rarely leap out from the pack as being the kind of thing you'd want to hear between ""Wut"" and ""Power"". Still, the superlative High Violet deserves to be spotlighted in as many ways as possible, so we might as well isolate the album's first single and one of its more musically buoyant tunes, ""Bloodbuzz Ohio"". It's as perfect a distillation of the National's essence as you're going to find, particularly the way the band creates tension between its surface composure and its lyrical anxiety. Like most of the National's songs, ""Bloodbuzz Ohio"" is unflappable on its face, as Matt Berninger suavely croons while the rest of the band swells and ebbs with gentlemanly grace. The words, however, paint a picture of regret, dislocation, and even financial hardship. Berninger dresses impeccably as per usual in the song's video, whilst intoning with pitch-perfect irony, ""I still owe money/ To the money/ To the money I owe."" --Joshua Love",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b60eb335119a49f1ed1/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_National-Bloodbuzz_Ohio.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,65,Dum Dum Girls,"""Jail La La""",Sub Pop,"One of the dominant sounds of independent music in the past few years has been 60s girl-group pop swathed in a cocoon of distortion. And while anyone with a fuzz pedal can get the ""noise"" part of noise-pop right, few bands get the bubblegum-earworm sweetness and tough-chick posturing of the ""pop"" part as right as Dum Dum Girls, the former solo project and current quartet led by songwriter Kristen Gundred (call her Dee Dee, please; she likes to stay in character). Some of the credit for ""Jail La La""'s success goes to producer Richard Gottehrer, the co-writer of ""My Boyfriend's Back"" and ""I Want Candy""-- it helps, when aiming for a specific sound, to go right to the source. But the real star of the show is Dee Dee, who wrangles a tale of landing in jail and longing for someone to tell her ""baby"" that she needs bailing out into a tight, propulsive jangle plumped by her teen-dream coo. Lo-fi has rarely sounded so full. --Rebecca Raber",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Dum%20Dum%20Girls%20-%20Jail%20La%20La.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b605e6ef95969327f12/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Dum_Dum_Girls-Jail_La_La.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,64,Alicia Keys,"""Un-Thinkable (I'm Ready)""",J,"Alicia Keys always puts out one perfect song per album. She reminds me of Billy Joel, with her corniness and piano loungeness and deep affection for New York clichés. But I never deny when she's on point, so if I judge her too harshly for not being able to always replicate ""Fallin'"", it's just a testament to that song setting the bar impossibly high for the rest of her career. Drake co-wrote it, and freed from having to pretend for his rap bros that he's a misogynist (I see you, Drake) goes deeper than ever into female pleasure and earnestness. Given his much expressed affection for Aaliyah, this is probably Drake's attempt at an Aaliyah song, tailored to Alicia's very different specific strengths. That said, this song is erotic city. It's an instant babymaking classic. Skittering beats, trembling synths, deep piano chord progressions, and floating drums. It sounds like it was recorded in a downtempo underwater sex chamber or inside a neon motel sign. It belongs on the Art Laboe Connection forever, with Sade and Minnie Riperton and other sensual heavyweights. It is the eye of the quiet storm. --Molly Lambert",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b610c2bba1b7de0597d/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Alicia_Keys-Un-Thinkable_Im_Ready.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,63,Broken Social Scene,"""World Sick""",Arts & Crafts,"For a band composed of something like 17 members, Broken Social Scene rarely aim to overwhelm. So, when they returned with their first proper album in five years (following a pair of ""Broken Social Scene Presents"" solo discs from founders Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning), it makes sense that they would open it with a nearly seven-minute long song that floats in like a breeze and never hits harder than some light cymbal crashes. Another signature BSS trick: for all that restraint, they still manage to make a lasting impression, and carve out a lot of sonic space. The verses slip forward, punctuated by sharp echoing guitar couplets, Drew's vocals a kind of seductive apathy (not just ""world sick every time I take a stand,"" but so tired that he's even ""sick of the self love""), the choruses gently swell and spray and then recede to almost nothing again. And after seven minutes, that nothing stays echoing in your head. --Eric Grandy",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b625e6ef95969327f14/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Broken_Social_Scene-World_Sick.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,62,Ted Leo and the Pharmacists,"""Bottled in Cork""",Matador,"Almost once per album now, Ted Leo will pen a song that ends up some of that year's most potent travel writing. Songs like ""The Ballad of the Sin Eater"" gained half its velocity from a litany of foreign names and tricky pronunciation, but ""Bottled"" is more about finding common ground. The song's structure cleverly mirrors its own lyrics, with it's nervous, word-crammed opening seconds soon giving way to communal call-and response, over which the rabble-rouser and proud New Jerseyan Leo stops sweating the state of the world and is even willing to lie about his hometown for the sake of smoothing over a hurdle in conversation. But it's all OK, because he knows that the real equalizer in foreign relations is not geography or current events, but booze--years of ""psychic damage"" and political anguish are drowned out by a refrain to get the bartender's attention. For the next three minutes and change, forget your town and its borders, forget what's on the news, put away your passport, pop a bottle, raise your glass and say, ""Prost!"" --Jason Crock",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b62d7a71d1ea569d397/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Ted_Leo_and_the_Pharmacists-Bottled_in_Cork.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,61,Tyler the Creator [ft. Hodgy Beats],"""French""",self-released,"They said a lot of really noxious and vile shit on their records this year, but Odd Future Wolf Gang never sounded more effectively evil than Tyler the Creator and Hodgy Beats do on ""French"". Credit a lot of that to the beat alone, which is a lurching menace: a speaker-corroding bass line prowls the low end while serrated snares pummel off the beat from above. Over it, Tyler rasps dementedly about doing coke at 17, calls himself ""Wolverine's stepson,"" and engages in a series of vividly described, morally indefensible acts of sexual violence (Goldilocks and Mary are implicated). Filthy, nasty, repellent, and undeniable: in just four minutes, Tyler and his cohorts have left an indelible smear on your consciousness, implicating you with the same leering brilliance of the early Eminem they so clearly worship. --Jayson Greene",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Tyler%20the%20Creator%20-%20French%21%20Featuring%20Hodgy%20Beats.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b630c2bba1b7de0597f/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Tyler_the_Creator_ft_Hodgy_Beats-French.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,60,Panda Bear,"""Slow Motion""",Paw Tracks,"Panda Bear's 2007 release Person Pitch is still a daily listening staple for an entire generation of weirdos, and in our post-""My Girls"" world, a lot of people are paying attention to Animal Collective's every move. It's a heavytime for the band, but possibly heaviest of all for Noah Lennox, who has emerged as the engine for the group's most accessible music. So how do you follow Person Pitch? ""Slow Motion"", from the first in a series of 7"" singles, takes Lennox's sound in a darker direction. Built on a hypnotic, dub-inflected drum break, the track finds Lennox's familiar, comforting vocals floating in monastic calm. It begins, moves from stark melody to rich harmony, and then before you know it, it's over, and the only thing that seems right is pressing play again. --Sam Hockley-Smith",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b6313d1975652140361/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Panda_Bear-Slow_Motion.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,59,Twin Sister,"""All Around and Away We Go""",Domino,"""All Around And Away We Go"" is thick with atmosphere, but everything else about it is airy and light, if not outright weightless. The bass groove has the slick gestural quality of fashion illustration, amazingly fluid and subtle in its suggestion of an almost unnatural elegance and sophistication. Andrea Estella's breathy, ecstatic vocals further amp up the song's perfumed, sensually teasing quality, but the raw sexuality comes through in the guitar, which shifts from a clicking disco rhythm in the verses to a dreamy clatter during the bridge. It's an extremely well-crafted song, but you probably won't ever spend your time listening to it focused on its construction. Instead, you either get lost in its lovely haze, or wonder how this young band ever managed to come up with a blissed-out psychedelic variation on the Andrea True Connection's ""More More More"". --Matthew Perpetua",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Twin%20Sister%20-%20All%20Around%20and%20Away%20We%20Go.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b64d7a71d1ea569d399/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Twin_Sister-All_Around_and_Away_We_Go.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,58,Oneohtrix Point Never [ft. Antony],"""Returnal""",Editions Mego,"On the album that shares its name, ""Returnal"" is a mesmerizing drift of repeatingsynthesizer lines that wrap like gauze around Daniel Lopatin's vocoder. But the song feels subservient to the sound, with Lopatin's message and motive woven into the melody. This version, pulled from a limited edition 7"" release, is a total overhaul, with guest vocalist Antony Hegarty recastingthe New England electronics wizard as a patient songwriter and arranger. Lopatin's pianolines plod and scatter, grounding Hegarty's ascendant croon with patience. Hegarty hascollaborated often in the last decade-- with Björk and Lou Reed on his own albums, andon records by Rufus Wainwright, Hercules & Love Affair and a dozen othes-- but he'srarely sounded so at home inside someone else's words. Lopatin's quest for renewal and hope resonate with Hegarty's recent, environmentally driven works. ""My desire to see thelight,"" he sings, doubling the line for emphasis, ""my desire to be pure."" Taken together,those words-- pure and light-- befit this take. --Grayson Currin",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b65c0084474cd0c7b23/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Oneohtrix_Point_Never_ft_Antony-Returnal.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,57,The Fresh & Onlys,"""Waterfall""",In the Red,"The Fresh & Onlys have always had a way with mixing noise and melody, but they've never recorded a song quite as shimmering as ""Waterfall"". A dramatic electric guitar line scales up the fretboard while the strummed acoustic behind it evokes waves crashing against a wall of rocks, and ghostly-but-gorgeous backing vocals float in and out. Frontman Tim Cohen's lyrics tackle being in the middle of a tug-of-war between the warring media devices of our everyday lives, and the disconnect we feel when not knowing exactly what to believe. By the chorus, Cohen decides to forgo it all. ""Fall with me into the waterfall,"" he sings amid a climactic wall of sound. Out of the slew of garage bands roaming the underground rock landscape these days, the Fresh & Onlys do romance better than any of them. --Martin Douglas",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/The%20Fresh%20%26%20Onlys%20-%20Waterfall.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b66eb335119a49f1ed3/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Fresh__Onlys-Waterfall.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,56,Joker,"""Tron""",Kapsize,"Joker's always been more than capable of providing a fully-realized suite of ideas in his tracks, whether it's a g-funk-reinventing tour de force like ""Purple City"" or just a slick cut-up job of the Metal Gear Solid 3 theme on ""Snake Eater"". But sometimes, all you really need is a bassline. The one in ""Tron"" is, to put it delicately, fucking bonkers: hoover synths turn feral, stomping with a menacing shudder that sounds like it could've been written by Black Sabbath's Geezer Butler and then shelved for being too unnerving. It drops hilariously, too-- after a minute of crystalline synth-funk lulls you into wondering if it's going to be one of his more stripped-down slow jams, that wobble smashes through the wall Kool-Aid Man-style. The bass does subside every so often, and without it you can more clearly hear one of the year's better-constructed dubstep backbeats, all surgical hi-hats and bracing 808 handclaps. But with that bass, watch the hell out. --Nate Patrin",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b66c0084474cd0c7b25/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Joker-Tron.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,55,Lady Gaga [ft. Beyoncé],"""Telephone""",Cherrytree / Interscope,"""Telephone"" is one of the less weird tracks on The Fame Monster, a stuttering Eurodance confection about the First World Problem of cell/text communication in the club, featuring a brief cameo by Beyoncé at her (Sasha) fiercest. But with Lady Gaga, the music itself is often just the side dish to the sumptuous entree that is her ever-evolving freakshow image. And thus, the ""Telephone"" video made the song iconic by association. ""Telephone"" cast Gaga and Beyoncé as a funhouse mirror Thelma & Louise, mashing up women's prison sexploitation, Broadway musicals, Tarantino, and feminist rage into the most fun, most ridiculous, and arguably best music video of the year. Without it, we might never have known that cigarette sunglasses and phone receiver hair curlers exist. --Amy Phillips",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b675e6ef95969327f16/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Lady_Gaga_ft_Beyonc-Telephone.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,54,Vampire Weekend,"""White Sky""",XL,"Vampire Weekend's music is too likable to make the band as divisive as it's become; even the experiments are supported by rock-solid new wave hookcraft. It's the vocab-drunk obscurity of Ezra Koenig's story-songs that have proven to be the band's selling or sticking point, depending on whether you fall into the ""pro"" or ""con"" camp, and ""White Sky"" is one of Koenig's showiest performances yet. As usual, his wordplay might seem brick-dense on the page, with cultural references both high and low. But Koenig's become a master of the kind of melodies that only reveal their intricacies once you really start paying attention. The verses are so fluidly arranged, supported by the band's minimalist techno-meets-highlife bounce, that they're almost a lesson in smoothing out knotty lyrics until they hit with the directness of the best pop songs. And that's not even counting the simple, ecstatic pleasures of one of the year's best wordless choruses. --Jess Harvell",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b67eb335119a49f1ed5/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Vampire_Weekend-White_Sky.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,53,Kendal Johansson,"""Blue Moon""",Sincerely Yours,"This Big Star cover from Sweden's Kendal Johansson came from out of nowhere. Carried along on the heft of a yawning drum mulch, it ebbs with bird noises and creeping atmospherics before a big vocal that ratchets up the drama of the original a few notches. Johansson's room-filler is a (very) distant relative to Alex Chilton's quietly yearning strain, but gentle melancholy still trails his voice. Its widescreen arrangement, comprised of soft guitar, piano, synth strings, and mammoth drums, could sound schmaltzy in the wrong hands, but Johansson flips the score, coaxing the heart of devotion in the song to the surface and allowing it to ripple there for a moment before the song fades away. Boldly economical, it ends way too soon but leaves an indelible mark on the silence that replaces it. --Hari Ashurst",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Kendal%20Johansson%20-%20Blue%20Moon.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b68c0084474cd0c7b27/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Kendal_Johansson-Blue_Moon.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,52,Lindstrøm & Christabelle,"""Lovesick""",Smalltown Supersound,"This is one of the least likely Cadillac jingles in history. Just a few years back, Hans-Peter Lindstrøm crafted a retro-futurist masterpiece in his debut full-length, Where You Go I Go Too. But he pulled trump card when he announced he'd be making an album of pop tunes with a Mauritian woman singing lead. Here, Lindstrøm plays a frittering Moroder-type producer while Christabelle vamps Donna Summer, but the collaboration also recalls the friendship of No Wave pioneers Richard Hell and his literary muse Lizzy Mercier Descloux. Like Descloux, Christabelle barges like a tornado into Lindstrøm's beats, lilting her unaffected, almost quizzical speak-singing as Lindstrøm frantically works to construct a backdrop, barely managing to accompany her temperament with a palm-muted 95 bpm set piece. --Mike Orme",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b690c2bba1b7de05981/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Lindstrm__Christabelle-Lovesick.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,51,Smith Westerns,"""Weekend""",Fat Possum,"You don't have to look very far to notice the pending Britpop revival: Blur reunited to great fanfare last year, and Pulp is next. Suede got a sympathetic re-look with this year's best-of collection, and the final active bands from the era, Oasis and Supergrass, have finally called it quits, placing a tombstone on the era and opening the door to re-evalation. And now here comes Chicago's Smith Westerns with a sound indebted to the bright-eyed, buoyant Supergrass model of Britpop. And just as Supergrass were upon arrival, Smith Westerns are young, exuberant, and fueled by optimism and imagination; in love with the possibilities of life rather than navigating its obstacles. So here is the new Smith Westerns sound, stripping away the glam and boogie from T. Rex, and here is also the first great indie pop song of 2011. Sure, it hit the web last month, but the album drops in the new year, and this one has ""springtime"" written all over it. --Scott Plagenhoef",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b69d7a71d1ea569d39b/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Smith_Westerns-Weekend.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,50,Cults,"""Go Outside""",Forest Family,"Cults quietly debuted their invigorating first single ""Go Outside"" on Bandcamp, without so much as a MySpace or a Facebook page listeners could use to mine for details about them. The low-key introduction was notable not just for injecting some much needed mystery into an era in which we know so much about our over-accessible pop stars that we even see camera-phone pictures of their junk, but because the song itself-- which recalls both brightly twee, glockenspiel-happy Swedish pop and the simple, nostalgia-inducing melody of the Faces' classic ""Ooh La La""-- sparked immediate interest in the group. The New York band has since gone public and signed to a major label (which guarantees some serious spotlight glare), but with more songs like this one, they'll continue to hold our interest for two or three minutes, rather than 140 characters, at a time. --Rebecca Raber",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Cults%20-%20Go%20Outside.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b6ac0084474cd0c7b29/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Cults-Go_Outside.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,49,ceo,"""Come With Me""",Modular / Sincerely Yours,"The CEO is, with good reason, a popular bogeyman, a puppeteer buffered from the consequences of his decisions by golden penthouses and parachutes. Weirdly, that makes ceo a perfect name for the Tough Alliance member Eric Berglund's solo project, a cocoon of carefree dance-pop untouched by street-level problems. Berglund's best song, ""Come with Me"", is a dreamily temperate ode to escapism. With bubbly synths and a wistful piano bridge sandwiched between a gleaming, fluffy top layer and skittering bottom, it's like candy made from five kinds of candy. There's a sugary ache in Berglund's voice, and a shrewd note, too: He's inviting you from a place they call ""reality"" to ""a place I call reality."" This is an invitation to choose a world where we can have it all, even for a few blissful minutes, over one where we probably have less than we'd like; a proposition that's hard to resist. --Brian Howe",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/ceo%20-%20Come%20With%20Me.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b6aeb335119a49f1ed7/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/ceo-Come_With_Me.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,48,Best Coast,"""When I'm With You""",Mexican Summer,"""When I'm With You"" launches straight into the invincible feeling of a brand new relationship. Bombs could be going off, there could be an earthquake, the world might be crazy, but this kind of us-against-the-world tunnelvision is a universally relatable sentiment. Best Coast's take on this well-worn pop trope works so well because of Bethany Cosentino's directness: Her vocals, set against reverb-soaked guitar chords, are utterly sincere, self-assured, and shouted to the rooftops. That ability to effortlessly communicate the rush of newfound love, to briefly infect her listeners with that feeling, is her greatest strength. Where lyrics like, ""When I'm with you I have fun,"" and ""I hate sleeping alone,"" might seem trite or obvious on paper, Cosentino delivers them with a lovestruck swoon so affecting, we can't help but d'awww. --Hari Ashurst",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b6b13d1975652140363/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Best_Coast-When_Im_With_You.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,47,Beach House,"""Walk in the Park""",Sub Pop,"On their first two records, Beach House made lovers' rock for basements. Their albums were muted, dusty crawlspaces that you entered alone and lingered until you were ready to face the world. On their Sub Pop debut, Teen Dream, they let all the air in on this sound at once, amplifying the intimacy at its heart. ""Walk in the Park"" was at once its saddest and most cinematic moment. Victoria Legrand's indelible chorus, a six-note wail of failed ascent tugged downward by the chord progression, embodied the album's tone: you can be just as gorgeously miserable walking in the crisp fall air as you were sitting in your bedroom, and Beach House prove that they're more than capable of soundtracking your heartbreak wherever you take it. --Jayson Greene",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b6bd7a71d1ea569d39d/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Beach_House-Walk_in_the_Park.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,46,The Knife [ft. Mt. Sims and Planningtorock],"""Colouring of Pigeons""",Mute / Rabid,"If you're going to go from creating claustrophobic electronic pop music to writing an opera based on the notebooks of Charles Darwin, you might as well fully commit to the audacity of such a move and release an 11-minute teaser track. But as ""Colouring of Pigeons"" shows, the Knife took to (as the group's Olof Dreijer described it) the ""pretentious and dramatic gestures"" of opera with ease. The shambling backing track of strings, drums and cymbals might be new to the Knife, but the piece's ominous theatricality is most certainly not. Both Olof and Karin Dreijer Andersson are right at home in this skin, turning the mundane details of Darwin's ornithological observations into haunting, fractured poetry. --David Raposa",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/The%20Knife%20-%20Colouring%20of%20Pigeons.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b6cc0084474cd0c7b2b/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Knife_ft_Mt_Sims_and_Planningtorock-Colouring_of_Pigeons.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,45,Gorillaz,"""On Melancholy Hill""",Virgin,"In recent years, Damon Albarn has been aging gracefully into a pop culture role that extends far beyond his provincial Britpop persona. He's done that in part by either sharing or ceding the spotlight to a revolving door of eclectic collaborators. Luckily for longtime Blur fans, he reserved the best song on Plastic Beach as a showcase for his own voice. Albarn's performance on the lovesick ballad ""On Melancholy Hill"" is wistful and understated enough that he sounds overwhelmed at the center of his own buzzing synthpop symphony. The contrast between his weathered, weary tone and the bright notes that carry the main hook is surprisingly beautiful, like garish commercial lighting that ends up appearing romantic in spite of itself. --Matthew Perpetua",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b6c0c2bba1b7de05983/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Gorillaz-On_Melancholy_Hill.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,44,Das Racist,"""hahahaha jk?""",Mad Decent / Greedhead / Mishka,"Das Racist mock hip-hop because they love it. They're the guys who'll make a joke out of anything, but like all great satirists, still take their role seriously. This track off Sit Down, Man, their second mixtape of 2010, is as close as they've come to a statement of purpose, i.e. a statement of ambiguity. They're working in a field whose audience is hung up on authenticity, so that's the button they keep pushing from both sides: extreme rap insider references (""Ice-T plus Coco""!), extreme rap outsider references (Dwight Schrute!), and jabs about race and class wrapped up in copious lolz. Are they in or out? Well, in enough that ""hahahaha""'s got a beat from Boi-1da, the same guy who's produced a bunch of Drake's hits-- even if that beat is a freaking ""Days of Our Lives"" parody. --Douglas Wolk",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Das%20Racist%20-%20hahahaha%20jk.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b6deb335119a49f1ed9/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Das_Racist-hahahaha_jk.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,43,Waka Flocka Flame,"""Hard in Da Paint""",Warner Bros.,"Much like Waka Flocka Flame, roundballers Charles Oakley and Rick Mahorn went hard in the motherfuckin' paint and were vilified by purists for turning a sweet science into a headbanger's ball. Of course, NBA fans remember them now because they recognized the effectiveness of focused intimidation, and what we have here from Waka is a master class in sonic domination. Producer Lex Luger once again sounds like he's making beats for the Decepticon Francis Scott Key, and most of the rappers talking shit about Flocka on Twitter have entire albums with fewer memorable lines than this one packs into five minutes. But the song's greatest lesson is a point lost on so many others: a rapper doesn't have to be everything to everybody all at once. --Ian Cohen",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b6dd7a71d1ea569d39f/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Waka_Flocka_Flame-Hard_in_Da_Paint.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,42,Japandroids,"""Younger Us""",Polyvinyl,"Japandroids' slept-on between-LPs single ""Younger Us"" touches on something essential to rock music that too few bands these days even attempt: encapsulating the spirit and romance of youth. It makes sense: Hip-hop and electronic R&B are basically the sounds of youth culture now, and although Japandroids are taking a rearview approach to their lives here, they aren't doing it with heavy sighs, misty eyes, or the trappings of reflective, so-called mature rock. They're still putting their heads down and rocking, refusing to intellectualize skin touching skin for the first time or choosing beer over sleep-- the kind of shit that seems so simple when you spell it out, but can be so profound in the moment when you're living it. No grief, all joy... memories are made of this. --Scott Plagenhoef",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b6e5e6ef95969327f18/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Japandroids-Younger_Us.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,41,Deerhunter,"""Helicopter""",4AD,"Pretty and unabashedly earnest, ""Helicopter"" flirts with melodrama. Whenever I hear its slow prom-dance lilt and maudlin lyrics, I think of Sonic Youth's winking take on the Carpenters' soft-rock classic ""Superstar"". But Sonic Youth's love for that song was sincere, and so is Cox's aching interpretation of a truly sad Dennis Cooper story about a Russian teen lost in the worlds of sex slavery and mafia violence. What pushes ""Helicopter"" beyond mere sentimentality are the evocative simplicity of Cox's pithy verse (""They don't pay like they used to pay/ I used to make it day to day"") and the swirl of electronic debris that grounds the arena-sized chords. The result is emotion that's universal without being generic. Even if you haven't read Cooper's story, ""Helicopter"" will make you feel it in your bones. --Marc Masters",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b6e0c2bba1b7de05985/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Deerhunter-Helicopter.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,40,Janelle Monáe,"""Cold War""",Bad Boy / Wondaland Arts Society,"Janelle Monáe became a breakthrough critical darling in 2010, thanks in large part to her dizzying ambition, far-flung musical appetites, and daring unpredictability. It sounds like your standard story of artistic triumph, but Monáe's road hasn't been an easy one. She effortlessly defies lots of unspoken but pernicious expectations of her race and gender, and there's no doubt it's made it difficult for her to find true acceptance in any community. ""Cold War"" is not only the most straightforward moment on the multifarious The ArchAndroid, it's also the most affecting, a testament of Monáe's unshakable faith in herself and her art despite the world's baseness and limitations. ""I was made to believe there's something wrong with me,"" she confesses, and you don't have to see the tears in her eyes in the song's arresting, single-take video to feel the layers of struggle and self-reliance behind that line. --Joshua Love",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b6feb335119a49f1edb/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Janelle_Mone-Cold_War.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,39,No Age,"""Fever Dreaming""",Sub Pop,"It was a point of debate for several weeks at P4K HQ whether No Age's Dean Spunt shouts ""Fever dreaming!"" or ""Keep on dreamin'!"" in the fiery climax of this standout from the L.A. noise-punk duo's latest full length, Everything in Between. Both make sense, since ""Fever Dreaming"" is a shit-kicking anthem on a record about feeling bored and defeated, and persevering regardless. Marvel at Spunt's controlled intensity as he barks lyrics and bashes his drum kit half to death. But what really makes ""Fever Dreaming"" a true achievement is its impeccable fusion of screeching clatter and big-tent melodic appeal and that brain-burned howling feedback figure channels the attitude of Pete Townshend's windmill strum. No Age: stadium fillers? Keep on dreamin', keep on dreamin. --Larry Fitzmaurice",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/No%20Age%20-%20Fever%20Dreaming.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b6f0c2bba1b7de05987/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/No_Age-Fever_Dreaming.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,38,Hot Chip,"""One Life Stand""",Astralwerks,"For guys who barely play guitars, Hot Chip still know a thing or two about a killer riff, and the sneakily catchy ""One Life Stand"" contains one of their best, a synth line so comically arch you could picture Dick Dastardly twirling his mustache to it. One of Hot Chip's primary talents has always been their ability to flip the comedic into the sublime, and they do an exemplary job of that here, piling chord changes and slinky counter-riffs on top of the original until they've built an intricate machine. All this while lead singer and principle songwriter Alexis Taylor strikes the right balance between winsome and artful and the band somehow make Caribbean steel drums and motorik disco sound right together. --Mark Pytlik",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b7013d1975652140365/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Hot_Chip-One_Life_Stand.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,37,Jay Electronica,"""Exhibit C""",Decon / The Dogon Society,"On ""Exhibit C"", Jay Electronica peppers his Nas-like rhymes with lived-in, specific nods to East Coast cities, calls-out rappers for stealing the South's slang (Jay is originally from New Orleans), references Marcus Garvey, Nikola Tesla, and MGMT in just a few lines, and name-drops insider buddies Q-Tip and Diddy. He's all over the place-- as the most widely praised and enigmatic rapper of the last few years should be. And Just Blaze's wailing soul beat has a nice dose of lively, Vegas grandeur to it that helped smuggle this roaming, rap samurai tale onto satellite radio for most of the year, and for a short time there, onto Clear Channel-approved rap playlists too. It's Jay-Z's ""Show Me What You Got"", only it doesn't suck. --Brandon Soderberg",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b70c0084474cd0c7b2d/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Jay_Electronica-Exhibit_C.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,36,Arcade Fire,"""Ready to Start""",Merge,"With its bouncing-ball bassline and galloping gait, ""Ready to Start"" at first sounds like it was simply spliced from the DNA of previous Arcade Fire snap-along jaunts like the whole of ""Keep the Car Running"" and the northern-soul close of ""Wake Up"". But the mood this time is decidedly less joyous, and much more anxious. From its title on down, ""Ready to Start"" is all about unrequited anticipation: Win Butler's protagonist declares his intent to leave the rat race behind for a girl who just wants to be friends; likewise, the song charges through three verses-- with Butler's desperation becoming more pronounced with each of promise of ""I would""-- only to break down just as Butler works up the nerve to shout out the title. If The Suburbs is fueled by a need for escape, nowhere else on the album does that desire feel so urgent yet so impossible to fulfill. --Stuart Berman",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b71d7a71d1ea569d3a1/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Arcade_Fire-Ready_to_Start.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,35,Rihanna,"""Rude Boy""",Def Jam,"Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, and Katy Perry appeared to be the pop stars who dominated 2010, but it was Rihanna who had four No. 1 singles-- three of them excellent, the other one featuring Eminem. Of course the Em one, which openly referenced the physical abuse Rihanna suffered, received the bulk of the attention. If you're a pop star, your personal horrors, or foibles, or trivialities, or redemption, or quarrels with ""Sesame Street"" are what gets you in the news. But it's a run of singles like ""Rude Boy"", ""What's My Name?"", ""Only Girl (In the World)""-- not to mention the David Guetta Eurohit ""Who's That Chick"" and 2009 leftovers ""Hard"" and ""Run This Town""-- that secures your legacy long after the tablogs are done guessing whether this or that song of yours was written for Taylor Lautner. It can take a lot of time for people to catch up with even the best pop songs, but ones so openly sexually aggressive as ""Rude Boy"" tend to take even longer, and so-- underrated and dismissed as fluff compared to most of post-abuse record Rated R-- it was left to slowly grow in stature over the year. In the end, amidst the darker hues that colored Rated R, it was the Technicolor ""Rude Boy"" that best indicated that the singer was turning a new page in her life, heading toward a career year and once again in charge behind closed doors. --Scott Plagenhoef",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b7113d1975652140367/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Rihanna-Rude_Boy.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,34,Gold Panda,"""You""",Ghostly,"It was a pretty big year for abstracted vocal samples and beatific, downtempo collage music, but Derwin Panda was the only producer to turn a second-person pronoun into an anthem. Making a type of music where nuance and detail are paramount, Panda stands out as the producer most willing to bludgeon you with a really kickass sample. And so it goes with the staccato repetitions of the song's title and its stabbing synth responses. It is the yippiest song of the year; you get the impression your little cousin would love to jump around the room to this (the PS22 children's choir would turn this into a supernova of chirp). It is immediate: the sample here is not teasing out the vagaries of memory or twisting into knots. These are not ""ghost voices."" Instead, it's a celebration, and you know of who. --Andrew Gaerig",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b725e6ef95969327f1a/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Gold_Panda-You.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,33,Zola Jesus,"""Night""",Sacred Bones,"Rip out the bleeding, beating heart of ""Night"" and you're left holding a good old fashioned power ballad, the kind of thing an airbrushed pop starlet and slick Hollywood producer could conceivably turn into the love theme from a blockbuster disaster movie. (""Don't be afraid/ Don't be alarmed/ In the end of the night/ You're in my arms."") Which makes this goth torch song even more deliciously creepy: Its haunted house atmospherics seem to conspire to both seduce and dismember, as if something nasty from the depths of hell is constantly trying and failing to brutally murder its innate prettiness. At this stage of Zola Jesus' blossoming career, ""Night"" offers principal Nika Roza Danilova a choice of rabbit holes. Will she clean up and aim for the big time, allowing her gigantic, husky voice to shine through unencumbered? Or will she descend further into an experimental underworld where noisy sheen often overwhelms content? --Amy Phillips",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Zola%20Jesus%20-%20Night.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b73eb335119a49f1edd/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Zola_Jesus-Night.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,32,Robyn,"""Hang With Me""",Konichiwa / Cherrytree / Interscope,"Like so many of Robyn's songs, ""Hang With Me"" is a playlet that's dramatic in scope and story, a monologue that sums up a complex situation in just over four minutes. Over thrumming synths and an insistent bass drum, she lays out the terms of a relationship with the no-bullshit ultimatum of a woman who knows she's not indestructible. Even as the vocoder makes her voice pulsate like a strobe light, Robyn sounds achingly human-- not the fembot she sometimes plays, but the tough-but-vulnerable club girl she is at heart. ""I know what's on your mind, there will be time for that, too,"" she concedes; sex is rarely handled with as much adult understatement and pop eloquence, although it's certainly tempting to read much more than that into the line. There will also be time for heartbreak, recrimination, betrayal, acrimony. But for now she has the contentment of that rush of a chorus, which conflates a simple need for no-drama companionship into something human and monumental. --Stephen M. Deusner",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b740c2bba1b7de05989/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Robyn-Hang_With_Me.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,31,Girls,"""Carolina""",True Panther,"The fun thing about listening to Girls is that, knowing frontman Christopher Owens' sheltered backstory, it's distinctly plausible that he's only just now discovering a lot of artists we all take for granted. Even if that's not true, though, he's still got an impossible combination of world-weariness and wide-eyed naïveté and a love-- above all else-- for pure song craft. ""Carolina"" is a daunting, nearly eight-minute journey through lilting shoegaze and doo-wop and early-'90s monotone guitar rock. The fact that Owens and co. manage to blend all these elements seamlessly into an appealing whole is one thing, that they do it so beautifully is borderline transcendent. --Sam Hockley-Smith",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b75eb335119a49f1edf/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Girls-Carolina.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,30,The-Dream,"""Yamaha""",Def Jam,"With each successive album, R&B singer and songwriter-to-the-stars The-Dream retreats further into his interior soundworld, an overripe, post-coital haze of lush synths, snapping beats, sighing harmonies, and unsubtle sexual innuendo. This process has mixed results for his songwriting, but on ""Yamaha"" the pay-off is undeniable. The tune's sonic and thematic indebtedness to Prince's ""Little Red Corvette"" is explicit and obvious, but what continues to surprise on the hundredth listen is how The-Dream-- or anyone-- could intensify that ecstatic pop blueprint so dramatically. It's hard to think of another contemporary musician whose grasp of pop alchemy is so intuitive, or so affecting. --Tim Finney",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b75d7a71d1ea569d3a3/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The-Dream-Yamaha.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,29,James Blake,"""CMYK""",R&S,"If your introduction to James Blake was the knowledge that the 22-year-old British producer sampled 90s hip-hop and R&B in spans of three or four minutes, you might've rightfully flinched at the thought of a dubstep Girl Talk. But where Girl Talk's mash-ups attempt to zap as many nerves as possible with a stream of ephemera and excerpts, Blake-- especially on the four-track EP, CMYK-- lifts slight, smart samples and molds them into pop songs worthy of their own notice. ""CMYK"" borrows from Aaliyah and Kelis but uses them more as instruments-- both have intriguing voices, after all-- than impulses. They chatter beneath his propulsive drums and become the songbirds above his bass-and-keyboard throb. Blake uses samples, then, not as beats to be dangled for nostalgia; rather, he uses them to synthesize what sounds like a stunning future. --Grayson Currin",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b76eb335119a49f1ee1/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/James_Blake-CMYK.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,28,Yeasayer,"""O.N.E""",Secretly Canadian,"Yeasayer's second album was a hard one to figure out. It was certainly audacious, and its positivity was admirable, but it was also at times overstuffed, disorganized, and cloying. Hitting right in the middle of the album,""O.N.E."" was the song that undeniably got everything right. It's stuffed for sure, but in this case the stuffing is a stunning number of catchy rhythms, riffs and melodies, wedded to a surging update of 80s synth-pop aesthetics. The song's internal momentum builds as it goes along-- every section feels like an elastic band stretching out to fire you into the next one, and that sense of propulsion carries through even the gently swelling interludes. It's always satisfying when a band gets everything right, and ""O.N.E."" is the sound of Yeasayer hitting all its marks. --Joe Tangari",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b760c2bba1b7de0598b/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Yeasayer-ONE.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,27,Four Tet,"""Angel Echoes""",Domino,"While pretty much everyone can cut up vocals these days, distressingly few artists do it while attributing even a little bit of significance to the relationship between the voice, language, and meaning. But Four Tet, for his part, managed to make good on a track titled, portentously, ""Angel Echoes"". As an album-opening salvo, it introduced the rich There Is Love in You by way of a looped vocal squiggle that sounds like part of an atomized hymn, with real beauty and majesty serving what could otherwise be merely a paean to the abstract electronicist's process. There's more to it than that, though-- and enough to distract from the fact that, on a rhythm-happy album by a rhythm-happy artist, the ""beat"" is nothing but a gentle cymbal tap that goes on and on, gently in the background. --Andy Battaglia",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b77d7a71d1ea569d3a5/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Four_Tet-Angel_Echoes.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,26,Cee-Lo,"""Fuck You""",Elektra,"How an instant classic works in 2010: a YouTube lyric video gets posted on 4,500 blogs and racks up two million clicks in its first five days online. William Shatner sings it, 50 Cent remixes it, Cee-Lo himself performs it on every talk show known to man. The official music video is viewed online 29 million times. It gets nominated for four Grammys, including Record and Song of the Year. Everybody and their mom gets it stuck in their heads for months, but nobody minds, because it's one of the most joyful break-up anthems in history, a song so bulletproof, even Gwyneth Paltrow couldn't completely ruin it on ""Glee"". And yet, so far, it isn't a blockbuster sales-wise, with both the song and its accompanying album barely cracking the top 10 for only a week. But as long as the Internet exists, ""Fuck You"" will live on, long after anybody remembers what an Xbox or an Atari is. --Amy Phillips",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b7713d1975652140369/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Cee-Lo-Fuck_You.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,25,The Walkmen,"""Angela Surf City""",Fat Possum,"Smart bands are wary of repeating their greatest hits to the point of diminishing returns. Really smart bands know they shouldn't avoid returning to their successes entirely, especially if they can tweak them just enough to make them feel new. And so six years after the career-defining howl of regret that was ""The Rat"", the Walkmen released ""Angela Surf City"", almost equal in intensity but more than a rewrite. Instead of a frighteningly claustrophobic wall-of-sound, ""Angela"" moves gracefully from spare verses to furious choruses, frontman Hamilton Leithauser revving from surprising restraint to a pitch of pained romanticism. But if the song bores itself into your brain immediately, it's probably thanks to the fearsome force, precision, and speed of drummer Matt Barrick. His booming surf rock recreation on the verses is the song's best hook, and when he rolls into the choruses, it's as much of a release as Leithauser's yearning yowl. --Jess Harvell",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b78eb335119a49f1ee3/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Walkmen-Angela_Surf_City.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,24,Teengirl Fantasy,"""Cheaters""",Merok / True Panther,"In which two Oberlin grads happen upon an old Philly soul song and craft the year's most gorgeous house tune. Love Committee-- a vocal group in the O'Jays/Temptations tradition-- already had a long history of providing raw material for visionary remixers before Teengirl Fantasy discovered their 1977 single ""Cheaters Never Win"". Once disco was in full swing, Love Committee was being edited by legends like Tom Moulton and Walter Gibbons, whose sublime extensions, stretching jukebox-friendly songs into eight minute mini-symphonies, still hewed to the percussion-and-strings template that was Philadelphia's trademark. With its deep house synth sweeps, shivering trance-like keyboard effects, and stop-and-start techno percussion, Teengirl Fantasy's rework sounds little like classy analog disco. But by adding just a few snippets of Love Committee in just the right places, TF prove they understand what those early tape-splice geniuses also knew so well: Endlessly pumping beats count for a lot when trying to keep people moving all night. But a little recognizable human joy - or pain, in this case-- still goes a long way when trying to reach dancefloor ecstasy. --Jess Harvell",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Teengirl%20Fantasy%20-%20%20Cheaters.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b79c0084474cd0c7b2f/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Teengirl_Fantasy-Cheaters.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,23,Vampire Weekend,"""Giving Up the Gun""",XL,"In 2009, it was discovered that Vampire Weekend singer Ezra Koenig had, along with a college friend, formed a bedroom group called L'Homme Run that played around with hip-hop, homemade R&B, and pop. And although that description could be applied to any number of underground indie artists in 2010, this was some delicious red meat for the baying crowd of hipsters gleefully holding the supposedly milquetoast Vampire Weekend at arm's length. Vampire Weekend answered their critics the same way they always have: Head on. They went and redid the best L'Homme song and, without changing that much, turned it into ""Giving Up the Gun"", the best Contra single. It was another deft example of something Ezra and co. spent a lot of the year doing, running end arounds on their critics by grappling in their music with the issues thrown at them-- only doing it with, you know, a depth of thought and grace along with great hooks and melodies. The result: A hell of a lot of complex, multifaceted songs about who or what's real, who or what we are, and what worrying about this stuff says about you. ""Giving Up the Gun"" was the most clear, direct example of the group embracing their past instead of putting on poses and disguises but it was hardly the only one; and the act of doing so, of stuffing giddy songs like this one, or contemplative songs like many on Contra, with this sort of richness and self-awareness is one of the indications that they're a singular iconoclastic band, and likely to be one for quite some time. --Scott Plagenhoef",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b79d7a71d1ea569d3a7/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Vampire_Weekend-Giving_Up_the_Gun.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,22,Rick Ross [ft. Styles P],"""B.M.F. (Blowin' Money Fast)""",Def Jam / Maybach,"Rick Ross' career could've ended back in 2008, when the Smoking Gun figured out that he'd spent time as a correctional officer-- a history that makes his many boasts of drug-kingpin immortality look very, very silly. But instead of crawling into a defensive hole, the Rick Ross of ""B.M.F."" pushes his old fictions even further, taking them past the point of absurdity and actually stealing the identity of some notorious incarcerated gang leaders. ""I think I'm Big Meech! Larry Hoover!"" he booms. He's obviously nothing like these guys, but it works anyway, mostly because it's such a goddamn catchy chorus, so fun to scream with the windows down. Lex Luger's track is anthemic thump of the highest order, his twinkling keyboards only highlighting the thunder of the low-end and giving Ross' simplistic bellow all the bombastic noise it needs. Veteran New York hardhead Styles P gives the song an extra kick at the end, delivering a mouth-foaming guest verse that has to be almost entirely bleeped out when the song shows up on the radio. And that, it turns out, is how you turn a public humiliation into a summer rap anthem. --Tom Breihan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b7aeb335119a49f1ee5/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Rick_Ross_ft_Styles_P-BMF_Blowin_Money_Fast.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,21,Azari & III,"""Reckless (With Your Love) (Tensnake Remix)""",Permanent Vacation,"In most histories of dance music, old-school rave is rarely praised for its nuance. It was raw stuff designed simply to make your calves ache, to leave your brain swimming, to make you sweat. But there was another side of rave-- lush enough for the chill-out room, but still funky and ecstatic enough to whip up a massive crowd-- and that's what Azari & III (and their remixer, Tensnake) pay homage to in ""Reckless With Your Love"". Each element of the tune will be familiar to anyone who's owned a rave compilation or two-- the ""Breaking Bells""/freestyle percussion, the air raid sound effects, the Balearic piano riff, and so on-- but these multiple nostalgia-inducing hooks are woven into the kind of club-ready and bedroom-friendly epic that was as rare in 1990 as it is in 2010. It's a track that's assembled with such loving, luscious attention to detail that you can get a high just laying back and listening, even as the warehouse-rocking groove and that C+C Music Factory quote command you to dance. --Jess Harvell",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b7a13d197565214036b/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Azari__III-Reckless_With_Your_Love_Tensnake_Remix.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,20,Erykah Badu,"""Window Seat""",Universal Motown,"The lead single from Erykah Badu's New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh was a personal statement, but one to which everyone can relate. ""Window Seat"" is about wanting to carve out space to think and take care of yourself while also acknowledging the need for human contact. It's about worrying that if you check out for a while, which everyone needs to do from time to time, no one will even know you're gone. The line ""Don't want nobody next to me"" is followed with ""But I need you to want me/ Need you to miss me,"" and in the tension between these poles lies about 80% of what's difficult in human relationships. That this idea comes packaged in an earthy, elegant, smooth-as-butter soul groove-- the kind of thing that sounds great in the background when you are dreaming alone and equally engaging when you're on the couch with someone who, you hope, feels as deeply for you as you do for them-- is another testament to Badu's singular vision. --Mark Richardson",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Erykah%20Badu%20-%20Window%20Seat.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b7b5e6ef95969327f1c/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Erykah_Badu-Window_Seat.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,19,How to Dress Well,"""Decisions (feat. Yüksel Arslan)""",Lefse / Tri Angle,"Despite the ambient qualities of his music, Tom Krell isn't a timid singer, and his soulfulness could never be mistaken for parody. Krell's admiration for R&B history is audible in each ultra-sincere high note. In his music, Krell's long love of soul music is often limited to little quotes and riffs. And the 4AD-on-a-cheap-laptop surface of ""Decisions"", like all of his songs, places it in a far different continuum than the pinpoint digital perfection of pop R&B, or even the classicist craft of neo-soul. The murky drift of ""Decisions"", for all its slow-jam worthiness, is not aiming for radio. But when Krell lets loose, you can tell this is a guy whose formative influence wasn't the cracked yearning of Stephen Malkmus but the silky, multi-tracked melisma of SWV. But what separates Krell from the mainstream 21st century blue-eyed brigade is the way he inverts R&B's tradition of ""selling"" a love lyric with a delivery that can move the people in the back row. For the listener, the content of ""Decisions"" seems secondary, if only because it's often so hard to make out the lyrics. The most coherent line is ""don't forget to check your cell phone,"" an absurdly prosaic request given an unexpected emotional punch by the song's heartsick delivery. Applying the lyric-obliterating vocal approach of the Cocteau Twins to music where ""good singing"" is all about clarity, Krell foregrounds the intimate moments usually embroidered into the backing tracks of pop R&B hits, the moans and murmurs and wordless harmonies. With this smeared delivery, and the song's frizzed-out distortion, Krell creates an intense sense of one-on-one intimacy between performer and listener, something very different than a showboat trying to reach millions via the radio. --Jess Harvell",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/How%20To%20Dress%20Well%20-%20Decisions.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b7cd7a71d1ea569d3a9/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/How_to_Dress_Well-Decisions_feat_Yksel_Arslan.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,18,Titus Andronicus,"""A More Perfect Union""",XL,"The phrase ""a more perfect union"" is part of the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution, right after the ""We the People"" bit the Tea Partiers love so much. It's also the title of a speech that then-Sen. Barack Obama gave about race when his primary campaign looked most lost. As an indie rock song by Titus Andronicus, ""A More Perfect Union"" is ambitious enough for these lofty origins, and as down-to-earth as a college kid's face after one too many Four Lokos. In other words, this is an anthem for people who hate anthems, at once intensely personal and impossibly grandiose. There's room for the places and experiences of Patrick Stickles' life, from the Garden State Parkway to Somerville, Mass., by way of the Fung Wah bus. There's room for Billy Bragg and New Jersey patron saint Bruce Springsteen. And, in keeping with the grandiose Civil War concept of the album this song opens, there's even room for the Battle Hymn of the Republic. (Stickles' former high school drama teacher is here, too, meticulously reciting Abraham Lincoln.) Most simply, though, ""A More Perfect Union"" rocks: a riotous seven minutes of raw-throated passion and ragtag righteousness, fiery guitar interludes and madcap drumming. It's not entirely clear which flag Stickles wants us to ""rally around,"" but anyone who has ever felt the least bit of allegiance to what some marketer once called ""Alternative Nation""-- anyone who has ever considered themselves an underdog-- well, please rise. The state of the union could always be more perfect. This song probably couldn't. --Marc Hogan",Platform: Pitchfork - Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Titus%20Andronicus%20-%20A%20More%20Perfect%20Union.mp3,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b7c13d197565214036d/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Titus_Andronicus-A_More_Perfect_Union.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,17,Girl Unit,"""Wut""",Night Slugs,"2010 saw an avalanche of dubstep and bass singles that drew straight from early 90s 'ardkore-- scatter-beat proto-jungle breaks and e-peak hyperventilating synths and diva vocals turned manic spaz-outs and all of that. Many of these singles were obvious, and some of them were great, but one of them just completely hijacked the whole enterprise and scrapped it for parts so it could build something even better. Girl Unit's instant anthem ""Wut"" took hold so deeply because it managed to replicate the rush of hearing the original progenitors of rave without actually photocopying their blueprints. The old ingredients are familiar: the pitched-up hook swoops and stammers and provides the insistently slippery title, spelled that way for a reason; the synth melodies pit soaring euphoria against choppy intensity; there's lots of perfectly-timed Pavlovian breakdown-buildup segments that lead into constantly escalating go-apeshit bass drops. But while the spirit of this track is simpatico with old-school rave, the actual rhythmic structure is something else entirely-- the 808s and the slow-ride bounce bring it closer to contemporary Southern hip-hop and R&B, a supple yet hard-hitting beat that earns its air horns. --Nate Patrin",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b7d0c2bba1b7de0598d/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Girl_Unit-Wut.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,16,Beach House,"""Norway""",Sub Pop,"Beach House's Teen Dream does not lack for songs that are hypnotic, haunting, gooey, gauzy-- all those words reserved for music that sounds like it was made in air a little bit thicker and more viscous than the air we breathe. But ""Norway"": That's the one that jumps out the most and, if only for 3:55, buckles any working notion of time, space, continuums, and all that jazz. Like a strange mix of old 60s London psych act White Noise and Fleetwood Mac at their most blessedly and overzealously produced, the song sweeps you off your feet while tripping you up at the same time. As the third track on Teen Dream, ""Norway"" works to spin the album off on its centripetal course after a pair of comparatively spare, upright openers. But it would sound startling in any context, with its languid pump-organ churn and Victoria Legrand's blend of breathy and throaty vocals. There are definite referents in there: the ones named above, plus no small amount of My Bloody Valentine and 10cc. But ""Norway"" did a lot this year to establish Beach House as a band to be dealt with on its own terms, likely for a while to come. --Andy Battaglia",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b7d13d197565214036f/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Beach_House-Norway.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,15,Crystal Castles [ft. Robert Smith],"""Not in Love""",Fiction,"A much tamer version of ""Not in Love"" appeared on Crystal Castles' surprisingly strong sophomore album earlier this year and barely seemed to make a dent, so it's mildly surprising that this revamped version, which features a pounding bass drum and guest vocals from a certain Robert Smith, should feel so instantly like a classic. Maybe it's the knowing conflation of forms, the weird Venn diagram of goth rave, pop goth, and hairspray pop afforded by the track's three principles: Crystal Castles, the Cure, and its original composer, 80s Canadian radio rock outfit Platinum Blonde. Or maybe it's the fact that such an arch cover feels sort of like an inside joke that anyone who wasn't glam rock or Canadian enough in the early 80s could never hope to get. Or maybe it's the fact the production/singer combination of the Castles' Ethan Kath with Robert Smith feels dangerously perfect, with Kath's storming synth squalls providing the ideal offset to Smith's precarious and insecure delivery. ""Not in Love"" is four minutes of inspired casting that's decidedly more than the sum of its parts. It is also very possibly what you wish the Cure actually sounded like in 2010. --Mark Pytlik",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b7e5e6ef95969327f1e/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Crystal_Castles_ft_Robert_Smith-Not_in_Love.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,14,Sleigh Bells,"""Rill Rill""",N.E.E.T. / Mom & Pop,"Few 2010 sounds were as jubilant as the first few bars of ""Rill Rill"". Built around a riff sniped from Funkadelic's ""Can You Get to That"", Derek Miller's guitar-- so fraught and heavy elsewhere on Treats-- goes soft and jangly, tempered only by an electro-crash that sounds a little like rolling thunder: A storm might be inching in, but you're safely huddled under the bleachers with the cutest kid in class. By the time Alexis Krauss sneaks in with a string of barely-there ah-ah-ah's, we're already charmed, teleported somewhere sweeter and more interesting. With its school-dance melody and childlike vocals, ""Rill Rill"" might be the track on Treats that your mom's most likely to cite as a jam. But like all of Sleigh Bells' songs, it's also delightfully odd: ""Keep thinking about every straight face, yes/ Wonder what your boyfriend thinks about your braces/ What about them, I'm all about them,"" Krauss sings, in one of the year's weirder moments of self-empowerment. Krauss and Miller like to toy with juxtaposition, mixing the grotesque and the innocent, but here, Krauss' calm, plaintive vocals and Miller's gauzy backing are in perfect sync. --Amanda Petrusich",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b7ec0084474cd0c7b31/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Sleigh_Bells-Rill_Rill.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,13,Caribou,"""Odessa""",Merge,"We've come to expect a progression from Dan Snaith with each new album, but ""Odessa"" is a track no one could have dreamed would come from a Caribou record. Borrowing moves from modern dance-pop acts like Junior Boys as well as avant-disco playfulness from Arthur Russell, ""Odessa"" oozes anxiety in each of its many layers--those low notes sounding like a depressed trampoline, that triangle, the pitch-shifted vocals with creepy and cavernous-sounding reverb. Snaith is a fine singer but his performance can't help but sound small compared to distinctive, sometimes overwhelming sounds of the track. Then again, the story he's choosing to tell is just as small: a woman who stands up to years of being mistreated to finally leave. It doesn't sound earth-shattering, but Snaith comes up with a song worthy of that character's anguish, and even the timid delivery fits that story-- the music takes the place of the words and the will she didn't have before. That's part of the reward of ""Odessa"" once the surprise wears off: As Snaith's bag of tricks grows deeper and his musical tapestry more intricate, his subjects get smaller, simpler, and more human. --Jason Crock",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b7fd7a71d1ea569d3ab/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Caribou-Odessa.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,12,LCD Soundsystem,"""All I Want""",DFA / Virgin / Parlophone,"One half of the emotional core of LCD Soundsystem's This Is Happening, ""All I Want"" is so huge-sounding that it seems out of control at first. That wailing guitar line is too loud, right? Is the mix off? Nope, listen more and you realize it's exactly how James Murphy (who, despite his perfectionism is a very democratic bandleader) wants it. In Murphy's mind, his voice is no more important than any other instrument, and here the guitar sings lead because it conjures a feeling he can't muster himself. It's supposed to ache like that. The song wouldn't be an LCD ballad if it wasn't emotionally complex, and here we get the good and bad sides of Murphy. He wants the one he can't have, the only one who really understands him, but instead of just accepting it, he wants her to feel that hurt, too. ""All I want is your pity, and all I want is your bitter tears."" Rarely has a singer been so vulnerable, so dejected, and such a dick all at the same time. But then the song keeps going skyward, swelling off that guitar and those sparkling synths, and the pain starts to disappear. You lose yourself in the surge. Really sad or really triumphant? It's both. --Joe Colly",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b7f13d1975652140371/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/LCD_Soundsystem-All_I_Want.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,11,Deerhunter,"""Desire Lines""",4AD,"Bradford Cox may be Deerhunter's über-prolific, all-blogging mouthpiece, but don't underestimate Lockett Pundt. Read deep into the liner notes and you'll realize that the guitarist has been responsible for some of the band's finest moments of tender and droney uplift-- growers like ""Neither of Us, Uncertainly"" and ""Like New"". ""Desire Lines"", one of his songwriting contributions to Halcyon Digest, is his finest effort yet. It's the album's trippy centerpiece-- ascending from power chord chug to Tom Verlaine-worthy space-out over nearly seven minutes. ""Walking free/ Come with me/ Far away, everyday,"" he sings, punctuating each line with a gentle ""whoa-oh."" This is Pundt's first truly up-front moment as a vocalist in Deerhunter and his subdued, casual delivery slots perfectly into the album's flow. As a songwriter, Pundt has a gift for sneaking into epic territory through the back door-- delivering a big, guitar-driven payoff without condescending to cheesesball bombast. Cox may have the noisier songs, and personality, but on ""Desire Lines"" Pundt proves that he's more than just a deep cuts guy. --Aaron Leitko",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b80eb335119a49f1ee7/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Deerhunter-Desire_Lines.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,10,Janelle Monáe [ft. Big Boi],"""Tightrope""",Bad Boy,"Emotional extremes-- elation, heartbreak, fury, romantic obsession-- are pop's bread and butter; they're inherently dramatic and totally relatable. So it's a curiosity and event when a great pop song comes along about... equanimity. With the moral authority of a Sunday School teacher and showmanship of a Cirque du Soleil ringleader, Monáe rails against high highs and low lows-- specifically, against letting either sycophantic praise or jealous disses go to your head. That's good advice for target-hoisting famous folks like Monáe who get a lot of both, but what about the rest of us? Everything from ""Tightrope""'s taut body-popping funk beats to its note-perfect brass sallies to Big Boi's well-cued entrance make Monáe seem preternaturally confident, in-control, even unapproachable. But consider: In every orchestrated wire walk is the ever-present danger of taking one wrong step. And that's why we're down on the ground, holding our collective breath that she won't. --Amy Granzin",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b805e6ef95969327f20/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Janelle_Mone_ft_Big_Boi-Tightrope.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,09,Arcade Fire,"""Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)""",Merge,"Disco and Arcade Fire have a lot in common: both rely on building and releasing communal sentiments for their full effect, and both create that effect through rhythm. Of course, disco's rhythm is based on an ultra-tight streamlined groove, and Arcade Fire's is more often a rolling, ragged surge. So on ""Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)""-- where the two musics triumphantly fuse-- a lot of the appeal comes from the way the band get disco enthusiastically wrong. Take the way the piano comes bouncing and hammering in on the break-- a messy, earthy contrast to the twinkling synths we've already heard, and a highlight of the song. ""Sprawl II"" evokes a precise era in dance-pop-- the bass and keyboards are ""Heart of Glass""-era Blondie, and Régine Chassagne's breathy, accented singing reminds me of Eurodisco vocalists. This late-70s moment is when disco crossed over, becoming a suburban as much as an urban phenomenon. Perhaps more than any other track on The Suburbs, ""Sprawl II"" is true to the group's claim that the record is neither for or against the suburbs, but simply from them. The song's imagery-- memories of teen defiance set against visions of abandoned malls-- seems in unequivocal opposition to suburban life. But by setting it to this ersatz disco, music summoned out of the suburban heyday, the band let us know that, even in the sprawl, culture and life can flourish. It's not just the band's catchiest song, it's one of their most hopeful. --Tom Ewing",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b81d7a71d1ea569d3ad/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Arcade_Fire-Sprawl_II_Mountains_Beyond_Mountains.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,08,James Blake,"""I Only Know (What I Know Now)""",R&S,"Quite a few artists this year worked with the embers of dubstep and chopped up vocals to create something we dubbed ""the new vocabulary."" But none were as successful as 22-year-old Londoner James Blake, whose trio of 2010 EPs gradually peeled back layers to reveal a bit more of his own vocals. His marquee songs all worked the same way: ""The Bells Sketch"" featured nearly wordless vocalizations; ""CMYK"" incorporated spectral samples of Aaliyah and Kelis; and by the time of his Feist cover ""Limit to Your Love""-- a preview of his 2011 self-titled album-- his own fragile voice was front and center. ""I Only Know (What I Know Now)"" is the midpoint between the two, and his career highlight to date; it's the place where the ghost in the machine peeks out through the cracks and lets some light in. Pitchfork's Tom Ewing once said the KLF's Chill Out was the sound of music having dreams about music. On ""I Only Know"" it sounds as if Blake is recording dreams of his own work. That's a trick that could slot him in with the half-remembered nostalgia crowd, but he trumps Bandcampers with this song's elegance, compositional prowess, and above all, his willingness to feel something and spotlight those emotions. More than any artist this year, Blake felt like both today and tomorrow; he clearly captures something in the air via Burial and other contemporaries, but takes that something somewhere brave and new at each turn. --Scott Plagenhoef",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b82eb335119a49f1ee9/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/James_Blake-I_Only_Know_What_I_Know_Now.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,07,Joanna Newsom,"""Good Intentions Paving Company""",Drag City,"A few days after Have One on Me came out, I walked into a store where this song was playing on the radio, and thought, in order: 1) Huh, they don't usually play the classic rock station here; 2) Anyway, I love this song!; 3) Whoa, wait a minute. A seven-minute suite that seems as compact as an AM-radio single, ""Good Intentions Paving Company"" might be the first Joanna Newsom song that demands the context of other folks' music rather than its own gallery space. (And Newsom really is ""in love with the hook,"" which is a neat trick for a song without a refrain.) It's a road song about a couple who are literally on the road and figuratively on the road to hell. Like Zep sang, sometimes Newsom's words have two meanings, and this lyric pivots around the way they shift: ""honey,"" ""open,"" ""right,"" ""spell,"" ""range."" Her lacy, shimmering voice was once a vehicle of eccentric character; here, it's a traveling companion, giving her tricky diction some emotional spin. (Joni Mitchell is one obvious point of reference here, but so is Randy Newman.) At any moment, the focus of the song is the heart on Newsom's sleeve, so you need to pull back from it to catch the spectacular architecture of its melody-- the first bridge (""honey, just open your heart"") is where the song flies off the interstate beat her piano's been pacing out, and into the open air. Also: trombone solo. --Douglas Wolk",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b82c0084474cd0c7b33/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Joanna_Newsom-Good_Intentions_Paving_Company.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,06,Kanye West [ft. Dwele],"""POWER""",Def Jam / Roc-A-Fella,"After the Taylor Swift Incident, Kanye West apologized and suggested he would work on becoming a humbler, more even-keeled person. @kanyewest: LOL. ""POWER"", the first salvo of what would soon become his year, is an absolutely breathtaking piece of egotism, even for a genre that's fueled by bravado and narcissism. Aptly self-described as superhero theme music, the track establishes a power-clap beat as heavy as Ye's Horus medallion before gliding through a high-speed tour of his musical evolution (the militant chants of ""Jesus Walks"", the moody piano and strings of 808s & Heartbreak). But it's a multi-part suite that loses none of its menace in its complexity, and a look back that sounds entirely forward-thinking. If those aren't enough contradictions for you, the only thing as powerful as Kanye's sense of self-worth is his self-doubt-- the chorus is simultaneously boastful, condemning, and anxious. It's this endless competition that makes him so fascinating both on-stage and off, and ""POWER"" might as well be the theme music for that psychological warfare as well. Whether self-diagnosing himself through King Crimson samples or indulging a suicide fantasy in the song's final segment, ""POWER"" darts from manic to depressive and back again as quickly as its distorted MPC sample pings around your headphones. It's all of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy's pathology and genius in digest form, the vicarious, timeless thrill of hearing a crazy talented person act crazy and talented. --Rob Mitchum",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b835e6ef95969327f22/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Kanye_West_ft_Dwele-POWER.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,05,Big Boi [ft. Cutty],"""Shutterbugg""",Def Jam,"Like all of Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty, ""Shutterbugg"" was dragged through years of major-label rap development hell before it reached our ears. But it appeared this year bearing no timestamp: That stuttering, quicksilver beat, a perpetual-motion machine of sparkling guitars, electro synths, and gastric talk-box burps, could have been birthed in 1979, 1999, or 2022. The fact that it was somehow partly the product of Scott Storch-- he of the dependably lifeless, funk-free Dr. Dre imitations-- only deepens the song's mystery. Maybe it's the strange alchemy of working with someone as rhythmically and musically alive as Big Boi-- there are an infinite number of potential rhythmic detours in a beat this rich, and Big Boi burrows his way through nearly all of them. Like the album it leaps off of, ""Shutterbugg"" is a joyous demonstration of the triumph of funk over release dates. --Jayson Greene",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b830c2bba1b7de0598f/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Big_Boi_ft_Cutty-Shutterbugg.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,04,Robyn,"""Dancing on My Own""",Konichiwa / Cherrytree / Interscope,"How do you know when a new pop song is a stone instant classic? If it gives you chills whenever you hear it? If it mixes perfectly into basically any other song? When every straight guy you know confesses that he secretly loves and listens to it? If it interpolates the themes and sounds of every great disco torch song ever and updates them without being winky or retro, but keeps the ""Funky Town"" woodblock percussion? If it contains a couplet as perfect as, ""Stilettos and broken bottles/ I'm spinning around in circles""? Or if, when the chorus comes on in the club, it always feels like the very first time? Robyn gave us all kinds of great singles this year, but ""Dancing on My Own"", which kicked off her Body Talk trilogy, remains the standout. Defying expectations and categorizations at every turn, she continues to demonstrate that she is the Rocky Balboa of pop music. Summoning the eternal spirits of divas like Donna Summer, Sylvester, and Gloria Gaynor, Robyn alchemizes everything great about current dance music into flawless ABBA gold. --Molly Lambert",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b8313d1975652140373/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Robyn-Dancing_on_My_Own.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,03,LCD Soundsystem,"""I Can Change""",DFA,"Musically, ""I Can Change"" finds LCD Soundsystem diving wholeheartedly into early-80s synthpop. With its nagging and simplistic keyboard melody, its dry electronic percussion, and its grid of interlocking pieces, the entire backing track could've come off a Soft Cell or early Depeche Mode record. James Murphy is old enough to remember how that stuff worked and smart enough to figure out why it worked and how it could work again. And while most of his 2010 peers would use these elements for giggly, ironic nostalgia, Murphy knows exactly how perfect a vehicle this music is for delivering complex emotion. On ""I Can Change"", a wounded and broken-down Murphy, desperately hoping to save a relationship, makes the one promise that nobody can ever deliver on: He could become a completely different person if that can make him the person his partner wants. It's a doomed plea, but Murphy makes it over and over: ""I can change, I can change, I can change, if it helps you fall in looove."" It's a familiar scene to anyone who's fought hard to save a relationship that probably wasn't worth saving, and Murphy delivers it simply and without effect. The twinkling beat pulses obliviously behind him, leaving him naked and vulnerable. --Tom Breihan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b84d7a71d1ea569d3af/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/LCD_Soundsystem-I_Can_Change.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,02,Kanye West [ft. Pusha T],"""Runaway""",Def Jam / Roc-A-Fella,"Of all the arresting moments on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy-- Nicki Minaj mauling the competition on ""Monster"", the King Crimson call-and-response of ""POWER""-- none is more striking than that instant when the head-spinning, hallucinatory soul of ""Devil in a New Dress"" dissolves into the sobering piano-tapped intro to ""Runaway"". It's the sound of Kanye's entire over-Tweeted, Lanvin-lavished, Dubya-dissing universe reduced to one single, lonely chord. On an album situated perilously on the faultline between ego and insecurity, ""Runaway"" puts Kanye's contradictory impulses on full display like they're some immaculate museum exhibit. At nine minutes, it is My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy's longest song, but also its simplest and most emotionally direct. It's a sensitive piano ballad inspired by a moment of dick-pic exhibitionism. It's a chronicle of post-breakup depression and regret that, by the time we hit that ubiquitous chorus, has been reframed as a celebration-- and the more Kanye venerates his most loathsome qualities, the more humble and sympathetic a character he becomes. As his recent Tweet-athons about Matt Lauer and Taylor Swift suggest, Kanye tends to get defensive when his dubious behavior is called into question. ""Runaway"" marks the rare moment where Kanye sides with his detractors-- if the whole world thinks he's a douchebag, well, this one time he's inclined to agree. --Stuart Berman",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b840c2bba1b7de05991/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Kanye_West_ft_Pusha_T-Runaway.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7895-the-top-100-tracks-of-2010/,2010,year,song,01,Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti,"""Round and Round""",4AD,"Thinking about ""Round and Round"" in this slot, I can't help but compare it to the song we had here last year, Animal Collective's ""My Girls"". The connection between them starts with the fact that Ariel Pink first came to public consciousness with the releases of The Doldrums on A.C.'s Paw Tracks label in 2004. Musically, that's also pretty much where the connection ends, despite the two artists sometimes sharing the ""hazy, half-remembered yada yada"" that became an indie cliché over the past two years. But I keep thinking of ""My Girls"" when listening to ""Round and Round"" because the musical differences couldn't be starker. Panda Bear wrote a simple verse and chorus and alternated between the two with a rhythm that felt right, jumping back and forth until it seemed time to stop and then the song faded out. ""My Girls"" was naïve and straightforward and full of heart and people played it at weddings with a straight face and that didn't even seem that weird. ""Round and Round"", on the other hand, has an intro, a variation, a funny little break with a sound effect, a section that pauses just before the big refrain, and then that huge chorus, where every musical element (and every listener) is embraced by the song's skinny arms. In addition to all those pieces, it's also got requisite ""vibe"" and atmosphere. Where ""My Girls"" felt sincere, ""Round and Round"" is knowing and self-conscious, commenting on itself as a song as it unfolds. That bass/vibes line goes round and round, there are lyrics about air guitar and a frontman, and Ariel Pink whispers ""breakdown"" during a breakdown. This is music that gets over on its astonishing level of craftsmanship, which is something no casual Ariel Pink fan accustomed to his blown-out home recorded lo-fi output over the last decade would have expected from him in a million years. In 2010, Ariel Pink was the strange kid who fucked around all semester and developed a reputation as a hopeless loser who then proceeded to blow everyone's minds at the talent show. And in the end, ""Round and Round"" succeeds brilliantly for the same reason great Burt Bacharach songs work-- because every chord change and turnaround and melodic leap is in exactly the right place. ""We'll dazzle them all,"" goes one line, and it's no idle boast; another goes, ""Write the songs that say, 'I like that!'."" Done and done. --Mark Richardson",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6b85c0084474cd0c7b35/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Ariel_Pinks_Haunted_Graffiti-Round_and_Round.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7744-the-top-50-albums-of-2009/,2009,year,album,50,Woods,Songs of Shame,Shrimper/Woodsist,"Woodsist had an auspicious 2009, releasing well-liked albums from Real Estate, Ganglians, and the Fresh & Onlys. Amongst the best of them was Songs of Shame, the fourth album from label chief Jeremy Earl and his intrepid band of outdoorsmen Woods. Filled with their peculiarly pitched vocal harmonies, off-handed melodic hooks, and pixilated guitar figures, songs such as ""Down This Road"" and ""Born to Lose"" make maximal use of Woods' humble home recording techniques. And whether it is with their spirited cover of Graham Nash's ""Military Madness"", the zoned guitar jam ""September With Pete"", or the dusky melancholy of standout track ""Rain On"", Woods continually offer the listener the privileged impression of being allowed to listen in on a private and spontaneous fit of inspiration. --Matthew Murphy",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6027eb335119a49f1433/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Woods-Songs_of_Shame.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7744-the-top-50-albums-of-2009/,2009,year,album,49,Cass McCombs,Catacombs,Domino,"The standard thinking on Catacombs, the fifth LP from singer-songwriter Cass McCombs, goes something like this: enigmatic troubadour takes a welcome turn toward accessibility, loosening the knotty arrangements of previous recordings to offer his best and most direct album yet. And I would say that's mostly true. But such a clinical analysis ignores how remarkably warm Catacombs is, how a big part of its appeal is its welcoming Nashville Skyline vibe. The album's two most talked-about tracks, opener ""Dreams Come True Girl"" and heartbreaking waltz-time centerpiece ""You Saved My Life"", are clear highlights, but alongside them is a very solid supporting cast, from the gracious sway of ""Harmonia"" to darker pieces like ""The Executioner's Song"", an ode to the satisfaction of working life no matter how distasteful the occupation. A disquieting tone and deft lyrical touch also runs throughout, making Catacombs more than just a pleasing folk-pop album-- though it certainly is that, too. --Joe Colly",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c602713d197565213f881/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Cass_McCombs-Catacombs.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7744-the-top-50-albums-of-2009/,2009,year,album,48,DOOM,Born Like This,Lex,"For his best album in five years and his rawest in 10, DOOM came back from a mysterious hiatus with a hungry, take-no-prisoners ferocity. Born Like This, which takes its title from one of Charles Bukowski's more apocalyptic poems, is a borderline reboot of the comics nut as we know him, throwing a bit of vintage Alan Moore menace into his Jack Kirby trappings. The complex rhymes and truism-flipping still act as DOOM's lyrical catalysts, but they scan even more vividly as true crime warped into surrealist dementia, delivered with a voice that's just raspier and brusquer enough to give it that extra push toward antagonistic malice. Madlib, Jake One, J Dilla, and DOOM himself make up a four-man army of beat creators that give Born Like This that extra layer of grit and haze, combining it with a deep headknock pulse and some memorable guest spots (Ghostface, Raekwon, Empress Stahhr) to seal it as another diabolical masterpiece. --Nate Patrin",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60280c2bba1b7de04eaa/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/DOOM-Born_Like_This.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7744-the-top-50-albums-of-2009/,2009,year,album,47,Zomby,Where Were U in '92?,Werk Discs,"Considering how quickly the splinters of dubstep progress and mutate, it says something about the strength of Zomby's Where Where U in '92? that we're still talking about it more than a year after its November 2008 release. That has little to do with Zomby's masked identity (really, producers, it doesn't make you more mysterious), but because of the record's dual nature-- its ability to be both forward- and backward-looking at the same time. Famously building the tracks with humble software, Zomby re-imagines the early 1990s jungle-techno strain of hardcore (what some incorrectly call ""rave""), and infuses it with his own heavy dubstep. The jarring, paint-splattered result brings to mind James Murphy's modern take on disco-- the sound of a producer dreaming up a new outcome for a beloved genre. It's unclear where Zomby goes from here (subsequent 09 releases found him further retooling this sound), but one thing is certain: he has a lot to live up to with this record. --Joe Colly",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60280c2bba1b7de04eac/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Zomby-Where_Were_U_in_92.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7744-the-top-50-albums-of-2009/,2009,year,album,46,Dan Deacon,Bromst,Carpark,"From the Magnetic Fields on i to Elliott Smith on Figure 8, plenty of beloved artists have upgraded their equipment at the expense of some of their most appealing qualities. Dan Deacon's schmancy new toy is a computer-operated player piano that can generate notes faster than any pair of human hands; thankfully, his most appealing quality remains manic glee. So when Baltimore's most notorious electro-spazz made the leap from the basements of 2007's comparably lo-fi Spiderman of the Rings to, well, wherever the hell you'd expect to hear something like Bromst, he sticks the landing. Highlights ""Snookered"" and ""Surprise Stefani"" expand the sonic and emotional palette of Deacon's densely layered drifts, staying between Philip Glass and Chicago house, while unexpected touches like the female vocals on ""Wet Wings"" show new sides of the old goofball. Don't worry, he still sings like Woody Woodpecker. --Marc Hogan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c602913d197565213f884/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Dan_Deacon-Bromst.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7744-the-top-50-albums-of-2009/,2009,year,album,45,The Mountain Goats,The Life of the World to Come,4AD,"""Twelve hard lessons the Bible taught me, kind of"" is how main Mountain Goat and regular churchgoer John Darnielle describes his latest, and all song titles, as well as some choruses, come directly from the Good Book. But this is a religious album in only the most nebulous sense possible. Most of the time, it's about living at the edge of sanity and looking for a way out-- the near-extinct animals on ""Deuteronomy 2:10"", the people coping with impending death on ""Matthew 25:21"", the exile from an old hellish life on ""Genesis 3:23"". But all that desperation finds Darnielle even more humane than usual. Musically, it's all haunted whispers and soft pianos and quietly matter-of-fact declarations. And ""Genesis 30:3"" includes about the most heart-wrenching description of meeting your baby for the first time I've ever heard-- from a man with no kids, no less. All of which makes this album a work of deep, profound empathy-- the kind of thing the Bible is supposed to teach us in the first place. --Tom Breihan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6029eb335119a49f1436/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Mountain_Goats-The_Life_of_the_World_to_Come.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7744-the-top-50-albums-of-2009/,2009,year,album,44,tUnE-yArDs,BiRd-BrAiNs,Marriage/4AD,"Originally released on cassette (!) last year, the debut album by Merrill Garbus' solo project made bigger ripples this year in this slightly expanded edition. Garbus is a fantastic songwriter with a very unusual sense of rhythm (""Hatari"" lopes like no other Anglophone song in recent memory), she's got a creamy voice with a welcome, salty-bitter edge of indignation about it, and there are indelible lines all over these songs. The biggest delight of BiRd-BrAiNs, though, is how much Garbus' ingenuity milks from the record's severe economy of means. The album was very clearly made with nothing more than the tools at hand-- a ukulele, a couple of pieces of percussion, a yard-sale keyboard, a loop pedal, a crappy cheap mic, some free audio software, and Garbus' larynx, which gets to express everything her machines can't take care of. The whole thing is held together with duct tape, but that's what makes it shiny. --Douglas Wolk",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c602a13d197565213f886/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/tUnE-yArDs-BiRd-BrAiNs.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7744-the-top-50-albums-of-2009/,2009,year,album,43,Cymbals Eat Guitars,Why There Are Mountains,self-released,"It can be hard to reckon with Cymbals Eat Guitars' debut album without bringing up the work of Modest Mouse, Built to Spill, the Wrens, and a host of other 1990s indie rock icons, but if the band is willing to wear its influences so proudly on the sleeve, there's probably no shame in making those comparisons. What makes Why There Are Mountains more than just a nostalgic retread is songwriter Joseph D'Agostino's preternatural skill for balancing pensive meandering with moments of cathartic release, and the band's endearing and unforced enthusiasm for rocking out. CEG have serious chops for a young band, but they wisely let their youthful energy guide their way, whether navigating the dramatic peaks and valleys of ""...And the Hazy Sea"" or bopping their way through a jaunty number like ""Indiana"". Isaac Brock and Doug Martsch may have built the highway Cymbals Eat Guitars are driving on, but it's pretty obvious that D'Agostino and company are having their own adventure on it. --Matthew Perpetua",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c602b13d197565213f888/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Cymbals_Eat_Guitars-Why_There_Are_Mountains.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7744-the-top-50-albums-of-2009/,2009,year,album,42,A Sunny Day in Glasgow,Ashes Grammar,Mis Ojos Discos,"The term ""dream-pop"" has been bandied about for the better part of 25 years now, but it may just as well have been invented to describe Ashes Grammar. Sure, Cocteau Twins and Mazzy Star and Galaxie 500 and Slowdive and whoever else made ""dreamy"" music, but they also made more or less linear records comprised of 10 to 12 tracks mostly falling in the three-to-five-minute range (Pygmalion excepted). The emphasis there fell squarely on the pop half of the descriptor, with pretty effects and leisurely tempos merely serving as signifiers-- much the same way gauze around the lens signifies dream-time happenings in old movies. Ashes, on the other hand, sprawls across 22 tracks, ranging from 10 seconds in length to six and a half minutes. Sometimes it seizes on a sound that makes you go ""wow,"" and sometimes it just drifts along, unfolding with its own otherworldly logic. There are linguistic flights of fancy (""fall forward, feel failure""), bits of apparent nonsense, fragments and clips of phrases and distant, half-remembered old tunes. In short it's very much the dream experience, rather than the dream representation, in recorded form. You're not always fully cognizant of what you're hearing. You just know you like the way it feels, and there are times when you wish it could inhabit your headspace in perpetuity. --Matthew Solarski",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c602b13d197565213f88a/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/A_Sunny_Day_in_Glasgow-Ashes_Grammar.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7744-the-top-50-albums-of-2009/,2009,year,album,41,Baroness,Blue Record,Relapse,"Baroness' second album isn't remotely ""experimental,"" and you'd never mistake any of its 12 tracks for indie rock. Instead, the guitars mix furious power-prog melodicism with the gut-punch force of old fashioned Southern sludge, and the grot-lined vocals are anthemic rather than tortured into incomprehensibility, a pleasant reminder of the days when extreme metal bands managed to be catchy without sacrificing an ounce of essentialist brutality. --Jess Harvell",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c602c5e6ef9596932742a/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Baroness-Blue_Record.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7744-the-top-50-albums-of-2009/,2009,year,album,40,Mos Def,The Ecstatic,Downtown,"How did Mos Def shift his popular perception from ""fallen off"" to ""best since Black on Both Sides""? It helps that he transitioned perfectly into the post-Stones Throw epoch of indie stoner rap; one of the reasons The Ecstatic is so engaging is that Mos sounds great rattling off short but dense verses over the likes of Madlib and Oh No. But the Jackson Brothers, along with Georgia Anne Muldrow and the obligatory J Dilla beat, are just part of the equation. Along with Mr. Flash's mutant Ed Banger beats and Preservation's heavy-bumping musical flourishes from Latin America and the Middle East, Mos depicts himself as a new kind of international ambassador of hip-hop. His depiction of a jet-set travelogue bypasses celebrity status and focuses on the idea of connecting with as many cultures as possible, spinning abstract free-associations and evocative narratives into a shrinking-world milieu that's left him completely revitalized. --Nate Patrin",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c602cd7a71d1ea569c874/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Mos_Def-The_Ecstatic.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7744-the-top-50-albums-of-2009/,2009,year,album,39,Jim O'Rourke,The Visitor,Drag City,"The first pop-ish album in eight years from Jim O'Rourke turned out to be well worth the wait, and it continued to reward patience once you actually put it on. Almost pathologically subtle, the lone 38-minute piece that makes up the record works like a series of intriguing riddles that are never quite resolved. Small bursts of sound pop in out of nowhere, and the tempo occasionally slows down and then stops; typically, a piece like this is positioned as a ""journey,"" but The Visitor constantly (and gently) nudges the path into unexpected realms that don't really lead anywhere. Exquisitely recorded-- the sonics make you miss O'Rourke's engineering and mixing acumen as much as his compositions-- and played entirely by O'Rourke himself in his Tokyo apartment, The Visitor sometimes feels more like a perplexing sonic game than a proper album. It keeps pulling you back in, partly because you want to take another crack at it. --Mark Richardson",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c602dc0084474cd0c7056/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Jim_ORourke-The_Visitor.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7744-the-top-50-albums-of-2009/,2009,year,album,38,Major Lazer,Guns Don't Kill People-- Lazers Do,Downtown,"One of Mark Twain's most famous and oft-repeated (albeit typically in a slightly mangled way) aphorisms is, ""If you don't like the weather in New England, just wait a few minutes."" The sentiment holds true for Guns Don't Kill People-- Lazers Do, the debut fruit of Diplo and Switch's collaborative project, Major Lazer. Jamaican dancehall may be the overriding stylistic theme, but there's such a multiplicity of sounds, subjects, and stances crammed under that banner here that hardly anyone should have trouble finding something in short order to enjoy (and, perhaps, to disdain). Few listeners are likely to single out, say, ""What U Like"" as a favorite track, but hey, if ultra-graphic raunch is what you're looking for, you're in luck. The rest of us will be gravitating towards the throbbing, Santigold-assisted ""Hold the Line"", the incessant ""When You Hear the Bassline"" and especially the buoyant, irresistible club-hopper ""Keep It Goin' Louder"". --Joshua Love",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c602d5e6ef9596932742c/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Major_Lazer-Guns_Dont_Kill_People--_Lazers_Do.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7744-the-top-50-albums-of-2009/,2009,year,album,37,The Antlers,Hospice,Frenchkiss,"After a decade in which private lives basically became public domain-- think confessional emo, YouTube, reality TV, and social networking updates-- you would think that we'd have become inured to the private pain of semi-autobiographical songwriting. But as the debut album by Peter Silberman's former solo project (it's now a trio) proves, with the right blend of earnest, whispery vocals, delicate, gauzy melodies, and strangely smothering scratchy effects, a desperately delivered concept album about personal loss still has the power to emotionally destroy listeners. Hospice, as its name implies, is not an easy album to take-- the haunting songs' plainspoken prose tells of mental illness, abortion, cancer, and death-- but couched in soaring anthems and swathed in layers of ambient noise, its heartbreaking stories are easy to love. --Rebecca Raber",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c602eeb335119a49f143d/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Antlers-Hospice.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7744-the-top-50-albums-of-2009/,2009,year,album,36,Dinosaur Jr.,Farm,Jagjaguwar,"When news of the Dinosaur Jr. reunion came around, one would probably have been hard-pressed to think that it'd be anything more than an enjoyable little nostalgia trip. Two albums in, the only thing remotely nostalgic about the 21st century version of the group is its cover art. Farm finds the group as powerful as ever, offering a familiar blend of sad-sack sentiments and amp-shredding solos-- all with a swagger and strut that'd be hard to find in the group's back catalog. Whatever acrimony caused their initial dissolution, Dinosaur Jr. are clearly over it. F. Scott Fitzgerald's oft-quoted line about there being no second acts in American life has been debunked numerous times, but it's particularly nice to see it apply to these guys. --David Raposa",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c602fd7a71d1ea569c876/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Dinosaur_Jr-Farm.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7744-the-top-50-albums-of-2009/,2009,year,album,34,Passion Pit,Manners,Columbia/Frenchkiss,"Passion Pit's debut album can seem to come on like a big, friendly dog slobbering you with kisses: one part ""Eww, too much!"" and two parts ""Aww, I can't resist!"" Manners' day-glo playground lite-funk desperately wants to be loved, stopping at nothing (Children's choirs! Velveeta disco synths! Smoove sax samples!) to deliver high-fructose hooks straight to the part of the brain that lusts after Froot Loops and chocolate milk. But helium-voiced frontman Michael Angelakos keeps the whole affair from collapsing into diabetic shock by grounding it in an undercurrent of melancholy, howling lyrics about loss and decay with the kind of roof-raising sincerity shared by the likes of U2 and Arcade Fire. At times, an almost celestial beauty comes frothing out (""Moth's Wings"", ""Make Light""); at others, the ants-in-your-pants enthusiasm overwhelms (""Little Secrets"", ""The Reeling""). This is music that begs to be shared with as many people as possible. The more Passion Pit's star rose throughout 2009, the more all was right with the universe. --Amy Phillips",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6030c0084474cd0c705a/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Passion_Pit-Manners.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7744-the-top-50-albums-of-2009/,2009,year,album,33,Bibio,Ambivalence Avenue,Warp,"Terrific albums from Animal Collective and Phoenix were almost foregone conclusions this year, but Bibio benefited from the element of surprise. As recently as March, when he released Vignetting the Compost, Bibio was a folksy Boards of Canada understudy who played everything on the same wobbly phonograph. Merely three months later, he issued the sparklingly clear Ambivalence Avenue and blew his narrow, drowsy range wide open. As if making up for lost time, he hop-scotched effortlessly between genres and influences-- Dillafied funk on ""Jealous of Roses"", weedy Flying Lotus-style hip-hop on ""Fire Ant"", spangled indie-rock on ""Haikuesque (When She Laughs)""-- but kept everything cohesive with tuneful, elaborately syncopated, commanding production. You seldom see shifts this radical and swift outside of teen melodramas: It's like Bibio just took off his glasses and went from wallflower to prom king. --Brian Howe",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6031eb335119a49f1441/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Bibio-Ambivalence_Avenue.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7744-the-top-50-albums-of-2009/,2009,year,album,32,Bear in Heaven,Beast Rest Forth Mouth,Hometapes,"If Bear in Heaven's reps weren't working New Moon ticket queues with sound vans and promo swag, they missed a brilliant opportunity. No one's nailed adolescent melodrama this well since, I dunno, My Chemical Romance? And in this case, critics don't have to stoop to bestow a condescending ""guilty pleasure"" disclaimer: Beast Rest Forth Mouth is a nigh-perfect collection of confident songwriting and magnificent production detail. Check how ""Wholehearted Me"", a brisk, surly bedroom raver bridging Power, Corruption & Lies and Oracular Spectacular rides decaying feedback and cymbal spray into ""You Do You""'s robotic rhythms. The latter betrays a more-than-passing familiarity with fellow Brooklyn band Yeasayer's utopian psychedelia, but from ""Dust Storm""'s queasy dissonance to ""Drug a Wheels""'s fog-machined atmospherics, BRFM views the world through a goth lens. A moody brew of surging hormones and consumptive crushes, the album speaks to the misunderstood vampire-- or lovesick teenager-- in all of us. --Amy Granzin",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6031c0084474cd0c705e/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Bear_in_Heaven-Beast_Rest_Forth_Mouth.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7744-the-top-50-albums-of-2009/,2009,year,album,31,Sunn O))),Monoliths & Dimensions,Southern Lord,"It certainly was the year's most effective pairing of album and cover art, with the black sun of Richard Serra's Out-of-Round X succinctly summing up drones-gone-supernova within. Working again with Attila Csihar and Oren Ambarchi, Stephen O'Malley and Greg Anderson recruited a small army of contributors for their most musically ambitious album yet, with horns, reeds, conch shell, and choir casting an auratic glow over charred guitars; the band's trademark infernal rumble took on a newfound spectral quality, drawing unexpected connections between black metal and Ligeti. They sounded as undeniably, awesomely evil as ever, but there were also moments of pure, unabashed beauty to be found amidst it all, like dewy mountain springs scattered throughout a scorched landscape. The closing ""Alice"", a tribute to Alice Coltrane, went so far as to end on a major third, its spiraling ascendance having poked a head-sized hole through the seemingly impermeable canopy of gloom. --Philip Sherburne",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6032d7a71d1ea569c87c/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Sunn_O-Monoliths__Dimensions.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7744-the-top-50-albums-of-2009/,2009,year,album,30,Röyksopp,Junior,Astralwerks,"Junior was 2009's pre-eminent 2001 album: an energetic and undeniably big dance record, crafted by a largely invisible production team pulling from all corners of the pop universe. Just under the tweaked techno-disco veneer established by the ""Do That Stuff"" sampling ""Happy Up Here"" and Karin Dreijer-Andersson's diva turn on ""This Must Be It"", though, lurks a sense of ambivalence and regret about life lived in and with technology. On ""Vision One"", over a wickedly mangled version of the ""Too High"" bassline, Anneli Drecker laments the encroachment of concrete and steel into her natural surroundings. Robyn bickers with a cold, mechanistic lover on ""The Girl and the Robot"", and Lykke Li offers a remarkably affecting cyborg's lament on the billowing ""Miss It So Much"", longing for the simple pleasures of ""a dial to turn"" and ""a key to hold."" For all its focus on the mechanical, Junior works so well because it keeps focus on the all-too-human things that make us go. --Eric Harvey",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60320c2bba1b7de04eb5/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Ryksopp-Junior.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7744-the-top-50-albums-of-2009/,2009,year,album,29,Yo La Tengo,Popular Songs,Matador,"The album begins with nearly six minutes of disco strings, ambient organ, and crashing drums. It ends with three tracks-- one nocturnal, one pastoral, and, of course, one rave-up-- that last at least nine minutes. There's a not-too-subtle nod to the Four Tops' ""I Can't Help Myself"", and another to the group's own ""Cherry Chapstick"" (which itself is a nod to ""Sugarcube"", which trainspotters can probably trace back to something else in their catalog). ""Avalon or Someone Very Similar"", is a fuzzed-out paisley-pop troop. On ""By Two's"", Georgia Hubley is a smoldering chanteuse, crooning atop a spacious bass line and haunting Casio drone. And on ""When It's Dark"", she's brushing her drums as the group cops a low-key Creedence pose. ""Periodically Double or Triple"", with its laissez-faire shuffle and Ira Kaplan's Eeyore-esque narration, is probably one of the most fun and silly tracks in the group's catalog; the smoke-filled McNew-sung ""I'm on My Way"", one of the most poignant and beautiful. So, yeah, all in all, Popular Songs is just the same old collection of minor miracles from a 25-year-old rock group comfortable enough in their skin to seek out all sorts of itches to scratch. Here's to many, many more. --David Raposa",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60335e6ef95969327439/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Yo_La_Tengo-Popular_Songs.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7744-the-top-50-albums-of-2009/,2009,year,album,28,Micachu and the Shapes,Jewellery,Rough Trade,"Mica Levi sings about searching for ""that nonsense sound"" in ""Golden Phone"", the centerpiece of her debut album as the leader of Micachu and the Shapes, and the rest of the record is like an elaborate sculpture crafted from various noises accrued in her quest for the perfect clatter. The music may be composed of unlikely timbres and rough edges, but Levi's passion for atonality does not get in the way of her knack for melody and rhythm, resulting in one of year's-- or hell, the decade's-- most atypical collection of pop tunes. The alluring oddness of this music is not limited to its surface, which contrasts lo-fi textures with smooth tones to often discomfiting effect, but in the way cuts like ""Vulture"", ""Calculator"", and ""Ship"" blend disparate influences (punk, grime, folk, R&B, music from outer space and/or the future) into a listening experience that is vaguely familiar, somewhat baffling, totally fascinating, and uniquely pleasurable. --Matthew Perpetua",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60335e6ef9596932743b/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Micachu_and_the_Shapes-Jewellery.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7744-the-top-50-albums-of-2009/,2009,year,album,27,Various Artists 5,Five Years of Hyperdub,Hyperdub,"It's been a couple of years since we saw a label comp as moment-defining as Hyperdub's 5, a 2xCD set that chronicles the UK's fevered urban dance music. 5 can rightly take its place next to Run the Road and DFA's Compilation #2 as convenient summations of well contained, massively creative music scenes. And if those two compilations sit dusty on your shelf or sound a bit dated these days, it's only because their affectations have seeped into so much of our listening in the interim. Expect the same from Hyperdub's lead actors, pirate radio denizens with plenty of room to grow: Several of the best tracks on 5 were turned in by artists (Joker, Darkstar) without proper albums to their names. 5 gives us the chance to reflect on some music that has frequently felt important in the last five years, but it's here in equal part for what it promises for the future. --Andrew Gaerig",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6034c0084474cd0c7061/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Various_Artists_5-Five_Years_of_Hyperdub.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7744-the-top-50-albums-of-2009/,2009,year,album,26,Bon Iver  EP,Blood Bank,Jagjaguwar,"Bon Iver's Justin Vernon has a knack for evocative storytelling, sprinkling his work with tiny, telling details-- ""Then the snow started falling, we were stuck out in your car/ You were rubbing both my hands, chewing on a candy bar,"" he coos in ""Blood Bank""-- and the Blood Bank EP, his 4-song follow-up to For Emma, Forever Ago, is a soft, hazy homage to the isolation (and, on occasion, the mercilessness) of deep winter. It's not all despair and icicles-- ""Summer comes, to multiply,"" he promises on the shimmering ""Babys""-- but much of its beauty is in its desolation. Vernon's liberal use of Auto-Tune on closer ""Woods"" flummoxed some fans-- is there any greater sacrilege for a folk singer?-- but its deconstruction of Vernon's falsetto into a bizarre series of wheezes and yowls helped the song feel like a cold, sustained wind-- the exact kind of thing that pushes you through to spring. --Amanda Petrusich",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6034d7a71d1ea569c880/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Bon_Iver__EP-Blood_Bank.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7744-the-top-50-albums-of-2009/,2009,year,album,25,DJ Quik and Kurupt,BlaQKout,Mad Science,"DJ Quik is a So Cal rapper and producer best known for never getting the recognition his fans think he deserves. Kurupt is a Philly-born, L.A.-bred rapper who struck out on both coasts. Both are on the 40 side of 35. Quik's most inspired lyric on BlaQKout is, ""Drinkin' something that I can't pronounce/ And I'm'a spill each and every ounce""; Kurupt's is the chorus of ""9x's Outta 10"", a 35-word Chinese finger trap where he not only explains the concept of momentum, he illustrates it. They seem to agree on the issue of girls. A handful of bizarre metaphors aside, Quik is humble at the mic-- he wants to hug the block, get tipsy, get by, and get laid. Behind the boards, he's more complex and ambitious. Party music isn't just his vibe, it's his art-- he's as interested in challenging himself as he is entertaining his audience. But BlaQKout feels like there's nothing riding on it, which is part of what makes it great. It's just two dudes hanging out. --Mike Powell",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6035eb335119a49f1444/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/DJ_Quik_and_Kurupt-BlaQKout.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7744-the-top-50-albums-of-2009/,2009,year,album,24,Bill Callahan,Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle,Drag City,"There are all these great takeaway quotes on Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle, and yet it's a line from the live-action version of The Tick that really nails it: ""Alone is an unfortunate predicament. Lone is an aesthetic choice."" Eagle is almost certainly colored by the dissolution of a relationship, but it refuses to be Bill Callahan's ""breakup album."" Instead, it wonderfully reveals itself as a solitary but patient and purposeful search for ""ordinary things"" obscured by metaphysical uncertainties like God (""Faith/Void"") and dreams (the dryly hilarious ""Eid Ma Clack Shaw""). So much of Eagle owes to what lies just beyond the surface-- the creamery-rich Countrypolitan orchestration underscores the hints of drone and dissonance that give ""My Friend"" its mesmeric locomotion and ""All Thoughts Are Prey to Some Beast"" its cataclysmic climax. Likewise, Callahan's sober vocals underscore the expressiveness he gives to his curious mantras-- ""I am a child of linger on,"" ""If only you could stop your heartbeat for one heartbeat,"" ""I used to be sort of blind and now I can sort of see""-- an unusually affecting statement of reassurance as he forgoes easy answers in the quest of real ones. --Ian Cohen",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6035d7a71d1ea569c882/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Bill_Callahan-Sometimes_I_Wish_We_Were_an_Eagle.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7744-the-top-50-albums-of-2009/,2009,year,album,23,Memory Tapes,Seek Magic,Sincerely Yours/Acéphale/Something in Construction,"By all accounts, Seek Magic should have merely been a next-step culmination of the sounds New Jerseyite Dayve Hawk has released as cut-and-paste project Memory Cassette and the dancefloor-inclined Weird Tapes. (And no bad thing if that's what it had been-- each has had its name on some excellent tracks.) Indeed, Hawk retained traces of the best qualities of those creations-- a pitch-perfect mix of beatific dance-pop structures and austere slices of nostalgia. And yet Memory Tapes' debut is no Frankenstein's monster. With Hawk in full command of a surprisingly confident, fully-formed pop sound that ranges from the funk of ""Stop Talking"" to the resplendent new wave grandeur of ""Bicycle"", it's a monster full stop. --Zach Kelly",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60365e6ef95969327442/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Memory_Tapes-Seek_Magic.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7744-the-top-50-albums-of-2009/,2009,year,album,22,Wild Beasts,Two Dancers,Domino,"Few acts use their band name as a conceptual framework for their music like UK quartet Wild Beasts, whose falsettoed frontman, Hayden Thorpe, is the very embodiment of id unhinged, singing of bloodlust and carnality in no uncertain (and uncensored) terms. But where the baroque'n'roll of the band's 2008 debut Limbo, Panto played up the absurdity, Two Dancers is defined by its austerity. Two Dancers sees the band evolve into a two-headed beast with the emergence of Tom Fleming as Thorpe's more reserved but no less devious wingman-- what makes the album's two-part title-track suite so unsettling is not simply the first-person account of gang rape graphically described within, but the stone-faced nonchalance with which Fleming delivers it. --Stuart Berman",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60360c2bba1b7de04ebe/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Wild_Beasts-Two_Dancers.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7744-the-top-50-albums-of-2009/,2009,year,album,21,Neko Case,Middle Cyclone,Anti-,"Arguably Neko Case's best album in a decade, Middle Cyclone plays like the culmination of all her guiding eccentricities, as if Blacklisted and Fox Confessor Brings the Flood were just warm-ups for the real thing. Here Case sings about amorous storm fronts, menacing red tides, truly killer whales, alarming magpies, and other fauna that manifest particular conditions of the human soul. She's singing about common alt- and mainstream country themes-- broken hearts, wandering spirits, chilling loneliness, the nature of nature-- but no one bends traditional Americana sounds to fit her eccentricities so perfectly, getting at these issues through tangential songwriting and force-of-nature vocals. Plus, with Middle Cyclone Case accomplished three undeniable superlatives: the coolest album cover of 2009, the most bizarre album closer (30 minutes of looped frog noises), and the loveliest love song, no matter that it was told from the point of view of a tornado in love with a lost child. --Stephen M. Deusner",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c603613d197565213f8a1/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Neko_Case-Middle_Cyclone.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7744-the-top-50-albums-of-2009/,2009,year,album,20,,Real Estate,Woodsist,"Real Estate roll and tumble along, making a fizzy, fuzzy kiddie pool splash of rock. Whatever, man. Their ethic is lo-fi because they can't afford a nice studio, not because it's fashionable. (Still, it didn't hurt this year.) But what makes their dream-like debut special is its lack of guile. It has no reservations about what it is. The band hails from suburban New Jersey, a fact not hidden throughout the album, and it desperately wants you to remember or learn what it's like to grow up there: Swimming pools, trips to the beach, flat soda, mild angst. ""Fake Blues"" is hardly a tragedy in this blessed life, but at least they know they can't mine their backstory for anything. ""I've got to find a reason to write this song,"" Martin Courtney sings, knowing so much about himself and yet nothing at all. Mathew Mondanile's guitar is like a sundial, facing up and open to the light, a refreshing refraction of his diffuse work as Ducktails. Telling the truth shouldn't seem so pretty, and the suburbs shouldn't seem so harmless. But maybe it ain't such a bad place. --Sean Fennessey",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60375e6ef95969327446/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/-Real_Estate.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7744-the-top-50-albums-of-2009/,2009,year,album,19,,The Pains of Being Pure at Heart,Slumberland,"Their indie pop sonic lineage is obvious enough, but the Pains of Being Pure at Heart also slot nicely with the Strokes, Interpol, or Vampire Weekend-- precocious New York kids who also made it look too easy. Hell, even their name is pretty much perfect. If I were in a struggling band, I might just hate them on principle. But the hype a boutique label like Slumberland can spark doesn't make you one of 2009's breakout bands on its own-- a killer record to back it up does. And while Pains' fuzzy production and sparkly guitar jangle made them timely, the energetic-but-effortless, bright-but-melancholic hooks of ""Stay Alive"", ""Come Saturday"", and ""Young Adult Friction"" are something closer to timeless. Their excellent follow-up EP Higher Than the Stars continued the band's exploration into early MBV harmonies, C86 jangle, and Sarah Records lyricism, but regardless of the luminaries they conjure, the toughest standards the Pains of Being Pure at Heart might have to top are the ones they've set themselves. --Ian Cohen",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6037eb335119a49f144a/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/-The_Pains_of_Being_Pure_at_Heart.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7744-the-top-50-albums-of-2009/,2009,year,album,18,Atlas Sound,Logos,Kranky,"While it has plenty of watery drips and washed-out backdrops, Bradford Cox's Atlas Sound project can also be very blunt. Like his work with Deerhunter, he places gothic horror side-by-side with gorgeous guitar riffs and sonic textures, a disarming combination. But Logos makes it a point to get dark. Guilt and suffering are commonplace; it's suffocating to enter the album's lyrical landscape of cold lights, grey dawns, and regrets. The simple line ""my halo burned a hole in the sky"" is stigmatizing. Logos is another turn at making pop music wrapped in sonic gauze, yet all the wounds remain exposed. Just look at its cover; Cox's own frail, caved-in chest contrasts with a face obscured in a blinding light. But the aura and the album are also revealing and redemptive. ""Shelia"" spins an elderly couple's burial into something poppy and romantic. Saints aren't born saints, Laetitia Sadier implies in ""Quick Canal"", later cooing that ""wisdom is learned."" Perhaps it's all about moving toward change. As the refrain says on ""Walkabout"", the album's propulsive and sunny highlight, ""Forget the things you've left behind/ Through looking back you may go blind."" --Patrick Sisson",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6038eb335119a49f144c/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Atlas_Sound-Logos.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7744-the-top-50-albums-of-2009/,2009,year,album,17,The Very Best,Warm Heart of Africa,Green Owl,"The Very Best provide almost too convenient a model for the discussion of broad sociocultural concepts like globalization and the Internet's power to bring people together. Here's a group seemingly operating without any national or idealistic barriers, whose infectious dance-pop, the result of a free exchange of Western and African sounds, simply couldn't have reached as many listeners, say, five or 10 years ago as it has today. But what sometimes gets lost in that discussion is the sheer heat that Esau Mwamwaya and Radioclit are able to bring to the stage and on record. Example: On a Monday night in Washington, DC-- a pretty tightly clenched city-- I watched these guys, armed with little more than a few samplers, turn a crowded bar into a good-natured, sweat-drenched riot. That same energy carries over to Warm Heart of Africa, where Mwamwaya in particular is in rare form, singing with such passion and pleasure that it's difficult not to share in his enjoyment. A senior thesis-worthy example of pop globalism, sure, but also something much more basic and human: music as joy. --Joe Colly",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60380c2bba1b7de04ec0/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Very_Best-Warm_Heart_of_Africa.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7744-the-top-50-albums-of-2009/,2009,year,album,16,Antony and the Johnsons,The Crying Light,Secretly Canadian,"""Watching Kazuo onstage,"" writes Yoshito Ohno, the son of the pioneering Butoh dancer Kazuo Ohno, who's pictured on the cover of Antony and the Johnson's third LP, The Crying Light, ""we tend to miss such fleeting facial expressions, as more often than not we're captivated by his movements."" The same holds for listening to Antony Hegarty. His radiant, amorphous voice and the transgender identity of which he's so often sung tend to dominate commentary. So often with Hegarty, the intricacies are overlooked for the obvious-- a big, gay, histrionic singer telling us about it all in a startlingly soulful feminine air. But The Crying Light-- the first album Hegarty wrote outside of the queer New York art circles in which he was once an underground impresario-- deserves to alter that dialogue. Pained but hopeful, Hegarty expands his reach as a thinker and writer, examining his relationship to a wounded world and to abandoned images of masculinity. His interactions-- with his family, his environment, a lover, a friend-- serve as the old solipsism's stand-in. Extravagant but exact, the backing ensemble meets Antony's ambition with touches of rock and soul bravado and, more importantly, subtlety beneath the surface. The Crying Light tells its story in repeated, obsessive listens. In doing so, it suggests that Hegarty has a lot left to say. --Grayson Currin",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6039eb335119a49f144e/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Antony_and_the_Johnsons-The_Crying_Light.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7744-the-top-50-albums-of-2009/,2009,year,album,15,Japandroids,Post-Nothing,Unfamiliar/Polyvinyl,"Japandroids have a freaking wind machine, which they use to great effect on stage. It's a perfect nod to what this Vancouver band delivered on its debut album: eight deliriously enthusiastic garage-rock songs about girls, growing up, and going away from home. Rather than mask their emotions in reverb or tape hiss, Japandroids shout slogans, often in unison, over thrumming guitar chords and chaotic drumming. From the rambunctious ambivalence of ""The Boys Are Leaving Town"" to the slo-mo emo of ""I Quit Girls"", the energy level rarely wavers. Raging against the certain knowledge that we won't know what we've got 'til it's gone, ""Young Hearts Spark Fire"" sums up Post-Nothing's sound in four words. While Neon Indian, Washed Out, and their homemade psychedelic electro-pop peers were getting accused of wallowing in childhood, Japandroids captured the recklessness of youth-- and the abject terror of not knowing what comes after it. --Marc Hogan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6039c0084474cd0c706b/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Japandroids-Post-Nothing.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7744-the-top-50-albums-of-2009/,2009,year,album,14,Neon Indian,Psychic Chasms,Lefse,"2009 was the year Ariel Pink became the most influential figure in indie pop, which is too bad because it's the first year since 2003 that he didn't reissue anything. Of all the records classified as glo-fi, none were as confident or well defined as Psychic Chasms-- which is to say that none sounded so deformed. This brilliance of Alan Palomo's skeletal soul-pop is found in its atmosphere. I've heard people say Psychic Chasms sounds like an old cassette. It doesn't. It sounds like the idea of an old cassette, in the same way pre-faded jeans look like the idea of jeans that have been worn for a decade. It's one of the reasons Psychic Chasms sounds so defiantly current: It's the aesthetic of decay taking on a life of its own. Naturally, Palomo's touchy about ""craft"": ""I really hope the medium by which someone writes a song isn't the only thing the song has going for it,"" he told us earlier this year. Well, it's not the only thing, but it's what makes his music stand out immediately. That his melodies fight their way through the humid mess of laser-beam noises and sound effects-- well, that's what made it stand out months later. --Mike Powell",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c603ad7a71d1ea569c88d/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Neon_Indian-Psychic_Chasms.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7744-the-top-50-albums-of-2009/,2009,year,album,13,St. Vincent,Actor,4AD,"Marry Me established Annie Clark as a coolly confident visionary. Actor, the second album from St. Vincent, is where that vision congeals into formidable shape. From Technicolor film scores to abrasive art-rock, Clark takes us to her version of Oz, over the rainbow and out the other side, where swelling strings mingle with jagged but precise guitar leads, and splendor gives way to dark menace with nary a warning. In fact, so fully realized is the sound of St. Vincent that it's sometimes too easy to overlook Clark's quirky and slightly uneasy character studies. At the same time, her deceptively unaffected but still upfront persona takes the focus away from her inimitable off-kilter arrangements and inventive musicianship. In other words, it's a bundle of contradictions unlike many others, so nearly sui generis that it's impossible to guess where she'll go next, other than even further up, up, and away. --Josh Klein",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c603b0c2bba1b7de04ec3/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/St_Vincent-Actor.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7744-the-top-50-albums-of-2009/,2009,year,album,12,Yeah Yeah Yeahs,It's Blitz!,Interscope,"With Karen O off scoring Where the Wild Things Are and rumored to be working on a solo album-- not to mention the rumblings of inter-personal discord-- it's amazing that this record exists at all, let alone that it turned out as successfully as it did. But It's Blitz! isn't the work of a band in its death throes. It's a band on top of its game. Whatever Karen O, Nick Zinner, and Brian Chase touched turned to white-hot flame: the glistening new wave of the opening one-two punch of ""Zero"" and ""Heads Will Roll"", the itchy disco of ""Dragon Queen"", the tenderness of ""Skeletons"", ""Hysteric"", and ""Little Shadow"", ballads that often reached the emotional heights (and depths) of YYY's career-best ""Maps"". Which isn't to say that the garage rock urgency that made the band famous is missing. Rather, it has been channeled into something bigger, bolder, and more multi-faceted. It's Blitz! is the sound of Yeah Yeah Yeahs ascending the throne of longevity, showing off a previously uncharacteristic versatility that could keep them on magazine covers and at the top of festival bills for years to come. --Amy Phillips",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c603b0c2bba1b7de04ec5/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Yeah_Yeah_Yeahs-Its_Blitz.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7744-the-top-50-albums-of-2009/,2009,year,album,11,Fuck Buttons,Tarot Sport,ATP,"Fuck Buttons' second album shows their first up as a tease: Street Horrrsing flirted with accessibility then pulled back to squalls and screams. But the contrast was part of their prickly appeal, even to the noise-agnostic: by ditching those snarlier elements, Tarot Sport risked seeming tepid. Instead it leapfrogs likeable and ends up full-on generous-- a rolling, open-armed stadium noise experience with beauty pushing through the fuzz on every track. Fuck Buttons understand that scale doesn't have to simply intimidate-- it can also comfort. The huge slow melodies and layers on ""Olympians"" and ""Surf Solar"" pile satisfyingly up, block on primary colored block, like a child's building game at cosmic scale. Not that it's all so monumental-- ""Phantom Limb"" shows the band remembers how to jab as well as swell, there's a martial sadness to the more subdued ""The Lisbon Maru"", and when the grandeur gets too much there's always some fascinating incidental texture to lose yourself in. Recruiting Andrew Weatherall to produce the record was an inspired decision-- the dance music veteran knows a bit about slow-release euphoria, and Tarot Sport is an unlikely, rich collision between post-rock's sweep and house music's detail and heart. --Tom Ewing",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c603cc0084474cd0c706e/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Fuck_Buttons-Tarot_Sport.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7744-the-top-50-albums-of-2009/,2009,year,album,10,Girls,Album,True Panther/Matador,"In the original video for ""Lust for Life"", Girls singer-songwriter Christopher Owens does a little ""Subterranean Homesick Blues"" routine. Dressed in a stripey bathrobe, he sits in the middle of a cluttered bedroom and flips scrawled messages that range from witty (""you wouldn't be so stupid if you were Randy Newman"") to confessional (""Maria-- I'm sorry""). Along the way, he unveils one Sharpie'd piece of printer paper that stands out: ""believe in me."" While many bands hid their ambition and/or emotion behind fuzz, fussiness, and psychedelics this year, Girls took full responsibility for their potential impact on the hearts and whims of young adults besot by that perennial, perilous question: ""Now what?"" Owens doesn't offer an answer, exactly. His solution takes the form of inclusive understanding; he's a mess, and he's just trying to figure some shit out, too. Lots of people have compared Owens to Elvis Costello, and their voices do share a high-pitched timbre. But Owens doesn't snarl or bark-- when he calls himself a ""big bad mean motherfucker,"" he's in on the joke. A more apt godfather may be Paul Westerberg, another gut-spilling King of Nothing with his eye on transcendence. ""Hey, are you satisfied?"" asked Westerberg on the Replacements' ""Unsatisfied"", possibly the best song about being frustrated with your own ennui ever written. It's down, but not done. With the seven-minute album centerpiece ""Hellhole Ratrace"", Girls create an equally rousing sequel. ""I don't wanna cry my whole life through/ I wanna do some laughing too,"" howls Owens. I believe him. --Ryan Dombal",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c603ceb335119a49f1456/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Girls-Album.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7744-the-top-50-albums-of-2009/,2009,year,album,9,,Fever Ray,Mute/Rabid,"When the first singles for the Knife singer Karin Dreijer Andersson's Fever Ray dropped, it was clear that her solo project was inscrutable, even by the standards of someone who considers Venetian plague masks a cornerstone of her wardrobe. The first impression is that atmosphere trumps narrative; bass notes, simple rhythms, and stark synth chords creep like a rolling fog while a cast of pitch-shifted voices emerge from dark corners of the woods or darker recesses of the mind. But Andersson's use of chilling childhood imagery and warped lyrics, filled with morphing perspectives that cultivate curiosity and raise questions that may never be answered, make it addictive. Who knew dishwasher tablets could be so unsettling? What's made Andersson's work even better is how her videos and performances amplify the music's sense of dread and mystery. Does the dirty rave dancer on a diving board know she's being watched (""When I Grow Up"")? Why is the Miss Havisham figure in a silver dress cavorting with farm animals (""Seven"")? Are they the same person? It's deliberate, theatrical smoke and mirrors, constant reinvention, and a David Lynch-like veneer of unseen danger that invite audience reinterpretation. The more material this unique artist releases, the less any of it makes sense. --Patrick Sisson",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c603deb335119a49f1458/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/-Fever_Ray.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7744-the-top-50-albums-of-2009/,2009,year,album,8,Phoenix,Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix,Loyauté/Glassnote,"The banality of evil's got nothing on the banality of music stardom-- not in 2009, anyway. Consider: Frumptastic Scottish virgin breaks debut-LP sales records; cherub-cheeked Idol appropriates rock hedonism; and Phoenix, the decade-old French pop outfit known to longtime Pitchfork readers as trendsetters in ""the sparsely-attended arena of new soft-rock,"" become, well, sorta famous. And it's richly deserved: From its giddy opening salvo to a finale that makes chippy guitars and keyboards set to harpsichord seem as natural a pairing as drums-and-bass, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix is a joy of geeky craftsmanship, irony-free cliché, and simple animal pleasures. No accident that the album pits Franz Liszt's celebrity against Mozart's musicianship, only to expose it as a false dichotomy. Or that Phoenix licensed its effervescent jam ""1901"" to an ad for the Cadillac SRX-- a crossover vehicle. For a local-boys-done-good victory performance this autumn, ""Take Away Shows"" auteur Vincent Moon staged the band at the site of that most hackneyed of package-tour icons, the Eiffel-frickin-Tower. But Moon knew what he was about. Bystanders-- foreign tourists, a beaming bride and groom-- are at first tentative, confused by the camera crew converging on these ordinary looking buskers. Then Phoenix reach the crackerjack chorus, shedding their street clothes for rockstar-superhero duds. Oh how banal, and utterly exceptional. --Amy Granzin",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c603e0c2bba1b7de04ec9/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Phoenix-Wolfgang_Amadeus_Phoenix.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7744-the-top-50-albums-of-2009/,2009,year,album,7,Bat For Lashes,Two Suns,Astralwerks/Parlophone,"There is no separating love from fantasy on Two Suns. Every track, from the mythic grandeur of ""Glass"" to the operatic sorrow of ""The Big Sleep"", revels in impossible desire and dark romance, resulting in an album that is alternately exhilarating and emotionally exhausting. Whether singing about infatuation on ""Daniel"", heartbreak on ""Moon and Moon"", or yearning for affection on ""Sleep Alone"", Natasha Khan invests her songs with the heightened drama of epic fiction without sacrificing nuance or emotional depth. Her darkest fantasies are isolated in the persona of a toxic yet fragile narcissist named Pearl, who in the album's brilliant centerpiece ""Siren Song"" delivers a line so devastating in its terrible irony-- ""My name is Pearl and I love you the best way I know how""-- that it can be hard to listen without wanting to somehow shake the man she is addressing and beg him to run away. Much of the record's seductive allure is owed to Khan's gift for melody and evocative atmosphere, but ultimately the most compelling element is her voice, which is as technically stunning as it is expressive. Her passionate performances keep the songs from descending too far into misery, and place the emphasis on the beautiful romance in the music rather than all the melancholy and tragedy. --Matthew Perpetua",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c603e5e6ef95969327456/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Bat_For_Lashes-Two_Suns.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7744-the-top-50-albums-of-2009/,2009,year,album,6,Grizzly Bear,Veckatimest,Warp,"You can tell a lot about a band from how its members line up on stage. Stick the drummer in back, place the singer in the front, and you might as well wear t-shirts that say ""Generic Band."" Not Grizzly Bear, who go four across in their live show, a demonstration of band democracy that suits their elegant, interlocking sound. Credit the friendly songwriting competition between Ed Droste and Daniel Rossen, which-- while the band is most praised for their intricate arrangements-- bloomed here into songs pliable enough to be reworked by Neon Indian and covered by Michael McDonald. The combination made for the most thrilling one-two opening punch of the year-- the onrushing storm of ""Southern Point"" bleeding into the psychedelic stomp of ""Two Weeks""-- and it continues to pay dividends throughout the album. And in the spirit of equal praise, the double-Christopher rhythm section is hardly mere time-keeping, adding the off-kilter crunch to ""Fine For Now"" and ""I Live With You"" that prevents GB's ghostly sound from evaporating. In a year where abrasive was the In texture, Grizzly Bear's warm sound was a welcome respite, a sepia-toned tapestry that could have been weaved only by four equal partners. --Rob Mitchum",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c603f13d197565213f8b9/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Grizzly_Bear-Veckatimest.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7744-the-top-50-albums-of-2009/,2009,year,album,5,Raekwon,Only Built for Cuban Linx... Pt. II,H2O/EMI,"At a time when many critics have mistaken hip-hop's state of creative flux for the genre's final flatline, it seems simultaneously fitting and frustrating that a sequel to a 14-year-old album is one of the few things everyone can come close to agreeing upon. The long-awaited successor to Raekwon's groundbreaking solo debut doesn't push the art of hip-hop any further outside the boundaries of classic 1990s East Coast lyricism or production-- in fact, it doesn't point the way to an exciting new future or direction for the genre much at all. It's an album for people who are comfortable with the way rap sounded in the mid-90s, a work of high-caliber Wu-Tang fan service that acts as a 71-minute buffer zone between the listener and the splintering, agitated state of rap in 2009. But OB4CL2 doesn't need to push things forward-- it builds upwards, using old foundations to create a permanent monument. Whether Rae, Ghost, Deck, RZA, and the rest of the album's star-studded cast represent a bygone era or not becomes irrelevant once the atmosphere sinks in: this is one of those records where everyone seems hellbent on proving why they're still here and why they still matter. The stories of betrayal, despair, remembrance, and celebration that they tell are relentlessly gripping, and set to the most impressive collection of beats gathered in one place all year; six of the contributing producers can lay claim to being all-time greats. It might not sound like the future, but it'll always be worth going back to. --Nate Patrin",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c603f0c2bba1b7de04ece/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Raekwon-Only_Built_for_Cuban_Linx_Pt_II.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7744-the-top-50-albums-of-2009/,2009,year,album,4,The Flaming Lips,Embryonic,Warner Bros.,"""Experiments"" are great, but they matter most when their results can be put into practice. In retrospect, a lot of the Flaming Lips' quarter-century of intermittently inspired fucking around seems like preparatory work for this assured, forceful, savagely dark album, and for the way their cracked sense of humor glows through its darkness. This is a double album because it's heavy, an hour and a quarter of superabundance whose omnipresent digital distortion gives it heft like a jagged slab of lead, a mammoth pile of mammoth songs that offer more than it's possible to take in on a dozen listens because they're written around their sound design. The prettiest sounds the Lips can make are spot-welded to the ugliest, and one mix after another focuses squarely on ""errors"": the sheet of gristly static that drifts from ""Sagittarius Silver Announcement"" onto ""Worm Mountain"", the slowly hemorrhaging guitar solo in the middle of ""Powerless"", Karen O's priceless vérité aside at the end of ""I Can Be a Frog"". And a lot of the album's existential bleakness is also as funny as anything Wayne Coyne has ever offered up--this is an astrological celebration whose concluding ritual chant goes ""Yes yes yes/ Killin' the ego tonight."" --Douglas Wolk",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6040d7a71d1ea569c894/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Flaming_Lips-Embryonic.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7744-the-top-50-albums-of-2009/,2009,year,album,3,,The xx,Young Turks,"Sensual music is so rarely about dialogue. The xx make lovers' rock, yes, but they make it for lovers who can't help but talk about their love. Diving rhythms and creeping basslines keep tensions high, buoying traces of Young Marble Giants and Gainsbourg, while guitarist Romy Madley Croft and bassist Oliver Sim trade opaque declarations like, ""I'm frozen by desire, this is the choice I make."" But The xx, an album that billows under the sheets but never reveals what's underneath, is far from plaintive. Theirs is a secretive conversation, the sort you might have after sex, or on a train, or at a coat check at night's end. On ""VCR"", Sim and Croft ""watch things on VCR."" What things? Pornography? Home movies? ""Entourage""? ""You, you just know. You just do,"" they purr back and forth to each other. The mystery is alluring and maddening--are the two a real couple? What have they done to each other? The dialogue overlaps near the end of the album's centerpiece, ""Crystalised"", as the two breathlessly explain themselves, ignoring their mate. And then, at the end, they find themselves back in harmony. Like any good relationship. --Sean Fennessey",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c604013d197565213f8bb/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/-The_xx.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7744-the-top-50-albums-of-2009/,2009,year,album,2,Dirty Projectors,Bitte Orca,Domino,"One of the most heartening-- and least expected-- success stories of the year was Bitte Orca's fearsomely complex, occasionally grating, and way-beyond-arch prog-pop, with its nods to twee glee club harmonies and rigorous avant-composition managing to impact the NPR-ified indie rock landscape of 2009. It helped, of course, that Bitte Orca contains a handful of the Dirty Projectors' most accessible songs yet, offering predictably tweaked but still recognizable takes on R&B and folk. Sure, there's always Dave Longstreth's literally and figuratively cracked falsetto and the band's jones for out-of-control ululations, both of which mean DPs will probably always remain at least a little divisive. But Bitte Orca is whimsical (and gorgeous) enough to make the ""difficult"" bits seem less like work than glorious play. --Jess Harvell",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c604113d197565213f8bd/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Dirty_Projectors-Bitte_Orca.jpg
The Top 50 Albums of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7744-the-top-50-albums-of-2009/,2009,year,album,1,Animal Collective,Merriweather Post Pavilion,Domino,"When Animal Collective traded up from FatCat Records to Domino in 2007, the label was flush with the recent successes of Arctic Monkeys and Franz Ferdinand-- chart-topping artists that presumably helped underwrite the label's more outré signings, like Kieran Hebden, Juana Molina and, well, Animal Collective. Even as their 2007 Domino debut, Strawberry Jam, dialed down the textural density and brought Avey Tare and Panda Bear's vocal melodies higher in the mix, the cleaner, chiseled presentation seemed only to accentuate the band's intrinsic weirdness. So how the hell did Merriweather Post Pavilion-- an album closer in spirit to the sub-aquatic psychedelia of 2005's Feels and Panda Bear's 2007 solo Person Pitch than its predecessor-- wind up in the Billboard Top 20 and outsell both the Arctic Monkeys and Franz Ferdinand's most recent albums in North America? That mystery is ultimately the most wonderful thing about the album. Unlike so many indie-rock crossover artists before them, Animal Collective did not breach the mainstream by cleaning up their act, or adopting classic-rock conventions, or scoring a strategic soundtrack or iPod-commercial placement. And, above all, they did little to formalize their defining mercurial quality. Almost everything we hear on Merriweather Post Pavilion has some antecedent in the Animal Collective canon. But, true to the band's science-lab-like stage set-up, years of experimentation have yielded a formula that mixes those core elements-- psychedelic pop, analog electronica, West African rhythms, echoplexed dub ambience-- in perfect proportions, producing a work that gleefully teeters on the line between accessibility and inscrutability. And the evolution is as much emotional as musical, the excitable yelps of old translated into tender, sincere declarations of love, friendship, and familial duty. At the time of its release last January, the title of Merriweather Post Pavilion felt like a fitfully nostalgic tribute to the Maryland amphitheater that hosted bygone A.C. heroes like the Grateful Dead. But now, it feels less evocative of distant teenage memories than a very real prophecy of the kind of venues Animal Collective could soon find themselves playing. --Stuart Berman",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6041c0084474cd0c7076/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Animal_Collective-Merriweather_Post_Pavilion.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,100,Darkstar,"""Aidy's Girl's a Computer""",Hyperdub,"Only a label that has released records by Kode9 and Zomby under the banner of ""dance"" could consider ""Aidy's Girl Is a Computer""'s bob-and-weave a fitting tempo for movement. Its title wants to take literally the shrinking gap between human and computer interaction, and the track's winning, fractal vocal samples do their best to make some sense of the concept. But this is also one of the most tonally interesting electronic tracks of the year. The pitter-patter melody-- a marimba, a wooden xylophone, or just exquisitely manipulated digital tones-- carries the song as a stream of distorted keys run underneath. It sounds like a jocular, urbane cousin to one of Boards of Canada's fireside jams. Would that all significant others prove so rewarding. --Andrew Gaerig",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c605cd7a71d1ea569c8c6/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Darkstar-Aidys_Girls_a_Computer.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,99,Julianna Barwick,"""Bode""",eMusic Selects,"Call it the Sufjan Stevens factor but independent music consumers softened their stance on faith this decade, so long as it was packaged pretty and subtle. In ""Bode"", Julianna Barwick offers that package without pandering or compromising. A Louisiana transplant to New York, she paints spiritual yearning with such loose brushstrokes-- her own vocals looped and layered to lyrical inscrutability, soaring yet ecumenical electronic tones-- the most devout unbeliever risks no crisis of conscience wallowing in its loveliness. Make no mistake, ""Bode"" has the modal chant of medieval monks and ecstatic rhythms of Sacred Harp in its soul, and as its name implies, the song's an omen. Instead of announcing imminent end-of-days, however, ""Bode"" declares the good news. --Amy Granzin",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c605deb335119a49f1489/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Julianna_Barwick-Bode.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,98,Future of the Left,"""Arming Eritrea""",4AD,"Pity poor Rick, the subject of Andrew Falkous' mysterious rage in ""Arming Eritrea"". Did anyone suffer a more brutal browbeating in all of pop music in 2009? Each line of the verses begins with Falkous screaming ""C'mon RICK!"" with an intensity that is at once maniacal and hilarious. Who is Rick? Why does he deserve severe contempt? Though Rick's literal or metaphorical connection to Eritrea is unclear, the root of Falkous' fury is obvious and universal: He cannot stand this man's condescension, and must insist that he is an adult. Though berating one's enemies is not typically a hallmark of maturity, the song expresses an exasperated disgust that is bitterly familiar to anyone who has ever felt a bit too old to be treated like an idiot kid. The details don't really matter here, because we've all had to deal with a Rick at some point or another, if not every day of our lives. So, actually, you know what? Fuck Rick. He totally had this coming. --Matthew Perpetua",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c605deb335119a49f148b/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Future_of_the_Left-Arming_Eritrea.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,97,The Smith Westerns,"""Be My Girl""",Hozac,"The Smith Westerns aren't shy about borrowing from their heroes, and with ""Be My Girl"" they aren't afraid to compete with them. Whether it's the lurching half-drunk rhythm of the verses, the strings and echoing drum hits of the chorus, or the fuzz nicked from contemporary lo-fi acts, they seem hellbent on squeezing onto record shelves somewhere between ""Seeds"" and ""T. Rex"". The band sighs amiably at first, seemingly content to float by on languid jangle and good vibes. But the way the whole track swells on the chorus, it's as if they think they can overwhelm their forebears through sheer volume. And while the melody is hard to resist, the band's earnest exuberance is the glue that holds it all together. --Jason Crock",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c605eeb335119a49f148d/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Smith_Westerns-Be_My_Girl.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,96,Gucci Mane [ft. Plies],"""Wasted""",Asylum,"Gucci's music is divisive, like gangster rap should be. He is a hedonist, often emotionally detached and frequently ironic. ""Wasted"", though, was not an act, and, given his recent legal troubles, has a brutally sad subtext-- you know you have a substance abuse problem when you're failing piss-tests under threat of jail time. It was the party-rap hit of 2009, a track for rap fans tired of the encroaching gloss of Flo Rida's 1980s corpse-fucking formula. Fatboi's gradually layered chainsaw beat was the perfect groggy intoxicant for Gucci and Plies' slurred pitch-imperfect raps. Combined with Gucci's 50 Cent-like ability to ingrain a hook into his listeners' subconscious, and a scene-stealing quote from Plies (""I don't wear tight jeans like the white boys..."") made this one of 2009's most memorable singles. It's nice to have an anti-hero again. --David Drake",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c605fd7a71d1ea569c8c9/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Gucci_Mane_ft_Plies-Wasted.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,95,The Thermals,"""Now We Can See""",Kill Rock Stars,"A recording studio? A band? Who needs those artifacts and ankle weights these days. During the last half of this decade, lots of young artists-- Washed Out, Toro Y Moi, Bon Iver-- retreated from full-band settings to the isolation of their consoles, computers, and bedrooms. Maybe that makes the Thermals, who recorded Now We Can See with indie production star John Congleton, Luddites, but that archaic methodology also makes the title track such a successful anthem. Up front, we get a sing-along of four repeated syllables in a hook so simple you'll know it by the time the drums-- loud and live like, you know, real drums-- enter. Then we get our backstories-- damaged kids of disparate origins. And then we hear what we hope can be our future-- a confluence of independence and solidarity. ""Now we can see/ What should we need,"" sings Hutch Harris. ""We should need nothing at all."" We thank you, rock band. --Grayson Currin",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60600c2bba1b7de04f02/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Thermals-Now_We_Can_See.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,94,Best Coast,"""Sun Was High (So Was I)""",Art Fag Recordings,"In all the hubbub over the 1960s suntime funtime revival this year, it was surprising to see how few female singers got involved-- that beach party was a total sausage fest, brah. Thank goodness then for Bethany Cosentino, who broke off from Pocahaunted to contribute her own project to 2009's (ugh) wave of oceanic lo-fi. ""Sun Was High (So Was I)"" has all the signposts of its scene: murky percussion, barbed-wire-stringed guitars, oodles of reverb. But it stands out from the pack due to Cosentino's reach-back-and-belt-it vocals, a lighthouse through the four-track fog. That passion creates girl-group echoes, although the fact that Cosentino sings alone rather than in a shimmying trio lends the song a kind of isolated sadness. Yet even a fuzzy kiss leads to another, and ""Sun Was High"" was a much-needed feminine breeze for the year. --Rob Mitchum",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60605e6ef9596932748f/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Best_Coast-Sun_Was_High_So_Was_I.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,93,Morrissey,"""Something is Squeezing My Skull""",Polydor,"After Morrissey's onstage collapse and subsequent pegging by a drink-hurling fan, Years of Refusal's muscular, defiant opener, with its worries about the star's health, feels like its most striking accomplishment. For such an aggressively upbeat glam-rock tune, the theme is melodramatically bleak-- and, to British pop fans, probably doubly familiar: Modern life is loveless. Worth it just to hear Moz list meds and then breathlessly repeat, ""Don't give me anymore,"" at the song's conclusion. Oh, Mother, he can feel the soil falling over his head. --Marc Hogan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c606013d197565213f8ef/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Morrissey-Something_is_Squeezing_My_Skull.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,92,Cam'ron,"""I Hate My Job""",Asylum,"Killa Cam's career-peak infamy hung on elaborate death threats, audacious wardrobe inventories, and lyrics that used the slipperiest words possible to get his point across. ""I Hate My Job"" has none of those traits, and that's what makes it one of his weirdest tracks. Cam's casually audacious flow lets up on the swagger and rolls out a couple hard-luck stories dealing with 9-to-5 frustration and the even harsher realities of unemployment, and damned if it doesn't work perfectly. Not only does he capture the perspective of a stressed-out underpaid woman (""Ain't no money for new shoes or purses here/ Should've done my first career, nursing, yeah"") and an ex-felon trying to join a diminished workforce, his delivery absolutely nails their emotional stress. Skitzo's piano-driven beat is deceptively uplifting, with a choral ""yeah yeah yeah"" refrain providing a bit of classic-soul sympathy, but it doesn't obscure the bitter realities at the core. --Nate Patrin",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c606113d197565213f8f1/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Camron-I_Hate_My_Job.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,91,HEALTH,"""Die Slow""",Lovepump United,"It's fitting that HEALTH's most melodic song to date manages to rip and rend something sweet from a grind. It's a hook that could have been fashioned from sheet metal, but adorned with wiry guitar and Jacob Duzsik's airy vocals, the cycling, jagged loop gains velocity and feels visceral yet restrained. These Smell alums obviously know how to move a sweaty, packed room; listen for the double bass-hit and the chugging, heavy riffs that make a brief appearance 10 seconds in, a paean to house parties past. What makes ""Die Slow"" stand out is that it's some of the best evidence yet that, after a dance remix record and road trip with Trent Reznor, these guys know how to play to a much larger room. --Patrick Sisson",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6061d7a71d1ea569c8d2/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/HEALTH-Die_Slow.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,90,The-Dream,"""Rockin' That Shit""",Def Jam,"At the end of each one of The-Dream's drowsy, come-on laden verses, a simple submission: ""There's nothing I can say..."" Like pretty much everything else he's produced since, ""Rockin' That Shit"" doesn't really need to say much. In a year filled with bottle-service bangers that failed to generate any sort of authentically carnal club-knock appeal, there was something so deliciously simple about a suave-ass grinder that was free of any worn-out sexting tropes. The bombastic tidiness of the chorus-- and the awesome punctuation of that titular line-- played so perfectly up against the sexy shyness of the whole endeavor. Happy to accommodate any sort of cosmic VIP fantasy you're harboring, it shouldn't take much effort to fill in those blanks while surrounded by that celestial synth hook and those impossibly deep drums. --Zach Kelly",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6062c0084474cd0c70af/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The-Dream-Rockin_That_Shit.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,89,No Age,"""You're a Target""",Sub Pop,"No Age might be a duo, but they've rarely sounded slight. Guitarist Randy Randall favors heaps of distortion and delay, and drummer Dean Spunt doesn't seem to sit still very often. But with pronounced harmonies and a prominent bridge, they've never sounded bigger than on ""You're a Target"", the final cut from a four-song EP that finds the pair pushing themselves sonically and structurally. The guitar glows and refracts, different tones slipping through one another as if this were a Growing co-write. When Spunt pounds his way in, it's off to the races. ""I get laughed at/ I wanna be like you, dude/ If you're a target/ Then I guess I'm one, too,"" he sings, offering the sort of anti-angst mantra that should be scribbled in lockers or across the front of spiral-ring notebooks. After all, you wouldn't want the high school bully saying your new heroes sounded thin and under-produced, would you? --Grayson Currin",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6062c0084474cd0c70b1/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/No_Age-Youre_a_Target.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,88,Passion Pit,"""Moth's Wings""",Frenchkiss,"Michael Angelakos' falsetto has been a divider since Passion Pit started knocking out bloggers last fall with the arrival of the Chunk of Change EP. It made many gooey and drove others crazy. A year later, much has changed: Passion Pit got a major label deal and became a full-blown band, and Manners, their first full-length, burrowed its way into the fringes of the mainstream. And while ""Moth's Wings"" probably wasn't the jam to do the trick, it captured Angelakos at his most restrained and lordly. Opening on a staircase hook forged purely of dulcimer, the song quickly takes flight and plays to the band's strengths. Angelakos never screams out of range nor does he give his vocals the Chipmunk treatment. He simply sings, and it works out beautifully. --David Bevan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c606313d197565213f8f3/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Passion_Pit-Moths_Wings.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,87,Here We Go Magic,"""Fangela""",Western Vinyl,"""Fangela"" sounds too sophisticated to be the four-track project it is. Though it hardly carries the gloss of a big-budget studio job, the production is immaculate without ever feeling clinical, over-arranged, or prim-- just natural. It feels otherworldly, thanks to many layers of Moog, muffled doorknocker beats, and the timbre of Luke Temple's voice. His yelping plea, ""you gotta move,"" may be the most striking part of the track (which is saying something), like he's yelling against the tide of the orderly, inevitable momentum of the rest of the song. Temple's range may be narrow, but makes the most out of his limitations. --Jason Crock",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6063d7a71d1ea569c8d8/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Here_We_Go_Magic-Fangela.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,86,Drake,"""Best I Ever Had""",Cash Money,"There's that sexless, pretty-boy, falsetto hook, which floats up into the air-conditioned synths and nearly gets lost; that beat, which sounds like someone sent a 2003-era Roc-A-Fella production through seven different house filters; those sensitive-guy panderings, which are just expertly smarmy-- ""Sweatpants, hair tied, chillin with no makeup on/ That's when you the prettiest/ I hope that you don't take it wrong."" There is absolutely nothing about Drake that is not cocky, slippery, insincere, and canny-- the dude recites his freestyles from a fucking Blackberry, for Christ's sake-- and ""Best I Ever Had"" synthesizes all of those oily, Clintonian charms into one perfect Summer Jam. If he never releases another decent song in his life, this will be enough. --Jayson Greene",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6064d7a71d1ea569c8da/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Drake-Best_I_Ever_Had.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,85,Wavves,"""No Hope Kids""",Fat Possum,"Think your 2009 sucked? Here's how Nate Williams' kicked his off: no car, no money, no god, no girlfriend, not a whole lot but some weed and GarageBand and an afternoon or two to kill. Then, on the back of a drifty, droney, sun-spotty one-two LP punch, he suddenly found himself a little bit of an indie star; and, well, you've probably heard the rest. Whatever your thoughts on Wavves (or Wavvves), indie rock entitlement, or whether or not Jared Swilley could or should take him outside, ""No Hope Kids"" is tough to front on. It's a bummed-out blast of surf scum that's preternaturally tuneful and instantly relatable to anybody too faded to care about life's little foibles. It's also, in its way, weirdly prophetic: ""just a bunch of people... put around [him]"" would take on new meaning a few months later. Turns out non-inspiration can, at times, be inspiring. --Paul Thompson",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6065d7a71d1ea569c8dc/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Wavves-No_Hope_Kids.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,84,Junior Boys,"""Parallel Lines""",Domino,"""Parallel Lines"" is lily-white, almost unnaturally perky, and club-savvy, with chatty vocals neatly razored over mirrored synths. Startlingly, it isn't about cocaine. In fact, it isn't about much of anything. It shifts pacifically from moment to moment, unperturbed by continuity, with abrupt toasts and loaded inquiries popping off like champagne corks. ""Remembering the line, an empty metaphor"" sums up the sort of sublime vapidity that's handled so handsomely here. It's like the words are just inconsequential whiffs of perfume that come off the feelings. It takes a sort of grown-ass-man vibe to pull off something so languorous, and the spring-wound track delivers. Impeccably balanced between a Fred Astaire flutter and a limp, it makes the all falsetto purring feel rich with meaning, not to mention icy sex appeal. ""If I forgot the lines, is it easy enough to fake it?"" It is, when you've got those peaking-at-daybreak keyboards for stimulation. --Brian Howe",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6065d7a71d1ea569c8de/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Junior_Boys-Parallel_Lines.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,83,Lady Gaga,"""Paparazzi""",Interscope,"Though ""Poker Face"" was an irresistible earworm and global chart grand slam, there were still moments (chiefly the line ""I'm bluffing with my muffin"") when Lady Gaga seemed like a desperate Jenna Maroney take on electroclash. But in its flawless tabloid-baiting fusion of immaculate hooks, dominatrix beats, and Matthew-Barney-goes-Hitchcock spectacle, ""Paparazzi"" rendered resistance futile. Building on a fame-stalking statement of intent (""I'll follow you until you love me"") ""Paparazzi"" was strong enough to raise her above the legion of Madonnabes-- indeed it's turned out to be the best Madonna song of the 21st century-- and delivered the first real hint of the imperious, imperial artiste to come: ""There's no other superstar you know that I'll be."" --Stephen Troussé",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6065d7a71d1ea569c8e0/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Lady_Gaga-Paparazzi.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,82,DJ Kaos,"""Love the Nite Away (Tiedye remix)""",Rong/DFA,"Even in a slow year DFA managed to surprise us with a platter of exultant soft funk. DJ Kaos' original was an Italo-influenced jam whose sonics were just slightly too weighty for Kaos' love utopia. Italians Do It Better tricksters Tiedye buoy the mix with warm, open disco riffs, a perfect foil for Kaos' slightly flat mouthfuls. He sounds like late-period Iggy Pop: gruff and assured and game for just about anything. --Andrew Gaerig",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6066eb335119a49f1499/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/DJ_Kaos-Love_the_Nite_Away_Tiedye_remix.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,81,Bowerbirds,"""Northern Lights""",Dead Oceans,"""All I want is your eyes,"" Phill Moore and friends sing, ""in the morning as we wake for a short while."" And the music for ""Northern Lights"" gracefully acquiesces to this request. It canters and sways in a comfortably sleepy manner, with each strum of the guitar and each splash of piano dappling the song's evocative lyric in streams of sunlight. And each time the song's lyric details what it does or doesn't need, it always comes back to the one thing that's truly wanted-- a moment of intimacy with a lover, waking and staring into each other's eyes as a new day begins. In praising the group's first album, Amanda Petrusich credited Bowerbirds for their ability to ""[translate] place into sound."" With ""Northern Lights"", the group outdoes themselves, translating something private and personal into a song whose resonance and sentiment can be universally understood. --David Raposa",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6066eb335119a49f149b/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Bowerbirds-Northern_Lights.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,80,YACHT,"""Psychic City (Voodoo City)""",DFA,"It takes a particular kind of sensibility to hear a chanted poem on a two-decade-old K Records cassette by Rich Jensen, think, ""That's cool and all but it'd be even better if someone re-recorded it as a boppy alt-rock party jam,"" and then make that happen. Jona Bechtolt and Claire Evans of YACHT, fortunately, have that sensibility. They're the proselytizing kind of archivists-- the kind who helpfully sell posters and mix CDs detailing their influences-- and they appear to believe that dancing confers currency and maybe even immortality on anything. So their ""Psychic City"" is a song whose online annotations are part of its fun, a big ol' chunk of ideology set to a big ol' dance beat. --Douglas Wolk",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6067c0084474cd0c70b6/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/YACHT-Psychic_City_Voodoo_City.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,79,Pictureplane,"""Goth Star""",Lovepump United,"Because of his gritty bedroom production and affinity for quirky electronic music strains (trashy house and early-1990s dance-pop in particular), Pictureplane's Travis Edegy could be lumped in with the recent crop of chillwavers if his style weren't quite so sinister-sounding. Actually, with regard to ""Goth Star"", one of a few stellar cuts from his Dark Rift LP, the producer he reminds me most of is Gregg Gillis. But instead of splicing together multiple tracks, Edegy is able to achieve a Girl Talk-like recontextualization by chopping up just one-- Fleetwood Mac's ""Seven Wonders"". Isolating small snippets of the song-- the chiming keyboard bridge and snatches of Stevie Nicks' vocal-- he builds a mutilated, bass-heavy version darker and arguably more evocative than the original. Not unlike Gold Panda's also-fragmented ""Quitter's Raga"", the song is at times battered beyond recognition, but somehow that enhances the overall effect. --Joe Colly",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60675e6ef95969327497/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Pictureplane-Goth_Star.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,78,Charlotte Gainsbourg,"""IRM""",Because/Elektra,"The sensation of entering a magnetic resonance imaging scanner has been documented on film many times over. These round, ominous chambers track and scan magnetized hydrogen atoms in the human body to unlock the secrets of pain and internal health. Charlotte Gainsbourg makes those films look bad. This, her first collaboration with Beck, is both a giddy and terrifying journey through the MRI process (that's IRM in French). A harmonium signals entry, feedback stands in for the oscillating interior gadgets, and galloping snares beat along with your heart, Gainsbourg elucidating the process throughout. ""Leave my head demagnetized/ Tell me where the trouble lies,"" she half-sings, her voice disappearing into the hole. This is medical horror in literal translation, a trip through a frenzied and X-rayed mind. It's short, but powerful, and paralyzing. All part of the plan. --Sean Fennessey",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6068c0084474cd0c70b8/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Charlotte_Gainsbourg-IRM.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,77,Frida Hyvönen,"""Jesus Was a Cross Maker""",American Dust,"Judee Sill is the kind of tragic pop figure-- a troubled singer and songwriter who released two tough, mesmerizing folk records, fell into obscurity, and eventually died of a drug overdose in North Hollywood in 1979-- that attracts intense, cultish adulation. Her 1971 single, the Graham Nash-produced ""Jesus Was a Crossmaker"", is a classic piece of lush, Laurel Canyon songwriting, and Frida Hyvönen's stunning rendition-- recorded for Crayon Angel: A Tribute to the Music of Judee Sill-- comes awfully close to topping the original. Hyvönen's voice, augmented with a tiny bit of reverb, feels fragile and near-unhinged compared to Sill's quicker, more controlled performance, and her arrangement is sparser and gentler, almost celestial. When Hyvönen sings of betrayal a final time-- ""And when I turned, he was gone/ Blinding me, his song remains reminding me/ He's a bandit and a heartbreaker""-- she sounds raw and slighted, angry on behalf of Sill, angry on behalf of all of us. --Amanda Petrusich",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6069d7a71d1ea569c8e7/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Frida_Hyvnen-Jesus_Was_a_Cross_Maker.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,76,The Rural Alberta Advantage,"""Don't Haunt This Place""",Saddle Creek,"Though it depicts the end of a relationship, a few things elevate ""Don't Haunt This Place"" out of any break-up song torpor. The first and most obvious of these is the phenomenal work by drummer Paul Banwatt, whose taut and frenetic playing provides the action with the heightened suspense of a jewel heist. But what truly changes the narrative's trajectory is the bracing vocal harmonies of Nils Edenhoff and Amy Cole on the song's choruses. When they sing, ""We tremble in the night/ For the things we're wishing were right/ Because we need this oh so bad"" the key words are the pronouns. This is not the sound of one person moping alone in a suddenly empty apartment, this is the sound of two people making the simultaneous realization that a real-world relationship means accepting some imperfections, a glimpse of maturity that signals that there might just be a future to this story yet. --Matthew Murphy",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c606ad7a71d1ea569c8e9/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Rural_Alberta_Advantage-Dont_Haunt_This_Place.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,75,Gold Panda,"""Quitter's Raga""",Make Mine,"A mid-tempo instrumental about two minutes long, anchored by a vocal chant so shredded that even people who speak the sample's language probably couldn't sing along comfortably. (The source: ""Can't say 'cause I'll get sued,"" Gold Panda told us in September. You kids!) But there's something novel in the way the track is structured: It doesn't have enough time to build itself up, so it just breaks down. And maybe that's why it invites repeat plays-- it's a palate cleanser. It's easy to wonder about the future of this style, especially since J. Dilla's death, but while I'm actually listening to it, I bliss out and forget-- and then I remember the song's title. --Mike Powell",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c606ad7a71d1ea569c8eb/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Gold_Panda-Quitters_Raga.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,74,Neon Indian,"""Should Have Taken Acid With You""",Lefse,"By comparison, ""Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue"" sounds resolutely proactive, but if there's any lesson to be learned from the ""that was so 09"" node of hazy, homemade pop, it's that maybe all the kids don't want something to do. But amongst some stiff competition, ""Should've Taken Acid With You"" stands out as the ultimate statement on beanbag chair-bound detachment. According to Neon Indian singer/synth alchemist Alan Palomo, the song is based on a true story, but the side effects of tuning in and dropping out are so literal and innocent-- going swimming, ditching your parents, watching the cosmos, making out-- that it could just as easily have been called ""Should've Tried to Hold Your Hand"". Insouciant laziness as pop intoxicant-- fucking groovy, man. --Ian Cohen",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c606b0c2bba1b7de04f16/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Neon_Indian-Should_Have_Taken_Acid_With_You.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,73,Woods,"""Rain On""",Woodsist,"""Rain On"" is a sad song that turns on one major point: It hardly feels like a sad song at all. There's just something in the way that its obliging verses sit with its downtrodden refrain over smeary, spindly guitars that makes it such a harrowing tune, but like the emotion the song conveys, the reason for its success is complicated. There's vocalist Jeremy Earl's gaunt falsetto, the band's sneaky little smears of rusty, Crazy Horse-tranquilizer feedback, and the wistful verse lyrics. But the chorus, ""Oh, how the days will rain on you,"" is sung with a sort of optimism, and you kinda feel like he shouldn't sound so OK with the sentiment. It's a creaky triumph of stoney resolve and compositional reserve. --Paul Thompson",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c606c5e6ef9596932749f/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Woods-Rain_On.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,72,Matt & Kim,"""Daylight""",FADER,"You've seen the commercials and sitcoms that took advantage of this track's plucky drive to set a mood, but even without the extra exposure, ""Daylight"" was destined to resonate. From its opening punchy saloon-piano riff to the metallic rush of Kim's marching-band percussion and Matt's least whiny (and most overdubbed) vocal performance, it is a giddy expression of the most carefree moments of youth that is easily relatable to anyone who has ever taken a spur-of-the-moment road trip or stayed out all night. With lyrics about wanting to hitchhike to Maine, ignoring clocks of the workaday world, and taking trips down Williamsburg's Grand Street at dawn, it's an ode to freedom and free time-- two things that never go out of style. --Rebecca Raber",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c606c5e6ef959693274a1/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Matt__Kim-Daylight.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,71,A Sunny Day in Glasgow,"""Close Chorus""",Mis Ojos Discos,"The highlight of Ashes Grammar, one of 2009's most immersive, headphone-friendly albums, ""Close Chorus"" sees A Sunny Day in Glasgow combining the polyphonic voices of a church choir with a shuffle-step drum loop lifted from an illicit late-night party amongst the pews. Leader Ben Daniels has honed his craft over two LPs now, but ""Chorus"" is the first time he's mixed Georgian folk music and Gregorian monastic chanting with the requisite Cocteau Twins or ""Blown a Wish"". Even so, the band seems to be operating here based on hazy memories of past sensations more than any direct channeling of influences. Appropriately then, when those angelic voices split like light through a prism and braid together into an impressionistic tapestry, the effect is positively haunting. --Eric Harvey",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c606dc0084474cd0c70c2/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/A_Sunny_Day_in_Glasgow-Close_Chorus.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,70,Discovery,"""Orange Shirt""",XL,"I was a bigger fan than most of the Vampire Weekend/Ra Ra Riot offshoot Discovery, but if ""Orange Shirt"" is the one song that endures from their debut album LP, I'll live. It pretty much sums up all the best parts of the project anyway: the sparkling keyboard tones, the celebratory nods to the production and song structure of contemporary R&B, the sense of wide-eyed yearning in the vocals. And it even manages to hit on something that bugs people about multi-instrumentalist Rostam Batmanglij's main group: the ease in discussing details that betray a sense of privilege. ""Sleep on the train to Tokyo/ Google yourself when you get home,"" goes the line that the whole song builds to, and it's a lyric that has fascinated me all year. A few people I've spoken to found the sentiment obnoxious, but to me the second half of this couplet captured perfectly the low-level digitally assisted narcissism of the current age. The Beach Boys wrote about the specs on that Little Honda, Q-Tip explained all about that Skypager; for a few seconds here during the climax of ""Orange Shirt"", this is our life, lovingly rendered in a punchy indie pop song. --Mark Richardson",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c606dd7a71d1ea569c8ef/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Discovery-Orange_Shirt.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,69,Taylor Swift,"""You Belong With Me""",Big Machine,"Nobody much cared when Kanye West interrupted Justice and Simian at that awards show a few years back, but when he talked his shit to Taylor Swift at this year's VMAs, the PR apocalypse sent him crying to Jay Leno. There's a reason for that; Swift may be the most flat-out likable pop star to emerge in recent memory. Case in point: ""You Belong With Me"". Musically, the track finds some expert gazillion-dollar middle ground between simple, expressive assembly-line Nashville country and exploding-chorus Kelly Clarkson radio-pop. But Taylor's is-he-really-going-out-with-her narrative links the track to the most fragile, heartbroken strains of twee indie pop. --Tom Breihan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c606e5e6ef959693274a3/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Taylor_Swift-You_Belong_With_Me.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,68,[ft. Robyn],"""The Girl and the Robot""",Astralwerks,"To paraphrase Rob Sheffield's line about a Replacements song, ""The Girl and the Robot"" finds Robyn pouring her heart out over Röyksopp's synthesizers after a long night of MTV. Against a disconcerted, increasingly frenetic electro-pop beat, a lonely Robyn cries out to an emotionally unresponsive workaholic lover, claiming, ""you never seem to know when to stop"" (hmm, is she dating Dr. Manhattan?). Eventually, she confesses that she ""fell asleep again in front of MTV,"" which causes her to muse, ""no one's singing songs for me."" Like so many of Robyn's other great singles of recent vintage, ""The Girl and the Robot"" gives a post-modern sheen to old-school heartache. --Joshua Love",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c606e0c2bba1b7de04f1a/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/ft_Robyn-The_Girl_and_the_Robot.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,67,Arctic Monkeys,"""Cornerstone""",Domino,"Some love doesn't know when it's lost. To Alex Turner, every woman he makes a moves on in every bar he visits is a placeholder for his ex, and every liaison comes to a crashing halt when he asks if he can call her by his former lover's name. Well, except for the one where Turner hooks up with his ex's sister, but that's the way love goes in Arctic Monkeyland. The central gimmick aside, the real pleasure is in the telling. The names of the pubs (the Rusty Hook, the Parrot's Beak), the broken arm on the girl fixing the smoke alarm, his love's scent on the seatbelt in the cab-- Turner doesn't spare a horny, heartbroken detail. And the band suggests that ballads may have been their hidden strength all along. Turner is lost in love, and you don't have much choice but to swoon along with him. --Joe Tangari",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c606f0c2bba1b7de04f1c/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Arctic_Monkeys-Cornerstone.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,66,Julian Casablancas,"""11th Dimension""",RCA,"It's been nearly five years since the Strokes fumbled First Impressions of Earth, and while Julian Casablancas' solo debut couldn't quite conjure the glories of his band's heyday, ""11th Dimension"" shows he's still capable of writing a big hook and compellingly unintelligible lyrics. The song may or may not be about forgiving the haters and staying true to your artistic vision, but the words matter only insofar as they give one of the best rock vocalists of the decade something to sing. Musically, ""11th Dimension"" is the strongest he's sounded since Room on Fire. It's a blast of retro-futuristic synths, steam-rolling guitar licks, and slicing, dicing hi-hat, and the busy pulse of the production cuts through the detachment and manages to convey a sense of fun, as if he's finally enjoying the creative experience. --Stephen M. Deusner",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c606f0c2bba1b7de04f1e/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Julian_Casablancas-11th_Dimension.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,65,The Tough Alliance,"""A New Chance (The Juan MacLean Remix)""",Sincerely Yours,"""I know a place where diamonds never fade away,"" sang Sweden's the Tough Alliance on the title track from their 2007 album A New Chance. Chances are, they weren't singing about the Internet, but the song turns out to be a nice example of the way that there's more to the culture of rip-burn-and-remix than accelerated buzz. Digitally released in 2008 and made more widely available a year later, the Juan MacLean's remix digs in for the long haul with eight minutes of New Order arpeggios, acid squelch, and rubber-knuckled piano-house chords, plus a lovely loop of Cocteau Twins-styled swooning. The vocals may scream 00s indie, but in every other aspect, MacLean's epic rework is a testament to the way pop music colors giddily outside the timelines. --Philip Sherburne",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c606f5e6ef959693274a7/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Tough_Alliance-A_New_Chance_The_Juan_MacLean_Remix.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,64,Annie,"""Songs Remind Me of You""",Smalltown Supersound,"Despite the awkward syntax of the title, ""Songs Remind Me of You"" finds Annie in tight control, sharpening her incalculable charm into the massive 1980s jam she had somehow never managed to tack onto her résumé. The cut reunites the canny Norwegian with British producer Richard X, architect of a boatload of UK dance pop hits in the last decade. While Annie may lack the go-getter appeal of some of the producer's collaborators like Gwen Stefani or Sophie Ellis-Bextor (on the contrary, Annie prefers to bask in timeless melodies and classic turns of phrase), the bitter lament of ""Songs"" reminds us that when she bares her soul, it's got fangs. --Mike Orme",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c607013d197565213f912/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Annie-Songs_Remind_Me_of_You.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,63,Real Estate,"""Fake Blues""",Woodsist,"Though Real Estate have made it known that they're from New Jersey and they like a bit of geographic specificity, their music has a universality that's easy to rally around. These dudes have probably spent a summer or two pounding Busch Lights in the vicinity of a boardwalk, but with ""Fake Blues"", the boardwalk is the least important part of the equation. Like a shaggy house-party highlight, ""Blues""'s simple, bright guitars and loping drums evoke something both giddy and contemplative. ""Your worries ain't so different than my own,"" effuses guitarist Martin Courtney blearily. A little sad, but brimming with grand, adolescent possibility, ""Fake Blues"" travels light and far, fueled by its simple charm. --Zach Kelly",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60725e6ef959693274a9/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Real_Estate-Fake_Blues.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,62,Volcano Choir,"""Island, IS""",Jagjaguwar,"When word broke that Justin Vernon of Bon Iver had been working on an album alongside Wisconsin instrumental post-rock outfit Collection of Colonies of Bees, a few devotees probably wrinkled their noses a bit-- he was, after all, closely identified with solitary, emotional bloodlettings. But the results were moving anyway. Amid the spongy, repeating layers of Unmap entry point ""Island, IS"", Vernon's falsetto is painted with colors and textures and rhythms only hinted at in his solo work. Grooves open wide and close tight. Chords blink and twirl. No longer alone and somewhere deep inside the Bees' hivemind, Vernon's voice found another kind of home, and perhaps gave a glimpse of what's to come. --David Bevan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60725e6ef959693274ab/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Volcano_Choir-Island_IS.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,61,Atlas Sound [ft. Lætitia Sadier],"""Quick Canal""",Kranky,"It's easy to marvel at ""Quick Canal"", to get swept up in its dense whirlpools of sound, to admire Bradford Cox for achieving a successful sonic communion with idol Laetitia Sadier rather than succumbing to the various perils of hero worship, and to fall completely under the spell of the Stereolab singer's angelic invocations and impossible high notes. It's easy to want to tune in again and again-- even at nine minutes it's never quite long enough. And while you're doing all that, it's easy to forget how awesomely noisy this thing gets, and how, after listening to it over and over at the high volumes it somehow demands, you're probably going to suffer some kind of permanent hearing damage. ""Quick Canal"": Even when it's loud, it still sneaks up on you. --Matthew Solarski",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6073d7a71d1ea569c8f7/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Atlas_Sound_ft_Ltitia_Sadier-Quick_Canal.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,60,Kurt Vile,"""Freeway""",Woodsist,"The first few seconds of ""Freeway"", with its sputtering drum machine and gauzy keyboard tones, sound like incidental four-track diddling. When the track erupts into a hazy watercolor version of FM rock, all those details snap into place, as essential as the glassy guitar strum throughout or the brief, melodic guitar lead. That one opening moment sounds like a dam of writer's block breaking open for a wave of inspiration, and Vile, who usually sings in a more vulnerable and defensive tone, sounds positively swept up in it. An then abrupt ending makes the grin vanish like a puddle in the summer sun. Bedroom pop rarely sounds so assured. --Jason Crock",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6074d7a71d1ea569c8f9/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Kurt_Vile-Freeway.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,59,tUnE-yArDs,"""Sunlight""",Marriage,"Merrill Garbus isn't the first performer to experiment with loop pedals and lo-fi aesthetics. Nor is she alone in embracing, with her ridiculously flexible voice, the melismatic virtuosity most commonly known to modern R&B-- if not opera, or yodeling. All of these in one package, though? Yeah, pretty much just her. ""Sunlight"" is the early highlight of one of 2009's most promising debuts, distilling her sui generis performance persona into less than four minutes of the most intense and intimate music you'll hear this year. Over not much more than a mangled, erratically strummed ukulele and stocky drum loop, Garbus spits and howls while never losing the beat, remaining focused and completely intense. She may have slipped unnoticed through the first half of the year, but especially after a killer recent run opening for Dirty Projectors, she won't be forgotten soon. --Eric Harvey",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60740c2bba1b7de04f26/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/tUnE-yArDs-Sunlight.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,58,Fever Ray,"""If I Had a Heart""",Mute/Rabid,"In the Knife and as a solo artist, Fever Ray's Karin Dreijer Andersson has proven to be a magician of sonic perspective: M.C. Escher with Ableton Live. Everything in ""If I Had a Heart"" feels weirdly scaled, impossibly angled, or just off, somehow. The churning chords that drive it like a powerful engine are almost drowned out by the machine noise they emit, as if the song had been turned inside-out. The pitch-dropped vocals are frighteningly alien, yet the clicks preserved in the recording link them, distantly, to a mouth that wants more, more, more-- which is to say, a regular human one. It sounds subdued and disturbed, until Andersson's untreated voice-- a brassy caterwaul-- swings the song in the other direction, now direly triumphant. ""If I had a voice, I would sing,"" she sings. Once you get that everything obvious here conceals its opposite, you realize that wanting more is about needing less. ""If I Had a Heart"" is the heart Andersson doesn't have, large and strange, pumping unfathomable blood to who knows where. --Brian Howe",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c607513d197565213f91a/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Fever_Ray-If_I_Had_a_Heart.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,57,Sleigh Bells,"""Crown on the Ground""",self-released,"For those who always wished that extreme noize terror had more teen-pop in it and that bubblegum fluff blew out more speakers, Sleigh Bells are a beautiful nightmare come true. A former hardcore guitarist and a former singer for a manufactured girl group got together to bang out crunchy, supremely satisfying blasts like ""Crown on the Ground"", which sounds like the most delicious razor blade inside a candy apple ever. It's a chart-topping club-pop hit with a singsong chorus trapped in an epic battle to the death with an eardrum-gobbling feedback monster, and nobody wants either side to win. Sleigh Bells have promised to re-record their primitively captured songs in higher fidelity in the coming year. That better not mean a sacrifice of even a drop of intensity. --Amy Phillips",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c607513d197565213f91c/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Sleigh_Bells-Crown_on_the_Ground.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,56,John Talabot,"""Sunshine""",Hivern,"Perhaps due to its Midwestern origins, deep house does tend to revolve around the indoors: the dusty soul and spiritual gospel-disco of sweaty loft dances, dank subterranean clubs and nocturnal parties. John Talabot's ""Sunshine"" emerges gradually from the genre's earthy origins, tendrils of soft-focus texture sliding upward, each additional layer emerging like budding irises, until the vocals break through and the song's flowers bloom. But what makes ""Sunshine""'s radiant perfection so evocative is how easily it replicates a state of unmoored relaxation. How often, sitting in front of your computer and checking the running Twitter feed, do you feel truly released from the onward march of time? To give in to ""Sunshine""'s charms is to free yourself from the shackles of your cell phone's vibrations, like a cat spending the afternoon on a windowsill. As the track's interlocking melodies blur in and out, its gradual heat calms nerves and the soothing titular mantra evokes a sort of Zen dancefloor warmth and liberation. --David Drake",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6076eb335119a49f14b6/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/John_Talabot-Sunshine.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,55,Bat For Lashes,"""Glass""",Astralwerks/Parlophone,"Quick Bible lesson: In the Old Testament, the Song of Solomon tells of a man and woman who form an eternal bond through love, sex, and marriage. ""Let us see if the vine flourish, whether the tender grape appear, and the pomegranates bud forth: there will I give thee my loves,"" says the bride. While such ancient innuendo might not register in the Age of R. Kelly, it was pretty provocative for the time. Kate Bush knew as much; ""Don't want your bullshit, just want your sexuality,"" she sang on 1993's ""Song of Solomon"". And Bush disciple Natasha Khan, aka Bat for Lashes, is aware, too-- the first song on her breakout 2009 LP starts with a bunch of lines lifted directly from Solomon's Song. But Khan's Biblical flip doesn't vie for pure sex or eternal love. Her take is more mystical and spectral-- like the Old Testament via King Arthur via The Dark Crystal. Tribal drums boom around her as she searches through a strange land for her ""knight in crystal armor."" Instead of portraying monogamy as an undying, fruitful brightness, Khan sings cloaked underneath the gothic shade surrounding her. Love evolves; glass breaks. --Ryan Dombal",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6076eb335119a49f14b8/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Bat_For_Lashes-Glass.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,54,Joker & Ginz,"""Purple City""",Kapsize,"Bristol's Joker was revelation enough in 2007-08, starting with his Kapsize EP and following it up with a string of completely bonkers dubstep singles (including the frenetic nunchaku-vs-laser battle ""Holly Brook Park"" and the spy-brass Metal Gear Solid 3- homage ""Snake Eater""). But when Ginz jumped in to team up with Joker, the result was absolutely preposterous: Here was a drunken-boxer-style swoon of a track, pots-and-pans percussion clanking slinkily under a phalanx of synthesizers that did absolutely filthy things with g-funk melodies. It comes across as a weirdly affable kind of deep-bass aggression, and it's a sound so potent that within a couple of months of its release they'd find themselves listed in the remix Rolodexes of Basement Jaxx and Zero 7. Yeah, their mixes of ""Raindrops"" and ""Everything Up (Zizou)"" are just about as berserk, but ""Purple City"" still stands as what should be the first of this duo's many great moments, the match that lit the dynamite fuse. --Nate Patrin",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6077eb335119a49f14ba/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Joker__Ginz-Purple_City.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,53,The xx,"""Islands""",Young Turks,"As our Andrew Gaerig said: ""[I]t's nearly incomprehensible to think that a group so fresh-faced produced xx."" Like almost every song on their debut, ""Islands"" is impressive for what it doesn't do as much as for what it does. They employ negative space as if it's a sound generated by a musical instrument, while employing their actual instruments in an economic fashion, playing just enough notes and beats to construct an irresistible backbeat that manages to both bump and swoon. And the co-lead vocals are so breathy and smooth that it's almost too easy to misinterpret the fire/ desire talk as something besides what it actually is, a pledge of unyielding fidelity-- ""I am yours now/ So now I don't ever have to leave."" That such a promise is offered in a off-hand manner that belies the commitment behind those words is just what the xx do-- they exude a confidence, both in their music and what their music says, that's beyond their years. --David Raposa",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c607713d197565213f91f/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_xx-Islands.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,52,St. Vincent,"""Actor Out of Work""",4AD,"Annie Clark gave herself exactly 135 seconds for this audition, and makes the most of them. The lyric is a slinky come-on that doubles as a seething bug-off and takes a few iterations to settle into an off-balance three-line stanza; the distorted Gary Numanoid synthesizer that responds to Clark is so nasty and pinched that it makes her frostily composed voice (""ooh,"" she sings, as if she couldn't mean it less) sound like the good cop by comparison. The recording is full of unnerving little details, from its first sound (Clark's multitracked inhalation) onward-- the more closely you listen to the guitar chug that underscores the entire song, the more wobbly and disconcerting it sounds, and the choral aaaaaaah behind the last few verses cranks up their sarcasm to scalding levels. Extra points to Clark for naming the song's host album after it: who, exactly, is the actor that's getting it from both barrels here? --Douglas Wolk",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c607713d197565213f921/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/St_Vincent-Actor_Out_of_Work.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,51,Antony and the Johnsons,"""Aeon""",Secretly Canadian,"""We don't know nothing/ Nothing better but this world,"" sings Antony Hegarty near the end of ""Aeon,"" his voice strained as though it's fighting through tears of epiphany. And maybe it is: ""Aeon"" reconciles Hegarty with his father, a subject that's been difficult for him in interviews and verboten in his earlier work. Here, though, he seems to realize he has one chance to live in this world, to be his father's child. ""Hold that man in your tender clutch/ Hold that man I love so much,"" he says, shouting those last two words like an evangelist. For music that's often labeled precious, it's a jolting, intensely personal moment, spotlighting the power of redemption and empathy-- or at least the power of giving them a chance. --Grayson Currin",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6078eb335119a49f14bc/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Antony_and_the_Johnsons-Aeon.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,50,Matias Aguayo,"""Rollerskate""",Kompakt,"Matias Aguayo is arguably stacking the deck here-- writing a circular techno song and then setting it to lyrics about rollerskating. But the Chilean producer makes good on the premise in ""Rollerskate"", a track that attaches a Kompaktian sense of space to cool vocal coos and hums. Aguayo does a lot with his mouth on his restless scat-dance album Ay Ay Ay, but ""Rollerskate"" gets the most out of his singular feel for sensuous, suggestive atmosphere. The rink he circles is full of skaters slow to find their balance and leering off sideways with shared thousand-yard stares. Aguayo himself is right there in the center, all but taunting the communal flock with his queasy, whirlwind house music. -- Andy Battaglia",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60795e6ef959693274b7/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Matias_Aguayo-Rollerskate.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,49,Yo La Tengo,"""Here to Fall""",Matador,"Popular Songsopener ""Here to Fall"" was an early indication that Yo La Tengo's new albumwas going to contain a few surprises. Its soulful string sounds underscore the resigned confidence of Ira Kaplan's warts-and-all love song, but even those were upstaged by another instrumental novelty: This may be the first Yo La Tengo single where Ira Kaplan's keyboard playing matches what he can do with a guitar. (Granted, ""Autumn Sweater"" came awfully close.) When his warping organ goes solo near the end, it makes lines that could otherwise sound fatalistic-- ""I'm here to fall with you/ What else is there for us to do?""-- seem optimistic. Those wistful, reassuring chords make even the bleakest future worth sticking around for. --Marc Masters",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c607a13d197565213f923/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Yo_La_Tengo-Here_to_Fall.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,48,Destroyer,"""Bay of Pigs""",Merge,"So begins Destroyer's unforgettable ambient-disco-meets-acid-folk epic ""Bay of Pigs"": ""Listen... I've been drinking/ As our house lies in ruin/ I don't know what I'm doin'/ Alone in the dark/ In the park or at the pier/ Watching ships disappear/ In the rain."" Geez, man: It's not enough you're sitting at the pier watching ships vanish over the horizon? It's gotta be raining, too? But Dan Bejar is far too good of a drinking companion to wallow in this place for long. Instead, he cracks jokes, tells shaggy dog stories, asks eternal questions, moves the soundscape from droney synth washes to a steady 4/4 pulse, and parades in strange women, talking about them as if we've been hanging out with these people all of our lives. Sounds like the makings of a fiasco, but ""Bay of Pigs"" is nowhere close. It's actually a triumph-- delicate and moving but also righteously funny, a welcome and surprising gift from a true eccentric. --Mark Richardson",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c607a13d197565213f925/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Destroyer-Bay_of_Pigs.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,47,Yeah Yeah Yeahs,"""Heads Will Roll""",Interscope,"We should've known that synth-pop would've fit the YYYs like a sequined fingerless glove. After all, the trio came into the game making dizzily direct bangers like ""Bang"", and they always had rhythmic push to spare. So as a dance move, It's Blitz! worked out beautifully, especially when they were going for it full-bore. On ""Heads Will Roll"", Karen O alternates her usual brassy yawp with ethereal Blondie coos, while stomp-it-out guitars intermingle with glassy keyboard trills, everything working together like a machine. ""Off with your head! Dance till you're dead!"" commands Karen-- exactly the sort of delirious imperative non sequitur that's animated floor-fillers for decades. A whole lot of people remixed ""Heads Will Roll"", but nobody managed to improve on it. --Tom Breihan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c607bd7a71d1ea569c907/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Yeah_Yeah_Yeahs-Heads_Will_Roll.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,46,Memory Tapes,"""Bicycle""",Sincerely Yours/Acéphale/Something in Construction/Loog,"Animal Collective may have the 2009 lock on negotiating the pull between adult responsibilities and desire for escape, but the insanely prolific New Jerseyan stay-at-home dad Dayve Hawk (also of Memory Cassette and Weird Tapes) managed to create his own simple, beautiful, danceable ditty about riding bikes out of town in the middle of the night. Pulling a page from Yeasayer's guide to nü-primitive psychedelia for the first verse, Hawk then doubles down, dropping some straight-up disco with chopped-up vocal samples, as if the nocturnal bike trip somehow stumbled upon an open-air dance party. It all feels appropriately both urbane and primordial, a vibe driven home by an extended coda that pairs far-off chanting with a surprising and faithful cop of Bernard Sumner's shimmering guitar. --Eric Harvey",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c607bc0084474cd0c70d2/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Memory_Tapes-Bicycle.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,45,The Flaming Lips [ft. Karen O],"""Watching the Planets""",Warner Bros.,"It's telling that the Flaming Lips made you wait until the end of side four to hear Embyronic's most accessible track-- at no point prior did they sound concerned with pleasing anyone besides themselves. And it's not like ""Watching the Planets"" is that much more commercial than this double LP's other noisy mantras-- it's just one repetitive hook and a crunchy bass-drum loop that gives Wayne Coyne time to bark ""oh""'s and ""aye""'s while Karen O squeaks supporting yelps. The lyrics are just as simple-- mind-emptying chants about staring at stars, killing the ego, and ""finding that there ain't no answer to find."" In that way, ""Watching the Planets"" catches the stunned thrill of the Lips' back-to-basics left-turn. They sound hypnotized by their own rediscovered sounds, gazing at the music like a baby fixated on its own moving fingers. --Marc Masters",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c607cd7a71d1ea569c90a/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Flaming_Lips_ft_Karen_O-Watching_the_Planets.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,44,Jay-Z [ft. Alicia Keys],"""Empire State of Mind""",Roc Nation/Atlantic,"Jay isn't at his best here. His vocal tone and delivery are a little ragged, and on paper ""Empire"" reads like the literal endpoint to Jay's ""black Sinatra"" fascination: a late-period piece that somehow becomes his biggest-charting hit. But then Alicia Keys' elemental voice blows in on the chorus, and suddenly, we are all holding hands together and singing along on top of the Empire State Building. That giddy, heart-swelling whoop is what transforms ""Empire State of Mind"" from über-schmaltz to, well, transcendent über-schmaltz, the sort of song that bids your singing voice up out of you before your conscious mind can even check it. Take a bow, Hov-- you can loosen the bow tie now. Go backstage and see what Gwyneth and Chris are up to. --Jayson Greene",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c607c0c2bba1b7de04f35/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Jay-Z_ft_Alicia_Keys-Empire_State_of_Mind.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,43,Camera Obscura,"""French Navy""",4AD,"The story of Camera Obscura to date is really the story of singer Tracyanne Campbell's transformation from wallflower to showstopper. ""French Navy""-- the glorious opening track from the Scottish group's fourth album, My Maudlin Career-- may begin in a ""dusty library,"" but it's miles away from the bookish, bespectacled indie pop that defined the band's early output, and even several bold steps beyond the buoyant Motown swing that defined 2006's Let's Get Out of This Country. Instead, Camera Obscura subject the song's fantasy daydream scenario-- a chance romance with a member of the titular military body-- to the big-screen bluster it deserves, with a series of urgent, Spectorized stomps that suggest the affair is doomed from the start, and a spotlight-seizing performance from Campbell as the sensible student who lets fleeting desire get the better of her. ""I wanted to control it/ But love, I couldn't hold it,"" she admits-- but at least she has that irresistible, post-chorus orchestral sweep to mop up the tears. --Stuart Berman",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c607d13d197565213f92b/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Camera_Obscura-French_Navy.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,42,The Big Pink,"""Velvet""",4AD,"What's more cocksure than naming your band after the house where the Band wrote Music From Big Pink and recorded The Basement Tapes with Dylan? Calling bullshit on Otis Redding. ""These arms of mine/ Don't mind who they hold,"" Robbie Furze announces on ""Velvet"", the second single by London duo the Big Pink. Men are scum-- check the headlines. So an album called A Brief History of Love would be pointlessly abridged without a song exploring the conflicting, self-destructive emotions of the (post?) adolescent male: heartbroken and heartless, loving and horny, quixotic and cold. If you don't hear any of that, Furze and bandmate Milo Cordell-- plus vocalist Lauren Jones and drummer Akiko Matsuura, with mixing by Alan Moulder-- conjure a feedback-roiled electro-shoegaze maelstrom that sounds as huge as first love feels. Does it make sense, or are we all eventually doomed to end up with facial lacerations and a five-iron through our Escalades? --Marc Hogan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c607d5e6ef959693274bc/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Big_Pink-Velvet.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,41,Major Lazer [ft. Nina Sky and Ricky Blaze],"""Keep It Goin' Louder""",Downtown,"""Keep It Goin' Louder"", one of 2009's unofficial summer jams, succeeds by emphasizing what steers every bro's night out from Jamaica to Portland: go where the girls are. So after one verse of rote braggadocio from Ricky Blaze, the sisters from Nina Sky, mostly ignoring Blaze, promise to pile on the ladies. Gender politics aide though: ""Keep It Goin' Louder"" is a pump-up song, a car song, and a club song wrapped into a sweetly repetitive ode to a game of cat and mouse in which both parties think they're the cat. Oh, and the cats are into exquisitely tight dancehall-pop. --Andrew Gaerig",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c607ec0084474cd0c70d7/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Major_Lazer_ft_Nina_Sky_and_Ricky_Blaze-Keep_It_Goin_Louder.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,40,Bear in Heaven,"""Lovesick Teenagers""",Hometapes,"As we get older and wiser, most of us learn how to control our emotions. But as much as we manage our expectations and tell ourselves that we are mature adults, those raw adolescent feelings never really go away. This is more or less the point of Bear in Heaven's ""Lovesick Teenagers"", a song that appeals to our rational minds on a lyrical level while its music aims straight for our hearts by simulating the rush of angst-ridden romance. The verses plumb the depths of despair, but the choruses swoop upwards, ascending to a point so high up that you lose perspective on everything. Inevitably, you come crashing down again, and the song ends with an anti-climactic thud. ""Lovesick Teenagers"" doesn't attempt to shake you out of your composure or demand that you regress, but the sound of it is intoxicating, and it makes a great case for allowing oneself to embrace dumb passion-- even in some muted, self-conscious way. --Matthew Perpetua",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c607eeb335119a49f14c4/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Bear_in_Heaven-Lovesick_Teenagers.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,39,Lady Gaga,"""Bad Romance""",Interscope,"In theory, she was an artist you want to root for-- all these ideas about art and celebrity and a flair for the dramatic. But the first few singles made the Lady Gaga project feel so presumptuous, her artsy entitlement overwhelming her songs' occasional strengths. ""Bad Romance"" was the moment where the music didn't just live up to the (self-inflated) hype, but surpassed it. The track is epic in construction-- by the time she gets to the bridge, more than three minutes in, the realization that there are hooks yet to come is thrilling. It helps that RedOne's production matches the songwriting's torrential drama; the churning, earth-shifting low-frequency synths are a programmatic reflection of the singer's unsteady, perhaps unwise, infatuation. But it's Gaga's performance, the wholly unapologetic fools-rush-in carnal energy, that commitment to emotional bravery in a context of increasingly twee chart pop, that makes ""Bad Romance"" feel so necessary. --David Drake",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c607f5e6ef959693274c1/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Lady_Gaga-Bad_Romance.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,38,Dirty Projectors and David Byrne,"""Knotty Pine""",4AD,"It's a dangerous thing when a musical legend lends his or her endorsement to a new band-- the potential new fans can sometimes be lost in the long shadow of the endorser. So it's remarkable how seamlessly David Byrne, whose stamp of approval carries serious weight, integrates into ""Knotty Pine"". Dirty Projectors don't sound much like Talking Heads, except for the fact that both bands don't sound like anyone else. Yet on the verse that Byrne and Dave Longstreth take together, it's hard to spot who is who-- quite an achievement, given how hard it must be to trace over Byrne's sinuous delivery. Most remarkable of all: Despite Dirty Projectors' trademark unpredictable rhythms and harmonies based on some kind of Martian scale, ""Knotty Pine"" is still a loveable, friendly song-- one that even those who can't warm to the Projectors could take to heart. --Rob Mitchum",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c607f13d197565213f92d/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Dirty_Projectors_and_David_Byrne-Knotty_Pine.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,37,Surfer Blood,"""Swim""",Kanine,"Fuck Tim Tebow-- in the past few years, the greatest act of public service from University of Florida students was committed when Surfer Blood changed their name and spared us the indignity of having to say 2009's best piece of Weezer-esque power-pop came from a band called Jabroni Sandwich. But while that might've constituted a grown-up move, ""Swim"" alternately strikes me as disarmingly naïve and startlingly confident, bundling what could be at least four standalone hooks into less than three minutes. Any self-respecting ""pop craftsman"" would've whittled away at that ""Needles in the Camel's Eye""-quoting intro, the Scandal-ous chorus, or the slip-n-slide Built to Spill riffs, but Surfer Blood just throw it all on the table like a whopping 50% tip. Lesser bands might call that melodic conspicuous consumption wasteful, but it ain't trickin' if you got it. --Ian Cohen",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60805e6ef959693274c5/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Surfer_Blood-Swim.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,36,Fever Ray,"""When I Grow Up""",Mute/Rabid,"Karin Dreijer-Andersson's Fever Ray turned out to be no sunnier than the Knife's dank, forbidding Silent Shout. If anything, having slowed tempos and excised the Knife's spry arpeggios, it was an even more claustrophobic affair, with all potential escape routes blocked off and shrouded in fog. Even so, the singer's voice pierces ""When I Grow Up"" like a flashlight cutting through the moors, her semi-steam-of-consciousness narrative rendering romance in almost animistic terms. Running ""through the moss in high heels,"" she crystallizes the album's mood in a single image: It's as though, in a dark corner of a subterranean techno club, she'd discovered a hidden passageway straight to the heart of Jan Švankmajer's Alice. --Philip Sherburne",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60805e6ef959693274c7/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Fever_Ray-When_I_Grow_Up.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,35,Micachu and the Shapes,"""Golden Phone""",Rough Trade,"Twenty-two-year-old Mica Levi will admit that her aesthetic fondness for musical hybrids and gibberish grew out of her short attention span. Take those impulses, add musical ability and a knack for sussing out perfect collaborators (fellow sonic miscreant Matthew Herbert), and you get ""Golden Phone"", a mutant playground chant that ranks as one of the year's most intriguing left-field pleasures. Herbert and Levi mash together bratty punk, thrumming bass, cooing girl-group harmonies, mini noise-bursts, and 8-bit bleeps into a multifarious pop sculpture held together by the same sort of London art-world cool that wound through Kala. Few songs sounded as 2009, or even as 2019, as ""Phone"", but the song's promise might even outweigh its simple gifts. Levi herself suggests as much, in her own way: ""give me that nonsense sound and I'll be back."" --Eric Harvey",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6081c0084474cd0c70de/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Micachu_and_the_Shapes-Golden_Phone.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,34,Atlas Sound [ft. Noah Lennox],"""Walkabout""",Kranky,"""If you were 17 I'd feel the same way,"" sang Tim Granada in 1965 on ""What Am I Gonna Do?"", B-side to the Dovers' doomed debut single. Was he daft about some hot older chick? Was he cruising jailbait? The confusion only adds to the image of the Dovers as the ultimate Nuggets group, forever stranded in Santa Barbara garageland adolescence. For ""Walkabout"", 2009's sweetest moment of musical bromance, Bradford Cox and Noah Lennox snatched and looped a moment of this teen turmoil, but rendered it chastely existential-- the memory of youthful ideals countered by that timeless rock'n'roll imperative: don't look back. If Cox's 2008 full-length debut as Atlas Sound was the sound of a young shut-in tinkering with tape players, ""Walkabout"" was the coming-out party: ambling and sunkissed but feeling the first breeze of autumn. --Stephen Troussé",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60825e6ef959693274c9/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Atlas_Sound_ft_Noah_Lennox-Walkabout.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,33,DJ Quik and Kurupt,"""9x's Outta 10""",Mad Science,"DJ Quik on the beat? Kurupt/Young Gotti on the mic? I mean, how could you go wrong? (Other than commercially that is...) Even compared to the rest of the floaty finesse of BlaQKout, there's nary a wasted second on ""9x's Outta 10""-- Left Coast legend Kurupt's stark solo spotlight on the otherwise Quik-dominated LP. Kurupt, in a dazzlingly technical turn, finds himself in rare motion as he twists his tongue around Quik's skeletal skull-smashing beat, sliding into the nooks and crannies of the producer's metamorphic ""Grindin'""-like bleacher-basher with this brittle, been-there done-that braggadocio and a showcase of pure MCing skills. ""Difficult as calculus"" is right; Kurupt circles around, switches out words like he's playing Jenga with the verse, and speeds up without spinning out around Quik's spiraling sampledelic ending. And when it stops, two and a half impossibly short minutes later? It's the kind of thing you want to start again. --Paul Thompson",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c608213d197565213f933/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/DJ_Quik_and_Kurupt-9xs_Outta_10.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,32,The Very Best [ft. Ezra Koenig],"""Warm Heart of Africa""",Green Owl,"Like most great popmakers, the Very Best understand that if you've stumbled upon something indelible and irresistible, it's not a bad idea to repeatedly cram it down listeners' earholes to the point where it couldn't possibly be dislodged from their heads. ""Warm Heart of Africa"" has two such elements, the first in the form of a guitar line taken from Nigerian legend Sir Victor Uwaifo's signature hit, ""Guitar Boy"", a playfully springy thing that propels the song forward in its ebullient bliss. The second earworm, of course, is the hook sung by Vampire Weekend frontman Ezra Koenig, which is both maddeningly infectious and charmingly inscrutable. It's Koenig and V-Dubs' appeal boiled down to its essence-- a boyish voice breaking into falsetto, the lyrics dense with cultural allusion. --Joshua Love",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6083d7a71d1ea569c916/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Very_Best_ft_Ezra_Koenig-Warm_Heart_of_Africa.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,31,Lily Allen,"""The Fear""",Capitol,"Lily Allen has at the very least a visitor's pass to the gauzy, half-real celebrity world she's singing about. That doesn't help ""The Fear"" work as satire, but it still cuts a good deal deeper than you'd expect. That's partly due to the irresistible chorus and to Lily's blissfully callous performance-- the way her sweetness makes ""I heard people die while they're tryin' to find them"" chilling where it could be excruciating. But it's partly down to these crazy times, the consumer economy running off a cliff like Wile E. Coyote and the boom it magicked up melting into air. Lily's character in ""The Fear"" senses dimly that something's not real and that it might be her, and what makes her dread and confusion convincing is the fact that a lot of people know how she feels. This song, as delicate and pretty as a bubble, is about 2009 in ways its obvious zings can only hint at. --Tom Ewing",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60840c2bba1b7de04f44/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Lily_Allen-The_Fear.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,30,The Pains of Being Pure at Heart,"""Young Adult Friction""",Slumberland,"I haven't heard a lot of them, but I'm still confident that ""Young Adult Friction"" is one of the best love songs set in a library. It's at least the only one to rhyme the words ""see"" and ""microfiche"" so smoothly. Perhaps it's no shock that a band whose sound owes so much to bright, brainy college rock of yore would be this comfortable singing about dusty stacks and moldy pages and nerdy puns on the word ""spine."" But what's so surprisingly smart about ""Young Adult Friction"" is that after a rush of clever verbiage, TPOBPAH shut up for the climax, launching into 30 seconds of jangling guitar bliss. And they don't ruin the afterplay with chatter, instead simply chanting another love/library pun-- ""Don't check me out!""-- as they graduate to another peak. --Marc Masters",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6085c0084474cd0c70e1/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Pains_of_Being_Pure_at_Heart-Young_Adult_Friction.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,29,jj,"""Ecstasy""",Sincerely Yours,"Using one of last year's most ubiquitous club hits-- Lil Wayne's ""Lollipop""-- as blotter paper, Sweden's jj dip the familiar pulse into a disorienting, lush mix of ethereal synths and skittering drums. Surprisingly for something so dreamy and atmospheric, ""Ecstasy"" is also funny, with quips that sound stranger or more deliberately profound with each repetition, depending on what state of mind you might be in at the time. It might feel reductive to label ""Ecstasy"" as a drug record, but hey, sometimes it really is that hard to just say no. ""When I'm in the club, I'm always on this drug/ If you get a hug, guess what drug I'm on?"" We'll venture a guess. --Zach Kelly",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6085eb335119a49f14c8/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/jj-Ecstasy.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,28,Neko Case,"""This Tornado Loves You""",Anti-,"A light poetic touch goes a long way when set to the right music. Neko Case blurs the line between the literal and metaphorical as she carves a path across three counties in search of her wayward lover, smashing transformers with trailers lifted in rage. It works so well in part because she has the voice to inhabit a force of nature-- her power is such that she hardly seems to expend any effort as she ramps up from a near-whisper to a full-throated call. The band swirls around her like fence posts ripped from the ground-- flecks of banjo, guitar, shaker, and snare drum flying in all directions. Here, Case has found a way to convey vulnerability, menace, sadness, ecstasy, panic, and calm simultaneously without any logical dissonance, much in the way the emotions of love can conflict while coexisting. The message is clear: Don't stand in the way of her heartache. --Joe Tangari",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c608613d197565213f937/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Neko_Case-This_Tornado_Loves_You.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,27,Four Tet,"""Love Cry""",Domino,"Kieran Hebden's music-- folk, hip-hop, and free jazz cut up with a laptop and left in the sun (for that faded look)-- has always represented a kind of sonic pacifism to me, so I was surprised by how confrontational ""Love Cry"" is. His pulse quickened on last year's Ringer EP, but this is the first time he's made dance music so pure and unhyphenated. He maintains his stamp-- a grainy atmosphere of samples that sound ripped from dusty vinyl. But the build-and-release is techno's and so is the tempo. It's not surprising that he changed his style per se; it's surprising that he did it gracefully and without capitulating to any particular trend. It's like he stepped sideways just to prove how agile he is. Oh, and the female vocalist chanting love cry and love me over and over-- for a musician whose fans are quick to point out how well he humanizes electronics, it's haunting how alien he makes a human sound. --Mike Powell",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6086d7a71d1ea569c918/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Four_Tet-Love_Cry.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,26,Bon Iver,"""Blood Bank""",Jagjaguwar,"What is it with Justin Vernon and winter? Even disregarding the backstory behind Bon Iver's debut, there's snow all over the cover to the Blood Bank EP as well as side project Volcano Choir. Vernon uses that winter setting on ""Blood Bank"" to turn in evocative fragments of images that carry tremendous emotional weight, such as a couple rubbing their hands together in a car-- to keep them warm, of course. Many of Bon Iver's songs creak with a certain kind of hope, but the simple chords of the chorus keep descending here. Especially after paring down to a heartbeat rhythm before its clamorous outro, ""Blood Bank"" becomes one of Bon Iver's most somber tracks, seeming like the thaw might be a long way away. --Jason Crock",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60875e6ef959693274cc/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Bon_Iver-Blood_Bank.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,25,Cass McCombs,"""You Saved My Life""",Domino,"Though Catacombs album opener ""Dream Comes True Girl"" was lovable straight out of the speakers, ""You Saved My Life"" is the song that still keeps me up some nights. As uncluttered as the spare room he invokes in its very first line, it showcases a velvety union between pedal steel and synth-- understated instrumentation for a waltz-time ode whose premise, title, and chorus are, for McCombs, unusually direct. Here, he saves his elliptical tendencies for the tune's structure, steering clear of an obvious hook and allowing the song to seep in as if by osmosis. The quietly devastating ""You Saved My Life"" still retains some of McCombs' sense of mystery, but its simple beauty exudes undeniable warmth. --David Bevan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6087eb335119a49f14ca/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Cass_McCombs-You_Saved_My_Life.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,24,Basement Jaxx,"""Raindrops""",XL/Ultra,"Like most great Basement Jaxx tracks, ""Raindrops"" hits with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. There's little room for thinking, or even breathing, inside this psychedelic disco fantasia; pause for even an instant, and you might get hit by a falling sitar, or an airplane flying overhead, or some ""Fifth of Beethoven"" synthetic strings hurtling past. Or you might just get steamrolled by that thudding, insistent martial beat as it bubbles in and out of focus, spiking thirst for its return every time it goes away. (Just like raindrops in a desert, you see.) Jay-Z and other Auto-Tune haters: This is the only track on the latest Basement Jaxx album, Scars, that doesn't feature a guest singer. Its vocals are handled by the Jaxx's own Felix Buxton, with some generous help from your least favorite studio effect. D.O.A.? No fucking way. --Amy Phillips",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6088eb335119a49f14cc/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Basement_Jaxx-Raindrops.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,23,Animal Collective,"""Brother Sport""",Domino,"Going back to at least Sung Tongs, the dominant themes in Avey Tare and Panda Bear's lyrics have been responsibility, familial love, and a desire to work toward self-improvement. These aren't new ideas for pop music, but they are difficult things to express in song without coming across as unbearably hokey. Animal Collective circumvent this tackiness in part by investing every sound with an intense generosity rather than just leaving the sentiment to the words being sung. ""Brother Sport"" in particular is a big warm hug of a song, and would feel loving and supportive even if Panda Bear were not singing lyrics encouraging his brother not to descend to depression following the death of their father. Cynics may grumble, but anyone in need of this sort of earnest, full-hearted empathy will find it here as the music gradually shifts from a gentle exhortation to move on from a state of mourning to a celebratory climax merging elements of rave, psychedelia, and folk jamborees. On a good day, ""Brother Sport"" is a joyous romp, but in times of trouble, it's profound and life-affirming song, rejecting self-defeating despondency while showing a deep respect for the agony of loss. --Matthew Perpetua",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6088d7a71d1ea569c91c/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Animal_Collective-Brother_Sport.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,22,Delorean,"""Seasun""",Fool House,"Barcelona four-piece Delorean could hardly have given the standout from their Ayrton Senna EP a more zeitgeisty title. But what ""Seasun"" represents would be just as relevant in 2002, 1982, or-- warning: weak Marty McFly joke to come-- 2022. It's the sound of a rock group who learned songwriting by making killer remixes of other people's songs. Forget verse-chorus-verse: Singer/bassist/scholar Ekhi Lopetegi doesn't sing anything you could properly call ""words"" until almost the three-minute mark, but that doesn't make ""Seasun"" any less catchy. Instead, we get a shimmering, arena- or disco-ready object lesson on letting the beat build. Whirring synths-- and, on John Talabot's excellent ""Seasun"" remix, electronic thuds that could fill the Camp Nou-- here give way to dramatic piano, high-pitched coos and hearty cheers, handclaps that sneak up on you, rock-style drums that gain momentum, maracas, and gorgeously Balearic guitars. Something something, ""never be the same again."" --Marc Hogan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60890c2bba1b7de04f4d/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Delorean-Seasun.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,21,"Raekwon [ft. Ghostface Killah, Inspectah Deck, and Method Man]","""House of Flying Daggers""",Wu Music Group,"Sorting through the surface clutter in the extended Wu-Tang discography can be a maddening process, and in part this frustration has its roots in tracks like ""House of Flying Daggers"", where Raekwon and crew reanimate their classic Wu form. It'd be inaccurate to say they make it sound effortless, however, since effort seems to be the crucial ingredient. Every verse here rings with conviction, as Rae, Inspectah Deck, Ghostface, and Method Man are each fully locked-in and engaged, issuing their joint battle cry with an impressively balanced ferocity. With a chorus cribbed from 36 Chambers and top-shelf production straight from Dilla's vault, ""House of Flying Daggers"" works as both a deliberate throwback and as a welcome, long overdue piece of reclamation. --Matthew Murphy",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c608a0c2bba1b7de04f4f/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Raekwon_ft_Ghostface_Killah_Inspectah_Deck_and_Method_Man-House_of_Flying_Daggers.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,20,Japandroids,"""Young Hearts Spark Fire""",Unfamiliar,"Even in a year when indie bands sang about the simplest of pleasures-- adobe slabs, pizzas, and bottles of wine-- Vancouver's Japandroids made ogling girls sound subversive, like a call to arms for all young hearts. ""We used to dream! Now we worry about dying,"" Brian King and David Prowse shout, lamenting either their own age or the crumbling economy but sounding like men who've been robbed of something crucial. So when they finally get around to singing, ""I don't want to worry about dying,"" in that rushed cadence, it's a relief: After all, at its heart, this is a soundtrack for doing stupid shit on a Friday night. --Stephen M. Deusner",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c608a5e6ef959693274cf/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Japandroids-Young_Hearts_Spark_Fire.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,19,Joker,"""Digidesign""",Hyperdub,"You're probably bracing yourself for the big state-of-dubstep hard-sell right now. We could go there, with ""Digidesign"" as the new Bristol beat: nostalgic, swashbuckling, madcap, almost anti-somber, but still reliant on the brunt of trembling bass and synths. Or we could talk about Hyperdub's knack for keying in on zeitgeist-tilting obscurities, with Joker as a photonegative of the preoccupied, vulnerable Burial. But we'd be obsolete in about five minutes-- this music is exciting because of its rapid mutation. Besides, wondering what ""Digidesign"" means for dubstep is like wondering what a nuclear bomb means for physics: It seems rather beside the point while it's going off. --Brian Howe",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c608bc0084474cd0c70e5/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Joker-Digidesign.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,18,The Big Pink,"""Dominos""",4AD,"Big Pink's ""Dominos"" rolls big and boisterous, as carefree and brash as the commitment-averse dude at the song's center. And when we're talking about a blur of sexual conquests and quick flings (as the LP's title says: a brief history of love, indeed), what's to learn, or more accurately, what do you want to learn? Though some of the lyrics belie grief and bitterness, the massive hooks, slabs of crunchy synths, waves of big beat build-up, and blind optimism of the music encapsulate the rush of a long chain of encounters, one bumping into the next. That you don't see the end of the line quickly rushing toward you doesn't matter. Connecting the duo's influences-- noise, shoegaze, and booming pop-- can be instructive. But when obsession over a song can be boiled down to big, dumb, and fun, why bother? --Patrick Sisson",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c608beb335119a49f14d3/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Big_Pink-Dominos.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,17,Fuck Buttons,"""Surf Solar""",ATP,"""Surf Solar"" might crest and fall like a dance tune, but the squeals, squiggles, and shocks that it rides on aren't exactly the stuff of dance. They aren't exactly noise anymore either though: To Fuck Buttons and producer Andrew Weatherall's credit, all 10 minutes and 35 seconds of this thing manages to be approachable yet uncompromising. It's great as a single edit too, but with more room to roam, ""Surf Solar""'s peaks and troughs come off as more natural, the build towards its irresistible ""pop"" center more gradual and rewarding. And, most importantly, there's more of it. Here's hoping there's even more where this came from. --David Raposa",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c608cc0084474cd0c70e7/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Fuck_Buttons-Surf_Solar.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,16,The xx,"""Crystalised""",Young Turks,"""Crystalised"" is a night of strip poker, dare after dare to risk more with less. The xx don't waste a stray beat or single downstroke, and the track's most ""superfluous"" component, a vaporous high-pitched moan, only throws its bones into bas-relief. Emotionally, however, ""Crystalised"" is a mess of mindgames, of breathy flirtation, verbal caresses, and the long shadow of sexual rejection. Dueting London art students Romy Madley Croft and Oliver Sim shape a space of such airless intimacy that we can only feel like voyeurs catching fleeting glimpses of flesh through peepholes. --Amy Granzin",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c608cd7a71d1ea569c91f/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_xx-Crystalised.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,15,Girls,"""Hellhole Ratrace""",True Panther,"The lyrical sentiments on ""Hellhole Ratrace"" are full of dimestore aphorisms, stuff like ""Sometimes you just gotta make it for yourself/ Sometimes, sugar, you just need someone else."" Honestly-- he says sugar. And he sells it. Because ""Hellhole Ratrace"" is big and reverberant enough to fit whatever brightly colored pop clichés inside you could ever want; girls named Bobbie Jean, white Cadillacs with tail fins, lonesome highways, you name it. It's just four chords, but played slowly and magisterially, with a tightly modulated build that crests each time that chorus kicks back around. By the seventh minute, all of the song's graceful details-- the tinkling sleigh bells, the soft-focus, swirling guitars, the background choirs-- have coalesced into a massive wave, which spills over and sends the whole thing skyward. --Jayson Greene",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c608deb335119a49f14d5/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Girls-Hellhole_Ratrace.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,14,Joy Orbison,"""Hyph Mngo""",Hotflush,"One way to look at ""Hyph Mngo"" is to think about the song's progressive nature, to consider that Joy Orbison, this previously unknown kid from South London, turned dubstep inside out to make the kind of dance track that we just hadn't heard before. Which is true: Though he infused the track with elements of house and UK funky, Orbison's assured debut introduced something uniquely forward-thinking. And, yes, it's also remarkably well-crafted-- almost minimal, there isn't a single bass knock or synth line that goes to waste. But that's only part of ""Hyph Mngo""'s appeal. What sets the track apart, particularly from its brooding dubstep contemporaries, is how bright and visceral it is, how its unrelenting vocal clips are sampled at their most exuberant moment, and how those pounding bass hits-- physical enough to be felt in one's chest-- make avoiding a dancefloor just... unthinkable. --Joe Colly",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c608dc0084474cd0c70ea/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Joy_Orbison-Hyph_Mngo.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,13,Neon Indian,"""Deadbeat Summer""",Lefse,"There's nothing wrong with nostalgia. Alan Palomo knows this. And though he reaped the benefits of a swirling interest in the transient subgenre dubbed glo-fi and chillwave and other made-up words, what's made his work as Neon Indian so satisfying is its surprisingly rock-solid construction. Everything sonic is loose and fraying, from the rumbling guitar to the wah-wah-wah-ing vocals to the plinking KORG. The sound effects are straight Michael Winslow. But the songwriting is so ruthless and rigid. Verse-chorus-verse-chorus-solo-coda. This is not rocket science, but it isn't pharmacology either. If ""Deadbeat Summer"" happens to make you think of faded VCR tapes and Saturday morning cartoons and Marble Madness for NES that's cool, too. But Palomo is more than a sentimental collagist; he's a pop formalist. Long live the languor. --Sean Fennessey",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c608eeb335119a49f14d7/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Neon_Indian-Deadbeat_Summer.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,12,Grizzly Bear,"""While You Wait for the Others""",Warp,"The baroque qualities of Veckatimest occasionally threaten to overwhelm Grizzly Bear's songwriting, with melodic lines spinning off into a tumble of harpsichords and multi-part harmonies. But on ""While You Wait for the Others"" all that billowing excess is funneled and concentrated-- both within the song and the album, as the song's late-run sequencing pulls taut the airy slack around it. Clean, terse guitar chords muscle through a murky field of reverb, plowing the way for an unusually direct vocal performance from Daniel Rossen. A seesawing chorus lends an unmistakable sense of resolution to a song about kissing off, cutting off, and letting go. --Philip Sherburne",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c608ed7a71d1ea569c921/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Grizzly_Bear-While_You_Wait_for_the_Others.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,11,Animal Collective,"""What Would I Want? Sky""",Domino,"Between the distorted drum rolls and distant, arpeggiated chants of this song's first half and the luminous harmonizing and pop smarts of its second, anyone who has ever liked Animal Collective at any point will find something to cherish about ""What Would I Want? Sky"". In the end though, it sounds less like the band's past and more like an explosion of future possibilities. Sequencers, 7/8 time signatures, suite-like structure, totally fucking obscure Grateful Dead samples-- these are the sorts of things that could once be considered hopelessly obtuse, and yet here it comprises instantly likeable, of-the-moment music. While Merriweather Post Pavilion served as a culmination of an improbable career arc over the span of the 00s, ""What Would I Want? Sky"" gives us plenty of hope that the next decade will be every bit as thrilling and unpredictable for Animal Collective. --Ian Cohen",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c608f5e6ef959693274d7/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Animal_Collective-What_Would_I_Want_Sky.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,10,Washed Out,"""Feel It All Around""",Mexican Summer,"A year ago, Ernest Greene wasn't singing, really. Nine months ago, he wasn't making glimmering lo-fi electronic pop as Washed Out. Until October, you couldn't buy any of his stuff in physical form. Not long before you finally could, he would've had no reason to ask upstart labels Mexican Summer or Mirror Universe to press more than tiny numbers of his Life of Leisure 12"" EP or High Times cassette. Who would be interested in them? A lot of people, it turns out, and ""Feel It All Around"" is the biggest reason why. Washed Out's first single doesn't tell you what, exactly, you're supposed to be ""feel""ing, but that's the idea. Twinkling synths, amniotic vocal drone, undulating bass, and chockablock percussion all imagine a hazy innocence that's just out of reach. Greene's wispily multi-tracked ache is no more clearly articulated. Anybody truly scandalized about this track's sampling of Gary Low's Italo-disco jam ""I Want You"" would've been just as pissed at the 1983 original for having synths. The past isn't as sublime as you remember it. The present always ends too soon. --Marc Hogan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c608feb335119a49f14db/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Washed_Out-Feel_It_All_Around.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,9,Girls,"""Lust for Life""",True Panther,"For a band that's inspired so much record-collector-rock referencing, it's no shock that Girls would brazenly swipe a well-worn Iggy Pop title for the first song on their first album. But if Iggy's anthem was about getting fucked up, Girls' version is about being a fuck-up-- less a celebration of excess than an appeal for basic human needs. It's tempting to filter frontman Christopher Owens' lyrical pleas through the lens of his religious-cult background, transforming the seemingly throwaway requests for ""a pizza and a bottle of wine"" into the song's most resonant moments and shedding light on an upbringing devoid of the most simple pleasures. But from that bracing first line-- ""I wish I had a boyfriend,"" delivered by an ostensibly heterosexual singer-- it's clear that Owens is really singing for any outcast who's sick of feeling sorry for themselves and ready for ""a brand new start."" That eagerness is manifested in the song's blurry-handed jangle riff, which makes Owens sound like he's in such a hurry to turn a new leaf that he doesn't even take the time to fashion a proper chorus. But just when you expect the band to kick into a second-verse rock-out, Girls respond with more playful gestures: cheeky doo-wop harmonies, tambourine shakes and handclaps-- inclusive, participatory devices that underscore the fact that ""Lust for Life"" is less about Owens' life than your own. --Stuart Berman",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6090d7a71d1ea569c926/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Girls-Lust_for_Life.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,8,Phoenix,"""Lisztomania""",Glassnote/Loyauté,"Phoenix make it look easy. Their jeans, tones, scarves, hooks, arrangements; it all comes together on stage and on record with minimal fuss. But writing succinct and powerful pop that has the ability to serve grad students and Nano'd teens is, in fact, quite difficult. Don't take my word for it. Just ask singer Thomas Mars, who airs out his music-making frustrations all over ""Lisztomania"". ""So sentimental/ Not sentimental, no/ Romantic, not disgusting yet,"" he starts (and stops), dragging his side-margin notes to the fore. This is a behind-the-scenes, neurotic, Woody Allen-meets*-8 1/2* meta anthem that tries to get to the root of universal appeal without pandering to it. Sure, the song's surface sheen is meticulously catchy, but there's a lot more here than that. Along the way, Mars is disgusted, discouraged, misguided, distant, lonely. ""From a mess to the masses,"" he wails, throwing his hands up at the prospect of converting a bunch of riffs, beats, and brainwaves into something worthy of a sold-out crowd. And then he leads his band through something worthy of several sold-out crowds. No sweat. --Ryan Dombal",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60905e6ef959693274d9/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Phoenix-Lisztomania.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,7,Big Boi [ft. Gucci Mane],"""Shine Blockas""",LaFace,"That Big Boi's solo album still hasn't seen the light of day is further proof that the record industry is irreparably broken. ""Shine Blockas"" should be more than a rap blog curio. It's the sort of track that we should hear blaring out of every passing Civic. The track works as a study in contrasts. Even more than usual, OutKast's still-rapping half raps in darting, stuttery little bursts, his flow fighting its way upstream on the beat, dropping syllables in places nobody would expect. Gucci's guest spot does just the opposite. It's a fully intuitive vocal, his hoarse, marbled monotone drifting lazily over the cascading beat like he was born rapping on it. Cutmaster Swiff's lush, strobing Harold Melvin sample might be fundamentally opposed to the dinky synth symphonies that Gucci generally favors, but he makes rapping over it sound like the easiest thing in the world. Big Boi makes it sound like the most difficult, but he still sticks it. None of these ingredients seem like they should work together, but everything piles on top of everything else, and against odds, the song turns itself into a towering anthem of self-assurance. --Tom Breihan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60910c2bba1b7de04f54/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Big_Boi_ft_Gucci_Mane-Shine_Blockas.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,6,Yeah Yeah Yeahs,"""Zero""",Interscope,"Yeah Yeah Yeahs' take on electro-pop is all harsh lighting and exposed wires, their machines powering up in fits and starts while Karen O tells you the cold truth: ""You're a zero. What's your name? No one's gonna ask you."" It could be a corporation or a subculture, but the rules are the same: you start as nothing and you crawl and claw your way up doing exactly what you're told. But when you do fight to the top your reward is the most glorious release: the crunched-up cyber-glam riffing that's ""Zero""'s own ladder to the sun. It lets Karen O cut loose, too, the restrained creaks and tremors in her voice becoming cries and gasps as the song fills splendidly out. In another world and a less bombed-out market it could have been their ""Heart of Glass"", crossing over to an audience of people who never cared about their punky pedigree. A shame it didn't find that public, but this is pop steely enough to need no wider validation. --Tom Ewing",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c609113d197565213f943/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Yeah_Yeah_Yeahs-Zero.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,5,Grizzly Bear,"""Two Weeks""",Warp,"A better name would be Teddy Bear, such is the unlikely appeal of this unassuming Brooklyn foursome. But just how did they manage to charm the indie elite and Jay-Z and Solange and Beyoncé and your mom and scores of Twilight-addled tweens? It wasn't by pandering-- the carefully honed Grizzly sound has progressed naturally, organically, from Ed Droste's bedroom recording days, creeping through the quiet spaces of Yellow House and finally blossoming fully on this year's Veckatimest. No track better typifies the fully-formed Grizzly Bear than ""Two Weeks"", but it's not the craftsmanship that's winning people over and making them want to spin this one again and again. It's the intangible, of course, the sound of a band that has struck upon something timeless, inspired, holistic, and-- it bears (ahem) mentioning-- utterly wholesome. Some people will hear ""Two Weeks"" and instantly feel better about their day, some will want to join a boys' choir, and most will feel the urge to share this exceptional thing with those close to them. --Matthew Solarski",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6092eb335119a49f14dd/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Grizzly_Bear-Two_Weeks.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,4,Bat For Lashes,"""Daniel""",Parlophone/Astralwerks,"With a knack for high-concept storytelling and a distinct visual aesthetic to accompany her rich, moody pop, Bat for Lashes' Natasha Khan may be the closest thing to a video star in today's indie realm. Though perhaps not as iconic as her Donnie Darko-inspired clip for 2007's ""What's a Girl to Do?"", the video for ""Daniel"", the standout from her Two Suns LP, matches the song's hope and longing. In it, Khan wrestles with sorrow (in the form of faceless, black-clad dancers) as she races toward the titular character and the track's skyward chorus. This struggle for salvation is central to ""Daniel""'s appeal, and Bat for Lashes play masterfully with shades of light and dark to achieve the effect. With its dark romance, soaring vocal hook, and skillful songcraft, ""Daniel"" does feel like a direct descendant to similar work by Kate Bush and Sinead O'Connor, though I'm also reminded of songs like Concrete Blonde's ""Caroline""-- the kind of goth-tinged gem that, sadly, seems to have disappeared from the airwaves. --Joe Colly",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c60920c2bba1b7de04f58/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Bat_For_Lashes-Daniel.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,NA,NA,NA,NA,"In Amadeus, Antonio Salieri wonders how such beautiful music can come from a buffoon like Tom Hulce's Mozart. There might also be some American indie rock Salieris stewing over these French invaders Phoenix waltzing over here and perfecting their genre. Even more than 2006's exquisite It's Never Been Like That, the singles on Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix demonstrate with arrogant ease how disheveled indie rock tropes can be reshuffled into straight-laced pop gold. When ""1901"" debuted on the Phoenix website with animated pink shards slashing across a black backing, it looked like the track's error-message synthesizers were clawing a neon marquee out from underneath the sooty abyss. And the song itself is similar restoration, layering sloppy guitar jangle into a propulsive motor and goosing the synthesizers into an air-raid crescendo until the whole mess is a glass-smooth shiny bauble. People in indie rock circles often talk about hit singles in alternate dimensions, but Phoenix prove you don't need quantum theory to make pop out of indie rock ingredients... you just need to be from Versailles. --Rob Mitchum",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6093c0084474cd0c70f2/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/4648ebf9-f04f-46e5-b12c-5b2dd4e337a7
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,2,Dirty Projectors,"""Stillness Is the Move""",Domino,"When avant-garde musicians try to engage with pop, they reveal a lot about themselves. People who make difficult music sometimes act as if the kind of music that catches on broadly is a dumbed-down version of the ""real thing,"" or a collection of catchphrases and synth presets. The sharpest avant-gardists, of course, realize that the real musical vanguard very often enters the culture via Hot 97: If a song is designed to give pleasure, a dose of shocking newness can be the element that helps demand it be played over and over. The high point of Bitte Orca lovingly appropriates the great innovations that have descended from the top of the charts over this past decade--the sharply defined negative space, holographic hooks, chiseled phrasing, and Olympically luxurious vocal arrangements of Amerie, Aaliyah, and Destiny's Child. Its lyric is partly pop readymades (""From now until forever baby/ I can't imagine anything better""), partly lines from Peter Handke's ""Song of Childhood"" in Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire (""Like a child it had no habits/ No opinion about anything""), and in the context of its spiraling melody and arrangement, they seem like they've always belonged together. And Amber Coffman's lead vocal is a phenomenon: acrobatic, locked into the rhythmic demands of the song, and delivered in a way that makes her voice's thin, conversational tone radiant. --Douglas Wolk",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6093d7a71d1ea569c92d/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Dirty_Projectors-Stillness_Is_the_Move.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2009 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/,2009,year,song,1,Animal Collective,"""My Girls""",Domino,"""My Girls"", the catchy, gloriously harmonized highlight of Merriweather Post Pavilion, is all heart-- arguably the most earnest expression of basic human want recorded in 2009. Panda Bear's promise to provide a proper house for his wife and young daughter, in the wake of his father's death-- ""But to provide for mine who ask, I will, with heart, on my father's grave,"" he pledges-- yielded a blissful, near-ecstatic song that practically requires participation, be it hollering along (try to keep yourself from yelling a synchronized ""ooooh!"" after the chorus) or shimmying in your subway seat. Panda Bear and Avey Tare's harmonies here are warmer (and groovier) than most anywhere else in the band's catalogue, and the electronics are gentle and buoyant; in some ways, ""My Girls"" feels like a life preserver for people tottering on the precipice of adulthood. Panda Bear might be apologetic about his craving (""I don't mean to seem like I care about material things,"" he hedges), but ""My Girls"" is ultimately a celebration of the simplification-- of desire, of priorities-- that comes with growing up. --Amanda Petrusich",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6094d7a71d1ea569c92f/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Animal_Collective-My_Girls.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7573-the-50-best-albums-of-2008/,2008,year,album,50,Ponytail Ice Cream,Spiritual,We Are Free,"From the fist few seconds of ""Beg Waves"", the opening track on the sophomore album from Baltimore spazz-rockers Ponytail, you know something's up: You can feel the song gathering itself together-- the guitars rev and the drums roll and vocalist Molly Siegel clears her throat-- and there's a sense that an enormous amount of energy is about to be unleashed. The record that follows delivers on this early promise, as Ponytail combine surf guitar riffs, shredding harmonized leads, gitty-up rhythms, and the one-of-a-kind Siegel howling above it all, her ""lyrics"" seemingly written using a strange alphabet that consists only of exclamation points. The weird thing is how inclusive and welcoming it all sounds, as you find yourself wishing you could be sweating and screeching and thrashing in the studio along with them. --David Bevan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6cff13d197565214042d/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Ponytail_Ice_Cream-Spiritual.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7573-the-50-best-albums-of-2008/,2008,year,album,49,Crystal Stilts Alight of,Night,Slumberland,"These Brooklynites highlight the difference between being derivative and having good taste. With record collections clearly crammed with Phil Spector-produced singles, Jesus and Mary Chain albums, Black Tambourine rarities, Velvet Underground boxed sets, and every version of Unknown Pleasures ever released, Crystal Stilts synthesize a sound that owes obvious debts but works on its own terms. It's not all doom and gloom, either: Despite all the ghostly reverb, there are bouncy melodies lurking amidst the murk, as shimmering tambourines, hints of surf guitar, and Wall of Sound orchestrations provide hints of innocence and levity. Sure, their band is hard to keep straight thanks to the current onslaught of similarly titled groups (in 2008, ""crystal"" was the new ""wolf""). But with tracks as good as ""Prismatic Room"" and ""Shattered Shine"", Crystal Stilts is a name worth remembering. --Rebecca Raber",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6cff5e6ef95969327fd5/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Crystal_Stilts_Alight_of-Night.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7573-the-50-best-albums-of-2008/,2008,year,album,48,High Places High,Places,Thrill Jockey,"On their self-titled debut, High Places subtly combine the more abstract meanderings of their earlier recordings with a more song-oriented approach. The interplay between vocalist Mary Pearson's endearingly metallic-toned melodies and Rob Barber's lush percussive collages is somewhere between minimal dance music-- particularly on ""Gold Coin"" and ""A Field Guide""-- and shadowy meditations on ambient music. Despite the duo's ambitious blending of genres, the colorful, charismatic High Places remains unique and focused, naturally absorbing a rich array of influences and ultimately thriving on the impulses behind them. --Mia Clarke",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6cff13d197565214042f/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/High_Places_High-Places.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7573-the-50-best-albums-of-2008/,2008,year,album,47,The Tallest Man on Earth Shallow,Grave,Gravitation,"We still don't know a whole lot about the Tallest Man on Earth, just a few bullet points from his résumé: Name: Kristian Matsson. Home: Sweden. Experience: former frontman for some band called the Montezumas. Releases: a strange, superb EP in 2006 and this year's full-length debut, Shallow Grave. The latter is a bewitching collection of Spartan folk songs that drew comparisons to Bob Dylan but sound more like Dock Boggs. Tallest Man's unforthcoming nature bolsters his out-of-time music, which sounds like it could have been recorded at any time in the past 40 years. If his standoffishness preserves the mystery, then his ragged croak and fingerpicking style lend gravity to his dreamlike imagery (""I'm gonna force the Serengeti to disappear inside my eyes"") and his thoughts about death and the oblivion that follow. --Stephen M. Deusner",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d005e6ef95969327fd8/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Tallest_Man_on_Earth_Shallow-Grave.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7573-the-50-best-albums-of-2008/,2008,year,album,46,Beach House,Devotion,Carpark,"Beach House's self-titled debut got a long way on decayed atmosphere-- drum machines sounded like dot-matrix printers, organs bled out into the tracks like slit writs into bathwater. On Devotion, they sweep away a lot of the cobwebs, and the crisper production spotlights Victoria Legrand's husky croon and clears a path into the album's thematic depths: Beach House was simply lovelorn, Devotion is, as its title hints, a sharp study of dedication. ""Your wish is my command,"" Legrand moans on ""Wedding Bell""-- there's a thin line between loving commitment and unhealthy addiction, which she repeatedly crosses. On ""All the Years"", Legrand provides a subtler image-- she's sitting on a rock, waiting for a key. We get the sense she'll be waiting for a long time. --Brian Howe",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d00c0084474cd0c7bfb/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Beach_House-Devotion.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7573-the-50-best-albums-of-2008/,2008,year,album,45,Lykke Li Youth,Novels,LL/Atlantic,"Ask her if she's in love, ask her about the last time she cried, and Lykke Li will answer you honestly. But it's hard to know who she is on Youth Novels, because every song is about closed hearts and open legs; about crying over someone yet enjoying having someone to cry over; being a little bit in love, but too shy shy shy to say anything. Lykke Li is confident in herself, but still a bit unsure of exactly who she is-- which is to say, she's like a lot of young adults. Unlike a lot of young adults, however, Li expertly uses melodies, desires, and just a few drum beats to try and express what she's feeling, and she invites us to follow along as she sorts through it all. --Jessica Suarez",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d01c0084474cd0c7bfd/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Lykke_Li_Youth-Novels.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7573-the-50-best-albums-of-2008/,2008,year,album,39,Times New Viking Rip It,Off,Matador,"Times New Viking make noise-pop but Rip It Off never forgets the ""pop"" side of the equation. It has some of the group's sweetest songs (""Drop-Out"", ""Another Day"") next to some of its biggest riffs (""Teen Drama"", ""Relevant: Now"") and most indelible choruses (""My Head"", ""The Wait""). The unconverted may regard the record's caustic EQ levels as a challenge, but plenty of others can hear where they're cribbing from and the love with which they soil the source material. In the end, Rip It Off isn't as hard to enjoy as some (this writer included) have made it out to be: ""Faces on Fire"" should have been the soundtrack to more people's summers, and if you hear Beth Murphy singing ""let's do something that hasn't been done yet,"" and read it cynically, that may not be the band's fault. --Jason Crock",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d03c0084474cd0c7c02/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Times_New_Viking_Rip_It-Off.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7573-the-50-best-albums-of-2008/,2008,year,album,38,The Bug London,Zoo,Ninja Tune,"While Burial captured imaginations with his sparse, mysterious, and isolation-evoking Untrue last year, this year the best dubstep tended to swing the pendulum back towards the immense, the dense, and the sometimes confrontational. Few albums personified this shift as boldly as Kevin Martin's third album as the Bug. Here he took two of the best dubstep singles of 2007-- ""Poison Dart"" and ""Skeng""-- and surrounded them with a front-to-back tour de force of dub bass. Martin never met a bassline he couldn't turn into a subwoofer-annihilating force of nature, but his beats are put together with such meticulous detail that nothing truly gets suffocated, and the moments when the rhythm pauses to let that force dissipate are all the more breathtaking for it. As instrumentals, these tracks would be heavy enough; with a diverse group of ragga and dancehall MCs and singers to give it a voice-- Warrior Queen, Flow Dan, Tippa Irie, a supremely pissed-off Spaceape-- it's a landmark in futurist dancehall. --Nate Patrin",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d04c0084474cd0c7c04/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Bug_London-Zoo.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7573-the-50-best-albums-of-2008/,2008,year,album,37,Grouper Dragging a Dead Deer Up a,Hill,Type,"Grouper is Portland, Oregon's Liz Harris, drenched in so much reverb that she sounds almost intangible-- like a voice calling up from the bottom of the ocean. On Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill, Harris' third full record as Grouper, a few meager shafts of light are finally allowed to penetrate the mix: A gently strumming acoustic guitar reappears regularly, and Harris' words are, for the first time, occasionally discernible. These tiny hints of accessibility are just enough to deepen the music's essential mysteriousness, to make us feel tantalizingly close to Harris before she's gone again, the echoes of her breathy coo humming in our ear. --Jayson Greene",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d04eb335119a49f1fc2/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Grouper_Dragging_a_Dead_Deer_Up_a-Hill.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7573-the-50-best-albums-of-2008/,2008,year,album,36,Wale The Mixtape About,Nothing,self-released,"D.C. rapper releases a mixtape based around ""Seinfeld"", complete with clips from the show and an appearance, midway through, from fucking Elaine Benes. And no, Adult Swim has nothing to do with it. Wale, on the cusp of breaking out for a few years now, translates the sitcom's nihilism of minor differences to his own idea of hip-hop culture. The kid can rap his ass off, as we learn on the joyous, seemingly never-ending freestyle over ""Roc Boys"" (on which he thanks his ""connects"": ""MySpace, Facebook, don't forget MapQuest""), or this example of self-effacing braggadocio, from ""The Crazy"": ""I ain't sayin' that I'm Nasir, I'm just sayin' rap's dead when I'm not here."" Sure, he can (and does) milk a gimmick, but the real truth here comes from his scathing clarion call to ""post-Napster"" rap fans on ""The Perfect Plan"" (""some say rap is dead...buy an album.""), and ""The Kramer"", which segues from a clip of Michael Richards' onstage racist outburst to an insightful treatise on the unintended circulation of the n-word. --Eric Harvey",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d04d7a71d1ea569d472/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Wale_The_Mixtape_About-Nothing.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7573-the-50-best-albums-of-2008/,2008,year,album,35,Girl Talk Feed the,Animals,Illegal Art,"Confirmation that Greg Gillis really does think like a pop star: Feed the Animals tries again and again to repeat his ""greatest hit,"" that magical Biggie/Elton John collision from Night Ripper. It never works quite as well, but the attempts are a rush. Though every track has a couple of grin-making highpoints, what really makes me love Feed the Animals aren't any of the specific mash-ups, it's the record's Utopian vision. This time out Girl Talk's sources lean far more to the mainstream-- alternative touchpoints are swapped out for wedding-disco classics. The result is a grand and delightful romp around the notion that everything in the pop charts might actually be part of some whole, or at least on kissing terms at one of Gillis' parties. The loss of pop's shared center has been a critical trope for close to four decades-- Girl Talk is a parallel-world navigator, dreaming of what might have been if that center had held. --Tom Ewing",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d05c0084474cd0c7c08/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Girl_Talk_Feed_the-Animals.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7573-the-50-best-albums-of-2008/,2008,year,album,34,Arthur Russell Love Is Overtaking,Me,Audika,"If this collection of singer-songwritery demos and work tapes spanning close to 20 years were all the recorded evidence that existed of Arthur Russell's strange and wonderful career, he'd still probably be a cult item. The guy was one of the greatest New York musicians of his era, and the fact that he cared more about making recordings than polishing and releasing them means Audika's ongoing series of archival releases is a public service. Most of this material sounds like it would've been hopelessly unfashionable or alien in the context of its time, but it sounds amazing in 2008. The documentary Wild Combination details the clashing impulses of Russell's art-- his devotion to the avant-garde and his longing for the pop spotlight, his intensely eccentric sonic vernacular and his desire to make what his friend Allen Ginsberg called ""Buddhist bubblegum""-- and a lot of its power comes from that friction. It doesn't hurt that he had an astonishing sense of melody and wrote lyrics that pierce straight to the heart: ""I Couldn't Say It to Your Face"" and ""Hey! How Does Everybody Know"" sound like standards straight out of the box. --Douglas Wolk",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d05d7a71d1ea569d474/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Arthur_Russell_Love_Is_Overtaking-Me.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7573-the-50-best-albums-of-2008/,2008,year,album,33,Frightened Rabbit Midnight Organ,Fight,Fat Cat,"Frightened Rabbit shelved the coy, meta-commenting variety pack of their debut Sing the Greys for a sophomore LP of unabashed, unambiguous anthems about girls. In retrospect, artiness didn't do much for the Hutchison brothers' talents-- guitarist/vocalist Scott's impatient, perpetually aggrieved yelps, drummer Grant's muscular booming and bashing. But a fleshed-out band and improved studio work allowed the winsome Glaswegians to take their raw, vulnerable perspective on modern romance to its logical sonic conclusion. Scott's assertion ""This is the last song I write about you,"" in ""I Feel Better"", is heralded by trumpets and cascading harmonies-- arrangements so ludicrous they only underline the poignancy of the singer's self-delusion. And gold-standard loud/soft dynamics and shifting tempos dramatize the band's quest to reconcile idealism with pragmatism. A year ago, I predicted modest indie-world success (in all its diminished expectations) for these guys; I really underestimated them. --Amy Granzin",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d06eb335119a49f1fc4/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Frightened_Rabbit_Midnight_Organ-Fight.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7573-the-50-best-albums-of-2008/,2008,year,album,32,Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds Dig!!! Lazarus,Dig!!!,Mute UK/Anti-,"Nick Cave has long mined the Bible for both horror and hope, but in his later years he's increasingly been looking to the good book for humor as well. Sleaze, spirituality, and snarl rule Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!, but that's not as surprising as how easy he makes it all sound. Indeed, now topping 50, Cave-- pushed, prodded, pulled, and propped up by his ever-reliable Bad Seeds-- comes across more alive than the album's titular zombie, brought back from the dead to wander the streets of America, lost, confused, frustrated, and ultimately left for dead all over again. Cave spends much of the rest of the apocalyptic record howling of rampant violence, perverse injustice, and pervasive unease, imploring heavenward like he imagines poor Lazarus would to demand his maker explain the fucked-up world in which we live. --Joshua Klein",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d06eb335119a49f1fc6/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Nick_Cave__the_Bad_Seeds_Dig_Lazarus-Dig.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7573-the-50-best-albums-of-2008/,2008,year,album,31,Fennesz Black,Sea,Touch,"Devotion to Christian Fennesz can be frustrating: Three years passed between the Austrian electronicist's landmark Endless Summer and 2004's relatively underwhelming Venice. After another long wait, we got this year's Black Sea, a sublime return to form. Indefatigably patient and subtle, Fenensz makes motions through tiny gestures; as a result, his treatments of acoustic and electric guitars bear a human warmth and narrative weight that much electronic music misses. At its best, Black Sea feels like a victory, the would-be score to slow-motion scenes of violence and victory. But unlike many actual film scores, Black Sea rarely feels blindly sentimental or vacuous. Instead, Fennesz builds thriving microcosms by and of his own rich textures. Moving pictures would just be redundant. --Grayson Currin",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d06d7a71d1ea569d477/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Fennesz_Black-Sea.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7573-the-50-best-albums-of-2008/,2008,year,album,30,"Los Campesinos! Hold on Now,",Youngster...,Wichita/Arts & Crafts,"Head Campesino! Gareth sounds like he doesn't have the time, patience, or wherewithal to edit. He doesn't sing as much as he spews his twentysomething blog entries while the other Campesinos ape Pavement and dare you to keep up-- their quicksilver angst updates as often as your Facebook status. Take ""Knee Deep at ATP"", a tale of indie-rock betrayal on England's southern coast. A festival at a shit motel leads to a grammatically sound letter, which leads to an overexposed photo, which leads to sand falling from insoles, which leads to a crushing realization. But then, just as Gareth seems like he's about to break down into a pile of his own K Records 7""'s, the song builds, bulks up, and sprints to the finish. There's something triumphant in post-elitist indie rock sad-sackdom that defies hyphenates. This band will not tire until they break down exactly what that something is. They're off to a great start. --Ryan Dombal",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d0713d197565214043f/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Los_Campesinos_Hold_on_Now-Youngster.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7573-the-50-best-albums-of-2008/,2008,year,album,29,The Hold Steady Stay,Positive,Vagrant,"Four albums in, they still come off like what they are: Uber-literate punk-rock corndog lifers ransacking classic-rock radio for every dizzily joyous trick they can find. (Guitarist Tad Kubler broke the double-neck barrier years ago.) And, just like on 2006's Boys and Girls in Americ a, they're finding new ways to come off as a band, not just as a vehicle for Craig Finn's deranged honk and Flannery-O'Connor-huffing-glue rants. Boys and Girls had the megaton sing-along choruses, but on this one the tricks feel even more internalized. ""Sequestered in Memphis"" has the incendiary blurting garage-rock Farfisa. ""Both Crosses"" comes slathered in acoustic-Zeppelin drama. And ""Lord, I'm Discouraged"" follows up one of Finn's saddest-ever lines with the sort of guitar solo Slash used to play outside rickety desert churches. Stay Positive is the Hold Steady's getting-old album, but it's not about nostalgia: It's about holding onto your ideals and energy when the kids at the shows are having kids of their own. --Tom Breihan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d07d7a71d1ea569d479/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Hold_Steady_Stay-Positive.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7573-the-50-best-albums-of-2008/,2008,year,album,28,Flying Lotus Los,Angeles,Warp,"It says something about the depth and cohesiveness of Steven Ellison's deconstructed hip-hop opus Los Angeles that, unlike most other entries on this list, it has no clear standout. In fact, it's almost impossible to choose one favorite song. Like the melting black rubber that adorns its cover, the record's pieces twist and mutate, colliding or bleeding into one another in intricate patterns that are best absorbed in the wider context of the whole LP. Alongside the crackling beats that recall the great J Dilla, FlyLo conceals his complex rhythms in low-key, sometimes gentle arrangements that can lull the listener into a blunted haze. Take a sober listen and you'll discover a forward-thinking producer who, like Aphex Twin before him, uses disassembled and reformatted digital elements to create some seriously next-level shit. And the album's three subsequent L.A. EPs find him looking even further ahead, putting his transformative spin on other genres such as dubstep. If this really is the future of hip-hop, we're in pretty good hands. --Joe Colly",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d0813d1975652140441/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Flying_Lotus_Los-Angeles.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7573-the-50-best-albums-of-2008/,2008,year,album,27,Max Tundra Parallax Error Beheads,You,Domino,"In a year when eternal punchline Chinese Democracy finally arrived, another long-awaited album was met with equal fervor by a much smaller, more bespectacled fanbase. Flying under the radar since 2002's spectacular Mastered by Guy at the Exchange, Ben Jacobs spent six years caressing every single knot out of this vertiginous opus, creating a pop masterpiece tailor made for laptop-shackled music junkies. However, that's not to say Parallax Error Beheads You isn't fun, catchy, or energetic. While you still need a road map to navigate the dizzying song structures, Jacobs sounds a hundred times more confident as a pop vocalist here, diffusing the cerebral instrumentation with nutty lyrics referencing iPods, Google image searches, and his boyish quest for a significant other. High-concept? Definitely. But there's a warm heart inside this digital labyrinth. --Adam Moerder",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d08d7a71d1ea569d47b/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Max_Tundra_Parallax_Error_Beheads-You.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7573-the-50-best-albums-of-2008/,2008,year,album,26,Atlas Sound Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot,Feel,Kranky,"The first CD as Atlas Sound by Deerhunter lead singer Bradford Cox inhabits a bedroom a world away from the bipolar psych-outs of Cryptograms, let alone the messy four-track sketches of Atlas Sound's prior vinyl releases. This one's for the sleepyheads: Cox combines Velvet Underground's unwholesome reveries and Kraftwerk's pretty side to 1990s dream-pop, the Field's glistening loops, and Panda Bear's sun-kissed introspection. Unrequited love fills some of the album's more traditional pop songs, such as the fatal attraction of ""River Card""; so does Cox's long history with hospitals, whether on the emotionally drained ""Recent Bedroom"" or chiming metamorphosis-wish ""Quarantined"". As an album-length dream, Let the Blind can be bliss (the ""Love in This Club"" strobes on ""Ready Set Glow"") or nightmare (the small horror of ""Small Horror""), but the arrangements vary: an African-tinged guitar loop on ""Cold As Ice"", a steady electronic pulse on ""Winter Vacation"", music boxes, Zimbabwean mbira, glockenspiel. All those toys, and it still feels like a lonely place. --Marc Hogan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d08eb335119a49f1fcc/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Atlas_Sound_Let_the_Blind_Lead_Those_Who_Can_See_But_Cannot-Feel.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7573-the-50-best-albums-of-2008/,2008,year,album,25,Titus Andronicus The Airing of,Grievances,Troubleman Unlimited,"By now you might have thought there was nothing new to say about spending your twenties in New Jersey overeducated and underwhelmed, but caring about what you think is pretty low on Titus Andronicus' priority list. Armed with toilet-bowl production and the type of instrumental bombast typically used to signify inspiration, hope, or empathy, TA instead celebrated the Sisyphean nature of modern existence. But no matter how simple and fist-pumping their slogans were-- ""fuck you!"" ""your life is over!"" ""one mistake is all that it takes!""-- the nine tantrums of The Airing of Grievances were instantly catchy, intensely personal, and often hilarious. Few bands sounded more pissed off than Titus Andronicus in 2008, and even fewer sounded like they were having more fun. --Ian Cohen",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d0913d1975652140444/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Titus_Andronicus_The_Airing_of-Grievances.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7573-the-50-best-albums-of-2008/,2008,year,album,24,Gang Gang Dance Saint,Dymphna,The Social Registry,"Warped wind instruments, clattering percussion, woozy My Bloody Valentine guitar, trance-like synth arpeggios, a reggaeton beat, hints of grime and dubstep, and singer Liz Bougatsos' transfixing Siouxsie Sioux-like vocals, caught permanently between squeal, drawl, and coo: Gang Gang Dance painstakingly assemble these and many more sounds without distinction between the modern and the antiquated, the populist and the peculiar. What makes it work is that the group never conforms its sounds to some reductionist vision of cross-cultural collision. Instead, they let disparate ideas find their organic own ways to grow together. Gang Gang Dance are a rare group: one whose impossibly broad tastes result in music every bit as good as their record collections. --Tim Finney",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d0913d1975652140446/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Gang_Gang_Dance_Saint-Dymphna.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7573-the-50-best-albums-of-2008/,2008,year,album,23,Hot Chip Made in the,Dark,Astralwerks,"Injustice: A band writes a tear-jearker electro-soul song using professional wrestling as a metaphor for both relationships and early-childhood nostalgia and they get stuck with a February release date. Almost a year on, the timing still feels right: Listen to ""Made in the Dark"" as you shop for holiday presents to remind yourself of all that is frustrating, sweet, and bizarre about your relationships. Save the too-soft ballads (like ""Looking for a Lot of Love"" and the title track) for first snows and the gnarly rockers (""Shake a Fist"", ""One Pure Thought"") for when the ice gets all compacted and gritty. And since everyone buys themselves a little something while shopping anyway, listen to ""Wrestlers"" when you're visiting home and you catch a moment alone. ""It's me vs. me vs. me vs. me vs. me vs. me vs me…"". --Andrew Gaerig",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d0a5e6ef95969327fe7/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Hot_Chip_Made_in_the-Dark.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7573-the-50-best-albums-of-2008/,2008,year,album,22,Santogold,Santogold,Downtown,"Santogold's cover features an unflattering image of Santi White vomiting gold dust. Clearly, this woman does not give a fuck. After all, what has she got to lose? She's an over-30 industry veteran, wears outlandish clothes that don't show skin, and is as likely to coo a sticky pop hook as growl a dancehall put-down. Not an easy sell. If the whole superstar thing doesn't work out, she can always go back to writing songs for Ashlee Simpson. So for her debut album, the Brooklyn-via-Philly dynamo gets a little help from shit-hot beatmakers Diplo and Switch to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. Pretty much all of it does: the icy hot new wave of ""L.E.S. Artistes"", the itchy, menacing hip-hop of ""Creator"" and ""Unstoppable"", the light and fluffy ""Lights Out"" and ""I'm a Lady"". ""Shove It"" kicks so hard, Kanye West sampled it for a Jay-Z track. With a sound this fresh and now, of course these songs were licensed to high heaven, becoming the de facto soundtrack to 2008 in beer- and car-commercials. In this day and age, could we expect anything less? --Amy Phillips",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d0aeb335119a49f1fce/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Santogold-Santogold.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7573-the-50-best-albums-of-2008/,2008,year,album,21,Kanye West 808s and,Heartbreak,Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam,"I feel sorry for Kanye West even though I shouldn't feel sorry for Kanye West. This is a man who regularly blogs about phallic light fixtures whose price tag dwarfs my annual salary. Who regards his immense homes, fast cars, and first-class status as nothing more than symbols of bottomless isolation. Who turns the enthusiastic screams of a Singapore audience into a chorus of blood-curdling madness. On paper, 808s & Heartbreak reads like the musings of a grown-up Richie Rich: spoiled, caustic, and hopelessly unaware of his own ridiculousness. But thanks to an imperfect, mechanized singing voice and beats piped in from the universe's loneliest planet, West turns woe-is-me into woe-is-us. He beat emo at its own game. Whether sounding like a decrepit despot clinging to power on ""Amazing"", lamenting post-breakup angst on ""Love Lockdown"", or lashing out at his ex's terrible jokes over haughty strings on ""RoboCop"", the pop star shows he can be as self-obsessed, confused, and petty as the rest of us. (I'm surprised there's not a song written in drunk text vernacular.) And, on ""Street Lights"", he reaches a glass-eyed resolution: ""Life's just not fair,"" he mumbles, giving meaning to meaningless. --Ryan Dombal",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d0a0c2bba1b7de05a65/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Kanye_West_808s_and-Heartbreak.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7573-the-50-best-albums-of-2008/,2008,year,album,20,Fuck Buttons Street,Horrrsing,ATP,"It's always fun when an album comes along to fill a need you didn't even know you had. ""Wouldn't it be sweet if an album took the prickly psych damage of Black Dice but made it work in the context of epic rock, so that it had the cathartic build of early Mogwai?"" Why, yes-- yes it would: Enter Bristol two-piece Fuck Buttons. Their most obvious gift is to use harsh sounds in service of something more conventionally musical. Ten years ago, noise music was understood to be an endurance test. It was Merzbow and Masonna, all bondage and bleeding ears and bad vibes. But Fuck Buttons showed how the visceral power of noise can be bent into a dramatic arc that takes you places. Season the churning distortion with some tinkly piano clusters, keep things quiet and pretty until they're loud and mean: Street Horrrsing is what happens when you give equal weight to every extreme. --Mark Richardson",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d0b0c2bba1b7de05a67/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Fuck_Buttons_Street-Horrrsing.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7573-the-50-best-albums-of-2008/,2008,year,album,19,The Walkmen You &,Me,Gigantic,"You & Me wasn't so much a return to form as it was a reassurance: Even if you didn't love their last couple of records, this album breathes air back into the Walkmen's sound like the wind moving sparks to flame. After floundering while exploring the relatively forgotten corners of Bob Dylan or Harry Nilsson's catalog, the Walkmen now sound just as comfortable fitting on something traditional and unassuming (""Four Provinces"", ""I Lost You"") as the late-night bob-and-weave that's worked for them in the past (the irrepressible ""In the New Year"", the even-better ""The Blue Route""). Whatever winding route the band had to take, on record or elsewhere, to get back to sounding like themselves again, You & Me was worth the journey. --Jason Crock",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d0b13d1975652140448/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Walkmen_You_-Me.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7573-the-50-best-albums-of-2008/,2008,year,album,18,The Mae Shi,HLLLYH,Team Shi,"Left to their own devices after the demise of 5RC, the Mae Shi calmed down enough to make the most gloriously hyper indie rock album of 2008. HLLLYH offers simple, anthemic tunes that up the band's caffeinated giddiness, but the album is still pretty sprawling, filled with frantic Casio beats, unruly noise breaks, ridiculous climaxes, and an 11-minute mash-up of the entire album stuck right in the middle. This infectious mess is tied together by super-enthusiastic, all-together-now singing, used not for harmony or texture, but to make the band's messages louder and more delirious. Lots of those messages are religious-- maybe even evangelical-- but can you blame the Mae Shi for thinking they've seen the light? On HLLLYH, they're definitely speaking in irresistible tongues. --Marc Masters",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d0c13d197565214044a/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Mae_Shi-HLLLYH.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7573-the-50-best-albums-of-2008/,2008,year,album,17,Fucked Up The Chemistry of Common,Life,Matador,"Like their spiritual ancestors on the 1980s SST Records roster, Fucked Up understand that hardcore is not a means to codify punk rock's parameters, but to blow them wide open. In fact, the Toronto group's progression up to this point closely mirrors that of Hüsker Dü. If Hidden World was Fucked Up's Zen Arcade, The Chemistry of Common Life is their New Day Rising, harnessing its predecessor's psychedelicized sprawl into laser-focused ferocity. But unlike Bob Mould or Grant Hart, Fucked Up frontman Damian Abraham (aka Pink Eyes) isn't going to start singing ballads anytime soon. While his band's triple-guitar attack grows evermore grandiose and the Floydian interludes become even more pronounced, Abraham's guttural growl remains wholly unaffected, and when the songs call for harmonies or pop choruses, he farms them out to guests ranging from Brooklyn garage gals the Vivian Girls to Canadian emo pin-up Dallas Green. Back in 2004, Fucked Up released a split-single featuring a cover shot of a 1930s Nazi rally. At the time, it seemed like the sort of crassly provocative gesture you'd expect from a contrarian punk band; aesthetically, it proved to be a harbinger of what was to come: With The Chemistry of Common Life, Fucked Up project extreme ugliness and aggression through a wide-screened Riefenstahlian lens. --Stuart Berman",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d0cd7a71d1ea569d483/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Fucked_Up_The_Chemistry_of_Common-Life.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7573-the-50-best-albums-of-2008/,2008,year,album,16,Vivian Girls Vivian,Girls,Mauled by Tigers/In the Red,"Perhaps most impressive about Vivian Girls' 22-minute debut is how familiar and vital it sounds after only a few months of listening. Credit goes to the band's ace formula: combine the fairly simple components of 1960s girl-group vocals, fuzzy garage rock, and touches of shoegaze; then filter the result through a life listening to Nirvana and Wipers. As such, the record's two finest tracks-- chugging barnburner ""Tell the World"" and the shambling doo-wop ballad ""Where Do You Run To""-- seemed to have been unearthed rather than just recorded. The brightest (and most deserving) stars of this year's welcome noise-pop revival, Vivian Girls stood at the fore of a quasi-movement that saw a return to relevance for the Slumberland imprint and found aesthetic cousins Times New Viking, Crystal Stilts, and Sic Alps forcing melody through self-constructed haze. But Vivian Girls has that and so much more: Ten killer tracks without an ounce of fat on them, detached odes to love lost and found, absurd catchiness, and three rad chicks rocking out with the canon on their side. --Joe Colly",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d0cc0084474cd0c7c12/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Vivian_Girls_Vivian-Girls.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7573-the-50-best-albums-of-2008/,2008,year,album,15,Crystal Castles Crystal,Castles,Last Gang,"Crystal Castles aren't exactly easy to like. Thanks to being on the wrong side of a pair of fair use controversies this year, they can seem like artists who willfully misread the long-outmoded tenants of punk as justification for their own entitlement. Moreover their live show has to be one of the most shambolic experiences going; if 45 minutes of Alice Glass's bratty squeals and painfully self-aware tantrums over top of otherwise great songs is your idea of a good time, donate some emo genes, cause you're in surplus. And yet…this record. The bastard child of the Knife's Silent Shout and Simian Mobile Disco's Attack Decay Sustain Release, it fused together the spangliest portions of electronic music's nascent 8-bit scene with vinegary attitude, dirty basslines, and some of the freshest programming work this side of Max Tundra. ""Courtship Dating""! ""Untrust Us""! ""Air War""! For pretty much a whole year, this goddamned thing was tough to deny, even when it felt like the people who made it weren't. --Mark Pytlik",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d0d13d197565214044e/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Crystal_Castles_Crystal-Castles.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7573-the-50-best-albums-of-2008/,2008,year,album,14,Air France No Way,Down,Something in Construction,"The music of Sweden's Air France is pure fantasy, but it's not necessarily escape, and it actually seems to benefit from being approached with a bit of cynicism. Their sound is unapologetically warm and pretty, with tropical beats, smeared harmonies, peppy tempos, and lots of ""sweeteners"" like strings and bongo fills borrowed from other songs. But then there's an undercurrent of longing, often triggered by sampled voices (usually kids, presumably from TV shows and old movies), which somehow manages to transform skepticism into plain old sadness. You start to lament: Why can't life be all teenage dreams and frolics on the shore and fake marimba and heavily reverbed 1980s keyboards? Simple pop tunes, inspired by the likes of Saint Etienne and delivered with a currently fashionable Balearic lilt, wind up leading to a complex knot of feelings. The UK version of No Way Down augments the six songs of the 2008 original with four more from 2007's fantastic On Trade Winds, and having all 10 tracks together in one place turns out to be the way to go: When you listen to one of the EPs on its own, you feel like the strange little beach party is just getting started. --Mark Richardson",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d0d5e6ef95969327fed/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Air_France_No_Way-Down.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7573-the-50-best-albums-of-2008/,2008,year,album,13,Erykah Badu New Amerykah Part One (4th World,War),Motown,"On her latest album, this honey-voiced Earth Mother goes down to the well and comes back pissed-off, knives-out, long-winded, half-stoned-- it's a sign of the times. But if you can't hear past the protest funk, ankh worship, cosmology, 1970s-rooted Afrocentrism, dusty grooves, and other superficial signs that this is a retro album, consider the coda to ""Twinkle"", where a robotic voice recites Howard Beale's televised breakdown from the 1976 film Network and only needs to change ""TV"" to ""flat-screen"" and ""toaster"" to ""microwave oven"" to modernize it for our terrified hearts and minds. In March, Erykah Badu told Blender that ""time is for white people."" I think she was making a joke, but whatever helps her take the longview is fine by me. --Mike Powell",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d0dc0084474cd0c7c18/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Erykah_Badu_New_Amerykah_Part_One_4th_World-War.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7573-the-50-best-albums-of-2008/,2008,year,album,12,Lindstrøm Where You Go I Go,Too,Smalltown Supersound,"The scruffy Norwegian Hans-Peter Lindstrøm might still be better known for his collaborations with Prins Thomas, but he has on his own produced perhaps the most audacious musical statement of 2008. Inspired by the multistage epics from electronic music's past, Where You Go I Go Too nevertheless can't be explained away as a genre experiment. The centerpiece is the titanic, half-hour title track, where heroic Moog swaths meet beachy Balearic techno. The shortest of the three tracks, ""Grand Ideas"", might have sprung from new age composer Jean Michel Jarre's laser harp in 1981, but it would also kill on a contemporary dance floor. Throughout, Where You Go displays patience as it celebrates electronic music's origins in a way far deeper than Lindstrøm's previous disco throwbacks ever could. --Mike Orme",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d0e13d1975652140452/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Lindstrm_Where_You_Go_I_Go-Too.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7573-the-50-best-albums-of-2008/,2008,year,album,11,Lil Wayne Tha Carter,III,Cash Money/Universal,"The morning Tha Carter III's mind-boggling, first-week sales figures went public, 50 Cent called New York City hip-hop station Hot 97, reporting that the album's success had him ""confused."" Of course 50 was confused. Rap stars are supposed to carry themselves in a certain manner: Cool, imperturbable, in control. Back when he was racking up his own mind-boggling sales figures, 50 followed that blueprint. But here's Lil Wayne, in thrall to chaos and digression and his own appetites, chasing whatever idea might cross his syrup-addled synapses. He cackles pure non-sequitur on ""A Milli"", he tells brimstone gutbucket blues stories on ""Playing With Fire"", he rhymes ""yeast infection"" with ""geese erection"" on ""Dr. Carter"". The beats, mirroring their host, veer off in crazy directions: late-1990s NYC Casio thunder on ""You Ain't Got Nuthin"", opulent chopped-up soul on ""Let the Beat Build"", evil circus midgets on ""La La"". Nothing coheres, and even less makes sense. And still, against the odds, the whole sprawling mess resonates as pop with all the joy and immediacy that term ideally implies. End result: The biggest-selling album of 2008, in any genre. We're confused too, but in a good way. --Tom Breihan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d0e5e6ef95969327ff1/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Lil_Wayne_Tha_Carter-III.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7573-the-50-best-albums-of-2008/,2008,year,album,10,DJ/rupture,Uproot,The Agriculture,"When DJ/rupture, aka Jace Clayton, released his brilliant pan-global mix Uproot, he also made available the companion album Uproot: The Ingredients, an unedited collection of the mix's source material. This was a generous move, and a bold one, for it risks allowing the listener backstage to watch the master alchemist at work. Fortunately, Uproot: The Ingredients does more than simply confirm that Clayton owns a well-used passport and an impeccable set of ears; it also provides fresh insight into his distinctive and powerful musical vision. Clayton recognizes global bass culture to be a complex system of interlocking burrows, and on Uproot he revels in exploring as many hidden passageways as possible. Starting primarily with dubstep and ragga sources, Uproot branches outward to reconcile such far-flung pieces as Filastine's jittery ""Hungry Ghost (Instrumental)"" and Ekkehard Ehlers' elegiac ""Plays John Cassavetes"". And, particularly after hearing The Ingredients, it is a marvel to witness how intuitively Clayton allows the mix's various rhythms and displaced vocals to linger and echo back on one another, as if his only role is to expose all those secret links and shared roots that have been buried in plain sight all along. --Matthew Murphy",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d0f13d1975652140454/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/DJrupture-Uproot.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7573-the-50-best-albums-of-2008/,2008,year,album,9,Hercules and Love Affair Hercules and Love,Affair,DFA/Mute,"You've read it all over: 2008 was a big year for disco. And sure, plenty of decent dance fare over the past year or two copped to an ambivalent glamour and scratched a four-to-the-floor itch. But no one else managed to connect with a greater public than Andrew Butler's Hercules and Love Affair. It didn't hurt that he had Antony Hegarty behind the mic on the record or that the towering Nomi stole the spotlight in shows across the States and Europe. But mainly it was the songs that did it: Co-produced by DFA's Tim Goldsworthy, Butler's tunes laid out a kind of alternate history of pop music, where the marginalized, forgotten talents of the late 1980s and early 90s were still at work on ideas for the decade about to break. Recreating the music you love is never an easy thing; to do it in a way that so viscerally evokes the lost era that inspired it is even harder. Whatever might be said of NYC dance culture in 2008, Hercules and Love Affair dreamed it like no other. --Philip Sherburne",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d0f13d1975652140456/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Hercules_and_Love_Affair_Hercules_and_Love-Affair.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7573-the-50-best-albums-of-2008/,2008,year,album,8,M83,Saturdays=Youth,Mute,"The cover of Saturdays=Youth features a composite of stock characters from films released in M83's Anthony Gonzalez early childhood-- so there appears to be a disconnect between the album's source image and his liner-note claim that it's a tribute to his wild teenage years. But Saturdays is every bit as much about a time frame as a frame of mind, and what makes Gonzalez' fourth LP his finest is how the former is rendered with honesty instead of irony and the latter with positivity instead of angst. Forget the shoegaze tag M83 is too often pinned with-- the irrepressible hormones of prom years are almost rendered in spectral, skyward tones on twin peaks ""Kim & Jessie"" and ""We Own the Sky"". On the whole, Saturdays is a pristine, inhabitable universe whose emotions can match the enormity of its sonics, penetrable any time you wish to see the movies of your dreams with Gonzalez's cast of irrepressible day trippers. --Ian Cohen",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d0f13d1975652140458/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/M83-SaturdaysYouth.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7573-the-50-best-albums-of-2008/,2008,year,album,7,Vampire Weekend Vampire,Weekend,XL,"This record was officially released in January, but at this point it seems like we've had it-- and the hot-fuss backlash that accompanied it-- for years. Sure, VW's songs got a lot of praise quickly-- these things happen in the internet age, usually to far less deserving bands. They dress like the early Talking Heads or Wes Anderson characters, but few people display righteous anger toward the early Talking Heads or Wes Anderson characters. They went to an Ivy League school but is that actually a negative anywhere outside a Sarah Palin rally? OK, there's a whiff of them being just your little brother's music-- more listenable than capital-I important-- but actually getting pissy over the existence of VW seems about as reasonable as getting out the torches and pitchforks over, say, a (superior version of) Squeeze or Madness or Supergrass. In a time when other populist groups like Spoon, Arcade Fire, and the Hold Steady-- potential radio staples at certain points in rock history-- have commercial ceilings somewhere between ""an appearance on 'SNL'"" and ""gold record,"" I can't find myself rooting against Vampire Weekend's relative success. At the end of the day, all they've done is craft an album of crisp, endlessly replayable guitar pop songs with expressive, detail-heavy lyrics and charming music that serves as a welcome antidote to today's more overly compressed sounds. How dare they. --Scott Plagenhoef",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d1013d197565214045a/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Vampire_Weekend_Vampire-Weekend.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7573-the-50-best-albums-of-2008/,2008,year,album,6,TV on the Radio Dear,Science,4AD/Interscope,"When much of the critical conversation this year focused on Brooklyn's nü-primitivism coldly capitalizing on globalism, TVOTR proved that the borough can give us so much more than Keffiyeh scarves. TVOTR mixed Princely falsettos and handclaps rooted in African-American churches with dissonant washes of feedback and sounds cribbed from ""I Wanna Be Sedated""; hell, ""Family Tree"" references slavery and lynching while copping its aristocratic aural style from Coldplay. Lest we forget that the group is still a bunch of boho weirdoes, though, there's the unapologetically strange video for ""Golden Age"": with its brass-aided angelic chorus emerging triumphantly from the robotic funk of the verses, it was the closest thing 2008 pop had to Rapture. On that note, one last sigh of relief that ""Golden"" in December isn't a sad curio of a nation afraid to embrace difference on November 4, but instead stands as a bona fide fucking anthem going forward. --Eric Harvey",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d10c0084474cd0c7c1c/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/TV_on_the_Radio_Dear-Science.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7573-the-50-best-albums-of-2008/,2008,year,album,5,Deerhunter Microcastle / Weird Era,Cont.,Kranky,"While iPod ads and Hollywood films based around Bishop Allen shows reinforce the idea that there's little difference between mainstream and indie rock, this year, a tale of two redheads redrew the lines in the sand. When Axl Rose found out GN'R's Chinese Democracy leaked, he tried to get his most over-eager fan thrown in jail. But when Deerhunter's Bradford Cox found out his band's third album, Microcastle, was making the P2P rounds some four months before its October street date, his band went about preparing a completely new bonus album, Weird Era Cont., to reward those who waited for a retail release. (Alas, it too would leak early.) While Microcastle cornerstones like the autobahn-bound ""Nothing Ever Happened"" and the atomic doo-wop of ""Twilight at Carbon Lake"" suggest Deerhunter are undergoing a Flaming Lips-like evolution into stately, psych-pop dignitaries, Weird Era Cont. charts a parallel course where Deerhunter break down and mess around with the raw materials-- the lo-fi garage-disco of ""Operations"", the shoegaze overdrive of ""Vox Celeste"", the looped-feedback drones of ""Weird Era""-- that comprise Microcastle's magnificent whole. And yet with the closing ""Cavalry Scars II_Aux Out""-- a 10-minute psych-raga reconstruction of a 90-second Microcastle interlude-- this supplementary album achieves a majesty all its own. --Stuart Berman",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d11c0084474cd0c7c1e/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Deerhunter_Microcastle__Weird_Era-Cont.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7573-the-50-best-albums-of-2008/,2008,year,album,4,Cut Copy In Ghost,Colours,Modular/Interscope,"There was a surprisingly feast-or-famine reaction this year to Cut Copy's In Ghost Colours, an album that on one hand should be a go-to indie dance/pop/rhythm release (see ""Hearts on Fire"", ""Lights and Music"") and on the other is actually closer in spirit to a flat-out gorgeous and uplifting pop record (""Out There on the Ice"", ""So Haunted"", and ""Unforgettable Season""). Our reviewer Mark Pytlik simply yet accurately called In Ghost ""a hard record not to love,"" yet it also had the sense all year of an LP bubbling just under the surface. A corrective, then, that would improve most year-end lists and give In Ghost Colours the profile it deserves: ""Time to Pretend"" excepted, replace all appearances of ""MGMT"" with ""Cut Copy."" At the risk of overloading on navel-gazing, Cut Copy's Pitchfork Music Festival appearance was an accidental metaphor then for the group's year. With the band late from the airport, curiosity seekers, casual observers, and the uninitiated slowly peeled away from the crowd, preferring main stage act Spoon or an early end to the weekend; those who stuck around bottled the tension and anticipation and transformed it into ecstasy when the group finally performed an electrifying three-song set. It was clear that, for many (including yours truly), this was the album of 2008; still ready for its close-up, it's possible that for even more people it will be their album of 2009. --Scott Plagenhoef",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d1113d197565214045c/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Cut_Copy_In_Ghost-Colours.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7573-the-50-best-albums-of-2008/,2008,year,album,3,No Age,Nouns,Sub Pop,"Los Angeles is the least interesting thing about No Age, but it's still the easiest place to start. Harder to put into words is the way Randy Randall and Dean Spunt pack ear-splitting guitar textures, raucous punk energy, and even some memorable little tunes into their first proper album, Nouns. Those same basic ingredients were already present on last year's Weirdo Rippers, a compilation of non-album tracks, but they're more fully integrated this time around, the songs occupying the perfect intersection of grit and accessibility. The first song we heard from the album, ""Sleeper Hold"", still blends those elements best, with fist-pumping choruses, screeching feedback, and a credo that all punk parvenus should have to get carved on their foreheads from now on: ""With passion it's true."" No Age have, by all accounts, established a thriving underground community at the Smell, but for the vast majority of human beings who don't live in a Southern California, their legacy will be Nouns. --Marc Hogan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d110c2bba1b7de05a78/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/No_Age-Nouns.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7573-the-50-best-albums-of-2008/,2008,year,album,2,Portishead,Third,Island,"Musically, no dominant trend or theme emerged in 2008, so it makes a perverse kind of sense that one of its best records came from a band left for dead that emerged out of nowhere with a fragmented take on itself. When Third was originally announced, the prevailing consensus seemed to be that folks were: 1) Happy to have Portishead back, and 2) Skeptical about how their formula would translate in 2008. Turns out, Portishead had long ago shed their skin. Instead of anything resembling noirish, sample-heavy trip-hop, the trio returned with a palette of songs that spanned prettified acoustic folk to gnarly industrial to eerie electronic ballads. Their decade-long attitudinal shift was most dramatically articulated, though, in their production style; where the trio's previous full-lengths were tidy, neatly assembled affairs, the songs on Third -- from the chippy musicianship on opener ""Silence"" to the Joy Division homage ""We Carry On""-- sounded roughshod and bedraggled. Elsewhere, they diversified: The shimmering ""Hunter"" recalled Broadcast at their ghostliest, ""Small""s foggy psychedelia belied a love for early 70s Krautrock, and the ukulele-led ""Deep Water"" wouldn't have been out of place on a Feist record. Meanwhile, the stuttering cacophony of ""Machine Gun"" and devastating ""The Rip"" were two of the tracks of the year. The sound of a band choosing decay over craft, no album leapt out the speakers quite like Third. --Mark Pytlik",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d12eb335119a49f1fdd/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Portishead-Third.jpg
The 50 Best Albums of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7573-the-50-best-albums-of-2008/,2008,year,album,1,Fleet Foxes Sun Giant EP/Fleet,Foxes,Sub Pop,"Listing Fleet Foxes' debut LP and EP may be awkward, but just feels right. They're like two sides of a coin, and equally express the band's mastery of its music, a catchall Americana that takes a wide slice of our popular music's spectrum and pulls it through a reverse prism to create a gorgeous and focused sound of the band's own. The threads of Brian Wilson's intricate coastal pop, Appalachian folk, modern indie rock, Grateful Dead jams, and other influences are masterfully synthesized in the band's harmonies and simply orchestrated but constantly shifting instrumental arrangements. The Sun Giant EP introduces the band to the world with a just plain pretty a cappella harmony passage that lays their pastoral tendencies bare, while later on the disc ""Mykonos"" and ""English House"" show us their muscle and easy way with loose song structures. The lyrics are non-narrative but vivid nonetheless. See the way the Fleet Foxes refrain ""and Michael you would fall and turn the white snow red as strawberries in summertime"" plunges you into the stunning guitar-and-voice counterpoint that blows ""White Winter Hymnal"" wide open. Lead singer Robin Pecknold has a strong, clear voice and knows when to let fly with a drawn-out, impassioned bellow and when to withdraw into the shelter of his bandmates' harmonies. The group shares his sense of dynamics, and Fleet Foxes flows like a river, wild and free but logical, filling what needs to be filled and moving on. --Joe Tangari",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d1213d1975652140460/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Fleet_Foxes_Sun_Giant_EPFleet-Foxes.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,100,"Girls ""Hellhole",Ratrace,True Panther Sounds,"I wanted to pull rank and sneak that Chunklet David Lee Roth vocal track or the Andrew W.K. ""McLaughlin Group"" song in here, but fair is fair. Plus, hell, it already feels like I pulled rank with this low-key release from San Francisco's Girls: almost nobody outside of our office voted for it, i.e. nobody other than the people forced to listen to me talk about and play this bit of casual bedsit glam-pop. Ideally that will change in the new year: With luck, Girls will get big enough for people to complain that female-centric band names (see also: Women, the Girls, Vivian Girls) are the new ""crystal"" or the new superfluous consonant (see: Wavves, Nodzzz, Lovvers). So long as people are listening. --Scott Plagenhoef",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d2ad7a71d1ea569d4b6/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Girls_Hellhole-Ratrace.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,99,"Final Fantasy ""The",Butcher,Blocks Recording Club,"Recorded with the members of Beirut during a series of faux field recordings in Quebec, ""The Butcher"" ripples with samples of bird calls and crickets. Lyrically, it's one of Owen Pallet's strongest songs, conveying a sense of urgency and doom that is pushed along by the gorgeous melodic layers that ride restlessly beneath. But Pallet's startling knack for string arrangements really gives ""The Butcher"" movement, the way the piercing violin line soars over the even disposition of the muscular brass. --Mia Clarke",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d2bd7a71d1ea569d4b8/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Final_Fantasy_The-Butcher.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,98,"The Magnetic Fields ""The Nun's",Litany,Nonesuch,"A great song about longing to be perceived as a sexual being, and an even better joke, because Stephin Merritt knows how ludicrous that longing can be. The title is the omitted detail that makes the lyric's meaning fall into place; the melody is as severe and formal as a nun's cloth, but the arrangement is interested in an entirely different Jesus and Mary. The escalating fantasies of each verse have little circumstantial barbs built into them (""I want to be a brothel worker/ I've always been treated like one""), and the last one ends by abruptly stripping singer Shirley Simms' voice naked in front of her audience. Also worth finding: the solo ukulele-accompanied version Merritt sings himself, on which he hilariously phrases ""learn S and M and all those gay tricks"" as if M and S were unrelated concepts. --Douglas Wolk",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d2b13d1975652140484/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Magnetic_Fields_The_Nuns-Litany.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,97,"Buraka Som Sistema [ft. M.I.A. and DJ Znobia] ""Sound of",Kuduro, Enchufada/ Sony BMG,"Portuguese collective Buraka Som Sistema play kuduro, an Angolan dance music creole built out of baile funk beats and abandoned rave motifs: a junkyard sound that builds up such steam you fear it might shake itself to bits. On this calling-card track M.I.A. acts the carny, yelling ""All aboard!"" and setting the ride spinning as MCs Saborosa and Puto Prata spit boneshaking consonants over a spring-loaded beat. Around them hoots, horns, keyboards, and bird calls conjure a spirit of joyful mayhem. M.I.A.'s endorsement gives you a reference point for Buraka's guerrilla techno, but the track's breakneck appeal would easily survive her absence. --Tom Ewing",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d2c13d1975652140486/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Buraka_Som_Sistema_ft_MIA_and_DJ_Znobia_Sound_of-Kuduro.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,95,"Friendly Fires [ft. Au Revoir Simone] ""Paris (Aeroplane",Remix),XL,"Pop songs are full of promises, most propped up by little more than a few chords and a nice melody. UK phenoms Friendly Fires go one step further with ""Paris"": Their ""I promise"" gets a boost from the very contemporary go-getter mantra that immediately follows, ""I'm on it."" And this remix does them one better by involving an actual Aeroplane-- certainly one way to get to Paris-- and, well, pretty much eliminating the Friendly Fires guys from the equation all together by relinquishing their verse parts to the original track's chorus girls Au Revoir Simone (hey that's French!). Even if all this fails to convince you that Friendly Fires will one day live with you in Paris and command the stars to shine on your behalf, at least you got a sweet, beat-accented eight-minute ride out of the deal. --Matthew Solarski",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d2c0c2bba1b7de05aac/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Friendly_Fires_ft_Au_Revoir_Simone_Paris_Aeroplane-Remix.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,94,"WHY? ""Fatalist",Palmistry,Anticon,"At first blush, ""Fatalist Palmistry"" feels like the perfect early spring jam. Its confident jangle and generous bounce guide it through warm harmonies and reassuring piano, the sound of a wide grin in a new car, the top down and the sun shining. As blissful as these four minutes feel, though, they're the torturous culmination of Yoni Wolf's cyclical neuroses. He sweats death even as he bemoans life even as he celebrates not being dead yet. He confesses maudlin feelings for a married woman even as he admits his devotion is a limited-time offer even as he proclaims admiration in the eternal: ""I'm lucky to be under/ The same sky that held/ The exhale from your first breath."" It's difficult hearing any writer toil through this sort of detailed torture on tape. Thanks to the song's survivalist glow, though, listening in is a joy. --Grayson Currin",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d2dc0084474cd0c7c4b/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/WHY_Fatalist-Palmistry.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,93,"Atlas Sound ""River",Card,Kranky,"Inspired by a Puerto Rican fable about a boy who falls in love with his own reflection after gazing into a river and ends up drowning as a result, ""River Card"" was the hidden gem on Atlas Sound's debut album, Let the Blind Lead Those That See But Cannot Feel. Shimmering with longing and carried by a percussive pulse that feels like a heartbeat, it took a couple of listens before revealing itself as a high point in Bradford Cox's songwriting. The track gently swells with a rising tension that never dissipates, but expands with an ambient airiness that feels as deep and clear as the river Cox describes. --Mia Clarke",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d2d13d197565214048a/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Atlas_Sound_River-Card.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,92,"Born Ruffians ""I Need a Life (Four Tet",Remix),Warp,"Though Kieran Hebdan's reimagining of ""I Need a Life"" by Toronto's Born Ruffians abandoned that song's indie rock pedigree for vistas much more expansive, it still bottled the Red, Yellow & Blue single's grown-up-but-still-wild-haired vitality. Hebdan conjures serious vocal abracadabra from Born Ruffians' multi-tracked vocals, the shouting and jounce of the original all but lost in a featherbed of synths, keys, and kick drum. --David Bevan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d2ec0084474cd0c7c4f/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Born_Ruffians_I_Need_a_Life_Four_Tet-Remix.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,91,"Jamie Lidell ""All I Wanna",Do,Warp,"When Jamie Lidell rolled his Soul Man dice this time, out came ""Sam Cooke Ballad."" Like an idyllic 1950s prom date, the Warp throwback is ""swallowing the sky so there'd be nothing to fall on you"" as plucked bass gently bounces off swirling keyboards. But while the song may seem like an impressive ""Mad Men"" jingle at first, its sentiment is skewed a little to fit our modern world. Cooke's best slow jams-- ""You Send Me"", ""Cupid"", ""Nothing Can Change This Love""-- proposed a romantic love that's eternal, unwavering, and sublime; Lidell isn't as starry-eyed. ""There's really no such thing as an endless night,"" he admits. ""So let's make a little magic just to put things right."" All he wants is something more than a one-night stand, but less than a retirement home in Boca-- a cupid with his feet on the ground. --Ryan Dombal",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d2f0c2bba1b7de05ab0/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Jamie_Lidell_All_I_Wanna-Do.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,90,"Sic Alps ""Message From the",Law,Animal Disguise,"San Francisco duo Sic Alps made the leap from primitive noisemakers to semi-pro songwriters in the blink of an eye. Their 2006 debut album was a stumbling wreck of overmodulated, blues-damaged debris, but by last year they had become equally capable of Nuggets-style gems. ""Message From the Law"", a 12"" B-side compiled on A Long Way to a Shortcut, is their shiniest stone yet, a fuzzy garage ditty built around bouncy chords, a finger-snapping beat belted out on trashcan drums, and the faded croon of Mike Donovan. It also has a skewed, loose edge that only an ex-noise band could muster, and while Sic Alps are still given to moments of dodgy confusion, their newfound clarity could be their cleverest trick yet. --Marc Masters",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d2f13d197565214048c/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Sic_Alps_Message_From_the-Law.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,89,"Ponytail ""Celebrate the Body Electric (It Came From an",Angel),We Are Free,"At first glance, the smiley, casualwear-clad Ponytail seem mild-mannered, but when it comes time for their ever-more-impressive feats of derring-do, their transformation time's little more than a count-off. And ""Celebrate the Body Electric"" is bona fide geek-to-superhero music, the surefooted sound of bottled-up rage exploding into banshee squeals and echoing guitars. It's easy to picture it underpinning some Peter Parker type's refusal to hand over the milk-money; or, for more practical application, the blast-off point of their revelatory live shows. ""Away we go now,"" Molly Siegel seems to be chanting as the tune catapults itself into the stratosphere, and with that, they're fucking off. --Paul Thompson",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d300c2bba1b7de05ab4/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Ponytail_Celebrate_the_Body_Electric_It_Came_From_an-Angel.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,88,"Low Motion Disco ""Things Are Gonna Get",Easier,Eskimo,"The Five Stairsteps' ""O-o-h Child"" is an old song about future days. Low Motion Disco's red-cheeked edit, ""Things Are Gonna Get Easier"", is instead a perfect soundtrack for our idealized present, at a time when hope actually seems totally natural. Revisit your pre-election, bailout-weighted October headspace, however, and remind yourself how absolutely necessary this song was in 2008. It's such an easy high that you wonder if the sort of margarine-spread treatment that LMD employ couldn't be used on every classic soul song. Go ahead: spend winter 2009 dreaming on a 17-minute ambient version of ""I Call It Pretty Music But the Old People Call It the Blues"". --Andrew Gaerig",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d30eb335119a49f2019/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Low_Motion_Disco_Things_Are_Gonna_Get-Easier.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,87,The Veronicas,Untouched,Sire,"From its opening, pathos-laden synthetic strings, ""Untouched"" wears its artificial heart on its sleeve. Teen-pop duo the Veronicas verge on replicant-status here, chanting at lightning speed through a tongue-twisting account of joylessly insatiable desire. Musically, too, there is no satisfaction: With its brisk, stiff beats, moody guitar, and pseudo-gothic seriousness, ""Untouched"" is pop at its most totalitarian, demanding submission but indifferent to your enjoyment. Best of all is the high-pitched, melodramatic chorus-- ABBA-like in its touching simplicity and grimly formal perfection. ""Untouched"" literalizes the put-down ""manufactured pop"": this is strictly party music by and for flawless, heartless robots. --Tim Finney",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d300c2bba1b7de05ab6/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Veronicas-Untouched.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,86,"Los Campesinos! ""Sweet Dreams, Sweet",Cheeks,Wichita/Arts & Crafts,"""Any idea..."" e-mailed an editor in the summer of 2007 after seeing Los Campesinos!, ""...what that 'one vote for yes, two votes for no' LC! song is?"" It's ""one blink for yes, two blinks for no,"" and the song was ""Sweet Dreams, Sweet Cheeks"", from a 2006 demo available on the Welsh septet's MySpace. Like last year's #41 track, ""You! Me! Dancing!"", ""Sweet Dreams, Sweet Cheeks"" was an unmistakable indie hit from first listen-- LC! closed shows with it long before all but the most LC!-like (read: obsessive) audience members would've recognized it. On 2008's Hold on Now, Youngster..., producer Dave Newfeld (Broken Social Scene) has its youthful desperation spilling over all the more, a superabundance of shouts and scraggly guitar. The lyrics are gloriously elliptical-- Malkmus-gone-emo. As online music gets increasingly corporatized, indie rock appears to be reassuming the marginal place it held in the old brick-and-mortar economy; if so, a subculture crashes and burns magnificently here. --Marc Hogan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d31c0084474cd0c7c57/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Los_Campesinos_Sweet_Dreams_Sweet-Cheeks.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,85,"Osborne ""16th",Stage,Spectral Sound,"In his review of Todd Osborn's almost self-titled romp down electronic music's memory lane, Andy Battaglia correctly observes that the synth riff that drives opener ""16th Stage"" sounds a whole lot like the ""Doogie Howser"" theme. This is the kind of celebration Osborn likely envisioned when he came up with the idea of a record that meditates on the history of house music. The keyboard first comes off as cold and distant, but the song's weary hook persists over a beat and murmured vocals, warming into a fondly remembered moment of nostalgia. --Mike Orme",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d3113d1975652140492/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Osborne_16th-Stage.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,84,Beach House,Gila,Carpark,"If you've never experienced a narco-haze, here's your chance to do it by proxy. In Victoria Legrand's sleepy world, the word ""Gila"" has about 17 syllables, and she spends the almost whole second half of the song finding different ways to draw it out into melodic ribbons. Alex Scally's guitar, meanwhile, winds like a sepia-toned serpent through the dry lakebed of organ and muffled drums that provides the song's foundation. This is Beach House during the off-season, boarded up and empty, but ringing with memories of warmth and activity. --Joe Tangari",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d32d7a71d1ea569d4ca/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Beach_House-Gila.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,83,"Titus Andronicus ""Upon Viewing Brueghel's 'Landscape With the Fall of",Icarus',Troubleman Unlimited,"Patrick Stickles is proving himself one of rock's great unreliable narrators, steering his alternately confident and weary Titus Andronicus through all of the existential dread at the heart of the sprawling The Airing of Grievances. ""Brueghel's"" is the record's literal centerpiece and arguably the tune from which all the others' lyrical threads unfurl. More than that, though, it's the one track on the album that sounds like it could break loose and go on forever, careening off the back of the spiny guitar line that runs through its second half and Stickles' tale of life unrequited. ""I was born into self-actualization,"" he imparts at the song's beginning with what sounds like a smirk, and when the tune's beery ballast crashes into his words about god and death and a Saturday night, you realize he almost means it. These young punks seem to be steering through the days with just as much of a clue as the rest of us, but on ""Brueghel's"", they've set quite a backdrop for getting derailed. --Paul Thompson",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d320c2bba1b7de05abb/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Titus_Andronicus_Upon_Viewing_Brueghels_Landscape_With_the_Fall_of-Icarus.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,82,"Solange ""Sandcastle",Disco,Music World/Geffen,"Solange wants badly to convince us of her disco hipness, but ""Sandcastle Disco""'s video looks like a cross between Michel Gondry and those Hewlett Packard ""hands"" commercials, both of which seem like more fitting cultural touchstones for Solange than late-period Diana Ross anyway. For an artist (still) looking for a big-moment star turn, Solange works within herself on ""Sandcastle Disco"", and her honey-lipped restraint is the strongest evidence yet that Solange is more permanent than her titular featherweight palaces. There's nothing wrong with big sis' rapturous declaration, ""If you like it you should've put a ring on it,"" but Solange seems to understand that our relationship with her is still in the ""if you like it"" phase. So she sings soft and avoids uncouth innuendo, you know, keeps things ladylike. It's all very sweet. --Andrew Gaerig",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d330c2bba1b7de05abd/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Solange_Sandcastle-Disco.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,81,"Love Is All ""Wishing",Well,What's Your Rupture?,"Witchcraft, tarot cards, wishing wells-- what will it take to help Josephine Olausson find that one thing that's in her band's name?? ""Wishing Well"" doesn't provide any explicit answers, but it does turn the search into an exhilaratingly fizzy lo-fi pop shout-along that ranks as A Hundred Things Keep Me Up at Night's high point. That most Love Is All songs sound like they were recorded in a tin can is part of the act's charm; this one, however, could have been laid to tape inside a confetti-loaded firecracker about to go BOOM. And if the lyrics are all desperation, the music is all hope and excitement; we straight up dare you to get that main melody out of your head. --Matthew Solarksi",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d330c2bba1b7de05abf/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Love_Is_All_Wishing-Well.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,80,"The Bug [ft. Warrior Queen] ""Poison",Dart,Ninja Tune,"Like all of the best productions by the Bug, aka Kevin Martin, ""Poison Dart"" seems broadcast from some post-apocalyptic future where little of the urban landscape remains intact but somehow dancehall culture has managed to survive and flourish. Admittedly, this impression is fuelled in part by the ""Poison Dart"" video, which envisions a Mad Max-style nomadic soundsystem unit, with Warrior Queen's ferocious vocals delivered via the mouthpiece of a strange hovering droid. Even without these visuals, however, Martin summons a dystopian shitstorm with his blown-out beats, shuddering bass, and distorted electronic squeals. Over the commotion Warrior Queen takes aim at those woebegotten fools who have been inexplicably deluded into believing her to be soft, sounding for all the world like a woman ready to withstand anything that Armageddon might throw at her.. --Matthew Murphy",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d340c2bba1b7de05ac1/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Bug_ft_Warrior_Queen_Poison-Dart.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,79,"Ida Maria ""Oh My",God,Waterfall/RCA,"In demo form, ""Oh My God"" has been kicking around Norwegian radio and Ida Maria's MySpace page since 2007, but that doesn't mean the song can't kick ass in '08. Rolling through the year collecting new converts, the retooled album version-- from her debut Fortress Round My Heart -- loses the rawness of the original as well as the boy-girl vocals with guitarist Stefan Törnby, but it gains a new and almost impossible sense of urgency from the shakier guitars, taunting bass, bashing drums, and Ida Maria Sivertsen's world-swallowing vocals and self-destructive lyrics. ""You think I'm in control,"" she sneers, hardly asking a question but assuming your doubt. ""You think it's all for fun."" She convinces us otherwise. Good god. --Stephen M. Deusner",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d340c2bba1b7de05ac3/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Ida_Maria_Oh_My-God.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,78,"Frightened Rabbit ""The Modern",Leper,Fat Cat,"Driving chords propelling ever forward towards cathartic crescendo. A sprightly, fiddle-like counter-melody. Yearning vocals that aim heavenward: Most of the time, these are the ingredients for an uplifting anthem, the kind of thing fans pack stadiums to sing along to with their arms around each other. With different lyrics, ""The Modern Leper"" could have the potential to turn the Scots in Frightened Rabbit into Coldplay, or at least Snow Patrol. But this is not a happy tune. Oh no. It's wretched. Lead Rabbit Scott Hutchison compares emotional debilitation (possibly alcohol-induced) with physical handicap, wondering how the hell anyone could ever love him: ""Is that you in front of me/ Coming back for even more of exactly the same/ You must be a masochist/ To love a modern leper on his last leg."" No, Scott, we aren't masochists. We're just seduced by the song. --Amy Phillips",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d34d7a71d1ea569d4cf/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Frightened_Rabbit_The_Modern-Leper.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,77,"Telepathe ""I Can't Stand",It,Rare Book Room,"Telepathe's contribution to Living Bridge, the inaugural release from the in-house label of Brooklyn's Rare Book Room studios, is typical of that stellar 2xCD compilation-- subtle, restrained, and sneakily hypnotic. Marching to a slow, rolling beat, ""I Can't Stand It"" builds momentum through quiet persistence, floating and humming until it gathers into a dense cloud of shimmering guitar and purring vocals. It's tempting to call the song ethereal-- it wouldn't sound out of place on an old 4AD collection-- but Telepathe inject it with too much blood and guts. ""I Can't Stand It"" may drift, but it's not made of air-- inside its entrancing haze lies thick, thoughtful sound. --Marc Masters",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d355e6ef9596932802d/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Telepathe_I_Cant_Stand-It.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,76,"Justice ""DVNO (Radio",Edit),Ed Banger/Because,"This song started as a fairly inert cut on last year's † : its foot-dragging half-strut came close to fulfilling some kind of funk-pop promise, but it lacked one important thing-- energy. A solution came in the radio edit of ""DVNO"", which tweaked the song's tempo and pitch, restructured the backing track to heighten the arrogant thrill of Mehdi Pinson's preening vocals, and turned a lurching also-ran into manic, twitchy disco that sounded like the ideal haughty counterpoint to the adolescent glee of ""D.A.N.C.E."". The lyrics needle the exclusivity of certain dance clubs-- Xavier de Rosnay derived the title from El Divino-- so it's fitting the chorus plays out against a muffled bassline that sounds like the top-notch soundsystem of a ""enforced and fashionable"" dress-code club you're standing outside because you weren't invited. How else to react but to protest your exclusion from the list: ""Don't need to ask my name to figure out how cool I am."" --Nate Patrin",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d36d7a71d1ea569d4d1/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Justice_DVNO_Radio-Edit.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,75,"Little Boots ""Stuck on",Repeat,IAMSOUND,"Following in the tradition of the finest meta-pop, ""Stuck on Repeat"" is an addictive groove about being addicted to the groove...and addicted to love. Romantic obsession is a broken record in the sleek disco world populated by Victoria Hesketh (aka Little Boots) and producer Joe Goddard of Hot Chip-- a sentiment that can surely be understood by anybody who ever spent way too much time refreshing a crush's Facebook page over and over again. But real-life codependence isn't anywhere near as sexy as the blood-pumping throb (with sleighbell accents!) that anchors this immaculately constructed song, or the way that Hesketh's light-headed vocals swim around in the heavenly, beat-free middle section before being sucked back into the vortex. If it was, we'd all be doomed. --Amy Phillips",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d365e6ef95969328031/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Little_Boots_Stuck_on-Repeat.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,74,"Wale ""The",Kramer,self-released,"MP3: Wale: ""The Kramer"" If the real problem in America is class rather than race, why I am I wondering if my editor will censor the word ""nigger""? If it's class, why did people laugh when Michael Richards shouted, ""Fifty years ago they'd have you upside down with a fucking fork up your ass"" at a black audience member during a stand-up routine, but whisper ""oh my god"" when, seconds later, he shouted, ""He's a nigger. A nigger. Look at the nigger ""? ""I'm not tryna be conscious,"" Wale raps, after Richards's rant fades. No, he's too self-aware and market-savvy to abort his career by being conscious. ""Conscious"" is code for ""uppity."" Tone it down or leave it to Bono. ""Nigger"" used to mean one thing. Now it means too much. ""P say that I should stop saying nigga, but if I did, what would be the difference?/ I'd still be a nigga."" This is the trap. ""The Kramer"" doesn't attempt healing; documenting the damage is hard enough. --Mike Powell",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d37c0084474cd0c7c60/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Wale_The-Kramer.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,73,Goldfrapp,A&E,Mute,"Having recently conquered the world, Alison Goldfrapp decided to grow a heart. While I'm sure hawking soda and cellphones must have had its fleeting appeal, Goldfrapp and her partner Will Gregory changed gears after the overcharged, Grammy-nominated million-seller Supernature by releasing this year's introspective Seventh Tree. On ""A&E"", the album's best ballad, electronic treatments only threaten the dark edges of the song, building an increasing pulse to the crescendo of the bridge. Unlike previous Goldfrapp hits, which gussy up the vampy singer in an aggressive sexuality, ""A&E"" focuses on vulnerability: longing for someone gone, wondering whether they're thinking of her, taking pills, feeling surrounded by her own oppressive presence, lamenting the duality of an artist/entertainer. When Goldfrapp sings ""It's a blue, bright blue Saturday,"" she's not just chatting about the weather, she's sharing feelings once kept hidden behind her hypersexuality. --Mike Orme",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d37c0084474cd0c7c62/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Goldfrapp-AE.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,72,"Fleet Foxes ""Blue Ridge",Mountains,Sub Pop,"Maybe more than any other band in operation, Seattle's Fleet Foxes are uncannily predisposed to singing about mountains: With its ghostly opening and perfect little Fender Rhodes riff, ""Blue Ridge Mountains"" feels ancient and huge, like it tumbled down from the top of the range and rolled straight into Sub Pop's front office. The atmospherics are so convincing-- and frontman Robin Pecknold's high, wearied vocals so effortless-- that when Pecknold mews the phrase ""I heard that you missed your connecting flight"" it feels genuinely anomalous: It's hard to imagine that Fleet Foxes and commercial airlines even exist in the same dimension. --Amanda Petrusich",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d38d7a71d1ea569d4d4/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Fleet_Foxes_Blue_Ridge-Mountains.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,71,Sigur Rós,Gobbledigook,XL,"Since the late 1990s, Sigur Rós have dutifully fielded inquiries about Hopelandic, the googly, wheezing non-language favored by frontman Jonsi Por Birgisson; ""Gobbledigook"" feels like a tongue-in-cheek refutation-- in both spirit and name-- of the band's longstanding reputation for obtuseness. Built around an acoustic guitar riff (which, incidentally, could have been snatched from the Dave Matthews Band's ""Grey Street"") and nervous, foot-stomping percussion, ""Gobbledigook"" is the band's most blithe, frolicsome cut to date, an invitation to bounce around the room instead of huddling in front of the stereo. Sigur Rós haven't sacrificed any of their trademark grandeur-- even ""Gobbledigook"" feels epic in its own way-- but they have become a little more playful. --Amanda Petrusich",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d38eb335119a49f2026/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Sigur_Rs-Gobbledigook.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,70,"Rihanna ""Don't Stop the",Music,Def Jam,"Thanks to its relentless build (this would be a bear to sing without overdubs-- there's barely space to take a breath) and expertly filtered scrapheap psy-trance amazingness, ""Don't Stop the Music"" probably would have been a hit in its own right, but its real masterstroke is its sneaky slipstreaming of the ""mammasaymammasaw"" bit from Michael Jackson's ""Wanna Be Starting Something"". Was there a more inspired and inexplicably happy-making sample in any other mainstream pop song this year? All in all, it helped make this one of Rihanna's finest singles-- high praise, even in her young career. --Mark Pytlik",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d39c0084474cd0c7c66/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Rihanna_Dont_Stop_the-Music.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,69,"Portishead ""The",Rip,Island,"""The Rip"" seems to represent anything seductive and annihilating-- an ocean's undertow, psychological breakdown, destructive relationship, drugs, death (R.I.P. is, after all, the final rip). Recognizing a kinship in sound and sentiment, Radiohead covered the ominous dirge in concert this year. But ultimately, this is pure Portishead: Who better suited than the simultaneously cool and quavering Beth Gibbons to deliver these portentous opening lines ""She walks in the room/ Centered and tall/ Hesitates once more"" and still manage to avoid melodrama? Or carry on so elegantly after synthetic arpeggios, in a gutting seismic shift midway through the track, devour their guitar counterparts? In a(nother) year when many young bands thrifted decades-old material with déjà-vu results, the Bristol trip-hop vets were among the very few making music that sounded both right-now and 10-years-hence. --Amy Granzin",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d39d7a71d1ea569d4d6/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Portishead_The-Rip.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,68,Four Tet,Ribbons,Domino,"Four Tet has always skirted the periphery of techno, but he finally jumped into the ring in 2008-- sort of. ""Ribbons"" feels more inspired by minimal techno than of a piece with it, and while I tend to remember good minimal techno tracks as evolving wholes, I think of exactly one thing when I think of ""Ribbons"". It's not the abbreviated loop slithering in the background. It's not the metastasizing percussion. It's not even the splashy theme that dominates the back half. It's that one perfect sound, a pearly trill that gives the song its mojo. Aware that he's locked onto a sublime moment, Kieran Hebdan rides it hard through enthusiastic variations-- loud and soft, fast and slow, blossoming fully and pulling up short-- and it's goosebumpy every time. --Brian Howe",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d395e6ef95969328034/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Four_Tet-Ribbons.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,67,"Young Jeezy [ft. Kanye West] ""Put",On,Def Jam,"If ""Put On"" was just a Young Jeezy track, it'd already be the best Jeezy track since at least ""Hypnotize"". Jeezy snarls hard but brings a newfound sense of style and wit to a monolithic synthetic boom from producer Drumma Boy: ""Inside fishsticks, outside tartar sauce/ Pocketful of celery, imagine what she telling me."" But then, at the 2:52 mark, Kanye shows up in full AutoTune robo-mode, moaning damaged, paranoid self-pity out of nowhere: ""You can ask Big Homey, man the top so lonely/ I'm so lonely."" It's a neck-snapping about-face, Jeezy's chest-thumping self-aggrandizement into Kanye's seething depression. But when ""Put On"" sinks in, they sound like opposite sides of the same coin: The conjoined feelings of exhilaration and doubt that come when you finally, against odds, make something of yourself. And in a car with decent speakers, this little meditation on duality sounds like the fucking apocalypse. --Tom Breihan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d3a13d19756521404a3/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Young_Jeezy_ft_Kanye_West_Put-On.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,66,"Lykke Li ""Dance, Dance,",Dance,LL/Atlantic,"Suggesting something can be so much more effective than coming right out and saying it. On this Youth Novels single Lykke Li uses movement to overcome her shyness and compensate for inability to explain herself. ""Having trouble telling how I feel,"" she sings, ""But I can dance, dance, dance."" The song's music is equally understated and demure: a sliding bassline on an acoustic guitar, some mumbling sax, eventually a few backing voices to fill in the spaces. It builds, but only a little, and even at its peak it's a long way from abandon. For a while this year I kept hoping that ""Dance, Dance, Dance"" would get a massive remix, something that gave the hypnotic repetition and Li's purring coo the surging beat they deserved. But eventually I realized that the low-key production is a virtue. Your mind fills in everything that's not there, which further reinforces the song's focus on subtle communication: ""When I'm shaking my hips, look for the swing/ The words are written in the air."" --Mark Richardson",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d3bd7a71d1ea569d4d8/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Lykke_Li_Dance_Dance-Dance.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,65,"Max Tundra ""Which",Song,Domino,"Normally I wouldn't gravitate towards a song that features a line like ""hopefully she'll be there when my U.S. tour is through,"" because usually it's a red flag that you're dealing with a narcissistic artist douche who can't understand why all women can't be at his beck and call. However, Max Tundra mastermind Ben Jacobs is far too neurotic and self-critical to be painted with that brush, and ""Which Song"" ends up being an affecting portrait of romantic malady. Jacobs' always-jittery music serves as an especially perfect complement to his lyrical ball of confusion, reflecting not only indecision but also his general charm in its brightly kinetic synth melodies. Max Tundra's sonics are sometimes unabashed in their cheesy cheerfulness, giving you the sense that a date with Jacobs would involve watching a lot of Saturday-morning cartoons. In which case, she ought to be waiting when he comes home from the road. --Joshua Love",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d3b0c2bba1b7de05ad1/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Max_Tundra_Which-Song.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,64,"The Whitest Boy Alive ""Golden Cage (Fred Falke",Remix),Modular,"The original 2006 version of ""Golden Cage"" was a nice, low-key piece of bummer disco, with Erlend Øye providing the wistful, murmuring vocals that dance-music enthusiasts have appreciated since his appearance on Röyksopp's ""Remind Me"". But just like that track's remix by Someone Else, where a sharp jolt of electro-house put that lonely voice into even sharper relief, Fred Falke's transformation of ""Golden Cage"" into gleaming, pristine synth-pop finds a way to make Øye's warmth even deeper. When he sings ""so of course I miss you and I miss you bad"" over Falke's production-- replete with a glowing Fender Rhodes, dubbed-out shards of Øye's minimalist-Nile Rodgers guitar line, and a melodic synth hook that circa-83 Jellybean Benitez would envy-- a lyric that originated as a resigned, moping sigh becomes one of the most affecting pleas of the year. --Nate Patrin",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d3c5e6ef95969328036/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Whitest_Boy_Alive_Golden_Cage_Fred_Falke-Remix.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,63,The Very Best,Kamphopo,Ghettopop/Green Owl,"Architecture in Helsinki's ""Heart It Races"" was a song many of us enjoyed a good deal upon its release in 2007, but it's remarkable how much Esau Mwamwaya and Radioclit's ""Kamphopo""-- constructed atop that track's instrumental-- utterly shatters the original, rendering it almost child-like in comparison. But ""Heart"" provides the ideal canvas for this team to work with, and in between its clattering percussion, and buzzing, rapid-fire bass, it leaves plenty of blank space, so Radioclit's Johan Karlberg and Etienne Tron don't need to alter it much-- wisely they mostly step aside to allow Mwamwaya room to paint his stirring vocals. The singer rides the beat with ease, shifting tempo on a dime and arcing his cadence to match the timbre of the prevalent steel drum. --Joe Colly",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d3ceb335119a49f202e/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Very_Best-Kamphopo.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,62,The Tough Alliance,Lucky,Sincerely Yours,"MP3:__ The Tough Alliance: ""Lucky"" A B-Side on their ""Neo Violence"" single that began percolating back in April, ""Lucky"" saw Sweden's Tough Alliance finding traces of their own pop DNA in the deliciously obvious. Originally a European hit in 2006 by another-- though perhaps less provocative-- Swedish pop duo, Lucky Twice, the song in its first form is a carnival of synths and teen-pop. But Henning Fürst and Eric Berglund's take is surprisingly shattering, the two troublemakers slowing things down with matchlit finger-picking and love tunnel echo. Thanks to their love of bubblegum, however, all the longing and hormonal charges remain exactly where they should. Because even if the gum's a different flavor, they found a way to make its bubbles pop. --David Bevan __
__",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d3d5e6ef95969328038/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Tough_Alliance-Lucky.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,61,"Q-Tip ""Gettin'",Up,Universal Motown,"2008 saw little abatement of the tributes to (and resurrections of) the late James Yancey that started shortly after his 2006 passing, but this one was special: Nine years after he co-produced the last Q-Tip record, it only made sense for a Dilla beat to anchor the first single from Tip's long-awaited comeback. Q-Tip's clear-eyed enthusiasm and the pristine, pulsing soul of the beat make ""Gettin' Up"" bright and full of life, which would be encouraging enough even if it wasn't a welcome reintroduction of one of rap's most recognizable voices. And even if the romantic sentiments aren't the kinds of lyrics battle-rap aficionados might be looking for (""Move"", the other Dilla-produced track on The Renaissance, should fill that need plenty), the way Tip's flow bobs and weaves alongside those snap-tight drums and that liquid yet seismic bassline show that even in his lover-man moments the dude can still kill a beat. --Nate Patrin",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d3deb335119a49f2030/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Q-Tip_Gettin-Up.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,60,"Crystal Castles ""Courtship",Dating,PIAS/Different,"Any line about ""Courtship Dating""'s beat sounding like Timbaland on steroids seems less clever in light of…Timbaland looking like he actually is on steroids, but it still seems a more appropriate barometer for this song than another tired Atari reference. ""Courtship Dating"" swells and throbs like your thumb, post-hammer. Alice Glass's normally chirping, flighty voice roils and thwacks, wringing all of the decadence it can out of goth-y eyeliner and thrift-store leather. It'd make a better dance song if it wasn't nominally about self-mutilation in the name of l-u-v, but lusty, angry bedroom floors need rhythm too. Dance, mosh, screw, repeat. --Andrew Gaerig",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d3dc0084474cd0c7c71/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Crystal_Castles_Courtship-Dating.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,59,The Dodos,Fools,Wichita,"Sounding like they're auditioning for a spot in the Animal Collective, Dodos here build a swaying psychedelic house on a foundation of polyrhythmic West African ewe drumming. The arrangement swings back and forth between acoustic strumming and electric guitar outbursts, creating a constantly shifted backdrop for the even, melodious vocals. If all that wasn't plenty to keep you off balance, you also get sudden, rhythmic shouts to spike the rhythm in later verses, ghostly backing vocals, and an out-of-nowhere harmony vocal on the song's last note. It's enough to leave you as breathless as the drummer, and one of the most subtle and accomplished integrations of a global folk style in a year seemingly more indie bands than ever looked abroad for inspiration. --Joe Tangari",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d3e0c2bba1b7de05ad6/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Dodos-Fools.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,58,"Annie ""I Know UR Girlfriend Hates",Me,Island,"Yet another excellent single from the Scandinavian pop starlet with a difference (that difference being that she's never charted in America; no, whoops, it's that she's got dance and indie cred). It's an immaculately constructed bonbon of a song: Note the way the first line of the verse seems to complete the 10-bar chorus's progression, the ""ringy dingy ding"" nonsense syllables at the beginning returning for a bridge about a ringing phone (in a song with a txty ""ur"" in its title, no less), the cliché-inversion of ""life's too long for you to get it wrong"", the ingenious way every section of the song secretly harmonizes with every other section. The whole thing, in fact, is a lemon-peel twist on the I'm-hotter-than-your-girlfriend trope: What makes the girlfriend deserved to be dumped for Annie is that she's unreasonably jealous. --Douglas Wolk",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d3e5e6ef9596932803a/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Annie_I_Know_UR_Girlfriend_Hates-Me.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,57,"High Places ""From Stardust to",Sentience,Thrill Jockey,"Mary Pearson's vocals seem to emerge out of the ether of Rob Barber's clattering, clanking percussion. Their debut album's closing track, ""From Stardust to Sentience"", begins with some heavily phased bell tones and the distorted ticking of a cosmic clock-- yet the most striking thing about the High Places' heavily clipped and processed beats is how organic they manage to feel. ""Millions of forces of physics and providence teamed up and brought us all here,"" Pearson lilts, imbuing a spiritual sweetness to the Carl Sagan-esque thematic expansiveness of the song's title. High places indeed. --Tyler Grisham",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d3f13d19756521404ad/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/High_Places_From_Stardust_to-Sentience.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,56,"Vampire Weekend ""Oxford",Comma,XL,"""Oxford Comma"" is the pinnacle of Vampire Weekend frontman Ezra Koenig's casual vulgarities. For all of the song's idiosyncrasies-- Lil' Jon in the chorus, that line about the United Nations (building?), an implied debate about the merits of commas-in-a-series-- the song's real appeal lies in Koenig's conversational sing-song. Less about slang or pop culture references and more about meter and tone, ""Why would you lie about something dumb like that?"" is the year's best approximation of the chip that sits on every young, educated, sweatered shoulder. Kanye West may have declared himself the voice of this generation of this decade-- hell, maybe he is-- but few artists sound more like their Whole-Foods-shoppin', Red Bull-drinkin' peers than Koenig. --Andrew Gaerig",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d3fd7a71d1ea569d4e0/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Vampire_Weekend_Oxford-Comma.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,55,"Usher [ft. Young Jeezy] ""Love in This",Club,LaFace,"As far as pick-up lines go, ""I want to make love in this club"" is about two drinks away from, ""Let's fuck in the bathroom."" But it's not about the line, it's about the delivery, and ""Love in This Club""'s delivery is impeccable. Just he like did on Ciara's ""Promise"", producer Polow da Don creates a musical backdrop that sounds like it's in slow motion, this time thanks to a stuttering synth figure that hangs behind the beat. Like the musical equivalent of a disco ball, the song is shimmering and seemingly suspended in mid-air. For four and a half minutes, Usher almost makes it seem not ridiculous to ""get undressed right here,"" and what higher goal is there for R&B than to make the ridiculous sublime? --Dave Maher",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d405e6ef9596932803e/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Usher_ft_Young_Jeezy_Love_in_This-Club.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,54,"Lykke Li ""Little",Bit,LL/Atlantic,"A shy-voiced Scandinavian pop songstress? Our hearts have been stolen before. With debut album Youth Novels and seamless live shows, Lykke Li showed she was for real, but it was ""Little Bit"" (originally from last year's Little Bit EP) that suggested she could be more than another stranger in the night. If you haven't had your ""I Think I Love You"" moment with this song yet-- if maybe Li's vulnerable/eccentric persona reads too much like shtick for stoking feverish blogger-boy fantasies-- listen again. Producer Björn Yttling, of Peter Bjorn and John, does a lot with a little (bit): steel pan-like percussion, mandolin, a gently distorted beat. Li's voice, like a meaningful whisper in a mostly vacant room, completes the seduction; she barely needs words to get from ""too proud for love"" to jumping off cliffs for it. Ooh, ooh, la-la-la-la: Let's forget about our tainted hearts. --Marc Hogan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d400c2bba1b7de05adb/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Lykke_Li_Little-Bit.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,53,Be Your Own Pet,Becky,XL,"""Becky"" is a fun and infectious grrl-powered story of teenage jealousy and revenge that ends in ass-kicking and murder. As the boys in the band rev up the engine and run a comb through their pomade, Jemina Pearl belts out the sordid details of this best-friend breakup as only she can. However, when she hollers about her former friend making a friendship bracelet for Becky Facelift, or demands that borrowed clothes be returned (""no bullshit""), there's actually a hint of sadness behind her angry glee that humanizes her song-long fit. Unfortunately, this song's probably best-known for getting booted (along with two other tracks) from the U.S. version of Get Awkward because of ""violent"" content concerns. That the offending tracks were repackaged as a stand-alone EP not three months later isn't the worst part. The real tragedy is that the EP featuring ""Becky"" was the final Be Your Own Pet release. --David Raposa",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d415e6ef95969328040/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Be_Your_Own_Pet-Becky.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,52,"Ricardo Villalobos ""Enfants",(Chants),Sei Es Drum,"Having inaugurated his first label, the vinyl-only Sei Es Drum, with selections from his Fabric mix, Ricardo Villalobos chose one hell of a follow-up. ""Enfants"" was essentially an extended edit of the introduction to ""Baba Yaga La Sorciere"", Chrisitan Vander's 1995 recreation of his group Magma's Mekanïk Destruktïw Kommandöh, from 1973. But Villalobos' mildly accelerated loop-- a chugging piano line recalling Nina Simone's ""Sinnerman"" and a children's choir that sounds like the Langley Schools Project speaking in tongues-- somehow captured the Zeitgeist. Whether heard amidst the throng at DC-10 or accessed via YouTube while reading interminable blog posts about the future of dance music, the song's combination of innocence and melancholy was just the reality check needed. --Philip Sherburne",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d41d7a71d1ea569d4e4/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Ricardo_Villalobos_Enfants-Chants.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,51,"TV on the Radio ""Golden",Age,4AD/Interscope,"No American band has captured the tension, fear, and defeatism of the Dubya era as vividly as TV on the Radio, so when ""Golden Age"" was first unveiled on the band's website this past summer, it provided an exhilarating reintroduction to a group for whom Election Day couldn't come fast enough. Never mind ""Yes We Can""; ""Golden Age"" was the true theme song for the season of Obama, the taut robo-funk groove and increasingly anxious vocal from Kyp Malone mirroring our collective pre-election jitters and anticipation, before the song's victorious, cloud-parting chorus-- complete with heaven-bound harmonies and brass fanfares-- gets the party started in earnest. And of course it helped that, for all of the band's previous experiments with texture and rhythm, this was the first TV on the Radio song you could actually dance to. --Stuart Berman",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d415e6ef95969328042/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/TV_on_the_Radio_Golden-Age.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,50,"Invisible Conga People ""Cable",Dazed,Italians Do It Better,"The music on Mike Simonetti's Italians Do It Better label has always had a spectral quality, but on their debut single Invisible Conga People may as well be conducting a séance. Their expansive kraut-disco grooves act as a medium for a host of eerie stylistic visitations: We hear bleached Chic guitar scratch and gently disintegrating synths weaving in and out of hushed, reverent close harmony vocals, like Low offering a tribute to Visage's ""Fade to Grey"". Halfway through, everything drops away other than a lugubrious keyboard loop and a distant train rattle, and for a moment you feel an icy hand on your shoulder. Then the ghosts move on, the fade-in of a sullen one-note bass pulse and hissing techno hi-hats signaling the arrival of yet more uninvited guests. It's dance music, but you don't dare move a muscle. --Tim Finney",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d42eb335119a49f203c/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Invisible_Conga_People_Cable-Dazed.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,49,"Jay Reatard ""Always Wanting",More,Matador,"MP3: Jay Reatard: ""Always Wanting More"" Having released and compiled two-dozen singles this year, much of the trouble wasn't in finding Reatard's jams, but picking a favorite. Motored by a typically Reatard-ian (read: zippy) running time of just two minutes and change, ""Always Wanting More"" felt more brawny and colossal than the rest of his pop-punk progeny. It arrives on the back of another mighty riff, but the monster chorus seems to explain the Memphis singer's recent sonic shift-- it sounds like he's gnashing his teeth at the punk scene he's left behind. --David Bevan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d42d7a71d1ea569d4e7/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Jay_Reatard_Always_Wanting-More.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,48,"Spiritualized ""Soul on",Fire,Fontana International/Spaceman/Universal ,"Whether coaxing drone rock from Spacemen 3 or combining all manner of strings, electronics, horns, and choirs in Spiritualized, Jason Pierce has long aimed for grandiosity. But, both to his bands' payoff and detriment, the restless experimenter's intentions often distract from the song itself, either by layering too many sounds in too small a space or distending the action into tedium. But ""Soul on Fire""-- the pop gem Pierce nearly cut from Spiritualized's sixth album, Songs in A&E, because it seemed too catchy-- makes good on magnitude with newfound concision. In four minutes, we get it all: strings that sweep, guitars that snarl, drums that swing, and a choir that drives yet another resplendent Pierce chorus straight into memory. And that the hook's plea for immortality (""I've got a hurricane inside my veins/ And I want to stay forever"") comes from the man who almost died while writing this album only reinforces its majesty. --Grayson Currin",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d430c2bba1b7de05ae3/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Spiritualized_Soul_on-Fire.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,47,Alphabeat,Fascination,Charisma,"You'll hate this song: ""Fascination"" comes straight from Patrick Bateman's guidebook to great pop, its manicured and springloaded mid-1980s pop-rock groove falling somewhere between ""Footloose"" and Huey Lewis & the News, shot through with euphoric perkiness. ""Passion is our passion,"" the punchably sincere boy/girl vocals squeal, before launching into skyscraping woah-ohs that light up like a garish shop display at Christmas. You'll love this song: no tune this year parades its pop craft so openly and gleefully, or puts so much on the line in the name of pure giddiness. Danish group Alphabeat know you want to hit them, but they don't flinch: They're confident that by the time they reach the end of their interminable but brilliant ""The word is on your lips/ Say the word!"" call and response, the hand that was raised to smack will have turned itself into an enthusiastic fist-pump. --Tim Finney",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d43c0084474cd0c7c7b/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Alphabeat-Fascination.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,46,"M83 ""Graveyard",Girl,Mute,"Being a teenager sucks. You hate everybody. Nobody gets you. You want to die. Yet through the magic of florid melodies and sweet, rushing guitars, M83's Anthony Gonzalez makes the teen years seem idyllic, a time in life when all emotion is pure and beautiful. ""Graveyard Girl"" is a tale of a young goth who ""collects crowns made of black roses, but her heart is made of bubble gum."" When the stadium-rock drums and widescreen synths stop to make way for Morgan Kibby's mid-song monologue, and she whispers, ""I'm 15 years old and I feel it's already too late to live. Don't you?"", what former misfit couldn't relate? It's melodramatic, overblown, and even a little bit silly. But then again, so is high school. --Amy Phillips",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d4413d19756521404b3/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/M83_Graveyard-Girl.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,44,"Hot Chip ""One Pure",Thought,EMI,"The problem with clever is that it can be cold. And the risk of pastiche, particularly on Hot Chip's ambitious scale, is joyless, overintellectualized calculation. But ""One Pure Thought"" blithely breezes by both roadblocks, cycling through rawk riffs, glassy analog synth, smooth beats, and a flipbook of neon new wave poses to arrive at its joyful destination. Leaning on the groan-inducing conceit of ""it was only a dream,"" the band nonsenses its way through forests and rail stations, namechecking both the cool (Chic guitarist/disco hero Nile Rogers) and the un- (the much-maligned Macarena) in pursuit of that elusive state of being. Eliminate thought from this equation: It's all about that catchy killer chorus and the way it makes you feel. --Amy Granzin",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d440c2bba1b7de05ae9/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Hot_Chip_One_Pure-Thought.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,43,"Kelley Polar ""Entropy Reigns (In the Celestial",City),Environ,"Kelley Polar's new-agey second record, I Need You to Hold on While the Sky Is Falling, left a lot of people cold, other than the zippy ""Entropy Reigns (In the Celestial City)""-- its most accessible and translatable moment. Earlier this year, I exuberantly compared this boy/girl duet to Human League's ""Don't You Want Me"" and it still feels cut from the same cloth. Between the syrupy strings, winding vocal melodies, frosty drum claps, and that big, straining chorus, ""Entropy Reigns"" hangs together perfectly. It's probably a stretch to hope that someone as academic and as art-minded as Polar would ever care to make overtures to the mainstream, but this is proof that if he ever decided to, he wouldn't be lacking for tunes. --Mark Pytlik",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d45c0084474cd0c7c7f/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Kelley_Polar_Entropy_Reigns_In_the_Celestial-City.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,42,"Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds ""Dig!!! Lazarus,",Dig!!!,Mute UK/Anti-,"In the gospel according to John, Lazarus is raised from the dead after four days spent moldering in the grave. And in Nick Cave's wry and wicked update ""Dig!!! Lazarus, Dig!!!"" it is all downhill from there. Returned to life and transported to America, Lazarus careens through a world of sex, fame, and weapons as Cave bears bemused witness, chronicling a journey that leads inevitably to ""prison, then the madhouse, then the grave."" Clearly reinvigorated by his raucous Grinderman side project, Cave is here joined by the Bad Seeds in a stripped-down garage rock mode, with multi-instrumentalist Warren Ellis punctuating Lazarus' tale with all manner of noises and back-alley sound effects. And lest it might appear that Cave is enjoying Lazarus' downfall a bit too much, he does offer up one final head-shaking ""Oh, poor Larry!"" as the Bad Seeds escort him from the scene, another valuable lesson apparently learned. --Matthew Murphy",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d4613d19756521404b9/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Nick_Cave_and_the_Bad_Seeds_Dig_Lazarus-Dig.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,41,"No Age ""Sleeper",Hold,Sub Pop,"Like Dinosaur Jr.'s ""Freak Scene"" with the slacker mope washed away, ""Sleeper Hold"" is an intoxicating mix of hurry up and wait, showcasing No Age's ability to make a song ebb and flow while never actually taking their feet off the gas. Many of Dean Spunt's lines here start with the phrase ""with passion,"" and that's key-- he and Randy Randall's belief in the urgency of what they're playing transforms the song from floating rave-up into chaotic bliss. It helps that No Age sound larger than life, like two guys in a tiny garage doing the work of five on a huge stage. But the magic of ""Sleeper Hold"" lies in the way the duo's frantic rushes and pregnant pauses sound like identical sides of the same coin. --Marc Masters",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d4613d19756521404bb/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/No_Age_Sleeper-Hold.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,40,"T.I. [ft. Rihanna] ""Live Your",Life,Grand Hustle/Atlantic,"People usually save their moralizing for after they leave jail, or at least for during their stay. That T.I. uses the second verse of ""Live Your Life"" to dispense with life advice registers as just a little more ridiculous than its ""Dragostea din Tei"" (Numa Numa) sample, courtesy of Just Blaze. It's not the words though, it's the mood created by ""Live Your Life""-- all minor chords and choppy strings-- that makes T.I. sound wistful. And it's the music that, in Blaze's hands, morphs from novelty into melancholy, more so than T.I.'s words or Rihanna, who here is little more than Auto-Tune and a haircut. There's something so incredibly sad about the foaming keyboards, the organ line that appears halfway through the verses, but there's something about the chorus that inspires arms-around-shoulders swaying-- or at least some solo webcam lip-synching. --Jessica Suarez",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d47eb335119a49f2048/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/TI_ft_Rihanna_Live_Your-Life.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,39,"Kanye West ""Love",Lockdown,Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam,"We know Kanye had a hard year because he publicized it well. He got arrested. He blamed himself for his mother's death in interviews. Wounded and lost, he set out to follow his heart, and it led him back to the free market: On September 8, his blog read, ""LOVE LOCKDOWN.... wrote a week and a half ago, it's my favorite song 2 date!!."" He streamed two studio versions over the following week. Days later, iTunes released it. As pop psychology, ""Love Lockdown"" is rich. He's healing deep wounds under bright lights. As a lyric about relationships, it's awful-- it's robotic, immature, and one-dimensional. But as a piece of music, it's his most deceptively ambitious: android vocals over expressive, soul-style piano; 20th-century drum machines underpinning 5th-century Japanese percussion; a pulse borrowed from Marvin Gaye and sense of space reminiscent of Spoon-- in short, strikingly contemporary. --Mike Powell",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d4713d19756521404bd/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Kanye_West_Love-Lockdown.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,38,TV on the Radio,DLZ,4AD/Interscope,"This song is an enigma: nonchalantly badass, effortlessly purposeful. That simple, lock-step beat, no-nonsense bass line, spare synths nipping at the edges-- it's unstoppable, and Tunde Adebimpe just rides it with his highly rhythmic vocal. For a band that uses so many synthetic sounds, TV on the Radio sound amazingly gritty here. And there's plenty of ear candy beneath the song's skeletal strut, from the distant thunder of the deep percussion to the spooky whistling that sneaks around in the background at the end. The chorus of ""la la las"" might sound incongruous in other hands. On ""DLZ"" it just drives home how casually cool these guys are, like they could do anything without their pulses rising above 80. --Joe Tangari",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d4813d19756521404bf/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/TV_on_the_Radio-DLZ.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,37,"Big Boi [ft. Raekwon and André 3000] ""Royal",Flush,LaFace,"When Raekwon and Outkast last collaborated in 1998's ""Skew It on the Bar-B"", it was an audacious challenge to rappers stuck in their ways both artistically and geographically-- ""you gotta come provocative…with crazy, bust your shit open beats."" A decade later, its follow-up initially sounds mixtape-like: There's almost nothing to ""Royal Flush""-- no hook, a wallpapery sort of beat, and no groundbreaking album to attach itself. Which just shows how much of a premium there still is on superior rapping. In fact, it's actually more of a reprise of ""Git Up, Git Out""-- Big Boi and Chef alternating political disgust with burly flash talk, while Andre 3000 beautifully goes from playful to thoughtful to enraged to bemused. ""Royal Flush"" came out of nowhere and it's still difficult to say where it's going-- we've been promised three Outkast albums in 2009, the actual release of Only Built 4 Cuban Linx II...yeah, tell me more about that lakefront property in Idaho. But with ""Royal Flush"" as a teaser, we have all the more reason to hope against hope and wait. --Ian Cohen",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d480c2bba1b7de05af2/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Big_Boi_ft_Raekwon_and_Andr_3000_Royal-Flush.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,36,"Arthur Russell ""I Couldn't Say It to Your",Face,Audika,"We already know of Arthur Russell's astounding range, but it's still hard to believe he's responsible for ""I Couldn't Say It to Your Face"". Here's a guy who made his name on elaborate left-field disco and ethereal cello-and-voice experiments, chucking it all in favor of earthy vocals and an arrangement that wouldn't sound misplaced on an AM Gold compilation. This is his polite take on the mean break-up (getting dumped via song probably stings, but it beats a text message). ""It's my song/ Didn't ask you to sing along"" is as harsh as he gets, and his triumphant refrains feel more like relieved catharsis than genuine spite. --Brian Howe",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d49d7a71d1ea569d4f3/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Arthur_Russell_I_Couldnt_Say_It_to_Your-Face.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,35,"Shearwater ""The Snow",Leopard,Matador,"Zoological fact: The snow leopard cannot actually roar, thanks to the formation of its feline larynx. Fortunately, Jonathan Meiburg, an ornithologist and frontman for Shearwater, ignores this genetic trait, making a lot of noise on ""The Snow Leopard"", the climax of Shearwater's fifth album. Rook marks the point when Meiburg finally climbed out of Okkervil River to create an album that could stand alongside that band's best work. He's been honing his otherworldly singing and pagan songwriting over several albums, and ""The Snow Leopard"" stands among his best compositions, full of glowering majesty and anthropomorphic lyrics. The band prowl at a death-march pace, growing more ominous and menacing with every beat, while Meiburg holds his notes inhumanly long and Scott Brackett's trumpet tops the mountain. --Stephen M. Deusner",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d49c0084474cd0c7c88/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Shearwater_The_Snow-Leopard.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,34,"Fuck Buttons ""Sweet Love for Planet",Earth,ATP,"When pop music listeners try to explain their love for the cacophony of Street Horrrsing, the debut from Bristol noise duo Fuck Buttons, they might mention melody and major chords. And while those non-noise notions contribute to its distorted bliss, the album's 10-minute launch pad, ""Sweet Love for Planet Earth"", establishes its magnetism with transition and tempo: Deliberate, patient sonic choices lift the listener to heights and sights unimagined just seconds before. The track's vocals-- almost black metal, almost cheerleader chants-- recharge the beat when needed, while the song's persistent forward throb recalls the Field working in an oil refinery rather than a laboratory. That is, fists pump just as often as heads nod. --Grayson Currin",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d4a13d19756521404c4/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Fuck_Buttons_Sweet_Love_for_Planet-Earth.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,33,"Animal Collective ""Street",Flash,Domino,"Animal Collective ascended as a metropolitan band exploring imaginary worlds, and finished 2008 touring the globe with songs about moldy takeout and getting stoned after chores. I used to think they made everyday life look wild and tedium seem cataclysmic, but I was wrong-- they're just about appreciating your surroundings, which is neither weird nor disagreeable. Like ""Street Flash""-- a ballad about wandering the city at night. No orgiastic drums, no fluorescence, no hysteria; just inertia and echoes. Avey Tare sees loving couples behind windowpanes, fruit shimmering at the corner market, gummy bears, and the friend rotting on his couch because the city's too expensive-- and it is, if you need money to be entertained. --Mike Powell",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d4a13d19756521404c6/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Animal_Collective_Street-Flash.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,32,"Crystal Castles ""Untrust",Us,Last Gang,"MP3: Crystal Castles: ""Untrust Us"" __ Wisely siphoning off the ear-grabbing opening bits from Death From Above 1979's ""Dead Womb"", Crystal Castles disposes of the unremarkable remainder of the song and manages to turn a garbled little vocal loop into something ridiculously catchy and fascinating. Like many of their Nintendo-jocking fellow travelers, the group's glitchy product can grate over the course of a full-length, but for a few minutes these jokesters can dazzle. Almost every sound, instrument, and effect on ""Untrust Us"" seems like it's speaking, and-- irrepressible as it is-- there's something haunting about a symphony of lonely, computerized syllables we can't decipher or hope to understand. --Joshua Love",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d4ad7a71d1ea569d4f5/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Crystal_Castles_Untrust-Us.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,31,Aeroplane [ft. Kathy Diamond],Whispers,Eskimo,"Hercules and Love Affair were this year's champs of new disco, but Belgium-based production pair Aeroplane ran a close second. Without even a proper full-length to their name, Stephen Fasano and Vito Deluca were name-checked by heavyweights Lindstrøm and Prins Thomas and tapped to add their Balearic spin to songs by Cut Copy, MGMT, and Grace Jones. Even in their rich catalog, ""Whispers"", though, is in a class all its own. Built on a foundation of forceful synths, deep bass, and Olympic-timed handclaps, the instrumental alone is a runway freight train; it's kept from careening off the rails by UK crooner Kathy Diamond's tender coos. Diamond sings of a fractured relationship, but in this song there's no room for turning back, no time for repair. ""Whispers"" just keeps chugging along, full-steam ahead. --Joe Colly",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d4bd7a71d1ea569d4f7/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Aeroplane_ft_Kathy_Diamond-Whispers.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,30,"MGMT ""Time to",Pretend,Columbia,"MGMT's Alex VanWyngarden says ""Time to Pretend"" was originally about his pet praying mantis (original title: ""The Mantis Sailing Home""). He and partner Ben Goldwasser transformed it from a fantasy about an insect sailing on a pirate ship into a fantasy about becoming a rock star, all the better use for that warbly seven-note hook. Brash and dumb, sure, but its second verse, where VanWyngarden sings about leaving playgrounds and pets and his family behind, sounds like a kid boarding a spaceship, a ""Major Tom"" for coked-out child stars. That sense of loss colors the first verse's cartoonish fantasies; fame and excess become nighmarish film montages whose soundtracks are too fun to be tragic. --Jessica Suarez",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d4c5e6ef95969328059/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/MGMT_Time_to-Pretend.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,29,Vampire Weekend,M79,XL,"In the fuss made over the traces of Afropop in Vampire Weekend's sound, it's easy to miss that they're just as sly and nimble when swiping from Western traditions: the charming chamber music flurry that opens ""M79"", for instance. It's an amused nod to their presumed gentility whose brisk rhythm jumps from harpsichord, to strings, then to guitar and drums as the song opens out. Ezra Koenig has mastered the key indie pop skill of stringing phrases together that hint at deeper significance but are really just there to color the mood: Bus route 79, Jackson Crowder, French kids and the Khyber Pass-- these riddling specifics do wonders for the song's texture, but the emotional kick of ""M79"" is in the way the string refrain whirlpools down and then rushes delightedly back in the final minute. --Tom Ewing",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d4cc0084474cd0c7c8e/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Vampire_Weekend-M79.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,28,No Age,Eraser,Sub Pop,"Before Nouns, many wondered if No Age could make more of the instrumental noise passages and more immediate hooks that they split the difference between on the singles compiled on Weirdo Rippers. After ""Eraser"", it was pretty clear they'd figured it out. Everything this duo conjured on its earlier singles-- placid instrumentals, surging waves of noise, quick-fix melodies, and sweaty exuberance-- is here in less than three minutes. Even as the band's sound has expanded, No Age have retained a sort of innocence; the shrugging voice of drummer Dean Spunt is almost stunned by the sound summoned here and elsewhere on Nouns. --Jason Crock",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d4c0c2bba1b7de05afb/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/No_Age-Eraser.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,27,"T.I. ""No Matter",What,Grand Hustle/Atlantic,"Memorizing raps instead of writing them down is now a de rigueur studio practice for hip-hop's elite. Jay-Z, Lil Wayne, and Kanye West do it. And so did T.I., for a while. But, awaiting a year in jail on weapons charges and smarting from the deaths of a good friend and a child due to miscarriage, the Atlanta MC started jotting things down again. It seems safe to say ""No Matter What""-- with its moral depth, fluid continuity, and clear-eyed clarity-- is a product of some meticulous pad-and-paper work. ""Even when winning's illogical, losing's far from optional,"" reasons T.I., but it's not mere braggadocio -- it's self-help minus the flotsam, a stark-yet-triumphant look in the mirror. So when he concludes with, ""Wonder how I face years and I'm still chillin? Easy: Let go and let god deal with it,"" it doesn't sound like a cop-out as much as a confession. --Ryan Dombal",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d4dc0084474cd0c7c90/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/TI_No_Matter-What.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,26,"The Walkmen ""In the New",Year,Gigantic,"The title relates to time, but ""In the New Year"" is just as much about place. ""Oh, I'm still living/ At the old address,"" the Walkmen's Hamilton Leithauser rasps. When bass, drums, and a festive organ fill arrive to join the brittle central guitar figure and distant orchestration, the vexed space they share becomes somehow vivid. If You & Me's detractors wonder where the songs are, one of the New York band's best since Bows and Arrows is right here. How it starts: strings whimpering. How it ends: cymbals crashing. Where it lives: at the old address behind your sternum, like a memory of a lost love. ""I'm almost home,"" Leithauser concludes. ""I'll see you in the New Year."" Auld acquaintance isn't easily forgot. --Marc Hogan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d4d13d19756521404ce/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Walkmen_In_the_New-Year.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,25,"The Hold Steady ""Constructive",Summer,Vagrant,"There's a lot in this song that sticks with what worked on the first couple of Hold Steady albums: classic rock tropes, stories of escapism through drinking, in-joke references to the Dillinger Four, invocations of religious upbringings. But the drinking on top of the water tower is a counter to the unhappy fate of working at the mill until you die, the D4 reference (""Me and my friends are like/ Doublewhiskeycokenoice"") namedrops one of their most broken-up lonely-drunk anthems, and icons-- secular or otherwise-- only prove to disappoint: ""I met your Savior, I knelt at his feet/ And he took my 10 bucks, and he went down the street."" Despite all that, the fact that Craig Finn is less concerned with the travails of a few specific characters than a generally inclusive ""us"" makes it one of the Hold Steady's clearest moments of epic, aspirational populism. As those familiar rock maneuvers are blown up into wall-of-sound monoliths, Finn declares: ""Let this be my annual reminder that we can all be something bigger."" --Nate Patrin",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d4dd7a71d1ea569d4ff/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Hold_Steady_Constructive-Summer.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,24,"Gang Gang Dance ""House",Jam,Social Registry,"""House Jam"" is the kind of title you'd normally find scrawled on a band's practice-space CD-R demo, denoting some incomplete experiment or a one-off joke. But the one that appears in the middle of Gang Gang Dance's fourth and most accomplished album, Saint Dymphna, sounds like the moment these Brooklyn mystics have been working toward their entire career. With their hyperactive tribal rhythms harnessed into a steady 4/4, the psychedelic synth textures yielding a brain-massaging bliss, and Lizzi Bougatsos cooing ecstatically like the Cocteau Twins' Liz Fraser if she were zoning out at Danceteria in 1982, ""House Jam"" marks the point where Gang Gang Dance turn into the Dance Dance Gang. --Stuart Berman",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d4e5e6ef9596932805f/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Gang_Gang_Dance_House-Jam.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,23,"Beyoncé ""Single Ladies (Put a Ring on",It),Sony BMG/Columbia,"The best song from Beyoncé's misguided I Am…Sasha Fierce album is half ""Get Me Bodied"", half ""Irreplaceable"": a break-up song in going-out shoes. Maybe it wouldn't be as good without the video choreography-- and maybe Beyoncé's superstardom is able to will anything into a hit-- but credit goes to the song's agitated claps and ticks, to its purring keyboard hums and squiggles. Credit also goes to Beyonce's realization of a nearly universal desire-- to project ourselves onto a screen, even if that screen is a person (or persona). Her screen is called Sasha Fierce. Ours is called Beyoncé. Don't believe me? Just ask the hundreds of YouTube stars in heels and cut-up leotards. --Jessica Suarez",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d4ec0084474cd0c7c94/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Beyonc_Single_Ladies_Put_a_Ring_on-It.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,22,"Santogold ""Lights",Out,Downtown,"Santogold tries on as many genres on her album as she does outfits in the video for ""Lights Out"", so there's perhaps a little irony to be had in this particular year-end list featuring her most indie-rockin' track. It's a strum-and-drum affair that works the loud-soft angle, and adds a generous helping of harmonized ah-ahs to the mix. You've probably heard those harmonies trying to sell you some low-calorie beer, if you haven't already heard the song by choice, and it's hard to un-hear it once you've been exposed. Tom Ewing wrote in his LP review that the track ""finds a fascinating middle ground between the Pixies and the Go-Go's,"" but though ""Lights Out"" sounds maddeningly familiar, and the checklist of obvious reference points might be on the tip of your tongue, it doesn't really sound like anything else other than a wizened, longtime industry vet finally writing songs for herself. --David Raposa",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d4f0c2bba1b7de05b01/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Santogold_Lights-Out.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,21,"Hercules and Love Affair ""Hercules'",Theme,DFA/Mute,"Antony Hegarty and Kim Ann Foxman received loads of shine on the Hercules and Love Affair debut, and rightfully so, but ""Hercules' Theme"" shed light on the ensemble's linchpin, Andy Butler. Despite ratcheting the vocals down, Butler manages to weave primal dancefloor coolness with the insecure, almost melancholy Hercules persona more heavily featured on other tracks. The theme starts as an anthem, cocksure and tightly wound around a four-on-the-floor beat, though the facade unravels quicker than the character's lives in Boogie Nights. There's something vaguely unnerving about the pestering horns, and the breakdown towards the end smacks of drug trips and hook-ups gone awry. The best part? The frenzy sounds so fresh and new, not like some threadbare revival. --Adam Moerder",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d4f0c2bba1b7de05b03/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Hercules_and_Love_Affair_Hercules-Theme.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,20,"The Juan MacLean ""Happy",House,DFA,"""I think aggression in music is the domain of really young people,"" Juan Maclean said in an   interview earlier this year. He demonstrated an alternate way for older, more centered artists to display their power with this 12 and a half minute bliss-bomb. It's everything good about the DFA collective in one place, a track that sinks its roots deep into the history of dance music (the relentless piano riff that serves as its spine is jacked from Dubtribe Sound System's ""Do It Now"" by way of every Chicago house record of the 1980s, not to mention ""Din Daa Daa"") and extends in numerous directions at once. ""Thank you for just being so damn excellent,"" Nancy Whang declares, and she sings it like that's precisely what she means. ""Happy House"" is an in-your-face song, but it melts into your face. --Douglas Wolk",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d4fd7a71d1ea569d504/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Juan_MacLean_Happy-House.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,19,"Vivian Girls ""Where Do You Run",To,Mauled by Tigers/In the Red,"Vivian Girls appropriated an oft-referenced outsider-art touchstone for their band name, and nicked numerous well-worn tricks from your favorite lo-fi Phil Spector acolytes-- the cavernous reverb, the extra percussion, the rough-and-tumble harmonies-- for their first full-length. But possession is nine-tenths of the law, and when ""Where Do You Run To"" reaches the chorus, and the song's rumbling thunder starts sucking face with the girls' intermingled voices, it becomes pretty clear that these ladies are taking what's not necessarily theirs, and making it their own. --David Raposa",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d50eb335119a49f2056/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Vivian_Girls_Where_Do_You_Run-To.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,18,"Women ""Black",Rice,Jagjaguwar,"MP3: Women: ""Black Rice"" Once you fight off the initial knee-jerk urge to toss this psych ditty onto the blog-rock scrap heap, you'll find ""Black Rice"" rewards more with each listen. That's because these roughshod Albertans are actually closet post-punk deconstructionists who happen to have a killer knack for citric hooks. A minimalist Wire-esque riff and fussy stop-start sections temper the saccharine vibes, though it doesn't hurt when drowsy singer Patrick Fiegel rolls off the couch to deliver a stunningly euphoric chorus. The result is a lo-fi pop gem that's (fortunately) too lethargic and stand-offish to exploit the many indie trends it alludes to. --Adam Moerder",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d510c2bba1b7de05b07/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Women_Black-Rice.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,17,"Wiley ""Wearing My",Rolex,Asylum,"""Here's my number-- she already knows it"": Wiley's MC persona is often an icy, defensive control freak, so no surprise that his pop breakthrough is about the horror of losing that control. He's in a club, drunk, short-term memory starting to go: What's he been doing? Why is everything repeating itself? Who has he just given his tremendously expensive watch to? The music, built on a sample of DSK's house classic ""What Would We Do?"", is a tight electro loop, keyboards arcing woozily upward, perfectly capturing a night out on the brink of disintegration. ""Rolex"" birthed a dance craze, an answer record (Mz Bratt's ""Wearing His Rolex""), and gave Wiley a top 3 UK hit, but beyond the novelty it's his befuddled paranoia that makes it so memorable. --Tom Ewing",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d515e6ef95969328069/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Wiley_Wearing_My-Rolex.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,16,"The Mae Shi ""Run to Your",Grave,Moshi Moshi/Team Shi,"The Mae Shi lost their singer and their label in 2006, but instead of being defeated, these apostles of good vibes and distorted electronics attacked 2008 with a rapturous self-released collection that celebrates life, god, and the joy of buzzing synthesizers. And with ""Run to Your Grave"", HLLLYH's blissful climax, they manage to alchemize all of their arty experimentalism into a blatantly ecstatic anthem, complete with an addictively chanted chorus, bright, videogame-worthy keyboard bleeps, and revival-tent handclaps. Despite ingredients that in lesser hands could be grating-- spazzy nasal shout-singing, preachy lyrics about abandoning worldly possessions to give into spirituality, and a repetitive melody-- the Mae Shi crafted a winning pop gem of exultant abandon. --Rebecca Raber",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d52eb335119a49f205a/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Mae_Shi_Run_to_Your-Grave.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,15,Amadou and Mariam,Sabali,Because,"At once futuristic and crushingly nostalgic, this blind couple from Mali's first collaboration with Blur's Damon Albarn is a haunting electro-pop experiment that drips with soul. It begins with Mariam Doumbia in a conversation with gentle violins that sound beamed down from the International Space Station, then gives itself over to a synthetic rhythm and an arpeggiating keyboard. It has a lonely tinge that equally evokes Alan Shepard all alone on a suborbital flight and a lone traveler crossing the desert on a cold, starry night. It's honestly hard to pin down a song that has as many emotional currents running through it as this one, but it's truly a song for any state of mind, no matter where you are. --Joe Tangari",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d52eb335119a49f205c/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Amadou_and_Mariam-Sabali.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,14,"Lil Wayne ""A",Milli,Cash Money/Universal,"Somewhere, Orville Redenbacher's Gourmet Popping Corn is ruing a missed marketing opportunity. Somewhere else, Dennis Rodman has mixed feelings about his only 2008 cultural reference. Goblins are up; goons are down. Erykah Badu is excited to be repped by an MC not named Common. Big, Jay, and 2Pac are looking on, humbly satisfied. Andre 3000 wants his plaid pants back. Mike Lowry is watching Bad Boys 2 climb up Netflix queues. Gwen Stefani is remembering she's also in a band called No Doubt. People in charge of venereal disease awareness are reluctantly pleased. The almighty dollar is pining for its pre-meltdown glory days. The Bible is happy to have been mentioned in the most booming hip-hop song of the year. And Wayne? He's still rapping. Or maybe singing. --Ryan Dombal",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d53d7a71d1ea569d509/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Lil_Wayne_A-Milli.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,13,"Kanye West ""Flashing",Lights,Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam,"On Grand Theft Auto IV's Hot 97 clone, DJ Green Lantern introduces ""Flashing Lights"" as the song they won't stop playing even though you're sick of it. But ""Flashing Lights"" never really reached that level of ubiquity, possibly because of the way it nods toward Euro-club whoosh without ever quite committing to it. The strobing synths and the house-thump drums are just slightly off, and the abiding mood is one of paranoid detachment, not ecstatic release. The lyrics follow: When Kanye shows up to the club, he doesn't see pretty girls and free drinks; he sees the paparazzi (who, naturally, he hates ""more than a Nazi."") He's kicking game to some girl, but he's never quite reaching her. ""Flashing Lights"" is a tweak on pop conventions evocative enough that its sticky bad feelings will linger on until we've all blessedly forgotten about, like, ""Low"". --Tom Breihan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d53d7a71d1ea569d50b/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Kanye_West_Flashing-Lights.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,12,"Cut Copy ""Out There on the",Ice,Modular/Interscope,"It had been four years since Cut Copy released their debut LP, Bright Like Neon Love, but their next record almost immediately made festival crowds lose their shit. Getting from points A to B seems awfully Faustian here, but paying close attention to ""Out There on the Ice"" unlocks the secrets of In Ghost Colours. After so many DJ gigs, Dan Whitford figured out how to foolproof dance music for rock kids who still want to get down but have no idea about the process. When Whitford sings ""you don't know what to do"" during the chorus of ""Out There on the Ice"", it's unintentionally empathetic in this context. Besides being a gloriously glowing pop song, it's the record's most instructive one as well, coasting on a splotchy warm-up, and just to make things even more clear, the DFA's Tim Goldsworthy pipes in crowd noise once the ""Blue Monday"" drum hit kicks after the breakdown. And right when it seems like ""Out There on the Ice"" could spiral upward into infinity, it gives you a literal breather at the end as a respite…right before ""Lights and Music"" makes you flip out all over again. --Ian Cohen",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d540c2bba1b7de05b0d/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Cut_Copy_Out_There_on_the-Ice.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,11,"David Byrne and Brian Eno ""Strange",Overtones,self-released,"Arriving more than 20 years after the pair's last collaboration, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today bears little of the sampler magic that haunted the bare corners of My Life in the Bush of Ghosts; instead, the pair relies on its own songcraft to fill the sonic space. And the sweetly sung ""Strange Overtones"" stands up with the most heartfelt composition in either's oeuvre. Advanced age makes itself apparent in the vocals, but Byrne and Eno go at ""Strange Overtones"" like a hymn, measured and deliberate while the luminous guitar riff chugs along underneath, powering their voices like a motor. The cutest thing about ""Strange Overtones"" might be the fact that Byrne and Eno sing about becoming lost in the relentless digitization of the world, as if either of them could actually go out of style. --Mike Orme",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d550c2bba1b7de05b0f/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/David_Byrne_and_Brian_Eno_Strange-Overtones.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,10,"Estelle [ft. Kanye West] ""American",Boy,__ Homeschool/ Atlantic,"Young British singer Estelle struck gold with her first international single, which proved to be the perfect pre-summer hit. The velveteen quality of her personable, laid-back vocals synched brilliantly with Kanye West's on-top-form cameo appearance, and the deceptive simplicity of the music with its clubby electro vibe offered an open platform for Estelle's distinctive voice to take center stage. Refreshingly playful and uplifting, ""American Boy"" is an unpretentious and breezy party track that hit the right notes on both sides of the pond. --Mia Clarke",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d55c0084474cd0c7c9b/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Estelle_ft_Kanye_West_American-Boy.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,9,"Portishead ""Machine",Gun,Island,"Listening to ""Machine Gun"" was one of the most purely satisfying physical experiences of 2008. I can't even count the number of times I let it batter me in the car at a volume that will undoubtedly prevent me from being able to hear my grandkids in 50 years. The music (if you can call it that) lives up to its title for sheer mechanistic repetitive punishment, while holed inside the barrage a wounded, despairing Beth Gibbons confesses her spiritual abandonment, the soulless determinism of the beats matching her own feelings of existential futility. --Joshua Love",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d55d7a71d1ea569d511/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Portishead_Machine-Gun.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,8,"Air France ""Collapsing at Your",Doorstep,Sincerely Yours,"""If you have anything in you, anything unique, what others might term as originality, it will come through whatever the component parts used in your future Number One are made up from,"" the KLF write in The Manual: How to Have a Number One the Easy Way. Air France threw a ""Beach Party"" on last year's #89 track, quoting Lisa Stansfield's ""All Around the World"". On ""Collapsing at Your Doorstep"", from this year's No Way Down EP, the Swedish duo create a fantasy island out of bird chirps, tropical percussion, strings, a little kid's voice (also sampled this year by should-be-beloved dubstep producer Zomby), and two other little kids' voices (from the 1980s TV show ""Beauty and the Beast""). The results are as warm and transportive as the new West Coast sound of Gothenburg neighbors Studio, but also as catchy and wistfully innocent as the punk-minded pop of Sincerely Yours chiefs the Tough Alliance. Sort of like a dream? No. Better. --Marc Hogan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d56d7a71d1ea569d513/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Air_France_Collapsing_at_Your-Doorstep.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,7,"Cut Copy ""Hearts on",Fire,Modular/Interscope,"""There's something in the air tonight, a feeling that you have that could change your life,"" Dan Whitford sighs, just as a glimmering cloud of synth-beeps coalesces into a twerked-up house beat. Whitford never really specifies what that feeling that you've got that could change your life might be, and he doesn't have to; the track's starry-eyed pound does all the talking for him. ""Hearts on Fire"" is a love song, or maybe a crush song, or maybe a song about your hand brushing some girl's hand in a crowded club. This is a classic synth-pop jam, almost exactly the sort of classic synth-pop jam New Order used to churn out on the regular. And we've heard all this stuff before: those droll detuned guitars, those giddy club-diva whoops, those faraway sax-tootles. But we've rarely heard all this stuff click together into such a perfect machine of instant sugar-rush giddiness-- even from New Order. --Tom Breihan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d565e6ef9596932806d/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Cut_Copy_Hearts_on-Fire.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,6,"Deerhunter ""Nothing Ever",Happened,Kranky/4AD,"Delayed gratification, meet instant pleasure. After Cryptograms' exquisite perversity, first Microcastle single ""Nothing Ever Happened"" was like the moment in the film A Hard Day's Night where the Beatles finally escape into the sun. All the usual Deerhunter signatures are there: Neu!-like propulsion, Sonic Youth-style iridescence, airy vocals, lyrics about dreaming. But the delay pedals and gloomy noise-murk are gone, replaced with festival-ready crowd-pleasers. Big dumb hooks! Guitar solos! Finger-tapping! It's the Deerhunter song you play for people who don't think they like Deerhunter. After the huge chorus hits twice in the first two minutes, the next three-plus promise a third chorus so convincingly you probably won't mind when it never, um, happens-- ""Waiting for something, for nothing,"" Bradford Cox observes pointedly. Gangly guy gets most of the attention, but bassist Josh Fauver, guitarist Lockett Pundt, and co-founder/drummer Moses Archuleta (now joined live by guitarist Whitney Petty) are all co-equals on this one; hell, Fauver wrote most of it. --Marc Hogan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d575e6ef9596932806f/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Deerhunter_Nothing_Ever-Happened.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,5,"M83 ""Kim &",Jessie,Mute,"Even though M83's Anthony Gonzalez had already downshifted from making muscular, wall-of-synth workout records to barely there, ambient piano doodles, few people anticipated his next direction. Steeped in equal parts old school 4AD and vintage Thompson Twins, 2008's Saturdays = Youth was one of those rare albums branded with the 80s tag that, crazily, actually sounded like the 80s. With its apocalyptic electric drum hits, keening synths, icily detached vocals, and volcanic chorus, ""Kim & Jessie"" not only ranked as the album's best song, but also combined with the similarly convincing ""Graveyard Girl"" to make one of the year's most potent 1-2 punches. If you heard this in a John Hughes film, you wouldn't even flinch. --Mark Pytlik",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d575e6ef95969328071/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/M83_Kim_-Jessie.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,4,"Santogold ""L.E.S.",Artistes,Downtown,"With a synth-freaked production from Switch and echo-drenched patois, Santi White had to know her debut single, ""Creator"", would unleash a deluge of M.I.A. comparisons that could potentially dominate all discussion of her work from here on out. However, the upside to being saddled with that recurring reference point is that it freed her up to mine other sources with less critical scrutiny. In the case of her fantastic follow-up single ""L.E.S. Artistes"", she imagines what Tegan and Sara's ""Walking With a Ghost"" would've sounded like had it been covered by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs instead of the White Stripes-- and, in the process, she fashions her self-titled album with an opening mission statement that effectively establishes her genre-hopping, poptimist approach by attacking narrow-minded indie insularity from within. White's singular résumé-- former punk-rock singer, one-time major-label A&R rep, and current song-doctor to the stars-- lends her a unique perspective to analyze Lower East Side scensterism, and her lyrics (""I'm trying to build a wall,"" ""I don't need no one else"") could be read as both a declaration of independence or a critique on the exclusionary politics that come with it. But that ambiguity is crucial to the song's success: In giving the middle-finger to the too-cool-for-school set, White ended up giving them a new favorite song to belt out in hipster hangouts around the world. --Stuart Berman __
__",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d57eb335119a49f2065/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Santogold_LES-Artistes.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,3,"Hot Chip ""Ready for the",Floor,EMI,"When you first found out that a song called ""Ready for the Floor"" would be on the new Hot Chip album, it was already playing in your head, even before you actually heard the thing. But for me at least, it didn't turn out to be quite what I expected. Instead of a commanding call to shake it, ""Ready for the Floor"", while still a brilliant dance tune, turned out to be reserved and kind of sweet. But it's also hugely confident and quite possibly the best pure pop tune in the band's catalog. Consisting of several distinct hooks daisy-chained together, any one of which could conceivably be built out into a genius song of its own, ""Ready for the Floor"" has the strange effect of blurring lines between verse, bridge, and chorus. It moves from ""Oh yeah, here's this great section"" to ""Ah, right, now it's that great section"" to ""You're my number one guy!"" Even after a kajillion plays, it never got old. Songwriters of the future, take note. --Mark Richardson",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d58c0084474cd0c7c9f/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Hot_Chip_Ready_for_the-Floor.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,2,"Fleet Foxes ""White Winter",Hymnal,Sub Pop,"Back in January, ""White Winter Hymnal"" was an intriguing and inviting introduction to the Seattle quintet, when they had just ridden a wave of MySpace success and signed with local label Sub Pop. Nearly a year later, it remains their perfect, triumphant moment, even after they've opened for Blitzen Trapper and Wilco, headlined their own tours to ever-larger audiences, and invaded the lower rungs of the Billboard album charts. Just over two minutes long, the song contains every element that would make their Sun Giant EP and self-titled full-length debut so entrancing: the intricate vocal arrangements highlighting their evocative harmonies, the way Sklyer Skjelset's clean guitar lines shadow Robin Pecknold's wordless vocals, the Edward Gorey imagery of the lyrics, the heartbeat tattoo of the floor tom. Its meaning may remain unclear even after so many listens-- something about the passage of seasons, which seems apt-- but its spell remains as strong as ever. --Stephen M. Deusner",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d58d7a71d1ea569d517/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Fleet_Foxes_White_Winter-Hymnal.jpg
The 100 Best Tracks of 2008 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/7572-the-100-best-tracks-of-2008/,2008,year,song,1,Hercules and Love Affair,Blind,DFA/Mute,"2008 was a weird year for dance singles. With a few notable exceptions, techno basically spent it on snooze, electro sounded limp and uninspired, and house failed to build on French touch with much of anything fresh. Indie rock did a pretty decent job of integrating dance music into the full-band aesthetic, while a few mainstream cheesemongers helped make up some of those losses (the otherwise awful Sam Sparro scored with ""Black & Gold"", and it says a lot that one of the year's best dance tracks -- ""Pjanoo"" -- came from Eric fucking Prydz), but it was hardly robust. Disco, however, avoided that malaise. While tracks from Aeroplane, Chaz Jankel, and Sally Shapiro (with Lindstrøm) helped maintain its profile, this cut from New York's Andy Butler was its undoubted high point. And thanks to its sturdy rhythm, infectious horn section, rumbling bassline, and an appropriately vampy vocal turn from Antony Hegarty (whose full-bodied belt, as it turns out, is perfectly suited for disco divadom), ""Blind"" cut across all sections and tastes. Between this, Cut Copy, and last year's singles winner, LCD Soundsystem, producer Tim Goldsworthy might want to think about having his mixing desk bronzed. --Mark Pytlik",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c6d59d7a71d1ea569d519/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Hercules_and_Love_Affair-Blind.jpg
Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6510-top-50-albums-of-2006/,2006,year,album,50,Booka Shade,Movements,Get Physical,"Between the hyperreal clarity of its production, the friendliness of its arrangements, and the diversity of its stylistic detours, Movements may have been the most deliberately inviting of 2006's dance albums. There's something intuitively dead-on about the German duo's exquisite production, the way their sinuous melodies and weedy synth riffs slide like plasma over the surface of their thick grooves, as if all recent German house and techno had been distilled into a single, charming sonic signature. True to the duo's restless form, Movements intermingled rousing anthems with atmospheric curios, but it's when the duo go in for the kill with expansive emotional juggernauts like the trance-inflected ""Darko"" and ""In White Rooms"" that enthusiastic comparisons to Orbital or Underworld suddenly make perfect sense. --Tim Finney",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d2b13d197565213f40d/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Booka_Shade-Movements.jpg
Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6510-top-50-albums-of-2006/,2006,year,album,49,Ellen Allien & Apparat Orchestra of,Bubbles,Bpitch Control,"More assured than Ellen Allien's solo work and more immediate than Apparat's, Orchestra of Bubbles is at heart a pop album, albeit one cloaked in techno's urgency. With both artists working at their moody best, the Bpitch Control label's typical stridency is tempered by an uncommon attention to warm, electro-acoustic sounds-- resonant strings, harpsichords, voices and analog synthesizers. Despite nominally four-to-the-floor cadences, Allien and Apparat layer long phrases in a way that creates a sense of suspended animation, with morphing tones extending to the horizon in undulating waves-- with the exception of one dubstep-inspired cut and Apparat's bashful foray into balladry, both of which usefully break up the record's horizontal sprawl. The whole album, ragged at the edges and bloody with tone, is swollen in the best way, and it crests from peak to peak across 13 tracks that are at once meditative and eruptive. --Philip Sherburne",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d2ceb335119a49f0fb9/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Ellen_Allien__Apparat_Orchestra_of-Bubbles.jpg
Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6510-top-50-albums-of-2006/,2006,year,album,48,The Long Blondes Someone to Drive You,Home,Rough Trade,"The racks are cluttered with promising albums from British post-punk bands boasting charismatic singers, needling guitar work, and hollow, driving drums. But what separates the Long Blondes' debut album is lush-voiced frontwoman Kate Jackson's dexterity in exploring the complexities of women's relationships with other women. You'd have to reach back to the halcyon days of riot grrrl to find the subject probed this deeply. On songs like ""Once and Never Again"" and ""Heaven Help the New Girl"", Jackson is the wise survivor counseling her young, naïve sisters; on ""Giddy Stratospheres"" and ""In the Company of Women"" she competes for male affection; on ""Separated by Motorways"" she celebrates girl friendship. Turns out Jackson shares more with a certain Charlie's Angel than just a name. --Amy Phillips",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d2cd7a71d1ea569c3f5/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Long_Blondes_Someone_to_Drive_You-Home.jpg
Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6510-top-50-albums-of-2006/,2006,year,album,47,Matmos The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of a,Beast,Matador,"Physical objects have always played a central role in Matmos' music. On The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of a Beast, the duo of M.C. Schmidt and Pitchfork contributor Drew Daniel use their typically esoteric collection of materials-- teeth, cigarettes, typewriters, a cow's digestive tract-- as instruments to embody their various biographical subjects. The album's resulting ""sound portraits"" draw links between cultural figures like novelist Patricia Highsmith, punk rocker Darby Crash, and philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Not that any of these high-concept reconstructions would matter much if listening to this record was not such an absolute blast. Tracks like the space-age surf instrumental ""Solo Buttons for Joe Meek"" or the mutant disco of ""Steam and Sequins for Larry Levan"" are entrancing even when heard apart from their contextual sources, and ambitious musique concrète narratives like ""Rag for William S. Burroughs"" are crafted with enough microscopic detail to foster endless fascination. Though directly animated by its two creators and 10 iconoclastic subjects, this brilliant and deceptively cohesive album contains multitudes. --Matthew Murphy",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d2ceb335119a49f0fbb/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Matmos_The_Rose_Has_Teeth_in_the_Mouth_of_a-Beast.jpg
Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6510-top-50-albums-of-2006/,2006,year,album,46,M. Ward,Post-War,Merge,"M. Ward is the kind of guy who seems to sneak his way onto lists like this year in and year out-- but he deserves it every time. Post-War is a move away from lo-fi intimacy that finds Ward entering a more polished widescreen world in which his guitar virtuosity lends itself as ably to ragged fuzz riffs as it does to delicate acoustic duets. Yet even with the big arrangements and production, he still sounds like your friend singing you a song. That comfortable, gravelly croak is one of the most disarming voices out there, and it's never sounded better than it does on ""Chinese Translation"", a song you could throw a thousand adjectives at without getting it quite right. --Joe Tangari",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d2d13d197565213f411/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/M_Ward-Post-War.jpg
Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6510-top-50-albums-of-2006/,2006,year,album,45,Camera Obscura Let's Get Out of This,Country,Merge,"""You're not a teenager,"" sang Tracyanne Campbell on Camera Obscura's 2003 album, Underachievers Please Try Harder. And on follow-up Let's Get Out of This Country, she no longer acts like one. With percussionist/singer John Henderson now out of the picture, Campbell takes on full vocal duties, her sweetly crestfallen presence giving a cozy glow to organ-glitzed ballads about loneliness, yearning, and Lloyd Cole. The band's sound has grown up, too, leaving behind song-for-song influence-spotting to pour Northern Soul shimmy, country melancholy, and twee-pop bookishness into a single, half-empty glass. ""I don't believe in true love, anyway,"" Campbell sighs. Point is, she's lying. --Marc Hogan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d2dd7a71d1ea569c3f7/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Camera_Obscura_Lets_Get_Out_of_This-Country.jpg
Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6510-top-50-albums-of-2006/,2006,year,album,44,The Pipettes We Are the,Pipettes,Memphis Industries,"The Pipettes admit they were a concept before they were a band. The polka dots, the dancing, and the re-appropriation of 1960s pop were all apparently set before the band began writing songs. But if the songs came second in the band's grand scheme, they come first on We Are the Pipettes. With few exceptions, each one is polished, clever, and miraculously poppy. Whether singing about a boyfriend's ""slightly unnerving"" cleanliness, confessing to murderous thoughts brought on by envy, or considering ripping out a mother's spleen, the lyrics are slyly self-aware, offering cartoony twists on modern love. Meanwhile, producer Gareth Parton puts the uniformly excellent harmonies upfront while adding just the right amount of iPod-friendly, DIY-Spector flourishes underneath. Love or loathe their charming nostalgia, but navel-gazing backlashes are wasted on the Pipettes. --Ryan Dombal",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d2ed7a71d1ea569c3f9/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Pipettes_We_Are_the-Pipettes.jpg
Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6510-top-50-albums-of-2006/,2006,year,album,43,Sonic Youth Rather,Ripped,Geffen,"On Murray Street and Sonic Nurse, Jim O'Rourke pulled Sonic Youth out of a late-90s rut, spurring noise-rock jams that looked backward, forward, and somewhere in between. But even the biggest fan of those albums probably wouldn't deny craving a sequel to pop records like Goo and Dirty, and on their first post-O'Rourke effort, Sonic Youth offer exactly that: Twelve shiny, beefed-up rockers that funnel noise into melody at a level not seen since The Year Punk Broke. The surprise isn't so much that the quartet made this move, but that they pulled it off so sharply. There's hardly a wrong turn here, just reams of revved-up rock with all the classic pieces-- Kim Gordon's voice, Thurston Moore's writing, Lee Ranaldo's poetry, Steve Shelley's energy-- locked together as tightly as a jigsaw puzzle. --Marc Masters",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d2e0c2bba1b7de049e0/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Sonic_Youth_Rather-Ripped.jpg
Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6510-top-50-albums-of-2006/,2006,year,album,42,Mastodon Blood,Mountain,Reprise,"After going major label in the wake of 2004's epic masterpiece Leviathan, Mastodon could've gone melodic and recorded the metal Nevermind that many fans expected from them. Instead, the Atlanta quartet crawled even further into their death-gurgle aesthetic and still managed to churn out a transcendently violent opus. On first listen, Blood Mountain is a heaving, spitting, seething mass of throat-shredding screams and serrated riffage. And after listening a while, the details really begin to creep out, like the scrabbling pseudo-jazz noise-boxes at the beginning of ""Bladecatcher"" or the way Brann Dailor's drums tumble all over themselves in a flurry of speed but still manage to find their own pocket. Throughout, the band walks a thin line between technical complexity and outright brutality, never letting one overwhelm the other. There's also a vaguely mythical storyline about a mountain populated by one-eyed sasquatches and blood-sucking flies, if you're into that sort of thing. This is metal, after all. --Tom Breihan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d2e13d197565213f417/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Mastodon_Blood-Mountain.jpg
Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6510-top-50-albums-of-2006/,2006,year,album,41,The Decemberists The Crane,Wife,Capitol,"The melodies are grand but stalwartly hummable, and Colin Meloy finds surprising soulful inflections in his reedy voice. Proggy epics blur seamlessly into poppy jangles, successfully drawing an implausible line between Jethro Tull and R.E.M. Meloy revisits a number of his favorite themes-- star-crossed lovers on ""O Valencia""; imperiled children on ""Shankill Butchers""-- but by drawing them together under the Japanese myth of the Crane Wife, he creates a more cohesive album than his erstwhile period pastiches. His well-heeled diction remains intact, but it's tempered now, more concerned with artfully framing the album's emotional payload than attempting to work turn-of-the-20th-century jargon into rhymed couplets. The Decemberists have always been an interesting band, but with The Crane Wife, they became a great one, and they did it without shedding an ounce of their oddball charm. --Brian Howe",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d2f13d197565213f419/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Decemberists_The_Crane-Wife.jpg
Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6510-top-50-albums-of-2006/,2006,year,album,40,Tapes 'n Tapes The,Loon,Ibid,"It was not a great year for guitars and drums. Bearing little flash, no licks, and too much story, Tapes 'n Tapes used a kitchen-sink approach to guitar'n'drums slack (nicking bits of Pavement, Modest Mouse, and Wire) and combined it with an angry-young-man urgency. When Josh Grier's voice gets a little too emotive over The Loon's nervous tunes, it's against his better judgment: ""I'll be had if I'm in your dress tonight"" he sings on ""Insistor"", as if his jealous hand-wringing was directly wired to his bandmates fingers. Who cares if the band boxed CDs in their apartments, and walked them to the post office uphill? Cut their bootstraps and you're still left with an album that's richer for its frugality: just drums, just guitars. --Jessica Suarez",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d2f0c2bba1b7de049e4/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Tapes_n_Tapes_The-Loon.jpg
Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6510-top-50-albums-of-2006/,2006,year,album,39,Fujiya & Miyagi Transparent,Things,Tirk/Word and Sound,"It shouldn't have worked this well. Somehow, the British trio behind Transparent Things managed to quote ""Dem Bones"" (possibly the least hip song ever written), rip Damo Suzuki's vocal technique (possibly the easiest-ever influence to spot), combine motorik drumwork and long, major chord vamps (possibly the most Stereolab concept ever demonstrated by someone other than Stereolab), and still came out sounding like nobody else in 2006. The band's singles ""Collarbone"" and ""Cassettesingle"" painted them as groove addicts, but the heart within the record belonged to tracks like ""Ankle Injuries"" and the gentle closer ""Cylinders"", sounding like a motive sunrise and sunset, respectively. The record's title clues me in: Analysis and dissection is fun and all, but sometimes it pays just to listen to the nice music. --Dominique Leone",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d3013d197565213f41b/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Fujiya__Miyagi_Transparent-Things.jpg
Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6510-top-50-albums-of-2006/,2006,year,album,38,J Dilla,Donuts,Stones Throw,"No, this is not a posthumous award for lifetime achievement. We wish James Yancey was still here, but we don't sit around crying over Donuts. We nod our heads. We tap our feet. We might even dance some. (Okay, a lot.) But more than anything, we marvel at the 31 tracks of synaptic soul Dilla left with us. Listening to Donuts is like listening to him daydream about his favorite records-- crackles and pops included-- each song a passing notion from a man in love with his sampler. He made plenty of better songs, but he never made an album like this-- one so personal it feels almost intrusive to listen to, and so generous it feels selfish to hold it up for glory. So yes, it makes a difference that he made this while he lay in bed dying. It should. --Peter Macia",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d30eb335119a49f0fc2/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/J_Dilla-Donuts.jpg
Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6510-top-50-albums-of-2006/,2006,year,album,37,DJ Drama & Lil Wayne Dedication,2,Gangsta Grillz,"As mixtapes continued their evolution from street corner myth to major-label marketing ploy, Wayne proved himself to be the medium's most riveting ambassador. Thanks to the peerless beat selection and pacing of Atlanta's DJ Drama and Wayne's magnetic mugging, Dedication 2 easily rose above all other tapes that hit over the last 12 months. The rapper's nonchalant dexterity works perfectly within the casual, anything-goes vibe of a mixtape. ""As far as this rap thing, I think I am better than everybody,"" he said on one of the record's confessional interludes. ""I'm a competitor. I hope everybody else feels the same way about their craft. If you do it makes it better for the listeners."" And when his ache to be the best involves flipping several silly flows over a tennis-ball beat (""Sportscenter""), contemplating calling a girl with the neurotic self-awareness of Woody Allen (""This Is What I Call Her""), and eloquently exposing government hypocrisy (""Georgia…Bush""), it makes you wish other rappers had a similar drive. Dedication 2 isn't a byproduct of fourth-quarter fiscal pressure as much as a gauntlet thrown down by a rapper who simply loves to rap. The difference is clear. --Ryan Dombal",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d30eb335119a49f0fc4/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/DJ_Drama__Lil_Wayne_Dedication-2.jpg
Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6510-top-50-albums-of-2006/,2006,year,album,36,Brightblack Morning Light Brightblack Morning,Light,Matador,"Thick with swampy guitar twang, chocolate Rhodes organ, group chanting, deeply funky handclaps and flutes, and acres of smoked-out ambience, this was the record I turned to first thing in the morning and late, late at night. It feels so listenable, so effortless, and sooooo stoned that you don't notice how well sequenced and tightly constructed it really is: If Rachel's organ riffs are sneaking the instrument out of church and onto the corner, the soulful harmony singing is walking right back in and grounding the band in gospel's ecstatic discipline. Brightblack's ecological and Native American lyrical allegiances will garner curiosity from some corners and skepticism from others, but their musical momentum carries them beyond scenes and signifiers. The rhythmic upramp of Nabob's heavy riff in ""Everybody Daylight"" is one of my favorite moments in music this year, but it's tough to pick favorites because the whole album is just so damn foxy. --Drew Daniel",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d31d7a71d1ea569c3fd/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Brightblack_Morning_Light_Brightblack_Morning-Light.jpg
Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6510-top-50-albums-of-2006/,2006,year,album,35,Herbert,Scale,!K7,"Riding the momentum generated by his well-received collaborations with the likes of Björk and Róisín Murphy, Matthew Herbert hopped back into the lab and came out with one of the best albums of his career. Although it contained samples of a reputed 723 different items (including coffins, birds, gas pumps, mobile phones, and the sweet sounds of some unfortunate soul losing his lunch), Scale felt more like a digital composite of all the best parts from his own winding back catalogue. Combining the moody brass flourishes of his big band effort Goodbye Swingtime with the rhythmic invention evident in his remix collection Secondhand Sounds and the intimate, late-night murmurs of the lush Bodily Functions, Scale is joyously overpacked with one stunning moment after another. --Mark Pytlik",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d31d7a71d1ea569c3ff/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Herbert-Scale.jpg
Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6510-top-50-albums-of-2006/,2006,year,album,34,Girl Talk Night,Ripper,Illegal Art,"Girl Talk's Night Ripper is not so much a compendium of the best bits from your favorite songs mashed up into an epic sample-a-thon as it is the best bits from your favorite parties. Remember that night those dudes in the back killed the keg to Boston's ""Foreplay/Long Time""? Or how amused you and your middle-school friends were the first time someone played you 2 Live Crew's ""We Want Some Pussy""? How about the college radio station mixer that introduced you to Pavement and Sonic Youth? Kind of blurry? Well, Gregg Gillis remembers them all for you, and vitally, makes you dance in the process. He cites Dr. Dre and Nirvana as his two favorite acts as if it was natural to mention them in the same breath. And, argues Night Ripper, maybe it is. --Joshua Klein",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d315e6ef95969326fde/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Girl_Talk_Night-Ripper.jpg
Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6510-top-50-albums-of-2006/,2006,year,album,33,Mission of Burma The,Obliterati,Matador,"Conventional wisdom says Mission of Burma first broke up in 1983 due to various logistical obstacles, but the high quality of Burma's output since their 2002 reunion suggests they were merely waiting for everyone else to play catch-up before moving the goalposts again. While art-punk progeny like Trail of Dead struggle to reconcile their aggressive and extravagant impulses, The Obliterati provides an exemplary model of tuneful atonality, with 14 songs that are as melodically precise as they are fierce. But what's really remarkable is that Burma aren't trying to play like men half their age; instead, they rage like the pushing-50 cranks that they are, seething at an American political landscape that sadly hasn't changed much in the past two decades. There's a big difference between reformation and revitalization, and The Obliterati makes that gap all the greater. --Stuart Berman",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d32c0084474cd0c6bbc/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Mission_of_Burma_The-Obliterati.jpg
Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6510-top-50-albums-of-2006/,2006,year,album,32,Lupe Fiasco Food &,Liquor,1st and 15th/Atlantic,"Fairly touted as the great crossover hope by hip-hop reformists looking to reap philosophical gains from a repeat of the Kanye Effect, the heroically-delayed and oft-resequenced debut from Chicago's Lupe Fiasco ultimately scored a small victory by landing at #8 on Billboard's album charts. That it didn't sell much more beyond that was hardly an indictment of its content; stuffed full of rolling strings, lustrous horn samples, and bumping (if not slightly too tasteful) rhythms, Food & Liquor was one of the year's most decadent hip-hip albums. And at the core of it lie Lupe's impressively tricksy raps, equal parts virtuosic and virtuous, but never overly clever. What he does from here is anyone's guess. Lord knows, he's got the charisma and the Rolodex to full-court press for mainstream numbers, but I'd just as happily take three or four more records like this, provided he doesn't have 12 minutes worth of people to thank each and every time. --Mark Pytlik",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d330c2bba1b7de049ec/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Lupe_Fiasco_Food_-Liquor.jpg
Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6510-top-50-albums-of-2006/,2006,year,album,31,Danielson,Ships,Secretly Canadian,"A burning hard rock album disguised as a ""Kumbaya"", Ships didn't achieve the level of blog frenzy that Daniel Smith might have hoped-- but not for want of trying. With a cast of over 20 indie greats including Deerhoof and Why?, Smith delivered a majestic, melodic beast that's closer to Queen than to his better-known disciple Sufjan Stevens. The summer camp sing-along vocals-- which were probably the biggest obstacle to potential converts-- belie the rich arrangements and gigantic power chords that lift and heave the band: Dig the centerpiece, ""Two Sitting Ducks"", where they climb higher and higher until you think their metaphorical ship might break apart and spill uniformed twee-rockers into the sea. But Smith keeps their heads above water: He's always a step ahead of his massive ambition, and here, he doesn't falter for a second. --Chris Dahlen",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d33d7a71d1ea569c405/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Danielson-Ships.jpg
Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6510-top-50-albums-of-2006/,2006,year,album,30,Belle and Sebastian The Life,Pursuit,Matador,"By the time of The Life Pursuit, most people probably thought they had Belle and Sebastian figured out. The Scottish group's sixth album followed within a few short months of a live recording of If You're Feeling Sinister and an essential 2xCD compilation of their seven Jeepster-era EPs. Then again, most people slept on those records the first time around. So The Life Pursuit was probably doomed to become the one-time D.I.Y. band's most misunderstood album, even as its exuberant soulfulness and L.A. polish also made it the group's most accessible. But rather than fade into the post-glory MOR that word implies, The Life Pursuit explodes with love-- for pop, insects, misfits, choirgirls, and a divine power that may not even exist. Stuart Murdoch's canny wordplay and bold melodies keep the faith, from the opening theatrics to the urban country-Stones ennui of ""Mornington Crescent"". Punk may be dead, but here are 13 frivolous reasons to believe in just about anything. --Marc Hogan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d33d7a71d1ea569c407/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Belle_and_Sebastian_The_Life-Pursuit.jpg
Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6510-top-50-albums-of-2006/,2006,year,album,29,"Lily Allen Alright,",Still,Parlophone/EMI,"From MySpace rumor to gloriously gobby pop star in less than a year, Lily Allen's public profile at times threatened to eclipse her music. This would be a shame as Alright, Still proved to be one of 2006's most enduringly rewarding pop albums. It was a bawdy comedy of North London manners and romantic hangovers, with a soundtrack expertly sourced from the likes of Lord Kitchener, Althea and Donna, Shampoo, Terry Hall, and the Happy Mondays. While she'll always stand accused by some of being a mere stageschool style-biter of the rawer Lady Sov, the best of her debut suggested that Allen might actually turn out to be the heir of another mordant kitchen-sink pop storyteller (and daughter of a famous dad): Kirsty MacColl. --Stephen Troussé",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d34c0084474cd0c6bc0/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Lily_Allen_Alright-Still.jpg
Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6510-top-50-albums-of-2006/,2006,year,album,28,Cat Power The,Greatest,Matador,"When people go to Memphis to record, it's usually to escape into a simpler past; either from the coastal machinery of the music biz or personal turmoil. Chan Marshall doesn't sound like she quite succeeded in evading the latter on The Greatest; throughout the record, her own woozy vocal and ponderous piano seems somehow at odds with the Muzak-slick brass and strings. But rifling through a historical genre wardrobe (gospel, soul, brittle country) in search of a life preserver isn't a futile effort, whether she's coldly watching herself hit bottom on ""Hate"" or charting a path to redemption on ""Living Proof"" or ""Love & Communication"". By all accounts, Chan Marshall left 2006 in a much healthier place than she started it, but The Greatest lingers as an eerie souvenir of her emotional battle's homestretch. --Rob Mitchum",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d34eb335119a49f0fc8/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Cat_Power_The-Greatest.jpg
Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6510-top-50-albums-of-2006/,2006,year,album,27,Califone Roots &,Crowns,Thrill Jockey,"It didn't come easy: After touring behind Heron King Blues in 2004, Califone collapsed. Struggling with a lack of motivation and his place as a musician, frontman Tim Rutili moved to Los Angeles, where he busied himself with film scores until chancing upon a mixtape graced by Psychic TV's ""The Orchids"". Obsessing over the song, he began writing, fell back in love with music, and finally, resaddled the band. A paean to resurrection bathed in electro-acoustic manipulation and flanked by Jim Becker's violin, ""The Orchids"" is the sonic and thematic epicenter of Roots & Crowns, an album that ties the threads of Califone's existence. Rutili's songs have rarely said so much so freely, and here, the thoughts and melodies come rendered in perfect detail with conviction, clarity, and reignited devotion. --Grayson Currin",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d3413d197565213f425/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Califone_Roots_-Crowns.jpg
Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6510-top-50-albums-of-2006/,2006,year,album,26,Hot Chip The,Warning,DFA/EMI,"For all its sly tech-pop wit and style, Hot Chip's 2004 debut, Coming on Strong, suffered from the ancient English affliction of bathos. But with The Warning, they shook off all that irony and understatement, sincerely embracing British art-pop tradition-- from Robert Wyatt to Brian Eno and New Order-- and making good on their abundant potential. ""Over & Over"" was a smartly dumb, brilliantly addictive dancefloor juggernaut, while both the wistful ""Boy From School"" and the Willie Mitchell-style ballad ""Look After Me"" showcased Alexis Taylor's reedy but affecting vocals, tugging on heartstrings without sacrificing any of their hipster poise. --Stephen Troussé",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d355e6ef95969326fe4/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Hot_Chip_The-Warning.jpg
Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6510-top-50-albums-of-2006/,2006,year,album,25,Justin Timberlake,FutureSex/LoveSounds,Jive,"Justin Timberlake has a powerful, serpentine voice, but it's not suited for superhuman r&b pyrotechnics. It has a soft, timorous vulnerability, a lost-little-boy quality. When he sings about heartbreak, he sounds like he wants to crawl into a hole and die. When he sings about dancing, he sounds like he's seeing nightclub lights for the first time. When he sings about pimping, he sounds like a kid playing dress-up. But here, Timbaland takes that voice and traps it in a hall of mirror-balls, surrounding it with glistening strings, dizzy sci-fi synths, and itchy funk guitars. The result is a disco album both dazzling in its technical trickery and enormously satisfying in its emotional sweep. If an album this ambitiously weird can be one of the year's biggest sellers, we're in good shape. --Tom Breihan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d350c2bba1b7de049ef/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Justin_Timberlake-FutureSexLoveSounds.jpg
Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6510-top-50-albums-of-2006/,2006,year,album,24,Peter Bjorn and John Writer's,Block,Wichita/V2,"One of the year's most misleadingly titled releases, Writer's Block is by far the most studiously crafted of Peter Bjorn and John's three full-lengths. Channeling romanticized 60s U.S. pop through the D.I.Y. filter of 80s New Zealand indie rock, the Stockholm trio's songs are more charmingly inventive here than ever: ""Young Folks"" fashions bongos and whistling into an elastic groove that's simultaneously soaring and navel-gazing; ""Start to Melt"" lays guitars and distortion like brick and mortar; ""Let's Call It Off"" shuffles on a floor tom/handclap beat and a goofily catchy chorus; and every last note sounds basted in liberal doses of reverb. So PB&J aren't fooling anyone with that title: Writer's Block evokes a sense of crippled creativity without falling victim to it, capturing the feeling of being uncomfortable in your own skin and wanting to be anywhere but wherever you are. --Stephen M. Deusner",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d35eb335119a49f0fcb/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Peter_Bjorn_and_John_Writers-Block.jpg
Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6510-top-50-albums-of-2006/,2006,year,album,23,Yo La Tengo I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your,Ass,Matador,"Even if home-run opener ""Pass the Hatchet, I Think I'm Goodkind"" were the only great track on I Am Not Afraid of You..., the album would still be among Yo La Tengo's best of the decade. That extended guitar blissout not only fits snugly in the Ira Kaplan Hall of Fame (right alongside ""The Evil That Men Do"" and ""Blue Line Swinger""), it's also a loud, clear sign that Yo La Tengo have relit their own eclectic flame. Their winning streak might have seemed on the verge of running its course with 2003's spotty Summer Sun, but even if its final track claims to be ""The Story of Yo La Tango"", I Am Not Afraid of You proves this trio still has tales to tell. --Marc Masters",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d360c2bba1b7de049f1/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Yo_La_Tengo_I_Am_Not_Afraid_of_You_and_I_Will_Beat_Your-Ass.jpg
Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6510-top-50-albums-of-2006/,2006,year,album,22,LCD Soundsystem,45:33,iTunes,"Dear LCD Soundsystem: Please break up. Ok, ok... just kidding. I'm probably one of the few Pitchfork writers who hasn't yet heard LCD's new album, but the first one is nowhere near as boring as everyone's post-facto making it out to be. And live, LCD smoke-- the hands aloft, ridiculous transition from ""Yeah"" to ""Beat Connection"" to Paperclip People's ""Throw"" was one those moments this year that's kept me from chasing bourbon with barbiturates. As of right now, though, I have no idea how James Murphy is gonna top this quickie exploitation number for a little-known shoe company. A multi-part ""suite"" that moves like a smoothly mixed DJ set and nods to Ash Ra Tempel mastermind Manuel Göttsching's E2-E4 along the way, 45:33 encompasses everything from an original space-disco re-edit of an original Foreigner-esque rock song to the prettiest microhouse this side of anything by actual Germans to spastic HI-NRG-- and it should finally silence anyone who thinks Murphy's just a cranky pastiche artist. Also, apparently you can jog to it. --Jess Harvell",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d3613d197565213f427/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/LCD_Soundsystem-4533.jpg
Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6510-top-50-albums-of-2006/,2006,year,album,21,Be Your Own Pet Be Your Own,Pet,Ecstatic Peace/Universal,"Grumps might complain that the best thing about Be Your Own Pet is that their minor success helps bankroll the weirder stuff on Thurston Moore's Ecstatic Peace label, now that it's part of David Geffen's empire. But c'mon: These scruffy-shoed, dirty-faced teen angels might not be the second coming of X-Ray Spex, but little else this year ripped shit up with such screechy formalist glee. Fourteen shots to the dome of bratty pop-punk, with only one dip into ""ballad"" territory, Be Your Own Pet is snot as high art. Singer Jemima Pearl sneers the way only a teenage girl can, and she sounds just as good shouting things like ""We wanna be friends with you! Everyone wants to have a good time!"" And I've spent the better part of a year hearing the bridge to ""Adventure"" as ""From MySpace to my place to castles to highways."" Which, right or not, is about as 2006 a sentiment as I can think of. --Jess Harvell",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d375e6ef95969326fe8/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Be_Your_Own_Pet_Be_Your_Own-Pet.jpg
Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6510-top-50-albums-of-2006/,2006,year,album,20,Man Man Six Demon,Bag,Ace Fu,"Indie's finest nickelodeon act grew into a silver screen star on Six Demon Bag, maturing their sound beyond Zappa/Beefheart hijinks and delivering a surprisingly stark, cinematic mood. Not that frontman Honus Honus exactly spills his guts all over the record: Between mindfuck numbers like ""Engrish Bwudd"" and sweeping busker elegies like ""Van Helsing Boombox"", Man Man span both ends of the emotional spectrum. Plus, Honus seems to have a one-liner ready for any occasion. The countless Kodak moments here-- from the drunken lament of ""Feathers"" to the Noreaga shoutout on ""Black Mission Goggles""-- only attest to Man Man's ability to power pawnshop ditties with a ramshackle classic rock bigness. --Adam Moerder",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d3713d197565213f429/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Man_Man_Six_Demon-Bag.jpg
Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6510-top-50-albums-of-2006/,2006,year,album,19,T.I.,King,Grand Hustle/Atlantic,"Predictably lauded for its triumph, King doesn't really do anything Tip Harris' other albums haven't done before-- he just does it moreso here. ""King Back"" and ""Talkin' to You"" spoke to those who wanted the epic, Epicurian, and Eastern, while ""Why You Wanna"" and ""Live in the Sky"" held down women and the warm-hearted. And ""What You Know"" pleased damn near everybody-- DJ Toomp's production is one of the finest in years. But the rough-hewn backend of King -- especially the whistling ""I'm Straight"", the lock-jawed ""You Know Who"", and the near-perfect posse cut closer ""Bankhead""-- provides the backbone of an album that was conceived as a something of a genre-hopping risk. Working with Just Blaze seems like a no-brainer, but for an artist as locale-specific as Tip, it was bold. All coronation gags aside, this is a marriage of attitude and atmosphere that stands up against nearly any other rap album released this year. --Sean Fennessey",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d37eb335119a49f0fce/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/TI-King.jpg
Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6510-top-50-albums-of-2006/,2006,year,album,18,Destroyer Destroyer's,Rubies,Merge,"On the expansive and unhindered Destroyer's Rubies, Dan Bejar finally gave his innate musical strangeness some room to breathe. In a sense, it's the most accessible record ever released under the Destroyer moniker, elegantly produced and sharply melodic. But without the constraints of a deceptively ""weird"" aesthetic regime, the distinctiveness of Bejar's songwriting and performance is much more striking. I'm still not entirely sure how these songs make sense, but they do-- convoluted structures, lavish arrangements, vocal tics, and all. For the first time in his career (with the possible exception of the criminally underrated This Night ), Bejar doesn't sound like he's fighting against his own instincts; even if his vision can be impenetrable, it's presented here with tremendous generosity and grace. --Matt LeMay",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d38c0084474cd0c6bc5/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Destroyer_Destroyers-Rubies.jpg
Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6510-top-50-albums-of-2006/,2006,year,album,17,"The Thermals The Body, The Blood, The",Machine,Sub Pop,"When a rock group that's made it a point to keep things brutally simple tries to change its formula for success, there's naturally some cause for some concern. Yeah, the Thermals might've exchanged their balls-to-the-wall guitar attack for a more measured approach, and yes, some of their charming lo-fi grime and grit has been scrubbed away. But working with the subjects of God, war, and power, these high-brow brat-beaters show no mercy. And when Hutch Harris strikes his Jesus Christ pose on the album's opening blitzkreig, he launches a bloody crusade from which, in the heaving finale, the noble young band conquers all. --David Raposa",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d38d7a71d1ea569c40d/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Thermals_The_Body_The_Blood_The-Machine.jpg
Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6510-top-50-albums-of-2006/,2006,year,album,16,Beach House Beach,House,Carpark,"The house was clearly abandoned around the end of the second World War: These songs are empty, drafty, and lazy, with sand blowing up in the corners, late-autumn clouds blotting out the sun, and the seasonal power long disconnected. It doesn't hurt that Beach House paint with the barest of colors-- drum machines tick, organs drone, guitars slide, echoes wander-- or that their sweet, broken-down drawl has the same dead elegance as scratched-up waltz LPs, Nico, or old country music. But the album is more elegant than spooky, and when singer Victoria Legrand gets all ""Blue Velvet"" on ""Master of None"", it's like we've finally found the Atlantic-coast equivalent of Julee Cruise playing the ""Twin Peaks"" roadhouse. --Nitsuh Abebe",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d39c0084474cd0c6bc7/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Beach_House_Beach-House.jpg
Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6510-top-50-albums-of-2006/,2006,year,album,15,Sunset Rubdown Shut Up I Am,Dreaming,Absolutely Kosher,"Much more than a ""side project"" or any other lo-fi, run-of-the-mill indie, there's something wonderfully naive about Spencer Krug's truisms, like a quiet wide-eyed child in the backseat absorbing everything. With its occasionally bleak picture of romance (""The Men Are Called Horsemen There""), Shut Up I Am Dreaming can make you somehow nostalgic and guarded at once. The album's dry, peculiar production and brief minor-key themes make childhood sound like a scary and dangerous time, and it's easy to picture the eccentric Krug behind out-of-tune pianos and toy keyboards, maniacally banging out his eccentric calliope shit. But take these grand statements, sung in his affected drawl, and add oddly flashy guitar tricks like speedy arpeggios and bottomless reverb, and the album becomes a poignant, unflinching portrait of growing up. --Jason Crock",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d39c0084474cd0c6bc9/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Sunset_Rubdown_Shut_Up_I_Am-Dreaming.jpg
Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6510-top-50-albums-of-2006/,2006,year,album,14,Tim Hecker Harmony in,Ultraviolet,Kranky,"Separating Harmony in Ultraviolet into 15 separate ""tracks"" dampens Tim Hecker's blizzard symphony. What makes the album brilliant-- not merely gorgeous-- is the gradual accrual of power that occurs throughout its 50-minute duration: Submerged, sinking synths are steadily woven into stuck-between-stations radio static, floating from a patient, natural-world meander until, in the last 20 minutes, the dam breaks and angels swirl. This is the ambient album of 2006, one of Canada's most celebrated sound artists imbuing electro-magnetic b-rolls with humanity and grace. --Brandon Stosuy",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d3a0c2bba1b7de049f5/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Tim_Hecker_Harmony_in-Ultraviolet.jpg
Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6510-top-50-albums-of-2006/,2006,year,album,13,Phoenix It's Never Been Like,That,Astralwerks,"Pitchfork's Rob Mitchum called Phoenix the ""soft-rock Strokes,"" which is as accurate as it is damning. But where Julian and his boys are so self-consciously cool it hurts, Phoenix effortlessly walk the walk. Their songs work their foggy notions shamelessly, regardless of whether they take their cues from former dictators or Heloise, and what initially seem like inconsequentially doughy ditties turn out to be hearty pop-rockers that won't leave your head. --David Raposa",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d3ad7a71d1ea569c40f/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Phoenix_Its_Never_Been_Like-That.jpg
Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6510-top-50-albums-of-2006/,2006,year,album,12,Band of Horses Everything All the,Time,Sub Pop,"Listening to Band of Horses' big, hazy atmospherics feels a little like steering your 1987 Corolla through 100 miles of white-hot desert, blindly navigating a landscape that feels simultaneously comforting, strange, and infinite. Everything All the Time, the brainchild of Seattle's Ben Bridwell and Mat Brooke (both formerly of Carissa's Wierd), is an unexpectedly epic collection of high, lonesome rock songs. But despite obvious comparisons to My Morning Jacket and the Shins, Band of Horses have carved out their own sonic niche: This is 2006's perfect comedown record, each lulling guitar and strained, earnest vocal hitting like a puff of warm breath on your cheek, reassuring and sweet. --Amanda Petrusich",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d3bc0084474cd0c6bcb/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Band_of_Horses_Everything_All_the-Time.jpg
Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6510-top-50-albums-of-2006/,2006,year,album,11,Junior Boys So This Is,Goodbye,Domino,"Without the stuttering, r&b-influnced beats of their debut, it's harder to prop up So This Is Goodbye as bold or innovative pop. Rather, it aims for a distinctly different yet similarly difficult route: Music so smart, yet so obvious, that it must have been there all along, waiting for someone to snatch it from our collective subconscious and make it our soundtrack for late-night driving and pre-party preening. Not to say this isn't a dance-minded record-- one listen to ""Double Shadow"" or ""In the Morning"" firmly proves otherwise-- just a surprisingly classicist one. More than blazing a trail, Junior Boys are simply a half-step ahead on the same path, finding the most predictable and logical rubbery synth or icy croon just a moment before we think of it. --Jason Crock",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d3bc0084474cd0c6bcd/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Junior_Boys_So_This_Is-Goodbye.jpg
Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6510-top-50-albums-of-2006/,2006,year,album,10,Scott Walker The,Drift,4AD,"Like a malcontent Santa Claus, Scott Walker's gift to the music world this year was a sack of coal-black art songs, dumped centerstage and set on fire. It's strong stuff: Ghosts of European and American political crimes howling from the grave, percussion constructed from gut punches to a side of beef, scary string arrangements that tilt the floor downward, and heavy guitar sludge that hits like first-wave Swans. Presiding over this palace of gloom is Walker's gnarled, throaty croon, a gallows moan that braids sweetness and violence. His trembling vibrato can be overwhelming, but Walker's histrionics are kept on a short leash of meticulous control. Amid the endgame of microscopic sub-genres and unconvincing pastiches that is contemporary music, Walker's hard slap reminds us that music can be both High Art and utterly new. --Drew Daniel",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d3cc0084474cd0c6bcf/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Scott_Walker_The-Drift.jpg
Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6510-top-50-albums-of-2006/,2006,year,album,9,Boris,Pink,Diwphalanx/Southern Lord,"Pink's liner notes peel apart into small individual squares resembling either Pantone chips or acid tabs, but the implication was surely meant to be ambiguous: Whatever you were looking for, you would find. This meant gauzy, billowing meditations; disembodied vocals and dirt-caked guitar tones; and an echoing thicket of colliding feedback and gong reverb. For a trio so ready to fall on its collective face, they found a way to make vertigo their chief strength. Attempting everything at once, all elements magically congealed; only on Pink will you hear three musicians committed so deeply to going exactly where their songs took them. --Zach Baron",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d3c13d197565213f432/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Boris-Pink.jpg
Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6510-top-50-albums-of-2006/,2006,year,album,8,Grizzly Bear Yellow,House,Warp,"2005's Horn of Plenty earned Grizzly Bear a number of comparisons to Brooklyn brethren Animal Collective, but Yellow House outed the band as its very own kind of critter. The album was recorded in Edward Droste's mother's Cape Cod home, and that familial, clean sheets, cookies-baking warmth is weirdly palpable: Yellow House is cozy, nuanced, and lovingly produced, as delicate as a fistful of dried flowers. Tracks like ""Little Brother"", with its acoustic intro, wisps of flute, and slow descent into psychedelia, and vintage waltz ""Marla"" (written by Droste's own grandmother) are dense with dizzying vocals, plucked banjo, and dusty, room-filling arrangements, all showcasing Grizzly Bear's strength for imbuing scratchy, archaic sounds with a sense of safety and warmth. --Amanda Petrusich",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d3cd7a71d1ea569c411/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Grizzly_Bear_Yellow-House.jpg
Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6510-top-50-albums-of-2006/,2006,year,album,7,Clipse Hell Hath No,Fury,Jive,"You could file it in the last two years' ""crack rap boom"" if you want but you'd be selling Clipse's climactic second album short. Hell Hath No Fury might detail crack-dealing and all its ugly vagaries, but it's also an exercise in self-awareness: Its street tales follow two balls-of-fire rappers (Pusha and Malice) for whom the game-- and the society that helped them into it-- has turned frigid. Hardly a glorification of the drug dealer lifestyle, Hell Hath No Fury's immediacy, no-future misanthrope, and grim delivery feel borderline apocalyptic. Even tracks like ""Dirty Money"" and ""Trill"", which are supposed to be about ""fun,"" ring like death knells for materialism. Pharrell's gruesome, impersonal space beats may sound futuristic, but these lyricists' tales are as old-- and maybe as effective-- as Greek tragedy. --Julianne Shepherd",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d3dd7a71d1ea569c413/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Clipse_Hell_Hath_No-Fury.jpg
Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6510-top-50-albums-of-2006/,2006,year,album,6,Liars Drum's Not,Dead,Mute,"Brooklyn-to-Berlin trio Liars have one of the strangest career arcs in recent memory, but even their staunchest champions couldn't have anticipated the avant-rock masterstroke of their third album, Drum's Not Dead. Following through on the murky promise of 2004's widely panned concept album They Were Wrong, So We Drowned, the band hunkered down in an East German radio facility, using the varying acoustics of different rooms to naturally inform the atmosphere of each song. The result is an album cut with dark, devastating simplicity, colored by ritualistic percussion, translucent guitar figures, and Angus Andrew's unearthly falsetto, which hovers like a phantom. The fabric of tracks like ""Be Quiet Mt. Heart Attack"" or ""Let's Not Wrestle Mt. Heart Attack"" is rent with shadowy turmoil, depicting an ongoing conflict that finds fragile resolution in the exquisite album-closing ballad ""The Other Side of Mt. Heart Attack"". Gorgeous and unfathomable, Drum's Not Dead is a landmark achievement from a group that many had virtually left for dead, but whose prospects now seem more limitless than ever. --Matthew Murphy",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d3d5e6ef95969326ff3/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Liars_Drums_Not-Dead.jpg
Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6510-top-50-albums-of-2006/,2006,year,album,5,The Hold Steady Boys and Girls in,America,Vagrant,"Almost every description of the Hold Steady invokes alcoholic imagery: a bar band with drinking songs. But such condescension doesn't do Boys and Girls in America justice; it isn't so much a dashed-off, beer-soaked record as an unflinching and literary document of social intoxication, from its Kerouac-quoting thesis statement-- ""Boys and girls in America/ Have such a sad time together""-- to the 11 one-acts that repeatedly drive the observation home. Craig Finn fills his dioramas with characters using substances to stave off boredom and fuel desperate, fleeting collisions with people in similar states; in most songs, the drugs get equal billing. The only way to accurately depict these interactions was to reach back to an era of bigger rock sounds-- not just Bruuuuce, but also Thin Lizzy and the Band-- that do the alchemy of making the everyday seem momentous. If alcohol's most seductive effect is making one feel like they're the main character in a movie of their own life, the Hold Steady made the bombastically bipolar soundtrack for that feeling. --Rob Mitchum",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d3e5e6ef95969326ff5/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Hold_Steady_Boys_and_Girls_in-America.jpg
Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6510-top-50-albums-of-2006/,2006,year,album,4,Ghostface Killah,Fishscale,Def Jam,"Fishscale was officially released in March, but unofficial versions were devoured and crapped out on blogs for months prior. Upon hitting stores, it was showered with praise by critics from your local paper to NPR-- trusted sources of hip-hop since never. In other words, no matter when you heard it or in what form, Fishscale became your favorite rap record, maybe for hours, maybe forever. Exactly how it became Ghostface Killah's most lauded is more difficult to explain. It's not his most compelling album lyrically, nor his most progressive album sonically. Still, Fishscale most vividly displayed Ghostface's versatility. Even when forced into revision by his abiding (but impatient) fans, he retained his signature faculties-- ludicrous imagination, elaborate storytelling, tortured soul singing, and dirty jokes for days-- all while evolving into a wiser, gentler armchair hustler whose charisma spanned race, class and creed: He was still Ghost, but now he was everybody's. --Pete Macia",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d3e13d197565213f434/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Ghostface_Killah-Fishscale.jpg
Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6510-top-50-albums-of-2006/,2006,year,album,3,Joanna Newsom,Ys,Drag City,"Ys is, without a doubt, one of the most ambitious albums on this list, which is not always a good thing. But Newsom's ambition is the quiet, professional kind, and complaining about it feels a little like standing at the finish line of a marathon and pointing out that the runners look a little haggard. She's summoned up every shred of her compositional training, refined her voice from a curiosity to an expressive marvel, and shot past the average singer's confessionals into a complex personal mythology of manipulative circus animals, astronomer siblings, and one ""awfully real gun."" She directs arrangements that veer from shades of Chinese opera to a sort of Broadway baroque. As fans and detractors talk about fairies, debate the validity of the pronoun ""thee,"" and argue the aesthetics of it-- as if she's on her deathbed and can't just try something else next year-- what slips quietly, professionally under the radar are the triumphs of her songwriting and craft. In the middle of this record, she sits alone with her harp for 10 minutes, asking stuffed birds ""Why the long face?""-- it feels like four minutes, tops, and you can spend at least two of them right up toward the edge of your seat. --Nitsuh Abebe",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d3f5e6ef95969326ff7/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Joanna_Newsom-Ys.jpg
Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6510-top-50-albums-of-2006/,2006,year,album,2,TV on the Radio Return to Cookie,Mountain,4AD/Interscope,"This could be the only record this year I never tired of. Each time I heard it, I liked it more-- and I heard it a lot. In one sense, it's a fairly conventional rock record, with big chords, hummable refrains, chorus hooks, and even a few bridges. Peter Gabriel, U2, and other none-too-hip references are spread out for everyone to hear, though the fantastic singing gives TV on the Radio their own spin on the rock anthem. Still, David Sitek's production-- sounding like nothing else out there at the moment-- wormed its way in between the songs' cracks, all thick and sludgy and opaque, ensuring that the biggest moments never hit all at once. Of course, even after all this time and so many listens, I still don't really know what the songs are actually about. But I guess that'll come in 2007. --Mark Richardson",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d3f5e6ef95969326ff9/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/TV_on_the_Radio_Return_to_Cookie-Mountain.jpg
Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6510-top-50-albums-of-2006/,2006,year,album,1,The Knife Silent,Shout,Rabid/Mute,"Entering the year, could there have been a more unexpected consensus pick for 2006 than the Knife? OK, so the Swedish brother/sister duo got a boost from the Sony Bravia commercial featuring José Gonzalez' rendition of their brilliant ""Heartbeats"", and that exposure served as unintended cross-promo for Silent Shout, helping anoint them among the upper echelons of this year's blog-rock royalty. But nothing else on the blogs sounded like this. Masters of their own record label, Rabid, the Knife may be indie, but nowhere would their shuddering trance arpeggios and steely technoid programming qualify as ""rock."" Vocals aside, Silent Shout is deeply rooted in contemporary European techno at a moment when techno remains deeply unfashionable among American listeners, for all but a few Europhilic holdouts. Retaining the merest echo of their last album's electro-pop perk, Silent Shout plunges into the darkest thickets like a Japanese horror flick, turning sunny-day steel drums into instruments of harmonic torture and processing vocals in a way that decouples the ""human"" from ""expression."" Perhaps what stuck out for listeners, despite the shivering digital luster of it all, was the obvious attention to old-school notions of musicality: Here, no matter the synthetic nature of its source, a sound is never a static thing but a breathing, heaving presence that pushes air across the room helter-skelter. It didn't hurt that, no matter the studio-bred nature of their music, the Knife built their popularity the old-fashioned way, by touring-- embellishing their playback-heavy concerts with suggestive video projections and ominous theatrics. Ultimately, Silent Shout thrives on its uncomfortable balance of mystery and transparency. The way they structure their tracks, every sound sticks out like a lone wire waiting to be stripped, but the more you tug on any given strand, the more all the rest-- unstable harmonics, queered pitches, android shanties, looping tales of forest families-- is plunged into the most addictive kind of inscrutability. --Philip Sherburne",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d3f5e6ef95969326ffb/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Knife_Silent-Shout.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,100,"Burial ""Southern",Comfort,Hyperdub,"MP3:  Burial: ""Southern Comfort"" When it comes to tokenism, we could have done much worse. Either I continually underrated dubstep for the past few years or this was the year it finally got good, but Burial's mix of UK garage's skip, dubstep's low-end whump, and a haunted dancehall vibe of frozen rain and isolationist static is the genre's best stuff yet. And though Burial's album contains spookier moments, little of it bumps as hard as this early single. If too much ""dancefloor"" dubstep sounds like a sparse (or fucking boring) syncopated nothingness, Burial's mournful South London alleyways and highrises are flush with enough eerie sights and sounds to keep us dilettantes happy. --Jess Harvell",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d4bc0084474cd0c6bf0/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Burial_Southern-Comfort.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,99,"The Divine Comedy ""A Lady of a Certain",Age,Parlophone,"MP3:  The Divine Comedy: ""A Lady of a Certain Age"" Neil Hannon is best when he plays down his typical pomp and focuses on a story, and depending on your socio-economic rung, the story this song tells could be either sad or vindicating. With warmth and incisive wit, Hannon details the loneliness of a late-in-life English aristocrat whose kids are distant, whose dead husband willed the summer home to his French mistress, and who has finally had to give up chasing the sun around the French Riviera and settle into an affordable flat. Was it a fun life? Yeah, but an empty one, too, and it's much too late to change now. --Joe Tangari",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d4c0c2bba1b7de04a0f/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Divine_Comedy_A_Lady_of_a_Certain-Age.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,98,"Chelonis R. Jones ""Deer in the Headlights (Radio Slave",Remix),Get Physical,"MP3:  Chelonis R. Jones: ""Deer in the Headlights (Radio Slave Remix)"" Radio Slave (aka Rekids label proprietor Matt Edwards) had a banner year, turning out two underground club hits (""My Bleep"" and ""Secret Base"") as well as a solid album (as Rekid) and mindbending remixes for M.A.N.D.Y. vs. Booka Shade, Trentemøller, and more. This blinder from January is an overlooked triumph of utter warehouse madness, its siren-like glissandi and dagger-sharp rave stabs carrying its punishing intensity higher and higher in an unremitting build-up. Chelonis R. Jones' soulful vocals become a crossing guard's scary rant as rushing bass and Dopplerized car horns lay waste to the dance floor like it's a six-lane highway, leaving clubbers all but roadkill. --Philip Sherburne",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d4c13d197565213f445/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Chelonis_R_Jones_Deer_in_the_Headlights_Radio_Slave-Remix.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,97,Midlake,Roscoe,Bella Union,"MP3:  Midlake: ""Roscoe"" After the pale fire of their Flaming Lipsy debut failed to set the world alight in 2004, few expected Texan psych-pop conceptualists Midlake to return with a single like ""Roscoe""-- a tune that sounds something like a Music From Big Pink outtake if it'd been recorded by Fleetwood Mac on the banks of Walden Pond. Out of step with anything else released in 2006, ""Roscoe"" fabricated a backwoods world that nobody had quite yet fathomed, conjuring all the dogged integrity those creamy CSN&Y harmonies yearned for. --Stephen Troussé",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d4ceb335119a49f0fe7/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Midlake-Roscoe.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,96,"Oxford Collapse ""Please Visit Your National",Parks,Sub Pop,"MP3:  Oxford Collapse: ""Please Visit Your National Parks"" Statistically, the debut single from Oxford Collapse's Remember the Night Parties isn't all that impressive: one riff, three nearly-identical verses, and four choruses. But the focus and repetition of ""Please Visit Your National Parks"" propel the song into a kind of frenetic, suspended animation trance that hasn't been done this well since Cap'n Jazz. Michael Pace's dynamic, Meat Puppets-style guitar playing keeps things at a constant peak as the song careens towards the only conclusion this kind of indie rock knows: a half-minute cooldown outro. Perfect. --Matt LeMay",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d4dd7a71d1ea569c42b/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Oxford_Collapse_Please_Visit_Your_National-Parks.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,95,Rihanna,S.O.S.,Def Jam,"This squeaky teen diva has the courage to ride the entirety of ""Tainted Love"". Necromantic sacrilege or pop justice? Well, the Soft Cell hit was already a cover of an old Northern Soul favorite first made famous by Gloria Jones. In other words, this was already a soul floorburner before it became an untouchable 80s synthpop chestnut, so here it comes full circle. Rihanna wears the beat well, cranks up the drama, and has enough fuck-all attitude to pull it off. Somebody tell Ciara to bite ""Sex Dwarf"" next. --Drew Daniel",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d4dd7a71d1ea569c42d/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Rihanna-SOS.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,94,"Scritti Politti ""The Boom Boom",Bap,Rough Trade,"Scritti Politti kicked off their 2006 comeback with this beautifully understated but addictive hymn to old school hip-hop. It was all the more affecting for frontman Green Gartside's decision to trade his usual Derridean indecision for plaintive plain-speak: In the last verse, he recites the tracklist of the first Run DMC album before concluding, ""I love you still… I always will,"" sighed in a helium falsetto the years haven't withered a bit. --Stephen Troussé",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d4ed7a71d1ea569c42f/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Scritti_Politti_The_Boom_Boom-Bap.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,93,"The Thermals ""Here's Your",Future,Sub Pop,"MP3:  The Thermals: ""Here's Your Future"" Picture Jesus Christ Superstar soundtracked by the Ramones, and you're pretty close to ""Here's Your Future"", which spins a dystopian fascist nightmare of the future with Christian folklore, while remaining vague and spiteful enough for anyone to rock out to. A church organ starts it off, but Hutch Harris remains as bratty as ever, even if his Bible CliffsNotes spin a distinctly human tale: Noah as fearful, lockstepping grunt (""Oh, Lord, no sir!""), JC as a freaked-out teen (""but Dad, I'm afraaaaaaaayed…"" Guitar solo!), and God as deliciously laconic: ""Here's your future: It's gonna rain."" Who'd have thought God was a master of understatement? I mean, the Bible's a fuckin' thousand pages long. --Jason Crock",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d4ed7a71d1ea569c431/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Thermals_Heres_Your-Future.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,92,"Mew ""The Zookeeper's",Boy,Sony BMG,"MP3:  Mew: ""The Zookeeper's Boy"" Mew really played the angles well here. There's the interwoven, spaghetti instrumental parts for you prog-rockers, the oh-so-gooey chorus for the card-carrying indie pop fan, the classic rock highs and lows-- and best of all, it's wrapped in a chilling Euro other-worldliness that gives it the personality so many monotone indie bands sorely lack. Still, ""The Zookeeper's Boy"" evades any cross-analysis with its contemporaries, working toward some model of perfection that's completely mindless of current trends. It's a sui generis ""Bohemian Rhapsody"", full of big words, big sounds, and most memorably, a big heart. --Adam Moerder",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d4fd7a71d1ea569c433/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Mew_The_Zookeepers-Boy.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,91,Escort,Starlight,Escort,"MP3:  Escort: ""Starlight"" You know, hats off to a track that, in 2006, is proud to be this unabashedly disco. ""Starlight"" doesn't just open the time capsule, it defrosts cryogenically frozen 70s strings and a vintage four-on-the-floor pulse, only to find them both-- unlike John Travolta-- still attractively thin. The almost catatonic chorus (""Staaaar-light"") stays true to classic disco's time-tested formula, but the song has enough clever ideas to soar beyond simple emulation. There's no fat that needs trimming here, no gloating over the 1970s' inferior production technology with digitized bleeps and bloops, just disco for disco's sake, and why not? --Adam Moerder",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d4feb335119a49f0fee/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Escort-Starlight.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,90,"Arctic Monkeys ""A Certain",Romance,Domino,"I still think they'll regret choosing that bandname in a few years (if they don't already), but give these boys a little fuzz guitar and you won't care what they're called. ""There's only music so that there's new ringtones"" is such a funny indictment that its place in a larger narrative-- about living in a small town among the chavs-- feels like a bonus. Of course, the Arctic Monkeys place themselves inside this world, but you get the feeling that the bands there could never come up with an arrangement as clever and subtly varied as this one. You get rolling surf drums, crunching riffs, and affable chime in about the space of 30 seconds, and the neo-ska bass and guitar parts are a perfect complement to the proudly working class accents that put it all together. --Joe Tangari",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d500c2bba1b7de04a17/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Arctic_Monkeys_A_Certain-Romance.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,89,Annuals,Brother,Ace Fu,"MP3:  Annuals: ""Brother"" You've got to wonder about Annuals frontman Adam Baker, a 19-year-old who sounds like he can't stop having ideas long enough to sort through them: The first 110 seconds of ""Brother"" are all intricacy-- cricket samples, a gentle acoustic guitar, and Baker's multi-tracked vocals creaking over an electronic bed. And then, it explodes, his sextet perpetually cresting on a two-minute crescendo-turned-coda. Guitars crunch, drums march, and he sings, ""Now I've grown, bold and lonely/ I should have stayed with dear brother at home."" If this is what undergraduate angst from hyper-creative kids sounds like in 2006, it could hardly be better. --Grayson Currin",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d50c0084474cd0c6bf7/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Annuals-Brother.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,88,"Geiger ""Good Evening (SuperMayer",Remix),Firm,"The website  Resident Advisor  recently said ""nothing can redeem [Michael Mayer's ""Good Evening"" remix]… It's one of the most pompous, overblown pieces of Wagnerian microtrance I've heard in a good while."" But I thought that's why it was so awesome! Maybe I'm just a sucker for superoverorchestrated trance (calling this ""micro-""anything is a bit, um, wrong). Or maybe, like my French forebears, I'm just way too eager to roll over for German pomp and circumstance. But if one of your main complaints in this era of minimal techno is that dance music just isn't whooshy enough, the dynamic duo of Superpitcher and Michael Mayer should restore your faith. --Jess Harvell",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d510c2bba1b7de04a19/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Geiger_Good_Evening_SuperMayer-Remix.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,87,"Yeah Yeah Yeahs ""Cheated",Hearts,Interscope,"Truth: I wrote off Show Your Bones at first and not for a very good reason: I didn't like the first single, ""Gold Lion"". But this follow-up does all the things that great Yeah Yeah Yeahs song do: Ripcord solos from Nick Zinner, a breezy melody that spirals into freakish yelping from Karen O, and sky-bomb crescendos throughout. Nobody locks in and out of momentum like this band when they're flying, and ""Cheated Hearts"", while never as sticky or grand as ""Maps"", marks a rare accomplishment in 2006: A top-line, major-label alternative rock band with a hit and a heart. --Sean Fennessey",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d51eb335119a49f0ff0/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Yeah_Yeah_Yeahs_Cheated-Hearts.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,86,"Spank Rock ""Sweet",Talk,Big Dada,"Spank Rock was 2006's most successful act from a burgeoning hip-hop movement that emerged out of neither traditional rap circles nor high-minded backpacker ciphers. Working alongside fellow Philadelphians Plastic Little and Amanda Blank, he had the album that sold best, and for that, we can give him-- and especially his producer XXXChange-- a whole lot of credit. ""Sweet Talk"" sums up the equation: Spank Rock's syncopated vocals are but one puzzle-piece in XXXChange's playfully cluttered tapestry, which loops a guitar-lick and a wicked catchy female chant into filthy good times. --Zach Baron",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d52c0084474cd0c6bfc/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Spank_Rock_Sweet-Talk.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,85,"Beyoncé ""Ring the",Alarm,Sony,"So many questions! Why does the other girl get everything Beyoncé owns if Beyoncé lets this guy go? Did she not sign a pre-nup? (Is she secretly married?) If the other girl's rocking of chinchilla coats and VVS stones hinges on Beyoncé's letting him go, why doesn't she just, you know, not let him go? And why would anyone cheat on someone as hot and awesome as Beyoncé to begin with? Is it 'cause she goes a little crazy sometimes? --Amy Phillips",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d52c0084474cd0c6bfe/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Beyonc_Ring_the-Alarm.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,84,Boris,Farewell,Southern Lord,"MP3:  Boris: ""Farewell"" The heavy shoegaze anomaly on an otherwise hard-charging metal record, ""Farewell"" opened Pink and closed out Boris' live shows. It was from the gossamer calm of this song, one sensed, that Boris got in the mood to be Boris. The wind-tunnel vocals and deferential cymbal crashes, the single sustained chords and drawn-out three-note runs; this was the gradually building sound of a band settling into their headspace and preparing to lay waste. It felt like either a demonstration of their private dynamic or the slow application of their public face: Either way, it was one of the heaviest metal tracks of the year that couldn't rightly be termed ""metal"" at all. --Zach Baron",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d520c2bba1b7de04a1d/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Boris-Farewell.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,83,Cansei de Ser Sexy,Alala,Sub Pop,"MP3:  Cansei de Ser Sexy: ""Alala"" Mediocre musicians, shitty dressers, all the glamour of a sweat stain: CSS have a lot going against them. But ""Alala"" was CSS at their over-the-shoulder ash-flick coolest, so nonchalant even while begging; implying filthy things (""I wanna be that dirtyfinger"") without saying them (""alala""). Brazil's sleaziest export is all about image, so it's funny that their best song is about not measuring up. ""You're so cool/ Can I be your friend?"" asks Lovefoxxx coyly, over smarting, jagged keyboard lines. It's hard to know who she's submitting to, but the synth grinding away in the foreground elicits satisfied groans, like it's her own music sending her over the edge. Call it narcissism or harmless self-love-- it makes a great single. --Jessica Suarez",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d5313d197565213f44e/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Cansei_de_Ser_Sexy-Alala.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,82,"Kris Menace Presents Stars on 33 ""I Feel Music in Your Heart (Lifelike and Kris Menace",Remix),Vulture,"MP3:  Kris Menace Presents Stars on 33: ""I Feel Music in Your Heart (Lifelike and Kris Menace Remix)"" Nothing like a shot of Xanadu neon to wake you up. ""I Feel Music in Your Heart"" evokes unabashed disco fashions and a dumbstruck reverence for love, the topic on which house music wrote its thesis. 2006 wasn't exactly the year to get nostalgic for rollerskate angels in short shorts, but lest you doubt the power of rose-colored disco, behold Lifelike and Kris Menace's take on it. The beat is pumped up like the gushing hearts so apparently full of music, but the real Stars are the layered vocals teasing their message in harmony: ""I feel music in… I feel music in…"" Glittery and fantastic. --Dominique Leone",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d540c2bba1b7de04a20/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Kris_Menace_Presents_Stars_on_33_I_Feel_Music_in_Your_Heart_Lifelike_and_Kris_Menace-Remix.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,81,"My Robot Friend [ft. Antony] ""One More",Try,Soma,"I'm testing a theory that it's impossible to be genuinely upset about anything while this song is playing. Something about the unflinching 808 beat and surgically clean synthesizers seem to ask, ""Is it really that big a deal?"" Of course, a disarmingly fun and sassy vocal performance from Antony-- a guy who managed to eke self-aware humor out of a song called ""Hitler in My Heart""-- doesn't hurt. ""One More Try"" embraces its own superficiality with restraint and simplicity, and in doing so becomes a powerful prophylactic against all things anguished and complicated. --Matt LeMay",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d55c0084474cd0c6c02/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/My_Robot_Friend_ft_Antony_One_More-Try.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,80,Nelly Furtado [ft. Timbaland],Promiscuous,Geffen,"Prior to hooking up with the new and improved Timbaland, Nelly Furtado's music was working as the muzak in granola coffee bars all across American college campuses. But with tracks like ""Promiscuous"" selling cellphones and making kids scream her name on ""TRL"", Nelly officially joined the world of pop. Here, she reclines atop Timbo's bed of pop-and-lock synths like a laconic Debbie Harry, waiting for the right man to figure out what she's thinking. She acquits herself nicely, trading lines with Mr. Mosely, but it's those coy ""la la la""s at the end of the track that speak volumes. --David Raposa",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d56d7a71d1ea569c43f/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Nelly_Furtado_ft_Timbaland-Promiscuous.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,79,"Cam'ron ""Weekend",Girl,mixtapes,"MP3:  Cam'ron: ""Weekend Girl"" Let's face it, this wasn't a banner year for Cam. Wayne showed him up on his own jam. His movie made State Property look like The Godfather. His album tripped on an overabundance of ostentatious fanfare, making fans long for the days when his default was breezy, not brutish. Then he was oddly quiet for months, except for this carefree come-on that laid on that Purple Haze charm thick. Peppered with smooth uptown nostalgia and downtown creeping, ""Weekend Girl"" was the gangster-Gestapo antidote we wanted to hear. No forced pomp, just a quaint, rhetorical question: ""What you doin' this weekend?"" --Ryan Dombal",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d565e6ef95969327020/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Camron_Weekend-Girl.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,78,Be Your Own Pet,Adventure,Ecstatic Peace/Universal,"MP3:  Be Your Own Pet: ""Adventure"" Even if every review hadn't already told you that Be Your Own Pet are teenagers, you probably would've figured it out from this song. Maybe not from the wide-open sprawl of the rhythm section, or the elegant swoops of guitar, or the captivating vocals-- all of which sound like the work of people who know what they're doing and have been at it for a while. No, you'd have figured it out from the way this track leaps around ecstatically and talks big (""We're, like, adventurers! We've been to every place, anywhere in the world!"") with enough energy to leave even tired old jerks like me enthusiastic about the epic possibilities of, like, life and stuff. --Nitsuh Abebe",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d57d7a71d1ea569c441/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Be_Your_Own_Pet-Adventure.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,77,"Jamie Lidell ""Multiply (In a Minor",Key),Warp,"MP3:  Jamie Lidell: ""Multiply (In a Minor Key)"" Where Jamie Lidell's live sets are feats of technological prowess that find him singing, beatboxing, and sampling his way from climax to climax in real time, this duet with his frequent tourmate Gonzalez is a more controlled affair. Stripping down the arrangement to boogie-woogie piano vamps and vocal acrobatics, this is far more intimate than the original version, even while Lidell's voice is multiplied into pinwheeling, layered harmonies. Gonzalez mirrors the vocal fireworks with bright rolls and tone clusters as an imaginary crowd murmurs approvingly beneath it all. For all the melancholy of the title and lyrics, you'd be hard-pressed to find a more celebratory song. Coming unglued never sounded so good. --Philip Sherburne",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d57d7a71d1ea569c443/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Jamie_Lidell_Multiply_In_a_Minor-Key.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,76,"Cham [ft. Akon] ""Ghetto Story",(Remix),Atlantic,"The track is almost non-existant: skeletal snare-ticks, gasping, gauzy synths, and lots of empty space. It leaves room for voices and words, and Cham and Akon fill that space enormously. Cham's rangy hyena yowl couldn't be further from Akon's shivering autotuned tenor; they're gravel and silk. And they're both in terse, economical storytelling mode-- Cham recalling a hardscrabble Jamaica childhood, weaving in half-forgotten memories about kids getting shot, and Akon singing about immigration, car theft, and prison. The two stories never intersect, but the way both singers' voices work together makes it an all-encompassing tapestry of violence-- City of God in song. --Tom Briehan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d57c0084474cd0c6c06/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Cham_ft_Akon_Ghetto_Story-Remix.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,75,"The Killers ""When You Were",Young,Island,"MP3:  The Killers: ""When You Were Young"" After all this time, sincerity remains the Bossman's calling card, which is why some found this Bruce tribute from upwardly mobile Vegas con men so troubling. Epic, romantic rock may have been invented some time in the early 1970s but now it's a form like any other, a costume that can be pulled from the rack when you want to try a new number. And Killers fit their suits well on this explosion of rock grandeur and pomposity. Once upon a time this kind of stuff just wafted out of radios and you didn't know who'd made it or what they stood for; all we were left with was a song and a hook, and a phrase like ""when you were young"" rang true even if you were 10 years old. --Mark Richardson",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d58d7a71d1ea569c446/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Killers_When_You_Were-Young.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,74,"The Pipettes ""Your Kisses Are Wasted On",Me,Memphis Industries,"When the Pipettes broke on the internet with this song, their YouTubed concert video introduced the three members: the sassy librarian, the one who sings pretty, and the one who waves her arms. The stomping hook and frothy Technicolor chorus put the band squarely on the map, and it also helped kick off a Shangri-La's renaissance-- partly because these three made their forebears' lyrics seem like Shakespeare by comparison. But even if the verses are more brush-off than tragedy, the declaration of the title is stadium-sized. We'll always be suckers for big hooks and polka-dot dresses. --Chris Dahlen",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d5913d197565213f454/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Pipettes_Your_Kisses_Are_Wasted_On-Me.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,73,Poni Hoax,Budapest,Tigersushi,"MP3:  Poni Hoax: ""Budapest"" Drone disco-- like black mascara on club queens you wouldn't let blow you for all the coke in NYC-- isn't for the faint of fashion. French people don't bat an eyelash, of course-- they were goth-chic before goth was. But for the rest of us, ""Budapest"" makes a great excuse to get dark and ready to go out. If the vocals make you feel queasy, maybe imagine them coming from your roommate's girlfriend. The one you're trying to steal. And if the track's lo-fi-ish production doesn't grab you, focus on the dreamy chord progression. The one ripped from Can. --Dominique Leone",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d5913d197565213f456/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Poni_Hoax-Budapest.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,72,"Built to Spill ""Goin' Against Your",Mind,Warner Bros.,"It'd been a five-year dry season for Built to Spill fans, and an even longer drought for those still wishing for a pure throwback to the wide-scale guitar mantras of Perfect From Now On. For those listeners, the nine-minute ""Goin' Against Your Mind"" provides a welcome and long-overdue deluge, encapsulating the group's diverse strengths so deftly that, at first glimpse, it seemed almost like a mirage on a desert horizon. Driven by Scott Plouf's unyielding backbeat, this typically wry saga of inner confusion is at its best when Doug Martsch drops his UFOs-as-God whispers and lets the guitars do the heavy thinking. Packed tight with overlapping riffs and melodies, this track is likely to stand as one of Built to Spill's definitive creations, and is undiminished by the fact that little else on You in Reverse is quite able to match its heights. --Matthew Murphy",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d5913d197565213f458/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Built_to_Spill_Goin_Against_Your-Mind.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,71,"Candi Staton ""His",Hands,Astralwerks,"Manhandling is the central motif of Candi Staton's recorded output-- as well as much of her adult life. It's hard not to see ""His Hands"" as the epitome of that strain. Her preacher's-son husband mistreated her before she became a star, and this song's main character is equally beholden to both an abusive mortal patriarch and an erotic male God. Southern men wrote and produced Staton's music decades ago (even forcing her to do multiple takes to irritate her throat, in pursuit of her famous wise-victim rasp) and for this 2006 gem she had a Lambchopper manning the boards and Will Oldham penning the lyrics. The mournful sex-gospel of ""His Hands"" compensated, in the pop culture karmasphere, for Peter Jackson's sentimental fumbling of King Kong : Staton wailed from the viewpoint of woman as a captive possession of a self-loving, barbaric, masculine will-to-power. --William Bowers",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d5aeb335119a49f0ffc/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Candi_Staton_His-Hands.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,70,"El Perro del Mar ""God Knows (You Gotta Give to",Get),Memphis Industries,"MP3:  El Perro del Mar: ""God Knows (You Gotta Give to Get)"" Where UK peers the Pipettes update 1960s girl groups' chipper choreographed harmonies, Sweden's El Perro del Mar remembers there were moments when-- well, there were moments when. For all its stiff-lipped self-recriminations, ""God Knows (You Gotta Give to Get)"" is still the least melancholy song on singer/songwriter Sarah Assbring's sophomore album, and the most painfully affecting. ""I've been taking a lot without giving back,"" she sighs in her half-whisper, and not even big-screen strings, doo-wop backing vocals, and glistening saxophone can comfort her. Sometimes love just isn't spelled L-U-V. --Marc Hogan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d5bd7a71d1ea569c449/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/El_Perro_del_Mar_God_Knows_You_Gotta_Give_to-Get.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,69,"Oneida ""Up With",People,Jagjaguwar,"MP3:  Oneida: ""Up With People"" Despite clocking at nearly eight minutes, ""Up With People"" claims the 2006 Yamatsuka Eye Cup for the year's swiftest free climb. Riding a tangle of tweaked guitars and Kid Millions' frenetic drum patterns, Oneida deliver their sermon (""The highest hills feel the sweetest breeze/ You've got to get up to get free"") with such wild-eyed fervor that they sound about a click or two from moving to a yurt in the Himalayas. Near the three-minute mark a gale of distortion threatens to blow the fevered crew hopelessly off course, but they soon scratch their way back into formation with such determination and diligence that you'll grow increasingly convinced to trust their guidance, no matter how thin the oxygen gets. --Matthew Murphy",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d5b0c2bba1b7de04a26/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Oneida_Up_With-People.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,68,"Klaxons ""Gravity's",Rainbow,Modular,"MP3:  Klaxons: ""Gravity's Rainbow"" Copping feels from a dozen genres, ""Gravity's Rainbow"" was scrappy but streamlined powder/pill music for children. Its chorus' first half (""Come with me/ We'll travel to infinity"") sounded like something a pegasus might tell its young master without a hint of bestiality. The next lines, though (""I'll always be there/ For you, my future love""), were considerably more earthbound, further softening the hardcore-punk bassline that Jamie Reynolds' falsetto boy-cooing already disarmed. The rave keyboards and rock guitar solo helped sustain the surprise-around-every-corner vibe of this dance track, to which actual dancing was fairly difficult. Even the Klaxons backlash, undoubtedly just over the horizon, promises to be interesting. --William Bowers",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d5cd7a71d1ea569c44b/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Klaxons_Gravitys-Rainbow.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,67,"E-40 [ft. Keak Da Sneak] ""Tell Me When to",Go,Reprise,"2006 was the year kids jumped out of moving cars for fun. E-40, Ambassador of the Bay, shepherded ghostriders to the promised land with this Lil' Jon-adrenalized version of hyphy's thumping, bleeping club-rap hybrid. ""Tell Me When to Go"", along with its video, turned thizz-facing, stunna-shading, and dread-shaking into national phenomena and introduced the Bay as one of the most fully realized scenes in music. But the real gift was the wolfish Keak da Sneak, who blew down his guest verse and finished with the brilliantly inane, ""Yadadamean, yadada, I'm saying, though."" Once familiar with hyphy's sense of commercial subversion, the ""dada""'s didn't sound so dumb and E-40 looked like Moses. --Pete Macia",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d5cd7a71d1ea569c44d/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/E-40_ft_Keak_Da_Sneak_Tell_Me_When_to-Go.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,66,"Swan Lake ""All",Fires,Jagjaguwar,"MP3:  Swan Lake: ""All Fires"" Hip test: Can you avoid the temptation to hold lighters and/or hands during Spencer Krug's luminous refrain? ""All fires have to burn alive to live,"" he sings, his voice, a simple acoustic progression, and a parable about a flood that kills half its kingdom clicking together as indie rock's answer to arena balladry. But ""All Fires"" is in minor shambles, the product of three excellent songwriters (Krug, Dan Bejar, Carey Mercer) being comfortable enough to let perfection fall apart. --Grayson Currin",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d5d0c2bba1b7de04a28/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Swan_Lake_All-Fires.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,65,"Liars ""Let's Not Wrestle Mt. Heart",Attack,Mute,"Despite its pacifistic title, this is a war song; it marches forward with grim resolve, and seems always on the verge of erupting into fantastic violence. But it never does. Instead, its deranged madrigals, cyclical drones, and ceremonial percussion percolate with circumscribed abandon, and the seemingly inevitable brutality looms larger for its latency. You can tell Liars are pushing toward some kind of personal transcendence; you peer through the song's swirling vapors for the ceiling that must be broken through, and then you see it-- it's below your feet; you're already floating. This is what TV on the Radio's music might sound like if lightning-struck and turned to glass. --Brian Howe",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d5d0c2bba1b7de04a2a/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Liars_Lets_Not_Wrestle_Mt_Heart-Attack.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,64,"Prince ""Black",Sweat,Universal,"It's like he knew that the Jehovah's Witness lite-jazz rubberband was about to snap and so, boom, here it is-- an undeniably stone cold Prince jam with all the trimmings: chorused guitars, lascivious confessions, weird speak/sing breakdown, and the trademark pitched-down snares that pop like chopped-n-screwed champagne corks. A friend from Minneapolis told me that Prince used to ride a specially constructed conveyor belt up to the mic-stand at his Paisley Park club gigs, and people would go berserk when they saw his silent silhouette hovering towards them. If Prince is that cool just standing there doing nothing, he's unstoppable when he makes an effort. Thank god for dirty old men. --Drew Daniel",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d5ec0084474cd0c6c0a/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Prince_Black-Sweat.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,63,"Figurines ""The",Wonder,Control Group,"MP3:  Figurines: ""The Wonder"" Figurines' stateside debut, Skeleton, opens with a piano ballad called ""Race You"" that, curiously, is the slowest song on the album. But it's all just a deceptive set-up for the second track, ""The Wonder"", where the Danish indie upstarts leave you flailing in the dust. Over a hyper-tense riff that makes your wrist hurt just listening to it, Figurines fashion an exhilaratingly urgent pop song that seems to be about nothing so much as urgency itself-- frontman Kristian Hjelm is in such a rush to get through the chorus (""It takes time/ To get it together for a long time"") that he apparently has no time to find another word that rhymes with ""time."" --Stuart Berman",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d5e5e6ef9596932702d/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Figurines_The-Wonder.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,62,"The Field ""Over the",Ice,Kompakt,"MP3:  The Field: ""Over the Ice"" More throb than pound, ""Over the Ice"" sounds the way a rave does if you close your eyes: dazzling lasers become amorphous pools of color, and sharp sonics devolve into brooding clouds of intensity, still pulsing at the same urgent pace, but somehow kindlier, more nurturing. Like Todd Edwards crafting homages to Steve Reich, the Field's widescreen canvasses of cut-up, strobing, sampled vocals (I suspect from Kate Bush's ""Under Ice"") blur the lines between the minimal and the symphonic, the purely human and the total machine. But it's their romance more than their vision that wins the day, as they capture a world of desolation in every single half-sigh. --Tim Finney",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d5fd7a71d1ea569c44f/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Field_Over_the-Ice.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,61,"The Mountain Goats ""Woke Up",New,4AD,"MP3:  The Mountain Goats: ""Woke Up New"" Maybe you don't need an earth-shattering breakup to get this one; maybe your partner went on a long vacation and you're finding yourself mind-numbingly bored. The soft strumming of ""Woke Up New"" might sound limp at first listen, but John Darnielle has the storytelling stones to match the soundtrack to his protagonist's mood, laid out in the song's second line: free, lonely, and scared. What follows are rudimentary details and tactfully-deployed similes detailing the First Day After. It's hesitant and almost meandering, but when the chorus comes and Darnielle pleads ""What do I do?"" over and over in his lilting falsetto, it's less panicked than genuinely puzzled. Few songs chart such a particular emotional state so excruciatingly closely. --Jason Crock",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d5fd7a71d1ea569c451/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Mountain_Goats_Woke_Up-New.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,60,"Zeigeist ""Tar",Heart,self-released,"In what must be the promotional coup of the year, some clever soul added an mp3 of this track to an early leak of the Knife's Silent Shout, leading plenty of people to note that, fake Knife or not, it was one of the most immediately thrilling things on the tracklist. Part of it was the addictive familiarity of the chorus, which turns out to be a lot like the vocal from ""Running Up That Hill"" plus the sequencers from ""Bizarre Love Triangle"". And part of it was that, like all good borrowers, these Swedes had worked up a dance track as great as its cousins, and with nearly the same combination of melodramatic tension and ecstatic release. --Nitsuh Abebe",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d60d7a71d1ea569c453/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Zeigeist_Tar-Heart.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,59,Nelly Furtado,Maneater,Geffen,"On paper, a synthesis of Hall and Oates' ""Maneater"", Gwen Stefani's ""Hollaback Girl"", and PJ Harvey's ""Rid of Me"" sounds like the worst ironic hipster DJ mix ever. But when filtered through the Nelly and Tim dream factory, those sources come together to form something alluring and dangerous. Unlike the pair's other 2006 smash about overwhelming female sexuality, ""Maneater"" isn't coy or flirty. It's in your face with its warning: Watch out, boys, she'll chew you up. --Amy Phillips",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d600c2bba1b7de04a30/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Nelly_Furtado-Maneater.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,58,"Girl Talk ""Smash Your",Head,Illegal Art,"MP3:  Girl Talk: ""Smash Your Head"" It may seem strange to celebrate a DJ mix cut; on Night Ripper, the chapter breaks seem arbitrarily placed amidst Greg Gillis' copyright-flaunting fantasia. But ""Smash Your Head"" is notable for containing the megamix's finest moment, when the micro-sampling settles down for an entire minute into a classic two-way mashup of ""Tiny Dancer"" and ""Juicy"". We're all supposed to be sick of such beat-matched juxtapositions by this point, but the surprising way Elton John's circular piano riff brings out the warmth of Biggie's reminiscences (with World Trade Center line triumphantly intact) is a vivid reminder of the form's ability to thematically reinvent, rather than just demonstrate, point-click skills. --Rob Mitchum",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d61d7a71d1ea569c455/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Girl_Talk_Smash_Your-Head.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,57,"Kleerup [ft. Robyn] ""With Every",Heartbeat,Risky Dazzle,"Let's not pretend this is anything but a Robyn track. Like a good director, Kleerup quietly sets the stage with a subtle sewing-machine beat and sobby strings, then lets his leading lady take the spotlight. Robyn quantifies her heartbreak, reducing it to its smallest element: ""It hurts with every step,"" she sings, ""but I don't look back."" But it's the coda that kills: ""And it hurts with every heartbeat."" She sings the line over and over, giving each syllable its own staccato beat. The effect is a sort of breathless internal conflict, as if she's finally freed herself into the big wide world only to find it suffocating. --Stephen M. Deusner",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d61d7a71d1ea569c457/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Kleerup_ft_Robyn_With_Every-Heartbeat.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,56,"Booka Shade ""In White",Rooms,Get Physical,"MP3:  Booka Shade: ""In White Rooms"" Booka Shade's 2006 wasn't as thrilling as their 2005, when the duo's ""Body Language"" was crowned Ibiza's Track of the Season, and their ""Mandarine Girl"" spawned an entire subgenre based on brightly twirling arpeggios. ""In White Rooms"" shares that very lineage, with rounded synth leads hopscotching across the song, landing with a neat new fillip every eight or 16 bars. Less immediately recognizable than their previous hits, and backed by a house beat so nakedly functional it might be Shaker, the song fades into a comfortable semi-anonymity when folded into a DJ mix. But that's precisely its paradoxical power, as the hook-- just out of reach of true hummability-- rises up from satiny pads to declare its reign. It's a brief victory, but while it lasts, a total one. --Philip Sherburne",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d62eb335119a49f1004/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Booka_Shade_In_White-Rooms.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,55,The Blow,Parentheses,K,"MP3:  The Blow: ""Parentheses"" In addition to being a treat for anyone who's ever wondered what it would sound like if the Shangri-La's had laptops and USB keyboards, ""Parentheses"" is also Khaela Maricich's best performance since ""Hey Boy"". Yeah, in other spots her lyrics can feel like watching Me and You and Everyone We Know one too many times, but on this one you get to hear that voice-- always uncomfortably plain and direct, skipping from husky to choirgirl-- offer a curiously reassuring case for human connection. I admit it: Sometimes I just appreciate hearing her say she'll be there for me if I ever break down sobbing at the grocery store. --Nitsuh Abebe",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d620c2bba1b7de04a36/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Blow-Parentheses.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,54,Lily Allen,Smile,Regal/Parlophone,"It's not exactly the sparkling commercial-ready pop trifle toothpaste marketing execs were hoping for; Lily's got nice teeth, but they probably need flossing. And that's the angle: ambling exterior, cutting core. Even when succumbing to cliché, she'll go out of her way to flip it just a bit, in lines like ""I found a light in the tunnel at the end."" Given her sudden stardom, her smile gets even bolder: Revenge in a diary-- or on a MySpace page-- is one thing but revenge from atop the pop charts is another. Feel for the poor sap being kissed-off: He thought he was fucking around on some rich girl who wore silly dresses and sneakers-- and then he got burnt by Lily Allen. --Ryan Dombal",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d62c0084474cd0c6c14/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Lily_Allen-Smile.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,53,Asobi Seksu,Thursday,Friendly Fire,"MP3:  Asobi Seksu: ""Thursday"" ""Thursday"" is lighter than air, opening with a chilly melody that sounds like it was recorded 50 feet down the hall from the door to a skating rink, and then foraying into ethereal pop. In truth, it sounds more like an endless Sunday than a bland workaday Thursday with its pillowy guitars, wispy ""aah ah"" chorus, and bright, chiming arpeggios. The bass and drums keep it tethered with an insistent rhythm, but even they let go of the ground after a time and just let the whole thing float. I can barely catch a word of the lyrics, but it seems beside the point-- the melody is celestial enough that gluing it to language would only be a distraction. --Joe Tangari",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d63d7a71d1ea569c45b/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Asobi_Seksu-Thursday.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,52,"Barbara Morgenstern ""The",Operator,Monika Enterprise,"MP3:  Barbara Morgenstern: ""The Operator"" Here we have one of the most attractive synth-pop songs from one of the most attractive synth-pop albums of the year, and I should point out that Barbara Morgenstern's vocals are now competing with her production as the most interesting thing about her music. ""The Operator"" passes by in a whiff-- its double-take verse chords and baroque, midi-sounding drums never miss a beat. It's actually a busy song but never seems so, which is all the more reason to fall for it-- and if this blurb sounds like I have a crush on it, let me correct you: The crush is on the piano+vox B-side remix. --Dominique Leone",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d630c2bba1b7de04a3a/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Barbara_Morgenstern_The-Operator.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,51,"Scott Walker ""A Lover",Loves,4AD,"Buoyed by Scott Walker's dark-eyed operatics, The Drift is a harrowing rattle. Stripped of percussion, keyboards, and echoplex, this whispered coda finds Walker handling barely there guitar, slightly crooning: ""This is/ A waltz/ For a/ Dodo/ A samba/ For Bambi."" It's that, as well as a cornea-damp love song for ""A hand/ That is/ Cold/ In another/ Colder."" He repeatedly divides sentences and sounds with a whispered tick. If Samuel Beckett turned ""Ping"" into a frozen ballad, the sentiments might knock like this; but where the nameless Beckett protagonist ostensibly remains trapped, Walker notes that ""everything"" is ""within reach."" If only all teen idols turned out this transcendent. --Brandon Stosuy",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d64d7a71d1ea569c45d/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Scott_Walker_A_Lover-Loves.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,50,"Voxtrot ""Mothers, Sisters, Daughters &",Wives,Cult Hero/Playlouder,"MP3:  Voxtrot: ""Mothers, Sisters, Daughters & Wives"" Voxtrot don't sound original by any stretch of the imagination, a fact that the Austin quintet doesn't really seem to have a complex about. Like so many indie pop bands before them, they worship in the chapel of the Smiths, genuflecting at Morrissey's wry offhandedness and Johnny Marr's room-filling effects. But Voxtrot offset this devotion by piling up choruses like a wedding cake, spending enough hook capital for four songs in four minutes. Ramesh Srivastava's wordy delivery, and the crisp tightness of his band, only serve to amplify the frenzy the song works itself into around the second and third choruses, their manners disrupted by a reverb-sopped guitar in the left channel that goes from setting a wet pace at the song's intro to elbowing out the rest of the instruments with a giddy solo-- pure melody rendering novelty unnecessary. --Rob Mitchum",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d640c2bba1b7de04a3c/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Voxtrot_Mothers_Sisters_Daughters_-Wives.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,49,"The Game ""It's Okay (One",Blood),Geffen,"RZA already used the sample of reggae vet Junior Reid screaming at the sky on the Wu-Tang Clan's ""One Blood Under W"". But here, producer Reefa turns that sample into a host of angels, relentlessly swarming the track with that gravelly moan until it becomes a desperate wordless chant. Accompanied by titanic drums and sweeping strings, the voices steadily help build the song to a diamond-hard operatic banger. It's the perfect way for Game to reintroduce himself as a vengeful lone wolf, spraying anger in all directions after 50 Cent backstabbed him and Dr. Dre abandoned him. Game sounds like rage is eating him from the inside out; he extends olive branches to 50 and Jay-Z before snatching them right back, lashing out against legions of prominent rappers without spelling out the names for us. The video makes the image literal: Game walking through decaying California streets by himself, chin jutted out, chest puffed up, one guy against the world. --Tom Breihan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d650c2bba1b7de04a3e/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Game_Its_Okay_One-Blood.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,48,"Cassie ""Me &",U,Bad Boy,"Actress, dancer, and easy-on-the-eyes protégé of Tommy Mottola and Diddy, you might expect Cassie to be just another multitasking, melismatic diva in the tradition of Mariah or Beyoncé. But ""Me & U"", put together by Ryan Leslie out of not much more than a few bleeps, some synthesised handclaps, and an auto-tuner, features one of the blankest, most holographic vocals since Chet Baker stepped front stage. Hardly hindered by a low-budget video (intended only for the ""European audience,"" according to the label) which left little of the middle eight suggestion-- ""Baby, I'll love you all the way down""-- to the imagination, ""Me & U"" recalled the crypto-emotional coolness of Cameo circa ""Single Life"", and proved the most refreshingly minimal r&b hit of the year. --Stephen Troussé",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d65d7a71d1ea569c45f/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Cassie_Me_-U.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,47,"The Rapture ""Whoo!",Alright-Yeah...Uh-Huh,Universal,"MP3:  The Rapture: ""Whoo! Alright-Yeah...Uh-Huh"" Right off the top, everything appears to be just as they left it on 2003's Echoes : 4/4 hi-hat beat? Check. Stacatto guitar riff? Yup. Cowbell? Of course. But eight seconds in, it's ""House of Jealous Lovers: Extreme Makeover Edition"": The stark funk of the Rapture's 2002 breakout 12-inch has been given a radiant, lipstick-cherry-glossed polish by producer Paul Epworth, while Mattie Safer's effete vocal sounds much less Gang of Four than ""Girls on Film"". But the title's exclamations are overshadowed by Safer's bummed rap: ""People don't dance more/ They just stand there like this."" It's a sentiment that felt truer in 1996 than it does in 2006 (maybe he's been hanging out at too many Black Dice shows?), but the back-up rocksteady crew of b-girls responding to his call make Safer's petty complaint feel like a cause still worth rallying around. And just when you think they've run out of breath, Safer asks, ""Y'all ready girls?""-- and it turns into a ballroom blitz. --Stuart Berman",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d66d7a71d1ea569c461/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Rapture_Whoo-Alright-YeahUh-Huh.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,46,"Liars ""The Other Side of Mt. Heart",Attack,Mute,"Almost every critic who reviewed Liars' third album, Drum's Not Dead, claimed it was a heady concept about two characters named Mt. Heart Attack and Drum. On that map, album closer ""The Other Side of Mt. Heart Attack"" would be the denouement, a careful and conclusive slope that lets plaintive melody surface above vanquished noise. That's not the case, but ""The Other Side"" is as completely beautiful and resplendent as that suggests: On a record where thrust is the axiom, and dense textures and their dismal moods are its corollaries, this is an eloquent, perfect rebuttal, like the redolent and forgiving closing score for a film busy with urgency and abrasion. --Grayson Currin",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d6613d197565213f472/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Liars_The_Other_Side_of_Mt_Heart-Attack.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,45,Beyoncé,Irreplaceable,Sony Urban,"In the January 2007 issue of Vanity Fair, Christopher Hitchens writes a column titled ""Why Women Aren't Funny"", claiming it's because there are more obstacles for men in the ongoing quest to charm, amuse, and romance the opposite sex; men depend on the art of humor for seduction, and apparently, women aren't. Hitchens clearly doesn't listen to Beyoncé. While ""Irreplaceable"" has a steely tone and traditionalist themes, it's pretty damn hilarious. Naturally, when the song opens ""To the left, to the left"" from a diva known for her swiveling, thoughts wander to instructive dancing. On the contrary-- Beyoncé, more restrained than ever, simply put ""everything you own in a box to the left."" That's funny. Toying with expectation and convention, she's taken what could have been typical and made it smart and droll. Now if only her man could relocate his sense of humor. --Sean Fennessey",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d67c0084474cd0c6c1b/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Beyonc-Irreplaceable.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,44,"Arthur Russell ""Springfield (DFA",Remix),Audika,"Without Arthur Russell's approach to disco-- reinventing it from the inside out, wielding a single cello line in an elegantly minimalist display of extrapolation-- we almost certainly would not have James Murphy and DFA. It's difficult to imagine either Murphy's sense of rhythm or his sense of space without the generous, introverted productions of the late chamber-disco savant. Murphy's mix strips Russell's already spare original down to the kind of clubfoot thud that once might have anchored a Depeche Mode edit; he proceeds to thread that rickety lattice with winding counterpoints-- voices, stubby Rhodes, perhaps a clarinet?-- and lays tingly synth chords over it all like a protective canopy. The last two minutes are Russell's alone, as he falsettos his way from blossom to blossom, as ghostly as he ever was. --Philip Sherburne",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d67c0084474cd0c6c1d/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Arthur_Russell_Springfield_DFA-Remix.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,43,Fujiya & Miyagi,Collarbone,Tirk,"MP3:  Fujiya & Miyagi: ""Collarbone"" If Can had built a career from Ege Bamyasi's pop moments they would have come up with this song eventually, but Fujiya & Miyagi make the wait worthwhile and Damo was never this coherent. For a song so laidback, subtle, and swinging, it sure dominates its environment, almost to the point of bullying. If it comes up on shuffle, it either enhances whatever else you have going on or it shoves it out of the way and demands to be moved to. As weightless and easy to inhabit as anything released this year. --Mark Richardson",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d685e6ef95969327042/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Fujiya__Miyagi-Collarbone.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,42,Ciara,Promise,LaFace,"A defining moment in Ciara's career and an instant theme song for freaks everywhere, this smouldering, space-storm slowburner was the song equivalent of sensual massage, wherein your favorite producer's favorite producer, Polow da Don, fashioned a talkbox and glossy-ass ping-pong beats, and Ciara's dewy-eyed love devotional never seemed to stop. At this moment, the studio was the sexiest place on earth (word to Janet and Aaliyah without whom this would not be possible). Ciara sang about her heart opening, but the subtext was more that of her legs: As humpy as Prince's pre-JW days, ""Promise"" is a prime example of a song that barely grazes the concept of campiness, without going so over the top you can't release it on the radio. But with Polow's synth churning over on itself, the song was almost too much, waves crashing its own climax. Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder had to make ""Love to Love You Baby"" like, 17 minutes long to achieve this, and Ciara didn't even have to fake an orgasm. --Julianne Shepherd",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d690c2bba1b7de04a45/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Ciara-Promise.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,41,"Ghostface Killah [ft. Trife] ""Be",Easy,Def Jam,"MP3:  Ghostface Killah [ft. Trife]: ""Be Easy"" My friend and fellow rock critic Michaelangelo Matos recently compared Fishscale to Mama Said Knock You Out, an I-haven't-fallen-off-yet-motherfuckers move by a guy who only really fell off in terms of sales, which were never quintuple-platinum to begin with. In this equation, ""Be Easy"" is the face-busting title track. Pete Rock's rock hard, rock simple drums fuse seamlessly with Ghost's I-AM-QUITE-WORKED-UP flow for a boneheaded, driving track that distills a whole bunch of what's good about hip-hop into less than four minutes: shouting, shit-talking, snares to crack skulls, and some more shit-talking. But even if the beat didn't knock, the way Ghost ends every line with a concussed ""UH"" like a linebacker Mark E. Smith means the acapella bangs just as hard. --Jess Harvell",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d69d7a71d1ea569c464/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Ghostface_Killah_ft_Trife_Be-Easy.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,40,Lily Allen,LDN,Regal/Parlophone,"Remember the video for Len's 1999 teenybopper fuzz-rap opus ""Steal My Sunshine""? The one where a bunch of smiling kids in wifebeaters and Matrix sunglasses and paperboy caps ride scooters around Southern California on a blissfully sunny day, renting jet skis and eating popcorn and mugging for the camera? ""LDN"" snatches one of those kids up and plunks her down in the middle of London. The day is just as gorgeous, but now she's riding past rotting tenements and crack dealers and black-hearted juvenile thieves. She's still got that dazed smile, but now it comes with a vicious mean streak and a mercilessly sharp eye. --Tom Breihan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d690c2bba1b7de04a47/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Lily_Allen-LDN.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,39,Lil Wayne,Georgia...Bush,Gangsta Grillz,"MP3:  Lil Wayne: ""Georgia...Bush"" If nothing else, Lil' Wayne's foray into politics gave more people a reason to listen to him. No other artist, and almost no other public figure, spoke as vehemently and incisively in response to the government's failures in post-Katrina New Orleans. Yes, ""George Bush doesn't care about black people,"" but the President already knew that. Wayne said something new and deep, and, as a result, appealed to those who shared his frustration. For those who followed Wayne regularly, though, ""Georgia…Bush"" was something more. It was a chance to hear Wayne's brains coherent after a year of his free-associative logorrhea. And by giving us a tiny glimpse of his spine, Wayne showed he was more than a talking head. --Pete Macia",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d6aeb335119a49f1011/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Lil_Wayne-GeorgiaBush.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,38,"Brightblack Morning Light ""Everybody",Daylight,Matador,"MP3:  Brightblack Morning Light: ""Everybody Daylight"" ""Dark blackness"" is a redundant sci-fi cliché, usually referring to outer space or interior rot. The only degrees of lighter blackness that I can imagine being worth citing would have to do with faded rock-band t-shirts, and of course, matters of skin complexion. The term ""Brightblack"" stopped bugging me with this track, during which this band dipped their hippie-plink into imposing soul for a sound that suggested Isaac Hayes and Canned Heat swapping drugs, or Tricky hijacking a Mazzy Star reel. The whomping organ, slinking flute, and antsy high-hat combined to make ""Everybody Daylight"" suggestive not just of tie-dyed sarongs, but of a classic tune that would have gotten sampled on Marley Marl's Cold Chillin' records back in the day. --William Bowers",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d6ac0084474cd0c6c22/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Brightblack_Morning_Light_Everybody-Daylight.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,37,"Jarvis Cocker ""Running the",World,Rough Trade,"Back in the day, specificity was Jarvis Cocker's thing. When he had some sweeping point to make, he'd keep it hidden: false downward mobility as a rich chick from St. Martin's College, the emptiness of fame as the porn on his hotel-room TV. That's over. On ""Running the World"", only hamfisted sarcasm stands between us and the blunt force of Cocker's fatalism and despair-- and it still kills, mostly because nobody else does hamfisted sarcasm quite so well: ""Now the working classes are obsolete/ They are surplus to society's needs/ So let them all kill each other/ And get it made overseas."" In Cocker's hands, all that pessimism is anthem material, and the way his bitchy Bowie swoon floats over the track's shivering pianos and airy strings, you'd think he was wondering if they know it's Christmas after all. --Tom Breihan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d6b13d197565213f480/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Jarvis_Cocker_Running_the-World.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,36,"Love Is All ""Busy Doing",Nothing,What's Your Rupture?,"MP3:  Love Is All: ""Busy Doing Nothing"" Only in a socialist haven like Sweden could you live a life like Josephine Olausson's. According to ""Busy Doing Nothing"", the Love is All frontwoman spends about seven hours a day watching DVDs (""five movie marathon!""), another 30 minutes with her iPod on repeat (""nine times the same song!""), 10 hours in bed, 12 hours on the phone, an hour in the shower, and two more shining her shoes (even though she could probably pay a guy at the train station to do it in two minutes), which leaves her about, oh, three minutes and 20 seconds to brag about her sedentary existence while pogoing to a strobe-lit sax-punk groove. But even if it's a life of privilege that few of us can afford, ""Busy Doing Nothing"" lets us live it out in the privacy of our own rec-room discotheques-- just like Tom Cruise in Risky Business, but with the button-downs and briefs replaced by safety-pinned sweats and ripped stockings. --Stuart Berman",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d6bd7a71d1ea569c468/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Love_Is_All_Busy_Doing-Nothing.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,35,"Justice ""Waters of",Nazareth,Ed Banger/Vice,"French electro-house duo Justice incorporate heavy metal imagery into their presentation, often in ways that don't make sense. But ""Waters of Nazareth"", their first non-remix single, stands as a true cross-genre monster. At its core is a disfigured riff that sounds like a garbled distress signal from some distant colony and a blinker so distorted its original source could be synth, guitar, or virtually any other malfunctioning appliance. A solitary, submerged organ emerges midway through to give the gnarled rhythms a bit of a melancholic tug. But the track retains such a destructive edge that it can't help but summon visions of an apocalyptic future, as though it's all some lingering impression of rave culture as remembered by the few surviving machines that were able to outlast the humans. --Matthew Murphy",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d6cd7a71d1ea569c46a/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Justice_Waters_of-Nazareth.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,34,"Kelis ""Bossy (Alan Braxe & Fred Falke",Remix),LaFace,"While making a case for the better-known, slinky single version of ""Bossy"", Pitchfork writer Julianne Sheperd told me this fluffed-up redo from French disco dudes Braxe & Falke ""siphoned the gravity from the original."" She's not wrong. The dance duo remove the song's off-kilter creep and crush in a few dozen caffeine pills, speeding the vocals double-time to fit their four-down Prince-isms. Kelis' sinister dominatrix vibe is sacrificed, but it's a heavenly sacrifice. Without Bangladesh's original leering beat tugging at her heels, Kelis goes superhero, soaring triumphant through puffy-cloud synths. Especially for an artist known for dissonance and confrontation, it's exhilarating to hear her flow with the wind squarely at her back. And Too $hort's guest verse-- which sounds utterly braindead on the original-- is given fresh life, with lines like ""It's about time that she get with me/ Can't stop staring, she's fine and she's pretty"" sounding way better than ever thought possible. --Ryan Dombal",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d6c0c2bba1b7de04a4c/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Kelis_Bossy_Alan_Braxe__Fred_Falke-Remix.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,33,Turbulence,Notorious,XL,"MP3:  Turbulence: ""Notorious"" Touted by Diplo on his late 2005 FabricLive mix and later by Thom Yorke as part of the pre-show intro music for Radiohead's 2006 world tour, this long-waylaid single from Jamaica's Turbulence found new life this year as the crown jewel in XL's solid Jamaican music compilation, Serious Times. Tasked with toppling the relentless semi-automatic spatters of the magnificently vicious Scallawah riddim, ""Notorious"" finds Turbulence delivering a fiery vocal performance, complete with laser-sharp backing harmonies. If you didn't know the lyrics, you'd be content to stop at calling it an incredibly bracing dancehall track. But once you realize it's actually about the sheer joy of salvation (""I could have been one of the most notorious/ I got saved by the king/ And his grace is so glorious"") ""Notorious"" becomes something else entirely: The most incredible hymn you've heard in years. --Mark Pytlik",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d6d13d197565213f485/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Turbulence-Notorious.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,32,"Christina Aguilera ""Ain't No Other",Man,RCA,"The word here is ""tight."" DJ Premier brings in the funk and does his best to keep Christina from doing anything that a diva with her sort of brass and pipes is prone to do. And Aguilera obliges, keeping the vocal flourishes to a minimum, and her sentiment short and sweet. She might be leaning on the moon/spoon/June crutch a bit, but it's how she's saying what she says that tells her story about her man. And if you think you hear Bobby Byrd yelling ""yeah"" in the background between horn blasts, that just means you're buying what she's selling. --David Raposa",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d6d5e6ef9596932704a/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Christina_Aguilera_Aint_No_Other-Man.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,31,"Matmos ""Steam and Sequins for Larry",Levan,Matador,"MP3:  Matmos: ""Steam and Sequins for Larry Levan"" Boasting both the best hand-clapping and the sickest cowbell break on this list, Matmos' tribute to legendary DJ Larry Levan is five minutes of great beats, musique concrète (dig Drew Daniel on the sequins and sewing machine), and owl-like hoots that evoke bigger crowds and louder cheers from the past. Full disclosure: Daniel, a Pitchfork contributor, had a chance to vote this song onto this list. He didn't, but would you have blamed him? --Chris Dahlen",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d6ed7a71d1ea569c46d/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Matmos_Steam_and_Sequins_for_Larry-Levan.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,30,"Cat Power ""Lived in",Bars,Matador,"MP3:  Cat Power: ""Lived in Bars"" At first you think you know the drill: slow tempo, sad piano figure, and that husky Southern plaint. But when Chan Marshall sings, ""There's nothing like living in a bottle/ And nothing like ending it all for the world,"" she's not just winking at her trauma-junkie fanbase while delivering the suicidal melancholic goods. By the end of this tune, she's serving notice that things have changed personally and aesthetically, and here she cleans house over Memphis soul horns and some gleeful, shit-kickin' ""shoo-ba-doos."" To the crabby miserabilists who find the most recent Cat Power album a little too musically ""mature"" and respectable (quelle horreur!), I would ask them to listen a little more closely. This song is a lot weirder than you think, but when she hits the final chorus she sounds thrillingly, shockingly sane. A new woman. --Drew Daniel",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d6e5e6ef9596932704c/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Cat_Power_Lived_in-Bars.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,29,"Beirut ""Postcards from",Italy,Ba Da Bing!,"MP3:  Beirut: ""Postcards from Italy"" This song sells a nostalgia that Zach Condon should be too young to understand. While he gets novelty points for opening the track with a ukulele, the strongest parts are Elephant 6 veteran Jeremy Barnes' Eastern European drumming and Condon's evocative vocals-- easily compared to Rufus Wainwright's, but far less pompous. Though the rhythm is brisk, the song takes a leisurely pace with lengthy horn solos and plenty of room for the sentiment to cool off. It's just the right detachment to take when eulogizing someone else's memories. --Chris Dahlen",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d6fd7a71d1ea569c46f/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Beirut_Postcards_from-Italy.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,28,"Man Man ""Van Helsing",Boombox,Ace Fu,"MP3: Man Man: ""Van Helsing Boombox"" Man Man's lovesick lament takes this year's prize for most golden melancholy. Honus Honus bays about sleeping at her feet and howling at the moon, sounding every inch the wounded mutt too stubborn to die. The song's self-negating chorus-- ""When anything that's anything becomes nothing/ That's everything/ And nothing is the only thing you ever seem to have""-- gains emotional depth with each weary repetition. The bassline stumbles around barrelhouse piano, while a distant melodica wafts like a suppressed memory seeping into a drunken stupor. Honus has nothing, which explains the song's dejection. But if nothing is everything, as he insists, in a sense he's got it all, explaining his stubborn exuberance. Emo bands who rejoice in their pain could learn a thing or two from Man Man, who rejoice in spite of it. --Brian Howe",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d6fd7a71d1ea569c471/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Man_Man_Van_Helsing-Boombox.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,27,"Sally Shapiro ""I'll Be By Your",Side,Diskokaine,"MP3:  Sally Shapiro: ""I'll Be By Your Side"" Disco has been the music of chance encounters at least since Larry Levan was DJ at the Continental Baths. Even so, ""I'll Be By Your Side"" makes for an unlikely meeting: a Swedish producer who rekindles the cold flame of 1980s italo disco, and a pseudonymous chanteuse who brings out the genre's inner shyness. While Johan Agebjörn's four-on-the-floor beats and faraway synths make for beautifully nostalgic trappings, it's Sally Shapiro's soft voice that gives the song its fragile strength. ""I'm with you all the time,"" Shapiro promises, but in so doing admits the possibility she might not be for long. Meanwhile, the singer's real name remains under wraps. Her poignancy and publicity-averseness has prompted Pitchfork's Tom Breihan to declare her ""the new Belle & Sebastian,"" after Stuart Murdoch's famous early reticence. An electronic renaissance has probably made stranger bedfellows. --Marc Hogan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d6feb335119a49f1017/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Sally_Shapiro_Ill_Be_By_Your-Side.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,26,"Camera Obscura ""Lloyd, I'm Ready to Be",Heartbroken,Merge,"MP3:  Camera Obscura: ""Lloyd, I'm Ready to Be Heartbroken"" A loving rejoinder to Lloyd Cole & the Commotions' 1984 ballad ""Are You Ready to Be Heartbroken?"", the opening track from Camera Obscura's third album opens with a dirge-y organ intro and an endearingly awkward rhythmic chug that belies the terrifically massive hook that's about to swoop down for the chorus. ""Heeeeeeeey Lloyd!"" booms Tracyanne Campbell, at once demonstrating the difference between singing your heart out and singing about having your heart ripped out, ""I'm ready to be heartbroken!"" And, like a great soul singer laying waste to the microphone in the name of heartache, you love her all the more for it. --Mark Pytlik",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d700c2bba1b7de04a53/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Camera_Obscura_Lloyd_Im_Ready_to_Be-Heartbroken.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,25,"Guillemots ""Trains to",Brazil,Polydor,"Nobody can do the ""leaving your flat and marching down the street to a bright new day"" beat like the British, and echoing ELO's ""Mr. Blue Sky"", ""Trains to Brazil"" turns a walk through a dark night into something surprisingly fantastic. The lyrics start dark, and the title pays tribute to the victim of a police shooting. But the song chokes down tragedy and spits out joy. Fyfe Dangerfield's soaring, gnarly vocals keep getting away from him, and even when he starts to sneer, he doesn't have the heart for it. As the horns swirl to the finish, you feel like traffic lights should start blinking and people should hug on the sidewalk. Like the best British pop, it even makes London look a shade less grey. --Chris Dahlen",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d700c2bba1b7de04a55/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Guillemots_Trains_to-Brazil.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,24,"Califone ""The",Orchids,Thrill Jockey,"MP3:  Califone: ""The Orchids"" Tim Rutili is drawn to rust and decay. His characters are troubled by frayed nerve endings and sour livers, and live constantly on the verge of doing something they'll regret. So he uses cover songs to give the warmth that exists as an undercurrent in his own music an opportunity to flower. Psychic TV's ""The Orchids"" is difficult to parse, with typically ambiguous references to the body, but Califone focuses on the song's simple beauty, its yearning to be a quiet anthem. The chorus, which mentions falling in love with the light, is an epiphany frozen and preserved, always ready for future access, the kind of thing you can return to the next time the walls start closing in. --Mark Richardson",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d71d7a71d1ea569c473/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Califone_The-Orchids.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,23,"Phoenix ""Long Distance",Call,Astralwerks,"Phoenix's 2006 incarnation sounded like a band of OCD neat-freaks fighting to overcome their phobias, as they pushed themselves to incorporate a measured amount of sloppiness into their squeaky-clean sound, ""Long Distance Call"" was the closest they came to having a breakthrough. At first cautiously dipping their toes into Strokes-lite slacker jangle, then quickly retreating to safely airtight drums and shimmery keyboards, Phoenix forced these two oppositional elements to coexist in the choruses. You can hear a combination of fear and thrills in the way Thomas Mars' loses his icy cool demeanor, the mocking chortles of his verses replaced by fevered ""OH!""s. --Rob Mitchum",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d71c0084474cd0c6c2c/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Phoenix_Long_Distance-Call.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,22,"Luomo ""Really Don't Mind (Radio",Edit),Huume,"MP3:  Luomo: ""Really Don't Mind (Radio Edit)"" With The Present Lover, Luomo conjured visions of voluptuous German house music soundtracking the latest in glittering chart pop (paging Kylie). But his new album, Paper Tigers, mostly dodged the issue, with the exception of ""Really Don't Mind"", perhaps the Finnish techno producer's most focused pop track yet. In its truncated radio version, the song encapsulates the artist's considerable arsenal of tricks in under four minutes: Swishing snares, dub echoes, and springloaded, fractured drums are present and correct, of course, but all ears are trained to the melancholy bass riffs, the achingly emotional clusters of synth chords, and the sweet but deliciously conflicted vocals (""You make me do wrong/ But I do what feels right""). Pushed forward by restless, senseless desire, ""Really Don't Mind"" spirals in on itself, culminating in a perfect tremor of lust that's as good as anything in ""Can't Get You Out of My Head"". --Tim Finney",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d72c0084474cd0c6c2e/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Luomo_Really_Dont_Mind_Radio-Edit.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,21,"The Pipettes ""Pull",Shapes,Memphis Industries,"Happy, innocent songs about dancing are few and far between these days; happy, innocent songs about dancing that aren't annoying are even rarer. ""Pull Shapes"" begs to be replayed not just for pure enjoyment, but to discover all the little quirks that punch heart-shaped holes in the song's shiny girl-group façade. Quirks like the usages of ""rock'n'roll"" and ""hip-hop"" as verbs, the faint crowd noise at the end, the half-time record skip after ""I like to hip-hop."" And, of course, the hint of a feminist agenda behind the song's premise: a girl asking a ""pretty boy"" to dance. Because the personal is always political, and a dance is always more than just a dance-- even if you just wanna move-- you don't care what the song's about. --Amy Phillips",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d7213d197565213f492/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Pipettes_Pull-Shapes.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,20,"Clipse [ft. Pharrell] ""Mr. Me",Too,Jive,"For a group that was essentially non-existent for three years to re-emerge with a song that indicts people they believe are biting them takes some nerve. Such is the audacity of Pusha T and Malice. Sonically, it's a fairly terrible choice as lead single (to say nothing of Pharrell opening the song rapping), but ""Mr. Me Too"" was thrilling because it was the opposite of everything We Got It 4 Cheap Vol. 2 predicted. Sedate and disarming while still provocative. Pusha ends his verse with the now oft-recited: ""These are the days of our lives/ And I'm sorry to the fans, but them crackers won't play 'em fair-- Jive."" Though their album's now arrived, few serious rap fans will trust the label ever again. And whether they were unloading on Lil Wayne or their man on the corner is of little concern. In the end, did they win? Yeah... us, too. --Sean Fennessey",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d7313d197565213f494/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Clipse_ft_Pharrell_Mr_Me-Too.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,19,"Ghostface Killah ""Shakey",Dog,Def Jam,"MP3:  Ghostface Killah: ""Shakey Dog"" Ghostface is renowned for his next-level quipping and Rosetta Stone metaphors, but this is an example of his excellence as a storyteller: George Pelecanos couldn't have done a better job with ""Shakey Dog"", a realistic, fine-print-detail play-by-play which Ghost rapped like the storyboards for an episode of ""The Wire"". Only the shit was in real time, as he took us on a journey from a cab uptown to the middle of a bloody shoot-out. On a dramatic, car-chase-invoking sample of the Dells' ""I Can Sing a Rainbow/Love Is Blue"", Ghost begins as the protagonist in the back of a car, eating fries, smoking joints, and loading a gun, ready to rob some drug dealers uptown, Omar-style. ""Back seat with my leg all stiff,"" he says. ""Push the fuckin' seat up, tartar sauce on my S Dot kicks."" He switches voices more than once, barely pausing for breath as he raps from the perspectives of different characters, but never leaves out the details that make this track so immediate. As he spies on his targets, he considers his own hunger: ""These fuckin' maricons on the couch watchin' 'Sanford and Son'/ Passin' they rum, fried plantains and rice/ Big round onions on a T-bone steak, my stomach growling/ Yo I want some."" Before long, the dealer's wife starts screaming in Spanish, the pitbull is let loose, and the apartment is overtaken by plumes of gunsmoke. ""To be continued,"" is the last line. A rap so cinematic it needs a commercial break! --Julianne Shepherd",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d73eb335119a49f101d/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Ghostface_Killah_Shakey-Dog.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,18,"Band of Horses ""The",Funeral,Sub Pop,"MP3:  Band of Horses: ""The Funeral"" I'm one of maybe three people in the world who actually liked the fuzzy, black-and-white, traffic-school video for this anthem from Everything All the Time. Really it's a nonvideo, neither distracting from nor adding to the song itself. Which was a smart move: ""The Funeral"" is the supreme weeper of the year, proof that indie guitars can be tender and gentle and that indie songwriting doesn't have to sacrifice intimacy for size. To leash the song to visuals would resolve the lyrics' conflicted empathy, lessen the impact of Ben Bridwell's ghostly ooohs, and sever the listener's personal connection to it. And ""The Funeral"" is a song that people connect to, as reader emails continue to attest. So long as it doesn't end up soundtracking some crummy indie movie, it'll be ours forever. --Stephen M. Deusner",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d735e6ef95969327057/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Band_of_Horses_The-Funeral.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,17,"Herbert ""Something Isn't",Right,!K7,"MP3:  Herbert: ""Something Isn't Right"" In a cruel bit of self-reflexive judo, Matthew Herbert turns the very gloss and sophistication of his own disco-jazz production chops into a foil for a narrative of romantic failure and collapse. Herbert's music has never sounded more glamorous and widescreen: He's going to town with tricky horn charts, tightly picked funk guitar bridges, and luscious orchestral arrangements. This is a song wearing pop history on its sleeve, with cleverly nestled references to hooks past; I hear overt nods to Quincy Jones, Stephanie Mills, and Earth, Wind and Fire. But there's a terrible sorrow and frustration coiled within. When Dani Siciliano's breathy voice coos the blunt chorus, ""There must be something wrong/ I don't feel love,"" you feel both clued in to the ""friendly torture"" the song describes and enacts. When you get past the increasingly dubious chant that ""I'm all over this"" to the final cliffhanger strings, you don't know whether to dance or cry. --Drew Daniel",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d74eb335119a49f1021/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Herbert_Something_Isnt-Right.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,16,"Hot Chip ""Over and",Over,Astralwerks,"Sometime during this decade, indie music opened a window for awkward white boys to dominate dancefloors to previously unimaginable extents. And though that window has significantly narrowed over the past couple years, bands like Hot Chip keep squeezing through. Honoring the LCD Soundsystem formula of rock-crit as song concept, ""Over and Over"" mocks repetitive arrangements while building a microdot groove of its own, keyboards and one-note guitar piling atop each other like hands in a huddle. Just when you start to think they might be hypocrites, the song unexpectedly scuttles the momentum, if only to show off their ability to rebuild the beat from scratch. Just when you think these guys must be pretty damn cool, their sex-jam spelling-bee is interrupted by a synthesizer brand name, a momentary reminder of the tech-geek handicap Hot Chip triumphantly overcame to bring you this seething banger. --Rob Mitchum",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d755e6ef9596932705b/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Hot_Chip_Over_and-Over.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,15,"Lupe Fiasco ""Kick",Push,Atlantic,"Six months ago, when a friend of mine-- someone who's felt burnt by hip-hop ever since Phife hung up his New Balances-- called to ask if I'd heard the ""hip-hop skateboard single,"" I knew this was something special. And I'm not so afraid of looking like the corniest man in Corntown that I won't say that this song found its way onto more than a few personal mixtapes as I was falling in love earlier this year. (Irony of ironies: She's now moving to icy Chicago, where this perfect summer single inexplicably came from.) Both musically and lyrically, the way this song so purposefully plays up to saps is indefensible, but you can't knock those strings, some of the prettiest to ever grace a pop single. --Jess Harvell",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d75d7a71d1ea569c47a/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Lupe_Fiasco_Kick-Push.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,14,"The Knife ""We Share Our Mothers'",Health,Mute,"The Knife's Silent Shout offered a fantasyland as elaborately detailed as any record's all year, and plenty has already been written about how flat-out otherworldly it was-- a haunted houseful of demented voices, rusted-out music boxes, creepy familial tensions, even paranoid refugees and anti-Communist purges. Yeah, it's spooky. But let's not forget that it's also, in spots, mind-bogglingly fierce-- and for a catchy, danceable synth track, ""We Share Our Mothers' Health"" is about as intense as it gets. The beat clangs like hardcore; the bass synth sounds like an evil inner tube; and Karin Dreijer's voice, which starts off sounding painfully human, turns into some kind of vacuum-cleaner demon halfway through, and then starts accompanying itself with the insistent keening of some killer bird with enormous claws that lives out in the snow. This is pretty much the grimmest theatrical production to come out of Scandinavia since Ibsen, only a lot more fun. --Nitsuh Abebe",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d76d7a71d1ea569c47c/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Knife_We_Share_Our_Mothers-Health.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,13,"Junior Boys [ft. Andi Toma] ""In the",Morning,Domino,"MP3:  Junior Boys [ft. Andi Toma]: ""In The Morning"" The production is rock solid: all the yearning and innocence of 1980s new wave brought intact into the present without a scratch, yet somehow updated to sound completely of the moment. And the melody bounces along like a small white ball over the words, sounding like it was written years ago and was just waiting to be discovered. But the magic of the thing is in Jeremy Greenspan's voice, rhythmic and punctuated despite a tone that can only be described by invoking whispers and coos. He's always up against your ear, and you can almost feel his breath on your neck; it'd be creepy if he wasn't so warm, articulating longing and confusion with a smoothness that says music is the one thing we can control, the tool to make everything all right. --Mark Richardson",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d76eb335119a49f1026/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Junior_Boys_ft_Andi_Toma_In_the-Morning.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,12,"Killer Mike ""That's",Life,mixtapes,"MP3:  Killer Mike: ""That's Life"" FEMA's still juking the stats, and everytime you see edutainer-cum-bullshitter Common hawking hoodies between scenes of ""Heroes"" in the name of peace, I hope you think of Killer Mike, who, on ""That's Life"", delivers his Cornel West-conversating/Michael Eric Dyson-debating knowledge in a screed so passionate you'll be screaming church by the time the final Sinatra sample hits. An exasperated defense of rappers against the bourgeoisie a-holes who vilify them, this Purple Ribbon All-Star was motivated by pure teeth-baring emotion, his sardonic disillusionment bitter and real: ""Pipe dreams/ Crack fiends/ Cars look like ice cream/ Kids see the bling bling/ And they want them nice things/ All cause of tennis shoes/ Our kids drop out of high school/ They said 'Be Like Mike'/ So ball, nigga!/ That's life."" He calls out hypocrites who boycotted Ludacris but forgave Martha Stewart: ""If I actually do time, I can come back out and have a TV show with an all-white audience? But if I RAP about getting some money on the block, it's a problem? ARE YOU FUCKING RETARDED?"" Andrew Hacker wrote this book in 1992 called Two Nations: Black and White, Separate, Hostile, Unequal. It's still relevant. ""We wear our fuckin' pants big because our mothers were too poor to buy our size,"" Mike levels. ""Call it what it is, nigga: It's fucking poverty."" In a year full of crap, Killer Mike cut right through it. --Julianne Shepherd",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d76eb335119a49f1028/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Killer_Mike_Thats-Life.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,11,"The Hold Steady ""Stuck Between",Stations,Vagrant,"MP3:  The Hold Steady: ""Stuck Between Stations"" The state of mind Craig Finn describes here is so vivid. Those periods of doubt where nothing quite makes sense, you can't get a handle on things, everything seems to be in a constant state of flux, and hey, all this drinking isn't making things any clearer. Sometimes it's like this-- especially tonight. Where to get your bearings in such a world? How do you know what you can hold onto? It's the sort of thing that can drive someone like poet John Berryman to make regrettable choices. But even if you don't feel like paying attention to Finn's take on the drama, you've still got the riffs. A concise statement of a fantastic album's thesis that happens to be a kick-ass song in its own right. --Mark Richardson",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d77eb335119a49f102a/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Hold_Steady_Stuck_Between-Stations.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,10,"Christian Falk [ft. Robyn & Ola Salo] ""Dream",On,Bonnier Amigo,"""Dream On"" knows that to deliver a message, it's best to keep things simple, and this song's looped breakbeat, trembling electroclash bass, and winsome synth arpeggios are happy to be the pretty, bittersweet background to Robyn's sermonizing lyrics. Thugs, badmen, punks, lifers, locked-up interns, pigs, and snitches, all have somewhere to come home to in this one-night-only offer of shelter to the unwanted. ""Dream On"" is ultimately sadder and darker for what it seeks to save us from (""you won't be backstabbed, double-crossed, face down, teeth knocked out, lying in a gutter somewhere""), and it's this fragility-- the frustrating hopelessness of the dream-- that makes it such an effective, unexpected tearjerker. Nominally a duet, ""Dream On"" is really Robyn's song, her throaty, tremulous performance verging on the evangelical as it crowds out everything else. --Tim Finney",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d77eb335119a49f102c/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Christian_Falk_ft_Robyn__Ola_Salo_Dream-On.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,9,Joanna Newsom,Emily,Drag City,"A popular but false notion of Joanna Newsom is that the classically trained harpist's luxurious fantasias amount to little more than childlike playacting. But ""Emily"", a beautiful 12-minute deluge of exotic imagery that hinges on an elliptical narrative and Van Dyke Parks' lush symphonics-- proves otherwise. It isn't just ambitious; it's an entirely human tale, heavy on empathy and devoid of artifice. Sure, she drops a ""thee,"" but it's only at the playful, rhyming end of an astronomy lesson about meteors that she set to verse so she'd always remember. In the end, Newsom's song is all humility, the sound of this precocious talent bowing to the respective bravery and wisdom of her sister and father. --Grayson Currin",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d78d7a71d1ea569c482/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Joanna_Newsom-Emily.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,8,"Beach House ""Apple",Orchard,Carpark,"MP3:  Beach House: ""Apple Orchard"" It wouldn't have been possible without shoegaze. Baltimore's Beach House gravitate to gauzy sounds that shimmer and hang in the air, and that their chords morph lazily into each other makes it easy to underestimate the duo's songwriting talent. On first blush, ""Apple Orchard"" just kind of glides along, its organ twisting and turning indiscriminately, its guitar floating languidly in the background. But by the time you finally unpack it, on the fourth or fifth listen, you find there's a compact and marvelously crafted song at its core. And suddenly, in the context of its spacious arrangements, the chugging hook and minute pauses in Victoria Legrand's chorus (""Let's lie down for a while/ You can smile"") seem Grand Canyon large. Forget autumn: This was one of the most beautiful songs of the year. --Mark Pytlik",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d78d7a71d1ea569c484/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Beach_House_Apple-Orchard.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,7,"Hot Chip ""Boy From",School,Astralwerks,"Hot Chip learned how to perform the way a live band should: with force and might. They also learned to wipe the smirks off their faces. Hot Chip leaders Alexis Taylor and Joe Goddard are two of the most promising young songwriters around, and ""Boy From School"", their masterpiece-so-far, exudes a kind of sadness that feels earned without sounding meek. Since they make a sort of filtered dance-pop, they've often masked their songs' identities behind canny phrasing or silly double entendres. But here, they're direct, singing in harmony, ""We tried, but we don't belong,"" over a boomeranging track and crinkling wind chimes. In 2006, ""Boy From School"" energized downtempo electronic with vigor, and took the heart-pounding to ever greater heights. --Sean Fennessey",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d7813d197565213f49e/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Hot_Chip_Boy_From-School.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,6,Clipse,Trill,Jive,"When I interviewed Pusha T late last year, he touched on Clipse's unique relationship with the Neptunes. ""Everybody else comes up to them says, 'Hey, give me one of them joints with the congos or bongos or whatever the hell,'"" he said. ""But when they work with us, if it ain't something crazy, we don't want it."" I imagine ""Trill"" probably started off as a relatively standard Neptunes club track; the round bass dropping off the syncopated hi-hats, Pharrell playing dumb on the hook. But the song's black-hole suction is almost wholly dependent on that squelching keyboard line that's forever mashing dirt like an army of deranged earthworms. Malice and especially Pusha-- who even switches to a Mase-esque sing-song for the occasion-- sound as rough as ever, but it barely matters. And that's the impetus to its greatness; ""Trill"" turns two of rap's most scenery-gulping MCs into premium perks. --Ryan Dombal",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d79c0084474cd0c6c3e/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Clipse-Trill.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,5,"Peter Bjorn and John [ft. Victoria Bergsman] ""Young",Folks,Wichita,"MP3:  Peter Bjorn and John [ft. Victoria Bergsman]: ""Young Folks"" Stockholm's indie-pop pied pipers whistled, and music lovers couldn't help but follow: MySpace, YouTube, the BBC, NPR, first-wave blogs, Pitchfork, blogs by kids who stalk Pitchfork writers on IM... even ""Grey's Anatomy"". In a year of The Long Tail -- when nobody didn't have a website (not even Ryan Adams), and music listening followed TV viewing and political wingnuttery into Big Bang-style fragmentation-- ""Young Folks"" belonged to everyone. Taken from Writer's Block, the latest album by Swedish trio Peter Bjorn and John, the summer single's spacious reverb leaves two world-weary strangers alone over the busy rhythms of a crowded nightlife scene. Their seduction becomes a metaphor for our own. Like record collectors jaded by the last Next Big Thing, PB&J's Peter Morén and ex-Concretes singer Victoria Bergsman bring low expectations: ""No one will surprise me unless you do,"" Bergsman shrugs. But soon the two are inseparable, promising it's not about style-- young, old, or even their own-- and it's not about the kids, the oldsters, or anyone else, either: ""All we care about is talking/ Talking only me and you,"" they enthuse, unwilling to spoil so rare a feeling with pointless comparisons. --Marc Hogan",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d795e6ef95969327063/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Peter_Bjorn_and_John_ft_Victoria_Bergsman_Young-Folks.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,4,"TV on the Radio ""Wolf Like",Me,Interscope,"Wolves, as many naturalists could tell you, have had a bad rap for centuries. Thanks to their negative portrayal in all manner of fairytales, horror movies, and Old World folklore, they've earned a bloodthirsty reputation far out of proportion with their actual history of mayhem and destruction. TV on the Radio's rampaging tale of transformation, ""Wolf Like Me"", certainly buys into that Red Riding Hood mythology, but they're also savvy enough to recognize that sometimes pack animals are just on the prowl looking for new playmates. Tunde Adebimpe's charismatic wolfman is undoubtedly a wild character, but in pursuit of this romantic quarry he always takes care to use his powers of persuasion rather than predation. ""When the moon is round and full,"" he promises seductively, ""Gonna teach you tricks that will blow your mongrel mind."" Of course, it doesn't hurt that this fervent pitch is delivered atop one of the year's most immediate and indestructible punk-bred productions. Guitarist/producer David Sitek and the group fill the night air with such savage rip-currents of vocals and guitar that the wind at Adebimpe's back soon grows into an irresistible cyclonic force. It draws the listener inexorably into TVOTR's den, as the enraptured closing affirmation ""We're howling forever"" begins to sound ever more inclusive and triumphant. --Matthew Murphy",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d7a13d197565213f4a2/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/TV_on_the_Radio_Wolf_Like-Me.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,3,"T.I. ""What You",Know,Atlantic,"In The Wire, writer Hua Hsu compared T.I.'s ""What You Know"" to Jimi Hendrix's monolithic ""Hey Joe"". This is a record so epic that it positively encourages outlandish comparisons. It's the biggest noise of the year and also one of the simplest: a keyboard line by DJ Toomp that rolls out and keeps on rollin' like a slow-ass tidal wave of cheap synthetic grandeur. It's the mid-range that swallowed rap. As plenty of mixtapes proved this year, just about anyone sounds good rapping over ""What You Know"" and that zillion dollar riff. But it's T.I. who makes the track that bears his name one of the year's best. The King lives up to his title, following the dips and crests of the melody with a regal surety and never sounding lost in its long shadow. And the whole thing probably sounds even better rolling through in a big ride with a killer system instead of walking around with tinny, tiny buds jammed in my ears. So maybe the best compliment I can pay this monster of a song is that it kinda makes me want to steal a car. --Jess Harvell",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d7a5e6ef95969327065/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/TI_What_You-Know.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,2,"The Knife ""Silent",Shout,Mute,"No one can hear you scream. Every piece of this song-- the treated vocal, the insistent, uncooperative arpeggios, the muffled drums, and the gradual build to what, in any other song, might be called a ""climax,"" but here is evasive and even-keeled-- is a clue that the Knife understand their subject matter better than most. Surprisingly, this wasn't usually the song gushed about during conversations I had about this band this year, yet after all the cards have fallen, it seems like an obvious representative for both the band and 2006. There's something anticlimactic about it, maybe in the same way isolation in general is anticlimactic, always moving from one still, cold moment to another. Karin Dreijer sings about hopeless dreams where her teeth fall out, and even when the electronic hi-hats ruffle by like a flock of birds scared by a passing car, that vision never seems manic or macabre. Instead, ""Silent Shout"" seems veiled and driven, making me feel pushed on by something, but covering all tracks of whatever's doing the pushing. And it demonstrates something interesting about music: You don't have to be able to make out the exact contour of a dark landscape if you can feel your way through. --Dominique Leone",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d7bc0084474cd0c6c40/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/The_Knife_Silent-Shout.jpg
The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 | Pitchfork,https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/6508-the-top-100-tracks-of-2006/,2006,year,song,1,"Justin Timberlake [ft. T.I.] ""My",Love,Jive,"Some people still get gassed that we like Justin Timberlake, as if there were some honor in denying good songs. But Timberlake is the new King of Pop, and just like the old King, he’s not scared to sing like a girl as long as his tracks are thrillers. We appreciate him for that, for taking the throne and working with producers who take risks and constantly surprise us. Despite leaking as the worst mp3 ever, ""My Love"" felt like an instant favorite. It jolted us so much we gave it a five-star review after some wishful (but futile) EQ'ing. Days later, usually fussy DJs played it in clubs, and some smart guy made t-shirts that said, ""Atlantic Records for T.I. Clearance,"" the vocal stamp on the leaked track meant to discourage pirates. Maybe they were being ironic, but we like to think not. The thing is, ""My Love"" wasn't made to please hipsters or blow up the internet. Timbaland, and his unsung protégé, Danja, wanted to make the song of the year and got us by default. Their audacious synthesizer fury turned JT's little valentine into sentimental napalm. You want his love? You're melting in it. Yes, T.I. called himself ""candle guy,"" but ""My Love"" still won, proving that even the coolest artists (and coolest songs) don't have to always be so cool. --Peter Macia",,https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/592c5d7b13d197565213f4a4/master/pass/file,/dataset/artwork/Justin_Timberlake_ft_TI_My-Love.jpg